“The Girls”
My face was burning. I still absolutely cannot believe that that little shit…well, things were just going to have to change. No more peeping Sid. He had to stop at the threshold of the back door, but I stepped out onto the porch. I left the screen open so he could be heard. Two big black birds perched on the backs of the two wicker chairs on the porch. One of the cawed at me.
“Uh, hey guys,” I murmured at them, wondering for the millionth time if I was insane. My backyard looked the same as always. It was a compact rectangle, with the Western half dominated by the porch and a square of grass with a willow tree in the middle. I pretty much LOVE that tree. When it storms, the whippy branches blow around like leafy tentacles. It’s awesome, and dramatic, and if you stand in the right place, IT WILL WHOMP YOU. No joke.
The other half of the yard has a small entertaining pool, which right now was a pretty shade of aqua. In the northeast corner there is a lace bark elm, and next to that is a white gazebo. It is one of my dearest ambitions to string it up with Christmas lights and have an uber romantic kiss underneath it. Preferably with a boy. The whole yard is bordered by a slender band of garden, except for the side that abuts the house with is thickly shrubbed.
I stalked out into the yard. “So where are these ‘girls’?” I asked, making finger quotes. I leaned against the willow tree and raised my eyebrows at him.
“Get off!” screeched the tree.
“AHHH!” I screamed back.
“She screams a lot,” observed Sid.
As I watched, the outline of a figure appeared in the tree’s bark. The striations in the wood compacted into strands of hair and smoothed out into ethereally gorgeous features. It looked to be a teenage girl, tall and well…willowy. She looked nutbrown all over, until her eyelids flew open to reveal eyes the exact color of the silver green leaves of her tree. They were luminous, enchanting, and scornful. As she stepped away from the tree, her skin suddenly appeared white and pearlescent, with a glow like moonlight, even though it was 11am. The whole process took about three seconds. She wore a draped white dress that should have looked ancient, but instead was unspeakably chic.
“So, she sees now.” The tree-girl said. Sid mumbled something in the affirmative. I rubbed my eyes.
“Okay, more weirdness.” My eyes were bleary and she looked forbidding, but I smiled and introduced myself.
“Of course I know who you are,” She tossed her moon-colored hair. “I’ve been watching you. You talk to yourself a lot. Who exactly is Tyler?”
I flushed angrily. “Jesus Christ! Have I not had one private moment since I moved here?”
“Sorry, no,” said someone behind me. I whirled to see a short, curvy girl of maybe 20 or so. She had brown tanned skin, tangled brown hair, and brown eyes of unusual depth and clarity. She was just..cute. she had round rosy cheeks, a button nose and a rosebud mouth. She smiled sympathetically. “You’ve been closely watched since your first blood. That’s when she could sense you. I’m Lacey, by the way.”
The willow-girl snorted elegantly. A look passed between them that I didn’t understand.
My mouth hung open. “This is getting to be too much, if it wasn’t already.” I said with a hint of a sob in my voice. I threw myself into one of the wicker chairs, startling one of the raven/crows and taking a wing to the face. I looked at Lacey. “Hi, I’m Katie. Who is ‘she’? The vampire queen of Louisiana?” I got blank looks, except from Sid who grinned. Of course on him it looked like a grimace.
“She’s referring to your esteemed patron, of course,” sneered the willow girl.
“It would be best if you didn’t know who ‘she’ is,” said Lacey. Her voice was rich and earthy, hearing it was like sinking your fingers into an unplanted flowerbed.
“Ignorance is bliss?” I asked sardonically. I had addressed it to the willow but Lacey answered.
“Perhaps she wants you to figure it out for yourself.” I chewed on this for a minute. What information was I supposed to go on here? I didn’t know what universe I was dealing with here. The nymphs seemed to suggest that I was dealing with greek legends, but the Rusalka was technically some kind of fairy, I thought. I mean, was this just…anything goes? Were there fairies and greek gods and vampires, oh frickin’ my?
“Where’s Melly?” Sid broke into my thoughts.
“She’s being shy,” said Lacey.
“There’s another one?” I asked.
“Yes,” snapped tall, blond, and bitchy. Lacey narrowed her eyes and glared at the other nymph.
“Don’t be unkind, Arianne,” she said firmly. I looked around for ‘Arianne’ but then I figured it must be the willow girl. I had just been calling her “Willow” in my head.
Arianne crossed her arms like slender white branches. “I’m not convinced she’s really a Thinker,” she lifted her chin. “She seems like an idiot to me.” Lacey must have seen me start to retort and jumped in.
“I’ve heard her talking too,” she looked at me, “You are not an idiot.” I nodded my thanks. “There is no question of her being a Thinker or not.” The authoritative glare she gave Arianne sat oddly on her round features. Arianne tossed her hair again and walked across the porch like it was a damn runway.
“She certainly looks like a Thinker,” Arianne tossed in my direction. She folded herself into a chair that faced mine. She leaned forward and said in a condescending stage whisper “You’re ugly.” I sat back like I’d been pushed.
“You’re rude!” I snapped at her.
“It’s not that,” Lacey said, “It’s your coloring.”
“How so?” I asked.
“You have an ‘ish’ look to you.” I had no idea what that meant.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“You have reddish hair, greenish eyes, paleish skin. Ish. It’s the look of a Thinker.”
“Guys,” I said with a sigh. “My hair is dyed, I have no idea what color it really is that this point.”
“Probably something ish,” offered Arianne unhelpfully. I tried my best to block her out.
“What exactly are you two?” I asked Lacey. She gave me a kind look.
“I am sure you have many questions,” she said. “shall we go somewhere we can speak in private?”
“Okay, sure” I replied. Lacey walked around the yard to the Elm in the corner and motioned for me to follow. I walked over and stood in front of it, but she kept walking and seemed to just melt into the trunk.
“Lacey?” I asked. As if in answer, the tree started to move. The branches were rearranging and shifting. The whole tree seemed to bend forward. I yelped as a branch started to twine around my middle.
“Just go with it!” Sid yelled from the back door. The branches continued to twist around my arms and legs and torso, tuning me into a woody mummy. All of a sudden the thick main branches came at me and clamped around my middle, more all the world like a giant pair of tongs, taking me up and into the tree. I whimpered, but successfully held in the scream that was building in my chest. For a few seconds all I could see was wood, the solid trunk and whippy branches, and leaves, abrading my face and arms. It felt like I was being pulled through a tunnel made of slender branches. Then just as suddenly as I’d been bourn upwards, the branches arched out to create a weird wooden womb. It felt like being inside of an egg made out of twigs.
There were two wooden stools, making it look like the world’s sketchiest tree house. Seeing as that the branches that made up the dramatically concave floor were no bigger than my pinky finger, I somewhat doubted it’s structural integrity. The stool seemed to be the most substantial surface in the place so I tucked my feet up underneath me and sat on it. Lacey was sitting on the other stool, looking perfectly at ease with her surroundings.
“Now,” she said, “Where were we?”
All I have to say about this post is that Sid is lucky he’s dead.
I wouldn’t have believed that the events of the previous evening weren’t a dream (and a complete waste of REM!) if I hadn’t woken up the next morning to see the outline of a youthful face wavering in the air above me.
“How did you sleep?” He asked. I shut my eyes and rubbed them vigorously, making a last ditch attempt to prove that Sid was a figment of my imagination.
“Um, okay, I guess, considering that I’m being protected by my worst nightmare. If my worst nightmare were pubescent.” His lopsided grin was kind of adorable.
“Hey now, I’m not so scary,” he thumped my shoulder with a ghostly fist and it went numb like it had been shot up with Novocain. I hauled myself out of bed for my routine morning trip to the porcelain throne. My mind was so scrambled that I didn’t even notice the horrid wall paper I’ve been mentally abusing since we moved here. I splashed my face with water from the sink and looked at my reflection. I looked a little haggard and a little scared, but I enjoyed the soft glow my skin always had immediately after I washed it. Or I would have enjoyed it, had I not noticed at that moment that Sid was standing right behind me.
“WHAT THE HELL, MAN?” I screeched. “I am USING THE BATHROOM!” He looked uncomfortable.
“You’re vulnerable in here. What if something sucks you down the drain? I’d never know.” He mumbled.
I gestured at my body “DO I LOOK LIKE I WOULD EVER IN A MILLION YEAR FIT DOWN A DAMN DRAIN?” I could feel metaphorical smoke coming out my ears.
“Well, there-there’s a window! Something could come in that!” He stammered. I rolled my eyes.
“Oh my god, Sid. If something came through the window you would hear it break. I mean, in an emergency, what could you really do?” It was out before I realized how rude it was. The question hung in the air for a moment before Sid stood to his full height, puffed out his boyish chest a little and said with the utmost pride:
“I was told to watch over you. Every day. Every night. Every minute.” A horrible possibility occurred to me and I drew breath to yell but my life-challenged friend held up his hand (through which I could see my loofah hanging from the shower head). “If you were ever to be in real danger, Forgotten powers beyond your belief would be here almost instantaneously. You are important. Your protection is worth my after-life. This is my task and so long as you are under this roof you will not leave my sight.”
I was impressed against my will with the speech, but I was pissed as hell. “Have you been watching me pee for four years?” I inquired through clenched teeth. I saw Sid note my narrowed eyes and fisted hands. He crossed his arms.
“Yes,” He said, defiantly, lifting his chin. He looked pretty proud of himself, but his eyes were scared.
“Have you been watching me shower and bathe for four years?” This time he couldn’t help smirking a little. I wanted his smirk to die painfully.
“That’s kind of the best part of my job.” My nails were clenched into my palm so tightly that the skin was in danger of breaking.
“When I’m alone…with…myself…” I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even finish the sentence (by the way, screw you, I’ve been single a long time!). His face broke into a full fledged, shit-eating grin.
“I take it back” he said, with more confidence than I had seen from him so far. “Watching you shower is the second best part of my job.”
With an inarticulate noise of rage I launched myself at him, but I went right through his smokey form. For a second I got that feeling of chewing minty gum and having all of the air you breathe in seem wintery cold no matter how warm the air around you is, only on my whole body.
When I looked up at him, his face was morose again. “I thought that might make you mad. But it’s kind of a bad idea to try and hurt me physically ‘cause I can rearrange myself so that you go right through me.” I glared at him. He let out one of his patented emo Sid sighs. “Want to go meet the girls?” He asked. I was indeed curious about these “girls.”
“Can they help me kill you?” I asked in what I hoped was a terrifyingly soft and lethal voice. He smiled a little.
“Nope, already dead.”
I got to my feet, scowling. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
If I were a lolcat…
Has anyone ever taken the “Which lolcat are you?” quiz on facebook? I forget what mine was, but it should have been this one!
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
In which I get Edward Cullen-ed and it is sooo not on
The flight home was much less eventful than I thought it would be. I had assumed that since the storms in Colorado had something to do with me and some scary Forgotten World power, my plane had a good chance of being struck by lightning. But, no. It was sunny when we landed in my hometown.
If I was feeling high and mighty on my cloud of arcane specialness, my mom brought me down right quick. I was no mysterious Thinker. I was just a vacuum-er. Or so I thought until, vacuuming completed, I looked outside to see a storm brewing. I had planned to go outside and watch it rain, but the with stress of dealing with two kids all weekend (not an activity to which I’m really accustomed) and finding out about the existence of a secret population of what I could only assume were fairies and monsters…well, I passed out. However, I didn’t sleep through the night.
Thunder boomed so loudly that I could hear it in my dream, which involved a certain wizard rocker and myself…not that you needed to know that. I woke up facing the empty space between my dresser and the corner of my bedroom. In it was crouched a young man, who could not have been older than eighteen. He seemed to be wearing tight jeans, a black t shirt and a dark hoodie.
If I had stared at him longer I would have noticed that he had floppy dyed black hair, incongruously fair eyebrows, and a mournful expression. Instead, I did what I still think was the most sensible thing to do. I screamed. I hollered at the top of my lungs until they started burning. All the while he was holding his index finger to his lips and shushing me urgently. His expression had gone from pathetic to panic.
“Please, please, stop screaming!” He begged. I drew in a huge breath and clutched the covers to my chest with one hand and felt around for my cell phone with my other hand.
“WHOTHE HELL ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU EDWARD CULLEN-ING IN THE CORNER OF MY ROOM?” Now, I admit that this mightn’t have been the most appropriate situation for a Twilight reference, but when someone is in a corner of my room watching me sleep, that is where my mind goes. Not that this had happened before or anything.
“My name is Sid, I’m here to help you! Please be quiet, I don’t know how long I can keep your mom from hearing you!”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!”
“NONONO!!!” He begged. I blinked and he was gone.
“Are you okay? What is it?” My mom asked sleepily, appearing in my doorway.
“N-Nothing, I just had a bad dream.” I squeaked. My mom glared at me through sleep-slitted eyes.
“Well, please try not to wake me up again, I have to be at work in a few hours.”
“Yeah, Sorry. Of course.” I mumbled. She turned back into her room and a moment later her light went out. And the intruder was back
“WAIT! Please don’t scream!” he exclaimed. I’m here to help you.”
“How could you help me? By killing me or raping me or robbing me?” I spat.
“No, what? I wouldn’t! I like you! I can help you!”
“You like me? I don’t even- ARE YOU STALKING ME???” I was pretty close to screaming again.
“NO! Well, not in a creepy way at least. Like, if I told you what I do you might think it was stalking. I…I watch over you.” He explained plaintively. I narrowed my eyes.
“So you are Edward Cullen-ing me!” I said loudly.
“I’m not! Please stop yelling!” As he said this, lightening flashed in from my bedroom window and illuminated his features. I observed that he was really cute, totally the kind of guy I would have gone for in High School. I also observed that he was see-through.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” My scream mingled with the thunder.
I flashed to that scene in…I want to say it’s in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince because Snape is teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. He asks Harry what the difference between a ghost and an Inferius is, and Harry replies that ghosts are see through and gets the Severus Snape version of a “Bitch, please.”
I knew the Rusalka said that others would find me, but I hadn’t thought that the others finding me would be things that scared the living day lights out of me. Sid seemed like a nice, normal (albeit transparent) kid…but I’ve been afraid of ghosts forever.
“God, Katie, I’m not going to hurt you!” I could tell that the hysterics were starting to get to him.
“How…How did you know my name?” I asked in a quavering voice. I had progressed from screaming to crying and my face was awash in tears.
“I’ve been here since before you moved in.” He answered, appearing to sit on the bed by my feet. “I haven’t been able to speak to you before now, what happened in Colorado?”
“How did you know I was in Colorado?” He knew too much about me. It was freaking me out perhaps since I knew nothing about him (other than that he made me want to void my bowels in fear).
“Hey, I’m dead, not deaf!” He said, obviously trying (and failing) to make a joke.
“There’s only one consonant’s difference!” I snapped. He looked even more wounded than before. He looked towards the window and tossed his transparent black bangs away from his eyes. Oh great. A dead emo kid. “Sorry,” I sobbed. “I don’t mean to be unkind but…you scare me…so much.” I wrapped my arms around a pillow and sobbed. He touched my shoulder, which I’m sure was meant to comfort, but it just made my shoulder go numb. He chuckled at me.
“I hate to break this to you Katie, but there are lots scarier things out there than me. Things that don’t like you.” I cocked a teary eyebrow at him. He sighed as explosively as a skinny hipster ghost can. “There is so much you don’t know.” I sat up.
“So tell me. You can start with what you are doing here.”
“Hey, I’ve been here longer than you have!” He said defensively. “My grandparents lived here. I killed myself in your bathtub.”
“Why?” I interjected. I had never liked that tub.
“No one understood my pain…” he said morosely. He was staring off into space, so I felt safe to roll my eyes. Presently, he brightened and said “but my funeral was awesome! Everyone cried.” His smile faded a little bit when he saw how I was looking at him. “What? Do you think I’m an asshole for enjoying it?”
“I don’t think you’re an asshole. I think you’re an idiot.”
“Why?”
“Because being misunderstood is not a good reason to kill yourself. No one understands teenagers! Not having anyone get you is like a rite of passage. Hell, teenagers don’t understand teenagers!” I said with feeling. Sid let out another gusty sigh.
“Well, now that I’m technically in my twenties I get your point about teenagers.” He brooded a moment and then said, “Yeah, I guess I was a bit of an idiot.”
Then there was a looooooong awkward pause.
“Well”, he said, “let’s hope I’ve gotten smarter, because I was sent back specifically to help you.”
“Okay,” I said massaging my temples. “Where did you get ‘sent back’ from, and what are you supposed to help me with?” I decided the two most urgent questions would get posed first, with more to follow.
“I don’t know where I would have gone, I was back here almost immediately after I died.” He acted like he had more to say on the subject, but cleared his throat and went in another direction. “I supposed to help you use your gift, learn about the supernaturals, unseen world, elders…whatever you want to call them,-“
“She called it the Forgotten World.”
“That works, too. But most importantly I’m here to keep you alive and out of the wrong hands.” Sid finished with a hint of bravado.
“How do I know I’m not already in the wrong hands?” I asked philosophically. Sid’s face fell.
“I wouldn’t be working for them if they meant you harm.” He said softly. He seemed to think that we were having a moment but I was highly alarmed by his last statement.
“Excuse me, but who the hell are ‘they’?” I demanded.
“Well it’s not a ‘they’ so much as…” His expression hardened. “Let’s just say that as a thinker, you have a very powerful patron.” I opened my mouth to interrogate him some more, but he cut me off. “No more questions tonight. I need to know what happened.”
“A teenage ghost accosted me in my bedroom?” He shook his head dismally.
“Not tonight. If you can see and hear me now, it must mean that you met up with something very powerful or very old in Colorado Springs. They removed the sensory block that prevents you from seeing…stuff like me and the girls,” he said.
“Who are the-” I started to ask.
“No more questions!” He snapped.
So I told him about all of the weird shit that went down last weekend, and most especially about the Rusalka. He listened with a meditative attitude, nodding occasionally. When I’d told him all I could, I meant to start asking more questions, like what exactly is a thinker supposed to do and what girls was he talking about and what was out there that had it in for me. However, my eyelids were very heavy and my pillow was very soft and before I quite knew what was happening…
The Rusalka
Which is to say that she was so pale her skin emitted a faint glow. Now, I’ve always had a porcelain complexion. And I’ve been to the UK where my pastiness is considered to be only moderately pale. And I’ve seen scores of bad white face makeup for vampire dramas (I’m looking at you, True Blood). But I had never in my life even conceived of this kind of skin. I could see, even from across the room, spidery purple blue veins lacing up the inside of her arm as she combed her long soggy green hair. She looked up at me and her eyes were the same pale fishy green of her tangled tresses. She had no pupils.
I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. But the tears didn’t start flowing until I realized that I wasn’t making a sound. It was like every nightmare I’d ever had where I was in trouble but couldn’t call for help. I waved my arms around trying to grab someone. I called for my dad. Somehow I was alone.
“Greetings, Thinker.” She said in a surprisingly deep voice. I wouldn’t have said that she looked like a child…just a very delicate, childlike woman. I noticed her wrists were inhumanly delicate.
“You’re a Rusalka!” I blurted. The taste of my tears made me even more afraid. I’d read that Rusalkas (Rusalki?) were spirits of women who had drowned, or alternately committed suicide ( by drowning) rather than be wed. Some people might have dismissed them as a disturbing fairy tale,but I thought they symbolized the essential yearning humans have for freedom.
“Yes.” She inclined her head. Her expression was serene. Her kind were known to entice men and children to their revels and then murder them. I was pretty sure this one had enticed some men. She’d have been a stone cold fox if you could get over the lack of pupils.
“What are you doing here? Are you going to hurt me? Where’s my Dad?” I said in one sobbing breath.
“Your father is fine.” She murmured. “The other two questions are not so simple to answer.” She stopped her grooming and the comb was still in her lap. It was made of bone. “Katie Hatch…” Her voice seemed to be coming from many directions, like a breeze. “You have imagined our world. The world of the Rusalki…and others. Yearned be part of it.”
Well…maybe not her world exactly.
“Did you never wonder why that was?”
“Um-I- I don’t know?” I stammered. “I was bored?” She smiled and her teeth gleamed so highly they almost looked metallic.
“No, it was not because of your boredom. It is because you are a Thinker.”
“I’m sorry, um, ma’am, but that doesn’t really tell me anything. Everybody thinks, right?”
“Not the way you do, Katie Hatch.” She replied. “Most humans see their world and use things like science and religion to explain it. You see the world and think that those things are the proper modes of explanation. But you do not use them. You think differently. You think of the Forgotten World.”
“The Forgotten…” I started.
“I am a creature of the Forgotten World. There are many of us, some good, some that humankind would call evil. Many creatures are similar to the kinds you read about in your fantasy novels.” She said.
“I don’t understand…about me, I mean. I think differently? Is something wrong with my brain?” A new thought struck me. “Am I hallucinating you?” She waved her papery hand delicately. She smelled wet and earthy, like moss.
“No. It is simply that there is something in you that has not forgotten us.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Did you see the ravens?”
“Um, no ma’am, but I saw some crows.” I answered in a shaking voice.
“Ah yes, they are crows now. Ravens would excite too much comment. I trust you recognized them?”
“Thought and Memory.” I murmured.
“Precisely…they would be attracted to you, for those are two qualities which you possess.” Her voice was lulling me into calm, my heart rate was slowing. “Your kind used to be called seers, but your worth has nothing to do with your eyes.” Her delicate eyebrows arched. “Your…abilities come from your mind.”
“What are my abilities?” I asked, but she ignored me.
“Other …things you will recognize will be drawn to you now.” She looked off into the cave behind me. “Someone is displeased. That’s why there have been so many storms.” Her dainty mouth twisted angrily. “Hekate should have done this long ago, and it is likely I will be reprimanded for what I have done here tonight.”
I started, hearing that name. “Whoa-”
“You are needed” She continued, heedless of my stuttering. “Thinkers are always important players in the dance between the human world and ours.” Her eldritch eyes bored into mine as her light faded. “You are needed….”
“And that’s how the cave looked to the very first cave explorers!” Chirped our tour guide as the intense blackness rushed in around me and I could feel the presence of other humans. A second later the lights flicked back on and my Dad smiled at me. I stared at the pool but the Rusalka was gone. I could still smell moss.
Points Below
I have always loved caves since the first time my Dad took me to Carlsbad Caverns. I was overwhelmed with the size of them and the age…the immense age. In some ways it was scary. Even the great craters of the ceiling looked like I could fall upwards in to them, or down into bottomless pits where I would take an eternity to descend.
The Cave of the Winds near Colorado Springs was nothing like that. The really exciting rock formations were scattered thinly around the place, and unlike the openness of the Big Room in Carlsbad, it was riddled with tiny passages that any grown person would have to practically crawl through to get from room to room. But it was a cave, and it was a respite from the storm that was oddly beginning to grate on my nerves. It was dimly lit and the cement floor was scored to provide traction (I assume). It was definitely a tourist cave. It was the last place I expected to encounter anything out of my dreams or even my nightmares.
I was bringing up the rear of our tour group, my heart rate going a little faster than it should have for this amount of exercise, when I spotted a recess that the guide had been too busy trying to corral my cousins to tell us about. I had to lean a little ways into it to see that there was a formation back there that had been deemed interesting enough to be lit. I grinned. Like so many stalagmites, it resembled nothing so much as a limestone peen.
I turned to follow the group and my grin turned rapidly upside down. I was alone. I could hear no voices, no footsteps. They had moved on while I was dawdling. Alarmed, I took some nearby stairs at a run, but there was no sign of them, so I backed down them, noticing only then that they were terrifyingly rickety. I took off running in one direction calling out for my dad, my aunt, my uncle. My heart raced and I wondered how long the lighting would stay on. I had been in a handful of caverns before and I knew just how tangibly black it would be if the lights went off. That was my main fear.
However, a new fear was creeping into my consciousness. I could hear my own breathing and the pounding of my heart and the slap of my sneakers against the floor, but I could hear something else. I couldn’t quite get my head around it but I was hearing other breaths, slow and measured, not like someone was pursuing me, but like someone was mouth breathing into my ear. The smell of moss was so thick I could aste it, which was weird because I couldn’t see any green. Just cold, slick stone. In my mind I could hear Ian McKellan as Gandalf intoning “In the Deep places of the world…”
Of course I looked over my shoulder, and of course no one was there, but the unnerving sound didn’t stop until I heard my dad’s barking laugh directly ahead of me. I took the stairs in front of me at a run and was immediately smack dab in the middle of my tour group, wheezing like I’d just run a freakin’ marathon. Our guide was calmly explaining how “cave bacon” was formed. No one had missed me.
“Dad!” I exclaimed when we started to move into the next chamber.
“What honey?” he replied.
“I know you always lie about me being your favorite daughter, but did you have to ditch me so blatantly back there?” I teased in my breathy post running up the stairs voice. I happen to know that he’s not lying about it. I’m an only child.
He laughed again. “Well honey, I just can’t take my eyes off you for a second can I? You’re worse than Dallas and Susie!” My eight and five year old cousins had been trying to give us the slip since we went subterranean. We moved to a stairwell and started down. I was in the rear again. “Oh no, she’s three steps behind me, she’s gunna get lost!” He continued to chortle.
We started to go through a very tight tunnel, I had to tuck everything in not to brush the passage walls. It was so snug I fit that I felt the walls were contracting around me like wet rawhide in the sun. I remembered the slow, other breathing, and for the first time ever in my experience as a spelunking tourist I wanted OUT of there. I wanted the safe surface with light and air and the stink of civilization. I was scared.
The passage opened up into another small chamber with unspectacular stalags and water flowing down one wall, staining it bright white and dull orange. There was a small pool under the walkway that people had tossed years of coins into. It was different from the other chambers in that instead of fluorescent lights covered on one side with plaster or something to imitate the rock, this room had several small fake lanterns set onto flat ledges. The fake flame glowed reddish, and it flickered in time with the beating of my heart.
“If you have any digital watches or cell phones that emit light, please turn them off,” said the guide. I knew what was coming next. She was going to turn the lights off. All the way off. So dark you could touch your nose to your palm and not see your hand. I was highly looking forward to it.
Once, I had taken some friends who were cave virgins to a cavern in Arkansas. When the lights went out, I immediately started tickling them unmercifully. Their screams (first of surprise, then of ticklishness) reverberated around the tiny chamber. Though I would have considered doing something similar to Susie, I was really just looking for a respite from the lanterns. They didn’t seem to bother anyone else, but they were giving me a headache so bad it was messing up my hearing. Our guide was saying something about the first people to see this cave, but it sounded like she was yards rather than feet away from me…and moving further and further away. I tried to pop my ears the way I sometimes do on plane rides but to no avail.
When the lights winked out and my world was blackness, I couldn’t hear her at all. The other tourists had gone unbelievably silent. I could have been alone again. Out of habit, I raised my palm to my face to demonstrate to myself how I couldn’t see it. But I could see it. I saw it’s outline very faintly. I shouldn’t have been able to see anything. I lowered my hand slowly. My heart sped up painfully, racketing around in my chest. I broke into a clammy sweat and I backed up against a wall that I couldn’t see. Sitting at the edge of the pool was a girl. She was glowing. That was when shit started to get Real.
Vacation
The resort we were staying at was huge, and had almost every activity known to family resorts in the country. Day one was a spa day and that I have no qualms about saying that it was a magical experience. Magical. Then, to my delight, a storm rolled in.
I definitely should not like storms as much as I do. I come from an area that has frequent and occasionally fatal severe weather. But as long as there aren’t sirens going, when there is a storm, I am so there. I love walking out into the middle of my backyard and throwing my arms up to the heavens. I feel the wind swirl around me, and the icy rain lashing my cheeks, and I hear the thunder booming across the sky. I feel power. I feel alive.
By the time I left the steamy confines of the spa, the storm had moved off into the craggy foothills, making them look more Scottish than western. It was as if they knew I preferred them in their mist-wreathed state.
Day two was what I had proclaimed sightseeing day. It’s hard to plan anything in my family. Most everyone is really passive about what we do and my dad wants to do at least three more activities each day than we have hours for. His girlfriend and I have kind of bonded over the fact that neither of us wants to play golf, tennis, or anything else before noon.
There are a ton of places to visit in Colorado Springs. Everyone was very keen on suggesting multitudes of options without stating a preference. I ended up having to decide which tourist traps sounded the most interesting, since no one else was willing to commit to a plan. This is what usually happens. It’s awesome because I usually get to see what I want. However, it really sucks because a) I take all the blame if the sight I chose for us to see is a bust and b) I never know if, for example, my Uncle has always wanted to explore the Manitou Cliff Dwellings and misses out because he didn’t speak up about it.
The first place we visited was the Garden of the Gods, which was not a huge letdown, but only because I had low expectations. The main reason I was interested in it was because it had been mentioned in one of the Percy Jackson novels, which I had been reading shortly before the trip. To be honest, you can see all there is to see from the visitors center.
There was some awkwardness when my little cousin Susie protested that it couldn’t be Garden of the Gods because didn’t we know that there was only one God? My aunt and I exchanged queasy looks over her head. I personally would have been pleased as punch to spend the entire drive time (which is not insubstantial because everyone driving through TGOTG goes about a mile per hour) explaining the Greek, Norse, and Celtic Pantheons to her, but she’s eight. And her mom is super hardcore Catholic and I suspect she would like, excommunicate me from the family if I put that heathen nonsense in her little girl’s head. It’s only a matter of time before I slip her Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for Christmas.
It was still pretty wet out and there were some sinister looking clouds loitering around the foothills, but it didn’t start raining until we got to the overcrowded visitors center. By the time we had used the restrooms and forked over ten bucks for a slice of rock dyed lurid fuchsia for Susie, the rain was coming down in sheets. I vaguely remembered being told by one the locals I’d met in the hotel bar that this area had been in drought conditions for something like seven years, but this year they had been receiving precipitation of Scottish proportions.
Thunder punctuated our arrival at the park, and lightening streaked dramatically across the sky. On one of the rock formations, right at the top there was an extremely circular hole that seemed to have been formed either by erosion or by two boulders falling into each other. It made me think of the motif I’d seen in a few books where one can see faeries through a stone with a natural hole in it. I strained my eyes trying to see something through it, but all I could see were clouds. It was pretty high up.
The storm calmed down as we turned back onto highway 24, but I guess we were following it because when we got to our second stop, it blew up again and we had to huddle in the few dry spaces that were not infested with screaming tourist kids. Unfortunately we had two screaming tourist kids with us, so I could never really escape them. We had to wait an hour and a half to get a tour and rain fell softly the whole time while thunder boomed intermittently.
Thought and Memory
My first weird premonition happened when I was on the way to meet my dad for paddle boating (which was more awesome than it should have been). I had heard that there were two violently unfriendly black swans in the lake (read: glorified pond) which put me slightly on edge about the venture. I had no prior grievance with swans, but I had heard some horror stories about geese.
As I strolled down the path, surrounded by well manicured nature, my mind was preoccupied with birds and possible suffering. Then I saw them. No one else would have looked twice. There were two shiny black birds standing a foot or two off of the path, not looking particularly occupied. Now, I will be the first to admit that I wouldn’t know a blue bird from a red robin if the names weren’t such a big clue. And I have been known to dramatize perfectly boring incidents.
So my first thought was “Oh my God, two ravens? Thought and Memory!” I had read a book that involved two significant ravens, who were either named or symbolic of Thought and Memory. It’s possible that they show up somewhere in Celtic mythology, but I’ve never looked into it. Then my sense kicked in and I realized that I have never seen a raven anywhere other than the Tower of London so it was highly unlikely that these were ravens. Also, the ravens at the tower had seemed larger.
I tried to dismiss it as a fancy of my imagination but then one of the birds followed me, flying to perch atop a lamppost several yards from where I had first seen them. I walked on, but something made me stop and peer over my shoulder. It hadn’t moved. It’s beady gaze was locked on me. “Which are you?” I asked it in my mind, “Thought or Memory?” Then I really did dismiss it. They were just crows.
OR WERE THEY??????
Seriously, they were just crows. However, I was wrong to dismiss them. It was one of the last time I dismissed something on the basis of it being illogical or even impossible.
The Beginning or the End?
My acquaintance with the Forgotten World began on a family vacation to Colorado Springs. I know I should have felt über grateful to be spending the weekend in paradise Rocky Mountain style but I wasn’t. This was probably the last real summer break of my life. I didn’t want to spend it dealing with the family politics and drama shit-storm that clan Hatch always stirs up.
So I ensconced myself by the pool with the type of book I love best, the kind of fantasy book where a regular kid finds out that he or she is a wizard/faerie/demigod/ hot vampire’s girlfriend. Like, my most defining personality trait is that I can’t get my nose out of a book. As I type this there is a copy of Sense and Sensibility calling to me from my night stand. I’ve been hiding novels behind textbooks since grade school. Sometimes I go to the bathroom in the middle of class and take a paperback with me.
I was reading The Magician by Michael Scott and it gave me the kind of pangs you are only supposed to feel for lost loves or chop suey when you’re pregnant. I wanted to be a part of that exciting supernatural world so badly, I wanted someone to descend from the clouds and tell me I was special. I craved an experience like that of Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. I wanted to find out that there really was more in heaven and earth then I had dreamt of. Excuse me, of which I had dreamt.
My whole frickin’ family was there trying to get me to play canasta and lose weight and pretend to be a mermaid. That last one was my cousin Susie. She’s eight. I love my family, don’t get me wrong. I love my boozey aunt and my grandma whose sleeping apparatus makes me feel like I’m rooming with Darth Vader and my great aunt who always tells me how smart and pretty I am.
I love her especially.
But on this trip, when I was fighting to lose myself in pages with artfully battered edges, they seemed to drive home my extreme normalness. I needn’t have worried. Shit was about to go down that was going to blow my mind.
“Ordinary” is a myth
My name is Katie Hatch and I’m starting this blog because I’ve just been told the biggest secret that’s ever been kept. I write it in hope of understanding what has happened to my life. I write it because people should know that our world is not what we thought it was. There are things that have been forgotten. I understand now, if I didn’t always in my heart, that what we know about the world doesn’t even scratch the surface. If nothing else I’m writing this blog because I’m a story teller, and this is a story.
I am an ordinary girl who attends an ordinary school with an ordinary major in an ordinary city. I’ve spent the last 20 or so years of my life thinking that I was abysmally normal. My life has been cushy and sheltered and safe. I live in the Midwest with my mom and our small but noisy canine posse.
If I had tried to write about my life before now I would have to say that there was no reason for you to care. But now, now you have to care because everything is real. Everything is true…and I can’t explain things to you. I just have to tell you. Everything that humankind has been having dreams and nightmares about for centuries is real.
