The Complete Collection Read Free Page A

thrilling.
    I always relate to the wrong characters.
Like Jason in Friday the 13th . Or Michael Myers in Halloween ;
especially Michael Myers. I feel an almost sexual attraction to him. There’s
something about his patient walk. His big knife that he draws without taking no
as an answer.
    There’s something hot in submitting to
the inevitable.

Chapter 5
     
    I spend some time talking to the younger
Mrs. Brown in the graveyard.
    Poor thing. She died so young and had
such a difficult life. Her mother-in-law hated her.
    She was just a young woman in an
unfriendly and unhealthy household. All she wanted was a baby to love.
    Mother Brown would spill things on her
freshly laundered clothing. She would turn up the flame on the stew simmering
for her husband’s dinner. She tried to stick up for herself, but Mother Brown
was a formidable woman.
    When she had the baby, things got worse.
Mother Brown would pinch it when she walked by, causing her to scream and fuss.
    Mother Brown was always telling her son
what a poor wife and mother he had chosen. Mrs. Brown’s husband always deferred
to his mother. Soon his mother’s bullying got the best of both of them. They
started to fight. The baby got crankier.
    Then, Mother Brown killed their baby
boy.
    Of course, the young Mrs. Brown had no
way to prove this. She sits, silently weeping on the bench next to me, holding
her ghost baby. They are transparent, but they are more alive than I am. At
least they can love.
    Late one night, she put the baby to
sleep in her cradle. Mrs. Brown was exhausted from doing and redoing chores all
day, and she fell asleep next to the cradle. She slept deeply.
    When she woke, the sun was high. It felt
wrong somehow. Her baby lay unmoving in her crib. In the night he had pulled
the pillow over his face and suffocated. Or, someone had smothered him.
    Mrs. Brown screamed and screamed. She
fell to the floor and prayed God would take her instead. Mother Brown stood at
the doorway, a smirk hidden in her expressionless face.
    Mr. Brown shunned his young wife from
then on. At the baby’s burial, he stood at his mother’s side, leaving her to
grieve alone, in silence and shame.
    But Mother Brown, after destroying her
son’s marriage and isolating her daughter-in-law, was not satisfied yet.
    She told anyone who would listen that
her daughter-in-law’s laziness and neglect had caused her grandson’s death. All
the elders of the town patted the old woman’s hand. Young Mrs. Brown was
ignored. Or clucked at disapprovingly. She took to staying home alone in her
room. She ate less.
    She found solace only in the Blacksmith,
visiting him as he worked. She liked the sound of the clanging metal. The spray
of fire. He did not talk to her. But he did not look at her with disgust. He
just worked. And sometimes, he listened.
    The younger Mrs. Brown eventually died,
alone in her attic room. No one found her for a week. Mother Brown and Mr.
Brown had not noticed she was gone.  Or they had known, but didn’t care.
    But after death, she was reunited with
her son.
    I ask her what it’s like to have a baby,
and what it feels like to love a child. I want to know what it’s like to be a
mother.
    I tell her about my broken womb. My
babies also died, but inside of me. For this, she is able to find some sympathy
in her heart for me. I think she can sense my isolation.
    She holds out her baby son for me to
take in my arms. I hesitate.
    Then I take him. I hold the gurgling
baby. He is so happy to be reunited with his mother that he even shares a smile
with me.
    And I cry. For the first time in many
years. Tears drip heavily from my eyes, through my ghostly charge, and into the
dirt below. The things buried there will never grow.

Chapter 6
     
    Last night I dreamt I ate Sam.
    The emptiness inside me was like a hot
air balloon, filling me from head to toe. Nothing could invade that emptiness.
    I felt my heart. It died for certain
years ago, but in my dream I could feel it again. It was