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“I’m here!” I called but she couldn’t hear me. Panic rushed through every inch of me as I dropped to my knees and tried to take her hand. No matter how badly I wanted to reach out and touch her, I couldn’t. Logic evaded me and I kept trying. I just needed to hold her hand. I needed to feel the heat of her skin. I needed her to know I was there.
“Eden…” Gran moaned as she dropped her head and pressed it to her folded hands.
“I’m here, Gran!”
Folding into herself, Gran laid back in the grass as sobs shook her.
What was this?
What was happening?
A single moth landed on her shoulder. Its wings slowly fluttering.
I crawled toward her but all too quickly I was ripped away and thrown back into darkness.
My steps echoed around me as I held my hand carefully outstretched, wary of whatever lurked in the dark. Memories of walking through my dark house when the power went off replayed in the back of my mind as I looked around.
“Gran?”
Crying was the only answer I got. A gentle sob I knew that carved another crack into my heart.
This was torturous. Was this part of the witch’s doing? Was she doing something to my mind to try to break me after she realized there was nothing she could do to my body? I was as surprised as she was when she cut into me and my flesh glowed bright. The smell of hot coals and fire filled the air with each cut before my flesh burned back together. Healed. Like new. She didn’t stop trying, but after a while, even the pain subsided.
She hated that.
Twisted bitch.
The crying continued as the darkness around me billowed like smoke. I jumped as trees stretched into existence all around me. It was just like before. A world that suddenly became real, replacing the darkness I wandered through.
I turned on my heel, looking through the trees until I saw the roof of my house.
We were in the woods. The ones I knew well. The ones I hiked or strolled through with coffee in hand when my mind was busy. Something else the girls deemed white people nonsense.
‘You traipsing around those woods like that with no one around is just asking for trouble. Who the hell do you think you are anyway?” Imani would say.
Ugh, what I would do to have her here berating me right now. Making fun of my house in the woods that was a killer’s dream and all that. That was normal. Just another day.
Would I have just another normal day ever again?
A painful wail interrupted my thoughts and I turned away from the direction of my house and followed the sound. My feet picked up as I jogged through the familiar woods. I knew it wasn’t real, but it was so damned close. The path under my feet was the worn one I’d walked a hundred times. The trees opened to the little spot I sat sometimes, with the fallen log on its side and a clear view of the sky over the trees.
Abuela was there. She knelt on the ground, her salt and pepper hair wild and her face soaked with tears. Her hands wrapped around my back as she clutched me to her chest, my body heavy and my legs stretched out beside us.
“What?” It wasn’t me. I knew that, but the sight made my throat tighten. She looked so broken. Is this what she would look like if the witch succeeded? The thought of causing her this much pain made my stomach churn. My shoulder fell into the tree beside me and I leaned into it.
“Baby,” she whimpered. “What have they done to my baby?”
The legs of people crowded around her, but the tops of their bodies were blurred. Paintings that had gotten wet, the colours streaked up and running. They towered around her, watching her buried in her grief.
She began to pray, the Our Father said in Spanish, the way I knew it from her best.
Prayer would do nothing. Even if I was still rooted in my faith, I knew it couldn’t undo something like this.
This wasn’t real.
I had to remind myself of that as I shoved off the tree and took a shaky step forward. “Abuela,” my voice cracked. “It’s not real. I’m here.”
“What have you done?” she screamed up to the sky. “What have you done to my baby?”
