12 Sophie’s Travels

For as long as the valley spread wide, the river also spread, sparkling clear over its stony bed. The path followed closely, just beyond the thin belt of trees and shrubby growth that hugged its bank, an uneven band of gray stony soil threading through the green. The open grassland off to her right might easily have been any overgrown pasture outside the country town where she had grown up. This was lushly green and knee to waist high as far as she could see, rolling all the way to the ridge that cupped and controlled the quiet land.

At one point she crossed a tributary stream by inching along on the trunk of a fallen tree. The path had forked along the creek bank, with one branch leading down toward a steep, muddy scramble to the water’s edge and the prospect of more wading between that and another messy climb on the other side. The alternative was a newer choice, but had been used by other travelers before her, including at least one who had stopped long enough to make a fire in a ring of stones in the shelter of the tree’s root mass. The tree had been dead for some time. Its rough bark was falling away in patches, revealing silver gray wood etched with dull lines by insects during its long life.

The water in the little stream below her was dingy with mud, and flowing rapidly, as if from a heavy rain somewhere upstream, however the level of the water was nowhere near the line of debris caught in the fibrous roots sticking out from the bank. As she neared the other side, she saw the first sign of other human beings, a wood-handled iron tool, with its rusted blade trapped in the twisted tendrils. A heavy thing to have been carried for any distance. She was tempted to follow the stream toward whatever farm it had come from, but the surety of the path overwhelmed the possibility told by the implement.

The valley narrowed some distance past the creek, and the path rose away from the riverbed to parallel its path higher on the hillside. At one point, through a clearing in the trees, she thought she saw the place where she had come into this place. The rock seemed to rise higher above the water than she had thought.

She was beginning to tire of the climb long before the path turned downward again. Another clear valley spread before her, more narrow than the one she had just left, and almost entirely in the shadow of the tall hills opposite. Sunlight touched the tips of trees growing higher on the hillside, tall and straight and close. With her eyes drawn to the light, she almost missed the dark stone tower standing at the edge of the forest in the distance where the hill bent to touch the river again.

She wanted to run. Common sense told her that there might not even be anyone there, even if she managed to reach the building without breaking her neck with a headlong rush. That was nothing to prevent her from wanting to hurry along the stony path. Once it left the crest, she no longer was able to see beyond the trees in which she walked, and each turn of the trail to avoid some small obstacle seemed to take her her farther and farther from her new and now invisible goal.

When she came out into the clearing at last, it took all of her strength to keep from setting off straight across the uncertain grassland toward the tower, but reason sent her along the cleared path instead, with the knowledge that the longer distance would be faster without the tall grasses that she would have been wading through.

The tower was not so far from the river as it had seemed from her vantage above. She examined it carefully, as she grew closer. Beyond taking care of her footing, there was not much more to do. Not much to see that was different. The same trees, grasses. The same blue sky with only a few small clouds. No animals, at least none large enough to be noticeable. Not even a bird since that single tiny one on the other side of the river. The place was empty. Beautiful, but empty. The building was tall, round, and slender, built of the same gray brown stone as the boulder on which she had begun this ramble. There was a narrow slit of a doorway on the side facing the meadow, but it was in deep shadow, and if it had a door, open or shut, it was impossible for her to see from the distance. High above the doorway, was one single window, unglazed, unshuttered, bare as death.

It was an uninviting structure, almost forbidding. Still, when she saw a thin track leading off the main path in the direction of the tower, she turned onto it.

The path ended at a very low wall built of the same dark, river rounded stones as the tower. There appeared to be not gap or gate, although she walked all the way around the wall and back to opposite the doorway, looking for one. It seemed an absurd thing, the wall, too low to keep out any sort of animal. Even a human without her long legs should have no difficulty stepping over it and into the garden beyond. For there was a garden surrounding the tower, a structured series of beds with aisles paved in fanciful patterns in between their wedges of green or bright color. Some of the garden appeared to be solely for beauty and some, beautifully functional. Roses bordered the kitchen herbs, and the leaf crops grew in shaped beds surrounded by nasturtiums and blue borage. There were ripe blackberries, too, growing on trellises near the back of the garden, just beyond her reach inside the wall.

Supper had been a very long time ago.

Still…

The path ended at the wall. Or did it? There were paved walkways all through the garden, all leading to the flagged circle around the base of the tower. So, any step across the wall was a step onto another path, and this one leading directly to the doorway.

Yet…

It was such a fairy tale building. And she was not from this world. How many times in the grimmest of tales did the hapless young fool come to a bad end from going where he so obviously ought not go. And how many times was that the only way out of the story?

She sat down on the wall where the gate should have been, looked at the shadowed doorway, and at the empty window, and thought.

“Hello.”

She looked around.

“Up here. In the window. What are you doing there?”

That took a moment’s thought. “I’m not exactly sure,” she answered, at last, craning her neck to see where the voice might be coming from, “I believe I am lost.”

The girl in the tower laughed. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t be lost. You’re here.”

“But I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Of course you are. Wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be. It makes perfect sense.”

In a sort of cockeyed, alice in wonderland way. “Can I come inside?”

“You are more than half way in already, so I suppose you can. The question you really want to ask is, ‘may I?’, isn’t that right? Because the two are entirely different.”

“May I come in to your garden?”

“Whatever turned you into such a grump? Of course, you could come into the garden… if it were mine. But it isn’t, so you probably ought to, well you probably ought to get off the wall. If you are seen, it might not be,” she paused, “exactly happy.”

“Oh. Do you think you could come down here and we could talk. It’s a little difficult shouting up like this.”

“I could come down. But down is one thing and out is another entirely. You see, the door is locked.”

“You are a prisoner!”

“No, no, no. I am supposed to be here, silly. It is just the way things are.”

“By that logic, if I came inside the wall, it would be where I was supposed to be because it would be where I would be.”

“How clever you are. You are almost as clever as Sophia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You haven’t done anything.”

“No, I meant something else. It was just a phrase.”

“I knew that. It’s just that so few people stop by to chat that I tend to become a little odd at times. The jailer hardly talks at all, so it’s no fun to play with him, and Sophia is so dreadfully clever and wise.”

“Why does she have you locked away like this?”

“Who knows. I imagine it’s just the way it’s supposed to be. That’s probably what Sophia would say.”

“Did you do something wrong? Did you break some rule or something? I don’t mean to be nosy. I only ask because when you don’t know anything, well, I don’t want the same thing happening to me. You understand.”

The girl laughed as if that were the most outrageously funny thing she had ever heard. It was some time before she could catch her breath, and when she spoke again, she was hiccuping slightly.
“You. (hic) Don’t know anything. That’s so good. I’ll have to tell Sophia the next time she comes to see me.”

“I believe you are being intentionally rude.”

“I believe,” she said pompously, “you are being intentionally stupid.”

“What?” she almost screeched.

“Where do you think you are?” the girl said, in rather dry voice. “And who do you think you are talking to?” She sighed, in a somewhat overly dramatic manner.

“I said I didn’t know where I was. I said I was lost at the beginning.” When there was no response from above, she went on, “ and as to who you are, you are an obnoxious child, obviously locked away for your own good to keep sensible people from wringing your neck.”

“You aren’t lost, and you know it. You know exactly where you are. And you know who I am, too. You just haven’t listened to me very much lately.
“This has been a pretty useless little journey for you. There are all sorts of adventures you might have had while you were here if you had just once gotten off that path. It’s really very sad. You might as well go on back if you aren’t going to learn anything while you’re here.”

Everything went black.

11 [in which Sophie is taken on a side trip]

The darkness had a texture, if no form. It was like a cloud or a fog. A cloud of dark light. The the air was thick with moisture, cool against the skin of her face. She could feel it beading on the hairs of her arms. Her lashes grew heavy from the droplets that formed upon them.

Franticly, she groped about, but there was nothing there to touch, and her wild windmillings only served to make her lose her balance. She stumbled and dropped, painfully, to her hands and knees. Sharp stones cut her palms and bruised her knees. There were tufts of coarse grass growing in hard-packed dirt where she felt nearby. The smell crisp of crushed greenery grew into the dense air from some plant she had damaged in her fall.

She sat in the dirt and tried to gather her senses. The dark seemed to muffle any sounds she made–breathing, stirring, dislodging of stones, any and all–and rebuild them around her until she was the center of a filmy cotton bell of her own noises. The sound of her pulse waxed and waned through it all as she tried to calm herself. She tried to think, to put a label on this place. What was she doing and how was she here? Even the questions were hard to form. The pain from her hands was distracting, a stinging, burning, small and constant reminder of her body.

The anise-like scent of the broken plant was a friend in the darkness. Its strong reality was an anchor. It was a thing, a real thing. In a place, however veiled. It made the gloom less ominous. If she were in a place it was somewhere, and she ought to be able to leave for somewhere else. If one place were not the same as every other wherever this was.

For the first time she strained to see through the darkness. In front of her, there was no difference. She peered into the thick black air to her left and to her right, and could see nothing but more of the same obscurity. Unwilling to move again, and risk another fall, she twisted around to look behind. She blinked, unsure whether what she saw was real or an artifact of her own eyes.

It did not move. There, behind her, somewhere low to the ground was a dim light. She had no way of telling its size or its distance, but it was something that was not darkness. A beacon. A star. A lodestone.

She stumbled toward the light, falling more than once when the uneven footing played her false. For a while, she crawled, but the rough pebbles bit into her hands and the slowness of her progress drove her to her feet again, although she found herself walking in a kind of awkward shuffling crouch, the better keep from tripping. It was slow progress, but it was progress, nonetheless.

In time the glow expanded to fill the area before her. No brighter than before, it seemed like a large, dim doorway of mist. Discrete, and almost tangible. It shed no light into the place where she stood. She could not see her own hands, her own feet, even standing directly before it. She could only stand and stare. It seemed less a light than a hole in the darkness. It was scarcely another place at all, but a barrier, a pale and faceless wall.

Still, she gathered her courage and stepped into it
—to be standing not four feet from the verge of a rather narrow, but deep and briskly flowing river some distance below. The rock on which she stood sloped abruptly toward the water. She felt her right foot begin to slip, and scrambled backward before remembering what had been behind her. There was no sign of the barrier or the darkness.

On this side of the river, the land rose steeply. Where the undergrowth was not heavy, large bare rocks were visible among the trees. On the other side there seemed to be a narrow belt of trees and brush along the river, but more open land beyond. The bank there was lower, and dirt. Just a little downstream a small rivulet entered, and in the eddies there a pair of dragonflies seemed to stand still in the bright afternoon sun.

She felt a touch of something on her left hand, and reached to brush it away. There was nothing there, but the hand showed three clear claw marks across the back. On that wrist was a bracelet that she had never seen before, a heavy silver wire cuff set with a single dark yellow-green stone–chrysoberyl. Cat’s eye. The cat. Somehow the cat had done this to her. Was she really here? Or still back in the apartment, sitting on the floor? Had reality ended the moment she first saw that cat coming out of the shadows on the side of Hamilton Street?

She closed her eyes and imagined herself back in the apartment. The long oak table with its well-aged gouges and nicks, and stains married into its grain was behind her. The door was to her left, and beside it a stack of packages, piled bags from half a dozen different shops. Before her, and to her right, the doorway to the bathroom. Across the room from that, the sofa, chair and the little television on its wheeled stand. She would not allow herself to think of the beings that might or might not be in the room. Instead, she concentrated on her own body, placing it exactly as she remembered being just before whatever it was that had happened.

She tried.

Hard.

And kept trying.

And nothing happened. She was still there beside the blue green river. There was no argent glow about the bracelet. Nothing in the world had changed. Everything was exactly the same, only now there was a slight headache forming between her eyes from the strain of what she had thought might send her back home.

And she was thirsty. The long trek across the black land might have been only within her imagination, but it had been a long, dry imagination, and the sight of all that water, only a few feet away and out of reach, was torture. With some resignation, she turned her back to the stream and prepared to battle her way through the bushes, thorns, and vines that might be concealing a less precipitous way down to the water. And she hoped against hope that here, wherever here was, if there were snakes, they would prefer to run rather than to stand and bite.

She struggled with a small forest of low trees’ twigs and branches in her eyes, wiry snagging briars around her ankles and legs, and thick, stubborn bushes grabbing at her arms. Although it was hot, she was grateful that she had been wearing her heavy, old sweatshirt over the softer cotton blouse. That and the wool trousers were nearly indestructible.

Some time later, but a short distance up the side of the hill, she came to a clearing through which ran a narrow, almost imperceptible, path. If there had been leaves still on the ground, she would not have seen it at all, but rain, following the packed depression, had washed enough away to make it plain. Her only choice, then was which direction to take.

Wisdom, would have her take the direction the river took. Every single thing she had ever read or heard or seen in a movie told her that one ought to move downstream, because, in that direction, eventually, one would find civilization of some sort. In this case, the path that would lead in that direction turned up the hill and away from the water altogether. It might meet it again somewhere farther downstream, but it might have been a path coming to the river from somewhere else. And the lefthand fork turned downhill, not only toward the water, which she wanted, but it seemed to be the easier and the clearer of the two directions.

With no coin in her pocket to toss, she considered the two options and decided on the path of least resistance. She could always turn around and go back the other way after she had had her fill of water, but without water she was going to be uncomfortable at best, and in the long run, much worse. As if to put the seal on her decision, the moment she set foot on the downhill path, a small blue bird appeared and lighted on a branch less than two yards away from her and with no apparent fear. When she came near it, the bird fluttered away down the path to land in another bush beside the trail. This went on for some time, until a few notes from the bushes farther into the undergrowth called it away from her.

“Get back home before you get into trouble.” What goes for a bird goes double for a girl. The bird is where he belongs.

Eventually, the path leveled out alongside a small creek that flowed into the river at a place where it spread wide over a bed of bright smooth stones. She could see the path emerging on the other side of the river and leading off downstream. It stood to reason that she ought to try what must obviously be a ford.

Before anything else, she was going to drink. And not while standing up to her whatever in the river. She knelt on the bank, as close to the edge as she could get, scowling at the mud oozing into the knees of her pants, then realizing what a ridiculous idea it was to try to stay dry when she was about to go wading. She leaned over and cupped her hands for the water. When she touched it, she almost fell in from shock. It was frigid. She sat back on her heels for a moment and looked at the river that she was going to have to cross. Nobody around here ever heard of bridges? This was not going to be at all like a day in the park.

The stones on the bottom were just large enough to be slick, and not quite so big that they would not shift underfoot. The water, although much shallower than it had been where she first saw the river, was still in some places up to her thighs, and it was swift. A halfway intelligent person would have found a good strong stick to cross with. She managed to keep her head above water, but not much more. By the time she crawled out onto the low, muddy bank she was soaked, and she had had her fill of water.

Chilled to the bone, she removed all she dared of her sodden clothing.  It took some time to wring the river out of her sweatshirt and socks.  After a little consideration, she pulled off her trousers, too, and as swiftly as possible squeezed the worst of the water out of them.  They were still wet when she dressed, but they were better, and might dry a little faster.  At least it was summer here, and not about to reach the winter solstice.
Wherever here was.
She stuffed one sock to hang from each front pocket, and tied the sweatshirt by the wet arms around her equally wet waist then set off down the path, following the river.

SOPHIE’S SOLSTICE Chapter Ten

Between that thought and the next, between one moment and another, their pleasant tête-à-tête became a council, a meeting, and–oddly–something almost with a party air.

The ghosts, or most of them at any rate, were chattering their opinions of everything that they had seen and heard. Because, of course, they had been there all the while Sophie and Rusty had conversed “alone”. And, of course, Sophie had known it all the while. It was not for secrets that she had wanted then out of sight and out of her mind, but for the sweet psychological distance.

It had worked. Opening the door for Speaker, she felt in command of herself for the first time–she was surprised to realize just how long it had been–since the rug had been pulled out from under her in such a literal way by that ugly notice to vacate the perfect apartment so close to Cedar Square.

Now, she felt almost right again. There was something about having taken action and having something concrete to show for it. She had an apartment now. A car, or the use of one, for as long as she needed it. A few, new, things. She had a friend, it seemed, all out of the blue. And then, there were the soothing rituals of preparation, and the cooking, and the meal. Some time alone with her music might have tied the entire package, but as it stood, she was armored for the coming difficulties.

She offered the Speaker some Cat Chow in a jade green cereal bowl, as an afterthought, and with just a bit of her mood of celebration, she scraped the crispy bits left in the bottom of the pan in which she had cooked the pork onto the top of the dry kibble before setting the pan to soak.

She would have been hard pressed to gain the attention of any of the ghosts. They were all clustered around Rusty, trying to glean any knowledge from him about the process of leaving this dimension that he could possibly have learned in his previous encounter. That was when it sank in. They were, for all that they existed as spirits, inexperienced. However much time they had spent as ghosts, it had not been with an awareness that there was an alternative to their drifting solitude in the midst of all the living.

What was it that had made her their catalyst? Some random sequence of past events that combined to make her who she was at just this point in time? Was one single event the last straw, the red-numbered powerball of chance, without which she would have gone on her way, enjoying her mundane life, blissfully unaware that there was anything more to existence than what she had always seen and heard and touched.

The cat rubbed against her leg, shedding silver hairs into the coarse brown weave of her trousers, for all the world as if her were a perfectly ordinary household pet. she sat down on the floor beside him and scratched his sleek gray head. He settled back on his haunches. When he raised his head, his gold eyes were almost closed to slits.

“It’s an odd existence,” he said, almost as if to himself, “being a cat.” Then he looked at her. Seemed to be looking into her her soul for just one brief moment. “Most of the time, you know, I am a cat. There’s not a thought in my mind beyond the moment. i want to eat or to sleep. Hunt. Or mate.

“It was disturbing enough to feel passion inside another man’s body. Especially considering the differences in our tastes. But that first time when I was attacked by this body’s lust, it’s painful drive to sex–the moment before my death was not so terrifying.”

“Even when you are the cat, You are there. You, the one who is calling himself ‘Speaker’, but who had another name once however long ago it was, you and however many others there are in there. I still don’t understand how there could be so many of you there. I thought reincarnation was different somehow. Not that I understand all that I have heard and read. Things that don’t make much sense tend to just go through my head, and I don’t usually make much effort to stop anything that doesn’t really grab my interest. I guess I should have listened more.”

“I wouldn’t have helped here. This is different. What reincarnation is, I have read the books–several of us were educated men. What we have experienced is not that, nor is it Rebirth. It is only what it is. None of us has changed from one body’s life to the next. Each one persists entire and separate, yet we are connected to each other like a magician’s chain of rings. Within one living being we have life.

“In a way, now, you are the magician for them.” He nodded toward the ghosts, still clustered around Rusty, but arguing among themselves, hashing over what he had been telling them. “You are for all of us,” he said. “With a ‘flash!’ you bring them into the light where they can be seen and hear. They are all but alive again because of you.”

“But they are still dead.”

“They think. They feel. And now, they interact. It may be that they are not breathing flesh, but even that one, the one who was so stricken to learn that she has a soul at all, even she is in the true sense, animated.”

It was true. They were all, even the dark one, Mrs. Slaughter, engaged in a lively discussion. Lively. Like any normal people. “And I am somehow responsible?” she wanted to know.

“Without your presence here and now, they would be as they were before, still wandering, formless, and without the key to the doorway past that existance.”

“Great,” she said, bitterly, as she started to gather her feet under her to rise, “now who’s pulling my strings?”

Before she could move further, the cat’s paw flashed onto her hand, claws extended. He stood, muscles tensed as if he were about to pounce. She tried to move, but somehow the force of that one small paw was sufficient to hold her to the floor, as if gravity had multiplied a thousandfold in that one point. His eyes, intent upon her own, had become solid black, and huge. For a split second, looking at him, she felt a sense of vertigo. She closed her eyes and the odd disorientation disapeared almost immediately. The pressure on her hand eased to a feather touch. At that, she breathed a sight of relief and opened her eyes again. To a world gone dark.

*CAVEAT*

 

This is even now being written for NaNoWrimo 2007.
By the “rules” of NaNo, one does not edit. Not until the month of November is over and gone. Please, therefore, be aware that this is a draft, and a rough one at that. If this were a paper manuscript, it would show the creases, strikethroughs, marginal notes and coffee stains of its true self. This digital format is a little white lie.

Consider this:

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It’s like passing around samples of sputum.__
Vladimir Nabokov

 

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

It was from her grandmother, that Sophie learned to cook, the same way she learned reading and playing piano from Tom, it was in the air that surrounded her when she was around them.

Ramona had been an artist in the kitchen, and her recipes were an artists’. She changed and added according to her tastes of the moment, what appealed to her eye in the store, or simply, what was on hand. Watching her putter around, inventing the moment, as she said, was a pleasure. Sophie often did her homework at the kitchen table while her grandmother made supper. The big room with its worn yellow linoleum and ceiling-high white cabinets always had plenty of space for her to spread out with her books and notebooks, yellow pencils and bics. The red plastic radio at the end of the counter would blast away, whatever had seemed to suit Ramona’s mood: sometimes classical, sometimes country and sometimes rock and roll. And they would talk. They talked about school, the weather, problems with Grace or with Tom; they talked about religion, and life, and sex; and, of course, they talked about food.

Having Rusty around while she cooked brought back those afternoons. It had been too long since she had cooked for someone else. To celebrate, to warm the house, she was making what had been one of Grace’s favorite meals that she prepared: The Butter Plate. Everything would be swimming in the stuff. Pork loin piccata, for which she even splurged and bought a good Marsala wine. The tiniest red potatoes in the bin, simply boiled and drenched with butter. Brilliant carrot haystacks, still crisp, sprinkled with a little dill.

While Rusty rummaged through their afternoon’s purchases and began transforming the living room to something bright and warm, she unpacked the little Japanese mandoline. Inside the cheerful-looking box with its bright pictures and sharp, black characters, was a rather flimsy-looking bird of a tool. She wondered how someone would react to the thing if they had no experience. If there were instructions, they were on the box, they were in Japanese. It was a far cry from the beautiful Bron that Tom had bought Ramona. It was her peace offering when he came back from taking Jake Hartley’s place on his New York gig when Jake cracked his wrist at the last minute. That, after he had promised no more road trips. It sat untouched for a month, in all its stainless splendor before she relented.

Sophie’s little slicer was nothing like that professional-grade tool, but it was fun to play with, and in no time she had far more perfect carrot matchsticks than she could possibly use. She decided, in that case, to make more. Maybe mash them up and turn them into pudding. She could almost taste it, spiced with nutmeg and studded with raisins and walnuts. But that would be for another day, and the carrots would keep.

While she was occupied in the kitchen, Rusty went downstairs to the car. Somehow he managed to wrangle both the table in its box and the folded wooden screen back up the steps single handed.

“We poets are a hardy breed,” he said when she seemed stunned.

“Are you published?” Sophie asked him later, over the supper table. It was a good meal. Grace would have loved it. And Ramona would have been proud of her ‘Kiddo’.

“You might call me more of a performance artist,” Rusty said. I know you’ve never been to Songstage or kifiko, or I would have seen you. That’s where I usually–I won’t say ‘read’ because what I do is a little different, but it’s like that. Perform.”

He would have noticed her because she stood head and shoulders above most other women. Sophie didn’t bother to say what first came into her mind; there was no need, it served no good purpose. “Songstage, I’ve heard of. What’s Kifiko?”

“A sort of multilingual pun, which tells you how self-consciously literary it is. If i understand it correctly, kifiko is the Swahili word for the ’stages of a journey’–both the beginning and the end. The ownership is all about Swahili. Very roots-aware. Still, it’s a nice little place, and the sound system is good. Their whole emphasis is on the recitative art, and in that case, it doesn’t matter if your mama was black brown or irish red, for which I am extremely grateful. They are a most appreciative group. And they feed the performers. It is not your average coffee house. They do have some people there who understand that the mind does not live on the word alone.

“They break down and have little bit of jazz now and then, usually on Sunday afternoons, but the room is really too small for anything with any brass to it. You would like it there, I believe.”

She finally asked him what she had been wondering about for some time. “You are a poet. But what do you do for a living? I mean, I might say that I am a novelist, or a songwriter, if I wanted to stretch things. What I do is no the same. I’m a waitress and, when I am working for real money, it is all in codes. As soon as I can get an internet connection up and running from here, I can get some freelance web design work. That’s me. What do you do?”

He looked at her for a moment before he said anything. While he was simply sitting there, saying nothing, though, the man across the table from Sophie changed.

When he answered her, he spoke more slowly, and almost softly. “I’m not working right now,” he said. “A while ago, quite a while, now, I had a breakdown. I’m not ready to go back yet. I was finishing my residency. There was a lot of pressure over that and over some other things at the same time. My personal life was a wreck. All at once everything got to be too much for me, and I just shut down.

“When I started seeing the ghosts, I thought it was because I was… just over the bend.”

Sophie waited.

“Compared to you, I suppose, I was fortunate that there were only two. On the other hand, one of mine was asking me to get revenge for her. She came to me, to this blithering shell of a human being, and told me she wanted me to kill someone for her.”

“Oh, no! You. You didn’t, of course. Did you?”

He laughed, something of the brittle edge returning. “No, I did what any sane person in the middle of a breakdown would do. I went on with my breakdown and ignored her along with anyone else who wasn’t me myself and I.

“Eventually–her name was Eleanor–she and Sonny both started feeling a little sorry for me. Irritated, frustrated that I was all they had to work with, but sad for me and the mess that I was making of what ought to have been a perfectly good life. She said that in almost so many words.

“They helped me in the end. And then I was able to help them move on, too.”

“You didn’t have to…”

“I didn’t have to kill anybody. It was what she needed that moved her on, not what she wanted. We need to remember that with your lot. She didn’t need revenge. She didn’t even need justice. It was something a lot more difficult and a lot simpler than that. She had to accept what had happened to her.

“When that happened, she just, for a moment got this glow–of comprehension, I suppose. And she smiled. Then she was just gone.”

“What about the other one?”

“I wrote an anonymous letter to his girlfriend, saying that I was a psychic and that he had sent a message to her that it wasn’t hidden in the back yard, so she could stop digging, and ought to open the boxes of books in the attic, instead.”

“It?”

“Sonny was an embezzler. He never had a chance to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. I think that if I were going to be a crook, I’d probably do just as bad a job of it. I want some instant gratification.”

Laughing, Sophie wondered just how much more there was to the man than there appeared. How much there was to everyone, for that matter. Was the Renta-Wrek man a secret anarchist? Did the preacher who always ordered an omelet and a salad for lunch go back home and beat his wife? And what did people think Sophie ought to be that she was not?

She made coffee for them with the french press that was on sale at Linens, Inc. For such a well equipped kitchen, there had been some huge holes. While there was a four slice toaster, there was no coffee pot, not even an old range-top percolator. With all the pots and pans, one sad omission was a tea kettle. Unnecessary, granted, but something always nice to have. She had one now–chrome and black, with a flip-top whistle over its spout. And sooner, rather than later, she was going to have to spring for a small microwave. There were too many times when she simply did not want to bother to cook something just for herself, and heating the oven to 375 for forty five minutes for just one little frozen dinner was about as wasteful as a person could get.

Rusty moved into the living room with his coffee. “I wonder how much longer we get,” he said, settling back onto the newly-slip covered sofa. A warm, soft brown. The simple geometric print pillows in gold and greens were a bright, clean accent.

“They’re probably standing right here and have been all along, only we can’t see them. I know Raymond does that. Just waits for his moment.” She sighed. “I guess. I guess, shit. I’ll go let the cat in. The rest of you can do your trick.”

CHAPTER EIGHT (iterlude)

 

There is a power in the beginning of things and there is a power in endings. At the point where the two are alongside, never touching, there are infinite possibilities. In that space of time that does not exist, but which is beyond measure, the inconceivable may reach fruition, and dreams walk the earth.

Sophie’s Solstice CHAPTER SEVEN

 

For just one moment, the silence in the room was profound. Not even the cat was moving, not a paw or a whisker. In the far distance, down in the valley, an ambulance whispered its way to an emergency. Then, Clunk! Whirr! The refrigerator motor came to life, and Sophie realized she was standing with the freezer door still open. A glance. Everything to be cold was put away. At least she had some sense left.

“Let’s all go in the living room,” she said, at last.

Rusty stopped to open one of the bags. “I’ll get the slipcover.” She would have stopped him, only the male ghost and two new females had just arrived in the thin air not two paces behind him. Better if he kept his back turned for now.

The one woman nearest Sophie was tiny, and rather frail, probably in her thirties when she died. She might have been dressed for an office, a plain skirt with a silky little blouse, neat with tucks. It looked as if there ought to have been a jacket to go with it, left hanging on the back of a chair somewhere, sometime ago.

In truth, on her last day, she had just stepped out to have lunch on the terrace at the hospital where she was a minor administrator. The February sun was bright, and there was a bench by the wall, out of the wind. She always enjoyed the quiet there, away from the noise of the cafeteria and the closeness of the break room. It was on a day like this that David had proposed. Before the Gulf War took him. The tears caught in her throat, and choked her. The bite of sandwich in her throat finished the job. No one was there to help, and she died gasping for air.

The other figure seemed to disappear within a shadow, even as she stood in the light. A woman of late middle years, her shoulders were slumped, as in some bone-deep weariness or disappointment.

When Rusty turned around, the room behind him was full of people. And not a one of them was making a sound, except Sophie–and the cat, whose claws were ticking across the wooden floor as it trotted toward him. Sophie was breathing rather oddly, almost as if she were about to begin crying again. He was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable, when the little woman by the kitchen table said,”We are all being very rude. Please accept at least my apology, I believe you said your name is Rusty. That’s for your hair, isn’t it?”

“That, and for my last name, Russell. It’s either Rusty or my initials.” Who were these people, what did they want. And why did they keep staring at him?

Sophie took the slipcover from him, sat down on the couch, and patted the seat next to her. “Sit down and I will introduce everybody I know.” She looked a little grim. He found hinself blinking, trying to bring things into better focus.

The old man said, “Sophie, don’t beat around the bush about this. Let’s just get it over with. We have business to take care of, you know.”

“Shut up, Raymond,” she said. Then, “He’s right, though. Rusty. All of these people. They’re ghosts. Look at Raymond there. Look at him closely. You can see through to the bathroom door on the other side of him. The kitchen table behind Amy, look and you will see it. They are a long way from being as solid as they look. And, trust me, you don’t want to touch them.”

“How do you know what the rest of us feel like? You have only been around Grandaddy, here. He even looks fuzzy to me.”

“Amy, you look insubstantial to the rest of us,” said the younger male ghost. “My name, when it mattered, was Sean Jacob. I was a modestly famous artist before I died. In case you are curious, it was nothing tragic and exciting. I had an aneurysm in my brainstem I had no idea about. It went ‘pop’ one afternoon while I was in my studio, working, or planning to work, thinking. It hurt. Then it was over.”

“Well, I was just an innocent bystander, shot in cold blood,” Amy said, with more than a hint of melodrama.

Raymond raised his hand slightly. “Fell down and broke my neck. I used to live here.”

The little woman said, “Please, call me ‘Birdy.’ Some food disagreed with me,” she said primly.

“I am Elizabeth Rose Slaughter,” said the last of the ghosts, emerging from her introspection long enough to look around the room at the others. She seemed unimpressed. “I kept my married name after the divorce. That was my name for twenty years, and no whim of his should make me have to go through all the changes it would take to call myself another person. It was him that changed. I look in the mirror and see the same woman that was there when I married. Same eyes, same skin, same hair. A better style than when I was a girl.
“I have been a good woman.
“I had expected death to be different. More… total.”

Sophie was, understandably, overwhelmed. He ignored all the others. “Of course they’re ghosts, dear. Anyone can see that. I was just wondering what they are all doing here.”

“I know,” Amy sang out. “I know.”

“Hush.” Then to Rusty, “You might be just a little more, I don’t know, freaked.”

“Well,” he said, “it’s not exactly my first time. And, no, I would rather not talk about it in mixed company, if you get my drift.
“Do you know yet what it’s going to take to get rid of them? I can tell you one thing: the church is absolutely worthless when it comes to ghosts. Not even all that supportive.”

“You are interesting.” That was from the gray cat, who was looking at Rusty as if contemplating an odd specimen of something.

“I could say the same about him,” he said to Sophie. “And about you, for that matter. What did you do to acquire the menagerie?”

“According to, what was his name, Adolf?…”

“Otto,” said the cat. “He would say that it should be called properly by its German term: Das Zusammenströmen der Notwendigkeit. To put it more simply, a confluence of need.
“Our friends here need to move on, out of this dimension, and to whatever after death existence is waiting for them. Why they are here, specifically, we don’t know. There is something about Sophie that attracts.”

Rusty looked at her. She shrugged.

“Hell if I know,” she said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“I don’t think so, Alice,” he said. “This tea party is in your honor, if what kitty there is saying is right. They need something from you. You. Not just anybody out on the street. And you won’t be able to get rid of them until they get it.”

“You don’t have to make it sound so ominous. Raymond and I already figured out what needs to be done for him,” she said. “You said the name was on the saddle? Then all I need to do for him is make sure the guy is still at that address and then get a package to him. That is, if I can get it out of the garage downstairs without the landlady seeing me and calling the cops. It ought to be pretty simple.”

How many of the laws of fate and Murphy was she tempting with that?

“I think I have something that needs to be delivered, too,” the artist said.

“So Why didn’t you people just light in the FedEx office?” Sophie was irritated, she was tired, and she was hungry. Especially hungry. She was finding it difficult to concentrate properly. “Look. You just talk among yourselves for a while. Wherever it is you are when you aren’t here. Give me a few minutes to pretend I am still sane. All right? Then I promise. Everything in my power. Everything within reason, that is, I will do what I can to help all of you. Just give me some time.”

“You said…”

“Raymond. Please.”

“You want me to get out, too?” Rusty asked.

“You stay. We’re having supper like we planned. I’m sorry. I can only do one thing at a time. That is where I start My brain isn’t going to work, otherwise. And my body isn’t all that far from crashing, too.”

The less substantial beings left with varying degrees of grace. The Slaughter woman scowled and faded into a gloomy cloud that stayed around for some minutes after the others had blinked out of the room. Speaker walked a wide path around her to reach the door, where he waited with conspicuous patience for someone to see him out.
Sophie stepped onto the landing with him. The sudden freezing wind stung her face and whipped the sharp ends of her hair into her eyes. In the absence of the moon, the clear, dark sky was blazing with stars.

“This night, and the next, are the pit of the year’s days. The bowl of darkness, it has been called. Finish what has to be done before midnight tomorrow. The door begins to close then. If it closes too soon, they will be trapped on the side of life again. Who knows when they’ll have another chance?” Then he turned and bounded down the steps and into the stark black shadows.

She stood there, shivering, for a while, for some reason unwilling to return to the light and warmth of the apartment. It seemed right to be alone in the darkness and the cold, as if it were the only reality, and the other, brighter world was mere imagination.

After a while, Rusty came to stand in the open door, watching, quiet. She gathered herself and went back in. It was time to be normal and human. At least for a while. Later, the planning and the doing and the being someone or something else.

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

With Rusty following, Sophie drove the little Escort wagon back to the apartment. She had to agree that it was a more sensible choice than the Ram van, but what if she found something big? A comfortable sofa?

Rusty had looked appalled. “You do not move a sofa around by your self, innocent. The store delivers.”

The steps. And the narrow landing. She shelved that dream. Somehow Rusty had concluded that she was imagining new furniture. Had he even seen the inside of a Salvation Army store? This might be fun.

He was charmed by the building. “This is unbelievable. When do you think it was built? A little outpost of California in the thirties. The house, what is it, Tudor? No imagination. What is it like up on the roof?”

That was an interesting possibility. “I don’t know how you’d get up there. That’s funny, I just remembered. When I was young we lived down the street from a place. It had a bar on the street level, but there were stairs outside to apartments. One of my grandmother’s friends lived at the front, and her place opened onto a rooftop. She was an artist and used to open the french doors and have parties out there. It was covered with brown river gravel.”

“Ah, you little bohemian. You want a salon for all your artist friends?”

Her laugh had a slightly bitter edge. “I’m not very social.” A salon. The cat might count as a party in and of itself. She glanced at the brush around the clearing, but there was no sign of him.

Inside, the apartment was quiet. Sophie relaxed, suddenly aware of how tense she had been. Would having another living being around keep the spooks at bay? If so, she would, well…find someone.

“This. Is excellent. There is so much room. Of course, I would paint eventually, but even if you can’t it isn’t intolerable. One can always ignore white, when it isn’t too demanding.”

“I think it’s a little like a bowling alley.”

“The bouquet of spilled beer and rented shoes? The rumble of the ball. The crash! The clatter of pins. The suspense of that last wobbling loner. Will it fall or will it stand?

“Well, it is long, straight, and more or less bare wood. It would make a wonderful dance studio. A barre along the outside wall and mirrors opposite. Ceiling is too low. No elevations. What do you see yourself doing here? I’m not being nosy, at least not very.”

“The usual, of course. Watching TV, reading. I’m a software designer, and sometimes I work from home. I’m working on a novel that will never get finished, and then there is this.” She pointed to a large black case. “I need to set up my keyboard.” She hesitated, then hurried on, “It isn’t full size, and I just use earphones. All it’s for is playing around with, really, and a little writing. I got it cheap. All the paraphernalia cost almost as much as the Yamaha.”

“Then you need a work station. A desk to go alongside the keyboard. A chair.

“You know, if you put a folding screen back there, you could make almost a bedroom from half of that end of the room. Then you could use the other half as a studio. Some sort of divider, there, behind the couch. A bookcase or a table with some plants. This place does need some living things in it.

“We can do this! Come on. Miles to go.”

The shopping excursion was fun. It was trying. It was exhausting. And it was productive. Spending the afternoon with Rusty was a little bit like having Ramona back for a while, only a Ramona with sharper edges and more energy He was in his element in the holiday crowds, and had a surprisingly sharp eye for bargains. “I never pay full price for anything. Period. No matter how much you think you need it, if you can’t haggle for it or find it somewhere cheaper, you can always make do with something else. It may be better.”

Laughing out loud was so good. She felt alive for the first time in ages. Sometimes it did seem as if they might be attracting a little too much attention. Several times she had the feeling that people were staring at her.

“What do you keep looking over your shoulder at?”

“It’s silly. I feel like somebody is watching me.”

“Of course they are. It’s Christmas. The biggest shoplifting season of the year. The stores are full of innocent-looking people watching out for crooks. There’s also hoards of purse snatchers and pickpockets. Not to mention the fact that we are a striking pair.”

“Pshaw,” she said. It felt like the right thing to say.

They found the screen early, and a small flat-box table for Sophie’s workstation desk. That required a screwdriver. “You might as well get a tool set. You will need it sooner or later if you don’t.” They found an inexpensive basic set. It came in a plastic case–choice of pink or baby blue. “You are definitely a pink. Your hair and eyes. Pink and brown go well together.”

“Pink eyes?”

“Fool.”

He no longer referred to her height.

It was after dark when they finished their last stop. She went wild at the grocery store, stocking up on basics, buying useful things, and making hunger purchases left and right.

Once back in the alley outside the apartment, Sophie’s exhaustion began make itself felt on top of the hunger.  They left the furniture in the car, and a most of the other things to bring in later, but carried up the groceries and the bag from Linens Inc.

The cat followed them in the door.

Sophie looked at him. “Hi,” she said. “I bought you some supper, too, if you will just wait a bit.”

“You didn’t mention you had a cat.”

“I don’t exactly. He seems to have adopted me, didn’t you?”

Speaker stared at her. The tip of his tail twitched several times. He seemed to be considering his next move.

Sophie turned away and began putting food into the refrigerator.

Rusty said, “I’m going to go back down and get another load.”

“Good,” Speaker said.

“Did you say something?” Rusty turned around with his hand on the doorknob.

“Good,” said Sophie, “just ‘good’.”

When he was out and the door closed behind him, Sophie said, “He heard you!”

“I noticed. I didn’t expect that. It may be that we should have. Confluence of Need.”

“I don’t see Raymond. Did he remember the name of the guy we need to send the saddle to? I found the key where he said it would be, but I haven’t tried the lock yet.”

“Name’s on the saddle,” the ghost said, appearing alongside the table. “I wrapped the saddle with a clean sheet first and tied that, then it’s got two layers of plastic shipping wrap around it. The label is between the two layers. I don’t know how they missed it. It’s right out there in plain sight.”

“You should deal with that soon,” said Speaker.

“You should leave Sophie alone, catboy,” said the girl who suddenly existed just by her left elbow. “You, too, Grandaddy. Can’t you see she is busy? And tired, too. Those crowds were really something, weren’t they? I don’t know what moved you to go out to the mall. Y’all were doing just fine at those outlet stores. I’m Amy.”

The new apparition was a well-developed little redhead with a wide mouth and sharp chin. In her perfectly creased trousers and mint green twinset, she was the preppie college girl. Sophie stared at her for a moment. She had been right: there had been someone watching her earlier. The little bitch had been following her around all day, eyeing everything she did. Now she materialized eight inches from where she stood–purely for effect. Well, she could choke on it. Sophie returned to stacking the green Healthy Choice dinners in the freezer.

“Humph! What’s got her nose all out of joint?”

The man who materialized to Sophie’s right gave her a comradly wink, then wandered off in the direction of the door. “Your friend is on his way back up. A quick word of advice: tell the truth.” Then he disappeared.

Sophie looked around. Amy was still there. Raymond looked as if he were waiting for a cue from her. “What do you think?” she asked the cat.

Rusty’s arrival outside forestalled any more conversation. Almost overballanced with his load, he waited on the top step for her to open the door. “That’s everything except the screen and the table. Oh, hi. I didn’t see you when you went up. I’m Rusty.” He smiled at Amy and began setting packages down by the door. “You must be Sophie’s landlord, sir” he said to Raymond, and held out his hand, politely.

“Oh, shit,” Sophie muttered.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Sophie waved good-bye to her new friend Tahsin. The cabbie would have been willing to wait, but, nice as he was, the sound of the meter constantly ticking was getting on the last of her nerves. Finding Renta-Wrek had been an adventure for the two of them, although, in the end, it was only a few blocks from the highway and the used car lot where she had sold the Buick.
It was a hairbrained idea. The likelihood that the car would still be there was slim, and saying, “Excuse me, fellas, but I changed my mind,”… Still, she felt compelled to try. Nothing ventured. In this case, nothing gained. The Buick was gone, of course, and with that her hope of finding a cheap car… crashed. There was nothing on their lot over five years old. The salesman, seeing her as not even a lost possibility, was the one who suggested she try the rental company.

“They sometimes have one or two for sale. Take good care of their vehicles, and they only buy clean used cars. We sell some of our trade-ins to them now and then, and they are very particular about what they take. If they don’t have one for sale, you might think about leasing for a month or so.”

With that in mind, she threaded her way across the gravel lot toward the small cinderblock office beneath the huge Renta-Wrek sign.

The sandy-haired guy standing in the doorway was saying to the manager, “This one had better run.” He turned around and, seeing her, grinned. “Hey, you didn’t happen to see a green Buick Park Avenue anywhere, do you?”

She stopped dead in her tracks.

The Green Behemoth. Here? What were the odds? She looked around the lot for the first time. Unaccountably, there it was, just past the office. She pointed. “It’s a good car,” she said, with a catch in her throat. “Mom always changed the oil.” Then she was crying, like an idiot, in the middle of a car lot.

Rusty considered his options. He could be a good samaritan or he could be true to himself. The giant with the bowl cut spewing tears in front of him could probably use some help. And he did have another hour before he was supposed to meet Kitty and Roman, who would swoop in, fashionably oblivious, after he had been waiting for at least forty minutes.

“You want a cup of coffee,” he stated. He nudged her in the direction she had pointed before, toward an enormous heap he only hoped he would be able to maneuver off the lot. He missed his little conversation piece, that was so neat in its habits, not waddling all over the place like these American trolls.

The girl was digging around in her oversized bag. He hoped she had a box of tissues in there, since the waterworks showed no sign of shutting down.

She stopped when they reached the car. She patted it, fondly, on its rear end. “Last week. I didn’t need a car. So I sold it.” She stopped to blow her nose again. “Now I need a car. I was going to buy it back. They… sold it.” She started sobbing again.

The women of Rusty’s acquaintance might grow misty under just the right circumstances, but they would never on any condition, blubber in public. The idea of Roman waxing sentimental over a car of any sort was, frankly, too appalling to be humorous. This girl was making Rusty regret his impetuous offer. He wondered if it was too late to extricate himself from the situation. Behind the reflection of the traffic in the office window, he could see the lot manager, watching them. Probably wondering why he had not left yet, and what he had done to upset the oversized panhandler.

He opened the car door and slid in. The heap might be huge and aging, but she was well-appointed. And what did Mama do, only drive it to Sunday School? It had certainly not seen a family of three boys.

Finally he said, “If you would like to talk over a cup of coffee, come on and get in. Any number of people would swear to my character. I’ll even hand you my cell, and you can call anyone on the list.”

She looked at him as if her were an idiot. Then, amazingly, she laughed. It was crossed with a hiccup and mixed with a gasp, but it was a laugh, nonetheless.

Then, without explaining what she found amusing, she said, “Thanks. I believe it will be better in the long run if I take a few minutes and pull myself together. It’s very kind of you to offer.”

She kept blessedly quiet while he tried to familiarize himself with the controls. Even with its power steering, it was a bear to handle in tight places, and the aisles in the lot were narrow. It was a relief to get into the traffic on Main.

He chose to avoid any of his favorite haunts, although he did have to pass Tasse on his was to the Rose Park. The restaurant was likely finished with its lunch rush. The coffee was usually fresh, if not exceptional. And none of his friends would be caught dead there during the day, although after hours was another matter.

The parking lot beside The Rose was almost empty. One car he recognized was the owner’s, with her schizophrenic collection of bumper stickers. Pro-life, Wiccan, Anti-gun, Support our boys, slash W, ‘Nuke France’, ‘I heart my Doberman’, ‘Pickers do it with their toes’. Rusty knew for a fact that Amy did not own a dog of any breed. He suspected she just liked to use the stickers to get a rise out of people.

The old neon sign above the door was a simple pink flower edged in glass tubing. Rose Park was the street and Rose Park was the restaurant, and it had been around for decades, serving twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Holidays included. In the middle of the night the place was usually full of displaced people, drunks, and writers, and cops. Even in the daytime, the woman from the rental lot would not be out of place at The Rose.

Still, he steered to a booth toward the back, not too far from the ladies room, should she tear up again. While the waitress–it was Gina, with red hair this month–went to get their coffee, Rusty introduced himself.

The woman, who was probably close to his age of twenty-six, was Sophie Quick, an out-of-work software designer and a waitress at a Cedar Square place he never heard of. In this light, and now that she had washed her face, she was not bad. She had a good mouth, and he suspected that her eyes would be pretty when they were not so puffy. Seated, she didn’t seem so big. She was probably not more than four or five inches taller than his compact five foot seven.

She leaned back in the booth and propped her feet up on the seat next to him. He moved slightly to avoid her dirty tennis shoes. She closed her eyes. He wondered for a moment if she were going to just drop off and go to sleep.

She looked at him and said, “You would not believe the night I had.  And the morning.  The only reason I don’t think I’m going nuts is that everything is perfectly normal now.

“Do you believe in ghosts,” she asked, after a few minutes’ silence.

“I’m torn,” he said, “between believing that there is some sort of psychic residue left of the strong emotions people felt when they were alive, and the suspicion that something like subsonic waves disturbs the eyes and the brain.  Why?  Do you believe?”

“No,” she said.  “I don’t.  Believe.”

Then she switched the subject and her mood, and began telling her misadventures in the real estate market.  “Now I’ve found a place, but it is a three mile walk back from work at night.  I’d like to find a used scooter if I can’t find a cheap, dependable car, but either one may take a while to find.  Guess I’ll see what kind of a deal I can get at Renta-Wrek.  Then I have a ton of shopping.  That place.  It needs so much.”

“Shopping.  I love shopping.”

“Well, I don’t.  I mean, I do.  I enjoy window shopping and wandering around the stores.  But not having to buy things, and not trying to make things look right.  What I like the looks of and what I choose to buy aren’t often the same.”

“Would you like some help?” Rusty surprised himself by saying.

She sat up straight and looked at him rather oddly.  “Yes, I would,” she said.  “I would love some help.”

“Fine then, first let’s go and get you a car.”

Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Sophie stared at the cat.
Raymond stared at the cat.
The cat sat on his haunches and looked back at them, wondering why they were staring at him.

“You heard it, too,” said Sophie. I want a ghost to tell me I am still sane.

“He said something, all right. Only I don’t believe we heard him. I think it was the same way I hear you talking to yourself.”

“I don’t talk to myself. You get inside my head. Cat was that you? Say something else.”

The cat was even more nonplussed than the others. He had not intended to ‘talk’. He would never dream he could. It wasn’t anything he had done, just something that had come out of the blue. In the stories animals talk on Christmas Eve, but they are holy animals in holy tales. And it was not Christmas. He wasn’t even certain how to go about it again, it was just a thought that came out.

“Call me Esau,” he said. “It’s from the Hebrew. It means the hairy one. ‘And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man’ Genesis 27, Verse 11.”

“They say the Devil can quote scripture, but I never heard it said about a cat.”

“Are you the same cat that’s been around all day? Acting like a regular cat? Letting me feed you, begging. Wanting your head scratched.” Sophie was aware that her voice was growing shrill. She stopped. Glared at the cat.

“Yes. But you never heard me before. It happened.” He shuddered once and licked his nose. “Er sagt die Wahrheit,” the cat said, and shuddered again. He looked around behind himself. “That was an odd feeling,” he said, “I thought I knew all of my past lives, but I don’t recognize him. Kind German to testify to my veracity.”

What had seemed like a nice cat was turning into a pompous prig. Sophie wondered how the rest of his lives tolerated him. And just how many there were. Sybil-Esau the Cat.

“Esau. Was that your name? When you were alive.”

“No. There are so many names. It seemed best to choose one for us all. Don’t you like it? I considered ‘Shiva’. Would you prefer that?”

When Sophie closed her eyes she could see a pinched-faced little man standing there. He’s irritating, but he really wants to be liked. “Whichever you like,” she said. “Esau is fine. It is unusual.”

Raymond was fidgetting. “As much as I want to find out about your talking cat, I’ve got a problem of my own.”

“That’s right, you need to find your saddle.”

“That’s not all, Miss…”

“Stop calling me that,” she interjected. “My name is Sophie.”

“Miss Sophie. I need to get the saddle back to its owner like I promised. It was my word. I said I’d have it ready for him by Christmas.”

“That was last Christmas.”

He looked stubborn. “It doesn’t matter. I gave my word, and I’m going to do my best to keep it. Only. Only you’re going to have to help me.
“Once I find it, you’re going to have to be my hands.”

Sophie sat down, hard, on the chair behind her. She ought to have seen that from the beginning. She felt suddenly exhausted. “Somehow I can’t imagine this is going to be simple.”

The cat walked over and placed a paw on her knee. It was an oddly comforting gesture. “Why don’t you get some rest,” he said. “You can’t do anything for Mr. Satterfield until he finds his what he is looking for.”

Her reason agreed, and, Sophie decided even her emotions were deadened to the point that they could not keep her from collapsing. Raymond had already disappeared when she turned out the lights and stumbled to curl up in her sleeping bag. Once again.

* * *

Sophie woke with the sun full in her eyes. There was an argument going on somewhere in the apartment. Whoever it was, she wished they would go away and take the sun with them. She curled up as best she could, shielding her face with her arms, and tried to go back to sleep.

“You’ve awakened her, “ one of the voices said.

The only response was a rude snort.

The cat hopped up onto the bed. “Sophie,” he called, in a pleasant, coaxing tone. “Time to get up.” He walked around to the head of the bed and began fussing with her hair. “I know you’re awake. Come on, get up. You can’t sleep all day. Hop up and let the cat out.”

That was just too disturbing.

She did as he suggested without bothering to engage in conversation, and while he was gone, took a quick shower. With no shower curtain, she splattered the bathroom, and she felt doubly naked knowing that Raymond might pop in at any moment. But, she smelled rank, and that is the real mother of necessity. She dried herself with the XXXL Dewey, Cheetham & Howe Tee shirt she found for fifty cents at a Cedar Square yard sale. That was a purchase even her mother would have loved.

She was fully dressed and considering how to manage the shopping that had to be done, soon, when the cat scratched outside to be let in. When she opened the door, Raymond was leaning on the railing, talking to the cat.

“I always wanted to go there,” he was saying as they came inside.
“Miss..Sophie, our friend here tells me he is from Hawiia.”

“Esau?”

The cat rolled over once, while the voice that seemed to come from him, laughed. “My companion, the Priest, has an interesting sense of humor. He was called Father John when he was alive. I was No‘eau, and some of our other companions were Otto (whom you met briefly), Li, the two Davids, and Adonis. There are some others who have not introduced themselves by name. I believe they may consider it rude or, perhaps, dangerous.
“We have been discussing matters, and decided that among us we have some information that you ought to know.
“After some debate,” he chuckled, ruefully, “we are not a very good democracy, I was chosen to be Speaker. I guess that will do as a name, too. It doesn’t have the ring of ‘Call me Esau’, though, does it?”

Sophie looked at the ghost, standing quietly through all this. “You look pleased. Did you find it?”

“I did, indeed. It’s right downstairs. All we’ve got to do is open the door and get it out and send it off.”

“That is if you still have the name and if the address is still valid, and…you have to excuse me, if I think this is the bigger ‘if’, but if we can do it without my winding up in jail for stealing the thing from your sister.”

“Aw, don’t worry about Elizabeth. If it comes to it, you can always tell her about me.”

“Yeah, like she’ll believe that. ‘Please, Ma’am, don’t call the cops. I’m only stealing this saddle because the ghost of your dead brother here told me to. What? You can’t see him? Why, he’s standing right behind you making faces at me right now.’ Besides that, Raymond, I can’t even imagine myself breaking and entering.”

“You won’t have to do that. The spare key to the side door is right where I left it, under the second from the bottom step down there in a magnetic box. It didn’t take me but one time getting myself locked out and having to wake Ben up at three AM. You can bet money on it being there still.”

Speaker said, “As important as this is to you, there are some things Sophie needs to know, and soon. Let’s go in the other room where it’s more comfortable.” He stepped purposefully into the living room area and appropriated the single overstuffed chair. The ghost followed him and perched on the arm of the sofa.

Sophie wanted to balk. She was tired of having her life turned upside down. There was too much to do still. And she was hungry. Instead, she took her place on the couch. “So, what’s the scoop.”

“You know how they say, ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news’? We have some interesting news, and because of our varied pasts, we may be of assistance. If it’s any consolation, your life should return to normal in a few days.”

“Is that the ‘good news’? That eventually things will stop being bad?”

“It isn’t all that bad, girl,” said Raymond, “just interesting.”

“Like the curse: May you live in interesting times.”

“It was a bad choice of words,” Speaker said. “I’ll go on. Sophie, we have been aware of you for days. You have been like an movement on the edge of our field of vision, never there when we looked, always just too far away to find.
“We thought it was because you had come closer, physically, that we finally got a fix on you. But it was because of the time element, instead. As it grows closer to the Solstice, you are becoming more psychically magnetic. Otto calls it Das Zusammenströmen der Notwendigkeit. Confluence of need.”

“That is supposed to make sense?”

“Truth? No. It’s a description, not an explanation. There is power in the open door between the season of night and the season of light, and there is power in strong emotion. Yours are both a beacon illuminating everything around you, and a whirlpool, sucking up whatever is in your vicinity.
“Our friend Raymond, here, would never have corporealized without your presence. He responded to your nearness like one tuning fork vibrating in sympathy to another one already humming.
“We felt a physical discomfort that could only be relieved by being near you.”

“Well. Excuse me for living.”

The cat sighed. “You know better than that. No one here wants to hurt your feelings. You ought to be aware that in the next few hours, you will probably be having more visitors. If I were you, I would begin to but my head on straight.”

“I’ll leave.”

“It isn’t where you are. Raymond’s location was a coincidence. That confused us, too. It is who you are.”

“All right, I am the Magnet. Koo koo ka choo. Whatever. I tell you what. I am just going to do what I was planning and let whatever is going to happen, happen. I’m not going to sit around here waiting. I have things to do.”