There is a stillness within them.
The golden wood panels
lined with framed faces of the past. 
The minutes are not rushed, 
they creep 

and crawl along the shag,
rusted orange and worn flat, telling tales
of icy boots and sleeping babies,
holding on to mountain memories
like soot stuck to the hearthstones.  

The curtains are smoke-stained 
and left open, letting the world flow in
or out depending on the season,
I am in.

There is solace in the thin, sweet air,
serenity in porous earth 
under stilted cabin walls,
here, tucked in Yuhaaviat, 
land of the People of the Pines.


*

Gather up my bones
and build a house, 
use my ribs for a white picket fence.
Let them shelter someone else.

Harvest my organs 
one at a time;
my fatty brain and black lungs
are sure to fill the empty shelves.

I only ask to leave behind
my octopus-shaped heart,
sloped and swollen, 
from years of his absence.

Bury it deep, 
under a seaside redwood canopy
engulfed by ocean mist. 
He knows to find me there.


*

Tonight we are twin sisters,
the sky and me, 
lying in beds under thick clouds.
We mirror each other’s grey faces 
in unwashed windows,
reflecting truth that we are one in the same.
Our bodies a vacuum, containing a cosmic void
of infinite size, constantly stretching,
moving further from the nearest guiding light.
I see you, my sister,
and I am reminded why humans evolved
to sleep through the murky midnight hours:
not to replenish bodily stores,
and not to reset the mind,
but to ignore the silent sonata 
of our own dark matter.


*

1.	Sunrise greetings, good night wishes
2.	A firm grip on the base of my neck 
3.	See-you-laters
4.	Belly aches from giggle fits 
5.	Soup
6.	Lingering gaze, unbroken when matched
7.	Taking some of the weight I won’t admit exists
8.	Late night log stacking in fireplaces
9.	The plateau
10.	Cool glass of water on the nightstand
11.	Finding faces of me in lyrical refrains 
12.	Enduring the winter for spring is promised


*

I see the way you look at me
and how the light leaves your eyes,
making me a shadow on the wall, 
a silhouette of something that once was. 
Am I just a ghost, 
haunting your every waking moment? 
I whistle past the graveyard 
and hope you can hear my love. 

Look once past light
my shadow on the eyes
your you my me look 
something waking hope hear me
every ghost leaves the way 
the moment just was silhouette just that
love haunting a past moment 
me at you just look past.

See look hope hear love
making waking something haunting 
shadow light leave 
me me you you
just was am whistle me 
I of something that way moment 
leaves on the graveyard hope
ghost eyes you I something.

I hope that you light the way,
past the eyes on the ghost wall 
and hear my shadow whistle,
and look at me. Waking on the graveyard, 
just that moment, I see you, once,
every silhouette of love,
something haunting me, 
a moment that leaves.


*

        The faint patter of an early spring rain is the only sound in this tiny second-story hospital room. Emily’s face is as pasty white as the sanitary paper covering the exam table, her hair a knotted, pitch-black mess of unkempt curls in stark contrast. Her eyes are proof of why I had to drag her here: the broken blood vessels around her chocolate irises, and bruise-like bags underneath make it obvious that she’s not sleeping. She’s nervous; her hands are shaky as she fidgets with the raw edge of her sleeve cuff. There’s a soft rapping on the door, and it might as well have been an atom bomb going off by the way Emily nearly leaps out of her skin.

	“Emily? I’m Doctor Fischer,” the small woman’s voice is firm and commanding of authority as she closes the door behind her. “What brings you in today?”

	“She can’t sleep,” I say.

	“And you are?” the doctor retorts. 

        Emily eyes me blankly, swinging her dangling feet back and forth like a child waiting to be excused from the principal’s office. 

        “I’m her husband. She hasn’t slept in four days.” The bitter smell of antiseptic stings in my nose. The quicker we get this over with, the better. 

	Doctor Fischer reaches for a penlight in her coat pocket. “Why aren’t you sleeping, Emily? Look up at me, please,” she sounds concerned as she tries to dilate Emily’s pupils. “Are you having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep?” 

        “She’s just not sleeping, at all. She’s afraid to fall asleep. I’ll catch her nodding out, but then she jerks herself awake and busies herself to stay that way. It keeps me up all night long.” 

        “Afraid of what, exactly?” she listens to Emily’s heartbeat through the stethoscope hanging from her ears. 

        “She’s convinced someone else is in the room. I keep telling her it’s just a nightmare and that it’s not real, but she’s terrified. I can’t shake any sense into her, and she refuses to be left alone.” The last bit isn’t a new symptom, Emily hasn’t slept alone since she was twelve. 

        The doctor puts her tools away and writes something down in a folder on the counter. “Normally nightmares are more prevalent in childhood. But they can become an issue in adulthood if someone has experienced some sort of trauma,” she turns her attention back to Emily, instead of me. “Has anything happened recently to cause these nightmares?” 

        Emily hesitates. “When I was a kid, there was—”  

        “Recently, we had a home invasion,” I say, bringing the conversation back to relevance. “No one got hurt, but the guy must have climbed in through our bedroom window. Emily was sleeping and I . . . well, I wasn’t there. I was still at work.” Which is technically true. Except I wasn’t working anymore, I was having a few beers with the new foreman on a jobsite. He didn’t want to go home to his needy wife yet, and frankly, neither did I. Falling asleep in the cab of my truck was clearly a mistake. “He scared her, and it really spooked him because he thought the house was empty, so he took off before he could steal anything.”

	“Kevin, that’s not what happ—” Emily interrupts.

        “I understand it was unsettling for her. But I’ve spent the last week trying to make up for it and make her feel safe—” 

        “Maybe she will believe me—"

        “I keep a baseball bat under the bed now, and I even installed indoor security cameras for Christ’s sake. She’s losing her mind!”

        The doctor throws me a look of warning, as if I’m pressing some big red buttons that say, “don’t push”. I pedal back a bit. I need her on my side.

         “Listen, someone needs to be rational here,” I say, “it’s dangerous for her health to not be sleeping. I don’t want her to hurt herself somehow and I’m going to lose my job if I have to stay home and watch over her every second of the day too. I mean, just look at her.”

        Doctor Fischer looks back to Emily on the edge of the exam table and pity washes over her face for a brief moment. She snatches up the folder decidedly and checks her gold watch. “I’ll set you up with a sleep study as soon as I can get you in, we can monitor your nightmares and check for sleep apnea. But the facility is in Seattle, you’ll have to plan for a two-hour drive. For now, I want you to try a mild sedative that—” Emily forcefully grabs the doctor by the wrist. 

        “No pills,” she says, trembling, but stern, “it’s not a nightmare. That thing in Hoh River found me, and it wants to bring me back.” 




        Home in our apartment, it’s clear that Emily feels defeated. After some convincing, she accepted the sleeping pills and a referral for a sleep study. And therapy. She drops her damp jacket to the hardwood floor and sulks her way into the too-small kitchen. I follow her and try to comfort her, wrapping my arms around her waist and resting my chin in the crook of her neck. This usually brightens her mood, but she doesn’t seem to relax. She only grows more stiff. 

        “Don’t make me take the pills.” 

        “They will help,” I say. “Why do you have to be so dramatic?”

        “Don’t make me take them, Kevin. Please just let me wait for the sleep study, so they can . . . watch.”

        “Will you try to get some sleep on your own?” 

        She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even breathe.

        “Fine,” I drop my arms and move to the other end of the kitchen. “Don’t let me help you. But you know, no one else will. I’m all you have.”

        “And you didn’t come home that night,” she says, tears threatening to spill over her cheeks. Always the tears with her. “That’s how it found me. You were supposed to be home.”

        I scrub my face with my hands. A combination of annoyance and fury boils in my gut. “Seriously, Em. You really think this is all because of some stupid campfire ritual? It’s a kid’s game, made up by kids to scare each other. And it obviously worked on you.” 

        “It was real,” she pleaded. “I almost drowned, it almost had me!”

        “It’s a fucking prank! We all did it in my middle school. You pick the weakest kid in the group to throw themselves in the river and ‘sacrifice’ and ‘swap souls’, while everyone else runs and hides in the dark trees. Yeah, it’s mean and scary, but kids are mean! It was over twenty years ago. Why can’t you just let it go and move on?” 

        “You don’t believe me,” she says, backing further away from me. “You think I’m making it all up. You think I’m crazy, just like everyone else does.” 

        I hold my tongue for a moment. I don’t want to say something that I can’t take back, and there’s no sense in arguing about it when she’s a stone’s throw from no-sleep-psychosis. She’s standing her ground, and all I can do is play along with her until I can get things back to normal. 
        Or was this ever normal?

        “Honey, if I thought you were crazy, I wouldn’t have married you,” I say, reaching out for her. She seems wary of my touch. “You’re safe here with me now. I keep you safe, right?”

        Emily slowly makes her way back into my embrace, too tired to resist.

         “If you just try to sleep for a little bit, I’ll throw the pills in the trash. I won’t bring it up again and you can do it your way. Okay?”

        She exhales sharply. She’s giving in. “Okay,” she says. “But you have to stay awake. You need to . . . be there. And you can’t fall asleep.”

        “I’ll stay awake, scout’s honor. Why don’t you go take a hot bath, I’ll make us some tea, and we can lay in bed and watch Homeward Bound again. That should make you feel better.”

        Emily nods her head and wipes the snot leaking from her nose on the back of her hand. I give her a smack on her backside, walk her to the bathroom, and turn the tub faucet for her. While she bathes, I set the kettle of water to boil on the stove, pull out two coffee mugs, and drop in sachets of chamomile tea. The kettle sings at the same moment I hear the bathtub drain.

        I slide the sleeping pills out of my pocket, and pop one out of its foil packet. As quietly as I can, I crush the white pill between the back of a spoon and the tile counter. Fine enough to dissolve quickly, I sweep the powder into her mug. 

        She’s already in bed when I arrive with the tea; sweats on, and her hair is wet and brushed out long, starting to curl up at the ends again. She accepts the mug with a tired smile, drinking long and slow.

        The movie plays on, and Sassy falls in the river when I notice Emily becomes more still and her breathing more rhythmic. I lean over and see that she’s asleep. 

        Finally. 

        Satisfied, I turn off the television and doze off blissfully. 




        Within minutes, I feel a heavy pressure on my legs. I force my eyelids to open, and find Emily straddling me over my knees, holding the baseball bat straight above her head. Our eyes meet. Her stare is burning and wicked. She opens her mouth, bellows out a terrible gargling cry, and swings the bat down towards my face. With a quick jerk of my neck, the bat thwacks into the pillow, just breezing past my ear.

        “What the fuck, Emily!” 

        The bat comes up in the air again. I grip her shoulder and push to the side, using my legs for momentum to throw her off my body. She flies off the bed, crashes against my dresser and hits the ground, unmoving. She’s unconscious but breathing. Blood creeps along the wood panels underneath her face. I check her pulse, return the bat to its position under my side of the bed, and call an ambulance.




        In the opposite wing of the hospital, Emily is in a room with three other occupied beds, separated by thin floral curtains on a reel. I’m standing in the hallway, only comprehending pieces of what this new doctor is explaining to me, “. . . rare side effect . . .” 

        What the hell was she thinking?  

        “. . . minor trauma . . .” 

        That look in her eyes, she wasn’t asleep.

        “. . . observation . . .” 

        She should have been out cold.

        The doctor puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, snapping me back into focus. “She just needs to rest while we monitor her, make sure there’s no residual side effects once the medication leaves her system. Don’t worry, she’ll wake up fine and ready to go home by tomorrow.”

        I give the doctor quiet thanks and wander back to the padded chair by Emily’s bed. She’s in a deep sleep, her chest rising and falling heavily with each breath. Her coloring looks worse; she lost quite a bit of blood from the wound on her scalp. I feel a headache coming on from confusion. I wasn’t asleep for very long; how did she get out of bed and grab the bat without waking me? I shift my gaze and notice a security camera mounted in the ceiling of the nurse’s station across the hall.

        The cameras.

        I quietly fish for my phone in my pocket and turn the volume all the way down, so not to wake anyone. I bring up the constant feed footage from tonight. With a clear view of the bed from the opposite corner of our bedroom, I start the playback from the time I fell asleep. An icy chill snakes over my body, prickling my skin and lurching my stomach when I see it. 

        There, next to Emily, an emaciated black form rises from the floor, slowly growing taller and longer, until its bent head and hunched back almost reach the ceiling. Looming over Emily’s helpless, insentient body, the massive figure raises its rawboned leg, bending backward at the knee like a cricket, inserting a toe into Emily’s mouth. Wrapping its gnarled and lengthy fingers around her face, the thing shoves its way down her throat, unhinging her jaw and gagging her; her body convulses in complete powerlessness. Emily’s mouth eventually closes, swallowing the black mass. She rises from sleep, and stalks around the bed to me. She reaches down for the bat.

        Bells of alarm race through my veins to my ears and I close the video feed. I turn to Emily and her bloodshot stare is fixed on me, void of recognition or light, sharp and still as an animal of prey. 

	She’s awake. 

	
*

        Before she got out of bed that Sunday morning, she knew. The fatigue, the headaches, the tender breasts. It wasn’t the sixty-hour work weeks that were wearing her down. Jenny Bailey, attorney at law, was thirty-five, single, and pregnant.

        The one time she entertained a man’s affection.

        She laid there in silence on her back for half an hour, watching the golden sunrise inch its way up the blank walls in the single room of her downtown Los Angeles industrial apartment. Once the room was completely aglow, she rolled onto her side and crumpled into a ball. Pulling the cream linens over her head, she cried out, “Why is this happening to me now?”

	You think I planned for this?

	Jenny caressed the current flatness of her torso and swore she could feel a small warmth against her palm, fluttering against her soul. She let out a deep belly chuckle, “No, I guess not. It appears we have that in common.”

	You didn’t call for me, but here I am.

	“Well . . . yes, but you know accidents do happen sometimes. Under different circumstances I would have given you more notice,” she swiftly moved her hand away from her stomach and instead stuffed it under her chin. “Are you not happy to be here?”

	No! I am not! I wasn’t ready.

	Jenny ripped the covers away from her face and sat up straight, curling her hands into fists. “You weren’t ready?” she grumbled. “I hardly think you had a choice in the matter.”

	No, I did not. And if I had, I wouldn’t have come here.

	“Pardon me?”

	Look at the way you live. You cannot cook, you do not drive, you’re alone, you are always working, you left your mother in Chicago– 

	Jenny’s eyes began to sting, so she looked out the window. The cedar leaves and orange-topped Metro busses that lined Spring Street refracted images in her tears. They reminded her of being a young girl, swimming underwater with her eyes open in the community pool, searching for hidden treasure and safe, faraway worlds in the blurred blue. 

	“I’m capable of change. I could be better, for you.”

	It is not what I want.

	She took a deep breath and let the air out slow, through pursed lips, and counted her heart beats. “What do you want?”

	A sudden buzzing from her cellphone charging on the nightstand stole her attention. Jenny stood up from the bed and seized her phone reluctantly. After all, it was her first day off in over a month. On the screen was a single text message, from a phone number she didn’t recognize: 

        Madame Garnet 1406 Spring Street Apt 507 do not keep me waiting 

	Jenny knew the name but couldn’t recall where she had heard it from. Feeling suspicious that the firm was sending her a new client, she tossed her phone back down and padded her way to the coffee pot. 

        She spooned black grounds into the filtered basket and the smoky smell made her think of her mother. How many times had little Jenny made coffee in the morning for her? When shaking and screaming at her didn’t work, she would shove a steaming mug under her nose to rouse her from sleep. She’d always been angry. “Why can’t you just let me sleep, for once?” she’d ask, whiskey still strong on her breath. Jenny promised herself she would be a better mother someday.  

        Another ding came from her phone but she ignored it. Taking a sip from her coffee and leaning up against the fridge, she thumbed through her calendar book. She needed to take more days off for doctor’s appointments, plan her maternity leave, find a replacement for a few courtroom appearances, maybe a cooking class.

        A strong wave of nausea suddenly overcame her. Jenny gripped the handle of the fridge door, dropping her calendar to the ground. Her mouth overfilled with saliva and she swallowed it down, estimating how fast she could make it to the bathroom sink. Once more, her phone dinged and the nausea disappeared as quickly as it came on, leaving only the small, warm fluttering deep in her core. More sounds came from her cellphone, and the fluttering turned into tugging.

        Jenny walked back to her bed, and sat down once she saw the new messages she received:

        1406 Spring Street Apt 507

        1406 Spring Street Apt 507

        1406 Spring Street Apt 507 

	She placed her hand back on her belly and the tugging grew stronger. 

	She immediately recognized the address as her own, but apartment 507 was directly above hers. As long as she’d been in the building, she didn’t think anyone lived up there. She rubbed her eyes with her fingers and thought about how strange this was. Who was this person? And what did they want from her so urgently? She considered turning the phone off completely but bile threatened to creep up her throat again.

	Go.

	“Okay, okay! I’m going.” At the very least, she could put an end to the serial text messages. 

        She threw on some old black sweats, and her Cubs ball cap and wandered out into the hall. She took the stairs, two at a time, to the next floor and found the door marked 507. Jenny knocked, and waited to see who was behind it. Madame Garnet opened the door wide and without saying a word reached out her open palm. The ends of her long grey hair swept the floor along with her white cotton nightdress. Her face was gracefully aged, the few fine lines only appearing near her gentle smile and under her brazen emerald eyes. 

        Instantly, Jenny remembered how she knew the name. She had seen the posters in the rail stations: Madame Garnet – Seer and Healer.

        She laughed to herself, thinking it had to be some kind of practical joke. “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong apartment. My mistake,” she said as she tried to turn and walk back toward the stairs. The tugging in her gut became so overwhelming that she almost doubled over, freezing her in her tracks. 

        “No mistakes,” Madame Garnet said, not dropping her hand. 

        After a few deep breaths, the pain subsided and was replaced with the smooth fluttering again. Jenny took her hand with caution and was led into a grand, baroque boudoir, twice the size of her own studio downstairs. She was awestruck, surrounded by gardenia wallpaper, fresh flowers, gold moulding trims, hand-knotted wool rugs, and thirty-six domestic cats.

        Each of the cats were delightfully charming. Some long-haired, some short-haired and some had no hair whatsoever. Siamese, tabby, tuxedo, Himalayan, and so many more lying on ornamental chairs and chaise lounges. They were all perfectly groomed, well-fed, and seemed to be smiling at Jenny, purring in unison, and sending a wave of vibration through the boudoir. It smelled so fresh of spring blossoms that no one would have guessed there was a single cat in the building.

        Madame Garnet motioned toward a cobalt divan in the middle of the room that was not occupied by a feline, and Jenny obligingly sat upon it. 

        “I received your messages,” Jenny said. 

        Madame Garnet said nothing and knelt on a white satin pillow on the floor in front of her.

        “Are you, um, in legal trouble? Are you looking for representation?”

        The woman pointed to Jenny’s stomach. The soft fluttering intensified, feelings of calm and joy seeped into her muscles.

        This is what I want. This is what you can do for me.

        Jenny understood. It pained her, but she wouldn’t be like her mother. Madame Garnet gestured for her to lie down, and she did, fighting back selfish tears. The woman placed her hands on her belly.

	“Hallo again,” she muttered quietly. She closed her eyes and Jenny watched as she sat stock-still, mumbling every so often. She could feel the fluttering warmth pulling away from her body until it was gone completely.

        “I see,” she said as she nodded and withdrew her hands.

	Once Madame Garnet opened her eyes, she stood and walked away. Jenny assumed she was going into the kitchen because she heard the buzzing of an oven timer sounding off. Returning to the divan, she held out the warm, meager body of a Ragdoll kitten by the scruff pinched between her fingers. Its fur was white like fresh snow, with dirty grey ears and mittens.

	“He is beautiful,” Madame Garnet admired, dangling the kitten in front of Jenny’s face. “You want?”

	“He? Oh . . . thank you, Madame, but no,” Jenny reached out a finger and rubbed the short bridge of the kitten’s nose. “He will be much happier here.” 

	The woman shrugged and said, “You have time.” 

        She brought the kitten over to a group of cats that were sitting by an open window. They mewed in harmony and accepted the kitten, filling the room with purring and vibration again.





*