Shadows — Chapter Two, part two

a story of everlasting love — Ghosts, life, death, life lessons

I am spinning, spinning round. My feet are rising to the ground. — from Sirena’s journal

Miss Lillian’s shadows circled my dripping body as waves sloshed against slick sand beneath my feet. When she opened her mouth this time, her words mixed with echos of lost sailors, and they crashed along the shore.

“Our dreams are the dance of life, so be patient with them, Child. Pick up their pieces when they shatter, and rearrange them, but don’t throw them away. Cracks are where the light comes in,” she said.

Scattered at my feet were pieces of Ruthie’s countenance and my childhood. Our faces peered up like so many broken shells. Sharp points. Missing edges.

Orbs of light rose up and poured down on us like gentle rain. In flickering shades of summer, they shimmered as Augie drifted closer to Miss Lillian. He took her hand and the two of them became one as they stepped into a dance of melding bodies.

Spiraling fountains of colored waters flowed together. Luscious colors turned somber, and then fresh, and clear, and as bright as the rising sun, before shadows of nightmares pushed in.

As the spirits of Augie and Miss Lillian crashed together and flowed apart, they never fully mixed, and when their uncanny rumba of light and blackness was over, the energy between the two died, slowly at first, and then it was gone. It flowed out with the tides.

As their ghostly bodies returned and wrapped their arms around each other, joy rushed through me. I looked into the eyes of two separate beings again.

Sunshine peeked through the heavy clouds and applauded their performance by gracing us with that glimpse of light. The sky brightened to an icy white. Even the toast colored sand at my feet took on a gentle glow.

In the shimmering light, Augie drifted close to me and I saw his eyes were pools of smoke without flame. His form looked as if it would evaporate and spray out into the air just as surely as a sand castle being kicked by a child. And his feet? They weren’t touching the ground.

“Look at her, Sir,” Miss Lillian said to Augie and I felt something brush against my chin.

I put my hand up to touch the spot but nothing was there.

My head tilted back and to the side as both shadowy images peered into my face.

“Such beautiful light brown sugar skin and those shining eyes,” she observed. “That hair is kissed with strawberries and honey. Couldn’t you just eat her up?” Miss Lillian laughed.

I reached up for her hand. Like a child who’s afraid of getting lost in a crowd, the fear of being separated came to me and I reached out to her. But instead of flesh, I felt only warm, moist air.

“You’re a long-leggedey thing in this world, I see. Much taller than I expected, don’t you think so, Sir?”

“You’re right about that,” Augie agreed, “and wise as the ages when she’s able to get out of her own way. Yes, I can see that plain enough.”

“What are you here, Child? Twenty-five?” Miss Lillian narrowed misty eyes at me.

“Thirty-two,” I whispered, and looked around to see if anyone was watching. Thankfully, I was alone. Even Rosebud was nowhere in sight. She left me to stand in the gentle rain.

“Of course,” Augie said. “Thirty-two. You would be, wouldn’t you? That’s wonderful. I always knew what a fine lady you’d become, despite the dark paths running through your life.”

As Augie and Miss Lillian talked on and on, I stood there, in a rain that got heavier by the minute, listening to these two misty souls who had first visited me in my dreams, as they summed me up — discussed my age, my legs, and me. It made no sense at all. But for some reason I wasn’t afraid. For some reason, I decided to laugh.

Ridiculous or not, this was all too much to take in without letting something go and as I stood there laughing in the rain, thunder rumbled overhead. It raced across the sky like shifting shadows, and let loose a bolt of lightening.

As if the approaching storm was chasing them away, Augie and Miss Lillian fell into vapor but I heard Miss Lillian’s voice as it whispered on the wind. “Find the one who has the note, Child, the dark note, and take its message to heart. Listen to its light.”

“What note?” I asked feeling detached from my own words. “Whose note am I looking for?” But this time I got no answer. Without another sound, their shadows reappeared on the deck of their ghostly steamer and sank back into the waves.

I stood and stared. “Simply an illusion.” I assured myself out loud. “That’s all it was. Hallucinations brought on by exhaustion. I was up all night driving through a terrible storm, and …” Sheets of rain swept over me as I tried hard to think of something else to tell myself that would make it all seem right. Anything at all. And then I had it. The only possible solution.

“I have lost my mind.” I announced it simply and with conviction because I knew I had hit on the only plausible answer. For now, I, Sirena Texanna Vestal, was no longer a sane person in this world. That would have to be just fine with me.

And so I stood still and got drenched as the ocean pounded forward, slid away, and rose back up again. Each time it was more powerful than before, and each time the waves reached out for me, reminding me they could pull me under, and hold me there.

It was a long time before I turned and slowly headed for shelter from this storm. Rosebud was asleep in the car when I climbed the stairs back to her and drove us to the Galvez where a room was waiting for us. A room and so much more.

Raised eyebrows and side glances greeted me as I checked in. My flip-flops made a squish-squash-squishing sound as I dripped along behind the crater faced bellhop and his rolling cart. He raised his upper lip to make sure I knew he was annoyed with my soggy appearance as he led me out of the grand lobby, and to a small freight elevator tucked in behind the curved stairway.

He jabbed a skinny finger at the button. “Dogs,” he informed me, “particularly big wet ones like that, are not allowed in the main elevators with our guests.”

Rosebud had managed to shake herself fairly dry after climbing in the driver’s side window of my Jeep and waiting for me out of the rain. Despite her penchant for jumping through open car windows and her good judgment to keep herself dry, she still had obviously not made this bellhop’s Preferred Guest List, and neither had I.

When the elevator doors opened, the young bellhop pushed the rattling silver rack in ahead of us. We followed him into the dimly lit metal box and I pressed my back against the wall. Rosebud lumbered over and sat on my feet. As she was getting comfortable, a bullet-headed man shoved in behind her. He was bald, grim-faced and he stunk. His shirt was splattered with bloody slime.

“Hey, Rupert,” the bellhop said as he pushed the 5 button and we all watched as the doors slid closed in front of us. Now, I was trapped in a stuffy box with two scoffing strangers.

“Are the redfish biting for you?” the bellhop asked as we started on our slow rise to the fifth floor.

Rupert didn’t bother to respond to the question, he just turned his sunburned face away from both of us.

“Going up to get into your maintenance clothes, are you?” the bellhop tried again. “Gladys going to handle things for you at the fish market, is she?” He grinned but again, Rupert gave him no response.

So the bellhop turned a scowl on me. Not wanting his disgust for my dripping hair and clothes to go unnoticed, he gaped at the puddles forming beneath me and rolled his eyes.

Rupert noticed, too, and grumbled, “Looks like somebody don’t have sense enough to come in out of the goddam rain.”

I learned a long time ago to pick my battles and I was in no shape to tangle with a foul-smelling man who was three times my size, so I smiled and pretended to think he was joking. Our little troop fell silent again until the bellhop piped up.

“It’s against the rules, you know. If Pop hadn’t called the front desk and told them you were the one who owned the house, they never would have let you check in so early. It’s only 8:45 and guests aren’t allowed in their rooms ’til three.”

“Pop? Who’s Pop?” I asked. “No one was expecting me to get here today. I didn’t even know myself until last night.”

“Who’s Pop!” The bellhop stared at me. “Mr. Vail, of course! Martin Vail. He’s only the caretaker for most of Galveston!” His gape mouth expression made it clear he thought I was an idiot. “Ha! You mean you come all the way from Dallas to meet somebody and you don’t even know who he is?”

Oh, he couldn’t believe my stupidity and I wondered how he knew I’d come from Dallas, but I didn’t have time for questions.

Rupert glared me down. “What house does she own?” he asked the bellhop, not me.

“The house. The haunted one. One they call The Pink House even though it’s not pink anymore.” He coughed out a laugh. “That ought to tell you something right there!”

“So, she’s the one,” Rupert said, shifting his eyes my way.

“She’s the one,” the bellhop said with smug pride and we fell back into the murky silence.

I was stunned by the mention of The Pink House. Not because they said it was haunted, but because it had been years since I’d heard anyone say those words out loud. Surely it was my family’s Pink House they were talking about. The one I had lived in as a child with Roy and Ruthie. Could it be that it’s still standing after all these years?

With my mind wrapped around memories of a sheltering structure, I also became vaguely aware that this was the slowest moving elevator I’d ever ridden. We must have been only halfway up to the fifth floor when the doors slowly groaned themselves open. The box we were in didn’t stop moving; it kept right on going, inching its way upward while the doors crept all the way open. They revealed a solid wall of streaked concrete sliding downward as we moved slowly up.

Rupert didn’t flinch, but the bellhop took a different tactic. He panicked. The kid who had been entirely too cool to be civil to me was now looking to me for help. “W-what am I supposed to do now?” He shouted at me as if he was sure I knew.

A fresh breeze brushed across my face and a feeling of comfort came over me. Even though I was dripping wet, I felt warm. I was with two strangers who obviously hated the sight of me, yet I felt wanted. “Just hold on a minute,” I told the bellhop. “A couple I met on the beach are getting in with us. I knew them before I was born. It won’t take them long to get settled.”

“Nobody’s there, you freak!” the bellhop yelled as if I was missing the point.

“It’s all right,” I assured him. “Some people just can’t see.”

As the doors slid closed again, the bellhop reacted to this information exactly as he would have if I had lit my nose on fire and told him to stand back and watch this. He scrambled into the corner and tried to make himself as small as possible while glaring out at me through narrowed eyes. “Are you crazy?” he shrieked in the cracking voice of youth.

“I think so, yes,” I told him softly. “It’s hard to be really sure, but all the signs are pointing to it.”

He pierced our little space with a scream.

Dear Reader: My goal is always to make people feel good about themselves and our lives as our journey here on earth unfolds. Uplifted is the feeling I crave. I am a former humor columnist and a retired publication editor.

I self-published my book entitled, Shadow of the Final Storm, in 2012. Now, with this wonderful ILLUMINATION platform, I am preparing this long needed, edited version.

Review: Readers’ Favorite gave Shadow of the Final Storm 5 stars and called it one of the best books of the year.

Chapter One — Shadows https://readmedium.com/637d9ca82770

Chapter Two, part 1, Shadows https://readmedium.com/bc88f7406773