Shadows of Shadows - 3. Light Reading

Besides breakfast, Susan splurged on a set of portable computer speakers. All afternoon they blasted from her laptop. When the noise blared, it kept her from having to think her own thoughts. Spotify kept her company while she hung clothes -- the laundromat was indeed shut. NPR podcasts helped her through packing Mom’s room. There were only a few pieces of costume jewelry, to which Mom always replied with a trash can emoji. When she was sick of both, she pulled a radio out of a box she’d already packed and simply played what was on while she ate a lonesome frozen dinner, then a sandwich, and a couple of Cokes.

She was forced to quiet it down when her phone chimed with a notification from college: her paper needed revision. The light of day slipped away behind her back while she sat on the sofa and typed away. When she submitted the revision, the only illumination was the lamp behind her.

Susan sprang up and snapped on every light on the ground floor. Every room was empty, to her surprise. A thought bomb went off in her head: I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do, I do, I DO believe in spooks! The response to that line was, of course, You’ll believe in more than that when I’m through with you!

Before he’d died, Grandpa had convinced her that four or five ghosts inhabited the house. The best had been Mister Mulberry, whose story Susan had actually recounted with a laugh to some or her friends in Massachusetts.

“The day I left home in Indiana, I packed the old house into an big truck. I cranked it up -- vroom! -- and rolled down the old dusty drive. I stomped on the brakes -- crunch -- and stopped”

“Don’t brakes say ‘skrr’?”

“Not on a dirt road. Who do you think I saw in the mirror, stooped over in the door, but Old Mister Mulberry. I jammed the truck into reverse and -- vrrrrrrrrrm, crunch -- stopped and said ‘How are ya, now, Mister Mulberry?’

“‘Are you going to leave me here by myself, Sanders?’ he said. “I’ll be so lonesome and hungry in this house all by myself.’

“Well, I had your grandmother and my old yellow dog in the front, but there was some room left in the back of the truck. He was happy enough to climb in. All the way here we heard not a peep, and when we unloaded here, he stepped out, thanked me, and carried his old bedroll up to the attic.”

“He lives in the attic?”

“He doesn’t bother us much. You can hear him moving around sometimes, and at night he’ll come for a little food, but other than that, you’ll hardly know he’s here.”

It was charming, folksy and funny. Grandpa had had a way with a tall tale, and though dead these nine years, it kept him alive in her memory. However, there was no way Susan was cleaning out the attic before Makayla showed up.

Susan skittered into the kitchen and bobbled cups and tea bags until she finally had the makings of a hot drink assembled. She drummed her fingers and stared into the sink while the kettle worked, not willing to risk seeing Mister Mulberry float in for his supper. Eyes still downcast to avoid greeting any unexpected visitors, Susan returned to the sofa with the steaming, steeping mug. Drinks in the living room had been forbidden under Grandpa’s reign, but Grandma had relaxed the prohibition. Susan practiced this excuse just in case grandpa himself showed up tonight, which seemed more and more likely as the still night closed in. The lights shining around her held at bay the darkness seeping from upstairs, and Susan had to repeat to herself that nothing was coming down.

From the end table Susan took up the paperback and opened its steamy cover to the clipped page. She fumbled the pen and it slipped under her butt. Susan clamped the pages under her thumb of her left hand while scrabbling with her right, capturing the pen before it was consumed in the cracks between the cushions. She set it on the end table then paused for a sip of tea before returning to her reading:

“Lucy’s mouth was a bitter twist. ‘Does Harry know you love me?’”

Susan squinted over the words. Hmm, page two again. I really thought I was on five, she thought in consternation. She thumbed the corners and found five, letting loose a little cough. Her fingers slipped over the page to turn it, until a horrible hacking fit overcame her. She caught the slim volume in her left hand again, still open to the second page, while her right caught cough after cough.

Tea gone down the wrong way. Well, now she couldn’t remember what had happened anyway, so she picked up from there.

“And then Pris had started to cry -- had buried her face in Lucy’s breast -- had tilted her face up and kissed Lucy desperately. But later, when the buttons were rebuttoned and the petticoats smoothed back down, Pris had only said: ‘Harry and I will be married from Winlock House on the twenty-eighth of March.”

Susan tried out the words in her mouth. “Buried her face in Lucy’s breast … kissed Lucy desperately.” It was a good start. She imagined herself and Makayla, trying the two of them out in one role or another of the scene. Depending on how slow a burn the book was, it might have to keep her going for a while. She backed up and took another run at the passage, reading aloud and doing the voices in stilted, plummy accents.

Her voice rolled around the living room. Where the electric din of the day’s music had merely beaten back the irrational dread of her solitude, her own human speech flowed through the crannies, flushing out the dim terrors lurking in the corners. Feeling brighter and lighter, Susan scooted and settled her bottom into a comfier spot, grinning giddily.

She kept reading aloud, but as the dialogue petered out and the monstrous men crept into the plot, her lips stopped moving and she considered skimming ahead. In that instant, the warmth that had crept into her mood drained, and a tingle of nausea replaced it. Laying the book facedown in her lap, she sipped at her tea and drew a few measured breaths. Susan rested the mug on the book, leaned back and stared through the ceiling to collect herself.

“Don’t stop. Nobody but us!”

“Gaaaaaaah!” yelped Susan as the hot wetness soaked her shirt tail. What the hell? She’d fallen asleep and spilled. That’s why grandpa had fussed about drinks in the living room, she recalled with galling guilt. That dream though: she hadn’t gone anywhere, but slipped into a twisted reality at the edge of sleep. Nobody but us …

There was a black and white ghost movie she remembered watching on the TV in this very room, one of the videotapes. In its continued quest to be as unhelpful as possible, her id pulled up a clip of the housemaid proclaiming that “the house is happy you’re here” or something along those lines. Susan muttered, “No, that’s stupid,” but obeyed a fanciful impulse. First setting down the mug on the end table, she wiped the drops from the book’s glossy cover on the shirt next to the larger spill; neither seemed like a big enough problem to fix now. She haltingly continued:

“Pris was gone. Lucy truly was alone now. Cold seeped from the cold stone floor through her thin slippers …”

The knife-edged tension in the empty room relaxed. Susan choked on a nervous giggle. She eyed the empty spaces, first in grandma’s recliner, then the spot on the sofa beside her. As she locked gazes with the thin air and the pause lengthened, another sick pit just failed to form inside Susan. She resumed:

“… as she realized that for the next two weeks she would be entirely at her own disposal.”

“The Uninvited”. That was the name of the movie. If she remembered correctly, right after the maid had pronounced the house happy the ghost started murdering people. If she found that tape, it was going straight in the trash.

Nevertheless, reading aloud filled the cold void, so she pressed on. Ten pages passed, then twenty, then thirty. It was oddly satisfying. Reading aloud made her slow down, and she was enjoying it twice as much as she might have normally done. Perhaps she was enjoying it for two? She banished the thought and read on.

The story engaged her in the familiar way of the pulp romance. Lucy was a brilliant astronomer repressed by society, Lady Moth her widowed patroness. They lived under the same roof, together endured the rebuff of the patriarchy, then valiantly carried on nonetheless. One’s weaknesses perfectly fitted the other’s strengths. Upon this frame the author hung the heroines’ lustful internal monologues, sprinkled artfully among the mounting tension of the plot.

Ninety minutes after she had started, Susan concluded chapter three, set the book face down, then stood and stretched. Feeling the silence tighten around her, she picked up her now-empty mug and announced, “Just getting some tea!” and dashed to the kitchen. While her trembling hands prepared another drink, every sound, from the sliding of drawers, the creaking of hinges, to the click of the warming kettle, seemed for all the world to be an impatient tapping foot.

Susan was careful to sit exactly where she had been before, took the book up again and soldiered on. Over the next hour, the characters slowly got closer -- the image of gravitating bodies was explicitly rolled out -- until finally …

“Yes! They did it!” Susan cried out. She dogeared a page, then cautiously closed the book. To her relief, elation continued to fizz inside her. It was also well after one in the morning. Weariness at once stole over Susan. She turned to the adjacent seat again. It was thankfully still vacant, but she patted the cushion to make sure. Satisfied, she swung her legs up, nestled her neck against the armrest, and was out in moments.

***

“We used to do this all the time, Makayla,” said Susan. She propped against the head of her grandmother’s bed, her lover facing her, cross-legged on the mattress, in a white embroidered nightgown. Susan was still wearing the pants and stained shirt from before. Between them, they drew in turn from a stack of cards, each searching for their first play; rummy was the game. Susan discarded a queen and said, "A shame you couldn’t meet my grandmother. She was so nice. You know my grandmother meant so much to people around here."

Makayla squealed in victory and drew Susan’s discard. She matched the queen with two matching faces in her own hand. Makayla laid out the trio on the blanket between them with a flourish, then discarded an eight, which Susan picked up. While Susan shuffled her hand and strategized, Makayla remarked, “It’s making people crazy, making everyone lonely.”

Susan discarded a king. “The pandemic is making people crazy,” she agreed. “I do what the government tells me, but we aren’t socially distanced. Will the police come?” She thought she heard sirens outside.

Makayla laughed with a sparkling tone. “No police. The Devil doesn’t exist. I haven’t seen him.” She drew and discarded. A joker. Take out the jokers! Take out the jokers! screamed the sirens outside.

Mortified, Susan drew the upturned card. “I’ll hide it here, before the police come. Look, I have a meld!” She laid down three queens. “I can lay them on yours, too!” Susan giggled, but Makayla was eyeing her sternly. Was she mad at the extra queens?

“Susan,” Makayla said intensely, “you need to wake up just a little. Remember? Nobody but us.” She started crawling across the space between them, upsetting the cards. The noises from outside subsided, and the world beyond the bed dimmed, as if Susan were developing glaucoma. Makayla sat against the beds’ head by Susan, her right hip against Susan’s left.

“I didn’t know women could be in love with other women.” That was a line from the book. Susan realized.

Coolness flooded Susan's limbs, replacing the stiffness she just realized was there. A dream. A lucid dream. This happened sometimes. Susan smiled broadly. As long as she could keep herself asleep, she was alone with a Makayla she could do literally anything with. Her mind hazily boggled with possibilities. She began simply, by stroking the long white legs beside her. No! Makayla! Susan was willing the beautiful brown body of her girlfriend to return, when she was suddenly embraced and staring into a pale woman’s face. Long red was spilled around her as the intruder’s head cradled itself into Susan’s shoulder.

“You came! You came!” cried the woman. Sensations faded in and out of relief as Susan scrambled out of the woman’s arms: the scratching of bedclothes as she tried to push herself out of the bed; the cold shock, of hitting the head of the bed and the wooden rattle as it arrested her movement; the hot heavy air, thickly scented with blood that streamed in and out of her mouth. Still upright, Susan curled into a ball in self defense, hands clasped around her shins. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the woman as she bounded in front of Susan, smiling madly, landing on the mattress on her knees in a crash that rocked them both like a stormy ocean. The woman crawled toward her and reached out to take Susan’s clenched hands.

“I didn’t want to hurt you, but you wouldn’t wake up. You told me that lovely story!”

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” Susan wailed.

The woman held a finger to Susan’s lips. “He’s gone!” she told Susan. “He’s gone and you’re here. I’m Lady Moth. Free! Free! Free!” The woman leaned back on her haunches, and laughed and laughed. She seemed an instant later to regain her sanity, goggling hungrily at Susan. “Lady Moth asked first: Can I kiss you?”

Susan screamed.

She awoke in darkness. Susan cursed the faulty electricity again. She rolled this way and that in her sweat drenched clothes, attempting to reorient herself to reality. Her tongue played about the new sore in her cheek; she had clearly bitten herself in her sleep. How intense was that? She wasn’t going to forget that dream for a while.

As her dreaming yielded to waking, she saw that the TV was the wrong size, not to mention in the wrong place. The sofa was no longer firm, but gave way easily under her touch. Light finally entered her consciousness, a trickle coming from the door. Coming from the stairs beyond. -- from the upper landing.

Susan started, then froze, spread-eagled. This was no dream. Slumber had definitely abandoned her, but how -- when -- had she gotten upstairs -- and why sleeping in Grandma’s bed?