Page 8 of A Curse On Black Lake
“Have you had the same dream before?” she asks.
“No, I haven’t.” Even though I wish I had. There’s something about him I can’t put my finger on. I want to know more. Ineedto see his face. It might give me more insight into why he’s in my dreams. It might even help me to understand what the dream is telling me.
Or maybe it’s not telling you anything.The Spirits say.
“I’m well aware that’s not the case,” I mumble.
“What do you think it was telling you? Did the Spirits help you understand?” Grams asks.
“Honestly, I don’t know. It felt like a nightmare,” I tell her.
I don’t say anything about my desire to know this man, and I don’t want to tell her that part. I feel like I should keep it close, as if it’s meant solely for me. It’s for me to hold on to becauseworse things are ahead of me, looming over our heads like the dead branches of a tree about to snap off.
“Nightmares can tell you things too,” Grams says.
“If it did anything, it told me to be scared.”
You should tell her what you saw.The Spirits say.
“What did they say to you?” Grams asks.
“Nothing,” I sigh and turn to a fresh page. I don’t want to talk about it anymore because I know something will change when she passes. We know that time is coming, and I don’t want to waste our precious days or weeks we do have left on dreams that may or may not mean anything. It’s not worth it.
I stare at Grams for a minute, looking at the way the light hits her brown face as she reads her book, though I’m beginning to think she’s not actually reading at all. Taking the tip of the pencil, I outlining what I see before I fill it in.
“Did you hear about the other body they found at the lake?” Grams asks.
“No,” I mumble.
“I read about it in the newspaper. It feels like it’s all we’ll ever see or hear about. There was no mention of the baby I delivered last week. He was a beautiful, healthy boy. Not a peep.”
“Maybe itisall we will ever see. I swear this town is allergic to life,” I mumble and glance at her to make sure I’m getting her eyes and nose right. Death is a part of the fabric of this decaying town. I’m not sure it surprises any of us anymore.
“Eliana, my sweet girl, look at me,” she says.
I set my pencil down and meet her gaze.
“I love you, flower. We may not have the answers we so desperately want, but there is always room for hope. Darkness clouds Black Lake. It always has, even when I was a girl. I blame this town for taking everyone I love. But you know what? I still have you. And I count my blessings.”
I smile sadly. “I know, Grams, I’m glad I have you too.”
She closes her book and sets in on the side table. “I think it’s time for this old woman to turn in for the night.”
Chapter four
Eliana
Hoppingonmybike,I head into town to make a delivery to Delilah’s Grocery and Cricket’s General Store. They sell our soaps and lot and were running low on stock. We have an old truck, but I don’t like to drive it, and Grams can’t drive anymore, so it sits there.
It needs work done on it, and I hardly have the time to figure it out, let alone the money to pay someone for it. So I bike.
Black Lake has been falling apart for years. Like most things in this town, it’s old, it needs work, or it needs to be torn down completely.
The sky is always grey, but the sun still somehow shines. The wind blows through my hair, and the warm breeze fills my nose with the almost June air. I take a deep breath of the sun and soil, mixing together to create the smell of life and decay. Tilting my head back while I pedal, I let myself feel the overwhelm, the sadness, the desperation for control when I have none.
Peddling to town, people stare at me, and I ignore them. The Spirits talk at once. They usually get louder the closer I am to groups of people. That’s why I like staying home. I try to speakto each of them. Sometimes I talk back to calm them. But today, they keep telling me to follow my intuition. To be aware of what’s around me. I don’t take it that seriously since they’ve said that before about a thunderstorm, and lightning hit a tree on our land. Some would call it an omen. I call it nature.
My Grams calls my connection with the Spirits a gift. Most of the time I call it a curse, but I’ve learned to deal with it since my hair turned white. I think that was when the people of Black Lake really ostracized me. I had just turned ten. I was in school, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor staring up at my teacher, and my ears were buzzing.
