Charles De Lint - The Ivory and the Horn

I also brought along my trusty old manual typewriter that I used all through college, because I think I might try to do some writing again— creative writing like I used to do before I got my first job on the paper. I would've brought my computer, but there's no electricity here, which is also why I've got a flashlight and an oil, lamp, though I wasn't sure I could use either until I checked if they could be seen from the highway at night. It turns out all I had to do was replace a couple of boards on the window facing the parking lot.

And of course I brought along my bathroom scale, so I can monitor my weight. This diet's proving to be one of the few successes of my life.

I've hidden my car by driving it across the overgrown lawn and parking it between the pool and my unit. After I got it there, I went back and did what I could with the grass and weeds the wheels had crushed to try and make it look as though no one had driven over them. A frontier woman I'm not, but I didn't do that bad a job. I doubted anybody would notice unless they really stopped to study the area.

Once I had the car stashed, I worked on cleaning up the unit. I had to keep resting because I didn't seem to have much stamina— I still don't— but by nine o'clock last night, I had my little hideaway all fixed up. It still has a musty smell, but either it's airing out, or I'm getting used to it by now. The trash is swept out and bagged in the unit next to mine, along with the mattress and a bundle of towels I found rotting in the bathroom. The plumbing doesn't work, so I'm going to have to figure out where I can get water to mop the floors— not to mention keep myself clean. I found an old ping-pong table in what must have been the motel's communal game room, and I laid that on top of the bed with my sleeping bag unrolled on top of it. It'll be hard, but at least it's off the floor.

I finally made myself a cup of tea, boiling the water on my Coleman stove, and settled down to do a little reading before I went to bed. That's when things got a little weird.

Now usually I'm asleep when the well's ghosts come visiting, but last night... last night...

I'm not really sure what she is, if you want to know the truth.

I was rereading my old journal— the one I kept when I was still a reporter— kind of enjoying all the little asides and notes I'd made to myself in between the cataloguing of a day's events, when the door to my unit opened. One of the reasons I'd chosen number twelve was because it had a working door; I just never expected anybody else to use it.

I almost died at the sound of the door. The fit's a little stiff, and the wood seemed to screech as it opened. The journal fell from my hands and I jumped to my feet, ready to do I don't know what. Run out the front door into the parking lot. Pick up something to defend myself with. Freeze on the spot and not be able to move.

I picked the latter— through no choice of my own, it just happened— and in walked this woman. The first thought that came to mind was that she was some old hillbilly, drawn down from the hills after seeing the light that spilled out of the window on the pool side of the room. When I was cleaning up the unit, I took the boards off that window and, miracle of miracles, the glass panes were still intact. I never did bother to tack the boards back up when night fell.

She had to be in her seventies at least. She looked wiry and tough, face as wrinkled as an unironed handkerchief, hair more white than grey and standing up from around her head in a wild tangle. Her eyes were her strongest feature— a pale blue, slightly protruding and bird-bright. She was wearing a faded red flannel shirt and baggy blue jeans, scuffed work boots on her feet, with a ratty-looking grey cardigan sweater draped over her shoulders, the sleeves hanging down across the front of her shirt.

She looked vaguely familiar— the way someone you might have gone to school with looks familiar: The features have changed, but not enough so as to render them unrecognizable. I couldn't place her, though. When I was a reporter I met more new people in a month than I could ever hope to remember, so my head's a jumble of people I can only vaguely recognize. Most of them were involved in the arts, mind you, and she didn't look the type. I could more easily picture her sitting on a rocking chair outside some hillbilly cabin, smoking a corncob pipe.

I wasn't thinking about ghosts, then.

She seemed to recognize me, too, because she stood there in the doorway, studying me for what seemed like the longest time, before she finally came in and shut the door behind her.

"You're the one who comes to the well on Sundays," she said as she sat down on the end of my bed. She moved like a man and sat with her legs spread wide, hands on her knees.

I nodded numbly and managed to sit back down on my chair again. I left my journal where if lay on the floor.

"Got a smoke?" she asked.

How I wished.

"No," I told her, finally finding my voice. "I don't smoke."

"Don't eat much either, seems."

"I'm on a diet."

She made a hrumphing sound. I wasn't sure if it was a comment on dieting or if she was just clearing her throat.

"Who... who are you?" I asked.

The sense of familiarity was still nagging at me. Having pretty well exhausted everyone I could think of that I knew, I'd actually found myself flipping through the faces of the ghosts I'd called up from the well.

"No reason to call myself much of anything anymore," she said, "but once I went by the name of Carter. Ellie Carter."

As soon as she said her name, I knew her. Or at least I knew where I'd seen her before. After I first found the motel and then started coming by more or less regularly, I'd tried looking up its history. There was nothing in the morgue at In the City, but that didn't surprise me once I tracked down a twenty-five-year-old feature in the back issues of The Newford Star.

I'd had a copy made of the article, and it was pinned up above my desk back home. There was a picture of Ellie accompanying the article, with the motel behind her. She looked about the same, except shrunk in on herself a little.

She'd been the owner until— as an article dated five years later told me— business had dropped to such an extent that she couldn't make her mortgage payments and the bank had foreclosed on her.

"So've you made yourself a wish yet?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Well, don't. The well's cursed."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you clean your ears, girl? Or is that a part of your diet as well?"

"My name's Brenda."

"How long are you planning to stay, Brenda?"

"I... I don't know."

"Well, the rate's a dollar a day. You can give me a week in advance and I'll refund what you've got coming back to you if you don't stay that long."

This was insane, I thought, but under her steady gaze I found myself digging the seven dollars out of my meager resources and handing it over to her.

"You need a receipt?"

I shook my head slowly.

"Well, have yourself a nice time," she said, standing up. "Plumbing's out, so you'll have to use the outhouse at the back of the field."

I hadn't got around to thinking much about that aspect of the lack of bathroom facilities yet. When I'd had to pee earlier, I'd just done it around the corner near some lilac bushes that had overgrown the south side of the motel.

"Wait," I said. "What about the well?"

She paused at the door. "I'd tell you to stay away from it, but you wouldn't listen to me anyway, would you? So just don't make a wish."

"Why not?"

She gave me a tired look, then opened the door and stepped out into the night.

"Listen to your elders, girl," she said.

"My name's Brenda."

"Whatever."

She closed the door before I could say anything else. By the time I had reached it and flung it open again, there was no one to be seen. I started out across the parking lot's pavement until I saw headlights approaching on the highway and quickly ducked back into my room and shut the door. Once the car had passed, I slipped out again, this time shutting the door behind me.