Into the Mystic, Volume One

by Tay LaRoi

  I hastily stood up to unfurl the dress and held it out to her. Without a word, she stepped into it and then turned around for me to do up the buttons, exactly as she had just a few weeks back for that final fitting.

  She turned around and I was shocked to fully register how different she looked now. Her skin was pale as a fish belly with a greenish tinge to it, drawn back, making her bones and blue veins stand out. Her eyes were sunk into her head, with dark circles underneath, the pupils small points and the whites overly large. Her lips were dry and cracked, pulled back to show the dried-out gums. She stood at a slightly crooked angle, seemingly unable to completely control all of her muscles. She looked like a nightmare come to life.

  “Cissy,” she croaked. “I miss you.” Her voice was a rusty, unnatural whisper.

  But she was still my Pearl.

  I swallowed down my fear. Something was wrong, and I was going to try to fix it.

  “Why are you nightwalking, Pearl-girl?” I asked, friendly as my cousin inquiring after which pie you’d be bringing to the bake sale that year. I smiled at her, determined to treat her as Pearl and not a monster. “And don’t try to butter me up that it’s ’cause you miss my pretty face.”

  “Pretty,” she whispered, her eyes intent on mine. Her hand twitched, as if she wanted to reach out. “So pretty.”

  “Liar,” I told her, forcing myself to laugh. “I know what the mirror shows. I’m plain as a hen’s egg. Why are you walking?” I asked again, determined to press the issue.

  “Can’t sleep,” she whispered. “We can’t sleep.”

  “Huh,” I said, dragging a toe in the dirt. “We” was an interesting word choice. This wasn’t about something Pearl herself did or didn’t do. Pearl and the others, they all fell into the same group. Something the same was causing all of them to rise.

  “Can’t sleep,” she repeated, looking at me with a longing that almost broke my heart all over again.

  Focus, I told myself sternly. I rapidly made a list in my head of times I couldn’t sleep.

  “Is something too loud?” I asked.

  She shook her head, but even that seemed to be causing her almost too much effort.

  “Too bright?” I asked, glancing at the quarter moon, shiny as a silver sickle.

  Again, she shook her head.

  “Does something hurt?” I asked cautiously, afraid to hear what death felt like.

  She paused, thinking, but again shook her head.

  I waited, silent; she seemed like she had something on the tip of her tongue and just needed to work up the strength to get it out. On her gray face, I could see her struggling to think, to form words, to drag some thought swirling in her mind to coherent words on her cracked lips. It was heartbreaking to watch, remembering her usual cheerful expression and the tumble of witty words that would tumble from her lips on any given day.

  “Coffee,” she finally said.

  “Coffee?” I repeated, bewildered, wondering what to ask next to try to narrow down what she meant.

  “Like…I drank coffee,” she said with much effort. “And…dropped…in ice water.”

  “Ahh,” I said, comprehending. So, she felt like she’d been forced awake then. Round here, a child oversleeping when he was supposed to be on his way to school might find himself unceremoniously dunked in a horse trough to get the cobwebs out of his eyes. Someone had done something similar to Pearl. But how? And why?

  She collapsed and lay down on the disturbed earth of her own grave. “I can’t sleep,” she moaned. She looked like she would have cried if there were any tears left in her.

  I sat with her in solidarity as the night wore on. At some point, I nodded off and then woke, stiff and damp with dew, as full sunlight began to hit the cemetery, to find her gone back in her grave, but not, I suspected, forever. The dead here were going nightwalking, and this was not an isolated incident. How? Why? Who?

  All that day I wrestled with these questions and came up with nothing. I nodded absently when Cousin Martha announced she was leaving for a few days to join Cousin Lucas at a revival meeting going on a few towns over.

  While puzzling out the next step to help Pearl, I pretended to listen to the list of chores she reminded me needed doing. By the end of the day, I was resigned to the fact that I was going to have to consult an expert. So I took courage in my own two hands and set out another Dumb Supper with places for two.

  In my head, I thought of a line in a poem we had learned in school: “because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me.” I scowled. Kindly or not, he better stop by tonight.

  After sitting at my empty place in frustrated silence, waiting with an impatience that almost strangled me, the clock finally struck midnight. The door opened with a rattle of wind, and the tall figure glided in. I forced myself to look closer this time, to try to get a good look at Death, and perhaps because Pearl wasn’t here this time, he let me see more of him.

  His face was only mostly skeletal, which was far worse than just a skull; he still had some flesh along one side of his jawbone, and parts of his nose were there. He had a beard that seemed to be full of dead leaves, and his eyes were utterly devoid of anything, just black pits that probably went on forever.

  I forcibly choked my dinner back down, and he calmly put down his scythe to lean it against the wall, like any man home from the fields for the noonday meal. His scythe wasn’t the long-handled scythe shown in drawings and in silly cartoons, but an ordinary handheld scythe that could have come from any farm in the area. Unlike the rest of him, decaying and tattered, the scythe was bright as new silver, not a speck of rust anywhere, with an edge that looked sharp enough to slice through a solid block of granite as easily as through fresh bread.

  I thought of all the stories of people like me tricking Death into handing over his power, but the thought of even touching that scythe, let alone stealing it, left me with goosebumps crawling across my flesh. I didn’t want the power of life and death—I just wanted things to go back to normal.

  “I am not often invited for supper,” he commented, his voice dry as dead grass, snapping my attention back to him and away from his instrument. He calmly turned his chair around to face the right way, shaking his head a little with good humor, like any grown-up dismissing the superstitions of girls, and sat down at the other place setting. He ran a withered finger around the rim of the empty glass.

  “I wasn’t sure what you eat,” I said.

  “I eat everything, Cecilia,” said Death calmly, no threat, just stating facts. “But tonight is not about food.”

  “What did you do to Pearl?” I demanded, jumping feetfirst into the hornet’s nest.

  “Nothing.”

  I snorted. Then clasped my hands over my nose and mouth in horror as I realized I had just actually laughed at Death.

  “It was her time,” he continued, ignoring my reaction. “I did as I do for all and escorted her. Say what you will of me, I am a gentleman and do not leave girls alone on the dark road between the two worlds. And I even warned her it was her time since you two meddled with that old scrying ritual. All was as it was to be. But…” he sighed, now troubled in his tone.

  “But?” I asked, my voice scaled up as my fear ratcheted up several notches, wondering what could make Death uneasy.

  “But then she was dragged back off the road, back almost to this world, and now she and the others are stuck between.”

  “But how’d she get dragged back like that? Why can’t they sleep?”

  “There is someone trying to change the rules of Life and Death. You will fix it.”

  “Me?” My voice came out squeaky as a mouse’s.

  “Why else would I have answered your imperious summons? Here.” He pulled something from under his cloak and placed, of all things, a cloud-white glove on the table, incongruous in its setting. “This will assist you.”

  “Assist me to do what? Go to a debutante ball? Catch a prince?” I spat out angrily, getting mad at the thought o
f being the butt of some joke. “And why only one?”

  “It will help you with the task set for you. You have work to do, Cecelia. Look for its mate.” He got up, clearly a man ready to take his leave. “Things are unbalanced,” he intoned as he picked up his scythe. “You must balance them.” He hefted the scythe on his shoulder, looking just a few degrees off from any normal man done with his meal and ready to go about his harvesting.

  “But how? And who started this?”

  “Help is coming. Watch for the glove’s mate. And you will know the meddler when you see him.” He glided towards the door.

  “But why me?” I asked, somewhere in the back of my mind dismayed at how much I was whining.

  “Because you had the courage to look Death in the face,” he replied, sanguine as ever. He turned and smiled directly at me.

  This time I did throw up, only just managing to make it to the sink in time.

  When I looked up, he was gone, and I was certain I would not see him again until it was my turn to be “escorted” as he had called it. Whether that was in days or decades, he was not going to be any more help now.

  I spat once more into the sink, trying to clear the taste of bile, and then kicked a chair leg. “Men,” I snarled, “all the same. Utterly useless in a crisis.”

  “Um, hello?” called out a voice. It was the next morning, and I was gloomily sitting in the house by myself working on “Dove in the Window,” pondering what I could do next, and wishing mystical figures weren’t so mysterious in their directions.

  I was jolted out of my thoughts and almost out of my chair at an unfamiliar voice calling from the door. “Yes?” I called back, wondering who on earth it could be since all of Cousin Lucas’s parishioners knew he was out of town. “Ah, come in?”

  A woman stepped into the house and immediately launched into why she was there. “The seamstress I spoke to in town… She said I was crazy to ask for a rush job. She apparently needs a month notice to do a project, but she recommended you. Said the preacher’s daughter with her ‘fresh eyes’ could do a job quick. Even if it was some frivolous doodads, as she called them. She also may or may not have said some other things insinuating I was no better than I ought to be, but that’s neither here nor there.”

  I stared at her, awed by her rapid-fire speech. She had a Northern twang, but over that, she had a sort of polish to her words that reminded me of how people in the films spoke. The silence stretched on as she waited for me to say something, and I struggled to think of a response to her odd introduction.

  I was also distracted by the fact that she was gorgeous. She had large blue eyes, golden hair, shaped into a short froth of curls like Joan Crawford in Our Blushing Brides, and a fashionably short peach dress with a dashing buckle that emphasized both her trim waist and generous bustline. She held a carpetbag in one hand, looking like she had just stepped off a train from some glamorous city like New York or Los Angeles. She looked as absurd as a member of the sheik’s harem standing in a coal mine. I opened my mouth, closed it again, dumbstruck.

  “I’m sorry. I just jumped in the middle there. I’m Marie. Marie Defoe of the Traveling Candle Theatre Company.” She held out her hand. Her nails were beautifully shaped and lacquered with a pink polish the same shade as cotton candy.

  “I’m Cissy. Cecilia McGurk, but everyone calls me Cissy,” I stammered, awkwardly disentangling myself from the sewing to stand up and shake her offered hand.

  “And you’re the preacher’s daughter?” she asked, now sounding less sure of herself. She looked like she was wondering if she’d been given bad directions.

  “I’m not his daughter,” I griped, annoyed for the thousandth time by how hard that casual misnomer had stuck. “He’s my cousin. He and his wife raised me after my parents died from the Spanish Flu.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if that explained everything. I was relieved she didn’t offer any sympathies. It always made me feel guilty to have people say things like “poor dear,” as if I had taken money I hadn’t earned, odd as that sounds.

  “But yes, I can sew, and a darn sight faster than Mrs. Leech, who I’m guessing is who you talked to,” I told her. “What do you need sewing?”

  She blew out a breath of relief. “One of the witches tripped over a pile of swords and only managed to save herself a broken ankle by grabbing onto the queen’s gown, and now the sleeves and the stars are all torn up.”

  “Witches,” I repeated, uncertain.

  “Oh, sorry, again. We’re performing the Scottish play. Daisy Lyndon is playing one of the witches in the play, and when she was coming backstage she tripped over some of the props from the battle scene. When she fell she managed to tear up her costume and the costume Joanna is supposed to wear in Act III when Lady Macbeth becomes queen.”

  “Oh,” I said, understanding dawning. She’d introduced herself as part of a theatre company, of course, she’d be asking about mending costumes. “Are the costumes in there?” I asked, nodding towards the bag in her hand.

  “Yes, indeed,” she said, placing the bag on the table and undoing the clasp. She pulled out what seemed at first to be simply acres of dark cloth, gradually, as she shook them out, revealing themselves to be a dark-purple dress with gold trim and a black dress patterned with golden stars and silver moons.

  I could see straight off they weren’t real Sunday best dresses, but the kind of stage style that would look impressive to people sitting in the back row. I also saw the large rent in the purple sleeve and the tear in the black skirt. I hissed in sympathy.

  “Can you fix it?” she asked anxiously.

  “Oh, sure, it can be fixed,” I assured her. “I was just thinking how bad that woman might have got hurt when she tore this.”

  “Just a skinned knee,” said Marie, waving the matter off. “Though she made quite a caterwaul over it, first at how bad her knee felt, then at how bad she felt at ruining the whole show, then at how mad she was at whichever fool left the swords out.” She shook her head ruefully. “But she wouldn’t be a real actress if she didn’t make a big production over a little scratch.”

  I was measuring out the rip with my hands, making some quick estimates in my head. “I’ve seen worse with the Three Wise Men getting into a tussle over who would get to give baby Jesus the gold. Cousin Lucas threatened to rewrite the Bible and have the shepherds give the gold if the boys didn’t stop fighting, and I was up all night sewing to get everything back in order for the pageant on Christmas Eve.”

  Marie laughed. It was a delightful laugh, deep and rich, without any sort of hoity-toity affectation to it. “Boys will be boys,” she said. “I have the boys in the troupe do a lot of fake fighting practice. I tell them it’s to make the battle scenes look real, but honestly, it just helps wear them out to help keep them out of trouble.”

  I eyed the golden star that had been ripped through. “I think I can have these done by tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said. She pulled out a coin purse from her pocket. “How much do you need on deposit? And how much is a rush job going to set me back?”

  I was tongue tied again. Yes, I’d done some sewing work for others before, but it had all been through barter, mostly to help stock the larder. I had no idea what to charge and was ashamed I had no idea what to ask for. I felt like the most backward of hill folk in front of this charming city girl.

  “How much did the last rush job set you back?” I managed to ask.

  Her eyes crinkled, and I guessed she knew my predicament, but she named a price seriously and explained, “That was what I paid for the last rush job to have fake flowers resewn on the fairy costumes for when we put on Midsummer in Philadelphia. It was more work, but also more time, which I think works to be about even.”

  I nodded. “Sounds fair.”

  She started to place some money down on the table. “Keep it,” I told her. “I know you need this fast, and I don’t want to take your money and disappoint you. Besides, you haven’t eve
n seen my work yet.”

  She looked around at the quilts on display. “Did you do all that?” she asked.

  I smiled. “Not in a day. But yes, I did most of it. Pearl helped a little…”

  “She your sister?”

  “A friend. She died a few weeks ago,” I said shortly.

  “I’m sorry,” said Marie, suddenly sounding younger.

  “I best get started,” I said brusquely. “I’ll bring it to you as soon as I’ve finished. Where can I find you?”

  “Oh, you can’t miss us. Most of the time we’re at the theater we’ve rented out while we’re in town. And the few hours we aren’t there, we’re at the oh-so-imaginatively named Kentucky Hotel when we’re supposed to be resting up for performances but more likely risking getting ourselves thrown out with having parties in the rooms.”

  I felt my cheeks get a bit warm as I remembered how everyone said actors were a scandal waiting to happen. Hotels were considered a bit risqué by themselves, but add in actors and goodness knew what sort of shenanigans would happen. I busied myself with digging through my sewing kit, making a more than was needed fuss over selecting the right shade of black to begin fixing the skirt. “Well, I better begin then. I’ll see you soon, Miss Defoe.”

  “Thank you, Miss McGurk,” she said, her smile seeming to light up the room, and left.

  I began work on the repairs, determined to ignore the excited little flutters in my chest, trying hard not to think that I would get to see her again, and soon, along with probably an entire troupe of actors. A thought struck me, and I almost stabbed myself with my little sewing scissors.

  Was this the help I had been promised? Actors?

  Well, one thing at a time, I thought grimly and set to work on repairing the costumes. I was finished by the next afternoon, but glumly watched as rain began to pour down. I waited in vain hope for it to let up, but mocking my impatience, it came down harder. It was a proper summer squall. The crops needed it, but it was going to make things difficult for me.