From Away

by Phoef Sutton

  “No, not like that,” I said. I’d never talked to Neil about the spooks. Partly because I thought he was too down-to-earth to understand it. “Did you ever see visions, Neil?”

  He gave me a sideways glance. “You mean like saints? Joan of Arc, all that shit?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Can’t say I have, ’cause I haven’t.”

  I was immediately sorry I’d brought it up. I didn’t want Neil to think I wasn’t every bit as down-to-earth as he was. I figured if I dropped the subject now it would all be okay. Neil wouldn’t pry. Prying was anti-Maine.

  “Do you have visions?” Shara asked. I’d forgotten about Joe and Shara, thinking they were still busy feeling each other up. Instead they were sitting next to me, all ears. “What do you see?” Shara went on.

  I blushed with embarrassment. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Don’t tell me they’re angels. The angel thing is getting so old,” Joe said.

  I don’t know whether Neil sensed my discomfort or just wanted to be with Charlotte again, but he got up and walked out to the yard to help the now upright kids light new sparklers. That left me alone to try to end this conversation as quickly as possible. Shara was looking at me expectantly; I knew the type. She believed without proof, without even hearing the whole story. It was an attitude that made me feel far more uncomfortable than when people said I was a nutcase. “I just see people, okay? Ordinary people.”

  “Who aren’t there?” Joe asked. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun or not. Couldn’t blame him if he was.

  “Who aren’t there,” I confirmed.

  He gave a soft whistle of envy. “I wish I could do that.”

  “You can have it.”

  Shara was really in my face now, eyes wide with annoying wonder. “You see spirits, you mean?”

  I nodded. Spirits was classier than spooks.

  “It must be a great responsibility,” she said.

  I didn’t know what the hell she meant. “They’re just hallucinations, okay?”

  Joe shook his head emphatically. “You’re not crazy.” He’d had two and a half conversations with me and obviously considered himself an expert.

  “I think there are other explanations,” I said.

  “Like what?” Joe asked.

  Well, if I knew that….

  Fortunately, Joe was on a roll and didn’t wait for an answer. He looked up at the sky. “A lot of stars we’re looking at aren’t really where we see them, because of the curvature of space, you know? Maybe you see people who aren’t there on account of the curvature of time, what do you think?” I guess he’d found his lighter since I saw him in the canoe; his words were smoky with dope.

  I don’t know why I didn’t just shut up. But despite all my discomfort, it did feel good to talk to someone about all this. I’d held it in for so long. “I don’t just see them,” I said. “They talk to me.”

  “They talk to you!?” Joe looked almost heartbroken. “Why does this happen to other people and not me?”

  “What do they say?” Shara asked.

  “Just…different things. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you listen?” Shara went on, breathless.

  “Not if I can avoid it.”

  Joe suddenly hollered out to the crowd, “Hey, is Emily Day here!?” Noncommittal grunts came in reply.

  “She called,” Shara said, “I forgot to tell you. Said she couldn’t make it.”

  Joe sat down, looking hurt. “Why is it the person you respect most never comes to your parties? Do you know Mrs. Day?”

  I knew her slightly; one of the familiar faces on the island. I would see her, I would smile, I would wave, she would do the same, maybe a little more enthusiastically than most. Word was, she ran the little town museum and raised three kids on her own. Arlo Ransom’s daughter, she lived in the Green House. A good woman. I tried to remember why I had such a positive impression of her but couldn’t recall any details. Just a general sense that she was one of the people who held the town together. Your average neat middle-aged woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Certainly not the type who would seem likely to impress a Bohemian nightcrawler like Joe Kelan.

  “She’s a Wise Woman,” Shara said. I could hear the capitals. Dear Lord, had sweet old Mrs. Day suddenly gone all Goddess and Gnostic and Wicca?

  “She straightened me out,” Joe said, gravely. What could he have been like before?

  “A very sensitive woman. Very in tune,” Shara said. “She has the Gift too.”

  “It’s not a gift!” I couldn’t help myself; their complacent attitude was really pissing me off.

  Joe gave me a stern look. The skull-like qualities of his face shone through. “Maybe not for you. But it’s a gift for them.”

  “For who?” I asked.

  “For the ones who are trying to talk through you. While you’re too chicken-shit scared to even listen.”

  I bolted to my feet, hands clenched. His counter-culture abrasiveness was charming to a point, but he’d stepped over the line. “This is not some fucking parlor game,” I said, stalking off.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Joe called after me.

  From then on, the evening was spoiled. I found you, tried to join in with the fun, but the night had turned so dark even the sparklers couldn’t light it up.

  NINE

  Your mother and I were both restless that night, but you were completely wasted. Fell asleep on the way home and stayed limp in my arms when I laid you in your bed.

  “She never sleeps through the night when she conks out like this,” Charlotte said, tucking you in. You like to know you’re falling asleep; to go through your ritual of stories and songs. If sleep hits you by accident, you wake up in the middle of the night, disoriented, cheated, howling for help. Getting you back to sleep after that is a tough proposition.

  Charlotte dug a baby monitor out of her luggage and set it up on your night table. A plastic pink Fisher-Price model that worked like a walkie-talkie. She turned it on and we took the receiver downstairs. Reception was weak, so I had to rummage through the closet for batteries. While we were looking, we found another rogue field mouse, and that kept us busy for an hour or so, until I trapped it in the lint tray from the dryer and released it into the meadow. No doubt it found a crack and ran right back into the house.

  Charlotte made popcorn. The cable was working and, miracle of miracles, Cinemax was showing Black Sabbath (Galatea Films, 1963, Italian title I Tre Volte della Paura, five stars on the Kehoe Scale). We settled down and watched together, the gorgeous glistening Italian colors and the eerie disconnectedness of the badly dubbed dialog transporting us to our childhood, to the times we used to sneak downstairs on Saturday nights and watch the local horror movie host “Count Gore DeVol” (there was a literary reference guaranteed to go over the head of his target audience of twelve year olds) as he made bad jokes and broadcast Mexican wrestling films and Hammer Horrors and whatever else Channel 20 could afford.

  Nothing soothes the unquiet mind like a familiar movie at one o’clock in the morning. So comforting, to know the rhythm of the edits in your blood, to hum along with the score, to see the obvious shocks coming, like old friends dropping by for a visit. Your steady, musical breathing coming over the baby monitor completed the meditative mood.

  Unlike you, I never slept better than when sleep crept up on me unawares; I love being able to drift off without having to reflect on the missed opportunities of the day. To head the monsters off at the pass. My head dropped onto my chest, and I jerked awake. On the screen, a hideous mannequin, apparently mounted on roller skates, was supposed to be a reanimated corpse trying to retrieve her stolen ring from Jacqueline Soussard. I glanced out the window at the night sky. Moonlit clouds. The flashing green light of the channel marker a thumping pulse on the water. The dark mass of Brown’s Head Island a giant seal’s head breaking the surface. The green roof of the house on the shore glowed momentarily, like a phosphor
escent fungus.

  Charlotte put her book down and reached for more popcorn. “I can’t believe this used to scare us. It’s so fakey.”

  “Of course it’s fakey,” I said. “That’s the point. That’s what makes it poetry.”

  Charlotte shrugged. She’d outgrown the charm of these movies. “What do you think of Neil?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” We’d only known the guy all our lives.

  “We were sitting on the stoop talking. You know, while you were on the porch hitting on that skinny girl with the tattoo.”

  “I wasn’t hitting—”

  “We talked for a long time, and he kept helping the kids with the sparklers. He’s really good with kids, and we had a nice talk and….” Her voice dropped off, gloomy tone contrasting strangely with her words.

  “So, what’s wrong with that?”

  “I think he’s trying to impress me.” She sounded so tired.

  “Well, maybe he is.”

  “But why? What’s he up to?”

  “Look, I said it before. I think he likes you.”

  She pushed the popcorn bowl aside. “I think we should go back home.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just…this makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Did he do anything?”

  “No. I wouldn’t even be suspicious if I didn’t know him so well. But it’s like he’s trying to be…charming.”

  “And is he succeeding?”

  “A little. A little charming.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “Well, you don’t bother to be charming unless, you know, you expect to get something.”

  “Look, if you’re not interested, just tell him.”

  She shook her head. “No, no. See, that already messes things up. I haven’t even done anything and already I’m having to shoot down a friend. See? It just spoils everything. Things won’t be the same.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be mad.”

  “He’ll be hurt. That’s worse. And I’ll feel guilty and we’ll walk by each other on Main Street and we won’t know what to say and it’s all spoiled.”

  “But he was charming?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “And you had a good time.”

  “For now.”

  “And Maggie likes him.”

  “Yeah. God. That makes it even worse.”

  “So, there’s another alternative.”

  A slant-eyed look my way. “I’m not ready.”

  “For anybody, or for him?”

  Shaking her head again. “Neil. Neil is not my type.”

  “Because he’s charming? Because he likes kids? Because you have a nice time with him? What are his other bad points?”

  “You just, you don’t think of Neil that way.”

  “Maybe you could.”

  “Like it’s that easy.” She curled up around the popcorn bowl; end of discussion.

  Now, on the screen, Michèle Mercier was getting phone calls from the dead while wearing a puffy pink negligee. All my life, I’ve never once seen a woman actually wear a negligee like that. Was I born in the wrong decade or just the wrong country?

  We heard the squeaking of bedsprings through the baby monitor. You sounded restless. Kicking at your covers. Making short, unhappy gasps. Then a bleat of crying. Strained and confused, but not strong yet; no howling. I muted the TV and started to get up.

  “Give her a minute,” your mom said, “she might drift off again.”

  We waited, trying to will you back to sleep.

  Then, we heard the singing.

  A woman’s voice, soft and lilting, drifting from the baby monitor. Charlotte and I looked at each other, eyes wide, sharing shivers.

  I couldn’t make out words. Just a lullaby of wistful nonsense syllables coming out of the tinny speaker.

  “Shool shool shoolah roon, shool go sakeera na shool ka kewn.”

  We ran for the stairs. The rest of the house was dark, and we didn’t stop to flip on the lights, so we stumbled on chairs in the dining room, clattering them to the floor, knocking against the kitchen table, skidding on linoleum. I flung open the door to the stairs and took the steep steps two at a time, cracking my head on the low doorframe.

  What did we expect to find? An escaped maniac with a butcher’s knife at your throat? A burglar trying to quiet you so she could get on with her crime? A kidnapper? A molester bending over your bed? Any one of the menagerie of monsters that live in a parent’s mind.

  The blackness of the upstairs hall was heavy, pushing me back. I forced through it, reached a hand into your room, flipped on the light before stumbling in. Charlotte was right beside me.

  You were asleep. The room was empty.

  We were both panting like we’d run a marathon.

  “She’s not even awake,” Charlotte said.

  I crossed to the baby monitor. The red indicator light wasn’t on. I shook it. It wasn’t working. “The battery must have died.”

  “Then, what the fuck?”

  “The receiver must have been picking up somebody else’s monitor. From one of the houses on the shore.”

  Charlotte laughed. I laughed. It was really wonderfully funny.

  “Gawd. That was so freaky. I don’t know what I expected to see up here.”

  We laughed some more and then shushed each other when we saw you roll over. Charlotte went down to get some new batteries. I found Mr. Tee on the floor and put him back in your arms, tucking you in again. You snuggled him and your big eyes rolled open. A happy, secure smile. “Hi, Unca.”

  I touched your forehead and whispered. “Back to sleep, honey.”

  You shut your eyes, not really awake at all. “I like that babysitter,” you murmured. “Can I have her again?”

  TEN

  Of course the house is haunted. Every house on the island is haunted.”

  Neil pried another boulder loose, and we rolled it out of the Old Well. The New Well (“new” in that it had been dug in 1937) had fed the faucets of the Thorofare house for decades, but its water had a bluish tint and tasted unwholesome. Good enough for washing, but water for drinking had to be carted from the springs along the Quarry Road. Reclaiming the Old Well on the meadow was one of a thousand projects Dad had never gotten around to. I figured this was as good a time as any to at least see if it was possible. And also a good excuse to get Neil and Charlotte together again.

  “But we’ve lived here for years,” I said. “Wouldn’t we have heard something or seen something before?” Especially me, I thought but didn’t say. Me with the Gift.

  Neil shrugged. “Who’s to say you didn’t?”

  No, I explained. I never saw anything spooky here at all; never even had a nightmare. Not even during my periods of frequent childhood night terrors.

  “Why should it be a nightmare?” Neil asked. “Maggie wasn’t scared by it, why should you be?”

  He shined a flashlight down through the boulders that filled the well. We’d made enough of a gap that we could see something shining down there, reflecting back the light.

  “Yep, there’s water. You get a backhoe and clear out these boulders you might have something here.”

  We discussed how to test the water for drinkability, and I pretended to understand. It took us about ten minutes of struggling with the plywood and tarpaper lid to get it back over the well.

  Walking through the brambles, cold scratches glowing white on my numb fingers, I looked at the house sitting alone on the meadow. I’d never noticed how isolated it was. How it stood out by itself. Like the sapling trees the woods had cast out into the meadow, trying to reclaim it.

  “Do people tell stories about the house?”

  “Ghost stories?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s an old, empty house. ‘Course they do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Spooky lights in the windows. Ladies in white. Phantom pirates. The usual shit.”

  I stopped and gave him a serious look,
which we both found quite uncomfortable. “Do you believe in that sort of thing?”

  “Folks are always telling stories.”

  “No, not just the stories. The whole thing. Do you believe in….” Well, fuck, what was the word for it? Spooks? Ghosts? Spirits? Life after death? It all sounded too foolish.

  But Neil knew what I meant. “Sammy,” he said, “the way I figure it, at this point, my life is about making a living, falling in and out of love occasionally, and getting sick twice a year. If I didn’t think there was another world, I’d probably blow my brains out.”

  Which maybe wasn’t an answer, but was at least a point of view. More than I had.

  It was time for lunch, so I cooked up some fried egg and onion sandwiches. Charlotte was making herself scarce; I supposed that she’d seen through my brilliant plan to keep her close to Neil. She came in, just as we were finishing up.

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  The last she’d seen of you, you were flying your kite by the side of the house. We went out and looked. Kite number three was whipping at the top of a tall pine, but you were nowhere around. You were gone.

  Now, grown-ups have to play moments like this carefully; everyone searching, but smiling, joking, trying not to let the panic in. The panic that’s always dancing on the sidelines when a child is in your life. Because the worst thing can always happen, and it only takes a second, and you always know that.

  Neil searched the shore. Charlotte called through the woods. I checked the well, of course. Imagining you slipping in when our backs were turned, getting wedged down in the cold, staring up as we dropped the lid in place. When you raise a kid you get real good at elaborate horror stories like that. Children turn everybody into Edgar Allan Poe.

  You weren’t down there. You weren’t in the woods. You weren’t around.

  We reconnoitered at the house. We danced around the fear, not sure if we were trying to protect the others or ourselves. Neil showed the most concern, but then he had the least practice.

  “You want to get in the truck? She mighta gone down the road.”

  You might have, you might not have. For an adult, the road was the obvious choice. For a four year old, it was just one of many.