Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  A tear blurred Lyta’s vision, she wiped it away. She blinked twice, but there was still something there: a sort of indistinct oval in mauve. Lyta smiled at the memory of one client’s objection to the interior paint colours in a house Lyta was showing her: ‘Mauve is like orange met purple and they had an incredibly dull baby.’ Lyta guessed that the light of the moon, perhaps coloured by some thin haze in the atmosphere, was reflecting off the lake and shining through her window against the wall. No, Lyta thought, the light isn’t on that wall, it appears to be in the middle of the room, away from the wall. Lyta was intrigued by the effect; she turned and looked at the window. A chill shimmied up her spine and through her neck. Heavy drapes obscured any exterior light—she swivelled her head back around—and between door and frame came yellow incandescent light from the hall, clearly delineated, reaching towards the headboard then up the wall. You’re tired, Lyta told herself. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Now she could feel it. It was not just a light, but an energy. Lyta’s eyes snapped open; the light was still there. It doesn’t shimmer, Lyta thought, it’s not vibrant enough to say it shimmers, but it . . . quivers. She wondered how she could be so placidly picking over word choice in her head and realised that she wasn’t scared of the unnatural glow. In fact, she felt drawn to it. The feeling was not a compulsion, but an invitation. Its pull was subtle, neither demanding, nor vertiginously menacing, it was simply . . . a possibility.

  Lyta pulled away the sheet covering her and sat up on the edge of the bed. The light remained steadfast and unresponsive to her movement. Lyta leaned a little closer and squinted at the shape of light. She saw no definition and wondered again if it was all an optical illusion. If it was a ghost—there, it’s out there, she thought—then shouldn’t it look like something, or do something? But still Lyta felt the draw of the thing, the faint charge in the air of her room. This was clearly something—some thing. Lyta stood and moved toward the spot where she thought the light to be hovering. Even now she expected the light to suddenly appear to shift position, proving to be a trick after all. But it stayed. It remained exactly fixed, if quivering slightly, even as Lyta came within arm’s reach, even as she stretched out her arm and moved her hand into the space the oddly coloured light seemed to occupy.

  Lyta had seen on a cable television show about paranormal investigations how the air in an ‘active’ room might feel thick, but the area occupied by the mauve light had exactly the opposite feel: the air felt thinner and lighter, as if gravity didn’t work as stringently in that small space. Lyta’s hand tingled, not all the way through, but just at the very surface of her skin as if some potency in the energy that created that dull glow were caressing her gently, comforting her. Slowly, waves of indeterminate rhythm pulsed down from the tips of her fingers to her knuckles and to her palm. A sudden flash of memory came to Lyta: riding in the front seat of her father’s car, late at night on the highway through West Virginia, on the way back to Ohio. There wasn’t another set of headlights visible in front of or behind them, but her father kept his speed down around fifty-five. He had to: deer lined the sides of the highway, down at the bottom of the short embankment that fell away from the road. Every hundred yards one or two or more would appear in the outer cone of the car’s headlights, silvered silhouettes turning their heads away from the glare. She remembered her father slamming on the breaks and her body straining forward against her seatbelt, then the hurried scamper of a startled doe across the road, disappearing in the dark on the other side.

  Lyta staggered backwards and collapsed against the side of her bed. She looked at her arm: it seemed perfectly normal, her hand responded to her command to open and close, but she couldn’t feel anything below her elbow. She touched her arm with the other hand and her sensation returned, but the two hands together felt the other as slightly unfamiliar, like two friends reuniting after years apart. Lyta looked up towards the light, but it was gone. She felt a pang of sadness at its disappearance, and then laughed at the sentiment. She asked herself why she should feel a sense of loss for a lucid dream and a bit of sleepwalking. You need your sleep, she told herself, ineffectually trying to dismiss her experience. She settled back into bed beneath the sheets with her head positioned to look at the space where the light had been. She made a mental note to pick up a pack of cigarettes at the first opportunity.

  As disoriented as they were by their sudden change in circumstance, and as alien as the lake house was to them after the previous day’s drive, Lyta’s children resolutely refused to get back in the car the next morning.

  ‘I don’t want to drive around anymore,’ David said, and Lyta refrained from pointing out that she was the one doing the driving.

  ‘Can’t we just watch a movie?’ was Missy’s obtuse compromise.

  ‘I need to go to the store to get some things for the house.’

  ‘When are we going to change the rooms around?’

  ‘Is Daddy coming?’ Missy apparently didn’t understand the long, tearful talks they had had as they packed and then repeated on the road yesterday.

  Lyta didn’t want to have to clear that up again. She also realised that she and her children were talking past each other, and there was nothing to do but leave them here and rely on their discomfiture in their new surroundings to keep them from getting in too much trouble.

  ‘You can stay but you have to watch a movie, and your sister gets to pick,’ she told David. When he pouted, she laid a hand on his shoulder. He looked up as though expecting some consolation, but Lyta instead commanded, ‘Do not go near the lake without me. In fact, just stay inside until I get back.’

  They had passed a medium-sized supermarket standing alone in a large lot off the main road along the lake as Lyta drove in the previous evening. Lyta estimated it to be twenty minutes away; she drove a little faster than she would have if the kids had been in the car, telling herself she needed to get back to them as quickly as she could. Her new cell phone buzzed on the passenger’s seat; Lyta picked it up and looked at the display: her divorce lawyer was calling. Presumably that meant that Jack actually had made it home and had been served. Lyta wondered if he’d contacted the lawyer to raise a stink about the children. She could see it going either way: he might be angry at the betrayal, and at the loss of his meal-ticket, or he might be so shamed by his own continual failure that he knew he shouldn’t be surprised at all. Lyta let the call go to voice-mail. It was too early in the morning for her to address that drama. She would need some coffee first.

  The supermarket was busier than Lyta anticipated until she remembered that it was mid-morning Saturday and that most of the working-week regulars were likely on their usual routine of restocking the pantry. Lyta felt harried and hurried by the crowd, as if she had to move along and clear the aisle for those who did know where to look for what they needed, and she made impulsive decisions that she was sure she’d later regret. When she thought her cart was full enough, Lyta decided to curtail any further investigation of the products available and rushed to a checkout lane only two-deep. She bought a pack of Marlboro lights, and when the cashier asked if she wanted to carry them or have her put them in the bag, Lyta shot out her open hand by way of reply. Lyta was also pleased to see a separate coffee stand in the corner near the exit, and she got a large black house blend. After she threw the groceries in the minivan, Lyta leaned against the trunk and sipped her coffee, taking deep drags on a cigarette with profound relief. She estimated she had another half an hour before whatever movie her kids were watching finished. Lyta figured she’d make it, easy. Two men passed by her as she smoked, talking and chuckling with each other. One of them, a sun-rubbed, lanky fellow with dirty-blonde hair and a gold moustache looked her way and gave a smile and a nod. Lyta mirrored the motion absently before tossing the smouldering cigarette butt to the ground and stamping it out.

  Missy looked with horror at the contents of the emptied shopping bags presented on the countertop as her mother put the milk and cheese into the refriger
ator.

  ‘Mom,’ she whimpered. ‘Mom, you forgot to get Lucky Charms.’

  Lyta’s heart sank. Missy went through phases where she latched onto one thing as the most important thing in the world, something that could not be lived without; currently, it was her favourite breakfast cereal.

  ‘How about I make us some pancakes?’

  The upgrade did not impress her daughter at all.

  ‘Mom.’

  Lyta sighed. ‘I’ll go back to the store later and get your Lucky Charms and you can have a big double helping later today, okay, sweetie? Why don’t you pour yourself some juice and I’ll make cinnamon-sugar toast for now.’

  Missy remained dubious. ‘A big double helping?’

  ‘I won’t even make you dinner.’

  Lyta’s cell phone danced on the countertop next to the groceries. She picked it up, looked at the screen and addressed her daughter. ‘Put these away for Mommy, okay?’

  The call was from Doris at the regional Happy Homes Realty office. Lyta had had her boss call Doris by way of introduction so that Lyta could transfer to the local office. Doris assured Lyta that they were happy to have her on board and welcomed her to the area with all the left-handed sincerity of someone who resented the additional competition for sales. That’s fine, thought Lyta, the attitude was nothing new to her: a sales team was always competitive, and in a prime region like this, she imagined it would take a redoubling of effort on her part. Still, if she couldn’t find a way to sell real estate around the Finger Lakes, she had no business being in the business she was in. Doris asked her to come by the office that afternoon; Lyta assented.

  When Lyta got off the phone, she saw her daughter with a can of soup in one hand and a box of macaroni in the other looking confusedly around the kitchen and wondering where, exactly, her mother expected her to put the groceries.

  The real estate office was an hour away; there was no getting around it this time: the kids had to come with Lyta. Thankfully, Missy was enthralled by the beauty of the scenery she’d been unable to appreciate in the dark the night before. David, on the other hand, was in full-on sulk mode. He stared at his iPod and shuffled through the song library; Lyta could hear some of the music even though the headphone nibs were sunk into David’s ears. She hated to think what he was doing to his hearing, but she allowed the indiscretion; she’d had to be uncharacteristically shrill to get him into the car in the first place, and she didn’t want to alienate him further.

  ‘What if there was a clown in the woods, running along with the car?’ asked Missy.

  ‘That would be something.’ Lyta looked in the rear view mirror and saw Missy rolling her head back and forth, her nose pressed against the window as the pivot point.

  ‘Mmm,’ Missy agreed. ‘What if somebody lived in the lake?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, not too close to the house, anyway. I’d be afraid to go swimming.’ Lyta winced at her carelessness.

  In one quick motion, Missy unbuckled her seatbelt and lunged forward, her head and shoulders emerging between the two front bucket seats. ‘We can go swimming?!’

  David perked his head up and pulled the headphone nibs out of his ears. ‘What’s that?’

  Lyta tried to regain control without instilling disappointment, the practiced method of dismissing expectation that every parent learns early.

  ‘We’ll see about that. You need more lessons and we haven’t even had a chance to look at the lake yet.’ God, you idiot, you did it again, she thought.

  ‘Can we look at the lake when we get back to the house?’ Missy was exuberant with excitement. David tried to appear uninterested, but the expectation showed in his eyes as well. Now they’d be impatient; they’d get crabby and argue with each other if her appointment with Doris took too long.

  ‘We have a lot to do today.’

  The realty office was situated in a small strip mall. Two doors down was a video store; Lyta saw the opportunity and told her children to pick out one video each and she’d sign up for a membership when she was done in the office. Lyta thought the store’s location advantageous if she were often to come to the office, and for the first time that day she felt something was going her way.

  The feeling didn’t last. Doris wanted to know everything about Lyta (looking for a weakness, Lyta thought), and the last thing Lyta wanted to do was offer any truthful details about her situation. She tried to dispel Doris’s inquiries with vagaries by way of reply, but it only seemed to pique Doris’s curiosity more. When it came Doris’s turn to talk about herself and the business and the ‘distinct complexities’ of the region, she demonstrated a verbosity Lyta felt she should have anticipated. As if on cue with her apprehension about how long had she been in the realty office and how long her kids had been by themselves, David and Missy entered, looking bored and frustrated. Lyta had to introduce her children to Doris, and suffer the embarrassment of them not wanting to be there and not wanting to meet some fat, middle-aged busy-body as well as the look of reproach from Doris for having left the children wandering about on their own. Doris demonstrated her talent for inflicting torture with practiced precision by suggesting that they all drive around together and tour a few of the nearby properties that Happy Homes was representing. At the end of their tedious expedition, Doris insisted upon buying David and Missy hot fudge sundaes before sending them and Lyta on their way back home.

  When they got back home, it was after dinner time. Lyta baked a tray of chicken fingers and steamed a package of frozen vegetables. The kids, of course, were not hungry. Lyta had no real desire to eat, either. She didn’t try too hard to get the kids to eat and soon found herself putting her own leftovers into the refrigerator. Missy was coming down off the sugar high that lasted the entire drive home and was growing irritable. She asked if they were going to go look at the lake ‘or what’. It was growing dark rapidly; the sun’s rays were already fighting through the trees on the hillside. Lyta suggested they wait for the morning and that maybe they should do something else. David asked if they could change the rooms around now. A wave of exhaustion washed over Lyta at the very suggestion. When his mother told them they’d do that tomorrow, too, David just shook his head. Lyta was disturbed; it was the most distant reaction she’d yet received from her son. Couldn’t they just do something more relaxing? David pointed out that she hadn’t gone into the video store to sign for a membership like she’d said, so they hadn’t got the movies they’d picked out. When Missy observed that at least she’d have her Lucky Charms for breakfast in the morning, Lyta yelled ‘Shit!’ so loud that she scared her children.

  Lyta stood outside the sliding glass door smoking a cigarette. The exterior light was not turned on; Lyta stared off into the dark. Listening to the gentle lapping of the lake on the shore, she was alarmed to hear Missy’s soft sobs drift out of the window overhead. She threw her cigarette down onto the deck and snubbed it out with her shoe. But as she turned to go back in the house, she heard another sound: David was saying something soothing to his sister. She sniffed and asked him something. He said something else to her and Missy stopped crying. Lyta was grateful; as much as she wanted to comfort her child, she felt disconnected from them and worried she’d only make matters worse. Moreover, she felt too anxious to be of any comfort to anybody. She knew this change would take its toll, but she was beginning to doubt her own strength, and that was one thing she knew she must not do. Her divorce lawyer had called again, so something else must have happened beyond Jack getting served with the papers. Maybe it would be okay; maybe he agreed to go forward amicably. Lyta covered her mouth to stifle a simultaneous laugh-and-sob combination—dammit, that would be just like him to do that, wouldn’t it? She couldn’t bring herself to check the messages; she’d been resolute from the moment she’d learned of her inheritance, but even now there were some things she just wasn’t ready for. As long as I can keep a lawyer between us, she thought, I’ll be
all right. She gave up on the day and, promising herself tomorrow would be better, she went up to bed.

  Not twenty minutes after she lay down, the light returned. It appeared unchanged to Lyta from what she’d seen the night before: still vaguely oval but essentially formless, still the same dull mauve glow, quivering gently down past the foot of her bed. Lyta got up without hesitation and moved to the light. She put both arms in and the tingle of lightness and disappearing moved through them. Lyta heard herself giggle at the thought, ‘Maybe it’s my ghost.’ Lyta stepped forward, into the light. She opened her mouth to express her feeling, but nothing came out: she had no reference for expressing the simultaneous wonder of anticipation and relief that moved through her, for the great dropping away of her exhaustion and worry. There was a sensation of flight without wind and a profound understanding of the undulations of the deep water in the lakebed and its connection to the flicker of tiny crests on the surface and the easy reaching out from the shallows to the shore. Lyta fell back on her bed slowly while the image of honey drizzled over cotton balls spun through her mind and sent her off to dream.