The Lunar Phase

CHAPTER 5: LAKE BY THE WOODS

They say after every thunderstorm comes a day so bright, that it erases all the bad memories. The next day in Fork was exceptionally sunny. It was wonderful. As if the angels from heaven were on a painting spree. There was beauty and peace everywhere but my heart. If my frayed senses weren’t my imagination, I was still torn between believing what might be logically correct and what might be inexplicable. This morning I decided to do a little research of my own. So when everyone was busy either working on the class project or necking behind the stack of books, I was feverishly looking up for the major reasons behind hallucinations or nervous breakdown.

Let’s see….I certainly don’t do substance abuse…..alcohol, cocaine, mescaline or LSD. Neither do I have a depressive disorder. Though I have occasional headaches…I don’t think I have migraine. It says something very interesting over here. Migraines do cause a certain kind of visual hallucinations of geometrical patterns, but in rare cases a person may also have the experience of seeing objects which appear much larger or smaller than they really are. This phenomenon is sometimes known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, named after the famous author Lewis Carroll who had these symptoms and wrote detailed and beautiful descriptions of this phenomenon in his fiction. Who would have known that pain could be chanelised into something so beautiful!

It also says here,” Many people also experience mild hallucinations as they wake up or as they go to sleep, so called hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations respectively. Sometimes these particular phenomenons suggest the presence of the sleep disorder narcolepsy”. This was the only information that sounded sane. It’s probably my active imagination …or the fact that I was half-hungry… half-sleepy that caused all those visions. My mind kept replaying bits of them, every spare second of my day. And within a few minutes I was weaving them in a day-dream.

I was rudely awaken from my daydream, when my watch beeped to let me know I was going to get late for my next class. I hurried down the stairs at an admirable speed just to enter the class a second before Mr. Alvarez, our History teacher. My ears caught a few giggles as I caught my feet on a nearby table. I was saved from a humiliating tumble on the floor in front of my peers.

“Good Afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Believe me it gives me tremendous pleasure to see you all at a single time in an orderly fashion. Something that unfortunately was lost for the past few weeks. The good new first- your assignment topics are put up in the library and the due dates would be next month…..”

The announcement was greeted with a variety of groans and occasional snorts, something that amused our teacher for he smiled, sort of.

“You would need to write an essay of 3000 words, no more no less, on any of the 5 topics. You would be internally assessed on the essays and graded accordingly. I want no previously written submission to have any influence on your writing. No copying. No downloading. Originals, thank you. It need not be a first class material, but I would not accept total amateur gibberish pieces. You need to READ your essay’s before submitting. The library is open for your research. Supplementary books are available in the market. So good luck.

After this protest inducing announcement, we were all handed a copy of the assignment topics for our review. Interesting mix of variety of topics. “Renaissance literature and Occult”, “Biohazard and their remedies”, “Shakespeare and Scandals”….”Witchcraft lore around Washington” Great. It seems Mr. Alvarez WAS obsessed with the paranormal. The gossip around school was that he had some very questionable visitors last Halloween. Many a time had he been found collecting literature on the unexplained. I shoved the paper inside my sack and was once again immersed in my day-dream. Fortunately it was a movie day today and the movie of the day was, surprise surprise, Blair witch project! Seriously someone needs to get his brain mapped. The last thing we want in our school is a “witch fanatic” loony.

As the screen filled up with a bunch of budding movie directors hitchhike on the scarily gloomy forest and a few of my peers took this opportunity to make use of the back benches for a quick nap, I embarked on my own journey of evaluation. I was replaying yesterday’s incident, blowing every frame 4 times the normal size in my mind’s eye. From my walk by the forest till the shower incident, none of it made sense, even the two girls were different. The girl I saw in the shower was blond whereas the girl I saw in the forest was a red-head. Though the exact vision was sort of hazy, like you see in a very bad picture transmission, grainy sort. But I could make out the shock of reddish hair. A shade darker, orangeier than me. Plus if it was a premonition of some sort the images should have been repetitive. It simply doesn’t make sense. All these thinking got me really tired and I decided to catch 20 winks. The movie was still half on its way. Pretty sure I wouldn’t be caught by then I closed my eyes.

I was not sure it was a dream. I was sort of floating, like being on a plane of subconscious where you are on the verge of waking up, but still get tied down by a languish. I felt a sort of strange numbness, like the anesthesia dentists pump into you, before a tooth extract or root canal. The feeling was…sweet…a contrast to the previous two experiences. Pretty amazing how I was able to feel the difference between them. The other two were very very intense, painful even. I was able to sense a sort of pricking sensation all over my body as if someone was trying to forcefully make me see those things. This…was natural… as if someone had just to open a passage and I would float in all by myself.

In the trance, I found myself in a forest. Very different from the ones I am familiar with in Forks. The trees were a little denser. They formed a kind of canopy, I saw only in National Geography. There were no birds or occasional cries of monkeys. As if somehow natural cacophony was forbidden in these parts. It was an interesting to note that I wasn’t able to feel the ground beneath me. I was floating towards my destination. I couldn’t make out whether it was dawn or dusk. The golden glow would have signified any one. I was gliding towards, maybe, the south of the forest. As soon as the thought fiddled my brain, I was greeted with a very sweet fragrance. Wild Flowers? Trees? Do I really need to bother? The inner me rebuked with a jaunty laughter.

That part of the forest was somehow different. Pleasant greener trees. Soft breeze bringing in the sweet ripe smell of mangoes. It oddly reminded me of my grandma’s cottage in Phoenix. Bella and I used to spend our rare summers together there. She used to let us play in the garden and when our little legs were tired she used to make us lemonade. I half-expected her to come out from the small cottage in view now. But this wasn’t grandma’s cottage. This was more of a hut. A hut made of mahogany wood. With smoke coming out of the chimney. I wanted to go inside to explore. But something inside me said that wasn’t my destination. Right passed the hut ran a river. I was urged towards it.

What caught my eyes first, was the blaze of red that stood by the river bed. As I approached further I was able to make out the feminine arch of hip, proud and nubile. Though her face was turned away from me, I was able to see her bare arms and feet. Delicately shaped and pink. I wondered if her face was equally artistic. And as if she heard my thoughts, she turned.

My heart stopped as I took in her features. Beauty was a term much inferior to this creature. By now I am sure she wasn’t human. She couldn’t be. We humans were flawed. That’s our allure. This heavenly creature was flawless. With a face like this she could easily be the cause of a thousand deaths. Her eyes were naturally black and slanted like mine. But where I have to paint them every time to give them the catty look, her eyes were naturally painted. Her lips were blood red. Her skin creamy. Her hair a fiery shade of red that now moved about in an array of intricate web. And as I took in her feature, the creature spoke in a perfect syllable,

“Hello” I mumbled something as a sort of greeting, she smiled and I am sure somewhere a thousand flowers would have bloomed just at the purity of it. “This is my home, my world. I gave it life just as it gave mine. What wouldn’t I do to protect it! Even rise from the ashes like a phoenix. But alas! No time to spare. No time to love! We must act now or everything would get lost… everything… and a drop of tear fell on her lovely cheeks.” “What must I do?” I asked desperately “you must not ward away what you don’t understand. Half the battle can be won if you believe… believe in your wisdom… in your sanity… dreams talk a lot of things… most are gibberish but if you scrap through the surface you would be able to find all your answers … just listen to your heart and believe” “But nobody would believe me, they will think I am mad” I knew that for sure. “Madness is just another way to force sense into things that are inexplicable. Just glamour to hide the ugly truth.” “What truth?” I felt the fine hair on my arms rose “Listen… do you hear that….?” I frowned “ what am I supposed to hear?” “Hear the wind cry… raising an alarm… impending doom…hurry…choose your friends…” her words carried off in the wind, the last thing I could hear was “the diary”. And with that I began to shake. I was rudely awoken by the most despicable girl in the history of Forks, Amelia Keep. “Rise and shine sleepy head…” she said with saccharine sweetness. “ Miss Swan, are we having trouble keeping up with the class? “Lordly Lord! Mr. Alvarez’s dead pan voice announced the verdict next” perhaps you might be able to get something more up to your taste during an hour detention” one of his eyebrows arched in a very awe inspiring way. As I rose to pick up my sack, Amelia spoke softly into my ears,” Happy detention, sweety” How I hate that hag!

RISING MOON