Shadows of Shadows - 7. Final Contact

Susan opened her eyes. Still alone, still in the same bed. Damn! It didn’t work, she thought. That’s dumb, though; why would I actually want to meet a ghost?

Susan climbed out of bed, and made for the door, nightgown fluttering around her ankles -- what? Nightgown? Where were the t-shirt and jeans she went to bed in? Other signs appeared: Black windows shedding sunlight on the floor; books on shelves with garbled gibberish in the spines; a door that never got farther away the more she stepped toward it. This was the place, but where was --

The room pivoted under Susan’s feet, and a polite but firm hand was guiding her back to the bed. The ether to her left coalesced into the familiar pale woman, walking abreast of her. Suan’s left hand was being held in the woman’s left. The other’s right hand was pressing insistently into the small of Susan’s back, leading her to the side of the bed. Susan chilled as the hand slid to her hip and inexorably willed her into a seat on the edge of the mattress. The woman now stood before her, the set of her face and frame wearing a purposeful clarity that perturbed Susan far beyond the addled raving of their previous encounters.

“Don’t move,” the woman ordered. “That Negro is out there, ready to bust in and break us up.”

“Stop calling her that!” Susan protested.

The woman rolled her pale blue eyes. “What’s going on around here? Why is the colored girl touching you and kissing you? How did Marian get here?" The woman’s voice rose in shrill madness. "You have to tell me! I know you can tell me! What is happening in this house?”

She raised a hand to strike Susan who cowered to block the blow that never came. When Susan looked back up, the woman’s palms were over her face, trembling with sobs. When she removed her hands and revealed herself, she was again composed, but the blue of her eyes was lost in a sea of bloodshot red. She pulled a shuddering, calming breath, and collapsed, seating herself on Susan’s left.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I can’t … let me think. I have to know.” She wrapped her right arm around Susan’s waist, and placed the left hand high on Susan’s lap. Susan took the hand and pointedly moved it to her knee. The woman’s face grimaced and clenched her eyes shut, suppressing a flurry of paroxysms. A minute passed before she spoke with frigid sanity, “I don’t understand what’s happening. I wished to be free. I woke up and I was. You were here waiting for me, but somehow you’re not, and now Marian, but --

Susan had taken a psychology course last semester, and the professor had been drawn down a rabbit hole on dementia. According to her, you were supposed to deal factually with these patients, never playing along. Susan doubted there was a manual for settling a spirit’s unfinished business, but this one seemed not to know where or who she was, so she decided facts were the best starting point.

“Are you Rachel Sanders?” Susan asked.

“What?”

Susan pressed on, ‘You’re Rachel Sanders. Your maiden name is Wheeler. You married William Sanders in 1957. I know it’s you. Makayla drew your picture, and Marian identified you.”

The woman let go of Suan and recoiled, and her eyes lost their focus. In a moment the focus returned to Susan and the woman sneered, “William! Marian! Never say those names again! They’re both horrible. She’s a … a traitor! Ran away when I needed her most, and left me with … with this beast! I can’t get away, can’t escape, can’t escape…”

The threads of this poor woman’s story began to weave and mesh in Susan’s mind. She took both the woman’s hands in hers and said softly, “You tried to kill yourself. You took that bottle of pills. Do you remember?”

Rachel's face crumpled into a ball of rage, then convulsed with suppressed crying. Through ragged breaths, she repeated, “No escape, no escape, no escape …”

“What’s the next thing you remember?” Susan gently questioned.

Rachel fell into Susans chest, her head a burning weight on her breast. “I went to sleep, when I woke up, he was gone. They were all gone. I was free. Free! Then there you were, with your wonderful book. I knew then that you were like me, and I wanted to be with you.”

Rachel’s weight pushed Susan onto the bed. Susan flaccidly flopped on her back, allowing Rachel to recover on the pillow of her chest, while she pondered the next step.

“Did I die? Am I a ghost?” Rachel asked in a thin, broken tone.

That was a hard one. “Be more specific” seemed as if it would be an unsatisfactory answer. “Yes --” Susan began, with no plan on how to continue. “Yes, but …”

Susan stopped and froze. Fingertips were drumming up and down her thighs, and under her chin, Rachel was cooing and nestling a bit too comfortably into her breasts. “So,” Rachel purred, “I got what I wanted after all.” With no further warning, Rachel hauled her body over Susan’s. Susan’s shocked eyes met Rachel’s sultry stare. Then Susan’s lips were buried under what felt like a ton of warm, wet flesh.

Susan shoved and scrambled out from under Rachel, She managed to sit up, but Rachel still clung to her legs, her visage painted with lust. Time to put it to her straight, decided Susan.

“Look, you didn’t die that night. They saved you! You had kids and those kids had kids. You’re my grandma, for God’s sake!”

Rachel flickered between rage, disbelief, sorrow, and wonder as Susan rushed to lay out Marian’s story. Her face settled into a frosty flint as Susan brought the tale home.

“So it worked out in the end, right?” Susan concluded. “Grandpa shaped up, you had a family, you reconciled with Marian and lived to a ripe old age. Doesn’t that bring you peace?”

Rachel sat up in a cross-armed pout. “Ha! Does it bring me peace?“ she mocked. “I don’t know who that old woman is you’re talking about, but it’s not me. I am nobody’s grandmother! I’m young, I’m pretty, and I’m ready to start a new life with you.” Susan’s heart chilled with the sudden dangerous turn in Rachel’s tone. “I don’t know why you want that colored girl over me.” She cackled derisively, “She almost took care of herself, too …”

“Wait, that wasn’t you? I saw you!” Susan didn’t like where this raving was going, but the mystery gripped her.

Rachel laughed again, without mirth. “That clumsy black sow did it all on her own. I was just watching to see her try and find those earrings she dropped. She looked everywhere! I would have pushed if I could, but I can't touch her. You however…” Rachel drew herself up and lunged forward, then with a single hand to the sternum forced Susan into her back.

Rachel crawled along the bed, suspending herself, straddling Susan. Susan felt her willpower draining away, and the haze of the helpless dreamer seeping in. Rachel purred, “You know, I helped you kick those things into one of the floor vents when you were upstairs before. You didn't even notice. God, that was so much fun!” Rachel now brimmed with malicious intent. The room behind her darkened and slipped away leaving Rachel to shine with her own uncanny light “You know, If I can do that,” She lifted her right hand cupped Susan's lifeless jaw, “maybe I can help you join me on this side.”

Susan slashed through the senselessness and screamed with the last of her consciousness, “Makayla! Makayla!” Her feeble voice was lost in a black tempest that tore the room to shreds and whisked away the swearing Rachel. Then In the luminous warmth of the real world, Makayla was at her side.

“Geez, babe, you’re soaked!” she was saying. “Why’d you put on a blanket?” Susan only half-listened, shaking off the dreadful slumber and inventorying her faculties while Makayla continued, “I finished that movie while you were asleep. Scared me shitless. I started calling around and I found an open hotel …”

The magic word! “Yes!” shouted Susan, sitting up and grasping Makayla’s shoulders in a death grip. “Get your shit! We’re leaving in two minutes!”

“But I never found my Airpods …” Makayla objected.

“Fuck your Airpods. You’re not getting them back! I’ll explain later, but we are leaving now!”

***

Susan shivered in the October chill of the Boston suburbs. Makayla was almost there! Her virtual senior year had barred Susan from the dorms and kept her prisoner in her bedroom at home, almost two hours from Makayla’s apartment in Amherst. They’d planned this for weeks: a self-guided tour of New England foliage after midterms. It was strangely exciting; COVID was forcing everyone outside for their vacations, and this would actually be their first autumn trip to the mountains together.

Makayla’s car finally wound down Susan’s street, bringing much needed life to the dull cul-de-sac. Makayla stopped and sprang out of the vehicle, meeting Susan in front of the headlights for a long, sloppy kiss.

Makayla pulled away first and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “God, I missed that! But save some for the trip, we’ve got two days ahead of us!”

“I’ve got a place picked out on Airbnb,” Susan told her. “Romantic, and guaranteed not haunted!”

Makayla laughed, then remembered: “Wait, I brought you something. Stay there!” Susan waited while Makayla skittered to the trunk of the car, and returned with a long cardboard tube with plastic caps on the ends.

“Is that one for us?” Susan asked in excited anticipation as Makayla nodded and popped off the caps. From the container she extracted a huge poster, which she unfurled on the car’s hood.

Susan pored over the massive sheet. An old white house dominated the summer scene, and looked on as knots of figures played out miniature vignettes. There she was, the little blonde girl swung under the big oak. A gray woman tended the garden while an old man watched over her, while elsewhere their younger counterparts sat on the grass with two children, a boy and a girl -- Mom and Uncle Steve. Susan cataloged all the little people and nodded in approval.

“Mom is going to love this!” Susan chirruped. “She’s been so bummed about the house. The guy who bought it tore it down and is building something bigger. I’ve been keeping this a secret from her.” Susan squeezed Makayla again. “She is going to flip! Thank you so much!”

“I was able to get into the school’s print shop and make these copies. The original is oil on canvas, and I’ve got it in a gallery,” Makayla explained excitedly. “I am really happy with it. I mean, it’s a little cheesy, but would you believe it? I might have a buyer already!”

“Makayla! That’s so cool!” cried Susan, and turned back to the picture for a second perusal. Then she saw, just on the edge, two women walking arm-in-arm down the road, one topped in vibrant red hair, the other hiding her brown locks under a cowboy hat.

“That’s them?” asked Susan, pointing.

Makayla nearly burst with pride. “You bet! It’s a good thing your mom found that old picture of Marian.”

Susan smirked. “You know, if Mom had left some of those pictures for us to find, that mystery would have been solved a lot earlier. Did you mail one of these to Marian?”

“Of course. No more freebies, though. The rent doesn’t pay itself!”

“It’s so wonderul to have this. You did a great job, and this is a much better memory than I got back in April.”

“You and your ghost,” Makayla chuckled, but Susan didn't hear. Her attention was suddenly transfixed by the little painted women on the road.

“Hang on, Makayla.” Susan squinted in disbelief. “You painted them kissing?”

“No, of course not.” scoffed Makayla. “That would be a little too obvious, wouldn’t it?”

Susan blinked again. No, they were just holding hands. ”I guess you’re right," she admitted with a shrug.

Just my imagination, but … maybe, just maybe ... if the painting had captured an essence -- a soul -- a spirit … maybe it was finally at peace.

THE END