by Sarah Dreher
Stoner liked her. She wore loose-flowing, floor-length dresses that reminded her of Edith Kesselbaum and made her feel calm. Diana’s hair was dull blonde shading to brown, and she wore it long and hanging free. Encroaching middle age and two back-to-back pregnancies had given her body just the slightest hint of matronly and maternal solidity.
She was, Stoner thought, a comfortable person.
Diana glanced up, saw Stoner, and raised her eyebrows slightly in a gesture of frustration. The customer was a tourist, and an indecisive one at that. The type was easy to recognize. They took up tremendous amounts of time, asked hundreds of questions, found fault with each item they were shown, and in the end declared it “not exactly what I was looking for,” and left without buying.
Which this one did.
Diana came over to where Stoner was looking at a crystal pendant decorated with smaller stones representing the colors of the Chakras. “Are these stones in the right order?” she asked.
Diana leaned against the jewelry case. “Yep. For the dense and the poor of memory.”
“Sounds just like me.”
“Uh-huh. So what brings you in here on a week day. Worried about your aunt?”
“I hate psychics,” Stoner said, studying a tourmaline crystal. “They’re always reading your mind.”
Diana laughed. “Your aunt looks like death warmed over, and you’re as jumpy as a monkey. It doesn’t take any special talent to put that together.”
“The doctor can’t find anything wrong with her.”
“So I heard.”
Stoner glanced at her. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Mary Scott. She’s in the coven.”
“I thought they weren’t supposed to talk about things that went on in the coven.”
“It’s a coven, honey. Not an AA meeting.”
Stoner studied her hand through a sheer flowered scarf. “Do you know the coven women?”
“Some of them pretty well, some of them a little.” Diana noticed something in the jewelry case whose arrangement displeased her and set about fixing it.
“What do you think of them?”
“They seem like a good bunch. None of them shoplift, as far as I know. If they do, they’re very good at it.” She paused and seemed to be listening. “Wait a minute. I’m getting a message from Spirit.” Her eyes widened a little. “It’s for you.”
“I hope it’s about what to have for dinner. It’s my week to cook.”
Diana shushed her. “They say… they say you’re… what in the world?... ‘looking for answers in the wrong place.’ Yep, that’s it, looking for answers in the wrong place.”
She didn’t need Spirit to tell her that, but it gave her an idea. “Diana, if I can persuade her, could you do a reading for Aunt Hermione? Maybe you can find out what’s wrong.”
Diana actually blushed a little. “Read for her? That’s like blessing the Pope.”
“She’s tried to do it for herself, but it doesn’t get her anywhere.” Stoner glanced up. “Her spirits haven’t ever refused to talk to her before. To tell you the truth, it scares me. I mean, Aunt Hermione—”
A customer opened the door and set the wind chimes singing. “I’d be honored to do it,” Diana said as she started out from behind the counter. She paused and her eyes went blank again for a moment. “Spirit says it’ll be all right, as long as everyone does what they’re supposed to do. And check what you have in the freezer, left-hand side, third shelf down.”
It made absolutely no sense to feel relieved, but she did. More than relieved, optimistic. Because finally Aunt Hermione was going to see someone who spoke her language and maybe could tell what was wrong? Because it was one more chance of stopping this thing before it went any farther? Because it had made Aunt Hermione so happy when she suggested it?
Because of what Cutter had said about her soul?
Or was it because, when she looked into the freezer, she found the pan of frozen lasagna on the left side of the third shelf?
Whatever the reason, she found herself actually smiling as she ripped up the lettuce and waited for the rolls to brown. She felt light, almost bouncy.
Not a very Stoner way to feel, she reminded herself. Could be denial.
Even that didn’t bring her down.
Something was being done. That was all that mattered. It was being done tonight, and she and Aunt Hermione were doing it together.
The evening was dark and fragrant. Lilacs and grass. Fresh oil from a street they’d repaired a couple of blocks away. The muddy odor of the Deerfield River, swollen with the snow melt from up north. Cutter hunkered down in the shadows by the railroad track and waited. He could see Stoner’s outline against the lights in the store windows. They sat in the darkness as if they were together. The two of them, waiting.
Now and then a customer dropped by, and she went into the store for a few minutes and they came out together. Once the customer carried one of the thin pastel bags Diana liked to give out. Another customer didn’t seem to have bought anything. A few seconds of conversation, and Stoner went back to her place on the porch.
The old woman—Hermione, she’d insisted he call her, but that didn’t seem right. After all, she was as old as his mother, and it wasn’t respectful.
No, his mother’d be much older now, wouldn’t she? She’d been, what, nearly fifty when he’d left for ’Nam. Sometimes his emotions forgot any time had passed since then. He thought he was still eighteen. Other times he felt as old as forever.
That was thirty years ago. She’d be old now, too. She might even be dead.
He’d thought about going back to see his mother. Not when he first got home. He was too broken up then. But later, when he got out of the VA hospital. The first VA hospital, the one where they’d put his body back together. He planned to go about it real slowly. He couldn’t just walk up to the front door like any normal person. She’d get all excited and that would make his head blow up. Or his Dad would answer the door and look right through him as if he didn’t exist, they way he always did, and close the door in his face, and when his Mom asked who it was he’d say, “Nobody.”
But he could slip into the back yard in the night and watch, the way he did with Marylou and her friends. He could keep anything bad from happening.
Except the other guys, the ones who’d tried to do that, said it wasn’t a good thing to do at all. They said it would make your mind shatter.
He was inclined to believe them. They were as crazy as he was, and didn’t lie.
Cutter wondered if he’d done the right thing, telling the old woman about the ghosts. Now that he thought about it, he’d taken away their need for secrecy. Now they could just come and do what they wanted to do, and he didn’t have time to prepare.
Not even time to study them and guess what to prepare for.
Before ’Nam he wouldn’t have had these doubts. But that was what happened to you in the jungle. First it ate your name, and then it ate your body, and finally it ate everything you were sure of.
He’d been sure he could keep his friends safe. Not at first. He wasn’t that foolish. But as the months went on and he made all the right calls… when to attack or retreat, which paths were safe and free of land mines, where the VC might be, almost as if he had an instinct for warfare… just when he’d come to trust himself, there’d been that night, and that one wrong decision he’d been so sure was right, and he was the only one who’d survived.
So in the end the jungle took everything. And maybe that was the point of ’Nam after all.
Stoner rested her head on her knees and rubbed the back of her neck. He could tell she was frightened. Not of the dark, but of what was happening in the little room off the store where Diana held her channeling sessions.
He wondered how frightened she’d be if she could see what he could see, scurrying over the railroad ties, hugging the rails.
Without thinking, he groaned a little, just from the enormity of the terror.
H
er head went up. She looked around. And listened. Still as a bird listening for a worm.
Cutter stopped breathing. Stopped his heart. Stopped the blood from pumping through his veins.
He’d learned how to die back in that world. To become so still, to pull himself so deep inside himself even the animals couldn’t smell life in him. He became a shadow. Then less than a shadow. They could shine a flood light on him, and they wouldn’t see him.
He’d learned to slip into the spaces between atoms.
“Cutter?”
No answer.
She held her breath and tried to sense movement or sound. The night was as still and two-dimensional as a photograph.
It must have been her imagination, or an animal, or even a tree branch moaning under the weight of its own leaves.
Why had she thought of Cutter? The last she’d heard from Marylou, the two of them had plans for tonight. She hadn’t exactly said what they were, but Stoner doubted it involved creeping around Turquoise and hiding in bushes.
Just the thought of that made her smile. Marylou hiding in bushes was right up there with Marylou passing for homeless in the Big Y World Class Market. Definitely not on the menu.
Then why did she have the feeling Cutter was here?
She tried calling him again, softly.
Still no answer, still that feeling.
She closed her eyes. She could listen better that way.
The feeling faded.
A patch of light fell across her eyelids. Diana had come out of the reading room and turned on the light by the side door. It illuminated the lilacs and alder where she’d thought she’d sensed Cutter. There was no one there.
Diana looked exhausted. Her face was shiny with sweat, her skin seemed tight. There were dark circles under her eyes.
Apprehensive, Stoner got up and went inside. The shell wind chimes clattered in the doorway.
Diana had gone to the kitchenette in the back, and was getting a bottle of spring water from the old refrigerator. She offered one to Stoner.
“Thanks.” She unscrewed the cap and took a swallow, trying to appear more casual than she really felt. “Rough session?”
“Your aunt...” Diana shook her head and rolled her eyes. “...has the most demanding collection of spirit guides I’ve ever met.”
“They’ve been together for a long time,” Stoner said.
“Tell me about it. The crowd that lined up to talk to her—if they were corporeal they’d have stretched halfway to Greenfield.”
Stoner smiled and wished she’d get on with it.
“I had to limit them to five. I think they held a lottery.” She took another swig of her water.
“Uh...how’s Aunt Hermione.”
“Finishing up her notes,” Diana said. “And she wants to meditate.”
“But do you have any sense of things?”
“Not much. Most of the time in a reading I go somewhere and don’t know what’s going on. I might catch a sentence or two, but once things get under way, it’s really none of my business.”
Scared and frustrated, Stoner put her bottle down too hard. It slopped a little. “Shit,” she muttered.
Diana glanced at her. “I know you’re worried. I wish I could give you a full report, but I just can’t.”
“Can’t you tell me anything?” She swiped at the spilled water with a paper towel.
Diana scrunched up her face. “I did hear ‘soul loss,’ so I guess we were right about that. And your name came up.”
“Mine.”
“Yep. There seemed to be an argument going on.”
Oh, great. Aunt Hermione’s in trouble and they’re arguing about me. “That’s it?” she asked.
“Well, it seemed to me the upshot of the discussion—and it got pretty heated from time to time—was that, whatever the problem is, you should solve it.”
“That figures.”
Diana smiled. “Spirit can be a pain in the neck sometimes, can’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Stoner said. “We’re not in the habit of communicating on a daily basis.”
“Too bad. You might get along better if you did.” She closed her eyes and seemed to listen. “You have an interesting bunch, from what I can tell.”
“Yeah,” Stoner said wryly, “but they’re no good in the kitchen, and they don’t do windows.” She realized how bitter that sounded, and apologized. “I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”
“I know.” Diana put her empty glass down. “Well, some day...”
She agreed, to be polite. But the truth was, she neither expected nor wanted to be in everyday communication with Spirit, her own or anyone else’s.
“Who’s the old Native American woman?” Diana asked.
Her stomach clenched. “Who?”
“An old Native American woman. With some kind of bird on her shoulder.” She focused inward. “A crow. She calls you ‘green eyes.’”
Stoner caught her breath. “That’s Siyamtiwa,” She said tightly.
“Siyam-what?”
“In English it means Butterfly-coming-over-the-edge-of-a-flower or something like that. I met her in Arizona. She’s a Hopi. I think.”
“A very old soul,” Diana said. “She’s lived hundreds of lifetimes.”
“Sometimes she lives several at once,” Stoner said.
Diana gave a low whistle. “Just imagine.”
“Look, I’m kind of going out of my mind here. Isn’t there anything you can tell me?”
“Well...” She was listening again. “She says to remember to do what they tell you.”
“And they are?”
“She says you’ll know when the time comes, and she hopes you won’t make a mess for yourself like you did last time.”
Stoner felt herself blushing deeply. “All right,” she said quickly.
Diana looked at her. “What’s she talking about?”
“Just something… something we had a difference of opinion on.” She looked skyward. “You were right, Grandmother. Okay? You were right. Can we forget it?”
“I think she’s left,” Diana said.
“That figures. She always had to have the last word.”
Aunt Hermione was just leaving the reading room when they came back to the front of the store. She looked tired, but it was a normal, everyday kind of tired. She was more alive than she was before she went in.
“How are you?” Stoner asked quickly.
“Much better. It’s always good to talk to old friends.” She handed Diana a sealed envelope.
Diana backed up and raised her hands. “I don’t want money. I told you. This was a professional courtesy.”
“And this isn’t your fee. It’s an early Solstice gift.” She put it down on the counter. “Take it, if you want. If you don’t, leave it here for some tourist to steal.” She scribbled something in small writing on the back. “There. A curse. If anyone but you touches it, it’ll scare the daylights out of them.” She took Stoner’s arm. “Come on, niece. I’ve been in another world for two hours. I need some of your good down-to-earth Capricorn energy.”
Chapter 5
“They refused to be more concrete,” Aunt Hermione said. They’d reached the middle of the Bridge of Flowers, where a park bench waited beneath a street lamp. “They were quite adamant about it. Let’s just sit here for a moment and talk.”
Stoner felt her heart tighten. She tried not to let her aunt see how worried she was, but it was clear the older woman was quickly becoming exhausted again.
Aunt Hermione propped one foot up on the bench and hugged her knee. It was a characteristic and very un-old-ladyish gesture that Stoner loved dearly. “I do wish they’d been more specific,” she said at last.
“Who are we talking about?”
“The spirits. They’re usually much more specific, and certainly less contentious.
“Exactly what did they say?”
“Only that someone really is after my soul—though of course they have their
own word for it, and it’s a very strange one. I’m not sure I could even pronounce it in body. If they know the motive, they’re not telling.” She sighed. “Sometimes it’s so frustrating, incarnating. If I were in spirit, I’d know everything. But incarnate… well, our knowledge and understanding are spotty.”
“If you don’t mind,” Stoner said, “I prefer you in the flesh and spotty.”
“You’re very sweet, Stoner. One of the things that makes this time around worth while. Oh, and they said that this is something that you, and only you, can solve.” She patted Stoner’s knee reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I have total and absolute faith in you.”
Stoner swallowed heavily. “You always do. I’m not sure it’s well-placed.”
“You haven’t let me down yet. Besides, if they say only you can solve it, they’re also saying you can, aren’t they?”
“Look,” she said, trying to be reasonable even though she really wanted to scream, “how do we know they’re telling the truth? Or it could all be a mistake...”
“Spirit doesn’t lie. Or make mistakes. We make the mistakes when we misinterpret what they say,” her aunt said, and watched a moth circling the street light for a second.
If she tells me that bug is one of her spirit guides, Stoner thought, I’ll slit my wrists.
“If we watch very carefully,” the older woman said, “we might see a bat harvest this moth.”
“Aunt Hermione, the last thing I’m interested in is carnage on the Bridge of Flowers. I want to know what’s wrong with you, and what I have to do about it.”
“Of course, sometimes there are—well, not to be too critical, but—troubled souls lurking about. Stuck, you know, between this world and the Light. Usually poorly evolved, mired in their base instincts, as it were. They can be dangerous. They’re ordinarily quite angry. Or at least greedy. Being poorly evolved…”