The Elementals Read online

  I knew not to scream.

  I knew to keep talking.

  I don’t know how I knew. Maybe I had imagined this before, a thousand times, without realizing it, thinking of Jeni in my unconscious mind.

  What did she do when it happened? What would a little girl with no fear do when this happened? What could she have done if she had thought about it beforehand?

  Maybe Jeni was telling me what to do—the spirit of Jeni. Because as I lay there breathing the smell of my own death, a voice said:

  Keep talking. Keep talking. Ariel.

  So I did.

  “My mom has cancer. Do you know anyone with cancer?” I didn’t wait for him to respond because I knew that he wouldn’t anyway. “I love her so much. She’s a really good mom. I’m so lucky. Not everyone has that. It must be so hard if you don’t.” I hesitated then, for just a moment. I could hear him breathing. I didn’t want to hear the sound of his breath. “I go to school here, that’s why I’m here, but it’s really bad sometimes. It’s not like I have the worst problems but I want to go home and be with my mom.” I could feel tears in my throat and I tried to grit them back. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to freak you out. You must already be pretty upset.” I turned my head so that my eye wasn’t pressed into the upholstery. My neck clenched with pain. Streetlights flickered over me like shiny fish. “My name’s Ariel,” I said. “I’m twenty. Just turned twenty. In October. Now it’s November, almost, isn’t it? I had a boyfriend but we broke up. I think there’s something wrong with him, or at least I know there is something wrong with the world he belongs to. Have you ever felt that way? Like there’s something wrong with the people you care about, with the whole world? And then you think, maybe it’s me?” I heard a soft groaning sound coming from him. I peeked up and saw the huge form at the wheel. His head touched the roof of the car, even bent over, a hump on his back.

  I had seen him before. Many times on the street. The giant. I buried my face down again.

  “I don’t want you to hurt me,” I said. “I know you could hurt me if you want to. You must be so angry to want to hurt someone you don’t know. You must have had people hurt you…”

  Maybe it was worse. Maybe I’d gone too far. The car veered and I slid off the seat onto the floor. The rain was still pouring down. It seemed to be darker now, no streetlights. I could smell the earth outside, wet and thick with worms.

  “Please,” I said. “Please don’t hurt me. Just let me go. I won’t look at you. I won’t report you. Just let me go. I want to go back to my mom. I should never have come back here again.”

  The car screeched to a halt. He was breathing heavily now. I was covered in a cold film of sweat. He was going to rape me and then he was going to murder my body, and then I would be with Jeni and on All Hallows’ Eve I would return and dance with John Graves.

  I should have called him as soon as I got back to Berkeley. I should have trusted him this time.

  I should have told my mom more often how much I loved her.

  I shouldn’t have given up on Jeni. I should have done anything I could to find her.

  These are the things you feel at death—the regrets more than anything else.

  The giant bent down and grabbed me by my bound wrists, hauled me up to the seat again.

  “They believe they can bring back the souls of the dead,” I said. Tears were pouring down my face now and I was speaking faster and faster, not trying to calm him anymore. “Do you believe anyone can do that? They must be crazy. Or maybe it’s true? They want to bring back their baby. They had a baby who died. I can’t imagine that. How awful that must be. A baby. But he apologized, he said he was wrong. I shouldn’t have left him.”

  There was a rushing sound, like a windstorm in the trees, and what sounded like cries. The giant cocked his head and his eyes darted to the car window.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” I whispered. “Please. I’m sorry for whatever has happened to you.”

  He smelled like the wet earth and excrement. I held my breath and my heart clenched. The rushing sound grew louder—branches cracking under stampeding feet, wind tearing through the leaves, those strange voices. It seemed as if the storm had circled the car. Everything turned black and in the black lake of the window I thought, for a moment, I saw the reflection of Jeni’s face. I tried to scream but a huge, grimy hand slammed over my mouth.

  Then my captor reached over and I felt raw, dry lips brushing my cheek.

  A kiss.

  A kiss?

  He unlocked the door, grunting something I didn’t understand, and pushed it open and pushed me out into the rain.

  And I rolled down the muddy slope away from everything that had ever gone before. Toward nothing.

  32. The dead bride of nothing

  Mud was in my mouth, nostrils and eyes and the only sounds were the voices of the rushing water. I am dead. The dead bride of nothing. But there was cold, gold light through the trees; it was morning.

  My wrists were not bound and there was no sign of the rope that had cut into them. I crawled and clawed my way along the creek bed and leaned against an oak tree that grew at the bank to help myself stand. My legs were shaking like the golden oak leaves in the cool air and my dress was torn and brown with mud. Mud lined my fingernails so that they ached with it.

  The tree had a hollow. Something about that hollow frightened me. I imagined I could hear children crying there.

  My hand was touching something hard. I blinked at it, trying to understand. The rain had washed away the dirt, revealing what lay beneath. Pale and dense and rubbed clean of what it once knew. It was a bone. And not an animal’s. I had been taking anatomy that semester.

  I recognized a human femur when I saw one. But this one was very small.

  I stumbled back to the path where I used to run. Some joggers passed me and looked back but kept going. When I got a bit farther a guy on a bike stopped and squinted at me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I stared at him. He had freckles across the bridge of his nose. I thought, I can’t be dead. He has freckles. It seemed to make sense.

  He was dialing on his cell phone. “I’m going to get you some help,” he said.

  I thought, Are you going to get me John Graves? Are you going to get me my mommy? Are you going to get Jeni?

  * * *

  The campus police officer checked me in to Cowell Hospital where I was examined. No serious injuries—just bruises, but they kept me for observation anyway. Pierre came by with my overnight bag and my book filled with notes about Jeni. My roommate hardly said a word, just leaned over and kissed the top of my head.

  Officer Liu came later in the afternoon and had me describe what had happened and ID the giant, Burr Linden. “We’ve got him. He didn’t go far. Was sitting in the car a few miles away from where we found you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He doesn’t say much. Mute. Or supposedly. Why do you think he would take you where he did? You think he was aware of the bones?”

  “The bones,” I said, trying to keep calm even as the words clawed in my throat.

  “We found some more, actually. We’ll keep you apprised.”

  “Human bones.”

  Pain winced the man’s face—so intense it was like I was looking into a mirror. “You just need to rest now. We’ll check into everything. I promise.” He handed me his card. “And call me if you need anything.”

  “I need you to take this,” I said, handing him my notebook filled with suspicions, terrors, rants. “Maybe there is something that will help.”

  “We’ve got him,” he said.

  “No. With Jeni.”

  * * *

  My parents flew in that day. My mother clung to my father’s arm as they came into my hospital room. She looked as ill as I’d ever seen her, her skin white and peeling as birch bark, her cheekbones exposed ridges, and I thought, It’s my fault for coming back here. But I wasn’t ready to leave now,
not now.

  “We can’t let you stay,” my mom said. “Not after Jennifer.”

  I didn’t correct her. Jeni.

  “And now this! I knew we shouldn’t have let you come back.”

  “I promise,” I said, reaching for her hand. The skin on her palm was so thin and dry it felt like it would tear. “I’ll be more careful. I wasn’t careful.”

  My father shook his head. “Ariel, how can we trust this situation? Look at the elements.”

  “I’ll be safe,” I said. “I’m safe at Pierre’s. I won’t go out at night alone again. And they caught him, anyway. He didn’t hurt me.”

  “Why would you want to stay?” my mom asked. “How can you justify it to us?” She was crying. “I mean, how can I live with myself…”

  “I promise,” I said. “I’ll be so careful, Mom. I have to stay now. I have to help find out what happened. Just give me until the end of the semester.”

  That night she insisted on sleeping on a cot in my room while my dad got a hotel. She wouldn’t leave me alone, she said. I slept better than you would have thought. Because she was still there.

  33. An angel, not

  I checked out of the hospital soon afterward and my parents got me settled back in my bedroom at Pierre’s, the collages glittering on the walls, Michelangelo playing with wooden blocks in the next room while Pierre cooked dinner. All this reassured my mom and dad and after more conversations and many instructions and warnings they agreed to let me stay.

  Before they left, my mom and I sat in my bedroom and I showed her the collages in detail, describing what each one meant to me. There was one made up of greeting cards she had sent me since freshman year. Many were of angels.

  “I didn’t even realize that,” she said, peering at a Piero della Francesca reproduction of the Annunciation that I had used, decorating it with dried and pressed white stargazers.

  “We need them now,” I told her, thinking not just of her illness and Jeni and John and what had happened to me but the whole planet, and she nodded. “But you are mine, my darling daughter.”

  A woman, maybe. An angel, not.

  “How are you?” I asked. “I mean, spiritually.”

  That wasn’t a word we usually used in my house. She paused, looking at the collage, and when she looked back at me her face was more animated than it had been since she’d arrived.

  “I’d say I’m good that way. I’m not ready to leave yet but when I go I know it will be all right. And I know, without a doubt, I’ll stay connected to you. I’m sure of it.”

  I thought of Tania and Perry and even John, wanting me to bring back the soul of their dead child with them. But this was different. I nodded and kissed her hand. “I understand,” I said.

  “I know you feel you need to stay.” She met my eyes and there was a ferocity in hers I’d never seen before. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

  * * *

  I went to John’s the next afternoon. He was staying in a large, slightly ramshackle house overgrown with ivy. I walked upstairs and knocked on his door. It seemed strange that it was so easy to find him. But he had been close all along; I had just been too afraid to come.

  He answered right away. Unshaven, wearing a plain T-shirt and jeans with rips in the knees. He stared at me and then stepped back and motioned for me to come inside. There was so much visible tension in his arm and shoulder muscles and I remembered with a clench in my pelvis the way he strained above me just before the release. I wanted to jam myself into the crook of his arm and breathe him back into me the way he had been before—a constant presence, part of my body. Mine.

  My John.

  Somehow, after everything, I still thought of him as that, the way, perhaps, you might think of your mother, your child, your best friend or your husband, when you see them again in an afterlife, in whatever form they have chosen.

  His room was plain, only a twin mattress, a wooden dresser, desk and chair and a lamp balanced on a stack of books. No art nouveau furniture, no roses or wine bottles. The window overlooked an old oak tree. He sat on the bed and I sat on the chair across from him.

  “I’ve been waiting,” he said.

  “I needed time.”

  “I know.”

  “You left them?”

  He nodded.

  “Is it hard?”

  “It’s hard. Without you.”

  I had so much to tell him but I couldn’t speak. My throat felt crushed from inside. Love was too big for me; it was a giant, but one that meant no harm. Still it might kill me; I’d let it if I had to. I bent my head and he came and knelt in front of me and put his arms around me and together we wept. The wet from his eyes fell onto my bare arms and my tears soaked his T-shirt.

  I don’t know how long we sat like that, both crying, my body fastened to his, refusing to let go of him. I only know that then we were on the bed, naked, our clothes in shreds on the floor. I was feverish, the nerve endings in my scalp tingling, but I was still holding on.

  In the tale, Janet/Margaret holds onto Tam Lin as he changes from beast to beast to burning coal; she does not let him go. She saves him from the queen of fae.

  * * *

  We didn’t wake until much later. Night was filling the spaces among the leaves outside his window.

  I began to sing to him, lullabies I remembered my mother singing to me.

  “By my baby’s cradle in the night/Stands a goat so soft and snowy white/The goat will go to the market/While I my watch do keep/Bringing back raisins and almonds/Sleep my little one sleep.”

  This was only one small thing of many gifts my mother had given to me. I did not ever want to let her go. I had this—her lullaby, but without her in the world it would never be enough. Still, I sang and sang it to John, into the night, and then he sang to me and as we sang I moved farther and farther away from the real world with its pain and sorrow.

  I could have stayed like this, with him, forever, if only to watch the subtle shifts in his expression as he slept, the way his belly showed when he stretched awake, revealing the line of hair beneath his navel, the pallor of his face against the sheet. We made love again, his body charging into me as I closed my eyes and shivered in the rain of his sweat.

  Finally we dozed and at dawn we woke together to a loud sound.

  My bag had fallen off the chair and out of it rolled the doll Jeni’s mother had given to me. I had put it in at the last minute before I left for John’s.

  He got out of bed, naked, and picked her up. Even against the pallor of his skin his knuckles looked white. “What does it mean?” he said.

  Then I told him, in as calm a voice as I could manage, what had happened since I’d seen him.

  John put down the doll and looked at me with too-bright eyes. “There is something I need you to see.”

  He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a skeleton key.

  “What’s it for?”

  “When I came back from seeing you the last time, before I moved out, I went into Tania’s basement. I knew there were things wrong with her but I never realized how much.”

  “John?” My eyes were watering with fear. “What are you telling me?”

  His pupils were so dilated I could hardly see the green. “There was a time when I was away from them, from Tania. Around when Jeni disappeared. Remember I told you.” He looked at the doll on the bed, then quickly away. “I think I’m starting to understand. But I need to be sure.”

  The key lay in his open palm.

  “They’re probably gone now, or asleep.”

  34. Where the key talked to the girl

  There was a fairy tale where the key talked to the girl, led her to the chamber where the bones of the dead wives were hidden. This key had no blood on it, no voice, but I shivered with fever. My head felt like there were things inside, knocking around, trying to get out or send a message, like spirits warning miners of death underground.

  We went in through the kitchen door, through to the parlor. It l
ooked dusty and dim, untouched, no flowers in the vases, no music, no more tang of garlic and onions sautéed in olive oil from the kitchen; even the almost too heavy essence of rose blooming in from the garden was gone. The house smelled cold and musty.

  I remembered how we had all danced night after night, the fire blazing and the smell of wine and petals mixing with smoke and their bodies flickering.

  Had I really lived here or was this only another sign of the strangeness of my mind?

  I followed John downstairs as quietly as possible. He opened the room with the key and flicked on a light.

  “I’m going to wait outside,” he whispered. “Call if you need me.”

  There was nothing sinister at all except perhaps for the lack of windows; but this was a basement, so, of course. A basement with a tattered brocade chaise longue and chairs, a wine rack and a table with three ceramic bowls. The first two bowls were filled with leaves and flowers and the third had a very fine powder in it. I would have examined these further but I was more interested in the dolls.

  They lined all the shelves, watching me with their big, blankly unblinking eyes and secret painted smiles. Straw, wood, porcelain, bisque and plastic ones. I went around the room touching each doll with my finger—some on the lips, some on the chest where their hearts would have been—remembering how, for a few months after Jeni’s disappearance, I’d have to secretly kiss every stuffed animal in my room (I still kept them there) good night before I could fall asleep, just as I’d done as a child. I was exhausted with shame by the time I was through. Obsessive-compulsive much? as Lauren would say. But at least I’d stopped that now.

  Had I? I imagined going into this locked room every night and kissing each doll’s cold little lips, every single pair, before I could sleep.

  I put my hand on top of a small metal box painted with a picture of a tree. When I moved my hand away the box shook and—popped. A weird little man in a red cap was leering at me. Just a jack-in-the-box but those things always creeped me out. I shuddered back at him.

  What was there to be afraid of? I was only looking at harmless dolls. Why had Tania locked the room? To create an aura of mystery? Or something more? Sometimes I wondered about Tania’s sanity but what made me any less crazy? If I closed my eyes I could imagine the dolls whispering to me in unison, telling me a story in voices I didn’t understand. And what if Tania caught me in the secret room? John had sent me here now for a reason.