“Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.”
-Sonnet 15, William Shakespeare.
1
One, two, three, four, pull through. One, two, three, four, pull through. Bridget’s needle danced with the light green yarn she crocheted. She sat across from her grandmother’s hospital bed. Every now and then she snuck a peek at the old woman across the room from the corner of her eye.
Half in shadow, half in light, her grandmother looked for all the world like the harpy Bridget’s aunts and uncles purported her to be. Her hooked nose, combined with thin lips pressed even thinner from the pain, looked for all the world like a beak. Her eyes, one cloudy white and blind, the other a dark green, almost black in shadow, stared out the window.
Bridget shook away the image. She’s taken my side, through everything. She can’t be that bad.
She knew what Granny Aubrey looked at out the window. There was a courtyard in the middle of the Hospice Center. A fountain sat in the middle of a lovely garden. A gargoyle statue spewed the green water of the fountain into an awaiting pool. Granny spent hours, mesmerized by the flashing lights and colors of the water. Occasionally, like now, she’d turn from the window to the door— no, not quite the door, but to the side, her expression unreadable.
“Granny, what do you see when you look there?” She’d asked one day.
“What’d you say?” Granny Aubrey replied—the cancer that’d taken her sight in one eye and was slowly killing her had also affected her hearing. The nurse that just so happened to be taking Granny’s blood pressure caught Bridget’s eyes and shook her head.
“Never mind,” Bridget said.
Later, the nurse pulled her aside. “People as close to death as she often see things that aren’t there. It’s the slow decline of their faculties, y’see. It’s best not to engage them, especially her.”
Bridget nodded then, images of Granny screaming obscenities, hands curled into talons, skittered through her mind like animals scurrying away from a forest fire.
Yet Bridget remained unconvinced that what Granny saw by the door was something. She got the distinct impression, in fact, something to do with the tired recognition in Granny’s eyes, that she was intimately familiar with what she saw— and she hated it.
No, no. That’s crazy. Stop being crazy, Bridget.
“Why are you here?” Granny Aubrey’s voice, creaky like an unoiled screen door or the squawking of a woman bird, interrupted her thoughts.
Bridget looked up at her, startled out of her thoughts. The question itself was no surprise. Granny Aubrey’d asked it a thousand times and a thousand times Bridget’d answered as she answered now, “Because I love you.”
Granny Aubrey’s mouth screwed around the other bitter words she always followed Bridget’s reply with, but seemed to decide against them, then changed her mind. “You’d still get the money,” she said.
“Ain’t about the money, Granny.”
Then memories flowed in like water— Bridget’s stepmom screaming at her, calling her names, and throwing things. Granny Aubrey barging in, swooping like an avenging angel. Granny Aubrey and Bridget in a limousine, driving away. A hotel room, hushed tones on the telephone and quiet, pensive, what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you glances in her direction. The blessed relief of staying at an all-girls school and summer camps—all paid for by Granny Aubrey.
Nothing saved her from the nasty letters and bitter phones calls, but the distance saved a smidgen of her sanity.
Bridget blinked away the memories to find her grandmother staring at the invisible thing by the door again. Bridget’s nostrils flared. Sometimes when Granny did that, she could just barely detect something, buried far underneath all the Hospice smells—antiseptic, potpourri, illness and (death?) she thought she smelled something… yellow? The scent was there again and gone. Did I imagine it?
“Company coming today,” Granny Aubrey said as she turned back toward the window.
“Who?” Bridget’s heart sank. Ever since she’d been named Granny’s heir, Bridget’s entire family had become very… nice. They almost treated Bridget like a human being. In fact, she’d actually almost enjoy it— if the ingratiating scent of simpering greed hadn’t clung to them like a cheap cologne. They’d followed her everywhere, showed up everywhere she turned.
If they dared show up here… But, no, she’d given implicit instructions up front…
Then again, her family had a flair for flouting rules and bending them to their wills.
Granny Aubrey only smiled a Mona Lisa smile and shook her head. Today seems to be one of her more lucid days. It might be a good day then… Just wish I knew who—
The abrupt knock at the door shouldn’t’ve made her jump the way it did. As it was, though, she had to pick up her needle and yarn off the floor.
The nurse swooped in. “Miss Aubrey,” she sang. “Company!”
Bridget looked up just in time to see an elderly woman hobble in with the help of a nurse that made sure she was comfortable. She watched the nurse leave before turning back to their guest.
“Oh, Mabel… You came,” Granny Aubrey said.
Her voice… I’ve never heard it so soft… Almost reverent.
Bridget looked from her grandmother to the elderly woman. “Mabel” was dressed simply but elegantly and carried herself in an almost stately manner despite her dependence on others.
“Sorry, I’m late. The Challenger exploded. They announced it over the radio on the ride over and my driver was quite upset.”
2
Mabel’s hair was still the same color as when they met… How many years has it been now? Sixty?
Aubrey stroked the tail of the emerald, green scarf that hid the now bald head—hard to believe a tumor so small, the shape of a quail egg, no less, could cause so much trouble. Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d let it go for so long either.
She sighed. Her hand dropped to her lap. Mabel’s smile—so calm, so kind—she hadn’t changed a bit. Being near her again felt like a little bit of heaven she didn’t deserve. For a moment, she wondered, if maybe— but, no, she couldn’t—not after all the horrible things she’d said and done.
Her eyes darted, almost subconsciously, to the demon by the door. Eyes black as the abyss stared back at her out of the glowing green, slimy, hulking mass before it turned away to pace again—soon, soon, it seemed to say.
But not soon enough if I’ve got anything to do with it! She turned to Mabel, who’d sat down in a chair pulled up next to her.
“Mabel—”
“Oh, Aubrey! Your beautiful black hair—” Mabel reached for Aubrey’s face and thought better of it.
“It’s nothing, really. You mustn’t—”
“Oh, balderdash! You’re dying. Isn’t there any hope?”
Leave it to Mabel to get right to the heart of the matter.
“Now, what is it, Aubrey darling, that’s got a hold of you? Your letter only said that you were sick. I assume it’s cancer, but—”
Aubrey blinked. “It’s some fangled word—”
“Ocular melanoma,” Bridget supplied. Aubrey spared her a thankful glance. Bless the little thing, she’s got her uses after all, I guess.
Mabel blinked.
She doesn’t know what that means any more than I do. Just knows it’s cancer. She—
“You’ve tried everything?”
Hopes…
“Everything money can buy and some it can’t…”
Mabel’s shoulders sank down like a deflating balloon. Hope, then, seemed like so much air escaping.
Aubrey found herself wanting to apologize. Her sharp tongue failed her, though.
Mabel rose soft, sad eyes to hers.
“Can you ever forgive me, Mabel—” Aubrey hadn’t even realized she was thinking the words before they came tumbling out of her mouth.
“Shush! I forgave you as soon as I knew… Did you never receive any of my letters?”
“Letters? You wrote me?”
“I wrote every day, for weeks and weeks. Of course, all the ones I mailed to your parent’s house came back ‘return to sender.’ But the ones I sent you when you were married—” Mabel left the sentence unfinished.
Aubrey shook her head.
Mabel sighed. “Was it a happy marriage, at least?” She gave Aubrey a hopeful look.
Aubrey went to answer but hesitated and cast a glance at Bridget. “It’s probably best we not talk about that.”
Mabel nodded.
“Uncle said he was a mean and terrible man,” Bridget said, not looking up from her work.
Aubrey nodded. “He was.”
Bridget put down her needle and yarn and looked at Aubrey then. “Tell me,” her voice was small. “Please?”
Aubrey looked her in the eye. Then her eyes widened as she turned back to Mabel. “Oh, where are my manners?” She said. “This is my granddaughter, Bridget!”
Introductions went around the room.
“To answer your question, he was the type of man to control who I talked to and when. He was the type of man to control every facet of my existence and to be upset with me when I was unhappy. And trust me, when he was upset, you definitely paid attention or else he made sure you didn’t make the same mistake again.”
“Oh,” Bridget said. So… Just like Daddy. She took a deep breath and decided to change the subject. “How do you two know each other?”
“Oh, that. We knew each other…” here Mabel faltered. Her eyes glistened as she looked over at Aubrey.
Aubrey coughed. “Charm School. From Charm School.”
Bridget looked up from her yarn. “Oh! Classmates, then?”
For a moment Aubrey and Mabel looked at each other. Mabel nodded. Aubrey smiled, shyly.
“Not just classmates… We were lovers.”
3
After a shocked silence, Bridget’s questions stumbled and fell over each other like newborn fawns.
“Lovers? At Charm School? In the twenties? Did that kind of thing happen back then?” She laughed, “What am I talking about? Of course, it happened!”
Aubrey laughed. “You know, Mabel, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she wanted a story…”
“Yes, please!” Bridget cried out, clapping her hands.
Mabel laughed. “Well, why not?”
Aubrey leaned back and stroked the tail of her scarf.
“It was 1924. Coolidge was President, radios and cars were new concepts to the public, and my parents were still upset women got the vote. The nouveau riche were hedging in on our social circles. I was entranced by the flappers I saw in magazines and advertisements. And so, I was sent Charm School, much to my chagrin. I’d no intention, mind you, of catching a husband. No, I was quite happy with the prospect of becoming a spinster. But Daddy wasn’t the sort of man that took no for answer. I’ll never forget that first day at school.”
“We were all so nervous—” Mabel interjected.
“You, nervous? I couldn’t tell!”
“Oh, lord, yes! Terribly!” Mabel’s hands fluttered.
“And yet, it was you who broke the ice later during free time—” Aubrey shook her head.
“Honey, I’d just knocked down all those books. If I hadn’t laughed, I’d’ve cried.”
“Anyway, the girls all kind of fell into their little groups.”
“Except you, Aubrey.”
“Yes, except me. I always was a bit of an odd bird, even back then.” Aubrey’s eyes glittered mischievously at Mabel. “And then—”
“What?”
“That poem.”
“Oh!” Mabel blushed and tried to hide behind her purse.
“We were learning to interpret poetry and got to choose our poems to analyze—”
“I thought it was by a man or about a man. I didn’t know—”
“And Mabel chose a poem by Sappho. Fragment 31, to be exact.”
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if Olive—”
“Ugh! Olive!” Aubrey and Mabel rolled their eyes and shook their heads. Aubrey sighed.
“What’d Olive do?” Bridget asked.
“Well, Mabel had just finished reading Sappho’s poem—”
“God! I’m so embarrassed even now!” Mabel said.
“And then looked out at the class—”
“All of whom’d chosen much more serious poems, certainly not love poems—”
“And Olive raised her hand—”
“Olive never raised her hand unless it was to be negative, judgmental or plain out preachy—”
“And asked, ‘Wasn’t Sappho a homosexual woman?’ Just like that—”
“Oh, the judgement just dripped from her tongue—”
Mabel turned to Bridget. “I’ve no issue with religion, mind you—”
“Neither I—” Aubrey put in.
“Just hate when it’s used so… Like a weapon to bludgeon others.” Mabel turned to Aubrey and waved at her to continue.
“Poor Mabel’s face went beet red. I was livid with Olive. Mrs. Johnson stated that Mabel must choose another poem, a better one, and present it the next day—”
“Aubrey stood up, stomped her foot, and insisted there was nothing wrong with that poem, and if there was, it was Olive that made it wrong and dirty!”
“I, of course, lost out and Mabel had to choose another poem. But by then the battle lines were drawn in the sand. I remember looking over at you and nodding, and—”
“Our eyes met—”
“It was kind of electric—”
The nurse came in and checked a few things. Aubrey paused a moment to catch her breath.
4
Bridget felt her suspender sliding down her shoulder and adjusted it. She had a feeling that time was growing short.
One, two, three, four, pull through. One, two, three, four, pull through.
Every now and then, she glanced up at Aubrey and Mabel.
She thought of Granny’s Aubrey’s laughter a few moments before, how it’s novelty and sweetness took her breath away.
5
Aubrey leaned back into her pillows and stroked the tail of her scarf. She gazed at Mabel. Oh! How I’ve missed her!
She hadn’t felt so light in such a very long time. All she’d felt for so long had been a kind of exhaustion, a sapping away of her energy, little by little.
Her eyes flicked, a subconscious action really, toward the corner. The demon wasn’t diminished in the least by Mabel’s presence. She thought… No, she’d hoped, he would. But he didn’t. If anything, he seemed to glow brighter. Of course, these past sixty years (has it really been that long?) he’d had plenty of time to grow sleek and fat, to guard against the famine of Mabel’s light.
Why did I let this thing go for so long? She brushed her fingertips over her eye. Ah, never mind that. I can’t change that. But maybe— She looked over at Mabel, who laughed as she answered Bridget’s (sometimes I forget she’s not a child anymore) questions. Could Mabel really have forgiven me for—
She winced, a sharp pain jolting through her eye. She must have gasped, for all conversation ceased.
“Granny?”
She glanced at Bridget with her good eye.
“Gra—”
“I’m alright,” she groused and readjusted herself. “Where were we?”
6
“I think we didn’t talk, or at least acknowledge each other, again for at least a week or so. They kept us busy there, with dances, classes and activities. How to pour tea, arrange big dinner parties, sewing, tennis— Name of it,” Aubrey stroked her scarf as she stared up at the ceiling. “We were assigned rooms when we arrived. Each girl had her own and she was expected to keep it just so, you know. But the bathrooms were the common areas and there were only so many per hall— and all of them off limits during ‘lights out.’
She paused and scowled at Bridget. “Which is utter bullshit, let me tell you. If I’ve got to go, I’m going. So, one night, I go to the bathroom, and I find Mabel already there sitting in the dark, swearing— and the air smells like cigarettes—”
“My one vice!” Mabel interjected.
“Now, Mabel was known as one of the sweetest girls— if you needed a pal to go anywhere, you asked Mabel, she’d go with you. She took care to do all that she was told, just the way she was told— you know, she was that type of girl. So, imagine my surprise—my utter joy! — to find her so.” She turned to Mabel. “Oh, Mabel! I could have just eaten you up right then and there! But I didn’t. I sat right down with you and promised it’d be our little secret and even shared a cigarette with you to show solidarity.”
Mabel chuckled. “If we were gonna be in the stew, we’d be in it together…”
7
One, two, three, four. Bridget was nearing the end of the row. Yarn over.
“You know, I never told you about Olive seeing us as we came out that night, did I?” Mabel asked as she rubbed her slacks.
“No! Did she? How?”
“Her room was directly across from the bathroom— Now I can tell by the look on your face, just now, you’d no idea. Yes! That’s how she knew what she did later! — That night, she’d been up reading the Bible through again— or some such nonsense. I only know because she approached me the next day about…” Mabel put her hands in her lap. “I think that’s when the gossip started.”
Bridget’s head shot up at the word gossip. Her breath caught in her throat. So that’s why…
Bridget watched a younger version of herself in a playroom playing house. Her stepmom across the room playing cars with Bridget’s younger brother Stephen. Bridget felt lonely. “Mama? Can I go see grandma?” She asked, not even looking up from the doll she rocked in its cradle.
Abruptly, red fingered talons snatched Bridget’s little arm. Bridget looked up into her stepmom’s red face. “Do not! Ask me! About that harpy! Again!” She emphasized each sentence with a shake of Bridget’s arm.
Bridget huffed and puffed. Her throat felt tight and raw. She was too scared to even blink, much less cry.
Her stepmom let go of her arm.
In a daze, she heard herself say in such a soft little voice, “I think I’ll go… read a book…” A few moments later, she found herself hiding in the closet in the room and trying not to cry.
Stephen came bounding in. He found her crayons on her desk, dumped them out on the pretty carpet and started stomping on them.
“Stephen!” she hissed from her closet.
He spared a glance at her and kept stomping. “Mama says your bad,” he said.
“But…” Bridget crept out of the closet. “But why?”
“She says you like Grandma. And that makes you bad…”
“But…”
“Mama and Grandma fight a lot…”
“I mean, yeah, but… Daddy and Mama fight. You and me fight—”
Stephen stopped stomping and looked up at her. “Not like that. Grandma called Mama a gossip. Mama called her a skinflint and a harpy.” He moved on to her bookshelf and began pulling her books off the shelf, one by one. “I think they really hate each other.”
Grandma never could abide a gossip after that, I suppose.
8
Aubrey felt a strange tiredness creeping in her bones. She knew it for what it was.
Not now. Not yet.
She watched Mabel’s face as she chattered (filling in a quiet moment, I suppose), with Bridget over the blanket she was making. Mabel always was into that sort of thing. She watched the laugh lines on Mabel’s face as she spoke, now shortening as her face relaxed. She didn’t have to ask to know that Mabel’s marriage had been good, was probably still good. She wore his goodness about her as one would a fur coat, all warm and luxurious, great protection against a cold and bitter world. Not only did she have the air of the unbroken about her, but she also had the air of the well-loved.
Aubrey felt the same sharp pang in her heart that Mabel’s presence always gave her.
She is this wonderful thing, and she chooses to be around us, the broken. I must protect her. She felt of her blind eye. Aw, but what am I gonna do? She looked at the demon. Do I even have time for anything? An idea occurred to her.
“Mabel…” She was interrupting but she didn’t care. “Do you remember the dance?”
9
“Dances were a big thing at our Charm School, and none more important than the Fall Social. These were big to dos with dates arranged beforehand. Dinner was part of the main event. Etiquette and training, that sort of thing, started a month beforehand. Your performance at the Fall Social, it was implied, would have an effect on your grades.
I hated the idea of it myself and was woefully bored.”
“I remember!” Mabel said. “That was my first and so nervous,” she turned to Bridget and leaned forward as if what she was about to say was a secret. “Growing up we were an old family that used to be rich but was running out of money. I didn’t exactly get a lot of training in ballroom dancing, you see, so…”
“And that was precisely the type of dancing done there. The school assumed everyone attending would have extensive training in ballroom dancing—”
“I asked you to teach me late one night during one of our cigarette sessions, and you agreed.”
“I remember, when I was teaching you one of the positions, realizing how short and small you were compared to me… I think, then, is when I really started to fall for you…” Aubrey’s eyes glistened as she looked over at Mabel.
“Really?” Mabel put her hand on Aubrey’s and squeezed.
“You picked up on it so quickly… One, two, three, four. Turn. One, two, three, four. Turn.”
“Yes! Every couple of days, I’d ask you to practice again.”
“That went on, until—”
“Olive!” Mabel and Aubrey said together.
Bridget moaned sympathetically.
“God! My heart jumped into my throat when she knocked on that door!” Aubrey said.
“You? You could’ve fooled me! I was shaking like a leaf.”
“I remember you went pale… It could’ve been anyone else. Somehow, I just knew it was Olive…”
“The look on her face when we sailed out of there with our heads held high…”
“Or when she asked what we were doing in there— fiddling with that cross necklace of hers and that sneer of nastiness on her face— and you said, ‘Oh, just teaching Mabel a new hair style. Wouldn’t want her to end up with hair like yours.’ “
The two women laughed.
“Oh, her eyes went so wide…” Aubrey said.
Mabel’s laughter ended with a sigh. “You know… We drew first blood…”
The two women sat in grim contemplation of that statement for a moment.
“How’d the dance go?”
“Ah, the dance itself? Oh, swimmingly. That’s where I first met your Grandpa. Daddy picked him, of course.”
For a moment, Bridget thought she meant her son, Bridget’s father. No, she means my great-Grandpa… Is she…?
“I remember Clayton,” Mabel leaned back in her chair and frowned up at the ceiling. “He seemed so… Cold and stand offish. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but… He was so, ‘handy,’ with you, if you catch my drift. I remember watching you all evening, this bad feeling in my stomach. I never could figure out if it was jealousy… Or if Clayton was giving me what the younger generation calls ‘the creeps’…”
“Oh, he was handy, all right…” Aubrey’s cheeks reddened as if she’d admitted something unfavorable here. She looked out the window. “There was definitely something— off about him. Fifty years of marriage and I never did figure out a rhyme or rhythm to his often-purulent moods…”
The room lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Aubrey stared out at the fountain; her lips pressed tight. These secrets, those secrets… So many—she glanced at the demon at the door—some best kept to myself.
“I watched you, too,” Aubrey finally said as she steered the conversation back. “But it definitely wasn’t worry in my stomach. I remember watching you over Clayton’s shoulder, so beautiful and radiant, and how once, our eyes met. I remember being bored with Clayton and imagining you were like some fallen star or fae, come to save me, to take me away…”
10
“I found out later,” Mabel said. “That Olive caught us looking at each other during the dance, too. It only made the rumors worse.”
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Oh! Her ball of light green yarn rolled across the floor and rolled across the floor to Mabel’s shoe, who picked it up and handed it over to Bridget with a smile when she got up to retrieve it.
She paused near the door. It feels different here, cooler. I wonder if there’s a draft. I’ll ask the nurse later.
Granny Aubrey sighed deeply. That yellow scent wafted across Bridget’s nose as she sat down—kind of reminds me of matches actually. She looked over at Granny on the bed, who’d gone pale and leaned against the pillows.
11
He’s been dead ten years now… Still, I can’t erase the grip he had on me… Bastard!
Aubrey turned, slow, slow, toward the window and stared out at the gargoyle with its fountain and green water.
He always ruins everything.
The demon groaned (growled?) by the door. Her head turned toward it. No, that’s not true. There’s always been you. The demon moaned again.
A major part of their affair, which remained unspoken, occurred in the library. Memories of stolen glances and little notes passed before her eyes. Mabel and her giggling together over a phrase in a book.
Neither the bee nor the honey for me, Sappho. She blinked and sighed.
That first, and last, sweet, forbidden kiss in the rare books room when they made love.
The moment afterward, Mabel already gone, when she found the poem Glenfallis by Sir Walter Scott in the book she was looking for… What book was it again? Ah, yes, Tales of Wonder. A scrap of paper with words in a language that resembled Latin that she tried to read aloud… Never was any good at Latin. The putrid, green presence that would become her constant companion for the next sixty years that appeared in a flash of sulfur. Her turning toward the thing… Mouth dry and heart frozen like a rabbit facing a salivating wolf.
The door to the rare books opened, just then, and there Olive stood, doubtful salvation. Olive and Aubrey stared at each other. Aubrey abruptly shoved past her, unthinking and unsettled.
She stayed up all that night worried. What was that thing? What did Olive see? What did she know?
By morning, the girls cast her dirty looks. She caught the words the girls whispered sneakily to each other… Words like dyke and lady lover.
She made up her mind to cast as much doubt on Mabel as possible, to try to distance and shield Mabel from her in the minds of her classmates. The decision broke something important inside of her.
Her life after being kicked out of Charm School and forced into a marriage of convenience had been miserable. Sure, Clayton was an asshole and a piss poor excuse of a husband, but her misery was more than that.
It was as if she’d become a whole other person… One capable only of that which reflected a bone deep sorrow and searing black rage.
There were missing spots in time where she’d come out of a mood and not remember what she’d said or did. (One maid even told her she’d used a different voice… That maid gave her immediate notice to quit in the same sentence, crossing herself and praying in Spanish.)
Other times, she’d watched her own body from afar as it acted out a will not her own, for she’d found she’d been unable to control her own body in those times.
Sixty years, now. Call it like it is, you old coward. This demon doesn’t just haunt you… It sometimes possesses you. And you deserve it, for all your meanness.
12
Mabel and Bridget exchanged a worried glance. Mabel mouthed to Bridget, “Get the nurse.” She held Aubrey’s hand.
She was old enough to be an old shoe at this— she’d watched so very many of her friends and family die throughout the years. Never hurt any less, though.
Oh, yes. Aubrey was dying. She’d seen this enough times to know the slow, wedding march paces that death took to join his elderly grooms and brides. The nurse came in and ran her checks, blood pressure and temperature.
She thought back to that fateful day, the last day she’d seen Aubrey. The day the words were said and the deeds done that would eat Aubrey up with guilt for the rest of her life.
Mabel was walking across the courtyard when it happened. She’d been headed to class. She noticed the girls pointing at her and the whispering, the disapproval in the arch of their eyebrows and malice glittering like dark jewels in their pale eyes.
Even the air of the courtyard felt pregnant with the threat and chill of storm.
Somehow, she’d sensed all this and been unafraid, unable to guess what was coming. Oh, to be so young and naïve again!
Tall and dark, Aubrey marched toward her. Back then, her heart still thumped with the electric, “first time I saw you,” love every time she saw Aubrey’s Amazonian form.
—Mabel paused in her remembering to consider the emaciated bird-like form before her and blinked back tears. Oh, for her to come to this! —
But then she’d noticed, the sad, determined look in Aubrey’s eyes and froze. Aubrey stood in front of her, now. A crowd began to gather behind her. Whatever she’s going to say, whatever she’s going to do, please God, let her do it quietly.
But, no, that wasn’t, couldn’t have been really, Aubrey’s way. Not for where she’d come from, nor perhaps for what Mabel now suspected to have been her goal.
“I don’t want to be friends with you anymore,” God the whole courtyard heard, people stopping and staring. “Not after the fight we had last night.” What fight? She remembered being so confused. “Your red hair is ugly—” Mabel’s heart plummeted to her feet. “You’re a bitch—” The air went cold around her. “And I wish I’d never met you.”
The crowd behind Aubrey parted like a red sea. A hand appeared on her shoulder.
“Come with me,” a deep, baritone voice said. The headmaster then. Short of stature, but long of reach, his presence brooked no argument. They followed him.
The murmurs of the crowd as they passed through felt like a hundred yards away and muffled.
Once in the main office, Aubrey and Mabel were separated. They waited a long while to be seen, someone was in the office with the headmaster. Finally, the door opened, and Olive came out. The look she gave them, one of evil triumph. Mabel wanted to slap her.
She found out much later that Aubrey’d been kicked out that day. All that saved her own hide from a similar fate was the fact that her father was a trustee of the board. Even so, the tongue lashing her father later bestowed upon her could have peeled paint.
Distantly, she heard the nurse asking Bridget to step outside and have a word with her. Yes. It’s nearly time. Now how to manage this next part…?
13
It wasn’t exactly a surprise when the nurse told Bridget that Granny Aubrey was dying.
It was kind of the whole reason she was here, that’d she’d spent the last several weeks at her bedside, desperate to ensure that, at the very least, she shouldn’t die alone.
When Bridget stepped in, she felt conflicted. Then Mabel turned to her and she saw the knowledge and the aching question in her eyes, afraid to ask this thing.
“Would… would you like to… Be the one to—”
Mabel nodded.
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
She went over to Granny Aubrey’s bedside, and gently brushed back the hair from her forehead. Granny Aubrey, for her part, was unresponsive and seemed a hundred miles away. “Goodbye, Granny. Thank you. For everything.” She kissed her on the cheek. Then she went into the hallway.
14
Aubrey looked up at Mabel, who stood above her now, a gentle smile on her face.
Mabel glowed silver like a fallen star.
…Ah, yes… My fairy has finally come to take me home…
She heard the snarl of the glowing green demon—
15
“I love you… I understand why you did what you did. I understand why you hurt me. I—” Mabel whispered to Aubrey.
Aubrey’s breath was labored. A gray pallor stole across her features. Soon, the last breath escaped, and she was no more.
Mabel turned to the door and stared at the demon.
“I’ve won… She’s mine now. Be gone.”
The ground shook and a roar echoed across the sky. Outside Aubrey’s window, the gargoyle’s head slide off its precipice and tumbled into the green water of the fountain.
Mabel reached down and closed Aubrey’s now empty eyes, then laid two dimes across her eyelids. She nodded goodbye to the nurse, then went outside and hugged Bridget as they cried together.
The End
By Ariella Saxton
Ariella Sexton lives in South Carolina with her three children and dog Finn. She’s been published in various anthologies, to wit: A Haunting of Words, Flash Fiction Addiction, Share Your Scare, Vol. 4 A Lulu Anthology, and Cafe Macabre II.
Grey Bear Culture Magazine 
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