Forest Ghost (27 page)

Jack was sitting in his office, going over the last few days’ accounts, when Sally came in, looking windblown.

‘The Polack returns!’ she said, leaning over his desk and giving him a kiss. ‘How was the old country?’

‘Are you on duty?’ he asked her. ‘If you’re not, come to the bar and have a drink while I tell you. I think you’ll need it.’

‘I’m off today, as a matter of fact. But I’m back on tomorrow. I have to go back to Muskegon. Undersheriff Porter says he has some new evidence he wants us to look over together.’

‘Well, how about that for a coincidence? Sparky and I were planning on going back there tomorrow.’
Fate
, he thought.
Now that I’ve started to believe in it, I can actually see it at work.

Sally sat down on a barstool and said, ‘It’s a little early, but I’ll have my usual, if that’s OK. Why are you and Sparky going back there?’

Jack unscrewed the Jim Beam bottle. ‘It’s Sparky. You know how OCD he can be. He thinks if we go back there he can find out why his friend Malcolm committed suicide.’

‘I don’t know how. Undersheriff Porter says there’s still no evidence that any third parties were involved. And since there were no survivors …’

Jack took the top off a bottle of Zywiec, and said, ‘Let me tell you what happened in Poland, anyhow. You won’t believe it. It was almost an exact parallel of what happened at Owasippe. We went into the forest and all of us panicked. And I mean like
total
panic! Three of the people who were with us committed suicide.’

‘Oh my Lord! You’re kidding me, aren’t you?’

As calmly and as rationally as he could, he told Sally all about their ill-fated expedition into the Kampinos Forest. She sat and listened and didn’t touch her drink until he had finished. Then she knocked it back in one. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What is it with these forests?’

Jack explained Professor Guzik’s theory – that forests all over the world harbored a whole multitude of spirits which the Ancient Greeks had once called Pan – spirits which defended the trees against destructive intruders, and especially humans.

‘And what do
you
think?’ asked Sally. ‘Sounds kind of far-fetched to me. Pan – is that the guy with the goat’s legs, and the pipes?’

‘That’s the one. But what
I
saw – that white thing – it was nothing like that. Like I said before, it was more like a ghost.’

‘What time are you going tomorrow?’ asked Sally. ‘I didn’t book my flight yet. Maybe we could go together.’

Jack caught sight of the two of them in the mirror behind the bar.
Fate
, he thought again. It was almost like watching a movie of his own life, playing out in front of him.

That night, he was woken up by the sound of voices. He rolled over in bed and checked the time. It was two thirty-three, which meant that he been sleeping for less than three hours. He lay there, straining to hear what the voices were saying. Maybe it was nothing more than the people in the next-door apartment, watching television. He knew that the husband worked the graveyard shift at O’Hare airport, and they would argue or play music or take a shower at all kinds of ungodly hours during the night.

But these voices seemed to be much quieter, and much closer, as if two people were talking intently to each other in the living room, while at the same time trying to keep their voices down so that they didn’t disturb him. One of them sounded like Aggie, but he didn’t recognize the other one. It was reedy, and whistly, with a slight hoarseness to it, as if its owner was suffering from a cold.

He climbed out of bed, walked across the bedroom and opened the door. He was right: the voices were coming from the living room. Not only that, a silvery-white light was playing underneath the living-room door.

Treading as quietly as he could, he went along the corridor and stood outside the door, with his head tilted toward it. The angel Gabriel stared at him disapprovingly from the etching on the opposite wall.
You again, trespassing in the middle of the night, listening to conversations that are none of your concern
.

‘So you’re going tomorrow?’ That was Aggie, or the woman who sounded like Aggie.

‘Yes – tomorrow, early.’ That was the reedy voice.

‘Did you ever think it would come to this?’

‘I think so, yes. Not so soon, maybe. But the stars have been predicting it for years.’

There was a pause, and then Aggie said something which Jack couldn’t hear clearly.

‘I was always hopeful that they would understand what they had,’ the reedy voice replied. ‘I know now that they never will. I don’t think they’re capable of it. Either that, or they simply don’t want to.’

Another pause. Then Aggie said, ‘I always knew you were special, from the moment you were born. I always knew that God had a plan for you.’

‘God?’

‘Well – destiny, maybe. Whatever you want to call it.’

Jack took hold of the doorhandle. Silently, he counted to three, and then he flung the door wide open. The silvery-white light vanished instantly, and when he stepped into the room all he could see was Sparky, in his pajamas, sitting on the couch with his legs tucked up underneath him, like a yogi. His eyes were closed as if he were meditating, but as soon as Jack came into the room he opened them.

‘Sparks! What the
hell
do you think you’re doing? Do you know what time it is?’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Sparky, and his voice was much hoarser than usual.

‘What, you’re catching a cold or something? You sound like it. If you are, you need to go back to bed and keep yourself warm.’

‘I’m OK, Dad. I’m not sick.’

‘So what was that light I saw?’

‘What light?’

‘I saw a light in here, like a very bright flashlight.’

Sparky didn’t answer, but Jack could see that he didn’t have any kind of lamp next to him, on the couch.

‘Who were you talking to? It sounded like Mom again.’

Sparky shook his head. ‘I wasn’t talking to anybody. There’s nobody here but me.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Sparks. I heard you. You said that the stars have been predicting something for years. Like –
what
have they been predicting for years?’

‘I don’t know, Dad. It wasn’t me.’

‘Sparks, I’m not stupid. I heard you talking to Mom just like you were talking the other night. You said that somebody didn’t understand what they had, or didn’t want to understand.’

‘Things are different now,’ said Sparky, in his flattest, least expressive tone. ‘Things have changed since then. We went to Poland. Why do you think we went to Poland?’

‘We went to Poland because you insisted on it, that’s why. I still don’t have any idea what the hell we have to show for it, except for a whole lot of bunkum about trees talking to each other and the great god Pan. Oh – and nightmares, too. We got nightmares, or at least I did. And hallucinations. And the ongoing heebie-jeebies.’

‘It does all make sense, Dad. You just have to see it from a different point of view.’

‘Sparks, the only point of view I can see things from right now is that it’s two-thirty in the morning and we’re catching a plane to Muskegon at nine forty-five, which means we have to be up by six at the latest. I’m almost tempted to cancel it, and forget this whole thing.’

‘We can’t. I told you. We
have
to go.’

When he said that, Sparky’s voice was even hoarser, and the way he said it was no longer flat and expressionless, but demanding.

Jack thought to himself:
Something is about to happen here. Something that’s going to make all the difference to Sparky’s life, and maybe mine, too.
However much he didn’t want to go tomorrow, he knew that Sparky was right, and they had to
.

Maybe then, at last, the voices would stop
.

T
hey caught the nine-forty-three United Express from O’Hare to Muskegon. It was only a fifty-three-minute flight and the airline didn’t serve food, so Jack had asked Duane to make them some chicken-and-salad wraps to take with them.

Sally said, ‘These are delicious. And here’s me, trying to diet.’

Sparky hadn’t touched his. He was staring out of the window at the hammered-glass surface of Lake Michigan, and the streaky cirrus clouds that were passing beneath them like shreds of torn muslin.

‘
So
many people simply don’t get it,’ he said, without turning around.

‘So many people simply don’t get what, Sparky?’ Sally asked him.

‘So many people don’t understand that here we are – living on an actual planet.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ Sally admitted. ‘I mean, it’s not something that I’ve ever thought about. Are you going to eat that wrap or can I have it?’

‘Go ahead,’ said Sparky. Sally turned to Jack for his approval but Jack shrugged and said, ‘Sure. Go ahead. Better than wasting it.’

They gradually started to lose altitude. Flying over the lake was almost always bumpy, and this morning was no exception. Sparky clutched the arms of his seat and pressed his face close to the window. ‘Nearly there,’ he said, so that his breath fogged up the Perspex.

‘He seems to be real excited about it,’ said Sally. ‘What does he think he’s going to find there?’

‘The
answer
,’ said Sparky, still without looking around. ‘The answer to everything.’

Sally looked at Jack and raised one eyebrow. Jack shrugged again. He couldn’t work out what Sparky was talking about any more than she could.

‘Where are you meeting Undersheriff Porter?’ he asked her.

‘At the County Sheriff’s Office, first of all, in Muskegon. Then we’re coming out to Owasippe. Apparently he has some circumstantial evidence he wants to show me,
in situ
.’

‘Oh, OK. So we may see you later. We may fly back later this afternoon, depending how long we stay at Owasippe, but I’ve booked us in at the Comfort Inn, just in case. Maybe you and I could have dinner together.’

‘Undersheriff Porter has already asked me, I’m afraid. He wants to take me to some place called the Hearthstone Grill. He says I’ll love it – ma-and-pa food brought up to date, apparently.’ She smiled, and added, ‘I think he’s taken a shine to me.’

‘Sounds cozy. But make sure that the only thing he shows you that begins with “circum” is “stantial evidence”.’

Sally laughed, and then she said, ‘Do you know something? I can’t remember the last time I laughed. Yes, I can. It was with you, when your waitress dropped all of that spaghetti Bolognese right in that guy’s lap. We don’t laugh enough, Jack, do we? I think we’ve forgotten how – what with all the money worries and the violence and the general crappiness of everything. Sparky’s right. We’re living on an actual planet, which is amazing, but we take it totally for granted.’

The plane’s wheels went down, and it began to tilt and sway as it made its way down to Muskegon Airport. As the ground came closer and closer, Sparky started to gabble something under his breath. The engines were whistling too loudly for Jack to be able to catch any of the words, but even if he had been able to, he wasn’t at all sure that he would have known what they meant.

After they had landed, however, and were taxiing toward the terminal, Sparky pointed both of his index fingers upright, and touched the ends of his two thumbs together, to form a figure that looked something like a W. Very softly, Jack heard him say, ‘
Suck see wahbey. Man, two, suck see wahbey
.’

Undersheriff Porter was waiting for Sally in the terminal building, under the high arched roof. He smiled broadly when he caught sight of her, but his smile faded when he saw Jack and Sparky.

‘Sorry, Sal, but what are these guys doing here?’

‘They wanted to go back and take another look at the scout reservation, that’s all. Kind of a pilgrimage, I guess you could call it, to pay a tribute to all those scouts who died.’

‘I see,’ said Undersheriff Porter, grudgingly. ‘Although, to tell you the truth, I
don’t
see. You’ll find that substantial areas of the Owasippe Scout Reservation are still restricted from unauthorized entry – especially the scout huts at Lake Wolverine, and the shoreline all around the lake, and that hollow where we found those two dead cougar-shit collectors.’

Sally made an exaggerated show of covering Sparky’s ears with her hands.

‘Oh come on, now,’ said Undersheriff Porter. ‘If he doesn’t know the word “shit” by now he must be arrested.’ He turned around to Jack and added, ‘And so will
you
be, sir, if you try to enter those areas of Owasippe which we’ve marked off-limits.
Arrested
, I mean. Get it? Just a friendly warning.’

He and Sally left the airport in his squad car, while Jack hailed a cab. The driver was a fat, middle-aged Native American with greasy gray shoulder-length hair and mirror sunglasses. He wore a maroon shirt buttoned up to the neck and a brown deerskin vest that was shiny with age.

First of all Jack asked him to drive them to the Comfort Inn on East Sherman Drive so that he could check in at the desk and leave their bags. If they missed the last plane back to Chicago, which left at seven twenty-five in the evening, they could stay here for the night, and catch the first plane back in the morning.

When he had registered, Jack climbed back into the cab and asked the driver to take them to the scout reservation.

‘You know it’s closed down for the rest of the season, don’t you?’ asked the cab driver, incessantly chewing gum. ‘It’s on account of all them kids that killed themselves. You hear about that?’

‘Yes, we heard about that.’

‘That place, Owasippe,
brrrr
! That was always kind of spooky. My grandpa used to tell me old Potawatomi stories about Owasippe. Some folks used to say it was haunted.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Jack asked him. ‘Haunted by what?’

‘Oh, not by people or nothing. By this white albino deer, with special powers. It could run so fast that it could catch up with itself. And nobody who saw it ever told the tale, because the deer used to make them cut out their own tongues rather than say that they had seen it, and where it was.’