Winter Child

I know when the winter child comes because I see her footprints in the snow leading up to my bedroom window. I see her breath on the glass and wish she was intangible like a dream I can’t remember as the days go on. Winter child doesn’t speak but with her eyes and black smile because her vocal cords were burned so badly. She comes to remind me of what the cold can bring, what kerosene lamps give and take.

Her room is behind a wall, boarded up by her family after the fire came to pass. The other rooms of the house are still livable while hers remains charred, the smell of melted flesh forever clinging to its walls. Her pink tufted covers are ashen, and in the middle of her bed is the outline of her, asleep while the fire crept slowly up to consume her. Her parents kept it all the same, what was left of her baby dolls, some with melted heads and dirty dresses, others winking. The dollhouse sits burned in half, arranged just as winter child left it the day before. The lamp lays broken on the floor next to her bed, knocked from the bedside table. Winter child is afraid of the dark. She flailed too much in her sleep.

Winter child is buried in the field under a small weathered headstone with her birth and death dates barely visible. Born into winter January 1908, died in fire February 1915, buried under a bed of frost and frozen ground at age seven. Winter child just wants to play. Winter child whose name I can’t decipher because she died so long ago, and there’s nothing left of her engraving.

She opens my window and rushes in like cold wind, leaving melted snow on my rug. She silently dances in front of my fireplace as I watch from my bed. A long patch of hair hangs onto the back of her head and sways above her waist. She stops to look into the vanity mirror and grabs my silver handled hair brush to untangle the patch of hair that remains. She wants me to braid it, so I do, trying to hide the shock on my face when chunks of her burnt flesh loosen and fall between the pieces of hair I’m holding. Now winter child wants to braid my hair. She pulls too hard, and I feel strands being plucked out. My hair smells rotten after she’s touched it.

My least favorite game is hide and seek. I cover my eyes and count. I look up first, hoping she isn’t clinging to the frame of my canopy bed, obscured by the sheer curtain that hangs there, her one patch of hair hanging so low it touches my face. When I find her, she lets go and swings on her knees, hands free, reaching for me to pull her down. I’m afraid if she falls, she will be a contorted mess on the floor, still smiling, still taunting me to play into the twilight hours. I sigh when she’s chosen elsewhere to hide.

The second place I look is under the bed. I lean over the edge gripping the covers, so she can’t grab both of my ankles before sliding out with a devious glint in her glazed eyes. If she’s not there I search behind the curtain for her standing emaciated on her nub feet, pressed against the wall, paper thin. I look in the armoire and inside the chest at the foot of my bed that on multiple occasions I’ve thought of locking her inside and running far away from home where winter child can never find me again.

The worst thing about winter child, isn’t that she’s dead, it’s that Mother will not acknowledge that she’s dead. Sometimes, winter child comes before Mother reads me a bedtime story, and Mother let’s her curl up next to her. We both choose a book. Winter child always wants to read from the one about native plants, and I always want to read the one about the girl who disappears, then Mother says, “Don’t stay up too late now, girls.” As she closes the door and doesn’t resurface until morning.

If I tell Mother that winter child won’t let me sleep, she says, “Well dear, she only wants to play.” But winter child never sleeps. She stays until sunrise, then she climbs back into the cold until nightfall. If I close my eyes she pinches me so hard it leaves a bruise.

*

Winter child wants to play Bloody Mary. I know because she’s pointing at the mirror insisting I say the words, but she is the only thing I ever see staring back at me because Bloody Mary isn’t real, just winter child.

We play tic-tac-toe on my leg, and it burns. We can’t play on winter child’s because there is no skin to press into. When she wants to play, she grabs my leg with two hands, then drags her sharp bone finger into me to make the board. It almost bleeds. She always goes first, and her X’s hurt the most. I let her win every time and act surprised.

We make string tricks from a long loop of her hair, which she’s pulled out from brushing it too much, called Jacob’s ladder and cat’s cradle. We see who can hold their breath the longest, of course, it’s winter child. Of course, she has no lungs because they dried up from the heat of the fire, the reason why fire actually kills you, asphyxiation. The heat boiled the water right out of her lungs until they were just dry sponges.

Winter child pulls me over to the rug and holds my hands as we dance in a circle singing:

“Ring-a-ring o’ rosies,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.”

After we fall down, we stay there staring at the flowered wallpaper ceiling, imagining what it would be like to walk around up there and live juxtaposed. Winter child then looks at me, and I don’t know what she is thinking. She is thinking how much she wants my hair and so she decides to let me sleep, just this once. My eyes are so heavy.

I wake up and see winter child dancing around me and something is different about her. Yes. She’s wearing my hair. It’s glued unevenly all over her burned scalp. There is a red ribbon tying it up. I scream and Mother comes to say, “Beautiful! How thoughtful of you. What a good heart you have. What beautiful girls.” Then she closes the door. I run to the mirror and look in horror at my butchered hair, and not only that, I am wearing winter child’s dingy dress. She is watching me from my bed with the covers pulled up to her chin in my white cotton nightgown. She watches me as if she wants me to dance across the rug as she has so many times before. I huddle into a corner and cry until morning. Mother doesn’t come. Winter child watches.

*

I won’t let her open my window tonight. Never again. She fogs up the glass and writes the word, “Hi” with her frayed finger. I can see the remains of my hair crudely scattered about her head, my red ribbon blowing chaotically, my nightgown stained from her walk to and from the dead earth.

Winter child disappears from view, and just as I fear, Mother is knocking on my door. “There’s someone here to see you, dear.” She opens my door and winter child is holding a bundle of witch hazel. She wants to make potions, some that will cure her burns and make her beautiful again, one that will make me sleep forever. Mother slips out.

Winter child goes to my dresser and begins to twist and tear the witch hazel. She pulverizes it with her fists as I watch with my back against the door. She finds a near empty perfume bottle of vanilla musk and shoves what’s left of the leaves and stems into it. Winter child hands it to me and motions for me to fill the bottle with spit. I pull away and she pulls a handful of hemlock from her pocket.

I remember it from the book Mother read to us every night since winter child came, and I grab the bottle to buy myself time. I am slow to fill the bottle as I watch winter child disappear into my bathroom and return with a cup full of water. She places the hemlock into the cup, and as it steeps, she gestures for me to continue on in her strange ritual. Winter child loves games, and this is her new favorite.

The bottle is full. Winter child takes it from me and puts the top back on. She dances and shakes it and spins more lively than ever on her feet, amputated by fire, my hair curling and uncurling around her as she moves.

I bump the dresser, sending the poisoned tea to the floor. Winter child sees and grabs the hemlock. She moves like a puppet as she works to corner me on the far side of the room. I rip a piece of my hair from her head. It drifts to the floor. I rip another. The new game we play is like pick-up sticks. Winter child grabs for the hair. I grab the hemlock she’s dropped and throw it into the fire, but it’s a terrible mistake, and winter child knows it. She closes the flue and mimics silent laughter which is much like everything else she does, abnormal and soulless.

The poisonous air fills the room, and I cough until my lungs hurt, my throat begins to swell, but not before I grab winter child, who’s distracted by my vulnerability. We roll together on the rug, two soon to be dead girls. I shove her hard into the hearth ablaze and hold her there as we both scream in pain. We both want Mother to save us, but Mother can’t hear, or maybe, it’s just that Mother can’t cope with anything bad. She can’t empathize because it would mean she has to feel something burning inside of her.

Winter child is quiet. My breathing is shallow. Anaphylaxis is a lot like asphyxiation, I think. I can’t breathe. It feels like a dream I won’t remember. I look over at winter child who has stopped fighting, and there we are juxtaposed like the night before, when we laid together and imagined what it would be like to live in an alternate reality on the ceiling of my room, me with no hair, second degree burns, swollen from the inside with hemlock, and her, an unrecognizable heap of the corpse she was before.

Mother enters the smoke filled room and opens the flue. The wind outside is so loud, swirling smoke of what’s left of winter child all around the house with the blackened room that everyone wanted to forget, through the frozen field where a small grave sits empty and in full decay.

 

Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt 

 

I watch her sit on the back of my wife, Amber, her ears a twitching silhouette in the small bit of moonlight coming in from the open window. She arches her back and bends, circling around before lying still. I hear her asthmatic breathing and think it’s Amber. I reach out my hand but recoil at the subtle rasps that come and go, then settle back into the bed trying to hear my own breath, listening for a symptom of the virus as I fall asleep. It feels almost impossible. The nights are long, and we are restless.

In the morning Amber’s cat is still asleep on top of her back. I nudge Amber, but she continues to sleep into the next night. The power got shut off three weeks ago, and it only took us two days to stop absent-mindedly flicking the light switches on and off. I don’t mind the change; there is something contagious about fading into darkness unimpeded, pulling a light source from my breast pocket, striking a match to bring fire to the many candles placed on the dresser, windowsill, and nightstand as the day turns to dusk, the scent of lavender filling the room. I do mind Amber’s unwillingness to get out of bed and the dreaded feeling of isolation that it evokes as each day passes.

*

The house is quiet except for the sizzle of my cigar, creak of my rocking chair, me speaking the name of the book I am holding, Slaughterhouse-Five, just to hear my voice out loud before I open and turn the pages. I stop on a line from chapter two, “…when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.” I read it over and over again. Amber’s cat yowls to go out, and it’s the only reason I ever open the door.

I make oatmeal for the third time today. It’s one of the cheapest things besides rice and beans that we were able to get in bulk before the stores became barren and closed. The rain catch was a good idea, though every time I pull from it I wonder what’s lurking there, microscopic and deadly, a parasitic cause for dehydration from our only source of polluted drinking water. I boil everything. I don’t let the birds have a drop.

Crows sit at the window, and beyond them is a cloud covered sky that is the looming threat of cold to come, winter’s suffocating cloak. Sometimes, the crows, close cousins to ravens, that we’ve named Poe and Lenore bring gifts of bones and flowers. They peck and caw, calling to us to be fed, confused as to why we’ve stopped coming outside. I dare not let them in though they are pitiful and cunning, a part of our family in a not so distant past.

I take the oatmeal up to Amber and insist she eat. Poe watches from the window. She doesn’t stir, but stares blankly through me. I feed her, and she is so reluctant and stiff I can’t stand it. After a few bites, I whisper to her, “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting…” I leave the room and retreat back to my study.

I puff on my cigar and sleep; it sags and falls into my lap burning a hole into my pant leg. I scream and all is quiet again except for the distinct scratching at the door, the cat. She rushes in and drops a female grackle at my feet. I fall away and stumble to the kitchen, grappling for rubber gloves, a plastic bag, bleach. The dead bird is now in the bag with one glove which I’ve turned inside out to avoid touching it. My bare hand opens the door while my remaining gloved hand holds the gift of death. Amber’s cat tries to swat the bag out of my hand, sending it swaying. A small tear lets the tip of the grackle’s wing escape. I hold it higher and run out into the starless night.

There is no road noise, no airplanes or helicopters droning, only stillness, dark houses except for small flickers of light accompanying the neighbors that are left. The dead are resting, locked up in their homes that have become their tombs until…until when? I hate the thought, so I hurry back inside and bleach my hands, the sink, the floor, the doorknob. I take off all my clothes and burn them. I bleach my hands once more. Standing naked I watch my flannel shirt disintegrate to ash as the cat warms herself, unaware of the chaos she has brought into the house or the lukewarm bath that comes for her next.

Both clean and exhausted, we warm ourselves once more by the fire before going up to bed. I kiss Amber and say in a hoarse voice I barely recognize, “I think we’re in trouble. I don’t know how this started or why; but it’s here…” I drift into another sleepless night.

*

I sleep long into the afternoon. My throat is sore, and the oatmeal goes down like sludge. Hot coffee helps only for as long as each sip lasts, and I must conserve everything. The bird flu is not a death sentence after all, they said so on the news three weeks ago before everything went dark. I would not tell Amber of my symptoms. She would only worry, maybe even get hysterical. Though her silence is a plague, her losing it would be worse.

I try to recite the symptoms—very sudden fever, chills, body aches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, cough…much like any other flu. My voice is a choked whisper. Like any other flu. I rub my throat. Except this flu can kill you like the Spanish flu. I take another gulp of coffee. Just. Like. Any. Other. Flu.

I turn the knobs frantically on the radio dial listening for anything but static, searching for coverage like vaccine, resistance, positive turn around, disaster relief, but there are none. I stop when I hear the words, new development. Yes! I release a quick rasp turning up the volume. A lady is speaking—This is an urgent message that likely pertains to a large percentage of the population. I repeat, this is an urgent message. Veterinarians have confirmed that now not only is the virus infecting birds of various species including fowl as well as cattle, but it has mutated and is now infecting domestic dogs and cats. We understand that most people are coming into contact with the virus via animals. As of now the spread of the virus from human to human is not a cause of concern. At this time we advise everyone leave their pets outside and cease contact with them immediately. She repeats the prophetic message, says it every which way, but the reality is the same. I turn the knob to OFF and look around for Amber’s cat.

She is resting on Amber’s back; her black fur is sleek like the night sky outside once winter rolls in, and the air is crisp. She does not behave as a sick cat would. I bargain with death as I lay down next to them in the fading light of the room. Dark is coming sooner these days as autumn fades away. I am exhausted, and what would Amber think if she woke up to find her cat staring in at us from the window, begging to be let in like the crows? The cat would grow so hungry, her odds of eating an infected bird would go up exponentially.

My second to last thought as I drift off to sleep is that I must keep the cat in from now on. No more grackles. No chance of the flu for any of us. My last thought is an echo of what the reporters on TV were telling everyone to reduce panic before we all quit our jobs and went into quarantine, something they said frequently in 1918 before the Spanish flu devastated the world, “The so-called H1N1 influenza is nothing more or less than an old fashioned grippe.”

*

Again I sleep into the late afternoon. I drink hot coffee. I feed Amber, and I shoo the cat away from the door despite her mournful cries. The crows, including Poe and Lenore, seem to have given up, perhaps branded us as bad people who cannot be trusted. It could be they’ve broken into the attic and have been eating our food reserves with no mercy. Maybe, the flu got them. Maybe, the flu got me, I think, coughing. I look over at Amber’s cat. “Have you killed us with that damn grackle?” She purrs and squints her eyes.

Night comes faster and faster. The cold comes with it. I tell Amber from the doorway of our room that I will be sleeping in the spare bedroom on account of I just cant sleep next to her smelling so terrible, but not to worry, and to think about a bath sometime very soon. Of course it’s a lie to take the focus off of my symptoms. Of course she does stink to high heaven after not bathing for going on two weeks now, but I have grown used to it. Depression is an all consuming disease, and she has every right to be depressed. She doesn’t say anything, and I know I’ve either hurt her feelings, or she has already fallen asleep. I close her cat in with her and go collapse in the adjacent room.

*

I sleep the longest since we locked ourselves away from society, right into the next night. I miss a whole day, not that it matters, and when I do wake, the house is oddly warm as I walk down the hallway and into the study where Amber is stoking a fire. Her hair is brushed, the smell that surrounded her before is gone. “Amber!” I reach out for her. “You’re better, more than better. What has changed? I’m sorry about last night, what I said. It’s just been a long, lonely two weeks.”

It’s the first we’ve spoken in what feels like a lifetime, and my symptoms have seemingly vanished. Just a cold. Just some bad water, maybe. I’ll boil it longer next time. I notice the cat, content by the fire and remember the radio broadcast and my fear returns. “Amber, last night on the radio, they were saying to abandon all animals because of the flu, that it’s spread to cats and dogs. She didn’t seem sick, so I let her stay in. You didn’t let her out today at anytime did you?”

“Oh dear, you’ve no need to worry about all that now. You’re here, she’s here.” Amber gestures towards her cat. “We can do as we please. The flu can’t hurt us anymore. It seems I’ve been waiting for you two for so long now, but I guess it’s only been…how long did you say? Two weeks?”

I stare at her confused. If I’d kept the radio broadcast on the previous night I would have heard the woman say—The majority of cats and dogs are asymptomatic after contracting H1N1, but their health can rapidly decline at any time in the weeks following, leading to breathing difficulty and death within a few days or hours, but not before spreading the virus around to other animals and unsuspecting humans, especially veterinarians and pet owners.

Amber remembers something too, something from the book I never finished reading in my study when I was alive, and she was in our bedroom long dead from the bird flu. She smiles and hugs me as she whispers in my ear, “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”