Nightlight

by Michael Cadnum

  “So you want me to drive up there, tell him to call home, and leave it at that.”

  She relaxed. “That’s exactly right. That’s all I want. Drive up, and drive back. The only catch is—I don’t know exactly where the cottage is. So it might be difficult for you to find it. Time-consuming. And so I want to compensate you for your trouble—”

  “Absolutely not. I will not hear of it. I was very much in need of a vacation. This is exactly the sort of break I need. Besides, I always liked Len. I haven’t seen him for years, but he was always such a talented guy. Always drawing and taking pictures. We used to play with his train set. I was always proud to have such a smart cousin.”

  “I can give you a key to his studio here in the city. It’s in a warehouse off First Street. A cavernous place; I only saw it once. Perhaps he has an address or something there, some way of knowing where the place was and …”

  Paul pulled at his lower lip. “You want me to check up on him.”

  “Please.”

  Paul stood and wandered to the window. “Maybe you need a detective.”

  “If you don’t want to do it, Paul, I understand.” She added, “I’ve had some experience with detectives.”

  Her voice had become dry. She turned away from Paul and watched the fire. “Your Uncle Phil had an affair at one point during our marriage. I contacted a detective to find out who was involved. It was an established firm, a distinguished-looking man. When it was all over, I felt entirely sleazy. Phil confessed all of a sudden one night, but didn’t name the woman involved. The detective arrived the next day, with telephotos of my best friend on a beach at Lake Tahoe. I was appalled, of course, but the worst thing was the pornographic glitter in the detective’s eye. This is, as I said, a family matter.”

  “I understand.”

  “I have an envelope with directions to his studio, the studio key, a letter giving you permission to act on my behalf, and some cash against expenses which I ask you to accept, with my gratitude.”

  “You knew I would agree to do this.”

  “I hoped you would. And I read your reviews. They are the reviews of a curious man, who likes to taste new things. A man who prides himself on his common sense. On his ability to notice details. A man who is impatient with his own ignorance.”

  Paul blushed, flattered, but also amazed that she could have touched his vanity so well.

  “By now you, too, want to find Len. Your curiosity is aroused.”

  She either guessed well, or she knew Paul’s nature. Paul agreed that she was right. His curiosity was very much aroused.

  Paul paused before a small painting on the wall. A man, evidently a shepherd, looked up from his seat at the foot of a tree. An angel addressed him, a diaphanous figure the size of a large rabbit. The angel was painted in white, with quick strokes of the brush. In the distance was a city, walls and towers displayed awkwardly, in a perspective that struck Paul as crude. The horizon beyond was lost in blue, and the entire painting was discolored, whites gone yellow, blues going gradually gray.

  “A Patinir. Joachim Patinir died in 1524. Flemish, of course, and arguably the first Western artist to specialize in landscapes. What you see here is a shepherd awakened by an angel, perhaps the angel of death, but here the experts differ. Death is usually depicted as a virtual caricature. A dancing, grinning skeleton. So perhaps this is simply an angel.” His aunt stood close to the painting, as if she had never seen it before. “As if in those days they expected angels to show up before shepherds, like a swarm of gnats.”

  “He looks surprised,” offered Paul. “As if he were not aware of the custom.”

  She did not answer at once. “At any rate,” she said, shaking off a thought, “I don’t believe it is the angel of death. Some other heavenly messenger, with some other tidings. Certainly there must be good apparitions as well as evil ones.”

  “This is beyond my field of expertise,” Paul said, tugging his nose. “I don’t believe in any sort of spirit.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Aunt Mary.

  “Everything will be fine,” Paul said.

  “I don’t expect instant results,” she said, in a way that seemed a rebuff. “I am very patient. Take your time, but please begin soon.”

  A bad thought touched Paul. “Is there something you’re holding back? Something I should know?”

  “Nothing. Except a feeling I have—a hunch. A feeling that Len is in a strange kind of trouble. And that it has to do with his research.”

  “You mean, his ghost hunting.”

  “Thank God for your common sense,” she said. “But Len takes it very seriously, and Len is not stupid.”

  “Everything will be fine,” he repeated.

  “I hope so. I wake at night sometimes, and I am afraid to be alone. I, of all people. I have always been a rock. A sensible person. So steady. Even during my husband’s infidelity I waited, always sure of myself, never panicking. But lately, I’ve had the most terrible dreams. They seem so real.”

  She opened a door that swung too silently. Their footsteps made no sound across the carpet. A desk drawer opened with a sound like a cough. She pressed the envelope into his hand. She turned away, as if she did not like to see the envelope, or to be reminded of what it contained.

  Paul wanted to leave then; he did not want to stay in this house. It was too cold, and too empty.

  “Always the same dream,” she continued. “I am in a house, alone. And then there is a sound, and someone is in the house, in a distant room. And they begin fumbling through the house, as I try to move, and I can’t. I am utterly incapable of movement, of even turning my head, as if a powerful force held my skull in its grip.”

  Paul paused in the garden, and watched the water of the fountain mingle with the rain as it sprinkled the cupid. The cherub looked to one side, with a grin. His cheeks were fat, and fatter with the effort of a grin that could be called lewd. The eyes of the boy angel had no pupils, but he seemed to be looking at someone only he could see, someone who provided the obscene joke that the angel enjoyed. His wings sprouted from his shoulders, and from the top of his spine sprang a rigid black tube. Water jetted from this black pipe and fell back on itself, with a sound very much unlike rain. A patter of water, but deliberate, artificial, the sound of someone pretending to laugh.

  “Paul.” Aunt Mary’s voice stopped him. She held on to the front door, and did not speak for a moment. “I don’t think there’s a phone at the cabin.”

  Paul waited, the chatter of the water the only sound.

  “I want you to call me within the next three days, whether you’ve found him or not.”

  Paul shrugged. “Sure. No problem.”

  He wanted to sound calm and responsible, but all he could think was: the dream.

  She has the dream.

  6

  For some reason crazy people and derelicts tended to spend working hours on the steps into the building, and Paul, for some reason, always said good morning to them. He had even become familiar with a savage-looking man with huge yellow teeth who nodded not his head but his entire upper body in greeting and said, “How you doin’,” in response.

  Paul never knew whether or not this was a question that required an answer, but on this morning he responded, “Very well, thanks,” and the man shrank back into the shelter of the eaves, beside the newspaper vending machine chained to a pole.

  Paul shook himself out of his rain coat, but did not bother to hang it anywhere. “Gotta see the Ham,” he told the secretary he had never seen before.

  “Yeah, Paul,” said Hamilton, mussing up his gray hair as a way of greeting.

  Paul stood still in the center of the room, meaning that he would take more than three seconds, and that he needed to sit somewhere.

  “Move some of that shit,” Hamilton said, waving a hand. A cigarette scribbled smoke into the air. “Berkeley High is having a field trip upstairs, and we all had to loan chairs.”

  Paul dropped three phone books to t
he floor, and set a clipboard of blank yellow paper carefully on top of them. He sat, and said quickly, as he had planned for hours, “I need some time off.”

  Ham put his feet up and scrunched his features with one hand. His face momentarily assumed new creases, then fell back into its usual folds. He blinked to focus his eyes, and leaned forward on his elbows. This was all a way of demanding an explanation.

  Paul kept his silence.

  Ham cleared his throat. “Time off.”

  People on the Gazette liked to quote small portions of previous statements as a way of negating them. It was a habit Paul found delightful, except when it was used against him. “Off,” Paul said.

  “Why?”

  “Family emergency.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. What the hell’s a family emergency? And while you’re thinking, get up and shut the door, because I don’t want to embarrass you before the secretary.”

  “Secretary? You mean your latest hobby horse out there?” Paul shut the door, but slowly.

  “Do you have a review for us?”

  Paul pressed his heart, and paper crackled.

  “You’ve been borderline late three weeks running.”

  “Borderline, though, right?”

  “Don’t give me any of your horseshit, Paul, because I’m tired, the paper is broke, and you are very lucky to have a job. It’s the easiest newspaper job in the state. You file nine little inches, twenty-three centimeters, a week, and clip out some recipes you steal from Family Circle every Saturday, and that’s it.”

  “It’s destroying my personality,” Paul said calmly.

  “Personality.”

  Paul let his features assume the expression of a Buddha.

  “I could name a hundred people who would kill to have your job.”

  Paul shrugged so hugely his neck creaked. “This is all beside the point. There is an emergency in my family.”

  Ham studied Paul’s right eyelid. “What?”

  “My cousin has disappeared.” As soon as he spoke, he knew it was a mistake. His first, but he could not afford many.

  “Your cousin,” Ham said slowly.

  That had been the weak part. The disappeared part had been solid. “He has vanished.”

  “Life is hard.”

  “So I may skip a column or two.”

  “Write them ahead.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m sick of it. I’m sick of eating béarnaise and snails and that incredible style of food where they put a piece of lox next to a pickled brussels sprout and call it a salad.”

  “You’ve never eaten béarnaise and snails.”

  “I didn’t mean together.”

  “You’re lazy,” said Ham, squashing out his cigarette.

  Paul rolled his eyes, but he knew he was winning. Ham was already pinching another filterless out of the pack, and leaning back in the chair. A lecture was about to begin, and a lecture was the tax paid on a liberty.

  “Lazy,” Ham continued. “I make you a celebrity. And what are you? Not even thirty. When I picked you, you couldn’t tell a bagel from a—one of those little inner tubes people who have had hemorrhoid operations sit on.”

  The image made both of them thoughtful.

  Paul was thirty-two, a fact which seemed like something that could be used against Ham in some way. He could not think of a way. He tugged the review from his jacket. He offered it to Ham.

  “New Sicily.” Ham glanced at Paul and looked back at the review. “What is it with you and Italian food. You don’t like Chinese?”

  “Sure,” Paul said, feeling that it would have been better to say nothing. Ham was going to destroy this review, tear it up, and say that Paul had to have another review in half an hour. Paul would threaten to quit. Ham would tell him to leave. When they met again, they would be calm.

  It was true that Paul had become something of a celebrity. A year before the newspaper had run ads featuring Paul’s smiling face. The campaign flattered Paul, in a mild way, until he began seeing his face on the sides of AC Transit buses everytime he went for a walk. He had become reluctant to be on the same street as a bus.

  The trouble with Ham was that Paul actually liked him. He had all the charm of a very old and very fierce reptile, but Paul admired him. Ham knew what he was doing. He was intelligent, and he believed in doing a job well.

  Ham’s scowl was still in place, but there was the slightest twinkle in his eye.

  “You younger guys. You expect a lot of things from life that isn’t going to happen. You draw cartoons for a few years, and you figure—I’m pooped. I need a break. You have a prize job, a job I would personally bleed for, and you piss and moan like you were covering the Donner party. Where is your desire to work? Where’s your hunger to work, until you can’t see straight, and to keep on going, because you have this need to keep going, this need to make something of yourself? To prove something.”

  Ham smoked, reading the review. “I was sportswriter here for years. I won’t tell you horror stories about living on coffee and Camels for weeks at a time. Sometimes, it was fun. Sometimes working at the city dump is fun. I sat at ringside dozens of times. And got sprinkled with blood. My cuffs stained with it.”

  He tossed the review to Paul’s side of the desk. “It’s a good review. Take it to Luke.”

  It was a dismissal, and Paul had succeeded. He felt triumphant, but did not feel like celebrating. He handed the review to Luke Hand, the features editor, without speaking. Luke lifted an eyebrow to say that he saw it, leave it there.

  Ham passed him, and paused at the men’s room door. “Take care of yourself,” he called after Paul, the sort of casual farewell Paul had heard uttered a thousand times.

  Except this time he kept repeating it, all the way down the steps.

  Take care of yourself.

  7

  They each packed a small, nearly identical suitcase. “Matching ugly luggage,” said Lise, tossing her suitcase next to his.

  She was very excited, and of course she wanted to go; it would be an adventure, she said. Paul was delighted. It was their first chance to spend time together away from the clutter of their separate lives.

  She pelted him with questions as they drove across the Bay Bridge. “He was an interesting guy. A few years younger than me, always had a camera around his neck. The kind of kid who had a telescope and a microscope, a scientific person, but only in that he was very interested in looking at things. He had an expensive HO-scale train set. We used to cause train wrecks, on a miniature scale. I’ve always liked people who seem smart.”

  “Was he … too smart?”

  “Not really. Just very curious.”

  “What’s the big mystery?”

  “He vanished.”

  “But, what else?”

  Paul had been embarrassed to mention ghost hunting. It made his cousin sound like a fool. He told her, briefly, about the attempts to photograph ghosts, and the supposedly haunted house, making an expression of mild distaste. “He was a very likable guy. Very curious. It was probably just a passing hobby. The way someone else might take up birdwatching for a while. I always liked Len a lot. I’m sure this is one of the unspoken reasons for my aunt asking me to look for him.”

  A gust pushed the Volkswagen into the next lane. Paul struggled with the car. “These damn Bugs blow all over the place,” he said. “My secret theory, and I think my aunt was thinking along the same lines, is that Len has a homosexual lover somewhere up in the wine country, and has become hopelessly involved with him. I mean, it happens. This is why she doesn’t want even the slightest chance of publicity. All of this ghost business is irrelevant, just the pastime of a man who doesn’t have to work for a living. Maybe little more than an excuse for unexplained absences.”

  “But how exciting!”

  “A homosexual?”

  “No, a haunted house! It’s fascinating!”

  Paul made a world-weary smile. “We’ll
have fun.”

  “I wrote a paper on the etymology of the word ghost just last year. The word has a very interesting history. Its origin is, to make a long story short, mysterious. That’s why I wrote about it. I thought I could clarify the mystery.”

  “Did you succeed?”

  “Not at all. It comes from a pre-Teutonic word meaning ‘fury.’ It’s related to the Old Icelandic ‘to rage.’ Whatever the difference between ‘rage’ and ‘fury,’ it amounts to the same thing: Ghosts are trouble. It’s as if at some time in the distant past everyone understood that ghosts are dangerous.”

  “So that to ancient superstitions, ghosts were always angry.”

  “Not angry. Furious. There’s a lot of difference between anger and rage.”

  They found the warehouse on a side street cluttered with wet trash. A stringy dog stopped and sniffed in their direction, then skulked up the street. Paul nearly slipped on the cracked sidewalk, but they both trotted through the rain, and up the steps. “He was always a fairly organized person,” Paul said, finding the key in the envelope. “I’m hoping that we can make sense of his files.”

  “You know that what we are doing is not quite right.”

  Paul looked up with mock surprise.

  “Sneaking into someone’s privacy like this. What if he’s in there now? What will we say?”

  “Hello, Len. He’d be glad to see us.”

  “Would he be glad to know that we had a key?”

  “Maybe glad is too strong a word. He wouldn’t mind as much as some people. Of course, I haven’t actually seen Len in years. Maybe he’s changed.”

  The stairway was dark. The wooden steps were dusty, and the dust stuck to the soles of their shoes. They climbed toward the bright expanse of the studio above them, and emerged into it. A bank of windows let the gray-bright day illuminate the warehouse. The roof was high above them, a tangle of girders. The vast floor was bare, the entire place vacant, except for a crowd of furniture in one corner.

  “You could play football in here,” Paul whispered.

  “It’s huge!”