Shaman's Moon

by Sarah Dreher

  “I didn’t know that was the sort of thing you were supposed to have feelings about,” she said defensively.

  “I don’t have dire expectations,” he said quickly. “But a woman with your level of health...”

  “At my age,” she interrupted.

  “At any age. I wish I were as healthy as you at my age.”

  “Flattery,” Hermione said, “will get you everywhere.”

  “Seriously, Mrs. Moore…”

  “Oh, please. My ex-husband was a fool and a ne’er-do-well. If I’d known strangers were going to connect me to him for the rest of my life, I’d have opened a vein before I ever married him. Ms. Moore will do. ‘Hermione’ will do even better.” She stared him straight in the eye. “Especially since you’ve spent the better part of the afternoon peering at and into me.”

  As she’d expected, he was struck dumb with embarrassment.

  “I wasn’t married long,” Hermione said as she slipped into her coat. She was pleased to see he didn’t jump up to help her as if she were feeble and had lost track of her arms. “Young and foolish. BWM.”

  He looked at her questioningly.

  “Before Women’s Movement.”

  “My aunt talks about those times with great fondness.”

  Hermione picked up her hand bag. “It probably wasn’t as much fun as we remember. I recall having the compost scared out of me more than once. But it was a lot more fun than the War Between the...” She caught herself. “Well, most things I can think of.”

  “I have something to tell you,” Aunt Hermione said a few days later over after-dinner coffee. “I went to a doctor and there’s not a thing wrong with me. The blood tests came back today, everything normal.”

  Stoner looked around the room. Gwen and Marylou were smiling as if they’d just heard good news. Aunt Hermione seemed pleased with herself. My God, Stoner thought. Don’t they realize this is worse than finding something? She still looks awful, and they don’t know why?

  “What kind of doctor?” Stoner asked. “A real doctor, or one of those New Age types that sniff your navel and charge you two hundred dollars?”

  Her aunt turned to her. “A real doctor,” she said in a voice so calm it hurt, “the kind that refers you to someone else, who performs unnecessary and life-threatening tests, and charges you two thousand dollars. He referred me to a neurologist.”

  “A neurologist? You say there’s nothing wrong and he’s sending you to a neurologist? They don’t send people to neurologists for nothing.”

  “Actually, he’s sending me to one for about six hundred dollars.”

  Stoner gripped the edge of her chair and tried not to scream. She forced herself to lower her voice to something close to her normal range. “He must have given you a reason.”

  “The reason was, he couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Stoner said in a tone of finality and dismissal. “People don’t do that sort of thing.”

  Aunt Hermione stared at her defiantly. “That’s what they said when Hedda Gabler shot herself.”

  “Oh, please,” Gwen said. “Will y’all just let it go for once?”

  Uh-oh. When Gwen said “y’all” it was a warning that something truly unpleasant could very easily happen.

  It was grocery shopping night. Tuesday. Stoner’s turn. She was just as glad to be getting out of there. Even glad for Marylou’s company. It would keep her mind off of things. And she couldn’t nag Aunt Hermione if she wasn’t even in the same place.

  Ever since the Mohawk Trail Big Y World Class Supermarket in Greenfield had gone to twenty-four-hour openings, Marylou had been convinced that homeless people were using it as a shelter. It was perfect. Restrooms, magazines, flowers, and even a halfway decent deli and wine department. With no rent to pay, you could splurge at the deli. She was on a mission to find someone who was living there. Not to make trouble, just to talk with them and ask them what it was like, living in a Super Store. What kinds of people came in? Who was friendly and who was nasty? What clerks had been hired or fired? Were any of them under age and should the management be reported? And, especially, what was the gossip?

  Marylou loved gossip. Not in a uncouth or spiteful way, but because it was like reading about someone’s life without worrying about the book coming overdue. And you didn’t have to listen to the day-to-day grind, the way you would if you made friends with them. You just got the high and low points. It was perfect.

  It wasn’t safe to trust what she passed along, though. Marylou had a talent for creative embellishment. The story was usually exciting but indistinguishable by the time she was through with it, and she generally forgot who she’d heard it from or who it was really about.

  “Now, remember,” she warned Stoner as they pulled into the parking lot, “they’ll talk to me more easily if I’m alone, so stay away from me until we come out.”

  “Really?” Stoner asked, big-eyed. “You’re finally coming out?”

  Marylou hit her on the wrist. Her collection of silver bracelets sounded like wind chimes. “Stop that. You’re too old to be corny.” She gathered up her huge tote bag.

  “That thing’s going to cripple you some day,” Stoner said as Marylou hefted the bulging bag over one shoulder. “What in the world do you keep in there, anyway?”

  “Things I might need. Cosmetics, aspirin and other emergency supplies, appointment book, notebooks, whatever I happen to be reading at the time, and another book in case I finish that one while stranded in a remote and boring place.”

  “And your lunch?”

  “Well, of course not, just a snack.” She started away from the car and turned back. “Don’t forget, give me a five-minute head start. I want to be able to blend in unobtrusively.”

  Stoner grinned. Marylou had as much chance of blending in unobtrusively anywhere as a Mexican festival at a Quaker meeting.

  “And, when you see me at the other end of the aisle, don’t jump up and down flailing your arms like a demented dervish, the way you usually do.”

  “I do not,” Stoner said.

  “You do. You’d think I was your long-lost something-or-other.”

  “Okay, okay. So it makes me happy to see you unexpectedly. Even if it’s just in the frozen food aisle. It’s like a nice surprise. But I do not flail.”

  “Well...” Marylou said, “maybe not exactly flail…”

  “It hurts my feelings when you say things like that.”

  Marylou patted her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Forgive me?”

  Stoner thought it over. “Okay, but you owe me a free pout.”

  “Good. Take it while I get a head start.”

  She swung away from the car before Stoner could stop her again.

  Hermione glanced up from the Tarot spread she was contemplating to snatch an unnoticed hard look at Gwen. She liked the woman. Always had liked her. Of all the people Stoner could have brought into her life—and she had brought more than one unsavory sort in her youth—she was glad Gwen was the one who seemed to be sticking.

  She couldn’t recall having met Gwen before in any form. She liked that, too, meeting a new soul and one she was drawn to. The spirit formerly known as Yogananda was fond of hanging around souls who were about to incarnate and reminding them not to waste their time on souls they’d never met before, but stick to the ones they’d already worked things out with. As if they’d remember his uninvited advice once they were carnate.

  It wasn’t bad advice, but rather narrowing. Yogananda was like that, always thinking about how to avoid the obstacles to evolvement. As if all you were interested in was getting there as quickly as possible. As if the only way to get to a particular point were a straight line. Like your typical man with control of the car. Hermione herself enjoyed the scenic route, even if it meant delays, errors, discomforts, and all the rest. Yogananda was single-minded, and sometimes she wished he’d concentrate more on raising his own vibration and leave the rest of them
alone. Or just go on up to the next level, where things were calmer and more contemplative. Hermione and her bunch weren’t through with disarray quite yet.

  Gwen glanced up and saw her watching and smiled.

  “Final papers?” Hermione asked.

  Gwen nodded. “The last batch for this year, thank God. Sometimes I get a little sick reading about things I already know.”

  “I thought you had a teaching assistant to grade papers.”

  “I do, but he has college finals. And I figured I’d better be a little familiar with these since we have parent conferences.” She paused briefly. “How are you feeling?”

  Hermione looked down quickly at her Tarot spread. “Better than these cards imply. If I believe them, I’ve been dead for years.”

  Gwen took her reading glasses off. “Is it a bad reading?”

  “It’s completely flat. All minor arcana and mostly pentacles. It seems there’s nothing going on with my soul at all.”

  “Maybe it just needs a rest.”

  “It’s getting one,” Hermione said. She raked her cards together and shuffled them three times and started to lay out a Tree of Life spread. After the first four cards, she gave up. “Nothing.”

  Gwen got up and came over to the table. “Want me to try it?”

  “It’s not the cards, it’s me.” Suddenly she heard herself say, “I’m driving Stoner crazy, aren’t I?”

  “A little.” Gwen took the community pack of Tarot cards and sat at the table. “How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “It has you a little crazy, doesn’t it?” Gwen asked as she shuffled the cards, not looking directly at Hermione. When Hermione didn’t answer, she said, “If I felt as terrible as you seem to, and they told me there was nothing wrong with me, I’d be out of my mind.”

  Hermione smiled. She knew exactly what Gwen was doing, drawing her out, without making too much of a big deal about it. She didn’t mind. In fact, she was rather relieved. If there was anyone she could count on not to become emotional or pushy, it was Gwen. “I think I might be, slightly.”

  Gwen shuffled the cards again. “What’s it like?” she asked.

  “Going a little crazy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hermione contemplated how to put it into words while Gwen started flipping through the cards, one at a time. “Well,” she said at last, “the closest I can come is how you feel when you take an antihistamine right before you go to bed, and it hasn’t worn off when you wake up.”

  “Thick in the head and flannel-tongued,” Gwen said.

  “Flannel-everythinged. Not quite here, disconnected, as if there’s a wall of water between me and the rest of the world.” She watched as Gwen removed the Queen of Pentacles from the deck and tossed it to one side.

  “Stoner,” she explained, indicating the rejected card. “Let’s see how it reads without her.”

  “Good idea. It’s a struggle for Spirit to get through her anxiety.”

  Gwen glanced up. “She doesn’t mean to be difficult. She’s just...” She shrugged. “Impossible.”

  Hermione had to laugh. For a Pisces, Gwen could be amazingly clear. But Pisces could be like that. When they came up for air, they glinted silver in the sunlight.

  “And there’s the memory problem,” Hermione said as Gwen started in on a new layout. “Sometimes I can remember in such detail, and other times I’ll go into a room and can’t for the life of me think of why I did. I suppose that can be advancing age...”

  “Hardly,” Gwen interrupted. “You don’t lose your memory from one week to the next. Not without a severe trauma to the head.” She leaned back in her chair. “Look at that, would you? Not a single major arcana.”

  Hermione looked. It was nearly identical to the reading she’d gotten. “It happened suddenly?” she asked. “The memory thing?”

  “About a month ago. One day you were fine, the next you seemed to have trouble remembering anything at all. And losing weight. Your energy seemed to drain right out of you.”

  “You noticed.”

  “Everyone noticed. They just didn’t know what to do. I mean, we all kept asking you how you are, and you kept putting us off. We got the message. At least, some of us did.”

  Hermione felt a deep burning behind her eyes, along with a sense of relief and regret. They’d all known, of course, all this time. And she’d felt so alone, so frightened, and there was comfort so close all she had to do was reach out...

  She began to cry.

  Gwen came and put her arms around her. “You’re not in this alone, Aunt Hermione,” Gwen said, and stroked her hair. “We’re your family and we’re right here.”

  Hermione let herself be held until she was comforted.

  It wasn’t getting any better, Cutter thought. Not that he’d expected it to. Ghosts didn’t get bored and wander off. When they wanted you, they wanted you, no two ways about it. And these ghosts wanted the old woman.

  They started showing up just after sunset now, before it was even totally dark. Growing braver. Arrogant. They even knew he was here, and it didn’t bother them one bit. They knew who he was, and that he knew who they were, and it didn’t even slow them down. Tonight one had come so close to him he could almost see its face, staring directly into his. But he didn’t see its face. He never let himself see their faces. Back in ’Nam, if they showed you their faces you were dead.

  What was he going to do? They weren’t afraid of him. He couldn’t knife them or shoot them or strangle them the way he’d been taught. He knew that from bitter experience. His hands’d gone right through them when he tried to pull them off his buddies.

  He wondered why they never attacked him.

  Maybe they were like the old Roman legions. Leave one of the enemy alive and mangled, so he’d go home and tell about how vicious the Romans were. So they wouldn’t even try to fight the next time.

  Maybe he’d been left alive in the jungle because he was supposed to come back and warn people about the ghosts.

  There seemed to be more of them tonight, but they weren’t doing anything. Not yet. Just kind of congregating under the old woman’s window.

  Cutter waited.

  At times like this, he often found his mind going back to a kid he’d known, before he’d let himself be drafted. The kid’d been a soda jerk in the local drug store. A nice kid, friendly but serious at the same time. He knew where to find everything in the store, and how much chocolate syrup you liked on your chocolate, marshmallow, peanut sundae.

  The kid had wanted to be a pharmacist after college. Cutter grunted. If he’d been in ’Nam, he’d know more about drugs than he’d learn in a thousand years of college. But the jungle probably would have broken him, his mind, his body, both. He was the kind of kid the jungle could break.

  Cutter wondered what had happened to him. He hoped he’d slipped across the border to Canada. He could be back home now, because of the amnesty. Sometimes he wondered what his own life would be like if he’d done that. It had made sense, even at the time, even thinking you’d never come home.

  His Dad would have disowned him, of course. His Dad was one of those flag-waving veterans of the Second World War who never talked about it. That wouldn’t have bothered him much, to have his Dad disown him. They’d never had much to say to each other, anyway.

  But his Mom, his Mom would have been ashamed. He couldn’t do that to her.

  The old woman was about the age his Mom would be now. He wondered how she was doing. He’d wanted to go see her right after the war, but he was too fucked up, he couldn’t let her know what had happened to him, she’d have blamed herself. And now it just didn’t make sense.

  But he still wondered about her, and hoped she was all right, and wished he could do something for her.

  Well, he could still do something for this old woman.

  He slipped around to the front of the house through the deepest shadows. Marylou was out tonight, with Stoner. It’d be easier with just Gwen and the old w
oman there. Still, his heart pounded and his mouth was desert-dry with anxiety. He stood for a moment at the bottom of the steps, hidden in a pool of night, and watched them.

  He avoided talking to people when he could. It frightened him. Frightened him more than his drill sergeant had, or even the Viet Cong. Everyday people could catch you off guard and cut you. Even if they didn’t mean to, they could say something that seemed perfectly unimportant to them, and it would slice right through you. Words like “family” and “loyal” and “kids.” Sometimes even the dumbest words you could imagine—like “sour cream,” which was the stupidest thing he could think of to name something you wanted people to eat—sometimes even innocent words like that could stab and sting. It depended on what they ran up against. And he wasn’t sure what there was inside him that they shouldn’t touch. So even the most innocuous conversation, about the weather or baseball or the price of tea in China, could leave him bleeding.

  Cutter took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He had a job to do. Like in ’Nam, when you had a job to do you did it. Otherwise your buddies could get hurt.

  He fixed his eyes on the door bell and forced his feet to follow.

  “Ma’am,” he said when the old woman answered the door, “excuse me for bothering you so late, but someone’s trying to steal your soul.”

  Chapter 4

  Stoner supposed it was possible. Stranger things had happened to Aunt Hermione. Stranger things had happened to her, as a matter of fact. She’d run into an unsavory collection of beings during some of the adventures she’d fallen into. A few of them could be said to be definitely not of this world, or so it had seemed in the fear and confusion of the moment. In retrospect… well, it was hard to tell.

  And as far as soul-stealers went, she’d encountered more than a few of them in her time. Maybe not ghostly entities that lurked in the wisteria to snatch your spirit while you were sleeping, but energy-draining, manipulating vampires none the less. As a matter of fact, she’d been lovers with at least one. Maybe even had one for a mother. They were all around.