Catherine Suspended
If only Gus Farrow had not fled so precipitously on murdering me, or indeed if he had fled to any refuge but this one, I might have found peace.
There my body lay on the riverbank, cooling like so much stale porridge, mud-smeared from my struggle. And there he stood above with his darting eyes, his mouth still befouled by proclamations of what he had called love. Had I been in any condition to speak, I might have disputed that the sentiments of my murderer deserved such a name. But I could not form words.
Please do not infer from this that death had left me voiceless. On the contrary. I knew that I was dead; I have never been disposed to avert my mind from facts, however disagreeable. With a certain stunned detachment I noted the body so lately mine: now silent, limp, and filthy, its petticoats mingling with the muck. Nonetheless I was still screaming and found I could not stop.
Gus jerked his head and clapped his hands to his ears, so I supposed I was in some manner audible, if only to him. With his movement I realized where I was.
His hands were cottony with my ghost, though I do not think that Gus perceived me wound about his fingers. For my part, I assure you I had no desire to cling to him. Ugh, how had I become so entangled? The result was that in covering his ears my scream drove through his head, and he yanked his hands away and gaped with hounded eyes.
Then he began running.
Had I not been in a state of shock, I would have guessed at once where he was going. But even then I could not have known what it would mean for me to be carried, poor shredded ectoplasm that I was, to the city of sorcerers.
To Nautilus.
If he had stayed on the green earth, then in time I might have disentangled myself and floated free, released into the sweet blue sky and sparkling river that I have always regarded as my truest home. Or I might have come loose without any effort on my part, and dissolved into serene unbeing. But Gus allowed no interval for that. Like some unholy rabbit, he reached a burrow or gap he knew in the fabric of our dear world, and down he went. There was a wild spinning-about of which I was but dimly sensible, and after some time a landing.
And then I, who had always regarded magic as the most noxious presumption, who had certainly never felt the slightest desire to see this city so imbued with it, found myself in Nautilus. I could see why Gus had grown infatuated with the place, all pearly grandiosity and unsettled forms. There was hardly a straight line to be seen anywhere, nor a surface that did not warp and scroll, as if, in their arrogance, these sorcerers had petrified the wind itself. If I had still been possessed of my body I would have been seasick simply from looking at the architecture, and even bodiless I felt a fierce distaste.
Gus had fled, of course, hoping to escape the consequences of his guilt. So far as the rope that would have awaited him under ordinary laws, he succeeded. But he was still very young then, and very foolish. I knew quite well, for he had told me that he had won his citizenship in Nautilus only a week before: he was nearly as much a stranger there as I was.
So it seems likely that he was as astonished as I by what followed.
My scream, which had been a thin and nagging wisp of sound before, grew markedly louder; so much so that the extravagant denizens of the city began to look at him askance as they passed. He glowered back at them, lifting his chin. But I could feel how he quaked at the prospect of being challenged by those with strength and experience far beyond his own. His heartbeat quickened, too, at the realization that in Nautilus my scream was not reserved exclusively for his ears. I suppose he had regarded it a mere figment brought on by his guilt, likely to fade once he composed himself.
And then there was the matter of my spirit. On being yanked so rudely from my person it had unspooled like a ball of yarn batted about by cats. In such disorder had my unsuspecting killer carried me to Nautilus.
The atmosphere of Nautilus is not at all the fresh and wind-scoured air of my home. Instead it is a positive miasma of enchantment, as unwholesome as the breath of a fetid marsh. And its effects, as I then discovered, are hardly predictable.
My spirit battened on that uncanny wind, or perhaps there was a sort of reaction analogous to those of chemistry. Again, this was through no desire of mine, or indeed of Gus’s. Neither of us could have foreseen the dreadful consequences of his actions. Only a few hours previous, my intentions for the day had been to inform Gus of my engagement, then set to the week’s baking and study my Thucydides while the dough was rising. Writhing up as a wraith, pulsing endlessly back and forth across death’s threshold, had not been among my plans.
But so it was, and so I was. A sinuous female figure, recognizably my own, spun up from Gus’s hands as he flung them protectively before his face. My lower extremities caught on the back of his spine, and there they stayed, so that I flapped above his head. I could see my own hands, sleeves, billowing skirts, all winking frantically between a white-limned darkness and a black-shot pallor. Gus shrieked in wild dread, and I myself was put out by the development. My father’s church and the Spiritualists seemed to be equally misinformed on the question of what life after death was like.
If I am honest, I was as much offended by my scream as Gus seemed to be; it felt too much like an admission of hurt, of vulnerability. I would have liked to insist that nothing he did, nothing, not even my murder, had the power to distress me, but my scream said otherwise. If such feelings sound absurd in retrospect, nonetheless they were mine.
Gus twisted his head so that we faced each other, or nearly so, our confrontation torqued and oblique. We stood in a shimmering alley, pressed between two curvilinear walls as finely fluted as a river skirting boulders. I had known that morning that any future meetings I might have with Gus would be awkward, but this was rather worse than expected. How had I ever regarded that pointed sallow face, those pale green furtive eyes, with affection?
Gus’s scream and mine hung entwined for a moment, but then his voice ceased with a gasp. He leaned back on the wall, one foot propped on its alabaster froth, and crossed his arms over his chest—a very impudent pose, I thought, given the enormity of his guilt. I did not slide into the wall, as popular tales had taught me to expect. Instead the wall’s curve pushed me over his head, so that I draped willow-like into his view.
“Catherine,” Gus said at last. “Do you see it now? Do you see the mistake you made, in failing to love me? Why else have we been granted this reprieve, unless to give you another chance?”
All sorts of furious rejoinders occurred to me, but I was sadly unable to pronounce any of them. As I have noted already, I could not stop screaming. Looking about me, it seemed that this city was built in its entirety of change, of volatility, trapped in awful stasis, and so it seemed to be with me. I remained seized by my dying scream, unable to resolve into silence. I hung flickering on the brink. Nautilus preserved my death but would not let me die.
Abhorrent city.
Gus had the small sense to take my scream as a refusal, for he nodded curtly.
“You say that now, Catherine. You say that now. But I am no longer that frail and gentle boy begging for your notice. I have come into my power, as you see. And my quest for power—it was always for you. It is still for you. This great love of mine, which endures beyond death itself—what else is my power for, but to bring love to its full flowering?”
His love endured beyond my death, he meant. Ah, but would it endure beyond his own? I wished to propose that we make a trial of it, then and there. My scream again proved a great humiliation, for it blocked my throat of all else. As if I were a wordless thing, empty and bellowing, and not still and acutely myself—
Gus, meanwhile, considered my apparition. I billowed like a flag some feet above him, my colors flashing from dove to crow, and would have given anything to sit sensibly by the hearth and resume my reading. He worked up his courage and passed his hand through me. I made the disappointing discovery that I could not corrode his flesh with the acid of my anger. He was unharmed.
It did occur to me, though hazily, to wonder why I interacted differently with his matter than that of the walls. I learned in time.
“But what are you, after all?” Gus mused.
Was it not obvious?
“What is it I love? I suppose you were attractive enough, but my love is plainly not conditional on your person.”
Since my person lay dead, he meant. I thought of how Old Darius had mocked me as the object. There is nothing as utterly object as a corpse, its materiality distilled by the subject’s deletion. Gus, in short, had found me not object enough, and had amended that deficiency.
“No: Catherine is an essence.” Gus had begun to pace the alley, head bent and hands laced at the small of his back. My reluctant ghost dragged along with him, a black-and-pale flame that gusted and bobbed. “And the nature of that essence is that Catherine can and must love me! There are other qualities, of course: a refusal to accept the world’s terms, a certain brisk clarity. But the love, the love is definitive. If Catherine did not love me, it was only that she failed to be her truest self. No wonder I found it necessary to set aside—that particular framing of Catherine, then.”
Set aside? It took me a moment to understand. His theft of my life, my future, the quiet tenderness of Thomas’s arms, that was a setting aside? All at once my scream felt less like confession, more like intention.
“And if that essence did not inhere in her living body, does it not follow that I can find it elsewhere? If this Catherine failed, might not another succeed? Can her fault be redeemed, but in a different form?”
I could hardly parse the implications of this speech. What, did he mean to hunt down girls of what he considered my model and extract love from one of them, and as redemption? Did he think he could slake his pride with someone elected as my substitute? The idea was so ridiculous that I rocked in disbelief. It was no wonder that I had accepted Thomas Skelley in preference to Gus; Thomas surely considered me an end in myself.
He twisted again and looked at me. He looked at me, and I, who could not speak, looked back. People speak of the language of the eyes. Well, their vocabulary is cruelly limited.
But hatred my eyes could convey, quite clearly. Gus recoiled, which only pitched me toward him. He let out a gratifying shriek.
Then he recovered himself.
“I can do it again,” he said, with a certain flat viciousness. “Catherine, I’m warning you.”
What, kill me? I could not burst into bitter laughter at what struck me as a difficult undertaking. Then, oh, then I understood.
“If I can find you again in others, if I can grant you anew the opportunity to correct your fault—then I can also kill you again if you disappoint me. Do you understand? I can still be merciful. But that mercy must be earned.”
On hearing these words, on understanding that my personal murder was not enough to satisfy him, rage buzzed through me. It swarmed like a cloud of insects dense enough to blacken the skies. I was not literally blinded or deafened by my feelings, but I might as well have been, for I forgot everything that my private darkness did not encompass. I forgot Gus’s voice, even while he prattled on, forgot the shining architecture, forgot even to pine for the pulse and twinkle of a flock of sparrows bursting from the grass. I felt myself transformed into an explosion of black heat that swept all else away.
For some timeless time, I hovered in the nearest approximation to a swoon that a ghost can attain. But as you may have gathered, that state of unconsciousness wasn’t nearly as permanent as certain other states I might mention.
My story emerges now from death. It comes in search of its own ending, hated reader.
And it comes in search of you.
Angus at the Door
There has to be a reason I do these things. My eyes sort of slur into waking. I’m upright, a backpack hunched over my shoulders and my hand lifted, forefinger up and eager—not what you’d expect for someone who’s been asleep. I didn’t just ring the doorbell next to this pale green, rust-mottled door, did I? I have a feeling that maybe I did. So it might be good if I could remember what I’m doing here before somebody opens it?
Something’s clutched in my left hand. Phone. I swing it reflexively in front of my face, and there’s a text message bubbled blue on the screen. It’s from someone named Tom Monroe, and I don’t think I recall anyone with that name, unless maybe I do? Angus hey buddy heard you’re in Chicago! My mom’s friend Carmen has jobs in her warehouse. 2021 West Street. Just show up.
Below that there’s a reply, which I presumably typed myself: Thanks buddy. On it.
A job! What a valid, incontestable, normal-person reason to be standing here. I love it.
This is definitely a warehouse in front of me. Those skanky mylar parallelograms are clearly marked with 2021. And Chicago? That seems like useful information too. The clouds hang low above, sallow and heavy with September heat.
The door jerks open. A woman looking fifty-some is standing there, all square jaw and boxy shoulders and giant puff of hair as thick and sticky-looking as freshly poured tar, but with more gray. Brilliant blue eyes screwed into a censorious scowl. “Carmen?” I say, but it’s obvious she can’t be anyone else. “Tom Monroe sent me. He said you need workers? I’m Angus Farrow.”
There. I’m pleased with myself for getting it together so quickly, for acting so much like people are supposed to do.
But Carmen throws back her head and laughs. “You’re Gus?” It’s a hilarious piece of information. She laughs again and looks me over, shaking her head in what seems like disbelief.
I laugh, too, just to cover the awkwardness of it all. “I really prefer Angus. I guess Tom told you about me?”
Another head shake. “Angus. Well, in that case you’re hired, little boy. Come on in and we’ll get you settled.”
“Just like that?” I say. And then, “Settled?”
“Just like that,” Carmen agrees, already walking away into a mush of vague shadows. I hurry to follow her. “And settled, because the job comes with an apartment. Nothing too nice, but it’ll keep you in the running. That plus minimum wage. I don’t expect an argument.”
“Are you sure you don’t have me mixed up with someone else?”
Carmen laughs again. “You’re Gus Farrow. It’s a small, stale, indigestible fact. Not something I’m likely to find confusing.”
Angus, I think. But it seems like I’ve already lost that argument. She’s walking away, and I scamper after her.
“It’s not that complicated of a job,” she says without looking around. “You follow instructions, you don’t screw it up on any kind of major scale, and you don’t bitch where I can hear you. Why would I waste time interviewing you over that?”
Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Porter
