Grim

by Anna Waggener

  Shawn sat down on the grass again and twirled the tennis ball on the dirt in front of him. He heard a familiar voice ask, “Was it like this every day?”

  “No,” he said, and then looked up.

  The man named Jeremiah stood above him, with his hands in his jacket pockets.

  “She stayed with him for so long,” Jeremiah said. “And she hoped so much that things would change. It’s a wonder she ever managed to leave.”

  Shawn stayed quiet.

  “Do you think that he loved her?” Jeremiah asked.

  “No. Yes.” Shawn shrugged. “I don’t know.” He glanced back up. “You haven’t killed me this time.”

  “I haven’t killed you at all,” Jeremiah said. “You only ever do that once.”

  “Who are you?”

  “At this point, I’m honestly not sure how to answer that.”

  Shawn nodded slowly. “Tell me,” he said, “am I dreaming?”

  A crack, like gunfire, echoed through the house. Jeremiah patted the pockets of his slacks.

  “Damn,” he spat. “Your mother’s a born thief, isn’t she?”

  “What?”

  Erika ran out of the house, splattered with blood. Her right hand gripped a pearl-handled pocketknife; her chest fluttered as she tried to catch her breath. Shawn leaped to his feet and watched his mother turn her eyes on him and smile. A soft, thankful noise escaped her throat. Then her eyes skimmed past her son and her smile disappeared.

  “Jeremiah.”

  “You don’t listen, Erika. I told you not to come back.” Jeremiah crossed the yard in two strides and wrestled the blade from her hands before tossing a look back at Shawn. “I’m sorry you have to see this,” he said, and then plunged the knife into Erika’s heart.

  A scream burst from the house and Rebecca crashed through the back door. She ran out, young and scared, with a toddling Megan on her bony hip, but when she looked at her brother, an odd flash of recognition made her eyes go wide. Somewhere deep in his gut, Shawn realized that she could see him. She knew that he was there, beyond sleep and beyond dream. Their mother vanished with Jeremiah, leaving behind a pool of warm blood. Shawn opened his eyes and saw the speckled shadows of his bedroom’s ceiling.

  Jeremiah stood with his arms folded across his chest and his back to Erika. She crouched on the floor, doubled over and wheezing into the dusty carpet.

  “I told you not to do that,” Jeremiah said.

  “You showed me how!”

  “I showed you how to get in. That’s not the same as getting out.”

  “I’m —”

  “Keep your apologies, Erika. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Martha came in after Jeremiah left.

  She carried a roll of linen bandages and a ceramic bowl, which she filled with water from the bathroom. Then she knelt on the floor, saying nothing, and cleaned the gash on Erika’s left temple.

  “I just wanted to check on them,” Erika told her.

  Martha undid the roll of linen and began to wind it around Erika’s head, her movements careful and even. She knew that it ought to look like a ribbon rather than a bandage.

  “I know you did, dear,” she said quietly, because Erika expected it, and then turned her attention to the task at hand.

  Rebecca jumped when her brother rounded the corner into the kitchen. “Shawn!” she said. “It’s two o’clock, why are you up?”

  Shawn sank down onto one of the wooden stools and slumped over the tiled counter.

  “I had a bad dream,” he said. He gave her a long, slow look from under his mop of hair.

  “Oh?” She turned away to open the refrigerator.

  “Becca.”

  “What?”

  “Becca, when I sleep …”

  “No, Shawn,” she whispered.

  “When I dream —”

  “Don’t. Please, don’t.” The fluorescent refrigerator light made her highlights glow amber.

  “I can see things.”

  “Just because you do see things doesn’t mean you can, Shawn. Just because you have nightmares doesn’t mean any of them are real.”

  “You do too. You saw him.”

  “No.” Rebecca whirled on him, slamming shut the heavy plastic door. “If you want to be crazy, then go ahead, but don’t make me crazy with you. You had a nightmare and I had a nightmare and that’s all natural. Our mom is dead. Our mom is dead.”

  Shawn got up from his seat. “Calm down, Becca.”

  Her shoulders slumped, as if on command, and she put her hands over her mouth. “It’s just … I saw her,” she said. “I saw her on that table. She was dead. We buried her. She has to be dead. It was just a dream, Shawn. Please say it was a dream?”

  Shawn put his arms around her. “You’re right,” he said. “She’s dead and we buried her. But maybe she’s —” He took a deep breath. “Maybe she’s still around. Somewhere else.”

  “Don’t,” Rebecca whispered. “Please don’t. It’s a nightmare and I just want it to be over.”

  “Okay,” Shawn said, rocking her a little. “Okay. We won’t talk about it again.”

  Megan crept into the kitchen, her eyes huge and round. “You didn’t come get me,” she said, sounding wounded. “I called and you didn’t come get me. I waited and you didn’t —” Her voice caught.

  Rebecca opened her arms. “It’s okay, Meg,” she said. “We didn’t hear you. We’ve all been having a rough night.”

  Megan ran up and buried her face in Rebecca’s stomach. “He killed her,” she whimpered. “He killed her in the backyard and you didn’t do anything.”

  Rebecca looked up at Shawn. Her hands were pressed against Megan’s back, but Shawn could tell that they were shaking.

  He reached for her. “Becca —”

  “We’re going to church in the morning,” she said in a low voice.

  “Listen —”

  She held up a hand, cutting him off, and pulled Megan away to look her in the eye. “How about you come have a sleepover, Meg?” she asked. “My bed’s big enough for two.”

  Megan nodded and Rebecca tried to smile. She ran her thumbs over Megan’s cheeks, wiping off the tears. The two of them headed for the stairwell entry.

  “You should get some sleep, Shawn,” Rebecca said over her shoulder.

  Shawn heard them pad up the stairs and across the hall. Their footsteps were punctuated by the hard click of the lock on Rebecca’s bedroom door.

  Erika’s whole body felt shrunken and afraid as she walked into the dining room. It was like she was sixteen again and about to face her mother at the kitchen counter, a whole nest of plastic sticks with plus signs buried in the bathroom garbage. Only tonight she was in a ball gown instead of ripped denim, her skin uncomfortably naked even under all the layers of stiff green taffeta. The dress had been chosen to match the gem around Erika’s neck, a small gold and emerald teardrop that she refused to part with.

  A thick white drop cloth covered most of the dining table, which looked long enough to seat thirty on either side. At the far end, the sheet had been peeled back and places set for two, a candelabra tossing its steady flames across the silverware and painted china. Jeremiah sat at the head of the table, as if holding court to a hall of ghosts. He rose and offered her a stiff bow.

  “You look nice,” he said. “The dress suits you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Please. Sit.”

  The chair had already been drawn out for her. She took her seat.

  “Bread?” He passed her a covered wicker basket.

  She pulled away the cloth and felt the steam rising from each perfect little loaf.

  “Hungry?”

  Erika set the basket down beside her glass.

  “Not especially,” she said.

  Jeremiah took a piece of bread for himself and broke it over his plate, the crust making a soft crackle in protest. “Have I upset you?”

  “No more than I deserve.” Erika glanced over at him. “I feel awful, Je
remiah. I know that I shouldn’t have stolen your knife, but I just … I only … I’m worried about them.” She shook her head. “I want to see my kids.”

  “And I told you that you would,” Jeremiah said smoothly. “I don’t lie, Erika. There are some things that I simply cannot tell you right now, but I would never lie.”

  “But you shouldn’t have to chase me into their dreams. You won’t get anything done for them if you do.”

  “Yes. Well.” Jeremiah set aside his uneaten bread. Struggled for a moment to compose his thoughts. Finally, he sighed and reached for Erika’s glass. The dark wine barely splashed as he poured it onto her empty porcelain dinner plate.

  “Give me your earring,” he said.

  Erika took one of the Tahitian pearls from her ears and handed it to him. He dropped it onto the plate, the pearl’s rounded edge jutting out a little above the surface. They both watched as the ripples stilled and the pear-shaped lights of the candelabra became clear in the reflection.

  Jeremiah leaned in close and let a slow breath skim the wine, but it stayed blank.

  “They aren’t sleeping any longer,” he said, drawing back to his own plate. “You can try later. But I warn you, Erika, some dreams are more true than we would like to think.”

  He didn’t give Erika time to respond before he lifted the lid from the platter in the middle of the table, revealing a leg of lamb on a bed of greens and fruit. Jeremiah reached over and placed a sprig of grapes in Erika’s empty soup bowl. “Eat something.”

  “I’m really not hungry.”

  “It’ll make you feel more lively,” he said.

  “I don’t want to feel more lively. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

  Jeremiah pursed his lips and moved his hands from the serving ware. “Then talk,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “About me?”

  “What else would you tell me about?”

  Erika picked up her fork and nudged the pearl in circles around her plate. Wine dripped from its surface like blood as it tumbled over and over the bottom of the dish.

  “The last thing I remember,” she said, “were lights. Headlights. Someone hit me, didn’t they? Is that why I’m here?”

  Jeremiah cleared his throat and flexed his fingers, then chose a thin slice of lamb for himself. It lay folded on his plate, steaming.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “And in the gas station. Did you know then?”

  “At the end,” said Jeremiah slowly. “Just as you were driving off, I realized that there would be an accident.”

  “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  Jeremiah let out a breath and looked away, down to the floor on his right. Then he looked back at his guest. “I’m not human, Erika,” he said. “I think you’ve gathered that much.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  He nodded. “There are some things that I can’t control. That I’m not supposed to get my hands in. I’m a guide. I teach the dead how to die, and I show them where to go. Ferry them across. That’s all I’m supposed to do. It’s all I’m made to do.”

  “So I’m dead?”

  Jeremiah stopped again, then reached out and took her hand from her fork. Held it tightly in one of his own. “I suppose,” he said, “that sometimes I can make exceptions.”

  “But you can’t make exceptions for stopping it in the first place?”

  “You …” He wet his lips. “I’m trying to help you, Erika. But some things must be figured out first.”

  “What does that even mean? Please just tell me, Jeremiah. Am I alive or not?”

  He pressed against the back of her hand. “You’re waiting, Erika,” he said. “You’re waiting because someone made a mistake. But you’re safe now, and we’ll know something soon. I promise you that.” When she finally nodded, he let go of her hand. “Tell me about yourself. About who you were before you got mixed up with me.”

  Erika looked down at her hand, where Jeremiah had touched her. She pulled her fingers away from the table and folded them safely in her lap. “I was born in Pennsylvania,” she said. As the memories stirred in the back of her mind, she smiled to herself. “I miss it. It was a beautiful place to grow up.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  The smiled faded. “Because I got pregnant,” she said. “Things changed a lot after that. My mother disowned me, for one. My father had died by then.”

  “Was that Rebecca?”

  Erika started. “What?”

  “The baby,” said Jeremiah carefully. “It was Rebecca?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I married her father. We moved back to his hometown.”

  “Were you happy?”

  Erika shrugged. “I thought that I loved him.”

  “You did love him.”

  She gritted her teeth.

  “Don’t do that,” said Jeremiah. “I know what I’m talking about. It is possible to fall out of love, you know.”

  “That’s true, I guess.”

  “But you never did, did you? Fall out of love, I mean.”

  Erika sucked her lips into her mouth and bit down on them. “I should’ve left after Rebecca. I knew that it wasn’t working. But I couldn’t go. I couldn’t —” She faltered. “And we decided to have Shawn and I thought that it would fix things, but it didn’t. He was just a baby. How could he fix anything?” She kept her eyes open to hold back tears. They started to weigh on her lids and lashes, but she couldn’t bring herself to let them fall. “You would’ve thought Megan was his farewell present. ‘She’s yours,’ he said, and walked out of the hospital. And she was mine, I guess. He didn’t want another one. He barely touched her when he came back.” Erika pressed one hand against her mouth and closed her eyes. “He never loved Meg. Or me.”

  “You’re wrong again,” Jeremiah said gently. “He did love you, Erika. He loved you very much. He just loved himself more.” He lifted her free hand from the table again. “You did the right thing, Erika, by leaving him.”

  “I wanted it to work.”

  “I know you did. You both did. But sometimes the world gets confused. I’m sorry it happened.”

  “I am too,” she said in her smallest voice.

  “And I’m sorry that this happened. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Her eyes flashed up and now she didn’t care that the tears fell, clearing themselves away.

  “Of course I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “Do you think I wanted to get killed by a drunk on the highway?”

  Jeremiah flinched and withdrew his hand. “Erika, please,” he said. “Don’t. I’m doing the best I can, but I don’t have the same standing I once did.”

  “What standing?”

  He shrugged. “That of a very sad bastard,” he said. “My father would have me scrubbed out of the picture if he hadn’t promised my mother not to touch me. He loved her. He did.” He dropped his napkin on the table and got up from his chair. “You have full license of the house, Erika,” he said. “No secret rooms for you, or locked doors with conspicuous keys. And you won’t find a magic wardrobe or mirror. We sold that with the flying carpet.”

  Erika felt too tired to play along.

  “I think I’ll just go to bed.”

  They walked together down the dark stretch of the dining room, leaving the haze of candlelight behind them.

  “I’ll be in my study,” Jeremiah said, “if you need anything.” He paused as if he intended to say something more, but then he just took a step away and dipped his head in a small bow. “Good night, Erika. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night.”

  “And please don’t leave the grounds. I wouldn’t want you getting lost.”

  Erika nodded and went out into the entrance hall and up the smooth marble steps. She didn’t feel at all hungry or tired. She felt only hollowed out — empty. She wanted so badly to go home.

  When Shawn came downstairs
in the morning, Rebecca sat waiting at the breakfast table with her hands around a coffee cup. She looked him over.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” she said. “Mass starts at ten.”

  “You aren’t serious.”

  “Yes, I am. Go change.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Becca.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I just think we need some comfort right now. I’m doing this for Meg.”

  “Meg is sleeping,” said Shawn. “She was up half the night crying. She needs a nap, not a sermon.”

  “Don’t make excuses, Shawn,” she said, getting to her slippered feet. “I’ll wake her up. Just worry about yourself.”

  Shawn stood alone in the kitchen for a few minutes, debating whether or not he should just leave and come back later that afternoon. He thought better of it. After all, Rebecca had kept her word at the funeral by letting Megan stay in the car while their father said his piece. An hour at mass seemed the least that he could do.

  The church delighted Megan. She tugged on Shawn’s and Rebecca’s shirtsleeves and pointed out the murals across the high ceiling, and the stained glass windows, and the brass organ pipes along the back wall. They nodded, smiling, and led her a little farther down the aisle. A lady stepping into a pew ahead of them smiled at Megan, and Megan smiled back at her, and then at her hat, which had a cloth rose on it and a little yellow bird.

  It had been five years since Shawn had come into the Church of Saint Jerome, and he kept an eye out for anyone he might know from childhood. He wanted to avoid them.

  Rebecca remembered her first Communion and the tedious confirmation classes every Sunday. She remembered the way the wafers always stuck to the roof of her mouth. The sweet taste of grape juice from a cup that everyone shared. Body and blood. Even then she stumbled after salvation.

  The Stripling family had stopped coming to church after Erika’s divorce. As a Catholic, she hadn’t wanted to face the congregation with the news. Rebecca and Shawn soon became used to staying home on weekends. After Matt started coming over, church found itself replaced by long breakfasts and walks in the park. Erika found that her children preferred this to the rolling monotone of mass anyway.