Moving Night

Response to prompt 1 from JF Danskin’s June Prompts:
A drabble during which an actual bell tolls. Is the sound a call to action, a warning, or something else…

I don’t know when I discovered that studying in cars, moving or not, could shut out so many distractions. My grades improved, anyhow, as soon as I started taking my work-books from the kitchen table and spread them across the dashboard. I studied by daylight and then when I got my own car I studied by torch-light. Sometimes I put the seats down in the back and laid down, propped on my elbows, letting the seat warmers lull me into a studious mood.

People would joke that I had an apartment, yet still lived in my car. I used to laugh, then I stopped when I thought about it. I’d certainly gone more than a few days without needing to use the apartment key on my keychain. It would save a lot of money, to move into the car. It wasn’t uncomfortable, and it wasn’t like I had any kids or pets.

I began an experiment. There must be something I’m not thinking of, was my main issue. I’d hand back the key and close the lease and within the hour I’d suddenly need something a car couldn’t provide. If I could go a week — no, two weeks — without a hitch, then I’d give it proper consideration.

I found a cozy parking spot in the old park, in the shade of an old grove that rose in a round, leafy mound like a black halo around a brownstone church. The doors were locked, but not boarded up, and all the windows unbroken. It gave the impression it was waiting for the right moment to open up, dust off, and resume business as usual. For now, however, its business was to give me cover from unwanted night-time guests.

From where I sat, taking in the night with the radio on in the driver’s seat, I could look out over the park’s edge and the road just beyond, to where a large wrought-iron gate lay gaping open, letting silver street-light flood in. A stony path curled around a duck pond, its inhabitants sleeping, floating dreamily around the reeds.

A song I hadn’t heard in years came on and I closed my eyes, waiting for the seat warmers to work their magic. This was a nice night. A nice place to sit and be quiet and aware. My mind was already dimming, pictures of long, comfortable sleeps in the secret shade fading as I fell softly into them.

My eyes suddenly flew open. Through the window I could see the ducks also stirred, their heads stretching out momentarily, look my way, and then tuck back into their wings. I rubbed my eyes and searched for the disturbance that woke me, but I didn’t have to search for long when a second earth-shaking toll sounded from my right. Even with the windows up the church’s bullying toll was too close to my ears for comfort.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. This thing must be on a timer because I’d seen or heard nobody going in there. The clock on my phone read 11:59. The outdated technology that ruled this park made me laugh. I couldn’t boast, though. Despite the cleanliness of my car, it was no stranger to breakdowns. Mostly I just sat in it. I couldn’t remember the last time I drove further than the petrol station.

I’d have to find somewhere else to sleep after tonight, then. As the bell tolled a third time I searched in the back seat for some headphones I’d thrown back there, but not finding them, I turned and opened the glove compartment. I heard a sleepless duck splashing around in the water at the fourth toll. I thought that, living all its life by this church, it would have gotten adjusted to the nightly interruption. If a duck couldn’t, I certainly wouldn’t.

It quacked through the fifth and sixth tolls, waking up some of the others while I sifted through old textbooks for that sneaky wire. At last they seemed to calm down, and I grappled under the passenger seat, finally locating the headphones. I pulled them up and wound them around my hand as the bell tolled a seventh time in the rounded silence. I poked my head up, checking on the ducks like they were my own neighbours. They all floated away from the edge of the pond, heads up and bills pointed accusatorily towards the park’s entrance.

I humoured them and followed their lead, glancing to the silver cone of the streetlight. The bell tolled its eighth. I missed the headphone jack in my phone. Someone was standing in the light between the gates, looking directly at me over their shoulder.

It looked at first glance like an angel, white-clad and heavy, doubled over as if it had just caught its balance from a great fall. But as the ninth toll vibrated out of the air, I saw that it buckled under the weight of its sodden clothes. A guilty streak of dark lake water traced its path down from the lake, and a small puddle was forming under its bare feet.

It turned the rest of its body and I saw it more clearly, but then it could still see me. It had long hair, black as the water it emerged from, and skin pale as a mermaid, but under the long white robe the shadows of two legs stretched out, and it started to walk towards me. I cursed under my breath. There was no way it could see me. I could hardly see myself in the shadow of the church and the trees. I checked that my headlights were out, and that I hadn’t left anything outside, but when I looked up again it was already half-way across the park. The bell tolled its tenth note and I could swear it wasn’t touching the ground though its wet robe trailed behind like a sweeping bridal train.

The car’s interior was warm but I shivered, a blistering chill spidering down my spine. I couldn’t move, but the ducks had already returned to their drifting sleep. It stalked even closer, darkened eyes in their sockets unwavering, until the figure was at my side.

My jaw was set, teeth clenched so tight they threatened to grind and chip away at each other. The twelfth and final toll sent them chattering, and the guest raised a wet, blue-veined hand to the window, slapping it flatly over my face. I flinched, but it made a fist and knocked again.

Taking the hint, I breathlessly reached over to wind it down an inch or two. That didn’t satisfy. The figure — I could see now it was a woman — poked her finger through and pulled it down the rest of the way. The force of the action splattered me with chilly droplets.

She gulped down air like she’d been half drowned a moment before. That might not be far from the truth. In a raspy, tired voice, she said “You can’t park here.”

I shakily nodded, sure that by now my seat was soaked with cold sweat. She nodded back and straightened up, wringing water out of her hair. I thought she would leave, but she took her time. I heard the crackling joints popping back into place as she stretched one arm over the other, and vice-versa. Her mouth was a purple ring when she yawned, death-blue tongue poking out between pearly white teeth, then she shuffled lazily back past the water, pausing only to look at the ducks as they waded through the reeds.

And then she left, droplets in her wake, rounding past the wrought-iron gate in silence.

I wound the window back up and turned on the engine. The streets were empty but I stopped dead at every crossing and looked over my shoulder as if she were still watching me, now nit-picking for traffic violations. I drove all the way back to the apartment and put a kettle on for some tea, but I fell asleep while waiting for it to boil, slumped over on top of the bed I hadn’t made in weeks, still fully dressed.