Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (28 page)

“I could see all of the other women who were wearing wigs!” she said. “We kept stopping our carts to hug and say how beautiful we looked. We ended up having a little party right in the dairy isle. No one else could get to the yogurt, but that was their problem. They didn't have to be bald ladies!”

It was sort of like that for me as a kid, when I got to see other thumb-suckers and bed-wetters. But I hated it ever since cheating on a test in high school. I had thought it was just a little thing, that once it was Secret Day, I would see in everyone else's faces that they had cheated, too. Then the day came, and it was just me and Tyler Hart, Tyler with his long fingernails and the blister always at the edge of his lip. He grinned at me like we were two of a kind. I told myself that I would live so that I never had to have secrets again.

It didn't work. I have more secrets than nonsecrets. Some of them aren't so bad. One year, Secret Day let me see everyone else who loved to read tabloid magazines in dentists' offices. One year, I saw everybody who puts away all of their own clutter from around the house, just so they can be angry with someone else for leaving out their shoes. I saw everyone who leaves bad tips when they travel out of town, everyone who likes to have their own car be in front of the others when they drive (not many), everyone who pees in the shower (a disturbingly large group), everyone who waits until food in the refrigerator gets moldy before throwing it out (almost everybody). But Secret Day would never be easy like that again. That was why I had called in sick last year and stayed home, hiding in the basement so that the mail carrier couldn't see me.

I tried to keep from looking at anyone in the coffee shop. I told myself that it would be okay, that there couldn't be too many of us. But then: the light in the face of one other woman in the corner of the room. I turned to leave. I could hear her following me. I tried to rush getting Anna into the car.

“I'm so sorry,” the woman was saying. “How long ago was it?”

With Anna fastened in her car seat, I opened the front door and got in without talking.

The woman banged on the window. “It really is better this way,” she called out. “You know you did the right thing.” She was crying.

I backed out of the parking space as the stranger hammered.

When James came home that night, it was the same secret in his eyes.

I had forgotten that it was his secret, too. How had I forgotten? “Oh, James,” I said.

I did not touch him. We were beyond touch. We stood in the kitchen, and I held Anna, a monkey in my arms, squirming for the glasses on James's pain-chipped face.

Did anyone really need a special day to see the loss we carried?

When Anna was asleep, we lay beside each other on the couch, our bodies still and warm.

“I was thinking,” he said, “how she would be a year and a half old by now.”

“That's old enough to walk and talk.”

“But she probably wouldn't have.”

“Probably not.”

“Do you think she's Anna?”

“No. I think she's gone.”

“Me too.”

“It's not like I'm making a first impression,” James said.

“Yeah, but when we stayed home last year, I guess he wasn't too pleased. Apparently, he didn't think very highly of someone who helped me make the decisions I made.”

“We made.”

“You know what he was expecting. Can you imagine how surprised he must have been?”

“So, we'll show up with a baby this year.”

“Right. And you'll both look your best.”

“I can stay until five o'clock,” James said. “Then I have to go to my aunt's place for my cousin's Day of Return party.”

James's family always has a full house. There are plenty of grandparents and great-grandparents who come back, but the one everyone really tries to please is his cousin, Brian. Poor kid. Leukemia took him at fourteen, even after the prayer circles and the fundraising and his whole former basketball team shaving their heads to match him. That first year, Brian's family got everyone to come to his party: all of his teachers, the news reporter who had covered his story, nearly every kid from his freshman class. But Brian was shy and hid in the basement, playing video games with his two best friends. His parents were sad but understanding. The next year, they only invited his friends over, bought a lot of ice cream, and everyone sat around the kitchen table, trying different flavors and laughing. The year after that, Brian was still fourteen, but his friends were sixteen. Conversations became tedious, especially since one of them had been out of the loop of the social world for two years. The day ended with Brian locking himself in his room and watching TV, which must have been the same as being dead anyway. When he came back the next year to find only his family was waiting for him, he yelled about how nobody cared about him. He was fourteen years old after all. The following year, his parents were desperate to see their son, desperate to see him happy, to do things right. They went to his former high school and advertised to the new freshman class, convincing parents to send their kids to his party, encouraging teachers to give extra credit to students who attended, even getting one less scrupulous teacher to offer double extra credit to girls. They fixed up the basement like a nightclub and hired a DJ. After the disappointments of the previous years, Brian was flattered. He sat on the couch, watching the others, never one to know how to jump into social situations even when he had been alive. Two girls took him into the bathroom to, as they said later, “make a man out of him.” They had been ten-year-olds when he died. Brian's parents found out from one of the other kids, and that was the end of the big parties.

It was rough for several years, with very, very quiet Days of Return. When Brian's best friends graduated from college, they came back to see him, and although the conversation was stilted, it was kinder than it had ever been. A few years later, his best friend brought his tiny son, and Brian held the little boy and sang to him. Now each year, Brian plays with the child of his best friend. The little boy is seven years old now, old enough to remember his strange friend from one year to the next, old enough to draw him pictures and prepare stories for him. In a year, they will ride bikes together, and perhaps in another year, one of their parents will drive them to go fishing. It won't be long before the heartbeat of time when they are the same age, and then it will pass, and nobody knows what they will do for Brian then. Perhaps he will stop coming back, and then he will be truly gone. The dead do that. From one visit to the next, their memories fade, and their personalities become smoother, rounder, like stones washed in a river. In the end, they return to the one great soul of all people, and are truly present, truly lost.

Last year, when James and I stayed home from the Day of Return parties, I was twenty weeks pregnant with Anna. I had begun to feel her reliably, thumping like a baby rabbit. On the Day of Return, the sister who got to live swam beside the sister who gave her life so that the other could live. I imagined them in two separate placentas, side by side, as if looking through a glass at one another. It was the closest that Anna would ever come to knowing her sister, the closest her sister would ever come to knowing anyone.

Life and death were indistinguishable inside of me. “This is her,” I had said to James, my hand at the bulging place on my side. “No. This is her.”

This year, when the first baby came back, I pulled Anna against my suddenly round belly, held her to the kicks of her impossible sister. I put on the loose dress that I had saved, and James and I took our two daughters to the party at my mother's house.

In the years since my father's death, it had felt strange to go to his Day of Return party and see my father calm, mellowed by death. He took Anna into his arms and bounced her, let her feel his stubble against her soft cheeks, held her in the upside-down positions that made her laugh, the positions that came so naturally to James and so awkwardly to me.

I went to the daffodil-covered buffet table that my mother had laid out: my father's favorite macaroni and cheese, the chocolate-covered pretzels he liked, the lasagna that he made so perfectly that my mother could never quite replicate, the table-hard cookies that my grandmother believed should be at every gathering, my grandmother's signature Jell-O salad, her favorite chicken salad sandwiches in neat triangles with the crusts cut off, the lemon bars my sister made in perpetual batches, the chocolates that we ordered her from specialty shops even when the chemo taste made her mouth too bitter to enjoy them, the Petit Bordeaux she had so loved from her favorite winery.

Then I knew, finally knew what I had been unable to realize in the two months since it had happened: Rosie had gone.

She was across the room, laughing with one of Mom's brothers. He was making a shape with his hands, and she was copying him in what looked like a rude joke. I turned, and there was Scott. He was watching her, too, and gnawing on one of the rocklike cookies.

“Look at you, all dressed up,” I said.

He looked down at himself as though surprised.

“Rosie gave me this tie for my birthday one year,” he said. “She told me I ought to dress better. Then she made fun of me whenever I wore it. I don't think she's noticed that I'm wearing it.”

I hadn't seen much of Scott in the time since Rosie died, but he looked pretty much like you'd expect from someone who'd just lost his wife.

“Will the two of you be getting any time alone today?”

He shrugged. “What's there to talk about? What's it like being dead? I asked her that when she was home this morning. She says she doesn't remember.” He gave a horrible little laugh. “And there's not much to say about my life.”

Perhaps in three years or perhaps in ten, Scott will meet another woman. Scott would never stop coming to Rosie's Day of Return parties. Would he bring a new wife here? Would he bring his new children?

Rosie was bouncing Anna into the air while Anna giggled and clapped. Anna's ghost sister was restless in my belly. I was restless watching my ghost sister. Someone had turned on the television, and a local news program played a story about a dog parade.

“I have to go,” James said. The day was so warm that he carried his jacket over his arm.

I kissed him and held his hand. “Drive safely,” I said. I put his hand against my stomach. “Say goodbye.”

The Ghost Wife of Arlington

written by

Marilyn Guttridge

illustrated by

SIDA CHEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marilyn Guttridge was born and raised on the family farm in Oregon. When she was just a babe in arms, the first book her mother ever read to her was Tom Clancy's
Clear and Present Danger,
and ever since then she's been a collector of odd books. Marilyn grew up immersed in fantasy and science fiction of both the bestseller and obscure varieties, and was writing her first stories at the age of twelve—though she was telling them a long time before that.

Now as a community college student, Marilyn is a fan of all things that go bump in the night. She hopes that one day her stories will capture the imagination the same way her favorite books captured hers.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Sida Chen was born in rural China and lived there until she was five. She doesn't remember too much about her time there, and only retains a little of the language. When she arrived in Manhattan, she picked up English quickly and moved on to devour most of the local library's stash of fantasy books. After her mother bought her a Lisa Frank unicorn book, Sida began to dedicate an equal amount of time to drawing unicorns and dragons.

As she grew, she and her parents moved around the US, from Manhattan to Connecticut, before finally settling on Long Island. Though the amount of time she spent on books diminished, her doodling never stopped. Near the beginning of middle school, her father bought her a tablet as a birthday present and she began to experiment outside of traditional art using programs like Painter and Photoshop. Today her art still contains a lot of dragons but currently her favorite settings to illustrate are steampunk inspired.

Sida is currently studying biochemistry and visual arts at Columbia University and hopes to start a web comic this summer.

Sida's website is
Junedays.deviantart.com
.

The Ghost Wife of Arlington

T
he streets of Arlington were gloomy
with summer dust, the afternoon sun giving the light a bronze hue while the shadows
hinted at ash. Buildings older than Vivian's grandparents loomed four, five, six
stories over her, crowding the narrow streets like elegant sentinels, luring her in
to her destination. The ever-burning gas lamps of Bone Rattler Street had little
effect on the gloom not even the sun could entirely break.

Vivian, the lone pedestrian on Bone Rattler Street, wore black and
carried a red umbrella, the single dash of color against the shadows. Her black hose
whispered as she walked, skirt and coat swaying.

They called this Bone Rattler Street, though that was too crude a name
for it. If Vivian had had a chance to name it herself, she would have named it
Shadow Way. In the meantime, she called it “His Place.”

An abandoned bicycle rested near a wall. Vivian smiled at it, and
continued along. She was familiar with these streets, in a way none of the other
living residents of the city were. A few solitary lights still burned in the empty
shops, perhaps maintained by the relatives of their owners, perhaps by the force of
will of those who still dwelled there. The silence was overwhelming as Vivian's
footsteps echoed down the narrow alley.

Vivian was the only one allowed to pass unmolested through this street.
He had given special orders she was not to be bothered, and the ghosts obeyed Him.
Of course they did—they would never dare invoke His wrath.

Vivian carried on her arm a bag of gifts. Orders or no, she preferred
the occupants of Bone Rattler Street to think of her fondly. On one doorstep she
left a bottle of red wine, on another whiskey, and cakes next to a window. It was a
walk she performed every Sunday, while the living were at church.

They whispered of her walks, those who lived in Arlington. They feared
her as much as they admired her for it, leaving tokens for her to bring to this
street, where only the dead remained. Today she left a yellow chrysanthemum at each
door. Next week it might be lilies.

The people were terrified of this place. For good reason, she
supposed…not everyone would take well to kindness. His orders, and fear of Him, kept
Vivian safe from those who received no gifts, from those who made others keep their
distance.

Water ran through the gutters, dusty and thick with filth. Even in the
heat of summer, no matter how dry the weather, even if Vivian carried the umbrella
for shade, the stones of Bone Rattler Street were always soaked as if there had been
a thunderstorm.

Vivian peered out from under her umbrella. Her dark brown hair was bound
loose behind her head, and her dark eyes studied the lighted and darkened windows.
Someday, she knew, her parents and grandparents would inhabit a place like this, and
eventually Vivian herself. Who would take her place when the time came, she
wondered. Perhaps He would find her replacement, as He had found her.

It seemed likely. Vivian knew herself to be a temporary amusement for
Him. He was, as most Immortals are, fickle in that manner. Mortals amused Him for
only so long.

His gift was not in her bag.

His gift was her.

V
ivian met with Him in the house
on the end of the street. It was larger than any of the others, more imposing. It
loomed like a judgmental watchman, dark and clean and regal. Vivian left her bag and
umbrella by the door, and walked inside. She knew the way up by heart—she could have
walked the path in her sleep.

“You're late.” His voice carried down the stairs, deep and soft.

“No, I'm not. I'm exactly on time. Noon, you said. It's just noon now.”
Vivian brushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Usually you're early.”

“That doesn't make me late this time.” Vivian was the only person in the
city who would have dared argue with Him.

The city had a hundred names for Him—Bone Rattler, Black Coat, the
Orphan Maker. Vivian called Him the Shaker.

The room she met Him in was bare, and the dusty light illuminated His
black coat like a silhouette. He had a hundred different faces, but today He wore
the one Vivian was most familiar with—that of a handsome aristocrat, with auburn
hair and pale skin, tall and lean, with spidery hands. The Shaker stood with His
back to her, hands clasped behind His back and feet apart, the collar of His coat
turned up. He looked like a military commander.

Perhaps more than a little pompous. He had changed His face again.

“And all you survey is your kingdom,” Vivian said, smiling.

He turned His head toward her. “You do enjoy taunting me, don't
you?”

She removed her gloves. “I don't know what you're talking about. I am
summoned every Sunday by an Immortal whose favorite form of entertainment is
children's rhymes.”

He scowled at Vivian, and turned His gaze back to the window. He had
given Himself high cheekbones today, and an upturned nose. It seemed unusual, but
Vivian liked it. She walked to His side, clasping her hands before her. “It's a
small city, but you rule it well.”

“Thank you.”

“Many Immortals abuse their power.”

“I have little care what you mortals do, so long as it does not make any
more work for me than necessary,” He replied. “That you live in relative autonomy
until your deaths is a great service.”

“They live well because they fear you.” Vivian sat on the window seat,
crossing her ankles and admiring the Shaker's new form. “This suits you. Handsome
and distant. Very good.”

“This is not for you.”

“Isn't it?” Vivian smiled. “I see no reason you'd want to make yourself
handsome.”

He frowned. He disliked when she could guess things about Him, but it
was the reason she had yet to be replaced. She interested Him.

In some places, Vivian had heard, the Immortals kept themselves hidden,
and ruled in secret. More ridiculous, even, the mortals there believed Death was a
single entity. Or—inconceivably—that Death was not even an entity at all, but a
force, something that happened when the body ceased to live. Vivian could not help
but laugh at that. As if her Shaker were an
event
; the
very idea was ludicrous.

The Shaker motioned her to follow and turned on His heel, leaving the
room. Gloves in hand, Vivian pursued His swift stride, the heels of her shoes
clicking while His left silence. He watched her from under His eyelashes, which He
had made quite enviable. She adjusted her earlier assessment—He was more than
handsome, He was beautiful.

He took her to the rooftop. A light wind had picked up but dust still
hung over the city. The hot sun warmed her shoulders as they watched the still and
quiet Arlington. Church bells rang, and the faithful began to pour back on to the
streets.

“It is funny, how they still hope to be saved from me by God.” The
Shaker's face was bemused.

“They are afraid.”

“What do they call me, again?”

“Black Coat, Bone Rattler—”

“Not those.”

Vivian swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Devil.”

The Shaker was quiet for a moment. “Devil, is it? And what have I done
to them that's so devilish?”

“What you were made to do,” Vivian replied. “They hate you even as they
appreciate your mercy.” She wanted to reach out, to touch Him, but she knew He did
not want her to. Accepting comfort would be admitting weakness.

“And what do you think of me?”

“You know what I think.”

“Say it anyway.”

Vivian looked up at Him. “There is a sort of cruelness in this, you
know. I love you, and yet you don't believe me.”

The Shaker shrugged. “Mortals are careless with their words.”

“If ever another mortal has served you more diligently, then God strike
me down,” Vivian said. “Every Sunday for four years, without a complaint—with
eagerness and fondness, even—I have come down this road. Still you doubt me.”

The Shaker laughed. “You speak of four years as if it were a long
time.”

“For me it is.” Vivian looked out over the city. “Four years is a very
long time to be alone. They won't come near me, you know. No one speaks to me.”

“An unfortunate hazard of this occupation. You knew this when you first
came here.”

Vivian pursed her lips. “God only knows why I love you,” she said. “You
certainly give me no undue kindness.”

He smiled and pulled her close. There was no warmth from His skin, but
the arms about her made her feel somewhat better. Vivian sighed and shook her head.
“God help me.”

He brushed her cheek with His fingers—ice cold they were, but Vivian had
grown used to it. When He did not threaten to freeze her, His skin was hot as fire,
and little in between. When they were intimate, He did His best to manage that
temperature for her, but she had more than a few unpleasant scars to mark her as
His. She looked up at Him, taking in this new face.

“You look sad,” He said.

“I was just thinking someday you will grow tired of me,” she said. “I
will outlive my usefulness to you.”

His frown deepened, and He stepped away. “You mortals. You know so
little.”

Vivian rolled her eyes, and watched Him as He walked to the far side of
the roof, the wind catching His coat. The sun cast Him in gold.

“Shaker…”

He was silent.

Vivian sighed, and returned to inside the house. She would not leave
Bone Rattler Street until nightfall, perhaps not until midnight. As the Immortal
sulked, she walked down to His kitchen, the chill air of the house making her
shiver. Her black clothes made her feel like a shadow drifting.

Plenty of far more real shadows followed her as she walked, whispers and
movements she hardly paid attention to anymore. His
children,
He called them, and she supposed she believed Him. They said
in the city that most of His attendants in the last two hundred years had been
women—that these Whispers were His children she could well imagine.

If the Shaker ever ate or had need of food, Vivian didn't know, but His
kitchen was always supplied for her. Tea and cakes and other little snacks. She
nibbled on a bunch of grapes while she thought, a single window admitting some
sunlight. The Whispers crowded in the corners, watching her. Vivian glanced at them
occasionally, but they always fled from her gaze. Perhaps the last attendant had not
been so kind to the Shaker's Whispers.

He came down in His own time, to discover her nursing a cup of chamomile
tea. The Whispers followed His coattails, barely formed figures chasing after,
shadowed shapes casting glances her way.

The Shaker brushed His lips along her forehead. He had tried to warm
Himself, it seemed, but now He felt like a fever. Vivian just managed a smile.

She did not know why the Shaker looked for attendants as He did. Many
Immortals wanted little to do with their mortal subjects, and fewer still wanted in
them some kind of partner. But the Shaker…well, despite her many guesses about Him,
He was inscrutable.

“So you like this new form?”

Vivian's smile became more amused. Older than civilization, yet He
preened like a teenage girl. “Yes, I like it. It's beautiful.”

“Beautiful.”

Vivian nodded, finishing her tea. She stood, assessing Him a little more
fully. She straightened His collar, which had fallen somewhat, and brushed His hair
out of His eyes. “There,” she murmured, and kissed His cheek. She tapped the end of
His nose. “This was a nice touch. Unconventional, but it works for you.” His lips
were fuller now as well. At first glance, it seemed He had assembled these features
at random, but the longer she looked at Him the more she liked it.

She ran her hands down His chest. “You're very thin; I don't know I
expected that.” His waist and hips were incredibly narrow, and she could imagine for
what purpose He had done that. His long hands settled about her waist, and the
Shaker kissed her hair. Whether it was all an act or genuine tenderness, it won
Vivian over, and she sighed. The Whispers began to creep away.

He took her up to the bedroom, though if He ever needed it for sleep,
Vivian would have been amazed. They said Immortals didn't need sleep.

Vivian had never known any man who could do what the Shaker could. It
was perhaps the advantage of infinite time to learn that made Him what He was, but
Vivian didn't care—when she was with Him, Bone Rattler Street could have been
burning to the ground and she never would have noticed.

Vivian curled against Him when they were done, enjoying that for a few
moments, His skin only felt flush, and not like ice or fire. He traced the curve of
her hip, endlessly fascinated with the shape of her. Any slight change He
noticed.

“Say it again.”

“I love you.” She ran her fingers through His hair.

“Again.”

“I love you.” She kissed His face.

He fell back on the bed, tracing His fingers along her throat and
breast. “Once more.”

“Shaker.”

“Please.”

“I love you.” She whispered it this time, a hand over His heart. “Now
please, just be quiet.”

He kissed her, tasting of mulled wine and something earthy. It was a
familiar flavor to Vivian now. His skin was beginning to cool.

When Vivian left at almost midnight, her umbrella over her shoulder and
the empty bag on her arm, she was tired but calm. She would sleep through most of
Monday, and on Tuesday she would buy groceries.

People would talk to her as little as possible, and whisper when her
back was turned.

As she walked, she could hear the ghosts of Bone Rattler Street
whispering. She had thought about asking the Shaker why He never left Bone Rattler
Street once, but she had decided she already knew why.