The Bargain
One night, one offer—what would you trade to get back what you’ve lost?
Her reflection stared back from the mirror. Eva watched as her hands fluttered over garments, plucking at the cloth like distressed birds. Black—the color of widow’s weeds. How she loathed black. It washed out her already pallid skin and deepened the dark circles under her eyes. The overall effect made her look older, more severe than her twenty-two years.
She longed to wear one of her gayer dresses. All she had to do was open the chifforobe; she’d find all of her dresses from before the War, neatly hung one beside the other. She need only choose one—the blue silk Davis said complemented her eyes. With a longer shawl, no one would… no. Eva sighed resignedly and turned from the mirror. The risk was too great. If Mother or Papa stopped her—or heaven forbid that moony Jack Dooley, always underfoot these days, and suddenly with the nerve to ask her walking—she’d miss her appointment.
She absolutely could not miss her appointment. The man had been very clear on that point of their arrangement.
No, widow’s weeds it was. Eva jammed her mourning hat firmly on her head, pulled down the veil, and strode into the descending darkness.
#
Eva had not yet been wearing black when the man found her standing too close to the cliff’s edge, looking down at the waves crashing against the rocks.
“It would be a shame to ruin such a lovely dress,” he said.
Startled, she stepped away from the ledge. Sea winds whipped through her petticoat and tore at her hair, partially obscuring her view as she struggled to identify the man or his carriage. Suddenly—much too suddenly—the man was beside her. He took her elbow, led her further away from the ledge.
“Perhaps I can be of assistance?” He gestured to the letter clutched in her hand.
Eva looked at the letter. Written on official letterhead it began: We regret to inform you…
#
She’d meticulously tracked the night sky these past four weeks—watching the moon grow thin and then fat again. On the next full moon, the man promised. Eva half suspected the man and their bargain weren’t real, something she dreamed in a haze of grief. And yet, here she was, once again on the ledge watching the waves crash against the rocks below. She had to hope—no, believe deep in her bones—that the man and, more importantly, their deal were real. It meant a second chance.
The faint sounds of a carriage bumping down the ruts in the road snapped Eva from her reverie. An elegant, if slightly antiquated, black stagecoach pulled by a perfectly matched pair of raven-colored horses came to a stop. The door opened, and the man—his attire mimicking his conveyance—stepped out. He tipped his hat to Eva before turning back to the carriage and addressing the darkness inside. Eva took a tentative step forward, straining to hear what the man said and to see whom he addressed. She thought she caught a glimpse of something pale. Something familiar.
“Miss Monroe, always a pleasure.” The man, once again, was all-too-suddenly by her side. He hooked his arm through Eva’s and began a leisurely stroll away from the carriage. Eva craned her head back to the carriage, struggling against the man’s embrace.
“Please, sir,” she said. “Is…”
“Ah, ah, ah,” the man replied, wagging a finger at her. “First things first. Are you prepared to make payment?”
“It’s right here.” Eva hefted the large carpetbag she was carrying. The man smiled a small, weary smile. “It’s everything I have—my savings, the silver serving set from my trousseau. The candlesticks—my grandmother’s candlesticks, I might add—alone are worth their weight in gold. You didn’t specify an amount but couldn’t possibly want more, sir!”
“No, of course not,” said the man. “But are you prepared to make the payment?”
Eva sighed in exasperation. “Yes, yes! For the love of our Lord and Savior, I am prepared to make the payment.” She thrust the bag at the man. “Take it!”
“Miss Monroe, I urge you to keep the payment until services are rendered in full. I would like to remind you of the terms, if I may?” The man waited for Eva’s consent before continuing. “I have the…package, if you will, in my carriage. You have until the first rays of dawn to enjoy my delivery. I hasten to remind you that I return at sunrise to collect my payment. Are we agreed?”
With Eva’s acquiescent nod, the duo returned to the carriage. The man dropped her arm only to open the door. With a mock courtly bow, he offered his hand to the occupant therein. A thin arm emerged and used the man’s arm to steady the body that followed. The figure that materialized from within the depths of the black stagecoach made Eva’s heart skip a beat.
Just as it had the first day she saw him.
“Davis!” The name was sheer joy on her lips. The man transferred Davis to Eva’s arm. Eva leaned into Davis to support his frail frame. She noted that he was ashen and she could feel the sharp edges of his ribs and elbows through his jacket.
The man hopped lightly into the carriage, leaned his head out of the door. “Remember, Eva, I return at dawn.”
#
“As always, Mrs. Monroe, a most delectable dinner, and a dessert beyond compare. If only my future wife were so culinarily inclined!”
“Davis Dixon!” Eva sputtered, considering the merits of kicking her beau beneath the table. She settled for sticking her tongue out.
“Eva, manners!” Mother’s rebuke caused Eva to blush and Dixon to laugh. Only when he was able to regain his composure did he ask for and receive permission to step out with Eva.
This was her favorite part of these dinners with Davis, wandering the streets arm-in-arm with her betrothed. She took quiet pride in her handsome escort. In some ways, she guessed she was lucky to have an escort at all, what with the War. Just this past Tuesday, poor Annie Sutton had received news that her Henry had fallen at Bull Run. Eva made a mental note to seek out Annie during church services to offer condolences. Davis, she decided as she pinched a little color into her cheeks and smoothed her hair down under her hat, wouldn’t risk his promising law career to join up in this silly little war. They were about to get married, after all.
#
Eva helped Davis to a blanket spread under a tree at the cliff’. His skin glowed in the darkness, the moonlight accentuating the hollows beneath his cheeks. She worried about the care he was receiving wherever the man had retrieved him. She settled in beside him, wrapping one of his limp arms around her shoulders, resting her head on his uniform jacket. She wrinkled her nose at the faint odor that emanated from the jacket and again worried about the quality of Davis’ care. She took a moment to study Davis’ face. In addition to the hollow cheeks, his skin appeared waxy and his eyes focused on something far away.
“Please forgive me,” she whispered. She settled more comfortably against Davis’s shoulder and gripped his free hand in her own. They stayed that way, watching the stars grow more brilliant in the night sky.
#
“Davis, if this is one of your pranks, it is not funny.” Eva stopped dead in her tracks and, heedless of the scene they were causing. She studied his face, watching as his eyes first pleaded with her to understand and then turned hard, resolute.
“I leave tomorrow.”
“But the wedding!”
“We’ll marry when I return. It won’t be long—a few months, a year at the most. All the papers say we’ve got these Rebs on the run.”
“All the more reason to stay! Why risk everything for a silly war that’s almost over?” She felt the heat rising in her body and gathering behind her eyes. She fought against the tears.
“Eva, darling, please understand.” He took her face between his hands. “Please.”
“Let someone else go,” she hissed.
Davis sighed, dropping his hands from her face. “I can’t. I don’t expect you to understand. I hoped you would, prayed that you would give me your blessing and a promise to write.” His eyes implored her to accept this last bit as a peace offering.
“I do not understand, I do not give my blessing, and rest assured Mr. Dixon, I will not write. Go off to your silly war, and God speed. Good night, sir.” Eva pivoted and, blinded by tears, strode towards home.
Davis caught her hand, pulling her up short. He brushed a tear from her cheek.
“I’ll come back for you, Eva. I always will.” He kissed the back of Eva’s hand and disappeared into the dark.
#
After the initial euphoria of seeing and touching him once again, Eva found herself nervously nattering on and on, saying anything to get a response from Davis. In the lulls between these one-sided conversations, she paced back and forth on the ledge above the ocean. Once she stopped in front of Davis, shrieking at him like a mad woman and still, nothing. He continued to stare through and beyond Eva. Finally, Eva had nothing left to say. She slumped to the ground beside him, defeated. This was not her Davis.
As the night sky began to lighten and the faint sounds of morning birdsong filled the air, Eva began to worry. The man would return soon, for his payment and, Eva assumed, to collect Davis. Clearly, her broken beloved needed to return to the facility in which the man had found him. Perhaps, she mused, she could visit Davis at this hospital. She smiled, reveling for a moment in the image of herself as a sort of Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton tending to her wounded love. His discovery was, after all, a miracle. She’d received the official letter that he was lost, and on that fateful day had nearly…
“It’s cold here.”
Davis’ soft voice jolted Eva from her thoughts. She shifted to her knees, taking Davis by his shoulders, and staring intently at his face. His eyes were unfocused, still staring at something in the distance. “Davis, can you hear me?”
“There was light. And warmth. I can’t get warm here.”
“Here, let’s cover you up. You’ll be warm soon.” She rubbed his frigid hands between her own. “Just imagine, Davis! Your parents, they were so worried! We got that horrid letter… but you’re here now, it was all a mistake.” She kissed his eyelids, his cheeks, his hands. “Now we can go back to planning the wedding—when you’re better, of course—and you can rejoin the firm.” Eva couldn’t stop the flood of words.
“I know where I was.”
Eva sat very still. “You were in a hospital, Davis. Not a very good one by the looks of it.” She heard these words for what they were: an attempt to convince not Davis, but herself, of the truth of the situation.
“No.” He repeated the word, shaking his head with each reiteration as though the motion would jog loose the memory. He stopped; his eyes locked with Eva’s. “I was in—“
“Careful, boy.”
Eva swung around to find the man standing before them. He was, as before, attired in head-to-toe black. For the first time, however, she noticed he smelled singed, like a dog that had lain too close to the fire.
The man held out an elegantly gloved hand, “Come, Eva, we have business to conclude.”
Davis sat motionless, returned to the cadaverous, cold, unseeing thing he was upon his exit from the stagecoach. Eva struggled to comprehend the events unfolding around her. Clearly, she was mad. That was it; the grief caused her to go stark raving mad and she was hallucinating from inside some asylum. Or she was dead; she’d stepped over the cliff that day and this was her own personal Hell.
“Not there yet, my pet. But soon.” The man smiled a toothy carnivorous smile. “Now really, Miss Monroe, do hurry up. It’s nearly daylight and our business has yet to conclude.” The man wiggled his fingers.
#
What she remembered most about the man from that day on the cliff was how courteous he was. Not once, during their negotiations did he break decorum; rather he ushered her to a suitable log and explained the extent of his services. For a small fee, the man would bring Davis back to her for the duration of a single night. She protested at first, indicating the letter as irrefutable evidence that Davis was permanently and irrevocably inaccessible. The man smiled and simply repeated his offer. After a while, Eva raged at the man, called him every name she could conjure, and demanded to know how he could prey on others’ grief. Still, the man smiled and repeated his offer. Her energy finally spent, she allowed herself to hope that maybe—just maybe—the man spoke the truth: the official letter was a mistake. Davis was alive. He offered her his handkerchief when it became apparent that her emotions might just spill over.
She remembered the delicate but simple lace edge of the hankie and the soft leather of his black kidskin gloves. No matter how hard she searched her memory, she did not remember the exact form of payment their agreement dictated.
#
Eva accepted the man’s assistance as she heaved herself to her feet. She bent, picked up the carpetbag, and once again offered it to the man.
“I believe you’ll find this payment adequate, sir. I ask only one thing,” she paused as the man opened the bag and peered inside. “I ask that you make arrangements for me to visit Mr. Dixon as he continues his convalescence.”
The man began to laugh and laugh. He dropped her hand, doubled over under the force of his mirth. As he clutched at his sides, his derby hat tumbled off his head. Humiliated, but unsure why, Eva reddened. As the man straightened, he scooped up his hat, re-deposited it onto its rightful spot, and wiped a tear from his eye.
“Surely you jest,” he said. The man grasped the bag by both handles, twirled around once, twice, three times before releasing it. The bag sailed through the air and disappeared over the ledge. Eva raced to the edge, watching as the waves swallowed the bag and its smashed contents.
“All of my worldly possessions are in that bag!”
“All but one, Miss Monroe.” The man’s face no longer exuded kindness or mirth; it was set hard and grim. “Believe what your heart already knows. I represent the interest of a certain party from down under, shall we say,” the man pointed to the earth. “Now, I must insist that we conclude our business.”
Eva looked to Davis. She remembered his chilly hands as she tried to warm them between her own, his hands on her cheeks, the rough wool of his jacket against her skin. The fetid smell that she couldn’t quite place. And the letter that she desperately wanted to be a mistake.
The man sighed. “If you’d like, you may say good-bye. Quickly now!”
The man impatiently snapped his fingers, and Eva found herself drawn—no pushed—toward Davis. She stared down at him, unable to touch him; the doubt and fear, fostered by the man’s words, prevented her from doing so. Yet she wanted to tell him so many things—she forgave him for leaving her, for dying, did he forgive her for never answering any of his letters? Instead, she said the only thing that mattered: “I love you, Davis Dixon.”
“That’s sweet. Now, good day, Mr. Dixon!” The man waved his hand. Eva watched in distress as an abrupt fog enveloped her beloved and, as rapidly as it appeared, disappeared leaving an empty blanket.
“What. Where…” Eva sputtered.
“I sent back from whence he came, no need to worry. Now, my payment.”
The man glided toward her, hand outstretched, palm up, fingers splayed. He constricted his fingers and Eva felt a tugging deep inside her chest. Another twitch of his fingers and she felt it again, stronger this time. At the third, she fell to her knees.
“Almost there. Just a little longer,” the man murmured.
She tried to scream but couldn’t draw a breath. The thing stretching out of her chest felt as though it could tear free at any moment. She clutched at the air as though she could pull it back into her body.
The man tut-tutted her. “Don’t fight it, dove, it’ll hurt more.” He curled his fingers one more time and Eva felt yet another filament of her soul stretch and snap free. Inky darkness crept into the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes, resigning her body to what she hoped was a swift end.
“My soul for her life.” Davis’s whisper cut through the dark. The tugging but not the pain stopped. Eva opened her eyes to find Davis smiling down at her. “I’ll always come back for you,” he said.
“Oh for the love of—can’t a man just finish his work!” Exasperated, the man threw his bowler to the ground, hands clenching and unclenching until his breathing slowed. Upon gaining his composure, and his hat, the man said, “I’m listening.”
“A simple exchange—my soul for her life.”
“You would relinquish your celestial appointment for this woman?”
Davis nodded.
“Shall we shake on it?” The man stuck out his free hand and Davis accepted. A sly smile spread across the man’s face. “You really should have been more careful how you worded your proposition, son. Miss Monroe can keep her life, certainly. However, I shall take her soul, and yours of course, Mr. Dixon.”
The man snapped his fingers and in a flash of rotten-egg-smelling sulfuric smoke, Dixon disappeared. The man turned to Eva. She struggled to push herself into a sitting position. The man squatted next to her and caressed her face with his free hand.
“You’ll never die, Miss Monroe. Of course, you’ll have to watch every one you know and love grow old and die around you. But imagine it—eternal life!”
The man snapped his fingers again and the dark descended on Eva.
Great story!
This reminded me of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, but make it gothic. The diction, the characterization were on point. I absolutely loved this read.