by Trisha Telep
Mel had insisted they do Christmas dinner, even though neither of them had enjoyed it since before Mel had gone to AA and moved them to Coffin Hollow, when Jo was in middle school. Jo figured after five years, she should get a pass from candied yams and Mel freaking out over how long to cook a turkey, but Mel put her foot down.
“If I didn’t know you weren’t that damn stupid, I’d think you were on drugs,” she told Jo. “Now get your ass in that kitchen and pretend you like me for a couple of hours. It’s Christmas, dammit.”
Jo thought about detailing just how many times she’d smoked pot with Ani since the band started, and how many times at gigs older guys or club owners had offered her everything from LSD on fake postage stamps to what she could only assume was really good cocaine, from a little platinum vial that looked like a skull.
But she got her ass in the kitchen. She figured a woman Nick would like would at least know how to cook.
She should have been in a tryptophan coma, out for the count until Christmas morning, when Mel would have a mimosa with sparkling cider rather than champagne, and she’d have a hot chocolate and they’d exchange gifts before Mel went back to work. The production company she’d done the designs for had hired her as a full-time animator for their next summer blockbuster, and she was hard at work making cute, chubby dogs and gerbils sit up and talk.
But instead, she was back in the dream, and it was so real she could taste the smoke, see the thorns embedded in her calves and thighs, hear the wavering scream that rose from somewhere close by.
A girl stood on the bank of the Acushket, and Jo knew it was a dream because it was summer, river wild and blue as it flowed, banks choked with brambles and wild roses. Her dress was white, whiter than the foam that rode the top of the current, and it swirled in the wind, along with hair the color of fire.
Jo knew she herself was bare, standing in the wilderness while Ash House burned behind her. Thorny vines crawled up her legs, her arms, twisted around until she felt like her skin was burning too.
The girl looked back at Jo and said, “Drown.”
Jo woke up in the silver light of before dawn. Christmas morning, and there was no snow falling. Ice covered everything, and made it gleam like the entire world was frozen for good.
She got her boots, jeans, a jacket, and slipped outside. She’d lost weight, and everything flapped around her when the wind caught her clothes. The dream was hard to shake. It was as if she really were bleeding from the hundred wounds, slipping under the surface until she’d be pale and dead as Nicholas.
He was in the music room when she reached Ash House, playing the piano. He smiled when he saw her. “You came.”
Jo could touch him now, and he smoothed her sleep-tossed hair from her face before he put his lips on her forehead. She was so cold already she didn’t feel the change. “Did you have Christmas already?” he inquired. Jo shook her head.
“I had the most horrible dream. I was at the river and I...” She felt the flush prickle her cheeks with warm blood, and she looked at her boots. “I was naked and these thorns ... there was a girl.” She didn’t realize Nicholas was holding her hands until he pulled her close. “She wanted me to go into the river and drown.”
“Shh,” Nicholas said. “It will be all right.”
“I woke up and I...” Jo thought she must be crying, as a crystallized flake slid down her cheek. This close to Nicholas, vapor froze and fell out of the air. “I wanted you there,” she whispered.
“I wish that were possible, love,” Nicholas said. “I wish I could go home with you.”
Jo pulled back, hands on his chest. His jacket really was velvet, and she could feel the satin lapel now, the crisp linen of his shirt. He was almost there ... almost real. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Maybe if I gave you permission ... if we went together...”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. “You’d want that? You want to be with me?”
“I do,” Jo said. She put her head back against his chest. “I want to be with you.”
“Then come,” Nicholas said. “The worst that can happen is I’ll disappear, back to Ash House. I’ve been trapped here for so long anyway, it will hardly matter.”
Jo took off her glove, so she could feel his hand. “I need you, Nick,” she said.
He smiled down at her. “I know.”
They walked from the music room and down the grand hall and into the entry. The red door stood open, and Jo tightened her hand on his. If they could just cross the threshold ... If Nick was with her, the dreams would stop. She knew they’d stop.
“You look so beautiful,” Nick whispered. “You’re so delicate, Josephine.” He brushed his free hand down her cheek. “Promise me you won’t ever forget,” he said. “Even if I vanish into vapor. Promise me, Josephine, that you will never forget me.”
Jo watched her breath turn to steam as the cold of outside crept across the threshold. “Never,” she said.
She stepped across the threshold, and Nicholas held her hand. They walked down the drive, across the bridge with the river ice below cracking like gunshots, and down Route 7. They walked home, into Jo’s house, past the Christmas tree and the gifts, past Mel’s call of “Jo? Jo, where the hell have you been?,” and into her room.
Nick pulled her to him, pressed her lips to his, and for the first time he began to feel warm against Jo’s skin. She dropped her jacket, her gloves, the flannel shirt she’d pulled over her tank top. She tangled her hands in Nick’s hair, felt water clinging there. Her fingers traced the scars on his arm. She could feel the scars for the first time.
His hands traveled under the hem of her shirt, raising gooseflesh on her abdomen. His lips caressed her ear. “Josephine...”
“Jo!” Mel shouted. “Ani is here! Get downstairs!”
Ani ... That broke Jo away from Nick’s ardent caress. “I have to...” She fought a giggle at his comical pout. “I have to go. That’s my best friend.”
“I’ll come,” Nick said. “She can’t see me. Nor your mother.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Jo said, and slipped out, hoping she wasn’t flushed or disheveled. She remembered to kick off her boots before Mel got even more pissed off about her tracking mud and ice everywhere.
“Ani?” she said, at the sight of her friend standing in the foyer. Her hair was bright candy-apple red, shorn in a pixie cut. “Wow. Hey.”
“Hey,” Ani said. “Deirdre and I broke up. I wish I could light that bitch’s Dodge Dart on fire, but instead I’m here, and I’m going to drown my sorrows in Christmas cookies and pie. Yes, it’s ten a.m. Don’t you judge me.”
“It’s good to see you,” Jo said carefully. She didn’t have time to listen to the no-doubt epic tale of Deirdre and Ani, no more to be. Nick was waiting.
“So, join me?” Ani said. She looked Jo up and down as she descended the stairs, and her eyes widened. “Jesus, Jo. You look like shit.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jo snapped. She was beautiful. She was thin and delicate, and she was the best she’d ever been.
“I mean, you look like you’re living in a POW camp,” Ani said. “Oh shit, are you anorexic? How did I not notice this?” She grabbed Jo’s hands. “I know I’ve been a shit friend lately, dude. I was really messed up over Deirdre, and I’m really sorry. But this...” She looked down at their twined fingers. “Jo, you’re freezing.”
“It’s cold,” Jo said. Ani’s eyes widened again, all pupil.
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “I’m sweating bullets, and this isn’t even my warm coat.” She pulled off her vintage army jacket and scarf, and pulled Jo’s face into her hands. “This isn’t some cheerleader eating disorder. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Jo,” Mel said, and there was a snap in her voice like a switch. “I need you to take this extra pie over to the Powells’. I’d do it, but I have an emergency conference call with L.A. in about two minutes.”
Her mother was in sweats and slippers, hair pulled back
in a messy bun. She held out the pie to Jo. “When you get back, maybe you’d like to tell me where you were.”
“Not particularly,” Jo said, snatching the dish and her coat. Ani followed her, running to keep up.
“ What is going on? You and your mom are like the only functional parent/child relationship I know of.”
“Ani, just leave me alone!” Jo shouted. “You’re so incredibly nosy it drives me insane!”
Ani drew up, like someone had hit her in the face. “Oh, eat me,” she said. “You haven’t been normal since the summer. I don’t know if it’s drugs or some secret boyfriend or what, but you’re being an utter dick. You used to be my best friend, Jo, and I need you, so piss off with your dysfunction. I’m going home.”
She left. Jo wanted to run back upstairs, cradle herself in Nick’s arms, have him kiss the top of her head and say everything was fine, fine, just fine, love. Instead she stomped up the Powells’ steps and jabbed at the doorbell. After what seemed like an hour, Drew opened the door.
“Well, happy freaking holidays,” he said, looking her over. “That a pie?”
Jo shoved it at him. “It’s from my mom.”
“Nice,” he said. “My mom has been listening to Perry Como all morning. I’m about seven seconds from getting my dad’s shotgun out of the safe and killing either her CD player or myself. Care to join me?”
“I have to get home...” Jo started, but then Mrs. Powell was at the door, taking the pie, cooing thanks, ushering her in. She was wearing a Patriots sweatshirt and perfect makeup, a sprig of fake holly in her helmet-like hairdo. The diametric opposite of Mel.
“So, Jo, your mother tells me you’re quite a student,” she trilled, cutting into the pie. She tapped a cigarette out of the pack with her other hand—the same brand Drew smoked, Jo noticed—and paused to light it, flicking ash into a tray shaped like a sleeping cat. “Maybe you could tutor my son here sometime, so he doesn’t end up in vo-tech and covered in grease for the rest of his life.”
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” Drew complained. Mrs. Powell swatted him on the head.
“None of that. Your mother tells me you’re very interested in history, Jo. What are you studying now?”
Jo wanted to turn around and run. She could feel Nick calling to her, the feel and smell and chill of him tugging at her, wanted more than anything to feel him against her whole body, pressing into her like the thorns in her dream.
“Ash House,” she lied. “The history of Ash House. It’s an independent study project.”
“Ash House.” Mrs. Powell shivered and tapped ash off her cigarette. “That place gives me the creeps. I lost a girlfriend there in high school, you know.”
“Here we go,” Drew muttered. “This is a really long story, FYI, Jo.”
“Hush, boy,” she said, waving a hand at him. “There were six of us, and we got to playing truth or dare, and she and I were to walk across the bridge on the rail.”
“I have to...” Jo tried. Her stomach was boiling, the acid eating at her insides, even though she hadn’t eaten anything since a few bites of Mel’s turkey the night before.
“We fell in, probably because we were drunk off our kettles on cheap bourbon,” said Mrs. Powell. “Judy ... Judy Templeton, that was her name... she hit her head and drowned. At least that’s what the coroner said.”
Jo smelled a sweetish scent rolling off of Drew’s mother, and realized for the first time that if she wasn’t drunk, she was doing a good job getting there.
“When I was in the water,” Mrs. Powell continued, “I felt as if something ... something was almost, pulling me down. Not a root or a rock, but something strong, like ... well, like a hand. And I heard this voice while I was under the water. Whispering about black water, drowning. Anyway.” She shivered again. “Grim old place. ’Course, we were only there because of what happened to that girl back in ’58.”
Pins made of ice pricked Jo up and down her spine. “What girl?”
“You know.” Mrs. Powell waved a hand. “Effie Walker. Kids called her Pepper, on account of she had this fabulous red hair...”
“ Mother,” Drew sighed. “Wrong holiday for this shit.”
“Relax, dear, I won’t embarrass you in front of your cute little friend much longer,” Mrs. Powell said. Drew mimed shooting himself in the head behind his mother’s back.
“What about her?” Jo said, voice coming out loud and high.
“She had a fella,” Mrs. Powell said. “Real mysterious. Theory is he got her knocked up, dumped her, or something like that. Anyway, she walked into the Acushket down at Ash House with rocks in her pockets, even though nobody ever saw her with the boy and her sister and mother swore she wasn’t in a family way. Just decided one day to up and end it. That bend in the river’s had a lot of accidents. They need to put up a guardrail there.”
It was as if the river had come to her, had filled up Jo’s ears with rushing water. She couldn’t hear what Drew was saying, nor the smarmy carols pouring from the Powells’ stereo. Couldn’t think of anything but the dream, the girl with flaming hair at the river’s edge. Thorns in her skin. Ice filling up her lungs as she stared into the black current.
Her stomach twisted, and the next thing Jo knew, she was staring into the face of Effie Walker. Her hair had been carefully curled once, but now it hung lank against her cheeks, and her makeup ran down her face in rivulets. She wasn’t the only one. Judy Templeton, cutoff shorts and platform sandals and a ripped-up Journey shirt, sodden and clinging to her petite body. Both of them, sunken-cheeked and hollow-eyed, starved white fingers reaching for something they could never catch hold of.
And Abigail Worth, who leaned down and whispered in Jo’s ear in the language of black water.
You set him free. Do you even realize what you’ve done?
Jo couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe. She could feel again, and her joints ached. Her bones pushed against her skin, and she wasn’t cold now but burning up, and if there had been anything in her stomach, she would have spewed up on Drew’s scuffed leather army boots.
“I’ll get her home,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Outside, staring up at her lit window, Jo clutched at Drew. “I can’t go home.”
He stopped in the driveway, didn’t argue with her. “Where can you go?”
A shadow flicked in front of Jo’s curtains, the size of a tall thin spirit. Watching her. “Ani’s,” she said, thinking of the only place she could. “Take me to Ani’s.”
Drew backed the Nova out of the garage while she shivered. She could feel Nick’s eyes on her.
You set him free.
Not just his intended had died at Ash House, been consumed by the river. He’d lied. He’d lied to her, and she’d walked him across the threshold, set him free. To do what?
Jo jumped into the passenger side of the car, slamming and locking the door, as if it would do some good. She caught her face in the door mirror and almost vomited again. Her eyes were sunk into her skull, and her hair was dull and tangled. Her cheekbones stuck out like razor blades, and her lips were chapped. She could see every vein under the skin.
“You okay?” Drew asked. Jo managed a nod, curling her knees up to her chest.
“For now. Just drive.”
Drew drove and got her to Ani’s grandmother’s place in record time. Ani’s dad was an EMT, and he’d drawn the dubious honor of being the one to patch up family scrapes and drunken bar brawls on Christmas Day.
“Jo?” Ani dashed out of the house wearing nothing but a thermal shirt she’d cut the collar out of and jeans hastily stuffed into boots.