Kelsey and the Burdened Breath

Darcie Little Badger

 

 

HAND STRETCHED TOWARD the bedroom ceiling, Kelsey climbed on her wooden footstool. “Here, Pal,” she called. A shimmer—a tiny Fata Morgana, light bent through not-quite emptiness—flowed across the ceiling, down her arm, and around her shoulders. Pal’s weight lessened hers; an alien gravity drew all last breaths from Earth.

“Good boy,” she said. “It’s work time.”

She hopped down from the stool and used her bare foot to push it against her bed, a twin-sized, twenty-year-old mattress on the wooden floor. If repairs to the farm and the three-story white elephant of a house hadn’t bled her of every cent she earned, Kelsey might have bought a proper bed, something with memory foam instead of metal springs. She didn’t need a frame. Never had. But with every passing year, it became more difficult to sleep on a creaky, lumpy, tilted beast with steel bones and two hundred generations of dust mites woven through its skin.

Kelsey shut off her bedroom light and stepped into the hallway. As her pupils expanded, she navigated by floorboard creaks. Twenty footsteps to the staircase. Thirteen steps to the ground floor. Her father had constructed the house by hand; there were no coincidences. He built the number thirteen into the foundation thirteen different ways as a monument to his patience with the superstitions of the seventh-generation settlers who once employed him.

It had been a modest farm. Just a vegetable garden, one acre of corn, and thirteen bleating sheep. Enough for two new farmers, both retired from early-life careers, to manage. Now, all that remained was the last breath of the sheepdog Pal.

And, of course, the farmers’ daughter.

After breakfast, a bowl of joyless shredded wheat and almond milk, Kelsey left the house; her car was parked across a grassy acre once used for grazing. “Nearly a full moon,” she said, as if Pal could appreciate the view. When Pal was alive, he used to bound across the countryside, free, and then sprawl belly-up on the ground, panting. He couldn’t do that anymore. He couldn’t even see the sky.

Outside, Kelsey always carried Pal in a backpack to protect him from falling into the void. She secured the backpack in the trunk of her car before slipping into the driver’s seat. It was a twenty minute drive to work with no traffic, one benefit of a very early morning. Because the hospital never closed, the best time for herding was that sweet spot between late night and early morning: 4:00 a.m. Despite the red-eye hour, a thirty-person crowd waited outside Maria Medical Center, filling the long rectangle of grass between the parking lot and street. Some sat on picnic blankets or collapsible lawn chairs. Others stood. All watched the marble, chimney-like chute jutting from the hospital dome. As Kelsey parked in front of the vigil keepers, she recognized several regulars who enjoyed witnessing last breaths rising, like smoke from a pyre, into the vestiges of starlight.

The new faces might be mourners, waiting to say goodbye. Last breaths rarely lingered near their cooling bodies; if they weren’t captured immediately, they drifted away, indistinguishable from other shimmers trapped in the labyrinth of medical departments.

That’s why hospitals were Kelsey’s biggest clients. Hospitals and slaughterhouses.

She entered the clinic through a discrete side door. The security guy, Philip, smiled at Kelsey in recognition; he didn’t even take a cursory glance at her badge. “I saw a couple on the second floor,” he said. “One followed me around like a duckling chasing after its mama.”

“Huh! Maybe they recognized you.”

“How?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Can they see? Maybe you don’t need the dog. If I was a shimmer, I’d follow a beautiful woman.”

“You will be a shimmer,” Kelsey said. “Sooner or later.”

“Christ.” The flirty smirk dropped off his face, and she couldn’t be more pleased. Philip’s hints were tiresome, and he never gave her the chance—the courtesy, really—to reject him outright. It wasn’t that Kelsey enjoyed telling people, “I’m not into you,” but she had thirty years of practice under her belt and much preferred one direct, cathartic “no” to the awkwardness that had been happening twice a week at 4:00 a.m. for the past six months. It had been a mistake to confide that she wasn’t married during a bout of friendly rapport with Philip. That’s when his behavior switched from friendly to interested, and with every interaction Kelsey felt a little lonelier.

“It’s the human condition,” she said. “With that last exhale, you soar.” Of course, that was only partially true. Fish released shimmers, too, and they sucked fluid life through their gills. Without giving Philip another thought, Kelsey unzipped her backpack, and Pal floated upward like a bubble in a lava lamp. Once his shimmery body hit the paneling, he zipped across the hallway ceiling and took the first left, so familiar with the hospital layout he anticipated Kelsey’s directions.

Floor by floor, through sterile corridors and above sleeping patients, Pal ushered last breaths like he’d once herded sheep. He encouraged them into a huddle and up the stairs, where they gathered in the sixth-floor departure chamber, a hexagonal room with a white dome ceiling. Kelsey pressed a red button embedded in the wall, and the grate separating the marble chute from the dome slipped aside with a whir, converting the room into an inverted funnel.

“You’re free,” she said, peering at the nine last breaths that clung to the ceiling perimeter. “Just let go.” Kelsey used a yard stick to guide Pal into his backpack. “Good boy,” she said. Her bag shivered as he wagged a remembered tail. His work was done. After all, they weren’t actually the breaths of sheep. Each one of those shimmers had carried a human through life, whatever that entailed, from the first gasp and scream to this. Kelsey needed the fall upward to be their choice.

One by one, the shimmers slid up the dome and through the chute until just one breath remained. The straggler clung to the concave ceiling so tightly their body was flat and wide like a quaking, gelatinous puddle. The poor thing seemed afraid to fall. In Kelsey’s experience, many shimmers were reluctant, and she often wondered where that reluctance came from and why other shimmers—like her parents—left without hesitation. Some might fear the cosmic unknown or have unfinished business, she supposed. Others might be unwilling to let go.

“Hi there,” Kelsey said. She checked her phone clock. “Six thirty. A beautiful time to fly. The sun has risen, and it’s warm.”

The shimmer sluggishly inched down the wall, fighting the pull of the sky.

“You can’t stay here.” She lowered her voice and continued, “I’m not supposed to …”

Her phone rang, and for a panicked instant, Kelsey felt a rush of guilt, always her first reaction when the outside burst into private moments. She stared at the bright screen in wide-eyed confusion until the caller—unknown number—went to voicemail. It was barely past dawn. Who called so early? Even scammers had a better sense of timing.

“Sorry,” she continued. “I’m not supposed to go until the room is empty.” In the United States, it was illegal for shimmers to be contained by anyone but family or specific conservators, and the practice, even done legally, was generally considered tasteless. Sensibilities had changed since the Victorian era; back then, last breaths were often sealed in urns. There must be thousands of imprisoned shimmers still languishing in museums, catacombs, and tombs.

Kelsey sat against the closed door, her legs crossed at the ankles under her long, traditional camp skirt, homemade from yellow fabric with a pink flower print. “How about a story?”

It took forty minutes, but in the middle of an anecdote about her grandmother’s tortilla-eating longhorns, the shimmer finally slid up the dome and through the chute. Maybe they missed their own grandmother.

As she left the departure room, Kelsey checked the voicemail. A deep voice rasped:

Good morning, Miss Bride. Jennie Smith—you clear her poultry farm—gave me your number. Sorry for the hour. I need help. Desperately. Can you banish burdened breaths? The one in my neighborhood has killed

A pause.

so many people.

He recited his name, Clint Abbott, and phone number.

Please call back. I’m acting on behalf of the Sunny Honeycomb Salt Pond Homeowner’s Association.

Philip must have noticed something haunted in Kelsey’s face, because he asked, “Everything all right?”

“It’s a prospective client.” She lowered the phone from her twice-pierced right ear. Kelsey wore a silver squash blossom through the lobe, but her cartilage piercing was half-closed from disuse.

“Is the city trying to poach you again?”

“Nah.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what this is.”

Kelsey replayed the message as she crossed the parking lot, still shocked by the request. The repetition did not numb her dismay. Sure, her business card read: Kelsey Bride, Shimmer Finder and Guide. But that didn’t make her a detective. She’d only searched for the burdened, murderous dead once, and that was a decade ago. They weren’t exactly common. The act that made a last breath burdened was so terrible the word “murder” didn’t do it justice.

She cradled Pal’s backpack. “I’m sorry.”

Kelsey returned Clint’s call.

 

 

THE VICTIMS, ACCORDING to Clint:

Peter. Twenty-eight years old. Murdered six months ago during a recreational dive in the Honeycomb Sea Caves with several other scuba enthusiasts. His last words: “I’m stuck. All tangled up.” Body never recovered.

Spencer. Forty-one years old. Murdered four months ago. A seasoned diver exploring the Honeycomb Sea Caves for the ninth time. Footage and audio were recorded by his GoPro camera. On Spencer’s guide rope-assisted exit from the caves, he stopped moving forward. Audio includes: “Somebody got me.” No abnormalities, including other divers or obstructions, were captured by the GoPro. However, visibility during Spencer’s death was low, since he disturbed silt.

Kylie. Nineteen years old. Murdered two months ago. She had been swimming in the brackish pond over the sea caves. Nobody witnessed her drowning. Kylie’s body was discovered by two divers inside the cave system.

The caves and pond were closed after Kylie’s death.

Patricia. Sixty-one years old. Murdered this week. Crushed in her bed between 3:00 a.m and 9:00 a.m. Patricia was Clint Abbott’s neighbor. Their community surrounded the brackish pond, which connected to the Atlantic Ocean through a narrow, marsh-straddled channel. On the night Patricia died, two outdoor cameras recorded evidence of burdened breath activity. Police investigation ongoing.

“Burdened breaths are rare,” Kelsey said. She and Clint shared a booth in Sprinkle’s Donut Diner, reviewing his notes. She ate a cinnamon bear claw and drank coffee with cream; he ate nothing but was finishing his third cup of oil-black coffee. They made an unusual pair: Clint, six-foot-three, stout and reddened by the Atlantic sun and Kelsey, four-foot-eleven, her round face a rich tan surrounded by a home-cut bob; her hair a mix of white and black strands which from afar resembled metallic silver. “They’ve never been observed in a controlled setting.”

“What does that mean?” Clint asked. “Controlled?”

“A laboratory. All mice float.” Kelsey glanced at Pal’s bag. “Personally,” she said, “I doubt that nonhuman breaths can become burdened. Well. Perhaps chimpanzees. They hunt monkeys for sport. Kinda messed up.”

“Is it true that…” His jaw tightened, as if something innate resisted the question.

“Yes.” Kelsey took a bite of her bear claw and immediately regretted it. “Dead that eat the dead get pushed against the Earth. In a curious way, it’s like losing weight. The pull of that alien gravity weakens, and then it shoves the cannibal shimmers away. Crushes them against the land. That’s why all the burdened breaths in historical records co-occur with disasters like coal mine accidents, earthquakes, and train derailments. Mass deaths trapping normal, buoyant last breaths in an enclosed space, providing the cannibal with ample time and opportunity. So my next question, Clint: has there been a recent catastrophe in town?”

“No,” he said. “Not until Patricia and… and the rest, anyway. Can you help?”

“Maybe,” she said. “You’re staying with friends, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “In Cape Cod. It’s a commute, but it’s less expensive than a hotel.”

“Distance is good. Don’t return home yet. In fact, avoid the pond. The murderer will kill again to maintain its reverse weight and stay tethered on Earth.”

Who knew what waited up there for cannibals: a reckoning? Nothingness? Paradise? A larger, hungrier mouth?

“Have you handled one before?” he asked.

She nodded. “Once. About ten years ago. I travelled a lot back then. Life was fifty percent gardening and sheep-shearing at the farm, and fifty percent wandering. It was fun. Kind of perfect, actually. I had this ’99 gold Monte Carlo, and when the urge struck, I bundled Pal into a fine silk bag and drove all the way to California. We made pit stops in every big city; when populations are high and buildings are like beehives, there’s never a lack of work for people like me.”

“You said you had a farm?”

“My parents did,” she said. “Just a little one. They sold yarn and veggies at the farmer’s market.”

“A labor of love?”

“Yes,” Kelsey said. “Exactly that.” Heartache was always inside her, like the bile in her stomach, and now it swelled. All that remained of their love and labor were weeds around an empty house.

“And the encounter?” Clint asked. He seemed eager to change the subject.

“The job was at an abandoned high school in Houston,” she said. “The kind for thousands of students. Imagine this massive brick building, seriously damaged by Hurricane Andrea, with broken windows and chained doors. It was fenced up for months before they started renovations. Apparently, the crew had only been working a couple hours when they found a pair of bodies in one of the classrooms. Two adults. The city contracted me to sweep the building and make sure their last breaths had escaped. The police had already checked and didn’t find anything. But the glass kept breaking, and the renovation crew kept getting goosebumps. So they figured the police missed one or both breaths; in a building that size, it’s understandable. I agreed. Figured it would be a quick and interesting job. Pal has keen ears, for lack of a better word. And the building was scary looking, but I had backup in the form of two police escorts. They gave me a face mask and a hard hat, too.

“Pal is faster than human breaths, but I still worried about his safety, you know? I asked the escorts, ‘Are the shimmers dangerous?’ I was worried they’d shove Pal out a broken window somehow and I’d lose him to the sky.

“This gruff police guy said, ‘One of them is. Google it sometime.’ So I did, right there in front of the brick building, with these storm clouds gathering overhead. I don’t think the gruff guy expected me to own a phone that could Google stuff. Joke’s on him. The first article that popped up characterized the deaths as a murder-suicide, which made me start shivering, like the realization ripped a hole in my jacket and let the chill of the city inside. I work with last breaths, but most… well, they go easy after a long life. Or they’re chickens, pigs, and cows. Those poor animals don’t go easy, but they aren’t murderers.

“I didn’t read beyond the title… didn’t want to scroll down and see faces…”

Kelsey paused. The waitress, a brunette white woman wearing orange lipstick and black-framed glasses, was idling near their table, a carafe of coffee in one hand. “Can I top you up, Ma’am?” she asked. Kelsey glanced at her cup of coffee; it was only half empty.

“Maybe in ten minutes,” she said. “Thanks.”

Kelsey resumed her story, eager for the chance to talk. It was nice to reminisce about her life, even the dark parts. “Pal found them in a drama classroom, of all places. The far wall was set up like a mini-Broadway stage, red curtains and everything. I whipped those curtains aside and looked up. There they were. The two breaths. They went in circles. One chased, and the other ran—or maybe they were both chasing—embroiled in an unending game of tag.” She bit her lip. “No. It ended.

“The two breaths must have started arguing, because a window in the classroom shattered. In swept the winter. I shouted, ‘Hey! Hey! You can escape now!’ I should have known, though. I should have known they never wanted to escape. There were plenty of broken windows in that school.

“One of the breaths paused, like I’d startled it. And in that moment of stillness, the game ended. Two became one, and the one sank languidly, resembling this partially deflated helium balloon. Burdened. I remember thinking, ‘I have to protect Pal.’ So I threw my jacket over the burdened breath and pushed them through the broken window. A gust of wind blew them over the weedy strip of grass between the building and the basketball court. That’s when I lost sight of them. They probably drifted over Houston a couple days before flying off. You know, Clint, I often wonder: had the cannibal been the wrathful victim or the violent murderer?”

“Does it matter?” he asked. “That’s… terrible either way.”

“Yes,” Kelsey said. “For my own peace of mind, it does.”

“Guess so.”

She sighed. “I hate to talk business, but I’m going to need an advance,” she said. “Unfortunately, home is three hours away, so I’m overnighting in a motel.”

“Local one?” he asked.

“Uh huh. The one with a mermaid on the sign.”

He smiled. “Good choice. I know the owner. Be sure to have their breakfast. Everything’s local. You can order an omelet with wild mushrooms from the heath.”

In addition to the advance, Clint gave Kelsey three files on a thumb drive before he left. The file names were MARTHA GIBBERT FRONT PORCH SECURITY, MARSH BIRD CAM, and PATRICIA LAWN PHOTOS. Kelsey used her tablet to view the pictures and videos. The waitress lingered nearby, sneaking glances at the screen with unconcealed interest.

MARTHA GIBBERT FRONT PORCH SECURITY: In a black and white video that was filmed between 2:34 a.m and 2:39 a.m, the porch door shakes. Moments later, its lower glass panel shatters. Inside the house, Martha’s golden retriever barks. No further disturbances occur.

PATRICIA LAWN PHOTOS: Clint photographed Patricia’s property after her body was discovered. Most of the thirty pictures show damage to the potted flowers and ornamental bushes outside her bedroom window. The plants are crushed, as if somebody had flattened them under a boulder. A photograph snapped through her open window shows her bedroom floor. A tube of lipstick has been flattened, its red, waxy stick pressed into the carpet like a spray of blood.

MARSH BIRD CAM: The green and black night-vision video, captured between 1:43 a.m and 1:47 a.m, shows a stretch of marsh outside the brackish pond. In the right-hand corner, grasses shake and bend, as if something unseen is rolling from the water to higher ground, crushing the vegetation beneath it.

As the waitress refilled Kelsey’s mug, a tear slipped down her pale cheek, made gray by mascara and chalky foundation.

“Are you okay?” Kelsey asked.

“Sorry. Clint has such a loud voice. I heard… it’s just… they used to eat here.”

“Who?”

“All of them,” she said.

“My condolences.”

“What happens to a soul when it’s eaten?” The question, whispered, seemed afraid to be heard. So Kelsey pretended that she hadn’t.

After finishing her coffee, Kelsey drove to the coast and parked on Clint’s driveway. He lived in a typical upper-middle-class New England home. It was painted pastel blue; every house along the street was some variety of pastel, no doubt coordinated by a strict homeowner’s association. Kelsey wondered if the neighbors knew that Clint had hired her. Maybe it had been a collective decision. One discussed during an emergency homeowners’ meeting. As she unloaded supplies from the trunk, a wind that smelled like the sea tousled her hair. She inhaled deeply and slipped into thigh-high wading boots.

“We’re going on a walk, boy.” Kelsey lifted Pal from the truck where he rode in his backpack, surrounded by pillows. Together, they hiked to the marsh; Kelsey located the two-foot-wide trail over the mud, grasses, and pickleweed. The plants were bent inland, their blades matted by sticky earth. “If you sense it, bark. Detect, boy. Detect.” Last breaths sensed their fellows and communicated with them through a language that, although unheard by the living, raised goosebumps and broke glass.

The route became messy fast. Halfway to the pond, one misplaced step sent Kelsey’s left foot calf-deep into the mud, which clutched her boot in a vacuum-tight grip; she leaned back with all her weight and twisted. The earth held fast.

“Shoot.”

The hair on Kelsey’s arms prickled. Was Pal barking? Perhaps her distress had upset him.

Or perhaps…

She slipped out of her trapped boot and hop-sprinted from the marsh. The mud seeped through her cotton sock, gritty and cold. A sharp edge poked her heel; no time to investigate, but she glimpsed feathers and cracked bones woven between grass blades, as if a plover had been crushed when the burdened breath rolled to land.

It must be fast.

She abandoned her second boot and sprinted.

Safe in the car, Pal’s bag buckled to the passenger seat, Kelsey pressed her forehead against the steering wheel and waited for her heart to calm, her stomach to settle. She felt silly for visiting the marsh alone, like a real private investigator with the know-how and mettle to escape death. Now, she probably owed the wildlife center thirty bucks for the loaner boots.

At least the trip hadn’t been fruitless. Clint said there was just one fresh path between the pond and neighborhood. Kelsey had not found evidence—such as grasses bent toward the water—that the burdened breath had retraced its figurative steps after killing Patricia.

It did not return to the sea caves.

Where was the murderer hiding?

Not in Patricia’s house. The police scoured crime scenes for breaths, in case the victim or other dead witnesses remained.

Maybe the murderer had fled the neighborhood, a wanderer, traveling along the coast, drowning divers, feeding and leaving before people recognized its modus operandi.

That theory did not accommodate Patricia’s suspicious death, however. Instead of moving when the pond closed, the burdened breath had lingered until desperation compelled it to murder a woman in her bed.

So it had a motive more complex than “eat and hide.” But what? Why would it remain in quaint, unremarkable Sunny, with a population so small everyone knew everyone, except for the steady stream of tourists who were making a pit stop on the way to Cape Cod?

At a loss for answers and afraid to leave her car, Kelsey decided to drive around town. Pal was trained to search for other last breaths, and although that usually involved herding, he could detect noisy ones from inside his backpack.

She started in Clint’s neighborhood. There were very few signs of life and no signs of afterlife. In the distance, a cloud of gulls flew in circles, occasionally swooping, their bodies bright against the graying sky; she thought of buzzards and endless games of chase and the Ouroboros consuming its own tail. She took a right, delving inland.

Most tourists passed through the town of Sunny, Maine in a day. They played a round at Mermaid Mini-Golf, viewed the nautical museum, and ate lobster for 3 p.m. dinner. Kelsey drove down Main Street twice, once going east and once going west, to check the storefronts on each side of the two-lane street. The candy shop advertised fresh fudge and seawater taffy. There were oil paintings of the sea in the art gallery window. She didn’t notice any cracked glass, however. “Detect,” Kelsey reiterated. “Detect, Pal!”

Nothing as they passed the nautical museum, which promised a wealth of REGIONAL MARITIME HISTORY and AUTHENTIC VICTORIAN TREASURES for just FIVE DOLLARS & FREE FOR CHILDREN, based on the sandwich board outside its door. The shop that sold beach supplies, postcards, and keychains had an orange “Closed” sign over its door. The coffee shop was also closed.

“Hear anything?” Kelsey asked.

Pal didn’t make a peep.

“Well, then…” On the curb, a seagull nibbled salt from a french fry bag. It occurred to Kelsey that buzzards weren’t the only feathered scavengers on earth. Gulls could eat meat, too.

She made a U-turn and returned to the street that passed the brackish pond. Kelsey continued along the coast, heading toward the swarm of gulls. Most of the birds were huddled near the roadside, although they scattered upward as her car approached. Kelsey parked and rolled down her window. From the awkward vantage point, she couldn’t tell whether the dark smear on the pavement was an animal or garbage.

“Detect,” she reminded Pal, slinging his bag over her shoulder. “We’ll be fast.” Outside, she could feel every grain of sand beneath her feet, a reminder that she wore mud-drenched, threadbare socks. It only took a moment for Kelsey to confirm that the shape used to be a racoon. The poor thing could be the casualty of a sports car. She hoped that was the case.

Kelsey called Clint.

“Did you find the bastard?” he asked.

“Not yet.” She considered the street. “I did find evidence that it’s still in town. Can I ask a favor?”

“What do you need?”

“Spread the word to watch out for fresh roadkill. It’s probably too smart to hunker down near a meal, but any pattern we find may help pinpoint its location.”

“He’s consuming animal breaths?”

“Most likely. This burdened breath is an opportunist.”

“I’ll spread the word,” Clint said. “What are your plans?”

“Widen my search.” Her stomach rumbled. “After a late lunch.”

After Kelsey ate lobster bisque in a café on Main Street, she took Pal on a walk, ostensibly to get a closer look at the storefront glass but actually to buy a bag of taffy. Along the way, she noticed the museum display window. Much like the sandwich board, it advertised:

REGIONAL MARITIME HISTORY!

OVER ONE HUNDRED DETAILED SHIP MODELS!

NEW! TREASURES FROM THE DAMNED QUEEN MARY!

“A shipwreck,” Kelsey said. “That’s a disaster. What do you think, Pal?”

“Were you talking to me?” An elder drifted behind them, her steps long and moonwalk-light. A yellow canvas balloon, easily large enough to cradle six human last breaths, was strapped to her back.

“Sorry, no. Just thinking out loud. I’ve never heard about the Queen Mary.”

“Sad exhibit,” the woman said. “All the things they left behind. Mary drowned six hundred people.” A breeze snagged her balloon, and the woman nearly stumbled. “It used to be easier,” she said, “when I weighed more, and they… and they were fewer.”

“Who?”

“My family. I carry them.”

“Me too.”

“In that little backpack?”

“It’s just my dog.”

Her parents hadn’t lingered. When the time came, they slipped out the eastward-facing window. Although Kelsey had not been there—in fact, she had been a thousand miles away, sleeping in a motel room with old timey circus posters on the wall—she knew they fell up together, as if holding hands.

Sometimes, the heartache in her chest demanded to know: why didn’t they wait to say goodbye?

“Enjoy the exhibit,” the woman said, waving as a gust of wind pulled her down the sidewalk.

It occurred to Kelsey that last breaths had little use for things. But family? Friends? Enemies? Those were eternally meaningful. Maybe the burdened breath was desperate to remain on Earth because somebody they loved couldn’t leave.

Kelsey pushed her way into the museum—the door resisted her, dragging against a thick mat—and stepped into a small lobby; there was an unoccupied reception counter to her left and a laminated poster on the wall to her right. Navy blue text across the poster read:

 

Beyond this point, you will witness the following artifacts from the damned Queen Mary on display in the Sunny Nautical Museum:

Ornate pocket watch

Tobacco tins

Child’s boots

Reading glasses

Jewelry and jewelry box

Multicolored vials

Paper money, playing cards, cutlery, keys, clothing, sealed urn, suitcases and purses

A cherub’s head

Binoculars, boarding passes, hand mirror, hats, toys, a toilet

Stained glass from the ballroom dome, a thousand pieces splintered by the screams of six hundred last breaths.

 

After reading the poster, Kelsey was certain that she knew how to find the murderer. She strode into the dim exhibit room beyond the lobby. There, a young man in a tartan vest and a matching checkered bowtie guarded the cherub head, which had its own display case. A tag with the name “Billy” was pinned over his heart, but Kelsey would have guessed that the guy worked in the museum based on his professorial outfit alone.

“Hi there,” she said.

“Hello. Did you pay for admission?”

“Nobody was at the front desk.”

“Huh.” He leaned to the right, making a show of checking the lobby for himself. “Mr. Kay must be on a break. You can buy a ticket on the way out. Unfortunately, I’m a guide, not a money-taker guy.”

“Actually, that’s great,” Kelsey said. “Because I have questions. How long have the Queen Mary artifacts been here?”

“Six months,” he said.

“Do you know where they came from?”

“The Iowa City Natural History Museum.”

“Just a minute.” She took her phone from her pant pocket, ignoring Billy’s disapproving eye roll, and searched for “Iowa City accident” on her phone. Ten months ago, a child drowned in a drainage pipe. Thirteen and sixteen months ago, two unrelated people drove into the Iowa River, where they perished in their cars. And those were just the unusual deaths reported by a cursory internet research. “What’s in the urn, Billy?” She pointed to the display case across the room; a three-foot-high crematorium urn shaped like a blooming lily dominated the collection. “Better yet: who’s in the urn?”

“The urn? If I recall, imaging tech found ashes. They couldn’t identify the person.”

“Did they also screen for last breaths?” She recalled how a hundred years ago, it had been in vogue to carry the deceased with their ashes.

“Imaging tech always screens for breaths. It just has ashes.”

“In that big thing?”

“Sometimes, a vessel is commissioned before the family knows whether the breath will linger.”

“I think you should open it.”

“The lid is soldered shut.”

“Shimmer screens are unreliable. They just detect noisy last breaths. By the way, how often do you get goosebumps here?”

Billy crossed his arms and glanced at the display case. “I mean, in the evening, I guess I… but goosebumps aren’t compelling enough of a reason to damage a relic. It’s been five hundred meters under the sea.”

“Have you heard about the murders in town?” she asked.

“Obviously,” he said. “Are you implying that there’s a shimmer in the urn, and it’s… somehow… escaping? And killing people? That’s impossible.”

“No,” Kelsey said. “I suspect that about one hundred years ago, a mysterious person—let’s call him Frank—boarded the Queen Mary with that urn because he took it with him everywhere. He couldn’t leave it behind; it carried the last breath of his beloved wife or child. And when the boat sank, Frank drowned—but instead of drifting up, he stayed with the urn. Frank dwelled down there, cannibalizing other stragglers and the breaths of crushed squid and fish. That was his existence, decades spent in the black and heavy water, until divers found the urn and stuck it in this exhibit, which forced Frank into the light. He won’t let go of the person he loved.

“He’d rather be a monster.”

Kelsey took a plain glass microscope slide from her pocket; during work, slides were her miner’s canary. “Take this, Billy,” she said. “Humor me.” She crossed the room and knelt outside the Plexiglas display case with the cherub head, urn, and silverware. Kelsey shouted, “Who is he? Who follows you? Who carried you onto the Queen Mary? Who do you call at night?”

“Nothing happened,” Billy said. He delicately held the slide between forefinger and thumb.

“Don’t want to be found?” she asked. “It’s too late. I found you, and I’ll find your burdened breath. Tell him it’s over! Say something, or you’ll never be together again!”

The slide snapped in half.

 

 

LATER, AFTER SCRUBBING mud from under her toenails, Kelsey ate pizza in her motel room and watched Pal herd dust motes around the lumpy-paint ceiling. His shimmering body spun in wide and tight circles, clockwise, counterclockwise, bouncing wall-to-wall, dizzying. He never slowed. Boredom did not seem to survive death.

“Goodnight, Pal,” she said.

She didn’t need to spend the night in a motel with a mermaid on its sign—police had captured the burdened breath that afternoon, after the dreadful thing turned itself in for the sake of the shimmer in the urn—but when Kelsey thought about returning to the farmhouse, she was filled with a sense of dread. Like that husk of a home was actually her urn, and maybe that’s the way her parents had felt when they escaped through an open window and fell into the sky.

For a few minutes longer, Kelsey continued watching Pal, her thoughts residing in memories of green fields and vast blue skies. Then, she walked across the room, unlocked the window, raised it high, and removed the protective screen.

Now, he had a choice.

Upon returning to bed, Kelsey tugged the cotton comforter up to her chin and closed her eyes, afraid she’d peek before sunrise. She wondered if Pal would be waiting for her in the morning. If so, she’d tuck him in the backpack, eat an omelet, leave Sunny, and sell the house her father built, sell it to somebody who loved the number thirteen. Somebody who’d cultivate the earth with the same care as her mother. That done, Kelsey would cram all her belongings in the back of her car, buckle Pal into the passenger’s seat, and go west.

Or Kelsey might wake up to an empty room. She’d still buy an omelet, leave Sunny, sell the farmhouse, and go west. She’d just do it alone.

“It’s all so mysterious, isn’t it?” Kelsey asked the night.