Eleanor

by Jason Gurley

  Her father travels to the real estate convention because a man named Richard—who sometimes helped her father sell houses in the early days—goes hunting with his brother-in-law, stumbles into a ravine, and breaks his ankle. Richard was to attend the convention, but with his injury, Paul transfers the flight into his own name.

  This is the single event that creates the accident in the timeline.

  A broken ankle.

  Paul goes away for a few days then. Logistics dictate almost everything else. The Witts have only one car. Had Paul driven it himself, the car would have remained in airport parking for days, useless to Agnes and the girls. A taxi is too expensive, so the whole family drives to Portland to see Paul off. Goodbyes said, hugs hugged.

  Because the taxi is so expensive, Agnes and the twins return a few days later to retrieve Paul from the airport. This puts them on Highway 26, speeding through the rain and fog to meet Esmerelda’s—Mea’s—fate.

  There are very few people in history like you, Mea says to Eleanor. Like you, and like—me.

  Eleanor is quiet; she listens as Mea spins her tale.

  The average human being lives its life in one direction—forward. It is born, it experiences the sum of all things that happen to it, and when it comes to its end, it dies, Mea explains. But for a few people—for you and for me—there are other possibilities.

  “What do you mean?” Eleanor asks. “Like—we can time-travel?”

  Yes.

  Eleanor is excited, as any human might be, but Mea hears the darkness whisper in her ear: Caution. There are risks. There are rules.

  Mea says as much.

  “Rules?” Eleanor asks.

  You and I, we are the same, Mea says. Except I am no longer human. I am no longer alive. When a—soul—has unfinished business, when it waits in the rift for passage into the after, it cannot control its fate.

  “That sounds like hell,” Eleanor says. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  Most souls wait for a very long time. In the end, the peace they seek is usually within themselves, not within the confines of the world they left.

  “They have to forgive themselves?”

  Or accept that they cannot change the past.

  “But you’re different,” Eleanor says. “Why?”

  Because of you, Mea says. Because we are the same. Because we are connected.

  “Because we’re twins?” Eleanor asks. “That seems—I don’t get it.”

  Do you remember when you were a child? When you and Esmerelda would—

  “—finish each other’s thoughts,” Eleanor interrupts. “I had forgotten it until just now.”

  The connection transcends death. I linger here because you live. And while you live—

  Eleanor hangs in the darkness, and Mea moves closer, creating heavy black ripples edged with light. Eleanor bobs in the nothingness like a sprite of flotsam in the sea.

  The connection cannot be broken by time, or by death, Mea explains. And when one of the souls is alive, and one is not, the connection—

  “—is like a tunnel between two worlds,” Eleanor finishes. “Right?”

  That’s correct, Mea says. It explains why you can enter the rift. Why I was able to bring you here.

  “So—you can come back to the world with me?” Eleanor asks. “Is it dangerous?”

  I do not know. I have never tried such things. I suspect it is, yes. Very. I suspect there are limitations.

  “What are they?”

  I cannot physically go with you, Mea says, for I have no body. But through you, I think, I can manipulate things. Time. Events. In a way. I have had much time to think about this. I think that it can be so.

  Eleanor seems to consider this while Mea watches her. “What does that mean?”

  It means, Mea says, that we can start over.

  Mea’s words rattle her, and if she could, she would cry. She feels the familiar surge of warmth that precedes her tears, and a surge of color, like bubbles on a river’s surface, wash out from her into the dark. Mea is close now, and the colors collide with her in little spitfire flashes.

  “We can go back,” Eleanor says. “How far?”

  As far as you might wish.

  “To that day? To the day you—”

  Yes.

  “You’ll be—”

  Alive. Yes.

  “What happens then?”

  Mea says, I do not know. I suspect that I will be expelled from the rift. After all, I will not be dead, then.

  “And then what? The crash happens all over again? I feel that hurt all over again? Watch you—watch you—”

  She cannot finish the thought.

  Time will begin to move forward for us, Mea says. But I do not think that it will be predestined. I think that we will be able to change it.

  “We can prevent the crash,” Eleanor says.

  I am not certain. But I think that we can.

  “We’ll be six years old again.”

  Yes.

  “How do little girls stop something like that? How do we stop a car crash?”

  We will have to devise a way.

  Eleanor is filled with fear and wonder. “We’ll have to relive everything. All those years of school, of—”

  Yes. Is that undesirable?

  Eleanor laughs. “Are you kidding? I won’t be alone this time!” Then she pauses. “Wait. Will—will we remember?’

  I do not know.

  Eleanor turns in a circle, and laughs again. “Esme,” she says, “you’ll be alive! We’ll grow up together! Can you imagine? All the things we’ll share?” Eleanor stops, and faces Mea in the darkness. “Maybe this time you won’t be such a little shit,” she says, pointedly.

  Mea does not answer.

  “Hey,” Eleanor says. “I was only kidding. I’m sorry, it was tasteless, it—”

  There are other things you must know.

  Eleanor feels a strangeness—a coldness that charges her heart with fear. Then a warm swell—almost as if the sea has licked at her toes. “Someone else is here,” she says. “Who is here?”

  No answer comes.

  “Mea,” Eleanor says. “Are we alone? Are there other—dead people here?”

  The rift holds all the souls of people who wait, Mea says. But we are mostly alone.

  “Mostly?”

  The darkness is here.

  “What do you mean? It’s dark. It’s been dark the whole time.”

  The darkness knows you. The darkness knows all. The darkness is time, it is life, it is death.

  Eleanor feels a tingle of fear, and then the darkness speaks, and the darkness turns to light.

  Love, says the darkness.

  Eleanor feels exactly that, like a flame that explodes inside her and blooms outward, setting everything around her alight.

  Now, says the darkness. Do not be afraid. Fear will send you back.

  Eleanor doesn’t say anything. She feels calm. At peace. Loved.

  Mea has not told you the most important thing, the darkness says. I will tell you, and then I will leave you.

  Eleanor feels Mea press close to her, feels their two amorphous selves begin to bleed into one another. The sensation is electric, a sustained, wavering hum.

  There are more worlds than these, the darkness continues, and Eleanor listens. As a human soul, you possess the ability to exist in only one. Your world. Your Earth. Because of Mea, you may exist here, in my rift, within me. But there are infinite worlds.

  You have been to another one, Mea says.

  “Another?” Eleanor repeats. “No. What—”

  You have seen dreams, the darkness says, silencing them both. Mea has shown these worlds to you, though she did not intend to.

  You slipped out of my hands, Mea says. I dropped you.

  “Dropped me.”

  Between the rift and your own world, the darkness booms, are the dream worlds. You have been there. We have seen you enter, but we have not seen what you have seen. I cannot follow. But I h
ave seen the mark you left, and it burns like a brand. It bleeds like a wound. In the world of dreams, your power is greater than my own.

  Eleanor feels as if her head might explode. “I’m—I don’t understand,” she says. “I haven’t been to any dream worlds.”

  But then she remembers.

  The cornfield on Venus.

  The falling ash in the dead forest.

  “Oh,” she says.

  Yes, Mea says. You remember. What did you see?

  “Farms,” Eleanor says. “I saw farms, and corn, and—children. I saw myself. I saw—I saw Jack.” She remembers the carvings in the trees. J loves E 4ever.

  What is it? Mea asks. What did you see?

  “Crude carvings on trees,” Eleanor says. “Things about boogeymen and bad things. But—

  Yes?

  Eleanor can feel Mea’s anticipation like pin-pricks.

  “One of them said J loves E,” Eleanor says. “And—oh, my.”

  J, Mea says. It was Jack. Wasn’t it?

  “Jack,” Eleanor breathes. She imagines him, far away, and his face appears before her, a pattern in the colors.

  Before, the darkness says. Before you were there, you were near the boy.

  Eleanor nods. Blue sparks flitter in the pale nothing that cups her.

  Dream worlds are emotionally and physically proximate, the darkness says. When Mea tried to bring you to the rift and failed, you fell into the chasm between here and there. You fell into the dream worlds.

  But not just any dream world, Mea says. You fell into someone else’s dream world. Someone near you, or someone you know very well, that you have a deep connection to.

  Eleanor gasps, though she does not hear the sound of it.

  “Gerry,” she says. “When you tried to take me from my father’s office.”

  The woman, Mea says. Geraldine.

  “I saw her children,” Eleanor says. “Her two boys. I saw—I saw them die. And the cornfield—that was Jack’s dream? He dreams—of me?”

  The other time, the darkness says. What do you remember? What did you see?

  Eleanor tries to remember where she was before she found herself in the scorched woods, naked and slick with mud.

  “I was—”

  Home, Mea finishes. You were at home.

  Were you alone? the darkness asks.

  “No,” Eleanor says. “No, my—”

  Her heart seems to stop beating.

  “My mother was there,” she says.

  “What does that mean?” Eleanor demands. “The place that I was—that was a dream world? The forest that was all knocked over and burned up? That was—that was my mother’s dream?”

  Yes, Mea says.

  Your mother, the darkness says. I have watched her.

  “You’ve watched her?”

  The darkness knows all, Mea reminds Eleanor.

  I have watched everyone. I have watched you. Every life leaves a tiny trail as it passes forward into time, the darkness says. Your trail has grown darker since you were small. Your trail shows your sadness. Yours is gray and weak.

  “Because I was grieving,” Eleanor says.

  Yes.

  Mea says, But your mother’s trail—

  “She’s your mother, too,” Eleanor interjects. “Yours.”

  Your mother’s trail is withered and black, the darkness says. It is not straight. It is broken and frail. It will snap soon. All threads of this quality do.

  “What do you mean?” Eleanor asks. “I don’t understand—trails? What happens when they snap?”

  Death, the darkness answers. A snapped trail only occurs when a life is extinguished.

  Your mother’s world sounds very dark, Mea says.

  Your task will be more difficult than we had imagined, the darkness says.

  “What task?” Eleanor asks.

  A person carries the sum of their feelings when time is spun back, Mea says. They may not remember anything of the years taken from them—but they will most certainly remember how those years made them feel. Their state of mind, their emotions, come with them.

  “My mother is depressed,” Eleanor says. “She has liver cancer. She—she barely lives.”

  The cancer would unwind, the darkness says. But her black cloud would persist.

  Even though my human self would be returned to her, Mea says, she would suffer the same grief as if I were still dead.

  She would not understand why, but it would swallow her like a beast.

  Eleanor says, “Why would you tell me that it can all be undone if it really can’t?”

  Because it can be undone, the darkness says.

  “How?” Eleanor asks. “How am I supposed to—”

  Heal her wounds, the darkness says.

  And your father’s, too, Mea says.

  “How?” Eleanor asks. “How am I supposed to do that when their daughter is still dead? Just tell them to suck it up? Get over it, move on, everything’s okay even though it clearly isn’t?”

  Isn’t it obvious? Mea asks.

  “No,” Eleanor snaps, frustrated. “No, it’s not obvious to me!”

  You must enter their dreams, the darkness says. You must heal them from within.

  We will start with her mother, Mea suggests. If her trail is almost broken, we should begin with her.

  The darkness agrees. Child, it thrums. Are you ready?

  Eleanor is quiet for a long moment. She can feel Mea studying her.

  Child, the darkness repeats.

  Eleanor says, “Tell me what I have to do.”

  The house looms before her, still and quiet. There are no lights in the windows. The shadows of the trees tremble as clouds trundle before the moon overhead.

  “How close do I need to be?” Eleanor had asked.

  Closer to your mother than to your father, Mea had explained. So that you will enter her dreams, and not his.

  Her father’s car is parked in the driveway. Eleanor is unselfconscious even though she is not clothed. She pads on the soles of her bare feet across the driveway, and peers into the car. It is empty. Her father’s briefcase is on the passenger seat, still open. An unwrapped, half-eaten sandwich rests on a pile of papers. His car phone is on the floorboard, unplugged.

  She goes around the house, her skin pale as death in the thin moonlight, her red hair turned the color of dark wine. The spare key to the garage is still there, tucked under the terra cotta flower pot. The flowers are dead and crackle like paper beneath her touch.

  Eleanor slips into the garage and steps around the old, gummy oil stains on the concrete floor. She pauses for a moment, staring at the boxes that her father never took with him when he moved out. They are marked Attic junk in her mother’s angry, hasty hand. A strap of old tape holds the flaps loosely together. Eleanor peels it away, and opens the box.

  Staring up at her from the depths of the first box is the toothless gaze of a broken model house. The cellophane windows have been punctured by tiny tree stems. The walls of the house are buckled and folded over upon themselves. Fake grass has crumbled free of its glue and is scattered everywhere like mossy tobacco dust.

  She sighs and feels her eyes fill up with tears, remembering the mailbox that she broke years ago, on that awful day. She had fretted about it as her mother drove. Her mother had even noticed—Eleanor barely remembers what it felt like for her mother to notice her—and had plucked at Eleanor’s mood. “What’s going on with you, kiddo?” she had asked.

  Eleanor never told her, and then the accident rose up and demanded everyone’s attention, and she had forgotten about the mailbox. Until now.

  She carefully closes the box, presses the tape back into place, and turns away.

  The inner garage door is closed. She grips the knob and lifts as she pushes it open, so that the hinges won’t squeak the way they always do, and then she silently closes it behind her, only releasing the knob when the door is firmly in place. For a long moment she stands still, letting her eyes adjust to the shadows,
listening to the quiet of the house. There are no sounds other than the house itself—the soft tick of the water heater in the closet beside her, the groan of the foundation settling.

  She pauses beside the laundry room door. It is open, and there is a pile of clean laundry in a basket atop the dryer. Her father’s doing, she thinks. Her mother hasn’t done laundry in years. She rummages through the pile and finds her father’s Glacier Pilots T-shirt, and remembers his story of watching Mark McGwire, all of nineteen years old, hit three home runs in a game. She pulls the shirt on. It smells like dryer sheets and her father. It’s large enough that it hangs almost to her knees.

  Eleanor creeps into the kitchen, then stops. She crosses the room to the sink, and opens the cabinet beneath it. The red plastic bin inside is empty, and she breathes a sigh. Her father is doing something right. Her mother isn’t drinking.

  Or maybe her father just isn’t finding the bottles.

  She leans against the doorframe and peeks out into the hall, then across to the living room. The moon washes the room in dim gray light, enough that Eleanor can see that it is empty. Her mother’s chair is unoccupied. The blanket she used to drape over her mother is folded carefully on the footstool. The side table is free of bottles.

  She steps carefully across the hall, then stops dead in the doorway of the living room.

  Her father is sitting upright on the couch in the dark.

  Eleanor’s breath catches.

  She can’t seem to move her feet.

  Then her father snores—faintly, but enough that she can hear it. She exhales softly, then tiptoes into the room and heads for the stairs. The floor creaks beneath her feet, and her father startles awake. She can hear the thin click of his lips parting, and her skin prickles when he says her name.

  Mea takes her then.

  The space between the world and the rift is uneven, and Eleanor feels the air spark and hum around her. Her father’s voice stretches and wavers, her name on his lips turned to taffy.

  “Ellllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnahhhhhhh—”