The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 20

She c.o.c.ked her head. "When? The night it . . . happened?"

The night it happened, their mother had gone out into the dark forest without her flashlight. It had been snowing. She was found in the morning beside the fence, the gate frozen open. Cody had found her.

She had been lying face down. He hadn't turned her over. He had kneeled in the snow to check her pulse. But he already knew. He could tell. Her skin was shiny, like ice, and- "I went into Dad's room," he began, meaning tonight. Just now.

"So did I." She clenched her jaw. "I saw."

He suddenly had the feeling they were talking about two different things. He glanced at the closed curtains.

Then he smelled the smoke. It was thick and oily, and it was rolling down the hallway.

"Dad!" he shouted.

Together he and Elle ran back down the hall. The quilts on the living-room walls were on fire. The recliner was ablaze, and Kenneth was staggering through the smoke, coughing hard.

"I'll get water," Elle said, as Cody ran for his father. He took his hand and hurried him to the front door. He threw it open and- She was standing there. His dead mother, skin blue and brown and red. Her dark blue polyester top over a long black skirt he didn't recognize. Her eyes were like cracked marbles. Her mouth hung slightly open, revealing only blackness.

"She's cold," Kenneth said.

"The ceiling is catching!" Elle cried. "We have to get out!" The house was making a whum-whum sort of noise as the fire grew, flames crackling and snapping. Cody heard the kitchen door slam shut. His sister had made it outside.

Lucile faced Cody and Kenneth, her face a rictus stare. Heat brushed against Cody's back.

His mother took a step forward. Her eyes blazed with fury.

"She slapped me," Kenneth murmured. "Hard."

She headed for them.

Before he knew what he was doing, Cody grabbed his father's hand and raced back into the living room. The recliner was going up, and all the quilts. The skin on his arms began to pucker. He felt as if someone was pressing heated spoons on his arms.

"Hot, hot," Kenneth wailed.

Cody stepped on something burning. His foot cramped and sizzled. He raced into the kitchen. The ceiling was burning. Smoke slammed into his throat and expanded into his lungs.

Hacking and coughing, he clung to his father's hand. He reached the kitchen door and threw it open. They ran into the snowy backyard. Snow tumbled down; ghosts darted and swirled among the clots of white: the ghosts of secrets.

"Elle!" Cody shouted. "Elle!"

The fence gate was open, as it had been the morning he had found his dead mother.

Because he had opened it himself, about two hours before then.

After he had unlocked it.

"Cody!" Elle cried.

She was waiting on the other side of the fence. When Cody and Kenneth ran through the gate, she grabbed Cody in a hug. She was sobbing.

"Wait for Mom," their father said, turning back to face the house. It was an inferno; flames shot up through the roof, surrounding the chimney.

"Cody," Elle said into his ear. "Cody, I followed her out. I-I locked the gate. Cody, she was. .h.i.tting him. Hurting him. I saw the bruises. I hated her." She threw back her head. "I hated you!"

Cody's father shuffled towards the blazing structure. Cody and Elle caught up with him. Each took a hand, restrained him.

"I'm so cold," Kenneth said.

"I locked it, too," Cody said to Elle. "It was unlocked, then. But I didn't know what you know."

"Then . . . why?" Elle asked. "Why did you do it?"

"My feet are stinging," Kenneth informed them.

"I knew I had to," Cody answered. He felt a fierce sort of joy. He hadn't known why he was locking her out. He had hated her, but he didn't have a reason to, as Elle did. He just knew she was the force that kept them frozen.

But now he had a reason. The best of reasons.

The ghost of his mother appeared before them in the snow. Elle started screaming.

"I'm sorry," Kenneth said. "I'm so sorry." He lifted his hand, taking Cody's hand with him. He pantomimed locking the gate.

The ghost took a step towards the three Magnusens. And then . . . she turned to steam. Her body drifted apart, floating in the snow; the ice crystals hissed as they collided with her.

The house burned all the way down to the foundations, to ashes. Nothing left. By then, the fire trucks had clanged into action and the Magnusens were wrapped in thick yellow blankets. They were wearing dark blue mittens and drinking hot cocoa out of Styrofoam cups. Elle and Cody were hanging on to their father, holding him, Elle kissing his grizzled cheek over and over again.

"Daddy." She sounded like a little girl.

"We'll have to move," Cody said, feeling dizzy. "Make some decisions."

The wind whistled through the dark shapes behind them, forest green, hunter green, and tree-bark brown. The ghost glided among the trees, grey and charcoal on ash black on burned black. That ghost did not touch Cody either.

"I'm so cold," his father said.

"We're done with cold, Dad. It's done," Cody said.

"All done," Elle agreed.

And his father gave them the ghost of a smile.

"All done," he agreed, and drank his hot chocolate.

Return.

Yvonne Navarro.

Mara goes back to the only place she can think of.

She doesn't know how she gets there, but the house is suddenly right in front of her tan brick split-level with a black shingle roof, big picture window in the front that, like the rest of the windows, is always dirty because no one will take the time to wash it. No one will take the time for a lot of things in this house, but she has nowhere else to go, no one else to whom she can turn. All she has is old memory and deeper instinct, a compulsion in her bones that won't let her keep on going past the driveway; she has to turn, has to go down the steps to the back door which she knows will be unlocked during the day. It's as if she has only one eye and she's pushed it tightly against one end of the discarded cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels there is nothing beyond that small circle of light at the end and whatever images fill it.

The steps.

The door, brown and dusty.

The doork.n.o.b.

Her own hand such an amazing thing reaching for it.

She stops and stares at it for a few moments, turns the palm upward, checks for non-existent dirt under the fingernails. It looks . . . OK, about the same as it did back then. What about her face does that look the same, too? She is wearing the same clothes, but is her hair still light brown, does her nose tilt upward, is her mouth too wide, are the eyebrows she'd always wanted to arch still straight across? Is she still pretty? She's been gone a long time, and she wishes she had a mirror so she can check, because it won't do to have any big surprises. Well, any more she is certainly going to be one all on her own, isn't she?

She opens the door and steps inside the house.

Nothing has changed, at least in the utility room. It's still too dark and full of cobwebs and dust along the concrete floor, still lightens up a bit by the double laundry sink. The air down here is cooler than in the rest of the house. She sees that across from the sink the dog's bowls are there, where they are always kept, and that there is fresh water in one and bits of dog food scattered on the floor around the other for an old, small dog, a Pomeranian, Greepers always had been a messy eater.

And there he is, standing in the doorway at the other end of the utility room, staring at her.

They've shaved him for the summer and he looks like a puppy, enticingly soft and cuddly. It seems like it's been years since she felt any warmth and she can't wait to pick him up . . . but there is something in his stance that makes her hesitate, even though he's old and he's been hers for over thirteen years. How has he been all these months, when she was always the only one to give him affection, to keep him company? She tries to speak his name and her voice is an unintelligible croak, so she clears her throat and tries again, takes a small step forward.

"G-Greepers."

He growls at her and backs away.

She freezes, and now it's her turn to stare at him. Greepers keeps backing up until he b.u.mps into the short flight of stairs that leads up to the kitchen, then he gives a single, shrill bark.

She hears footsteps then, overhead and hurrying down the upstairs hallway to the stairs, going to the living room, turning the corner to come down to the utility room- And she sees, at last, her mother, at the same time as her mother sees her.

And screams.

"You need to come home," Amber O'Shannon says into the phone. Her voice is shrill, louder than it's been in eight months. That's how long it's been since- "You need to come home right now!" Her fingers are closed around the receiver in a death grip, as though the cold plastic has become some sort of lifeline, the only thing anchoring her to the world. If not for that, perhaps she would float away, simply drift up into the clouds. The notion is about as realistic as anything else going on here in her well-kept home.

"I'm in the middle of an important meeting," she hears her husband say. "For G.o.d's sake, Amber-"

"I don't care!" she shrieks, then realizes what she is doing and makes a conscious effort to regain control. Already it's starting, she thinks. Already. "I can't tell you why just do it. It's an emergency." She will pay for it later, but she slams down the phone before he can argue further, because she can't deal with this, can't deal with him and his questions, and most of all, she can't deal with- She turns.

Her daughter Mara still sits, silent and patient, at the kitchen table.

Amber doesn't know how the young woman got there, or what happened in the moments between seeing her standing down in the utility room and now, what was said to get her from there to here, sitting at the kitchen table like some kind of speechless question mark. It figures that she would be home all by herself when something like this happens an absurd thought to begin with, because who would have expected something "like this" ever to occur anyway? She wants to ask a question, the question, but she is nervous and afraid. Maybe it would be better to wait until Bill gets home, or Andy. Even Brianna, although G.o.d knows what help that girl could give.

So she says nothing.

Instead, she sits across the table and she and her daughter stare at each other and wait for the others to arrive.

"Yoh, Mom!" Andy O'Shannon shoves open the bas.e.m.e.nt door and barrels into the house, making sure that the noise level goes up along with his bellow. He likes it when his mother comes hurrying down the stairs to meet him, to make sure he had a good day, ask if he's hungry, whatever. It's a standard routine perfected over the last six months and- He frowns.

Car's in the driveway, but where is she? He drops his stuff on the dryer and climbs the stairs to the kitchen. "Mom?" Then he sees her, sitting quietly at the table with someone else. He starts to walk towards her, then she turns a shocked gaze on him. But any explanation she might have mouthed is forgotten the instant he focuses on the other person.

"Jesus G.o.d," he breathes. "I-" He can't think of any words to finish the sentence and so he doesn't, just stops and lets his back push up against the kitchen wall. Finally he slides down, settles on the floor, and stares.

Brianna walks in on it without warning.

She is the only one who insists on using the front door "like civilized people" and never mind the extra work it makes for her mom, because that's not the point, d.a.m.n it. So she comes through the other doorway from the living room and, even so, she recognizes the back of her older sister's head immediately and is not pleased. "What is this?" she demands. "Some kind of sick joke? A mind f.u.c.k?" She turns to her mother accusingly. "This is so not funny."

But her mother doesn't even say anything about her language. "No," she says slowly. "I don't know what it is . . . but I don't think it's a joke."

Brianna scowls and steps up to Mara. "You . . ." she begins, but then they all hear the slam intentionally hard of the bas.e.m.e.nt door. "Daddy's home," Brianna says instead, with as much sweet sarcasm as she can muster.

Her mother nods. "I called him."

Brianna gives an unladylike sn.i.g.g.e.r. "What like you think he's gonna fix this?"

Bill O'Shannon storms into the kitchen of his home purposefully, the same way he storms into the boardroom in the real estate firm of which he is president. He is a controlling man and it angers him to the core that his wife has had the nerve to call and demand that he come home, without even giving him a reasonable explanation. It can't be one of the kids she would have simply told him. What the h.e.l.l could be so important that she would interrupt his Friday status meeting to-?

And there, sitting with the rest of them around the table, he finally sees the reason Amber called him.

Mara sits at the table and watches her family watch her, but she feels nothing. No love, no fear, certainly no comfort. The closest thing she's felt to emotion was that fleeting desire to pick up Greepers, and that died with his nasty little growl of all the things in her life, he had been the only one she'd always believed she could go to for comfort. But, like everything and everyone else, even he has failed her.

"So," her father asks her now, "you want to tell me how this happened?" He waits expectantly.

She says nothing.

"Mara, you can't just waltz in here like this without some kind of explanation about-" For the first time, he hesitates. "About where you've been," he finally finishes.

"Why not?" Brianna cuts in. Her voice is high. "It's what she always did before. Why should this be any different?"

"Well, duh!" Andy snorts.

"Shut up!" Brianna shouts. "I wasn't talking to you!"

"Like I need your permission," he shoots back.

Mara sees Brianna's face flush, as it has countless times before. There is a difference though the last eight months have made a subtle difference in her younger sister's appearance, filled out her face and given it a hard edge that Mara doesn't recall seeing before. Still, Mara sees a lot of hard edges in the faces of her family that may or may not have been there. Some she remembers, others she doesn't they might be new. Not surprisingly, there is no softness when they look at her.

"You two keep your mouths closed," her father says, and there is no mistaking the don't f.u.c.k with me tone of his voice. "I want to know what the h.e.l.l is going on." He glares again at Mara. "How do I know you're even my daughter? You might be some kind of imposter, or a con artist."

Mara still doesn't say anything. She still doesn't feel anything, and that surprises her. She remembers all the pain and the hurt and the humiliation especially that from before, and when she'd realized where she was, when she'd sort of come to herself, and found that she was going back home, she'd expected it to all come slamming back, as if she'd gone through some kind of cosmic rewinding machine and somewhere a supreme being had leaned over and pushed the play b.u.t.ton. But it wasn't the same, and if there is any kindness at all to be attributed to the universe and whatever powers it, it is that this time around they've left the emotional track off her life tape.

"I don't believe this," Amber says suddenly. "What are we going to tell the neighbours? What are they going to think?" Her hands, so carefully manicured and creamed, flutter around her face like panicking humming birds. "What am I going to do about her now Jesus, how do I get her back in school and back into a normal life? How do I explain her?" Her attractive face is pale and fragile, her expression crumpling beneath a problem too huge to cope with. "People will think we let her run off or something, that we lied about where she was and didn't even care enough to hire a private investigator to find her. My G.o.d." Her crystalline blue eyes fix on Mara. "That's what you want, isn't it? You want everyone to think we were bad parents, that I'm a bad mother."

It's an interesting question and rather than answer her, Mara ponders it. Is this something she wants? To let the neighbours, friends and all the other relatives know how truly dysfunctional this family is, what abysmal parents she has, all the dark and dirty little secrets? To point fingers and condemn? And, oh, but they had some real, honest-to-G.o.d putrid pond sc.u.m hidden in O'Shannon daily diaries, didn't they?

But . . . no. She really doesn't care. She doesn't know why, but she doesn't.

Before Amber can demand an answer, Mara's father steps close to her chair. His shadow towers over her, and it seems to her that it has always been this way, as far back as she can recall. She doesn't think there was ever a time when she looked forward to seeing him at the end of the day or over the course of a weekend; he is like the fantasy king who wields a brutal sword of justice. The peasants always know their great ruler is looming somewhere, but would rather not cross his path. Is this the way fathers are in other families? Maybe in some of them. She doesn't know.