Shadows Dance

"Don't."

"I just--" She reaches toward him, trying to rest a hand on his shoulder. He flinches, shrinking into himself.

"Don't." He repeats the word in a defeated whisper, staring up into a corner of the room. The ceiling fan slowly cuts through the air above, and a mesmerizing shadow flows behind the blades.

The silence stretches until he makes an idle observation. "It's been years since that thing worked. I had a replacement new in the box, but it sat in the garage for the last near decade. I never got around to installing it."

She tries on a smile, seeing if it fits. It's a squeeze, but she manages to shimmy into one. He hears the strain in her voice as she attempts to broadcast calm. "Looks like it's fine."

He turns his gaze her way. "The day it started working was the first day you did this."

She knows what he means by this. He shivers, but the room is comfortable.

Words stop flowing and the quiet is a drought.

A minute, an hour, a year seem to pass. There's a slight jingle as one of the brass pull chains does a dance, sometimes hitting one of the lightbulbs on the bottom of the ceiling fan.

Finally, he reaches out and takes one of her hands in both of his. His palms are clammy and cold, but a bead of sweat runs from his temple down to the neatly trimmed beard at his jawline. It almost looks like a tear, but his voice is steady and not thickened by heightened emotion. He sounds eerily calm when he speaks.

"You saw her." It's a statement, not a question.

Unsure if it's rhetorical, since they've discussed this at length, she answers with a yes.

He nods. His gaze returns to the fan blades chasing one another in an endless loop.

"Do you think it's coincidence?"

"What's that?" She asks, not quite following. This is a new conversation, not more retelling or rehashing of what she saw, heard, and communicated.

"The fan. Years it's sat, unused, because only the light worked. Everything was fine, then, poof, it was broken. I figured maybe a wire had wiggled loose or something, since I practically always left the thing running. Years, it sat there, and then the very day you..." his voice dwindles off, and he makes a vague gesture with one of the hands holding hers.

"The day I what? Say it. It's nothing to be afraid of."

"The day you spoke with the dead."

"Yes. The day I spoke to your grandmother."

He shivers, and more sweat beads on his forehead.

"Let's pretend for a minute that what you're saying is true."

"It is."

"Yes, you're sure of it, but I'm still skeptical it was her."

She scoffs. He sees her lean back a little, taking in the sight of him. She removes her hand from his, and wipes several droplets of sweat from his forehead. She shows him the moisture on her fingers before flicking it away. "It's 71 degrees in here but you're sweating like it's 95. I've watched you shiver at the same time."

"Maybe I'm getting sick."

"Maybe you're terrified."

His answer is a gunshot, harsh, sudden, almost echoing in the room he uses as an office. "You're goddamned right I'm scared." It's nearly a shout, but not quite. She hears the new thinness of his voice in the outburst, but not nearly as much as he feels it. The hollowness in his chest lends a shallowness to his voice that speaks truly of the abject terror within him.

"There's no need to be afraid. I was the one communing, I was the one open, not you."

"So you've said."

"Yes, so what's wrong?"

"Did you ever stop to think that if we're both standing on your porch, and you turn on the light at night, everyone is caught in the glow? The bugs don't care who owns the property, they just fly towards the light. We both get bitten, because we're both there. We were both here."

She pauses, furrows her brow. "I'm not sure that's how this works."

"I'm now sure how this works at all."

"Fear of the unknown is normal, I get it."

"Did you get other voices? Did you get cold? Did you get weighed down?"

She turns to look at him, seriousness washing across her features. He continues.

"Yeah. So, while you're telepathically chatting it up with grammie or whatever, I'm feeling something all over me. Pressing down on my shoulders. On my chest. It's heavy, it's cold, it's suffocating."

Seriousness becomes worry, but she tries not to show it.

She fails.

"Yeah. Exactly. I see that look. Now imagine there I am, trying to put on a happy face for you while you're divining or whatever. But I'm having an entire fucking conversation in my head."

"What was said?"

"Let me in. Over and over and over and over and over."

"What did you say?"

"I said fuck off, fuck you, no."

She laughs. It's involuntary, sudden, and entirely heartfelt. "Really?"

He isn't offended, and even manages to crack a smile. "Yeah. That was a quote."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, I said you're not welcome here and not to bother me again. I told it I was protected and that I walked in the light."

"I didn't know you were a religious man."

"I guess we never really know how we feel about things until we are certain about some other things. I mean, I'm not headed to church anytime soon, but yeah. I guess I got a little religion in me."

"So what happened next?"

"Lightness. Brightness. Weightless. My shoulders perked up, my chest loosened, I felt like I could practically float away."

"I think that was your guardian spirit reassuring you."

"So you think this shit was real? It wasn't some sort of irrational response to a set of implausible things? It wasn't all in my head?"

"Well, technically it was all in your head, but I think it's more accurate to say it was all in your spirit." It's her turn to take one of his hands into both of hers. She tries to be reassuring, confident, a rock.

He smiles as much as his anxiety will allow.

Silence returns, but it's comfortable.

Finally, he speaks again. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll not be on your porch when the light is on. Let's not try to talk to any more of my people, if you don't mind. I think it's best if we let those who have gone stay on their way. Leave them gone, not forgotten, but most definitely not here."

She nods, and they enjoy each other's quiet company until it's time for bed. While he doesn't want to be a part of her metaphysical porch light being on, he leaves all the lights in the house on this particular night.

Neither of them notice that the still-turning ceiling fan's dancing shadows stopped moving when they left the room.