Pretty Marys All in a Row Read online

  This is all wrong. She shouldn’t be able to touch me. But then she shouldn’t have ever been destined to become my replacement either. That fate binds us together. We’re the same and not the same. I’m the end she never suffered, and she’s the beginning I never got. And with her at my side, I can feel it stirring within me. The darkness thrashes, but it can’t bubble to the surface. If it tries, Abby will simply grin and chase it away.

  “Are you feeling all right, Aunt Rhee?” Abby dabs the sweat and grime from my forehead. “You look tired today.”

  I rasp out a laugh. “I am tired, little one. So very tired.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Abby glances around, her nose scrunched up. “It’s not very nice in this place.”

  She tugs my hand and leads me out of the shadows and through the wall. David and my sisters follow us, each of them murmuring my name. They can no longer see me, but that’s okay. Abby guides me back to the dusty place that was my home all those years ago, back when I was alive. The home that I’ve found all over again.

  Daylight, pure and unforgiving, pours across the stained floor, and the dust lilts through the air, gray and beautiful and free.

  Through the cracked front window, I smile and look into the sun.

  chapter ten

  “Aunt Rhee, would you like to play hide-and-seek?”

  Abby blinks up at me, wide-eyed and pleading, and I chuckle because she knows I won’t deny her.

  “Yes, baby,” I say, “I would love to.”

  She leads me outside to the biggest oak tree, the one that towers over the sagging roof of the house. The sap once again drips from the branches, clear and sweet as rainwater. It’s spring and warm and welcoming. In the backyard, I extend my arms over my head and chase Abby across the overgrown grass. She squeals and runs off, eager to pick a hiding place where even a ghost can’t find her.

  I cover my eyes and start counting. The sun shines down and prickles my skin. Unlike the darkness that came before me, I don’t turn to ash in the day. I’m not pure gloom and never have been—my sisters and David and Abby make sure of that.

  The morning smells sweet and fresh, and the bottoms of my feet itch, ready to rise up to meet the clouds. And I could float away if I wanted to. No longer tethered to earth, I could float anywhere in the world now. But why would I? If I drifted away, I would spoil one little girl’s perfect game of hide-and-seek. And that would be an unforgivable offense.

  After I call out a hundred, I creep around the yard and back into the house. In the corner of the living room, David toils away at decades’ worth of repairs. This home, decrepit as it is, isn’t only mine anymore. Over the winter, David paid off the long-simmering lien and purchased the property—for a decent bargain since none of the locals were hankering for a haunted house with bad pipes. Now he’s fixing it up the way it used to be, the way I remember it. I whisper to Abby all the little details—the gingham curtains in the bedroom and the robin egg blue paint for the walls—and she sprawls out on the floor, her lips twisted to one side as she employs a kaleidoscope of Crayolas to craft her best likeness. I can’t quite describe it like I see it in my mind, and Abby can’t quite draw it the way I describe, so the finished home won’t be perfect. But then nothing ever is.

  “It’s a fresh start,” David told his wife, though it didn’t quite convince her. She hasn’t moved in, not yet, but she visits often and watches the repairs and sees David, the same way I see him, kind and flawed and human. Their future is a fragile one, but that’s better than no future at all.

  My future is fragile too. Except for flashes here and there, David still can’t see me. No one but Abby can. And the darkness isn’t gone. In quiet moments, I hear him whispering to me, tugging at me, desperate to claw his way out. But I won’t let him. I won’t listen. There might always be shadow, but there will be light too. And sometimes, that’s enough.

  Abby peeks out of her hiding place in the hallway and grins at me. I smile back at her.

  Yes, this time, the light will be enough.

  Though they can’t see me either, my sisters return here often, paying their respects. And their disrespects.

  “This place is a mess.” Mistress drags one manicured finger across a grimy cornice, her body more substantial than before. My sisters are still ghosts, but they’re a little more alive too. They can touch this world and live in it. David can live in it too. He no longer flashes in and out like a phantom. Neither do the twins. With the darkness tethered, no longer able to yank us back and forth, we’re stable here. Or as stable as a world filled with spirits can ever be.

  The afternoon light slants golden through the front window, and the spider-web crack in the glass casts lines on all my sisters’ faces. Here we are, the way we’re meant to be: a family of ghosts, five Marys in one place, with Abby in the middle as my decoder.

  “Aunt Rhee says she’s glad to see you,” Abby says, nodding once, proud of herself.

  They give me their updates like old folks back from a chartered tour of the Taj Mahal. Mack has found a nice funeral home to haunt in Cleveland, and Mistress has been touring all the gardens on earth, from California to Moscow.

  “You wouldn’t believe all the poisonous plants I’d never even heard of!” she marvels.

  Red hides among the stacks of withered textbooks in the twins’ house, the three of them researching the Marys, remembering who we are, cataloging us for posterity, and of course, terrorizing the twins’ parents whenever they come home for a visit.

  “Sometimes,” Red says, leaning toward me, toward the place she thinks I am, “we materialize in the bathroom mirror. You know, for old time’s sake.”

  For her part, Lew’s retired to Des Moines where Gladys is teaching her all the trade secrets of a self-respecting blue-haired lady. Bingo games and knitting circles and, of course, baking tips.

  “If I focus hard enough, I can even hold a wooden spoon now!” Lew beams and shares Gladys’s snickerdoodle recipe, which she claims makes the “best cookies this side of the Mississippi.”

  Her eyes burning bright, Abby listens to cheerful tales of desserts she’s never sampled. “Aunt Rhee doesn’t believe you,” Abby says. “You should bring some cookies with you next time to prove it.”

  I laugh and shake my head. I never said that. But I won’t ruin Abby’s caper.

  “I’ll see what I can do, little one,” Lew says, flashing her a grin.

  Sunset grows nearer, and my sisters bid their farewells.

  “Those mortals won’t terrify themselves,” Mistress says.

  I smile and wave a goodbye none of them can see, always a little lonely inside that their visits end too soon.

  Red lingers behind, hopeful she might catch a glimpse of me. But no matter how many times we circle each other, I can’t bring myself into her focus. Now I’m a ghost in a way I never was before.

  With a defeated sigh, she turns away.

  “Goodbye,” I say, my fingers gliding through her hair. That long mane is no longer caked thick with blood. Now it’s shining and wild and hers.

  At my touch, Red starts for a moment, a shiver trembling through her. She smiles.

  “I’ll see you soon, Rhee,” she says, and I hope she’s right.

  After my sisters have departed and the sun evaporates from the sky, David mops the sweat from his forehead and closes up his toolbox. Another day has escaped us. Somehow, I thought a life would pass slower if I could live it one sunrise at a time, but each one is gone before I even have a chance to hold it in my hand.

  In my old room, I sit by David’s side as he reads Abby a bedtime story about a wolf and a girl draped in red. Curled up in her new bed, Abby chortles and requests an encore when the tale is over, but she falls asleep before the little girl fills the beast’s belly with stone. It’s probably for the best. I don’t think those stones would work anyhow. Fire would have been better. Trust me on that.

  Down the hall, David kicks off his boots and climbs into his own bed. I sit
on the edge of the mattress, my hands folded in my lap, and he turns and smiles at me, at the air I occupy.

  “Goodnight, Rhee,” he says and dims the light. I recline next to him, his breathing calm in the dark. I want to linger here, tucked against him as he dozes off, our bodies so close we might as well be one.

  But I can’t stay. My work has waited long enough. Before I slip out the door, I kiss David’s forehead, my lips as ephemeral as air, never disturbing his sleep.

  Through the wall, the Marys are sleeping too, thousands of them murmuring in their strange dreams. Together in their neat rows, they no longer weep, but that doesn’t mean they’re at peace. This still isn’t their choice. Some of them have merely been asleep so long they no longer remember how to open their eyes. But I’m here now, and I’ll help them.

  I march down the rows of girls whose faces I’ve memorized. There are so many of them, their bodies dusty and quiet, and sometimes it feels overwhelming, as though this should never be the work of a single person. But then I smile and remember: I have an eternity to rouse them from this place. And that’s what I’ll do. One by one, I’ll retrieve them from the darkness, and the legends will be free, the way they were meant to be. Then maybe I’ll be free too.

  And tonight, I know where to start. Far off in the corner beneath a gauzy spotlight where the Glenn Miller music plays on repeat, I find her.

  The Mary who came before me.

  As the hours fade away until dawn, I sit with her and tell her everything. About all the secrets we shared and how beautifully terrifying she was, her hauntings a formidable sight. And I tell her that this was never her fault, that she deserves better, that she is better.

  She’s fabled. She’s remembered. She matters.

  This work is imperfect. There is no easy way to coax a spirit back. But I don’t give up. I keep reminding her of herself, and somehow, she hears me. Still dozing, she wades through the darkness in this make-believe ballroom and through the darkness stirring deep within my bones. Her dreams aren’t so distant and bottomless anymore. Her dreams aren’t anything at all, fragments of the past, a cruel fate in need of sloughing off.

  Her lips curl into a smile and so do mine.

  “Awaken,” I whisper, and the ghost opens her eyes.

  about the author

  Gwendolyn Kiste is a speculative fiction author based in Pennsylvania. Her short stories have appeared in Nightmare, Shimmer, Interzone, Black Static, and Three-Lobed Burning Eye, among other outlets. Her debut fiction collection, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, is available now from JournalStone.

  A native of Ohio, she currently dwells on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. You can find her online at gwendolynkiste.com.

  BROKEN EYE BOOKS

  NOVELLAS

  Izanami’s Choice, by Adam Heine

  Never Now Always, by Desirina Boskovich

  Pretty Marys All in a Row, by Gwendolyn Kiste

  NOVELS

  The Hole Behind Midnight, by Clinton J. Boomer

  Crooked, by Richard Pett

  Scourge of the Realm, by Erik Scott de Bie

  COLLECTIONS

  Royden Poole’s Field Guide to the 25th Hour, by Clinton J. Boomer

  ANTHOLOGIES

  (edited by Scott Gable & C. Dombrowski)

  By Faerie Light: Tales of the Fair Folk

  Ghost in the Cogs: Steam-Powered Ghost Stories

  Tomorrow’s Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity

  Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird

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