“Track Four” You Have Stolen My Heart

‘I don’t know if you know, but I feel you in me. Inside of my years inside of my bones.’ It was unseasonably warm the November we moved into Red Cliff Manor. Fifty-five and sunny, the only cool that came in was brought in off the water from the breeze in the mornings just after dawn or under the moon in the middle of a sleepless night.

‘I remember the colors, your mysterious eyes. Part of me stays in the room where we met.’ A year ago, to feel that voice echo inside me would have terrified me. 

It did terrify me. 

But now? Now I didn’t want to leave the Manor. It was home. So were the grounds. The cliffs and the waves and the old shack that looks over all of it. 

Even the star jasmine that wrapped around the old tree in the backyard. Its vines, choking the life out of that tree. Maybe that’s why I found it a kindred spirit. Though I don’t know which I was. The star jasmine, or the tree. 

We’d made it nearly one year in this house and I was terrified now to leave it. But Arthur was making me. What if I never hear those words again if we left these walls and returned to a life in the city?

Arthur said that since the week we’d moved in, I had become another person, but that wasn’t entirely true. 

I hadn’t changed. 

I’d just met someone who made me want to. 

I’d met Callum. 

 Last November

The cliffs weren’t actually red. I imagine at sometime or another they were. Not from the earth mind you, it was certainly colored for bloodshed or any other lot of male masochistic behavior, I’m sure. Not that I’d ever utter those words out loud in Arthur’s presence. Not I, his perfect wife. 

Prim and proper. Well dressed. Perfectly manicured- always. Quiet- often. Needlepoint or party planning. Often a book in hand- something for the betterment of our home of course, party planning or a history on French cooking. Nothing for the betterment of my mind, just his manor or his belly. 

I didn’t feel this way at first.

Our wedding was a dream, really it was. Absolutely stunning. Everybody said so. Sometimes I even go back and look at the photos from that day to remind myself when I can’t remember that feeling anymore. 

I suppose that’s why I didn’t start to feel this way until that second night in the library. Because on the first night, I was too terrified to feel anything else. 

Three Cards

The Lovers. 

Arthur was working late again in town, and I was alone in the house. In our old city apartment I’d find comfort in the library we built in the spare bedroom. Soft lighting and a deep armchair. Record player in the corner, my favorite crooner swooning through the speakers to distract from the sounds of sirens and traffic on the streets below.

The Manor had been left in a hurry, and the previous owners had left the house nearly fully furnished, including an incredible variety of books… amongst other things. It was on the first night I went into the library that I found the tarot deck. 

I’d never seen one in person before. I’d heard about them of course. The pulling of three cards; past, present, and future. Arthur would hate this. Say it’s silly, but I decided to pick them up and shuffle. 

And then I pulled a card. 

‘The Lovers,’ I mumbled to myself. I was disappointed. I suppose it made sense, Arthur and I were still Newlyweds, but-

“It’s not always what you think you know.” I gasped at the sound of a male’s voice that certainly didn’t belong to Arthur. 

“Who’s there?” I demanded.

“The Lovers card- it’s not… it’s not always about love.” I dropped the cards in a fit.

“Show yourself! I’ll- I’ll call the police!” I inched backwards toward the window, falling into the window seat. 

“You may if you like, but they won’t be able to find me.”

I looked down at my hands, they were trembling. “And why is that?” I asked, my feet still infuriatingly planted to the floor. My body was frozen but my head was screaming at me to run.

“I live between the bindings and the books. Live- if you can call it that.”

I peered around the room, certain there was nowhere for this man to hide. “What do you mean?”

“Can I tell you about the card first, incase you decide to go…”

Against all better judgement, my heart still racing, I said yes. “Go on then.”

“I was always wary of the Lovers. It’s the card that comes after infatuation. A choice to stay or go. The Lovers ask you how you’re really feeling. The Lovers are a mirror, and what you tend to see is nearly always complicated.”

I don’t know why but it made perfect sense to me. 

That card was Arthur and it was me. It was us. On the wrong side of our wedding. It was complicated, but I hadn’t though of it that way. Not until now.

“I’m Callum by the way.” In that moment my heartbeat finally eased, though I didn’t know why.

I took a breath, and gathered up the cards from the floor. “I’m Amy.”

“Nice to meet you Amy. You don’t seem nearly as scared anymore.”

“I don’t think I am. No, I suppose I’m not.” I agreed with the voice. “How could you tell?”

“I may no longer have a heartbeat, but I am very good at hearing others.” My heartbeat raced again. “See, now you’re nervous.”

“Are you a-“

“Ghost? Spirit? Not exactly departed? Yes. Whichever you’d like to call it.”

“Can I not see you?”

“No…” his voice dropped sadly. “Not here-“

Lights flashed across the window. Arthur. 

“I have to go!” I rushed towards the door when his voice called me back.

“Will you come back to visit me?” Callum asked.

“I-“ I heard the front door slam shut and ran out of the library before I knew how to answer.

But when I returned the next night, and I pulled the second card, that’s when everything changed. 

The Moon. 

I don’t know why I believed him. That voice of his. Anyone else would think I was loosing my mind to believe him- it. Whatever it was. 

But somethings don’t make sense. 

Some things are just feelings. 

That pull in your gut.

That glowing light inside of you that pulls you toward a place or a person without any real concrete reason why. 

Some things don’t need to make sense. 

Star jasmine doesn’t make sense. The way the vines choke another plant, robbing it of all it’s nutrients. But we plant it. We water it. We tend to a thing that we know might kill another living thing. Some things don’t make sense. 

And I went back to the library the next night. 

“You came back.” His voice didn’t sound heavy like it had when I left him. This time it sounded like hope. 

I looked to the floor, the tarot cards were only half cleaned up, I’d left in such a hurry I’d forgot to put them away. And in a way I was glad. It reminded me that last night wasn’t a dream. 

“I came back.” I said to nothing but the books on the wall. No other body to look at. Maybe I was loosing my mind.

“Did you come back for the cards? Or did you come back for me?”

I busied myself with picking them up. I didn’t know how to answer him. Not honestly.

“Maybe both.” I finally said with the cards in hand. I sat on the window seat again, this time of my own volition, this time I wasn’t shaking.

“Both, in my opinion, is better than no reason to come back at all.” He said.

I had begun to shuffle the cards without realizing it. The heft of the cardboard, the once glossy art of the backside so warn and smooth, all the easier to slide back and forth against the palms of my hands. 

“There- that’s your card.” Callum said.

“What?” I stopped my absent-minded shuffling.

“On your lap.”

He was right, a card had jumped from the deck, landed face and right-side up. I stared at it, “The Moon.”

“Keeper of secrets, a spotlight.” Callum said from the dust fluttering out of the books. “A judgement free spotlight, actually.”

“Sure. Judgement free.” I looked out the window at the darkened driveway knowing the headlights to Arthur’s car would find their way up the road soon enough. I felt my throat go tight. I noticed my stomach knotting up. Had it always done that? “What else does the card mean?”

“It’s disorder. That your plans have been swept away. That you’re no longer in charge.”

I stared out the window at the moon, it was nearly full, lighting the whole of the grounds.

“It’s a full moon tomorrow.” Callum said, reading my thoughts again. “Walks by the sea under a full moon along those cliffs were my favorite. I never miss one.”

“I’ll go for us then-“ ’Us?’ oh really, Amy come on. “You, I mean. I’ll go for you. Tomorrow.”

“I hope you will.”

Before I could say another word, Arthur’s headlights flashed across the window payne. This time I set down the cards and left the room as I would any other in the house. Except for when I paused in the doorway to wish Callum goodnight, which is unlike anything I could do, anywhere on the grounds. Maybe even the earth. 

The next night, during the full moon, with Arthur asleep in the bed, I left for the cliffs. The air was cool but comfortable, a welcome relief from our stagnant bedroom, trading the crash of waves at the base of the rocks over Arthur’s snoring. I can see why Callum never wanted to miss a night as bright and beautiful as this. The rest of the world seemed miles away. Arthur felt miles away.

I felt at peace. 

I reached the end of the trail and stared out at the water, that’s when I heard the faintest sound. Music? Blues music was rising up in the air in between the crash of the waves. The skin on my arms prickled but it wasn’t from the night air. There was a cabin at the end of the path, and a light had just turned on. And I felt someone calling my name in my bones. 

I raced for the cabin door, not away from it. When I walked into the doorway I felt the warmth of a fire, the sweet smells of scones and cinnamon tea, and the blues music filled my ears.

“Hello?” I asked. “I’m Amy, I run the Manor. I didn’t know this cabin was still operational.”

“It’s not. Well. Most days.” A voice said. But it wasn’t just any voice.

“Callum.” I whispered. From the bedroom a young man stepped out. Handsome and tall and- alive. “I don’t understand…”

“I told you I never miss a full moon. Not everything in my life is past tense. At least for one night, a night like this.”

“How?” 

“I don’t know. Magic isn’t easily explained. I fell in love with a girl, her wealthy family paid a woman to get rid of me, and she cursed me instead.”

“Why would she do that? Why punish you?”

“I don’t think she thought she was. She thought she was giving me a life. To live amongst the books, and walk underneath the moon- one night to live as fully as the shown, the rest of the days left to dream.” 

I hadn’t realized I stopped breathing. “That’s- maybe she was right. I suppose there are worse fates than that.”

“Would you come back here again? The next time?” Callum asked. 

The Ten of Cups.

It went on like this for 8 months. I’d wake each day and wait for Arthur to take his leave into the city, so I could spend my day in the library surrounded by Callum and his stories.

Days spent in the library, then one perfect night each month on the edge of a cliff with Callum. It was a fever dream, existing under the moon, eventually falling into his arms, my heart growing with love. 

But the more dreamy my days became over all these months spent with Callum, the more Arthur noticed my personal happiness- and my lack of attention to him. 

Arthur’s grip became like star jasmine and I was the tree. His vines wrapped so tightly around me that he would constrict me from all nutrients if he could. If I were to stay with Arthur I would cease to exist, there would be no more growth. Arthur would prefer me trapped by his side, existing, but slowly wilting to nothing.

One afternoon, cradled in the sunlight of the the window seat, shuffling the tarot deck, imagining Callum’s arms around me with only his words to comfort me he said, “You’ll grow tired of this.”

It was like an ice cube dropping down my spine. 

Doubt had crept in for the first time.

“I won’t.” I pulled a card, but I didn’t look at it. Not right away.

“Then why do you always stare out the window for the sea?” he asked me, his voice drooped in a way I hadn’t heard before.

“I don’t stare at the sea longing for escape. I stare at the sea and my heart is full. That this- this place is our backyard. The sea is the gate to our home on the cliff. Once a month, our home, cradled by that the sea gives me everything I need-“ I let my eyes scan the racks of the books, never actually sure where his spirit rests. If a spirit ever does. “I stare at the sea because I need to make this real every moment of the day. Because to be this happy, in only one place shocks me every morning.” 

I turned over the card. The Ten of Cups. 

I heard Callum chuckle, his voice warmed. “It’s happily ever after. How ever you want it to look. Whatever you want to make it.”

“Whatever I want?”

“That’s the challenge with the Ten of Cups. It might not be perfect, or look like anyone else’s happiness- but it’s yours. You just have to create it.” 

“I don’t have to create it, Callum. We’re already living it.

In our ninth month at Red Cliff, Arthur took no more of my happiness. No more of my distraction, my lack of attention to him. Mostly, I think it was because he started to notice the change in my body. There was magic growing inside me. Callum’s child.

“This is impossible,” Callum whispered to me through the stacks of books. 

“Or it’s magic.” I said very simply.

The sun cast upon my face from the window seat, forever imagining it was his warmth wrapped around me those days. Too impatient to wait for the full moon to allow him to do it himself. 

“It can’t be.” Callum’s voice was fluttering with disbelief. 

“Is it really as impossible as a man’s soul trapped in a library?” I prodded. 

“More so.”

“As impossible as a man who returns to form once a month?” I pointed. 

“Absolutely more so.”

I could only grin. “I wonder if she’ll-“

“She?”

“I can feel it,” I nodded. “I do wonder if she’ll stay with me, or will she get to walk between both our worlds?”

“You’ve lost your mind!” Arthur had burst into the library. “Talking to yourself, pregnant- and certainly not with a child of my making!”

Arthur ripped me from the sun drenched window seat.

“Don’t you touch her!” Callum wailed in the stacks, but only I could hear him. There was nothing he or I could do to stop Arthur. 

  “We’re leaving Red Cliff. Pack your bags.”

I sobbed, his hands wrenched around my upper arm, dragging me from the library, the Ten of Cups falling at my feet, I reached for it but couldn’t grab it as Arthur dragged me away from Callum. 

This November

Over the next two weeks Arthur made preparations for us to leave Red Cliff. I was shut out of the library, ‘your head’s too filled with stories as it is,’ he told me. 

I had intended to leave with him. My bags were packed after all, and it’s not like I had money or a choice of my own. But the more I went through the motions the more I heard Callum’s words echo faintly in the halls, desperate to escape the libraries hold on him. We were still a week shy of the full moon.

And Arthur was meant to take me away in just three days.

I kept hearing Callum’s words.

I ached with the monthly promise of the full moon. The one night that was worth more than all the others, and Arthur refused to let me go. There were raised red marks along my arm from how he dragged me across the house toward the front door to prove it. 

There were items I’d snuck out of the library, hidden amongst the fabric of my dress. At the time, I didn’t know why I’d kept the letter opener, but on the day Arthur drug me through the house I found the hilt of it in my grip.

The first motion was swift. The second and the third felt like I was drowning in quicksand, suddenly in too deep. Unable to backtrack. 

Arthur’s face, white and in shock, for so many reasons- stared up at me as I said, “Maybe on another night, we were lovers in another life…”

The light left his eyes after that. “Or maybe we were always strangers on mystery trains. And you were only a ghost that has stolen my heart away.” I whispered it to myself, but they were words meant for Callum.

I didn’t want us to be loves from another life. I wanted to be his love in this one. Then, once Arthur stopped moving, I ran for the library. 

Twelve days with Callum each year would be enough. My hands rested on my belly, I’d have a new life to take care of soon, too. And who knows, maybe that bit of magic is enough to free Callum from the elsewhere he’s found himself trapped in. Just maybe he’d be able to finish his days out with me. 

Then again, if not, we’ll still have the library and the moon. 

*Inspired by the first and last lyrics of the Brian Fallon song, You Have Stolen My Heart.