Stork Magazine Issue 20

FALL 2015 ~ VOLUME 20

Colleen Risavy Jessica Waters Kira Compton Allison Rassmann

stork FALL 2015 ~ VOLUME 20

MASTHEAD Editors-in-Chief Sarina Clement Maria DiPasquale Managing Editors Kaylee Mizell-Anzick Richie Wheelock Prose Editors Kayla Cottingham Chloe McAlpin Mary Kate McGrath Sarah Samel Head Copy Editor Kelly Nolte Copy Editors Michael Moccio Faith Ryan

Faculty Advisor John Skoyles Head Designer Emily Pfaff Design Assistants Bella Bennett Tricia Sullivan Readers Kelsey Aijala Heather Cole Sarah Dolan Madeline Poage Tyler Powles Colleen Risavy Kyla Taub

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS As we sit down to write this letter, there is one word on both our minds: stress. It’s true, the end of the semester has been really stressful, as we try to produce a magazine with finals and the “real world” looming ever closer. At times, we have stopped and stared at each other, realizing we had no idea what we were doing. It can be difficult to lead a staff at the same time you’re preparing to answer that ever-present question: “what are you doing next?”

But, thankfully, Stork has always been a magazine built on the power of collaboration. Our wonderful staff is always there, passionate and spirited and committed to making each piece of fiction the best that it can be.

The care that goes into our staff ’s collaboration with our authors is what makes Stork beautiful—and what makes us proud to lead this magazine. We have to thank our amazing managing editors, Kaylee Mizell-Anzick and Richie Wheelock, who were always ready to pick up a task or offer an opinion; and our design team, headed by the wonderful Emily Pfaff, who took our vision for this issue’s design and ran with it. Of course, we must also thank all the wonderful authors who submitted and resubmitted their stories; without your talent, commitment, and originality, we wouldn’t have this beautiful issue. We hope you enjoy these stories as much as we do.

Lots of love, Sarina Clement and Maria DiPasquale Editors-in-Chief

CONTENTS

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Out of the Darkness

by Colleen Risavy Illustration by Richie Wheelock

19

The Family

by Jessica Waters Illustration by Holly Kirkman

25

The Midnight Train Came Through

by Kira Compton Illustration by Ben Patterson

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Bones in the Ground

by Allison Rassmann Illustration by Stephanie “Ricky” Richards

OUT OF THE DARKNESS

by Colleen Risavy Illustration by Richie Wheelock

The February air cut through Rosa’s skin despite her wool coat. As she biked through the streets, she felt the chill in her bones. Perhaps it was the sight of her once beautiful city that caused her to shiver.

Looking to her left, Rosa saw women standing in a queue that snaked around an entire block. She thought the soles of their shoes must have been thinning to dust each day. An older woman stumbled out of the latteria, the dairy shop, sobbing. She fell to the floor, and two younger girls helped her back onto her feet. “There’s nothing left!” she cried. “I waited in line for three hours and they don’t even have a tin of milk.”

Rosa knew the couple that owned the latteria, the Orsinis. Her father performed dental work on Signore Orsini for free when they had little money, and since then, he had gifted Rosa a tiny piece of cheese each time she came inside.

She was sure that if they had any milk left, they would not withhold it from the people.

To her right, a little boy held his mother’s skirt with one hand and his protruding ribs with the other. “Do you have any more chocolate, Mamma?” he asked, his eyes pleading.

Rosa looked from the boy to her own empty stomach and kept peddling.

The scent of her husband’s sandwich: tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, wafted up from her nose and the edges of her vision blurred for a moment. She had hidden the delicious

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treat under a napkin in her wicker basket like a weapon. Rosa forced herself to look forward and keep pedaling her feet.

She wanted to stop, to turn around and give that little boy with the dirt smudged on his forehead the entire sandwich, but she couldn’t. She could be mauled just for having it. Besides, the sandwich was for Gregorio.

She biked down a narrow street and the clatter of people soon faded into a hum. A poster hung on one wall. In it, a women held a baby in one hand, a skillet in the other, and an apron was tied around her waist. It read: Do Your Duty.

This must have been hung by one of the fascista Women’s Groups. Rosa kept pedaling and emerged in Piazza Navona.

It was empty, except for some soldiers sitting at a café. They warmed themselves over espressos.

Rosa closed her eyes and tried to imagine this beautiful square before the war. In the summer, tourists from around the world would lick creamy gelato and speak in their many foreign tongues. Artists marveled at the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the Fountain of Four Rivers. Rowdy children even splashed with the marble serpents before their parents could catch them. And the restaurants lining the edges of the square were full of patrons sitting under shaded seats.

Rosa first met Gregorio in that square. A soft wind had pushed her golden curls off her face, revealing the pink chiffon dress she chose to wear that day.

Rosa had been reading in the piazza for a few minutes when a shadow crossed over her body. She looked up and her eyes locked with the most beautiful boy—man—she’d ever seen. He had chestnut hair and deep black eyes. His nose had a slight crook in it, like a bad break that had never healed from his childhood. But somehow, it made him more approachable.

“Scusa, may I sit here?” he asked.

Rosa nodded, so he sat down and opened his book. And to her surprise, he did not comment on her hair, her smile,

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or stare at her body, like all of the other boys at school. He simply focused on his book.

“What are you reading? Is it for università?” Rosa asked when she could not stand the silence any longer. She sensed he was too old to be in secondary school.

“A political essay,” he said.

Rosa frowned and looked down at his book: The Doctrine of Fascism. She felt her jaw clench. This man was a fascist?

Born in 1922, the year Mussolini marched on Rome, Rosa was familiar with fascism. Her family was optimistic about the fascists at first; Mussolini promised the workers an eighthour day and mandated religious education in the schools.

Rosa’s Catholic mother, Gisela, especially appreciated this.

But, little by little, he acquired more and more power. The Acerbo Law in March 1923 made Rosa’s father, Mario, distrust Mussolini the most. With the threat of a cracked skull and broken ribs, the fascists secured two-thirds of the seats in parliament. Opponents were killed. Newspapers shut down. At that point, her parents could not risk fighting him.

Gisela and Mario taught their daughter to keep her head down and avoid the Blackshirts. She was not to engage the soldiers. She was not to read the rebel pamphlets. “You disappear into the darkness, Rosa,” they would say to her around the candlelight of the dinner table. “Disappear into the darkness.”

But this man did not look like the other Blackshirts. He bit his lip when he read and his hands were soft.

“I prefer Coleridge, actually,” Rosa said and pointed at her own book. He slowly lifted his head and returned Rosa’s smile.

“I’m Gregorio Moretti,” he said. “Rosa Bacio.”

“Kiss a Rose, how fitting,” he said.

For the rest of the afternoon, Rosa and Gregorio talked in Piazza Navona.

“People have the wrong image of fascism in their minds.

They think of the soldiers whose job it is to interrogate pris-

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oners and political enemies. But they forget that Mussolini brought Italy out of a depression. He saved the government from a parliament who could not pass a single law. He’s a man of the workers, the heart of this country,” Gregorio explained.

Rosa felt her face flush. She hadn’t considered this. All she really knew was the sound of the soldiers as they pounded through the streets and the stories her parents had told her.

“My uncle is one of Mussolini’s advisers. He will give me a position once I graduate. Of course it is very low in rank, but with the war coming, there will be a lot for me to do and time for me to rise,” Gregorio explained.

In the north, Hitler had already started his trek west across the continent, a well-organized blitz domination. “So Italy will join Germany then?” she asked.

Gregorio’s eyes did not leave Rosa’s as he said, “We must.

We signed a pact.”

He in turn learned that Rosa’s passion was literature.

“Ever since I was little, I’ve been captivated by books. The way they smell like leather and the feeling of paper between my fingers. The words never seem to end. But I have only read a fraction of the books out there. There’s still so much for me to learn at università,” she said. “When people look at me, they see a pretty face, not a brilliant mind. I want to show them everything that I am.” Rosa looked up and saw Gregorio studying her. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be telling all of this to a stranger.”

Gregorio chuckled. “Do you know why I sat down here today?” he asked. The light in the sky had faded from a rich blue to a citrus orange. Rosa shook her head.

“You were the only girl outside reading. Everyone else was laughing with friends or talking to boys, but you were reading Coleridge. You are more than just a pretty face.”

Rosa opened her eyes and was back in the cold, unforgiving winter. She tried to keep her head down as she biked past the

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soldiers who flaunted their warmth. Disappear, she told herself. But even in barren February, the men noticed Rosa. They noticed her body underneath the layers of clothing, with her lips chapped from the wind.

“Why don’t you come over here, carrissima?” one of them called.

“You can keep me warm,” another said.

Rosa smiled politely, but continued on her path.

Taking a deep breath, she pedaled around another corner and heard twinkling bells. There was a small shop with a sign above the door that read: Libri e Romanzi, books and novels. The bookstores were often broken into and vandalized these days: windows smashed, cases knocked over, papers shredded.

But this little shop appeared untouched. She wanted to walk inside, to run her fingers across the spines of the novels, to feel the weight of encyclopedias in her hands. Rosa smiled as she passed it.

Leaving Piazza Navona, she came face to face with the Palazzo Braschi. Rosa remembered the first time she had seen the headquarters of the Partito Nazionale Fascista when she and Gregorio had first started courting each other. The façade of the palazzo was enormous, intimidating. The entire front wall was covered with a repetition of the word si, imploring Italians to give their support to the Partito. Right in the center was the giant stone face of Benito Mussolini. The rock was chiseled to such perfection that she was sure the country’s leader would speak to her in the next second. Yes, it was definitely intimidating, but when Gregorio looked at the palazzo with such admiration in his eyes, Rosa instantly warmed to the building herself.

“Let’s go inside,” she once said to him, motioning for Gregorio to follow her under the grand arched doorway.

But Gregorio had grabbed her wrist and drew her back to him with a force she hadn’t expected. “It’s my day off, amore.

I’d rather not spend it at my work”

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“Of course,” she replied and gave him a big smile, trying to warm his sudden icy exterior. “Let’s have a gelato instead.”

It wasn’t until she was standing outside the arched doorway once more that Rosa realized she’d never actually been inside the building. She did not pass the palazzo many times after that. She only really left the apartment to join the queues. But even that was rare, since Gregorio usually brought home something delicious for dinner. Did she not go inside because she always assumed Gregorio was too busy to visit her during the day, or was it because she watched the other Romans scurry past the palazzo with their heads cast down? Maybe it was a combination of both.

If Rosa had gone to università like she planned, she would have biked past this building every day. Rosa can still remember the night she and Gregorio decided to withdraw her application from school. The day had been just as cold as this, a few months after their wedding.

“I want to study literature,” Rosa whispered. She wasn’t even sure she had said it loud enough for him to hear. “You know it’s always been my dream.”

She watched her husband through the dancing candlelight. A drop of wax slipped off the candle and melted onto the table.

“Rosa, I make enough money for the both of us now, but I don’t think I could support you at school,” Gregorio said, stabbing the last of his chicken piccata on his fork and tossing it into his mouth. She had spent the entire day looking through cookbooks to find the perfect recipe because Gregorio said it was his favorite. Did he know? Did he appreciate that?

“I don’t mind finding a job to help with the costs. I—I could go to school and work,” she said, suddenly desperate to find a solution to this problem.

Gregorio swirled his wine around in the cup and took a sip. Anything, she supposed, not to look at his wife. “You don’t want to worry yourself with exams and a job when we

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are trying to have a baby.”

Rosa stifled the desire to roll her eyes. “But books don’t worry me, Gregorio. They calm me.”

He pushed the empty plate forward. Gregorio looked Rosa straight in the eyes, challenging her with his unyielding gaze. He’d never looked so frustrated, so irritated. Gregorio was the calmest person she had ever known, but in that moment, Rosa first perceived his anger steeled in the caramel spirals of his eyes. “And what happens if we make a baby tonight? Who will take care of him while you are off at school and at work?” he asked. “And who will clean our apartment and make us all dinner?”

Rosa had not pondered this. Why hadn’t she thought of this until now? If they did have a baby soon, she would not be able to care for him and Gregorio and still attend classes, let alone keep a job. But did she really have to choose between literature and a family?

“All of your studying for these exams is probably why—” Gregorio stopped himself and folded his napkin.

“Probably why what?” Rosa asked, slightly afraid to hear his response.

“Why we haven’t made a child yet, Rosa. We have been married for months now and you’re still not pregnant.”

His words stung. Rosa’s hand instinctively cradled her abdomen. She wanted her stomach to swell, to feel a baby drag its tiny heel across her belly button, to look into its eyes. But it seemed to be out of her control.

“I don’t see how studying can prevent me from getting pregnant.”

“How do you know? Your priorities are completely wrong.” Gregorio sighed and reached across the table and took her hand in his own. He rubbed his finger across her palm and she stiffened. “You’re going to be such a great mother. I know it. Just focus on that for now. Università is just distraction, Rosa. You have me, and soon we’ll have a baby, and that’ll be all you need.”

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“I suppose you’re right,” she said when she felt Gregorio’s eyes boring into her.

A small smile emerged on his face, all of the tension and aggravation suddenly washed away by her compliance. He stood and kissed Rosa on the top of her head. “It’s for the best, amore.” Then he walked into the back office to look over some papers.

Rosa did not pick up Gregorio’s dirty plate. She left everything on the table and walked out onto the terrace. A frosty breeze cut through the air, so she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders protectively. Rosa was far from warm, but she welcomed the numbing sensation that had set into her fingers and toes. A chapter in her life had just ended and she wanted to feel like nothing for a few minutes.

She sat on one of the metal chairs outside and felt her arms and legs become anesthetized. She stared at the little dots of light in the sky and thought of the author George Eliot. She was a gifted modernist writer, but she did not have a family. Eliot engaged in a long, steamy affair with a man she loved, but they never married and never had children.

Was that why she was so successful in her work?

Rosa wanted to analyze the great novels of the world and take part in heated debates about poetry. Yet, she craved the feathery feeling of a newborn’s hand wrapped around her finger. Was there no way to have both? After a while, she returned to Gregorio’s bed.

Rosa now stood outside the door to the Palazzo Braschi again and she was still a little numb.

She had a pit in her stomach. Rosa felt guilty for not telling Gregorio she would make this surprise visit and then she felt silly for even considering it. Of course he would be excited to see her, and he would be grateful that she had brought his lunch. He would kiss her and tell her he couldn’t wait to come home to dinner that night. He couldn’t possibly be too busy to see her for a moment. She shook her head

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from side to side, as if to expel the negative thoughts from her mind.

Rosa locked her bike to a street post outside and walked through the giant arched doorway of Palazzo Braschi. She silently took note of the art. The green and tan marble was carefully encrusted in the shape of a vine, whose leaves swirled around the arch.

The sounds of the Partito headquarters overcame her. Soldiers’ jackboots pounded into the marble in deep even beats.

Secretaries’ heels clipped the floor in short, speedy bursts, their noises easily differentiable. Papers rustled. Men barked.

It was a labyrinth of sounds that Rosa did not know how to navigate. How would she ever find Gregorio?

Finally, she saw the secretary’s desk to her right. The girl sitting behind the desk had the same tan skin as Rosa, but her hair was a deep chocolate brown.

“Scusa, I’m trying to find my husband Gregorio Moretti.

Do you know where he may be?” Rosa thought she saw the girl’s eyes dim for a moment, but they instantly brightened when she met Rosa’s gaze.

“Signore Moretti is in a meeting right now, but I can take you to an area where you can wait for him.”

“Grazie mille.”

The secretary, whose name Rosa still did not know, led her up one of the beautiful marble staircases. She reached out and grabbed the banister. The stone was cool under her fingers and slippery from her perspiration. She had to grip it firmly to not lose her balance. In her other hand, she held the basket with Gregorio’s sandwich. The spires from the wicker stuck into her skin from holding it so hard.

They walked through a rich cherry door. Inside, a small hallway looked out onto the larger lobby below. Fascist flags hung from the balconies displaying the axe and sticks on a field of black. The girl stopped by a comfortable velvet divan and gestured for Rosa to sit.

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“You can wait for Signore Moretti here, ciao.”

Rosa sat on the couch and repeated the greeting, “Ciao.”

She heard the girl’s heels on the marble staircase and released a sigh.

Suddenly there was a scream. No. A pained wail. Coming from a room down the hall. Rosa stood. Her body frozen.

Her hand still gripped the twine basket.

The sound was followed by hushed voices. Rosa looked around, but she was alone. The secretary gone. She walked to the railing and looked out on the lobby below. Party members and assistants rushed by as if Rosa had made up the sound on her own. She started walking towards the sound. Disappear into the darkness, she heard herself say as she stepped closer and closer to the door.

Just as Rosa was near enough to start making out words, she heard a BANG! She stumbled backwards in surprise, her body shuddering. That sound was not human. It was mechanical. Powered. A pop. Could it be? she thought. Rosa had only heard that sound twice. Late at night. Outside her window. When she could hide beneath her blankets.

A revolver.

She patted herself down, checking for wounds, but soon realized she was not shot. Rosa turned around and started walking back to the marble staircase. The basket hung limp at her side. Despite her efforts, she couldn’t stop her legs from trembling. Rosa couldn’t help but think that each step of her heels on the ground sounded like a bullet leaving a gun.

Behind her there was a creak of wood. “Rosa!” she heard a voice call out to her. Tall and broad shouldered with wavy chestnut hair and full lips. Gregorio.

“Rosa!” he called in a singsong tone. He ran to her and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Amore, what are you doing here?” he asked her.

“I—,” Rosa said, her voice hoarse. “I brought a sandwich.”

She held up the basket.

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“Oh, thank you. I completely forgot it this morning,” he said and pried her fingers from the handle. “Are you alright?

How long have you been here?”

Rosa reentered the moment then. “Not—not long. I just didn’t want you to go hungry.”

“You’re very sweet. I have to return to my work, but I’ll be home for dinner.”

Rosa stared at Gregorio’s face. The face that smiled at her. That believed in her. That loved her. There were a few red droplets on his cheek. She reached into the basket and grabbed the linen napkin off the sandwich. Rosa raised the napkin and dabbed the liquid. A scarlet color spread across the linen as she held it.

“You had something on your face, amore.”

Rosa walked down the marble staircase, but began to run out of the ivy arch of the Palazzo Braschi when she was out of sight. Her fingers fumbled to unlock her bike and she pedaled past the women on the queue. She did not remember it. To say she was in a dream would be a horrible understatement.

A fascista soldier stood outside of the panetteria, the bakery. A thick handlebar mustache on his upper lip. He was short, and chubby, and barked at the Romans who walked in front of him. And yet, when Rosa looked at him, she only saw Gregorio.

How dare you, she told herself. Gregorio was her husband of two years. The man who shared a beautiful apartment with her and kept her stomach full. The man who held her in the night. She told herself this over and over again until she finally returned to their apartment.

Rosa was so focused on getting inside her home that she almost overlooked Signora Campo standing next to the door.

“Scusa, Signora, I did not see you there,” Rosa said, taking a deep breath.

“Oh dear, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Is every-

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thing alright?” Signora Campo was the Moretti’s next door neighbor. She was forty-three and had eight children who ran around the apartment building all day. She was a terrible gossip. Rosa was convinced that Chiara Campo used her children as spies to get information on all of the tenants in the building.

“No, Signora, I’m quite fine,” Rosa assured her. Needless to say, Chiara was not the woman to confide in unless you wanted to receive horrible looks from the rest of the wives in the apartment building.

“Gregorio asked me to speak with you, as the leader of this sector’s Fascista Women’s Group. You haven’t been to the meetings lately, dear.” Rosa felt a pain in her side as she said his name. Stop, she told herself. Gregorio is your husband. You love him. He did not make that man scream.

Chiara unbuttoned her flashy fur coat and looked at the ground, waiting for her invitation inside. Rosa let out a sigh and said, “Would you like to come in, Signora?”

“I’d be delighted.”

The two women walked into the apartment. Rosa signaled Signora Campo to sit at the kitchen table. “I hope this is acceptable,” Rosa said and handed Chiara a cup of acorn coffee with a sliver of biscotti. “We ran out of real coffee a few days ago.”

Chiara’s lips tightened around the cup, but she sipped the bitter liquid anyway. “I suppose it will have to be, times are different now,” she said.

Rosa poured herself a cup and turned to join Signora Campo at the table. But a frame hanging on the wall caught Rosa’s attention. It was a photograph of Rosa and Gregorio on their wedding day. Gregorio had just taken a chunk of white frosted cake and smeared it across her nose. When Rosa closed her eyes, she could still hear herself giggling.

That is the real Gregorio.

She sat down across from Chiara. “I’m sorry I haven’t been

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to the meetings, Signora. I’ve just been so busy keeping up the house and making meals.”

Chiara turned her head to the side. “Is that so? Because I’ve been doing the same and attending the meetings and taking care of my children.”

Rosa forced herself to smile though her hand gripped the table with such a force that she was sure she’d break the wood. “I guess I’m just not as good as you.”

“We all have a duty to uphold as fascista women,” Signora Campo said. She took Rosa’s hand and patted it informally.

“We have to support our men in any way we can. That means attending the Women’s meetings… and getting a baby in there.” She pointed to Rosa’s flat stomach.

“It’s not as if I haven’t been trying, Chiara,” Rosa mumbled and sat up straight.

“I know that, but you could be trying a little harder. For Gregorio’s sake. Imagine what the other men must think of him. And you have the power to stop that.” Signora Campo looked at Rosa as if she were a baby that needed to be taught how to walk. Chiara stood and slipped her coat across her shoulders. “Now, we are having another meeting tomorrow night in my apartment. I hope to see you there.”

“Of course,” Rosa said and led Chiara to the door.

“You are a good girl,” Signora Campo said and squeezed Rosa’s shoulder. “And you can become a good wife. Don’t worry, we’ll get you there.” Rosa locked the door behind her and let out a sigh.

For the rest of the afternoon, she cooked. Gregorio had brought home a couple of steaks yesterday and Rosa decided to make them for dinner. She marinated the meat and boiled a side dish of pasta. But again she felt detached from her task. Everything around her was foreign.

When Gregorio came home the winter sky had deepened to a dark blue. “Amore, I’m so happy to see you again,” he said.

“How was the rest of your day?” Rosa asked and chopped

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broccoli to mix with the pasta. The scent of the garlic and olive oil popping inside of the saucepan made her stomach rumble. She hoped Gregorio liked it as well.

“It was fine,” he said and hung his trench coat and hat on the rack.

“What did you do?” Rosa asked. She felt the question suspended in the air like a bomb.

Gregorio came up behind Rosa. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the crook between her neck and shoulder. “You’ve never asked me that before,” he whispered to her.

“I was just curious. The building is so beautiful. I want to know what happens within it,” Rosa answered.

“Well it was a boring day, to be honest. Lots of paperwork. Nothing that would interest you,” he explained and she nodded. Gregorio took a deep breath in through his nose and added, “That smells delicious, Rosa.”

They ate across from each other at the kitchen table, the candlelight igniting each other’s eyes and making shadows dance on the walls. The scene reminded Rosa of the night when Gregorio told her she could not attend università. She pushed the memory out of her mind. Forget the past, she told herself. Think about this moment, right now.

“Signora Campo stopped by the apartment this afternoon,” Rosa said and cut a piece of her steak. She made a point of looking into her husband’s eyes.

“Ah, yes. I asked her to speak with you.”

“You did?”

“I thought it would do you some good to attend the Women’s Group meetings,” he said. “Maybe they could give you some advice about the… problem we’ve been having.”

Rosa was glad the room was too dark for Gregorio to see her blush. She wanted to say that no advice Chiara Campo could give her would be helpful. Advice other than how to turn her future children into spies. But what was the point?

Gregorio did everything he was supposed to as a good hus-

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band. He kept her safe. He provided them a place to live. He fed them in a time when very few people could eat so well.

And what had Rosa done in return? Nothing. The furniture was constantly dusty, her pasta overcooked, and she could not give him anyone to carry on the name Moretti.

“It was kind of her to offer her help,” Rosa finally said.

“Signora Campo also suggested we give away some of your books,” Gregorio said.

Rosa’s fork clattered on the ceramic plate. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“Rosa, those books you read don’t relax you. They are a burden and their messages are inappropriate to say the least.”

“Gregorio, please. I’ve had those books for years. I love them,” Rosa said. She felt her voice rise to a desperate pitch.

“Signora Campo and the rest of the Women’s Group have more suitable books that you can read. Besides, I think it’s time we get rid of them. If my superiors ever came in to the apartment and saw them, I’d be in serious trouble.”

“Then I can hide them. I won’t even read them, amore. I just can’t throw them away,” she suggested leaning closer to her husband.

“Hide them? Rosa please, this is ridiculous. I will not have my wife supporting the publication of such vulgar texts. I’ve let this go on because I thought it was a hobby. I thought you would lose interest with this eventually. But now I realize that was a mistake. We will get rid of them tomorrow.”

He let out a sigh and said, “Can we please return to our dinner now?”

That was it. Conversation over. Books gone. Gregorio cut into his steak and started chewing. As if he hadn’t just said what he did. Rosa closed her eyes and heard the sound of a gun firing. She saw the red droplets on Gregorio’s face.

That night, Rosa slipped into her silk bathrobe and climbed into bed beside Gregorio. His eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell to a peaceful rhythm. She cradled his face in her hands and kissed the top of his head. Gregorio

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stirred. His eyes opened sleepily and he smiled at her. “Buona notte,” he whispered to her.

“Good night,” she replied and let her head fall onto the pillow beside him. They lay there for a few moments, staring at each other until Rosa said, “You know I always loved you, right?”

“Of course I do,” he answered, his voice trailing off as he fell back asleep.

In the morning, Rosa fried eggs for the both of them and Gregorio got ready for work.

“Goodbye, amore, I’ll see you tonight after your meeting,” Gregorio said and grinned from the doorway.

Rosa returned the smile and replied. Then he was gone.

For a moment, Rosa closed her eyes. She listened to the wind rustle the planters on the terrace outside. She listened to the overwhelming sound of silence without Gregorio.

Then Rosa opened her eyes. She walked into the kitchen and took two slices of bread out of the cupboard. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a tomato, a chunk of mozzarella cheese, and some basil.

Rosa sliced the cheese and tomato and put them on the bread. She placed a couple of leaves of basil on the tomatoes then she took a bottle and drizzled balsamic vinegar to finish it. Rosa wrapped the sandwich in a linen napkin and put it in her coat pocket. Rosa walked to the door and turned back for a moment. She looked at the kitchen table where Gregorio told her she could no longer go to università. Where Chiara Campo told her she was not a good wife. Where she parted with her books. Then she shut the door behind her.

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THE FAMILY

by Jessica Waters Illustration by Holly Kirkman

Magus the Aquarian had bought his retirement by selling the software company he’d founded in the 80s. It wasn’t an extravagant retirement, he’d tell me, but it was comfortable.

Magus had been his legal name since 1971. First name “Magus.” Second name “the.” Last name “Aquarian.”

Magus came to the convenience store where I worked a couple times a week and bought cans of Campbell’s vegetable soup, and tins of tuna fish, and gallons of distilled water. When Mackie was around, he usually bought a few grams of the “sacred herb” too. Magus had long white hair, old puckered skin, and a bad knee, so I always helped him load the water jugs into his car and let him use the bathroom even though it was supposed to be for employees only. I didn’t think a successful software engineer should get his groceries at a gas station or smoke weed or anything like that, but Magus always laughed at me when I told him so. “If you’ve got money, you shouldn’t go around acting like you’re just some dirty old hippie,” I’d say. Then he’d say, “What’s the point of having money if I can’t act however I like, man?”

On days when the store was quiet, which was most days, he’d stay and talk to me for an hour or more. I’d tease him some and he’d laugh and argue and always call me “man” even though I was a girl. He made up names for me, like Starfire, and Littledove, and Harmony, that I always liked much better than the one on my name-tag. “Hannah” is a

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boring name. I didn’t think a successful software engineer should be friends with a seventeen-year-old gas station employee either, but I couldn’t bring myself to say so.

Sometimes Magus talked about his doctor’s appointments and sometimes he talked about his old software company, but my favorite was always when he would talk about his Family. Back before Magus started making software, and before most anybody knew what software was, he had a Family.

A big Family, capital “F,” back in the 70s—but not anymore.

When he told me about it, it didn’t seem so bad sharing the employee bathroom, since Magus used to share a three-bedroom ranch house with a couple dozen Brothers and Sisters.

Magus’s Family was all about freely loving one another, and making art, and eating health food, and meditating, and some other stuff I didn’t really understand. I guess there were lots of groups like that back then. Magus said the most beautiful girls in Southern California—which was basically the whole world, or what was important of it anyways—were in his Family and that everyone was always smiling. It didn’t matter what you looked like before you joined the Family, Magus said. You became beautiful just by being.

Magus said he had a favorite Brother named Orion the Aquarian, who had a laugh like the August sun because it made you feel warm. Orion would kiss everybody on the lips and he and Magus had a band together. Magus always promised me he’d bring some of their old tapes, but he always forgot. I thanked him and promised him I’d give him some of my tapes, too, if I ever had a band.

The head of the Family was Father. Father was the oldest one, and he’d started the Family. Nobody, not even Magus, knew much about who Father had been before 1970, when he showed up on the streets of San Francisco in a white robe and taught everybody how to love each other freely, and meditate, and stuff. Magus said Father was tall, and strong, and handsome, and always had enough money to support the Family, and always knew the right thing to say when you

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talked to him. Magus said Father was much better than his real dad, and he sounded a lot better than my old man, too, but that didn’t take much.

Magus would lean up against the dirty countertop of the convenience store most all afternoon sometimes, telling me about all his Sisters, and Brothers, and Father, and his whole big Family. There wasn’t much reason for him to be there except to talk to me, since he always bought the same things.

I think by now he owned more Campbell’s Vegetable Soup than any person could ever eat.

I’d always marvel about how big Magus’s Family was, bigger than any family I’d ever heard of before. My family was small, just me and Dad now, and I wasn’t really close with anybody at school: I ate my lunches alone in the bathroom or on the bench outside and spent my afternoons and weekends at the gas station. I liked work better than school, because at work, at least, I got to see Magus and hear him talk about his Family, which was so big I thought you must have always had someone to eat with.

One day I asked Magus if there were any children in the Family. “We were all Father’s Children,” he said, squinting at the soup selection.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “But were there any little kids? Or babies?”

Magus smiled. “Yeah man, there were babies. Thirty-four home births between ‘71 and ‘75.”

“Any of them yours? Little Magus Jr.’s running around?”

“A son,” he said, and even though he was still smiling Magus didn’t look up from the soup can he was holding.

“We didn’t name him Junior though. Named him Rowan.

Like the tree.”

“What’s he like?” I asked.

Magus was quiet for so long I wondered if he was losing his hearing too, but when he spoke it was soft as the Coronado sand. “Beautiful, man,” he said. “He was a beautiful baby.” He looked up, but he didn’t look me in the eyes. “He

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died, though. When he was just little.”

“Oh,” I said.

He came over to the counter and we were quiet while I rang up four cans of Campbell’s Vegetable Soup, and two tins of tuna fish, and a gallon of distilled water. He signed the receipt. First name “Magus.” Second name “the.” Last name “Aquarian.” We stood there for a moment, not looking at each other or anything in particular, and then Magus cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I—?”

“No, not at all,” I said, and got the key out of the cash register drawer. I loaded the groceries in the car while Magus the Aquarian used the employee bathroom. He came out a few minutes later, and I thought he looked older—like an old man, like when he talked about his bad knee or his doctors or his software company. He still smiled and thanked me, and called me Sunflower, but I couldn’t think of anything to say back so I just watched him drive off.

That night I laid in my bed, and I could hear my dad watching TV downstairs like he always did. When I came home from work, he picked his head up like a buffalo, slow and stupid and sad. “Hannah?” he said. When he looked sad, he looked old, and so he looked old most all the time since Mom left. It made my gut twist when he looked at me like that, so I just ignored him and went straight to my room and he didn’t try to stop me. He never knew the right thing to say.

I laid there, and I thought about Magus’s Family, a big Family that all loved each other, not just a dad, and a kid, and nobody else in the world. I thought about Magus’s Father and Orion the Aquarian and I wondered what had happened to them. Magus never told me anything about the Family after ‘76, when he left and went to school to study software.

I wondered what it would be like to have a Family like that and I wondered what it would be like if Magus was my dad and that made me think of Magus’s son, Rowan, who died when he was so little. Rowan the Aquarian. If he was still alive, he’d be older than me, but not by so much. I tried to

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imagine what he would be like, and I thought about that for a long time. I decided to ask Magus more about him the next time he came to the convenience store. I fell asleep not too long after, dreaming of a man with long blonde hair and a laugh like the August sun.

It was almost a week before I saw Magus again and could ask him.

“He died of an ear infection,” he told me, leaning on the countertop. He frowned. “Common antibiotics would’ve fixed it, but the Family didn’t believe in that commercial stuff. Father and Orion they told me if I walked out the door to get a doctor for my boy, they’d make sure I never walked back in again. So—I stayed.”

“Oh,” I said. After a minute, I added: “What happened?”

“I buried my son,” he said. “He was three.”

My face twisted, although I didn’t want it to. Magus must have seen it, because all of the sudden he looked sad again. I wished I hadn’t asked. It wasn’t fair, I wanted to say. Rowan the Aquarian had a Family—Sisters, and Brothers, and a Father, and Magus, too. But in the end, it was still just him and Magus. And in the very end it wasn’t even that. My hands were balled into fists, squeezing too hard, nails cutting halfmoons in my palms.

It was supposed to be Magus’s family too, the ones he must have always eaten with, but they let it happen. A family wasn’t supposed to let bad things happen to you—a father was supposed to protect you. I could see him then, a young man in a white robe with his dead kid in his arms, small as I felt, and all of them around him picking their heads up stupid, and slow, and sad. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say.

“Me too,” said Magus, knowing the same.

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THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN CAME THROUGH

by Kira Compton Illustration by Ben Patterson

Alison was on her way home when she was caught by the 11:42 train.

It was one of those Midwestern monstrosities, longer than long and loaded to full. They only ran in the earliest morning and the latest night, so as to avoid riling up the townspeople with a ten-minute delay to their commute. In her two years of living in that small town by the woods, she’d been fortunate enough to never catch one. That night, her luck had run out. As the light from the first train car illuminated the red and white railroad barriers in front of her, Alison put her car into park and settled in for what would, at best, be ten minutes.

It wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened, she reasoned as she reached for a package of cigarettes. Better tonight, when it was Jackie’s turn to take care of Mom. Better tonight, when she wouldn’t be late for the nurse’s doses and dinner. Alison lit her cigarette and threw the pink lighter back into the cup holder.

The train shot past, rustling the trees of forest around it with its speed. It was going too fast for her to see whoever was driving it. Likely, they were the only living soul on board.

The rest of the cars hooked to the train were those giant cylinders that held oil or chemicals or whatever else needed to be transported in the dead of night. In her mind, Alison saw

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one of them unlatch and roll back, crushing both her and her car. She looked behind her in the rearview mirror. Nothing there but the smoke from her exhaust pipe. Alison threw her car in reverse and backed up, just a bit. Now, she thought disdainfully, if one of them rolls off, I’ll have enough time to think Oh, shit before becoming a smear on the road.

Alison wondered when she had gotten so paranoid.

Maybe it was living in a town so close to the woods. More likely, it was all the movies she’d been seeing, full of cheap action and jump scares. She probably had been watching too much TV lately. Breathing smoke out her open window, Alison decided that tomorrow, she would go to the library and pick up a book. If she had to be stuck here in the hick town she grew up in, she could at least be learning.

Screech!

Alison flinched. It was sharp, like the sound of dull knives scraping against one another in a dark kitchen. The cars on the train were older, and no longer ran smoothly along the tracks. Scrunching her nose in distaste, she flicked on the radio, letting it scan through a few channels before settling on some old local station playing the opening notes of “Hotel California.” It didn’t do much to drown out the train’s noise, but until she finished her cigarette and closed the window, nothing would. Alison took a drag, and the train continued to roll on. The awful screeching did not let up.

Then, underneath the sound of the train and the radio and her own absent thoughts, she heard something else.

Charlie, was the first impossible thought that crawled into her mind. It had sounded just like Charlie, the German Shepard she and Jackie had had as children. It wasn’t Charlie—he’d been put down when she was twelve. Still, as she turned to look in the back seat, some small part of her expected him to be sitting there. It was empty, of course. The noise had come from outside, probably one of those nasty raccoons that liked to hide under her mother’s porch in the summer. Alison tapped the ashes of her cigarette out the

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window. She’d rather it be a raccoon than a skunk. Her car would smell for days if one of those little beasts got scared because of the screeching train.

The almost growl came again. Alison peered closer in her rearview mirror. Her brake lights were shining across the road behind her, but not brightly enough to see into the woods around. If there was something out there, it had decided to stay hidden in the trees.

Alison stopped herself before she could let that thought get too far. This was the Midwest. The largest things that lived in these woods were deer. Still, she didn’t think raccoons could growl loud enough to be heard over both the train and the radio. A couple of the older families had dogs; the big, hulking mean ones that snapped at anything that moved. If one of those had gotten out, maybe hunting for rabbits, and saw her just sitting alone with her open window…

Alison dropped her cigarette on the ground, half-finished, and rolled the window up. She was being paranoid, just like she had been when she’d backed away from the train, but no one was watching. Besides, she reasoned, a woman driving alone could never be too cautious. She kept her eye on the side view mirror warily. Nothing appeared, and the noise did not repeat itself. Alison tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel and turned back to the train. At least now with the window closed, the awful metal noise from the train was slightly dulled. The train showed no signs of being near its end, even as the last notes of “Hotel California” filtered out.

“And that was ‘Hotel California,’ a real classic by—” Alison snapped the radio off more violently than necessary. Around her, the black mass of the forest seemed to press in ever closer. She sometimes forgot about it during the day, but God, she hated these woods. She hated them as a child, and still did now, especially after being dragged away from that other life she had built only to be brought back to this miserable town she’d tried to leave.

She felt a pang of guilt at that thought almost imme-

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diately. Mom hadn’t coerced her back, but had gotten sick.

Alison hadn’t been dragged, but had come back willingly. It wasn’t her mother’s fault she was stuck back in this town. It wasn’t her mother’s fault she was stuck behind a screeching train.

On the road far behind her headlights twinkled into being. Alison’s shoulders relaxed against the back of her seat. Paranoid or not, it would make her feel better not to be caught alone in the woods. The car got closer and closer, briefly illuminating the woods around them. Alison jerked up, staring out the window, eyes widening— The car pulled to a stop behind her, and the woods were washed out in darkness once more. Alison held her hand against her chest, staring widely out at the oppressive night, as though to conjure back what she had almost seen.

Something’s actually out there, she realized slowly, hardly believing the thought even as it came to her. She hadn’t seen anything—she couldn’t have, in the brief seconds the woods had been illuminated—but instinct was a powerful thing.

Something out there had set off warning bells. Something out there did not belong.

At the sound of the squealing train, Alison locked her car doors. Reaching over into her glove box, she drew out a can of unused mace and popped the lid off. She dropped it into her cup holder, then set her foot on the break and put the car into drive. Whatever was out there, it wouldn’t matter for much longer. Once the train was gone, so was she.

Not that the train was showing any signs of being gone.

She thrummed her fingers against the steering wheel, eyes flickering back in forth between her side view mirror and the shrieking train in front of her. The noise, once irritating, now seemed to taunt her: Scared so easily, Alison? There’s a car behind you now. Nowhere to go, Alison.

It doesn’t matter that you’re boxed in. It’s just a dog, she thought to herself, in a voice that she might have used to calm children. Just a stupid dog.

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Screech!

Like the shriek of a paper cutter, the train wheel scraped against the tracks, louder than ever before. Alison glanced at it in disdain before turning back to her mirror.

And there the creature stood, half-hidden by shadow, towering high above the car behind her. It was worse, so much worse than anything her fear-addled mind had supplied. Its yellowed eyes rolled deep in sagging sockets, mad and terrifying and too much, all of it was too much, too sharp, too like a nightmare as it opened its mouth to reveal jagged teeth. Alison was still, frozen with that primal, childlike terror that had made her close the closet door, lie still under the covers, and keep looking straight ahead for fear of what might be lurking around the corner—oh, but the monster hiding in the corner of her eye was there, right there, hiding no longer. Each breath she took was not enough, not enough, too much like a final breath because surely, surely that thing was the end, had always been the end, from the moment she had been born to the moment she had come back to this town to the moment the screeching train had trapped her here with it. It squealed again, that train, but it could have been miles away for all she noticed—the only thing that mattered, that would ever matter, was the razor-edged beast that stood like a phantom in the glow of the brake lights.

It opened its mouth and how, how, could she have ever thought that was a growl? It was a horrific rasp, a shriek, loud enough to be loud against the train. The thing jerked forward, moving with the heart-stopping speed of a predator, and stopped at the other car behind hers. There was a wild scream as the thing ripped the car door from its hinges and ducked inside, its head and arms vanishing from sight. The car door, thrown backwards, smashed against a tree, violently jerking her back into reality.

To the sound of screaming, to the sound of the screeching train, Allison rolled her eyes around, trying to think of something, of anything. Mace would do nothing. Running would

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do nothing. For a moment, she thought she was saved—she could crash her car into the beast—but it was only feet away and too big to comprehend. It would never, never work. She cried out, her fingers white as bone across the steering wheel.

Alison stared in wide-eyed horror as the thing crawled out of the car and rose to full height. A human arm hung out of its mouth, dripping red down its front and onto the road below. The smoke from her exhaust pipe swirled around its legs, swirled up and up so that its mad eyes glowed through it, staring right at her through her rearview mirror. Her heart beat so painfully in her chest that she was sure she would die right then, and if by some miracle she didn’t, she would never sleep, never close her eyes again, for what else could be there in the dark than that thing, that horrid thing soaked in blood and blurred by exhaust smoke? It dropped the arm, and with the teeth of a nightmare monster, grinned.

The end of the train sped past.

Alison slammed on the gas, her car screeching to life and bursting through the red and white barriers on either side of the tracks. The wood splintered across the front of her car, exploding out in opposite directions as she sped away, her eyes still on the grinning monster in her rearview mirror.

The dial on the speedometer moved from 0, to 45, to 70, but she did not slow down—not as she left the forest, not as she passed through town, not as she slipped onto the highway towards the glittering lights of the city, too far away. Alison did not slow down all night.

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BONES IN THE GROUND

by Allison Rassmann Illustration by Stephanie “Ricky” Richards

There was a man who lived in these woods when I was a girl.

No one knew much about him: he had no name, no family, no connections in a town so small that everyone knew each other’s entire lineage. Myths and legends lingered about him, nothing too mysterious but just the right sort to keep the town bustling and give them something to chatter about through the perpetual heat. The kids in town would make up stories to fill in the gaps that we did not know: he was an axe murderer that would kill anyone who went into the woods after dark; he was actually Bigfoot; he was the devil incarnate.

The adults were far more reasonable. He was a loner, they would remind each other over country store counters or sips of peach iced tea. Just that type, you know. A regular Boo Radley. Us kids never really understood that name, but we liked the sound of it and we made it our own. I figure we heard the Boo in that name and clung on to it, picturing a creature that would jump out and surprise you if you got too near. That’s when it clicked for us, how he really must have been a ghost all along. Soon enough, kids all over the valley knew about the Ghostman that lived in the woods by Chickasaw Creek.

That summer before the fourth grade was the one I really started exploring the woods. Before then I had always tagged along with my two older brothers, joining in whatever games they and their friends had made up, but that was the summer

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they suddenly decided they were too old to have their little sister following them around everywhere. Left alone, I began to spend most of my time at home, where my mother seemed to spend most of her time glaring at me.

“Why don’t you go outside and play with some of your own friends?” Ma often asked, growing less and less patient as time went on.

I avoided her eye as much as possible as I explained, “I don’t got friends. I can’t ever think of anything to say to them, and then I get scared and start talking too much. They all think I’m weird for it.”

“Well, you just get out there and show them there’s nothing weird about you,” she insisted. This happened nearly every day until I started to go out to the woods to be alone.

Nothing scared me more than the idea of other people, but the woods helped.

Deep in the forest, I always liked the creek the best. It was slow, but deep enough that you could go swimming in some parts in the summertime. Wildlife lived on its banks too: anything from frogs to snapping turtles to long-billed herons and their eggs. The days were long and I never did want to go home to face my mother’s disappointment, so I made a game of following the river as far as it would lead me. Every day starting at the break of dawn I would walk near its bank and allow the babbling water to be a better instructor than a school ever could be.

It was on one such day, deep in the forest with nothing around but trees and the ripple of the river in the distance, that I found the door and, with it, the Ghostman.

It was a metal trapdoor in the ground, almost covered by fallen leaves. I nearly fell on top of it after stumbling over a small stone. Only with much prying did the trapdoor yield to my petite fingers, revealing nothing but an impenetrable darkness. As impulsive as any child, I descended.

The way down was slightly damp and smelled of wet earth. I felt my way down six concrete steps before my feet

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landed on a packed earth floor. Even when my eyes adjusted to the light, I could not see anything besides the concrete walls that made up the large room. The air was stifling.

I have never been afraid of many things. A recklessness like mine does away with most fears, and I’ve always figured I could face whatever came my way. That empty room remains one of the only things I’ve truly feared. There was a primal urge welling up inside me: the sudden panic of feeling trapped under the ground, where it was deep and dark and where no one would find me. My heart pounded like I was facing death itself as I ran back up the steps.

When I reached the surface, I stood gasping for air as if I had been denied it for hours. I was so preoccupied I almost didn’t notice the man watching me from a distance. It was the shotgun in his hands, aimed right at me, that made me turn.

“I’m tired of all you damn kids stomping around the woods and throwing rocks at everything you see!” he said. I shied away from the way he waved around his shotgun. Strangely enough, this man didn’t even scare me as much as that room did. The darkness under the ground was something visceral and unrelenting, but a man could be talked to reason. It was this thought that gave me the courage to speak.

“But I didn’t throw rocks,” I pointed out. “The boys in town, they like to throw rocks. They used to like throwing them at Mr. Harrison’s store, but they got yelled at by the sheriff to stop. Now they mostly just throw ‘em at birds.” He continued to glare, so I quickened my speech. “But I don’t like doing stuff like that. I just wanted to explore.”

I suppose something in me knew that the longer I kept talking, the longer I could put off being shot.

“Who are you?” asked the Ghostman glaring. The sentence drifted stupidly in the air as I stared at him. He had to demand it again, even more fiercely, to get a proper answer out of me.

“My name’s June and I live in the yellow house on Spit-

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brook Road, right on the edge of town thataway,” I said, pointing in the general direction of my home. Fear prompted me to blabber further. It’s a habit I picked up early, and one I still have today. “I live there with my ma and my two older brothers, but they’re not here. My brothers say they’re too big to be playing with me, and my ma says ladies shouldn’t be playing in the woods, so she doesn’t know I’m out here.”

“Get off my property,” he retorted. Any smarter child would have turned and fled the instant they were given the opportunity. But I was always a slow child, and responded with a slow answer: “Is—this your property? The woods?”

He clearly was not impressed. “Get out of here, kid,” he ordered, though he faltered when he saw the way I tugged at my paisley dress.

“I like your room down there,” I told him. It was only half a lie. “It’s nice and cold. It’ll make a good place to live during the summer. Are you gonna live down there? It’ll be swell. But it needs some furniture first. Maybe a cupboard for snacks.” Words fell from my mouth like apples from a tree.

The more I talked, the more fearless I became. I suppose my chatter startled him more than anything, for by this point he had lowered his rifle. Secretly I don’t think he would have shot me even if he wanted to.

I remember him mumbling his response like he didn’t know quite how to talk to a person, let alone a child. Something about how it wasn’t finished but it was all his. His grey-streaked beard quivered with every word.

“I’d be happy to help,” I supplied, “especially with the snack cupboard. I like making things out of wood. Last summer I built two whole birdhouses.”

The Ghostman narrowed his dark eyes at me, glanced at the stone by my feet, then slung the shotgun over his shoulder. To this day I’ll never know if he did it because he thought he might want me there, or if he had just succumbed to the fact that by this point I wasn’t going away. I like to

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think that somewhere in that lockbox heart of his he knew that I was just as lonely as he was.

“I’m not gonna have you working with wood. Too dangerous for little girls.” He saw the pout on my face, and his shoulders slumped. “Run around and scoop up some of the sticks lying around, will you? We’ll be needing them to build pit traps for the animals.”

An hour passed in near silence as we worked. I would pick up a bundle of sticks, he would point me to a tree to place them under, and the work would continue. When the clearing was free of sticks and I was exhausted, I plopped down under a tree and tried again at conversation.

“Are you really the Ghostman?” I asked. He didn’t look like a ghost, it occurred to me. He was large and hunched over from years of labor he hadn’t trusted to anyone but himself. His eyes were dark and clear, though they didn’t meet mine often. The only part of him that looked remotely ghostlike was the white stubble on his face, which he kept pausing to rub with his dirty fingers until it was speckled brown. It reminded me of when my pet rabbit would get all covered in dirt after playing in a field all day.

He paused and straightened up from the hole he had been digging. “The Ghostman. So that’s what they’ve been calling me,” he mused. Then he turned to me. “Why the hell’ve they been calling me the Ghostman?”

“Because you’re a ghost.”

For the first time and one of the only times, he laughed.

It was a cannonball laugh, straight from his gut. I liked it.

“But you’re not a ghost!” I hastily corrected. “You’re not a ghost at all.”

He considered this. “No, I like that name. I’d rather be a ghost than nothing at all. Besides, it’s scary enough to keep the kids away.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my hands. “But—you must have a

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real name. Can I know? Now that we’re friends?”

“We aren’t friends, don’t make that mistake. You talk like that around town, about you being friends with an old man like me, and people will start getting the wrong idea. No, Ghostman suits me just fine. You just keep on calling me that, Miss June.”

I smiled to myself. It was the first time anyone had ever called me miss.

You’d think that one afternoon with the elusive Ghostman would scare me out of those woods entirely, but it didn’t. It had quite the opposite effect. Every afternoon I could get away with I’d retreat into the woods and help him with a little more of whatever needed to be done. He never grew less gruff or less uncomfortable around me. I don’t think he knew how to deal with children: his large, dirty fingers were never meant to work with a child’s, and the etiquette of speaking to another human being had been lost years before. But I think he wanted to know. He was not unkind.

After a few days of working with him, he told me what exactly he was doing. The world was going to come to an end, he proclaimed, and that end would be someday soon. That’s why he had to prepare: back in town people didn’t understand or take him seriously when death was staring them in the face. It was easier out here by himself, where, when the end finally did come, he would have a safe place to live out the rest of his days.

I mostly came because I liked being useful and I liked hearing his stories. As the days passed he gradually opened up, told me more about the world’s end and his plans to survive. The shelter, too, thrived underneath our diligent touch.

He kept saying that one day soon he would get a generator to pump in real electricity for the place, but until then we worked by the light of an oil lamp he brought down with him every day. We worked for thoroughness and we worked for speed. Though it may have looked like we had all the

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time in the world, he would often tell me, we only really had a few months to do all the hard work. By the time spring came around the creek would overflow and risk flooding the shelter out with it. I asked him if he was so concerned about it flooding, then why didn’t he move it?

He responded by pointing to the stone. She was there, he said, and he had to stay with her. The shelter would not move.

The Ghostman never did make up his mind on how the world was going to end. Each day came with a new prophecy that he would preach to me with the diligence of a messiah turned pariah. On many occasions he described to me in vivid detail how any day now a meteor would plow into Earth, leaving nothing but dust and debris, and how it was just a miracle it hadn’t happened sooner. Some days he was convinced that the dead would rise from their graves, flesh dripping and mud oozing from their cracked lips, seeking vengeance on those who had forgotten them. My favorite stories were always those of the aliens lurking just outside of the stratosphere, waiting for the right moment to pounce with ray-guns blazing.

He warned me of the government plots for chemical warfare and totalitarian regimes. He rehearsed entire narratives on drought and famine. Once he told me about the nuclear missiles the government had locked away in their arsenal, taller than the trees that surrounded us, and how they would one day launch into the sky and obliterate every one of us in a second-long display of irradiated light. I thought about it before telling him that I wouldn’t like that sort of death. It would mean that I would never have the time to say goodbye to the people I loved. He hesitated, then he nodded slowly, and he agreed.

I once asked him about the stone. To my surprise he gave me a hard, lingering look before responding. Her name was Emma, he said, and she died far too young.

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“A good thing she died when she did, though,” he said, though his eyes were on the stone, not me. “The world started falling apart the day she left.” I asked him what he meant, but he did not respond.

Working with the Ghostman never felt like I was doing work at all. Work to me was sitting in a classroom copying numbers from a chalkboard, or going up to the front of the class to give a speech on Abraham Lincoln. The Ghostman’s work was tough, especially for someone as young as me, but there was an immense satisfaction in seeing something I built come to life.

My mother didn’t feel the same way.

“She yelled at me again yesterday ’cause I came back all wet from the river,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bunker door while watching the Ghostman chop wood nearby. He still hadn’t relented with his rule that woodwork would be too dangerous for me; often he would make me sit and wait while he did the more intensive work, like felling trees or testing traps. I didn’t mind.

“So?” the Ghostman asked between axe swings. “Wasn’t your fault. You were busy helping me catch fish. Tasty fish, too.”

I shrugged, swinging my legs absently. “She wouldn’t care about that even if I told her,” I explained. “She’d just say it wasn’t ladylike.”

The Ghostman paused to swipe the sweat from his brow before saying, “That woman oughta be grateful you’re learning a couple a’ good life lessons. When that apocalypse comes you’ll be able to fend for yourself better than a coyote in a rabbit warren.”

“I know,” I sighed. “She’s just scared for me. The kids at school don’t like me because they all think I’m weird. She thinks that being ladylike will help me make more friends, but that isn’t true. Just last week I tried to play with some other kids at the park. I was the perfect lady and I still

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couldn’t think of nothing to say to them, so they just ignored me until I went away.”

The Ghostman’s axe swings slowed, then stopped as he listened to me. There was something in his eyes that I didn’t recognize then, a sort of empathy, a kindred feeling of loneliness. He set the axe down. “C’mon over here, now,” he beckoned to me, picking up some of the wood pieces he had chopped, “and bring that bucket of nails with you.”

“Why?” I was already on my feet.

“We’re gonna make a snack cabinet.”

By the end of the day it stood tall and proud, and we filled it with acorns and leaves until we could find enough berries to stuff it with. After all that work I was too tired and proud to feel upset, and my mother was too exasperated to ask why I was covered in paint.

The next month that passed was one of heat and sunshine.

“Ghostman!” I called, my picnic basket bouncing against my leg as I ran. He looked up from his work immediately, and for a moment I thought I saw him smile. Two months into the summer and we were still working as hard as ever, but we had come to a point where I could finally call us friends.

“Whoa, girl,” he said, holding out an arm to stop me, “slow down there. Any faster and you’ll dive straight into one of those pits.”

I beamed.

The afternoons had been growing hotter and hotter, so we had made a habit of eating lunch together in the cool shelter under the ground. I found that the more time I spent down there, the more comfortable I became with the dark, cramped room. It didn’t seem as scary when the Ghostman was nearby. We ate by the light of an oil lamp that cast flickering shadows on the walls and the skeletons of half-finished furniture we were still building.

That day we ate sandwiches my mother had prepared (I had said I was going on a picnic with my doll), and apples

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and cookies from the plate our neighbor Constance had brought us. The Ghostman was always grateful for the food I brought. He liked to live off the land, but no matter how hospitable the forest was, finding food was always a bit of a struggle.

“Why don’t you just come to town and buy things?” I asked him as he devoured his apple.

He gave me an odd look and grunted a dismissive sound.

“I’m never going back there, not if my life depends on it.

They all think I’m crazy there. Besides, I have too many bad memories.”

“Why?” I set my sandwich down and looked him in the eye.

He avoided my eyes, but he couldn’t avoid the silence. By now he knew what a persistent child I was. So he sighed and said, “My wife and I moved to this town when we were first married. She had grown up here and knew most everyone, but I didn’t know a soul. Didn’t want to, neither. They’re all uppity folks who like to stick their noses where they don’t belong, and I mostly wanted to keep to myself.

“But then Emma came along, the prettiest baby girl you ever did see. Everyone loved her the moment they laid eyes on her, including me. And things were good for a while, up until she was about nine years old. One day she was fine, the next she wasn’t. They said they did everything they could, but I don’t believe ’em.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath to compose himself before continuing. “Well, so, I took her out here where I could take care of her, where she couldn’t get hurt by no one.

The wife and I didn’t last long after that. Only good thing that came out of it was I learned the truth of things: there’s no way the world can keep on living without Emma, not if I barely can. Any day now the whole world’s gonna fall to pieces, and the best thing I can do is build this bunker here to prepare for when it does. Someone’s gotta stay here and take care of her.”

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That was the last thing the Ghostman said before falling into a silence that lasted all day. For once, I had no words for him. Yet I was determined that wouldn’t be the last said of her.

Emma became my favorite topic of conversation.

“Does your wife ever come visit Emma?”

“Nope. Too scared, too afraid of people talkin’.”

“What did Emma look like?”

“She looked a lot like you, though she was taller and her eyes were blue. Her smile was just like yours, all full of teeth and sunshine.”

“Is she really buried here?”

Whenever we descended into a period of silence I would do my best to fill it with questions. Sometimes I would even talk to the stone as if it could speak back. I never saw the way the Ghostman tensed with every word.

One day I asked him what she wore. I had been trying to draw her for the past week but I had no appearance to base her off of. He sighed and said that she wore her hair in braids and liked dresses with long skirts so that they could spread like the full moon when she twirled. Her favorite was the pink dress her mother had made for her.

I drew her like that, with blue eyes and a pink dress and a smile full of teeth and sunshine. But when I showed it to him, it wasn’t enough to bring a smile to him. Nothing was.

The idea came to me in our kitchen, with my mother standing straight-backed over the frying pan tending to breakfast. I had spent all morning summoning up the courage to ask my mother what I wanted to and had now spent almost an hour seated behind her at our bar stool counter, twirling sticky strawberry stems in my fingers. In those days, the Ghostman had all but enveloped my thoughts. How could I possibly reach a man whose heart was still buried with the bones of a girl I did not know? How could I make a ghost

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smile?

“Ma? Can you make me a dress?” I asked the woman tending to the stove. The words slipped almost before I knew it. Ma looked back at me dubiously, so I clarified, “A pretty one. With a real long skirt, too.”

“Now, what do you need a dress for, girl?” Ma scoffed as she turned back to the bacon on the stove. “All you do is play in the woods and get dirty all day. Any dress would be lucky to last ten minutes with you. Soon’s you get out of those woods and get some friends, then we’ll talk.”

I bit my tongue. I wanted to tell her that I did have a friend—one who lived in the woods, thank you very much— and that this dress would help him in what I was sure was his time of need. But she wouldn’t understand. Instead, I did what I had to and told her what I knew would make her happy. “But I am making friends, Ma. Michelle from my class is having a birthday party next week, and I’m invited.

That’s why I need the dress.”

My mother’s demeanor changed immediately. You could see the way she glowed with pride as she turned to face me.

“June, honey! You should have told me sooner!” she cried.

I shrugged. Her eyes sparkled like the kitchen floor she attended to daily as she spoke. “I’m so proud of you. See, it’s not hard to make friends if you just put yourself out there.”

She tottered over and gave me a kiss on the forehead. I ducked my head. “Of course I’ll make you the dress. I’ll have it finished by Friday so we’ll have some extra time to make sure it fits right.”

I mumbled my guilty thanks. She smiled and slid another piece of bacon onto my plate.

The dress was finished by Sunday afternoon. My mother was so excited about the prospect of me going to a party that she did my hair in twin braids and even let me go directly after church instead of staying for our usual social. I snuck out to the woods, determined to make a lonely friend happy.

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I called him up from his shelter and I smiled at him, then spun and made my skirt full. There was no smile on his face.

There was only gradual horror as I danced next to Emma’s stone.

“What the hell are you doing, girl?” he demanded of me. I slowly stopped spinning, taken aback by his tone. His hands were shaking with fury.

“I’m like Emma now, see?” I told him, tugging on the hem of my new dress for emphasis. His silence told me more than words could ever say. In my desperation, I started to ramble.

“You’re out here all alone all the time, and I know what it’s like to be lonely, but at least I have my Ma and my brothers back at home to keep me company. All you have is Emma.

So I figured I’d dress up like her, and maybe that’d—” The Ghostman, who had tried for weeks to make himself small for me, now whirled on me in all his hugeness.

“You don’t know anything about her!” he bellowed. “You might look like my Emma, but you’re a damned fool if you ever think you could ever do her a lick of justice. I want you to leave this place and don’t you come back, you hear? The world is falling to pieces, the river’s about to overflow, Saint Gabriel’s blowing his horn, and you aren’t my Emma!”

There was no question in his voice. I stood and I trembled; then, before the tears could come, I ran. And I did not come back.

I never meant to leave the Ghostman behind for good.

Somehow, though, I grew to face his name with more fear than the other neighborhood kids who still whispered his name like the Boogeyman. Then I grew up, as all children do. First there was school, then college and work. Life caught up to me.

I left town the first chance I got after high school, like most kids dream of doing around that age. My brothers had left years before on their own time, meaning that there was nothing left for me there once my time came. Away from

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town, I was free from my mother’s expectations, which never dwindled, and found a new hometown where I could make a renewed effort to find friends and somebody to spend my life with.

As the years passed the Ghostman faded to the back of my mind, only drifting occasionally to the surface like the phantom in his name. Some days I was convinced that he was a false memory, maybe something I had read in a book or seen in a movie that invaded my mind and twisted childhood summer days. After all, what sort of man lives out in the woods in a bomb shelter?

It was only after ten whole years that I returned to my hometown for a funeral of a family friend. I was surprised at how many people I recognized, but even more surprised by the amount that did not recognize me. It was like the town had been trapped in space all that time, even when I had phased out of it. That happens in small towns: people remain stuck, settled down with a comfortable case of eunni like they never once had dreams bigger than their front porch.

The men and women who were once children with me now had children of their own, who would grow up and inherit the houses that their parents and grandparents once had, just like all the generations before them.

They didn’t have room for a person like me. Even while I was there, I had been too distant from all of them for them to really know the girl who had spent all her time alone in the woods. And then, after high school, I’d gone too far away to remain in contact with anyone. There was always a pang of remorse when I saw the obviously fake smile plastered on to their faces, the visible struggle in their eyes as they tried in vain to remember a name. “It’s June,” I would remind them, shaking their hand and trying to smile. “Marilyn’s daughter.

We went to school together.” I spent my entire visit trying to pretend I didn’t care.

Because the wake and funeral were a day apart, I had some time to myself. The last thing I wanted to do was try to re-

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connect with more people, so I tried to explore the town as if it were my first time seeing everything. Try as I may to make it an adventure, every house and school and country store was familiar, right down to the rocks in the road. Halfway through the week the Ghostman drifted into my mind again.

I had almost pushed him off as part of my overactive childish imagination again. But then, on my last night in town, I thought to ask the bartender about him. The restaurant where he worked was a place I remembered seeing all my life, with the same name and the same pleasant owner, walls made of wood and floors covered by a dusty and faded carpet.

I spent most of my evening eating whilst making eye contact with the moose head tacked glumly on the wall before I had the courage to ask my question.

“Excuse me, sir?” I waved him down. “You ever heard of a man around these parts called the Ghostman? He lived in the woods down by the creek.”

“Ghostman?” the bartender replied, a confused note to his drawl. “Now, I’ve never heard of a Ghostman, but there was someone living in the woods a while back. Just a lonely old guy. They say he died of a stroke, a heart attack—something or another, one of those things that might’ve been stopped if he got help in time. It was hard to tell, though. The doctor says he was dead near a week after they found him, from the way he was starting to decay. Said he was shut up under the ground in some kind of bomb shelter. They only found him at all because when the creek overflowed it flooded the shelter and pushed his body out.”

I didn’t know what I wanted to hear, but that wasn’t it.

With a lump in my throat I thanked the bartender and paid for my meal, then grabbed my jacket and left. Even if he knew more to the story, I didn’t want to hear it.

I didn’t need directions to find my way through the forest again. The path was engraved into my mind from hours spent walking, a memory I thought to be a dream. At the

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edge of the woods I found a large rock and hefted it up into my arms, then resumed my walk. Fifteen minutes in and I spotted the clearing: the inconsolable river, several broken animal traps, a now boarded up door in the ground and a small, unremarkable stone.

I approached with my arms aching from the weight of the rock. Admittedly along the way I thought about getting a proper headstone, but somehow that didn’t feel like it would be something he would’ve wanted. Nothing from the town itself would do, either. He hated them all in life, and the memory of his stubbornness tipped me off that he probably still wouldn’t forgive them in death. This one, half covered in lichen and chafing my arms raw with its rough edges, was wholly unexceptional. It was perfect.

With a deep exhale I sat the stone next to Emma’s, small and big fitting together comfortably. I had no body to bury, but that didn’t matter much. I stayed there with them a long time, the three of us engulfed in a silence broken only by the river. I thought about saying some sort of apology, but knew he wouldn’t forgive me if I did.

My visit drew to a close without event and I left home, leaving the small town with its dust and frozen clocks behind.

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