Chill Waters

by Hovey, Joan Hall

  Just then a Siamese cat slinked around a partly open door of a back room, blinked sleepily at Rachael out of eyes as blue as its mistresses’. Then it sat on its haunches, looking remarkably like a sculpture of itself and studied her.

  “What a beautiful cat,” Rachael said. She’d always had an affinity with animals, but made no move to pet this one, who was presently regarding her with haughty eyes.

  “That’s Cleopatra. Cleo for short. Doesn’t keep her humble, though.” She smiled indulgently at Cleo, then turned her attention on Rachael. “You know,” she frowned, “you remind me of someone. I can’t think who. You did say you lived here as a girl?” As the last word trailed off, Rachael saw a shadow of fear cross the woman’s features, her smile waver.

  “Is something wrong?” Rachael asked.

  “No. It’s nothing.”

  She’s lying. She looks as if she just saw a ghost. Except that it’s me she’s looking at. “Only visited,” Rachael said in answer to her question, suddenly anxious to be on her way, beyond the scrutiny of those piercing blue eyes. But the woman had been kind; she owed her courtesy. “I spent a few summers at Jenny’s Cove with my grandmother,” she offered. “It was a long time ago.” Another lifetime, she thought. “Not so surprising that it would look different. I don’t know what I expected.” Her laugh sounded hollow in her own ears.

  Placing the empty bottle in the crate on the scrubbed-wood floor, Rachael started for the door.

  In a move that seemed almost supernatural, the storekeeper was suddenly in front of her, holding the door for her. The scent of wild roses cut through the apple smell.

  Rachael moved past the woman, down the steps. “I do remember now seeing that welding shop on the corner,” she said over her shoulder. “Thank you again.”

  “I knew some of the people around here back then,” the woman said after her. Rachael had no choice but to turn around. The storekeeper looked as if she was trying to work out some complex problem in her mind, but the fear still lingered in her eyes. “I’m Iris Brandt, by the way.”

  Rachael knew she was expected to respond with her own name. When she didn’t, the woman added in an ominous tone, “Most of the summer people are gone now.”

  Three

  Backtracking to the welding shop, a squat structure with dark green corrugated siding, Rachael turned onto Bay Road.

  Just past the welding shop was a tarpaper shack with a couple of junk cars and a blue half-ton in the yard. The mailbox was nailed to a post at the end of the drive, the name N. Prichard printed on the side in red childlike letters.

  The dusty, white Cavalier bumped along the narrow tree-lined road, groaning with the need of new shocks, forcing Rachael to slow down.

  Fall was still more than a week away, but already the leaves were turning color. As a child, she used to imagine tiny elves skipping down this road with pots of paint, brushing the leaves with scarlets and golds. She’d even made up a poem about it. Not much she didn’t pay poetic tribute to back then.

  The road was narrower than she remembered, trees hemming her in, forming a lacy canopy overhead, moving her in and out of shadow. The salty mist of the ocean wafted through the open window.

  Gradually, the trees on her right thinned, revealing shimmering patches of blue, stirring old memories, buried emotions.

  She passed a summerhouse, remembered the childrena boy and girl—who lived there one summer. Towheads both, they would wave to her as she flew past the house on her bicycle. Now the windows were boarded over, the porch leaning drunkenly, overgrown with weeds and shrubbery. She passed a few more cabins and cottages along the stretch of road, a couple recalled, most not.

  At last the bay burst into full view. The rocky shore sprawled past, broken here and there by smooth sandy beaches. Overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, Rachael pulled off to the side of the road, switched off the engine and got out of the car.

  She walked to the grassy bank and gazed out at mossy islands rising out of the bay like the backs of grey whales. On the farthest island, the pulsing light from the lighthouse guided the safe passage of sailors as it had done for more than a hundred years.

  Enduring. Steadfast. Unlike her marriage. Her life. She fought back a fresh welling of tears, angry with herself. Surprised there were any tears left.

  Once, she’d been downtown and looked up to see a man staring at her and realized the tears were streaming down her face. She couldn’t seem to stop them. Another time, she actually started running as if she might outrun the pain. Well, enough of that. Enough.

  She turned away and went back to the car.

  She was about to open the door when suddenly the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. As if someone were watching her. She looked around.

  But she saw no one.

  Four

  The house appeared before her so suddenly that she gaped, the sight of it as startling as turning a corner and coming face to face with someone you’d believed long dead. As if on some level she had not expected it to be there at all, its existence only in her memory, and in some faded, yellowing snapshots.

  But there it wastall windows overlooking the bay, small open front porch where she had so often sat reading, or scribbling in her notebook.

  As the road had seemed narrower, so the house appeared smaller, the way places often do when you revisit them years later. Once white shingles were weathered now, but nothing a coat of paint wouldn’t fix. If it had been in A-1 shape, she wouldn’t have gotten it at the price she had.

  Rachael parked in the drive. As she made her way up the sloping path to the house, the salty breeze from the bay brushed her face like the hand of an old friend. Gazing wistfully up at the eaves of the house, she smiled to herself, wondering if that old gutter still held any of the rubber balls she’d lost to it over the years. But surely there’d been other children who’d played her solitary game since then. “…Claimsies, clapsies, rollies, crossies…recited softly, almost hearing the phantom ball thump against the house.

  A house she had bought sight unseen, deciding the instant she saw it up for sale in the paper. She knew a lot could happen to a house in over a quarter of a century, but she also knew that somehow it would be all right. The house had called out to her. Or perhaps she had called out to it.

  She’d telephoned Greg at his office. Give me a quarter of what our place is worth’, she’d said, and I’ll sign it over to you. To his credit, he tried not to show his eagerness in complying, but Greg knew a deal when he heard one. He brought her a certified check that same afternoon, and the appropriate papers to sign. She was surprised he’d been able to have them drawn up so quickly.

  “You’re in no mental state to make major decisions like this,” her friend, Betty had said, when they had lunch at the mall a few days later. “That’s why insurance people like to negotiate right after a house fire. You can be sure if Allan threw me over for some tramp, I’d take the son-of-bitch for all he was worth.”

  Of course, Allan would never betray Betty. He adored her. Rachael had a bitter, jealous moment, followed by shame. Betty was her friend. She deserved her happiness.

  Fitting one of the two keys the real estate woman had given her into the lock, she turned it. The door creaked open, and Rachael stepped over the threshold into another lifetime.

  The shadowy livingroom smelled dank and musty. Yellowing newspapers hung over the two long windows facing the bay, held by bits of crumbling masking tape. The one nearest her was askew, letting in a shaft of sunlight that revealed dust motes in the air.

  She stood very still, listening. For what, Rachael? No one is here. No one is coming to greet you.

  Even the room’s dim light couldn’t disguise the battered furniture, the worn tweed carpeting, the tired brown couch flush against one wall. Rachael flicked on the wall light-switch, bathing the room in light.

  In the far corner, a fifties floor lamp stood beside a sagging stuffed chair, its torn, fringed shade tilted at a jaunty angle, like a
drunk’s hat. Out of habit, she crossed the room and straightened it. She remembered a similar lamp from her childhood.

  The brick fireplace took up most of one wall. Above it, On the mantle, a pickle bottle held a faded plastic rose. She ran her fingertips over the mantle’s gritty surface. Once, it had been lined with photographsRachael in short hair with bangs, a tooth missing from her shy grin. Next to that, a black and white photo of her father in a baseball cap, hefting a bat too heavy for the thin boy he had been. She touched her fingertips to the spot where her parents’ wedding picture had been.

  Right here. Right in the middle. How young they were. Her mother’s face soft and sweet, framed with dark hair, styled in a pageboy. Her father smiling, barely resembling the gray, somber man she remembered.

  As Rachael climbed the stairs to the upstairs rooms, a strange sensation came over her—a sense that she was not real, not quite flesh and blood, but merely a ghost returned to haunt old stomping grounds. A haunted creature herself, belonging to neither past nor present.

  The oak railing felt smooth and warm beneath her hand. She gripped it hard, until her hand tingled hotly, giving her evidence of her own substance, her own existence.

  Her old room was situated across from her grandmother’s. A small cozy room. An iron-framed bed much like the one she had slept in, stood against the wall, beneath the sloped ceiling. Through the small window above the bed she could see the woods and a slice of bay.

  She remembered lying in her bed, palms pressed flat against the ceiling, fancying that she was holding it up, like Hercules holding up the Heavens. A wonder she hadn’t felt claustrophobic with the ceiling crowding in on her like that, but she hadn’t. Rather, she’d felt safe and snug under the patchwork quilt, like a small animal curled up in its den, the battery-operated radio playing beside her. How often she had fallen asleep listening to the old radio program Music in the Night.

  She still loved the songs from that time: Patti Page’s Old Cape Cod, Tony Bennett’s Rags to Riches. Ella Fitzgerald, Sinatra. Greg had no interest in things past, including music. Or a wife, she thought wryly.

  Suddenly overcome by exhaustion, Rachael took off her shoes and lay down on the bare mattress. A nubby blue blanket lay folded at the foot of the bed; ignoring its musty smell, she drew it up over her, curled into a fetal position, and was soon asleep.

  Five

  For the first time since the teenager was rushed into St. Clair Hospital, the victim of a brutal assault, her swollen eyelids twitched, as if she were trying to wake up. The nurse taking her pulse felt her own heartbeat quicken in response. She watched for other signs that her young patient just might make it through this horror. The wrist she held in her hand felt cool and fragile as a sparrow’s wing. “Miss Myers? Heather?”

  The only answer was in the steady beeping of the monitor beside the bed. “Heather? Can you hear my voice?”

  The girl moaned faintly, her eyes fluttering open, at least as far as was possible, swollen near shut as they were. She peered up at her through mere slits in a face so horribly battered it made Nurse Janet Lewis wince inwardly just to look at her.

  As the girl struggled to speak, blood beaded on her lower lip. The nurse gently blotted the wound with a cotton swap from the tray on the night table. She’s trying to tell me something.

  She tracked Heather Myer’s gaze to the aqua plastic carafe beside the tray. “Of course. You’re thirsty.”

  Pouring water into the glass, she then cupped the back of her patient’s head, raised it just enough to allow her to take a few sips through the L-shaped straw.

  When she had taken sufficient liquid, the nurse asked, “Do you know where you are, Heather?” The girl tried to answer, but nothing came out. Seeing the panic in her eyes, she said quickly, “Don’t worry. Your voice will return. I’m sure it’s a temporary condition brought on by shock. You’re going to be fine, Heather. It’s just going to take a little time.”

  Gently, she lowered the girl’s head back down on her pillow, smoothed the blanket around her, then hurried for the doctor.

  Six

  Iris fished a cigarette from the pack of Benson & Hedges she kept under the counter. Holding it unlit between her long fingers, she looked out the storefront window. In the elongated shadow cast by the Coca-Cola sign, a crow hopped and pecked at something on the ground. Probably a potato chip or a Tacos, dropped by some child.

  As if sensing her watching it, the bird fixed its beady eye on her. A chill passed through Iris. A crow at the window means death. Not that she really believed any of those old superstitions.

  Barely conscious of the jazzy tune bouncing from her radio, Iris’ thoughts returned to yesterday’s lone customer. (Unless you counted a $3.00 purchase of gas from a teenage boy driving a wheezing Chevy.) She’d seen the woman somewhere before. But where? Though that wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t seem to get her out of her mind, or even the main reason. What had so unsettled Iris Brandt was the danger she’d sensed around hera cold, malevolent energy. The energy wasn’t coming from her, thoughit accompanied her, like the demon dog from hell.

  What was wrong with her today? Dogs …crows…

  But it was not exactly an unfamiliar happening. Iris had gotten feelings about things and people since childhood. Not that she considered herself clairvoyant or psychic, or whatever was the in-term these days. The very notion of ‘second sight’, as her mother used to call it, was distasteful to her, right up there with snake charming. She was a simple woman, of German peasant stock, who ran a store during the tourist season, and dabbled in pottery-making whenever time allowed. A practical, no-nonsense person.

  Still, she had learned to pay attention to the bad feelings, essentially because there was no way you could ignore them. Sometimes they were so intense they didn’t let her sleep or eat. And when she did sleep, she would dreamterrible dreams that followed her into waking. And the feelings would stay with her, boring deeper and deeper inside her skull and her skin, until the awful thing happened.

  Just like that time whenno, she wouldn’t let herself dwell on that. Though she did often think of Ethel, wondered how she was getting on in Florida. Was George still alive? He’d seemed so feeble that last time she saw him. Not so surprising considering what that boy did to him.

  “We interrupt this program to bring you this news bulletin.”

  Iris turned the volume up on the radio.

  “We have just received a report that seventeen year old Heather Myers of St. Clair, was brutally assaulted in Steve’s convenience store where she was employed part-time. Myers was discovered unconscious in the back room by owner and operator, Steve Poulis, who, following a frantic phone call from the girl’s mother, drove back to the store to investigate. The condition of the teenager is listed as serious. Unable to speak, she is unable to describe her attacker. If anyone has any information, please…”

  “My God,” Iris whispered, snapping off the radio. That poor, dear child. How terrible this must be for Helen and Bob.

  ‘The devil walks among us’, Iris’ grandmother used to say. If she were alive today that would probably be ‘The devil runs amok’. Or something similar.

  Iris dropped the unsmoked cigarette into the deep pocket of her skirt. Retrieving the dust cloth from beneath the counter, she grimly attacked the already spotless display case as if through sheer physical effort she might banish the bad feelings inside her. She feared the savagery inflicted on Heather Myers was only the beginning.

  Then it came to her. Now Iris knew who the woman was.

  Or at least who she was kin to.

  Seven

  The instant Rachael opened her eyes she felt disoriented, confused at the unfamiliar, and at the same time familiar, surroundings.