A Spectral Hue

by Craig Laurance Gidney

  “I began to get worried. Because this cotton candy girl was beginning to show up closer and closer to me. In the hallways of school. Waiting for me at the corner.

  “By the way, my mother doesn’t know about my visions. My grandfather would have disowned me if he had known. Mama’s not as religious, but she would definitely disapprove. I’m telling you this because there were a few times when the girl would be around, and Mama would see me glancing at her. At something. This ghost girl was becoming intrusive.

  “Finally, one Saturday at Mercy Park, when I was sure no one was around, I asked her what she wanted. I had never really communicated with them. But I needed to know. I don’t think I was prepared for an answer.

  “She didn’t actually speak to me. Thoughts and images flashed in my head. They swirled around in there like snakes. Words, and lightning-quick flashes collided with my own thoughts. It was so sudden and creepy, that I practically ran away from her, from the park. It felt like my head was full of bees. A whole hive of them, droning away. It was horrifying, made me feel nauseous.

  “Afterwards, when I saw her, she was different. Cotton candy is just strands of spun sugar, right? Well, now the strands of cotton candy billowed, like a sea of pink clouds. It’s like when yeast is activated, you know? Suddenly it bubbles and foams and comes alive. For a couple of days, I lived in sheer terror that she would try and worm her way into my mind.”

  Bastien said, “That sounds similar to what happens to me when I communicate with the Orishas. When Olokun enters my soul, I see what he sees. I see the dark colors of the sea, and hear the song of the waves in my blood. It can be dizzying.”

  Iris felt a slight twinge of guilt, speaking openly about things that were blasphemous to her grandfather and her mother. The old gods were demons, as far as they were concerned. Pop-Pop would have called Bastien a witch doctor, if he was still around. She looked up at the god statues, and felt a shudder go through her body. The resin figurines were no longer just objects. Suddenly, they seemed alive and predatory. Was one of these disembodied spirits waiting to take her over?

  “I didn’t like that feeling. Or, at least, then I didn’t. But first I tried a bunch of things to get her to leave me alone.”

  Iris had tried crucifixes, even hung one in her room. Of course, that didn’t work. The cotton candy girl wasn’t a vampire. She read somewhere that sage could chase away unwanted spirits. There was a jar of it in the kitchen, so she sprinkled some of it in front of her bedroom door. Mama was a neat freak, though, and it had been swept up by the next day.

  “Finally, I had had enough. By this time, she had taken to appearing in my bedroom, a shimmering shape that almost made me want to puke! So, I let her in.”

  She drowned in a flood of imagery and sounds as before. But since she knew what to expect this time, it wasn’t so overwhelming. She saw sand, piers, miles of boardwalk, the gaudy neon lights of hotels, the tumble of black-and-white gull wings, throngs of stumbling, sweat-sheened people and most of all the ever-present expanse of the Atlantic, strips of muddy brown water giving way to deep blue until the horizon. Iris recognized the place the cotton candy girl showed her. Mona had taken her to Atlantic City a few times. She even played quarter slots every once in a while, telling Iris, “This’ll just be our little secret.” She remembered going down the streets, which had the same names as Monopoly properties.

  “It was hard to get a thought in; she just steamrolled over my own thoughts. But eventually, we came upon a method of talking to each other. I would whisper aloud, and she would answer in images.”

  Over a couple of months, Iris pieced together the rough shape of the cotton candy girl’s life. The girl had a strong attachment to Atlantic City, and the ocean in general. She was obsessed with sea shells in particular. Their shapes slithered through Iris’s mind. Iris became an expert even though she was miles from the Atlantic. She became familiar with their names and colors. Beaded periwinkle, Paper Fig, the Alphabet Cone. She even began to research them on her own, finding out about the mollusks that discarded these bits of calcium carbonate. Iris gave the cotton candy girl a name: Pearl. When she told her that, Pearl’s pinkness flickered from the pale pink of quartz to a deeper rose tone.

  “I liked it at first,” Iris said. “It was….”

  “Intimate,” Bastien finished her sentence. He leaned forward.

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve never been that close to someone before.”

  Among the onslaught of images Pearl sent her was one of a smooth-skinned young woman with french-braided hair in a lace dress that looked like it was from the 1930s. Her lips were as pink as the inside of a conch shell, her eyes sparkled with mischief. She guessed that this was Pearl, before she passed on, and she was gorgeous. Iris told herself that the delicate quivering excitement she felt was because of Pearl’s current state. Of course, she was bewitching. She was a ghost. Iris felt sure that if a boy ghost shared these things with her, she would feel the exactly same way. She was reasonably sure of this.

  Bastien said, “How long have you been in contact with Pearl?”

  “Just under two months. I want it to stop. And I kind of don’t want it to stop at the same time. I mean, Pearl is sweet, most of the time. But sometimes she gets…. Needy.”

  Bastien cupped his chin in his hand. He was such a beautiful man, almost as pretty as a girl. Iris snipped that thought as soon as it sprang up. Thoughts like that, thoughts about Pearl were poisonous weeds. The sickly kind that emerged from cracks in the concrete.

  He said, “The idea of a ‘hungry ghost’ is a concept in Buddhist thought. It’s probably older than the religion itself. A Hungry Ghost is a spirit that is entranced with the world of the living. They long for warmth and light, the scents and sensations of living. Spirits that hover around people often become jealous of those of us that live. They can become parasitic, even if they don’t mean to.”

  ‘Hungry ghost’ was a perfect description of what Pearl had become. She took up more and more space in her brain. Pearl visited her at night, a roiling pink woman-shaped cloud. She would see the shape of color fluctuating at the foot of her bed, waiting. At first, it was just the ‘conversations,’ the pummeling images that left no space for her own. Then, somehow, Pearl entered her dreams. Iris would wake up groggy, the wisps of dream swirling around her head. She knew that they were Pearl’s thoughts. She saw the bizarre architecture of shell-like buildings, their curves and bumps and spirals. She saw women, both white and black, nude, starred with sand, some of them with webbed fingers and the scaled tails of fish. These women and mermaids were always caught in some private ecstasy, their eyes slitted as their hands roamed over their bodies, pausing at their engorged breasts, and the mounds of their sex. Iris was intrigued, even aroused by the display of female flesh. But was the arousal her own, or Pearl’s? She couldn’t tell anymore. For now, the disturbing images only haunted her sleep. How long before she began hallucinating in the daytime?

  She said, “How do I get rid of her?”

  Bastien stood up. “Wait here,” he said. He left her alone in the aisle of gods. She felt their bead eyes on her skin, eager and questing. Iris turned around, and saw the statuette of a black mermaid staring at her. It stood about a foot high. Her scales were iridescent, and her hair was seaweed-green. Her skin was ebony, and her eyes were two chips of some blue stone that glittered. Her mouth was slightly open, sighing. She sat on a pedestal, with the words La Sirena carved in a flowing script.

  Iris startled when Bastien returned. He had a small sachet of something in his hand, which he gave to her.

  “Sprinkle this around your bed for two nights. That should be enough.”

  Iris hefted the sachet in her palm, felt the movement of granular things inside. “What is it?” she ask.

  “Salt,” he said. “Salt from the earth, not the sea. That will drive Pearl away.”

  Outside of Botánica Olokun, Iris opened the small bag of salt. The salt was rough-hewn crystalline pebbles. It was
the color of La Sirena’s skin.

  14: Xavier

  He had spent four full days in the museum, from ten am to six pm, combing through the archives and the surplus holdings. Most of the time, he was the only museum visitor. A couple of groups of people had tramped through during his studies, but usually it was just Xavier, Lincoln and Dr. Lenski. Dr. Lenski was extremely helpful. But there was something off about him. He was always hovering around Xavier as he worked on his laptop. Xavier felt his eyes on him, as if Lenski was checking for something. He had a nervous energy that was jarring. But Xavier couldn’t really complain. Lenski bought coffee and donuts in the morning, and even sent Linc out to get lunch every day he was there.

  Going to the museum had been the right thing to do. In addition to what was hanging behind the glass, there was an extensive collection in storage. Xavier spent hours flipping through some of Whitby’s earliest work. The museum had quite a few of her experiments, including her embroidery hoops and some handkerchiefs. There were also other paintings by Grayson, and the other artists as well. It was invaluable. It also felt…wrong. He thought back to the first time he’d seen a Whitby quilt. How it entranced him. The quilts, up close, were so much less. They were just rough bits of textile, clumsily stitched together. The colors didn’t sing. They were just a bit of charming folk art, nothing more.

  It was in stark contrast to the Tamar Dupré works. When he returned back to his rented room, Xavier would look at the collages. Those images seemed to be alive. The fuchsia moved, like an optical illusion. The flowers became a hidden face, or the body of a woman.

  He asked Iris if he could show Dr. Lenski the rest of Dupré’s work one evening over dinner.

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” she said. “I mean, it is her artwork, after all. She didn’t intend for it to be in a gallery.”

  “But I’m not asking for it to be put in a gallery. I just think the curator ought to see it.”

  She scowled at him. Xavier almost laughed out loud; the reaction was so disproportionate to the request. She was a strange lady, he thought, recalling the weird drunken conversation he’d had with her the other night.

  Then Iris said, “When Tamar left Shimmer, she told me to burn the artwork. She said it represented a bad period in her life.”

  “I understand,” he told Iris. He still intended to take some of the pictures to the museum. Iris, and for that matter, Tamar, would never know.

  Xavier woke up early on the next day, went down to the basement, and took a couple of the Dupré pieces. They positively shivered with manic energy. He saw the face of the woman in the flower, the flower in the woman. The cut-up landscape of photographed water and plants moved beneath his eye. He carefully placed them flat in his briefcase, next to his laptop, and left.

  He got to the museum early, but luckily, Linc was already there. He let him in.

  “Howard’s not here,” he said to Xavier. There was something strange about his affect. His eyes were animated, and his breathing was rapid. Linc clasped Xavier’s shoulders. There was excitement in his voice. It sounded like he could barely contain it. Xavier felt a wave of warmth wash over him, starting at his head, moving through his body, ending at his groin. It took a moment to recognize that the tremble he felt was desire. Linc was a bony scarecrow of a man. His clothes hung off his thin body like a billowing tent. His teeth were terrible, his face was gaunt and skeletal. But he had a handsome face, or least, one that would be handsome if it ever filled out. Linc, though, was a former methhead, Xavier was sure. He’d seen the signs. (Was Linc even off the drug?) The spark of desire died as quickly as it flared.

  “Let me show you something,” Linc said, and he tugged Xavier by one shoulder to the Grayson gallery.

  Xavier was apprehensive. What could make Linc, who was usually calm, so agitated? Unkind thoughts and images of rose pipettes flashed through Xavier’s head. Linc stopped tugging his arm when they reached the Grayson gallery. The lights were off.

  “What did you want me to see?” he asked.

  “Just watch the walls,” Linc said.

  There was nothing to see save the vague shapes of the hanging canvases. And then—

  Light oozed from the hanging pictures. The orbs in Shadrach Grayson’s paintings vibrated, pulsing out fuchsia light. Xavier had never been a fan of Grayson’s work. It looked a little slapdash—lazy smears of dove and pearl grey for the sky, choppy blue for the waves, and the fuchsia suns were lopsided. But it was as if something had awoken them.

  “You see it?” Linc asked.

  “Yeah…” Xavier said, then stopped speaking because something new was happening. The glowing orbs were changing. Some of them sprouted the tubular bells of the marsh-bell. Other shapes emerged from the fiery purple.

  “What is happening?” Xavier said after a while.

  “You’re the scholar,” Linc said. “You tell me.”

  Xavier said nothing. There were no words for what was happening. The paintings were living things. Painting was both a verb and a noun and both aspects of that word were present. The daubs of grey clouds that moved, the white-capped blue water that undulated, the sun that was also a flower and a face. The motion of Grayson’s paintings was mesmerizing. It was also unbalancing, in the way that many optical illusions were. Xavier looked away.

  He said, “What about the other artwork?”

  Xavier didn’t wait for an answer. He walked into the Descendants’ gallery. Glass bottles winked like Christmas lights. The porcelain dolls’ dresses looked like they were wreathed in purple flames. He left that gallery, entered into the main gallery. Whitby’s quilts were also moving. They were still made of fabric, but it moved like water, like grass in the wind. And the marsh-bells became women, became one woman.

  Xavier said, “When did this start?”

  Linc had a grin on his face, a look of child-like wonder. “I noticed it about two weeks ago,” he said. “Howard left for a doctor’s appointment. Then the artwork came alive. It’s miraculous. Like crying statues, or seeing Jesus in your toast. I tried to take pictures of it. But they never come out right. They’re all blurred and weird.”

  The whole gallery was haywire, a riotous spectacle of flashing color. It was just like when he first saw the Whitby tapestry years ago, that same thrill. Xavier felt a bubble of wild joy grow in his chest. It grew and grew, transparent and iridescent, until it was the size of his heart. What would happen if it burst?

  Linc continued, breathless with excitement. “When I first came on, Howard told me that the custodian before me, a dude named Gerald, quit because the museum was haunted. I thought nothing of it. People can be crazy, right? Then, when Howard left, stuff started happening. I stayed late that night, trying to capture it. Of course, it failed.

  “I came in the next morning, and everything was still. It took me a couple of times to put it together. She doesn’t show herself to Howard. Or, to just anyone. She only reveals herself to certain people.”

  Xavier was going to ask Linc about Howard, specifically, in what way Dr. Lenski was a paranormal activity retardant, but there was a more pressing question: “Who is ‘she’?”

  “She is the ghost,” Linc said. His tone suggested an unspoken Obviously.

  “The ghost? You think Hazel Whitby is haunting the museum?” It sounded silly, to speak it aloud. To quantify the weirdness. And yet, there wasn’t any other explanation.

  “Maybe,” Linc said. “I don’t think she’s trying to scare people, though.”

  He thought back to the Dupré collages he had in his briefcase. Why were they ‘activated’ if they weren’t in the museum?

  “Why did you think I would be able to see this?”

  Linc said, “Because she told me.”

  They both heard the click of the front door lock, and turned to watch Howard Lenski enter the museum. As soon as he entered the room, the tapestries were just pieces of fabric. The nervous, euphoric energy became inert. It was sudden, and absolute. It was like when
a cellphone conversation dropped, the words you just spoke snuffed out.

  Dr. Lenski was oblivious. He said, “This time, I bought bagels, boys. Still carb-bombs, but I was getting tired of the sugar rush.”

  Both Linc and Xavier looked at each other. Xavier was certain that the two of them were telepathically thinking the same thing: He did NOT just call us ‘boys.’ It was unclear which one of them started it. Was it a smirk or a glint in the eye? Both of them began laughing, softly at first, but then it tumbled into guffaws.

  “What’s so funny?” Howard asked. He looked so confused, standing in the doorway with a paper bag of bagels in one hand. It was an effort not to laugh again.

  “Inside joke,” Linc said, and left presumably to start his rounds.

  ***

  On the morning of the fourth day, Howard took Xavier to what was left of the Whitby mansion. Xavier wanted to take some pictures to include in his thesis.

  “In the 1950s, a group of artists used the old Whitby house as a studio,” Dr. Lenski said. They rode in his weathered boxy car on a road that had the bay on one side, and the marsh on the other. It was a clear day; the sky was blue, and sunlight spangled the waves. The marsh, on the right side, was dense with browning shrubs, dying vines and grasses. Xavier thought he saw a tent on one of the pieces of dry earth, camouflaged by old branches and bracken. Who would want to live in such a desolate and unforgiving place?

  Dr. Lenski continued: “It was abandoned for a number of years before that. Then someone burned it down.”

  “They burned it down on purpose?”