Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift Read online

  Oh. OK. That was good. Two parents were definitely better than one. Whatever monster was out there killing kids couldn’t get past both of them.

  I nodded. The television news program signed off with trumpet music. That meant it was 7 pm. The sun was starting to set and it would be completely dark in another hour. I’d paid attention to things like that. The rule was to be in the house by the time the street lights buzzed on. But as the terror gripped the city and the curfew was instituted, the only thing you could hear now were not any kids rushing to get home but drunks stumbling back to their cars from the bars a couple of streets over. That and crickets chirping outside.

  My mom walked around the corner, each step causing a groan from the hardwood floors. She had her all-weather coat in her hand in navy blue, her favorite color, but she hadn’t brought my coat along with her. Then again, I would just be staying in the car so I guess it really didn’t matter if I went out in my pajamas.

  Dad said, “We’ll be back.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re going to stay here with Gramma.”

  “I’m not going with you?” I looked to my mom but she wasn’t saying anything. Looks like this would be a united front.

  “Angie,” Mom said, “Gramma will protect you.”

  I looked over there at the lump sitting on the couch. Not likely. I didn’t even think that she liked me.

  “You’ll be safe,” Dad said. “See.” He reached out to the light switch under the rack where the keys were usually hung and flipped it. “We’ll turn on all the lights. Criminals, bad people, they don’t like the light. They’ll stay away.”

  They were really going to go. I held onto his sleeve. “I don’t want pizza. You don’t have to go.”

  “It’s OK,” he said. And with that they left out the front door and then to the driveway to where the gold Mazda GLC hatchback was parked, the car Dad used to go to work.

  The wind started to pick up. The neighborhoods were so old and trees had grown so big that sometimes the roots would break out the concrete on the sidewalk.

  The world where you could see everything in the daylight transformed at night into a place where you couldn’t see beyond the trees that whipped into the house as the sky growled at you.

  The warning tone sounded on the television drawing my attention.

  IT IS 7 PM. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE?

  The question was if I knew where my parents were. I didn’t. They’d left me there alone.

  If we’d stayed in South Carolina, I would have been able to run over to my aunt and uncle’s house just over the crest. My parents probably would have dropped me off and I’d be eating strawberry pie and talking to Aunt Lou about her massive collection of costume jewelry. Junk she had called it.

  A game show came on after the news. With their noises and cheers, they irritated me, but at least they were better than the wind. It was these times that I realized that the house was just particle board. There was nothing to stop anyone from coming in and doing anything to you. A house was not protection. People were protection and my people were gone.

  Gramma had moved some. She was a creature in and of herself with a crocheted pink shawl, her feet bandaged and her hair covered. Gramma always had something on her head. Usually a tiny piece of fabric that had to be pinned down on top of her head with the gray curls sticking out. The only time I would see her with her head uncovered was at her funeral.

  I headed to my bedroom. The house was small even with the attention that had been made to expand it. The front room was the living room with the television and then that led to the dining room to the right which we hardly ever used. Around the side of the house was the long kitchen that held the kitchen table. The kitchen didn’t have a lot of width, but mostly length and the room led out to the back yard. The bedrooms were off the hallway behind that big room that was the living room. It was a compact house.

  My room was decorated in sunny colors as Mom called them. The dresser was white decorated with gold trim and the bedroom bedspread was yellow with ruffles along the edges. Mom had found a good deal at the outlet store for the yellow blackout shades with scalloped edges and fringe at the end that was supposed to block out the sun.

  The brooch sat stuffed in the bottom of my underwear drawer. It was a starburst pattern but to me it looked like a blue glass dahlia. And certainly nothing a ten-year old girl would be wearing. It looked more like a brooch the church ladies would wear. The brooch was royal blue so that they would probably have paired it with their whites after Easter with blue shoes and a blue bag to match.

  My Aunt Lou had given it to me the day we left for Atlanta. The shimmer of magic clung to it. I’d taken to carrying it with me to school. Having it on my counter made it easy to grab on the way out the door whenever one of the parents weren’t with me. I didn’t know how long the protection spell my aunt had cast on it would last, but I planned on making use of it as long as I could.

  I hid the brooch in the drawer after I saw Gramma turning it over in her hands, mumbling something, when I came home from the grocery store with my mom a couple of days ago. If she lost it, it would be gone forever so I hid it in a place where not just anyone would be able to pick it up and touch it.

  I looked at the phone sitting on the nightstand and wanted to call Aunt Lou, but weighed the consequences. My parents would not be happy with the long-distance phone charges all just to say that I was scared of a thunderstorm.

  It wouldn’t take long for them to come back with the pizza. Maybe thirty minutes? The room already was getting stuffy from the humidity of the storm. I’d have to turn on the fan in the main room. So, I had a thirty-minute problem. Just wait this out. I pinned the brooch to my pajama shirt and looked down it. It was so heavy that it sagged and pulled the shirt down a little. I ran my fingers along its ridges. This was the most I could get from Aunt Lou for now.

  I went back to the living room.

  “You’re fine with me, Mouse,” Gramma said as I went back into the room. She had moved and she was facing toward me.

  I kept my mouth shut but shied away from her, edging around the room against the ridges of the wood paneling toward the windows. Mom liked the windows and the front side of the house was full of them. Gramma wanted to be able to look out from the La-Z-Boy recliner that sat off near the side right in arm’s length of the bookcase. The sofa was butted up right against the windows. I never did understand why she wanted to look out over the asphalt or see the occasional drunk staggering toward his car.

  “Come sit here,” Gramma said. “We can make the time go faster until your parents get back.”

  But I hung back. You know that kindly grandmother that folks talk about? I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my grandmother. My hand went over my brooch and then sat down next to her, her scent of Ben Gay and convenience store rose lotion stifling my nose.

  “Can I open a window?” I asked

  “It’s windy and gusty out there. You don’t want the water to get in the house.”

  “Just a little bit?”

  “OK,” she said and then she patted me on the head. My hair was still in French braids one on each side so my mom didn’t have to do my hair that much, just once every two or three days. “but be careful.”

  I nodded and then reached behind us, opened the latch and shoved the window open. A bedraggled soul was walking along the sidewalk in front of the house. Probably someone from the bar up the street. It was hard to tell with the sheets of rain pouring down.

  The air circulated in the room. “That is better,” she said.

  That guy on the sidewalk. There was just something about him I didn’t like. “Gramma, can we turn off the porch lights?”

  “Keep them on,” she said. The game show “Tic Tac Dough” was on. I glanced at the clock. Just twenty-five minutes left.

  The cool air came into the room, but with it also came the pin drops of rain against my neck. Gramma hugged me to her shoulders. She might hav
e been fluffy, but she was brittle and held me lightly. I pulled away as much as I could so that I could breathe.

  The doorbell rang. I looked out and saw it was that same soaked soul I’d seen walking on the sidewalk, now standing on our porch. Which meant that he had gotten from the street to the porch and walked up the steps. I could see him clearly now underneath the porch lights. His bald head contained beads of rain. His white t-shirt was soaked, pressed against his skin. The studded leather jacket and the scuffed combat boots labeled him as a regular to the neighborhood, but the type of person I hadn’t gotten used to seeing yet. My old world had been full of plaid shirts and denim overalls.

  Gramma released my shoulders, pulling herself up with her cane.

  “Don’t answer it,” I said.

  “It’s OK,” she said. Then she ran her fingers along the brooch. “It’s all right.” She took her cane and she hobbled the few steps to the door. I fingered the brooch and stood right there behind her.

  “Was just wondering if I could use your phone,” he said and then he looked down at me. I shrunk further away. I didn’t like him. The images of those dead boys came back to me and then the rationalizations began. They were boys. They were found in other parts of the city, further west. They were away from people and they were alone. I was not alone.

  But none of that made any sense to me right now and I felt little protection except for the brooch from my Aunt Lou who wasn’t the strongest in the family and a woman whose powers were draining.

  If we were back home—

  The truth, though, is that we weren’t. We were here in this world of concrete and steel and even though I was a mouse, a person without power in her family, I felt the difference. I knew magic even if I didn’t wield it. It had a certain feeling to it, a shimmer, a warmth that had been the underlying tone of my life now ripped away.

  So that on a Friday night I was facing a stranger who could kill both of us in the twenty minutes it would take for my parents to come back home.

  “You’re welcome to ride out the storm on the porch,” Gramma said. “Or I can call someone for you, but you cannot come in.”

  She took a step back and pushed me in front of her gripping her fingers into my shoulders to hold me steady. I shrunk back against her skirts, the open door let all the power of the storm rush through the door.

  He reached out to us, his hand stopping at the doorsill. Where his hand stopped, energy waves formed circles around it like when you throw a rock in a pond. He tried again and again it was stopped.

  Gramma nodded. “You had best be on your way,” she said. “If you need me to call someone I still would be happy to do it.”

  He already backed off the porch stumbling and then down the stairs.

  She patted my shoulders. When she spoke her breath held the regular stink of someone twelve hours from their last brushing. “I think we can still catch the end of Tic Tac Dough.”

  I blinked watching him go. She had already hobbled around me and sat on the couch.

  She left me standing there. I watched until the man made it to the sidewalk where he started running.

  “We aren’t supposed to use magic here.”

  “I’m not leaving my grandbaby here unprotected. So the house is warded. It only keeps those out who you don’t allow in and only at the door. Anyone can come up to the porch. We want to be able to get the mail. You don’t think I really came here to see a doctor, did you?”

  “You didn’t?”

  She sighed, settling into the couch. “I don’t see where they can do anything else for me that the folks back home can’t,” is all she said. “And don’t tell your parents, but I also bumped up the protection spell on that brooch you carry around so much. Your Aunt Louisa didn’t know you’d like it that much but I figured you’d look for something to remind you of home.”

  But I’m just a Mouse—a mute—a normal. “But I would know the magic was around. Mom and Dad would know.”

  “They don’t know everything,” she said. “It’s subtle. You appreciate the subtleties as you get older, Mouse, and you’ll learn how to pick up on them. That’s what I would have taught you if you grew up at home when I knew for sure what you were going to be.”

  She took my hands in hers. “You have magic. Everyone does. You just have a subtle source of magic that it took me a while to get used to seeing. You knew enough to protect yourself didn’t you? You’ll learn. You’ll grow it in this strange world. This Big Town.” She sighed. “But I guess you do have a better chance here.”

  She turned to the television.

  I took my place next to her on the couch. The contestant Bob was taking his turn at the Xs and Os. I scooted so that my pajama legs touched the skirt of her day dress and laid my head on her shoulder. We rode out the storm together.

  Introduction to “Shaman”

  For more than a decade now, I have adored the work of Leslie Claire Walker. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines, from Electric Velocipede to Fantasy Magazine. Other anthologies have snapped up her stories as well. You can find a lot of her work in e-format, including her wonderful novel, Skin and Bone.

  She writes that a week in Peru inspired “Shaman.” She fell in love with the country, but also saw its darkness. She shares both here.

  Shaman

  Leslie Claire Walker

  Dad stepped into the doorway of the doctor’s consultation room. Newly grown-in, prematurely gray hair. Blue blazer. White dress shirt. Jeans and loafers. No socks. January Friday casual for the office where he should be lawyering for wrongly convicted felons under, you know, normal circumstances. Whatever that word meant anymore. He hadn’t worked since his diagnosis a year ago. The firm made an excuse. Laid him off.

  He slipped his fists into his jean pockets and pushed down, which shoved his shoulders up close to his ears. Still, his eyes shone. Bright brown with hope. A little sarcastic humor. He glanced over to where I sat in the waiting area and grinned as he disappeared inside.

  Everything’s gonna be all right. He wanted me to believe that. He wanted to believe it himself.

  I sat in the cheap vinyl chair, one leg tucked under me and one black boot scuffing the tile. I thumbed through a fashion mag because the office didn’t have anything better to read. Which was torture, but better than watching the courtroom reality show on the screen bolted to the wall or staring at said wall or listening to the phone conversation of the old woman in the corner. Besides, her bright green sweater made my eyes hurt and I overheard her saying something nasty about sick people. Not just any sick people, either. People like my father.

  I thought about Vince, the guy at school who I’d been crushing on for two whole days and his amazing hazel eyes. And how my best friend Amber had a plan to uncover whether he liked me, too. And the likelihood that the zit forming on my chin could be stopped by will alone.

  But then Dad shuffled out of the consultation, hands fisted in his hair. His eyes looked a lot redder than when he’d gone in. And I figured out in that moment that hope was a lie they fed you to keep you in line.

  The doc had told him there was nothing more they could do. His options were

  a) more chemo, which was not designed for this disease but they were using it anyway because they had nothing else to offer, and maybe it would give him a few more weeks to live;

  b) no more chemo, with fewer weeks and hospice care at the end; or

  c) stick a gun in his mouth.

  He deserved better than that. He wasn’t the only one.

  This particular disease had a name I refused to say out loud, although every syllable haunted my dreams. It started in the bones. It affected the blood. It made its victims weak. They couldn’t keep food down. They had episodes where they lost consciousness while they were awake—blackouts—near the end. They died in agony.

  The doctors who saw the first cases couldn’t do much to help. Eventually, the government got involved. The Centers for Disease Control. Its counterparts in other countrie
s.

  None of them knew what caused the disease, only that it came to affect an enormous amount of people in the course of a decade, that it wasn’t communicable, and that it had no known cure.

  We all got tested. It used to be a guideline, the testing. Then it became the law. A crappy law passed with lots of grandstanding. From fear. People said the disease could be a terrorist plot (paranoia). They said the sick deserved it because they’d done something to offend God (if Jesus had a grave, he’d officially be rolling in it). They said the government was building internment camps to keep the sick ones and their families away from everyone else (conspiracy theory, but one I kind of believed).

  So anyway my dad wasn’t the only one. But he was my dad. And he never gave up on anything or anyone without a fight.

  I drove us home. I watched my speed. Stopped in all the right places. Didn’t reach for the radio even when the silence got to be scream-worthy uncomfortable. He went inside while I parked the car in the garage. I caught sight of him as he slowly climbed the stairs. Heard his unsteady steps in the upstairs hall and the door to his bedroom snick shut.

  Only then did I slip on my headphones and turn up the sound as loud as I dared and brace myself against the kitchen sink. I peeled potatoes for soup. My method of salting them was unconventional and unstoppable for a while. I wiped my eyes with a paper towel. It came away smeared with mascara and black eye shadow.

  I left the soup simmering on the stove. It filled the house with the scents of butter and starch and chives.

  I couldn’t help the memories that arose in my mind’s eye. Everywhere I looked, I saw them. The spot on the threadbare living room rug where our Lab Charlie used to lay. He’d been the first of us to die, though in his case it’d been death by the front grill of a Suburban.

  Dad’s collection of old movies. As in at least twenty-five years old and a lot of them way more than that. Breakast at Tiffany’s. Shane. The entire Harry Potter series. He had weird taste, which he preferred to call eclectic. He made excellent caramel popcorn. We’d seen all the flicks at least twice, all of them on Friday nights or sick days, snuggled on the oversized sofa.