Three Lives (Mud Valley) - Chapter 45
A dark quest, murder and an unimaginable burden. A 40-year saga of loyalty and the afterlife
To be released soon in digital formats as Mud Valley. I plan to continue using the title Three Lives for the serialized format.
Start where you like. Here is the table of contents. Three Lives of Jury TOC
Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash
Chapter 45
Petra Kappens died in the night after the day she learned the terrible truth about her youngest son Frank. In her dying gasp, she blamed herself for whispering on the day he was born that he would never grow old.
The message breathed into the ears of an infant escaped her lips on impulse, moved by grief and guilt upon learning her son’s condition, never dreaming the infant would hear, much less understand.
But on her dying day, she blamed those words for spawning a jealousy in Frank of people who took life for granted. What other explanation?
“It must hard for a psychologist to accept her own child is so fucked up.” Lucy sat across the table from Sylvia at Moe’s Asian Diner, two days after receiving the news of Petra Kappens’ death.
“Or just the opposite,” Sylvia said. “I understand what you’re saying, but I can also imagine that a psychologist parent might explain everything away as just a normal phase of development.”
Lucy picked at her spring rolls. “Good point.”
She told Sylvia the story of the night Frank burned down the lodge at Spirit Waters hot springs. The complete account: the screaming, the fighting, Frank’s petulance, his alpha male puffing and the attempted rape, or if a person was taking a more Frank-friendly view, the assault on Lucy.
“Whit has always had more patience with that asshole than me.”
She finished the story with how they woke to a red glare lighting the hills above them, the scene of mayhem at the top of the hill, of panicked people desperate to find loved ones or get medical assistance, the gruesome burns and the pain-fuelled screams.
“I never once visited Frank when we got back, not in the hospital and not later when he lay dying in Petra’s house. Not even once,” Lucy said. “Whit, did, I think. But I couldn’t do it. Frank got what he deserved. I know how that sounds but I can’t help it. It’s how I feel.”
Sylvia dipped a thick white spoon into the pho on the table in front of her. “Must have been hard,” she said.
“I know Whit thinks better of Frank than I do and I guess that’s his business. But I don’t see how he can stand behind him still, even after learning about the murders.”
Lucy banged her spoon on her plate, crushing her spring rolls into bits, the clatter, clatter, clack of her work drew the attention of people at nearby tables. Behind her, the small pale girl-thing in jeans and tattered brown jacket wore a toque now, pulled down close to her eyes.
Christ. The figure’s abrupt appearance startled Lucy. She almost dropped her spoon. There’s a connection, she thought, between Harley’s sudden appearance, this pale girl ghost and Whit. She didn’t understand it but the events of two nights ago convinced her.
Lucy witnessed something extraordinary. The girl-spirit threw itself onto Whit. It protected me, she thought. And it helped me at the cabin, in that horrible vision or dream, or whatever it was.
She sprinkled crushed pieces of spring roll into her bowl. The Whit problem couldn’t be denied any longer, she knew that much. His crazy was on everyone’s lips. People around town were talking.
She still didn’t understand his visit to her place two nights ago. Did he really want to celebrate Frank? That story seemed made up to her. He must have been worked up before he ever got to her place because he was on the edge of rage when she first opened the door.
Lucy entertained telling Sylvia but where to start? She doubted she’d believe her anyway.
She glanced at the pale girl standing behind Sylvia, between the swinging door to the kitchen and the cash register, and wondered how a ghost goes about getting a toque.
“Whit never talks about Frank at all to me.” Sylvia filled her mouth immediately after speaking. She wanted to stop talking about this.
Lucy glanced at the pale-girl spirit. It didn’t move. She’d tried talking to it the morning after it chased Whit off. It seemed alert and prepared to make contact but when Lucy reached out to touch it, it fizzled and vanished.
After that, the girl-thing appeared wherever Lucy went. When Lucy went to the kitchen, it was standing next to the fridge. When Lucy went to the bedroom to change clothes, the tiny, white face watched from the other side of the bed. In the bathroom, the living room, the bakery downstairs and on the street, out in broad daylight, the pale girl-thing became a flutter in the corner of Lucy’s eye and travelled everywhere with her.
Lucy got used to having the shimmering face around. It was the first friendly spirit she had met.
“You’re more than the other ghosts,” she said to the girl-thing one day. “You have stuff banging around in here.” She pointed to her head. “And here.” She pointed to her heart. “Why are you so different from the rest, eh? What makes you so special, I wonder?”
Lucy talked to the girl-thing constantly, hoping the right word might spark a reaction, but so far none did.
She puzzled over it, unable to reach any conclusions, other than the notion that it no longer seemed proper to refer to the girl-spirit as “it”.
“You’ve earned a real name,” Lucy said to the girl. “Do you have one already?”
The girl shone, gleaming white in the harsh light of the bathroom.
“Still with the silent treatment, hey? OK, I guess I’ll have to make up a name for you then. Chalky? Voldemort?” She studied the girl in the doorway while she finished washing up.
“Ugh, you’re no help,” she said when the girl-thing gave no sound.
Lucy brushed past the spirit and walked into the hall. “Wait.” She snapped her fingers and turned around. “I got it. Blanche. Your new name is Blanche.”
Back in the restaurant, Lucy wondered about the significance of Blanche’s new black toque. Maybe the girl was representing her life in stages and today she showed a different point in her past life.
Lucy doubted such a thing were possible, but everything she once thought she knew about spirits had become fit for trash.
* * *
Bonus material
Check out bonus material, including back stories to the characters in the novel Three Lives of Jury at the link below.
The Underworld Vents also contains short stories of alternative/historical fiction with The Wagon People series.
Check out the new additions with the Tynoffer Common series, humorous flash fiction in bits of letters, bulletins and bureaucratic paranormal madness.