Carol said nothing, and Kev couldn’t see her face as she was staring forward again, toward the TV she wasn’t watching. But Kev wanted to see her, to see both of them, so he stepped around to the front of the couch past the coffee table to face them. He looked at his wife and son both looking toward him, but not at him.
“I had to say something to him, Hon,” Carol said, blinking her eyes but keeping her voice steady. “I know he thinks he’s doing everything for us, but…but we need him here more. I need him here.”
“But that’s not who he is,” KJ said. “He’s not that hands-on Dad kind of guy. I don’t…I don’t know that it’s fair that you, that we expect him to be something he’s not.”
Carol pulled KJ closer against her side like she was trying to shield him from something, and closed her eyes, tightly, screwing them shut so hard it wrinkled her nose. That was what she did when she was trying not to cry, and Kev saw for the first time that his son did the exact same thing.
“I can expect him to try,” Carol said, and Kev let out a ragged breath that made his throat ache.
“So you see the problem, right?” the Spirit boomed from behind the couch, so loud Kev jerked where he stood though neither Carol nor KJ moved right in front of her.
“Yeah, yeah I do.”
The Spirit nodded her head with a disapproving frown. “Not even talking about planting trees.”
“What?” Kev said, but the Spirit abruptly whipped loose a couple yards of cloth belt from around the waist of her robe. Before anything could flop open, or out for that matter, she snapped the tip forward like a rolled-up towel in a gym locker room, and zipped Kev in the nose. The world went white again. * * *
STAVE FOUR - THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS.
This time when Kev woke in his bed he swung his legs out from under the sheet and tried to stumble to his feet. The stumble went on too long for that, as the cord of the digital clock snagged one of his legs, starting a long fall as he slid all the way down the length of one wall. The clock cord yanked out of the socket, and Kev crashed into a heap in the corner of the room.
“Ow,” he muttered, rolling over and blinking as he saw his own breath in the starlight through the French door. He shivered in the cold, then shivered again as he felt something looming above him.
He made out the shape only slowly, for it was draped in a deep black garment as dark as the night. It was almost a part of the darkness, and it stood unmoving over Kev, hood hanging to conceal its face.
“Let me guess,” Kev said from the floor. “I am in the presence of the Ghost of Arbor Day Yet To Come?”
The Spirit answered not, but stretched an arm down toward Kev. A hand in a glove seemed to be sticking at him from the end of the sleeve.
“Yeah,” Kev said, sitting up against the wall then pushing himself up to his feet. The hand rose along with him, always pointing at his face. “I figure you are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us, right? Look, we can take a pass on that one, I get the point already. I’m ready to go home, okay? I’m going to try, I will. I’m going to try as hard as I’ve ever tried to do anything. So really, if you just want to check me off your list and maybe catch up with the redhead…”
With an exhalation of sepulchral air, the Spirit sighed. It reached forward and poked a bony finger into Kev’s left nostril.
The finger up the nose made Kev’s eyes water more than the flash of white light. When the digit was mercifully withdrawn, he stared all around and gave a gasp, for he and the Spirit stood under the stars in an awful, blasted landscape of churned earth. The ground all around was bare, damp mud crisscrossed with tread marks, and there was no sign of any living thing in the world.
“What the what?” Kev gasped. “Is this all that is left of the world in the future?”
With another sigh, the cowled figure slapped Kev on the shoulder and pointed an arm up sharply. Kev looked along it and saw that they were standing deep in the bottom of an open pit mine, as he could see a cliff-like wall beside them, with dump trucks, bulldozers, and a couple pre-fab trailer offices at the bottom. A company logo was emblazoned across the equipment; the name of a mining company Kevin Weeser knew well.
“Oh hell,” he said. “We’re in Bimidji? This is the iron mine the lawsuit is about? The State of Minnesota versus Cratchit & Sons?”
The Specter pointed an accusing finger Kev’s way.
“Of all the tree-hugging, hippy-dippy nonsense. You spooks have seen how I’ve been treating my family, and you’re worried about how I’m treating a bunch of pine trees? For real?”
The arm in its black sleeve remained extended, the hand pointing between Kev’s eyes.
“You know what? Fine. You’re right, you win. I’ll tank the case. Screw the case. You, you’ve shown me the way.” Kev threw himself onto his pajama knees and clutched the specter’s cloak. “Spirit!” he cried, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse!”
Intercourse? Where the hell did that come from?
“I will honour Arbor Day in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will even spell honor with a ‘u,’ if that helps. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, Kev saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into the digital clock on the floor of his bedroom. * * *
STAVE FIVE. - THE END OF IT.
Kev tore up Lyndale Street in his dusky Mercedes S Class, hands on the wheel still dirty from the nursery. Carol’s identical white car was just backing down the driveway, and he screeched to a halt right behind her, almost going into a skid. He threw open the door and vaulted out. After an instant she did the same, wide-eyed and pale from his noisy arrival and the near fender-bender.
“Kev?” she demanded, staring at him, looking ready for business in a smart suit jacket and pale green skirt. KJ got out too, staring at his Dad and yanking his earbuds free.
“I thought I missed you guys,” Kev said. “I…I, I missed you guys.”
Kev’s wife stared like he had gone off his nut, which was understandable. He had on a shirt with no tie and a suit coat with dirt all over the sleeves, worn above pajama bottoms and muddy slippers.
“You’ve gone off your nut,” Carol said.
“It was about time,” Kev said, then for lack of a better idea, or any desire to do anything else, he shuffled forward in his slippers and threw both soiled arms around Carol, hugging her close and kissing her on the mouth though she breathed a protest into him. But she didn’t push away, and after a moment she put her hands on his shoulders.
When he stopped to breathe, Kev looked over the roof of the car at his son, who rolled his eyes.
“Gross, you two,” KJ said. “And what’s with the tree?”
KJ nodded at Kev’s car, where half the long, spindly trunk of a young dogwood emerged from the rear right window. The damp root bundle was soaking the backseat.
“It’s Arbor Day,” Kev said. “We’re all taking the day off.” He leaned back so he could look from Carol to KJ. “We’re going to do something together. As a family.”
“We’re going to plant a tree?” Carol said. “God bless it, Kev. You’ve lost your flippin’ mind.”
Kev blinked at her, but her look of incredulity softened at the edges until she let out a rough breath and leaned against him, putting both arms around him.
“It’s about time.”
Kev hugged her back, and waved for KJ to come join them. His son glanced at the neighbors’ houses, but slouched around the car and tentatively put his arms around his parents. When they both put an arm around him, he seemed to settle, and hugged them back.
The strains of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” piped out of Kev’s car, playing gently in the warm morni
ng air of spring, and the first day in the rest of everyone’s life.
#
M. Edward McNally is the author of the Norothian Cycle fantasy series, but he wrote an homage for this collection as the name "Dickens" makes him titter. As does the word "titter."
Find him at his website sablecity.wordpress.com or follow him on Facebook
The Sable City
If you enjoyed Ed’s story, check out his best-selling fantasy!
For the first time in a hundred years, Vod'Adia - the fabled Sable City - is Opening. All across the known world, adventurers hungry for gold and relics from the Witch King's era are making their way to the legendary ruins. For many of them, the Sable City will claim their lives and perhaps even their very souls. But for one heroic fellowship bent only on rescue, entering this deadly place may do worse than destroy them. It may destroy the entire world.
The journey begins in the Miilark Islands, where a most unusual dwarf makes a most unusual choice. Captain Block, charged with finding the exiled heir of House Deskata, picks Tilda Lanai to accompany him - a young woman newly trained in the arts of the Guild, but completely untested. With the help of a rag-tag company that includes a ronin samurai, a semi-competent wizard, a noblewoman in disguise, a healer, a warrior-priest and two ex-soldiers (one in danger of being hanged for desertion), Tilda's quest leads her into the very heart of the Sable City--where devils and demons roam freely, and very little is what it seems.
Last Leap
Heather Marie Adkins
I have died a hundred times.
When one thinks of death, we think of it with finality. When we lose someone, they are quite literally lost to us forever. A slow fade begins from the moment their soul leaves their body until eventually we can barely remember the sound of their laughter, the beat of their heart, the smile on their face. This is why we immortalize each other so much in photographs. Pictures last so much longer than we do; even though someone we love has died, they don’t vanish completely. We create paper memories, fragile and ethereal.
But my life is different. When I lose a loved one, they’re not gone forever.
I relive their deaths over and over.
For someone only two decades old, I’ve lost a lot of people. Grandparents, cousins, friends, neighbors. All in all, ten people over a span of five years. A crazy number, oddly high, I always thought.
I wish I could say reliving the losses only happened in my dreams; that it was simply a teenage girl’s flights of fancy. But it’s not. What I go through is real, and it is scary. The burden of responsibility has taken a toll on me. I’m not always sure I can keep this up without going mad.
It began when I was fifteen.
My grandfather died in a plane crash when I was three years old. I never knew him beyond the vast collection of pictures my mother kept framed throughout our house. I didn’t know much about the crash except he was coming home from a business trip in California. The plane went down, everybody was killed. Finito.
Twelve years later, I was eating a TV dinner in front of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was an episode I liked a lot: about a girl who is ignored at school until she eventually turns invisible and begins taking her revenge on the people who made it happen. Right about the time Buffy confronted the invisible girl, I was suddenly… not there anymore.
The leap feels kind of like a rollercoaster. I ascend rapidly, disoriented and sick to my stomach, and then I fall like a rock. When I get where I’m going, sometimes my limbs jerk as if I’d fallen, like those dreams that wake you up panting in the middle of the night, certain you’ve just leapt to your doom.
I was on a plane. A small plane, a puddle jumper, only three seats across. I hated those things, so rinky-dink, like a toy pulled from a cereal box. You can feel every dip and jerk, and it seems like any breath a passenger takes could throw the plane off balance.
I was too shocked to react. I was still in my pajamas: gray sweats and a Hello Kitty T-shirt. I didn’t even have shoes on my feet.
“Have you flown before?”
Caught off guard, I cast what had to be a startled, and quite frankly terrified, gaze to my seat partner. When we locked eyes, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.
It was my grandfather.
There was no mistake. Those same wise, brown eyes beneath a head full of blindingly white hair. Handsome and thin, he even wore the leather thong necklace around his neck from my mother’s favorite pic of him in Hawaii, taken three months before he died.
“Grandpa?” I gasped.
He chuckled. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. My daughter has a three-year-old. A beautiful little girl named Mila. And my son has three boys under the age of ten.”
I’m Mila. And my cousins were named George, Sam, and Alan. Alan died when I was ten. Leukemia. But I’ll get to that.
My grandfather smiled. “So, first time? You’ve been tense since we boarded.”
I knew I was staring, but how could I stop? This was my mother’s dad. He was famous in my family, a legend. And here he was alive and smiling, speaking to me as if he didn’t know me.
Of course he didn’t know me as anything other than a toddler.
“Um, yes. First time,” I managed.
“I remember my first time flying. I was in my twenties. Terrifying, I know, but they do say you have more chance of dying in a car crash than a plane crash.”
The irony was not lost on me.
We spoke for twenty minutes. It was perfect, this brief moment of getting to know my grandfather. He showed me pictures of myself, spoke fondly of his wife and daughter, and told me about the trip he’d just finished and how much he enjoyed his job.
When the plane jerked beneath us, I reached for his hand.
As it fell from the sky, we clutched each other. I thought I would die alongside him, caught in some bizarre turn of fortune. Some magical voodoo that had sent me back in time to perish.
But as the orange ball of flame rushed through the cabin, I returned safe and sound to our old, brown leather couch. My dinner was in shambles on the floor, and the credits were rolling on Buffy.
I cried as if my heart were breaking.
* * *
Five times since, I’ve sat beside my granddad on that plane. Each conversation is different, another puzzle piece to build up this man I never knew. So many times I’ve wanted to tell him who I am, to tell him that I love him and I wish he would have been a part of my life.
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. I read it freshman year, and it stuck with me. The Butterfly Effect is the theory that one tiny change, as insignificant as the death of a butterfly, could change the full scope of human existence. So I don’t say anything to my grandfather. What good would it do when he’s ten thousand feet in the sky with nowhere to go?
I don’t know what triggers the leaps. There is no common denominator. No code word or sound. As random as the weather; as random as death. If I knew the answer, I would leap to before my grandfather got on that plane, and I’d keep him from doing it. I would change his fate, regardless of the consequences, because I wanted to give him back to my mom.
That’s the thing about my leaps, though. I never leap into a situation I can change.
Take my aunt, for instance. She’s already on the subway when I show up, sitting prettily in her seat in a flowered dress and heels. The last stop is coming up—her stop. When I first leaped to her, I thought for sure she would recognize me. She’d only died the year before; I knew her well and closely.
She never does, though. Maybe through some kind of magic, I don’t know. I get two minutes and thirty-six seconds with her before a garbled voice comes over the intercom announcing her stop. It’s late. It’s the last stop. We’re alone in the car.
“It was great to meet you,” she tells me, and then clicks off in her high heels.
She’s murdered on the stairwell, shot for the meager contents of her handbag. She never makes it out of the subway.
The second tim
e I leaped to her, I went against my “no-changes” rule and I told her. I told her who I was and what was about to happen. Funny how fast she left the car. She thought I was some kind of crazy person, and she died anyway. Did it help her to have the seed of her death planted before she left the train? I doubt it.
And then there’s Alan, of course. My thirteen-year-old cousin who died from leukemia. My uncle and aunt—a different aunt from the one who was murdered—always thought he died alone, late at night in the hospital while they caught a few precious hours of sleep at home between medications and doctors.
He didn’t. I was curled up beside him, eating popcorn and chatting. Alan always knows me. Again, like everything else about leaping, I have no clue why he gets to see me as I really am. The six times I’ve gone, I’m always holding his hand as he shuts his eyes. I watch, fascinated as his heartbeat—visible beneath the thin, papery skin of his fragile neck—slows, and eventually stops.
It’s like this with everyone. I leap every week or two, never knowing whose face I will see, what situation I will be in. Every couple of months, a new death is shown to me. Just last week, it was someone I’d never even met—my mom’s childhood best friend. It’s always short, it’s always hard, and it’s always in the past.
Or it was.
Until I leaped to my own death.
* * *
I recognized myself right away. I guess it would be hard not to when you see your own face in the mirror every day for twenty years. I looked older—lines at my eyes, hair longer and darker. I had a little girl at my side, and I was holding a handsome man’s hand.
The older Mila saw me right away, almost as if she sensed my arrival. She lifted the little girl and passed her into the man’s arms with a few short words, then she walked to my side.
We were on a boardwalk, the beach behind me and a quaint strip of shops before me. A strong sun beamed down from mid-day, splashing rainbows through glass wind chimes dangling beside me. An eternity passed as I watched my other self come closer. Our clear, blue eyes locked, sharing an acknowledgement neither of us had been prepared for.