Mrs. Drury retired to replace the reference books she’d assembled for me. August 10 and 11 whizzed by in a blur. I wasn’t stopping for history lessons now.
The twelfth appeared. I slowed the film. Sections one and two drifted by. Section three was mostly advertisements and public notices. The obituaries were listed alphabetically on page 8. “Casement, Thomas R., age 19.”
I swallowed, biting my lip, forcing myself to read the rest.
“Thomas Reed Casement, beloved son of Edward Casement and the late Eloise Casement, of this borough. Fatally injured in labor mishap. Calling hours, 2-5 p.m. Aug. 13. Services, Yardley Friends Meeting, Aug. 14, 10 a.m. See Sec. 1, pg. 4, this ed.”
There was an article about it in the first section. I rewound the tape quickly, anticipating, and yet dreading, what I would see.
I scanned the page hastily until I found it. The caption jumped out at me. “Local Youth Killed in Mill Accident.” And just beneath it, a picture of Tom’s dear face.
I put my arm on top of the machine and rested my forehead against it. It was true. It was really true.
When I had recovered enough, I raised my head and read the rest. The story described how Tom had died, in quaint, melodramatic prose. He had fallen while stacking bales and struck his head on the stone grinding wheel. He had breathed his last on the threshing floor.
I remembered the scar I’d noticed on his forehead. Now I knew how he’d gotten it.
“Are you finished?” Mrs. Drury asked behind me. “It’s almost closing time.”
“Yes, I’m finished,”
“Did you get what you came for?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes, I did.”
She removed the film spool from the loader. “Good. I’ll just put this away.”
I glanced up at her. “Thank you very much for your help. It was nice of you to take such time with me.”
She waved her hand in dismissal. “It was my pleasure. Saturdays are slow. I wasn’t doing anything and I was falling asleep.”
A brief description of the results of our detective work was sure to wake her up. There was no point in going into it; she would simply think I was deranged.
I picked up my purse. “Goodbye, ma’am. And thanks again.”
She waved, and bustled off to replace the film. I moved in a daze toward the elevator.
I remembered nothing of the drive home. My mother was waiting for me as I came through the door.
“Cordelia, what do you mean by taking that car? You know better than that.”
“Yes, Mom,” I said wearily, “I’m sorry.”
She eyed me, waiting for an explanation. When I didn’t volunteer one, she said, “Well? Why did you take it?”
“I had to go to Trenton, and I didn’t want to take a bus.”
“Why did you have to go to Trenton?”
“I had to do some research, and they didn’t have the materials in town.”
“What kind of research?” she asked suspiciously. The Viking Princess, Senior, was hot on the trail.
“Historical research. About Yardley, for the anniversary.” A liberal interpretation might qualify that as the truth.
“I see.” Obviously she didn’t, but she also knew when to give up. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she announced.
The thought of food made my stomach turn cartwheels. But I didn’t want to antagonize her further by refusing to eat, so I said, “Good,” and followed her into the kitchen.
Stella was sitting on the floor next to the oven, waiting for the emergence of the chicken I could smell. She always took up this guard post when my mother was baking anything. She acted as though the food were going to fly out of the oven and into her mouth.
I set the table as my mother transferred the vegetables from pots to serving bowls. I couldn’t believe I was engaged in this mundane activity after the revelations I’d had that day. But what else could I do? Even if I collared everyone I knew and told them my fantastic story, nobody would believe me.
I touched the medallion at my throat. My grandmother would have believed me. But she was gone. If it was possible to come back, as Tom had done, why hadn’t she returned? She’d loved me very much. She had always accepted without question the existence of the supernatural. Why was she silent, if Tom could speak?
Luckily for me the phone rang during dinner, and while Mom was talking I fed my chicken to Stella and wrapped my vegetables in a paper towel. When Mom wasn’t looking I stuck the towel in the garbage. I felt like Dennis the Menace.
I cleaned up quickly so that she wouldn’t notice how little I’d eaten. I had all the leftovers stored in plastic containers before she hung up the phone.
“Aren’t you efficient this evening?” she said dryly as she surveyed my handiwork. “Quite the busy little bee.”
“I have some assignments to do,” I said evasively. “I want to get started on them.”
“I’m volunteering at six,” she said. “I’ll be back around ten.”
“Fine.”
I escaped as soon as I could, fleeing upstairs to my room. While I waited for my mother to leave I considered what to do.
If I never went back to the mill I would never see Tom again. I was fairly sure of that. I could end this whole episode by quitting my job and not returning to the agency.
But I didn’t want to end it. I loved Tom; I missed him every day that he didn’t come to me. I knew that it was crazy to persist, but I simply couldn’t bear the thought that he was lost to me forever.
The alternative was even worse: to keep on meeting with a ghost. I winced as the word formed in my mind. I had refused to call him that, to use that term in thinking about him, but wasn’t that exactly what he was?
I stretched out on my bed and put my arm around Stella, who had curled up next to me. I stroked her muzzle and contemplated my dim future. The prospects looked bleak indeed.
I heard my mother’s car pull away outside, and got off the bed. I looked out of my window at the street below, and then at the cloudy sky. The bare branches of trees were etched against it like an intricate pattern of black lace.
The Werner Agency closed at six on Saturday. The last time I saw Tom he had asked me to get rid of the others, to arrange to be alone. He would get his wish.
I felt better now that I had made my decision. I bent over Stella and gave her a kiss. She twitched her nose and continued sleeping.
I took a sweater out of my closet and put it on. The night was cold and promised to get colder.
I went downstairs and collected my purse. By the time I left the house, I was humming.
To combat the temperature, I walked briskly toward downtown. I reached the mill and unlocked the door, being careful not to turn on a light. I remembered my previous experience with the police too well.
I slipped inside and shut the door behind me. Slowly, deliberately, I sat in the chair behind the reception desk. I closed my eyes and waited.
When I opened them, he was there.
Chapter 6
Tom didn’t say a word, but came toward me slowly. I held up my hand.
“Stay back,” I whispered.
He halted immediately. His eyes moved over my face, and then he closed them.
“You’re afraid of me,” he said, agonized. “You were never afraid of me before.”
“If I were afraid of you, would I be here?” I demanded. “I would quit my job and never come back to this place again.”
“Why did you come back?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I answered sadly. Tom advanced again, and this time I didn’t stop him. He put his hands on either side of my face.
“Your hands are so warm,” I said. Tears welled up in my throat. All I seemed to do was cry.
“Of course they’re warm,” he said gently. “I’m real.”
“The others feel cold when you are around, but I never do.”
“I’m real for you. Only for you.”
“Why?” I cried. “Why did you come to me?”
“I came because you called me,” he answered simply.
“I never,” I gasped. “I never did.”
“Oh, yes, Cory,” Tom answered, pulling me close. “Your loneliness called me, your thoughts and wishes while you sat here alone. I watched you many nights before I came. It was your desire that made me real.”
“But how can this be?” I sobbed, pulling back to look into his face. “You’re dead. I saw your obituary in a 1926 newspaper!”
“All right, all right, take it easy. Trust me when I say that there are many, many things you don’t understand, many things that are beyond your comprehension. You are able to see me, hear me, touch me, because my life ended suddenly, too early, unfulfilled. You’ve given me the chance to do good, to experience love, so that I can pass on.”
“Pass on where?”
“To a better place, a place of peace and happiness. That’s all I know. But that passage must be earned, and I didn’t earn it, I didn’t have time. I’ve been trapped here, and you are giving me my freedom.”
“How?”
“By loving me, and allowing me to love you. You do love me, don’t you, Cory?”
“You know I do.” I put my head on his shoulder and clung to him.
“Sweet Cory,” he whispered, his hand moving in my hair. “You don’t know what you’ve done for me.”
“The others will never see you?” I asked.
“None of those who come here now,” he answered.
“That’s why you always left when anyone came?”
“You would have seen that they weren’t aware of me.”
“In all this time, only I have seen you?”
He released me and walked a few feet away. “No. A few have seen me, an image, something. A few whose thoughts or yearnings called me back. But it was never enough to make me real.” He looked back and smiled at me. “It took your strong will to accomplish that. You are a determined, tenacious person, Cory. You’re going to have a wonderful life.”
“Without you,” I murmured.
“I can’t tell you about the future,” Tom replied. “I don’t know everything. But you shouldn’t worry. Don’t you feel in your heart that this is a good thing?”
“Yes. I’m just worried about what would happen to me if anyone found out. No one would understand, Tom. They would think I was insane. I thought so myself until I saw you again. I’ll probably think so once more as soon as I leave.”
“No one will find out if you are careful. Have you talked about me to your friends?”
“Yes, before I knew . . . before I realized who you were.”
“So they think I’m just some boy you met?”
“Yes.”
“Leave it at that. Stop discussing me and they’ll think you didn’t hit it off with me. That happens, doesn’t it?”
“It happens to me all the time.”
He chuckled. “Oh, Cory, if you only could appreciate your own great spirit, your capacity for love. I’ve been waiting, waiting for you to come along and release me. Time is meaningless to me; I’ve been stalled between two worlds in endless nothingness. The first day you came here I said, There she is. That’s the one, the one who can set me free.”
There was a giant lump in my throat. “Oh, Tom, if only things were different.”
“Shhh, shhh, I know. I was born too soon, or you were born too late. But we have now.”
“For how long? How long can this last?”
He sighed. “I don’t have the answer to that. I can only feel, and I feel that we were brought together for a purpose. I don’t know yet what that is.”
“When will you know?”
“I think we’ll learn that at the same time.”
“I saw a picture of you this morning,” I said, watching his head come up as he looked at me. I could barely see him in the darkness, but I knew his expression. It was full of mischief.
“Did you?” he asked. “Was I handsome?”
“Actually, I saw two pictures. You were in a group photograph taken outside the mill, and then in a school picture in the newspaper.” I paused. “Your mother’s name was Eloise?”
He nodded sadly. “Yes, she died a couple of years before my accident.” His fists clenched at his sides. “Oh, I wish I could join her.” The heartfelt longing of the lonely wait was in his voice.
I went to him and took his hands. “You will. I know it.”
He turned my hands over and kissed them. “Is that how you knew about me, from the picture?”
“I saw your face in the group photo. I tried to talk myself out of it, but I knew it was you.”
“I’m sorry if that upset you.”
I pulled away from him. “Of course it upset me. Couldn’t you have prepared me for it?”
“You were prepared, Cory,” he answered quietly. “You knew there was something different about me. You sensed it from the beginning, the same way I sensed that you knew when I saw you tonight. You didn’t have to tell me; I felt the change.”
“That’s not the same thing,” I protested. “Can’t you even imagine what I thought? I thought I was losing my mind, that I had hallucinated you. People do that, you know, imagine the perfect person in their minds and then convince themselves that the hallucination exists.”
“Would I be the perfect person for you?” he asked.
“You know you would. That’s why you’re here.”
“How old would I be now?” he inquired, teasing.
I figured it out. “Seventy-seven.”
“Not quite perfect,” he said sadly.
“I see you as you were,” I replied.
He nodded. “I can’t grow older, as you do.”
“Like the people on the Grecian urn,” I said softly.
“What?”
“That poem. By Keats, or Shelley, somebody like that. We had it in English last year. The vase has a picture on it showing a girl being pursued by a young man. The poet talks about how they are frozen in time. He says to the boy, ‘For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.’”
“That’s beautiful, Cory.”
I blushed. “I didn’t write it.”
“No, but you remembered it, and applied it to me. That makes me very happy.”
I bit my lip. “What’s going to happen when I can’t see you any more? You’re going to leave me all alone.”
Tom put his arm around me and hugged me close. I marveled again how vital and alive he felt. Though everything I’d learned about him contradicted it, I could almost believe I could walk out of the mill with him and keep on going.
“Don’t think of it that way,” he said. “Think of this as a chance we never would have had if I’d gone on when I should have. We never would have known one another. Maybe that’s why I was left here until now. Things work out the way they’re supposed to, Cory. It’s not up to us to question why.”
“I can question it,” I said fiercely. “I can question why I was made to love someone I can never have.”
“Maybe it’s a sacrifice,” Tom answered softly. “Your pain in exchange for my freedom. You’d do that for me, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d do anything for you.” I put my arms around his waist. “But I’ll live on, and grow old without you.”
“That’s as it should be, Cory. You must have your life.”
“What kind of a life will it be without you?”
“I’ll be with you always. You’ll never be alone again.”
“You won’t be with me like this. You’ll be gone like my grandmother, only a memory.”
“Your grandmother lives on in your mind, doesn’t she? And you’ll see her again, as you will see me when your life is done.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“In time, you will.” He ran his hands down my back, and I shivered. “But let’s not waste the little time we have talking like this. Our meetings are precious; let’s enjoy them while we can.” He led me to the wall and we sat on the floor against it. I curled up in hi
s arms. “Now tell me all about your life.”
I did. I talked and talked until I was hoarse, while Tom held me and listened. It got later, and I knew I should leave, but I was afraid to go.
“I have to know when I’ll see you again,” I said.
“The next time you’re here,” he answered simply. “I always know when you’re here. But I can’t show myself when others are around.”
“Why not? I’d be the only one to see you.”
He hesitated. “They’d feel the cold.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Monday night. Alice will be here, but I’ll get rid of her.”
“All right.”
I glanced at my watch, making out the time by the luminous dial. It was late. I wanted to beat my mother home.
We stood together and Tom walked me to the door. I peered anxiously outside. I had to get out while no one was looking.
“You can go,” Tom said. “Nobody is there.”
“I’ll be back,” I whispered.
“I’ll be waiting.”
I slipped through the door and into the lot. Everything was quiet. I strolled casually out to the street and headed home.
As I walked I looked around at the passing cars and the occasional pedestrian, hunched and hurried against the cold. I wondered what these people would think if they knew what was happening to me. I felt privileged, special. The sense of fear was lessening and a dawning wonder was taking its place. I was one of the chosen now, one of the few who had seen past the curtain which hung between life and death. I knew the spirit survived the destruction of the body, and was comforted by that knowledge.
I was humming under my breath all the way.
I was back only a few minutes before my mother pulled into the drive. She came in carrying two bags of groceries. I helped her put the things away in the kitchen while Stella sniffed the packages. The dog found the jerky treats my mother had bought, and pawed the bag enthusiastically. I laughed and gave her some.
Mom looked over at me. “You must be feeling better.”
“I am.”
Season of Mists (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (Cupid's First Strike - Teen Love In The 80's) Page 8