The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  If she climbed into the tree house and he came, he wouldn’t know she was there.

  But they had the lanterns.

  She climbed into the tree house, stopping twice to catch her breath, and made her way from the balcony into the interior. She went to the cabinet where they stored the lanterns, pulled one out and lit it, then hung it in the window that faced the house. He might see it if he looked out of the kitchen window; he might as he came over the bridge. If the magic let him.

  She sat on the futon, a blanket wrapped around her and she rested her hands on her belly, on the baby. She prayed that he would see the lantern. And she waited.

  “Who’s up there?”

  The voice sounded far away, but it was shouting and angry. Sarah woke and realized she’d fallen asleep. For a moment she was confused. She wasn’t in her bed. She was in the tree house, the lantern was still burning and tendrils of fog were curling around the windows.

  But her hands were still curved over her belly, and she remembered. Her breath caught in her throat. “Sam?” she shouted.

  “Sarah?”

  She heard feet on the ladder and, an instant later, he came through the door. Sam. Sam alive, with the fog swirling in behind him. They held each other, and wept, and kissed. But this time neither of them hurried to turn the futon into a bed. This time, they had to talk, and both of them knew it.

  “I saw the light from the house, coming through fog on the island,” he said. “But ... it was real? You’re real?”

  “I don’t think I can prove I’m real to you. I know you proved you’re real to me. I’m pregnant.”

  He stared at her. “After Samantha, you had your tubes tied.”

  “Samantha?” she whispered. “We lost Samantha. She ... I had a miscarriage almost five months in, and nearly died. She didn’t make it. You had a vasectomy a month later.”

  He thought about that for a long time without saying anything. That was Sam. She watched his face, watched him working through the different connections, how all the pieces fitted, the same way he’d designed houses and office buildings. Carefully, methodically, he was putting things together, visualizing how they worked, seeing actions and consequences. She waited. As she’d always waited.

  “So you’re pregnant and I had a vasectomy. And there are going to be people who know you who know that.”

  She nodded. “Dr Gruber tested me today because I thought I was dying: ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, something like that. He found out I was pregnant, and when I told him it could only have been you, he didn’t believe me.”

  “He doesn’t matter. How are you?”

  “Lots of morning sickness and I’ve lost weight.”

  “I noticed. Let the kids ... let the boys help you out.” He rested his hand on her belly, and pressed his face against her hair. “We’re still us, Sarah. You and me. But different. Slightly different pasts, very different futures. You’re gone in my world, and the kids are lost without you. I’m lost without you.”

  “I know. I can’t sleep at night.”

  “But . . . where you are ... I left you taken care of?”

  She nodded. “Everything’s paid for. The investment accounts are still growing, the college trusts are fine, the passive income’s fine. We’ll be all right. But, Sam, it’s like I can’t breathe without you.”

  “How can I be here for you? I’ve tried to get back to you every night since that night. This is the first night I’ve made it. And I don’t know why I made it, what I did, what you did, how to make it happen again.” He took her hands in his and said, “If I could, I’d bring the kids here and hire someone to deliver food and I’d never leave this place again.”

  “I know. But could we bring the kids? Could they meet themselves?”

  “I doubt it. I can’t figure out how we can both be here. I can’t figure out how this works.”

  “We’re supposed to be together,” she said. “We were always supposed to be together, and we both knew it.”

  “We still know it. Maybe that’s the . . . the magic that makes this work.” He closed his eyes. “Or maybe you were supposed to have Samantha, and you got this second chance, and once she’s born you’ll never be able to get back here again.”

  Sarah said, “I don’t want to think of that.”

  He hugged her. “Sarah, know that whether I can touch you or not, whether you can see me or not, I am with you every minute of every day. And I can’t leave the kids alone every night, but I’ll come out here for a little while and light the lantern. Look for it at twilight. If you can see it, and if you can get out here, come.”

  She buried her head in his chest and he wrapped his arms around her. And finally they did fold down the futon and they made love.

  The pale pink of dawn woke them both. He lay looking at her, tracing his finger along the tiny scar on her chin. “Where you fell off your bike,” he said. “When you were twelve.”

  “Before we met.” She ran her hand over the surgical scar on his left knee. “The end of your budding hockey career when you were seventeen.”

  “So much is the same,” he said. “I know you. My heart and soul know you, and you’re not some different Sarah. You’re you. Only . . .”

  “Only in your world I’m dead, so I can’t really be your Sarah. And in my world you’re dead, so you can’t really be my Sam. I’ve been asking myself the same question you’re asking yourself. Am I cheating on you with you? Is being here with you wrong?”

  He touched the wedding band on her finger. “I gave you that ring,” he said. “I promised to love and honour and cherish you until death parted us. And you’re right here, not dead. So am I. I meant it then, Sarah, and I mean it now. How might matter to your family, or mine, or to our friends, but I don’t give a damn about how. We found each other, we’re together the way we should be and I’ll do whatever I can to be with you as much as I can.”

  When, hand in hand, they stepped onto the bridge together, he vanished again, and again her heart cried out.

  But this time was different. This time she knew he’d been real. And if she was alone in her world, she still had him in their world, tiny as it was.

  Her mother said, “You’re pregnant! How could you?” Her father turned away from her, shame and disgust on his face. Her friends, knowing about Sam’s vasectomy, asked her, “Who’s the father?” and eyed their own husbands with sudden distrust. She told them the truth and they didn’t believe her. When she refused to have an abortion, her parents stopped speaking to her and her friends suddenly had their cell phones turned off.

  The boys were supportive, if a little stunned, when she told them.

  Every night for five months, Sarah looked for the light in the tree house window, and every night it wasn’t there.

  She took pictures of the boys, had them take pictures of her and her swelling belly, and she put the pictures into scrapbooks. She made no secret of the fact that she was storing the pictures in the tree house. “To keep them close to your dad,” she told the boys. When Sam came again, she wanted to be able to show him.

  She didn’t tell them that.

  She had a hard time with the pregnancy, but not as hard as she’d had with the baby she lost. She managed to gain a little weight.

  She had never been so alone.

  But she was sleeping nights. Sam was with her in spirit, and she went out to the tree and sat by the urn and talked to him. She told him about the boys. She knew that he was telling her about them and about Samantha, who in his world had lived.

  Sometimes Mike and Jim went out and sat beside her while she talked. Sometimes one or the other would go out to the tree alone.

  “He’s always with us,” she told them. “He will always love us.”

  Sarah made it through the long days and the lonely nights. He was out there. He was with her. She did not doubt him, and she did not lose faith.

  She was standing sideways at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes around the huge obstacle of her belly, when
she looked out the back window and saw the light in the tree house.

  It was too early to send the boys to bed. It was, however, Friday night. She told them, “I’m going out to the tree house to talk to your dad for a while. You two can watch TV until midnight, and then go on to bed.” She looked them in the eye. “I’m counting on both of you.”

  Mike hugged her. “We won’t let you down. Or Dad. You’re not alone, Mom.”

  Jim nodded agreement.

  She hugged them. “Thank you. Thanks for being people your dad and I can both be proud of.”

  The boys locked up. She hurried out the door and across the bridge and into the fog. “Sam?” she called.

  He burst out onto the balcony. “You’re here!”

  “I am. But I can’t get up the ladder any more.”

  “I’ll come down.”

  He touched her belly, and held her as close as he could. The baby kicked him, and he said, “I knew you’d see the light tonight.”

  “How?”

  “I found all your scrapbooks. I was up there looking at pictures of you and the boys. They look just the same. But the hole where Samantha should be—” He pulled out his wallet and opened it and showed her pictures he had taken of the boys and Samantha. The boys were exactly the same. Samantha was beautiful.

  “How are you holding up? Everyone helping you out?” he asked.

  “Your parents and my parents aren’t speaking to me because they think I cheated on you, my friends have dumped me because they think I cheated on you and they suspect their own husbands.” She shrugged. “The boys have been wonderful though. And we’re fine, all three of us. I come out to talk to you every day. I can feel you here.”

  “That’s because I am here. I do the same thing.”

  She touched his arm. “Just knowing you’re here, that you’re alive, even if you can’t be with me all the time, has been enough to keep me going.” She laughed. “I sometimes wonder if we ever talk about the same things, or answer each other.”

  “Of course we do. Sometimes I can almost hear you. When you could still climb into the tree house, you sat on the futon and talked to me. You always sat on the left?”

  “That’s because you always sat on the right,” Sarah told him, and they looked at each other and smiled.

  He held her hand. “Sometimes, when we’re sitting there, I reach out and take your hand,” he said.

  “I can feel you.” She took a deep breath. “You know this is going to be the last night for a while,” she said, suddenly realizing the truth of that. “I can’t get into the tree house any more and, when the baby is born, I won’t be able to come out at night at all.”

  “I’ll still come,” he said. “I’ll still light a light every night. If you can slip away even for a few minutes, I’ll be here.”

  Sarah made it through labour and delivered a healthy baby girl. She did not name the baby Samantha. Samantha was her daughter, and alive, if not with her. Instead, she named their daughter Magie, which was German for “magic”.

  Before she and the baby and the boys rode home in the taxi, she had the hospital do DNA tests on all three children. The results when she received them proved what she already knew: the baby was a full sibling to both boys - was hers and Sam’s. She photocopied the results and mailed them to her friends, to her parents, to Sam’s parents and to Dr Gruber, writing a note at the bottom of each: “DNA proof. The baby is mine and Sam’s. Don’t phone; don’t drop by. I just wanted you to know I was telling the truth.”

  She raised her children, and loved them, and she watched every night for the light through fog.

  When Magie was old enough, she took her and sat in the tree house while she fed her. And Sarah talked to Sam, and showed Magie pictures of the father who could not be with her, even though he loved her.

  Magie grew, and the boys grew, and Sarah took pictures, and kept scrapbooks religiously. She shared them with Sam and, through his pictures, watched the Samantha she had yearned for and never known become a lovely woman.

  When the boys went off to college and Magie was in school, Sarah took a painting course in watercolours and oils. She made a new friend, a woman a few years younger than her who hadn’t grown up in the same town, hadn’t gone to the same schools and didn’t know all the same people. The two of them shared outsiders’ lives, and enjoyed their camaraderie with each other. For Sarah, that one friendship, plus her children (and eventually her grandchildren) and Sam, made for a full life.

  The children stayed in touch with both sets of grandparents, but there was no real closeness there. None of the four, her parents or Sam’s, ever apologized for doubting her, and she could never forget how they had abandoned her when she and the children needed them.

  Sometimes, for no reason either Sam or Sarah was able to discern, they both made it through whatever barrier it was that separated them, and they rejoiced in the few hours they stole from the universe.

  So the years passed.

  So a lifetime passed.

  One day Mike, grown and with children and grandchildren of his own, stopped by the house because no one had answered the phone all day. In one universe he found his mother sitting on the left side of the futon she had refused to let him and his siblings replace, her right hand stretched out as if she had been holding someone’s hand. She had taken her last breath some hours earlier. She was eighty-three. On the same day, behind a different door, in another “if, Mike found his father sitting on the right side of the futon, his left hand stretched out as if he had been holding someone’s hand. He was eighty-four.

  Mike called his brother and sister, and he called an ambulance.

  On the day of the funeral, the children and grandchildren and the great-grandchildren gathered on the little island, and mixed Sam’s and Sarah’s ashes into the same urn. It seemed the only right thing to do. Neither of them had ever loved anyone but the other.

  They were not alone. They had never been alone.

  Sam and Sarah, young again, reunited, held hands and watched the families they had created and raised together and apart. And when the island emptied, they smiled at each other. “On that side, this moment seemed like such a long wait,” Sarah said.

  “I forgot how short that time truly is,” Sam said, and pulled her into his arms. “I forgot you would be here when I got here.”

  “I forgot too,” she said. “Everything there is like light through fog. You only see a little, you only understand a little, and it isn’t until you cross the bridge that it all becomes clear.”

  They walked over the bridge of light, their hands clasped.

  This time, nothing separated them.

  The Tuesday Enchantress

  A Guardian Story

  Mary Jo Putney

  It was just after 2 a.m. on a warm Tuesday morning when I stumbled into the corner deli and croaked, “Gimme a triple espresso mocha latte and make it fast!”

  My pal and classmate Rajiv, who was minding the store for his grandparents, glanced up from his textbook. At this hour, he could get almost as much studying done in the deli as he would at home. “It might be malpractice to give you a triple when you already look like nine miles of bad road. Maybe you should try gettin’ some sleep?”

  Even after years of being friends, I smiled at the contrast between Rajiv’s Indian face and his Texas accent. He’d saved my bacon when I returned to school after a couple of years of bumming around. I’d lost the habit of study, and it was Rajiv who helped whip my brain into academic shape again. “I’ll sleep when finals are over.”

  He set aside his book and crossed to an espresso machine so big and fancy that it seemed like it should do more than just make coffee. “Don’t worry, Charlie, you’ll ace the exams. You always do.”

  “Only because I study so much I have no life.” I waited impatiently until he gave me the tall, foaming cup. After slurping some whipped cream off the top, I started chugging the latte. Two swallows and I started to feel alive again. “Fat, chocolate a
nd triple caffeine,” I said contentedly. “What more can a desperate student want?”

  Rajiv pulled a couple of hot samosas out of the warming case and handed them to me. “Some protein would be good. And then maybe a scone or three.”

  I thanked him through a mouthful of samosa. He made a cappuccino for himself - only a single shot, the wimp - and I decided I would survive this last exam after all. While I chewed, I surveyed the empty deli.

  Spotlessly clean, the small place was jam-packed with corner-store staples, the espresso bar and a small but excellent selection of fresh edibles. This being New York City, there was everything from pastrami to burritos to stuffed grape leaves. The Guptas’ deli had kept me from starving for years. “Sure is quiet tonight.”

  “It’s Tuesday night. Nothing ever happens on Tuesday nights,” Rajiv said authoritatively. “They’re great for studying.”

  A chime rang as the door opened. I glanced over, then stopped in mid-bite. “That is the hottest chick I’ve ever seen,” I said softly, speaking under my breath so she wouldn’t come over and deck me for the sexist comment.

  Rajiv studied her. “Nice looking, but not spectacular. Unless she has the keys to your DNA, and judging by your expression, she does.” I could hear the grin in his voice.

  She was tallish, with a nice figure, dark hair pulled back simply at her nape, a reserved expression, and a profile that belonged on an ancient coin. I couldn’t see her eyes since she was frowning at the rack of packaged cookies. Technically, Rajiv was right. She looked damned good in jeans and a tweed blazer, but she wasn’t a raging beauty. Nonetheless, she made me want to roll on my back and wave my paws in the air.

  “OK, she’s not exactly a hot chick,” I conceded. “She’s the kind of girl you want to take home to mother and, if you manage that, your mom says ‘You finally did something right, Charie.’”

  “Either you’ve gone nuts from studying and caffeine, or you’d better go over and introduce yourself right now,” Rajiv remarked as he ambled back to the counter.