The Fog Maiden

by Jane Toombs

  Still the shadow came with her, small and shifting, never quite touching her, and at last she had to stop because she was lost and maybe she never could find her way back. Maybe she’d be here forever, lost like Mama.

  She couldn’t pretend to be a grown-up lady because she was only Janny. The shadow stayed with her and she knew it wanted to come in and be a part of her, but she was afraid. She could sense the shadow’s need but pushed it away with her thoughts, and gradually it thinned out and disappeared and she was alone.

  “Mama?” she called. But Mama was lost.

  Daddy would come if she called to him but he’d be angry, he didn’t like to find Janny with the shadows.

  “Aunt Toivi, help me,” she begged. “Tell me where you are, show me the way to get back.”

  Had her aunt led her here like out on the breakwater in the fog? Had she made her come here to be lost, to drift forever among the homeless shadows?

  “Aunt Toivi, please,” she whispered.

  Then the voice was with her again, Aunt Toivi’s voice. “Janny, where are you? What do you see?”

  And she was back in the rain with the long green leaves around her and death in front of her.

  “Who killed her, Janny? You can tell me. Look and tell me.”

  No, she couldn’t look, it was wrong to look. The rain diminished, the trees blurred, and she began to feel cold.

  “Please, Aunt Toivi,” she said, “help me see Mama, make Mama come and kiss me like you promised. Hurry up because Daddy is coming and he won’t let me see Mama.”

  But she was too late. The blue haze was about her and the cold filled her mind until everything froze but her father’s terrible face.

  “Wrong.” His voice fell on her like icy sleet. “You must not come here, you must not remember. Wrong, it’s wrong.”

  Janella fled from the ice-blue eyes into the blackness. Daddy was gone, Aunt Toivi was gone, and she would never find Mama again. There was just Janny all alone with the shadows.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Janella opened her eyes to a pale-blue ceiling. Her room. She was lying on the bed in her room. How had she gotten here? She was dressed—something was wrong, a terrible thing had happened, she would remember in a moment and she didn’t want to. Aunt Toivi? She frowned. Aunt Toivi had been here, was mixed up in a dream—was it a dream?

  Then the awful sight of the black bundle in the woods came back to her and she sat up, burying her face in her hands. Her eyes were dry, tearless, she couldn’t cry for Akki. Akki, who was beginning to be her friend.

  She shook her head and became aware of dampness—the legs of her pants were wet, and her hair. It had been raining outside. She changed quickly. A warm shower would feel good, but she needed to be with people, see if Arnie was all right, talk to Lucien.

  Janella knocked on Toivi’s door and went in as soon as she heard her aunt’s voice. Arnie was still on the huge white bed, eyes closed, sleeping quietly.

  “I’ll put him back in his crib,” Janella offered.

  “For now, perhaps it’s best. Later we’ll decide. But come back.”

  When Janella returned to Toivi’s room, her aunt was waiting by the door. “Help me downstairs. This is a terrible shock. I depended on Akki for so much. Thank God you are here, Janny, to help me. I don’t know how I would get along without you now.”

  Janella supported her aunt through the door toward the stairs. Toivi walked well, it was more a matter of leading her. “Who is—I mean, who was Akki?” she asked.

  “A dear friend. Akki has always been with me, except for the time I spent with you and Arnold after Lisa died. She wouldn’t come.” Tears were visible on Toivi’s cheeks. “I loved her.”

  “Is she related?”

  “She was related to my husband, but she’d been with me before I even knew him.”

  “Related to Lucien?” Janella felt confused. He hadn’t seemed to like Akki.

  “Oh, no—didn’t he mention I’d been married before? Right after I left you and Arnold.” Toivi’s voice was choked. “Poor Akki, she was against me going to take care of you then. ‘No good will come of this,’ she said. Ah, poor Akki…”

  “Will he—I mean, will your first husband be coming here to…”

  “He’s dead.” Toivi stopped on the bottom step and laughed without mirth as she wiped her eyes. “I married a rich old man, Janny, and I didn’t love him; and he died and left me the money just as the fairy tales go. Akki disapproved but she stayed with me—she’s been my only friend.”

  “Lucien…” Janella couldn’t help saying.

  “Yes,” Toivi said, moving into the entry, “yes, I must see Lucien.”

  Had Lucien carried her upstairs? Janella wondered. He must have, no one else…

  “You were in my room,” she said to her aunt.

  “You had fainted and Lucien asked me to sit with you until you roused, but I—I thought I heard Arnie. My sight is so bad I had to go all the way back into my room and right up to the bed before I could see he was still sleeping. Then you came…”

  Why is she lying? Janella asked herself. Toivi shut her door, shut herself away—she was through with me. She had finished whatever purpose she had in mind. But the thought made no sense. Through with her? When Toivi had just now told her how much she needed her here?

  Lucien came through from the living room. “I was going up to see how you were, Janella.” He took his wife’s arm and Janella relinquished her hold.

  “I’m all right now. It was stupid of me to faint.” She glanced uneasily about her. “What have you—what did you do about…?” Her voice faltered.

  “I called the police,” he said.

  She looked at him in amazement, and her uneasiness returned.

  Toivi pulled away from Lucien. “Why on earth didn’t you simply call a doctor?”

  Janella caught their reflections, all three of them, in the mirror, standing unnaturally stiff like a posed picture. We’re all afraid, she thought.

  Lucien grasped Toivi’s arm again and led her into the living room. “We’ll wait in here,” he said.

  Toivi allowed him to seat her on the couch but repeated her question. “Why the police?”

  “As far as I know Akki hasn’t seen a doctor since we’ve been married. Has she?”

  Toivi shook her head. “Why should she? She wasn’t ill. But she was old—my God, I don’t even know how old she actually was. She’s always been there.” Toivi’s mouth quivered and tears filled her great dark eyes. “What will I do, what will I do?” she moaned, beginning to rock back and forth.

  Janella waited for Lucien to comfort his wife, but when he remained standing she sat next to her aunt and put an arm around her. “I’m here, Aunt Toivi,” she said. “You’re not alone.”

  “Don’t leave me—promise me you won’t leave.”

  “I’ll stay with you, Toivi—don’t worry.” Janella wondered why Lucien wasn’t saying the soothing words instead of her. “You aren’t alone,” she murmured. “I’m here.”

  “Toivi.”

  Janella felt the frail figure next to her stiffen. She glared at Lucien. Why was he so cruel to his wife?

  “Toivi, stop feeling sorry for yourself and listen.” Lucien’s voice was abrupt, businesslike. “No doctor will sign a death certificate on Akki without doing an autopsy. She will definitely be a coroner’s case.”

  “Coroner?” Toivi said, wiping her eyes.

  “No doctor can sign a certificate of the cause of death if he doesn’t know what it was. No doctor has seen Akki in years.”

  “But she was so old,” Toivi said.

  “Old age is not a cause of death. A doctor has to certify heart disease or some other fatal condition,” Lucien said, and Janella found herself nodding in assent, remembering the section in her textbook on “Death, reporting of.” Akki was a “death occurring without medical assistance.”

  “But the coroner isn’t the police,” she said involuntarily.

  Lucien lo
oked at her.

  “I mean,” she added, “you don’t call the police unless death was due to unnatural means, and…” She found she couldn’t go on. Her arm dropped from Toivi’s shoulder and she crossed both her arms in front of herself, turning her face away from Lucien, away from Toivi. She gazed blankly at the fireplace.

  “The coroner’s office takes a while to make arrangements. It seemed practical to call the police and explain the circumstances. They’ll notify the coroner.”

  “Will the same ones come out?” Toivi asked. “The same policemen?”

  A silence fell, and Janella turned to look at them. Lucien was frowning and shaking his head at Toivi, but she went on. “Is that really why you called the police, to bring that same man back here to torment me?”

  Lucien sighed. “He was only doing his job. And I don’t know who they’ll send out.”

  “Where is my poor Akki?” Toivi demanded. “Where have you put her?”

  Lucien’s face showed real distress for the first time. “She’s in the grove where Janella found her. I…”

  “In the rain?” Toivi’s voice rose. “Oh my God, poor Akki. How could you?”

  “They—the police suggested I cover her and leave her where she was found until they get here. I saw no reason not to.” But he looked uncertain.

  Janella closed her eyes against the huddled black body among the chips, but she could see the image inside her head. The desire to get away rose in her until she couldn’t remain still.

  “I—I think I’d better check on Arnie,” she said.

  “Wait, Janny.” Toivi’s voice was pleading. “Lucien, can’t you move Arnie’s crib into my room? I had planned to ask you before this—this tragedy. Janella is in great need of rest—see how pale she is. And I know she’s overly conscientious about her brother—she worries so. You know how lightly I sleep; I’d hear any tiny sound he might make and can certainly care for him. Besides, I need something just now to distract me. You know that, Lucien, you know how badly I need the distraction, the wonderful distraction of caring for someone who needs me.” She looked from Lucien to Janella. “Arnie might almost be my son, our coloring is so similar. ‘Black Finns,’ Arnold used to say.” Toivi sighed. “You’re like your father, Janny, blonde and blue-eyed. Arnie and I are the dark outcasts.”

  Janella swallowed past the lump in her throat, moved despite herself by Toivi’s appeal. Lucien looked at his wife a long time before replying, and then turned to Janella.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Would you mind if we moved Arnie?” She thought she caught an echo in his voice of her aunt’s plea.

  “I don’t…” she began.

  “Shall we try the arrangement for one night and see how it works?” Lucien suggested. “If you aren’t happy about it, or if his care proves too much for Toivi, I’ll move the crib right back into your room.”

  “Please make the change now, Lucien,” Toivi begged. “The police will be here soon and you’d have to wait then. Janella can help you while I wait down here and let them in if they come before you finish. Oh, please do it now.”

  Lucien again gazed at Toivi for a time. Finally he touched her face gently with his fingertips. His own face seemed very vulnerable, and Janella wanted to cry.

  “All right,” he said, and Janella followed him up the stairs.

  “I’m not sure…” she started to say, and he interrupted.

  “Just for tonight. Poor Toivi—she has so little. Let her have Arnie—what can happen to the boy?”

  Janella pictured Arnie in Toivi’s arms, quiet, contented. Was she being unreasonable? “Well…” she said, but Lucien was already lifting Arnie out and placing him on her bed. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Akki’s words filled her mind, “Death waits for us.”

  Lucien had barely finished the move when the doorbell rang. He looked at Janella. “Settle the boy,” he said, “and come down as soon as you can.”

  Arnie whimpered a bit when she picked him up from her bed and carried him into Toivi’s room. She watched him for a few minutes after placing him in the reassembled crib. He quieted though his eyes stayed open. She bit her lip.

  “I don’t know, Arnie,” she said. “I wish I did. You seem to like your aunt. Our aunt. You don’t care much for me, I know, and it’s my fault. You shouldn’t be able to tell I don’t like you, but you can. I’m sorry.” She leaned over and touched the side of his head. He didn’t move, didn’t respond in any way. She felt she was deserting him when she walked out of the room.

  There were two policemen in uniform in the living room with Lucien and Toivi. The older, heavier one had his eyes partially concealed by lightly tinted glasses.

  “Miss Maki,” he said, “I understand you found the body.”

  So Akki was only a body now. “Yes.”

  “Were you looking for”—he glanced at an open notebook—“for this Akki Koski?”

  Janella had never heard Akki’s last name. “Yes—yes, I was trying to find her for my aunt, for Mrs. DuBois.”

  “I’d like you to tell me about it in a few minutes. We’re going out to see about getting the body moved first.”

  Janella nodded and watched Lucien lead the two men out.

  “Would you help me upstairs? I can come down again later if that policeman wants to talk to me.” Toivi’s manner dismissed the police scornfully.

  “Was he—were they—I mean, I heard you say they’d been up here before.”

  “Oh, that silly girl—the one before you. A stupid child. I don’t want to talk about it now, I’m too upset. Anyway, it was all Lucien’s fault—why don’t you ask him?”

  When Janella didn’t reply, Toivi went on, “Perhaps you feel you’re prying when you ask Lucien about his former girlfriends?”

  Janella turned startled eyes on her aunt.

  Toivi’s face was unreadable. “Maybe you could fetch one of Arnie’s bottles of formula,” she said. “I couldn’t find where Ruth keeps them. Won’t he be hungry soon?”

  Janella left Toivi in her room, cooing over Arnie. “If you need help with him I’ll come up,” she said, but her aunt only smiled.

  Janella sat halfway down the staircase feeling like a small child shut away from adult doings. She wasn’t afraid to be in the living room alone, no. But here on the stairs she felt safe, a part of no one’s world. Was she losing her mind? Why did she feel that danger hung in the air of the house?

  So many dreams at night and the feeling that someone talked to her in the dreams, someone real like Aunt Toivi—and maybe she did, maybe she came in and hypnotized Janella even if Lucien said you could only hypnotize yourself.

  What if Toivi came in and talked to her at night and she didn’t remember? She shivered a little at the thought and at the chill draft flowing up the stairs. Helen used to worry about something going wrong with Janny’s mind when she had so many spells as a child. Helen had even blamed Daddy.

  “He talked to you too much,” she would say, “Such intensity isn’t good for little children.” Funny that Janella could hardly remember Daddy talking to her at all.

  She’d taught herself not to think about her blackouts, to push them from her mind along with the sadness of not being able to remember her early childhood. Don’t dwell on the bad things, because they’ll drag you under and there’s no one to help you to the surface, no one to depend on but Janella Maki. Her mother dead when she was five, her father when she was eight. Everyone left her. Except Helen. But Helen didn’t understand. Don’t think about it. She sighed.

  The sound of the front door opening brought her to her feet, and she descended the rest of the stairs, hoping the men hadn’t seen her sitting there.

  She went over her walk in the rain, the finding of Akki, with the policeman. No, she hadn’t seen anyone else. She thought of the sound of the motorcycle she’d heard, but said nothing. Just a noise, there were lots of motorcycles.

  The policeman wrote in his notebook, then closed it. “Well, I don’t th
ink I’ll need to take up more of your time. Probably just routine—she was an old lady, sure enough.” He was speaking to Lucien.

  “You’ll let me know when we can bury her?” Lucien asked.

  “The coroner’s office will tell you when they release the body.” He smiled, but Janella couldn’t quite see the color of his eyes behind the tinted lenses and the smile seemed somehow sinister. She couldn’t smile back.

  Lucien returned to her after seeing the policemen out. “You must be exhausted. I’ll have Mrs. Barnes fix you a tray…”

  “No, I’d rather eat down here. I’ll take some food up to Toivi afterward. That’s what I—why I was looking for Akki. She hadn’t brought Toivi’s breakfast.”

  “I know—you told the police.”

  “Oh—I guess I did.” Janella put her hand to her forehead. “I feel confused.”

  “And no wonder,” Lucien said. “I’ll have Mrs. Barnes get some food together for us, and I’ll take a tray up to Toivi. You’re to rest—understand?”

  She smiled weakly.

  “We’ll have a quiet meal, the two of us.”

  Like you used to have with Chris? she wondered. And what’s happened to Chris? Why were the police here about her?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Janella couldn’t remember ever feeling so exhausted, but as she lay curled on her bed, eyes closed, the minutes passed and still she hadn’t slept. Then she realized her teeth were tight together, jaws clenched, and her hands were clamped into fists. I must relax, she thought. Turning on her back she tried to go limp, to make each muscle obey, but a nervous fluttering started in her midriff and she sat up. No use. Maybe if she read something, anything, for a little while…

  She hated going back down the stairs and hoped neither Lucien nor Ruth Barnes would see her—she couldn’t bear to hear another word from anyone. She was grateful to Toivi for taking Arnie—his whimpering wouldn’t be bearable, she would start screaming if she had to listen to him, scream and shriek until she collapsed. Maybe they’d call a doctor if that happened, call someone to take away the demented Janella, give her a shot to quiet her, a sedative. Morphine? No, don’t be silly, a tranquilizer more likely—maybe thorazine or one of the barbiturates. Morphine was for pain. All the opium products made the pupils of your eyes pinpoints if you took enough. Lots of drugs from the opium poppy: morphine, codeine, paregoric, pantopon, dilaudid, papaverine, and then the illegal one, heroin. Doctors couldn’t prescribe heroin.