Red

by Amy Stilgenbauer

Red

  Amy Stilgenbauer

  Copyright © 2014 Amy Stilgenbauer

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Image: "Birds eye view--showing about three miles square--of the central portion of the city of Detroit, Michigan" by Calvert Lith Co This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.This map is available from the United States Library of Congress's Geography & Map Division under the digital ID g4114d.pm003420.

  "No I am not demon nor fairy,

  I am an unhappy lover

  Who does not dare to appear in your eyes:

  Feel sorry for my destiny at least”

  LE PRINCE LUTIN. - Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy.

  1.

  Late June, 1965. Detroit, Michigan.

  A storm raged against the windows of Clarissa LaRoux’s apartment. She tried her best to ignore its ferocity, but the walls rattled like a monster desperate to get in.

  The battle clamored on outside; Clarissa made a fresh pot of coffee to assuage her nerves. The rich but slightly acidic taste had an instant effect. She felt it flow through her; the caffeine adding strength and power to her blood. She took another sip, savoring the steam as it danced over her face. “I’m ready,” she whispered.

  A heavy hand knocked loudly at her door and Clarissa almost dropped her coffee cup. Anxiety crashed back over her like a wave. “W-Who’s there?”

  Only another round of knocking answered.

  Clarissa perched on her tiptoes, peeping timidly out the spyglass. She saw nothing: only the peeling hallway wall paper.

  The knocking came again: at her window this time. Clarissa felt her stomach churn. She didn’t know if she had it in her to turn around. After taking a few deep breaths, which did little to calm her, she pivoted. In the window was a creature that had haunted her nightmares since childhood. At first glance, if it weren’t hovering at a third story window, it would have looked like a young child, but Clarissa knew better. She could see the cold glint of red in its eyes; the sharp rotting fangs in its sadistic grin. She knew the creature well.

  The first time she had seen it, she had only been three. She couldn’t read the fancy words in her grandmere’s grimoire, but the finely illuminated pages fascinated her. Between the letters on one page, she found the little red gnome. Its appearance unsettled her so much that she couldn’t pick up the grimoire again for years.

  “You’re not getting in,” Clarissa said, trying to sound as firm as possible.

  When it started appearing in her dreams, Clarissa’s grandmere had taught her a simple banishing spell. It worked for a little while.

  “You’re not getting in.”

  The creature gnashed its fangs. A shudder ran through her, but she suppressed it.

  “I told you. Move along. I have nothing for you.”

  Thunder rang out. A violent shudder threw pictures from the apartment walls. Lighting ripped across the sky. Still, Clarissa stood her ground.

  “Move along.”

  The creature let out a peel of high-pitched laughter. A small crack began to grow in the window glass. Clarissa crouched down, covering her ears with her hands to block out the terrible sound.

  Its laugh would be the last thing she remembered.

  2.

  June 23, 2013. Paint Twp, Ohio

  The phone rang unnoticed in the Mooreland farmhouse. Cerise, bedridden with a fierce fever, assumed it was part of a dream. Her mother, Opaline, had once again forgotten to take the phone with her when she went outside to the porch swing.

  At the same moment, a pickup truck barreled down the drive, spewing dust in its wake. Opaline looked up from her book and gave the vehicle a harsh look. “Raymond...”

  A man whose appearance situated him firmly in his late forties climbed out of the truck and paced toward the porch, shaking his head. “Mom! What is the point of having a cordless phone if you never take it outside with you?!”

  “I have an answering machine,” Opaline said, watching the dust settle with obvious irritation in her eyes.

  “Not if you don’t turn it on, mom.”

  “You could have called Cerise. I assume she has one of those mobile...”

  “I did. She’s not answering either. It’s turning into Grey Gardens out here.”

  Opaline slammed her book closed and started inside without a word. Raymond followed. A loud ringing greeted the pair of them. “Well, you’re here, so who’s calling me?”

  “Answer it, mom!”

  “No need to get impatient, Raymond.” Opaline made her way to the phone and removed it from the cradle. With a swift, withering look back at her son, she answered, “Moorelands...”

  The harried voice at the other end was loud enough for Raymond to hear. “Hello, Ms Mooreland. I am sorry to bother you, but this is the only number the young woman would give us.”

  Opaline’s heart skipped as her mind went immediately to her granddaughter, Jaclyn. No one had heard from her in months. They all knew where she had gone, but with every passing day, the chance of her return grew slimmer. She didn’t want to hope, but what other “young woman” would have the number for the farmhouse? “Go on...”

  “We have a young woman here. She was picked up on the side of I-75. She...well, she seems to be in quite the state of shock.”

  Of course, she thought. Jaclyn would be in a state of shock upon leaving the Underland. Cerise wouldn’t be happy about it, but at least having her daughter back would get the girl out of bed. “We’ll be right there.” Then she paused. “I’m sorry...but who is this?”

  A long pause followed, as if the person on the other end had forgotten their own name. “Sara Dawson, ma’am. I’m calling from the Detroit Medical Center.”

  “Detroit?” Lima, Opaline had been expecting. Maybe even Findlay, but Detroit was a different story and even further from home. Worry began to fill her. “ I’m afraid I don’t...”

  “She keeps asking for an Opaline Mooreland...”

  “That’s me, but...”

  “She claims her name is Clarissa LaRoux.”

  Opaline’s eyes widened and she covered the receiver. “Raymond, rouse your sister. We’ve got a bit of driving to do.”

  3.

  June 23, 2013. Detroit, Michigan

  Clarissa stared out the window with empty eyes. She heard the nurses discussing her psychiatric care and now she was deciding not to fight them. Outside, was a city she had lived in since birth. It was the same city, and yet...it wasn’t the same at all.

  She couldn’t quite place what was different. Everything she recognized carried a patina of age. There were new buildings, but even they didn’t look so very new. The theme from The Twilight Zone ran through her head as she gazed upon the scene. This place was wrong. She had been gone for much longer than she realized.

  A familiar voice in the hall broke through her haze.

  “Where is Miss LaRoux? I have to see her.” Even she sounded older. Her voice had same lyrical timbre and slight Appalachian accent, but it was also darker, heavier, tinged with the small tragedies of a long life lived.

  “Are you family?”

  “The closest thing she’s got.”

  “I don’t...”

  “My name’s Opaline Mooreland. I was told she asked for me.”

  The curtain moved back. Clarissa steeled herself for what an old Opaline might look like, but very little could prepare her for the shock of seeing her girlhood best friend in her seventies. Her strawberry blonde hair was now the color of clouds before a summer rain and her once acne scarred face had been creased so that it resembled a dry and cracked riverbed. But she was still Opaline. There was no mistaking that. Her pine forest eyes were as expressive as ever.

  “Clarissa
?” she asked, confusion clearly dominating her mind.

  And Clarissa knew exactly why she wore that expression. She hadn’t aged a day. The girl Opaline was seeing was the same girl she had known at nursing school. Unfortunately, Clarissa had no way of explaining how. “I suppose you were wondering...”

  “Wondering? Clarissa, you disappeared.”

  She couldn’t explain. She couldn’t tell her what happened in the almost 50 years that must have passed. “This can’t be Raymond,” she said instead, turning to the man at Opaline’s side. “Last I saw, you were an infant.”

  Raymond wrinkled up his nose in an expression of confusion identical to his mother’s. “You barely look older than my niece.”

  “Niece?” Clarissa asked, clasping her hands in excitement. “You have grandchildren, Opaline?!”

  Opaline did not bite on the subject change. “Where were you, Clarissa?”

  She took a deep breath and looked at the nurse still lingering in the doorway. A pang that the lovely young girl could have been her own granddaughter struck her, but she shook her head quickly to rid herself of it. “I don’t know...”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, Opaline. It makes no sense. Yesterday, there was a bad storm. Today, I’m waking up in a hospital. They’re telling me they found me on the side of an interstate...Opaline, I barely remember an interstate -being- there!”

  Opaline sat down and took her friend’s hand. Clarissa couldn't help noticing that she had a firm hold for an elderly woman. “Clarissa...think hard...” She cast a glance at the still lingering nurse and lowered her voice. “Did you go through something? Did someone cast a spell?”

  “No,” Clarissa replied, her voice growing ever more urgent. “There was just a storm. It was...so loud...The window...it cracked, I think.” Memories of that night forced their way back into her brain as if picturing her cracked window had made the same crack in her memory. The creature’s laugh rang out and Clarissa immediately covered her ears.

  With measured hesitation, Opaline began to stroke her hair. “Clarissa...”

  She pulled away, dragging her knees up to her chest. Tears began to sting her eyes though she tried her best to fight them back. “It must have been him.”

  “Him?” Opaline and Raymond asked at once.

  “You’ll say I’m crazy...”

  “I think we’ve already passed that point.”

  Again, Clarissa looked to the nurse, who ducked out, seeming to take the hint. She trusted Opaline. She trusted her more than anyone else in the world. Many years separated this Opaline from her schoolmate, but still Clarissa knew she would understand. She didn’t even think of Raymond. “Do you remember my grandmere’s grimoire?”

  “Of course. It was...extensive.”

  “Perhaps then...you’ll remember a particular illustration? Of a Brownie of sorts...with red eyes and...”

  Opaline shivered and Clarissa knew the memory had come back to her. “How could I forget?”

  “It was at my window that night. It wanted in...”

  “Did you try a banishing spell?”

  Clarissa gestured widely at the hospital room around her. “It didn’t work.”

  The two women stared at each other. Opaline’s brow creased further with fear and worry. Clarissa hated seeing that expression on her. She used to look that way when she knew something she didn’t want to share. She was about to ask what it was when Raymond interrupted.

  “A Brownie sent you through time?” He asked, clearly embarrassed to be uttering such a sentence as a grown man. “Brownies...fix shoes...and clean houses...they can’t manipulate time.”

  “Brownies are very powerful creatures, Raymond,” Opaline chastised. “Just because they choose to complete some services in exchange for payment does not make them any less so.”

  Raymond looked slightly abashed. “I’m just saying, Mom. You can’t even manipulate time, and you used to screw with the weather constantly when we were kids.”

  Opaline nodded, reaching for Clarissa’s hand again. She gave it reluctantly. She felt a pit begin to grow in her stomach, not sure she wanted to hear what Opaline had to say.

  “You’re right. I don’t believe the creature sent Clarissa to the future.”

  “I think it’s fairly obvious it did!” Clarissa protested. “Look at you!”

  “I don’t mean-”

  “I gave them my address. They said it doesn’t exist.”

  “I don’t mean it -isn’t- the future! I mean the creature wasn’t your means of getting here.”

  “Then what was?” Clarissa crossed her arms and tightened her jaw as she stared Opaline down. She felt a strange anger rising inside her that she didn’t recognize. It was almost a hatred, but it went deeper. She wanted to destroy something; tear something down; Opaline; Raymond; the walls of the hospital, if she had to. She wanted it all in pieces.

  “I don’t know,” Opaline admitted, the crease in her brow deepening. “But we will find out.”

  4.

  Clarissa didn’t know what became of her grandmere’s grimoire. It had been sitting open on the table the night of the storm, but it could have been taken anywhere since then. It pained her to think of those finely wrought illustrations being sold to pay her back rent, but that was the most likely scenario considering her sudden disappearance. In the best case, the book ended up in a library or private collection. However, she didn’t need it to draw the creature for Raymond. The image was branded into her memory.

  “Don’t let it fool you,” she whispered. “It looks like a child, but it’s a hundred times more brutal.”

  Raymond nodded and passed the drawing to his mother. Clarissa watched her face, hoping for a spark of inspiration. It didn’t happen. Opaline’s expression remained impassive. It was hard to imagine the way her eyes used to suddenly glow, as if a fire had been lit behind them, superimposed on this elderly face.

  “Yes, this is how I remember it as well,” she said, setting the drawing down and turning toward the window.

  “Do you know anything?” Clarissa ask, pleading.

  “Clarissa...”

  “It’s been fifty years. If I know you, and at least I used to, you’ve been studying and growing in power every day. You’re going to tell me you’ve really never run across that creature again?”

  Opaline continued to stare out the window, hiding her face. “No. No, I’m not saying that.”

  “Then what are you-”

  A small yelp of fright came from the other side of Clarissa’s bed. She turned back to see yet another nurse. Her eyes were wide, almost as if she had just discovered a murder scene. One hand covered her mouth. The other hesitantly pointed at the drawing of the creature.

  “Why do you have...that?” She asked in a forced whisper.

  “You know it?” Clarissa tried to pass it to the nurse, who let the paper fall to the floor rather than take it.

  “I’m not touching that.” She backed away a few steps.

  “What is it?”

  The nurse shook her head vigorously. “I only came to see if you’d like any lunch.”

  “Please...I want to know what this is. I’ve seen it before...”

  Though Clarissa hadn’t thought it possible, the nurse’s eyes grew wider. “Then it’s too late for you. I’m sorry.” She hurried from the room without another word.

  Opaline turned back finally. Her eyes looked darker, more fierce. ‘Raymond, get her back here.”

  He looked rightly hesitant, but after a moment stood and left the room.

  5.

  August, 1965. Detroit, Michigan.

  The taxi stopped in front of the LaRoux family’s Corktown storefront, but Opaline couldn’t bring herself to open the door. She stared at the filmy wine colored curtains hanging in the smudged windows with an anxiety more appropriate for facing down a mountain lion.

  “Meter’s running,” the driver said, more nudging than impatient.

  “Yes,” Opaline said
with a nod. She fished her wallet from her purse and passed a large sum to the driver. When he began to make change, she held up a hand. “I don’t think I’ll be long.”

  “Ex-husband in there?”

  “Not quite...but if you wouldn’t mind...” The driver nodded and after several deep, calming breaths, Opaline walked into the shop.

  She knew it was desperate, coming all the way up to Detroit, but she had to do something. Since nursing school, the pair had corresponded on an almost weekly basis. They wrote more than letters. The documents they exchanged were in-depth missives of their deepest thoughts. Clarissa’s letters, however, had been growing steadily more distant since the holidays. In May, the only letter that came was short and strange and then, in June, none came at all. It was too much for Opaline to bear. She left the farm and children in her husband’s care and took a train straight to Michigan. She needed to know the truth.

  The shop was practically empty, which surprised Opaline. She and Clarissa had often visited during their school days and it had been stuffed with people browsing the book shelves and waiting for Grandmere LaRoux’s particular brand of herbal and medicinal teas.

  “Clarissa?” She hissed, peering down one cluttered aisle after another and seeing no one. “Clarissa, are you here?”

  “Opaline Mooreland is that you?” a sweet, older voice called from the back of the shop. Opaline immediately made her way to the source and found Clarissa’s grandmother carefully measuring rue into a small sachet.

  “Gr-grandmere LaRoux?” Opaline asked her voice cracking over any attempt at proper French pronunciation.

  The older woman smiled at Opaline. It was a strange, forced smile that sent a chill through her. Her voice was even more chilling. “Opaline...I never expected to see you again.”

  “Yes, you see...” Opaline took a few deep breaths, trying to keep her hands still. “I haven’t had a letter from Clarissa for some time...”

  “That’s right. I don’t expect you’ll have another.”

  Opaline stared at her for a moment, puzzled by those words. She had assumed that Clarissa was angry with her, but her grandmother made it sound like something terrible had happened. She remembered that Clarissa had mentioned the little gnome that used to give her nightmares a few times recently. In May, she said she had practically stopped sleeping due to the frequency of the dreams. Opaline hadn’t thought anything of it at the time; she had been more put off by the letter’s brief nature, but now, reading between the lines...“In her last letter...she sounded afraid...”