“Maybe it’s just barley,” Marj managed as she spooned up the offending letters and swallowed them. “Now, about the library committee . . .”
Later that day, keeping office hours for the students who never came, Marj forced herself to concentrate on her notes for a new seminar she was teaching.
She tilted the contents of the little teapot she kept by her desk into her mug. Only a thin stream of pale liquid came out. Lifting the lid, Marj peeked inside. The few stray tea leaves that always escaped her strainer arranged themselves into curving letters.
Death cannot be denied.
Swallowing a scream, Marj dropped the pot onto to the carpet. The driblets of tea spilled out, writing in cursive on the tightly woven industrial carpet: Destiny cannot be denied.
Shutting down her computer, Marj called to the office secretary, “I’m leaving early. If anyone wants me, I’ll be back on Monday.”
“Have a good weekend!” came the cheerful reply.
As if . . . Marj thought.
At home, no neatly scripted messages in purple ink defaced her mail. Marj wanted to hope that the viral campaign was over, but she no longer believed that threadbare excuse.
If a viral marketing campaign of that magnitude had been going on, someone would have mentioned it, even if only to question who would bear the cost of cleanup.
Ivy Perkins would have wanted to discuss the psychological implications of vaguely threatening messages. Why were they written in a shades of purple? The other students would have actually gotten into that discussion.
No. This had been meant for her from the start, and when she had found an excuse to ignore the written messages, a new, less explicable avenue had been found.
“I’m going crazy . . .” Marj wailed, and took little comfort when both cats rubbed themselves against her ankles, rumbling comforting purrs. “What am I going to do? Go to a shrink?”
Her laughter echoed harsh and shrill off the walls. “Physician, heal thyself! If the word got around that I was having a breakdown, my reputation would be shot. Tenure or not, the news could cost me my job. Extenuating circumstances. I might lose my license. Find myself on the streets.”
Marj wished Dr. Schimdt was still in the area. She could consult him. Then he’d go safely back to Argentina, out of her world. He wouldn’t tell anyone anything.
“No. Couldn’t talk to him,” Marj babbled, picking up Poppet and squishing her face into the cat’s long fur. “There’s e-mail. If he thought I was becoming dangerously deluded, he might report to the department. Later, he might mention the case in one of his lectures. ‘The Spice Girl Who Lost Her Mind.’ God! That would be horrible.”
Holding the vaguely protesting Poppet, Marj paced back and forth. Normally, she didn’t drink more than the occasional glass of wine with a meal, preferring tea or coffee, but now she feared what she’d see in the tea leaves. She’d never heard of coffee grounds having significance, but she’d never heard of any of this . . .
A glass of whiskey. She had a bottle she’d bought when her brother was visiting. On the rocks. She’d be careful not to spill anything. No words uncoiling, written in whiskey on her polished hardwood floors.
An hour later, Marj was soundly drunk. Rather than the alcohol numbing her fears, it intensified her sensation of dread. She avoided gazing in anything that reflected, even tossing a towel over the polished front of her infrequently used oven.
She didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out on the sofa. When she woke in the middle of the night, she was disoriented. Her mouth was furry and dry. A hangover threatened behind her eyes, making remembering just why she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, rather than in her bed, hard to recall.
Stumbling to the bathroom, Marj flipped on the light. Her reflection looked back at her from the mirror. Her own reflection and something else, a wavering image of a second face, a much older face, but one that resembled her own.
Marj leaned forward. Her reflection superimposed itself over the phantom image, sharpening it, adding details. Marj felt a horrified sensation that the image was swallowing her.
“Grandma Gloria?”
The lips moved, deep creases around them writing grotesque prophecies of age over Marj’s much younger features.
“Why haven’t you accepted my gift?” the lips shaped, the words perfectly clear, although there was no sound.
“Your gift?”
“My gift. I gave you a gift.”
Marj shook her head, the violent action causing her hangover to germinate and her vision to swim.
“No, Grandma, you couldn’t have sent me a gift. You’re dead.”
Marj woke late the next morning, sprawled on her bed, still fully dressed. Poppet was pressed against her side, Tuffet in the curl behind her knees. The hangover played drums in her head. Her muscles ached.
A hot shower helped amend both sets of aches. Not until Marj was on her second cup of coffee, and daring a nibble on a slightly stale croissant, did she consider what she had seen the night before.
“Grandma Gloria,” she said to Tuffet. “Something about a gift. But she died when I was a child. Why would I have such a dream now?”
Tuffet chattered at a bird or squirrel outside the window.
Glancing over to see what had the cat’s attention, Marj saw Grandma Gloria staring back at her.
Dropping her coffee mug, Marj screamed.
Grandma Gloria—or rather, her reflection, for now Marj realized she could see through the image—made a gesture as if writing with the index finger of her right hand.
The puddle of spilled coffee on the table elongated into words: Why do you wait? Neither death nor destiny can be denied.
“Are you threatening me?” Marj said, her voice shaking. “Are you some omen of death?”
No, Grandma Gloria wrote. You are threatening you. Accept my gift.
“Gift?” Marj said. “If you mean the savings bond you left me, I was waiting to cash it until I needed . . .”
NO! Grandma Gloria shook her head disapprovingly. How long will you deny me? Deny your destiny? Deny what I knew you to be?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marj said, although she was beginning to remember.
Come then . . .
A gnarled hand, too solid to be a mere reflection, emerged from the windowpane. Tuffet hissed, but the cat’s warning came too late. The hand grasped Marj firmly by her right earlobe and dragged her in the direction of the window.
“I will show you,” came a commanding voice Marj would have sworn she had forgotten, but was unmistakably that of her grandmother. “I will show you what you have never forgotten.”
Marj felt herself enter the reflection, moving through light that shifted like molten quicksilver, coating her body, covering her, compacting her, packing her into herself as she had been at age six.
Child Marj knelt next to a low table. Its polished teak surface was all but swathed beneath a fringed shawl of red damask. Set on the shawl were several items: a crystal globe, a small pitcher and matching bowl, an overly thick deck of cards.
The room was lit by candles set in high sconces, these positioned so that their glow illuminated the table but left the rest of the room in shadow. Incense saturated the air of the enclosed room with the smoky scent of sandalwood.
The ringing sound of brass against brass and the aroma of freshly brewed tea announced the arrival of Grandma Gloria.
Grandma’s attire was quite different from how she normally dressed. Instead of a tidy floral print housedress, nylons, and comfortable shoes, she wore a long skirt that came nearly to the floor and a full-sleeved blouse trimmed with lace and thick with embroidery. Both were so dark a purple that they were almost black. She had a fancy velvet shawl over her shoulders, and another tied over her skirt. Her hair was wrapped under a scarf. The brass chimes Marj had heard came from rows of bracelets that hung heavy on her wrists.
As the old woman set down the tea tray she had been carrying, she gave Marj a hearty smile that—de
spite its cheer, or maybe because of it, since Marj didn’t think of her grandmother as particularly cheerful—managed to scare Marj right down to her neat, white bobby socks.
“Well, Marjoram, are you ready for our little game?”
“Marj . . .”
“Excuse me?”
Marj looked down at her knotted fingers. “Marj. My name is Marj. I don’t like being called Marjoram.”
“But Marjoram is a wonderful name, full of significance. Do you know what marjoram is?”
“A plant.”
“Yes, but it is a wonderful type of plant. A type called an ‘herb.’ ”
“My friend Amy’s dad is named Herb.”
“Not at all the same. Can we get back to the point?”
“You won’t call me ‘Marjoram’?”
From somewhere under the child, Adult Marj applauded this reply. Grandma Gloria obviously didn’t agree. A quick flash of anger erased the carefully genial expression she had been maintaining.
“I want you to understand what a wonderful name you have been given. Marjoram is a cure-all.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a special medicine that can make many sicknesses go away.”
Little Marj didn’t say anything, but her out-thrust lower lip made quite clear that learning this had done nothing to improve her opinion of her namesake plant.
Poor psychology, thought Adult Marj. What child thinks anything good about medicine? It’s only when you get older that pills and ointments are appreciated.
Grandma Gloria sighed. “Well, ‘Marjoram’ is a very special name, and a very pretty plant. I’ll show you it in my garden this summer when it is all covered with the flowers.”
“What color?”
“White, just kissed with pink.”
“I like pink.”
Grandma Gloria seemed to decide that this constituted a truce. “Now, Granddaughter . . .”
Not ‘Marjoram,’ Adult Marj thought gleefully. Round one to the kid.
“I’ve brought you here to show you something wonderful about yourself. Our family has long had a gift for the Second Sight.”
“What’s that?”
“The ability to see what most people can’t—things people don’t believe are there.”
“Like ghosts?”
“Maybe . . .” Grandma Gloria was cautious with her reply, obviously prepared to backpedal, but Little Marj didn’t seem too worried.
“Is that why you’re dressed like a witch, Grandma?”
“Like a witch?”
“I saw a movie where some kids went to a witch at a fair and she was dressed like you are, all fussy. The movie witch had big earrings, though. You don’t have those.”
“Did you like the witch?”
“She was okay, I guess.”
“Well, I’m not a witch. I’m a seer.”
“Because you have two eyes?”
“Two eyes?” Grandma Gloria looked seriously confused.
“I mean that Second Sight,” Marj corrected herself. “It’s not the same as having two eyes? Sometimes pirates have just one eye. They wear eye patches, then.”
Man, I was an annoying kid, Marj thought, but she felt a little delight, too. She was remembering more and more now about her early childhood.
Lucky days, unlucky days, holy days. Going to Mass in a church that was fully modernized in the best post–Vatican II style, but seeing another side of religion in the homes of older relatives where statuettes of saints leaking gore were proudly displayed and where the same Jesus the priest told them was gentle and mild hung tortured in elegant detail from the Cross.
The evil eye. Not stepping on a crack unless you broke your mother’s back. Black cats. Not going under ladders. Don’t open an umbrella inside the house. Don’t speak ill of the dead.
Robins have red breasts because a robin pulled a thorn out of Jesus’ forehead. Dead rooster proclaiming the resurrection. Animals kneel on Christmas Eve.
Religion and superstition, all blurred together in a storm of contradictions, a storm held together by a fearful logic that almost made sense.
Grandma Gloria had been at the heart of that storm. Other old ladies and sometimes old men came to see her. These people called Grandma a wise woman and praised her skills for healing with herbs and prayer. Sometimes Marj heard another word whispered: witch.
Grandma Gloria had seemed very much a witch on that day in her parlor when she had persuaded little Marj to look into the crystal ball on the table.
“Look and tell me what you see,” Grandma had coaxed.
“Can I have a cup of tea?”
“After you look.”
“With sugar?”
“And cookies. Now, look and tell me what you see.”
And Marj had looked. At first she’d seen nothing but the candlelight giving back distorted images of the room, then . . .
“I see the church! Our church. There’s a service. A coffin. Grandma! Grandma! You’re in the coffin! You’re dead!”
“So you remember now,” Grandma Gloria said, her tone almost wistful.
Adult Marj found herself sitting across from her grandmother. They were in the same candlelit room, but now Marj was dressed not in Little Marj’s party dress, white socks, and penny loafers, but her fluffy robe and slippers. There was even a small, damp spot on the sleeve of the robe where coffee had splashed when she’d dropped her mug.
“I remember. You tried to convince me that I had the Second Sight, that I should train to be your apprentice. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“I didn’t try to convince you,” Grandma reprimanded. “I proved it to you. You panicked. You ran away. You’ve been running ever since, what with your silly study of psychology—a fancy name for study of the spirit, the very thing I offered you when you were six.”
“You offered me nothing of the sort! You tried to capture me in a well of superstition and fear, tried to make me part of this dark world.” Marj gestured wildly with one hand and the candle flames flickered. “I wanted light, not shadows.”
Grandma Gloria ignored her. “I am here to offer you another chance at the destiny you refused.”
“What? Why now?”
“You were six. You are now thirty-six. The numbers are aligned.”
“What if I don’t want what you’re offering?”
“You didn’t want your name, but I notice it remains a part of you.”
Marj blinked. “What does my name have to do with anything? I thought about changing it to ‘Margery’ when I went to college, but it would have been a hassle. Anyhow, changing a word wouldn’t change me.”
“Denying you have the Sight doesn’t change the reality. You are gifted. Why must you deny your destiny?”
Grandma Gloria’s words were silky, persuasive. Marj felt a desire to reach out for the crystal ball, to pour water in the basin, add a drop of oil, gaze into the liquid. Images would appear for her, as surely as writing had appeared on walls.
Messages from the dead or from my own subconscious? Has my recent birthday given me a yearning to go back to the imagined security of childhood?
Grandma Gloria’s expression softened.
“I frightened you, child, all those years ago. I should have waited until you were older, but I had been blessed with a warning of my own near death. I knew you had the Sight, and I wished you to be my heir. Instead of winning you over, I chased you away. And because I wronged you, my soul cannot rest.”
Unwilling pity touched Marj. Perhaps Grandma Gloria saw some sign of this and took heart. She leaned forward and picked up the deck of cards that rested on the table between them. From the thickness, Marj knew it must be a tarot deck.
“Can’t you draw just one card?” Grandma pleaded. “See what it tells you?”
“I shuffle,” Marj insisted, accepting the cards. “And cut.”
“That is how it is always done.”
The cards were worn, polished with long use, but crisp eno
ugh that they shuffled with appropriate clatter and snap. Marj riffled the pack together enough times that she was certain any attempt to stack the deck would have been defeated.
(“But this is a dream,” a small part of her mind screamed in protest. “This entire vision is a stacked deck.”)
Marj cut the deck a half inch from the bottom, rather than near the middle as was usual. Then, peeking up through her lashes so she could see Grandma Gloria’s reaction without the other realizing she was being observed, Marj held up the card for the older woman to see.
Instead of the satisfaction or smugness Marj had expected, she saw puzzlement flicker across the lined features.
“That isn’t a card from my deck,” Grandma whispered, and for the first time Marj looked to see what she’d drawn.
The card showed an androgynous figure in a chariot drawn by two horses, one black, one white. Although the horses were not pulling against each other, there was a sense that what kept them in cooperation was the firm confidence of the driver holding the reins.
“The Charioteer,” Marj read the legend on the card. “You say this isn’t what it looks like in your deck?”
“No. I always used the Rider-Waite deck. The Charioteer in that deck wears armor and his chariot is shown behind paired sphinxes, black and white.” Grandma Gloria looked at Marj almost shyly. “Does this card say anything to you, child?”
“Balance,” Marj said, speaking the first word that had come to mind when she looked at the card, “like in Plato’s tale of the charioteer. Plato says that the soul is like a chariot pulled by two winged horses: the rough, passionate black horse and the powerful, spiritual white horse. Plato’s message was that we need both horses but, unless the charioteer carefully manages his team, the chariot will go in circles and no progress will be made.”
Marj felt her heart racing, words tumbling from her mouth almost before her mind could shape them.
“It’s like Freud: the id, the ego, and the superego. The Id contains our base, animal passions. It is the fountain from which our spirit springs.
“The Ego embodies the rational self, the sense of ‘I’ as distinct from the rest of the universe. Various philosophers—Descartes, Kant, Hume, and others—sought to explain the Ego, feeling that if we understood the Ego, we would come closer to understanding the individual in relation to society at large.
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 17