Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day

by Seanan McGuire

  Brenda is at the stove when I walk, barefoot and wrapped in my sleeping shroud, out into the front of the apartment, where the kitchen and living room flow together like water. The floor around her is a sea of cats, wolfing down their canned food with a gusto that I haven’t seen from some of them in months, if ever. I give her a quizzical look.

  “You died in what, the mid-seventies?” asks Brenda neutrally, flipping the sizzling bacon in the pan.

  “Early,” I say. “Seventy-two.” That was the last year I walked the world in skin and flesh and bone; the last year the world contained my sister, pretty Patty, who should have been the one to endure, if either of us was going to.

  “So you probably missed the trick,” says Brenda. She begins scooping bacon from the pan to a nearby plate, where half a dozen slices are already cooling, fatty and delicious. “I’m a corn witch. I’ve told you that. I left Indiana because I missed Bill, and because the field was too tempting. Witches can only go out into things that have life of their own. Remember that, when whatever comes next turns taxing: a witch can never go into a ghost, or a corpse, or a bone. They can go into stones and gems and the like, but that’s because the earth has a sort of life, and that’s getting very metaphysical. Bacon?”

  “Do I smell coffee?” I ask, in a small voice. I didn’t expect to start my day with a witch waxing poetic about things that are and aren’t dead. I may not sleep in the traditional way, but I’m still groggy and unsettled when I get up, and this is more than I’m equipped to handle right now.

  “You do smell coffee, and pancakes,” says Brenda. “Delia will be down with more eggs in a moment. She’s a charming woman, your landlady. If I were twenty years younger, and she were interested in the living, I’d offer her more than a free breakfast, if you take my meaning.”

  “If I don’t want it, can I put it down?” I ask, horrified.

  Brenda laughs. “Anyway. As I was saying: witches can’t go into what’s dead and gone. There’s no temptation for me in a can of corn. But that doesn’t mean it’s beyond my reach. They put corn in everything these days, thanks to the subsidies and the lobbyists. Short-sighted bastards, every damn one of them. Doesn’t mean I won’t take advantage.”

  It takes me a moment to puzzle my way through what she’s saying. Then I stop, and stare at her. “Are you saying you . . . you witched my cats?”

  “I’m saying I used the cornmeal in their food to clear up a few little medical problems they didn’t need to have,” says Brenda. “They’ll feel better, they’ll eat more, and they’ll still die whenever they were meant to, because nothing I did would give them any more time. They’ll just be happier until they go.”

  I can’t be mad at her for that, no matter how uneasy I am about her using magic in my home. The cats deserve every moment of joy that they can get. “Corn witches are powerful, then, huh?”

  “Why do you think we have so many lobbyists?” Brenda smiles as she turns off the stove. “Everything comes back to the soil it’s planted in. Remember that.”

  “I’ll try.”

  The back door bangs open, and there’s Delia, Avocado on her shoulder. The parrot is shrieking about bacon-bacon-bacon; my landlady is holding a wicker basket brimming with enough eggs to feed a small army. I don’t understand why until someone knocks on the front door, and Delia’s face splits in a smile.

  “I may have invited a few people, sweetheart. I thought you could use a little cheer before you go off chasing shadows. Everyone gets a proper wake in this house. Now be a dear, and let them in.”

  I can’t tell her no, even though I want to: this is her building, and I’m just a tenant. So I walk to the door, my shroud wisping into my daylight clothes, and hope that whoever she’s invited doesn’t frighten the cats too badly.

  Whoever she’s invited turns out to be all the living tenants in the building. People I’ve never met pour into my apartment, exchanging greetings, trading names, settling in for breakfast. Some of them pet the cats. Some of them smile. All of them know Delia, who greets them like a proud parent, Avo sitting on her shoulder and gnawing on a strip of bacon. The whole scene feels familiar, eggs cooking in the pan and Brenda barking commands at anyone who wanders too close to her. One of the boys from downstairs stops by to thank me for a lovely breakfast, and I realize why this has me so on edge. It’s not the strangers in my space or the fact that Brenda and Delia didn’t ask me.

  It’s that what Delia said was accurate. This feels like a funeral. This feels like a saying goodbye. When the last dish has been washed and the last visitor slips away, I’ll still be here, but my old existence will be over. I’ll be someone else, someone who works with witches instead of avoiding them, someone who looks for missing people instead of staying safe behind a phone and helping the lost find their own way home.

  My first funeral was no fun. This one isn’t much better.

  It takes a little over an hour for the occupants of my building to devour everything Brenda has cooked, everything Delia has provided. Then they stream out, some pausing to pet the cats, vanishing back into the halls and the safety of their own homes. I feel a pang of loss. I’ll likely never see most of them again. The fact that I’ve never seen most of them before doesn’t matter. They became a part of my world when they came to breakfast in my living room, and now I have something I can grieve for.

  I should have made an effort. I should have met them before this. I should have lived.

  The door closes behind the last guest. The only sound is Avo crunching on a piece of toast. The parrot has eaten enough to make up for the fact that I haven’t eaten anything at all, too nervous to stomach anything but air. I look to Brenda, and I wait.

  “I don’t know where the other ghosts went,” says Brenda. “I know they were taken. I know someone out there is barring ghosts in glass. And I know Delia has to stay here.”

  “I provide housing for more than just ghosts,” says Delia. She looks uncomfortable, like the words are bitter in her mouth. “There’s families, college students, people who’d be priced right out of what this city has turned into, if they didn’t have me to keep a roof over their heads.”

  “What she’s not saying is that right now, she’s the senior ghost in Manhattan,” says Brenda. “That comes with certain responsibilities. One of them is staying here, in case new ghosts come along and need to be taught the rules of the city.”

  “Delia’s always been good at doing that,” I say numbly.

  “It was always just helping out in an unofficial capacity before,” says Delia. “Hopefully, it will be again soon, when those other ghosts come back. I don’t want to be in charge of anything. Being in charge of things will interfere with my painting something fierce.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it.

  The phone rings.

  We all turn toward it. I’m the first to find my voice. “No one from the hotline would be calling me at this hour, and today’s my day off from work,” I say. “No one should be calling me at all.” Because that’s the real tragedy of being a dead girl in a world filled with the living: no one calls. No one comes over for breakfast. I am a tourist here, in a place where I never belonged, and there are very few people who would miss me if I were gone.

  “Aren’t you going to see who it is?” asks Delia, when the ringing gets to be too much.

  I pick up the receiver. It’s cold and heavy in my hand. “Hello?”

  “Jenna!” Danny sounds so relieved to hear my voice that it hurts. I almost drop the phone. “I was afraid you wouldn’t pick up.”

  “Danny?” Brenda stiffens. Delia looks relieved. I try to focus on the sound of his voice. “Danny, where are you? We’re all worried sick. The ghosts are gone. All the ghosts are gone.”

  “That’s why I’m hiding—because someone’s been stealing ghosts, and I don’t want to be next,” says Danny. “I was calling to make sure you were okay. Where are you, Jenna? Are you being safe? Are you being careful?”

  “I’m at home,” I sa
y, frowning. “You called me. You should know that. How did you get this number?” A lot of people who shouldn’t have my number have been calling me lately. It’s starting to get on my nerves.

  “I—” Danny stops after that one syllable, leaving it hanging for several seconds before he says, “Just be careful. Stay in public places, if you can. Don’t go to the helpline. It’s too predictable. Try the park, or Times Square, someplace where no one can get you alone. I’ll do my best to call again.”

  The line goes dead. I lower the receiver, frowning. “I never gave him my number,” I say. “How can he call me if he doesn’t have my number?”

  “There are many kinds of witches,” says Brenda. Then, without giving me a chance to stop and think, she asks, “Where did the call originate?”

  “Mill Hollow, Kentucky,” I say, with equal speed. Then I stop, blinking slowly, and turn to stare at her. “How did you . . . how did I . . .”

  “Ghosts can always find home, and there had to be a reason you’d been left alone this long,” says Brenda. She looks to Delia. “Lock your doors and windows tight. It’s not safe here anymore. I know you can’t leave—”

  “You know I won’t leave,” says Delia firmly.

  Brenda smiles. “You won’t leave. Yes. But you need to stay secure, if you can. We don’t want Manhattan to come unmoored.”

  Delia sobers. “No,” she agrees. “We don’t want that.”

  I look between the two of them, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. If I’d lived—if I’d grown up and grown older as a living human girl—I’d be an adult by now. As it stands, in some ways, I’m still a child. I always will be, right up until I reach my dying day and step across the line into whatever waits for ghosts who have moved on. It’s frustrating under the best of circumstances. Right now, it’s terrifying.

  “What does ‘unmoored’ mean?” I ask.

  Both older women stop, turning to face me. Delia’s mouth works like she’s trying to speak but can’t find the words. That just makes things worse. Brenda can be silent. I’ve seen it, seen her sitting comfortable at the diner counter with a cup of coffee in her hand, letting the world move around her like a promise. But Delia doesn’t hold her peace. “I’m not resting in it, so I don’t see the need to cling to it” was what she told me once, when I asked if talking all the time got as exhausting for her as it was for me. Delia is never silent, and now Delia can’t make a sound.

  This is where I should turn and run. This is where I should go see California, catch a plane to Hawaii, anything to get me away from this suddenly unsafe apartment full of ancient cats and silent ghosts, anything to take myself out of the line of fire. I’m Jenna, I’m the girl who runs. I ran from Patty’s death and into the storm that killed me. I ran from Mill Hollow and the slow acidic ache of watching my parents age and die while I stood outside of time, exiled by my own actions. Ghosts are going missing, Danny is calling me from Mill Hollow, and Delia has been struck silent. This is where I leave.

  “Well?” I look between the two of them, not moving. “What does ‘unmoored’ mean?”

  “Ghosts don’t age unless they choose it,” says Brenda. I already know this, but something about her tone tells me to listen. Her words are careful; she’s choosing them like she’s trying to pick the best shells off a cluttered beach. Delia’s mouth stops moving. I wait.

  Brenda continues, still slow: “Most people think this means ghosts aren’t connected to time anymore. That time doesn’t care about the dead, and maybe that’s true, in a sense, but it’s also false, in a much larger one. Time needs the dead, or it gets . . . confused. That’s the best way to say it. Time gets confused. Time doesn’t run right without the dead to tell it which way it’s supposed to go. Ghosts are the nails in the coffin of eternity, and they keep the lid from flying off.”

  “If there were no ghosts in Manhattan, maybe Tuesday would come after Wednesday instead of before,” says Delia, finding her voice. “Or maybe Tuesday would come and never end, and nobody would notice, because who really pays attention to such things? Everything would get tangled, and even the people who couldn’t tell you why it hurt to be here would feel the pain of it all. They’d start leaving. That’s the long and the short of it. When a place comes altogether unmoored, life deserts it.”

  “How did people ever go anywhere new? That doesn’t make sense. Who was mooring Manhattan before humans got here?”

  “Remember the rats,” says Brenda. “Everything that lives can die, and everything that dies can leave a ghost behind.”

  Her meaning catches like fire, immolating me as I stand, wide-eyed from the possibilities. Ghosts of stately old trees lining the coast. Ghosts of whales sounding in the deep water. Even ghosts of mosquitoes, landing on human skin, sipping minutes along with blood, disappearing into eternity before they could be slapped away. And before them, the ghosts of bacteria, of protozoa, of the single-celled swimmers in the primordial sea. The world was a haunted house long before people came along to rattle their chains and wear their winding shrouds.

  I ask the only question I can think of, under the circumstances: “Are there dinosaur ghosts?”

  Brenda laughs. I slant a glance at her, sure that she’s not making fun of me, and she smiles. “I asked the same question, after the corn started talking to me,” she says. “My gran was a cotton witch. She didn’t know the ways of silk and stalk, but she knew what it was when the fields called you home, and she’d been waiting for a while for me to find my calling. She said there were dinosaur ghosts, once, before people got all scientific about it. Started trying to put names and labels on them, instead of just respecting them as the restless dead. So all the dinos pulled in their remaining years a few centuries ago, and left this world for the next one. Pity. I’d have loved to have seen one.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “But we’re off the point,” says Brenda, smile fading. “As near as I can tell, you and Delia are the last human ghosts on the island of Manhattan, and that means she needs to stay here, lock the door, and keep herself safe until the city can make itself a few more nails.”

  That isn’t as heartless as it sounds. People die in New York every day. Not just people, either. Pigeons and cats and Sophie’s beloved rats. Knowing what I know now, even the cockroaches count. Manhattan would have more nails in short order and be better anchored for having them.

  But old ghosts are stronger than new ghosts. They have more practice at moving time from one place to another, channeling the needs of the world through themselves. Delia will still need to stay here. A thousand cockroach ghosts wouldn’t equal one of her. I can tell myself that they would be enough, but I’d just be lying to myself and delaying the inevitable. Delia has to stay.

  I’ve always been the one who runs. Maybe it’s time I started running for home.

  “It’s a long way to Mill Hollow,” I say.

  Brenda nods understanding. “I’ll drive.”

  9: Home Again

  Brenda drives a pickup truck the color of bleached corn husks, where it isn’t the color of the virulent rust that’s eaten through half the frame. She drives like the highway is another rutted dirt road in the middle of Indiana: no haste, no hurry, and yet somehow, no problems. The traffic melts away at our approach, leaving us with a clear bead on the horizon. The speed is enough of a surprise that I don’t object when she takes as many surface streets and back roads as the route allows, driving past family farms and through fields of things I can’t identify.

  “It’s been a hard season,” she says, eyes on the road, trees rustling around us. We’re back on the main road for a while, making the transition between states. “Not enough rain, not enough water, not enough love to fold back into the soil. Some of these folks are on the verge of losing their farms. Some of them have already lost; they’re just hanging on and hoping the banks don’t notice for a couple years more. Everything’s a haunted house in today’s America. Everything’s in need of an exorcism.”

&n
bsp; “The world’s changed,” I say, uncomfortable, not sure what she’s trying to tell me.

  Brenda sighs. “I know. I guess I don’t always make sense to you, and I’m sorry for that. You’re a lot younger than I am.”

  “Always will be, I guess, unless my dying day says I was supposed to be a great-grandmother when I went.”

  “Age isn’t the same as getting older,” says Brenda. “You can be here for a thousand years, and you’ll still never be as old as I am. Be grateful for that. There’s a lot of mourning to be had when you’ve been alive as long as someone like me. I remember when this land was all about the farms, and the fields went on this side of forever. These days, everyone wants to eat, but no one wants to take the time and care needed to coax the land into giving up its glories. People don’t change. We’re always selfish, and we’re always hungry. We’ve just gotten better at looking at greed and saying ‘Oh, that’s self-interest, that’s all right.’ We’ve forgotten the way the word ‘enough’ feels on the tongue.”

  “Oh.” There isn’t a place for me in this conversation: Brenda may leave pauses, but they’re just breaks in a wall she built years ago, maybe before I was even born. I don’t have the strength or the knowledge to get through to her, and so I do the only thing I can, and change the topic. “Have you ever been to Kentucky before?”

  “Not in decades.”

  “Same here.” But I can taste it on the back of my tongue, humidity like fine wine, the unique blend of coal and ash and soft green moss that saw me through my childhood, anchored and cushioned me through the blows of my living days. Kentucky is the sound of dogs baying outside the window, the buzz of crickets, and the sweet comfort of Patty’s lips against my forehead, kissing my nightmares away. Kentucky is water and soil and doing for ourselves, even when people say things are easier in the cities, that we could have leisure and peace and silence if we were willing to slice ourselves off at the roots and turn into American tumbleweeds, rolling across the plains, looking for a place to grow. Maybe those people are right. Maybe if we’d moved, Patty would have lived, and if Patty had lived, I would have lived too. We could have grown old together instead of rotting away in matching graves.