“I got in an accident,” he told her. “I can’t find my way out of the woods.”
“I know,” the girl responded, her tone neutral. She resumed walking.
Guy followed, equally concerned for him and her. He asked himself why such a young child would be alone in the deep woods. “Are you lost?” he asked.
“You’re lost,” she said, in the same impartial manner. She looked at him, her alert brown eyes reflecting him and the surroundings, and walked over to another tree.
Brown eyes?
Guy felt prickles of unease run through him. There was no question that her eyes had been a striking blue before she’d climbed the tree. He looked back at his Escalade, trying to get his bearings so he could get the hell out of there, but the SUV was no longer in sight. He ran a few steps in the direction he thought he had come from, but stopped, uncomfortable with the idea of letting the girl out of sight. Everything else he had looked away from had disappeared.
He returned to where the girl stood. She now had rich ebony skin, but the same light-blue overall shorts, which he found more disconcerting.
Isn’t it the clothes that are changed, not the child inside them?
She seemed unconcerned, giving him the impression that she wasn’t lost, which meant she was faring better than he was. Again, she scribed something onto the tree.
He stepped beside her, feeling as if he’d fallen into the rabbit hole. “Something’s going on here that I don’t understand.”
“Something’s always going on,” she replied, matter-of-factly.
He couldn’t tell if she was being disparaging or just answering him the way most children her age would, but she was making him feel dense. Frustrated, he asked, “Can’t you give me a direct answer?”
“I can,” she said, pinning him with glimmering green eyes. She skittered up the tree, spent five minutes up above, moving from branch to branch, then climbed down.
He followed her thirty yards to a huge, majestic oak. “What are you doing?”
The girl, now with shiny, waist-length coal-black hair, started writing on the tree with what looked like a simple wooden stick, but as she moved it, the name Joey Wilkerson appeared as if engraved. “Writing,” she said.
“Writing what?”
“Names.”
“Who is Joey Wilkerson?” Guy asked, understanding that his questions would have to be precise if he wanted precise answers.
“A broken heart,” she said, but offered no explanation.
She climbed the tree again and moved from branch to branch. Meanwhile, he inspected a number of trees and saw that most of them had names engraved: Dedrick Aaldenberg, Luis Rosios, Peter Craig, Hirohito Ishushima, Glenn Levesque—and hundreds, maybe thousands more. She descended, now wearing a mane of tight auburn ringlets.
“Are these all broken hearts?”
“Yup,” she said, the simplistic word making her, for the first time, sound her age.
“Why are they all men?” he asked, as he followed her to another tree.
“Boys, too … mostly boys,” she said. “There aren’t enough trees for girls and women; their names are on the leaves.”
Guy thought about this for a while and asked, “Why so many females?”
She looked at him and smiled sadly. “Thirty-one years,” she said.
“How do you know how old I am?”
“That’s how long your eyes have been closed.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know. You will when you have to,” she said, rubbing an almond-shaped eye with the back of her hand.
“Who are you, Confucius?” he blurted with frustration. “What little girl talks in circles like this?”
“Me,” she answered. “You are angry with the wrong person.” She engraved the name Abubakar Kwabena.
“You’ve already written his name,” Guy said, noticing the name was already on the trunk once, and again. “Twice.”
“A heart can break more than once. His has broken three times.” She looked around and held out a pale arm. “Girls, women, they grow another leaf. Some trees have many names; some names have her own branch.”
He followed her gesture and looked back at the pale-skinned girl with Afro hair and Asian eyes. “Speaking of names, what is yours?”
“I was never named,” she said. “What would you have named me?” She seemed so sincere that he seriously considered it.
“Eve,” he said.
“Then, for you, I am Eve.”
“Okay, Eve, why are you writing the names of all the broken hearts?”
“Broken hearts deserve recognition.”
He chuckled and said, “My name should be written here somewhere a dozen or two times.”
“You are here…once,” said Eve.
“Once! How is my name here only once? I’ve been trashed by more women than…” Guy quieted when he noticed the way she looked at him. Her smile was much too knowing for the Samoan child’s face that wore it.
“A wounded pride is not a broken heart.”
Guy’s indignation was defused when Eve took his hand. She led him a long way into the woods, during which her features changed numerous times.
“Why do you keep changing?”
“Is there a specific way a girl is supposed to be?” she asked.
He felt the question was layers and ages thick, and any answer he gave would be insulting to her and condemning to him. He didn’t answer. Eve smiled.
They stopped alongside a heavy oak. Eve pointed to Guy’s name on the trunk and met his eyes. “This is your heartbreak,” she said.
“And which one was that?” he asked, feeling diminished, like a child trying to defend himself.
“When your mother died.”
“I was four!”
“Four-year-old hearts break.”
“I know! I mean…” he sputtered. “That was the last time my heart broke?”
“That was the last time anyone could reach it,” Eve said. “You locked it away.”
He wondered if he was unconscious, or hallucinating from the accident, and if that were so, would he be this coherent or even have these thoughts? “How do you know about my mother?” he asked.
Eve gestured to the surrounding trees with her sun-weathered Cherokee arms. “It’s what I do,” she said.
“But how would you know? You’re what… nine years old?”
“I’m what you need me to be,” said Eve.
“There you go again with your befuddling comments, confusing me even more,” Guy complained. “Why are there no evergreens here…where are we?”
“Here is also what you need it to be,” she said. “To understand.”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Understand what?”
“Your accountability. You have broken hearts.”
“Okay, so whose heart did I break?”
“Many.”
“Many? How? I don’t remember being such a bad guy.”
“Bad is an assessment, as is inconsiderate, neglectful, and unconscious.” Eve said. She pushed a strand of her platinum-blond hair behind her ear. “Some hearts you broke intentionally, some out of spite. Some were unintentional, yet still they were broken.”
“Who?”
Eve moved to a nearby oak and climbed to a low branch. She quickly returned with a single leaf and handed it to him. He read the name inscribed on it.
“Marlene Rinaldi? I didn’t break her heart!”
“Really?” asked Eve.
“Okay, I was sort of a dick, but she was whacked. We dated in college for about a year, but we agreed we were better off going our separate ways, and then she started stalking me.”
“Odd behavior for someone who’d agreed to separate,” Eve said.
“Well, okay… she didn’t exactly agree, but we were better off apart.”
“Absolutely,” Eve granted. “You can’t make someone love you, although she loved you immensely, as you knew.”
“All right, if y
ou’re trying to make me feel guilty, you succeeded. She had serious problems. I heard she killed herself.”
“She did.”
“I wasn’t with her then. At least that wasn’t my doing.”
Eve held his gaze but didn’t answer.
“Now wait a minute! You’re saying that I broke her heart and caused her to commit suicide?”
“I didn’t say anything… you did,” Eve said. She started for another tree. “You broke her heart, but you weren’t the direct cause of her suicide—you weren’t that influential. A far more painful heartbreak caused her to take her own life, although you did play a part in it.”
“How was I responsible for that?” Guy asked, flustered.
“The baby died,” Eve said. Her skin darkened to a warm Brazilian bronze as quickly as if someone had dimmed a light inside of her. It was the first time he had actually witnessed her face change.
“She had a baby?”
“Stillborn. She was in her ninth month,” Eve explained.
“It was mine?” Guy cried.
“It’s simple math,” Eve said. “Marlene was already alone and depressed, the death left her utterly heartbroken.”
“I had no idea,” Guy said, shifting to a new level of surreal. He felt sick to his stomach.
“You threw her letters away unread, ignored all the calls, and deleted the texts. Marlene didn’t want you back as a mate—you’re no prize.” She crinkled her nose in effect. “She was hoping you, the father, would acknowledge his own child so she wouldn’t go through life feeling her father had abandoned her.”
“It was a girl?”
“Yeah, she would have been nine now—if she had lived.” Eve engraved the name Kenneth Mossiman on a tree trunk. She turned to Guy and met his eyes, her stare direct. “Her name would have been Eve.”
He stared back, unable to speak for a long time. “Are you…?”
“As I said, I’m what you need me to be for your situation,” Eve said.
“What do you mean by my situation?” he asked, but Eve simply smiled.
“I didn’t want this to happen,” he said.
“Is that a comfort to you? What kind of monster would you be if you did?” Eve asked. “Most consequences of most heartbreaks are not fully intentional, and many are unknown by those who cause them,” Eve pointed at the name she had just engraved on the tree. “Like him,” she said.
“Kenneth Mossiman?” he read aloud. “Well, I know I didn’t break his heart.”
Eve held his gaze but said nothing.
“Oh, come on!”
“As I said, most broken hearts are not intentional. Those who cause them, directly or indirectly, are unconscious of the pain inflicted.” Eve’s hair transformed to a fiery copper as if to stress her words. “Bethany, Kenneth’s wife, was the driver of the car you hit while you were texting. Her pain was intense, but fortunately it didn’t last long. She had just dropped her three-year-old son off at daycare.”
He reeled and had to use a tree for support.
“Kenneth’s heartbreak will last another forty-seven years. It will fade gradually with time, but it will never leave him,” Eve said.
“Are there more?” Guy asked. Feeling disoriented and very old, he rubbed a hand over his face.
“Yes,” said Eve. “But for heartbreaks, these are the worst.”
How can this be? Guy wondered. He was having a conversation with a child who ethnically fluctuated and could be the nine-year-old spirit of a stillborn child he might or might not have conceived with an erratic ex. It was nonsense, and regardless as to why he was having this episode—be it a head-knock, nightmare, or daydream—it was just a matter of time before he came to. He opened his eyes and looked at a Korean Eve, still with fiery copper hair. She offered him a sweet, understanding smile, but said nothing.
“Alright, I’ll play along,” he said. “We’ve already established that I’m inconsiderate, unconscious, and despicable beyond the norm.”
Eve laughed and said, “Don’t give yourself so much credit. On the grand scale of things, you’re pretty common. Everyone plays a part in heartbreaks somewhere along their lifeline, deliberate or not, and some thrive on purposely causing it. On the bad-guy-good-guy scale, you’re as usual as salt… but you have a decision to make.”
“And what would that be?”
“Your situation,” Eve said. “Haven’t you figured out why you’re here?”
“I’m either dreaming or hallucinating.”
“You’re dead, Guy,” Eve said. Guy gave a harsh, derisive laugh, but Eve silenced him with serious, hazel eyes. “Bethany Mossiman wasn’t the only fatality in your accident. Right now, your body—your shell—is lying forty feet from your vehicle. You are suspended in the In-between. I am your guide.”
He felt a sudden inrush of pain. He fell to the ground, writhing as scorching blades of agony stabbed and twisted throughout his body, in both of his legs, down his right arm, the right side of his chest, and his head—dear God, his head! Lying on his back on the forest floor, the pain became so complete he couldn’t move. Eve knelt down beside him and took hold of his left hand. The pain in his chest intensified and he cried out. He tried to focus on Eve through the hurt, but his vision kept shifting from light to dark and back. Shadows and a stir of voices swelled and ebbed around him. Blunt trauma head… tree. Compound fracture… leg… arm… need backboard.
“Can you hear me?” came a voice, close. “Stay with us, buddy. Talk to me.”
Guy focused on the face of a man… friendly looking, wearing some kind of uniform. The man gradually diminished as Eve returned.
“It’s time for you to choose, Guy. You have to choose between returning to your present life or moving on to your next,” Eve said to him, but her voice was deeper and satiny—soothing and alluring—a woman’s voice.
She still held his hand, and gently moved it onto his chest, over his heart. He could see the flesh of her arm was now black like onyx, as was her face and her hair… everything. She was no longer a child, but a woman, draped in robes made of the darkest shadows. She had become the night—terrifying, yet beautiful… so beautiful.
“In a few minutes, the window will close,” Eve said. “You will default into death and move to your next life, unless you choose to remain in this one.”
An intense stab brought the paramedic back into view as he maneuvered Guy’s shattered arm. “Can you tell me your name?” the paramedic asked.
“But, before you decide,” Eve was saying, fading back, “there needs to be balance in whichever choice you make.”
“Balance…” Guy muttered.
“That’s good! That’s good! Talk to us…” said a hopeful EMT with large, compassionate eyes. She opened a large package of gauze and handed it to an unseen person near Guy’s head.
“If you return to your present life, you must resolve your past,” Eve continued, tugging him back to the In-between. “You will live with a new resolve.” Something moved behind her—something large, dark, with feathers. Eve has wings, Guy realized through his gauzy consciousness. Her hand gently touched his cheek and she coaxed him to meet her eyes, which were black opals, hypnotic pools of oil with fire flashing within.
“You will live to rectify your life by avoiding the thoughtlessness and neglectfulness that dictated your old way of living. You will retain the knowledge that each person you encounter is like a well. If you only glance inside, what you see is only the surface. Below the surface, there may be treasures, danger, horrors, or beauty as you’ve never witnessed before, but you will never truly know that person, or what is below their surface, until you make the effort to explore. In your present life, there will be times of happiness, though much loneliness.”
Guy’s body exploded with agony as the paramedic and EMT carefully maneuvered him onto the backboard.
“If you choose to move into your next life, there must still be balance,” Eve said, her voice somehow weaving through the torment. “While you will
create little heartbreak, you will experience much, though there will also be much love. You cannot experience heartbreak without love.” The black angel leaned forward as if to kiss him. “Now,” she whispered, “decide.”
Guy’s whole existence became agony, and with his last coherent thought, before the blackness swallowed him, he chose.
He opened his eyes to a chaos of motion and light.
IN AGATHA CRAGGINS’S DEFENSE
Gloucester Massachusetts
June 1693
Agatha Craggins was a witch—or so many townsfolk thought—but I wasn’t convinced.
It wasn’t that she didn’t look the part—she did, with her coarse, straggly hair as gray as bog mists, and her nose long, crooked, and arrow sharp with one perfectly grotesque wart just to the right of its tip. From it sprouted five crooked, black hairs, much resembling a spider, be it absent a leg or three.
Short and stout of body, she displayed anonymity of gender beneath her correspondingly formless wraps, which fell to her feet like ethereal drapes. To say Agatha Craggins was unattractive was a gross understatement.
She lived in a cabin along a swamp-lined path bordering one of the inland ponds, deep in the woods on the western part of town. Stagnant, insect-ridden, and festering with lichen, none traveled there without reason, and when reason existed, most formed even stronger reasons to avoid it.
Rather the recluse, Agatha kept mostly to herself, but on Tuesdays would waddle two miles into town to buy provisions, and then waddle the two miles back, for she had neither horse nor mule. Each time, she would lug a wicker basket for her goods, her shoulders draped in a heavy shawl and a dark kerchief on her head, regardless of the weather. As she shuffled, she would mumble, murmur, ramble, and curse, but always under her breath and to herself, paying no heed to the stares, jeers, and jitters of the townsfolk, who would point and laugh. They would gossip and whisper in hushed tones—yet conspicuously—of the “withered old shrew” or the “wizened hag,” who—unbeknownst to all—was only four years into her sixth decade.
A Variable Darkness: 13 Tales Page 2
