Grim (3 page)

 

Rebecca put the last dish in the drainer and pulled the stopper from the sink. She hadn't spoken since starting the chore, but Shawn wasn't about to interrupt her. This was her own ritual.

The last gulp of soapy water swirled away, leaving a mushroom of white froth in the drainer. Rebecca watched it for a while, listening to the soft
tick
of popping bubbles. She rinsed her hands.

“We should ask Matt to let her friends know,” she said. “And call her office.”

“Yeah,” said Shawn. “And I'll tell Peter.”

“Who'll tell Beth, who'll tell everyone else.” A drop of acid sizzled in the comment. Rebecca didn't like Shawn's friends. “So that takes care of the high school.” She paused. “But I'll tell Ashley and them myself.”

Shawn said nothing. He didn't like her friends, either.

Rebecca looked at him. “Who else?”

He sighed. “Well, you already called Grandma, so that about wraps up family.”

She nodded, torn between the sting of the statement and the reality of it. They settled into thoughtful silence for a few more seconds. Finally, Rebecca cleared her throat. “I think that we should call Dad.”

Shawn blinked at her from across the kitchen counter.

“Excuse me?”

“Dad,” she said. “I think that we should call him.”

He folded the newspaper on the counter in front of him, taking care to match the creases. “You know Dad's number?”

“Mom gave it to me.”

“You've talked to him?”

Rebecca stared at the white grout between the counter tiles. “Not recently, no. Not really at all. She just wanted me to have it.”

“Oh.” Shawn stacked the newspaper sections, separating them: advertisements in one pile, everything else in the other. Their mother had always done this before breakfast, throwing out the coupons before the deflated paper even touched the coffee table. She'd hated coupons. “Why?”

Rebecca must have drifted too. She glanced up at him. “Hmm?”

“Why are you even asking me about this?”

“Because I'm not sure it's such a good idea,” Rebecca said. “I don't want to upset Megan. Or Matt.”

“Then don't call him.”

“He deserves to come.”

“No, he doesn't.”

“Yes, he does, Shawn,” she said. “He deserves to know, at least.”

“He'll see the paper.”

“He left town last month. He's in Hammonton now.”

Shawn leaned away from his sister and took a deep breath. “Good for him,” he said. “I'm glad that someone told me.”

“Don't be stupid about this.”

“You've made up your mind. I'm going for a drive.”

Rebecca reached for his hand. “We need to talk about the service.”

Shawn pulled away. “Why don't you ask
Dad
about it? I bet he'd love that. I can't believe you, Becca. He walked out on us. He walked out on Mom. You really want him there when we
bury her
?”

Rebecca glared at him. “I don't
know
, Shawn,” she said. “That's why I'm asking you!”

“Then, no,” Shawn spat. “No, I don't want him there. No, I don't think that it's a good idea. No, I don't think that he deserves it. Now I'm going for a drive.”

He left her in the kitchen with the sparkling dishes and the neatly divided newspaper.

 

Megan knew that Matt watched her as she swung, kicking her legs out as far as they could go, wondering what would happen if she spun all the way around the metal bar above her and dropped her hands. Would she fly up to heaven, where Matt said her mommy might be?

No. Because things fell down when they died, and that's what Matt meant when he said that they would say good-bye soon. Her mommy, with her hair like a princess's, would go into a shoe box, but nicer, and never come back.

“My mommy's dead,” she said to herself, tasting the words and how strange they felt in her mouth. “My mommy's dead.”

She realized she was saying them too loud when Matt walked up and slowed her swinging. Made her stop. Came around to squat down in front of her.

She liked Matt and how easy he smiled and the way his hair perched too high on his head. It made his face look big, but he had a nice face, so that was okay.

“Are you all right, Meg?”

“Yeah.”

“You can tell me if you're not.”

Megan looked down at the dust on her white shoes. She wanted to say that she liked the pink shirt even if Katie didn't. That she liked the way her mommy smelled in the morning, when she came in and turned on the light and kissed her full of giggles. That sometimes she went into her mommy's bedroom just to hear her sleep, and then got into bed because they kept the house too cold, and that sometimes she got angry when her mommy hadn't come home, and what would happen now? But she didn't know if these were good things to say; if Matt would get sad about her talking about Mommy, because this morning she'd asked if they could have Mommy's special chicken-and-tomato soup for lunch and Rebecca had almost cried.

So instead, Megan said, “Who's going to take me to piano?”

Matt opened his mouth a little, and then closed it, and then said, “I'll take you, Meg, if you want to go.”

Megan looked at him and how careful his eyes were, like he thought they might hurt her if he let them, and she said, “I'm too sad to go,” because it sounded like something she should say.

Matt nodded and got back up again, and then he pushed her on the swing. Megan wondered what would happen if she jumped. If she could go deep down and curl up there until her mommy came to find her.

 

The forest floor was packed hard as brick and just as cold, the sun sleeping somewhere behind the horizon. No leaves rotted on the ground, but no life grew in the branches, either — just smooth earth and columns of naked trees, each a splotchy black against air that hovered gray and glassy and a little damp, like early morning in the Rockies.

Erika clutched her knees to her chest while Jeremiah stubbed out the fire. When she'd woken again, he'd told her that she was ready now, and she believed him. She felt rested, as if she'd just gotten up from the best sleep of her life.

Tall. Medium build. These were the things easiest to notice about Jeremiah in that dying half-light. Erika watched him, trying to catch the details that faded with the coals. He had a thin, straight nose and eyes like hers. Shamrock eyes, her mother called them. Outside of her family, Erika didn't know many people with eyes that green.

He might've been thirty, but he'd let his dark hair grow long, to curl around his ears like the art students' at the nearby college. His jacket looked expensive, and tailored well, but threadbare. His T-shirt underneath was washed thin, the lettering faded to a shadow she couldn't read. Keys jingled on his belt loop as he moved. It reminded her of her ex-husband.

Erika knew, from the way Jeremiah looked at her, that something had changed. He seemed calmer, happier even, but when he caught her staring, something like guilt flashed across his face. That conflicted feeling flooded into her stomach again, making her nauseated.

Then he helped her to her feet and, though he didn't say anything, Erika found herself reassured by his touch. She knew that he watched her in the dark, his hand still on the crook of her elbow, and something told her that he could see her far better than she could see him. He seemed to be measuring her up.

At last, he opened his mouth. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

Erika hesitated. She wanted to trust him, but the thought of giving up control terrified her. Unusual, since she had always lived her life as the one willing to be molded.

“Yes,” she said, surprised to hear herself.

“Do you know why?”

The silence hung heavy. Erika could feel Jeremiah's breath on her forehead, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. Something crackled in the distance.

“No,” she said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” he told her.

“I know,” she said, sure that she
did
know. Afraid not of him but of what she allowed herself to do when he was there. She felt like she was drunk or dreaming, going through motions without sense telling her to stop.

Jeremiah pulled something out of one of his pockets and took a few steps back. Erika followed him without a question. His hand never left her arm.

A
click
punctured the dark.

Jeremiah dropped his mouth to Erika's ear. “There's someone behind you,” he said, “who wants to kill me.”

Erika saw his hand flash up and almost screamed, but he yanked her close so that her mouth filled up with his jacket. His hand, fisted around a pocketknife, slammed into the tree beside them. The blade sank in up to its hilt and stuck. Jeremiah gripped Erika tighter, then drove her up against the tree as well, until her shoulders dug hard into the rough bark. Now she couldn't scream if she wanted to, because his free hand pressed against the back of her head and she could only think of how it felt like he cradled her, just a baby scared by too much sound and too much dark, and how he smelled of chocolate and oranges, and how the shape behind him — a shadow blacker than the trees, the size of a man — twisted and churned like cloying smoke.

“I'm sorry to drag you into this, Erika,” Jeremiah said, his voice a whisper but loud in her ear.

Her knees buckled and Jeremiah had to hold her up, refusing to let go as she started to slip, pushing her harder against the tree like he wanted to shove her all the way through, but the more he tried, the more Erika realized that it didn't matter, because there was no earth for her to fall to, since the forest had dropped away, the whole forest, except for the skinny tree that made up her entire world, and the black, empty air rushing past them both. She thought about the smell of the sap biting into her throat, and tried to place it because it was so, so important. Sharp and smoky. Hickory. She could feel hickory bark sliding through their skin. When she started to fall, Jeremiah fell with her.

Shawn stayed out late, and came home to find Rebecca's Mustang sitting in the driveway as if it had never left. House lights glowed through the curtained windows of the first floor. Shawn locked his own car on his way up the front steps. As he let himself into the house, his cell phone rang.

“You had better be on your way home,” Matt said when he answered.

“I'm just going in.”

“Good. Rebecca's a wreck. She wouldn't let me stay over there, but I put Megan to bed before I left.”

“Thanks.”

“What'd you say to her?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Don't lie to a cop, Shawn.”

“She wants our dad to be at the service.”

Matt fell silent. “That's between you two.”

“You think that it's a bad idea too, don't you?”

“I'm not getting into this. I'll call back in the morning.”

Shawn frowned. “Good night,” he said.

“Night.”

Shawn found Rebecca at the kitchen table with her head nestled in her arms. A cluster of beer bottles crowded near her elbow, their folded caps scattered across the floor. The room reeked of hops and vomit.

Shawn dropped the bottles into the trash and nudged his sister awake.

“Who came over, Becca?”

She blinked at him, mascara sticking her lashes together. There were trails of makeup down her cheeks and chin, mapping out her tears. “Ashley,” she said. Her voice came out hoarse from crying.

Shawn didn't ask anything else. He didn't want to criticize.

They walked upstairs together, with Rebecca leaning against her brother. He dropped a blanket over her once she made it to bed.

“Shawn?”

“Yeah?”

Rebecca didn't open her eyes, but her voice came out soft, pleading. “Don't let Mom know, okay? She'd kill me.”

His chest tightened as he sighed. “Okay.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” he said. “Now go to sleep.”

Shawn closed the door and checked on Megan before turning to his own room. At the end of the hall, his mother's bedroom stood open. He wanted to go in and soak up the smell of her air freshener. Rebecca had never let her spray it anywhere else in the house, saying that it gave her a migraine. Now the scent of bottled rain, light and cool, seeped into the hallway. For the first time, Shawn realized just how much he loved it.

 

Jeremiah broke away from Erika before they touched the ground. She found her voice in a scream as she slammed into the rigid clay floor. Jeremiah rolled to a stop and sprang to his feet. They were in a clearing, but the earth was still packed solid, the trees still bare and straight and lonely. A quiet wind chuckled through the stripped twigs and branches overhead.

Erika ignored Jeremiah's proffered hand and pushed herself up. “What happened?”

He shook his head. “It doesn't matter.”

“What did you do to me?”

“I … I can't …” Jeremiah pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Don't ask me, Erika. Please don't ask me.”

“Tell me! Tell me what you did.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I
can't
.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We had to move quickly. Too quick for you. It's just a bit of magic.”

“Magic?”
she shrieked. “
A bit of magic?
Who
are
you?”

“No one.” Jeremiah's voice was thick, afraid. “Just whoever you make me out to be.”

“What do you want from me?” Panic tightened Erika's throat. She took a step back and choked out her last question. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Nothing,” Jeremiah told her. “I've already done the worst. I'm sorry, Erika — I'm sorry. But I need to get home and I can't do it by myself.”

“Get
away
.”

“Erika, please.” He whipped out his pocketknife and flipped it open. “The Passing Woods only open up for human souls.”

“Oh God!”

Jeremiah shrugged off one of his jacket sleeves.
“Look.”
He sank the knife into the soft underside of his arm and ran it up toward the elbow. His skin pulled away from the blade, but no blood came to the surface. Instead, a thin ribbon of smoke seeped out and hovered in the air around him. He ran his fingers through it, dispersing the curls of charcoal gray until they'd faded. “There's nowhere to hide out there. I had to get back in. So I needed you,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

His cut sealed itself back into smooth skin. Erika pressed her palms hard against the nearest tree. Her mouth hinged open, her hands trying to grip the knobby bark.

When she found her voice, it came out muddled, half scream, half sob.
“What are you?”

“I'm …” Jeremiah faltered, knife still in hand, arm still hovering in midair. “I'm just a guide,” he said. “Just a guide.”

“Don't touch me,” Erika said, but she already sounded defeated.

“Do you think that I wanted this, Erika? I didn't. I've been running from myself for so long.” He held out his hand. “I know that you've been doing the same.”

“No.”

“You can't lie to me, Erika. Give me your hand.”

“No,” she said.

“I can help you.”

“No.”

But her arm drifted up, fingers limp in the air, and she wasn't afraid.

“I can show them to you,” Jeremiah said. He took her wrist, lightly, between thumb and middle finger.

Her baby's face shot through her veins. She could feel Megan, like a ghost, prickling the hair along the backs of her arms.

She opened her eyes and stared at Jeremiah's hand, and at the thin blade of his knife.

“I'll protect you,” Jeremiah said. “I promise I'll take care of you, Erika.” His eyes looked dead into hers, irises dark and drowning in white. “I'm the only one who will anymore.” He snapped the pocketknife shut and laid it against her palm, pressing her fingers down around it.

She looked at the fat pearl handle and, after a minute, pried open the blade, studying its worn edges.

“Put it against your mouth,” Jeremiah said. “Flat.” He tried to demonstrate with his fingers. “Now breathe.”

She did. He saw her eyes glaze as she lost herself in the wandering. Her breath glowed frosty on the steel, and then white-hot. Through it, Jeremiah could see the shadows of dreams. He took her shoulders in his hands and guided her to the ground, so that she knelt on the earth that so many souls had knelt on, walked on, wept on. He sat down a few feet away, letting his breath come slow, because he was alone now, and safe, and that was all he needed.

 

Shawn sat in a rowboat with his father, the lake all sapphire and silver under a sheet of duckweed. Water striders crisscrossed the surface on spindly legs, spinning trails behind them. He was saying something about school, but his father wasn't listening and it dug at him. He looked up from his fishing line.

“Don't you care at all?”

“Not really. We didn't want you, Shawn.”

Shawn's mouth dropped open.

The boat rose and fell as if on the chest of a sleeping giant. He could see his mother on the other side of the lake. She wore her favorite picnic dress and a straw hat, wind playing with the hem and ribbons as she watched them. The same waves that lapped at her sandaled feet were making hollow sounds against the hull of their fishing boat.

“Mom would never say that.”

“Mom doesn't give a damn about you.” His father scratched at the stubble of his chin. “She's screwing that cop,” he said. “But he's going to get it, because she's not in love.” He smiled. “She's not in love.”

“Don't talk about her like that.”

“Why? Because she's dead?”

Shawn looked back at his father, his heart speeding up. This didn't happen. This never happened.

“Didn't you go see her? Rebecca saw her. Rebecca cared more.”

Shawn saw the caps of the waves turn from white to pink. Rubies. Wine. The water started to jump and bubble like hot water in a kettle. Something bumped against the side of the boat, making it tip harder one way. He gripped the fiberglass seat.

“Don't you want to look, Shawn? Don't you want to see your mother?” Shawn shook his head, eyes shut tight. His father leaned down to breathe against his ear. “Don't you want to say good-bye?”

It felt like the years before his parents' divorce, when his father raved about the affairs and the empty bank account and the things that he'd given up to make this work. Shawn had never been sure what his father thought “this” was. The family, probably, or his marriage. Or maybe even his life.

“Look, Shawn! Stop being such a fag and look at her for once!” Shawn felt the heavy hands on his arms before he opened his eyes. His father slammed him against the bottom of the boat and dragged him to the edge.

“Little whore, little whore, little whore.”

Her dress clung to her like a second skin, pale blue and patterned. Blood stuck her lips together like the cheap gloss that Rebecca had always complained about. Red hair sparked fire as it snaked around her face and neck.

Deep in his throat, Shawn's father chuckled. He shoved his son and let go.

Shawn saw his mother reach out of the water, but he was struggling to catch his breath and said nothing. He saw her put her pale, slick fingers over the edge of the boat. He saw her pull, hard, and felt the boat tipping up.

His father was gone, leaving him alone to his mother and her pruning fingertips. Shawn slid down toward the water. Crimson and steaming, it licked at his skin, but he didn't think to open his mouth. He just toppled forward, splashing into the lake and breathing blood and water and air. He let himself drown.

Shawn woke up in a cold sweat, choking on spit that tasted of lake water.

 

Jeremiah waited for Erika to come back. Her body sat behind him, lips barely touching the cold surface of the pocketknife. Her mind walked somewhere else.

Jeremiah didn't pry; she'd find her own way. He knew that time seemed to pass more quickly while wandering, and that Erika would come back to herself without realizing just how long she'd been gone.

Though surrounded by steadfast twilight, the knife blade flashed like sunshine on water. A little bit of magic. Weak magic, old magic, but magic nonetheless. Still, it wasn't the enchantments that made Jeremiah hold on to the old heirloom. The knife had been a gift from the High Kingdom to his own homeland and to his own father, and it was the most precious thing that Jeremiah had taken with him when he'd been sent away from the royal circle. It was as much a part of Jeremiah as anything, and it brought him as close to his father's house as he could ever hope to be again.

The dusk hovered cool and silent, and the air smelled sweetly of pine sap and thawing soil. Jeremiah drank it in as he struggled to plan his next move. He was in his element, and nearly back home, but that was never enough. He always had to run. Running and running and running on and on and on since the day they deemed him mature enough to understand. Or at least to almost understand. He hadn't been all that old when the tricks turned dirty and the game stopped being a game. Running and running and running. The running would be a part of him, ingrained and tested, until he gave up and gave in and gave over.

Someone had told him, once, that he was lucky not to be too much like his mother, because spirits like hers bent too easily to fit the shapes expected of them. He was lucky also, they said, for having a father capable of pushing the ghosts back into the shadows, just beyond seeing. But they didn't understand: His father wasn't always there.

The knife fell out of Erika's grasp as she came to, and the polished handle struck the forest floor. She wiped her eyes with stiff fingertips.

“I want to go home,” she said. “I just want to go home.”

Jeremiah put the blade back into his pocket, his fingers lingering on the worn family crest. “I know,” he told her. “But it's such a long way. You have to give me time.”

“They think that I'm dead.”

He took her hands between his own. She felt the warmth of his skin, and wondered at how normal he felt. As if blood moved underneath, instead of air. She didn't understand how everything could have gone so wrong.

“They think I'm dead,” she repeated.

“You make it sound like the worst possible thing.”

“Isn't it?”

Jeremiah smiled. “No,” he said. “There are many things worse than dying.” He squeezed her hands gently. “And half of those things are bent on getting rid of me.”

“Take me home?”

“You'll see your children again, Erika,” he said. “I promise you that much.” He jumped to his feet, smooth as smoke. “We have somewhere else to be now.”

Erika tried to catch another breath of the sweet smell clinging to his skin. “You remind me of someone,” she said.

“Oh?” said Jeremiah. “I hear that sometimes.” He pulled her up, but she wasn't paying attention anymore.

Again, chocolate stuck to the back of her throat. Coffee and citrus and the clean scent of soap. She thought of Matt.

 

In the morning, Rebecca came downstairs and found Shawn in the kitchen, leaning over a sheaf of notebook paper, his ankles hooked around the wooden legs of one of the bar stools.

He slid a line of old photographs across the counter. “Which one's best?”

Rebecca held the pictures out for judgment. “When did you get up?”

“Seven.”

“Couldn't you sleep?”

Shawn glanced at her. “Could you?”

“Sure,” she said.

She let three of the four pictures fall back onto the tiled countertop. “This one,” she said, handing over the last photo. It was from last Christmas, Erika beaming in a thick, white sweater as she leaned over the kitchen counter, fingers protective around a yellow mug. Matt had snapped it while the kids whipped together a fancy breakfast. “She looks pretty,” said Rebecca. “Happy.”