by Kristie Cook
Why couldn’t grownups ever just do what kids asked of them without asking a million questions? “Please, Carol! I saw someone out there. She looked really weird. And she called my name.”
Carol went to the bedrooms to check the locks on the windows, but not without saying, “Calm down, honey. It’s probably nothing. Maybe a neighbor you didn’t recognize?”
Therese finished checking the last window and then found her aunt in the guest bedroom. She pointed a finger at her aunt and shouted, “You either think I’m paranoid or you’re acting brave because you think you need to for my benefit! Well, I think I have a right to be paranoid. And if you’re just acting brave, don’t.”
She left the room and sat on the sofa, which faced the kitchen, and stared at the back door. Clifford jumped into her lap.
“Therese, I’m sorry.” Carol crossed the room and sat on the other end of the sofa.
“I know my own neighborhood,” Therese said, still worked up.
“You’re right. I’ll call the lieutenant. I’m a little scared now, too.”
***
It was dusk when the lieutenant arrived with another officer in tow. They came inside, accepted glasses of iced tea, and listened to Therese’s account of what happened earlier in the woods.
The lieutenant said, “To be on the safe side, I’ll post an officer on guard for a week or so to keep an eye on the place. Officer Morgan here will stay tonight. I’ll see you both in the morning for the line up. Let Officer Morgan know if you hear or see anything the least bit suspicious to you, okay?”
“We will,” Carol said, following the lieutenant to the door. “Thank you so much.”
Officer Morgan slept on a cot on the back deck, so Therese felt a little more at ease, even though she couldn’t take Clifford out to pee without him barking up a storm.
At night, when it was time to go to sleep, she was glad the officer was there below her on the deck outside. She lay there with Clifford and first thought of the fear. The woman had looked so strange. Even her voice was strange. Then Therese thought of the despair, and she fought off the panicky feeling until it won and she sobbed and sobbed until she finally fell asleep.
***
Therese was riding on a carousel at a carnival on a painted horse rising up and down to accordion music when Hip appeared and said, “My brother is coming for you.”
“But he said he’d kill me if he came to me,” Therese said.
“Only when he’s acting as the guide for the dead. He’s getting our father to make me take over that loathsome job. I’m not looking forward to it, and I guess I have you to thank for it.”
“I don’t get it. You’re going to be the new guide for the dead?”
“Just temporarily, so Than can come for you.”
“And then what?”
Hip shrugged. “I think he wants you to become his queen of the dead.” Then he said, “Why don’t you become my queen instead?”
Therese laughed. “You’re not the marrying kind, Hip. I can see that.”
***
The next morning after breakfast, Carol drove Therese to the Durango Police Department. Lieutenant Hobson met them at the front desk and escorted them into a dimly lit room that smelled like her father’s cigars. Through a window on one wall, they could see six men being led into an adjacent room. Each wore a number around his neck. Two of the men were tall and the others closer to average size. One had a big belly. All six men had dark skin and beards, though the beards were of varying lengths and tidiness. Therese recognized the face she had seen the day of the shooting. Seeing him sent shivers all down her spine and made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She could barely breathe. There was no question in her mind. He was there the night of the shooting.
Had he killed her parents? She looked at him with hatred and fear as tears slid down her cheeks. Had he been responsible for ruining her life forever? She wanted to break through the glass and strangle him. “Number four,” she finally said with confidence. “Definitely number four.”
“You’re sure?” the lieutenant asked.
“Positive.”
The lieutenant spoke into a machine and said, “Thanks. You can lead them out now.”
As the men turned to follow the officer out of the small chamber, Therese saw a reflection in the window of a woman standing behind her. The reflection appeared out of nowhere and looked exactly like the woman in the woods from the day before—the woman who called her name and may or may not have been carrying a snake. There was definitely a large bird perched on the shoulder of the woman in the reflection, and the woman was smiling and nodding, apparently at Therese. Therese quickly turned, gasping, but there was no one behind her.
“What’s wrong?” Carol asked, standing beside her.
“What? Oh, nothing. Can we go home now?”
Chapter Ten: Setting Up
Late at night, Than listened for her voice among the multitude praying to him. So many voices all at once, “Please don’t take my son! He’s all I have!” and “Don’t let the cancer take her. Help her to recover.” As if he had a choice. People are born, they live, and they die, and there was little the gods could do to alter their experiences. In many ways, Than thought, the gods were the slaves of humans, each with a duty to help maintain the world and to keep all of its creation in balance. The gods served the world and its inhabitants, not the other way around.
At last he heard her voice echoing above the mountains of Colorado. He flew to her and listened.
“I hope my parents feel no pain,” Therese whispered, and her voice lifted up to him and into the clouds like sweet, soft music, like something his mother might have once sung to him. “I hope my dream was true, and they really are in the beautiful Elysian Fields, perfectly happy.”
Than looked down upon Therese where she sat on her bed with her little dog. “I miss them, Clifford,” she said out loud. “I miss them so much!” She hugged her dog and sobbed.
A knock at her bedroom door brought her beautiful face up again. “Yes?”
“Can I come in?” A woman, a redhead, too, stood behind the door.
As Therese and the other woman spoke, Than wondered if he were acting too hastily in his decision to pursue Therese. She was, after all, the one and only girl he had ever met alive. Once he changed into mortal form, he could meet other girls and make a more informed decision. What was so special about Therese? As soon as he had asked himself the question, he answered it: she was the only soul in the centuries of his existence to have willed herself to the outskirts of the Underworld and to get close enough to him to touch him. This alone set her apart. Also. she hadn’t come to him in a proud, arrogant, threatening way. She hadn’t realized she had left the dream world and was close to dying herself. She had believed herself to be the author of her own dream, and in that dream, she wanted her parents alive. Who wouldn’t? If she had exerted her will and demonstrated strength, she had done so in ignorance. She had not set out to challenge him.
She hadn’t come like Sisyphus to bind him so humans could not die. She hadn’t come like Hercules to steal Cerberus. She had not come like Orpheus first to persuade with song and then to defy a broken agreement.
She had come, put her arms around him, and told him he was lovely—so lovely—and she had kissed him. Who in the history of time had ever done that to Death?
And the deal with Hades required Therese to do something that not just any mortal could do. He wasn’t sure that even Therese could do it.
Plus, he had only forty days. Why had his father chosen forty days? To Than, this seemed an arbitrary number. Why not one hundred? Why not twenty? At any rate, forty days seemed hardly enough time to make a selection among the billions of girls on earth. No, unless Therese was less than she seemed, he would spend his time courting her. He would not do like his father had his mother and take her unwillingly. Than had seen how her resentment had poisoned her relationship with his father. He wanted to win Therese’s heart.
/> From the conversation below him, he came to understand that the woman was Therese’s aunt, Carol, and this woman was now encouraging Therese to visit her friend, Jen. Than soon learned where Jen lived, and so he turned his attention to her, to see if he could use her in his efforts to meet Therese in the flesh.
When he found her, he was surprised to hear her praying to him. Most mortals prayed to a different god, unless they or someone they loved were dying or already dead. But this young woman was asking for death?
“Everything would be easier for everyone else if you just took me. Then he could come back, and they’d all be a happy.”
Than saw a way to befriend Therese. He would first study Jen and her family.
Chapter Eleven: Invitations
A few weeks passed since Therese had identified the man she saw the day of the shooting, and, after mostly lying around in bed and spending time with her pets, she finally returned to the woods with Clifford. She didn’t go as far as usual, but she went a little ways, and Carol stood on the back deck watching her in full view. The police were no longer standing guard at the house, and Therese could finally take Clifford out to do his business without a leash and without him barking and growling and driving her mad. The wild animals, which had not come around while the officers were here, returned to eat the sunflower seeds Therese sprinkled across the deck and railing.
Jen had called several days ago and had begged Therese to come and groom the horses with her, and Therese decided today she felt like going.
Carol turned on to the gravelly drive leading up to Jen’s house. Clifford leaned his head out of Therese’s open window, his tongue hanging happily from his mouth, his stubby tail wagging. Clifford loved to come to Jen’s and run around the ranch, though he wasn’t allowed in the pen. He knew Jen’s family and their horses, and they knew him, and so everyone got along just fine. Therese loved to come too. She looked at the big log cabin, similar to her own, on the right of the property, and the barn and pen to the left. On the opposite side of the pen from the house, two pastures spread out to the north at the base of the mountains. A stream cut across the entire property behind the house and pen, and through the center of the pastures. Tied to the base of the front wooden steps of the house was a lone goat, which bleated as Jen opened the front door and skipped down the five steps to the ground.
Jen’s blonde hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, and she wore a white tank top and old blue jeans and boots. Therese felt a wave of jealousy at Jen’s beauty but shrugged it off as soon as Jen called to her in her friendly voice, “Hey there! You’re finally here!”
When Therese opened her car door, Clifford sprang out to meet Jen. The goat bleated its objections, and Clifford cowered away from it.
“Hey there, boy!” Jen pet Clifford when he greeted her with his front paws on her legs. Then Clifford ambled down to his favorite hangout: the stream at the back of the property, which was full of trout.
Therese turned to Carol. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Sure. Call me if you want a ride home. First I’m running into Durango to get a few more groceries, but I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
Therese stepped out of the car, but before she closed the door, Carol asked, “You sure you don’t want me to run you by the cemetery later? You still haven’t visited your parents’ graves. It’s been over a month since we buried them.”
“I’m sure. I’m not ready to do that yet.” She wished her aunt wouldn’t have brought this up now. She’d been close to happy and excited, but now she was filled with dread.
“Okay. Bye, sweetheart.”
Therese closed the car door and turned to her friend. “It’s nice to be out of the house. Thanks for inviting me.”
“Hey, listen. My mom was wondering if you want a job. The two brothers she hired this spring had a death in the family. She hired a new temp a week ago, but she still needs one more hand, just until she can find someone more permanent. Up to it?”
Therese shrugged. It would be a lot of hard work, which could be both good and bad. “Would she need me every day?”
“Pretty much. She pays ten an hour.” Jen led her across the gravel drive past the barn toward the partially sheltered pen where the dozen horses hung out.
“I don’t know. If she can’t find anyone else, maybe.” Then to Clifford, who had come back to check on her, she said, “No boy, not in the pen. You know better.”
“Please say yes. We could hang out.”
“How early in the morning?”
“Okay, you wouldn’t have to do the early morning stuff.”
They reached the pen and the General greeted her with a sniff. He stretched his long gray neck over the fence for what he knew would be a soft stroke. He was the biggest of the horses, a huge gray gelding. Jen and her brothers sometimes called him the elephant. “Hey, General,” Therese said, rubbing the side of his face.
“We bring the horses in at nine for grooming before they start their first trail ride of the day. My brothers and the new handler are in there finishing up now. We’ll need help with the grooming and tack so they’re ready to go by eleven. You could leave after that.”
“So nine to eleven? That’s not bad. Let me think about it.” She could use some of her own mad money, and twenty dollars a day for just a couple of hours of her time seemed like a good deal, and a good distraction. She loved grooming the horses.
Jen added, “After my mom’s trail rides, we exercise them hard before dinner, when we turn them out to pasture again till dark. We could use another rider then, too, from like four to five. Not necessarily every day. Just when you can.”
One of Jen’s two brothers appeared in the middle of the pen from behind the shelter. He was the tallest and oldest of the Holt kids and had blond hair like his sister, which he kept short around his face like a bowl. He graduated last May and would be attending college in the fall. “Hey, Therese.”
“Hi Pete.”
“Oh, hey, Therese!” the other brother, who would be a freshman this year, called as he popped up from behind a horse. He wore the same blond bowl on his head as his brother, but the freckles that peppered his cheeks were more prominent.
“Hi Bobby.”
“Sorry about your parents,” Pete, the older one, said.
“Yeah. Thanks.” She bit the inside of her bottom lip.
Then Bobby asked, “Hey, have you met Than?”
Another boy, slightly taller than Pete with dark wavy hair and a bigger build, stepped out of the shelter and into the middle of the pen and the horses.
It was the Than from her dreams.
Jen must have noticed the look on her friend’s face, because she asked, “Do you guys know each other?”
“You look familiar.” Than strolled up to the fence in his blue jeans and tight white t-shirt.
“No, I don’t think we’ve met,” Therese said. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be him. But how many people had she known named Than? Her knees felt like they might buckle.
Than extended his hand. “Well, then, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Therese. I’ve heard a lot about you, thanks to Bobby here.”
Bobby’s face turned crimson as she gave the new guy her hand, and she couldn’t pull it away fast enough. Than seemed to be laughing at her behind his smile, enjoying her pain and confusion and Bobby’s embarrassment. She decided she did not like him.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” she lied.
Jen opened the gate of the pen. “We’re half way done with the grooming.”
“Can I groom Sugar?” Therese asked.
“Than’s finishing her up now,” Pete said. “Can you take Hershey?”
Without warning, Clifford ran through the gate and leapt into Than’s arms. He licked Than all over his face. The General spooked back, causing a domino effect as two other horses, Ace and Chestnut, reared and snorted. Fear gripped Therese as she recognized the danger. But Than tossed Clifford to Therese, grabbed the General’s mane, and
whispered something in his ear. The General settled, which calmed the other horses, and Therese finally released her breath.
“Bad boy! Go back to the stream! Go catch a fish!” she scolded Clifford, turning him out of the pen. She said to Jen, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over him. He should know better than that.” Then she looked up at Than with suspicion and awe. Why had Clifford run to him? And how had he settled the horses so quickly?
“Wow, Than,” Jen said. “How did you do that?”
Than shrugged and said he had a way with horses, but Therese still felt as though he were laughing at her, as though the threat of danger had been her fault because she couldn’t control her dog, and she had needed Than to save the day. She took up a brush and went over to Hershey, a mare whose coat, as the name implied, was like chocolaty brown silk.
“Hey girl,” Therese said in a soothing voice. “Did you miss me?” Therese could feel Than’s eyes on her, but she tried her best to ignore him. He was too sexy for her, anyway, and much too arrogant and self-assured. Jen had probably already staked her claim on him, and she was probably more his type, so naturally beautiful. As Therese brushed through Hershey’s coat, she wondered if it had been a mere coincidence that Than looked like the Than in her dreams. Or, maybe he didn’t, and somehow she was now imposing the image of him on her memory.
Therese bent over to brush Hershey’s belly, and her rear-end bumped against Than, who was passing behind her. She popped upright, the blood rushing to her face, and muttered, “Excuse me.” He said nothing, but when she snatched a glance his way, she could see he looked pleased with himself.
Had her subconscious somehow sensed she would be meeting him? Had it been a prophetic vision? And if so, what had it meant?
After they finished grooming and saddling the horses, Jen’s mom came out of the barn where she had been working to formally offer Therese the job and to thank her for accepting it. She was surprised to hear Therese wouldn’t be coming at dawn to help with the barn and pen cleaning, but Jen quickly explained that she planned to work every morning instead of splitting the chores with her brothers. Jen’s surreptitious glance toward Than confirmed Therese’s suspicion that Jen was interested in him, and this explained Jen’s sudden eagerness to work more. Mrs. Holt seemed pleased with the arrangement, since she paid Jen less than ten an hour.