His breath clouding the air, Terah stood in the dark. The sun shone green. Green? He glanced up, his mouth open in unbelief. Hanging in the clear sky above him fluttered curtains of green light. Slowly playing about as if a dreamy wind worried the troposphere, the lissome drapes were ethereal. He’d seen plenty of pictures of the northern lights, but being bathed in them was altogether different. A rational man, he knew it was silly, but he thought he could feel the faint play of their transient fabric on his face.
“Unreal, ain’t it?” How long had she been standing there? He simply nodded. “Look,” she said hardly above a whisper, “I think I need to explain a few things. I know you were helpin’ Vince today. Yesterday. Whatever. And I know what you’ve been thinkin’. Not just since then, but since I let you in on my secret. It’s not safe for me to come inside. We can walk, though. Is yer fire banked?”
Their footprints made parallel tracks in the snow. “I gotta past, and I won’t tell it. Some of the guys here know it ‘cause it wasn’t so far in the past when I first found Dickinsheet. I ain’t been with none of these guys. Not that way. Vince, he’s an artist. I can’t tell his story either, but we had an understandin’ and the other guys knew. That sketch was art for art’s sake.”
“Ars gratia artis,” Terah whispered.
“I could tell when ya come to the asylum that you’d been through somethin’. Those of us gone through it see it in others. I knew ya weren’t a threat. An’ I figured once you knew I was, well, a female, ya might start finishin’ the narrative. The asylum was dark an’ safe in that way. I never planned to leave. I still think it mighta been a mistake. Ya might’ve been right about Wednesday, though. I mean, ghosts can move shit around. Maybe they can fuck the livin’. I’d been there quite a long time, and incidents had been gettin’ worse. Still, I knew once we got out in the light it wouldn’t take you too long to learn the truth. I didn’t wanna complicate it.”
“Life has a way of complicating things, whether we want it too or not.”
“I wasn’t runnin’ away from ya after the garage. I heard the dogs when I got to the road an’ I ran. Recognized where I was. I couldn’t wait for ya. I didn’t wanna cause you pain. How’s your leg, by the way.”
“Improving. Look, Lin—Claresta, I understand. I’m biologically old enough to be your father. You befriended me, though. You know some of my past, yes. Believe me, however, when I say that what I need is a friend.”
They stopped and stared at the aurora. “You no doubt see that I’m not a big guy. In fact, on RateMyProfessor—a website for college kids—the girls used to say I was cute, the way a puppy might be. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand. Small guys are intimidated by other men. My brothers were both bigger than me. I’ve spent my life having to look up at other men. They intimidate me. I never really had many friends that were male. Women accepted me—I’m less threatening, I guess. I also realize that for some, yes, size matters. Our culture says bigger is better. I’m not part of the usual demographic.
“After I panicked over Danielle, I was on my own. You were literally the first person I’d talked to in months. I won’t lie. I like you a lot. It won’t ever go any further than that. I swear by these northern lights! But I have to know I’m a special friend for you. I’m not saying you can’t hang around with the others—I’m a realist—but if I know that I’m the one you might come to if there’s a problem, if I’m the one you’d talk to if you couldn’t sleep, that would be enough. You’ve known these guys longer than me. If you’ve got a confidant here, tell me. I mean, Vince, at least, knows quite a bit about you.”
She smiled in the green air. “You think cause he saw my cunt he knows me? Cal, you know me better than that.”
“I do recall you shined a flashlight on me when I was peeing, back in the asylum.”
“Just because I saw yer parts doesn’t mean it has to go any further.”
“But it does mean I’m vulnerable.”
The shimmering green light began to fade.
“I’ll tell ya what. When it’s time for me to go for supplies, I’m make sure yer my partner. How’s that? I mean, the others will figure out from our tracks that we’ve been out here. Winter can be quite revealin’.”
She turned right and walked down the hill alone.
As long as he was out here, Terah decided to visit the outhouse. Dawn was sliding open her languorous eyelid when he stepped back into the fresh air. The outhouse was the building closest to the road all the others had used to find this place. Terah had come from the opposite direction. He’d lost Lindsey and although he hoped to find her, he simply had to get away from the garage. From the dogs. From the snowplows. He had to hide.
Those footsteps in the forest still seemed unreal to him. Now that it had been a couple of days, he started to doubt he’d really heard them at all. It could’ve been his imagination. He’d been overwrought at the time. Even the ghosts of the asylum—he’d seen Wednesday as if he’d been right here in the growing daylight—now suggested themselves as hallucinations. Quotidian life had convinced him. Doctoral studies had nailed the coffin shut. There was no supernatural. How quickly the effects of aurora borealis had faded. He was now just a homeless guy standing in the snow.
He turned up to see the road. She was the most beautiful young woman he’d ever seen. She was there for just a moment, then vanished. The sun crested the denuded hill to the east. She must’ve been a trick of the light.
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