Starcrossed

monosyllabic answers.
    Even though she went to bed at nine, leaving her dad watching the Red Sox on TV, she was still lying awake at midnight when she heard the game finally end and her father come upstairs. She was tired enough to sleep, but every time she started to drift off she would hear whispering.
    At first she thought that it had to be real, that someone was outside playing a trick on her. She went up to the widow’s walk on the roof above her bedroom and tried to see as far as she could into the dark. Everything was still—not even a puff of air to stir the rosebushes around the house. She sat down for a spell, staring out at the fat, black slick of the ocean beyond the neighbors’ lights.
    She hadn’t been up there in a while, but it still gave her a romantic thrill to think about how women in the olden days would pine away on their widow’s walks as they searched for the masts of their husbands’ ships. When she was really young, Helen used to pretend that her mother would be on one of those ships, coming back to her after being taken captive by pirates or Captain Ahab or something just as all-powerful. Helen had spent hours on the widow’s walk, scanning the horizon for a ship she later realized would never sail into Nantucket Harbor.
    Helen shifted uncomfortably on the wooden floor and then remembered that she still had her stash up there. For years, her dad had insisted she was going to fall to her death and had forbidden her from going up to the widow’s walk alone, but no matter how many times he punished her, she would eventually sneak back up there to eat granola bars and daydream. After a few months of dealing with Helen’s uncharacteristic disobedience, Jerry finally caved and gave her permission, as long as she didn’t lean out over the railing. He’d even built her a waterproof chest to store things in.
    She opened the chest and dug out the sleeping bag she kept in there, spreading it out along the wood planks of the walk. There were boats far out on the water, boats she shouldn’t be able to hear or see from such a distance, but she could. Helen closed her eyes and allowed herself the pleasure of hearing one little skiff as its canvas sails flapped and its teak planks creaked, way out on the gently lapping swells. Alone and unwatched, she could be herself for a moment and truly let go. When her head finally started to nod she went down to bed to give sleep another shot.
    She was standing on rocky, hilly terrain, blasted so hard by the sun that the bone-dry air wriggled and shook in streaks, as if parts of the sky were melting. The rocks were pale yellow and sharp, and here and there were angry little bushes, low to the ground and lousy with thorns. A single twisted tree grew out of the next slope.
    Helen was alone. And then she wasn’t.
    Under the stunted tree’s crippled limbs three figures appeared. They were so slender and small Helen thought at first they must be little girls, but there was something about the way the muscles in their gaunt forearms wove around their bones like rope that made Helen realize that they were also very old. All three of them had their heads bent, and their faces were completely covered by sheets of long, matted, black hair. They wore tattered white slips, and they were covered in gray-white dust down to their lower legs. From the knees down, their skin grew dark with streaks of dirt and blackening blood from feet worn raw with wandering in this barren wilderness.
    Helen felt clear, bright fear. She backed away from them compulsively, cutting her bare feet on the rocks and scratching her legs on the thorns. The three abominations took a step toward her, and their shoulders began to shake with silent sobs. Drops of blood fell from under the skeins of rank hair and ran down the fronts of their dresses. They whispered names while they cried their gory tears.
    Helen woke up to a slap. There was a prickly numbness in her cheek and the steady note of a dial tone whining in her left ear. Jerry’s face was inches away from hers, wild with worry, and starting to show signs of guilt. He had never hit her before. He had to take a few shaky breaths before he could speak. The bedside clock read 3:16.
    “You were screaming. I had to wake you,” he stammered.
    Helen swallowed painfully, trying to moisten her swollen tongue and closed-off throat. “S’okay. Nightmare,” she whispered as she sat up.
    Her cheeks were wet with either sweat or tears, she didn’t