Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  ‘I don’t know her,’ she said.

  ‘Hrmh. Well. I suppose that fits with your experience, then,’ the mortician said.

  The gaunt, pale man stood stock still with his hands behind his back. Properly respectful and taciturn, he was younger and more handsome than Samantha might have expected, but otherwise, ‘straight out of central casting.’

  He said, ‘I expect it would be something more of a surprise if you did know her.’

  Samantha sighed heavily. How many times is that today, I wonder? She let drift, ‘Why did I come here?’

  The funeral director cleared his throat. ‘It doesn’t matter, really.’

  Samantha’s gaze appeared to ruffle the man.

  ‘What I mean is—hrmh-hem!—we don’t need you to identify the body for—for the law. We already know her identity. And, well, really…I already have my instructions, so you needn’t worry about the funeral. You know, the service or, the…the expenses.’

  ‘I wasn’t at all worried about either.’

  ‘Ah, yes. It’s all been pre-arranged,’ the mortician offered helpfully. ‘She planned every detail. Look.’ He moved to the wall and unzipped a long garment bag. ‘Even the dress.’

  The dress was a vintage tea dress, shiny lime in colour with alternating white and pink quarter-sized polka dots. Samantha couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to wear it, let alone be buried in it. Though Samantha had early in her sojourn doubted the woman’s sanity, upon looking at the dress she wondered for the first time if her presence here wasn’t the product of a bizarre sense of whimsy.

  ‘But that’s not all. It doesn’t matter about everything.’

  Samantha expressed her lack of understanding.

  ‘Don’t you see? You are her legal heir. Oh—as is my understanding from—from what I was told. I suppose I shouldn’t say for sure. I’m sure there are papers to sign. There always are. But I do have the keys to her house, and they are yours to have. If you wanted to… to…’

  Samantha looked back at the body. She fought the compulsion to pull the sheet up over the woman’s face; she didn’t know if it came from compassion or squeamishness. ‘Yes, I do want to,’ she decided. ‘So, if you would, please give me the keys and directions.’ She stepped away from the gurney and approached the mortician. ‘And if you could also tell me where I can find a motel, because there’s no way in hell I’m going into a dead stranger’s house at night.’

  A mile outside of town Main Street lost its name to become once again a numbered state route. It then ambled up a long hill and around a curve to a plateau where it cloverleafed in an interchange with the interstate highway. Slightly west of the interchange sat two motels, two chain family restaurants famous for their breakfast menus, and two gas stations, one set of each on either side of the road. Samantha chose the side with fewer cars in the motel parking lot. She noted that Meadowlark could not be seen from the small cluster of buildings; travellers on the interstate could pass by ignorant of its existence.

  The room was ‘comfy’. A flower watercolour print hung above a queen bed with maroon-and-gold-patterned comforter. A slight mustiness indicated mild disuse, which Samantha preferred over suspiciously harsh chemical cleansers and perfumed aerosols. Like every motel she’d been in, the air conditioner was set too high and Samantha left it that way. The machine rattled with an indistinct murmur more mantra than complaint. The flat-screen television was hung high and out from the wall, obviously utilizing the same mount leftover from the tube television that used to occupy the space. The available channels were sufficiently distracting for the disinterested.

  Samantha turned off the TV at midnight. She waited for sleep complacently, having accepted the foolishness of her endeavour and having accepted that she was not going to go straight home the next day. She closed her eyes and let the voice of the air conditioner guide her into darkness.

  Samantha had not seen the woman’s house yet, but she knew the house was hers. The sun filtered through a haze of golden pollen suspended like a delicate lattice of gossamer in the air. She stood in an entry hall on dark hardwood. The exterior door behind her was closed. To her right was an opening to the living room. Beyond that, a stairway led to the second floor. Past both, straight in front of her, was a painted white door with no handle. There was what Samantha took to be a child facing away from her, playing between the rungs of the banister at the bottom of the carpeted staircase. The child was wrong, modelled from simple shapes: two straight, squat columns for legs and a body distinctly egg-shaped. Samantha wondered briefly if he was wearing a costume before she understood his presence was incidental and not at all germane to her dream. She passed on through the entryway into the living room.

  Mismatched furniture surrounded an enormous corded rug. The television faced a cream recliner. A couch and loveseat hid under blankets without impression. Well-thumbed magazines lay in a frozen cascade on a coffee table. Samantha heard a voice, or something like a voice, indistinct in origin. A set of shelves and a china cabinet sat behind the furniture, illuminated by sun through a bay window. She moved towards a small table beside the china cabinet. She saw the table was actually a shallowly-angled display with photographs and other mementos under glass. The shimmer in the room made it impossible for Samantha to see them clearly, and the colours ran like the glint of diffraction in oil.

  She went back through the hall to the staircase. The child was gone now (as he should be). The carpeting on the stairs, orange with dark specks and gold flecks, was worn and dulled down the middle. She climbed the stairs that sagged beneath her weight but did not creak. At the top of the stairs she looked back down a hallway. Three doors, one beside her, one halfway down the hall, and one opposite, were all closed. The voice became louder and more distinct, but it came from downstairs, as to warn her away from the second floor, or to let her know she was looking in the wrong place.

  She went back down the stairs and turned away from the living room. She pushed open the swinging, thin door with peeling white paint and passed through into a tiled kitchen. The voice was a voice now, clear, distinct, and unchanging. It said:

  a willow, a willow cat

  a willow, a willow cat

  Samantha still could not see the speaker. She wondered: In the metal cabinets on the walls, thick with their third coat of acrylic? Behind the slotted doors in the shadowed pantry? In the refrigerator?—No, that would be stupid.

  a willow, a willow cat

  a willow, a willow cat

  The light shifted and pulled the air with a translucent blur towards Samantha’s left. She saw a small breakfast nook cramped with a wall-mounted table and benches amenable for four children at best. Tufted seat cushions lay on the benches and a tasselled, floral tablecloth spilled unevenly over one side of the table.

  a willow, a willow cat

  a willow, a willow cat

  The sound seemed to come from underneath.

  Samantha put one hand on the table for support and squatted. She saw nothing under the table. She bent forward and then suddenly slumped to her knees as the tablecloth came free and piled over her fist on the floor. Samantha tried to set the tablecloth on a bench. It crackled with static charge and wrapped itself around her wrist sticky as a spider’s web before finally sloughing free as though weary of the game. Samantha eased forward. The voice was clear.

  a willow, a willow cat

  a willow, a willow cat

  The bench stood out a few inches from the wall. There was a gap of shadow Samantha couldn’t see between the bench and the wall. She shuffled forward on her elbows and bent her neck. She pressed her cheek against the wall. Through a crude hole in the plaster and lathe Samantha saw the unblinking stare of the dead woman, fish eyes milk-white under steady, arched brows. Her thin lips and sharp, purple tongue fluttered crisply:

  a willow, a willow cat

  Samantha awoke with a start, on her stomach, her chin tucked against a shoulder. Her eyes caught and held the thin line of light beneath th
e door as she struggled to gulp calming breaths. She came into full consciousness and awareness, listening to the air conditioner and its artful, murmured chant:

  a willow, a willow cat

  a willow, a willow cat

  With every crawling block, Samantha entertained the notion of turning the car and going home. Her hands tingled on the steering wheel as her brain sent contrary pulses down through the nerves. She rolled her wrists up and back, trying to dispel the sensation; her palms shuddered over the grey rubber. Her breath wavered high in her chest until she sighed and became momentarily emboldened with an unconvincing, ‘Why not?’ When the practice weakened with repetition, she chided herself that a fool’s errand is made more foolish left uncompleted, and, having committed so much effort already, it would be a lamentable waste to abandon her inquiry now.

  She was forced to admit that thoughts of her dream spurred her on, as well. She knew the old woman’s mutterings were the creation of her subconscious mind processing the noise in her environment as she slept, but there was yet the indefinable ‘extra’ in the dream’s essence, a purity of instinctual, primal connectivity against which any appeal to rationality faltered. Despite its frightful conclusion and nonsensical message, the dream had the quality of communication—if only from the hidden parts of her own mind—and that aspect commanded attention, even if the dream confounded interpretation. Despite the buzz dancing across her knuckles, Samantha felt she had no choice but to continue her bizarre experience through to some sort of denouement.

  The house was situated on the corner of one of the broad thoroughfares and a humble side street, little more than an alley with a ‘stop’ sign. The billowing mushroom of a horse chestnut tree dominated the front yard, but left a clear sight line from a broad, inviting porch down to the three-stair slope to the sidewalk. Sky blue narrow slat wood siding shone bright in the late-morning sun. Cream trim and shutters bordered the windows; a shock of black topping the handrail on the porch cut across the mellow tones. The door was stained dark chocolate. Samantha calmed at the alienness of it; the house was in no way recognizable to her. She retrieved the keys the funeral director had given her from her handbag and unlocked the door.

  Samantha’s adopted tranquillity sloughed away. She did recognize the interior, though it struck her as somehow incorrect. A flash of awareness came over as soon as she stepped inside: Though she had never before seen the prim sitting room with its rattan furniture and pedestaled houseplants, the living room beyond was unquestionably the one from her dream. The layout was right but the angle was reversed: In her dream, she had ‘entered’ from a side door towards the back of the house. Samantha swooned and buckled forward. She caught her arm on the frame between the two rooms. She looked for somewhere to sit and saw the sag-seated recliner to her left. Her fingers dug hard into the bevelled frame as she steadied herself where she stood, refusing to surrender to her instability if it meant sitting in that chair.

  Samantha saw the glass-topped table by the china cabinet and remembered the indistinct swim of imagery from her dream. She indulged her curiosity and crossed the living room. She ran her fingers over the clean glass. A sliver of sun stabbing between gauzy curtains hung across the bay window struck the glass with glare. Samantha held the back of her hand perpendicular to the surface to block the light. In the display she saw what she might have expected: photos: an old cameo of the dead woman in younger days and filtered soft light, a few round-cornered squares and Polaroid snapshots capturing children’s candid moments in paisley shirts and plaid pants, playing under skies of a different blue unseen in a generation, and several more recent 4x6 photos of small family units, posed in awkward line-ups, waiting for the shutter to click and release them from the obligatory update for an absent relative. Other objects fought for space: a US Army Purple Heart, a Topps baseball card for a Montreal Expos player Samantha had never heard of (not that she would expect to recognize any baseball player’s name), a single passenger ticket for a train from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, a lock of hair tied with red ribbon; all were meaningless in their entirety to Samantha.

  Samantha passed the ‘guest’ sofa and the coffee table. She went into the hall from which she’d begun her nocturnal ‘investigation’. She cast a quick glance and smiled with relief that no profoundly misshapen lad played between the rungs on the banister. Because there shouldn’t be, she thought, remembering the way her dream had corrected itself, as though the skeins of divergent realities had intertwined and then been unwoven.

  The speckled-rust carpet flowed from a landing hidden in cool shadow down to the wooden floor on which she stood, just as Samantha knew it must. In her dream the doors on the second floor were closed, as in warning. Though the landing was dim, Samantha could see light creeping along the hall above her and she guessed the doors upstairs were not closed. She looked to the swinging door to her left, behind which she knew lay the kitchen. Samantha thought of the woman’s face murmuring in the dark corner and she shuddered. She knew the kitchen must be her ultimate destination. But she weighed the strange horror that ended her dream against whatever answer she might find in the breakfast nook and decided that a quick investigation of the second storey might embolden her to that confrontation. She climbed the stairs; they groaned beneath her.

  When Samantha reached the top of the stairs she was surprised to see that the floor plan did not match her expectation. Instead of one long hall running back parallel to the staircase towards the rear of the house, the landing surrounded the staircase on all sides in a squatter configuration. Instead of three doors in a row, two doors were on each side, slightly offset from facing each other. At first the discrepancy startled Samantha, but then she wondered what expectation she should reasonably have that a house she’d never before entered should match in every detail to a dream. She shrugged, reasoning, Otherwise there would be nothing over the living room.

  The door nearest Samantha was closed. She tried the handle; the knob rattled loosely as it turned. Pastel pink light frosted chequered tile. A bathmat of new, plush yarn lay in front of a clawfoot tub. Matching towel and washcloth hung from a plastic rack. A single toothbrush stood in a jar on the sink. Samantha never understood the supposedly ubiquitous compulsion to look in someone else’s medicine cabinet, but she considered that in this situation prying might reveal useful information. Was the dead woman taking any psychiatric medications, or did she have a prescription to treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease or another condition that might indicate diminished mental faculties? She stepped into the bathroom. Despite the possibility of illumination, the intrusiveness of this particular action in the midst of her investigation seemed especially shameful, and Samantha looked down at the sink to avoid her reflection as she opened the cabinet. The interior revealed nothing but beauty aids and painkillers.

  The next door down was open. Samantha immediately conjectured this was the dead woman’s bedroom and not meant for guests. Like the recliner downstairs, and unlike the additional furniture, the room showed evidence of ongoing use. The queen bed was ‘made’, but inattentively—an emerald bedspread reached over the pillows towards the headboard, but it lay untucked and ruffled. Several books were piled on the nightstand. Samantha sat on top of a hope chest at the foot of the bed and looked around. There was a dresser and a vanity glinting with heavy lacquer in unmatched tones. The vanity had a tall central mirror and two hinged side mirrors angled slightly in. A hairbrush and a small makeup case shared space with two photos in frame of a moustachioed man, one young, one older—but not past middle age, and clearly taken more than a decade ago. A jewellery box with lid ajar beckoned, unable to contain its secret. Samantha rose and revealed an unwieldy tangle of plated chains and brightly-coloured stone. Samantha crossed to the nightstand and picked up a book. She grinned with surprised satisfaction to see it featured the liberal political commentary of a modern comic.

  But it means nothing, Samantha thought. Here were hints of a personality, but no apparent purpose or pl
an. Any suggestion Samantha might have liked to have known the dead woman or found her interesting was compromised by the fact that Samantha didn’t know her and was interested only by the single eccentricity that led Samantha to Meadowlark. And if there were any why behind that foible, it refused to reveal itself. I feel like I’m drawing a sketch in the dark.

  Samantha sighed and turned to leave when she noticed shoeboxes on a high shelf in the closet. Photos. Those she had seen so far had failed to pierce the veil of mystery, but Samantha hoped a clue might yet wait in the clutter of yesteryear. She pulled three boxes from the shelf. One was lighter than the others and was revealed to be empty. The other two contained the expected photographs, laid flat in unstructured piles. Samantha dumped them on the bed and spread them out.

  For ten minutes she gazed at strangers and learned no more than a woman once lived who had family and friends for whom she cared enough to preserve their images. Nothing in any of the photographs indicated any connection between the dead woman and Samantha. There were no familiar faces, no clues in the locations shown in the backgrounds, no resonant name among the occasional notations on the backs. Samantha left the photos in chaos on the bedspread and departed the room.