But Bryony had been a ghost since before she was born. She was the girl who was born to die, and so never really lived, even though she had certainly tried. She would ignore these screams, and Peter, and would send the police to look for him later, which was rather kind of her, considering. But that might be useless, because she knew exactly what was happening to him.
He was being punished for letting her go.
The frightened, creeping things of the desert had found Peter. They were clinging to him with their claws and teeth and stingers. They wrapped their thorns and vines around him, climbing over him, burrowing beneath him. He tried to crawl through the muddy water that had turned into a small river, the dreaded flash flood desert dwellers are warned of. The desert fed itself to him in the form of mud and running water that washed over him, through him, covering him with fur and scales and debris. The ground would find marrow to satiate its craving after all, and if it wasn’t going to be the Star Girl’s, then it would certainly be he who was chosen to murder her and failed.
The screams increased in pitch and then were cut off, and the desert made a sound that nearly stopped Bryony in her tracks, so full of revulsion and disgust was she. The awfulness! But her desire was strong, and so were her legs, and so was her spirit. She wasn’t clear yet, but she would make it, she would make it, she would live.
Suddenly the sky illuminated as though a meteor crashed to the earth, as though it was the atomic bomb all over again. Thunder, so loud, so close and monstrous that she screamed and threw her arms over her head to stave off the lightning blooming and blossoming in front of her eyes like her beloved yellow jonquils, and it was too much, she had come so far, but there are always more tricks to be pulled from somebody’s sleeve, and this last one was the cruelest of all, and our Star Girl fell to the ground like a star from the sky from whence she came, and there her broken heart stopped.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The End
Oh, what a terrible story!
How could it be that we followed Bryony’s journey from the time she was a little girl, ignorant of all that would befall her, through her first kiss and college and meeting friends and Eddie and her tormented killer and her fight to the death, and then she dies in the end?
She dies. Bryony falls to the ground like a flower, and we are left to mourn her. More than that, we feel betrayed. We invested time and interest. We cheered her on and we shouted: “No, don’t let that man in your home!” and “Eddie, what are you doing, you must go with Bryony!” and “Hooray, Teddy Baker, you had decency inside of you all along, and we are so very proud of you for your choices!” Perhaps there were even a few thoughts of, “I wonder what a jonquil looks like. I shall certainly run to look one up and educate myself so I may better relate to the tale of Bryony and her Eddie.”
Perhaps you are angry, dear reader. Perhaps you hoped better for our girl, because she was so genuine and caring, and a good person deserves good things. Perhaps you are frustrated with the narrator and are thinking to yourself: “I would have told a much better story, and the ending would have been satisfying. There would have been hot air balloons and sunshine and confetti that fell from the sky. Most importantly, she would have lived. For I know what makes a good story, and it is only a good story when the end wraps itself up nicely and neatly and adorns itself with a bow.”
You must know this: There are not always happy endings. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was true? Unfortunately, it is not.
“But it isn’t fair!” you cry.
Yes, you are absolutely right, but life was not meant to be fair, it was meant to be lived.
Despite the smudge of impending doom that hung over her, did our Bryony not try to live? Did she not hold her friends close to her? Did she not throw her arms around Chad the Fish Guy, and speak to the old woman who sells peaches at the market, and laugh with Syrina as they packed for her spontaneous wedding, and generally enjoy the wonders life gave her? There was sorrow and sweetness and pain and joy. Did she not choose joy? As with all tales, this one has a moral, and the moral is this: Live.
And yet . . .
And yet, this is also an amazing universe, rife with beauty and surprises.
Never forget that.
Even as you mourn, my tender-hearted reader, remember this: Never give up hope.
CHAPTER SIXTY ONE
There Is No End
Lightning did not hit our sweet Bryony. The same time it flashed, a car came spinning out of nowhere, and its headlights were stark and bright and almost blinded our dear girl. Her heart shivered and stopped momentarily, quite knocked out of sorts by the extreme overload, but soon came back to itself and began to beat resolutely.
Car doors slammed and feet hurried over to her.
“Bryony!” cried out a voice, a familiar voice, a dear and good voice. Bryony raised her head and looked through the veil of water to see death had been kind enough to send her an angel who looked, sounded, and, oh my, felt just like her Eddie.
“Bryony, I will never leave you again, I swear it. Never, never,” he said, and buried his face into her wet hair, and kissed her cold face and lips and cheeks and fingers. He gently caressed her burst stitches and tried not to cry.
A man walked up from behind him and held out a blanket. Eddie helped Bryony to her feet and she was soon wrapped head to toe in warm softness.
“Hello, Bryony,” said Detective Bridger. He smiled at her, and something about his endearingly crooked front tooth made her lips pull up slightly in response. “I am very pleased to see you alive and quite literally all in one piece. I was afraid we would be too late.”
He opened the car door for her, bowing like a gentleman. Eddie helped Bryony inside, and then slid in after her.
“Where is Peter?” he asked her. His eyes were angry but his voice was soft, and Bryony was happy, and tired, and overwhelmed, and still couldn’t believe her husband had suddenly shown up out in the middle of nowhere like somebody out of a dream.
“Sing me a song, Eddie. Please? Something beautiful that doesn’t have anything to do with death.” For dreams cannot sing, at least, not here in the real waking world, and if this man opened his mouth and words and music poured out, then she would know it was her love, her best friend, her quirky and irritable and inordinately wonderful Eddie.
Eddie arched an eyebrow at her, but her face pleaded and her eyes were without shine, and he would have given her anything at all, and a song would be a pleasure. He didn’t have Jasmine the Guitar, but he sang the lovely ballad he composed just for his wife, the song she had never heard. Then he was silent.
“It really is you,” she said, and rested her head against his shoulder. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I have missed you so much. It has been a terrible time . . . ”
She couldn’t say anything more, and it was to be expected. Eddie kissed her fiercely and said: “I am sorry, Bryony. I wish more than anything I could have come here with you. I thought sending Peter to watch over you was better than you going alone, but I was so very wrong.”
Bryony looked at him with her wan gray eyes. She was tired, and it seemed too much effort to blink, to see, and even though she was safe now and warming up nicely, everything still faded away in front of her vision until she saw nothing at all.
“Why didn’t you come, Eddie? Is your career so important?” It was raining inside of the car now, water coursing from her eyes and then her clothes and hair as Eddie threw his arms around her.
“No, of course not. It was never the career. It was something else, something I was too ashamed to tell you, but I should have and I’m sorry, and I will always tell the truth from now on because it will make things so much easier. Bryony, I have been recording, and I’ve been at the station, and practicing, of course, but that isn’t where I have been spending the majority of my time. I . . . I have been with this detective here, day and night, and during the course of this time he and I—”
“You two were having an affair?!” she demanded.
Eddie’s mouth dropped open, and Detective Bridger laughed.
“I was investigating him for murder,” he assured Bryony. “Several murders, actually,” and then he laughed some more.
“Oh. Well that is perfectly all right, then,” she said, and kissed Eddie. “If that is all it was, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Murder, Bryony. They thought I had killed all of those women, and I had ties to them. The woman missing from the market and the woman from the bookstore I play at on Thursday nights. And of course Rita and my mother, and the body you found. She was dating this guy I know named Mike, and really he was a terrible loser. It doesn’t change the fact that it was like a web of bodies, and it seemed as though I was connected to them somehow, and it was a horrible, thing. I didn’t want to tell you, because I was so angry, and I didn’t want you to think poorly of me. So I was under investigation, and was forbidden to leave the area, which is why I couldn’t go. But something was wrong, and I stormed into the detective’s office and told him I had sent you home to see your father and this man named Peter Culpert had gone with you, and it wasn’t right. It should have been me. And I said they could arrest me as soon as I came back, but I had to go find you. I could feel it. Death was so close to you, I could smell it on your breath as you slept. It was time.”
Detective Bridger met Bryony’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t believe Eddie had done it, personally, but he was close to an awful lot of the victims.”
“That’s because they were close to me,” she said rather fiercely, and raised her chin to give the detective what she hoped was a stern and chastising glance. Eddie the Murderer, indeed.
Detective Bridger grinned. “Right, but when he said the name Peter Culpert, the alarms rang in my head. I had been looking into him, myself. He told us that he had chased your attacker off the trail, but there was so much blood, and Peter was covered in it. He looked so calm when we got to him, sitting quietly in a pool of crimson, completely unfazed. Seeing you lying in his lap while he blinked at me with blood running down his face, it just . . . Then we came across a body, and it matched the DNA we found all over Peter. Why would he say he scared the guy off when he had actually killed him? So I told Eddie he could find you, but only if I could come. Where is Peter, anyway?”
Bryony looked out of the window at the storming sky. The munching sounds were undeniable, and quite disturbing, but far off she could see a place where the clouds had opened up, and a few stars peeped out tentatively.
“He belongs to the desert now,” she said, and the car was silent except for the sound of the rain and the gallantry of the windshield wipers.
Nothing was said, and although Detective Bridger didn’t completely understand the situation, he was not immune to the archaic and devious murmurings the desert made. He vowed to search for the remains of Peter Culpert in the morning, but not until the sun came out. Deep within all of us swims a primal fear of the dark and the stealthy creatures that inhabit it, and no matter how polished and mature and respected we become, when we are alone and it is quiet, the ancient things of the night whisper to us that they are there, and we are quite defenseless. We are no match for the evils so much older than we.
“Yes, the morning will be fine,” Eddie said to the detective as if he had spoken aloud, and he reached forward to pat his shoulder.
“Right then,” Detective Bridger said, and was grateful.
And thus it was.
***
They held Stop’s funeral a few days later. The mud had already dried and hardened, and Bryony managed to smile as they lowered his casket into the ground. She stood beside Eddie and Syrina and Rikki-Tikki, and Teddy, his wife, and their baby, and all of her friends and neighbors she had grown up with.
Bryony was holding a particularly stunning bouquet of fresh flowers from her little stand at the market. They were yellow and purple and red, and full of happiness and joy and the “We wish you well!” and “Come home soon!” sentiments from those back home who missed her. She glanced over her shoulder at Syrina, who was giving her the thumbs up.
“I held those flowers the entire flight,” Syrina whispered to the butcher beside her. “Bryony is especially fond of yellow jonquils, you know.” She was extremely proud of herself, and had every right to be, for although she sneezed a bit during the flight, she refused to let Rikki-Tikki take the flowers from her at all, and it was a labor of love that did not go unappreciated.
“Thank you!” Bryony had cried, throwing her arms around Syrina. The flowers were nearly knocked loose, and Eddie stepped in quickly to save them.
“You’re welcome!” Syrina answered back, throwing her arms around Bryony.
“I love you,” Bryony said, and wiped her eyes.
“I love you, too.” Syrina cried without any shame whatsoever, and they looked at the flowers and the clouds and each other.
Bryony had never had a sister, but she had one now, and they would never be parted for the remainder of their days, although they did not yet know this. But you, dear reader, are privileged enough to have a brief glimpse of the future, and know this: The future is lovely, and it is spectacular, and it is full of happy things for Bryony and the good friends who have become her family.
“’Sup?” Rikki-Tikki had said to Eddie, and they clapped each other firmly on their backs, and their smiles were wide and as bright as the sky.
Bryony took a step forward. She tucked one of the flowers behind her ear, and tossed the rest onto her father’s casket. They fell soft, bright, and beautiful. The casket became a marvel, and it was exactly as it should be.
“I love you, Daddy. Now you are free and can go wherever you want without being chained to this desert. It has no hold on either of us anymore. I do hope you check in on me from time to time. I think Eddie and I are going to be very happy together.”
Eddie took her hand, and it flashed and glittered and shone. Bryony had decorated it with a delicate yet surprisingly resilient bracelet made of silver stars.
OLIVER BLOOM
by Ryan Johnson
1
Oliver Bloom was born the day his father died, but an hour after. When it was finished and the doctor handed Emily Bloom her son, fresh and new, the joy in her tears mixed with loss, and she knew the worst was over.
2
The Bloom family had never been rich, or had the greenest lawn or the freshest paint on their house, but those who knew them knew, without mistake, that Emily Bloom enjoyed the finest entertainment in town—nightly and for free—at the hands of her husband and his guitar.
When Emily returned home from the hospital, child in arm, and flipped on the lights, it was that beat-up guitar leaning against the couch that made her knees wobble and her eyes burn. She went to the baby’s room—the one she and her husband had spent so many hours preparing, filling with all the laughter and hope they could muster. She swung open the door and placed the baby in the crib they’d toiled to put together and lacquered in excitement.
She left him there to sleep.
She went back downstairs, sat beside the orphaned guitar too afraid to touch the strings, and make it sing painful reminders. She dragged her fingers along the headstock and picked it up carefully, same as the baby.
She locked it away in the back of the closet.
3
Eleven years and eleven days later, while Oliver was amidst a perilous expedition for hidden Christmas presents his mother surely possessed, he came across an old guitar.
From that day forth, Oliver Bloom was the boy who saw life in eighth notes.
4
Oliver played and performed, performed and played, and practiced in between. His fingers bled, they calloused, but through the pain and peeling skin, notes began holding longer, bent further. Melodies gained complexity, and rhythm became nighttime ocean waves bombarded by falling stars.
Beauty, Oliver learned in his room in the night, came after a little bit of ugly.
And sometimes, ther
e just had to be blood.
5
So years in Oliver Bloom’s life passed, through middle school where he spoke with few, to high school, where he spoke to no one.
At lunch he took the money his mother gave him and shoved it into the vending machine, punched the button for the same drink he always had. After that he sat up against the same machine, unconvinced by the sticker warning people died every year when they fell over, and set out on whatever new tune he dreamt of the night before.
In class he couldn’t practice, so he begrudgingly suffered through endless lectures, slideshows, and pop quizzes. He never studied. He never had to. School came naturally, and he was grateful; studying would have adversely affected his more creative exploits.
Days blurred together for Oliver most months—until a fortuitous event occurred: a student moved away, leaving an opening in Music Theory class. Hearing the news he went to the counselor, made a case for himself to be transferred into the newly available seat. He told the cold-faced, bespectacled woman how he languished in French II, how his talents and future would be much behooved by the simple mashing of a few computer keys, freeing him from archaic, uninteresting European culture and thrusting him full speed into the colorful world of academic bliss.
The counselor eventually agreed. With a keystroke, Oliver Bloom’s high school life changed forever.
6
It didn’t happen right away like in the movies, when he walked into class with his guitar slung over his back. Without fanfare he surveyed the room, probably glanced over her once or twice without even noticing. The only empty seat beckoned. He took it and sighed, set down his pack and his father’s guitar.
The teacher walked into class and wasted no time beginning the day’s lesson.
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