Pawpaw died in the late spring, or early summer some might’ve called it, after an eight year long battle with cancer. He fought so hard that hardly any of us believed he would actually die like that. We all deluded ourselves that pawpaw would live forever. He was the only one in our lives that seemed stable.
The day he passed, I thought we would have at least another week with him. I’ll never forget the day itself, a cold gray typical of central New York in late spring, when the thunderstorms were ready to roll across the farm plains. Annie howled so loud that she fainted, and we had to call a nurse.
Pawpaw has always been strong; he had always been the type of man we assumed would go out fighting, raising hell with a Bud in one hand and then a shotgun in the other.
Cancer made him weak and radiation made it worse. Pawpaw hated the radiation treatment more than any of us. Annie eventually agreed to let him ask the doctors to stop the treatment and he plummeted, but at least he kept his hands on the reins to the end. That’s the way he would have wanted things. He was a stubborn old man, but he’d looked after all of us kids for better or for worse.
Pawpaw had Old Bill, the Homer lawyer who handled the last wills and testament of all the little folk and farmers in town. Old Bill took all of us aside, and read off a list of who got what. Ma hadn’t spoken to pawpaw in years but he left her all the shares he had of some investments he made in the eighties that had tripled in value. Ma would spend it all on drink and we all knew it but having her spend it on Jim Beam was better than having her red-faced and pitching after the rest of us.
Charlie and Peter got an acre of land each in Tully, perfect for cultivating, not like either of them would use it for such. Annie was the sole beneficiary of Pawpaw’s life insurance, which she had more than earned in the last few months of caring for him. I got his farmhouse across the lake where we had spent so many summers as children, where Daisy had been buried after the accident, where we had played and laughed and cried together as a family. We would never be together again like that and the farmhouse was both a memento and a sad reminder. None of us present were surprised by the will and once the reading was done, we stood solemnly outside the lawyer’s office.
“Damn, I need a drink,” Charlie grumbled.
Annie scowled. Even now, she couldn’t help mothering us.
“Why?” Annie snapped, “So you can end up like Ma?”
Age made Annie harsher. Her big-bellied, loudmouth drunk husband didn’t help things either.
Peter intervened awkwardly, “Ease up, will you Annie? This ain’t easy for any of us.”
Annie tutted but didn’t dig into Charlie any further.
“Are y’all staying for the memorial?”
“Yes,” my brothers assured her. Annie turned to me expectantly and I nodded to reassure her that I too would remain.
“I’m gonna head out to the farm after.”
Annie scowled again.
She uttered coldly, “I don’t see what you like about that place.”
“I haven’t been back since—“ Charlie started before trailing off.
I hated how no one ever wanted to say it out loud.
“—since Daisy died,” I finished, “We can say her name you know.”
“I told you,” Charlie grumbled, “I need a drink.”
Hoping to change the subject, Peter thumped Charlie on the back.
“You’ll get plenty to drink in a bit. What’s going on brother and sisters? It’s been a while,” he tried to play the cool hippy bit, like going out West had knocked the uptight New Yorker out of him, and like any of us would be fooled by his act.
“Too long,” Charlie grunted.
“You two are the ones who live all the way across the country. I see Ariana all the time.”
Charlie elbowed me and grinned, “You still seeing Jim Baker?”
“No. And I would appreciate if you don’t remind me about him.”
Peter snorted, “I warned ya! Never date the guy your brother used to shove in lockers.”
“Sage advice,” I snarked.
“Hey don’t take it personal. You’ll find someone,” Charlie teased.
“Are you sure? She ain’t a spring chicken anymore,” Peter continued. Their habit of ragging on me never failed to bond them together.
“Most guys probably see that hair color and realize trouble follows.”
They laughed like no time had passed. Heat rose to my cheeks and my fists clenched against my will. I was too old to succumb to another petty battle with my siblings.
“Don’t you two have anything better to do.”
“What could be better than teasing you?”
Pawpaw’s memorial was well attended for our small town, and at the end of it all we had enough well wishes to last until the next Thanksgiving. Charlie and Peter didn’t linger in town long after the memorial. Peter drove Charlie to the airport since Charlie had pulled a Ma and drank half his weight in vodka. Annie left later in the evening to get home to Paul and the kids, who hadn’t attended — upon Annie’s request. She didn’t want ‘em to see us all wailing and crying. She gave me the keys to the farmhouse after she left.
“Is it okay if I go tonight?”
“Sure. Old Bill will bring the deed around next week to sign and it will be all official.”
Searching for sentiment I’d never find with Annie, I remarked, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“He had a long life,” she replied, stifling her emotions in that overly responsible way of hers.
“I know but... I’m gonna miss him.”
“Remember how much fun we had at the lake?” I asked.
Her expression softened as she and I shared our recollection of hot central New York summers and the refreshing green lake that had kept us entertained all summer long from frog-hunting to fly fishing, to borrowing the neighbor’s canoe and diving off the back into the murky green center.
“You take care, Ari,” Annie warned me, “Preble ain’t got many troublemakers, I’ll admit. But the lake is still busier than it used to be. It’s more commercial.”
“I think I can handle the stray drunk college student.”
“Good. Go on up there then, and let me know how you find it.”
Annie hugged me goodbye, her neck scented by flour and sweat rather than heavy perfume.
“Give my love to Paul and the kids,” I told her, though if I could have helped it, I would have only sent love for the kids.
“I will dear.”
Another thin-lipped half-smile.
I clutched the key that she’d handed to me and then stepped outside to my old green Volvo station wagon that my ex-boyfriend had left me after I lost my job out of some sort of pity, or perhaps an apology for cheating on me. I hadn’t been to the farmhouse since the day pawpaw grew too weak to live alone and we had to take him down to Annie’s in Cortland.
As I drove down the long stretches of highway, the corn was only half tall, so I could see clear across the fields and rippling emerald hills as I drove. The smooth highway gave way to pebbly asphalt as I drew closer to the farmhouse. A doe and her fawn ambled across the fields, grazing slowly and fearlessly as they went, only feet away from the highway. I rolled my windows down and the thick green scent of the lake water permeated the car. A few more feet of driving and I came alongside a dead skunk off the side of the road.
“Shit!”
The putrid scent filled every inch of my car before I could get the windows up. I choked all the way to the farmhouse driveway. The door was still the brilliant eggplant color that Daisy had painted it with pawpaw’s permission the summer before she died. None of us liked the color, but we hadn’t had the heart to change it. I parked and stared at the old white farmhouse, appreciating every second that I didn’t have to go in. My phone rang. Only one person ever called me from a private number.
“This is a collect call from Lansing Correctional Facility. Do you accept this call. Press one.”
1.
“Arianna, it’s me.”
“Hi Jer.”
“How was the memorial?”
“It’s over now. But it was nice.”
“Good. Good. How you been?”
“I should ask you that,” I deflected.
“It’s prison. Same old, same old.”
“You sound sick.”
“Pneumonia outbreak,” Jeremy rasped.
“I’m sorry.”
“Listen, I don’t have much time, Annie didn’t pick up.”
“She’s with Paul and the kids,” I answered, knowing that it wasn’t really an excuse, and that Annie hadn’t spoken to him since he’d been locked up and sent out of state.
“Figured.” Jeremy responded, punctuating his response with a violent, hacking cough.
“You need money, Jer?” I spat right out, secretly hoping that he only needed money and once I promised it, we could get off the phone.
“No. No money. Just wanted to check on you. ‘Cause of pawpaw.”
“I’m fine. I’m at the farmhouse.”
I had the urge to tell him, to see if there was something he remembered from this place aside from the misery we had all experienced there.
“How is it?”
He sounded resistant to the very idea. Pawpaw’s will hadn’t been a secret and all my siblings knew that I’d be the one to inherit the place. None of them had challenged Pawpaw’s final requests. We all had a painful history here.
“It’s the same. Not different at all.”
“Heard from John?” he asked, eager to change the subject
“No.”
Jeremy continued, “He’s down at Cook County. They’ve got riots down there I’ve heard. So uh… let me know if you hear from him.”
“I will.”
“I miss you, Ari.”
“Yeah.”
“You take it easy up there. I always thought that damned house was cursed.”
I didn’t believe my brother’s claim about the cursed house. Of course he would think that. The way I figured it, bad things could happen anywhere, no matter how peaceful things looked on the outside. Don’t they got the saying that still waters run deep? That evening, I walked around the old farmhouse taking inventory of leaky pipes, flickering lights and missing chunks of walls or ceiling. Pawpaw hadn’t been able to help some of the disrepair the house had fallen into. Years of negligence as he put every dollar he had left into fighting the cancer meant my work was cut out for me.
I didn’t end up getting much done before my achy back and muscles drove me to bed. It had been many years since I’d done hard farm work like this. I hadn’t worked this hard since I was a kid, at least. The night, I cracked open the wooden door to my old bedroom that still had a crack in the wood from when I was fifteen, and Charlie got too drunk off stolen moonshine from pawpaw’s stash and punched a hole in it.
I slipped beneath the sheets of the creaky, twin bed that dipped in the middle of the cornhusk mattress, worn from sustaining the bulk of my weight for years. The pillows were old and lumpy, but there had never been a good reason to replace them and pawpaw had always been on the frugal side. I sank my head into the pillow and shut my eyes.
This sleep was nothing like any I had experienced before. I was asleep, frozen in space and suspended in my awareness of time, yet I didn’t feel the foggy uncertainty of unconsciousness. Blue light and thick blue fog flooded behind my eyes, bursting past my closed lids as if they weren’t even there. The emotions followed. Strong sensations tingled from the tips of my fingers all the way up my arms and into my chest where euphoria nestled and throbbed in tandem with my pulsing heart. Through the blue light that pervaded every inch of my between-consciousness a face slowly emerged. My euphoria gave way to a deep terror.
He was here again. The thought entered my head without question, and slipped in like someone had put it there. He is here. He is in my head again. The outline of an almost human face appeared in the field of blue light. His skin was pale, so pale that it gave way to an icy blue color, the way my veins looked beneath my freckled skin.
His eyes fluttered open, parting the ocean of blue light which reflected plumes of blue fog around his face. Or it’s face. The face which no longer looked completely human. Chartreuse, glowing eyes with hooded lids emerged from the dark blue, set on a face with chiseled cheekbones and an angular jaw. He had ridges on his nose, three or four of them, that cast an unusual shadow amongst the foggy light beams.
Wake up, Ari. Wake up. I willed myself to wake up. I willed myself to escape from him. But I couldn’t wake up because I had no control of my limbs or my state of wakefulness. Only my raw consciousness existed here — wherever here was. Long silvery white-blond hair draped down to his shoulders. I seized in terror, my mind and thoughts the only weapon I had against him.
No! I screamed in my head.
<<Ariana, you are nearly ready.>>
No.
<<Don’t be afraid.>>
This is a dream. This is all a dream and I want you to leave me alone.
<<I’m coming, Ariana. You don’t have to wait any longer.>>
No!
<<You have two weeks.>>
Who are you? What are you? How did you get in my head?
His lips never moved to respond to me, but he closed his eyes and then his face disappeared from my mind and my head was still filled with the blue light and his voice.
<<You cannot run from this, Ariana.>>
Who are you?
The blue light faded into blackness.
WHO ARE YOU?
I sat up straight in bed, dripping in sweat with my clothing soaked straight through and clinging to my skin. I screamed again, this time my voice ringing throughout the farm house.
WHO ARE YOU?
After the dream, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to see that man’s face again, if he was a man at all. What I hated more than the loss of control and his intrusion into my mind was the nagging sense of familiarity I felt, as if I’d met him before. But that was impossible. His skin was blue. People don’t look like that. They just don’t. It was too early for me to do any work around the farm so I dug out Pawpaw’s old coffee maker from one of his piles of junk and started it up with tinned coffee from his cupboard that smelled fresh despite being untouched for months. I made a grainy batch which was rough on the stomach, but the early morning craving for that first hit of caffeine on the back of my tongue made me tolerate it better.
After coffee I started cleaning the kitchen. The farmhouse had been both filthy and unoccupied for a while and droplets of water housing colonies of moss fell from a hole in the ceiling into a nearly filled rusted metal bucket. By the time the sun rose I was dripping in sweat and had the kitchen cleaned from top to bottom. The scent of vinegar and heavy lemon cleaner intermingled with my sweat. As sun spilled into the room, I couldn’t handle the heat mixing with my own odor. I flung the double windows open to let more light and fresh air in.
I stepped into the shower upstairs. I turned on the water and stepping outside the the stream, I allowed the stale well water to run for a few moments before I stripped down and willed my body under the flow of icy water. Even with the heat on, you could never count on that shower to get very hot. My skin shuddered reflexively as I stepped beneath the cold stream.
At least now I didn’t have John and Jeremy standing outside the door hurrying me. I closed my eyes and let the water run down my scalp, soaking my hair until it turned auburn, Annie’s color, the color I always wanted. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. I peeked my eyes open to locate my shampoo bottle. As I shut my eyes again to lather, the face from my dream flashed into my mind. I screamed and my eyes snapped open staring frantically around the room. The shampoo bottle clattered to the ceramic floor of the shower. My eyes stung.
The bathroom was the same mustard yellow and I was still alone. Despite that, the intrusion left me with the nervous paranoia that out here on the farm, I wasn’t completely alone. I rinsed the shampoo out of my burning bloodshot eyes. Once out of the shower, I twisted my hair into a tight bun and then stepped into a pair of formless jeans and a plain white t-shirt. To put these nightmares out of my head, I just had to keep busy. It was probably just grief anyway. I missed pawpaw, and my mind was driving me a little crazy over it. Nothing I couldn’t handle.
With the sun up, I tackled the barn which I knew would be my biggest mess to clean up. I called Annie before I got started. The hairs on my arms still stood up straight from what I had imagined in the shower. I didn’t get how those kinds of nightmares could pop into your head while you were awake. I couldn’t make it another night on that farm without at least a little bit of human contact to convince me that I wasn’t losing my mind entirely.
“Ariana?”
She seemed surprised to hear from me so soon, but relieved too.
“It’s me.”
“You okay?” Now she sounded worried.
“Yes, are you?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I had a strange dream last night, that’s all.”
My heart raced.
“What kind of dream?” After what happened to me, I was curious about what Annie would say.
“It’s nothing. You were in it so I guess I worried. Silly me, right? Getting all flustered over kid stuff…”
“Okay. I’m about to head out to the barn. And… funny you say that Annie, because I had a strange dream about you too.”
Annie tutted and hissed, “It’s that damn farmhouse.”
“Nothing like this has happened before,” I retorted.
Annie made that tutting sound again.
“Nothing that you remember!” Annie huffed.
“What do you mean?”
“When we were kids…” she trailed off.
“What happened when we were kids?”
“It’s nothing Ari. With you all alone all there I don’t want to freak you out.”
“I won’t get freaked out. I want to know.”
“You saw a man in the woods. Near the woods. You were convinced. But there was never anyone there. It was like you saw a ghost.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but you scared the crap out of all of us.”
I pressed her for more details and she relinquished what she knew.
“You blabbed about this ghost of yours for a few months. We figured it was just a phase like an imaginary friend or something.”
“Creepy…”
“Be careful all alone up there. Keep the shotgun on ya. Even pawpaw knew something wasn’t quite right up there.”
“I promise I’ll be careful. So far it’s only dreams and I ain’t gonna get worked up over ghosts.”
“So long as you watch your back,” Annie cautioned.
“I will.”
We got off the phone and I wandered outside towards the barn to survey my work one last time before heading to bed. The dream I told Annie about had only been one part of my story. In the shower, I had been wide awake and what happened there had been as real as when I mucked hay and junk out of the barn.