Emily's Ghost (33 page)

Outside, it was raining --
the fourth soaker that week -- and inside, it seemed damp and
chill, even for late June. Emily pulled her ratty chenille robe
around her more tightly and sipped her tea, trying not to think
about either Lee or Fergus. She had the Newarth phone book open to
the white pages. It was time to think about Kyle
Edwards.

There were thirteen
Edwardses, none of them a Kyle, in the Newarth phone directory, and
on Saturday afternoon Emily called them all. The responses ranged
from "No Kyle here" to "Who wants to know?" But when she reached
Timothy Edwards, she reached pay dirt. Timothy Edwards had a nephew
named Kyle who was living in Cambridge—the last anyone heard
anyway.

An operator gave Emily a
number, and she called it, fingers dancing over the phone with
excitement. At the other end a laid-back voice answered. "Yeah,
this is Kyle Edwards," he said in a not unfriendly way.

"Mr. Edwards, this is
Emily Bowditch. I'm writing a feature story for the
Boston Journal
about
Talbot Manor in Newarth. I understand from my research that you had
some connection with the place?"

"Hey, no kidding? The
manor, huh? I lived there for a couple of years."

Yes,
she thought ecstatically, punching a victory fist into thin
air. "That's what I thought," she said in a carefully calm voice.
"I came across some old term papers of yours there."

"So what's up?" he asked.
"Has someone made me their heir? If so, thanks but no thanks. No
one needs a white elephant like the manor in their
life."

"Well, you can sleep easy,
then," she said, laughing. "No one's left it to you. No, I'm just
doing profiles of people who've lived there, from the original
owners up to the present. I wonder if I could meet with you and get
some of your thoughts. It wouldn't take long."

"Sure. What about this
afternoon? You in town?"

"I live in
Charlestown—"

"Close enough. Can you be
in Cambridge tomorrow?"

"Nothing to it; I have to
go to the Coop anyway," she lied. They agreed to meet at the
Tangiers coffeehouse in Harvard Square at two in the afternoon.
Emily hung up.

That was when she saw
Fergus appear alongside her desk. At least, trying to. But his
image was indistinct, blurry at the edges. Emily rubbed her eyes;
it was as if a film were covering them. She blinked and tried
again, but the image remained dim and unfocused. The only thing she
could see well were his eyes, which seemed to burn with more
indignation than ever. He looked hurt and angry and -- something
new -- anxious.

"Fergus!" she cried,
panicky herself now. "You're not coming in clearly!" She jumped up
in alarm.

"Mother o' God," he
snapped, "I ain't a TV!"

She wanted to run and get
him a glass of water, or help him to her bed so that he could lie
down, or fan his face with a magazine. Or give him ammonia salts.
Or CPR. But there was nothing she could do, nothing. She could only
stand by helplessly while he closed his eyes and took on a look of
intense concentration that left her feeling weak-kneed.

Whatever it was that
Fergus did, it brought him back into sharp focus. The brown of his
vest became distinct from the gray of his pants, and the little
details, like the four flaps on his vest, became visible once more.
But the effort seemed to cost him; he looked exhausted.

"What's happening?" Emily
asked faintly, feeling wan and exhausted herself. It was as if they
were bound by a common blood supply.

He shook his head. "I
don't know; this is new." He made a dismissive gesture, as if he
didn't want to talk about it. "Who is this Kyle Edwards?" he asked
in a still-unsteady voice.

Emily told him about the
bound packet of airmail letters from France that she'd noticed in
the drawer of the desk in the tower. "They were written in a young
girl's hand, postmarked Paris, and the penmanship was distinctly
European. Okay, it's a wild hunch, but I think Maria Salva wrote
them to Kyle when she was a teenager."

A tired smile softened the
strained features of Fergus's face. "Wild hunch? A flying leap into
the great unknown, I'd call it."

"You've got to have more
faith in me," she insisted, hurt. A surge of deep emotion for him
rippled through her, sending color into her cheeks; she was
remembering every word of his impassioned protest of the week
before. Obviously, if anyone had faith in her, Fergus
did.

"Sorry. That was a dumb
thing for me to say," she admitted.

Fergus was off his feet
now, sitting on the floor next to her desk, his head leaning into
the wall behind him, his legs stretched out in front of him. The
light from her desk lamp was shining on the top of his head,
highlighting the shafts of auburn in his hair. His fair skin seemed
even more pale than usual. Once again she had an overwhelming urge
to reach out and touch him, but she knew, now more than ever, that
she'd be crossing the line between two different dimensions. She
had to respect that line.

"Are you all right?" she
asked, wanting reassurance.

He shrugged. "Time will
tell." He meant to sound offhand, but his green eyes were blazing
at her from under his brows.

Whenever he'd looked at
her that way before, she'd felt either frightened or uncomfortable.
But something was different now. This time she didn't look away or
try to return the look defiantly. This time she drank it in the way
a thirsty child drinks water on a summer day.

"We don't have much more
of it -- time, I mean," she whispered. "Do we?"

In a voice surprised by
its own sadness he said, "Every day I borrow a little more of it."
He added with an ironic smile, "Trouble is, no one's told me my
credit limit."

"Welcome to the American
banking system," she said with an attempt at lightness. But her
heart was beginning to crack.

"Emily--"

"Yes?"

"I know this is taking a
toll on ye -- with yer senator, I mean," he said, his eyes burning
with emotion. "I cannot stand to hurt ye."

She leaned her elbows on
the desk and propped her chin on her open palms. Emotion was
welling up; she was trying very hard not to cry. "That's what
friends are for, Fergus," she said with a melancholy
smile.

"So it's true. Somewhere
along the line we've become friends, ye and me. Real friends." He
closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "Oh, brother. This was
not part of the plan."

Emily studied him
thoughtfully. "Did you actually have a plan?"

"I did, and ye don't want
to know it," he said with a grim twist upward of his mouth. "It
might strain the friendship."

She lifted her chin from
her hands; her eyes became wary. The old tingle rippled down her
spine. "You really intended to harm me? Once you got what you
needed ...?"

"Emily, I've told ye
before," he interrupted gently, "earthly notions of right and wrong
do not carry over to the state of nothingness."

"But it was an earthly
wrong that put you there in the first place," she argued,
distressed. "Are you saying that if there are other astral beings
trapped as you are in that state, they'll do whatever they have to
do to break out of it? Whether it's right or wrong? They don't have
to go by any rules of conduct?"

"I know only about
myself," he said wearily.

"But there must be other
beings like you. What about Talbot Manor, in fact? If there
is
a power of some kind
there, it could be trapped the same way you are." He shrugged, and
she said, "It could be trying to break out of its nothingness the
same way you are. And it could be prepared to do whatever it takes,
the same way you were. Of course!"

She jumped up, jittery
with nervous energy and resolve, and trekked over to the Mr. Coffee
machine to set up the last thing she needed, a pot of caffeine.
"I've been assuming that the only thing haunting Talbot Manor was
Maria Salva. Or, at worst, some poltergeist that she was creating
–-
that's
Lee's
fault; he's the one who got me going on poltergeists as projections
of psychic disturbances. I do believe that Maria is disturbed. But
now I see a simpler explanation."

She dumped a good part of
a bag of ground A&P coffee into the pleated filter and slid the
drip tray back into the machine. Instantly it began to glub and
hiss, an evil, manipulative sound to her ears. She turned around to
Fergus, gripping the counter's edge behind her.

"It's my belief that the
manor is possessed by Hessiah Talbot's murderer,"
she said with almost lurid intensity.

Fergus was seated sideways
on the sofa, his legs folded in front of him like a Buddha's. "Ye
sound like them Basil Rathbone Sherlocks I been watchin'," he said,
chuckling despite himself. "Let me see if I have this correct. Ye
think that the murderer is itching to break out of his entrapped
state --"

"Yes!"

"So that he -- or she --
can rush headlong into his -- or her -- punishment."

"Oh." She chewed on the
inside of her cheek while she stared at the thin brown stream of
liquid filling the glass decanter. "I suppose it's true; he doesn't
have as much to gain as you do.
But
"
she
said, pulling out a mug from the rack, "you said yourself you'd
rather exist in someplace like hell than not exist at all. Why
couldn't the murderer feel that way, too?"

"If it
is
the murderer we're even talking
about," Fergus added, slipping back into melancholy. "This is too
damn fanciful for me. I need some facts."

"Then tag along with me to
Cambridge tomorrow," Emily answered, filled with confidence enough
for both of them. "I'll give you facts enough to fill a
barn.

****

That night Emily slept
poorly, probably because she'd overdosed on caffeine. Sometime
before dawn she was troubled by a tremendous awareness that she was
not alone in the room. Fretful and anxious but still half asleep,
she opened one eye slightly and was able to make out Fergus
standing at the foot of her bed, arms folded across his chest. The
sense that it was the last time she'd ever see him cut through her
like a bolt of lightning.

"Fergus!" she cried, her
voice ripping through the night's stillness.

He was absolutely silent:
unwilling, or unable, to answer her.

"Don't leave me," she
moaned in sleep-shattered confusion. "You always do that ... so
don't ... anymore ... please ... I don't want you to go
...."

He remained there
silently, a look of intense emotion on his face, and eventually
Emily, confused and disoriented, fell back asleep. In the morning
she couldn't remember the incident with any clarity at
all.

****

The Tangiers coffeehouse,
tucked in a small alley behind the Harvard Coop, was one of many
intimate gathering spots that make up the lifeblood of Harvard
Square. Subterranean and dimly lit, it had a reputation for
attracting aging hippies and unorthodox intellectuals. Emily asked
for and left her name with a waitress named Laura and was led to a
small round table in the corner. The brick floor, bentwood chairs,
and Bob Dylan sound track lent a certain earnest ambience to the
place. Kyle Edwards, seated at the corner table, fitted right
in.

He was a big man,
gray-bearded and balding and gone a little to seed. Emily
introduced herself, and he put out his cigarette at once, shuffling
to his feet with a bulky man's awkwardness. The hand he extended
was surprisingly soft.

They sat down together and
talked a little about Cambridge. Emily learned that Kyle had
dropped out of Harvard Business School to protest the war in
Vietnam. He'd never gone back and was casually vague about what he
did for a living.

"For the past twenty years
I've dealt in a little of this, a little of that," he said amiably,
lighting up another cigarette. "D'you mind?" he asked as an
afterthought.

"Not at all," Emily
replied stoically.

He sent a stream of smoke
scudding through the side of his mouth. "So tell me about Talbot
Manor. Is it the same pile of rubble it was when we lived there in
the early seventies?"

"I wanted to ask you who
all was there," she asked after filling him in about the
renovations.

"Gawd, that's hard to say.
We came and went. I mean, someone'd crash there for a few days or
weeks and then move on. You know how it was." He sized up her youth
with a grimace and a sigh. "Or maybe you don't."

"I have a pretty good
picture," she said. "So you were in a commune. Was there anything
special that bound you to one another -- the antiwar movement, the
Whole Earth thing, something like that?" What she really wanted was
to know whether he was part of a religious or drug cult of any
kind.

"Nah. Everyone was into,
y'know, something, but we weren't all into the same thing. One of
the women used to tie-dye shirts and sell 'em on the corner. Then
there was Varuna. She worked with clay and kept a pet chicken. She
had a potter's wheel up on the top floor of that tower -- jeez, we
had to haul that concrete kick wheel up there for her, must've
weighed a coupla hundred pounds. Some of the stairs actually
collapsed under us, but we managed to save the wheel. Course, Bill
-- Bill something -- did break a leg. I can't believe I've
forgotten his last name."