Stranger Things Happen

by Kelly Link

  The man shrugged, still smiling. His fingers drummed on the counter. “I thought you might like a change, is all,” he said. “So my Rose-By-Any-Other-Name, I’ll make you up a standard batch. May I help you, dearie?”

  “I was just looking,” June said.

  “We don’t have anything here for your sort,” he said, not unkindly. “All custom scents, see.”

  “Oh.” She looked at the woman, who was examining her makeup, her long smudgy eyelashes, in a compact. Rhinestones on the compact lid spelled out RR, and June remembered where she had seen the woman’s face. “Excuse me, but don’t you write books?”

  The compact snapped shut in the white hand. A wing of yellow, helmeted hair swung forward as the woman turned to June. “Yes,” she said, pink pointed tongue slipping between the small teeth. “Are you the sort that buys my books?”

  No, June thought. I’m the sort that steals them. She delved into her sack. “This is for my mother,” she said. “Would you sign it for her?”

  “How lovely,” Rose Read said. She signed the book with a fountain pen proffered by the man behind the counter, in a child’s careful looped cursive. “There. Have you got a lover, my dear?”

  “That’s none of your business,” June said, grabbing the book back.

  “Is it my business, Mr. Kew?” Rose Read said to the shopkeeper. He snickered. She had said his name the way two spies meeting at a party might use made-up names.

  “She doesn’t have a lover,” he said. “I’d smell him on her if she did.”

  June took a step back, then another, hesitating. The man and woman stared at her blandly. She found the store and the pair of them unnerving. She wanted to flee the store, to get away from them. She wanted to take something from them, to steal something. At that moment, a large family, noisy, redheaded, mother and father, how extravagant! June thought, poured into the shop. They pressed up to the counter, shaking a battered copy of Fodors at Mr. Kew, all speaking at once. June pocketed the unwanted perfume and quickly left the store.

  5. Going to hell. Instructions and advice.

  It is late morning when you arrive at Bonehouse, but the sky is dark. As you walk, you must push aside the air, like heavy cloth. Your foot stumbles on the mute ground.

  You are in a flat place where the sky presses down, and the buildings creep close along the streets, and all the doors stand open. Grass grows on the roofs of the houses; the roofs are packed sod, and the grass raises up tall like hair on a scalp. Follow the others. They are dead and know the way better than you. Speak to no one.

  At last you will arrive at a door in an alley, with a dog asleep on the threshold. He has many heads and each head has many teeth, and his teeth are sharp and eager as knives.

  6. What was in the bottle.

  June sat happy and quiet in the grassy bowl of the castle. Students in their red gowns and tourists in various plaids clambered over the worn and tumbled steps that went over the drawbridge between the squat towers. Outside the castle wall, there were more steps winding down to the rocky beach. She could hear people complaining loudly as they came back up, the wind pushing them backwards. Inside the wall the air was still, the sky arched like a glass lid, shot through with light.

  Ravens sleek and round as kettles patrolled the grass. They lifted in lazy circles when the tourists came too close, settling down near June, hissing and croaking. She took the perfume out of her knapsack and turned it in her hands. The bottle was tall and slim and plainly made. The stopper was carved out of a rosy stone and where it plunged into the mouth of the decanter the glass was faceted like the rhinestones on Rose Read’s compact. June took out the stopper.

  She touched it to her wrist, then held her wrist up to her nose and sniffed. It smelled sweet and greeny-ripe as an apple. It made her head spin. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again there was someone watching her.

  Up in the tilted crown of the lefthand tower, Mr. Kew, Prop. was looking straight down at her. He smiled and winked one eye shut. He cocked his index finger, sighted, and squeezed his fist closed. Pow, he said silently, pulling his lips tight in exaggeration around the word. Then he turned to make his way down the stairs.

  June jumped up. If she went out over the drawbridge they would meet at the foot of the stairs. She grabbed up her pack and went in the opposite direction. She stopped at the wall and looked over. A cement bulwark, about five feet below, girdled up the cliffs that the castle sat on; she tossed the pack over and followed it, heels first, holding hard to the crumbling wall.

  7. She hears a story about birds.

  Down on June’s right was the beach, invisible past the curve of the castle’s bulk, cliffs and marshy land to her left. Waves slapped against the concrete barriers below her. She sat on the ledge, wondering how long she would have to wait before climbing back up to the castle or down to the beach. The wind cut straight through her jersey.

  She turned her head, and saw there was a man standing next to her. Her heart slammed into her chest before she saw that it was a boy her own age, seventeen or eighteen, with a white face and blue eyes. His eyebrows met, knitted together above the bridge of his nose.

  “Before you climbed down,” he said, “did you happen to notice if there were a lot of birds up there?”

  “You mean girls?” June said, sneering at him. His eyes were very blue.

  “No, birds. You know, with wings.” He flapped his arms.

  “Ravens,” June said. “And maybe some smaller ones, like sparrows.”

  He sat down beside her, folding his arms around his knees. “Damn,” he said. “I thought maybe if I waited for a while, they might get bored and leave. They have a very short attention span.”

  “You’re hiding from birds?”

  “I have a phobia,” he said, and turned bright red. “Like claustrophobia, you know.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” June said. “I mean, birds are everywhere.”

  “It’s not all birds,” he said. “Or it’s not all the time. Sometimes they bother me, sometimes they don’t. They look at me funny.”

  “I’m afraid of mice,” June said. “Once when I was little I put my foot into a shoe and there was a dead mouse inside. I still shake out my shoes before I put them on.”

  “When I was five, my mother was killed by a flock of peacocks.” he said, as if it had happened to someone else’s mother, and he had read about it in a newspaper.

  “What?” June said.

  He sounded embarrassed. “Okay. Um, my mother took me to see the castle at Inverness. She said that my father was a king who lived in a castle. She was always making stories up like that. I don’t remember the castle very well, but afterwards we went for a walk in the garden. There was a flock of peacocks and they were stalking us. They were so big – they seemed really big – as big as I was. My mother stuck me in a cherry tree and told me to yell for help as loudly as I could.”

  He took a deep breath. “The tailfeathers sounded like silk dresses brushing against the ground. I remember that. They sounded like women in long silk dresses. I didn’t make a sound. If I made a sound, they might notice me. They crowded my mother up against the curb of a stone fountain, and she was pushing at them with her hands, shooing them, and then she just fell backwards. The fountain only had two inches of water in it. I heard her head crack against the bottom when she fell. It knocked her unconscious and she drowned before anyone came.”

  His face was serious and beseeching. She could see the small flutter of pulse against the white flesh – thin as paper – of his jaw.

  “That’s horrible,” June said. “Who took care of you?”

  “My mother and father weren’t married,” he said. “He already had a wife. My mother didn’t have any family, so my father gave me to his sisters. Aunt Minnie, Aunt Prune, Aunt Di, and Aunt Rose.”

  “My father emigrated to Australia when I was two,” June said. “I don’t remember him much. My mother remarried about a year ago.”

  “I’ve nev
er seen my father,” the boy said. “Aunt Rose says it would be too dangerous. His wife, Vera, hates me even though she’s never seen me, because I’m her husband’s bastard. She’s a little insane.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Humphrey Bogart Stoneking,” he said. “My mother was a big fan. What’s your name?”

  “June,” said June.

  They were silent for a moment. June rubbed her hands together for comfort. “Are you cold?” asked Humphrey. She nodded and he moved closer and put his arm around her.

  “You smell nice,” he said after a moment. He sniffed thoughtfully. “Familiar, sort of.”

  “Yeah?” She turned her head and their mouths bumped together, soft and cold.

  8. Rose Read on young lovers.

  It’s all the fault of that damned perfume, and that mooning, meddling, milky-faced perfumer. He could have had it back and no harm done, if he didn’t love mischief more than his mother. So it might have been my idea – it might have been an accident. Or maybe it was Fate. If I’m still around, so is that tired old hag. Do you think that I have the time to see to every love affair in the world personally?

  Those hesitating kisses, the tender fumbles and stumbles and awkward meetings of body parts give me indigestion. Heartburn. Give me two knowledgeable parties who know what is up and what fits where; give me Helen of Troy, fornicating her way across the ancient world, Achilles and Patroclos amusing themselves in a sweaty tent.

  A swan, a bull, a shower of gold, something new, something old, something borrowed, something blue. He seduced Sarah Stoneking in an empty movie house, stepped right off of the screen during the matinee and lisped “Shweetheart” at her. She fell into the old goat’s arms. I know, I was there.

  9. In which a discovery is made.

  The sky stayed clear and pale all night long. When they were cold again, they wrapped themselves in Humphrey’s coat, and leaned back against the wall. June took out the box of chocolates and ate them as Humphrey explored her pack. He pulled out the perfume. “Where’d you get this?”

  “I nicked it from a perfume shop off Market Street.”

  “I should have known.” He pulled out the book. “Aunt Rose,” he said.

  “She’s your aunt?” June said. “I guess I should give it to you to give back.”

  He shook his head. “If she didn’t mean for you to have it, you wouldn’t even have thought of taking it. Might as well keep it now. She probably set this whole thing up.”

  “How?” June said. “Is she psychic or something?”

  “This must be how they’re planning to stop me,” Humphrey said. “They think if I have a girlfriend, I’ll give up on the flying lessons, take up fucking as a new hobby.”

  “Right.” June said, affronted. “It was nice to meet you too. I don’t usually go around doing this.”

  “Wait,” he said, catching at her pack as she stood up. “I didn’t mean it that way. You’re right. This is a complete coincidence. And I didn’t think that you did.”

  He smiled up at her. June sat back down, mollified, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Why are you taking flying lessons?”

  “I’ve been saving up for it,” he said. “I went to see a psychologist about a year ago, and he suggested that flying lessons might make me less afraid of birds. Besides, I’ve always wanted to. I used to dream about it. The aunts say it’s a bad idea, but they’re just superstitious. I have my first lesson tomorrow. Today, actually.”

  “I think flying would be wonderful,” June said. She was shivering. It was because she was cold. It wasn’t because she was cold. She slipped her hands up inside his shirt. “But I know something just as nice.”

  “What?” he said. So she showed him. His mouth was so sweet.

  10. Going to hell. Instructions and advice.

  As the others step over the dog he doesn’t wake. If you step over him, he will smell live flesh and he will tear you to pieces.

  Take this perfume with you and when you come to Bonehouse, dab it behind your ears, at your wrists and elbows, at the back of your knees. Stroke it into the vee of your sex, as you would for a lover. The scent is heavy and rich, like the first cold handful of dirt tossed into the dug grave. It will trick the dog’s nose.

  Inside the door, there is no light but the foxfire glow of your own body. The dead flicker like candles around you. They are burning their memories for warmth. They may brush up against you, drawn to what is stronger and hotter and brighter in you. Don’t speak to them.

  There are no walls, no roof above you except darkness. There are no doors, only the luminous windows that the dead have become. Unravel the left arm of his sweater and let it fall to the ground.

  11. In the All-Night Bakery at dawn.

  June and Humphrey went around the corner of the bulwark, down over an outcropping of rocks, slick with gray light, down to the beach. A seagull, perched like a lantern upon the castle wall, watched them go.

  They walked down Market Street, the heavy, wet air clinging like ghosts to their hair and skin. The sound of their feet, hollow and sharp, rang like bells on the cobblestones. They came to the All-Night Bakery and June could hear someone singing inside.

  Behind the counter there were long rows of white ovens and cooling racks, as tall as June. A woman stood with her strong back to them, sliding trays stacked with half-moon loaves into an oven, like a mother tucking her children into warm sheets.

  She was singing to herself, low and deep, and as June watched and listened, the fat loaves, the ovens, the woman and her lullaby threw out light, warmth. The ovens, the loaves, the woman grew brighter and larger and crowded the bakery and June’s senses so that she began to doubt there was room for herself, for the houses and street, the dawn outside to exist. The woman shut the oven door, and June was afraid that presently she would turn around and show June her face, flickering pale and enormous as the moon.

  She stumbled back outside. Humphrey followed her, his pockets stuffed with doughnuts and meat pies.

  “My Aunt Di,” he said. He handed June a pastry. “Some nights I work here with her.”

  He went with her to the station, and wrapped up two greasy bacon pies and gave them to her. She wrote her address and telephone on a corner of the napkin, and then reached into her pocket. She took out the crumpled banknotes, the small, heavy coins. “Here,” she said. “For your flying lesson.”

  She dumped them into his cupped hands, and then before she could decide if the blush on his face was one of pleasure or embarrassment, the train was coming into the station. She got on and didn’t look back.

  She slept on the train and dreamed about birds.

  Home again, and Lily and Walter were finishing the breakfast cleanup. June handed the book and the perfume to her mother. “Happy birthday, Lily.”

  “Where were you last night?” Lily said. She held the perfume bottle between her thumb and middle finger as if it were a dead rat.

  “With a friend,” June said vaguely, and pretended not to see Lily’s frown. She went up the stairs to the top of the house, to her room in the attic. The honeymooners’ door was shut, but she could hear them as she went past in the hall. It sounded just like pigeons, soft little noises and gasps. She slammed her door shut and went straight to sleep. What did she dream about? More birds? When she woke up, she couldn’t remember, but her hands hurt as if she had been holding on to something.

  When she came down again – hands and face washed, hair combed back neat – the cake that Walter had made, square and plain, with a dozen pink candles spelling out Lily’s name, was on the table. Lily was looking at it as if it might explode. June said, “How do you like the perfume?”

  “I don’t,” Lily said. She clattered the knives and forks down. “It smells cheap and too sweet. Not subtle at all.”

  Walter came up behind Lily and squeezed her around the middle. She pushed at him, but not hard. “I quite liked it,” he said. “Your mother’s been sitting with her feet up in the pa
rlor all day, reading the rubbishy romance you got her. Very subtle, that.”

  “Rubbish is right,” Lily said. She blew out the candles with one efficient breath, a tiny smile on her face.

  12. The occupant in room five.

  Two days later the honeymooners left. When June went into the room, she could smell sex, reeky and insistent. She flung open the windows and stripped the ravaged bed, but the smell lingered in the walls and in the carpet.

  In the afternoon, a woman dressed in expensive dark clothing came looking for a room. “It would be for some time,” the woman said. She spoke very carefully, as if she was used to being misunderstood. June, sitting in the parlor, idly leafing through sex advice columns in American magazines left behind by the honeymooners, looked up for a second. She thought the woman in black had an antique look about her, precise and hard, like a face on a cameo.

  “We do have a room,” said Lily. “But I don’t know that you’ll want it. We try to be nice here, but you look like you might be accustomed to better.”

  The woman sighed. “I am getting a divorce from my husband,” she said. “He has been unfaithful. I don’t want him to find me, so I will stay here where he would not think to look. You were recommended to me.”

  “Really?” said Lily, looking pleased. “By who?”

  But the woman couldn’t remember. She signed her name, Mrs. Vera Ambrosia, in a thick slant of ink, and produced Ј40, and another Ј40 as a deposit. When June showed her up to Room Five, her nostrils flared, but she said nothing. She had with her one small suitcase, and a covered box. Out of the box she took a birdcage on a collapsible stand. There was nothing in the birdcage but dust.

  When June left, she was standing at the window looking out. She was smiling at something.

  13. A game of golf.

  June tried not to think about Humphrey. It was a silly name anyway. She went out with her friends and she never mentioned his name. They would have laughed at his name. It was probably made up.

  She thought of describing how his eyebrows met, in a straight bar across his face. She decided that it should repulse her. It did. And he was a liar too. Not even a good liar.