Caitlin R. Kiernan - The Red Tree

She sighed very loudly and shook her head in disgust or disbelief. “The Cliffwalk,” she said, speaking very slowly now, the way one might talk to a small child with attention issues, “is a trail leading along the cliffs, over on the east side of Newport Island, behind Salve Regina College and all those great fucking mansions that people like the Vanderbilts put up back in the 1890s. You have heard of the Gilded Age, right? The fallout of the Second Industrial Revolution? John D. Rockefeller, Silas Desvernine, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, all those guys?”

“I think maybe I heard of it once,” I said, not bothering to smile because her eyes were shut. I took another drag on my cigarette.

“So, behind the mansions,” she continued, “there’s a pathway. It was just a dirt trail back when, a long time ago, kept clear by the Indians and the colonials and then the Victorians and whatnot. It runs on for miles, and in some places the drop to the sea is seventy feet or more. But over the years, hurricanes took their toll on the path, and finally, I think, the Army Corps of Engineers came in sometime in the seventies and paved it and repaired all the storm damage, fixed the walk up all nice again. Better than new, I’m sure.”

“Our tax dollars at work,” I said.

“It’s nice,” Constance said. “Maybe I’ll take you sometime. Anyway, so I used to drive out there, back when I was sixteen, seventeen, hoping there wouldn’t be crowds of sightseers. And one day it was foggy and sort of cold for summer, so there was hardly anyone, and I pretty much had the place to myself. July 21, 1995, so that’s what. thirteen years ago?”

“Almost,” I told her, counting on my fingers. “Sixteen days from now, it’ll have been thirteen years.”

“Fine, so twelve years, eleven months, and spare change. And there I was, alone at the Forty Steps, down at the end of Narragansett Avenue—”

“What are the Forty Steps?” I asked, and she shook her head again, so I added, “A Georgia redneck, remember?”

Constance made an exasperated sound, and somehow managed to roll her eyes without opening them. “At the east end of Narragansett Avenue, on the Cliffwalk, there’s a granite staircase leading down to a sort of balcony above the sea. Used to be, the steps were wooden, and back in the Gilded Age, the Irish servants from the mansions would gather there for dances and socials and whatever the Irish immigrants called such things. There’s a Gaelic word for it. ”

“Céilí,” I volunteered, and she nodded.

“Ten points to the ignorant redneck dyke from Georgia,” she laughed. “Yeah. Well, so they had their parties at the Forty Steps, to blow off steam, back in the 1880s and 1890s and so on. Nowadays, though, the old wooden steps are gone, and there’s a sturdy red granite staircase enclosed by walls made from blocks of limestone and mortar, so it’s a lot safer. It was still new, in 1995. There’s a name engraved on each step, the name of the person who ponied up the dough to pay for that particular step. It cost something like three thousand dollars a step. And then, from the little balcony — which is probably two-thirds of the way down the cliff — it’s, I don’t know exactly, but I’d guess another twenty or thirty feet down to the rocks and the sea. Far enough you wouldn’t want to fall.”

“Or jump?” I asked. And Constance frowned, and I thought for a second she might even open her eyes.“

Or fucking jump, ” she said. “Far enough that if you didn’t die outright, you’d be pretty busted up. I used to sit there on the limestone wall of the balcony, because it’s a good view, and there are lots of fossils in the limestone. That rock didn’t come from anywhere around here, but I don’t know where it did come from. Also, there’s a sea cave, below the south side of the balcony, and it’s great to just sit there and watch the water rushing in and out again. But that day in July 1995, I was just coming down the stairs, and I looked up, off towards Purgatory on the other side of the harbor, and for a second I didn’t see her, just the sea and the far shore—”

“Didn’t see who?” I asked.

“I am absolutely sure that she wasn’t there when I first looked up,” Constance went on, ignoring my question. “And then she was. Like someone throwing a light switch, like a magic trick. She just. appeared.”

“Or you simply didn’t notice her for a second or two.”

“I’ve tried hard to believe that, over the years, Sarah, but it’s not the truth. The truth is, I looked down those granite steps at the balcony, and one second she wasn’t there, and then, the next, she was. That’s the truth, whether you believe me or not. That’s what I saw.”

“But. you know . whatever you saw is not necessarily what happened. Optical illusions—”

“I won’t finish this story if you’re not interested,” she said. “I mean, if you’d rather argue, we can do that.”

“I’m not trying to start an argument.”

“Then just shut up for a few minutes and listen. It wasn’t an optical illusion, or a mirage, or whatever. Yeah, there was some fog, but I know what I saw. She looked a little older than me, no more than twenty, say. She was wearing a dress and boots, and my first thought was this was one of those Society of Creative Anachronism types, or some sort of goth or something, because the clothes were tailored and the boots. It was like seeing a postcard or an old photograph from the Nineteenth Century. And she had this antique-looking pistol gripped in her right hand, and the barrel was set against her temple. She was looking out to sea, and so her back was turned to me.”

And at this point, I have to admit, Constance had my attention, and I just sat there listening, staring at the smoldering tip of my Camel.

“I stopped where I was, there on the steps, and for a minute or two, I just stood there, watching her. Her finger was on the trigger, and I could hear that she was crying. Well, sort of sobbing, softly. I almost couldn’t hear it over the breakers. And then I took another step or two towards her, though she hadn’t seemed to notice I was there, and I said, ‘The fall will probably kill you. The gun. I really don’t think it’s necessary.’ Something to that effect. And she turned around, turned and looked straight at me, and her face. ” Here Constance trailed off and was silent for a while.

Finally, I said, “You can tell me the rest some other time, if you’d rather.”

Her eyes still tightly closed, she shook her head and took a deep breath, as if summoning some necessary courage, as if filling her lungs with the requisite will to finish her story. She breathed out slowly, and, sitting there, I thought of Lamaze classes and childbirth and of taking a very deep breath before a dive into cold saltwater.

“I’m fine,” she said. “So, anyway, she turns and looks at me, this woman with her revolver and her dress that looks like she just stepped out of a Merchant-Ivory film. And the look on her face, Sarah, I knew, then and there, that expression was exactly what people mean when they say someone looks like she’s just seen a ghost. The woman lowered the revolver, letting her arm go limp at her side, and very slowly, very carefully, without ever saying a word, she climbed down off the wall onto the balcony. And vanished.”

“Vanished. ” I said, not meaning to sound skeptical, but sounding it anyway.

“Just gone, Sarah. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a minute. Two minutes, at the most.”

“And there were no other witnesses?” I asked.

“No, no one. I walked over to the wall, and stood there a long time, staring down at the sea sloshing against the boulders. It’s all charcoal-colored shale there, and the sea foam looks so white against it, and the sea is so many shades of green and blue, and I remember seeing strands of kelp in the surf that day, down there below the Forty Steps. There was no one else, just me and a few cormorants and gulls.”