Seven Turns: A Ghost Story/A Love Story

Katarina returned as promised to help Bethany clear the table. Ian excused himself from the table, promising to join everyone on the porch in just a few minutes. Covering his plate of dessert with a napkin, he headed down the hallway toward his quarters, and Katarina smiled at his retreating back. “He always does that,” she told Cally, shaking her head as she whisked empty plates into the kitchen.

Joan went to her office “to make some important calls before that storm arrives!” and Foster stood and helped Nell up from her chair, “We’ll just be spending the evening’s festivities in our room,” he said. “Nellie’s terrified of thunder.” Cally thought he looked like the terrified one, the way his hands twitched as he held onto Nell’s arm, but she didn’t say so.

While the Captain made his way slowly toward the Hall, Bethany switched off lights in the dining room until it was illuminated only by the light inside the china cabinet. “Now, feel free to help yourself to anything from the sideboard,” she told Cally. “That’s what it’s there for. And if you’re not interested in storm watching,” she chuckled softly, “there’s a television in the Front Parlor, just there through the doorway at the side of the Hall. It’s not a very fancy set, but it should work. As long as the power stays on, anyway!”

“No, I’d love to join you all,” Cally assured her. “I’ll just run upstairs and grab a sweater, in case it gets chilly out there.”

Nell and Foster had already closed the door of their room by the time Cally arrived at the Rose Room door, but she could hear their voices arguing about something. She tried not to listen, as she stood fumbling to find the keyhole in the dim light from the butler’s desk, but she couldn’t help but hear Nell shout, “That’s not what the doctor said!”

“I think I know you much better than any of those doctors do, after all these years,” was Foster’s stern reply. “And anyway how would you know what anyone really said or not?”

Cally decided she didn’t need her sweater after all. She turned quickly and headed back to the stairs, but hadn’t reached the bottom before she heard Foster conclude firmly, “It’s just to help you keep calm.”

The bottom of the stairs and the Hall were dark, now, except for the porch lights shining in through the door, and a blue flicker coming from the open doorway opposite Joan’s office. Cally peered into this room – the Front Parlor, Bethany had called it – and recognized the man she had seen when she was checking in, still wearing his dark suit, sitting on one of the sofas. He seemed to be deep in thought, with his hands pressed together almost as if in prayer. He was not watching the television, which showed nothing but static on its screen at the moment. Something about his drab clothing and serious demeanor made Cally think he must be a preacher of some sort. Maybe this was Mr. Iverson? She decided not to interrupt him, but turned away and stood a moment in front of the screen door, letting the rapidly cooling breeze blow her hair back from her face.

The Captain and Katarina were already outside; she could hear them chatting in the wicker seats beside the door. Bethany rushed into the Hall from the dining room, drying her hands on a dish towel, and paused to turn on a small lamp on the desk. “Has the show started yet?” she asked. “I used to make popcorn for these things, but the damp always ruined it.” She laughed and pushed open the door, holding it for Cally and gesturing like a theater usher toward some of the empty wicker chairs.

Away to the south, a low rumbling could be heard above the Gardens Road housetops. The eastern sky was already quite dark; what light remained seemed to come from crimson sunset reflections along the top edges of the clouds above the meadow. The three horses were nowhere to be seen.

“I hope the rain waits until Ignacio gets back from locking up the chickens,” Katarina said as Cally sat down next to her.

The breeze blowing in over the meadow grew cooler by the moment, and it took on a metallic smell. Cally was going to remark about this – she had always wondered how air could smell metallic when, as far as she knew, metal had no smell – but as she opened her mouth to speak, a terrific bolt of lightning split the sky, temporarily turning the porch to daylight. Katarina began to count slowly “One, two, three, four...”

A large, shapeless shadow leapt from the lawn to the porch stairs and Cally gasped, but it was just Ignacio, holding his jacket over his head to ward off the fat drops of rain beginning to fall. Katarina lost count as she stood to hug him, and took his jacket to hang over the back of a chair to drip. As the couple sat down, the thunder from the lightning bolt arrived, a deep, tearing crrrrack! If Katarina hadn’t been trying to count the seconds since the flash, Cally would have thought it had come from directly overhead. “Well, three miles, at least,” Katarina said.

“Still a long way off,” Ian observed from the doorway. Ignacio brought two of the wicker chairs from the other end of the porch closer to the door and Ian sat in one of them, leaving the remaining chair for Joan, who arrived last, complaining about how the lightning was messing up all the telephone signals. She reached back inside the door as she came out, switching off the porch light and throwing the front of the house into deep, indigo twilight.

“You wanted to see something supernatural?” Joan said, sitting down and leaning across Ian to speak to Cally. “Well, you’re in for a real treat now!” Cally couldn’t imagine how a thunderstorm could be a “real treat,” supernatural or otherwise, but it was refreshing to see Joan feeling jovial about something for a change.

As the crackling and flashing continued, the rain began in earnest, filling the lawn with the sound of hissing, and raising the fragrance of wet earth and grass.

“They have a name for that smell,” Ian explained. “It’s petrichor, and it translates from the Greek to something like ‘rock blood’.” Everyone smiled and thanked him for telling them this, though Cally could tell by their patient expressions they had already heard him say it many times before.

The breeze grew chilly, and Cally wished she had brought her sweater after all. The Captain passed a small silver flask down the row of people seated on the porch. Ignacio and Katarina each accepted a sip and Katarina passed the flask on to Cally. She feared it would seem rude not to also take a sip, and steeled herself to do so, telling herself the alcohol would kill any germs on the mouth of the flask. When she tasted how strong the whiskey inside was, she suspected it might kill her stomach as well. She swallowed carefully and passed the flask to Bethany. “I hope Nell is okay,” she said, trying to cover up her choking.

“Oh, don’t worry about her!” Joan said. “Foster’ll have her drugged up nine ways from Sunday. She won’t know a thing!”

Cally didn’t think that was a very functional way to deal with one’s fears, but she said nothing. It wasn’t her place to judge and, as Foster had said, he had been dealing with Nell’s illness for a long time and ought to know what was best for her by now.

Bethany plainly only pretended to drink from the flask before she passed it to Ian. He took such a deep swallow, Cally winced on his behalf, but he smiled as he handed it on to Joan. “Nell’s mother used to love these storms,” he said. His voice was husky and Cally couldn’t tell whether it was due to the whiskey or emotion.

To Cally’s surprise, Joan poured a few drops from the flask into her tea mug. She held the mug under her nose, inhaling with a deep, introspective expression on her face, saying nothing for once. At length she took a deep gulp from the mug, and that seemed to bring her back to herself. She handed the flask back to Ian and said, “Here comes another.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before a wide network of lightning bolts arched over the meadow like a gigantic umbrella of light.

“One, two, three...” counted Katarina.

Cally looked over the meadow. The low hills stood out sharply against the fiercely lit eastern sky, like a black jianzhi cutout. After the light had gone, the reverse of the image floated before her eyes for many seconds.

“... four, five, six.” Thunder boomed overhead, temporarily drowning out all talk and even the sound of the rain.

“Getting closer, Kat?” Joan asked as the thunder rolled away into the distance.

“Can’t tell yet,” Katarina answered. “But I think so. Maybe next time.”

Cally looked at Joan, marveling at the way she was being so unusually civil, even to Katarina. Beyond Joan’s silhouette, at the southeast corner of the porch, Cally could just make out the old gray tom cat sitting on the porch railing, curled up comfortably with its tail around its front feet, completely unperturbed by the storm. It was gazing out toward the crossroads, just outside the main gate, where the end of Main Street met Gardens Road.

“You would think the cat would hate the storm,” she remarked.

“Oh, she does,” Katarina laughed. “Little Cyndi came crying at the kitchen door two hours ago, and is hiding under the hoosier right now.”

“No, I mean...”

Another great bolt interrupted her, and Kat began counting again. Over the sound of the rain, somewhere down Gardens Road, a dog began to bark, and then another. On the other side of Vale House, beyond the pond and the Pirate Ship, a third dog joined them with bell-like howls, before the clap of thunder drowned them all out.

“Four!” said Katarina. “It’s almost overhead!”

“I just love storms,” Joan murmured. “They always make me feel so peaceful.”

Ian stood up stiffly and walked to the porch railing, wrapping an arm around the column next to the stairs to steady himself. He gazed out into the dark meadow and everyone followed his gaze, except Cally, who watched everyone else and wondered what they were looking at. The rumbling of the thunder rolled away until the dogs could be heard again, still barking, inciting others along Main Street to join their chorus.

The flashes of lightning that followed were not as impressive, but they were too frequent for Katarina to be able to count the seconds between the bolts and their respective booms. In the strobe-like light, Cally saw the cat on the railing at the end of the porch stand up and, to her surprise, jump down into the yard, running off through the rain toward the road. “Why would... ?” she started to wonder aloud, before being cut off by a series of thunderclaps all on top of one another.

“Now that’s really close!” Joan remarked. She looked up to Ian and he nodded and smiled.

“Yes, I figure you’re right,” he said. Cally had to agree. It sounded as if boulders were landing on the porch roof and rolling down the tin sheeting, while gusts of wind began to blow the rain sideways onto the porch, dampening them all where they sat. Cally shivered and looked around her, beginning to feel a little worried the storm might be growing strong enough to damage the old house, but nobody else seemed concerned as they brushed raindrops off their cheeks.

Ian raised the arm he was not using to hang onto the porch column and reached out, palm up, as if to feel the rain sheeting down from the lip of the porch roof. No, Cally thought, it was more like the way he had reached out to take her hand when she had first met him. As if he were greeting a lady. Beyond him, in the brief flashes of illumination, Cally thought she could see someone standing at the metal gate where Main Street ended at the meadow. The person appeared to be wearing a hooded slicker, holding something out in their hand as they walked slowly toward Vale House.

“Who on earth would be out in this?” Cally wondered aloud.

“I’m pretty sure nobody would,” Joan snorted. And then, between one flash and another, Cally could no longer see the dark figure. Ian lowered his hand. The breeze died down and the thunder and lightning grew softer and moved off toward the north.

“... six, seven, eight... Well, I guess it’s over, then,” said Katarina, and accepted another drink from the Captain’s flask. The dogs stopped barking.

“See?” said Joan. “You see that? All Ian has to do is stand up, and the storm goes away.” She beamed and nodded. “Seen it a hundred times. He’s probably why this house is still standing.”

“Well, that’s Joan’s little story,” said Ian, peering at Cally as if trying to gauge her expression. “And now you have another tale for your book.”

“I...” Cally couldn’t think of what to say. She couldn’t make sense of what she had just seen – or thought she had seen. Nobody else seemed to have seen it, and she was not about to ask them.

The flask had returned to her, but she passed it on to Ian without drinking. “I think I’ve had enough,” she said.