by Nhys Glover
There had always been a steady flow of ghosts in the manor when I was a kid. Many were past relatives who were watching over the family. I remember one particularly anxious spirit, my great-grandmother Noni, who was always trying to impress upon me the need to stay pure. Because she came from a different generation that associated sex with purity, I easily dismissed her misguided morality. It wasn’t until later that I understood she was talking about something more than virginity. But by then it was too late.
Sometimes, what I got from a ghost wasn’t enough to truly understand what they wanted from me. I might get words or images or emotions flooding me, and it became my job to sort them out and make sense of them. But without a suitable reference point that could be a hit and miss activity.
I once watched a TV medium at work. His approach was not that different to mine, and he explained it much as I did. It was not a science, by any stretch of the imagination, and because it couldn’t be properly tabulated, it was dismissed by the bulk of the population. Only the gullible and those with gifts of their own took people like me seriously.
So, I felt the cold chill that warned me a ghost was present. But looking with my eyes wouldn’t help me determine who it was and what they wanted. And the more I focused on Hilary and what she was saying, the harder it was to focus on the ghost who had joined us.
Something about my distraction finally got through to my daughter. “You feel someone?”
I nodded. “Shh… let me… Oh, just as I thought. Mom. She hasn’t moved on.” I gave a little chuckle. “She’s kicking herself for being so careless with her life. A new idea had come to her as she walked, and she was thinking about it when she stepped out onto the crossing. She didn’t even realize what had happened until she looked down and saw her body on the ground and people rushing in to help.”
“You saw it? Saw her die?” Hilary asked, even though she knew how my gift worked.
“Like I imagined it happening, to be honest. If I didn’t already know for sure I feel ghosts, I’d write off what I just saw as me imagining what I was told by the police.”
“Hi grandma!” Hilary said into the silent, cold room.
A wave of warmth and affection washed over me, and I knew it was meant for Hilary. Pushing down my momentary niggle of disappointment that she hadn’t reacted to me that way, I passed on the news.
“She’s really happy to see you, Hil. And the baby. She’s over the moon about the baby,” I said, correctly interpreting the second layer of affection.
“Yeah, she told me that on the phone. She said I should name Beep after her.”
I felt Mom’s confusion and laughed. “Beep is the name they’re using for the baby. It comes from Hil’s favorite fictional series.”
I got the flash of a movie—no, a docudrama—Mom had been taken with. It was called What the Bleep? The bleep replacing a swear-word.
“Beep not bleep, Mom.”
“Black-eyed pea, Grandma. I told you that was what it stood for, because in the book that was how big the baby was when the heroine knew she was there. She was like me. She knew almost immediately that she was pregnant and could communicate with her daughter. Like I can.”
“You played down how bad it was,” I cut to the chase, annoyed with my mother for some reason. “The land. How far it had spread.”
Did I want her to make me feel worse? She was shielding me, I knew that. And yet I was miffed to have been blindsided by what I found.
I felt her acknowledge my words, but without guilt. I got that it was time for me to uncover the taint and fix it. No more excuses, no more avoidance. It was my responsibility now.
All of which I already knew. But it wasn’t so easy. How did one go about bringing life back to the land? How did I remove the taint from my soul? It felt like the darkness grew more intense the more years that passed. It was illogical, and I was furious with myself for letting a minor experience from my long-ago past affect me so deeply. How many girls got shafted at least once in their youth? Unless you treated relationships like a guy, sooner or later you’d get your feelings hurt.
“If you have any insights from the other side, please feel free to share them!” I snapped at my incorporeal mother.
Instant antagonism came back at me. This would get us nowhere. Just as it never had during our phone calls and Skype sessions. What was there to say, after all? She was as in the dark as I was.
“Anyway, it’s your funeral tomorrow. Any last minute requests?” Hilary interrupted the seemingly one-sided conversation.
“No,” I answered for Mom. “It doesn’t matter to her. The only thing she cares about is the land....Oh, and you and the bub. Sorry.”
Hilary frowned. “And you. She cares about you, too.”
I shrugged, brushing off my mother’s lack of maternal affection for her prodigal child. I could at least satisfy myself that she hadn’t included Lucy or Casey in her list.
Lucy wouldn’t be coming for the funeral. Wayne wasn’t able to get away, and her youngest grandson had come down with the flu. For safety sake, she decided not to make the trek. It was an excuse. I knew it as much as she knew it. And as much as Mom would know it, if she attended her own funeral.
And Casey was in France. So she wouldn’t be coming home for her mom’s funeral.
It was going to be a very meager show tomorrow. Which was unfair. Mom deserved better.
In the next instant, the room warmed up again. My mother had gone. At least for the present.
“Right, Grandma?” Hilary said, looking around the room, much as I usually did. “You care about Mom, too.”
“She’s gone, sweetheart. She’ll probably pop in again. There’s nothing except for the land she feels she's left unfinished. Until that’s sorted she’ll stay.”
“More motivation to get it sorted then,” Hilary said, her tone snippy.
I grinned smugly. “You missed your calling. You should have been a cheerleader.”
“Ew. Those stuck-up bitches. No way. And dating jocks was never on my to-do list.”
“Your soldier husband was a jock,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know him then. And the army had knocked some sense into him by the time I met him. Whereas the knocks he got on a football field were never going to lead to sense. Just brain damage.”
I laughed. “Come on. We’ve a lot more of the house to see. I’ll show you my old room. I bet Mom left it just as it was twenty-five years ago. And Casey’s, too. Wait until you see hers. It was always too sparkly to sleep in. Seriously, a unicorn could have farted rainbows in there and they would have gone unnoticed amidst the rest of the bling.”
Hilary groaned. “I can’t imagine Aunt Casey like that. She’s so… pragmatic. I think that’s the word I’m looking for. Does she ever laugh? I mean, when she was a kid, did she laugh? Or has the world just got so much more terrible since she grew up?”
I shrugged, trying to remember my younger sister as a girl. There was only two years between us, but we’d never been close. Yet I did have memories of her laughing and being silly as a kid. So she wasn’t always the dour one. Our contact since I left home had been minimal. I’d made an effort to keep up the relationship for the kids. They deserved to know their cousins. But as they lived on the other side of the world and Casey was a lot like Lucy when it came to her heritage, I couldn’t be sure what she was really like anymore.
“I guess when your sister was as much of a screw up as I was, she felt she had to step up and be the sensible, reliable one. And she had to stay here to watch the plague spreading a little further every day. It was four years before she could escape to college. She did come home for vacations and holidays though, unlike me.”
We had returned to the foyer and were starting the climb up the graceful sweep of the staircase to the second floor. Even as a kid I felt like a princess when I walked down the stairs. All I would have needed was a puffy, floor-length dress and a tiara to make the feeling complete.
“I hope
Michael gets here in time. He should have begged off that trip to California. I mean, it’s his grandmother, too. Why is it boys aren’t expected to maintain the same level of societal expectations? I’m having a baby, but you don’t see me begging off, do you? I’m here for you, Mom.”
Hilary had always been competitive with her brother, probably because of Paul’s blatant favoritism. But sometimes it amazed me just how deep her resentment went.
“He didn’t know her very well. And you know that our side of the family is a girl’s club. Because few guys have magic, they often feel like second-class citizens. Is there any wonder so many of us girls end up as single parents?”
“Clay isn’t like that. He thinks it's cool what I can do with babies. I’m the Baby Whisperer in his eyes!” Her tone took on the lovely lilt she often got when talking about her husband.
If ever there was a case of soulmates, then Hilary and Clay were them. It had been love at first sight, and Clay had put a ring on her finger before he returned to duty. Their little family was going to be a very happy one, once Clay came home for good.
When I got to my old room, which was still just as I’d left it twenty-five years ago, I felt yet again the dream-like quality of the years that had passed since I left. It was only when I looked passed the boy band posters to the view from the window, and saw brown where there should have been green, that I realized time had moved on. I was no shy teen, and Channing Manor was no longer a fairytale castle in a magical kingdom all of its own.
“Ew, Mom. Britney Spears? Seriously?” Hilary remarked, seeing my one poster of my girl idol amongst all the boy bands.
I grimaced. “People used to say I looked a lot like Britney. I used to rock Karaoke night dressed in school uniform and pigtails.”
Hilary paused to look at me. I tried to imagine what I looked like to her. My figure was still trim, considering I’d had two kids. My girls might be a little less buoyant than they once were, but in a good pushup bra they still filled a C cup nicely. I wore my pale blonde curls short, more for convenience than fashion. For some reason, even as a trophy wife, I’d never had much time for the endless hours at salon, gym, and spa others of my kind indulged in. Maybe if I had, Paul would have remained interested in me.
Who was I kidding? That man didn’t have a faithful bone in his body. I went into the relationship knowing it, and nothing he ever did changed my mind about him. That’s why the breakdown of my marriage was not a devastating experience. Maybe when the kids were younger and I was trying harder… but except for odd moments when my ego was fragile, knowing my husband was off with some other woman, I really didn’t care.
Not like Jake.
Gods, why couldn’t I stop thinking about him? He was probably bald, fat and looking every one of his forty-three years by now, while I still looked to be in my thirties.
I did, didn’t I?
What had become of him? Mom had never mentioned Jake Killian, and I’d never asked. But I’d hoped he’d suffered a groin injury that ended his football career, forcing him to end up selling used cars in Chicago.
Chicago? Why Chicago? I had no idea. It was about as Midwestern bland as I could come up with. Yet my home in Austin, Texas, hardly rated as anything special. Unless you like cowboys. Which I don’t. And spicy food. Which I do.
“Are you going to be able to do this, Mom?” Hilary asked, staring out the window, her voice small and child-like.
It was how she sounded when a scary nightmare woke her, and she wanted assurances that she was safe.
But I couldn’t give her those assurances now. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to right this terrible wrong. I didn’t have the first clue where to start.
“I’ll have to do my best. If I can work out what I did wrong I might be able to fix it. But it’s a mystery to me. I was the wronged party. I didn’t do anything terrible to warrant this.” I used my hand to indicate the scene beyond the window. “It wasn’t my fault!”
Hilary crossed the distance between us and hugged me hard. “Nobody says you were at fault. You were the innocent one who was tainted, just as the land was innocent. I think your first step is to acknowledge that truth. You were sixteen years old and drunk. An older boy you had a crush on took advantage of you that night. It wasn’t your fault. He’s the bad guy in this story, not you. I hope he’s still in town. You have no idea how good it’d feel to give him a piece of my mind. Or sic Clay onto him when he gets home. I do love having muscle on my side.”
She smiled smugly. Though the idea of her accosting Jake horrified me, the way she’d put on the gangsta rap demeanor to make her threat was highly amusing. My daughter could always make me laugh.
3
Grand Haven had once been a bustling logging community, but in the last twenty-five years it had lost its bustle and become tired. The storefronts around the town square were old and rundown. A couple were even unoccupied, if not boarded up. The small rotunda in the middle of the grassy center was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and some brightly colored flowers. That was the way it had looked in my youth.
It felt like the whole town had given up.
“Isn’t it tourist season?” Hilary asked as we drove slowly down Main Street heading for the funeral parlor on the far side of town.
I was shocked by the state of my hometown as much as I’d been shocked by how far the blight had spread from the manor. The few people I saw wandering along the sidewalks looked a little lost and aimless. Where had the spirit of the community gone?
These thoughts flitted through my mind before being replaced by the pressing concern of the day. In half an hour my mother’s body would be cremated and I would be expected to greet her friends as though they were my own. Would I even remember any of their names? I could barely remember my own friends’ names. My teachers, except for the rare exception, had slipped into the void of forgetfulness. Why couldn’t I remember?
“Yes. I guess the economy has failed around here, too. I think they’re still logging, of course. While there are still trees on the mountains there’ll be logging. But for the rest… I don’t know. Maybe Mom should have brought her plant to town, to help create jobs.”
“I imagine she wanted to keep her products as far away from what’s happening at Channing as she could. You said she’s had bad press at different times over the last twenty years. I wouldn’t want to buy natural products that came from around here. Even though the tests all show there are no toxins or chemicals in the soil, you can’t get past the evidence right in front of your eyes.”
I hated when Hilary got all adult and knowledgeable. My shoulders slumped a little more.
We reached the edge of town and pulled into the parking lot for the crematorium. I’d made most of the arrangements over the phone with the funeral director. As Mom had left a fairly detailed description of what she wanted, all I had to do was okay it and turn up at the right time. And carry plenty of tissues in my bag, just in case I suddenly had a fit of tears.
I’d barely seen my mother in a quarter century. I barely knew her. Why would I cry?
Yet I felt stinging behind my eyelids, unaccountable, insidious, illogical stinging.
As I stepped out into the glorious morning, bright blue sky overhead, I noted a rental car not far away. Frowning, I headed in its direction. As Hilary and I approached, the last person I expected to see climbed out of the car to greet me.
“Hey, honey. How’re you doing?” Dad asked me, as if I’d only seen him the week before, instead of ten years ago.
“I didn’t expect you to come. Not even Lucy’s coming. Or Casey. You know, your other daughter? The one who lives in France with her ambassador husband? She couldn’t get away on short notice. Maybe not even Michael will get here.”
The well of grief rose up to overwhelm me. Suddenly, the fact that so few members of Mom’s family would be at her funeral was too painful to bear. Surely, they could have made the effort. Mom had been a good mother and a passable sister. She de
served to be remembered. She deserved better than to have her life celebrated by an ex who left her thirty-five years ago. An ex who had another wife and kids.
Dad crossed the distance to wrap his arms around me. I allowed the contact, but stiffly, as if he were some distant relative whose name I couldn’t remember. There would be a lot of this mock affection going on in the next hour or two. Somehow, it only made things worse.
“I loved your Mom, Cleo. I didn’t leave because I stopped loving her. Or you, for that matter. I just couldn’t handle… you know,” he said into my hair.
Both my parents had been fair-haired and blue-eyed. Their Viking ancestry had been apparent in their long, slim bodies and pale coloring. When Casey and I were little we both had white-blonde hair as soft and flyaway as goose down. Our similar looks were the only thing we’d ever had in common.
“Magic. You couldn’t handle things that went bump in the night,” I finished for him, trying to draw away from the far-too-comfortable shelter of his arms.
It felt like another lifetime that I’d felt those arms around me. It hurt to realize just how long it had been. Who left their young children just because they were afraid of what they couldn’t see? How cowardly was that? A dad was supposed to be the protector. That was his job! He wasn’t supposed to run away at the first sign of spooky stuff.
I felt him nod, and then his sadness. “I was a Muggle to the core, I’m afraid.”
Hilary grunted in annoyance. “You’re comparing our family to Harry Potter? Wait, give me a minute. I’m sure I have a broomstick and wand around here somewhere…”
This was her grandfather she barely knew, but she was ready to go to battle for me. What an amazing girl I’d been gifted with.
“Retract your claws, kitten. I meant nothing bad by it. Just my attempt at humor. Trying to make light of a difficult situation.”
“Are you supposed to make light of a death to a loved one at a funeral?” Hilary snapped, gently drawing me out of my father’s big arms.