Chapel of Ease (24 page)

“You wanted to see our wings,” Thorn said with a smile so seductive, it almost worked on me.

“This is who we are, Matt,” C.C. said. He looked more handsome than ever, his shoulders broad and his body sculpted like some romance cover model. “This is
what
we are.”

“We're real,” Thorn added. “We're the Good Folk.”

I had no available words, so I reached tentatively for the edge of Thorn's nearest wing. When I touched it, it felt like silk paper, delicate and fragile. Yet I sensed that it wasn't, that any weakness was simply an illusion.

My touch made Thorn gasp in an unmistakably sexual way. She closed her eyes and sighed.

I turned to C.C. and, my fingers shaking, caressed the edge of his wing. He responded with a similar sigh, and put a hand on my cheek. He pulled me into a kiss.

As he held me, I felt Thorn's hands lift my shirt up, and I let her take it off. I looked up into C.C.'s shadowed, enigmatic eyes as Thorn pressed herself against my back and began kissing my shoulders.

My voice shook as much as my hands as I asked C.C., “Can you fly?”

He smiled and pulled me into his arms. And then my feet left the ground.

As we rose into the night, the wind grew stronger, seeming to help lift me and keep my weight from hanging in space. C.C. and I kissed again, and Thorn's hands reached from behind me to unbuckle my jeans. It was all so mind-boggingly arousing that I didn't know or care whose hands caressed me, as long as C.C.'s arms were around me.

“This is just for the two of you,” Thorn whispered in my ear. And then she was gone.

C.C. and I kissed some more, turning in the sky, his wings effortlessly holding all our weight. I wondered how I'd ever find my clothes again, and imagined them spiraling out of the sky and landing across some old lady's porch rail. But truthfully, at that moment, I didn't care. I just didn't.

And then I opened my eyes and saw, unbelievably far below and shining in a moonlit clearing, a gray rectangular shape. It was the chapel of ease, glowing like a beacon in the darkness.

And then I didn't care about that anymore, either.

 

20

Things got … fuzzy after that, the way sex does sometimes when you totally lose yourself in it and your brain disengages so it doesn't ruin the fun. Eventually we came back down to earth, literally and metaphorically, in the same clearing we'd departed from, and our carnal adventure became much more mundane, though no less arousing. Finally, spent and exhausted, we lay looking up at the stars, legs entwined, until Thorn appeared and, amused, tossed me my clothes in a bundle.

“You're lucky I found everything,” she said wryly. “Now, get dressed, you two. It's getting late.”

I sorted through my clothes so I could put them on. I still couldn't tell you how long this adventure had taken, or how long we'd been gone from the farm.

Then, fully dressed and woozy from sex and magic, we walked out of the forest together, me between C.C. and Thorn, and all of us kissed each other good night with the sad resignation of knowing this would likely never happen again. But it had definitely happened … hadn't it?

I watched Thorn sashay across the yard toward the house, the hem of her sundress swaying against her calves. She hummed a tune I didn't recognize, and her arms swung with weary contentment. C.C. and I remained at the edge of the forest, holding hands, silent until we heard the screen door slam.

I turned to him and said softly, “You don't have to leave.”

“I can't stay,” he said with a sad smile.

“Then I could go home with you? …”

He shook his head. “Not tonight.”

“Are you sorry this happened?”

“Not at all,” he said, and his kiss convinced me.

“Then why can't I go with you?”

“Because I didn't get anything done workwise today, so I'll be heading out in—” He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “—a few hours. But I'll come by after breakfast, don't worry.”

He kissed me again. I watched him climb into his truck and drive away, the noise incredibly loud in the night's silence. His taillights disappeared as he turned onto the road.

I was left outside alone. The wind continued to blow through the trees, and I sat on the porch swing, which luckily didn't squeak when it moved. What had just happened, what I'd just learned and experienced, wouldn't process; my brain had no context for it. I was numb, not just from physical satiation (and there was plenty of that) but from simply being brain-fucked by all this.

Still, the night and the swing began to work, and I grew sleepy. The swing sported a pair of musty old all-weather pillows, so I kicked off my shoes and stretched out as comfortably as I could. My overstimulated body gradually wound down, and I suppose at some point I dozed off. That is, until a familiar voice said, “Hey.”

I opened my eyes and half rose on my elbows. He sat at the other end of the swing, my feet in his lap. He wore the same tattered denim jacket, and grinned like he knew the biggest secret in the world.

I said, “Ray?”

He put his finger to his lips.

“Ray?” I repeated as a whisper, and sat all the way up.

“Hey, Matt.”

“Am I … Is this really happening?”

“Who am I to say, man?”

I looked around. It was still night, yet somehow I could see everything in exquisite detail. I could feel Ray's presence beneath my feet, too, so I discreetly drew up my knees. “Shouldn't you have, like, a blue glow around you or something?”

He laughed. “What, like I'm some Obi-Wan Kenobi? Foolish you are, yes.”

“That's Yoda.”

“I was never a fan. It didn't have any good songs.”

I'd never met anyone who wasn't a
Star Wars
fan, so I doubt my subconscious would have made that up. Okay, then, this was reality, at least for the moment. “What is … Why are you here?”

“That's the question I've got for you, actually.”

“Why am I here?”

“Yeah.”

“Because I brought your ashes home.”

“Yeah, I appreciate that. But
now
why are you here? Come on, it's rhetorical, I know why you're here. It's because of the chapel of ease.”

I said nothing, but I couldn't deny it.

“And now maybe C.C., too,” he continued. “But the chapel is at the heart of it.”

“Yeah, I suppose. Maybe.”

“So back to my original question: Why?”

“Because you were supposed to tell us the secret.”

“What secret?” he said with a laugh. “What's buried there? Dude, I told you, it
doesn't matter.
It's the mystery that counts, not the solution. Suppose you find the bones of a dead baby—what then? Or a box of Confederate gold? Or a diary with its pages all crumbling, telling old family secrets?”

Those were, in fact, ideas we'd had and pinned on the backstage board, and it made me wonder anew if this wasn't all coming out of my subconscious. I'd heard of lucid dreaming, but never experienced it; was this what it was like? It made sense that I'd conjure up Ray after everything that had happened, but was this what I'd have him say?

“So is anything buried there, or did you make it up?” I asked.

“Oh, no, there's something there. I've seen it. I'm just asking, what will knowing that change?”

“It'll mean you kept your promise, for one thing,” I said, a little annoyed.

He looked away with a scowl. “Yeah, I know. But you want to know a secret?”

“Sure.”

“I was planning on weaseling out of it.”

“So you made a promise you intended to break?”

“No, I made a promise to give you guys something else to focus on. You were bringing my show to life, I would've done or said anything to help with that.”

I was fully alert now, and close to being pissed off. “That's pretty fucking manipulative, man. We trusted you.”

“That's showbiz.”

“So you're not going to tell me, then?”

“What, now? Is that why you think I'm here?”

“I don't have a clue why you're here. Or even
if
you're here.”

“Are you planning to help my sister get out of Needsville?”

“Yeah,” I said before I even realized I meant it.

“Good. She needs it. She's more talented than I was. But just … be gentle with her.”

I remembered the way she'd behaved earlier, in the air. My God, that really
had
happened. “She seems pretty … sure of herself.”

“She is. She's tough and smart and driven. That's why I want you to be gentle with her. If you're not, no one will be. They'll see that toughness and think it goes all the way to the bone. It doesn't.”

I nodded. “Okay. I'll watch out for her.”

“Thanks.” He smiled again, then lightly punched my shoulder. I felt the impact as if he were as real as me. He said, “So you and C.C., huh?”

I grinned. “Yeah.”

And suddenly I snapped wide awake. I nearly fell off the porch swing before I caught myself. My heart ping-ponged around in my chest, and I gasped for breath.

One of the dogs—Ace, I think—emerged from beneath the porch and came up to rest his head against my leg. I scratched him behind his ears as I waited for my pulse to calm down. Clearly I'd been dreaming, but did that mean I
hadn't
actually spoken to Ray's ghost? Was there some rule that said ghosts couldn't show up in your dreams?

I looked up at the starry sky visible past the porch overhang. Had all that been a dream, too? I mean, could I really have been up in the air with my literal fairy lover?

I shook my head rapidly to clear the last of the cobwebs, then went inside to my room as quietly as I could. I undressed and eventually fell asleep, half-expecting Ray to return in my next dream. But he didn't, and whatever I did dream didn't stick with me the next morning.

 

21

At breakfast, Gerald seemed stiff and cranky, but otherwise in pretty good shape for a man who'd been shot less than twenty-four hours earlier. He still wore the sling, and his shirt was awkwardly buttoned so that the bandage beneath it showed. The rest of the family acted as if nothing had happened, including Thorn: she smiled at me with no hidden mischief or knowing glances. It made me doubt my own memories.

As I sat nursing my coffee and ignoring my eggs, I looked around at this family and tried to process what I'd learned. If I was right, if my experiences last night had been genuine, then they
weren't human.
They were unearthly supernatural creatures, hiding behind the images of regular small-town folks.

I thought back to the people I'd seen and met at the barn dance. Were
they
supernatural as well, hiding diaphanous, shimmering wings beneath their old suits and overalls? It seemed impossible, but either I'd hallucinated the previous night, or my whole view of the universe would need to change.

And Ray … Ray had been a fairy, too. Big, goofy Ray, with his cowboy boots and sloppy ponytail, could transform into a creature that could fly effortlessly around Manhattan. Or could he? Could they only change here, where they were safe and secure? I remembered that night on the roof after the preview, the last time I spoke to him before he died. He kept looking up; was he expecting his fellow Tufa to swoop down and carry him off?

“Anybody want the last biscuit?” Gerald asked, and when no one spoke, he grabbed it with his good hand. Ladonna bent over him, cut it open and buttered it, then kissed the top of his tangled hair. He said, “I reckon I better call Bliss and ask her how long before I can take a shower, or y'all will make me start sleeping out in the barn.”

“I'll call her later this morning,” Ladonna said.

I watched her carry her plate to the sink, scrape off the remains of her eggs, then rinse it and set it aside for washing later. When I looked back at the table, Gerald was watching me.

“Son, I hope you'll excuse my language,” he said, “but you present the appearance of a man who knows he's about to shit a pumpkin.”

“Gerald!” Ladonna scolded.

“Well, look at him. He keeps staring at us.”

I looked at Thorn for some guidance, but she just sipped her coffee. At last I said, “I had some pretty strange dreams last night.”

“That'll happen,” Ladonna said, and patted my shoulder. “But you're awake now, and everything's normal.”

That made me stare some more. Thorn smiled behind her coffee cup.

As she refilled Gerald's coffee, Ladonna asked, “Matt, would you mind singing some more of the songs from Rayford's show? Gerald was telling me last night how much he wished he could've paid more attention to what you sang yesterday.”

“I was kind of preoccupied with not bleeding to death,” Gerald said.

That brought me out of my haze a little. “I have the whole score on my iPod. All the demos. It's Ray singing, too.”

“We'd love to hear that, too,” Ladonna said. “But not right now. Right now, we'd like to hear you sing it just for us.”

“Nothing beats hearing it live,” Thorn interjected.

I helped wash the dishes; then we adjourned to the living room. The three of them sat on the couch and I stood in front of the television. I wondered about Ray and his strange appearance on the porch. Was that how a ghost, or rather a “haint,” really manifested? Or had I just internalized C.C.'s story of the old man at the fishing hole, overlaid it with my own memories of Ray, and then dreamed the whole thing? And if it hadn't been a dream, was he also here now, waiting to pass judgment on my performance just as he had in New York?

I began with the overture number, the same one I'd performed at the wake, and essentially sang them the whole score. I did better on my own songs, since I'd practiced them more, but I didn't do too badly on the others. It took a little over an hour, some of the songs didn't really translate to a capella, and I had to stop once to rest my voice and rehydrate. But they seemed really pleased with what their son had created.