Many Bloody Returns

The Wish Carolyn Haines

Carolyn Haines has written more than fifty books. The latest in her Mississippi Delta series is Ham Bones. She also writes single titles. Hallowed Bones and Penumbra were named one of the top five mysteries of 2004 and 2006, respectively, by Library Journal, and Carolyn received an Alabama State Council on the Arts fellowship. An avid animal-rights supporter, she shares her home with nine cats, six dogs, and eight horses. Because no minute should go unused, Carolyn also teaches fiction at the University of South Alabama. Her website is www.carolynhaines.com.

It hasn’t rained for weeks, longer than anyone remembers. Each gust of wind carries tiny particles of dirt—soil shifting from place to place, fleeing across the borders of lawns, counties, and states. The land is on the move, as if it’s given up hope for America and is headed vaguely north, aiming to cross the border. It’s a long way to Canada from Mobile, Alabama.

The weather is all the talk in the grocery and feed stores, the nurseries and post office, places where I carry on the business of my life. Old men, as weathered and crinkly as the grass, study the sky that looks like spring and feels like Minnesota as they stand outside the Hickory Pit and the tractor dealership. They see nothing good. The climate is changing, and the farmers are catching the brunt of it. Gamblers at heart, they have no clue where to lay the odds in this New South of hard drought and hurricane.

Sitting in my pickup, waiting for a load of mulch and fertilizer while the heater blows ineffectually, I watch the dirt fly down Highway 45 in an orange cloud. Across the road, at the Stovalls’ abandoned nursery, a tulip tree sways purple against the clear blue sky of another cold, dry, windy day.

The late February winds, unusually strong for south Alabama, pick up the fallen petals of the tulip tree, and suddenly I see her shape against grass that glistens with melting frost. The coffee cup I hold slips from my nerveless fingers and drops to the floorboard. I never hear the crockery shatter, nor the tinkling of the wind chimes abandoned at the nursery. My world goes mute. Again.

She stands beneath the tree, beside barren hydrangeas and glossy green miniature gardenias that will permeate the April air with a scent as delicious as taste. How easily I’d assumed that spring was a season I’d experience—waiting has become my only game. I haven’t been to a doctor for fifteen years, but I feel healthy enough. Illness isn’t my destiny. She’s taught me that.

She nods at me, an acknowledgment of our pact, and then she’s gone. The bruised petals fall softly to the thawing ground. Bosco, my old coonhound, breaks into a long, low howl in the backseat of the truck. He understands who and what she is. The enemy.

Mobile isn’t the center of anything, merely a small port city on a bay where lazy rivers meet in one of the last untainted habitats in the Southeast. It’s a sleepy place with smiling, crocodile politicians one step removed from the horse thieves and slave traders who first took the land from the Choctaw Nation. While the town is physically beautiful, it lacks the sophistication of New Orleans, or at least pre-Katrina New Orleans. The Moral Majority holds sway in Mobile, those prunelike faces set against the joie de vivre that made New Orleans so special.

I should have left Mobile, but it’s because of her that I’ve remained here for so many years. Her and a certain ship’s captain who finds the empty downtown of old Mobile to his liking. No Disney creation, this pirate holds the answer to my dilemma.

Anxious in my grief and unable to sleep one long night, I walked the empty streets. By happenstance that evening, I saw him plying his trade in a dark alley, and I made it my business to learn his haunts and habits. He is my field of expertise, the most important element of my future. The cobblestone alleys of old Mobile are a perfect hunting ground for him, and one he returns to regularly, because in the dark of the moon, anything that’s truly desired can be found in old Mobile.

Once I deliver the mulch and fertilizer, I’ll put my plan into action. By moonrise, I’ll find him, the man, or some would call it a thing, who will help me.

To fully explain my story, I have to go back in time twenty years to a hot August day. Sometimes I forget that once I was another person. A wife and mother. A woman with dreams and expectations. To understand how I came to this point, the past has to be pulled out like so many wrinkled snapshots and examined.

It’s an irony, really, because I hate remembering. In memory, the images are so sharply focused they slice through the layers of alcohol I’ve used to pad my pain. People tell me that I live in the past, like that’s an accusation of moral degeneracy. “You live in the past” in their mind equates with “You killed your children.” Hardly. We all have a past. We all have a present. But not all of us have a future.

Once upon a time, I had a future. I had the family and job, the normal, boring things that Middle America takes so for granted. I also had a mortgage and a car note and nights when my husband and I made passionate love and forgot the dirty dishes in the sink, the piles of laundry waiting, and the spats about bills and babies. Today, none of those things trouble me. They’re all in the past, along with my heart.

On a too-hot August morning twenty years ago, I woke up plagued with a fever of unexplainable origin. The day was sweltering, even for south Alabama, and the humidity lay on my skin like a wool suit. We were in dog days, when it rains each afternoon and Mobile takes on the foliage of the tropics, thick and lush and green. Dennis had a breakfast meeting, and even though I felt terrible, I took Kala and Kevin to day care. My intention was to return home, shower, and go to work. I had a client meeting that couldn’t be missed, a big account, a cash bonus.

The antihistamine I’d taken in an effort to dry up my sniffles had left me feeling dizzy and disoriented. The twins, identical even in their moods, were quiet as I buckled them into the car seats and headed out, a cup of hot tea in my hand. The day care was only eight blocks away. Eight short blocks in a residential neighborhood shaded by live oaks that buckled sections of the sidewalk with gnarled roots.

I was almost there—I could see the day care sign with the happy alphabet letters spelling the name—when I saw her in the Darcy yard. I thought I was hallucinating, and I slowed the car for a better look. Some would call her a wind wraith, a substanceless creature of twigs and leaves, but she isn’t. Nor is she a sprite or fairy or gremlin. I stopped the car, completely stunned at this creature formed of debris and spinning air currents who beckoned to me from the shade of the Darcys’ yard. I didn’t know it then, but I know now what she is. She’s an angel. A dark angel with a list of names. At the top of her list were Kevin and Kala.

I never saw the Ozark Water delivery truck that hit me from behind. I never even had a chance to glance at my children in the rearview mirror. My seat belt stopped me from impaling myself on the steering column, but my forehead cracked the wheel, and I was knocked unconscious, or so they told me at the emergency room when I tried to tell the doctor what I’d seen. No one believed me, but it doesn’t stop it from being true.

From far away I heard sticks and sand pelting the windshield. Semiconscious, I fought to wake up, to protect my babies. A man yelled at my window, but I didn’t pay any attention to him. I watched her, standing at the passenger side of the car. Her hands reached through the car, lovely hands, fine boned and delicate. Kala took her hand first, then Kevin. Each one so trusting.

“No! No! Kala! Kevin!” I tried to call them back to me. “Don’t leave me. Don’t go.”

She held my children’s hands and shook her head at me. “I’ll be back for you,” she said.

“Don’t take them,” I begged. “Please. They’re only children. Take me instead.”

“It isn’t your time.”

Such a matter-of-fact answer for an event that would make me wish for death a million times over.

“Take me. Let my children have a chance to grow up. Kala wants to be a veterinarian. She wants to make animals well. And Kevin—” My voice broke and I couldn’t continue. “Dennis will be a good father. They’ll be fine without me. Take me.” I held out my wrists, offering the veins to the broken windshield for a slashing.

“It isn’t your time.” Her face was pale, the eyes dark and sad.

“Make it my time. Trade me for them.” Panic had begun to build beneath my ribs. My heart squeezed, and I hoped it was the first sign that a deal had been struck.

“You can’t bargain with death,” she said. “It’s either your time or not. This isn’t your time.”

Against the pain in my chest, I struggled to free myself from the seat belt that held me. “No!” I fought, but the belt was tight. “No!”

They backed away from the car. A shaft of sunlight touched Kala’s chestnut curls. Tears hung in her lashes. “Mama.” She held out her arms to me. Kevin bit his lip.

“Please!” I ignored the man tugging at the driver’s door, his face showing horror and panic. “Please don’t take them.”

“It’s their time.”

“That’s supposed to bring me comfort?” I wanted to kill her. I wanted to tear her fleshless body with my teeth, rending her apart. Anything to protect my children.

“Their purpose is done. Let them move forward.”

The pressure in my chest became unbearable, and I knew it wasn’t a heart attack. Grief had set up lodging. My new boarder had brought his full accommodation of pain. “For God’s sake, I’d rather be dead. Please, take me!”

She shook her head. “When your time comes, I’ll be back.”

They stepped out of the sunshine and slowly dissipated in the shade cast by the oaks.

“Please!”

I was still shrieking when the man got the door open and Mrs. Darcy reached in to grasp my hands that clawed at the air. She tried to calm me until the ambulance came, but I could tell by the tears on her face that my children were gone. Just like that, gone. As quick as snuffing out a match.

There was a funeral, which I don’t remember. For a year, Dennis tried to make a go of it, but he lost not only his children but his wife. No man should have to live with a zombie, and though Dennis tried, there was nothing he could do to bring life back to the husk of my body. I ate what I was forced to eat. I sat in the sun if someone led me there. I bathed if a bath was drawn. Mostly I sat in a rocker by the front window and watched for her. I knew I’d see her again.

After Dennis left me, I cut my wrists in a bathtub of warm water. It’s a funny thing, but I’d always expected it to be painless. Bleeding to death is excruciating. The body demands to live, no matter what the mind or spirit says. My lungs burned for oxygen. My starving heart suffered anguish. I felt agony, but I knew soon it would be over.

That’s when I saw her again. She stood in the doorway of the bathroom, a vague creature of swirling air currents and energy and bath powder. For a moment I saw the terrible beauty of her face as she shook her head.

“It isn’t your time, Sandra.” She held out a scroll, and for a split second, I thought I saw names written in blood. “Your name isn’t here.”

“Fuck you.” It’s hard to be witty while bleeding to death.

“You can’t cheat death,” she whispered. “And you can’t hurry it.”

“Where are my children?”

“Their destiny is no longer your concern. They’re where they’re supposed to be.”

With those words, I knew Kala and Kevin were forever lost to me. Death would not resolve my loss. “I hate you! You won’t win! I’ll do whatever is necessary.” My voice weakened.

She slipped closer and looked into the tub that was bright with warm blood. “It isn’t your time.”

She disappeared and I heard footsteps pounding up the staircase. Dennis to the rescue. Why couldn’t he leave it be? He could’ve collected the insurance money and been done with the guilt. But no, he’d come back to check on me. I hadn’t looked good. He’d been worried, had a bad feeling. Feeling guilty over the divorce, he’d come back to make sure I was okay. But, of course, I wasn’t. I was far from okay.

Two years later, the wounds on my wrists were hard to find. My new attitude—one of self-sufficient acceptance—had won my freedom from West Briar Estates, the place where crazies can get twenty-four-hour surveillance and legal pharmaceuticals to blur reality. Never make the mistake of telling a psychiatrist that you’ve had a conversation with Death; it’s a surefire ticket to involuntary incarceration. While under the watchful eye of the medical staff, I began to formulate my revenge.

I learned to smile and pretend an interest in the news and the visits of my nieces and nephews. Actually, I was interested in the news. I’d begun to catch glimpses of her in the newscast footage of violent slums, on the dusty roads of the Middle East, and in the mud villages of Central America as a flood swept houses away. She was always there, a half-formed face in the shuddering palm fronds or in a dust devil shifting across the desert. She was there, the Pied Piper of the dying. She’d always been there, but no one looked for her. Except me. I sought her out, gathering the tidbits that would become my arsenal.

When the doors of West Briar closed behind me, I moved into a lovely old home with screened porches and an acre of yard that Dennis bought for me. He’d remarried and his wife was pregnant. They both came to visit, to include me in the growth of their baby. No two people could have worked harder. So I feigned an interest and began to garden with spectacular results. I had a green thumb. Imagine that. Someone who watched for death could grow anything.

As the years passed and I waited to see her, my plan took shape. She’d sentenced me to a half life. When she took my children, she took my joy. She wouldn’t let me die. She said it wasn’t my time, as if she could dictate the end of a person’s life by a timetable worked up like a train schedule. Good. I’ve been waiting. I’ve arranged for a little surprise.

It begins tonight, symbolically enough, on my birthday. I saw his ship in the harbor last night while I walked the midnight streets, unafraid of harm because it “isn’t my time.”

Tonight I’ll be forty-three, a mother of dead children, a divorcée, a failed suicide. A winner.

The winter days are short, and I’ve watched the sun wane and the timid appearance of the gibbous moon. Somehow, I thought it might be full—too many superstitions and legends, I suppose.

My home isn’t far from downtown, which is my destination. Thank goodness it’s a weeknight. On weekends young people crowd Dauphin Street to drink and party and listen to music. Tonight, a Tuesday, the downtown will be quiet. The hunters will be out.

By the time I park my Volvo beside a meter, which I deliberately don’t feed, dusk has fallen like the soft kiss on a child’s sleeping brow. The Mobile River is only a few blocks away, and I can smell the water. The last, lingering businessmen and-women are hurrying out of downtown. Hurrying home, as out of control of their lives as I used to be.

Neon lights a few bars, and I go to Barnacle Bill’s. I’ve watched my pirate often enough to know this is where he’ll be. Just as I step to the doorway, a rustle of wind reveals her image. She’s in Bienville Square, a vague outline among the squirrels and homeless people who sleep on the park benches. She walks beside an old man, and he never senses her. I know exactly what she’d say. It isn’t his time.

I never considered that she might read my mind. Can she squeeze my heart at a distance? Can she send a blood clot streaming through my lungs? I’d always assumed she has to touch me, but I might be wrong. Now that would be a fatal mistake, so to speak.

I step into the darkness of Barnacle Bill’s and inhale the smell of stale smoke and spilled beer. Old men slouch at the bar, hovering over mugs of beer. I’m the only woman in the place, and that draws interest, for about ten seconds. One look at my face, and all the men turn back to the drinks they’re nursing. I’m not there for company.

A puff of smoke spirals from a corner so dark I can’t make out the features of the smoker. That’s where I want to be. I walk to the booth and sit, uninvited.

“I’m Sandra, and it’s my birthday,” I say. “I have a wish.”

“Fascinating.” The accent is impossible to place, a blend of French and Spanish and old South. Beautiful. Seductive. I hadn’t expected to feel that.

“Will you grant me a wish?” I have to clear my throat twice before I get the question out. I’m afraid. Fancy that. After all this time, all the planning, I’m afraid.

“Depends.”

“I know who you are. I know about you. I’ve done my homework. Mobile Bay, 1823, the ship Esmeralda. You were walking along the docks late one night. You felt a tap on your shoulder and then a bite on your neck. You come back to Mobile to commemorate your making, and to hunt.”

He leaned forward, his eyes so black I felt as if I were being pulled into bottomless darkness. “And what else do you think you know, cher?”

“I know you can give me peace. You can take my life and give me immortality.”

His hand, the fingers chill, brushes my cheek. His touch is sensual and also terrifying. This is the hand of Death that I’ve sought for the last half of my life, but death on my terms.

“It doesn’t always work that way, cher. This immortality you request comes in degrees and always with a price.”

When he smiles, I see the points of his fangs. His face is dark-hued, the color of coffee or a nut. His teeth are white and his hair jet-black, long and beautiful. He’s no older than forty-five, or maybe two hundred and forty-five.

“Death has come for me. She says it’s my time. After twenty years of begging to die, I refuse to do it on her schedule. She took my children. She took my life.” The anger hardens my words into rocks that I hurl at him. “She has her little list with my name at the top, but she won’t win this time.”

His laughter is sucked into the beer-sodden wood of the bar. I’ve amused him.

“You think to best Death.”

“I do.” I don’t hesitate. I stretch out my wrists. “I’ve wanted to die for a long time. Now I refuse—because it suits her.”

“So you want the bite of immortality. To what end?”

“You hold the power of life and death. You are her rival. I want you to win.”

His smile looks haunted, and he doesn’t answer immediately.

From the table beside us a pile of napkins whirl into the air. She’s here. She’s standing right beside me, her hand reaching out for mine.

“Help me. Please.” I ignore her and focus all of my powers of persuasion on him. I think that I shouldn’t have waited until the last minute. I should’ve come sooner.

Before I can blink, he’s swept me into his arms. In a blur of speed we’re out the back door and into the alley.

“Happy birthday, Sandra,” he says just before his teeth sink into my neck. This time the blood loss is erotic instead of painful. I feel my body grow limp. Soon I will sleep and awaken to a world where Death has no hold on me.