Wild Fell

by Wild Fell- A Ghost Story (retail) (epub)

  It was a lighthearted game of imagination and mental magic of the most innocent and childlike sort. At least until Amanda appeared a year later, when Terry Dodds stole my new red bike and had the accident.

  I had learned to ride a bike the previous year on a battered and rust-veined green Roadmaster cruiser of my father’s that had been stored in my grandparents’ garage at the time of my grandmother’s death. In addition to its sentimental value, my father thought it was the perfect bike to teach me to ride. Learning to ride a bike is usually a painful process for any child, but my sense of balance was remarkably bad. In the beginning, my father held the bike as I pedalled, keeping me steady, running beside me as I wobbled along the sidewalks of our neighbourhood.

  The first time he let go of the seat, I crashed badly, skinning both knees. I burst into tears. The pain from my kneecaps was like fire. They were bloody and there were tiny bits of dirt and concrete dust in them. My father held me and let me cry against his shirt. Then, gently, he insisted I get back up on the bike.

  “It’s important, Jamie. You need to get back up now. I’ll clean off your cuts and put some Bactine on them when we get home, but right now you need to climb back up and pedal.”

  I sniffled. “Why? I don’t want to. It hurts, Daddy. My knees sting. Look,” I added with dramatic flourish. “They’re bleeding.”

  “Because you need to show the bike that it didn’t win, Jamie. That’s why.” His face was grave, that deeply serious expression he always had when he was imparting something vitally important. He rubbed the bridge of his nose where the horn-rimmed glasses he wore always left a red mark. “If we go home now, it will have beaten you. You need to get back up on the seat. You don’t need to go far, but you need to make sure that the last thing you remember about today isn’t that you fell down, it’s that you got back up again. That’s what we do when bad things happen to us.”

  I stuck out my bottom lip. “I don’t want to.”

  Without replying, he lifted me up and put me solidly back on the seat and told me to pedal. Which, of course I did, hating it, but with him walking slowly behind me, holding onto the seat with one hand so I didn’t fall, and steadying me with the other. The sidewalk ahead swam in my vision like I was underwater, but as the tears dried, the path in front of me cleared as sure as the pressure of my father’s hand on the small of my back. This became our routine over that week, every evening after dinner. In short order, I graduated to him running behind me holding lightly onto the end of the seat.

  Every night, I told Mirror Pal about my progress. Mirror Pal confessed that he wasn’t sure I would ever learn to ride a bike, and agreed with me that it seemed like a stupid skill to need to master. He also agreed with me, though, that attaining this skill was necessary so I could ride with Hank anytime I wanted, even if the process would probably kill me.

  Then, one day, I had pedalled down the half-length of our street before I realized that he was no longer holding on at all. I looked backwards without falling over and saw that my father was clapping, and doing a little dance because that barrier was down, never to rise again, and the bike hadn’t won.

  My parents presented me with a brand new Schwinn for my eighth birthday. It was gleaming ruby red and chrome silver. It had a metallic gold banana seat and hi-rise bars, just like the ones the big kids rode as they swept by the front of our house on their way to school like alien gods of coolness from some other planet.

  And now, I had one. I was going to be cool, too, just like the big kids. My joy knew no bounds.

  Hank (who had learned to ride a bike at five) and I spent the next week exploring the length and breadth of our neighbourhood, which looked somehow completely different from this new vantage point of two-wheeler independence. We barrelled down the greenbelt hills and along the wooded paths by the creek. I’d been forbidden to cross Dearborn Road because of the traffic, so Hank showed me a way to approach the greenbelt from the rear, via the safe streets I was allowed on. We were the same age, but sometimes it was like Hank was older. She was already more like a boy than I could ever imagine being. If that made me the girl in our friendship, it wouldn’t have bothered either of us—if we’d thought of it that way, which we never did.

  Two weeks after my birthday, Hank and I decided to have an adventure.

  We rode our bikes as far as we could before stopping. We may have gone as far as three or four miles out of the neighbourhood but it’s hard to tell. It certainly seemed like that, or even farther. I had a very clear sense of being way outside the bounds of what my parents would have thought of as an acceptable distance at that age. Still, it was exhilarating. We’d packed a lunch we’d made ourselves, in secret: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cheese, cookies, and some candy. No fruits or vegetables—and not by accident, either. It was our adventure and it was, in every sense, outside the bounds of adult authority.

  We stopped for lunch in a field and ate under the branches of an ancient oak tree. In the near distance, we saw the edge of one of the new subdivisions that were cropping up all over the city. They were different in every way from our neighbourhood, which was old and established. I imagined that the people living there must be just as different.

  I was lying on the ground with my eyes closed, enjoying the sun on my face, well satiated after stuffing our faces with sandwiches and the cookies, when Hank said, “Look, here come some big kids. They don’t look like nice big kids, either.”

  Three older boys, larger by far than Hank and me, were making their way across the field toward us. Rather than walk, they lumbered. They reminded me of a pack of cartoon jackals.

  “Hey kid, nice bike,” the largest one said. “It’s too big for you. I want it. Give it to me.”

  “You can’t have it, it’s mine. I got it for my birthday. My mom and dad bought it for me.” This was greeted with coarse guffaws from the three boys. Again I thought of cartoon predators.

  The one who addressed me first—the one I would later learn was Terry Dodds—mimicked me. “‘You can’t have it, I got it for my birthday!’ Waaah, waaah, waaah, baby. What are you going to do if I just . . . take it?” He reached down and picked up my Schwinn as though it were a plastic model. “Huh? How ya gonna stop me?”

  Hank shouted, “Leave him alone! It’s his bike! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, you . . . you asshole?” There was a moment of stunned silence at the use of this word by an eight-year-old girl, but they laughed again.

  Terry jeered at Hank. “Are you a boy or a girl? You look like a boy. If you’re a boy, let’s fight. If you’re a girl, then your pal is even more of a sissy for letting a girl fight for him.” He turned back to me. “Huh, kid? Are you a sissy? You gonna let this little girl do all your fighting for you, or are you going to come and be a man and take this bike away from me? Because otherwise, I’m gonna take it. And if it’s too small for me, I’m gonna give it to my kid brother. He needs a bike. That okay with you, kid?” he taunted me. “Huh?” Terry grinned at his friends. “I guess it’s all right with him. He didn’t say I couldn’t, did he?”

  “Nope,” they chorused. “He didn’t say you couldn’t.”

  “Yes I did! I did say you couldn’t. It’s my bike!”

  “Too late,” Terry taunted. He climbed on the bike, which was ridiculously small for him—and which made him look even more like some sort of monster astride it—then did a quick, jerky circle on it. “Yep, this’ll be okay. See you later, kid. Come on guys, let’s get out of here.”

  Hank, who had been standing next to me, fists flexed at her side, abruptly jumped on Terry’s back and began to punch him. She even managed to land a few major blows, blows that made him cry out in pain. He shoved her to the ground. She jumped up and went for him again, shouting a strangled war cry that she had probably picked up from a Saturday afternoon adventure film on television. He shoved her down on the ground again, and this time he put his finger in Hank’s face and wagge
d it.

  “Stay down, you little bitch,” he said. “If you come at me again, I’m going to put you and your little buddy in the hospital. Got it?”

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” she said again, but both of us heard the note of defeat in her voice under the shrillness, as did Terry. “He’s just a little kid. Give him back his bike!”

  “He doesn’t have a bike,” Terry said. “I have a bike. It’s my bike now. Come on, guys, let’s get home and give this bike to my brother.” And with that, he pedalled off across the field toward the new subdivision, with his two friends half-walking, half-running to keep up with him.

  I burst into tears. I not only felt the loss of my bike, but I felt the guilt of disappointing my father after all those hours of practice and all his patience. The bike had been a gift of love, the consummation of those painful hours of skin scraped against asphalt, banged-up limbs, and blood, and my father’s loving attention to helping me learn.

  Hank hugged me. “Come on, get on the back. I’ll double-ride you home,” she said. “Let’s go tell your parents.”

  I tasted the snot running down my upper lip, mixing with the tears. “They’re going to be so mad. . . . I’m not supposed to be this far from home.”

  “Don’t cry, Jamie,” Hank said. “Let’s get home and tell your parents. “We’ll get your bike back, I promise. I don’t know how, but we will.”

  When we eventually made it home as dusk descended—a rickety, long, difficult ride with me on the back and Hank pumping heroically over the rutted sidewalks and stopping at crosswalks so both of us could dismount and walk safely across the street—my parents were furious. My mother in particular was enraged that we’d ventured so far out of Buena Vista, our neighbourhood, and managed to lose an expensive new bike in the process.

  “It wasn’t a toy, Jamie.” After everything that had happened that afternoon, her voice seemed unbearably harsh in my ears. I had seen my mother angry before, but this seemed to be a level of developing anger that was new and a bit frightening. “It was a very expensive bicycle and now it’s gone. You lost it. You should have been more responsible instead of being such a damn dreamer all the time. I’m very, very disappointed in you.” My mother had wanted my father to spank me, but he’d refused.

  “He didn’t lose it, Alice. It’s not lost. It was stolen. Another kid stole Jamie’s bike.”

  “If he’d stayed in our neighbourhood,” my mother said, “this would never have happened. This is his fault and I want him to take responsibility for it. If you won’t spank him, I will.”

  My father held up his hand. He, too, was furious, but his anger was directed differently: he seemed mostly angry that an older kid had bullied me into giving up my new bike. “Alice, please,” he snapped. “One thing at a time. I want to know how this happened. We can discuss the rest later, but right now I want to understand how this took place. I want to know who this kid was, and where this happened.” He turned to me and said, “Jamie, can you tell us again how this kid came to take your bike?”

  I told the story again, feeling calmer under my father’s steady questioning. He asked me if I could remember the neighbourhood where it took place. I told him no, but that Hank would probably know how to get back to the field. The boys likely lived in the subdivision across from the field, since that was the direction from which they had come.

  My father looked glum. “Well, Jamie, let’s call Hank’s parents and see if she can go for a ride with us tomorrow and see if we can find out who this kid is. We can drive around the neighbourhood and you can see if you recognize him. But I have to admit, it’s going to be a bit of a long shot. Your mother is right—this was very irresponsible of you. I hope we can get your bike back, but don’t get your hopes up. In the meantime, I’ll go call the police and see what the procedure is to file a report.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. Really, I am.”

  “I know, Jamie,” my father said. “But it doesn’t really help matters. It doesn’t really change things. You should have been more responsible. I think you should go downstairs and get ready for bed. I’ll be down in a little while to tuck you in.”

  In my room, sobbing and in disgrace, I told Mirror Pal about what had happened.

  As always, I did both of the voices, mine and Mirror Pal’s, and they both sounded like me. Both voices bore the imprimatur of my grief: one bore it plaintively; the other bore it with justifiably loyal outrage.

  A casual adult observer who happened to walk in on me would likely have seen an eight-year-old boy, his face red and puffy and streaked with tears, sitting on the edge of his bed talking to himself in the mirror, working himself into a state of near-hysteria, arms flailing and pointing, punctuating the air with angles and jabs. I have a memory of actually slapping the wall beside the mirror and imagining I heard two slaps.

  But of course, I could only have heard one slap. I was entirely alone in my bedroom. The only illumination inside the room came from my bedside lamp, a green-glassed brass ship’s lantern with a hand-painted shade featuring a rendering of a sailboat at full mast, hard against the wind.

  Feeling better for having vented a bit, I turned away to put on my pyjamas and get into bed. I thought I saw something flicker and shift in the depths of the mirror. There was a sudden impression of fluttering, as though a moth had trembled in front of a lamp, wings beating a frantic insectile tarantella in the air. But when I looked again, I was alone in the mirror with my empty bedroom reflected in the glass behind me.

  Then suddenly I wasn’t alone. I knew I wasn’t alone as surely as I knew my own name, or that my beautiful red bike had been stolen that afternoon, or that I wanted it back at that moment more than I’d ever wanted anything in the world.

  I touched the glass and tapped it lightly with my index finger. “Mirror Pal? Are you real?” Even at eight, I realized how ridiculous that question was, but I asked it anyway. I breathed on the glass, running the tip of my index finger through the condensation, bisecting the cloud of moisture with a jagged line of fingernail. “Mirror Pal?”

  What happened next was something I felt in a way that almost precludes an adult ability to put it into words. As I opened my mouth to form Mirror Pal’s answer to my own question, the air inside my room became heavy with something like the weight of the electricity and ozone that presages a summer lightning storm. By reflex, I closed my eyes as though anticipating a thunderclap. There was the burst of the orange-red light that always accompanies a rapid opening and shutting of the eyelids.

  An image rose in my mind—or, more accurately, appeared to impress itself on my mind from somewhere outside of my own reckoning—of a young girl of my age whom I had never seen before. She had long dark hair tied up in the sort of bow I had seen in pictures of my grandmother when she was my age. The girl wore some sort of dark-coloured dress rippling like black water caught in a shaft of moonlight. And her name came to me then: Amanda.

  Amanda.

  When I spoke, it was my voice, of course—Mirror Pal’s voice—but this time it was also not my voice at all. I had uttered the name without any conscious intent to do so, but I said it as reverently as if it were an invocation. The name seemed to pour out of me of its own volition, shaping and wrapping itself around my vocal cords and calling them to life. I heard it with my ears, but I also heard a double-voice say it in my mind, as though two record players were playing the same single at different speeds, causing a slight overlap.

  With my eyes still closed, I reached over and switched off the light on my night table. Then I opened my eyes and looked into the mirror.

  Something indefinable had changed in the reflection. It was still my room, but the edges now bled into a general murkiness, a blurring not dissimilar to that of the faded quality of an antique photograph: yellowing, age-burned and cracked at the edges. My reflection, too, had changed in a similarly impalpable way. My eyes were obscured by the shadows of the room,
but my shoulders were hunched in a narrowing way that suggested somehow the fey mien of a young girl sitting on the edge of a large antiqued chair that was too big for her. When I instinctively relaxed my shoulders to dispel the illusion, my reflection followed suit, but it seemed to lag just a beat, as though it slyly wanted me to know that it was doing it on sufferance, not because the laws of physics had compelled it to do so because it was my reflection.

  My. Mine.

  Mine.

  I said, “Mirror Pal? Is that you?”

  Again, the unbidden response, the weird aural duotone of my own voice echoing in my head.

  My name is Amanda.

  I was entranced. I’d forgotten that I was speaking to myself, forgot that this illusion was impossible, forgot that I must be speaking in my own voice because there was no possible way my reflection could be addressing me independently. And yet, the name “Amanda” hadn’t come from me. I didn’t know anyone named Amanda.

  Excitedly I asked my reflection, “Is this my imagination, or is this real?”

  Maybe it’s both. Maybe I live in your head as well as in the mirror. I felt my shoulders involuntarily rise and fall in a mechanical-looking facsimile of a shrug. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m here now.

  “Who are you?”

  I told you. My name is Amanda.

  “Where did you come from?”

  From your mirror.

  “No, before that.”

  There is no before, there’s only now.

  “Where’s Mirror Pal?”

  Mirror Pal has gone away. I’m here now.

  “Why haven’t I ever seen you before?”