The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) (5 page)

“I didn't know whether to come or not,” she said as I reached her. Her eyes were raw and her voice trembled a little as she spoke. “I wasn't invited, not as such, but I heard where it was and so I thought...”
 

“I think her parents preferred to keep it small, but I’m sure Gemma would've liked it that you wanted to be here.” My eyes itched, but rubbing at them only made it worse.
 

“Are you all right, Alex? I mean, are you handling this OK? You look terrible.”

My skin felt as well as, I knew, looked like it was ready to fall off my bones. “I just haven't been sleeping well,” I said. “Five, six hours maybe, maybe less, since we met at the hospital.”

“You should see a doctor. That can't be good for you.”

I smiled humorlessly. “I’ll live. How are you doing?”

“OK, I guess. Gemma was one of the best friends I had in Vermont. It doesn't seem fair.”
 

“These things rarely do.”

“Have the police come up with anything so far?”

“They haven't called me, so I don't know. I guess not. They thought there was a chance it might have been a freak accident anyway.”

She frowned past me, up the hill. “Don’t you wish you knew?”

“Sure. But I just have to wait it out. I’ve got to go up to her house, sort our things out and get them ready for her lawyer. No one wants someone in my state putting their nose where it’s not wanted. Anyway, I’m not much use for anything right now...” The sentence slipped away from me. I glanced down at the grave next to us, wondered if its occupant wouldn’t mind if we swapped places. Right then, the idea didn’t seem so bad.
 

The carpet of ice behind me crackled. Anna and Murray Larson, Gemma's mom and dad, were standing there. Murray was a stocky, tough man who now looked utterly wilted and unsure. He fixed me with watery eyes and said, “Hello, Alex.”

“Mr Larson.”

“I don't know how you're doing right now, or what's going on in your head, but I want you to know that my daughter meant everything to me.” Murray's voice cracked as the words jammed in his throat. “Damn you for getting her killed.”

“What?” I couldn't believe I’d heard him right. We’d only met a few times, but I’d always thought Gemma's parents liked me well enough.

“This is your fault. She wouldn't have been there if you hadn't wanted her to move down south. She was happy in Houlton. Why couldn't you have let her be?”

I said nothing and just stood, looking at him. I wanted to defend myself but didn’t. Gemma's father was angry, but I knew he was grieving for his daughter the same as I was. You don’t start an argument in that situation.
 

“God help you if I find out she died because of something you did,” he said before clasping his wife tighter and moving away. Anna glanced briefly at me, a flat gaze devoid of emotion, then buried her face in his shoulder.

I watched them go, still not moving. Wondering then if maybe there was something in Bethany's argument. If maybe I could find out a little more about
why
she’d died and the hell with the cops. Bring some justice for the woman buried on top of the hill and some peace for an old man feeling the pain of outliving his daughter. Maybe. I owed her that, and more, even if it wouldn’t in all probability get me anywhere. And in trying to
do
something I could escape the reality of
being
something I didn’t want: alone.

I looked around for Bethany, but she was gone, slipped away and out of sight without a sound, leaving me to myself among the frozen graves.

I didn't go back to Boston after the funeral. Instead I followed US-2 west, out of Maine, across the White Mountains of New Hampshire and into Vermont. From St Johnsbury I switched to smaller local routes all the way to the isolated town of Bleakwater Ridge, Gemma's home for the past six months. Miles of hill country, evergreen-covered ridge lines marching off into the distance. The trees that blanketed the slopes were nothing but sombre black shapes beneath their dappled coat of snow. The horizon ahead slowly seemed to rise to meet me; the advancing wall of the Green Mountains steadily cut off the sky, lining it with stone. By the time I drew close to town in the deepening dusk, the jumbled peaks and sawtooth foothills were vague, looming shadows climbing up behind the highway like breakers about to pour down into the forest and the cluster of buildings huddled within.
 

I crested the top of one slope as the highway looped to the right and my headlights flashed across something up in the trees by the road. It could just have been a patch of shadow, something half-seen and misinterpreted by my brain, but my breath stuck in my throat and it was enough to make me tighten my grip on the wheel.

It looked like the corpse of a large black dog, maybe a German shepherd. Suspended somehow, hung or nailed to the trunk, head upwards. Its back legs hung limply down towards my car. The lights sparkled off something shiny and wet on its coat. I glanced back once or twice in case I saw I again, but I didn't stop. Either it was someone else's problem, or it wasn't what I’d thought.

When the town appeared up ahead it almost took me by surprise, the same as it ever had. Glimmers of yellow, cream, and orange light burst like stars through the unseen foliage by the roadside and then suddenly the trees broke and I was passing houses which rambled up and over the rocky fold that gave Bleakwater Ridge its name. The buildings were old-looking and packed tightly together, with whitewashed wooden siding and pale roofs, living ghosts of an earlier age. With their small yards and closeness to the road it was impossible to tell just how far the town spread away from its sole major artery. The uphill climb was only a few hundred yards and the couple of side streets didn’t give much away; the roofs of the houses lining each junction masked the view to either side until I crossed. A brief sense of space, some lights in the darkness, then they were gone again.
 

At the top of the ridge I made a right on to West Road. The intersection with Main was the focal point of the settlement: a barn-like town meeting house, a tiny run-down church, a general store with a couple of other businesses to either side, and the Owl's Head Inn, its only bar. Fifty yards down West, I pulled on to the driveway of Gemma's darkened home and killed the engine.

“How'd you afford a place like this?” I asked, climbing out of the car as Gemma trotted down the steps to meet me. My eyes took in the two stories of white boards, the high sash windows, the deck to the side and rear, the upturned V-shape of the dormer roof where it jutted out above the attic room casement.

“No one much wants to live this far from the big towns or the main vacation spots,” she said as she threw her arms around me. “Besides, it’s hardly in pristine shape.”

Looking again, I could see spots where the siding had warped, twisting and splitting around knots just visible beneath paint which was peeling and blackened in places. The window frames showed their age with minute cracks laced along the grain of the wood. The front door's rusty hinges creaked as it swung shut in the breeze.

For all that, the place was beautiful. From where we stood on the driveway I could just make out the grey sheen of Silverdale Lake through the trees and houses to the east. The ridge ran steadily downhill all the way to its shore and we were in a good spot to enjoy the view. In the opposite direction the forested, notched face of Windover Mountain punched up into the sky behind the town like a vast ancient rampart, sheer and indomitable. There was more birdsong than traffic noise, and the air that rustled through the leaves was clean and pure.

“You doctors get all the good things in life.”

“Come on,” Gemma said. “I’ll show you around.”

I clambered out of the car and fetched my bag from the trunk. The street around me was frozen and silent, though not entirely dark. Light shone through the windows of a couple of the houses further down the road, and there was perhaps a hint of movement behind the curtains. I turned away from them and crunched through the undisturbed snow up to the porch, hunting in my pocket for the keys.

Inside, the house was cold. I flicked the lights on in the hall and dropped my bag at the foot of the stairs, then went back outside to retrieve the handful of mail that had built up over the past few days. Junk, most of it. A couple of personal letters for Gemma I didn't open but left propped up by the mirror, like she might come home to get them.

The living room was much the same as last time I was here. The burgundy felt couch starting to wear thin in patches, the not-quite-matching armchair, the clutter on the coffee table. At the far end of the room near the fireplace was the antique rocking chair we’d come across when we went to a fair in Burlington. On the mantel was an LCD alarm clock intended for travelers. Next to it was a photo in a cheap wooden frame of the two of us together; apart from that and a few lighter patches on the pale yellow walls to show where the previous owner's pictures had once hung, the room was undecorated.
 

The cavernous kitchen beyond was a little homelier, though that didn’t stop my footsteps ringing hollowly from the tiled floor. The table in the center was spread with a blue and white cloth, half a dozen cookery books sat on top of the fridge and there were a variety of utensils stacked along the worktop. A couple of dishcloths hung from cupboard doors, splashes of color against the wood, and there was a bunch of wilted flowers - the ones I’d given her that final time - in a vase on top of the microwave. I skimmed the notes stuck to the wall by the phone, but nothing grabbed my attention. I glanced through the back windows at the deck outside, then checked the fridge and cupboards. Although I figured I should be OK for breakfast, there wasn’t much food in the house. I hoped the bar on Main served meals.

I collected my bag and headed up the groaning stairs. Gemma's bedroom looked like she’d just left. The covers were crumpled, unmade, and the pillow still retained the dent left by her head. There was a shirt and a sweater that never made it to the laundry hamper lying on the floor, a scattered collection of jewelry and the small amount of makeup she used on the table by the mirror. There was a half-read paperback on the floor next to the bed. I couldn’t help but glance down the landing to the smaller spare room — the study — that I knew housed her computer and some junk she’d never gotten round to unpacking, and the bathroom at the far end, just to make sure she wasn’t still here. Dissonance between memory and reality; it all felt deeply wrong. I dropped my bag just inside the bedroom and made my way downstairs again, then out into the cold.
 

My breath steamed in the stiff breeze that blew down off the mountains, rubbing my face raw. It thrummed and whistled among the wires that suspended the stoplights over Main, making them shudder and dance. The Devil's eye-glow of the red light preventing traffic from crossing the larger highway glowered at me as I hurried over the junction towards the Owl's Head. A small, unlit sign beneath its name said: 'Bar — Grill — Rooms'.
 

I walked into a roiling cloud of stale warm air and the low murmur of conversation. Somewhere in the background a jukebox was playing Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms', because nothing said Saturday night in this part of the world like wanting to kill yourself. Either the bar hadn’t changed much since Revolutionary times or the owners had gotten a great deal on dark aged oak in bulk. Black wooded tables, ceiling, counter, doors and windows. The carpet was a red so deep it might just as well have been black too. Even the walls were dark green. I’d been in here a couple of times with Gemma but I didn’t remember it being quite so funereal.

There were no more than thirty people inside, and I wasn’t surprised to see that none looked like tourists. Not that the locals were grizzled mountain types out of some cheap TV movie; as far as I knew maybe half the people in town were white collar workers unable, like Gemma, to afford anywhere closer to their jobs. The rest were either farmers or retirees. More than one pair of eyes tracked me to the counter, though the music didn’t die and the conversation didn’t stop. A couple in their forties were tending bar and waiting tables. The woman intercepted me.

“What can I get you?” she said, not bothering to hide the fact that she was trying to guess what I was doing in town.

“A Bud, thanks. Is the kitchen still open?”

She checked her watch. “Yeah, just about. Best not ask for anything fancy, though.”

“A burger, fries maybe. Whatever's big and won't be too much hassle this time of night.”

“No problem.” She scribbled down an order on a notepad and the old guy took it from her and vanished out back.

I sat at the counter, nursing my beer and absentmindedly listening to such snatches of conversation as I could make out. Normal nothing talk for the most part — complaints about work, road repairs, hockey games. Husbands bitching about their wives, wives bitching about their husbands. The closest I had to a pack of suspicious types in long coats lurking in the shadows was a pair of old timers at one of the tables, talking in voices too quiet for me to catch. One of them eyeballed me periodically; I watched him in the polished surface of the beer tap in front of me.
 

This continued while I worked through my dinner and another beer. The Owl's Head filled up a little, but not enough to come close to crowded. Eventually, on one of his occasional trips to the counter, one of the old gossips said, loud enough to catch my attention, “Cold evening we're having. You from away?”

"Yeah. More or less.”

He nodded like that was expected. “We do get folk passing through. On your way out again tonight?”

I looked across at the old man. His question was a typical 'get rid of the unwanted outsider' type, but his tone made it seem less of a threat and more as though he suspected he already knew my answer. Like he already knew who I was and what my business was here.

The guy himself was unassuming, not even looking at me but instead trying to catch the barmaid’s eye. He must have been in his late sixties at least, with a whitish-grey beard and close-cropped white hair thinned almost to baldness on top. Dressed for the cold.