The Rememberer – Chapter 10

Albin stood there staring at the same wall that Rowan couldn’t take her eyes off of. The blood smeared on the wall was still glossy, it had not been there long enough to dry. She wanted to scream but no sound came out. Was this… Was this her fault?

She walked up to Albin and placed her hand on his shoulder. He looked back at her with glazed over eyes that didn’t see anything. He was in shock. The knife was held tightly in his hand, its blade now wet with blood.

Was this… Was this his fault? That couldn’t be true. There was no way that was true because she had seen his unwavering loyalty. He would never do something so awful, but she also knew that it certainly looked like he did it. Someone was trying to frame him.

She eased the knife from his hand and nearly fainted when she felt the now familiar feel of a memory trying to make itself known to her. She was touching his hand, nothing more. According to Rei she should not be able to see anything. She viewed the memory.

Albin had started cooking breakfast when he heard a strange noise coming from the bedroom. He found his grandmother dead with a knife in her chest and a message scrawled in blood on the wall. Without thinking he pulled the knife out.

She suddenly felt as though she were pulling on the memory. Both she and Albin passed out on the floor.

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The Rememberer – Chapter 9

Rei smiled as he pulled the car down a short driveway. “We’re here.” he exclaimed. They were in a quiet neighbourhood. All the houses were similar in a way. Everything was so clean and new, or at least mostly everything. The house that they had decided to go to in order to examine the Stone of Corbin was that of Albin’s grandmother. It reminded Rowan a lot of her father’s house, small, quaint, and bearing a history that extended before the history of the current occupants. It made her smile.

They climbed up the front steps and Albin knocked on the door. A little old lady who Rowan remembered from the council meeting opened the door. She smiled when she saw her grandson. “Welcome Albin, Rei, Miss. Winters. I got your call. Feel free to do whatever you want to do here. I’ll get some tea ready.”

“Grandmother. You don’t have to do that.” He walked past his grandmother and into another room. A gentle clanging sound could be heard from within.

“I see he has yet to change.” the woman frowned.

“Changed?” asked Rowan.

“My, my. I haven’t introduced myself yet have I. I’m Edna, Edna Hoffmann. You can call me Ed.” Ed took Rowan’s hand and shook it. “Alby has been like this for most of his life. He does whatever he’s asked and will even do jobs he wasn’t asked to. I keep telling him that he shouldn’t be so incredibly unfailingly obedient, that it is okay for him to turn down jobs but he won’t listen to even me.”

She led Rei and Rowan into a small sitting room. Everything in this room was either black, white, or grey, and had a blocky shape. It was not what Rowan had expected. She took a seat in a chair. Rei sat on a couch and Ed sat next to him.

“Don’t tell Alby I said this, but sometimes I worry about him.” Ed said quietly.

“You don’t have to worry.” Rowan replied. “He seems pretty good at his job.”

“That’s not why I worry. You see his parents were both servants of the council and a few years ago they both passed on a job. I think he tries so hard because he blames himself, though I don’t know what he thinks he did.”

The three sat in silence for a few minutes.

Albin walked into the room carrying four tiny teacups. “I made mint tea. I hope everyone likes it.” He exclaimed as he handed the teacups out. “Wait. Why is everyone so quiet?”

“No reason.” Rei said. “We just all really wanted some tea. Mint tea is my favourite thank you.”

“I thought ginger tea was your favourite.” frowned Albin.

“That was two months ago.” smiled Rei. “Anyways let us get down to business. Sorry but I need to ask you to do this Miss. Winters. Do not pull away no matter what. Look for anything that could be a clue in this investigation.”

“Okay.” Rowan said nervously. She still didn’t know what exactly she was getting into. Just how old was this stone? What memory could be so terrible within it?

She grasped the stone in her hand and closed her eyes, concentrating on the memories within this stone.

“Good luck.” she heard Rei say before she was overwhelmed by all the memories.

She gasped before diving in. The memories went back to before the Roman Empire fell. A young girl held the stone and spoke silently. Behind her bright green hills rolled into the horizon. Later a young man wearing plate armour held it and he to whispered words into it. The many types of people who had at one time held this stone amazed Rowan. It was multiple centuries old, filled with the heritage, dreams, and emotions of thousands of people, and now Rowan was becoming a part of this amazing heritage.

Finally she got to what she wanted to see, what she needed to see. A young girl clutched the stone while in the wardrobe in the Corbin house. She was scared. After the murderer walked past the wardrobe and into another room she left the stone in a pile of clothes and burst into the living room. Rowan could hear the girl’s screams of fear when she saw what had happened. She wanted to help the girl, but this was all in the past. Feet pounded against the floor and the girl screamed one more time.

After a few minutes a man dressed all in black and wearing a ski mask reached for the stone. “We got it.” he said. “Now we just need to destroy it.”

    “Be careful.” warned another voice. “Everything will be remembered within that stone. We will be caught if it sees your face.”

“But you can erase those memories, can you not? I mean you did erase the memories from all those other objects. Besides even if a rememberer gets their hands on this stone and discovers our identities we still have her to deflect the blame. They can’t touch us.”

“We never know what will happen in the future. Nothing is impossible.”

“Yeah, but still…”

The stone was shoved into a pocket and it remained there for many days. Finally it was pulled out and placed into a gloved hand. “So this is the Stone of Corben, eh? It looks smaller than I had expected.” a woman’s voice said.

“It does look rather small, doesn’t it.” replied the second voice from before.

A couple minutes later it was placed back into the pocket. A few days later it was transferred to a safe where it remained untouched for many years.

It was taken out of the safe and placed into the hands of a young girl who Rowan recognized as herself at the age of 5. She did not remember this. “Take this and protect it always.” A voice said. “It is now your job to keep this stone safe. I’m sorry that I have to do this.”

     Then the girl went on her way and history unfolded.

Rowan opened her eyes and found that everyone had left the sitting room to do their own things. Rowan’s tea still sat on the small coffee table, now cold. She sighed sadly. She hated wasting such good tea. She decided to relax for a bit, allowing her to go over everything she had seen. She needed to make a decision as to what she would tell Rei.

That is when she heard the scream.

She jumped up and ran towards its source.

She burst into a bedroom and stood shocked at what she saw.

Albin stood in the centre of the room. His whole body shook with sobs, a bloodied knife was held tightly in one of his hands. The body of Edna Hoffmann was on the floor and on the walls a message had been written in her blood.

“You have been warned. We will come for you. – The Raven”

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The Rememberer – Chapter 8

That day they took a taxi to a quiet neighbourhood filled with large houses. For the entire ride neither of them said a word because they couldn’t talk about their job in front of someone who wasn’t part of the hidden world. That happens a lot in movies and books. The heroes talk about their dealings with the supernatural or their criminal acts within earshot of people that will either think that they’re crazy or will call the police. Sure oftentimes passersby won’t hear enough to actually understand, but you can’t always count on that now can you.

They paid the driver in front of a large white house with boarded up windows and a for sale sign. It didn’t look like anyone had gone inside for at least a few decades. At least someone had tried to keep it looking nice. The grass was mowed, the small flower gardens along the path had been weeded and planted, and the house looked like it had been recently painted. Even the boards over the windows looked pretty recent as though they were only there until the panes could get replaced.

Mr. Hoffmann noticed Rowan admiring the property. He smiled. “The council pays people to come here regularly so that someone may actually want to live here, but after what happened 40 years ago no one seems to want it.”

“I see.”

“A representative of the council will be inside to give us a quick tour and to tell you anything you need to know.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Hoffmann walked up to the door and knocked. A young man of Asian descent opened the door.

“Hello.” he said with a smile. “Young Albin. Miss Winters. I’ve been waiting for you. Come in, come in. You should begin your investigation at once.”

They walked inside into a small entrance area. A small shelving unit lined the wall opposite of the front door. The other two walls contained doors to other rooms within the house. The man led them to the left.

“I’m Rei Keller by the way. A member of the Council of the Hidden within this fair city. I’ve been here for about 50 years at this point. If you have any questions feel free to ask me.”

Rowan stopped in her tracks. How could this man who looked like he was only just out of high school over 50 years old?

He smiled at her. “I look young for my age don’t I.”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Only about 110 years.”

“Holy.”

“If you think my age is unbelievable don’t ask Edmund how old he is. That information will blow your mind.”

Rowan continued walking following Mr Keller down a short hallway into a living room that for some reason looked familiar to her. “How old is he?”

“Well he’s never given me an exact age but he has told me about some of his adventures in the Roman Empire hanging out with Caesar.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah and just call me Rei.”

Mr Hoffmann looked irritated. “Can we start already?”

“Why yes Alby. We should get started as soon as possible. Sorry I got a little carried away.”

“It’s fine.” Mr Hoffmann sighed.

“Okay then, let’s get started.” Rei walked to the centre of the room. “This is the room where most of the action happened 40 years ago. We sent people through here shortly after it happened, but we haven’t had a rememberer until now since they all went into hiding. In the past rememberer’s were used to solve crimes between hidden individuals because oftentimes that is the only way they can be solved. Everything in this room is almost exactly as it was back then, except of course we cleaned a bit. The objects should still retain their memories. Miss Winters, why don’t you try accessing the memories.”

Rowan walked up to a sitting room chair and touched it. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. This was a lot more difficult than it normally was. She couldn’t see past the memory the chair had of just after the murders had happened. She felt sick to her stomach. Blood had been spilled over the hardwood floor. Dead eyes stared up at the ceiling. She removed her hand before she could see more.

She touched other objects and got similar results. She looked over at Rei who looked concerned. “I’m not getting anything.”

“That’s strange. Objects should retain their memories no matter what happens. I wonder what’s going on.” He frowned.

Mr Hoffmann also frowned.

Suddenly Rowan remembered the books that had been thrown all over the floor after the break in at her apartment. “I’ve seen something like this before. After someone broke into my apartment the other day some things were disturbed and when I put them back where they belonged it felt as though they were brand new. They had no memories before or during the break in.”

“That is very interesting.” Rei mumbled.

“Rei, isn’t there a type of hidden that can erase memories?” Mr Hoffmann stepped in.

“Yes, but they don’t exactly erase memories. They are known as memory thieves and they take the memories of others into themselves making the other person forget things, but they only steal the memories of people. As far as I know they can’t steal the memories of objects because they can’t read those memories.”

“Hmmm. Maybe this is something that hasn’t been seen before.” Mr Hoffmann said with his arms crossed.

“Alby, that’s not possible. I already know of everything the hidden world has to offer.”

“Maybe that’s not the case.”

Meanwhile Rowan walked up to a wardrobe in the same room and stared at it in horror. With a careful hand she opened the doors. Inside some jackets were still hanging up and on the bottom sat a blue sweater and a red scarf, both things that she remembered clearly.

She remembered them because they often showed up in her dreams, specifically in the ones where a man called out for her and she hid terrified in a wardrobe.

“Um Rei?” she asked.

“Yes Miss Winters.”

“I think I remember being here in this wardrobe during the event 40 years ago.”

“That’s not possible because that would make you over 40 and you are still in your 20’s. Besides rememberers have the same amount of time on this planet as normal humans. There is no way you could have been there. But maybe that memory isn’t your own. I understand you have something of great value to you. A stone perhaps.”

Rowan pulled the stone out from under her shirt where it had hung since she had gotten up in the morning. Rei looked at it in amazement.

“Wow.” he exclaimed. “I never thought I would get to see this again. It wasn’t found after the crime all those years ago. There is no way you are one of them by blood though. They all died then which must mean that you are somehow related to the killer…” he continued rambling.

“Wait.” Rowan interrupted. “What are you talking about?”

“Well you see, that stone you have hanging from your neck is an objects that rememberers use to record hidden history. This particular item is known as the stone of Corbin and it belonged to the family that lived in this house. You having it can only mean one thing, that you are related in some way to whoever committed this grave crime. I’ve read into your past. Is it true that you don’t remember anything from before you were put into the system? Don’t lie to me now.”

“Rei, please. There is no way she has anything to do with this.” Mr Hoffmann exclaimed.

“I don’t have any memories from before I was about 5. I was found as a blank slate by my Father.” she ignored his complaints.

Rei smiled again. “Good. Sorry but I just had to use my powers on you to make sure you weren’t lying. It seems that you speak the truth which is good because that stone may be the key to solving this crime.”

Rowan stared at the blue stone for a second before enclosing it in a tight fist and closing her eyes. She was going to read the memories of the stone as soon as possible.

“No, no.” Rei exclaimed. “Do that somewhere else. There are a ton of memories in that stone, or at least there should be. Plus I want to leave this room. It may have been cleaned but that doesn’t change what happened here.”

She dropped the stone and let it dangle from the chain. “Let us be on our way then.”

Rowan followed Rei and Mr Hoffmann out of the clean abandoned house. As they walked down the path towards the side of the road where Rei had parked his small blue car she looked back at the house.

It looked like the perfect house for a large family to live in. It looked welcoming despite the boarded up windows. Did something so terrible actually happen there?

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Quick Rememberer Update – August 24, 2017

Today’s chapter of The Rememberer is a little bit longer than the other chapters. This is because rather than ending the chapter after the first reveal, I ended it after the setting changed a second time. I think that the rest of the chapters are going to be long like this. Also I have yet to revise any of the already existing chapters so again if you want to read the unrevised versions for whatever reason do it now.

One final thing. Since I want chapters to be posted right at noon EDT there will be a few hours today where chapter 7 won’t have a link to chapter 8. I will try to be better with this in the future. Until I can add the link I’ll add a little note to the end of chapter 7. There also won’t be a link in the archive.

 

Quick Rememberer Update – August 22, 2017

I have just gone through all of my already released chapters of The Rememberer and added links to the first chapter, the last chapter, the next chapter, and the series archive to make it easier to read all in one go. If you want to read the current versions of each chapter do it now because starting tomorrow I will be heavily revising each chapter starting with chapter 1  tomorrow so that they are much closer to meeting my standards. Also if you find any mistakes with the links, spelling, or grammar please let me know. It will make things so much easier for me to do this work.

Thank you,

EclaDragon

Links:

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The Rememberer – Chapter 7

A girl sat in a cupboard alone and afraid. The metallic smell of fresh blood hung in the air. She clutched a blue stone to her chest begging for the memories of her ancestors to save her, but they would not come to her aid. They never answered no matter how much the girl talked to them. They weren’t actually people after all, but shadows left behind in the memories of the Stone of Corbin.

“Clea!” a man shouted from somewhere in the house. “Where are you? We need to talk.”

She did not reply. A shiver shook her body. There was no way she was getting out of this alive, but she had to protect the stone at all costs. She placed the stone in an old shoe and opened the door wide. Light filled the small space.

“I am here.” She shouted after carefully closing the closet door.

The stone stayed there until a masked figure retrieved it.

Rowan woke up to the sound of footsteps outside her bedroom door, the taste of her dream still on her lips. After speaking to the Council of the Hidden, Mr. Hoffmann returned her necklace and she went home. Of course the strange man who had randomly showed up at her apartment had to stay with her. She was in `danger`after all. How could she be alone when someone out there wanted her blood.

Of course Mr. Hoffmann was forced to sleep on her couch. He did object at first about this. He claimed that he needed to be in the same room because some of the hidden had powers they could use to infiltrate a locked room without opening any doors or windows. Then he realized why she had to be alone in her room and apologized. Maybe he wasn’t such a jerk after all.

She started by looking at the red lights of her digital alarm clock. It was just past midnight. She swore. Of course Mr. Hoffmann was a bad roommate. He was still up at such a late hour and he wasn’t even being quiet about it. She her bedroom door to tell him to be quiet, but instead she stood frozen with an expression of horror on her face.

Mr Hoffmann was nowhere to be seen, most likely because he was sleeping on the couch and its back blocked her view. Where she thought he had to have been a book floated in the air. A page was flipped then it just hung still in the air.

She had to have still been asleep. Books did not just float. She yawned and went back to bed.

The next morning Mr. Hoffmann wanted to talk with her.

“So I noticed that I probably scared you last night. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t scare me. I slept all night.”

“Again I’m sorry. I should have more careful. I shouldn’t have paced and I should have found a better place to read my book.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Rowan looked at him in confusion.

“Yes I do. If I had been more careful you wouldn’t have woken up in the middle of the night and seen a floating book. You see I’m a geist. We never actually sleep. Instead we are able to walk around and do things in an ethereal form. Unfortunally this means that we are invisible all night and there are many things we cannot do in that form such as talk.”

“Oh.” she finally understood what he was talking about. “You don’t have to apologize for that. Besides I thought I was still dreaming when I saw the book so I wasn’t really that freaked out. It’s fine. Really.”

“That’s good.” he said as he put his jacket on. “Now lets get ready. We have a lot of work we need to get done now.”

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A quick update – August 16, 2017

Guess what! This is my final week of archaeological field school and I’m returning home to my normal writing tool (my laptop) and a normal WiFi connection. I’m typing this up on a laptop I borrowed from my university’s library and for the past five weeks I’ve been connecting to the internet in short bursts to check on my blog. Most days I noticed a steady rising in both views and visitors. When I return home I hope to improve several aspects of my blog such as the Contact Me and About Me pages, and my SEO. The SEO especially because it seems I have one post that gets a near constant stream of views and has been for the past several months while my other posts get a few views after they are posted and then are never looked at again.

I have done a lot. I’ve crossed off three things off of my bucket list (play D&D, go on an archaeological dig, and get a cactus), I’ve mostly plotted out a new series that I hope to start posting as soon as possible, and I’ve made a few decisions about The Rememberer. No I’m not ending it prematurely, I hate it when authors leave an already partially published project unfinished, but it is going to end soon. Hopefully by the end of September. I will start posting The Shadow Stone two weeks after The Rememberer ends. I will also be making lore pages for both projects because that is part of what gets me excited about sharing these projects with you. Also I’ll be revising the chapters of The Rememberer already posted to make it so that its actually something I’m proud of.

Now I need to quickly write my post for tomorrow. See you next Tuesday with some improvements to this blog.