David Stullingham squinted into the garrish morning sun invading the large bay window of his dining room. That window had once been one of his favorite features of his renovated Victorian home. Now he hated it for welcoming in the burning daylight. He sighed. It was only early April, but Spring had already commenced and dawn had begun arriving each morning with annoyingly bright eagerness. At one time, that had been a selling point of this place. Nature, warmth, a long growing season. It was a part of what had prompted David and his wife to move to Oak Mountain, a tiny north Georgian community on the outskirts of a marginally larger town. With a sigh, David recalled how much they had loved this place. He could remember a time when he had enjoyed daybreak, too, and the brilliant frosty-rose light it provided. But now, like so many things, it had become little more than an irritation.
Sort of like the papers scattered across the brown speckled marble of built-in breakfast table. Returning his gaze to the offending sheets, David growled under his breath. "Fantasy. Pure, childish fantasy."
The hand writing was that of his daughter and only child, Marie-Belle. She was seventeen, nearly eighteen, but her mind had ceased aging when she was eleven. The same car wreck that had stolen David's wife had also damaged his daughter's brain irrevocably. Nonetheless, as David often reminded himself, the girl was mature enough and intelligent enough to understand the difference between reality and the useless, fanciful gibberish he so often found scribbled in notebooks and on the backs of misprinted documents.
David sighed and dropped his head into his hands. It wasn't that he was a harsh man, or that he had any particular aversion to fantasy in general, but rather it was that he knew too well that Marie-Belle already had the cards stacked against her. David wouldn't be able to care for her forever, and she would have to get along somehow. She could get a decent job through one of the local work placement charities-- David was sure of that-- and Social Security would help provide her with an apartment, but she could only hope to be even partially self-reliant if she could learn to behave more like an adult. He had tried to explain that fact several times, and for the most part Marie-Belle seemed to understand, for she completed her chores and managed her allowance with as much studiousness as could be expected, but still she wrote these ridiculous fairy tales. Worse than that, she wrote them as if they'd actually occurred. She actually seemed to believe they were real.
These were more than stories to Marie-Belle, and that made them dangerous. Like any good father, David worried about his daughter's future. There was an imp in some dark, wicked corner of his mind that whispered Marie-Belle had been damaged more than the doctors had recognized; that her sanity was failing. David refused to believe this, however, and in his desperate conviction he savagely pushed his daughter to abandon her childish ideas.
Yet here they were, staring him in the face yet again, complete with blatant absurdities and juvenile misspellings. "Last night Enda came to visit, and he brought his friend faylin again. He thought it was funny when I told him I used to think Enda’s name was Ember, and he said that was as good name too. Enda said that in that case Faylin should be called Failing. We all laughed.
Enda asked me how my head-ach was even though I hadn't told him my head hurt. He always knows when something is wrong, and he always makes me feel better. Then he told me a story.
The words rambled on and on, relating a Cherokee folk tale she must have picked up somewhere. It involved two brothers who decided to journey to “the Dreamlands,”—which David could only assume was Fairyland—so that one of them could become a fey of some sort, called a Mikumwess, while the other married a fairy princess. It was a cute story, if one cared for such things, but what followed reminded David just how perilous this fancy really was.
I said that I wished I could be a Mikumwess, too. I wish I could fly up to a castle in the sunset where everything would be pretty colors. And no one can go there exept when the sun is coming up and going down so that way I can hide when I want to. Then people couldn't find me and look at me funny. I wish Enda and Fraylan could stay and be my brothers. Then I would be happy..."
Suddenly enraged, David stopped reading and turned his face quickly away from the disagreeable text. He couldn't explain why the words made him so angry other than to suppose that they made him feel utterly helpless. Marie-Belle had never shared with him her desire to hide away from the world, or the discomfort that people's attention brought her. No, she only shared those deep secrets with her imaginary friends! It bothered David even more that the two friends mentioned in the story-- who made regular appearances in his daughter's late night scribblings-- were male. There had been a time when David had been extremely worried by Marie's assertion that two young men climbed through her window at night. He had spent more than one sleepless vigil outside her bedroom door listening, listening but never hearing anything save his daughter's peaceful breaths. Finally it had become apparent that the nocturnal visitors were in Marie-Belle's head. David had raised the question with her psychiatrist, who reasoned that it was normal for a seventeen-year-old girl to dream of receiving attention from men. David silently disagreed. When a girl still had the mind of a child, sexual interests became unnatural and disturbing.
The overshadowing wrongness of the situation was increased by the fact that, if Marie-Belle’s earlier accounts were to be believed, neither of these men were human. One, who she alternatively called Faylen, Faolan, and Faylonn, was “a wolf who is also a man” and the other, Enda, had “brown and green hair with leaves stuck in it.” They both lived in the state park twelve miles away from the house.
When these episodes first began, David had tried to talk to his child about the stories. He had asked her about her "friends" and had been told that they lived in a hill.
"You mean they live on a hill, don't you, Marie?" David had asked.
"No, Daddy. In the hill! That's the way lots of fey live."
"Fey?" It took a moment for David to remember where he had heard the vaguely familiar word before. "You mean fairies?"
"Shh! Don't say that word!" Marie-Belle glanced around as if worried someone else might be listening. "That's a really bad word," she added in a whisper. David had thought, momentarily, that she had heard the slang use of the word somewhere until she continued. "Enda says 'fey' means a person like him, and 'fairy' means something they make or something that belongs to them. If you call a person that it's rude, rude, rude!" She repeated the word three times in imitation of Beth, David's elderly aunt, who had moved to the Oak Mountain from David's home state of Texas after David's wife Josephine had died. She was an old-fashioned lady with old-fashioned manners who had a habit repeated things three times for emphasis. Aunt Beth was especially prone to that mannerism when reminding Marie-Belle that it was rude to point, stare, or yawn at the dinner table.
David had realized, with sickening shock, that this was not a game to Marie. From that moment there was a war between the imaginary characters that had invaded the girl's life and the man who desperately clung to his daughter's sanity. David fought the intrusion of these fantastic feinds with grit and resolve that few save the toughest soldiers could understand. He had already lost Josephine, he beloved wife, and he was determined that he would not loose Marie-Belle too.
Looking down at the papers spread across the table, David had to admit that he was losing the battle. No matter how many times he told Marie-Belle that fairies were not real, no matter how many times he punished her for writing this nonsense or tried to interest her in other activities, the girl still persisted in her beliefs, and still refused to stop writing about her imaginary friends' visitations.
God dammit! David thought, clenching his fists and wadding up sheets of paper. He wanted to tear the ridiculous stories to shreds, destroying the written words in a effigy of what he wished to do to the inane and childish thoughts permeating his daughter's brain. With a determined effort, David relaxed his hands and smoothed the pages back out. Like most parents, he was unwilling to destroy any thing that his child had created-- especially if that thing had brought his daughter happiness. With a shake of his head and an humorlessly ironic chuckle, David considered the impasse in which he had caught himself. He hated these fairytales, and believed they were harmful to his daughter's mind, but fatherly love would not permit him to destroy them. Sighing, he rose, gathered the scattered pieces of frivolous insanity his daughter had left behind, and took them to his bedroom. In a box on the top self of his closet they joined dozens of other such stories. Although his main intention was to hide the ridiculous tales from Marie-Belle, and thus prevent her from rereading them and falling deeper into her imaginary realm, some small part of David admitted an ulterior motive. If he lost the war, and Marie's mind crumbled, he hoped that perhaps someone would be able to look at these writings and piece together the puzzle of how the girl's mind had faltered.
Perhaps they would even be able to discern how her sanity could be reclaimed.
"Daddy, can I go out and play in the forest?" Marie asked at lunch. David worked from home as Process Mapping and Technical Writing Consultant so that he could raise and tutor his daughter. Public school had been ruled out shortly after the car accident because the administrator had wanted to put Marie-Belle in Special Ed. David had argued vehemently against the move, insisting that putting the girl in a class with more severely retarded children would be a detriment to her development. Of the two nearby private schools, one-- the elite Wellingham-Albright Academy-- had been too expensive, and the other-- Mount Somerled Private School-- had been too focused on philosophy and liberal arts. So David had arranged first to act as a consultant to his old company, and then had expanded to several other businesses as well. This allowed him the time to teach Marie for a couple of hours every morning and check her homework in the late afternoon.
With typical child-like impatience, Marie-Belle squirmed in her chair and finally asked again: "Can I go play in the forest?"
"Say 'may I,' not 'can I,' Marie-Belle," David said distractedly, looking over the specifications for a washing machine manual he was preparing to write.
"May I, pretty please, go play in the forest today, Daddy?"
David smiled a little. "Do you promise to be home for dinner?" he asked. "And do you promise not to talk to any strangers?"
"Yes!" Marie-Belle agreed happily, knowing permission was forthcoming.
"And no talking to any fairies, either."
"Daddy, don't say that bad word!"
"It's not a bad word, Marie-Belle. It's just a word for something made-up that doesn't exist. That's not bad. Just silly."
Marie-Belle bit her lip and tugged a lock of dark, red-brown hair. Although David's chastising had not caused her to disregard her belief in the supernatural, it had taught her to hide her thoughts and activities.
David sighed. He didn't want to become an enemy in his daughter's eyes, and he half-wished he'd left well enough alone, but "the forest," as Marie-Belle called an acre-wide strip of wooded land separating their neighborhood from a nearby cattle farm, was where she claimed to have met Faolan and Enda. He wanted to make sure she didn't come home with new absurdities to write about.
"No fairies today," he reiterated firmly. Marie still didn't respond, and David sighed in exasperation. "I read what you wrote last night, Marie-Belle. You know I don't want you writing things like that. You know that, don't you?" he goaded, determined to coax an answer from his still-silent daughter. The girl finally nodded and David continued. "Why don't you write about real things, like flowers and people and what job you want to have someday? Why don't you write about things like that?"
Marie-Belle said nothing and glanced away, but David, who knew his daughter nearly as well as himself, could read the answer clearly in her reaction. This is real. She still believed that Enda and Faolan, and all the other people she claimed to meet, actually existed.
After a moment of uncertain consideration, David relented. "Okay, you can go play in the forest. Just remember what I said, and next time you want to write something, try writing about something new. No more fairy stories."
"I'll remember," Marie-Belle replied simply, and David couldn't help thinking that recalling his words and obeying them were two entirely different things.
His suspicion was well founded, for, while no scattered scribblings greeted David the next morning, his momentary good humor was ruined when Marie came down stairs with fading and slightly crushed wildflowers braided into her chestnut locks. Clumps of Blue and White Aster, along with a few bright Dandelions, haloed her smiling face. The effect would have been angelic if it hadn’t set off screaming warning signals in David’s mind.
“Marie-Belle! What have you done to your hair?! Did you go outside last night? You know you’re not allowed to play outside alone after dark!”
“No, Daddy, I didn’t go outside. They’re presents. Enda brought them to me. Don’t I look pretty? I wanted to show you last night, but they said I shouldn’t wake you up.”
“Damn it, Marie-Belle! They’re not real! They’ve never been real! Don’t you understand?! They’re pretend! Those stories you write are made up! Enda and Faolan do not exist!”
His daughter looked up at him with wide, teary grey eyes. “They’re real, Daddy,” she said quietly. “They really are.”
“No they’re not, Marie! You’ve got to stop pretending! You’ve got to let go of these dreams! Let go, Marie-Belle! Let go!”
Marie-Belle was echoing him. “Let go! Let go!” David didn’t remember grabbing her, but he realized he was shaking her by her shoulders. She pushed at him with all her small might and ducked away. Shock and guilt might have been enough to freeze David where he stood, but Marie-Belle shouted:
“They are too real! They are! Just because you don’t believe in them doesn’t make them fake!”
Somewhere in David’s head a single thread that had been strained and stretched thin finally snapped. He darted after his child, cornering her in the hallway and seizing her roughly. Imprisoning her with one arm around her waist, he tore the blossoms from her hair, creating a shower of drooping petals and occasional chestnut strands. Marie-Belle fought him, slapping at him and jerking her head around. She cried as if those flowers were dying children.
“They are not real!” David’s snarls punctuated each vicious pull. “Faolan and Enda are in your head! They. Are. Not. Real.”
She twisted out of his grasp, dropping to the floor to escape his arms. She moved frantically, half crawling while gathering torn and scattered blooms in her hands. David swooped, trying to grab them from her, but she slide away, almost crab-walking, until her back hit the wall. There she sat, weeping and trying to piece fragile, beautiful things back together.
David felt sick. He felt like a monster; like an evil ogre breathed to life from one of his daughter’s story books.
“Marie-Belle,” he stopped, choking on the lump in his throat. With an effort he tried again. “Marie-Belle, Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He knelt before her, reaching to touch her hand, but she shoved him away.
“I hate you!” she shrieked. “I hate you!”
“Marie-Belle, please…”
David watched helplessly as his daughter scrambled to her feet and raced up the stairs. A moment later he heard her bedroom door slam. She didn’t come out again that day, and she didn’t eat the meal David sat outside her door even though it was one of her favorites. The only evidence that she was still there were her sobs and her demands that she be left in peace.
David had a great deal of trouble sleeping that night. When he’d first lain down, he’d been unable to shut out the hot guilt and twisting shame. He felt both monstrous and ridiculous for letting recent events effect his mind so profoundly, and could only offer the excuse that he was felt protective– almost paranoid– about the well being of his only child. She was his sole remaining piece of Josephine, and he was terrified of loosing her.
As sleep finally took him, however, new disturbances arose. He dreamed of woods and wind, and of a tap-tap-tapping noise that sounded one moment like rain, and the next like twigs tapping the window. There was a musical quality to it, like a tune he couldn't sing or even clearly define that stuck in his head and played over and over. It was both calming and somehow bothersome-- almost frightening. As if it was too calming, and that was what made him uneasy. As if someone was singing him to sleep with rain and water, wind and twig. David repeatedly struggled toward the surface of his thick lethargy, tossing and turning as he tried to escape the uncomfortable dream, but invariably he was dragged back down into the depths by the tuneless lullaby.
Somewhere in his strange sleep he heard Marie-Belle laughing.
The next day David woke with sore, blurry eyes and stumbled down stairs. The world outside the window looked as grey and worn as he felt, and the dim light, filtered through a haze of low clouds, made it especially difficult to resist the urge to return to bed. After starting the brew cycle on the coffee pot, he flopped wearily down into one of the kitchen chair and dropped his head into his hands. The table was once again covered with notebook pages, but David couldn’t bring himself to care. He was tired, and—- though he wouldn’t admit it—- worried by his oddly disturbing dream. He didn’t want to read anything about Marie-belle’s “friends,” couldn’t take anymore talk about faeries. That didn’t stop him from gathering up the papers and depositing them in a drawer in his room. He would scan and email them to Samuel later in the day. He drank a cup of hot, black coffee, swallowing small quantities of the burning liquid quickly to avoid burning his mouth, before beginning his typical daily routines.
With prodigious determination, David pushed himself out of the chair and made his way into the kitchen to cook breakfast. Desperate to complete the first chore of his morning, he broke one of his own rules and got out two skillets. (He usually limited himself to a single pan for the purpose of reducing the necessary clean-up.) Only when the sausage links were sizzling brown in the first skillet, and two fried eggs had been covered to stay warm in the second, did David call Marie-Belle downstairs for breakfast. She didn’t respond to the first or second summons, and an invisible finger of fear touched David’s nerves. Foolish though it was, he felt suddenly certain that something was terribly amiss.
“I guess I’m not the only one who had a hard night last night,” he said aloud as he climbed the stairs. He felt as if he was insisting to an invisible observer that he was not afraid, that he knew everything was fine, and felt as if this assertion somehow ensured that everything really would be okay. He would open Marie-Belle’s door and see her sleeping soundly in a tussle of blankets and chestnut hair.
Even so his heart beat a little too fast, and he was torn between running to his daughter’s bedroom and delaying the moment of truth. His mind reeled with nightmarish possibilities, none of which he wanted to considered, yet an oddly calm part of his head knew he was too late.
David’s feet moved faster, barely-controlled panic rising in his chest. The entire time he reminded himself, over and over, that everything would be fine. In a moment he would open Marie-Belle’s door, find her sleeping or startled awake by his sudden entrance and he would feel absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous, but blissfully relieved.
That moment never came. David flung his daughter’s bedroom door open and jerked to a stop. His stomach dropped as he starred at her rumpled and unoccupied bed. The entire universe froze, then spun out of control as David began tearing aside curtains and frantically dismantling the carefully organized closet. He upturned the dirty clothes hamper and dropped to his knees to search under the bed.
“Marie-Belle! Marie-Belle!” He shouted as he stumbled down the hallway, hot tears of rage stinging his eyes. He would not—could not—accept this. His daughter was safe somewhere. There was no other option. “Marie-Belle! God dammit! Marie-Belle! Please answer me! Marie-Belle!” David tore through the house, terror stealing his breath and quickening his heart. “Marie-Belle!” He ripped open the door and raced down the road, shouting his daughter’s name, oblivious to the rough pavement under his bare feet and the startled curiosity of his neighbors.
Marie wasn’t at the little wooded creek down the street. She wasn’t in the back yard. Desperate, David galloped upstairs to his bedroom, stumbling over his own feet. He snatched his car keys and cell phone from his nightstand and was halfway down the hall when something stopped him. He had an overwhelming urge to check Marie-Belle’s room one last time for some indication of where she’d gone.
David flung the door open, thinking to make a quick search just in case he’d missed something, but it wasn’t necessary. Leaning against the pillows of Marie-Belle’s neatly made bed was an aged Polaroid. The man shook his head. He had no recollection of seeing the obviously-placed article, and realized that he must have been blind with panic when he searched the room. How else could he have missed it?
An unwanted cold shiver ran down his spine.
Roughly shoving aside his discomfort, David crossed the room in three strides and snatched up the photograph. He forced himself to glance at it, fearfully expecting an old picture of Marie-Belle to smile up at him through a scrawled ransom note.
The lone subject of the photograph was a stranger. David looked closer, forcing his frantic mind to take in details. The picture was older than he’d thought, with a thick white margin at the bottom and slightly muted colors. He guessed it was from the late sixties or early seventies, and the clothing of the woman smiling up at him supported his theory.
She was pretty in a very ordinary way, with long, curly brown-blond hair and warm amber eyes. The only thing particularly spectacular about her was her bright, infectious smile. She wore a boxy yellow and brown plaid dress that probably would have looked hideous on anyone else. The high neckline and small lace collar made her look a little girlish, but the thick belt around her waist and loosely pleated skirt showed off her womanly curves.
None of these details were of the slightest use to David, however. Frustrated, he flipped the picture over, half hoping to find a note of some kind. His heart skipped a beat when looping script met his eyes, but it sank a moment later when he realized it was just typical photograph information.
Melissa Moore
Aker’s Creek Hotel
Haven, Georgia
April 1968
Melissa Moore
Aker’s Creek Hotel
Haven, Georgia
April 1968
Cursing himself for wasting time, David shoved the Polaroid into his robe pocket and sprinted for the door. Something occurred to him as he fumbled with his car keys, and made him take out the photograph again. Aker’s Creek Hotel. The name sounded vaguely familiar, and David wondered suddenly if it could be a clue to his daughter’s location. Josephine had loved the little historic town of Haven, and they had visited often when she was alive. Had this smiling young woman grown up to be an older acquaintance of theirs? Had Marie-Belle gone back to a place where she remembered feeling safe and happy?
David danced in antsy indecision for a moment. Haven wasn’t far, but he was afraid that he might miss Marie-Belle if she was closer to home. He determinedly jerked opened the car door and got in, flying out of the drive way before reaching for his cell.
The police dispatcher had wanted David to stay where he was, saying that officers were on their way. He had explained again and again that he had to go to the hotel, that he’d found a picture from the place on his daughter’s bed. The woman told him, with exaggerated reasonableness, that everything would be alright and he should calm down. He was left feeling unsure about whether someone would still show up at his front door, expecting to ask questions, but he found he didn’t care. He knew with inexplicable certainty that he had to visit the location of the photograph.
In the end, David hardly needed his GPS to find the hotel. Memories flooded back to him as he entered downtown Haven. Some things were different—a couple of shops had gone out of business, and new ones had stepped in to take their places; the wood trim around the large windows of several store fronts had been repainted, and a few had new signs—but for the most part everything was exactly the same. There was the little bakery on the corner where Josephine had always stopped for a tompouce and a cappuccino. Next to it was the antique shop where they had bought their couch, and across the street was the comic book buy-and-trade venue that a much younger Marie-belle had loved investigating. David turned down Main Street, passing the Tideland Art Gallery on his left, and Glad Rags Unique and Vintage Clothing on his right. There was a parade of other shops, each of which reminded him of something bitter-sweet, before he reached the bridge spanning the aptly named Little Styx River, which flowed through the heart of Haven. It was more like a large creek than an actual river, and David could remember, while picnicking on its banks, feeling no tremor of fear as he watched Marie splashing in the shallows.
Across the bridge he saw Calypso’s Metaphysical Shoppe and Café, as well as Patchwork and Peas Blossom, another antique and gift store which David had always found to be too feminine. Across from Calypso’s was Aunt Agatha’s Attic, which was something like an upscale thrift store that also featured the wares of local artisans. To its left was Morrighan’s, an eclectic, earthy place that sold a little of everything. Beside Calypso’s was another one of Josephine’s favorite shops: Main Street Books. It was a beautiful place, housed in a grand old stone building, and Josephine, an avid reader and antique collector, had described it as a sort of heaven. She had loved conversing with the odd owners-- brothers who had a love of old pages discordant with their young age–- and David could remember feeling a little jealous. The memory of that petty envy, and the thought that it had blocked him from sharing his wife's love of the shop, added heavy melancholy to David's frantic worry, serving to make him perfectly miserable.
Right on cue, the rain started to fall.
By the time David turned up Mulberry Creek Avenue he was fighting back tears. Everything in Haven seemed so familiar that it felt as if he had been here with Josephine only weeks ago. She had loved this place so much, and had matched the personality of its stately brick facades and brightly painted trim so well, that it almost seemed as if a part of her had gotten stuck to it. David could feel her presence, and it seemed as if he could have turned his head and seen her smiling beside him. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t glance over at her. It had seemed such a small thing when they were married– so small in fact that he had taken it for granted– but those daily moments, the comfort of her constant presence, was one of the things he missed most.
Damn it! I won’t lose Marie-Belle, too! David thought, letting determined anger push away his sorrow. It was odd, almost strange, how suddenly he remembered that Josephine hadn’t liked it when he swore. Half of him thought it was foolish, but he silently apologized.
The building was the one he remembered, though it was a little more worn about the edges. It was elegant in a comfortable, homey sort of way, and, while it seemed to be well cared for, it looked as if it was being run on a modest budget. Still, it was undoubtedly the correct place. The garden was a little over-grown, but David thought he recognized the trellis where the old photograph had been taken.
David pulled into one of the many available parking spaces, and strode up the double French doors. The man behind the heavy oak desk, like the hotel itself, was a little old and worn around the edges. He had light tanned skin that spoke of mixed heritage-- maybe Mexican or Native American—and he had probably been handsome once, before life had taken its toll. His hair was mostly grey, and his face was traced by fine wrinkles. There was an aura of threadbare weariness about him, but he looked as if he could still muster up feisty energy if the need arose. He also looked notably surprised to see a stranger sweeping through his door.
“Would you like accommodations?” he asked automatically, almost as if he had been practicing those words, waiting for a chance when he could actually say them.
Despite his own desperate plight, David momentarily felt sorry for the man.
The moment passed, replaced with awkwardness, as David realized suddenly that he had no plan for proceeding. He stood for a moment looking at the man, who was growing slightly suspicious, before deciding that his only available course was to simply ask.
“Are you the owner of this hotel?” It seemed like a reasonable assumption, if for no other reason than because the man matched the building. They both looked as if they’d seen better days.
“Yes,” the man definitely look suspicious now, and David could almost see words like inspector and hotel licensing board reeling through his mind. He seemed to be wondering which guest had complained, and what he had done wrong.
“I have a rather unusual question to ask you,” David said, reaching into his pocket. “I found this picture in my daughter’s bedroom. It was taken outside your hotel. I know this is a long shot, but do you happen to know the woman in the picture?”
The man kept his curious eyes on David while he took the picture, but when he glanced down his expression instantly changed.
“That–” he choked, then cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “That’s my wife, Melissa.” He looked up sharply at David. “Where did you say you got this?”
“From my little girl’s room. I found it.”
The man nodded absently, entranced by the beaming face in Polaroid. “I haven’t seen this picture in years. Not since Lissa went away.”
“I’m very sorry,” David offered. “I lost my wife six years ago.” There was something strangely comforting about the ghostly sorrow in the stranger’s eyes. David felt as if he had found a kindred spirit– someone who could truly understand his own experiences.
The older man looked at the aged image with bewildered tenderness, smiling wistfully and stroking the image as if he could feel his wife’s cheek. David tried to think of a way to tell the man not to touch the picture too much, but he didn't think he could get it out of the man's hand without a fight. He steadfastly reminded himself that he needed this man's help-- needed to know whatever he knew--
To David's relief, the man stopped, and simply starred at the photo, his expression lost between nostalgia and misery. "Well," he said at last, handing the Polaroid with an obvious effort. "I think you'd better come upstairs and sit down."
Minutes later David found himself sitting at a tiny round table in a small, surgically-clean kitchen. The retro prints of the curtains and linoleum, along with the warm, buttery shades of yellow, cream and brown, reminded him so vividly of Melissa's photograph that it was a little unsettling. Recognizing traces of a person he had never met in a room she had once lived in was a rather like walking into an empty house and smelling a long-dead grandmother's perfume.
David's host-- Nathan Moore, as he had introduced himself-- was pouring sweet tea from a frosty pitcher into two glasses.
"I've got some shortbread cookies, if you'd like some. I always set out a dish of them for guests in the evening."
"I'm fine, thanks," David forced a polite smile onto his face. He resented this man wasting time with niceties when his daughter might be in danger, but reminded himself once again that Nathan might have information he needed. Nonetheless, he felt that a little prodding was in order. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you loose your wife?"
Nathan became very still, his shoulders stiffening as if a sudden chill had brushed his back. He returned to the table, carefully avoiding David's eyes. "It's funny, isn't it? Things never turn out right. You have these ideas when you're young about how life is going to be, and it just never happens that way." He sighed and sat down, lifting world-weary eyes to David's gaze. "God, I miss her. She loved this place, you know. She absolutely loved it.
"We moved down here from Colorado Springs twelve years ago. We'd come down on vacation two years before, and she had been enchanted by everything in this town. We ended up staying three extra days because she just couldn't bear to leave. While we were here, she'd seen this old place-- it was little more than a big, fancy shack back then-- for sale, and from that moment she wanted it with all her heart. I thought it was a terrible idea. She looked at it and saw the makings of a castle, but I looked at it and saw a dump. I said we'd go home, think about it, and save up some capital. I thought she'd forget about it in time.
"She didn't. It was just as if she was obsessed. She saved every dime she could. It was as if she just couldn't be happy unless she had this house. She used to tell me how great it would be. We could turn it into a bed and breakfast, she said. Our home and business would be the same place, and we could spend all the time together we wanted. We would keep a steady stream of visitors in a beautiful historic town like this, and we would make enough money to be reasonably comfortable without having to work outside the home. I still didn't like the idea, but she begged and pleaded. We argued and argued, and then fate took a hand. I lost my job when my company changed hands, so when she asked again, saying that this was the perfect opportunity, and I figured 'What the hell?' So we moved down and bought Lissa's dream house.
"It was hard work getting this place up to scratch, but we loved it. I was actually happy that we'd bought the house. We worked every day together, but we rarely fought. There's nothing better to help people get along than a common goal. Things seemed so perfect. We were happy, life was going so smoothly. Every day we woke up, had breakfast together while we watched the street from the balcony, and chatted all day while we worked. She did the dishes every morning while I listened to the news. In the evening, after dinner, I did the dishes while she went for a walk. We enjoyed our lives here, and dreamed about the future. But that was before the money ran out.
"Lissa had managed to save up a lot, and this place had come very cheap, but even so things got very tight. We opened in mid May, but the tourists didn't pour in like we'd hoped. We were barely earning enough to keep this place up and running. Lissa insisted that things would be much better in Summer. 'We'll earn most of our money in Summer and in December, with another smaller lump around spring break. We'll just have to be careful with our spending and make it last all year.' That was what she said, and I believed her. It sounded sensible.
"Well, summer came and things got only marginally better. We waited and waited. Every day Lissa got up at the crack of dawn to cook breakfast for our few guests, and sweep the floors, and water the potted flowers she'd bought to spruce up the porch. She cleaned all the rooms, and took time to chat with every one who stayed her. She made an effort to make every single person feel special, partly because that was just the sort of woman she was, and partly because she hoped our little inn would become recognized as one of those little hidden jewels with four star service and two star room rates.
"That's when she first started acting funny. She would come home from her walks with odd questions, like what I thought the river felt when someone rowed a boat across it. Absurd stuff like that. I started worrying that maybe she'd run into some of those hippie types in town, and maybe had gotten into drugs or something. Then, one day, I came home from the store and heard her in the parlor talking to someone. A man. Suddenly I was certain she was having an affair, and I burst into the room to catch him in the act. There was nobody there. Melissa said I'd been hearing things, but I knew what I'd heard. She let her eyes go all wide and asked: 'Do you think this place could be haunted?' Something about the way she said it wasn't sincere-- there was no thrill of excitement and fear in her voice, like I knew there would be if she really thought we had a ghost-- and I didn't believe her. But I let it go. Maybe I shouldn't have.
"June melted into July, and July melted into August. The number of guests never significantly increased, and the budget was becoming tighter than ever. We didn't eat nearly as well as our guests, and it got to the point that we were happy when there was food remaining in the serving dishes after breakfast. We were looking forward to other people's left overs. Like dogs.
"I had to take another job outside the house. I worked part time at Roland's Hardware on Symphony Street, and still had to keep up with all my chores here. All so that we could hold onto this place.
"During that time I heard that male voice several more times when I came home from work, and once when I woke up in the middle of the night. It really bothered me, as it would any man. I began feeling that between our financial situation and Lissa's strange behavior, there was no option for me but to get us both out of this house and out of Haven. I suggested that we cut out losses and sale the house. I told her that, now that it was fixed up, we could sell it for far more than we'd paid for it and get a little apartment over in Glenwood where housing was less expensive. I could get more hours at the hardware store, and we would make it through.
"She wouldn't hear of it. She was almost crazy. She cried, and said that there was magic in this place. She said she would rather live on the street here that live in a mansion somewhere else. It was so unlike her. She could be stubborn as a mule, and I admit she was acted a little spoiled sometimes, but she was always a reasonable, logical person. She'd always had a thing for unicorns, fairies, and fantasy books, but she'd never actually talked about magic as if she actually believed it existed.
"I told her she was being childish. I told her she sounded crazy. She said that if I wanted to leave I could, but she wasn't going to give up. She said we'd spent too much and worked too hard to just turn away. I knew that wasn't really the whole reason. There was something else. I told her that I knew she was having an affair, and she got enraged. She said that Coinneach was just a friend. That's what she called him. Coinneach.
"I didn't believe her. If you had been in my shoes, you wouldn't have either. There it was, as plain as day... A confession that she had been hiding this 'friendship' from me. I told her never to see him again. I told her to stop going out on her walks at night. She asked how I could take away her last bits of joy in life, and I asked what joy she though I had in this new life of ours. I reminded her that this whole thing was her fault. I guess that really hurt her. She said sarcastically that she was so sorry she had ruined my life. She told me again that I could just leave if I didn't like living with her. I told her that it might come to that if she couldn't be reasonable, and said that if she wanted to live with this Coinneach fellow then she might as well just come out and say it. She said again that they were just friends, and I said again that I wanted her to stop seeing him. She said she would do whatever she damned well pleased. Then I... Well, it's not something I'm proud of. I was angry, and I was under a lot of stress. I hit her. In seven years of marriage I'd never raised my hand to her before, but that day I hit three times.
"She fell down and cried like I'd never seen her cry before. I tried to comfort her and say I was sorry, but she pushed me away and ran for the door. I tried to stop her, and she ducked around me. She kept saying things like: 'Let go! I'll scream! I'll call the police!' I tried to reason with her, but there was no sense left in her. I didn't want to make things worse, and I didn't want to cause a scene, so I made the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life. I let her run out the door.
"That was the last time I ever saw my wife."
There was silence for several minutes. David felt hot fingers of guilt prodding his mind. He, too, had hurt the person he loved most in the world, and thus driven her away from him. At last Nathan added: "I've never told that story to anyone before. I didn't even tell the whole thing to the police when I called them... when we were searching for Melissa. I only told them that I thought she had been having an affair with a man named Coinneach. We never found her, of course. I've stayed here for years, just waiting for her to come home. It's a sort of penance, I guess. But she'd never come, and I've come to realize that she never will. Once someone goes... well, I've missed my chance."
David wasn't sure what to say. He was torn between feeling strangely touched, feeling angry with this man for wasting his time with fairy tales, and feeling terrified that there might be something behind the myths after all.
Or maybe this man was just crazy. Yes, that was it. He'd clearly lost his mind.
So why was there a part of his mind that insisted there was a reason he’d known he had to bring the photo here?
David shook his head. No, he couldn't except this. He could except criminals masquerading as immortals, but not the real thing.
His brief-lived internal struggle was interrupted by the man's next words. “What is your daughter doing with my photo? Where did she get it?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t know… That’s part of what I’m trying to find out.” A sudden thought struck David. "Did your wife ever mention people named Enda and Faolan?"
The man thought silently for a moment. “Faolan sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't believe I've ever heard the name Enda before. Does your daughter have any more of these photographs?”
The man thought silently for a moment. “Faolan sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't believe I've ever heard the name Enda before. Does your daughter have any more of these photographs?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure.” David took a deep breath. “The truth is, I’m not sure my daughter had that one. I found it on her bed this morning…”
Nathan looked up suddenly, his eyes serious. “My God. They took your little girl, didn’t They?”
David felt exhausted. He had called the police again, and had been brought in to make a report. It hadn’t been bad, really. The officers were understanding and businesslike, though they kept asking repeatedly why David had insisted on running off the Aker’s Creek Hotel three days ago. He had explained as best he could, and handed over the photo as evidence after being mildly reprimanded for handling it so much. Afraid of being thought insane—possibly even insane enough to harm his own child—David didn’t mention too much about faeries. He said only that his daughter had claimed to have immortal friends, named Enda and Faolan, who he had believed to be imaginary until his daughter disappeared. Afraid of withholding information that might prove vital, David explained that, due to her mental state, Marie-Belle was more gullible than most girls, and could have been fooled into believing young men were faeries of some kind. This afforded him more latitude to be truthful, and he agreed to hand over the box of stories to the police. That had proved more painful than he’d expected. He’d longed for enough time to read through them each once more before surrendering them for the investigation. Each word, every curve and line of his daughter’s handwriting, now seemed precious, and David felt as if he were relinquishing a piece of his little girl. He insisted several times that the papers all be returned to him when everything was over, and the officer—a young black man who’d said he had a daughter of his own—had assured him they would be. Nonetheless, David felt the fearful regret of a man loaning out a priceless artifact, and nothing could convince him beyond doubt that he would ever see Marie-Belle’s stories again.
The house had felt empty, quiet and lifeless after the policeman left. It was as if it had had a personality all its own which had not been noticed until it vanished. With both Josephine and Marie-Belle gone, it was no longer a home. It was merely a building.
Unable to remain in the suffocating stillness, David had gotten in his car and started driving. The rain blurring his windshield barely bothered him, as he could not see through the rain in his eyes. He drove automatically, wanting nothing more than to distract himself from his empty house and wrenching pain, but was somehow unsurprised when he found himself back in Haven.
Without pausing to think, David turned into a parking space almost directly in front of Main Street Books. He swung out of the car and strode through the front door before he could loose his nerve—almost as if he were leaping out off a plane rather than entering a shop.
Although he’d only been there a few times, David was struck by how familiar the surroundings were. As far as he could tell, almost nothing had changed. Just beyond the old double doors was an open space. Antique marble flooring that was probably worth more than David’s entire house stretched to meet the smooth-plastered walls. Polished dark wood gleamed everywhere. There were glass-front cabinets along the left wall and across half of the right. These contained the old and rare books—those that were actually worth something—and a few were even locked in individual display cases. On his right stood a coat rack which a few trusting customers had actually used, and beyond that a spiral staircase led to the second story. Several small tables filled the room, along with high-backed stools and several comfortable looking over-stuffed chairs. Behind them was an ancient but highly polished pub bar that had been converted for café use. It seemed simultaneously fitting and bizarre that the shop owners would allow eating and drinking in the same room where priceless books were displayed. To David’s left, on the sparse wall space not dedicated to books, there were four tall, narrow windows and a glass door. It was currently closed due to the storm, but David seemed to remember that during good weather it opened to small garden and a patio with more seating. Near the back right corner, between two bookshelves, was a door way through which winked the multicolored covers of more modern (and far less expensive) used books. David suddenly remembered roaming that room with Josephine, picking out a stack of story books for the baby they would soon be greeting.
Perhaps this is why she had loved this place so much. It was beautifully refined yet welcoming, and very, very familiar. Even the odd shopkeepers—one of whom stood behind the coffee bar and one of whom was holding a cheerful discussion with a couple of patrons—seemed utterly unchanged.
“It’s a wonderful place, isn’t it?”
David jumped, and turned to face the voice. She was a young woman dressed in a green skirt and a green and cream print blouse. Her blondish hair was pulled back into long braid, and she wore a thin gold chain and emerald stud earrings. David recalled having seen her before, though he couldn’t remember her name or where they’d met. There was something undeniably familiar about her face and her warm, light brown eyes.
Automatically, David agreed with her assessment of the shop, then managed to ask: “I hope I’m not being rude, but have we met before?”
The woman puzzled over that for a moment. “I don’t believe so. But I’ve been making regular visits to Haven for years, and I always stop in here, so if you’re a regular customer we’ve probably bumped into one another once or twice.”
“I haven’t been in here for years. I just… I’m looking for my daughter,” David decided to give her a half truth. It was none of her business, after all.
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. She’s just Away.”
David realized he was shaking his head. “I don’t… think so.”
“Oh, she is, you can believe that. You only think she’s lost, but she isn’t. She knows exactly where she is… or at least she knows the part that matters.”
The odd wording of the last comment bothered David, and he looked sharply at the young woman. “What do you mean?” he demand.
“Oh, nothing bad. I just mean that that’s what it’s like. People think someone is lost when they’ve really been found. That’s what it’s like. Things are just clearer, somehow. What’s important is important, and it doesn’t get all muddled up by everything else. That’s part of the beauty of it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
She smiled winningly, and suddenly David remembered. Suddenly he understood, and things that shouldn’t have made sense did.
“I told you,” said Melissa Moore. “She’s Away. She’s not really gone, you know. It’s just that she’s not here. She’s just Away with the Faeries.”
