Seemed to echo far away, upstairs.
Ave’s heart stutter-skipped. Could an echo carry that far in here? All the way up to the attic? “Hello?” she called, after the sound ricocheted off the dark cathedral ceiling.
No answer. No more sound.
She should go back outside to the Porsche 914. One of its two trunks held Sheridan’s battery-operated sound system and his favourite CDs. She should play Sheridan’s music so she wouldn’t have to listen to sounds she couldn’t explain while she prepared to see him again.
Ave left her cleaning bucket to wedge open the heavy front door, even after she returned and set up Sheridan’s music system.
Blues would be good for the invocation. Soon, Bobby Blue Bland crooned, “I’ll take care of you. Please let me take care of you.”
Now for a romantic dinner.
Ave retrieved a candelabrum from the mantelpiece in the parlour and carried it to the dining hall. Had she and Sheridan eaten at this very dining table before they went in search of the ghostly ball? Was this the same candelabrum Sheridan had carried upstairs? Ave couldn’t be sure. That one honeymoon night they had spent at the townhouse was hazy, entangled as it was in her mind with so much fear and desire.
Ave fitted new white candles into the holders and debated lighting them this early. Decided against it.
She went, instead, to the kitchen, and washed and dried a collection of fragile plates from the china cabinet. She set out a circle of brie, a baguette of fresh bread, some buttery mascarpone cheese, and clusters of willow-green and violet-black grapes. She covered all these under upturned serving bowls on the dining table, in case the vermin crept back in while she was away, up in the attic.
Last, she set out the very same Hungarian cut crystal goblets that they had toasted their love with out on the balcony. “To us,” Sheridan had said.
But she placed a bottle of clear water on the table tonight. Ave had not dared drink anything stronger than coffee since Sheridan’s death. Depression always threatened.
“There.” Ave stood back from the table, hands on hips, to survey her spread. Perfect.
And a black line as thin as a hair caught in the viewer’s eye moved just out of Ave’s line of vision.
At first she thought it was a hair. She wasted precious seconds fluttering an eyelid and tugging at her eyelashes.
Wait. No pain.
There was nothing in her eye.
Ave jerked toward the doorway between the dining hall and kitchen. Something slipped away just ahead, as she turned.
“Sheridan?”
The slamming in Ave’s heart took forever to calm. She had to reason with herself that Sheridan wouldn’t come to her like this, slithering around at the edges of things. This was her imagination. She had always been frightened by the attic as Mardi Gras midnight drew near.
And a memory surfaced like a swimmer breaking through ice to gasp for air.
Ave’s grandmother, bathed and scented with lavender, wisteria, and mimosa oils from the local Voudun shops, draped in delicate white lace, her fine golden fingers sparkling with her wedding ring’s diamonds and sapphires as they ran along the keys of the baby grand piano, while she waited for that blackest hour.
The candelabrum’s flames flickered roseate spatters against the darkness all around and drew a courageous little Ave down the curved stairway to sit at her grandmother’s side. “Why are you still up, Grandmamá Marie? Why are you so dressed up?”
Ave had looked up into her grandmother’s face. The fullness of her grandmother’s youth had been carved by passing decades into contours of tenderness and grace lovelier than any of her young wedding photos.
“I want to be with him again, little one.”
“Be with who, Grandmamá Marie?”
Grandmamá Marie had raised her beautiful face to gaze up the pitch-black stairway toward the attic.
Ave turned there now as Bobby Blue Bland’s song died away. In the sudden hush, a footstep sounded high away at the top of the stairs.
And brought a memory of Ave’s aunts struggling to restrain the one of them who fought in their arms to go up the stairs at Mardi Gras midnight, dressed in red satin, her hair straightened into undulating waves of perfumed blackness.
“No!” Ave screamed before she collected herself.
The footsteps stopped. Or had never sounded. Ave couldn’t be sure. She breathed deeply. Swallowed the sudden panic.
Grandmamá Marie’s bath. Of course. A scented hot bath would ease Ave’s mind and put her in the mood for a possible encounter with Sheridan. And wasn’t she in luck? Water and gas were both turned back on.
It was harder to mop the upstairs bathroom floor and scrub the tub in what was now the pitch darkness of nighttime. Ave was very aware that the front door downstairs was still open to the street, to wanderers, revelers and burglars. But she wasn’t yet able to bring herself to close it again. She kept remembering the sound of that distant latch closing way upstairs in the attic.
Ave kept her cell phone off to save its power, but placed it carefully on the bathroom floor between the bathtub and the lit candelabrum, in case she needed to call for help. Then she stepped into the old claw-footed tub.
The warmth eased her legs and back. She moaned with pleasure and relief.
And came awake, thinking it was silly to be afraid to close the front door. Rats and roaches were nowhere near as dangerous as rapists, thieves and drunks. She would go close that door right now and then come back and finish her bath.
Ave clutched the edges of the tub and rose. Water sluiced down her sinewy café-au-lait thighs. Sheridan used to kiss her thighs like sipping coffee, the cream of the sunless season whipped deep into her skin’s end-of-summer mocha.
Dizzied by sleep and reverie, Ave stepped onto the newly cleaned floor and gathered up the sheet she had taken for a towel during her foray into a linen closet. She rubbed briskly, wrapped the sheet over damp skin and tucked the end between her breasts.
Paused. Listened. Called sharply, “Who was that?”
Someone had just whispered her name. Ave was sure of it this time. She leaned forward and shoved the bathroom door closed. Latched the flimsy hook.
She fumbled for her cell phone. Snatched it up and powered it on with shaking hands. Waited an eternity for it to beep into life so she could call 911.
And then thought, A burglar wouldn’t know my name. That has to be Sheridan.
“Sheridan? Sheridan, is that you, honey?”
Ave shut the phone just as she glimpsed the time. Nearly midnight. Already? Finally.
She slid the cell phone back to the floor and reached for the candelabrum, instead. How long did I sleep in the tub?
Went to the bathroom door and leaned her cheek against it, listening.
Nothing moved. No one spoke again.
“Sheridan?”
Ave gathered up her nerve. She had survived nine months when she would rather have been dead. She had driven halfway across the continent to meet with Sheridan one last time. She must not falter now, hiding from him in the bathroom, cowering in fear of the unknown.
Ave forced her free hand up to the latch. Flipped the hook free. Lowered her hand to the knob.
Twisted it open. Pulled the door wide.
She raised her candelabrum and peered into the darkness. “Sheridan?”
How she hated the pleading in her voice! She tried again, more forcefully this time. “Sheridan, I’m here. It’s Ave.”
Ave stepped out into the hallway and looked up toward the closed square of the attic door, still half a flight of stairs higher.
He would be in the attic.
Ave had not meant it to be like this. She had meant to be bathed, perfumed, dressed in his favorite colours, with her hair cascading from a pretty clip atop her head.
But what if he was up there already, waiting for her? How alone he must feel, suspended between the world of the dead and the world where they had shared their lives together!
Ave closed her eyes and thought of the warmth within Sheridan’s arms. The hard strength when he pressed her against his chest and abdomen. Their passion.
She opened her eyes and forced herself to move up the last curve of the stairway. Of course it was Sheridan up there in the attic, waiting for her. What on earth else could it be?
Another flash of memory. One aunt’s sharp hand across the cheek of the aunt who struggled and wept.
“You don’t even know what’s up there.”
“But Mamá always went up there every Mardi Gras.”
“And you don’t know what she went up there to meet.”
“Papá. Daddy was up there for her.”
“You don’t know that. She never said it was Papá.”
“But who else could it be?” the aunt in red satin had asked desperately, just as they all heard the tinny thin music of the ghostly ball begin.
Ave paused beneath the attic door cut into the third floor ceiling. What had the aunt in red satin done, in the end?
But what did all that matter? What else besides the spirit of the man a woman loved could possibly be in that attic?
Had her grandmother ever explained? To any of them? No. She was sure Grandmamá Marie had never said anything beyond, “I want to be with him again.”
But Ave hadn’t been there to hear the last words when her grandmother died. Couldn’t even remember her grandmother’s waning years. Couldn’t begin to guess at the “he” that Grandmamá Marie meant.
In fact, it seemed to Ave that she could remember nothing worthwhile, figure out nothing, just now when she needed so badly to remember and figure out everything.
And finally, for the first time ever, she wondered if the culprit whose crime cost Sheridan his life had survived that double shooting. How ironic, if he had. How cruel of fate.
In a flash, un-tethered memory – a hissed warning to the aunt who struggled : “Carnival is the night when spirit becomes flesh, you fool. Anything could be up there.”
This had stopped the aunt in red. And now it stopped Ave.
She faltered. Struggled with indecision.
Became impatient with herself. Really, what did all these memories matter? Surely, nothing at all! She knew with all the power of her love and devotion that Sheridan would come back for her, no matter what, just as she had held on, survived the pain, and come all this way just to be with him.
And anyway, if something else was in the attic when Sheridan came for her, he would protect her from it.
Of course Sheridan would protect her.
By now, Ave had arrived beneath the attic door. Bolstered by the thought of Sheridan’s protection, she reached for the rope that would open the door and drop down its collapsible ladder.
They would be together again.
Only as she gripped the rope did Ave wonder if Sheridan might not yet have arrived in the attic. Who or what else might know her name?
Her hand on the rope lay still.
Ave thought of the limbo of nothingness Sheridan had to have come across to return to her. She shivered, damp from her bath in the humid chill.
And maybe just a little frightened?
Ave realized she was waiting for Sheridan to call her name again. This close, she would recognize his voice. Or know if it was something else that called her.
But nothing called.
The cell phone was back in the bathroom. Maybe she should go get it and call her aunts in San Francisco, to ask if one of them had ever made it into the attic at Mardi Gras midnight. Maybe they would tell her what waited there, once they discovered it was too late to stop her from coming to the townhouse.
Ave let go of the rope.
And the music of the ghostly ball started.
So faintly at first that she wasn’t sure she heard anything, only that pleasure and sweetness had stolen into her mind and eased away her worry, the music seeped through gaps between the attic door and the ceiling just above her head, and swelled into fullness as she listened.
“How lovely.” Ave could not recognize a tune. Only the tinkling harmony of archaic instruments. A mandolin? A harpsichord? Bells?
The ghostly ball had begun! Was Sheridan just a few feet above her, even as she hesitated? Would she soon be in his arms in the attic?
Excited now, Ave reached for the rope, pulled it, and opened the attic door.
Blackness and melody surged down the descending doorway and engulfed her. The flames of the candelabrum guttered out as the music drew Ave up the ladder.
Topping the last rung, Ave climbed forward onto the attic floor, into the blindness.
Far below, she heard the front door slam.
Ave swung the useless candelabrum around. “Sheridan?” The attic door creaked shut behind her bare feet. “Sheridan, it’s Ave.” Her voice shook. “We can be together again.”
Silence.
Why would Sheridan frighten her so? She would ask him as soon as she could unclamp her throat and speak again.
And then, so faintly she wasn’t sure at first that she felt it, a touch on her ankle.
Lighter than a wisp of dust. Weightless as a gossamer insect’s wing floating upward on a draft, a trickle of feeling drifted against gravity along her leg.
She wasn’t sure she felt anything until it spread behind both knees and clambered up to seize the insides of her thighs.
She screamed and hurtled the candelabrum. Heard it crash as she tried to backpedal toward the ladder, out of the attic.
Found she couldn’t move.
What had happened to the music? When had it stopped?
And what was this that roiled just in front of her? Darkness boiled thicker than the darkness it drew from.
She whimpered, mute with terror and hope. And sudden, deep, humiliated pleasure. Her trapped legs spasmed.
“Ssshhh.” Oddly, the sibilant shush quieted her as the pitch mass surged against her trembling, welcoming limbs.
It eased her to the floor, pierced her body with white-hot chill and splintered her mind with light. Pleasure fled before awe. She succumbed in amazement, unsure that this thing that embraced her could ever have been Sheridan, gathering ethereal fragments of himself to swarm back to her from his oblivion.
•••
Alexis Brooks de Vita has published literary theory in Mythatypes, an historical murder mystery titled The 1855 Murder Case of Missouri versus Celia, a translation of Dante’s Comedy, beginning with Dante’s Inferno: A Wanderer in Hell, and has contracted with Double Dragon/Blood Moon to publish a series of Atlantic Slave Trade dark fantasy titles, beginning with The Books of Joy: Burning Streams and Blood of Angels. She can be found at: alexisbrooksdevita.com.
Objects & Mementos
“As we hastened from that abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in St. John’s pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So, too, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound in the background.”
“The Hound”, H.P.Lovecraft
The Ba-Curse
By Ann K. Schwader
They asked him if he feared the mummy’s curse,
That blameless maid he’d stolen from her tomb.
The excavator laughed; he’d heard far worse
In every local souk. As twilight’s gloom
Suffused the valley like the Nile at flood,
He lit a lamp & tied his tent-flaps tight,
Then, with a flourish fit to freeze the blood,
He poured a dram & bade his prize goodnight.
They never knew what savaged him, although
He shrieked it very clearly as he died: “Ba! Ba!”
“Ba! Ba!” A madman’s babble ... Even so,
His men won’t speak of things they saw inside,
For neither time nor whiskey can erase
/> That black-winged nightmare with a maiden’s face.
•••
Ann K. Schwader is the author of five speculative poetry collections: Werewoman, The Worms Remember, Architectures of Night, In the Yaddith Time, and Wild Hunt of the Stars (Sam’s Dot Publishing, 2010). Twisted in Dream, a comprehensive collection of her weird verse, to be edited by S.T. Joshi, is forthcoming from Hippocampus Press. Ann lives and writes in Colorado, USA. For more about her work, visit her Web site, http://home.earthlink.net/~schwader/ or read her LiveJournal, Yaddith Times: http://ankh_hpl.livejournal.com/.
Hitomi
By Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas
“The pupils dilate and shine with the thousand facets of a kaleidoscope with an abyss in the centre.”
— Clemente Palma
•
The fire that floats in the hallways purrs, whispers my name.
•
I was in the last stages of writing a thesis about Japanese literature. The classes were over and the summer, which one could foresee would be severe, reminded me of the imminence of the deadline.
I read, as part of my investigation, an odd little novelette titled ‘Hitomi’, written by a woman called “Tsukino” during the first years of the Edo period in Japan. It was a complex text with a plot revolving around insomnia; the characters seemed to be one alone, repeated infinitely, who, with a different costume, moved from house to house to escape the impossibility of sleep. I, insomniac by election, did not wish to escape, but had no option.
Like the infinite faces created by Tsukino, the rigour of summer forced me to find a new place to live: a return to my parents’ home was not an option. Besides, Mexico City had something that demanded I stay, search for a roof atop the ancient lake, traverse its subterranean veins inside suffocating, sweaty trains; the same “something” which took me that day to Donceles Street.
Candle in the Attic Window Page 16