©1990 D. A. Houdek

No reproduction or distribution without consent of the author

4030 words

"Ghosts," alternately titled "What Dreams May Come," is the first fiction story of mine that was published. The story is fantasy based on an area of historical interest to me--England at the time of the schism; Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

Originally published in Wellspring literary magazine, summer issue 1991 (in a shorter form). Reprinted in full length in Galactic Citizen, summer issue 1995.

GHOSTS

by

D. A. Houdek

            I am to die. So it has been said. Soon it will be done. How can this be? I feel not the chill of age, nor the draining fade of illness. Nay, my heart beats full of life! How can death’s cold hand grasp mine?

            Aye, I know that answer well enough. ‘Tis the hand that puts pen to paper, to the warrant of my death, that brings my life to this untimely end. At least my husband’s displeasure does not extend to burning. That torment I shall be spared.

            The executioner is on his way here from France, an expert with a sword. He is, they say; very good....

* * *

            She turned, wrapped slender fingers round her neck and laughed. It was a high, strained, laugh.

            “And I have a little neck,” she said, her eyes glittering with black mirth.

            Master William Kingston dropped his emotionless eyes from hers and sniffled uncomfortably, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his grimy coat. As Constable of the Tower he had seen the sorrows of many men and women executed. Never had he seen laughter. This lady...it seemed she had much joy in death.

            Anne spun away, laughing wildly. Her skirts were a whirl of scarlet that matched the imprints her tightly clenched fingers had left on her neck. The sound of her laughter echoed from the stone walls, covering the sobs that choked at her throat.

            A distancing darkness swelled over the scene making hollow the sounds and blurred the images. The scarlet defocused into a mere trace of redness touching at the darkness.

            I sat upright clutching at my neck. The air rushing into my lungs felt harsh and alien. Sobbing laughter rose and fell as it faded into the distance. Red light flashed over unfamiliar shadows.

            Then time settled into the present and my body became my own. My dream identity faded and I was, again, myself: Regina Annette, tourist, historian and, at the moment, ghost chaser. I lay back down, limp and exhausted. From my neck I removed the twisted sheet. The shadows slowly resolved into those of my hotel room.

            I felt my way to the balcony and stood for a long time in the open doorway listening to that peculiar sobbing wail of a London ambulance. It dissipated into the sounds of the night as my dream was dissipating into the reality of now.

            Just dreams...no, not quite so simple as that. Here they were stronger and clearer. Even as I had dozed on the plane I had felt the distance closing; the flavor of ancient death strengthening. It excited me, that aura of death. I tried to shudder away the ghoulish thought. They’re just dreams. Compelling and entrancing, but harmless, dreams.

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            Over the sparkling expanse of the city I stared, trying to will the centuries away and see it as it had been in May of 1536.

            There wouldn’t have been the lights, nor the low rumble of traffic and industry. No smell of exhaust fumes. What then? Wood smoke and candle wax? Open sewers and unwashed bodies?

            I looked the other way. Toward the river. Little change there. The Thames still ran filthy as it passed beneath the Bridge where severed heads had once rotted. And past the Tower where restless ghosts still walked.

            Oh, yes. The Tower would have been there.

            When I returned to bed I couldn’t sleep. My neck was terribly sore. A wonderful psychosomatic omen that is, I thought.

            I moaned as I tossed and turned, struggling to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. No, wrong story. The voice of the ghost that had lured me here had spoken of a different tale.

            Or was it the fear I’d seen in Anne’s eyes that brought me here? Anne Boleyn’s legendary black eyes, that had entranced a king and shaken a kingdom, had held the fear of a woman facing death at the hand of one she loved. I needed to see it again. I needed to follow it through.

            As the first rays of the sun crested the horizon I finally drifted into sleep and into the hazy currents of time.

            Anne blew out the candle and watched the smoke waft through the beam of sunlight that had penetrated the Tower walls and reached her window. Her long, sleepless night was past.

            “It’s been delayed, Milady,” Kingston’s voice came from behind her followed by a sniffle. “There’s a storm in the Channel, you see. The execu...he, well, you see, he’s been delayed crossing the Channel.”

            Anne willed her fingers not to tremble as she laid the quill pen across the lullaby she’d written for herself.

* * *

 Oh, Death, rock me asleep,

 Bring on my quiet rest,

Let pass my guiltless ghost,

 Out of my careful breast.

            The swordsman from France has been delayed. My jailer, Master Kingston, thought me eager for death when I told him that I had hoped to be dead by now and past my troubles. He does not understand. How could he? Until now I did not understand it myself. Dying is not the thing that is so fearful to face. ‘Tis the knowing. The knowing of when. The knowing of how. I welcome the walk up the steps of Heaven. But, I fear the steps of the scaffold.

            Oh, Death, rock me asleep. One of the ladies asked if I wrote that lullaby for my daughter. Tiny Elizabeth. She is so young she will probably have no memory of me. All she will know of her mother is shame and scorn. Daughter of Anne the Whore and Bloody King Henry the Eighth. I fear there is little hope for her. Would to God she had been a son.

            For the failure to bear a son I am to die.

* * *

            The tour of the Tower was disappointing. I don’t know what I expected. It was all together too tidy, too bright, too sunny. The site of Anne Boleyn’s execution was nothing more than a neatly trimmed patch of grass marked with a tidy little plaque. The Yeoman Warder guiding the tour made a quaint little joke and a few cameras clicked.

            I trailed behind as the group started on. A chill crossed me, along with the peculiar sensation of being watched. When I turned no one was there.

            No, there was someone. That same odd little fellow I’d been noticing all day was staring at me again from a short distance off. He was a squat, dumpy man with pants too short and smudged black-rimmed glasses.

            I tried to stare him down but he wouldn’t drop his eyes. Instead his intense little eyes met mine without blinking. His smile showed crooked, yellow teeth. When his hand crept up to his nose I hurried to catch up to my group.

            He found me, again, in the afternoon. I had been staring out at the river trying to make myself move through time as discarded cans moved in the water. All I accomplished was to learn the names of several European beers.

            When the man’s shadow crossed me I quickly stepped back, instinctively clutching both my purse and camera. He peered at me as if he were trying to decide whether he knew me or not. I was edging away from him when his words stopped me.

            “Ever seen a ghost, have you?” he asked and I shivered. It was involuntary and uncalled for but, nevertheless, I shivered.

            “Why do you ask?” I managed and inched backwards.

            “I can help you.” He pressed a grubby business card into my hand and scurried off before I could say another word.

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            With the night came the fog moving up the river like a spirit. It stretched its tendrils around the Tower. The spotlighted walls of the Tower rose from the shroud of fog, isolated in time and space.

            From the balcony I watched until the fog blotted out all view, leaving only the sounds of the night as disembodied whispers.

            Eagerly, I took to the bed and concentrated on sleep.

            And couldn’t.

            I forced my eyes to close and chanted, “sleep, sleep, sleep,” to myself, but my mind refused to cooperate. When finally I did sleep it was restless and dreamless. The Twentieth Century held me down and suffocated me.

            The dawn was foggy and damp as only London can be. In the dank grey I tore through my purse and coat pockets. I held the smudged card with a mixture of urgency and apprehension. It read: Time Travel, Ltd. William Anton, Proprietor.

            The address was very near.

            Ghosts walk in the night for good reason. Daylight brings rationality and reason. It’s in the midnight hours, that witching time, when graveyards open, shadows become monsters, and mystic fantasies real.

            In these black hours on my second dreamless night I ventured out to Mr. Anton’s Time Travel shop. Fog and darkness swallowed all sign of the present. Into the murky void I walked alone followed by the echoes of my footsteps. It was foolish, I knew. These riverfront streets were no place for a woman. But, fear could not compete with the compulsion that drew me on.

            “Time Travel, Ltd.” I made out the words on glass wavy with age. Beneath a heavy oak door, the stone step had been worn into a hollow by the passage of centuries of feet. There was no light inside .

            I let the knocker fall and waited. As I lifted it a second time the door creaked open and I was staring at a living anachronism. Mr. Anton carried a single candle for light. He wore an ankle length nightshirt and an absurd nightcap pulled low over his scruffy black hair.

            He squinted at me, shoved his glasses on, then stepped back pulling the door open. “‘Bout bloody time,” he said as I moved timidly into the shop. Then he chuckled, “If you take my meaning, that is.” I didn’t, but nodded anyhow.

            “Come on, come on,” he urged me forward. The door closed behind me with a nerve-jarring thunk.

            Mr. Anton led me through the shop to a back room. In the candlelight I could make out dust-covered antique time pieces. Ah, I thought with a mixture of relief and disappointment, that’s what the ‘Time Travel’ name means. Then, at the edges of the candle’s dim glow some far less benign objects caught my eye.

            Mr. Anton hurried me on through before I had a chance to clearly see how closely these devices resembled those I saw in the Tower.

            “You asked me if I’d ever seen a ghost.” I said as Mr. Anton busied himself pouring tea, “Why?”

            He gestured me to a comfortable chair, handed me a cup and settled into the chair opposite me. All I could see in the candlelight were his eyes peering at me. I squirmed ever so slightly.

            “I saw it in you right away,” he said. “You’re sensitive to it. So am I. But you need a guide, someone to help show you the way through the dreams.” He leaned forward, fiddling with an object I couldn’t quite see...

            “You know about the dreams,” I whispered.

            Those eyes bore into me. “They’re not just dreams. They’re trips through time to hear the messages of ghosts.” Mr. Anton settled back and I saw now what he held, “There’s this idea, you see, that ghosts aren’t the souls of the dead staying to haunt at all. Instead a ‘ghost’ is the imprint of a strong emotional trauma left on the surroundings. Death. Murders! Executions!” He fell silent in a reverie of death, distractedly twisting the thumb screw in his hands.

            My cup rattled against the saucer. I controlled the tremor. After an endless dark moment William Anton continued. “The imprint replays like a tape loop, night after night. Century after century.

            “Some people are more receptive than others. You’re very receptive,” he paused, fixed his eyes on me again and admonished, “Now, drink your tea before it gets cold.” Obediently I sipped. As all tea tastes uniformly horrible to me I didn’t notice any odd flavor in this.

            Mr. Anton went on talking, “In your dreams you’re picking up this ghostly tape loop.”

            I yawned widely, finding it difficult to concentrate on his words. His eyes grew and expanded. I jerked myself upright to keep from falling into their black pools. Quickly, I downed the last of the tea and asked, “Am I traveling through time in my dreams?” I felt myself drifting into the dark web of the past.

            Time is traveling through you,” his voice said, with a faint sniffle, before it faded into the distance and was replaced by the dull thud of an axe.

* * *

There is written her faier neck rounde abowte;

Noli me tangere, for Cesars I ame;

 And wylde for to hold, though I seme tame.

            Good Thomas Wyatt wrote that of me. He was spared the axe I hear Not so the others. Norris, Weston, Bryerton, and mine own dear brother, George. And Marc Smeaton, who met the awful death of a commoner. They all died today. On my account. All innocent...as am I.

            Master Kingston conducted e to a window whence I could see Tower Hill and scaffold bloodied with the blood of my brother and friends. Hath Kingston no qualm of conscience for the grim office he performs?

            Tomorrow it will be my blood on the straw. They were all so brave. So also, must I be. Touch me not, for Caesar’s I am. Today I am a Queen on Earth. Tomorrow a Queen in Heaven? The headless bodies of my friends and brother torment my thoughts. Anne the Whore the people called me. Soon it will be Queen Anne Lackhead.

* * *

            Anne was pale and shaken as Kingston returned her to her rooms. I reached a hand toward her in a gesture of comfort and failed to make contact. It was then I realized that none of those among whom I walked had noticed my presence.

            I sat down in a chair near the fireplace. Anne stood nearby, staring into the flames. “They died most bravely,” Anne said in a voice she forced to be clear and free from tremor. “God speed their way to heaven,” she added in a whisper only I heard.

            “Leave me, now,” she said out loud. Kingston and one of the Ladies left after bows and curtsies that were not as low and respectful as they had once been. One lady-Kingston’s wife, I believe-remained in the shadows near the door.

            From the ornately carved, and extremely uncomfortable, chair in which I sat, I watched Anne. I saw her as no portrait could paint. She was darkly beautiful in a way that seemed exotic next to the pale English. She was small, near to my own height, finely built yet firm. A sensuous pout never left her lips. But, it was her eyes that were her wonder. They were rich, black and alluring.

            Watching her, with the fire crackling softly, its glow a halo of gold, a sleepy feeling swelled over me. Anne pulled the scented pomander that hung from a chain around her waist up to her nose and smelled it distractedly. Her hands twisted the chain. I inhaled the spicy scent deeply, thinking vaguely how well it contrasted to the smoky smell of the fire, and masked the sour ale smell Kingston had left behind.

            Anne moved toward me and I was startled abruptly awake when I realized she meant to sit in the chair in which I sat. My mind had refused to believe I was anything but solid and real, lulling me into forgetting that, here, I was nothing but an unseen spirit, with no more substance than a ghost.

            Anne sat as I scrambled up and we passed one through the other.

            Time froze.

            Anne Boleyn and I were one.

            In that oneness I encompassed the essence of Anne. It was total empathy; total understanding. In that brief moment I experienced a revelation as bright and overpowering as a nova. This was the thing I had sought. This was the completeness of knowledge and understanding of this woman and this era that no research, no study, and no dream, could ever deliver.

            Then we passed, one from the other, and were each our separate selves.

            Anne shivered as if she had been touched by ice. “George?” she whispered her dead brother’s name to the air. “Oh, Jesu,” she moaned and began to cry.

            I stood before her. The revelation was gone, vanishing from my mind and memory like a dream at dawn. In its wake was left the burning need to have it again.

            I opened my eyes to candlelight and found it blurred by tears. A slight whimper escaped me.

            “Worked, did it?” Mr. Anton’s voice came from the shadows.

            “That was no dream,” I whispered. “I was there. I could feel and smell and almost touch. I was her. Send me back,” was my quiet plea.

            There was a long silence from the darkness beyond the candle’s glow.

            “Please,” I urged.

            Mr. Anton stirred from the shadows. In his movements I sensed an air of familiarity that I couldn’t quite define. Complete recognition was beyond the fringes of my memory; somewhere in the lost revelation.

            “You freely ask this thing?” he said at last.

            The barest trace of doubt crossed my mind and was firmly shut away. What danger could there be in this peculiar dreamworld of mine? “Yes. Please, send me back. This is it. This is what I came here for. Please!”

            “Aye,” Mr. Anton moved slowly into the candlelight. “That’s true enough. True as it was when I chose you.”

            “Chose me? Chose me for what?”

            He stood over me forcing me to look up at him; an odd little figure in a shop full of time pieces and torture devices; a strange man out of sync with time. His eyes stared into me. “You look very like her, Regina” he whispered. I felt a growing knot of fear as the now familiar slipping through time sensation overtook me.

            “Chose me for what?!” I repeated.

            “My atonement,” I heard him say from the darkening distance and in my last clear vision I saw him wipe his nose on his sleeve with a loud sniffle.

            “Mistress...it is time.”

            A crucifix resolved into clarity as a tear was blinked out of the way. Master Kingston’s somber face was seen in the peripheral vision. Lips moved and soft words of prayer were spoken.

            Neither the lips nor the words were mine. I tried to panic but could not force a scream from the throat. This body was controlled by a will other than my own.

            Anne rose. We rose, this one body containing us both. I felt what she felt. The gown was snug against our chest. The fabric of the skirts was a silky rustle around our legs. She moved our hand briefly to our neck, bare of jewels, and I heard a trace of her thoughts.

            I forced myself to be calm and found I could hear the whispers of Anne’s thoughts. They leapt about and came to me in occasional flashes of clarity. There was a glimpse of her daughter, Elizabeth. Of Henry in both loving and hating.

            And there were images of Anne, herself. She envisioned the sword slicing through her neck, blood pouring out. Anne was afraid. And why not. Death was only minutes away from her.

            From us! I tried to panic again; tried to regain my sense of self. I struggled to control this body, to flee.

            A heavy door swung open and we stepped out into the bright sunshine of Tower Green. Every eye in the crowd was upon us. Anne saw only a blur of faces. With crystal clarity we did focus on the scaffold, built low and draped in black.

            We swallowed hard. Through boldness we had come to be Queen and boldly we would meet our death. We tilted our chin up and walked slowly toward the scaffold.

            Straw rustled beneath our feet as we reached the top step. We looked to Master Kingston, into his painfully familiar eyes, for our cues.

            The Ladies removed our headdress, leaving our neck quite bare and vulnerable. We were guided to our knees. Anne prayed over and over, “Jesu receive my soul; Oh Lord God have pity on my soul.” Alert to every rustle, we heard the Executioner draw the sword from its hiding place in the straw. Anne’s iron will kept us still while I strove to run screaming.

            Kingston gave the signal. We felt, rather than saw, the Executioner raise the sword for the blow.

            Then Anne was gone. And I was alone, this body mine to control. Too late.

            The sword flashed.

            Hard steel cut through the skin on my neck, then through the spinal cord, numbing my body, then on through sinew and muscle. It cut through the windpipe causing a choking feeling and through the veins and arteries opening up the blood to the raw air.

            It was so quick and, yet, agonizingly slow. My eyes were open and seeing as my head dropped into the straw. “My God!” my lips formed the words without sound. Fainting blackness crept over the brain as the blood drained away.

            And, even still, I remained.

            The Ladies, weeping and distraught, picked up my head and wrapped it in a cloth. They struggled with the weight of my body, carrying it down from the scaffold.

            They placed me in a rough box, scraping my cooling flesh on its sides. I screamed and fought in vain as they closed the cover on me. Dirt thudded down on the lid.

            Then it was silent. Then it was dark.

            Bit by bit my body died. Trapped in this dying flesh I tried to vomit but the body could not. I could not force air into the lungs nor blood through the veins. Decay was already beginning as cells died throughout my body. And I, a living mind in a rotting corpse, experienced each hideous moment.

            In this cold grave time lost meaning to me. My coffin, a cramped arrow crate, began to leak. Worms burrowed into my spoiling, liquefying flesh. Each nibble was an eternity in my nightmare. I stood in the Chapel. In my hands I held my severed head.

            But, it was not my head. It was Anne’s. But, Anne was gone. I stood in the Chapel above the grave where I had lain in torment. I wore a dead woman’s specter. Now I walked her path.

            I had no will of my own, but could only wander those pathways laid down by Anne Boleyn. From the grave to Tower Green I walked back and forth.

            On rare dark nights a Tower guard might feel a brush of chill. Or an expression of terror would tell me that I had been seen. The ice of my desperate touch fell on the shoulder of a tourist, the person I had once been. She shivered under my ghostly hand, looked around uneasily and walked on.

            After that, and all the centuries gone by, I knew I was trapped. This dream-that-was-not-a-dream would never end. “To sleep, perchance to dream,” had been my wish and with resigned sorrow I remembered the words that followed: “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come....”

            On a foggy London night, in a shop in a rundown riverfront district a single candle burned. Anne Boleyn opened eyes that felt strange and breathed air into lungs that seemed alien. She clutched her neck.

            William Anton Kingston dropped to his knees before his Queen, took her hand and kissed it. “Forgive me, Milady, for all that has gone before, and all I was bound to do.”

            “Be this Heaven, or be this Hell?” Anne whispered to the dark figure that knelt before her.

            “Purgatory,” was the only answer he could think to give.

THE END

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