(4)
 It happened to my Tamsin recently when we strolled in the park one sunny afternoon. Who did we see on Sixth Avenue near Laurel Street, under a flawless blue sky right out of Loma Portal, but the Unfaithful Tamsin and her weasel, Marcus. I had retrieved Tamsin from that other world, literally torn her from the eyes of white-gloved Handlers (large man-wraiths) who were about to carry her into the world of the dead, and I had to tell her right away. I had to tell her she was dead, and that ours was not the world in which she had lived. Ours was the world in which this Tamsin was unfaithful to me and somehow left me to be murdered in the park. I don't think there is a connection between Tamsin and my murderer, but you never know. My Tamsin, the new one, the one who loves me faithfully, screamed and was depressed for days. I needed to tell her, because ghosts live in a smoky, hazy, unsteady world, and the only way to be grounded is in the truth.
Recently, when Tamsin saw Unfaithful Tamsin and Marcus strolling down Sixth Avenue toward downtown San Diego, Tamsin put her hands to her temples. Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth opened in a scream. And kept opening, until I thought she would eat her own head. I reached over to grab her, but too late. Nobody heard her scream but me and a few grayish ghosts lounging on the rooftops, on the hillsides, in the treetops. Tamsin was always athletic. Now she was a blur, running for the spot where she died, not a quarter mile from here in the Alcazar Gardens with their Moorish fountains and piles of lovely flowers in rows of potted gardens decorated with elaborate Mexican tiles. Ironically, it is the same spot where I died. Somehow, whatever logic engine drives the universes, whatever cosmic spider weaves elaborate nets of circumstance, I died there in my world, and she died there in her world, after being stiffed by me in a mirror image. It was the good offices of Johannes Rector and Compass News that brought us together, like he recreated Lolo's ghostly family from fragments in three parallel worlds. I almost felt myself going Daze of Craze. My heart beat like a panicked songbird in a cage as I reached the place where she lay thrashing, sobbing, cutting the air around her with arms flashing like swords.There is nothing you can do for a ghost when he or she is in this condition, so I waited for her to calm down.
Tamsin calmed down soon enough, and we sat together on a low wall. Alcazar Gardens is beautiful when they have the sprinklers operating and the flowers live. She sat glumly with her chin resting on her palms, elbows on knees, while I kept one arm around her shoulders. I could feel her heart pounding, and her breath still coming brokenly. She was trembling like a mouse. "I want to leave here," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I want Rector to find us a world where those two don't exist. Or never meet.'
I shrugged. "I don't know if he will do that—move us, I mean."
She rose and stamped her foot. "Let's ask."
"Honey…" I saw that it was useless to protest. "Okay, let's go ask him."
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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