Chloe N. Clark

“What’s the trick?” She asked as she leaned forward in her chair. Her blouse dipped as she did so, revealing the slopes of her breasts and the necklace that hung between them. It was a pendant, shaped like a half-lidded eye. The pupil was a tiny black pearl.

Conor shifted back in his own seat, away from her closeness, from her need. “It’s a card trick. It tells a story if you lay it down right.”

“What story does it tell?” She reached out, as if to touch his knee, as she asked. Conor tried not to flinch.

“Whatever story you need it to,” he said.

“Will you show it to me? Will you show me the trick?” Her voice was a plea. Her voice was a beggar asking for a single coin to save her life.

He nodded. He had never been able not to when faced with such need. And they always had such need.

He gathered up his card deck, riffle shuffled it, nothing flashy. He handed it to her and told her to cut the deck as many times as she liked. She cut it once, carefully. She seemed to be trying to measure the deck exactly into two halves. She handed the deck back to him, hands trembling, tiny earthquakes of loss.

He began to tell the story. It was always the same story, really, though he changed the names and the circumstances. It was always the same story.

Conor was born on a Sunday. His parents were religious in a way that leaned more towards superstition than grace. They thought he’d be the blessed child. They thought he’d make everything better. He did, at first. He was a smiling baby, an early laugher. His first full sentence was I want a joke. He liked to dance as a toddler, wobbling on chubby legs to whatever music came on the radio. He was happy. His parents were happy.

When he was seven, he met his first dead person, and then everything changed. Though it wasn’t all at once; it wasn’t as dramatic as everyone would make believe in the stories normally told about these sorts of things. 

She sat in the branches of a tree, swinging her legs and humming to herself. He was walking past, saw her and waved. She waved back and he saw how her hand was made of leaves. Dead leaves formed together to make a palm and five fingers. He stared, though he knew it wasn’t polite to do so. 

“Whatcha looking at?” she asked.

“Your hand, how did it get that way? Did you have an accident?” At that age he always pronounced it ax-ee-dent. 

The girl smiled. “You could say that, kiddo.”

“Why did the doctors fix it like that?” he asked. He knew his mother would have scolded him for his questions. But his mother wasn’t there.

The girl took a few moments before answering. “The Doctor fixes things with what she can.”

He nodded as if this made perfect sense. Conor had never liked to seem like he didn’t know what was going on. “Oh.”

“It’s not so bad, kiddo, I can climb trees much better now than I ever could before,” the girl said. She climbed higher up into the tree as if to prove this to him. It was true. She barely seemed to be climbing at all, as if the tree bent its branches closer to her and she simply stepped upwards. Conor gaped. He wished he was that good at climbing trees.

The girl laughed down at him. “See the Doctor tries to make things better. She really does.”

“Which doctor is she?” he asked. He wondered if this doctor worked with his family doctor, the stern Dr. Griss who always said that Conor shouldn’t squirm so much when he was getting his shots.

“You’ll know her when you meet her,” the girl replied. She disappeared higher into the tree and Conor could no longer see her through all of the leaves. He waited a few minutes, but when the girl didn’t reappear, he decided he better get home before his mother worried.

He told his mother about the girl. “She had hands made of leaves, Mama!”

His mother smiled, a mother-smile. “Of course she did, Conor. And was she a fairy?”

He thought about this for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. She was wearing a yellow jumper and blue tennis shoes.”

His mother paused in what she was doing, cutting carrots, the sharp click of the knife stopped and the room was quiet. “A yellow jumper and blue tennis shoes?”

He nodded. He was finishing a snack at the table, peanut butter and raspberry jam on bread. He took a bite of the sandwich and a little jam squirted out onto the table. His mother stared at the blob of jam as if it was an inkblot test and she needed to see the right thing in order to be found sane. 

“That’s….” she didn’t finish what she was going to say. She walked out of the room and then returned with the newspaper. She laid it down on the table next to Conor. “Conor, did you see this paper this morning before school?”

He shook his head. He wondered why his mother could possibly have thought that he might look at the newspaper. Even the cartoons in the newspaper were boring.

She pointed at the front page. There was a picture of a girl, she was wearing a yellow jumper and blue tennis shoes. “Is that the girl you saw?”

He looked at the picture. It was the girl, except in the photo she had both hands. “Yes, but she doesn’t have the funny hand there.”

His mother stared at him. He looked up at his mother and for the first time he saw something in her eyes which could only be called fear.

They went to see his grandmother. They almost never did. There was the perfunctory visit at holidays, but his mother always bustled them back out practically the moment that they got there. His grandmother’s house was always kept dark and cool, like the snake area of the pet stores. His grandmother, herself, reminded him not of a snake but of a lizard. She curled in things, usually her sitting chair, and her gaze darted around the room every few moments. She always held her hands in fists, fingers curling and uncurling as if she were working an invisible stress ball.

“Mother, he saw one, I think he saw one.” His mother’s first words to her mother as they stepped inside the house.

His grandmother looked at him, closely, and motioned for them to sit. His mother went to the couch and he followed her, though he had never liked sitting on that couch. It gave away too easily and he always sunk into it; he sometimes had nightmares of it swallowing him whole.

“So, Conor, you saw a Dead One?” his grandmother asked. 

“A what?” he asked.

“A Dead One. A spirit,” she replied.

“No, I saw a girl. She had a hand made of leaves. She was in a tree.”  He was matter of fact. He knew what he’d seen. She had been a most thoroughly alive girl. He had seen a dead body, his uncle lying in a casket and looking like he’d been removed from himself.

“A Dead One is not the same as a dead thing,” his grandmother clarified as if she had read his mind. “A Dead One can move about and even climb trees. It’s just that not everyone can see them or wants to see them.”

“What makes her dead, then?” he asked. It all seemed very confusing. He thought that the dead had to stay still and that was what made them dead.

“It’s dying that makes you dead. Its staying still that keeps you that way. A Dead One can’t stay still, they need to get up and move around.” 

Conor thought about this. “Are we all Dead Ones, then?”

His grandmother chuckled. “Some could argue…But, no, Conor, we are very much living. It’s just that you have a gift. An ability to see the Dead Ones and talk to them. You can tell them things. You can help their families. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”

“Oh no he isn’t doing anything of the sort,” his mother finally spoke. “He’s not being made a tourist attraction. What happened to Marta, it won’t happen to him.”

Conor had never heard of a Marta before. He had also never heard his mother speak in such sharp tones, a raggedness to her breath. 

His grandmother scowled. “Marta could have done so much more. People need this. It’s a gift. It could help so many.”

“I don’t want you putting that in his head. I brought him here to know. I didn’t bring him here for you to give him your duty and honor and helping speech. I’ve heard it. If I thought it was a good idea, I could have given it to him myself.” His mother stood up and tugged on Conor’s arm, forcing him to his feet, the couch released him with reluctance.

“He’ll come around to it on his own, anyway. He’s a good boy,” his grandmother said. “I’ll give him the rules, then. Conor, you can listen to the Dead Ones, you can talk to them, but you musn’t ever make them promises. Not ever. Because a Dead One’s promise is one that you cannot go back on. And you don’t make deals with them, neither. A Dead One’s deal is never what you think it is. And whatever, whatever, you do, you don’t let them take you to the Doctor.”

“Oh, the doctor. The girl told me about her!” Conor said, happy to show that he had knowledge.

His grandmother’s face changed sharply. Her mouth became tight, eyes widening for a moment. “You don’t listen, you don’t ever listen, Conor, when they tell you about the Doctor. Do you promise?”

He nodded, there was nothing against him making promises with his grandmother. “Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded, back, and let out a long breath of air. “You remember that promise.”

And with those words from his grandmother, his mother hurried him away.

Conor saw them off and on after that during his childhood. There was the man with the large hole in his chest stuffed with dog fur and feathers. There was the young, beautiful woman who smiled at Conor in a library once and he had smiled back until he noticed that one of her eyes was a cat’s eye marble. 

There was the boy he knew, a kid from school, who after disappearing one day on his walk home, appeared to Conor. He was sitting on a park bench, staring at the ground, and Conor had walked up to him. “Dylan?”

Dylan had nodded, not looking up, and Conor had asked. “Everyone’s saying you ran away. Are you going home now?”

Dylan had shaken his head, slowly side to side, and Conor had asked, “why not?”

Dylan raised his head. His eyes were bottle caps and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but his tongue was a skeleton key, glinting within the darkness of his mouth. That was when Conor had stopped being such a happy child.

Conor learned to not approach the Dead Ones, they often tried to engage him in conversation as soon as they realized that he could see them. He learned how to train his gaze so that it could glide past a Dead One without them noticing. They would try to get his attention as he hurried past them, they always wanted things, and so he never listened. He just rushed past, keeping his eyes to the ground, his mouth firmly closed, hands dug deep into his pockets.

Then he turned sixteen and did something foolish. He heard his mother talking on the phone to someone and he heard her say, “What has Marta done now?”

He had not heard the name since all those years before in the house of his grandmother. He watched his mother as she hung up the phone. She looked exhausted, as if the phone conversation had lasted years instead of moments. She turned to him and he asked without thinking the question through, “Who is Marta?”

Maybe his mother wouldn’t have answered at any other point, maybe she was caught off guard, maybe she was worn down. “She’s my sister.”

He felt a jolt go through him. He didn’t know that his mother had had any siblings. And that her sister, his aunt, could see Dead Ones, too. “She is? And she can see them, too?”

His mother nodded, defeated by something, life maybe. “Since she was three. She saw a girl walk out of a river. I remember that moment so well. She couldn’t stop asking me if I saw the girl and I didn’t. I didn’t. Mother knew what was going on, ran in her family I guess. I think she wanted to see them, too, all along. Jealous of her own daughter, jealous of her own daughter seeing the dead.”

“What happened?” Conor asked. “To Marta?”

“She…She saw them so much. Mother pushed her to look for them, to do her duty and help people. To spread their messages back to their loved ones. Holy god, who would place that on a child?” Conor realized that his mother wasn’t really talking to him so much as talking out loud to herself. She continued, “She started speaking in her sleep, I’d hear her, speaking and speaking and she was always saying ‘no.’ No. They asked so much of her. She was good and she wanted to help. She wanted so much to help them all. And she said she knew the Doctor would help her if the Doctor could. I never knew what she meant. Mother always said the Doctor was bad. Bad. We found her, you know, we found her when she did it. She was cutting off her hair with a knife. I thought, her hair that isn’t so much to lose and then she turned…”

“Mom?” he asked. His mother was staring off at some past memory.

“Conor, she had blinded herself.” His mother sat down, slumping into a chair. He was glad the chair was there, as she might have just crumpled to the ground if it hadn’t been.

“Where is she now?”

“A mental institution. Or she was. She died this morning. Swallowed her own tongue.” His mother said and Conor wished the words hadn’t come out. He knew his mother had needed to speak them, to tell someone, but he wished he could erase the words from the world.

He stared at his mother, not knowing what he could do to help. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her. His mother felt cold. He decided then that there was one Dead One that he needed to help.

He went looking for Marta. She was the first Dead One he had ever purposefully sought out. He glanced around the church for her at the funeral. His mother, father, and he were the only people there. His grandmother refused to make an appearance; he wanted to believe that this was out of devastation on her part.

He stared at the coffin as if willing for Marta to rise from it. She did not. He glanced around the graveyard and he saw the Dead Ones everywhere. Some of them sat on gravestones, some wandered between the rows. One was even kneeling before a gravestone, running her fingers along the engraved name on it and crying. He had never seen a Dead One crying. She looked so completely alive in her grief.

He did not see Marta. His mother leaned against his father. He looked at them and wondered how they had fallen in love. It seemed such a strange question to have never before considered. He wondered if it was something that happened fast or if it was gradual. He wondered if the Dead Ones saw his parents and longed for something so simple as the ability to lean their heads against the shoulder of someone who loved them.

They left the graveyard and he looked about as they walked away. Marta was still not anywhere to be seen. Conor tried to imagine the places she might turn up. He had never known her and so he had no idea of which places she might choose to haunt: had there been a spot in the city that she loved, did anywhere hold memories for her—was there a place where she had had a first kiss? A playground that she had loved as a child? A certain section of stacks in the library where she hid as a teenager devouring books? Or was there nothing? Had she always been cursed by sight and so had never felt connected to anywhere?

Conor spent weeks looking for her. He didn’t find her. And so he did something even more foolish. He went looking for the Doctor.

She was easier to find. He knew that all the Dead Ones knew her. He saw a Dead One leaning against the outside of a building. She was in her twenties, or she had been in her twenties and now would always be in her twenties, and had long red hair. She was pretty in the sort of way that some girls can be only at certain moments in their lives—rebelling against something and wearing that rebellion like a second skin. He went up to her. He knew she was a Dead One, because of her arms, the cuts up the veins were patched over with Lisa Frank stickers. 

“Excuse me,” he said to her.

She looked up at him, startled that he could see her. “Hey, shit, you can, whoa.”

He nodded. “I can see you, yes.”

“How?” She peered at him, closely, as if she could see the ability on his skin, as if he might be wearing a badge that said I see dead people. Ask me my name! 

He shrugged. “Just can. I need to ask you something.”

“That seems like a fucked up reversal. Aren’t we supposed to be asking you for something? To pass on messages or sing down some stones and lead us out of this hell or your immortal soul or something?” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest, playing at defiance, but Conor knew that it was so that she could hide her sticker-covered veins from view.

“It is what is. I need to find the Doctor.”

The girl stared at him, her mouth opened slightly. She blinked a few times.

“Please,” he added.

“The Doctor? You want to meet her? Why?”

“She’s the only one who can help me find someone. It’s important.” 

The girl thought about it. “Okay, fine, I could help you. But, you’d have to make me a deal.”

Conor gulped. He had expected as much, but it still made his stomach drop like he was on a fast descending elevator. “What kind of deal?”

“I want you to get the Doctor to talk to me. She won’t talk to us.” 

The deal seemed straight-forward enough. Conor wondered what traps could lie within it. “Okay.”

“Do you promise?” the girl asked. Her voice had risen a notch, she sounded younger.

He wondered if he shouldn’t just run now, but he remembered his mother, sitting in her warm room and still feeling so chilled. “I promise.”

The girl nodded and started to walk away. “Follow me, then. I’m Alicia, by the by. What’s your name?”

“Conor.”

She smiled. “I heard a story about a Conor once, or maybe that wasn’t his name. It was something Irish sounding.”

“What was the story?” he asked as he began to follow her.

“Well, he was real drunk at the pub at closing time. As the Irish are known for and whatnot. He’s walking home and he because he’s drunk he forgets that you aren’t supposed to walk through the graveyard at midnight. So he does.

“And he’s walking and he hears this voice calling his name. ‘Conor! Conor!’ but he can’t see nobody around. And then he feels this weight on his back all of a sudden and it’s a heavy weight.

“And he’s scared, he’s trying to shake it off of him, whatever it is, but he can’t. And then he realizes that it’s a fuckin’ body on his back, its arms are wrapped around his shoulders. And he starts screaming as, you know, anyone would rightfully do in the situation.” She stopped speaking for a moment and Conor looked up, startled, to find that it had become evening around them although he had been sure it had only been 3 O’Clock when he had first walked up to the girl. He looked around them and he didn’t recognize the surroundings anymore. They were in front of a deep, dark woods.

“Then the voice speaks to him,” she continued. “’You found my body Conor O’Fain and now you must take me to my burial ground.’ “But, we were just at the cemetery,’ Conor said and his voice was pleading. ‘They won’t let me be buried there, but there’s a cemetery only a few miles from here and they will take me.’ And Conor is terrified. He’s freaking out. But he does the cemetery that the body speaks of and so he begins to walk in that direction.”

They stepped into the woods, Conor close behind Alicia, afraid to let her out of his sight.

“And all the time the body is talking to him and telling him to hurry. And finally Conor says ‘what’s the big rush? You’re already dead. Don’t you have all the time in the world?’ And the voice says, ‘well, I do, but you don’t. If you don’t get rid of me by sunup then you’ll have to carry me forever.’ And Conor starts running, but the body is heavy and the road is uneven and it is hard to run on.”

Conor didn’t look around himself. He could sense there was something wrong about the trees in the forest, but he didn’t want to know what it was. He kept his eyes on Alicia’s back.

“And so finally the sun is staring to rise. Those red fingers of dawn are stretching out and tickling away the stars. And he is running, but he sees the gates of the graveyard and he races through them. He made it! He made it! And the voice says “you’ve made it. I didn’t believe you could do it, but you’ve made it’ and the body drops from his shoulders to the ground. And Conor is thinking that he shouldn’t look at the body, he shouldn’t see its face, but he just can’t help himself. No one ever can in stories, can they? And he looks down and the body is him.” Alicia stopped speaking at the same time as she stopped walking. Conor nearly walked into her. In front of them was a tiny cottage, it looked like it belonged in some other century.

“We’re here,” Alicia said.

“But, is the story over?” Conor asked. Alicia nodded and so he asked, “But what the hell does it mean?”

She shrugged. “Does anyone ever know?”

He stared at the door of the cottage. It was rounded and had colored glass windows in the center. “Should I knock?”

Alicia nodded, again, and so he went up to the door and knocked. It swung open. He took one last look at Alicia, she looked less rebellious, she looked like a confused teenager who had seen something horrible and didn’t know how to respond except to stop caring. He stepped inside the cottage. The door swung shut behind him.

The cottage smelled of buttermilk pancakes cooking on a griddle and of spiced apple cider. He walked towards the kitchen and peeked inside. The Doctor sat at a wooden table. She was looking down at something and all he could see of her was her dark hair hanging around her face. He didn’t want to startle her, “hello?”

She didn’t speak or look up, but she motioned for him to take the seat across from her. He did. He looked at her. She was young, though he wouldn’t have been able to pin her age except to say she was between 15 and 35. She had creamy skin and her eyes were wide and dark. “Hello, Conor.”

“Hello, miss, er, Doctor,” he said.

“I am the Doctor. You have come to the correct destination. How can I help you?”

“Well, it’s about my aunt.”

“You have two aunts that I have known.”

“My aunt, Marta, the one who was like me. Who could see the Dead Ones.”

The doctor frowned. “The dead ones?”

“Yeah, the Dead Ones. The ghosts or whatever.”

“Oh, the dead, yes. Marta could see them, I remember how she asked me why she had such a power. I didn’t know how to answer. I said that maybe she was just looking more closely than anyone else was.”

Conor shifted in his seat. The Doctor had a soft yet deep voice. She sounded like he imagined fairy godmothers sounded in fairy tales. “And what did you do to her?”

The Doctor looked down, again. “I didn’t heal her. I couldn’t. I can’t heal the living. I’ve tried, you know, that was the deal I had made. That I could heal the living. And I can, I can heal their sickness and their wounds, but I can’t fix everything. I can’t stop how painful it all is. What kind of gift is that I was given? Blessed they called me. The blessed child. And here I am with all of my cures and none that mean anything.”

“The Dead Ones, the dead, they say you heal them, but you do it so badly. Leaves for hands? Bottle caps for eyes? What is that supposed to help?” Conro felt an anger welling up inside him, he didn’t know that it had been lurking inside of him all of that time. He remembered a little boy with a key. 

The Doctor’s hands were shaking. “I’m not supposed to, that wasn’t part of the deal. I have no cures for them and so I have to work with what I can beg, borrow, or steal. I’m not supposed to, but how can I not? They all have such ache in them.”

“And what about Marta? Is she here and healed by you?”

The Doctor sighed. “She is. She didn’t want me to restore her sight, but she wanted her voice.”

Someone walked through the doorway. Conor knew it was his aunt. She looked like a younger version of his mother but faded out like a Polaroid snapped and left in the sun. Her hair was white and she wore a blindfold across her eyes. A raven sat on her shoulder. She walked over to him, passing the Doctor, and letting one hand brush over the hand of the Doctor. She opened her mouth and the raven did as well, mimicking the movements that she made. He realized as she began to speak that it was the raven who was talking. “Don’t blame her, Conor. She’s as lost as us, you know. It’s not fair. It’s never been fair. It’ll never be fair. I learned that eventually. You can’t do everything, you can’t save everyone. You just try to help where you can.”

“My mom, your sister, she,” and his voice broke. He didn’t know how to explain. 

Marta shushed him, she walked over to him and whispered in his ear. She told him a story. It wasn’t a long story, but it was a good story. When the story was done she walked back out of the room.

Conor looked up at the Doctor and she looked at him. “Is there anything else you need of me?”

He nodded. “There was a girl who showed me here. Alicia. She wanted to ask you something. She said you wouldn’t talk to them, the dead.”

The Doctor shook her head. “I can’t talk to them. It’s my punishment for healing them. I lose them. I can’t even see them once I’ve healed them.”

“But, Marta was just here. You saw her.”

The Doctor shook her head. “Oh, especially not her. I can never see her.” She smiled, faintly, at some memory. “And what does Alicia wish of me? Go ask her and I shall grant it if I can.”

He went out to Alicia and he asked her what she wanted. Then, he returned to the Doctor. “She’d like something other than stickers. She says they make her feel childish.”

The Doctor stood up and walked to the shelves that lines the walls of the kitchen. She pulled out two scarves and handed them to him. “Tie them tight for her.”

He nodded. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Conor.”

He left and went to Alicia. He helped her tie the scarves over her wounds. “I like the color. It suits you.”

She smiled and her smile was radiant, it was life. They walked out of the woods and as he stepped from the trees he was back in his city and it was day, again. He looked around but Alicia was gone. Conor walked home.

He found his mother in the kitchen, she was making soup and the smell of tomatoes and garlic filled the air. He went up to her and hugged her. She laughed, “What’s that for?”

“When you were little and your sister was even littler, you’d build snowforts and the two of you would climb inside and it would be warm because the snow shielded you and you’d tell stories to Marta. And she said that was the happiest she ever was, that she never felt safer than hidden in the snow with you near her. And she misses you and she loves you and she wants you to know that you gave her happiness.”

His mother stared at him. She stared at him for the longest time. And then, though there were tears in her eyes, his mother smiled. Conor smiled back, but his body felt heavy under his skin.

Conor laid the cards out one by one. He looked behind the woman for a second and then he picked up three of the cards “And there were three who got lost.”

 He tore the three cards into pieces. The woman gasped. She held a hand against her mouth. He threw the pieces into the air. “And the ones left behind. They thought that they were lost forever.”

The woman watched the pieces fall to the ground. He scooped the remaining cards back up and handed the woman the deck. “Shuffle them.”

She did, though her hands were trembling.

He took the deck back and began to lay down the cards, one by one he went through the deck, until there were only three remaining. He laid them down and they were the cards he had thrown away. The woman gasped.

“But, they never left, you know. They are always there. Because you’re there and you remember them and sometimes that’s enough.”

The woman began to sob, some release shaking itself free from her body. He looked behind her again at the three who stood behind her. They nodded at him in thanks.

He nodded back, even that weight of movement so heavy to his exhausted body, because he knew that he was doing what he could.