Yet, I persist. In spite of the solemnity of the season I have come to enjoy my celebration which begins, as I have said, with the altar of dead and so forth until the great night arrives when I turn off all my lights and—dressed as myself all those years ago—sneak away from streets teeming with Strangos of all shapes and sizes; generations of Strangos with no connection to Laurel or her life to stand beneath our tree where I beg her to forgive me, jump when a leaf falls (briefly seeing too much meaning in it) and look at my hands. So large, though once they were so small. I shiver in the cold. Walk home alone, shoes and socks dampened by frost.
The next morning I pack photographs, dress, headband, purse and the rest. I toss out the caramel apple sticks and pumpkin tea wrappers. I stand at the closed window noting how the tree limbs scratch the gray sky, the fallen leaves de-composed of color. November is the worst month, that brutal time after they found her body and my own mother began the wandering which defined her final years. She paced at all hours; locking doors, sprinkling sugar on the floor (“It will mark his footprints,” she said) and cut up tablecloths which she insisted made perfect fabric for new dresses, though I never saw any sewn. Perhaps I outgrew them in that time between the charge and my acquittal. My father found solace in fantasies of revenge, which he described in our new ritual of bedtime stories. “First, I’ll tear off his fingernails,” he said and so forth, seeding my sleep with nightmares from which I often woke to find my brother weeping in a dark corner.
I was arrested in December so it would not be unreasonable to assume the month ruined for me but I have recovered the season; enlivened by the tradition of Christmas ghosts. Laurel loved the holiday; it made sense she would use the occasion to make a grand entrance. In spite of what that movie inferred she never would have become zombified with an appetite for blood; even dead she would remain a life force. I know she wasn’t always sweet, or even good but she could make me laugh when no one else did. She told Petal Mearlot and Tina Schubert to stop throwing stones at me, and the day after Christmas—that last year—she pretended to be impressed by my meager haul then brought me to her house (it smelled of peppermint and evergreen) where she dumped the contents of a giant stocking on her bed, dividing it between us because, she said, Santa meant for me to have an equal share. “We’re just so alike. Sometimes he gets us confused.”
So it came to be that I made the error of inviting the Strangos I found standing beneath the streetlamp into my house. They looked cold and forlorn and, I admit, I was curious. Why would they choose to be Strangos when they could be daughters; loved and loving on early Christmas morn?
“Why are you here?” I asked, as I hung their wet coats in the downstairs shower where they dropped chips of ice on the linoleum.
“We came to see Laurel’s tree. Did you cut it down?” they asked. “Did you save the wood? ‘Cause it’s haunted.”
“Here.” I offered the blue willow cup and saucer my mother once loved, trembling with excitement at my first Christmas guests, ever. “Do you take lemon, cream or sugar?”
“Oh, I don’t drink tea,” said the first Strango, frowning into the cup.
“Me neither,” said the other. “What else you got?”
They reminded me of Laurel. She would have sounded bossy, just like them. It put a smile on my face, it really did.
“I have Coke, and milk. There might be juice.”
“What about eggnog?”
I shook my head, no. “My mother said it is dangerous because of the eggs.”
“There are no eggs in eggnog,” said Strango One, frowning into her cup.
“What about cocoa?” asked Strango Two. “But it must have whipped cream. I hate marshmallows.”
“Laurel hates marshmallows too,” I blurted.
“We know,” the Strangos said in unison.
An uncomfortable silence settled over us. I wondered how they knew this about her. Was it buried somewhere in the movie; in the early scene when we met in kindergarten, perhaps? Or maybe noted in the companion volume, which I never purchased though I did page through it once, in the library, hunkered between shelves like a voyeur, my worn copy of Rilke temporarily abandoned?
“What’s it like?” Strango One asked. “To live in her house?”
“Whose house?”
“The murderer.”
I knew how Christmas was supposed to be and, while I had never entertained visitors, I had an idea how they were supposed to behave. I decided to rise above my guest’s poor manners. “Would you like toast? I can cut it in the shape of a star, or a boot.”
The Strangos, sitting side-by-side on the couch in their matching dresses with knocked knees and wet socks, looked at each other, wide-eyed then clapped their hands; three quick claps.
“Goody,” said one.
“Yes, please,” said the other. “With cinnamon.”
Laurel liked cinnamon too. It made me sad to remember, though it did make the toast glitter pleasantly. I wished I had cocoa, but the Strangos didn’t seem to mind the Coke and one of them even commented favorably on the combination, saying she planned to make it a tradition. I’m not sure if she was serious. It is very difficult for me to differentiate between mockery and affection.
After the Strangos finished their snack we sat and stared at each other. I studied them closely for clues on how to proceed but when Strango One began picking her dress with long fingernails as though harvesting fleas, I began to fear my little party was in trouble. “Would you like to play charades?”
“How about hide-and-seek?” Strango One replied.
Personally, I never liked the game and didn’t see what it had to do with the holiday but in the spirit of being a good hostess, I agreed.
“You hide,” Strango One said.
I thought it unkind, to send me off alone while they counted to a thousand and five, yet they were guests and, as such, should be graciously accommodated. How strange it was, then, to be alone again in this new fashion; knowing there were those nearby who shared companionship while I had none. Even though they were Strangos, it made me lonely in a way I hadn’t been for a long time. Hearing their voices count together brought to mind the sound of Laurel and me reciting “The Night Before Christmas’ which we learned in its entirety in second grade. The memory only made me want to create more distance between me and the Strangos. I crept up the stairs; careful to skip the third from the top. The sound of their counting became a murmur that reminded me of waking in my bedroom when I was young, listening to the sounds my parents made.
What had I been thinking? Why had I invited Strangos into my house?
Before then it had never occurred to me to enter the forbidden attic, but it offered a perfect hiding place; its narrow door blended neatly with the paneled wood and the small hole that once housed a doorknob appeared to be a whorl. It was off limits when I was a child, the occasional source of strange noises my father attributed to ghosts, though I had seen him take my brother up there and knew the moans belonged to him. I stood at the bottom of the jagged staircase, looking up the dark portal with the odd feeling of assessing a giant jigsaw piece, memorizing it before pulling the door shut and slowly walking up the stairs, imagining all sorts of frightening things like mice and bats, spiders and the like.
The attic was surprisingly small and, once I adjusted, cozy in a way. As a child I often “played mole,” rolling up in a blanket and hiding in my bedroom closet; it made sense that I enjoyed the confined space with its low slanted ceiling jutted at odd angles over inviting corners. There wasn’t much up there—an old bed, broken lamps, boxes filled with tools—but it was surprisingly warm. I sat, leaning against the wall and felt something like happiness, or what I remembered of it. “See dad,” I whispered. “I always knew it was you,” which led to tears that surprised me with their sudden, inexplicable arrival.
The single, old window offered a patch of bruised sky I stared at; finally hypnotized into a slumber until revived by a luminescence that filled the room with a h
oly glow. “Laurel?” I whispered, but did not wait for a flicker of acknowledgment; instead, I turned away, curled into the reassuring crook of my elbow. For some, hope is an annihilation; a greater loss than the loss from which it is born.
I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke the attic was consumed by darkness, there was an uncomfortable crick in my neck and my knees ached as I carefully unwound myself. I bumped my shin on my way across the room, maneuvered carefully down the stairs, suspecting the Strangos were long gone; if I fell and hit my head I would likely die and be decomposed before anyone even noticed I was missing.
What a mess the Strangos made! The house was in chaos; furniture moved, lamps unplugged, cupboards left open. What, I wondered, did the Strangos think I had shrunk myself small as a pin—the refrigerator drawers drawn full to reveal a pale head of lettuce, carrots and eggs thrown to the floor—before I accepted they had not been guests, but invaders. I closed the drawers, tidied up as one does, returned each thing that could be returned to its rightful place and tossed what was ruined; when my eyes fell to an errant orange, an orb of brilliance I plucked from its shadowed corner and peeled, getting skin beneath my nails as the bright spiral fell against the white porcelain. I wiped my tears with orange scented fingertips, finally understanding the answer I had been given: the sweet taste, the holy glow, the great loss and widening absence; to be robbed day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year; left to fall deeper into the void, find an orange there, and destroy it.
SHELL BABY
V.H. Leslie
THE CROFT-HOUSE STOOD STARK WHITE in the diminishing light, dark waves breaking against the shore in the distance. Elspeth looked past Donal toward the churning waters. It was desolate at this Northern edge, even the seagulls crooned melancholically as they soared overhead.
“You have to be crazy to move here,” Donal said, handing over the keys.
Elspeth nodded and pulled up the collar of her coat. The wind blustered past, obscuring what Donal said next.
“Pardon?”
“Would you like me to help with your things?” he repeated louder, looking toward the car. Elspeth had brought a ridiculous amount of provisions; the back seats full with food, the boot already overloaded with suitcases and clothing. She’d brought as much as she could physically carry. She was loath to make the journey across on the ferry to the supermarket on the Orkney mainland more than was absolutely necessary. She was ready to hunker down and forget all about the rest of the world.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, shaking Donal’s hand and walking decisively toward the front door. Though it would take her longer on her own to unload the car, she was reluctant for Donal to enter what was now her space. Though technically he owned the croft-house, it was hers for the foreseeable future and she wanted to ensure it remained untainted by others.
She heard the sound of a car door slam behind her as she placed the keys in the lock, followed by the rumble of the engine. She took her time with the keys and waited until Donal was back on the road before she opened the door.
The croft-house looked much the same as the photos on the tourist website. It was traditionally furnished, slightly outdated in parts with chintz ornaments and horseshoes nailed to the beams. But it was the view that had drawn her, as it did now. Sitting on a small window seat beside the hearth, she could see the sea, girded by a stretch of shingle beach. It was the sea, vast and inexhaustible, combined with the knowledge that there were no other homesteads for miles and miles that restored a peace within her. She was finally on her own.
She’d craved being on her own for such a long time. Over the years, she’d become increasingly frustrated with people, with the relentless noise they made. Even in the relative quiet of her flower shop, noise persisted, her customers’ verbal outpourings stifling her roses and lilacs, their inane conversations drawing all the air out of the room and leaving her gasping. She could only spend so long in the little side alley, among the rotting vegetal remains before having to return to serve another patron, the shrill ringing of the doorbell summoning her back to the fray.
She didn’t have to serve anyone now but herself. She watched the waves continue their unyielding assault against the shore and thought of the life she’d left behind. It was more than just an idle fancy, this quest for isolation. She’d felt a change over the last year, as though she had misplaced a part of herself somewhere, in the way she would lose her scissors beneath the debris of leaves and stalks on the counter or under the copious buds of hydrangeas or delphiniums.
She called it a kind of quiet madness, this descent, this slippage in herself. She was aware of how far she could plunge if she left it unchecked. She had imagined herself shouting at her customers, yelling profanities, striking vases, flowers tumbling about the room. Or worse, she would recede into herself, losing her grasp of reality entirely and begin talking to the azaleas and orchids.
She knew she had to go away. Somewhere where she would be alone. Where there was no one to witness her decline.
It would have been different if she’d had a child, someone to look after her in her old age, to accommodate this change in her. A daughter would have been best. Daughters are always better than sons at caring for their ailing parents. Elspeth wondered why that was. Were men only able to satisfy one woman in their lives? Maybe women were just more compassionate, dutiful.
She knew she was unusual; she’d never wanted a partner—a mate. Sex was a fleeting appetite that reared its head from time to time, not enough of a motivation to consider a life-long commitment to another person. But she craved a child.
The sea was disappearing into the encroaching darkness but she could still hear the reassuring hiss of the waves against the shore. And she thought of her former fantasies about discovering a foundling; a gurgling baby nestled amongst her blooms or left in a terracotta pot in lieu of a crib, as if it had grown overnight from the rich soil.
It took her well into the night to finish unpacking. It took her longer because every few minutes she was drawn seaward. Nestled on the window seat, she’d scrutinise the grey surface, waiting for something to disrupt the steady to and fro of the waves—perhaps the appearance of a seal, a trawler in the distance—but the waters remained unchanged, vacant.
Night fell early on the island and as Elspeth made the journey to and from the car, she was struck by the absolute black of the sky. Laden with bags, she could still smell the salt reek of the sea. It was on the last trip to the car that she noticed the green shimmer and placing the bags back down, she leant against the bonnet of the car, realising what it was she was looking at.
In the supermarket earlier that day she’d told the curious cashier that it was the Northern Lights that had brought her to the islands. People don’t typically head to the edge of the world in winter, when the days are short and harsh. It was why she’d got such a good deal on the croft-house. She needed a ready excuse and it seemed the most plausible. But the Northern Lights held no more appeal than the orcas and porpoises that inhabited the waters in the summer months. Yet now, looking up at the strange green spectacle, Elspeth felt a twisting, sinking sensation in her stomach, a giddy trepidation that made her short of breath.
She made her way down to the shore, the swelling green sky lighting her way. She needed to be close to the sea, to see the cosmic light dance off the black water. She felt the crunch of shingle underfoot and wondered briefly when the beach had last been walked upon. But she didn’t look down. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the eerie luminosity.
It was loud at the sea’s edge. Not the lazy lapping of the waves as she’d imagined but the violent crash of water against rock. And then there was the wind, whipping past her, drowning out even the sound of the sea, pushing her toward the surf. She was aware at some point that her feet were wet, that the water had crept up on her without her realising. Though her feet were cold, it wasn’t unwelcome. In fact, despite being deep midwinter, with the wind buffeting her with icy gusts, she felt
strangely unaffected by the temperature. She’d left her coat indoors and now considered recklessly casting off the remainder of her clothes, struck by an overwhelming desire to feel the icy bite of the water on her skin.
It was the kind of crazy behaviour she’d never indulge back home, but here at the edge of the world she could do as she pleased. She removed her clothes hastily, in case she changed her mind and, pausing to glance up at the green sky once more, she stepped out into the sea.
Elspeth rolled over in bed, stretching her limbs as if she were underwater. The memory of the sea forced her upright and into wakefulness and she realised that she was naked. Pulling the bedclothes tighter, she felt the shame of her younger self; of the times she’d woken unclothed beside a stranger, barely recalling much of the night before. There was no one beside her now, though her memories of the previous evening had the same vague quality about them. When she closed her eyes, a green haze filled her mind, interrupted by brief, half-formed recollections.
She remembered the initial shock of the ocean but later a curious, comforting warmth, as if the water was charged with the aurora’s energy. And then there were the strange darting motions in the water, phosphorescence perhaps, snaking through the current towards her: potent rays of light seeking her out in the darkness.
Elspeth pulled the covers aside, looking around for her clothes. She couldn’t remember anything beyond swimming. She must have stumbled back to the croft-house at some point, making her way, naked and wet, to her bed; her clothes still cast down on the beach or else washed away by the tide.
She rose and made her way downstairs. Though she wanted to head straight for the beach, to confront the strange experience of the night before, she delayed, putting on the coffee machine, stirring porridge slowly in a pan. What she needed right now was some semblance of normality. After she washed and dressed, slipping her coat on this time and a scarf for good measure, she made her way down to the shore.
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