Wild Swans (26 page)

**
Indeed it is,**
Lindt said.

**Who is he?**

**
You know I can’t tell you that
,** Lindt said, amused. **
It would spoil the surprise.**

**
But...
**

**
That’s something you’ll have to discover on your own. But I can tell you that the two of you are comrades in arms**.

**
We’re in the army
.** Althea said. Stunned. **
The uniforms on the chair next to the table are ours.**

**Yes**.

**Where did we meet?**

**Uh uh, that’s cheating. **

**
But can’t I know some things? Didn’t you tell me that the present is the cusp between the future and the past?**

Lindt paused, considering. Then he said, **
The year is 1963. You met the man of your dreams in Munich. You are newly wed and the two of you are enjoying your honeymoon in Paris**.

**You said this is the beginning of a new life? Did you mean that literally?**

**
Yes, there will be a child from this union.**

**Really?**

**
Oh yes,**
Lindt said, his mental tone filled with warmth and humor.

**
How will I find him? How will I know who he is? All I see is his back.**

**You will know.**

**Will he love me?**

**With all the passion in his heart.**

**And he won’t care if I didn’t have a father?**

**
Not one wit.**

Althea bit down on her lip. **
Will I love him?**

**
Fiercely.**

**As fiercely as you loved your late wife? As fiercely as you love Tante Cal?**

**Even more.**

**Will we be together for a long time?**

**For the rest of your lives.**

**How will I find him?**

**
You will find each other
.** Lindt reassured her. **
Now, let us return. Cally has come to fetch you. And I—
**

He broke off, the connection between them severed. Althea felt a tremendous tug at the small of her back as she was flung backwards through time and space and back into the reality she knew. She crashed back into her body just as someone grabbed her by the hair and hurled her backwards onto the floor. She rolled, barely dodging a kick aimed at her head. She scrambled onto her rear and scuttled crab like towards the corner of the room, frightened and disoriented as she struggled to get away from her mother’s wrath.

“
Putain
!” Ruby screamed, the cords in her neck extended, her eyes wild as she lunged towards her daughter. “So this is what’s been going on all this time, You’ve been slutting around after all. And who should I find you with, rutting on this filthy old man, and in your wedding dress.”

Althea raised her arms over her head as Ruby struck her over and over. Then her mother turned with surprising speed and kicked Lindt hard in the ribs. He doubled over as she kicked him twice more.

“You BASTARD,” she screamed, each syllable punctuated by a punch to the head. “How many times? How many times have you been on top of her, you filthy, rutting, disgusting old goat?”

“Mom stop,” Althea pleaded. She tried to get up, found her legs wobbly and unable to hold her. She slid back down to the floor. “He didn’t do anything. He’s always been a perfect gentleman.”

Ruby stopped pummeling Lindt long enough to vent her rage on Althea.

Ruby rushed towards her, but Hank, who had just stepped into the apartment, stopped her. He held Ruby’s arms against her sides while she hurled curses towards her daughter and Mr. Lindt, who was slowly trying to sit up.

Althea realized that Cally was now in the room as well and had rushed towards Mr. Lindt. “He wasn’t doing anything bad to her, Ruby-Marie. He was showing her, that’s all. Just showing her.”

“Showing her what?” Ruby hissed. “How to be a whore? How to be a filthy sneaking whore?”

“Why does your mind have to be so disgusting?” Cally cried. She knelt before Lindt, and helped him sit up. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was showing Althie her future, that’s all. He was showing, just like he showed me and poor old Mrs. Ramsay. Only with her, he put beautiful images in her head. And with me...” her voice trailed off.

“Oh I have a real good idea of what he showed Althea,” Ruby shouted. “You’ve been putting ideas in this girl’s head since you got here. Now it’s all clear. You’re the one who told her about her father didn’t you?” she said to Lindt.

Ruby’s head swung hard on her thin neck, and glared at her sister. “And you’re the one who told him, weren’t you. You told him during one of your ‘showing’ sessions, only it wasn’t a showing it was a show and tell wasn’t it? What else did you tell the good and honorable Mr. Lindt, Sister? What else?”

With calm grace, Cally rose, walked to her sister, and slapped her hard in the face. Ruby’s head rocked back, her eyes clouded, then cleared. Cally slapped her twice more.

“Stop,” Hank said.

Cally ignored him.

“You’ve had that coming for a very long time now, sister mine. Only I didn’t have the guts to do it until now.” She stepped back, and pointed at Lindt. “Lindt is a kind, gentle decent man. If you ever gave anyone a chance, had ever let anyone in, you’d know that. But no, you let one awful incident ruin your life. And in your hurt and rage you decided to ruin everyone else’s life along with your own.

“How dare you?” Ruby whispered.

“I can and I do. I’m sorry about what happened to you, Ruby, I swear I am. But the past is the past. It’s dead and gone. You need to live
. I
need to live. And most of all, Althea needs to live her own life, not the one you’ve laid out for her.”

Ruby shook herself out of Hank’s grasp. “I just don’t want what happened to me to happen to her.” She whispered. “Men are evil. They’re all evil. And my child needs to be protected.”

“What happened, Momma? Please tell me,” Althea heard herself ask.

“If you don’t, I will,” Cally said, her arms crossed.

“Maybe I should go,” Hank said as he started for the door.

“No, stay,” Althea said. “You need to hear this too. You were honest with me from the beginning. It’s time we return the favor.”

Ruby seemed to age before their eyes. She moved feebly towards a rocking chair in the far corner of the room. She sat, her hands dangling against the arm rests, her gaze cast down toward the hardwood floor. An old Regulator Clock on the paneled wall struck two. After several minutes passed, she spoke.

“I was just a kid, fifteen. I had a crush on a boy. He was Varsity and the quarterback no less. Every girl in school wanted to date him. I didn’t even think he knew I was alive. So imagine my surprise when he asked me to the homecoming dance.”

She paused, collecting her thoughts. “At first everything was wonderful. He took me to the homecoming dance, and then to dinner at the best restaurant in town. Dad wanted me home by eleven and so I didn’t think about it when he said it was time to go.”

“But he didn’t take you home, did he?” Cally asked, her voice quiet, her head lowered as if in shame.

Ruby shook her head. She burst into tears, holding her stomach as if she’d been punched in the gut.

“Oh Momma,” Althea whispered. The sudden, horrible, ugly realization struck her like a copperhead hiding under dank leaves. “Oh Momma, he
didn’t
.” She crawled toward her mother; put her hands on her mother’s arms. “Momma?”

Ruby nodded, sniffed, and regained her composure. “I never regretted having you Althie. Not for a minute.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Did Lindt show you that? What that boy did to me?”

“No, he didn’t.” she said. “I promise.”

“Well,” Ruby said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Now you know. I suppose the truth would have come out some time or another.” She looked up at Hank. “I’m sorry. I really wanted you to be my son. I hoped and prayed.” Her face was pale, her smile wan, apologetic. “I guess God said no.” She shrugged. “It’s my fault for not listening.”

“I want you to know, Miss Ruby, that I think Althea is a wonderful girl, and I do care about her. But,” he turned to Althea, “she made me see that my destiny lies elsewhere.” He shrugged, his smile crooked, charming. “I was meant to be a priest, and not a husband.”

“I know,” Althea said. “I’ve always known.”

“It appears, dear friends, that we have greater problems to consider,” Lindt said. His voice, though soft, carried throughout the room. He pointed at the door that was left open. Althea gasped.

A shadow loomed in the threshold.

Chapter Sixteen

The shadow-thing was long, pencil thin and ran like a crack in the universe from the doorway across the threshold and into the apartment. The profound darkness clashed with the white radiance filling the doorway, which was eerie in and of itself. Althea knew at that instant that, like the scene in the alley depicting her mother and her aunt, everything beyond the door was void. There was nothing else. Somehow they had been removed from the reality they knew. They were quite literally trapped.

“It’s a remnant,” Althea whispered. Lindt nodded.

“We can’t get around it, can we?” Cally asked. “Even though it’s just a shadow.”

“There is nothing beyond the remnant,” Lindt said, confirming Althea’s thoughts. “There is nothing beyond but a white empty expanse.”

“No, there is something else. Something you’re not telling us.” Althea said.

“Yes, there is one other thing, something that no human language can describe. It’s something so horrible that your mind will bog down trying to comprehend it. The long thin shadow we see is indeed a Remnant, just as Althea said. But there is more. What we’re looking at is just an appendage of the horror that lies beyond the doorway.”

The atmosphere in the room became weighty, surreal. “What’s happening?” Althea asked. She laid her head on her mother’s lap. “My head feels so heavy,” she whispered as she slid down onto the floor. “I feel like a great weight is pressing down on me.”

“Everything feels too heavy,” Cally concurred as she slid down the wall and onto the floor. Hank pressed his hands against his temples and began uttering the Lord’s Prayer. Seconds later, he too, succumbed to the intense pressure and collapsed onto the floor.

“It is distorting the reality in the room. Your minds can’t keep up.” Lindt said.

“But it’s not affecting you,” Hank said.

“No, because I am a part of what the thing is. It wants to take me back into itself.” Lindt uttered a tired laugh. “I won’t let that happen.”

The distortion grew worse.

Ruby moaned, her fingers digging deep into both sides of her head. Without warning she doubled over and vomited over the chair’s arm, avoiding striking her daughter. She collapsed, first onto her knees, then across Althea’s back. Cally turned, her face reflecting the panic that Althea herself felt. She tried to rise, to rush towards Lindt, but stumbled and fell as soon as she rose, too, overcome by the pervasive evil of the shadow to rush to his assistance.

Althea felt her own stomach muscles cramp up. She doubled over, grabbing her head as everything she knew or thought she knew warped and twisted around her. She felt her fingers twisting her hair, pulling hard, the pain jolting her into a framework of reality which she could understand. At that instant she realized that her eyes were clenched closed, her jaw tightened so much that the delicate sinews twanged like over tuned guitar strings.

I can still see
, she thought with a shock,
even though my eyes are shut, I can still see.

And what she saw defied anything that she could possibly comprehend, and the only thing that she did understand was that Lindt had changed.

Lindt was no longer a slightly flabby middle-aged man with graying brown hair sitting in the middle of the floor in a pair of old man’s khakis and a white t shirt. He, or what Althea could understand of as he, stood in the center of the little living room; his body glowed, growing longer and thinner as the center axis of himself rotated while pulsating great beams of pure white light.

The shadow slipped into the room and erected itself, then, divided itself into six more shadow-things, all tall, all utterly black, all standing slanted and twisted like a grove of crooked old trees.

Hank stumbled toward them, holding his crucifix out like a man holding a vampire at bay. He uttered something, but the sound was so distorted Althea couldn’t understand it. She wanted to cry out to him, to warn him, but she found she could not. Hank stumbled just a few feet toward the nearest shadow-thing and then succumbed, collapsing into a heap, clasping his head, screaming as blood poured from his nose and ears.

There was sound, a terrible rushing sound, and yet there wasn’t. Dazzling lights assailed her, and a buzzing sensation ripped at her skin as if she were standing too close to a high tension wire. There were colors she couldn’t begin to comprehend as the warp of the tiny pocket of their universe twisted and bulged. Althea shoved her head between her knees, trying not to see what was happening, yet, it seemed that her own head had opened up and became a receptacle for every perception.

**
No.
**

Huge dollops of blood splattered on the floor. Althea’s nose gushed, blood oozed from her tear ducts and trickled from her ears. And yet she could still see. She saw Cally stumbling toward Lindt, her arms open wide. Althea was astonished at the sheer strength of will and love that her aunt showed. The terrible thrumming sound intensified, Althea’s field of vision was invaded by brilliant white lines. She pressed her cheek against the floor and vomited weakly.

**
Take me with you
. **Althea heard Cally say in her mind.

**
Cally
**Lindt said.

**
Take me
**

**
With all my heart I wish
**

**I love
** Their minds pulsed together.

**Yes...
**

The creature that they knew as Lindt became longer, thinner, until he was nothing more than a long thin string of violet gold light. No one could look at him. Cally collapsed to the floor, one hand raised as if trying to grasp for him. At that instant, the shadows rushed towards him, light pulsed, and the string shot through the ceiling. The shadows pursued. Reality rushed in; there was a loud slam as if a tremendous door had shut. The sounds of summer returned. Althea raised her head and looked toward her aunt. Cally, still stretched out on the floor where Lindt had stood only moments before, keened.

****

After what seemed like an eternity, Althea regained consciousness. Ruby rose, and knelt next to the wall. Althea stood shakily, as did Hank who helped her up. With a trembling hand, she wiped the blood from his nose and upper lip with her veil. He smiled weakly down at her.

“He’s gone.” Cally moaned. She knelt in the spot where Lindt had stood, heartbroken, utterly devastated. “I’m never going to see him again.”

A soft breezed stirred, whirled around her. She looked up, confused, as something that Althea could only describe as flower petals (although she knew that they were from no plant that ever lived on earth) spiraled around and upon her aunt. They floated like tiny pieces from heaven, soft, purple and crimson, and the room was filled with a scent that no perfumer in Paris could ever duplicate.

Cally was showered with them. She looked up, tears glistening on her cheeks, the petals landing in her hair, onto the floor, piled into her lap. She grasped double handfuls of them, and buried her face in them.

A word hung in the room. It was Lindt’s voice, soft, humorous, the culmination of everything Althea knew he was.

Love.