Annabelle

With Blood and Salt

The humans were at war. The world had gone mad with sorrow and rage. An infinite shade of red staining history. Blood. Roses. A flag. A uniform. The hand of a madman raised to the air in a fluent motion as though he directed an orchestra. The cymbals, his soldiers. The drums, his artillery. The violin, his soul, playing away into the hands of the devil. And finally the bugle horn, his plan sounding off in metallic beats for all to hear but none to listen. An orchestra of war and ruin.

I am no one and yet I see everyone. I watch everything. I am assuredly not God. But I am one of His. A foot soldier with no weapon but guiding hands and a pure heart. Merely a knight in the charge of his king. Perhaps, in someways, a nobody.

It's 1941, January 3 in Honolulu, Hawaii. I stand in the pouring rain outside a steel fortress, a carriage of the seas. The gentle waves of a storm press around its sides, sea water misting the wet air. A metal beast breathing steam and smoke, unaware of the end it shall meet. I trace the ship's name on the dew slicked side. U.S.S Arizona

What a terrible fate she faces.
The very human feeling of sympathy washed over me like a wave of the storm. Curious. I have felt sorrow, joy, passion, even anger, but never the strange sensation of sympathy. I felt sympathy for what was to come; for the souls heaven would welcome . . . And the souls it would not. What a fate she faces, what a fate.

I step through the raindrops and fly; I fly far away from that place of thunder and water to one where a girl with auburn hair and blue eyes is born in an alleyway.

A young woman, hardly nineteen years, gives birth. The woman's  sister grasps her hand, tears of fear flooding the corners of her eyes. I kneel beside the young woman, unseen. Her brow was wet and cold in the hot night air, her blonde hair falling from its clip. She cries out.

"Hush, Clara! He will find us!" Her sister fumbles with the cloths. Her elbow bumps the bottle of liquor . It tips and the contents flood the filthy alley ground. Moonlight fills the pool of alcohol turning the clear liquid opaque.

Clara snatches the bottle up and swallows a mouthful of the drink. Her eyes lift to the clouded sky as the alcohol burned her throat, a pleasant distraction. A sharp pain twists through her abdomen. She moans, letting the bottle slip from her fingers. "It hurts, Marie."

The girl watches her sister with eyes as big as the moon. Both of them so young... I brush my hand on Clara's cheek. Her skin is chilled and clammy. She would not make it another hour. Clara leaned against the wall, eyes closed, seeing a different sort of night behind her thin eye lids.

"Marie . . ." She whispered her sister's name like a plea. Like a prayer.

Marie cupped her cheeks. "Clara! Clara, don't leave me!" She sobbed and her shoulders sagged under the weight. "Clara . . ."

This child had a fate. She was not to die before her time.  I lean forward and lay a gentle kiss where the child's heart ought to be and... I pray.

A thin heart beat. A soft pounding. She was desperately alive.

Clara pushed herself away from the wall. She was suddenly pale. Her eyes squeezed shut.

Blood pooled in the moonlit liquor. It washed away the dirt and grime on the alley floor. Red and white. Blood and water. There was so much blood. Too much.

Marie held her hand. She laughed, a brief sigh of relief. "A little more, Clara. One more push. Just one more."

And in the deafening silence of night, a baby's cry sounds. Loud and alive. The breath of first life.
Marie's smile glistened. The innocence of one so young blinding her from seeing the world had gained life but lost it as well.

"Clara, it's a girl! You should name her Annabelle, like Mama," Tears glistened in her eyes. "Oh, she's beautiful. Her eyes are open. As big and blue as the sky. She has your eyes, Clara." Marie looked at her sister. "Clara?" And like an arrow sprung forward, it pierced her heart: Death, a keen sting.

"Clara," She choked on her name. Blue eyes as vast and full as the sea stared back at her. Full of a lifetime of memories and scars. Of nightmares and daydreams. Her eyes watched unblinking and... Empty.

The child cried.

Marie closed her eyes. Salty tears fell into the pool of blood and liquor. She wrapped the babe more tightly in the threadbare blanket and tucked her under Clara's arms.

Marie fell back onto the wall and screamed. She screamed at the world until her breath escaped her. Marie wiped away the tears but left a smear of blood and dirt. I touched the girl's eyes, washed the tears, the blood, and the grime away. Not a flicker of life shown in her being. She stood transfixed, unbelieving eyes searching the air that shared her breath. But there was nothing to see. Marie closed her eyes for several long and tumultuous seconds. When they opened there was something, or someone, missing from them; As though the twinkle that once lit her eyes was snuffed out like a candle flame.

The girl ran, she disappeared into the night air like a fog. I watched as the clutches of night pulled around her until all that remained was the clapping of her shoes against stone.

I gently closed the woman's eyes and pulled the girl from her mother's embrace. I cradled the child in my arms. Annabelle. From birth to death and eternity on, she would always and forever be in my care. The child and her angel: One.