A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb Page A

happened then. Any other night, he would have put his arms about her or tickled her. This time he simply looked back at the ceiling. His wife stood up and said, "Snap out of it, Babe." But he didn't laugh. She paused as she unbuttoned her jeans, frowning.
       "Maybe I lost my muse," he said. "I wonder what I did wrong."
       Her eyes flashed at him, a ripple went through the gentle stream of her nature. A shock wave she hid by turning her back on him as she got undressed. She was shaken, and I knew why. He had broken the illusion that she was his muse. She knew that he was smitten with her, but now she feared that she was not enough. Mrs. Brown slowly folded her T-shirt and laid it over her jeans on the dressing table chair.
       "I think I'll take a shower," she said. And on any other night, he would have followed her into the water, but tonight he lay staring at the ceiling.
       It was my fault. I had stepped off one stone in the river before finding another. He sat up as the water started running in the next room and looked toward the open window. He stood and walked to me now. Leaning a hand on the wall on each side of the frame, he studied the darkness, the breeze that wafted through me, stirring his hair. I was inches away, but he was alone. It was not like talking to him when I had touched his shoulder alone in our classroom. He couldn't feel me anymore. If only I could appear to him like the ghosts in stories. The soles of my feet began to feel like ice.
       I backed away, willing his eyes to eventually lock with my own, but of course he was blind to me, and I couldn't bear it. I had never left a host who wasn't dying. I was losing my beloved friend, and he wasn't going to heaven without me. He was going to live his life without me. I turned my back on him and fled. Once I had run from my hell and managed to make my way back to my host's doorstep. I began walking in what I hoped was the right direction. As I felt the pain crack through my bones, I held the number I had memorized in my mind like a compass. Seven twenty-three.
       I was in the freezing waters again, being pulled down in the dark, the demons roaring above and mud flooding my throat. I reached out, trying to tear down the dirt wall, but it was a plank, like the side of a rough coffin. I clawed at the wood, and it started to crumble in little rotting chunks. Water shot between the boards with a scream.
       An animal, a black deer, loomed over me. It stood so still even as the wind was blowing leaves and sticks around in a wild maypole dance. I realized then, it was only a statue of a deer. I could see, behind it, two swings flapping in a crazy jig. I was too fragile to move. I felt as if I would be blown to pieces if I tried to rise, so I stayed close to the ground and let everything else riot over my head. My hell and a storm were strangely mingled.
       I couldn't actually hear anything except the shriek of the wind and all that it carried, but I knew that someone was calling me. I looked around and on the street corner, I saw a figure. He put a hand up to his head, perhaps blocking the wind from his eyes. No, he was holding back his blowing hair. He started run ning toward me. When I saw that it was James, I struggled up but was thrown into the madness of the dance and caught in a tree over his head. I saw James stop on the sidewalk below and look about as if I had disappeared.
       I was then sucked into the sky, and I could see nothing. All I could hear was wind and all I could feel was wind, but I was thinking over and over, seven twenty-three, seven twenty-three. Finally, I smashed into the grass of a small yard. Ivy shook on a pale blue wooden wall, and then James was standing beside a fig tree that was jerking in the wind. He was scanning the street, but as I pulled myself toward him, he caught sight of me and stared.
       I crawled closer, trying to keep myself from sliding down the hole in the earth that dragged like a whirlpool at