Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
Overlea Marsh
Monday, July 19th, 2010
We’re a big family, notoriously hard to fright, unless you count Uncle Jack; the rest of us got our horses walloped over fences when we were young enough to learn— no fear, or don’t show it. My cousin Gilly’s shaping up to be like Uncle Jack. The aunts talk about what’s to be done about her.
Therefore when my horse cast a shoe coming up on Overlea Marsh I didn’t fret too much. Everyone warns about the marsh— “not after sunset,” & etc. I found the shoe settling in a pool off the track, pulled it out in the reddening light, and decided against going after the missing nails.
“We’ll have to walk it, Conqueror,” I told him, and he had the grace to look ashamed. We crossed the first bridge, by Cold Water.
“Who passes there?” asked a voice like water weed.
I stopped dead.
“John Overlea,” I said, addressing the empty dusk.
It said nothing more; yet I found myself kneeling in the middle of the bridge, weeping with loneliness. My whole family despised me, though they’d never said a word. Overleas don’t. They thought I was worse than a hundred Uncle Jacks.
“That was quick,” said the voice by my ear. “I thought to have to try you at all three bridges. Mind the lesson here. If you do, nothing more will fright you tonight.”
I stood up, startled. The loneliness had gone, my aunts and cousins and all didn’t despise me in the least.
I walked on leading Conqueror, thinking; the voice kept its promise.
When I got home, I walked round the porch to where Uncle Jack always sits, alone with his pipe on the far side. I sat down beside him.
“Young John,” he nodded.
“Uncle Jack,” I answered, “You suffer a great deal from us.”
He smiled, looking out over the north field towards the marsh.
“Yes,” he said. “Someone’s got to carry the fears awhile, if nobody else shares the burden. Makes you strong, I admit, though you hate it.”
He turned to me.
“Something happen in the marsh?”
“Yes,” I blinked.
“Ah,” he said, smiling out over the field again.
“I’ll share the burden,” I offered suddenly, because nobody ought to bear what I’d felt on the bridge, even if sometimes they must.
He patted my arm.
“Some’s you can, and some’s you can’t. Thank you.”
Shift Change
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
The town of Antrin Corners sat in hot summer darkness, from Hank’s Auto to Fred’s Coffin Refurbishment. Down at the Clothes Check (“No More Burst Buttons! No More Teeth Marks!”), Sandrine had just finished mending young Jim Seely’s shirt, placing it in the cubby with the rest of his things, when Officer Smarandescu stopped in.
“Coffee?” she offered, hoping her voice didn’t shake.
“No, thank you; I’m almost ready for the coffin,” he replied, carefully looking into her eyes.
“All quiet tonight?”
“Well, yes, though it’s damned close to full out there.”
She pointed at her mending pile.
“Don’t I know it,” she smiled.
“It’s mostly the newcomers who can’t keep it together in the afterlife. You’re human, and anyway you grew up here. But the new people… Sometimes I think of going to a quieter beat, like New York. I hear there are some—sympathetic—folks in the force there.”
“Dumitru! Even you were new here, a couple of centuries ago. Be nice.”
“True: but that means I know the families. I know who’s carrying a grudge against whom. At least it’s all quiet on the feuding front tonight,” he joked shyly.
He hoped his voice didn’t shake, either. Her coffee might be appalling but her countenance was superb. The way she had looked at him lately, he had begun to hope she might risk the bite. It was a lonely coffin every dawn. Fred would widen it practically at cost, for an old friend. Too old?
“It’s never all quiet. You know that, Dumitru. Some cub is always falling in love with some young vamp—or worse, fighting over a human—and then the moon goes full and all hell breaks loose. It’s like that Twilight,” she went on, smiling apologetically when he flinched.
“We don’t glow,” he grumbled.
“You do to me,” she replied before she could stop herself. He stared at her.
“Perhaps,” he ventured at last, “You might come for a flight at bat time, some night? If it doesn’t scare you. You’ve always been brave, for a human.”
She smiled at him.