The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  Mom’s voice came from the kitchen. “Dammit, Demi. You left the stove on!”

  Demi looked beyond the ants. Dead grass, dead flowers, dead bushes and dead trees. She closed her eyes and relaxed into her private seeing place. Nothing appeared. It was like probing the gap left by a pulled tooth. She knew something had been there once, but it was gone now, as dead as her yard.

  A shadow flicked across her face. She looked up. The owl circled the dead oak, crossing the sun again, its huge wingspan blocking the light for an eye-blink. When it settled on a branch, a dozen leaves rained down. The owl folded its wings to its side and looked at her, locking gazes. Demi felt she could walk up to the owl and touch it. It would let her. There was no hate in the scrutiny, no condemnation. It bobbed its head, dropped off the branch in a long swoop directly toward her. A wing-tip brushed her forehead as it passed, and then it was gone. The caress was a gentle one, not a hello or goodbye, but an acknowledgment. Even if she could never see them the way she had before, the ants would return. The grass would renew, and in her back yard, saplings would grow.

  Mommy’s alive, Demi thought, and she couldn’t understand why she was crying.

  It’s a well-known fact among Talebones readers that Barb and J.C. Hendee are to blame for this fourteen year small press magazine. Fortunately, since they had run a small press magazine themselves (called Figment), they were both around to help (after I decided not to listen and start the magazine anyway). They now write the best-selling Noble Dead books, and Barb has her own vampire series, and upcoming is the Mist Born Witches series. She’s the sweetest person I know, without a doubt. This story came from our first issue. The cover is by Charles S. Fallis. It was our only black and white cover, printed on cardstock.

  THE WINDS OF BRENNAN MARCHER

  BARB HENDEE

  Tears in the rain don’t always fade into uniform oblivion, hiding behind a thousand other wet drops born from clouds or sadness. Especially if you’re dead. We never knew how Brennen came to us, only that he did.

  My brother Joshua placed no stock in heaven or hell or God or sin or redemption. But only fools are arrogant enough to believe that everything in our world is visible. Josh and I grew up with a ghost, so perhaps that put us ahead of the game. Children of poor parents often experience richer childhoods in the halls and shadows of aging fixer-uppers that teem with the tattoos of past lives, especially in autumn and winter when the wind blows. Mrs. McPherson sat by the window in my bedroom each night looking out over our garden. I don’t think she ever saw me, but I often lay wrapped in my tattered comforter, gazing at her smooth pale face, and wondered what she thought about. Was she happy? Did she miss life? Why did she stare so at the garden? Josh tried to talk to her sometimes, but she never answered, and later we moved away. Our new home housed no ghosts, only dry rot. I was young then, and young minds are often more accepting.

  After that, only the living passed through our doors until I was twenty-eight and Josh was thirty-two. We lived apart in our early twenties, each been married once and divorced, then the brakes on a fork lift failed and crushed his legs while he was working part-time down on the loading docks. When two orthopedic surgeons said he’d never walk again, he used the insurance money to buy a house in Portland, Oregon, and I moved in to help care for him. Not that it was any sacrifice. Josh had always been a good friend. He’d have done the same for me.

  “Sherrie,” he called from the living room. “Channel twelve is showing Captain Blood in a few minutes. If you haul some wood in, I’ll build a fire.”

  “Yeah, hang on. Dinner’s almost ready.”

  He was careful about the television set. Too many of the invalids he’d come to know spent their days staring at one mindless program after another. So we went through the TV Guide every Sunday with a highlighter marking movies or sports events or news broadcasts that were being aired during our evening time together. Otherwise, the set stayed off.

  I put a lid on the stew and pulled the bread out of the oven to cool slightly. “Be right back,” I called, grabbing his old jean jacket.

  The night wind felt almost refreshing as my feet crunched down the frozen path to our back yard. Josh could do amazing things from a wheelchair, and the previous summer we had managed to construct a sort of makeshift woodshed (with a little help from a few friends). Burning the stove for heat was cheaper than electricity.

  I’ve always liked darkness. I like to stand outside and see warm, yellow windows glowing with their welcome light. Odd, really, because that’s what made me stop that night — a light in the woodshed. It had to be clicked on from the inside, and nobody ever went inside but me.

  “Is someone there?”

  No one answered for a moment, and then I heard crying. Not a loud, wailing sound, but muffled, choking sobs. Should I go get Josh? The thought occurred, but never became reality. I stepped forward and opened the door, expecting to see a vagabond or perhaps a lost child.

  Crouched by a stack of wood, he stood out clearly wearing khaki green pants, a white t-shirt, and two silver tags hanging around his neck. He looked about twenty-one and sported a nearly shaved head. Tears fell in shaky drops off his face but never hit the ground. He jumped when I walked in and whirled around with his back to the wall.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Something’s coming,” he whispered. “Something blue.”

  And then he faded until only the wall was left.

  There’s a ghost out in the woodshed,” I said to Josh after he’d started thefire, turned on Captain Blood, and taken a bite of stew.

  “What?”

  “I think he’s a soldier. He’s wearing dog tags and his head’s been shaved.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No, but . . . .”

  “But what?”

  “He was crying.”

  “Then he’ll come back.”

  “Maybe. He wasn’t sad like Mrs. McPherson. He looked scared.”

  Should I have told Josh about him speaking to me? It’s not that he wouldn’t have believed me. I just didn’t want to spook him. At least not yet. Living people see dead ones all the time, but the two sides speaking to each other is something else entirely.

  I ate my stew without tasting it and watched the film with only mild annoyance after noticing it was colorized.

  No sound or light or sobbing woke me later. I only remember opening my eyes to see his softly glowing form crouched at the foot of my bed, looking at my stereo.

  I remained silent until his gaze lifted to me. He seemed calmer now, almost composed.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what he meant and shook my head.

  “This silver thing with all the lights,” he said. “Is it a radio?”

  “The stereo? It has a radio.”

  “Where’s the mouthpiece?”

  “There isn’t one. I just use it to play tapes.”

  He stared at me, dim illumination shining from his eyes. “Is this America?”

  “Yes, Portland, Oregon.”

  “What year?”

  “1994.”

  He winced and turned away. “Something’s coming. Something blue.”

  Then the room was empty except for me. I didn’t sleep anymore.

  Our friends, Mark and Dogger, came over the next night to play poker.

  After Josh’s initial accident, they hung around the hospital out of guilt. Both of them seemed to think that Josh’s life was basically over since he couldn’t play football and chase a Frisbee around over a six-pack on the weekends anymore. But their attitude changed once Josh was wheeling himself around the Safeway store, building woodsheds, and shoveling snow off the front walk. It wasn’t that he resigned himself to some tragic situation or “accepted” his new lot in the world. I don’t think he ever gave it much thought. Driving his truck and reaching the higher kitchen cupboard had suddenly become a problem, but other than that he didn’t see things as any different. Since he did
n’t express the least amount of sympathy for himself, no one else did either. He was a lot of fun before losing the use of his legs. He was a lot of fun afterwards. That’s all.

  “How many cards?” he asked Dogger.

  “Four.”

  “Four? Poor guy.”

  “Just deal.”

  I was still wrestling with how much of last night should be shared. Not with the others, of course, but the vision of that wan, transparent image as he visually dissected my stereo seemed an unfair item to keep from Josh.

  Who was this phantasm?

  How could he speak to me?

  How could he hear me?

  “How many cards?”

  “What?” I looked up into Josh’s broad face.

  “I asked how many cards you wanted,” he said. “You’ve either got a killer hand or a pretty sad one. Your eyes look fifty miles away.”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m not feeling very well. Maybe I’m just tired. Do you guys care if I call it a night?”

  They grumbled a little because I’d only lost six dollars so far and Mark was hoping to clean me out, but Josh nodded his head toward the hallway.

  “Are you getting sick?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t been sleeping.”

  Our hall was covered in cream wallpaper with tiny faded rosebuds—warm and old-fashioned. I walked down our worn carpet among the rosebuds toward my bedroom.

  Then I heard the sobbing. Not so lost anymore. Controlled. Terrified.

  The attic.

  Without thinking, I took two steps back and reached for the ladder. No one had been up there for nearly a year, so dust filled my mouth, choking me slightly as I pushed up the wooden, hatch-style door on the ceiling.

  It was dark, but I could see his pale outline, sitting by an aged cedar trunk, trying desperately to open it, but his fingers kept passing through the latch. I climbed all the way in and closed the entrance behind me.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned. “Help me.”

  Josh and I had never bothered to clean the dusty, attic relics of the previous owners away. Partly because we had no use for the extra room and partly because we still remembered the peaceful chills of our childhood in the old Manhattan house with Mrs. McPherson. All around me lay tattered shawls, imitation Tiffany lamps, an over stuffed velvet chair in varying shades of dark green, broken pottery jars, ceramic horses with their ears chipped off, and several mismatched cedar chests.

  “What’s inside?” I asked, after pulling the beaded light cord, kneeling down beside him and looking at the rusted latch.

  “We have to find it. Just start looking.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  My presence seemed to calm him a bit and his visage stopped wracking quite so harshly. But what did he want? Perhaps he was confused. I opened the chest. Inside lay ancient, moth-eaten clothes from the thirties or maybe forties. I couldn’t tell.

  “Do you see it?” I asked.

  “Start digging.”

  “For what?”

  “Anything that looks like it could be mine.”

  That lost me. “How could I possibly know which things might be yours?”

  “Just do it!”

  Anger replaced his expression of fear, and he tried lifting the top layer of clothes himself. His hands disappeared into a cotton skirt. I leaned over and began pulling items out for him to see. He watched carefully until the last hole-ridden pair of hand-knitted socks lay on the floor next to us.

  “Nothing,” he whispered, staring at the pile. “I thought for sure . . .”

  He trailed off, and I took in the sight of his tense young face, blue eyes, and short — almost nonexistent — covering of reddish-blond hair.

  “Who are you?” I asked finally.

  “Who . . . ?” He moved to a crouched, but more relaxed position. “Brennen Marcher, Private, third class.” His gaze suddenly lifted and for the first time, he looked straight at me. “Something’s coming. Something blue.”

  Then I was alone.

  Josh, are you awake?” I called softly from his bedroom door about midnight.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong?”

  He often had trouble sleeping. I took him to a local doctor once who gave my brother this sterling advice, “Just stop worrying about everything a few minutes before you go to bed. Turn your mind off and relax.” Words of wisdom. All I could think at the time was, “You went to school eight years to learn that?”

  Josh clicked on the nightstand light by his bed.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

  “Well, yeah . . . can I talk to you?”

  He sat up and moved backward, leaning against his headboard. I smiled when the sheet fell to his waist and I noticed he was wearing a threadbare t-shirt our dad bought him years ago that said in big block letters, QUESTION AUTHORITY.

  I moved in and sat on the bed. “That ghost is back.”

  “So? I told you he’d be back.”

  “He’s speaking to me.”

  Josh’s brows knitted. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure? Yes, I’m sure. He made me go through an old trunk in the attic looking for . . . for something. He’s afraid.”

  For a moment I watched Josh’s expression change, nothing overt, just a flicker. “Sherrie, what was he looking for?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t even belong here. He seems pretty confused. He asked me what year it was.”

  Josh turned quickly and grabbed his bathrobe. Then, using his arms, he propelled himself down the mattress toward his wheel chair. “You saw him in the woodshed and the attic?”

  “And my room.”

  He stopped. “Your room? Maybe he can go anywhere he wants. Did he give you his name?”

  “Um, yes, Marcher. Brennen Marcher. He said he’s a private or something.”

  The items in this bedroom were always far more chaotic than the ones in mine. Josh liked photos and knick knacks and paperback books strewn all over the place to remind him of his history. He stopped pushing himself down and glanced around, toward the door, then the closet, then the faded braid rug by his nightstand.

  “Brennen, can you hear me?” he said.

  I held my breath in surprise. That seemed too easy. But then a blur of white caught the corner of my vision, and gradually a translucent figure materialized by the cluttered mahogany desk. He seemed disoriented for a moment. His gaze shifted first to me, then to Josh. At the sight of Josh, his face shifted into profound relief.

  “Oh, thank . . . .” He trailed off and turned to me. “You found help. Good girl.”

  Good girl? What did that mean?

  “We have to hurry,” Brennen rushed on. “Do you have any weapons? Guns? A decent hunting knife? Anything?”

  These last questions were aimed at Josh, who sat staring in fascination. “There’s a 20 gauge shotgun in the kitchen. Why?”

  “Go and get it. We don’t have much time. He’s coming. I can feel him.” Then Brennen saw the wheelchair and he froze. “Whose is that?”

  Josh smiled almost sadly. “Mine.”

  “You’re a cripple?” The words came out with that panicked choking sound I’d heard him make so often. “Then we’re lost.”

  I suddenly felt frustrated, and Brennen was beginning to frighten me. We were all speaking, but no one seemed to be saying anything. “What’s wrong?” I blurted out. “What’s coming?”

  “Schutzstaffel. Waffen SS.”

  No one said anything. I still didn’t get it, but Josh moved to the edge of his bed and lifted himself into the wheelchair. “You do know you’re dead, don’t you?” he asked Brennen.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “January 6, 1943. Just before 02 hundred hours.”

  Fifty-one years ago, to the day. I looked at my watch. 1:05 a.m. January 6th. Brennen’s agitation made a little more sense now, although I still didn’t understand what
he was so afraid of. He’d either died or been killed almost exactly fifty years ago. Josh and I both sat quietly, somehow knowing he would go on.

  “We were running supplies in Libya.” His low voice whispered now. “It was hot, so hot you couldn’t breathe, then freezing cold at night. My dad always told me deserts were cold at night. General Montgomery commanded entire divisions down there, Brits, Aussies, a small bunch from New Zealand, some Indians and South Africans, even a few Americans like me. All good fighters. They had Rommel on the run for Tunisia. He knew it. They knew it. Everybody knew it.”

  The hatred in Brennen’s voice when he mentioned Rommel’s name surprised me. Wasn’t Rommel some sort of WWII hero, even to the Allies? Mark and Dogger used to stay up until three in the morning just to watch Desert Fox movies on channel thirteen.

  “It had turned into a supply war. You can’t imagine what the land looks like. There’s nothing. No food. No water. No cover. The British Navy got as much into port as they could. Then it was up to the fliers and ground convoys to try and run it in. Our convoy was a gold mine: food, water, trucks, tanks — Crusaders and a couple of the new Churchills — rifles, heavy artillery . . . even three 17 Pounder antitank guns.” His voice drifted. “Those Germans couldn’t have used that stuff. Not then. Rommel wasn’t even retreating anymore. He was flat-out running down the coast.”

  “What happened?” Josh broke in.

  “I fell asleep.” The face of Brennen was somehow crystalline clear and hazy at the same time. “We’d been pushing hard for a week. Montgomery needed our convoy to keep up the chase. We were trying to intercept him nine hundred miles inside the eastern Libyan boarder. We kept going that night until 22 hundred hours, and I was one of the guys who pulled first watch. I was exhausted. I had dirt in my eyes and my mouth, and I just fell asleep over my rifle.”