That’s all he needed to hear. Maybe now he’d find out the connection between Judd and Allison.
Brett entered the back door to Allison’s room. Judd’s back was toward the door in deep concentration with 20 very quiet eight year olds. This was a class of low achievers. Their IQ’s hovered in the 50’s. What amazed Brett was that Judd permitted this class to exist and that it was given to such an inexperienced teacher.
Out of nothingness came specks of light. There was an array of twinkling orange stars, each a different shade of orange. Like snowflakes, no two were the same. They hovered over the heads of each student. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. The kids opened their eyes. ‘WOW!’
One child said, ‘Wasn’t that cool.’
‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘First the darkness, then a feeling of nothingness.’
‘Like we stopped being,’ said a third.
Then a continuous chatter Brett couldn’t hear. He was washed over by an all too familiar fog. He felt pushed. And he feared a bottomless pit, but a step away. That was when everything went blank.
The next thing he recalled was being revived in his swivel chair behind his office desk. His vision was blurry, as if he were severely near sighted. Then, as he regained control of his faculties, objects in front of him began to coalesce into meaning. Before him was Allison’s pear shaped face framed by her winsome blonde hair.
‘Are you okay? Do you always fall asleep in class?’ She laughed at her own joke.
‘I was standing. And the next thing I knew, I’m looking at you. What happened?’
‘Beats me. I would love to talk this over with you, but Judd is waiting for me to take back my class. She’s one person I hate to keep waiting. By the way, she wants to see you in her office after school.’
‘Good, now I can get to the bottom of this before the day is out.
At 3:30, when the kids were dismissed, the secretary read her boss’ prepared speech over the public address system. ‘Dr Judd would like the building vacated by 4:00. The rain has caused flooding and she wants you all to get to your homes safely before rush hour.’
Brett walked the short distance to the school office in time to watch the secretary let down the aluminum door to the reception window and bolt it. She grabbed her large purse, and rushed out the door.
Brett caught his principal looking out the window, at a storm that didn’t want to quit. Somehow, she sensed his presence and said, ‘It’s actually a beautiful day. So much life! So much green. You’re so lucky.’
‘Nanette, I want to talk to you about something personal.’ Her desk, unlike the mess on his, was always immaculate. Only the crystal paperweight and a picture taken from the Hubble Telescope held any space.
Underneath the picture was the caption, ‘Cygnus Loop - Blast Wave from a Stellar Time-Bomb. High speed gas from a supernova explosion slams into dark cooler clouds of interstellar material.’ The gases were shocked and heated by a tidal wave of energy, the clouds glowing in bright, neon-like colors.
‘It’s not Nanette, ‘ she said. She faced him behind the expanse of her desk and noticed him reading the blurb.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Judd. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.’ He’d used her first name on other occasions when they were alone, and was surprised that suddenly she was objecting.
‘It’s not that.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘My name is Yalma Nakava.’ She pointed toward the chair across from her desk for him to sit.
She’s really flipped. I’ll ride this out until I find out what she was doing with those kids. Maybe she will tell me what happened while I was unconscious.
‘I’m an entrepreneur from Tau Ceti 5.’ She leaned over to the picture on her desk and pointed to an orange star lighting up a region of space near the Cygnus Loop.
‘With a group of investors we opened an amusement park on our moon. Unlike yours, Stam has an atmosphere and a tropical climate. Thirty years ago there was still some land to be bought, but the terrain was rough and uninhabitable. We decided to build an amusement park. It was successful, but our people wanted more.
‘Then, one of our scientists found a way to harness the energy from this supernova.’ She pointed to the picture on her desk. ‘And use it as a means to transport his essence over thousands of light years. We constructed twenty capsules in which visitors could comfortably fit for a short period of time and experience intergalactic travel.’
Brett leaned forward in his seat, eyes bulging and jaw gaping. ‘Those lights I saw in Allison’s room. Are you telling me those were... aliens?’
‘To you, maybe. To me they’re clients. You see Brett, business is booming. We need to build more cubicles to meet demand. And we need more bodies to borrow to meet that demand. That means another administrator to guide our visitors. So, within a week’s time...’
‘Wait a second. Are you telling me that you’re from another planet?’
‘Nanette Judd is from Earth. The intellect known as Yalma Nakava is from Tau Ceti 5. My mind has taken over her body. My body is in a cubicle twelve light years from your sun.’
‘Doesn’t she mind?’ Brett asked trying to humor her.
‘Being so mentally deranged, it was easy to push her mind to the enlarged brain ventricles of a schizophrenic.’
‘Why are you here at an elementary school?’
‘When visitors come to our theme park, they want to try the Cygnus Loop experience. So we built more cubicles to protect their bodies. When one of our principals has a classroom of children prepared, the transference can be made.’
‘How long does that last?’
‘Since we have a waiting list, no longer than an hour.’
‘What happens to the children?’ Brett asked.
‘Nothing. They usually forget. Some of the older ones get sick. That’s why we try to target children less than ten years old.’
‘Forget? Do you mean...blackout?’
‘Just like you, Brett. We seized your mind when you were eleven. You’ve been a tough brain to raid, but one of our people has figured out a way to push your consciousness aside for him to take over your body. That’s why you’ve been promoted to the Hearst School principal job.’
Maybe now she’s coming to her senses. This was sudden, but expected. Brett contemplated what his promotion meant. New responsibilities, a comfortable office, and some of the foxiest single women in the district. Hearst was a dream comes true.
Dr Judd closed her eyes and went into a meditative trance. Her eyelids fluttered until the office glowed with an orange light. Brett bolted out of his seat and to the office door. But before he could leave, the orange star hovered over his head and then disappeared.
Brett stood at a precipice, but this time a scaly hand with long sharp nails plunged out of the fog and pushed him. With arms flailing and legs twisting, Brett’s mind fell into an abyss.
The next day was a sunny unseasonably warm day. Brett Castille opened the door of his silver Nissan Altima, stretched his arms, took in a deep breath of air, and happily strolled to his office closet.
He knew he wouldn’t be there but for a few more days and decided to clean up the mess. He heard the click of his door open and the rattle of the window when it was thrown quickly against the wall that desperately needed a door guard.
‘Cami? Cami is that you?’ Allison Parks ran over to Brett. She stroked his newly shaven face, saw that special gleam in his eye, and threw her arms around his neck rewarding him with a deep passionate kiss.’
Madam Crowl’s Ghost by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs Jolliffe’s tall slim figure. She is now past seventy, and can’t have many mile-stones more to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd, but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and active.
She has taken of late years to the care of adult inva
lids, having surrendered to younger hands the little people who inhabit cradles, and crawl on all-fours. Those who remember that good-natured face among the earliest that emerge from the darkness of non-entity, and who owe to their first lessons in the accomplishment of walking, and a delighted appreciation of their first babblings and earliest teeth, have ‘spired up’ into tall lads and lasses, now. Some of them show streaks of white by this time, in brown locks, ‘the bonny gouden’ hair, that she was so proud to brush and shew to admiring mothers, who are seen no more on the green of Golden Friars, and whose names are traced now on the flat grey stones in the church-yard.
So the time is ripening some, and searing others; and the saddening and tender sunset hour has come; and it is evening with the kind old north-country dame, who nursed pretty Laura Mildmay, who now stepping into the room, smiles so gladly, and throws her arms round the old woman’s neck, and kisses her twice.
‘Now, this is so lucky!’ said Mrs Jenner, ‘you have just come in time to hear a story.’
‘Really! That’s delightful.’
‘Na, na, od wite it! no story, ouer true for that, I sid it a wi my aan eyen. But the barn here, would not like, at these hours, just goin’ to her bed, to hear tell of freets and boggarts.’
‘Ghosts? The very thing of all others I should most likely to hear of.’
‘Well, dear,’ said Mrs Jenner, ‘if you are not afraid, sit ye down here, with us.’
‘She was just going to tell me all about her first engagement to attend a dying old woman,’ says Mrs Jenner, ‘and of the ghost she saw there. Now, Mrs Jolliffe, make your tea first, and then begin.’
The good woman obeyed, and having prepared a cup of that companionable nectar, she sipped a little, drew her brows slightly together to collect her thoughts, and then looked up with a wondrous solemn face to begin.
Good Mrs Jenner, and the pretty girl, each gazed with eyes of solemn expectation in the face of the old woman, who seemed to gather awe from the recollections she was summoning.
The old room was a good scene for such a narrative, with the oak-wainscoting, quaint, and clumsy furniture, the heavy beams that crossed its ceiling, and the tall four-post bed, with dark curtains, within which you might imagine what shadows you please.
Mrs Jolliffe cleared her voice, rolled her eyes slowly round, and began her tale in these words:-
MADAM CROWL’S GHOST
‘I’m an ald woman now, and I was but thirteen, my last birthday, the night I came to Applewale House. My aunt was the housekeeper there, and a sort o’ one-horse carriage was down at Lexhoe waitin’ to take me and my box up to Applewale.
‘I was a bit frightened by the time I got to Lexhoe, and when I saw the carriage and horse, I wished myself back again with my mother at Hazelden. I was crying when I got into the ‘shay’-that’s what we used to call it-and old John Mulbery that drove it, and was a good-natured fellow, bought me a handful of apples at the Golden Lion to cheer me up a bit; and he told me that there was a currant-cake, and tea, and pork-chops, waiting for me, all hot, in my aunt’s room at the great house. It was a fine moonlight night, and I eat the apples, lookin’ out o’ the shay winda.
‘It’s a shame for gentlemen to frighten a poor foolish child like I was. I sometimes think it might be tricks. There was two on ‘em on the tap o’ the coach beside me. And they began to question me after nightfall, when the moon rose, where I was going to. Well, I told them it was to wait on Dame Arabella Crowl, of Applewale House, near by Lexhoe.
‘‘Ho, then,’ says one of them, ‘you’ll not be long there!’
‘And I looked at him as much as to say ‘Why not?’ for I had spoken out when I told them where I was goin’, as if ‘twas something clever I hed to say.
‘‘Because,’ says he, ‘and don’t you for your life tell no one, only watch her and see-she’s possessed by the devil, and more an half a ghost. Have you got a Bible?’
‘‘Yes, sir,’ says I. For my mother put my little Bible in my box, and I knew it was there: and by the same token, though the print’s too small for my ald eyes, I have it in my press to this hour.
‘As I looked up at him saying ‘Yes, sir,’ I thought I saw him winkin’ at his friend; but I could not be sure.
‘‘Well,’ says he, ‘be sure you put it under your bolster every night, it will keep the ald girl’s claws aff ye.’
‘And I got such a fright when he said that, you wouldn’t fancy! And I’d a liked to ask him a lot about the ald lady, but I was too shy, and he and his friend began talkin’ together about their own consarns, and dowly enough I got down, as I told ye, at Lexhoe. My heart sank as I drove into the dark avenue. The trees stand very thick and big, as ald as the ald house almost, and four people, with their arms out and finger-tips touchin’, barely girds round some of them.
‘Well my neck was stretched out o’ the winda, looking for the first view o’ the great house; and all at once we pulled up in front of it.
‘A great white-and-black house it is, wi’ great black beams across and right up it, and gables lookin’ out, as white as a sheet, to the moon, and the shadows o’ the trees, two or three up and down in front, you could count the leaves on them, and all the little diamond-shaped winda-panes, glimmering on the great hall winda, and great shutters, in the old fashion, hinged on the wall outside, boulted across all the rest o’ the windas in front, for there was but three or four servants, and the old lady in the house, and most o’ t’ rooms was locked up.
‘My heart was in my mouth when I sid the journey was over, and this the great house afoore me, and I sa near my aunt that I never sid till noo, and Dame Crowl, that I was come to wait upon, and was afeard on already.
‘My aunt kissed me in the hall, and brought me to her room. She was tall and thin, wi’ a pale face and black eyes, and long thin hands wi’ black mittins on. She was past fifty, and her word was short; but her word was law. I hev no complaints to make of her; but she was a hard woman, and I think she would hev bin kinder to me if I had bin her sister’s child in place of her brother’s. But all that’s o’ no consequence noo.
‘The squire-his name was Mr Chevenix Crowl, he was Dame Crowl’s grandson-came down there, by way of seeing that the old lady was well treated, about twice or thrice in the year. I sid him but twice all the time I was at Applewale House.
‘I can’t say but she was well taken care of, notwithstanding; but that was because my aunt and Meg Wyvern, that was her maid, had a conscience, and did their duty by her.
‘Mrs Wyvern-Meg Wyvern my aunt called her to herself, and Mrs Wyvern to me-was a fat, jolly lass of fifty, a good height and a good breadth, always good-humoured and walked slow. She had fine wages, but she was a bit stingy, and kept all her fine clothes under lock and key, and wore, mostly, a twilled chocolate cotton, wi’ red, and yellow, and green sprigs and balls on it, and it lasted wonderful.
‘She never gave me nout, not the vally o’ a brass thimble, all the time I was there; but she was good-humoured, and always laughin’, and she talked no end o’ proas over her tea; and, seeing me sa sackless and dowly, she roused me up wi’ her laughin’ and stories; and I think I liked her better than my aunt-children is so taken wi’ a bit o’ fun or a story-though my aunt was very good to me, but a hard woman about some things, and silent always.
‘My aunt took me into her bed-chamber, that I might rest myself a bit while she was settin’ the tea in her room. But first, she patted me on the shouther, and said I was a tall lass o’ my years, and had spired up well, and asked me if I could do plain work and stitchin’; and she looked in my face, and said I was like my father, her brother, that was dead and gone, and she hoped I was a better Christian, and wad na du a’ that lids (would not do anything of that sort).
‘It was a hard sayin’ the first time I set foot in her room, I thought.
‘When I went into the next room, the housekeeper’s room-very comfortable, yak (oak) all round-there was a fine fire blazin’ away, wi’ coal, and peat, and w
ood, all in a low together, and tea on the table, and hot cake, and smokin’ meat; and there was Mrs Wyvern, fat, jolly, and talkin’ away, more in an hour than my aunt would in a year.
‘While I was still at my tea my aunt went up-stairs to see Madam Crowl.
‘She’s agone up to see that old Judith Squailes is awake,’ says Mrs Wyvern. ‘Judith sits with Madam Crowl when me and Mrs Shutters’-that was my aunt’s name-’is away. She’s a troublesome old lady. Ye’ll hev to be sharp wi’ her, or she’ll be into the fire, or out o’ t’ winda. She goes on wires, she does, old though she be.’
‘How old, ma’am?’ says I.
‘Ninety-three her last birthday, and that’s eight months gone,’ says she; and she laughed. ‘And don’t be askin’ questions about her before your aunt-mind, I tell ye; just take her as you find her, and that’s all.’
All Destiny MoON Fiction: A Mix of Old & New Short Stories Page 18