Winter Oranges (7 page)

Either his garage was haunted, or he’d just experienced a serious psychotic break from reality.

He slept fitfully. Ben drifted in and out of his dreams, sometimes simply watching him, sometimes begging for help. Once, he morphed into Dylan, who told him he needed to relax. Maybe have a drink or take a Valium. Another time, Ben turned into Sheriff Ross in old-west sheriff attire, complete with Stetson and spurs. She told him to “Get along, lil’ doggy, ’cause we don’t need any Hollywood trouble ’round these here parts.” He woke up feeling like he’d barely slept at all.

He didn’t look out his window to see if Ben had reappeared. He took a long, hot shower instead, mulling it over. It was time to deal with his haunted garage in the most logical way he could. So after getting dressed, he settled down on the couch with his laptop and a cup of coffee and started to search.

First, he searched “psychotic break.” The results varied from mildly alarming to horrifying. Delusions could be a symptom of any number of disorders, including schizophrenia. They could also be the result of a medical condition, like epilepsy or an electrolyte imbalance, or they could be substance-induced. The latter was the one option he felt comfortable ruling out immediately. Despite what the tabloids reported, his drug-using days were well behind him. The strongest thing he’d had in years was a glass of well-aged, single-malt whiskey.

Still, that left plenty of scary options. But as he read, he found himself dismissing one possibility after another. The more frightening mental disorders didn’t generally appear out of the blue. A person didn’t wake up fine one day, and then start talking to imaginary people the next. It was usually more of a descent into delusions than a sudden fall. The exceptions were people who suffered a severe injury or traumatic event, but that certainly didn’t apply to him. He had no history of seizures, and his research into the other suggested medical causes led him to lists of symptoms he knew he wasn’t having. No dizziness, muscle cramps, numbness, abdominal pain, or blood in his urine. Most sources of course concluded that only a doctor could make the final diagnosis.

Should he try to find a doctor in Coeur d’Alene or Spokane? Should he make an appointment and ask to be tested for everything from high blood pressure to sudden-onset psychosis?

Definitely not.

He turned to his other option: Ben must be a ghost. But where to begin?

He typed “Can a snow globe be haunted?” into Google. He found several accounts of people whose snow globes suddenly started playing music by themselves, which was generally attributed to ghosts or spirits in the house, but nothing like what he was experiencing.

Next, he tried “Can an item be haunted?” This time, he found link after link telling him that yes, it was possible. He began hopefully searching through the answers. In most cases, people reported strange events happening after a specific object was brought into their house—lights going on and off, doors opening and closing, things being moved about, strange smells or noises. Sometimes people felt an aura of evil, or inexplicable cold patches in otherwise warm rooms. A couple reported seeing specters, but none of them reported an interactive, full-body apparition like Jason had witnessed.

That wasn’t all. The most obvious and telling difference between these people’s accounts and Jason’s experience boiled down to a single word: fear. These people were afraid. They spoke of “dark energy” and “angry spirits,” none of which described Ben.

Jason drummed his fingers on his keyboard, staring blankly out his living room window as he debated. From his seat on the couch, he could see the door at the end of the cobblestone path, but he couldn’t see the second floor.

He had one final option—one he’d refused to consider until now: What if he wasn’t going crazy? What if Ben was exactly what he claimed to be—a young man from the
nineteenth century who’d somehow found himself trapped in a snow globe? It was impossible, yes. Crazy, even. And yet . . .

It was the option he suddenly wanted to believe.

He googled “snow globe.”

Most sources speculated that snow globes had been invented in France, seemingly in the early nineteenth century as a sort of spin-off of the popular glass paperweights used at the time. Most agreed that the first documented sales of the trinkets had been in 1878 at the Paris Universal Expo, and that by 1879, several companies were producing them and selling them throughout Europe. But the truth was, nobody knew for sure when the first ones had been created.

It didn’t exactly confirm Ben’s story, but it didn’t disprove it, either.

Finally, he googled, “Can a person be trapped in a snow globe?” although he felt silly even typing the words. “I sure hope nobody’s checking my browser history,” he mumbled as he hit Enter.

The search engine returned several listings, but every one of them had more to do with entertainment than with hauntings or real-life experiences. There were movies, novels, and short stories, but nothing that hinted at the paranormal.

Nothing that explained Ben.

He set his laptop aside and went to the window, staring thoughtfully up at the second-story loft. After finally conceding that Ben might be real, it was disappointing not to find him staring down from the guesthouse.

He grabbed the keys off the hook by the door and returned to the garage. The door at the top of the stairs was still closed, and Jason opened it cautiously, feeling like an intruder.

“Ben?”

But he found the room empty. The snow globe sat on the desk, exactly where he’d left it before storming out the previous day. He lifted it and peered inside, but saw only the cheesy little fake cottage with its tiny snow-capped trees. He shook the globe gently, causing little flurries of fake snow. “Ben? Can you hear me? Are you in there?”

Still nothing.

He set the globe back down, feeling as if he’d been rudely awoken from a rather pleasant dream. After spending the entire morning convincing himself the incident had been real, he felt cheated at not being able to face Ben again now.

Maybe he’d imagined it, after all. And yet . . .

He hefted the globe again and weighed it in his hand, considering.

Believe Ben, or discount his own sanity and start searching for a doctor? Those were the choices, and it seemed as if his entire life hinged on his decision.

“To hell with it,” he muttered. “I’m beginning to think sanity is overrated anyway.”

Ben didn’t appear that day. Jason kept the globe next to him in the living room while he watched TV and checked his email. He took it into the kitchen with him while he made dinner and ate. Occasionally, he called Ben’s name, but as the day wore on, he felt more and more ridiculous. His only consolation was that Ben hadn’t yet appeared in the guest room window, either. Eventually, Jason gave up on Ben—and on late-night television—and dragged himself off to bed, leaving the globe on the dining room table.

He dreamed of Dylan. They were on the set of
Summer Camp Nightmare 4
, trying to shoot a scene together. Jason was sure they’d decided to cast Dylan opposite him as the love interest, and he was anxious to get to their big kiss, but every time he read a line, Dylan scowled and told him it was wrong. And no matter how hard Jason tried to read the script in his hands, he couldn’t do it. The words kept jumping around the page, the letters rearranging themselves right before his eyes, and he began to panic. Tryss, the extra who was still paying for her boob job, stood off-scene, waiting to take his place if he couldn’t get his shit together.

“Come on, Jason,” Dylan said to him at last. “Even you couldn’t pass that up.”

He woke shortly after ten. He lay there for a minute, thinking about Dylan, and about the script downstairs, shut up in the drawer of the writing desk in the corner of the living room. He didn’t need a dream analyst to tell him he was worrying about both, but he thought his subconscious had played a bit dirty.

He pulled on a pair of sweats and wandered downstairs, still rubbing his eyes. He rounded the corner into the dining room and stopped short. He’d nearly forgotten about the snow globe and its ghost occupant, but now here they both were, the former sitting on the table where he’d left it, the latter standing at the window, looking out. Sunshine poured through the glass, and straight through Ben as well, making the upper half of his body nearly invisible, although his lower half looked relatively solid. It was a disconcerting sight.

“You’re here,” Jason said.

Ben whirled around to face him, and Jason was reminded of the first time he’d ever laid eyes on Ben—the expression of shock and surprise on Ben’s face, his full lips forming a perfect O—but this time, the surprise quickly gave way to pleasure. Ben started talking, gesturing out the window at the garage, at Jason, at the room around them. His pale, slender hands flew around his head like frantic little birds as he talked, and his face was bright with excitement. Jason was almost glad he couldn’t hear him. He wasn’t awake enough yet to deal with the rush of words that was obviously pouring from Ben’s mouth.

Jason held up his hand. “Hang on. Let me get some coffee.”

Ben put the fingers of both hands over his lips, but Jason was sure even that couldn’t stop Ben from talking for long.

He went past Ben into the kitchen. Ben followed him as far as the doorway, then stood there, bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet, watching.

“It’s a Keurig,” Jason said, “so it’ll only take a minute.”

He felt silly as soon as he said it. Would Ben know what a Keurig was?

“I tried to find you yesterday,” he said to Ben as his cup began to fill. “Where were you?”

Ben frowned, then put his hands together as if praying and laid them next to his cheek.

“Sleeping?”

Ben nodded.

“All day?”

Ben frowned and shook his head. He said a single word. Rusting? Jason laughed, realizing his mistake.
Resting
.

Ben pointed toward the window and the garage, then at Jason, his eyes begging the question.

“I thought maybe you’d like a change of scenery.”

Ben smiled broadly and nodded.

Jason pulled his full coffee mug out of the brewer. Ben stepped aside to allow him to pass, and Jason couldn’t help but wonder if it was necessary. He suspected he could have stepped right through his new guest, although he wasn’t anxious to test his theory.

He took his coffee through the dining room, across the entryway and into the living room. The old-fashioned foursquare floor plan meant each room was distinctly separate from the others, unlike newer homes with their large open spaces and wide doorways.

“So,” Jason said as he set his coffee down on the end table, “how often has this—” But when he turned to face Ben, he was surprised to find nobody there. “Ben?” he called.

Stupid, of course. Ben couldn’t answer him. Or, more accurately, he might be able to answer, but Jason wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“Ben?”

He backtracked to the door of the living room. Ben stood directly across the hall from him just inside the door of the dining room, looking anxious.

“Aren’t you coming?” Jason asked.

Ben shook his head, turning to point at the globe, then at the door. He was talking again too, but there were too many words for Jason to try to lip-read. Ben gestured to the globe, then the room around him, finally put both hands up as if to touch the doorframe, although his hands seemed to sink half an inch into the wood. Jason thought back to when they’d met, and how Ben had stayed inside the guest room.

“Only the room the globe is in?” Jason guessed.

Ben nodded.

“Wow.”

Ben nodded again.

“How long were you in that room over the garage?”

This time, he was able to read the answer on Ben’s lips.
I’m not sure.
He said something else. Jason had to have him repeat it before he was able to figure out Ben’s question.
What year is it now?

It hadn’t even occurred to Jason that Ben wouldn’t know what year it was. Ben’s image flickered when Jason told him, his shoulders slumping a bit. He frowned toward the garage, then held up fingers. Three. Four. He wobbled his hand back and forth uncertainly. Jason lip-read,
Maybe five.