The Cauldron (16 page)

Chapter 26

Ellen

“I used to pick up those tabloids at the grocers.” Her laugh sounded musical. “The ones talking about Elvis sightings, Sonny and Cher gossip, miracle diets—thirty pounds in thirty days. Oh, and carnival rides that were secretly spaceships sent here to abduct Earth’s children. I still buy
The National Enquirer
to this day.”

Carl raised an eyebrow.

“Big headlines and obviously doctored photos,” she went on. “Filled with stories about aliens running for president, near-death experiences, and reincarnation. Remember how you used to call me silly for wasting our money on them?” She sucked in her lower lip. “Though back in those days they weren’t quite as fanciful, and they weren’t called tabloids, were they? I think they were … oh, broadsheets … that’s right. And my favorite was just called
The Enquirer
then, and it wasn’t so sensational. Mostly just propaganda in those years, true stories with a bad slant. The spaceships and ghost tales came later. Don’t you remember me—”

“—buying them … let alone reading them? Yeah, I remember.
The Enquirer
used to run editorials against the military, demoralizing the troops fighting in Germany.”

“Yes. World War II. Back in the day. You called my papers birdcage liners.” Ellen shivered. Seeing him here, being so close to him—her John—she wanted to hold him tight and bring back her youth and their marriage. It had been a happy one. This was
her
John … even he admitted it, though what real proof was there? But there were too many years gone, and too many years between them. She kept her distance.

How could this be possible?

It wasn’t possible. But it felt right.

“You know, maybe they had it right, my birdcage liners. Or some of it right anyway, about the reincarnation.” She rubbed a thumb against an age spot just above her wrist, working at it like it was a worry stone. “The notion of a person’s soul finding its way into another body, that death isn’t the end, just a path to a new life.”

She realized John … Carl … was studying her. She turned away and rearranged spices on her counter, picking up the last of the dinner dishes as she continued. “I was raised Baptist, you know.” Or at least that’s what she remembered. The First Baptist Church, choir practice.

“I recall, yes.”

“I had an old friend who was a fire-and-brimstone preacher and had me terrified about the fires of hell and eternal damnation.”

“We were married in his church.”

“Kept me on that old straight and narrow when I was young. So there’s something … oh, I don’t know … something comforting in seeing you, John … Carl. Death isn’t final. But there’s something—”

“Uncomfortable, too,” he finished.

She shrugged and opened a drawer, moving silverware around. “Then there’s karma.”

“Karma?”

“Karma and reincarnation.” She shut the drawer and turned, leaning against the counter and looking at him without meeting his gaze. “You reap what you sow,” she explained. “If you’re bad in one life you come back as something less, like a beggar or a rat. And if you’re good and kind you come back as something better, or—”

“—something that’s the same?” His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear him. Louder: “That doesn’t sound very Baptist, karma and reincarnation.”

“It’s Hindu, I think.” During the winter months when business was slow, she’d taken some classes offered at the public library: music appreciation, Egyptian symbolism, comparative religions. “And it holds that if your life is easy, and you’re … say, rich … it’s because you were a good soul in a previous life. But if you’re sick and poor, you—”

“Weren’t very upright?”

“Something like that.” She shivered again. He was finishing her sentences, just like he used to decades ago. “The Hindu notion is that the souls of animals can come back as humans, and vice versa.” This time her laugh was clipped. “Maybe your father took a turn at being a cocker spaniel. And maybe that tabby I had—”

“—before we got married—”

“—was Grover Cleveland.”

“Cows are exalted creatures in India.” He stood and pushed in his chair and took a step toward her. “Ellen—”

“I remember an article in one of those tabloids about a near-death experience researcher who claimed that when our bodies give out our spirits go into this cosmic cauldron, some universal consciousness, where we all swirl together waiting to be ladled out. No need to fear the fires of hell or eternal damnation, nothing so horribly cruel as all of that, or …”

He took another step, reached forward and touched her cheek.

She hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

“John … Carl … if you’ve been reincarnated. If it’s really you … why—”

“—do I look the same?” He retreated to give her breathing room. “On our first anniversary I took you to this little French restaurant. It wasn’t really French, but it had scenes of Paris wallpapered in the dining room.”

She nodded.

“You gave me a Zebco casting reel, all big and shiny.”

“Too big for the pole you liked to use.”

“So I bought a new pole just for the Zebco reel.”

“Yes, you are my John. But why … if you died, drowned—”

“I don’t know that I really died, Ellen.”

“Why do you look—”

“—the same?” He shook his head. “I always look the same. In every life, I look the same.”

She finally met his eyes. “I don’t under—”

“Look, Ellen. I was John, am
your John
, but I recall being a lot of other people.” He stared at her, his eyes holding her in place like daggers. “I’ve never told anyone that, not Jerrah, not … I always look the same. Every life. From the Civil War to the Gold Rush to—”

She raised a hand to her mouth.

“Say it, Ellen. Call me mad.”

“I don’t think you’re mad.”
You’re my John,
she mouthed. But how was this fair? How could he have been ripped from her? She’d buried him … or at least his memory. No body had been recovered from the swollen river. There was a stone at the cemetery, and an empty plot next to it where she’d made arrangements to be buried when it was her time. She’d gone on with her life, growing old and acquiring the aches and little pains and maladies the years heaped on. And here he was in front of her, young and whole, looking like he did the day he left to look at that boat. Younger than that day. “Where have you been?”

He told her again about the office he worked in, and this time he mentioned the movie theater and Shelly, and his run-in with her brother Mike. “That’s where I’ve been. I just didn’t remember before … remember I was John. I wouldn’t have stayed away.”

For several moments neither said anything. She heard the putter of a boat coming in and hoped whoever was in it had caught a nice mess of pan fish or a big bass; the thought distracted her.

“I don’t understand it, any of it,” he said. “At least not yet. If I’m making you too—”

“Of course you’re making me uncomfortable. But, no, I don’t want you to leave.”

There was more silence. This time she broke it.

“John … Carl … I’ve never had one of those déjà-vu experiences. No out-of-body episodes, past life recollections. Certainly nothing like you’ve, like you’re … but, God, you look exactly like my John. Dreams. I have dreams, though. I am different in my dreams.”

“We both realize that somehow I was your—”

She waved her hand to cut him off and opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. She busied herself moving more things around on her countertop again for a few minutes, and then went to the refrigerator and took out a beer and a Fresca.

“It’s all I have up here. It’s what we sell the most of.” She tapped a finger to the Hams label and handed it to him. “Vacationers still love the stuff from the Land of Sky Blue Waters.”

She sat the soda in front of her and did not sit down. She steepled her fingers to the sides of the can and let out a long sigh before she popped the top open and let it breathe.

“Ellen, it’s like … I’ve been thinking of it as dreamtime, one life fading and another growing in its place. Except, until recently, I couldn’t remember any of them, my other lives. I was just Carl Johnson. But in the past few days I have been remembering, pieces anyway. And one of those pieces brought me here.”

“And Lord knows where else they’ll take you.” Ellen picked up the soda and took a sip. “I said I’ve not had any of that déjà-vu stuff. And I haven’t. I believe in God and heaven … or want to believe. But I think there are things that can’t be explained. Call it unnatural or supernatural.” She watched him drain half the beer in one long pull, just like he used to. “I believe in precognition.”

He raised both eyebrows this time. “Precognition?”

“Big word, huh? Somehow I can tell when someone is in danger, at least someone I’m close to, a friend or relative.” She took another sip, her mouth feeling so dry. “I knew you were in danger, John … Carl. Oh, hell, what do I call you? That day when you went to look at that boat of Oscar’s, I had this feeling.” She touched her stomach. “Right here. I knew something bad was going to happen. All that rain. You had to have that damnable boat. In all the years since I was angry at myself for not stopping you, for not putting up a fight and saying you didn’t need the damn thing. So many boats here at the resort. Why did you need one more?”

“It was a beauty,” Carl whispered.

***

Chapter 27

Jerrah

She’d taken forty-six dollars out of Carl’s wallet while he was napping before dinner. She knew he’d miss it, but it wasn’t his last dollar; she certainly wasn’t leaving him with no chicken. But it would be enough to buy her bus fare to someplace, maybe back home, a few meals … though after Ellen’s spread, she didn’t think she could eat another bite for days.

Jerrah had left the tiny out-of-date kitchen as soon as she’d finished dinner, and she ignored the friendly waves of a fisherman coming in. Part of her had wanted to stick around to watch the Carl-and-Ellen freak-show. But the courteous corner of her brain actually wanted to give Carl and Ellen time alone.

God, but that situation curled her toenails! Ellen had to be … what … forty years older than Carl. Fifty probably. Old enough to be his mother, maybe grandmother, and he was looking at her with the eyes of a teenager in love. Curl her toenails and turn her tummy. Jerrah stuck two fingers in her mouth and pretended to gag.

What if Carl really had been Ellen’s husband—or actually was
still
her husband, somehow preserved in time like a two-headed pig in a jar in some carnival sideshow? Jerrah shuddered. That wasn’t possible, was it? But what if it
was
true? What would the two of them do? Pick up the wedded bliss where they left off? That notion made her almost really gag. Ellen seemed nice and all, but she was just too, too old for Jerrah to wrap her mind around the notion of a rekindled romance between the pair.

Better just to get out of this mess. Why had she stuck around so long anyway? What sort of answers had she expected to get? Carl was all caught up in himself and certainly wasn’t going to help her ferret out why she’d gotten involved in this … mess. Why had she taken a bus to Morgantown? Why had she felt compelled to follow Carl? Sure, she wanted answers. But more than answers, she decided she wanted to book out of here.

“A helluva mess,” Jerrah pronounced as she shuffled back to their cabin. Because Ellen’s dinner was so early, it was still plenty light outside, and the sun struck the lake’s surface making it sparkle. It was actually pretty, Jerrah thought. Why the hell did she fear water? A few summers ago she’d worked at her local pool as a lifeguard, and she didn’t have any bad memories from it. Nothing real good, but nothing that should make her so wary now.

Just what was going on with her mind?

Inside the cabin, she looked around, spotted her backpack next to the couch, and grabbed it up. She thought about writing Carl a note, but what would she say?

I’ve come to my senses and I’m going home?

Have fun with your “old” girlfriend?

You’re even more messed up than me?

I’m out of here?

In the end, she left nothing—deciding to split before she changed her mind or before Carl came back to “call it a night” and confront her about his missing money. She grabbed a paring knife out of the drawer by the sink, double-wrapped the blade in a paper towel and put it in her back pocket; it wouldn’t be much protection if she hitched a ride with some scumbag, but it would make her feel a little safer. And if she had the opportunity, she would indeed hitch a ride.

The screen door banged shut behind her and she started hoofing her way back toward the lodge and the road that would eventually take her to the highway.

It would probably be dark before she made it all the way to the highway … unless she could find that ride. She supposed she could have swiped Carl’s car; he’d left the keys on the table. Stealing forty-six bucks was one thing. A car … out of the question. She’d started out walking fast, and the exertion had her huffing before she guessed she’d gone a mile. She slowed to a steady pace and shifted her pack to her other shoulder. Maybe she should have waited until the morning, maybe asked Carl then if he’d take her as far as the highway, maybe talked him into taking her back into Morgantown so she could catch the next bus.

Where the hell was Morgantown?

She’d not looked at a map. Indiana, apparently. She should’ve asked one of the waitresses, or even Carl. But she hadn’t wanted to seem stupid. Really, walking into Morgantown and not knowing where the place was with regards to anything else.

“Stupid!”

It couldn’t be terribly far from her hometown of Greencastle. Couldn’t be, could it? She was never floating in money, though she had a savings account put away only for grad school expenses, so the bus she’d taken to Morgantown couldn’t have been a costly ticket.

Why why why had she taken that bus?

And why now, when she looked to her right and could see the highway, traffic purring along, was she turning around and walking back to that damnable run-down resort?

Jerrah sat on the sagging couch in the cabin, backpack between her feet, staring out the window, nervously knocking her knees together. The lake was black, the night sky reflecting off the water, like she was staring into some bottomless pit.

She remembered turning around, but for the life of her she didn’t remember walking back here.

She did, however, remember a presence in her head. It felt like someone was hitchhiking a ride in her brain. Except that someone was doing the driving. Lord, but it had given her a hell of a headache.

It was a demanding presence, with something familiar about it, and it left her with odd images … an awkward attempt to steer a TransAm, minutes staring at an office building and the swarm of people moving by it on the sidewalk. Then there was the almost hospital-like picture of a seamless metal floor, a man-sized cocoon, and the whisper of a word: augmentor. Mostly, it left her with thoughts about Carl Johnson.

Jerrah drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, rocked back and forth and waited for Carl to return from his dinner date with his elderly wife.

He needs to tell me I’m not going insane, she thought.

***