~ Dancing Ladies ~

by

Marilyn Gardiner

Max sat in bed, clutching his clown pillow, with tears sliding down his cheeks. His arms strained forward as she rounded the corner into his room. “Mommie…”

Backed into a corner, bristling as if confronting an attacking mastiff, teeth bared, Babe barked hysterically.

Kate folded herself on the bed beside Max and rocked him back and forth. “Sh-h-h. It’s all right. I’m here. Sh-h-h. Babe! Hush!”

Max buried his head in her neck and gripped her in a stranglehold. “I want my… light,” he sobbed. “Can I… please… have my light?”

Only then did Kate notice that Max’s little baseball player lamp, always plugged into the baseboard socket, no longer gleamed in the night. Light from the hall way filtered in the door, but the little ceramic and glass baseball guy lay on the floor.

Babe had never stopped barking. The ruff of hair down his spine stood on end and he was stiff-legged, staring fixedly at something she couldn’t see.

“Babe! Stop it! It’s okay.” Reluctantly, the dog grumbled and with a punctuating yip, sank back on his haunches.

Max had both arms wrapped tight around Kate’s neck, but with one hand she groped for the bedside lamp and flipped the switch. “There, is that better?”

He nodded weakly. “Can I sleep with you? I don’t want to stay in here.”

Max hadn’t slept with her in years. What in the world? True, she could hear a storm building in the west. Thunder rumbled distantly and lightning lit the windows, but it wasn’t yet overhead. And, anyway, Max had never been afraid of storms. Why now? What was different?

“Max, it was only a bad dream, and it’s over now. Everything is fine.” She tried to hold him away from her, but he clutched her even tighter.

“You smell better than…”

Kate went cold. “Better than what? Who?”

“Her.”

“Does she have a name?” And with fear tightening her insides, “What was that about a smell?”

“She smells like flowers, but I like the way you smell better.”

“Who, honey? Tell me who you’re talking about.” Flowers. He’d said flowers!

“I can’t.” The tears started all over again and he fumbled blindly for Lambie beside him on the bed. “It’s a secret. I can’t.”

Kate pulled him into her lap. “Max. This is important. There are times when it’s best not to keep a secret from someone who can help. I want you to tell me who you saw.”

No answer.

“Who did you smell?”

No answer.

Kate closed her eyes. The ground here was a bit boggy, so she spoke carefully. “It is somebody I know?”

A slow nod, his face still buried in her chest, Lambie hugged between them.

“Is it someone we see often?”

Max’s head shook an emphatic no.

“Is it a woman?” He had, after all, said “she.”

Max’s body didn’t move. He seemed to be holding his breath.

“Aunt Bree?” Of course, it wouldn’t be Bree, but…

Again, a negative shake.

“Ruby June or Pearly June?”

This time a small expulsion of breath before he said, “No.”

It’s time. All or nothing. “Aunt Leah?”

She felt him tense against her. No answer.

“Max, I think Aunt Leah has been visiting you. Am I right?”

“I didn’t tell you. I didn’t!”

“No, you didn’t tell me anything. I guessed.”

“She said it was a joke,” he sniffled, “but it isn’t funny any more.”

“I can see that. I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

Leah, you snake! If you have been terrorizing my child, I’ll… What? What could she do? If Leah weren’t already dead, she’d strangle her herself. Frightening babies. That was low!

Rain came then, slashing against the window and pounding on the roof. A crash of thunder and Max’s body pressing even closer to hers, decided her. “Come on into my bedroom. We’ll ride out the storm together.”

Babe trailed them nervously as she carried Max awkwardly down the hall to her bedroom. A sturdy seven year old with gangly legs wasn’t the easiest thing to manage on her hip, but as distraught as he was, she wasn’t going to ask him to walk. Pulling a cuddly, cotton afghan from the back of the chair, she kicked back in the recliner by the bed and tucked them both in tight. Babe lay down squarely under her feet. He was shivering.

“Now, I want to know more about Aunt Leah.”

When there was no response, she came at it from another angle. “Let me tell you about us when we were small.”

Kate spoke softly into his ear, as if confiding something special. “She was so pretty. The prettiest little girl you ever saw. And, when we were growing up, she was always pulling silly stunts. She loved, more than anything, to startle people. To scare them. Well, primarily me, and if I didn’t get frightened at one thing she’d dream up something else until I did. Now, today, when I’m all grown up, I can remember those times and laugh, because there wasn’t any danger involved. Leah would never have really hurt me. And I also know,” God help me, please don’t let me be telling a bald-faced lie, “that she would never, never hurt you. If she were here, she’d love you to pieces, Max. My guess is that she’s somehow playing more silly jokes. But I can’t help you until I know what’s going on.”

He hiccupped softly. “She comes in the night, sometimes, and tells me things.”

“Tells you things? Like what?”

“Like she doesn’t like you hiding the painting of you both in the closet. She wants it back on the wall.”

“Is that all?”

“I’m not supposed to take all the pictures in the camera Lionel’s dad gave me. She doesn’t want them developed. She says you won’t like it.”

Kate frowned into the top of Max’s head. “Why won’t I like it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Is there more?”

“Well, she doesn’t much like Cass.”

Kate strove for an even tone. The problem was that once Leah had liked Cass too much. She said, “That’s a lot of things she doesn’t like.”

“She likes me. And she likes you a lot. But she wants you to do something and you won’t do it.”

“Oh yeah? What does she want me to do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t get it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can’t understand it.”

“Does she talk to you, Max? Out loud?”

“I can’t hear what she says, but in my head I know. It’s weird.”

Oh God, this was worse than she’d thought. “Is that scary for you?”

“N-no. Sometimes she’s funny. Like your bra-thing in the coffee cup. We laughed ‘cause you couldn’t make out how it got there. You looked funny. That was a joke. And the car horn. You and Cass were running around…” His voice trailed away.

“I didn’t think it was terribly funny, but I can see that you might.”

“But then she got mad about the painting in the closet. She thought you’d fix it and hang it up again and you didn’t.”

“I wish you’d have told me about this a long time ago, Max.”

“She said…” He hesitated, then blurted, “I couldn’t! She said it was a secret.”

Kate swallowed what felt to be a stone in her throat. “Sometimes secrets aren’t fun. They’re a burden. I wish she hadn’t said that.”

Outside, the wind had picked up. Leaves and twigs were being flung at the window. Wind howled around the eaves and seemed, almost, to be trying to get in around the window. If Leah had anything to do with the weather, she was probably responsible for all the rain recently and the storm pounding now at the windows.

But what kind of phenomenon was going on, anyway? Talking to Max “in his head!” Kate had never heard of such a thing. Was she wrong, after all, and they were in danger in spite of her conviction that Leah wouldn’t harm them? She needed to talk to someone. Was there some kind of organization that dealt with the supernatural? Some resource she could tap for information about paranormal activity?

There were, she knew, gauges that registered all sorts of things. Magnetic fields, temperature changes, electromagnetic pollution, disturbances of electric fields. There were people who specialized in all kinds of physical manifestations of the spirits.

Kate shuddered, hoping with all her heart she wasn’t going to have to resort to something like that. Mediums. God forbid, seances! Ghost busters!

She buried her nose in Max’s hair. He smelled of soap and talc and little boy, and was absolutely the dearest thing in all the world. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, let anything happen to him. Exorcists? No, she didn’t want to go that far. No mediums either. Surely, for the moment anyway, they were safe. That had to be enough for now.

Max yawned hugely and Kate settled him more firmly in her arm. “Go to sleep. I’ve got you. Nothing bad will happen. No more dreams.”

Max’s eyes drifted closed. “You won’t leave me, will you? Put me back in my bed?”

“No, we’ll sleep together in my bed, and when you wake up it will be morning.”

He sighed deeply and was asleep in minutes.

Kate sat in the darkness wondering if she could ever find it in her heart to forgive Leah for frightening Max. Although to be fair, until tonight Max hadn’t seem traumatized by Leah’s appearances. Not the way Kate would have expected, anyway.

And the nightlight. Did Leah take it out of the socket and lay it on the floor? Or had Babe maybe knocked it out when he became so excited? But Babe had been on the other side of the room looking at something. Something that wasn’t there. Wasn’t visible, anyway. Was it remotely possible, like she was beginning to be convinced, that Leah was really and truly walking and talking on the earth? She’d never before believed in paranormal happenings. Things that couldn’t be explained by the natural laws of the universe. But she hadn’t imagined her bra in the coffee cup. Cass was here when, impossible or not, the car horn went blew. And, again, when the portrait crashed to the floor in what appeared to be protest of Cass kissing Kate. And now Max was involved. Her heart hardened.

“Talk to me, Leah. Not Max,” she said fiercely, but softly enough not to wake the sleeping boy. “If you have a problem, deal with me, not a child.”

Silence.