Like much of New England, Rhode Island has a haunted past that still can make your skin crawl. While Rhode Island may not have participated in the hysteria around witchcraft, it does have its fair share of historical occurrences that have left its mark on this tiny state’s haunted history.
Rhode Island was founded on the principle of religious and political freedom and was only able to keep itself from being consumed by the hysterics that took over much of Massachusetts and Connecticut until 1892.
When the bodies of an Exeter family were exhumed with hopes to banish an undead spirit that had been slowly killing a family. When the bodies of the mother and two daughters were revealed, the youngest daughter was found to have a flush complexion and blood in her veins. Her name was Mercy Brown and the towns folk deemed her the first American vampire, only after burning her heart and liver and drinking the ashes.
This story traveled fast and made its way into newspapers all over, it thought to have inspired Bram Stoker’s, Dracula and H. P Lovecraft’s The Shunned House. You can still visit her grave today at the Chestnut Hill Baptist Cemetery in Exeter.
The Coventry homestead of the famous Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene, has had its fair share of paranormal experiences. Sounds of horse’s hooves and carriages approaching the house can be heard and moving objects throughout the house have been witnessed. The house is now a museum where you can visit and take a chance at experiencing the other worldly.
Another unlucky lady, that lived a privileged life, ripe with tragedy and marked by the death of her children, Alice Vanderbilt; lived in one of Rhode Island’s most prominent “cottages” during the summer months. This “cottage” is said to be one of the finest homes built during the gilded age and is now Rhode Island’s most visited attraction,
The Breakers mansion, in Newport. It is said the Alice’s ghost has been haunting the home since her death, trying to relive the happier times of her life.
Another of Rhode Island’s more magnificent buildings is thought to be haunted by a man who holds a prominent place in Providence’s history. In 1878 Providence City Hall was completed under the supervision of Providence’s longest serving mayor, Thomas A. Doyle. He died in 1886 and was honored with an elaborate wake at City Hall. His love for Providence ran so deep that he has chosen to roam City Hall for the rest of eternity.
One of Providence’s most popular hauntings is thought to be the result of a broken engagement between two very impassioned writers, Edgar Allen Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman. Poe and Whitman had a literary love full of passion and spiritualism. She was a poet and a spiritualist and he, well, was one of America’s finest writers. They spent many hours together in the Athenaeum Library in 1848, where their engagement would ultimately end, by a letter, given to Whitman stating that Poe was not holding up to his promises of sobriety. Poe died a year later and they never saw each other again. Some say Poe still roams the aisles of the Athenaeum waking up sleepy readers as he goes.
One of the more sad and disturbing historically haunted places in Rhode Island is The Ladd School in Exeter. This school was often overcrowded and poorly staffed, which lead to the death of many of its students. The school was opened in 1908 and was abandoned in 1994, thousands of people came through and died in this school. People have claimed to see ghostly figures and have heard screams, moans and other disembodied voices.
These are only a few of the many tales of haunted lore that still spook locals in Rhode Island. To get a taste of the real or fake thing check out one of the many events honoring Rhode Island’s dark history. There are excellent ghost tours in Providence and Newport led by enthusiastic, costumed guides drawing you into the history and the mystery. If you are looking for more of a scare than a historical creep there are several haunted houses in old mill buildings all over the state.
If I’d known, of course I’d have kept the damn cricket. Or… maybe not. Writers can’t pass up a good opportunity.
The pet store owner bobbed his white-haired head to one side and then the other as he released an impassioned torrent of guttural invectives and no small amount of spit. He jabbed a nicotine-stained finger in my general direction.
His young clerk hastily jumped into the fray. Dressed in a Lucky Jade Dragon t-shirt promoting the store, he said, “My uncle insists a cricket is a fine companion. People have kept them as pets for a thousand years.” The thumb-sized bug in question sat in its cherrywood cage, chirping.
My fellow teacher Llewlyn swallowed a laugh and whispered in my ear, “Bollocks! That’s not what the old man said.” I had figured as much. After seven months in China, I could make out key words such as “dàbízi” and “Měiguórén.” (Big nose and American.)
I told the young man behind the counter, “Please tell your uncle I need to return the cricket because it chirps all night. I can’t sleep.”
The nephew complied, setting the old man off on a new blast of frustration.
The owner’s nephew explained, “The cricket offers his stridulation – Sorry. Sometimes, I choose a bigger-than-needed word. – his song. It is a gift.” In fact, he spoke better English than most of my students. Leaning in, he whispered. “Besides, they only live for a month or two. And they are delicious fried in sesame oil.”
“That’s fine,” I insisted, trying not to turn up my big nose at crunchy snacks, “but I’d like something quieter. It’s for a small apartment, a conversation starter for when I have girls over.”
Llewlyn chuckled with Brit smugness. “Good luck,” he said. The old man narrowed his eyes, looking first at Llewlyn and then at me. Llewlyn was right, of course. Teaching all day and writing all night left me little time for dating. I’d met two girls in seven months. That worked out to one day trip to the Summer Palace followed by a snub and a two-woo-hoo-stand followed by an awkward break-up over WeChat. I was as thirsty as the Gobi.
I didn’t even hang out with my students after class, unlike Llewlyn. The government agency that hired us had no rule against fraternizing, but teenagers bored me. Beyond online games, they had no conversation in them. The only reason they were in my class reading A Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby, and The Old Man and the Sea was because their parents demanded they get into the best American colleges, so they could get high-paying jobs.
I’d worked long enough at various office jobs to know I wanted to be anywhere else. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, I’d come to the conclusion that corporations existed solely to enrich the lucky few. I wasn’t lucky. I figured China was a land of exotic adventures and offered a chance for a Liberal Arts Major to soak up some culture and turn it into a novel or three. In truth, no one cared whether I was good at teaching. They wanted me there to listen to me speak so they could one day sound like a Měiguórén.
The owner’s nephew thought about what I’d said and conversed with his uncle. The old man took a drag on his cigarette – smoking was as ubiquitous here as jaywalking and belching – and led me through his little shop. We went past a cage holding two cute kittens and several open-topped pens containing bunnies. I shook my head near each, and the old man pursed his lips in disgust.
Finally, we came to an aquarium teeming with animated silvery flecks. The old man pointed as if to spear one.
“I don’t really want fish,” I said.
He pointed again, lower this time, and stomped his foot.
“I think you’d better take whatever he’s pointing at,” a bemused Llewelyn said. “Just trade him back the cricket and throw in an extra ten yuan.”
The younger man at the counter looked over and nodded.
“Fine,” I said.
*
The next day was Monday. I stood in front of my class, called up a PowerPoint on the smart board, and began my best impassioned, well-practice rant. “All writing must contain truth, beauty, and love. Truth: writing must obey objective logic, or for fiction, an internal logic of its own. Tell me early whether your vampire can fly or not and stick to that rule; no ex machina twists at the end! Beauty: for this class, that means learning proper grammar and vocabulary. Every object, place, or person has a proper name. Learn it! That means reading everything you can get your eyes on, from Mark Twain to JK Rowling.” A few of them stirred at the plug for Harry Potter. “Try reading a good translation of Liu Cixin.” That got a bigger reaction; they were hot for The Three-Body Problem.
I wrapped it up. “Love. This is the biggie. You must make certain your story comes from a place of love. Anger pushes readers away. The world has enough hate, enough cynicism. What it needs is empathy, compassion. Without love, you’re not making art; you’re just giving your inner demons a forum to scream obscenities.”
I waited for questions. One young man whose father ran a medical supply company looked around and then raised his hand. “Will this be on the college entrance exams?”
Was I reaching the impressionable minds before me? Who knew? Teaching was a gamble, as indeed was my nascent writing career.
*
As promised, Satchmo said not a word as I dutifully filled out the query form. My new roommate’s hinge opened a little so he (she? it?) could wave his filtering filaments in the bowl’s water and have a meal. My mind flashed on my little brother showing me his half-chewed Fluffernutter sandwich. No matter. Satchmo was a good, quiet companion. If he didn’t share much, it’s only because he was a little shellfish. (Good writers employ puns.)
Back to the query: Genre? Body Horror/Fantasy. Pitch? A katana haunted by the master swordsmith Sengo Muramasa meets its match in a willful teenage schoolgirl who wields the cursed weapon to exact revenge upon her mean classmates. What about theme? Use of motif? The online forms weren’t interested. Most likely, my passion project would remain unsullied by human eyes. Instead, a computer would search for keywords: Taylor Swift, homoerotica, one million TikTok followers. Finding none of these, it would generate a standard rejection email.
Satchmo commiserated, blowing one of his singular pearlescent bubbles. I’d broken down and bought him several tankmates. Each in turn had, however, shuffled off their mortal scales. Three midget lobsters – crayfish, really – made quick work of the sushi. I didn’t bother to name the lobsters; their feeding habits were kinda gross. Satchmo, on the other hand, possessed character. My imagination stuck Satchmo in my favorite episode of a campy old TV series, which I kept loaded on the laptop for when I got homesick for silly American culture. Robin’s green boot stuck out from his crenulated mouth as Batman rushed to the rescue.
Even as I was finishing up the current query, the internet vomited an email from a Misti Rumplay of the BiblioBug Literary Agency. I’d submitted my query months ago.
No big surprise: “Thank you so much for your query and the chance to read your book. Unfortunately, the material did not grab me. This is a subjective business. Hopefully, you will find someone who will embrace your work with the conviction necessary in the current market.”
I had racked up scores of nearly identical emails. They didn’t even mention my book by name. For professionals who dealt in creative writing, agents showed a lack of color and variety when composing their rejection letters.
“Didn’t grab you?” I muttered. Then I yelled it. “Didn’t grab you! Who the hell are you, anyway? God, you’re all one big soulless business, looking for a quick knock-off of the latest mega-hit. Sure, I could sell my books, if I were a celebrity or a politician.” No one read those books; they skipped to the tell-all bits to see who screwed who. Great writing. I screamed again, “Grab you? I wish! I’d like to grab you and throw you out the window!”
With that, I picked up my mouse and flung it at the far wall. Since the apartment was tiny, it wasn’t all that far. The mouse cracked, and a piece flew off, plunking into Satchmo’s tank. Satchmo blew a bubble of surprise. I retrieved the plastic shrapnel from the tank, dried my hand in the previous day’s underwear, drank a beer, and went to bed.
*
A dull thud not far from my head woke me from my usual light sleep atop the stiff platform that was my kang. My phone said it was just after two. An earthquake, I wondered, or a large truck passing in the night, or my fat neighbor stumbling in after enjoying too much baijiu? As I set the phone back down, I heard a heavy flapping, like someone shaking out two freshly laundered bedsheets for drying. Most of the tenants used their tiny porches as dryers and storage since few of us apparently had dryers… or closets. It was an odd time to be doing the wash, though. A sudden scrape of steel against stone curdled my thoughts. The shrill noise lasted only one terrifying second.
I sprang up with my phone. I could have fumbled the flashlight on, but I didn’t feel like frying my retinas. My newsfeed was blank, thanks to the Little Chairman’s censors and a crappy VPN, so the page gave me enough white to see by. Nothing appeared out of place in the ghostly glow. Breathe. Whatever had made the noise had been outside. I checked the sliding glass door to my porchlet. It would have been nice to let the cool night in to stir my apartment’s bachelor musk, but I kept the door shut against the city noise and pollution. Now, it was half-open. Reaching over the edge of my kang – almost a dikang, since it left precious little floor space – I slid the door closed.
Too tired to think about it, I stepped into my tiny WC (if you don’t know, be grateful) and peed. Then I went back to sleep.
*
Later that morning, I was dressing when I noticed the singular change in my tiny apartment. The bitty lobsters were scurrying over the bottom of the ten-gallon tank, picking their way through the empty gravel, looking for food. The gravel should not have been empty.
Satchmo!
Like an idiot, I immediately checked under the table and around the floor. Exactly how a clam jumped out of an aquarium I did not know, but this one had. I called out, “Satchmo!” I wasn’t sure about clam ears, either. No matter; there was no trace of him.
Already running late, I got my second, and much larger, surprise of the morning as I was checking the laundry hanging on my tiny enclosed porch. I had one sliding window open on either side of the porch, which was barely large enough to hold me, and forget about putting a table and chairs out there. Mine is a corner apartment, packed in with thousands of others in a neighborhood a mile or so from Tiananmen Square. As I reached up to grab a clean shirt (well, as clean as Beijing’s filthy air left it), my eye went to a stark new detail.
Something had dealt the quoins a glancing blow, deeply etching four V-shaped grooves into the concrete.
*
My students were already seated, pulling out their essays, when the young woman walked into my classroom.
“I am shen,” stated the slender girl in a white dress.
“Shen? Actually, I didn’t get any paperwork for a new student. You’ve already missed a week of class.”
She never broke eye contact. “I have come to grow meaningfully from your wise teachings.” She quickly added, “And from knowledgeable books.”
It was the nicest introduction I’d ever gotten from a student. “Well, I suppose you can take a seat.”
And so, it began. Shen sat quietly, never raising her hand in class or speaking to the other students. Afterwards, she’d come up to me with observations and questions that left me fumbling for a response.
“Gatsby possesses great wealth and property? Daisy must submit to Gatsby. She does not, and the ending displeases the thoughtful reader.” Or “In ThePrince and the Pauper, why does Tom not order Edward to undergo murder rather than relinquish the throne of power?”
She was not as young as my other students. She was mid-twenties, closer to my age. She carried herself with a confidence I’d have expected in someone much older. I found it hard to look away. Shen’s hair and eyes shone dark, as if drawn by the sure hand of a skilled calligrapher. Her full lips promised the sweet tang of candied jujube fruit. On a simple leather thong around her slender neck, she wore a single silvery-lilac pearl, far too large to be real. Then there were her formidable nails, lacquered in cinnabar and detailed in delicate gold characters.
While the students took turns reading aloud from A Rose for Emily, I couldn’t help but stare at those nails clacking on the desktop. Those characters approximated the Oracle Bone Inscriptions I’d seen in the museum. Thousands of years old. If modern characters slashed the parchment with masculine aggression, these displayed feminine sensibilities. They were rounder, more organic, embodying a primal architecture equal parts creation and destruction.
*
As I said, the rules against fraternization were less an official thing and more my own personal code – a rule book Llewlyn had not read, by the way. He tried to shake me of this personal prohibition that night over dinner and drinks.
We chose Haidilao Hot Pot, which was noisy enough with the usual slurping and burping, and more so thanks to a loud TV. The news opened with a gushing report on the Little Chairman. He had given “an important speech” on modernizing the People’s Liberation Army and blah blah blah. A photo op found a perfect array of trim officers in starched uniforms, standing missile-straight and applauding in synchronous. Front and center, the Little Chairman slumped in his seat like a day-drinking housewife, his pot belly spilling over his belt, unconcerned with any possible criticism. No one criticized the Little Chairman.
“Try the pig ear,” Llewelyn practically screamed, holding a chewy bit in his chopsticks.
Llewelyn was the closest thing I had to a friend, despite the fact that he was already burning his forties. Hailing from somewhere (or something) called Stoke-on-Trent, he had a blue-collar background, living as meagerly as a 19th-century coal miner. It was no wonder he’d decided to chuck that life and teach abroad. “I’ll never go back. I won’t let the beast eat me.”
Over pork ribs, I fumbled out some hints that I was interested in one of my students, and he perked up.
“This Zhen sounds mysterious. It’s high time you went native, Jules my lad. Ask her out,” he needled me. When I tried to demur, he scolded, “Stop being such a melt.”
“A what?” I shouted over the noise of the restaurant. Someone at the next table was blasting TikTok, reviewing snippets of soul-sucking media with sound effects lifted from Hanna Barbera. Critics said the CCP used TikTok to deliver propaganda. I thought it simply made people stupid and docile. Whatever.
“A melt. Oh, what’s the American term for a craven sod?”
“Wimp?” I volunteered.
“Chickenshite.” Llewelyn anglicized it. In any case, he was right. “What is required here is ten seconds of bravery…” waving two fingers at the server, “which comes in liquid form.”
By the end of the night, my thoughts were liquified indeed.
*
What did I know about Shen? Did she have family? Besides Western Lit and Composition, what were her interests?
As it happened, asking her out took exactly ten seconds, even accounting for my hangover.
“You have written a book?” she mentioned as the other students were filing out.
“A novel.”
“Please, I would like it to read. Let us discuss this sincerely as we walk,” Shen said. It wasn’t a question.
The next thing I knew, we were holding hands, strolling under a row of camphor trees. For a time, we talked about my book. She nodded, only commenting that it was about a Japanese sword. “Chinese blacksmiths forge in the heat noble swords of great victory.”
I felt an instant bond, as if we had known each other all our lives… or longer somehow.
Sitting on a bench, she said matter-of-factly, “Your quest for finding an agent has been unrequited.”
This struck deep, and I’m afraid my bruised ego burst like a rotten tomato. “Others get in. Nobody wants to touch my haunted katana story, but Smythe-Beachcroft just signed a deal with Netflix to make a series out of his space nazi books. Space Nazis! Give me a break.”
“Gou pi,” Shen commiserated.
“I read that stupid series. He used every lazy trick: blank sheet between every chapter and ridiculous spacing - 32 lines per page - to push it barely past two hundred pages per book. Fifteen books. The plot wasn’t worth a short story!”
“What do self-absorbed agents require for making acceptance?” It was a question I’d asked myself a million times.
“Different agents have different rules. Some want nothing but vampire stories. Some take self-help books. There are enough self-help books to stack to the Sun; they should tell people they’re not broken and should get on with their lives. There are agents who want stories about the Jewish experience, or the Black experience, or the Hispanic experience, or the left-handed Vanuatuan experience, all for people who have already experienced things but figure it doesn’t count until someone experiences it in a book. Celebrities and politicians get instant approval because folks wanna know who they slept with. Then there are agents who only buy stories about cancer patients, assorted bunches of downtrodden victims, or LGBTQers — I’d turn lesbian if it’d sell my book.
“No matter what the agents want, it seems like they’ve already written it in their minds before I send anything in. Misti Rumplay from BiblioBug said, and I quote, “the material did not grab me.” I trailed off, not wanting my anger to spoil the moment.
Shen squeezed my hand and said, “You will try again in three days.”
Why not? Here I was, sharing a bench with a beautiful girl, so my luck had obviously changed. The cicadas worked themselves up to a fever pitch, pointing out the obvious: Beijing was hell in July.
“It is too hot here. Xi’an was a more tranquil capital city of pleasant breezes.” Before I could respond to Shen’s latest charming non-sequiturs, she tilted her head and pointed up at a series of red placards fixed to the trees.
“Those are everywhere, ruining the scenery, a gift from the Little Chairman,” I said. “Party slogans: ‘Young people must learn the Party’s rules’ and ‘Honor the Party.’”
“Why does a party need so many rules?”
“It’s not that kind of Party; and, no, it’s not fun.” It took me a moment. I had another rant inside me. It was definitely not a good idea to voice such thoughts in class, but here in private, I decided to see how Shen would respond. “They’re no different from anyone else. Communists, capitalists, socialists... at the end of the day ideology means nothing.”
Shen’s mouth pursed down to a single jujube and migrated to one side. “Mmmm,” she intoned in a thoughtful manner, staring at the placard. “This little chair-man, he is no son of heaven. His merit does not earn red signs.”
“It all comes down to a few old men forcing their will on others. They grab power, money, and of course, women.” I instantly regretted bringing up sex so soon in our relationship, even in the abstract. Shen was so damned sweet and –
“The emperors of ancient times understood that all glory is fleeting. The lamp of life burns brightly but not long. You are my emperor. Take me home now, and we will make sex.”
It was a sharp turn in the conversation. I could not form the words, but my eyes certainly let her know I was on board with the idea.
We took the jammed Beijing subway for a twenty-minute commute. Shen led me through the two transfers, we exited the station nearest my apartment. I didn’t even realize until that point that I’d never given her directions. I had questions once we got home.
We kissed deeply as soon as we got in the elevator, and our lips never parted until we were inside the apartment. She pulled away, smiling, and took a look around. There wasn’t much to take in. The kitchenette was smaller even than the one I’d had in Providence. It was a kitchenettette. The aforementioned WC will go undescribed save to say it was tiny. My crap took up the unused half of the kang. I had zero chairs, as the kang left me no floor space; I used it to sit on. And there was an armoire, stuffed with clothes and boxes and my long-neglected guitar, and a writing table, where I kept my laptop.
Stepping round the kang as best she could, she glanced for a moment at the aquarium, running a cinnabar-red lacquered nail along the rim and bending down to affectionately wave a finger at my pet lobsters. Then, she stepped onto the porch. Craning her neck, she regarded the neat row of grooves in the concrete. “Four forward talons.” She held up one hand, tucking in her thumb, leaving four finger-claws. “An emperor’s dragon.”
“Really?” I wasn’t following.
“Only the emperor may have a dragon with five toes. Anyone else must have four, or be beheaded.”
“Good to know.”
I had questions… but… her movements in that tight summer dress…
She hurried over to the laptop and began typing. Had I left it unlocked? I didn’t usually do that.
“Here. Rumplay. New York City. That’s a long flight,” Shen said, looking up from my email.
“Fourteen/fifteen hours, plus layovers.”
“Twelve. No stops,” she said confidently.
I had questions… questions her warm jujube lips pressed straight back into my own throat. Before I knew it, that silvery-lilac pearl was swaying above me, forward and back, forward and back. Lovely. I was wrong. The pearl was real. She was real. Shen was my life’s pearl.
*
My post-coital stretch ended in a sharp twinge from the region just under my left scapula—directly behind my heart. In the half-light, two cunning eyes reflected gold from some source I could not identify. Shen regarded me with amusement as her tongue explored the fingers of her right hand. The facile muscle that had thrilled me so just hours before now darted beneath her long cinnabar nails, savoring tasty evidence of our tryst. I had no doubt that when I checked the bedsheets, I’d find bloody spotlets. Mine. I knew with equal surety that I’d need both a hand mirror and a wall mirror to view my new permanent brand.
*
“Not Zhen. Shen.” To prove it, I reached into my work pouch, where I kept my students’ papers. Rifling through them, I couldn’t locate Shen’s latest essay. “Anyway, it’s Shen.”
“Oh. I thought you were mispronouncing it like you do everything else.” Through a mouthful of dumplings, Llewelyn added, “That’s not a given name – at least, I don’t think so.”
Llewelyn looked it up. He had a better VPN than mine, and it managed to get past The Great Firewall of China! I could get email on a good day, but I couldn’t Google or check the weather because the CCP and the Little Chairman was afraid that might lead to *gasp* free thought. Another alternative was to pay for roaming data. I could take a cab somewhere nice and have a big bowl of cold noodles with three sides of vegetables and a Coke for less than the price of one day’s roaming data.
Llewelyn tried several times, shaking his head but getting the same results. “Fine. Straight from Professor Wiki: ‘Shen may be spirits, goddesses or gods, ghosts, or other. A shen is a shapeshifting clam-monster or dragon that creates mirages.’ It says they have a special affinity for the affairs of humans. Sounds fairly accommodating as myths go.”
“Accommodating to what?”
Llewelyn took a long gulp of his Guinness Extra Stout. How he could drink that stuff… “To the person hearing the myth. Most ghost stories, or any stories for that matter, rely on the reader’s imagination. It gives them that extra zing of veracity.”
“Why would a spirit care what happens to me?” I said it even as my brain screamed: Satchmo!
He stared blankly at me. “Why don’t you just ask her? Or – here’s a wild thought: you could actually introduce her to me. I mean, the two of you are shagging and all.” I nearly spit out my dumpling. “I could ask her some of the things you’re too puss-snoggered to ask.” I’m pretty sure he made that word up on the spot.
He was right, as usual. It was long past time I introduced Shen to my friends – my one friend. “I will. She’ll be back in a few days. She says she needs to get some things done.”
The scratches on my back twinged. I wouldn’t call it painful, just… insistent.
*
I pulled out my laptop and set it on the table. There was an email alert waiting for me from the BiblioBug Literary Agency. To my amazement, the note said they were reviewing my book a second time. Could I send the full draft? Yes. Yes, I could. My hands flew over the keys, attaching the updated draft – the sword was now Chinese – back to BiblioBug. I noticed that the name on the return address had changed. It was a nightmarish time for literary agents, thanks to impossible competition from Amazon. Revenues dried up, agencies dwindled, and desperate agents flew out the nearest window, seeking someplace better.
I hit send and looked up. Shen was standing on my porchlet, tucked in amid my shirts and pants.
“Have you been there the whole time?” I asked, taking her hand and walking her in. “You’ll never guess what –”
A smile. A kiss. It was a simple spell to make me forget what I was saying.
My luck was definitely improving.
Even my VPN started working.
*
The next morning, Shen looked at me with a serious expression. “Jules, why do you write for the world?”
“I think you just answered your own question.” It was true. I wrote for anyone out there who’d read it and, miracle of miracles, let my words sink in.
She considered this.
“I wish to write for the world as well. Is this permitted?”
“It’s why you’re in my class.” We talked about it briefly, and then I logged her into the laptop and let her be.
While she wrote, I death-scrolled through Facebook and my newsfeed.
Lots of pictures of dragon sculptures. I checked the ones at various palaces and counted toes. After an hour, I came across an item in the news-of-the-weird section. Manhattan Demon Attacks Woman. It was nonsense, of course, the kind of police blotter news that paid the light bills for trashy media outlets. The article quoted an unnamed woman as saying she felt “invisible claws grab” her at her desk and force her out her third-story window. She fell to the pavement below, suffering numerous broken bones and other serious injuries. The writer conceded that the woman was also undergoing a psychiatric review. The blurb concluded with a melodramatic and unnecessary line to the effect that the demon was still at large.
“This is wild, Shen. It says –”
She cut me off, thrusting the laptop into my hands. There on the screen was her composition.
I read page after page. It was a lovely, lyrical dissertation on youth and freedom, the kind of thing that belonged in a literary review. I started to reread one section aloud, and she joined in so that we spoke in unison.
“Two swans with chests to contain one steadfast heart for the pumping of blood pipes did locate destiny on the harmonious lake of the lamenting willows.”
Her writing brimmed over with spurious syntax steeped in quaint non-sequiturs.
After a moment, I slipped on my teacher’s hat. “We say ‘weeping willows.’” We carefully went through her pages. I fixed some of the syntax, though, in truth, I liked her version better. Beijing paid me, however, to exorcise such cultural tags from my students’ prose so as not to rock the boat of Western conventions. In other words, I taught them how not to stand out.
Finding something of a balance, we agreed on a final draft. It was her work, heart and soul, and she beamed with pride. Next, we hit the internet, looking for local publishers. This was China, of course, so all of them were state-run. “The Little Chairman has his fat thumbs in everything,” I joked. We chose one that seemed as though it might be a good fit, and I helped her navigate a lengthy submission form. It required her to enter her address. She became agitated to the point that we agreed to list my apartment.
For the next several days, Shen virtually glowed. She encouraged me to begin work on a new book, which I did. I wanted to write about a love affair. The words came out cloyingly in a school-boy gush, but no matter. I had a good idea where it was going, and I could tone down the hearts-and-flowers in a later draft.
At Shen’s insistence, I checked my email twice a day for updates on her story.
“It can take a while,” I told her one evening, after a week. “Let’s get some sleep.”
In the early morning, I awoke with my arm sprawled across an empty kang. The laptop was open; it was this light in my eyes that had awakened me as much as Shen’s absence. I checked the computer.
It was opened to our shared email account. There on the screen were heart-breaking words, I’d seen dozens of times, with a decided Chinese twist. “The Committee feels your work is not appropriate for the revolutionary spirit of the People.”
Not only had they rejected Shen’s lovely story, but they’d used Party nonsense as an excuse. This was clearly the work of the Little Chairman and his minions. Like his namesake decades ago, the tubby politician was a ruthless climber, currently in the process of winnowing out any writing – indeed, any thinking – that didn’t line up with his stated ideology. I knew what she must be going through. It was the same thing all over: narcissistic groupthink. Either reflect the wonderfulness of me/us, or your soul’s work gets chucked out with the trash.
It was then that I heard an upswell of noise from the street below. The glass door was open again, and my ears registered sirens and a commotion of upset people. I rose, naked, and walked out on my porchlet. In the lightening sky, a column of smoke rose into the air, from the direction of the Great Hall of the People.
The words blew through my lips like air from a deflating balloon. “What did you do?”
*
As things played out over the next few days, Shen said very little. I wanted to talk to Llewelyn, but not knowing how to explain things, I kept making excuses about getting together.
The school was closed – as was everything across China – so, we sat on the kang and watched on the streaming news feeds as the huge somber procession made its way through the streets of the capital.
I also read and reread one email from BiblioBug; they had found a publisher who was willing to read my book! Shen assured me – and I believed her – saying, “You will bring knowledge and wisdom to the world.”
I urged her to resubmit her work, or perhaps to try another composition. She adamantly refused. In my mind, I resolved to convince her. There was an ineffable beauty inside this unique being, something primal, wed to the heart of the world. If I was meant to write my truth, she certainly was. Together, nothing could stop us.
My life had suddenly become more complex than I’d ever imagined, of course, but things were looking bright. Shen shared in my excitement, and this made it all magnificent. She was my dearest one, my muse, my toughest critic, my biggest fan. There is nothing in this world or any other that is better than sharing success with someone you love.
Still, I had questions. On my back was a four-talon scar. Not three. Four. I couldn’t stop wondering… what promise could the future hold for someone marked by an emperor’s dragon?
"Those we love define who we are. They teach us to accept that we’re neither terrible gods nor nameless grains of ocean sand, but rather something in between, unique and irreplaceable. The slipstream of our years brings souls alongside us for a time. We cannot keep them; that’s not what souls are for. If we’re wise, we let the ones we love change us. We remember them, and we hope, as deeply as hope flows, that they remember us."
Goody Celeste combines a sense of magical realism with a feminist bent in a novel that pairs the coming-of-age experiences of three teens with the oversight of young witch Cece who, in 1969, helps these young people even while struggling with her own challenges with an absent husband missing in Vietnam.
As these characters find their lives entwined, so they acknowledge that "the summer of my witch" changes them, drawing connections between Cece and her boys that lead them all into unexpected arenas of growth and new realizations.
The magic in this story lies not in a typical growth pattern, but in a process of revelations and counterpoints that bring together and contrast disparate individuals whose wild rides through 1960s culture and attractions are tempered by their relationships.
Chris Riker's lyrical prose also produces exceptional results that defy any definition of a staid coming-of-age progression to inject poetic and magical elements into even seemingly mundane shared experiences, such as a day at the seaside:
"Determined not to be bested in the ocean, not even by a goddess, I made my way out to the sandbar and waited. Waves do funny things. Physics suggests they amplify each other when they join up. That’s all well and good, but it’s not something you comprehend when your eyes are inches above the surface and the first swell blocks your view."
Goody Celeste also embraces the atmosphere of the times so seamlessly that the contrasts of these disparate forces is compellingly attractive, as in descriptions that offer unexpected contrasts between atmospheres from Carl Orff’s 1936 masterpiece from Carmina Burana (the O Fortuna movement) with the contemporary pop group The Cowsills.
These references keep the story pulsing with possibility, perception, and the flavor of an era in which opportunities for cultural and social enlightenment came from a wide range of forces that intersected lives in a manner unique to the 1960s.
Thus, the series of events and connections that drive these three young people and the witch who oversees them makes Goody Celeste a highly recommended marvel of contrasts and unprecedented opportunities.
Readers who enjoy novels of magical realism, growth, and a unique sense of place and time will find Goody Celeste defies pat categorization. It rewards those who imbibe with a rich, lyrical "you are here" journey that will attract libraries, book clubs, and discussion groups alike with remarkable, notable celebrations of life:
"We grasped little and were infinitely better off for our ignorance. Youth was the best holiday of all, unrecognized and uncelebrated, tenuous yet remembered forever. This time neither knows nor needs purpose. It is. It is. Life may be on a joyless march to steal innocence. It did not matter. Not here, not yet. Under the sun, three stupid, carefree boys rode bikes to the beach."
--Midwest Book Review & Donovan's Literary Services
This is one of those "beach songs" that was there on the transistor radio (new invention!) when we were kids. I didn't know until years later that the Cowsills were from Rhode Island and that they were the inspiration for The Partridge Family TV show. Hope this brings back memories... or just brings you a few minutes of joy.
I chose the triquetra pattern for Mara, my forever one. I run my fingers over its interlacing trinity knots and declare that she and I are united in eternity. There are three of these. Mine is coming. The original still lies, I suppose, painted on a granite wall deep inside our improper cave. Triads. The power of three. What you carry, what you seek, and how the weight and the journey change you.
Things used to be simpler.
Our teacher, Mrs. Flynt, took us on a field trip once to the Alton Jones campus. I was amazed there were so many acres of cedar, oak, and poplar inside West Warwick. On that spring day we hiked through the hilly woods, passing speckled red mushrooms, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and fiddlehead ferns until we came to a spot near the lake. In her singsong teachery voice, Mrs. Flynt pointed out “a cohort of igneous titans dredged and dropped in a glacial campaign fought eons ago.”
Someone said, “It’s a cave!”
Mrs. Flynt said, “No, a proper cave is formed by water chewing its way through limestone or by a lava tube or some such.” I took a closer look at the cluster of boulders forming a big hole in the ground. This must be an improper cave, I thought.
We spent an half an hour exploring that gaping hole, dropping in, climbing out, scrapping our knees raw on coarse granite, and getting generally sweaty and filthy. In those days, our ankles absorbed all abuse without complaint; we were unbreakable, I thought.
Later, we got a talk about snake bites and venereal disease–it was two talks actually; I think Mrs. Flynt used the snakes to build up her courage. My classmates and I hiked back to the school bus laughing and joking about “ssnakesss with ssyphilisss.” It was a fun day. I didn’t get many of those.
Mara wasn’t on that trip. I met her at a party months later. I don’t usually go for Goth chicks, but there was something, a presence, about the pale girl sitting all alone, intensely scoping the room. She was underdeveloped, filling out her black dress slightly more than the hangar it came on. Her bangs were comically uneven, but cute.
She caught me staring. “What?”
“Sorry,” I stammered. Indicating her dress, I asked, “Who died?” It was a stupid thing to say, an aggressive-defensive, insecure mess of an opening gambit. She was enjoying my obvious discomfort.
“Don’t make fun of the dead,” she said, her lips widening into a crooked grin. Weird, but cute.
I took a chance and sat down next to her. We talked nerd stuff. She was super smart, got straight A’s in chemistry, a subject I barely survived. I sketched a few things on napkins and bragged that one day I was going to be an artist.
She said no. “Not the hang-it-in-the-Louvre kind, anyway. These are good, but it’s more like you’re trying to tell a story. You need to write, use these to help tell stories.”
“Like kiddie books? Like Where the Wild Things Are?” I asked.
“Or, who’s the guy who wrote The Giving Tree?”
I can never remember his name; the guy who looked like a bald biker dude and wrote those gross, funny poems. “You must read a lot,” I said, trying to keep the conversation moving.
“I like books more than people.” She looked at her knees.
I wanted to change the subject. “What else do you like to do?”
“Nothing.” I thought she’d frozen me out. Then, she said, “I like to learn about the secret arts.” Cool!
We drifted outside and she told she practiced Wicca. She told me how it was all about living in harmony with nature, and how she wasn’t supposed to use her special knowledge to hurt people. “I seek to honor the Triple Moon Goddess and the Horned God.”
My mouth hung open. A horny god. I had no clue. “So, what kind of spells do you do?”
“I am learning ways to build inner strength and acquire wisdom, to provide protection.”
“I’ll protect you,” I offered and leaned in to kiss her.
“No!” She pulled away abruptly, then walked off into the night. I hadn’t meant to make fun of her beliefs. I just wanted a kiss. I headed back to the house, carrying an empty beer and a ton of questions with no answers.
The next time I saw Mara was at the homecoming game. I played bass drum in the marching band, not because I was good, but because I was tall. For our half-time show we did Copacabana and Star Wars and We Are the Champions and we sucked. Afterwards, we took a break. I spotted Mara in the concessions line. It was warm for September, but she wore a dowdy brown coat with a high collar and a wide-brimmed (witch’s?) hat pulled down over her eyes.
“Hi!” I called.
She flashed a smile. “Todd. Hi!” She sounded genuinely happy to see me, and that was electric joy to my senses. For an instant her face peeked out from under the brim. I saw that one snaggle-tooth that shows when she smiles, her big, expressive brown eyes, and the fading purplish marks along her jaw, poorly hidden by makeup.
She saw the concern in my eyes and that’s all it took. It was like watching a time-stop movie of a flower blooming, except in reverse. She closed up tight and turned her face toward the person in front of her in line. For the second time, I had blown it. I was determined to do better. I realized we had something in common.
We met a few times in the cafeteria and I made a point of saying, doing, and thinking nothing offensive. (You try it!) She warmed up to me, even suggested we enroll in an art class after school. She passed me a library book on Celtic art. The triquetra drew our attention, the perfection of a triple racetrack turning back on itself into infinity. We spent the next Saturday morning painting that design on the big rock that acts like a watchman at the entryway to EGHS. (That’s East Greenwich High School. Go, Avengers! Huzzah!) It wasn’t vandalism; everyone painted the rock. New layers obliterated the ones below, though they wound up looking the same.
This was my time, the one part of my life when everything was possible. The future lay in a perfect pattern before my eyes. I owed that wonderful feeling to Mara. We were sharing a chocolate cabinet. OK, you’re probably not from Rhode Island. A cabinet is an ice cream shake. Anyway, I blurted out that I loved her. She spoke softly. “I love you.” I heard her say those words. I can still hear her saying those words, just as I can still feel the warmth of her skin and the thrill of her kisses. Yes, it happened.
Don’t ask me why, but I felt there was something only I could give to Mara, something she needed. I knew her secret; the clues were on her like cheat notes to a test. The trick was to get her to say it. Over the course of weeks, I got it out of her in bits and pieces. Her mom’s boyfriend, Brad, liked Mara as much as he liked her mom. Maybe more. And he was a mean old drunk. I asked Mara why she didn’t tell the police, or her mom. She said she thought her mom knew. That sucked. I told her (honestly) that I knew how she felt. I told her about Barry.
Uncle Barry used to visit my room when I was little. I don’t remember much, but I know what I know. He’s gone now. Moved to Oregon and died. When I heard, I wanted to laugh, but that’s not what I did. That’s the really fucked up thing about me.
Brad sounded like another Barry. I told Mara, “The difference between men and women is that a man wants to beat the shit out of his attacker.” That wasn’t completely true, but she accepted it. I sensed she appreciated my candor. A spark went off in my mind, my heart. I was her brave knight. I promised her I would avenge her; it would be my life’s quest.
She held my hand tightly. “Together,” she said.
Being the future writer, I laid out our plan. Mara was the brainy Wiccan, so she brewed up a chemical arsenal.
Obviously, we picked Halloween, or Samhain as she called it. After her mom left for work, we put on a little performance for Brad, complete with music, magic, and Mara’s special spooky punch. He fell like a lightning-struck oak. We got him into his brand-new Cordoba with its Aztec eagle hood ornament and drove to the wilds of West Warwick. My learner’s permit meant I had to have an adult with me to drive after dark. Nobody said the adult had to be conscious.
We dragged the groggy old bastard for an hour under the gibbous moon until we found our secret place; my memory did not falter. The boulder pile offered up its intimate domain. (Halloween makes me talk like this.)
I dropped Brad down the hole, into that stony interior with its rudimentary floor of mud and leaves and muskrat turds. Mara was dressed in full regalia, with a black and red hooded cloak. By lantern light, she performed an arcane ceremony, at one point holding up a wicked cool dagger with a pentagram on the hilt. “Death to lies,” she said.
I went to work painting a nice triquetra on the wall above our semi-conscious subject. The Day-Glo green came alive in the lamp’s aura. It wasn’t paint, but a special, permanent dye, Mara’s creation. I was careful to save enough. We worked together to turn Brad’s manhood into a baby gherkin.
Pointing at the symbol that stood over our work, I said, “We should get tattoos.”
“We should cut the design into our flesh.”
I looked at the blade again. “We should get tattoos,” I repeated.
We decided to do it in henna, there being no end of surprises in Mara’s little bag of tricks. To this day I can feel the spot where the tattoo was.
Brad was still in la-la land. My heart was pounding like my bass drum; I was jazzed from what we’d done. It felt … righteous. As we sat there in our improper cave, I turned to Mara. “Let’s make love,” I said.
Familiar storm clouds filled her beautiful eyes. “I … can’t.” Everything I needed to know was in those two tortured words, if I had listened, but I was young and horny and stupid. She was trying to explain her situation. Mara said she needed me to be her friend. What I heard was rejection aimed straight at me. Poisonous pride flooded my brain. I had offered her my cock like it was some great gift. She didn’t want it.
We spoke only a little as we hoisted Brad’s fat ass out of the hole and dragged him back to his car. Pain and awareness were slowly seeping back into his mind. I told her we should have used her dagger on him, but Mara stopped me. “This is enough. It’s wrong to add more evil to the world.” So, I wrote a letter and put it in his pocket, saying next time he wouldn’t find a pickle dick; he’d find a stump.
Brad moved out of her mom’s house. I hope he died, but I really don’t know. The cops never came knocking, so to hell with him.
Mara and I saw each other often. We walked through graveyards; gawped at the lizards in the pet store; went antiquing (what teenager goes antiquing?); and ate the world’s best pizza at Two Guys from Italy on Main Street. I cherish those moments, replay them often in my mind. I called it dating, but she corrected me. She said we were best friends. So, I went to a boutique in Newport called The Operculum and bought her a friendship ring: a moonstone set in tri-color gold. Witchy chic.
Anyway, try as I might, I graduated a virgin. Mara skipped commencement. We saw each other a few times that summer, but something had changed. When we kissed, she—it was— I’ve tried a million times to figure out what I could have done differently but succeeded only in making myself ache. I have to accept my past as it is. (That’s a fucking lie in case you couldn’t tell.)
She went off to college at UC Berkeley. I guess they have more Wiccan circles out there. I got into RISD (just Google it) and focused on my art and my writing. I got pretty good. I’ve written more than a dozen children’s books over the years. Danny the Lonely Blue Dragon is mine. I like talking to kids at book signings and public readings, with their folks around, of course.
I don’t have any kids of my own. Dawn, my ex, said it was best not to. “You know how you are.” I do know. At times, I’d be all over her, but mostly I wouldn’t touch her, just sit around wishing and being moody. My compass really spins! Dawn used to say her love was worth more than that… more than me. She was right.
After the split, I’d hook up with other women, single moms. It’s no use. What I carry has become what I seek. I haven’t … but I can feel the beast getting stronger. Bourbon and a pricy shrink help, but the main thing is Mara. I feel her presence warning me against passing along this dark gift. You can believe that or not; it’s what I feel.
I wrote to her about all of it. She wrote or emailed often, telling me about her life, her Wicca buddies, her three fat cats, her career in pharmaceuticals and the difficulties she had at work, plus the gory details on why her relationships crashed and burned. Some of it hurt to read, but I was glad she trusted me with her private thoughts. She signed her letters “your enchantress.” She never wrote the word “love.” That hurt, too.
One day, I found a letter in my mailbox, written in her fine hand on parchment stationery. Mara said she might be coming back to Rhode Island soon. It was like my heart stepped out of the freezer. Maybe, I could say or do or be something different this time. I wanted to be better, to be someone who could offer her a decent future. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. It didn’t happen.
The infinite track was always leading me here; it will go on even when I have ceased to be. All I have left is this task, then I’m done. I couldn’t be her protector, so I’ll be her avenger. Huzzah!
Witnesses say Jack, her junkie boyfriend, threw Mara against a wall so hard it caused bleeding in her brain. The prosecutor tried to pin it on him, but he was miles away when the aneurism killed her, so the jury gave him a pass.
The funeral was nice, I think. I was pretty drunk. I’m glad her mom brought Mara home and hope she doesn’t mind that I came back today and replaced the little bronze plaque with this big Celtic marker.
So, I stand here crying like I haven’t done since Barry died. I’ve got one hand on Mara’s stone, the other holds a fifth of Cuervo Gold and a plane ticket. Without her, I’m a bad thing waiting to happen; it’s only a question of who gets hurt. I choose Jack. I’ll do what I have to do and make the cops do the rest. I’ve made sure the matching triquetra headstone I ordered for myself will be ready when they bring me back here.
Mara, I can’t claim to understand your choices; I hope you can accept mine. I like to think you’re wearing the moonstone ring. Under this vacant October sky, I pronounce the two of us bound to eternity. I am a used and broken wreck of a man, but you, Mara, are beautiful. You are love-worthy.
