Tangled Webs

by Bibiana Krall

  This was an artistic challenge like none I had ever imagined.

  So, in the end, after many, many, phone calls, meetings, paper shuffling, and the first installment of the fee deposited (plus a few long-distance calls with Bjorn), I took on the Williams’ commission.

  The plaster castings of her famous legs arrived first. I studied them extensively and made drawing after drawing, trying to figure out how to carve and incorporate the bones.

  Speaking of which, I was a bit hesitant the day the bones arrived in a padded, black trunk. I opened the lid slowly, kind of like a half of a casket, which I guess in retrospect it kind of was. I didn’t quite know how I would feel seeing them in real life after so much discussion.

  Stanley had been right, they had been preserved and bleached. I’m happy to report there were no unexpected fragments to be found.

  Before I started the technical research, I took it upon myself to get to know Grace Williams. I binged watched her movies, television appearances, interviews. I read her autobiography. I combed tabloid magazine articles that spanned over eighty years. Stanley gave me access to her private, photo albums.

  I have to admit to getting a bit teary-eyed when I saw her as a young girl, posing in her high heels. She was turning out to be a kindred spirit.

  The project took me almost a year to complete. I met with engineers at robotic companies. Medical doctors and prosthetic specialists were consulted as I tested designs and settled on materials. For her lower torso and legs, I chose a soft, pink marble. It was delicate to work with but gave off a translucency to the legs and back torso.

  (Yes, she did have a casting of her buttocks. Grace Williams was proud of all her assets…).

  As I carved and sculpted, I ran her movies in the background.

  The sound of her voice was soothing to me as I formed the stone into a coquettish pose. I imagined her in the room with me, watching as I brought her beloved legs to life.

  For the feet, I was able to work with the prosthetic company to attach the foot bones to an articulated frame covered with a synthetic skin coating so that they could be fitted into different shoe styles. Stanley had several of Grace’s favorites (she had excellent taste) delivered to the studio.

  Heels, sandals, boots—my job was to make sure her feet could fit in them. I have to admit to trying a few of them on myself.

  The craftsmanship and materials were stunning. I had a few replicas of the more unique footwear made for my own use.

  It was a groundbreaking day when I was able to finally attach the marble legs to the feet. Her legs were slightly bent at the knee with one leg in front of the other. The feet snapped onto the legs with connecting rods.

  They could be posed in different slants, depending on the shoes she was wearing. (Yes, I had assigned the legs as she/her.)

  There was even an added bonus—Grace had a collection of ankle cuffs made from rich tapestry material bedazzled with jewels and faux fur. They were elegant and provided the perfect way to hide the seams from the posable feet and marble legs.

  I found them stunning and had several pairs made for myself.

  As a remembrance of this most unusual commission, I placed different pairs of Grace’s shoes on the leg torso and took pictures of her standing regally in different rooms of my house.

  That evening, I celebrated my epic design with a bottle of champagne, wearing a matching pair of shoes and ankle cuffs with my stony friend, Grace. I think she was pleased.

  I called Stanley the following day and told him the commission was ready to be picked up. He had a shipping company come to the house to carefully pack her up and take her away.

  It was a bittersweet day---I was sad to see her go. I had watched and re-watched the actress’s shows, movies, interviews the past year. I read her books and learned of her hardships, highlights, trials, and tribulations. I grew to love her really, she had become my kindred, shoe spirit.

  With the second installment of the generous fee deposited into my account, I was ready to do some shoe shopping in honor of my newfound, stony friend!

  Grace’s lower torso was delivered back to her mansion in Bel Air, per the instructions in her will. Stanley was kind enough to send me a picture of the famous legs that had been installed in her sunroom, overlooking her topiary garden that had several of the bushes trimmed into the shape of her beloved heels. I thought she would be happy there.

  The next month I slowly went back to the other sculptures that had been deferred by Grace’s commission. I was back into the world of carving busts of loving grandmothers, beautiful children (they were the hardest to do) and even a few beloved pets.

  My normal, sculpting mojo had returned, and I was wearing some fabulous new heels. All was peaceful, until I answered the phone last night.

  “Hello, Greer McKay.”

  “What did you do with this statue? It’s drivin’ me nuts I’m tellin’ ya, nuts!”

  “Who is this?”

  “Arnie Kravitz, Grace’s husband. Is this some kinda joke? Are you and that lawyer up ta somethin’?” Had Grace lived a bit longer, I’m sure this number eight husband would have been replaced with number nine.

  “Mr. Kravitz, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Now please, I must go.”

  “No, she’s after me, I tell ya. I can’t shake her.” He was definitely panicked.

  “Mr. Kravitz, you need to call someone to come over, really, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “She’s coming after me I tell ya.” I could hear him running as he talked. It sounded like he was climbing stairs. I could hear what sounded like a thump, thump, thump in the background, but had no idea what it could be.

  “I can call 9-1-1 for you. Please, calm down. Help will be to you soon.”

  All I could hear was his huffing and puffing as he continued running.

  The sounds became muffled as I heard him opening a creaky window and climb out—he must have put his phone in his shirt pocket. I could tell he was struggling.

  He cursed several times. I could only assume he was tripping and sliding down whatever it was.

  All of a sudden, I heard a terrified scream that seemed to go forever and then a sickening crunch. The line went dead.

  Reports the next day told of his fate. Arnie Kravitz, husband number eight to Grace Williams, had fallen off the roof of his Bel Air home and died.

  The headlines went viral though for something that was indeed odd. Standing on the roof of the house in all her glory, were Grace’s legs in their coquettish pose, wearing the star’s famous red, sequined shoes with matching ankle cuffs.

  A few weeks later, after the grisly inquest was completed (I had to testify), Stanley summoned me to his office in Beverly Hills. It seemed that there was a second codicil to the will.

  If, in the event, the inheritor ever tried to get rid of the sculpture or died, the estate was to go to the last person contacted, which amazingly turned out to be me. In a very strange twist of fate, I inherited all of Grace’s fortune and belongings, including the famous legs and her shoe collection.

  She’s in my bedroom now, next to the walk-in closet. At first, I had her down in the conservatory with the other returned carvings, but apparently her love for shoes was too much of a temptation.

  Night after night I’d find her in my closet, trying on elegant heels. I finally decided to let her stay with me in my bedroom—I was tired of lugging her up and down the stairs.

  I don’t know what exactly is going on with Grace and how she manages to move around so easily. This was a universal curve-ball from a worm hole I didn’t quite have the answer to.

  Life with Grace was unusual and fun as it turned out. Friday nights became a let’s re-organize the shoe closet night.

  We spent winters in the Aspen house (we both love snow boots) and for summers in Bel Air, open-toe sandals never looked so good.

  During the month I went to stay with my #SO, Bjorn, in Norway, I left Grace to enjoy the shoe closet all to herself. The only t
hing I made sure to do was disconnect the phones and internet while I was away.

  Grace had figured out how to place orders online.

  Really, she was such a shoe-a-holic!

  Did the bones bring this star of stage and screen back to life? Was it the thrill of enjoying the shoes that she loved so much?

  I doubt we’ll ever know for sure. All I know is that this sculpture of the dead still had a ton of living to do.

  * * *

  Buy the shoes…

  Jasper

  “This is all nonsense, fantasy, it is not like this. Nothing so blood-curdling and becreepered and crude - not so...so laughable. The truth is quite other, and altogether more terrible.” –Susan Hill

  Spirit Island

  by Bibiana Krall

  Seychelle, Tanglewood was no pushover. She didn’t believe in haunted legends or operate on fear like many seem to these days.

  She had recently returned to Jasper, a village in Alberta, Canada.

  Like in anyone’s hometown, gossip and reputations tend to stick.

  Trying to adjust to the dreaded “new normal,” she stayed in her lane and today she actually made decent money at it too.

  The hiking trail through the forest was extra slippery this morning, because the winter thaw had come and gone.

  All too quickly, the morning frost was back again.

  A dress rehearsal for late October when snow and the dreaded silence always came home to roost.

  An owl hooted and a bald eagle circled above the ethereal pine grove she’d named “The Cathedral” when she was a little girl.

  Something scrabbled behind her on the wilderness path and her pulse quickened, wondering if it was a young grizzly or perhaps an elk herd?

  Both were equally dangerous when the rut began.

  She’d pushed her luck and hadn’t showered off the lilac deodorant and vanilla-bean body spray from the night before, when she took a rare moment to tip one at The D’ed Dog and had flirted with the most eligible man in town.

  Of course, there were also tons of college students and athletic nomads who worked at the ski resorts, but she didn’t vibe with the party crowd anymore.

  Ethan Keasik was a park ranger she’d had a secret crush on since grammar school.

  They were both in their late twenties and oddballs, as most everyone they knew had a few children, had moved away to “Cowtown” for career opportunities or were married.

  Happily or unhappily ever after, as the pendulum swings.

  She stopped walking for a minute to listen closer, ready to calmly step off the throughway with her eyes cast down if a grumpy bear or a young buck with an attitude showed up.

  Bear spray is a real thing and she had some tucked in her bag, but she wasn’t convinced that it actually made a bad situation better, especially in late fall where the animals seem to be especially concerned about hoarding enough food to get through the season.

  Whatever it was seemed as if it were gone now, so she continued on with heightened awareness, as an ethereal mist slipped and wove through the pines like a silk ribbon.

  Medicine Lake was easily one of her favorite places in the world.

  Outdoor Quarterly hired her to photograph the changing of the leaves in a nature documentary series called, ‘Our Distant Seasons.’

  She’d traveled the world for the past five years searching for the origins behind legends and lore connected to natural phenomena, like the Aurora Borealis and the green flash many report on the ocean horizon as the sun disappears.

  People liked it when she used snippets of these stories to caption her award-winning photography.

  Freelancing would never earn her a million dollars, but freedom and experience is what she’d exchanged it for.

  Seychelle had once rented an overpriced studio in Kitsilano, an upscale district in Vancouver before she ended up back here in Jasper, working remotely on digital projects for the past year to help her mother Margot deal with life after the pandemic.

  Lack of tourism had shuttered most of the local businesses on Connaught Drive, including her family’s historic bar and grill, The Prince Rupert.

  At the turn of the century, the semi-famous watering hole had catered to tradesmen, fur trappers and hunters.

  Adventurous, rugged types who’d relished steak and eggs for breakfast and knew that the best drink in the world comes from Scotland and needs no ice.

  Some claimed that back in the day, Dr. John Rae, the man who’d started the Hudson Bay Company liked to stop in for a dram and a plate of, Toad in the Hole.

  It’s a delicious combination of baked sausage with a Yorkshire pudding poured over it, and baked into a golden-brown puff. Comfort food to the highest power on a dark and stormy night in the mountains.

  There was a carbon print photograph framed on the wall behind the bar that proved he’d visited Jasper at least once.

  She’d often pondered how closely the man resembled Ethan.

  The only time people flocked here now was in January to ski or snowboard and to enjoy the six weeks of summer on a scenic train that dead-ended in Vancouver.

  It stopped making sense to keep the bar going for only a few months of revenue and full stop––they needed to accept how things were now.

  Her mom was a planner.

  She’d saved a bit here and there and the cozy brick building with the spacious apartment upstairs was paid for when her father passed on from heart failure due to health complications a few years previous.

  Recently, her mother had started to speak aloud, as if her father had returned, as if this was a two-way conversation and there was nothing unusual or strange about it.

  The past year had been a difficult time and most anyone might agree that loneliness does horrible things to people.

  No one was actually there, but Margot firmly believed that she saw his ghost most often on the service stairs that connected their living space to the ground floor. She sometimes mentioned seeing other spirits float by the bar on the street.

  Mom shared troubling musings about spectral trappers dressed in fur pelts stumbling down the asphalt late at night towards the gondola.

  On occasion, she delighted in the vision of a spectral young woman with ‘the face of an angel and hip-length, lustrous black hair.’

  The forest has magical, restorative powers and Seychelle’s mind finally let go of her troubles, as she reveled in the peace and quiet.

  There’s nothing quite like crisp autumn air while inhaling the herbal camphor of an uncut pine grove.

  Seychelle eased off her heavy rucksack and began to set things up.

  The trail ridge opened to a scenic overlook. All around her stood majestic peaks with a serene valley down below.

  Rockwell, Helen, Pumpelly Pillar and her stoic muse… Lone Walker Mountain, which garnered a lion’s share of the view. It made the perfect background for the mysterious, disappearing lake.

  Most of the water had vanished from the basin, as it was early September.

  The phenomena happened every year like clockwork and the trees left stranded in the mud flats looked like boulder humps from the distance.

  The woods celebrated its annual metamorphosis and a blaze of scarlet, sienna and gold added splashes of bold color to the picturesque landscape, as she set up her tripod and hoped the sun would stay hidden behind the clouds for a while.

  Natural light can be tricky for professional photography and she preferred the days when cumulus clouds filtered out the brightest rays.

  After a few hours, she’d snagged a fair number of photos to go through later.

  The decamped restaurant had been turned into her office, so she could leave things in piles and not worry about the mess bothering her mother.

  Perhaps a thousand frames or more were added to the memory stick, but only one or two photos would make the final cut.

  For some reason she began to feel leery and exposed standing out there on the rock ledge. It was the same prickly feeling one might exper
ience on a deserted subway platform late at night in a city or in a deserted parking garage fiddling for your keys.

  Her skin tingled, as if someone were watching, but she saw no one by the lakeshore or anywhere else, as she methodically scanned the valley with a hand shielding her eyes.

  Often a red jacket, the racket of music or laughter would pinpoint another hiker rather quickly.

  Swiveling the camera lens around, she flipped on the video, hoping to catch a big animal coming out of the woods to fish or drink.

  Short clips including wildlife, especially anything considered dangerous or fierce fetched tons more money than the stills.

  Sweeping the lakeshore with the telephoto on from left to right, something in the distance moved and her heart raced when the viewfinder confirmed that she was not alone.

  A person was perched on the edge of the tiny, pine-studded island centered in the lake.

  Spirit Island has a romantic legend of star-crossed lovers, shared around campfires by the original residents well before the illustrious Shakespeare penned Romeo and Juliet.

  Zooming in, she tried to sharpen the focus, but it was just a little too far and all she could surmise was a sinuous, feminine shape.

  Pulling back from the camera, the movement continued, but what scared Seychelle more than anything was the haunting, and spine-tingling wail that arrived soon after.

  Canyons carry noise for miles and it was impossible to deny the tragic sounds of weeping. Echoes of the woman’s grief carried across the lake. Even the trees seemed to feel the deep emotion this person openly shared.

  Perhaps the woman was in trouble and something terrible had just happened?

  Before she could change her mind or decide to not get involved, she popped the camera off the tripod and packed up her gear.

  The only way to get down there quickly was to jog back to the gravel parking lot a half-mile back where her jeep was parked and to drive down.

  Cupping her hands over her mouth, Seychelle sucked in her breath and boomed over the cliffside, “I’m coming ‘round with my truck! If you’re hurt, please sit tight. I will phone the ranger station to come help us.”