by Phoef Sutton
He took a deep breath and struggled to his feet. Time to get back to the car and make sense of all of this. Tell it to Kit and to Jesse and see if he could figure out what to do next.
He took one step and stopped. Kit was standing in the spot where the car was supposed to be, looking around him in confusion. Carl hurried to him. “Where is she?” he asked.
Kit looked at him apologetically. “She left,” he said.
SIX
Her locker wouldn’t open. She tried the combination six times and it still jammed on her. Typical. She smacked it with her fist. Typical. Ten minutes late to Delgado’s class and she can’t even get her book. He’d flay her alive if she came in like this.
She walked down the empty hallway, listening to the rumblings of classes in progress and cursing under her breath. She could try going to the library, see if she could check the book out, try to fake it. But now she didn’t even remember what chapter they were on. Come to think of it, she couldn’t quite remember the name of the book. Delgado would love that.
The best thing would be to cut her losses, skip class and wait till fifth period. Tomorrow she could tell Delgado she couldn’t come because she was having real bad cramps. Delgado got so embarrassed whenever a girl talked about her body that he’d gladly believe her, just to shut her up.
“May I help you?” The voice rang out to her down the hall.
She turned and saw the teacher. No one she knew, thank God. She ducked down the next hallway and ran to the auditorium. She slipped through the side door and ran down the dark aisle, her footsteps echoing in the empty theater. This was always the safe place, the haven. No one but the drama students ever came here, except during the assemblies. The dark emptiness scared them off.
She clambered up the foot of the stage and ran past a ratty, old rehearsal sofa center stage (what dump did they drag that out of?, she wondered), past the ‘ghost light’ on its wooden stand (old theater superstition, she remembered, keep that light burning at all times, so the ghosts can see) and on into the soft, black curtains of the wings. She kept running though she knew no one was following her, just enjoying the feeling of running. There was a wire cage off stage left that held the lighting equipment – ancient electronics controlled by huge wooden levers, like something from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. Set into the wall, next to the refrigerator sized gray metal boxes filled with fuses and tubes, there was a trap door.
She slipped off the always-unfastened padlock and opened the door to the cage. She squeezed between the dimmer board and the metal shelf with its rack of lighting gels, crouched down, opened the trap door and crawled into the even darker blackness within.
They called this the Black Hole of Calcutta. She thought Calcutta was somewhere in India, but didn’t know why it had a black hole. This Black Hole was a crawlspace inside the walls of the auditorium. There was a metal ladder bolted to the cinderblock walls, which rose thirty feet to the ceiling of the theater. If you climbed it and walked along the ridiculously unsafe catwalks, you could adjust the lights that beamed down on the stage. It was either unknown or deliberately ignored by the school administration that students regularly clambered like monkeys thirty feet above hard wooden seats and linoleum, risking death and devastatingly high insurance premiums with every step.
The students themselves would have been the last people to tell anyone about it. They loved the risks of the high wire act. More than that, they loved their secret cave, which they used for much more than theatrical lighting.
She breathed heavily, enjoying the drama of the chase, even though she doubted that the strange teacher had even taken two steps to follow her. She started climbing the ladder, feeling, as always, like an old time sailor climbing a mast on a stormy night.
She made it to the top, tired and surprisingly out of breath. Was she getting out of shape? She lay on the catwalk, inhaling dust, looking into the darkness above her, watching it grow brighter as her eyes collected the light drifting up from below. She rolled over onto her stomach and looked down – the ceiling was below her now, or the asbestos panels that made up the ceiling as you saw it from the floor. She stood up, wondering why her legs ached so much, and walked to the lights. They hung from a metal bar suspended from the concrete, their lenses pointing through a long slit in the ceiling. Looking over the lights she could see the stage below, in the faint 60-watt glow of the ghost light. She loved watching the world from up here. Everything seemed so much more interesting from a distance.
It was weird, though, that she didn’t see anyone down there. And why didn’t they turn the lights on? What was the point in sending her up here to adjust the lights if they weren’t going to turn them on and tell her where to point them?
She called down to the stage, but no one answered. And now that she thought about it, she couldn’t actually remember them sending her up here. So why was she here? To meet Carl? Weird that she couldn’t remember.
She settled down to think it over.
All through the endless forty-minute cab trip to Glendale, Carl hadn’t spoken a word to Kit. He just listened as Kit switched from heartfelt apology, to defensiveness, to outraged accusation.
“You’re telling me you handled this in the best possible way, that this isn’t your fault, you telling me that?”
Carl wasn’t telling him anything.
“What took you so long? You were just supposed to prepare him a little bit and then take her to him, you weren’t supposed to leave me out there with her that long. You can handle her, I can’t. She gives me the creeps. She kept forgetting who I was; you knew she’d do that. What the hell were you gabbing about?”
Carl wasn’t gabbing now.
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
Carl didn’t say.
“Two minutes I was gone. Less than that,” Kit repeated.
He told Carl again how he’d waited so long and been so nervous that he’d had to pee, so he just slipped out of the car (“okay, I didn’t time myself, but I was there and I was back and how long can it take to piss?”) to some bushes behind a house under construction. When he got back (“I’m serious, ten seconds, tops, fuck you if you don’t believe it”) the car was gone and Carl was staring at him angrily.
“How was I supposed to know she’d steal the fucking car? Where the hell are we going? Why don’t we just call the cops? I think you’ve already fucked this up enough on your own, if you don’t mind my saying, and I know it hurts, but I’m just saying what I believe to be true.”
“I don’t think the police are such a good idea,” Carl said. He knew where she would have gone. She would have tried to go home.
But Carl’s BMW wasn’t in front of the big white house when they climbed out of the cab. Maybe they’d beaten her there, Carl thought, trying to keep his heart from sinking. If she wasn’t here, if she’d really fallen through the cracks and was out in the world on her own, how would he ever find her?
He rang the front bell and the little window in the door was opened with more than customary caution.
Carl described Jesse to the frightened woman. He didn’t have to ask if she’d been there.
“What’s wrong with her?” the woman asked, eyes wide. “I mean I’m not paranoid, I try to be as helpful as the next person, but this is getting scary. She comes here asking about people I’ve never heard of, saying she knows they’re here and what have I done with her house. How can a person do something with a house? I just had to slam the door on her; I just had to bolt it. Then she starts hammering on the door. I mean hammering, really hammering. And yelling. Finally she just drove off …No, she didn’t say, and I really don’t care where she was going. I just want some assurance, if you know this woman, I want some assurance that she won’t come back again. These days you have to wonder, you can’t help it, you have to wonder if you’re safe. And I’m not paranoid, but I don’t want to think some psychotic has focused on my house and is going to do something, I don’t know what.”
Carl told her n
ot to worry. That she was sick, but that she’d never hurt anyone. “I hope you’re right,” she said, “but I can’t say I believe you. She gets worse every time.”
Carl had turned to leave but he stopped now. “She was here before?”
“Yeah, last night. It was very late. It must have been nine o’clock. But I said to myself, she seems confused then and I thought well, maybe it’s an honest mistake. And I figured I was making more out of it than I should, because I was tired and who doesn’t get a little paranoid when they’re tired? And I’m not paranoid.”
“How did she get here? Did she have a car?”
“Yes, some black sedan, I didn’t really notice,” she said, suddenly sounding suspicious.
Carl thanked her and promised Jesse wouldn’t be back, though he knew he only said that to have an exit line. He didn’t see any reason she wouldn’t be back there every five minutes.
Kit was still sulking in the cab, didn’t even ask Carl what the lady had said. Carl ran it over in his head. She’d come by here last night too, before she’d come to his house. That made sense. Somehow she’d gotten hold of a car, probably in a manner similar to the way she’d gotten hold of his. Someone was driving her somewhere, had left her alone long enough for her to drive off, either in a deliberate escape or because she forgot about him. Then she’d driven long enough to forget about all that. So she’d find herself driving a strange car, but naturally she’d drive it home. And even if she forgot where she was at every stoplight, she’d still know to go home. So she’d come home and found home gone. Then hours later she’d showed up at his house. Where did she go in between times? Wherever it was, that was where she’d go now.
So he could just go home and wait, assuming that the pattern would repeat itself and that eventually she’d show up at his door. But could he really be that cool? Could he really just sit and wait, hoping that nothing would happen to her between now and then?
He told the cabbie to take them to his house and thought about that black sedan. Then he remembered something – those car keys digging into his back in the greenhouse. They hadn’t been his.
Until then he’d never really stopped to consider how she’d gotten to his house. He remembered no black sedan parked anywhere nearby. So she’d left it somewhere, but kept the keys. And that somewhere was the place she went between her house and his and, chances were, that was where she was now.
“Fuckinkids.” To Manny, the custodian of Fremont High School, this was one word, and the only word to describe the student body of Fremont High School. There were ten days when it was the only word Manny used at all.
Friday was his hardest day. Cleaning up the shit and garbage the fuckinkids spread all over the school all week. Like it mattered. Like the fuckinkids wouldn’t do it all over again next week. And he’d clean it up. And the fuckinkids would do it again. And again. And again. Manny felt that made little contribution to society.
And the fuckinkids laughed behind his back, he knew that. Half the filth they left, no more than half, was just for his benefit, just so he’d have to clean up after them, while they laughed at him.
And now the trapdoor behind the stage was open again. The fuckinkids were getting up there again, doing their shit so he’d have to clean it up. Well, he wasn’t going up there. He wasn’t climbing the fuckinladder to sweep up their beer cans and joints and used rubbers and their shit. Once they’d actually done that, the fuckinkids had actually shit up there, through the ceiling, trying to hit the principal during an orientation address. And everybody went ape shit, saying how could they treat the principal like that. But Manny knew it wasn’t the principal they were after. The principal didn’t have to clean it up.
Manny slammed the trap door shut and fastened the padlock in place. Monday he’d nail the fuckinthing shut for good. Before he moved off, he wondered if someone might be up there now. Serve ‘em right. Leave them in there over the weekend. Give ‘em time to think. Let ‘em know Manny could fight back.
Fuckinkids.
Carl lifted the keys from the dirt behind a broken flowerpot. Thick flat keys, with a heavy black plastic base. The Mercedes symbol was a button, when you pressed it, you could lock or unlock the doors from ten feet away. But you had to have some idea where the car was to be ten feet away from it.
Carl sat on the dirt floor of the greenhouse, leaning back on the old wood and peeling paint, staring at the spot on the ground where the dirt was swirled and swept about from their loving embrace last night and eighteen years ago.
SEVEN
“I’m just asking you to consider the possibility.” Kit sounded so matter of fact, Carl wanted to scream.
“Why? It’s inane, it’s idiotic.”
“But you can’t find her, can you? She’s disappeared, hasn’t she? Just like she was never…”
“Don’t finish that sentence. Please don’t finish that sentence. She stole my car, for Christ’s sake. Do ghosts need cars?”
“How can we be sure what they need?”
Carl stood up and frightened half a dozen finches from the feeder. “This isn’t helping.”
Kit remained irritatingly calm. “Why don’t you go to the police, if you’re so sure of your theory?”
“You mean my crazy theory that she’s a real person? They might put me away.”
“Don’t evade the question.”
Carl sat back down. “The police would just give her back to him.”
“And you’re sure that would be bad?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, then.”
“It’s just that he said I was making it all up.”
“Maybe he thought you were.”
“But I hadn’t said anything yet. What did he think I was making up? I hadn’t even said anything and he gave me money. Twenty thousand. He had to be feeling guilty about something.”
“Maybe he just feels guilty about the accident. A lot of people in this world feel unjustified guilt.”
“Yeah, but it’s pretty justified if you’ve just killed somebody.”
“You think that’s what he did?”
Carl took a deep breath and took the plunge. “I think he figured a quick shove off the end of the boat was easier than spending the rest of his life with…”
“Mercy killing?”
“So that makes it okay?”
“It makes it understandable.”
“You know, that’s your fucking problem, you understand everything.”
“Thank you.”
“Look, it’s not like she’s dying of cancer and is in great pain and needs an end to her suffering. She’s not suffering; she doesn’t even know what’s going on. It’s the other people that suffer. And even that isn’t suffering; it’s just an inconvenience. Is that a new plea for justifiable homicide? Inconvenience?”
“Aren’t you being a little harsh?”
Carl started over. “Okay, let’s say we understand why he did it. Let’s say we forgive him. All I’m saying is I don’t want him to do it again.”
“Granted.”
“Thank you.”
“But are you sure he did it in the first place?”
“No. I’m not sure.”
“So what are you going to do?”
It came down to that again.
“If you’re right and she’s out there lost, you can’t just do nothing.”
“And you’re saying the police could find her.”
“Well?”
“But if she’s a ghost these are all moot questions.”
“That’s why I’m taking all of this so calmly,” Kit said with a smile.
“Ackerman is covering something up, I’m sure of that much. Maybe I’m wrong about what it is. If I could be sure he’s not going to hurt her, I’d call the police in a minute.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I think he said his brother was on the boat that night.”
“Really?”
“If I could talk to the brother and find o
ut what really happened…”
“I have to say,” Kit interrupted, “I find it hard to believe he’d kill his wife with his brother on the boat.”
“Why? You’re perfectly willing to believe she’s a ghost.”
“Well, I guess we all have different things we want to believe.”
Carl had had enough. “What the fuck does that mean? Why should I want to believe that he tried to kill her?”
“I don’t know, but you’re sure fighting for it.”
“I’m not fighting for anything. This isn’t some story idea we’re working on.”
“Okay. Go on.” He was granting Carl this insignificant point, waiting for the bigger prey to pounce on.
“He said when they went out on the boat she panicked because she’d forgotten she knew how to sail. Now that can’t be true. She’s only regressed, or whatever you call it, back to eighteen or nineteen years old. She’s been sailing since she was ten.”
“So?” Carl thought this was such an important point and the only response it got was a ‘so?’
“Ackerman’s brother was the one who used to sail with her, he was on the boat. I want to talk to him. Can you help me find him?”
Kit shook his head. “I’m just consulting on this. My advice is, go to the police, tell them how you feel and let them decide.”
“The police won’t give a fuck about how I feel.”
“Make them care. Show them the check, that’s bound to make them suspicious.”
Carl felt an embarrassed blush. “I tore it up.”
Kit reacted with surprising concern. “What?”
“It made me sick.”
“That was a mistake.” Kit was on his feet, thinking as he walked, like he always did when he was picking holes in a story. “I mean, right now he thinks you’re a run-of-the-mill blackmailer and writes you off. But when he finds you didn’t even cash the check, he’s going to know there’s more to it than that. I suppose you gave him your name?”