A/N: I'll leave feedback to reviews at the beginning of the next chapter. Thanks for reading!
~12~
Now (2009)
They didn't visit Casey that day. That afternoon Olivia arrived at the inn for her yearly artist retreat; she scrimped and saved all year for her seven days at Breakwater Bed and Breakfast. As soon as the fifty year old woman had unpacked her bags she set off down the path to the beach with a sketchpad and pencil in her hands, wearing the orange vest that Elsa had pressed on her.
Despite the wise autumn sunshine filtering through the leaves, the house seemed imbued with stormclouds. Anna was restless; she begged Elsa to join her in the garage while she worked on restoring a 1970 Dodge Challenger. Elsa sat by the workbench with her notebook in her hands, content to listen to music and the sounds of metal on metal under the chassis of the car. They were Anna-sounds and therefore beloved.
The family members checked in on them from time to time, but no one really had anything important to say.
Anna died at 9 pm, cuddled in Elsa's arms. After she died, Elsa kissed her forehead and ached for sleep.
There was no sunlight the following morning. Heavy storm clouds had rolled in from the ocean, and the inn was pelted with stinging and malicious rain. Elsa lugged Anna's body into the hot shower and waited those exquisitely long four minutes.
Four minutes, the length of time it took for Anna to die by drowning nine years ago.
Beads of water hung on their skin, and Anna's hair was dark with it. She was still so cold, so very cold and dead.
A watery gasp, and Elsa was catapulted into panic mode.
Anna opened her mouth and screamed, and this scream was somehow even more dire and revolting than yesterday, for this had never happened before, not this, not two red nights following each other. Normally months would pass between the red nights, months to help them forget the metallic and bitter taste of blood.
Anna paused only to catch her breath; Elsa used the opportunity to turn off the shower and try to pull Anna out. The screams turned watery and weak; sobbing started with ferocious intent. Elsa was hard pressed to hold Anna upright as she tried to wrap Anna in a towel. She could only pray that Olivia wouldn't hear them.
Her partner must have been too exhausted to continue screaming as she did only yesterday, for she stopped screaming rather quickly, crumpled in a heap on the bathroom floor, sobs hitching and racking her chest. Elsa pulled on her robe just as Haley peeked through the door, her eyes wide and frightened.
Their eyes collided with each other over the towel-wrapped form on the floor. Mist from the shower clung to the window as if trying to escape the confines of the bathroom, propelled by sound waves of the screams.
"So soon?" Haley asked from the doorway. She was wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt, blue flannel pants and pink bunny slippers, but her eyes had never quite looked so old.
Elsa nodded, a little curt. Haley helped her half lift, half drag Anna into the bedroom, hoisting her into bed. Haley's eyes were apologetic as she handed Elsa the recorder, and another refreshing jolt of anger coursed through Elsa's veins. Before her father died, Elsa had known that God was cruel, had known it like a person in the Bahamas kind of knew that snow was cold.
Such intimacy with that nature of God since then, such firsthand experience of winter cold and cruelty.
Barbed wire fence. There were only two fingers and a thumb on her left hand, and people tried not to stare.
Haley retreated, shutting the door behind her, and Elsa held Anna in her arms, cursing the cruelty of God.
As before, she kept her eyes open, trusting the recorder to catch all the words. It took a long time for Anna to calm herself enough to speak. When she did, the words etched Elsa's skin like acid.
It had been another girl, trembling on the cusp of adulthood. Anna had actually seen the face of the man who killed her; a young face, rather plain, contorted by pain and rage. He had loaded his father's hunting rifle and drove down quiet suburban streets to wait for her outside her house.
The girl had blown her mom a kiss as she stepped into the night; off to the movies with her friends. The town had only one theatre, and the chick flick had excellent ratings; she had hoped to arrive early enough to get good seats and to beat the concession line that would snake even outside the theatre doors. The popcorn at this theatre was the best she had ever had; fresh and white, with none of the artificial colouring so often put in popcorn in the bigger cities.
She had locked eyes with her assailant for one moment before he lifted the gun and blew off her head. The recoil of the rifle would leave a bruise on his shoulder.
This girl had no grand dreams of the future, of becoming an astronaut or an actress. All she wanted was to enjoy life.
The horrified mother had fainted dead away; the father's fingers trembled and convulsed as he phoned 911. Later, the police would force the young man's truck to the side of the highway, taking places behind the cruiser doors to protect themselves from the rifle in his hands.
An unexpected gift; Anna could see the name of the town on the cruiser doors. It was Brooks.
An older officer who had never witnessed a homicide before, he was a traffic cop, really, and content to write tickets to place under the wipers of cars; he shot the young man in the shoulder to bring him down. It had been a perfect shot, a textbook shot, and after having the best sex of his life with his wife that night he would admit that he could scarcely believe he had done it, for it felt like someone else had pulled the trigger, some divine presence helping him wound the young man enough to bring him in and charge him for his heinous crime.
The girl had come to Anna in the grey underbelly of the unseen world, had pulled Anna to the scene of her death and then implored Anna to tell her parents that she loved them, as if she somehow knew that Anna was revenant, about to return to the formed world at 6:04 in the morning.
Why only these red spirits and not others? There was certainly more than one act of bloody violence throughout the world at night. Was there some connection between these particular spirits, however faint, to the fortune teller, or even to Anna herself?
Later, Haley took the recorder, tight-lipped and wary. The rain didn't let up all day; Olivia spent most of her time in the public common room, reading by the fire with Cub at her feet. Could she feel the spooky caress of the unseen world, alive and ignorant as she was?
Elsa could scarcely remember such ignorance, such bliss.
Haley stayed in her room most of that day, running endless searches on Google, more for the previous day than this one. She came out in the evening, rubbed her bleary eyes and asked Anna to make her some "special" coffee, which usually meant anything hot with caffeine and a tot of rum.
Elsa was a useless lump on the kitchen chair and the characters stayed away. It appeared they had their own universe of problems, but they weren't sharing them with Elsa. Beth, her editor, would be alarmed if Elsa told her. Elsa didn't tell her; she had no difficulties in burning the midnight oil when a deadline loomed. Sometimes she almost needed the cracking rush of adrenaline to burst through the story.
So that day passed.
She and Anna slipped into bed early that night, but Anna turned her back to her, facing the piebald walls with their marks of red and blue. Elsa wanted to touch her before she went cold, but Anna's bare back was like a wall. Elsa closed her eyes. When Anna died she shone like a fired star, and Elsa could see the light as pinkness through her eyelids. After many restless moments, Elsa slipped from the bed to kneel on the hard and cold floor, not able to pray for any greater blessing than a blue night.
She could not voice the great despair in her heart, the cataclysmic idea that Anna could be taken from her forever, never to return from her imprisonment of the unseen world. She was not as brave as Anna was; she would not be able to bear it.
Her knees ached by the time she finished, yet it took some moments for her to get off the floor. Her body creaked and moaned as if nearing sixty, not forty. She crawled back into bed, knowing it would be useless.
A blue night, please.
Elsa didn't often get what she wanted, at least not the way she wanted it.
The following morning was another red morning. Another young girl, a foreigner this time, stabbed to death in some Eastern European country, blood erupting like lava from a volcano. Anna couldn't translate her words, and guessed the origin only from the Slavic tilt of her speech. Anna did not scream as much that morning, not for lack of violence. Could someone really grow accustomed to this, to treat it as a matter of course?
More time was spent in the garage watching Anna work, and Elsa held her notebook quiescent in her hands. Her characters were hushed and silent. Elsa wondered if she could ever write a story again.
After the fourth red morning in a row, Anna shambled like a zombie into the kitchen. No one objected when she had a cup of coffee, and Elsa watched her hands tremble. Renee made most of the breakfast, just as she had been doing for the last few days. Sometimes they had breakfast together with their guests; Elsa forced slim happiness upon herself long enough to share the meal with Olivia. The woman's eyes were narrow and troubled; had she heard Anna scream?
Anna didn't allow herself a nap; she took a walk in the gardens with Haley while Elsa did the dishes from breakfast. Renee had a shift at the clinic in town today, and Olivia was gone as well, meandering through the paths that snaked across the peninsula.
Later that evening after everyone had come home, the family took council together in the kitchen. Anna was silent, and she held Elsa's hand in a soft yet firm grip.
Four red nights in a row. Such a thing had never happened before, and Elsa had her suspicions. Once everyone was gathered, Elsa said, "I think it's a diversion. Something important is happening out there, and the fortune teller is trying to divert our attention by drowning us in red nights. Maybe she's hoping to slip something by us, to hide it in the mass of noise."
To her right, Anna was nodding. Her face was void of all colour and expression, and there were shadows under her eyes that screamed of her exhaustion. Haley didn't look much better; Elsa knew she had been spending hours and hours on the computer, listening to those hateful recordings and searching the Internet for those victims of red.
"Have you found all of them?" Elsa asked.
"Some of them," Haley said quietly. "It takes some time for it to hit the news, even online. There were two locations that had murders like the first red night, one in Alliance, Nebraska, and the other in Morden, Manitoba. The second was easy to place; it happened in Brooks, Alberta and was all over the news. The ones from yesterday and today I haven't been able to trace; it's probably too soon to show up in the papers." She had spread a map of North America on the table, and had marked the potential cities with post-it notes.
Elsa looked across the table at Kristoff and Renee. Her last brother looked vastly ancient this evening, as did the rest of them. His brown-skinned wife was almost a waif by his side. Their faces were tight, and their hands were clasped as well.
Did the former nurse regret joining their family, being catapulted into this world that, by all rights, shouldn't exist at all? Before meeting Kristoff and Elsa, did Renee even believe in magic, in Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy?
Haley hung her head, the pink hair obscuring her face. "I don't know what to do," she said softly. There was no one to hold her hand, to comfort her in the night. She was always alone.
Anna pulled the map over, started surveying the potential locations. She held her lower lip lightly between her teeth.
Knowledge was a weapon of the unseen world.
She closed her eyes as she placed her hand on the map. If it had been anyone but Anna, Elsa would have sworn this veiled silence was a prayer. When she opened her eyes again, she tapped Alliance, Nebraska. No one questioned her.
Unconsciously, every eye swivelled to look at Haley.
"I want to see Casey before I go," she said.
Then (2000)
New Years Eve, and Haley and Anna spent it together, watching the tiny television at Haley's apartment. Two million people had swarmed Times Square in New York City; an eclectic mix of housewives and monster-shouters and children rubbing their eyes as if they could understand the frenzy. Anna and Haley chanted with the television those final moments of 1999, and when the world didn't end, they clicked their wine glasses together and sipped in triumph.
They stayed up for another hour, flipping through channels to watch the news, but it appeared that the most apocalyptic thing to happen due to the Y2K bug was the breakdown in Australia's subway ticket validation stations (in two states only), and the mobile phone service in Japan was deleting new messages instead of saving them.
Anna almost felt disgusted at herself for worrying so much about it. She only hoped that the rest of middle America felt as sheepish as she did, and wondered how long it would take to eat all the food they had stockpiled against the event.
New Years Day itself was almost anticlimactic. She and Haley had a fondue together, and the red and green haired girl went into raptures of delight over all the homemade sauces Anna had made for dipping. Charming and obnoxious, Haley enjoyed herself immensely, loading up her forks with meat to lower into the bubbling oil and promising to love Anna forever for the cheese sauce. Yet there was an echo of silence, as if someone else should have been there with them, but Anna kept herself busy so she wouldn't have to think about the last few Elsa-less days remaining (two, if Elsa were coming back on Tuesday, and four if she waited until Thursday).
Finally Monday, and the library, and the prospect of Elsa in her carrel the following day. Anna could barely sleep on Monday night; she recycled old conversations and invented new ones and slept with the ring on her finger. When Tuesday dawned, Anna dressed in her best clothes and took time putting on makeup; Haley would see right through her, but Anna didn't care. It was a brand new world out there, a cold and refreshing January. She could scarcely believe what the past 365 days had made of her life, and touched the nick on her ear.
But Elsa did not come on Tuesday. Anna nearly got a crick in her neck from looking around so often, near breathless for the moment that Elsa would breeze through the doors, bringing with her a scent of springtime and hope, her platinum hair defying the very sun.
Anna berated herself that night, and told herself to get over it. Elsa hadn't promised when she was coming back, just that it would be in the New Year. It was only January 4. She would come on Thursday, that's when they would both resume their routine. Anna cooked an impressive meal on Wednesday night in anticipation.
It was Haley who ended up eating it on Thursday. They were both silent upstairs in the staff room while big fluffy flakes of snow curled down from a near incandescent sky. "The roads could be bad," Anna said.
Haley nodded, but didn't say a word.
That week seemed to last forever. Anna would come across the books that had been part of Elsa's castle, whether Stephen King or Michael Crichton or Maeve Binchy, and she would handle the books with a frown on her face, telling herself not to be silly.
It was as the week following began and ended without Elsa in it that Anna started to get really anxious. Haley ate the meal on Tuesday, and Anna didn't make extras for Thursday. That weekend, Anna bought herself a beater of a car in desperate need of repair. Her hands were aching for work, but the days were too damply cold to spend tinkering with the car. In the evening she studied repair manuals and constantly wondered what had happened to Elsa.
Surely something had happened. Elsa just wouldn't stop coming for no reason, right? She would let Anna know if she couldn't come, right?
A deep malicious thought lingered. You need her far more than she has ever needed you.
Weeks passed, and Anna continued handling Elsa's books with a reverence that bordered on insanity. A young man had the audacity to sit at Elsa's table. Anna was just heading over there to yell at him and tell him to bugger off until Haley persuaded her not to, using some tireless argument about Anna keeping her job.
Whatever. He looked wrong sitting there, and under the repeated vilification of her gaze alone, he eventually scarpered, no doubt to tell tales of her to his friends, the crazy woman in the library who probably had a dozen cats and spent her evenings crocheting and drooling.
Books were no longer the solace they had once been. Words were but weapons, and authors were merely arms dealers.
As impossible as it seemed, time was her enemy now, and January eased into February with no sign of Elsa. Storms lashed the coast, driving fierce beasts of thunder and stinging snow. She walked home every night in mounting perplexity, mist steaming from her mouth, taking on the form of frail angels of hope fleeing to the heavens. Trees huddled together, naked and shivering, reminding her horribly of the thin path that led to the unmarked grave of a German Shepherd, the day of the gunman and the cranberry drops of blood.
She felt empty, spent.
Her suite was unbearably cold, and Anna slept with socks and sweaters on. Every night she thought of Elsa, playing back their conversations in her mind until they were paper thin and useless. She hugged the pillow at night, kissed it and tried not to cry.
Still no word.
Loneliness was a fist around her heart, and she should have remembered what it felt like, how awful life could be. She should have remembered that the world was just a carnival, full of meaningless games and insipid prizes and the taste of victory over the carnies was only brass in the teeth. The best prizes were always elusive, always meaningless. She should have remembered how bad it could be, and she berated herself for forgetting so soon.
Late February, and before she could convince herself not to, Anna looked up Elsa's file in the system. For long minutes she stared at the address Elsa had provided; a post office box in Richmond. She navigated away from the screen as Haley approached, and that weekend she took her shivering and rattling car up to the little town, nearly an hour drive in the bad weather, wondering what she would do should she happen to see Elsa on the sidewalk, laughing and carefree, whose face would turn in revulsion and disgust to see Anna haunting her there like a poor and broken puppy.
She thumbed the ring on her finger so often it felt branded into her skin. That at least was real, wasn't it?
There was no sign of her, and Anna was not brave enough to get out of her car and ask around. She returned home, and resumed her joyless and Elsa-less life.
Time marched on, dragging her along for the ride. Hans met someone and expedited the divorce proceedings. Before she knew it, a flurry of papers had been passed back and forth, and then it was over. By the time the end of March arrived, Anna was divorced. Hans didn't invite her to his wedding. She sent a card, but no money. Her wedding band had long ago been locked in a drawer; she locked all her hopes and dreams inside it as well and threw away the key.
Haley watched her with disconcerting interest as these months passed.
Walking home one cheerless yet bright spring day, despair a blanket of snow on her chest, Anna looked at the unfurling leaves on the trees, the shy plants bursting through furrowed soil, turning petals up to kiss the sun. As she passed a storefront, her reflection was mirrored in the glass. She paused to look at herself, her shoulder-length ginger hair, the fashionable clothes, a simple pendant around her neck and crushing mountains in her eyes.
How long would she measure herself by the reflections of others? When would she dare to look inside for the truth that continued to elude her? For all of her life she had relied on everyone else to tell her who she was. A good person? A bad person? A gay person?
A year ago fear held her prisoner, tangled her in dying flesh like the corpse of the dog.
Anna looked at herself and realized that nothing really changed, and certainly not for the better. She should have remembered it before now, because then she could have been prepared her own walls and defences for this silent and absent betrayal, the second worst betrayal of her life.
She wouldn't think of the first one. She wasn't strong enough, not now, maybe not ever.
After work the next day, Anna retreated to a boulder outside the library, huddling into her jacket; slim protection against the conspiring wind. Thick clouds scudded across the sky in roiling bands in numerous shades of grey, and only occasionally would the captive sunlight reach the ground. She had plucked a small handful of dandelions on her way to the boulder; she sat and popped off their heads as she stared at the boats on the river.
She was a wall now. Just a wall.
She heard someone approaching, and knew who it was even before Haley sat down next to her. Her leather jacket creaked, and the various chains hanging from her clothing clinked against each other. Her hair was a spiky black now, yet her lipstick was not; it was a deep and luscious red, far more sensual and arousing than any shade of midnight. People would never classify Haley as beautiful, but today she was stunning.
"I think I know what your problem is," Haley abruptly said, also looking at the river.
Anna near viciously decapitated another dandelion and tossed the fat yellow head to the ground. "Really?" she asked, lacing her voice with as much sarcasm as she dared. "May I assume that you are about to educate me on my problem?"
"Someone around here has to," Haley replied, not rising to the bait. "And I love you too much to see you make an ass of yourself in your stinking pig pen of self-pity."
The words stung, but Anna remembered that she was a wall now, so she said, "You just mixed your metaphors, Haley. Am I an ass, or am I a pig?"
"You're clueless is what you are. You're nearly thirty, and you still don't get it."
"What don't I get?" Anna wouldn't look at Haley, because there was a mean taste in her mouth from all this truth, and from maintaining this pretence, this wall.
Brass.
"Your problem is that you keep relying on everyone else to define who you are. You need us to validate you, to convince you that you're doing the right thing. That you are a good person. You prop yourself up on us. No wonder you fall apart so easily when one of those props is suddenly gone."
Anna's chest was burning; she clamped her jaw tight.
"When are you gonna get that you don't need Hans, you don't need me, and you don't need Elsa? She leaves, and your life falls apart? That's more than clueless, Anna, that's pure self-indulgence. You're never gonna grow up until you realize that you write your own destiny, and it's frankly stupid to let someone else have so much power over you and your emotions."
"Are you pretending to be Spock now?" Anna drawled, hoping the words sounded as condescending as she hoped. "Some Vulcan, all logic and no feelings?"
"Get off your high horse, Anna, and wake up to some facts, all right? One: you are stronger than you think. You dared to leave your husband and start a new life. You dared to come into the library to drop off your resume. You were brave enough to bring Elsa lunch. These are not the actions of a coward. Two: you shouldn't need me to tell you how fabulous you are, how you've blessed my life and made it richer, how just knowing you makes me a better person."
Oh, the words, the artillery! Tears were pooling at her eyes, begging her to surrender. Haley's voice was fierce and low.
"Your self-worth has nothing to do with any of us, Anna," Haley continued. "Maybe part of you is still afraid that God is judging you for having the feelings that you do towards women, and towards Elsa in particular. Maybe part of you feels that all of this is just what you deserve, some mental flagellation with a whip. Open your eyes, Anna. You are not bound by what we think of you. You are only limited by what you think of yourself."
Having said her piece, Haley left Anna to her thoughts, as turbulent and roiling as the mirrored sky above.
I think you are going to love the next chapter. See you Saturday for it!
J