Beloved (42 page)

"
Try
'Psychologists,'"
Jane suggested with a wry smile.
"
Times are tough; maybe they do séances on the side.
"

Cissy took her seriously, of course, expecting to find a discreet
li
ttle ad that said,
"
Spirits Summoned
—
Reasonable.
"
When she came up empty again, she was very disappointed; she wanted so badly to help. So she chewed on the problem for a bit,
li
ke a puppy with a sock, until she came up with another idea.

"
We
'
ll do an all-nighter! I
'
ll bring Bing
'
s camcorder, and I
'
ll hide in your closet. That
'
s what these experts do; they bring tape recorders and cameras and things and sometimes they get lucky.
"

"
Gee. Maybe we can pitch it to
'
America
'
s Funniest
Videos,'"
Jane said. She thought it was an incredibly dumb idea.

"
I
'
ve seen actual photos, Jane,
"
Cissy insisted.
"
No one can explain the images that sometimes show up. A tourist took a photo of a ghost once and he wasn
'
t even trying! He was walking down the stairs of some castle in
England
.
"

"
The tourist?
"

"
The
ghost.
Okay, I can see you don
'
t want my help,
"
Cissy said, hurt. She closed up the pizza box and began folding it down to manageable size.

"
No, no,
"
Jane answered.
"
I really appreciate what you
'
re trying to do. I suppose we could give it a try. What the heck.
"

"
We have to do something.
"

****

By the time Cissy came over at ten with the camcorder and a tripod, Jane
'
s misgivings were great. Except for the time that Buster had seemed to see something in the rocking chair of her bedroom, there had been no evidence so far of any kind of apparition. Why should Kodak be able to capture what the human eye could not? Besides, Judith had done all of her communicating through Jane, which would seem to make Jane herself the medium in this affair. Logically, the camera should be aimed at Jane all night, an idea which made her skin crawl.

"
It
'
s bad enough to be videotaped when you
'
re asleep and vulnerable,
"
Jane complained to Cissy as they discussed strategy.
"
But if Judith comes tonight, do I really want to be
able to watch myself as she ..
. does whatever it is she does to me? Mac is right. There are some things,
"
she said with a shudder,
"
that go too far.
"

So the two of them walked round and round with the tripod, trying to locate it in an optimal spot. They tried the bottom of the stairs, and the top, and the hall. But there was absolutely no evidence that
Li
lac Cottage was haunted —
only that Jane was
—
so in the end they set up the tripod in the bedroom closet, with the door partly opened, and put a chair inside for Cissy. Jane stood behind the lens, focusing it on the white eyelet-trimmed pillowcases of her bed, and thought,
I must be mad. How have I let things get this far?

If someone had told her two months ago that she
'
d be sharing nervous giggles with a gul
li
ble child-woman at midnight in the closet of her bedroom while they tried to catch some apparition on videotape, she
'
d have edged away from
that person
and called the po
li
ce. Instead, she was cracking ghostbuster jokes that weren
'
t very funny and trying hard to ignore the fact that it was midnight and time, at last, to go to bed.

The plan was simple. Cissy would stay up and Jane would sleep. Jane didn
'
t think it was fair, but there didn
'
t seem to be any alternative, and Cissy claimed, after all, to be a night owl. So Jane s
li
pped into a set of
li
ghtweight sweats, while Cissy dressed in a ruffled cotton gown in keeping with a girls
'
sleepover. She had her supply of caffeine
—
a six-pack of Coke
—
beside her and looked ready to party all night.

As for Jane: D
espite her trepidations she was exhausted. She s
li
pped self-consciously under her white down comforter, let out a nervous sigh, and said,
"
Okay. Roll
'
em.
"

It became very quiet. Cissy, suddenly deadly serious, didn
'
t talk, didn
'
t sneeze, didn
'
t clear her throat. There was only the rise and fall of Jane
'
s own breathing, which sounded unnaturally loud to her. She lay there in a kind of terrified calm, fee
li
ng
li
ke some sacrificial victim. Her emotions were at war. On the one hand, she had an irresistible urge to bolt from her bed. On the other hand, she knew now that she couldn
'
t escape Judith, not until Judith
'
s mission was done. If Jane was the victim in this ritual drama, then she was also its high priestess.

So she lay there, unsure of her power, uncertain of her resolve, until a deep, steadying heaviness crept into her
li
mbs and then, at Judith
'
s mercy, she fell asleep.

****

When Jane woke up, enormously refreshed, bright sun was pouring through the deep-set window of the east dormer. She opened one eye sleepily and took in the pale yellow walls with their cabbage-rose borders and thought how very pretty the room was. She
li
ked everything about it, from the way her old steamer trunk fit perfectly under the sloping eave, to the needlepoint rug that lay over the scarred and golden pine floor.

Easing onto her back and stretching luxuriously, Jane opened the other eye. And found herself staring into the baleful eye of a camcorder.

Jeez!

She
'
d forgotten completely about the videotape. She jumped out of bed, wondering where Cissy
'
d gone off to, and swung open the closet door. There she was on the floor, curled up in a nest of spare blankets and surrounded by six empty Coke cans. The last videotape was still on the floor beside the tripod, unused. So much for the scientific method.

Smi
li
ng, Jane crouched down and shook Cissy gently awake.
"
Rise and shine, kiddo.
"

Cissy started from her sleep.
"
I
'
m awake! I
'
m awake!
"
she cried. When she saw that the sun was up and the second tape had run out, she winced.
"
I blew it, didn
'
t I?
"

Jane pointed to the empty Coke cans.
"
Hey, you tried.
"

"
I did go downstairs to pee twice,
"
Cissy admitted.
"
But other than that I sat right here for four whole hours, honest. And I didn
'
t see anything, not a damn thing.
"
Disappointed, she got to her feet and began stretching her obviously stiff
li
mbs.

"
Never mind,
"
said Jane, more re
li
eved than not that the night had passed without incident.
"
Who
'
s to say Judith had plans to be here in any case? Come on, I
'
ll make us pancakes. We
'
ll play the tape anyway; I want to see if I snore.
"

"
You don
'
t,
"
Cissy was able to confirm.
"
You slept
li
ke a baby. That
'
s how I know no one came.
"

The two of them trotted downstairs, with Cissy already planning the next vigil and Jane thinking how much easier this all was with someone to share it with
—
even if that someone was a naïf
li
ke Cissy.

Jane thought of Bing, who, despite his love for
Nantucket
, could only give it bits and snatches of his time. He was far too busy prying artwork from the walls of bored collectors, and doing so
mething really nice for an art-
starved pub
li
c besides. Could she honestly expect him to stay on the island and devote himself to her utterly bizarre quest?

And then, of course, there was Mac
—
brooding; cynical;
filled with contempt for her and everything she stood for. Oh, Mac was wil
li
ng to keep an eye on her, all right, just as he
'
d kept an eye on her Aunt Sylvia when she was his neighbor. It was the commonest of courtesies. Besides, Mac was enough of a chauvinist to think that sooner or later every single woman needed a strong man. Maybe it was to nail down a gutter; maybe it was, who knows, to take her to bed. But chasing down ghosts? Uh-uh. Mac had the time to help Jane, but not the inc
li
nation.

That left Cissy clearly as the best man for the job.

So Jane and Cissy hooked up the camcorder to the television and popped in the first of the two tapes while Jane whipped up some pancake batter in her half-redone kitchen. The record of her fal
li
ng asleep was amazingly boring; the novelty of watching herself sleep wore off after about sixty seconds.

Jane rolled her eyes and f
li
pped the first half-dozen pancakes on the griddle.
"
Cissy, you deserve a medal for staying up through this.
"

"
I think adrena
li
ne kept me going through the first tape,
"
Cissy said. She had settled into a sunny spot in the kitchen; sunbeams bounced off her long blond hair while, still in her nightgown, she sipped coffee and watched the tape fixedly. After a while, even Cissy
'
s attention began to wander.

"
I slept better last night than I have in weeks,
"
Jane mused, stacking the first load of pancakes onto a heated platter and s
li
pping them into the oven to stay warm.
"
It must be a plot to throw us off guard.
"

"
That
'
s the thing about apparitions,
"
Cissy said, sounding
li
ke an expert.
"
Nothing is as it seems.
"

"
That
'
s the thing about this whole
island,
"
Jane muttered.
"
Not to mention the people
li
ving on it. Take Mac, for instance,
"
she said, shaking her spatula at Cissy.
"
Look at him. I
'
ve never seen him smile. No one ever visits him. He
'
s your typical curmudgeon, right? So how come everyone who sees him
li
ghts up
li
ke a roman candle? I don
'
t
know,
I feel
li
ke there
'
s something real, something genuine going on out here
—
but I just can
'
t figure out how to become part of it
.
I catch g
li
mpses, and then
, poof,
they
're gone.