• • •
I smelled smoke.
• • •
I jerked the goose up, almost flinging it aside—almost hurting myself, or setting something else ablaze—and I patted frantically at the cotton, as if there were something I could do to save it.
I swore and sputtered, furious with myself. My mind had wandered too long, and my hand had lingered too slowly.
Emilio appeared in the doorway. “Tomás?”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I wasn’t paying attention. Everything is fine.”
“Is that the cotton for the—”
“Yes.” I stopped him right there. “I thought I’d press it; the linen and the wool . . .” I gestured toward the bolts, the goose still in my hand. I was afraid to put it anywhere. “I made a mistake. I gave it too much heat. Leave me to it. Go see to Mr. Sadre.”
“He’s paid and left.” Emilio came to the board to look for himself. “Oh dear . . . well, it’s not so bad. It’s not much lost.”
“No, only a foot or so. The rest will be fine.” I reached for my shears and sliced the ruined portion loose, wadding it up and throwing it toward a bin we use to collect scraps. I missed. It tumbled to the floor. I stomped over to the bin, picked up the loose ball of cotton, and squeezed it, over and over again.
“Tomás, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m stupid, but I’m fine.” Before he could ask another well-intentioned question that would only aggravate me, I announced, “I’m not feeling well today, but it’s only a headache. What time is it?”
“Nearly one o’clock.”
“Do we have any more appointments scheduled?”
“Nothing I cannot handle myself. Go home, if it’s only a headache,” he urged. “The shop is quiet on Tuesdays, and if there’s some great matter that needs your attention, I’ll send for you.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’m sorry,” I mumbled over my shoulder. I worked the fabric into a ball until it was small enough to hold with one hand—but this time, I did not throw it away. “I’m sorry, my friend, it’s just not a good day.”
“We all have those. Go on, and I’ll see to Cordero’s. I’ll come around after close, all right? I’ll bring you some supper from Antonio’s.”
“No, you don’t need to do that.”
He shrugged. “I’m doing it anyway. The less you cook in that house, the better.”
I gave up and left, the singed cotton still wadded in my fist and still warm from the iron—or from my own body heat, I don’t know which. I felt like I was the one on fire, pressed by the goose until I was flat and steaming. I sweated until my collar was sticky, and I pulled it looser at my throat, only to feel the slime-slick yellow that would stain it if I wasn’t careful. I smelled salt and sulfur, and the sharp stink of burned fabric. I smelled the ocean to my west, and the azaleas that lined the street.
I unwadded the material. I held it up like a letter I was trying to read.
Was there an image? Was it sorrow that told me I could see the line of her brow, the lift of her cheekbone? Was it madness or a sign from God, that if I held it at an angle, I could see the corner of her mouth?
It was abstract, and much darker than the picture left behind on the wall of the house. It was smaller, tighter, and somehow more refined. It made me think of an illusion I once saw, where an image is an old woman when viewed one way—but a change of perspective reveals a young woman in the lines.
There she was. My Evelyn, coming to me in heat, in destruction. In flame.
Once I saw it, I could see nothing else.
9
ALICE DARTLE
Cassadaga, Florida
I NEED TO write something down, but I don’t want to. I ought to, so I will. But I’m not sure how to come around to it, so this might take a minute. I can always tear out my first few pages and toss them in the garbage, if it comes to that.
• • •
AFTER my first open reading, I cried myself to sleep. Well, first I asked for (and received) another sandwich and a glass of orange juice, even though orange juice doesn’t taste very good before or after bourbon—and that was all I had in my trunk.
My supply is dwindling. I’ve been nipping just a small swig in the evenings, before bed.
I know that rum is the easy thing to get, here in the tropics, but I don’t want any. I want the burning, smoky comfort of something from Kentucky or Tennessee. And now one bottle is empty, and the other is more empty than full. I shall have to write to my father to ask for more. Prohibition is about as effective in Virginia as it is in Florida, and the postman won’t look, I’m confident.
But yes, I cried myself to sleep, smelling like orange juice and bourbon. I woke up smelling like sour orange juice and stale bourbon, and I thanked God that I lived alone. Heaven forbid anyone should see me like that. Christ forfend that they should get a whiff of me.
I freshened up, washed my face, smoothed my hair, and put on something nice to pretend that I was not afraid, and not embarrassed, and everything was just fine, goddammit.
Well, everything was fine. I dressed myself and fed myself and headed down to Mr. Schumacher’s seminar on aural coloration as an indicator of overall health, and I didn’t fall asleep once—even though I’m not sure I believe there’s any such thing as an aura, really, and I didn’t understand most of what he was saying.
It sounded silly. It sounded like the flimflam that my mother warned me I was signing up for when I started packing my things to come here.
I sure do hope no one ever reads this, because I sound like a terrible person.
I should definitely yank these pages and burn them. Absolutely. Just as soon as I’m finished. But then what would be the point of writing them in the first place?
I guess this is why Catholics have priests. I know it’s supposed to be about cleansing yourself of sin, but I bet it’s partly the relief of having a diary no one can ever read. That’s how it works, isn’t it? The priests aren’t allowed to tell anyone anything they’ve heard.
If that’s not how it works, I can’t imagine why anybody tells them a damn thing.
• • •
WE aren’t supposed to tell, either—if we have clients or cases, or meetings with people. A medium should be a perfect confidant and an unimpeachable fortress of discretion. That’s what Mr. Fine said, and that’s a lot of five-dollar words that add up to “We’d better keep our mouths shut.”
I think there’s more to it than discretion for the benefit of our clients, for an agreed-upon silence works for our benefit, too. I think we are safest when we hold other people’s secrets. Just think of it: If my dearly departed great-aunts had held more secrets, they might not have burned. They could’ve used those secrets, cast them like spells, and summoned help. Someone would have spoken up on their behalf and not left them to face a court or a stake alone.
Help is help, even if you have to buy it with blackmail.
Dr. Floyd knows this. That’s why she wants to build up this little community, and why she nurtures its reputation and its residents so enthusiastically, and with such eagerness. She’s building up the town’s defenses, shoring us up against a time of trouble. (And oh, but there will be another time of trouble. There always is for people like us.)
She’s trying to make us strong enough that we don’t resort to secrets, or blackmail, or trickery to survive when the torches come. But we’ll have them if we need them.
• • •
BUT speaking of fire. I’m trying to, I swear.
Here I go.
• • •
I’VE been very anxious about my dreams, ever since the public reading. I’ve been afraid I might see that man again, the terrifying man made of soot and smoke, who appeared in my vision when I was finished with the old soldier.
The stranger had turned
to regard me before I’d fainted. He’d looked at me—looked into me, through me—and I’d heard the gunfire, rat-a-tat-tat. Also, I’d gotten a whiff of something that smelled like alcohol, but not the kind you drink—the rubbing kind you get from a chemist. Something that burns fast and hot and leaves behind nothing. Something you’d use to start a fire, or feed it.
I didn’t remember this astringent, chemical smell right away; it didn’t come to me until I was almost asleep last night. I was lying there, trying not to think about the smoldering man who called himself a “hammer” . . . and thinking about him anyway. (I did not want to call him “the hammer.” It felt too much like giving him what he wanted.)
So here’s what happened this morning.
It was very early, so early that I want to say it happened last night, but the wee hours count for today—and I’m trying to record this accurately. I’ve been talking around it ever since I picked up my pencil and opened this little book and started my rambling.
It was dark, and I thought I was asleep. I thought I was dreaming, and it was something about my father and the horse races and a tea-colored bay. I was wearing a bonnet and carrying a little white purse, so it was Easter time, give or take. I was asking the horses which one of them was going to win, and they were making their best guesses. The bay told me that she wasn’t feeling quite herself that day and that I should probably put my money on the white stallion with the gray spots. He looked a little small to me.
Then my father asked me where the lantern went. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I asked him what lantern. In return he said, “Keep it close. Don’t set it down, not here in the barn. It’ll start a fire.”
I heard something crackle and pop, and I caught a thin tendril of smoke, right up one nostril, and I wanted to sneeze. The horses started to clamor, kicking the stall doors and whinnying, crying, demanding to be let out. My father took my arm, but I yanked myself free and ran to the doors—opening them one by one, all in a row, and telling the horses to go, find someplace safe. They stampeded past me, huge and leggy and full of horror as flames caught on the hay bales and climbed the walls.
My father was shouting. I couldn’t understand him. The smell of the smoke was more than I could bear; it stung my throat and burned my eyes, and I could hardly see without squinting and rubbing them. I couldn’t find my father. I turned around but didn’t see him—not even a silhouette. All I saw were flames and smoke, and the barn was burning down around me until it wasn’t.
• • •
YOU know how dreams are. As random and boring as hell to hear about, each and every one of them. But I’m only talking to myself, so I need to finish this.
• • •
I need to remember the flames at my feet, and the smoke pouring up my nose, into my mouth. I was standing upright, my back pressed flat against some pole, my arms tied down at my sides. There were no horses. There was no barn. My father was dead. (I don’t know how I knew this.) I was alone and I was dying, the pain from the heat beyond bearable, and I was fading, my head drooping until my chin lay flat on my chest.
And then, rat-a-tat-tat.
But now it was someone else’s dream. These weren’t my boots, and that wasn’t my uniform. That wasn’t my gun.
No, it wasn’t a gun. It couldn’t be a gun—there’s no such gun like that one, or none that I’ve ever heard of. It did not shoot bullets, though there were bullets all around me. It did not shoot shells, though they fell and crashed and blew caverns into the trenches beside me. It shot fire, in a huge long stream. The man holding this gun could’ve stood on one side of Colby Lake and blasted a stream of liquid flame right into the worship pavilion.
I stood there, my mouth hanging open, hardly noticing the men wailing and dying around me—hardly hearing the screams of horses (yes, the horses were screaming here, too, and running from the fire) and the rat-a-tat-tat that never stopped for more than a moment.
The man with the gun was wearing a mask.
“You’re the man who dreamed of fire,” I said to him, although the war around us was so deafening that I could not hear myself speak.
He turned to look at me. Bright flashing infernos reflected off his lenses. I could not see his face. I could not see his lips move when he spoke in return. But I heard him over the impossible din, and what he said was, “Alice?”
• • •
FINALLY, mercifully, I shot awake. I sat up in bed and clutched my throat, patted my mouth and face, and coughed like it was consumption. “Oh my God,” I wheezed. “Oh my God . . . it was so real . . .” And I was so glad there was no one to hear me, for I know it’s ridiculous for a grown woman to be shocked awake by a nightmare. I could still see the man in the mask, with his cannon of fire. I could still smell the smoke.
I could really and truly smell the smoke.
I wrinkled my nose and took a big sniff. No, it wasn’t my imagination—and it wasn’t some tricky leftover from sharing the dream of another person. There was smoke, and it was close by.
I didn’t hear any fire. No telltale cracklings or sizzling sounds.
I swung my feet over the side of the bed and wormed them into a pair of slippers I’d left there for just such a purpose. I heaved myself up and tottered, still woozy from the dream and worried about the smoke. I know you’re supposed to stay down low if there might be a fire, for smoke rises and chokes . . . but this was no room filled with toxic haze, and when I felt my doorknob, it was as cool as the edge of my bathtub.
I held up my nose. The bathtub. The washroom.
That’s where it was coming from.
The door was ajar, and when I pushed it open, pulling the chain to turn on the light, I let out a squeak of dismay. There it was, in the sink: a pile of cinders still spitting tiny red crinkles of char. It was the pamphlet and notes from Mr. Schumacher’s seminar, piled there and set ablaze.
Lucky for me, the pamphlet wasn’t long and I’d scarcely taken any notes. There was not enough fuel to make the blaze more noteworthy, and it was wholly contained by the bowl of the sink. I turned the faucet handle anyway, whipping it clockwise until a stream of cold water doused the whole mess to a runny muck of ashes and paper.
I shuddered and hugged myself, and looked into the mirror. You can sometimes use mirrors to see into the beyond, I’ve learned. That’s one of the things they taught me in the seminar called “Seeing the Other Side: Scrying in Glass, Water, or Stone.” According to the speaker, they’ll tell you things if you look the right way or ask the right question. But I didn’t see anything in this one except my own wild-eyed, teary reflection.
I was not at my best.
But as Mabel would say, “In my defense . . .” it had been one miserable night. Something (not someone, I am confident of this) came into my room, chose some tinder, and set a blaze. What a sinister invasion of privacy! What a horrible thing to contemplate, that I might have been there sleeping all the while, as something crept, flittered, or oozed about the place, picking and choosing what to burn and what to leave.
I took a washcloth and wiped out the sink, sending everything either down the drain or into the wastebin beside the toilet. I tried to breathe in and breathe out, and count, one-two-three, all those things you’re supposed to do when your heart is beating so hard that it’ll probably break clean out of your ribs.
It kept pounding anyway, a drumbeat in my ears, riling up a headache back behind my eyes.
I asked my reflection, “What the hell was that?” but it didn’t have a good answer, or any answer at all. I had runny red eyes and pupils as big as poker chips. I had a breakfast meeting in another hour with Mr. Colby and Dr. Floyd, and we were supposed to talk about my progress and catch up after the whole awful business with the fainting and the open reading.
I didn’t want to see either of them. I wanted to curl up in bed with what was left of my bourbon, and finish crying.
>
But that’s not how the world works, not even in the magical fairyland of Cassadaga.
I reached for a clean washcloth and turned the water back on. I picked up the bar of soap and closed my eyes. The soap smelled like lavender. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t mask the glum, damp odor of drowned ashes.
I washed my face anyway.
I opened the curtains and let in the sun.
10
TOMÁS CORDERO
Ybor City, Florida
I AM TAKING a few days to myself.
I told Emilio and Silvio that I would see a doctor for the headaches, and get some French aspirin, and have some rest. I strictly forbade them when they asked about bringing me a meal or two. I assured them that Mrs. Vasquez was feeding me and that it was no concern of theirs. When Mrs. Vasquez realized that I was home for a few days, I told her exactly the opposite—that the fellows from the shop were taking care of me. “Emilio is taking very good care of me,” I lied through my teeth. “I needed a few days to rest and to hire someone to clean up the back wall and the bushes. I might just get rid of those palmettos altogether.”
“Good luck, if you try. But don’t do it yourself.”
“No, no. Of course not. I will see if Mr. Swinton and his son are free.”
She kept her arms crossed and eyed me warily. She did not believe me, but I did not care. “I’ll see his son tonight, when he brings his mother to prayers. I’ll mention it to him, that you need some help with the house.”
“You do that,” I urged. I could hardly afford it, but I couldn’t just leave my house looking half burned down from the rear, either. Even if I had the stamina to tackle the job myself, it would be ill-advised. Too many snakes. Too many sandspurs. Too many headaches.
Mrs. Vasquez took Felipe inside and closed the Dutch door. “If you need anything . . . ,” she began her combined offer and admonishment.
“Yours will be the first name that springs to mind. I only need some rest. I only need some time.”