Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades

Lesbian Ghost Stories

Edited by

Catherine Lundoff

Lethe Press

Maple Shade, NJ

Copyright © 2008 by Catherine Lundoff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief citation or review, without the written permission of Lethe Press. For information write: Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.

This is a work of fiction. No spirits were harmed in the making of this anthology.

lethepressbooks.com lethepress@aol.com

Published by Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052

ISBN-13 978-1-59021-162-5

ISBN 1-59021-162-6

____________________________________________________________

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haunted hearths & sapphic shades : lesbian ghost stories / edited by Catherine Lundoff.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59021-162-5

1. Lesbians--Fiction. 2. Lesbianism--Fiction. 3. Ghost stories, American. I. Lundoff, Catherine, 1963- II. Title: Haunted hearths and sapphic shades.

PS648.L47H39 2008

813’.08733083526643--dc22

2008016453

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I have to thank Steve Berman, who had the notion to begin with. Without his enthusiastic interest and support, this anthology would not have come to pass. Next, I have to thank the authors for their wonderful, wonderful spooky stories. It has been a great pleasure working with each and every one of you. Finally, as always, I want to thank my partner, Jana, for being there when she was needed and for putting up with the editor.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Spirit Horse Ranch by Sacchi Green

The One I Left Behind by M. Christian

A Path To The Woods by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Some Old Lover’s Ghost by Dayle A. Dermatis

A Quiet Love by Suzan Tessier

Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts by Kathleen Bradean

Ostraca by Brenta Blevins

Midnight Confession by M.E. Cooper

The Dyke You Know by Selina Rosen

Waiting Tables And Time by Lyn McConchie

Authentic by Jean Roberta

City Of The Dead by Kaite Welsh

Airtight by L.C. Jordan

Focus Of Desire by Elise Matthesen

Meeting Mr. Krenshaw by Ka Vang

The Oath by Lynne Jamneck

One Horse Town by Melissa Scott

Contributors

Introduction

Ghost stories have been with us all our lives. We tell them from the time that we are old enough to have sleepovers or go to camp or curl up on the couch on a snowy night with a book in our laps. They may be among the world’s oldest story telling traditions. Certainly they are among the most universal. The ghosts themselves are as varied as the cultures that create them. They can be vengeful, tragic, comic, cautionary or tormented by turns. The ghost you encounter may be that of a total stranger or a missing relative, a lost love or a dead enemy.

The purpose of a good ghost story is as varied as the spirit worlds they represent. The tale may terrify, running icy fingers down the unsuspecting reader’s spine, like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Or warn, in the manner of the ghosts in Dickens and Shakespeare. It may represent a woman’s struggle with her lack of social and political power as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The ghost can be a phantom child, as in Joanna Russ’ “The Little Dirty Girl.” It may even be an avenger of past crimes real and imagined, as in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

There’s yet another kind of ghost story, one in which the ghostly lover returns after death, trying to resurrect the passion that may have existed in life, as in Dorothy Allison’s lesbian ghost story “The Demon Lover.” On the other hand, the mortal lover can, in her or his turn, bring a ghost back through love or obsession, binding it to the mortal world as ballads such as “The Unquiet Grave” and “The Long Black Veil” suggest.

With so much variety to choose from, it’s difficult to narrow down ghost stories into neat categories. The stories transcend genre, overlapping horror and mystery, fantasy and romance. The modern ghost may bring madness or comfort, each one as likely as the other, depending on the kind of ghost story the narrator is telling.

At their heart, ghost stories are often domestic tales. Ghosts are generally presumed to be bound in place by the circumstances of their deaths or the unfulfilled longings left over from their lives. It is this binding that gives them a purpose for lingering as well as a location in space and time: a home of sorts.

This domestic connection is probably a contributing factor to why so many women have written ghost stories. Victorian era writers like Mary Gaskell, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Louisa May Alcott—all wrote ghost stories alongside their other literary work. Contemporary writers like A. S. Byatt, Sarah Waters, Dorothy Allison and Jennifer McMahon have continued this tradition, in some cases with the added twist of writing in lesbian characters or lesbian ghosts into their stories.

Why lesbian ghost stories? Perhaps because, like ghosts, lesbians are often presumed to be domestic. As the old joke puts it: “What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul.” History is filled with stories of lesbian couples together until parted by death: Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Radclyffe and Una, the Ladies of Llangolllen, Mabel Hampton and Lillian Foster. Is there a dark side to such commitment, one that would make a relationship linger dangerously, vampirically on after death? Or is the reversal of that same theme, the notion of eternal love and devotion, more significant?

Additional historical comparisons can be made between society’s perspective on lesbian relationships and the fantastic, ephemeral and often invisible phantasms that haunt ghost stories. With that comes the suggestion of loneliness, of isolation filled with frightening but familiar phantoms: the maiden aunts, the crazy woman in the attic, the spinster. Early ghost stories are filled with characters that can be read as coded lesbians, living as ghosts on the fringes of mortal life.

Fortunately, like human civilizations, ghost stories evolve over time. Modern ghosts, lesbian and otherwise, have become teachers, rescuers and even ectoplasmic Cupids, assisting the love lives of those they have left behind. These newer shades go on existing alongside the same stories that we terrified each other with as children, the combinations building on the endless variety that characterizes these tales.

The writers in Haunted Hearths bring that same variety to their own stories. In “Meeting Mr. Krenshaw,” Ka Vang introduces us to a Hmong shaman in training trying to save her relationship. Kaite Welsh tells a tale of a Edinburgh tour guide in love with the ghost of a long dead Scottish lady. Melissa Scott’s “One Horse Town” is the story of a woman who must foil her family’s protector spirit. Brenta Blevin’s protagonist encounters Egyptian ghosts on an archaeological dig. Authors Jean Roberta, Elise Matthesen, and Selina Rosen introduce us to unforgettable ghostly suffragists, haunted paranormal romance writers and phantom academics.

Lynne Jamneck takes us to the town of The Haven, where the ghosts are the least of the inhabitants’ problems. Or are they? L.C. Jordan spins a tale of a ghostly Cupid while Sacchi Green’s Emmaline lays the ghosts of her past and her present to rest. Dayle Dermatis gives ghostbusting a new spin in “Some Old Lover’s Ghost.” Marilyn Jaye Lewis pens a haunting, in every sense of the word, tale of love and loss in “A Path to the Woods.” M. Christian tells a new kind of ghost story in “The One I Left Behind” while Kathleen Bradean’s haunted bookstore robs a poet of what she cherishes most. Lyn McConchie and Suzan Tessier present two very different kinds of romantic ghost stories while M. E. Cooper’s “Midnight Confessions” tells a spooky tale of romance cut tragically short.

So step into the haunted house and explore the rooms. Let the ghosts take you in hand and introduce themselves to you in all their infinite variety. You won’t regret it.

Catherine Lundoff

Minneapolis, MN

Spirit Horse Ranch

Sacchi Green

~

Someone was behind her.

Emmaline, deep in the root cellar, hadn’t heard Sigri’s truck pull in or Chinook’s bark of welcome, but the sense of a presence was unmistakable. It had to be Sigri, or the dog would’ve sounded a warning. Sigri could sneak up on grazing elk, when the wind was right; even if Emmaline hadn’t been hammering at shelves for her preserves, she might have missed any sounds. She’d been humming, too, immersed in the joy of working among provisions of her own raising. Not that she wasn’t always, on some level, listening for Sigri every bit as intently as the dog did.

Sigri would sometimes press up against Emmaline from the rear with no warning, nuzzle her neck, and reach around for further fondling. If she was in the mood, why not go along with it? Emmaline lowered the hammer and moved back a step, as though surveying her handiwork. Her backside tingled in anticipation.

A touch on her hair made her jump. “You’re back early,” she said. “Didn’t figure you’d get here from Bozeman so... Ouch!” Fingers tightened on her long, thick braid, and icy-cold knuckles dug into the nape of her neck. Somebody pulled, hard.

“Hey!” Emmaline tried to turn. The hidden tormentor yanked again. Tears burned her eyes and panic pounded in her veins.

It wasn’t Sigri!

Sigri wouldn’t do that. She knew enough about Emmaline’s past, and what triggered memories. No one else who knew would ever dare, or care enough, to search Emmaline out after twenty years—if he was even still alive.

Terror snapped into sudden rage. Emmaline wasn’t fifteen and vulnerable any more. She kicked back sharply at ankle-height, let out a yell worthy of an old-time Blackfeet war party, and swung the hammer at what should be a thigh—or, better yet, more vulnerable parts.

Her foot didn’t connect with anything. Neither did the hammer. But her yell brought the German Shepherd scrambling down the kitchen stairs in a frenzy of barks and growls.

Emmaline wrenched sideways to free herself. Resistance ceased so abruptly that she spun right around, her russet braid flipping over one shoulder. A gust of cold air rushed past; she staggered, nearly fell, and leaned on Chinook’s shoulder for balance.

Nobody was there. A bulb dangling from a cord hooked to the ceiling lit the space well enough. None of the sacks and crates looked disturbed. Nobody could have got out past the dog even though her growls had subsided.

“C’mon, Chinook, upstairs.” Emmaline couldn’t keep her voice steady. The chill where her neck had been touched crawled all the way down her back. What if he wasn’t alive—but had come for her anyway? She had to get out of there, get her thoughts under control.

She went to the steps, overwhelmed by a desperate need for Sigri—and just as glad Sigri wasn’t there to witness her weakness.

“Chinook, come!” The dog’s tail wagged to show she’d heard, but she kept sniffing among the crates. Just doing her job, searching for whatever had made her mistress yell like a damn fool. But when she clambered onto a heap of potato sacks and starting nosing at the packed earth wall, it was too much.

“Drat you, Chinook, come on!” The dog kept poking at the wall. Small chunks of dirt had dribbled down, a few feet to the left of the new shelves. The hammering must have jarred them loose. A few bits of old sticks or roots showed in the roughened earth, but there wasn’t a hole, so far as she could tell without going closer, which she wasn’t about to do. Nothing big enough to let a mouse through, much less a rat. A rat?

She bolted upward, not looking to see if the dog followed. Her scalp still stung from the tugs. No rat could have been that strong!

Better that, though, than anything else occurring to her. She could deal with vermin. Still…a filthy rat clinging to her head? She scrabbled at her braided hair until it hung loose around her shoulders, shaking it so hard her brains seemed to slosh like flapjack batter. Her heart pounded, anger mixing with fear. She tried hard to let the anger win out.

A bark and a high-pitched whine came up from the root cellar. Emmaline went to the top of the steps. “Get your furry butt up here,” she yelled, beginning to lower the trapdoor. Chinook, not wanting to be shut below, left off whatever she was doing and bounded up into the kitchen.

“If you haven’t caught ‘em yet, you won’t, not without tearing up my spuds and onions!” The scolding was mostly to keep her own voice steady. “Wait for Sigri to get home!”

At the sound of that name, the dog padded to the screen door and looked out at the empty, dusty road connecting the ranch to the rest of the world. For all her devotion to Emmaline, Chinook looked to Sigri as her one true goddess.

No argument there, Emmaline thought. To see Sigri riding against the backdrop of the mountains, lithe, strong, the herd of horses running with her for the pure joy of it, any passing stranger might think Montana was as close to heaven as earth could get. At night, in ways no passerby could imagine, Emmaline knew for sure she’d found her own personal paradise.

But what was she going to tell Sigri? That she’d freaked out in the root cellar, thought about ghosts, when it might be just rats? Even in the familiar normalcy of the kitchen, she couldn’t believe that. Whatever she decided, it would go better after supper, and there wouldn’t be any supper if she didn’t get on with it.

Chicken and dumplings had been her plan, with leftovers from the hen she’d roasted Sunday. But she’d forgotten to bring carrots and onions up from the cellar. Forgotten? Well, not exactly, but nothing was going to get her down into that hole again just yet.

That hole? Now anger won out. She’d been so proud of the root cellar, clearing out generations of trash, building shelves and bins, reinforcing the support posts and steps with Sigri’s help. It was older than the ranch house itself, part of a pioneer dugout home carved into the hillside. Most of it had caved in well over a hundred years ago, but when Sigri’s great-great-grandfather had built his house of red cedar logs, the kitchen had overlapped what was left of the hole just enough for the trapdoor and stairs to connect with it. Back then it had been used as a root cellar, but not in recent years.

Emmaline had found things in the rubble that could have been there since before the cave-in. A flat tin box, barely protruding from the wall, held two long, faded coils of hair inside, one blonde, one reddish. She imagined two girls, sick with the fever, who’d needed to have their hair cut when it became tangled, as was common in the old days. In an odd way it had given her a sense of connection to those long-ago settlers. She might not belong here in any conventional way—she knew the townsfolk preferred to think of her as Sigri’s housekeeper and business manager, nothing closer—but she did belong to the tradition of growing and harvesting and tending loved ones.

Which included making supper. Question was, could Emmaline let herself be scared out of her own root cellar by…well, once she knew for sure what it was, maybe she wouldn’t be so scared.

For now, there was plenty left of the big kettle of chili Sigri cooked once a week. Emmaline could whip up a batch of cornbread and pull some greens from the autumn garden. Sigri wouldn’t object, having pretty much lived on nothing else in the years she’d ranched here alone.

A tensing of the dog’s back, a perking of ears, brought Emmaline to the screen door. Dust puffed in the distance, where the road was no more than a crease in grasslands tinted gold by the afternoon light. Beyond, blue mountains streaked with early snow rose in jagged ranges; the Absarokee and Beartooth to the south, the Crazies to the west. To Emmaline they were guardians, shielding her against where she’d come from, who she’d had to be; but even their grandeur dimmed behind the glint of sunlight on the approaching truck.

Chinook’s whines rose to a frantic pitch. It didn’t take the dog’s quivering rump, ready to break out into a fit of wagging, to tell Emmaline that the truck was Sigri’s. She knew, as surely as the dog, and she understood the impulse to race to meet the loved one, but Chinook, for all her size, was barely out of puppyhood and still needed her training reinforced. Her job, her sacred charge, was to stay close to Emmaline every minute.

Sigri had swapped the stud service of her Appaloosa stallion for the pick of a neighbor’s litter of pups. “Folks around here are pretty much decent, mind-their-own-business types, whatever their beliefs,” she’d said, “but punks can sprout up anywhere, even Montana. A good dog can make ‘em think twice about trying to get at…well, at a woman out here alone.”

No need to spell it out. It wasn’t just being a woman alone. What had happened down in Laramie to that boy Matthew Shepard was on both their minds. Sigri, when she’d lived alone, hadn’t worried; nearly everybody within fifty miles was related to her, or owned horses she’d trained. She was one of their own. Emmaline, for all her farm-girl background, wasn’t.

The red truck was close enough now for her to make out the familiar lines. Where the road dipped down to ford the tree-lined creek, green-gold leaves hid it for a moment; this was when Emmaline would generally head out to open the gate in the stock fence. Right now she wasn’t sure her legs would take her that far without some wobbling Sigri was sure to notice.

“Stay!” She pressed her hand down hard on Chinook’s wriggling shoulders. Sigri reached the gate, got out to open it herself, looked up at the house, and got back in. Emmaline waited until the truck stopped between the barn and the house and then, finally, let Chinook out.

Sigri stood, stretched her rangy body after the bumpy ride, pushed back her Stetson until straw-pale cropped hair showed above her tanned forehead, and looked again toward the house. Glimpsing Emmaline inside the doorway, she flashed a grin that would never grow old, no matter how many lines time and weather etched on her face.

The dog pranced around her legs in frantic welcome. Weanling fillies along the paddock fence whickered in greeting. Emmaline, aching to be there too, watched as each animal got its moment of affection. When Sigri finally hauled sacks of groceries out of the truck and strode toward the house, Emmaline rushed to tie on her apron, pour flour and corn meal into a bowl, and get enough on herself to look like she’d been in the middle of mixing.

The screen door swung open and shut. As soon as the bags and a banded bundle of mail were on the kitchen table, and the Stetson tossed onto its hook, Emmaline wiped her hands on the blue-checked dishtowel and rushed into a big hug.

Sigri’d noticed something, though. “You okay, babe?” She stroked the loose tangle of hair Emmaline had forgotten to tidy. Fear came surging back.

With her arms around Sigri’s lean body and her head nestled against a firm shoulder, Emmaline managed to say, “Sure I’m okay. How’d it go in Bozeman?”

“Not too bad.” Sigri tried to get a look at Emmaline’s face. “I dropped off your baked goods at the café. Claire wrote a check for last week and this week too, so we’re all square there. And Rogers at the bank seemed pretty sure we can get an extension on the loan. He knows I’m owed enough by the horse trek outfitters to cover it.”

Emmaline burrowed a little closer, then tilted her head back for a kiss. Chinook, trained not to interrupt such proceedings, lay down with her head between her paws, and then, impatient, went to nose around the edges of the trapdoor.

Emmaline heard the rattle of some small object being pushed around the floor behind her. Sigri, looking past her shoulder, broke the clinch. “What’s that dratted dog got? Chicken bone?”

“Not from my kitchen…” Emmaline stopped. Chinook offered her prize to Sigri; held tenderly, in jaws trained to pick up eggs without breaking them, was a four-inch bone. Not chicken bone. Chickens don’t have fingers.

Sigri knelt. “Good girl,” she said, ruffling the dog’s ears. She took the bone and inspected it. “Not fresh, at least. Old. Real old, I’d say, but not prehistoric. Where’d you get that?” She looked up. “Where’s she been?”

Emmaline managed to yank a chair out from the table and slump into it. “Just here, in the house, or right beside me outdoors. And…down in the root cellar. I was putting up some more shelves.”

Sigri’s long body straightened. She hauled out a chair, straddled it backwards, and surveyed Emmaline. “Down in the dugout? Guess you must have been hammering up some storm to get yourself so bedraggled.”

“I was,” Emmaline said, steadying herself with pure stubbornness. “I built a good strong set of shelves. And maybe shook a little dirt loose from the wall, but I swear there wasn’t any crack big enough for…for a rat.”

“What’s a rat got to do with it?”

“Nothing.” Emmaline fastened her hair back tight with the rubber band from the bundle of mail. A couple of magazines unfurled their covers, the sort she wouldn’t have wanted the local postmistress to see, which, along with the occasional specialty mail order delivery, was why they kept a post office box in Bozeman.

“Then why’d you mention it? Come on, Em, tell me what’s been going on.”

Emmaline drew a deep breath, let it out, and tried again. “I don’t know. Maybe one of those flashback things like they write about. I was feeling so happy right then, safe, my preserves and vegetables all set for winter…and when I felt somebody behind me I figured it was you.” She reached out a hand. In an instant Sigri’s fingers were warm and firm on hers.

“But it wasn’t you,” Emmaline went on. “Somebody…something…yanked hard on my hair, pulled my head right back, just like that old bastard used to do. I yelled and swung the hammer and jerked around, and…nobody was there. Just Chinook, scrambling down the stairs growling fit to scare a bear from its den.”

Sigri looked a shade paler under her tan, but her voice held steady. “Good for her!” She stood to pull Emmaline into another hug. “So what’s this about the rats?”

“Nothing, really. She just went poking and whining at the rough spot in the wall, and wouldn’t come upstairs until I started to close the trapdoor. So I thought of rats, and wondered if one could have jumped on me.”

“Do you still reckon that was it?” Sigri’s breath warmed Emmaline’s cheek. Emmaline wished she could never be any farther away, although warming other bits of her anatomy would be just fine.

“I…well, I don’t believe in ghosts any more than you do, so…” she stopped, feeling a slight tensing of Sigri’s body. “You don’t, do you?”

“Don’t I? Can’t say as I recall ever discussing that particular subject.” Sigri didn’t seem about to say any more.

“Well, you’re so level-headed snow could build up a foot deep and not slide off if I didn’t tip you over from time to time.”

Sigri chuckled. “If it’s tipping you’ve got on your mind, girl…” She lifted Emmaline right off her feet and high up until Sigri’s warm mouth pressed between her breasts. The long, slow slide back down was so sweet and tantalizing, it could almost make them both forget what else was on their minds. Almost.

The fingerbone lay on the table, seeming to point right at them. Emmaline itched to knock it off, kick it out the door, and scrub both table and floor.

Sigri sighed and set her down. “Guess I’d better check things out. My grandmother wouldn’t go in that cellar on a bet, always had a strange feeling about it, but I never paid any heed.” She hoisted up the trapdoor fast, as if in a hurry to get it over with before she changed her mind. “Looks like you left the light on down there.”

“I guess I did.” The hole swallowed Sigri feet first as she went down the stairs. Emmaline hurried to the edge to keep sight of her.

“Hang onto the dog,” Sigri called from below. “Danged mutt seems to have clawed out a fair bit more before you got her upstairs.”

“Bones?” she managed to croak.

“Yep, looks like two hands, most of an arm, and signs of more where those came from. Don’t worry, though.” Sigri glanced up over her shoulder and flashed a wan imitation of a grin. “I haven’t been stashing the remains of my exes in the wall. These’ve been here for a mighty long time.”

“They’ll keep, then, till the sheriff or somebody can take them away,” Emmaline said. Fear was rising again, but not so much for herself. “Sigri, please, come on back up here.” She moved down a step, still holding the dog back. Chilly air gripped her ankles.

Bending over the jumble of dirt and bone fragments and rotted scraps of cloth, Sigri didn’t answer. Emmaline took another step downward.

Sigri’s head jerked back. She let out a strangled yell, kicked at thin air, and clawed at her own throat. Emmaline and Chinook took the stairs in three mad leaps. By the time they got to her Sigri was flat on her back, writhing, cursing, flailing with arms and knees at some unseen attacker.

The dog snarled and whirled, not knowing what to lunge at. Emmaline, without any thought at all, flung herself right over Sigri and hung on as though she could ward off the attack with her own flesh. Something so cold it burned streaked along her back, and then was gone.

Sigri’s breath came in such tearing gasps that Emmaline raised up to a crouch so as not to smother her.

“It’s okay,” Emmaline soothed, hoping that she was right. “We’re okay, it’s gone.” The dog was barking right at the wall now, as though whatever malevolent force had attacked had retreated back into the earth.

Sigri struggled to sit up. Emmaline backed off and stood up. Sigri took her hand, got to her feet, and shook herself like a dog who’d rolled in dirt. Or carrion.

“Em…” She tried again. “Whatever…whatever’s going on, looks like we’re in it together.”

“You’re damned right. But we can just as well be in it together upstairs.” She tugged Sigri toward the steps, and Chinook, foreseeing the closing of the trapdoor, followed them.

“Get out of those clothes,” Emmaline ordered, “and into the shower. Then we’ll call the sheriff’s office, and after that you’ll tell me every last thing you’ve ever heard about the dugout.” It might not make sense, but somehow knowing that she wasn’t alone in this steered her away from panic and into problem-solving mode.

“How about you get your clothes off, too,” Sigri said, clearly beginning to recover, “and we’ll talk about it in the shower together.”

Emmaline hadn’t realized until that moment that she too had been rolling in that unspeakable filth on the cellar floor, or at least crouching in it. “Great idea,” she said.

But the supply of hot water was limited, and the need to cling together in the warm, sheltering flow was intense, so not that much talking got done. “Em, are there marks on my throat?” Sigri asked after a while.

Emmaline checked. “No bruises that I can see. A few scratches, likely from your own fingernails. What…what was it like?”

“Just…well, scrabbling at my hair, at first, and then choking, and then...knocking me down, poking, trying to touch places…” Sigri faltered.

“Places nobody but me gets to touch,” Emmaline said grimly. “Could be he thought from your short hair you were a man, and then got the notion maybe you weren’t and was set on finding out.” She touched her lips to several of the areas in question, gently at first until Sigri wasn’t so tense, at least not in the same way, and then applied them to the hollow of her throat with such fervor that there soon would be some interesting marks. Sigri held her even tighter, but the water was cooling, and neither of them was in a state to tolerate chills.

When they’d dried off, dressed, and steeled themselves to get on with it, Emmaline handed the phone to Sigri.

They hadn’t discussed what to say. Sigri kept to the bare facts as coolly as anybody could who’d found a body buried in their cellar. “Must have been somebody caught in that cave-in back in eighteen-whatever. Early seventies, I think. Before my people got here. Anyway, I figure that’s your department, or the coroner’s, or maybe some archaeologist’s. Appreciate it if you’d come out and take a look.” There was a pause. “Well, we sure do want it out of there, but I guess it’s not likely to go anywhere before morning. See you then. And Frank...say howdy to Shirley for me.”

“Tomorrow,” Emmaline said in a flat tone. “Well, all right then.” The sheriff and his wife were cousins of Sigri’s to one degree or another, just like most everybody in the county. Two or three had come up to Emmaline on the street in town to say hello, and go on a bit about Sigri having somebody to feed her up and get her accounts in order. There’d been no mention of visits, but things could have been worse.

“Should I…” Sigri made as if to dial the phone again.

“No, you did right. The rest is purely our own business. But…how about we sleep in the barn tonight?”

Chinook nosed around the edges of the trapdoor. Sigri nodded. “Good idea. Talking of the barn, I’ve got chores to do before dark.”

Emmaline gave up any thought of cooking, and went to help herd the weanlings inside and feed all the critters that needed feeding. Sigri got fed cold chicken and leftover biscuits.

The breath and smell of horses, as well as the sweet scent of hay, left the barn warm and safe. They snuggled together under wool blankets. “Tell me about the old dugout now, and the cave-in,” Emmaline said.

Sigri was still shaken, and not hiding it. Showing some vulnerability told Emmaline how the rancher felt about her.

“I never listened a lot to old stories when I was a kid. Always trailing after the men and the horses, learning from them, not putting much stock in women’s talk. There was one thing, though…” Sigri hesitated. “Well, you asked about believing in ghosts. They said it was a horse caved in that dugout, stomped on top of it, broke his legs and had to be shot. A big one, crossbred draft horse—my grandad’s grandad hauled away the bones from on top of the rubble when he bought the land.”

“Nobody dug to see if anybody’d been caught inside?”

“Not that I know of. That was some years after it happened. But folks seemed sure the people living there, two young brothers wintering over on the way to try their luck in Canada, got out okay and traveled on.”

“So…where does the ghost part come in?”

Sigri drew in a deep, slow breath.

“Ever wonder why I call this place Spirit Horse Ranch?” Emmaline hadn’t wondered. It had just seemed…right. But Sigri didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve seen spirit horses, times when nobody else could. And I’ve seen that horse. On clear nights, under moonlight, down across the creek near the hollow where the bones got dumped. You could still see humps where the grass grew over them. After the first time, I used to ride back now and then, and mostly he’d be there. He’d lift his head and look at me, and my horse would whicker a little, and then he’d just…fade away. Never any footprints in the daylight, when I went back to look, even if the ground was muddy. Haven’t seem him in years, though, not since the creek flooded through that hollow and washed away everything, bones and all.”

“So maybe getting rid of the bones gets rid of the ghost.” Emmaline was trying to puzzle things out.

“That’ll be just fine with me.” Sigri stretched, and yawned.

Emmaline couldn’t rest quite yet. “Sigri, remember that old tin box I showed you, with the hanks of hair in it?”

“Sure, one of ‘em towheaded and the other a redhead like you.” She nuzzled the loose russet hair on Emmaline’s shoulder.

Thoughts swirled in Emmaline’s mind, notions twisting themselves around a time or two and settling into a possible pattern. The ghost had grabbed her hair, and tried to grab Sigri’s. Could be he was searching for somebody, somebody female.

But Sigri was nuzzling now with clear intent, and nothing could be better than to stop thinking for a while and turn to pure feeling.

If the ghost was watching—and she didn’t believe he was, with his bones far away in the root cellar—let him eat his rotted heart out.

Emmaline reclaimed her kitchen before sunrise. She eyed the trapdoor. No footprints, no bruises left on Sigri’s throat, and her own hair not coming loose until she’d torn at it herself. Maybe ghosts couldn’t do you real physical harm, unless your fear did it for them. Pain, yes, that came from the mind; they could make you feel like you were being attacked, but maybe nothing else. Still, the more his bones had been dug out, the worse the assaults had felt. Digging out the whole thing might be more than anybody should have to deal with.

She lifted the trap door, and carried the open tin box down just a step or two. Nothing stirred except a cold breeze. “Look,” she called down into the dark. “They got away, they’re long gone.” She raised each coil of hair to display. “We’re not the ones you’re looking for!”

Safe back in the kitchen with the trapdoor shut, she peered down into the box. There’d been a tiny clink when she’d replaced the hair. She lifted the coils again and saw two small, broken, tarnished rings. The last bits of the puzzle fell into place, whether anybody else would believe it or not.

She fixed up enough coffee and apple cake to feed whoever came. The sheriff arrived just past morning chore time. With him were the coroner, two deputies in a pickup truck—and Shirley.

Emmaline hadn’t counted on the sheriff’s wife, but her kitchen was nothing to be ashamed of, if you didn’t count a body buried under one corner of it.

Shirley was vigorous, fiftyish, a rancher in her own right on land passed down through her family. Emmaline braced herself for whatever small-mindedness might come as she took the woman’s offered hand in a firm grip.

“Can I call you Emmaline? Well,” as Emmaline nodded, “I’m ashamed you’ve been here near a year and I haven’t managed to stop by to say howdy. I hope you don’t mind my coming today, but with all this happening it’s bound to be hard for you, and I hoped maybe I could help.”

Emmaline, still wary, said she was glad of the company, and after more introductions and much hearty appreciation of coffee and cake, the trapdoor was raised.

“Emmaline,” Shirley said, “Maybe we could head down by the barn while they tramp around in here. You could show me the new crop of young’uns. Nobody breeds horses as fine as Sigri’s.”

By the time they reached the paddock Emmaline had made some hard decisions. “Shirley,” she said, “I’m real glad to have this chance to meet you. And I hope you don’t mind, but there’s things I need to tell somebody. I know folks have questions about me.”

“You’re not obliged to satisfy anybody’s curiosity,” Shirley said.

“Well, I’ll tell you as much as anybody needs to know, and I don’t care who else hears it.” Emmaline leaned on the fence, watching the horses. “I come from a little place all to hell and gone in Utah. Nobody’s heard of it. I was married off when I was fifteen. Not legally, not with my consent. I got away when I was sixteen. The old bastard had plenty of wives left.”

“I’ve heard of such things, even in this day and age,” Shirley said. “Good for you for getting out.”

“I got by on washing dishes in diners and cafes from Idaho to Oregon and back here to Montana. No fooling with men.” Emmaline glanced sideways. Shirley nodded.

“Along the way I picked up some education in cooking and baking, and moved up from dishwashing. Took night classes whenever I was in a college town. Whatever might come in handy. Accounting class was where I met Sigri, in Bozeman.”

Shirley chuckled. “I did hear the only thing Sigri got out of that class was you.”

“Well, she’d already got a degree in animal science years ago. Anyway, what with needing somebody to handle the bookkeeping, and getting a taste for my cooking—” here Shirley let out a muffled snort of laughter—”she asked if I’d ever considered ranch life.” Close enough. Sigri’d said something more along the lines of, “Think you could put up with being a rancher’s woman?”

“So I’m here. And I’m staying, as long as Sigri needs me.”

Shirley put her arm right around Emmaline’s shoulders. “My Grandad used to say Sigri’d got no quit in her, which was why she’d make a rancher. Never was any use trying to change her mind. I reckon you’ll be around as long as ever you want to.”

Full of relief, Emmaline gave her a quick hug, and looked back toward the house. The sheriff and deputies had come out, and were dragging shovels and a big pine box out of their truck.

“Shirley, parts of what I told you gave me some ideas about what might have happened with that…body. I’d like to tell the sheriff now, before they get to digging.”

Shirley nodded, and kept close beside her as they went.

Emmaline tapped the sheriff on the shoulder. “Sheriff—Frank—I might have some helpful information.”

He turned, a hint of embarrassment crossing his face. “I’d sure appreciate anything you can tell me, miss. Uh, ma’am.”

“Emmaline,” his wife said.

“Right. Well, we’re going to have a hell of a time figuring out who this guy was and what to do with him.”

“I think you might want to get someone from the Mormon Church,” Emmaline said. “If there’s any bit of identification, wallet, initials, whatever, the genealogy experts in Salt Lake City might be able to help.”

The sheriff raised an eyebrow. Even Sigri looked puzzled.

Emmaline went on quickly, “Back when I was clearing out the root cellar there was this one tin box mostly buried in the wall, so I dug it out.” She bent and picked up what she’d set under the front steps that morning, not sure whether she’d show it or not. She pried off the corroded lid. Everybody strained to get a look.

“Then last night Sigri told me that there were old stories about two young boys living in the dugout, one blond, one redheaded.”

Now Sigri, who hadn’t said any such thing, raised a quizzical brow.

“I’m thinking,” Emmaline said, “those weren’t boys at all. They’d run away and cut off their hair, but they were girls. Or women. And then there’s these, that I hadn’t seen until today.” She lifted out the two thin silver rings, each cut through. “Wedding bands, maybe, that they’d cut off, as well.”

Frank looked dubious. Emmaline hurried right along. “Now, I’ll be the first to admit it’s likely just my own background talking, but I think those were two wives of a Mormon patriarch, back when that was still legal. And that…thing…caught in the cave-in in there,” she jerked her head toward the house, “was either him, or somebody he’d sent to chase them down.”

Sigri’s arm was around her now. “Could be something to go on, Frank,” she said. “Chances are we’ll never know. It’ll be good to get all that out of here now, anyway, the sooner the better.”

It was over by mid-afternoon. The sheriff took down statements, the deputies shot pictures, and Shirley helped clean the kitchen floor after all the tramping through it. Finally Emmaline and Sigri were alone.

“How did it go, in there?” Emmaline asked, when they’d sat on the front steps a little while.

“Nothing happened,” Sigri said, “but everybody sure was jumpy. I didn’t go all the way down till they’d dragged the bones out. Not enough room for all of us, anyway.” She stared down at hands scrubbed so hard they were red. “Em, I did try to clean up your stuff down there, but there’s three or four sacks of spuds you may not want to keep.”

Emmaline didn’t say anything. After a while Sigri turned to face her. “I’ve been thinking maybe…well, how will you feel about living here, after all this?”

“You’ll stay on,” Emmaline said. “You won’t leave your land.”

Sigri’s face, for the first time Emmaline could remember, showed every one of her thirty-seven years, and more. “I’d quit the land before I’d quit you, Em.”

Emmaline reached her hand out. “I think it’ll be all right, now everything’s been cleared away. And even if it isn’t, those are my hard-raised provisions down there, and my home and heart right here.” She pressed Sigri’s fingers to her lips. “Nothing’s going to chase me away. Like your Grandad said about you, I’ve got no quit in me, and don’t you forget it!”

Her expression was fierce, but Sigri got so close, so fast, that expressions didn’t matter a bit. What mattered was settled, once and for all, beyond the power of man or ghost to rend apart.

The One I Left Behind

M. Christian

~

The Seaside Cafe was a secret. Just four Formica tables, ringed with strips of cheap, peeling chrome. Steel napkin holders, rarely holding any napkins. Salt and pepper. Industrial ketchup and bright yellow mustard. Behind a counter with seven red-plastic cushioned stools a menu of plastic letters on stained, warped plastic: hamburger, cheeseburger, fish & chips, hot dog, and sodas. Above the antique weight of the cash register, a 7-Up clock that was four minutes slow.

The Cafe was always turgid with steam from the kitchen: hell on hot days, stifling on cold ones. A perpetual patina of various greases and oils covered its surfaces. The food was bad, at best, but with an honesty that still made it tasty—the same way going home is never a good idea but walking familiar roads can be a thrill. It was loud, hot, and dirty—but it was special, sacred, because it was hers and hers alone.

Alice would walk the half mile from their place on Highton Road, after doing her chores—arriving around 12:30 or so. Every day she’d order fish and chips—two big pieces of unknown bottom-feeder, and two-dozen or so fat, glistening slabs of potato—and read her book of the week as she ate. There was always something thrilling about that first taste of fish, the way the breading crackled between her teeth, the way the rich juices and grease made her mouth hum with forbidden pleasure.

She’d eat and read. Sometimes something lurid, with cowboys or spaceships on the cover, or something serious, books with bold covers proclaiming just the title and author. The Seaside cafe rarely had more than three, maybe four, other people in it at lunchtime. It was always filled with the sounds of kitchen clatter and the scratchy, distant sounds of the invisible cook’s Spanish-language baseball game. Every day the same older, heavyset woman would leave her stool behind the cash register and slowly make her way over to Alice’s table to take her order—and every day, Alice would feel a faint flash of shame at never having asked her name.

It was good. Not just because she liked the guilty thrill of the fish or the salt and oil of the chips, but because it was hers. The house on Highton Road was theirs, as was the old yellow Volvo in the drive, the various appliances, and the furniture. It was a good home: warm, safe, and always there. The paint wasn’t peeling, the garden was surprisingly large, and the plumbing was solid. But it was theirs.

It was Thursday. That morning she’d done the laundry, weeded the front yard, and put away the dishes from last night. This afternoon she had to take the Volvo in for a fluid change, and stop by the market to pick up groceries. And water—yeah, she had to call about getting some more bottles delivered. The local stuff tasted okay to Alice, maybe a bit metallic, but it always gave Deborah headaches.

That was before, and after, but right now it was 12:45 in the Seaside Cafe. She’d taken her first bite of bottom-feeder, and was relishing the grease, fat, and crispy breading, and her first swallow of icy 7-Up. On the linoleum table off to the side, pages resting against the condensation-dotted can of soft drink, was Apollo’s Moon—a tale of a bunch of brilliant young scientists who discover an ancient Roman temple buried under the Sea of Tranquility. It wasn’t a good book, but the author had a knack for descriptive narration that kept her turning the pages—even when she’d already figured out the end.

“Mind if I sit?” said someone standing by Alice’s elbow. Two years—two years of fish and chips and 7-Up and no one, not even once, had asked that question. Alice turned quickly, to the source of the voice. Before she looked, she knew what she wanted to say: ‘No’, final. Nothing else in her life was certain, absolute—it was all various shades of negotiation. No’ had a firm, sharp feeling—like she imagined a shot of bourbon might taste, if she ever dared sample one.

But she did look up. Slender, long—like herself, with hair the color of warm gold. Her smile washed away the heavy atmosphere of the Seaside Cafe, clearing the stagnant air in a surge of light.

The girl didn’t ask again. Instead she smiled—brilliantly—and pulled a chair up. As she flopped down in the vinyl-covered seat, Alice had a sensation of a pirouetting, tumbling butterfly: soft yellow skirts, a brilliant tie-dyed blouse, a loose string of amber beads, brass bracelets. It was a comfortable feeling, like catching the sight of a favorite childhood book on a shelf, comfortable memories springing right to mind.

“So how ya doin’?” the girl said, helping herself to a fat slab of chip, chewing with fast, energetic slides of her narrow jaw. “You hanging in there?”

Alice didn’t know how to respond. It seemed a long minute before she could summon herself to speak, and then it came in chopped syllables, too-hurried words: “Fine, I-I guess. I mean....” Who the hell do you think you are? “Look—I’d really like to eat my lunch—”

“Good for you! I was hoping you’d say something like that. Was starting to worry that you’d just sit there and watch me eat your fries or something.” That smile. It wasn’t so much a flash of white as a flickering glow—and not just from her rows of imperfect teeth. There seemed to be something natural, brilliant about her, as if she was light: bright and floating.

“It’s okay,” Alice said, still shocked, still trapped in the narrow rut she’d carved for herself. It’s not okay. It’s not! Go away, leave me alone, go bother someone else.

“God, Alice, you used to be such a riot. Fuck, look at you now: when does the library close anyway? Still got those dirty books on the shelves?” the girl said with a slow motion, lascivious wink.

“Do I know you?” Alice flipped through her memory, shuffling years in a mad flurry of schools, jobs, activities ... nothing from New York State, nothing from afternoons skating through the cloisters with her Gorilla Art Hag buddies; nothing from the summer as a watsu intern at Harbin Hot Springs; nothing from that hot and frightening three months in Costa Rica; nothing from that bad, good, and everything in between with that steel-plated, riveting diesel dyke in Florida—and nothing, nothing at all in the years on years of that little town, her years with Deborah.

Shyness burned behind Alice’s eyes ... no recollection, but wasn’t it worse having to ask, having the truth come out (“That summer in LA!”), (“You said you loved me!”)? Or smiling and nodding, as she’d spent so many days doing? Besides, there was something about this girl. Alice searched her body, her face, her eyes, her tone, her word’s frequency for the flutter of speed, the haziness of acid, the collapse of booze—and found nothing of the sort. Same for the unfocused stare of mental chaos and its too-close sister, fixation. The girl was light, breezy—her atmosphere wasn’t needles and bubbling spoons, but rather feather beds and staring up at clouds on a hot summer day, melting them into bunnies, leopards, and fluffy elephants.

She was lovely. But that didn’t keep the stammer out of Alice’s voice. “I mean, I can’t seem to remember—”

The girl waved her slim hand in dismissal. “It’s okay. I’m sure it’ll come to you.” She picked up the ketchup bottle and knocked a hefty blob on top of the chips. Snatching a red-dripping one from the pile, she popped it into her mouth and chewed. “It’s been a while, after all.”

The girl was like a memory you firmly believed in, only to find an illusion. She was where you knew you’d put your car keys, but when you looked—no matter how many times—they just weren’t there. The girl was real enough, though: despite the hole in Alice’s memory, her presence was something else.

Deborah’s allergies made their house clean by necessity, and while Alice had never left food to evolve into something of voting age, she’d never been one to embrace a cool—and in more irritable moments, ‘inhuman’—sterility. When she’d lived in New York, the village flat she’d shared with the rest of the Gorillas had been warm and soft, comfortable: hundreds of pillows on the furniture-less floors, billowing sheets making the ceiling an undulating, inverted sea of crimson and washed-thin blues. Every cup was cracked and muddy from generations of java, every plate was nicked or chipped, every fork askew, but everything seemed to just taste better that way—back then.

The girl looked like a billowing ceiling of old tie-dyes, like a room of nothing but deliciously musty pillows. She wasn’t dirty, but she was all-too human. You guessed, looking at her, that her legs were unshaven, her pits wild, her thatch wild and curly—but that she’d be warm and soft in bed, earthy and musky between the sheets.

The girl frowned. In the years with Deborah, Alice had been well trained by that slight change in tone, a firmness around the lips. A frown back home could mean Deborah upset, Deborah irritable. Not bad, no—never that bad, but enough that the rest of the day would be spent trying to remove it, by whatever means necessary. Only then would the tension be able to leave Alice’s own face.

“What’s worse is that you really do love her, don’t you?” the girl said, seriousness in her large brown eyes. The frown didn’t drop, but the words held sympathy “If she was really bad it’d be easy, wouldn’t it? Zap! Off you’d go, babe. But she’s not. She’s kind, good to you—when she’s in a good mood herself, helpful, supportive, and hot enough in the sack. But she’s not it, isn’t she? Close, maybe, but not really there. So why the fuck do you stay with her?”

“I really don’t see why I have to—” Alice started, indignation flushing away her fantasies, her lingering look in one quick, hot flash.

“Just let me finish, doll: I’m just letting you know that I’ve got at least some of this figured out. Stop me if I’m off-base—okay?”

She gestured with a fat slab of potato, and Alice was momentarily hypnotized by the suspense of whether or not the ketchup would go flying. Her anger, though, pulled her away from the delight of wondering about the pattern the red might make on her blue cotton dress. “I don’t see why I should sit here—” She should have stood up and walked out. But she didn’t. At the time she didn’t know why. Later, she guessed that at some level she really did need to hear—especially from this stranger.

“You love her, like I said. But she’s not the only one. You sit here, a place she can’t touch, and you stare out the window. Now dreaming’s good, but when you live only to dream, when it’s only when you’re sitting here in this little grease spot and staring out the window or reading your crappy books that you live. That’s not good. You hate it, but it’s also good—but not good enough to make you happy, and not bad enough to make you haul luggage.”

Ketchup flew, making red teardrops on the plastic tabletop. As far as Alice could tell she’d been spared the splatter, but she didn’t look to see.

“You’re a wonderful babe. Damned smart, fuckin’ sexy, wild-ass but not ever a mean bitch, never irresponsible. You’re a great girl. But you’re stuck here—and you’re dying off, bit by bit. You can’t walk because you don’t want to hurt her, but you can’t stay there anymore, either. Every damned day you kick at the girl you want to be. Yer dyin’ by habit, girl. You’re better than that. I know you are—more than anyone, anywhere, I know that.”

There, that heaviness she recognized. Knew it all too well. Sometimes, in the mornings, after Deborah had gone off to work and it was just Alice in their polished and buffed house, she’d feel the weight on her lids, feel the dragging deep down. At first she just thought it was tiredness—a lethargy from too vivid dreams, a restless night’s sleep, but then when the tears started to flow she finally recognized the sadness.

The girl, still nameless, stopped her words and just looked ... just looked at her with eyes so deep, they became bottomless.

When Alice had first started to cry those early mornings she’d been shaken, disturbed by the upswell of darkness. She thrown herself into cleaning, shopping, playing in the garden ...she’d tried to bring it up with Deborah but that was the summer her mother was dying, and so Alice had pushed it down, held her lover’s hand and tried to still Deborah’s own salty descents.

In August Deborah’s mother had passed—but Alice still couldn’t give voice to it. And so it twisted in, became a steaming hatred. Weak, she thought of herself, weak. Couldn’t face a little adversity, couldn’t deal with a few months of hard times. Buck up, she told herself in the stern voice of her father. It’s not the end of the world.

“That’s very bad for you,” the girl said, seemingly in narration to Alice’s thoughts—but she couldn’t have. No, she was smiling again, bright and wide, and pointing down at the pile of greasy fries between them.

“A little indulgence—” Alice said just for something to say. She wanted this girl and the emotions she’d pulled up, to go away. She wanted it to be her bad book, the greasy food, the clatter of plates in the kitchen, the steaming windows, the cracking voices from the chef’s radio. She wanted it to go back to her secret time, her time away from the house and Deborah.

“It’s the little things like this that keep me going, you know? Get rid of too many of them and—poof—I’m gone. Here’s to greasy fries, doll; the little things that keep us alive.”

The girl’s warm hand found the top of Alice’s tightly closed fist. The contact was electric, a voltage touch. Fear told her to pull away, the fear of breaking the careful bricks she’d built inside herself very strong. But ... she didn’t.

“No, it’s just -I,” Alice wanted to say that she didn’t know this girl from Eve, suspected track marks down her arms, suspected Single White Female, suspected flying china, 2:00AM hysterical phone calls. But a memory tickled at the back of her brain. Faint, but persistent.

But more than that she liked her. Whoever she was, she was also fast, smart, funny, and—even though she’d done most of the talking—the girl was actually there for her.

“That’s okay,” the girl said in a low whisper. “You’re freaked. You’re in unfamiliar territory—and me, doll, I’m your signpost. And the fact that you haven’t like, gone zoom out of here, says to me that you’re not completely lost yet. Thank god.”

The memory tickled, stronger. She did know this girl, knew her well—but the context was weird, twisted. They hadn’t dated— even though a good part of her wanted to taste her lips, to feel the muscles in her thighs, to see the pinkness of her nipples—they hadn’t even talked. The girl’s voice was unfamiliar. But she knew her, nonetheless. She’d seen her, looked at her ... almost daily. Where, where, where?

“Do you love me, girl?”

Astonished, Alice stared at her for a long minute. Who comes out of nowhere, invades her space, eats her fries, and then pops off the big “L” word?

But the moment felt crucial. She’d done too much thinking these last few years. Too many thoughts, too much caution. She knew that, and so she stopped the stream of them, the bad images of what might happen and, instead, did what she knew she had to. “Yes.”

The girl ... beamed. Her smile was more than brilliant—her cheeks puffed and her wide, expressive eyes narrowed. She started to speak then stopped herself. Alice watched tears bead the corners of the girl’s eyes. Alice watched as the girl reached up and rubbed the salt streaks away with the heel of one hand.

A splash of bright red deepened on the girl’s blouse. Alice stared hard at the spot until she realized it wasn’t a stain or a pattern on the fabric, but the back of the chair, the back of the chair, sharper and clearer with each moment as the girl faded away.

Soon she was just a suggestion, a hint of what she’d been. But before she washed away to nothing, Alice knew who she was, and then where she’d come from: sometimes ghosts are the nearly dead, newly brought back to life.

When her heart stopped hammering, when her breaths came slow and steady, Alice teetered to her feet and stumbled out the door. The air outside was painfully brisk, clear as ice—but she was warm, comfortable despite the cold. Warm because she was in love with someone she’d thought she’d lost, someone who’d nearly passed away from neglect.

Hugging herself, Alice walked down the street, maybe back to the house, or maybe somewhere else. She felt the beginning of a smile.

A Path to the Woods

Marilyn Jaye Lewis

~

The roses here along the path are dying. Like Rose lying alone in what used to be our room, our world, but is now only spoken of as her “sick bed.” Fall pulls the warmth from things little by little until one night, what was once so gaily blossoming in the sun is suddenly deep into frost and beyond saving.

Pink rose petals are now strewn all over this footpath—the one in our back garden. Even in near darkness, the fallen petals are heartbreaking, making it look as if a gentle pink snow has blessed us—an ethereal dusting from Heaven; something sacred and eternal and not just the ordinary death-knell of autumn. Well, maybe it’s true that we’ve been blessed, but regardless, this too—this snow of dying rose petals—will be so fleeting. Damn it. Everywhere my eyes look, the fleeting beauty I find tears my heart to pieces. It is all in motion, the forces of life, and all of it separate from me. I am so small and alone here; so incapable of mattering. The tall trees towering overhead, so cleanly outlined against the black depth of a faraway sky are starkly profound. Trees survive us so effortlessly; Rose, me, everything. They dig deep and branch out and then just keep growing.

Tonight, a slice of moon peeks through the trees. I sway a bit as I look up at it. I’ve officially given up all hope, all expectation of miracles. I’ve stopped my meager efforts to find strength and to be kind; I’ve abandoned all of it to the vast emotional wasteland of hopelessness. And in support of choosing to kill my heart, I’ve once again returned to the wine.

Drunk, I’m out here in the garden in the dark searching blindly for some spiritual corroboration that giving up is wiser now. I can no longer fool myself into thinking that Rose is not dying (or in truth, is as good as dead), and that I’m not alone.

I wish I could simply pull the plug on Rose and then claim that I’d had nothing to do with the lifelessness that would rush in to finally claim her. But there are no medical machines; no cord for me to pull. She is simply lying there in our old bed, drugged and laboring to breathe.

It has gone on too many days already, this feeling that her death is imminent. In old movies they would ease a down-filled pillow out from under her delicate head and then smother the misery. I should do the right thing for once, no matter how legally wrong it was. Be courageous—help her. But I have no courage; it’s been my eternal downfall. If I were brave would I be this drunk right now? I hardly think so.

Beneath the blanket of dead rose petals, our garden path is paved with white pebbles. Lit every few feet by lamps that glow an eerie runway blue at night, the pebbled path leads down our yard and into the woods, where the crunching pebbles under foot abruptly become dirt. I follow it all the way tonight, wine bottle in hand. I like how it feels to be on the dirt path for a change—like walking off to oblivion; dense trees immediately enclosing me overhead, protecting me from everything heart-wrenching, inescapable and inevitable. Rose and I rarely ventured into the woods in daylight; we certainly never did it after dark. However, I need this feeling that all of the sorrow is obliterated now in order to ease the guilt I’m feeling over leaving the house at all. I know she’s in there rattling at death’s door. It’s bad enough to have gotten so drunk when she might go at any moment. It is worse yet to physically abandon her; to secretly hope that she will die while I’m far away from her to save me from having to witness the worst of my fears: me standing impotently by in a world that is so suddenly without Rose.

There’s a small clearing somewhere in these woods. I remember it from one of our rare sojourns. I have no idea how far into the woods it is, or even if I’m going in the right direction. I’m hoping to find it not because it’s particularly beautiful, but only because there are large rocks there that I can sit down on. Then I can be far enough away from the house that the death rattle is no longer in my ears. I can sit and drink and cry and no one will hear me and I, in turn, will hear no one.

The slice of moon overhead is following me, gliding in and out of treetops. I can’t keep looking up at it, though. I’m stumbling drunk as it is, I don’t need to stumble literally and then fall and perhaps break an ankle out here in the dark. It’s a good sign, I suppose—I’m trying to keep at least some kind of grip on acceptable behavior. Rose would have been impressed.

Shit. Now they’re coming, all those tears that I’ve been trying to swallow, to keep at bay. God. The sound of my own crying breaks my heart even more. I am going to be so alone without her. I don’t want to be here without Rose. She is the love of my life. Before the illness ravaged her, she was so dark and lovely and transfixing—her soul was like that proverbial well, some kind of deep, dark water you would only find in a dream. Her brown eyes looked out from an ancient place, a place mysterious and bottomless. I worshipped her.

Why was I always so intolerant of her weaknesses, then? Why couldn’t I just love her? Why was I always so hard-hearted and mean? “Please tell me that wasn’t all I was!”

I’m crying out loud to the trees now when I should be up there in our old room, saying this all to Rose.

But she doesn’t hear me anymore. The Rose that could have responded to me is gone now. There’s only a shell up in our bed. I should have had the courage to say these things when she was still cognizant and able to give a reply; to forgive me.

What the hell is that? There’s an echo in these woods. My cries return to me a moment after they’ve left me. It is disturbing to hear. In fact, it’s scaring me.

Sniveling, I abruptly stop crying altogether but the echo continues. Oh my god, I realize; I’m not alone in these woods. Someone else is here; someone else is also crying.

I turn back toward the house to leave whomever it is that sounds so miserable, alone with her sobbing heart. I don’t want to invade someone else’s sorrow. I want to respect the stranger’s grief.

But no, that’s not really it, is it? I’m afraid of being needed. I always have been. I’ve always demanded that others be strong, as if it were something virtuous when in reality I was only in doubt of my heart’s ability to carry the burdens of others.

The sobbing continues. It’s a blessing in a way; it’s taken my attention off my own breaking heart—finally. It’s a woman, I can at least tell that much from the sound of her cries.

I turn around once again and follow the path in the woods to the clearing I’d been searching for, and there she sits on a rock as I would have done, alone and sobbing. A woman with white hair; an almost skeletal woman; her skin is too luminous to chalk up to only the hint of moonlight. I am compelled to approach her, even though it becomes quickly apparent that I’ve scared her to death.

“Christ,” she cries. “Stasha, where did you come from?”

She knows my name. Good lord, who is this? She looks so much like Rose. “Rose?”

She sniffles. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find me like this. I was trying so hard to be stoic, you know? You seemed to be holding up so well and I wanted to be like you.”

“Rose, what the heck are you doing out here? And what’s happened to you?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, frantically wiping her eyes in a pitiful attempt to make it seem as if she hasn’t been sobbing her heart out. “I just needed to cry a little,” she defends herself. “We all need to from time to time.”

“I don’t mean that; I can see you’re crying. I was, too. But…” My voice falters. I am completely bewildered here. I set down the bottle of wine, feeling thoroughly spooked.

“Are you drunk again?” she asks. “Stasha, what is the matter with you?”

I try to pull myself together, at least together enough to speak. “Rose, how did you get out here? How did you even manage to get out of bed, let alone walk all the way down here, by yourself, and without my seeing you? And what’s happened to your hair? And where’s the nurse?”

“What? Am I a prisoner now? I’m not allowed to leave the house by myself, without your permission? I’m just sick, Stasha, that’s all. I’m sick. Everyone gets sick from time to time. It’s not like I’m dying. Yet.”

Oh god. These are the words she said to me right after we’d learned about her illness and the unbearable prognosis.

“I still want to take that trip, you know,” she goes on insistently. “I’m scared; I admit it, but I’m not going to let this death sentence completely stop what’s left of my life. I’m going, even if I have to go by myself. That said, though, I still want you to come with me.”

“Come with you where?” I ask in horror—I know what she’s going to say because we had this conversation once before.

“To London, obviously. We have the tickets already. I’m going, Stasha. I don’t care what the doctors say.”

“Rose,” I say cautiously, “we already went to London—a year ago, Christmas. You got really sick there, remember? We had to take you to a hospital.”

She studies me strangely, as if I’m the one who’s out of place here; whose words are incomprehensible to her. “No,” she says, with faltering conviction. “That’s not true. The plane tickets are upstairs on top of the dresser.”

My mind goes to the dresser in our room and then I re-encounter the specter of her nearly dead body lying in our bed, laboring to breathe; the same bed where she’s been lying incurably ill for several months; nurses coming and going. I suddenly feel like I’m going to faint. Who is this woman who seems so like my Rose?

“Stasha, what’s happening to you? Why are you acting so crazy? I thought you were going to quit drinking, at least for my sake, until we got through this ordeal. I need to be able to count on you—to count on you being sober, being present for real, not just physically in the room. Or in the woods—well, you know what I mean. But look at you: you’re drunk. Goddamn you.”

I’m drunk, that’s what this is. I’m really drunk, more so than I think I’ve ever been. That’s what’s causing all this insanity. I’m drunk. I should never have betrayed her trust in me; I swore I would be right there with her when she died; that I wouldn’t leave her side. This is my punishment for leaving the house. This is my guilty conscience rising up from my dreams or something.

“Stasha, I am so disappointed in you,” she goes on. “I need you to be sober now. I really need you.”

“I’ll go back to the house, Rose, I swear. I’ll go right now and I’ll leave the wine here.”

“No! Don’t leave me!” she screams. She bolts toward me. “I know what’s up there! I know what’s in that room!” She grabs my arms to keep me from leaving. She is real. She is no dream.

Up close like this, I can see into her eyes. Even in the dark, I recognize Rose. It is too alarming. How did she get here? And how did her damn hair get so white? “But you were in the house, Rose,” I splutter. “That was you in the room.”

“I know,” she says quietly, still gripping my arms tight. But she looks so desperate and defeated now, so tragic. She says it again, “I know.”

I stare at her, unnerved. She hasn’t been this alive, or this strong, in many months.

“I’m not going back in there, you know.” She is barely audible now. “I know what’s going on up there—in that room, that bed. Why did you leave?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Stasha. You left me there. Alone. I was—” Her voice falters. She lets go of my arms and turns away. “I was dying. Shit. What’s happening to me?” She looks around us at the surrounding trees then up at the black sky. “How did I get out here? Stasha, what’s going on? Help me. Please. I don’t want to die. I don’t know how to die.”

Out of habit, I reach down for the wine bottle. It is always my instinct: to get drunker still. But I offer her some first. “Maybe a drink would help?”

She looks at the bottle being offered to her. “Maybe,” she consents. “Maybe it will.” Rose takes the bottle and helps herself to a healthy swig of wine. “We need to figure this out,” she says. “We need to be rational and we need to be calm, right?”

“Right,” I agree without even thinking. If I were thinking, rational and calm would easily give way to panic and alarm. She admits that she was up there in the room dying, and yet she’s right here with me, asking for my help. It makes no sense.

“You could do the pillow thing,” she suggests.

“The what?”

“You know, put the pillow over my face. I know you want to, you’ve thought of it.”

“Rose –”

“It’s okay, Stasha. You don’t have to deny it; I want you to do it. I don’t know how to let go, that’s my problem. I can’t find that light to go toward, that beacon we’re all supposed to see? I don’t see it. I can’t figure out how to cross over—cross over what, to where?”

She’s asking me to kill her, or to at least assist her in suicide. This is terrible. “Rose, maybe you’re just thinking too much about it. You sometimes do that. Maybe you just need to calm way down, you know? Get super calm and it’ll be like falling to sleep. You won’t even notice it. It’ll be peaceful, you’ll cross over and then you’ll be dead.”

“I tried it, believe me. I’ve been trying it for what feels like weeks already. I’m drifting to sleep and then I get to that point, that cliff—I feel like I’m falling over it, and I feel like I’m suffocating; I can’t breathe. I’m falling to my death and I can’t breathe. Then there’s that jolt of fear and I’m back again. I’m still alive. I’m back in that damn bed and you’re standing there, staring down at me with a look on your face that tells me I must be pretty repulsive to look at now. You look at me with such—I don’t know—horror. And I know from that look that I need to get on with it already, that I need to just go now. But I can’t. I don’t know what the fuck to do.”

She’s crying again.

“Rose, honey. Don’t cry.”

She’s weeping in the same way that I’ve cried, night after night, alone in the guest bedroom, praying that the night nurse won’t hear me. Well, she has to have heard me, but I was at least praying that she wouldn’t come in. She never did.

“Rose,” I say. “What if I hold your hand? What if we go back to the house together, right now, both of us; we go back to the bedroom, you get back in bed and try to just fall peacefully asleep. I’ll hold your hand. It won’t be painful. You won’t fall from any cliff. You’ll just cross over, like you’re supposed to. You won’t even notice it.”

“How do you know? How can you possibly know?”

I admit that I don’t know. “It’s just a hunch. It’s what I think dying is like. Let’s at least try it, okay? You’ll hold my hand.”

She takes one final swig of the wine and drains the bottle. I have a quick pang of regret, I would have liked at least another swallow, but I don’t want to be selfish. It’s unbecoming to me and inappropriate to the weightiness of the situation. Let her be blissfully drunk when she dies, I figure. Let her at least have that. “Okay,” she finally says, gathering her courage. “We can try it.”

Together, we walk back through the dark woods, finding our way on the dirt path to the beginning of our backyard.

“Look at that house,” she says. “Isn’t it charming? I’ve always loved this house, Stasha. I’ve loved my life here with you. Every minute of it has felt effortless. Even those times we fought, I still felt like my soul was at home here—in this house, with you.”

“I think I’ve felt that way, too, Rose. I just didn’t know how to put it into words.”

“Then why do suppose you were always drinking? What was it you thought the wine could give you that you couldn’t simply feel by being here, alive, with me?”

“I don’t know, Rose. I honestly don’t know.”

“Be straight with me, okay? Is tonight the first night you’ve gotten drunk since we found out that I was sick? Did you keep your promise to me, for the most part?”

I take her hand. It is ice cold. I lead her up the white pebbled garden path. “I swear, Rose. This was the first time. I kept my promise.”

As we get closer to the sliding door that leads in to our kitchen, Rose holds back. “Look,” she says. “Someone’s in the kitchen. Is that nurse in there?”

“Probably, why?”

“I don’t want her to see me, or to be in the room with us. She makes me nervous, Stasha. You go in by yourself and tell her you want some time alone with me, okay? I want to try it with just you and me. No strangers. This is my death. It’s important to me.”

“Okay,” I agree. “I’ll tell her.”

“I’ll meet you upstairs in the bedroom, then.”

“Okay.” I have no idea how Rose is getting into the house, but I’m guessing she knows a secret way. I slide open the kitchen door and the nurse smiles at me. She’s having a cup of tea at the kitchen table. She can tell I’m drunk; it’s obvious. But she’s polite about it. “Getting some air, Stasha?”

“Yes,” I say.

“That’s good.”

“Listen, I want some time alone with Rose now. I’m ready to tell her good-bye. I think she needs to hear me say it. I think I need to hear myself say it.”

“I think that’s wise, Stasha. I know it’s a sad time for you, but I think this idea is best for you both. Call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

I go up the stairs alone. For the first time in weeks, I’m not dreading getting to the top of those stairs and seeing the door to our room standing open, revealing a near-lifeless Rose in our old double-bed. What does startle me, though, is that the more luminous, white-haired Rose stands next to our bed where the dying, dark-haired Rose still lies.

“What’s going on?” I say quietly, but I’m starting to panic. “Who are you really?”

“I’m Rose,” she insists.

“Then who’s in the bed?”

“Me. I have to get back in that thing. God, look at me; I look awful. I used to think I was so beautiful.”

“You were,” I assure her. “I mean, you are. Even with all that white hair.”

“What do you mean?” Rose turns and sees herself in the mirror. “Shit,” she cries out. “Is that me? What the hell happened to my hair?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “You must be, like, the ‘soul’ part of you now or something.”

“I guess,” she says doubtfully.

“Well? Are you ready?”

“I think so, Stasha. I think so. I’m really going to miss you, you know.” The sound of tears is creeping into her gentle voice.

“Don’t,” I say. “If you start weeping again that nurse is liable to come running.”

“You’re probably right.” She stops a minute to compose herself and then she sits down on the bed next to her useless and now haggard body. “I guess I just sort of –” She makes a sweeping gesture with her arms. “I kind of just swoop in there, huh?”

“I guess. I was assuming you knew.”

“I wasn’t really counting on this part.” She looks up at me. “I actually have no idea how to get back in there.”

“Well, don’t look at me. I don’t even know how you got back into the house.”

She sighs. “Stasha?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s do the pillow thing, okay? I think it’s going to be easier.”

“I can’t! I can’t do that to you.”

“You wouldn’t be doing it to me, really. I’m right here. The real me is, anyway. I mean, this would just be for the sake of convenience. I’m going to be right back out of the body again anyway, right? This way, I’ll just go directly from here. I’ll cross over like this. What do you think?”

“No, Rose, I can’t—I can’t kill you. I think we need to stick to the plan, do it the right way.”

“But I don’t want to get back in that thing, Stasha. I’m sorry; I just don’t. You have no idea how creepy it feels in there. It’s dark and clammy and cramped, and I can barely breathe.”

She gets up off the bed and slides a down-filled pillow out from under her body’s head.

“Stop it, Rose,” I shout. “Don’t do it. Don’t!”

But she’s doing it anyway; she’s smothering her near-dead form with her own pillow.

“Don’t! Rose, please.”

I struggle to tug the pillow from her grasp but she’s determined; she’s quite strong. “Rose, come on—don’t!”

But it’s too late. The shell of a body gives up with barely a noticeable struggle. She’s dead. She’s really dead. And the white-haired Rose is gone, too. I’m standing alone in the room in shock, in horror. She’s crossed over. And it all happened so quickly. I didn’t even get to say good-bye. It’s breaking my heart all over again. I look down at the love of my life, dead now; a fluffy white pillow over her face. I’m sobbing uncontrollably.

The nurse walks in and startles me from my grief. “Stasha!” she cries. “What have you done?”

“My god, no,” I say, turning to look at her. It was Rose, I want to say, but even I am having trouble believing.

Some Old Lover’s Ghost

Dayle A. Dermatis

~

The woman who answered the door looked a little haggard, her thick dark hair straggling from a French braid down her back.

I said, “Hi, I’m Helena Johnston.”

She stared at me.

“Paranormal Manifestation Services?” I prompted. “You called me?”

She laughed then, and it transformed her face from tired to glowing. She held out her hand. Firm, cool grip. Long fingers. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course. I’m Beth Lopez. PMS—that’s fabulous.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I like it when people get it.”

I entered the condo.

Clean, classic lines. The natural oak of the floor was echoed in the furnishings. In the living room, just beyond the foyer, two walls were painted a bold blue, while one was white…no, the palest gold, to amplify the afternoon sun that currently streamed through the glass deck doors.

It’s my job, in part, to notice these things. Notice the placement of knickknacks (few, but elegant), books (a comfortable number of both coffee table and paperbacks), dishes (the kitchen was open to the living room, showing me red glass dinnerware and a KitchenAid mixer).

Beth wore a forest green ribbed Henley shirt with the top two buttons open. Finally, forest green is coming back in fashion. She’d paired it with skinny jeans that faded down the thighs and funky bronze earrings. She was barefoot, her nails trimmed but unpolished.

It’s not my job to notice those things. Those things, I just can’t help.

“Please, sit down,” Beth said, and I went to the comfortable brown leather sofa. Above it was a curiously out-of-place-looking print of Monet’s water lilies.

We danced through the “call me by my first name” stuff and got down to business.

“So tell me why you called me,” I said.

“It’s…” She twisted a braided ring on her index finger. “It’s for my girlfriend, really. Please don’t be offended when I say that I’m not sure I believe in ghosts.”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “You haven’t experienced the haunting yourself?”

“No, just Marguerite,” she said. “She asked me to call you. She moved in about three weeks ago.”

Ah. That explained the incongruous print.

“And what manifestations has she experienced?”

“At first, it was just some of her stuff getting moved around.” She laughed uncomfortably. “We…we’re getting used to living together, and I know in a couple of cases I was the one who moved things. You know how it is, in a new relationship. I was just tidying up, really.”

I did know. I nodded.

“But it soon became obvious that it wasn’t just me. It was one thing for me to hang up her jacket or put her deodorant back in the cabinet. For a while it seemed like someone was hiding things—she found her toothbrush in the fridge, her favorite sweater on the deck, tangled on one of the potted cacti.”

“So, not just a case of absentmindedness?”

Beth caught her lower lip between her teeth. “No. She says she got out of the shower one morning and someone had written “Get Out” in the steam on the mirror. And, um, that someone dumped all the Equal packets on the table and spelled out the same thing.”

“Has she been physically assaulted in any way?”

“No.”

“Heard voices, humming, knocking, anything like that?”

“Yes.” Beth leaned forward. “She says she’s heard someone, a woman, whisper things, but she wouldn’t tell me what. I’m sorry she’s late—she said she’d be home by now, but she gets distracted.”

I jotted down some notes, more to look efficient than anything else. I’d remember what she said. “Why don’t you show me around the place, especially where these things have happened?”

Beth’s decorating preferences were apparent throughout, as were Marguerite’s attempts to settle herself with her own possessions. It’s never easy meshing styles and two sets of furniture and cutlery, but this was the most jarring I’d ever seen.

There were two bedrooms—one used as an office with two laptops set up and more bookshelves brimming with books—two full bathrooms and a loft overlooking the living/dining room, where Beth had her workshop. She made jewelry—funky, bold items like the earrings she wore. I liked it. The skylights made it the perfect area for her work.

Beth obviously liked clean lines, a modern but still comfortable space. Marguerite was more into draping fringed shawls over things and loading up on ornate candleholders.

Marguerite arrived home as we came down from the loft, bursting in with breathy apologies and a kiss for Beth that made me consider leaving the room. Even Beth looked a little embarrassed by it.

But good lord, she looked like a pre-Raphaelite maiden, which must have been what Beth the Artist saw in her, along with the stunning combination of tumbling red ringlets and pale skin. She accentuated the mystique with a flowing flowered dress.

She confirmed what Beth had said, then hesitated. Beth took the opportunity to go check the P.O. box she used for jewelry orders. Marguerite and I both watched her leave. I’m pretty sure Marguerite didn’t realize we were focused on the same body part.

“Beth says you’ve heard voices,” I said.

She bit her lip and nodded. “A woman’s voice,” she said. “Definitely a woman. She doesn’t like me.”

“What does she say?”

“You’re not good enough for her.”

It took a bizarre moment to realize she was quoting the spirit, not speaking directly to me. Guilty much?

“She threw a wineglass at me, too.”

I started. “Really?”

Marguerite tipped her head. “Well, not at me, exactly. Kind of near me. Like she wanted to scare me.”

“But not hurt you?”

“She could’ve hurt me!” Her eyes were wide.

“But she didn’t. That’s good.” I jotted that down, wondering if I should reassure her. If the spirit—assuming there was a spirit, because even I don’t make assumptions until I’ve done my investigation—didn’t throw the wine glass directly at her, it wasn’t by mistake. Those buggers don’t miss.

“What happened to the other wineglass?”

That startled her. “What?”

I gestured to the rack where six glasses hung. “Set of eight originally?”

“Oh. I sort of broke one.” She looked sheepish.

“Any shoving, pushing, pinching, hair-pulling?” I asked.

She pursed her lips and winked at me. “Not from the ghost,” she said.

That was so not what I wanted to be thinking about.

I came in two nights later with my assistant, Scott, and a vanload of equipment.

Before Beth and Marguerite left for the hotel, I briefly explained what everything was. Digital recorders, temperature gauges, electromagnetic readers, infrared cameras, yadda yadda. I have other methods, too, but I always start with the science.

Science, and my gut.

In the interim, I’d done a little research. The high-rise was reasonably new, and nobody had died in this or the adjacent condos. It was highly doubtful that it had been built on an Indian burial ground or anything like that.

Plus, there was the interesting little fact that Beth hadn’t experienced any of the phenomena. My instincts told me she wasn’t lying.

My instincts told me Marguerite wasn’t lying, either, although I had to consider that a little harder before I decided she really didn’t seem to be the type who’d make this stuff up to get attention.

Marguerite had brought some older furniture pieces with her, but nothing that could be construed as a true antique, and she hadn’t had any of this happen in her previous place, so that ruled out a haunted armoire or something.

Scott and I set up equipment, and I re-noted the placement of various objects in case of movement. We took the usual measurements, wandered around, stared at various screens. Finally, I plopped myself on the bed (the bedroom and adjoining bathroom had been where most of the incidents had happened), made sure my recorder for digital voice phenomenon was on, and said,

“Okay, I’m here, and I’m willing to listen. Is there anybody here who’d like to talk to me?”

Silence. Now there’s a surprise.

“You’ve interacted with one of the women who lives here, and she’s uncomfortable with that. She and her girlfriend would like to know who you are.”

Crickets chirping. Figuratively, not literally.

“They hired me to find out. I’d like to talk to you…”

A sigh. “Kia.”

I nearly fell off the bed. Jaysus, my heart was pounding.

The various instruments were going wild. Electromagnetic frequencies spiking, thermometer plummeting. Even I felt chilled, and not just from shock.

“Kia,” I repeated when I had a voice again. Usually what I hear are murmurs, taps, unclear sounds that sound marginally more clear on the recorders. This had been pretty damn clear. “I’m here just to talk, Kia. Can you tell me why you’re here?”

“Beth’s…girlfriend.”

“Marguerite?”

“No. Me.”

Oh. Ack. Beth had a ghostly girlfriend? Dammit, had I read her that wrong?

And if she was two-timing Marguerite…

As if Kia read my mind, she said. “No. Former.”

Duh. How addled was my brain? Of course Beth didn’t have a spectral chippie on the side; that wasn’t possible. What she had was a partner who had died.

A dead partner who was manifesting right before my eyes. Jinkies. Normally all you see are flashes of light, human-shaped shadows or mists, that sort of thing.

This, on the other hand, was pretty much someone suddenly sitting in the recliner across from me, knees drawn up to her chest. Okay, she was kind of see-through but I could discern her features. She was petite, with straight black hair and sharp, foxlike features that really worked on her. I wondered how she’d died, but that wasn’t the important question to ask right now.

“I take it you don’t like the current girlfriend? Marguerite?”

Another sigh, now with a bit of an eye roll. “Not impressed.”

“Me, neither.” It popped out before I could contain it. I wasn’t sure why, but everything I’d seen pointed to the two of them not being really compatible. At any rate, I made a mental note not to let Beth or Marguerite or even Scott hear this recording. Egads, no. “You want her out?”

“Want Beth to be happy.” Speaking seemed to be something of an effort, judging by her minimal responses.

“But you’ve been manifesting to Marguerite, not Beth.”

Silence again. Crap, had I pushed her away? I willed her not to disappear.

“Don’t like her much,” she said finally.

I tried, and failed, to suppress a snort. “Yeah. Well. That’s the problem with new girlfriends, isn’t it?” The wrought-iron edged mirror, full of curlicues and spirals, on the wall was obviously Marguerite’s. Kia hadn’t cracked it, though. She also hadn’t hurled a wine glass at Marguerite’s head. She was grumpy, she was opinionated, but she wasn’t dangerous.

“But Beth should be happy,” she said.

Ah, there was the crux of it. If Marguerite made Beth happy, then Kia had no right to butt in. I hate these dilemmas. It’s not like I hadn’t been in them before myself.

“Kia,” I said, “I’m glad you’re talking to me. I respect that trust. But I really think you need to talk to Beth. Would you talk to her if I facilitated it?”

A pondering silence. Then, “Yes.”

The twenty-thousand-dollar question. “And Marguerite?”

“Okay.”

Her tone said everything. This was not going to be fun.

I reviewed all of the data over the next couple of days, with Scott’s able assistance. The only thing I modified—which I’ve never done before—was the conversation with Kia. Just my two sarcastic words about Beth. That’s all, I swear. I felt like shit doing it, too; it went against everything I believed in to tamper with evidence.

I told myself it wasn’t anything that proved or disproved the existence of a spirit, nor anything about the spirit. I was editing out only myself.

My normal modus operandi was to just lay it all out in front of the homeowners. But this situation contained sensitive information. I decided to talk to Beth alone, first.

After all, she’d hired me on behalf of Marguerite. And it was her former girlfriend that was messing up the place.

We met at a random coffee shop near my office. I didn’t bring a computer or .mp3 player. I just wanted to tell her what was up.

“We gathered a lot of material: audio, visual, mass spectrographic,” I said. “I’ll show you everything of note.”

Beth wrapped her hand around the oversized, brick-colored ceramic mug. “I take it you found concrete evidence?”

“We did. Not just on the instruments, though. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about first. I also had a firsthand experience. We take those into account along with the scientific measuring.” There was no easy way to say it, so I just said it. “The spirit is Kia.”

She sucked in her breath. “You…could have looked that up.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “Not a shred of research into your or Marguerite’s past. Hauntings are usually related to the buildings, not the people. I have no knowledge other than Kia was your girlfriend, and she passed away.”

We have so many weird euphemisms for death. Anyway.

“Why do you think it’s Kia?”

“She told me her name and who she was, and she appeared.” I described her, and Beth first went white, then red. Her hands tightened around her coffee cup, and then she raised it and took a sip. To her credit, there was no trembling.

“What does she want?” she asked finally.

“She wants you to be happy,” I said. “She was clear about that. She’s just…not sure Marguerite’s the one to do that for you.”

The color on her face changed; now just red spots heightened her cheeks. “Kia and Marguerite are very different people.”

“I gathered that,” I said. “The most important thing is, she says she’s willing to talk to you, and to Marguerite.”

“Really.” Her voice held clear skepticism, which I respected.

I held up my hands. “I don’t even know Kia’s last name. And frankly, if I had the money to put on a bunch of believable special effects, I’d be on a beach in Tahiti, not poking around people’s houses trying to find cold spots.”

She grinned. It lit up her face. “Yes, you would,” she said. “It’s your passion. You’d just be doing it in really famous places in England.”

I laughed. Damn, but she had me pegged. “Ireland, too.”

“Okay,” she said, when we’d stopped laughing.

“Okay?”

“Okay. I want to see the footage and hear the audio and whatever data you’ve collected, but of course I want to talk to Kia, if that’s who it is.”

“Marguerite may not like it,” I warned. “I can run everything by you first.”

She pursed her lips, considering. “No, let’s do it how you’d normally do it. Marguerite’s a big girl. She can handle it.”

I had my doubts about that, and if I was hearing Beth’s tone of voice correctly, so did she.

I set up all my equipment on the island that separated the kitchen from the living room. First we went through all the recorded information. I explained what each thing was, but didn’t suggest what we might be hearing or seeing. It was up to the client to interpret.

When Kia said she didn’t much like Marguerite, Marguerite made a terrified eeping noise and covered her mouth with both hands.

The exchange about new girlfriends didn’t sit well with her.

“What did you mean by that?” she demanded.

“Former girlfriends never like current girlfriends,” I said. “It’s…” I shrugged. “It’s just how it is.”

She scowled at that, making me doubly glad I’d deleted a certain unwarranted comment.

Then she eeped again, repeatedly, when we reviewed the visual of that conversation.

Beth went pale and quiet at the sight of Kia on screen (wobbly at first, because I’d been using a handheld camera). She didn’t cry, but she pressed her lips together and took a deep breath that she didn’t let out right away. She’d told me Kia had died more than a year ago; my sense was that she was over the worst of the grief, but of course she’d still miss her partner. She’d never lose that. You always miss people who are gone from your life, even after you move on.

Marguerite just frowned, her brow furrowed as she leaned forward to get a good look at her predecessor and tormentor.

“She’s the one who’s been harassing me?” she asked.

Beth and I both nodded.

“Because she doesn’t like me?”

“She wants me to be happy,” Beth said, covering Marguerite’s hand with hers. “That’s understandable, isn’t it?”

“It’s creepy, that’s what it is.”

“Of course it’s uncomfortable for you,” I said. “But Kia’s willing to talk to you; do you want to sort things out?”

Marguerite turned those big eyes on Beth. “You’ll be here, right?”

“Of course, honey. Of course.”

Sheez. Clingy much? But I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have Beth call me “honey” in that tone of voice.

So I set up the séance table, the one with the spirit board on it, and borrowed one of their glasses to prove it wasn’t rigged. I doubted we’d need all that, because Kia was perfectly capable of manifesting and speaking clearly, but one can never be too sure.

I lit the appropriate white candles around the room—it was actually helpful that Marguerite had so many candleholders—and smudged a circle, and then we all sat and held hands. Marguerite’s was cold, her fingers delicate. Beth’s was warm, and she squeezed my hand once before we got started.

Hmm. Nerves, maybe?

I invited Kia (and only Kia, just to be on the safe side) to join us.

I’d set up four chairs around the table, but when Kia appeared in the empty one between Beth and I, we all jumped.

“Hello, Beth.” She nodded at me for facilitating this, I guess.

“Oh, Kia.” Beth held out a hand, then drew it back.

“Why have you been harassing me?” Marguerite asked in a voice that implied “you big meanie.”

“Because,” Kia said, “I’m not so sure you should be here.” She looked at Beth again, subtly turning her body and snubbing Marguerite. Ouch.

“I want you to be happy,” she said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. I’m glad you’re not pining for me—I always wanted you to find someone else to be with. But she’s all wrong for you.”

“Hey!” Marguerite sounded indignant. We all ignored her.

“She’s a nice enough person,” Kia said, “but…you deserve better. That’s just my opinion of course. It’s your choice.”

She directed her next words at Marguerite, who leaned away from her. “I’ve said my piece; I’ll leave you alone now. But think about what I’ve said.”

To Beth, she added, “Just be happy.”

And then she was gone.

I excused myself to the bathroom, wanting to give them time to talk. When I came back after as much dawdling as I could muster, the lights were on and I heard their voices in the bedroom. I had to walk by; thank goodness the door was open and they weren’t, well, you know.

Beth sat on the bed, watching Marguerite rebound around the room, snatching clothes and toiletries and flinging them into a tapestry suitcase in a dramatic fashion.

Uh oh.

She zipped the suitcase shut with a flourish and hauled it into the living room. We followed.

“Can’t we talk about this?” Beth asked.

Marguerite took Beth’s face in her hands. “I love you,” she said, “and I will always love you. But if the shade of your former love says it’s not to be, then it isn’t to be.” She choked on the last words, her big blue eyes filling with unshed tears. “I’ll never forget you,” she managed. Then she grabbed her suitcase and made her grand exit.

Which would have been more grand if the suitcase hadn’t caught on the doorjamb and tipped over. She righted it, straightened her back, and continued on her way, head held overly high.

I looked at Beth. “She expects you to go after her.”

“I know,” Beth said. “Glass of wine? Or are you a whisky sort of girl?”

“Martini, if you have the fixings.”

We were sitting back down, quietly contemplative, when Kia spoke again.

“I was afraid of that,” she said.

To our credit, neither of us actually spilled our drinks.

“Kia?” Beth whispered.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Kia said, appearing in the doorway. She looked less substantial now, even more see-through. “I didn’t mean to drive her out. I just…wanted to make sure she was worthy of you.”

“Because if she’s so insecure a ghost can drive her out…” Beth’s eyes widened in understanding.

I just sat with my martini in hand, not wanting to interrupt.

“Exactly,” Kia said. “She could’ve told me to piss off, and I would’ve, and I would’ve respected her for it.”

Beth laughed softly, a little sadly. “I know, honey. I know. I would’ve, too.”

Kia was translucent; in another moment, she’d be gone. They said their goodbyes before she’d faded completely.

“She always was a good judge of character,” Beth commented, and knocked back the rest of her martini.

“You know something? You never actually told Kia that Marguerite made you happy,” I pointed out.

Beth blinked. “You know, you’re right. I didn’t realize that until now.”

“Did she? Make you happy, I mean.”

“I never really had time to find out. We hadn’t been dating that long. She wanted to move in; I was willing to give it a shot.”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“She’ll come back in a few days to get the rest of her stuff. I’ll have it packed up for her. She’s a lovely girl, but Kia’s right. It wasn’t meant to be.” She smiled. “I guess you don’t usually get in the middle of drama like this, huh?”

“This is a first for me,” I said. “I’m glad I could help. PMS to the rescue.”

I’d already packed up the equipment before we’d started the séance. I folded the table and Beth helped me carry everything down to my van.

“Thanks again,” Beth said. “Now I know who to call next time the Equal packets get messed up.”

“Give my number to your friends,” I said. “I left extra cards on your counter.”

“Actually,” she said, and stopped. I waited. “I might call you anyway, if that’s okay.”

I tried not to look too excited. After all, this was kind of quick. Even if Marguerite hadn’t been The One, Beth still needed time to process.

“To talk about paranormal stuff,” she added. “Now that I know it’s real, I’d like to know more.”

“Any time,” I said. She didn’t quite wink, but I could tell there was something more there.

It was a start. And I had a sneaking suspicion Kia might just approve.

A Quiet Love

Suzan Tessier

~

Sharp breath caught in her throat, Julia shot up from the desk in the corner. Like blackened gossamer, Elizabeth’s shadow fell across the quilt.

One soft, coaxing word, like a gentle breeze came from across the bedroom.

Sleep.

Julia sucked in a breath, tension and desire caught in the sponge of her lungs. She could not sleep. Not here. Not in the heritage home once belonging to Elizabeth Hicks.

Revealing the face Julia longed to touch, the wispy form turned and without reply in word or expression, was gone.

“Oh Elizabeth.” Julia placed a hand on her heart. Want ached, stretching her being to fine filament, so tense with need, that one wrong move and it would snap in two.

“Julia, is that you? ”

Whenever Debbie Sullivan’s voice blasted through the house, Julia imagined the delicate wallpaper curling up and sliding off.

“Julia? Can you come down here a sec?”

She resisted the urge to race away from the demand and return to the modest rolltop desk where she’d been reading a letter dated June 9, 1852 from Hannah Ellis, a member of the Woman’s State Temperance Society of New York, to Elizabeth.

“Julia?” Debbie was now at the bottom of the stairs, threatening to barge up and dissolve the last glimmer of Elizabeth’s essence.

“Hi, Debbie. Yes, I’m here. I wasn’t expecting you in today.” She padded to the edge of the vintage Persian runner and Debbie smiled up at her, teeth gleaming and eyes immediately disinterested upon finding their target. It was an attention shift Julia was familiar with; her parents, too, were never more engaged with her then when she was out of their sight. But then, she soothed herself, they had been old—both in person and ways—and she an only child who’d never known how to anticipate their needs.

“Mrs. Overley dropped off her donation this morning at my house. I had a few minutes so I thought I’d come by before you closed up.” Debbie retreated, her news a tasty morsel Julia chased after.

Downstairs, on the main floor, a Priority Mail box bore the words E. Hicks museum in quick, black marker scrawl.

Excitement heated Julia’s face and dried her mouth even while disappointment scratched at the anticipation. Wasn’t there more? What kind of collection was crammed into an express mail box?

Debbie opened the box and removed the sacred items. No more care was used than if she’d been sorting groceries. Julia flinched with each item tossed onto the table.

“It’s a shame.” Debbie tucked a wad of blonde hair behind one ear, her smile causing more tension in Julia’s spine than the mystifying words.

Julia’s attention hung between Debbie and the treasures on the table—a pair of glasses, a letter, a post card, and an embroidered pillow. “Is there something wrong? I think they are wonderful gems.”

Debbie’s face screwed up like a churchyard gargoyle’s. “There’s no jewelry.”

“No, I meant-”

“We probably should have told Mrs. Overley to hang onto this stuff. Any new pieces will have to go into storage now.”

Acutely aware of the gulf between herself and the other woman, she searched inwardly for connection or clues to figure out what Debbie was talking about. Somehow she felt sure she was the one at fault for missing a valuable piece of information.

“Do they feel the house is too crowded? Or are they waiting for a special occasion?” she asked.

Debbie paused, possibly considering the question before rushing on. “I’m surprised at how well you’re taking this. Even I was upset when I heard.”

A car horn blared, but to Julia it was only background noise like the hum of the refrigerator or the canned voices coming from the news shows Henry watched.

Debbie shot to the window and peered out through the reproduction period lace (Julia had tried for years to locate authentic 1850’s lace curtains but had been unable to find anything matching the photographs).

”It’s my daughter, Courtney. I told her I’d be a few minutes but you know how are teenagers are. Zero patience.”

“Does she want to come in? I’d be glad to give her a tour.”

With a laugh, Debbie shook her head. “No thanks. She said this house gives her the creeps.”

“Oh.” She felt more disappointment than she should have. Teenagers and children were rarely interested in Elizabeth Hicks and her home, but still Julia longed to educate people on the great woman’s life.

Debbie pointed at the pillow. “It’s made from real hair, you know. Isn’t that gross?”

Julia jolted, but quickly calmed herself. “Whose hair?”

“Elizabeth’s I think.”

Her knees unhinged as though a pin holding them together had been removed. The walls moved in, hugging the dusty, stale air around her. She didn’t dare speak. She didn’t need to. She had no words for what she felt staring at the delicate cameo of an eighteenth century woman on the sage silk cushion. Many items in the house had belonged to or been touched by Elizabeth but none, not one, had been a part of her physical being. Touching the hair would be the closest Julia would come to touching Elizabeth. Heat flared, a wild fire of need filling her. “You okay?”

The gentleness of Debbie’s voice drew her out of the reverie.

She met the other woman’s gaze and found it caring, intent, so unlike anything coming from the efficient, distant woman before. A rush of goodwill and something she could not name prompted the thought, This is how it might have been for women in the 19th century—the soothing bond of deep female friendship.

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m just excited by the donations.”

And then like tar on a patch of grass, the moment was smothered by Debbie’s frown. “Well, at least someone still gets excited by Elizabeth Hick’s memorabilia. Most people don’t even know who she is anymore.” She glanced toward the window and the daughter who waited impatiently. “I better get going.”

“Uh, Debbie? Before you go-”

“Yeah?” Impatient tone. She wouldn’t be held back.

Anxiety spiked. She wasn’t one to push, to ask for what she wanted. Except now. She needed to know what had been hidden from her or perhaps what she had failed to see.

“Are the trustees closing the house down?”

An incredulous look accompanied Debbie’s answer. “They made their decision last Thursday.”

Her face heated with shame. “You’re the first coworker I’ve spoken to in weeks. Since the cutbacks, my shifts have all been alone.”

Debbie’s brow crinkled. “But what did you think all the meetings were for?”

“I only went to the first meeting back in January. I thought the closing was a far off plan.”

Debbie snorted, looking either relieved or disappointed, Julia couldn’t tell. “It’s not. You should get an official announcement by mail in a few days. September One we’re done.”

And she was gone, leaving Julia with a crushing grief so complete it staked its flag in every pore and filament of her being.

On wobbly legs she crossed to the Windsor chair she’d sent out for repairs two years ago. “Oh, Elizabeth. I’m so stupid. I should have attended the meetings. I suppose I knew in my heart what they were about and stayed away.”

Tears bled into her eyes, distorting her vision. She cried so rarely, but it seemed only right she should shed tears here, in this place she loved so much, under the roof of the house once belonging to one of the greatest women to have ever lived.

She wiped her cheeks knowing hot blotches appeared on her face, neck and chest. She never could hide her emotions even when she tried swallowing them.

She spied low light creeping across the drawing room wall where Elizabeth Hicks, Judith Mary Jackson and Hannah Ellis had held the first meeting of the New York Woman Suffrage Council in 1854. She spun, disappointed when the reflection lifted and flew toward the window. It had only been Debbie’s Ford Explorer backing out of the driveway. She caught its taillights trailing down the quiet city street when she reached the drawing room window.

Outside a few late birds called and a lawn mower puttered to life, but the air inside the house was still, quiet and unmoving as if it too waited for the ghost of Elizabeth Hicks.

Sleep.

With the excitement of the donation and then the anguish of the news, she’d forgotten the last word Elizabeth had spoken to her. Upstairs, the suggestion had confused her, but now, she wondered if Elizabeth had been referring to Mrs. Overley’s donated pillow.

Yes, she thought. Yes, she must have known what was in the box.

Communication between the two women remained difficult. Elizabeth’s attempts to reach out had been met with open, willing arms, but the chasm between the living and the dead was far larger than Julia was able to breach alone.

She breathed deeply, studying the room where Elizabeth, her lover, Hannah, and their colleagues had discussed strategy and plotted campaigns in an attempt to create a better world. It was no surprise Elizabeth’s ghost had first appeared to Julia in this special room three weeks ago. Like all the other subsequent appearances, the first had come late in the day, after an unusually slow afternoon. No school children had stomped and shouted through the two story Victorian. No scholarly types had squinted at the painting of Elizabeth’s dear mother, Cora, and father, Edward. No one had wandered in off the street asking to use the restroom. Something in the quiet of the house must have drawn Elizabeth out.

Julia had feared she was losing her mind that first time. Throughout the house’s history there had never been a sighting of Elizabeth’s ghost or any ghost for that matter. But since then Julia had come to believe something quite different, something quite extraordinary, something which took her world, cracked it open to reveal something desperate for recognition—Elizabeth had returned for her.

A second wave of grief, more ferocious than the first, shoved her off balance, pounding the truth like a balled fist; the house was to be shut down. She wouldn’t have access to it or Elizabeth anymore.

Her tears were interrupted by the first chime of the mantel clock given to Elizabeth by her brother for her twenty-first birthday. Julia snatched her grief and held it tight. She’d already been reprimanded once before for staying after hours. Board member Jordan Casey-Schmidt had been driving past one winter evening five years ago. The parlor lights and Julia’s 1992 Chevrolet Cavalier had given her away. Julia had been so ashamed she had stuttered through her apology and promised never to stay late without permission again.

Hurriedly she returned to the table and Mrs. Overley’s donations, hovering a shaking hand over the items. The clock finished its sixth strike, and returned to the soothing tock-tock-tock Julia measured days by. She didn’t have much time. The alarm system needed to be set, the lights turned off.

Gently, she took the pillow into her hands, blood crashing through veins, speeding her heart and making her dizzy.

She drew one finger across the silk, luxuriating in its smooth texture and then slowly touched the edges of Elizabeth’s woven hair.

The world slid out from under her, the surge of exhilaration a force in itself.

Colors, vivid, vibrating, swirled. An exquisite warmth, at once like a tingling touch and a tempting caress, stoked her skin.

She sensed Elizabeth everywhere, but could not see or hear the ghost until one word cascaded around her like silken hair.

Sleep.

A spike of pleasure collapsed her and the pillow fell from her hands.

Dazed, but not hurt she sat up, putting a trembling hand to her dizzied head. “Elizabeth, what happened?”

She listened for an answer, but none came.

Moments passed before she realized her exhilaration had turned to a disappointment so solid she could feel it pushing up against her spine.

“It was nothing but my imagination. I’ve been wrong all along. You’re not coming for me. You never were!” Her scream made the small room feel deadly and soured. It also caused her shame. She’d never yelled at anyone or anything in her life. The stress over losing this house, over losing her job was taking its toll.

“Forgive me, Elizabeth.”

Hurriedly, she got to her feet and careful not to touch the hair on the pillow, put all the items in the box and went home.

Blood skipping and heart a thunderous drum, she pulled into another driveway twenty minutes away and as far from Elizabeth Hicks and her time as a black hole on the outer rim of the galaxy.

The squat ranch house with its Chicklet sized windows and brown siding was not even brightened by the small garden she attempted every spring. Though the yard was tidy, it was empty of character and love. She never found the peace she expected working in the garden and Henry had no use for such pursuits. Gardening was women’s work. He did only men’s work with a quiet stoicism he felt the rest of society should adopt. Henry, like Julia, didn’t fit into the century he’d been born into.

The moon of his balding head was visible through the front window where he sat on the plaid couch watching the news. She unlocked the front door, called her usual, “I’m home” and without thinking, padded toward the bedroom.

“Julia?”

He never left the couch to meet her. But then she never raced toward the bedroom without kissing him “hello” on the cheek.

“What are you doing?” His voice sounded like it was held up with teetering scaffolding. She supposed it was because it was once kept strong by commanding a team of engineers, his voice now only commanded her.

“I’ll be right back.” She tossed an awkward smile over her shoulder, too afraid to face him.

He crossed the distance faster than she expected and stood behind her, smelling of old wool and a musky mixture of skin and deodorant. Scent not looks or personality, she’d read, was what made people fall in love with each other. But she’d learned it too late, long after she’d ignored her repulsion and focused on Henry’s good points. In the beginning, the list—handsome, friend of the family, mature, confident, financially well off—had comforted her even when her mother’s coaxing had not.

“We love you both so much, we want to see you together for the rest of your lives,” her mother had said. “And I don’t mean to be harsh, Julia, but you’ll likely never meet anyone else like Henry again. This is your opportunity. If you can’t marry him for yourself, then do it for us.”

“But Mom, I don’t even think he likes me.”

“He’s been through so much since losing Kathleen and he’s not a demonstrative man, but he has a quiet love for you. You’ll see, before you know it, you’ll love him, too.”

But to Julia, quiet love meant strong, sure and filled with endless possibility. It was the kind of love that made you want to get up in the morning and sent you to bed with hope at night. The kind of love where no words were needed. Where a tilt of the head, a glance in the loved one’s direction or a tender touch could extend the depth of its desire and warmth. It was the kind of love a person dreamt of all their lives.

Henry’s love was not quiet. It was seething, but not in the beginning and not all at once. His need to control and his irritation when she obeyed, grew over the years. And like her parents, the harder Julia tried to please him, the angrier he became.

“What are you making for dinner?” he asked.

“I thought we’d have the leftover pot roast.” She prayed he didn’t hear the tremble in her voice.

“We don’t need to eat leftovers. You bought the lamb the other day, didn’t you? Don’t you want that instead?” His cold tone made her stomach skip and twist.

Slowly, she turned to look into his granite gray eyes and thought, This can’t go on.

But fear slapped the idea to the corner. She needed time to plan, to think.

“I heard they’re closing the museum down,” he said.

Blood left her face. “When did you hear?”

“Three or four days ago.”

She gasped, astounded at how he could have withheld something so important. Even though she should have known how uncaring he could be, she was continually convincing herself he never meant to be unkind. But there it was once again, out in front of them, like a gutted animal on their wall-to-wall carpet.

“You knew and yet didn’t tell me?” Her words were barely above a whisper.

“Everyone knows.” He swung away. “Make my dinner, Julia. I’m hungry.”

For the next two hours, she buried her need and did what Henry wanted. She made dinner, sat at the table listening to him talk about his day, a day that was exactly like every other since he retired.

The unhappiness seeped from the creases of his face and the breath of his speech. She’d never known him to be a joyous man, but when he still had his work, he had been determined, satisfied even. Now he saw the world through a screen of distortion and needed to vent about every wrong angle. Some might have called him bitter but Julia had never learned what sat at the core of his being so she could not say if it was bitter or dead.

He was tired after dinner and let her go, her earlier transgression of not greeting him apparently forgotten. She filled the dishwasher, wiped the counter and raced to the bedroom. The television came to life in the living room as she closed the door, opened her night table drawer and took out the leather bound journal.

Two summers past, an elderly descendent of Elizabeth’s, Joshua Redburn, had called the museum to donate a diary. Unable to drive, the old man had requested someone pick up the item. Julia had driven over that afternoon. She’d hit it off with the elderly gentleman and ended up staying until well into the evening. Over the course of the visit, she hadn’t hidden her admiration for Elizabeth and Joshua had been touched.

He wanted her to have a gift. She refused, but he was insistent. Finally, she agreed and he handed her a copy of the diary, bound exactly like the original. On close inspection, you could tell the pages had been photocopied but it was an excellent reproduction. His mother had made the copy in case anything ever happened to Elizabeth’s journal.

“I can’t think of anyone else who would enjoy having this more than you. I’d give you the original but I bet you’d donate it to the museum anyway.” Joshua said.

She smiled. “You’re right. I would, but I can’t take the copy. It belongs to your family.”

He placed the binder in her hands. “No, it belongs to you.”

Through her tears, she said humbly, “Thank you.”

Since that day, she had read the diary more often than she could count.

Now, she opened to the entry dated February 2, 1859.

I fear I’ve offended Robert Crittendon with my comments last evening. Hannah says it would do me well to keep silent at certain times. Though I’ve oft argued with her on this point, I know in my heart that she is right. I fear without my Hannah I would have already squashed this movement with my prickly disposition and inability to control my tongue. I have still so much to learn, so much to do. I pray to God to keep me on the path, to keep my Hannah by my side and to give me the intelligence to know when I must listen to her and when I should hold my fiery tongue.

Julia smiled. Elizabeth often mentioned her blunt manner, but Julia admired her brazenness. It was one of the qualities that made for a great leader and yet she sympathized with the woman’s lifelong struggle to improve both herself and the world she lived in. Though Julia knew Elizabeth was by no means perfect, she thought, At least, here is a person who recognizes both the light and dark within herself and still is able to accomplish so much and to love so deeply. I could learn a lot from her.

She read the next few entries, at first warmed by the loving passages devoted to Hannah and then chilled with sadness, as was so often the case after reading the entries.

In 1878, Hannah left Elizabeth for a man named Arnold Whistler and did such a complete turn about on the suffragette movement, she nearly had Elizabeth sent to prison. Near the end of her life at seventy-nine, Hannah admitted her mistake in leaving Elizabeth. Elizabeth forgave her old lover but the betrayal had so broken her, she took no other partner for the rest of her life.

Thinking about Elizabeth’s pain and feeling regret for both women, Julia lay down on the bed. Closing her eyes, she brought the few images she’d seen of Elizabeth in various books into her mind. Once Elizabeth’s heart shaped face was conjured, she summoned the pictures to life, imagining delicate fingers on her back, thick black hair lying on the pillow next to her. In her mind’s play, she gave Elizabeth words to speak:

“Turn over, my love.”

With a snap of excitement and deep desire, Julia imagined her lover’s tempting lips and blue eyes.

“You’re beautiful, Beth.” In her dreams, Julia always called her lover by the pet name.

“As are you.” Beth took Julia’s chin into her hands and pulled her close, hard nipples meeting Julia’s skin.

A warm tingle spread through Julia’s body as she imagined fiery kisses stoking her desire.

“Wake up.”

Her eyes shot open. Henry stood over her, greedy and possessive.

“Don’t touch me.” She pulled back.

He startled, but quickly recovered. He would never show weakness, not to his wife.

“Push over.” He made a movement to climb in and she bounded to the other side and shot up.

As they stared at each other, one animal sizing up the other, she realized how cold she was. Henry always seemed to sap her vital energy. But there was something else, something simmering beneath. For the first time she knew she would not spend the rest of her life in misery married to this man. She would find happiness.

It came from her mouth before she could lay it out in her usual way, folding its corners, looking for her words’ best position and least offensive delivery. “I can’t be married to you anymore. I want a divorce.”

At first, she thought he hadn’t heard. He showed no reaction. He seemed at best nonplussed and at worst distracted.

But her relief did not last, could not last. This was a man she’d been married to for over fifteen years. She knew him as she knew the stench from the creek at the back of yard.

“The closing of the house upset you.” He swung around the bed, startling her with his swiftness.

“Yes, but no.” She examined her will. It was strong. Sure. She could do this. “I’m sorry, Henry, I-”

He grabbed her wrist, his grip surprisingly painful for a man his age. “I won’t let you go. I told you this when we married.”

He had. At the time, it had seemed like a sweet gesture even though her skin had rippled with anxiety.

“Please, let me go.”

He gripped harder. “I lost one wife. I won’t lose another.”

She struggled, his fingers digging into her bone, his large frame a dark shadow above her.

“You won’t do this. You won’t leave me.” His voice was the firmest she’d heard in years.

Fear, cold and metallic, blasted through her. Not only would he not allow her to leave, he would take advantage of the blatant act of defiance. It would give him the cause he’d been waiting for. Though he’d never struck her, she sensed the violence in his stance, in his hard eyes. Not only would he hit her if she disobeyed, he would enjoy it.

Is this where we were heading all along?

Panic, pure and searing, grasped her by the back of the neck. For an instant, it held her suspended, all thought blistered beyond recognition.

And then it came.

The force of her will. The strength of her soul.

She twisted out of his grip, snatched up her purse and ran.

As she drove, her heart crammed itself higher and higher into her throat. He would find her no matter where she went. No matter what he did. He had a mission now. He would not let go until one or both was dead.

But the decision, she realized when pulling into the heritage home’s driveway, had been made even before Henry’s reaction, even before she’d told him she was going to leave. Because her decision was not a decision at all. It was the one true thing in her life she’d ever wanted. Elizabeth was the only person she’d ever loved. She might have admitted it years ago if she hadn’t convinced herself how insane and pathetic her yearnings were. How could you love someone who was not only dead but who had lived in another time? You could admire, yes. Respect, of course. But love? It was mad. She was mad. And she didn’t care. Not anymore. She’d lived too long not to know what she wanted and if her plan didn’t work, then she would be no worse off.

Shaking so she could barely hold the key, she unlocked the staff entrance door and bounded into the room where she’d left the pillow.

She tossed the other donated items onto the table and grabbed the sage colored cushion. Crazy with want her fingers dangled over the woven hair, but she resisted.

“Not here,” she whispered.

She took the stairs two at a time and raced to the bed, the only bed she wished she was sleeping in night after night.

She slid onto it, the complaint of the springs’ sweet whisperings, and took off her clothes. Then curling onto her side, she pulled the pillow to her body.

Light seared. Warmth radiated. Colors like streams of water poured over her. A beat later, she realized she was not in her body and that behind her was the woman she’d been waiting for.

“This is one of my favorite places,” Elizabeth sat on a swing in the backyard. The landscape was the same but different. Lush willows hung down to the unmowed lawn. A field erupting with wildflowers extended far beyond the property’s borders.

“It’s gorgeous.”

With a smile that sent tendrils of excitement through Julia, Elizabeth stood and reached out her hand. “It is, but I know somewhere better.”

She didn’t ask. She didn’t need to. Didn’t want to.

When their hands met, all was told and it was exactly what Julia had imagined.

“Yes,” was all Julia said before they left the home once belonging to Elizabeth and the body, now cocooned in a thick layer of black hair, once belonging to Julia.

Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts

Kathleen Bradean

~

I could be coy and say I only meant to press my lips to hers, but the truth is that I’m a thief, and I meant to steal more than a kiss.

Normally, I wouldn’t have emerged from the crawlspace above the bookstore until well after sundown. Like the hustlers, queers, punkers, and cut-and-suck cultists of Hollywood, I preferred the night. That afternoon though, Santa Ana winds pulled hot, dry air from the high desert into the Los Angeles basin and made my lair a suffocating oven. Heat fermented my mood, turning it sour.

The ding-dong of the door sensor below caught my attention. Even though I rarely haunted the bookstore by day, there was no reason I couldn’t. The heat in my lair made it impossible to rest, and fully alert, I was beyond bored. Mischief, I’d found, was an excellent cure for malaise, so I crept down the storefront wall like a gecko to see what entertainment could be had there.

In the bookstore, the torpid September air reluctantly moved as the fans slowly turned. Paper lint drifted on hidden currents through beams of sunlight before falling to the wood floor. The bright white walls and maple shelves were the current rage in store design, but as long as I’d haunted the place, the interior hadn’t changed. Even though it appeared trendy, the scent of old books gave away the store’s true age.

There wasn’t much to watch from my perch above the magazine rack. As I suspected, during the day the bookstore did little business. Until dark, there was only the ginger bob-tailed store cat, the clerk, and me.

Cat or clerk?

The skinny, tattooed clerk leaned against the counter behind the cash register and read a paperback. The store cat slept comfortably in a patch of sun in the window display.

Definitely the cat.

I crept along the wall and into the front window to curl around the tabby. The inside of the cat’s ear was translucent shell pink. The ear twitched as I barely traced the tips of hairs inside it. I ran my substance over the edge of the cat’s whiskers until it lifted its head and opened its eyes in narrow slits. It wasn’t much of a victory, but the cat looked directly at me and blinked before resolutely closing its eyes. After that, no matter what I did to its ears or paws, it refused to react.

For a while, I drifted in front of the sensor at the door. When my substance caught the sun just right, the chime sounded. I hoped to drive the clerk insane with erratic noise, but couldn’t trigger the sensor often enough. When it did chime, the clerk took his sweet time lifting his gaze from his book. Seeing no one in the store, his gaze drifted back down to his place in the story, which he held with his thumb across the page.

The day clerk was my least favorite store employee. After closing, the night clerks hung together near the register as if the strong lighting would protect them while they whispered tales about the store poltergeist. On occasion, I’d reward their reverence by moving objects or making sounds guaranteed to spook anyone with an imagination. The day clerk explained away their experiences by blaming the aging building. Maybe it was time to shake his smug certainty.

As I’d done with the cat, I played with the reddish hairs sprouting from the clerk’s ears. He scratched absently while he read. How I sighed for him. What good did it do him to be surrounded by fantasies created by others when he was blind to the fantastic, the phantasm, me? How could he choose to ignore me?

I wondered if he’d duck an unabridged dictionary, if I could summon the energy to fling one across the store at him. The massive tome would strike his forehead with a satisfying thump, I decided. But an expenditure of energy like that took time to build up to.

Settling for much less spectacular proof of my existence, I gathered my substance and knocked one of the expensive art books down from a shelf and then waited for the clerk to do his slow mental math of:

1 book dropped in the middle of the aisle

+ no other humans in the bookstore

= ?

No, don’t cast accusatory glances at the cat, you loathsome movie novelization reader. Reality TV viewer! I bet U think the NXT GR8 novel will be RIT10 N TXT messages.

The clerk set down the paperback he’d been reading and emerged from behind the counter. He picked up the book I’d knocked down and re-shelved it without so much as an arch of his pierced eyebrow.

Giving him up as hopeless, I drifted over to one of the fans that cooled the store, stuck my ectoplasmic fingers into the whirling blades and watched them chop off like slices of sausages. Snick, snick, snick; it didn’t hurt. My wrist was headed for the same fate when someone walked into the store.

The day clerk only nodded at the woman before turning his attention back to his book, but I couldn’t ignore such a presence. What were girls like her called now? Baby dykes? Lush was a better word. Not lush as in a drunk. Lush as in luxuriant, flourishing, verdant.

The khaki cargo shorts and unisex olive beater she wore were feminized by the curves they couldn’t conceal. Her hair was shaved to the tops of her ears, but above that were thick waves the color of autumn wheat. Hidden behind thick ashen lashes, her eyes were myriad shades of amber and toast. If I were the type to wax poetical, I would have compared her plump lips to a rosebud about to bloom. Her mouth bunched over an elfin chin, as if perpetually prepared to receive a kiss.

“Excuse me. Are you Rick?” the vision asked the clerk.

“Nope.” He continued reading for a moment, and then set down his book and said, “He’ll be in later.”

The vision nodded. “Hi. I’m Cara. We have a reading here tonight, and I thought I’d drop by and make sure everything was set up. I didn’t see copies of the book in the window.” She glanced around the counter. “You did get the shipment, right?”

“We got them,” the clerk told her.

“Maybe you should put them on display for the reading.” Cara squared her shoulders as the clerk tried to stare her down.

“You’ll have to ask Rick about the displays.” Every time the clerk’s eyes tried to focus back on his reading, Cara drew his gaze back by quiet persistence. She was much more patient in the face of his rudeness than I would have been.

She asked, “When does Rick get in?”

“Five or so,” the clerk huffed.

Oh, I liked her. From the way the clerk folded his scrawny arms across his chest, it seemed Cara managed to irritate him. Lovely. I wished I had such powers.

Gathering my severed pieces, I reformed and flowed over to her. She pulled like a magnet on my being. I wanted something from her but couldn’t describe it. Twelve dictionaries, three thesauri, and hundreds of examples of classic Western literature were within reach, and I was at a loss for words. The irony of that didn’t escape me. She had—élan. No. Spirit. No. Passion, maybe—that I wanted to absorb from her. Her aura radiated the creative power I sometimes felt emanating from artists. My fingertips brushed against her skin to absorb it.

Cara flinched from my touch. I was so close that I could have reached for her again, but that fleeting contact was enough to tell me that her creative force couldn’t be siphoned that way. She looked up to the ceiling. “I think your air conditioner’s broken,” she said.

The clerk grunted. “We don’t have air conditioning.”

Cara shrugged and headed for the door. “I’ll be back just before seven, then.”

Following her, I flowed to the window and pressed against it to watch her walk down the street.

Sometimes I thought of venturing past the store’s threshold. Nothing held me to that building, except that I couldn’t bear to leave all those lovely words behind. Besides, there was only one reality outside of the store; books contained thousands of alternate worlds for me to live in.

Waves of heat rolled off the passing street traffic and under the store’s door. Hot metal pinged and ticked as cars clung to the hill below the red light. The scent of radiator fluid about to erupt from a faulty seal gave the air a sweet, coppery flavor like blood. I wondered if Cara smelled it too as she headed down the Boulevard.

In a moment, she would be out of sight. I glanced at the books, and then at her. She would be back.

I would wait.

Restless as the hours passed, I flitted over the pink cotton-candy insulation and rat turds in my lair. Between the fifth and sixth steel girders was a stash of words I’d horded through my decades haunting the bookstore below.

I dipped into my box of pilfered language, lifted the words high and let them spill like chocolates from my fingers. Certain ones I’d lick, savoring the nuances of language. I sorted the words like candy from a trick-or-treat bag, a separate pile for each part of speech. Then I drew one from each pile and put them in a row. The grammar of the resulting sentence was correct. The words were culled from great literature. But somehow, strung together, they lost their flavor.

One day, the secret of writing would reveal itself to me, and I would put those words together in a magic combination that would make writers weep with jealousy. Until I had the secret though, words would simply be bland black marks on white pages to me.

I swept the words into their box, slammed shut the top, and shoved the box back into its hiding spot.

Downstairs, the night clerks pushed back the bookshelves that were on rollers to clear a space for the reading. The store cat sat on a bench in the center of the store and watched the clerks place metal folding chairs in rows. Customers read the backs of books and flipped through magazines. Not that anyone noticed, but I hung above the murder mysteries at the end of a rope. That back corner of the store needed a touch of atmosphere.

My heart leapt when Cara backed into the alcove below me. She wore jeans, a white long-sleeved shirt, and a red plaid tie. Stuart tartan, I thought, but wouldn’t swear to it. Her wheat colored hair stood in rigid spikes like the insides of an iron maiden, but that didn’t intimidate me. Following Cara into the alcove was a femme with straight black hair, broad cheekbones, and rose-gold skin.

“Looks like a lot of people came,” the femme said.

Cara peered around the edge of the true crime bookshelf. “Yeah, but they don’t have the book in the window. They didn’t even put it on display behind the mike. There’s just a stack on the table.”

The femme caressed Cara’s cheek. Her hand moved down to Cara’s shoulder and briefly squeezed before sliding down Cara’s arm.

One of the store fans swept an arc towards the alcove. The gust spun me so that my toes dragged across the nape of Cara’s neck.

Cara shivered and clasped her hand to her neck as she looked up. “Ugh. A chill went down my spine. The same thing happened when I was in here earlier,” she told the femme.

“Nerves,” the femme said.

Cara shook her head. “No. I swear it’s ten degrees cooler where I’m standing. Here. Feel it.” She stepped back and pulled the femme into the spot below me.

The femme shivered. “Air conditioning duct?” She glanced up. If she saw me, she gave no sign. “Nope.” A wicked smile spread over her mouth. She leaned closer to Cara. “Maybe what they say is true. Maybe this store is haunted.”

Cara chuckled. “A ghost? Tell me you don’t believe something so stupid.”

The femme laughed with her. “Made you smile.”

Cara shoved her hands into her pant pockets and nodded.

The femme touched Cara’s elbow. “You should go mingle. I’ll make sure the sound system is working. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cara said.

Luscious or not, how dare Cara deem my supernatural presence stupid? Stupid? She should have at least chosen a word that wasn’t so trite. She was a writer, wasn’t she? I expected more from her.

I was glad she said that. Nothing was more pathetic than a ghost with a crush on the living. She’d done me a favor. It would make my plan that much easier, not that I had a conscience that was bothered by trifles like theft.

I ran the tip of my tongue over my teeth in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment. I doubt she’d find it stupid.

By the time the manager introduced the book, most of the seats in the center of the store were full. The audience was mostly young, although a few older gay men sat towards the back, at ease among the lethally clad punks and Goths. It was a typical Thursday evening Hollywood crowd.

Cara sat at the end of the front row, next to the femme, while the first poet read his work. She squirmed. The femme twined her fingers with Cara’s, but by the time the third poet finished, Cara pulled her hand away and tugged at the red tartan tie around her neck.

It was finally my chance.

When she was introduced, Cara bounded from her chair and stood in front of the mike. That burst of energy seemed to drain her. Her lips pursed, as if she dreaded forcing her words to perform in public, jump through hoops, take bows. I wanted to release the thoughts on the tip of her tongue and let them run feral.

Unlike the other poets, Cara didn’t hold a copy of the book before her. She was going to recite her poetry from memory. Brave girl. Or maybe a better word was stupid. She couldn’t know what I had planned, but only a braggart would leap without a safety net, and I would enjoy pointing that out to her.

Cara stared at the shoes of the people sitting in the front row, leaned forward, and without a rambling introduction, launched into her first poem.

Her words had physical energy. They flowed from that rosebud mouth and filled my mind with images as bright and ethereal as the northern lights. I’d heard the term “slam poet,” but had no idea what it meant until then. I’d never seen poetry performed. The words lifted off the two-dimensional page and took on depth beyond ink and paper.

Listening to Cara’s poem, something filled my heart, but it wasn’t wonder, and it wasn’t light. While the audience enthusiastically applauded, dark jealousy rushed through me, poisoning my awe. How dare she taunt me such effortless art? It was as if she deliberately mocked my years of fruitless creative effort.

After the applause stopped, Cara stepped up to the mike again. She set her shoulders. A small dimple, unseen before, deepened in her cheek as she and the femme exchanged lover’s code in quick eye contact.

The next poem was a confection. It lacked the darkness of Cara’s other work, but even her sweet yearning had intense flavor. Furious, I oozed between Cara and the microphone. She took no notice of me, but gazed out at the audience. They were hers, and she was theirs.

Refusing to be the beggar outside the banquet window, I flicked my ethereal tongue against Cara’s mouth. Full, plump, ripe, like her breasts, but unbound and accessible, her lips were edible flowers. The spice of her dinner was still on them.

Cara paused for a moment. Her fingers touched her mouth, testing her lips for some trace of the sensation she thought she felt.

Not good enough. I didn’t simply want to kiss her. I meant to steal her art.

The crowd, in rapt attention for her words, ignored Cara’s hesitation, but the femme leaned forward, her smile fading.

Cara’s magnificent lips parted. I waited breathlessly to hear what might fall from her mouth like pearls before swine. Flustered, she shivered, but continued reciting her poem. I waited for just the right phrase, the right moment, the emotional peak. All those years, I’d tried to make ordinary words into art. Now I understood that what I’d lacked was a writer’s voice.

I forced my mouth over her lips and pressed my tongue against hers. Her aura I couldn’t absorb, but her poetry I could. Sucking it into my substance, I withdrew from her mouth.

Cara blinked at the audience, wondering just where her precious poetry had gone. She stared at her femme, wide-eyed and distraught, and then grabbed at the pile of books, sending some tumbling to the floor. She hastily flipped through pages in search of the tasty metaphor I’d stolen from the tip of her tongue. Disbelieving, she stared at the blank space at the end of the page. The words were gone—gone from the page, gone from her mind, gone from her mouth.

I passed through her, letting her feel the chill of my presence. I had her words in my teeth and I would never give them back. They were sweet and wintergreen, like candy conversation hearts.

Dedicated to Lucy

Ostraca

Brenta Blevins

~

~

Definition

Ostraca. Plural Noun. From the Greek: ostrakon, pl. Ostraka. Fragments containing scratched-in words or forms of writing on stone or pottery.

Postcard

Dear Isabelle,

I’m sorry. I wish there were something else I could do or say, but there it is: I’m sorry.

Anna

Postcard

Dear Mom,

With my layover in Frankfurt, the flight took 24 hours.

Cairo seemed impressive. It’s a huge city of 8 million living along the Nile in a mix of towering skyscrapers made of glass and metal and traditional structures of mud and terracotta huts.

From Cairo, we drove two hours south to our dig housing.

I’m going to have a wonderful time here. I’m grateful that Professor Wellman gave me this unique opportunity, especially for an English major! Being in Egypt (and helping to write a book) is going to be the experience of a lifetime. I just had to come.

Love, Anna

P.S. Internet and cell reception is spotty.

Dream Journal

Dream: Falling. Terrible falling, plummeting sensations.

Analysis: I woke in the darkness of the little cottage, which I share with Diane Foster, the archaeology student I’d met briefly last night before I collapsed in exhaustion. Maybe the dreams came from my fear of flying?

Desert Scenes

In the darkness, Anna hiked the half mile across the desert sand following the other students, most of whom were too sleepy to do anything other than slurp coffee from their insulated mugs. With her nightmares and jet lag, Anna felt like a zombie.

At least she was too tired to think of Isabelle, she congratulated herself, but as her thoughts then turned to whether or not Isabelle was thinking of her, she realized the futility of her brief victory.

The group members dispersed to their various locations, all except for Anna.

She stood transfixed as she gazed around the flat desert floor interrupted only by jumbles of rock, piles of dirt and sand, and gatherings of people. The pink glow of the pre-dawn sky cast everything and everyone in a soft, pastel hue. Men in flowing robes and turbans were heaving a massive white block onto a wooden ramp. Students in their Western attire clustered about, shoulders hunched over notebooks, pens in their hands. At another site, surveyors peered through their equipment at rods rising from the desert floor. With so much activity aboveground, the site was nothing like the claustrophobic dig she’d envisioned after her brief interview with Professor Wellman, with images of people writhing through narrow tunnels into hot, dark chambers.

A fluttering breeze signaled the rise of the sun, presaging the coming heat of daytime on the hot sand. Anna wondered where she needed to go. She couldn’t help envying the other students’ clear purpose.

“Anna!” Professor Wellman waved his wide-brimmed hat. The group of Egyptian men around him departed. Anna walked over.

“Welcome to the village.” He glanced down at her hands. “I see you brought your notebook. Good!”

Anna smiled, but truth be told, she hadn’t known what else to bring.

“Your job is to record my activities ‘in situ,’“ Professor Wellman told her. “You know what ‘in situ’ means?”

“Uhh—”

“In place,” the professor said. “I keep forgetting you’re not in archaeology. You’re going to observe me in my natural environment, just as the archaeologists here record their findings before they remove them.”

“But—” Anna frowned. Anna had been looking for an assistantship in the English Lit department when she’d come across the job listing in Archaeology. “I thought my job was to help you with documentation.” When she got the job, she’d told Isabelle, “I have to go,” but Isabelle had known the opportunity wasn’t the only reason Anna had accepted the work.

“It is.” The professor beamed. “It’s to document me, what I do here, my discoveries.”

“But—” Anna stopped herself. How intelligent could she sound when she bleated “but” and “uh” in every reply. “Won’t I be duplicating the work you and your students do?”

“No, no. I’m documenting the site, the finds, you’re documenting me.”

“Like—like a biography?” Anna hated the way her voice practically squeaked out the question. “Not about the site?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.” Well, of course, she realized. There were enough archaeology students eager for fieldwork themselves that the professor would have no problem filling a team to work the site. What had she gotten herself into?

Professor Wellman tapped a plastic white device hanging from an orange cord encircling his neck. “I bought a voice recorder. This should help you transcribe what I say during the day. That way you don’t have to be around me the whole time.” He frowned at her unopened notebook. “Aren’t you going to start writing?”

“Uh, yes.” Anna flipped open the journal and uncapped her pen with her mouth. Professor Wellman continued frowning at her even though she had her pen poised ready to write. She wondered what commitment she had made in agreeing to this job.

“Why don’t you go and observe how the archaeology students record site data?”

“Uh—fine.” She forced the words through her clenched teeth. Her cheeks burned with irritation and embarrassment. She headed toward the students.

“I’ll give you the recorder later!” he called. “And don’t forget to drink lots of water! Or you’ll become a mummy yourself!”

Anna spent the rest of the morning observing the students scribbling into their notebooks, recording the exact spot, size, and description of their particular items of discovery in the 10 foot by 10 foot grid.

In the distance, she watched the surveyors measuring other parts of the ancient temple complex. Anna wondered whether Isabelle, a civil engineering graduate student, would marvel more at the forensic analysis of the original construction or the contemporary reconstruction effort of the temple fragments in preparation for eventual tourism.

She groaned inwardly. Thousands of miles and a huge change of scenery hadn’t put enough space between Anna and her promise to never speak to Isabelle again.

When the students went inside the work hut to escape the midday sun, Anna followed along. The students sat down and pulled out calipers, graphing paper, and little scraps of old pottery.

“What are you doing?” Anna asked.

“We’re drawing sherds,” Diane, her roommate said. And when Anna’s face remained blank, she explained, “Potsherds. Fragments of pottery. Common archaeological relics.”

“The most tedious, too,” a young man snorted. “Who are you?”

Diane introduced Anna to the dig’s other students. Jason was a senior from Texas; Kristy and Helen were, like Diane, graduate students.

“What are you doing here?” Helen asked, looking up from her graph paper. “You in archaeology?”

“Professor Wellman hired me to help him with a book about his work. He was interested in a cross-disciplinary approach, so he hired an English major.”

“Because archaeology students can’t write?” she asked, glaring at Anna.

Anna blushed.

“We all know how Wellman is,” Kristy whispered the admonishment to Helen.

Helen sniffed, but remained silent. The students returned to their sketches while Anna flipped the edges of her notebook, not sure what she should write about the professor yet.

“The one thing I know is I miss my girlfriend already.” Jason rolled his eyes, then glanced up at Anna. “You dating anybody?”

“Not—no.” She tried to keep images of Isabelle from surfacing. “No.”

“Ah.” Jason grumbled, “We’re never going to get finished with these—which are from last season. Ugh. They may remain here forever.”

“Can I help you with one of those?” Anna yearned to feel useful.

“The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities only allows archaeology students and professionals to perform fieldwork,” Diane explained.

“Wellman told me to get familiar with life at the dig site.”

“Well, lean over and I’ll show you,” Diane said. She demonstrated how she used the calipers to get measurements off the sherd and then transfer that by drawing on the graph paper.

The hut suddenly grew dark as if a shadow had passed over the sun.

“What are you doing?” Professor Wellman stood looming in the doorway, looking at Anna.

“I was just getting familiar with the site procedures.” Anna wondered why she needed to apologize for learning the observational techniques the professor had suggested.

“Here.” Wellman tugged the voice recorder from around his neck. “It’s filled up. I may have to get a bigger one.” After handing the device to her, he turned and left.

Anna pulled her laptop from her backpack, then put in her earbuds, preparing to listen to the voice recorder.

“How did he get funding for her?” Helen asked in a whisper to Diane.

“No kidding,” Jason said. “Do you know how much it’s costing me to be here?”

“I swear, the man’s such a Pharaoh,” Diane said. “Building temples to himself.”

“What choice do we have?” Kristy asked. “He’s on my dissertation committee.”

Anna hit the playback button and began listening to the professor’s voice.

Draft

Professor Wellman begins each day meeting with the site workers and the conservator. He provides direction to the site artist and the site photographer, as well as coordinating the efforts of his students. The students are responsible for the detailed maps of the site that the professor coordinates into his overall map. Additionally, the professor works with local employees to coordinate their efforts.

Scene

That night, Anna followed Diane to the common building where a local cook prepared the students’ dinner, which was something with eggplants, rice, and lentils.

After dinner, the students sat around the table and started telling stories. As the sky grew darker, their stories grew likewise.

Anna had been half-drifting off to sleep when she caught Jason’s comment, “Lord Carnarvon was the first to prove there are spooky things that happen in the deserts here.”

“Oh, please,” Diane said. “You’re not going to insist there’s some ‘pharaoh’s curse,’ are you?”

“Beware the Curse of the Pharaohs,” Jason retorted, “Or it will get you.”

“Hasn’t that curse been proven imaginary?” Anna couldn’t speak intelligibly to archaeology experts, she was sure, but she suspected they were trying to scare her, the new person on site. In a way, she couldn’t blame them for wanting to have fun, when their day seemed so monotonous.

“Well, if you don’t believe in the curse, how about ghosts?” Jason raised his voice over Diane’s objections. “There’s evil Queen Rhodophis who haunts the third temple at Giza. She appears naked and anyone who gazes upon her beauty is captivated before being driven mad.”

“Please,” Diane repeated.

“Jason, for once, has a point.” Kristy looked like she belonged in a boutique, not in the desert. “Many tombs do have curses written on or around them, warning against entry.”

“Of course, some tombs have no inscriptions,” Helen mumbled. “Khufu has none interior.”

“Well, regardless…” Anna rose. “It’s time for me to fall asleep before our tomb’s curse gets me.”

Dream Journal

Dream: Isabelle looked at me adoringly with the open and welcoming look of pure, unconditional love. She pulled me into an embrace, our arms wrapped around each other like we’d never fought, never separated. I turned my face into Isabelle’s long, dark hair, as if I could hide there from all the problems we’d had. I drew in a deep breath; her hair smelled sweet, like the scent of blooms on the night wind. I turned, and pressed my lips against her soft cheek. She felt so warm. I kissed her again, and again, moving my lips closer toward hers. Finally, she turned her head and returned my kiss, her hands pulling me tighter and tighter, crushing me against her. Her fingers dug into my back, first with ardor and then her grasp began to hurt. She wouldn’t release me for the longest time, but when she finally did, she whirled away from me. She pirouetted as a dancer would, then whirled again, her clothes altering into something strange and exotic, a white dress and black veil over her head. I looked again at Isabelle, and realized her skin was too dark, her nose the wrong shape, and her eyes were outlined in kohl and green eye shadow.

Analysis: I woke with my heart pounding. I had insomnia after that dream, so I transcribed it into my dream journal, even though I really wanted more sleep before beginning the day. I’d tried reading to seed my subconscious with pleasant things to dream of, but it didn’t work. When will I stop dreaming about Isabelle? Isabelle had never been a dancer; she was much too practical to do anything like that. What does this dream mean?

Scene

“Anna, I think this is a good first attempt, but I’m not sure it conveys the right flavor,” Professor Wellman said as he glanced over Anna’s notebook at dawn.

“Sure, it’s just a first draft,” Anna said. “What would you like for me to try next?”

“I really think you need to go to the voice recorder and start quoting me,” the professor said.

Transcript

[00:10:30] Wellman: Oh, oops. Almost forgot to turn this thing on.

[00:15:08] Wellman: All right, if you can hoist that stone there, I think it would assemble into part of the column. What do you think?

[00:15:15] Curator?: Yes, yes. Yes, I think it is part of the column.

[00:15:35] Curator speaks Arabic?

[00:15:55-00:18:35] More Arabic; sounds of men grunting.

[00:18:35] Wellman: Yes, that’s it. Exactly.

[00:20:35] Kristy: Professor, can you tell us whether or not it would be all right to move a stone? We can see a bit of pottery underneath and would really like to get at it.

[00:21:05] Wellman: Yeah, sure. Give me a moment.

[00:21:35-55] Wellman whistles.

[00:22:00] Wellman goes to bathroom????

Dig Scene

Anna looked over the transcript on the drive in, then made some redactions before handing it to the professor.

“Okay, so while this captures exactly what I do,” the professor said, “I don’t think this is what we need, do you? I want my book to capture the voice of the archaeologist, to make archaeology exciting and glamorous, so people will be excited about going to museums with the exhibits from here. That’s my vision. I’m counting on you to be able to pull that off. I mean, I’m the archaeologist. You’re the writer. Right?”

“I’ve got some ideas I’m working through,” Anna said.

“Great! Let’s get back to work.”

Anna went outside to the student’s dig site where Diane held a plumb bob and Kristy pulled a tape measure across the grid to record the latest layer they scraped down.

Dream Journal

Dream: I remember only a few images—the not-Isabelle woman. A knife. And blood. A lot of blood. Too much and too red. I woke screaming.

Analysis: I’m at a loss. Change?

Desert Scene

Professor Wellman looked up from the transcript. “This isn’t what I said.”

Anna tapped the recorder. “You said to ‘quote’ you.”

“Maybe it’s what I said, but it’s not what I meant.” His eyes flicked over her face. “You need to capture the flavor of my intent. Your job isn’t to make me look stupid.”

“Of course not.” Anna wondered if the only reason the professor had invited her to Egypt was to make her look stupid.

Dream Journal

Dream: The same. Over and Over.

Analysis: I’ve never had recurring nightmares before. Maybe it was the stress of being in a new culture, surrounded by unfamiliar language, foods, and climate.

Maybe it’s the separation from Isabelle.

Draft

Professor Donald Wellman first wanted to become an archaeologist when he watched a horror film about a mummy.

“I wanted to know why people would wrap strips of cloth around their dead,” Wellman said. “There had to be a story there in the mummy telling us something about the ancient Egyptians that they could no longer tell us. It was like time-travel. You could see into the past.”

Wellman studied archaeology at the University of Memphis and the University of Pennsylvania and participated in a number of digs throughout the world during his graduate education. “But I was always drawn to the site that first sparked my interest: Egypt and its mummies.”

Scene

Anna wanted to crawl under the hut and wait for archaeology students eons in the future to dig her from underneath the structure and speculate on what her life was like. Would they mistake her for someone who had known what she was doing?

“What did he think of your work today?” Diane asked, holding a pair of calipers.

“The usual.” Anna wished she could take a pair of calipers to Professor Wellman, not to measure him, though. She twisted her journal in her hand. “Oh, this is boring.”

“Boring?” Diane asked. “Spend hours making tiny little lines on graph paper about pieces of trash.”

“Yeah.” Anna wished her nighttimes could become as monotonous as her days. She wished she could bury her nightmares under the shifting desert sands.

Scene

Anna considered a silly postcard showing a monkey clutching a banana riding on the handles of a turbaned man’s bicycle beside skyscrapers. She thought about sending it to Isabelle.

Postcard

Dear Mom,

We only get one day off a week (at least the archaeology students do; I have to keep trying to write). The Valley of the Kings is wonderful. Better than I imagined. I got to go into the tombs of Tutankhamen and Thutmoses III (where I had to climb over a pit that was probably dug to deter tomb robbers). You wouldn’t believe how steep the entrances are into the tombs. And it triggered my claustrophobia, but it was worth doing once.

Love, Anna

Definition

Ostracize. Noun. From the Greek: ostrakizein, meaning to banish by voting with potsherds. To exile or exclude from a group through the group’s decision; to perform an act of ostracism.

Scene

As Anna retreated from the sun and from the professor into the hut, she caught a glimpse of several people arriving at the site, but she was too hot and tired to linger. Kristy and Jason were already inside registering potsherds.

“Hey, it’s that guy I see on TV!” Anna realized. “What’s he doing here?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kristy said. “Wellman had to get permission from Antiquities to enter the new tomb he’d found. And it’s good form to allow the people whose country it is to be first into their ancestors’ constructions.”

Anna yawned, then remembered the warnings about dehydration and took a long drink from her water bottle. None of her hydration efforts had helped her feel any better rested.

“Where are the women of ancient Egypt?” Anna blurted out. Of course, she wasn’t thinking of women in general so much as the dancing woman who kept appearing in her dreams.

“What?” Jason asked. “Has the heat gotten to you?”

“No, I’m serious. The pharaohs have their pyramids, the men have their tombs, but you rarely see women. I’ve been looking at books Professor Wellman loaned me.” Anna shrugged. “Why don’t we know much about the women of ancient Egypt?”

“Because archaeology is focused on the uncommon men,” Diane said.

“That’s not entirely true,” Jason said. “The Egyptians didn’t record a lot on their tomb walls about women. They rarely built tombs for their women. I think the ancients share some of the blame.”

“Typical male answer,” Kristy said.

“No, come on. Finding gold treasure is a lot more glamorous. That’s what people want to see when they visit museums and that’s what gets archaeologists on television, which, to be honest, is what Wellman really wants.”

A woman carrying sheets of plastic walked in and plopped down onto a stool and leaned against the wall. She grabbed a bottle of water and chugged it. “Wow. Why did I want to be an artist at a dig site?”

Anna looked up from her notebook where she was scribbling yet another sentence from the voice recorder. “Hi, I’m Anna.”

“You’re—” the artist glanced at the voice recorder in Anna’s hand. “Oh, right. You’re Wellman’s.”

“No, I’m writing his story,” Anna snapped. Her fingers tightened around the recorder until her knuckles turned white. “I do not belong to him.”

“Yeah. Her.”

“His story,” Diane repeated. “Yep, that’s what history is. His-story. It’s all about his belongings and his wife and his tomb.”

“You’re only saying that because Wellman isn’t around,” Helen said.

“Yeah, at least I’m not working on ‘his story,’“ Diane said. “Oh, sorry, Anna.”

Transcript

Wellman: Anna, I’ve paid a lot of money for you to come here and for your school credits.

Anna: I know. I appreciate that. I’m trying to give you what you’re looking for, but obviously I’m not.

Wellman: I don’t understand how else I can make it any plainer what I’m looking for.

Anna: I want to do a good job for you.

Wellman: Do you? Do you understand how important this is to me? I want to leave a record of my work.

Dream Journal

Dream: The woman dances through the shadows of a colonnaded room.

Analysis: When I awoke from the dream, I went and took a cool shower in our bathroom. As I was standing under the water, I would have sworn I saw the dream woman standing in the bathroom too. Maybe I’d fallen asleep again. I asked Diana if she ever has nightmares or dreams about ancient Egyptians, but she said after working out in the desert, she sleeps like a log and rarely dreams. Maybe the work affects different people differently.

Desert Scene

Dennis, the site photographer, entered the hut. “Wellman’s looking for you, Anna. Something about you needing to see something. And his voice recorder was full.”

Anna wondered if there was anyone at the site who didn’t pronounce the professor’s name with a snarl. “Where?”

“In the tomb.” He walked her out, then pointed at the new tomb, which seemed like a dark cave entry into a yellow sand dune. “Go down, turn right, then left, then right again. It’s really tight in there, so you’ll have to crawl.”

“Are you sure he wanted to see me?” Anna called, but the photographer had already walked off. Crawl? Maybe, Anna hoped, the professor wasn’t so far into the tomb.

Anna was sweating in the midday sun and hoped that the shade inside would be cooler. She walked down the slope lined with wooden timbers anchored half like stairs and half like a ladder.

When she reached the bottom, she could barely see out the entry above. She tried to stand upright, but hit her head on the ceiling.

“Professor Wellman?” Anna called. “Professor?”

What had the photographer said? Right, left, right? She turned and looked down the tunnels; work lights had been set up in either direction.

She crouched and headed down the right-hand passage, hating the enclosed feeling. Sweat dripped into her eyes and she had to blink to clear her vision. When she reached another hall, she turned left. This walkway was even narrower than the previous; she felt like she should turn sideways and scoot along. How could anyone have worked in this environment?

Finally, she reached the second right and took it until—it dead-ended into another wall, but tunnels branched off to either side. There was no sign of the professor.

“Professor Wellman? Professor Wellman?” she shouted in each direction. Could she find her way out? It was so hot inside the temple and it smelled like an oven. She was about to panic, so, when she heard nothing, she decided to turn right in search of the archaeologist. If she couldn’t find him, she’d return the other direction.

She bent over double, almost crawling through the narrow, dark, low passage. She pulled her keychain out, and turned on the little flashlight from her key ring. It put out a weak round circle, just enough to convince her that there were no beetles or snakes crawling in front of her.

She dropped her head, keeping her eyes on the dusty yellow floor a few inches in front of her hands. She shuffled her palms forward, then drew her knees up behind.

Then she realized she was stuck. She tried to turn in the narrow space, but couldn’t. She was unable to suppress the urge to buck, kick, and scream.

She gasped for breath, but no matter how hard the muscles in her chest pulled and squeezed, she felt no cooling oxygen enter her burning lungs. She was suffocating. She tried again to inhale.

Her mouth filled with dust. The dust of ancient decay. Of mummies. Of bodies.

Something gave way.

Anna felt herself falling. She hit hard. Her breath left her. And then consciousness left, too.

The heat woke Anna. She tried lifting her head, but a horrible sense of vertigo sent her spinning. Anna looked around. A whirling grayness amid the darkness caught her eye. The image coalesced. Anna gasped as the woman from her dreams danced through the darkness. The white dress swirled and Anna could see the woman’s breasts as the fabric shifted. The woman took the black veil from her head and then spun it around her torso.

“Who are you?”

She was beautiful and partially naked. Just like Jason’s evil Queen Rhodophis story.

“Why have you been haunting me?” Anna wondered if the last thing she ever saw would be this woman. A harem dancer, her mind supplied, recalling one of the professor’s books.

Another form appeared to distract Anna from panic. Just as beautiful, this woman was naked, and lighter skinned—possibly not Egyptian. The new woman glanced over her shoulder twice, while the first woman circled around the naked woman until her dance became an embrace. The two kissed and the kiss grew more passionate, each pulling the other tight and tighter, just as the ghost had held Anna in the dream. Anna’s vision blackened again, but the women reappeared, this time arguing with one another, pointing, desperate expressions on their faces, words flying in a language Anna didn’t understand.

They faded away again, then the dancer appeared on her knees, her face in her hands as her shoulders heaved in sobs.

The other woman appeared then. Blood ran down her hands, her arms. The dancer reached out for her, but she was jerked away into darkness.

The dancer fell to her knees, sobbing into her hands.

Eventually, the dancer rose, no longer crying, and walked around the walls of the tomb. Anna caught glimpses of images, all of them women. The dancer was there, with other performers, and concubines, and queens, Anna guessed. But not the dancer’s lover, her lover disgraced through some act of violence.

The dancer and her lover were separated forever. Was that what the ghost had been trying to warn Anna about? But it was too late now; Anna already lay dying in a tomb. She wished she could speak to Isabelle just one more time, tell her, “I didn’t mean to tell you, ‘I’m sorry;’ I meant to tell you ‘I love you.’”

Hospital Scene

When Anna woke, a man’s face was staring over the railing of a hospital bed. Professor Wellman. She hadn’t recognized him without his desert hat.

“You had us pretty scared,” Professor Wellman said.

Anna rubbed the back of her swollen head. “What happened?”

“You helped us make a great discovery,” the professor said. “I don’t know why that chamber hadn’t shown up on radar. But it’s incredible! Normally, we have to get permission from the antiquities council, but seeing as how we had to launch a rescue party for you, I think they’ll let us back in for continued study. I’ve already been in talks with the Discovery Channel about them filming our re-entry. By the way, you’re going to be okay, just a concussion and some dehydration. I told you to drink water.”

“I know.” Anna curled her lips together and wished she had moisturizer handy. “You know how we talked about whether or not the transcripts were accurate?”

“That’s okay. After your ‘discovery,’ I’m happy with your work.”

“I want to talk about it.” Anna watched the corners of the professor’s lips curling up in triumph. “You were right.”

Wellman’s head bobbed up and down in his enthusiasm.

“As a cross-disciplinary effort, I propose we do something different.”

“What?”

“I’d like to turn you into Indiana Jones.”

The professor’s lips scrunched as if he’d consumed a mouthful of sand. “Uh, what?”

“What if we take the bits and pieces of the find here and turn them into fiction? An adventurous professor would provide the lead-in to the stories. You said you wanted this book to excite kids about archaeology. We could write for young teens.”

The professor seemed to consider. “Okay. After they watch the documentary, they could buy the books.”

“And I’d like to write from home. I don’t think I have any business being in Egypt.”

“Good idea.” Professor Wellman laughed. “It’s a shame you couldn’t see it, but the tomb you were in held the most marvelous paintings of women on the walls.”

Phone Call

Anna pressed her lips to the unsent postcard of the monkey on the bicycle. She punched her cell phone’s first speed dial option. As the line rang, she flipped the card over and over with sweating fingers. Please answer; please answer.

“Hello?”

“Isabelle? It’s Anna.”

Midnight Confession

M.E. Cooper

~

I saw her today. Passing me on the street, she walked right by. She didn’t notice me—or she pretended not to. Her arms were full of flowers tied with a bow. A gift for her or a gift from her, I didn’t know. I tried not to care.

Dozens of people walked by, but she was the only one I saw, the only one who seemed real in the mass of bodies that swept along. I imagined I could detect the faint trace of her perfume—her essence. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, searching for some small part of her to grasp.

A flash of her yellow coat and she was gone. I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the backs of strangers as they weaved in and out of the crowd, longing to catch another glimpse—hoping that I wouldn’t.

She wasn’t there. I knew that. She was gone and I was never going to see her again. But I did. Every day, I saw her. Out of the corner of my eye, reflected in a window, hovering at the edge of a crowd—I couldn’t escape her.

My eyes still searched for a hint of yellow, a trace of her. Desperate to catch more than a glimpse, I slipped into the crowd. Moving against the tide, I resolved to act this time, following the insubstantial whisper of her passing, the glint of a bright raincoat disappearing around a corner, luring me onward. I was swept along and the thoughts and feelings that I had shoved away spilled out of their locked corner in my mind. Two years ago. A lifetime ago. My heart cringed as I drowned once again.

A girls’ night—a night like any of a thousand others we had spent together since we were children. Her boyfriend had to work. There was always a reason, an excuse that left her alone. She never saw it, just laughed and showed up on my doorstep, a bottle and a movie in hand.

Sitting on the couch, we sipped wine and huddled beneath a blanket. The television played music videos while we talked and laughed in the dark room. Beneath the scratchy wool, I could feel her thigh against mine; the heat crept up my leg, my flesh tingled, my heart thudded in response. All those years I had my secrets, things that I would never dare to tell her, things she would never guess. I still had her—at least some part of her. That had to be enough.

But I couldn’t stop myself while the lights were low and all that illuminated the room were the flickering candles and the images on the screen. I turned to watch her. My glance became a stare as I felt the warm rush of emotions, feelings I could never say aloud. She turned and we sat in silence as the soundtrack played on. Surprise, confusion, realization, longing—the feelings flashed through her eyes.

My lips pressed against hers, tentative when they met resistance. Pulling back, I fumbled with apologies but her hand brushed my mouth. She started to speak, but no words came. Her fingers traced my lips, and I could see the play of emotions across her face. Uncertainty gave way and she leaned in. This time there was no objection. With a groan, I let go all of my secrets. I allowed myself to feel, allowed myself to be. We moved deeper into the couch, our hands traveling of their own accord, guided by instinct, encouraged by need.

Warm and flushed, her skin glowed in the candlelight. The feel of her beneath me, above me, surrounding me—my senses sang in response to every touch. Her body arched into mine, a perfect fit. I was lost in the gliding of skin against skin—a frictionless heat threatening to consume us both. Intoxicated by the feel of her, the scent of her, the taste of her, I murmured the words I had hidden for so long. Confessions whispered against her neck, her breast, her belly, her thigh—words I could no longer contain.

Hearing my name on her lips, calling, pleading, and wanting—I was filled with a sense of triumph, a sense of power, a sense of belonging, a sense of completion. Feeling her hands on me, searching, coaxing, teasing—I knew that this wasn’t just me. This was her, too. This was us. Together.

It was midnight when she left. Soft, whispering kisses as we lingered by the door, fingers trailing, caressing, and remembering the paths they had followed earlier. With a gentle laugh, she shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her yellow coat. A flash of sadness crossed her face as she stepped across the threshold. She turned back, biting her lip, and looked at me—her gaze meeting mine, a question in her eyes. One last kiss as the door closed. Overwhelmed, my knees weak, I pressed my head against the wooden frame.

Returning to the couch, I swept up the blanket, inhaling her scent. My scent. Our scent. Wrapping it around me, I swayed through the room, the television playing in the background, the station playing old standards, torch songs and ballads of unrequited love. Laughing aloud, I twirled around the floor, dancing to my own rhythms, moving to the beat of my own heart. Out of breath, I burst onto the balcony, huddled inside our blanket, and looked out at the city lights spread before me.

The music swirled around me as I leaned against the railing, breathing in the brisk winter air; the shock a welcome relief to the flushed heat within. The words floating around me were everything I wanted to say and do. I wanted to climb higher and higher in the cool night air. To tell the whole world what I felt, what she felt—it wasn’t a secret ... not anymore. Now it was in the open. It was real. The feelings consumed me. They enveloped me, terrified me, exhilarated me.

I should have listened to more than just the music, the refrains—I should have listened to all of the words. Perhaps I would have understood. I may have been prepared for what was to come.

When the door closed, did she reach into her pocket and pull out the small velvet box he had given her that morning? Did she open the heart-shaped lid and look inside? Standing on my doorstep, staring down at what lay nestled against the satin, did she think about him? Did she think about me? She hadn’t worn his ring that night. She left it hidden, unspoken. The ring didn’t fit that night but I had fit; we had fit. A perfect fit, but only for one night. The next time I saw her, the ring was snug around her finger. Her eyes were as hard as the diamond on the gold band, and in their depths, I saw.

Words—bitter words. Words that had to be spoken, but should never have been said. Words that once spoken, could not be taken back. Words that hung, suspended in front of us, words that burrowed under our skin, embedding in bone. And that was all.

Months later, I sat alone in an empty café. The barista ignored me as I stared at my pages, my pen hovering over the scribbles and scratches. The words swirled before me. With every line I wrote, the memories and feelings dulled, the sharp sting becoming a soft ache. Perhaps I could put it behind me. But that wasn’t why I was there.

There had been a message flashing in the darkened living room when I came home that day. A message that I played a dozen times, memorizing, examining every word and nuance as my finger hovered, ready to erase, ready to forget. Her words faded and her voice washed over me while the television was a mute witness to the emotions that raced through me.

I sat staring at the pages before me, anticipation and dread churning through me. At the sound of the chime when the door swung open, I didn’t dare lift my head, my breath catching at the glimpse of yellow. Half out of my chair before I raised my head, I froze. I looked in her eyes and I saw.

A second chime and the wooden door crashed against its frame behind her. Hair wet and dripping, rivulets of rain streaming down his cheeks, he stumbled into the cafe. His hand trembled slightly as he raised the gun. A shot, a flash and my heart exploded. Holding her in my arms, nothing else mattered. A brief touch, fingers warm and sticky while the bitter stench of cordite and copper seeped into my skin. Desperate, scalding tears burned against my cheeks and I leaned closer, frantic as her lips moved. Her voice was lost in the deafening roar that reverberated through my head. I stared into her eyes, the stab of fear and pain as she struggled to keep my gaze and the silent letters of my name formed by her pale lips ...D...E...B...

The burst of a strangled sob shattered my memories and I was far from the city streets, standing on a worn path that wound its way through a grassy lawn. Stones surrounded me. I knew this place. I hated this place.

I saw her. No brief glimpse or whisper of colour that flitted in the corner of my eye, a fleeting image that I could never catch. She was here. The flowers lay upon the ground by her feet where the twilight shadows shrouded a grey marble marker. As I approached, my eyes were caught by a brass plaque fixed to a marble stone. The etched words swam before me and my mind struggled to comprehend the letters that burned into my eyes ... D...E...B...

I raised my head, a protest ready to spill from my lips. I stopped, paralyzed and mute. She stood before me, her yellow coat a beacon of light. Her eyes were red and raw. Staring into them, I saw something in their depths, something recognizable, something that I knew too well. She leaned forward, eyes searching but unable to find me, her voice washed over me, and her words pounded in my ears: “I saw you today ...”

The Dyke You Know

Selina Rosen

~

That thing in the wall knew that no one would be stupid enough to buy a house with a ghost or worse in the wall, so it hadn’t made a sound on any of the three times Helen had looked at the house to make sure she wanted to buy it. No, it didn’t start showing its ass till she’d been living in the house for a week.

She’d been sound asleep—probably dreaming about how lucky she was to have such a great house—when the wall just behind her head erupted in sound like someone inside was desperate to get out. Up till that moment Helen had been a true disbeliever: there weren’t ghosts, or demons, or angels or spirit guides or any of that hokey shit that psychics touted across the screens of daytime TV.

But it didn’t matter that she’d never believed in ghosts and she didn’t care what other people might say. You get woke up in the middle of the night by some unexplained sound it doesn’t matter how firm a disbeliever you are, the first thing you think is there’s a spook in your house.

She’d immediately gotten up and flipped the lights on—because of course any self-respecting spook will run screaming away from light. The hair was standing up on her arms accompanied by a sudden cold sweat and goose flesh. The noise continued. She knew there was something unearthly and wrong in the wall, but her logical mind fought it. It was the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom, so it had to be the pipes. The noise finally stopped so she reluctantly turned off the light and went back to sleep.

In the morning she called a plumber and he’d told her the last thing she wanted to hear. “Ma’am, your pipes are fine and… well there aren’t any pipes in that wall. They’re all in the west wall. That will be $64.70.”

Helen wrote paranormal romance novels for a living. Fans were always surprised to find out that she didn’t believe in ghosts and ghouls and things that went bump in the night, but just because she didn’t personally believe in such things didn’t mean she didn’t find them interesting. Now she churned out four romance novels a year and had more money than she needed, but she still remembered the lean days when she hated to shell out $64.70 so that a fat guy with his ass crack showing could crawl around under her house for ten minutes and then tell her that she was insane.

She worked at home—of course—so all day long she kept making trips from her office into her bedroom to see if the wall was making noise, which it wasn’t. She came up with a dozen different perfectly rational reasons for what she’d heard the night before as she wrote about sweating bodies writhing together in passion, his long throbbing man flesh probing at the softness of her eager, waiting, womanhood longing for fulfillment.

Not the sort of thing she really wanted to be writing because for one thing she was gay, but hey, it paid the bills. At least she didn’t hate what she was writing, and she had hated the damn bank. Occasionally she wrote some gay erotica, more for herself than the few dollars that brought in. She’d love to just write gay paranormal romance or science fiction, but she’d tried that and if she’d stuck with it she never would have made enough money to quit her day job.

At 5:00 she sat down to eat a tuna sandwich and watch a little TV and tried to remember the last time she’d actually been laid. Writing four books a year—basically in a vacuum—hadn’t left her with much time for a social life. Besides, the memory of failed romances past still filled her with dread. It was hard to just wade into a club and put yourself out there, send the right vibes to attract the right woman. Usually she wound up attracting the last woman in the bar she wanted to and then she spent the rest of the night trying to get away from her.

She hadn’t even been to a club in years. She was lonely and frustrated, and if something didn’t give soon she was going to get carpel tunnel syndrome from diddling herself. Dykes could just be such a huge pain in the ass, though. If they made a connection to you at all they immediately wanted to move in with you or have you move in with them. Only after you had done so would you learn that they weren’t really looking for companionship at all, what they were looking for was someone to clean up after them and take care of them, do their laundry, fix them dinner, and help with the bills.

Helen told herself she wrote romance because reality sucked on ice. For the last few years she had mostly just stayed completely out of the dating scene, preferring to work out her sexual frustration in words, and the help of battery-operated accoutrements.

Still that night when the banging started on the wall again she wished she had a big, strong butch to curl up around, someone to tell her that she wasn’t really hearing what she thought she was hearing, that it was all in her head because of the things she wrote.

The next day she spent the whole day changing her room with the guest room. She didn’t get any work done and she was exhausted, more from trying to find a good reason—one that didn’t include anything otherworldly—that she was hauling furniture around. The minute she lay down she went right to sleep.

Of course when the banging on the wall in her old bedroom started up at 3:00 in the morning, it woke her right up. She got up and went to look for her luggage. She did a lot of signings, appearances and such, and always had to stay in hotels, so she kept one bag packed all the time with all the cosmetics and hygiene items that she always needed. You know: her rags, mascara, toothbrush and such. She found the bag and rummaged through it till she found the earplugs which she was doubly happy for when the wall started screaming—which she really couldn’t just tune out or rationalize away.

When she woke up in the morning she went straight to her old room, and on the wall behind the bed a twisted face had appeared in the paint—the image of someone trying to claw their way out.

No, she’d shaken her head hard and thought, I just haven’t seen it before. It’s just the way the light is hitting the textured wall treatment. So she’d gotten closer to check it out then jumped back when she saw that the wall looked almost as if the thing had been painted there. She decided it was a water stain and called a different plumber who told her the same thing the other one had and charged her seventy-five dollars.

She went to the hardware store and in the paint aisle she met a tall, good-looking woman who started checking her out and damn near tripped over herself to be the first to wait on her. Helen didn’t like to brag, but she was fairly good looking.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked with a warm smile and a lovely voice that made Helen’s heart beat faster. The stitched nametag on her shirt said her name was Sara.

“I’ve got a water stain I need to cover.”

“Follow me,” Sara said, and Helen so did willingly. “This product is supposed to cover water stains in one coat… What are you doing tonight?”

So Helen went home and painted the “spot,” then worked for a couple of hours. She then spent the next four hours getting ready for her date. Her hair wouldn’t do what she wanted it to and when it did she couldn’t make it stay. She wondered when the last time she’d bought makeup was and why she didn’t have anything she wanted.

They didn’t sleep together that first night, and Helen wasn’t really sure how she felt about that, but then as she kissed her good night she started to think that Sara was more like the women she’d written about than the women she’d always wound up with in the past.

When she got home she worked for a couple of hours and went to bed, earplugs in place, and feeling like everything was as it should be. That was the night she felt it. It felt like someone walking up to her back and looking at her, and then when she had pushed it completely out of her mind as just being stupid and was almost asleep, the vision of the thing on the wall seemed to come shrieking out of the night. She sat up straight in bed and turned the lights on. She removed the earplugs from her ears. Whatever it was, it was screaming and banging on the walls again. She grabbed a flashlight and turned on every light as she walked to the guest room. The banging and screaming was almost deafening and the stain had returned. That was when she decided she had to go ahead and start believing in ghosts because this thing wasn’t about to be denied.

“Shut up and go away!” The banging and screaming stopped. “I don’t know what you are, but this is my house and I’m trying to sleep so knock it the fuck off!”

Feeling like a complete idiot she went back to her room, leaving all the lights on. She lay down. After a few minutes, all was still quiet, so she turned off the bedside lamp and went to sleep only to be awakened at 3:00 by the banging and screaming again. This time, she just put her earplugs back in and went back to sleep.

The next day she talked herself out of the whole ghost thing again. Somehow squirrels were getting in her wall, banging around and screaming and pissing on the wall and making wet spots. So she called an exterminator.

The exterminator told her—after an inspection—that there was no way that a squirrel could get into her wall and that squirrels didn’t scream, they barked. He made a noise. “Did it sound like that?”

Helen shook her head no.

“Then it weren’t no squirrel,” he said. “That will be $47.50.”

Helen decided she was in the wrong line of work as she paid him.

She painted the wall again, thought about Sara, stopped working on the straight paranormal romance she needed to finish to make some money and wrote a really hot lesbian sex scene with she and Sara as characters.

Not too surprisingly she and Sara got serious quickly and between that and dealing with the thing in the wall Helen didn’t get a lot of work done. Still, she wasn’t afraid she wouldn’t make her deadline. It didn’t matter anyway; she was in love with the perfect woman.

She thought about therapy—not because of Sara, but because of the thing in the wall. She thought about an exorcist but then thought she might just get locked up and she really didn’t think she was just imagining things. She thought about tearing the wall completely out and building a new one, but then thought that all she might accomplish was letting the thing out to run wild through her house and maybe over the world. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it wasn’t good.

She thought about selling her house and buying a new one, but she just wouldn’t feel right doing to a buyer what the people who had sold the house to her had done to her, and she didn’t really think that people would pay what the house was worth if they knew there was a ghost in the house that wouldn’t shut up be still or quit drawing on the wall. Helen made good money, but she couldn’t afford to buy another house unless she sold this one.

Being a curious writer type, and wanting to get a handle on the thing in the wall, she had looked up the past owners who it turned out were not the first owners. When the woman opened the door and saw Helen there she sort of cringed, and before Helen could say a word she said, “I’m sorry.”

Helen frowned hard, knowing exactly why she was apologizing. She took in a deep breath and let it out. “Do you know what it is?”

“No, it was there when we got the house.” Over a cup of coffee she explained to Helen how it had also laid low till they were in the house. “We have two kids… that thing… well we just had to get out of that house. I’m awful sorry, but we couldn’t buy another house till we sold that one and… well I hope you understand.”

She’d given Helen the name and address of the original owners, and Helen had driven over there immediately.

The woman opened the door. “Hello,” she said, then let out a scream, “Oh my God! You’re my favorite author!”

Next thing she knew she was sitting in the woman’s kitchen with yet another cup of coffee in her hand. It turned out that Evelyn York had been turned on to paranormal romances because of what had happened to her in Helen’s house.

“My husband Eddy… when we married he had a teenage daughter. A moody child. Her mother had been raising her, but when Eddy and I got married she just dumped her and left. Jenny—that was her name—she resented Eddy, she resented me. A very dark, moody child.” She frowned, thinking. “Not a bad kid, just really messed up. I… Well I think she was gay.”

Helen hoped her features didn’t change.

“Any way, we hadn’t been there long when Jenny, well she just doesn’t come home from school one day. A few days later that thing in the wall started up, and I think Eddy and I both knew that it was Jenny, that something had happened to her.” Tears formed in the corners of the woman’s eyes. “They never found a body, but… well I don’t think her ghost would be in the wall if she wasn’t dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Helen said.

Evelyn sighed sadly and shrugged. “It was a long time ago. We had a psychic come in and try to send her on, but she wouldn’t go. Then Eddy,” she whispered then even though Eddy wasn’t home, “he had a nervous breakdown. We couldn’t live in the house with it any more. The medium said she couldn’t really hurt us, but a girl screaming like that with such anger and pain, and you’re her father… that’s plenty hurtful. Didn’t do much for my nerves, either, and impossible to ignore.”

Evelyn was right, the ghost was damned hard to ignore. But when Helen thought about it she wasn’t much worse than having noisy neighbors. Helen liked the house and… Well, it just wasn’t right to sell unsuspecting folks a house with an angst-ridden, teenaged lesbian ghost haunting it.

She tried talking to the ghost. “Now, Jenny, I don’t know what happened to you, but I didn’t do it, and you’re making it damn hard for me to enjoy my house.”

Jenny just made some horrible screeching noise, so Helen gave up and went back to earplugs and trying to ignore her.

One night Sara came over to her house instead of her going to Sara’s, and of course just like clock work the ghost in the wall decided to show her ass—at an inappropriate time, too. Helen had hoped that with Sara being new in the house the thing might just stay quiet, but no such luck.

“What the hell!” Sara had quit doing what she was doing, which was immediately frustrating for Helen.

Helen sighed and sat up turning the light on as she did so. “It’s a ghost. She lives in the wall in my guest room. Come on, I’ll show you.” Helen led a reluctant Sara to the bedroom and pointed to the stain she knew would be back on the wall right on a large lump which was the forty coats of paint she’d used to try to cover it. The ghost was screaming and knocking and even Sara looked scared. Helen guessed that she had sort of gotten used to it because she wasn’t that scared anymore.

“Shut up!” she yelled at the wall and the ghost was quiet. “She usually shuts up for awhile if I yell at her, but no matter how many times I tell her to, she won’t go away.”

“Is this some sort of joke, Helen?”

Helen explained everything she knew about the ghost in the wall ending with, “I can’t just sell the house to someone else so that they’d have to deal with it, but I can’t afford to buy a new house unless I sell. I just don’t have that kind of money.”

“Then you can come live with me,” Sara said.

It had seemed like the perfect solution at the time. Her gallant hero was going to save her. Sara’s home wasn’t as big or as nice as hers, but at least hers didn’t have a ghost in the wall. Of course Sara already had furniture, so they would decide later what of Helen’s would move and what could stay. They had plenty of time to decide how best to meld their two households since Helen had no intention of selling her house.

The first week they had a lot of sex and basically just enjoyed each other’s company. Sara was nurturing and contemplative and she seemed to listen when Helen talked. They shared the chores, and Sara in fact proved to be the special woman Helen thought she was.

Then came the eighth day of their cohabitation, which started with her waking up to find Sara standing at the bathroom sink in boxers scratching her ass with one hand and brushing her teeth with the other. She turned to look at Helen, and without missing a beat farted and said—toothpaste spraying from her mouth as she did so—“Honey, since you aren’t working today could you clean up this pigsty and make dinner? I’ve got to work late.” She finished brushing her teeth and dropped her toothbrush unceremoniously onto the counter beside the sink as if that was where it belonged, and Helen noticed as she did so that Sara had used her toothbrush.

Helen smiled, “But honey, I am working today.”

Sara laughed. “Writing? That’s not like a job; you can work when you want.”

And so it started. In the next seven days, Sara changed from the perfect woman she had been dating into every dyke she’d ever lived with. So on the seventh day Helen packed all her stuff, glad that Sara had deemed most of her belongings to be unworthy of her house and had driven back to her own home.

It was broad daylight when she walked in with her computer and screamed, “Oh, honey! I’m home!” The ghost started banging on the wall and wailing in what Helen took to be an excited “so good to see you” way. “You know, honey, of all the dykes I’ve ever lived with I have to say you’re the least complicated.”

Waiting Tables and Time

Lyn McConchie

~

Mary had always thought of herself as ordinary as her name. She had medium brown hair, medium brown eyes, she was of medium height, weight and looks, and being middle-class, her clothes tended to the medium as well. Nothing about her had ever stood out at school, and now that she worked in a coffee bar, well—that was pretty much medium too.

Even her relationships were medium she thought as she carried a tray of toasted sandwiches to the group sitting near the café door. Absently Mary distributed the toasted sandwiches, returned to gather the next tray full of food and continued to worry at the problem of being medium when you were expected to stand out.

Maybe she could cut her hair, gel and dye it green or something? The mental picture of her parents’ faces if she returned home one day with short spiky green hair made her stifle a giggle. They’d been almost casual when they found out that she preferred girls to boys, but somehow she suspected they’d feel different about something as obvious as green hair. That really would make the neighbours talk.

Oh, well, she wasn’t the green hair type either. But that was her trouble in a nutshell. She didn’t seem to be any type but blandly average—medium, boring. She wanted passion and excitement, something magical in her life, but at nineteen she supposed few people her age got those things. Once she was on lunch-break she sat chewing her sandwiches and staring into space, her mind nibbling all around the edges of her worry.

“Something on your mind?”

She turned. “Thanks, Liz, nothing really, it’s just, I was thinking that I’m sort of unnoticeable. I wish I stood out more.”

Liz Turner, the thirty-something owner of the coffee café and Mary’s cousin, looked at her. “I see, you mean you want to look and be more like them?” She pointed at the other three staff where they stood laughing over some story Debbie was telling them.

“They’re nice girls,” Mary said, on a slightly protesting note.

“They are. But they drink too much, smoke too much, and one day they’ll wake up and find that they’re in a marriage that they don’t want with kids they didn’t plan for. Or that they’re living alone, getting old, and that the doctor has just been sent medical tests saying they have something nasty.” Mary looked at her, Liz stared blandly back, and then they both collapsed giggling.

“Heaven forbid that fate await me.” Mary said.

“So, what fate do you want?”

“That’s the problem, I haven’t a clue. I just know I’d like to be a bit less medium. I’d like some excitement in my life.”

“Is this something to do with Jilly?”

“Not her exactly.” Mary’s fingers twisted together as she tried to explain. “The problem was more that I didn’t mind breaking up with her. I mean, I liked her, she liked me, but there weren’t any sparks. There wasn’t any magic. It kind of felt like I was settling for her because she was there.”

“And you wanted something more? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, but what if I never find more? What if it’s me? What if I’m so average no woman will love me the way I want?”

Liz looked at her watch and stood up. “It’s time I got back to the kitchen. We’ll leave the rest of this discussion for after work.”

“Okay.” Mary went back to her job while Liz returned to the kitchen and contemplation of her young friend’s worries.

“Mary? Look at this.” Liz held out the flyer she received in the mail just before the cafe closed.

“What is it? Oh, a new coffee-bar.” She read aloud from the leaflet. “Come to the Monet, relive the sixties when the Monet first opened. Immerse yourself in the times, the music and the dancing. Twist the night away, rock around the clock, and dream, dream, dream. Prizes for the best sixties outfit, the best male or female dancer. Grand opening at eight P.M. Saturday.”

Mary studied the address at the bottom of the flyer. “Hey, isn’t this just up the road?”

“Yes, so would you like to come with me? It’ll be fun. You might even find someone who gives off sparks.”

“Not likely, but yes, I’ll come.”

Mary thought about the Monet re-opening later as she stretched out in bed. She wondered if she could find something to wear that suited the era; it was still three days before the opening. Liz might have something tucked away, she had a dim memory that sixties gear had always been “in” at the Monet and didn’t Liz used to go there sometimes?

She fell asleep to dream that she was dancing with Elvis to the music of a jukebox. He swung her in a froth of her petticoats and set her lightly on her feet again while asking, “An’ does that keep you awake, little lady? Awake? Awake?”

Her mother’s voice sounded exasperated, “Mary, I said are you awake yet? It’s almost eight o’clock, your breakfast is on the table.”

Mary scrambled for the bathroom. Elvis? What on earth had brought that on? Oh, of course, the coffee bar opening on Saturday. She’d gone to sleep thinking about it and debating finding sixties gear to wear. She’d ask Liz about that at lunchtime.

When asked, Liz was helpful. “There’s the shop up at the far end of Cuba Street, they sell retro gear. We could both go to the shop tomorrow and see what we can find? Then we can dig out any of my old stuff that I can find and mix and match with it.”

The next lunch-hour they found the shop and were soon almost helpless with laughter.

“I can’t believe people wore this sort of thing!” Mary whooped surveying herself in the full-length mirror. She had donned a skin- tight cheongsam in scarlet with gold and silver embroidery. “There’s no way you could rock and roll in this surely?”

Liz grinned at her. “You’d be surprised, why do you think it splits right up both of the sides?”

“I thought the seams had just given way?”

“No, it’s meant to be like that. What do you think of me?”

She pirouetted, showing off the huge flared skirt of the green dress with the half a dozen stiffened petticoats making it stand out in a bell from her waist.”

“It looks great,” Mary told her. “Are you buying it?”

“I think so”

Mary changed back into her own clothes then turned to run her hand down the rack of clothing. It parted to show an old poster propped against the wall. On it a girl sang into a floor microphone, her body snugly cased in a sleeveless top, tight black jeans with only a belt made from silver plaques linked by chains to relieve the stark black of her clothing. She had silver earrings and a medallion on a long silver chain. Mary wanted to look like that, so comfortable in her own skin.

She rummaged through the accessories and found a silver belt like the one in the poster. There was a top on the rack too, made from some sort of thin stretchy material, it had a high polo neck and the arm-holes were cut high, not just no sleeves, but making it clear the top had never been meant to have them.

She found black jeans the next lunchtime, and with them she also found a pair of boots, only ankle high, but the jeans tucked into them neatly. They had five-centimeter heels to make her sleekly jeans-clad legs look even longer, and yes! From the tangled metal in the charity shop’s jewelry box she pulled long silver-colored earrings and a medallion on a silver-tone chain. Mary looked at her plunder and smiled. She wouldn’t look medium in this outfit.

Mary stuffed everything into a bag on Saturday afternoon and hauled it to Liz’s place. There they helped each other dress and looked at the results in the mirror. Liz looked almost ten years younger in the green dress.

She held back a gasp when she looked at Mary. Someone who was almost a stranger looked back from the mirror. This person was cat-like, the long lean lines of her body showed as muscular in the thin black top and jeans. The silver of the belt, earrings and the medallion with its chain accentuated the blackness.

“Wow,” she said softly. “That’s really something. If I was a poet, I’d say you look like a piece of the night cut out and sewn into shape.”

Mary stretched, admiring herself in the mirror. “Not exactly medium is it?”

“It certainly isn’t. Where did you get the idea?”

“There was an old poster in the sixties shop. I think it was some 60s rock or folk singer, anyway I thought she looked great and it’d be good if I could copy the effect.”

“You did. Have you been working out or something? In that top you look as if you’ve got real muscles.”

“I swim all summer,” Mary looked surprised. “And I do aerobics two evenings a week too. I suppose I’m fairly fit but yes,” she turned slowly, watching her reflection. “I do look pretty good, don’t I?”

“Yes. Let’s get going.”

Mary strode down the street beside Liz, feeling good about tonight, Ahead she could see the garish lights of the rebuilt coffee bar and hear the music. In the night her costume almost vanished with only the silver items catching the moonlight. She liked the way it made her feel different; stronger and more assertive, as if people would notice her. Liz had spent their spare time over the past two days in teaching her some rock and roll moves and Mary was looking forward to trying them out.

They entered through a door at pavement level, climbed a long steep flight of stairs and came out into the main part of the building. The coffee bar was a fascination of light and movement. Overhead a glittering mirror-ball revolved, throwing off blazes of flickering lights, while in one corner a jukebox played and on the small dance floor people spun and circled.

Before Mary could do more than glimpse a portion of all that was going on, a man dressed in a suit made of silver-studded denim swept her into the next dance. She hopped, swung, and bounced in time to the driving beat of the music, laughed at her partner’s silly jokes, and found brief spaces in time in which to look about her.

Along the back and down one side of the room there were booths, each of which would hold two people a side, three perhaps if they were skinny or good friends. The ends of the seats in each booth came right up, so that once you sat down you were almost hidden from the general view. But then you wouldn’t be able to watch the dancers either.

“Wanna sit down an’ have a Coke?”

Mary nodded to her partner. “Okay, thanks.”

He led her to one of the booths and she saw how wrong she’d been in assuming someone in a booth wouldn’t be able to see out. She touched the heavy glass that comprised the outer side of the booth. It was that one-way glass people said was used in police interview rooms. It had appeared plain black and opaque from the dance-floor side. Sitting inside the booth as she was now, she could see out quite well. That had to be modern, they wouldn’t have had such a thing in the sixties.

Her gaze fixed abruptly on a young woman as she spun. Her gear was the same color-scheme as Mary’s, black and silver—a thin black sweater covered her from wrists to the high neck, the sweater hem tucked into black trousers held up by a wide leather belt with a large silver buckle. On one wrist over the sweater sleeve she wore a heavy silver bracelet, while on her chest a square silver medallion on a long chain swayed to the shift of her body.

She was a terrific dancer too, Mary noticed, and almost floated as she spun her partner around her. The partner wasn’t so good. Her outfit wasn’t authentic and she seemed clumsy. At the end of the dance they vanished behind several other couples and Mary saw the partner emerge on her own looking disappointed.

“Here’s your Coke?” The man in the blue denim had returned.

She raised it slowly before she was abruptly aware of another presence at her shoulder. The Coke was lifted from her fingers.

“I don’t think she should drink that, do you?”

She jerked around to find the woman wearing the similar costume to hers holding her glass and looking hard at her dance partner.

“What...”

“I saw you drop something in that after it was poured. I think perhaps the lady should make her own decisions about what she does and who she does it with tonight.”

His reply was so obscene Mary’s eyes widened then narrowed in rage as that was followed by the snarled question—“Whyn’t you mind your own business, you cow?”

“Why don’t I just call the police and have them test this?” was the reply.

He sneered. “Fancy her, do you? Got nothing better to do with your time? I have. Not as if there aren’t plenty more fish in this sea. I’ll just hook another one. Who needs some lousy...”

The woman took his arm in what seemed to be a surprisingly painful grip. Her voice was soft, the tone holding a dangerous edge

“There may be plenty of fish, but this is a private pool. Go do your angling somewhere else. The owner’s a relative of mine and he’ll back me. Now get out.”

The man gave them both a vicious look. Mary glared at him and whatever he saw in the other pair of eyes that watched him was still more convincing. He barged his way through the crowd and vanished down the stairs. Mary turned to look up into dark eyes.

“Thanks. I do know to be more careful, I guess it was being here and feeling as if I really am in the sixties. They didn’t have that sort of thing then.”

The young woman grinned at her. “Who told you that? They certainly did, the stuff they used was cruder and more dangerous, people could die, but it was around now and then and girls were smart to be careful the same as they are now. He won’t be back though.” She eyed her. “Care to dance?”

Mary eyed the woman back. She wasn’t particularly good-looking; it was the dramatic costume that made her appear that way. But she liked the laughter in the dark eyes, and the way her lips curved up. She got the impression that the woman usually smiled a lot although she looked too as if she hadn’t smiled much lately. Her face was a little aquiline and the dark hair flopped untidily over her forehead. It was boyishly short but there was a silken sheen that made Mary want to reach up and run her fingers through it. She remembered her dancing with the other girl. She could really dance and that was all she was asking of Mary right now.

“Yes, I’d like that.”

She was immediately swept onto the small dance floor and they danced. It was as if her hope for the perfect partner had been given expression in this stranger. There was nothing she did that Mary couldn’t follow, and when she tried out some of the moves Liz had taught her, the woman followed her in turn, meshing so smoothly it was as if she took the knowledge from her mind.

“What’s your name?”

“Mary, Mary Brynn. What’s yours?”

“Jan Gilles.”

“I like your medallion.” Mary grinned and showed hers to Jan. She studied the medallion’s picture of a shepherdess apparently involved in unusual ways with a sheep and laughed softly.

“Where did you get that?”

“From a charity shop. I think they can’t have looked at it before they put it out for sale.”

“I’d guess not.”

“What’s the picture on yours?”

The woman held it up in the flickering lights. “An oak tree. A friend made it for me.” Mary squinted and could just make out two sets of initials carved into the tiny trunk. Jan saw her looking and let the medallion fall down on the chain.

“Hey, they’re playing “Wake Up, Little Suzie,” let’s dance!”

They danced again and again that night. Now and again they separated, dancing with other partners, but always they made their way back together again. Around three the next morning the music stopped amid laughing protests from the dancers.

The big man who had halted it held up his hands. “License only runs until three, people. After that we have to shut down. We’re open again at eight tomorrow night.”

Jan took her hands. “Are you coming back?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“See you tomorrow night then.”

Mary smiled at her, her face alight with the pleasure she’d found in the dancing. “Yes, you will and thanks for—you know.”

“No trouble. I have to go now, but I’ll be watching for you.” She slipped away through the crowd and Mary went in search of Liz. It had been a great night.

Saturday she slept in, read for a while over a late breakfast and once the dishes were cleared she considered possible outfits to wear to the Monet that evening. Maybe she’d leave well enough alone and wear the same gear again? Yes, why not? She could vary the silver part of it, or even the black clothing, but stick with black and silver as her theme.

As soon as Jan came through the crowd towards her she saw that she had made the same decision. They danced, sat talking in one of the booths while they drank Coke and ate toasted sandwiches. Liz came with Mary only once more after that. Mary didn’t mind. As for her, she was happy. Jan didn’t pressure her; they danced, talked about all sorts of things, and laughed a lot. They kissed now and then and it never mattered to her that when they did it was just friendship. Somehow there was a connection despite that, and she was content for things between them to develop at their own pace—if they ever did.

They met most evenings and it was almost six months before she realized that she only ever saw Jan at the Monet.

“Come to the pictures, they’re showing the new SF movie.”

Jan hesitated. “I prefer dancing. I’m not much on movies.”

“Oh, okay.”

A week later she suggested they go out for a meal.

“We can eat here, don’t you like the food?” Jan seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion.

“Yeah, sure, I meant a proper meal, you know, three courses and sit down with knives and forks?”

“I’m not really crazy about restaurants.” Jan said. “I like being here. It’s all right if you want to go with someone else.”

“I don’t. I would have liked to go out with you, that’s all.”

She saw the quick look of sadness on her friend’s face and said nothing more—but it made her aware of the things she did not know about her. The following night she was afraid that Jan wouldn’t be there; she went anyway and, to her interest, she found Jan setting up a tiny stage.

“What’s that for?” Jan grinned at her and Mary relaxed, all was well between them still.

“It’s for the singing competition. The Monet always had one each year before it burned down and they’re starting it up again. The winner gets free entry here and free Cokes for the year. Why don’t you enter? I’ve heard you singing to the juke-box sometimes, you aren’t bad.”

Mary laughed. “I’m strictly a bathroom singer.”

“Most of the people who enter won’t be any better. I’ve heard this kind of contest before.” In the next half-hour she convinced her that she had a chance—and more importantly, that Jan would like to hear her sing—until, laughing and still a little reluctant, Mary wrote her name on the entry list.

Five nights later it was Mary’s turn to sing. She was the last before the evening break and all but slunk onto the tiny stage, behind her the band, hired for the nights of the contest, awaited her signal. She gave it and the first ringing guitar notes slashed into a suddenly silent coffee bar. Mary’s oldest cousin had written the song in the sixties; it had been the theme for a story Linda Rosen had written and sold. A little later a friend of Linda’s had put music to the words just for fun and as a child Mary had heard it sung many times by her cousin and loved it.

She’d decided that it fit the period, and at least it wasn’t a song she’d have to worry about someone else singing before her. Those here would hear this song for the first time, and unless she was in the finals, that would be the first and only time it would be sung. Linda had given her the rights as a tenth birthday present, it was hers and tonight she’d share.

The band moved into the song’s introduction, playing with a sweet savage sound that caught the attention of the audience. Mary was energized, pulled out of her nerves and into the music. Her voice slashed into the first line, soaring up, unexpectedly wild and powerful.

“Rock and roll is my life,

Gives me a heart and a soul,

Gives me a dream and a vision,

True rockers never grow old!”

The music soared in a gale of sound and she flew on the wings it gave her. She’d never sung so well, never felt so truly one with the sound that raised her up. When the song ended there was a tiny moment of appreciative silence before the applause crashed out. Jan reached her first, swinging her around.

“That was brilliant! Bathroom singer my foot! You were great!”

The audience agreed. When the votes for that night were tallied there was no question but that she’d won the night’s contest. At least if she sang as well on the final night she wouldn’t be disgraced.

Liz promised to come to that one. “I’ll wear my green dress with the starched petticoats. You just do your best; I haven’t heard that song for ages. It’ll be great if it wins,” she told Mary.

“Oi, I’m singing it, don’t I get some of the credit?”

“If you win you do.” Liz said. “Linda would have liked it that you’re singing that song. She wrote it for someone.”

Mary stared. “Someone? I always thought the song was just written to go with that story she did. It sold, didn’t it, wasn’t that what the song was for?”

Liz took her hand, drawing her to sit in an empty booth. “No, the song came first. It fitted the story she wrote later so she used it in that. But the song was written years earlier for Linda’s girlfriend. They used to go dancing together. It’s funny, but it wasn’t until recently I remembered that it was here they often used to come to dance.”

“What was her name?”

“Jenny, I think. I never met her but I heard the story from Linda’s Mum, our Aunt Julie.”

“What happened to Jenny?”

“Linda never talked about her afterwards. But Aunt Julie told me most of it over the years. You know this place burned down?” Mary nodded. “Well, Linda was hurt in the fire. She had internal injuries, her heart was damaged and her health was poor after that. The doctor said she shouldn’t have any relationship, nothing that would cause her stress. Her father had her in a private hospital under another name to keep reporters away. I don’t know the whole story, but I think she wrote to Jenny as soon as she knew her injuries were permanent to tell her that with the fire and everything that had happened she didn’t want to see her again.”

“What did she say?”

Liz gazed out across the crowded room seeing none of it. “She never replied. It was odd in a way, I never saw her around again, she just vanished. Maybe she left the city and went overseas. I don’t know. You have to remember, Mary, it was the sixties; there was a lot of prejudice. Linda’s parents had been horrified to find out that she loved another girl. They’d been unpleasant about it and maybe Jenny just found it all too difficult.”

“What a loser.”

“Linda accepted it. After that she stayed home and wrote, her work started selling and that made her happy.”

“And then last year she died.”

“The doctor was right, she lived as long as she did only because she took life so quietly. Jenny’s not trying to persuade Linda to stick with her may have been all for the best.”

Jan’s voice broke into that comment. “What was all for the best?”

Liz slipped away while Mary launched into Linda’s story. She finished with—“She wrote the song I sang, the one I’m singing again in the finals. Liz says it was written for Linda’s girlfriend.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I think it’s so sad. Linda loved her so she let her go—and she just went. She never even wrote to Linda or anything. Liz says that she could have left the city because Liz never saw her again anywhere.”

Jan nodded. “There’s other possibilities, you know. Perhaps she didn’t understand your cousin’s letter. It could have been that she was scarred in the fire and thought that Linda had heard and that was what she was talking about. She could have been unconscious for a few days. No one would want to tell this Jenny that Linda had been hurt. Perhaps the first she heard about any of it was getting that letter from her.”

Mary’s imagination and sympathy were caught. “Oh, yes. Oh, that’d be awful! She’d wake up, look in the mirror and then read her lover’s letter. If it’d been me I’d have just wanted to curl up and die after that.” A tear trickled down her face at the idea. And yet, what must it have been like to be loved that way, to love so deeply?

“Yes.” Jan’s voice was somber. She forced brightness into her tones, “But forget all that. Tomorrow night’s your night.”

“Wish me luck.”

“I do, I always will. Now, what about a dance?”

It was almost four o’clock when Mary returned home. Tomorrow night she’d sing Linda’s song again, and when she did she’d think of her cousin’s story. Jan had sworn she’d be there, Mary went to bed to lie awake a while and dream how it might be if she won. Would Jan turn to her? She could be falling in love, and even if she wasn’t Jan was a great friend, in some ways that was almost better.

She was nearly ready to go to the Monet when her Aunt Julie arrived. “I hear you’re singing my Linda’s song tonight. I just wanted to give you this for luck. It was Linda’s.” Mary accepted the silver scarf and tied it as an Alice band.

“Thanks, Aunt Julie. I’ll think about her when I sing. If I win I’ll tell everyone that she wrote the song.” She paused, would it be too sad to ask? Aunt Julie had given her the scarf and didn’t seem to mind her using the song, maybe she wouldn’t mind talking about it either. It had all been ages ago after all.

“Aunt Julie, did you ever hear what happened to Linda’s girlfriend?”

Julie Brynn nodded. “Yes, we never told Linda and I suppose it doesn’t matter who knows about it now. The girl was hit in the face with a length of burning wood and was unconscious for eight days with a fractured skull. She was left scarred all across her face but she wasn’t that badly hurt apart from that and the head injury. She went home from the hospital almost as soon as she was conscious and strong enough again to get out of the bed—and killed herself three nights later. We kept that edition of the paper away from Linda and she never knew.”

Mary spoke slowly, thinking about the sequence of events. “Jenny had to have had the letter saying Linda never wanted to see her again. She didn’t know Linda was so badly hurt, she thought it was because she was scarred. If Linda had known that she’d never have forgiven herself.”

“That’s right, dear. Her father and I thought that it was best that she never knew what had happened.”

Mary shook her head. “So my cousin died believing that Jenny didn’t love her at all, and all the time Jenny had probably killed herself because she thought the same. It’s like Romeo and Juliet.”

Aunt Julie gave her a sad smile. “Not really. There couldn’t have been any kind of a happy ending even if my Linda had lived. It really was all for the best in the end.”

Mary left with Liz ten minutes later, waiting nervously on her arrival until the time came and she stepped out onto the small stage. No one was giving any orders, but somehow as Mary began to sing the floor cleared completely. She was swept up in the song and realized only during the second verse that two dancers had just taken to the floor.

Through the song she’d been remembering Linda. The cousin she’d loved died quietly in her sleep one afternoon and Mary had cried when she heard. She wanted to cry again as she sang, letting the music carry her, feeling the passion in her cousin’s song flow out. It came back to her like rapture as she started the third verse. As if her blood whispered and sang through her body, as if her heeled boots drifted up a little from the stage. Movement caught at her attention and she focused on the faces of the two who danced in front of her, watching until they saw she had noticed them.

They were both in black and silver, their steps matching as even hers and Jan’s had not. But—that was Jan who danced, looking up at her, a wild gratitude and loving affection on her face as their gazes met. She looked at the other dancer and somehow she was not surprised to see her cousin, dancing as Linda must have danced before the fire. The music screamed up into the final lines and Mary held their gaze with hers as she sang, pouring all her friendship and love into that look.

Jan had never been able to join her at the movies or come with her to a restaurant. She’d waited here, waited for her love and a lover’s closure, and Mary had been able to give it to Jan—to them both. She held the last note as the guitar’s voice screamed upwards, torn between love for her cousin and regret for a love that might have been her own.

A last silver glinting from Linda’s belt, Jan’s oak-tree medallion and they faded, dissolving into shadow. Once they were gone the crowd thrust back, unseeing, to fill the dance-floor. Applause boomed out for the winner, Mary Brynn. Her Aunt Julie and Liz applauding her as Mary accepted the prize, told everyone how the song had been written by her cousin Linda, smiled politely for the cameras, and left with Liz.

She would return the prize the next night, Mary thought, as they turned into Bond Street. She’d suggest that the owner give something to charity instead. The Monet wouldn’t be the same without Jan and she didn’t think she’d want to dance there any more. She’d always be looking for that black and silver-clad figure. Always waiting for the one whose steps matched hers.

“Oh, and we got the name wrong,” Liz said as they waited for the taxi. “Aunt Julie finally remembered when we were talking last night, she says Linda’s girlfriend was Jan, not Jenny. She was the youngest sister of the owner’s sister-in-law, Karen Gilles, that means she must have been this one’s cousin.”

Mary nodded casually, as if it made no difference. Maybe the family ties had pulled her, Jan, and Linda together somehow. Liz didn’t know Jan’s surname as Mary had never mentioned it to her. No one else would make any connections and that was how Mary wanted it. She’d always wanted to be less ordinary, she thought she could say that was true now. Not many women had found themselves falling in love with someone like Jan.

But that night she cried bitterly for the friend she’d loved and lost, for the lover she’d hoped Jan could be, and as she wept she wondered—would there ever be someone who loved her that much? Or was love only that strong when you couldn’t have it? She slept at last, clutching the silver scarf, and woke to find the scarf gone and her hand curved gently around Jan’s oak tree medallion.

She held it up to the sunshine pouring through her window and made out the initials engraved into the trunk. J.G. and L.R. She wept again, then found she was smiling through her tears. It was a wish from both of them, she thought. That one day there could be love like that for her. Not Jan, and not today, but one day.

Authentic

Jean Roberta

~

Government House looked as if it were not on speaking terms with the pawnshops, convenience stores, laundromats and rooming houses that surrounded it. The square brick structure, built in the Victorian Age, was now far from all current government offices, but it still stood firmly on a spacious lot that included benches, flower gardens and trees imposed on the windswept Canadian prairie.

Matt turned her collar up against the wind, waiting for the traffic light to change. She could have driven to Government House, but she chose to walk. She told herself that maintaining a certain level of fitness would make her more appealing to an eligible single dyke, if and when such a woman popped into her real life. And walking was an antidote to depression.

There was a tour being conducted when Matt strolled in as if she lived there. The walnut chairs in the entranceway, the Persian carpets on the floor, and the lace doilies on the furniture were all in the British imperial style of 1905, the year in which the first Lieutenant (left-tenant, a pronunciation that seemed appropriate) Governor had moved in with his wife, children, trunks and all. Matt was responsible for keeping the surroundings authentic. Her Master’s degree in history had earned her a job with the government archives. She had the last say on every piece of bric-a-brac that entered the premises.

The tour guide, a pretty university student dressed as a maid in starched white apron and cap, finished explaining the ground floor to her flock of tourists, then led them up the protesting wooden stairs to the second floor which held the bedrooms, including the servants’ quarters. Her high, simpering voice grated on Matt’s ears, and she hoped the girl didn’t expect fame on the stage or the screen. The job attracted student actors, and their love of costumes combined with their ignorance of the past usually made Matt want to slap them.

Her own faded jeans and denim jacket clashed with the decor, so she tried to stay out of sight until she could tiptoe up the stairs (trying to avoid the creaky boards) to her tiny office, a former storage room. It barely held a desk, a chair and a computer. With a sigh of relief, she turned on the light, dumped her backpack in a corner and closed the door.

Going on-line on the site where she was a kind of intellectual servant made Matt feel as if she were working. Sure, she told herself, hanging out in chat-rooms is a form of research. I might just meet someone who knows a few things about Edwardian china patterns.

Matt caught sight of herself in the decorative mirror on the opposite wall, a touch she originally felt would make her feel less claustrophobic in her little cell. Seeing her own thin-faced reflection now reminded her of how isolated she felt, how much like a woman of the past who had left civilization behind in the secret hope of discovering her own wildness in the untamed West.

In her first month in town, Matt had discovered a stagnant community of local lesbian couples who had all been drinking together for the past quarter-century. On her rare visits to the hotel bar where they spent their evenings, she felt tolerated but not welcome. It was clear to her that she didn’t fit in.

As her fingers tapped the keyboard, Matt tried to evaluate the appeal of her own dark eyes and the shaggy brown hair that framed her pale face. She had seen interest and even need reflected back to her in the eyes of other dykes in the eastern city she came from, but here she felt increasingly disconnected from any sense of how she would look to a potential girlfriend. Without a human mirror, she felt as if she were dissolving around the edges.

“Prairie Dog, how r u?” she read. Ravenheart!

“Not good,” she typed. “Need someone to talk to.”

“I’m here,” came Ravenheart’s answer. This is insane, thought Matt. I don’t even know if she’s really a woman. I might as well be talking to myself. Aloud. That will be the next phase, and then the men in white coats will come to take me away.

“Going crazy, need girlfriend. Not just for the obvious. Can’t find one here but don’t want to leave my job. Good pay, good perks, interesting work. Rent and food cheap. Nothing like this in the East, but can’t spend my life alone. What to do?”

“Don’t lose hope. There’s a cup for every saucer.”

Matt groaned. “M I the cup or the saucer?”

“Nectar in the cup.”

“How can u tell?”

“Taste u from here.” Matt exhaled in a silent laugh. Madness for two. So far, Ravenheart had refused to tell Matt (Prairie Dog) where she lived, but she admitted to being Canadian. Ravenheart sometimes used such colorful, old-fashioned turns of phrase that Matt suspected her of living in Newfoundland, another out-of-the-way region that seemed immune to passing trends.

“Where’s here?” Tell me, dammit. I want to imagine you living in some real place, even if you’re thousands of miles away.

The air in the room seemed much colder than when Matt had come in minutes ago. Touch wood, we have working fireplaces on every floor of this building. If we have to use them, it will just add to the authentic period atmosphere.

Her sensitivity to the cold had grown steadily worse as she lost weight due to her lack of appetite. She knew she should eat the sandwich she had brought with her, but she didn’t want to say goodbye to Ravenheart. Not yet.

“When will you meet me?”

“Already met.”

“In RL, girlfriend.” Real Life. I hardly know what that is any more. She knew how easily Ravenheart could disappear completely if Matt pushed her too hard, but Matt wanted to know how much of what she had said was true. Last week, Ravenheart had sent her a link to a blurry photo of a young woman with large, questioning eyes and long pale hair tied with a ribbon behind her neck. The shading made it look like something from the archives—probably a photo of Ravenheart’s great-grandmother.

“What’s real 2 u?”

“Face 2 face. Both bodies in same room.”

“R u inviting me?”

“Duh. My place or yours?”

Matt waited several minutes for an answer before sensing that Ravenheart was not going to give one. Angry with herself for childishly trusting a joker in cyberspace, Matt logged out, then checked her work-related emails. Having to delete fifty government memos which had nothing to do with her made her feel invisible. By the time she finished, she was shaking. She had never felt so alone before, and she was tempted to burst into hysterical sobs. She was terrified of losing her grip.

Food. I am basically a mammal that needs to be fed. Matt turned off the computer, pulled her lunch bag out of her backpack and set out for the kitchen.

The last tour had finished, and the place seemed empty. Steve the security guard must be somewhere on the premises, but Matt still felt alone. She spread her supper on a simple pine table covered with a cotton cloth, filled the tea kettle and lit the gas stove to make herself a pot of tea.

The sound of the piano in the music room almost caused her to drop her teacup on the floor. She recognized a sentimental tune which was popular before 1910. Matt knew that melody because the wife of Lieutenant-Governor Ferrier had made up her own words to it.

Someone has done their homework but playing the piano at this time borders on vandalism and is definitely trespassing. Eating in the kitchen wasn’t the same kind of offense. After all, it had been the room where the servants prepared meals for their betters. On a deeper level, Matt felt she had squatters’ rights to Government House.

She followed the tinkling notes until she stood facing the back of the woman in evening dress who sat gracefully on the piano bench, lit by the soft glow of electric lights dimmed to look like gaslight. Her blonde hair was loosely piled on her head in a chignon that left artless wisps hanging down her bare neck and upper back. The royal-blue crepe de chine of her bodice led to a tiny, cinched waist that made her look like a life-sized doll.

“Excuse me,” said Matt. “I’m sorry, but you can’t—why are you here?”

The woman turned to smile at Matt. Her face looked young but shrewd with large blue eyes and a determined chin. “Does my playing offend you?”

“It’s after hours,” mumbled Matt, “and no one is supposed to –be here. Are you a new tour guide?”

The woman laughed. “I’m Ravenheart, Prairie Dog. You may call me by my name, Diana.”

Matt felt faint. She didn’t see how Ravenheart could have done herself up so elaborately and then come to the building (from where?) and found a way in since she had left Matt hanging in the chat-room. It didn’t seem possible, but it had to be. Another explanation suggested itself. But she refused to believe that she had completely lost track of time or that she was conversing with a hallucination or a disembodied spirit.

“Ravenheart! Diana—like Lieutenant-Governor Ferrier’s wife? You’re good! You even—did Rob Branson—when—.” Mat’s voice trailed away as she tried to sort through the implications.

How could Rob, Director of the Provincial Archives, have hired a new tour guide without telling Matt? He had never gone behind her back that way before. But of course, Matt was still fairly new. She realized that she was probably naive about how the department really worked. She might have overestimated the importance of her position. She didn’t seem to know how to fit in anywhere.

Or this woman might have permanently left the world of RL. It wouldn’t be hard to do, especially in this Goddess-forsaken place.

“Think you’re goin’ mad, don’t ya, girl?” Diana asked. She watched with amusement as Matt moved closer to her, unbearably tempted to touch the strange woman to find out if her skin and hair felt real. The air around her felt cold.

“Okay. Okay,” Matt babbled. “Let’s get everything straightened out. Did Rob Branson hire you?”

“Do you think I need honest employment? You could give me a reference.”

Rob didn’t hire her. Chill out and think, Matt told herself. Diana’s voice fascinated her. So, too her smooth pink skin, the innocent look of her wheat-colored hair, the light in her eyes and the shape of her nose and chin, which at close range looked stronger and squarer than they did from a distance. Matt was hypnotized by the glitter of a pendant at her neck and the shadow of cleavage below.

Omigod. She’s dressed like Diana Ferrier in the oil portrait in the library, except that the dress in that painting looks dark-grey and the jewel in her necklace looks more like a sapphire than a diamond in this light. I’m a history buff but this woman is obsessed. She is probably a stalker who has done time in the psych ward. I need to get her out of here as soon as possible. But she’s Ravenheart! If she leaves, she won’t come back.

“Is this all the welcome I get, Prairie Dog? I accepted your invitation.”

Matt braced herself to play it cool. “Oh. Sorry for my bad manners, Diana. Why don’t we go to the kitchen for a cup of tea and something to eat?”

“I would be delighted.” Diana’s dress rustled as she regally preceded Matt to the kitchen. She seemed familiar with the layout of the building.

Matt busied herself pouring tea and checking the cupboards, where she found a box of shortbread cookies. She found a china plate, dumped the cookies onto it and set it on the table. She moved her soggy sandwich out of sight.

“Are we alone, dear? Couldn’t you have managed more of a proper repast for our tête à tête? Perhaps some vin blanc and pâté?”

Matt felt as awkward as a teenager. “No one’s supposed to eat here at all. Diana, this place is a museum, not a house where people live. Besides, I wasn’t really expecting you.”

She couldn’t sit calmly across the table from Diana. Instead she stood next to her to offer the lemon juice that her guest requested. Matt could smell a faint fragrance from Diana that reminded her of the attar of roses that a great-aunt had once given her for Christmas to nurture her feminine vanity. But the coldness around Diana was odd.

Diana gazed into Matt’s troubled dark eyes. “You want to kiss me, don’t you, Miss?”

Matt tried to calm her shaking hands. Am I that obvious? What could this madwoman pass to her through the touch (and taste!) of her full, soft lips?

“What a shame you lack the courage.” Matt heard the dare and knew she had to meet it or forever lose her chance.

She conjured up as much butch attitude as she could. She gently but firmly pulled Diana up from her chair and wrapped her arms around her. Matt was amazed at how small and light Diana was, like swan’s-down in her arms, yet crackling with energy like a human generator.

The little woman felt warm to the touch, and she yielded to Matt’s possessive grasp in a way that sent tingles all through Matt. There was nothing passive or jaded about this woman. For once, Matt sensed that she had been chosen, not accepted as the least-worst or to prove something to an ex-girlfriend.

Oh my Goddess. I didn’t know it could really feel this way. Like a nail drawn to a magnet, Matt leaned forward and pressed her lips to Diana’s. A surprising amount of heat passed from Diana’s mouth to Matt’s, and it made her shiver in the cool air surrounding the woman whose exposed skin seemed impervious to it.

Matt slipped her tongue between Diana’s lips and ventured beyond her teeth. As though she had spoken aloud, Matt heard: “Please forgive me. I never did this before.”

Matt pulled away, and felt dizzy. Her own recklessness made her feel sick. “We can’t do this here.” Matt held Diana by the shoulders, pushing her away. “The security guy could come in any time.”

Diana stared at Matt as though disappointed by her unwillingness to risk everything for an ecstatic experience. “He won’t. I put him to sleep.” This explanation made no sense to Matt, who could not believe that Diana had killed the guard or even knocked him out with some powerful sedative. Steve must not have come to work, or he must have sneaked out early. Those seemed to be the only possible reasons why he hadn’t come to check out Matt and her visitor.

Matt was reminded of the posse of women who had called themselves “bisexual” as an excuse for cruising dykes in the wicked city where she had lived a year ago. Eventually, most of them confessed to having husbands and children. Matt’s head was swimming. “Are you a lesbian?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Matt thought they sounded stupid.

“Ah girl,” sighed Diana. “Am I a follower of Sappho, the poet of Lesbos? Don’t you know it? You distrust your own senses. Well then, ask me whatever you want to know.”

“Ravenheart. That’s the name you used. Didn’t you say you have two children?”

Diana nodded. “I did. I was blessed with a son and a daughter. Do you believe that one love cancels out another, my girl? Haven’t you had other loves before me?”

Matt couldn’t imagine babies growing inside Diana’s fragile-looking body, much less bursting out of her through the usual gateway. She wanted to leave the building and inhale the sharp fresh air of the prairie. “We can’t stay here, Diana. Come with me.” She tried to pull Diana by the waist.

A force that felt like gravity or magnetism seemed to keep Diana rooted to the spot where she stood. “I can’t leave my home, Matt. Indulge me.” As though humoring a child, she added: “Come into the music room with me, dear. I’ll sing you a lullaby, and that will help your understanding.”

Matt needed help to remain standing up, so she let herself be led into the room with the piano. She sank onto the firm upholstery of the sofa, as unwelcoming as it was. “Are you married?” asked Matt. “To a man?” She wanted the whole truth about her mysterious guest.

Diana paced in front of her, occasionally striking a pose that accentuated the sweep of her skirt. She moved as gracefully as a dancer or an actress. “I was. Until I left him in the surest way I knew. Oh, you think me a traitor to women, don’t you? You judge me for refusing to sacrifice the honor and comfort of my parents and my sisters, whose good names would be lost along with mine. You think me a coward because I wouldn’t give up my home, my social position and my children!”

Matt felt sucked back to an era before the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Then she remembered reading gruesome stories about crimes against actual and suspected “sex deviants” in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the former Soviet Union. And these melodramas were not relics of the past.

“Not blaming you for anything, honey. I just want to know,” Matt confessed.

Matt had written an article about Diana MacDonald Ferrier, the first Lieutenant-Governor’s lady. Her pet causes had been feminism, anti-vivisectionism (forerunner of the animal rights movement) and medical care for the poor. She had almost rescued those causes from the political frontier and made them respectable. She had even been instrumental in gaining the vote for women in her adopted province.

A wave of humility washed over Matt. We can only do what works at the time, wherever we find ourselves. Not that this woman is really the Lieutenant-Governor’s wife. “I wasn’t putting you down.” Matt felt dishonest. Her mouth felt numb, as though false statements were damaging her ability to speak.

“Do you think my lack of experience makes me ignorant, Matt?” Diana’s voice invaded Matt’s mind. “I know what is possible between women. I’m not a child or a prig. I felt your desire when I accepted your invitation. I would not have refused you anything! Yet you withdrew from me because you were afraid of losing your job.”

Matt couldn’t be sure what sounds came out of her mouth. What a sorry response to a woman in heat! An image of Diana lying naked in a large feather bed filled the screen of her imagination. She pictured the nymph undulating her hips while licking her index finger and using it to trace her own rosy nipples—slowly, teasingly, watching her for a reaction.

Diana was piercing her with a look. “Cowardice costs dearly, Matt. Do you know ‘When Hearts Entwined Are Torn Asunder’?”

Yes. Matt shrugged off her skepticism about Diana’s identity. You wrote it.

Diana favored her with an enchanting smile. Without further preamble, she glided to the piano, seated herself and began to play the melody. When she sang the words, her voice sounded surprisingly low and soothing.

“When hearts entwined are torn asunder,

Ever are the heartstrings frayed,

Eyes once bright with joy and wonder

Darkened to a leaden shade.

“Fire snuffed out is ne’er rekindled.

Love once lost is ne’er replaced.

When the light of day has dwindled,

Cold and darkness must be faced!”

Diana paused for a heartbeat.

Did you write that for your friend Mrs. Hale-Hardy? asked Matt in her mind. Your buddy in the fight for women’s rights?

No, came the answer. I loved her in my way, but I wrote this song after they separated me from my first love, Gertrude. We met in school when we were sixteen, and we planned to go abroad together. They married me off while she was kept captive in her bedroom, and my husband brought me here to make the separation permanent.

She continued:

“When the cloistered soul is fading,

God’s pure love is distant balm.

When the world with scorn is lading

Human hearts, they find no calm.

Weak and foolish are we reckoned,

From our duty led astray,

But when life and bliss have beckoned,

What true heart can turn away?”

Poets of your time liked feminine rhymes, thought Matt vaguely, and rhetorical questions. Quaint as a corset.

I’m not finished, Diana informed her. I wrote two more stanzas that sealed my fate. I never trusted them to paper.

“Offer me no absolution

For desire which is no sin.

Kinship found needs no solution.

Bid me not disown my kin!

“Strong I stand, ‘though bound and bloody,

Undefeated, ‘though in pain.

Take me for a field of study

‘Til my spirit sings again!”

Good for you, thought Matt, but how did those words seal your fate? Her vision was so blurry that she closed her eyes to control her nausea.

An image of Diana’s open casket jumped into Matt’s mind. She remembered that the Lieutenant-Governor’s wife supposedly died of tuberculosis when she was only 28 years old, and that half the local population attended her funeral.

I had a cough, Diana told her. That would never have killed me against my will. We all choose the time of our passing.

Waves of darkness threatened to overwhelm Matt’s consciousness, and she fought them. You have unfinished business, don’t you? she asked.

Diana gave her a smirk of shocking lechery. Oh yes, dear heart. You could have helped me to cross over. Or I could have taken you with me, but instead I only put you into a swoon. You will recover. And you won’t completely forget me, I hope.

Matt sank into sleep that was like a little death.

A vague sense of danger alerted Matt to the sound of the front door being unlocked. Still half-asleep, she scrambled off the sofa and stumbled to the staircase, feeling like a stranger in her own body. Muscles she had not been aware of in months ached as though she had spent all her energy in an all-night orgy.

“Matt! Were you here all night?” The concerned look on Rob’s face was both reassuring and embarrassing.

“I fell asleep. I had some stuff to finish up.”

“Matt, you don’t have to cover for Steve. It’s not your job to fill in for the security staff. If this happens again, call me, won’t you?”

Matt mumbled agreement and tried to look alert as she headed up the stairs.

“You couldn’t have had a good night’s sleep. Take the day off and don’t think about work, eh? Spend a day in the twenty-first century.”

Matt smiled over her shoulder as she walked upstairs to collect her backpack and jacket.

Entering her office, she thought she could smell flowers. She knew that no one else would find any trace of Diana in the building.

Please, thought Matt, give me one more chance. The creak of the floorboards under her feet sounded like laughter.

City of the Dead

Kaite Welsh

~

We frighten people for a living. That’s what they come to us for, that shiver skittering up and down their spine, that frisson of fear. They enjoy being scared, and we are glad to oblige. This city is built on death—plague pits lurk beneath the lush green grass, created when the dead began to outnumber the living and rats started to take over the streets. Signs on crumbling stone walls memorialise the dead on the losing side of a battle from centuries ago; the gravestone of a dog is one of the more unlikely tourist spots. And high above the city looms an extinct volcano and the crags beneath it. Bodies are found in the heather from time to time—suicide, perhaps, or not-so-innocent victims of murder. Even the strip joints are named after body snatchers.

Edinburgh is not a happy city.

It’s autumn, and the leaves are all turning to burnt umber and covering the tarmac of the tree-lined streets. My breath sighs out into the air like smoke, and I add a few extra layers to my costume. My cloak is thick and heavy, made out of wool to keep out the bitter chill—you can tell the new tour guides by the way they shiver in the velvet capes they made with their mother’s sewing machines, the kind that look beautiful but offer absolutely no protection against the elements.

I’m an old hand at this, and I’m not taking any chances. I tried to do a tour with a cold last year, and at the end I found my voice hoarse and my throat red raw. So tonight I’m sipping hot lemon and ginger tea with a generous spoonful of sweet honey mixed in, and considering painting myself with goose fat the way women used to do before going out to dance skyclad and invoke the goddess beneath the full moon. The only problem being that I’m a vegetarian—and besides, goose fat is hard to come by in these modern times. So I wear thick tights beneath my boots and thermal underwear underneath my flowing skirts, and hope my cloak will keep the cold air away from the expanse of pale skin not covered by my corset. The best thing about this job is indulging my flair for the dramatic, so I paint on my make-up with a heavy hand—thick strokes of black eyeliner and blood-red lips (all the better to kiss you with, my dear). My pentagram, secure on its heavy chain, rests an inch below my breastbone to ward off the ghouls, beasties and lost souls that wander the city at night, and a rape alarm goes in my bag, its fresh batteries a back-up in case the magic fails.

Six of the clock and all is well, but the night drawing in and already the sky is black. The sliver of a new moon hangs in the inky sky above the crags, and my fingers find their way to the iron charm against my skin as my lips move in a silent blessing. Work is busy when I get there—the tiny office that houses our ghost tour is crammed with people—Michael, one of the other guides, and the gaggle of tourists eager to flirt with the supernatural. Michael’s usual handful of groupies, male and female, is eager to flirt with him. I cast a quick appraising glance over the crowd, and wonder which one he’ll take home with him tonight. The slim-hipped English boy in skinny jeans and black nail polish, or the copper-haired siren with buxom curves and an accent straight off the streets of Glasgow? If he doesn’t want her, I do. We have strict rules about that sort of thing, anyway. The beauties on our own tours are ours for the taking, but if the person who catches your eye is following someone else around the freezing Edinburgh streets in search of magic, then hands off.

A dozen people are standing at the second-hand desk that poses as our reception, huddled together against the cold and handing over their hard-earned cash in exchange for a brush with terror. They’re chattering amongst themselves, impatient to get started and scare themselves silly, when I walk in. The boots give my stride a confident swagger, and they click across the floor like gunshots. I do love to make a good entrance.

The tour starts out like all the others. The audience hangs on my every word, and every sentence is designed to heighten their anticipation. I lead them out of the cramped warmth and there are muffled curses as the shock of the cold air hits them. An icy breeze gusts down the street, making my curls dance wildly in the wind, and I begin.

“There is a secret underground city beneath your feet. Only a few people have the key. For tonight, you are one of them. Unless, that is, you’re easily scared.” I wind my way down narrow, twisting streets, and they follow me blindly, trustingly, into the dark. They stumble on rain-slicked cobbles and keep their eyes fixed on the flickering light of the lamp I hold high in the air. Afraid of the dark like children, they think that they’re safe, so long as it stays lit.

I pause at the entrance to the vaults, an unprepossessing green door that guards the labyrinth, and whatever—whoever—lives inside it.

“If you want to turn back, this is your last chance,” I warn them. “If you follow me in the only way out is the one that I show you.” They nod apprehensively. I can see one or two who would clearly rather be somewhere else but, fearing the mockery of their peers, they stay silent. More fool them. In the world that they are about to enter, fear is an aphrodisiac. I can taste their terror on the tip of my tongue as the door creaks open and they walk with me into a dimly lit, musty passageway. It crashes behind the last walker, and shrieks are hastily swallowed, dissolving into giggles as they begin the charade of not being frightened. No one wants it to peak too soon; everyone wants to prolong the delicious agony of a good scare. I pause at the top of the stone stairwell that leads deep down into the heart of Edinburgh’s subterranean mirror image.

“Before we go any further, you need to listen to me. Down here we play by my rules, so don’t wander off. I know this place like the back of my hand.” I hold one up as if to illustrate, and then drop it to my side suddenly. “You don’t. So if you wander off, you do it at your own risk, but don’t expect to be found alive. There are enough ghosts here without one of you adding to their number. If you’re scared, just grab onto the person next to you. But don’t be surprised when you look down at the hand you’re holding and realise that there’s no-one there.” I descend the first steps, leaving them in darkness, and I can tell that not one of the group is dawdling. After my little speech, no one wants to get left behind.

We emerge from the staircase into a roomy corridor filled with dusty yellow lamplight. I can hear sighs of relief and disappointment behind me. Maybe they were expecting dank walls stickily smeared with ectoplasm, or a few wraiths floating around. We’re far more subtle than that. The ghosts down here are wily, imbued with centuries of patience. And it’s no fun if it’s easy.

You see, the more scared the group, the more likely the ghosts are to come out and play. Every tour has a different vibe—you can walk through the same rooms three times a night, and every time the atmosphere will have shifted slightly. Maybe the group that came before you were rigid with terror and the spirits have since slunk off, sated. Then again, you could be the first decent meal that they’ve had all night. You can never tell.

Tonight…tonight is something special. It’s guaranteed, if you’ll pardon the pun, to lift the spirits of the most jaded tour guide. Of course, as they tell us when we start—be careful what you wish for. Is it my imagination, or has the temperature suddenly dropped a few degrees? People pull their coats around them for warmth, fumbling in their pockets for gloves. In the stale, artificial light of the catacombs, my breath lingers in the air like fog. It shouldn’t be this cold.

I move on briskly, hoping that no one notices the quiver of apprehension in my step. Fear is for amateurs and audience members, fear is a sign that you’re not in control—and a tour guide who isn’t in control is in trouble. I lead them into the first room, sticking to my script for once. For the first time, I’m tempted to rush them through their tour, cheat them of their supernatural thrill, and get the hell out of here.

But it’s too late for second-guessing myself. Already a few people are starting to shrink back against the wall, regret that they ever signed up for the tour. Someone glances over their shoulder, wondering if they can retrace their steps back up to the entrance. They can’t, they all know that. They don’t have a hope of escaping unless I show them the way. And I can’t do that.

I don’t know if they can sense her presence or my apprehension. Either way, they’re beginning to panic. That’s the worst thing they can do, because they more frightened they are, the stronger she becomes. This wasn’t what I signed on for when I started as a tour guide. I knew that ghosts were real, but I never considered the implications of working with them. I never thought they could be this real. I never thought that a ghost could be someone who could communicate with you, who understood you and needed you. I never thought that a ghost could be someone like her.

Most of the time, ghosts don’t have a gender. Whatever they were in life just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s depressing, but most people don’t leave a strong spiritual imprint when they die. You have to have had a strong personality to retain any semblance of whoever you used to be. And back when this woman was flesh and blood, she must have been a force of nature. That’s probably why I can’t walk away, can’t refuse her anything or anyone she asks me for.

I’ve been working the tours for three years, but I’ve only been frightened once. I’m talking about real fear, the kind of sickening lurch you get in your stomach when you realise that the world around you has changed completely. When a street you know like the back of your hand suddenly looks unfamiliar, or when even though you’re in an empty room, you know that you’re not alone. It was the closest I’d ever been to a presence that strong, and when I heard her low, commanding voice, I felt something far more disquieting than fear.

Her sigh whispers against my skin, a breath of icy air that makes every hair stand on end and my heart pound. I should walk away now, forget this ever happened and never go back to this part of the vaults. I should, but I already know that I won’t.

I’ve never fantasised about this the way that some people do—the skinny Goth girls that show up, hoping to turn the corner and bump into some long-dead Scottish Laird on the lookout for a bride. But this wraith-woman has me spellbound, the scent of heather and the lingering traces of wood smoke and charred herbs grow stronger every time she’s near me. Aileen Macdonald, she told me her name was. I’ve formed an impression of her in my mind, although whether it’s telepathy or just my own fantasy I can’t say. Pale, red-gold hair and freckled skin, the faintest suggestion of crow’s feet starting to show at the corner of her sea-green eyes.

I can’t even touch her, and yet I’m obsessed. She’s addictive, this woman. She’s the reason I suffer the low pay and unsociable hours, why I brave the cold and the dark night after night, just to lead some tourists around dark underground rooms, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, to give her what she wants. I hear a whispered laugh, like paper rustling in the breeze. Her voice is barely audible to the small crowd but my ears are attuned to it. Or maybe I’m just hearing what I want to hear. She never sounds plaintive or lonely, the normal way a ghost bewitches someone they wish to ensnare.

Tonight she is pleased, I can hear her purring approval. Everyone’s nerves are on edge, it must taste so sweet to her. I wish I could share it with her, this feasting on the energy of a dozen terrified strangers. God, it must be more intimate than sex. When we leave, I’ll try to snap myself out of it, remind myself that what she’s doing—and, by association, what I’m doing—is wrong. I’ll comfort the shaking fragile victims and try to make up for the horror that I’ve put them through. I’ll tell them that it was all a show, that their imaginations did most of the work and make sure that they don’t get the chance to swap notes. No harm done—everyone loves a ghost story, don’t they?

If my employers knew what I’m doing, they’d either laugh or fire me, depending on their level of cynicism and seniority. I know enough to know that what I’m doing is dangerous. Leading a group of innocent people into a room with this kind of creature is reckless, it’s irresponsible. I’m already attracting attention for having the highest number of unexplained accidents on my tours—the fainting fits from sturdy men, the mysterious scratches discovered afterwards on skin that had been protected by layers of clothing. All normal signs of poltergeist activity, but they shouldn’t happen as often as they do. I’ve had more than my fair share of complaints, as well, accusations of Satanism or, and at least this has a grain of truth to it, witchcraft.

My bosses roll their eyes and tell me to ignore it, no one will sue, and they never do. Just be careful next time. And I always am, for a while. But I begin to miss her so much that it hurts, she plagues my dreams and invades every waking thought until I have to take one more group to her, just one more and then I’ll stop. I never do. And no one ever finds out. So Aileen stays my secret and not theirs, and I only come home with the occasional bruise or scratch if the human-shaped treats that I brought her aren’t quite tasty enough. I’m breaking all the rules, but she’s worth it.

Right now, I know what they’re going through, and it soothes my guilty conscience to know that they’re not doing anything I haven’t tried. I’ve offered myself to her, but it was never enough. She explained gently that she needed me strong. After a few weeks of letting her feed on me alone, the tours were getting harder and harder, the walk feeling longer and colder. So it’s better this way, people only give her their strength once and then move on. They can recover; they’ll forget about it, they’ll only remember the chill creeping into their bones, the paralyzing fear, and the brush of her mind against theirs, in nightmares. The real sacrifice is mine; I’m the one putting my job on the line, my sanity. My life. Of course, Aileen is my life now—even when it’s daylight and I’m above ground, I’m constantly aware of her presence beneath my feet. She’s getting harder and harder to shake off; sometimes I find myself sizing people up in the street, wondering if she’d care for them. I’ve gotten some strange looks, and more and more people are refusing my offer of a flyer, or a discount on one of the tours.

I wonder how desperate I’m starting to look. My skin is pale enough for me not to need make up anymore, except to hide the dark circles under my eyes. Bags under my eyes that I could carry shopping in, an old woman on last night’s tour said to me. She said they work me too hard. I told her she had no idea.

My cat ran away a few weeks ago—she’d never come near me when I finished work. Sharing a flat with a haunted woman is clearly beyond the call of duty for any household pet.

I’m in over my head, I know this, but somehow I can’t bring myself to care. She may feed off other people, but it’s me she’s consuming day after day. I start to see the world more through her eyes than my own. The part I play at night is getting harder to act; the bravado no longer conceals the sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. I carry on regardless because this shared life is the only one we can have. I’m in this forever, for better and for worse, and I think I know which one it will be.

You always begin a tour hoping for something out of the ordinary to happen. I’m careful what I wish for these days.

Airtight

LC Jordan

~

The wind chased the fallen leaves across my porch, swirling them behind the deep orange pumpkins and knobby gourds I had bought to decorate for Halloween. The hickory and ash, oak and maple leaves would hide in piles until later when I routed them out with a broom and sent them back into the wind in a flurry of red and gold.

Placing first one foot then the other on the railing, I checked my laces to be sure they were tied tightly and adjusted my helmet. Descending the three steps, I swung a leg over my mountain bike and headed out onto the road for my evening ride.

Darkness came earlier now and I wanted to get at least five miles in before the sun set. I had no intention of being out on my bike at night the way the roads twisted and turned around here. The term blind curve was something I fully comprehended now. After working as an ER nurse for only a few weeks, I had seen enough car accidents to know I never wanted to be involved in one, much less on a bicycle.

I inhaled deeply, enjoying the spicy autumn scents of the surrounding woods. Moist earth, leaves, forgotten apples from neglected trees and the faint smell of distant rain all mingled together. I rode a little faster, wishing I had checked the weather forecast before heading out.

Keeping to the shoulder, I pushed myself, feeling the muscles of my legs begin to burn a little. At two miles, I came to the familiar T road. Here I always turned east and rode for a half mile before heading back on my route.

A dark shape emerging from the tangle of brush along the roadside startled me. I knew I hadn’t seen anything when I passed this way the first time, although I usually encountered some small animal during my rides. This, however, was larger than the occasional squirrel or rabbit that sometimes crossed in front of me. All the usual supernatural tales I’d heard came to mind and I briefly considered turning around and taking another road. I quickly ruled that option out because it would add at least three miles to my ride, taking me over Airtight Bridge, and I’d never make it home before dark. If I was going to be chased by some creature, I’d rather be able to see it.

Mentally chastising myself for letting my imagination run amok, I kept peddling. The shadowed form took the shape of a medium sized dog. I exhaled, the air burning as it left my lungs. The animal was coal black with four white paws. It didn’t look particularly threatening, or at least made no move to chase me. In fact, he ambled along as though he had a purpose and couldn’t be bothered with the likes of me. That suited me just fine.

The first warning sprinkles of rain began to pepper down as I coasted into my drive. Quickly raising the garage door, I stored the bike inside and dashed beneath the protection of the porch roof as random drops organized themselves into sheets of rain.

Running my fingers along the underside of the porch railing, I located the spare key and unlocked the door. Kicking my shoes onto the braided rug just inside the entrance, I pulled my helmet off and stood looking out the window. It was difficult to see through the gray curtain of rain, but I could have sworn I saw that black dog walking down the road in front of my house. What really got my attention was that someone was walking along beside him. The window was fogging up and I swiped at it with my palm. When I looked again, there was only the dog to be seen making its way home, or so I hoped.

Thursday dawned chilly and windy. I grabbed a jacket from the hall tree as I headed out to my Jeep, grateful that at least the deluge from last night had abated. Soon enough I’d be greeted by frost and snow, so I wasn’t going to start complaining this early.

With the inevitable weather change, my days of biking would soon be over and I would make the transition to either jogging, which I hated, or walking, which I could tolerate. It would have been nice if I’d had a neighbor close by who could be persuaded to join me, but I hadn’t had much of a chance to get to know any of them. Most of the other residents out here had lived in the area for years and were slow to accept a newcomer. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake in moving here. I loved living in a rural area, but I was starting to get a wee bit lonely.

Turning onto Airtight, the car tires resonated as I drove slowly across the bridge and down the stretch of deserted road that lead to the highway. Irrationally, I blamed my melancholy mood on the bridge. Recalling the good-natured teasing my co-workers lavished upon me after I answered the usual questions of where I was from originally and where I currently resided, Airtight seemed to be the source of my problems.

The bridge, constructed well over a hundred years ago, spanned the river in an imposing web of iron and steel. Something about the name Airtight got under my skin, even without the stories I’d heard.

Before I moved here, the real estate agent didn’t bother to share the local lore attached to the bridge. About twenty years ago, a woman’s disfigured body had been found by a couple of local fishermen. She still rested in an unmarked grave, although her identity had eventually been discovered, unlike the party responsible for her death. My co-workers at the ER told me that after that incident, the local residents got a little paranoid. No trespassing signs went up on private lanes, some going as far to say it would be enforced from the other end of a shotgun. Teenagers drove out there at night on dares, scaring themselves and the already nervous residents, adding to the growing rumors.

Nothing nefarious had happened since then, but the reputation persisted. I wasn’t a particularly superstitious person, I didn’t believe in borrowing trouble. I took the short route across Airtight in the mornings, but when I worked late and didn’t get off until after dark, I drove the long way home. When the time changed I had resigned myself to logging more miles on my odometer and spending my Christmas bonus on gas. Shaking my head free of the jumbled thoughts, I flicked on the radio for company and sped down the highway.

By four-thirty I was ready to go home and begin my long weekend. Three of the nurses I worked with promised to bring their kids to my house Saturday to trick-or-treat. I wondered if they were making genuine overtures at friendship or if they just felt sorry for me. I decided to take it face value and simply enjoy seeing the children’s costumes when they came.

Making a mental note to stop and pick up some candy and fruit before I left town, I changed out of my blue and white scrubs. Grabbing my coat and duffle, I sucked in a breath of chilly air as the automatic doors at the main entrance opened, ushering me into the autumn evening.

The sky was still overcast, the clouds heavy and low. Once again, by the time I got home there wouldn’t be much light left. No time for a ride or walk tonight.

With two bags of groceries in the back of the Jeep, I drove the now familiar route out of town. Though it wasn’t dark, I switched the dims on for good measure. Fifteen minutes later I flipped the turn signal to make a right and take the short cut over Airtight. Hunger overrode my apprehension and the sugar from the bag of Hershey’s miniatures I had torn into must have given me a sense of invincibility. My bravery was short lived as the faint beam of the headlights outlined a shape moving along the shadowed side of the bridge. I slowed down and pulled into the other lane, hoping no traffic came from the opposite direction in the next minute or so.

As I approached, the shape became more defined. Two figures took form; the black dog from the day before and a willowy woman. I inched even with them then I pushed harder on the brake and rolled to a stop.

You always hear the corny line from the movies that says everything, including time, stands still for a second or two during a pivotal moment in your life. I had always heard about it, but never experienced it until that particular moment.

The tingling in my fingers alerted me to the crushing grip I had on the wheel, breaking the spell and restarting the universal clock. Glancing down at my hands, I released my hold and began rubbing them to force the circulation back. A sharp tap on the passenger side window caused me to jump so hard that only the seatbelt kept me from completely ejecting myself out of the vehicle.

Glancing right, my eyes met the obviously concerned and somewhat amused face of the tall woman. “Are you alright?” she questioned through the glass, loud enough for me to hear above the Jeep’s engine.

“I’m fine,” I nearly yelled, mustering up a weak smile in an effort to convince both myself and the stranger.

“You don’t exactly look fine,” came the skeptical reply, her voice again raised to be heard through the barrier of glass.

Our combined breaths were starting to fog up the window. Feeling foolish, I hit the button to power it down. “Really, I’m fine,” I repeated with more conviction this time.

Desperately wanting to shift the focus off myself, I commented on the only other subject close at hand: her furry companion. “I’m glad your dog wasn’t lost yesterday evening. I wondered about him being out in that rainstorm but he seemed to know where he was going.”

Bending a little to see more clearly through the Jeep door, the woman smiled and answered. “We didn’t melt. Jett has such a thick coat I doubt he even felt it. You barely made it in before the heavens opened up though.”

“We?” I frowned, confused. “I didn’t see you, only the dog.”

Turning her face into the wind, the blonde let the gusts comb back the shoulder length strands. “Jett had gotten a little ahead of me. You probably just didn’t notice me.”

I was about to completely embarrass myself and say I’d have to be blind not to notice her, but stopped myself in time. Instead, I returned to the canine subject. “Jett, huh?” So much for witty conversation.

“It’s short for Jett Black,” she said, absently running the fingers of her left hand over the animal’s glossy head. “I’m Cassie, by the way.”

“Robin,” I said as I stretched across the seat and offered my hand. Cassie seemed to hesitate, then reached through the open window and wrapped her fingers around mine. The sensation was a bit like slipping on a glove of ice.

“Your hand is freezing,” I admonished. “Why don’t you let me give you a ride home or wherever it is you’re going?”

Cassie quickly withdrew her hand. “What’s that old saying? ‘Warm hands, cold heart?’ Thanks, but Jett and I don’t have far to go. We’ll be fine, won’t we boy?” she declined my offer as she ruffled the dog’s fur.

“Alright then,” I smiled, trying to hide my disappointment at the apparent end of our conversation. “It was nice to meet you.” Not able to think of anything else to prolong my time with her, I started to pull away.

“Hey Robin,” Cassie called out, bringing me to an abrupt halt. “Maybe we’ll see you out here again.”

The mega watt smile on my face could have out shown the Jeep’s headlights for the rest of the drive home.

Checking the forecast Thursday morning, I was ecstatic. Fair weather was promised through the weekend. Surmising there was a good chance I might run into Cassie again around the same time that evening, I tried to keep busy until then. If cleaning was an Olympic sport, I would’ve taken the gold.

Four-thirty found me biking slowly a mile from Airtight, scanning the road for Cassie or Jett. My left foot slipped off the pedal and I nearly took a header when someone spoke behind me.

“Beautiful day,” Cassie said, grinning as I regained my balance, then dismounted.

“Yes it is,” I agreed, waiting as Cassie and Jett caught up with me. “I was hoping for some company to enjoy it with,” I confessed.

“Jett’s a lot of fun, but I’m a little out of practice. I may not be as entertaining as most of the people you know.”

“Impossible,” I laughed. “Especially since I don’t really know anyone here that well.”

Tilting her head, Cassie eyes were kind as she asked, “Why is that?”

Not wanting to explain my bridge theory, I gave a simple answer. “Oh, I haven’t been here that long. What about you?” I questioned. “I take it you live around here.”

“I grew up here,” Cassie said, avoiding a direct answer. She picked up a stick and threw it, Jett making a mad dash after it. Full of energy, he brought it back and all three of us began walking.

“It’s a good place to live,” Cassie said quietly. “Sometimes it’s not so much that we pick a place, but that a place picks us, you know?”

“Oh I love the location and scenery,” I agreed, understanding her feelings. “I wish the people weren’t so hard to get to know.”

“Maybe they’re thinking the same about you. This is a good place to hide from the world.”

Lost in my loneliness, I had never stopped to consider that perhaps I wasn’t alone in my solitude. Maybe it was in part self imposed. I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe,” I conceded.

For almost an hour we walked, talking about life and dreams, hopes and fears. It was somewhat one sided, Cassie drawing me out and encouraging my need to connect. She didn’t share much about herself, except to briefly mention that she was colorblind. It was an unusual fact to share out of the blue, but I welcomed any personal tidbit.

Retracing our steps, we ended up back at Airtight. I invited Cassie for supper, but she declined. My disappointment was short lived though.

“Same time, same place tomorrow?” she asked.

“Deal,” I agreed, thrilled. Biking home, I realized I never even noticed whether she wore a ring, much less inquired about her personal life. Either I was slipping to not be romantically interested in a beautiful woman or I was that badly in need of friendship. I decided not to analyze it too much.

On Friday I left my bike at home and headed out on foot a little early. Cassie and Jett had beaten me and were waiting. As I approached, Cassie knelt and seemed to be speaking to Jett. Leaning forward, she wrapped both arms around his neck and held him. This puzzled me and made me vaguely uneasy. When she turned to face me, I knew something was wrong.

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I asked.

Ignoring my question, she continued. “I need you to keep Jett for a day or two.”

“Why?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “I mean yes, I will, but why?”

“I have to go away again.”

“Again? Where? Please tell me what’s wrong,” I pleaded.

“Someone will come for him. He won’t be any trouble to keep.” She refused to answer my questions.

“Stop,” I raised my voice, gaining her full attention. “Are you in trouble? Are you sick?” All my questions were met with a negative head shake. Nearly defeated, I stated more than asked, “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”

The sorrow in her eyes matched the ache building in my heart. With one hand tangled in Jett’s fur, she reached behind my neck and pulled me closer. Gently kissing my forehead, she whispered. “Never say never.”

Stunned, I watched as Cassie crossed Airtight and rounded the turn. Jett kept making small whining sounds, but curiously didn’t try to follow. In a panic, I ran after Cassie, planning to stop her on the other side. As I turned the corner, the road was empty though; Cassie was nowhere in sight.

Jett and I spent the rest of the afternoon on my front porch. My stomach eventually made its needs known, despite my depressed mood. Realizing Jett must be hungry as well and needing dog food I opened the garage door. He could either ride with me to town or I’d lock him inside, but I wasn’t going to risk him wandering off. He’d been my shadow for hours now, but I couldn’t chance it.

Easily enough, he hopped in the Jeep’s back hatch as soon as I opened it. The trip was uneventful and once home, he ate and was content to curl up on a blanket I folded and placed on the floor in the living room. Suddenly exhausted, I stretched out on the couch and didn’t move until morning.

It was Saturday, Halloween, and my vacation was half over. I had no idea what to do about Jett if Cassie’s friend or whomever didn’t come for him before Monday. Although I didn’t want to admit it, I was already attached to him. He didn’t ask for much except food, water and my blue slippers. They fell victim to his nocturnal scavenger hunt while I was sleeping.

Just after dusk the nurses I worked with began to show up with their costumed children. The women admired the house and what they could see of the yard in the dark while I doled out candy and apples. Jett left his blanket to investigate the commotion and stood patiently while little ghosts, one princess and a fuzzy feline costumed child petted him.

“Robin, I didn’t know you had a dog,” Kate, the other ER nurse, commented. Her husband Dan was along for crowd control. Before I could reply, Dan took a closer look at Jett and said, “That looks like Parker’s dog.”

“I’m keeping him temporarily for a friend.”

“So you know Parker?” Dan asked.

“No,” I answered, slightly frustrated. “Who’s Parker?”

“Parker is the architect who designed our house,” Kate said.

“I see. No, I wouldn’t know him.” I was feeling uneasy again.

“Her. Parker is a woman,” Kate corrected.

“That sure looks like her dog,” Dan repeated.

“It isn’t,” I was a little sharper than I intended and Kate must have sensed my discomfort even if she didn’t understand the cause. She herded Dan and their children back out to the car. The rest of the group followed suit and Jett and I were left alone.

The whole encounter had drained me for some reason and I ended up on the couch again. Jett curled up on the floor next to me and his snoring soon lulled me to sleep.

Persistent knocking on the door combined with Jett’s whining roused me. Disoriented at first, I checked my watch. I had slept only an hour. It was after eight and I wasn’t expecting any more trick or treaters.

Hoping Jett was a good guard dog, I peered out the side window. A woman stood on my porch, the collar on her Carhardt jacket turned up against the wind. Her dark, shoulder length hair kept blowing across her beautifully sculpted face. Dark eyes set above high cheekbones caught sight of me in the window and I froze.

The woman shoved her hands into her pockets for warmth. I could have just not opened the door, but I had a feeling she’d stay there all night if I didn’t. Turning the lock, I pulled the knob and faced the stranger.

“Hello,” she said, looking tired. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my dog is missing and…”

“Dan,” I interrupted, my earlier irritation returning.

“Yes, Dan called me.” The woman was taller than me and she glanced into the living room and saw Jett. The fatigue in her eyes was replaced by relief as she whistled. Jett pushed past me, tail wagging furiously, and went straight to her. “You must be Parker,” I guessed, motioning her inside and closing the door against the chill.

Producing a leash from her pocket and snapping it on Jett’s collar, she nodded. “And you must be Robin. I can’t thank you enough. Where did you find him?”

“I didn’t find him. Cassie asked me to keep him for her until she sent someone to pick him up,” I answered, already missing the dog.

Parker looked as though I’d gut punched her. “What did you say?” she asked, staring me down.

I sensed something was terribly wrong “Cassie sent you, didn’t she?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes.

Pulling Jett close to her, Parker’s hand clenched on the leash until the knuckles turned white. “Is this your idea of a sick joke?” she demanded.

“No! I don’t know how I got in the middle of all this. Two days ago I met a sweet, kind woman walking her dog. Next thing I know, she asks me to keep him for her. Then you show up with an attitude and accuse me of I’m not sure what.” Stopping for breath and seeing the dog hiding behind Parker’s legs, I lowered my voice. “Tell Cassie she owes me an explanation,” I finished, then remembered something. “And a new pair of blue slippers, if she can get someone to help pick the color.”

Parker raked a hand through her hair and opened her mouth twice to speak before any words came out. “What do you mean about the color?”

Wondering just how well Cassie knew this person, I shrugged and answered. “She said she was color blind.”

“No one knew that besides me and her parents.” Parker looked at me strangely. “It embarrassed her for some reason. She had me tag her clothing so she could match it herself in the mornings without having to depend on me. She was stubborn that way.”

A sad smile passed over Parker’s face as she spoke. Something clicked in my head and I had to ask. “Are you and Cassie…” I let the sentence trail off.

“Cassie was my partner, if that’s what you’re asking,” she leaned back against the door.

I wanted to be discreet but still satisfy my curiosity. “Was your partner? I take it you aren’t together anymore.”

“Cassie died three years ago,” Parker said, her voice full of barely controlled emotion.

“That can’t be,” I shook my head, not believing her. “I just talked to her on Friday! She kissed my forehead, damn it,” I added for emphasis. “Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not!” Parker said as she threw both hands in the air, dropping Jett’s leash. He promptly moved back to his blanket on the other side of the room. “I don’t know you. I don’t understand how you found out about Cassie being color blind or how you ended up with my dog, but I’d like to figure it out.”

“Not tonight,” I said with conviction. My head was splitting and I’d had enough. Parker made no move to leave and I wondered if I was going to have to threaten her with the fireplace poker. Judging from size, I knew who’d win. I tried reasoning with her instead.

“Let Jett stay here tonight. You can come for him in the morning. Maybe I’ll wake up and this will have all been a wild dream,” I told her.

You could hear the ideas rolling around in Parker’s head, but after a few moments she reached for the doorknob. “I get up early,” she warned.

“That figures,” I muttered, easing the tension and earning a strange look from Parker.

Retrieving her leash, she left without another word. Locking the door behind her, I considered the possibility of renting a U-Haul, leaving before daybreak and mentally blocking out the past three days. If I hadn’t been so tired, I might’ve tried it.

Parker showed up at seven the next morning, but at least I was awake and dressed. Her arms were full as I opened the door and ushered her into the kitchen. Jett was sniffing the air and bouncing, clearly expecting a treat. Parker reached into one of the bags she sat down on the table and produced a huge bone shaped chew toy that smelled like beef jerky. My stomach didn’t appreciate that particular fragrance so early and it must have been evident on my face, causing Parker to laugh at me. Reaching into the bag again, she brought out a box of cream filled doughnuts and handed them to me. I nearly swooned, but managed to pour two cups of coffee before I opened the box, accepting the peace offering.

Sitting down, Parker lifted a large picture album from the other bag. Hesitating, she spoke. “Hear me out, ok? I brought something to prove to you that I’m not insane. I don’t understand why now or why you, but Cassie must have had a reason for all this.”

I sat next to her and she began to tell me about Cassie as she turned the pages of the album. It was without a doubt the same person I had met. There were shots of Parker and Cassie’s commitment ceremony, their family gatherings and every type of picture you’d expect to have accumulated over what she told me were ten shared years of life. On the last page was Cassie’s death certificate. The cause was listed as extensive internal injuries sustained from an auto accident. I didn’t know what to say or think.

“I was with her in the emergency room before she passed,” Parker told me. “She made me promise I wouldn’t become angry or bitter. Made me promise I wouldn’t throw my life away. For a long time, I wished I’d died, too,” Parker glanced up to check my reaction.

“I’m not judging, only listening,” I reassured her. “I couldn’t imagine bearing that kind of pain, but I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to in the ER.”

“The first year I wouldn’t have even gone outside the house if it wasn’t for the dog, The second year I had to get back to work or lose my business. This year, I realized I’d be letting Cassie down if I waste any more days feeling sorry for myself.”

Without thinking, I placed my palm over her hand and squeezed. “I think she’d be happy to know that.”

Parker’s face lit up with the first real smile I’d seen from her. She looked both pleased and slightly embarrassed with the compliment, and it melted my heart. I could see why Cassie fell for her. In the same instant, it hit me that I could easily become attracted to Parker, and I felt guilty. It was almost like I was cheating on Cassie somehow, though that didn’t make any sense. But then again, having long walks and philosophical conversations with someone’s spirit was even harder to fathom.

Parker and Jett left after one more cup of coffee, leaving me alone to sort out my thoughts. Like Parker said, why now and why me? What was so important that it brought Cassie back? I wasn’t even certain I believed in anything paranormal. Still, I knew what happened was real even if I couldn’t explain it.

Then there was the issue of Parker, whom I knew for a fact was flesh and blood. I didn’t even think to find out where she lived. Kate could tell me, but then she’d be full of questions. I should’ve at least asked for visitation rights to Jett. And lastly, I was seriously considering buying a treadmill and getting my exercise inside, away from the back roads and Airtight.

It was good to get back into the routine of work on Monday. The days flew by and kept me from dwelling on the odd events of last weekend. My only off day was Sunday, and I drove up to the northern part of the state to a Renaissance Fair I’d seen advertised for a much needed diversion.

It was early evening when I got home. Parker was sitting on the tailgate of her truck in my driveway. Jett was bounding around the yard, making himself at home. I stopped in front of the garage and got out, wondering what brought the two back out here.

“I should’ve called first, but I don’t know your number. I don’t even know your last name,” Parker apologized as she walked over to my Jeep.

“That’s ok,” I told her. “Have you been waiting long?” I asked as I bent down to ruffle Jett’s fur.

“Not long. I hope you don’t mind. It was just peaceful. Jett remembered the place and wanted out.”

“No, I don’t mind,” I assured her. “I’m glad to see the big guy again. And you,” I added, not sure how it sounded.

Parker stood there a minute, at a loss for words it seemed. She suddenly smiled and held up one finger. “I almost forgot something. Hang on,” she said before jogging to her truck. Taking a package from the cab, she jogged back and handed it to me. “Open it,” she urged.

I did and laughed at the contents of the box. Inside was a pair of blue slippers. “You didn’t have to do this. But thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she grinned. “I had to guess at the size.”

Turning the box over, I was surprised to find that they were exactly right. “Good guess,” I said.

Parker pinned me with a hopeful yet hesitant look. “I was wondering if you’d do something for me,” she said.

That sentence triggered an eerie sense of déjà vu. “If you’re going to ask me to keep Jett, the answer is no. That’s how this all got started in the first place.” I was only half joking, not having a clue what Parker was going to spring on me.

“Oh, no,” she laughed nervously, finding more humor in the situation than I did. “I wondered if you’d be willing to show me where you saw Cassie.”

Both relieved and apprehensive, I nodded. “I can do that.”

And so began our evening ritual. Parker and Jett would be waiting at my house when I got off work and the three of us would take the same route that had brought me in contact with Cassie. We continued for almost a week, weather permitting, but never saw anything out of the ordinary. On Thursday, Parker was unusually quiet. Walking across Airtight and keeping Jett close on his leash, she broke her silence.

“This is the last time I’m going to drag you out here,” she sounded defeated. “She isn’t going to show.” Parker leaned her elbows on the bridge railing and gazed down at the water below. “What I don’t get is if she found a way to come back, why didn’t she come to me?”

Adopting her pose, I gave the only answer I could. “I don’t know. She must have had a reason. Maybe she was using me to check on you because she was afraid you wouldn’t be able to let her go again,” I ventured.

“But that’s just it; you’d think she would’ve made an appearance two years ago when I was ready to give up. Where was she then?” Parker asked bitterly.

“There could be a thousand reasons. Maybe you had to decide to live on your own, without Cassie. She could’ve known you were strong enough and didn’t need her interference,” I suggested. The emotions and energy rolling off Parker were palpable. She was fighting against something, perhaps herself, and I wasn’t certain how to help or if she even wanted me to.

“That still brings me back to the why now question,” she persisted. “Why now when I finally feel like I’m ready to move on with the rest of my life?”

“Are you ready?” I felt guilty again for wanting that to be true.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” Parker frowned slightly. Struggling to say more, she pushed off the railing and began walking again.

I was glad to be moving. The road had been empty of traffic this evening, but it was getting late. The light was fading and I wanted to be home before dark. Parker always managed to maneuver Jett and me onto the shoulder, keeping herself between us and oncoming traffic. It was something she did without realizing it, her protective nature rising to the surface automatically. It was sweet, though if I pointed it out she’d deny it.

The still of the evening was broken by a high pitched whine in the treetops as the wind picked up suddenly. It was decidedly cooler and I hugged my arms against myself in an effort to ward off the chill. My two companions didn’t seem to notice the temperature drop. One was lost in thought and the other intent on sniffing every available landmark within reach.

A sharp cracking sound emanated from the canopy of branches above us, followed by a shower of loose bark. A large section of dead wood plummeted downward, striking other branches and imperceptibly slowing its decent. As if in slow motion, Parker and I both looked up. Before I could react, Parker lunged, grabbing me around the waist, knocking me to the ground several feet from where we stood only seconds before. Simultaneously, the log-sized branch crashed to the shoulder of the highway, vibrating the ground and splintering into two pieces with the force of impact.

The weight of Parker’s body atop mine kept me motionless. It was difficult to catch my breath, both from the unexpected scare and the feel of the woman above me. Slowly, Parker lifted her torso, bracing an arm on either side of my shoulders. Our legs were tangled and neither made a move to get up.

“You ok?” The words brushed across my face like a warm caress. Parker’s eyes, darker than the shadows around us, held mine and voiced all the other questions she didn’t ask out loud.

“I feel alive,” I answered, meaning much more than the obvious.

“Robin…” Parker began, then changed her mind. Instead, her gaze drifted down to my lips. Inch by agonizing inch, she lowered her head until her mouth whispered across mine. The brief touch was repeated, Parker’s kiss more insistent this time. Gently taking my bottom lip between her teeth, she teased the sensitive skin with her tongue. A rush of heat swept through my body, igniting a slow burn that settled between my legs. I parted my lips and Parker accepted the invitation. Her tongue glided against mine, tasting, exploring, as I opened my body and heart to her.

Jett had been quiet, drug along out of harms’ way with Parker and me. Now he whined softly, triggering an odd memory for me. Breaking away from the kiss, I turned my head towards the dog, already knowing what I’d see.

Cassie stood maybe ten feet away. Parker’s eyes followed mine and I felt her body tense, then relax. I should have run screaming from the entire situation straight to a therapist, but strangely I felt calm.

Parker spoke first. “It took you long enough.”

This caused Cassie to grin. “I could say the same about you two.”

The pieces slipped into place for me and I worked a hand free, waving it at Parker and myself. Staring at Cassie, I sputtered, “You mean that’s what this was about?”

Parker’s eyes were still locked on Cassie, but she spoke to me. “I told you she was stubborn. She was never satisfied until everyone she knew had someone to love.”

“You know me well,” Cassie admitted.

“Will you be…”

Cassie held up a hand to stop her. “I’ll be fine, now that you are.” Cassie pressed her lips to her palm, placed it over her heart and faded into the twilight along Airtight road.

After several moments of silence, Parker carefully stood up, then reached down for my hand and pulled me to my feet. Not sure of what to say, I asked the only thing that came to mind.

“Are you ok?”

Entwining her fingers with mine, Parker drew me close and kissed me softly. Leaning her forehead against mine, she echoed my earlier answer. “I feel alive.”

We never did see Cassie again, although Jett would sometimes whine and beg us to take him out along the bridge in the evenings.

Every year on our anniversary, Parker buys me a new pair of blue slippers. It’s our own little corny ritual. The odd thing is, I can never find them where I left them. Parker swears she never moves them and Jett never comes upstairs. I wonder…

Focus of Desire

Elise Matthesen

~

Dr. Graham? I’m sorry, but we’re closing soon. I’ll have to lock up.” The librarian gripped the doorframe, leaning in. “Can I help you put things away?”

It took Danise Graham a moment to find her voice. “Yes. No.” She cleared her throat, tried again. “I mean, it’s not Dr. Graham. Yet.”

“Dissertation?” the librarian said, with a friendly grimace.

“Yes,” Danise said, and blew out her breath noisily.

The librarian laughed and came in to help gather up the research materials. “Well, it’s Friday night.” She picked up a bound copy of a journal and its battered slipcase. “You could probably stand to grab some dinner. There’s a halfway-decent place down the block that’s still open.” She looked at Danise, her green eyes warm, and smiled.

“No, I don’t think so.” Danise said, counting the pages of crucial notes she had to transcribe, and frowning. The librarian helped her clear up in silence, then let her out the front door.

Danise said, “Bye,” absently as she heard the lock click behind her. It was only when she turned the corner by the bus stop that she realized the woman had been flirting with her, and she had totally blown her off. No, worse: she hadn’t even noticed. She winced.

Shelly would have ragged her for missing that. But Shelly wasn’t around any more. And this sort of behavior was exactly why.

One point about not having a girlfriend, Danise thought, is that it did give a person more time to concentrate on work. Which had been part of Shelly’s exit speech, come to think of it. “You have a one-track mind,” Shelly had said, hands on her hips. “The trouble is, whatever track you’re on is never the one where I’m standing waiting for you. You’re so focused on your work, you can’t see anything else. You don’t want to. And you’ll never change.” She had turned, not quite quickly enough to keep Danise from seeing the tears starting, and had walked out for the last time.

Danise shook her head to clear the memory and boarded the bus home.

But when she got there and spread out her notes and the pages she had scanned and copied, she said aloud, “This really was important, damn it.” She had said that to Shelly too many times, but it was true. This was something worthy of focus.

She looked at the newspaper page again. Yes, that did say “Dr. Jane Barneveldt Cooper’s office and residence.” The address was correct—and there was a photograph. Triumph! Photographic confirmation of the makes and models of equipment Dr. Cooper had used. Her key dissertation point was now solidified by indisputable evidence.

More than that, her guesses about her home were finally confirmed as well. It wasn’t germane to the dissertation, but she had to admit that it mattered to her personally. Danise looked from the photo to the walls around her. The doctors of Dr. Cooper’s day had had their offices wherever they could afford to, often combining living quarters and professional space. This room was clearly the one in the photograph; that odd jog in the elegant old woodwork, though scarred by time and subsequent tenants, definitely identified it as the wall behind the machinery. Dr. Jane, as her friends had referred to her in their letters, had indeed worked and lived—and died, for that matter—in this building, and now Danise had proof. “It’s like living in a primary source,” she said, aloud. The rows and stacks of books and file boxes absorbed her voice. Every book, every file, every stack of photocopied paper had to do with Dr. Jane. Shelly had accused her of being more in love with Dr. Jane than with her, and Danise had to admit that there was some truth to that, even though Shelly would never understand it.

She wondered if the other researcher who had once lived in this apartment had felt the same way about Dr. Jane. Danise had known about the doctor when she took an apartment in this building—that was why she had taken it in the first place—but she only found out later that Olive Powell had a connection to the building as well. Olive Powell, writer of the only previous work on Dr. Jane Barneveldt Cooper, had lived and died here too. Did Olive know Dr. Jane had lived in the building? Or had her interest in the doctor come later? Whichever it was, the interest had turned out to be all-consuming.

Olive’s papers were Danise’s first big break. Finding that the address on Powell’s letters was her own was a bit disquieting, and Shelly had made jokes about communing with the spirits that irked her considerably, but the papers, letters, and logbooks were of inestimable value. Secondary texts, yes, but she could see the avenues Powell had researched, and they led her to primary sources she otherwise might never have found. Today’s finds had been among them: the photograph from the small newspaper that had folded not too long after the doctor had died, and the small bundle of letters to Dr. Jane.

Danise picked up the copied page of the newspaper. The dark-haired woman in the photograph wore sober professional attire and held an ornate mechanical device attached by a long cord to more hardware. Danise imagined her wielding the apparatus, skillfully bringing a female patient to a writhing climax. “Inducing the hysterical paroxysm,” they called it then. The best books on the subject, of which there were still few, talked about the vibrator as labor-saving device, especially for those physicians whose lack of skill with manual manipulation meant that their “hysterical” patients’ office visits took considerable time and effort on the part of the doctor. Early electric vibrators, however cumbersome and expensive, were a godsend. Plug ‘em in, get ‘em off, bill ‘em and send the next one in, thought Danise sourly. Just like the HMOs.

Her own field wasn’t that dissimilar, she thought. Her advisor kept admonishing her to get on with it and publish something, anything, whether or not there was more work she felt she had to do. “Rewriting is endless,” he had told her, making one of his unfunny Buddhist jokes. “Vow to end it.” More to the point, he had told her that unless she could demonstrate she was making real progress, the department might not renew her contract for the next year. Without the income from teaching, her research grant wasn’t going to be enough to live on. Nor was its renewal a sure thing either.

She wasn’t done yet, though. There was too more to find out. She’d just have to economize. At least she didn’t spend much on movies and cafes these days, she thought wryly. Not having a girlfriend definitely streamlined the budget. Plus she didn’t have to hear about how unreasonable she was when she criticized movies and television shows for historical inaccuracy. Nor was she told to save her socioeconomic and political analysis for her committee—not that they were much in favor of it either. Danise sighed.

She wondered whether Dr. Jane had been much beset by professional jealousy. She had certainly had her detractors among fellow physicians. Probably those were the ones who weren’t as good at treating the patients they lost to Dr. Jane, she thought. For the rare woman doctor who knew female sexual response firsthand it must have been different. Danise reached for the photograph again and studied the face. This woman looked strong and stubborn. Danise liked that. Hell, she was that herself.

Granted, the clues in the few surviving letters of Dr. Jane Barneveldt Cooper were elliptical, but Danise felt like she knew where Dr. Jane was coming from. And who she was coming with, so to speak. She had no solid evidence that Dr. Jane was a lesbian, but in her heart, she knew.

Proving it to her committee and to the world was another matter, of course. But this was why sinking into research was her real joy. So much hidden, she thought. So much we’ll never know. It’s there sometimes, hinted at, but not seen clearly. It’s not in focus, and it’s our job to put it there, if we can find solid evidence.

Shelly’s bitter jokes about chasing ghosts echoed again in her mind. She shook her head, and bent to her reading and note-taking with renewed energy.

But as winter wore on, things went badly for Danise. Several members of her committee weren’t happy with her emphasis on Olive Powell’s interpretations of Dr. Jane’s methodology and motivations. It might have been easier had Powell’s other books not chronicled the lives of several prominent Spiritualists in the early feminist community. No matter how much serious, solid work those women had done in the abolitionist and suffragist movements, their involvement with table-rappers and trance mediums made them suspect, and a biographer who seemed to be seriously entertaining their beliefs was equally suspect. She didn’t know what they’d do if she told them about the accounts in Olive Powell’s logbook about the séance interviews she’d attempted to conduct with Dr. Jane, but it wouldn’t be good.

Her committee members alternated between disapproving of her sources and pushing her to publish. Her grant for the next year was still in limbo, and her teaching contract was under review. Worse, her daydreams were getting in the way of her work. Some of them—all right, most of them, these days, featured Dr. Jane.

Well, thought Danise, the woman was fascinating. Also hot. Brilliant, driven women usually were.

Her collection of antique vibrators—for research purposes, she had once told Shelly earnestly, and had been grievously offended when Shelly broke out laughing—had grown significantly. She had succeeded in finding several more examples of the apparatus that Dr. Jane had refined and marketed. Some were fairly expensive, but Danise made sacrifices. However, after she brought them home, she was embarrassed. Not because of what they were—she prided herself on a matter-of-fact approach to issues of physicality and sexuality—but because of the fantasies that popped unbidden into her head when she looked at them. Fantasies that usually involved Dr. Jane.

Maybe Shelly had been right. Maybe there was such a thing as getting too involved with your subject.

She told herself this again when her mind took a sudden embarrassing swerve into the decidedly ahistorical. Though she knew it was ridiculous, she imagined Olive in the arms of Dr. Jane. The two women kissed, tentatively at first, and then hungrily, fiercely. They tore each other’s clothing off, falling together on the nest of discarded garments. Olive’s face bent to the dark curls at Jane’s center, the doctor’s hand caressing her head, urging her on….

Was it fair to fantasize about someone without their consent? But both women were long since dead, and how would you get consent from a ghost, anyhow? Danise shook her head to dislodge the intruding thought, and tried to settle back into her reverie about the two women who had lived and died in this apartment, separated by time but united by work and passion. The passion part was clearly uppermost in her imagination now, but she had started by thinking about the work: the doctor who had done so much to lay a groundwork for an understanding of female sexual response, and would have revolutionized the field had she not died so young, and the researcher who followed her by sixty years, reconstructing her work and her theories, looking at them through the psychological perspectives of her era. That she believed by now, from passages in each of their letters and private papers, that both had been lesbians was not the only reason she cared about them, but it did matter. How could it not? It affected their work, their lives, just as it affected hers.

Well, okay, right now her worldview was drifting off sideways into a nice little bubble of sexual fantasy. And why not? Didn’t Dr. Jane herself say that the therapeutic focusing and release of sexual energy was important to the health and well-being of the female organism?

Besides, in her field, fantasies were an occupational—what, hazard? Hardly that, Danise thought muzzily, grinning. More like a fertile opportunity for endless distraction, at least for her personally. Of course it was probably what her more prudish colleagues thought she did every waking moment when they had seen her research collection at her recent presentation. The sight of devices intended to stimulate seemed to bring out latent Puritanism in the most unlikely people. Really, she thought, it was nearly as bad as it had been back in Olive Powell’s day, when a woman researching and writing about the history and therapeutic aspects of female masturbation was automatically thought to be a pornographer or worse.

She tried to imagine Olive, as she’d seen her in photographs, with her serious face, bent over the case diaries and logbooks of Dr. Jane. The scene kept turning into Olive, naked on the couch, spread wide and blissful under the ministrations of Dr. Jane and her miraculous labor-saving device.

Danise went to get one of her own miraculous labor-saving devices, of which she had a significant modern research collection herself. It was the only way she was going to undistract herself enough to get this next section written, and she had a deadline. The demands of the scholar’s life, she thought, grinning.

Work went on. So did the distractions. Olive Powell started invading her dreams next. Well, maybe “invading” was too strong a word. Olive was being reassuring, after all. It happened when Danise fell asleep on the couch. She had been taking a break, checking out the latest anthology of lesbian erotic fiction, trying not to make too many grumpy notes in the margins. She drifted off, and Olive appeared, telling her soothingly, “It’s all right. We want you to dream, to daydream, to fantasize—about us, about anything. And read, too! Please.”

“You want me to what?” said Danise, half-aware that she was dreaming. “Why?”

“Reverie makes certain things stronger. So do any of the trance-like states. Fantasizing about us is one. Reading, really reading, is another. When you do it, you create a field. Do it enough, and in the right way, and the things in that field come close enough to us that we can see them clearly. And it’s been so long since I’ve had anything new to read here.” Olive’s voice was plaintive, but her expression shifted suddenly to the conspiratorial.

Danise looked at the book she was, in the dream, still holding, and tried not to blush. “Where exactly is here, anyway?”

“It’s just… here.” Olive drew her hand across her breasts slowly, watching Danise’s expression.

“Are you a ghost?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Olive nodded.

“The Spiritualists were right?” said Danise.

“Mmm-hmm,” said Olive again. She trailed her other hand slowly down her stomach, over the curves, and slid her fingers down into the tempting shadows below. “Would you mind reading the part about the ropes and the ripe mangoes again? Please? I’d be really grateful.”

Danise awoke with a start. The book had slipped from her fingers and fallen with a thump. She thought about Olive’s request. Then she smiled and reached for the book.

What the hell, she thought, it’s the least I can do for a colleague in the field, isn’t it? Community of scholars and all that. I’ll just do a little ‘textual analysis’ here, and then get back to work.

The next time she heard Olive’s voice, she was awake. “Please,” she heard, the word urgent with desire.

I know that voice. I know it from my dream. Danise craned her neck to look in the direction of the voice, torn between her own incipient orgasm and her insatiable curiosity. What she glimpsed caught her irrevocably.

And after that, it was all if only. If only she hadn’t spun around, to try to see more. If she hadn’t needed to know that that really was Jane’s hand down between Olive’s thighs, pushing apart her closed legs. If she hadn’t caught that glimpse as she spun of Olive’s face wearing a look of triumphant submission, and Dr. Jane’s matching expression of intent precision, exploring the agency of desire with a wicked smile. She had nearly exploded right there into her own hysterical paroxysms.

Well, and if only she hadn’t been sprawling in a rickety cushioned swivel chair with an anthology of grade-A lesbian smut in one hand and a brand-new top-of-the-line vibrator in the other, she probably wouldn’t have overbalanced and tipped the chair when she tried to spin around. It was just bizarre bad luck, one chance in a million.

The thought was no comfort. Danise surveyed her body on the floor. There was no question about it; necks didn’t bend that way. Not in live people.

I’m dead. No, I can’t be dead! I still have two sections to go, and the bibliography! I can’t be dead. Please tell me I can’t be dead. Please.

And someone touched her.

She nearly jumped out of her skin. If she was dead, was it skin any more? Ectoplasm? Whatever, she thought wildly, looking around.

There was somebody standing just behind her. No, there were two somebodies. The first one she knew to be Olive right off. The other—well, how many people were likely to show up in this apartment wearing the dark suit of a lady doctor of the 1890s and carrying that particular apparatus?

Danise shut her eyes for a moment, wondering if dead people could hallucinate. Where’s my tunnel of light? How come I get dead lesbians with antique vibrators?

Well, if this was heaven, a lot of Baptists were going to be seriously surprised. And really, what was she complaining about? Dead lesbians with vibrators beats the hell out of a whole bunch of other options. She fought down the rising bubble of laughter, sure that if she started, she’d never stop.

“Fear not,” said the first ghost. “You’re with us now. We’ll look after you.”

“I wasn’t done being alive! I hadn’t published yet!”

At her words, both doctor and researcher looked sad. “Yes, we know,” said Olive. “Couldn’t be helped. We’re working on it, though, and someday, we hope….” Her voice trailed off. “Well, anyhow, let’s get you settled in. We need to see what came with you—ah! Good!” The ghost pointed at stacks of books and boxes that had suddenly appeared at Danise’s feet. “Let’s see what we’ve got. Oh, super! You brought the pirate book!” She fell to her knees, and started rummaging in the boxes. “Oh, this is a treasure trove! I knew you were going to be just perfect the moment you moved in.”

Danise watched her rummage through the boxes, pulling out book after book.

“These are great!” said Olive. “You’ve doubled our library!” She said confidingly, “I brought my books, of course, when I came. The ones that mattered to me, anyway. But there’s so much that’s been published since! And we have Jane’s medical texts, but they’re rather dry.” She wrinkled her nose and smiled. “Jane’s really excited about your literary criticism books, by the way. We didn’t have any of those, and she really enjoys them.”

The other figure suddenly moved forward, and Danise heard a velvety voice say, “Yes, I do. They are quite amusing. Particularly the ones about gender and sexuality.”

“Um,” said Danise, not quite sure how to respond but feeling vaguely judged. “I’m glad…”

Olive’s fingers caressed the well-worn volumes. “The trouble before, of course, was that we had to wait for you to open them and to turn the pages.”

“And people always read at different speeds, or skip the part you want,” said Jane, winking at her. Danise felt her face heat up, hating that she did so.

Jane said, matter-of-factly, “Oh, dear girl, never be ashamed. People’s predilections and interests vary wildly, but everyone has them. The science of medicine, and particularly my own area of study, have taught me that most thoroughly. Noticing what attracts a patient’s attention, what elicits their response, finding that upon which they fix their mind and their heart—”

“—not to mention their hands and their—” said her companion, gesturing.

“Olive, you are shocking our guest,” said Jane, her tone of reproval at odds with the light in her eyes. Olive grinned, and slid an arm around Jane’s waist.

There is a ghost leering at me. No, make that two ghosts. Danise grabbed frantically at whatever shreds of rationality she could find. “So you said that it’s reverie or trance or whatever it is that makes things come close enough to you that they exist here. And that it’s a between-state. How come everybody who dies in this place doesn’t come here? Or am I the only one who’s died here? Besides you two, I mean.” Danise looked around to see if other ghostly women might be sneaking up on her from all directions.

“No, you’re not, but don’t be alarmed.” Jane’s voice was reassuring. “There are a few others with us, though they aren’t here at the moment. We didn’t want to overwhelm you. But there aren’t many. Most people don’t have the right kind of reverie at the moment of death.” The wicked glow was back in Jane’s eyes.

“Oh.” Then, embarrassed, Danise said, “Oh!” She remembered where her mind had been, just before she died. And her hands. Particularly the one with the vibrator.

“If it’s any help, that’s how I got Olive,” said Jane. “Reverie.” She favored Olive with a positively lewd look.

“Mmm,” said Olive. She smiled at Jane, and added, “And it’s not just reverie. Body temperature has something to do with it too.”

“Yes. Did you know that in certain states of relaxed attention, the skin temperature actually goes up slightly? Some people do it when they’re drowsy, as well.” Jane’s voice held the eternal tones of the lecturing professor, along with something else. Something that Olive evidently liked, thought Danise. Well, she could understand that. If she had been studying under Dr. Jane, she would have had to discipline her thoughts pretty seriously to keep from drifting off during lectures into fantasies of more strict instruction.

“Mmm,” said Olive. “Terrycloth robe.” Suddenly she was wearing one.

And nothing else, noted Danise. I must have run out of startlement somewhere along the line here.

Jane said, “Olive had a terrycloth robe she loved, when she was alive. Then one day the woman who lived here after Olive died got one rather like it, and spent a lot of time… appreciating it. In a sort of drowsy fog of bliss. And that’s how Olive got her robe.”

“Wait a minute. Olive had a terrycloth robe when she was alive? How do you get a terrycloth robe in the afterlife?”

“From someone who appreciates it. I told you, it’s about the focus of attention.”

Olive interrupted. “The focus of desire, really. ‘Drowsy fog of bliss,’ huh. It’s a bit more specific than that, and you know it.” She looked at Jane meaningfully. “We really should tell her the truth.”

Jane nodded, solemnly. “It’s only fair. Courtesy among colleagues.” She squared her shoulders and looked Danise full in the face. The intensity of her gaze was such that Danise felt herself start to blush all over again. “My dear, we wanted the things you want. More to the point, we needed them, and therefore we needed you to want them intensely, and in particular ways, and at particular times.”

“And in a rather possessive way,” interrupted Olive again. Jane rolled her eyes. Olive amended her statement. “Well, in a way in which you fully… inhabit them, become one with them psychically, allow them to fully enter your consciousness. Isn’t that what one of your books said? I’m sorry, I don’t remember which one; you closed it before I got to the end of the page, and then you put it in a bag and didn’t bring it back.” She looked mournful. “It’s dreadfully hard to be a scholar and a ghost sometimes.”

“Think of it this way,” said Jane. “Your manner of demise will benefit scholarship and science, in our shadow plane of existence if not on your own. And because of the unique qualities of this apartment, which we have done much to reinforce over the years, the things you most desired will be with you here as well.”

“And with us,” said Olive, reaching out and picking up a book from the desk. It was shocking to see the familiar cover solid in the hands of a ghost. Olive held the volume to her chest possessively.

Danise felt the light break over her. “My books!” she said. “You… you killed me because you wanted my books?”

“Now, now,” said Jane. “We didn’t kill you. Your death will be ruled accidental, and it truly was. An accidental death while engaged in routine acts of self-pleasuring.” She paused. “We merely distracted you at an opportune moment. Timing is important.”

Routine acts of self-pleasuring, thought Danise. Right. She looked back at her body on the floor next to the overturned chair. The vibrator was still plugged in and buzzing quietly on the rug. The book she had been holding, one-handed, was lying open, pages splayed. She hadn’t quite gotten to the key page, the part where Anne Bonney and Mary Read had their way with their gradually enthusiastic captive. Truth be told, she had been mentally constructing her own version involving pirate queens with a more personally relevant backstory. Writing myself into the text, she thought. Finding myself in the history, even if it’s fantasy and smut, and oh my God that’s what they wanted, to get me caught up in the story enough so that they could—

“You wanted me to die while I was coming?” she said incredulously. “But I wasn’t yet! Doesn’t it have to be the exact moment of, you know, orgasm?”

“There’s a little leeway,” said Jane. “As with the full moon. Three days, traditionally, for the moon; three minutes, more or less, for this.”

“That is so not fair,” said Danise bitterly.

“We’ll make it up to you,” said Olive, standing up. “I can promise you that much.”

“Think, my dear young woman,” said Jane. “Your books are now corporeal to us. And so are you.” She stood near enough to Danise now that had she been alive, Danise would have felt the warmth of her breath. “And it follows that we are corporeal to you. This is quite useful.” She tilted her head slightly. “I’m presuming a bit, but I suspect you would not be averse to helping with my own research?”

“It seems only fair,” said Danise faintly. “You were the subject of mine.” Well, she thought, I might as well. A person has to work, or she’ll go crazy. I understand that. She suddenly had a flash of bizarre compassion for the ghost-scholars who had gotten her here, even given what they had done to her. The thirst for knowledge? She understood that particular focus of desire. And really, she was here now, and what else was there worth doing?

“That’s what I thought when she made the same offer to me,” said Olive, laughing. “Of course, I told her I’d do anything to help.”

“And so you did. And do,” said Jane fondly. “We’ll figure out the details of publishing someday, but for now, there’s still so much still to be learned.” The doctor turned her gaze on Danise again. “And a community of scholars is a fine, fine thing.” The texture and tone of her words made it an invitation, delicious and obscene. The doctor smiled.

Danise had seen that expression before. Just before she died, in fact. So had Olive, she gathered by the noise of anticipation the other woman gave. Danise closed her eyes and waited for the cool shivery touch she expected. A love stronger than death, she thought. The search for knowledge. Of course. She almost giggled again. “Of course you can have my books. We can share them..”

Olive said, “Well, I’m the one that really wants your books. What Jane wants is the vibrators. And you.”

The buzzing in the room changed slightly. Danise opened her eyes. Jane had lifted the modern device from the floor and was looking at it with mingled scientific and prurient pleasure.

Olive added, “And what Jane wants, Jane gets.”

Apparently so, thought Danise, as the doctor and the scholar moved forward to embrace her. She heard Olive say, “Shall I assist?” and the doctor reply, “Of course, my dear.” Then she felt cool arms holding her, and a familiar buzzing sensation was applied with a sure touch. Right, she thought. Heaven it is, then. Or at least the sort of afterlife fit for a seeker in this particular branch of knowledge. She closed her eyes again, sighed, and gave herself up to the ghosts.

Meeting Mr. Krenshaw

Ka Vang

~

The Shaw mansion stood on a hill in the elite Summit Avenue neighborhood in St. Paul. With massive oak doors resembling a mammoth mouth consuming all who entered and black shutters that framed the windows like long eyelashes mysteriously hiding a secret, the house called to Shoua, who first glimpsed it on the internet. The Shaw mansion was built in 1884 by a prominent immigrant who made his fortune in the railroad according to the realtor’s comments on the website. Shoua clicked on the slide show icon and saw the home’s interior with the original coffee colored hardwood floors that have been carefully refurbished until the walnut oak shimmered. The third picture showed the second floor master bathroom. There was an alabaster cast iron tub in the center of the tile bathroom. Shoua’s partner, Sarah would love the tub, but probably nothing else about the house.

Sarah liked new things such as fresh baked bread, blossoming flowers on a spring day and the latest fashions in Vogue. She equated new with good, which annoyed Shoua since she was the complete opposite. So Sarah rolled her eyes when Shoua pulled up the Shaw mansion on the Internet.

“Baby, it has everything we are looking for,” Shoua whined. She thought it was cute, but only it irritated Sarah. “Four bedrooms, two baths, two car garage and a large yard near Summit Avenue.”

“Shoua, we agreed that we would only look for homes in Woodbury” Sarah diced tomatoes to make salsa for their taco lunch. “Why are you even bothering to look at homes in St. Paul?”

“Because I grew up in St. Paul,” Shoua suspected that talking to Sarah while they cooked, which was Sarah’s favorite activity, was not going to help her get the house. “Besides the Shaw mansion is near my store.”

“Well…I want to be out in the country…where I grew up,” Sarah smashed avocados. “We agreed Woodbury would be a compromise.”

Shoua didn’t give Sarah a chance to finish. As she sprinted out of their rented downtown Minneapolis loft, she made sure the metal front door thundered behind her.

“Fine! Run away again,” hollered Sarah as she heard the door slam and knew that Shoua would not be able to hear her. “But I’m not coming after you.”

Wiping tears from her eyes, Sarah wondered why after ten years of an exclusive relationship Shoua still ran away during arguments. Lately Shoua bolted from the loft at every minor disagreement. Over the years, Sarah had chased Shoua out of her Hamline University dorm room, out of their Highland Park duplex and out of their downtown loft. If Sarah had been less confident about their union she would have thought that Shoua deliberately got upset so she could run off to be with a lover. But she was secure and knew Shoua needed time to cool off. Most of the time.

Shoua drove in circles around the Twin Cities and didn’t realize that she was in front of the Shaw mansion until she pulled up and saw the red open house sign. Her cell phone buzzed and she glanced down and saw Sarah’s number. Shoua pressed “ignore” and jumped out of the car, filled with anticipation.

As she skipped up the steps onto the porch she noticed an old woman leaning against a young man, practically using his body as her crutch.

“Benji, I don’t like this house.”

“Grandmother, it’s perfect for Theresa and girls.”

“There’s something not right about it.”

“That’s what you said about the last twelve homes.”

“Benji, did you not feel chills in there?”

“You are always cold.”

“Ber-nard Wal-ter Spen-cer!” The grandmother carefully annunciated every syllable as though the man had forgotten his own name. “It-is-fi-nal! This home is not right for you, Theresa and the twins. It is my money and my decision.”

“Yes… Grandmother,” choked the man as though the old woman’s crinkled hands had dug into his chest and ripped his beating heart out.

Shoua tried to contain her amusement. She didn’t need a wealthy grandmother to purchase her a house. With the money from her store, she had enough to pay for her own house. Besides, her parents couldn’t help her anyways. They were close to retirement and made little money selling vegetables at the St. Paul farmers market. Of course, Sarah’s parents could buy two-no three- homes in the affluent neighborhood for them, but Sarah’s mother would never allow it.

Stepping through the massive double oak door, Shoua felt chills run up her spine causing her to shiver. The mahogany foyer reeked with age, filling her with a sense of romance and history. She imagined black tie parties with men in tuxedos smoking Cuban cigars and women in sparkling flapper dresses like she read about in the Great Gatsby. She twirled twice as she imagined being part of this glamorous history if she purchased the Shaw mansion. Shoua, the poor refugee girl who grew up in a dingy rental in the ghetto, was going to own a home near Summit Avenue. The problem was convincing Sarah to share her dreams. But once Shoua walked into the kitchen she knew it wouldn’t be hard to convince Sarah to love the house also.

“Sarah!” Shoua yelled as she dropped her car keys and purse in purple African basket on a console at the main door. “Sarah?”

Shoua opened the bathroom door and a wall of steam hit her. Through the mist she saw Sarah’s athletic body behind the glass shower panel. A warm feeling washed over Shoua as she remembered the first time they were together ten years ago. She had never been with a woman before so she was nervous as Sarah’s expert fingers and mouth probed her lips, breast and the dark triangle between her legs. It didn’t take her long to scream with feverish delight. She finally understood why she could never reach ecstasy with her boyfriends. She was never meant to be with a man.

If Sarah knew that Shoua was in the bathroom, she didn’t acknowledge her. Instead Sarah continued lathering the bar of soap over her firm breast. Shoua stripped out of her tight black tee and skinny jeans and slipped into the shower. Sarah ignored her and pretended to be busy scrubbing. Shoua touched Sarah’s shoulder and planted butterfly kisses where her hands were just moments before. But the caressing caused Sarah to turn the other way and scrub her body fiercely.

“I’m sorry baby,” whispered Shoua. “Forgive me.”

“Why can’t we talk things out after ten years?” Sarah turned to face Shoua. They were the same height so their nipples touched, and both women felt electricity shooting through their bodies. “Why do you run away?”

“I don’t know…”

“I feel like we are stuck in the same place-“

Shoua didn’t allow her to finish. Instead she reached out and planted a lingering kiss on Sarah’s mouth, intertwining their tongues and pressing their breasts together. Her fingers danced downward on Sarah’s body, from her breast to her tight stomach until she probed Sarah’s most intimate parts. Shoua kneeled to taste her sweetness as Sarah moaned until she found her release.

“I love it!” Sarah walked into the renovated kitchen of the Shaw mansion. Shoua grabbed Sarah and they spun around the room, doing a little dance.

Shoua knew that Sarah was imagining baking sugar cookies for Christmas in the double ovens and giving them to the neighbors. She could plan dinner parties in the kitchen that would make Martha Stewart jealous. Sarah was currently on her way to becoming partner at the law firm, which meant working 16 hour days and most weekends. Cooking was the only outlet she had to overcome work burn out.

“Let’s go upstairs and check out the master bath,” suggested Shoua.

Alabaster tiles covered the entire bathroom. Like a diamond sitting in the middle of the room, the original cast iron claw foot tub sparkled, inviting people to bathe. Sarah climbed into the tub and imagined soaking in warm rose scented water after a long day of litigation. Shoua joined her partner in the tub and gave her an enthusiastic kiss. A thundering cough from their realtor, Maxie, brought them both back to reality.

“Ladies, I’m hope you are as passionate about the house as you are about each other,” Maxie remarked.

Sarah chuckled as she got out of the tub, “We’re going to take the house.”

The bitter autumn wind made it a cold day for Sarah and Shoua to move into the Shaw mansion. Sprinkled throughout the landscape were dried leaves in hues of flaming reds, brilliant yellows or ashen brown that crackled when Sarah stepped on them. Shoua felt as though her ancestors were creating a picture perfect day for her to move so they painted the scenery with her favorite colors. Regardless of what her mother told her when she abandoned her shamanic training, Shoua felt the ancestors had not left her. Her mother wanted her to be a shaman like herself, but she didn’t think she could continue her training and finish business school. She had to give up something and with Sarah’s encouragement she gave up being a shaman.

Shoua’s burly twin brothers, Tom and Jerry, came to help them move and did most of the heavy lifting. The twins were born right after the family came to America and at the time her parents were learning English through watching television. They were either going to be Tom or Jerry, after the cat and mouse cartoon characters, or Bo and Luke, the cousins from “Dukes of Hazard.” Shoua was glad they were named Tom and Jerry because like the cartoon they liked playing practical jokes on each other. Her five siblings including Tom and Jerry knew she and Sarah were more than roommates, but they didn’t care. Instead they treated Sarah like a sister.

“Mother wants you to call her,” said Tom.

Her parents had never acknowledged her relationship with Sarah. In fact, there wasn’t even a word for homosexuality in Hmong culture.

“Why?”

“She’s been having nightmares and she wants you to come home to visit,” answered Jerry.

Sarah frowned. She wanted to respect Shoua’s religion, including her mother being a shaman. But she didn’t believe Shoua’s ancestors were guarding them, and she certainly didn’t think that Shoua’s mom or anyone else had a direct line to any higher being. She knew Shoua’s parents hated her because they saw her as the reason for Shoua ending her shamanic training. Sometimes she thought they hated her more for that than turning Shoua into a lesbian.

“I’ll call her tonight,” Shoua said reluctantly.

Tom and Jerry set the final piece of the oak bed frame in the master bedroom on the second floor.

“It’s kinda…” said Jerry.

“Chilly in here,” finished Tom.

“You should turn the heat on,” added Jerry.

“When I learn how to do it I will,” replied Shoua.

Shoua’s knees shivered as she pressed the doorbell. After a few minutes she rang the doorbell again. She looked at her watch and noted that it was the right time. Then the door opened and Shoua found herself staring at her father’s weathered face. Strands of silver peppered his jet black hair. The lines around his eyes ran deep like little rivers carving themselves into his face.

“I need to dye my hair. It makes me look ten years younger,” he said in Hmong as though he read her thoughts.

“You look great,” she lied.

“The doorbell doesn’t work.” He opened the door wider for her entrance. “Your mother had a feeling that you were outside.”

“Or it could be that this is the time we agreed I would come over,” muttered Shoua under her breathe in English so her father wouldn’t understand.

But she was wrong.

“Don’t underestimate your mother’s power.”

Shoua was surprised because her father had not bothered to learn English earlier despite living in the United States for over twenty years.

“I started taking ESL classes recently,” he told her. “Your younger brothers and sisters are growing up and leaving the house. There is no one to help us translate at the farmers’ market.”

Incense filled the tiny house, giving Shoua a sense of yearning for a childhood that she didn’t know she had missed until now. As a child she helped her mother during the rituals by beating the gongs to help her mother into a trance—into another world, to fight with demons and bring back lost souls. With three incense sticks in her hands, Shoua’s mother knelt at the worship altar in the living room, located directly across from the front door for good luck. She spoke in short breaths, in tongues, to the ancestors. Shoua was able to make out a few words. Her mother was bargaining with the ancestors to protect a member of their household from harm. In exchange for the family member’s safety her mother would sacrifice a pig as an offering to them. When she was finished, she placed the incense sticks in a rice filled bowl and allowed them to burn.

“Daughter, I have something important to speak with you about,” she said between sips of water as she caught her breath.

They sat on the decrepit sofa that Shoua purchased for the family right before she moved out with Sarah. She hoped that their relationship was like the sofa: battered, but still salvageable.

“Your brothers and sisters tell us that you have brought a beautiful home in St. Paul.”

Shoua nodded. A painful memory raced into her head. Ten years ago she sat on this same sofa and told them about Sarah. Shoua’s parents called her the vilest names and demanded that she stop seeing Sarah or she would be exiled from the family and the Hmong community.

“You are a good Hmong girl,” said her father. “Don’t start being bad now.”

“Are you a woman or an animal?” her mother lashed out. “Only animals lust after the same sex. A real woman would never do such a disgusting thing.”

“I can’t deal with you and your filthy daughter. I’m going!” With those words, her father stormed out of the house.

“Look at what you have done,” hissed Shoua’s mother. “Only the ancestors know when he will be back!”

“Mother, I want to stop my shamanism training…”

“You have a gift,” answered her mother. “You have the power to be even a greater shaman than me. Don’t throw away it away because of a love, especially an unnatural love.”

When Shoua told her she was firm in her decision to be with Sarah and not to be a shaman, her mother threw her out of the house.

Tears swelled in her eyes as Shoua recalled the years that her parents refused to see or talk to her. It has only been in the last year that her parents had opened their home and hearts to her again. During those few, but precious visits the conversations focused on Shoua’s successful import store on Grand Avenue.

Until now.

“Your father and I would like you to move back home,” said her mother.

Shoua couldn’t believe it. Maybe this was just a tactic for them to separate her from Sarah.

“Before you say no, just listen to me. I’ve had the same dream for the last three months about you. You are wearing strange American clothes from the old days. There is a bull, but not just any bull, but a demonic bull chasing after you in an old mansion.”

“Mother, the Shaw Mansion is my dream house.”

“Have you forgotten your shamanism training? Nothing is as it appears. But your ancestors may not have forgotten about you so at least call to them when you need help.” Then Shoua’s mother gave her a white yarn to wear on her wrist to protect her against bad spirits.

“Put it on and don’t take it off until I tell you.”

“I’ll put it on at home,” Shoua lied, knowing she was never going to wear it. She tucked the yarn into her jeans pocket.

Then her mother handed her a gold colored paper with triangles and circle shapes on it.

“Why are you giving me this ceremonial paper?”

The paper was used in the shaman’s ceremonies and were one of the few things that could move between the human and spirit realms. The shaman could cut and fold the paper into various shapes with each shape symbolizing a different meaning and that shape could be used for various rituals.

Shoua took a piece of the shaman paper and after folding it, put it in her other pocket.

But when she departed her parents’ house, Shoua was convinced they made up lies to separate her from Sarah with the ultimate goal of converting her back to desiring men. They continued to think her lesbianism was because of Sarah. They just didn’t understand that Shoua could never be with a man even if Sarah wasn’t in the picture. The first time she felt true to herself was when she kissed Sarah for the first time. That must have been why they wanted to see her.

Sarah and Shoua had moved in over a month ago, but everything was still in boxes. Sarah thought it was Shoua’s responsibility to unpack since she was working overtime trying to become partner at the firm while Shoua felt it was Sarah’s duty to unpack since she was putting long hours at the store.

Shoua glanced in the medicine cabinet and shifted through the boxes in the bathroom before calling out for Sarah, who either couldn’t hear or was pretending she couldn’t. Shoua had unpacked the bath oils the other day, but now they were nowhere to be seen.

“Sarah!” she yelled a second time.

The only answer she got was branches scratching the windowpane so it sounded like the tree trying to answer.

“Sarah! Sarah!” She realized that there were disadvantages to living in such a big house. She found Sarah slumped over in her office on the first floor reading a law book.

“Did you hear me call you?”

Without looking up, Sarah shifted her head to say “No.”

“Where are the bath oils and soap?”

Without looking at Shoua, Sarah simply shrugged to signify that she didn’t know.

“Will you look at me?”

Sarah looked up in disbelief. “I’m working.”

“Just tell me where the bath oils are!”

“How would I know?”

“Didn’t you use them last?”

“Um…no, I didn’t.”

“Where are they?” Shoua asked again, still not believing Sarah.

“How should I know?”

“Are you saying they just disappeared?”

“Maybe they are still in the boxes.”

“They can’t be in the boxes because I already took them out,” said Shoua. “Never mind. I’m going out for a jog.”

“What?” cried Sarah “You’ll even run away from your dream house.” But when Sarah heard the front doors slam shut, she felt relieved that Shoua was gone. Now she could get some work done.

Sarah poured the tea into her father’s cup.

“Doll face,” her father said. “The house is gorgeous.”

“Thanks Pops.”

“Your mother wanted to come, but she had a bird watching class so she-“

“It’s okay, Father. You don’t have to make up excuses for my mother.”

Her father blew the hot tea to cool it off before taking a sip. “I thought you had your mind made up about not living in the city.”

“I thought so too, but…” Sarah sipped from her own cup. “But Shoua wanted to live in the city. She wanted this house.”

“Really?”

“For her the Shaw mansion is the realization of a dream that she has arrived. For me a house is just a house so I guess in the end I just wanted her to be happy.”

“If you love her then why did you sound so irritated when I asked about Shoua on the phone?”

“Pops, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m your best friend, remember.”

She finally explained that Shoua had become increasingly neurotic since they moved into the Shaw mansion. “This morning she complained that the toaster was missing. Yesterday she couldn’t find her purse. The other day it was something else.”

Her father refrained from saying anything.

“You’d think there was someone living with us taking Shoua’s things,” snorted Sarah. “But honestly, I think her parents put something in her head about the house, her dream house being haunted. I hope they don’t convince her to be a shaman again…that was a complete waste of time.”

Her father responded carefully, “If there’s anything I can do, just call me.”

Shoua gazed around her and thought she was in a snow globe. It was the first real snowfall of the year. The flakes were heavy, yet soft and they melted immediately on contact with her skin. She saw a neighbor walking her white poodle towards her. The elderly woman seemed remarkably sturdy despite her frail appearance. She moved as though she was made out of granite.

“Good morning,” said Shoua.

“Have you met Mr. Krenshaw yet?” The woman had a long Southern drawl.

“Is he a neighbor?”

The woman giggled. “No my dear, he is your roommate.”

Without uttering another word, the older woman continued her walk.

Shoua watched her walk away and decided that the neighbors were right about her. They all said Blanche Le Beau was senile.

The two hundred year old Shaw mansion was cold and drafty. The women used an electric blanket under their comforter, but Shoua felt perpetually cold. That night, Sarah unknowingly wrapped herself around Shoua in her sleep so for the first time in weeks Shoua felt warm. It had been a long time since Shoua felt Sarah’s hands on her. They were arguing almost every day over the slightest misunderstanding.

But tonight she was awakened by Sarah’s delicate fingers teasing her nipples until they jutted out from pleasure. Shoua pressed Sarah onto the mattress and straddled her waist, whipping her long black hair over Sarah’s face and breast. She dipped down and licked Sarah’s breast before exploring lower and lower until she was licking and sucking Sarah’s golden triangle. Sarah tasted just as sweet as the first time she tasted her.

“Let me take care of you now,” said Sarah after her body stopped shivering from orgasmic pleasures.

Shoua settled back on the pillow and allowed Sarah to be totally in charge. She choked as waves of pleasure washed over her again and again. Then something felt off. The hair on the back of her head stood up, an animalistic alarm letting her know something was wrong. She felt as though someone or something was watching them. She opened her eyes and saw the face of a man scowling at them from the corner of the room. His crimson eyes burned like hot coals.

Shoua bucked Sarah off of her. “Sarah! There’s a man watching us!”

“What?”

Sarah flicked on the lights next to the bed and scanned the room. Both the closet and hallway doors were closed. There didn’t appear to another person in the room with them.

“I’m sorry, but I thought I saw a man… and…”

Sarah let out a heavy sigh, “It’s late. Let’s try to get some sleep.”

They kept their distance for a few days, barely acknowledging when the other person was in the room. Sarah told herself it was better to keep their distance since Shoua had been edgy after claiming to see the man in their room.

A few days later Shoua found her partner in the kitchen, already dressed in her conservative navy blue suit and finishing off a bowl of cereal “You’re up early,” commented Shoua.

“Yeah, I’m going in early to finish writing my legal brief,” Sarah put her bowl into the sink before she left.

Shoua wondered if Sarah realized that it was the first time since they’d been together that they didn’t kiss each other before the other person went to work. Then she shivered and wondered why she was freezing when she turned up the heat before they went to sleep last night. She sauntered into the parlor where the thermostat was located and saw nothing strange. But when Shoua turned on the water on the bathroom sink to wash her face and brush her teeth, it was like splashing ice on her face. She swore and marched down to basement to see if the furnace was out.

When she opened the basement door, she was met with complete darkness. It was darker than a moonless, starless night. Shoua knew the basement was not finished and resembled a maze with many little rooms leading to other little rooms. She and Sarah had explored the basement the first week they moved in and joked about getting lost.

But if she remembered correctly the furnace was directly below the kitchen so if she went downstairs and turned right and started walking, eventually she would reach the furnace room. Driven by the chill, Shoua carefully walked down the steep stairs into the belly of the house with a flashlight in one hand.

But by the time she took the last step on the stairs and landed at the bottom, fear crept over her. She couldn’t see an inch in front of her. The flashlight didn’t help either; instead it emphasized just how dark the basement was. She heard footsteps approaching her from behind and directed the flashlight at the noise. She felt relieved when she didn’t see anything and thought it was just her imagination.

Then the footsteps were coming from her right, then left, and each time she pointed the light in that direction. Beads of sweat formed at her forehead despite the cold. She slowly started walking backwards up the stairs. Instinctively she recalled her shamanism training and called to her ancestors to protect her. It was the first time since she left her parents’ home that she acknowledged her ancestors. A sense of courage washed over her for the first time since coming down the basement stairs. Shoua knew whoever or whatever was in the basement with her was still watching her, but she was fearless.

A little while later, Shoua pulled out of the garage as she did almost everyday. But this time she noticed someone standing behind her car. She stomped on the brakes and jumped out of the car.

Blanche standing like a statue in her path.

“Mr. Krenshaw doesn’t like your kind.”

“Who is Mr. Krenshaw? And what kind do you mean?”

“You know…yellow people or women who do unnatural things to each other.”

“Where does this Mr. Krenshaw live?”

“I already told you, child.”

“Why are you saying these things to me?”

“Get out of his house.” She walked away without looking back.

Disturbed by Blanche’s words, Shoua couldn’t focus on her job and found herself dialing her mother around noon. She told her mother about the noise in the basement and Blanche’s strange message from Mr. Krenshaw.

“Daughter,” answered her mother. “My dreams make sense now. Please leave the house. Nothing good will come out of you living there. This has nothing to do with your girlfriend. I want you to be safe and happy.”

Tears streamed down Shoua’s face; it was the first time her mother had said something even slightly accepting about Sarah. She didn’t know what the right decision was. The house was her dream, but her gut told her she needed to convince Sarah to move.

“Do you want me to come and do an exorcism on your house?”

“I’m not sure how Sarah will feel about it,” answered Shoua. “She’s so stubborn sometimes.”

“I feel like you always choose her over us, your family.”

“No…it’s not like that.”

“You are a powerful shaman. Just remember what I taught you,” said her mother before she hung up the phone.

Over dinner Shoua recounted the basement noise and Blanche’s strange message. Sarah’s eyes bulged indicating to Shoua that she trying to contain her anger, but was about to blow.

“Shoua, do you know how much money we’ve got invested in this place?”

Shoua nodded her head again.

“Well, we can’t just leave it!”

“Do I matter to you at all?” Shoua responded. “I told you that I feel my life is in danger here. Why wouldn’t you just move with me?”

“Who told you our lives are in danger?” asked Sarah. “Blanche?”

“The ancestors. They are coming to me in my dreams, telling me things.”

“Oh please! You don’t really believe that. Do you?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Shoua. “Why don’t you believe in me, try to believe in what I believe?”

They fought for over an hour before Shoua took off.

“Great! You know there’s a blizzard outside,” screamed Sarah after her.

As soon as she heard Shoua’s car pull out of the driveway and race into the night, Sarah broke down crying. She thought buying the house, the house that Shoua wanted, would improve their relationship but it had only intensified their problems. Sarah picked up the phone to call her father who with her mother was in Arizona. They owned a condo in Mesa and spend the winter months golfing.

“Hello?”

“Mother, is Pops there?”

“What’s wrong?’

“I just need to talk to Pops…”

“He went to the store to pick up some milk.”

“I’ll try his cell.”

“You called his cell.”

“Oh, I did. Right.”

“Sarah, what’s wrong?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Mother…I just need to talk to Pops”

“Sarah, I’m here for you.”

“Well…”

“I know we don’t see eye to eye on things, things you do in your life, but I’m still your mother and I don’t want you crying like this.”

“It’s…it’s Shoua and I. Things are not going well.”

“Why not?”

“We argue and every time we argue she takes off, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.”

“She’s cheating on you.”

“No, Mother. Shoua would never-“

“Why else would she disappear?”

“Mother-“

“Sarah, um…I’ll tell your father to call you.”

Click.

Sarah felt like a fool. Of course her mother didn’t want to hear about her relationship with a woman. Her mother hated that she wasn’t straight, wasn’t the Barbie doll loving daughter. Wasn’t a mini version of her. She yanked the phone out of the socket and threw it across the room all the while sobbing.

Shoua didn’t drive far; instead she stopped in front of Blanche’s house. She felt like she needed to have a conversation with the old woman to help her understand the strange goings on in her house.

Shoua pounded the thick oak door until she thought she would wake the dead.

The door opened with a creak and she saw wrinkled hands clutching a white poodle. Then a frail stick figure emerged from the dark foyer.

“It’s cold,” said Blanche. “Don’t just stand there, child.”

“I’m here to talk to you about Mr. Krenshaw.”

“Come and sit with me. I am having my evening cider.”

As they crossed the foyer into the formal parlor, Shoua peeked into the other rooms and noticed that everything—from the furnishing to the framed pictures—were older than the woman. As Shoua fell into the deep sofa cushions she released a film of dust into the air making her cough.

“Would you like some cider?”

Shoua politely declined.

“Mr. Krenshaw loves my cider.”

“Who is Krenshaw?”

“A friend,” said Blanche, then she whispered, “I’ve known him since I was a little girl. He was my granddaddy’s best friend.”

“Just tell me where to find him.”

“Child, he is sitting next to you.”

Shoua looked at the empty space next to her on the sofa, and a familiar voice told her to look down at the cushion. There was an impression of a person sitting on the cushion. Shoua gasped in shock and leaped off the sofa.

“You saw him!” Blanche clapped several times before adding, “You have the sight to see him, to see things.”

As Shoua trembled she silently called her ancestors to protect her. She recited an incantation to protect her soul from being stolen away by evil spirits.

“I don’t mind people like you,” Blanche continued. “But Mr. Krenshaw doesn’t like yellow skinned people living in his house. Reminds him of the dirty Chinese railroad workers who built his railroad. He doesn’t mind your special lady friend…he likes her. He wants her for himself.”

Without any warning, the pictures dropped off the walls as though someone threw them onto the floor. The glass shattered as they hit the hard wood. The fire in the fireplace flared up, threatening to escape and burn the nearby furniture.

“I’m sorry,” Blanche repeated. “That was supposed to be our secret.”

Shoua heard the familiar voices of her ancestors telling her to leave Blanche’s home because they were both in danger. The ghost would follow her home and leave Blanche alone, they whispered.

Without uttering another word Shoua bolted out of Blanche’s house and headed towards her mammoth mansion. Though she didn’t see anyone following her when she turned around she saw footprints right behind her in the snow.

Shoua crept up the steps to the house, but unlike her animated steps six months ago she dragged her feet because she did not want to go back inside. But her ancestors were guiding her back into the house and she knew they would protect her.

When she put the key into the hole the key wouldn’t go in. Shoua looked at her key chain to make sure she had the right key. It was. She tried a second, third and fourth time to put the key in, but to no avail. She walked to the window and peered inside. The fireplace in the main parlor was lit. Sarah slept on the sofa; next to her were a pile of used tissues. When Shoua saw the tissues, she felt awful. She never wanted to cause Sarah pain.

Then a man dressed in a black tuxedo with tails appeared behind the sofa. Shoua let out a loud shriek of fear. He had an ashen sick look to him as though he had not seen the sun in ages. His gloved hands reached out to caress Sarah’s inviting apple cheeks. In a panic Shoua pounded on the window, not caring if she broke it. The glass wobbled as though it was made out of plastic. Swearing, Shoua grabbed a chair from the porch and threw it at the window. She expected to hear glass shatter, but the chair just bounced off. The man slowly took off his right glove, exposing a maggot infested rotting hand. His gooey hand caressed Sarah’s face, which caused her to shiver. Shoua ran back to the front door and started to kick and push at it. When she called to her ancestors to help her get inside, the door opened and she came face to face with the man.

“Get out of my house!” growled the man.

“Sarah!” Shoua trembled. She knew she needed to get Sarah and get the hell out of there.

“My house!”

As Shoua tried to step around the man, he pushed her back with both slimy hands. She felt a burning sensation rush throughout her body, but the place on her body where the man touched was on fire. Shoua instinctively yanked off her coat and pulled off her sweater so she was only wearing a tank top.

Shoua remembered then that she wore the same jeans as she did when she visited her mother. She pulled out the white yarn and tied it around her wrist, which she knew would protect her from harm. She walked past the man, and when he tried to grab her again, his hands could not touch her. It was as though there was a force field protecting her.

“Sarah, wake up!” Shoua called out, shaking her.

Sarah woke up and stretched.

“I’m sorry babe,” she said. “I love you so much and I really want to-“

Before she could finish, Shoua took off her white string and tied it around Sarah’s wrist.

“Sarah. I love you. Please trust me. Do not move…trust me!”

Sarah’s eyes bulged out when she saw Mr. Krenshaw.

“Don’t be scared” Shoua said, “Trust me.”

The man laughed wickedly. “You can protect her, but who will protect you?” The man raised his arms in the air. A lamp lifted off the table and raced towards Shoua. Sarah screamed as Shoua ducked just in time. The man growled again as Shoua chanted an ancient incantation that she remembered from her training.

“Oh grandmother and grandfather, give me the strength to fight this evil…” were the first words Shoua said out loud. She took the ghost paper out of her other pocket. Her ancestors guided her hand and she folded the ghost paper several times into the shape of a heart, not even understanding how she knew to do it. It was a shape that represented the love that Shoua felt for Sarah, her parents and herself.

The man became transparent, and then he was being sucked into Shoua’s paper heart. Krenshaw fought hard, cursing and clutching onto the furniture. But he was no match for Shoua and vanished right before their eyes.

Shoua and Sarah met with Maxie for lunch at a bistro in downtown Minneapolis. The women gave their realtor friendly hugs and they settled into their chairs.

“Ladies, if you want I can help you sell the Shaw mansion and get you into another house.” Maxie said, “A house without all the memories.”

“Actually we’ve decided to stay in the Shaw mansion,” answered Shoua.

“We are making new memories, good memories now,” added Sarah.

Since the evening that Mr. Krenshaw vanished, both Shoua and Sarah decided that Shoua should continue with her shaman training. Because Shoua’s mother was over a lot training Shoua, she was getting to know Sarah better. The other night Sarah had even cooked eggrolls for them all.

“What did you find out about the house?”

“The Shaw house was built in 1884,” said Maxie skimming her notes from the Minnesota Historical Society. “It was built by Andrew Krenshaw who made his money in the railroad.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” said Sarah.

“Andrew was from England. He was the fourth son of a minor lord, Baronet Morton Krenshaw.”

“Repeat the name.”

“Shaw.”

“No the other name.”

“Krenshaw. He changed his name to Shaw when he got to Minnesota. I also read that Mr. Shaw, ur, Mr. Krenshaw was a religious fanatic. He was a devout Protestant and went to church everyday. Made sure everyone who worked for him was a Christian. This was something that I learned about when I read the society section of the papers of the time—it was implied that he allegedly he disowned his only daughter when she started a relationship with one of their maids. Apparently the two women ran off together.”

“That explains a lot,” Shoua and Sarah both said at the same time.

Maxie pulled a copy of an old picture from a newspaper clipping. The man who was in the picture was the man with the maggot-infested hands.

The Oath

Lynne Jamneck

~

Shut your trap, Horace. And keep digging.”

The moon had risen from behind the cool-blue mountains like a giant, polished pearl. Butch paused to take a swig from his scuffed flask, winced briefly as the alcohol burned his throat. Horace wiped perspiration from his tanned, wrinkled brow in spite of the cool midnight air.

‘‘This is trouble, Butch. I’m telling you, we should get Chester. He’d believe it was an accident.’’

‘‘And I’m telling you, Horace, I don’t want Chester involved. Him and that donkey-nose-deputy of his. How much help were they when I had the trouble with that Lewicki boy? Hell. Damn Chester and his ‘truth-and-justice’ speech. Has all these ideas in his head. He’ll stick his nose in further than need be.’’

‘‘But Butch—’’

‘‘Horace, dig. Damn you—give me that shovel.”

Butch continued with renewed vigor where Horace had left off. Determination and anger jockeyed for position on his face. Horace stepped back. He kept glancing into the thicket of darkness, too nervous to leave and ambivalent about hanging around. He’d tried to persuade Butch: at least let them put the body in the graveyard, it being consecrated ground and all. Maybe it would seal the act with some sort of seemliness. Butch had simply scoffed at him and told Horace not to ‘get all religious on him’. When last had Horace been in church? Butch knew it hadn’t been for a while. That young priest from upstate had asked Marge why he never saw old H.P on the wood bench came Sunday. And besides, was Horace out of his mind? How in the nine hells could they bury the body of such a sinful creature amongst the rest of the God-fearing people of the Haven?

Horace turned suddenly, his wiry frame stiff. “What’s that?” His voice had dropped to a hissing whisper.

“For’ chrissakes, Horace, what?” Butch had finished digging. He tossed the shovel aside before grabbing the lifeless body by the wrists.

“Stop actin’ all prissy and gimme a hand here. Grab the feet.”

With a shuffle and a curse the two men dumped the dead body in the freshly dug grave. Filling it up was mercifully faster than digging it, and they carefully leveled the soil so as not to appear suspect. Butch then held he was just about ready for a Guinness down at the Wiley. Horace said he wanted to go home. Butch laughed and slapped his friend on the back.

“Remember, Horace—it was an accident; saw the man lunge at you, something glinted in his hand and I thought he was meaning to stab you. So I punched him. Caught him on the soft spot of his skull and that was that. If this should ever get out, get my drift?”

Horace nodded, all the while trying to dismiss the chill of wrongdoing filling his chest. Too late now. If he went to Chester, Butch would just stick to his self-defense story and claim he didn’t want to cause his Dina any more grief with having her daddy charged with murder. True enough, the girl’s already had to bear more than her fair share. Her mother running off like that. And indeed, Horace didn’t like the prospect of having to confess being party to something underhanded, and certainly, this was just that. Gypsy or no. A man was dead and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He wasn’t even sure now whether that same man had really stolen Sam Barclay’s precious brandy flask. Not sure if he even had a weapon. Not sure if he ever meant himself or Butch any harm.

In the end Horace let himself be convinced to a pint after all. And why should he tell Butch about the noises he heard while they were digging dirt? Butch wouldn’t believe him anyway.

The gypsies made it happen again. It was always someone else’s fault. Truth be told, if anything was to be blamed it was intolerance. And the Haven had that in big, bloody buckets.

The locals were not fond of outsiders. The fact that the motley band of strangers arrived in the Haven during the slow passing of night didn’t do a great deal to mollify the townsfolk either. Hopefully they were only traveling through, as was the custom of their kind. Better not bother anyone, either. Keep themselves to their campfires. That was the general consensus.

The gypsies did venture into town for supplies. Some food and a few rudimentary necessities. They caught their own fish down by the harbor. That didn’t go down well at all.

Marge Derbyshire, prime proprietor of the Chem-Shop on the corner of Willow and Rue was appalled at their apparent lack of modernity. Mainly after a youthful gypsy girl tried to influence her to the healing properties of a good lavender and chamomile tea. Marge had puffed up to stout-size behind her counter of salves and pills before shooing the child outside with a nasty scowl. And let’s not forget the episode with Sam Barclay’s alleged stolen flask of brandy.

Devilkin. That’s how the locals referred to them. It was soon after that the graveyard started behaving eccentrically. No prizes for guessing whose fault that was.

The Haven was the sort of unaffected village you’d come upon if you took the wrong turn on a desolate road. Unaffected by both civility and any sense of hospitality, it had a population of maybe four thousand, and even that number may have been overestimating its charm. Despite trying to keep up the appearance of fulfillment its inhabitants didn’t live there because they necessarily chose or wanted to. Most had settled into the Haven’s repetitive way of life simply because they had no other options. Money was a sparse commodity. Nobody was wealthy. Everyone got by. The few young ones who managed to leave upon completing high school did so on the odd scholarship (mostly football grants—Let’s go Bushbucks!), and were seldom seen or heard of again. Who could blame them?

The Haven didn’t boast much: H.P.’s Superette—old Horace Pincher could damn well charge whatever he wanted since he had no competition. Marge and the pharmacy, and opposite the street the Wiley Coyote, enthusiastically supported by the men who ploughed farms in the surrounding areas. Wheat went big in ‘86, spurring every fisherman to sell his boat, buy a tractor and build a corn shed.

Doctor Franklin’s surgery was two shops down from the bar, separated by one empty lot and a second hand bookstore. Handy enough, since the doctor thrived on late-night-bar-room brawls over whose wife baked the best apple pie. To Franklin’s credit, he got everyone to stop calling him ‘Doc’ early on. Said he didn’t own a six-shooter and never cared much for that trashy Western stuff.

The biggest source of bother appeared to be the on-and-off antics of local teenagers. Anything from rude graffiti to the incident with Bobby Lewicki and Butch Munson’s daughter, Dina. In the family way was a hushed term on many lips that summer in ‘89.

Bobby never was the sharpest lemon on the tree. Let himself be bossed around by Butch and pretty soon after ‘the incident’ he left the Haven for good. Poor kid. Probably, he was better off. Marge heard he was kicking football for some big league team in out East. Marge heard everything.

Dina never had the baby. Franklin was sworn to secrecy, futile as it was, since just about everyone and their uncle’s cousin knew the straight story. The Haven had its share of secrets. Oh yes.

They were practically newlyweds when Jo and Max moved to the Haven. Tired of the city, they had packed their bags when Max saw the position for pastor advertised in the Sunday paper. Max had been ordained three years before. She thought the church was the best place to start a revolution from.

“Touch the people from within,” she’d say with an expression of mock holiness. It was that blatant anarchy that made Jo fall in love with her in the first place. That, and the fact that Max had managed to do what no one else in Jo’s family had been able to before or since—knock a witch from her path. Jo was born into an inheritance of black magic, with or without her consent. Max had rescued her, though Jo knew Max would never let herself be held up to such standards.

They expected the locals to be leery of them. To be honest, neither expected Max to be offered the position. It started off as a lark; a way to initiate their agreement to be rid of the city within three months. Unexpectedly, the Haven council asked Max if she could start work as soon as possible. It seemed there weren’t too many applicants for the job.

“I heard them talking about it.”

Peg Winchell had made her way to the Chem-Shop on her lunch break.

When she wasn’t making her famous homemade applesauce, Peg lent her waitressing talents to the Haven’s one and only deli.

The two women stood outside on the sidewalk smoking menthol cigarettes. Marge always insisted they were healthier than plain ones. They watched the locals walk by, Peg dressed in her waitressing uniform which was two sizes too small, and bunched critically at her childbearing hips.

“They came into the deli?”

Peg scoffed. “Ah-yuh. Dressed like a gathering of cultists. One of them even had a devil-star round her neck. Right there, in public. It’s not right.”

“What did they do?”

“Bought some pie. If you ask me, they was just spying. Anyway, I heard them say it. Call it eavesdropping, I call it keeping the up-and-up on the devil.”

“What they say?”

Peg turned her voice down. “Said that the Haven was an old gypsy town.

This street corner, right here, said it was named after two of their ‘elders’. Willow and Rue. What sort of garbage is that? This whole town is full of them weeping trees. That’s where the name comes from.”

Marge dropped her menthol to the concrete and crushed it underfoot. “Here comes the new pastor. I’ve been hearing all sorts of things about this one.”

Before Marge could conclude her secret Max was smiling at them both. “Ladies.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “I smoke those menthols myself, even though the warnings say all those things they’ll do to you.”

Peg smiled and kept smoking, glad that she hadn’t acted like someone with something to hide. And speaking of which, the new pastor certainly didn’t seem to be hiding anything about her own life. Marge’s ‘secret’ really wasn’t one at all.

“How about those derelicts down by the harbor, Pastor?” Peg asked instead.

“The Romanies? Not doing anyone any harm are they? They’ll be moving along soon. They never stay long in one place. We had a big theatre group back home once. Great show, good people.”

“That’s not what I hear,” Marge added.

Max remained unfazed. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Besides, they’re bringing some much-needed currency to the town. Nothing wrong with money, is there?”

Peg nodded. Marge only huffed. “Maybe if they buy something from me.”

Max smiled her best. “I’m going to see a man about a car. Says he can give me a good deal for my buck. Take care, ladies.”

The two women watched the easy stride of Pastor Max’s back until she disappeared round the corner.

Marge’s eyebrows were sky-high. “She doesn’t look it, does she?”

Peg had heard that line from too many people already to not know what Marge was talking about. City folk. Sometimes Marge thought they were as bad as those thieves down by the harbor.

Jo realized she was more than just a little bit drunk. And with a pastor, no less. Max’s arm rested easily around her shoulders.

“Can you believe all this fuss with the gypsies?”

Max had parked their new secondhand car (a good deal for her buck indeed) at the edge of the Haven’s graveyard. The two of them had been here long enough to have soaked up much of the small town’s share of secrets and whisperings. Few people liked venturing near the graveyard at daytime, never mind at night. It seemed the Haven was a superstitious community. Not even their penchant for snooping could convince them to explore this part of town after the sun had dipped behind the horizon.

“It’s silly, I know.”

“It’s racist!”

“Of course it is. But soon they will move on to their next destination, and within a week something else will have caught the brunt of the town’s disapproval. If the peace can be kept until then, everything will be just fine.”

Jo flexed her fingers. They were numb and tired from typing all day. “There are people in this town just itching to start trouble. You can feel it, like they’re just—”

Max sat up abruptly, both hands on the wheel. Jo laughed, then clasped her mouth with one hand. “Silly,” she nudged Max. “I could have spilled my beer on you.”

“Do you hear that?”

Max’s voice was low but Jo kept talking, oblivious. “It’s probably old crazy Dave, turning his field. Have you heard about crazy Dave? I have. Peg told me all about him last week when all I wanted was a slice of pie. One of these days he’s going to run that rig of his right into the harbor, then he’ll be the original Davy Jones.”

“That’s not a tractor.”

Both women shielded their eyes as the old Pinto suddenly lit up like a football stadium at night. It lasted maybe three seconds, and when the spots finally subsided from their field of vision, Max and Jo could only watch in silent awe.

The graveyard was buzzing with the luminous glow of several small orbs of light. They hovered above the damaged headstones. Jo realized they were the source of the humming Max had been referring to just moments before. Erratically, an individual orb would dart from its perch to come to rest above a different headstone. Some of them changed color; luminous blue to stark red, while others opted for a sickly, yellowish green.

Jo muttered something unintelligible. She seemed transfixed by the fiery globes. Max noticed how their light reflected in her eyes. She grabbed Jo’s shoulders. “Jo!” She kept staring, seemingly unaware of Max’s presence.

When Max looked out the window again she noticed that the orbs weren’t just moving around at random. A pattern was starting to form in the air above the headstones. A ghostly piece of candle wicking began to transmute in the midnight sky.

Left—five paces. North—ten paces.

“Snap out of it!” Max shook her again, but Jo might as well have been a rag doll.

South—seven paces. Right—ten paces.

The humming was starting to hurt Max’s ears. The pattern in the graveyard was starting to take form but Max wouldn’t look at it for long. She didn’t always agree with the church and some of its doctrines but Max knew there were things from which people needed protection.

The Pinto stalled once before the engine jumped to life. Jo was still mesmerized. For an anxious moment Max felt the Pinto’s wheels spin in the marshland, then the car lurched as her foot pounded the accelerator.

In the rearview mirror Max caught a final glimpse of the shifting symphony of lights. She didn’t recognize their final shape but what she did know was that she didn’t wish to stick around for the finished picture.

Butch was hammered, and made sure he let everyone else know. Some of the older men who came to the Wiley for a quiet draught and a game of cards were unimpressed.

“Damn thieves!” Butch slurred. “If that wasn’t enough, they’re practicing witchcraft too.”

Horace closed his eyes as the cold beer crept across his chapped lips. For God’s sake Butch. Who’s the one mouthing off his yap now?

“What are you talking about, Munson?”

Horace recognized the barrel-voice of Samuel Barclay from the spot where he’d been working the knobs on the jukebox. Roy Orbison began singing. Butch slid his beer glass forward across the bar for a refill while Horace prayed for him to stop shooting off his mouth.

“You know what it means, gypsy?” Butch dipped into his sixth beer. The rest of the Wiley was quiet.

“Gypping. As in robbin’ someone of their money. Goddamned no-good lazy vagrants.”

“What’s this about witchcraft, Munson?” Sam Barclay was standing right behind Butch now. Horace tried to ignore the cold at his back.

Butch relinquished his mug and moved to face Sam. “Saw them down at the cemetery. Ask Pincher. Isn’t that right, Horace?”

Butch waited for a response. So did everyone else. Horace finished what was left of his beer in one breath, got up remarkably steady on his feet, and walked out the door without even putting on his coat.

And that’s how Sheriff Chester Beckford came to know everything that Butch had forbidden Horace to speak about.

Right about the time Horace stumbled into the Haven charge office, Max came speeding down the main road toward the same destination. She had taken Jo home first; she’d snapped out of her trancelike state the moment there was some distance between them and the graveyard. Despite this, Max remembered the unsettling words Jo had muttered as she’d remained rigid in the passenger seat. Disturbing blasphemies of corruption and revenge.

Damn them. If this was another one of Jo’s crazy family parlor tricks to scare her into going back home—she wouldn’t stand for it.

Max figured Chester would know what to do. She and Jo had only been in the Haven for a few weeks but Max sensed the sheriff to be a levelheaded man. She also sensed that he knew more about the Haven than he led on. He had the look of someone who bore a burden. Up until now Max had been content to tell herself she was imagining things. Not anymore. If anyone else had seen the disturbing lights they were no doubt on their way to the sheriff, too. Or getting ready to start a town riot.

As Max parked the car she saw Horace Pincher run-walk into the charge office. Well. At least the old miser still seemed to believe in the strong arm of the law. In the two months she’d been the pastor in the Haven Max hadn’t once seen Horace in church. Then again, every man spoke to God in his own way.

Inside the charge office Sheriff Chester Beckford was trying to calm down a mostly incoherent Horace. He glanced at Max as she entered. “Pastor?”

She couldn’t be sure, but Max thought she saw recognition on the man’s face. As if he knew what was coming.

“Calm down, Horace. Brian!” The sheriff called to his deputy, who took Horace to one side and gave him a strong cup of black coffee. Beckford turned to Max.

“Something wrong, Maxine?” The Sheriff sounded casual, but a different kind of emotion clouded his eyes.

Max watched Horace as he lifted a mug of steaming coffee to his lips. “I just saw something at the graveyard which I’m not sure how to explain.”

“The cemetery, this time of night? You know you need a license to perform an exorcism?”

Max let the joke slide. She was too busy contemplating whether she was about to make a fool of herself or if she really had seen those dancing globes above the headstones. She thought of Jo and decided to come clean. Besides, she wasn’t a woman prone to visions.

“All I know Chester, is that there was some kind of lightshow going off in the graveyard. Could be kids getting up to mischief again, but I don’t think so.”

A heavy frown creased Beckford’s brow. “Damn teenagers.” The statement carried little conviction. His deputy was now taking notes from Horace and would, by the looks of it, be occupied for another while still. Horace bore a look of quiet shock, and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. From what Chester could figure it had something to do with Butch Munson and the gypsies. Anything involving Butch could turn out potentially bad. The cemetery wasn’t far off from the charge office; if it was something serious, he couldn’t wait for Horace to get his act together.

The sheriff turned to Max. “Care to take a ride?”

In all fairness, Chester could take the risk because he knew a great deal more about the Haven than Maxine King. How long had it been since he first came to this devil-riddled town? Must be fifteen years now.

This wouldn’t be the first time bizarre goings-on in the graveyard had been reported. Those who had alerted him to such things in the past kept it to themselves. Just because everyone in the Haven knew their damned town was haunted didn’t mean they talked about it.

Chester had the unpleasant suspicion that Butch Munson’s paranoia was reaching the breaking point. In the past week, he’d been at the charge office on several occasions, demanding that something be done about the gypsies camping down at the harbor. Chester refused to harass them into leaving. They were in no one’s way, and Chester aimed to be hospitable. Besides, he knew better.

The new pastor was quiet next to him in the passenger seat.

Previously, it had been the circus. The locals didn’t like the freak show. Peg Winchell got that one started. Matters escalated, and soon after the Two-Headed Man was dead. Deputy Brian discovered him underneath a stack of hay bales in one of the circus trucks, both his heads bashed in. The following morning Suzy Bauman’s son was dead too. They found him in his bedroom. Hung himself.

Pete Bauman’s suicide note stated that he thought the two-headed freak (even in remorse, he was prone to discrimination) wanted to steal his car. Cars were expensive. Pete came to his senses only after he’d planted the knife in the man’s chest. That was the story anyway, and it’s what everyone still believes.

Marge Derbyshire said that Pete was probably under the influence. Said she wouldn’t be surprised because apparently young Pete took after his father. She and Suzy haven’t spoken since.

A year later there was the incident with a group of traditional healers.

Samuel Barclay’s brother had always been a bit of a thug. Even less refined than that brother of his. One Saturday afternoon in the Wiley, Fred Barclay and one of the so-called ‘witch doctors’ had an argument. Who started it and what it was about differs wildly, depending on who you ask. Point is, that same night the African traveler was dead. Day after that, so was Fred. No note; just a bullet in his skull from the same gun that killed the shaman.

Sam Barclay said that the African man had hexed his brother into killing himself. He would say that. Fact of the matter was that there was no evidence supporting such claims and the travelers were free to go.

And now the gypsies.

Chester wouldn’t be surprised if Butch Munson weren’t breathing come sunrise. After all, tradition was tradition for a reason.

“Right here,” Max spoke up, interrupting the sheriff’s thoughts. The police car’s headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating a chunk of the burial grounds ahead. The doleful hoot of an owl divided the quiet.

Max peered through the windscreen expectantly. “Damn.”

Chester laughed, and felt better for it. “Probably were kids playing the fool.”

Max said nothing. She’d begun convincing herself once more that the opposite was true. She hadn’t been drunk. Not to the extent that she could have imagined the otherworldly globes. Jo had finished four of the beers in the six-pack.

Jo.

“Stay in the car, Maxine.” Chester unclipped the loop of his holster and showed Max how to work the radio.

“Any zombies approach, call dispatch for back-up.”

“That’s funny.”

The minute Chester was out of the car, Max began thinking of ways to follow him. The graveyard was hiding something. Max wanted in on its secret. She didn’t like the idea of Chester Beckford going in there alone either. He might know more about the town than she did, but Max had lived her fair share of the spooky. Especially since Jo. Max wondered if Chester had smelled the alcohol on her breath.

The police radio crackled. Max jumped. Her breathing was shallow. There was no sign of Chester. He had disappeared amidst the headstones of those unfortunate enough to have lived and died in the Haven.

“This won’t do.” Max’s voice sounded loud in the empty car. So she said the words again. And a third time before getting out of the car.

Chester grimaced. He hoped the good Lord would forgive him for taking the mickey out of a priest. But he could hardly tell her the truth. Chester had taken an oath to protect the town and he was a man of his word. Of course, if the citizens of the Haven figured out there was Native blood in his veins, he probably would’ve had a headstone of his own by now. It was ironic that he was chosen to protect people who would soon enough kill him than accept him as part of their own.

There were times when Chester didn’t know whether life imitated art, or the other way around. All those television shows about small towns. They could have used the Haven as a location for ninety percent of them. It’s true what they say. Stereotypes were stereotypes for a reason. People are constantly exposed to what they think they’re supposed to behave like. The weaker of them get caught up in it. They start believing that’s who and what they really are.

“Here we go.” Chester took a few steps back as he rounded the weathered edge of a gravestone. He’d left his flashlight in the car, not wanting to attract attention. You never knew who might be around. Sometimes Chester thought he could hear the town breathe, feel its ribcage of houses and bridges and abandoned harbor expand and extract.

If Chester had been looking up instead of watching where he was going he would’ve fallen into the freshly dug grave next to the nameless mausoleum, dated 1464. The graveyard was in the care of the Haven police, and unless someone had phoned ahead to say he was going to be dead later that day there was no reason for that foreboding, gaping hole to be there in the ground.

No reason, bar one.

A scrappy patch of cloud drifted past the moon, and Chester caught the glint of something on the ground. He bent to pick it up, dusting it between his index finger and thumb. A small locket, fixed to a gold necklace. Chester recognized it. One of the Romany men had been wearing it when he came into the deli the day before. Chester had been standing right next to him at the counter. The man had struck him as an important man in his community.

The radio on Chester’s belt crackled; a moment later the voice of his deputy came through clearly. “You still up at the graveyard, Sheriff?”

“Yup.”

“Better stay there. I’m bringing Horace. And I think we should get a patrol to pick up Butch Munson.”

Chester thought fast. “Munson’s not going anywhere. It’s late. We’ll pick him up when Dina’s at school. Let’s spare the girl the job of seeing her father dragged to the charge office.”

“Good idea.”

“And keep Horace at the charge office.” He didn’t need to explain why. Who knew what Munson could get up to between now and sunrise? Better safe than sorry.

Chester switched his radio off.

“Who was that on the radio?”

“Oi!”

Max winced as Chester’s surprise echoed off the gravestones. “Sorry. But that was going to happen no matter how I did it.”

Chester had regained his composure. “You being here means you’re not in the car.”

“True. But as compelling as sitting all alone in a dark car parked in a graveyard is, I thought I’d come looking for you anyway.”

“Where did you get that?” Chester was looking at the talisman around Max’s neck.

“It was a gift. From my aunt. The one I never saw. The one no one talked about. Why?”

“How long have you had it?” Chester looked serious.

“Forever. Why? Should we be talking about jewelry right now? Why is there an open grave? Did someone die?”

A small smile played on Chester’s lips. “You ask a lot of questions, pastor. You’ll go down a treat here in the Haven.”

“Wait, what?”

“That’s the Obed Tilasm around your neck.”

“It is? I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s a guarding ward.” Chester opened the collar of his shirt and revealed a similar-looking amulet. It was almost identical to Max’s. “Yours is female.” He indicated a small curl within the intricate design. My tribe speaks of a female guardian that will come one day.”

“Well, my grandmother used to maintain that she was born out this way...” A peculiar feeling of recognition made Max go quiet.

Chester touched Max’s arm gently. “Come on. Even I’m getting the jeebies out here. I want a bed and a shot of schnapps, in no particular order. And when the sun comes up, there will be Butch Munson to deal with.”

When Maxine finally got home the sun was rising. She welcomed it, glad the night was fading away.

She found Jo in the kitchen, her face pale from lack of sleep. There were dark circles beneath her eyes but she seemed alert and coherent. Max felt the tears well in her eyes as tension and emotion all came bubbling up like a torrent.

Later, when Jo had made them strong tea, they were sitting outside, waiting for the creeping sun to touch their chairs on the back deck.

Jo said, “I’ve seen it before. That pattern.”

Maxine said nothing. She didn’t have to. She had expected as much when Jo had started talking in tongues the night before. Her reaction to what had happened in the graveyard could only be related to her family history. She waited for Jo to continue.

“It’s on one of my mother’s books. A book of incantations. My family is fond of retribution. Those feuding families you always see in movies? Like that, only to the power of a hundred.”

Max told Jo about her conversation with Chester. “You know, I never wanted to believe you when you first told me this talisman meant something.”

Jo took Max’s hand. “I knew the right time for you to understand would come eventually.”

A chill ran down Max’s spine. They were a strange pairing. But for whatever reasons, they fit, and that was the important thing.

“Looks like we’ll be staying in the Haven for a while.” Max tasted the tang of tea on her tongue. Savored it. It wasn’t a good or a bad thing. It was the just the way it was.

A ripple of surface shock extended through the Haven later that week after the local newspaper reported on the death of Butch Munson. Apparently, he somehow got caught between the blades of his brand new plough. Freak accident. Peculiar enough just to be believable. Sheriff Beckford had the scene cleared before Dina could come home from school and see the messy remains of her father.

She didn’t seem too perturbed about the whole thing when she eventually found out but that might have been the result of shock. Marge Derbyshire said that was a hell of a thing, to lose an honorable man like Butch Munson.

Doctor Franklin’s autopsy on the dead Romany man confirmed Horace’s story.

Butch had itchy fists on the best of days, never mind when he was drunk. The stranger hadn’t been armed. Had the tractor not killed Butch he probably would’ve stood trial for murder. Maybe it was better this way. For Dina’s sake.

By the time Sheriff Beckford and his deputy got down to the harbor to inform the rest of the gypsies about the murder they were nowhere in sight. Disappeared in the night. Like they’d never been there, the only evidence of their presence a few expired campfires.

Chester told only Maxine about the ring he found in the sand near the camping site. The one with Butch’s initials on the inside. The two of them went down to the old abandoned harbor at sunset. Initiation can take many forms. Chester gave Max the ring and told her to throw it to the sea like all the other trinkets left behind over the years. In the Haven, such things were best left forgotten.

One Horse Town

Melissa Scott

~

She arrived on the 2:40 train, unexpected, unheralded. It left her standing in the station in her pale blue dress and cheap unfashionable hat, hands in worn gloves clutching a cardboard suitcase. The front of her dress rode up a little over a round belly that could no longer be mistaken for anything but pregnancy, and Mrs. Hebekah Jestice, standing by the running board of the farm’s old Ford truck, shook her head, recognizing trouble. The porter came bustling, but the woman—girl, really, a blonde, round-faced, high-breasted child who barely looked old enough to be traveling alone, never mind alone and pregnant— shook her head and hoisted the suitcase with a determined look that changed to hesitation as she surveyed the street. Enough’s enough, Hebekah Jestice thought, and took her foot off the running board.

“Excuse me. Young lady, are you looking for something?” She sounded like the schoolteacher she had been once upon a time, and the blonde girl responded to that note, not with the ducked head and drawn-up shoulders that Hebekah had expected, but with the slow stare she’d gotten from her most difficult students.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for my husband. Maybe you know him, ma’am? Ferdy Catlett?”

Hebekah’s lips tightened in response to the faint note of challenge, and the girl looked away.

“I know him, yes,” Hebekah said. “But he’s gone away, three weeks back, and nobody knows where.”

The girl caught her breath, the first sign of weakness in her, but then she stiffened herself and squared her shoulders, saying, “Thank you, ma’am. But there must be somebody who knows—maybe where he worked?”

“He worked at Tannahill Stud,” Hebekah said. “As I do. You’ll want to talk to George-Ellen—Miss Tannahill.” She sighed. “If you want, I’ll take you there.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” The girl set down her suitcase, thrust out her hand in its mended glove. I’m Birdy Francis. Birdy Francis Catlett.”

“Hebekah Jestice.” Hebekah took the hand, feeling the bones delicate beneath the plain white cotton. The girl met her stare evenly, and Hebekah felt that sense of challenge again. “Put your case in the back,” she said, “and I’ll take you out to the farm.”

The girl—Birdy, and Hebekah wondered what that was short for—did as she was told, lifting the suitcase into the back and then sliding onto the cracked leather next to the older woman. She looked around as Hebekah started the car, and out of the corner of her eye, Hebekah saw her frown in puzzlement. It was the War Memorial, of course, smack in the center of the little town square. It always drew a stranger’s eyes, being not the usual soldier with his rifle, or even a mounted officer, but just the horse itself. It stood foursquare, saddled and ready, its massive head, larger than life, turned slightly to peer back the way it had come. The slabs of stone that covered the base were filled with names from the late World War, mostly the same names as the ones that had died at Antietam and New Market and the rest; there was room for more, and Hebekah sighed, thinking of the dead who’d soon be filling it.

“What’s that, ma’am?” Birdy asked.

“It’s the War Memorial,” Hebekah said, repressively, but the girl ignored her, craning her head to look back.

“Where are the soldiers?”

“Their names are on it,” Hebekah answered. Birdy was looking expectantly at her, and Hebekah suppressed a sigh. “The horse is the Tannahill Black. It belonged to Colonel Tannahill—that’s Miss Tannahill’s grandfather. It brought him and the last twenty men of his company home after the War.” They both knew which war she meant, and in spite of herself Hebekah found herself warming to the story. “Colonel Tannahill left town with a hundred men from all over the county, and he took the Black, his best racehorse, because he thought the war would be over in a few months. It wasn’t, of course, but the Black got him through every battle without a scratch, until the very last, when they were outnumbered and the colonel was sure he was going to be killed.

So he left the Black with his servant, with orders to bring the horse home to his widow because it was all she would have left to start over with, and went into battle on a borrowed horse. That horse was killed under him, and the colonel was nearly killed himself. But the Black broke free of the servant, and found the colonel on the battlefield, and when the servant found them, the Black was standing over the colonel’s unconscious body, dead men all around, daring anybody to come near. The servant got the colonel up onto the Black, and together they found the rest of the Tannahill men, and it was decided the war was lost and the only thing they could do was try to get home. No one was quite sure how to go, and the colonel, who might have known, was out of his head with fever. So in desperation, they let the Black have his head, and he brought them back to the river and they followed that to the road, and then they knew how to get home. They were the only men from here who survived the war, and it was the Tannahill Black that saved them. And that’s why the monument is to him as much as to them.” She glanced sidelong at the girl, offering a challenge of her own. “They say his spirit still looks after the Tannahills.”

“Oh.” Birdy nodded, looking for the first time a little at a loss, and Hebekah concentrated on her driving.

The roads were quiet, the young men gone to war, the old men’s cars kept at home by rationing. They passed a mule-drawn wagon, a mother in a chair in the wagon bed with the girls and a month’s shopping piled around her, while a boy in patched overalls sat sideways on the tongue, bare feet not quite dragging in the dust. He’d be gone, too, Hebekah thought, as soon as he put on enough inches to convince the recruiters he was of age. Another name for the War Memorial, more like than not.

She swung the truck between the gateposts with their peeling paint, then eased the truck up the long and rutted drive that led to the house. George-Ellen was standing on the porch by the time they got there, trim and pretty even in her worn pants and faded camp shirt, and Hebekah smiled in spite of herself as she brought the truck to a stop.

“Hebekah!” George-Ellen came down the three steps in a hurry. “Don’t turn off the motor, we’ll need to get the feed sacks into the barn. And Sammy’s been called up.”

“Damn.” Hebekah made no apology for her language: the news deserved worse. Sammy Elfin was the last of the young men who had worked for George-Ellen; without him, there was only old Mattison Roy, who was seventy and starting to show it, and maybe one-armed Vern Dimmitt to help with the chores.

“Oh, and there’s more,” George-Ellen said. “June gave notice, said she’s got a job over at the factory in Crownell.” She stopped, seeing Birdy for the first time, and looked at Hebekah in question.

Hebekah made a face. “This is Birdy Catlett—Ferdy’s wife.”

There was an instant’s silence while George-Ellen’s expression changed from annoyance to surprise to pity. “Oh. Oh, dear.”

“I’ve come to find my husband,” Birdy said. She looked from one woman to the other, unable to conceal her challenge any longer. “Mrs. Jestice said he worked here.”

Hebekah switched off the motor. “Why don’t we go inside?”

George-Ellen led the way into the relative cool of the house, bypassing the front room for the room she used as an office. It smelled of the leather chairs and faintly of her dead father’s pipe smoke, and Hebekah saw her fingers trail across the horseshoe that served as a paperweight, gathering luck before she took her seat behind the big desk. “Please, sit down, both of you.”

Birdy took a quick breath, as though she would protest, but did as she was told. “Ma’am, Miss Tannahill, Mrs. Jestice here said Ferdy was missing. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” George-Ellen said, gently.

“What happened?” Birdy’s voice was calm enough, but her hands closed tight over her gloves.

“We don’t know,” Hebekah said. She tried to match George-Ellen’s tone, but knew her voice was harsh by comparison. “He lived in, you know. So he didn’t come to breakfast, and when we went over to check on him, his bed hadn’t been slept in. He had wages owing, so we worried from the start—he wouldn’t have taken off on a bender without getting what he was due. We called the sheriff and asked him to keep an eye out, and then to search, but Ferdy hasn’t been heard of since.” She paused, wondering how to ask the next, the obvious question, and George-Ellen forestalled her.

“When did you tell him you were expecting?”

“That— that couldn’t have anything to do with it.” Birdy sat up straight in the leather armchair, her hands tight-clenched, wadding the cotton gloves. “He’d’ve been glad to know I was going to have a baby. He said so, more than once.”

“I’m sure he was,” George-Ellen said. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you—” Birdy stopped. “You do think something’s happened to him.”

“He’s gone, and left everything he owned and ten dollars pay,” George-Ellen said. “I’m afraid I do think something’s wrong. So does the sheriff.”

The blood drained from the girl’s face, leaving her paler than seemed humanly possible. “I have to find him. I have—he bought me insurance, a thousand dollar policy. I have to find him, dead or alive. Otherwise—oh, God, what’s to become of me?”

George-Ellen rose from behind her desk, came to kneel beside Birdy’s chair. “Hush, now. Hush. It’ll be all right.”

Hebekah frowned—George-Ellen was a great one for strays—but George-Ellen was rushing on, heedless of the look. “Now, Birdy—can I call you Birdy? You don’t want to be traveling now, not in your condition, and anyway, if Ferdy’s just gone off somewhere, this is the first place he’ll come back to, just to get his pay. And we need another woman here—it’s almost providential, you coming like this, at least for us. You heard me say, didn’t you, our cook June left? You can cook, can’t you?”

Birdy gave a wary nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Then that’s settled. You’ll stay here, be our cook until the baby’s born, and then—well, then we’ll see.”

The flow of words seemed to have silenced the girl, and she gave another nod.

“All right,” George-Ellen said, and pushed herself to her feet. “Bekah will show you your room, help you get settled. Don’t worry about supper tonight, June left us supplied for a day or two.”

“George-Ellen,” Hebekah said, but the other woman wouldn’t meet her eye.

“Now don’t you worry,” George-Ellen said, and patted the girl’s hand still clutching her gloves. “You’ll be fine.”

They had no time to talk about it until the evening, after Hebekah had seen Birdy installed in the cook’s room and shown her the kitchen and the pantry and the straggling victory garden, after the thrown-together supper and after George-Ellen had made her last round of the stables, checking on the three mares and the aging stallion. It was full dark then, and a quarter moon just rising. Hebekah squinted at it out of the dining room window, glanced over her shoulder to be sure the door to Birdy’s room was closed, then picked up the decanter and two glasses and carried them up the stairs to George-Ellen’s room. George-Ellen was already undressed, wrapped in a robe that had seen better days, feet bare on the braided rug. She smiled at the tap on the door, was still smiling as Hebekah set decanter and glasses on the table by the lamp, and folded back her sleeve to trim the wick.

“You don’t approve,” she said.

“I think it’s foolish,” Hebekah answered. She poured a glass for each of them, two fingers of neat whiskey.

George-Ellen accepted her glass, took a careful swallow. “I feel bad for the child.”

“I’d like to see her wedding papers,” Hebekah said. “And that insurance policy.”

“I believe you’re jealous.”

Hebekah smiled. “I’m not—I don’t think so, anyway. I just think this is dangerous.”

“I don’t see it,” George-Ellen said. “Besides, what harm could she do?”

“George-Ellen!”

George-Ellen had the grace to blush. “All right—”

Hebekah went on as though she hadn’t spoken, her own voice fierce and low. “Ferdy Catlett is lying dead under the hay in the stud barn, and we put him there, and you say she can’t do any harm? She’s Ferdy’s wife, she’s going to have a child by him—for God’s sake, she has a thousand dollar insurance policy on him, payable, presumably, on proof of his death. And you want to keep her around here? If you want to be kind, pay her Ferdy’s wages, but send her on her way.”

“That wouldn’t be right,” George-Ellen said. “It’s only ten dollars.”

“So tell her it was more.”

“I don’t have more to give her.”

There was a little silence. Hebekah said at last, “What if she starts poking around the barns?”

“She won’t.”

“How can you know that?” Hebekah’s voice rose again, and she caught herself with a gasp.

“I’ll tell her to keep away from the farm, that her business is in the kitchen,” George-Ellen said. “I’ll tell her they’re racehorses and they’re dangerous, most people believe that anyway. Besides, she’s not the sort of girl who was ever horse-mad. We’ll be lucky if she can cook.”

Hebekah shook her head, recognizing from long habit the futility of argument. “I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” George-Ellen answered, and wrapped her arm around the other woman’s waist.

Hebekah let herself relax into that embrace. “How were the horses?”

“Well. Quiet.”

Hebekah turned to kiss the other woman, tasting the whiskey on her lips. “And the Black?”

“No sign of him,” George-Ellen said. Even as she spoke, they both heard the sound of hooves in the paddock outside, a big horse running hard on hard ground. Hebekah pulled free, crossed to the window and flung up the shade without regard for discretion. George-Ellen was at her elbow in a heartbeat, and they both stared out into the night.

“Reddy’s on turnout,” George-Ellen said, her voice not quite steady. “See? There he is.”

Reddy was the old horse they used as a teaser, twenty-two years old, slow and careful from years of being kicked by not-yet-willing mares. Hebekah squinted, could just make out his shape, pale in the moonlight, at the far side of the paddock. “Reddy hasn’t run that hard in years.” She straightened, pulling the shade down again. “Send Birdy away, George-Ellen. For her sake, if not for ours.”

George-Ellen shook her head, stubborn. “We owe her. Ferdy’s dead, Bekah. We can at least take care of his wife.”

There was no arguing with her—there never was, in this mood. Hebekah took a swallow of her own whiskey, let its harsh heat run to puddle in her belly. “Please yourself, then,” she said, but her tone was less angry than her words. George-Ellen smiled, recognizing acquiescence, and tugged her toward the big bed.

To Hebekah’s surprise, Birdy took George-Ellen’s warning seriously, and settled comfortably into the routine of the farm, staying well clear of the horses and the barns. She was a passable cook and competent around the house, and showed signs now and then of a shy, sly sense of humor. Three days after she arrived, the sheriff came calling, sad-eyed and graying, holding his hat politely over his belt buckle. Birdy came to talk to him on the porch, wiping her hands on her high-tied apron. Bill Lankster looked her up and down, and Hebekah wasn’t surprised to see her duck back into the house and reappear with an envelope. Lankster unfolded the papers one by one, read them, and handed them gravely back again. He shook her hand, gentle as if he knew she were a widow, and then flipped his hat back onto his head and drove away. Birdy stood looking after him for a long moment, and Hebekah came to join her.

“Are you all right, Birdy?”

The girl looked at her, and Hebekah flinched to see her so pale, blue eyes like drawn flowers in the marble face.

“You need a cup of tea,” she said, and touched the girl’s shoulder, turning her toward the kitchen. “Come along.”

Birdy followed, obedient and silent, and Hebekah put the kettle on, opening the stove to mound the coals under the burner. She sat the girl at the table, bustled about cutting bread and finding the butter crock, and only when the tea was steeping did she speak again.

“Bill upset you.”

Birdy managed a wincing smile. The color was coming back to her face, and she wrapped her hands around the china cup. “He didn’t say nothing I didn’t already know.”

Hebekah sighed. “He thinks Ferdy’s dead.”

There was no kinder way to say it, but Birdy just nodded. “That’s what he said. I asked him about the insurance—was that bad of me?”

Hebekah shook her head. “Sensible, I’d call it.”

“I asked him, and he said he couldn’t speak for the company, of course, but he doubted they’d pay me without proof Ferdy was dead. Otherwise, he said you had to wait seven years before you could ask them to pay.”

“I believe that’s true.” Hebekah said.

“Oh, God.” Birdy managed a breathless laugh, not quite hysteria. “I haven’t got seven years, Mrs. Jestice.” She touched her stomach. “I doubt I have seven months.”

“You have a place here,” Hebekah said. It was a foolish reminder, but worse, she thought, if she didn’t offer it. “Miss Tannahill and I, we’re both glad to have you.”

Birdy shook her head. “I need to find his body.”

Hebekah shivered. “You must have loved him very much,” she said, hoping to change the subject, and Birdy sighed.

“I don’t know. I thought I did. But—this is for the baby. I have to find him.”

“Well, stay out of the barns,” Hebekah said, and knew instantly that she’d made a mistake.

She repeated the conversation that evening, following George-Ellen through the barns on the night’s last rounds. George-Ellen swore under her breath, but shook her head.

“You can’t blame the child.”

“No, I don’t,” Hebekah said. “But we can’t afford her poking around here. This is foolish, George-Ellen.”

George-Ellen held up the lantern to illuminate the next stall. The brown mare ignored her, head in the corner asleep, but the grey in the next stall came forward, poking her nose over the door in search of a last treat. George-Ellen patted her absently.

“Nothing for you, sweetheart, you’re too fat already.” She looked over her shoulder at Hebekah. “We owe the girl.”

“I know that,” Hebekah said. “But does the Black?”

There was another silence between them, broken at last by a rustling in the loft—one of the barn cats, hunting mice—and the heavy sigh as the gray mare turned back to her hay net. The night air was getting an autumn chill, and the barn smelled of hay and horses and broken leaves. Hebekah shivered, hugging her cardigan tight across her body, and the flame of the lantern flickered in a sudden breath of wind.

The scream came from outside, a woman’s scream, cut off short, and then the sound of pounding hooves. George-Ellen swore again, and ran for the door, Hebekah close behind. The scream came again, from the other barn, this time, and it was answered by the shriek of a stallion. Please let it be Honor Boy, Hebekah thought, half-prayed, please…. But the door slid back, and she could see the old bay stud in his stall, backed into the corner, ears pinned. The lantern swung in George-Ellen’s hand, throwing a crazy fan of light and shadow. Birdy was flattened against the door of a stall, and at the end of the aisle something seethed and snorted in the shadows. A stallion screamed again—not Honor Boy, Honor Boy was pressed trembling in the back of his stall—and Birdy shrieked in answer.

“No!” George-Ellen shouted. “Leave it!” The lantern trembled, and the shadows gathered and shifted, became for an instant the shape of a horse. Hebekah grabbed George-Ellen’s arm, pulling her back as the shadows swept towards them with a rush and a rumble of hooves. George-Ellen leaped back, and the lantern fell, extinguishing itself in a shower of sparks. The air was full of horse-smell, the heavy breath and weight of its step, the rustle of its presence. Hebekah felt something brush past her, bruising her shoulder, and George-Ellen cried out again.

“Leave her! She’s no danger!”

A horse snorted, hooves ringing on the hard dirt.

“Miss Tannahill?” Birdy called, her voice quavering. “Please, Miss Tannahill—”

“Get the lantern,” George-Ellen said, but Hebekah was already past her, feeling her way along the line of the stalls. The girl was trouble, possibly even worse trouble than her husband had been; she should walk away, and let the Black deal with her— hang back, even, that was all it would take, and the problem would be solved. Except that Bill Lankster would never believe another disappearance, and, more than that, most important of all, George-Ellen would never forgive herself. Something moved in the dark, a flicker of pale dress and paler skin, and Hebekah’s hand closed on Birdy’s shoulder.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s Mrs. Jestice.”

Birdy gulped a sob, and Hebekah folded her into her arms, pressing them both against the rough boards of the stall. In the darkness, hot breath moved sidelong, snorting and stamping as it shifted back and forth, searching for a way to get at them. They could hear it, feel its breath, and instinctively Hebekah put out her hand to shove it away. She touched—something, hot and smooth and solid, but it was gone in an instant, and horsehair thin and fine as strands of wire whipped across her face. She ducked, dragging Birdy down with her, and something struck the boards above their head. The wood cracked, and in the dark the Black screamed again.

Light flared—George-Ellen had struck a match—and in that instant Hebekah saw the horse rearing over them, hooves as large as plates and sharp as knives lifted to crush them. She jerked Birdy aside as the match went out, and they both felt the horse plunge down where they had been, heard it snort in complaint that it had missed them. George-Ellen cursed again, high and vicious, and struck another match. This time the lantern caught, and she raised its flame, driving back the shadows. The horse retreated with them, caught in the dark, made of darkness, and Hebekah swallowed a cry.

“Bekah! Bekah, are you all right?”

“We’re all right,” Hebekah answered, though she was shaking, and Birdy clung to her, keening soft and high. The shadows roiled again, the thing that waited there turning and whirling just out of the lantern’s light. Hebekah could hear its hooves on the soft dirt, could hear its breath again, the harsh whisper of its tail as it turned again. “Stay back, George-Ellen!”

Instead, George-Ellen lifted the lantern higher, casting a wider circle of light. She stepped closer, first one step, then another, and another, until she stood almost close enough to touch the other women. The darkness at the back of the barn seemed to thicken, so that they could hear the noises, but still not see clearly what moved there. It snorted, turning back and forth, the shadows shifting to hide it. Slowly, carefully, Hebekah pushed herself upright, dragging Birdy with her, and the thing in the shadows squealed again, lashing out against the barn boards behind it, snapping one with a sound like a pistol shot. Hebekah froze, Birdy still clutched tight against her; the girl’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears wet on her cheeks. The darkness circled, the horse at its heart pacing back and forth.

“Leave them be!” George-Ellen’s voice was high and sharp with fear, but still with an unmistakable note of command. “You hear me? Leave them be!”

There was a change then, like a shift in the wind, and the darkness steadied. The horse grew quieter, the rhythm of its pacing easier, and Hebekah saw George-Ellen draw a careful breath.

“I am George-Ellen Tannahill—the last and only Tannahill. And I tell you these are my friends. They’re no danger to me, or to you, or to this land. So go on, get— go on out of here.”

Hebekah held her breath. She could feel Birdy shaking, could almost feel the heart beating wildly behind Birdy’s ribs—or perhaps that was her own heart, she could not longer tell. The darkness snorted, whuffled, and then with a suddenness that was as terrifying as its attack, it flowed down the aisle, skirting the circle of the lantern light and was gone in a flurry of hoof beats. Honor Boy called after it, a high, ringing cry, and the answer came wild, fading on the wind.

“Are you all right?” George-Ellen’s voice shook, and Hebekah swallowed her own tears of relief.

“I’m fine.” She felt Birdy stir, pushing her away, and let her go, keeping only a hand on her to keep her upright.

“Birdy?” George-Ellen raised the lantern again, anxiously scanning the younger woman’s face.

Birdy shuddered. “I’m—all right, I think.”

“What were you doing here?” Hebekah asked.

George-Ellen frowned, but Hebekah ignored her. It was a question that had to be asked, and answered, or this matter could never be settled.

“Well?”

Birdy took a deep breath. “I was looking for Ferdy,” she said. “If he wasn’t dead, and he hadn’t taken his pay—I thought he might be here. I thought you might be hiding him, might be keeping him for yourself.” She looked from one woman to the other. “I guess I was wrong about that.”

“You were,” Hebekah said, grimly.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Birdy said. “That—that horse-thing killed him. I saw—that’s him, I know it by the ring.”

She pointed, her hand shaking. George-Ellen tilted the light, and they all saw it together: a hand outflung, reaching from beneath the massive pile of hay. The lantern light glinted from a plain gold ring, loose now on a finger that was little better than a claw.

“Yes.” George-Ellen set the lantern down at last, rubbed her hands together as though they were cold. “The Tannahill Black brought my great-grandfather home, and he’s protected us ever since. Ferdy was trying to blackmail me.”

“But you invited him here,” Birdy said. “You did, didn’t you? Where that thing could kill him.”

“Yes,” George-Ellen said again. “I did ask him to meet me here, and I was thinking of the Black when I asked him. But if he hadn’t threatened me, nothing would have happened.”

“Damn that man,” Birdy whispered. She shook her head, spoke more loudly. “I don’t disbelieve you, Miss Tannahill—I can’t, not after this. But what now?”

Send her away, Hebekah thought, and opened her mouth to say the same, but George-Ellen spoke first.

“I told you when you came here, we need a cook, and you’re welcome to the job if you want it. I feel responsible—not for him, Ferdy got what he asked for, but for you. I didn’t know he had a wife, or a child on the way.”

“I knew there was something wrong when he didn’t send for me,” Birdy said, almost to herself. “And he could be stupid—crooked and stupid—when he thought there was money involved. But that…” She shivered again.

“He brought it on himself,” Hebekah said.

Birdy nodded, sadly. “I’ll stay. If you’ll have me.”

To Hebekah’s surprise, George-Ellen reached out to her, touched her elbow, and as she turned, she saw the question in the other woman’s eyes. She smiled, nodding slightly, and George-Ellen’s hand slid down to clasp her own. Their fingers closed, bruising tight, and George-Ellen said, “Yes. We’ll have you.”

And that was enough, Hebekah thought. She stooped, her hand still tangled in George-Ellen’s, and picked up the lantern. They were safe, and the Black would see them safe—I’ll see us safe, too, she thought, whatever happens. The lantern light flickered, and steadied again, and they moved toward the door and the safety of the house, not quite listening for the sound of hooves.

CONTRIBUTORS

~

Sacchi Green is the smut-writing alter ego of Connie Wilkins. Their work has appeared in such assorted venues as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Prom Night, Bruce Coville’s Shapeshifters, Bruce Coville’s Strange Worlds, Best Fantastic Erotica, multiple volumes of Best Lesbian Erotica and Best Women’s Erotica, Penthouse, and a thigh-high stack of other inspirational publications. Sacchi is also the co-editor of three anthologies, Lambda Award Finalist Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Lesbian Cowboy Erotica; Hard Road, Easy Riding: Lesbian Biker Erotica; and Lipstick on Her Collar. A fourth anthology, Time Well Bent: Queer Alternate History, is in the works.

M. Christian’S numerous stories have appeared in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, as well as in the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, and Filthy.  He is also the author of the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, The Painted Doll, Me2, and Brushes.

Marilyn Jaye Lewis’s short stories and novellas have appeared in numerous anthologies in the United States and Europe and have won many citations and awards, including the New Century Writers Award and finalist in the William Faulkner Writing Competition. As editor, Lewis’s anthologies include the controversial Zowie! It’s Yaoi! Western Girls Write Hot Stories of Boys’ Love, and Stirring Up A Storm: Tales of the Sensual, the Sexual, and the Erotic—nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes for Short Fiction. Upcoming novels include Twilight of the Immortal, Freak Parade, and We’re Still All That.

Dayle A. Dermatis lives in Southern California within scent of the ocean, with her husband, a polydactyl cat, and a three-legged cat. When not writing, she can be found doing historic re-creation with the Society of Creative Anachronism, traveling the world (often via motorcycle), or renovating their 1911 Craftsman-style bungalow. Her stories have appeared in Fabulous Whitby, Sword & Sorceress, and Battlecorps.com, among others. In other incarnations she is a professionally published writer of erotica and romance, with two novels and many stories to her credit. You can read more about her work at www.cyvarwydd.com.

Suzan Tessier worked for years as a psychology research assistant until she came to her senses. Now, she runs a small online business and writes horror and erotica. She has short stories published in Brutarian, Peep Show Volume 1 and On Spec. She and her husband, both transplanted Canadians, live in Rochester, New York with two very spoiled pugs.

Kathleen Bradean’S stories can be found in Best Women’s Erotica 2007, Garden of the Perverse, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6, and She’s On Top in print, and on Clean Sheets and The Erotica Readers and Writers Association websites. She’s a member of the Erotic Author’s Association, Broad Universe, The Speculative Fiction Society, Bi Writers Association, and the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. She also reviews books for Erotica Revealed. KathleenBradean.Blogspot.com.

Brenta Blevins lives and writes in the Appalachian Mountains. She has written audio dramas that have been produced for public radio and non-fiction that has been published in Strange Horizons. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of anthologies, including Bound in Skin, Sporty Spec, and Desolate Places. Brenta appreciates the company and assistance of her fluffy, white cat, Snow Crash.

M.E. Cooper, as a fan of speculative fiction, likes to come at things just slightly askew, offer new twists on old tales and leave the reader with a story that will stay with them long after the pages have been turned. M. E. has stories published through Torquere Press. M.E. lives in Canada with her wife, two dog and four cats.

Selina Rosen’S stories have appeared in several magazines and anthologies including Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and the two new Thieves’ World anthologies. Some of her fourteen published novels include Queen of Denial, Chains of Freedom, Strange Robby, Fire & Ice, Bad Lands (with Laura J. Underwood), and Sword Masters. She owns Yard Dog Press and created their Bubbas of the Apocalypse universe.

Lyn McConchie began writing in 1990 and since then she has had seven books published by Warner Aspect and TOR books and short stories in anthologies such as Merlin, three of the Catfantastic anthologies, Space Opera, SF Trails and Ruins Terra. She lives in New Zealand’s North island on a small farm that she owns, sharing her farmhouse with Thunder the Ocicat, and 7,000+ books. Her humorous non-fiction series about her farm and animals are available on Amazon, or LuLu, and she has just signed contracts with Tor for another fantasy.

Jean Roberta teaches English in a university on the Canadian prairie. She is haunted by history and herstory, and writes in several genres. Her lesbian erotica can be found in Best Lesbian Erotica (2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007), and other venues including the true-story anthologies Up All Night and First-Timers. Fourteen of her erotic stories in various dark flavors are collected in Obsession from Eternal Press (www.eternalpress.com.ca). She wrote three articles in LGBTQ America Today (Greenwood), a reference work on all things queer. Catch glimpses of her here: www.JeanRoberta.com, goodsturdyjeans.blogspot.com and lizardlez.livejournal.

Kaite Welsh is a former artists’ model and academic turned author and wannabe rollerderby queen. She lives in 21st century London with her partner and two cats whilst yearning for 1920s Paris and Nathalie Barney. In between trying to stave off writer’s block with retail therapy and mass-produced, over-hyped media, she is working on a lesbian crime novel and a collection of short stories. She has a weakness for lipgloss, flavoured vodka, tv shows where the sassy girl sidekick saves the day, angsty girls with guitars and expensive notebooks.

L.C. Jordan lives, works and plays in the Midwest, but not necessarily in that order. When not chasing cats or birds, tending to family or playing with power tools and guitars, LC likes to write. The epic search for the perfect alchemy of words goes on, but she has been fortunate to be a part of several anthologies including The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica, Erotic Interludes Series II, III, IV and Travelrotica I.

Elise Matthesen lives in Minnesota, surrounded by beads, metal, words, music, and people she loves. She has a jewelry business, a hearing impairment, fibromyalgia, arthritis, attitude, ingenuity, numerous publication credits, and many pairs of pliers. Her stories and articles have appeared in Jane Yolen’s Xanadu 3, Five Minute Erotica, How to Mutate and Take Over the World, Bi Any Other Name and Lavender Magazine, among other venues.

Ka Vang was born in Laos and grew up in Minnesota. Her plays Disconnect, Dead Calling and From Shadows to Light have been performed at venues in Minnesota and New York City. Vang’s short story, “Ms. Pac Man Ruined My Gang Life,” was featured in two anthologies: Bamboo Among the Oaks and Charlie Chan is Dead II: At Home in the World. She is a recipient of the Archibald Bush Artist Fellowship and several other fellowships. She performs frequently across the country and is actively involved in Asian American community issues.

Lynne Jamneck is a South African born writer. Her short fiction has appeared in various markets including Best Lesbian Erotica (2003, 2006, 2007), H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, Jabberwocky Magazine, and So Fey:Queer Faery Fiction. She is the Editor of Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures (Lethe Press). Lynne is currently working towards a Masters in English Literature at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and writing her first speculative novel. She has an obsession with tentacles. Please send gifts accordingly.

Melissa Scott is from Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, where she earned her Ph.D. In 1986, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2001 she and her late partner and long-time collaborator Lisa A. Barnett won a Lambda Literary Award for Point of Dreams. Scott has also won Lammies in 1996 for Shadow Man and 1995 for Trouble and Her Friends. Her most recent publications are the short stories “The Rocky Side of the Sky” (in Periphery, Lethe Press) and “Mister Seeley” (in So Fey, Haworth Press).

~

The Editor

~

Catherine Lundoff lives in Minneapolis with her wonderful and long suffering partner. She is the author of two collections of lesbian erotica: Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing (Lethe Press, 2007) and Night’s Kiss (Lethe Press, 2009). Her stories have appeared in numerous publications including So Fey: Queer Faery Fiction, Time Well Bent: Queer Alternate History, Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures, Farrago’s Wainscot, Khimairal Ink, Best Fantastic Erotica Vol. 1 and Such a Pretty Face. She is a Spectrum Award short fiction finalist and a contributor to Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy: An Encyclopedia (forthcoming, Greenwood Press).

Finally, she is working on several novels and when not writing, she does terrible things to software.

Table of Contents

Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Introduction

Spirit Horse Ranch

The One I Left Behind

A Path to the Woods

Some Old Lover’s Ghost

A Quiet Love

Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts

Ostraca

Midnight Confession

The Dyke You Know

Waiting Tables and Time

Authentic

City of the Dead

Airtight

Focus of Desire

Meeting Mr. Krenshaw

The Oath

One Horse Town

CONTRIBUTORS

Table des matières

Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Introduction

Spirit Horse Ranch

The One I Left Behind

A Path to the Woods

Some Old Lover’s Ghost

A Quiet Love

Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts

Ostraca

Midnight Confession

The Dyke You Know

Waiting Tables and Time

Authentic

City of the Dead

Airtight

Focus of Desire

Meeting Mr. Krenshaw

The Oath

One Horse Town

CONTRIBUTORS

Table of Contents

Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

Introduction

Spirit Horse Ranch

The One I Left Behind

A Path to the Woods

Some Old Lover’s Ghost

A Quiet Love

Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts

Ostraca

Midnight Confession

The Dyke You Know

Waiting Tables and Time

Authentic

City of the Dead

Airtight

Focus of Desire

Meeting Mr. Krenshaw

The Oath

One Horse Town

CONTRIBUTORS