Waking Anastasia (10 page)

Although he was a firm believer that everything is possible and nothing is certain, Jerry nearly tripped over his own feet when he came face-to-face with a transparent, teenaged girl with golden hair cut in a scruffy bob, dressed in a simple, bullet-hole-riddled and blood-stained, black linen dress taking shape in the middle of his IKEA coffee table. Blood-loss was making him hallucinate a ghost! “Holy crap–! Wha–?! Who?!”

SHE WASN’T ALONE
! There was the man, again, from her dream. He stumbled back to the kitchen island, as shocked to see her as she was to see him. He flinched and she was hurt. She was harmless. She was Ana, and she would never hurt a flea! Just ask her younger brother. “Where am I? Who are you?”

FREAKED OUT, BUT
pretty sure a hazy, glowing girl couldn’t hurt him, Jerry stepped toward the coffee table where he could get a better look at his “houseguest”. “Who the hell are you?” Could she be the girl he’d been dreaming about?

The ghost tilted her head as if to hear better, but shook it, frustrated. She pointed at her ears and shook her head again. Jerry guessed that she couldn’t hear him any more than he could hear her. With the headache still thumping but slipping slowly into the background, he took another step closer. The ghost moved back, eyes wide and hands raised just a bit defensively. Recognizing fear when he saw it, Jerry stopped advancing and held up his hands in an “I’m-unarmed-and-come-in-peace” gesture. As he addressed the girl again, he accompanied his spoken words with sign language.

“Hello. My name is Jerry.”

ANA COULD SEE
his lips move, but she still heard no sounds whatsoever. She shook her head. “I do not understand.” The man held out his hands to show that he was no threat and stepped toward the table, pointing at a pen next to a book. Ana shifted warily to the side but didn’t feel the need to flee. He carefully picked up the pen in a bandaged hand, held up a greeting card of some sort with the other hand, and began writing on the back of the card. After a moment he held it up for her to see. She took a tentative, floating step so she could see what he’d written.

“My name is Jerry. Who are you?”

She smiled.

THE GHOST GIRL
pointed at Jerry, mouthing words. Understanding, Jerry grinned and nodded. “Yes, I am Jerry.” While Jerry signed, the ghost watched closely. “Yes! My name is Jerry. J-E-R-R-Y.”

The ghost copied the signs to spell his name and Jerry laughed. “Yes! Jerry!”

The girl continued, signing slowly, a look of concentration on her face as she tried to remember what Jerry had just shown her. “My name is . . .” Not having the signs for the necessary letters, she silently mouthed her name. Jerry didn’t understand her. He could sign with the best of them but he never needed to develop his lip-reading until now. The ghost held out her hand for the pen but when Jerry handed it to her it fell through her fingers and onto the table, landing on the book of poetry. The girl looked at the pen, frustrated, but then she pointed at it excitedly. Jerry picked it up and offered it to her again but she waved it off and pressed her finger down and into the book.

Understanding finally dawned on Jerry so he picked up the book and offered it to her. With a half-smile she shook her head “no” and mimed for him to open it. Jerry opened the cover and showed her the note inside the cover. Written on the title page in faded blue fountain pen was “To Ana, Love Mama. Christmas 1915.” The girl pointed at the inscription and then at herself.

Jerry got the message clearly, if not loudly. “That’s you?” he signed and spoke. “You’re Ana? Anastasia?” He signed slowly. “Your name is A-N-A?”

ANA NODDED VIGOROUSLY
. Hand signs! She put her palm over her heart like she had seen him do and made the finger shapes for her name. “I am Ana.”

“Hello, Ana.” His words were simple so she could both read his lips and follow his hand signs.

“Hello, Jerry.”

THE HEADACHE SWEPT
in again and grabbed Jerry’s attention. His eyes went wide and he stumbled to the closest seat, dropping the book back onto the coffee table. Ana followed him, a look of concern evident on her transparent face.

Jerry pressed on his temples with both hands. “Headache. Bad one.”

Ana glanced around the apartment, saw the kitchen sink, pointed at it, and mimed that Jerry should drink lots of water and then sleep.

“You’re pretty smart for a ghost. Sleep. I need a week’s worth of sleep.” He forced a smile, levered himself slowly up out the chair and stumbled to the kitchen area. When he got to the sink, he grabbed a clean tumbler with his good hand and held it up for his guest to see that he understood what she’d suggested.

ANA SMILED BACK
, pleased that Jerry was able to understand her, but suddenly the darkness was there again, beckoning her, pulling her away from this new world of light and colour and Jerry. No! It couldn’t be over! Dream or no dream, she wanted to stay. She reached out for him, as if he could grab her hands and pull her into his world, but that world was fading fast. The darkness swirled up and out of the book but she finally realized that it wasn’t dragging her back in; it was simply embracing her while her strength waned. Suddenly she was so very tired and the dark seemed like a perfectly reasonable place to rest and get strong enough to return to the world of this Jerry person.

She looked up as she left the dream, and waved to Jerry to say “goodnight”. Jerry waved back, but she thought he looked more than a little bit confused. Then her world went black, and she was once again alone, but now it didn't bother her in the least. She knew now that there was somewhere other than the darkness, and in that dream place there lived a very sweet, somewhat handsome, man named Jerry.

JERRY RUBBED HIS
eyes, shook his head, and took another swig of water. He wanted to pick up the little book but didn’t dare touch it. She was gone, but he wasn’t even sure she’d actually ever even been there. Had his headaches gotten so bad that he was hallucinating? Had one of his new West Coast friends slipped something into his drink? Were the mushrooms on the crackers magic ones? He had no idea, and if he were honest with himself, he didn’t have the energy to think about it much longer. He needed sleep more than he needed answers right now. To that end, he tugged off his party clothes, dragged on his grandpa-style flannel pajamas, and crawled into his antique, solid pine, spindle bed in the loft’s screened-off sleeping area. He fell asleep quickly, feeling much older than his years.

SOME HOURS LATER
, Ana reached in the darkness for the seam of light that led to the dream world where Jerry lived. Much about it was familiar, yet there were differences she couldn’t, yet, put her finger on. Unsure of what to expect, she pushed just her face through. She kept her eyes closed at first, fearing what might be truly beyond in the light, but then realized that she was being silly. She was quite certain that she was dead and so what could possibly be the worst that could happen to her? There were no tales she’d ever heard of people dying twice, except maybe vampyres. Even Our Lord Jesus Christ died just the once.

Ana snuck one eye open. She appeared to be alone, so she opened the other, and “pulled” herself fully into the flat. She turned a circle, admiring the beauty of the space. She was certainly used to much grander, but near the end of their exile, this would have been truly luxurious. The warm woods and plush furniture were so sumptuous compared to the sparse, drafty conditions of the rooms they had been confined to for their last days. She admired the beautiful, dark, hardwood floors and the Persian rug—and then she saw that she was floating eight inches above the floor.
Well, that’s silly!
She frowned, scrunched her face up to focus her considerable will, and “told” her feet to go lower. She dropped too quickly and ended up four inches into the floor. Disappointed, she put her hands on her hips, concentrated harder and, a moment later, Anastasia “stood” on the flat’s floor, quite pleased with herself.
I wonder if
. . . She concentrated a bit harder and soon she could actually feel the solidity of the floor through the leather soles of her lace-up boots.

Not seeing her host, but knowing that he had intended to retire for the night, she wandered around the flat until she saw the corner of Jerry’s bed not hidden by the screen. She hesitantly poked her head through the privacy screen, saw by the rhythm of his breathing that he slept soundly, then withdrew, and turned back to the wonderful flat around her.

She floated up in the air, moving around the loft, then caught herself.
This will not do at all!
She shook her head, closed her eyes, and imagined herself on the floor, walking across the room and not floating all willy-nilly through the air. When her feet touched down once again, she smiled, quite pleased with herself.
Much better! Where to now?
That’s when she saw a foot-tall, electrically-lit jar on Jerry’s desk containing a slowly undulating green liquid. A soundless giggle escaped her lips as she skipped over to examine the strangeness.

Carefully slipping her diaphanous hand through the glass of the jar, Ana slid her fingertips into the heart of the illuminated green fluid. She focused and imagined just her fingertips being a bit more solid and then suddenly there was less light visible through them. She concentrated a bit harder and the slowly rising ooze deflected around the new obstacles, like green magma around rocks. A silent giggle shook her ghostly form, and she willed her fingertips to be transparent, once again. She pulled her hand back, slowly, not wanting to break the odd little lamp.

Another movement on the desk caught her eye.
I’m not alone!
She turned to examine the one-gallon fish tank and once again saw the beautiful, long-finned, red and purple fish, swimming alone, nibbling at something on the blue gravel that covered the bottom of the little enclosure. A quick glance in Jerry’s direction assured her that he still slept, and a silly, impish grin spread across her face as she closed her eyes and pushed her face through the glass, into the water beyond. When she opened her eyes, the little fish peered out at her from behind his miniature Greek ruins.

She stared back at the little creature, then with a quick flick of his tail, he was out from behind the ruins with his fins flared, ready for a fight. She tried to blow bubbles at him but with no air to blow or solid body to do the blowing, she ended up just making a face at him. Nonplussed at the odd threat, the majestic little fighter swam in her nose and out through her left cheek, quite effectively calling her bluff. She blew him a kiss and left him to his meal.

As she withdrew her face from the tank, a faint reflection of twinkling white lights caught her eye. She spun to find a Christmas tree standing tall in the corner of the flat. The beauty and care in its decoration were quickly apparent. As she walked over to it, she felt more and more solid with each step. And then she could hear her own footsteps. By the time she bent over to peer at her own distorted reflection in a giant red glass ball, Ana was as solid as the world around her.

A gentle poke with her finger sent the ball swinging slowly on its metal hook and she smiled, delighted. She moved from one ornament to another, admiring the delicate glass balls and bells, what appeared to be slender crystal icicles, and tin ornaments similar in style and workmanship to those on her own simple trees over the years. These miniature train engines, soldiers, and sewing machines looked to be antiques, though, not new, like her own.

“Curiouser and curiouser.” Ana’s voice, unheard for so long, was magnified in the darkness of the loft. She spun a pirouette of joy, muffled a giggle with her hand, tossed a wiggle and a wave at the privacy screen, and stopped suddenly. How she had missed it up to now she had no idea, but in one corner was an enormous, black mirror on a stand at waist level. Thinking it extremely odd and highly impractical, she moved around directly in front of it to see what kind of reflection she got in the silly thing.

No! Her dress was riddled with holes and covered in blood! It was all true! In the darkness she thought she was having nightmares, but here was proof that they were memories. She had been
murdered
. She collapsed into a ball on the floor, her arms wrapped tight around herself, and for the first time since the killing ground of the basement of the cursed Ipatiev House, Anastasia Romanova wept tears of both heartache and fury.

There were no gunshots or bayonet stabs or screams of her family and servants to deafen her here. There wasn’t even Jimmy, her beloved spaniel, his whimpers of confusion and fear cut short by a bullet as the hot, choking gunpowder smoke filled the tiny basement room. True loss finally came home to the young Grand Duchess, and her tears flowed in a torrent, only to fade to nothing as they ran off her face.

Ana let the emotion rip through her and she faded, nearly slipping back into the book, but she held on. Although she drew no air, she took a deep breath and straightened
. I am already dead, am I not? Which means that it cannot get any worse. And, if I must be somewhere other than with my family, this place is good.
She squinted and dared to look again at her horrific reflection in the strange black mirror. She concentrated on the damage to her dress and imagined the holes being stitched up and the blood blown away by the wind. At first nothing happened, but after a moment she could see a slight change. She concentrated harder, and the holes slowly closed up and the blood stains faded.