Page 65 of Earthly Ties

Her body, in repose on the cloud blanket in front of Esther, doesn’t stir.

But Esther is determined, and spitefully hopeful. She opens the cemetery gate wide and waits.

Nothing happens. It’s eerily silent on the other side, only grass waving in the breeze.

Leaving the gate open, Esther treks to the other set of doors that make her feel uneasy. To Esther’s surprise, the cloud splits in two; the part bearing Lucy’s body stays put. The smaller part that broke away follows at her heels, trying to herd her back to the other gates.

“Sorry, cloud-friend,” Esther pats it fondly as she walks around it. “You don’t have to follow me. I won’t go in, unless I have to.”

The cloud bumps against her legs, nudging her away from the uncanny doors. It must regret letting Lucy run through the wrong gate, if it’s trying this hard to keep her from doing the same.

Unswayed, Esther cracks open the iron gate where she last saw Lucy running through in their last dream together. Unable to overcome the dread enough to step through it, she simply listens. A man shouts. A woman screams back at him. A child’s nasally singsong taunts someone beyond the gate.

Esther waits a little longer, but there is no hint of Lucy’s sonorous voice in anything she hears. With an annoyed huff, she slowly closes the gate with a creak.

Just a few feet away, her own uncanny door is even more sickening in its dreadfulness. She stands in front of it, building her courage. When she can’t bring herself to open it, Esther instead presses her ear to it. The screaming laughter of her younger brother and sisters echoes through the crack and brings a wistful smile to her face. The temptation to open it, to see if her siblings are there, is almost enough to override her intuitive unease.

But then comes her mother’s tearful prayers to fix her, followed by her father’s disappointed sigh before he tells her that he loves her, but not her sin, and hopes that she comes to her senses one day. Esther pulls away from her unpleasant door, leaving it unopened, before trudging back to Lucy’s body on the cloud blanket.

Sitting in her spot next to Lucy’s body, the cloud reunites with itself with a relieved shimmy. Esther looks at her pleasant closet door, decorated in the fairy and unicorn stickers she’d bought with her allowance when she was a kid. Unlike the uncanny door, the idea of opening this door feels like a cozy blanket and cup of tea on a rainy day. Or her first kiss with a woman.

Or the first time she met Lucy.

“Why not?” Esther shrugs. She opens her own door for good measure, fighting to stay upright as it tries to pull her in.

Nothing happens.

Leaving her closet door open, she resists the tug to go through it and back to her waking life. Instead, she sits on the cloud blanket and waits for the impossible, stroking Lucy’s blazing hot forehead. Strange, how warm her body is in their dreamland, when her touch is ice in the real world. Maybe Lucy’s dad was right, and her real body is trapped here in this plane, and her dream self is in the real world.

In Esther’s world.

“Lucy? Can you hear me?” Esther gently shakes her shoulder, knowing from experience it will do nothing, not even rock her in the slightest. But damn if she won’t try again. “Please wake up. I miss you. Please come back to me.”

She waits.

As she should have expected, nothing happens.

With every passing second lengthening into an eternity, Esther’s hope falters. How would one even put an anchor back where it belongs, when the rope is who knows where? She’s tried to move Lucy’s body, to no avail. Even if she could, what if it makes matters worse, and she loses Lucy forever?

Her stubborn hope breaks at the possibility. No hell would be worse than being alone again. Losing Lucy now, after everything…it’d cut deeper than the strange man answering her parent’s phone number. Hurt worse than endless weeks of overwhelming work, while grieving what could have been and longing for what was supposed to be. Ache more endlessly than the front door of her childhood home closing in her face, left with only her school bag and the clothes on her back. The iron will that has persevered through everything life has thrown at Esther falls back to the one true coping mechanism that has never failed her: appreciating what she has.

“At least I have something. Even if she’s no longer in my dreams. Even if I’ll never actually see her again, I get to talk to her during the day. That has to be enough.” Esther falls back onto the cloud blanket next to Lucy with a sigh, admiring the light of the aurora shimmering aqua across the sky through the tears blurring her vision. Tears Lucy would gently brush away in their dreams, the way she does now as a ghost. The way Lucy never did in real life.

The way she never would.

“Who am I kidding?” Esther’s voice cracks as she rolls into her side, burying her face in Lucy’s neck. “You’re right. This isn’t enough.” As much as Esther loves each whisper of Lucy in her heart, each glimpse of her, each cool touch, it comes with a price. That tug of emotions in her chest doesn’t belong to her. Those brief glimpses in the mirror, or a flicker of candlelight, are poignant reminders that Lucy is beyond her reach. Holding Lucy’s hand fills Esther with guilt, because it causes Lucy pain, even as it brings Esther comfort. “Maybe I should try what she did, and go through my other door?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.” A soothing voice from behind makes Esther jump. “It’s just your past. From what you’ve told me, I’d skip it if I were you.”

Esther whirls around to see Lucy leaning in the door frame of the bifold closet door. Her long legs cross at her thin ankles as she takes a tentative step into the grass. Purple glitter coats the white chemise that dissolves into wisps at the hems. Lucy grips the door frame with her elegant hands, steadying herself with a smile.

“You’re here!” Esther’s eyes burn as she chokes on her heart beating in her throat. The body that had been lying in repose on the cloud blanket for a year has vanished. “How is this possible?”

Lucy shrugs with a wet laugh. “Fuck if I know anything at this point. I’ve been wrong about everything this whole time. All my shit-talking about theosophists, and I’m just as bad as them. Why the hell am I coming out of your door anyway?”

“I tried opening it today.” Esther laughs. “Though my door opens every time I come in and leave. It can’t be that simple.” She holds out her hands in invitation. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you here.”

Lacing their fingers together, Lucy’s face softens in awe. She takes a tentative step onto the cloud blanket. “I missed you.”