Goodnight Blackbird (24 page)

"Of course not."

The graffiti was not confined to the living room. It spilled over onto the wall leading upstairs. HEY JACKIE, it said, WANNA CUM UP N PLAY WITH ME???? Several arrows pointed the way up to the second floor, presumably to Rachel's old room.

Larry was taking pictures with a digital camera.

Then Jacqueline heard it. It lasted maybe a second—the sound of a little girl splashing in a pool, trying to scream through a mouthful of water.

Jacqueline's heart froze. "Did you hear that?" She stared at Darren, her eyes bulging.

"I didn't hear anything. Jacqueline—"

When Jacqueline moved to the stairs, Darren's grip on her wrist tightened. "No," he said. "No way."

"I'm going up. With or without you. I have to do this."

"No. We have to leave. Now."

She went to the landing. There was an intimidating quantity of darkness at the top of the stairs, a swollen, metastasized tumor of darkness. When she flipped the lightswitch by the stairs, there was a flash, then a pop that made everyone jump as the hall lightbulb at the top of the stairs died a sudden death. It was as if the darkness had squeezed it in its fist.

So this was how it would be—suspense movie stagecraft that was already cliché thirty years ago. But in a way it made sense. Jacqueline wasn't facing anyone of any real substance—literally and figuratively. This was a teenage girl. Tantrums and cheap shots: that's all she had. It was all she'd ever have.

Jacqueline tried to keep her voice from quavering as she called out, "Rachel? If you ever bring up my daughter again, I will kill you, do you understand? Oh, yeah, I forgot—you're already dead. Because your lunatic daddy killed you. Like a rabid dog. I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, though. You're just as demented and pathetic as he was. Well, maybe if I can't kill you, I'll just pray every night that you stay trapped in this house forever and never get to heaven. Do you hear me, you little coward?"

The house was silent.

Jacqueline worked herself free from Darren's grip. "What's it like being dead, Rachel? What's it like being kicked out of this world but too stupid to enter the next one? Is it fun? Hey, you know what I think is fun, Rachel? Having sex with Darren. We made love this week, Rachel. Several times, actually. Pity you'll never get to experience that. With him, or anyone, for that matter. Because, of course, you're dead."

"Jacqueline, stop," Darren said, his voice nearly a shout. "Enough."

She swallowed. The cheapness of her words shamed her. She was sinking to Rachel's level. It was probably what Rachel wanted—
see the kind of cheap, vulgar woman you chose, Darren?
And what was sex to a ghost? It was nothing. Jacqueline imagined her somewhere in the house, laughing at her. Cold, empty, mad laughter, like a mental patient beyond therapy.

"Know what else you'll never have?" Jacqueline's voice was hoarse. "You'll never have a man tell you he's proud to be with you even after you've disgraced yourself and think you can't sink any lower. You'll never have someone who feels more like home to you than even your own family. And wherever you go or end up it'll still be like home because he's with you. You won't have that feeling of safety. You won't feel complete. Know what you'll have? An empty house. And no one will stay here, because you'll drive them all away. Forever. That's it."

Darren tried to hold her back again but she shrugged him off. She stood on the landing, looking up into the darkness. Her eyes stung with wetness, blurring her vision. At first she thought it was sweat, but she was crying. The tightness in her throat and the mild hitching in her chest were dead giveaways.
Terrible mother... you let your baby die
. "How dare you bring up my daughter. How
dare
you. What's it like being such a failure as a daughter that your own father would shoot you? What's that like, Rachel?"

She ascended the first two steps with Darren beside her, trying to restrain her. Larry and Lydia stood by the landing, urging them both to come down.

Again Jacqueline struggled out of Darren's grip. The door to Rachel's room was half-open. "Am I supposed to cower in my boots because you know about Michelle? Am I supposed to be scared by your superpowers? Is psychological terrorism your only trick? Oh, I forgot, you can also slam doors and throw things. Like some spoiled little girl. Tell me, do you think that endears you to him? Do you think all that is gonna make him love you? What's that say about you when he'd rather be with a whore and a terrible mother than spend another second here with you?"

She was halfway up the steps. She was shouting now. A sob clutched at her throat. Jacqueline the Whore. It amazed her how petty it was—and how effective. This is how they do it, she thought, not altogether certain who "they" were (maybe Kevin, her family, her friends, maybe the whole world), they goad you, they call you names, they nibble away at you bit by bit like piranhas until you're raw and bleeding in a hundred different places. If life's big calamities didn't break you, the day-to-day humiliations certainly would.

"You call me a whore? You have no right to call me anything. You miserable little coward. You were never married. You never had a daughter, and never had a daughter die in front of you. You never grew up and have to spend eternity with your shallow, bitchy little teenage mind. I was once like you, Rachel, but you will never—not for a minute, not for an instant—never know what it's like to be me. So don't ever call me names. Do you understand me?"

Another step, and another. She was close to the top. The darkness was around her now like a fog.

"Come on," Jacqueline said, "slam some doors. Throw some furniture around. You've already driven Darren to my house. You've already lost what you wanted most, you idiot. These people here tonight, they were going to buy the place and maybe try to help you, but go ahead, throw another tantrum, show them how unstable you are. You'll drive them away too, then you'll be here all alone. Forever. You can fucking rot here for all I care."

Jacqueline the Whore. As if Little Miss Rachel would have been perfect had she lived. Guess what, Rachel, she wanted to say, you would have ended up just like everyone else. You would have made more than your share of mistakes too.

She reached the top of stairs and looked into the shadows of the hall and into the slice of darkness beyond the half-open door of the spare bedroom. She heard nothing other than the pounding of her heart. Her blouse was half-soaked in warm sweat. All around her was the eerie stillness of the house.

Jacqueline kicked open the door to Rachel's room. She saw nothing but shadows and the glint of moonlight through the half-drawn blinds.

"Come on, Rachel. Why don't you materialize? I'm right here. Throw some books at me. Bring the ceiling down on top of me. I've been through things that are ten times worse than anything you can do to me. So come on. Show Darren the hateful little monster you really are."

She took a step into the room and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the absence of light. That was when Jacqueline saw her.

The closet door was ajar. Standing in the opening, half in the room, half in the closet, was the silhouette of a tall girl with dark, shoulder-length hair. As Jacqueline's eyes adjusted even more she noticed the girl wore a strange, glittery mask that covered most of her face. Moonlight reflected weakly off the mask, but the shadows in the closet were so dense Jacqueline wasn't altogether certain that what she was seeing was really there. It has to be my imagination, she told herself. Or maybe it was a cloud of dust in the air coalescing into a shape that was roughly human-like. Jacqueline stepped further into the room, and the girl-shape stepped back further into the closet, in the cowering way of a child afraid she's about to be hit. Over her own ragged breathing Jacqueline heard something else: whimpering. The girl was weeping.

Jacqueline's hand shook so violently it was almost useless, but she managed to grasp the closet doorknob. Fear was finally catching up to her, a throbbing, nauseating fear that fluttered and pulsed like a dying bird in her stomach. Darren was holding her more firmly now, one hand on her side and the other on her shoulder, and he was saying something to her—
stop it, let's go, let's just get out of here
—but she had to do this. Had to.

She opened the door. There was no one there. A handful of empty wire coat hangers gently clanged together like wind chimes.

Jacqueline began to cry. She put a hand over her eyes. What in God's name was wrong with her? She was just a girl—a teenage girl, a hurt little girl, the hapless victim of a violent crime, dead forever. Jacqueline pressed herself into Darren's chest. "Oh God," she said, "I am terrible. She's right. I'm sickening."

"It's what I call 'breakpoint,'" Larry said. "It's when the relationship between the spirit and the home's occupant changes. The spirit stops being a bully and the homeowner stops being a victim. Everything changes."

"Does it mean she's gone?" Darren asked.

Larry signaled for another vodka neat from the waiter. They were at a table in the deserted bar of the Embassy Suites near the airport. Jacqueline's club soda sat untouched in front of her. She watched the bubbles rise to the surface and die.

"I doubt she's gone," Larry said. "Fear and anxiety—the emotions Jacqueline aroused in her—are exactly the kinds of feelings that keep souls from making the full transition to the other side. There is a reason why we call negative feelings 'heavy.' They literally weigh our souls down. More accurately, though, they keep our psychic frequency vibration at a low level, too low to let us transition to the afterlife. Like a plane that can't achieve lift-off velocity."

"So I've just made things worse," Jacqueline said.

Larry seemed to consider the idea. "Not necessarily. In the cases I've studied, when the breakpoint stage is reached, there is the potential for the spirits to become more malleable, more open to direction and suggestion. When they've discovered that they can no longer terrorize the occupants with the same success they once had, they have a sort of crisis of confidence. They can't progress to the other side, but they can't rely on their old tricks down here. And since they're creatures of habit, often going through the same routines and rituals as if they're trapped in a loop, this disturbance in their routine can be crushing to them. They don't know what to do with themselves. It can make them panic, it can make them lash out violently, but it can also make them hungry for instructions. Like a little dog waiting for its owner to tell it what to do." He looked at Darren. "Rachel may actually be more receptive to your wish for her to leave. You could be in a good position."

"I could be in a good position," Darren said. "You mean
you
could be in a good position. I thought you were going to buy the place."

"I only buy houses when no one else is able to help the spirits there. In this case, if anyone can help Rachel make the transition, it's probably you. She's attached to you. If you can't do it, then we'll talk."

"Darren's not going back in there," Jacqueline said. "So maybe it would be better to start talking now."

"Of course he's going back in there. You know it and I know it. He'd never walk away from her like this. Would you walk away from someone trapped in a burning building? She needs help. There needs to be closure. I hate using bullshit psychobabble words like that but it's true. He's one of the magnets holding her here. Therefore he has to shut down the power."

"He can do it by simply never setting foot in there again," Jacqueline said.

"Boy, you're the picture of compassion, aren't you," Larry remarked. "Do you even give a shit about Rachel?"

"Do you even give a shit about
Darren?
Haven't you been paying attention to what's going on there?"

"I understand you're concerned about his safety, but there's a third person in this equation, too," Larry said. "You don't walk out on someone who's in this kind of pain. She'd just keep clinging to the house, waiting for Darren to come back. That would be appalling. Rachel deserves a little respect. She is a person. She may not have a body anymore, but she's still a person. She deserves to be treated with decency. If he walks away from her he's no better than those scumbags who get rid of their dogs by driving out to the country and dumping them by the side of the road."

"What exactly am I supposed to do if I confront her again?" Darren asked.

Larry shrugged. "I don't know. I wish I did."

Jacqueline laughed, exasperated. "You lecture us on everything else, but you don't know what he should do."

"I don't have all the answers to the mysteries of the universe, Jacqueline. All I know is that Darren has to try to end this. When you break up with someone, you do it face to face—not through third parties. It's the honorable thing to do."

Larry excused himself to find a bathroom. Lydia, who had been quiet through most of the evening, perked up suddenly. In the lounge's dim lighting, she smiled. "I love this song," she said.

Jacqueline listened. Over the bar's speakers came Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." Hotel bars invariably piped in either smooth jazz or seventies easy listening. Nothing in-between. Jacqueline guessed "Three Times a Lady" would be up next, followed by "Desperado."

"Jim Croce is so profound," Lydia said. "Don't you think so?"

"He's a regular Ramakrishna," Darren said.

"I'm not a religious person," Lydia said, "but sometimes I think about God. Sometimes I think His greatest gift to us is time."

"How so?" Jacqueline asked, not particularly interested in the answer. She expected little more than the usual bumper sticker vapidity favored by pampered, pretty women when they wanted to appear deep. Maybe Lydia would quote from the Collected Works of Dan Fogelberg.

"Time takes the sting out of heartbreak," Lydia said. "When time passes, it lets us reflect and come to terms with things. When I was little, my older brother died in a car accident in Santa Monica. It broke my heart." She traced a finger around the lip of her glass of white wine. "But after twenty years, I've learned to get on with things. Acknowledge the past, grieve, but move on. Maybe that's why I admire what Larry does. Because ghosts don't feel time. A thousand years can go by and to them it'll just feel like an instant. For them, the moments of heartbreak are so fresh it's as if they happened a second ago. They relive them over and over again. It's sort of like what Eugene O'Neill said—there is no present, there is no future. Just the past, happening over and over again, at this moment." She shrugged. "Maybe that's the definition of a ghost."