Eeyore and the Sanguine Spell
Linen almost has hypothermia; Walter realizes his spell worked
[You remember Walter, my imaginary boyfriend, my fellow anemic and fellow anorexic (well-controlled)? The one who’s a serial killer? When I left him and Linen in January 1998 in the attic apartment on Bishop Street in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, they’d both been turned into ethereal beings. Ghosts. This happened partly because of Walter’s sanguine experiment, which turned out to work. And it happened partly because as they were both on the point of death Linen sacrificed herself for him, sending her little bundle of soul-stuff his way. But then he batted it back like a Wiffle ball and they both ended up with a bit of it.
Now it’s the next day, and they’re more or less human again, except they have:
Rapid healing
Cold presence
Animal speech (I only realized that writing)
Imperviousness to cold (fading, apparently)
Partial invisibility — people don’t notice them unless they want them to
Linen’s just ghostly around the edges; Walter is a good quarter ghost. They’re bound to be pretty eerie by now; Walter’s soul sped straight to Hell where it belongs and they’re sharing Linen’s between them.
But it’s the human part of them I’m interested in. They have to figure out how to live in the world and with each other. They can worry about Walter’s soul later.
PS. If you’re looking for the New Confederacy stories, I took them down because I am querying agents about them. Real agents. And I gave a reading of Ducks and Drakes. And people asked if they could buy the book. Not YET!!! But one day, maybe. Anyhow, reach out if you were halfway through and I’ll send you preview links of any posts you missed.
PPS. More Surreal Tender in a few days, promise. Right now she’s daydreaming in Nun’s Well while Mr. Carker borrows her Stanley roadster to chug about the countryside and look for clues. He’s beginning to think Diana von Birkhausen, original and inventor of the technomancers, may still be alive … ]
When Walter woke up he was reclining against the gravestone of Major Wilbur T. Sharpless, 1827–1863, and Devoted Wife, Eliza Shipton Sharpless, 1826–1878. Snow had fallen and was falling, blanketing his body and that of the woman in his arms with a quarter inch of wet white fur.
He blinked snow off his eyelashes. Then he rubbed his nose. The tip — he had a long thin nose that alway seemed to be running — felt quite cold, but why was that strange?
He thought it through. Strange because that morning — sunny, about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or a good 15 degrees colder than it was now — he had walked through the streets of Bellefonte with his jacket open, feeling nothing but warm.
Linen had slung her big Navy coat over her shoulder. That was her name, the woman now using him as a bolster pillow. She told him her name last night, a few hours before he killed himself and her. Linen. She was an adjunct professor; she didn’t much like her job; she loved mountains and forests and gardens; she had a twin sister named Lacey, who was dead.
That was all he knew about Linen. Oh, and she gave her life for him. He remembered that, too.
But she was not dead now. Like him, she was breathing. He peered at Linen. He was poor with faces and could not remember hers. All he could see from this angle was the shoulder of her Navy coat and a head of pale, snow-covered hair.
Walter told himself he would have to study her face next time he got the chance. It would be humiliating not to recognize the features of someone who gave you their life.
That morning, they ate ice and more ice. They made snow angels and lay in the imprints, watching the sun swing to noon and past. Sparrows landed on them.
That morning, he felt no cold. His wounds were healed — and his body had been covered with cuts and punctures and other injuries in various stages of healing and suppuration. And he didn’t feel —
— he thought it through —
He didn’t feel like killing anyone.
When he was in the mental home, a boy with an overeating disorder told Walter that the hard part was that he was never not thinking about the next meal. In the same way, Walter had never not thought about killing someone. Himself, usually; other people, from time to time. It was always very specific. He didn’t want to hurt anyone or frighten them. He wanted to bleed them to death, or perhaps starve them, like that nurse in England who starved her charges.
Walter wasn’t a kind person, but he wasn’t a psychopath, either. On any given day, three-quarters of his mind space was eaten up with detailed thoughts about killing himself or others, another 20% was allotted to keeping from doing any such thing (he made detailed plans not to ever let himself be alone with people, for instance), and the remaining 5% was assigned to making a living and getting on with life. In solitude, of course, that was safest.
In that way he had managed not to hurt anyone except himself, not from the time he killed Laura back in 1990 until last night.
But there it was. A day ago he felt the cold as much as anyone else, or more, because he was so thin. He had been impervious to cold 12 hours ago. Now he felt the cold a little bit again. And now the three-fourths of him that thought only of emptying himself or other people more and more and more until there was nothing left —
— was gone.
Gone for now, he told himself. It wouldn’t do to let his guard down. But for a few hours around dawn he and Linen had become something like human-shaped forms filled with light. And now that gleam was fading, but he still felt changed.
He shivered. No, Linen was shivering, shaking. The cold had crept up on her while he thought. The snow fell harder. The temperature rose another tick.
What a mess if it rains, Walter thought. Rain on deep, established snow on a dark January night would be pain, and they were a mile from home.
“Linen? Linen, wake up.”
Her damp head butted against his chin. “Mmph?”
“Can you sit up? We’re getting snowed under.”
Linen sat up onto her knees and stared in all directions.
“We fell asleep in the cemetery,” Walter explained.
“Oh … ”
He peered at her face but couldn’t see much in the dim purple air. Snow fell between them. “Can you get up? We need to get home.”
Linen stood up. Walter tried to stand but his legs were asleep. He staggered and fell, then clawed himself up again, leaning on Major Sharpless and devoted wife Eliza.
He saw Linen turn left to right, looking for the path. She was still shaking. She fumbled with her coat buttons.
“Here.” Walter buttoned her up. “Hands numb?”
She nodded. “I think I lost my mittens.”
“We gave them to those mice … Linen, did we talk to mice today?”
“Maybe for a minute. I thought it was a dream.” She blinked up at him. “I thought it was a good dream, like the Babes in the Wood, the dream they have when they’re dying. The birds cover them with strawberry leaves, remember? And I was sad to die, but happy that it happened, that this day happened when we talked to mice and birds and made snow angels. And then I woke up and you were here and I’m alive and it’s still happening. The good dream is still happening.”
They could now see nothing but shadow. Walter, though, had grown up playing in this cemetery. He took Linen’s arm and began leading her to the path that ran down the side of the slope.
“You’re the first person I know to describe the day of their murder as a good dream,” he said to her.
“How many murdered people have you known?”
“Two, but you’re the first one who woke up.”
“Oh.”
They were silent a minute. Linen lost her footing and Walter caught her.
“Thanks.”
“When everything sinks in, I imagine you won’t want to be around me any more,” he said. “But today has been nice.”
“I will always want to be around you,” Linen said. “You’ll be the only person who understands.”
He had not thought of that.
“But that sounded oppressive, didn’t it?” Linen added. “I’m sorry. Of course I’ll leave you alone if you like.”
Walter reached inside his jacket and put his hand over his chest, hooking his thumb against his sternum and his middle finger between a couple of ribs in hopes of steadying his heart. It sped sometimes, something he had been told had to do with his anorexia. Any other day, he hoped the moth’s-wing flutter meant he was dying at last. At home, he would lie down on his bed to enjoy it.
Stop it, he said to his heart. He had things to do, and the moment of tachycardia was inconvenient, at least. For the first time in his life, he had a reason not to die, at least not for the next few hours. He had already murdered Linen once; he could not now desert her in a ghostly half world.
They came to the bottom of the cemetery. In front of them stood a copse of trees and, beyond that, sheds and the back lots of run-down businesses. A road crossed their path and sloped downhill on either side.
“Where do you live?”
She looked around. Her laugh pealed. “In the hollow hills with the little men.”
Her euphoria, paired with her hand still shaking in his, was starting to distress him. Cold, he thought. Hunger. Shock. “Just say the street address, we’ll find it.”
Linen repeated her address. Walter knew where it was. They turned right and slithered down the hill.
Linen’s kitchen was so narrow you could sit at the two-person table jammed against the window and open the oven to see if your dinner was ready. Walter’s knee pressed against icy glass; his foot rested on the electric register along the baseboard.
Linen had finished her soup and bread. She now watched him, chin resting on folded hands.
“Good night,” she had told Walter an hour earlier.
He held the door open.
“What is it?”
“I’m coming in. You’re not well.”
“But you don’t like me.”
“We’ll overlook that for now.”
Inside: “Do you have a kettle?”
She pointed it out. Walter made tea. “You’ll need to strip off your clothes, every last scrap, put on everything clean and dry.”
Linen started up the stairs. She had a small, high house that might once have been a barn; the two rooms of the first story had a low ceiling, while the upper story consisted of an open loft and a bathroom. “Maybe I’ll take a hot shower,” she said.
“Not yet, you’re not steady on your feet. A good steaming bath, now — ”
“No tub. And I don’t need help.”
“I’m just here to catch you when you fall down the stairs.”
Walter sat across the staircase while Linen turned the corner and went down a step into the loft. He heard her rummaging around, then silence.
“You’re in Shaw’s house,” he said through the wall, hoping to keep her awake.
“What?”
“Thomas Shaw, he was an escaped slave Mr. Parsons here worked with,” Walter answered. “The big house across the drive was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Old Parsons had it full of hidey-holes. I’ve seen some of them. But I’ve never been in this little house before.”
“He let Mr. Shaw live here?”
“Yeah, they got on so well Shaw never went any further north. Old Parsons gave him the barn for his house, and he fixed it up like you see here.”
“Not this paint, I bet,” Linen said. The inner walls were painted dusky rose and emerald green. It was a bit like living in a greenhouse.
“No.”
Downstairs she was happy to sit at the kitchen table while she told him where to find soup, bread, and butter. They split the can of soup and ate one slice of bread each.
Then she watched him for a while. She asked: “Could we talk about what happened?”
Walter nodded. “I’d like that. In detail, if it’s all right with you. But not tonight. I’ll need to organize my thoughts, and I do that best privately.”
“I understand.” Her mouth quirked up. “You’ll share your conclusions, but won’t show your work?”
“Of course I’ll appreciate your input.”
Suddenly her voice was made of magnolia petals. “How considerate of you.”
“It’s not that.” He folded his hands and rested his chin on them. Then he changed his mind and clasped Linen’s folded hands, holding her as she had held him in the coffee shop 24 hours before. “We are changed. I don’t know what happened. I have to get ahold of myself before I can think straight. When that happens, we’ll talk it through together. I promise.”
“Are you warm?”
Walter sat on the edge of the bed. Beside him, Linen lay under a pile of comforters.
“Mm-hm.”
“You feel like you’re still shivering.”
“Comes and goes. I think I’m all right.”
“Make sure. Or I’ll have to come in with you, and we both know how that ends up.”
She laughed, then, hearing silence, lifted her eyes. He was not smiling.
“I’m all right.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Walter felt Linen’s hands again. Then he picked up the end of the comforter and felt her nearest foot. Everything seemed warm. He had layered four blankets on the bed.
“Don’t go anywhere tomorrow,” he said. “Just rest, okay?”
She nodded. “You, too.”
“I don’t imagine you’ll want to see me anymore, but I’ll come walk you to the bus Monday.” He stood up. “Like I said, this spell worries me. I didn’t know it would work, and I’m not sure what it does, or will do. It’s acting a little unexpected, so far.”
“All right.” She rolled away from him and pulled the blanket up around her ears.
“We don’t have to talk, or anything,” Walter said. He held onto the doorway. He did not actively think about the walk home, 25 minutes or so through the dark, but he felt dread. He knew without turning his mind to it what the dread was: the absence of the desire that had been his god, his lover, his child, and his dear enemy for half his lifetime. He could no longer stride along through the icy dark absorbed in his negotiation: One ounce. Two. Three, but I’ll drink that Yuengling porter in the back of the fridge. No, that’s a lot of calories, 180. I’ll drink half. But that wastes half. All right. Eight ounces and I’ll drink the porter. And all the time the growing anticipation of the bite of the lancet —
All that was gone now. All gone.
It had been malevolent, pitiful madness. But it had interested him, engrossed him. It was his whole life.
And now it was gone.
“You’ll probably be back in your right mind by then,” he went on, “and anyone in their right mind would hate me. But I feel responsible — I mean, I am responsible. So — ”
“Don’t be such an Eeyore.” Her hand felt along the edge of the blanket. “Where are you?”
“Over here. Leaving, remember?”
“Yes, go home, it’s late — ”
“Good night.”