The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

by Martin H. Greenberg

  “And then . . . my daughter?”

  “Probably not. It doesn’t pass down blood-lines. But when they are, you’ll be free.”

  Maggie said, “You’ve never had children, have you?”

  And Gran’s voice was surprisingly bitter. “Oh, I’ve had ’em,” she answered. “Outlived them all.”

  Maggie reached out and placed a hand over Gran’s in something that was too visceral to be called sympathy. “When is it over, for you?”

  “I get to choose,” the old woman replied.

  “And I don’t.”

  “No. I often thought the mother got the rawest deal. No choice at all about having the children, only a choice about how they’re raised. Raise ’em well,” she added, “and the world changes.”

  Maggie looked openly sceptical. “The world?”

  “There’s a lot of difference between 1946 and 1966,” the old woman replied softly. “And trust me, you wouldn’t have liked living in either year.”

  “You’re going to be with me for a while?”

  “While you learn the ropes,” Gran replied. “But don’t be an idiot. Learn quickly.” She got up and headed toward the front door.

  Maggie’s voice followed her. “If there’s a mother, and a crone,” she said, the growing distance forcing her to speak loudly and quickly, “what about a maiden?”

  Gran’s snort carried all the way back to the kitchen.

  “She’s a strange woman,” Maggie said at last. “How old is she?”

  I shrugged. “I asked her once.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She almost made me wash my mouth out with soap. It wasn’t considered a polite question.”

  Mags laughed. I love it when she laughs.

  “She’ll probably answer that one later. She likes to parcel out information.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s sadistic.”

  Winter passed. Darkness made way for longer days and the snow melted.

  Maggie started to garden, which scared me. Not only did she start, but she took to it with a passion that was only slightly scarier than the ferocity with which she watched out for her children.

  Things grew when she touched them. Me? I’m no black thumb, but green isn’t my colour either; it takes work. I envied Maggie, the way I envy someone with a natural singing voice. I would have put my foot down when she started collecting stray cats, but hey, it wasn’t my house. And the kids seemed to like the cats—Connell even managed to survive pulling out a whisker or two from one of them.

  But it wasn’t until the height of Summer that Gran chose to answer the question about the maiden. She invited herself over to Maggie’s. Apparently, all conversations of import were to be held at Maggie’s. I think this is because Gran didn’t particularly care to have children destroying the knick knacks in her house. Either that or because Gran’s cats weren’t as tolerant as Maggie’s.

  Tea was like ritual, although without the fuss. The pot sat in the centre of the table; Connell toddled his way around the chair, and Shanna drew pictures while laying flat out against ceramic tile. Unfortunately, some of those pictures tended to bleed off the page, so the floor was a bit more colourful than it had been when the previous owner had laid down said ceramic tiles.

  “So,” Gran said quietly. “You’ve started gardening.”

  Maggie’s smile was calm and warm.

  “And cat collecting. I’d advise you to take up a fondness for rabbits instead.”

  “Why?”

  “Less of ’em. They’re still work,” she added. But she shrugged. “The kids are growing.”

  Maggie smiled fondly. She still looked like the same woman I’d first met—but not when she smiled. “I wanted to thank you both. But I also wanted to ask a question.”

  Gran snorted. She had her pipe in her hand, but she didn’t light it. Mags would have thrown her out of the front door and watched to see how many times she bounced; she respected age and wisdom, but smoking around her children was a definite no-go. Gran seemed to expect this, and as she was in Mags’ house, she obeyed the unspoken rules.

  “You’re the crone. I understand what you do.”

  “What?”

  “You preserve wisdom,” Maggie replied. “Collective wisdom. Maybe bitter wisdom.”

  “It’s all bitter.”

  “Maybe. But necessary.”

  That got a ‘good girl’ out of the old lady.

  “I’m the mother, and I understand—I think—what that means.”

  “Better harvests,” Gran said.

  Maggie raised a brow.

  “It’s true.”

  “Well,” she said, looking doubtfully out at her garden, “we’ll see.” She picked up her cup, staring at the cooling tea. “What does the maiden do? Preserve our innocence?”

  Gran snorted. “You’ve been reading those trashy novels again.” It was a bit of a bone of contention between them.

  Maggie chose to let the matter drop; she really was curious.

  “Look,” Gran said, with open disgust, “just how innocent do you think you were when you were a maiden?”

  “Well,” Maggie said, defensive in spite of her best intentions, “I wasn’t the maiden now, was I?”

  Gran laughed. “Good answer! No, you weren’t. But I’m going to tell you that you’re confusing innocence with inexperience.”

  “That’s her way of saying stupidity,” I added.

  “Got that.” She looked over at her daughter, who had finished her odd drawing and had started in on another piece of paper. Shanna was humming a song I tried very hard not to recognize. Because Gran didn’t hold with television much, either.

  “You think that the maiden is supposed to preserve stupidity?”

  “I didn’t use the word.”

  Gran snorted again. “Innocence implies guilt.”

  “Stupidity implies—”

  “Not guilt,” Gran snapped, before Maggie could get started. Watching the two of them, I could almost see a familial connection between them, and you know what? I almost got up and slunk out of the room. “Innocence is a Unicorn word. It’s a defacement. It’s a linguistic injustice, an act of defilement.”

  “Unicorns speak?”

  Gran’s laugh was dark and ugly. And unsettling. “You wore that ring for how many years, and you have to ask?”

  Maggie’s turn to get dark. “It didn’t exactly whisper into my ear.”

  I really wanted to be anywhere else.

  “It did. You just weren’t listening. You want it back? I’ll give it to you. You’ll probably hear a lot more now.”

  Maggie’s brows rose. “You didn’t destroy it?”

  Gran hesitated for just a second, and a shudder seemed to pass through her. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m no warrior,” she replied.

  “The maiden is a warrior?”

  Gran was quiet for a long time. “At her best,” she said at last, “she can be.”

  “And at her worst?”

  “Lost.”

  “Was there a maiden, back when there was a mother?”

  Gran said nothing at all for a long time. Silent Gran? Always made me nervous.

  “Look, what is the maiden about?”

  “Sex,” Gran replied primly.

  Maggie stared at her as if she’d started speaking in tongues.

  One week later, round two.

  “So, the maiden is about sex?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “If she’s about sex, she can hardly be a maiden.”

  Gran shook her head. “That’s Unicorn talk,” she said firmly.

  “Will you quit that?”

  “I could call it something else, but you probably don’t want Shanna to repeat it at school.”

  Maggie hadn’t asked for the ring back, and failed to mention it. Gran failed to offer. This was an armistice.

  “The maiden has always been the most vulnerable of the three,” Gran co
ntinued. “The hardest to find. The hardest to keep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “It’s the sex.”

  “Something like that.”

  Maggie turned to me. “Your grandmother is driving me crazy.” Unfair, trying to drag me into the discussion. “It’s because of the sex, right? There aren’t a lot of young women who don’t. Have sex.”

  “It’s because of the sex, but not in the way you think. You’re thinking like a Unicorn,” she added. So much for armistice.

  “Look, what are Unicorns? I’ve seen a lot of pretty pictures, and I’ve read a lot of pretty books. I’ve done more internet research on that than I have on almost anything, and my saccharine levels are never going to be the same. For something malign, they seem to occupy a lot of young girls’ minds.”

  “Not the practical ones,” Gran snapped.

  “Fine. Not the practical ones. Are we looking for a practical girl?”

  Gran seemed to wither. “No,” she said at last. “We’re not. That’s why it’s so hard. To find her. To save her.”

  “She dies?”

  “Not the way you or I do. But her gift is the easiest to lose. It gets passed on, but sometimes it’s just the blink of an eye.”

  “Unicorns are usually associated with purity.”

  “What the hell is purity?” Gran snapped. “A bottled water slogan?”

  Round three.

  “Okay. If the maiden isn’t defined by not having sex, and she isn’t defined by purity—which,” Mags added, holding a squirming Connell while trying to get him to eat, “I’ll agree is pretty nebulous, I have two questions.”

  “You’ve got a lot of questions. How, precisely, are you intending to pay for the answers?”

  Maggie glared. It was a pretty glare. “By being the mother,” she snapped.

  Gran nodded, as if this was the only answer she expected. “What are your questions?”

  “One: there are three. Maiden. Mother. Crone.”

  Gran nodded.

  “You’ve been waiting for me.”

  Nodded again, but more wary this time.

  “But we’re only two. The third one must be important.”

  “She’s important.”

  “But you weren’t waiting for her.”

  Snorting, the old woman said, “I wasn’t exactly waiting for you, either. I just knew you when I saw you.”

  “Fine. And the maiden?”

  “You’re not going to let go of this, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Be like that. What’s the other question.”

  “You haven’t answered the first one yet.”

  “Never promised answers.”

  “She is really driving me crazy.”

  “Hah. You’re getting there on your own.”

  “What is her role? Why is she important?”

  “It’s the sex,” Gran said quietly. “And not the sex. It’s not the act; it’s the possibility inherent in the act.”

  Maggie looked pointedly down at Connell.

  “The maiden never has children.”

  “Why?”

  “Because children are the mother’s. Try to pay attention.”

  “So she gets to have—”

  Gran held up a hand. “She’s important, because she’s dreaming,” she said quietly. “Dreams are fragile, and endless; they’re also a tad self-centered. Have to be. Heroes dream. She’s dreaming, and she can walk in any direction she wants. She has a freedom that neither you nor I have.”

  “You envy her?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I’ve seen what happens to dreams,” was the bitter reply. “Young girl dreams. You’re right. I was stupid.”

  Gran’s smile was bitter. Old. “I didn’t say you were stupid,” she said. She had, but I didn’t point this out. “Or if I did, I didn’t mean it.” She sighed, and caressed the bowl of her pipe. “Sex is union,” she said quietly. “When it’s done right. Union of body. A glimpse of dream. It transfigures us.”

  “Sex is about babies.”

  “Wasn’t always.”

  “Is now.”

  “Hah. You want my answer?”

  Maggie shut up.

  “Having sex doesn’t destroy the maiden. Abstinence doesn’t define her—unless she lets it. The maiden has freedom. But she doesn’t see it yet. Maybe she will. More likely, she’ll lose it; shackle it; accept what others tells her. By the time she wakes up, she’s given over dreams to reality. She’s become something solid, but she’s not—”

  “The maiden.”

  “Not anymore, no.”

  Maggie was thoughtful. “This is why you haven’t looked for her.”

  “She’s not entirely necessary,” was the reluctant reply, “and she’s much abused. Always. It’s hard. To keep her. And it’s damn painful to lose her,” she added.

  “How can you say she’s not entirely necessary?”

  “Sometimes dreams have edges. Sometimes they just cause pain.”

  “A world without dreaming—”

  “There will never be a world without dreaming,” Gran replied.

  “Joan of Arc was a maiden?”

  “Maybe. And look what happened.”

  “Buffy?”

  “Buffy?”

  “Television character,” I told Gran. I started to explain, and she lifted a hand. “Maybe. First two seasons at any rate.” Which really surprised me, given that Gran doesn’t hold with television. “But she’s not real. If she existed, she would be.”

  “So all we have to do is find—”

  “We don’t have to find anything.” Gran stood up. End of conversation.

  Question two was never asked.

  Maggie’s hands were on her hips. Unfortunately, no children were. This was her battle posture, and I didn’t much like it. “Your grandmother drives me nuts.”

  “She has that effect on people.”

  “I thought wisdom was supposed to be soothing.”

  “Judge for yourself.”

  Maggie snorted. “We need to go on a Unicorn Hunt,” she said at last.

  Which more or less brings us full circle. “Why?”

  “Because.”

  More argument, which I’ve already mentioned, followed by grim silence, which I may have failed to add.

  “The ring,” she said at last. “I would have held on to that ring forever. And it would have cost me my life. No, I’m not saying it would kill me—but look at me now. Look at me then. I’m alive now. I live in the present.” She walked over to her computer and flipped up the lid. I suppose it won’t come as a surprise to say Gran doesn’t hold with computers much either, so I’m not real familiar with how they work.

  “So you want revenge?”

  Maggie was silent. For a minute. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever understood why your grandmother calls you stupid,” she said in a flat voice.

  “Ouch.”

  “Live with it.” Maggie shouted a warning to Shanna, who seemed intent on turning two teetering chairs into a makeshift ladder. “I know the maiden is out there,” she said at last.

  “Pardon?”

  “I know she’s out there. I think she’s close.”

  “How?”

  “Because I feel younger than I have in years,” she replied softly. “And I feel—right now—that I can do anything.”

  “You’re the mother,” I told her.

  “Even the mother has to dream. Maybe especially the mother.” She looked fondly at the head of her younger child. “Look at this.” The computer was now flickering.

  “Unicorn hunt.”

  “It’s all garbage,” she added. “I’m sure your Gran was right about that.” Big concession. “But there’s got to be a grain of truth in this somewhere. What if,” she added, as her fingers added prints to the screen, directly across the face of a painted woman with a delicate, horned head in her lap, “it’s true?”

  “What’s true?”


  “Not that Unicorns are drawn to virgins,” she said, “but that they’re drawn to maidens.”

  “Which is usually the same thing.”

  “In Unicorn speak.”

  “Don’t you start that too.”

  Maggie didn’t seem to hear me. “If we go out on a Unicorn hunt,” she continued, “we’re bound to find the maiden.”

  “Okay. But.”

  “But?”

  “What the hell does a Unicorn want with the maiden, anyway?”

  “My guess? To kill her,” she said softly.

  “That’s phallic.”

  “Idiot.”

  “And all that rot about Unicorn horns and healing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s something in that. We can always find out.” She paused. “But I’m guessing that Unicorns don’t actually look like this either.”

  “They’d be pretty damn hard to miss.”

  So Maggie and I went over to Gran’s house. Gran was waiting for us on her porch. Which is to say, she was sitting on it, her arms crossed, her expression pure vinegar.

  “You know why we’re here,” Maggie said, without preamble.

  “I might.”

  “We need your help.”

  Gran pushed herself out of her chair. “I don’t have a lot of help to offer,” she said at last. “You’re going in search of the maiden.”

  “We’re going in search of Unicorns,” Maggie replied firmly. “And we’re not certain that we’ll be able to even see them.”

  “You might. She won’t.”

  “I think you can see them well enough, if a glint of ring could tell you so much. We need to be able to see them.”

  “You won’t like it,” Gran said, as if that would make a difference.

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll live; we all do what we have to.” She paused, and then added, “I’d like it if you kept an eye on the kids while we’re out.”

  “That’s your job.”

  “Yes. And I’d guess yours would be to find the maiden, which you aren’t doing.”

  Gran relented so quickly it was pretty clear she’d already made her decision. “I’ll go to your place,” she said. “They won’t be as safe here.”

  The tone of her voice made me wonder if I’d misjudged her reasons for keeping them out of her house in the first place. And I liked the older reasons better.

  She gave us glasses. Sort of. Nothing you could wear on your face, though. She gave us some sort of sticky, foul-smelling ointment as well. “You might need it,” she said. “But if you don’t, don’t waste it. Costs a fortune to make.”