Bed of Ashes

Chapter Three: Shadows Lack Reflection (Malcolm Ross)

The chill of winter's introduction is enough to leave me staring wistfully at the blank pages of the spring still to come. Being a ghost, the cold no longer bothers me the way it once did. But I can still feel an echo of the bitter temperature New Hampshire has to offer, like a distant voice raising the invisible hairs at the nape of my neck. I can't remember for the life of me when winter was ever my favorite season, especially in Coven Valley.

I walk the lonely streets of our quiet town before dawn has a chance to light the sky, holding my breath as the wind nips at my nose. At six o'clock in the morning, it's almost like I'm stepping through a fold in reality, slowly shoving my way into a picture that's been crumpled and left to die at the bottom of a desk drawer. The cold grabs me and pulls me through a tear in the fabric of the universe, leaving me standing in a black and white void of winding streets and twisting trees.

Old town houses sprout from the frost-covered ground at odd ends and angles, looming crookedly as I drag my feet in the glow of the flickering streetlamps dotting the sidewalks. The starless sky above is gray with coalescing clouds, and the farther I venture into the barn-swept countryside, the heavier the snow falls, determinedly blanketing the world I've come to confine myself in. Toward the east, lakesides glint before distant shadows of snow-tipped hummocks, shimmering faintly as sparse bursts of gray light spill from the clouds.

Withered balconies suspend over the icy yards of the richer folks in town, shadowing the sweeping stone walkways and providing the ground with ornate silhouettes of spiraled balustrades. Stained glass windows are like this town's signature, scrawled in scattered blues and reds and yellows; dirt roads are the legs of Coven Valley, running and running and running into the distance and back again, and the people are the faces of our unrealistic town.

Strolling over ice-covered hills and down narrow roads, across stone walkways and covered bridges, I politely nod my translucent head to the courteous citizens unknowingly passing me by, smiling and happy in the unfiltered light of the forthcoming dawn. Mathew Marx, one of the local farmers at Rose and Timber's Ranch, rides his tractor up to the center of town too; Marylyn Adams, one of the only clerks at Devin and Davis Bank—D.D. And Co—stares through me while she drives her husband's plow-truck to work. Cecil and Dana Boismart, the owners of the town post office, stop their van on the side of the road to scrape some of the ice from their windshield; desperately, I imagine them offering me a ride, and I envision myself declining with a smile. But they don't. Because they can't see me.

I continue on my way through the storybook terrain of Coven Valley.

I want to accept but I can't. I can't let them get to know me or let them near me or let them touch me because I'm different. Because I have a curse, and I still don't know what I'm doing. I can paint pictures in my mind and reshape the world to appear as it does in my fanciful imagination. I can think something and it might happen. I can laugh and the trees might stir and the grass might grow quicker, or the clouds might plummet and the sky might fall. I can ask the light to fix my problems, and it will, but it might cause even more problems for those around me. I can ask the light to cast the rays of my own dread and discontent into those who threaten me.

I have the ability to transform myself into something malevolent and malicious and malignant. Or I can remain as benevolent and benign and benignant as I've learned to become.

But I won't.

Because my curse is changing me. Forcing me to believe I have a gift. Tempting me to unwrap the secrets of what's been given to me. And I can't suppress my will to dig in and roll in the deep of what diverges me from the rest of Coven Valley; I can withstand the voices pushing me to raise my hands and recreate the world I've come to know.