Imogene extended her hand to Michael and when he grabbed it and felt the chill travel from her fingers up his arm, his fears were confirmed. Imogene was dead.
Before he could contemplate how she had died or why she had come back for him, he was thrust through some sort of tunnel, the wind billowing on both sides of him, echoing noisily in his ears, the landscape changing rapidly from rain and snow and trees to sun and sand and ocean. When they stopped moving, it took him only a few seconds to get his bearings and to realize that he was on the beach, the beach he had dreamed about while in Weeping Water.
Feeling slightly more unnerved now that they had landed than while they were traveling, Michael wanted to ask Imogene why they were here, why she had brought him to this place, but it was so calm, so tranquil, he didn’t want to interrupt the serenity with words and remained silent. He followed Imogene, but as she walked on top of the calm ocean, he walked into it. He looked down and saw the wave water envelop his feet languidly, without hurry, felt its coolness wash over his feet, his ankles. He was a part of this landscape; Imogene, his guide, was not. He stopped when the water reached his waist, but Imogene kept walking as if to step out of Michael’s memory, give him some privacy for what was yet to come. When she finally stopped, quite some distance away, she looked at Michael, her face a mask empty of any expression. Whatever emotions she was feeling would not be conveyed, and without another word of instruction or explanation, she turned her head preferring to watch some seagulls on their endless quest for food than the images about to befall her friend.
Before Michael felt Ronan’s touch, he knew he would be there. This was where they had first met, in his dream, before they saw each other in front of Archangel Cathedral, before the real world caught up with their destiny.
“Ronan, what’s going on?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied, smiling. “This isn’t my journey.”
Tracing Michael’s lips with his wet finger, Ronan stared tenderly at his boyfriend. “No matter what happens, no matter what you see, remember that nothing can change the present.”
For the first time, Michael felt cold, the ocean water that glided from his lips, past his chin, down his neck was like ice. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Ronan said, kissing Michael softly. “When you’re ready.”
They embraced, Ronan pressing his strong body into Michael as if to give him his strength. Holding on to Ronan’s muscular back, Michael felt an odd mixture of passion and panic when he saw, over his shoulder, his mother standing on the beach, her hands outstretched and drenched in blood. Without turning around, Ronan told Michael, “This isn’t for me to witness.” And before Michael could beg him to stay, Ronan plunged into the ocean and disappeared.
“Ronan! Come back!”
His plea was not acknowledged. The only response was the far-off sound of a seagull’s cry. And then Grace’s breathing.
Even though his mother was over a hundred yards away on the beach, and the waves were beginning to gain speed and power, their sound escalating louder and louder as they crashed onto the shore, Michael could hear his mother’s frantic breathing as if she were standing right next to him. It was so forceful, so commanding, it was as if there were no other sound in the world.
Until she screamed.
Frightened, Michael’s eyes searched the ocean to find Imogene, hoping that once he did, she could put an end to this nightmare, end the intense emotional pain he was already experiencing seeing his mother so fragile, so wounded. This is in the past, Michael thought. I don’t want to see this again! Finally, he found his dead friend hovering over the horizon. “Imogene! Please, make this stop!”
Imogene heard him, but she, just like Ronan, had no other choice but to ignore him. What else could they do? They weren’t the ones in control. All Imogene had been instructed to do was to bring Michael here so he could see the events unfold as they had originally taken place, as he was previously unable to see them. She couldn’t stop them, she couldn’t alter them in any way, and thankfully she didn’t have to watch them with him. She could fix her gaze upon something in the distance, anything, a whale, yes, that would do, a whale spouting a spray of water into the air as it traveled just beneath the ocean’s surface. Anything was better than watching Michael’s mother fall to the sand on her knees and shriek.
As Grace’s cries pierced Michael’s ears, he was transported back to another time, back to the dream in which he had his first kiss with the boy who would turn out to be Ronan, back to the dream in which he saw his mother covered with blood, and he couldn’t believe he was being forced to relive the experience. He remembered seeing his mother, the blood pouring from her wrists, staining the beach, the accusing stare in her eyes beneath the look of frenzy, the stare that still haunted him. But as he stared at his mother more closely, he realized that something was different. It was just as with Imogene, there was something different about her eyes. They were consumed by the same look that he remembered from his dream, the same look of accusation, but they were not looking at him. Turning around, he found the reason. His mother was looking at someone else. His father.
Vaughan was only a few feet away, standing on top of the waves, displaying the same impossible skills as Imogene, his feet bare, his white pants and shirt dry even though he was less than an inch above the ocean, the ocean that was growing rougher by the second.
“Dad?!” Michael cried out, unaware that the word had never escaped his lips with such ease before. “What’s going on?!”
It didn’t matter that it was Michael’s memory, his trip through time, it was as if he weren’t there. All that existed, all that meant anything, was the space between Grace and Vaughan, Michael was simply a spectator. But even though he was their child, he felt oddly disconnected in their presence. This was the first time he had seen his parents together since he was a very young boy, and looking at them now—his mother wild, frenetic, and blood-soaked, his father calm, aloof, immaculate—he couldn’t imagine them ever being a couple. And yet something had united them, something that had been just as powerful as what tore them apart.
He thought of how he had felt when he first laid eyes on Ronan and wondered if his parents had ever felt a similar passion, the same kind of need. No, that was impossible. If they did, they would still be together, they would never have separated, nothing and no one in the world could extinguish that kind of love. Michael knew so much more than they did, he understood so much more about life, and yet if that were true, why did he feel like a child, lost, alone, and scared that he was about to witness something he never wanted to see?
“You!” Grace heaved the word into the air with such force that the ocean roared and this time when the waves crashed beneath Vaughan’s feet, he was no longer immune to their aftershock; a fan of salt water rose and arched, showering his body. But when the water touched him, it turned to blood.
Startled, Michael stumbled backward and fell underwater. When he came back up, he shook his head, hoping that would correct the image, but it only made things worse. He watched in horror as rivulets of blood raced down Vaughan’s cheeks, his shirt, the side of his pants, staining his outfit, turning the white cloth dark pink. For a moment, time stood still while Michael watched transfixed as one bright red drop of blood hung from Vaughan’s foot, seemingly determined to cling to the flesh it had sought out, until gravity interfered and it fell into the ocean. Michael wished he could follow and hide, descend lower, lower, lower, underneath the water’s surface, far away from his parents, who were now both dripping in blood. But he couldn’t. He was compelled to watch, for no matter how painful it was to see these two people in such a raw, private moment, these two people were still his parents.
In spite of that, he began to suffocate. All the anxiety he felt as a little boy in Weeping Water started to push against his chest, his lungs; all the desperation he thought was gone, buried along with the rest of his past, began to resurface. He wanted to shout, scream as loud as he possibly could to block out what was happening, but his mother beat him to it.
“I’m ashamed of you!!”
Once Grace spoke, Michael was rendered speechless. The words were familiar; he had heard them before, but unlike the last time, unlike the last time she spoke those words in his dream, Grace wasn’t talking to Michael, she was talking to Vaughan. Confused, Michael looked at his mother, her bloodied hand pointing directly past him, and he realized that she wasn’t ashamed of him, she had never been ashamed of him, she was ashamed of his father. But why? What could he have possibly done to make her react so ferociously? Michael didn’t know, but he
