by Nisi Shawl
Hunger
When the river came alive, it hungered. It grew teeth and rose from its banks, swallowed the parks, the bending paths, the abandoned cars, the empty lots filled with broken glass, and encircled the bone yard, and the house. Ava woke to the sound of water running, like a faucet left on, and at first she thought it was a dream. She often dreamed of the river, the banks where her mother left her all those years ago, before the tall fishing man discovered her weeping by the still smoldering fire, before he took her home where she met Grandmama. But when Ava opened her eyes she realized the water had joined her, and that if she did not rise it would cover her and all the room. Then the cramps came, thunder deep below her chest. The baby, it was coming too soon. The water had awakened it. The water called to them both. Ava felt the gills open on her neck, the skin lengthen and stretch between her fingers. She needed to get out of the water, she needed to resist its call. Trapped between the birth and her own transformation, she climbed onto the top of the desk, then took a breath, plunged into the water’s oily depths, swam out the door, in search of Grandmama.
◊
Hearts
It was the blame in their eyes that made Ava shun their company. The silent accusation made her huddle in the staging area on her own. People wanted to know why, couldn’t understand how. The mayor said to go. Staying wasn’t part of anyone’s plan. “Why?” was the question that rested on everyone’s lips. Why did Ava and so many others decide to ride out the storm? How could they not know the storm would ride them?
Grandmama once told Ava that her husband’s heart had just stopped. “It knew Amp wasn’t gon’ never quit working, so his heart just revolted against itself.” She said she found him lying on the floor he had lain down himself. “He came from a people who always used their hands. Sometimes,” she said, “against themselves. But not my Amp. He built this house when we married, built it before your daddy was even born. I guess it’s good he didn’t know his boy wasn’t gon’ live long as him. In his way your daddy’s heart revolted, too. Sometimes it ain’t good to love so much in this world.” For Ava and Grandmama, the house and its memories were all that they had left.
To keep the house when her husband died, Grandmama cleaned cracked china and porcelain bowls, shined broken mirrors and windows that stayed closed. Her hands cooked meals for dinners she was never invited to, graced tables with straightback chairs where she could not sit. Where she worked she heard haints in the halls and would return in time to make Ava’s late-night dinners, telling her stories that left her amused, enthralled. She complained that there was nothing truly alive in some of those other grander houses, the walls had veins with no blood in them. Grandmama said a house has got to breathe, got to have some soul and a little laughter to make its foundation stay strong, said not every house, not every family can carry the weight. She said what Ava and she shared made their home more beautiful, more sacred than the fanciest castle. Ava believed her, too, right up until the water came and took her past and future, her home and her baby.
Loss
Long after they lost their house in the flood, after they moved to another river city, Grandmama stood in line with hollow-faced folks. Worried and weary, she waited like the others to get her pills. The churches collected toothpaste and brushes, brought clothing and prayers. The kindness made the loss less sharp. The city’s humid heat made them feel less naked. “But feeling clean don’t help me sleep,” Grandmama said. The water haunted her dreams, too. So she waited and swallowed pills she knew by color, tried to muster up an appetite to eat. Grandmama missed her garden and her homemade cha cha. Ava missed her baby.
Pain
When Ava found Grandmama, she was upstairs still asleep in her bed. The look on her face was pure disbelief. She refused to leave the house without getting herself dressed. “I’m not going with all my business hanging out,” she cried. “If the Lord gonna take me, I am at least going to have on my good dress.” The pain in Ava’s face made her stop. “What’s the matter, child?”
“The baby,” Ava managed. “It’s coming, I can’t stop it.”
“Stop calling that boy ‘it,’ and come help me pull down this ladder.” The water was rising up the steps. Framed photos, dishes, and books floated just below them. It took all Ava’s strength to help her Grandmama up into the attic. The pains came so strong, she wanted to lie down in the murky water and let the flood carry her wherever it willed.
“Come on, Ava,” her Grandmama said, reaching for her. They waited in the attic, darkness all around them. “We in God’s hands now.”
Air
While the water rose and their lone flashlight faded, Grandmama hummed and sang. She began with the stories Ava heard as a child, the ones that told of a people who came from water, who lived and breathed it, the way the others swallowed air. The infant Ava had loved and feared rested in a worn sheet between them. Its skin felt smooth and warm to Ava’s touch, but she knew when Grandmama first held it, that there was something wrong. The child, a boy, never took its first breath.
It was Grandmama who heard the people screaming below. She called back, thankful already though they had not yet been delivered. Racked with pain so deep it seemed to sear her belly, Ava managed to rise from grief, the blood slick and running down her knees. She took the flashlight and knocked out a hole in the roof. With each strike, the rain came faster, her tears harder.
“We’re here,” Grandmama shouted. Ava did not wait for the reply below. As Grandmama stood up, widening the hole with her shoulders and waving to the couple in the boat, Ava took the silent child, caressed its little winged limbs and released it into the water and the night. It was dark, later they would need a flashlight just to see the food they ate, but then, hovering in the house that was once her shelter, all Ava wanted was to see her child’s face. For a moment Ava thought she saw the tiny body shudder as the water covered it. Inside she felt her heart revolt. He came from a people who always used their hands. Sometimes against themselves. Ava turned away, her face full of tears.
“What did you do?” Grandmama cried. Her eyes were fetid floodwaters, her voice cold enough to stop a heart.
Silence
The house they loved was a waterlogged corpse, but the city was not all they left behind. Something had changed. The water between them had darkened and risen like the river and the flood. They spoke in clipped sentences. Grandmama slept as much as she could, while Ava dreamed awake. She replayed each second of memory, trying to recall if she had imagined the infant wriggling, picturing if and how the child might have lived.
Thirst
The night rain came and invaded her sleep as stealthily as the night of the hurricane, Ava woke with a hangover and one question on her mind. She flung the coverlet back, placed one bare foot on the hardwood floor. Stood in the open door, wearing her good slip, wrinkled and wine-stained. She took a deep breath, inhaled the rain and the sunshower air.
Grandmama had answered her call on the first ring.
Now, after making their way to the river’s bank, Ava slipped out of her shoes, stepped into the muddy water. The river whispered around her ankles and her feet.
“Listen,” Grandmama said, the weeds and trees swayed behind her. “The river is trying to tell you something: move, change. If your mama hadn’t gotten lost, if she had stuck to another plan, she never would have met your father.” Grandmama bent and picked up the shoes, wiped loose soil from the soles. “Here, at the riverside, is where they began. When she left the last time, she knew your daddy would return to the same place where he first met her. She knew he would never stop searching, never stop remembering. Sometimes it’s dangerous to love that much.”
Ava had peeled off her dress and stood in the open air, the wind brushing her nipples, still plump with mother’s milk. Her daddy had said she had her mother’s face, strong bones, wide nose, wider forehead. Moon-marked, Grandmama had said, so she kept her in the sun. The closer Ava got to the river, the less air her lungs needed to brea
the. She felt dizzy, her skin tingled and writhed with thirst. “Being lost helped us find you, Ava. You always thought the river took something from you, took your mama away, broke your daddy’s heart, but maybe the river gave you something more.”
Skin that was once dark and burnished now took on a copper-like sheen. Scales that were barely detectible appeared more pronounced. Ava began to walk into the waters, not far from the strip of sand where her mother had once told her lies and read her poems.
“I’m not mad, Grandmama, not anymore,” Ava said. She unraveled the thick French braids she wore. Her hair puffed around her shoulders in a dark, wavy cloud. “I just need to try to find him. I know what I saw, know what I felt. I think he’s alive.”
Grandmama waved away a witch doctor who hovered near her ear. “If you’re going, you need to listen to the river when you can’t hear me. She ain’t going to tell you nothing wrong. Listen to her now. She is telling you that there ain’t no shame in changing. Baby, you are what you are. You come from this here water, but you also are part of this land. All them years I tried to keep you safe from this,” Grandmama pointed at the Mississippi, “but when I wasn’t looking, the river come to take you back anyway. So find what you love most from both of those things that make you, and then you go on out in this world and make yourself.”
Ava walked deeper into the shallow water, felt the river whispering, pulling all around her. Grandmama clutched the blue sandals, crushed the sundress to her chest. “You don’t want to listen to me, then go ahead, listen to the river. It’s been calling you since you were born. The water is wise. When you feel there ain’t no other way, do like this river do and bend.”
Grandma stood away from the water, heels planted in the sandbar, as if she was afraid the river would rise and take her, too. Unwilling to leave on bad terms, but unable to stay now that they were good, Ava rushed out of the water to give her Grandmama one final hug.
And then, as if the sky had waited for this moment, the rain stopped. The only echo was Grandmama’s whispered “Be good, girl. I hope to be here when you come back,” and the hush of the river wind. Ava took a deep breath, inhaled the last of the sunshower air. Humidity wrapped around her ankles, pulled her closer to the bank.
Sunlight shimmered
on the brown river’s surface
the gold mermaid smiled
Haunt-Type Experience
Roz Clarke
The hooded shadow emerged from the larger, jagged shadow of the building and shuddered across the rough ground where the forecourt had once been laid. Megan glanced behind her, looking for its source, then shivered as she realized it was her own, made eerily penumbral by the spots they used for setting up the kit in winter, shining out above the broken walls. After this site they would shut the project down for the winter, analyze their data, see if there was anything worth reporting. “Maybe tonight’s the night,” she whispered to her shadow, and the sound of her voice in the lonely woods made her hair stand on end. “Come on out, you ghosts, I’m just another specter, just like you.” Nobody answered; the ruins brooded behind her and the woods talked only to themselves.
She kicked her way through the wet leaves; last season’s fashions cast to the ground to molder. Broken bricks and creeping brambles made the going tricky, but she didn’t want to use her torch. In the eighteen months they’d been investigating supposedly haunted sites, she’d never seen, heard, or felt anything that wasn’t easily put down to a draft or the shifting of ancient walls and staircases, but she wanted to hold onto that feeling: a ghost amongst ghosts, floating insubstantially through romantic, moonlit ruins.
Returning from the car with the thermos, she tripped on a fallen branch and sprawled in the open entrance to the old hotel. She cursed, brushing bits of twig off her old overcoat, and pushed her way into the thick, musty darkness of the hallway. So much for floating.
◊
She called out “Ho there” as she approached the ballroom door. Dan answered cheerily. She stepped into the light, picked her way across the remains of a parquet floor, and sat in a wobbly director’s chair under the small marquee they’d erected. She watched him working while she poured the coffee, and as she passed him a cup she read over his shoulder.
◊
“Not all buildings have a reputation for being haunted. For those that do, such anomalous experiences and events do not take place all of the time. Furthermore, when such instances do occur, not all persons present report them. These observations imply that there may be some critical dimensions or factors that distinguish such properties from other locations and differentiate certain observers from other individuals.”
Megan was one of the “certain observers,” recruited into Dan’s research project because she’d once awakened in the night to see her grandmother crawling on all fours along the hall ceiling. Her grandmother had been dead six months at the time. Megan had been eight years old, and nervously disposed. When she’d told the story at one of those round-the-campfire nights at Glastonbury, Dan had leaped on it like a hunting spider, asked all sorts of questions. They’d been last to bed, and he hadn’t even tried to kiss her.
“I’ll just go round again,” said Dan, standing up and stretching. They’d set up the MADS sensors already, and Megan had checked the alignments with the compass, but Dan liked to double-check everything she did. She’d long ago given up getting offended about it; he was that way with everyone. The lights picked out the active sensor in sharp delineation against the peeling wallpaper that clung to the broken walls, and Dan in his red anorak, hood pulled up around his face. She’d never yet tired of looking at that face, thin-lipped and finely boned, denim blue eyes always intently focused on something. Sometimes that something was Megan, but not often enough, and never in the way she wanted. She said nothing, afraid to push in case it killed their friendship. Her friends said she was crazy, and they didn’t even know the truth of it. The lies she’d told about the boys there’d been; there was never more than this, a yearning for something out of reach. A tingle of sadness at the back of her mind suggested that she’d probably tire of looking at him soon. Soon, but not yet, she decided, sipping on her coffee.
“Certainly one effective method for a contemporary field-based investigation of a haunting would be to evaluate (1) environmental factors specific to the location, (2) individual factors specific to the observer, and (3) factors specific to an interaction between the location and the observer. In the case of specific locations associated with numerous instances of anomalous haunt-type experiences, an evaluation of how the surrounding micro-environment could be responsible for inducing such an experience would seem crucial.”
The baseline sensor was located outside the building, collecting data they could use to compare the electromagnetic fields inside and outside. Tomorrow she and Dan would go through the data, looking for anomalies. If they found anything they’d go to step 2: interview the people who’d responded to Dan’s survey stating that they’d had supernatural experiences at this site. The ballroom was supposed to be the hotspot. She glanced around. It was large, the full width of the building, with three bay windows looking out into an enclosed courtyard, and three looking toward the road that led through the woods up to the main entrance. The windows were reduced to U-shaped openings in the brickwork, but in places the walls were still ten feet high. A decayed sofa lay on its side in the middle of the room, mahogany legs helplessly in the air like a great dead insect. The shadow it cast behind it in the hard light from the spots was even more insectile. Megan closed her eyes and tried to imagine the room as it must have been once. Bright and airy. Rather grand. She couldn’t make it happy, somehow, but certainly bright.
“Why did they close this place down?”
Dan turned to face her, smiled and waved a finger.
“How long have we been doing this? You know you don’t get the juice on the hospice until tomorrow.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
It was always the same story
anyway. She didn’t know why he was so coy about it; she could have googled the place if she’d really wanted to know, and it would be some variation on the usual themes: unseen children crying in empty rooms, headless monks walking through walls, or women in white, killed whilst attempting to rendezvous with a forbidden lover. Still trying to make that meeting, failing for all eternity. Then there were the friendly ones, killed in disasters and for some reason bound to the spot trying to avert future accidents. She liked those stories better. Well, perhaps the sensor readings would show something in the morning and they’d be able to put the hotel’s ghosts to rest. Just naturally occurring electromagnetic fields, making mojo with your brain.
“I sometimes wish I didn’t know the science,” she said, pulling her tobacco pouch from her pocket and rolling up.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Dan, finally leaving off tweaking the sensors and sitting back down, long legs stretched in front of him. “You want to be scared shitless by random phenomena every time you walk past an iron deposit or an overhead cable? Don’t you have enough trouble sleeping as it is?”
She looked at him. Half his face was in shadow, half in the light; bright light and deep shadow like the face of the moon. Laughter lines were just beginning to crease the corners of his eyes. Her stomach turned over with desire. So long she’d yearned for him, sitting this close, closer, if she reached out she could touch his face, but then again she couldn’t. Yes, she longed for more tangible strangeness in her life. For something to actually happen, instead of all this pointless longing. As a child she’d populated her world with imaginary friends and fantastic beasts. Dryads in every tree, naiads in every pond. Too much reading, too much time spent mooning around on her own. Two years into a degree in psychology, she’d had most of the credulity educated out of her, but she liked the idea of a world with magic in it. Dan was a postgrad, and he didn’t believe in anything inexplicable.
