Prom Night in Purgatory (Slow Dance in Purgatory)

by Harmon, Amy

  “So it was just….a vision?” Irene asked timidly.

  “Of sorts…” Gus nodded. “But when they got back to the room, my grandma’s nightgown was soaked through in back from the knee down.”

  “So there had actually been water. She actually saw the runaway slaves walking in a creek filled with water,” Maggie whispered.

  “It wasn’t soaked through in water, Miss Margaret, it was soaked through in blood. Grandma had a huge bite mark on her left calf. She showed me the scar many years later when she told me this story. She hadn’t just seen a vision, she’d been there. For that moment in time, she wasn’t just an observer of the past, she was a full-fledged participant.

  “My grandma always wore a St. Christopher medal that my grandpa gave her around her neck. She told me St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers.” Gus paused and looked at Maggie. “She was a traveler of a different kind, I s’pose. She said there were places that pulled at her, as if the layers of time were very thin, and if she wasn’t careful she would fall right through and find herself in another time completely.”

  “What did she mean by ‘layers of time?’” Maggie was spellbound by the direction the conversation had taken.

  “She believed that time wasn’t a big long line of events. Grandma said time was like layers of thin cloth folded back and forth, one layer above the other, accordion style. She said sometimes certain events seeped through from one layer to the next, creating a stain that was visible even on the uppermost folds. Visible to some, at least.”

  “So something happens in the past -- a powerful event or something that is repeated enough to create a…a stain and that stain seeps through to the present?” Maggie pondered aloud.

  “That was her theory. It made sense, especially given that she was constantly seein’ people and things from the past. She steered clear of places that were part of her family history. She felt like the blood connection with an ancestor, combined with a location where that ancestor had lived, created a conduit – a place where the layers of time were so thin as to be precarious to someone with her gift.”

  Gus stood and walked to Maggie. Leaning down a little so he could make eye contact, he spoke very slowly and succinctly. “You have her gift, Miss Margaret, the same gift as my grandma. It is a gift YOUR grandmother had, as well. Your grandma lived in this house, and you live here now. That’s some mighty thin layers…”

  “This house could be a…conduit?” Irene fluttered her hands in front of her face, as if she’d just been told the house was haunted. She looked ready to collapse, and Gus reached for her hands apologetically. He soothed and shushed, reassuring Irene that the house was nothing of the sort, but he looked at Maggie over Irene’s bowed head, and though he said nothing more to her on the subject, his eyes spoke volumes.

  ~5~

  A Time to Cast Away

  “He wants to see you, Maggie.” Jillian Bailey stood at the door and hunched her shoulders against the March winds that signified the last gasp of winter. April would be here shortly, and soon Honeyville would be awash in spring. Maggie wished it would hurry. She was cold all the time, inside and out. With spring came graduation, and May couldn’t come soon enough. She had no desire to leave Irene, but Honeyville had become a very painful place to be.

  Maggie rose and came to the door. She still wore the clothes she had worn to bed. It was still fairly early for a Saturday morning. Jillian Bailey looked tired and thinner than the last time Maggie had seen her. I guess having your brother rise from the dead had that effect. For Lazarus it had only been days….for Johnny it had been decades.

  “Did he tell you why?” Maggie asked quietly, looking into the woman’s weary face. Hope was threatening to well up inside her heart.

  “No. He just asked me if I knew where to find you.” She hesitated a moment. “He rarely asks for anything….so when he does, I like to help him if I can.” Maggie felt the grip of the guilt and pain she always felt when she thought of Johnny these days.

  “If you want to grab your coat…I can take you right now.” Principal Bailey looked so hopeful. But Maggie didn’t want to ride with her. She would see Johnny, but she wanted to be able to leave if and when she needed to, without having to ask for a ride home

  “I need to jump in the shower and get dressed…I’ll be there in an hour. You can tell him I’ll see him then.”

  Jillian looked as if she wanted to protest but then nodded her head briefly. “All right. Just…please, don’t take too long. The fact that he wants to see you is a good sign, I think. I don’t want him to change his mind before you get there.”

  Maggie nodded and shut the door behind Johnny’s careworn sister. She ran for the stairs, pulling her things off as she went. Less than 45 minutes later she was showered, dressed and blow-dried, and grabbing the keys from the rack. She wore the same blue jeans and purple shirt she’d worn that day in the school mechanics shop, the day she and Johnny had shared their first kiss. She hesitated for a moment, an idea popping into her mind. It couldn’t hurt. She raced back up the stairs and wrenched up the lid of her window seat, lifting Roger Carlton’s old scrapbook up and out. It might give Johnny some answers…or some proof of what had happened in the years he had lost.

  Jillian Bailey lived in the same house she had been born in. It was a tidy bungalow with a wide front porch and a garage that had been added on in more recent years. The grass was neat, and the flowerbeds had been cleared of winter debris, the dirt turned in preparation for spring flowers. Irene said it had been Clark Bailey’s childhood home as well. He had lived there as a bachelor and then when he’d married Johnny’s mother it had become their home, the home they had raised their daughter in. Maggie wondered if Johnny would find remnants of his mother there and if it would bring him comfort. She hoped so. She slid into the drive. Belle the Caddie had run perfectly since Johnny had given her the tune-up. She wondered if she should tell him about it.

  “He’s in the garage,” Jillian Bailey said without preamble as she opened the door to Maggie’s knock. “Walk around to the side and give the door a good rap. He’s got some music on in there….so if he doesn’t hear you, just go in.”

  The music was some sort of thrashing metal band from the eighties. Maggie couldn’t name the band. If it wasn’t music she could dance to, she usually wasn’t interested. She wondered why he’d chosen it; it was so different from the music he liked. Johnny didn’t answer when she knocked. She pushed the door open and walked into the dim light of the large garage. A sensible tan Camry sat in the farthest dock with its hood opened wide. Nearest to Maggie sat Johnny’s Bel Air. Maggie gasped and walked around it, marveling at the care that had obviously been taken to keep the car in such good condition.

  “It’s your car!” Maggie cried excitedly and looked around for Johnny, glad they would have something to talk about. He unfolded himself from under the hood of Jillian’s Camry. His shirt had a little grease at the hem, where he had probably wiped his hands without thinking. He’d gotten a haircut since she had seen him last. The style was slightly modified from its original 50s look, but it didn’t change his appearance all that much. He wore jeans, and Maggie noticed how he rolled the bottoms in a thick cuff – 50s style. His shirt was a plain blue tee that he’d tucked into the jeans that rode his hips. He was thinner, but he moved effortlessly and seemed completely healed from his ordeal. He nodded at the car and then looked back at her somberly.

  “How do you know it’s mine?” Johnny replied softly.

  “You told me,” Maggie offered, just as quietly. “An oil man from a couple of counties over forgot to put his brakes on when he went to spy on his wife at the reservoir. It rolled right into the water and sunk like a box of rocks. He told you if you could get it out, it was yours. You, Carter, and Jimbo got it out. You took it apart, cleaned it, and rebuilt it the summer before your senior year.” Maggie ran her hand along the sleek black side and stopped in front of the hood, which was raised just like the Camry. She tried n
ot to look at Johnny, but she couldn’t resist. She tried not to smile at his surprised expression. He grunted but didn’t comment on her obvious knowledge of his history.

  The silence in the garage became cloying, and Maggie struggled to find something to say, anything to say.

  “What do you get when you offer a blonde a penny for her thoughts?” Maggie asked randomly.

  “Huh?” Johnny shot a look at her from under his hood.

  “It’s a joke.” What do you get when you offer a blonde a penny for her thoughts?”

  “What?”

  “Change,” Maggie supplied, waggling her eyebrows. Johnny stared at her for a moment and shook his head. Maggie tried again.

  “What do you call a brunette with a blonde on either side?”

  Johnny didn’t reply.

  “An interpreter,” Maggie answered, a little less cheerfully this time. Johnny didn’t even look up from the car’s engine.

  “What did the blonde say when she looked in the box of Cheerios?” she said, her voice subdued. This was her favorite one. It used to be his.

  No reply again.

  “Oh, look! Donut seeds...” Maggie’s voice faded off.

  Johnny slammed the hood and wiped his hands on a nearby rag.

  “Did I used to laugh at your jokes?” he asked brusquely.

  “Only the blond jokes. I used to tell knock knock jokes but you told me they were terrible.” Maggie smiled at the memory. Johnny had liked the blonde jokes, and Maggie had searched for them, sharing new ones with him every day. She had even started calling them “Johnny jokes” because he was himself a natural blond.

  “Let’s hear one.”

  Maggie thought for a minute. “Knock, knock.”

  Johnny raised his eyebrows impatiently, waiting for her to continue.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Who’s there?’” Maggie prodded.

  “Who’s there?” Johnny parroted.

  “Sarah.” She waited. “Say Sarah who.”

  “Sarah who?” Johnny droned.

  “Sarah reason you’re not lettin’ me in?”

  Johnny rolled his eyes, and Maggie giggled a little, relieved he was at least participating somewhat.

  “Yeah. That’s pretty bad. But I can’t imagine I liked the blonde ones much better,” he grunted sourly.

  Maggie tried not to let his dismissal bother her.

  “Why is it so hard to believe that you and I were friends?” Maggie said quietly. She approached him and stopped, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

  “I don’t know, Margaret.” He leveled his gaze at her again. His eyes were like blue ice. “Maybe because I was born in 1939, and it’s now 2011, and I still don’t look like I’m a day over nineteen.” Johnny’s voice was laced with sarcasm. He walked toward her, still wiping his hands on the rag. He stopped about a foot in front of her. “Maybe it’s hard because I don’t know where the hell I’ve been for the last fifty odd years and nothing and nobody that I knew is still around to explain it all to me.” His voice had risen considerably, and his face was flushed.

  He crossed his arms at his chest and looked her over once, and then again, resting his gaze on the glasses perched on her nose. “And maybe it’s hard to believe because I don’t remember you, not at all…”

  “You don’t have to be a jerk,” Maggie shot back, crossing her own arms. “Is that why you wanted to see me? So you could tell me again how forgettable I am?” Maggie pushed her glasses farther up on her nose, though they really hadn’t slipped at all. She felt the tears threaten to spill over, and she rebuked herself silently but firmly. She would not let Johnny Kinross see her cry over him. Not again. She had some pride.

  He didn’t deny her accusations or defend himself. He just stared at her mulishly for a second and then spoke again.

  “So, Margaret – ”

  “Maggie!”

  “Maggie. You are the only one who seems to know what I’ve been doing or where I’ve been all this time. And I sure would like to know. I thought maybe you could tell me.” He attempted to sound flip, but there was a layer of strain that underscored his nonchalance. Maggie’s heart softened toward him the smallest degree.

  “All I know is what you’ve told me,” she said, somewhat begrudgingly. “I moved here almost a year ago. I started working at the school last summer. I noticed things right from the beginning, but they seemed natural enough…I thought it was Gus.”

  “Thought it was Gus doing what?”

  “Gus is the janitor…the older man who visited you a couple of times at the hospital?”

  Johnny nodded once.

  “I thought it was Gus playing the songs from the 50s when I would work alone. One day I actually saw you in the hallway. You scared me. Then another time I fell into the dumbwaiter shaft and you saved me. I didn’t know who you were, but Gus told me that the school had a.....a ghost. He’d seen you in the school off and on for the last fifty years, ever since your disappearance the night your brother died. The first time he saw you he told the police, and they searched the school. It wasn’t until later that Gus realized his mistake. He thought you were dead…..that you were a spirit haunting the school. The problem with that theory was that I had touched you, and I knew you weren’t a ghost. I learned as much as I could about the tragedy and your disappearance, and then I came to the school and I….” Maggie gulped a little, wondering if he would think she was crazy. Probably not, considering his very existence was proof of something seriously bizarre.

  “You what?”

  “I went to the school and I….started talking to you, calling you. I asked you if it was you who had saved me that night. I ended up in the rotunda…the place where you and Billy...”

  “Died?” His tone was caustic, like she had said something incredibly offensive. He wasn’t making this easy.

  “Fell,” Maggie retorted sharply. “You were suddenly there. Just...out of nowhere...there. You talked to me for a moment. You were amazed I could see you, and I frankly was amazed as well. I have seen ghosts before…..but never like you. You could see me too; you were aware of me, and you still had a physical body. At least, it felt that way…” Maggie halted again, unsure of where to go next and needing desperately to sit down. There was a folding chair propped against the wall, and Maggie sank into it gratefully. Johnny leaned back against the door of the Camry and stared at her through narrowed eyes.

  “I had a body….but no one could see me.” It wasn’t a question, but a recap.

  Maggie nodded. “You said that you thought you’d been trapped between Heaven and Earth. You told me after you fell from the balcony you could see Billy lying beside you. You could see that he was gone.” Maggie could feel the grief rising in her again. But this time it wasn’t for her own pain but for his. Her voice shook slightly, but she didn’t let herself stop. He stiffened at the obvious emotion in her voice but didn’t react as she repeated the horror of what he had gone through.

  “You said you could feel death’s pull. You knew you were dying. You told me you knew you had to fight it. You didn’t want to leave your mother. You didn’t want her to suffer the loss of two sons, even if you were the son....she was left with. See, you blamed yourself that Billy was dead. You were filled with guilt and pain and you fought...well...death.” It sounded overly dramatic, but there were no other words to describe what Johnny had told her. “You told me you refused to die. Then you felt a...a cracking – and there was a burst of light. The next time you became aware, policemen were there. Eventually, even your mother was there, but nobody could see you or hear you. They took Billy’s body away at some point, and you tried to follow him, but you couldn’t leave the school. It was like there was no world beyond the doors – just black. You said you were trapped there.”

  “All this time?” Johnny’s voice was an incredulous whisper. “How can that be? I remember falling. I even remember what you’ve described….the feeling of fighting death. But that’s all. I woke up in the ho
spital like it had all just happened. I even had the gunshot wound.”

  “You had no wounds in Purgatory. That’s what you called it. Purgatory. You didn’t even have a drop of blood on your clothing. Your clothes and body didn’t wear or soil; your hair was always perfectly in place. You weren’t really human – but you weren’t an angel either. You could do some amazing things, with just a thought. You told me energy wasn’t created or destroyed, it was simply redirected. You could harness energy. You could even heal! Here! Look at this.” Maggie stood and, yanking the sleeve of her purple shirt above her elbow, turned her inner arm out for Johnny’s perusal. The scar from her burn was a slightly raised pink half moon against her pale skin. “I burned myself….and you pressed your hand over the burn…and healed it.”

  Johnny reached out, running his fingers along the puckered edges of her scar. His touch was light, but Maggie felt it to the tips of her toes. She missed the Johnny who loved her! Oh, what she wouldn’t give to have him back! The longing hit her like a gale-force wind, and she shuddered involuntarily. She pulled her arm away and turned from him. She needed to leave. She couldn’t do this.

  “Maggie.” This time Johnny’s voice was soft, and for a moment he sounded like the old Johnny. “What else? What else could I do? How did I spend my time?”

  “You said you read a lot. You even read to me, sometimes.”

  Johnny raised his eyebrows and snorted in disbelief. “I hate to read. Try again, sweetheart.”

  Maggie stiffened and raised her chin slightly, a look Johnny was quickly coming to recognize as her battle stance. “You told me that, too. You also told me you’d read almost everything in the school library. You said it was better than boredom.”