Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift (22 page)

Who looked like my Real Cousin Ruby.

Suggestions, suggestions. Logical real world explanations for dreams that once seemed to make no sense.

“It’s just guilt,” my playwright sister Pam said when I told her in general terms about the girl I’d befriended then abandoned when she got in trouble, the dreams I had about the girl she could have been. “You wanted to help her and at what—ten?—you knew you couldn’t. So you made up a new life for her and dreamed it. You dreamed it all.”

It sounded so easy.

It seemed almost true.

And weirdly, neither sister tied these questions to our Real Cousin Ruby, whom they’d dreamed about too.

But all this logic didn’t stop the wedding. It happened several nights later—a spur of the moment thing, my Real Cousin Ruby said.

“We can’t deal with invitations. Come join us this afternoon at the courthouse. We’re tying the knot.”

I went. At least, my dream self went. I bought flowers just in case my Real Cousin Ruby forgot them, and I stood at her side, and I made myself smile as she married a poor Lon Goudy who wore dirty blue jeans, a paint-splattered denim shirt, and a baseball cap.

I woke up and cried for her, just like I should have cried for my so-called cousin Ruby.

My real cousin Ruby, who’d lived through hell in the real world, and never told a soul about it. We’d never noticed. No one noticed, until Delmar.

No one really cared.

“Sometimes I think,” my physicist sister Debbie said on the way to this summer’s family reunion, “that physicists postulate the existence of alternate realities because we’re old enough to understand how the world works.”

“What?” I asked. I was driving her truck. It had a stick shift, and she had injured her left foot, making using the clutch impossible.

My husband had the kids. He was traveling in our van, along with the food I’d spent the last two days preparing.

“You know,” Debbie said. “You get older, and you watch the opportunities vanish. When you’re ten, you can be a firefighter or a doctor, President of the United States or a famous rockstar. It’s all in the future. When you’re twenty, you’ve narrowed it down to your skill set. Doctor, maybe, or biologist or world famous scientist. You’re going to get a Nobel prize and discover the cure for cancer. Then when you’re forty, you realize you’ll never be more than the best surgeon at the second-rate hospital in your smaller than average town. Closed doors everywhere.”

“So how does that fit with alternate realities?” I asked, because I didn’t want to think about my skill set. I’d abandoned them all in my twenties when I got pregnant. I figured being a wife and mother would be enough.

“Simple,” she said. “You remember what it was like when the possibilities extended before you. Now they’re cut off, but those branches—in your imagination anyway—are still there. You just have to find a way to access them.”

“Through dreams?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Dreams are where the possibilities came from in the first place. We dreamed big, and most of us end up living small.”

We pulled up at the park. Someone stretched a banner across proclaiming this the sixtieth Folger family reunion. Beneath it, children I didn’t recognize played some kind of game. Adults who looked like the adults forty years ago, only in different clothing and with different haircuts, placed food on long wooden picnic tables.

“Ready for the ordeal?” Debbie asked, grinning.

I parked, then sighed. “Do you always think about your alternates? Or do you dream about other people’s as well?”

She gave me a penetrating look, the kind that makes the rest of the family nervous. I thought she was going to mention the cousin Ruby dreams, but she didn’t.

Instead, Debbie said, “I dream about you. If you hadn’t married and squeezed out babies. You could’ve been something, kiddo.”

Then she got out of the truck and limped toward the picnic tables.

I could’ve been something.

But I was something now.

I was a mother. A wife. A woman who never saw her cousin, whom she had apparently loved, lose herself to a sexual predator.

Maybe I should have explored that penthouse suite that appeared in my dreams. Maybe I should have seen who I might have been.

Or maybe I should simply look around now, and see what’s before me. All the changes from last year to this, all the closed doors and the newly opened ones. The people who were really hurting and the people who were doing fine.

I stepped out of my sister’s truck and stood at the edge of the parking lot, staring at my extended family. People I didn’t know. People I would never know, and children who would become people I didn’t know.

Branches, disappearing into infinity.

Too much to contemplate.

Too much for a single human brain to encompass.

At least when it was awake.

I still don’t have any theories of dreaming.

But I have dreams—a jumbled mess of images and memories, of fears and imaginary monsters.

The dream Ruby is gone, replaced by the real life Ruby. She’s still obese. But she doesn’t dye her hair any longer. Her brown has turned silver, giving her a dignity she hadn’t had before.

Or maybe I’ve accorded her that dignity.

In our lives.

Instead of my dreams.

Introduction to “
Leave a Candle Burning”

Dayle A. Dermatis’s short fantasy has been called “funny (and rather ingenious),” “something new and something fresh,” and “really, really good!” Under various pseudonyms (and sometimes with coauthors), she’s sold several novels and more than 100 short stories in multiple genres. "Leave a Candle Burning" marks her second appearance in
Fiction River.

This story’s title is appropriate since “Leave a Candle Burning” marks the last light story of the anthology. Dayle’s inspiration came from that moment at winter twilight “when the snow somehow makes the world look deep, haunting blue.”

Leave
a Candle Burning

Dayle A. Dermatis

She was lost.

Claudia stopped in the tree-lined lane, surrounded by the deep blue of twilight, a swirl of snowflakes, and an ever-growing drift of snow on the ground, and shook her head at her own stupidity.

In truth, the lodge she was heading for (at least, she hoped she was heading in the right direction) wasn’t far from the train station. Walking normally wouldn’t have been a problem. She just hadn’t factored in the earlier sunset this far north and the fact that it might be snowing.

Snowing, right before Christmas, in upstate New York? Not all that shocking.

Thankfully, her job scouting locations and stories for
America’s Legendary Ghosts
meant she knew how to pack light—at least she wasn’t dragging a suitcase behind her. She wore her bulky winter coat and boots, and everything else, including laptop, camera, and clothes, were in her backpack. She’d had to hike to sites before.

Just not in the damn snow.

The world held that silent quality that came only in the winter. The snow padded the ground, muffled the air. All she could hear was her own breathing, and the occasional, tiny snap of a twig as some small animal settled for the night.

The birch trees’ pale bark glowed in the moonlight.

Claudia felt as if she stood in the middle of a snow globe.

She thought she’d walked the two miles already, but nary a house was in sight, not even a glow of lights. She didn’t think the snow would have knocked out the power, so this was worrying. The GPS on her phone had been no help: the small dirt lanes didn’t register on the map. And then, of course, because she’d spent too much time on the train working, her battery had died. She couldn’t even call.

She was just about to turn around and head back to the station when she caught motion out of the corner of her eye. She hadn’t heard anyone approach; her own gasp sounded loud against the sudden pounding of her heart.

Not a someone…a something. A large white dog—a husky or a white German shepherd, it was hard to tell in the dark—stood a few feet away, tail waving languidly, tongue out, watching her.

“Well, hello there, pup,” she said in a soothing tone, holding out her hand flat. “Where did you come from?”

The dog barked, and jerked its head in a gesture that looked suspiciously like
Come on, then
. It took a few steps towards the trees, then looked back expectantly.

Its message was clear:
Follow me
.

Seriously?

The dog came back a few steps and barked again, this time more impatiently, then turned and looked over its shoulder.

The dog could be leading her to shelter, Claudia supposed. Or it could be leading her to someone or something in trouble. Or it could just be leading her…no, why would the dog be trying to lead her nowhere? Even if it wasn’t to the lodge, it would be somewhere with a phone or a car. Dogs didn’t lead people to scary shacks containing serial killers, after all.

Claudia always trusted her instincts, and they’d never proven her wrong. She also had a lot of faith in dogs. Her choice was clear.

She settled her pack more firmly on her shoulders and followed the dog into the woods.

The trees weren’t closely spaced and there was no foliage beneath the snow to trip her up, although in a few open places the snow had piled up. The dog seemed to take delight in bounding off to leap through the drifts before running back to trot ahead of her.

They hadn’t walked more than ten minutes when Claudia saw lights. As they drew closer, she breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing the stone-and-timber lodge from pictures. The dog had in fact led her directly to the lodge.

The three-story building toed the line between Victorian and mountain rustic. The roof was steeply pitched to keep too much snow from collecting, with two levels of dormers and multiple chimneys dotting the expanse.

Warm lights glowed from multiple windows, bathing the snow in warm, welcoming gold, a gorgeous contrast to the midnight blue sky and gleaming snow. Fairy lights in the bare trees added to the cheer. Claudia felt warmer already.

“Good job, pup!” she said. The dog barked one more time and trotted away, around the building. Probably a doggie door in the back, leading to a mud room or kitchen.

She went up the flagstone steps to the enclosed porch that ran the length of the building and let herself in, stomping her feet on the entry rug to knock off the snow before continuing to the front door.

Before she could ring the bell, she saw movement through the glass, and then the door opened.

“You must be Claudia,” the very attractive man said. His eyes were the color of winter twilight.

“Must I?” she asked, stepping inside.

“Mrs. Hawley said someone named Claudia was supposed to arrive tonight, and she’s been fretting that you’re late and your phone goes straight to voicemail,” he said, his voice low and pleasant. He closed the door. “So it’s a good assumption you’re Claudia.”

“Excellent powers of deduction,” Claudia said, holding out her gloved hand.

“I’m Reese,” he said, shaking her hand. “Come on in. Mrs. Hawley’s in the parlor with the other guests. I was on my way back from the bathroom when I saw you on the porch.”

It was warm inside, enough to make her chilled cheeks hurt in a pleasant way. She shivered, adjusting.

She followed him through the foyer, unable to decide whether to look at the gorgeous architecture or him (also gorgeous). The foyer, although paneled with dark wood, was welcoming thanks to the warm light from antique Tiffany lamps and the faded oriental rug covering the center of the floor. A steep staircase dominated the right side, its likely hand-carved newel posts a testament to an art form mostly lost today. The wood—currently wrapped with a sweet-smelling pine garland—shone, polished by more than a century of hands caressing the railing as residents and then hotel guests made their way up or downstairs.

Claudia smiled, feeling the tension melt away. She already liked it here.

She had a job to do, so she shouldn’t allow herself to be distracted by Reese, but unfortunately, she already was. Okay, maybe not full-on
attracted to
after their extremely brief conversation, but at least
appreciative of
.

The snug way his jeans hugged him didn’t hurt, definitely. Nor did the in-need-of-a-trim black hair, striking blue eyes, and warm smile. Nor the comfortable way he led her through to the parlor. Not cocky, but simply confident, settled in his own skin.

She wouldn’t have minded more time alone with him, but the parlor was full of people, and that settled that.

“Oh goodness,” said a tall, rangy older woman, “you must be Claudia.”

“I must,” she agreed this time. “You’re Mrs. Hawley?”

“That I am.” The woman’s white hair framed a face that showed a lifetime of smiles in the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She looked comfortable in jeans and a red cable-knit sweater. “Let me show you to your room, dearie, and then you can settle in and meet everyone. Shall I make you a pot of tea? Or hot chocolate? Or…?”