The Drowning Girl

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  She wanted to call an ambulance (again), but I was able to shake my head, and that stopped her. I’m surprised that stopped her, but it did.

  Two days later, Abalyn left me, and she never came back again.

  “Stop this,” Imp typed.

  I also typed.

  “You don’t have to do this anymore. You need to stop. It doesn’t matter what she said. So stop. Stop and put these pages away and be done with this bullshit. Have mercy for yourself.”

  “No,” I type. “You can only set it aside for now. But you can do that. You’ve said what matters. You didn’t drown, and the earwig died, and Abalyn left, and you can get to the rest of it tomorrow or the next day.”

  It’s such a wicked, selfish fucking thought, but I wish she’d let me go that day. I wish that as hard as I wish the telephone would ring, and this time it would be Abalyn.

  Stop. Enough. Enough for now.

  Enough forever.

  DENOUEMENT

  Act Five: The Wake-Up Bomb

  There weren’t supposed to be five acts. But I was wrong, and there are.

  Four days ago, I said “enough forever,” and for four days I haven’t sat down in this chair in the blue-white room with too many books. But here I am again. Here I am, because, because, because…even as I have tried to tell my ghost story, my mermaid and my werewolf story, as a thing that happened to me in the past, stuff keeps happening. New events stubbornly occur that I know are part of the story, which continues to unfold around me, rudely making a worse tangle of my hopelessly tangled mess. All along, I’ve desperately wanted to say these days were, and now it’s over, right? So, I’m only recording history. I’ve been pushing away, trying to put behind.

  And yeah, history has consequences, but at least it’s over. You remember it, but you don’t live it. This is what I think most people believe, and what I wanted to believe, because maybe believing that I could stop living the ghost story. I would type THE END, and walk away, and there would be no more sorrow and no more fear. No more thoughts of Abalyn and Eva and wolves and sirens and snowy roads and muddy rivers. No more Saltonstall. No more Perrault.

  But. In Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Mary says, “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us.” (Rosemary was very fond of Eugene O’Neill.) I searched through a book of plays after work last night, because I wasn’t sure I was remembering that line exactly right, but I was. Past is present. The future is present, too. And hey, look at me trying to sound like I know something, when the whole point here is that what I thought I knew I’m no longer sure I ever knew at all. Because it’s still happening, and the past is present, like Mary Cavan Tyrone said. She took morphine, and she was crazy, too, plus she’s only alive when actresses bring her to life, but she saw. She saw, and all I can do is borrow her vision.

  This happened (happens) to me yesterday (now):

  I was at work, and on my break, I felt like walking. This isn’t unusual. I left the art supply store and walked around the corner to Elm Street, and then I turned again onto Hospital Street. I was walking past the parking lot for the Providence Children’s Museum when I saw Abalyn and another woman, whom I’d never seen before, and a little girl, getting out of a red car parked close to the sidewalk. I could have turned around and headed back to work. If I had, everything would be different, and I wouldn’t be writing this. But “if I had” doesn’t matter, because I didn’t turn around. I just stopped, and stood there, hoping Abalyn wouldn’t see me, but also so happy to see her again after so long that I felt dizzy, but also so dizzy from the pain of having lost her twice welling up like it had all just happened. Like the pain was fresh. The way it felt, we might only have split up a week ago.

  She did see me, and she glanced at the other woman, as if waiting for some sort of cue or for permission, or as though she were going to beg my pardon for something she hadn’t yet done. And then she spoke words I couldn’t hear, so she couldn’t have said them very loudly, and walked over to where I was standing.

  “Hey, Imp,” she said. Her hair isn’t black anymore. She’s letting it grow out, and mostly it’s blonde, but the color of her eyes hasn’t changed.

  “Hi,” I said, and had no idea what to say next.

  “It’s been a long time,” Abalyn said, like somehow I wasn’t aware of that. “You doing okay?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I’m doing okay. Who are your friends?”

  She looked over her shoulder, back to the other woman and the little girl waiting in the parking lot by the red car. She turned back to me. When she spoke again, she sounded as anxious and dizzy as I felt.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s Margot and her niece, Chloe. We’re taking Chloe to the museum. She’s never been before.”

  “You don’t like museums,” I said.

  “Well, it’s for Chloe, not me.”

  “Margot’s your new girlfriend?” I asked, hearing the words and knowing that I was saying everything I shouldn’t be saying, but saying them anyway.

  “Yes, Imp,” Abalyn answered, and the smallest bit of a smile creased the corners of her mouth. “Margot’s my girlfriend.”

  There were a few seconds of awkward silence that likely seemed longer than they actually were, and then I said—no, then I blurted, “I’ve been writing it all down.”

  She stared at me, still almost frowning, and she asked, “Writing all what down?”

  Wishing I could take back what I’d blurted out, wishing I were sitting in the break room at work, or out in the courtyard, instead of standing on the sidewalk with Abalyn staring at me, I said, “You know, what happened. What happened before you left. The river, and the two Evas. I’ve only gotten as far as trying to drown myself in the bathtub, but I don’t think I’m going to write any more. I’ve told the July story, and I don’t think I really have to tell the November story.”

  Words tumbling out of me, like I was someone with Tourette’s and couldn’t help myself. She looked over her shoulder at Margot and Chloe, and then turned back to me.

  “The two Evas?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Both of them. July and November.”

  There was an even longer awkward silence than the first one, and she tried to smile, but didn’t do a very good job of it. “I’m not sure what you mean, Imp. There was only ever one Eva Canning. You’ve lost me.” She stopped, glanced up at the sun, and squinted. And I thought she was about to ask me if I’d been skipping my meds, missing doses. That was the sort of expression she had. All at once, it felt like my belly was full of rocks.

  “There was July, and then there was November,” I told her, the words still tumbling, sounding insistent when I’d only meant to sound certain of myself and a little perplexed. “There was the first time you left, right? And then there was—”

  “I’m sorry, Imp,” she interrupted. “It’s really good to see you again. Really, but I need to go.”

  “Why are you acting like you don’t know what I mean?”

  “Because I don’t. But that’s all right. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I have to go now.”

  “I miss you,” I said. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

  “We’ll talk sometime,” she promised, but I knew she didn’t mean it. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  Then she was gone. I stood on the sidewalk, and I watched her and the woman named Margot and the little girl named Chloe go into the children’s museum.

  There was only ever one Eva Canning.

  Only one.

  All the way back to the store, and the rest of the day, and most of last night, I tried to only be angry and only pretend it had pissed her off, embarrassed her, running into me like that. Or it was a cruel joke. Perhaps she hadn’t meant it as a cruel joke, but that’s what it was. Phillip George Saltonstall hadn’t meant to perpetuate a haunting when he painted that picture, and neither had Seichoˉ Matsumoto when he published Kuroi Jukai and changed a forest into a place where people went to die.
I might have called Abalyn last night, if I had her phone number. I might have called and demanded that she apologize and explain herself, tell her how it felt like she’d been making fun of me. I stood by the telephone in the kitchen, and sat on the sofa holding my cell phone. I probably would have been able to find her number if I’d tried, but I didn’t. I considered emailing her, because I’m pretty sure her email hasn’t changed, but I didn’t do that, either.

  Abalyn never played tricks on me. Why would she do it now, even if she was embarrassed at having to talk to me while her new girlfriend was standing there, close enough to hear everything we said? No matter how much easier it would be if she had, I don’t think she was lying to me. Which means she might just have been confused and not remembering it right, but that’s ridiculous. That would mean she’s forgotten months and months and so many awful things. If she thinks there was just one Eva, whether it was the first or the second, she would have to have forgotten things so terrible they’re impossible to forget.

  Last night I didn’t sleep. I lay awake until the sun came up, forcing myself to ask the worst question, first to myself and then aloud. Forcing myself to let it become solid as concrete, so I can’t deny it. Because Eva taught me the unknown is immune to the faculties of human reason, that something hungry below the water that you can’t see is scarier than a hungry twenty-foot-long shark. Because the unknown is even scarier than a truth so appalling that it breaks your whole wide world apart.

  Almost three hundred pages ago, I typed, “I said there’s no reason doing this thing if all I can manage is a lie.” If I wasn’t sincere, then none of this has meant anything, and I might just as well have been typing the same sentence over and over again. Or not even a real sentence, just the same letter hundreds of thousands of times. I didn’t mean what I said, that’s all I’ve done.

  Was there only one Eva Canning, and, if so, which one is the real one?

  Writing makes it even harder than concrete. Writing makes it hard as diamond.

  But questions don’t come with answers conveniently attached, and I always knew there was a paradox. A particle and a wave. Spooky action at a distance. July and November. Asking my appalling question out loud doesn’t bring any sort of resolution. I know less than I ever thought I knew. That’s all being able to ask the question means.

  Except it also means that I can’t stop here.

  7/7/7/7

  7/7

  7

  SEVEN

  7

  7/7

  7/7/7/7

  All our thoughts are mustard seeds. Oh, many days now. Many days. Many days of mustard seeds, India Phelps, daughter of madwomen, granddaughter, who doesn’t want to say a word and ergo can’t stop talking. Here is a sad, sad tale, woebegone story of the girl who stopped for the two strangers who would not could not could not would not stop for me. She, she who is me, and I creep around the edges of my own life afraid to screw off the mayonnaise lid and spill the mustard seeds. White mustard, black mustard, brown Indian mustard. She spills them on a kitchen floor and so has to count them seven times seven times before returning them to the spice jaw jar jaw jar. Screwed the lid on tight, because once was plenty enough of that, thank you. She exaggerates, but counting them more than once, there’s no getting past that, right? A careless elbow, and India Phelps loses one whole fucking hour and a half counting the seeds scattered all over the inconsistent floor, caught in cracks between boards, rolled away under the fridge and the stove and so having to be retrieved and no matter how long it takes. My time is mine. Black hands, hour hand, swift second hand, right and left hand dominant hand, minute hand, life line, soul line, all counterclockwise widdershins pockets full of posies. India Morgan Phelps, imp, demon, everyone calls her demon her whole life long thinking it was cute, her heart as rotten as old apples on the ground. These black enameled keys are good as mustard seeds, if I stop to consider the sound they make.

  There she was with a girl named Chloe and a woman she named Margot, but how would I know she wasn’t lying? To herself, to me, drawing names out of a hat. She didn’t ask if I was off my meds, but I saw it in her eyes, eyes green as wave-tumbled Coca-Cola tins. Saying there was only one story happened, when I’ve got two in my head, and how, how. How. Haven’t picked up the phone. No, picked up the phone, but haven’t called you Abalyn or Ogilvy or anyone at all. Thinking she might be right is worse than knowing, but still easier than picking up the phone or an email to steer my demonic self towards confirmation. The unknown is terrifying, but certainty damns me. Strike, strike, strike, strike a typewriter key, strike a match, strike a deal, strike a cord or is it chord? strike a bargain, strike me dead. The thought has crossed my mind many times the last several days counting my spilled mustard seeds. It would be easy, though bodies never want to give up the ghost easily, but with a little luck this would be ended and no more playing games of this is true or that is true but only the madwoman on Willow Street would dare be such a fool as to think both are true.

  Which brings me to Wolf Den Road, so called, so-called sobriquet Wolf Den Road traced in dirt between banks of snow forest in north and eastern Connecticut. I didn’t know the etymology that November night but I know it now. I know Israel Putnam’s crime of the winter of 1742, 1743, as winters span or straddle one year and the next. The justifications are almost as wild and unlikely as the legends of Gévaudan, La Bête du Pomfret we are told by history slaying sheep all that long winter, the tally varying from one source to the next. I don’t think any are reliable. I think the wolf was framed, and that sets me wondering about the wolf and the girl in red and who was it stalked who? Seventy sheep and goats on a single night. I don’t buy that, but I don’t buy many things others swallow whole, for the woodsman to cut free, half-digested, from distended lupine bellies. Lambs and kids mutilated, the survivors maimed badly enough to be put down like mad dogs, madwoman demonic disbelieving Imp. Devastated sheepfolds. Devastated shepherds of Connecticut. So there was a posse of Israel Shepherds and Oddfellow friends of sheep and goats and she’d left her fresh, incriminating paw prints in the new fallen snow so they’d have no trouble at all stalking her right back again. Makes me wonder if she wanted to die, too, and meant to be found, even if she didn’t make it entirely easy for those vengeful men of God. The dogs went down that stone throat and came out whimpering, tails between skinny legs, I think that’s shameful, sending dogs to do the bloody work of men, setting dogs against their forebears.

  Eva Canning, you of November evenings, lost and hopeless and hungry, crouched in the dark, sending the hounds scrambling back to their vexed masters. They’d already slaughtered so many of your children. And here the men sit all a long winter’s night, at the mouth of your den in the rocks, vexing themselves. Rocks slippery with snow and ice and the blood not yet spilled to avenge livestock. Putnam made a torch of birch bark and with a rope he bade them lower him into the crevice because if you want something done they say do it yourself if you want it done right. Don’t leave it to the dogs who once were wolves themselves, so let’s consider a conspiracy of canine coconspirators. Let’s suppose, as we suppose uncounted mustard seeds spell certain and not unknown doom. Good and righteous Squire Putnam, Patron Saint of sheep and goats, kids and lambs, mutton chops, lowered head down into the stinking maw of surely unknown blackness to exorcise the imp of Pomfret which was known lately to stalk frosty fields. Here he is, choosing the Road of Needles, for the sake of good Christian farmers of New England. Wolves who do evil out of ravenous hunger in the dead of winter. My headlights illuminating along back roads, not going anywhere on purpose, and ignorant of the mock-turtle heroics of Israel Putnam and the ghost he let loose that night so long ago when all my research has revealed the Holy Bible makes thirteen references to wolves. I’ve got a list right here. Try Acts 10:29. Skip this version. Remind me later.

  Canto 1, Inferno, Dante Alighieri, who wrote, but emphatically not of Israel Putnam the wolfslayer of Pomfret, lost in primeval glades and confronted by t
hree wild beasts. One was a she-wolf. Good Friday, 1300 AD: Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame, And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings; sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, seemed to be laden in her meagreness; e molte genti fé già viver grame, she brought upon me so much heaviness. The depredations of all these misbegotten bitches, woebegotten, so you’d think it was a bitch wolf in Eden and not a snake at all.

  (where you shall hear the howls of desperation)

  She didn’t see me at first. I’m not sure when she noticed me, but not until I stopped for her, Mr. Putnam. It’s not as if she were stalking me that night to do me mischief in that wood of barren limbs and snow crust to decently hide a billion shed leaves from my sight. It’s not like she was out hunting that night. I came upon her, Abalyn. I was out hunting, and it wasn’t her.

  I’m going to call this part “The Wolf Who Cried Girl.”

  But hunched here in my seat by the window on Willow Street I’ll not let Israel Putnam off the hook by straying back towards the road to Eva Canning (that’s the Second Coming, and not the first, this rough slouching beast).

  (which, even as she stalked me, step by dogged step)

  What I read says it was fifteen feet deep, the pit down to the haunt of the she-wolf of Pomfret. Then another horizontal ten feet hardly a yard from side to side and the ceiling so low Saint Wolfslayer had to crawl on his belly. This story grows ever more unlikely, just like Margot not being a not-quite-clever-enough nom de guerre, and what child’s name was India Imp, your guess is as good as mine. Fuck. Fuck. The mustard seeds keep coming back, and even without them I’d probably keep losing my way, straying from the path, but the mustard seeds aren’t helping one little biddy bit. Mr. Putnam said the wolf had fiery eyes. He would say that. He would embroider as hunters and fishermen are wont to do. All my Eva’s eyes flashed red. No, I mean that. So, Israel Putnam loaded his black-powder musket with nine deadly buckshot and killed the snarling, fire-eyed she-wolf bitch and dragged her out to the cheering crowd assembled above. She, dead, was dragged a corpse a mile from her sanctuary and nailed with an iron spike to a barn door or something of that sort. She was proof of the primacy of man, and of Putnam’s guilt but I see no proof hear no evidence (these lines I hear) beyond the merely circumstantial that she committed any crime. Remind me later.