Monday, May 6, 2013

Beautiful Redemption - Chapter 7



As I watched Link and Lena disappear toward Ravenwood, I knew there was one more place I
needed to go, one person I had to see before I went back. She owned Wate’s Landing more than
any Wate ever would. She haunted that place even in full flesh and blood.
Part of me was dreading it, imagining how torn up she must be. But I needed to see her, all the
same. Bad things had happened.
I couldn’t change that, no matter how much I wanted to.
Everything felt wrong, and even seeing Lena didn’t make it feel right.
As Aunt Prue would say, things had gone cattywampus.
Whether in this realm or any other, Amma was always the one person who could set me
straight.
I sat on the curb across the street, waiting for the sun to go down. I couldn’t get myself to move. I
didn’t want to. I wanted to watch the sun dip behind the house, behind the clotheslines and the old
trees and the hedge. I wanted to watch the sunlight fade and the lights in the house go on. I
watched for the familiar glow in my dad’s study, but it was still dark. He must be teaching at the
university, as if nothing had happened. That was probably good, better even. I wondered if he was
still working on his book about the Eighteenth Moon, unless restoring the Order had brought an end
to that, too.
There was a light in the kitchen bay window, though.
Amma.
A second light flickered through the small square window next to it. The Sisters were watching
one of their shows.
Then, in the dwindling light, I noticed something strange. There were no bottles on our old
crepe myrtle. The one where Amma hung empty, cracked glass bottles to trap any evil spirits that
happened to float our way and to keep them from getting in our house.
Where could the bottles have gone? Why wouldn’t she need them now?
I stood up and walked a little closer. I could see through the kitchen window to where Amma
sat at our old wooden table, probably doing a crossword. I could imagine the #2 pencils scratching,
could almost hear them.
I crossed the lawn and stood in the driveway, just outside the window. For once I figured it
was a good thing no one could see me, because peeping in windows at night in Gatlin is what made
even decent folks want to get out their shotguns. Then again, there were lots of things that made
folks around here want to get out their shotguns.
Amma looked up and out into the darkness, like a deer in the headlights. I could have sworn
she saw me. Then real headlights flashed behind me, and I realized it wasn’t me Amma was looking
at.
It was my dad, driving my mom’s old Volvo. Pulling right through me and into the driveway.
As if I wasn’t there.
Which, in a whole lot of ways, I wasn’t.
I stood in front of the house that I had spent so many summers repainting, and reached out to touch
the brushstrokes next to the door. My hand slipped partway through the wall.
It disappeared inside, kind of like when I shoved it through the Charmed door of the Lunae
Libri, the one that only looked like a regular old grating.
I pulled my hand out and stared at it.
Looked fine to me.
I stepped closer, into the side wall of the house, and found myself trapped. It kind of burned,
like walking into a lit fireplace. I guess slipping my hand through was one thing, but getting my
body into the house was another.
I went around to the front door. Nothing. I couldn’t even kick a foot partway through. I tried
the window above the kitchen table, and the one over the sink. I tried the back windows and the
side windows and even the cat door that Amma had installed for Lucille.
No luck.
Then I figured out what was going on, because I went back to the kitchen window and saw
what Amma was doing. It wasn’t the New York Times crossword puzzle, or even The Stars and
Stripes one. She had a needle, not a pencil, in one hand, and a square of cloth instead of paper in the
other. She was doing something I’d seen her do a thousand times, and it wasn’t going to improve
anyone’s vocabulary or keep anyone’s mind New York City sharp.
It had to do with keeping people’s souls safe—Gatlin County safe.
Because Amma was sewing a little bundle of ingredients into one of her infamous charm bags,
the kind I had found in my drawers and beneath my mattress and sometimes even in my own
pockets. Considering that I couldn’t step foot in the house, she must have been sewing them
nonstop since I jumped off the water tower.
As usual, she was using her charms to protect Wate’s Landing, and there was no getting past
any one of them. The salt snaking its way across the windowsill was even thicker than usual. For
the first time, there was no doubt that her crazy protections kept our house haint-free. For the first
time, I noticed the strange glow of the salt, as if whatever powered it leaked into the air around the
windowsills.
Great.
I was rattling the screen out back, when I caught a glimpse of the stairwell leading down to
Amma’s canning pantry. I thought about the secret door at the back of that little room of storage
shelves, the one that had probably been used for the Underground Railroad. I tried to remember
where the tunnel came out—the one where we’d found the Temporis Porta, the magical door that
opened into the Far Keep. Then I remembered the tunnel’s trapdoor opening to the field across
Route 9. It had gotten me out of the house before; maybe it could get me in this time.
I closed my eyes and thought about that spot, as hard as I could. It didn’t work before, when
I’d tried to imagine myself somewhere. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try again. My mom said
that’s how it worked for her. Maybe all I had to do was picture myself somewhere hard enough,
and I’d find my way there. Kind of like the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz—only without the
actual slippers.
I thought about the fairgrounds.
I thought about the cigarette butts and the old weeds and the hard dirt with the imprints of
long-gone carnival booths and trailer hitches.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. Still nothing.
I wasn’t sure how your average Sheer did it. Which left me ten kinds of stuck. I almost gave
up and walked, figuring if I could make it out to Route 9, I could hitch a ride on the back of an
unsuspecting pickup truck.
Just when it seemed impossible, I thought about Amma. I thought about wanting to get inside
my house so badly I could taste it, like a whole plate of Amma’s pot roast. I thought about how
much I missed her, how I wanted to hug her, take a good scolding, and untie her apron strings, like
I had my entire life.
The minute those thoughts formed clearly in my mind, my feet started to buzz. I looked down,
but I couldn’t see them. I felt like a seltzer tablet someone had dropped into a glass of water, like
everything around me was starting to bubble and fizz.
Then I was gone.
I found myself standing in the tunnel, right across from the Temporis Porta. The ancient door
looked as forbidding to me in death as it had in life, and I was happy to leave it behind as I made my
way through the tunnel and toward Wate’s Landing. I knew where I was going, even in the dark.
I ran the whole way home.
I kept running until I shoved my way through the pantry door, up the stairs, and into the
kitchen. Once I got past the problem of the salt and the charms, the walls didn’t seem like a big deal
—or feel like much of one either.
It was like walking in front of one of the Sisters’ endless slide shows, where you step in front
of the projector during the hundredth photo of the cruise ship, and suddenly you look down and the
ship is cruising right over you. That’s what a wall felt like. Just a projection, as unreal as a
photograph from someone else’s trip to the Bahamas.
Amma didn’t look up as I approached. The floorboards didn’t squeak for the first time ever,
and I thought about all the times I would’ve appreciated that—when I was trying to sneak out of
that kitchen or my house, out from beneath Amma’s watchful eye. It required a miracle, and even
then it usually didn’t work.
I could have used a few Sheer skills back when I was alive. Now I would give anything for
someone to know I was actually here. Funny how things work out like that. Like they say, I guess
you really do have to be careful what you wish for.
Then I stopped in my tracks. Actually, the smells coming from the oven stopped me.
Because the kitchen smelled like Heaven, or the way Heaven should smell—since I was thinking
about it a lot more these days. The two greatest smells on earth. Pulled pork with Carolina Gold,
that was one of them. I’d know Amma’s famous golden mustard barbeque sauce anywhere, not to
mention the slow-cooked pork that gave up and fell to pieces at the first touch of a fork.
The other smell was chocolate. Not just chocolate, but the densest, darkest chocolate around,
which meant the inside of Amma’s Tunnel of Fudge cake, my favorite of all her desserts. The one
she never made for any contest or fair or family in need—just for me, on my birthday or when I got
a good report card or had a rotten day.
It was my cake, like lemon meringue was Uncle Abner’s pie.
I sank into the nearest chair at the kitchen table, my head in my hands. The cake wasn’t for me
to eat. It was for her to give, an offering. Something to take out to Greenbrier and leave on my
grave.The thought of that Tunnel of Fudge cake laid out on the fresh dirt by the little wooden cross
made me want to throw up.
I was worse than dead.
I was one of the Greats, but a whole lot less great.
The egg timer went off, and Amma pushed back her chair, spearing the charm bag with her
needle one last time and letting it drop to the table.
“Don’t want your cake to dry out now, do we, Ethan Wate?” Amma yanked open the oven
door, and a blast of heat and chocolate shot out. She stuck her quilted mitts in so far I worried she
was going to catch fire herself. Then she yanked out the cake with a sigh, almost hurling it onto the
burner.
“Best let it cool a bit. Don’t want my boy burnin’ his mouth.”
Lucille smelled the food and came wandering into the kitchen. She leaped onto the table, just
like always, getting the best vantage point possible.
When she saw me sitting there, she let out a horrible howl. Her eyes caught me in a fixed glare,
as if I’d done something deeply and personally offensive.
Come on, Lucille. You and me, we go way back.
Amma looked at Lucille. “What’s that, old girl? You got somethin’ to say?”
Lucille yowled again. She was ratting me out to Amma. At first I thought she was just trying to
be difficult. Then I realized she was doing me a favor.
Amma was listening. More than listening—she was scowling and looking around the room.
“Who’s there?”
I looked back at Lucille and smiled, reaching out to scratch her on the top of her head. She
twitched beneath my hand.
Amma swept the kitchen with her eagle eye. “Don’t you be comin’ in my house. Don’t need
you spirits comin’ around. There’s nothin’ here left to take. Just a lot a broken-down old ladies and
broken hearts.” She reached slowly toward the jar sitting on the counter and took hold of the One-
Eyed Menace.
There it was. Her death-defying, all-powerful wooden spoon of justice. The hole in the middle
looked even more like an all-seeing eye tonight. And I had no doubt it could see, maybe as well as
Amma. In this state—wherever I was—I could see plain as day that the thing was strangely
powerful. Like the salt, it practically glowed, leaving a trail of light where she waved it in the air. I
guess things of power came in all shapes and sizes. And when it came to the One-Eyed Menace, I’d
be the last one to doubt anything it could do.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Lucille shot me another look, hissing. Now she was
getting bratty. I wanted to hiss right back at her.
Stupid cat. This is still my house, Lucille Ball.
Amma looked my way, as if she was seeing straight into my eyes. It was eerie, how close she
came to knowing right where I was. She raised the spoon high above the both of us.
“Now you listen. I don’t take kindly to you stickin’ your nose inta my kitchen, uninvited. You
either get outta my house, or you make yourself known, you hear? I won’t have you intrudin’ on
this family. Been through nearabout enough already.”
I didn’t have much time. The smell from Amma’s charm bag was making me kind of sick, to
tell the truth, and I didn’t have a whole lot of experience at haunting—if this even qualified. I was
completely out of my league.
I stared at the Tunnel of Fudge cake. I didn’t want to eat it, but I knew I had to do something
with it. Something to make Amma understand—just like Lena and the silver button.
The more I thought about that cake, the more I knew what I had to do.
I took a step toward Amma and her cake, ducking around the defensive spoon—and stuck my
hand into the fudge, as far as I could. It wasn’t easy—it felt like I was trying to grab a handful of
cement minutes before it hardened into actual pavement.
But I did it anyway.
I scooped out a big piece of chocolate cake, letting it topple off the side and slide onto the
burner. I might as well have taken a bite out of it—that’s pretty much what the gaping hole in the
side of the cake looked like.
One giant ghostly bite.
“No.” Amma stared, wide-eyed, holding the spoon in one hand and her apron in the other.
“Ethan Wate, is that you?”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. She must have felt something, though, because she
lowered the spoon and dropped into the chair across from me, letting the tears flow like a baby in
the cry room at church.
Between the tears I heard it.
Just a whisper, but I heard it as clearly as if she had shouted my name.
“My boy.”
Her hands were shaking as she held on to the edge of the old table. Amma might be one of the
greatest Seers in the Lowcountry, but she was still a Mortal.
I had become something else.
I moved my hand over hers, and I could have sworn she slipped her fingers between mine. She
rocked in her chair a little, the way she did when she was singing a hymn she loved or was just
about to finish a particularly hard crossword.
“I miss you, Ethan Wate. More than you know. Can’t bear to do my puzzles. Can’t recall how
to cook a roast.” She wiped her hand across her eyes, leaving it on her forehead like she had a
headache.
I miss you, too, Amma.
“Don’t go too far from home, not just yet. You hear me? I’ve a few things to tell you, one a
these days.”
I won’t.
Lucille licked her paw and rolled it over her ears. She hopped down from the table and howled
one last time. She started to walk out of the kitchen, stopping only to look back at me. I could hear
what she was saying, as clearly as if she was speaking to me.
Well? Come on, already. You’re wasting my time, boy.
I turned and gave Amma a hug, reaching my long arms all the way around her tiny frame, as I
had so many times before.
Lucille stopped and cocked her head, waiting. So I did what I’d always done when it came to
that cat. I got up from the table and followed.

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