“What’s wrong?” she said.
Maxine didn’t reply. She simply stared slackly up at the tree. A few leaves fluttered down from the branches where the moonlight was sourced, and to Tammy’s amazement the light began to slowly descend.
“Oh fuck,” Tammy said very softly, realizing that this was not the moon.
Todd had been right. There was some entity here, its outer form consisting of raw light, its core unreadable. Whatever it looked like, it apparently had eyes, because it could see them clearly; Tammy had no doubt of that. She felt its scrutiny upon her. Not just upon her, in fact, in her. She was entirely transparent to it; or so she felt.
And as its study pierced her, she felt it ignite other images in her mind’s eye. The house on Monarch Street where she was born appeared in front of her, its presence not insistent enough to blot out the world in which she was standing, but co-existing with it, neither sight seeming to sit uncomfortably beside the other. The door of the Monarch Street house opened, and her Aunt Jessica, her father’s sister, came out onto the stoop. Aunt Jessica, of all people, whom she hadn’t thought about in a very long time. Jessica the spinster aunt, smiling in the sunshine, and beckoning to her out of the past.
Not just beckoning, speaking.
“Your papa’s at the fire station,” she said, “Come on in now Tammy. Come on in.”
She’d not liked Aunt Jessica over-much, nor had she had any great fear of her father. The fact that Aunt Jessica was there on the stoop was unremarkable; she used to come over for supper on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, often taking care of Tammy and her brothers when Tammy’s parents went out to see a movie or go dancing, which they’d liked to do. Even the line about Papa being at the fire station carried no especial weight. Papa was always at the fire station for one thing or another, because he wasn’t just a fireman, he was the union organizer, and a fierce advocate for better pay and conditions. So there had always been meetings and discussions, besides his diurnal duties.
In short, the memory carried no particular measure of significance, except for the fact that it was a memory of hers, and that somehow this creature-angel or whatever it was-had got into her head to set it in motion. Was its purpose that of distraction? Perhaps so; being so perfectly commonplace. Tammy could slip into its embrace without protest, because it evoked neither great joy or great regret. It was just the past, there in front of her: momentarily real.
She thought of what Todd had said, about how the angel had appeared as his mother. Somehow the way Todd had described the process it had sounded altogether more sinister than this: more like a trap for his soul.
“Tammy?”
“Yes, I see it,” she said to Maxine.
“What do you see?” Maxine said.
“It’s just my Aunt Jessica — ”
“Well if I were you I’d look away,” Maxine advised. Tammy didn’t see why it was so important that she looked away.
“I’m okay, just watching,” she said.
But Maxine had taken hold of her arm, and was gripping it so hard that it hurt. She wanted to turn and tell the woman to let go of her, but it was easier said than done. The image of the clapboard house on Monarch Street had in fact caught her up in its little loop. It was like a short length of film, running round and round.
The door would open, Aunt Jessica would beckon and speak her three lines:
“Your papa’s at the fire station. Come on in, Tammy. Come on in.”
Then she’d beckon again and turn round to step back into the house. The door would close. The dappled sunlight, falling through the branches of the old sycamore just to the right of number 38 Monarch Street, would move a little as a gust of summer wind passed through its huge, heavy branches. Then, after a beat, the door would open once again, and Auntie Jessica would reappear on the stoop with exactly the same smile on her face, exactly the same lines to speak.