Bequested

Featured in Midnight Magazine Issue 1

The funeral ended once Grandma’s casket went down. Four of her children each went to the eldest son’s home afterwards. Two of their own children quietly stayed with them as the siblings sat in the dark lounge, all of them thinking the same thing, but no one wanting to say a word of it. The parents sent the two kids outside to play with the others. The bored and docile children did as commanded. The clock ticked, but the eldest son never wound it. It’s accuracy only a shadow of time's likeness.

The eldest son did not attend the funeral. No one saw him that day. They sat there in silence as children played outside in the late evening. A moth batted against the window. The youngest son poured wine for his two sisters and other brother. No one asked for any but their lips quivered for the bitter red anyhow. He dropped back into his seat causing the headrest to knock against the wall. He left his own glass empty.

            “It belongs to us anyway”. The youngest said, “us” being the children from Grandma’s second marriage.

“There’s no reason to fight over it now. The dress is buried with her.” His sister said.

The youngest leaned forward. A duplicitous glimmer shone in his eye that went unnoticed by all but for the eldest sister who swore a rude remark about the youngest’s past convictions, and the four of them once again erupted in argument. They pointed fingers and blamed each other for the manner in which grandma died. Hanging herself in the stairwell where she drooped for a week until meals-on-wheels came to deliver to her farm side home. The estranged nature of the siblings only made the tension fiercer. None cared to visit Grandmother much, and each sibling made cause for the other’s responsibility in the matter. “I wanted to send her to a home!” “Why couldn’t she live with you?” “All you care about is that damn dress!”

Then the eldest sibling came through his front door. The fighting continued until he demanded that everyone keep their gums still and listen to what he had to say.

“And where were you?” One of the middle kids condemned.

“Shut up and I’ll tell you. It’s about Mom.” He pulled out a yellow stained envelope with delicate cursive address. It read: “To be read upon my death”. The eldest held it for them to see.

“I found this note in her old house. I’ve been reading it and re reading it... I don’t know what it means.”

“What does it say? Is it about any inheritance? A secret lover?” the siblings conjectured.

“Everyone, be quiet- I’ll read it you all. Please, just be quiet and let me read it…”

“Dear children, have mercy on me for the time I’ve spent delaying this confession. With every angel as my witness I believe that keeping those days secret is best for everyone, but every day of every year I wanted to tell someone but fought to keep it safe under a rug, locked away in a secret cell where no one could find out the truth. No one ever asked about the Conjurer. No one knows what he did. Once my parents died, few knew I even grew up in the river lands outside of Elkhead. The friends that I wanted to disclosed this to are now dead. Whichever child or grand child of mine is reading this, I swear on my soul that this is the truth.

Our family farmed a modest strip of land. At ten years old, I dreamed of wonderful things. A famous person comes through to take me away. A star streaming from the sky falls in our backyard. One of the old, fat pigs maybe lifts from the ground and flys away. Maybe the rain is golden. Maybe the army drops an A-bomb and we can see the fiery light for miles. But nothing astonishing ever seemed to happened.

I read about the circus, and the theatre, but magicians fascinated me most of all. I practiced card tricks and making things disappear behind sheets, much to the stern revolt of Olka and Hildeman. Both maintained pious beliefs and never failed to attend Sunday service, Thursday service, Easter and Christmas service. When Hildeman caught me using a stick as a wand, he took it from me and used it to whip my the back of my thighs until they bled. I still practiced in secret, usually at night, or when I played outside alone. Same for many of the idle joys they perceived as “dark arts”. When I suggested to Olka that we pay off the farm by turning horse shoes into gold by spell I received a backhand across the cheek that I never forgot to this day because her wedding ring split openthe corner of my lip. This penalty scarcely frightened me from the wondrous, so I went beyond the tree line to the dry creek bed to practice my tricks in secret. My doll served as my assistant, as well as my audience. I looked into it’s button eyes, and said the magic words “Hocus pocus. Come to life!” and it fell from the branch I sat it on to the dirt. I brushed the dust from my doll’s red curls, and decided that I needed to learn real magic. When the Conjurer came, I got my chance.

When news arrived of a traveling magic show coming to Elkhead I begged my father to take me. He went to town on Thursdays anyhow, but he insisted I go finish my chores. But except for watering the apple saplings, I did all my chores early. He took me with him to town, provided I water the trees when we got back to the farm. On the way the longest train in the world passed through, and we waited until the uncountable carts raced by. When we got there we found only oil stains from their cars fresh on the pavement. The magicians already left. I cried the whole ride home.

Behind the barn lay our garden where the apple trees grew. I nourished them with buckets of water from the well. After I watered the second tree, I smelled sweet smoke and heard faint music. I stood still, and listened closely until I recognized the sound of a rainstick emerging from the summer wind- though at the time I never heard a rainstick before. My imagination went wild with possibilities. I dropped the bucket and followed the smoke, taking my doll along past the tree line. The promising scent of cinnamon spice grew stronger. The rattle grew louder. A faint tail of smoke rose from the dry creek. I wandered through the tall grass until I stood on the lip above the creek bed. There I saw him in front of an open tent sorting items on a blanket into wooden chests. A cairn burned between him and I. From behind the smoke he gazed with old souls clouding his eyes, solemn cheeks pondering distant ages, his hair and beard white with black streaks, neatly clipped and combed. Strange foreign rags draped his back. When he saw me climbing into the creek bed from the other side of the fire he bowed in greeting.

“Good evening, young lady. What is your name?”

I told him my name.

“Such battered eyes! What makes you cry?”

“I missed the magic show.”

“Come into my tent then,” he stepped aside, speaking as a doctor does about urgent treatment. “I have something for everyone. Especially for young magicians.”

The Conjurer held the flap open for me. I hugged my doll and entered the shade of his canopy. On the first table I saw an assortment of junk. A typewriter, old knives, unlabeled bottles of dark fluid. “Stay away from those,” the Conjurer instructed. “These are the cursed items I’ve collected.” Nothing on that table interested me until me mention cursed. I turned to other items with a fresh intrigue. Some books written in ugly languages, models of shipwrecks and ruined castles in glass bottles, a tiny guillotine, a ceramic cat with far too human eyes, a microscope that caused examined cells to die. At last I saw something that enticed me. A long black wand with a white tip.

The Conjurer saw my eyes widen, and he held the wand for me to take. When I grabbed it, cold tingles crept my my arm and down my spine. I bit my upper lip at the feelings.

“I have many magic items here.” he said, and showed me the tarot cards and the crystal balls, a top hat with a hidden compartment for a rabbit, a box that split in half. I wanted them all, but the Conjurer explained. “Some magic is real. These are parlor tricks. Hoodoo. Pseudo sciences. None are real magic…. But this wand is.”

He showed me by waving it over my head. A shower of golden dust rained onto the ground and burned out like sparks. By thrusting towards the ceiling, rainbow light projected from the tip and spread across the canopy. He held it horizontally and a scroll of paper rolled down. When he tore the paper away, a small flock of birds flew out from behind. I wanted to see more, so I told him to enchant my doll. He took it, scratched his beard, and tapped the doll with with the wand. The doll jumped from his hand to the ground, landing on its feet. I clapped and squalled. The doll bent his arms and legs, losing its balance and flopping on the dirt like a fish. I laughed so hard that I lost my breath. The doll flipped until it found itself back on its feet, then it lept for the guillotine, inserted its head, and pulled the chain. The blade fell and the doll’s head fell into a tiny basket.

The conjurer scooped up the body and the head.

“Somethings are lifeless that should live. Somethings are alive that should be dead.” He apologized to the doll and said to me “Please, take any doll you like.”

On the top of a shelf I saw three dolls. One made up of what looked like tumbleweed. The other wore a flat hat and had no mouth or eyes. The last one I wanted the moment I saw it. With green mop hair and a purple coat that covered her body from the neck down just like my grandma used to wear. The coat burned with my grandma when her house burned down the year before. I couldn’t believe it. The doll smiled at me like newborn. Rosy cheeks, shining eyes, without saying a word, I took the doll from the shelf.

“My little rascal! That doll is unlike any you’ve seen before. You must make sure that no neglect befalls it. Just like a special pet, you must take good care of it. And keep it ever accompanied.”

“Can you teach me real magic?” I felt I understood his warning, but I only concerned myself with this possibility though I hardly believed he’s agree.

“Yes. I can. Just one spell. Then you must get home.”

He led me to some trees behind the tent. “If you ever lose the doll, perform this spell, and it will come to you. However this doll has quite the personality. If she sees something she likes, she may take it along with her.”

I laughed at this idea. Excitement burned within me as he ran his fingers through the mop of hair and plucked a single strand of green fabric. He explained to me that one must speak loudly and clearly into a source of flowing air- wind, a fan, a vent- the words Veni vitae exitus mortis. I still remember them because they stayed on the tip of my tongue for weeks. He took the green fiber, ripped it in half, swallowed the strands, and said the magic words. The doll lept from my arms down to the feet of the Conjurer where he picked her up and handed her back to me. The doll hung lifeless once more in my grasp, but it felt so mortal to me.

I left with the doll, and looked back three or four times as I went back home. I wanted to remain there, but once home, I looked back. No smoke, no music. A piece of me knew the Conjurer left at once, but I never knew why he came, where he came from, or where he went afterwards. But I had the doll, and a magic spell with which to play with her. I was the happiest I’d ever been. No Christmas present ever brought me the joy of my doll and the magic that lived within her. I named her Charm Princess.

We played on the farm until Olka rang the dinner bell. I held onto her the entire time because I was afraid that she would run away. I didn’t dare test the spell in the daylight. If either of them found me, I’d be punished- or worse, they take Charm Princess away from me.

I carried my doll in with me- the two of us covered in dirt from our playing. Olka sat me down, and served Hildeman and I dinner. Then she asked where I got the doll from. Hildeman failed to notice the doll until Olka mentioned her. He directed a rigid glance at Charm Princess.

“Such an ugly thing.” Olka said. “What happened to the doll your aunt made for you?”

“I dropped it…” I was a terrible liar. My head sunk, and I spoke quietly. “And a nice stranger gave me a new one.”

“Strangers come up this way?” Hildeman’s eyebrows bent into arrow points when his brow furled.

“It was along the bridge. That’s where I dropped the doll.”

“I thought you were watering the apple trees.” Hildeman asked.

“I finished.”

Hildeman looked to Olka with wide eyed silence. Neither one seemed sure of what to do- though I’ve never doubted that they knew I lied. The usual punishment for dishonesty didn’t follow that night. They sent me to bed, re-enforcing my lie by telling me that they would go looking for my old doll in the morning. They wanted me to believe the lie. Maybe they wanted to as well.

My doll made them nervous, and never did they look at it directly nor did either one touch her. I always held onto her because I became more concerned that Hildeman would take her away from me because she drove him to a simmering rage. He kept his emotions quietly suppressed, but he gripped everything with flesh whitening force, and kicked and threw things across the room, cursing in German, arguing with some awful, invisible force. These rages sent me hiding with Charm Princess. I waited until dark and quiet to come out. Olka and Hildeman went to sleep at eight at the latest. His fits of anger exhausted him and sent him to sleep soon after an outburst. Olka wandered the home among floating whispers of her own passed mother. The house black at night but for her wandering candle.

Charm Princess became my dearest obsession. Never a shadow turned on the dial when I wasn’t brushing the country dust from its face with callused finger tips. Even in the waking hours when the bleating of hungry beasts called me to rise, my doll remained watching me. I placed Charm Princess by the window high in the room where she watched over the shadows and light outside. I held her as I took walks around the blossoming apples trees. A warmth in the drafty night, I remembered the Conjurer’s warning me never to leave her be, and I made certain to keep her as I slept. I placed boxes in front of the door. Latched the window, and locked the shutters. I waited, longed for a moment of enchantment. For its beady eyes to bat and little hands to take hold of my finger tip. I felt so convinced it breathed as I did, that it lived with blood and dream as I do. No matter how many words I whispered to its pocket ears, no how many stars shone in the dry creek bed as I called for magic to enliven my doll, she remained lifeless. But on common nights, I slept with her in my embrace, sealed in my room where she stayed at my leisure, and wades with me across dreamscape.

Then things around the house started missing. Idle items such as silverware from the dinner table, the nativity scene baby off the mantle, picture frames from the halls, the loose change jar on the top shelf of the closet along with Hildeman’s box of buckshot. These things are easy to miss, and no one seemed to take it as more than an inconvenience until more valuable things went missing. Like Olka’s pearls, and Hildeman’s truck keys. Once the family heirloom, that horrible wedding dress that they told me went back before my great grandmother, vanished Hildebrand and Olka came into my room. As I was the only other person in the house, they suspected me. I denied it all, and indeed I knew nothing. When Hildeman flipped my bed over, he pointed to the pile underneath with a fuming hatred.

“How did they get there?” He demanded of me over and over.

I stood speechless. I held Charm Princess to my heart, more terrified of my father than I’d ever been before. When he was calm, he was such a gentle and kind hearted man, but when he was mad he became an entirely differently creature.

He looked among the loot, getting down to rifle through it. Some of the spoils did not come from our house. He dug to the bottom, but still he found no Victorian wedding dress.

Hildeman rose his head, his eyes like a cat’s while it pounces, and with unpolluted rage he glared at me. I was so afraid I’d get the belt that I didn’t realize he was looking at my doll.

“Where did you get this demon?” He scolded, moving on all fours across the room as even Olka cowered against the doorway. I tried to keep her away from him and run for the corner, but he gripped my forearm with his farm work-hardened hands and nearly whipped my arm out of the socket to pry Charm Princess away from me. My doll hung limply in his crushing fist. Hildeman’s voice cracked as he damned her, storming out from my bedroom with his bald cranium candy red. I begged him to stop and ran to take hold of his leg, but he shooed me away like a mangy mutt, and tossed Charm Princess into the furnace. He latched it shut, and watched it burn with an amicable pout. The smell of her cherry fibers inflamed filled the house. I pressed my face into Olka’s apron and I cried, and cursed Hildeman for his unreasonable cruelty to my doll. Mother stroked my hair, and whispered “it’s for the best”. I told them nothing of the Conjurer’s warning.

I pretended to pray when they tucked me in that night. The possible repercussions of failing to keep Charm Princess safe tormented my imagination. When they left me in the dark of my room, I remained awake. Shaking, too cold for sleep. I started searching through the sheets until I found a piece of green thread. I took it to the window, opened it, and did it as I practiced.

I waited until the clock struck midnight, and the doll didn’t return. When I did fall asleep, I dreamed all night long of tornadoes splitting and whirling around a pool of sticky mud which I lay in. No matter how hard I tried to tear free, the mud pulled me back in, and powerlessly I watched the murderous cyclones converge around me.

I awoke at the bawling of the cattle. The doll lay in my arms again. Charm Princess came back. I ran my fingers through her hair, looked under her dress. The same one. With no signs of injury.

She became my secret. I never took her outside of my bedroom because I feared what the reaction might be. Hildeman and Olka now made me say prayers four times a day, and now they whipped me even more if I made a mistake. If I made persistent mistakes, then they made me whip myself. They even carted me off to a catholic boarding school in Omaha for a summer to receive indoctrination. The first night there, I again tested my spell. My doll did not come, and so I ran away from that place.

When I arrived on my parent’s doorstep they shuddered as if I were a ghost. I stood on the step, and asked them where Charm Princess was. Hildeman looked at me, and sparing no detail, told me how he put it in a bag, sealed the bag, put the bag into a trunk, then buried the trunk in a place he didn’t name. I went straight to my room.

I woke up in the middle of the night because something that felt like a hand reaching up through my blankets alerted me. It felt warm, and scratchy. I looked under the cover, and there she was. She came back to me again.

Hildeman waited all night, and watched it creep into my room. When I fell back asleep with her, I awoke because I remember the sensation of a huge, black wave hanging above me. I saw Hildeman take my doll, but I didn’t want him to know I saw him take her. I heard Olka’s cleaver hacking away at the cutting board. This time I didn’t worry. I woke up feeling refreshed and healthy. I performed the spell, and I ate my breakfast in relative peace. I refused to pray for thanks with Hildeman and Olka.

“But why?” Hildeman looked frightened and small.

“Because I don’t know why I should thank a god when Mom cooked it, and Dad grew it.” I told them. Both wore a look of fright that made my blood feel sick, and I wondered if I did something wrong. I disregarded it, ate my eggs, and went back to my room. Where Charm Princess sat waiting for me. I heard Hildeman bemoan to Olka in a tone so harrowing I couldn’t believe it was the man that could summon up a typhoon of rage at the flip of a switch.

“I cut it into pieces,” he told her in his shaking tone “and I fed it to the pigs.”

I stroked Charm Princess’s hair, and sat with her until I smelled the familiar smoke and heard wagon wheels moving up the road. I looked out the window to see the canvas covering drawn by two black horses. The wagon stopped before our home. Out climbed the Conjurer.

Hildeman came to the door to greet the strange visitor wearing foreign clothing and smelling of sweet smokes. His robes dragged against the dirt. He asked Hildeman to see me. Of course Hildeman said no, and so the Conjurer explained that he gave me the doll, and wished to see me about it.

“You’ve come to take that fiend away, I pray.”

“I’m afraid that’s what I must do.” he told Hildeman, and they both entered my bedroom, Olka behind them.

The Conjurer looked so sad, as if a hundred tragedies occurred before his eyes. He knelt to my height.

“My little magician,” he asked “Why have you been mistreating your doll?”

“It’s not me. I take good care of her. It’s Hildeman and Olka that’ve been trying to take her away.”

“I see,” he turned to Hildeman. “Does she speak the truth? Are you two the ones that’ve been harming this doll?”

“Just take it and go back to where you came from.”

“I see…” he smiled at me, patting me on the head, then he turned to Hildeman, and pointed a long finger at him. I never noticed, but he had no fingernails, but flat clips of flesh. When he pointed to Hildeman, the Conjurer murmured some foreign verse- and there was a loud pop! And Hildeman vanished- a wild buck in his place. Olka panicked and fled the room. The Conjurer laughed as the buck tried to escape the confines of the house to the outside world. His antlers tore the wall paper and tipped over tables and pictures as it hurled its body against the walls. At last it tried to jump through a window, cracking the glass, and leaving drop of blood smeared across the pane. The buck left behind a trail of blood as it slipped across the hardwood floor. Olka emerged from the closet, Hildeman’s shotgun in hand. I begged for her to open the door to let the creature esacpe, but a wildfire burned in her eyes. She fired both barrels and killed the buck.

The Conjurer came up behind her, and pointed his finger. I hid in my room and cradled my doll. Pop! Then footsteps over the porch, the snapping of reigns, and the dissipation of an outgoing wagon.

In the silence, I came out from under my covers, taking Charm Princess with me, and entered the parlor where we examined the buck. Both eyes that of a human’s. As I stood in the blood pool drying around my bare feet. i peeled apart its lips see see he molars and canines- with Hildeman’s fillings. I turned to look for Olka, but all I saw was folded quilt work laying on the dust of the floor. I unfurled it, the smell of an attic’s must and of Olka’s hair spilled from its folds. The fabric grew lighter as a piece of solid metal dropped from the heart of the quilt and clanged against the wood panels. With the quilt tight in my fingers, I bent down to inspect what dropped from it. A doll in mothers gown.

Years of being passed from foster family to foster family, and the stress from that day kept me from remembering it until I was in my thirties. When I became a teenager, I lost interest in the doll. I kept her stored away in a box of keepsakes that to this day I’m too afraid to open. Because I know the doll is not in there.I know because this very morning, I awoke with that old wedding dress across my body laid out in the manner which my mother carefully displayed it. Even as I write this letter, I can hear her sliding through the vents. If I look down now, I will see her eyes through the cover. I’m beginning to misplace more and more things, and I don't know how much of it is my age or the doll.”

The room filled with anxious silence. The eldest put the letter down. The siblings each looked at each other, confusion and doubt convecting in their brains. The earth darkened. The moth lay dead on the window sill. 

Everyone left as night fell- but the eldest sibling tapped the youngest and asked him to stay. They planned to leave once the others left. The shovels ready to dig dirt and a tarp ready to plant it on waited in the vehicle.

They spoke no words to each other on the way. The two only met enough times to know that they both wanted to preserve the traditional dress, and didn’t need to share it with the others.

They drove to the country cemetery Grandma wanted to be buried at. Nothing but darkness went on for miles. The brothers followed their flashlights to the grave, still sharp and glossy as the day they commissioned it, then they got to work. They found the soil still loose from its earlier filling, and it made their work easier until they reached three feet under where the weight began to compress the dirt underneath. The brothers stopped once. They thought they heard people, but it turned out to be birds flying south for winter. They resumed their task, greedily shoveling dirt until at the moon reflected in the glossy cover of the casket. They removed the lid, and silently looked from the contents to each other with the same pale aspect of mortality. They found no body- and no family wedding dress.

Only a single green thread.