Candle in the Attic Window Part 14

"Left that hideous thing for you!" she called.

Her voice and Mother's floated upward as they worked on sorting other things. Aunt had many things much of which would likely be sold at the estate sale but we wanted a complete inventory before we jumped into that phase. I didn't want to have the sale at all. I wished this house might stay forever ours, for what would we do without a place to dream?

I closed the door behind me and curled into bed, with the scarf held against me. Just a little nap, I told myself, and then I could join Mother and Louisa and pick through the remains of Aunt's life. I didn't want to. Didn't want to.

Her scarf smelled like spearmint and tansy, and I thought of the small sachets she liked to make, to keep the moths away from all her most precious things. None of us knew where this scarf had come from, for she always seemed to have it. Not even Mother could place it. "But then, your father is that way, too, isn't he? Just always been there ...." She would say it with a soft laugh, but you could tell she was partly serious. Her life before him had been a thing entirely different and now, she could not fathom him gone, so he had simply always been there.

The dream was different this time.

The windmill stood as it always had, a deep shadow beneath a moon that looked about to burst and send milky light everywhere. But this night, there was a soft wind which turned the sails; they creaked much like the gla.s.s beneath my hand had. If you listened long enough, it sounded like a low moan. This agony carried across the fields and seemed to saturate everything. Even the trees seemed to bend their bare branches low under this unhappy sound.

I waited for one sail to pa.s.s before I could step into the slight doorway and press against the door. But the door did not give and the next sail was rapidly approaching surely, the sails did not reach to the ground, I told myself, but I could feel the wind that pushed it and so, too, the wind that the sail itself made as it hastened toward me. I gripped the doork.n.o.b, shaking it and crying out to be let in (for it never occurs to the sleeper to simply step backward and out of harm's way, does it?), but still, the door did not open.

The sail caught my left shoulder, knocking into me hard enough to set me off balance. My other shoulder slammed into the door, just as it came open, and icy hands gathered me up before I might fall. My name was a whisper on his mouth then, dark and somehow full of secrets, as he bore me deeper into the windmill and the sails outside continued their anguished dance.

Over and over, he whispered my name, but did not draw me upward to the top room as he usually did. He pressed me back into one of the work tables, iced fingers sliding against my throat, where they started to melt. I could feel the trails of water running down into my blouse.

"This is the thing you must do," he said.

His voice was its own agony, rising and falling with the sound of the sails. His face was clear before my own I could have touched his cheek, but my fingers curled into the old table beneath me.

"Tell me what what must "

But before I could finish and before he could tell me, the windmill broke apart. The hideous sound shattered around us, as the sails broke free from the old mill and took the upper deck with them. Centuries of dust and wood and memories fell down upon us. The moonlight showed us how the sails toppled into the old fields, running, running, until at last, they gave a final breath, and fell still, shattering amid the corn.

"Come to me," he said and I woke up, tangled in the green-striped scarf.

I flailed in an attempt to free myself, for it seemed a snake, a tentacle, something cold and slimy, meant to hold me down. I flung the fabric onto the floor and stared at it, slowly coming to believe otherwise. It was just a stupid piece of fabric. Nothing more.

If this house was our place to dream, I thought that I only need go home. Perhaps I had conjured him to life, from the photograph or the sketches, or some combination thereof. Driven mad by my sister's need for social media, even in the midst of a winter storm, I sought the opposite refuge, that of imagination.

But when I saw the footprint, I reconsidered. The footprint gleamed in the low afternoon light, just inside my door. As if someone had been walking in snow and paused here, long enough to leave a wet impression. Was the snowman melting?

According to the police reports and sadly, there had been such a thing, because the neighbours didn't know who else to call Aunt was found just outside the door to the windmill. She was in her nightclothes and barefoot, her hair unbound, as though she had just come from bed. Being a woman of some seventy years, no one had been too surprised by her death, but its means remained a mystery. Had she simply wandered outside, fallen, and perished there in the night? The medical examiner thought that the most likely scenario and Mother seemed to accept it well enough for it was easiest. Asking more questions was tricky.

Why had Aunt been wearing such a smile? Did the dead smile? Why had Aunt been carrying a spring of rosemary? (It had been broken from the large rosemary bush she kept in her kitchen, dirt scattered around the pot as though she had been in a hurry.) The old do curious things, so I was told, time and again. Who could truly understand the mind? I wanted to, but how did one understand a mind that had already moved on?

If there were clues in the house, I could not see them. Everything looked ordinary. The kitchen felt as though Aunt had stepped out, but would be right back; even the teakettle that Mother had heated left me thinking it had actually been my aunt, for there sat her favourite cup with the white violets on it. Her room was still scented with the fragrance of her powder and there, by the bed, sat her slippers. Slippers she had not put on the night she had wandered outside to her death.

"Curious old lady," I whispered, as I turned circles in her room, looking for something, for anything.

When I noticed the thin line that ran up the far wall, I stopped spinning. The wallpaper was slightly curled up, yellow on its underside. The paper crackled when I touched it and I thought it was unlike Aunt to leave something so worn. She was proud of her house, though she wanted the public to stay away; she made certain it was well-kept in all ways. Yet, here was an oddity.

I ran my fingers along the paper, beneath it, where the glue had turned hard and had, in some places, flaked off entirely. There was still a little scattering of glue bits on the floor there, which I was prodding with my shoe when a hidden latch disengaged and the wall swung outward.

Alice in Wonderland was familiar enough to me that I was wary of such doors. I peered inside and saw a bare lightbulb with a dangling chain. One tug on the chain sent light spreading over a small s.p.a.ce that looked like a closet, but that featured stairs leading upward. At the top of the stairs (Of course I climbed those stairs, which groaned and seemed likely to give way before I did reach the top) there was another door, shorter. Through that door (for how could I not go on?), yet another door, and this one had me crawling through a small s.p.a.ce that seemed more like a heating duct than it did storage. Surely, nothing was kept up here but I was wrong.

A small box sat at the far end of the s.p.a.ce. I pulled it toward me, through the dust of ages, and pried up the small latch that kept the lid closed. Inside the box sat another box, and inside this box, a delicate ring. It was nothing complex, a loop of white gold or silver, holding one small diamond aloft in a simple filigree swirl. It seemed a thing a bride would wear.

There came a shout from the lower part of the house and I jumped into motion, wriggling out of that small s.p.a.ce, even as I jammed the ring box into my jeans pocket. I came down to find the bedroom quiet and dark. A glance out the windows showed me that, somehow, the day had flown. I closed the secret door and left Aunt's room, but as I stepped into the hall, a terrible cold seized me.

"Louisa! Mother!"

There was no reply from them. I was s.h.i.+vering by the time I reached the stairs and pulled myself back before I slipped down them, for they were coated in ice. Long daggers of ice draped the banister and small bits of snow swirled in the air. I stood there for the longest time, thinking I was dreaming, but a sharp twist of the skin near my wrist seemed to prove I was awake.

I picked my way down the staircase, only slipping once when I neared the bottom. I thumped down those last steps and entered a world that seemed unreal. Snow had drifted to the foot of the stairs and against every wall. The wind blew a gale from one end of the house to another, ice and snow tracing over every wall, window and door.

It was the front door that was open, a mouth for the storm to howl through. I could not close it, for the snow had drifted in such a way to make it impossible. I cried out for my sister and mother, again "Madchen."

It was his voice, though, not theirs, that rose above the shriek of the storm. I turned, fully expecting him to be there, but I was still alone in the snowy house. All around me, the house moaned, like Aunt once had as the cold burrowed into her, down to her bones. Oddly, I wanted to soothe the house, make it better, but instead, I fled.

Out into the storm, where that dismal voice hailed from. All through the blowing snow, the sculpted drifts, I stumbled half-blind, reaching frozen hands out to push brambles and branches back. I slipped on ice and staggered when the cold seeped into me; I could not feel my feet, but kept moving, not away from the house, but toward that voice.

"Who are you?" I screamed the question, expecting no reply, but one came.

The skeletal arms closed around me, nearly warm the way they had been in the windmill. Dream or awake? Awake, I told myself, over and over, as I turned in those arms and looked up at his face. And yes ....

He had lips as would any human man, lips that tasted of wintergreen oil when they crossed mine, but his eyes were far gone and so, too, his nose. Yet, this did not bother me. It simply was. His hands were no longer those of a man but skeletal. Long, time-worn bones stroked over my cheek, my hair and curled around my throat. I thought I should scream, yet the touch was warm, rousing, and I leaned into it. Even when he bade me not to, even when he told me only I could stop him.

"What do you want?" I whispered. Though my breath turned to frost between us, I still watched as it melted the snowflakes upon his rotting cheeks.

He could not speak I saw that now. As other parts of him had rotted, so, too, was his throat gone. There were no muscles that might make such sounds. He had never spoken my name, had never told me anything. Then who?

Though his eyes were clouded over perhaps they had once been blue I saw some frantic horror still within them. He needed me to understand, but he could not speak. He needed me to know. He was wretched and terribly lonely. And Aunt had never married ....

I shoved a hand into my pocket, barely feeling the sc.r.a.pe of cold denim over frozen skin, and pulled out the ring box. With shaking hands, I lifted the ring from its box and held it up, showing him how, even in the storm, it managed to gleam. That diamond was small but lovely, almost like my aunt.

There was a recognition in his eyes and maybe, just maybe, he had offered this ring dozens of years ago, so long ago that none could remember but Aunt had remembered. Had shut the box away in a secret place that only another dreamer might find.

I saw them then. He would take Aunt by the hand his own not gloved, fingers twining warm and firm about hers and lead her through the fog, up the hillock with its dew-wet gra.s.ses (faded to amber with the coming of autumn), and into the meadow beyond. The gate would unlatch, the sheep unseen, and they would make their slow and steady way toward the windmill, which rose in dark relief within the clouded air. The bare oak and apple trees made a fringe behind the old mill, only half there in the gloom; he pulled her through thorn bushes, which caught at her skirts and tried to hold her back.

Aunt said no and forever regretted it. Forever.

I held the ring between us, like a shared secret, and his milky eyes blinked. Did he gasp? Did he Ah, Reader. The dead do smile.

E. Catherine Tobler lives and writes in Colorado strange how that works out. Among others, her fiction has appeared in Sci Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. She is an active member of SFWA and the senior editor at s.h.i.+mmer Magazine. For more, visit http://www.ecatherine.com.

In His Arms in the Attic.

By Alexis Brooks de Vita.

The first surprise was that the two hundred-year-old townhouse was still intact in the heart of the French Quarter, even after Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, and the rebuilding of New Orleans into an adult fantasy of itself.

Ave Marie de la Croix pulled her antique 914 black Porsche over to the curb that dipped between the narrow-bricked sidewalk and the cobblestoned street. She shoved open the driver's rusted door and unfolded long, lean, jean-clad legs to slide out and confront her childhood holiday playground.

Then Ave had her second surprise.

She thought she heard a voice, hushed and urgent, call her name: "Ah-vay!" She jerked her head up toward the townhouse's second floor. And something slipped like a razor-edged knife between the wrought-iron balcony and the gla.s.s panes of the French doors.

A bird as it flew overhead? A squatter scuttling back into hiding?

Ave waited. Watched, barely breathing.

But no bulky darkness s.h.i.+fted behind the dusty gla.s.s. No hesitant hand pushed aside tattered lace to peer down at her upturned face. Nothing moved again.

Ave muttered, "Jumping at shadows."

She threw a cautious look back over her shoulder. No frustrated residents were out running errands, and no lost revelers wandered in search of bars or breast-baring college girls. Even with Mardi Gras night fast descending, this little side street remained empty and still.

Her neighbours had probably all fled the seasonal festivities for suburban relatives' homes. Ave would be alone in the townhouse tonight.

She squared her shoulders. Tossed back her head and yanked out the hair-tie that held together a lopsided bun at the nape of her neck. Braids and dreadlocks cascaded down to her narrow waist.

She had not driven all this way from San Francisco just to play the scared, little, big-eyed girl again. She was all grown up now.

And ready to believe in ghosts. On the theory that, once you believed, there was nothing left to fear.

Ave kicked shut the sports car's door and strode across the cobbles and bricks. She jangled through the ring of rusted keys she'd retrieved from a Bay Area safe deposit box until she found one with curled masking tape, faintly labeled: "Front Door."

She worked it into the lock. Grabbed the scratchy latch. Twisted and shoved.

Hesitation seized her with the panic of a virgin who has changed her mind just seconds too late. No!

And then came the rush of rotted air and the sweeping view through darkness to abandoned things huddled under stained sheets that always meant coming home.

Only, this had never been her home. Ave had never been more than a holiday visitor here, puzzled by the grandmother and aunts she loved so much.

Ave lifted a booted foot across the threshold. Eased her body behind it like a dancer poised at the edge of the stage.

Surely, someone was here. She could feel someone. "Sheridan?" Ave called. She couldn't resist the hope.

But nothing stirred.

Ave pulled herself together with a little mental slap. Of course that was not the way to invoke a spirit.

Ave flung out a hand and patted the wall to her right in search of a light switch. Felt an old-fas.h.i.+oned k.n.o.b at the end of a long, wire-covering tube. Turned it.

No lights flickered on. The electric company hadn't come through.

I should have brought a flashlight from the car, Ave scolded herself. But she suspected that if she went back to the Porsche now, she would leap into it and drive straight to Ca.n.a.l Street to search for a hotel room. Mardi Gras Night, there won't be one. So, she'd end up fleeing the Crescent City all the way back to the Golden Gate Bridge.

"And what will you do there?" Ave challenged herself out loud, just to hear a voice. "Jump off of it into the Bay?"

If she hadn't jumped or overdosed during her zombie-state in the blighted seasons following Sheridan's death, there was no point doing it now. Just see this through, Ave urged herself.

Maybe he will come. Perhaps he is already here.

Watching her. Counting on her to bring them together again.

Ave crossed the dust-coated hardwood floor to the closest lump of furniture hidden under dust covers. Grabbed a handful of cloth and yanked.

And screamed as a spiky clump hurtled across the toe of her boot, squeaking and trailing a bald tail an inch above the floor.

Ave was back on the street and had already grabbed open the Porsche's resistant door before she got hold of herself. "Just a rat," she panted and, "What did you expect?" she chided herself. "No one's been in that house since the honeymoon."

And with the accidental resurrection of that blessed, fairytale memory, she bent her face into her grimy hands and let belated tears of loss and despair gush free.

It felt good to cry. She sank against the Porsche's side, her curved back pressed against Sheridan's gaudily stenciled "914", and sobbed.

Flashes of memory: Sheridan openmouthed like a child as they cruised the French Quarter's narrow streets. Sheridan emerging from his gleaming Porsche, laughing and shaking his head with disbelief at the sight of her inheritance, this dilapidated mansion.

Sheridan coaxing her up the curved stairs, a candelabra in one hand and her wrist in the other. "Come on, babygirl. Aren't you even curious to see if the old stories are true?"

They had been married in San Francisco on a long-ago Valentine's Day before they rushed their honeymoon Gulf-ward. Sheridan so wanted to celebrate his first Mardi Gras in New Orleans: to revel in the streets and stack his neck with gaudy beads flung from masqueraders floating by in the night air.

Wanted to get into the townhouse attic by midnight and see if the ghostly Mardi Gras ball was only a spinsters' story told to a gullible Creole child. As if, in this sunken city where history and myth trembled at the edge of the encroaching sea holding back the final devastation magic still lived.

The two newlyweds never made it into the attic. Ave thundered down the steps and out onto the street, cursing Sheridan's insensitivity every step of the way.

He'd come after her. When he caught up with her among the revelers groping her rear end and waving strings of bright beads to tempt her to share her body, she slapped him. "That's my childhood you're making fun of, Sheridan! It's not funny. And I don't want to see whatever comes into the attic at midnight!"

Sheridan had laughed off his shock, kissed her, and swept her up into his arms to carry her back to the townhouse. Watching all this, the revelers cheered.

They'd spent the night out on the balcony. It was his idea. They'd told each other favourite childhood memories, and made love in a sleeping bag against a backdrop of fanning fireworks and the drunken laughter of merrymakers.

"Oh, Sheridan." Now, as the sobs eased, Ave dabbed at the muddy paste her tears made as they mingled with the dirt she'd gotten on her hands when she pulled off the first dust cover. "Tonight I'll make it into that attic for you, my love. Be there for me, too, Sheridan." She pulled herself to her feet.

Ave looked toward the wide-open townhouse door. The ring of keys glinted in the dark parlour where she'd dropped them when she'd fled.

No way could she go back in there now. But she'd go get some candles, see if she couldn't put in a call to the electric company, and maybe the gas and water people, while she was at it. Go do some groceries, as the locals called shopping, maybe find a few of Sheridan's favourites. Then she'd be back.

When Ave returned, she drove the Porsche through the narrow alleyway behind the townhouse to its carport. The walk through the alleyway around to the front door, lugging four bags of food and cleaning supplies with a flashlight, normalized her re-entry. The flashlight's beam swept ahead of Ave and sent vermin skittering out of sight to the edges of the dark parlour.

"Uh," she groaned. She'd be anxious to get into the attic by midnight and, if no one was there, get out of here.

Could she bear to think that no one would be there?

That Sheridan was gone? Grief does things to your mind. How many times had Ave heard this from her university's counselor, her aunts and girlfriends, in the blisteringly lonely months since Sheridan's death?