November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

On Nights Like This
by Rob Crandall

Some nights, usually when the moon’s waxing crescent is at its thinnest--so that it looks like an ethereal glowing thumbnail clipping--and, when the stars are so clear that you can actually put a face on Orion and picture him piercing that unfortunate bull with his arrow, …and when the air tastes sweet with spring nectar, so that you can taste the faint sugar on your tongue….on nights like that, sometimes she comes to the window.

And I wake to the most gentle of taps. And I thank God all over again that she has come back. I send the prayer of thanks out into the night, and I can visualize it evaporating into a mist of pixels, each droplet making its own path to God. And when the droplets get close enough, they come together again, and He sees and hears what I have projected.

And then I see her face, and it all rushes back to me. I always seem to forget how beautiful she was….how young! But, then, she was only sixteen years old when the cancer took her. And when I saw her --just before…--her face was pale and gaunt. Cheekbones, too prominent. The eyes--so dreadfully sad, so tired--sunken so that the ridges of bone above them looked like stone overhangs. Like she was some cruel artist’s version of a living Mount Rushmore. And her body, just skin on bones, folded into a fetal position, looking like something from the catacombs.

But when she comes to the window, she is herself again. Her face is stained red with good health. Her lips are swollen, pouty, and the most wonderful crimson. And her body is plump, like something from a Ruben’s painting. Curves in all the right places. Hips that already show signs of matronly perfection. Birthing hips.

She is dressed in the nightgown that she died in, but now it flows about her, and flaps in the cool night breeze, enshrouding her in its soft cocoon. It shimmers in the moonlight like glitter. And she hovers like some Victorian fairy, although she bears no wings. She floats, nonetheless.

And I get up and open the window, and everything is blue and gray with touches of gold on the fringes. And she steps into the bedroom with her bare feet, smooth as porcelain, and she is no longer hovering, but standing before me.

And then I take her in my arms, and she does not slip through me like some ghost. No, she is solid. Real. Her skin is cool and soft, and we both cry silently. But they are tears of joy. Poignancy leaks from our eyes, along with unbelief and the strongest belief I have ever known. This paradox is comforting and completely comprehensible, which is a paradox within itself.

I take both of her hands in mine, and lead her toward the bed. We have still yet to say a word. We know, on some level, that to do so might shatter everything. And, anyway, we have said all that we needed to say in life. And this is a mingling of the minds. An intertwining of the souls. There is enough meaning in one glance to fill a thousand dictionaries.

In my bed, we make love, as we never could in life, and it is slow, tender, and our spirits soar with unimaginable pleasure and the sweet agony of the knowledge that we ever have to part at all. But, as the first hazy light begins to creep its way into the oily black silk of night, we kiss with an unbridled passion, and try to hold onto the ecstasy for just one more tick of the clock. But with the sun, comes the inevitable departure.

And she tiptoes back to the window, as her gown wisps behind her, and she looks back. And I can see the deepest melancholy in those eyes, but also a promise. The promise that she will return when nature is once again displaying its kindest face--for she never comes when the weather is ugly--and that our souls will meet again, as they have never truly been away. And I will wait in patience. And, sometimes, I will wonder if it was all a dream, but a deeper truth inside me will reveal that it is more real than any waking day. And that I will always have her, even when my own death swoops in and carries me to the far end of forever. And perhaps then….when we have fatality in common, we will be as one and time will cease to exist.

♦♦♦