Candle in the Attic Window(49)

Ave forced her free hand up to the latch. Flipped the hook free. Lowered her hand to the knob.

Twisted it open. Pulled the door wide.

She raised her candelabrum and peered into the darkness. “Sheridan?”

How she hated the pleading in her voice! She tried again, more forcefully this time. “Sheridan, I’m here. It’s Ave.”

Ave stepped out into the hallway and looked up toward the closed square of the attic door, still half a flight of stairs higher.

He would be in the attic.

Ave had not meant it to be like this. She had meant to be bathed, perfumed, dressed in his favorite colours, with her hair cascading from a pretty clip atop her head.

But what if he was up there already, waiting for her? How alone he must feel, suspended between the world of the dead and the world where they had shared their lives together!

Ave closed her eyes and thought of the warmth within Sheridan’s arms. The hard strength when he pressed her against his chest and abdomen. Their passion.

She opened her eyes and forced herself to move up the last curve of the stairway. Of course it was Sheridan up there in the attic, waiting for her. What on earth else could it be?

Another flash of memory. One aunt’s sharp hand across the cheek of the aunt who struggled and wept.

“You don’t even know what’s up there.”

“But Mamá always went up there every Mardi Gras.”

“And you don’t know what she went up there to meet.”

“Papá. Daddy was up there for her.”

“You don’t know that. She never said it was Papá.”

“But who else could it be?” the aunt in red satin had asked desperately, just as they all heard the tinny thin music of the ghostly ball begin.

Ave paused beneath the attic door cut into the third floor ceiling. What had the aunt in red satin done, in the end?

But what did all that matter? What else besides the spirit of the man a woman loved could possibly be in that attic?

Had her grandmother ever explained? To any of them? No. She was sure Grandmamá Marie had never said anything beyond, “I want to be with him again.”

But Ave hadn’t been there to hear the last words when her grandmother died. Couldn’t even remember her grandmother’s waning years. Couldn’t begin to guess at the “he” that Grandmamá Marie meant.

In fact, it seemed to Ave that she could remember nothing worthwhile, figure out nothing, just now when she needed so badly to remember and figure out everything.

And finally, for the first time ever, she wondered if the culprit whose crime cost Sheridan his life had survived that double shooting. How ironic, if he had. How cruel of fate.

In a flash, un-tethered memory – a hissed warning to the aunt who struggled : “Carnival is the night when spirit becomes flesh, you fool. Anything could be up there.”

This had stopped the aunt in red. And now it stopped Ave.

She faltered. Struggled with indecision.

Became impatient with herself. Really, what did all these memories matter? Surely, nothing at all! She knew with all the power of her love and devotion that Sheridan would come back for her, no matter what, just as she had held on, survived the pain, and come all this way just to be with him.

And anyway, if something else was in the attic when Sheridan came for her, he would protect her from it.

Of course Sheridan would protect her.

By now, Ave had arrived beneath the attic door. Bolstered by the thought of Sheridan’s protection, she reached for the rope that would open the door and drop down its collapsible ladder.

They would be together again.

Only as she gripped the rope did Ave wonder if Sheridan might not yet have arrived in the attic. Who or what else might know her name?

Her hand on the rope lay still.

Ave thought of the limbo of nothingness Sheridan had to have come across to return to her. She shivered, damp from her bath in the humid chill.

And maybe just a little frightened?

Ave realized she was waiting for Sheridan to call her name again. This close, she would recognize his voice. Or know if it was something else that called her.

But nothing called.

The cell phone was back in the bathroom. Maybe she should go get it and call her aunts in San Francisco, to ask if one of them had ever made it into the attic at Mardi Gras midnight. Maybe they would tell her what waited there, once they discovered it was too late to stop her from coming to the townhouse.

Ave let go of the rope.

And the music of the ghostly ball started.

So faintly at first that she wasn’t sure she heard anything, only that pleasure and sweetness had stolen into her mind and eased away her worry, the music seeped through gaps between the attic door and the ceiling just above her head, and swelled into fullness as she listened.

“How lovely.” Ave could not recognize a tune. Only the tinkling harmony of archaic instruments. A mandolin? A harpsichord? Bells?

The ghostly ball had begun! Was Sheridan just a few feet above her, even as she hesitated? Would she soon be in his arms in the attic?

Excited now, Ave reached for the rope, pulled it, and opened the attic door.

Blackness and melody surged down the descending doorway and engulfed her. The flames of the candelabrum guttered out as the music drew Ave up the ladder.

Topping the last rung, Ave climbed forward onto the attic floor, into the blindness.