Me Without You Read online

  And then, there was the local Church. She had rightfully earned the ire of the local Ordinary with her open criticisms particularly its treatment of women. Had it not been for her late husband’s huge contributions, she would have been excommunicated earlier. In fact, even with her husband’s money, she was often ridiculed behind her back. It wouldn’t be a surprise for her if the Church wanted her dead.

  "The bishops are celebrating now," Rebecca muttered. She was cringing in pain once again as her lungs seemed to burst in flames.

  Rebecca heard a door cracked open. She listened carefully from where the sound was coming from. Even listening took an effort for her. However, her sense of hearing was unmistakably sharp.

  "Am I hearing imaginary things now?" Rebecca mumbled.

  The master’s bedroom had at least four doors adjoining other rooms. One door led to what had been a nursery room which was redecorated and occupied by her youngest daughter, Jonah. Another door led to the library. And another one opened to her late husband’s study which has not been touched for many years. There was also the passage to her own little laboratory where she hid powerful potions and oils she used when healing.

  The habak. Rebecca thought, alarmed.

  There was no time to hide the habak in a safe place before she became weak. That was one of the things that made her death different. Whilst in the past, she made careful arrangements about it. At the moment though, she had neglectfully forgotten about it and the secrets they contained. The habak was just as significant as the power she had. It contained all the recordings of the thousands of years of how to heal everything broken and how to destroy what has been created, from the non-physical entities to the physical entities in the universe. Without the knowledge to control such power, everything can go haywire.

  "Good grief—" Rebecca said, her tongue twisting her words. "The habak—!" She breathed in painfully and stopped as she heard movements.

  Footsteps, muffled by the thick rug on the floor, stopped right beside Rebecca's bed. Family members and friends had been coming in and out of her room, much to her humiliation for being caught at such a weak state, to either say a prayer or pitifully visit her before she finally died.

  Rebecca did not move. Squinting her eyes as the shadow of the newcomer dropped on her, Rebecca frowned a bit.

  It was her daughter, Jane.

  Jane was preparing to change the sheets for the thousandth time, Rebecca noted. She had Jane when she was only sixteen and the woman had acted more like a mother to her siblings than Rebecca ever did. Even with Jane's old-maid hairstyle of neatly pulled blond hair in a ponytail, her pale blue eyes still register the vitality of a woman who can easily pick up what she had missed in her youth. It won’t surprise Rebecca if Jane would marry the first man she will meet after she died. It often entered her mind that Jane was only after her seat of power. And when Jane has it, it will only be the beginning of living her life.

  But it can’t be Jane… Rebecca thought. "Go away!" she hissed.

  As if not hearing Rebecca, Jane continued to change the sheets carefully. She expertly maneuvered the beddings and barely moving Rebecca. Jane was always the neat one among Rebecca's children. However, Rebecca had always known her cleanliness was far from being next to godliness. Jane kept her cluttered self in her neat and organized household. Despite Rebecca’s prodding, Jane had refused to get healed.

  However, Rebecca had proceeded healing Jane from a far. And when the very signs of relief from her daughter were manifesting, Rebecca dropped it off the way she did with others, knowing she had made it even worse because healing was supposed to be eternal. But it was just her wicked way for people to be dependent on her for the rest of their lives.

  Rebecca frowned at her daughter and in a rushed tone said, "I don’t need to be squeaky clean now, do I?"

  Jane just shook her head and stared at Rebecca with an inscrutable expression on her face. "You’ve always needed cleansing, mother! Especially now," she said flippantly.

  Rebecca’s eyes slanted towards Jane. She had never heard Jane spoke to her in a very curt manner. The older woman heaved out a sigh. "Oh, yes right. I stink!" But not as much as most people I know. Rebecca thought. Not even you.

  Jane hurriedly completed doing Rebecca’s bed and left with a brusque nod at her mother. "I will be back with your meds," she said.

  "Oh, you mean my toxins?" Rebecca mumbled in between pursed and quivering lips. An impulsive idea came to her mind. "Get my habak and take it to me!" she ordered.

  Jane stopped on her way out and asked, "You were saying something?"

  "My habak!" Rebecca said and dismissed the younger woman. She tried to move again but to no avail.

  If she could only drag herself towards the habak without hurting so much…then she wouldn't have to ask anybody anything. Rebecca was contemplating.

  She felt it was almost time for her to really give in to death. But here she was, on the brink of death with nobody on her side and no one to trust.

  "Great!" Rebecca said out loud. What a legacy she will be leaving behind.

  "I still have to get your medicines. If there's nothing else—" Jane prodded. Her eyebrows were raised as she threw Rebecca a questioning look.

  "I said get my habak!" Rebecca shouted despite the pain.

  "It is locked!" Jane said indicating Rebecca's little laboratory. The room was forbidden from all of the children. Aunt Judith had hinted that nobody dared go inside it because Rebecca had put on various spells that will definitely harm intruders.

  "No, it has not been locked for days now. Judith had been—Oh, just go get it!" Rebecca ordered annoyingly.

  Jane stared at Rebecca for a moment with a mixture of loathing and triumph in her eyes before she entered the door to the laboratory. When she got out, she carelessly threw the belly chain on Rebecca's bed, just a couple of feet away from her mother.

  "Hand it over!" Rebecca screamed at Jane. She was able to move her eyes as they grew ominously large and her palm as it opened tensely.

  Jane hesitated for a brief period. But then, she obliged. She put the habak in her mother's hand before she turned and left in haste.

  Rebecca was still in the middle of deciding what to do with the habak when the knob turned again and another door opened. Rebecca perfectly knew who it was. By just the scent, Rebecca knew it was an unwanted guest.

  "Oh, it’s you! So, you've left your fortress to check if I am dead," Rebecca said weakly and swallowed hard. Her throat had felt constricted and she was feeling a metallic taste in her mouth. She took a deep breath and smirked despite her pain. "But you will never have it." Averting her guest's eyes for a moment, Rebecca heard another door closed softly.

  Rebecca’s unwanted guest followed Rebecca's gaze and looked in the same direction of the door leading to an adjacent room.

  "There, there…Gilda—" Rebecca hissed."You might as well find out who that was…or our little secret will be out in the open in no time. But I’d be damned if you do not find her quickly. She will be as strong as me…perhaps even stronger. You will know the signs as you always do. The signs you have always yearned to manifest but failed."

  "I will see you in the next lifetime, I guess," Gilda said. "Perhaps, by then you have simmered down a bit. Where is the habak? Hand it over to Judith like you always had."

  "Judith?" Rebecca replied sarcastically. "The little traitor—you must have fed her from your palms to turn against me."

  Gilda sneered with absolute contempt, "Had you known you are not coming back, would you still be this way?"

  "I am not coming back—" Rebecca said seriously. "Yet, I'm still me. You? When are you going to change skin?"

  "God, you've lost your soul—"

  "You took a piece of it," Rebecca simply stated. "I will never—"

  Rebecca took a lungful of air until she felt every inch of her body ached before turning numb. Then she appeared like she was going to cry and panic all of a sudden while still not being able to move. After
a split of a second, with her eyes wide open, a smirk on her lips and a cut-off sentence, all of her vitality ceased.

  Chapter 6

  The Death and Birth of a Healer

  "So that's her?" Jonah thought.

  Jonah tiptoed towards the door adjoining Rebecca’s room and listened. From the day the older woman got sick, Jonah had secretly monitored what went on from the little crack on the door jamb.

  She had seen people come and go. The activities inside her mother’s room had been non-stop the past few days with people pouring in to pay the older woman a visit. Except for Jane and their helicopter parent, Aunt Judith, not one of the children attempted to pay their mother a visit.

  Jonah couldn't blame her siblings for not showing their concern. "Nobody cares in the first place!" Jonah chuckled sarcastically.

  Jonah, on the other hand, had peeked in a few times when Rebecca was asleep. However, she never really lingered longer.

  The other guests were all coming from the side of her father’s family. The others were her mother’s so-called friends from the church and the community where Rebecca was revered almost like a goddess because of her wealth and her clout.

  "I can't believe Gilda Byrne went out of her house to visit. I mean—she has never been seen outside of her place," Jonah was talking to herself, occasionally shaking her head. Almost all of Rebecca’s visitors were familiar to Jonah except for Gilda Byrne.

  Gilda was an older woman with the purest white hair Jonah had ever seen that it almost shone like a bright halo over her head. The woman had a distinctive menthol scent that had wafted throughout the adjacent room even before stepping inside Rebecca’s room. It did not look like her intention was to see a sick woman. She looked more like preparing herself for the battle of her life.

  Gilda hadn’t also been greeted fairly well by the Blood matriarch. In fact, Rebecca had shown a manner of distaste for her. It was very evident that the two women showed a certain connection that could have been rooted for a very long time. With the way they sneered at each other and whispered their words, Rebecca and her guest had just confirmed that they shared bad blood for the longest time.

  Jonah put her ear a little closer to the door. She could not hear a thing.

  "What's going on? Can't even hear anybody breathing!" Jonah shook her head unbelievably. Even when there was nobody around, Jonah could still hear Rebecca’s unintelligible chanting.

  With the unwanted guest, it was strange not to hear a single sound. From where Jonah was standing, she could have an uninterrupted view of her mother and what went on inside Rebecca’s room.

  "Silence?" Jonah asked herself. "That’s weird." She wanted to take a peek and see what was going on. But the last time she did, she almost got caught. And it bothered her to no end to feel so sneaky towards her mother.

  "It was not as if she made us feel welcomed in her chambers," Jonah argued with herself. "She had always something weird going on…like some kind of a top secret or something. It invited people spying on her often. Even Jane spied on her. And Aunt Judith eavesdropped on her conversations." She snickered almost choking on her own breath as she tried to lessen the sound. "This is so weird. I am talking to myself like her."

  Earlier that day, it sounded busier. It was weird how it almost felt like some kind of a festivity with a somber mood. It had the eerie feeling that people were gathering around and celebrating but could not because it had to do with something as grave as death.

  Even the air had gone humid, making Jonah feeling so inconvenient. It was even more inconvenient to move with a bandaged hand. She felt like being restricted. There was really a big difference when she can feel and touch with her bare hands.

  "Ugh! What the hell!" Jonah silently cursed as she brushed back the bangs of her short pixie-styled, jet black hair away from her forehead. She had it cut really short before she will be starting for college, to heed a friendly advice.

  Her mother’s illness had nailed Jonah home instead of going to her university and check the place. She was grateful for it. At eighteen and with how her first romantic relationship turned out to be, she reckoned she had breezed through high school and university seemed too early for a head start. If Jane had not forced her to enroll for a degree by giving her an unacceptable option to stay in a mental asylum, she should have gone backpacking with her friends to Asia or camp outside of Xavier's doorstep. Actually, Jane had only suggested she submitted herself to a shrink.

  So, after Xavier had his last chemotherapy session and Hugh decided to join a special medical program in his school, she will become clueless again with what was going on with Xavier. Going away for college seemed like a good idea.

  "Good thing the woman got sick," Jonah whispered feeling awfully guilty. Good God, whip my thoughts. She reflected shamefully. Rebecca was after all her mother even if the older woman had not been living up to the role all of Jonah’s life.

  Jonah had that kind of relationship with Rebecca. There were numerous times when she wanted her mother to feel proud of her. However, when the opportunity was presented to hurt the older woman, it was so difficult not to take advantage. In fact, it was just so tempting to earn the ire of the older woman. It felt like a big accomplishment of some sort. For Jonah, anger or any emotion, may it be positive or negative meant Rebecca cared just the tiniest bit.

  I doubt it she cared about us… The painful thought entered Jonah’s mind. All her seven children were unanimous in the way they felt about Rebecca. Jonah had heard tales from her older siblings about their own childhood and how Rebecca had treated them.

  Even if Rebecca was more relaxed where Jonah was concerned being the youngest among the seven, still Jonah could feel no genuine love.

  "Genuine interest, perhaps," Jonah whispered sarcastically. It was plain and simple…their mother did not love them the way a mother should.

  "She was only protecting her own interests," Jonah mused. "She wanted us to follow her lead even if we did not want to. And she was so stubborn not to get it."

  For the life of her, Jonah could never imagine leading a life the way Rebecca did. And she could never understand why her mother wanted some of her children to follow in her footsteps when it was so evident Rebecca never really looked happy all these years. Not even when her life had been abundantly blessed.

  Yes, Rebecca was never happy. And never was I proud to be her daughter. Jonah thought to herself.

  Some of Jonah’s siblings had wanted to be like Rebecca. Just like Jane… Jonah knew how much Jane desired her mother’s approval and her favor, only to Jane’s own detriment. The old woman ignored Jane the way she did the other children she was not interested with.

  Jonah loved Jane so much. She was more like a mother to her than Rebecca could ever be. Jane had filled in Rebecca’s shoes taking care of the rest of the younger Bloods. Being the eldest among seven, she was at their beck and call, always ready to take care of their needs even when each of them had nannies. Jane had sacrificed herself a lot. It was probably her way of showing Rebecca she was capable of being the matriarch’s clone.

  However, Rebecca was only interested in a few of them. She had shown an odd interest in Jemmah once. But Rebecca could not just tame Jemmah. They always ended up fighting until Jemmah had to pack her things and married the first man who asked her to get as far away as possible from their mother. Jemmah eventually ended up miserable with a philandering husband and she never ceased blaming Rebecca for the way her life turned out to be.

  "No wonder Jemmah is still very pissed with Rebecca until now," Jonah shook her head remembering the day her sister left the mansion. It was very sad.

  Then, there was Jonah… All Rebecca did was to mold her into someone she was not and will never become…a version of Rebecca.

  The task was not that hard at all. If Jonah or Jemmah for that matter only gave in to their mother, all they really needed to do was to be with Rebecca all the time and practice what she had to do. Although, her meditation and her diet were a
little bit too much, a day in Rebecca Blood’s life would have been easy.

  "But a day with Rebecca Blood was hell…almost," Jonah suppressed her laughter. Although, Jane seemed to understand Rebecca better than the rest in the household, Rebecca was just the kind of person one just cannot deal with easily.

  "Because she is annoyingly right….and always. And she wants people to see the world the way she sees it," Jonah reflected loudly. As if on cue, her fingers started to itch.

  Jonah tried to clasp her fingers together to put some pressure and prevent the itchiness, but to no avail. She had to start bandaging her fingers all the way to her wrist at night as her skin asthma had gone worse ever since her mother had gotten ill. She scratches her hands in her sleep and makes them bleed. She had tried lots of stuff. She did not like using steroid creams so the bandaging was good. Some people say it was due to the weather mostly. It goes away in summer and comes back in the colder weather. So winter was when she was at her worst. However, it was way too early before winter and she was already itching, almost convincing herself she will itch to her death. Jonah had observed that knowing Rebecca was ill made the itching worse.

  Perhaps, she was indeed dying… The realization hit Jonah hard. It felt like it was Rebecca’s last day. There was something wrong in the air. It was something she could not understand. And yet she potently felt deep inside her that something was different…definitely different and wrong.

  Jonah dismissed the thought immediately. She felt chills all over her body. Nobody said anything about Rebecca’s condition. Not even Jane mentioned about their mother being gravely ill.

  It was Jane who looked after Rebecca from the very first day the older woman complained something was wrong with her. Jane had only insisted Rebecca needed to take a rest even if her Aunt Judith had insisted Rebecca take the concoction. Jonah found her Aunt Judith brewing the concoction herself which would have made Rebecca feel better.