Asleep In Eden, Part Three

I had not seen my old house in ten years, though my body had been resting inside since Cadence’s curse had been fulfilled. I caught a very brief glance as I was running out, already out-of-body, but I had never seen what the city of Eden had done to my house.

Over the front door, someone had hung a huge sign that read, “Museum of Eden”. I glared at it. Going inside would be harder than I had thought. Cadence’s mercenary souls had never haunted me as badly as my own memories, and when I stepped inside this house I would be confronted by both of them.

“Come on,” Marco said, gesturing me forward. “You said this was it, right?”

I nodded, too overwhelmed to speak, and followed Marco as he jogged up my front steps. When I lived here, when this was my house, my father’s chair had sat right where the museum employees had put their rack of brochures.

Marco pushed my front door open and I followed, sticking close but not too close. It does not turn out well when disembodied souls make contact with normal souls. Air conditioning blasted right through me— that had not been here in 1914— and then I noticed all of the tourists.

I had known there would be a lot. The Museum of Eden was Eden, Texas’ main attraction— not that Eden had many attractions. Still, there were at least ten people standing in my living room, milling around, staring at my mom’s china and my dad’s rifles, looking at my house and my life through glazed eyes. To them, this museum was about dusty old nobodies who lived a hundred years ago, but there was nothing else exciting in Eden, so they came here.

My hands curled into fists. They had no idea what they were looking at. They did not see the chips in my mother’s china that I had put there at five years old, trying to have a tea party. They did not know how she had forgiven me, putting her hand to my cheek and smiling gently as she wiped away my tears.

“So is it this room?” Marco turned around so fast I had to jump back to avoid touching him. He frowned, but kept watching me, still expecting an answer.

“Not so loud,” I whispered, and scanned the room for anyone who had decided to watch us. No one was looking our way. I turned my attention back to Marco.

“No,” I said. “No, it’s not this room. But please, try to be quieter. She’s got people  looking for me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Marco said. He scanned the room, like I had, for any watching eyes. Seeing none, he turned back to me and said, “Come on!” And before I could tell him the room would be on the upper floors, Marco had turned into the next room over and I followed him to bring him back. On stepping through the doorway, I stopped and stared.

I had forgotten. The room to the immediate left was mine— or had been. In the century since I had been asleep, the museum had made plenty of changes. Gone was every touch of me, everything that had ever meant anything to me, everything I had ever loved. The quilt my mother had made for me, agonizing over every stitch while I was still in the womb, had been replaced by one “generously donated by Doris Emmelby.” The plaquard over my bed said it had probably been made around the time I was born, but I could tell from the fabric that it was nowhere near that old.

“Jane Eden Carver,” Marco said. I turned around, wide-eyed, wondering how he had learned my full name. He was looking at another plaquard and a mannequin that was probably supposed to be a fifteen-year-old me. I glared at her. My hair is light brown, thank you very much, not black frizzy plastic, and I would never wear a dress in that shade of green. In fact, no one would wear a dress in that style in 1914.

Marco was still reading the text off the plaquard above the mannequin’s head. “...born in 1899, daughter of Henry and Anna Carver. Jane and her family moved to the Carver estate in 1900, shortly after Jane’s birth. She lived here with her parents until her mysterious disappearance in 1914. Her parents founded and named the town of Eden in her honor.”

Marco read the words off the plaquard like it was a dusty, ragged history textbook and not my life. Then he turned around and whispered, “You fit right in around here, don’t you? You’re dressed right, your name’s right... are you some kind of ‘Jane Eden Carver’ imposter? Is that your disguise to keep her from finding you or something?”

 “Marco,” I said quickly, “We should go. This isn’t the room I’m looking for.”

He turned around, scanning the room with mild interest.

“Sorry. I’ve been here three months and this is still my first visit to the Museum of Eden. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Poor girl,” he said, looking at the mannequin, “I wonder what happened to her.”

She got cursed by a fairy. That is what happened to her.

“How nice. I’m sure she appreciates your sympathy. Now please, can we go? I’d like to find this room before they close the museum.”

“Oh. Sure,” Marco said, running up behind me so quickly that I had to jump forward to avoid colliding with him. If we touched, it would get pretty obvious that I was out-of-body. “You said it was one of the upstairs rooms, right?”

“Should be,” I said, but I really did not remember much. It had been ten years since I had left, and I had forgotten all of the details. My body might not even be resting in my own house.

We headed up the stairs and started looking around in the rooms on the second floor. I was grateful that Marco was so unconcerned about Cadence that he looked like a perfectly natural tourist. Maybe if I stuck close enough to him, the “perfectly natural tourist” look would rub off. I knew I could not emulate it myself. I was far too busy looking under doorways for telltale greenery to be wowed my old house.

We wandered through the upstairs rooms for a while. I let Marco read all of the plaquards while I leaned down to check under the doorways. It was getting late and most of the tourists were leaving, but I was not about to go yet. From the looks of things, Marco was also enjoying the museum a little too much.

I bent down and checked the fifth and final door. Again, no greenery. I sighed and tried the handle. It did not turn. Maybe it was where I had fallen asleep, but the lack of rosebuds poking out from underneath the door made me doubt it.

“Hey Jane? You should come see this picture.”

“Actually, we need to—”

 “Are you kids lost?”

I shut my eyes. I recognized that voice, and it did not belong to a sweet lady who worked in the museums, trying to lock up. No, that was one of Cadence’s goons. Amy.

“Lost?” Marco was saying. “No, we’re not lost. We’re just, um, looking for—”

Amy’s footsteps had been getting much closer. I had tried to pretend to be very, very interested in the display of my old rocking horse, but it had not worked. She was practically breathing down my neck. I didn’t want to hurt her, but she really was not giving me much of a choice.

“Jane,” she said softly. I turned around and faced her. She was incredibly pale and getting lighter by the moment. Nervous? I had thought that Cadence would have beaten that out of them by now, especially Amy. She had been with Cadence the longest, and she was one of her toughest fighters.

 “Look, I’m sorry,” she began, reaching out for me.

‘No, don’t be. It’s quite all right,” I replied, slipping around her reach. I hurried across the room to Marco.

“Really, we should—”

“Jane!” Marco had time to shout my name before something slammed into my backside. Amy. I fell onto Marco, squished between them, and I had to act fast.

My legs twisted hard to the side and Amy fell off me. I was up in seconds, and she tried to stand, but I was too fast for her. One kick, one punch, and she was down again. A few more, and she would be out of commission for a while. I teared up, but I had to keep going. Cadence’s soul-troops did not bother for me a while after they had suffered through one of my beatings, and the less of them I had to deal with at once, the higher my chances of survival.

But seeing what I had to do to Amy to achieve that end brought the tears from my eyes out onto my cheeks. Her body and arms were badly bruised. She was breathing heavily, out of reflex, and clutching her stomach where I had kicked her. When I knelt beside her, she flinched like I was going to hit her again. I felt even worse.

“I’m so sorry, Amy,” I told her, trying to swallow my tears back. “I hate doing this, and if I have it my way it’ll all be over in a couple of days and you can go back to your normal life.” I swallowed again. Amy probably didn’t have a normal life anymore. “I’m so sorry I have to do this. I promise I’ll find a way to make it stop.”

I stood and faced Marco, who was staring at me, wide-eyed. “Let’s just go,” I said.

We went downstairs again and Marco tried to head out the front, but I stopped him. The front of the house would be far too obvious. We slipped out the back instead, and once we had left my house behind us Marco started running. By the time he charged up the stairs of an old apartment building I was sure I’d lost him, but I managed to catch up him in front of his apartment. I fumbled for my breath while he fumbled for his keys. He threw the door open, motioned me inside, and slid the deadbolt shut.

“And NOW you are going to tell me what happened back there.”

I looked at him and breathed, extra hard, hoping he would notice that I was not up to talking yet.

“Jane Carver, you’re gonna tell me right now.”

“Okay... fine,” I said between gasps. There was no more point in hiding the truth from him now that he had touched my soul. He knew my full name, at the very least, and probably several more sensitive details of my life story. I took a few more gulps of air.

“Fairies are real.” If I have to spit out my story, Marco might as well swallow the big chunks first.

“Yeah, and you made one of them pretty mad. So tell me what happened.”

I frowned at him. “How do you—”

“I’ll tell you later, but I can’t help you very well unless you tell me why Cadence is so mad.”

I turned away from him. Yes, this was definitely a story I wanted to revisit. But Marco was right. If he knew, he could help me a whole lot better.

“How do you...” I paused for breath, “know who I am?”

“There was a picture of you with your parents in the museum,” he said. “You were a lot younger, but it was you. So how’d you get to 2014? Time travel?”

I shook my head, still trying to catch my breath.

“So what? Are you 120?”

I shook my head again. “115.”

Marco blinked. “What?”

“It started with my parents,” I said. My breathing had calmed down a lot, so I was actually able to speak. I thought I heard Marco muttering something, but I did not care enough to ask.

“They had wanted a baby for years, so when I was born they invited every fairy in the country to a banquet in my honor, except for one. She had been in the Bahamas for a long time, and they didn’t know she was back.”

Marco whistled and tapped his index finger on the door behind him. “Cadence?”

“Of course. She showed up anyway and said that when I turned fifteen I would die, but there was one last fairy who reversed the curse. I’d just fall asleep for a hundred years, and then somebody’s gonna come rescue me and wake me up. There are more details, but when I asked Bea— the fairy who undid the curse, all I got was a condescending smile.” I laughed, remembering that awful condescending smile. Whatever Beatrice had in store for me, I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Marco stopped tapping and his face lost all color. “Wait. Beatrice?”

“Yep. Beatrice.”

Slowly, he turned red.

“So, um... how long has it been, since you fell asleep?”

“It’ll be a hundred years in just a couple days. I’m not entirely sure.”

“But you’re awake.”

I sighed. “Cadence won’t settle for my being alive, but the only person who can get to me is the person who’s supposed to rescue me. Since she can’t get inside the rooms where my body is, she had to pull me out-of-body to get to me.”

“Out-of-body?” Marco said, taking a step back. “But I can see you.”

I let my annoyance out through a slow, patient sigh.

“Being out-of-body isn’t what you think it is,” I said. “It’s a lot more complicated.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“No, Marco. It’s not that clean-cut.”

“Well, you already agreed to tell me, so you might as well get on with it.”

I sighed, but Marco’s expression did not change.

“The only real difference between a disembodied soul and a normal person is that physical objects are immaterial to me.” I swung my hand through Marco’s couch. “That, and I don’t have to sleep. Or eat. Laws of gravity still apply. I can’t float or sink. Everyone can still see me, and hear me talk.”

“You nearly squished me when that girl bodyslammed you.”

I stepped up to Marco and tapped his chest.

“There is a soul in here,” I said. “Souls aren’t immaterial to me.”

“Okay.” Marco sat down on his misshapen couch cushion and rested a foot on his knee. “So why are you in Eden?”

“I’m trying to find my body and skip town as soon as I can. I don’t think Cadence is going to stop once I’m in my body again.”

“Can’t you just wait for that person Beatrice is supposed to send you?”

“Yeah, I could,” I said, “but I don’t want to wait that long. The sooner I get into my body, the sooner I can skip town and throw Cadence off my track.”

“... How are you going to get back into your body, anyway?”

I had been trying to avoid that question since I got to Eden. By asking it, Marco had poked one more hole in my already thin plan. I was really just trying to get out of Eden alive.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Beatrice has a stake in this. Maybe she’ll show up and help me out.”

Yes. No one has helped me in the ten years I’ve been out-of-body, and suddenly Beatrice will decide to be merciful.

“Anyway.” The more I talked, the less time I had to think. “The most important thing is that I find my body again.”

Marco’s finger was resting on his lip. He was thinking.

“So what about the girl you attacked the museum?”

“Marco, I did not attack her! She attacked me!”

“Okay, okay! Fine. Why does she hate you?”

I sighed. “She doesn’t hate me. Cadence has been pulling other people out-of-body to track me down. That girl was one of her goons.”

“So why’d you beat her up?”

“I had to put her out of commission for a while,” I said. “If I had all of her goons on my tail at once, I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Marco laughed. “Wow.”

My fingers curled into fists and my fingernails probably cut into my palm.

“Believe me, I don’t want to do it,” I said, “but it’s that or die. They’re all still alive, and so am I. It’s the best option I have.”

“I know. I just... wow.” Marco was still grinning. “Cadence, she’s bad news.”

Why don’t you go ahead and state the obvious, Marco? I really had not noticed before.

“So,” I said. “Still want to help?”

Marco put a finger to his chin and thought at the ceiling.

“Yup,” was his decision.

“Are you insane?”

“No,” Marco said. “Trust me, I know what I’m getting into.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I am. Don’t worry.”

“How do you know about fairies, anyway?”

Marco turned his back to me and walked into another room. He came back with a plastic cup from a barbeque restaurant and took a sip.

“My mom knows a few of them pretty well,” he said. “Now come on. There’s a couch you can sit on in here. We need to talk.”

 “It’s a good idea, you’ve got to admit that,” Marco said. “You put the only girl who saw me ‘out of commission’.”

“I know,” I said, staring out of Marco’s dirty window. “I just don’t want to have to sit here while you do all the work.”

“Didn’t Beatrice say somebody else was supposed to rescue you?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m helpless,” I said.

“Obviously you aren’t helpless. I saw how you beat that girl up. Where’d you learn to do that, anyway?”

“I watch a lot of action movies,” I told him.

Marco snorted. “Sure. Look, I’ll just scope the place out real nicely after work. If I find anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

I stared at his linoleum. I did not like it, but it was a solid plan. None of Cadence’s goons would recognize him. He would not have to pretend to be a tourist. He already was.

“Okay,” I said. “But if anything, ANYTHING, happens, you tell me right away.”

He already had a hand on the doorknob. I got a grin and a salute. “Sure thing, Miss Carver. I’ll be back!”

The door slammed behind him. I sighed and headed down to Eden’s only movie theater to wait.

Marco wanted me to wait in his apartment, but he had been worried about what leaving the TV on all day would do to his electricity bill. I was not about to sit around in a house all day with nothing to do, so I snuck down to the movies. Marco would not be back until after dinner, so I would have plenty of time to get back to his place. Cadence usually kept a soul or two down at the theaters, since she knew they were my favorite hangout, but I had ten years of practice. In a dark movie theater, I was nearly impossible for employees or goons to catch.

By the time Marco got back from dinner, I had watched three movies— a kid’s movie about talking squirrels, some horror flick, and a cheesy romance. I was lounging on his couch, trying to pretend I had been there all day, bored. Since I had managed to avoid Heather and Jim, the goons Cadence had left for me, it was not that hard to fake. I had not exactly had an exciting day.

When I finally heard Marco’s front door opening again I hopped off his couch and sped up to the door like a dog left home all day. Marco’s eyes widened and he grabbed the doorhandle again.

“Well? Did you find anything?”

Marco released the doorhandle.

“Jane! Don’t startle me like that!”

“Sorry. Did you find anything?”

Marco shooed me back and walked over to his kitchen sink. He turned the tap on and splashed some water on his face. When he finished toweling off I finally got a response.

“No,” he said. “No, I didn’t.”

Now I really wanted to tear my hair out.

“Well, that’s peachy.”

Marco shrugged. “Got a plan B?”

“Plan A was your thing, mastermind.”

Marco frowned at me. “I’ll check the place out tomorrow and see if I can find your greenery.”

“Okay. Hey, do you know if—”

“JANE!”

He was staring wide-eyed at something behind me. I skittered to the right as a soul— Pam— ran past me, through Marco’s wall.

Marco and I stared at each other.

“How did she find us?”

“I don’t know. Must have followed me. Jane— We’ve gotta go.”

I ran for the back, the way the soul had come. The faster I could get away, the better. If I had come to injure one more soul again, I was not going to be happy about it. I made it to Marco’s back wall and skidded to a stop. I needed to disappear, but I could not go out back. The soul had probably been hiding on the fire escape or something. It might have backup. Instead I slid sideways into a closet. It was dark, and while I caught my breath I could hear Marco struggling with the soul.

“Let me go!”

“Tell me where she went!” Pam shouted.

“How’d you even find me, you freak?”

“Please, I have to find her,” said Pam. I winced. She really is not a bad person, but Cadence has made all of them so desperate.

“Do I look like I know?” Marco asked. “She’s out-of-body! She could be anywhere. And if you want to find her, you should probably let go of me, ‘cause you won’t catch her if you’re hanging on to me.”

“Where is she?”

“Okay, okay!” Marco said. “I can’t help you find her unless you let me go.”

There were some stumbling sounds. I shut my eyes. He was not really going to lead her to me.

“Okay,” Marco said. “Let’s check the kitchen. Jane! Hey! You in the kitchen?”

I opened my eyes again. He was throwing her off my track— again. My lips lifted in a smile. If Marco was good at anything, he was really good at confusing Cadence and her goons.

“Jane! You using the restroom or something?”

I heard him open and close a few doors. Then there was more scuffling.

“If you’re just going to stall,” she said, “you might as well come with me.”

I heard Marco try to yell, but something muffled the noise. My feet itched to leave the closet and help, but I forced myself to stay put. I was not going to do myself or Marco any good if I revealed myself now. If there was anything I had learned in ten years of being out-of-body, it was that I had limited advantages, and I had to exploit them to their full extent.

I squeezed my eyes shut, listening hard. I heard forced footsteps and stumbling. I slipped out of the closet and made it to the front door just as the soul was pushing Marco out.

I swallowed. This was my fault, mine alone, and I swore to myself that I would fix it.