Her Awakening

The air spilled heavily into my chest, crashing against my lungs like waves before forcing its way back out. “We are not the sheep,” I cried. My chest rose and collapsed in sharp, painful movements. Each breath brought less air than the one before it, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to die—if death began with the body forgetting how to perform the one task it had never needed to be taught. The heat was unnatural. It clung to my skin and settled inside my throat. A sweet, tropical scent saturated the air, so thick I could almost taste it. Something floral. Overripe fruit, maybe. Beneath it lurked the faint odor of decay. A dead animal? The thought flashed through my mind and disappeared just as quickly. What caused the smell did not matter. Whatever the mixture was, it made every breath feel like I was swallowing something rotten. Panic tightened around my ribs. My knees struck the floor before I realized I was falling. I braced my palms against a surface I could not see and fought to drag air into my body. “We are not the sheep,” I said again, louder this time. My voice traveled into the heavy darkness but never returned to me. There was no echo. No wall for it to strike. No indication that the place around me ended anywhere. Still, I knew I was standing in a room. An open room, perhaps. A cavern. A place with no perimeter I could see through the thick haze. The darkness did not feel empty. It felt watchful. I forced myself to look at her. Jinny stood several feet away with her back to me. It made no difference that my grandmother had been dead for nearly a year. I needed this to be real. I needed to believe that she had found a way to reach me, even if she had dragged me somewhere terrible to do it. “Jinny, please.” My voice cracked. “Tell me what to do.” She did not move. “I don’t understand.” My eyes burned from the effort of staring through the haze. “We are not the sheep,” I repeated desperately. “Remember?” The words had belonged to her before they belonged to me. She used to say them whenever I was afraid, whenever Lucius doubted himself, whenever our family seemed determined to bend under the weight of one more thing we could not control. Puff your chest out. Lift your head. We are not the sheep. I wanted the words to pour into her and fill whatever part of her had forgotten me. “Please say it.” She swirled around so violently that I scrambled backward. Her arms flew out from her body in the shape of a cross. Her head snapped back, and her mouth fell open as though she were releasing a scream powerful enough to split the darkness. I heard nothing. The silence was worse. Her body spun faster, dark fabric twisting around her legs. With every turn, something peeled away from her. Her age. Her stooped posture. The softness that illness had carved into her final months. She shed the old woman I remembered like a snake abandoning its skin. Then she stopped. Her head dropped forward. Her arms slammed against her sides. For one breathless moment, she hung there. Then her face snapped up. I knew her, but I did not. The woman standing before me looked younger than my mother. Her dark olive skin was smooth, untouched by the years I had known her. There were no lines around her eyes, no brown spots across her cheeks. Only the small scar near her hairline remained, half-hidden beneath a curtain of black curls. Virginia had always been the beauty of the family. “Virginia was the pretty one,” her sister used to say, usually with enough irritation to suggest that she had spent a lifetime hearing it. The woman before me proved her right. Her black hair poured down her back in thick, soft waves, curling around her waist and emphasizing how petite she was. I had never thought of Jinny as small. No one that strong could ever be small. She stared at me. The corners of her mouth turned downward. Not angry. Afraid. Several steps behind her, something began to ring. The sound was too delicate to be a normal telephone. It rose and fell like the tune from an old music box—a lullaby played one note at a time. Ring. A pale green light appeared within the darkness. It illuminated an old wooden stand several feet to Jinny’s right. The table was shaped like an octagon, with vines hand-carved around its edges and a rich walnut finish polished to a warm shine. I recognized it immediately. It had stood in the corner of Jinny’s family room for as long as I could remember. I had traced those carved vines with my fingertips as a child while she spoke on the telephone, swatting my hand away whenever I threatened the dish of peppermints she kept beside it. The telephone rested on top now. Black. Heavy. Waiting. Ring. Warmth rushed through me at the sight of something so familiar, but it lasted only a second. Jinny’s eyes moved past me. Her expression changed. The fear softened. Her shoulders lowered slightly, and something that looked almost like relief passed over her face. A cool breath touched the back of my neck. I froze. For the first time since arriving in that place, my lungs opened. Air rushed into me, clean and cold. I pulled it deep into my chest and held it there, terrified that the relief would vanish. Someone was standing behind me. I knew it with the same certainty that I knew the woman before me was Jinny. The presence filled the space without making a sound. It was enormous—not in size, but in force. It pressed against the darkness around us and held it back. I should have been frightened. Instead, something buried deep inside me leaned toward it. My heart slowed. The panic loosened its grip around my ribs. “Who’s there?” No one answered. Ring. Jinny looked over my shoulder, and for one fleeting moment, I thought she could see whoever stood behind me. Her lips parted. She shook her head. Not at me. At him. The certainty of that thought frightened me more than the darkness. I turned. There was nothing behind me but the endless haze. No person. No doorway. No explanation for the cold air still brushing gently against my skin. Then, far within the darkness, two amber lights appeared. Eyes. They watched me for the length of a heartbeat. Then they were gone. The heat rushed back all at once. My lungs seized. Ring. Jinny turned slowly toward the telephone. Her movements were gentle now, almost soothing. She extended one hand toward the glowing stand, and I thought she wanted me to answer. Then I saw her palm. She was pushing it toward me. Warning me back. Ring. An urgency pulsed through my body with every note. My legs began moving before my mind understood the decision. “Is that why you brought me here?” Jinny shook her head violently. I moved around her. She reached for me, but her fingers passed through my arm like smoke. Ring. The telephone seemed farther away the closer I came to it. The pale green light swelled, staining the mist and turning Jinny’s skin an unnatural color. “Hannah.” The voice came from behind me. Deep. Male. Unfamiliar. My name rolled through the darkness with enough force to stop me. I turned toward the voice. Nothing. When I faced the telephone again, Jinny stood directly between us. Her eyes widened. “Run,” she said. It was the first sound I heard leave her mouth. The ringing stopped. Silence crashed down around us. I stared at her. “What?” Her mouth moved again, but no sound came. The telephone rang once more. Louder. Sharp enough to pierce straight through my chest. My hand shot past Jinny and closed around the receiver. A shriek exploded against my ear. Metal screamed. Glass shattered. Something struck me hard from the left. The room flipped. Jinny disappeared. And I woke to the sound of my own voice tearing out of me. I bolted upright, striking something beside the bed with enough force to send it crashing to the floor. For several seconds, I could not tell which world was real. My room tilted in and out of focus. Moonlight crept through the crack I had left in my window, spilling a thin silver line across the floor. The curtains shifted in the cool night air. I pressed both hands against my chest. My heart hammered beneath them. Air moved freely in and out of my lungs, but my body had not yet realized it was safe. Damp curls clung to my face and neck. I pushed them away, only for them to fall back against my skin. The clock beside my bed glowed through the darkness. 12:14 a.m. I stared at the numbers until they sharpened. Something about them felt important. Not familiar exactly. It was more like the time had followed me out of the dream and was waiting for me to notice it. Twelve fourteen. I repeated it silently, though I could not have explained why I felt the need to remember. It had been a dream. Only a dream. My hands moved over my hair in a steady rhythm. I separated the damp strands, smoothed them back, and started again. The repetitive motion gave my fear somewhere to go. The room was cold enough that the sweat covering me should have turned to ice. Instead, heat spread across my face and down my neck. Jinny had looked so real. Not the way she looked before she died. Not pale and tired, her body reduced by months of illness. She had looked like the photographs from her youth. Dark curls. Smooth skin. Strength in every line of her body. But there had been something wrong with her. She had been trying to comfort me. No. She had been trying to warn me. The ringing telephone. The amber eyes. The voice that knew my name. My heart squeezed painfully. Grief arrived like a current, sweeping over me so quickly I had no time to brace against it. I had spent almost a year trying to understand that she was gone. I had listened politely while people told me she was no longer suffering. That she was in a better place. That time would soften the loss. Time had done nothing but teach me how to hide it. My breath broke. I grabbed my pillow, pressed it over my face, and screamed. The sound disappeared into the fabric, but the pain remained inside me. Tears soaked through the pillowcase. My fingers began to tingle as I clutched it tighter. I wanted her back. Not as a dream. Not as a memory. Not as the empty chair everyone avoided looking at during family gatherings. I wanted her voice. Her hands. The way she could make a person believe surviving and living were the same thing. A soft sound came from my doorway. “Hannah?” I froze. “Hannah, are you okay?” Lucius stood against the doorframe, rubbing one eye with his fist. His dark curls were flattened on one side, and the oversized T-shirt he slept in hung almost to his knees. His topaz eyes were barely open. “I thought I heard screaming.” “I’m fine, Bubba.” The words came out rough and broken. I had strained my voice worse than I realized. Lucius lowered his hand and studied me. It was an obvious lie, but I hoped he was too tired to recognize it. “I had a bad dream,” I added. He remained in the doorway. I squeezed my eyes shut and drew in a slow breath, trying to stop the trembling in my arms. The silence continued. When I opened my eyes, Lucius was still there. “Seriously,” I said. “I’m okay.” His gaze dropped toward the floor. His entire body went rigid. “What?” He did not answer. “Lucius?” His eyes widened. “Mouse!” He launched himself across the room. I barely had time to lift my hands before his small body collided with the mattress. He scrambled over my legs and attempted to climb the pillows behind me. My eyes shot toward the floor. A tiny gray mouse darted from beneath my dresser and disappeared into the closet. For one stunned second, neither of us moved. Then laughter burst out of me. It rose so quickly that I could not stop it. I fell backward against the bed, clutching my stomach as Lucius tried to wedge himself between the headboard and the wall. “Don’t laugh at me!” he snapped. “I’m sorry.” “You are not!” “I’m trying to be.” “The things I do for my favorite sister,” he grumbled. “I’m your only sister in this room.” “You could still be second.” I grabbed his ankle and pulled him back onto the mattress. He fought me for half a second before collapsing beside me. I wrapped my arms around him and ruffled his hair until he complained. “You’re safe,” I said. “It was the size of a chicken nugget.” “Chicken nuggets don’t carry diseases.” “Depends where you get them.” He tried not to laugh. I felt it building in his chest before the sound escaped. There he was. My Lucius. I rested my chin against the top of his head. “We are not the sheep,” I reminded him. He pulled away enough to look at me. The words worked exactly as they always had. He puffed out his chest and lifted his chin. “We are not the sheep,” he repeated. “That’s right.” “We’re still getting a trap.” “A humane one.” “A deadly humane one.” “That is not a thing.” “It could be.” I smiled, but the phrase sat heavily between us. Lucius glanced at the damp pillow and the overturned lamp beside the bed. “Was it about Jinny?” My smile faded. He knew me too well. “Yes.” “Was she scary?” “No.” The lie came too quickly. “She was just…different.” “Did she say anything?” I thought of her hand pushing me back. The terror in her eyes. Run. “Not really.” Lucius watched me for another moment. Then he looked toward the hallway. “I heard a phone.” The hair on my arms lifted. “What?” “Before you screamed.” “You probably heard my alarm.” “It sounded like Jinny’s phone.” My heartbeat stumbled. “That’s impossible.” “I know.” The certainty in his voice unsettled me. Lucius did not sound frightened. He sounded confused, as though the ringing had awakened a memory he could not quite reach. I forced a laugh. “You were dreaming too.” “Maybe.” He settled against my shoulder. I waited for him to argue, but exhaustion quickly reclaimed him. Within minutes, his breathing became slow and even. I should have taken him back to his room. Instead, I let him stay. For a while, I watched the shadows move across the ceiling. The house creaked softly around us, ordinary sounds reclaiming ordinary places. A pipe clicked inside the wall. The air conditioner hummed. A car passed somewhere beyond the window. I focused on each noise until the dream began to loosen its hold. Jinny was gone. The telephone was only an object from her old family room. The amber eyes had been my imagination. The voice saying my name had been built from memories and grief and every frightening story I had ever heard. I closed my eyes. Ring. They opened immediately. I held my breath. The house went silent. I waited. Nothing happened. I eased my head back onto the pillow. Ring. The sound came from downstairs. It was faint but unmistakable. Not my cell phone. Not an alarm. A telephone. The same delicate, almost musical ring from the dream. I carefully moved Lucius’s head from my shoulder and slid out of bed. The floor was cold beneath my feet. Ring. I crossed the room and paused at the doorway. The hallway stretched into darkness. Every sensible part of me insisted I should wake my parents. I should shut the door, return to bed, and blame the sound on a television someone had forgotten to turn off. Ring. The sound came again. I stepped into the hallway. The old house seemed different at night. Familiar furniture became crouching figures. Family photographs watched from the walls. The staircase descended into a darkness that looked deeper than it should have been. I placed one hand on the railing. “Mom?” No answer. “Dad?” Nothing. I took the first step. The ringing stopped. I stood completely still. The silence pressed against my ears. Then the telephone rang from the family room below me. I moved faster. At the bottom of the staircase, a pale green glow stretched across the floor. My stomach dropped. The old walnut stand sat against the far wall. Jinny’s stand. After she died, my mother had brought it home because no one else in the family wanted it. The telephone had come with it, even though it no longer worked. Mom said she would eventually remove it and use the stand for a lamp, but she never had. Tonight, the telephone sat beneath a pool of green light. Ring. My skin turned cold. The curtains were closed. Every lamp was off. There was no reason for the strange color surrounding it. I crossed the room slowly. The tropical scent from the dream touched the back of my throat. Sweet. Floral. Rotten underneath. I stopped several feet away. “No.” The telephone rang. My hand trembled as I reached for it. Jinny had told me to run. Or perhaps she had told me not to answer. The memory shifted every time I touched it. I wrapped my fingers around the receiver. It was warm. “H-Hello?” Static crackled against my ear. I listened. At first, there was nothing else. Then I heard tires moving across wet pavement. Fast. Too fast. A distant horn blared. Someone shouted, but the words were swallowed by the static. “Hello?” The sound of tires became a squeal. A man’s voice broke through. “Hannah!” My knees weakened. The line filled with the scream of twisting metal. Glass shattered. I pulled the receiver away, but another voice rose beneath the noise. Soft. Familiar. Jinny. “Run.” The line went dead. I stood frozen, the receiver pressed against my ear. “Jinny?” Only silence answered. The green light disappeared. The family room returned to darkness. My hand shook as I lowered the receiver. I followed the telephone cord down the side of the stand. It curled loosely across the floor. The plug rested beside my bare foot. The telephone had never been connected to the wall.