Authors: Renee Manfredi
Anna sat. Something wasn’t right. She pressed the blanket to her face, inhaled her granddaughter’s scent. It smelled a little sweaty, sour with illness or fear. An animal moved at the corner of her vision. She turned, but saw it was just the wind, not a living creature, moving the leaves and shrubbery. There was something else. A presence, a feeling of being observed. Anna walked to the edge of the porch, squinted into the darkness. An insect brushed against her cheek. She smelled roses and lime shaving cream. Anna rarely thought of sex, even more rarely wanted it, but there was something about the night, with its wintry air and the emotions swimming around in her—nostalgia, anger, and, inexplicably, fear—that made her want it now. With no one in particular, without any special tenderness, or, God forbid, false expressions of love, just a healthy strong man who could reawaken her body’s responses. Once again, she heard something rustling in the bushes beside the house. “Marvin?” she called, but there was no one there.
*
Flynn sat on the railroad tracks waiting for the midnight train. She felt like she was still stuck in a dream, only half aware of what she was about to do. This was best, she knew, because she had seen the future last night in her dreams and it wasn’t something she wanted to be a part of: Jack would die soon, so would her grandmother. Last night and early into this morning, she saw the rest of her life. She would marry and live in France, but it would be an unhappy marriage. She would be an artist creating things in blue glass, but even this would not make her happy. She would have a son, but not a daughter, and, most terrifying of all, she would develop a disease in her forties that would slowly paralyze her and confine her to a wheelchair long before she would actually die. She would be completely alone, her son turned against her by her ex-husband, under the care of a nurse who didn’t treat her very well because she didn’t have to; Flynn couldn’t speak but even if she could, no one was there to listen. There were wonderful things before this happened, but not so many to compel her to stay. She knew what would happen after she did it: they would be angry with her, just as in the dream last night her mother was angry when she saw Flynn and said,
what are you doing here, you’re not supposed to be here
, and they would put her with the angels for a while, make her sit among them but not be able to experience the joy they had, the place where every living thing had a voice. Her mother was dead, Flynn was sure of this. She’d been dreaming it for weeks.
The angels had come to her last night and showed her things, warned her that time was no better healer of wounds than mercy. They told her in the world of spirits time was measured only by completion, interruption, and violence. She would be sent back, and her next life would be harder but more rewarding. The punishment for what she was about to do was that she had to be in her father’s group again, as his mother, which was far worse than being his daughter. He was moving in the wrong direction, toward the dark and not the light, and he had many more lifetimes to learn his lessons. His had been a soul greatly admired: he’d lived twice as a beggar, which was greatly esteemed because it taught people charity and compassion. Before that, when he was new, he was one of the extremely rare beings formed from two separate places: the realm of the angelic and the realm of the human-divine. Sometimes, though, the angels got
jealous—they were imperfect, too—and they did bad things. In her dream last night, she saw and understood everything.
Before bodies, souls had colors. Her father had the blue of the angels swirling through the yellow-white of the human-divine. The angelic part of him sang along with the blue flowers, the bluebells and violets, a silvery wet sound in the key of C. Perfect C was what the angels were pitched to. An important task of angels was to escort all souls to the birth tunnel, one on each side, their bodies acting like skin to protect the new being from the dirt and darkness of the human world. There was a small space, a gap, where they had to be extra careful, and that was the border between these two places. This was the place of nowhere. The time of nothing. The place where no heavenly bodies could rule, and no bodies that were human could stay. Underground creatures dwelled here and were hateful.
With Marvin, one of the jealous angels moved just a fraction of an inch, and darkness rushed in. That angel had received the worst possible punishment: it was torn from the angelic realm and forced to become a human spirit. And, even worse, Flynn learned in her dream, the spirit wouldn’t be blessed with forgetfulness, it would always remember in a vague yearning way the blue and white happiness of the angels’ special place. That’s how bad it was to do something unkind and unloving to another being, Flynn was told by a man in her dream. Angels feared one thing and that was becoming human: the worst possible situation for them was to be encased in small spaces like human bodies that demanded to be fed and satisfied. The angel had been Anna, and now she, too, was bound to Marvin. The three of them, Flynn saw in her dream, would be back in the same group, with Marvin and Anna as husband and wife, and Flynn as Marvin’s mother. Poppy would be a mentally ill mail carrier who poisoned all the neighborhood dogs. She, a he, in the next lifetime, would go to jail for doing terrible things to children where he—she—would be murdered after ten years. A terrible war was coming and Flynn was to be a soldier in charge of a settlement camp after the fighting ended. Her life would be lonely and she would be blamed and hated for a food shortage and for enforcing laws—who could bear children, and who couldn’t; executing people who committed hate crimes—that were designed for the continuation and improvement of the species. In the world to come, only kindness mattered. She would be shot to death eventually, but Flynn would do good
in that future lifetime, fulfill her purpose.
In the distance Flynn heard the faraway whistle of the train. It was time, and now she was really frightened, not of dying, but of getting it wrong about being forgiven. Hell was where the unforgiven went. Flynn hadn’t seen hell, but she knew there was such a place. This, where she lived now, might be hell. She walked down to the track and lay down. Two Native American men lay beside her. One of them showed her how to make herself small so it wouldn’t hurt at all. But something or someone wouldn’t let her do this. When the train was close enough so that she could feel the vibrations in the track, she half sat up, about to change her mind. She was so afraid! No one in her dream had told her how afraid she would be; the angels told her there was nothing to fear. She wished she didn’t know the things that she did, wished she couldn’t see so far or so clearly. What if she was wrong about everything? What if she was just a psycho mental freak like kids at school said?
Lining the track now were all sorts of people—not anybody she recognized—who were staring at her. She didn’t know why they would be interested in her or appear glad to see her.
Watch my eyes
, an old man said. Flynn looked at him, and realized he was her grandfather. At least, he looked like the photograph her grandma had on her night table. She kept her eyes on his, felt the Native American men push in closer to her, their soft leather shirts like another person between her skin and theirs. This is wrong, she thought. I don’t want to do this. But now she couldn’t move and the train was so loud she heard it through every bone in her body. She didn’t feel anything, and just at the last minute, when the train was above her she saw a terrifying creature with red eyes hanging on to the underside, a creature from the place of nowhere, the time of nothing. It was like a badger only with a human face and very very angry—the Indian men squeezed against her so hard with such firm pressure that she popped right off the tracks. Now she would have to go home. Now she would have to finish out her life unhappy and crippled and lonely. She began to cry, because she was stuck in this dark dream, this thick darkness and clumsy body of a twelve-year-old girl when she’d been so close to being free of it all. She turned her head to the left and saw the lights from her grandmother’s house. She heard singing from somewhere, voices talking with echoes in them. There was a vibration in her chest, a rattling in her and she
knew she probably broke some bones because there was a rattling and a vibration, now moving up to the top of her head and causing a terrible pressure, a pain worse than anything she imagined possible.
Slip out
, a woman said. Flynn looked down, saw a pair of red shoes and a lawn with croquet wickets.
Slip out
, a woman’s voice said again,
just like your body is a sweater you’re taking off, and follow me
.
Flynn didn’t have any idea how to do this. She couldn’t move anything but her eyes. She felt the waiting presence of this woman, her grandfather and the others. She had to learn it before they could help her. She watched as the woman walked toward the wickets. They grew tall as she neared them, high enough that they cleared her head, then shrank back down when she passed through. Flynn watched as the woman’s red shoes got farther and farther away. She was moving in the direction of the sun, walked until the white light surrounded her and made her a shadow against it. Flynn again felt the humming in her head, now worse as she looked at the light, which she thought might be some kind of food, because in her body were thousands of buzzing mosquitoes frantic to get at it, so many of them that they pushed her head out to twice, three, four times its size until it exploded with a large pop like a gunshot. After that she felt better, could take a deep breath again. She was going to be okay. She stood up, turned toward her grandma’s house. Turned the other way. Turned back again. There was nothing there. She looked in every direction: nothing. The croquet wickets popped up one by one, becoming arches of light. A red soccer ball rolled toward her. She kicked it, then followed its rolling path; it stopped at a field of bright green grass where very tall women were wearing shoes the color of cherries and playing soccer.
Am I dead? Flynn asked the woman, who only smiled, and took her hand. Her grandfather appeared suddenly on her other side. They began to walk together. Flynn thought of Anna suddenly, of Jack, and instantly she was at her grandmother’s house, standing with her grandfather watching Anna sitting on the porch looking out at the sea. Anna snapped her head around when Flynn moved in close.
Can she see me? Flynn asked her grandfather.
No, but she knows we’re here. Kiss her goodbye, she’ll be with us soon
.
Flynn moved in close, closer. But she couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t get Anna to see her. Her grandfather turned her a little to the left,
so she was positioned beside Anna at a forty-five-degree angle, and told her to call her grandmother, call her name. Flynn did so, and Anna turned to answer her. They were on the beach together, walking in raw weather and looking forward to chowder and warm sweaters.
I’ve been so worried about you, Anna said. Where did you go?
Don’t worry. I’m with my grandfather, and new friends. The flowers grow really fast here. We’re waiting for you
.
I want you to go back to school, Anna said. You’ve missed so many days you’ll never catch up.
I can’t go back to school, Anna, I’m dead
. Flynn felt her grandmother’s shock, and it was so forceful that it pushed Flynn half a mile away. She waved to her, turned, and felt the sand rise up in a giant wall against her back and push against her firmly, not in a mean way, but in a way that told her she no longer belonged. She walked into a swirl of blue and white and looked down to see her feet in red shoes.
Anna sat up in bed sweating, heart pounding from her nightmare. She walked into Flynn’s room, and found it was still empty, her bed untouched. Marvin said he’d talked to her on the beach, just after the party ended. He said she told him she’d be back shortly. She checked Jack’s room, the bathrooms, downstairs.
She went into the guestroom where Marvin and his girlfriend were sleeping. The woman was so little that at first she thought it was Flynn entangled in his arms. Anna shook him awake. “Something is wrong. Get up. I can’t find Flynn anywhere.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m coming.”
The two of them searched the house again, then walked in opposite directions on the beach. Anna remembered the train tracks, how she’d found Flynn there several times, and turned in that direction. It was still an hour or two before dawn, but there was a full moon, enough light to see outlines and shadows.
She reached the crest of the hill overlooking the tracks, but didn’t go any farther. She called Flynn’s name several times. If Flynn were anywhere in the vicinity she would have answered. Anna turned to go, but then stopped and looked around again. There was something here, her granddaughter was here, or had been here. The air felt thick, a lacy humidity
clinging to her skin. “Flynn?” she yelled again, her heart pounding. She peered down and scanned the tracks. The times Anna had found her here she’d been in this spot exactly, either on this knoll or—twice—sitting on the tracks directly beneath it. She started down the hill.
We don’t want your grandma to see you this way
, Hugh said to Flynn, as he made the ground swell with tree roots to trip Anna and make her fall. Anna’s ankle buckled and twisted beneath her.
I’m sorry, sweetheart
.
“Marvin?” Anna shouted, hobbling back in the direction of the house. Her ankle was useless; it wouldn’t hold her weight. She called him three times before he answered.
“Where are you?” he yelled, and she could barely hear him over the crash of the waves and the high wind. He got to her finally. “Did you find her?”
“No. But I fell. I twisted my ankle, and I can’t walk. I need you to go and get Stuart’s Jeep and drive back to get me.”
He picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all.
“This isn’t necessary. You can’t carry me the whole way back. If you’ll just go and get the Jeep—”
“It’s no trouble,” he said.
They fell silent. Anna closed her eyes, breathing in the salty wet cool smell of the sand and the creatures the tide brought in.