Under the Light

  I had been Light, dead and bodiless, for more than a century before I laid eyes on Jenny. When I slid my spectral fingers into her folded hands and breathed through the instrument of her ribs and belly for the first time, I wept with joy.

  How strange that after waiting a hundred and thirty years for a body, I kept hers for only six days. For less than a week I played the part of Jenny. Slept in her bed, answered to her name. I’d shocked her family and friends, said and done things Jenny never would have. I inadvertently brought accusations against an honorable man. I bedded James using Jenny’s body without permission and then left her alone and unprotected with no memory of the days I had lived as her. I owed her my protection and loyalty now.

  The girl jumped at the sound of the doorbell. What was about to happen both thrilled and worried me. I had seen part of what was coming already. Forgetting the obvious, I reached for a towel to wrap around her, but my fingers passed through the cloth. I’d imagined exactly how to protect her, fashioned a detailed plan in my mind as I traveled back to earth. How could I help if I couldn’t even make the towel tremble when I swiped at it?

  Jenny was about to be thrown into great difficulties, all my doing, all while her spirit had been away on some mysterious adventure I knew nothing about.

  Watching her cower in that porcelain coffin brought me back to my last day as one of the Quick. And that’s where every ghost story begins, with a death.

  I didn’t know I was about to die, of course, but even so, my last day held a strange undercurrent that began with first light. The air smelled familiar, although I couldn’t place the scent. I was sitting in the rocker, holding my sleeping baby, as the sun rose with an ominous hue. I wondered if a neighboring farm was on fire, but I smelled no smoke and I’d heard no warning bells or cries for help.

  My husband walked past us, displeased with me, as usual, because he thought my answering our daughter’s cries in the night would spoil her. But his coldness toward her made me want to comfort her more. If I could have climbed into her cradle, I would’ve made it my nightly refuge—we were each other’s favorite and only companions.

  On my last day, I knew something was not right. Something was approaching—either dangerous, like a storm, or wonderful, like a gift by post. Or better, a sea voyage, an adventure to rival the novels I read again and again. The excitement that was hiding behind the foreboding sunrise, the possibility of a marvelous change, some new opportunity, was the only reason I agreed when my husband said he would be away from home all day. We didn’t need protecting, so I thought.

  As I baked the morning biscuits, the screen door creaked but did not open, dust devils danced at the foot of the porch, and the light became more and more queer. The air was thick and yellowed. As my husband walked out of the house, I looked out through the lace curtains to catch the last glimpse of him. He took our mare, but not the wagon. I saw his broad back in a white shirt, his hair blowing as he rode bareheaded through our gate and away.

  It wasn’t until that moment, when the weathervane above us squealed to change position, that I recognized the smell of that morning: It was the scent of a mountain of unshed rain. So it was a storm that was coming after all. Uncommonly big, perhaps, but just rain. No impending miracle on the horizon. A bad rain would mean lots of work cleaning up afterward. But I tried to cheer myself—my husband was gone for the day and that freedom always lightened my heart. We had the house to ourselves.

  The weather continued to vex us with peculiar scents, vibrations, and utterances. The windows rattled as if some invisible hand played them with a fiddle bow. On the bulging black horizon, flashes bounced like fireflies in the dark cupped hands of the sky.

  I took out a bowl and pan, but before I had even scooped out the flour for the cookie dough, the wind that leaked through the windowpane seams blew a puff of white powder off the top of the sack like a tiny specter. I lifted my child out of the wooden highchair and left the kitchen. As I passed through the dining room, the lace cloth on the table was rippled by some mysterious draft.

  I headed upstairs with the idea that I would sit in bed with the baby in my lap and the blankets over our heads, but was stopped by a crash, then the sound of breaking glass. A gust of cold air swept over us—a second-floor window must have broken. A branch from our oak tree had probably smashed into one of the bedroom casements. My daughter whimpered and clung to me mightily. I stopped with my feet on two different steps.

  I returned to the lower of the steps—should I go up and try to save certain treasures from the rain? The two nice pictures we had in frames on the dresser—a portrait of my parents and a tintype of my husband as a boy? My grandmother’s christening gown, folded in paper and sprinkled with dried lavender in the cedar chest, should be safe. But my books—I should hurry and save them.

  Or should I run downstairs with my girl and close us into the cellar?

  If the winds became a tornado, that would be the safest place to hide. The whole house could rip out at the foundations and the cellar would still be there, the two of us dug down in the bottom corner.

  Everything in the dining room trembled as we passed through again. Shadow and light mixed in a frightening dance on the other side of the lace curtains. The winds began to take on a human sound, a moan under the hiss and growl of air. I opened the back door and the handle jerked out of my grip before the door slammed into the outside wall. The sky was full of topsoil and leaves, twigs, even a gardening glove with fingers flapping.

  I didn’t know I had only a handful of minutes. Or that the cellar was a mistake. That strange feeling in my gut, that something wonderful might be just around the corner, flared back up inside me as we stepped out the kitchen door and into the wind. A thrill shot through me. God made the storm just as God made the rainbow and the calm that comes after the storm. God made the earth and all that dwelled there and also heaven and hell and all the angels and devils that dwell there, too. So there is God in everything, in the wind and the rain and the burning white of lightning.

  Maybe if I could have held on to that thought, I might have left that cellar for heaven instead of hell. But then, I never would have found James. So maybe God truly was in the rising water and the darkness and the terror. His eye, the unblinking funnel of cloud at the center of my panic.

  CHAPTER 8

  Helen

  THE SOUND OF A DOORBELL still hung in the air. I watched Jenny, how her eyes darted back and forth—she listened to the sound of footsteps and muffled voices in the hall.

  “Jenny?” It was Cathy’s voice, Jenny’s mother, just outside the bathroom door. “Are you feeling sick?” The handle turned, but the door stayed shut.

  Jenny twisted the faucet until the water shut off. Next a male voice was on the other side of the door—I knew who it was because I had already witnessed this scene.

  “Jenny? Can I talk to you?”

  It wasn’t James, of course, simply the body he had borrowed, but the sound still thrilled me.

  “Honey, there’s someone here to see you,” called Cathy.

  Jenny opened her mouth to speak, but her chin was quivering.

  “I’m serious.” Cathy’s tone was harsh. “This is your mother speaking. You let me in this minute.” She was making the hinges rattle.

  “Are you hurt?” His voice again.

  Jenny finally answered. “No.” But too soft to be heard.

  “Open this door!” Cathy’s tone was high-pitched now, on the brink of panic. “I’m going to call the police.” The door shook so hard, the empty pill bottle on the floor bounced. “I’m calling 911!”

  “I’m all right!” Jenny shouted. Then she looked at me, but of course she couldn’t see me. At least I didn’t think she could.

  Although I knew it was going to happen, I still jumped when the door burst in, cracking the wood frame, and Billy Blake crashed into the room like a fireman.

  Jenny blinked at him. She held her knees up to her chest, hiding her nakedness.

 
“Are you okay?” he asked. He was breathing hard as if he’d run for miles to get to her. I was not in love with Billy, of course, but that particular shade of brown hair and the shape of those hands made my heart ache.

  “I don’t know,” said Jenny.

  He tore a bath towel off the rack and bent down on one knee, unfolding it over her shoulders like a cape.

  “I’m sorry I said I didn’t remember you,” he told her, “when you came to see me today.”

  “I came to see you?”

  So, she didn’t remember what her body had done while I was its captain. I was not surprised.

  Billy reached to the back pocket of his jeans. “After you left, I found this in my room.”

  He held the shiny plastic square in front of Jenny, a photo. “This is us,” he said.

  Jenny brought the picture closer to her face, tilting it so that the glare on the glossy finish shifted. I knew that picture, of course. To Jenny the photo would look like a picture of her and Billy, but it was actually James and me while we occupied their bodies—it was the only way for us to be together.

  A drop of water from Jenny’s hand ran down the white border.

  “I’m having some trouble remembering things,” Billy told her.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “You look happy with me,” he said, as if astonished that someone could ever love him.

  Jenny looked pleased, but she was still dazed. “Yeah, I do,” she told him. He started to rub the towel on her head, drying her cold hair. “Is your name Billy?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Here was all I remembered seeing before I left earth.

  Cathy, the phone to her ear, stopped in the bathroom doorway. “Jennifer!”

  It was strange to think that I had left this bathroom and climbed to heaven, into James’s arms. That was happening at the same time that I was standing here and looking down at Jenny. I could not regret now that I had become a ghost, because how else would I have met James? Yet looking back, my inability to cross into heaven for so many years seemed foolish.

  Cathy snapped her fingers at Jenny. “Cover yourself!” Then she motioned for Billy to get out. “Do you mind?”

  Billy backed into the hall as Cathy closed the door in his face. “Why don’t they answer?” Cathy scowled at the phone, pressed two buttons, listened again. “How many did you take?” she asked.

  Jenny searched the room as if she felt watched.

  “How many?” Cathy demanded.

  “I’m not overdosing,” said Jenny. “I threw them up.”

  “Were you trying to kill yourself?”

  “No.” Jenny paused. I could tell she didn’t remember one way or the other. “I spilled them and the ones I swallowed I threw up. Don’t call an ambulance.”

  Cathy tried to dress her daughter as if the girl were five years old—buttoned her buttons, flicked her collar down straight, pulled her hair out of her sweater for her.

  Cathy agreed to drive Jenny to the emergency room instead of calling the paramedics. When they emerged from the bathroom at last, Cathy shooed Billy out of the house, rushing to gather her purse and keys.

  She bustled Jenny through the kitchen toward the door that led into the garage, but Jenny was staring at the house—the broken picture frames in the living room and dining room, the mess in the kitchen as if someone had pulled half the contents of the cupboards out and dumped them onto the floor and into the sink.

  I floated after them the way I used to follow my hosts everywhere. Before I met James I’d had a chain of five humans I’d haunted since my death. I found safety from my hell by clinging to them and did what I could to be a friend to each. But Jenny was the only one of the Quick I had ever possessed.

  I sat in the back seat behind her as the engine roared. Cathy couldn’t wait for the garage door to rise—the car’s antenna snapped off and clattered onto the driveway.

  Billy was waiting on the sidewalk. Cathy slammed on the brakes and rolled down her window. “Go home,” she ordered him.

  Jenny leaned forward, about to speak, when she saw Mitch. Wearing a grease-stained T-shirt, Billy’s brother stood leaning against his wreck of a car parked at the curb. Cathy’s angry tone drew his attention. He threw his lit cigarette onto the lawn.

  “Is she okay?” Billy asked Cathy.

  “If you don’t leave I’ll have to call the police,” Cathy told him.

  “Mom!”

  Mitch strode toward them.

  Cathy rammed the car into park and got out, taking a step toward Mitch before he could get any closer.

  “Will you please take your son home?” asked Cathy. She took in his appearance: unshaven face, muscled arms, tattoos. She held her sweater closed as if he could see through her garments.

  “He’s not my kid, he’s my brother.” Mitch gave her a sweeping glance, head to foot.

  Cathy bristled. “Where are your parents while all this is happening?”

  Mitch smiled. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Billy stood with his hands in his pockets now, watching Jenny through the car window, seemingly oblivious to the argument. And Jenny stared back at him, but she jumped at the sound of angry voices. I didn’t want her to worry.

  “All will be well,” I told her, but she couldn’t hear me with so many distractions.

  When I left heaven I had a clear plan as to how I would help Jenny. In the same way that I had guided my hosts with an invisible touch on the arm, keeping them from stumbling on an unnoticed stone in their path, I planned to lay my hand on Jenny’s shoulder when she was faced with Billy Blake and turn her from him. After all, it was James and I who had been in love, not Billy and Jenny. She should feel no obligation.

  When Jenny’s mother treated her with harshness I imagined I would sit between them, holding each by the hand, and act as the conduit for love as I had with my Poet and his dying brother. And if Jenny’s father were to reappear and throw hurtful words, I would stand like a shield in his face and dampen his wickedness as I had when my Knight was confronted by an angry colleague. And if Jenny found the consequences of my time in her life kept her from sleep, I would sit on the foot of her bed and sing to her, or recite verse, as I did when banishing the nightmares of my Playwright.

  But what I had forgotten was that those moments with my hosts were the exceptions. It was a rare thing to affect the realm of the Quick.

  Cathy’s voice quavered. “Well, tell your mother for me that it’s impossible for your brother and my daughter to continue seeing each other.”

  “Tell her yourself. She’s at St. Jude’s Hospital, but she hasn’t said a word in five years.” Mitch enjoyed her surprise. “Or, my dad’s in the county prison. Or you could mind your damn business.”

  Cathy took a flustered step backwards, bumping into the car. “Watch your language in front of my child.”

  “Fuck you, lady.” Mitch grabbed Billy by the sleeve and pulled him toward their car.

  Cathy hurried back into the driver’s seat, white in the face. The car accelerated, then left the driveway at an odd angle, scouring the tailpipe on the curb.

  “Billy wants to help,” said Jenny. “He tried to save me.”

  Cathy was breathing too fast. She sat with her shoulders high and tight. She should have at least tried to put on a calm front for her daughter’s sake. But Cathy offered not one word of reassurance. I had planned to draw them closer, and I could have sat between them now and taken their hands, but I didn’t want to touch Cathy. It angered me that she offered Jenny no sympathy. I didn’t want to try to make Cathy a better mother. I wanted to comfort Jenny myself. Someone had to protect the girl.

  Even though she might not hear, I leaned forward and whispered to the back of Jenny’s head of gold hair, “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

  “Why wouldn’t you open the door?” Cathy asked her.

  “The door?” said Jenny. “You mean the bathroom door?”

  “Yes, the bathroom
door!” Cathy, who hadn’t fastened her safety belt, now tried to force the strap over her chest, but it had locked in place.

  “I don’t know.” Jenny peered into the back seat, looking through me. “Maybe I didn’t want to get out of the tub.” Then she asked, “Who else was at the house?”

  “What?” Cathy glanced at her. “You mean Billy’s brother?”

  “No,” said Jenny. “Wasn’t there someone else in the bathroom?”

  CHAPTER 9

  Helen

  WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” said Cathy.

  A queer tremor rippled through me. I was the someone who had been in the bathroom with them, standing beside the tub.

  “Other than that boy?” Cathy asked.

  Jenny caught sight of something outside the car—she pivoted in her seat. I wondered what had captured her attention. We passed store window displays filled with autumn leaves and the silhouettes of crows.

  “Why are there pumpkins everywhere?” she asked.

  I didn’t know exactly how long Jenny had been away from her body before I entered it, but I knew it must be unsettling to be thrown blindly back into her life. If she could have seen me, I would have smiled at her, because her mother’s expression was far from soothing.

  “What is wrong with you?” Cathy demanded. “How many pills did you really take?”

  Jenny stared at her mother as if something was missing—I could see it in her blue eyes and feel it in the trembling of her narrow shoulders. She was afraid.

  “Mom?” Jenny asked. “Where’s Daddy?”

  Cathy started weeping as she drove. “He’s probably at her house.”

  “Whose house?”

  But Cathy wouldn’t answer. She muttered to herself and strangled the steering wheel with twisting fists. She drove past a stop sign without slowing down and did not seem even to hear the honking horns. This danger she was exposing her child to made me wish I could take over Cathy’s body the way I had Jenny’s.