Goodlow's Ghosts

by Wright, T. M.

  "Now, I know you've got some influence with these people, I know they listen to you, so I want you to do what you can to convince them I'm telling the truth."

  Ryerson sighed.

  "Mr. Biergarten, please don't say no. Have you ever been in jail? It's not a nice place. It smells of urine. It smells of piss. And you know why? Because people pee in here. Did you know that, Mr. Biergarten? People pee in their cells."

  "I'll do what I can, Mr. Lutz, but I really can't promise that my intervention will—"

  "Oh, fuck. Just tell them you saw her—"

  "But I didn't see her."

  "I know that. Aren't you listening to me. I'm suggesting a way out of this . . ."

  ~ * ~

  And while Ryerson and Jack Lutz were talking, the two boys were digging. They dug very slowly, as if they were part of an archaeological expedition—one small spoonful at a time. There was no other way. They supposed that their parents would think it was odd if they brought shovels out here, so they brought soup spoons, instead, which were easily concealed.

  And they dug slowly, too, because they were certain of what they'd find, and they were not at all sure they wanted to find it.

  The smaller boy was the first to notice the smell. "Jeez, smell that? It smells like shit."

  "Skunk cabbage," nodded the larger boy. "Ain'tcha ever smelled it before? Awful, huh?"

  "I smelled skunk cabbage before, and this ain't skunk cabbage."

  "What else can it be?"

  The smaller boy straightened from his digging and nodded grimly at the mound of earth. "It could be whatever's in there and you know it."

  The larger boy straightened. Imagining what might be in the mound of earth was one thing, but actually smelling it was another matter entirely.

  They stared silently at the mound of earth for a long while. And as they stared, the smell from within the mound grew stronger, until the smaller boy supposed that he could actually taste it, the way he could taste the smell of gasoline when his father filled up the car and the gas spilled over onto the bumper.

  He—the smaller boy—was the first to break the silence. "Ever seen a dead body before?" he whispered, and he put his hand over his mouth and nose.

  The larger boy nodded slightly. "My grandmother. She was sitting up in her chair and she was dead. We found her on Christmas Eve."

  "That's really awful."

  The larger boy shrugged. "Nah. She just looked like she was sleeping." He nodded at the mound of earth. "Whoever's in there ain't gonna look like they're sleeping, though."

  "Damn right."

  "Damn right I'm damned right."

  A moment later, some of the earth covering the mound gave way, revealing a gray hand within. The hand was long fingered, slender. It wore a thin gold wedding ring.

  "Shit!" whispered the larger boy.

  "A hand," whispered the smaller boy. "It's a woman in there." But he was speaking to no one. His friend had already turned and run for home.

  ~ * ~

  "And you were in that hunter's cabin, too," Jack Lutz protested. "So you know I'm not lying. I mean, you know I'm not lying."

  "I suspect as much, at any rate, Mr. Lutz," Ryerson said. "But what I suspect is not going to carry a lot of weight with the Boston PD."

  "Don't give me that. You're just trying to weasel out of your responsibilities to me."

  "Mr. Lutz, I'll call Captain Willis and talk to him. It's all I can do."

  "Thanks for nothing," Lutz said, and hung up.

  ~ * ~

  Fredrick—the octogenarian who had disappeared into his cellar wall—knew where he was and he wasn't sure that he liked it very much. There was his cat, Adam, trotting ahead of him through the mist, looking back every now and then to give his human a summoning meow.

  And there, around him, suspended in the mist, was the bric-a-brac of his past—houses he had lived in, friends and lovers who had left him years ago, animals he had owned, especially memorable moments from his long life.

  And he thought that all of this was well and good, and very tempting, too—that if he were not who he was, then he would probably stay here, and literally be as happy as he had ever been, forever.

  But all of this would come his way sooner or later, anyway. After he had come to it legitimately. In ten years or so, when his body finally gave up the ghost.

  For now, this place was simply annoying because there was no reason for him to be here now, and every reason to be back where he had come from, with his daughter, Hanna, who loved him, and with his surviving friends, who were numerous.

  And Adam—trotting far ahead and giving him a summoning meow every now and then—would wait.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “I've got a joke," said Sam Goodlow. "How many spooks does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

  Ryerson thought about this a moment and said, "I give up. How many spooks does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

  "None. Spooks can't screw. They're dead."

  Ryerson forced a chuckle. "That's pretty grim, Sam."

  They were in Ryerson's office. Ryerson was seated behind his desk.

  "Yeah," Sam said. "Grim."

  "Do you know that I can't see you?" Ryerson said.

  "Nor I you," Sam said. "I see the furniture. I see your desk, the windows, the chair." He paused. "I called you. I remember that."

  The abrupt change of subject took Ryerson by surprise. "When?" he asked.

  "Before ... this."

  "You mean before you died?"

  "If it's what you want to believe, Rye, though I think the jury is still out on that matter."

  A thin white line appeared in the far corner of the office.

  It widened slowly. These words came from it: "Now I see. There you are."

  "And there you are," Ryerson said.

  ~ * ~

  The smaller boy had found himself transfixed by the hand in the dirt. Unlike his friend—who'd run off minutes earlier—he'd never seen a dead person, and here, right in front of him, was a dead hand and arm. Here was a wedding ring, long red fingernails, wrinkled gray skin. A woman was attached to all that. The woman was in the dirt.

  And that dirt probably clogged her mouth. She couldn't scream if she wanted to. And she couldn't see, or smell, or touch. She could touch only the dirt, and see only the dirt, and smell only herself. And she could think only about the dirt. She couldn't think about anything else because the dirt was all over her and inside her, probably. All she had was the dirt. She was the dirt and the dirt was her.

  The boy wanted to move forward and uncover her, see her, see the face under the dirt. He wanted to find out if all the horror movies were correct, if the dead and buried really looked dead and buried.

  But he was transfixed and paralyzed by fear and indecision. He could hear his pulse in his ears, he could hear his quick breathing, and he knew dimly that he had his hand cupped over his mouth and nose to keep out the smell of the thing in the dirt, the woman in the dirt.

  And he realized dimly, too, that he was weeping.

  He knew also that he wanted to see the woman's face because then she would stop being the nightmare she was now—a wrinkled, gray, and smelly thing in the dirt. If he could see her face, she would become human. She would become only a poor, dead woman in the dirt.

  He thought that he took a step toward her.

  And another.

  It was some other boy moving, not himself.

  Another step.

  Then he was bending over, toward the thing in the dirt. He could see his hand, the soup spoon clutched in it. He could see the spoon penetrate the dirt, could see the spoon come away with its little burden.

  He threw the dirt over his shoulder, came forward with the spoon again, got some more dirt, threw it, came for-ward, got more dirt, threw it. This was slow motion, fast motion, no motion. This was some other boy's spoon, some other boy's arm.

  Then he could see hair beneath the dirt. Gray hair, white hair, blond hair. Who knew? It w
as matted with dirt. And then a smooth gray forehead appeared, and thin white eye-brows.

  Then eyes were revealed beneath the dirt, and they were closed, and the boy sighed through his weeping.

  A nose appeared—long, and straight, nostrils flared for-ever.

  Gray, hollow cheeks and wide, gray mouth. Puckered lips. Full, puckered, gray lips.

  Kiss, kiss.

  ~ * ~

  Sam Goodlow was seated in a big, winged-back chair across from Ryerson's desk. He was resting his head against the back of the chair and was wearing a rumpled gray suit. He looked comfortable.

  He also looked oddly damp.

  Ryerson asked him why, but Sam couldn't say. "I've been like this for a while," he explained, and lifted his arm as if to look at the sleeve of his rumpled suit. "Am I wearing anything?" he asked.

  "Yes, a suit," Ryerson answered.

  "Sure," Sam said, "a suit," and he let his arm fall and rested his head against the back of the chair again. "How are memories and minestrone alike?" he asked.

  Ryerson said, "I don't know."

  "They are, that's all," Sam explained drily. "My memories are like soup. Minestrone, chowder. Name your soup. No clear soups. Only unclear."

  "Yes," Ryerson said. "I understand."

  "No you don't, you don't. Who could, or won't? Tell me I'm not alive, Rye. I won't believe you. I am alive."

  ~ * ~

  On the street below, the big man looked up at the window behind which Ryerson and Sam were talking and he thought that he really couldn't wait to have a chance at killing again. If anything was good in his life, it was the killing he did—that manipulation, that control! Nothing was as simple or as everlasting as the extinction of a life, a psyche, a soul. One slow movement of the foot on the gas pedal, steady hands on the steering wheel, that so-satisfying whump! and a life that had been, suddenly wasn't!

  He sighed and lit up a cigarette.

  ~ * ~

  "You're always changing," Ryerson said to Sam Goodlow.

  "I'm just trying to find my equilibrium," Sam said from his winged-back chair. "Just trying to find the point of rest."

  Creosote sauntered in, hopped up on Ryerson's lap, and looked blankly at Sam Goodlow, who said, "I never had a dog. I wanted a dog. You have a dog."

  "Yes," Ryerson said, "I have a dog." He became uneasy. When the conversation started meandering like this, it usually meant that Sam was drifting off. Ryerson went on, "Who did you talk to when you called?"

  "A man who sneezed."

  "You mean he sneezed while you were talking to him? Was his name Matthew?"

  Sam did not look at Ryerson. He kept his head on the back of the chair and said, "He answered the phone, I talked to him, he sneezed. That's all there is to it."

  "My housekeeper and I are the only ones here, Sam. So you had to have talked to him."

  "Memories are made of sneeze."

  Ryerson sighed. Creosote gurgled.

  "Did you talk to him, Sam?"

  "He sneezed, I hung up, I died, I cried, I lied."

  Sam's rumpled, damp suit began to fade. His body appeared. He was white and stocky and hairy. He said, "And now I'm naked, right?"

  "It's not something you can control, is it?" Ryerson asked.

  "I am controlled," Sam answered.

  Then his bones appeared, and his insides, and the chair was empty.

  ~ * ~

  Janice Erb said over the phone to the woman who called herself Violet McCartle, "You know, of course, that you've sustained a terrific loss selling your portfolio at this time. And I might add that—as I predicted—there has been a measurable effect on the market itself."

  "No pain, no gain," said the woman known as Violet McCartle. "I assume you've transferred the funds as I requested."

  "Of course."

  "Then our relationship is at an end."

  "Regretfully, yes. Let me know when I can be of service to you again, Mrs. McCartle."

  "Of course, Ms. Erb."

  TWENTY-TWO

  I'm looking at her right now," the man said. He was calling the police from a phone booth on the corner of Joseph and Fitzhugh Streets, in North Boston. "She's not more than ten feet away," the man continued, "and I tell you, she's crazy. Someone's got to come and pick her up."

  "When you say she's crazy, sir," asked the desk sergeant on the other end of the line, "what exactly do you mean? Is she threatening anyone?"

  "What I mean is, she's calling out this guy's name over and over again."

  "And what name is that?"

  "Jack. She's saying Jack over and over again, like a crazy person, and I tried to talk to her but she acted like I wasn't even there, like she could see through me, so I thought I'd better call you guys."

  "Could you describe the woman, please?"

  "Sure. She's tall, she's got long brown hair, she's thin."

  "And what is the woman wearing?"

  "A wedding dress."

  "This woman is wearing a wedding dress?"

  "Yes. And it looks very old and very dirty. That's one of the reasons I called you. I mean, it's bad enough that she's calling out this guy's name and doesn't respond to anyone, but she's wearing this god-awful wedding dress, too—"

  "Give me your location, sir, and we'll dispatch a car at once."

  "She's gone."

  "Gone?"

  "Just like that. My God. She simply vanished, pfft! Into nothing."

  ~ * ~

  Rebecca Meechum thought that she was the soul of restraint. For three days now, she'd had that envelope and she hadn't opened it. She had held it up to the light, had even begun to steam it open, but had quickly decided that she would be found out, and so had abandoned the effort.

  She wished the woman would come and pick up the envelope, as she had said she would. Didn't the woman know what a temptation it was, didn't she realize that by telling her—Rebecca—not to open the envelope that that was precisely what she would be driven to do?

  It was as if the woman was . . . perverse, or something. As if she knew that Rebecca would have to do the thing she had been told not to and then she—the woman—would relish making her—Rebecca—suffer the consequences.

  But what could the consequences be, after all? The woman had made no threat, she had simply said, "Do not open the envelope. Wait for me to pick it up." There was no threat in that. Not even an implied threat.

  Rebecca held the large manila envelope up to the bright daylight coming in through her bedroom window. She saw only a rectangular dark shadow in the envelope that was a little smaller than the envelope itself.

  Photograph, she decided. It wasn't the first time she'd thought that it was what the envelope contained. It was obvious. The thing in the envelope was opaque. Regular paper would have let some light through, at any rate. Thick photographic paper probably wouldn't. It didn't take a modern-day Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.

  Her doorbell rang.

  ~ * ~

  Sam remembered this:

  "Hello again, Mr. Goodlow. Come in, please."

  "Hello, Mrs. McCartle."

  "Please. Violet."

  "Sure." He went into the big, ostentatious house and followed the woman down a long hallway, into a cavernous room filled with antiques.

  She sat.

  He sat nearby.

  "So, tell me what you've done with the envelope, Mr. Goodlow."

  He hesitated, uncertain. Something about the woman puzzled him. He studied her a moment. Canny, gray-blue eyes; short, white hair; strong, rectangular face.

  "Mr. Goodlow?" the woman coaxed.

  Perhaps, he thought, the key to what puzzled him lay in her voice. It was not precisely the voice he remembered, though he wondered how good his memory could be after a week, and after such a brief conversation.

  "Mr. Goodlow? The envelope?"

  "Sure," he said. "It's at my office. It's hidden in the overhead lighting fixture."

  "You'll have to do better than that, Mr. Goodlow." The v
oice came from behind him, in the doorway, and it was nearly identical to the voice of the woman seated in front of him.

  He turned, looked.

  ~ * ~

  Ever since her father's disappearance, Hanna Beckford had not left his house. More than once, she had lifted the telephone receiver after deciding that she needed to call someone. But she had called no one because it came to her that what she had to say—My father walked into the cellar wall and disappeared!—was impossible, and she would be looked upon as a crazy person.

  So she had waited for him.

  She was certain that if he could indeed disappear into a cellar wall, then he could very well reappear from the same wall, and when he did, he would need her to be there, because who knew where he might have gone, who knew the trauma he might have suffered?

  He would need her. And she would have to be there for him.

  She spent most of her time in her father's kitchen. The cellar way was off the kitchen, and she kept the door open. She had brought a cot into the kitchen, and a TV, which she watched with the sound turned off so she wouldn't miss hearing the reappearance of her father.

  It frightened her to stay in her father's house. She remembered the presence she had sensed in the far corner of the cellar just moments before her father's disappearance, and though she had tried to convince herself that she had sensed nothing but what her own nervousness had manufactured, she did not believe it. She had been within spitting distance of something powerful enough to whisk her father away as if he had never existed, and she was very fearful of it, so fearful that she had lain awake now for three nights.

  But her fear was not as great as the love she had for her father, so she had waited at his kitchen table, had played endless rounds of losing solitaire, and had watched her father's old TV show her faint gray and white images of the colorful and tacky and predictable world that existed beyond his big, empty house.

  And she had waited for him to reappear.

  When, at last, he did, she was not prepared for it.

  She had thrown down a king of hearts as unusable, had glanced toward the cellar way, to her right, thinking she had heard a noise from below. But it was not the first noise she had heard. The house was home to several families of mice, and they were not quiet.