Mistwalker

by Saundra Mitchell

  “I ask for it.”

  Grey gestured at the stairs, which were suddenly present again. Tucking the book beneath his arm, he started up and just expected me to follow. So I stood at the bottom and waited for him to turn around.

  “Maybe you could answer me without all the cryptic woo-la-la?”

  “Before I go to bed at night,” he said, then leaned against the rail, interrupting himself. “Forgive me for skipping my bedchamber. I wouldn’t feel right accepting female callers there.”

  Impatient, I leaned against the rail on my end too. I was fed up. If he was real, he was gonna be real. He was the one who talked all big about being completely honest with each other. Lifting my chin, I said, “Whatever, Grey. You were saying?”

  “I think about what I want, and in the morning, it’s on my breakfast plate. I often wish for music-box parts. But sometimes I ask for something new to read. Sometimes today’s newspaper. Once, I asked for a way to see the world beyond the island. I expected a telescope.”

  “What did you get?” I asked.

  “The Internet.” He gestured at a desk that hadn’t been there a moment before. A laptop gleamed there, a thousand times nicer than the beat-up desktop my whole family shared.

  I found myself walking toward him. “How’s that working out for you?”

  “Not well,” he admitted. Holding his elbow out, he waited for me to take it. Then he glided up the stairs with me, his feet barely making a sound. “When I turn it on, it displays newspapers and nothing more. There’s war everywhere. Homicides in Baltimore. Missing children, State Fair disasters, a woman who’s grown the state’s largest pumpkin . . .”

  Flooded with realization, I said, “It only shows you the news. A way to see the world outside the island.”

  “Precisely.”

  Grey pushed open a hatch, and wind swept over us. Cold and strong, it tried to keep us from climbing onto the beacon platform. We pushed back, and I caught my breath. I was surrounded by the sea. It was green and endless, stretching in every direction.

  There was nothing between me and the ocean but air. Nothing split my vision of it. For a screwed-up second, I wondered what would happen if I dived into it. If I’d hit the water and turn into foam.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Grey said. Even when he stood away from me, his voice got close.

  “I love this.” Then, before he got any ideas, I added, “The water. This is most of the world, you know. From space, it’s sea and more sea, with a little bit of land to break it up.”

  Grey’s expression shimmered. “From space?”

  I leaned over the rail, pointing to the sky. It had started to turn, purple in the east and crimson in the west. Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight. “From the moon. We went there. Lots of times. We have pictures from there.”

  The air sizzled. Grey leaned with me, turning his silver face to the sky. “Pictures from the moon . . .”

  “You like astronomy?” I asked.

  He didn’t look over. His faint smile twisted, into something painful and staid. “I like any view that’s not this one.”

  A bunch of gears clacked behind me, and the beacon simmered to life. Starting dim, it spun slowly, growing brighter with each pass. It shocked me, how much heat it threw off. My back stung with it.

  “It’s not so bad,” he said softly.

  He looked across the water to my village. I followed his gaze, and I don’t know what he saw. What moved in him when he looked at it.

  But to me, it was beautiful. My heart wrenched, wistful. Weirdly homesick. Because it all looked perfect. Nothing to care about from this high up, nothing bad ever happened in that little town. They sailed home on glassy seas with full pots. Everything they planned happened the way they hoped.

  Grey put a hand on my back. Its chill chased away the heat from the light. “Willa?”

  “What do you know, anyway?” I asked.

  Quiet, Grey ticked his tongue against his teeth. Then, he sat on the rail. He reached for me with his wispy fingers, curling them gently against my chin. He was still only shades of grey, but there was a light in his eyes. A dark spark that reacted in the shadows, leaping up.

  Finally, he parted his lips and whispered, “I know you’re not alone.”

  That touch stayed on my skin. It crept into my bones and tightened around me like a fist. As I walked home, I didn’t look back. I felt Grey, on that island, watching me. I knew he was there; knew he could see me.

  From that lighthouse, he saw me. That lighthouse, where nothing but a fall stood between him and the whole ocean. Where some kind of spell brought him everything he wanted. As I slipped into a quiet house, I thought hard at the kitchen. I dared it to give me a turkey dinner, to put Levi in the chair across from mine.

  But my kitchen was cold. Dark. Quiet. Thick clouds hung in the windows. It wasn’t even bright enough for shadows. Opening the fridge, I stood there in a cold glow. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent a text to Bailey. It was a whisper into nothing, and she didn’t answer.

  Helping myself to cold chicken and old potato salad, I made myself a plate and sat down alone. I rifled through the mail. The mortgage I ignored, and I tossed the light bill aside. Those weren’t for me, not anymore. Neither was the coupon for a tune-up or a catalog for mail-order clothes.

  At the bottom of the stack, I found an open envelope from an insurance company. There was a letter inside, and it caught my eye because it said SETTLEMENT ENCLOSED. Stapled to a letter, a receipt fluttered when I pulled it free. It was made out to the estate of Levi Matthew Dixon.

  My dinner turned to cold weight in my belly. No wonder Daddy didn’t want my money. I killed his son and paid a year of house payments all at the same time. Suddenly, I wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t look at me anymore.

  I dumped my plate in the trash. I about escaped the kitchen, but Daddy came in the back door. He brought the ocean with him, the smell of it on his wet clothes. He brought the bitter, ashy scent of cigarette smoke, too. It trailed after him like a cloak.

  Pulling off his hat, he stared past me. “Standing around in the dark?”

  “On my way to bed.”

  “Your mother bought you a dress.”

  The calendar seemed to rustle, reminding me of my court date. More weight piled onto my shoulders. What difference did it make what I wore to give myself up? Couldn’t I surrender what was left of my life in jeans and a sweatshirt?

  Daddy headed for the back stairs. “If you want to argue about it, you can wait for her.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  With a look back, he sighed. “Stay off the boat. I mean it this time.”

  Of course he knew. Dropping lobster pots isn’t exact. I replaced them as best I could, but there had to be little differences. A degree off here or there, a trap too close to the next one in the string.

  I could have argued with him. Lied about it. But he wasn’t stupid, and neither was I. He wasn’t being hardheaded about the boat to punish me now. After my court date, I couldn’t get caught on the Jenn-a-Lo when there was gear on deck or in the water. The Coast Guard would seize it all. The boat, the gear, the catch. They’d take Daddy’s license, too.

  “Your boy stopped by.”

  “He’s not my boy anymore.”

  Daddy rolled his eyes; he didn’t try to hide it. “I’m just giving you the message.”

  Grabbing a bottle of water, I twisted the top off viciously. He wasn’t just doing anything. It was real clear he thought I had a knack for screwing everything up. My insides tangled and turned, leaving me queasy.

  It was easy to imagine him and Seth sitting on a tailgate together. Shoulders slumped the same way, baseball hats pushed back a little too far. Talking all low, short sentences like they always did, waiting for me to come to my damned senses.

  Snatching my phone off the table, I took it to the dooryard so I could get some air and to bother Bailey some more. Another message into the air, and silence came back.
I texted my mother, asking where the dress was. She didn’t reply either.

  I was alone in the dark. Not just alone; lonely. Considering the phone, I punched two numbers, then stopped. I wasn’t about to go running after Seth. All my emptiness ached. It was gore under my skin, raw and red.

  Pulling my hood up, I hiked back to the wharf. The light swung over me, so solid—I wondered if I could catch it, walk across it to Jackson’s Rock.

  The ocean wasn’t the same from the shore now. Earth, solid earth, rock and stone, pushed me from behind. I could walk into the waves, but I wouldn’t be surrounded by them. I’d soar over them.

  Out on the Rock, Grey was probably sitting down to supper. Making his wishes for books that weren’t out yet, or a nice iPad to go with his half-assed Internet connection. All those music boxes . . . all that peace and quiet, surrounded by the sea. He had everything he wanted.

  And I was jealous.

  TWELVE

  Grey

  My kitchen is empty now. The stairs, silent. My sitting room nothing but a museum. I have a bowl of broth for supper, and two slices of bread. They go untouched as I flick through the pages of my book.

  Sometimes, I realize that my routine is a lie. I’m not real. My body isn’t flesh. I don’t need to shave, or to eat, or to sleep. When I cut my hair, I’m only rearranging the mist that shapes me. When I tremble in Willa’s presence, I fool myself into believing my emotions are sensations.

  I touch her, and in that moment, I trust my hand rests on her shoulder. If I were to cling to her or card my fingers through the light that should be her hair, I would believe it.

  She would too.

  It’s magic’s perception. All these things I do, I do because they’re vestiges of my humanity. I have habits, because I still consider myself a human being.

  But now . . . so close to becoming real again, the artifice is never more evident to me. Trailing my gaze along the walls, I notice the edges of the illusion. Those places where I failed to expect something. Mist hangs in those spaces, obscuring the incomplete picture that is my prison.

  This, I realize, is why the only room in the lighthouse is the room I’m in. The stairs come and go because I only need them when I walk to the lantern galley. Because it makes sense for my bedchamber to be above the kitchen.

  Willa’s presence looms. I feel her in every room now. I hear her voice in the grinding gears of the lamp. I see flickers of copper in my kitchen; her chair isn’t tucked beneath the table where it belongs. It sits at an angle, just as she left it.

  Closing my eyes, I hold myself painfully still. In the dark, nothing exists around me. Now that I understand this, I blossom with a terrible fear. This lighthouse is empty. These dinners are lies. The beribboned boxes at my plate are fantasy.

  Now that I know this, now that I can so keenly feel the difference between flesh and fantasy, what will I see when I open my eyes?

  With a breath I don’t need, I steel myself. Then I look.

  The kitchen remains the kitchen. The black stove radiates warmth; my fish broth has gone cold. With my fingers lifted, my book’s pages flicker and flip, losing my place. Willa’s chair remains askew. The walls vibrate still from the mechanicals working overhead. An ordinary, awful listing of things that simply are.

  There’s a difference between thinking and believing. I can no more prove myself unreal than I can prove myself real. Finer philosophers and thinkers than I have tried it; some may have achieved it. Ascendance from their mortal remains, existing as pure thought and naught else.

  My logic was ruined when I closed my eyes. To truly accept my nothingness, I would have needed to believe that I had no eyes to close.

  “I hope you’re embarrassed,” I tell myself.

  Stirring my broth, I upset the sediment in the bowl. It swirls, white haze like fog.

  THIRTEEN

  Willa

  “I wish you’d quit climbing on my trellis,” Bailey’s mom called out.

  One hand on the second-story window and one foot on the trellis, I leaned over and offered an apology through the window. “Sorry, Ma. I was trying to sneak up on her.”

  Ma Dyer came to the window, lifting the sash so I could hear her more clearly. “Works out better for everybody when you come through the door. My clematis lives and you get cookie dough.”

  Hopping down, I pointed toward the back, then headed that way. Bailey and her mother were the only people in Broken Tooth who locked their doors. Bailey because her mom insisted on it. Ma Dyer because she liked choosing the time and place when she’d socialize. By day, she did medical transcription. By night, she liked to paint. If it weren’t for my mom and Bailey, Ma Dyer might have been a straight-up hermit.

  The deadbolt chunked, and the back door swung open. I got one foot inside and found myself gathered in warm, fleshy arms. Even though I towered over her, Ma Dyer managed to wrap me up completely. The kitchen smelled of onions and garlic. The cookie dough was for eating, not baking.

  With a shake, Ma Dyer set me free. Reaching for the bowl of dough, she dangled it from her fingers, toward me. “You don’t come around much anymore, kid.”

  “I’ve been sticking close to home.”

  Ma Dyer snorted, moving so I could open the silverware drawer and claim a spoon. “That’s not what your mother says.”

  Shrugging, I skimmed my spoon into the bowl. “I bet.”

  “It’s not my business.” Ma Dyer shrugged. “But she’s having a hard time right now. Try to help her breathe a little, will you?”

  Though she didn’t mean anything by it, the advice rankled. Since the funeral, there was always somebody asking about my parents. Wanting to know how they were. If I was being strong for them. Telling me to take care of them.

  All along, I tried. The bills got paid; the phone got answered. I donated my boyfriend for sternman when Daddy wouldn’t let me go myself.

  If people didn’t ask how I was, that was fine. It was my fault, a disaster I built with my own two hands. People were good enough to keep that to themselves. Still, it seemed backwards that everybody expected me to take care of everything.

  I did it because Dixons are proud, and they keep their own. I would have done it anyway. It was everybody whispering it in my ear that left me full of sour, bitter anger.

  Had anybody taken my dad aside and reminded him to care for me? I knew Mom hadn’t gotten that advice, because it would have insulted her. She would have ranted the air blue about it and probably made me pancakes.

  Losing Levi had been a direct ticket to the hall of mirrors. Everything distorted. Nothing certain. I scraped up a buttery mouthful of dough, then dropped my spoon into the sink.

  “Fanks for the cookies,” I said.

  Then I took the stairs two at a time. Photos quivered on the wall, all the way to the landing. Bailey grew up step by step—her hair crazy white blond when she was a baby. With each school picture and summery snapshot, it grew darker. Her eyes grew more thoughtful.

  The bathroom door opened, and Bailey padded into the hall. Swathed in orange terry cloth, she looked like a steamed tangerine. Smiling curiously, she tightened her towel. “What’s up?”

  “Chicken butt,” I replied. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Ma caught me on the trellis. She punished me with cookie dough.”

  With a laugh, Bailey started down the hall to her room. “That’ll learn you.”

  “Won’t it, though?”

  I ducked into her room and helped myself to the bed. With my gaze, I traced the patterns we’d made with the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. We grew up with real astronomy: a constant, nagging awareness of the moon, the stars, the tides. So in sixth grade, we made up our own constellations.

  While Bailey dressed, I drew outlines in the air with my finger. The witch ball. Captain Jack’s rum. The bloodworm. My throat tightened, though I wasn’t sure why. We had a year yet. Our stars were immovable.

  “So how’s things?” I asked.

  Bailey pulled a s
weatshirt over her head. “With Cait? Still weird. With SAT prep? Still terrifying. Oh, and my best friend. She went and got a little barmy, so I’m worrying about her, too.”

  “Screw her,” I said with a snort. Rolling onto my side, I stuffed Bailey’s pillow under my head. “I saw the Grey Man. Up close.”

  Another snort and Bailey hauled her hair from her collar. “What have you been smoking?”

  “I’m being dead level with you, Bay.”

  “Okay. I don’t want to upset the delicate nature of your fish senses or whatever, but here I go. Don’t freak.” Twisting her hair into a loose knot, Bailey fixed it with a pencil and then flopped at her desk. One of her toy tops wobbled, threatening to hit the floor. Scooping it into her hand, she set it on the floor and spun it. “There’s no such thing as the Grey Man, baby.”

  “What if I told you I really, really have seen him?”

  Bailey stepped on the top to still it. Picking it up with her toes, she tossed it out of the way and came to sit beside me. Her hands were still hot from her shower, radiating heat right through my jacket. “Then I’d be really, really worried about you.”

  “He made me cocoa.”

  “Why are you messing with me?”

  Things were a lot simpler back in our fake-constellation days. We’d believe anything together, back then. The time that had passed had cured us of fantasy, though. Even if I spilled out the whole truth, she wouldn’t be convinced. Not unless I carted her to the lighthouse and made her sit down for a cup of tea with Grey. That would happen half past never, by my clock.

  I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just mean, I guess.”

  Bailey used me for a chair. Leaning against me, she planted her bony elbows into my back. Echoing my sigh, she rolled her head to look at me. “You seen Seth?”

  “I’ve been trying not to.”

  Soft laughter bubbled from Bailey. Digging one elbow in, she leaned over to whisper. “He’s pretty miserable.”