The Urban Fantasy Anthology Part 6

"Mama, mama!" Zia cried from the bed, her voice the high and frightened sound of a young girl waking from a bad dream.

Faster than she'd come into the kitchen earlier, the mother appeared in the doorway and crossed the room to the bed. She hesitated beside it, staring down at where Zia was sitting up with her arms held out for comfort. I could see the confusion in the old woman's half-blind gaze, but all it took was for Zia to call "Mama" one more time and a mother's instinct took over. She sat on the edge of the bed, taking Zia in her arms.

"I...I was so scared, Mama," Zia said. "I dreamed I was dead."

The old woman stiffened. I saw a shiver run from her shoulders, all the way down her arms and back. Then she pressed her face into Zia's hair.

"Oh, Maddy, Maddy," she said, her voice a bare whisper. "I wish it was a dream."

Zia pulled back from her, but took hold of her hands.

"I am dead, Mama," she said. "Aren't I?"

The old woman nodded.

"But then why am I here?" Zia asked. "What keeps me here?"

"M-maybe I...I just can't let you go..."

"But you don't keep Donnie here. Why did you let him go and not me?'

"Oh, Maddy, sweetheart. Don't talk about him."

"I don't understand. Why not? He's my brother. I loved him. Didn't you love him?"

The old woman looked down at her lap.

"Mama?" Zia asked.

The old woman finally lifted her head.

"I...I think I loved him too much," she said.

The ghost boy had no physical presence, standing beside me, here in the closet, but I could feel his sudden tension as though he was flesh and blood-a p.r.i.c.kling flood of interest and shock and pure confusion.

"I still don't understand," Zia said.

The old woman was quiet for so long I didn't think she was going to explain. But she finally looked away from Zia, across the room, her gaze seeing into the past rather than what lay in front of her.

"Donnie was a good boy," she said. "Too good for this world, I guess, because he was taken from it while he was still so young. I knew he'd grow up to make me proud-at least I thought I did. My eyesight's bad now, sweetheart, but I think I was blinder back then, because I never saw that he wouldn't get the chance to grow up at all."

Her gaze returned to Zia before Zia could speak.

"But you," the old woman said. "Oh, I could see trouble in you. You were too much like your father. Left to your own devices, I could see you turning into a little h.e.l.lion. That you could be as bad as he was, if you were given half a chance. So I kept you busy-too busy to get into trouble, I thought-but I didn't do any better of a job raising you than I did him.

"You were both taken so young and I can't help but feel that the blame for that lay with me."

She fell silent, but I knew Zia wasn't going to let it go, even though we had what we needed.

The ghost boy's mother did remember him.

She had loved him.

I'd fulfilled my part of the bargain and I wanted to tell Zia to stop. I almost pushed open the closet door. I'd already lifted my hand and laid my palm against the wood paneling, but Donald stopped me before I could actually give it a push.

"I need to hear this," he said. "I...I just really do."

I let my hand fall back to my side.

"But why don't you ever talk about Donnie?" Zia asked. "Why is his room closed up and forgotten and mine's like I just stepped out for a soda?"

"When I let him die," the old woman said, after another long moment of silence, "all by himself, swelled up and choking from that bee sting..." She shook her head. "I was so ashamed. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about it...about him...but I keep it locked away inside. It's my terrible secret. Better to let the world not know that I ever had a son, than that I let him die the way he did."

"Except you didn't kill him."

"No. But I did neglect him. If I'd been here, instead of driving you to some piano cla.s.s or gym meet or whatever it was that day, he'd still be alive."

"So it's my fault..."

"Oh no, honey. Don't even think such a thing. I was the one who made all the wrong choices. I was the one who thought he didn't need attention, but that you did. Except I was wrong about that, too. Look what happened to Donnie. And look how you turned out before...before..."

"I died."

She nodded. "You were a good girl. You were the best daughter a mother could have had. I was so proud of you, of all you'd achieved."

"And my room..."

"I keep it and your memory alive because it's the only thing left in this world that can give me any pride. It's the light that burns into the darkness and lets me forget my shame. Not always. Not for long. But even the few moments I can steal free of my shame are a blessed respite."

She fell silent again, head bowed, unable to look at what she thought was the ghost of her daughter.

Zia turned and glanced at where I was peering at her from the crack I'd made with the closet door. I knew her well enough to know what she was thinking. It was never hard. All I had to do was imagine I was in her shoes, and consider what I would say or do or think.

I turned to Donald.

"Is there anything you want to tell your mother?" I whispered.

He gave me a slow nod.

"Then just tell Zia and she'll pa.s.s it on to your mother."

He gave me another nod, but he still didn't speak.

"Donald?" I said.

"I don't know what to say. I mean, there's a million things I could say, but none of them seem to matter anymore. She's beating herself up way more than any hurt I could have wished upon her."

I reached out a comforting hand, but of course I couldn't touch him. Still, he understood the gesture. I think he even appreciated it.

"And I don't even wish it on her anymore," he added. "But then...while I feel bad about what she's going through, at the same time, I still feel hurt for the way she ignored me."

I opened the door a little more, enough to catch Zia's eye. She inclined her head to show that she understood.

"I've talked to Donnie," Zia said. "In the, you know. The hereafter. Before he went on."

The old woman lifted her head and looked Zia in the eye.

"You...you have?"

Zia nodded. "He understands, but he really wishes you'd celebrate his life the way you do mine. It...hurts him to think that you never think of him."

"Oh, G.o.d, there's not a day goes by that I don't think of him."

"He knows that now."

Zia's gaze went back to me and I made a continuing motion with my hand. "And he wants," she went on, then caught herself. "He wanted you to know that he'll always love you. That he never held you to blame for what happened to him."

The old woman put her arms around Zia.

"Oh, my boy," she said. "My poor, poor boy."

"He wants you to be happy," Zia said. "We both do."

The woman shook her head against Zia's shoulder.

"I don't even know the meaning of the word anymore," she said.

"Will you at least try?"

The old woman sat up and dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her housecoat.

"How does one even begin?" she said.

"Well, sometimes, if you pretend you're happy, you can trick yourself into at least feeling better."

"I don't think I could do that."

"Try by celebrating our lives," Zia said. "Remember both your children with love and joy. There'll always be sadness, but try to remember that it wasn't always that way."

"No," the old woman said slowly. "You're right. It wasn't. I don't know if you can even remember, but we were once a happy family. But then Ted left and I had to go back to work, and you children...you were robbed of the life you should have had."

"It happens," Zia said-a touch too matter-of-factly for the ghost of a dead girl, I thought, but the old woman didn't appear to notice.

"It's time for me to go, Mama," Zia added. "Will you let me go?"

"Can't you stay just a little longer?"

"No," Zia said. "Let me walk you back to your bed."

She got up and the two of them left the room, the old woman leaning on Zia.

"I'm going to wake up in the morning," I heard the old woman say from the hall, "and this will all have just been a dream."

"Not if you don't want it to," Zia told her. "You've got a strong will. Look how long you kept me from moving on. You can remember this-everything we've talked about-for what it really was. And if you try hard, you can be happy again..."

Donald and I waited in the bedroom until Zia returned.

"Is she asleep?" I asked.

Zia nodded. "I think all of this exhausted her." She turned to Donald. "So how do you feel now?"

"I feel strange," he said. "Like there's something tugging at me...trying to pull me away."

"That's because it's time for you to move on," I told him.

"I guess."

"You're remembered now," Zia said. "That's what was holding you back before."

He gave a slow nod. "Listening to her...it didn't make me feel a whole lot better. I mean, I understand now, but..."

"Life's not very tidy," Zia said, "so I suppose there's no reason for death to be any different."

"I..."

He was harder to hear. I gave him a careful study and realized he'd grown much more insubstantial.

"It's hard to hold on," he said. "To stay here."

"Then don't," Zia told him.

I nodded. "Just let go."

"But I'm...scared."

Zia and I looked at each other.

"We were here at the beginning of things," she said, turning back to him, "before Raven pulled the world out of that old pot of his. We've been in the great beyond that lies on the other side of the long ago. It's..."

She looked at me.

"It's very peaceful there," I finished for her.

"I don't want to go to h.e.l.l," he said. "What if I go to h.e.l.l?"

His voice was very faint now and I could hardly make him out in the gloom of the room.

"You won't go to h.e.l.l," I said.