“So there was a headless horseman?”
“Well, there wasn’t a horse. And this guy was wearing an old coverall like you see gardeners and handymen wearing. I’m no expert, but he didn’t look like a Hessian mercenary to me.”
“That must be the repairman that Billy mentioned.”
“Probably. I wish I’d had a chance to talk with him. But how would that work? No head, no talk. Plus the whole running away from us thing.”
“Do ghosts usually just walk right up and get all chatty with you?”
“Usually. They’re kinda pushy, actually.” I was quiet for a moment, thinking about what that would be like. The word horrible came to mind, followed
by disturbing.
A couple of hours later, we entered my apartment. The lamp was still in its familiar position on its side on the floor, and the lines of salt I’d spread across my bedroom and the bathroom doorways were still there. The apartment was warm, too warm, and the air felt stale. I opened a window in the living room to let in some fresh air.
Zoe took off her sweater and hung it up. When she turned around, I noticed she was wearing a black t-shirt that read there is no such thing as a happy medium. It took me a second, but then I chuckled appreciatively. She asked me to be silent to allow her to concentrate on making contact, so I shut up.
I pointed out the lamp and Zoe nodded at it and stepped into the living room, moving toward the window. I could see into the kitchen from where I was standing. Several kitchen cabinet doors were ajar.
Zoe pressed her hands against the window frame where I’d watched Kara scream from the fire escape before passing out. Zoe stayed in that position for a moment, and then turned around and went directly toward Kara’s bedroom.
I stayed in the living room, watching Zoe through the doorway.
“She’s here,” Zoe said, staring at something I couldn’t see. Suddenly I was glad I couldn’t see. I got goosebumps.
“Are you the spirit of Tamara Meadows?” Zoe asked. She seemed to wait for an answer and then nodded at me.
My palms were sweating. “Ask her why she attacked my roommates,” I whispered.
Zoe made a puzzled face. “She wants to talk directly to you.”
“Uh . . .” I said.
“Yes, I’ll allow it,” Zoe said, talking to empty space somewhere above Kara’s dresser. Then the air seemed to leave her body all at once. She shrank in on herself, shoulders curled inward, head bowed, and then she seemed to unfurl herself with blazing eyes and a fierce expression.
“So what do you want to know?” she asked with a nasal Long Island accent.
“Tamara?” I asked.
“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.”
“Why did you attack us? Why did you shred Julie’s lingerie and stab her pillow?”
“Who?”
“My roommate Julie.”
Zoe’s brow creased. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t attack you. You said Julie? Not Rebecca?”
“Not Rebecca. Her name is Julie. Julie Moon.”
“I don’t remember. Everything is different.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can see now. I couldn’t really see before. But then I saw you. You bitch. You wouldn’t tell me where he is.”
“Who? Michael?”
“Michael,” she echoed, her voice softening sadly.
“I’ve seen him,” I said. “He took my friend. I swear to you that I am going to stop him. I don’t know how, but I will find a way. He should pay for what he did to you.”
“Did to me?”
“He killed you—didn’t he?”
Zoe’s head shook from side to side, and the nasal voice said, “It wasn’t Michael! You’re crazy! He would never hurt me! He tried to protect me.”
“From who?”
She sighed. “It’ll be easier to just show you,” she said, and touched my forehead.
The girl lies in bed, the back of her head to the doorway.
Her head rests at an unnatural angle. Straight brown hair partially obscures her face, the rest of its length fanned across the white and black paisley pillow. Her skin is unnaturally pale. It’s not a lovely alabaster or creamy ivory; instead there is a chalky, almost gray whiteness to her skin.
Her limp hand dangles off the bed, fingernails gone blue. This much is visible from the bedroom doorway. This is what the landlord sees when he enters the apartment in the morning to fix the leaky kitchen faucet, as he’d promised the day before. The landlord calls the police.
A closer look reveals her eyes are open. A petite brunette with golden brown eyes in her late teens or early twenties. The bedclothes are pulled up to just below her nose. Beneath it, where her mouth and neck should be, runs an angry red and gray ruin of veins and tubes and ligaments that were never, ever meant to see the light of day. It is as if her jaw has been torn off and her throat has been ripped open by some curious animal that then took the time to dissect it.
Beneath this desecration, there are no other wounds. She wears a tank top and shorts. The tank top is white and stained with red, contrasting with the gray of her skin.
But where is the rest of the blood? The paisley sheets, the mattress . . . they should be soaked through, sopping with red. There’s not a drop on the bed. Hardly any in the girl. Hardly any at the scene. Her lower jaw is found beneath her head as soon as the coroner moves her. The sight is so disturbing to a rookie policeman on-scene, he bolts for the bathroom.
The coroner estimates—based on temperature and the progression of rigor mortis—that she has been dead only four hours.
Soon the detectives will determine she was killed elsewhere, then brought to the bedroom. But not in the tub. Not a drop, not a smear there. There are three drops of her blood in the entryway. Just three tiny drops. No blood of any quantity elsewhere in the apartment, not in the drains, not in the toilet, not outside the windows to the fire escape. No fingerprints found at the scene other than those of the apartment’s occupants.
Robbery is ruled out as a motive almost immediately. Her purse and wallet are in the kitchen, her jewelry in plain sight in the bedroom. There are no signs of forced entry, although a lamp in the entryway has been knocked to the floor, presumably as the killer carried her body into the apartment.
Who would want her dead? The roommate is out of the country. A rival at school has a rock-solid alibi. A boyfriend identified as a person of interest cannot be located. They don’t even have his last name. There isn’t a single lead. Not a single foreign hair or fiber on her body. The lack of evidence baffles forensic experts.
The sun sets, and rises again. Days pass. Weeks. Months.
The case is left unsolved. It goes into a cold case file, forgotten.
Such a violent, unthinkable murder.
Her spirit is left unsatisfied, malcontent, disturbed. Rooted to the spot. Unable to rest.
And when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead thins . . .
She haunts.
Then, in reverse order, images in flashes, the police, the landlord, the girl in the bed, flashes of more movement in and out of the apartment, days passing, and then slowing, slowing.
I watched the events unfold as if they were happening to someone else, though I was seeing through Tamara’s eyes, the eyes of her ghost, as she flashed through the last months of her life.
Her debut performance at Carnegie Hall. She has just come down the stairs off stage to a standing ovation. Michael Adderly approaches, wearing a suit and tie. He is handsome and young, holding a bouquet. This is their first meeting. Flashes of other meetings, dinners, always at night. The two of them singing together. He shows her the apartment and she moves in with Rebecca. The piano, a Steinway Model M Grand Piano, arrives.
Flashes of Michael drinking from her wrist. Michael kissing her forehead. Her attempt to kiss him, his refusal.
Then, a red-haired girl playing at the piano. It’s Rebecca, young, maybe twenty. Michael Adde
rly sitting next to her, showing her something in his wallet. Michael laughing with Rebecca, playing a duet with Rebecca. Sitting next to Rebecca.
Too close.
Outrage. Jealousy. Ultimatums. Threats.
Michael stands between them, trying to calm Tamara. He leaves with Rebecca.
Tamara’s hands shake as they shred Rebecca’s clothes with a knife. She stabs the knife into the center of Rebecca’s pillow.
Michael returns, entering from the fire escape. Tears. An argument. He takes out her suitcase and begins packing it for her. She doesn’t want to go. They argue again. Michael gets a call and leaves. Tamara screams into the mirror in her room, then cries, taking her clothing out of the suitcase and putting it away.
Fast forward. Night becomes day becomes night. Sitting by the phone. Waiting.
A sound on the fire escape. A beautiful, haughty woman in her early twenties steps into the room through the open window. She wears a black dress, accessorized with black gloves and stiletto heels. She has light blond hair pulled back in a tight bun, topped with a stylish black-veiled hat. Her blue eyes blaze, ringed in dark eyeliner. Beneath them, her regal nose and dark red-lipsticked mouth sneer.
The woman’s face is familiar, but I can’t place it.
Tamara flees to the front door. The woman is impossibly fast. Standing before the door, the blond woman snarls, showing fangs. Her hand shoots out, catching Tamara by the throat and lifting her off her feet. Tamara kicks, knocking over a standing lamp in the entryway. The woman sinks her fangs into the girl’s neck. The feeling is both painful and exquisite.
The woman pulls back and smiles a vicious red-tinged smile. “You see,” she says in a Germanic accent, “He will always come back to me. He will always be mine.”
The last thing Tamara sees before everything goes black is a drop of her red, red blood falling to the floor from the woman’s red, red lips.
I staggered, the pain in my neck and the trauma of the experience feeling much too real.
“That woman,” I said, my mind reeling. “Who was she?”
“Van Horn,” came Tamara’s voice from Zoe’s mouth.
Now I recognized her. The woman I’d seen in Tamara’s vision was the spitting image of the girl in the painting in the Adderly House attic. The clothes and hair had had a three-hundred-year makeover, but it was her.
“Catharina Van Horn?” I asked.
“Irina Van Horn,” Tamara said, and then Zoe slumped to her knees.
I helped her up, and she was Zoe again. She slowly got to her feet. “I understand,” she said to the empty air next to her. “I’ll tell her.”
Zoe’s eyes softened and seemed to watch something move upwards in the air and then off through the window.
Then she turned to me and said, “She’s gone. Like, gone gone. She won’t be back.”
“What do you mean, gone-gone? Where?”
“Wherever they go.”
“You mean, like heaven? Or hell?”
“Could be either. But she’s . . . at rest, now. She asked me to thank you.”
“Thank me for what?”
“For allowing her to move on. It looked peaceful.”
“But why was she a ghost?”
“You saw what happened to her, right? A lot of the time when there’s a haunting, it’s because the ghost has unfinished business. She couldn’t let go until someone knew the name of her murderer.”
“So you’re saying she’s gone for good?”
“I think so.”
“Thank you,” I said, spontaneously hugging her.
She laughed and hugged me back. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t really hug people.”
“It’s okay. It seems to happen in these situations,” she said with a smile. “I have to head out, though. Gotta get the car back to Queens. You’ll be okay now.” She gave me her number and I gave her my email. I took my usual teasing about not having a cell phone and saw her to the door.
I began cleaning. Turns out salt’s a bitch to sweep up. No wonder it’s bad luck to spill it.
Then I put the living room back the way it belonged and closed all of the kitchen cabinets, straightened the mirror in Kara’s room, and closed her door. The whole time I kept thinking about everything that had happened: Adderly House, Michael Adderly, Billy, Catharina or Irina Van Horn, Tamara. I’d set out to clear my home of supernatural activity, and I had. But at what cost? What kind of can of worms had I opened?
I’d just finished when I heard keys jingle in the door. Kara came in, a bag of groceries cradled in one arm. Her hair was up in its signature ponytail and she wore stretchy pants under a floral print maternity shirt. While I helped her put the groceries away, she caught me up on her hospital tests (all fine), seeing her father and sister at the hospital (also fine), and the remainder of her weekend with Serge (better than fine). I kept stealing glances at her, looking for signs of lingering psychic trauma: bags under her eyes, pale skin, nervous twitches. She seemed okay to me. It looked like Tamara’s brief possession hadn’t done Kara any lasting damage. She seemed to have bounced right back, and for that I was thankful.
After the groceries were put away, she rummaged through the cabinets and pulled out a baking pan. “I’m making lasagna tonight,” she said. “Wanna help?”
“Sure, but I have no idea what to do.”
“I’ll teacha you everyting you need to know,” she said with an exaggerated Brooklyn-Italian accent, making me laugh because she sounded almost exactly like Mr. Delgado. We got to work. Lasagna’s a process and a half, but with the two of us working on it, the time passed pleasantly enough.
It was dark by the time Julie finally arrived, entering the apartment wearily. She carried her small suitcase and a shopping bag. She took off her coat and scarf, revealing a black turtleneck and dark jeans that looked stylish on her petite frame. “Oh my God, that smells amazing!” she said, referring to the glorious scent of baking lasagna. “Can we eat now?”
Over dinner, Julie went on and on about the bed and breakfast where she and Tad had stayed over the weekend, from the king-sized bed to the fresh croissants every morning and the in-room jacuzzi and blah blah blah.
“What did you do all weekend, Madison?” Kara asked.
“Oh, I worked. Went to the library. That’s pretty much it,” I said.
“You really ought to go out more,” Julie said. I think she was trying to be helpful.
“Whatever happened with what’s-his-name? David? Daniel?” Kara asked.
“Derek,” I said. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
“Damn, I miss everything,” Julie said. “I demand details, woman!”
I shrugged and gave in, describing Derek, how we’d met, the movie dates, the kiss, and his dig regarding my lack of memory.
At that last detail, Julie pressed her lips together and inhaled deeply through her nose. “Yeah, about that. Madison, I’m sorry. I owe you an apology.”
I blinked at her. “I . . . you do?”
Julie nodded. “Yeah, I do. I was freaking out about all of the weirdness going on here, and I said some things about you that I shouldn’t have, and I don’t know if you even heard me or not, but you didn’t deserve that, and I’m sorry.” Wow, talk about concessions—or is it confessions? I felt a little bubble of resentment towards her that I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying around pop.
“Of course I forgive you,” I said. “It was a stressful time. Forget it.”
“We’re all good here?” Kara asked.
“I feel good. No weirdness the rest of the weekend either,” I lied.
“That’s a relief. I checked my windows and everything and it seems okay in there too,” Julie said.
“Me too,” Kara said. “the mirror’s right where it ought to be.”
“We probably just imagined the whole thing. It could have happened to anyone,” I said.
“Who wants dessert?” Julie asked. “I got cheesecake.”
Betwe
en my full stomach and finally feeling safe in the apartment again, I fell asleep quickly, tucked beneath the sheets in an extra-large white t-shirt and my undies.
I awoke just as quickly.
There was nothing, just the sense of having been completely out, followed by the sense of being wide awake in the dark and not knowing what had woken me. I opened my eyes and felt my soul try to leave my body when I thought I saw a dark figure on the fire escape outside my window.
I sat up suddenly, drawing the bedding back up to my chin, as if I could use it to protect myself.
When I looked again just a second later, the figure was gone.
I let out a deep breath, the one I’d taken in anticipation of screaming my head off. But there was nothing there. I’d imagined it. Hadn’t I? But if the figure was sort of man-shaped . . . could it have been Michael Adderly?
I felt like I was losing my mind. I fluffed my pillow a few times and then rolled over, trying to fall back asleep. Sleep came less easily than it had the first time, but eventually I drifted off, and by morning, the memory of the figure outside my window had faded almost completely away.
Chapter Nineteen
Monday afternoon, I walked into Chris Street and there was Billy, standing at the bag check in black jeans and an Ant-Man t-shirt, looking more cheerful than I’d ever seen him.
“Billy!” I shouted, rushing up to hug him.
“Jeez, Maddy,” he said, shrugging me off. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you about personal space?”
“Are you okay? What happened to you?”
“What do you mean?” He looked seriously confused.
“What do you mean, what do I mean? You disappeared!”
“What? Oh, that. I just got tired of that guy. That professor prick. I was bored. So I bolted.” The words came out smooth, almost rehearsed.
“No,” I said. “That’s not what happened.”
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