Forest Ghost (24 page)

‘I guess so. Except how do we get rid of it?’

‘I don’t understand. What do you mean, “get rid of it”?’

‘My great-grandfather and his closest friend both killed themselves because this Forest Ghost made them panic so much. My son’s best buddy cut his own throat, and he was only thirteen years old. These are the reasons why he and I came here, to find out who was responsible, or what.’

‘But, Jack – if you don’t mind me calling you Jack – the Forest Ghost is Nature. You can’t punish Nature for protecting itself from human depredation. We are here on this planet as guests, and it is our duty to take care of it. If you are attacked by a shark, you cannot blame the shark, especially when you consider how badly we pollute the oceans. If a lion mauls you, or a cobra bites you, or a wasp stings you, they are only defending themselves.’

‘So this Forest Ghost, this
nish-gite
, or whatever it is, we just let it go?’

‘I fail to see what else you can do. It’s an elemental spirit. You can’t catch it and put it in prison, or kill it.’

‘You can exorcize spirits, can’t you?’

‘You would have to ask a priest about that,’ said Professor Guzik. ‘But even if you could, would it be morally right to do so? In the last ten years, the Amazon basin has been deforested by two-thirds more than the entire area of Poland. What other way of defending themselves do our forests have?’

Jack didn’t know how to answer that. He had never been particularly interested in climate change, or recycling, or saving energy, except for making sure that the lights and the ovens in the restaurant were always switched off, to save money. But he couldn’t help thinking about Malcolm and all of his brother scouts, cutting their own throats; and of great-grandfather Grzegorz and his friend Andrzej; and Robert, and Borys, and Lidia. All of them valuable human lives; all of them needlessly lost. And for what? The sake of some trees?

Whatever Professor Guzik said, sharks that killed people were then hunted down and killed too. Dogs that attacked children were destroyed. As far as Jack was concerned, humans had an equal right to protect themselves against Nature. Nature had taken his Agnieszka away from him, and if there was any way that Jack could get his revenge on cancer, he would.

He felt the same about Pan, or the Forest Ghost, or whatever it was.

‘I sense that you don’t agree with me,’ said Professor Guzik. Behind those enormous glasses, his eyes looked like the eyes of a goldfish, staring out of its bowl.

‘Well, you’re very perceptive,’ Jack told him. ‘But let me tell you this …’ He held up his thumb and his index finger so that they were less than an inch apart, and then he said, ‘I was panicking so much in that forest that I was
that
much away from cutting Krystyna’s throat, and then my own. Then I saw Borys and Lidia with their heads blown off. Whether it’s Nature or not, anything that does that to you needs to be exterminated. We exterminate rats, don’t we?’

Professor Guzik shrugged and puffed out his cheeks. ‘I can understand your point of view, after what you have been through. If it had happened to me, I would probably feel the same. But whatever your opinion, I don’t see how you can exterminate such a thing. It is a spirit, a ghost, a will-of-the-wisp. Completely insubstantial.’

It had stopped raining by the time they left the café. Jack shook hands with Professor Guzik and thanked him. Professor Guzik said that if Jack ever managed to catch and kill a Forest Ghost, he should be sure to let him know. ‘I would be most interested, believe me.’

Jack and Krystyna walked a little way along Krakowskie Przedmie
ś
cie. The sun came out and made the wet gray sidewalks shine so brightly that they were dazzled.

‘I’d better get back and check on Sparky,’ said Jack.

‘Will I see you again before you go?’ Krystyna asked him.

‘Sure. We could have dinner this evening, if you like. It would have to be at the hotel. I can’t leave Sparky on his own for too long.’

‘Yes, I would like that.’

Jack took hold of Krystyna’s hands and kissed her on each cheek – once, twice, three times – and this time she kissed him back. They looked into each other’s eyes for a very long moment, and they both knew what they were looking for.

W
hen Jack returned to the hotel, he found Sparky sitting at the desk by the window, drawing a star chart. Beside him was a plate with a few French fries and some smears of catsup left on it, as well as an empty sundae glass.

Sparky’s hair was sticking up with gel and he was wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of Albert Einstein poking out his tongue.

‘How are you feeling, buddy?’ Jack asked him. ‘You managed to eat some lunch, then?’

‘I’m feeling much better, thanks,’ said Sparky, without looking up from his star chart. ‘Pluto and Uranus are at right angles, which was probably why you thought you saw that white thing last night.’

‘Oh, I see. Pluto and Uranus. Guess I should have realized.’

‘Not only that – the Sun and Uranus have also formed a square. This happens very, very rarely. It’s the first in a series of seven squares of power which are going to keep reappearing for the next three years. Every time that happens, things look strange, not the way they really are.’

‘Oh, OK. So what did you have to eat? Cheeseburger?’

Sparky looked up. Jack couldn’t put his finger on it, but he appeared different somehow, as if he were Sparky’s near-identical twin instead of Sparky himself. His face was even paler than usual, and his eyes seemed almost translucent. He probably needed a good night’s sleep, just like Jack did.

‘Cheeseburger with chili, and a chocolate ice-cream,’ he said. The way he said it, it sounded more like a religious intonation than lunch. Then, ‘How did it go with Professor Guzik?’

‘Very interesting, if you’re prepared to believe in mythological gods and spirits. Professor Guzik believes that trees can communicate and that we were attacked in the forest by the great god Pan.’

He went to the mini-bar, took out a bottle of Tyskie Gronie beer and tore open a small packet of pretzels. He sat down on the couch and said, ‘Professor Guzik thinks there are hundreds of Pans. Maybe thousands. Every forest has its own Pan, as far as I can make out.’

He recounted everything that Professor Guzik had said to them: that these multitudes of Pans had appeared all through history in forests all over the world, causing suicidal panic.

‘Yes,’ said Sparky, when he had finished, almost as if he had known it all already.

‘Do you believe him?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean, I’m totally confused about it. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. What if we’re feeling vengeful about something that doesn’t exist?’

‘You saw the Forest Ghost for yourself,’ said Sparky. ‘That white thing, anyhow, whatever it was. So did I. Why wouldn’t you believe him?’

‘Because there is no such thing as ghosts, for a start.’

‘You thought you saw a ghost last night, in the bathroom.’

‘Yes, but I think that was just me, being hysterical. In fact I think I probably dreamed it. It was the same as hearing your mom talking, on the phone.’

‘You threw the chair at the window. You didn’t dream that.’

‘No. No, I didn’t. But you said yourself that there was nothing there.’

‘There was.’

‘You mean there was something?’

‘No. I mean there was nothing.’

Jack watched him drawing his star chart for a while. Then he said, ‘I’d better confirm tomorrow’s flight home. It’s at twelve-ten but we need to be at the airport by nine.’

‘We
are
going back to Owasippe, aren’t we?’ asked Sparky, without looking up.

‘Why would we?’

‘We came here to find out why Malcolm and all of those other scouts committed suicide, and why your great-grandfather committed suicide, didn’t we? And now we know that it was the Forest Ghost. The
nish-gite
. It was Pan.’

Jack said, ‘Even if we believe that, I don’t see how going back to Owasippe is going to do us any good. If this Forest Ghost exists, and if there’s any way of catching it, I’d be the first one to try. We don’t want any more kids like Malcolm killing themselves, or anybody else for that matter. But even if it’s real, it’s a ghost. Professor Guzik believes it’s real, but even he said that it doesn’t have any substance. It’s a
ghost
, Sparks. We can’t catch it, by very definition.’

‘Actually, we can,’ said Sparky. ‘I’ve been finishing this new star chart for us and the planets say that we’re definitely going to, which means that we will. It says that you and me are going to go to the west to right a great wrong, so that it never ever happens again.’

‘Oh, really? But does it say
how
? I mean, that would be very useful – if we knew how.’

‘All it says is that we’re bringing back the answer with us, from the east, even though we don’t know what it is yet.’

‘Come on, Sparks – what answer? Even if we believe that people panic because of a Forest Ghost, that doesn’t tell us how to catch it, or stop it, or exorcize it, or whatever you do with ghosts.’

Sparky picked up the star chart and came across to the couch to show it to him. ‘
There
,’ he said, pointing at some of the symbols and quadrants he had drawn. ‘That’s us returning to the west … that’s your star sign, Aries, and that’s mine, Capricorn. Now there – that’s where we go to Owasippe and right the great wrong.’

‘If you say so, Sparks. Looks just like lines and squiggles to me.’

‘No, Dad – you see here? This is the Moon, rising at the same time as we arrive at Owasippe. But the Moon appears in the square made by the Sun and Uranus, and that turns everything upside-down and back-to-front. That’s when we realize what the answer is. It’s like the answer is kept in a safe, in the heavens, but the Moon is going to unlock it for us.’

Jack swallowed beer from the neck of the bottle and shook his head. ‘You got me there, Sparks. I don’t understand a word of this.’

‘It’s easy to understand. We already have the answer, but we won’t know what it is until we go to Owasippe and the Moon rises.’

‘So in the great scheme of all things astrological, is this a good forecast or a bad forecast or someplace in between?’

Sparky looked down at his chart and frowned. ‘Usually, when the Moon rises in a square, it’s bad. Like,
very
bad. Everything goes wrong. But this time, I don’t really know. It could be bad or it could be good. The trouble is, I don’t know which, or who for …’

‘T
his has turned out to be such a tragedy,’ said Krystyna, as they sat over dinner in the Platter restaurant on the hotel’s first floor. ‘I feel so guilty about Robert and Borys and Lidia. And what did we achieve? Nothing.’

‘What about the skeletons you found?’ Jack asked her. ‘Grzegorz Walach and his friend Andrzej, if that’s who they are? Will you be able to go back and dig them up?’

Krystyna shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Not yet. I will certainly have to wait until the police have finished their investigation. But even if I do get permission to continue, I’m not so sure that I will ever have the nerve to go back into that forest. Supposing I start to feel panicky, all over again? Supposing I want to kill myself? Supposing I
do
kill myself?’

She reached across the table and laid her hand on his. She was wearing a small silver ring with a red garnet in it, the birthstone of Capricorns.

‘Forgive me, Jack. I know you had that message from your late wife, and that you would very much like to know why.’

‘No, I don’t blame you. I feel the same way myself. Sparky wants us to take another trip to the forest at Owasippe. He says that if we do that, we’ll find out the answer to what this Pan thing really is. But … I don’t know. I can’t say I’m very happy about it.’

‘You’re not going, are you?’

‘I might have to. The trouble with Sparky is that he’s obsessive. He won’t let anything go until he’s had concrete proof that it’s right or it’s wrong. Sometimes he frets about something that he doesn’t understand until it makes him physically ill.’

‘Well … maybe he will be able to put this Forest Ghost to rest. Let’s hope so.’

‘I still can’t make up my mind if there really
is
such a thing,’ Jack told her. ‘We’ve heard the trees rustle and felt the wind blow and I know that I’ve seen some white thing running around. I didn’t tell Professor Guzik this morning but I even thought I saw something like it in our hotel bathroom last night.’

‘You saw it in your
bathroom
?’

‘It was like a bright white figure. So bright you couldn’t even look at it. I was scared shitless, pardon my language. I almost felt like cutting my wrists right then and there. I picked up this goddamned fruit knife, would you believe, this blunt little fruit knife, and I think I would have done it. But Sparky came out and said there was nothing there, and there wasn’t. I went back and searched the room, under the bed, everywhere. Absolutely zilch.’

‘That is so weird. Do you think you might have
dreamed
it?’

‘I guess I must have done. So – whatever Professor Guzik says – I’m beginning to believe that this Pan character could be all in the mind.’

‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Krystyna. ‘But whatever it is – whether it’s a real ghost or whether it’s a psychological delusion – it frightens me too much to go back. I regret it, very much, but what happened to your great-grandfather might have to remain a mystery. What happened to
us
might have to remain a mystery, also. To Robert, and to Lidia, and to Borys.’

The waiter brought their main courses – venison medallions with loganberries for Jack and pike with sour pickles for Krystyna. For the rest of the meal, they didn’t talk about the Forest Ghost again. Jack told Krystyna how his parents had started up the Nostalgia Restaurant, and Krystyna told Jack about her girlhood on the Baltic coast, in Gdynia.

They said goodbye in the hotel lobby. Krystyna said, ‘You will keep in touch, Jack? If you go to Owasippe with Sparky, you promise to tell me what happens?’