In Limbo

by Myah Rathi LittelJohn

Read on for a special feature short story published in our 'Nightmares' Anthology, now with original art by illustrator Lauren Choe!

Original Illustration by: Lauren Choe

I buried Pa in the back garden last spring, when the wisteria were in full bloom. I can still remember the half-moons of dirt trapped under my nails, the sharp scent of metal lingering on my skin from grasping the shovel so many times. I remember how I forgot to close Pa’s eyes, his vacant stare like murky, impenetrable ice. 

Now snow falls, and the old house up on Juno Lane still bears the heaviness of death.

I feel it even now, standing at the foot of Juno Lane, having just retrieved the newest stack of letters from my old home. I frown momentarily: these are why I came.  

Sitting on a lonely bench, I begrudgingly get on with the task. Familiar names dance across the pages: Great-aunt Tesfaye, the Lavignes, twice removed Uncle Sterling. So many different words to say the same thing: I’m invited to come stay in their sprawling manors and attend their children’s fancy schools. My relatives are more adamant than in their previous attempts, “now” underlined with red ink several times over. I have to remind myself that to them I am just poor Kestrel’s orphaned daughter, another charity case to be pitied and modelled in their image. 

I scatter the letters in the road, hoping they’ll turn to slush like all the others. 

… 

The pouch hits the glass counter and rings out like a clock chime, gold coins spilling where the drawstring has come undone. 

“Thanks,” I mutter hoarsely, tucking this month’s wages into a tunic pocket. It must be two, maybe three weeks since I’ve spoken to another human soul, and my voice feels wrong–as if  I’m a marionette, lip-synching someone else’s words.  

“Thank you, Aimee,” says Ms. Baudelaire. “I don’t know how you manage to be alone up there for so long. Not everyone can stay dedicated to such a… lonesome job.” 

A questioning, almost rueful expression flickers across her flour-dusted features and I force a meek smile in return. I turn to leave the bakery, desperate to return to my birds, my sky, my solitude. 

“Not so fast,” Ms. Baudelaire laughs, pulling a slice of parchment-wrapped cornbread from her apron pocket. “I wouldn’t let you go without a parting gift.” 

… 

Outside again, I’m overwhelmed as usual by the bustling chaos that is Vitalis City. Laughing children chase each other with fistfuls of snow, and weary buskers play their mellow tunes and hold out their half-empty cups. Makeshift stalls encroach on every street corner, the narrow lanes overflowing with merchants hawking everything from roasted chestnuts to honeyed wine. It is a place I have come to both despise and love, a city that’ll swallow up your space if you let it. And a city that more and more reminds me of everything that I’ve lost. 

Leaning precariously against the back wall of the bakery, tucked away in a mostly forgotten alleyway, is a spindly “chicken” ladder that leads onto the bakery roof. It’s only a two-storey climb, but it feels like a world away from the mayhem below. A few months ago, when I had just started my job with Ms. Baudelaire, the silence up here had felt eerie, suffocating even. Of course, back then I had also half-believed the stories of ghosts and spirits roaming the roofs that were held as gospel truth by virtually all of Vitalis’s cityfolk. 

The truth, as I’ve come to know it, is far less fanciful: up here is a seemingly endless expanse of flat, greyish-black asphalt roofs and decaying brick chimneys, belching long wisps of wraith-like smoke (sorry, no ghosts). The dull sky is perpetually glassed over like a doll’s cataractic eye, and the clouds fly so low that it’s sometimes hard to tell them apart from the smoke. And looming over everything, deadset in the middle of the city, is the gothic clock tower with its grotesque gargoyle and impossibly large clockface, metal hands frozen at 5:59 am. It’s been broken since the spring, no one willing to take up the post of horologist after Pa’s fall.

But I’m not exactly alone up here in this dreary roof-wasteland–there are, of course, the pigeons, and they’re even more numerous up here than down below. They’re actually the reason I came up here in the first place, Ms. Baudelaire having “hired” me to chase away the birds. (Funny, I haven’t seen any other bird-chasers up here, at least in this part of Vitalis). Every now and then I’ll half-heartedly shoo one away, if only to keep up the pretence of doing my “job.” But mostly I find myself sketching and painting the pigeons, countless pages of my sketchbook dedicated to these so-called “rats of the sky.” Maybe it’s because they, like me,  feel more at home on the roofs than down below–less of a nuisance that way. 

I spend most of my time up here lost in tangents and cycles of ruminations like this, oblivious to the snow falling on my skin, the cold seeping through my cloak. Most days I feel like some sort of hot air balloonist, suspended in the grey between worlds. And if I didn’t have to go down, to restock on supplies and collect my pay from Ms. Baudelaire, I would simply remain here, floating in the sticky goo of my thoughts.

…

The bird is an arrow, piercing my reverie as it spirals towards me. It’s obviously different from the others, all neatly pruned plumage and graceful, purposeful movements. My gaze catches on the black capsule attached to the pigeon’s sharp talons, a call-back to the long-forgotten era when pigeon carriers were commonplace–when these birds weren’t despised but cherished for their speed and endurance and unerring navigational skill. 

The bird halts at my feet, upsetting an open jar of indigo paint. Before I have time to think, I’m impatiently reaching for the message capsule, my hands trembling uncontrollably. The bird is peculiarly docile, even for a carrier pigeon (have we met before?), allowing me to unpin the receptacle.

For a moment the pigeon remains at my feet, cooing softly and cocking its head to the side as if posing a question or trying to tell me something. And then it’s off, heading in the general direction of the clock tower, presumably back to its home. 

Once more I’m alone on the bakery roof, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve dreamed the whole thing. The capsule clasped in my hand says otherwise, however, and upon opening it I find a curled slip of paper, painfully blank. I’m about to toss it out when images from my childhood come flooding back–lemon juice, wax candles… Pa’s secret messages. Instantly I’m rummaging through my knapsack for the pack of matches that I’ve squirreled away for the most brutal of winter nights.

The late afternoon’s bitter wind means it takes three of these precious sticks to catch a flame. But it’s all worth it as letters and then words start to take form on the paper, like a map of the constellations illuminating the night sky. 

When the moon is full and the clock turns red, come find me at the gargoyle. 

The lilting script is unmistakably Pa’s, each curve and line etched by the same meticulous hands that once twisted to life the finest of clocks, wrestled with the most stubborn of my hair knots. And yet Pa’s been dead for almost a year, of that I can be sure. How could I forget the impossible weight of Pa’s limp body as I struggled in vain to drag him home, away from the clock-tower, away from that grotesque gargoyle? How could I forget the tangy, metallic scent of his blood, staining the cobblestones red?

From my perch up here on the bakery roof I can clearly make out the imposing shape of the clocktower (it’s probably unmissable from anywhere up here), its oblong shadow darkening the already darkened roof-scape. And nothing that I can see before me dispels the notion that it’s possible to traverse virtually all of Vitalis City without ever leaving the rooftops–a veritable thoroughfare for ghosts and spirits as it’s rumoured down below. For a moment I waver, frightened and unsure of my next steps: I know there are no ghosts up here like the cityfolk all believe, but I’ve also never wandered very far from the bakery, and I’ve certainly never contemplated venturing anywhere near the clocktower. 

As twilight gives way to darkness, pulling the few remaining clouds with it, a red orb begins to manifest on the horizon. At first hazy and then dazzlingly brilliant, I stare in awe as a full blood moon starts its lonely journey across the night sky. But of course it won’t be alone: tonight I leave for the clocktower, tonight I face the gargoyle, tonight I seek out my Pa from beyond the grave. 

…

My few possessions packed away in my knapsack, I take one last furtive glance at the bakery roof that has become the closest thing to “home.” The pigeons have all gone, as if they know that I’m leaving, and a peculiar thing with wings trembles in my chest.

The first jump is almost two meters wide–the alleyway separating the bakery from the adjacent building (Mr. Mercer’s tailor shop, I think). Drifting up from below, my toes curled over the ledge, I catch snippets of conversations, fragments of people hurrying on with their lives. Closing my eyes, my jump lands a hair’s width from the other ledge, and for a moment I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I fell, if anyone would really care. Pushing this thought away, I focus on simply moving forward, and soon the bakery roof is just another square in the grey patchwork of roofs. By now I’ve lost track of where I am, which roof I’m on, but it doesn’t matter–the clock tower and its gargoyle are bathing in the red of the moon, and I’m getting closer. 

As the night pushes on and the full blood moon continues its ascent, the line separating reality from illusion becomes ever more blurry. Cloaked silhouettes begin to drift in and out of view, a thousand luminous eyes shining in the ruddy darkness. A shiver travels along my spine and reverberates in my mind–are these the ghosts of lore or just the chimney smoke playing tricks? Some look to be huddled together, crouched low in the dark shadows and shelter of the chimneys. Most are alone, roaming the roofs aimlessly it would seem, just waiting and brooding. Cold digits cling to my robes like leeches and shadows that are not my own skulk beside me. 

Pushing through this gauntlet of phantoms, real or imagined, takes all the strength I can muster, my mind and body focused on the clocktower and my Pa. But the ghosts aren’t so easily deterred: they cling to my robes and my thoughts with unearthly strength, drawn like moths to a flame. A blood-curdling scream erupts from inside me, and then I’m running with reckless abandon, the ghosts nipping at my heels. But there are simply too many of them, the wraiths and the ghosts and the bogeymen impossible to outrun.

With no escape in sight, I seek cover behind a small snow drift next to a blocked-off chimney, hoping against hope that the ghosts will either lose me or leave me be. Trapped in a supine position and overcome by the moment, I slip into the well-worn skin of a dream, one that has haunted me for several days.  

I’m back in my old house on Juno Lane, stretched out on the moth-eaten sofa that my relatives liked to call “well-worn.” Pa is crouched near the fireplace, trying and failing to catch a flame. 

I drag my feet when he asks me to fetch some drier wood, sighing aloud with the old floorboards. The logs are piled waist-high along the back wall of our kitchen, the masonry and brick riddled with holes plugged with scraps torn from old clothes and discarded potato sacks. I can almost see my mother tearing the individual scraps of cloth, stuffing the holes and cracks with the utmost care. Reminders of her are everywhere in this old house–a painting of the clocktower in the hallway, a porcelain sparrow on the mantle–reminders that she’s no longer with us. 

“Pa, the house on Pilgrim Street is still for sale,” I say, setting the wood down beside him. 

Pa doesn’t respond, his eyes focused on the hearth. 

“You know, the one the Abotts are trying to sell?” I continue, undeterred. 

“Yes, I know.”  

“The auction is tomorrow, we could still go and see it.”

“No,” he says tersely, the light of the flames casting half of his face in darkness. 

In the heat of the moment I forget about our family’s monstrous debt, the countless unopened bills hidden under Pa’s mattress. I forget the grueling hours he’s put in just to keep a roof over our heads, to feed me, to send me to school. 

“Why? Is it because of Ma? She’s not here anymore.” There’s a bitterness in my voice that I didn’t know I possessed. 

Pa winces at even the subtlest allusion to my mother–and this wasn’t subtle–and I know at once that I’ve gone too far. Pa doesn’t say a word as he gathers his sack of tools and a few scraps from the kitchen. And then he’s gone–departed for the perilous graveyard shift at the clocktower. 

I wake from this nightmare of a dream, cold and dripping with sweat, into a nightmarish huddle of cloaked phantoms. Encircling and looking down at me with hollow eyes, their skeletal fingers scatter snow across my trapped body, clamoring for me anew. My mind and body are frozen stiff in cold and in fear, nothing to do now but wait for the end. 

If death had a sound, this would be it: an indescribable cacophony of screeching, grunting and movement, all bottled up in a vacuum of time and space. But the trembling in my chest says: I’m. Not. Dead. And as the ghosts scamper off over the rooftops, eerie chatter echoing on the wind, my eyes light upon a dense mob of pigeons, flying their colours and flying home. 

… 

From up close, the clock-tower is even more imposing than I remember– a towering giant watching over the slumbering city. I’m on the adjacent roof, the red-glazed clockface another four storeys above. The gargoyle protrudes directly below the clockface– a large stone devil with a forked tongue and the outstretched wings of an albatross. A stream of melting snow gushes from its mouth, cascading down like a nightmarish waterfall. Below, the base of the clocktower is teeming with a 

plunge-pool of wraiths, emboldened by the red night. Whether they can no longer sense my presence or simply don’t care, the ghosts pay me no mind. 

There is a much more pressing concern anyway: there appears to be no way up the clock tower. There is of course an internal staircase, the same one Pa must have taken that fateful night, but I’d rather not take a chance with facing the ghosts… Just as desperation has me in its clutches, my gaze catches on what appears to be a shadowy figure sitting atop the gargoyle, eyes like two pinpricks of light in a paper bag, imploring me to continue. 

Biting down hard, a flower of blood blossoming on my tongue, I close my eyes and prepare to jump for the second time tonight. My arms go first, clinging to the slippery rocks for dear life.  My feet gain purchase on what feels like a ledge–something I failed to make out from the adjoining rooftop. Moving ever so carefully, I’m able to tiptoe my way around the curve of the clocktower, exposing the  shadow-swathed side of the tower that I couldn’t see from my previous vantage point. And there, my hands reaching into near-complete darkness, I feel the familiar contours of a wrought iron ladder, so much like the ladder leading onto the bakery roof. No time, need or desire to think anymore, my hands and feet propel me upwards. My hands are numb as I finally approach the outline of the gargoyle. 

Just as my fingers curl themselves around the gargoyle’s massive talons, I feel my feet give way, slipping off the slick metal rung. The only thing keeping me alive now is my grip on the garogyle’s talons, my lower body swaying wildly about. I feel myself losing grip of the gargoyle’s slippery feet, cool beads of dread dampening my forehead. Just as I am about to slip, a familiar hand entwines itself around my own, cold as January ice but unmistakably his. I am pulled onto the back of the gargoyle, my breath coming in unsteady heaves. 

“Aimee?”

For the first time, Pa’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“P-pa!”

“Aimee, you’ve… you’ve grown…” Pa drifts off, taking in my changed appearance: messily shorn hair, too-small tattered robes, dark bags swarming my eyes like ravens around a corpse. He sounds more like my distant relatives than the father I have always known, his eyes filled with worry, shock even. To think that he thought that his death would not change me, would not turn me into the living-ghost that I am now. I will never be that coddled little girl who stayed up past her bedtime to greet her father at the door, to attack him with bear-hugs and search his pockets for gifts. That part of me died when Pa fell, buried in the back-garden last spring. 

Pa’s embrace is so, so cold, and for a moment I think I must be a fish locked in winter ice.

There is a hollowness in his chest, the place where his heart should be now empty, pulse-less. I cannot help it– I squirm in his arms, a fish out of water. 

We sit there on the back of the gargoyle, contemplating the cobblestones far below. My mind spins, woozy from the height.

“I am so glad my bird found you,” Pa says, ruffling my hair as he always used to. “I worried that it might fly off course.”

  I wince at his touch, and Pa pulls back, visibly hurt.

“I’m glad t-too,” I say, voice cracking against my will.

 Silence crawls in between us in a way it never did, like water working its way into a rock’s crevices. After a year we are like strangers.

“How are you still here?” I ask, my curiosity becoming unable to bear.  

“I don’t know,” my father mutters. “All I know is after I fell… I woke up trapped on the gargoyle, as if I’m chained to it, as if it’s my… destiny. Every waking moment since, I’ve worked to fix the clock - it seemed the only thing to do. But every morning, no matter how hard I toiled the previous day, my progress disappears and I have to start all over again. There must be something I’m missing, a reason why I am still here, ” He gestures to the clock above and then back to a leathercase of horology instruments lying at his feet, my very own Sisyphus. 

“I saw you, Aimee,” Pa continues. “In dreams and visions, and you were up here too, all alone.”

“I work now as a bird-chaser, for Ms. Baudelaire, the baker.” The words come out all wrong, jumbled and upside down.

Clearly a little confused by this, Pa eventually says:“What about school? What about your art?” Pa is past anger– a dull ache echoes in his words. 

“This is not what I wanted for you, Aimee.”

“Why not. What if this is what I want?” The lie pushes itself through my lips, and hangs there in the open.

“You are not a ghost, Aimee. You don’t belong here, on these lonesome roofs. In this waiting place for lost souls,” my father says. “You are not waiting, Aimee.”

Tears escape, freezing on my wind-burned cheeks. 

“And how am I going to go back without you?”

“You just have to,” he replies, rattling my shoulders as if to shake the sense into me. “You have to wake up, Aimee..”

My world implodes in darkness. 

…

My surroundings come to me in fragments. First the chestnut wood of the bench, engraved with countless initials. The stack of letters at my feet rustle in the wind, and I have to step on them so they won’t fly away. Juno lane. A pigeon feather catches the light of the fading red moon, dancing its way to the slushy ground. 

The events that unfurled just minutes before feel distant, faded and hazy in my mind. The bakery. The ghosts. The clocktower. Pa. Had it all been but a peculiar dream?

Just then, the metal hands of the once-broken clock hit six AM, and a half-dozen rings are released into the wind.