My Grandmother's Pendant

Greetings Everyone,

My newest story is based upon a prompt from my Short Story group. I hope  you enjoy it. The name of the story is "My Grandmother's Pendant". I'd love to get some feedback and hear what everyone thinks!

"My Grandmother's Pendant"

by James J Meadows III

Backpack on my back, book in my hand, and small tears clinging tenaciously to the corners of my eyes, I set off down the long tree-lined path without so much as a look back at the house I once considered the closest thing to heaven in this lonely world. The house belonged to my grandmother but I would not see her again. Nor would I ever see the numerous family members, including my own mother, who had traveled from their various towns and states to attend my grandmother’s funeral. No, they were all behind me now. I was running away.

                It was likely, perhaps even more than likely, considering how much my grandmother always said we were alike, that my actions were modeled in some small part after her own. My grandmother had run away when she was a child too. For her, she was fleeing the abuse of an alcoholic father; for me, it was a cocaine addict mother.

                The sun had yet to crack the distant horizon as I walked through the gloomy shades of early morning. The company at the house would probably not wake for at least another couple of hours and no one would check on me for at least an hour or two after that. Being the only teenager in the family, I had gotten my own room. I made sure of it. I knew I was going to run away after the funeral was over. There was no reason for me to stay now that grandmother was gone. She was the only person who ever seemed to really care about me. I only hoped my attempt to run away could be as successful as hers.

                My grandmother ran away when she was fifteen years old, the same age as me. She was missing for almost two days before she turned up at her doorstep dressed in strange clothing, missing all her belongings and wearing a bizarre pendant around her neck. Grandmother never told anyone what happened to her while she was away and never explained where she got the clothes and the necklace. She simply claimed it was a good luck charm.

It must have worked because from that day on, her father, apparently broken-hearted after his daughter left, gave up drinking. He never touched another beer or harmed her again. Shortly thereafter, grandmother also published her first book; one of many fantasy stories, filled with bizarre magic, strange creatures, and parallel worlds, that would transform the teenager into a best-selling author and celebrity. It was one of these books that I held in my hand as I walked away from the house where my grandma had lived and died, still wearing that necklace even on her deathbed.

I wished I had such a good luck charm. In fact, my grandmother, who had always promised to leave a special surprise for me when she died, had bequeathed the necklace to me. Unfortunately, as seemed to be my luck, the necklace had disappeared. No one could find it, though people swore she was wearing it at the moment she passed away. Somehow, someone must have taken it off while her body was being prepared for burial and the necklace had gotten lost.

The end of the lane was approaching as faint sunlight began to crest the distant hills of my grandmother’s plantation. I knew I needed to hurry my pace. The town, and its rickety old bus stop which was my pen-ultimate destination, lay several miles away. I needed to reach it before anyone could catch me. The gate at the end of the lane was open and I was just about to dart through when I heard a voice call out to me.

“I will not say running away is a bad idea,” a woman’s voice rang out from the base of a nearby tree. “However, I will say that the time has come for you to return home.”

I spun around, my head turning in all directions as I sought to find the speaker. I spotted them at the base of the last tree on the right; a tree which had often caught my eye in the past for the strange way it seemed to stand out from all the others. Its exterior was darker than the rest, with numerous knots, cracks, and large roots protruding from the ground; upon which sat a solitary figure in a brown hooded robe. Upon my turning around, the stranger rose to face me.

            The mysterious newcomer, who I presumed to be a woman, based upon the voice, wore her hood so low that none of her features were visible inside the dark shadows formed by the hood and still rising sun. Likewise, the robe, which stretched all the way down to the tiptop of the freshly mowed lawn, obscured all of the woman’s features. I could make out only her lips, which smiled at me with an amused expression both strangely familiar and foreign.

                “Who are you?” I asked.

                The smile grew. “You know who I am,” she replied.

                This answer, both cryptic and troubling, combined with the stranger’s bizarre appearance, made me extremely uncomfortable. I wasn’t in the mood to play games to begin with and, if I had been, I certainly wouldn’t be doing it with some cloaked stranger trespassing on my grandmother’s plantation at five thirty in the morning.

                “No, I really don’t,” I replied, a little irritated. “And, if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere that I need to go.”

                I started to turn around when the stranger spoke again.

                “Yes, you do,” she replied. “But you are not going where you think you are going.”

                The words caused me to freeze in my tracks. A feeling of apprehension gripped me and I turned around nervously.

                “What do you mean,” I asked, trying to hide the fear in my voice.

                “I mean, you are not going where you are going, but instead you are going where you are going,” she replied.

                “That doesn’t make any sense,” I replied, my fear battling with my curiosity, as the bizarre game continued.

                “It will,” she said. The woman extended a hand from the cloak and help it out toward me. “Take my hand.”

                Fear gripped me. Though the woman didn’t seem any taller than me and didn’t sound any older than me, she had a strong, commanding voice, that didn’t leave much room for questions. Even though she had taken no direct hostile actions toward me, I felt frightened. A part of me wanted to run.

                At the same time, however, there was something strangely familiar about the woman. I couldn’t place exactly what it was, but there was something compelling about her; a strange energy which seemed to pull at me, making me want to comply with her request. Perhaps it was her confidence; maybe it was the gentleness with which she spoke; perhaps it was the strange familiar smile lining her lips, but whatever it was, something about her appealed to me.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked

“I am taking you home,” she responded.

“You’re lying,” I replied.

“Of course I am. I am also telling the truth. Either way, take my hand.”

“Why won’t you tell me where we are going?”

“Because if I told you, you wouldn’t go,” she said. “And you must go.”

“Why wouldn’t I go, if I knew?” I asked.

“Because you wouldn’t believe me. And because it is dangerous. And because you don’t trust me.”

“You’ve already admitted you’re lying to me,” I said, with some exasperation. “Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” she replied. “And you won’t. But you’ll come with me anyway.”

“Why won’t you give me a straight answer,” I asked. “Why do you speak in riddles?”

“Because sometimes riddles are the only direct answer,” she said.

“You’re confusing.”

“And yet you understand me,” she replied.

“If I understand you, then why I am so confused?”

“Because you don’t understand yourself,” she said.

“What don’t I understand?”

“You don’t understand why you’re going to go with me,” she answered.

This was true. For although I felt suspicious and distrustful, there was still that strange compulsion tugging at my mind; almost like an overwhelming sense of curiosity, so great it held me spellbound.

“Are you forcing me to go with you?” I asked.

“No. You’re going to choose to go with me.”

“Why would I do that when I know you’re lying to me and I know I can’t trust you?”

“That is what you don’t understand.”

“How do you know that I’m going to go with you?” I asked.

“That is what you’re going to find out.”

“And then what will happen?” I asked, beginning to feel stupid from the mix of bizarre riddles and answers that answered nothing.

“Then you’ll understand,” she replied.

Feeling both completely bewildered, and without fulling understanding why I did so, I extended my hand to take hers. She led me to the other side of the tree. There I saw, to my astonishment, a circle of tiny mushrooms. I was sure they hadn’t been there a couple of days ago and, if they had been, they should have been destroyed by the mowers yesterday. They must have popped up overnight.

“A fairy ring,” I said, gazing in astonishment.

“Step inside, and close your eyes,” she said, gesturing toward the middle of the circle.

“What will happen?”

“You will go to where you going,” she replied.

“Where is that?” I asked.

“To a place you wouldn’t go if you knew you were going. To a place you are glad you did now that you have,” she replied.

I didn’t understand but something told me I wasn’t going to get a better answer than that.

“What if I don’t go,” I asked.

“You will,” she answered.

“Why should I?”

I saw the shoulders of the cloak rise as though the woman were giving a shrug.

“What have you got to lose?” she answered.

The last statement was perhaps the first thing the woman had said which made any sense to me. If I was truthful with myself, which I had tried not to be so far, I was attempting an almost impossible get-away with little money, less food, and hardly any prospects of help. My only hope was that some bizarre miracle might happen like happened to my grandmother. I supposed whatever bizarre twist of fate was happening right now was as good as any other I could expect.

With a sigh of resignation, I stepped into the ring and closed my eyes. As I did so, the woman called out to me.

“One last thing,” she said.

I spun around to face her, only to discover that the woman had taken off her cloak. The face that stared back at me was one I knew only too well. It was my own.

Yet it was also not my own. It appeared more confident; more sure; more proud; more of everything that I wasn’t at this point in my life. She was wearing different clothes than my own but still had the same backpack on her back. What caught my eye above all else, though, was the necklace around her neck. It was grandmother’s lucky charm.

“Remember our grandmother,” she said. “And do her proud.”

As she finished the words, I felt a tingle, like a burst of electricity shoot through my body. I found myself unable to move or speak as every inch of my skin burned and pulsed with strange vibrations. As if responding to these vibrations, weird dancing lights and thick swirling white mist encircled me.

Through the haze, I watched my other self turned around and start back toward the house. The next second, white mist obscured my eyes and everything vanished.