She Walks in Shadows (20 page)

I stopped drawing pictures of Keziah’s stories at school. I realized that it was bothering people because they didn’t understand, because I was special and they weren’t. I listened to her tales with rapt attention, writing down in a notebook I kept by my bed whatever I could remember upon waking, and reading and re-reading them as I fell asleep at night.

The frequency of her visits decreased dramatically as I grew older. In the ever-growing spaces between our visits, I would spend lonely days seething in silent fury, imagining all of the angry things I would say to her, everything how-could-you and how-dare-you, until my emotions boiled over and I collapsed on my bed, a sobbing, sniffling mess.

I need you, Keziah
, I would whisper before sleep claimed me on those nights, as though I could summon her through my desperation.
I need you now more than ever. I want to be your chosen one. I want to be special.

Every night that Keziah failed to visit me led to another day where I was just another girl. I was an awkward teenager no different from all of the other awkward teenagers. How could she expect me to live like this? Our secret times were everything that made me important. Without them, I was doomed to be another weak and crawling thing like every other human being on this planet: impotent and voiceless, mindlessly shuffling towards my own death, unaware of my own tremendous insignificance. It was worse for me, though, as my eyes had been opened to the possibility of what could be, whereas the other unchosen were comfortable in their beds at night, believing that their pitiful existence was how things were supposed to be.

The instant I saw Keziah, however, my rage was forgotten. I had so much to learn and such little time with her that spending any of it on being angry seemed a terrible waste. Anyway, she wasn’t part of this world in the way I was — maybe time was different for her. Maybe what were weeks for me were hours for her.

On the night after my 17
^th
birthday, Keziah came to me for the last time. I knew it was the last time even before she said anything. Brown Jenkin was agitated, running circles around me, climbing up my back and crawling down into my lap, staring at me with his beady black eyes. I reached out to him tentatively and he nuzzled my hand, stirring a strange kind of love in my heart.

There were no stories that night. Instead, Keziah instructed me on how to get to the Witch House, the building in Arkham where she’d once lived. The original building was gone, she said, but something else was there now, though she wasn’t certain what. The building had changed ownership more than a few times since she’d left this world and it was difficult for her to keep track of our timeline. I’d need to get into the attic there, she said. I’d need to bring someone with me — a child, preferably no more than three years of age — to use in the ritual.

I never thought I’d miss Brown Jenkin’s hideous form, but I cried when I woke up and the warmth of his small body was absent. Arkham was a fair distance from my home in Vancouver. I’d need a passport and money for traveling. These weren’t things I could acquire quickly.

The next four years were easier than the months I’d spent waiting for Keziah to visit me. I had a mission, a purpose, and I was moving towards it as fast as I could go. I found a job, and saved up as much money as I could. Keziah’s Witch House had become The Witch House Brewery and Pub, who, as luck would have it, were looking for a new server.

It wasn’t hard to get access to the attic after closing time. I thought it would take them longer to trust me to be there alone, but on my third shift, I was given the keys and asked to close up.

I had a difficult time maintaining my composure until everyone else had left. Once the pub was empty, I ran up the stairs to the attic and squeezed myself in amongst the boxes of supplies. I closed my eyes and called to her.

Brown Jenkin came to me first. Tiny claws pierced my shirt, scraping flesh underneath, as he scaled my back and settled on my shoulder, chattering gleefully.

“Where is the child?” Keziah’s raspy voice came from behind me.

I turned around and opened my eyes. Brown Jenkin jumped down from my shoulder and returned to his mistress.

“Can’t,” I breathed, “can’t it just be me?”

Keziah arched a thin eyebrow. “You realize what it is you are offering.”

It wasn’t a question. Her eyes, sharp like a crow’s, stared into me, through and through. I closed mine, terrified that she would find me unsatisfactory and I would see it written in her face. This way, she could just disappear back into the shadows if she didn’t want me, an easier letdown.

“Please,” I whispered in a voice that was barely audible even to my own ears.

“Come with me, then.”

She walked into the darkness of a corner that should have been solid, and then through it. I followed, but carefully, unsure of how to proceed. As strange as visits from a haggard crone and her monstrous familiar had been, I had gotten used to it. Walking through walls, though, wasn’t something I had ever done — or even considered possible — before now. I couldn’t let on, though. Keziah had put her trust in me, I realized, and I needed to act like the kind of person who deserved such a precious thing.

Keziah led me down a spiral staircase that seemed to be floating. No handrails, no walls, just infinite blackness and stone steps that hung in the air. I was scared of falling off, but I was more scared Keziah would change her mind if I protested, turning me back out to live the rest of my days in the world of dullards, so I feigned bravery and followed her down.

The stairs ended at a small space that was lit with the same violet glow I had seen in Keziah’s room. There were no walls: The edges of the room were marked by the same empty abyss that bordered the stairs. A stone table sat in the middle of the floor.

I knew my role as if I’d done it a thousand times before. Perhaps that’s part of being the Chosen One. I climbed up onto the table and lay down upon it. Brown Jenkin scurried up after me, holding a metal bowl with strange inscriptions on it. He brushed his rough cheek against mine then hurried off.

As Brown Jenkin began a strange, tittering chant, I felt my body relax into the hard, stone surface of the table. This was my fate. This was my gift.

Keziah produced a long, wickedly sharp knife from within her robes. It gleamed in the soft light.

I had never known it was possible to be so happy. I was being carried off by a tidal wave of ecstasy. A smile blossomed on my face and I shone like a beacon, radiating joy throughout the tiny room. This was what I was made for. I wasn’t one of the sheep, one of the stupid cows. I was different. I was chosen.

Keziah raised her arm, aiming the knife at my heart.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for choosing me.”

BITTER PERFUME

Laura Blackwell

I KISSED MY
great-grandmother on the top of her dusty black wig and asked what she would like for her birthday. I had already sewn her a jewelry roll and mixed her a new skin-softening oil — the best I could afford to do since I had lost my job — but you don’t turn a hundred and twenty-five every day.

Abuelita turned her milky eyes to me and lifted a trembling, withered hand from her rosary to beckon me closer. “
Quiero morir
,” she whispered in my ear.
I want to die.

I shivered, not from the cold of the windowless room, but from recognition. “
Yo también
,” I told her in a voice just loud enough for her to hear. “
Espera, por favor. Espera
.”

Me, too. Please wait.

Grandpa Estéban eyed us suspiciously from his recliner. “What are you talking about, Melissa?”

I straightened up and forced a smile, raising my voice a bit more to carry over the hum of the compressors. “I promised her some birthday cake. Would you like some? It’ll be good. Sara made it.”

He grunted. Sara’s spice cake was a rare treat and he wasn’t too far gone to know it. “Just a spoonful of frosting.”

“Can do.” I stopped at the controls in the hall on my way out and added some oxygen to their sitting room. The hall door closed behind me, its rubber seals gasping as it shut.

In the kitchen, my grown daughter and my elderly uncle were finishing up their boring-but-healthy dinner of vegetables and rice. No meat, hardly any fat, no sugar. Sara said it would extend our lives; I didn’t see the point of life without flavor.

“Time for cake and presents,” I said, unzipping my coat. It was cool in here, but not outright cold, and the sight of the long prairie sunset through the window made me feel toasty. “Might as well leave the dishes. There’ll be more soon.”

“Okay,” said Sara, rising from her place to spoon leftovers into an old yogurt container. “How many plates?”

“Five plates, three forks, and two spoons.”

“They’re both eating the cake? I’m flattered.”

“Just the frosting. You might want to sprinkle a little extra cloves on it so they can smell it.”

“You bet.”

They started putting on their coats and gloves. I nabbed the jewelry bag from my room, but I left the skin oil. I would mix her a fresh batch and change up the ingredients a little.

While Sara pulled the cake out from the fridge, Tío Gaspar picked up the small pile of presents. We didn’t usually make a big deal out of birthdays, especially Abuelita’s and Grandpa Estéban’s, since they’d had so many. We certainly never invited anyone from outside the family, since we were the only ones who knew Abuelita was still alive.

If that was what she really was.

“I guess we should leave the candles off,” said Sara.

She meant because of the heat. I didn’t mind, seeing as Abuelita had already made her wish.

Grandpa Estéban and Tío Gaspar always had the Herrero name. I took it back after my ex left and changed Sara’s along with mine. She was just little, then. Everybody in North Dakota called us “the Herreros,” pronouncing the H like a harsh gust of wind.

Sometimes, they called us “the Mexican family,” although none of us has ever even been to Mexico. Abuelita was from Barcelona originally, but the rest of us were born in the U.S.

We liked North Dakota okay, though. The air was clean, the food hearty, and people kept pretty much to themselves.

I was born in Omaha, which I remember not so much as a place as the time Abuelita could still get around. I should have called her Bisabuelita — she was Grandpa Estéban’s mother — but she preferred to have everyone but her son call her Abuelita. I was seven when the white old-lady hairs on her chin fell out and never grew back.

After that, we moved to St. Paul, where Grandpa Estéban did refrigerator installation and maintenance for restaurants. It was where I met and married my ex, where Sara was born. My parents both died in a car accident there; Tío Gaspar came home and cried after identifying them. My soft Tía Rosa, who wore loose clothing and sloshed when she walked, was buried there, too. Sara remembers them all, but barely. My brother still lives there, doing radio voiceovers and murder mystery dinner theatre.

Grandpa Estéban was born in New York City, but out of respect for Abuelita, he never talked about it.

I ate Abuelita’s birthday cake for breakfast every day until it was gone. Then I stopped eating desserts after dinner, gave up snacks altogether.

“You’re eating so much better,” said Sara approvingly.

That was what I got for sending her to medical school. Even though she’s an anesthesiologist, she still knows more about nutrition than Man was meant to know.

I made Abuelita a new batch of skin oil. I mixed in the powdered remains of the green paint we’d found under the wallpaper of this farmhouse when we moved in. Abuelita liked the house; there was a chance that it was older than she was. She didn’t have that experience often in the Midwest.

Although the arsenic and the lead shouldn’t have much scent, I added a few drops of myrrh oil. It made it smell smoky and thick.

In our family, we know a lot of things that people aren’t supposed to know.