Mr Wicker Page 28

  “I didn’t mean to,” Alicia said. “I –

  (a puff of smoke in her eyes)

  —want them—

  —BACK!”

  Alicia stopped breathing. Grainy TV patterns appeared before her eyes as she felt herself go faint and slump to the ground, the hot cement banging her bare knees and scraping them like a thousand pins. But this time she didn’t fully lose consciousness the way she did when she was a baby. She was a big girl now, the doctor said, and she wouldn’t suffer what he called “breath-holding spells” much longer. She’d been having them since she was two years old, and even suffered a bad one when she’d discovered her mother’s body hanging in the garage. The doctor said they weren’t her fault. They happened in-volun-tarily. (Alicia had memorized that word.) But soon, they’d not happen at all.

  The strain wrung her fragile body like a washrag. She let her body go limp.

  Lillian dropped the dolls and crawled over to Alicia’s prostrate body, the rip in her pink corduroy jumper yawning across her kneecap. Her head blotted out the scorching sun as she peered down at her older sister. The winds were picking up, as Daddy used to say. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what, stupid?” Alicia gasped, the blood slowly flushing her gauzy head. While she thought her younger sister was kind of stupid, she was deeply attached to her. Alicia had taught her to walk and draw letters and everything—usually, though, by saying, “It’s easy, dummy. Just...” Fill in the blank. That was all it took to inspire Lillian, who did not want to be thought stupid or weak by her pretty and smart older sister, whom she let do the talking whenever any adult was speaking to them. Even grownups thought Lillian was slow. And Alicia could not dream of doing anything without her sister—the one person who had been there for her through the awfulness of losing both Mommy and Daddy in the space of a few months. They had held each other and cried so many times she couldn’t count. And Alicia could count pretty high for her age.

  “I wanna hold my breath,” Lillian said.

  “It’s easy, dummy. Just go like this...” Alicia sat halfway up, leaning on her elbow, and sucked in air until her cheeks bulged like a trumpet player. She let out the air.

  “But I want to hold it longer than you,” she said. “Let’s see who can hold it longer. Let’s try.”

  “Okay.” Alicia orchestrated with her index finger. “One, two, three.”

  The two girls dramatically inhaled and clamped their lips shut. The stillness of the incandescent summer air impregnated the bower for a few moments as the two stared at each other, not breathing, not moving. Alicia felt too uncomfortable as the fiery swells pulsed through her chest. Without her wanting it to, her mouth opened and the air rushed out. Lillian did the same, and they giggled.

  “That wasn’t very good,” Lillian said. “Will you help me, Alicia? Help me do it. For, like, a minute. Or two minutes. You can hold your breath for two minutes, can’t you?”

  “I dunno. I guess.”

  “Then help me do it longer than two minutes.”

  “Okay. One, two—”

  Lillian inhaled as before. Alicia counted out loud. “One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand...”

  When Alicia reached fifty, Lillian’s face blanched and her eyes quivered like the worms in her grandfather’s fishing bucket. Alicia kept counting despite the obvious distress on her sister’s face. Just as she was sure Lillian would give up, Lillian pointed to her mouth and slapped her hands over her mouth and nose, holding on.

  “...fifty one-thousand, fifty-one one-thousand, fifty-two one-thousand...”

  During the second minute, Lillian grabbed Alicia’s hands and slapped them over her mouth and nose. She sagged to the ground as Alicia continued to count. Her legs kicked in the air, which made Alicia giggle. “Stop—one-thousand—moving! one-thousand—” As if challenged by her sister’s resistance, Alicia—the stronger and sturdier of the two by far—planted her hands over Lillian’s mouth and nose more firmly. She dug her fingers under Lillian’s chin to keep her mouth shut as it tried to work open. One of Lillian’s hands worked free from the strangle but rapidly lost direction, at first flailing toward Alicia and then falling to the side, her medical alert bracelet tinkling against the pavement.

  When Alicia reached a minute and a half, Lillian had stopped moving, but she kept counting, her sister’s body slackening beneath her hands.

  “—and sixty one-thousand! Two minutes! You did it!”

  She lifted her hands from her sister’s rubbery lips with triumph, somewhat annoyed that Lillian had made it but also pleased with herself for helping Lillian master something new, even if for not as long.

  Lillian’s lips parted to emit the startling stench of vomit that had filled her mouth. Her head fell to one side, the deep bruises from Alicia’s fingers darkening on her pale throat and cheeks.

  “Lillian? Lil-li-aaan!” Alicia sang, poking her sister. “Come on. Stop pretending to sleep. Come—on!”

  But Lillian didn’t move. Strange red splotches dotted the whites of her eyes and splayed over her face like bloody freckles.

  Confused and alarmed, Alicia drew back from her sister until the threatening thorns caught her hair on the other side of the circle. She wanted to cry for her mother, but keen sorrow rather than words stung her tongue. What had happened to Lillian? Why was she lying there that way?

  “Lillian? Little Rose?”

  Her grandfather, but almost thirty years younger. Just as she remembered him. He grasped Gog and pulled it back effortlessly as he stepped with a slight sway into the sanctuary.

  “What’s holdin’ up the show here? Yer grandmother’s been calling you for lunch.”

  Alicia’s eyes caught her grandfather’s as they locked on Lillian’s lifeless body. “Lillian! LILLIAN!” He knelt beside her and cradled her head, noting the bruises and other marks. The fumes from the whisky he’d been drinking ripened in her nose as he spoke, smearing with the odor of Lillian’s vomit.

  “She asked me to help her hold her breath the way I do when I get the faints. She wanted to do it better,” Alicia said.

  In the distance, Alicia’s Phantom Grandmother opened the patio door and called out. “Leesha! Lillian! Lunch is ready!”

  His eyes watered in a terrible way as they widened and he turned to look at Alicia. “Run!” he whispered harshly.

  “Why?”

  “Run, child! Run! You never saw this! You never set foot in this circle, you hear me?” Tears bled from his red eyes and scrawled his leathery cheeks. “GET OUT!”

  The song of the book’s ink fell silent.

  Free from the vision but not its trauma, Alicia knelt where she fell in the memory, vomiting into the soil at the base of the roses. She hadn’t died in the bathroom but in that circle of roses with her sweet innocent sister. And all her life she’d walked, death and decay, blossoms dropping from rot. Her grandfather whom she had loved had taken the onus for her unspeakable act; she could not bear the memory.

  Run!

  She crawled beneath the thorns, scraping her hands and arms on the cement. She then staggered to her feet and ran to flee the filth, the guilt smearing her skin so thick the stench caught a scream from her throat and flung it to the winds unfurling above her like dry white sheets. Balloons and birds belonged there, in the air, not her guilt. Not this tsunami of agony. And there was no God to hear it.

  Dr. Farron’s car screeched to a halt in the driveway next to Alicia’s rental car. She had to be here, dead or alive.

  Alicia burst from the yard like a bird. She tore across the adjoining field, which Dr. Farron recognized from the descriptions of her hypnosis sessions. He wrenched open the car door. “Alicia!”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. Rather, she ran across the large green field as she cried. The tall grass whipped against her legs. He chased after her. The roaring Santa Ana winds stole his voice whenever he tried to call her name. She ran across the field and into the train tunnel.

  Dr. Farron sto
pped. There was no way he would follow her. If she wanted to die, he must let her. Judging by the newness of the Amtrak signs, the track was active. He could not risk himself any more than he had. But he dropped to his knees in the grass and called to her. “Alicia! I care about you! I’ll help you through this! I swear!”

  He heard the distant blast of the train inside the hill.

  Alicia entered the tunnel, time slowing until she felt like she was barely moving, arm up over her head. This time she would not jump aside. She would meet death head on.

  As if an answer to prayer, the approaching train rumbled, its unbending beam of light flooding the tracks and tunnel. She opened her arms. Christ-wide. The train light baptized her on the tracks.

  “...I care about you! And I’ll help you through this! I swear!”

  The words broke her conviction. She torqued away from the light, toward his voice, and ran. The train bore down on her. She did not want to die. She did not have to die. And she remembered why.

  But it was too late.

  Huginn alighted at the tunnel opening, the brutality of mortality fraying her senses. Still, she saw.

  She told.

  And he knew.

  Mr. Wicker, who did not know time. He stood outside of it yet kept it rolling forward like a man pushing a barrel full of heaven’s finest wine.

  He bent his head in the Library before the arching lavender window with the light he so loved and abhorred. For what it brought. And for what it took away.

  He bent his head with a single candle in hand, hoping for this one favor. And he blew on the flame.

  The train tunnel opening exploded with flames. They swallowed Huginn as she flew back home.

  Dr. Farron hit the grass, covering his head with his hands.

  In the field...

  ...in the smoke...

  ...in a searing plume of light...

  ...Alicia appeared...

  ...running...falling...onto the grass.

  Gasping for breath.

  “James!”

  He grasped her with all his might and life.

  And she did likewise.

  Chapter 45

  Mr. Wicker knew Georgeta had entered the Library before he saw her broken features. The girl’s feet dragged against the floor. She did not look him in the eye, even when she stopped beside the table where he stood. She laid a hand on the surface and hung her head.

  Holding up Georgeta’s book, Mr. Wicker asked, “Is this what you want?”

  Georgeta nodded.

  “Do you mean to pass on?”

  Silence.

  Mr. Wicker gave her the empty tome. She had given him nothing, yet she wanted it anyway.

  “Are you afraid?”

  Georgeta nodded.

  “Come here.” He pulled two chairs from the table and brought them together. He sat in one and Georgeta sat in the other beside him, hugging her book. “When you go into the light, life goes on. You may come out a tree, or a kitten, or a river. But most likely you will find yourself to be a new girl. Or perhaps a boy.”

  Tears rolled from the corner of Georgeta’s one good eye.

  “Why the sorrow? Either way, you will re-enter the circle of life. Old Mr. Grumpy Pants can’t even do that.” He paused. “That’s me, by the way.”

  Georgeta wiped the tears with her fingers. “I miss Alicia, the lady who used to hold my hand. Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know. But she is well, I suspect.” He missed Alicia more than anyone could know. “Well and happy.” He sensed Georgeta was not pulling out of the funk, despite this news. He honestly had not expected Them to free her in the tunnel, but They did. And it cheered him, even though now she most likely lived with the Celt. He knew that the love they were meant to share would not die. “Would you like to see her again?”

  Georgeta nodded vigorously.

  He hunched slightly and whispered in her ear: “I will put in the good word and see what I can do. Perhaps in the circle of life you will rejoin them.”

  Pulling back her shoulders, Georgeta swelled with hope. She hugged him. Her warmth buzzed through him with an auspicious strength. It reaffirmed what he’d resolved to do once she left. To think, he’d worried that Sirona would expel him from his world when it was Litu. The one who’d imprisoned him now wanted to free him. He’d already said goodbye to Huginn and Muninn, letting them return to their Norse master. The other ravens had fled after them to swarm the great halls of Valhalla. Without them, his bones weakened and the ink faded on the page.

  From between the stacks, the radiance hummed invitingly. Georgeta slid off her chair. She turned to him and gave a little-girl-bendy-finger wave before she skipped into the light.

  “Goodbye, Georgeta.”

  Mr. Wicker set down his quill for the very last time and the Library was quiet.

  Chapter 46

  Dear Grandpa Sam,

  I know this letter must come as quite a surprise after all these years. I’d somehow blocked out the memory of what had happened that day—the day you gave your life for mine—and since then believed Grandma’s admonitions to never contact you. Now that I remember what happened, I want to write to you. When I found out you were living in Montana, that you’d taken up drug and alcohol counseling as a community service when you got out, I thought I’d send you a note.

  I was having a difficult time in life when I remembered. I was sick with breast cancer. The good news is that the lump was encased in a fibrous sheath that they were able to remove with ease. I had some radiation treatment but that was all. Pretty amazing, eh? A hospital in Berkeley took care of my treatment gratis. Unfortunately at that time, Grandma passed away. She’d suffered several strokes. I don’t know if you know much about me, but I’m writing again and that seems to be going very well. And I’m engaged to be married. He’s an exceptional man. A real-life Orpheus.

  The guilt, though, was eating me alive. I went to the police in Simi and talked to old Sergeant Rogers of Homicide. He’d been a regular cop when Lillian died. I told him about the breath-holding game, how I was really the one who accidentally took Lillian’s life. He wouldn’t even take a statement. He talked about how you’d served your sentence, the justice system had played its hand, and that the only person who could challenge your conviction would be you. And if you hadn’t by now, you probably never would.

  Be that as it may, I couldn’t stand the void of real justice. I want you to know how much I love you. There isn’t a bigger place in my heart for anyone as there is for you. I know that probably doesn’t mean much after the terrible things that have happened. I’d understand if you threw this letter right in the trash. But I couldn’t go another day without saying it. And any time you feel like saying something—anything—I’m here for you. Because you showed me there is something worth living for in this world, something I had when everything else had been taken from me: I had your love.

  Thank you, Grandpa.

  Love,

  Your Granddaughter Alicia

  Acknowledgements

  Some stories take years to slither into the light. Mr. Wicker is one of them. I’m grateful for Neil Gaiman’s input on the original novelette and his reminder that, in fairy tales, “things come in threes.” It made all the difference.

  The story had such haunting visuals that I had to adapt the novelette to screenplay. Screenwriters Adam Campbell and Sean Dickson, actress Elyse Ashton and industry friend Kelly Brice read the adaptation. Their feedback and encouragement were priceless. When the script became a quarterfinalist in The Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, I knew I had a great story. Despite numerous meetings, Hollywood wasn’t ready for it and I had more to say. So, I adapted it to novel.

  In hindsight, taming wild weasels would have been easier.

  My gratitude goes to Dr. Jen Thompson for sharing with me her experience working in a psych unit. (I wish more professionals would have agreed to being interviewed.) I’m also grateful for my readers: Devi Snively; Susie Putnam;
Elyse Ashton; Bret Shefter; the Dark Delicacies writers’ group, in particular Jodi Lester, Lisa Morton and John Palisano; and the late Rebekah Owen. A big thanks goes to Jeanne Cavelos and Theodora Goss at the Odyssey Critique Service for their invaluable help. My copyeditors Faryn and Beverly are amazing people.

  But it is to Dr. Maurice James Moscovich, professor emeritus in Classical Studies from the University of Western Ontario, that I raise a large Grecian urn of honeyed wine. Thank you, kind sir, for taking me under your wing and teaching me about both Roman hostage-taking practices and the Gauls. Et merci mille fois for critiquing Drunos’ story.

  Most of all, I deeply thank John and Jennifer at Raw Dog Screaming Press for believing in me and Mr. BBQ Butt.

  Lugus bless you all.

  About the Author

  Maria Alexander writes pretty much every damned thing and gets paid to do it. She’s a produced screenwriter and playwright, published games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, interactive theatre designer, prolific fiction writer, snarkiologist and poet. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Chiaroscuro Magazine, Gothic.net and Paradox, as well as numerous acclaimed anthologies alongside living legends such as David Morrell and Heather Graham.

  Her second poetry collection—At Louche Ends: Poetry for the Decadent, the Damned and the Absinthe-Minded—was nominated for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award. And she was a winner of the 2004 AOL Time-Warner “Time to Rhyme” poetry contest.