Charles Grant: Night Songs

And on the day before it was over, it seemed as if he had found a way to slip into her mind. One moment she was kneeling by the bed, watching his breathing slow and stutter, and the next he was in there-in there — whispering to her, easing her slight panic with a cloak of comforting fog.

He would never leave, he said, if she did what he commanded.

He would never leave if she would obey all his instructions.

And she believed him, even though his eyes remained closed, his lips did not move, and the rise and the fall of his chest became increasingly shallow.

She slept that night in the shack, had been standing at the front window just like this when his breathing stopped and he'd left her. Just like this when she'd realized what happened and raced to the back, where the walls were bare and stained an ugly rust-brown from splotches of dead insects and nails from patches where the roof had leaked. A single window at the rear was closed against the night, covered with an uneven blanket faded from green to streaked white. One chest of drawers squatted timidly in the far corner. Beside it, a chipped oak table held a hurricane lamp whose low flame wavered though there was no draft.

And in the center of the uncarpeted floor was the bed-a cheap imitation brass frame and headboard that cradled a thin, linenless mattress at an uncomfortable angle.

The man lying there was extraordinarily slender. Naked. Not a square inch of dark flesh unmarked by lines here deepened into crevices, there laced across withered and flaked skin drawn around sticks that played at being bones. Like a man immersed too long in salt water. Sexless. Rigid. Eyes wide and staring.

She had circled the bed once, not touching, not seeing. Then she'd knelt on the floor and taken Gran's hand. Snakeskin. She had pressed it to her chest, trembled, wept until she could rub her tears into the insensitive palm while she strained and willed the eyelids to blink, the chest to rise, the knees to flex. Just once. Please, just once. That's all she asked. That's all she demanded.

She willed and wept and trembled until the green-chimneyed lamp with its tarnished brass base sputtered, flared, and died. From rents in the blanket came the waxing new moon's gray-white intrusion. From the cracks in the walls, in the ceiling, in the air, the muted thunder of the cresting tide. She wept, rocking on her knees, pressing the hand hard into her flesh and feeling no pain.

"Gran, come back to me," she whimpered between sobs. "Gran, please. Don't leave me alone, not now when I need you."

The floor creaked rhythmically. The moon began to dim as the night fog returned.

"Gran, listen," she whispered earnestly.

A bloated brown spider walked over the old man's shin.

"Gran, listen, please don't go. Please, Gran? Gran?"

She spread the dead man's fingers until the skin between was taut, near to tearing, took the thumb into her mouth and bit down slowly, not too hard-she wouldn't have him screaming. She lifted her head to glare at the night; to curse the dark and the fog and the moon and the stars; to curse the sea and the island and the shack where she knelt.

The faint cry of a gull, the scrabbling of a rat, the rubbing of sawgrass like the husk of a ghost.

And her voice was a woman's ten times her age. "I won't let you go, Gran. You're all I have, and I won't let you go."

For a long moment there was a last bit of fear and a brief troubled wondering if her mind had let go. Then she took a deep breath and held it until her lungs were aching. She released it in slow spurts and in doing so released her hold on the shack, on the beach, on the island in the ocean. There was only Gran now, and the old songs, herself in a universe of slow-stirring shadows.

The Atlantic spoke, and she listened; the fog whispered, and she cocked her head; the lamp hissed, and she nodded.

Carefully, moving as if dealing with cold, fragile black crystal- do now all I tell you, child, do it all now and it will all come right-she positioned his hands over his sunken stomach, one above the other, the fingertips angled toward the shoulders. She did not close the blind eyes-she wanted him to see everything so he could correct her mistakes. If she made a mistake. But she would not, dared not. Not now. Not now.

The Atlantic; the fog; the eye of the lamp. The creaking of the shack; the dead silence of the moon.

She moved on her knees to the foot of the bed, her hands in position to mirror Gran's exactly.

A last thought that momentarily brought life to the brown eyes: is this what they taught you in school, is this what you learned from Colin and the others, is this what you believe in, is this sane… is it… sane… is this…

The sea whispered.

The thought died.

"I will sing you, Gran," was a prayer and a query, and her voice filled the shack though its volume was low, the words swooping like ravens, darting like hawks, waiting like predators on the dead man's heart. Without joy, without promise, but a hard hopeful urging that surged to match the tide and hold, hold, until the words became a humming that lasted until dawn.

The words Gran had taught her to call on his gods.

And when she had finished and had slept for an hour, she started again.

For five days she worked at the luncheonette until seven, then returned to the shack where she ate, slept, and passed the night singing-staring at the cheap decanter she'd bought at Peg Fletcher's. There was gleaming red liquid in the cut-glass container, and each night a little more.

Five days later she walked into the police station and told them Gran was dead.

Dead.

And she didn't notice the way people looked at her now-except during those brief moments when the mind fog lifted and she wondered where she was.

A movement. Her eyes shifted. There. There on the water. Seven longboats making their way south just beyond the breakers. Dark against the sea, the figures within black in their slickers. She blinked rapidly to drive off the hazy past, and saw the people on the beach. Only a few yet, but a few more stumbling down the dunes; not one of them looked in her direction.

The boats turned, pitched, and rolled as they crested the waves and made their way toward shore.

She searched for Colin. Of all the people for all this time, only he understood what magic Gran had had in his fingers, in his soul, to bring to life the driftwood and the pine. He'd helped Gran sell, asking nothing in return, had helped deal with the big city galleries that came sniffing around the shack, hands on their wallets and handkerchiefs to their noses. Gran, however, refused most of Colin's assistance. More often than not he gave the sculptures away, then complained bitterly into his bottle about the few dollars he'd saved. And the closer to death he came, the angrier he grew, lashing out at the island without once ever taking any blame for his failures on his own frail shoulders.

She seemed to recall, then, that the songs he had taught her while he lay on the bed were angry as well. But it was only a feeling, one she could not pin down.

She shivered and hugged herself more tightly.

The afternoon before, Colin had visited her when school was over, having heard through the grapevine that she didn't want Gran buried in the sea despite the fact it was Haven's End's way.

She had met him on the sand, away from the shack.

"Lil, it's all right, y'know," he'd said, hands thrust into his pockets, brown hair caught in the sea breeze. "If you don't want to do this, it's all right."

She shook her head slowly. "You don't understand, Colin."

He managed a smile. "I'm trying." His look said, why don't you help me?

She felt a swirling of the mind fog that had blinded her since the night before Gran died. "It's not a matter of want, it's a matter of must." And she hoped she wasn't overplaying the bereaved role, one she sometimes felt wasn't a role at all. Whenever that feeling came she knew Gran was listening, watching, waiting to stop her. Then the feeling would leave and the fog would come again.