Falling in the Garden

Chapter Fifteen - Communion

Chapter Fifteen

Communion

It was exactly one week before we needed to be together at The Meadow. I had printed out the email and read it to Ashley many times. I left nothing out, though it hurt to read She is very sick, Michael. She needs you. These words made me feel even more inept, useless and unable to make any difference whatsoever.

I want to tell you that Ashley began to show improvement, but in reality her strange condition grew hungrier and started swallowing her whole. Our meetings now lasted at most an hour, each parting all the more painful. Ashley was having a difficult time even leaving the Kasner’s. She now had to sneak out through the laundry room door opposite the garage. The doctor visiting her said that her illness was an anomaly. She hadn’t yet been taken to a hospital, too, which I thought was very strange.

We agreed that she should not come to The Meadow the two nights before our important rendezvous. She needed to rest, to store up enough strength for those two hours. All I remember of the evening before is pacing my bedroom floor, trying to brainstorm a last-minute answer. When morning came, October 30th, I knew that I would not be going to school. I let my Mom know that I was staying home. Not feeling well. She said that was fine. I almost never missed a day at school anyway. Again, my mother knew something important was happening even if she didn’t know the particulars. I traced my usual path to The Meadow. I tried to imagine that I had somehow traveled back in time and approached a newer, less weathered Kasner Estate. I’d sneak around to the back of the house and find Ashley swimming in the pool. I’d have been smart enough to arrive long before the illness came. When she saw me, she’d know I’d figured out a way to bring her back with me to 1999. As the house came into view, my daydream shattered. The roof sagged slightly over the garage, the shingles faded and buckling. The landscaping was overgrown to the point of chaos, all vegetation desiccated. I moved off to the left toward the gazebo. I didn’t need the photograph to envision her sitting inside it. Everything about her was so perfectly part of my memory. I walked past both house and gazebo, letting it all fall away. I could find little hope now in the empty shells around me. Where before the house had been a puzzle to be solved, it was now only a mocking reminder. Here, there was no doorway back except in my imagination. I entered the woods and soon found the path. The path was faithful. It did what it was supposed to do. It took me to the Meadow. It did not dare lose me this time.

Daylight had faded to burnt hues and the clouds were bruised, moving with the defeated cant of a beaten dog. The trees were now in full blush, losing their coats quickly to the insistent, merciless wind. According to Ashley, the trees in her woods were now mostly skeletal. When I entered The Meadow, I realized that I was no more than dragging on, my feet pushing through drifts of leaves. My heart was a dead lump inside me as I knelt to the soft, earthen floor just a few paces from the center of the clearing.

It was too much.

I rolled onto my side and let my backpack slide slowly off. In a pathetic gesture, I brought my knees to my chest and closed my eyes. The smell of dirt and rotting leaves was no longer invigorating, but appropriate. The stench of the grave. I couldn’t help Ashley. Couldn’t hold her and tell her she was going to get better. Could not uncover even the slightest clue as to what happened to her. A failure. I should have felt at least a mild positive anticipation, considering Sarah’s email, but couldn’t find the faith.

Her voice was coarse when she spoke my name. She sounded impossibly close. I turned my face toward the voice and opened my eyes.

She sat no more than two feet before me, staring in disbelief. She said my name again, though it was now in the form of a question.

“It’s me,” I said, pushing up into a kneeling position. Only later did I notice the strange, red bruises on her neck and hands, her cracked and swollen lips, her hunched frame. All I had then were her eyes. I crawled toward her and didn’t stop until I knew it wasn’t all just some cruel dream. I reached out and touched her, first the side of her face, then her hair. I wanted to say so many things, but was overwhelmed. Her weak smile was a powerful force on my heart.