Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  They dropped into their regular routine and stopped jumping every time someone came to the door. It was all good for a few days; their dysfunction was in keeping with twenty-first-century America, and it felt oddly comforting. They didn’t dismiss their predicament, though. Laura bounced between wanting to try another medium, going back to hypnotherapy, or waiting for Edith’s next episode—if, indeed, there was one. They couldn’t give up on hope, either.

  Exactly five weeks after the Buffalo bombing, and five days after Martin and Laura had attempted to contact Calm Dumas, Edith woke from a nightmare. It wasn’t a night terror or a premonition, it was a good, old-fashioned bad dream, which, perversely, pleased her parents no end. Edith soon calmed down, but spent the remainder of the night in Martin and Laura’s bed. She slept soundly, as did Martin, the pair of them splashed across the mattress like starfish on a rock. Duly displaced, Laura went downstairs to sleep on the sofa.

  She woke just before 6 a.m. with a crick in her neck as intrusive as a fencepost. As she did every morning, she checked her social media while the coffee brewed, bracing herself for the latest catastrophe. This time it was God rather than terrorists, with severe flash flooding across Texas. Laura turned off the iPad, took her coffee onto the back stoop, and watched a peach-colored sunrise shimmer on the morning dew.

  The sun had fully risen before she noticed the old woman sitting on the deck behind her.

  8

  Martin walked into the kitchen dressed in boxers and a T-shirt. Glimpsed in his periphery, he assumed the two people sitting at the table were Laura and Shirley, even though his oldest daughter never got up before 9 a.m. on weekends. Edith was still upstairs, though, sleeping in their bed, so it had to be Shirley. This was as much logical thought as he could muster this side of his morning brew. He yawned, shambled over to the pot. “Didn’t sleep too good,” he moaned, pouring coffee into a mug with WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD printed on one side. “How can a ten-year-old hog an entire queen bed?” He added a splash of half and half, then turned to face the table, his eyes—and his mind—adjusting to the two people sitting there. Yup, that was Laura. All good there. And that was—

  He coughed, spraying his first mouthful of coffee across the kitchen, spilling more from the mug onto his bare toes.

  “Whafuck?”

  “Go put some pants on, handsome,” Calm Dumas said. “We need to talk.”

  * * *

  The photograph hadn’t been the best quality, but there was no doubt this was the same woman. She was older, yes—doughier in the face, her hair not quite as thick and completely white—but her eyes had lost none of their intensity. In the photo, she had four irises, four dark pupils, but only one pair of glasses. She managed a similar effect in real life, appearing to look at Martin and Laura simultaneously, even though they sat in separate chairs, five feet apart.

  It wasn’t quite 8 a.m. The girls were still in bed. Martin, Laura, and Calm sat on the rear deck with the slider open. Their voices wouldn’t wake the girls, but the open door invited them to join the conversation whenever they were ready to.

  Laura had brought Calm up to date before Martin had staggered downstairs for that first mouthful of coffee. She told her everything, from Edith’s “night terrors,” even as a little girl, through to the events with Love Paranormal. When Martin returned—pants on—he began his part of the conversation by saying:

  “I assume Laura’s spiritual advisor contacted you?”

  Calm smiled. The wrinkles around her mouth lifted adorably. “You’re going to start out being skeptical? Whatever happened to good morning?”

  “I’m sorry. Good morning.” Martin offered a smile, too. “I’m very pleased to meet you. And it’s logic, not skepticism. Laura told her spiritual advisor that we’d tried calling you. Now you’re here. I’m just putting two and two together.”

  “It’s okay if you don’t believe,” Calm said. “As long as you stand by your family should they choose to.”

  “Always,” Martin said. “Laura wanted to take an alternative route and I’ve supported her every step of the way. So far, I haven’t seen anything, or met anyone, to challenge my rational thinking. I’m open to you changing that.”

  “I didn’t travel five hundred miles to prove myself to you, or to anybody.” Still with that adorable smile. “I’ll do my thing. You make your own mind up. Just extend everyone the same courtesy.”

  “I adore you,” Laura said, taking Calm’s hand.

  With Calm up to speed on Edith, they touched on Martin and Laura’s part in this—the fear, the sleepless nights, the guilt. “All those young people,” Laura said. “Martin says we could never have known, and I’m sure he’s right, but it’s hard to distance yourself completely.” Martin voiced his concern about the potential strain on their work, home life, and marriage. Sure, they were scratching each other’s backs now, but would they always be? Calm listened with her hands folded in her lap, saying very little. Every now and then she nodded or made a small sound in her throat. Her eyes never stopped shining.

  “It’s a surreal—perhaps even unreal—situation,” Martin said. He finished his coffee and sat back in his seat. “We’re doing what we can to find a real way through.”

  “But we need to understand what we’re up against,” Laura added. “Does Edith have some kind of psychic gift? And if so, how can we help her?”

  Calm removed her glasses, inspecting the lenses for grime. She wiped them on her sweater, then slipped them back on. “First of all,” she said. “The girl is charged with psychic energy. I can feel her crackling away upstairs. Shoot, I felt her when the taxi I arrived in was half a mile away.”

  “But the cards,” Martin said. “The zenith cards, or whatever they’re called. Edith scored poorly. The hipster was unimpressed.”

  “The hipster was a goddamn fraud,” Calm said. “He and his girlfriend were looking to get rich or get famous. The whole thing was a ruse. They downplayed the psychic angle to remain credible … trustworthy. And the cards—the Zener cards … it’s a bullshit test. Psychic energy doesn’t work that way. If it did, true psychics would be working the poker tables in Vegas instead of huddled in their closets, contemplating suicide because of the voices in their heads.”

  “I think I adore you, too,” Martin said.

  “Which brings me to my second point,” Calm continued. “It’s not a gift, it’s a condition. Think of it as you would autism or bipolar disorder. Edith has it, she’ll always have it. You—that’s all of you—need to find a way to live with it.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Laura said.

  “I need more coffee,” Martin said. He skipped away and recharged his mug. Stepping back onto the rear deck, he saw Calm with one hand outstretched and a brilliant red cardinal sitting in her palm. Laura was on the edge of her seat, struck with a beautiful wonder. She made a “shhhh” gesture as Martin approached. He paused, afraid his movement might scare the bird away. Calm smiled and urged him closer. He got to within two feet—close enough to see the gray sheen of its tail feathers—before Calm lifted her hand and the cardinal flew away, gone in a red blink.

  Laura whooped and applauded delightedly. Martin took his seat, grinning. Calm regarded them both with shimmering eyes.

  “Bet the hipster couldn’t do that,” she said.

  “Tell us what we need to do,” Martin said.

  * * *

  “I’ll know more when I’ve spoken to Edith,” Calm said. “But from everything you’ve told me, I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’s a streamer.”

  “A streamer?” Martin and Laura asked at the same time.

  “Books and movies—not to mention all the phonies out there—have skewed the perception of psychic behavior. Clairvoyants and telepaths are usually depicted as receiving their information in clear and critical snapshots. This can happen, but it’s rare. It’s more like analyzing footprints, gauging size and direction, and restructuring events from there.”

  “Like tracking an animal i
n the forest?” Martin asked.

  “Exactly. You read the clues and put the pieces together. It’s also worth noting that the psychic cosmos is vast, powerful, and incredibly active. Most people who connect to it are overwhelmed—swept away.”

  “Institutionalized,” Laura said. “I remember reading a paper in college about how some psychics have struggled to connect with their gift—sorry, their condition—and been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s the main reason I didn’t want to take Edith to a psychoanalyst.”

  “The Dominic Lang paper,” Calm said, nodding. “Roundly criticized by the American Psychiatric Association, but entirely accurate.”

  Martin slurped his coffee. “So you’re saying that Edith can connect to the psychic universe—or whatever it is—without being swept away?”

  “Is connected,” Calm said. “It’s not like turning a TV off and on. It’s more like your internet connection. She’s always online.”

  “Always streaming,” Laura said.

  “Right. She’s receiving psychic data around the clock. Most of the time it’s mundane: traffic on the Interstate, passengers boarding a train, someone hanging a picture. Occasionally, the premonitions are good: a little girl getting what she wants for her birthday, a wife telling her husband she’s pregnant. Likewise, the data can be bad, and sometimes very bad—as was the case with the Buffalo bombing.”

  “Then why isn’t she institutionalized?” Martin asked. “All that extra crap flying through her head, she should be climbing the walls.”

  “Her day-to-day life acts as a suppressor.” Calm removed her glasses and wiped them on her sweater again. The morning sun glimmered off the thick lenses. “The more engaged she is—reading a book, playing sports, painting a picture—the more the signal is filtered. But she has to sleep sometime, and it’s during the later stages of non-REM sleep, when the body is in shutdown mode, that the connection is clearest. Again, the psychic data may be uninteresting and she’ll sleep right through. This happens most nights. But sometimes, the things she sees are violent and disturbing.”

  “Does dreaming suppress the connection?” Laura asked.

  “It does. But dreaming is rare during non-REM sleep, so that’s when she’s most vulnerable.”

  “It’s that one narrow window,” Martin said, “when she’s not active, and she’s not dreaming. Makes a crazy kind of sense.”

  Calm nodded. “The imagery fades as she wakes up, but it can take a few minutes, depending on how vivid the episode is. That’s when she purges. It’s common in streamers. They scream, thrash, throw stuff—whatever helps. I’ve known streamers get out of bed and dance. Some sleep with an easel in their room so they can paint what they’re seeing, just to get it out quicker. And it works, because it engages the brain.”

  “It fires up the suppressors,” Laura said.

  “Exactly.”

  “And what’s Shirley’s part in all this?” Martin asked. “Does she really have a telepathic link to Edith?”

  “If she does, it’s coming exclusively from Edith. Again, I’ll know more after I’ve spoken to her, but I’m pretty sure Edith was hiding in her big sister’s mind. It would explain why the episodes calmed down—or appeared to—for a number of years. But then Shirley decided she didn’t want Edith in her mind anymore. And who can blame her? She’s fifteen years old—a young woman. Her privacy is a serious business.”

  “She doesn’t even like Edith in her room,” Laura said.

  Calm spread her hands. A “there you have it” gesture.

  “If it helps,” Martin said. “She can hide in my mind.”

  “Mine, too,” Laura said.

  “You say that now, but what happens when—as much as you love her—you grow tired of it? And you will, just like Shirley did. What happens when, God forbid, you’re not there anymore? And did you consider the fact that Edith may not want to jump into her parents’ minds? Would you jump into yours?”

  “Hell, no,” Martin said.

  “It’s a fix, but not a good one,” Calm said. “It’s temporary and unstable. What she needs is something permanent. A place she can go when the psychic signal is clear and dangerous.”

  “How does she go about getting that?” Laura asked.

  “She has to build it,” Calm replied, and tapped her temple. “Up here. One tiny piece at a time. It won’t be easy, and you can help her by encouraging artistic endeavor. Reading, writing, playing a musical instrument. All these things reinforce the creative mind. They make the walls stronger.”

  * * *

  Both girls were awake before 9:30 a.m. They shuffled downstairs within five minutes of each other, poured their cereal, and were redirected from the TV in the living room to the deck where the adults sat. They were introduced to Calm, and regarded the peculiar old lady with the same indifferent expression. There’d been a string of oddballs through the house recently, and it was all too easy for Martin—no psychic ability necessary—to read their minds: Here we go again. They relaxed a little when Calm repeated the bird trick, this time with a female cardinal. It hopped from her palm, all the way up her arm to her shoulder, before flying away.

  “Pretty neat,” Shirley said.

  “I know lots of tricks,” Calm said.

  Later that morning, Martin took Edith to the Book Bazaar downtown, a sixty-eight-year-old, wonderful-smelling establishment that had kept its doors open when so many indie bookstores had faltered.

  “I call this ten-for-twenty,” Martin said, leading Edith to the middle grade section. “You get to choose ten books. Whatever you like. But you have to read at least twenty pages a day. Deal?”

  Edith’s eyes were huge. “Deal.”

  She loaded Martin up. At the top of her stack was a book called Diary of a Ten-Year-Old Rock Star. The cover was adorned with a picture of a young girl wearing a bandanna and biker’s jacket, a guitar slung over her shoulder.

  “Looking to unleash your inner rock god?” Martin asked her.

  “Maybe,” Edith replied with a smile.

  “Well, you’ll need a guitar before you can do that.”

  “Yeah, but—” Edith looked at her father with a puzzled expression. “Wait, are you saying you’re going to buy me a guitar?”

  “Sure,” Martin said. “On two conditions: you sign up for lessons, and you practice as often as you can.”

  “Deal,” Edith said.

  So they went from the Book Bazaar to the Music Man on the next block, where Martin bought Edith an acoustic guitar and a six-week tutorship with the music man himself. He balanced his purchases for Edith with a new laptop computer for Shirley, thus avoiding sibling Armageddon. They returned home (Martin considerably lighter of wallet but happier of heart) to the smell of fresh-baked goodness—another of Calm Dumas’s cool tricks: the greatest goddamn muffins known to man. They all sat around the kitchen table and scarfed them down, saying barely a word, leaving barely a crumb.

  * * *

  Midafternoon. Calm led Edith to the backyard and lay a picnic blanket down in the shade of the willow. They sat facing each other. The light was muted and perfect.

  “You had a bad dream last night,” Calm said. “Had to sleep with Mom and Dad.”

  “Yeah.” Edith sighed. “Like a baby, right?”

  “You were looking for shelter—for protection. It’s a natural thing to do.” Calm took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, subtly inviting Edith to do the same, which she did, easing out any lingering jitters. “Tell me about the dream.”

  “It was horrible,” Edith said.

  Calm nodded. She plucked a leaf from one of the willow’s branches and twirled it between her fingers.

  “I’ve had it quite a lot recently,” Edith continued. “Most nights. What’s it called when you have the same dream over and over?”

  “Recurring.”

  “Right. That’s what it is. I’m always in the same place.” Edith lowered her eyes. “A bad place.”

  “The well,” Calm said. “By the
abandoned farm.”

  Edith’s mouth fell open. She nodded once, her eyes big and round. “But who … how did—”

  “I just know, sweetie.”

  Edith’s gaze dropped to the leaf in Calm’s hand. Twirling. Rhythmic. Soothing. She blinked at tears and swallowed hard. “Shirley took me there. She told me to imagine the well when the window opens, and then throw everything inside. She said bad things belong in bad places.”

  “I say stay away from bad places altogether.”

  “Yeah.” Edith looked into Calm’s bright eyes. “I tried doing what Shirley said, but I couldn’t go back there. Not even in my mind. And now I’m dreaming about it. Sometimes I’m looking into the well, then I lose my balance and fall in. Other times the dead horse—the dead baby horse—crawls out of the well and follows me home. But the worst dreams are when Shirley is chasing me.”

  “Because you trust her,” Calm said. “You love her.”

  “On the walk out there, she pretended to be the devil and chased me through Spruce Forest. She used pinecones for horns. It was fun, in a way. But in my dreams, the horns are real—they’re like goat horns—and she’s not playing.”

  “Shirley is your conduit to the well,” Calm said. “You associate her with its darkness. But you need to remember that she was trying to help you.”

  “I guess.”

  “It was actually good advice,” Calm said, still twirling the leaf. “To imagine a place where the things you see in the window—the bad things—have less power. But it has to be a place you want to go, where you feel safe.”

  Edith wiped her eyes. They were a little damp, but there were no more tears. She took another deep breath and nodded.

  “It needs to be your place, Edith, and it can be as wild and wonderful as you like, with waterfalls and colorful birds and towering trees. And you need to build it yourself, right here…” Calm tapped her temple again, just as she had with Martin and Laura. “Your own place of power.”

  Edith nodded again but she looked confused.

  “Do your parents listen to the radio while they drive?” Calm asked, appearing to switch the conversation from one subject to another.