Stilling the Dead

by Jamie Wilson

Ramsdell had boomed for a year, a hundred twenty years ago, when construction crews in tent cities had built the Appalachian Branch Railroad. Today, well, it wasn't booming. Main Street boasted a combination general store/post office and a government/office building housing Frank Highwater's clinic, an attorney, and the sheriff's office. A candy store on one corner housed a soda jerk who still mixed ice cream sodas the old way. That was it.

It was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else's business. The old men who loitered in the general store, huddling around the stove even in the heat of summer to gossip and play cards, knew everything.

"It sure is a shame about that young doctor's wife, it is. Heard tell she was not quite dead when he cut out that baby boy."

"Hain't what I heard. Supposingly that doctor got mad and killt her."

"You shut that old nasty stuff up, you old goat." That was the old goat's wife Lottie, and not someone Frank would tangle with. He cleared his throat.

"Now, I think I'm one who ought to know the truth, don't y'all?" That got everyone's attention right quick. Frank cleared his throat again, making a show of it.

"Well, you going to tell us?" asked Sam the counterman.

"Don't know. You reckon you deserve to get told?"

Lottie folded her arms and huffed. "I reckon now you better tell. You done got our taste up for it."

Frank grinned, then sobered. The story wasn't anything to be joking with. "She had a massive hemorrhage. Bled out in just a couple of minutes. There wasn't anything anyone could do."

"He hit her?"

"No, no. Looked to me like the afterbirth pulled loose on her." The men nodded; most of them were farmers or grew up farming and were familiar with the things that go wrong in birthing. "Though it was hard to tell. For a surgeon, he cut mighty rough." He felt Sam slip the bottle of corn liquor into his hands, and he automatically uncorked it.

Lottie nodded. "Reckon that's explainable. He's crippled in the hands, I hear. Some sort of accident."

Frank knew that story well, too. Young Dr. McCoy had a brilliant future ahead of him. Gifted neurosurgeon, clever young man. Then he happened across the accident. The car was on fire, and the mother was standing outside wailing, trying to reach in and get her baby, though the flames were far too much for her. The young doctor had reached in, ignored the agony in his hands, and worked blind to unbuckle the child - his training as a surgeon stood him good stead in this. The baby had some fairly bad burns, but nothing that wouldn't heal.

But the young doctor had ruined his hands forever. No insurance company would cover them beyond paying his medical bills; he had, after all, made the choice to ruin them. And the young mother was grateful, and wild with remorse. She did all she could, and finally insisted that Dr. McCoy take the house her mother left to her, go out to the country and try to heal.

That would be the house the McCoys lived in now. An ill-fated place. It had once been the town bordello, servicing miners from miles around. Today, it sat up on a hill overlooking the town's cemetery, back away by itself. There had been a suicide sometime in the forties, something about a mother who lost her sons in World War II.

Frank had tried more than once to get McCoy to come out and join his practice - you don't need full use of your hands to be a country doctor, after all. But McCoy would shake his head and turn away, and after a while Frank stopped asking. He did send the young man all his medical journals when he finished reading them, and he knew they came back read.

Sam looked out the window. "Oh, lordy, heah she come."

Frank looked, and grimaced. Helen Highwater strode down the street, the clasps on her old galoshes clattering with each step. She was built solid, her old white cotton apron anchored firmly against her homemade calico dress, and the uninitiated would think she was a harmless woman on the shady side of fifty. The men and women of Ramsdell knew better. And Frank doubted any one of them would dare tangle with her.

"Best put up that bottle, Frank. Your daughter's gonna give you what for."

Frank shrugged and upended it again. It was Sam's best corn whiskey, sold without the benefit of government blessing. "Don't matter none, boys. She'll know, whether she catches me or not, just like her ma."

The old men guffawed. Arch licked his thumb and index finger and started dealing out four hands on  the board they had laid on the stove.

"Don't you be betting money back there."

"Ah, Sam, you know us."

"That's right."

The string of bells on the door jingled. Helen walked over and got a Coke out of the old fashioned ice chest. It was always colder than the one on the porch that shot cans out the bottom.

"That be all for you, Helen?"

She nodded.

"Sixty-five cents." Sam peered over his glasses at her. "Say, you look a little agitated. Is something wrong?"

Frank set his corn whiskey aside and pulled out his wallet. There sure was something going on with his daughter. She looked like she'd been seeing ghosts again.

Helen shook her head.

"Well, keep your secrets if you must."

"Ain't seen Raven, have you?"

Henry raised his eyebrows. "Raven, is it? So something is wrong."

She hesitated, then answered hoarsely, "Don't know. Maybe."

"Last I saw of him, he was up on Baldy doing something he called a spirit quest. I reckon there's enough spirits down here without seeking out more on mountains."

Helen nodded, then took her Coke and left. Dr. Highwater stood and put three quarters on the counter. "Not like Helen to scoot without paying. Or without saying so much as hidey-ho to her own daddy." He watched her as she headed south toward the bald-topped mountain. "Have to do my own typing for a day or two, unless one of y'all want to come over and help." One of the poker players hooted at him, but everyone else stayed silent. Helen's agitation had cast a pall over the entire room.

She might be a harbinger of doom, but she was always right. And if she was this upset, something surely was wrong.

The baby's wails woke Mark McCoy at two in the morning.  He sighed, smacked his lips, and threw the covers back.  Silver moonlight shone clearly into his window, puddling on the white t-shirt he'd thrown on the floor, behavior Elayne would never allow. Have allowed.  He stumbled into the nursery, pulled a bottle out of the refrigerator, dropped it into the electric bottle warmer.  Then he picked up the baby.

"Shit!" He almost dropped the baby.  The baby's little t-shirt was coated in something warm and moist. Spitup? It didn't smell unpleasant. It was -- earthy.

Mark gingerly carried him to the changing table, grimacing at the dark smudges on the white cloth cover. Elayne had been the household stain professional; Mark would probably never get this out.

"Daddy?" Robby stood in the doorway rubbing his eyes. One of his pajama feet was folded under his toes, stretching the red flannel leg taut. "Daddy, I'm sorry. I told Mommy not to wake him, but she wouldn't listen."

Mark tugged the shirt off the baby's torso. The baby was screaming, face red and body stiff with rage. "Robby. Go to bed."

The baby's little belly was taut. Colic, probably. Mark carried him to the rocking chair, patting him in what he hoped was a burp-inducing pattern. Just as he reached the chair, the baby vomited down his back. It splattered on the carpet and floor.

"Ah, crap, baby." The baby inhaled and screamed in earnest. Mark inhaled and wanted to scream. Instead, he gently laid the baby down on the carpet and stripped off his pajama shirt, dropping it over the mess.

"Okay, baby, okay." He tested the bottle. Warm. The baby calmed as Mark picked him back up and sat in the chair. He actually smiled when the baby nuzzled at Mark's bare chest. "Sorry, bud. Wrong equipment." The baby found the bottle and started sucking lustily.

"Dad, Mom already fed him." Mark sighed, not out of impatience, but to control the anger he felt whenever Robby said something like this. It wasn't Robby's fault. He was a little boy. He couldn't deal with the reality of Elayne's death.

"Mom is dead. Dead, Robby. That means she'll never come back."

Robby's face puckered, and tears came to his eyes. "But she does, Dad. Every night."

"I feel it too. The dead are agitated."

"Why?"

Raven shrugged. "Who knows? Someone bad die?"

"The only person who's died lately is Elayne McCoy, and she was a sweet thing."

"She was. I remember." Raven stared out over the ravine pensively. It was a beautiful view, all of Ramsdell blocked by trees except for the steeple of the church rising gracefully into a white spire, gleaming in the moonlight. As long as they kept their backs to the strip-mined top of Baldy, it was a postcard picture.

Raven had taken it on himself to appease the old mountain's spirit, angry and agitated at being left naked. He spent his days planting trees, tending and watering grass, and keeping careful watch on the parts of the mountain that wanted to slide downhill, where there was more cover. There were those who called it environmentalism. Raven had always done this, though, caring for the injured parts of the land. Helen feared she wouldn't do half so well when her time came.

"Did she die well?"

"No. It was -- terrible." Helen shook her head. Daddy was the coroner and mortician of the town as well as the doctor, and she'd helped prepare the woman's body. Whatever Daddy thought, Helen knew it had been an embolism of the womb, a part of the wall that was not as strong as the rest; she had bled to death in less than five minutes.

At least her husband had saved the baby. That was terrible, too; the poor man had to cut the baby out of his wife's dead womb. He refused to talk about it, except to say it was a good thing he was a doctor, albeit retired. The baby was a couple weeks early, but healthy. McCoy still hadn't named him. Daddy had taken to calling him Arnie, after his own father, and the name was sticking.

"Perhaps her spirit is unquiet."

"Why?"

"You should ask her, or her husband." He lapsed back into silence, smiling at the moonlit clouds.

Raindrops slid down the window, starting, stopping, colliding, picking up momentum, sweeping off the edge of the window at speed.  Elayne was probably getting soaked.  Mark had bought the most expensive coffin and vault, both guaranteed waterproof.  Now that was a situation ripe for fraud; who would check on the coffin's dampness?  He could imagine water dripping into the coffin, rolling down the dried petals of the white rose, soaking her white dress, finally puddling under her body and ensuring mold's clammy victory over the embalmer's art.

Elayne.  Mark reached over and touched the pillow on his left.  Her pillow.  He hadn't made the bed since it happened, slept on top of the covers.  The indentation of her head was still there, though fading and smoothing.  Soon she would never have been, except for the children, and all her little echoes.  Her diet sodas.  Her pantyhose, left to dry on racks in the bathroom.  He'd throw all those things away soon. It wasn't good to dwell on her so much, or so everyone said.  And Robby kept asking when Mommy was coming back.

Mark's back ached.  He got up and sat in the window seat, looking out at the rain.  He closed his eyes.  Heard the sound again, dirt hitting the coffin (though of course it never did, the coffin was inside the vault and they had all left by then anyway) the screaming.  Screaming from inside the coffin.  Elayne's fingernails, cut short for the funeral, scratching, tearing at satin lining, digging into wood, splinters to her bone.  Elayne.

Mark jerked awake.  Robby's warm little body lay on him.  He wrapped his arms around the child.  "She did too come back, Daddy."

Mark closed his eyes.  "Only in dreams, son. Only in our dreams."

That evening after feeding the kids, Mark caressed the black and white keys of the baby grand. He had barely played it since the accident; his fingers were too stiff and missed notes. But he had always played "Memory" from Cats for Elayne on their anniversary.

Which was tonight, full moon and all.

He barely touched one of the keys, and the strings whispered a "G" note. It was only slightly off key, remarkable since they hadn't tuned it since moving here. He touched another key. "E," it whispered.

Would she come if he played?

No. He was starting to believe it himself, Robby's private little myth. It made things easier for the boy, thinking Elayne was around, watching things, making certain the children were well. Which they were not. Robby barely left the house, and never went to the garden. The baby was sick all the time, puked up more than he ate. Still that green stuff, too.

"A."

He sat on the polished wooden bench and rested his fingers on the keyboard. Slowly, haltingly, he stretched stiff fingers, playing very softly. Moonlight. . .

The clouds broke, and the moon shone forth through its shroud, over the fields, bathing everything in its silver light. It cast a bright path from his window across the living room. The notes came easier, smoother. Tendons stretched creakily into position.

Someone was behind him.

He turned his head just enough to catch the reflection in the piano's polished surface. His fingers shook, but he kept playing.

Elayne. The baby was in her arms, sucking contentedly at her breast. She watched Mark, stroking the baby's hair, her heart in her eyes, and mouthed the words. Moonlight. . .

Mark wept silently. Robby had been telling the truth. Or Mark was insane. Perhaps both. It didn't matter. His darling was here.

A sound behind her, and she was gone, the baby rocking gently in the bassinette. Robby held his blanket, rubbing his eyes. He looked at his daddy accusingly.

"See? I told you she comes back."

Mark took him and the baby into his arms. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispered over and over. And then he carried both of them to bed, burping the green stuff out of  the baby before settling him down with a bottle. Mark didn't sleep all night, but instead watched across Elayne's garden toward the cemetery, where he knew she rested.

Helen paused at the doorway to the old bordello. There were spirits here, as there were throughout the hills, but somehow they seemed subdued. She was well familiar with all of them, the young bride who ran away to become a whore rather than submit to her husband's touch, the woman who suicided when both her sons were killed at Iwo Jima, the man who was beaten to death and buried in back, never to be found.

But today they were silent, no spirits to be found out in the open. She wondered what they were hiding from. Surely not the little boy who looked at her with a gap-tooth smile.

"Hi." He wiggled his fingers at Helen.

Helen smiled. "Hi."

"I'm Robby. Daddy's asleep with the baby. I got to take care of things."

"Well, Robby, I came up here for my father Dr. Highwater to do for you folks. Can I make you a sandwich?"

Robby looked at her suspiciously. "You're a stranger."

"No, you've seen me in Dr. Highwater's office."

"We got no bread."

"No bread?"

"Nuh-uh. Nor no milk, or anything to eat that I can make."

"What have you been eating then?"

In answer, Robby pulled out a bag of jelly beans and held them up. "I like the green ones."

"But I bet you a ham sandwich would taste a lot better right now."

Slowly, Robby nodded.

"Then what I'm going to do is walk back into town and get some ham and bread and maybe a Coke for you."

"Okay." Robby smiled.

When she returned, the boy didn't hesitate before letting her inside. He hadn't lied to her; the refrigerator was entirely bare, and there was no bread on the counters. "Do you want me to grill you a ham and cheese, or would you just want a sandwich?"

Robby looked at her wistfully. "Can I have both?"

"Sure." The child wolfed his food down; Helen shook her head and started cleaning. By the time Mark made an appearance at dusk, the house was spotless.

He scowled at her, as she looked him up and down. He was wearing a draggled white robe that had not been washed in weeks, by its looks, and holding a baby whose breathing was shallow and a little harsh.

"Hello, Dr. McCoy. I'm Helen Highwater. My father sent me up here to do for you while y'all get situated with the baby and everything."

"I don't need any help."

"Well, I got a pile of trash and a fed little boy who tell me a different tale."

"Fine." He kept scowling. "Stay. But stay out of my way. I do things my own way and I don't want to be meddled with."

Helen nodded. "As you wish."

He walked over and sat down at the piano, putting the baby into a bassinet near the stool. First caressing the keys like most men caress a woman, he put his fingers onto them and started playing lightly. Helen felt the hair on her neck stand on end. It had a wrongness.

After about ten minutes, McCoy turned around. "I think you're going to have to leave for tonight, Ms. Highwater. Thank you."

He turned back to the keyboard and ignored her. Frowning, she did as he asked and left, even though she could see the darkness taking over the house. She would be back tomorrow.

"He ought not to be doing that."

Helen stood in the doorway of the general store, sipping a Coke. Piano music issued from the McCoy house. Mark had been playing for a week, and it was getting better.

"It ain't so bad now, Helen."

"It disturbs the way things ought to be."

"Why, Helen." Bill Chilton stood up, folding his cards. "That ain't like you. You always used to like music."

"That's not music. That's a calling."

Bill grinned, showing all three of his teeth. "What's he calling?"

"You'll know when it gets here, I reckon." The spirits were stirred up. Something in McCoy's music reached across, touched them in their other world, and they didn't much like it.

Daddy was right. McCoy had quit looking for what ailed the baby. Doctors, even doctors who couldn't practice anymore, never did that. They dogged a problem until it coughed up an answer. But Mark didn't even seem concerned about the child now.

Helen was. The baby's body was healthy, but his spirit was spotted and stained. Something ailed his soul. His crying was less frequent, weaker, and he slept too much. Something was drawing the life right out of him.

Helen hated to lose a patient, even more than her father did. She'd only lost one, when she was just learning to deal with her peculiar gifts. Raven, bless him, had stepped in to guide her before she lost more, but that baby had died. Mrs. Haney had other children later, but you never forget your first child.

Raven knew Helen for what she was, right at the start. "There's one in every generation," he told her. "Watch the babies every twenty-five years, and you find your wise one, one born knowing." He'd watched from the side for her entire childhood, meaning no harm, though Daddy was wary. Raven lost her mother when Helen was born, when Dr. Highwater was out of town, and he'd never trusted the old Indian since.

Helen knew better. Raven had taught her the signs, the herbs, what to look for in a person's spirit, and how to talk to haints. He had added native ways to the ways Helen's Irish grandmother had taught, and Helen took pride in how she kept the little community safe.

Dr. McCoy was introducing something new. It felt like a spirit, but it wasn't. It was a thing that walked in the night, not meaning harm, perhaps, but things like that always caused trouble. It made the baby ill, and the little boy would follow soon. Helen liked Robby. He brought her flowers, and chattered incessantly, not expecting an answer. It was endearing.

Raven thought it was something from the Old World, something alien here. It left footprints. It dropped worm-infested clots of earth, and it traveled quick and light, down the silvery moonpath. Raven feared it, though it was not aware of him.

"Yet," he said, kneeling at the top of Baldy. "Things like this often do become aware of us, the living, and when they do, they resent our life. This must stop."

Problem was, Helen had no idea how to stop it. Or rather, she knew, but it hurt that she had to. The thing that visited the McCoys was wrong, but inside it was still the glimmer of Elayne. She wanted to love her family, and Helen pitied her.

She stopped at home to make roast-beef sandwiches, piling the meat on liberally, and stuffed the sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, and fruit into a bag. For the baby, she picked up some vitamin drops. The thing was haunting his life out of him, but vitamins never hurt.

The music grew louder near the house. Dr. McCoy never looked up, and Robby sat on the steps in his underwear, rocking the screaming baby. "He won't talk to me, Helen. He doesn't love me or Arnie anymore." Robby had taken to calling the baby Arnie.

Helen hugged the little boy and picked up Arnie, who quieted immediately. She passed out her sandwiches, forcing McCoy to take one, and fed the baby. After cleaning, she sat down and waited, rocking the baby quietly.

Robby went to bed by himself, sniffling a little when he kissed his daddy. McCoy ignored him. Helen let him leave. What was to happen didn't concern the boy. Darkness fell. McCoy played on, his long fingers stretching for arpeggios and scales, the same song over and over, singing in a whisper. Helen stretched and settled down in a corner, making herself invisible in the darkness. She could see moonlight glittering off McCoy's eyes.

And she felt Something.

It was the cold presence of the not-living, coming from outside, drifting in, thin shadow wavering in the path of the moon. McCoy turned to face it, smiling. Helen nodded.

Elayne's long white burial gown -- her wedding dress -- shifted and drifted in the light breeze. She floated inside, a fresh red rose in her hand. The baby stirred and grumbled.

She picked up Arnie and settled into the wicker rocking chair near the window. Ignoring McCoy, she focused on the baby, unfastening her bodice and holding him to her cold breast, where he latched on and began sucking contentedly.

Helen closed her eyes briefly. Little Arnie was partaking of the dead, and though he was not drinking substantial milk, Helen could see dark threads that wove into his thin aura, the unformed soul of a baby invaded with death.

The child was changed now, no doubt of it. Whether for good or ill remained to be seen. Perhaps she should allow things to play out. No. She remembered other cases where a soul had been infested with the threads of death. They became men and women to whom death had little meaning. It could mean heroic deeds or gifts like her own, or the creation of a monster, a human who hunted other humans to taste that death they craved, the death they wanted to fill up empty places in their souls where the strangleweed taint had murdered it.

Arnie should decide his own fate. It was not meet that the dead decide it for him. Elayne had rocked the baby to sleep. She put him down and disappeared through the window, dancing down the moonbeam path back to her grave.

Dr. McCoy stopped playing. Helen stood, and he leapt to his feet, kicking aside the bench. His breath was harsh and heavy. He'd had no idea Helen was there.

"So this is why you play."

McCoy glared at her. "Miss Highwater, I do not see where it is of any concern to you."

"The dead are my concern. Just as my father cares for the living, I care for the dead. And you are meddling."

"She is my wife."

"She is a month dead." Helen picked up the sleeping Arnie. "And she is calling your son to her."

"That baby's perfectly healthy."

"If you truly believe that, you are a fool."

McCoy looked away. "I can't live without her."

"You were doing well enough."

"Besides, she was coming back already, to Robby and the baby."

"The dead have a will that sometimes lives on past their physical lives. Your wife was a good and loving woman, and her love draws her back. She does not understand that her love is killing the family she left behind. She may not truly understand that she is dead."

"And how does one change that? You can't talk to her, you saw how she is."

"We used to rebury the walking dead at a crossroads with a stake through their hearts." McCoy recoiled. "She is dead and would not feel it."

"I can't do that."

"Then you must meet her at her grave and show her that she is dead."

McCoy swallowed hard and looked at Arnie.

"Do not deceive yourself. He is dying." She frowned at the skeptical look on his face. "Enough. I know the folk hereabout think I'm not wrapped too tight. But you gotta face truth. He's not gaining weight. He's turning yellow with jaundice. His lips and fingertips are bluish much of the time. You know just as well as I do that something's wrong, and neither you nor my daddy can figure out what. And it won't harm you to try my solution. I won't do anything you don't want me to do, if that worries you. And it might be a way to say good-bye to your wife, even if I'm wrong."

Lips, tight, McCoy nodded agreement. "Fine." The word was clipped, hiding the hurt in his soul.

Helen looked at him seriously. "I will meet you here tomorrow at dusk. My friend Raven will be here to care for the little boys. He will enjoy that, I think."

The next evening was cold and overcast. November had started, though it was scarcely past mid-October. The leaves were falling from the trees all at once as the forests went to sleep for winter. Helen kicked leaves out of her way as she stomped up the street, and they settled in little drifts on either side. It would be a cold winter, she thought. The season's wooly worms, black from top to tail, confirmed it.

Raven nodded to her. He was an old man, his long hair gray, but his body still held whipcord strength. He had been renowned throughout the Cumberland region, years ago, for pulling a tractor out of the mud alone, using only a rope. Age had treated him as well as could be expected.

He greeted her ritually, kissing her on the forehead. "Spirit-daughter, you look well."

She nodded. "Spirit-father, you honor me."

"The children are in the house?"

She took his hand and led him inside. Raven would not cross a threshold unless invited. Robby ran to her, his thin face spread wide in a grin. "Helen! Did you bring the cookies?"

She smiled and handed him the basket. She had baked him sugar cookies, decorating them with pine trees and animals. Raven knelt and looked into Robby's eyes, then stood, shaking his head.

"It is not that one."

"I see that. The baby?"

"Too young to tell. Perhaps we both have more time."

Raven nodded. McCoy paced in the music room, nervously pulling his gloves on and off. "This is Raven?" He gazed dubiously at the old Indian.

"He is my teacher."

"Well, we'd best get to it."

Helen smiled as the Yankee doctor used the localism. He was blending into Cumberland, just like everyone who moved here eventually did. Raven shook Dr. McCoy's hand.

"I am honored you trust me with your sons." His voice was rich and deep, touched with his Cherokee accent and Appalachia. McCoy calmed immediately. Raven had that gift.

"Well, let me show you around. Don't know how long we'll be gone." Helen went into Arnie's room. The little one was wet, and she changed him and gave him a fresh bottle. He cried too little. Touching his spirit, she pulled at some of the cobwebs left by his mother's touch, but he began to whimper, so she left it. Best to do it later, she supposed, when they withered a bit.

McCoy and Raven walked in, and Helen handed Arnie to the Indian. He held the child up. "A handsome son."

"Did they tell you I had to cut her open to take him out?" McCoy blurted, then looked horrified.

"A brave thing. You are a good doctor." Raven looked at McCoy's hands, the scars corded around them from the fire. "I think perhaps they are not so badly damaged as you thought."

"They've improved -- lately."

Raven raised his eyebrows. "So I have heard. You play beautifully." McCoy looked away. "You should talk to Dr. Highwater. Perhaps you can start working in his practice. He is getting old. The town need a new doctor."

McCoy nodded. "It's getting dark."

The wind was picking up, and clouds shrouded the moon, cutting its waning light in half. Without a flashlight, Helen led McCoy out of the house, through the woods  toward the cemetery.

Old friends everywhere greeted her. She rarely came to the cemetery; it was difficult to concentrate, so many speaking at once. She paused only for her mother's spirit, when it passed through her and kissed her on the forehead. McCoy shivered. "I didn't realize it was so cold here."

"It always is."

The spirits closer to Elayne's grave were frightened. She comforted them, letting them know that all would be well soon. Helen Highwater was here, she told them, and brought one who could settle things.

McCoy noticed how slow she was walking. "Helen?"

She waved him away absently. "Hush. Just keep walking."

He took her arm. She was glad to have the warmth of the living with her. The spirits clung to her, and it was cold. They all spoke at once, some gibbering in fear. The little ones were the worst, and kept speaking of babies who had been consumed by Something.

That was bad. Mrs. McCoy's spirit, then, was malevolent toward the other spirits. Perhaps she did not mean to be, but there it was.

McCoy stopped beside a grave beneath a weeping willow. "This is it." He dropped to his knees, cleared away weeds from the headstone. It read "Elaine H. McCoy -- Beloved Wife and Mother." Helen sat down, huddled down for warmth, and waited. One good thing -- no spirits would come here. She had peace and quiet.

McCoy finished his task and sat motionless next to the grave. The moon rose higher, and the clouds cleared, allowing silvery light to trickle down between the tree's drapery.

Earth shifted over the grave, stirring like the restless breath of the world. And shifted again. Trickles of dust fell away from the tombstone.

Helen sucked in her breath. It was a powerful ghost, having consumed others. This was dangerous. With her own spirit being so open to the other world, it might try to consume her, and she would have to destroy it. She had never destroyed a spirit, and never wanted to. It was sinful and terrible, however necessary it might be.

The ground shifted more, rippling like disturbed water. It shimmered, glowed, and a woman rose up, stepping out of the ground as one would step out of a bath. It was Elayne McCoy, a physical manifestation. Dangerous, indeed.

McCoy looked up at his wife, who was already drifting toward the house. "Elayne," he whispered.

"You need to call her louder, Dr. McCoy."

"Elayne." The spirit paid him no mind.

Helen nodded. So be it. "Take her in your arms, Dr. McCoy."

He walked as if he were underwater. "Elayne." He put his arms around her, and she stopped.

"Mark?" Her voice shimmered, shaking through the spirit world. Helen winced at its volume.

"Elayne, my darling. I miss you."

"Mark, it hurts."

"Dr. McCoy, you must tell her she is dead. She has to know."

McCoy's face twisted, and he kissed his wife's cold lips. Helen shook her head again. That was a dangerous game. "Tell her now, sir."

He stroked her face. "Elayne, darling. It hurts because you are dead."

She frowned. "I can't be dead."

McCoy closed his eyes. "You are dead, my darling. Why else would I mourn you?"

"No, I'm not. It's time for Jesse's feeding."

"Jesse?"

"Well, yes. That's what we decided, remember?"

"No. Do you remember?"

She paused. "No."

"Elayne, look around. You are in a cemetery. You are dead. We buried you a month ago. The baby is fine, but you are killing him."

Elayne's face twisted, and Helen stood as a cold wind started blowing through the cemetery, blowing trees, blowing spirits. It cut straight through her coat, to her very bones. "I'm not dead. I have to take care of Jesse!"

She twisted in McCoy's arms, but he would not let her go. "No! Elayne, listen to me. You are dead."

"How can you say that?"

"Elayne. Do you remember the garden?'

"Yes. No. I don't want to."

"For Robby and Jesse."

She calmed a little. "Yes."

"You died in the garden. It was a hemorrhage. The baby  -- " Mark swallowed hard, and held her closer. "The baby had to be cut out, darling. It was the only way to save him."

"Mark, it hurts."

"You were bleeding to death. There was no way to save you, no time. I asked you if you wanted me to save the baby. You said yes." He clung to her, starting to cry. "It was like cutting out my own heart, darling. It was like cutting out my own heart. But you had already lost too much blood. It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I know -- I know it hurt."

The memories in McCoy's mind were so raw Helen could see them, see him cutting the baby out of his wife, see her weeping with the pain, see him weeping, holding the bloody baby and his dying wife. She remembered Robby that day, running into her father's office. They had found them both that way, McCoy clinging to the cooling body, the baby wailing on the ground next to him. She had not known Elayne was alive and conscious during the Caesarian. Now she understood what bound Elayne to the living.

"Dr. McCoy, there was nothing else you could do."

"I killed her!"

"She was dying. You saved the baby."

"I could have waited until she was dead."

"And oxygen starvation would have killed or harmed the baby. You had to do it."

Elayne listened to them both. "Jesse's okay?"

Helen answered. "Jesse will be fine, if you will just leave him be. He is a baby, too close to the edge. Perhaps later you can visit him. But now, you are pulling him back into the place where the not-living dwell."

"I can visit him later?"

"Yes."

She turned back to Mark, who clung to her. "Darling, you have to live without me."

"Yes."

She closed her eyes and shivered. "I must return, I suppose."

Mark was silent a long minute. "Yes."

"I love you, darling."

The wind died. Mark held a silver shimmer. It drifted down, falling on the grave with the gentle touch of new snow, and dissolved. The spirits all around her were quiet.

She smiled. "Dr. McCoy, Raven and I will stay with you tonight. You need time to heal."

He nodded numbly.

"Perfect health, Mark. You have two perfect children."

Dr. Highwater slipped his stethoscope back into his lab coat pocket, where Robby fished it out, plugging it into his own ears to listen to Mark's chest. Mark picked him up.

Helen nodded in satisfaction as Mark conferred with Dr. Highwater. Things were set aright again. Robby started flying the stethoscope around, the bell following the earpieces like the pod racers in the Star Wars movie. She picked up Jesse Arnold and carried him to the changing table. He was six months old, just big enough to not cooperate when she tried to get sleeves over his hands. She smiled as he flailed about, looking at everything with big eyes, then grinning with a toothless laugh when he saw her smile. She tickled his feet. He crowed. And then he crowed at something over her shoulder.

She glanced around, expecting to see Mark. Instead, Raven greeted her. He nodded at her. No one saw him but Helen, and now the baby.

So that was why she hadn't seen the old man for a month. She'd have to find his body, be certain it was buried in his people's fashion. And now she had Jesse to teach.

"Mama gave you an extra gift there, little one. We'll have to talk about this when you get older." She fastened the last snap on his onesie shirt and carried him back to his daddy. They made a beautiful family, a perfect snapshot, especially with Elaine's spirit smiling down at Jesse, who gurgled and smiled back.

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