OtherWorld

by Sarah Dreher

  “You should be glad.”

  “If she leaves, I’ll follow her. I’ll call you before I go. Be safe, Dearest.”

  “Be safe, yourself.”

  “By the way, tell Edith she should get a rebate on that rental car. The air conditioning doesn’t work, and the fan belt sounds like a banshee in heat.”

  She stood there for a moment, idiotically clutching the receiver, as if that could keep Gwen with her, could keep her safe. But the empty dial tone was too depressing. She hung up and sat on the edge of the bed.

  Millicent Tunes. She hadn’t thought of her in more than two years, though she had given more than a little thought to Gladys Grenier, Shady Acres’ favorite sadistic head nurse. Of course, she had assumed that Millicent Tunes was safely behind bars, while old Glad-Ass roamed the world at will with her dutiful and equally sadistic son, Mario. Hell, for all she knew, Gladys and Mario were right here in WDW, tucked away inside Minnie Mouse and Eeyore costumes.

  A chilling thought.

  But no more chilling than the thought of Millicent Tunes, out of the pokey and hot for revenge.

  At least it explained the cryptic message sent by Aunt Hermione’s Spirit Guide. What Aunt Hermione had heard as “music” obviously referred to Tunes.

  Aunt Hermione breezed in a few minutes later. She’d been in the middle of a meditation, when something told her—as clear as a bell, that something was about to happen, and she’d be needed.

  “They didn’t happen to mention what it was that was going to happen, did they?” Stoner asked.

  “No, and I couldn’t get any images.” Aunt Hermione shrugged out of her jacket, dug a rumpled and gritty pack of Virginia Slims from her pocket, and set about looking for an ash tray.

  “I don’t know,” Stoner said as she unearthed the ash tray from the same drawer to which she’d relegated the Gideon Bible and which she was using for dirty laundry. “Sometimes I wonder if contacting Spirit Guides is really worth the effort. Half the time they don’t tell you much, and when they do it’s so obscure it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s because you only ask them for help with the minutiae of life,” her aunt said as she ensconced herself near an open window and lit up. “They really take little interest in mundane affairs—having a larger perspective. The things that bother us terribly just aren’t that important.”

  “Well, they’re important to me,” Stoner said. “This is the life I’m living.”

  Aunt Hermione smoked for a minute and contemplated the sky. “Perhaps,” she said, “we should contact one of the more earthly Guides. Someone who’s chosen to take a personal interest in the goings-on on the material plane.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe someone who knows Marylou personally. Or Millicent Tunes’ guardian angel—assuming she has one.”

  “Oh, we all have them, dear. Even the worst of us. It’s just that some of us refuse to listen. Very frustrating for Spirit. Imagine being Millicent Tunes’ guardian angel.”

  “What I can’t imagine,” Stoner said, “is doing anything so awful in this life I’d have to spend the time beyond being Millicent Tunes’ guardian angel.”

  Aunt Hermione put out her cigarette. “It’s a choice we make. Some Spirit has chosen to guard her. Well, it’s said we all have our uses in this world. For reasons too deep for us to comprehend, that woman has chosen her path. We have to respect that choice, even while we try to stop her.”

  “Sometimes I envy you, Aunt Hermione.” Stoner sat on the bed and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her head on her knees. “You have such an acceptance of things.”

  “It wasn’t always this way, you know. In my younger years, I thrashed about just as much as you do. I do recommend the aging process. If you allow it to, it brings great peace of mind. At the least, it puts the trivia into perspective.” She assumed her meditative posture. Back straight, arms open, palms up. “Now, let’s see if I can contact someone to give us a hand with these earthly matters.”

  Stoner closed her eyes. She heard her aunt take a deep breath, then another...

  The phone rang.

  Stoner picked it up, and shrugged “Sorry” to her aunt, who only smiled.

  “I know who I am,” the woman said.

  “What?” In the background, Walter Cronkite was holding forth on the wonders of Communication in the modern age.

  “Callie Rose. My name is Callie Rose.” She definitely had a heavy Southern accent. Not like Gwen’s, a slight smoothing out of sounds. Or even George’s or Stape’s. Callie Rose’s accent was thick as molasses, her words slow but run together as if they were all one word.

  “And you’re in Spaceship Earth.”

  There was a pause. “I never heard of that.”

  “It’s an exhibit,” Stoner said. “In EPCOT Center. In Walt Disney World.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Callie Rose? My name’s Stoner. Stoner McTavish. You’re trapped somehow. On a ride. How long have you been there?”

  “I don’t know,” the woman said in a frightened-sounding voice. “A long, long time.”

  Probably days. The woman was probably starving to death. She obviously stepped off of the ride, maybe even during one of those terrifying, twilight unannounced stops. She’d seen an exit sign, just as Stoner had, and in panic had gone through it and fallen on the stairs. Since then she’d had amnesia—a concussion, maybe—and had been wandering around lost. Sure, that was it. That explained everything.

  Except for a few minor details, like why was the ride running in the middle of the night when the park was closed. And, even more fun to wonder about, why was Stoner the only one who heard her?

  She tried to brush that aside. “Do you remember getting on the ride?”

  “What ride?”

  “The ride through Spaceship Earth.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Callie Rose said. Her voice turned a little shaky. “I want to get out of here.”

  “That’s easy,” Stoner said. “Just go out through any door. You’ll be on the ground, and a security guard will find you.”

  “I can’t do that,” the woman said.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s only one door. I’m afraid of it.”

  Stoner had a distinctly unpleasant feeling. “Why are you afraid of it?” she asked softly, and held her breath.

  “There’s death on the other side.”

  Oh, shit. Stoner shook her head. “Callie Rose, which side are you on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, does the door open toward you, or away from you?”

  A brief silence, as if the woman were trying to remember. “Toward.”

  The other side. Callie Rose was on the Other Side.

  Other Side of what?

  And how could she get across? If Stoner couldn’t cross from her side, how could Callie Rose...?

  What the hell was she talking about?

  No, this all had a logical explanation. Callie Rose was a tourist who’d gotten lost, trapped in a (nonexistent) tunnel on the opposite side of the (nonexistent) door Stoner had found at the base of the (nonexistent) stairs leading underground from the Ball (which didn’t touch the ground)...

  Stoner ran her hand through her hair and felt the inside of her face turn cold. “Listen,” she said, “try to tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  “The pit,” Callie Rose said.

  “The pit with the fog?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a hard knot in her stomach. It shifted a little, and made her slightly light-headed. “Do you know what’s in the pit?”

  “No.”

  She felt a tap on her shoulder. Aunt Hermione stood beside her, gesturing for her to give over the phone.

  “You won’t be able to hear her,” Stoner said. “I’m the only one who can.”

  Her aunt took the phone from her hand. “Callie? Listen, dear, this is Hermione...” She paused as if listening. But, of
course, that was ridic... “That’s right, Hermione. We’ve known one another before, but you probably don’t remember... A long, long time ago. I’ve been trying to reach you, but you’re hard to get through to, Callie. Now, I know you’re lost and feel perfectly wretched, but we can get through this. First we need your help, though. In your travels over there, have you come across our friend, Marylou?... Marylou... Well, perhaps you didn’t catch her name. She’s about thirty-two, chunky build, dark hair cut short, dark eyes... A little disheveled, yes, that’s the one.” She nodded eagerly at Stoner. “We need to find her, Callie. Yes, it’s very important...” She paled.

  “What?” Stoner asked.

  Aunt Hermione brushed her off. “Are you sure?” she asked into the phone.

  “What?” Stoner insisted.

  “Callie, try to be calm and pay attention.”

  Aunt Hermione covered the receiver and spoke to Stoner. “She’s very young. A child, really. And very frightened.”

  “What did she say about Marylou?”

  Her aunt ignored her question, turning back to the phone. “Think hard, now, Callie. What makes you think she’s dead?”

  “Dead?” Stoner squeaked. “She said Marylou’s dead?”

  “She thinks so,” said Aunt Hermione. “But it doesn’t feel right to me. I really believe I’d have sensed it if...” She listened, then laughed. “No, Callie, just because she’s wearing black doesn’t mean she’s dead. Marylou likes to wear black... I don’t know why, it’s just a quirk of hers... Yes, I suppose she’s a little different.”

  She hears her, Stoner thought. Aunt Hermione hears her.

  “Callie, can you tell us where she is? ...I know, dear, but anything you can tell us would be very helpful.” She took the pad and pencil from the table and began to write. “I see. Yes, yes, that’s quite good. You’ve been a big help. We’ll be in touch soon. Thank you, Callie.”

  “What did she say?” Stoner asked as her aunt hung up the phone.

  “She’s seen Marylou. In the tunnels. There seems to be an abandoned room, a section which was once intended for a work room, I suspect, since there’s a rest room nearby. But it didn’t seem to her as if anyone had been there in a long time.”

  “But where is it?”

  “She didn’t know, poor thing. Callie’s time on this plane was quite a long while ago. However, she did describe some landmarks. Maybe we can put them together and come up with something.”

  Stoner looked down at the rug. “Uh, Aunt Hermione, what does that mean, ‘her time on this plane...?’”

  “Callie Rose has been dead for more than fifty years. Caught between this world and the next. It happens sometimes, when a person is confused by death, or doesn’t want to make the decision to go... The source of most, but not all, hauntings, you know. Some hauntings are purely willful and nasty. One wonders how some spirits can be satisfied with being so un-evolved, doesn’t one? Well, as on earth, so in Heaven, as they say. Or is it the other way around?”

  Stoner felt like screaming. “Are you trying to tell me I’ve been talking on the phone to a dead woman?”

  “Crudely put, but yes, that’s the gist of it.” She consulted her slip of paper. “Water, lily pads—too general. Boats. Where in EPCOT might one see boats?”

  “Norway, Mexico, and the whole lagoon,” Stoner said. A dead woman? She’d been talking to a dead woman?

  Aunt Hermione scratched off boats. “Flamingoes. I imagine they’re everywhere, too.”

  Stoner thought about it. “I don’t really remember, but I don’t think I saw them everywhere.”

  “That could be a clue, then.” She consulted her list. “There’s one more, but it makes absolutely no sense. “A steeple without a spire.’ ”

  A dead woman was telling them to look for a steeple without a spire. A woman who’d been dead for a long time. More than fifty years. After more than fifty years underground, would she really make a reliable witness?

  Not that there were alternatives coming out of the woodwork. A fifty-year-dead woman might be the best they could do.

  “Are you thinking?” Aunt Hermione asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “About the task at hand? Or are you questioning the evidence of your senses?”

  “All right, all right,” Stoner said. “I’m questioning.”

  Aunt Hermione sighed. “The analytical approach,” she said, “was fine in Sherlock Holmes’ days. It won’t help us now.”

  Steeple without a spire? She tried to picture the buildings in EPCOT. There was Imagination, the big crystal. It could look like a spire-less steeple. The Land might, with its conical shape and truncated lid. The Eiffel Tower? No, that was more likely spire without steeple. Callie Rose wouldn’t make that mistake. Fifty years ago people knew their spires from their steeples.

  She was beginning to feel a little giddy.

  Morocco had that tall, steepleish building. And China. And if anything looked churchy, it was the American Adventure. Very right-wing Fundamentalist. And let’s not forget the Campanile in Italy. Norway had a genuine church. It had a steeple and spire, but Callie Rose might have missed it. And the Aztec temple that was the Mexican... “There are too many of them,” she said.

  “Then we’ll have to put the clues together in different ways, like those terrible logic puzzles you’re always trying to do but never finish and end up throwing across the room.”

  “They make me feel stupid,” Stoner said.

  “Of course they do. They make me feel stupid, too. That’s why I never try them.” She stared fiercely at her list. “This might be something. Steeple without a spire, boats, and water.”

  “Mexico and Norway, if she didn’t see the spire in Norway.”

  “Steeple, water, boats, and flamingoes.”

  “Same thing.” She hesitated. “Wait a minute. I don’t think there were flamingoes in Norway. The water was inside, not outside.” Stoner got to her feet in excitement. “Mexico. She saw her somewhere around Mexico.” She fumbled around for her shoes.

  “Stoner,” Aunt Hermione said, “what are you doing?”

  “We have to get her.”

  Her aunt put a calming hand on her arm. “It’s the middle of the night. The park is closed.”

  “Right.” She rifled through her brain and came up with an idea. “I’ll give George a call. Maybe she can get us in.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then… and then we’ll… do whatever needs to be done.”

  Aunt Hermione shook her head. “You’re always talking about having a plan, Stoner. Is this what you call a plan?”

  That stopped her short. Okay, maybe she needed to think it through a bit more. But meanwhile she could line George up, and tell Edith. It wasn’t exactly good news, but it was news. Callie Rose may have been dead for nearly a hundred years, but she’d given them their first break.

  CHAPTER 10

  “That was excellent,” Marylou said, wiping her mouth daintily on the linen napkin he’d purchased for her at the U.K. pavilion. “You have very good taste, David.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I only wish...” she caught herself on the verge of saying “you’d brought some real silverware instead of that dreadful plastic trash,” but decided not to press her luck. The food had been good, though a bit too much of a good thing all at once, one dish tended to distract from another, but the wine had been a decent choice, and it would undoubtedly be tacky to be too choosy. Yes, David was definitely trainable. By engaging in simple food-talk, she’d found out enough to know that she was incarcerated in, under, or near Walt Disney World. She’d gotten him to tell her his first name, too. Didn’t even have to simper much. She thought it might come in handy. The police would want all the information she could give them, once she got out of here.

  If she got out of here.

  He was looking at her in a shy, expectant kind of way. Now what?

  David wondered if he should bring it up himself, or wait f
or her to give him an opening. But she might be hesitant, being the woman. The man should probably make the first move.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” She glanced at him, head cocked to one side in a most appealing way.

  “I hope you won’t think this is forward of me...” he began.

  Oh, dear God in Heaven, he wants SEX! What the hell do I do now?

  “...but, well, you see, I’ve kind of guessed what you were getting at earlier…”

  “You have?” Marylou squeaked in a state bordering panic.

  He smiled. She was playing innocent. Probably embarrassed that she’d been so transparent. He took her hand. “It wasn’t that you said anything impertinent or anything like that. Please don’t think that. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, most men wouldn’t even have noticed, but I’ve always been—well, unusually perceptive. So I hope you won’t worry about that.”

  What on God’s green earth is he talking about?

  “I want you to know right off,” he said, “that I consider it an honor and a privilege. And I promise not to interfere with any decisions you make, as long as you let me see it once in a while. I might even be able to help with expenses, when things are going well for me.” He laughed a little. “I mean, there is a risk in my line of work. Going to jail and all. I couldn’t take a lot of responsibility, but I’d do anything I could, especially if you needed some special thing.”

  “It?” What “it”?

  Marylou had a very uneasy feeling. She couldn’t put it into words, but somehow, somewhere deep inside—in the general vicinity of her solar plexus—a part of her had a hunch about what was coming.

  He was waiting for an answer, or a word of encouragement or something. “You’re very kind,” she murmured.

  David grinned. “So we do understand one another?”