Nora’s Second Chapter Draft

Nora and Levi sat on a mossy log on the side of the dirt road where the remains of Crow Haven’s school house lie. Only the crumbling foundation still stands, filled in with the rubble of the rest of the building.

Crow Haven, now a ghost town, was originally established along a railroad line that ceased operation in the 1950s. In the ‘90s, the railway was repurposed into a hiking trail, conveniently connecting to a state park trail. Nora and Levi would loop back to the state park trailhead where they began their hike for a satisfying  six miles.

Levi swiped through the pictures he’d taken of the defunct town’s other two remnants—a community cemetery and an allegedly haunted covered bridge where nearly two dozen people had reportedly been killed by oncoming trains during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It was nicknamed Demon Trap Bridge. According to lore, locals believed a demon that lived in the woods would trap people on the tracks when a train was approaching, making it impossible for them to escape their demise. Locals had also claimed to see the ghosts of some of the victims around the tunnel. The ones most commonly seen were a headless train conductor, a woman carrying a basket of lavender, and a crying little boy.

“Have you ever contemplated what it is that makes you and me so obsessed with the paranormal?” asked Nora. “I really wonder about myself sometimes, being that I find coziness and joy in things that should freak me out.”

“I’ve actually never given it much thought. It’s always just been a fact of life for me. I heard a theory that people like scary stuff because it activates primal instincts that have mostly gone dormant in us. Our ancestors’ brains were wired to be on high alert for predatory animals and humans, dangerous weather conditions, and other hazards in their environments. When modern humans tap into this heightened awareness in situations where no real threat exists, it feels more thrilling than frightening.”

“Hmm … Maybe some people like scary stuff for that reason, but I don’t think that’s it for me …”

As Nora trailed off into quiet self-analysis on the topic, Levi returned to his photo gallery, apparently to study some images while zoomed in.

“Two of the ones we took inside the tunnel have these long, wispy shapes in them that don’t appear to be dust particles. They could’ve been caused by light diffraction, but given the angle the sunlight was coming from and the side of the tunnel we were on, it’s unlikely. Pretty neat.”

He passed the phone to Nora so she could see for herself.

“I think they look like arms,” she said.  

While Levi re-examined the shapes on his phone for the plausibility of being arms, Nora had an epiphany.

“I know why I like the paranormal so much,” she stated with a snap of her fingers. “It’s the hope it gives me in life after death. Think about it—alleged hauntings are the closest things we have to actual evidence that our consciousness continues on in some way after we die. That’s why this all feels fun and cozy to me, even when the stories we’re hearing about are anything but.”

“Yeah, that’s also a solid possibility,” he answered, slowly nodding his head.

He may never acknowledge it as more than a solid possibility, but the truth—her truth—had never been clearer.

Crow Haven was their third check off the haunted sites state map they’d picked up at a local bookstore. Levi especially liked to experience the energy and look of these places as fodder for his scary story anthology. He sometimes even incorporated real-life details of the locales and incidents that occurred there in his fiction.

This haunted site—or at least the state park where they began their hike to it—was only a 40-minute drive from a cabin Levi owned, so they made the pilgrimage into a full weekend getaway.

Levi and his ex-wife purchased the property during their last year of marriage. They’d gone on extravagant vacations with her family every year, and while Levi enjoyed those trips, he thought it would benefit their relationship to have more one-on-one time away, somewhere simpler and more romantic than their usual destinations. They divorced before ever using it.

His ex got to keep their primary residence since her parents gifted her the money for the down payment, so Levi wasn’t willing to give up the cabin easily, and he’d gotten the idea that he could use it as a writing retreat. They couldn’t agree on a fair buyout price though.

They eventually negotiated a shared use agreement in which they’d each have exclusive access to the property for six months. The agreement also included a clause prohibiting either of them from renting out the property to prevent the need for additional communication and coordination.

After initially proposing the idea to Nora to stay at the cabin, Levi second guessed himself, asking if it would be too weird for her given the circumstances. She told him no. It seemed petty to be bothered by it. He had a past; she accepted it. Wasn’t that the right thing to do if she really wanted to be with him? And if she was going to remain in his life, and he didn’t sell or stop using the property, wouldn’t this be something she’d have to overcome sooner or later?

Before heading to the trail, they’d decided to drop some groceries off at the cabin so they wouldn’t spoil in the humid car. As they got closer to his place, something inside her made her reassess the situation. Should she be uncomfortable with this? Was it weird?

Back at the cabin after the hike, they immediately got in the shower together to wash off the sweat, dirt, and bug spray. Afterward, they took the playfulness of their soaping and rinsing each other to the bedroom. Once dressed, they pulled out the ingredients they’d bought on their way there to make Chicken Milanese with an arugula salad and lemon olive oil cake.

Nora preferred to handle the chicken cutlets. She trimmed, thinned, and shaped each chicken breast with the same precision she used to draw the curves of a face, meticulously tenderized, seasoned, and breaded them, then pan-fried them in olive oil until both sides and the edges were evenly golden brown.

Levi prepared the salad and cake. He’d proved to be the better baker with the homemade cranberry-orange scones he’d surprised her with the first morning she woke up in his bed. She’d casually mentioned they’re one of her favorite breakfast foods while they were grabbing coffee at a café that was serving other kinds of scones. Then there was the rich, moist cinnamon sugar coffee cake he just threw together without a recipe one Saturday utilizing whatever was left in his sparse cupboards and fridge. He preferred to do his grocery shopping on Monday night when the store was less crowded.

They ate their dinner and dessert at the breakfast bar with a jazz standards playlist humming in the background. He had his arm across the back of her stool and was gently holding her shoulder while he told her stories of the bizarre sandwiches his grandpa would make him as a child and insisted were delicious, like bologna with bananas and peanut butter with ketchup, and how he’d slowly tear them into pieces and feed them to his grandpa’s dog under the table so he wouldn’t hurt his feelings. As she laughed, her hand resting on his thigh, that heady feeling came over her. Was it a combination of the Pinot Grigio and the disorienting number of things they’d done that day, or was it just because of him? She hadn’t even finished a full glass yet, and she wasn’t that big of a lightweight.

Though they’d been dating for three months, time sometimes still spun around hazily like in a dream when he spoke to her close and attentively.

On their second and third dates, she didn’t notice the restaurant or the Barnes & Noble had been shutting down around them while they were talking. It was surreal—as if she blinked, and suddenly, everyone was gone besides them and a couple workers still completing their closing tasks, and nearly all the lights were turned off. She’d be able to recall his every word, gesture, and facial expression later, but not the sequence in which the different parts of their conversation occurred or how long they were having it.

That’s how it was again. Everything beyond Levi’s presence blurred into oblivion.

After dinner, they settled into opposite corners of the living room couch—she with her digital sketchpad and he with his laptop to work on his ghost story collection. They switched to a dark instrumental playlist to set the mood, for her work too. Their ghost hunting adventures had unlocked a secret garden of ideas inside her. Each fresh concept was like a plant, and all its possible specifications were buds. Every time she tended this garden, the buds would grow twofold, and the plants would keep propagating. Pruning the concepts and harvesting their ripe fruits before they were rotten and lost to the abyss was overwhelming, exhausting work, but nonetheless rewarding. The beds of new ideas weren’t just transforming her art; they were transforming her. Their roots were reaching into her intellect, her sense of self, and how she moved through the world.

Levi was a fan of the new art direction. He told her it reminded him of a cross between Tim Burton’s world and American Traditional tattoo art.

“Well, I guess that assessment isn’t far off,” she told him. “I’m stitching psychobilly aesthetic, vintage pop art, and gothic surrealism together into an intricate dark veil to both conceal and convey symbols and themes, the way the strangeness of a dream distorts yet divulges secrets of the soul.”

“Wow—did you just come up with that?”

She laughed. “No—I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’d describe this style and even wrote out some ideas. That’s my favorite description.”

This particular night at the cabin, she was going to revisit a sketch she’d started of a retro-styled pinup girl driving a classic convertible down an empty highway that spiraled into a dark labyrinth in the distance, with Gothic spires and bats surrounding it.

Before settling into her work, Nora checked her email on her phone. She had a message from a contact she’d never seen in her inbox before, sending a little jolt through her. It was Ian, the guy she’d exchanged business cards with at the art exhibition. She opened the email.

“This guy from the art exhibition wants to know if I’d be interested in working with him on a mural project on the near west side,” she told Levi. “He said it was offered to him through a connection he has at a local community arts council that’s trying to revitalize the neighborhood. They can compensate two artists, and he doesn’t want to undertake the project by himself, so he thought of me.” How unexpected, and flattering. He probably knew other people he could’ve asked. She’d never even worked on a mural before.

“What’s the compensation?” Levi asked.

She hadn’t gotten to that part of the message yet. She was still caught up in the fact that she alone was chosen by someone whose first and only impression of her, if she didn’t count him possibly looking at her online portfolio, was at the art exhibition.

“Let’s see … He says the council is going to pay for our paints and supplies, the cost of equipment rental, like ladders and scaffolding, and then pay us each $2,000 for the labor.”

“$2,000? That’s it?” Levi said, eyebrows raised and eyes squinted disapprovingly. “I knew a guy who did murals as a side gig, and he told me he made between $10,000 and $15,000 for each one. They’re really low-balling you. I wouldn’t take it. You gotta know your worth, babe.”

“Yeah, but, Ian says Offbeat Magazine is going to do a story on it for their website and that a couple of the other bigger local news sources might cover it in their arts sections too. And then there’s the free advertising I’ll have for as long as it exists, because my name will be on it. It could lead to more projects down the road that potentially pay better, no?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But if it were me, I still wouldn’t be willing to take a chance on its future benefit for that small of a payment.”

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying,” she sighed. “I’ll sleep on it for a couple days.” Even if he was right, she couldn’t bring herself to toss the idea out so quickly. She hadn’t even gotten to daydream about the opportunities it could open to her yet. “He’s really not asking me for a definitive answer. What he asked exactly is if I might be interested and would want to meet to discuss the rest of the details. He mentioned there are some art direction guidelines, which is what I’m guessing he wants to talk about in person. I could always go just to see what it’s all about and turn it down if I don’t like the rest of what he tells me.”

“Where did he ask to meet you?”

There was a tonal shift—a splash of jealous mixed with a pinch of insecure. She liked it. It was just the right amount of each note to let her know she was valued —that he wouldn’t sit by idly while some other guy tried to take her like something he was going to discard anyway—not so overpowering that the words tasted controlling or possessive.

“No place specific. He just said ‘someplace.’ I’m sure he meant a coffee shop or park or another public space.”

“Right,” he said unemotionally, as if attempting to smooth over any feathers that may have become noticeably ruffled.

With that, she closed her email app and tossed her phone on the wide, white cashmere cushion next to her, creating a thud that let Levi know they could stop talking about the mural project for the time being and return to their respective crafts.

The distance between their couch cushions was as much space as she ever needed from him. The last guy she’d called her boyfriend, Jacob, while a perfectly lovely person, would begin to irritate her when they spent too many days in a row together in one of their apartments. But habits of Levi’s that might be considered annoying—like interrupting something she was doing to show her a video on a subject that was irrelevant to her, leaving his coffee and water cups on her dresser, never refolding the hand towel in her bathroom or closing the shower curtain, and complaining about finding her hairs in his socks and boxers but not cleaning up the beard hairs he left on her sink—didn’t wear her patience thin. Even his most unattractive qualities couldn’t repel her.

He didn’t need to worry about her running off with some other guy. But she might still let him squirm, just so she’d know he cared.

Once they both felt they were at a good breaking point in their work and their stomachs had settled from dinner, they decided to soak in the hot tub on the back porch. It was the perfect night for the hot tub. The air was crisp, but not so much that it was shocking when you first stepped out of the water. The sky was clear and black and blanketed with more stars than they could ever see at home near the city. The moon was full, acting as a natural floodlight over the open, soft hills surrounding them.

“You know, you really downplayed this place,” said Nora. She was sitting on Levi’s knee, out of the water from the naval up, her arms around his neck and her chest lightly pressed into him.

“What do you mean?”

“The way you described it as not being much. I pictured it like one of those old log cabins you can rent at public campgrounds with a simple bathroom and kitchenette. This place is really nice. It’s like a small but fancy air bnb.”

“Well, that was the intention. We bought it cheap and renovated it, thinking it would be a great investment property as an air bnb when we weren’t using it ourselves. So much for that.”

The exterior retained its old-world, rustic look with its dark-stained wood, white clapboard shutters, and red door. The interior’s vibe was bright, airy, and modern yet cozy and earthy enough not to feel disconnected from its outer persona, with a color scheme of soft white, light gray, wheat, and sky blue. A wall had been knocked down in the updated kitchen to open it to the living room for a more spacious feel, and the addition of the bar compensated for the lack of a formal dining area. A stone-tile walk-in shower and double sinks with lighted mirrors had been installed in the bathroom for that sense of hotel luxury, which was also reflected in the plush, elegant bedding on the queen mattress in each of the two bedrooms.

“I like it. I can see why you’d want to keep this place as your writing cabin,” she said, admiring the forest in the distance. It was too dense to be illuminated by the moon, but not foreboding. More like mystical. A warm tingle of enchantment spread across her chest like a blooming dahlia.

She suddenly became aware that Levi had been staring at her.

“What?” she said softly, a little nervously. Had he been scrutinizing her features and realizing he didn’t like them as much as he’d thought?

His expression turned more serious, his eyes more fixated on hers.

“I love you. I’m in love with you,” he said.

Still against his body, she felt him hold his next breath after releasing those words. In his gray-green eyes, she saw the ache and exhaustion of a man who’d been carrying other people’s judgments, a fractured self-image and sense of worth, and a loss of safety for far too long by himself. It filled her with a tenderness, a desire to embrace all of it, and anything else beneath the surface. All of him. It made her say, “I love you too.”