by Неизвестный
Persephone snarled at him, and suddenly I saw the dark power that shimmered beneath her amiable exterior. Her eyes glowed hot, and she waved a hand at Caine. He flew backward and hit the wall, hard, and then slumped to the floor.
“Remember your place, Soul Shepherd,” she warned him, but he only nodded and then picked himself up off the floor.
“This is my place. You told me you were apprenticing your granddaughter to me, so I have a right to know if she’s as stupid as she looks. I don’t need help, if it’s going to be beautiful and brainless. She’s a distraction,” he said, scowling at me.
Unfortunately, he was totally hot even when he scowled; all tall, lean deliciousness. Also, he thought I was beautiful? I distracted him?
“Wait,” I said, rewinding the conversation in my frazzled mind. “You want me to apprentice to him? And he’s a Soul Shepherd?”
Persephone avoided my gaze, but Caine folded his arms over his chest and nodded.
“First, you’re out of your mind. Second, not that it matters to me, because I’m so not doing it, but what is a Soul Shepherd? Finally, when do I get out of here?”
Caine smiled mockingly. “No, we’re not; a Soul Shepherd is exactly what it sounds like; never.”
“Caine,” Persephone snapped. “That’s enough. Penny, I’d hoped to tell you all this in a gentler way, but a Soul Shepherd is someone who helps a dying person make the transition to the afterlife. Because you’re the child of my child, you must serve out your time here, just like your mother did.”
My mother had served time in the Underworld? My mother was Persephone’s daughter? As unbelievable as it seemed, I hadn’t thought at all about the full implications of the relationship.
“When did my mother ever live down here? I think I would have known about it if she’d taken a long vacation to hell,” I said, all but challenging her to deny it.
“1865 to 1905,” Caine said, glancing down at a device that looked suspiciously like an iPad mini. “And this is not hell.”
For the second time that day — the second time in my life — the world swirled down to black all around me, and I fell. When my overwhelmed brain decided to switch back on, I realized that Caine was sitting on the floor, holding me in his lap, and I scrambled to get away from him. I was still dizzy, so I sat on the floor next to him and leaned back against the wall. Persephone was nowhere to be seen.
“It can be a lot to take in,” he said, and it was the first note of anything but nastiness he’d spoken, so naturally I didn’t trust it.
“Yeah, how long did it take you?”
His black eyes narrowed and he stared off into the distance. “Maybe seven or eight years, I think.”
“This is nuts, you know that, right?” I closed my eyes, fighting back the tears trying to well up. “I took a hard hit to the head at the bus stop, didn’t I? Any minute, I’ll wake up back in Kansas with Toto, right?”
“I thought it was Ohio?” He sounded so puzzled that I almost laughed.
“Never mind. Tell me about a Soul Shepherd. Not that I’m planning on being one.”
“You don’t have a choice, Penny. It’s in your blood — it’s your heritage. Your destiny.”
I opened my eyes. “Really? You had me till the word destiny. Now we’re in cheesy horror movie territory.”
“Denial is a common coping mechanism among the dying, too,” he said. “But it will be better if I simply show you.”
He stood up and held out his hand, but I shook my head and refused to take it. He sighed and snapped his fingers, and suddenly a vortex of silver and black sparkling lights surrounded us both and we were swept into the scariest roller coaster ride of my life.
##
I stumbled out after Caine and immediately realized we were in a hospital room. The twin scents of antiseptic and sorrow, the blinking and muffled beeping of monitors that rhythmically echoed a patient’s hopes — there was no mistaking it. A thin, pale girl who looked about eight years old lay asleep in the bed, covered by a crisp white sheet but also by a fluffy pink down comforter, which was jarringly out of place in the sterility of the hospital room.
A woman I assumed to be her mother sat next to the bed, her head in her hands, crying.
“Caine, we shouldn’t be here,” I whispered, grabbing his arm. “Give these people their privacy. That woman — ”
“Can’t see us,” he explained. “Nobody can see us until it’s their time.”
The girl opened her eyes as if on cue and stared straight at us. “Are you angels?”
I wished really, really hard that the floor would open up and swallow me. “No!”
Caine glared at me, but then smiled at the little girl, and the smile transformed his face from sardonic to darkly beautiful, so much so that I could completely believe that people would believe he was an angel.
“Yes, Becky, we are here to help you move into the light,” he told her.
She looked doubtful. “I don’t want to go to the light. I’d rather go to Disney World.”
“I’m with you,” I said fervently.
Becky’s mother, oddly enough, didn’t seem to realize that her daughter was awake and speaking to two invisible people in the corner. Caine made a complicated gesture with one hand, and the woman leaned forward, folded her arms on the bed, rested her head on her arms, and fell asleep.
“You don’t seem like a very good angel,” Becky told me. “Although you are very pretty, and I like your white dress very much.”
I glanced down at my jeans and faded T-shirt, then up at Caine.
“She sees a projection of you that fits with what her faith tells her to expect,” he whispered. “White dress, probably wings and a halo.”
I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted out of that room where a poor, sick, dying child was going to have to say goodbye to her mother forever.
“Do we have to go now?” Becky touched her mother’s hair. “I wanted to spend more time with her.”
“You’ll see her again, I promise,” Caine said, and his voice was filled with so much tenderness that I had to swallow, hard.
Becky hesitated, but Caine held out his hand, and she finally nodded. She leaned down to kiss her mother’s head and then climbed out of the bed, walked over to us, and put her tiny hand in his. Behind her, I could see her thin and wasted body, still lying in the bed exactly where she’d been. Caine lifted her into his arms, making sure not to let her look back and see herself lying dead next to her grief-stricken mother.
The vortex took us to a place I hadn’t seen yet, and we were suddenly standing on a rooftop, surrounded by sunlight-drenched clouds. A symphony of the most amazing music I’d ever heard filled the air, and a feeling of deep peace and contentment washed over me.
“It’s time, sweetheart,” Caine told Becky.
“But … This isn’t … .” I stopped, confused.
“Children get the express route,” Caine said softly.
He gently lowered Becky to her feet, still holding her hand, and raised his head to the sky. Within seconds, an intensely bright beam of light splashed down toward us.
“Take care of Mommy,” Becky whispered.
“I promise,” Caine said.
The light touched down, carrying with it a triumphantly joyous sensation of love and belonging, and then it vanished, taking the feeling with it, and I wanted to cry at its loss.
When I opened my eyes, Becky was gone.
##
“I’ll do it,” I told my grandmother, back in the geode, which was apparently her personal chamber.
“She’ll be useless at it,” Caine said. “But maybe she can sit around and look pretty.”
I whirled on him. “Maybe you can sit around and look pretty, Angel Boy. But thanks for bringing it up. It’s so cute, the way you have a crush on me.”
“What? I don’t … You … .” He threw his hands in the air and stormed out of the room.
Grandmother and I shared our first real
smile.
“Here’s the deal. I want to see my mother first, and tell her what’s going on.”
Persephone raised an eyebrow. “Is that all you want to tell her?”
I thought back to that lonely hospital room, and the mother who would never see her daughter smile at her again. Never hear her apologize for harsh words spoken in anger.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I didn’t try to stop them. “No. I need to tell her I love her, and that I’m sorry.”
Persephone — my grandmother — smiled at me through her own tears. “I need to tell her the exact same thing.”
The Greek, the Dog, Shangri-La and Me by Janet Woods
An award-winning romance novelist and short story writer, Janet Woods likes to explore other themes and writing styles now and again –– this story is one of her others. Meet her at www.janet-woods.com.
People move on, taking with them bittersweet memories of the past –– a father and son relationship, a boat that waits for a voyage that never happens, a favorite dog or two, or a photograph in a frame of that special someone from our childhood, who we never expect to see again … this is the stuff stories are created from.
When I’m seated my window is high enough to hide the view of Mrs. Tenby’s rusting tin roof and leaves exposed to my gaze the dunes and the stretch of sea beyond. When it’s open I’m close enough to the bent spines of the coastal grass to hear the hiss and whisper of wind through them, and to listen to the waves suck in golden grains of sand and spit them out again.
“Shusssssh,” it says, comforting me like a foster mother soothing the fractures in an abandoned child.
The path worn through the dunes is a twisted tangle of roots, affording a firm foothold, yet it yields under my feet. I can imagine the shadows the roots make and transfer them to my canvas as the deeper shadows that left them there.
Discount Dog used to leave trot marks in his youth, but he waddles now. Having to balance on three legs when he lifts the fourth to renew his territory markings is the only exercise he gets. He’s eleven … but seventy-seven in dog years and nearly deaf. His tail still whips little dents into the sand when he’s pleased, and the wind fills them up again after he passes by.
I like the wind, it sweeps the past into the future and sometimes you have to run after it to catch the essence of it — like the smell of moving on — like the smile on the photograph of Mrs. Tenby’s granddaughter. Annamarie gazes from the photo frame on the piano, gaps in her gums where the baby teeth once resided.
Discount Dog can’t smell or see very well now, and sometimes he plods trustingly along behind the shadows of strangers. I don’t think he can remember barking at seagulls or twisting in the air to catch his yellow Frisbee, or recall where bones are buried. His salt and pepper coat and grey muzzle doesn’t bother him; neither does the thought of death, as long as he has a patch of sunlight to warm him on his way.
Discount was a gift from my father when I was sixteen. He’d found the pup in a supermarket bag in the middle of the road when he’d been staggering home from the local drinking hole. There had been a moment of embarrassment when he’d handed him over, tears flooding his eyes.
“I know you wanted a dog. Here it is. Happy birthday, son!”
“My birthday was last month,” I pointed out, because I’d reached an age when my voice had broken and I feared nothing.
I’d been six when my first dog Wolf had appeared. He’d been imaginary, a fearsome creature, big and black with dripping fangs, blood red eyes and a ferocious snarl. We swaggered around the dunes together doing heroic deeds, and disposing of pirates, smugglers and avenging armies. Sometimes Annamarie came to stay with Mrs. Tenby. And she’d become the princess he and Wolf rescued. One day he noticed she was no longer in his life. “Gone abroad to live with her mother,” Mrs. Tenby said, her expression sad.
Wolf turned out to be a disappointment too. One morning I woke and he’d gone. But for all his might and power, I never loved Wolf as much as I loved my gentle Discount Dog.
“Was it that long ago?” My father gave a bit of an ashamed laugh. “At least you can’t say I never cared.”
##
I never knew whether it was me he cared about, or Discount, who, like me, learned to keep a healthy distance from my father in times of stress. Discount grew out rather than up. He was squat, his legs curved out from each corner like those on an antique table.
A year or so later, my pa met with an accident. He was run over in the driveway when his best buddy forgot about the handbrake. They’d been on a run to the liquor shop to stock up for the long weekend, and Pa was lifting the beer from the boot. I’d never liked Alex.
My father surprised me. He left me a large amount of money and the house we lived in. It wasn’t much of a place but it had potential, he’d said.
“He won the money on the lotto,” Alex told me. “I bought the boat with my share. Your pa and I were going to sail to Greece when you grew up.”
Over the years the symbol of Alex the Greek’s short-lived prosperity had been neglected, so the boat was now as unseaworthy as a bathtub in a storm. It was a small boat to go all the way to Greece in.
“I’m grown up now, so don’t let me delay you,” I told him, in case he hadn’t noticed.
Alex had a Greek captain’s hat hanging on a peg in the hall, but he’d never worn it and a spider had taken up residence.
##
Narelle –– that’s my mother –– came to Pa’s funeral. It was the first time I’d seen her since she’d left. When I thought to recall her — not often, because it took too much effort to remember that far back — her hair was blonde. Now it’s dark brown with copper streaks, as if her head’s leaking rust. Her eyes are ginger. She looks okay for a middle-aged woman.
Politely I hold out a hand. “Mother, how are you?”
She ignored the hand. “I’m a darned sight better than I would’ve been if I’d stayed. I married again, but it didn’t last. I did quite well out of it though. I don’t know what’s the matter with men these days.”
She showed me a photograph of two brown-eyed girls, laughing and holding up rabbit ear fingers behind each other’s heads. They must have been about twelve when the photograph was taken, and they reminded me of Annamarie. Where is she now? I wondered.
“They’re my twins. You can keep the photo if you like.”
It was disconcerting to experience a tug of jealousy about people I didn’t know. “I thought you didn’t want kids … that’s what you told me when you left.”
“Don’t whine. I asked you to come. You went all sullen on me, just like your father. When you told me you wanted to stay with him, who was I to argue?”
I would have told her who she was, but she remembered. “Has he treated you well?”
Her glance went around the sitting room of the small house, her nostrils pinching as she lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke. “I’d be too ashamed to live in this dump.”
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“Ooh … who’s a grouchy one, then? You didn’t answer my question about your father.”
Had I been treated right? What did she care? It was easier to remember the bad things than the good times. There had been beatings from my pa because alcohol made him mean. Sometimes he was okay, like when he’d handed over Discount Dog and became soft, and was ashamed because he knew it wasn’t manly to show emotion. Pa found it difficult to express love since he’d never had any himself, or so Alex said one night. A boy needed love.
After that, when Pa worked the night-shift I’d put a chair under my door handle and curl up small in my bed, hoping Alex would be too drunk to remember it.
If my imaginary guard dog had been a real one then, life might have been different.
“Pa was okay most of the time, I suppose,” I tell her.
“Of course he was, otherwise I wouldn’t have left you with him. Come and give me a hug, Johnny boy. I’ve missed you.”
Johnny boy! Th
e sharp pain of betrayal hit me, an instant when love, trust and indecision were crushed into pulp by a door closing.
“Goodbye, Johnny boy,” she’d said, and that had been that.
Her scent caught in my throat and made it tickle. Her heart beat against mine but didn’t connect. As much as I yearned for it, there was no synchronicity, just awkwardness. The boy was gone. There was a softness though, a muskiness I wasn’t comfortable with. She sensed it because she smiled, “You’re my handsome, Johnny boy. I bet the girls fall at your feet. Give me a ring sometime.”
I did. She said she was busy and would return the call later. She didn’t.
Women didn’t fall at my feet … not then. I had pimples.
My mother called me a month later. “Alex told me your father has left you a legacy. You kept that quiet.”
Alex was a dark horse. So was my mother. The half-sisters I’d never met giggled in the background. I did them a favor. “If you’re seeing Alex, watch out for the twins,” I tell her, and there’s silence while she digests it. This time it’s me who hangs up.
Alex and I had a row. I told him it was my business and he should keep his nose out of it.
“She’s your mother. You’re the man of the family and should take care of them. It’s the right thing to do.” He gave me one of his fierce looks, one that would have terrified me when I was a child.
Discount Dog dredged up some menace and growled when Alex took a step towards me. He likes to surprise me sometimes.
My mother rang several times, so I took charge and changed my number. I didn’t need them. I had Discount for company.
##
Alex left me a year after Pa’s funeral. He’d grown increasingly morose over the months. The police found his boat trailer on the beach. We’d had a silly argument about whose turn it was to wash up that day, and I told him to find somewhere else to live. After all, it wasn’t as if he paid any rent.
Flinging his cap to the floor he’d jumped up and down on it.
He called me a treacherous low down dog. “Christe mou!” he said, sounding exasperated, and he shook the crippled spider from the battered cap before jamming the garment back on his balding head. Headstrong with Greek pride and spitting curses in a mixture of Greek and English he went outside and hitched the trailer to his car. “I’m going back to Greece.”