by Ann Gimpel
It didn’t.
I was treading dangerous waters, but I brought up the hundred or so shots I’d taken the previous afternoon at sunset. Drawn beyond will or reason, I clicked on the one I’d been working on before Mom chivied me down to supper. The fine hairs on the back of my neck bristled in protest, but I couldn’t have looked away from the monitor if a typhoon had blown through my room.
Not only was the wolf back, someone was with him. That part of the photo was too small to make much out, though. Without thinking things through—or I probably wouldn’t have done it—I zoomed and then scrolled to that corner of the picture.
My heart pounded in a sick staccato, and bile splashed the back of my throat. Tearing my gaze from the screen, I jumped out of my chair so abruptly it clattered onto its side.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
The man in the picture, with one arm wrapped about the wolf, was my father. Shit! Had Mom been right about him still being here? I’d hadn’t actually believed her, but the reality of what my camera had recorded cast her words in a whole new light. I righted my chair and pulled up the other photos from last night.
Would he be in them too?
After staring minutely at ten more images, and not seeing any renegade animals or fathers, I couldn’t sit still any longer. Sliding my bare feet into an old pair of sneakers, I crept down the stairs and let myself out the back door as silently as I could, photo bag looped over my shoulder by its strap. June days are long in Montana, so daylight lingered. Without much of a plan, I made my way to the pond.
Was I expecting to take pictures of ghosts? Uncomfortable, embarrassed, I sidestepped my own question.
Once I reached the pond, it was easy to forget about Dad. Incredible clouds floated on the horizon, gold-tinged from the setting sun. The still, smooth water flared russet as it caught the reflection. I pulled out my camera and snapped a few shots before stopping myself. Photography was my comfort zone, but I wasn’t here to take sunset pictures.
Slowing my steps, I walked the perimeter of the pond, peering into the foliage and snapping pictures. All too soon I returned to my starting point. “Dad?”
Nothing.
Clearing my throat, I spoke louder, “Dad? Are you out here somewhere?”
Feeling foolish and frightened, I raked the dimming landscape, hunting for clues. Wait. Had a tail disappeared through the brush about twenty feet away? Hunkering down, I whistled and clucked but nothing emerged. A search of my pockets yielded a limp piece of beef jerky that I laid it on the ground. After fifteen minutes of whistling, cooing, and calling, I gave up. I was cold despite my sweatshirt, and I was convinced—well, almost convinced—that tail rustle or no, nothing was out here but me.
Back in my room, I fired up the computer again and pulled up that damned photo. It was just my picture again. No father. No wolf. I rubbed my eyes, and then looked again. Still nothing. My head throbbed, a headache settling being one eye. Irritation sluiced through me as I dragged the USB umbilical cord from its nest of dust bunnies on the floor and jabbed it into the port on my camera. A couple of key strokes and tonight’s harvest tumbled from the camera into the computer.
I created a folder for the batch of pictures before looking at them, wanting to put it off as long as I could. With good reason. Father and his pet stared at me like macabre sentinels. Not in every photo, but in the ones near the west end of the pond, exactly where they’d been in the last set of images. They hadn’t been visible when I’d stood outside, yet here they were, captured in digitized pixels.
The fine hairs on my arms stood on end. It took all my self-control to not curl into a ball and scream.
“Shut off the computer. Go to bed. Don’t think about any of this,” I said out loud to steady myself.
If Mom wanted to sell the farm to free up college money for me, I’d take her up on it. If what I’d experienced the last couple of hours was what she’d been living with for years, no wonder she wanted to get away.
My narrow bed, more like a cot, was tucked under one of two dormer windows. Originally, it had been on the other side of the room in a corner between two inner walls. There had been noises there, though, a sibilant susurrus that ebbed and flowed. As I thought back, the whispered murmurings in the walls had taken on jubilant tones when Dad left, reverting to terror, and something like resignation, after he’d stepped on that land mine. When I was around seven, I’d asked Mom why the walls got scared after Daddy died. It was then she decided to move my bed to its current location, telling me it would be perfect because I could look out at the stars.
My thoughts tripped over one another—remembering the talking walls hadn’t helped at all. I wanted sleep to come so I could stop thinking. I felt hot. Then I felt cold. A disengaged corner of my brain wondered if I was losing my mind.
Sleep came fast after that, surprising me. Sleep came; but so did dreams. For the first time in years, I dreamed of my father. He was with my mother, slipping a ring on her finger and telling her she’d be his forever. That nothing would ever part them. As I watched them kiss, a chill slid down my spine. Nothing would ever part them. Had Dad known something then? Something he hadn’t bothered to tell Mom? Or had she known and ignored it? She’d been close to forty when they wed. Something about Mom in my dream, an ethereal translucence, made her look like the fairy creature I’d believed her to be as a child.
The scene shifted, and I watched myself being born. Mom and Dad were alone here in the old farmhouse. Mom was scared. She kept asked Daddy to call old Mrs. Grandby and ask her to come, but he said they were a family and they didn’t need any outsiders, especially not that witch. Something nasty curled his lips when he said the word witch.
Dad told her again that she’d be his forever. Beyond the bonds of death and time, he said. And then he added something curious, as if what he’d said before wasn’t spooky enough. He told her the house would protect her too. By then, she was so far gone with birth pains, she probably didn’t hear him.
The dreamscape shifted, and baby me was in his arms. He whispered the same mantra: I was his, would be his forever, nothing would ever part us. “House’ll take care of my baby girl,” he crooned. “Just this ol’ house ’n me.”
He turned and met my grownup eyes, while cradling the infant me in his arms. Winking, he mouthed the words forever and mine. Claws graced his hands where fingers should have been, blood red claws that curved around the baby in his arms.
My dream screen went blank, interrupted by the shrill of the alarm.
Breath erupted in ragged, panting gulps, and I clutched the tangled covers, struggling to unwind them from my sweaty limbs. Questions pummeled me.
What’s going to happen if we try to leave here?
How could he have claws?
What is he? Even worse, I’m half of whatever he is.
An unsettling vision of the old farmhouse uprooting itself and pounding down the rutted lane to Tansy Avenue with my father close behind filled my mind. Stomach roiling, eyes sandpapery, I dragged myself to my feet and into a hot shower. I needed answers, but whom could I ask?
All Dad’s kin had died off, but his family had lived in this little town in northwestern Montana for a long time. As I thought about it, I recalled how quiet the neighbors had gotten whenever Daddy’s name came up. I’d always assumed they were being sensitive to my loss, but now I suspected conversations had petered out for other reasons altogether.
Mom was born in West Virginia, but she was first generation. Her family had emigrated from Ireland, and she met Dad through a friend of hers when he’d been visiting back east. They’d married almost on the spot, and then she returned here with him. It likely worked out pretty well for Dad that she didn’t have any friends or family anywhere close. Just him...and the house. By now I was toweling myself dry. With a resolute shake of my long, wet hair to chase the last of the dream demons away, I stomped back into my bedroom to get dressed.
Mom had breakfast laid out for
me by the time I came downstairs, book bag slung over one shoulder and camera bag over the other. When I looked at her, my mouth dropped open. She looked half-dead, standing in front of the sink. The skin beneath her eyes was gray, and her hair hung limp and lifeless, dragging her facial features downward under its weight.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked anxiously.
The corners of her mouth twitched upward in what might have passed for a weak attempt at a smile. “Didn’t sleep very well,” she replied. “Other’n that I suppose I’m okay.”
After the briefest of hesitations, I plunged in. After all, she was my mother. The only blood relative I had in the world. “Did you dream?”
An odd expression crossed her face, and she focused shrewd blue eyes on me. “Why would you be askin’ that?”
“Because I dreamed about Daddy,” I mumbled, afraid what would happen after that revelation passed my lips. She tottered from foot to foot. Fearful she’d collapse, I started toward her, arms outstretched, but she lurched to her sewing chair beneath the big, bay window and lowered herself stiffly into it.
“Do you...” she faltered, and then started again. “Do you dream of him often?”
“No. Never that I can remember.”
Something like a sigh escaped her bloodless lips, and she closed one hand over an amulet of Cailleach, the Gaelic goddess of winter, that she’d worn around her neck for as long as I could remember. Her other hand patted the table beside her, like a blind person hunting for something. Locating her coffee mug, she raised it unsteadily to her mouth and drank.
“What did you dream last night, Marni?” Her voice was strained, barely there at all.
I told her. Because I couldn’t stop the words from rushing out, I told her about the photographs as well. By the time I was done, I knew I’d be late for school.
Mom followed my gaze as I looked at the electric clock mounted on the wall over the Wedgewood gas range. “I’ll write you a note ’bout being late. High school’s all but done for you. T’won’t matter a twit if you’re late today. Settle in and eat your breakfast.” She pointed at the table. “You can listen while you eat, though I’ve precious little to tell you.”
I hadn’t budged from where I’d stopped when Mom stumbled her way to her chair. Laying my school bag and camera on the other end of the battered oak table, I dropped into my usual place. Though I didn’t feel hungry—in truth, I wondered if I’d be able to keep anything down—I picked up my fork and worried the edges of a blueberry pancake.
“I always wondered,” Mom muttered, “if’n he’d let either one of us leave here. ’Twasn’t that I was so worried ’bout me, mind you, but you’re a young woman with your life ahead of you. Be a damn shame if you were stuck here too. When I was young, see, all his fine talk ’bout keepin’ me with him forever sounded romantic. Now that I’m lookin’ at it from another side, I recognize I married into somethin’ I didn’t understand at all. My Ma, she tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen.”
“What could he do to us?” I demanded. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” And then I thought about the walls, and something deep within me recoiled.
“No, not really dead,” she replied, giving form to fear that trapped me like a winding sheet, constricting and smothering. “Last few years, he’s been gettin’ stronger. I don’t clearly understand the why of it. Times I’ve come close to talkin’ to old Miz Grandby, hopin’ she’d know somethin’. Never did get up the nerve. She usually charges for her readings. Since we’ve never had much extra money, it seemed like foolishness, all in all.”
“You didn’t tell me what you dreamed about,” I prodded while forcing down the last bites on my plate. It was impossible to wrap my mind around what she’d told me, so I pushed it away from center stage.
“Nor am I going to.” She got to her feet, looking steadier than before. “Come on, Marn. I’ll run you to school as soon as I get a note written tellin’ ’em why you’re late.”
“Uh, maybe I shouldn’t go,” I said, suddenly worried about her. “Will you be safe here?”
She studied my face, love—and a tear or two—shining in her eyes. “Nothin’s really changed, Marni.” A resigned smile edged the corners of her mouth. “Only thing that’s different is you know more’n you did an hour ago. No reason for you to stay home on my account.” She paused to take a breath. “I did talk with Mrs. Benson, yesterday, though.”
“From the real estate agency?”
Mom nodded. “And I’m thinkin’ that’s maybe why you and I had the dreams we did. And why you’re takin’ photos of Danny, even though you can’t see him. Likely you don’t remember, but he had a half-wolf dog. Critter was wild. I never could get close to him. Eventually, I stopped seein’ him round here after Danny died. No way he could still be alive. He’d be somethin’ past twenty-five.”
As she wrote something for the school on a lined sheet of paper, I heard her mumbling to herself, or maybe not to herself, but to him, “...if’n there’s a way I can stay here, and pull some money out of this house for her school, would you let her go then? Would you? She’s your only living child, don’t you want her to...” Mom pushed herself to her feet and handed me the note.
“What do you mean, ‘only living child’?” I asked in a strangled tone.
Mom looked at me out of eyes that could have belonged to something unspeakably ancient. “He had more’n one wife afore me,” she said so softly I had to strain to hear.
“Course I didn’t find out ’til after I was already here. I could sense ’em, see, wanderin’. Them and their little ones. ’Sides, you’ve heard ’em.” She licked her dry lips. “They’re the voices in the walls.”
Mom turned abruptly, making the Gaelic sign against evil. “No reason to drag any more of that into the light of day.” And then she turned back, drawing me into a rare embrace. “I do love you, baby girl. I’ll find a way for you. I promise.”
She kept her arm around my shoulders all the way out to the car. It helped, but sick, disgusted feelings jabbed me like darts. How many wives and their dead children lived in this house? How old was Dad, anyway?
Mom’s parting words when I left the car were, “Don’t dwell on any of this, Marn. It’ll tear you up if you do.”
I thought a lot about Mom that day. And some about Dad too, despite Mom’s warning. The harder I tried to drag something about him out of my head, though, the less there seemed to be. I must hold some memories of him from when I was younger. Where had they gone? The more I struggled to sort things out, the more tangled they became.
In the middle of the day, I was called into the Guidance Counselor’s office. Mrs. Burrell, a stout woman with long red braids wound about her head, wanted to know what I was going to do about my acceptance to the Pacific Northwest School of Photography and Graphic Arts.
I stammered and explained I didn’t have money to go since it would mean moving to Spokane. I told her I figured I could earn enough for rent and food, but that there wouldn’t be near enough left over to manage the ten thousand a semester tuition, never mind photographic supplies.
She smiled at me, a maternal light shining from her dark eyes. “I figured as much, Marni, so I submitted some of your work to the school after they offered you a place in the fall freshman class. They were so impressed,” she went on, still grinning like a satisfied Cheshire cat, “that this came today.” She waved a letter in my face, and then shoved it across the desk. “Go ahead. Read it.”
A fluttery sensation filled my chest, and I felt light-headed. Bending forward, I picked up the letter. Exultation mingled with disbelief as I read it. They were going to give me a scholarship. A full scholarship for all four years, as long as I kept my grades up. Bolting out of my chair, I caught up Mrs. Burrell and hugged her.
“Thank you,” I murmured, close to tears. “Thank you so very much.”
“Don’t mention it, my dear.” Mrs. Burrell hugged me back. “It’s the best part of my job. Really it is. Now hurry along so y
ou don’t miss any more of World History. And, Marni...”
I looked back over my shoulder. “Yes?”
“I already told them you’d be coming. It’ll be good for you to, um, get away from here.”
I raced across the room and hugged her again, not even registering what she might have meant by that last comment. This time I was crying, and laughing, and swiping at my streaming eyes.
As I floated down the hall, not caring who saw me bawling, nor what they thought, I couldn’t wait for the day to be over so I could tell Momma the great news. We didn’t have to sell the house after all. Although, given what had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted her to stay there without me.
Wait a minute.
Maybe she could move to Spokane with me. She could use the money from selling the house to make it happen. Brimming with plans for our new life in Washington, I didn’t hear a word in the rest of my afternoon classes.
Some promising photographic subjects crossed my path as I dashed home, but I didn’t want to take the time. Sharing my good news trumped photography—at least for today. I pushed into the house and called for Mom, but she didn’t answer.
Why not?
Mom was always home. Always. Dropping my things in the kitchen, I ran through the house, and then I went out to the garden and the barn, but I couldn’t find her. I checked the garage last, and the old Plymouth coupe was gone. My breathing settled back to normal. Mom must have gone to the store or something. Relieved nothing serious was amiss, I carried my book bag upstairs and started on the minimal amount of homework I had.
An hour passed. Then two, and I glanced for the hundredth time at the clock. It read just past five. Where was she?
I went back downstairs. Maybe she left a note, and I’d missed it, but a thorough search turned up nothing. Swallowing around a lump gathering in my throat, I picked up the phone to call the police. “It’s my Mom,” I said tearfully when Rosa Quinteras answered down at the precinct. “She’s never not here, and I don’t know where she is.”