Saturday, 9 May 2020

Spirits



Samhain was a trial. Because Samhain was really spirits.

Samhain had always been spirits and probably would be spirits forever. One had depended on the other and now they occupied the same space. Samhain without spirits was a recurring party people concocted and shared. Their version of it was celebratory and elaborate: Costumes of every day animals and people were worn, and costumes of imagined creatures and inanimate objects and fairy tale characters were worn. Strangers dispersed sweets to small masses, sometimes delicious and longed-for sweets, sometimes disappointing and stale ones. Pumpkins were forcibly removed from their homes and carved into, then stuffed with fire. Corn suddenly inhabited every grocery store and supermarket and kitchen counter and front step decoration. Wreaths of frothy corn stalk silk twisted around door knockers and on front gates. The favoured diet was mostly artifical flavours. Parents forgot school night curfews and set small monsters loose in the dark. It was like a traumatic re-enactment of an initial incident once a year.

Elijah liked almost all things about Samhain, and only a few things did he dislike enough to wish they could skip it.

Elijah’s family believed in Samhain. There were four of them to believe in it: his father, Zeke, his mother, Celeste, himself, the eldest child, and Kieran, his youngest brother, who was almost as charismatic as their father and would have been twice as much trouble if he’d been the same age. It was for the betterment of the world that Kieran lived and loved the life he had inside their family’s home, in a cottage in rural New York that hunkered down between ridges of clotted forest.

This family believed in spirits.   

Elijah knew all about spirits. Celeste had told him about them, and still told him about them, laughing in between telling, to banish his fear. She said, there’s another one today; it followed your father home when he temped it. You must keep it a secret. Who knows how many people would want one if they knew? The spirit would be a victim of disease, or of an accident, or of someone else, or of themselves. Sometimes, Elijah never found out what made them a spirit, and often he didn’t know. His father traipsed about with the spirit until he decided it was time to sell- and then he traipsed in the direction of the international market and the spirit, bound, traipsed with him until he found a buyer.

Time for the cleaning game. Celeste sometimes woke Elijah this way. Quickly, in the bedroom.

Then she would take Elijah to her bedroom that she shared with Zeke and he would see the dumping ground his father had made of it. Dozens of candles sounded by and ocean of matchstick packets, and then the upturned objects or the sheets twisted into different shapes that Zeke did not have the ability to create, or currents of cold air that fluttered book pages in very specific parts of the room. Zeke was stretched out or folded or curled in the middle of it sometimes, with the spirit’s fingers lingering on him, or sometimes in the middle of a shower, forgetting it all anyway.

Elijah did not believe it was a game, but he did help. Celeste liked to talk and sing and he would listen to her. When she was done talking or singing, and he was done listening, he felt no more uplifted than he had when they’d begun.

Don’t worry, Eli, my love, Celeste would say, and run a finger down his nose. There will be more fun games soon. It is nearly Samhain.

That only meant the games got more dangerous.

More dangerous for everyone, but mostly for Kieran.

Kieran was everything irritating and dazzling about Zeke, if it had been left in the oven a little longer and gotten darker and harder and smokier. He was condescending and curious, he was explosive and reserved, rapturous and vitriolic. Sometimes there was snow in May, in the woods, and it darkened the sky and weighed on the cottage and turned every pale woodland creature into its own ghost, and then the sun blazed over the hillocks and speared the trees and glazed every surface with fire.

Kieran was very much like May.

Kieran was just as involved with spirits as Zeke. Elijah had always known that this was why he was their parents’ favourite. The spirits that found him, that he found, that he discovered and called and caught, were more tragic or grand or hateful or glorious than Zeke’s, and most catastrophic.

So Elijah worried.

Sometimes the spirits frightened the strays Zeke brought home from others towns and set them to racing across the property in destructive frenzy. Sometimes the spirits drove the birds around them mad so the trees warbled and screamed. Sometimes hundreds of insets would drop dead in the garden and the grass would be crunchy for days. Kieran’s spirits were moved on quickly, and he rarely called them home. Kieran could go months without even seeing a candle, but sometimes he fell asleep with one when the power went out, or when Celeste forgot one on the kitchen table and Kieran napped in the next room over, or Zeke left a tea light in a lantern on the porch, where Kieran was resting. Or when they carved jack-o-lanterns for Samhain.

Elijah had known for a long time that it was the fault of the jack-o-lanterns, and he hated their smiling faces for it. The sight of candlelight shaped like a toothed grin made his skin prickle. He found the remains of their severed smiles and stuffed them back in just to stop the light, but it was not the light. Elijah wasn’t sure what difference the candles made, only that they made calling the spirits possible.

Celeste drew her own calendar to stick to the fridge and crossed off the days to Samhain, to show the boys how close it was.

Don’t worry, Kieran, she said often at this time. Your father will be home by Samhain. He would never miss it. Eli, where is your smile? Don’t worry. See, less than two weeks left.

Elijah saw. It was many nights for Kieran to summon a spirit. There was no smiling. The closer they got to Samhain, the heavier the skin the mushroomed beneath his eyes.

What treat do you want most for Samhain this year? Celeste asked as she separated a pumpkin’s innards.

Starbursts, Keiran said.

Sleep, Elijah thought.

The nights got tumultuous, and Elijah was certain there would be spirits. Elijah moved put the bowl streaked with pumpkin pie batter in the sink before Kieran got the chance to lick it and Kieran threw an incredible hissy fit over it.

I will have to make another one anyway, Celeste said. Soon, so it is fresher when your father comes home. Kieran, you can lick the bowl. This one we can all share, just the three of us. Why don’t you go outside? Adventure.

They went outside. They did not adventure. Kieran was thinking of what kind of adventure they could have in their sprawling woods (all of the woods were their woods, according to Kieran, because he said so). But Elijah did not want to spend time around his brother or spirits or both. He had been around his brother even when his brother was not awake, looking for candles that burned or had recently been burning, watching his brother in his first few hours of sleep to see if there would be spirits tonight.

Kieran had a tea light in his room that night when Elijah looked inside. Elijah blew it out, dumped the wick in water, and tossed the candle into the bin. Then Elijah found two more candles, one in the kitchen, and one in his mother’s bathroom, and tucked them into the garbage as well. There were no new spirits, but he watched Kieran for another hour before he considered sleep.

There was sun the next day, enough to melt the snow and make the boys squint. They shovelled the driveway and made snow angels in the middle of the road that ran through the wood. There was an unprecedented gathering of foxes far away, tumbling and mottled like a pile of autumn leaves. They did not immediately run when Kieran and Elijah shuffled toward them. They amended their wild ways to see who could get closest to the foxes before they were startled.

I want the white one, Kieran said.

The white one was insubstantial. Looking at it was complicated, because Elijah was not entirely sure it was there. It was there, but not all of it, as spirits were not all there at once. Elijah knew that if Kieran wanted it enough, then it was an entirely possible thing to acquire for him. He imagined what the house would look like with this spirit in it, and every other spirit that caught Kieran’s attention. He said, That’s the most boring one.

No it isn’t. All the others are red. You don’t know what boring is because you’re boring. Kieran burst out of hiding. The upset foxes darted away before the upset snow even settled. Kieran chased them until his blue coat was indistinguishable from the pale shapes of distant trees.

That night two candles burned in Kieran’s room, as though to make up for the candle Elijah had thrown away before. Elijah could see the beginnings of trouble on his brother’s pinched face and blew out the candles, then stamped on them until he ground wax into the rug. Then he shook Kieran awake, then tore away the duvet, to make sure. Kieran woke up shrieking.

Zeke appeared one day before Samhain. His car trampled the icy blue frost in the driveway, and the ruddy leaf litter under it. Elijah heard him before he saw him. His voice had taught the car’s engine how to rumble, and so they were both deep and loud. Zeke cursed the cold weather and the premature winter and called for the boys to help him unload the car. Elijah could tell some of them were Samhain presents, which were nice, but beside his father there were spirits, also bent over them, and the sight of them made him cross. Kieran’s joy, for he was always cheerful in their father’s presence, was much more attractive, and made Zeke love him more, and worsened Elijah’s mood. He watched Kieran show his father the hole a raccoon had made in the shed the week before, and he watched his mother hand Kieran the pumpkin pie bowl, and he watched Zeke introduce Kieran to the spirits from afar, and he watched terrible ideas occur to Kieran.

Celeste called Eli into the living room in the evening, after they’d made themselves heavy with pie. She’d set out cups of hot cocoa and tea and a coffee for Zeke. Kieran had unwrapped and played with and ranked every Samhain treat Zeke had brought home for them and was looking into a very strange one that Elijah had to squint at to see properly. It hurt his eyes a little. He saw a marble, mostly, but he had the impression that whatever it was was bullying him into seeing a marble. When he looked at it sideways it was the impression of a marble, and a book, and a boat, and Kieran looked at it with little discomfort and did not even mind the spirits that bent over him to touch it. For people like Kieran and Zeke, it was no discomfort at all at to look into it. It was a spirit thing.

Celeste handed Elijah a present that was not from Kieran’s pile. You can both have your gifts now, not just Kieran.

The gift was a set of chess pieces, more beautiful than any chess set he had seen before. Every piece looked like it had been made of ice and like breathing on it would destroy it. It was lovely and entirely what Elijah liked and he wanted to cry, and he wanted a sibling who did not sleep and call spirits who could look at this spirit thing and love it like he did. He did not have a sibling like this, so he took his present to his room and stayed under his blanket instead.

He’s tired, Zeke said to Celeste. Look at those eyes. We’ll leave him some pie.

Elijah woke up on the morning of Samhain.

His first thought was to find any lit candle and dispose of it. His second was to check on Kieran first, in case even more immediate action needed to be taken. His third thought, and the one that superseded the others, was about the black-pit feeling inside him, and about how much he did not want to look at Kieran’s face, and about what he’d wanted before he fell asleep. He did not get out of bed. He warred with himself in bed, and so he did not have to leave it.

Kieran might be sleeping and summoning a spirit right now. It might be dangerous. Too bad. It might hurt Kieran. Too bad. Kieran might realize that sleeping with lit candles was dangerous. Good.

Elijah pressed his ear into the pillow, but he did not sleep.

After another hour, he jerked out of his half-sleep state. The world was dark and dizzy with adrenaline. It was silent, and for a moment Elijah was sure he’d gone deaf. Then he pulled the duvet off his head and every muted sound returned.

There was one sound, less muted. It did not sound like Kieran, but Kieran was the closest and most disastrous source of most noise, and so the moment that followed the sound filled Elijah with the certainty that Kieran was hurt, required help, and that it only sounded strange because Kieran was in the primal state of experiencing pain or fear.

Hating everything about this night, Elijah got out of bed and went down the hall.

The brothers were not to enter one another’s rooms without permission, and Kieran hated when Elijah did, but Elijah hated when the spirits entered his room. He hated the spirits. He hated that he was afraid to open the door to one right now.

Elijah turned the light on.

Kieran had all the anatomical difficulties of a marionette. Joints looked improperly positioned, and bones assembled with poor instruction. He moved only slightly, fingers flapping as though he was trying to shake out what was in his head, or gesture at something else that was already there. Elijah did three checks of the room, then looked back to his brother. The damage must have already been done, but he could not see where it was. Kieran’s mouth parted and strained, as though he were in pain. He might have been. Elijah knew it happened sometimes. The ghostly ball Zeke had brought home with next to Kieran’s elbow.

Elijah nudged Kieran, who did not wake, and said, quietly, you did it again, Kieran.

The noise came again. It was not Kieran, and now that Elijah could see Kieran’s mouth not making the noise while it echoed in his ears, he felt foolish for thinking it might have been his brother. Sometimes the spirits wandered away, but Kieran could not tell why they did or didn’t. It was a guessing game. Sometimes he only saw what they left behind, but not the spirits themselves. He hoped that it was a secret, if he couldn’t see it, and that it would not wander so far Zeke could not find it, or that it might wander far enough that no one ever found it and the spirit never harmed a thing.

Elijah followed the noise out of Kieran’s room. He left the light on.

Which was why he could see Celeste so clearly, in the purple nightgown Zeke had bought her, looking very solid, and holding something that was not.

The child in her elbow was pale, as death, or china, and perfect as a doll. But Elijah knew that it was alive, and also knew that it was not the same kind of alive as himself or his mother. This was a new kind of alive, the kind he was sure only his brother or father could manage. Or maybe only his brother.

The child, who was already part of the family, smiled at Celeste, who cooed back.

Your brother, Eli, Celeste said. Elijah’s shock meant his brain caught up to his ears late. She was not talking about Kieran. He was furious for a second, that he had got his wish, and that it was not at all what he wanted. He had wanted someone like him.

Where’s your smile? Celeste put Elijah’s hand on his new brother’s face. The child did not feel like a spirit, but Elijah knew the truth. Don’t wake Kieran yet. He must be exhausted.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

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