“Hey. Like wow. I guess Baltimore was a tough trip,” Mr. Tactless said, dropping an unwanted hand on my shoulder. That I do not care to be touched is not something Dave finds recollectable. Or he doesn’t care about my wishes. “I mean you could never look bad— you’re just kinda pale and thin. You started dying your hair? You should go a little lighter. I always thought you’d make a great blonde.” He had also always thought that he was as slick as the year after next, as my grandma used to say. The trucks and trailers he was towing thought so, too, only they liked his manners. There had to be more than marshmallow fluff under that big hair, but you could never prove it by the way they were acting.
How weird did I look? I wondered as the women stared and giggled. Friends would see a change, but would strangers also gawk like Dave was? Would I ever feel normal again? Probably not if I stayed in this town.
It was stupid to feel wounded, but I did. It was high school all over again with me cast as the weird kid who didn’t fit in. Anger shot through me. Without thinking, I shrugged off Dave’s hand. His touch was distasteful and I hated the way he smelled. Dave doesn’t do nuance but truck and trailer usually picked up on things if one wasn’t too subtle. I had obviously been clear enough for them.
“D-does anyone l-look g-good in th-this l-light?” Emerson asked, obliging me with a stutter. His eyes were watchful though and I was sure that Dave would end up with broken fingers if he touched me again.
Then I recalled that I was also strong enough to break his fingers myself. That made me smile. Thankfully no one noticed because they were staring at Emerson.
“Uh…” The expression on Dave’s face was priceless. He was clearly disgusted by this sign of what he thought was weakness, but also knew that he had to hide his revulsion to Emerson’s stutter or look like a jerk.
Nona’s burly grandson, Paul, brought our pizza to the table before Dave could think of a reply. He muscled my nosy neighbor aside with only a small apology. Paul, who sometimes writes political parody for Golden Words, knows that Dave has a thing for me and that I definitely did not have reciprocal feelings. Paul is more sensitive than a lot of people because his soon to be ex-wife was a harpy and he had wisely decided to live with his grandmother rather than stay in the escalating murder-suicide situation he had been in. Some old dogs can learn new tricks.
I was glad to smell that Emerson had chosen Canadian bacon and black olives. Of course, that meant I would prefer to eat it instead of dumping the pizza on Dave’s head.
“Thanks, Paul. This looks great. How are Nona’s feet?” Nona had bad bunions and I was willing to start a conversation about them if it would get rid of Dave. Though Paul was as graphic as I could wish in describing her latest bunion removals, Dave remained nearby, perhaps hoping for an invitation to join us. Paul eventually had more pizzas to deliver so he left.
“Excuse us,” I said pointedly to Dave and company. “We need to eat and then get to the market before it closes. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay—see you later,” Dave said after snorting a few breaths and glaring at Emerson. He retreated to Millie’s table, probably hoping she had gleaned more details about my ‘cousin’.
“That is not a charming man,” Emerson said quietly. “An unpleasant shadow hangs over him. Something dark has touched his mind in the past, and people inclined to evil succumb easily when darkness closes in.”
I shivered. Was darkness closing in? Was the whole town being overshadowed by the evil that had followed me home? Or was Dave just being Dave?
“Maybe it’s the missing neck,” I muttered, feeling no charity toward my neighbor. “I always kind of wondered why they didn’t put him on the short bus. It must be because he was good at football.”
“The short bus?” This got a blank look. My poet wouldn’t win at Jeopardy! In the pop-culture slang category any time soon.
“Not important.”
“He desires you.” This did not please Emerson any more than it did me.
“Uh-huh. But then Dave would sleep with anything in a skirt—excepting maybe a highlander. And if I were a Scotsman, I would watch out if he’d been drinking.” Emerson snorted and I relaxed.
“I’ll wager that he has never read your magazine. It would not occur to him to learn about you that way. And clearly he has something less than impeccable taste in women,” Emerson added, eyeing the trucks and trailers whose twin hitches were stuffed into low-rise jeans that invited all comers to admire their butts as they leaned over the pool table. “He also seems to prefer quantity over quality.”
“Read? Poetry? Certainly not. Dave is a man’s man and has very peccable tastes. He does eighteen rounds on eighteen beers, not eighteenth century poets.”
“He does draw a crowd though. There is some kind of dark charisma there.”
I glanced at Dave’s table. Emerson was right. People were three deep around him.
“And pigs draw flies, but that doesn’t concern us.” Or so I hoped. More loudly I added: “Let’s eat. This really smells delicious!”
Chapter 9
“There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell… Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful… they must sleep, or they will devour us— they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.”
—The Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe
My brain was making arguments so convoluted that my own shadow couldn’t follow me down the twisting paths of thought. And all because I found myself wanting to hold Emerson’s hand and couldn’t find a way to do it naturally. This was an impractcal impulse since we were both carrying groceries and also because I had the feeling that any attempts at hand holding would baffle the loner beside me. Still, there we were walking along in the crisp snow under the light of the moon and I felt like holding his hand and maybe singing something silly and romantic.
This was all rather shocking. Me? Holding hands with a man I barely knew? I had been getting by, content that I was no longer grieving 24-7, because for a time I had grieved even in my dreams. I had not actually imagined that someday I would be happy again. That I might even want to be happy again. But here I was, walking along in the snow and wanting to hold Emerson’s hand. And maybe do other things. Eventually.
Emerson had been very quiet since leaving Nona’s though and I was not sure why. His attention seemed focused inward. He did not seem in any way alarmed or even particularly watchful of our surroundings, so I could only assume that something else had happened to make him introspective. Something I had missed while stuffing myself with pizza. Maybe he just found my neighbors to be as annoying as I did now that I could hear what they talked about when out with friends.
“A penny for them,” I said lightly. Steam was rising off of our bodies making for a bit of an annoying personal fog. It was nice not to be bothered by the cold though.
Emerson turned and allowed himself a small smile as his eyes finally focused on my face.
“My apologies. I was trying to recall the last occasion when I dined alone with a woman and believe that it may have been during the second of the world wars.”
“And is this long ago memory is a good thing, or something bad?” I asked uneasily. The second world war? How was that possible? Could anyone be that much of a loner?
“A little of both, I think. Relationships have always been a struggle. How could I ask anyone to be near me when my very presence endangers them? My contact is necessarily fleeting.” He shook his head. “But it was only tonight that I realized that I have sorely missed some aspects of everyday society. Though I must ever be apart from them, there is pleasure in watching people go about their lives. They have such foreign thoughts. It is as though I am visiting another country.”
I nodded. A little solitude can go a long way and watching can be fun even when one doesn’t want to personally engage in an activity. And probably, with time, one learned not be overwhelmed b
y the acute smell and hearing that came with the change to the body. The stuff about not asking any woman to be near him because of the dangers rang a distant alarm bell, but I told myself that he didn’t mean me. After all, what else could happen now? I had already been bitten by a komodo dragon ghoul and Frankensteined into a… well, a monster. Albeit, a fairly pretty one.
“I have also enjoyed assisting you with your periodical— more than mere words can say. If time permits and you are agreeable, I should very much like to help you with future issues. It has been a century and more since I last took up an artful pen and made an illustration of someone else’s work.” His voice was the most animated that I had heard it and I found his pleasure to be catching.
“The pleasure would be all mine. I could not have finished this issue without you— and your drawings are amazing. They are almost perfect enough to be photgraphs.” Even as I said this, I again felt the push of something against my mind. The shove was hard enough to be painful and I exhaled sharply.
“What is it?” Emerson asked immediately.
“Damn. I think I’m going to have a vision. The pressure is building. It feels like my eyeballs might pop.”
“You’ve felt this pressure today?” he asked with some concern. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything about eyeball popping.
“Yes. I got a little nudge earlier but it went away. I haven’t had anything happen since… Baltimore. I thought maybe they were over with.”
“Will you be disabled if the vision comes?”
“If it’s strong enough. Usually I’m not wiped out, but this feels… forceful.” Cold clutched my heart as a horrible thought occurred. “I hope nothing is wrong with Clarice.”
“Let us make haste homewards. We will call her.”
But the sentiment came too late and I felt myself collapsing into the snow, bags dropping around me. The vision that came was like no other I have ever had. Visions make me freeze for seconds maybe a minute. My eyes jitter and I get the shakes. They do not knock me flat on the ground. My head hurts and I can be dizzy and disoriented, but I don’t faint or fall down. Also, the knowing is very straight foreward. I see a pregnant woman, I know she’s carrying a boy and it isn’t her husband’s. Simple. I am not precognative, nor do I see things that happened in the past. I don’t hallucinate or see cryptic symbols or ghosts either. Yet this vision felt like something that was all these things.
Standing in the yard, ozone thick on my tongue. Wind rushed at me, hurling snow with angry fists. The icy confetti latched onto my nightdress and clung with frozen claws. I actually heard the small flakes hiss at me as they passed. The wind also carried a smell of rot and sulfur that had me choking.
Out of the white, a shape formed. It was a relief that it wasn’t my sister. It was only an outline, but I recognized him immediately and felt both happy and sad.
“Gus,” I whispered, dropping to my knees and reaching for my dog. My dead dog.
Gus barked at me, and the sound was dry, terrifying. I knew it was a warning to stay away— but away from what?
I began to shake. The ninety-first psalm suddenly popped into my head and I heard myself begin to recite—“you shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor pestilence that walks in darkness, nor destructors that lay waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hands, but it shall not come near you…”
“Anna!” I came back to the present and found myself cradled in Emerson’s arms, half-reclining in the snow. In the branches of a barren oak above, I saw the outline of a raven. The trees shivered as if they too were frightened. “What was it? What ghastly thing did you see?”
“My dog,” I whispered. “But Gus is dead. Why would I see Gus? Why did he bark at me like that?”
“Hush. Don’t think of the ghost. It may not be an omen.” Emerson pulled into the heat of his body and stroked my hair. I let myself enjoy it for a moment, but began to feel frightened being out in the open. The urge to get behind a locked door was very strong though I already knew that locks and doors would not keep out the dead if they wanted in.
“It was a warning. I don’t know what it means but we need to get home,” I said, making a half-hearted attempt to free myself and regain my feet. I failed. “I don’t feel safe out here.”
“Of course.” Emerson pulled me to my feet and then looked up at the raven. The bird launched itself into the air and I knew that Emerson had sent it up so that he could spot anything creeping up on us. Knowing that the raven was watching over us helped me keep the hysteria at bay.
“I— I don’t know why that frightened me. Except it wasn’t a normal vision. I don’t see the past and I don’t do cryptic symbols and metaphors. Or ghosts. I only know what is happening now. And I didn’t like that Gus barked like that. He loved me. He wouldn’t try to drive me away.”
“You didn’t used to see the past or dream in symbols, but perhaps you will now. It is early days to know how the change might affect your gift.” Emerson scooped up all the bags, finished with letting me feel liberated by carrying half the load. That was good because my limbs felt heavy.
“I don’t want to see the past. I don’t want cryptic symbols,” I complained, sounding young and pettish. “I don’t even like knowing about the now.”
“No one does. But there are many unpleasant things in life that we must learn to accommodate.” Like the ghosts he saw through the eyes of dead flying things.
“Hmph.” But of course he was right. I couldn’t believe that I had called my sister on New Years Eve and complained about being bored. I should have known the gods would be listening and decided to intervene in some terrible way.
We made it home without incident and by the time I had called Clarice— her husband said she was at the gym— put the groceries away and made a pot of tea I was feeling almost calm again. After midnight the storm that had been stalking all day found its voice and started screaming. The wind scrabbled over the roof like a giant spider testing the eaves and chimney. At least I hoped it was the wind. The way things were going it seemed possible that we could end up fighting giant spiders.
“Should we ask the raven in?” I asked Emerson who was building up the fire. “It’s a terrible night out there.”
“No. He isn’t affected by the weather.”
—art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— the words popped into my head.
“Because he isn’t really a raven?” I guessed.
“Something like that,” Emerson agreed. I wanted that explained but was beginning to feel tired. The fatigue was more mental than physical, but I was sure that sleep was the only thing that would mend me.
“Go ahead and rest,” Emerson said as if I had spoken aloud. “I will take a last look outside and then we should turn in.”
“Okay,” I said and started rehearsing how I could I ask him to sleep with me without sounding either cowardly or wanton. Was there any way to make this request appropriate? He was so old-fashioned. I could easily see him riding horseback and scratching out poems with a quill pen. What I couldn’t envision was him sitting in an outhouse with the Sears Roebuck catalogue, or reacting with anything but embarrassment if a strange woman showed up in his room asking to share the bed.
Or was I just projecting my own imaginings? What did I really know about this man anyway?
Minutes passed and the fire died down. Worry began stirring again. I stopped trying to come up with an unembarrassing speech about sharing a room just for that night and began to listen to the storm. Its tone had changed. The noise level had dropped but something was raising the small hairs on my arm.
Alarmed, I went to look for Emerson and found him on the porch staring into the night, but without any movement of his unfocused eyes. Whatever he was looking at, he wasn’t seeing it with his pupils.
I heard a noise overhead and looked up quickly. Something with giant black wings moved across the moon. It
seemed enormous, the size of a dragon.
“Is that the…?”
“Raven. Yes. He’s hunting.”
“For you?”
“For ghouls. At my request. If anything is coming, it will probably be ghouls. Zombies don’t do well in cold and are hard to transport, but ghouls…. Very little slows a ghoul. That is what I would send.” He shrugged. “But so far we are clear. Perhaps good fortune attends us after all.”
“A shotgun? That will stop a ghoul,” I suggested, beginning to shiver. “I have one of those. And a pistol.”
“Yes, but remember if you are ever again confronted with a ghoul or zombie that they must be hit in both heart and head to bring them down.” Emerson shook himself and focused on me. I noticed a tracery of golden scars around his neck that hadn’t been there before. “Not that we need to worry about this tonight. The woods are empty. We should retire now. The storm is beginning and the lightning can make me— us— a bit reckless if we stay out in it. This storm is strong enough that we should not risk worsening it to any degree.”
And he was right about the storm, though there had been no predictions of more snow I could see the clouds that had briefly parted were again closing over the moon and I could feel the cold wind that drove them toward us as keenly as if I were naked. I also felt a weird euphoria rising in me. Or maybe it was rising in Emerson and I was only sensing his experience second hand. Which ever it was, I wanted to run out into the night and laugh and dance.
“Are you doing this?” I asked softly, laying a hand over my chest where I felt a line of scar tissue under my blouse. It was rising like goosebumps. My heart had also started beating faster.
“Yes. Or I was. I wanted it to snow and lay down a pristine carpet where we would see any tracks.”
“That’s weird. How can you do that?”
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