Pete and Brittany rushed eagerly to the bench. The wiener dogs were finally going to meet Santa and Manchester the elf. They felt like they had been waiting for this for a very long time. Answers were finally coming. They would see Santa through eyes of a reliable narrator, not the eyes of mythical animals whose judgment had clearly been clouded by magical water. They would know why Christmas was in danger. They would have insight into whether or not any of this whimsical fantasy could really affect their own world. They would know if there was anything they could do about it.
Tomorrow was the last day of school before Christmas break. On Sunday, they were flying to the States to spend Christmas with Grandparents. Brittany was going with her family to California, and Pete was going with his to Oregon. The story had gotten interesting again. The rabbits were somehow going to make sure something happened. They were going to make sure it didn’t get mired down in boring nonsense.
Pete secretly suspected that it wasn’t going to turn out to be Santa’s workshop at all, but something far more logical. He secretly suspected that the raven was playing a good joke on all the mythical animals, that the enchanted water really made them delusional, and that there was no Santa Claus. He couldn’t explain why he had been dreaming about television monitors, or why seeing his image on them frightened him, but people had bad dreams all the time, right? And the fact that he had the dream before he read about the rabbits? Well that didn’t mean anything either. It had nothing to do with ideas seeping through growing holes in the fabric of the universe. Nothing at all.
Brittany had spent last night re-reading Edward Eager books. She had decided that it didn’t matter if Pete could come up with a logical explanation for the wiener dog story. Logic couldn’t keep the whole experience from being extraordinary, any more than the possible logical explanations Eager hinted at could make Laura and James’ wishing well be boring. The story was coming to Pete and Brittany. They liked the story. It was important somehow. It didn’t matter if it was mysterious, or if it was logical. It was still important.
Pete told Brittany to read aloud, because she did a better job than he did with the rabbits’ British accents.
December 19
"Go then," said Lady Hollyberry Rabbit. "The large building is both workshop and living quarters for the elves. You'll see Santa's Mansion just behind it. Good luck, and Godspeed."
The wiener dogs and the pig set off immediately. Akelmeyer had to stand on Fred's shoulders to operate the huge knocker. Inside, dogs barked. Small dogs, from the sound of it.
A purple aardvark wearing a pointy green hat answered the door. Two red puppies, looking like a cross between wolves and foxes, rushed out and chased about everyone's feet. "May I help you?" asked the aardvark in a dignified voice.
"Er, we are looking for Manchester the Elf," said Fred.
"I am Manchester," said the aardvark.
"You don't look like an elf," said Malchisedech.
"When was the last time you saw an elf?" asked the elf-vark.
"Good point," conceded Malchisedech.
"So," said Akelmeyer to Fred in an undertone, "elves are really oversized purple aardvarks?"
Said Fred, "Well, I guess so, but that doesn't matter right now." And then, to Manchester, "May we speak with you?"
* * *
The boy held two small red animals in his hand. “Are they really puppies?”
“You read the story. Didn’t it say there were puppies?”
“Do they look like puppies to you?” asked the boy.
“What do they look like to you?”
“I guess they could be puppies.”
He looked in the small cardboard box once more. “There’s no purple aardvark,” he announced.
“I’m sorry.” The man answered. “He seems to be in the story, but not in the box.”
“Is it a mistake?” the boy asked.
“Can an author make a mistake?” the man asked.
* * *
“Purple Aardvarks?” Pete couldn’t believe it. Today’s entry was supposed to answer questions. Not introduce stupidity. “There can’t be purple aardvarks!”
“Why not?” Brittany asked. “It’s not our universe. Why can’t aardvarks be purple in some other world? The animals talk. Why can’t the aardvarks be purple?”
“Because it’s just not right, and I wanted to see Santa.”
* * *
It’s not quite what I thought I wanted, but he’s a charming old man. Charming the way my husband used to be charming, before the wedding. Before the worries.
He listens to music. Really listens. Doesn’t complain about how the noise is like a root canal for the brain.
He eats my food and doesn’t complain about that either. That, in itself, would be enough. But he does more. He doesn’t merely eat my food – he savors it. If I prepare a feast from Ghana, with yams and cinnamon, I find that he has spent the afternoon reading up on Ghana. He regales me with facts and stories, while he plays Ghanaian music “for atmosphere”. He transforms the meal into an experience, and never once has he said “thank you for the lovely meal” in that singsong, I’ve-said-this-before-a-million-times sort of voice, as if he doesn’t even know what he’s been eating.
He looks at the world around him with a sense of wonder.
And he doesn’t worry.
* * *
The room was dark -- as dark as it ever really gets in downtown Hong Kong. The neon lights outside never stop flashing. The streetlights are always bright. Even thick curtains don’t black out everything.
The room was darkly dim. Jennifer struck a match. She had a lighter that she could have used, but she wanted atmosphere, so she used a match. It sputtered -- flamed high, then receded, an aura of blue outlining the tiny orange flicker. Jennifer lit the candles: one, two, three candles. Their soft glow illuminated the Ouija board on the floor. Her bed, her desk, her wardrobe, the rest of her room remained in near darkness.
Jennifer took a deep breath, and placed two fingers lightly on the planchette. She had never tried this alone before. You were supposed to do it with a partner, and she had to admit that she sometimes suspected Luci of moving the wooden marker herself when they worked the talking board together. Luci placed more value on drama than on integrity, which added a certain spice to life, in Jennifer’s opinion, but it made things duller than ever when Luci wasn’t around.
The candles were lit. Jennifer was dressed in black. The sounds of traffic from outside provided a droning ebb and flow of background noise. She took a deep breath, and said: “Hello.”
Nothing happened.
Jennifer sat on the floor in the dim room, hunched over the Ouija board.
She waited.
This time she breathed deeply enough to fill her lungs completely. She lifted her shoulders, and held her breath.
Held it.
Held it.
Then slowly exhaled -- relaxing, relaxing.
Exhaling away all self-consciousness. She would not feel stupid about waiting for the spirits to talk.
Exhaling all self-absorption. Opening herself to the Others that might be out there.
Exhaling away all consciousness of self. Obliterating her line between herself and the universe. She was ready to listen to someone from another dimension.
She tried again.
“Is there a spirit here?”
She waited.
She was open. She was ready. She was waiting. The traffic droned outside. The room was getting hotter. Every once in a while, a horn honked.
The candles burned.
The planchette moved.
She jumped, yelped.
She wanted the wooden marker to move, of course, but she hadn’t really expected it to move. She almost broke contact with the planchette, but she didn’t.
It moved slowly, deliberately, letter by letter, taking Jennifer’s fingers with it.
H – E – L – L – O
Jennifer swallowed, and asked again, “Are you a spirit?”
The shadows seemed to gather around the edges of the room. The background darkened. Only the board, and a fuzzy circle around it were illuminated by candlelight. The planchette moved to the upper left corner, to the word:
YES.
It then returned to the center of the board, not guided by Jennifer’s fingers, but bringing them along for the ride. This was going far better than she had expected.
“Can you help me?” she asked. She didn’t know what she needed exactly, but she knew that things weren’t going right. Friends were wrong. Family was wrong. School was wrong. She needed help.
The planchette was spelling again.
W – E – C – A – N – H – E – L – P – E – A – C – H –O –T – H – E – R
“How?” Jennifer asked. She could feel the back of her neck tingling. This was really happening! The planchette was really moving on its own. Something was here – in the room with her! She squinted into the darkness beyond the circle of candlelight. Was it out there? Something that could be seen? Her voice was shaking as she repeated the question, “how?”
The answer gave Jennifer chills:
L – E – T – M – E – I - N
“No!” She blurted out instinctively. “What if I’m afraid?”
A cold wind blew through the room.
The window was shut. There could be no cold wind in the room.
It was impossible, but that didn’t matter, because papers and magazines were flying off her desk. Posters and pictures fluttered on the walls. The doors of the wardrobe swung open, and slammed shut once, twice, three times. But the window was shut!
“No!” Jennifer couldn’t believe this was really happening. What had she done? What was she going to do now? How was she going to make this stop? “I mean, don’t get angry. I just meant – I mean – Who are you?”
The wind stopped. The papers fell where they were. Everything was quiet. Even the noise of traffic had stopped. The planchette moved.
I – A – M – Y – O – U
“How can that be?”
L – E – T – M – E – I – N-A- N – D – Y – O – U – W – I – L – L – K – N – O – W
Jennifer knew it wasn’t good to make a spirit angry. She had read stories on the Internet. They could haunt you for years. She had thought they were stories told by stupid people who were having psychotic episodes, or people who were making up stuff to try to get people to embrace Jesus as their personal savior, but now she knew why Luci always told her not to make them angry. She had thought Luci was just being dramatic. Just trying to keep things fun and spooky. Now she knew.
But her life was crap anyway. How could it get any worse?
She took another deep breath, and as she exhaled, she breathed out any attachment she had to her own body, or to her so-called life.
She let herself float – open – empty – waiting – waiting –
Her body went rigid. She wasn’t alone anymore. She wasn’t adrift anymore. She knew what she had to do. She had to find George.
She walked out of her flat, and down the stairs. She walked down Queen’s Road East, and turned onto Wan Chi Gap Road. She was walking in the street, the winding, twisting street that ran between two hills -- but nothing could hit her. She was walking to The Peak. She was walking down the center of the street, but the cars and buses couldn’t touch her, because she was walking through time, as well as space. Not much time, she sensed. Days? Weeks? She saw a light blue bus, but before it crashed into her, it was gone. Poof! Disappeared! What a rush! The lights were pretty. They swirled around her like time elapse photography. Blues, reds, yellows, and whites. She spread her arms and ran, launching her body into the sensation, but her feet only touched the ground for a few steps before she was floating above it.
She loved this!
* * *
I loved my old gentleman, and my escape from reality. He made adventure every day from everyday events. I had grown so tired of the worrying. World without end worrying. I thought I would drown in worry. I know we were eating into our savings, and I know that wasn’t good. I also know that things would turn around – if we had let them. If we could just have stopped worrying. If we could have been positive. “Money flows to me easily, and abundantly.” My husband used to say that every day, and it did. Money did flow to him esily, and abundantly! I don’t know when he stopped. Maybe when it started flowing a little too abundantly, and he was afraid he was going to lose it all. But it doesn’t matter, because that’s behind me now.
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