The Complete Collection (5 page)
Read The Complete Collection Online
Authors: Susan Shultz
A love I’d kept
Died yesterday
As silently as sleep.
A painless euthanasia
There was no need to weep.
No one came in mourning
As I held it
Still and cold.
So all alone
I buried it.
In my churchyard, vast and old.
I welcome work this morning at the library.
Tucked in its dark corners, I read and
stack and sort.
I hide. I eat lunch at my desk. I do not
talk to anyone. I give Portia one-word answers until the end of the day. My
eyes must look dead enough to scare her away.
At 5:00 p.m. I leave. I’m exhausted and
just want to sleep.
When I get home, Sam is sitting on the
hood of his car outside my house. He gazes down at the graveled road.
“We need to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Too bad.”
His hair catches the sunlight. I shield
my eyes from it.
“What the fuck, A.J.? What was that shit
last night?”
“Please, just leave me alone.” I sit on
the steps.
I can’t look at him.
He follows me to the stairs.
“How’s your girlfriend?” My voice is
quiet. I won’t look at him.
“First, she’s not my girlfriend. Second,
she was really charmed by your act last night. Thanks for making such a good
impression after all I’ve told her about you. And vice versa.”
I look up finally. He takes a step back,
looking into my eyes. He sees the deadness there.
“Do you think her opinion registers,
even remotely, on the list of things I care about?” My voice sounds as dead as
my eyes must look.
“Why are you doing this?”
I cover my face with my hands.
“Talk to me. A.J. It’s me. It’s just me.
Sam.” He is pleading.
He kneels in front of me and pulls my
hands from eyes.
“What’s going on? Please tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. There’s nothing you can say to
me that would change how I feel about you. Don’t you know that by now?”
I’m so exhausted. So tired.
He lifts me into his lap and hugs me to
him.
I wrap my arms around his neck in
relief. I feel the sun coming from him in rays. He is warm.
I’m so cold.
“Sam.” My head is on his shoulder.
“Yes?”
“How do you feel about me?”
My Blacksmith warned me not to ask. But
I do anyway.
He pulls my head from his shoulder.
“Ainsley, don’t you know by now?” He
looks into my eyes. He pulls my glasses off. His hand strokes my cheek.
Then Sam is kissing me. It’s a mistake.
I can hear whispers coming from my graveyard. Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. The
more open I am, the more horror he’ll see. Turn back, I tell myself. But I
don’t. I am opening, slowly. I can feel my Blacksmith’s anger. Jealousy.
Disappointment. Mistake.
But I still kiss him. His tongue meets
mine, and it’s warm. I swallow his warmth. He makes me warm inside. Sam is the
sun.
“Let’s go inside.” He opens the back
door and leads me, still tired, almost stoned with exhaustion, confusion, and
something else. The hunger lurches inside me.
Sam pulls me onto the couch and kisses
me again. He is so gentle. I forgot what real kissing was like. He kisses me
and rubs my back. I feel safe.
“Sam.”
“Shhhh.” He pushes me back onto the
couch and pulls my sweater over my head. I open his shirt, still kissing him.
We wrap around each other. I can see my yard from the window. I close my eyes.
I ignore the whispers.
Sam holds me and warms me and I lose
myself in it. I’m not a monster. I’m Ainsley. I am A.J. I am loved by Sam.
He fills me with his warm heart. I’m not
so cold now. My mouth is buried in Sam’s neck.
It’s a mistake. But he holds me until I
sleep.
When I wake, I’m cold again. I hold Sam
to me, but I can’t get warm. It’s the middle of the night.
I know what I have to do. I’ve gone over
it with my Blacksmith so many times.
“Sam…Sam, wake up.”
He stirs next to me. He is so beautiful.
Perfect.
He wakes up. He kisses me softly.
“Sam, I want to show you my garden.”
“Now? It’s the middle of the night.”
“That’s the best time. Come on.”
I take his hand after he gets dressed,
and we go up to the garden.
“Jeez, it’s dark back here.”
“Don’t worry, there’s some light ahead.”
We get to the graveyard. I find my
matches and light the candles.
“Cool graveyard. But where is your
garden?”
“This is my garden, Sam. I grow things
here. I plant things here. I talk to the dead here.”
He stares at me.
“I don’t grow tomatoes, Sam. I’m not who
you think I am.”
“Ainsley, I think you’re troubled. I
don’t know exactly what is going on. But it’s nothing we can’t fix together.”
He pauses. “Take my hand.”
“I can’t, Sam. It’s too late for that.
I’m a monster. Do you want to know who A.J. really is? Look back there. Behind
the graves. Do you see those piles of dirt?”
He looks.
“A.J., I don’t want to hear any more.”
He backs away from me.
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want
to know. Jesus. God.” He sits down on my Blacksmith’s grave. He covers his eyes
with his hands.
The Blacksmith is whispering to me. He
is telling me that he was right all along. I will lose Sam now. Forever.
There is only one way I can keep him. I
can keep him always.
His eyes are closed.
I kneel before him, quietly. I’m crying.
My tears water the soil.
“Sam.”
“Don’t, A.J. Don’t.” His voice is
pleading. I think he is crying, too.
“Sam, look at me. Kiss me once more.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Please, Sam. You said you’d do anything
for me. All I had to do was ask. I’m asking you for this one thing.”
He looks up me. His eyes fill with
tears. I’ve broken his heart. He is a victim of my dead, lurching hunger.
I kiss his lips gently.
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
Within me, my Blacksmith rages. I can
feel him. This would prove his ultimate power over me. That he has won. If he
can get me to sacrifice Sam for him, my evolution into a monster will be
complete.
I pull out the knife.
And slit my own throat.
I love you, Sam.
They bury me in my graveyard. Sam sees to
that.
They dig up my backyard. Body parts from
eleven different men are recovered. Some parts are missing, of course.
Sam has me buried where he knows I want
to be. I’m not far from my Blacksmith. My headstone is a simple wooden cross.
Sam keeps my name off the cross because he fears it would be vandalized or
desecrated.
Sam visits me often. He is the only one.
Sometimes he cries. Other times he is
angry.
But now, like me, he talks to the dead.
He sits on the bench for hours
sometimes. Trying to understand.
I sit next to him, but he can’t see me.
I hold him when he cries and I comfort him. I touch his hair, in the sun.
If you pass by a graveyard, stop and
walk among the dead. Don’t be afraid. Talk to them. They are lonely.
Even better, stop and see me. My grave
is marked by a simple wooden cross. I am right near the Blacksmith. He keeps me
company at night. We talk. I sit with the young Mrs. Brown, too. We talk about
healing. About forgiveness. About motherhood.
I visit with the baby bird. My
grandmother. The other A. All my friends, my lost ones, are here.
So stop and see me. I’d love to talk to
you, too. I will hold your hand.
I’m all right, now. I’m not alone
anymore. The Blacksmith accepts me.
He has shown me how a dead heart can be
made whole, when welded to another one just as lifeless.
My Blacksmith’s fire burns within
me—red and dead.
Come, sit by my Blacksmith and me. We
will talk about love. But please, leave before dark.
And whatever you do, make sure you keep
your voice down.
My babies are sleeping.
Jessie
Tales From the Graveyard
Book Two
Susan Shultz
For my husband and children and their patience throughout
this process—and for the muse who lives in all of us, showing us
sometimes the deepest darkness is capable of evoking the most shimmering
light—but especially for mine.
“
The
moon-cradle’s rocking and rocking,
Where
a cloud and a cloud go by,
Silent
rocking and rocking
The
moon-cradle out in the sky.
The
snipe they are crying and crying
Liadine,
liadine, liadine
Where
no track’s on the bog they are flying:
A
lonely dream will be mine.”
—“
Moon Cradle
”
Loreena McKennitt
Matthew, I’m coming.
The sun sets on my life and I look
beyond the old woman to a silhouette, distant, in the window.
The Blacksmith stands against the
dusk.
He watches.
The Blacksmith is the last person I
see.
I die.
The house is old. And weary.
It moans and groans from the
harshness of New England winters. Its paint splinters from the suns of one
hundred summers. It blinks its aged window eyes and waits.
Beyond it, trees stand guard
around the house’s yard, a moat rising above and back into the hills and a dark
forest. The trees hide the rustling of what lives within that forest. They
shelter the blinking nocturnal eyes of night.
Beyond it, trees stand their
posts around the house’s moat of a yard, rising above and back into the hills
and a forest of darkness. The trees hide the rustling of what lives beyond and
within those woods. It shelters blinking nocturnal eyes.
The trees stand watch. And watch,
they do. They lord over the darkest of deeds, full of blood and tears.
They keep the secrets of those
that are buried at their feet, and the secrets of those that buried them there.
They weep their leaves in fall,
spilling their splendid, grieving colors across the green grass. Their
sacrifice keeps the grass warm under bitter ice and snow.
There is one tree that is
different from the others.
From a distance, it looks the
same. But a closer look reveals more.
Where branches work their way
down its trunk, buried within the bark and now grown over, there is a handle.
Attached to that handle is an
axe.
It’s there because: Almost a
century ago, a husband placed the axe there to remind his young wife what would
happen to her if she tried to leave.
This.
This is what will happen.
And then he swung the axe. And
left it there. And now it has grown into part of the tree, an almost-forgotten
monument to his young wife’s pain, fear and imprisonment.
But I have not forgotten.
I was there when the axe swung
through the air. I can still hear its whistle.
I can still remember how I flinched when the blade hit the
stump.
How our eyes met after it did,
and how we both imagined it buried in my neck, instead.
And how that made him smile.
My name is Jessie.
And I still cannot leave.
