Dark Dreams, Pale Horses Read online

  She imagines Daddy on the floor with tears in his eyes, and a tiny part of her heart, inexplicably, leaks for him.

  Billy takes a final pull on the cigarette, then snuffs it out on the heel of his boot, and steps into the bedroom.

  Daddy grins and staggers to meet him.

  “Think you got what it takes, boy?”

  “It’s over now,” Billy says again.

  They come together; Daddy swings a clumsy fist that Billy dodges with ease. Terri covers her eyes, not wanting to see. She hears something fall over. There is a thud, a groan, a rush of spent breath that sounds like an accordion with all the reeds stripped from it. When she looks again she sees that Daddy is on one knee and Billy has a hand around his throat. Daddy’s face shines like a new bruise. Pellets of sweat roll down his stubbly cheeks.

  Billy says, “I’m going to let go, and then you’re going to get up, go to your room, and go to sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, all this will seem like a bad dream. Understand?”

  Daddy splutters and curses. He is trying to pry Billy’s hand from his throat.

  Billy squeezes a little harder. “Understand?”

  Daddy nods, lips peeled over his crooked brown teeth.

  Billy lets go.

  “Son-bitch,” Daddy says, his massive shoulders and the boulder-like dome of his back swelling as he draws in wheezy drifts of air. He blinks like a man who has seen something amazing. A runner of drool hangs from his lower lip.

  Terri is sure that he will attack again—regain his unsteady legs and sucker-punch Billy. But he does not. Maybe it’s the unflinching glint in Billy’s eye, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s poured a little too much devil-juice down his throat and his coordination is all to hell. Either way, he knows he can’t win. He nods as if he has seen this fact etched onto the insides of his blinking eyelids, then plants one hand on the edge of Terri’s dresser, and uses it to hoist himself up.

  “Son-bitch,” he mutters again, weaving toward the door. He stops in the hallway, turns back, and points at Billy with the index finger of his left hand…the letter H tattooed above the knuckle: the beginning of HATE.

  “Not over,” he says between gasps, wiping runnels of sweat from his dirty throat. He looks and sounds like an old machine. “Not over.”

  “Get out of here,” Billy says, and he goes. Terri hears him shuffle down the hallway to his bedroom, and then she is on her feet and diving into Billy’s arms.

  “Hey, baby,” he says. “You wanna go to California?”

  YOUR

  “It won’t take long to pack,” she says. “I don’t have much.”

  She finds a discolored duffel bag at the back of her closet and throws in most of her clothes, her make-up, her shoes, and a few personal items including a framed photograph of her mother and the candle from The Moko Lounge. Billy sits on the edge of her bed, smoking, watching her with a smile.

  “Can we go to Hollywood?” she asks him.

  “You bet. We’ll dance down Sunset Boulevard.”

  Conflicting emotions have been lifted from her soul like sheets of old newspaper in the wind. Her feelings are all positive: huge, foaming waves of exhilaration; and happiness, like wings, pulling her feet from the ground. She imagines the golden landscape of California—sees herself in silhouette gliding along the sun-kissed hills, and riding shotgun in a classic convertible, her feet perched on the dashboard and Billy behind the wheel, driving down Santa Monica Boulevard as the radio plays songs by The Beach Boys.

  “We can surf,” she says on the tail end of this thought, and imagines herself catching tubes of aquamarine. She sees the Hollywood sign and movie stars and palm trees.

  “We can do whatever you want,” Billy assures her.

  Everything in her heart shines like the sun on the rim of the Pacific. Her grin is so impossibly wide that her face doesn’t quite feel like her own. She packs the last item into her bag, pulls it closed, and throws it over one shoulder.

  “I’m ready, ba—” Terri stops, the bag slips from her shoulder, and everything happens so quickly that she cannot decide what is real, and what is not. Later on, she will replay it in her mind, over and over, just to be sure she didn’t imagine any of it…although she will never be certain.

  Her exhilaration shatters like a raindrop. Hollywood turns into Hell.

  Billy is standing in the middle of the room with his arms raised above his head. His face is a perfect zero, and for a beat of time that seems much longer she has to look at him carefully to be sure he has features.

  Daddy is in the doorway cradling his prized possession: a .410 loaded with slug, which may have been made at around the time Rawhide was enjoying its first run on CBS. He traded it for a set of shocks from an ‘88 Dakota and a half-bottle of Jim Beam, and he calls it his Homeland Security.

  He marches into the room and levels the shotgun at Billy’s chest.

  “I told you it wasn’t over, boy,” he says, and pulls the trigger.

  ONE

  “…Another great tune from a time when lovin’ was free and easy. This is Procul Harlum with ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale.’”

  Terri watches her dreams take wing into the night—her prayers, every one of them, spiralling into the darkness. She knows that it’s over, and that she’ll never be back here again.

  The east-facing wall of the place that was once her home has finally collapsed. Daddy always said that a good storm would rip that side of the house away, but the slug from his prized .410 had done it in the end. The roof has fallen in. There is a crazy scatter of shingle and spectral swirls of dust. The siding is buckled and splintered, and rotted timbers jut from the ground like fence posts. She can see the edge of her bed and a warped flap of drywall that once divided her room from the kitchen.

  Her prayers and dreams escape in their wonderful multitudes. She can’t see them, but she can feel them.

  She looks into the night, smiling…still crying.

  “Let’s go, baby,” Billy says. He is sitting behind the wheel of his Camaro, a cigarette smoldering between his index and middle fingers. Terri wipes her eyes and gets in beside him. As they pull away, she looks over her shoulder and sees the place that was once her home fade from view in the rear window. She will never see it again, and she is glad.

  TRUE

  Billy asks her if everything is okay. She looks at him, and her eyes are wide and bright, like the eyes of a child who is seeing something fabulous for the first time. Who are you? she thinks. Every time she blinks she sees the shocking image of her father pointing the .410 square at Billy and pulling the trigger. Her ears still ring with the sound of the blast, so that the music playing on the radio has a somewhat muffled tone, as if it is being heard on the other side of a wall. Who are you really, Billy? Where do you come from? She had screamed and covered her eyes as the report filled the tiny bedroom. She remembers thinking that he was dead—surely dead, and knew that when she opened her eyes she would see him thrown against the wall with a ragged hole in his chest. Dead. Just like James Dean. Just like Bogart and Jimmy Stewart and Marlon Brando and Cary Grant. Dead.

  Billy turns up the radio. “I love this song,” he says. “It sounds like something you’d dream.”

  Terri cannot take her eyes off him.

  Who are you?

  She remembers peeling her hands from her face and preparing herself for the most terrible thing her eyes would ever see. She recalls the sulphurous smell of gunshot and the pale thread of smoke oozing from the spent barrel.

  Terri reaches out and brushes her fingertips across the right side of Billy’s face. He smiles, takes her hand, and kisses the tips of her fingers.

  The sound of the shotgun blast had faded. Daddy was on his knees with one hand over his face, ashamed or amazed, she will never know. Billy was standing less than two feet from him, unscathed. There was a hole in the wall directly behind him, as if the slug had steered around him—or passed right through him. Once again, she will never know…and she is not sure she
ever wants to.

  She remembers the way the wall had creaked and swayed. There was a feeling inside her: powerful and dramatic, a release, and she knew then that it was over. The hole in the wall gaped, growing bigger as her prayers escaped into the night. The room appeared to keel to one side as the structure started to crumble, like a cabin in a ship that has crested a swell. She heard an ominous ripping sound as a large zigzag crack opened across the length of the wall.

  “Time to roll, baby,” Billy had said.

  She remembers thinking that, when she reached to touch him, her hand would pass right through his, because he wasn’t really there. He couldn’t be there. But he had clasped her fingers firmly and pulled her into him. They had swept from the house, leaving Daddy on his knees. She didn’t look back until they had reached Billy’s car.

  Who are you? Terri touches his face again, still unable to believe that he is real. He smokes his cigarette and guns the Camaro. The engine bristles and they pass the sun-bleached sign that tells them they are leaving the city limits.

  She remembers the terrible, perfect zero of his expression in the moments before Daddy pulled the trigger, and that she had thought—crazy thinking, almost hysterical—that he didn’t have any features…that his face was simply a blank page of skin stretched over the vague bumps of his cheekbones. She wants to ask him—is burning to ask him—if he is real, but she doesn’t (she is, in her secret heart, afraid of the answer). Instead she asks the question that seems most important:

  “Why did you come back for me?”

  He blows smoke and kisses her forehead, and his answer makes perfect sense to her. It fills her soul with contentment:

  “Because the last light you see is your one true love.”

  Terri takes her eyes off him for the first time since leaving the place that was once her home, but isn’t any more, and never will be again. She rests her head on his shoulder and looks out on the great gray tongue of the Interstate: the road that will take them to the rest of forever.

  LOVE

  Before long, her eyes grow heavy and she slips into a whispery sleep, chasing her dreams to their true place in the heavens. The thought that follows her down is beautiful and endless: that everything is possible now, and no prayer will go unanswered.

  Billy’s Camaro rumbles west, a movie star’s car, for sure: halfway to the sun with rock and roll music on the radio. Terri dreams and smiles and her eyes are finally dried of tears. She knows, even in the heart of sleep, that it’s all over now—that this is the summer of happy endings.

  This is the summer of love.

  THE GHOST OF LILLIAN BLISS

  It is quite without abashment that I tell you about my summers at Wickington Manor, and the ghost of Lillian Bliss. She was, unquestionably, a rare and wondrous girl, and the most delightful friend one could hope for. Her energy was like the spring in the grass, or the white-gold corona that circles the sun. A fractious mind might opine that Lily was the fruit of imagination, and while it is true that my soul is given to fancy, I can assure you that Lily was very real. Indeed, were it not for my uncle’s illness, I would always have summered at Wickington, and Lily would have been my friend for many more years. But to every thing there is a season. My time with Lillian Bliss was brief, but altogether magical. She was, for three unforgettable summers, my purpose under heaven.

  I should declare, at this point, that I recount this aspect of my childhood from a place of restraint. I am regarded with consideration, as well I should be, but there is yet a pallour to the walls, and an uncertain undertone to the staff, that impresses upon me a definite misgiving. I feel abandoned and adrift. The medication is frequent and coarse, but I take it without quarrel. But oh, I am old now, and these spaces seem smaller. It is a worrisome thing to touch the walls to make sure they are real. One day I will reach out and feel nothing.

  Were it not for memory, I fear my heart would grow pale. It is indeed a gift to close one’s eyes and see again the treasures of your life, and to have them before you, as bright as shells. My husband was an esteemed surgeon. His hands gave life, but never more than in acts of love. We were married in 1884 (against the wishes of my father, who had intended I marry the young Earl of Bellington), and lived many wonderful years together. I am with him often, in reverie, and experience his gifted touch over and over. But no matter how clear the memories (and in part because of them), I miss him terribly, and always when the walls are closest.

  Life, love, and children. So much glimmer when I close my eyes. It strengthens one’s soul to truly feel that you have lived, and the vestiges of your time are like the colours in a painting. Lily once told me that I should live every day like I was planting a flower, to leave behind a singular thing of strength and beauty, that in the end you could turn and see a meadow of luxuriant colour. I have come close to the end, I know. The flowers of my life sway behind me. I fear only that when I turn I shall become blinded.

  And there will be foxgloves. A dazzling crop of them, bowing their tear-shaped heads. The ghost of Lillian Bliss will be standing amongst them. She will be waiting for me.

  It is a peculiar thing to be born of nobility. My father, the Viscount Eshley of Greater Bledlow, was an individual of such high renown that the parlour of our splendid home seemed always engaged by personage seeking his approval, wisdom, or companionship. His passions were hunting and travel, and he was famous (or infamous, in accordance with your view) for marrying the two. He bested the great beasts of East Africa and India, and his trophy room was adorned with a great many curious creatures. The head of a spectacular seven hundred pound Bengal tiger held pride-of-place, and how he delighted in regaling his conquest of the mighty animal to friends and associates, and always with youthful zeal. I should not forget that he was Master of Foxhounds for the Buckinghamshire Hunt. How handsome he looked in his scarlet coat, the four brass buttons polished to a high sheen. All three of my brothers joined him as soon as they could ride with confidence, and all partook of the blooding ritual, as was proper for any noble young master.

  I was his only daughter, and I wanted for little. I had the most beautiful clothes, the most enchanting toys. My horse was a half-Arabian Palomino mare, and I would ride her upon our acreage in the company of young dukes and duchesses, and even, on one occasion, alongside Prince Waldemar of Prussia, grandson to our own Queen Victoria, less than a year before he would succumb to diphtheria at the tender age of eleven.

  I feel closer to that blithe, brilliant young girl than I have for many years. The memories were always there, but they seemed faded during the passage of marriage and motherhood, but now that I am old and alone, they are distinct again. I have startled myself on occasion, turning to the mirror, expecting to see a radiant girl with shimmering, corn silk hair, but have instead faced a passé dowager with rheumy eyes and skin like dough. Time is such a prankish thing that I fail to recollect events of the week passed, and yet can hear again the whinny of my mare as she was drawn to rein, or smell the musty steam lifting from her flank. It is without effort that I revisit the seasons of my youth, and in particular the three summers I lived at Wickington Manor. At times it feels as though I am there again, and I am forced to bring myself into the present by touching the walls that surround me. One swift, finger-light touch is all it takes, and then I am home, where the medication tastes like sulphur and one can sometimes hear the other ladies crying in adjoining rooms.

  My uncle was a large, stooped man, as though he were built of two different pieces, and the upper piece was decidedly heavier. His eyes were a threatening shade of green, and such a countenance should have been intimidating to a young girl, but there was in his manner a certain gentleness that exceeded all menace. I loved him dearly, not least because he enthused in sharing with me the tomfoolery that he and my father engaged in as children, but also, and more importantly, because he never doubted me when I talked with him about the ghost of Lillian Bliss.

  His home, Wickington Manor, was a magnificent Tudor hous
e built in the seventeenth century, with an array of deep rooms that I never tired of exploring. The gardens were a delicate selection of flora, with a colourful parterre, two great ponds, and a walk-in aviary designed to blend with the surroundings. If not for the constant chatter of the many birds, one could pass-by the aviary without knowing it was there at all.

  It was once written of Wickington Manor, “There is within a whisper of ease, as though all whom have lived there have lived peacefully. Such rarity of calm is restorative to the soul. Indeed, amidst the symmetry of its gardens, I should declare that Wickington Manor is the jewel of the Cotswolds.”

  I first encountered the ghost of Lillian Bliss within the great hall. She was sitting upon the dais, her small fingers tracing the bands of her crinoline. A desperately pretty girl, with inquisitive blue eyes and a spill of auburn curls, and I should have thought her a girl like any other were it not for the fact that I could see the legs of my uncle’s dining table directly through her. I frowned, feeling not afraid. I was eight years of age at the time, and knew nothing of fear. I gathered my own skirts and stepped quickly toward her.

  “I say, little girl…should you be here?” I queried.

  “My dearest Abigail,” said she. “I live here, and ought you be calling me little, when you are only little yourself?”

  I stopped and planted my hands on my hips, quite taken aback. She had thrice-surprised me, and with so few words. Firstly, with the affrontedness of her tone, to which I was not accustomed. Secondly, by saying that she lived at Wickington, when I knew that she did not. Thirdly, by speaking my name.