Caroline

It is dusk, the first witching hour. As the sun burns down her flaming arc, her hair explodes red against her ever vigilant stare of gold. The horizon bleeds under her feet trailing the way to the curve of the earth. As the last sparks of fire fade away, the sky quickly darkens.
In an abandoned alleyway, Caroline waits inside a circle of lilies. The sacrifices have been made, the names have been uttered, the prayers sung. She comes. The mist plays against her shroud, her wings made of moonbeams hug her body as she arrives, her locks untressed fall against her face and her naked body. Her hair is her mantle, melding with the darkness around her which verily accepts her, for it is of her as she is of it. Caroline is kneeling, her clothes tattered and torn. Her face is bruised and bleeding, her body broken. Her eyes are hurt, her gaze desperate, but none of it’s unyielding pride has departed, nor her regal demeanor disappeared. Is she not of the Tindómerel, the children of twilight? No hurt will make her forget this. Her duties have been heavy and have made her hard and uncompromising. Still, seeing her mother arrive at this, her most desperate hour may not leave her unmoved.
“Mother…” she starts, and finds her voice unexpectedly breaking. “You have come… I did not believe… I thought you had forsaken me…” she stammers. A single tear forms on the corner of her eye, and softly trickles down her cheek, clearing a small path off dirt and dust.
The cold, northern wind carries the voice of Night, in sounds of daggers, deception, and kisses in the dark. A single word forms on her lips: “Never.” The voice is cool, but comforting.
The moon breaks through the clouds and casts its light over the two figures. Caroline’s eyes widen, her pupils becoming thin and catlike. Night can be seen more clearly now, in this form that she appears; ageless, dark of hair and pale of face, an image of the land that belongs both to dusk and dawn, and resides forever in between. Her figure towers over Caroline’s short and slender body. Mists and shadows play all along her body, and flashes of naked flesh can be descried for the briefest of moments tantalizing the unwary. Twin stars glint from their sockets focused on Caroline’s young face.
A woman of no more than twenty three years, yet already she has witnessed more than most of us could even dream. Though one might have not described her as beautiful she is certainly very attractive, something to which her wildness adds. Her hair falls down to her waste like gold-red fire, catching the light of the moon in a shadow play of magnificent splendor. Even with her face bruised and dirty she would certainly turn most men’s heads. And her cats eyes…
Those eyes now look into her mother’s, and her gaze is cast down in shame of her doubt. Of course her mother had not forsaken her. It was the other way around. She continues but her words now come more difficultly, as if they burn her tongue, as if the effort to give them voice is tremendous, which of course it is. Always it is great torment for the dead to recall their last moments. “Mother, I… I was snared… My… my body… it… it hurt… they hurt me… it was… they violated me… mother… so many times… and then… they… they…” She chokes back tears. “They… a knife… I… I thought it would end… but… the pain… it… I… it won’t stop… oh mother it hurts… it still hurts… please make it stop.” She breaks down then in Nights arms, who runs her fingers through Caroline’s fiery hair and shushes her. A small child she now seems, all her pride and majesty extinguished.
After a while Caroline starts to calm down, her sobs coming at longer intervals, until finally they stop, and for a moment all is still. “Mother, do you hate me?”
Night laughs and it seems to Caroline that it is the laughter of a thousand fairies amidst the sound of a clear ringing bells. “Of course not. Why would you think that Narfinwen?” The sound comes again, lighter.
“For the same reason you still call me by my dark-name. My true name is Caroline, and by taking it up once more I have refused you and my sisters. Is it not reason enough?”
Night sighs heavily before answering. “As I told you on the day you announced your intention to leave, I love all my children, whether they be born in my blood or adopt it, whether they love me and accept me or not.” She pauses here. Her face tightens; the air grows darker. “Do you love me daughter? Or would you rather shed all your blood than yield one inch?”
Caroline’s face easily shows the sting of these words. Is it true? Is this the face she shows? She thinks back and realizes how accurate this description is. Yet is this who she is now? Has she not left her mortal shell? Is this a chance for redemption, a second chance? She doesn’t know that her eyes betray all of her thoughts to the keen eyes of the Goddess, nor would she care if she did. “I have shed all my blood. However, I would yield simply by your return to me. Yes mother, I do love you. And though I know that I may not, I would that I could return to you.”
“Indeed you may not. That road was lost to you when you stepped away. Yet, for all my love of you I would not wish to see you back among us, for that way of life is not suited to your spirit anymore.” With a deep sadness in her voice, Night goes on: “My daughter, Narfinwen, Caroline, you know that I cannot aid you. Nonetheless, I may offer my advice. Will you accept it?”
“I know that your advice is well meant, therefore yes, I will accept it. I do not promise however to follow it.”
“Of course; I would expect nothing different from my offspring. This I have to say: My daughter, there is none to avenge your death since you forsook the sisterhood. Mayhap after the veil pain stops and mayhap it does not, even I cannot say. Cling to this life yet a while, until you may set things right or forget all this and let go. Do not tread this ground between for too long or you may find that this path will change you in ways you do not anticipate. Should you be reborn, whatever aid I may offer I will.”
Night turns her back to Caroline. “The path now you must choose. Whatever choice you make may lady luck always smile on you and mistress moon guide your steps.”
Caroline’s face is deep in thought. As she realizes that her mother is leaving, she calls out: “Mother! Wait!”
Night stops but doesn’t turn around. “What is it daughter?”
“I would like to know one more thing.”
“If it is within my power to answer.”
“Joanna, my lover. Does she hate me for leaving?”
“That is not her dark-name.”
“It is her true name.”
Night smiles and turns her head. Caroline catches a glimpse of her starlight gaze. “If she loved you enough to give you her true name without departing from the sisterhood, do you think she does not love you whichever road you may travel?”
Caroline does not say anything, but smiles as well. As her mother rides the road to heaven, wings outstretched, she hears her say: “Caroline is a beautiful name.” The moon becomes brighter until its light is all there is. Engulfed in the moonlight’s tender embrace, Caroline closes her eyes and drifts away.

It is midnight, the second witching hour. Her senses come back slowly. At first she is aware of that sterile medicinal smell that only doctors offices and hospitals have. She feels small pains on her chest. A voice, the first true voice in the world, says: “We’ve got a pulse.” Then other voices, a clatter of metal, then all the sounds of the world. She had forgotten how loud the world was. Then her senses slam back into her body so hard they knock her breath out and with them comes the pain. She tries to scream but her brain takes over and forces her to gasp in a desperate attempt to get the oxygen it needs. Then her cry comes like the cry of a newborn baby, the cry of life.
Dr. Morgan will talk with his doctor friends about it over a round of beers down at “Half-Vinyl”, telling them that he had never heard such a sound coming from a living thing in 16 years of operating. However he will not tell them about how he lived the next 12 hours of his life during that piercing wail, lost in the girl’s eyes, and how he spent the next 12 hours living them again. He will never tell anyone that; it will be his dark little secret ‘till the day he dies.
Nurse Lorna Greene will not speak to anyone after the operation. She will go home, put on Roy Orbison on her CD player, fill the bathtub with warm water, slide in and slice her wrists with her boyfriend’s razor. The forensics investigators will find nothing unusual, except for two words formed by the pooling blood sliding down her fingers: “I know.” Not able to explain them, they will only add a footnote about them in their report, hoping that no one will notice it and prompt a long and meaningless investigation. Her boyfriend Jason will be able to explain them though. He will see them many times, in the land between dreams and wakefulness where death roams and he will know what they mean, oh yes, and Lorna will speak them again and again ‘till one day he will take a gun to his head and pull the trigger. If Lorna had talked to anyone, she might have told them what she had seen when Caroline wailed.
Nurse Kathy Grey will take a different route home through a dark alley and will be mugged. To her rescue will come a man who will trip the mugger as he is running out of the alley, snatch the purse and chase the mugger away. Kathy will thank him, they will exchange phone numbers and two months later they will be wedded and married for as long as they both shall live. Years later, recounting this story Kathy will say that she was daydreaming and took a wrong turn; she hadn’t consciously walked in that alley. Maybe it is true and maybe it isn’t. Maybe she saw something when she heard that wail.
Caroline sees a flash of images past and present as she looks into the eyes of everyone around her. Dr. Morgan’s, Lorna’s, Kathy’s, little Jimmy Baker’s, the undergrad student who will become a brilliant diagnostician some day, and all the others’ around her futures pasts and presents swirl inside her mind with hurricane intensity in a whirlpool of images which she cannot distinguish from her own and for a moment she thinks she might go mad and maybe that’s not so bad, maybe the pain will go away and everyone will be nice to her and she’ll have her own little room with padded walls and they’ll give her drugs and all the pain will go away forever and all her-
The wailing stops as abruptly as it began. The girl has fainted. All her signals are steady. She’s sleeping. For a few moments nobody speaks, and then everybody goes back to doing his job, not saying anything about his epiphany. They know that it was not personal, that it was something shared but they will not speak of it. The code of silence is set.






Caroline wakes up and it is still night. The window is open and a patch of moonlight is falling on the chair next to her bed. On it, there is an ancient dagger, intricately carved and set with runes. She reaches her hand grimacing against the pain and a moment later she is holding it in her hand. Already she regrets her choice. The pain is excruciating. And the worst part about it is that the physical pain will subside but the pain in her soul… It will not go. Not until she is revenged. Would she have chosen differently presented with the same choice again? Probably not. Still she regrets it. She remembers little of the moments in the Emergency Room but she senses that something profound happened, that many lives were affected. She turns the dagger over in her hands, and looks at the hilt. The name that was there has been changed. It reads “Caroline” now. She tightens her hand around it as a thin smile stretches across her lips. In her cat’s eyes, a flame has been rekindled. This is her choice, and she will live with it or die with it, whichever comes to her.

The next morning, no one mentioned anything strange occurring during the last hour of the night. The code of silence has extended to the whole wing. Perhaps the patients thought that they would be diagnosed with something other than what they had come in for, some sort of problem between the ears. Perhaps the nurses thought that they might lose their jobs if they made any oddball remarks. Still, all remembered at dawn, the third witching hour, an inhuman wail like ghost laughter, like footsteps on your grave; all remembered a hazy vision of things to come. Some dismissed it as a dream, an incredibly vivid dream at that. Others may have understood but didn’t speak about it. All were affected.
Excluding of course the security guard, Jack Denbrough, who had lost almost all his hearing when the guy behind him stepped on a landmine back in ’67 in ‘Nam. Still, he counted himself lucky that he hadn’t lost his arms. “How would a guy pleasure himself when there are no women around?” he was known to ask half shouting (apparently he thought that everybody else had gone deaf too). He found himself quite annoyed today. Everyone looked like they were carrying a secret they wouldn’t let him in on. He was about to mention this to head nurse Mary Johnson but thought better of it when he saw the look she gave him before he opened his mouth. He left the hospital and went home to sleep. Damn graveyard shift.
The nurse who checked in on Caroline found the bed empty, the covers thrown to the floor. Head nurse Johnson was quickly summoned. She didn’t say anything about the girl’s disappearance. “Just another Jane Doe gone with the night.” The code of silence held. She did give all the nurses in the wing an earful though when she noticed the cat hair on the bed. Didn’t they know that hospital regulations excluded all animals? Would they like a pregnant woman miscarrying or a man having a severe allergic reaction during their shift? They could all lose their jobs, including her. Mary might have been shocked to find out that quite a few nurses would like to see her get her ticket, though none said anything now. The nurses apologetically lowered their heads and promised to be more careful in the future and the issue was dropped. The day went on just like any other day. Nothing unusual happened.