The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove
It sounds too good to be true. She expected snobbiness, but the students are almost too nice and welcoming. Her elegant and pale headmistress even offers Jane the chance to earn extra money by tutoring her gorgeous son, Lucky.
An unknown enemy begins threatening Jane, but she's not easily scared...even though she suspects that something happened to a former scholarship girl and that the headmistress and her staff are hiding some very dark secrets.
The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
THE SHADOW GIRL OF BIRCH GROVE
Copyright @ Marta Acosta, 2010
All rights reserved.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
Der Vampir
And as softly thou art sleeping
To thee shall I come creeping
And thy life's blood drain away.
And so shalt thou be trembling
For thus shall I be kissing
And death's threshold thou' it be crossing
With fear, in my cold arms.
And last shall I thee question
Compared to such instruction
What are a mother's charms?
Heinrich August Ossenfelder
(1748)
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
ON THE NIGHT
that I die, the storm raging outside is not as fierce as my stepfather raging inside.
His hand is so sweaty that I am able to pull out of his grip. I run through the
kitchen, past my mother’s body. My foot slides in the pool of scarlet blood on the
cracked yellow linoleum floor. I wrench open the back door and run outside.
The darkness is unfathomable and rain beats down and I am small and
terrified.
“Come back here!” my step-father bellows and his heavy steps splash
through the mud as he comes after me.
The neglected yard is fenced, and he is closer to the gate leading to the
street than I am. I slosh toward my secret place among three enormous trees at
the far end of the yard. It is too dark to see, yet I know when I have reached the
largest, and I creep around it, hiding behind the wide trunk.
“Jane!”
Though, I can’t hear his movements, I know he’s somewhere near. I peer
around the tree-trunk as lightning flashes, briefly illuminating the monster that
he’s become.
His face is contorted by madness, and his sweatshirt is soaked with my
mother’s blood and rain. The dark metal of a gun glints in his hand.
I shake uncontrollably with fear. I move behind another tree and grip the
rough bark, struggling to climb, but the smooth soles of my sneakers slide and
even the lowest branches are beyond my reach.
An earsplitting blast stuns me and throws me back against the third tree. I
think it’s lightening. A second later, pain radiates from below my shoulder to
every part of my body. My knees buckle with the agony. I know that if I fall to
the ground, I will die.
I twist my body toward the tree as blood seeps from my chest, to the trunk
and the rain washes it down to the soil, the tree’s roots.
Help me
, I think,
help me
.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
As I begin to black out, I feel arms – no,
not
arms. I feel
something
take me
and lift me high into the wet green branches.
Lightning explodes, deafening me and cleansing the air with pure ozone. In
that flash of brilliant white light, I look far down to the yard and see my stepfather’s body jerk violently as the bolt of electricity rips through him.
Later, I hear the sirens approaching and then the voices amplified by
bullhorns. The storm has passed and the rain falls through the branches in a soft
drizzle. I want to sleep.
“The girl, the neighbors said there’s a kid here,” someone says.
They call my name and I hear them rushing through the house and into the
yard. “Jane! Jane!”
I don’t answer because I am safe.
“Here,” a man says. “A shoe.”
They are close now and they move below me. A woman says, ““On the
tree. Blood. Oh, God, a lot of blood.”
“Where does it lead?”
“Up. Is there something up there? Turn the light this way.”
“Where?”
“In the tree! Way up there.”
I nestle closer to the trunk, so they won’t find me. I feel as if I’m drifting
somewhere.
Then the pain in my body vanishes. I can’t hear the noise or the voices any
longer.
I open my eyes and I’m in a glorious shady wood. I inhale air that smells of
green things – pine, cedar, newly cut grass, the delicious anise scent of wild
fennel. I want to stay here forever.
I see someone coming toward me. I know she’s a woman by her gentle
movements, but she’s not human. Her dress falls down to the brown earth and
tendrils of the hem reach into the soil. I can feel her kindness and she begins
leading me out of the lush world.
“I don’t want to leave,” I tell her.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
“We will always be with you,” she tells me without words. “Breathe,
Jane.”
I gasp and open my eyes. Pain suffuses my body. I’m lying on a hard
surface and a cloth is covering me. Through it, I see flashing lights. I hear the
cackle of voices on police radios, and someone is crying nearby.
I tug the cloth away with my right arm and a man shouts, “She’s alive! Oh,
my God, she’s alive!”
Bright lights shine in my eyes and people in uniforms rush to me.
“How in the world did she get up there?” someone says.
“The trees,” I answer.
“She’s in shock.” A oxygen mask is clamped down on my face.
“You’d be in shock, too, if you just came back from the dead.”
THE FOLLOWING
weeks are as vague as smoke. Painkillers are pumped into
my body to make me sleep while I heal. Those times that I’m awake, I’m groggy
and confused. I already have difficulty remembering that night, my mother’s
voice, the wonderful green place.
Faces become familiar. A doctor who has a tiny teddy bear clinging to her
stethoscope is often there. When she talks to me, her words are a pleasant hum.
One day, I open my eyes and my mind is clear.
The doctor smiles and says, “How are you feeling today, Jane?”
“Better,” I try to say through chapped lips.
She lifts my shoulders and holds a glass with a straw to my mouth.
“You’ve been awake more. We’re delighted with your recovery.”
“My mother,” I say and I realize that I’ve cried for her over and over in the
days that I’ve been here.
“I’m so sorry.” The doctor lets me back down on the pillows and then
checks my eyes, my pulse, and the machines around me.
She brushes the hair back from my forehead. “Do you know that you
climbed twenty-seven feet into a tree, Jane? You’re such a strong little girl.”
I know that I didn’t climb. “How long was I dead?”
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
“Your heart stopped briefly, and they
thought
you were dead, but they were
wrong, weren’t they?”
No, they were right.
On the day that a caseworker from Child Protective Services is to take me
from the hospital, the doctor comes to goodbye.
“I don’t know if you want this,” she said, holding a small white envelope.
“It’s the bullet. I want you to remember that you’re stronger than it was. You’re
a brave girl.”
I take the envelope, feeling the hardness inside. I don’t feel strong or brave.