The Excalation (ii)

Running through a nightmare from which she can't awaken, she has shrugged me off and run outside into the the snow. When I realize she has stopped in the yard, I hold back, standing on the porch. She takes in the look of her former home. It's a tapestry of change. The muted, sedate colours of her memory have been replaced by brighter, more garish ones in the recent past, and then themselves been weathered and stripped by time. She shakes her head slowly, but there is no waking up.

I come down off the porch, hands in my pockets. She is in a summer dress and black buttoned boots that are no match for December, and I don't have my coat on. "Please, Mrs. Kent, come back inside," I beg her, for my own comfort as much as hers.

"There's not even a fire," she murmurs.

"I can make that right, if you help me."

She turns to look at me. Then past me, to my car parked in the drive. "What is it?"

"That's an automobile. It's sort of like... it's kind of a mix between a carriage and a locomotive. They used to call them horseless carriages a long time ago. It's how I got here today. We're about half an hour out of town."

"But town is a day's journey."

"Well, a couple of things have changed. The roads are better, cars go pretty fast, and the town is a lot bigger now."

There is a whine overhead and she cries out, crouching. Something large and dark moves through the sky high above us.

"...And we're also on the flight path to the airport, yeah..." I say, slightly embarrassed as I come forward. Frightened, she watches it, the hopelessness in her face only compounded. "It's called an airplane. That one is a jetliner. It can carry a couple of hundred people between cities in an hour or two. It can cross the Atlantic in six or seven."

"Have you... have you been up there?"

"Yes. Millions of people fly in them every day. I'll tell you about it if you come back inside."

She is coaxed in, if perhaps for no other reason than to get out from under an open sky full of new threats.

I lead her to the sitting room, where the hearth still stands. "Tell me about this room, please," I ask her. "And I'll make it like it was."

Distracted, but throwing her mind back, she picks through the details of what she recalls. Incidental things rather than the broad strokes I'm really looking for, but if it calms her down, that's the important thing right now. I sit, concentrate, and visualize. I hear her gasp. "It's true," she says. I open my eyes to find her looking around in awe.

"Is it like you remember?"

"No," she says. "But it's better than it was."

And there are practical advantages. Now there is seasoned firewood, kindling, matches, pokers, bellows. I'm no expert, but it's not rocket science to light a fire, and in a few minutes, there's at last some warmth to the room. I remember the coffee I've brought and excuse myself to get it.

Alexandra holds the plastic cup off the top of the thermos in hands shaking not with the cold but nerves. I take coffee black, but in the greatest of ironies, we've been able to lighten it and sweeten it with sugar and cream laid out for her wake a century and a quarter ago. In another irony, since she is drinking from the thermos cup, I drink from the recreated china, noticed only after I'd poured for her.

What do you say to a woman brought back from her own funeral, only to face the reality that her family has, as a result, predeceased her by decades? I say, "A lot has changed since..." Since what? Since you died? "...in the last hundred years or so. Some good, some bad..."

She swallows the coffee in a sudden, impulsive gesture. "What am I going to do? Where will I go?"

Those are good questions. I don't even know how you begin looking for help in a case like this. "Were you still living here when... in 1882?"

"No, Bill and I lived in the village. We moved there last summer."

"Do... did you have any children? Perhaps you still have family living there."

She shakes her head, slowly. "Oh, Bill," she whispers, and begins to cry.

I'm on the verge of saying something... something I know will be blithe and dishwatery, but what do you say at such a moment?... when suddenly she looks up, her face scarlet, her hands clenched in fists set to beat a drum. She hisses, "This isn't real. It cannot be real. This is all a dream, a ghastly dream." She darts her eyes at me. "And you're a devil. I swear."

I feel stung. I have been only kind and patient, and I am, after all, the reason she's alive at all, no matter how bewildering the circumstances might be. She went to sleep, and she has woken up, seemingly hours later, the void of a century of death forgotten, forgiven even. Absolved by my skills, if only in ignorance. Still. "I'm no demon," I coldly reply. "I gave you your life back."

Her face changes. She knows she's been unfair. "I'm lost," she wails; a sort of apology.

"Mrs. Kent..." I take a breath, I dare: "Alexandra. Please. Listen. It's not a bad time to be alive. There's so much that you can do now. I understand, believe me, that you're grieving. You have so much to grieve. But you're alive. There's hope for better days."

She doesn't seem shocked by my sudden familiarity. Either the strangeness of the circumstances has overcome it, or I overestimated the stiffness of Victorian formality. In either case, she seems to settle into it. Her face slips slowly into her hands again, and I am silent as she weeps, the room otherwise soundless but for the uncaring snap of the fire.

The first interruption of her sorrows is the comically melodic ringing of my cell phone. She raises her head, perplexed at the odd little tune I'm suddenly playing. "I'm sorry," I say. "It means someone wants to speak with me." I show her, taking the little box from my pocket. "Forgive me. I'll just be a moment." I rise and walk to the doorway. This must be a new thing for her; a person excusing himself from her company to speak to someone who's not even there; an entirely new fashion in rudeness.

"Hello?"

As I expected, it's the client, Mr. Michaels. "Hi, Mr. Darie, it's me. I'm just calling to find out how it's going."

Instantly I decide the best course is to say nothing; I don't need him showing up full of questions, possibly complicating the deal. The vision of a crowd of reporters hits me square in the face. "It's going about as I well as I expected," I tell him. "Two rooms are restored, so far."

"Oh. That's good," he says, having no idea idea whether it is or not.

"Who is that? Who are you talking to?" Alexandra can't help herself. She's curious. Maybe a trifle offended; it is, in her mind, still her family's house that I'm talking about, with some stranger. My hand shoots up to invoke her silence. She frowns but complies.

Fortunately she has not be overheard. "So everything is on schedule?" he asks.

"Everything is fine," I say.

"Good, I'll see you this evening, then," he says. We bid one another good-bye and hang up.

I turn back to Alexandra. I arleady know there's no way I'm going to get the house done today. But if Michaels has to wait a day or two, well, that's just how it's going to be. Something unforeseen and rather more important has just come up; literally, from the grave. I'll deal with Michaels later, whatever his mood is when the time comes.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to be rude. Obviously I couldn't just tell someone what's just happened here. I don't think either one of us wants a lot of other people showing up. Not right now."

"You were speaking to... who, the man who... owns the house now?"

I nod. "Jason Michaels. He and his wife Cindy bought it last fall. They've hired me to restore it."

"And that's why I'm here?"

"Yes."

Her face takes on a distant look; just a hint of horror in her eyes. "It was typhoid," she murmurs. "I remember hearing them say it. As I lay there. I remember thinking it would be a long time before I was well again." Boy, she got that right. She searches my eyes. "Did I really die? Or has your magic just brought me straight here?"

"I don't know," I tell her. "But I expect you really did die. The photo is from your wake." The details I've heard of cases like this, few and far between, are sketchy at best.

"Then where was I buried?"

"I have no idea. In the village, I guess."

She composes herself. "I want to see."

I almost laugh. "I don't really think that's a good idea."

"What did you say your name was?"

"Raymond Darie."

She straightens in her chair. "Raymond, then," she says. "Please. I must respectfully insist." Her eyes soften, penetrating. "I have to see. I have to know."

I'm at a loss. "I don't even know--"

"I know where the church yard is," she tells me.

"We'll have to take my car," I warn her.

She looks apprehensive, but steels herself and gives a nod. She rises, smoothing her skirts. She lets me place my winter jacket on her shoulders, and I lead her from the room.