The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  Catlin touched the brocaded sleeve of Lung Wei.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  JOURNEY INTO THE KINGDOM

  M. Rickert

  MARY RICKERT (1959–), who was born, raised, and still lives in Wisconsin, decided to use only her initial M as a byline because she was in the process of writing stories with a male voice and didn’t want to “break the fiction,” as she said in an interview. The decision has worked well for her, as her meticulously crafted stories are as gender-neutral as any in the supernatural genre. Her first story, “The Girl Who Ate Butterflies,” was published in the August 1999 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where most of her work has appeared. She has produced work in a wide range of fields, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and magic realism, but it is her retelling of Greek myths, often in a startlingly unsettling way, for which she became best known.

  A comparative newcomer to the writing world (she had wanted to be a painter), Rickert has already been nominated for and won several major awards. “Journey into the Kingdom” was nominated for a Nebula Award for the best novelette of 2006, was nominated for an International Horror Guild Award, and won the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Map of Dreams (2006) won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection and the Locus Award for Best Collection; the title story was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

  “Journey into the Kingdom” was originally published in the May 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  Journey into the Kingdom

  M. RICKERT

  THE FIRST PAINTING WAS of an egg, the pale ovoid produced with faint strokes of pink, blue, and violet to create the illusion of white. After that there were two apples, a pear, an avocado, and finally, an empty plate on a white tablecloth before a window covered with gauzy curtains, a single fly nestled in a fold at the top right corner. The series was titled “Journey into the Kingdom.”

  On a small table beneath the avocado there was a black binder, an unevenly cut rectangle of white paper with the words “Artist’s Statement” in neat, square, handwritten letters taped to the front. Balancing the porcelain cup and saucer with one hand, Alex picked up the binder and took it with him to a small table against the wall toward the back of the coffee shop, where he opened it, thinking it might be interesting to read something besides the newspaper for once, though he almost abandoned the idea when he saw that the page before him was handwritten in the same neat letters as on the cover. But the title intrigued him.

  AN IMITATION LIFE

  Though I always enjoyed my crayons and watercolors, I was not a particularly artistic child. I produced the usual assortment of stick figures and houses with dripping yellow suns. I was an avid collector of seashells and sea glass and much preferred to be outdoors, throwing stones at seagulls (please, no haranguing from animal rights activists, I have long since outgrown this) or playing with my imaginary friends to sitting quietly in the salt rooms of the keeper’s house, making pictures at the big wooden kitchen table while my mother, in her black dress, kneaded bread and sang the old French songs between her duties as lighthouse keeper, watcher over the waves, beacon for the lost, governess of the dead.

  The first ghost to come to my mother was my own father who had set out the day previous in the small boat heading to the mainland for supplies such as string and rice, and also bags of soil, which, in years past, we emptied into crevices between the rocks and planted with seeds, a makeshift garden and a “brave attempt,” as my father called it, referring to the barren stone we lived on.

  We did not expect him for several days so my mother was surprised when he returned in a storm, dripping wet icicles from his mustache and behaving strangely, repeating over and over again, “It is lost, my dear Maggie, the garden is at the bottom of the sea.”

  My mother fixed him hot tea but he refused it, she begged him to take off the wet clothes and retire with her, to their feather bed piled with quilts, but he said, “Tend the light, don’t waste your time with me.” So my mother, a worried expression on her face, left our little keeper’s house and walked against the gale to the lighthouse, not realizing that she left me with a ghost, melting before the fire into a great puddle, which was all that was left of him upon her return. She searched frantically while I kept pointing at the puddle and insisting it was he. Eventually she tied on her cape and went out into the storm, calling his name. I thought that, surely, I would become orphaned that night.

  But my mother lived, though she took to her bed and left me to tend the lamp and receive the news of the discovery of my father’s wrecked boat, found on the rocky shoals, still clutching in his frozen hand a bag of soil, which was given to me, and which I brought to my mother though she would not take the offering.

  For one so young, my chores were immense. I tended the lamp, and kept our own hearth fire going too. I made broth and tea for my mother, which she only gradually took, and I planted that small bag of soil by the door to our little house, savoring the rich scent, wondering if those who lived with it all the time appreciated its perfume or not.

  I did not really expect anything to grow, though I hoped that the seagulls might drop some seeds or the ocean deposit some small thing. I was surprised when, only weeks later, I discovered the tiniest shoots of green, which I told my mother about. She was not impressed. By that point, she would spend part of the day sitting up in bed, mending my father’s socks and moaning, “Agatha, whatever are we going to do?” I did not wish to worry her, so I told her lies about women from the mainland coming to help, men taking turns with the light. “But they are so quiet. I never hear anyone.”

  “No one wants to disturb you,” I said. “They whisper and walk on tiptoe.”

  It was only when I opened the keeper’s door so many uncounted weeks later, and saw, spread before me, embedded throughout the rock (even in crevices where I had planted no soil) tiny pink, purple, and white flowers, their stems shuddering in the salty wind, that I insisted my mother get out of bed.

  She was resistant at first. But I begged and cajoled, promised her it would be worth her effort. “The fairies have planted flowers for us,” I said, this being the only explanation or description I could think of for the infinitesimal blossoms everywhere.

  Reluctantly, she followed me through the small living room and kitchen, observing that, “the ladies have done a fairly good job of keeping the place neat.” She hesitated before the open door. The bright sun and salty scent of the sea, as well as the loud sound of waves washing all around us, seemed to astound her, but then she squinted, glanced at me, and stepped through the door to observe the miracle of the fairies’ flowers.

  Never had the rock seen such color, never had it known such bloom! My mother walked out, barefoot, and said, “Forget-me-nots, these are forget-me-nots. But where …?”

  I told her that I didn’t understand it myself, how I had planted the small bag of soil found clutched in my father’s hand but had not really expected it to come to much, and certainly not to all of this, waving my arm over the expanse, the flowers having grown in soilless crevices and cracks, covering our entire little island of stone.

  My mother turned to me and said, “These are not from the fairies, they are from him.” Then she started crying, a reaction I had not expected and tried to talk her out of, but she said, “No, Agatha, leave me alone.”

  She stood out there for quite a while, weeping as she walked amongst the flowers. Later, after she came inside and said, “Where are all the helpers today?” I shrugged and avoided more questions by going outside myself, where I discovered scarlet spots amongst the bloom. My mother had been bedridden for so long, her feet had gone soft again. For days she left tiny teardrop shapes of blood in her step, which I surreptitiously wiped up, not wanting to draw any attention to the fact, for fear it would dismay her. She picked several of the forget-me-not blossoms and pressed them between the heavy pages of her book of myths and folklore. Not long aft
er that, a terrible storm blew in, rocking our little house, challenging our resolve, and taking with it all the flowers. Once again our rock was barren. I worried what effect this would have on my mother but she merely sighed, shrugged, and said, “They were beautiful, weren’t they, Agatha?”

  So passed my childhood: a great deal of solitude, the occasional life-threatening adventure, the drudgery of work, and all around me the great wide sea with its myriad secrets and reasons, the lost we saved, those we didn’t. And the ghosts, brought to us by my father, though we never understood clearly his purpose, as they only stood before the fire, dripping and melting like something made of wax, bemoaning what was lost (a fine boat, a lady love, a dream of the sea, a pocketful of jewels, a wife and children, a carving on bone, a song, its lyrics forgotten). We tried to provide what comfort we could, listening, nodding, there was little else we could do, they refused tea or blankets, they seemed only to want to stand by the fire, mourning their death, as my father stood sentry beside them, melting into salty puddles that we mopped up with clean rags, wrung out into the ocean, saying what we fashioned as prayer, or reciting lines of Irish poetry.

  Though I know now that this is not a usual childhood, it was usual for me, and it did not veer from this course until my mother’s hair had gone quite gray and I was a young woman, when my father brought us a different sort of ghost entirely, a handsome young man, his eyes the same blue-green as summer. His hair was of indeterminate color, wet curls that hung to his shoulders. Dressed simply, like any dead sailor, he carried about him an air of being educated more by art than by water, a suspicion soon confirmed for me when he refused an offering of tea by saying, “No, I will not, cannot drink your liquid offered without first asking for a kiss, ah a kiss is all the liquid I desire, come succor me with your lips.”

  Naturally, I blushed and, just as naturally, when my mother went to check on the lamp, and my father had melted into a mustached puddle, I kissed him. Though I should have been warned by the icy chill, as certainly I should have been warned by the fact of my own father, a mere puddle at the hearth, it was my first kiss and it did not feel deadly to me at all, not dangerous, not spectral, most certainly not spectral, though I did experience a certain pleasant floating sensation in its wake.

  My mother was surprised, upon her return, to find the lad still standing, as vigorous as any living man, beside my father’s puddle. We were both surprised that he remained throughout the night, regaling us with stories of the wild sea populated by whales, mermaids, and sharks; mesmerizing us with descriptions of the “bottom of the world” as he called it, embedded with strange purple rocks, pink shells spewing pearls, and the seaweed tendrils of sea witches’ hair. We were both surprised that, when the black of night turned to the gray hue of morning, he bowed to each of us (turned fully toward me, so that I could receive his wink), promised he would return, and then left, walking out the door like any regular fellow. So convincing was he that my mother and I opened the door to see where he had gone, scanning the rock and the inky sea before we accepted that, as odd as it seemed, as vigorous his demeanor, he was a ghost most certainly.

  “Or something of that nature,” said my mother. “Strange that he didn’t melt like the others.” She squinted at me and I turned away from her before she could see my blush. “We shouldn’t have let him keep us up all night,” she said. “We aren’t dead. We need our sleep.”

  Sleep? Sleep? I could not sleep, feeling as I did his cool lips on mine, the power of his kiss, as though he breathed out of me some dark aspect that had weighed inside me. I told my mother that she could sleep. I would take care of everything. She protested, but using the past as reassurance (she had long since discovered that I had run the place while she convalesced after my father’s death), finally agreed.

  I was happy to have her tucked safely in bed. I was happy to know that her curious eyes were closed. I did all the tasks necessary to keep the place in good order. Not even then, in all my girlish giddiness, did I forget the lamp. I am embarrassed to admit, however, it was well past four o’clock before I remembered my father’s puddle, which by that time had been much dissipated. I wiped up the small amount of water and wrung him out over the sea, saying only as prayer, “Father, forgive me. Oh, bring him back to me.” (Meaning, alas for me, a foolish girl, the boy who kissed me and not my own dear father.)

  And that night, he did come back, knocking on the door like any living man, carrying in his wet hands a bouquet of pink coral which he presented to me, and a small white stone, shaped like a star, which he gave to my mother.

  “Is there no one else with you?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, there is not,” he said.

  My mother began to busy herself in the kitchen, leaving the two of us alone. I could hear her in there, moving things about, opening cupboards, sweeping the already swept floor. It was my own carelessness that had caused my father’s absence, I was sure of that; had I sponged him up sooner, had I prayed for him more sincerely, and not just for the satisfaction of my own desire, he would be here this night. I felt terrible about this, but then I looked into his eyes, those beautiful sea-colored eyes, and I could not help it, my body thrilled at his look. Is this love? I thought. Will he kiss me twice? When it seemed as if, without even wasting time with words, he was about to do so, leaning toward me with parted lips from which exhaled the scent of salt water, my mother stepped into the room, clearing her throat, holding the broom before her, as if thinking she might use it as a weapon.

  “We don’t really know anything about you,” she said.

  . . .

  To begin with, my name is Ezekiel. My mother was fond of saints and the Bible and such. She died shortly after giving birth to me, her first and only child. I was raised by my father, on the island of Murano. Perhaps you have heard of it? Murano glass? We are famous for it throughout the world. My father, himself, was a talented glassmaker. Anything imagined, he could shape into glass. Glass birds, tiny glass bees, glass seashells, even glass tears (an art he perfected while I was an infant), and what my father knew, he taught to me.

  Naturally, I eventually surpassed him in skill. Forgive me, but there is no humble way to say it. At any rate, my father had taught me and encouraged my talent all my life. I did not see when his enthusiasm began to sour. I was excited and pleased at what I could produce. I thought he would feel the same for me as I had felt for him, when, as a child, I sat on the footstool in his studio and applauded each glass wing, each hard teardrop.

  Alas, it was not to be. My father grew jealous of me. My own father! At night he snuck into our studio and broke my birds, my little glass cakes. In the morning he pretended dismay and instructed me further on keeping air bubbles out of my work. He did not guess that I knew the dismal truth.

  I determined to leave him, to sail away to some other place to make my home. My father begged me to stay, “Whatever will you do? How will you make your way in this world?”

  I told him my true intention, not being clever enough to lie. “This is not the only place in the world with fire and sand,” I said. “I intend to make glass.”

  He promised me it would be a death sentence. At the time I took this to be only his confused, fatherly concern. I did not perceive it as a threat.

  It is true that the secret to glassmaking was meant to remain on Murano. It is true that the entire populace believed this trade, and only this trade, kept them fed and clothed. Finally, it is true that they passed the law (many years before my father confronted me with it) that anyone who dared attempt to take the secret of glass-making off the island would suffer the penalty of death. All of this is true.

  But what’s also true is that I was a prisoner in my own home, tortured by my own father, who pretended to be a humble, kind glassmaker, but who, night after night, broke my creations and then, each morning, denied my accusations, his sweet old face mustached and whiskered, all the expression of dismay and sorrow.

  This is madness, I reasoned. How else cou
ld I survive? One of us had to leave or die. I chose the gentler course.

  We had, in our possession, only a small boat, used for trips that never veered far from shore. Gathering mussels, visiting neighbors, occasionally my father liked to sit in it and smoke a pipe while watching the sun set. He’d light a lantern and come home, smelling of the sea, boil us a pot of soup, a melancholic, completely innocent air about him, only later to sneak about his breaking work.

  This small boat is what I took for my voyage across the sea. I also took some fishing supplies, a rope, dried cod he’d stored for winter, a blanket, and several jugs of red wine, given to us by the baker, whose daughter, I do believe, fancied me. For you, who have lived so long on this anchored rock, my folly must be apparent. Was it folly? It was. But what else was I to do? Day after day make my perfect art only to have my father, night after night, destroy it? He would destroy me!

  I left in the dark, when the ocean is like ink and the sky is black glass with thousands of air bubbles. Air bubbles, indeed. I breathed my freedom in the salty sea air. I chose stars to follow. Foolishly, I had no clear sense of my passage and had only planned my escape.

  Of course, knowing what I do now about the ocean, it is a wonder I survived the first night, much less seven. It was on the eighth morning that I saw the distant sail, and, hopelessly drunk and sunburned, as well as lost, began the desperate task of rowing toward it, another folly as I’m sure you’d agree, understanding how distant the horizon is. Luckily for me, or so I thought, the ship headed in my direction and after a few more days it was close enough that I began to believe in my life again.