Forever and a Knight

by Bridget Essex

  I'm attracted to Attis.

  I want Attis.

  And we're from two different worlds; having each other is impossible.

  But as she bends her head toward me, as I feel the enormity of my pull toward her fill my heart and body, I wonder if I could torture myself with one small kiss. Yeah. Maybe one small kiss would be enough to hold me over, would be enough to take back with me when I return to my world.

  I know I'm talking myself into something that's going to hurt, so much, when I kiss her, when she kisses me, and then it has to stop. But for a heartbeat, I'm halfway there to convincing myself that the pain will be worth it, the pain of never being able to have this woman I'm falling for so completely...

  We're about to kiss, we're about to, so close that it's almost a kiss already...

  And that's when the scream comes again.

  Attis growls deep in her throat as she turns away from me, staring at the shut-and-locked door with dangerously flashing eyes. The scream, the long, lingering, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raising scream, came from directly out in the hallway, just beyond that shut-and-locked door.

  Attis moves swiftly, throws the lock again and pulls the door open with a rough yank.

  The ghost is there, standing in front of our door in the hallway—well, not really standing so much as hovering in midair. She's walking slowly, agonizingly slowly, floating about a foot or so off the ground, as she's pulled toward the balcony down the hall. She's making her slow parade down the hallway toward the railing...and the recreation of her death, I assume.

  Again.

  “Looping twice in a night? That's...odd,” says Attis quietly. Then she glances back at me, something flickering across her gaze as she shakes her head, turns and strides out into the hallway, following the ghost.

  I chase after her, shutting the door behind us, locking Wonder in the room.

  The ghost moves so slowly that we make an odd sort of procession as Attis and I follow her down the hall. We take a step about every thirty seconds. I feel like I'm in a Scooby Doo episode, tiptoeing around as we try to find the guy in the werewolf suit. I peer around Attis' shoulder at the ghost.

  “It's rather odd,” says Attis, then, voice husky as she whispers to me over her shoulder. Her voice is so low, the loud, raucous laughter down in the tavern makes it next to impossible for me to pick out her words, but I lean forward, listen closely. “Granted, I'm not well-versed in specters,” mutters Attis, narrowing her amber gaze in front of her, “but what little I know of them...they're usually spotted only once each night, and never more than once in a single evening. There must be something that's disturbing her spirit enough to make her go through this again, to awaken her from her spectral slumber, so soon after she just recreated her demise. Something is disturbing her enough to wake her.”

  “So, it's like in Poltergeist,” I say, then realize that, of course, she's going to have no idea what I'm talking about. “There's this...movie...” I say, charging right past the word “movie.” “Anyway, it's about a family who moves into a new house. But you don't know that this new house was built on an old burial ground, and the spirits of the people buried there were disturbed by the fact that houses were being built on top of their graves. So they start haunting the family.”

  “That's a common enough occurrence,” says Attis mildly, taking another step.

  And I, of course, bristle.

  Remember, I'm an eternal skeptic. That's why I always loved Scooby Doo so much. The “ghosts” and “werewolves” and all of the other “monsters” on the show always turn out to just be people in disguise. It's really, really difficult for me to accept all of this, any of this, even though it's right in front of my nose.

  No part of me ever believed in ghosts or anything otherworldly. I mean, how could I? I'm the type of person who needs proof, and science can't prove that paranormal stuff, and the television shows and popular movies about hauntings or alien sightings or, you know, whatever else you can lump into that category make it all sound so far-flung. Ridiculous and impossible.

  Just call me Scully. I don't want to believe, and I've never wanted to believe.

  And now here I am, in another world.

  This sort of thing is bound to turn anyone's worldview upside-down.

  I'm doing my best to keep an open mind about everything, approaching it all from a radio-show-host, journalistic-type perspective. From that angle, I can almost accept (without driving myself crazy) that this has happened, that somehow, magically, I ended up in another world without any rational explanation, and...I just have to roll with it. I am rolling with it, as best as I'm able. If I want to survive in this situation, I've got to not be that raving person who falls to pieces and keeps crying about the hot dog she can't have because it's a whole world away.

  And now I'm tiptoeing behind a knight stalking a ghost. Who just told me that the scenario in the movie Poltergeist is kind of common.

  Apparently, that's my hard limit of acceptance.

  “Really?” I find myself saying with a thick coating of sarcasm, but at that moment, the ghost, not having paid attention to anyone or anything beforehand...suddenly stops on a dime.

  The ghost, hovering in midair with her hair and skirts blown back in an invisible wind, turns.

  I find myself pinned to the spot. I'm not afraid, I realize distantly, as the ghost holds my gaze with burning black eyes.

  I should be afraid as she stares to the very deepest part of me, her mouth open, her mouth that, remember, is totally black on the inside. She opens her mouth, her black hole of a mouth, into a hideous, round “o.” If this were a horror movie, I'm at that moment where I'm probably supposed to die a grisly death, murdered by a vengeful ghost.

  But as I stare at her and as she stares at me, that's...all that happens. We stare at one another for a long, long moment.

  And then the ghost winks out and disappears, like a television flicked off, as if she were never there at all.

  “Interesting,” is what Attis says, folding her arms in front of her. She stares at the spot the ghost recently vacated, and then she turns and glances at me with one raised eyebrow, sighing out with a slight shake of her head.

  “What?” I ask her, biting my lip as I wrap my arms tightly around my middle, suddenly feeling more than a little odd.

  Kind of like I just saw a ghost.

  “You look like you just saw a ghost,” says Attis at that moment, her mouth turning up at the corners as her lips slide into a warm smile. Then she's chuckling to herself.

  “Great. Nice,” I tell her, but I'm laughing a little, too, voice weak. “That was...crazy. What just happened...” I trail off and glance up at her. “So, now what?”

  “Well,” says Attis, peering over the railing down at the bar area. “Shannon said she'd bring up dinner for the both of us soon.” She raises a single brow and puts her head to the side as she considers me. “And I think I have an idea for the ghost removal... I mean, exorcism.”

  “You do?” I ask her, as we head back to the room.

  “It's common enough lore that if we can get the specter to break her usual pattern, she might be freed,” says Attis, her eyes narrowed as she shuts the door behind us. “Just now, did you note how—when she turned and looked at you, which had not been part of her pattern before, she simply floated to the railing, stood on the railing and then leaped—that the ghost flickered and went out, like a guttering candle flame? It's odd, I feel, that she would look to you in particular. You don't have any magical power or talent that I'm aware of, but it was you that she looked to. My guess is that she was attracted to you because you come from another world, and she sensed that about you,” says Attis mildly, sitting down on her bed and leaning back on her hands as she glances at me with a small smile. “So, Josie, the question is: will you be bait for me?”

  “How so?” I ask her, brows furrowing as I frown. I pick up Wonder, who affectionately bites my hand, still purring, and I run my hand over her head again a
nd again, still feeling muddled and kind of wonky.

  Attis gets up smoothly, striding over to the far window. She pulls back the curtains and reveals diamond-paned glass that appears to open by a latch on the bottom edge. She undoes the latch and shoves against the window. It creaks and groans and finally gives beneath her pushing. Attis peers out, glancing down.

  “Oh, it's not far,” she says confidently. Mystified, I move to stand next to her, peering out.

  Uh...yeah. It's a two-story drop to the ground, where there just happens to be a very, very small pile of hay. I stare at her. What the hell is she up to?

  “You could make that jump, right?” asks Attis, turning to me with one brow raised.

  I just realized how close she is. Granted, I'm still holding my cat, my cat who is very affectionately (and robustly) chewing on my hand, as she purrs loudly between us. But still... We're so close, Attis and I. Again, I could kiss her.

  But I can't kiss her. What a terrible idea that would be.

  Just as terrible as jumping out this window.

  “Why the hell would you want me to make that jump?” I ask her, almost conversationally.

  “Because,” says Attis, tapping her finger on the window frame, “if you're able to get the ghost to follow you out the window, you'll not only break her pattern, but once the pattern is broken, her hold on this place will be no longer. It will allow her spirit to fly freely again, and to go to the land of the dead, rather than be trapped in this constant loop of death and despair. If her pattern is broken, if she can leave this house, you've freed her soul. You could help her, Josie,” says Attis softly, leaning closer to me, her mouth in a small, soft line.

  How can I refuse?

  How can I refuse her?

  “Sure,” is what I tell her. I paste on a fake smile, and I squeeze my cat so hard she lets out a little squeak. “It's just...a little jump.”

  And it'd be just a little kiss.

  I squash the thought as much as I can.

  Which is not enough.

  Chapter 7: The Leap

  After dinner, we sit, each of us on our beds, and consider our options.

  “We can't guarantee when the ghost will reappear. I'm assuming she'll come back again this night, though,” says Attis thoughtfully, wrapping her long fingers around the warm mug of coffee as she leans back against the roughly hewn headboard. “So, we simply wait,” she tells me, crossing her legs and glancing sidelong at me.

  “I'm so tired,” I tell her, wrapped in the blanket I pulled off the bed and still wearing my cannibal werewolf coat. The warmth of Wonder pressing on my stomach, of the blanket and the coat and the larger fire (Attis built it up, thankfully), with the delicious shepherd's pie digesting in my stomach...it's all too much. Especially after the day we had. I'm so tired, in fact, that I'm beginning to fall asleep sitting up.

  “Then sleep, Josie,” says Attis softly, gazing at me with warm eyes. “I'll wake you when it's time.”

  “Okay. Just...hurl myself out the window when I have the ghost's attention, right?” I mumble sleepily, finally lying down on the bed on my side, curling toward the fire.

  “Right,” Attis says with a small chuckle. “Just make sure to—”

  But whatever else she says after that is lost on me, since I fall asleep immediately.

  ---

  It's a common enough dream: I have it at least once a month. It's so familiar and well-worn that I know every last part of it, am aware enough during it that I know I'm dreaming, but still...I don't wake myself up. I don't do anything else but let myself dream it.

  This is my favorite dream.

  It's my favorite, because it's the last thing that connects me to her.

  My sister Ellie and I are at her apartment—about a month before the accident that took Ellie's life. The event that I dream about actually did happen; I remember it, remember that afternoon as one of the last memories of my sister, but the dream always deviates a little from what really happened that day, as dreams about real-life experiences tend to do.

  Ellie sits on her bulky red couch, blowing on her favorite mug filled with steaming green tea. She glances up at me with twinkling blue eyes as she wiggles her toes in her pink bunny slippers, and then she winks at me with such exaggeration, I find myself laughing.

  “You like her,” says Ellie then, all knowingly, her brows up and triumph clearly on her face, as if she just solved the greatest mystery of our generation.

  I stare at her in surprise. “Like who?” I ask.

  “Oh, really, you're going to play dumb?” she says, rising easily and plunking the mug of tea on the coffee table. She shakes her head so hard that her long, chestnut ponytail flops over her shoulders energetically. “Come on, Josie—let's cut to the chase. You like this knight chick. You actually like her a lot.”

  Even in the dream, I can begin to feel my blood pounding much quicker through me. “Ellie,” I begin, but she shakes her head, takes another step toward me, folding her arms in front of her, over her favorite pair of cat pajamas, a detail I always notice in the dream.

  Ellie always had this way about her... She called it “being psychic,” but I teased her that this was code for “being a total meddler.” Ellie's “being psychic” included that time she “intuitively knew” that Brandy from her yoga class and me would totally hit it off. Brandy and I did hit it off, but that's beside the point; there wasn't anything psychic about my big sister setting me up on a date with a woman she knew I'd find attractive. It's just what Ellie did. She meddled in my life, and she helped me out as only a big sister could.

  She's wearing that exact same mischievous, meddlesome expression now as she did then, when she set me up with Brandy.

  But it's a little more pronounced. She looks more than a little triumphant.

  “Spill,” says Ellie, leaning her elbows on her kitchen counter as she waggles an eyebrow at me. “Have you guys kissed yet?”

  “God, Ellie, no,” I tell her with a long sigh. I lean back against her sink, shrug. “I can't, okay? Just drop it. I'm attracted to Attis, yeah, but there's nothing I can do about it.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Ellie, flopping the top half of her body on the counter in an exaggerated movement of frustration. “Josie, seriously, you're on another world. Do you think this happens everyday? This is a moment in your life that you could never have predicted, and you're with this super hot warrior chick... I mean, why aren't you throwing yourself at her, if you're that damn attracted to her?”

  “Because, first off, I've never thrown myself at anyone in my entire life,” I tell her archly, tapping my toe on her black-and-white linoleum. “I mean, seriously, what do you take me for? I'm a hell of a lot cooler than that.”

  “There's such a thing as being cooler than a penguin, and how often do you think penguins get some? Don't be that cool; you'll shoot yourself in the foot,” she says, shaking her head as her eyes twinkle at me. “Okay, so don't throw yourself at her, but seduce the hell out of her, pour on the charm, and, damn, would you just make a move already? It's so obvious that she's into you, and you're being so stoic about it that it practically hurts to watch,” says Ellie, brows high.

  “So what if she's into me?” I ask her, using the same logic that you always have in dreams: of course, somehow, Ellie knows all this, knows that I'm attracted to Attis and that Attis is attracted to me. I accept the fact that I'm, somehow, speaking to my dead sister—because this is a dream. And anything's possible here.

  Ellie stands, then, her teasing expression gone as she skirts the counter quickly and meets me in her kitchen. She stands in front of me, and she grips my shoulders tightly with her hands, shaking me a little as her brows furrow, as her bright blue eyes turn stormy.

  “Josie, you've got to wake up, sweetheart,” she says, all laughter and smiles gone, replaced, instead, by a deep grimace. “This is so important. You've got to act on your feelings, or you're going to regret it for the rest of your life, I promise you. Stop ta
lking yourself out of everything wonderful in your life, baby. You deserve to be happy.”

  I stare at her, my eyes filling with tears as I take a deep breath, as I feel the world falling away from beneath me.

  My sister hugs me tightly, just the way she used to, when she was trying to convince me that life was really okay, that things turned out for good people.

  She's hugging me just like she used to before she was taken away from me.

  Ellie steps back, shaking her head, her eyes wide. What's strange is that, behind her, I see something big and silver move, but it's so blurry because everything's becoming fogged up; I can't quite make out what it is.

  It reminds me of something. Of a big silver animal...

  “Josie,” Ellie tells me with urgency. “You've got to wake up—”

  ---

  “Josie? Wake up—”

  I open my eyes and take a deep breath.

  The ghost is hovering over my bed.

  “Josie...it's all right. Don't be afraid,” says Attis smoothly, her voice soft and warm and reassuring, even as this ghost, a see-through woman with black eyes and a black mouth that's unhinging, as if she wants to take a bite out of my soul, hovers over me.

  Technically, I should be utterly terrified. But, again, for some strange reason, I'm not afraid at all as I stare up into this ghost's black eyes. I listen to Attis' voice, to the calm strength of it. Her voice is all I can really hear.

  “All right, Josie,” says Attis easily now. She's sitting on her bed, I realize, the mug of coffee probably gone cold in her hands. “You're going to have to get up, get out of the bed,” she says, every word smooth and easy. “Can you do that for me?”

  “I think so,” I whisper, unsure. My cat isn't curled up on me anymore... I wonder where she's gotten to (though she can't have gone far; the room's pretty small). I sit up slowly, and the ghost rises a little into the air above me.

  “All right,” says Attis, standing and striding quickly toward the door. “Josie, I'm going to go outside. You must keep the ghost's attention, keep her from going back to the hallway and throwing herself off the balcony. The window is open. When you hear me calling you from outside, you jump out the window. And I'll catch you.”