MADAME LOVELESS, PSYCHIC. PALMS READ. FUTURES REVEALED.

  You’ve already been to three psychics, all phonies, but those psychics were visionary enough—and terrified enough—to see that you needed the real thing. That you needed the services of Madame Loveless. It took half the night following poor directions, but you’ve finally found her.

  But if she’s such a good psychic, then what’s she doing living in an awful place like this?

  Suddenly a voice behind you makes you jump. “If you’re looking for Madame Loveless, you won’t find her here,” the voice says.

  You spin to see an old man crouching in the shadows of a dim doorway. Beside him is a shopping cart filled to the brim with trash and trinkets.

  “Building’s been condemned for over a year,” says the old man. “Rats are the only tenants now.”

  The old man steps into the pale streetlight. His skin is covered with layers of grime, and the grime covered by layers of clothes. He speaks in a high-pitched, raspy voice. “Just a second,” he says, then rummages through his cart, coming up with a cracked, bulbless flashlight. He aims it at you, as if it works.

  “Look at the likes of you! You certainly need a fortune-telling, don’t you?”

  “Do you know where Madame Loveless has moved?” you ask.

  “I might and I might not,” says the man with a smile. Knowing what he wants, you reach into your pocket and hand him five dollars.

  He aims the dead flashlight at the bill, obviously hoping for more, but in the end he grunts and says, “Follow me.”

  He heaves his slight weight against the overstuffed cart, and it rattles across the broken concrete.

  * * *

  About five blocks away, you come to a wrought-iron fence around a park. The old man chains his cart to the fence, then squeezes through a gap. He leads you across a field of untended grass and ivy. As the street disappears behind you, you notice dim gray shapes all around.

  “This park sure has a lot of benches,” you mumble, but the old man offers you a dark chuckle. “Those aren’t benches,” he says. “And this isn’t a park.”

  You look once more and finally realize that you are surrounded by tombstones.

  “It’s a shortcut,” says the old man, waving his broken flashlight. “This way.”

  You stop dead in your tracks, not wanting to take a single step farther. The moon has slipped behind a dark cloud, and there is no light up ahead. If you turn and run, you can follow the glow of a distant streetlight back to the deserted street… but that would mean crossing back through the cemetery alone.

  “A lot of people are scared of cemeteries,” says the old man, “but there’re no spirits here, only bodies. Spirits hate graveyards, because they don’t like being reminded that they’re dead.” Then he pauses for a moment. “Of course, every now and then someone comes back to rest in their old body for a while, and they moan with whatever’s left of their vocal cords.”

  You can almost feel the ground shake from the power of your own shiver.

  “Oh, don’t be so spooked,” says the old man. “It’s not like they can haul themselves out of their graves or anything. They barely got any muscles left, if they have any at all. Most they can do is scratch a little.”

  Somewhere far away you hear something scratching.

  The old man makes his way up a hill toward a solitary family mausoleum. The name on the mausoleum is LOVELESS.

  “I… uh… don’t need a dead fortune-teller,” you tell the old man.

  “She’s not so dead that she can’t tell your fortune,” he answers.

  You have no intention of following him into a mausoleum, but then something occurs to you. This creepy person is wearing a heavy woolen hat, and in the dim light you can barely see beyond the wrinkles. That nasty, raspy voice doesn’t necessarily belong to a man.

  Only now does he take off his ski cap to reveal that he’s not a man at all.

  “Are you… Madame Loveless?”

  The old woman smiles. “In the flesh.”

  * * *

  The way you’ve figured it, Madame Loveless has little or nothing left of her sanity—which may or may not make her a good psychic. But she had better be good, because you must have your fortune now. You must know the truth.

  “Please come in,” says Madame Loveless.

  You step into the dusty stone room. The small family mausoleum smells awful. It’s cluttered with heaps of gnawed chicken bones and stinks of rotting food. A greasy crystal ball sits on an old wooden table in the center.

  “This place is the only property my family owns,” says Madame Loveless, as she pours herself some imaginary tea from a cracked, empty teapot.

  “They kicked me out of my apartment, but I won’t let them kick me off family property.”

  Another shiver echoes through your body as you wonder how desperate a person has to be to start rooming with the dead. Then you begin to wonder how desperate you must be to have come here at all.

  Madame Loveless replaces the pot on the ledge above Claude Loveless, beloved father, who has been a resident of the wall for over thirty years. You shift uncomfortably in your seat as you watch the woman sip from her empty cup. Steam beads on her forehead as if the cup at her lips is filled with hot tea. She offers you some, but you don’t want to share in her insanity.

  “Are you real or another fake?” you ask. “I’ve seen plenty of fakes.”

  Madame Loveless puts down her teacup and looks you in the eye. She’s the only one who has dared to do that for as long as you can remember.

  “It’s an honest question,” she says, moving toward the iron door of the stone room. “The answer is yes and yes. I’m real and a fake at the same time. You see, most people who want their fortunes told are imbeciles who want someone to change their luck. Since I can’t take away their troubles, I take away their money.” And then she smiles. “But I can see you’re different.”

  “Prove to me you’re for real,” you demand, and the old woman looks at you as if reading the truth right off your eyeballs.

  “You come not only seeking to know your future,” she tells you, “but to know your past. For many months you have wandered the nights alone, because the sight of you strikes fear into people’s hearts. They don’t understand what you are. But what’s worse is that you don’t understand either.”

  Somewhere far off in the forest of gravestones, you hear something moan. This doesn’t bother me, you chant over and over in your mind. This doesn’t bother me at all. But the truth is, with each passing moment, you are becoming more and more terrified, and you begin to feel that Madame Loveless isn’t really insane at all… because the stone room around you has somehow changed. The dead flashlight is now shining a bright beam on the wall… and the old woman’s teacup is full of steaming tea.

  “Shall we begin?” says Madame Loveless.

  There’s no turning back now. You hold out your hand and brace yourself for whatever she has to tell you.

  The old woman runs her fingers along the lines of your palm, her fingertips like old parchment.

  “A well-crafted hand,” she tells you. “Fine as any I’ve seen.”

  “What does it tell you?” you ask, trying not to sound as anxious as you really are.

  Madame Loveless smiles. “What is it you want to know?”

  You begin to anger. She knows what you need. She knows why you came here. She only has to look at you to see the awful state you’re in.

  “I’m not here to play games!” you tell her sternly.

  She nods solemnly. “Few are,” she answers, “but your questions must be specific, if you want the answers to mean anything.”

  You swallow hard and voice aloud the questions that have plagued you for as long as you can remember. “Why is my skin so pale and gray?” you hiss at her.

  She flips over your hand, running her rough palm across the back of your fingers and up to your wrist. “Because your skin is as old as the mountains,” she answers.

  “Why am I always so cold at night?” you ask. “Why do I burn with fever in the day?”

  She touches a hand to your icy forehead. “Because you rise and fall with the sun,” she tells you.

  “Why do my bones creak? Why does it hurt each time I move?”

  The old woman grabs your arm and flexes it. You feel the grinding, and grit your teeth from the pain—the same pain you feel with each grasp, each footfall, each breath.

  “Because the bones you speak of do not exist,” she says. “And you feel the pain of a spirit not born to move.”

  And finally you ask the question you are afraid to have answered—the question that means everything, and may just destroy you if the answer is known.

  “Who am I?” you ask.

  The old fortune-teller leans in close and speaks in a whisper. “Not who you think you are.”

  You close your cold eyes and try to deny it. You have memories. You remember friends and a family. You remember a life.

  “But that life is not yours,” says the woman, reading your thoughts. “That life belonged to someone else.”

  You put your head down into your hands and weep, feeling stone-cold from the top of your head to the pale bottoms of your feet. There are no tears when you cry. And now you must admit to yourself that there never have been tears.

  “It’s not true!” you say.

  The old woman reaches out her cup of hot tea and pours it across your arm. It should burn you, but it does not. Instead it just rolls off your pocked, hardened flesh.

  “You see?” she says. “Your body tells the truth, even if your heart won’t.” Then she gently takes your hand. “Come, I’ll take you home.”

  You stand, spirit broken, and she leads you out of the dark stone mausoleum, into the wind that slithers like a serpent through the endless hills of the graveyard. She leads you past tall stones, so old that the names cannot be read. At last you arrive at a dark pedestal. You can no longer deny the truth, for the memory comes back to you as you stare at it.

  There used to be a statue on that pedestal. The perfect likeness of someone who died much too young. For a hundred years the statue stood over the grave as a monument for family to remember. Until family aged and were buried before the statue’s unmoving eyes. Until the world moved on, and the rains and winds etched off the name carved in the gravestone beneath your feet.

  And you forgot who you were.

  So you stepped down from that place, forgetting that you were stone, searching for someone who could tell you your name.

  “You place is here,” Madame Loveless tells you, “on that pedestal, guarding the child beneath.”

  “But the child’s forgotten,” you tell her mournfully. “I’m forgotten.”

  The old woman considers this, and says, “I’ve given you the past. Now I’ll give you the future.” Then she looks into your eyes and tells you this: “Years from now, when I am nothing but dust, and time takes over this graveyard, you will be remembered. You will be taken from here and will stand in a warm place of honor. You will have value too great to measure. And people will visit. Thousands! They will not know who you are, but they will come just the same, and look upon you with admiration. It will come to pass… if only you can wait.”

  You know the old woman speaks the truth, because in this world of change and lost memories, time brings all things full circle. That which was discarded becomes priceless. Those who were abandoned will someday be loved—if you can hold on till that day.

  And so you hope, because hope is all you have as you climb the granite pedestal and take the pose you know so well. Hope of a new life beyond the boundaries of time. Hope of a special place and purpose beyond this lonely grave.

  Hope enough to give you the courage… to wait.

  I’M NOT MYSELF TODAY

  You are not in your right mind… and you’re afraid to find out how wrong your mind truly is.

  —from “The Body Electric”

  The Body Electric

  You are not in your right mind.

  You knew it from the moment the lightning struck you, and as you stumble through the whipping, windswept branches of December-bare trees, you are certain your mind has gone terribly wrong. You know because the trees were green and alive in a summer squall only a moment before. Now they are as dormant as death, and the rain is now mixed with frigid, stinging sleet. You know because it was daylight when the lightning descended upon you, crashing from the heavens like the fist of God. It was only seconds earlier… but now it is night, not day, and the only thing lighting your path is the blinding flashes that the angry clouds discharge.

  Stumbling over sharp rocks, you count the seconds between lightning and thunder. Five seconds. A mile away. The storm is moving off, beginning to ease, and although you feel relief, one question fills your thoughts. Why weren’t you hurt when the lightning struck you? It had blinded you for an instant—you felt it coursing around you and through you, penetrating your mind, your spirit—and then it was gone, leaving summer turned to winter and day turned to night.

  No, you are not in your right mind… and you’re afraid to find out how wrong your mind truly is.

  The rushing of water fills your ears, and you burst through the trees, almost falling into a river swollen by the icy rain. To your right is a small brick house, its windows lit by a gentle flickering light. You don’t know this place, but it is far more inviting than the forest or the river. A woman stands on the porch; you can see her as you approach. She’s wrapped in a heavy winter shawl.

  “Al?” she cries. “Al, is that you? Get in here right away! You must be crazy to be gallivanting about in a storm like this!”

  As you get closer, you figure the woman will see that she’s mistaken. You are not Al, whoever Al might be. Stepping onto the covered porch, you shake the rain from yourself like a wet dog.

  “Hi,” you say. “Would it be all right if I came inside? I have to call home.”

  She looks at you with an odd expression. “Call home what?”

  You’re not sure what she means—but you’re more troubled by your own voice than by anything she says. The timbre of your voice is completely wrong. You must be getting a cold.

  “Maybe I should just text my father,” you say, a bit put off by the woman at the door.

  She shakes her head. “Your father has enough text with all those newspapers he reads. Come inside, dinner’s ready.”

  Does she know my father? you wonder. Probably not—because your dad never reads newspapers; he gets all his news from his phone, but you realize that you couldn’t text him if you wanted to. Your phone is dead, fried by the lightning. You’ll need to call your parents from someone else’s phone. Although by the look of things, these are landline kind of people.

  Inside, the house is warmed by a fireplace and lit by flickering bulbs. No, not bulbs—gas lamps, like the kind they used long ago.

  “That’s weird,” you say, clearing your throat to get rid of its strange sound.

  In the kitchen, a man sits behind a newspaper. The table before him is set with a serving platter of chicken and dumplings, making you suddenly realize how hungry you are.

  The woman hands you a towel and a beige button-down shirt. Its stitching feels funny; so does its collar. Just a little bit too small. “Better change into this before you catch your death of cold,” she says.

  “Hurry up, Al, so we can all eat,” says the man.

  “My name’s not Al.”

  The man lowers his newspaper, not sure he has heard correctly, and looks you over. “One week working for the railroad, and the boy’s already putting on airs!”

  “Perhaps you’d prefer we call you Tom,” says the woman, “or Tommy.”

  But that’s not your name either. You are about to inform them of this, but then you catch a glimpse of yourself in a big hallway mirror, and the truth hits you like a second bolt of lightning.

  You are in your right mind after all. Unfortunately, you’re in the wrong body.

  The kid in the mirror is not the one you saw in the mirror this morning. You look at your hands and your arms. You peel off your wet shirt and examine your birthmarks, freckles, and moles, which are as unknown to you as stars over an alien sky. You slip on the dry shirt and button it so you don’t have to see that unfamiliar body.

  “Well, what’s it gonna be, boy?” says the man. “Do we call you by your first or middle name, now?”

  Too dumbfounded to speak, you sit down in the hard wooden chair. Then, after several deep breaths, you say, “You can call me Al.” Which, as you recall, is the title of a song—but you suspect these people will never have heard of it.

  Satisfied, they continue to call you Al, and with nothing else to do, you begin to eat.

  * * *

  Later, the woman douses the light in a bedroom she claims is yours. “Good night, Al,” she says. “Don’t forget to say your prayers.”

  The woman’s name, you’ve learned, is Nancy, but you’ve also learned that there’s another term by which you should address her.

  “Good night… Mother.” You feel so strange calling her that; the words stick in your throat.

  After she’s gone, you study the room. There are several books on shelves, a handheld chalkboard with handwriting that’s far neater than your own.

  Everything you see makes you realize just how desperate your situation is—but nothing could have been worse than the glimpse you got of the man’s newspaper. The date was December 3… 1860.

  Now you know why the lightning did not harm you—its powerful electrical surge was absorbed elsewhere, short-circuiting time and space, thrusting you into the body of an unremarkable boy named Al, in the unremarkable town of Port Huron, Michigan.

  A void deepens within you as you try to fathom all the things lost. Your own parents are over a hundred years from being conceived. Your great-great-grandmother has not even been born, and your friends are lost in a future too distant for people here to imagine. There are no cars, no phones, no internet, no movie theaters. They haven’t figured out how to record music yet.