Breaking the Ice: a Dearest Artists
story
1-a northern town
“I heard there’s the phantom of a goose in
this town…” Sully offered.
“Ghost goose?” Auberon cut
in.
Their voices pulled Mona
from her thoughts. She had been enjoying the unique feel of a train carrying
her from Louisiana to the northern states. It was her first train ride and she
found it delightful compared to flying
“What? Ghost geese?” she
asked, looking to Sully and then Aubrey.
Sully had her hands in
cute black mittens, one of those child-like winter caps pulled down to her
eyebrows. Aubrey was reclining, serpentine as ever but with a blond brow cocked
at Sully in amusement.
“Yeah. Isn’t that the
most adorable ghost story ever?” Sully prattled on. “I’d make it a ghost mask.”
“Yeah...geese. Cute,”
Mona lied.
She had never overcome
the childhood trauma of being chased by an angry goose mother. She stumbled
upon a nest by mistake one day and found herself face-to-face with the most
hideous animal she had ever seen. The damn thing had teeth on its beak and
tongue.
“Geese are ornery. I
never found them cuddly,” Aubrey gave word to Mona’s sentiments.
“Not that you believe in
any of that crap.” Sully blew her nose.
“I believe in geese,
that’s for sure.” But that was all Mona would offer right now. She wished she
had brought Claudia along with them. She would have balanced out these two absurdists
and Mona would not feel like the only skeptic.
“Somehow I am already
regretting putting my faith in this town for ‘atmosphere,’” Aubrey moaned. He
rolled his eyes and cracked his knuckles. “I was better off in New Orleans.”
“I’m promising you
guys,” Sully told them “this town is creepy! You just have to know where to
look.”
Mona’s silence set heavy
before the musician and the novelist. She was a chef and a writer of
non-fiction. Perhaps a character Sully would play on stage or one Aubrey would
set in his novels. But not the grand creator artist. Not the god of any
creative pantheon. Just Mona. Just a chef-writer. She came along because she
needed to escape all the phone calls. Procrastinating stress. Which only caused
more stress.
Sully itched her nose
and twirled a strand of ginger-brown hair. She popped her gum. “Mmmmona?”
“Hm? Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“...I’m okay. Thinking
about haunted places. And what the point is.”
“What do you mean,
what’s the point? It’s pointless. That’s the point.”
When the train stopped,
Mona felt her stomach jumped ahead, almost upwards the way it would in an
elevator. “Shhh--” she kept herself from cursing by clutching onto the little
woman beside her.
Sully’s screech might
have been higher than the train whistle. “ARM!”
“Sorry.”
“It’s alright. Just warn
me if you’re going to claw me to death.”
“Now that’s the stuff of
stories, ladies,” Aubrey quipped. “A fight to the death.”
“I forfeit already,”
Mona moaned.
She felt her friends
exchange glances but made no attempt to assure them she was alright. She kept
certain truths quiet.
2- painted pond
Dear Claudia,
I had to write you as
soon as possible.
Because this is your
territory. The thing I’m about to tell you, that is. Not the snow and frigid
air. I’ve a feeling you wouldn’t quite like that.
But Sully, Aubrey and I
arrived to something bizarre.
I can get that feeling
when I’m here. It’s sort of the way you describe it to me when you’re in a
place with “preternatural footprints.” I remember you saying that you feel like
you’re on a higher or lower level than what you are actually looking at. That
is the sensation. But it could be from the train ride. Is there a word for it? The
way there is for “jet lag” or “sea sick?” “Train trippy?”
Anyways, Sully won’t
stop going on about a goose ghost or Phantom of the Quackings. You know how she
is. She gets these ideas in her head… And Aubrey’s making fun of how fascinated
she is in it.
Her lady band should
arrive tomorrow and they’ll begin rehearsal. I don’t know where she gets the
energy to tour constantly. Once she’s off performing I know that Aubrey will be
mostly quiet towards me. That’s what’s fun about introvert friends. They aren’t
noisy. So I’ll have the solitude to “be at peace with myself” as my
therapist prescribed. “Get away from all those tasks,” he told me.
I still wish you could
have come with us.
Now for the interesting
part.
Sully was still rambling
about the phantom goose at a 24-Hour Breakfast café. I kept her volume down by
shushing her every few minutes. The same with her swearing. Her winter cap made
her look like a anime character. I guess because it covered her eyebrows and
her big green eyes were shining. I had a napkin pressed to my nose because the
inside of the restaurant was so warm compared to the cold outside, I bled. My
nose, that is. That always happens.
“So, you’re saying there
was a mad scientist-type in the city who did cruel experiments on the geese?
And now the vengeful spirit of a goose is after children?” Aubrey summarized
her rambling.
“Well, probably not. But
that’s how the legend started. There’s a book in there somewhere.”
“Right alongside Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”
“And what’s wrong with
that?”
“Nothing, if that is
what you like to write.”
I guess I was still
looking morose. Because this time Aubrey touched my shoulder. (It must be worse
than I realized.)
“I’m fine, guys. Just
thinking.”
“I have an idea…” Sully
interjected the silence again. I think she’s allergic to silence. “Let’s go see
the haunted pond.”
Aubrey’s eyes set on her
with an expression of “can you not right now?” but Sully continued. “I think
it’ll take our minds off of...you know, New Orleans.”
“Hm. Let’s. Let’s see
this horrific memorial of goosely horror,” Aubrey perked up. I think he did so
for me. Sometimes I think he loves you so much it spreads to me only because I’m
your best friend. I haven’t decided yet.
So we paid with a big
tip and followed Sully’s rush through the snow.
Where does she get her
energy, Claudia? This is not a joke. I am actually concerned at this point. An
adult with the energy of an 11-year-old frightens me.
Aubrey and I had to keep
up, and we are both in fairly good shape. Sully is simply a force of nature.
Before I saw the pond, I
could…”smell” it.
“Do you smell that?”
Aubrey asked, confirming the odd scent I had picked up.
“It smells like…”
Sully was standing
before the pond, her snow boots sinking and her head cocked. She held still and
that worried me. Aubrey and I arrived to stand by her, one on either side.
The pond stretched out
in my view. I forget that there is clear, aqua-blue water in the world. We have
been in New Orleans for too long. Our water at home is the color of pollution.
But this water was blue and full of half-frozen life.
What was odder to the
eye, however, was the painted mural that colored the ice.
“the hell…?” I heard
Sully mumble.
Aubrey was the first to
say anything of relevance “It’s good...whatever it is…”
He was right. Someone
had “painted” the ice. That smell was the copious amount of oil paint used to
smear the surface of the frozen pond. How? I do not know. Who had that much
paint at hand? How would they go about painting frozen water that was due to
melt at any moment? Why would they?
I took a picture almost
immediately. I am sending a few of them to you through email. I hope you’re
online because I need your wisdom now. Something feels…”off” here.
The image is that of a
goose spreading its wings. Yet it is only the outline of a goose with its white
feathers and orange beak. Its surroundings are blank.
“I wonder if this is the
tourist attraction…” Sully spoke, voice distant.
Because I had said
nothing, I suppose they turned to look at me. I forget that I am usually
vivacious and funny. You forget things about yourself until they are locked inside
of you.
“What? I don’t like
geese…” I told them. “But it’s good. It smells bad, though…”
So I haven’t been able
to sleep. I keep looking out the hotel window in the direction of the pond. It
isn’t anywhere in eyesight. But I am waiting to see something. Anything…
Write back. I want to
hear your thoughts on this.
Love,
Mona
3- missing children
She decided to find a solitary
activity . While Sully was in rehearsal for her concert, singing and dancing
herself into a sweat and as Aubrey was deep in research for his next book, Mona
needed to wander.
So what would a
chef/writer with depression do to take her mind off of it?
Maybe walk around the
northern town and enjoy the wholesome scenes. Carolers holding hands while they
crossed the streets. One line of little girls all held hands. They danced
across the street, their giggles joining the bells. As a traffic light turned
green, Mona waited to cross. The man in the car met her eyes. He nodded and
signaled for her to cross.
She smiled, crinkled her
nose and waved. While she crossed she remembered for the first time in a day or
so that it was the holidays.
The holidays in a
northern town. This was a novelty for her.
She remembered small
family dinners. But no fire places and none of the huge celebrations she was
catching sight of here and there as she walked.
There was less of a
looming threat of being mugged here. That might all be a trick of the mind, she
realized. This city was just as likely to assault her as New Orleans.
Statistics were just numbers.
No, now she was
thinking nonsense.
When her boots crunched
to a stop and her head rose to read the public library sign, she managed a tiny
smile.
Inside she covered her
nose while she adjusted to the warmth. The librarian was a man with poofy hair
and tiny glasses.
“Hi…” she gathered her
usual vibrancy. “Do you guys have old newspaper archives?” she asked.
“We do. But a gentleman
is using them right now.”
Her brow furrowed. “The
local papers?”
The man nodded. “Oh,
wow. What a coincidence. I was wondering if I could see--” she trailed off when
she saw Aubrey in the distance. He was seated at one of the largest tables with
laminated newspaper pages before him. She shook her head and could not repress
a smile.
“I know him…” she told
the librarian and laughed.
When she took a seat
beside Aubrey, his eyes were so absorbed in their reading he did not seem to
notice her. Those eyes were blue today, either because he chose the blue
contacts or because they changed. She never inquired. She knew they were naturally
two different colors and he covered that by using contacts.
She cleared her throat.
He peered up at her and
blinked a few time. She thought she could see the studious haze in his eyes
fade.
“Mona? I have a stalker
now?”
“The best stalker you’ll
ever have. I’ll buy you socks.”
“I always appreciate
socks. Would you like to be president of the fan club?”
“You bet.”
When they finished
laughing, Mona ran a hand over the protected newspaper. “You had the same idea
as me.”
“Yes, seeing as we’re
inept at talking to actual townspeople. We turn to the written word.”
“What did you find?”
“Apparently the pond is
painted every year and the police are looking for who does it because, well,
oil paints aren’t exactly good for the environment. There are worse things you
could smear on a pond but…”
“So you still think the
town is boring?”
“I never said I thought
it was,” Aubrey corrected. “I said geese are not frightening.”
“You should have been me
at six years old. You know they have teeth on their tongues?”
“Ugly is not the same as
frightening..”
She rolled her eyes and
picked up a page. “How are you going through all of this manually? No
electronic sourcing?”
“Oh I did. These are the
issues with my key words. I’m more interested in the memorial by the pond.”
“There was a memorial? I
didn’t see one.”
“It was easy to miss. A
goose statue with some names written under it. Children’s names.”
He handed her a page.
She did a quick skimming technique. When the words “children” and “missing”
called to her she sat up pole-straight.
“This is depressing…”
Several children had gone missing fifteen Christmases ago. In their
memory the goose memorial was built..
“Why a goose? That seems
so...unfitting.”
“It is a mother goose,”
Aubrey reasoned “Forever calling for her goslings.”
“Well…” Mona batted her
eyes, trying to play off how melodramatic she found the idea. “That’s about as
sweet as the hurricane ‘fountain’ memorial.”
“Memorials can cause
pain, Mona. That’s catharsis.”
“Yeah, but how much
pain, Auberon? Whenever parents see it they’re going to cry.”
“Is that such a bad
thing. Perhaps they need to cry.”
She gulped and held in
the rest of her thoughts. “They need to catch the sicko who keeps painting the
pond. There’s really no need to make the fish sick with him.”
Aubrey’s arched brow
dropped and he returned to his reading. It seemed she had stepped on his toes
somehow. Best leave it alone now.
She stood and pushed her
chair in. “I’ll never understand how this scary, sad depressing stuff makes you
and Sully feel better.”
4- man at the pond
Not understanding
something had never held Mona back from seeking answers. The unknown frightened
her. What waited in the dark corners of her eyes caused her trembling. Sometimes
the creak of a door while she was home alone could spook her.
But fear had never held
her back the way it did most paranoids or skeptics.
Early morning on the
third day in town, Mona checked into a sports store and purchased a new pair of
roller blades.
She texted Aubrey and
Sully to let her know she was going to the local park to skate. Not to be
confused with the ghostly mural pond. Instead
she visited a smaller one with a park full of people. She set a skate on the
frosty lake while a little girl watched her in the distance.
With the child’s eyes on
her, she felt compelled to do an excellent job.
Almost instantly she was
in a contorted position. Years of karate and soft ball did naught to save her.
Fortunately, people were
in good holiday cheer and two teen boys helped her to her feet. One on either
side of her, they pulled the petite woman up. She laughed and began to “walk”
on the blades. It took a few minutes but soon she had the muscle memory of
rollerblading back. Those days when she and her friends would go to the roller
skate “park,” an indoor arcade and skating rink for children and young adults.
Before it became too dangerous to play there. Before the gangs moved in and
made it a meeting place.
Today Mona even managed
to skate backwards for a few moments. The teens who had helped her waved
dreamily at her and she waved back, innocently flirty. Luckily, they did her
the favor of not asking for her number and avoided that awkward exchange of
“Sorry, boys, I’m way too old for you.”
She took reprieve in a
cafe and wrote of the differences between this town and New Orleans. But she
had difficulty finding an angle.
“Is New Orleans really a
gaudy whore?” Scratch that. It was too witty, too much like Claudia’s writing.
“Each year, a ghostly
mural paints itself across a memorial pond.” No, too much like Aubrey.
“I hate geese.” No, that
was too much like Sully.
Where was Mona’s voice?
“I go to speak and my voice chokes. I go to smile but it comes out
Barbie-style. I go to feel something like fear or awe and instead I feel
annoyance. I go to write about a unique experience and can’t find my own voice
to do it. I want to believe there is a sicko painting a pond each year as one
final kick in the gut to the parents of his child-victims. I want to believe he
will be caught and forced into a jail cell without his precious art supplies. I
want to believe that the goose memorial gives the parents of the missing
children peace. But when I reach for these beliefs I come back with a hand of
snow. The facts are that the authorities have been after the pond-painter for
fifteen years and their searches have been fruitless. The fact is the children
were never found. The facts remain, geese are scary and nothing you can say or
do is going to make me change my mind.”
She stared at the page
before crumpling it up and throwing it.
It hit an old woman in
the back of the head and her husband turned, with his turnip-shaped face going
red.
“I’m sorry!” Mona
apologized.
She could go back to her
apartment, log onto the computer and speak to her support community. There were
good friends on there.
But when she made it to
the front doors of the hotel, Mona made a sharp turn. She was not sure why. She
wanted to ask why but knew there was no one there to tell her why she was
headed for the pond.
The sun set on the
horizon, a spill of golden light over the white. This was a new sight for the
southern woman. She smiled at it. But by the time she reached the pond, the
moon was bright in the sky and the trees’ silhouettes were hands with their
palms open to the sky.
By the light of that
moon, she saw that the pond was painted and by her smell alone she realized
that oil paint was thick and there was more than she had seen last time.
Someone had filled in
the sky around the flying goose. It was dusk with rays of red, yellow and
purple. Once again, she had to admit it was a good painting even if it was
biologically hazardous to the fish when it melted. She bent down to put on her
skates. There may be lurkers in the park who would jump at the sight of a woman
alone. She knew this risk. Especially with her own ideas of a child-killer who
painted a pond each year. Someone elusive enough to escape the police each
season. They probably once guarded the area and eventually gave up when they
realized what they were dealing with.
Small town,
she thought. Probably need their manpower
elsewhere. But really, why give up? There has to be someone who can watch the
area.
When she set a
roller blade on the pond’s surface, she tested with a stick how sturdy it was.
It was solid and she was prepared to see a ghost.
Do I want to see a ghost?
She skated over to the
start of the painting. Her thoughts were noisy tonight. They clean it every year after Christmas. But what if we did it sooner?
Sully, Aubrey and I could come here tomorrow. Would that bring--
Her skin broke into goose
bumps. She turned her head inch by inch. If she rushed she might slip and fall.
She spotted his figure before his “face.”
The outline of a beaked
mask and a male figure, lithe, waited behind her.
“...okay...okay. Don’t
touch me…” she asserted herself right away.
That mask was not a
goose mask. It was familiar. A beaked masquerade
mask.
“I wasn’t going to touch
your painting. I was just… you know what…” she found her voice “You’re sick.
Doing this each year. Parents come here to grieve and you--”
He turned a figure eight
and in one fluent motion, spun in the air. This was the first of many,
mind-boggling tricks the darkened stranger performed on the ice. Mona stood
with her mouth agape, gasping cold air. She backed off the ice as the man figure
danced in the moonlight.
She fell backwards into
the snow and loosened her roller blades. The bird-masked skater never stopped to
look at her. Only when she had her skates off she was scrambling away did he
glide to her, one hand held out to her.
“Don’t touch me!” she
asked.
Wordless, he kept his
hand offered to her.
“What do you want?”
He hung his head but
continued to hold his hand out.
She shook her head and recoiled. The way his shoulders slumped
in the darkness pulled at her. It was enough that she whimpered, that pathetic
noise a human makes when they hurt a small animal, only to realize they are
sorry. “I’m sorry…”
But not sorry enough to
keep her from running away…
to be continued...
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