Annie turned her head away from the midsummer sun and looked down.
There it was. The strong silhouette of her own form from another darkened world, looking back up at her with that comfortingly featureless gaze. It watched in its silence, mirrored her as she walked across the lawn to the old oak tree, then disappeared as she took cover under the shade of the leaves.
A badminton birdie sailed past her face as she sat, through the shadows, out into the sun again, where it lay now behind enemy lines, drowning in light.
“Hey!” Raymond called across the lawn, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Get up and throw that to us, will ya?”
Martin stood to his side, shifting on his feet, switching his racket from one hand to the other.
Annie looked at her brothers, leaning against the trunk. The heat had already melted from her skin and the cool caress of shadows blanketed her now, and she was safe, no longer having to fear that burning mass of flame in the sky.
“No.” She replied shortly.
“Yes. You’re closer than we are.”
“I’m not leaving my spot.”
“It’s right next to you!” Raymond put his hands on his head in exasperation, and Martin looked at him. He muttered something that Annie couldn’t hear, and she brought her knees to her chest, tucking her head down.
A cloud passed over the sky and the world took on a brief grayish hue. When it had gone and the sunlight came back, Annie looked at the shadows again, feeling their humble and sightless figures stare back, dancing over her and studying her, taking in every aspect of the twelve-year-old so they could mimic her in their own subtle way.
Her shadow danced between the gaps in the leaves.
Annie didn’t respond to Raymond.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with her.” She heard him mutter as he stormed after Martin, following him across the lawn.
Martin shook his head. “Don’t act like you don’t know why she acts like this.”
Raymond was silent and Annie closed her eyes.
“You two are so heedless. Wicked.” Annie said, just loud enough so they could hear her from a couple feet over.
Raymond looked at her as he picked up the birdie. He was soaked with sweat, the trademark of the sun, and Annie couldn’t understand how he allowed it to happen. Rivulets ran down his cheeks, through the creases of his palms, locks of his hair clung together, and he did nothing, didn’t even wipe it away. She wondered if he knew at all what the sun was doing to him.
“There she goes again,” he huffed, “she hears a few new words and thinks she knows everything.”
Martin looked at him for a moment, crossed his arms and leaned his hip against a yard table, then looked down at his younger sister.
“What makes you say that?” He asked her.
“The sun!” She exclaimed. Sweat covered his body, too. It glistened on his skin like little glass beads that had molded to his form, hung from his hair like grease, danced in the light like a thousand tiny eyes, only furthering the influence of the fire. “Look at what it’s done! You don’t even care, you just move around like it’s…not…like it didn’t…” Annie trailed off, looking at the ground. She reached up and touched the silver necklace that hung around her neck, beginning to fidget with it.
“That’s because the sun didn’t kill Josephine. It was fire, moron.” Raymond corrected her sharply, averting his eyes. He took the birdie, tossed it, swung his arm back, and hit as hard as he could.
Martin glared. “She doesn’t know any better.”
“She should, for Christ’s sake. What kind of idiot twelve-year-old doesn’t know the difference between light and fire?” He snapped, marching across the lawn to retrieve the birdie, muttering inaudible phrases under his breath.
“It’s the same.” Annie insisted.
Martin looked at her.
“It’s not. But Josephine’s gone, anyway. It was just something that happened. Fire hardly has anything to do with it anymore.” He shrugged, picking up his own racket and following after Raymond. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”
“But— it wasn’t just her— Mr. Melbourne’s house—” Annie stammered, sitting upright.
“That was his own fault. He left a cigar burning.” Martin shook his head as he walked off.
Annie’s gaze lingered on them as they walked away, their images blurry and faint, but through the thin film of tears it was easy to see the way the sunlight draped over them. She could imagine it burning into them like it had their sister, she could see them in the same situation as her, hopeless and trapped with those greedy, licking flames, and she could not comprehend how they didn’t fear the same thing. Had they not witnessed the death for themselves? Had they not been there, watching the fire roar? Had they not heard what the cause of it was, had they not been at the funeral, too?
Annie shut her eyes tight and slouched back against the tree with a defeated grunt, running her fingers through the grass. The memory circled a few times, the black suits and the black coffin, black like ash, because that’s all Josephine was, all she would ever be, stripped of the right to be eternally young and instead, forever nothing.
She tried to push the thoughts away, but they stayed no matter what she tried, and she quickly came to understand that only the shade of sleep would ease her troubled mind.
It came and she lay dreamless underneath the oak, her head a silent shadow within itself.
…
Annie didn’t know how much time had passed by the time she woke. It felt quick, but the atmosphere told her it was long, and an instinct told her that where she closed her eyes was not where she opened them.
The sting of smoke was strong in her nose, and the blazing heat of some fire glanced across her skin, though she could not hear its roar or see its orange ribbon.
Annie felt the wild beat of her heart within her chest, she felt that the air around her was thin, felt that she suddenly could not get enough of it. She inhaled deeply, exhaled, wheezed because of the smoke taste and felt her muscles tense.
But she could not move her body, could not move her head to look for the fire, fearful she might actually find it. She stared ahead, not focusing on how the scene around her had changed, only focusing on that terrifying smell that hung so thick in the air and the somehow invisible smoke that was coming in and out of her lungs.
Her breath hitched and she shifted her feet, leaning forward as she gathered the courage to look around.
There was not a single flame in sight, but the fact eased her troubled mind only slightly, as the heat and the smoke were still prominent and it was like a message of impending doom. That the fire was coming, somehow, from somewhere, and she didn’t know how to stop it, where it would be.
Where was a good question. Where would the fire be? Where was the smell coming from? From what part of this strange scene? Where was this strangeness? Where was this place that she was in now? Where was she?
Annie looked around as if in a haze, still rubbing her eyes free of sleep.
The landscape resembled her own neighborhood, but she was not in her backyard and she was not underneath the oak. She was on a front porch, propped up against the steps instead of the tree trunk. Ahead of her was the cul-de-sac her house sat at the end of, but the road was dirt instead of asphalt, and the lots were empty, only accompanied by dead grass. Beyond the cul-de-sac Annie could see another road that had two houses, older ones, much older, but every other lot remained empty.
As her eyes adjusted, she noted a sickening orange and red film that hung heavy over the world, a film that she recognized as the red film of fire, covering everything from the grass, the dirt, to the pearl-white paint of the house she was sitting upon.
Annie stared at the paint for a moment. She ran her fingers along the floorboards and gently touched the frayed rug that sat in front of the door.
Not my house, she thought to herself, taking a deep breath. Not my house, no, somebody else’s.
Perhaps it was a dream.
Annie stared, bewildered, as the wisp of a memory came to her.
Laughter, the sound of ice water being poured into a cup— no, not icewater. Lemonade. She could taste it, it had been relief from the heat before the shadows. There was a man’s voice, then a girl’s, and someone’s hand in hers. Her hand had been smaller then, much smaller, and this house had been much bigger.
Annie brought herself to her feet and staggered backwards, turning her eyes up to its full image.
The paint bore the scars of fire. Scorch marks littered its form, and it came to her now, who had owned this house.
It was Mr. Melbourne’s.
She knelt over the grass, feeling as if she were going to puke.
The most recent memory of his home came back to her, that of charred wood beams sunken into ankle-deep piles of ashes, surrounded by devastated neighbors. She remembered the way that fire had looked from her window at night, blazing hot gold like a miniature sun against the black, hotter than all the stars in the midnight sky.
Taking an unsteady breath, she looked down in search of her shadow.
To her horror, it was gone. Despite the fact that the sun was out and burning directly above, there was no shadow, not a single one to be found anywhere in the new realm. It was just an endless plain of heat and fire, empty, hollow, and burning.
Annie turned away from the cul-de-sac and faced the road that led into it, swaying on her feet. There, a few more houses, but not many, and when she craned her neck to look past them she could see that the road circled back to the opposite side of the cul-de-sac.
Her eyes searched the land wildly, scouting the front porches, the windows, the backyard sheds and gutters, but there was nothing, not a shadow in sight.
In an act of mindless panic, Annie picked herself up and ran. Down the dirt road and past the hell-houses, not daring to look closer at their windows, feeling a primal instinct pushing her onwards. The heat beat down against her, tried to pull her to a walk, tried to take the breath from her mouth and the salt from her body, tried to burn her up dry, make her stop at a mirage, but she refused and kept running, on, on, on, until she couldn’t take it anymore and collapsed in a heap at the end of the road.
She lay defeated for a minute, panting in the sun, feeling something looming over her but not yet looking at what it was.
Annie breathed in and out and wiped the sweat from her face and loosened her dress, feeling that it was only helping the heat kill her.
The thing above her groaned.
It creaked.
Annie scurried back and got to her feet.
The thing was a forest.
She squinted at it and stepped forward. The trees were pine, their leaves a refreshing shade of deep emerald green, though one could only see their color for a few feet or so before a void beyond swallowed the vision whole and there was nothing but darkness and mystery. They were crowded together, bathing in shadow, apparently untouched by the orange film.
Annie could only imagine the refuge those shadows held for her. She began to walk, closer and closer to that emerald green palace, moving toward its call like a child following a mother’s voice.
The leaves seemed to whisper her name and the trees groaned in a wind that apparently only existed within the forest, and a chorus of animal sounds accompanied their ancient tree-speak, though it was hard to make out what they were.
Coyotes, maybe. She’d heard them cackling at night during trips in the American southwest. She remembered Josephine telling her the old Apache Indian tales about the trickster coyote.
Or wolves. Annie had heard them on a camping trip to Yosemite. She recalled Josephine’s shadow-puppet shows in their tent that night.
Maybe both.
The bark of a particular animal was separating from the chorus as the other animals faded into the void. The singular creature was drifting closer to her world, its sound much more distinct from the others. She thought of the hyenas she’d heard on her family’s trip to Africa, she remembered how she’d gotten sick that month and how Josephine had been the one to take care of her.
It could have been a hyena. But it was loud, guttural, sometimes almost a chortle instead of a cackle. It echoed off the trees like nothing she’d ever heard before, shrieked and howled, and Annie dared to take a step back.
The creature leapt from the shadows and landed softly on the live grass just before the forest.
Annie fell back, her breath once again escaping her.
What stood before her was a stag. A zombie deer whose fur had grayed and flesh hung from his body like ribbons, revealing bone and in some areas rotting muscle, allowing Annie to see directly into his ribs. There were no intestines, just black smoke that wove out through the ribs and around the legs, up his neck, through his nose and from his eye sockets where there was nothing but black, save for a tiny light emitting from the center.
He took a step forward and dipped his head towards her, tilting his crown of antlers slightly to the side. They were a huge set, the biggest she’d ever seen, bigger than the ones her father had mounted on the wall from his own hunting trips.
Annie glanced down at the shadow the stag cast. Long, dark, and cool.
She started towards it and turned her head back to the buck.
There was nothing but woodland. The stag had disappeared.
The forest was quiet. Even the groan of the trees had quieted down to a whispering creak, swaying softly, beckoning her forward.
Find out where he’s gone, they seemed to say, find out. Come a little closer.
Well, Annie thought to herself, beginning to walk, anything in there must be better than what’s out here. It doesn’t—
“Hello?”
Annie stopped and turned, her hand resting on the trunk of a tree. Something had called. Something from within the fire-world.
The shadows of the forest covered her now, cool and welcoming, and she felt herself relax. The crisp forest air filled her nose and lungs and she could breathe.
Still, for some reason, she turned back to the mirage-swathed horizon.
The form of the being that had called to her was so blurred by the heat that it looked like a ghost. She could not tell if it was human or not, and the more its image wavered in and out in the heat, the more she began to think she was face to face with a phantom.
Her thoughts trailed back to the zombie deer.
Annie stilled herself and kept silent, ever curious.
The ghost came closer.
“Who’s out there?” It called again with a voice like a breeze. Annie thought it reminded her of the shadows themselves.
“I- I wouldn’t venture so near to the forest, it’s…well…” there was a pause, and Annie shifted on her feet, growing uncomfortable. The voice was familiar and it shouldn’t have been. Perhaps it was a trap. Perhaps it was trying to lure her back.
“It’s dangerous out there.” The ghost finished its sentence hastily, walking through the mirage and coming closer to Annie.
Annie leaned back towards the forest, hoping the shadows would conceal her, but by the time she was within the void the ghost was directly in front of her, and suddenly she had the urge to reach out to it and pull it in with her.
The ghost stayed on its side of the world, keeping a deliberate distance from the shadows. It was close enough now that Annie could see its careful in and out breathing- as if every breath was to be savored- and the worried flits of its eyes.
Very real, very human eyes.
Annie hiccuped.
The orange haze suddenly reminded her of something else, something like the haze of a faded photograph she had seen before.
The ghost that was before her stood in that haze like Annie had seen a woman once stand in that picture. She had an air of natural regality about her, with high-held shoulders and a straight posture that breathed with confidence, her intertwined hands placed neatly in front of her while she looked down upon whatever lay ahead of her. Annie recalled her often looking down upon things, for she was a staggering five-foot-eleven in height, but her towering figure and elegant pose was always softened by a thin-lipped smile and gentle, hooded eyes. Annie recognized the color of her eyes in the eyes of this ghost, who had irises of such a striking blue that, since her sister’s death, the only place one could find such a hue was in the world’s most richly colored sapphire.
Annie recalled that woman looking at her brothers like that in the photograph. She sometimes saw Raymond looking at it when he was sitting in his room, sitting in a quietude that was unsettling to for someone like him. There was no fire there, just the shadow of a boy and the memory of a sister.
The ghost inhaled softly, parting her lips to speak but saying nothing.
Annie felt her throat tighten.
“…Josephine?”