Candles Burning

by Tabitha King

  The crow perched there blinking at me. We studied each other a moment, and then it began to preen itself, darting its sharp beak into its own feathers, looking for whatever itched it. It was a letdown to have bored it so quickly.

  Just as abruptly as it had settled, the crow rose suddenly with a loud uhhhk. It brushed one of the bulbs in passing, and for half a moment, the light was querulous and confused, showing one thing and then another. I glimpsed a collection of umbrella stands: The handles and shanks rose up from the open tops as if someone had stuffed dozens of flamingos and herons and ibises upside down into the stands.

  In another direction, the moving light caught the dusty drops and pendants of a chandelier hanging, lopsided, from a rafter over the coarse-woven shape of a grand piano. The shroud turned the piano into its own ghost. On its back it bore a collection of candlesticks and candelabra and wee-willie-winkies, some of them with the stubs of tapers sagging in them, melted not just by fire but by the heat in the attic.

  In yet another pass of the light was a blur of clock faces. All stopped, I knew by their silence, even as I cringed and crouched, to duck the swaying bulb that might hit me. Or light me up for something to see.

  The light steadied, still weak and dirty. I put my hand out to help me rise to my feet again and touched rivets and metal. Starting, I lost my balance and landed on my backside on the dry splintery planks of the attic floor.

  The thing that I had touched was a metal footlocker. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness again, I was quite sure that it was green and black. My throat closed with panic. I scrabbled backward, hands and heels to the floor, backside lifted enough to avoid friction with the planks. Out of the darkness came a mocking uuuhhk!

  If my throat had not been so dry, I might have cried out, but I was spitless.

  I came up into a hunker again. I hugged myself and stared at the locker. The dull clasp poked through the tongue of the locker’s catch but there was no padlock. I was mesmerized by that loose hanging metal tongue pierced by the clasp; it seemed an emblem of torture, inhuman torture. I felt a little dizzy: torture. Inhuman torture. Not inhumane; how silly would it sound to speak of humane torture. The screams would be of laughter. Inhuman. A cat playing with a bird, a rotten kid sticking a firecracker into a croaker’s hind end.

  It was another uhhk and a rush of wings that broke the trance. I could not make out the crow in the darkness but I knew that it was there, its eyes fixed on me, mockingly. I was not to be allowed to flee the attic until I opened the footlocker.

  My approach on my hands and knees bare on the planks was slow and painful, but I wanted to feel that discomfort, to help divert some of the fear, the terror, of what I was about to do. Too quickly, I was kneeling next to the footlocker. I touched the loose hanging tongue in slow motion. It was cool—no, cold—to the touch, under the eaves of that oven of an attic in Florida in May. Hinges creaked as I lifted it, reluctance balled up in an ache in my stomach. The lid rose screakity screak.

  The locker held only emptiness but it was bottomless. Perhaps it was not a locker at all, but a hatchway to somewhere else. It seemed to me that there were stains on the walls inside and that it gave off an ancient dead-meat smell. Daddy’s first coffin, that we had left behind in the Hotel Osceola in Elba, Alabama—now it was here, and had been all the years that we lived under this roof, under this attic. It had sat there above us, waiting for me to find it.

  Carefully I waggled fingers over the top edge and then over the opened locker. Slowly I lowered them, steadily waggling, into the emptiness of the locker. That emptiness was very cold. My fingers seemed to darken and then disappear into the icy darkness inside the locker. I tried to pull my hand out but it did not respond. Again panic rose in my throat and my heartbeat lunged into a violent gallop, but even as I yanked uselessly, I felt my hand again, responding.

  Unbalanced again, I fell backward onto my backside once more, my right hand coming after me. For an instant it seemed as if my arm was elongating, and then it was normal and my fingers were closed around something disgusting that I flung back toward the locker. It hit the front of the locker. The impact shivered the locker. The lid dropped down like a mouth full of teeth taking an enormous bite.

  Splayed on the planks, I stared through my knees at the thing that I had pulled from the locker. It was doll-sized, not the small kind that my Betsy Cane McCall had been, but baby-doll sized, large enough to fill a little girl’s arms for rocking. Ida Mae, the baby doll I never had. It was loosely bundled in yellow rags, and its face was wax, droopy pallid yellow dirty wax that looked like a face falling off. Around the misshapen skull was a tangle of colorless hair tied into two ponytails, over knobs of wax like wings that might have been, before the wax softened, overlarge ears. Behind the pink plastic-rimmed glasses, mended across the nose with a cruddy knot of tape, the eyes were sharp metal buttons.

  Shaking, I drew myself up and poked the thing with the toe of one sandal. It was soft. Stuffed. A weird rag doll, its body and limbs sewn of cotton scraps. I recognized the scraps; I used to have a pair of overalls and a shirt very like them. I nudged the weird rag doll again and it fell over. The head wobbled as if in a panic and fell off. At its lumpy wax feet, the face, such as it was, looked up at the eaves. The glasses did not fall off; they appeared to be stuck in the bridge of the nose.

  As if a string had been pulled to unravel it, the doll’s arms dropped away from the torso. The legs twitched once, splaying as the torso sank between them. Even as the rag doll collapsed into its component parts, the yellow rags fell too, forming a nest for the parts. But the strangest thing was between the rag doll’s splayed legs: Betsy Cane McCall. Almost naked, shaved bald, and looking—well, parboiled. Her nudity was emphasized by the rigging of straps around her torso. It looked like an old braided silk belt and suspenders—very like the bird harness that I found in the drawer of the semanier that day with Roger and Grady, but without the egg. And stranger yet, she was all tucked up, her head down, her arms and hands crossed over her chest, her knees bent and tucked up to her belly. Like the drawing in the Encyclopaedia in the public library, I saw, like a fetus.

  Fifty-seven

  THE water surged gently, very close to me. My cheekbone rested on damp sand. A ghost crab danced en pointe within inches of my face. Grass shook and shivered in the light air off the water. Slowly my breathing matched that of the waves washing the shore, and my heart beat with it and in counterpoint. A great tide of whispers fell over me, caressing me, tugging at me; retreated, releasing me, only to lift me again, draw me down, lift me, rock me, and the rays of the sun refracted through the water, lighting uncountable points of cold flame. The flicker licked at my eyes, stinging them with the fire inside each salt crystal.

  Listenlistenlistenlistenlisten

  Someone hovered over me.

  A rackety little fan stirred the air. The smell of the sea wafted in through an open window.

  I was on my own bed in my crooked little room. The someone hovering was Cleonie. Her hand closed around mine on the sheet.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes yet. I wanted to take an inventory of myself, to see if I were all in one piece, and not bleeding, not bone-broke, not dismembered. I wanted to be sure of what I would see: Cleonie, my room.

  One cool drop, two drops, fell upon my lips, from the warmth of Cleonie’s other hand, close above my face. Two more drops of water: my lips unstuck. Her hand let go of mine and burrowed under the nape of my neck to lift my head a little and then there was the cool mineral edge of a glass, a sip of iced water.

  She let me back down. I peeked quickly from under my eyelids. The reassurance in her eyes relieved me; I took a good breath and let my eyes open up. Cleonie sat on the edge of the bed next to me, a tumbler of water in one hand. Whumpet whumpet whumpet: So quoth the little electric fan on my dresser.

  She shook her head in slow amazement. “Jesus save us.”

  Miz Verlow was coming down the hall. I closed my eyes, was afraid to see h
er. She tapped softly at the door and opened it to look in.

  “She be restin’,” Cleonie told her.

  I stopped myself groaning. Why couldn’t Cleonie have told Miz Verlow that I was asleep again?

  Cleonie got up and Miz Verlow took her place on the edge of the bed, Miz Verlow’s cool hand coming to rest gently on my head.

  “Perdita says Roger found her on the beach?”

  “We figgered for sure she be sunstruckt, drown and daid.”

  “But you’re still in this world, aren’t you, Calley.” Miz Verlow lifted her hand. “Open your eyes. I want to see your pupils.” To Cleonie, she said, “Did you check her pupils?”

  “Yes’m, Miz Verlow.”

  I stared up at Miz Verlow fixedly, in the hope that all she would see in my eyes was the state of my pupils.

  “I’ll sit with her, Cleonie,” Miz Verlow said.

  Cleonie went out.

  Miz Verlow’s face was oddly stiff on one side and she was hollow-eyed. She had had that root canal. Her whole lower face was braced against pain.

  “Did you fall asleep on the beach or get a cramp swimming?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “That’s convenient. Someone’s been in the attic. The door was open. Is that the key on that chain around your neck?”

  Her words seemed to summon the chain and key into existence; I had not felt them before but now I did, half choking me.

  She hooked one finger under the chain and against the skin of my neck and yanked. The chain bit at me, and then it was gone, hanging in her hand.

  It appeared to be the chain from the attic light, run through the hole at the top of the key.

  “I was looking for a carpetbag to borrow. I’m gone to Tallassee,” I lied. “I want to find Ford. Or one of my uncles. It’s a good time to go, while Mama’s away.”

  Miz Verlow nodded. “And how did you come to wind up semiconscious on the beach?”

  “I don’t remember. Maybe I fainted.”

  Miz Verlow glanced around, saw the water tumbler and handed it to me.

  I took a mouthful and then another, amazed at how cool the water still was and how dry my throat felt.

  Miz Verlow made a carefully neutral observation. “The heat up in the attic can be fierce, never mind how easy it is to get sunstruck on the beach.”

  I thought of all the times Mama and Miz Verlow and the guests remarked upon the heat, the lack of it, the wind, the rain, the drought, ad infinitum, and suppressed a giggle.

  A speculative gleam appeared in Miz Verlow’s eye. “Calley, you have been taking your vitamin, haven’t you?”

  My vitamin. Of course I was taking my vitamin. I couldn’t imagine how taking it would prevent a swoon from the heat in the attic.

  As if in answer, she said, “You could be anemic.”

  I didn’t think that I needed to respond.

  “Calley, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you thought you were pregnant?”

  I could hardly believe what I heard—it’s a cliche, but that’s really the way I felt.

  “You’re too young to have a baby. And Grady Driver is experience and nothing more.”

  “Grady’s my friend and that ain’t ‘nothin’ more’.”

  “Of course,” agreed Miz Verlow. “And a handy useful young man he is and entirely appropriate to screw.”

  My face burned all the way to the helices of my ears. She meant to shock me, of course, to show me that she was unshockable. And that I could keep no secrets from her.

  “The footlocker is up there in the attic, the one they tried to stuff Daddy into and it’s still bloody,” I blurted. “Mama and I left it in Elba but it’s in the attic, over our heads. It has been all this time. And I found something in it.”

  Miz Verlow’s hand went swiftly again to my brow. I had risen bolt upright in my agitation.

  “Lie down again, Calley.”

  Words continued tumbling out of my mouth without me knowing what I was going to say: “There was a thing in it.“

  Miz Verlow hushed me. “Shhh.” She tucked a blanket up around me. “You’re all shiver. Quiet yourself now, Calley. I’m going to get you something to help you sleep.”

  Cleonie must have been stationed just outside. She came in as Miz Verlow went out, to sit down and hold my hand again. In a very few moments, Miz Verlow was back, with the plastic lid of a small jar in her hand. In it were two homemade pills. For the first time and without knowing why, I was afraid of them. A depth of confusion that I had never experienced before in my life overcame me.

  Yet my lips parted, my mouth opened, Miz Verlow put the pills on my tongue, and Cleonie held the water tumbler that I might drink. The pills went down like hard little dried peas. Immediately, I shook uncontrollably for several moments and then suddenly, a calmness came over me. I don’t remember closing my eyes or falling asleep. When I woke in the morning, I remembered dreaming of sleeping with my eyes open. Lying there in my room, while Cleonie sang to me and the moon fell into the sea.

  Fifty-eight

  A few days later, just before sunup, I dislodged the collar of the light fixture in my crookedy closet and felt around above it for my tin box.

  My fingers informed me of grit and lint and dust and then—a flash, as my arm went rigid with shock and sharp little points exploded into my eyes. The electricity hit me hard enough to knock me deep into the corner of the closet, and in doing so, broke the contact between my hand and the live wire.

  For a moment I was dazed. My head felt as if it were going to explode. My first coherent reaction was fear that the little bits that had sprayed at me were glass. But I could see. I managed to bring my left hand up to brush at my face. Grit and lint and dirt. Above me, I could hear a tiny smolder of fire like little mouse teeth chewing something up.

  My right arm ached deep into the socket; it lay slack across my torso. I could not lift it. Every other muscle was weak as dust. I’d wet myself. The closet was not only dark because the light was blown out; there was smoke in it. I coughed.

  As quickly as I could, I sorted myself out and struggled out of the closet. My strongest emotion was one of disgust at my own stupidity; if this didn’t prove that no one on this earth could be stupider than Calley Dakin, I didn’t know what would. A small dirty cloud of smoke hung just below the ceiling of my room. The window was open; I turned on my little fan to help circulate the smoke on out and draw in the good air.

  Taking the flashlight from my bottom drawer, I staggered back into the closet. It was a huge relief to see no flame. I no longer heard the fire; apparently it had gone out.

  I sniffed. Lovely. A bouquet of fragrant pee, ash and ozone smell. The flashlight beam showed me the electrical line and the top of the light fixture. Where the line joined the fixture, the insulation was gone. I knew at once that I had managed to touch a live wire, but the beam showed me where it was. The little tin box was wide open—and heaped with ash and fragments of burnt bills.

  So much for storing up treasure in this world. I dropped onto my bed, pulled a pillow over my face and laughed into it until my stomach hurt.

  I had a mess to clean up, and myself. I kept a supply of small waxed-paper sandwich bags for disposal of used tampons. With a couple of these in hand, as quietly as I could and with due care of the exposed wire, I collected the little tin box and its ashy contents. Then I played the flashlight again to make sure that I had gotten everything even remotely flammable. The light picked up a dark corner of something. I used the flashlight itself like a hook to move the object closer. It was a book.

  Even before I turned the flashlight full on it, I recognized the most common size and shape of a bird guide. An odd thought intruded: I don’t see it. It’s not there. But it was, most assuredly. There. As gingerly as if it were electrified, I touched it with my forefinger.

  Just a bird guide. Forget it.

  A puddle of something soft draped over the book, and a lump of gold hung against the edges of its pages. The bird har
ness, the egg locket.

  I drew the book toward me and gathered the loops of silk rope and the egg locket with the other.

  The book fit my hand perfectly—that sort of book is designed exactly for fitting hands. Still, I felt an excitement kindling inside me that I could neither explain nor resist. A jolt. A blast. It was the way I felt when I heard Haydn for the first time, or Little Richard.

  I remembered: I put the book there, when I moved into my crooked little room. I didn’t need it. I had other, more recent guides. Mama, someone, might notice that it was stolen, that my uncle Robert Junior’s name was written on the flyleaf.

  But I had not hidden the other books that I had taken from Ramparts, and, in fact, Mama had never looked into any of them. Every book that I owned had somebody else’s name written on the flyleaf.

  Listen to the book.

  My heart felt as if it were on one of those pull chains with the white knob at the end. Something yanked that chain, and my whole being seemed to light up inside me. One of my fingertips stung as if burned. The one with the scar on it.

  And dreams that were memories opened like a book in my mind.

  A long time ago, the ghost of my great-grandmama Cosima spoke to me, preparing me to meet a ghost named Tallulah Jordan, who vanished before anyone else saw her. And Tallulah Jordan had instructed me to listen to the book. The burning of my fingertip had identified the book as this one, my very first own bird guide, that was stolen goods from a dead uncle.

  The cold gold egg locket in my palm had my name inside it, opposite a picture of a woman I thought must be my great-grandmama. She was dead before I was born. Why had she written my name inside the egg locket?

  The household was only just beginning to stir. Mrs. Mank’s Benz sportster was parked next to Miz Verlow’s Lincoln on the kitchen side of the house. She had been expected; I’d helped Roger and Cleonie arrange her suite, and then heard her arrive shortly after I had gone to bed. I left the house barefoot, with the legs of my coveralls rolled up to my knees and pinned there. My hat in a pocket of my coveralls. I needed some light, some sun, and even the thin light of dawn was freshening. As I had done habitually since a little girl, I ran barefoot through the swash, northward, away from Merrymeeting.