Charon's Crossing

"What would you suggest? This is Elizabeth Island, in case you'd forgotten. There are no concert halls or museums or movies."

"Movies?"

"Yes. Movies." She puffed out her breath, refilled the coffee pot, and set it on the burner. "Take my word for it, okay? There aren't any."

"It sounds like a very exciting evening," Matthew said politely.

"It was a very pleasant evening."

"And then you came back to Charon's Crossing and sent Jason to bed alone."

Kathryn flushed. "I am not going to discuss my private life with you," she said coldly. "In fact, I'm not going to discuss anything with you, anymore. From now on, you are to keep out of my way."

Matthew clapped his hand to his heart. "For shame, Kathryn. You cut me to the quick."

"I don

't want you talking to me when other people are around, or turning on and off like snow on a TV set."

"Like snow on a what?"

"And you're to stop making everything into a bad joke," she said, ignoring the question. "It's bad enough you haunt my house, but to pretend it's funny is unconscionable!"

"Gallows humor, madam. It helps me deal with my reality but if it offends you, I will do what I can to restrain myself. Is there anything else?"

"Yes." Kathryn moistened her lips. "I wish you'd leave Charon's Crossing."

"My wish precisely, madam. Unfortunately, it is not possible."

"Then at least tell me why you haunt it," she said, turning towards him.

"I already have. Surely, you do not wish me to repeat the tale."

"No," she said quickly, "no, I understand about Catherine and Waring and that night. What I don't understand is why you're here instead of wherever it is people go after—after..."

"After they die?" he said with a twisted smile. "I've no idea where they go, Kathryn, but I do know why I have not gone there. It is because of what I have already told you, that it is against the laws of the cosmos to utter a curse with your dying breath. Fate turned my ill-chosen blasphemy back upon me. I became the accursed, doomed to spend eternity here, knowing neither love nor peace."

All Kathryn's anger seemed to drain away. "How horrible!"

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the Bible says. And, it would seem, a curse for a curse."

"Oh, Matthew, I'm so sorry..."

"Waste no sympathy on me," he said coldly. "It is a punishment that fits my own stupidity for having believed in love."

"You were stupid to have believed in Cat. There's a difference."

"I watched you with Jason," Matthew said bluntly. "You are no one to offer a defense of love, Kathryn."

She blushed but didn't deny it. "I don't feel any great passion for Jason, that's true, but—"

"Love is a lie that can cloud a man's mind more than the strongest measure of laudanum. I, of all men, should have known that. I never knew my father, and my mother beat me until the day she died of consumption, when I was nine. I rejoiced in what I thought was my salvation, but when none of her relatives would have me, I was given over to the tender mercies of an orphanage run by a man who called himself a servant of God." He smiled tightly. "After a year of being whipped and starved for the love of the Lord and the instruction of my immortal soul, I ran off to sea, where the cat with nine tails gave instruction to my mortal flesh and the captain was the only God I had to love. I tell you this not to elicit sympathy," he said coldly, when Kathryn started to speak, "but to make certain you understand that I am fully enlightened with regard to the meaning of 'love.' "

His tone twisted the word into an obscenity. Kathryn wanted to move towards him, take him in her arms, tell him that—that...

She swallowed hard, then cleared her throat.

"And what about that—that thing in the attic? What is it? And why is it here?"