I See You So Close

by M Dressler

  She stands, obediently, beside her desk, and in a voice soft with sleep, sings:

  Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,

  Long, long ago, long, long ago.

  Sing me the songs I delighted to hear,

  Long, long ago, long ago.

  Now you are come my grief is removed

  Let me forget that so long you have roved

  Let me believe that you loved as I loved,

  Long, long ago, long ago.

  Do you remember the path where we met?

  Long, long ago, long, long ago.

  Ah yes, you told me you ne’er would forget,

  Long, long ago, long ago.

  Though by long absence your truth has been tried

  Still to your accents I listen with pride

  Blessed as I was when I sat by your side,

  Long, long ago, long ago.

  Now you are come, my grief is removed

  Let me forget that so long you have roved

  Let me believe that you loved as I loved,

  Long ago

  Long, long ago.

  Longhurst blinks in the lantern light, as if the dampness has reached his eyes. Then he helps Addy to sit again. Next he calls for rounds of “Frère Jacques,” with a bow to Will.

  Are you sleeping, are you sleeping

  Brother John? Brother John?

  Our schoolhouse fills with waves of song. As the last, quavering notes die away, our teacher seems to sag, his shoulders drooping. He says it would be best now to prepare our beds for the night.

  “Boys to the left of the stove. Ola, Addy, girls to the right. Jack, help Will pull that horse blanket down on the floor.”

  We pack ourselves in together, tightly. The floor is rough and cold, much harder than a desk, and the wind whistles and seeps through the boards.

  Jack frowns at Longhurst sitting straight in his chair. “You’re not going to sleep, sir?”

  “I must keep the fire going. You get your rest now.”

  “Is the storm getting worse? It sounds like it is.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? But we’re as snug as can be. Off to dreams, now.”

  No sleep comes to me. Peering over the edge of a quilt smelling of horses and smoke, I watch our schoolmaster. His chin is in his hand, his brow furrowed over it. He starts, then tires, then straightens again. His eyelids flutter. My own begin to close with the weight of the blanket and the heat of the stove. I don’t want to sleep, there’s too much that’s unknown, but as the others begin to breathe slowly around me, their blankets rising and falling, a deep rest comes. The air beyond my wool collar grows colder, and the whistle and whipping of the wind in the trees twists into one long hum. My eyes shut, and I dream I’m falling, falling into darkness. I dream of a great crash and of powder falling into my eyes, and when I open them, my arm is on fire.

  “Ola!” Longhurst is shouting. “Children! Help, help!”

  A lantern lies crookedly on the floor beside me, its oil leaking out. The other lamp has fallen on top of me. Longhurst kicks it aside. Snow rushes in from what should have been the schoolhouse roof. My arm is beaten with a blanket, and when I lift my head only a few inches, I see Anton and Jack and Addy fighting with their bare hands against a tangle of limbs and boards and branches lying across my feet, while my arm screams with pain beyond bearing. Longhurst cries, “It’s out, the fire’s out, see if she can stand, Ola, Ola, please, you must stand!” He lifts my shoulders under what’s left of the lantern light, as Addy grips Willie and the blizzard pours through the gaping ceiling. I pull my skirt free, I’m free, free, I can stand now. By no more than a moving flicker of light, I see our shelter has been torn open on one side, too, and gapes into the night, with snow coming so fast it stitches the eyes and fills the mouth. We cling to each other and to Mr. Longhurst, who as the last feeble light is dying out shouts, “Rope, rope, bell rope, hold on, don’t let go, follow me, hurry, hurry—”

  I understand. We must hold and go, or we will freeze and die.

  I feel no pain in my arm. Longhurst is groping among us, blindly, his hands checking that this hand, my hand, has a hold of the rope. I’m oldest and last. I understand. We bend our heads against the wind and the rope tautens, pulling. I hold fast to the end. There’s never been such wind and snow, but we must hold, hold on in the dark, our teacher has gone forward into the blizzard and we must follow him, though the snow strikes the face so hard it cuts like a blade. Hold on, hold on, I hear the shout and cry, but the snow is so deep I sink, I’m sinking, slowing, falling, I must let go so I don’t hold back any of the others. Hold on, hold fast, I try to shout to Anton in front of me, and don’t know if he hears me, but I don’t feel any pain at all now, not even cold, only my mouth sinking to the ground, warm. Which must mean the storm is melting. It’s melting all around, warm, so warm, but now I feel too warm, hot, my clothes are on fire again. I think, You’ll burn, you’ll burn, so I must take them all off, no, no, that wouldn’t do, a girl must keep her manners and at least there is no pain, no more fire nor cold, only a blanket that starts to come over me, soft and heavy as a horse. How strange it is to be so still. No more pushing against the wind, though the wind is there, somewhere, far away, roaring and going up and away. And here are Mother and Father at our farm loading provisions, but finding nothing to put inside the wagon—neither my brother nor me, though they call and call for us. Through an opening in the snow, they drive the horses away. No, don’t leave me, I cry out, it isn’t right.

  I awake. I hear voices.

  The children. Oh, my God, the children!

  Longhurst, he’s over here!

  Turn him over!

  He’s still breathing!

  Dig them all out!

  Get back! I recognize one of the doctors’ voices. Give us room. We must examine them!

  I’m awake but I can’t open my eyes. How unusual.

  Caleb. My God.

  Listen to me. They were already sick, brother. Remember that. It’s a mercy, in a way, for there is nothing that could have helped them.

  It was so, truly.

  Kiersten says they’ll have to be burned, this time of year. Or floated in the river till spring.

  Burning’s best for any contagion.

  So we’ll say. We’ll do it here where they lie, in this meadow, where their poor bodies dropped. We’ll make a pyre. Best for all. The most fitting place.

  And the schoolmaster?

  If he survives, his is the crime.

  Putting them in such danger. Madness!

  Here’s Berringer. We’ll get him to carry the duties out with solemnity.

  Sweet angels.

  Longhurst is the very devil.

  Clearly, brother.

  We’ll make him pay.

  We will. For all of it.

  I’m ash in the wind. Ash falling into water.

  How long did we stay in the deep? How long does any ghost wait for what’s right? However long, too long. One by one, we floated to the surface. We found each another. Mr. Longhurst came at last, too, and told us these falls were no place for us.

  “We must rise, children, and show them we’re still here.”

  His face is ablaze with anger.

  “We will sit at their tables—if there are any left here still known to us. We’ll sleep in their beds. Follow them through the streets. Stand at their windows. Lie in their wagons. Do you understand me, children?”

  His voice rises. I feel my own soul burning, understanding.

  We were left by the town to burn in the cold. Then shoveled into the river, like muck.

  Yet as I stand here by White Bar Falls, I feel, I know, all of this has happened before.

  All these words have been said before.

  It’s what I must say now to Longhurst. To help him.

  To help myself. Ola. All of them.

  “All of these words”—I look at him—“have been said before.”

  “But what is it that hasn’t been said, you�
��re asking?”

  He nods, and faces the children.

  “Beloved pupils.” He speaks to them where they stand ghostly beside ghostly waters. “I am so sorry. Please forgive me. You must put blame in all the places where it belongs, and be no more afraid. Nor ever doubt yourselves again, or your courage. You didn’t let go, you see. You held on. Did you see, this time? The rope was pried from your hands by fiercest cold and wind. You did nothing wrong. You were brave. You held on, for as long as you could. You must trust yourselves, now. And I hope you will trust in what I say: I led you to this end. I led you to fall in the storm. I meant to help you. I tried. I tried again, when we rose from the waters. When we made the bargain with the living, and gained a schoolhouse forever. But then I said to you, Now children, you must set your suffering aside, and be good and hold fast and make no trouble. I said you must be silent about the past, and what was done to you. Is it any wonder, then, Jack, when they desecrated and dug a hole in the place where you died, that you cried out in pain? Your wounds were never mended. I only bound them more tightly to you. Do you understand? I do, now.”

  We’re no longer beside a ghostly river, beside a bank where drugged men died, where fever took hold, where gold was hungered for, and never enough of it found. We seem to be nowhere. In empty space. Neither dark nor light.

  “We need to be getting back, sir.” Through the emptiness, Jack holds out his arm, shyly, as if for a handshake. Longhurst, surprised, takes it. “We shouldn’t stay here, sir. Addy, what do you think?”

  “I say so, too,” Addy takes Will’s hand. “Willie?”

  “I say so, too. Anton?”

  “We’re done here. Miss Finnis?”

  They all turn to me.

  Never in all my life or afterlife have I seen faces, souls, so sure of themselves.

  “We’re done here,” I say. “Now come.”

  29

  She who made the Ghost Door is there, waiting for us as we glide into the barn.

  There is so much that must and will be said between the two of us, Su Kwon and Emma Rose Finnis, one day. Words of thanks. True words. Perhaps there are more among the living, like her, willing to arc and bend what is hard to bend. I don’t know. I do know her.

  Ola comes forward, glowing inside the freed skin she’s so well filled. I know, too, that feeling: to have a chance handed back to you again.

  “Well, what now?” Su asks.

  Longhurst bows to her. “You have given us more than we can ever express.”

  Su nods simply at the door. “Thank you. We were talking about what we should do, what the door means—Ola and I—all night long. How we have so many questions. But we decided the only answer you ever get is by doing and not waiting for directions. Doing is the answer.”

  I see Longhurst look again with envy and yearning at Ola. Again, he seems to catch himself, pull himself back, let some pain go. Did he, does he love her, I wonder? And still long for hope and love? How many of us are alike in that way, our paths strewn with errors and loss, and yet still we’ll never say, the part of me that aches is dead?

  So many questions.

  But first, my plan.

  30

  We wait. We bide our time. Time is what ghosts have, and the living do not.

  “They’re all still at the café,” Su says. “I just got a text. Pratt’s coming to present his assessment to the town.”

  Yes, he would do that. He’ll want to trumpet his accomplishments, real or imagined. If we’re to have any chance against him, there’s this still to do:

  We must help him.

  How different the townspeople look than when I saw them meeting with Su in this café. Then, they were full of their stories of finding peace and power in the mountains. Now they look battered, unkempt, their certainties all gone. Everything now depends on the hunter Philip Pratt, they think. They need, want him to erase all their troubles.

  The hunter sits in a booth by the window. The snow has stopped, and a twinkling morning light, glittering, silver, like the spoon in his coffee cup, hovers outside. A machine has plowed a narrow road out of town.

  “I call this meeting to order,” John Berringer announces, hoarsely. “We’re here to hear from you, Mr. Pratt, that this job is done and we can be sure we won’t be made fools of, or harassed, anymore.”

  “Mr. Berringer, I can only assure you that—”

  “Because if I see one hide or hair—”

  “Let him speak,” Martha, sitting on her stool at the counter, says desperately.

  “Thank you, Madam Mayor,” Pratt says. “Mr. Berringer, everyone: I have completed a thorough sweep. I left no corner of their confirmed lair untouched. It was—” From where I perch, above, on the doorbells, I see his hand stirring his coffee steadily but slowly, as if he’s searching for some truth in the water, not sharing the search with them. “It was quite intense.”

  “And your proof the job is done?” Berringer asks.

  “Will be in the coming days. I will be staying with you for a surveillance period. Have you had any disturbances since last night?”

  Mary Berringer asks the room, “Anyone?”

  “None,” comes the sullen answer.

  “Optimistically,” Pratt says, “the infestation is at an end. But only some time will tell.”

  “Then maybe,” Martha says, looking down into her own cup, “we should have a moment of silence for the passing of the sad souls who lingered here for so long.”

  “You’re not serious,” Bill says behind his counter.

  “Well, as your mayor, I do feel that—”

  “No, there is nothing to say!” Mary Berringer snaps from her booth. “Except for this: Mr. Pratt, we are now prepared to double your fee from the township, if you will agree, in return, and as we do, that this matter is now at an end, and no business of the state’s or anyone else’s, and so no need to report it to the authorities.”

  Pratt unfolds his napkin and seems annoyed. “We have had no discussion of what my fee buys, Mrs. Berringer. You’re making assumptions.” He looks up and around the room, frowning, disappointed. “Assumptions that don’t reflect well on you.”

  “But Mr. Pratt”—the old woman twists her face into a smile—“since we are, as I now understand it, the first to hire you after your rather unfortunate performance at the coast—where that poor young woman died, and you let the ghost you were cleaning get away?—you are making assumptions yourself, wouldn’t you say? We have the power of review. We can praise—or, I suppose, we could find fault with your work, if you choose to make our private matters public. We could note, for example, that you let matters get entirely out of hand here—or maybe you didn’t notice us being chased like rats across our own town square?—while you were off wasting time in Dutch Gap where that hideous boy Seth still is and that, that, that vegetating—”

  “Ruthie,” Martha says quietly. “You’re talking about our Ruthie.”

  “In your absence, Mr. Pratt, we were assaulted. Why, it’s a wonder John and I can even walk! And perhaps it was because your work was a bit sloppy. And too slow.”

  “You mean thanks to the obstacles and obfuscations you put in my way?”

  Harold jumps to his feet. “Every community has the right to always act first in its own best interests!”

  “Sit down, Harold!” the older woman orders him. She turns, her jaw tense, back to Pratt’s booth. “I wonder if what Mr. Pratt is implying is that maybe, even now, he’s still unsure of his work. If so, I think it best you stay on for a week, cleaner—at the increased fee, of course—in case there is any . . . mopping up you need to do. Harold and Bill will make sure you are . . . comfortable. Mayor Hayley has just graciously consented to keep her hotel open for a while longer—”

  “I have?” Martha asks.

  “—and we’ll do our own inspection of the schoolhouse, now that the weather is clearing, to see if, in our opinion—”

  “I am,” Pratt interrupts, “perfectly willing, Mrs. Berringer
, to accept a higher fee if you would like me to stay on for a longer period to monitor and confirm results. But that’s all I can accommodate. I must report the haunting of White Bar. Hauntings are a matter of public record.”

  “So are the public’s reviews, Mr. Pratt. So are newspapers. The internet. Television.”

  “I don’t frighten easily, ma’am. And you don’t frighten me. There’s only one thing that does—that should frighten any of us. And it’s not the rather ordinary, dirty little secret you all have been trying to hide here. It’s the great change that’s coming. The line, the border that’s being crossed, every day, the disruptiveness and the brazenness the dead are starting to show. No one cares, let’s be frank, about a town in the middle of nowhere, or what’s happened here, or about how you’ve been able to keep your ugly little zoo for so long. What people care about, and what I know how to bring down, is big game, the greatest threat. And it’s here. Without your knowledge. Probably watching us at this very moment. Its name is Emma Rose. You know her as Rose. What I’m known for is finishing what others don’t know how to finish. The work ahead is difficult and dangerous. It’s work some others aren’t even trying to or want to confront, because it means admitting we’re facing the greatest existential threat to our established ways of life that we have ever seen. What I am saying, Mrs. Berringer, is that your threats don’t impress me. Because they’re nothing compared to what else is here, with us, nothing compared to what needs to be done, what else I must do, which exceeds anything you can imagine.”

  It’s time.

  I ring the bells above the door. My signal to Ola.

  Dressed in the body of the woman whose life Pratt couldn’t save, she passes right in front of the window where the hunter sits.