Chapter 9-Garrett

~*Chapter 9-Garrett*~

The car was back in the driveway, and I was heading into the woods to bunk down at my base camp for the evening. It would be a nice evening; I could tell already. The stars would be bright, and the newly sprouting grass would be soft. What a perfect night for being out in the woods with nothing above your head but the night sky.

Once I reached the camp, I knelt down beside my satchel and started rummaging through its contents without a clue as to what I was searching for. I was more just making sure that all of the items were still there. Suddenly, I heard someone walking through the woods. No, there were two of them, a girl and a boy, judging from the sound of their footfalls. They were a ways off, and they were talking. I couldn’t make out exact words yet, though. Unfortunately for them, they were headed my way.

I quickly grabbed my satchel and leapt up into the tree that I had marked with the crude letter “B.” I would wait up in the branches for them to pass. This way, they wouldn’t see me. And if they happened to look up, well, I hope they’ve told their families they love them, because they won’t be seeing them again.

I could hear words now, and they were getting closer and closer to my hiding place.

“But why not? We were already there!” the girl was asking.

“I’ve already told you,” said the boy, “mom wouldn’t like it. And besides, nobody talks to her anyway. If we start getting friendly with her, people will stop talking to us.”

After a pause, the girl mumbled, “I still don’t see why we don’t just ask her.”

I shifted positions, setting my left foot on an adjacent branch. I strung my satchel across my chest, settling in to listen.

The boy sighed. “She’s . . . not like other people. She’s not like normal people. Celeste may be fine, but she’s crazy. There’s a reason nobody looks her in the eye, sis. If they did, she’d stare back. Have you ever seen her eyes before, Kristen? They burn within their sockets like the fires of hell itself. If she stares at you long enough, she can make you feel pain like you’ve never experienced before. You’ll be doubled over, screaming, and she’ll be standing over you, laughing like it’s some sick joke. She’s not normal, Kris.”

“Oh, I don’t believe any of that,” the girl, Kristen, went on to say. “She’s probably a perfectly nice person. So she’s a little different; when did that become a criminal offense? I’ll bet her eyes are actually really pretty. Grey eyes usually are. She’s really pretty anyway.”

The boy scoffed, saying, “Pretty. Sure. If you mean her looks, then yeah, I’ll admit she’s a stunner. But her mental state is ugly beyond all reason.”

“Oh, grow up! Just because Constance doesn’t think like us doesn’t mean she’s crazy! What if we all said that about everybody? What then? We’d all be hypocrites. Just like the Nazis. And just look at how they ended up! They were . . .”

I watched the kids pass beneath my tree, and I held my breath. Kristen was going on and on about the Nazis and how they had no tolerance for others who thought a bit differently than they themselves, and her brother had obviously tuned her out, just nodding at the appropriate moments in her monologue. Once they were out of earshot, I exhaled slowly.

Something Kristen had said was ringing in my head. She had mentioned a name that I hadn’t heard in over a hundred years:  Constance. They had wanted to ask her something, and they had even been at her house. But they had turned back because the brother thought that she was crazy.

I had known a Constance once. She had been beautiful, with grey eyes that seemed to burn. People had thought she was crazy, until one day, when she just disappeared inside her house. I was the only one who saw her after that. Nobody else dared to knock on the door; not that she would have opened it for them anyway. She saw no one but me, and she certainly wasn’t crazy. People said that she’d finally lost her mind and had become agoraphobic, but I knew better. I knew that she was hiding from them. She was tired of being judged constantly by the town as a whole, tired of being gossiped about when she had turned her back. So, she refused to see anyone. Except for me of course.

These kids had been returning from Constance’s house, according to Kristen, so if I followed their path in the opposite direction as them, I should reach this girl’s house. Why I wanted to do this, I had no idea. I just felt that it was the right thing to do. What if I had somehow found my way into the same neighborhood as her? What if she’d missed me? What if I knocked on the door, and it was opened by that familiar face with the grey eyes?

I had to go.

I threw myself down from the tree, and I ran at full speed toward the place from which the kids had been walking. The journey seemed like it took days to complete, especially since I had no clue as to where I was going or how I would know when I’d arrived. But, as my feet ground to a halt, I realized without hesitation that I was at the right house.

I was behind it, in the woods. Above me, there was a window with the curtains pulled back. Inside the window, there was a girl, sitting at a vanity, brushing her chocolate-colored hair. Suddenly, as I watched her, a sort of obsession overtook me. It was her.

I looked ahead, paralyzed. I realized that I was staring, but I didn’t care. Who would see me anyway? She was the only one who could catch a glimpse if she wanted to. If she just turned her head a fraction of an inch toward me, her peripheral vision would notice me just standing there, in the middle of the woods, eyes huge and jaw dropped.

         But she didn’t turn. She only brushed her hair. It wasn’t a very uncommon action, but she made it look like something I’d never seen before. She was so graceful and beautiful. There was no way she could be anyone else except . . .

         No, I told myself. There was no way that she could be the same girl that I had known. That was so long ago. But the resemblance was uncanny. And her mannerisms were spot-on. Even if it was the girl’s great, great, great granddaughter, the girl could not possibly look like this. Nobody was the spitting image of their great, great, great grandmother right? It was impossible.

         All the same, I felt my mind stretching out, pushing my thoughts toward hers. I knew that I would never ever be able to hear her thoughts, but I contented myself with willing her to feel my presence. If she showed any signs of recognition, then she must have some sort of magic preserving her in her youthful form, because she would be really over one hundred and fifty years old.

         I could feel nothing else but her. It was as if we were in a vacuum where only the two of us exists. My normally perceptive and heightened senses were dulled as I concentrated on her with all of my will, begging her to notice me.

         She was so beautiful; her hair was long and dark. Her face was pale. She was stunningly tall. But the thing about her that really captivated me was her eyes. I had memorized them so many times, but it still couldn’t do the real thing justice. They were slate grey. There was something about those grey eyes; they could hypnotize a person, holding him in their grasp until they softened and allowed the person to think again. They could scorch so passionately that anyone watching would expect flames to start licking into her pupils. They could burn white-hot like a drop of liquid nitrogen, suffocating people, forcing them to struggle for a freedom that would not come until the eyes decided to let it be so.

         And I wanted those eyes to turn to me. More than anything, I wanted those eyes to look my way once more.

         Suddenly, I saw it. The hint of recognition that I had been waiting for. It was almost imperceptible, but I knew that I saw it, and she knew that I saw it. The corner of her mouth flickered up only a millimeter or so, but I could tell that she had sensed my presence and had been thinking of me. Even if she had only let me cross her mind for a second or less, I was happy.

         She set down her hairbrush and picked up something else. My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw what it was.

         It was a silver pocket watch.

The cover was encrusted with emeralds, and, when she clicked it open, I could see the emeralds set into the three hands. The girl’s father had owned that pocket watch. After his untimely death, she had inherited it. Or so she had told me, at least. Nobody else could have had that watch unless they were directly related to the girl. But what if she was the girl? I knew in my rational mind that there was no way on earth that this girl could actually be the same. But, my subconscious mind was telling me over and over that this was all too coincidental to just be an accident.

And there was no mistaking one thing:  She remembered me. Her miniscule grin had told me that much.

I resolved to come back to this house later – during the day – and talk to her. How difficult would it be, really?

-Hi. My name’s Garrett Parker. I knew you a hundred and fifty years ago.

-Oh yes! I remember you now! I’ve missed you!

-It’s been so long . . . .

-I know! The Civil War seems like ages ago.

That was ridiculous. In reality, it would probably go more like this:

-Hi. My name’s Garrett Parker.

-Who?

-You know – Garrett Parker.

-I’ve never heard of you before.

-You mean you don’t remember?

-No, I don’t remember a thing.

And she’d call the cops.

Yeah, that was realistic. I tried to think of how many times the cops had been called on account of me. As the years had gone on, the number of calls per year had gotten smaller and smaller. I think it was only once last year. But who’s counting anyway? The important thing is that I’ve never been arrested. The cops have never even been able to find me at all. I’d just faded into the shadows, leaving no trail behind me.

Sort of like I had done to her over a century ago.

No! No, Garrett! That’s a stupid thought. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. There was no way it was her. She was dead, buried six feet under somewhere in Atlanta, probably. She had lived a happy life. She’d gotten married, had a few kids, lived many more years, and then died of old age. She’d died, like everyone else. That’s how people are. They’re born, they live, and they die. The girl had died. That’s how life worked.

But then why was I seeing her right in front of me? My eyes couldn’t lie, but neither could my mind, although I had a slight feeling that my theories were being stretched a bit too far to be feasible in any way. However realistic they might be, they were still pretty out there. A girl who looks just like her dead relative that I used to know from over a hundred years ago? A girl who happens to have the same hair, skin, height, eyes, and even pocket watch as her long-dead relative? It could happen . . . maybe.

But deep inside, I knew I doubted it. I didn’t believe a word of these stupid theories that I kept trying to force-feed myself. I realized with a start that I had been lying to myself for a very long time, and I had no business trusting myself any more. But that was life! You go along, do some things you’re not proud of, lie to cover them up, and eventually convince yourself to believe the lies you’ve told everyone else. And, it seemed that the more lies you told yourself, the sweeter your memories became. The more a man lied to himself, the more highly he viewed himself. Once the lies were believed, he could wash his hands of an incident, never looking back to question himself. He had successfully covered his tracks. It was a tactic that all people learned at some point in their lives. Self-evasion was becoming increasingly popular in my life, however, the longer I lived. I was so sick of it all.

It couldn’t be anyone else but her. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true, and I knew it. It was unfeasible that she was sitting there, brushing her hair mere feet away from me with nothing but a thin pane of glass separating us. But it was factual, whether I liked it or not. She was there, and I was here, just like years and years ago.

The lies were melting away now, revealing the blatant truth, however impossible it was:  this girl in the window was Constance Rosehaven, a girl I had met in Atlanta, Georgia in 1864. The most important person to walk into my life.

I had to see her again. I didn’t care how, but I needed to hear her voice once more.  I needed to look into her cold eyes and see them grow warmer as she looked back at me. Her mere presence in my life once more would be like a healing balm for my soul – if I had a soul at all, that is. With a condition like mine, who really knew?

And that was another thing; in order for her to be alive after over a hundred years, she must have been like me. She must have had the seemingly predisposed ability to live forever, never growing older and never moving forward. She must have been frozen in time, an obscure statue, just like I was.

It couldn’t happen. I mean, what were the chances? Still, I had to know. The desire to know was burning inside of me, struggling through all of the doubt and fighting its way to the surface. I needed to know her name at the very least. And I would find out.

If she was, in fact, Constance Rosehaven, then we had a century’s worth of catching up to do, and I wasn’t about to put it off any longer.