A Certain Slant of Light

by Laura Whitcomb

  It wasn’t that I had forgotten; it was just that no one had asked me in a long time.

  “Helen,” I said.

  He glanced around to see whether anyone was eavesdropping. Then he pushed himself back into the corner of the cramped space and gestured with one hand, inviting me into the glass booth. I was shocked, but I moved toward him, and he closed the sliding door behind me. It wasn’t until then that I realized he could talk now without others hearing.

  “Helen,” he said.

  “Mr. Blake,” I said.

  He smiled, a brilliant moment. “Not really,” he said. “My name is James.”

  There was such an odd silence, he staring into my eyes, and me, well, I was so lost; I could scarcely speak. “How is it you see me?” But I wanted to cry, Thank God you do.

  “I’m like you,” he said. When I only blinked at him, he added, “In spirit.”

  “You’re Light?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Light.” He adopted my term instantly. “Yes.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I only borrowed this flesh,” he said. “I couldn’t see you before I was in a body.” As someone passed by the booth, he jerked the phone back to his ear, having let it slip absently down to his chest. “Are you still there?” he said into the phone, but he was smiling. “Miss Helen, if you’ll pardon me asking, why did you hide from me yesterday?”

  “I’m not sure why. I was afraid.”

  “Please don’t be.”

  He seemed so clever, the way he moved among the Quick as if he were one of them. “How long have you been dead?” I asked.

  “Eighty-five years.”

  “How old were you when you died?” I asked. I wanted to know everything about him.

  “Twenty-nine.”

  I had forgotten that even if he’d died at a hundred and nine, he’d look seventeen in Billy’s body. Perhaps I blushed, if that’s possible, for now he watched my face with great interest.

  “Are there others like me, then?” I asked. The idea that I might be ordinary to him hurt me inexplicably.

  “No,” he said. “Now that I’m in a human body, I can see other spirits, but none like you.”

  There was something about him that continually disarmed me. “Mr. Blake...” I hesitated. “That’s not your name, is it?”

  “It’s Deardon,” he said, “but it would be a crime for you to call me anything but James.”

  He’d left me speechless again. He was truly exasperating.

  “Please,” he said.

  “James...” The word felt strange. “Why did you—” I stopped myself. “How did you take Mr. Blake’s body?”

  “He vacated it,” said James. “He left it, mind and soul, like an empty house with the door open.” He seemed excited to tell me his strange adventure.

  “When his spirit left his body, why didn’t he die?” I wanted to know.

  “His body didn’t die,” he said, still fascinated by his own luck. “His spirit chose to leave. It’s difficult to explain. Instead of the ship going down taking the crew with it, the crew abandoned the ship, but the ship was still seaworthy.” Now he looked embarrassed. Something in my expression had shamed him.

  “It seems wrong,” I said. “Like stealing.”

  “Better that I have him rather than—” An untold and eerie story flashed by behind his autumn eyes.

  “Than what?”

  “Well, left adrift, something evil might pirate him away.” James had let the phone slip down again. I raised my hand to my ear, and he smiled and raised the receiver again.

  “How long have you been inside there?” I asked.

  “Since September ninth.”

  That was a fortnight. “Then how is it you saw me only last Monday?”

  “That was my first day back,” said James. “Billy’s body was so sick, I was in bed for a week.”

  “What was wrong with him?” I asked.

  James looked sorry to tell me. “He took so many drugs he almost died.”

  “But how could you tell he was empty?” I wanted to know. Plenty of the students in Mr. Brown’s classroom looked fatally bored.

  “It was the way his body resonated when he left it. It sort of rang.”

  “It rang? Like a bell?”

  “No.” He thought for a moment. “Bodies with souls in them are solid, like a beam in a house. And bodies that are empty make a very small vibration, the way the wind can blow past the gutter on the roof and make the rain pipe hoot like an owl.”

  “You heard this boy hooting?” I was sure he was teasing me.

  “I noticed that he sounded hollow. Like holding a seashell to your ear,” he said. “I doubt that anyone who wasn’t Light could hear it.”

  This was becoming as curious as Wonderland. “How is it that I have seen more years than you, but you know all these things that I don’t?”

  James laughed. “It’s being in a body again,” he said. “For once I saw through a glass darkly, but now I see the world clearly.”

  “How did you find this body?” I sounded more demanding than I intended.

  “I saw him almost every day. He came to my haunting place to hide from his friends or take pills or smoke.” James watched a student thump past the booth, his shoulder rattling the glass door. “I knew there was something wrong with this boy, that he sounded empty sometimes. I wasn’t sure what it meant. He seemed hollow, but he was living, not Light,” said James. “I was held to my haunting place, but I felt responsible for this boy because I could tell he was in trouble, and yet I couldn’t warn anyone.” James took a deep breath, remembering. “So I followed him home that afternoon. On other days, I’d seen the way he came in and out of his flesh when he put poisons in his blood. His spirit seemed to go to sleep for an hour or two and he’d start to ring empty. But this day, he closed himself in his room and took pills and sniffed powder and even inhaled fumes from a bag. This day, when his spirit left his body, it didn’t come back.”

  I felt a chill encircle my heart.

  “I watched for seven hours,” said James.

  The pathways outside the phone booth quieted. Students and faculty had migrated to the parking lots. I was running out of time before I would have to leave with Mr. Brown.

  “Then I felt something wrong pulling at the body, something evil,” said James. “I tried to wake him up, but his spirit wouldn’t come back, so I went inside him, and I tried to scare away the evil. The trouble was, it wasn’t afraid of me. I couldn’t drive it away; I couldn’t even open my eyes or move, the body was so sick. The evil didn’t quail until Billy’s brother came in and called for an ambulance. Then it disappeared.” He sounded as if he had finished the story.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “We went to the emergency room, Mitch punched a hole in the waiting room wall, and I stayed in Billy’s body while they flushed the poisons out. It was frightening.”

  I must’ve looked horrified.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “We’re all right now.”

  “Did the evil that tried to get Billy look like a person or a creature?” Perhaps I had read too much about Middle-earth over Mr. Brown’s shoulder, but I thought it was important to know the shape of the enemy.

  He shook his head as if he’d never want to describe such a thing to a lady. I was fascinated by his adventures, but they still seemed so unreal.

  “Do you have any of Billy’s memories?” I asked him.

  “No, I don’t. And that does make life in a stranger’s body rather tricky.”

  “Where is your haunting place?” The more I heard, the more I wanted to know.

  “It’s a park a few miles from here. There used to be a two-story house there. That’s where I was born.”

  “You remember your life as James Deardon, then?” I said.

  “Not at all, when I was Light,” he said. “But since I’ve been inside a body again, some things have been coming back to me. I don’t know why.”


  “Do you remember how you died?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I remember more things every day.”

  “But you must’ve been with your family at first,” I said, “if you were haunting their house.”

  “The house had burned down long before I was haunting that land. Before I was in Billy’s body, I didn’t even know why I was stuck there. I just knew I couldn’t get more than a hundred feet away.”

  “How did you know you were stuck?”

  “If I tried to walk more than a hundred feet down the sidewalk...” He thought for a moment and shortened the description for me. “It hurt too much. I’d have to go back.”

  A queer recognition shook me. “Is it like black icy water crushing you?”

  He gave me an odd look. “Mine’s more like a light that burns and a wind that cuts you.”

  We looked into each other’s eyes, picturing each other’s hell. What a strange goblin God must be, I thought, to torment James. He was just to punish me, for I sensed that I had truly sinned. But not James.

  “You spent almost a hundred years on an acre of land by yourself?” I asked.

  “Well, after a few years, they built a park,” he reassured me.

  I suddenly felt like crying.”You didn’t have lamps at night or books.”

  “Some people read in the park,” he said. “Horror stories mostly.”

  “No poetry,” I said. “No Shakespeare. No Austen.”

  As if to cheer me, he said, “I read a comic book of Frankenstein sitting next to a ten-year-old girl once.”

  “That’s too awful.”

  “It’s all right now.” James saw that I was on the verge of weeping and fumbled in his pocket. Then he smiled. “I was going to offer you a handkerchief, but I haven’t got one and even if I did...”

  That made me laugh.

  “What do you recall about life as James?”

  He straightened up as the janitor walked by our glass booth. “Very little. We had an almond orchard and a weather vane of a running horse.” He thought for a moment. “When I was small, I had a rocking horse named Cinder because his tail got burned off when he sat too near the fireplace.”

  I felt cold and thin as tin for a moment, made fragile by a half memory of a child at play. A blonde head bent over a little wooden lamb on wheels.

  “My dog was named Whittle,” he told me. “My cousin taught me to swim in the river. One year we made our own raft and nearly drowned.” He laughed, then saw something that worried him in my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “What else?” I didn’t want to hear about swimming.

  “My father carved me soldiers out of basswood.” He switched the receiver to his other ear. “That’s all that’s come back to me so far.”

  I wished I had a picture of James in his true body.

  “And what do you remember from before you were Light?” he asked me. “Tell all.”

  “Nothing.” Then I realized that wasn’t true. “Only my age, my name, and that I was female.” He waited for more. “The rest is only images. And feelings. I won’t go inside closets,” I said.

  The way he was gazing at me made me curious. “What do I look like to you?” I heard myself asking. Immediately I was embarrassed, but James wasn’t.

  “You look beautiful,” he said. “You have dark eyes and light hair.” He stopped but continued to stare.

  “How old do I look?”

  “A woman, not a girl.” He shrugged. “I can’t tell.”

  “I was twenty-seven,” I said. “What am I wearing?” I added, “I can’t see myself in a reflection.”

  “I know,” he said softly. I had almost forgotten that he had been Light as well. “You’re wearing a gown with a striped ribbon here.” James drew the neckline of the dress on his own chest.

  “What color?” I wanted to know.

  He smiled. “It’s difficult to explain. You’re not like a painting. You’re like water. Sometimes you’re full of color, sometimes you’re gray, sometimes almost clear.”

  “And when I’m full of color,” I said. “What then?”

  “Then your eyes are brown,” he said. “Your hair is golden and your dress is blue.”

  One slow, hard pulse of cold clay beat through my heart. I leaned closer to James, banishing the fear.

  “What did you wear before you were inside Mr. Blake?” I wanted to know.

  He laughed. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see my reflection.”

  I laughed too; the feeling, so unfamiliar, made me giddy. Were we actually joking about our deaths?

  “Is the dress blue now?” I asked. “Or am I clear as water?”

  “Now?” He stared a moment more, still holding the phone to one ear. “You’re silvery, like the Lady of the Lake.”

  I had so many more questions for him, but I couldn’t stay.

  “Tell me about haunting the school,” he said.

  “I need to leave now.”

  “Wait.” He reached out to take my hand but couldn’t. I was startled by the flash of warmth. He took a moment before speaking.

  “Miss Helen, you have a way about you. When I watched you with Mr. Brown, the way you read over his shoulder, how you listened to him recite poetry. I don’t have the words,” he told me. “It was as if you were the only one in the world who could understand me. And now you’re looking at me and speaking to me.” He spoke very confidentially into the phone. “It’s like a miracle.”

  Perhaps it was because Mr. Brown was preparing to drive off, perhaps it was because James seemed to be speaking from my own heart, or perhaps it was simply that I had gone for 130 years without being heard or seen, but all at once I felt faint. I dropped my gaze.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No.” But I was fluttering madly like a winged thing about to fly apart. Then a pang of ice told me Mr. Brown was moving too far away.

  “Please be there tomorrow,” said James.

  When you are Light, you may move through solid objects with no more effort than it would take to add sums in your head. But at that moment, if James hadn’t opened the glass door, I’m not sure that I would’ve had the strength to pass through it.

  Three

  I SAT ON MR. BROWN’S ROOF through the tortured slowness of the night, thinking of questions to ask James. I watched the stars arc across the sky, slow as grass growing, and was at Mr. Brown’s bedside when the dawn broke. I wasn’t put out by Mrs. Brown any longer, not since I had someone of my own. Just as Mr. Brown started to rise, however, she slid her hand up his bare back. As he fell under the covers again, I gave a cry of frustration, the soundless fury of which disturbed only a sparrow on the windowsill. I blustered outside to wait in the back seat of the car.

  I thought better of it when Mr. Brown appeared at last, rushing to button his shirt and run a hand through his hair. He had spent almost his whole writing hour in bed, but I couldn’t be unhappy with him. As he turned back toward me to pull the car out of the driveway, he looked just a little like James—an angle of his jaw or the curve of his lashes. My heart unwound. He was, after all, my Mr. Brown, and he loved his wife, and at last, I had someone to talk to after so many years of wanting to talk with him and not being allowed. I remembered then how I used to whisper to my previous host, my Poet, while he was dreaming.

  That morning as Mr. Brown opened the box and took out the pages of his unfinished novel, I rested my hand on the back of his chair and leaned in toward the shell of his ear.

  “I know you can’t hear me,” I said to him. “I wish that you could.” I moved my fingers to his shoulder. I rarely attempted to be in the same space as the Quick. It was always an odd feeling, like falling. This time it felt like sliding down a waterfall. At that moment, he set the papers on his table and looked out at the empty desks. He let the arm I was touching drop, his hand in his lap.

  “My friend,” I said. “I want to tell you something.” I felt foolish, and at the same time confiding in him made my heart pulse li
ke the fanning of doves’ wings. “I’ve found someone,” I told him. “He can see me and hear me.”

  Mr. Brown turned to the door as if he had forgotten something and was considering going back to his car.

  “I wish you could be happy for me,” I whispered in his ear. “You’re my only friend.” Then I realized I had another friend now. What a queer idea.

  Mr. Brown looked out the windows on the left, then the door on the right, as if he might see a familiar face looking in.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” I said. Then I withdrew my hand and the first bell rang, startling him. He put the papers of his novel away without writing a word.

  That day as I waited for James, I felt not in the least afraid. As he walked in and slyly scanned the room, he found me sitting at his own desk. He tried not to laugh and I pretended not to notice him. He walked calmly up to me, rubbed his chin for a moment in mock contemplation, then continued past me toward the back of the room where he sat in the very last seat. I stayed where I was until every student was settled, even the young woman next to me. Finally I drifted back toward him. At the sound of Mr. Brown’s voice, I stopped, standing in the aisle right in front of James.

  “Mr. Blake?” called Mr. Brown.

  James had been smiling up at me. Now he looked through me, or tried to. I ruffled with pleasure at the idea that I could block his view. He ended up leaning far to the left in order to see around me. “Sir?”

  “Anything wrong?” asked Mr. Brown. There were several empty desks between us and the next occupied seat.

  “Claustrophobia,” said James.

  Mr. Brown shook his head and commenced with the lesson. I moved to the desk to James’s right and sat. He looked toward the front of the room, as if listening to the difference between an adjective and an adverb, then reached over, took hold of my desktop, and dragged the whole chair a foot closer to him. The deafening scrape made Mr. Brown stop lecturing, and several heads turn back toward us. James sat with his hands folded on his book and what appeared to them an empty desk beside him. As Mr. Brown continued with the lesson, James slipped the same paper he’d been writing on the day before out of his book and turned it over. He took a runt of a pencil stub from his pocket and wrote: “How long have you been Light?”