The Ghosts of Now (16 page)

“How was school?” Mom asks.

“Okay,” I answer. “Had a quiz in French. I think I did all right.”

I’m sure she doesn’t hear the answer. She might not even know what she asked. I think that particular question is programmed into Mom’s brain and pops out each afternoon whenever she sees Jeremy or me.

We chat for a few moments, the three of us, saying nothing, talking trivia, until I can’t stand it any longer. “Why don’t you both go down to the cafeteria and get some coffee?” I ask them. “I can stay with Jeremy.”

“Well,” Mrs. Clark says, wrapping her knitting
around the needles and tucking them into a large bag next to her chair, “I suppose I
would
like to stretch my legs.”

Mom looks into my eyes, and I realize she’s more aware than I thought she was. She knows I want to talk to Jeremy. “Good idea,” she says, and she straightens up from her chair, stretching and rubbing the back of her neck.

They leave, and the room is quiet. Down the hall people are chattering, and every now and then a buzzer sounds at the nurses’ station. But our white-walled cocoon is set apart, and here I can try to reach Jeremy.

For a few minutes I just study him. He looks a little thinner, but his legs stretch to the end of the narrow bed, and I realize how tall he has grown. The bruises that show are yellowing, and I know that means he’s healing. I take his left hand and hold it carefully.

“Jeremy, I found a gold wristwatch in your desk drawer. Maybe Boyd put it there. I don’t know. And I don’t know why he did. But I took it back to the people who own it before there could be any trouble about it.”

Maybe it’s the way I’m lightly touching his fingers. Maybe it’s just my wishful thinking. But I feel a current running through our hands, an electricity joining us together. “Jeremy, everything is going to be all right. I wish you could tell me what happened Friday night, but since you can’t I’m going to find out anyway.”

I think of what Boyd said about Jeremy’s depression.
I don’t believe Boyd, but what Jeremy had written told of his loneliness. So I talk about that.

“You’re not the only one who’s lonely,” I tell him. “We’ve all been lonely. It’s awfully hard to leave friends. It’s hurt Mom too. And maybe even Dad. He’s probably been too busy to notice, but someday it might catch up with him. But we’re a family, Jeremy. We have each other. And I’ll be here with you. I’ll be a real sister to you, for a change.”

I wait, and his hand now rests heavily in mine. “The doctor said you have to fight to get better, Jeremy, so you’ve got to try. I’ll help you. Please try.”

I will Jeremy to respond. I lean toward him, and with all the intensity in my mind and body will him to come back.

But the door flies open, and Mrs. Clark says, “That little snack did me a world of good, dear.”

Mom is behind her, and she says, “I went grocery shopping this morning, and got a package of chicken breasts for dinner. Angie, if you wouldn’t mind making dinner, you could take my car—it’s in the third lane in the parking lot—and Greg can come by this evening and pick me up.”

“Aren’t you tired, Mom? I could stay while you go home for a rest.”

“Neither of you has to stay,” Mrs. Clark says. “That’s why I’m here, and Jeremy’s coming along nicely.”

“The doctor did another brain scan this morning,” Mom says. “Everything looks good.” She gazes down at Jeremy and adds, “But he won’t wake up.”

“Sometimes it takes time,” Mrs. Clark says. “And medical science never knows how and why. I sat with a patient one time who was unconscious for nearly a year.”

“Really,” Mom says, and I can tell that her mind has mercifully tuned out Mrs. Clark.

I give Mom my chair, say good-bye to Jeremy, and head for home.

As I walk in the door I shiver. The air conditioner has made the house a little too chilly, and the quiet in each room is just as cold. I make a clatter, on purpose I guess, dropping my books on the kitchen table, scuffing my feet, moving noisily inside the swirling dust specks that glitter in the afternoon sunlight to turn the controls down a little.

Maybe I sense it. Maybe I’ve been expecting it. When the telephone rings I know who it is. The whisperer.

There’s a strange sound to the call. I can’t put my finger on what it means. But I’m sure this voice is the same as the first voice I heard. And the voice is shaking, crying, as it says, “You must stop. Now! Or you’re going to be sorry.”

“Why?” I demand, more angry now than frightened.

“Listen to me! I don’t want anybody else to be hurt!”

“Then tell me! What really happened to my brother?”

But the whisperer begins to sob and breaks our connection.

I stand there with my hand on the phone. This call, with its strange, hollow quality, was more a warning than a threat. And why—?

With a rush of remembrance I realize what that sound was—the almost-echo that sometimes comes with long distance calls. So someone not in town has called me. Debbie, who’s in Lubbock, staying with her aunt? That was more than just a ghostly voice. It must have been Debbie.

“The ghosts of now” flood into my mind, and I’m positive that I must make one more trip to the Andrews place. When Del and I searched it we didn’t look in the upstairs rooms. I don’t remember why we didn’t. Was it Del or I who decided to leave? But what if one of those rooms holds the answer I need?

Automatically I begin to dial Del’s phone number, but something stops me. I don’t understand what I’m feeling. I detest the idea of going to that Andrews house alone, but at the same time something is telling me not to ask Del to go with me.

I don’t have time to figure this out. I check my watch. It’s too early to start dinner now. If I hurry I’ll get back in time. It’s easy to get into that house through the back door, and on this trip I’ll know the way.

I stuff my driver’s license into a back pocket of my jeans, and scoop up the car keys with trembling fingers. I’ve got to follow my plan before fear can gobble up my determination.

I drive to the alley in back of the house and park there. I don’t want anyone to see my car on the street. But I’ve checked Huckleberry as I passed at the corner, and there are no other cars in sight. I pick my way through the weeds, over the dried, cracked, uneven ground, and carefully climb up the cement steps, past
the broken screen door, across the cracked linoleum on the porch, to the back door.

Gingerly I clamp my sweating fingers around the door knob and turn it. It moves easily, and the door swings open. I step inside the old, shadowy kitchen and close the door silently behind me. I am terrified of this house, but at the same time I don’t have the creepy sensation I had the first time I was here, that someone or something was watching me. The ghosts who live in this place are not here now. The old house and I are alone.

I move through the rooms as quietly as an intruder can, my legs wobbly, my hands shaking as I grasp the banister. Up the stairs I climb, slowly, feeling the old wood bend, hearing it groan under my feet, snapping into place behind me with the sound of ghostly footsteps.

At the top of the stairs I pause. The doors are open at either side, and I catch glimpses of yellowed, tattered wallpaper, flowered patterns that withered years ago. I go down the hall to my right, peering into bedrooms with dusty, sheet-draped furniture, bathrooms with brown-stained fixtures. And I find nothing.

So I try the left side of the hallway. It’s shorter, and it ends in a much larger room than the other bedrooms. Its windows, with torn, yellowed shades, open from the back of the house onto that untended garden. It’s an L-shaped room, apparently planned as bedroom and sitting room. I lean against the door frame and gasp as I see a radio, a couple of cameras, and other odds and ends piled on the torn and faded green satin chaise,
and the mounded shapes of two portable television sets on the floor beside it. And they’re not old and dusty. They were put here recently.

There it is, laid out for me. The answer. Or part of the answer, at least. Stolen property.

Wispy wraiths that float through haunted houses do not steal television sets. The ghosts of this house have bodies with hands to snatch and legs to run and minds to know what they’re doing. Who are they? Debbie? Boyd?

Jeremy?

“No! Not Jeremy!”

The spoken words shatter the silence, frightening me so much I cry out and make a rush for the stairs. I tear out of the house in a panic, flinging myself through the door and down the steps and across the yard, gasping for breath with a pain so intense I have to rest my head on the steering wheel of the car and make myself relax before I can drive home.

I’m glad the police aren’t following me now. I don’t mean to, but I drive through two boulevard stops and nearly hit a car parked near the corner of our house. I pull into the driveway, remembering as I throw open the car door to put on the parking brake, and stumble into the kitchen where I flop into a chair, hanging onto the table until the shaking stops.

Finally I’m able to pull the pieces of my mind together; and while I try to think I cook, browning the chicken breasts in some melted butter, adding a little celery salt and onion salt and lemon juice, covering the pan and putting it on simmer. I start the
brown rice, which must cook for forty-five minutes, and wonder if we should have a vegetable. Who cares about vegetables? All I can see are those things piled on the chaise and on the floor next to it.

And where does Jeremy fit in?

The idea doesn’t come in a rush. It’s been there in little pieces like those in a jigsaw set, fitting together in bits and chunks until it begins to form a whole. I had wondered about the watch. If someone had planted it in Jeremy’s desk, then there should have been a follow-up, some kind of threat. And no one has seemed afraid of what Jeremy might say or do when he regains consciousness. Scratching at the back of my mind has been this terrible feeling that Jeremy himself put the watch there. I have to admit to myself that when I first opened his desk it would have been easy for me to miss it. Now I let the thought come through, examining it, flinching at the pain. Jeremy is the one who stole that watch.

I’ll go back to that house, and I’ll wait for someone to come, even if I have to wait every night for a week. I think the person I’ll wait for will be Boyd, and I’ll demand to know what really happened. I’ll demand that he tell me how Jeremy is involved. And I won’t accept any more lies.

The phone rings, scaring me so much I shriek. Not the whisperer. Not now. I couldn’t take it. I’m tempted not to answer the phone, but it might be Mom or Dad. So on the fifth ring I pick up the receiver, clear my throat, and manage to say hello.

“Angie,” Del says. “I was fixing to hang up. I thought you might still be at the hospital.”

My relief comes out in a long sigh.

“You okay?” Del asks.

“Sure,” I say. “I’m okay. I was just starting dinner.”

“Are you a good cook?” There’s a teasing in his voice.

I try to match it, but my voice is coated in lead, and it won’t float. “Sometime I’ll show you.”

“What are you cooking? I might angle for an invite.”

Why not? There’s plenty of chicken. I’m about to invite him to dinner when he adds, “I didn’t call to get asked to supper. I thought I’d take you to the Andrews place tonight.”

It’s like getting socked in the windpipe. I have a hard time gathering words together. Finally I’m able to blurt out “Why?”

“You said you wanted to go.”

“I did?”

“Sure,” he says. “In the car. Don’t you remember?”

But I don’t remember. I’m sure I hadn’t thought of the plan until later.

Suddenly I’m afraid of Del. I’ve trusted him to help me, but phrases come back, dangling strings of words that keep telling me to forget, to back off, to leave it all alone. What has he really been saying?
Now you know this much it ought to satisfy you. Stop pushing for answers, because you can’t win.

Has that been Del’s unique way of warning me?

Who are the people who have haunted the Andrews
house? Is Del one of them? And why does he want me in that house tonight? I don’t know who to trust. I’m scared!

“Hey, Angie, are you there?”

I gulp and say, “I don’t want to go there tonight, Del. Some other time. Maybe tomorrow. I’ve—uh—got to study for a test tonight.”

“Okay,” he says, and his voice is so easy and sure of itself that I’m more frightened than ever.

“I-I’ve got to go,” I stammer. “The chicken is burning.”

“A real good cook, aren’t you?” Del chuckles, and I hang up, blotting out the sound.

I lift the lid of the pan, poking at the chicken pieces with a long-handled fork, trying to convince myself the chicken really was sticking and I wasn’t lying to Del. Maybe I’m becoming paranoid, not trusting anyone. Had I said something to Del about the Andrews house, about wanting to go there? I don’t remember everything I say. I must have.

I’m telling myself to be rational, but at the same time a trickle of hysteria shivers through my mind.

Slapping the lid on the pan I pick up the telephone. I’ll end the problem here and now by calling the police.

The receiver is at my ear, the dial tone humming monotonously, when I realize that it won’t help at all. Look what happened when Jeremy was hit. No one did anything. So what if they find all that stolen stuff in the Andrews house? What will they do? If the police have been protecting the old families here in Fairlie,
where will that leave Jeremy? And the answers to my questions?

No. I’ve got to find those answers myself.

It’s hard to eat dinner and talk to Mom and Dad and go through all the motions of being a normal person, when I’m not. At one point during dinner Mom asks if I’m feeling all right, and I tell her I’ve just got a lot of stuff on my mind. Well, it’s true.

It’s not quite dark when I come in with my set of car keys and a notebook and tell them I’m going to the library.

“When will you be back?” Dad asks.

“I’m not sure,” I tell him. “I have to look up some things for history.”

So the squared, one-floor library with the small windows and the narrow aisles between the stacks is my first stop. There are other kids I recognize using the same reference books I’m after.