by John Everson
What if a bear had come up behind him while he was wetting down a treetrunk? It could have happened so fast he wouldn’t have had time to cry out, and she wouldn’t have heard…
“Boo!” Jeremy yelled, leaping out from behind her.
Jan gasped, grabbed her chest and fell to her knees with the shock.
He apologized, pulling her to her feet and hugging her tightly.
“I thought something had happened,” she cried. “A bear or you fell and broke your leg or… ”
“No, baby, no… I just wanted to make you jump. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out that much.”
His words and hugs had turned to kisses and caresses. They’d made love in the bushes at the side of the trail. For weeks after, she’d fantasized that the tryst had made her pregnant, until the bleeding began, like clockwork…
Jan pulled her gaze away from the carpet that she was no longer seeing and leaned against the back of the couch, stifling a sob.
The bleeding had always come. And Jeremy had always shaken his head, as if disgusted with her…
Time for bed. When her thoughts turned to this… Jan turned out the light, but didn’t rise from the couch. She stared at the wall she couldn’t see in the darkness, and cried.
For a week, Jan came home and spent her evenings staring at the rug, memorizing its twists and paths and delicate twinings in her head. While sometimes those intricately threaded trails led her mind to wander down unpleasant paths of its own, mostly, she was happy, lost in the blur of the day’s events and the swimming color of dyes. Jan enjoyed the warmth the rug brought to her apartment. Though she couldn’t say it had completely filled that empty feeling that came when she stepped in through the door at the end of the day.
The next Thursday, on a whim, she pulled off Glenn Ellyn Road into the parking lot of the carpet shop after work. She felt lazy, idle. Maybe she’d browse the statuary, or just admire one of the other carpets.
There still was no sign on the door, only the glow of neon tubes to announce that it was a store at all. Jan pulled the door open and stepped inside. The door snapped shut behind her like a trap.
The store was empty.
White walls and beige carpet, fixture on the ceiling without a bulb.
The store had failed fast! she thought, and then considered… it’s hard to draw a crowd when you never posted a sign.
“What’s on your mind?” a familiar voice said, and the white-haired man seemed to materialize like a light flicked on, from the darkness of the hallway.
“Oh,” she said. Jan felt embarrassed for some reason, as if she’d stepped into the man’s bedroom and caught him in his stained, torn boxers.
“The store,” she said, pausing awkwardly. “didn’t do well?”
“Oh, we’re doing just fine, ma’am,” he answered, and smiled, eyes glinting brightly in the glare of the bulb.
“You just come back when you need something – when you really want something – and we’ll have it. I guarantee.”
With that, he turned and vanished into the back hallway of the shop.
Jan stood there a moment, almost as lost and disoriented as the last time she’d stepped inside and been overwhelmed by the rugs.
She felt betrayed as she stared at the empty white walls and the boring beige floor.
What kind of game was this guy up to?
She drove home in a kind of shock.
“You just come back when you need something – when you really want something…” she kept hearing in her mind.
When she reached her apartment, she dropped her briefcase on the foyer and kicked her shoes off with force, bouncing one off the wall to land on top of the coffee table. She knelt at the edge of the Oriental rug.
Tears were already starting to run down her face. “I know what I want,” she whispered, “I know what I want.”
Later that night, after the microwave, after the TV news, after the vodka, Jan climbed back in her car.
“I know what I want,” she mumbled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
The store’s door slapped shut behind her, and this time she wasn’t shocked to see a bare bulb and an empty room.
It wasn’t completely empty.
Against the back wall leaned a pickax and shovel, obviously freshly used. There were muddy prints on the banal carpet, dark, dirty footprints that ended in a jumble at the side of the dirt-smeared silver casket. It served as the only furnishing of the otherwise white room.
“You’ve made up your mind, then,” the proprietor said, his voice a cool dagger parting the silence with bloody sound.
Jan was too drunk to cry, too tired to crumble.
“I want Jeremy,” she whispered. Then, thinking of the cruel way he’d treated her, blamed her and left her, she corrected herself. “No… I want Jeremy’s child.”
The nod of his silver hair was almost imperceptible.
“So I surmised.”
“Is that… him?” she asked, staring at the casket.
The man nodded. “Is that what you really want?”
“More than anything else.”
“Then I will leave you in privacy. You have until midnight.” He checked his watch. “Roughly an hour.”
“And the cost?” she whispered, already moving forward.
“That you never return,” he said, and then vanished once more into the dark hallway.
Jan moved to the edge of the casket. Her eyes wouldn’t stop leaking; the room wouldn’t stop shivering beyond the veil of her tears. What if it wasn’t him? What if it was him, six months gone?
She pushed at the lid and her hands slipped on the damp earth still smeared on the edge. She pushed again. This time it opened, slowly, with a creak like a door in a haunted house.
It was Jeremy.
His hair, so blond and perfectly coiffed in life, was dulled, dirty, unkempt. His lips, once so full of sarcasm, were pale, lacking in spite or cynicism. His eyes, once electric and sparkling grey, were flat, listless.
But his lips opened when she gasped, and his eyes blinked as she laid her head on his pinstripe-suited chest.
“I love you,” she cried, almost incoherent, tears muddying the dust on his deep blue tie.
“And I loved you,” he croaked, barely audible in the silence of the empty room.
His arm raised, slowly, hesitantly, like a construction crane that’s spent the winter months rusting tight in the yard.
“I wanted to have your child,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was never you,” he hissed, and pulled her down into the velvet clutch of the casket with him. “But I could never admit it.”
* * * * *
Jan never went back to the store with the neon lights. She passed it every day on her way home from work, sometimes noting a car parked there. She wondered what the store held for those patrons, but never dared to stop and find out.
She thought of the store nearly every evening as she sipped warm tea and watched the nightly news and traced the ever-twisting patterns of the deep, dark Oriental carpet with the fingers of her mind.
She smiled a little when she thought of Jeremy. And she cried. But mostly, she just closed her eyes in contentment, and felt the warmth of her belly, and of the child growing so quickly there.
She had what she wanted. And would ask for nothing more.
~*~
CHRISTMAS, THE HARD WAY
One by one the candles lit, flames flickering into existence without the aid of a match or spark. Will smiled and counted: 25. Perfect. He glanced down the hall to make sure nobody was coming and then smiled a devious grin. Why do it the hard way?
The strand of lights rose like a thin green snake from the bag. Will pointed to the crowning branch of the blue spruce and the strand obeyed. Its end still hidden in the storage bag, as it began to twine around the tree.
On the third loop the plug sailed out of the bag and slapped the wall to mark the wire’s last circle about the tree.
&
nbsp; Will smiled in appreciation.
No point in getting stuck with pine needles. This was the way to set up Christmas. Flushed with pride, he didn’t note the shadow of his father against the wall until his second strand of lights was sailing around the evergreen.
The tree began to turn – without his help. Slowly at first, perfectly matching the spiral of his snaking lights and preventing them from coming to rest on the branches. It spun faster, dislodging bulbs already placed. The tree’s motion was matched by a whirlwind that blew Will’s long blond hair into his eyes, and his candle flames into oblivion.
Seconds later, the wind and the tree were still, and Will’s work undone. Lights lay in tangled heaps on the floor, and the candles hidden throughout the nooks and crannies of the great room were smoking in dark silence.
“Do it right, this time,” a familiar voice grated. “Your aunt Ertie will be here soon.” His father’s heavy steps echoed cruelly through the ruined room as Will stared at the mess.
“Damn, damn, damn!” he hissed, stamping his foot in frustration. Why did they insist on doing things the hard way at Christmas? Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable to just get it done? And why did Ertie have to materialize every year? She was so damned annoying. Chatter, chatter, chatter – as if she had a clue what living in today’s world was like.
Will shook his head and picked up the nearest plug, shaking the stubborn lights apart one by one to detangle the strand. He’d be here for hours!
At last he found the end of the strand and dragged it to the tree. Stretching on his toes, he tossed it up over the highest branch of the Christmas tree. A needle poked him in the eye. He jerked back, and dropped the lights which fell into a tangle on the ground.
“Damnit!” he snapped aloud.
“It’s Christmas, boy, don’t swear.”
Will turned toward the hallway to see a tiny ghost of a woman, all pale and white-haired. Her glasses perched high on a squat knob of a nose, and hands the color of French vanilla ice cream clung to her barreled hips.
Will bit his tongue and dutifully held his arms out for a chilly hug. He was careful not to clap his arms right through her; she got irritated when he did that.
“Hi Aunt Ertie, when did you get here?”
“When did you start swearing at Christmas?”
“Just now.”
“Just so.”
He laughed and she flitted away from the perfunctory embrace.
“What are you standing around for? Shouldn’t those lights be on the tree instead of the floor? Why aren’t the candles lit? You kids today. Lazy and slow.”
She winked at him and swooshed back down the hall. Sighing heavily, he turned and started putting up the Christmas decorations… for the third time.
He’d lit the candles – only burning his thumb once – and nearly finished the tree when Janice poked her head into the room.
“Still at it, poky? I finished the dining room half an hour ago!”
Without thinking, Will flicked his hand and across the room an ornament leapt from the decoration box to strike the wall near his younger sister’s head.
She laughed and shook her head at the challenge.
“Uh uh. It’s Christmas. And I’m telling Dad you used your power.”
“Damnit!” he yelled after her. “Who cares?”
Will bent over and plugged the last strand in, then flicked the wall switch to turn the tree on. Hundreds of colored lights blinked on. They shone red and blue and green and gold against the rich hue of the tree. But the subdued beauty of their twinkling was lost on Will.
“Could be brighter,” he grumbled.
And grinned. “Sure,” he murmured. “Could be brighter!”
He pulled the plug from the wall and touched two fingers to the copper prongs. “Light,” he said, and instead got noise.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
The first strand of Christmas lights exploded from the excessive rush of power he’d unleashed in the wire, showering Will and the room in a mist of colored glass. He felt the bite of tiny barbs on his face and realized his error just as a yell swooped into the room.
“Wiiiilllllll!?”
“Damnit!”
Will slumped on the couch and stared at the squalling infant on his lap. He imagined a honey-coated pacifier and absently popped it into the child’s mouth when it appeared. “Why me?” he asked for the hundredth time today. He hated Christmas.
Every year it was the same thing. The family sat down to dinner on the 19th of December and after dessert, his mother would place both palms on the table and say, “It’s time. Call your last wishes and then put away your powers. It’s Christmas week.”
“Couldn’t we wait until after the dishes are done?” he’d asked this year, and got a warning swat on the shoulder from Dad.
“That would be missing the point!” his mother replied.
“Well, what is the point?” he’d responded, face twisted in a petulant sneer. “Christmas is a good time for everyone else, but we have to be miserable? Christmas weak – with an A?”
Dad opened his mouth to speak and then, looking much like a gasping goldfish, closed it again.
Mom looked serious. “You think about the point, Will. You think about it while you’re doing the dishes. By hand.”
The nipple popped out of his baby brother’s mouth and Chris began to cry.
“Damnit!” Will snorted. He stood, rocking Chris in his arms. As much as he wished for the kid to shut up, there was no safe way to magic a baby into easing up on the volume. You had to stand up and walk and sing and rock. What a royal pain, he thought, and looked down at the drool-covered chin of his brother. The pink lips bubbled and then opened to let out a piercing cry.
“What do you want?” Will begged. “I can’t understand blubbering. Why can’t you just tell me? Why do you gotta cry all the time?”
He was still pacing the room with the fidgety baby when his family returned from their shopping foray into town.
“Gotcha some eggnog,” Janice chirped, dashing through the room and into the kitchen. Chris began to wail louder.
“You’ve got to learn to be gentler with him if you want him to settle,” Mom said, dropping a brown bag to the floor and taking the baby from his stiff arms. “You rock him slower, like this.”
Will saw how the child folded easily into her arms, how her body swayed softly, so different from his bouncing, impatient movement. Why couldn’t he do that?
“And it’s no wonder he’s crying, Will. He’s wet!”
Mom went to change Chris, and Will dropped defeatedly to the couch.
Snow was swirling past the living room window, a shadowy rain in the grey winter evening. Great, he thought dismally. I’ll spend Christmas morning shoveling the driveway. Why couldn’t it wait until after Christmas when he could clear the drive with a wish and a wink?
“Wouldn’t be right,” rasped a wheezy voice from the couch right beside him. Ertie had the annoying habit of simply being there at all the wrong moments. Will guessed she’d been quite the busybody in life.
“Huh?” he asked, turning to find the piercing gaze of his ghostly aunt upon him.
“Wouldn’t be Christmas if you didn’t give up somethin’,” she said. “You think Christ wanted to leave heaven? You think anybody wants to make a sacrifice? I tell you, when I was a girl, my sister Glennie was always puffing and strutting and getting all the boys. But do you think she got them on her own? Oh no. She tweaked herself with magic. Made ‘em think they were licking a gorgeous girl’s ear. Meanwhile, I couldn’t get a guy for nothing. But did I fake it? Well, once or twice maybe…”
She winked at him, her crow’s feet a tide of ripples. “But I knew then what I’m telling you now. Wouldn’t be right to get what I wanted that way. Had to sacrifice and get my man on my own call. Because eventually, the glamour won’t hide who you are. The magic isn’t enough, is what I’m telling you, Will. Ask your aunt Glennie. Ask her why she was never married.”
/> The tiny woman eased herself upright. “I married twice, you know. Twice,” she said again, as she faded from the room.
* * * * *
The church was nearly full when they walked into the vestibule at 11:30. Midnight Mass was another Christmas family tradition which Will had grown to hate. The main floor was abuzz with greetings and conversation. A half dozen Christmas trees were scattered about the altar, interspersed with the green and red blossoms of poinsettias in gold-foiled pots.
Pale blue lights wove a fairy dance amid pine boughs on the granite columns lining the main aisle. The muted strains of “Joy To The World” drifted from the organ to add to the chaotic hum.
A balding usher in a lime suit and red Santa tie guided them to the balcony. “Main floor’s already packed, folks,” he apologized. Will was considering making the garish tie constrict of its own accord when he was swept away by the mob heading upstairs.
The family filed into a pew near the edge of the balcony, first Mom and Chris, then Janice, Ertie, Dad and finally, Will. What a stupid waste of time, he thought, tapping his foot against the kneeler impatiently. As the priest began the mass, Will stared at the lights wound throughout the trees and columns down near the altar. After awhile, he began to reach out with his power to the lights, stopping the current here and there, putting out whole strands and then letting them blink back on. He glanced sideways to see if anyone was watching.
No. Good.
He picked out a handful of lights above the altar and began a wave. He’d shut off one light for a second, then let it back on while knocking out the following color in the strand, and then move on to the next. Anyone watching would see a moving wave of color in the midst of a series of unblinking strands. A miracle, he smiled. He was a miracle worker!
Will was thoroughly enjoying his cleverness when a hand gripped the back of his neck. His dad’s voice growled in his ear. “Keep it up, and you won’t live to see Christmas,” he warned.
Will settled back for the homily.