There were stories, of course: ghoulish, horrible tales passed down for generations. Everyone in town had heard them, and everyone knew they weren’t true. He’d heard the stories all his life and ignored them for the tripe they were. He had better things to do than sit and watch birds and bugs in a cemetery. He was a man of the age. But then the dreams had come and wouldn’t leave.

Funny thing, dreams. When they come in sleep, we’re certain they’re passing fancies. When they’re part of waking thought, some view them the same as sleep’s imaginings and others view them as possible future fact. He pondered that, for a minute. Did it matter when they came, whether waking or sleeping? Bah! Of course it did! Mind tricks is all they were!

So he’d begun to visit this place because of the dreams – the dreams that wouldn’t leave – looking for the thing that would set his mind to rest. And because, if he was honest, he was curious. First, he’d paused as he walked past. A week later, he’d taken a few steps in, then walked away. A few days after that, he’d quickly walked through the grounds; the next day, slowly. Then he’d begun to stop by every day. He’d found the bench and breathed in nature’s sweet air. It was peaceful, actually.

He rested his hands on the concrete and pushed himself farther back onto the pocked bench. A whisper of a breeze touched his hair. He scratched his ear and let his gaze

wander over the stones that peppered the green grass and weeds. Gnarled trees, older than anyone living, dotted the place. A rocky stream meandered silently along the edge of a steep drop not three yards away, with only a stray burble here or there.

This was the first day since he’d begun coming here, though, that he’d stayed long enough for twilight to descend and cloak the small acreage in the gray that follows periwinkle. The dreams had told him to, hadn’t they? He shook his head. Funny the influence that fiction mixed with the subconscious had on a person.

Still, his eyes searched the ground and he saw what he must have missed the other times he’d come here. It lay just as it had in his dreams. Finally. In his dreams he hadn’t been able to make out the scrawl. At last he could. At last the silly visions would leave him and he would sleep undisturbed once again.

A stray breeze, strong for the evening’s quiet, rustled his shirt sleeve and he shivered. The stream trickled more loudly now. The weather must be changing. He looked up at the leaves, still in the evening air.

He leaned down, picked it up, and unfolded the yellowed page.

to be continued . . .

Image: old-stone-bench-1183074_960_720 pixabay CC0 Public Domain

Memorial Day: what a great day! Citizens pulled out grills of every shape and size, stores were busy with celebratory sales, and beaches were filled with winter-white visitors. The brief parade highlighted the day, assuring every attendee of their patriotism.

Five well-spaced lines of an exuberant drill team followed the Grand Marshal, a politician of much note and reputation, in whom even the press found little to criticize.The band with its seven trumpets and eight drummers, its four flutes, three clarinets, and a handful of varied other sounds followed the swishing flags down Main Street. Next came a hay wagon of square dancers, the local gymnastics club cartwheeling to their hearts’ content, and the yearly float carrying the newly crowned city queen with her court waving in harmony.

The convertible with two Gold Star mothers that came next received a smattering of polite applause on this unseasonably warm May day. They weren’t as pretty as the queen and her court nor as exciting as the gymnasts, but they were included every year just the same. People lining the street began to shake out their blankets and stretch their legs, as just ahead of the fire truck, in the echoing cadence of the band, marched the veterans. The flag they carried high hung limp in the heat and stillness of the day.

But one stood still, watching what others left behind in their haste to find the best place at the park. He stood at attention, his chubby hand over his heart as he had been taught. And then? Oh yes. Then a sudden breeze lifted the drooping flag straight. It flew as it should, with honor and dignity. The veterans looked as one at the loyal little boy standing alone at his post on the curb. And the boy smiled.

Image: United States of America flag – commons.wikimedia.org

We’d loved each other forever. Grew up two houses down from each other. Went to the same schools and sometimes, if luck was with us, were in the same classes. We looked enough alike that some thought we were sisters. In a way, we were: sisters with different last names. We held each other’s secrets close, and kept promises made with the passionate loyalty of youth. When college years approached, we promised each other we’d choose the same college.

That was the first promise we broke. Her parents wanted her to go east to their alma mater and she agreed. I wanted something close to home. We kept in touch with weekend girlfriend chats, though less because of studies and new friends. Then one week we didn’t.

She moved back to town ten years later. I’d already settled there with a husband and two kids in a starter house that was fast becoming our forever home. We ran into each other at the local grocery and stopped at the cafe next door for lunch. By the time we’d caught up, her ice cream had melted and my fish sticks had grown soft.

We fell back into the familiar dance of friendship. My kids thought she was a superhero. Without the extra treasure and tension that mark the presence of a family, she had energy, money, and time to do those kinds of things that lives of mundane structure cannot. I promised I would cheer her on in whatever next adventure she undertook. She promised to understand when I did not join in.

I can see now what I didn’t then. Our long, repetitive accounts of years together and apart lasted sometimes into the night. Honestly, I was flattered she was so interested in the time I’d mistaken salt for sugar on Valentine’s Day or missed my car payment one December. I was grateful for the sweet little presents she bought for my kids. Her excuses for the missed lunch dates were little bits of nothing I ignored. All were tells I could’ve noticed.

When she suddenly moved and I was left without an inkling why, I dusted off college-honed research skills to find her. Hours of effort resulted in nothing other than a suspicion of identity theft in different cities across the country. Her parents were of no use, only saying it was her way to visit them on an unplanned day and they were resigned to her preference. My husband told me to let it go. Let it go.

It’s been ten years since. Shortly after I’d turned up nothing other than suspicion, I was served with a subpoena for the information I hadn’t found. From there it was a hop, skip, and a jump to complex accusations I still don’t understand.

My life continues its mundane structure, but my schedule is behind bars. My children grew up to call another woman ‘mother’. My friends seem to think she is me, as if that were possible. My husband grew distant and divorced, and my friend?

She broke a whole stack of promises when she stole my identity – complete with its extra treasure and tension. And I broke only one: I no longer cheer her on in whatever next adventure is hers.

Image: enwikipedia.org heart

It’s been four years since. I’ve met some people from town, but mostly prefer the solitude of this place. The vastness of the grounds does something to you; something forgiving, maybe. The quietness feeds you.

I found it finally; pulled it out of a very twisting, very dark, very wet cave underneath a small waterfall. I dragged it home, the birds and their progeny following me hoping for some fresh berries in the rookery I had built up for them.

I turned on every light in my vast house, made a celebratory cup of tea, scratched my ankle vigorously, and opened the trunk at last.

I’ve been reading its contents for days now; love letters written over many years from a man to his wife; flirtatious notes, long letters of yearning, crisp pieces of ordinary detail, always signed the same way: “Undying love”. Treasure indeed.

The End

Image: Public Domain

I returned to the little town later and stayed in the same “cheap motel” as it had been so kindly described by what I was now referring to in my thoughts as “my stranger”. I had taken odd jobs here and there, long enough to save money enough to pull up roots and wander again. I had felt unsettled, admitting now that I had felt that way since I was a teenager, and, as inexplicable as it seemed, this was the one place I had lost that unsettled feeling one evening turned to night about one year ago. I picked up the paper in the tiny lobby as I sat down to eat my continental breakfast. As I turned a page, a small obituary stopped my hand, leaving my next bite untaken. It was she, no doubt: the dry, black hair; the harsh, definitive profile; the eyes the color of a turbulent sea.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up. An overweight man in a black silk suit asked my name and sat across from me.

“Ah. I see you’ve been reading the death announcement. She became very ill a few months ago, called my office and asked that I find you and give you this.”

It was a copy of her will.

“She wrote it in my presence. It’s all legal.”

I scanned the type.

“Everything?” I asked, stupefied, unsure what I would do with worn, clompy brown shoes.

“She had no one. Not after her husband died. Here are the keys to the house. It’s the stone one on the hill. I’m sure you noticed it as you entered town.”

“I only recall a . . . what looked like a large . . . house.” I gave up trying to describe what I had seen.

He nodded. “Moved in as a young couple. Crazy in love, those two. He was away on business when he was hit by a little Honda. She wished she’d died with him. Never got over it.”

Upon those words, I was immediately transported back to the day when, as a careless teenager, driving much faster than the limit, I had killed a man. I felt the blood drain from my face.

He shook his head and then roused himself. “A very large estate indeed. That’s the one.”

He fished out another set of keys.

“Here,” he said handing them to me. “The keys to her cars. The Mercedes is parked in front,” he nodded out the window. “You might call the salvage yard to pick up that piece of junk,” he chuckled as he pointed to my Honda, the only car I had ever owned.

As he rose to leave, I called, “Wait! I . . . I don’t know what to do.”

“Why don’t you go home?” he laughed as he walked out the door.

I found it the moment I entered the house. A note lay on a table in the large entryway of the mansion. It said simply, “Do you wish to play a game?” Then I heard a familiar shriek.

to be continued . . .

video: youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHBJTVzvhkA

Looking at the birds that crowded around the box, she said, “So now you come! Now when I’ve done all the work!”

One of the birds pecked at her shoe.

I’ve nothing more left. Thank you for your help in finding it, but it’s all gone now.” She shooed them with her hands. “Go on. All gone.”

They squawked loudly, and she raised her voice over theirs, “The lady that came with me. She might have something for you.”

I suppose there are worse things than being found when you wish to hide, but I can’t think of many.

I shivered for a moment, enough to give myself away. They all looked my direction. I suppose there are worse things than being discovered when you wish to hide, but I can’t think of many. I crawled out from my place under the bush and took a few steps.

“The box,” I said, rather crossly. “What’s in it that you come so far from town, at night, with these, these . . .” I interrupted myself long enough to scratch my ankle furiously.

“Birds,” she finished calmly. “It’s a treasure I’ve been hunting for – oh, so many years I’ve lost count now. My husband buried it after a fight we had – years ago. He died not long after, but had left a note in his will telling me of some little birds he’d trained to show me where the treasure was. He always did love gamesmanship.”

“You’ve been hunting a treasure.”

She nodded.

“The birds led you to the treasure?”

“They led me to this little spot. I had to figure out for myself where exactly it was.”

She paused. “It took awhile,” she concluded.

I pointed to the chest. “I don’t suppose there’s anything there for me.”

“Not in this lifetime,” she said without malice, to my dismay.

“What do you think I can give those shrieking things?”

“I always gave them little pieces of meat. And berries. They seem to like berries.”

“Berries!”

What kind of mundane, insane conversation was I having with a stranger in the middle of the night? I began to walk. Then I ran. I must get to some place normal; a place that carried familiar scenes and scents; a place where people and birds said and did what they were supposed to say and do. I left town that same night.

to be continued . . .

She was fast and seemed to know the terrain well. I was neither, and fell farther and farther behind. It was luck alone, although I think she would have disagreed, that brought me up short when I tripped over her as she squatted near the ground. She was peering in the dark for some small landmark, some indication she was near whatever it was that she sought. She motioned silence, and I acquiesced, too out of breath for words anyway. She straightened and we had taken only a few steps when I felt the very earth give way below me and I fell smack onto a pebbly, hardened space a good twelve feet beneath the surface. I rolled to a sitting position, moaned, and saw that she was climbing down some mismatched boards nailed into the side of what appeared to be a cave wall.

I began to groan. It was not involuntary, I’ll acknowledge, but I thought by this time I deserved to whine. However, the instant a sound escaped my throat, she held up her hand to silence me and walked into a short tunnel. I found her scraping away some dirt from the wall with a little tool. It was apparent that she knew this place. The earth was packed solid, and she seemed to know exactly what she was doing though it was very dark despite the flashlight she had flicked on upon our descent. I tried to while away the minutes by chatting with her, but getting no response, I went back through the tunnel. I’d had enough. She could have the silence she seemed to crave for company. I climbed the “ladder” to the ground overhead, peeped out, recoiled at the black night, looked down again at the darkness beneath me, then, gathering my courage, swung my leg up and pulled myself out. I started off unsteadily, uncertain of my direction. The moon shone only dimly, and there was no trampled path, no recognizable landmark, no inner sense of direction.

I had walked for a few minutes when I heard a rustling. Scared out of my wits, I searched in vain for the hole I now wished I had never left and then ran into a bush under which I promptly sat as far as I could manage. There appeared, not too far distant, a large bird with black feathers and no markings.

“Black feathers,” I silently scolded myself, “Of course its feathers are black! The whole world is black in this darkness!”

It stood waiting; looking around excitedly like some kid at the first football game of the season. It didn’t wait long. Four birds of similar size joined it. They immediately raised such a scream as I’ve never heard since. The sound inhabits my dreams still on nights when the dark seems to close in so near that I can touch it.

I heard a scrambling and saw the stranger throw a wooden box the size of a small trunk out first, then hoist herself outside.

to be continued…

Image: http://pixabay.comenanimal-autumn-background-bird-89182-jpg public-domain

“You look as though you could use a rest,” she said, looking as though she wanted me to negate her observation.

It was not in me to let this advantage pass, though, and I eagerly assented that I did, indeed, need not only rest, but some more blueberries as well. Without waiting for further suggestions, I plopped down where I was. I quickly stood, having poked myself with a sharp stick or stone, and moved to sit on a fallen tree instead. I reached for some more blueberries and ate uninterrupted for at least five minutes straight until I felt sufficiently full. The whole time the woman in front of me looked toward her destination, then down at the decaying leaves at her feet, then off again in the same direction.

“What is it?” I finally asked.

“What?”

“What is it that you keep looking for or toward or whatever it is you’re doing?”

I swatted a mosquito and began to itch with zeal what promised to be a generous patch of poison ivy on my ankle.

I spoke quietly to myself now. “What in the world am I doing?”

“You asked if you could join me,” she replied.

“At the table. I meant to ask if I could join you at your table,” I answered her, frustrated with my stranger’s assertion and amazed at the misunderstandings this world holds and how destinations change on the simple turn of a phrase.

Destinations can change on the simple turn of a phrase.

“You followed me. No. You wanted to join me. In fact, when your little Honda pulled into the café, you looked,” she paused, searching for a word which she couldn’t quite find, ‘lost’.”

I stared at her, baffled that she’d not only noticed me come to the café in the first place, but also that she’d studied me. It was she who I had thought distracted, but her narration challenged my blazingly astute observation.

“Let’s see. You’ve, on impulse, decided to pull up roots, that is if you’ve ever had them which is doubtful; a result of something in your past, perhaps.”

A lump began to form in my throat, but I stared sullenly past her; a habit I’d found useful in life.

“You’ve used your last dollar for a week’s worth of cheap motel and a full tank of gas; and after a few days of little sleep and not much food you’re wondering if you’re still sane.”

She was about to continue, but, to my strange relief, another shriek split the air. At this she jumped to her feet and flew from the woods, running in the same direction in which we had first started.

The day was by now growing toward twilight, and having been afraid of the dark since my childhood, I sprinted after her. After all, it’s one thing to follow a stranger in the daytime, but quite another when the dark closes in. As the moon rose, she was – being the only human in sight – in an instant, my friend.

to be continued . . .

Photo: www.goodfreephotos.com

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, I am reposting the very first story I shared on My Fireside Chat. I will share it here in installments each day this week. Oh, sure – you can look it up here and peek ahead, but where’s the fun in that? Love stories come in all sorts of variations, you know.

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It was the shoes I noticed first. They were brown and clompy and worn, with traces of mud and dead grass stuck to the sides. She was drinking a cup of black coffee, some of which now spilled on the newspaper she held in front of her but did not read. Instead, she held it up to hide the fact that she stared into space; her thoughts breaking long enough for her to look around the small café and then drift back to whatever it was that drew her imagination to another place and time.

With nothing better to do and too little in my own life to merit attention, I resolved to catch her eye. I did, but not of my own effort. I had just searched my bag to see whether a piece of blueberry pie was in my future. It was not, and as I glanced around for a waitress to order my tea, I felt the stranger’s eyes on me. I looked her way, nodded, and then surprised myself by walking over and asking if I could join her. The stranger looked at me hard, nodded that I could indeed join her, got up, and walked out. Stunned at her rudeness, I stood motionless for a full minute until I turned and saw her at the door, motioning impatiently for me to follow.

Startled as I was, my grasp loosened for a split second, spilling some of the contents of my bag. I knelt to scoop it up, but her wave was so insistent and hurried that I took what was in my hand and left the rest to fate; a faint peach lipstick that I loved and two quarters.

As I started toward the door, she turned and jaywalked at a brisk clip across the street, a little to the left, down an alley, and back onto another street. I trotted to catch her, nearly close enough to ask her name a couple of times; but I was so out of breath, I could only wheeze. As we neared the edge of town, she slowed and looked northwest of where we now stood.

I looked intently in the same direction, but couldn’t see a thing despite my eye-strained efforts. My stomach growled and the woman, tired of what I supposed she saw as my ineptitude, turned her head slowly to me, then started off again. Ambling now through the long grass of the field we reached, she headed toward the wooded coolness at the far end. We’d entered the woods only slightly when she bent down and whisked a handful of blueberries from a bush.

Holding them out to me, she said, I couldn’t tell apropos of what, “It’s early yet, but maybe . . .”

It was the first time I had heard her utter a word. Her voice was surprisingly lovely; soft and – I will acknowledge this much – lilting. It made me think of a song or, perhaps, a story I had heard a long time ago, but couldn’t quite remember.

I was just about to reply, when a piercing shriek caught my voice in my throat. My leader paled slightly, and searched the distance from where the horrible sound had come. She involuntarily, barely perceptibly shook her head and hesitated for a moment.

to be continued . . .

Image: [URL=http://media.photobucket.com/user/flgardener_photos/media/IMG_0418.jpg.html][IMG]http://i394.photobucket.com/albums/pp26/flgardener_photos/IMG_0418.jpg[/IMG][/URL]