I Remember You

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Dolan turned his body toward her.

  — Got something for me?

  — Can it be anything?

  — Sky’s the limit. Time, space. Whatever’s unknown.

  — You see? You do want to make people afraid.

  — Maybe. Sometimes. I want to make people stop. I want them to think.

  — What about a ghost?

  — A ghost story, sure. But there’s got to be more to it than that. The ghost has to connect, has to link up to a present situation.

  — A ghost story, for the television.

  He turned back to the wheel, both feet flat down, and looked out his own window for a moment before looking back at her. What light there was caught the light of her hair, the line of her cheekbone, her jaw. He set his hand back on the ignition but didn’t turn the key.

  — You’re laughing. That’s fine. That’s alright. I’ll take my lick. The stories are mine, and I’ll write them the way I want them.

  — I’m not laughing at you.

  — The idea has promise.

  She lifted her face.

  — You want me to tell you a ghost story?

  — Only if it’s a good one.

  Heike got out of the car and shut the door, walking forward to the edge of the gully. Her feet were still bare, but the gravel of the road gave way here to softer stuff, the ground sandy and mixed with pine needles and fallen leaves. The little house stood somewhere below them, maybe two hundred feet down, and behind it, the stream disappeared and opened out into the pond. The raft, too, would be there, although she could not see any of it in the darkness. There was a softer thud, Dolan’s own door closing.

  — I keep thinking someone must live here, Heike said. But there’s never anyone in the house when I go looking.

  She stepped back and against him, and he laid a hand high up on her back, between her shoulder blades. Almost brotherly, she thought. They stood looking down into the gully until her eyes adjusted and she was sure for a moment that she could make out every detail, the shingles overlapping on the roof. The light changed again, and the shingles turned to aspen leaves, shimmering like dark coins. She was aware that Dolan was watching her.

  — You must have been terrified, he said. Walking so far all alone. In the war, I mean.

  He let his hand slip down her arm until just their fingertips were touching.

  — I wasn’t alone. He jarred a little at that, and Heike leaned in toward him, a reassurance. I had my little sister with me, she said. Lena.

  — From the photograph?

  — You see why I couldn’t leave it behind. I pulled her by the hand to the bakery that day. While we escaped. She rode on my back.

  She’d promised her mother. If she had to leave, she’d wanted to save Lena as well.

  — But I didn’t save her.

  — She starved, Dolan said.

  — No. No, we were hungry, but she was okay. I kept her quiet when the soldiers came. I put one hand over her mouth, and another over her eyes.

  They’d moved cautiously, to avoid the fighting and because Lena was so small. It was March and the nights were still cold.

  — We were almost in the Allgäu, and I was afraid all the time that we would accidentally knock into the Austrian border. So I made sure we kept going up, up, to avoid this. We were high up in the hills, and far below we could see the lake.

  She meant the Bodensee, Lake Konstanz, and Switzerland to the other side of it. Heike aimed in this direction, keeping the lake always in sight. They had been walking for almost two months when Lena disappeared.

  — I looked for seven days for Lena in the mountains, and then for her body, frozen or fallen off the trail, she said. But I never found her. I never saw her again.

  A few weeks later Heike crossed Lake Konstanz in the night. There is an upper arm of that lake that is narrow enough to row across, if you can steal a boat. Even for a girl. In Switzerland she found the convent in a valley and collapsed.

  Dolan said nothing for a moment. There was a susurration from somewhere down below, hidden away.

  — Do you think the house is whispering to us? Heike said.

  But it was only leaves. The aspens rustling papery in the breeze off the pond. She turned and let him lead her back to the car. He opened the driver’s side door. Heike slid in first and linked her hands in her lap.

  — You must find me entirely bizarre, she said.

  — No. He got into the car but didn’t pull the door shut. Not yet. He was half-turned toward her, one arm along the seatback, as though he might look over his shoulder to throw the car into reverse. His hand resting nearby but not quite touching her; she imagined she could feel the heat from his fingers. There, just at her neck, her collarbone.

  — I have a son, she said. You remember I told you that.

  — It’s no way to start a romance.

  — I could say, Don’t start the car, or, Start the car and let’s drive on. We’ll keep driving, into the morning, we’ll go right to New York and eat pastries for breakfast, out of a paper bag. I won’t even put on my shoes.

  — Is that all you want? Dolan said.

  — But I have a son, she said. So I have to go back.

  They were parked close enough to the gully that she could see where the tree roots came out of the earth and the land dipped down. The green roof of the house was down there, and the pond in its silence. Something shifted beneath her, the ground dropping out. Daniel’s body, curling off the raft, sure as a heavy stone. She didn’t even have to shut her eyes to see them: Dani, his skinny chest in the sun, and the girl stepping off the raft and skipping across the pond. Her feet sinking only an inch into the water, as though there were something there, under the surface, carrying her forward.

  Standing on the shore in the storm as Heike paddled away, her hair wet and matted, her stare fixed, unfaltering.

  A quick disequilibrium, the world flipping backwards. She turned to Dolan, her hand catching his shirt front as though to right herself. Something solid.

  — You remember when I met you, in the greenhouse?

  — I was drunk, Dolan said. You told me so.

  — You held onto me, she said. You put your hand around my back, where my skin was bare. Just here. She arched forward a little and curved one arm behind her, resting the hand on the small of her back. Can you do that again, she said.

  * * *

  When they drove back out to the road, the sky had gone lavender and bright all around them, and they turned down through Union Springs with the sun burning through the mist. In the village there was a bundle of newspapers sitting on the curb outside the bakery. Heike leaned forward and switched on the radio. It was almost too late for deer, but they saw one, just off in the woods, near the narrow road down to the house. The car rolled by, the gravel crunching and Fats Domino laid down over top of that, and the deer didn’t run but stopped chewing and froze, waiting them out. It was a doe, or else young; Heike didn’t know.

  — Here, she said. Let me out just here.

  She didn’t want his car in the driveway, the added problems that would come with that. As she opened the door, a glint of light caught in the mirror and she thought of how she’d once imagined the house on fire, driving home with Eric, that instant fear. Daniel locked inside. It had been starlight then.

  She watched the Eldorado disappear before turning to walk, her shoes dangling from one hand, down the drive. It was the moment before true sunrise, oddly quiet, without the birdsong usual for that hour. There were three pearl buttons at the side of her waist, and she’d missed one in the woods, straightening herself up. She fingered it now.

  The light flashed again.

  At the side of the house, she saw two cars: Eric’s hardtop green Buick and a black-and-white state patrol car with a single red emergency light mounted in the centre of the roof. The light spun around and around slowly; the flash Heike had caught in the mirror.

  — Daniel, she said.

  The front door swun
g open, and Eric came out onto the porch. The cop followed just behind him in his uniform and hat. He was grey-haired but civil-looking, neither fat nor thin, a man who’d spent years working with his hands but now mainly sat behind the wheel of a car.

  — Aha! This your wife? the cop said. Ma’am? Are you alright?

  Heike flew up onto the porch.

  — Calm down, ma’am. Slow down. Your husband’s got you all looked after. I’m only asking if you’re alright.

  — Dani! Where is Daniel? Heike looked from the cop to Eric and back again. Where is my son?

  — I can take it from here. Eric put a hand on the door as if to hold it shut, but then flicked it open for her after all. He was talking not to Heike, but to the police officer.

  Heike heard the screen door close gently behind her. The air in the house was still. Back in Eric’s office, the phonograph was playing, and from where she stood in the hall Heike recognized the strange echo of the same Fats Domino record she’d just heard in the car. There was a shift, a moment of dizziness, and she caught herself against the kitchen door frame.

  The girl, Rita, was in there, wiping down the table with a wet cloth. Seeing Heike, she straightened up and held her hands, with the cloth in them, behind her back.

  — Where is he, Rita?

  The table was wet where she’d been cleaning it; not just streaky, but puddled, as though she’d pulled the cloth from the dishwater and forgotten to wring it out. Rita stood very still.

  — I don’t know, ma’am.

  — What do you mean you don’t know? How can you say I don’t know?

  Heike ran to the back of the house, the music growing louder and then waning as she passed Eric’s office, the door standing open. She didn’t call for Daniel as she had other times. Her feet sank into the soft carpet in the white room. The French doors to the back porch also stood open, a coffee pot on the table outside. She ran her fingers along the wall to steady herself and pushed back out of the room and up the stairs, the rooms clean and bare, her bed made tightly, the coverlet pressed and laid flat and tucked neatly around the pillows. Heike did not call his name, but she whispered it: Daniel.

  Downstairs, the screen door hinge creaked as it opened and shut. A car engine started up, and there was the sound of tires against the gravel drive, the policeman taking his leave.

  — Dani!

  She yelled it out.

  The window was open in the bedroom, and the sheers puffed out and sucked back against it, a breath taken and released. The figurine, the little Dresden girl, stood upright on the vanity, her reflection repeating in the three-way mirror. Heike stood in the doorway. Her head was cloudy but did not hurt anymore. There was a noise she couldn’t get rid of, a rushing sound that started and ended and started again. She went halfway down the stairs. The record had ended, back in Eric’s office. The static sound just the needle hitting the centre label and bumping back and hitting centre again. She saw that Eric was at the bottom of the steps, looking up. Waiting for her. Heike wrapped her hand around the banister and squeezed.

  — Eric. She said the name in a soft way. Eric, please. Where is he?

  He held up a hand, two fingers beckoning to her. She did not know if they were alone, if the girl was still in the kitchen. She went down another three steps and stopped again and let her eyes drift up and down the lower hall, as though Daniel might suddenly appear, dirty from playing outside, his bare feet making no sound on the carpet.

  — Eric, she said.

  He made a movement with his head, a shake, almost imperceptible. A tight “No.”

  — Now look what you’ve done, he said.

  WAIT UNTIL DARK

  There are elements of time and space more infinite than we can

  know. Beyond the boundaries of our waking hours lies another

  place, limited only by the roiling expanse of the subconscious

  mind. Somewhere between intuition and imagination, between

  the darkness of dread and the bright scythe of salvation,

  the true nature of a man’s fear is made manifest:

  Here, in the shadowland we call the Mind’s Eye.

  — Leo Dolan’s opening narration, season 1,

  The Mind’s Eye (1959–1963)

  I went down fighting, as most television writers do,

  thinking, in a strange, oblique, philosophical way

  that better say something than nothing.

  — Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone

  The Bone Flute

  There once was a King who so loved to hunt that it was all he thought about morning, noon, and night. One day he was hunting in a thick wood when he caught sight of a Hind the likes and size of which he had never before seen, and he pursued the deer so eagerly that none of his men were able to keep up to him. When evening fell, the King stopped and stood stock-still in the forest, looking around him, and he realized he had lost his way. The Hind appeared then from between the trees, and as the King raised his bow and took aim, she fell on her knees and supplicated him to spare her. “I have been enchanted by a terrible witch,” the Hind said. “And if you kill me, you will never find your way out of this forest again. But if you spare my life, I will show you the way out of the woods and your own life will be saved.”

  It was growing cold and dark, and although the King wanted nothing better than to mount the Hind’s graceful head upon his wall at home, he agreed to this condition. Secretly, though, he thought: Ho-ho! I will let her show me the way out of the forest, and as soon as I see the edge of the trees I will raise my bow and shoot her.

  The Hind led the King through the darkest part of the forest until at last he was able to see a glimmer of light beyond the trees. When he was sure that the edge of the wood was in sight, he drew his bow and again took aim, but as he did so, the trees closed in around him and the Hind turned into a witch herself, and the King could see that he had been caught in his treachery. He began to beg for mercy, but his cries fell upon deaf ears until at last the witch said she would let him go on one condition only: that he trade places with his only child, a little girl of such pure heart and pale beauty that her parents had named her Gretchen, which means “little pearl.” No sooner had the King agreed than he found himself back in his own castle, but all that greeted him was the weeping and wailing of his wife and her ladies-in-waiting, for his daughter was indeed lost and gone.

  For her part, Gretchen grew up wandering the forest and cooking and cleaning for the witch. One day, the witch trapped a Golden Bird with a broken wing, and when she brought it home, Gretchen could see that the witch meant to eat it. In one corner of the little house stood a trunk that was so white it might have been carved out of bone, with many books of witchcraft piled upon it. When the witch went out into the forest, Gretchen urged the Golden Bird to hide in the white trunk.

  But, alas! The witch overheard this plan and dragged Gretchen, with the Bird in her arms, out to the chopping block, where she raised her axe and chopped off the Bird’s head in one swift motion. Gretchen still held on to the Bird tightly, and when the axe came down, it took not only the Bird’s golden head, but Gretchen’s finger as well. The witch took up the Bird’s body and went off to the house to roast the thing over the fire, but the head lay on the ground next to poor Gretchen’s finger, and it spoke to her:

  “I am all but gone now from this world. But take your finger where it lies on the ground and make from the bone a little flute, and you shall always hear my voice. Be careful to hide the flute well, for I shall guide your escape from the witch, and if she finds out, you will never get away.”

  With that, the Bird shut its eyes, never to open them again. Gretchen dried and peeled the flesh from her own finger, and carved from the bone a little flute. This took many days.

  As soon as she put the flute to her lips, she heard the Bird’s voice:

  “Quickly, now! Hide me away, and when the witch falls asleep tonight, I will help you to escape.” Gretchen did as she was told, a
nd hid the bone flute away in the white trunk.

  Then Gretchen started the fire and made a heavy stew, rich with red wine, and that night the witch ate heartily and fell asleep in her chair. When she was sure the witch was deep in her slumber, Gretchen opened the trunk and put the flute to her lips.

  “Do not forsake me and I will never forsake you,” sang the bone flute as it led her out of the house, but they had gone no more than one hundred feet when they heard the witch coming after them.

  “Surely she has seen my footprints!” Gretchen said. She hurried back to the house and hid the flute once again in the white trunk.

  The next night, Gretchen started the fire again and made another rich stew, and once again the witch’s eyes grew heavy as soon as she had eaten. No sooner was she fast asleep than Gretchen opened up the white trunk and the bone flute jumped into her hands.

  “Do not forsake me and I will never forsake you,” it sang. “This time you must put your boots on backwards, so that the witch sees only a set of footprints leading to the house and not away from it.” But they had gone no more than two hundred feet when Gretchen stumbled and the bone flute fell out of her hands, and they once again heard the witch coming behind them.

  “Surely this time she has heard us fall to the ground,” Gretchen said, and she scurried back to the house so as not to be caught. Once again, she hid the flute in the white trunk.

  On the third night, Gretchen lit the fire and cooked a really wonderful meal, and for a third time the witch ate heartily and began to doze before she had even left the table. As soon as she was truly asleep, Gretchen opened the white trunk and the bone flute jumped out.

  “Do not forsake me and I will never forsake you,” sang the flute. “This time you must swallow me whole.” So Gretchen swallowed the flute, which was, of course, really her own finger, and tiptoed out of the house and began to run to the edge of the forest. When she was able to see the glimmer of sunrise beyond the trees, she stopped to cough the flute up, but when she opened her mouth, the flute sang, “Run faster! The witch is close behind us!”