AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
"Now…" Lenora said. She let the word hang there, without any other words to follow, long enough that it started to make Daryl feel anxious.
"Now what?" He asked.
"What?" She asked, directing her attention to him.
"You said now," Daryl said. "Now…what?"
She laughed and shook her head.
"Isn't it obvious? We get started."
It wasn't obvious to Daryl. Nothing was obvious to Daryl, but he supposed that was to be expected. Lenora had working on something with the things from her box—a lifetime supply, it seemed, of little bottles of assorted supplies. She'd brought the book from her place, as well. Daryl let her rummage through the kitchen in search of anything she needed, and she'd found a heavy cast iron pot that she seemed to enjoy a great deal. Daryl figured, if she could pull this off, he might offer it to her as a parting gift—it wasn't like he was too attached to much in the house. After all, most of it had only just become his in the first place.
While she'd been working, she'd sent him through the house to find things. He'd accepted the scavenger hunt as an adventure, and he'd blocked out the thought of how strange everything was by simply focusing on finding as much as he could of her list. The spell, she'd said, could be completed without the items, but the more that he could find, the stronger it was.
Luckily, the house had been pretty much abandoned for the better part of a century, and those who had briefly had stints of cleaning it up or out had been, on the whole, unsuccessful. Daryl was even able to lay his hands on what he was certain were some of Carol's clothes.
"She gonna show up?" Daryl asked. "I didn't see her upstairs."
"Have you called for her?" Lenora asked, with the same kind of bored expression that Daryl had often seen exasperated parents get with their children in the grocery store. "Have you—invited her, Daryl?"
Daryl frowned at her.
"Well, no, Lenora," Daryl said, mimicking her tone a little. "I haven't done that because you ain't told me what the hell to do and this is my first damn exorcism."
Lenora looked almost like he'd burned her.
"Don't say that word," she said. "This isn't about exorcism, Daryl. This isn't about—about banishing the spiritual energy of a being. Do you realize that this is about a transformation? A metamorphosis. A conversion of energy into a living being."
"What I realize is that I don't understand about fifty percent of what the hell you say at all damn times," Daryl responded.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Do you realize that, if this works, you're inviting Carol to be here, with you, in the flesh?"
Daryl's stomach felt like it turned inside out—not because he hadn't realized it, but because it still seemed so very impossible.
"That's about the only thing I think I really do understand," Daryl admitted.
"And is that what you want?" Lenora asked. "Tell me before I do this. What's done, Daryl, cannot be undone."
Daryl nodded his head.
"It's what I want," he confirmed. "If—you can really do it."
She winked at him.
"This is my first—rodeo—too," she said, teasing him openly. "But I believe we can pull it off. This is ready."
"So—now what? You gotta like—wait until midnight or the full moon or something?"
Lenora smiled at him.
"Do you read or watch a lot of television to have that lovely imagination?"
"OK, fine," Daryl said. "Do ghosts just go wanderin' around whenever they damn well please? I don't fuckin' know…"
"Carol is not a ghost," Lenora said. "At least not in the sense of what you think of as a ghost. She's a semi-corporeal spirit in a state of flux that's attempting to connect with her soulmate."
"OK—but—whatever she is, she ain't a golden retriever. She don't come when I call her," Daryl said.
"You can't summon her?" Lenora asked.
"Is summon the same as call in your world?" Daryl asked. Lenora nodded and Daryl shook his head.
"But you've—contacted her before…" Lenora said.
"She don't like garbage and mess," Daryl said. "She come out to cry about it. Likes things clean and orderly."
Lenora looked around.
"Then she's spent the better part of a century crying," she said, lighting a cigarette and dragging the saucer near her that she'd been using as an ashtray. Daryl lit his own cigarette, figuring that he might as well join her as they sorted out this possible dilemma.
"Get off my ass. I just moved in," Daryl said. "You shoulda seen the shit before I started cleanin'. Besides—I thought your whole like job here was to summon her. You tellin' me that if she don't just show up then we can't do this?"
Lenora considered it and shrugged.
"Not at all," she said. "I just thought that—it might be nice to talk to her before we rip her from her semi-spiritual realm and pull her back into a fully corporeal state. You know—so she knows what's happening. Understands it."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"I'm sure it's gonna be crystal fuckin' clear when the two of us explain it," Daryl said. "Shit—I need a fuckin' beer. You want a beer?"
"I could go for a beer," Lenora ceded, accepting one of the cans that Daryl pulled from the fridge. They were finally good and cold. The fridge that had been put in the house, probably to entice the last buyer into buying it when the electricity in the place was either installed or updated, was a model that was damn near antique. Daryl was certain it needed to be replaced soon, but as long as it worked, he would keep on with it. He couldn't afford too many unnecessary luxuries, right now, when he wanted to fix more practical things around the house. "This is piss beer," Lenora commented, sipping on the cheapest beer that Daryl could find.
"I can take it back," Daryl offered.
"It's fine," Lenora said.
"The hell you gonna say to her, anyway? We suspect you was murdered like over a hundred years ago by your husband. Axe murder, they say. Fuckin' brutal. You remember that shit? Oh—and by the damned way, I'm your soulmate 'cause this old ass fuckin' book says so, and we're gonna try to pull you into the world now—hopin' like hell you get a whole ass body and not some kinda zombiefied fuckin' partial corpse or some shit—but neither of us have ever done that shit before and we don't have a single damn clue what the hell's gonna happen if it even does work at all. So—you game?" Lenora laughed to herself—the deep, husky laugh that ended in a cough that hardly seemed to bother her at all. Considering Carol's previous reactions a bit more, Daryl added to what he'd already said. "Besides—I'm not sure how much she can understand me. I know she can see me. That much seems pretty damn evident, but she ain't spoke directly to me, exactly. She don't respond to me. So—I don't know if there's somethin' that keeps her from understanding. And this is a helluva lot more complicated than me just tryin' to get her to answer whether or not her name was Carol."
"Fine. You're right. We might as well just…do this. Besides, there's no guarantee that she'd even remember everything we told her after the transformation—assuming, of course, that it works."
"What happens to her if it don't work?" Daryl asked, his stomach twisting slightly.
Lenora shrugged.
"I don't know," Lenora said. "Maybe she simply remains as she is. In this state."
"Forever?" Daryl asked.
"Or, at least, until you die," Lenora said. "The nexum de comes animae makes it clear that your souls must be united—in life, preferably, but at least in death."
"Like a 'til death do us part kind of thing," Daryl mused.
"More like a beyond death do us never part," Lenora said. "This connection is forever in a way that neither you nor I could ever fathom, at least not as we are now. A way that not even Carol could fully fathom, though I'm just going to say she's got a helluva lot better chance of comprehending it than either of us do at this point."
"It won't kill her, will it?" Daryl asked. "If it fails?"
Lenora stared at him. There was concern on her features. Then, that concern softened, and she gave him a soft smile.
"I can see you're worried about her," Lenora said. "You already care. I can imagine that's some natural feeling coming from the nexum de comes animae. It's like an ingrained love and affection—a need to care for the one who holds the other half of your soul. So—I'm not really sure how the hell to break this to you gently, Daryl. Carol's already dead."
Daryl laughed quietly and shook his head.
"What a fuckin' asshole," he mused. "Will you just—bippity boppity boo or whatever the hell you gotta do? And let's see what the hell happens?"
"So much television," Lenora muttered, lighting another cigarette, picking up the reading glasses she kept resting on the kitchen counter, and resting them on the end of her nose—a necessary aid in a kitchen that she complained was not well-lit thanks to the old lighting and nearly antique bulbs that were half-blown out. "You'll need to close your eyes," Lenora said. She came over to Daryl and offered him a piece of the garment that he'd found and believed belonged to Carol. Another piece of it had gone up in smoke during part of Lenora's preparations. "Touch this. Think about your beloved. Meditate on her."
"Is she my beloved if we ain't even talked?" Daryl asked.
"She damn well better be," Lenora snapped. She drew back, somewhat apologetic. "I understand that you don't know her yet, in the Biblical sense of the word, but…surely you sense the connection in your souls. Your mind may not know she's your beloved—or is destined to be—but something deeper inside of you does."
There was something inside of Daryl that he couldn't quite explain—a yearning of sorts. Of course, he'd always felt that, deep down. It had made him restless. It had kept him moving. It made him always feel like he wanted something—home. He wanted, he figured, the same things that any man wanted, but he'd convinced himself, many times over, that it wasn't meant for him, and that's why he'd never found anything and had never truly felt settled.
Now, there was a chance that there was a different explanation for things, and it was certainly one that he'd never considered before. Maybe the yearning was—and had always been—for Carol.
"Fine," he said. "I got it. Close my eyes. Hold this. Think about her." Lenora smiled at him and nodded. "Simple as that?"
"Simple as that," Lenora confirmed.
"I don't gotta—say nothin'? Do nothin' else?" Daryl asked.
"That's where I come in," Lenora said.
Daryl nodded and closed his eyes. Around him, he perceived the darkening of the room as Lenora turned off the electric lights. He sensed her moving around, lighting the candles that she'd placed around the room—several of which had been burning near her book since they'd arrived. Daryl made note that he'd need to purchase a supply of back-up candles for when the probably-faulty electricity left him in the dark. Then, he quickly pushed that thought out of his mind and reminded himself that he was supposed to be focusing on Carol. He was supposed to be thinking about her as his beloved.
He wasn't sure how to do that, so he focused on how he'd felt when he'd heard her crying—and how he'd wished that she wouldn't cry, and that he could somehow comfort her. He focused on how he'd felt when he'd heard that she'd been brutally murdered—like he'd lost something that he'd never even known but, somehow, had treasured. He focused on the sadness he'd felt and the wish that someone could have saved her—that he could have saved her. He focused on the feeling he'd gotten when he'd looked at her portrait. That had been it—the yearning—a tugging feeling in his gut. The desire to know her—to really know her, even in the Biblical sense, as Lenora had said. He focused on that desire to know her, and he focused on the image of her beautiful eyes. He focused on his desire to see them, up close and looking at him—really looking at him—and seeing him.
Daryl was only half-aware that Lenora was speaking. He soon felt like he was floating. He wouldn't have been surprised to open his eyes and find that his feet were no longer on the ground, but he didn't open his eyes. He felt dizzy and a little light-headed. It was the feeling that came just before falling asleep when he was really exhausted and his whole body seemed to rock too and fro with something like the gravitational pull of the planet.
For a moment, the air around him was thin, and thick, and thin again—and he didn't understand it, but he found that he didn't really care to understand it. He felt beyond the need to understand. He simply was.
He allowed the images of Carol that he had—few though they were—to run across his mind's eye. He found there, some images that he'd never seen. He must have imagined them. He must have simply yearned to see them enough that he'd created them. He saw her laughing and smiling. He felt himself smile in response as he floated in the strange push and pull of the restless air around him.
Then, he seemed to settle. His feet seemed to find the floor that they'd never really left. The spinning in his brain seemed to stop, and the air stopped changing its thickness to settle on something familiar and easily breathable—despite the smell of smoke, incense, and the slightly flowery aroma of whatever it was that Lenora had cooked in the cast iron pot.
For a brief moment, Daryl felt oddly relaxed, like he'd just had a wonderful massage and awoken from a long, restful nap.
"You can open your eyes," Lenora said, her voice soft and sweet, like she wanted to wake him without startling him. "It's done."
Daryl did open his eyes. They were in the dark kitchen. The candles smoked. All of them had been extinguished. Daryl didn't know if Lenora had blown them out or if something else had. From cracks in the closed shutters that covered the windows from the inside, there were little streams of sunlight.
"How do we know if it worked?" Daryl asked. Lenora raised her eyebrows. She started to shrug. She stopped suddenly, though, and opened her eyes wide. They met Daryl's.
They heard it at the same time—the scream from upstairs.
Lenora started toward the stairs right behind Daryl. As soon as his hand touched the banister, and he started to think about what awaited him upstairs, he realized that they'd never actually gotten around to talking about this part of the process.