A Certain Slant of Light

A Certain Slant of Light

by

Laura Whitcomb

Dedication

For my mother, who was both Quick and Light
—
my first protector, my model of clarity and forgiveness.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my family—my wonderful parents, the dear Jon Whitcombs, the
darling Marshes, my own Nick and Molly, and beloved Cynthia, who mentored
me from my teen scribblings. My writers' support group (Kristi, Linda, Leona,
Jackie, and Cherie), my star sisters (Hilary, Ruth, and Sat-Kaur), and my Chez
Day buddies (Pam and Susan). Denise (my spirit sister), Michael Scott (my
biggest fan), and Peter (my pirate in paradise). Compo, my first writing teacher. Ted Gideonse, for all his help and encouragement. Eden Edwards, my editor, for
her brilliant guidance. And a special thanks to my agent, Ann Rittenberg, for
being spectacular.

 
One

Someone WAS LOOKING AT ME, a disturbing sensation if you're
dead. I was with my teacher, Mr. Brown. As usual, we were in our classroom, that safe and wooden-walled box—the windows open
ing onto the grassy field to the west, the fading flag standing in the chalk dust corner, the television mounted above the bulletin
board like a sleeping eye, and Mr. Brown's princely table keeping
watch over a regiment of student desks. At that moment I was
scribbling invisible comments in the margins of a paper left in
Mr. Brown's tray, though my words were never read by the stu
dents. Sometimes Mr. Brown quoted me, all the same, while writ
ing his own comments. Perhaps I couldn't tickle the inside of his
ear, but I could reach the mysterious curves of his mind.

  
Although I could not feel paper between my fingers, smell ink,
or taste the tip of a pencil, I could see and hear the world with all
the clarity of the Living. They, on the other hand, did not see me
as a shadow or a floating vapor. To the Quick, I was empty air.

  
Or so I thought. As an apathetic girl read aloud from
Nicholas
Nickleby,
as Mr. Brown began to daydream about how he had
kept his wife awake the night before, as my spectral pen hovered
over a misspelled word, I felt someone watching me. Not even my
beloved Mr. Brown could see me with his eyes. I had been dead so
long, hovering at the side of my hosts, seeing and hearing the
world but never being heard by anyone and never, in all these long years, never being seen by human eyes. I held stone still
while the room folded in around me like a closing hand. When I
looked up, it was not in fear but in wonder. My vision telescoped
so that there was only a small hole in the darkness to see through.
And that's where I found it, the face that was turned up to me.

  
Like a child playing at hide-and-seek, I did not move, in case I
had been mistaken about being spotted. And childishly I felt both
the desire to stay hidden and a thrill of anticipation about being
caught. For this face, turned squarely to me, had eyes set directly
on mine.

  
I was standing in front of the blackboard. That must be it, I
thought. He's reading something Mr. Brown wrote there—the
chapter he's to study at home that night or the date of the next
quiz.

  
The eyes belonged to an unremarkable young man, like most
of the others at this school. Since this group of students was in
the eleventh grade, he could be no more than seventeen. I'd seen him before and thought nothing of him. He had always been va
cant, pale, and dull. If anyone were to somehow manage to see
me with his eyes, it would not be this sort of lad—this mere
ashes-on-the-inside kind. To really see me, someone would have
to be extraordinary. I moved slowly, crossing behind Mr. Brown's
chair, to stand in the corner of the classroom beside the flag
stand. The eyes did not follow me. The lids blinked slowly.

  
But the next moment, the eyes flicked to mine again, and a
shock went through me. I gasped and the flag behind me stirred.
Yet this boy's expression never changed, and next moment, he
was staring at the blackboard again. His features were so blank, I
decided I had imagined it. He had looked to the corner because I had disturbed the flag a little.

  
This happened frequently. If I were to move too quickly too
near an object, it might tremble or rock, but not much, and never
when I wanted it to. When you are Light, it is not the breeze of
your rushing past a flower that makes it tremble. Nor is it the
brush of your skirts that starts a drape fluttering. When you are
Light, it is only your emotions that can send a ripple into the tan
gible world. A flash of frustration when your host closes a novel
he is reading too soon might stir his hair and cause him to check
the window for a draft. A sigh of mourning at the beauty of a
rose you cannot smell might startle a bee away. Or a silent laugh at a misused word might cause a student's arm to prickle with an
inexplicable chill.

  
The bell rang, and every student, including this pale young
man, slapped books closed and stood, with a scrape of chair feet, shuffling toward the door. Mr. Brown snapped immediately from his bed dream.

  
"I'll bring a video tomorrow," he said. "And don't fall asleep during it, or I'll make you act it out yourselves." Two or three of
his students groaned at this threat, but most were already gone,
mentally if not physically.

  
So this was how it began. When you are Light, day and night
have less meaning. The night is not needed for rest—it's merely
an annoying darkness for several hours. But a chain of days and
nights is the way in which the Quick measure their journeys.
This is the story of my journey back through the Quick. I would
climb into flesh again for a chain of six days.

I stayed shamefully close to my Mr. Brown for the rest of the day.
When you cleave to a host, it is not necessary to shadow the per
son from room to room. I would never follow a male host into the
bath, for instance, or into the marriage bed, man or woman. I
learned from the beginning how to survive. From the moment I
found my first host, I had been devoted to the rules that kept my
punishment at bay.

  
I remembered all my hauntings clearly, but only a few images
stayed with me from the time before I was Light. I remembered
a man's head on the pillow beside me. He had straw-colored hair,
and when he opened his eyes, he was looking not at me but to
ward the window, where wind was rattling the pane. A handsome
face that brought no comfort. I remembered catching a glimpse
of my own eyes in the window reflection as I watched this man
ride away on a black horse through the farm gate, the horizon
heavy with clouds. And I remembered seeing a pair of frightened
eyes looking up at me, full of tears. I could remember my name,
my age, that I was a woman, but death swallowed the rest.

  
The pain, once I was dead, was very memorable. I was deep
inside the cold, smothering belly of a grave when my first haunt
ing began. I heard her voice in the darkness reading Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale." Icy water was burning down my throat, splin
tering my ribs, and my ears were filled with a sound like a demon howling, but I could hear her voice and reached for her. One des
perate hand burst from the flood and caught the hem of her
gown. I dragged myself, hand over hand, out of the earth and
quaked at her feet, clutching her skirts, weeping muddy tears. All
I knew was that I had been tortured in the blackness, and then I
had escaped. Perhaps I hadn't reached the brightness of heaven,
but at least I was here, in her lamplight, safe.

  
It took me a long time to realize that she was not reading to
me; nor were her shoes spotted with mud. I held her, yet my arms
did not wrinkle the folds of her dress. I cried at her feet like a
wretch about to be stoned, kissing the hem of Christ's garment,
but she didn't see me, couldn't hear my sobs. I looked at her—a
fragile face, pale but rosy at the cheeks and nose as if it were al
ways winter around her. She had gray duck-down hair piled on
her head like a bird's nest and sharp green eyes, clever as a cat's.
She was solid and warm with a fluttering pulse. She wore a black
dress with mismatched buttons, the elbows worn thin. Tiny spots
of ink dotted her butter-colored shawl. The cover of the little
book in her hands was embossed with the figure of a running
stag. It was all real and blazing with detail. But I was shadow,
light as mist, mute as the wallpaper.

  
"Please help me," I said to her. But deaf to me, she turned
the page.

  
"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird..." As she
read aloud the familiar words, I knew what I was. I stayed by her
side for hours, afraid that if I looked away from her or tried to re
member too hard how I had come to be in hell, I would be
thrown back there.

  
After a score of pages, my host closed her book. I was fright
ened by the idea that she might put out the light when she went
to her bed, and this panic made me fall on her again. I threw my
head into her lap like a heartbroken child. The book fell from her
hands and dropped through me onto the floor. I was startled at
the painless flick of sensation. My host bent to retrieve the book
of poems, and as her body passed through me, I felt myself drop
ping down and then soaring up again as if I were on a child's
swing. A most peculiar expression came over her face. She placed
the volume carefully under the lamp on the desk beside her and
took up pen and paper. She dipped at the ink and began to write: