Escapes: A Short Story

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  He stared at me. He took my hands and peered into my eyes. “Give us a kiss, then.”

  I’d never kissed a ghost before. Oh well. It had to be better than kissing Peter. I stood on tiptoe, and aimed my lips at his. He put his arms around me and pulled me up against him. His kiss was gentle, searching. After a long time, he lifted his head. “You’re a strange lass, Lexi.”

  “Too strange?” My heart thudded. Had I done something wrong here too, and soured all my chances again?

  “Oh, no. No! Don’t worry, love. We’ll keep you on.”

  I kissed his hand.

  “Sylvia? Sylvia, wake up. What are you doing still here?”

  I rubbed my cheek against Brannigan’s shirt, which felt rougher and scratchier than it had looked.

  I opened my eyes and looked up into David’s face. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep.”

  “Strange. You’ve only been here a week.”

  “I know.” I sat up and yawned against the back of my hand.

  “You’re still in the first stage of the review process. Er — or maybe you were just tired?”

  “That’s right.” I stroked my cheek. Rug burn. “Please don’t fire me.”

  A book dropped from a high shelf to land open beside my hiking boot. I flinched.

  David and I leaned forward.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said the first line on the page.

  “Oh,” I said. “All right. Thanks.”

  “Hmm. I guess the review period is over. Won’t be official until Liz says it is, but welcome to Brannigan’s, Sylvia.” David chewed on the first knuckle of his index finger. “Are you going to spend the night?”

  “I don’t know.” My stomach growled. There was a bathroom, of course, with lots of bookseller humor on the walls, but there was no shower that I knew of, and I didn’t have any more food with me. Still, I would spend the night if I was supposed to.

  Pages of the book flipped. They stopped. “Go home,” said the line at the top of the page.

  “Okay. Thanks.” I blew the carpet a kiss and stood up.

  “You worked at one of the big chains before,” David said.

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “Surprising. Of course, your references didn’t check out, but nobody’s ever do. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Good night.” I left David to his bookkeeping and headed out through the dark and silent store. I trailed a hand along the bookshelves, touching something more than wood, paper, cloth spines and leather. I made it to the front door without tripping over anything and paused to stare out at my new town through the glass.

  Rain drifted down, slicking the pavement of Main Street and capturing puddles of reflected light from the few signs lit at eleven at night: next door, Daylight Doughnuts’ sign was on; they stayed open until two a.m. Across the street, the sign for Mabel’s Diner was dark. At Tucker’s Tavern next door, beer neon flickered in the small high windows, sparking colors from the water on the street. The door to Tucker’s opened and someone staggered out.

  I gripped the door handle and turned it. Time to go home. Tomorrow ought to be different. I could ask them to call me Lexi now, maybe.

  My apartment was only a block away from Brannigan’s, upstairs from the Greasy Spoon, a tiny cafe with only a counter, no tables. Kash, the breakfast cook, served the best home fries I’d ever eaten. I had them every morning.

  I climbed the outside staircase, reached into my tote for the blackjack, running on automatic. I felt sleepy and jubilant. It didn’t matter whether Miki liked me; the store had chosen me. I had a future now.

  I gripped the blackjack and opened my front door.

  Peter grabbed my arm before I could raise it, twisted my wrist until I had to drop my weapon, pulled my arm up behind my back until it screamed with pain. He dropped my arm and snapped something around my neck before I could catch my breath.

  “Hey, Lexi,” he said in his purring voice, the one that stroked you like a feather. “You’re supposed to get home at seven ten. Why are you so late?”

  My right arm felt like it had been torn off. I checked. It was still attached.

  I walked into my apartment and dropped my tote bag, then lifted my left hand to the collar he’d put on me.

  “Want to see how it works?” he asked.

  “No,” I whispered. It worked? It wasn’t just a humiliating fashion statement.

  Well, of course it worked. This was Peter.

  “You need to know.”

  I turned toward him. Fire shot through my neck. I felt like I had been decapitated, only the pain went on and on. When it was over, I found myself curled up on the floor.

  “Sit on the couch, Lexi. Don’t be such a slob.”

  My muscles still worked, though they were spasming. I levered myself up and went to the couch. Peter held a remote control. His familiar suitcase lay on the coffee table in front of the couch. He came and sat beside me, took my hand, played with my fingers. “Shall we talk about how frustrated I am?”

  “Anything you want.” My voice was back to its old monotone, though a little harsh.

  “You were very hard to find this time. I had to pay strangers for information.”

  “Why. . . ,” I whispered.

  His finger hovered over the red button on the remote, then dropped to the side. “Go ahead. Ask.”

  “Why did you follow me? Why did you find me? Why won’t you let me go?”

  “I love you, Lexi. There’s something so — perfect about you. You’re the best woman I’ve ever owned. It’s like somebody built you just for me.”

  Yes. Father had done that. So much of what Peter enjoyed was similar to what Father had enjoyed. Living with Peter had felt familiar. Uncomfortably comfortable.

  Then one day I read a book, It was a book I’d read before, but this time some of the words rose up off the page and pounded into my brain. Sandy, the waitress at the coffee shop where I ate lunch, noticed which book I was reading, and said she had read it too.

  We talked every day for a while. She helped me pull my courage together enough to run away from Peter that first time.

  “Besides, I can’t let you get away,” said Peter. “It sets a bad example for the others. They’re watching me. They’ll expect to see that I’ve punished you properly for all the trouble you’ve given me.” He leaned forward and spun the combination lock on his suitcase, flipped the top up. He had added to his toy collection. “Hmm. What shall I start with? I know. Your favorite. Take off your shoes, darling.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  He touched the red button on the remote.

  When I could see straight again, I took off my shoes.

  #

  “I have to say good-bye to my new boyfriend,” I whispered the next morning. I had no voice left.

  “A new boyfriend? I’ve had someone watching you for a while, and nobody mentioned that detail.” Peter had packed everything he’d brought but the remote. He had only to move a finger and I would do whatever he wanted; he had trained me all night.

  “He’s at the bookstore.”

  “These workplace romances. So risky. Are you sure you want me to see this person? You know how jealous I am.”

  “I’ll just leave a note.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to just leave? No. Now that I know, I have to see him. Who could you prefer to me?” He knelt at my feet, slid fresh socks up over my bloody soles, smiled as I winced. During the night I had packed everything I had acquired since I left Seattle. He opened one of my suitcases and took out a pair of moccasin slippers. “Or would you prefer your tennis shoes?”

  I didn’t say anything. I would prefer never to walk again.

  Peter handed me a jacket. “Better put this on. Your forearms are a bit obvious. I’m glad I saved your face for later. Fresh bruises are more frightening to the others. Isn’t that nice? Your new lover can see you and think you’re still just fine.”

  He left me on the couch while he loaded his suitcase an
d mine into the trunk of his car, then returned to escort me downstairs.

  Knives sliced into my feet with every step I took. The first steps were the worst. After a little I remembered old skills; I dialed down the intensity of pain and walked almost normally, with only a phantom wince each time I put my foot down.

  “You’re early, Sylvia,” Elizabeth said when she saw me.

  “I’ve come to quit,” I whispered.

  “You can’t quit. David said you passed review.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to leave,” I whispered.

  She came out from behind the cashwrap. “Are you all right, my dear?” she asked. “You don’t look well.”

  “My fiancée was just having a touch of wedding nerves,” Peter said from behind me. “She ran off and led me a merry chase. Imagine. She can’t stay here, ma’am. I need her back at home.”

  “Introduce me to your young man, Sylvia.”

  “Peter McIntosh, Elizabeth Brannigan. Elizabeth, this is Peter, the one I ran away from.”

  “I see,” she said slowly.

  The floor pulsed under my feet, sending fire through all the new sores. I cried out, only my gasp was ragged, torn from a voiceless throat.

  “Lexi says she has to say good-bye to her new boyfriend,” Peter said.

  “Ah,” said Elizabeth. “I’d like to give her a farewell present as well.”

  “What sort of present?” Peter asked.

  “A book, of course.” She darted away from us.

  “Where’s the sweetheart?” Peter asked me.

  “In the office.”

  “Show me.”

  I took out my keys. Carefully I opened the key ring and pulled my office key off of it. I limped down the aisles past the shelves to the wide black door of the office. Peter followed me.

  What on Earth did I imagine the ghost of Samuel Brannigan could do?

  I could imagine lots of lovely things. My imagination was as far as events like that usually got.

  I unlocked the door and flicked on the light. The room was just the way I had left it — no sign that David had sat at Elizabeth’s desk crunching numbers and counting up the till.

  “There’s no one here,” Peter said, staring in from the store.

  “I’ll leave a note.” I stumbled to the desk and took a piece of stationery out of Elizabeth’s middle drawer. Dear Sam, I wrote.

  Peter came silently up behind me and leaned over to watch me write.

  I have to leave now. I’m so sorry. All I want to do is stay here with you.

  The pink carpet snapped up and wrapped around Peter. He screamed and dropped the remote. The carpet wrapped tighter until all that was visible of Peter was his head. A corner of the carpet stuffed itself into his mouth.

  David came in and handed me a book bound in turquoise cloth. “From Elizabeth,” he said. He glanced at Peter’s head, then at the remote. “Hmm.”

  Peter stared at David, his eyes wide and angry.

  I tugged at my collar. “Can you see how this comes off?” I leaned forward, pulling my hair in front of my shoulders.

  David’s cool fingers brushed the back of my neck. “It’s not immediately obvious. Can it wait? I need to show you something.”

  I straightened.

  “This is your book,” David said. “You must write the ending. It works better if you dip your pen in blood. This is a blood sampler.” He handed me a thing that looked like a fat, angular pen, with a button and a slide on its side. “You cock it like this, and when you press the trigger, a lancet pops out of this tip and digs a hole in your finger. It’s less painful if you lance the sides of your finger, up near the fingernails, rather than the fingertip. Understand?”

  “I think so.”

  He laid a pen on the desk in front of me, patted my shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  After he left, I opened the book to the front.

  “Where are the books where you write your own ending?” the girl asked me.

  I flipped ahead to where the writing ended. The last sentence was, “After he left, I opened the book to the front.”

  I thought for a little while. I glanced at Peter, whose face was so red I wondered if he’d die of suffocation or heart attack, releasing me from everything. Maybe Sam was killing him for me.

  But that wasn’t fair.

  I lanced the middle finger of my left hand and dipped the pen into the upwelling blood. Then I wrote:

  Lexi’s father rose from the grave with only one mission in mind. After all he had done to his daughter, he needed to make amends. He needed to make her safe, to free her from all the things he had taught her.

  He stepped into the office —

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled. The room, which had been warm, cooled to the temperature of ice. I didn’t turn around.

  — went to Peter and picked him up. Peter was helpless to do anything in the father ghost’s grasp. “Come on, son. I’d like to show you my basement,” said Lexi’s father.

  (Even as I wrote, I heard the words being spoken beside me.)

  Lexi’s father walked away through the wall, taking Peter with him. He did not stop until he reached the basement which had no windows nor doors, but was full of all the toys Father had collected across the years. “Ah, my son,” said Father. “I’m glad you’re here. I have so much to teach you.”

  Lexi never saw Peter or Father again. She lived happily ever after in Tonkit, working at Brannigan’s Bookstore.

  I closed the book, set down the pen. When I looked up, Peter was gone. I lay down in the little alcove beyond the filing cabinet. I closed my eyes.

  Samuel Brannigan smiled at me in my dream.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “You’re not like them, are you?” Had I just exchanged my first two prisons for another?

  “Only a little,” he said. “And you can rewrite that part if you like.”

  I hugged him. He didn’t smell at all like Father, or Peter for that matter; he smelled like pipe tobacco and bay rum and horses. “What did he do to your feet?” asked Samuel. His lips tasted my forehead for a long moment. “Great jumping Jehosaphat. Holy leaping lords, child!” He laid me down, then rushed off somewhere.

  I opened my eyes sometime later to find David sitting on the carpet near me, my book open in his lap. He closed it and smiled at me. “Elizabeth’s called Dr. Ambrose. We’ll take care of you.”

  I closed my eyes. It didn’t stop the tears from leaking out.

  “Hey, Lexi. Welcome home,” said David.

  =End=

  About the Author

  Over the past thirty years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her fiction has won a Stoker and a Nebula Award.

  A collection of her short stories, Permeable Borders, was published in 2012 by Fairwood Press.

  Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

  For a list of Nina's publications, go to: http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.

  Connect with the Author

  You can connect directly with the Nina Kiriki Hoffman through Facebook.

  Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles

  You can find the following titles online. The links below will allow you to purchase directly from Amazon or read free fiction online.

  Short Fiction:

  "Trophy Wives," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Family Tree" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Ghost Hedgehog" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "How I Came to Marry a Herpetologist" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "The Weight of Wishes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Key Signatures" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

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