That’s her.
Her.
And she’s…
The woman—Dawn—turns the mirror to show the reflective side of it, and in that shining metal, Dawn sees…Millie’s face. She falls back, hands flying to pat her face, feeling the doughy softness of it.
The woman cackles. Not an old lady cackle but a young one.Dawn’scackle.
“Something wrong?” she says. “Seems you really did wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I know what that’s like. Did it myself five years ago, when the last one trapped me, just like…”
Millie waves down, and Dawn looks to see she’s standing in some kind of circle, drawn in blood on the cabin floor.
“Stu’s had his eye on you for a while,” she says. “He was my caretaker. Well, yours now. Don’t worry, I’ll pay him for his services. I’m sure you have the money, and I learned my lesson, just as you’re about to learn yours.”
“I…I don’t…”
“You don’t know what I mean. Think of it as a cosmic time-out. You’ve been very naughty, and the world needs a breakfrom girls like you, just as it needed one from guys like me, and it needed one from the woman before me, who tried to murder old Millie, hearing she had a fortune buried under these floorboards.”
Dawn’s mind reels and all she can manage is, “I can’t…I won’t…”
“Can. Will. Unless you plan to built a raft and paddle your old bones to shore. I wouldn’t recommend it. The one before me tried that. Spent a year in a psych ward. Poor old Millie had a bit of a breakdown, ranting about being someone else, trapped in that body. It happens. You get old, and you feel like you’re in the body of a stranger.”
The person in Dawn’s body turns to go, and Dawn lunges, but her knees give way and she sprawls on the floor.
“Stu will be by in a week or so,” the body-thief says. “As angry as you might be with him, I’d treat him with respect. Otherwise, he’ll take his time bringing out supplies. For now, just settle in and enjoy. You have butter tarts and books. Stu made sure you had things you like. Remember that if you’re tempted to hurt him.”
The thief pauses in the open doorway. “I won’t say it’s not so bad. It’s hell. But take some time to think, and when you’re ready to move on, Stu will find you a nice body to pop into, if you’ve been good to him.” The thief looks down at Dawn’s former body. “I guess I was.”
The thief smiles…and shuts the door.
Dead Flowers by a Roadside
The house is damnably silent.
I sit in the middle of the living room, furniture shoved out of the way, one chair tipped over where it fell, pushed too hard in my haste. Shards from a broken vase litter the floor. One is inches from my hand.
Amy would panic if she saw it. I close my eyes and imagine it. Her gasp from the doorway. The patter of her stockinged feet. The soft click of the piece against the hardwood as she snatches it up. Her voice as she tells me not to move, she’ll clean the mess, I need to be more careful—really, I need to be more careful. What if I’d cut myself? What if Clara had run in?
In my mind, her voice is not quite right. The cadence, the tone are fading already. Amy’s voice. Clara’s voice. How much longer before they slide from memory altogether? Before I’m reduced to playing old videos that don’t sound like them, not really, and telling myself they do, just so I can still hear their voices in my head.
I open my eyes and look at the ancient book lying open in front of me. Spidery writing, water-smeared ink, barely legible. The air smells faintly of acacia. That’s critical, the book says.The dead will not speak without the scent of acacia to pull them through the ether.
Not true.
I know it is not true because I have seen the dead. Heard the dead. All my life they’ve been there, flitting past, whispering in my ear. Never once have they needed acacia.
Yet for three months, I’ve been trying to contact them. My wife. My child. I beg, I plead, I rage and shout for a sign, any sign. Comfort, any comfort. In desperation I turn to the books, to the acacia. But I hear only silence. Damnable silence.
I look down at the shard of glass by my hand.
Daydreaming again, weren’t you?Amy laughs.Always dreaming. Always distracted. One of these days, you’re going to hurt yourself.
I run my finger along the edge of the shard. As sharp as her ceramic knives, the ones I bought for her birthday, kept in the cupboard so Clara wouldn’t mistake the white blades for plastic.
And don’t you use them either, she’d said to me.Please.
Worried about me. About us. That was her nature. Double-checking door locks. Double-checking the stove. Double-checking Clara’s car seat. Even if she’d done it herself, she always double-checked. If Clara or I so much as stubbed our toes and yelped, Amy would come running.
