It was the first time he had ever thought about the universe. In life his thoughts had been more mundane. Breakfast, shaving, getting laid. He had gotten laid often, not because he was disarmingly attractive. He wasn't. Or because he was rich. He wasn't. But because he was charming. He had always been charming. When he was a young man, his mother, his aunts and his uncles had told him a thousand times that he was going to be a "real lady-killer" when he grew up because he was so charming.
He didn't remember being told that he'd be a lady-killer, and he didn't remember getting laid, either. He didn't remember if he had played the piano, or why the big guy in the Town car had run him down, or even what he—Sam Goodlow—looked like (so far, mirrors showed him only an elongated mist with hair), or what he had been, in life.
But he thought it would all come back to him in time.
He felt good, and it surprised him. He hadn't expected—flying ass-over-teacup above the Town Car—that he would feel bad. He had expected that he would feel nothing. Wasn't that what most people expected from death? Nothing. Not cold or hot or lukewarm. Not pain or comfort or joy. Nothing.
He liked feeling good, of course. But he was distrustful of it, too. He thought that it meant he was being prepared for heaven. He remembered stories about heaven and remembered thinking that it was not a place he would like to spend much time. An eternity in the company of saints and angels and "good people" would surely be a bore.
~ * ~
He felt as if he had eaten well and was very relaxed. He felt as if he had found exactly the right position for sleep.
Oddly, he felt wet, too.
~ * ~
He closed his eyes. He could still see the room he was in. This shocked him. Seeing through his eyelids was something he'd never been able to do in life. It was proof of his situation, proof that he was dead.
He screamed.
Nothing came out.
He opened his eyes.
The room lightened.
He closed his eyes. The room darkened, as if he were seeing through sunglasses.
He opened his eyes. The room lightened.
He closed his eyes. The room darkened. He saw nothing at all.
He smiled and decided that maybe he was alive, after all. It was possible.
~ * ~
He remembered water.
A telephone.
He shivered. Someone is dancing on my grave, he thought.
And he remembered that his father had died when he--Sam—was only three years old, although he didn't remember his father's face. Perhaps here, in this new existence, it would eventually come back to him.
~ * ~
He realized that he had to pee. This shocked him. Did ghosts have bowels, kidneys, bladders? Were tales of the supernatural littered with accounts of toilets flushing in empty bathrooms? Maybe. What did he know? In life, he'd never been much interested in the occult, so maybe the world was filled with supernaturally flushing toilets.
Or maybe the fact that he had to pee was further proof that he was, indeed, alive.
He glanced about. Bathroom? he wondered. He thought he should know where the bathroom was. This place was so hauntingly familiar.
An open door to his left. He went through it.
It was a closet. There was a broom, a pail with mop, a dustpan, some old newspapers on a shelf. "Dammit!" he whispered. He couldn't pee in here.
He heard a door open. He craned his head out the doorway, looked.
A short woman with wavy, shoulder-length, strawberry blond hair entered the room.
Sam pulled his head back in and stopped breathing.
RYERSON AT 35
Ryerson Biergarten said to his two-year-old Boston bullterrier, Creosote, sniffing around a pair of Ryerson's argyle socks (its favorite chew toys, especially if Ryerson happened to be wearing them, as he was now), "It's passion you feel for my socks, isn't it?" He knew that this was true because, from time to time, he was able to read Creosote's mind—not in any directly translatable way (he wasn't able to carry on a conversation with the dog), but in a way that let him know the dog's moods and appetites. Ryerson understood that Creosote had a sock fetish. And it was not a fetish for just any kind of sock, only argyles. Dimly, Ryerson knew it was the patterns on argyle socks that got the dog worked up.
Passion interested Ryerson today because he had just been thrown over by a woman he had fallen in love with—a woman who, he'd felt sure, had fallen in love with him. Her very last words to him were, "Yes, I do love you, Rye. But for reasons I'd rather not share, I am going to call us completed." Ryerson liked the phrase, but not the sentiment, and he certainly didn't like the emotion that had vaulted from her head to his when she'd said it. It had told him very clearly that their six-week love affair was over, and that it was what she wanted (had wanted for some time).
He whispered, "Damn, I miss her."
And so, his thoughts meandered, Creosote had a sock fetish, he—Ryerson—had a broken heart, and the world still turned 'round.
Creosote got a good hold on Ryerson's left sock, planted his feet firmly in the carpet, and tugged hard, wheezing and growling obscenely at the same time.
Ryerson admonished him, face to face, finger wagging, "You mustn't do that, Creosote. It's annoying, and it's destructive. I like my socks. I don't want them turned into dog drool." Creosote continued tugging on the sock. Ryerson grinned. He knew that Creosote was having a wonderful time.
Ryerson forced the dog's jaw open, so Creosote released the sock. The dog looked momentarily put out, then, after another wheeze and gurgle, curled up at Ryerson's feet. Ryerson reached down and scratched the dog's neck. Creosote gurgled, snorted, and sneezed.
TWO
Jenny Goodlow glanced sadly about her brother's empty office and sighed. "Sam," she whispered, "you were a world-class slob."
Yes, she heard, I'm aware of it! She thought for one chilling moment that Sam had actually said it. But then she realized that it had not been Sam's voice but her memory of his voice, her memory of the thousand times she had told him he was a slob, and the thousand times that he had come back with "Yes, I'm aware of it!"
She said, "I miss you, Sam."
I miss you, too.
"You were so much more than just a brother."
No, I was just a brother.
She had come to the office to collect Sam's important papers, his personal items, and to close the office up. His lease was done. He had to clear out, anyway, she told herself.
She sighed. "Oh, Sam, where did you go?" she whispered.
She got no answer.
The task of cleaning the office out had fallen to her because she knew that Sam would want no one else to do it, although he had had plenty of male friends—charming slobs usually did, Jenny thought—a half-dozen girlfriends, and a brother (he lived on the west coast and neither Jenny nor Sam had seen him in years). She and Sam were as close as a brother and sister can be (even though she was only his stepsister), and Jenny knew that he would have wanted no one else to do this.
Where do I begin? she wondered. "Right where you're standing," she answered herself.
She bent over to pick up a coffee-stained T-shirt. It had a photograph of one of the Three Stooges on it with the words "Just say" above, and "Moe" beneath. She smiled. She'd gotten Sam the shirt on his forty-first birthday, just a month earlier.
She stopped smiling abruptly.
The toilet was flushing.
The bathroom door opened.
Jenny, her mouth open in surprise, stared at the woman who walked out. It was Sam's most recent girlfriend, Rebecca Meechum. What in the hell was she doing here?
"You're not supposed to be here!" Jenny said.
The woman lurched. She was exiting the bathroom sideways and closing the door behind her, so she hadn't noticed Jenny. Her hand fluttered to her chest.
"Good Lord, you scared me!" she proclaimed.
"You're not supposed to be here!" Jenny repeated.
Rebecca let h
er hand fall. She was slender, dark-haired, large-eyed, and was usually full of a well-cultivated poise, mannerly and pleasant. It was all an act, Jenny knew. She had seen it in the woman's eyes from their first moments.
"I don't see why I'm not supposed to be here," Rebecca said, and came forward so she was standing obstinately on the opposite side of Sam's desk, which was littered with playing cards, a few errant Cheerios, rubber bands, and unpaid bills. There were also several large coffee mugs; one contained coffee which, because of the cream in it, had turned bright green with age.
Rebecca went on petulantly, hands on her hips now, "I have as much right to be here as you do."
Jenny shook her head. "No you don't. Sam's dead, so you have absolutely no right to be here."
Rebecca looked confused. "Nobody's proved that he's dead, Jenny. Besides, what's that got to do with it? I know he would have wanted me to take care of his stuff, so that's what I'm doing."
"Why in the hell would he have wanted you to do anything for him?" Jenny protested. She knew she sounded foolish. Sam had been smitten hard by this beautiful phony, as difficult as it was for Jenny to believe.
Rebecca smirked. "Apparently, you had a sick relationship with him, Jenny. Just because he was your stepbrother doesn't mean that it's not still incest!"
"You bitch!"
~ * ~
In the closet, Sam had figured out that it was him these two women were talking about. They seemed to know him quite well. One, the blond, was apparently related to him and the other was . . . someone else.
He thought of calling out to them. Would they be able to hear him? He could hear them.
Then he wondered if that would frighten them. He was supposed to be dead. Hell, he was dead—the blond had said as much. And whether he was or wasn't, the living simply weren't accustomed to talking to people they assumed were dead, so it was probably best to stay where he was.
Or was it? Wouldn't his sister like to know if he was dead or not?
He wasn't sure.
He was very confused.
"Shit!" he muttered.
~ * ~
"What was that?" Rebecca said.
Jenny glanced at the closet; the door was open. Inside, she saw little but darkness. "I don't know," she said. "It came from in there."
"He had mice," Rebecca offered.
"He had a mouse," Jenny corrected. "One little mouse, and he caught it and took it to the park and let it go."
Rebecca shook her head, though Jenny was still looking at the dark closet. Rebecca said, "Nobody has just one mouse. That's stupid. If you see one mouse, you've got to assume…" Her voice was trembling. "You've got to assume that there are lots of mice, dozens of mice, a whole family of mice."
Jenny said, "Mice don't curse."
"I didn't hear a curse," Rebecca said.
Jenny glanced quickly at her, then back at the closet. "I did." She said nothing for a moment, then she called, "Who's there? Who's in the closet?"
Silence.
"Dammit!" she whispered. She thought of stepping closer to the closet. She was a good ten feet from it and could see the forms of the mop and pail and broom in the darkness, but she needed a better angle.
"It was next door," Rebecca said.
"Shutup," Jenny said.
"Those people next door are very loud. I've heard them. It's a record producer's office, you know, and they play this awful music, this awful rap music, and they play it so loud you can hardly—"
"Shutup, dammit!"
Rebecca shut up.
Jenny took a step to her right, so she had a better angle on the open closet door. It wasn't enough. She took another step. "Go and turn on the light," she told Rebecca, meaning the overhead fluorescent. The only light in the room now was what filtered in through the tall, grimy windows from the gray overcast outside.
Rebecca went quickly to the light switch near the door and switched it on. The single overhead fluorescent tube flickered into life, casting a yellow, shadowless light that illuminated half of the interior of the large closet. "Who's in there?" Jenny called.
"No one's in there," Rebecca said. She had a better angle on the closet than Jenny, and she could see nothing but the mop and the broom and the pail. "It's empty. It was mice." She seemed pleased.
"Mice don't curse," Jenny said again.
"This one did," Rebecca said.
~ * ~
Sam's fingers and toes no longer felt heavy. This concerned him. He thought that it meant something, though he had no idea what. His fingers and toes, his entire body, felt ... airy. Light and airy and weightless. He'd never felt like that before. He'd always felt big and clumsy. Now, he felt as if he could float.
He wasn't sure he liked that idea. In life—if life was indeed behind him—he had been able to float only in his dreams. If he were able to float, now, it would mean that all the physical laws he had grown to accept without question—all the physical laws he had grown to count on in his years of living on the earth—meant nothing. And if those physical laws meant nothing, perhaps everything else meant nothing, too. And that meant that he was in for a lot of surprises.
But still, if he was going to float, how would he accomplish it? Did he merely have to will it, think about it? Did he have to say something—"Float!" ... "Levitate!" . . . "Fly!" Did he have to lift himself up somehow, flap his arms and flail about like a windmill to create the proper updrafts?
It was obvious to him that merely believing he could float didn't make it so.
He felt a cold breeze. It crept up from behind him, from the closet wall, and it covered him like water.
THREE
You don't like me much, do you?" asked Rebecca Meechum.
Jenny Goodlow was surprised by the question. "I don't think I've been subtle about my feelings."
"No," said Rebecca, smirking, "subtlety does not appear to be one of your strong points." She turned and started for the door, looked back. "I'll do this much for you," she said magnanimously. "Since we have so much in common"—meaning Sam—"I'll give you the dubious honor of cleaning up this place." She gave Jenny a quick, smug grin. "And then, should there be a funeral, we'll grieve together, we'll trade stories about him, we'll weep—"
"Why don't you just get out!" Jenny interrupted. Rebecca said nothing for a moment. Then, with a little nod and another smug grin, she left the office.
~ * ~
When Sam Goodlow turned his head in the closet to see where the cold breeze was coming from he saw this:
A dimly lighted attic cluttered with collectibles—lamps, couches, clocks, rugs. A dust-covered telephone from the flapper era.
Things were moving about on the attic floor. They were small and they moved quickly. He tried to peer at them, but then the breeze was gone. He was once again standing in the dark closet.
He felt wet.
And he was convinced that he was alive.
~ * ~
Ryerson Biergarten always woke with a start, as if someone had slapped him across the face. He often wondered why he woke this way and the only theory that made sense to him was this: Throughout the night, psychic input built up in his head, like water behind a dam—input from the people in the houses around him, and from the animals around him, too, even from the birds that lived in the attic, and the squirrels that cavorted in the oak tree in front of his house, input from the tail end of a thousand bad dreams floating into the atmosphere above Boston (or wherever he happened to be)—until, at last, and always precisely six hours after he fell into sleep, the dam let go and flooded his head with garbage. That was the way he thought of it. Garbage. Because when he woke it all drifted off like so much mental flotsam and jetsam on the outgoing morning tide. And though he had tried often, he could read none of it—it was like trying to read a newspaper that's been turned into papier-mâché.
But this rainy morning he woke with a start, watched the garbage floating off on the morning tide, and he found that he could read a small bit of it, that he could pull f
rom it the sense of something toxic, pervasive, and insidious.
One world encroaching upon another.
Creosote, asleep on the floor beside the bed, woke when Ryerson woke, turned his flat, gummy face up toward his master, as if asking what was troubling him so, and gurgled deep in his chest. Ryerson could say nothing to him, though. Ryerson was scared, he didn't know why, and for the first time in a very long time, he did not bound from the bed and launch himself into the shower (which usually chased all the garbage away completely).
This morning he lay still.
FOUR
Boston's Twelfth Precinct homicide captain was a short, thin, balding man whose name was William Willis. His friends called him Bill. Everyone else called him Captain Willis.
He said to Ryerson Biergarten, seated in front of his desk, "Let me tell you why I've asked you down here." He offered Ryerson a jelly bean from a decanter.
"Thanks," Ryerson said, picked two purple jelly beans from the decanter and popped them into his mouth. Captain Willis took a handful of the jelly beans and laid them out on his desk. He arranged them in single file as he spoke: "Twelve days ago, a man disappeared. His name was Sam Goodlow. He was a private investigator who worked with us from time to time—like you do, though not, of course, in the same capacity." Willis grinned. On his thin, boyish face it looked apologetic. He said nothing for a few moments, as if waiting for some input from Ryerson, and when Ryerson said nothing, Willis continued, "We believe that Sam Goodlow was murdered, and since he's apparently someone you knew, I thought you might help us."
Ryerson shook his head. "I don't know him."
"You're sure?"
"I shouldn't be?"
"Your name was written in his appointment book." Willis opened a file folder on his desk, took out a sheet of paper, and handed it to Ryerson. It was a page from an appointment book, and it was dated two weeks earlier. These words were written on it: "Ryerson Biergarten? Sledge's 12:30?"
Goodlow's Ghosts Page 2