Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  The window displayed a crying infant being pulled from beneath wreckage and an elderly woman howling at the rain. It displayed blood, ruin, and pain. Instead of screaming, Edith reached across an incomprehensible space and clasped her sister’s hand.

  Am I dreaming? Shirley asked.

  Maybe. I don’t know.

  Edith? What’s going—

  I need you.

  And that was all she had to say. Shirley opened her mind, which brimmed with love and warmth, and Edith found shelter.

  The visions persisted, however. Occasionally they were vague enough for Edith to handle alone, but when they were too vivid—too big—she reached for her alliance. Through the darkness and beyond reason, she found her sister’s hand. It was always there.

  I’d be lost without you, Shirl. Totally cray-cray.

  Or maybe you’d be more like a zombie, all droolly and smelly.

  Braaaaaaaaiiins.

  Edith became so adept at reaching for Shirley that she didn’t really have to reach; that connection—or disconnection, whichever it was—became so natural that she could do it without thinking. She sometimes touched Shirley’s mind when either of them were feeling low, or during one of their parents’ stern talks—It’s hard to take Dad seriously while he’s wearing his BAZINGA T-shirt—or just to say hi.

  Yo, girl.

  Yo.

  And then one evening at the dinner table Shirley surprised Edith by snarling at her, You can NEVER tell anybody about this. It’s a freak thing. Don’t pretend you don’t KNOW that. Edith had dropped her fork and looked across the table with hurt, tear-struck eyes—ignoring her mom, who’d asked if she was okay—and Shirley had stared back with an indifferent expression. They used to burn girls like you at the stake.

  * * *

  They walked from wiry grass into a yard where trash and pieces of machinery glittered among the weeds. The farmhouse was a derelict silhouette. Small birds dotted the roof and called. Edith wondered if Shirley’s special place was inside the house. They’d enter through the crumbling front door, or—worse—through the bulkhead and into the cellar. It would be full of old farm tools with long handles and rusty blades, and there’d be shelves crammed with nameless things in dusty jars—

  “Not the farmhouse.” Edith stopped walking. One of the birds took wing and vanished in the haze. “I’d rather scream through the night than go in there.”

  “This way,” Shirley said, tugging Edith in the opposite direction.

  They passed a rusted tractor with a near-architectural spider’s web—thick as string—hanging between the steering wheel and the seat. A few steps farther they came to a water trough pitched on its side, overrun by an embroidery of beautiful, flowering weeds. The dead foal was beyond this.

  “Oh, gross.”

  “Don’t look at it,” Shirley said.

  Hard not to look. It had been dead a long time—a small horse shape, little more than a skeleton draped with papery skin and cartilage. Its ears had been chewed off. Its eye sockets were empty. The hole in its stomach was large enough for a rat to crawl into, dry as a pocketful of dust.

  “This place is horrible,” Edith moaned.

  “It’s where bad things belong,” Shirley said.

  They passed through an open gate into another field. The grass was as tall as Shirley and it rattled as the breeze blew. They walked maybe fifty yards but it felt longer, with Shirley frequently stopping to look back at the farmhouse and keep her bearings. Eventually they stepped into a clearing and Shirley gently pulled on Edith’s hand, stopping her.

  “We’re here. Watch your step.”

  The clearing was no more than twenty feet in diameter, bordered by more tall grass but also a blackberry bush sprinkled with ripe fruit. There was a crumbling brick ring in the center, waist-high, covered by five boards nailed roughly together. Shirley started to push the boards aside while Edith went directly to the berries.

  “Don’t eat them,” Shirley warned. “They’re poisonous.”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious, Ede.”

  Edith had plucked a berry but now she dropped it with a little gasp and wiped her fingers down the front of her T-shirt. They left a purple stain. More evidence, but it didn’t matter anymore. No punishment could compare to this place.

  “Help me with this,” Shirley said.

  Edith did, bending at the knee and using both hands to slide the cover off the partially collapsed brick ring. It revealed a dark hole running deep into the earth, wide enough that Edith could fall in and hit the bottom without touching the sides.

  “A well,” Edith said, taking a considerable step backward. One of the bricks toppled into the hole, disturbed by the movement of the boards. At least three seconds passed before she heard it hit the water at the bottom. “Jeez, a deep well.”

  “I wouldn’t drink the water, though,” Shirley said. “Like the berries, it’s poisonous. Full of wickedness. This well is only good for one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Edith had taken another step backward.

  “It’s an energy dump,” Shirley said. She pressed both forefingers to her temples, then pointed at the deep, dark hole. “It’s where all the bad things go.”

  * * *

  “You won’t remember the time I ran away from home,” Shirley said, standing close enough to the well to make Edith nervous. “You were two years old. I’d just started third grade. There were two girls who bullied me every day and my teacher was a jerk. Also, Mom and Dad were giving you all their attention. You were super-cute, I guess, but still…”

  Something heavy—a deer, perhaps—moved through the grass. Edith flinched but Shirley didn’t move a muscle.

  “I didn’t think anybody would miss me.” Shirley shrugged, taking a step away from the well, for which Edith was grateful. “That’s how you think when you’re eight years old. So I threw some clothes into a backpack, stole twenty bucks from Dad’s wallet, and ran away.”

  “That was really dumb,” Edith said.

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t gone for long. Five or six hours, maybe. And it’s not like I joined the circus or hopped on a train to New York City.”

  “You came here,” Edith said.

  Shirley nodded. “The barn first. There were some rain barrels and a few hay bales in the loft. I made a cozy little nest, then decided the barn was way too obvious for hiding in. So I took a stroll into the field, into the tall grass.” Shirley looked around the clearing, then her gaze settled on the well. “And yeah … stumbled across this place.”

  “You could’ve fallen in,” Edith said. Her nostrils flared. “Nobody would have found you. Ever.”

  Shirley was silent for a moment. Edith didn’t care for the way she regarded the open hole—with a kind of eerie calm, as if she and it had a mutual understanding. Or shared a secret.

  “I thought about jumping in.”

  “Stop it,” Edith demanded.

  “It has a freaky pull, don’t you think?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Shirley’s lips twitched. Her eyes flicked between Edith and the well. “In the end I sat in the grass and imagined bringing Louise Fischer out here. She was one of the girls who bullied me—called me dogface and pulled my hair. A real beeyotch.” Shirley’s expression darkened. She made a pushing gesture with her hands. “Down she went. Bye-bye, Louise. Then I imagined pushing Gabby González in—not as big a bitch as Louise, but close.” Shirley used her forefinger to mimic Gabby’s descent to the bottom of the well. “Adios, Gabby. See you never.”

  “Shirley.” Edith shook her head. “That’s just horrible.”

  “I would never have done it.” Shirley flipped her shoulders indifferently. “It was good to think it, though. Not in a harmful way, but as a kind of stress relief, like slamming a door or having a good cry. And it was like the well wanted me to think it—like it was feeding on the bad energy in my head.”

  Edith wiped a light sweat from her forehead. She wanted to say som
ething but there were no words. She shook her head again.

  “So I gave it more,” Shirley said, and that eerie calm was back in her eyes. “I collected my bad thoughts and feelings—all the things that were getting me down—and I threw them into the well. It felt good, a little bit silly, but good. It was only later, walking home, that I noticed the difference.”

  “You felt happier?” Edith asked.

  “Not exactly,” Shirley replied. “Well, yeah, but … it’s hard to explain. It felt like there was more space around me. More air to breathe. Until I got home, at least. Mom and Dad were pissed.”

  “Go figure.”

  “They’d checked with all our friends and neighbors and called the police a couple of hours before. Long story short: Dad yelled while Mom hugged me, then Mom yelled while Dad hugged me. They wanted to ground me forever. Instead, they took me—us—out for ice cream, and paid me more attention after that.”

  A large bird took wing from the tall grass, printing itself briefly against the sky. Edith looked at it, wishing she could fly away, too.

  “I’ve been here a lot since then.” Shirley took a deep breath, then wrinkled her nose as if the air was sour. “I come here when I’m down. Really down. Fights at home. Fights at school. You know the kind of thing.”

  Edith nodded. Shirley was great most of the time. A real cool sis. But there’d been occasions—more so recently—when she’d been difficult to be around. She became sullen, wouldn’t talk to anybody. There were days she refused to eat or go to school. She once set fire to all her stuffed toys in the garden, some of which she’d had since she was a baby. Mom said these behavioral blips were in keeping with Shirley’s sensitivities, that she was displaying her “teenage quills,” and that they all had to give her space and support. Giving both at the same time, she added, was one of love’s many neat tricks.

  Edith looked at the well, thinking that space and support were wonderful things to offer, but that they didn’t really matter to Shirley. She had her own way of handling things.

  “So here it is. My special place.” Shirley stepped toward the crumbling brick wall and peered into the blackness. “It’s like extreme therapy, I guess. Unload your crap and go home.”

  “I don’t have any crap,” Edith said. “And the bad things … they’re not in my head all the time.”

  “Just often enough to be a problem.”

  “I’m never coming back here.”

  “You don’t have to.” Shirley sneered and pointed at her temples. “You visualize it. That’s what the hypnotherapist taught you, right? When the bad things come, you visualize something that can help. But instead of jumping into my mind, you come here. You see the crappy bricks and the poisonous blackberry bush. You see the tall grass and the barn in the distance. Most importantly, you see the well…”

  Tears gathered along Edith’s eyelashes. She shook her head and they plinked heavily onto her cheeks.

  “You see it all, Ede. Every detail.” Shirley spread her arms and turned a slow circle, like a realtor exhibiting a particularly resplendent room. “Then you draw the bad things from your mind, and throw them down the well.”

  Edith wiped her cheeks. Several damp strands of hair fell across her eyes, obscuring her vision, and that was fine.

  “This can work.” Shirley walked around the well to Edith’s side. She brushed the hair from Edith’s eyes and for the next thirty seconds she was very sweet. “I know it’s different than what you’re used to, and I know it’s scary, but you can do this. Pretty soon the bad things won’t bother you anymore. They might go away altogether.”

  “Maybe,” Edith said, smearing more tears from her cheeks.

  “I can’t have you inside my head anymore. I have my own life—my own stuff to deal with. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, you told me that. Like a hundred times.”

  “And I mean it.”

  Edith sniveled, her wet eyes turned to the sky. “It’s horrible here. It’s creepy and dark. I don’t think it’ll work for me. I need warmth and light. I need—”

  “Scream through the night, then,” Shirley snapped. Her lips wrinkled. Her eyes flared. “Draw all over the fucking walls. Mom and Dad know you’re not having night terrors. They won’t take you to Luke Skywalker next time. You’ll end up in some hospital with a bunch of creepy old doctors. They’ll poke and prod you, Ede. They’ll cut you.”

  “Don’t say that, Shirl, please, it’s—”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  Edith’s legs wobbled, then gave. She sat down in the grass with a thud that made her teeth rattle. More tears bubbled from her eyes and she wept loudly. Shirley offered no comfort. By the time Edith regained some composure, the boards were back on the well and her sister stood stone-still and featureless, framed by the tall grass.

  “I want to go home,” Edith croaked.

  Shirley led the way.

  5

  The Buffalo bombing had fallen off news feeds by the first week of May and America had moved on to its newest grief: a mass shooting at a mall in San Diego. This was something Edith hadn’t predicted, to the best of Laura’s knowledge. Likewise, there’d been no telepathic communication with Shirley, and no bizarre drawings on the wall. Were it not for the therapy and paranormal investigators, it’d be easy to believe they had a normal life.

  “Do they still have cameras in Edith’s room?” Anna asked.

  “Camera. Singular,” Laura said. “And yes. They want to witness one of Edith’s episodes. I guess they need to know what they’re dealing with.”

  Anna sipped her water—from an aluminum flask, not a plastic bottle—and looked at the river. It was wide here, and deep, with a broken yolk of sunlight shimmering across the surface. In many ways, it mirrored Anna herself: quietly beautiful, but with underlying power. She’d been Laura’s spiritual advisor for only two weeks, but offered an aura of such comfort that Laura felt they’d known each other for years. This was where the clichés began and ended; Anna was not the spiritual advisor that Laura had been expecting. She was a farmer’s daughter, born in North Platte, Nebraska, now living in Syracuse. Her attire was unspectacular, as was her hair—driftwood brown, pulled back from her face with a simple, sleek barrette. Even her name, Anna Wright, was middle-of-the-road American, without even a hint of New Age.

  Almost disappointingly normal. Laura joked with Martin that she’d have settled for an eyebrow piercing or a waft of patchouli oil. Anna prevailed in her confidence and intuition, though—what Laura thought of as her deep knowing.

  “So how do you feel about the camera?” Anna asked, screwing the lid on her aluminum bottle. “Set aside everything but your own feelings.”

  “I don’t like it,” Laura replied at once. “But if it helps Edith…”

  “This isn’t about Edith. Take Edith out of the equation. Think about the camera, that infrared device purring away through the night. It doesn’t make coffee. It doesn’t iron your shirts. All it does is watch. Stare. How does that make you feel?”

  “Awful.”

  “Okay.” Anna’s eyes flashed. They were russet, flecked with yellow. Beautiful eyes, magnified by her glasses. “It’s invasive, Laura, mechanically and energetically. You know that, and you’re responding to it.”

  Laura shrugged, but her sigh—deep and wavering—suggested she knew it very well.

  “You know,” Anna continued. “Some cultures believe that cameras can steal from the soul, and refuse to have their photographs taken. Make of that what you will.”

  It was warm for early May and Meredith Park had settled into a sunshiny daze. A clique of teenage girls—Laura recognized some of them from school—sat on the grass nearby, occasionally talking, mostly trapped in their cell phones. Several benches were occupied by old folks playing chess or reading fat Sunday newspapers. A family of ducks bobbed single-file downriver, quacking agreeably.

  “You think the camera’s a bad idea,” Laura said. Not a question. “Wait,
you think the whole of Love Paranormal is a bad idea.”

  “From everything you’ve told me,” Anna said, “it appears they’re trying to identify Edith’s ability so that they can drive it out. Eliminate it.”

  “Heal her.”

  “It sounds like an exorcism. Or maybe they’ll use electrotherapy, or go straight for the lobotomy.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Obviously. Because you won’t let it. But however it shakes out, I’m concerned their methods will create spiritual angst and agitation, not just in Edith, but in—and among—all of you. I’m concerned they’ll make things worse.”

  Laura fetched another sigh, this coming from an oh-so-tired place, and she didn’t have to reach deep to find it.

  “I don’t have the skill set to help Edith,” Anna said after a moment: a deliberate pause that informed Laura she’d carefully considered what she wanted to say. “I can align with her spirit, but not her mind. That’s where her power is. And my feeling—with a view to encouraging positive energies—is that she should learn to coexist with it. To harmonize. It’s an active part of her brain, after all. Who knows what damage might be caused by removing it? Or trying to remove it.”

  Laura nodded. She looked at the ducks.

  “And by the way,” Anna added. “There’s nothing wrong with Edith. She doesn’t need healing. She needs guiding.”

  Laura felt she’d struck gold with Anna. There was a charged but congenial energy between them, an immediate feeling of ease. This wasn’t the case with the few mediums she’d contacted in regard to Edith. The first (his name was Astral Weeks, which prompted a well-deserved eye-roll from Martin) claimed Edith was being haunted by “future ghosts”—the souls of the still-living, harbingers of their own approaching doom. He insisted on sprinkling a concoction of mugwort and cedar shavings around Edith’s bed before she went to sleep, which only resulted in Edith getting a splinter in her foot when she got up to use the bathroom. The second medium (Benedicta, a self-professed psychic diva) said that Edith was paying for her transgressions from a previous life. The idea that Edith—so sweet, so perfectly untainted—could be punished for anything upset Laura profoundly, and she felt wholly justified in calling the psychic diva a “trout-faced, callous old phony” and showing her the door.