“Sage?”
She gestured at a small ashtray with a partially burnt bundle of gray-green leaves in it.
“Wow,” I said, taking it all in.
She indicated I should sit on the gray couch and went to get us both glasses of water. “I’d offer you something stronger, but I don’t drink,” she said.
“That’s okay. Me either.”
I studied the symbols over the doorway and window but didn’t recognize any of them. Some seemed to repeat, while others did not.
“Did you do all of this yourself?” I asked when Zoe returned with the water.
“No, no. I found someone who specializes in this kind of thing. He did it for me.”
“Maybe I should get him to come to my place,” I said.
“Or I could just come over and find out what your ghost wants,” she said. “It’s the least I can do since you drove me home.”
“You don’t have to do that, but . . . well, I would appreciate it. The only problem is that it mostly comes out at night. You wouldn’t see it tomorrow morning,” I said.
“That won’t be an issue,” Zoe said.
I explained what the ghost had been up to, and Zoe periodically interrupted me ask questions: what I knew about the ghost’s death, what I thought her name was, etc. Once I told her that Kara and Julie would be back Sunday night, she insisted on coming to see “my” ghost.
“Now, let’s talk about the elephant,” she said, after taking a drink of water.
“Elephant?” I asked, mystified.
“In the room. You know, what your real story is? Amnesia doesn’t really happen to people, does it? That’s just soap opera stuff.”
I felt a cold, draining feeling from my head and hands I had come to recognize as a cocktail of dread, surprise, and shame. It was the same feeling I’d gotten when Derek had said my existence was fictional.
“It does happen, actually,” I said. “I can show you my hospital paperwork, if you want.”
Zoe seemed unconvinced.
“How do you feel when people say that you’re lying about seeing ghosts?” I asked.
She frowned. “It used to bother me. But now? Screw ‘em.”
“I was examined at Bellevue. Extensively. I took polygraphs. Passed. They tried truth serum, hypnosis, nothing. Either I’m super good at lying—guess what, I’m not—and fooled like twenty professionals, or I’m telling the truth. So should I say ‘screw you’?”
“Alright,” she said. “My apologies. You have to admit it sounds unlikely though.”
“About as unlikely as ghosts . . . and vampires,” I said.
“I didn’t see anything, you know. When I came to in the garage, all I saw was a blur come up out of the trapdoor and disappear in the woods. What happened?”
“But the . . . you mean you don’t remember the corpse?”
“Ugh, no. I definitely don’t remember a corpse. I remember there were some old blood stains, and that’s where it all goes blank for me.”
I told her about everything up to when I was grabbed. “I wonder if I have bruises,” I said, pulling the neck of my t-shirt aside to check my shoulder. Zoe leaned forward to check my back for me.
“It’s definitely a little red back here,” she said. “It might bruise by morning.” She seemed very matter of fact. Too matter of fact.
“Aren’t you going to freak out?” I asked. “I just told you that a corpse grabbed me.”
“I hate to say it, but I’ve heard worse,” she said.
“Ugh. Remind me not to ask.”
Zoe knew things. Things no one should have to know.
“So what happened next?” she asked.
“Well, then it got . . . kinda crazy. It looked right at me and it yelled, ‘No!’ and threw me into the wall—”
“Wait, it yelled no?”
“Yeah.”
“No . . . what? Like, leave me alone? Bad touch?”
“Well . . . I guess it was like it was saying no to me. It grabbed me, and was going to do . . . something . . . and then it looked at me. Like, really looked at me, and then it threw me aside, and I guess I hit my head and passed out.”
“What happened when you woke up?”
“When I came to? It was . . . feeding. On Billy.”
“Feeding?”
“Like, sucking his blood from his neck-shoulder area. Like Dracula.”
An expression of incredulity passed over Zoe’s face. So she did have limits to what she’d believe.
“We’ll skip that for now. What happened next?” she asked.
I explained, all the way up to the part where Billy had been draped over his arm like an overcoat and Adderly had said Chris.
We were both quiet for a moment. Then Zoe said. “God, poor Billy.”
I shook my head sadly. “I know. I feel responsible. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“You can’t do anything. Not for now, I mean. Damn, I wish we had some of those old magazines from the house.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For research. I mean, we don’t really know what we’re up against.”
“Well, we do have the Internet. And the library. As for what we’re up against . . . Like I said, I think it’s a vampire.”
“Yeeeeaaaah, I know you think that.”
“So the girl who can talk to ghosts doesn’t believe in vampires, I take it?”
“It’s just not something I’ve ever heard of. You’d think at least one of the ghosts I’ve talked to would have run into one.”
“Well, I don’t have any of the magazines, but I do have something. Billy found it in the basement.” I fished the wooden cigar box out of my backpack.
“What’s that?”
“This may support my idea about him being a vampire. Creepy photos.”
“How creepy?”
“Not super creepy . . . Just pictures of Adderly posed with various girls. It’s the way the hair and outfits change that’s creepy.”
“How did you get this?” she asked, looking inside the box.
“I swiped it when no one was looking.”
“Wow, and I thought Billy was the criminal of the group,” she said with a smile. It turned to a frown as she paged through the black and white images. “Okay, let’s just go with the vampire theory for a few minutes. Why would it push you away? Clearly, it was starving down there for who knows how long. Twenty or thirty years? And it has you in its clutches, looks at you, and says no, and goes for Billy instead. What’s so special about you?”
She paused a moment, regarding one of the photos. “Hey, this one almost looks like you. She could be your older sister, maybe . . . or well, more likely your grandmother, or great-grandmother.”
Zoe handed me the picture. It appeared to be from the 1920s or 1930s. An attractive woman in her early twenties with a nose and chin like mine stood cheek-to-cheek with Adderly, her eyes mostly obscured by her wavy dark hair and stylish bell-shaped hat. I could kind of see the resemblance.
“Do you think that’s how I got the key?” I asked. “Do you think she’s the Chris he meant?”
“Hell if I know,” Zoe said, still paging through the pictures. “Whoa. I think this is Rosalita. Do you want to look?” she asked.
I was almost afraid to. But Zoe gestured with the box so I took it from her. The girl she said was maybe Rosalita was a vivacious, laughing girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and dark lipstick. Not exactly how I pictured her, but there was something in the set of her shoulders and the possessive way she clutched Michael Adderly’s arm that held a hint
of familiarity.
There were twenty-six pictures in all. Adderly through the years, posed with girls from the twenties through the sixties, as far as we could tell, and he never seemed much older than he did in the first one. “You want to tell me why you were at Adderly House in the first place?” Zoe asked.
I explained about Rebecca and Tamara and the piano. My unreliable source.
“Come on, you go
tta admit that’s weird,” I said.
“Oh, I agree,” Zoe said. “I just keep wondering if there’s some rational explanation, you know? Like maybe he was part of some costume party where all the women came in outfits from different eras and he just posed with them in different spots.”
“And just happened to have a million changes of clothes nearby so he wouldn’t be wearing the same thing in every picture. And it least five different kinds of cameras and film stocks. And one of them was his wife. Was Rosalita his second wife? His third?”
“I forget,” Zoe said, flipping each of the photos over in tandem. “Nothing written on the backs. It is really weird that you had that key.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And you’re sure you’re not lying?” She gave me a skeptical look.
“I’m not. Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I deal with ghosts on an almost daily basis. But this is above my pay grade. Amnesia, vampires . . . are they connected? But if he was down there since the 1990s when he supposedly disappeared, how could that affect your memory? You can’t be older than twenty or so.”
“Beats me.” I yawned.
“Tired?” Zoe asked sympathetically. “Let me grab you some bedding.” She pulled a pillow and sheets from a closet and handed them to me.
“Thank you . . . for everything,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” She paused a moment while I made up the couch. “Are you and Derek a thing?”
I finished tucking a sheet into the cushions. “I think we were. I don’t know now. I mean, we had been hanging out. We kissed. He let me crash on his couch. But . . .”
“But he didn’t believe you about Billy.”
“He didn’t believe me about anything.”
“To be fair, he didn’t see anything.”
“I know, but it still hurts.”
She frowned a moment and then said, “Well, there aren’t a lot of people out there who can see what we see.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“I saw you in Adderly House.”
“Saw me what?”
“You looked right at ghosts twice.”
“I did what now?”
Zoe’s brows drew together in a look of confusion. “Didn’t you see them?”
“No. I swear to you, I did not see any ghosts.”
“Did you see anything at all? Anything weird, I mean. Not like the walls or furniture.”
I thought back to my experiences in Adderly House. “Not really? I guess I maybe saw a shadow once or twice where I didn’t think there should be one.”
“By the fireplace, right? And in the attic?”
I thought again. “Yeah. How did you know? You saw ghosts both times?”
“Yes.”
“That’s weird.”
“It just means you’re sensitive to their presence but you haven’t learned how to see them yet. Makes sense since you’re the only roommate who noticed the ghost in your apartment.”
Ugh. I didn’t want to be sensitive to ghostly presences. The thought made my head hurt. I rubbed my temples and another yawn forced its way out of my mouth.
“We should get some sleep,” Zoe said.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I’m going to make some chamomile tea. It helps me sleep. You want some?” she asked.
“If it will help me sleep? Yes. Yes, please.”
I couldn’t sleep. Michael had said a name to me: Chris. We sometimes called the comic book store Chris Street. Is that what he meant? That seemed like a stretch. Did he know me? Had he known someone who looked like me? The woman from the picture that Zoe said looked like she could be my great-grandmother? That seemed more likely. I picked up the box and found the photograph. I wanted a better look at it.
Michael looked happy in the photo. Like he was trying to keep from laughing over some secret joke. It was all so odd. Could she be a clue to my past?
I put the picture back and took out another. It was the photo with the girl that Zoe had said was Rosalita. Michael still looked happy in this one, but maybe a little less so. Rosalita was looking more at him than she was at the camera.
I pulled out another photo, and then another, going through the pictures obsessively, poring over each of them for details, and in every one of them, I found myself captivated by Michael Adderly’s face. As I arranged the photos in what seemed like chronological order, Michael Adderly’s smile—genuine in the first four pictures or so—seemed to stiffen, stretch, and sag as the images went on. By the last few photos, he was still smiling, but his eyes looked sad. What did it mean? That he regretted killing all the girls that had come before his latest conquest?
I thought back to the moment in the library at Adderly House when Billy had played that record. Everything around me had seemed to fade. Reality slid away like a satin sheet falling to the floor. Then the voice. Even thinking of it made my chest feel tight with longing. I felt unfulfilled, like I was missing a vital part of myself. The man who sang like that, he was the man who smiled and looked sad in photographs.
The song. His face going from happy to sad. What did it mean? Why had he hidden for twenty-plus years in that basement? And why did I have a key to it?
I boxed up the photos once more, and began to close the latch on the box, but I couldn’t bring myself to close it. I was feeling so many things. Conflicted. Yearning. Afraid. I had no basis for this kind of emotion. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. I closed the box anyway and laid down.
I slept fitfully, waking from faceless dreams of joy and fear that faded on waking. That was nothing new. I often had weird dream hangovers that I couldn’t really remember. But now instead of confusion I could shrug off, I was left with a palpable emptiness. Somehow, part of me now seemed to feel that my lack of memory meant I’d lost more than my identity and my history.
No. I’d lost all of the feelings that would accompany my memories: love, laughter, tears, anger, frustration. It was as if prior to hearing Michael Adderly’s recorded voice on that record player, all the feelings I’d had were just like the secondhand clothes I wore, emotions I borrowed from other people, not mine. But now, now I could feel. I felt the loss of my memory.
And I wanted it back.
Zoe offered me coffee and cereal the next morning. We sat facing one another at a two-seater table at the edge of her kitchenette. Mystical symbols were scrawled along the ceiling and window. In between mouthfuls of crunchy cinnamon cereal, I gestured upwards and asked, “It’s hoodoo, isn’t it?”
Zoe gave me a surprised look. “It is. How’d you know?”
“I just did. Like, how do I know how to drive? Or play piano? Or speak French?”
Zoe covered her mouth before saying, “Ohmygod, you don’t have a license.”
“Um, oops? Sorry about that. But you really were in no condition to drive.”
While we ate, I asked Zoe more questions about ghosts. She could see them at all times of day or night, when they were present and willing. Most were.
“You said something about the ghosts at the Adderly House being shy,” I asked. “How many did you see there?”
“Total?”
“Yeah, total.”
“I saw five.”
“Five, really? Is that unusual? The amount, I mean.”
“A little. Most places are only haunted by one or two ghosts. There are exceptions. Like cemeteries. Or places where a major tragedy has occurred. Adderly House was . . . different. The ghosts didn’t want to be seen. As soon as we’d enter a room, they’d leave. Or they’d watch us until I looked directly at them, and then they’d disappear. I mean, I almost got the sense that they wanted to talk but couldn’t. And that’s weird. And then there was Rosalita—and that was odd too.”
“Yeah, she was odd alright.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean that all of the ghosts except Rosalita were avoiding us. And the way she came through what’s-her-name . . .”
“Katie,” I said. “What about it?”
“I think that Rosalita must have had a strong personality in life. She felt very willful, and angry too. I think that in some ways when a person dies mad it creates a spirit that’s more powerful than your average ghost. I mean, I can let pretty much any ghost possess me whenever I want, but for a ghost to grab some random, non-sensitive and use her against her will—that shows power. I’ve never seen that before. Of course, she might have been feeding off of us, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, ghosts are kind of like, I don’t know, like energy receivers. They can take energy and do something with it—sort of like a light bulb giving off light. Without any energy though, a light bulb is dark. But the more energy they get, the more they can do—the more light they can shine. But if no one notices them—the ghosts, I mean—then they don’t get energy. In Adderly House, there were the two of us, noticing them, in one way or another. Maybe that was what let Rosalita possess Katie.”
“The ghost in my apartment, Tamara—I think she possessed my roommate.”
She took a breath. “That’s rare. Two possessions in your presence? Unless your roommate’s a medium, or the ghost is really powerful, I think they might be tapping into your energy. Which means you may have some kind of magical energy about you. It would explain why you were sensitive to their presence and maybe how you know what hoodoo looks like, even if you don’t remember how you know.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that idea. But if I could believe in ghosts and vampires, why not? “Magical energy?”
“Practitioners exist. Like I said, I know a guy. He’s the one who did all of this.” She gestured at the symbols painted around her apartment.
I shook my head. It was all too much.
“I don’t suppose you know what day and month Tamara died?” Zoe mused.
“April. Around the 12th.”
“There’s something weird that happens around death anniversaries. It’s like a resonance of some kind allows spirits to reappear.”
“Didn’t Billy say something about how different people had died in Adderly House on the same day?”
“Yeah. The caretaker. And that poor headless ghost . . .”
A Shade in the Mirror Page 18