OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology Read online

  The Midian County Library had been a gift to the community from William Madrigal. In the late 20s he’d had an abandoned estate completely refurbished, from the marble floors to the gold leaf constellations painted on the dark blue ceilings. Handcrafted book shelves lined the three stories, the mansion’s rooms turned into library sections. What had been the nursery now contained the library’s entire holdings on philosophy. The kitchen held crime and adventure. The master bedroom, history. Madrigal hadn’t skimped in his endowment, and the place continued to have a healthy budget even through the lean years.

  In the center of that rectangular mansion was a courtyard, sixty feet square, open to the sky. In the confines of that space, Cynthia had planted her Clock Garden—a circular bed, divided by white stones into twelve equal wedges, the points meeting at the center. Within each bed was planted a different type of flower chosen for the time of day it either opened or closed. Some were wild, like the hawksbeard and foxglove, and some were planted each year from seed like the zinnias. As the flowers opened and closed around the circle, they told the time of day. Goat’s beard opened first, then chicory, and later, around six, the dandelions. At the halfway point of daylight hours, the clue to the time was in a blossom’s closing.

  On the south side of the garden, facing it was a curved stone bench. Stan sat next to Cynthia, holding her hand, his eyes half-closed. It was cold in the courtyard and the garden was devastated. Curled brown maple leaves had blown over the walls and were trapped amid the drooping stalks. Colored petals were scattered on the dirt. A handful of black-eyed susans held on, wilted at the edges, as did most of the wedge of chrysanthemums. Time had run out for everything else, though, including Stan, who lifted his legs and curled up on the stone.

  He tried to tell her about his day with Groot and the near-accident, but his mind kept veering off the highway toward sleep. “There was a painting,” he told her, “and this big rock, and we talked to an old man.” His strings of phrases ended in sighs.

  “You’re exhausted,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, blinking like a tired child.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” said Cynthia. “What did you want?”

  “The pain in my foot, I know it’s gone. I made a wish.” He folded his arms and laid the side of his face against the cold stone. “Do me a favor and look up the Wish Head or Witch Head in local history. It’s out on the way to Verruk.” he told her.

  “What is it?”

  “A giant rock in a field.”

  “OK,” she said. She got up and patted him on the shoulder. Turning, she headed through the remains of the garden toward the courtyard door. She looked back at him once more before entering the building. Stan lay on the stone bench, eyes closed, and dosed in the early morning sun.

  #

  That afternoon, in the empty autopsy room in the basement of Midian General, Groot sat on a high stool, his heels hooked on the bottom rung, and Stan leaned against the lab counter, telling the detective about his ordeal in the woods.

  Groot laughed. “Well, in about two hours, I’m officially done with this case,” he said. “They’re making me move on to something new. Your Alina is bound for the Heartbreak file.”

  “Rashner’s sending his guys this evening to pick her up and take her to Albany so he can do an autopsy. When you leave, I have to bag her for them.”

  “I hope she at least perplexes the asshole.”

  “That would be sweet of her,” said Stan.

  “Go get the painting,” said Groot. “Before she’s gone I want to match the painting and the body.”

  Stan went into his office and returned with the canvas they’d picked up in Hekston. He led the way into the morgue and Groot followed.

  “The quietest spot in town,” said the detective as Stan leaned over and opened the door to the bottom slab in the refrigerated unit.

  “Alina,” he said as she rolled forth. When she was completely in view, Stan stood straight, and he and Groot were quiet for a moment, contemplating her expression.

  “She looks pissed off,” said the detective.

  “I’d say pensive,” said Stan. He held the painting at arm’s length. “What do you think?”

  Their glances moved from the painted figure to the body and back.

  “The eyes are definitely a match,” said Groot. “And the mouth is very close.”

  “I think it looks just like her,” said Stan.

  “As close as you can get with a painting.”

  “What does it mean, though?”

  “I don’t know,” said Groot. “One thing I did happen upon, though, this morning at the diner. These two guys from the factory were having coffee and talking about hunting and such in the area when they were kids. I lost track of what they were saying for a while, and then one says, ‘Some of these turtles around here live over a hundred and fifty years.’”

  “You think the brand on her rear end has something to do with that?” asked Stan.

  “Who the hell knows,” said Groot. “Close her up. I’ve had enough.”

  As the drawer holding the body rolled back into darkness, Stan said, “You want the painting?”

  Groot hesitated, then grinned until he caught the coroner glancing away from his birthmark. “I gotta take it back to Hekston next time I go up that way.”

  “Will you dig around anymore for this case?” Stan asked, heading for his office. Groot followed.

  The detective shook his head. “This shit doesn’t make sense to me. I’d rather forget it. I’m retiring anyway.”

  Stan laughed. “Been talking with your wife some more?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Groot and took a seat near the office door. Stan rested the painting against the wall as he sat down at his desk. He swiveled the chair around to face his associate.

  “What are you going to do when you retire?”

  “My wife wants to move to the ocean. Which one she means or whether she means it, I’m not sure.”

  “You’ll miss Midian,” said Stan.

  “I don’t think so,” said Groot. “This case gave me the jitters.” He obviously had more to say but hesitated, closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “I wasn’t gonna tell you this, but on my way back from Hekston last night, I passed this woman, standing on the side of the road. In the middle of nowhere out there in the woods. Not a stitch of clothes on her. Long hair.”

  “Alina?” asked Stan.

  “It happened so fast, I never got a good look at her, but it was enough of a look to know I didn’t want to go back for another. I never slowed down. Somewhere between there and home, I decided to retire.”

  “Are you sure you saw something?”

  “No,” said Groot and stood up. “I’m not, really.”

  Stan leaned back, grabbed the painting and handed it to him. They shook hands. “Here’s to the devil taking off till the end of the year.”

  “Good luck, detective.”

  “Coroner,” said Groot, tipped his hat, and stepped into the hallway.

  #

  That night, Stan lay next to Cynthia in his darkened bedroom. He had his arm around her. Her glasses lay on the nightstand, her head rested on his chest.

  “The Wish Head,” she said. “I found two brief articles about it. It was either erected or discovered by a group called the Schildpad in the late 1620s. They were a pagan group made up of Dutch trappers and traders who lived by their wits in the woods. They believed there was some kind of magical energy in the earth, you could draw its power into you by standing atop the Wish Head.”

  “The old man, Venner, said the same thing about the rock,” said Stan.

  “There was a brief piece about a witch, Griet Vadar, associated with the Schildpad, who lived in the 1800s. She was captured by settlers in the area, tried, weighted with stones, and thrown in the Heckston River. That’s pretty much all there was.”

  “The Schildpad?” said Stan. “Never heard of them?”

  “Sort of
like a homespun religion, created out of the life they lived in the wilderness. Schildpad is Dutch for turtle,” she said. “They were turtle lovers.” She laughed and lifted herself up to see if he was smiling. “Sounds crazy,” she said.

  They rested back on the pillows. It seemed only a minute or two before he felt, in her heartbeat, her breathing, that she was asleep. He thought he’d have no problem following, but something wasn’t right. He knew it wasn’t the fact that they’d had to close the case on Alina. That was a turn of events both he and Groot favored. The mystery of what had happened needed to be laid to rest in one of the dark drawers in the basement of the hospital and locked up for good. He recalled de Vries explaining to him once, “There’s going to be times when you have to admit you’re stumped.” But he was already there, more than willing to move on. Then he thought of the word “stumped” and realized what it was that kept him awake.

  Ever since his encounter with the deer the previous night, all through the long drive that followed, sleeping on the cold stone bench before the Clock Garden, meeting with Groot, bagging Alina for Rashner’s flunkies, and making it through the rest of his day—all those hours and he’d not felt the slightest twinge of pain from his foot. Where there was no pain, there was nothing. The ivory piece no longer felt an extension of himself, but just some cold block of something swinging off his ankle. It wasn’t so much painless as it was lifeless now.

  “The granting of my wish?” he wondered and pictured himself standing upon the stone head in the field. “Cured by earth magic.” He rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Cynthia, and limped to where his robe hung. He put it on and left the bedroom. On his way down the hall to his study, he whispered, “Or cursed by Griet Vadar?”

  Sitting in the same comfortable chair he had occupied during his bouts with the phantom limb, he poured a tall whiskey from the decanter on his desk. He sipped and listened to the wind in the trees outside the window and to the beat of the grandfather clock. It became clear to him that the emptiness was seeping out of the ivory appendage and invading the rest of his body. He drank faster, thinking that might stave it off. “Calm down,” he whispered to himself. “A dead woman is not stealing your soul.” He poured another drink, downed a quarter of it, and had a creeping inclination to add a couple of morphine pills to the mix. “Not smart,” he thought. “I’m getting all worked up just so I can have an excuse to take the drug.” To distract himself, he got up and walked across the room to fetch the mask, which lay atop a pile of books on a shelf. Returning to his chair, he held it in front of his face, so that he was eye to eyehole with it.

  The white visage was smiling, almost broadly. Her always-closed lips appeared just on the verge of opening. If he hadn’t been holding it, he’d have sworn the facial muscles moved, but what muscles?—it was plaster. She was beautiful, no doubt. He stared for a long time, the grandfather clock chiming the hour at some point. De Vries appeared in his memory, standing over the corpse of a cherubic-faced child he’d just finished sewing up. “Remember,” the old man had said, “Death is our business, but we should never become friends with it. It’s single-minded and exquisitely shrewd.”

  Stan poured some more whiskey into the glass on his desk. His entire body felt numb, his mind dull. “What do I want?” he wondered. He closed his eyes and swayed, sitting forward in the chair. The wind blew outside, and the tall clock chimed again. He fell back, the mask hanging from a finger hooked through its right eyehole. His eyes were closed, he was breathing deeply, but in the next instant, he sprang up and hurled the mask. The white face shattered against the glass clock face and littered the floor. Crossing the office, he opened his bag and retrieved his pills. Returning to the chair, he placed them within easy reach on the desk. He freshened his drink and waited.

  The pain started so subtly, like an eye opening, and that was all for a while. When he felt the first twinge of real discomfort, he took two pills and washed them down with a long swallow. Then there it was, the pain as he’d missed it, moaning like a ghost. He winced, he groaned, and his mind swirled with dark thoughts. At one point, he had a premonition that Groot would never see retirement. He saw the dogged detective clutch his chest and fall over into the field before the Wish Head. Then the birthmark lifted off, and flew, buzzing through the coroner’s skull.

  #

  Stan was awake when the phone rang at 6:06 the next morning. He pulled himself out of the chair and answered it. “Midian coroner,” he said.

  “Stanley, is that you?” The voice was angry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Doctor Rashner, did you get the body?” Stan asked.

  “Are we playing games? Are you mocking me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Stan.

  “I read your report. Incorruptible flesh, a victim who has died but exhibits no signs of death. Then I open the body bag, and what do I find?”

  “The woman?”

  “A bag of rotten leaves dug up from the creek bed. Have you lost your mind?” yelled Rashner.

  There was silence, and then the medical examiner said, “I want an explanation.”

  Stan looked up, noticed the first light coming through the window, and realized the pain had once again vanished. He lifted his left leg a few times to feel the life in it. Rashner was still talking, but Stan hung up, his attention drawn to something on the floor. Alina’s mouth had separated from the mask and lay unbroken. He walked over to the smile, hesitated for a moment, and then picked up the piece of plaster. Brushing it lightly with his thumb, as if it had kissed him, he slipped it into the pocket of his robe.

  Flash Forward

  By Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz

  “Perhaps I should take the ferry out with you.”

  The moment she hit “Send,” she regretted it. She realized how difficult it would be to coordinate their schedules. He was just going there to shoot some additional footage for a documentary a friend was making. But she convinced herself she could swing it; call in sick and stay sick for a few days. It was unlikely anyhow that she’d meet another malingering call center agent in Siquijor Island in July. But more than logistics, she realized how loaded that suggestion was—even reminding her of Charon and his boat. Reminded her too of her high school teacher who had pronounced it “Sharon” and how she had believed him until Wikipedia enlightened her.

  Maybe that was why she had boldly thought of taking that trip. She needed to ferry her spirit across to an island of mysticism, where it is said remedies of many kinds can be found. That seemed to her a noble enough reason. After all, she was still reeling from the end of a marriage on which she had placed all her bets. She wished a wise mananambal would have the proper incantations and potions for the process of healing.

  But really now.

  What was obvious was she wanted to take that ferry out to a secluded island with someone she was deeply attracted to. That she was so suddenly forward with him now could be explained by the spring coil analogy. She had kept her feelings secret because she was not free to have those feelings (and neither was he, but she conveniently edited that out of her fantasy). She had obeyed the rules as best she could, not even writing him for a spell. But she thought about him all the time. She had so many conversations with him in her mind, she thought she was going crazy. She would write him letters then she’d tear them up so she wouldn’t be caught with those forbidden feelings again. Anyone would see that she had indeed gone mad.

  After all, he had not pursued her. He made it clear that he was in a relationship. He did not tell her anything directly, nor asked her for anything. Except that in her lush imagination, every word, every gap between words from him meant the world. He did sign off one email, “love,” which was worlds away from “fondly,” which was even warmer than “sincerely.” She was sure she understood what he was trying to say. She was certain, somehow, that he was, well, in the same boat. What a leap of faith then when she made the suggestion.

  —

  Ther
e are several ways to continue this tale.

  A. If you think the woman is crazy, then the man will say no. And she will knock herself on the head and finally learn her lesson about men and women. A cautionary tale, if there ever was one. She would, of course, have to live with the embarrassment her whole life, while assuring herself there will be other trips, and maybe other men.

  B. If, on the other hand, you believe that the woman deserves a chance to cross the Tanon Strait and figure out the mystery, then the man will say yes. And they will sit on the deck and look out to sea, and maybe find the courage to ask the questions they’ve been waiting to ask the whole year. This way, the plot can get complicated.

  C. But if you just don’t believe in the best-laid plans of mice and men, you could have the man say yes and then mix up the schedules so that they’d fail to meet. This would, of course, frustrate the woman no end; but she will later realize that what really mattered was he said yes.

  The next day, she opened her email and found out.

  Where Sea and Sky Kiss

  By Dan Campbell

  Illness skulked about the village, hiding in the alley fish-rot and grasping at coats in the fog. The sea misted up and smothered the houses, as if already holding the island in its embrace was not enough.

  People coughed and hacked and died in their sleep. My father found one elder staring out to the dawn from his bed, one hand reaching toward the window. They buried him and all the rest under the perimeter of church bells, ringing out the chill.

  I screamed into the world amidst this grief. Many took my birth as an omen: some good, others bad. It all depended on who had lost, and how much, as to whether they shunned or smiled on me and my family.

  My parents had each been married to others, each lived quiet lives on the edges of the island. Mother had been a fisherman’s wife, shy and determined, always ready with a cup of tea or a loaf of bread, but little to say, when guests came calling. Father had been husband to the mayor’s disinherited daughter, out on the strand between the lochs, where he herded her sheep and milked their one cow.