LIMINAL EYES
AND OTHER UNSETTLING TALES
by
Carolyn Hill
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Smashwords Edition
Liminal Eyes and Other Unsettling Tales
Copyright © 2010 by Carolyn Hill
Cover art by Carolyn Hill
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. For further information, see http://carolynhill.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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* * * * *
LIMINAL EYES
AND OTHER UNSETTLING TALES
* * * * *
Ruth moved across the roof of her new house, doing karate kicks and trying to forget the plague of brown tree frogs she had found hopping in her kitchen at dawn. Successors to last week’s infestation of spiders, which had eaten the previous week’s swarm of flies, the frogs had been a flopping croaking mess before she evicted them with an otherwise unused broom.
What next? Ruth wondered, balancing on the roof’s red-tiled spine and finishing her exercise with a deep bow and a heartfelt “Kuk Sul.” Not beetles. Not salamanders. Those had been weeks ago, after she had first tried to speak to the starving woman. An invasion of the shifty-eyed cats that yowled all night long down by the creek? None of this was consistent with the advertisements for carefree living that had persuaded her to plunk down the remains of Jack’s life insurance settlement on a small home in the brand-spanking new Nuevo Vista subdivision.
It must have something to do with the starving woman. And that old house.
Running warm palms over her sweatpants, Ruth peered over the tree tops at the dilapidated Victorian mansion that crouched like a toad beyond her property line, its window-eyes hooded with grime, its paving-stone pathway lolling like an elongated tongue from the front door to an iron gate choked with insect-busy ivy. The mansion was a hodgepodge of warty scrollwork, witch-hat spires, cupolas knobby as goblin’s toes, and lightning rods that sprouted from every surface like hairs from an ogre’s chin. The border between Ruth’s lot and the old house’s land wasn’t razor sharp and squared off like the other lots; it ran jagged, like the interlaced fingers of two gnarled hands, following a chuckling creek that eventually veered away across the strange depression in which the mansion sat.
As Ruth watched expectantly, the front door of the old house snapped open and disgorged a frail figure. The door snapped shut, and the figure began to move haltingly along the stone path like a wooden maiden in a Black Forest clock, heading toward the delivery van parked on the other side of the mansion’s ivy-covered gate. Ruth grabbed her rope and rappelled down the side of her house, landed on the ground, and ran toward the creek.
Rushing past the small martial arts practice pavilion she had built with help from her Women Doing It for Ourselves group, she slipped through foliage and across the creek, to crouch on bare wet feet behind an enormous clump of oleander that bordered part of the path. She watched the figure approach: a youngish woman, emaciated, barefoot, hair a matted brown, clothes a tattered patchwork. The woman’s body was stiff, her bony arms rigid at her sides as one dirty foot after the other planted itself on the stones. Only her eyes were alive, darting about, drinking in details.
Everything was just as it had been a month ago, when Ruth had first tried to talk to the woman—suddenly to find herself standing on her own back porch, dazed and disoriented, with no idea of how she had gotten there. The next morning, her kitchen had been filled with clicking beetles. Two days later, she had cleared some of the bramble bushes along the creek and begun to build the practice pavilion. The next week, salamanders had slithered from her cupboards. After the flies, she had talked to the delivery company. After the spiders, she had laid plans to rescue the woman and end the plagues; sitting in her nearly completed pavilion, she had tended Jack’s bonsai, plucking a pine needle here, tweaking a copper wire ever so slightly there, and nurturing her thoughts. Care, that’s what was needed, care in tending people as well as plants. A misplaced hand could warp the tree.
Now, as the young woman neared the oleanders, Ruth emerged from the bushes and blocked the way. The woman stopped with one knee bent and her foot in the air.
Ruth said, “I’m here to help you.”
The woman did not respond, but her eyes widened.
Ruth beckoned.
Still, the woman did not move.
So Ruth seized her rigid arm and pulled her from the path. As soon as they left the stones, the woman’s body relaxed. With every step Ruth took, the woman became more pliable, more animate. By the time they had crossed the creek, she was walking on her own, accompanying Ruth readily enough. They made it all the way up the steps to Ruth’s back porch before the woman dug in her bare horny heels and resisted.
“What’s wrong?” Ruth asked, thinking: besides the fact that I’ve just kidnapped you. The woman stood silently, staring at the open back door of Ruth’s house, her body stiff again.
“We don’t have to go inside if you don’t want.” Ruth sat down and patted the step beside her. “Sit here awhile. We’ll chat and get to know each other.”
The woman just stood there, eyeing the door.
Ruth rose, closed the door, and sat down again. “Better?”
The woman eyed the door for a moment longer, then stared at Ruth, her black eyes set in bruised sockets, like dark water at the bottom of a dank well.
Ruth shivered and folded her arms over her sweaty T-shirt—one of Jack’s, an old faded Marine-issue from ‘Nam that she’d found in one of his chests. She preferred it to the more proper karate-gi. “Chilly out.”
Those eyes studied Ruth’s face. Then, ever so slowly, the owner of those eyes sat down on the step.
“My name’s Ruth,” Ruth said. “What’s yours?”
No answer. The eyes shifted, examining Ruth’s clothing. The woman seemed to pay special attention to the brown belt tied around Ruth’s waist.
“Do you like this?” Ruth asked, lifting the ends of the belt. Jack, proud dojo master that he had been, had always wanted her to test for black belt, but decade after decade, she had been content to remain a brown.
Ruth pulled a slip of paper from beneath the belt, put the paper aside, and took the belt off. “You can wear it if you want,” she said, holding the belt out.
After half a minute or so, Ruth laid the fabric in the young woman’s lap. The woman still made no move to touch it.
Ruth picked up the slip of paper and folded and unfolded it. “I know I’m butting in where I’ve no business, but I think you need help, and I want to help you.” Ruth showed her the paper. “See this? It’s a list I made of what to do after I got you away from . . . that house.”
Silly list, Ruth thought. The second item, in no-nonsense font, right after “(1) No cops” was “(2) Create comfortable atmosphere in living room—sit together on couch, but not so close as to be threatening.”
So much for the list. Ruth crumpled the paper and let it fall.
The young woman bent and picked it up.
Ruth watched her run her fingers over the lines of print. Her nails were bitten to the quick. Grime was imbedded in her knuckles. And she stank—oh, how she stank. Worse than the homeless people at the shelter where Ruth volunteered.
The woman looked up. “You made this,” she said in a voice as thin as she was.
“Yes.”
The woman’s black eyes sparkled as if some perfectly positioned star had managed to cast light down the length of the dark well. Her bony fingers imprisoned one printed word after the other, separating each from the rest so that it was the only word exposed. She studied the results carefully.
“I made that pattern once,” the woman said, showing Ruth the word “Prepare”. “Large and Small,” she said, pointing at each “p.” “Bend and curl just the same. Together.” She pointed at the “r” and “e” in each pair of “re.” “Bend. Curl. Together.”
Ruth nodded.
“But then I come.” She pointed at the “a.” “I curl the wrong way.” She pointed at the first and last “e” and then the “a.”
“I see,” Ruth said, though she didn’t.
“I curl the wrong way and that separates Small from the proper bending and curling. My fault.” She tapped the “a” again. “My fault. For curling wrong.”
“Oh, surely not . . . ,” Ruth began.
The woman turned the paper over and ran her fingers across the back. “How do you sew the pieces together?”
Ruth’s brow furled. “I don’t understand.”
The woman pointed to the spaces between the words. “There are no seams. How do you do that?”
Ruth shook her head. “Seams?”
“You made this,” the thin voice said again, but this time it sounded skeptical.
Ruth nodded. “Yes.”
Carefully, the young woman tore the bottom line from the list, then tore each word of that line onto a separate piece of paper. Just as carefully, she handed Ruth the separate pieces.
“Make it again,” she said.
“Oh! Oh, I see. No, I don’t sew the words together. The printer prints it out. If you come inside, I’ll show you.” Ruth gestured toward the door.
The young woman looked as torn as the bits of paper.
“I’ll leave the door open. You won’t be locked in.” Ruth held out a hand, coaxing.
The dark eyes grew quiet, the body rigid. The rest of the list slid to the ground.
“I’m sorry.” Ruth stuck her hand into the waistband of her sweatpants. “How about if I go inside and fetch my computer? That way I can show you, and you don’t have to come in.”
The woman eyed Ruth warily, but her body relaxed.
“You just wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Ruth rushed into the den and wrestled with the tangled wires, then dashed back to the porch with the laptop stacked on the printer and several sheets of paper shoved into the feed slot.
“My printer,” she announced, plugging the beast into an outdoor wall socket. “And my laptop.” She settled down beside the woman and turned on the computer.
The woman flinched when the screen flickered to life. “Magic,” she stated flatly.
Ruth laughed. “Hardly. Pacific Gas and Electric, and Apple.”
“Women are evil,” the woman said, just as flatly.
The laptop wobbled. “Who told you that?”
“Grandmother.”
“Your grandmother’s wrong. Women aren’t evil. And you shouldn’t say so.”
The woman flinched again.
Ruth typed, and words marched across the screen.
“Patterns,” the woman said with delight.
“You try,” Ruth said, motioning toward the keys. “Just hit these letters, and they’ll appear up here.”
The woman studied Ruth’s face, took a deep breath, and tapped “P” tentatively. Snatching her finger away, she stuck it in her mouth and examined the screen. When she saw the “p” on the display, she made a strangled sound of excitement.
“Go ahead. Make more if you want.” Ruth handed her the laptop, setting it down on the belt in the woman’s lap.
The woman’s black eyes widened, then narrowed. Her scrawny legs shifted, balancing the unfamiliar device while she ran her fingers over its boundaries as if deciding whether she could trust the thing to sit still and not bite. Finally she tapped a flock of letters, some of which combined into recognizable words and some of which, she announced, she had “made” herself.
When she reached the bottom of the display and the page scrolled downward, causing the first row of letters to disappear, she stopped abruptly.
“They are gone,” she said, looking distressed.
“No, no they’re still there.” Ruth leaned over, saved the file, and sent it to print.
When the printer began to whir, the young woman jumped to her feet and scurried down the steps. The laptop shot outward, the cable to the printer caught it up short, and the laptop swung up into the air.
Ruth lunged and caught the laptop, banging both knees painfully on the ground. “Ow.”
The woman stood as still as a statue, barely breathing. Her eyes rolled wildly.
“It’s okay,” Ruth said, holding the laptop out. “See, it’s not broken.”
“Women are evil,” the woman murmured under her breath. “Evil.”
“No, really, it’s all right. It’s my fault, I should have warned you. The printer’s old and kind of noisy.” Ruth set the laptop down carefully on the wooden deck and fetched the printout. “Look, here are the patterns you made.”
The woman’s fingers twitched. Accepting the printout, she ran her hands slowly over the paper. “No seams.”
“No seams,” Ruth agreed.
“I made this.”
“You did, indeed.”
She examined Ruth as closely as she had examined the printout, a long and measuring look. “You said that you want to help me.”
Ruth nodded.
“You helped me make this.”
Ruth nodded again.
“I will go inside.”
|:::|
The first item on Ruth’s newly revised list was to feed the woman. The second item was to clean her up. The rotting-potato, dead-mouse-under-the-sink stench that had been barely tolerable outdoors became overpowering inside the house.
Food to the woman, it turned out, meant cornmeal and beans, boiled and unadorned, and a side of lemons—as Ruth could have guessed, given what the delivery company had told her. They had delivered those same three items every month for generations and been paid yearly in a lump of gold. The contents of Ruth’s freezer and the mysteries of Ruth’s microwave prompted another spate of Women are Evil commentary, and then, once the meal had been nuked sufficiently and tasted hesitantly, squeals of wonder and delight.