The Pale Face

My mother told me when I was young that the pale face would be my death.

The overhead air-conditioner hummed loudly, nearly eclipsing her soft voice. But I caught every word. I heard that the pale face had taken her family. It would take her. Take me. It haunted our blood, and only the will of the one it fought could oppose it. But no one had overcome it. She murmured that I would be the one. I had to be. I would be.

I gazed into my mother’s warm brown face comfortably. Her whispers tickled my tiny ears, and her hair swung around me in a shining black veil. She held me softly, her embrace promising the safety that her words erased. My grubby fingers toyed with the rainbow display of beads around her throat in fascination.

I did not understand. The warning signs she radiated did not penetrate my consciousness as they should have.

I’d never heard her so solemn. The nuances of her voice were so grave, her dark eyes drowning in a distant sea of sorrow as if she could already see Fate. My only response was shrieking chuckles of childish delight. My sole focus was on the chain strung around her neck; her voice drowning out in my distraction. I squawked indignantly when my mother’s fingers tensed, and her embrace tightened confiningly. She loosened her iron grip, but her words did not cease. They crashed down like winter thunder before the storm, each grimmer than the last. She told me that when I heard the voice of the pale face cry three times, my life would be ended.

She told me.…

She told me.…

She told me.…

Perhaps if I had listened closely, I would have understood my mother's warning. I would have known which pale face to avoid. But I shut out her voice, forgot her warnings, laughed at her dread, and scorned her sorrowful ocean eyes.

As years passed, her mutters grew darker. She spoke of impending doom, and grief for things that hadn't happened took her. She began to frighten me. I avoided and left her, but always her words existed in the back of my mind. I shunned her. But I could not shun Fate.

I came home seven years later to find my mother’s body sprawled on the apartment floor, three jagged wounds in her chest.

The bloodied knife was gripped in her fist, glued to her fingers with gore. Her beads lay tangled on the floor.

Her eyes were glassy. The warm colors of her face that I had accepted as mine were gone. Her face was bloodless. Pale. But there were no cries from her.

I recalled the days before, when her eyes grew dark with misery, her emotions became unpredictable, an incessantly swirling hurricane absent of an Eye of Calm. Her words were bitter, and when she met my eyes, the sight of me seemed to cause her terrible sorrow. She knew our Fate in those days, though I did not.

I knew only one thing. The pale face had taken my mother. Now, by her words, it would come for me. In a swift decision driven by fear, I took her colorful beads as mine and pried the knife from her cold, stiff hand. I abandoned her corpse in our tiny apartment and ran.

Did I grieve? I don't know. The only thing I remember from those days is a whirlwind of fear and wariness. I left the city, glimpsing pale faces everywhere. On the train, in the gutters, seated in restaurants. I turned one way and saw one gliding towards me. I walked the opposite direction and met one head-on. All of them taunting, watching me with unfeeling blank eyes. Were they my end?

Why hadn't I listened?

I fled to the solitary wilderness, away from the pale faces at every corner, running from unfinished triads by strangers. I ran so far my steps would never be traced. I took myself away from the world. Mine was the only face I saw, my voice the only one I ever heard. Finally, I discovered a lonely ramshackle cabin in a deep ravine. When I stepped in, a cracked mirror caught my attention. I gazed into it, enraptured. My dusky face stared back at me, and finally, I believed I was safe. I could endure. I could overcome the pale face and outlive my mother's omen. I could choose my own Fate.

I was wrong.

My mother's omen slid insidiously into my head, slow poison in my consciousness. My mind's defenses were puny, overtaken with contemptuous ease. My existence became a half-life. On the occasions that I glanced into the mirror, I saw my body was emaciated, the pigmentation leaching from my skin, which hung off my bones like crepe paper. My eyes were feral, and my hair was a snarled mat that no brush could detangle. My nights were sleepless. I spent them creeping through the shadows; the blood-stained knife gripped in my white-knuckled fist. Even in my terrible isolation, pale faces stalked me, their hissing words raising the hair on the back of my neck. I recoiled at a breath of wind and stabbed the air wildly when the tree branches shifted to reveal shafts of icy moonlight.

My mind was going.

Going.

Gone.

On the last night, I peered curiously into the cracked mirror, brushing away the layers of dirt that blanketed it.

I remembered my reflection when I first stepped in. Dusky face, shining eyes, a hopeful heart.

The last particles of dirt fell away, and I flinched.

How cruel it was that the first thing that made me feel safe was the thing that would destroy me for good. As I viewed myself, struck with the truth of my wretched existence, the last fragment of my strength faded. The last ounce of will I possessed for life fled. There was nowhere left to run to. No one left to go to. Nowhere. No one. Nothing. The only two left in the world were me, my frail, beating heart, and tired body, and Fate, patiently waiting. I was not the one. I could not overcome Fate.

The knife stained with my mother's blood pivoted in my numb hands. The red stains captured the moonlight, and dreadful finality washed over me. No more pale faces. No more words. No more. The blade plunged forward into my body and withdrew, timed with my earth-shattering screams. Thrice it stabbed. Scarlet sprayed through the air, coating every surface. Silver gleamed red as the metallic smell of blood assaulted me.

A ragged breath burst from my cracked lips.

As the life drained from my body, my eyes met my reflection.

Three crimson wounds.

Three screams.

My ashen features.

No.

In a burst of clarity that came too late, I understood my mother’s omen. I had fulfilled it.

I knew the pale face.