by Ray Garton
“Oh.” She leaned against the counter, put both hands over her face, and whispered to herself, “Jeez-Louise, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“How much more of what, Mom?”
Martha frowned and wagged her hands at Jenna dismissively. “Oh, nothing, nothing.”
“I’ve got a client out in the living room,” Jenna said, then hurried back to the living room with her folder.
Avril had her bag unzipped and open on the couch beside her and held a beige folder in her hands. She handed it to Jenna, who opened her brown folder and removed from a pocket a form she’d printed up back in Redding. She wrote down Avril’s name on the form, then took the handwritten, paper-clipped pages from the beige folder. The handwriting was neat and clean. She counted the pages—thirty-eight, written on one side only. She wrote that down on the form.
“Are those your sons I saw a few minutes ago?” Avril asked.
Jenna sat up straight and turned to her so suddenly that Avril blinked with surprise, but her smile did not falter. “Sons?”
“The boys who came through here a few—”
“Boys?” Jenna let the folders and pages slide off her lap to the floor as she turned her whole body toward Avril. “You saw boys? In here? Just now?”
Half of Avril’s smile fell away. “Um... three of them. I—I thought they were boys, I didn’t see their faces, but they—”
“Three?” Jenna’s mind raced with questions, but she did not have time for them. “Where, exactly? Where did you see them?”
“They walked through here, from front to back. I kind of figured they were looking for you.”
“What did they look like?”
The urgency in Jenna’s voice made Avril scoot away from her on the couch. “I—I don’t know, I mean ... I looked up from my paper and they were passing through, and I looked up again and they were gone.”
“A little one—was there a little one?”
“Yes, he came in first, then the other two followed. He had on a jacket with a hood, and the hood was pulled up over—”
“Oh, God, you saw him!” Jenna could only whisper, because for a moment she had no voice. She felt as if her breath had been sucked from her lungs. Tears blurred her vision, and she quickly wiped them away with her knuckles. “My son, Josh, you saw my dead son, you saw him. Which way did he go?”
“Are ... are you all right?”
Jenna smiled and nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, yes, which way did he go?”
Pointing toward the doorway that led into the dining room, Avril said, “That way.”
Jenna stood, reached down, and clutched Avril’s elbow and tugged her to her feet. “Come with me.”
“Look, I have a class, I can’t—”
Jenna put her hands on Avril’s shoulders and squeezed. “Please, please come with me for just a minute. You saw him once, maybe you’ll see him again.”
“Did you say... your dead son?”
Jenna grabbed her hand and pulled her through the living room. “Please, come through the house with me just once.”
Avril jerked her hand free and went back to the couch. She bent over and picked up her pages and folder from the floor, put them back in her bag and zipped it up. As she slung the strap over her shoulder, she turned to Jenna. “I—I’m sorry, but I can’t, I’ve really got to—”
“No, please don’t take the paper,” Jenna said. “I’ll do the paper, I’ll have it done by tomorrow, if you—”
“Did you say your son was ... dead?”
Jenna sniffled as she nodded. “For three years. We just moved into this house, and I’ve been seeing him. You just saw him. There are no boys in this house. The only boy who lives here is my son Miles, and he’s at school.”
Avril’s eyes slowly widened. “But... I saw them.”
“I know. I have, too. Well... I’ve seen one. I don’t understand why you saw three, but the little one, that’s my Josh.” She moved slowly toward Avril. “Will you help me? Please?”
Avril took a step backward, then another, and a few more. “You’re talking about... ghosts?”
“Whatever you want to call them, I don’t really think of it that—”
Avril suddenly turned and bolted out of the living room and through the entryway, where she grabbed her coat and nearly tripped on the small throw-rug on her way out the front door. She did not even try to close the door behind her.
Jenna sighed, but it turned into a groan. She went to the door and closed it as Avril started the engine of her car outside.
“Shit,” Jenna said, thinking, That’s not the way to introduce yourself to the college community. As she went down the hall, she muttered, “Don’t take your papers to that crazy lady with the haunted house. She’ll try to make you talk to ghosts.”
“Who are you talking to?” Martha asked as Jenna entered the kitchen.
“Myself.”
“Okay, just so I know.” She sat in the breakfast nook, still wearing her robe, and returned her attention to her novel.
Walt thumped up the basement stairs and came out of the laundry room with his flashlight in one hand and toolbox in the other. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kellar, but there’s nothing wrong with your wiring. It’s clean as a whistle. Are you having problems upstairs, too?”
“No, so far it’s just happened down here. One of them was out here on the back porch.” Jenna led him out the back door to the bare bulb over the door. She reached inside and flipped the switch, but the light didn’t come on. “See? It’s out again, and David just put in a brand-new bulb.”
Walt reached up and unscrewed the bulb. “Do you have another one?”
“Sure.” Jenna hurried inside and got a lightbulb from a shelf in the laundry room, took it from its box.
Walt screwed the new lightbulb in and said, “Okay, try it now.”
When Jenna flipped the switch, the light came on.
“Works fine now,” Walt said.
“Of course it does,” Jenna said. “You’re here.”
Walt laughed. “I know what you mean. Things never break down when you want them to.”
“It’ll happen again when you’re not here. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Buy a different brand of lightbulb? Don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Okay. Come on back inside and my mom’ll pay you.”
“No charge. I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh. Well, thank you, I appreciate that. Tell me, while you were down in the basement... did you ... see anything?”
“See anything? Well, you’ve got a lot of stuff down there in boxes and crates, I noticed that. Is that what you mean?”
“Just wondering.” She smiled.
After Walt left, Jenna got Ada’s card from her purse. She went upstairs to the bedroom, sat on the bed, and called the number.
“Ada, it’s Jenna Kellar, from yesterday.”
“The poltergeist, yeah. I was just thinkin’ about you this morning. I was gonna call you.”
“You were?”
“Yes, but you’re calling me. Is there something I can do for you?”
Jenna told her what Avril Lauter had seen, and of her failed attempt to get the young woman to go through the house with her to find out if she would see it again.
“But I don’t understand why she saw three boys,” Jenna said. “Josh was there, but there were two other boys with him.”
“Like I told you, as long as you got a poltergeist, you can’t believe anything you see or hear in your house. But I know somebody might be able to help you.”
“Really?”
“A friend of mine in Crescent City. He’s retired now, he don’t do sittings no more, except once in a while, he’ll do one for nothing if somebody really needs help. I talked to him this morning and told him about you. See, he’s got experience with poltergeists. He claims he can get rid of ‘em. I haven’t seen him do it myself, but I know he’s a good medium, and he’s a good fella. He might be able t
o help you.”
The day’s disappointments faded a little. “But you say he’s in Crescent City?”
“He’s gonna be coming through Eureka this afternoon, honey, and he owes me a favor. He says he’d be willing to come to your place and do a sitting around one, if you don’t mind picking him up at the truck stop.”
“Truck stop?”
“He’s a trucker. He’ll be on a schedule, so you might want to fix something for him to eat while he does his sitting. He’ll probably eat just about anything you put in front of him.”
“He’s a... trucker?”
“Yeah. What, you think the dead only talk to cranky old women like me?”
“Oh, Ada, I can’t thank you enough for this.”
“Just keep your poltergeist away from me, honey, that’s all I ask.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lily. Wednesday, 10:01 A.M.
The teddy bear emerges from the darkness before her. One eye missing, stuffing leaking from holes, filthy and old. The music-box rendition of Brabmss “Lullaby” plays from the stuffed bear, slightly off key, dragging a bit.
“Get over here and be a good puppy,” a gravelly voice whispers, filling her with dread. The last two words, “good puppy,” echo repeatedly as the teddy bear’s head blurs. It is replaced by the head of the brown-haired boy she ‘d seen screaming in an earlier vision. Names and words fly at her—
Giles styles wiles piles Niles Niles Niles Miles Miles Miles!
—until the correct one lodges in her mind. She feels great fear for Miles, and something else—something that makes her feel as if she’s dying inside. Death feelings. They weigh her down, press on her chest and temples.
Then Miles’s face is gone and it’s just a teddy bear’s head again.
The music winds down to a stop as a large, beefy fist clutching the black handle of a broad-bladed knife swings into view. The glimmering blade of the butcher knife impales the bear’s body to the hilt. Dark blood bubbles up around the knife as the bear’s head bursts into flames.
The bear disappears as she feels herself falling through darkness. Light comes up from beneath her and she rolls over to see the ground rising rapidly toward her. She sees the same gray house she’s seen before, with the swing and slide in the backyard. She slows down as she begins to glide horizontally away from the house, along the gravel drive that cuts through the woods to the open metal gate at the road. She drops suddenly and finds herself beside the mailbox. Gold letters and numbers sit neatly in individual black squares on the side of the mailbox:
2204
The Kellars
A bright red starfish is spread out over the top of the mailbox and throbs with silent ferocity—it looks about to explode. The starfish fills her with a smothering horror as Brahms’s “Lullaby” begins to play again, plinking off key. Her dread grows as the music fades, until—
Lily whimpered as she opened her eyes, then fell silent when she saw all the faces looking down at her. There were umbrellas keeping her dry from the rain, but her back was soaking wet. She realized she was lying on the sidewalk. She’d been on her way to get a Record Searchlight from the vending machine in front of the store, and the smell of bananas and the electric-blue flashing had hit her abruptly, and she’d gone down.
She recognized Evelyn Walsh from the candle shop in the next building over, and Mr. Fitzgerald from the gallery across the street, and Minnie from the Hallmark store a few doors down from there. Lily heard Claudia before she saw her.
“Lily! Oh, no! Did she hurt herself?” Claudia peered down at Lily with one hand flat against the side of her face.
“I’m okay,” Lily said, although her left elbow ached, probably from the fall. She hoped she hadn’t ruined her green-and-black broomstick skirt. Mr. Fitzgerald took her hand and helped her to her feet. “I just don’t feel good,” she said.
“You should see a doctor right away, Lily,” Minnie from the Hallmark store said. “You look very pale. Has this happened before?”
“I’ll be okay. Thanks so much for your help. Really. All of you, I appreciate it. I’m sorry for taking a dive out here.” Lily’s head throbbed against the backs of her eyeballs and she was sapped by waves of nausea, but she smiled at the small group. They did not go away, though. “Okay, look, I haven’t been feeling well, but I’m having it taken care of, and I’m going to be okay. All right?”
“It’s nothing serious, is it, Lil?” Evelyn Walsh said.
Irritated, Lily shook her head. “No, no. Now, thank you again, very much, for your help, but frankly, I... I just don’t feel obligated to’ explain myself to you any further.” She turned and went back into the store.
She went through the store and into her apartment, to the bathroom, where she got a Vicodin from the medicine cabinet. She drank it down with a glass of water, then spent a moment studying her reflection in the mirror. She was pale, and ... was her face just a tiny bit thinner? She went to her bedroom, took off her clothes, and put on a brown-and-gold muumuu. She opened the notebook in which she was keeping a record of the visions and wrote, “2204, Starfish (red & throbbing), The Kellars.” As she stretched out on the bed, she heard Claudia walk through the kitchen and down the short hall to the bedroom.
“How are you feeling, Lily?” Claudia whispered.
“I’ve got an awful headache, and I feel sick. Do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Bring me some saltine crackers from the cupboard over the toaster in the kitchen.” The salty crackers sometimes settled Lily’s stomach when it was upset.
Claudia returned seconds later with an open package of crackers and handed it to her. Lily nibbled on one of the saltines.
“I, um, I explained to them that you weren’t feeling well,” Claudia said.
“To who? Out front, you mean? Why do they have to be so nosy?”
“They weren’t being nosy, Lily, they were being concerned.”
“I don’t like people ... talking about me. They do anyway, of course, there’s nothing I can do about it, they always have, because I’m just not... I don’t... fit in well with others. But if they’re going to talk, they’ll have to make up things to talk about, because they’re not getting anything from me. We’ve never discussed it, Claudia, but I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m a very private person.”
“But does that mean you have to be rude?”
Lily closed her eyes, rested her forearm across them. “Was I rude?”
“Well... yeah.”
“But... I thought they were being rude.”
“No, they weren’t. They were concerned, that’s all. You passed out on the sidewalk in front of your store— they had reason to be concerned.”
“And I was rude?”
“Yes, you were. The only reason I’m pointing this out to you is that you told me to. You remember that, don’t you?”
Lily smiled. “Yes, I remember. I’ve never been good at... people stuff.”
Claudia said, “I’m going back to the register. You rest for a while.”
“Thank you, Claudia.”
Lily had been living alone for so long, and went out so little, she sometimes lost track of her own behavior when she was around people. She had asked Claudia to point it out to her when she was rude or inappropriate. She would remember to do something nice for Evelyn Walsh and Mr. Fitzgerald and Minnie from the Hallmark store and apologize for her unpleasantness.
But for now, she wanted only to sleep until the headache and nausea went away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Wednesday, 11:39 A.M.
Dwayne Shattuck was a tall, lanky man in his late forties with short black hair shot with gray, and a handlebar mustache. He wore a long-sleeve brown-and-yellow plaid shirt under a tan quilted down jacket, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. He had an easy smile and spoke in a slow, quiet way that reminded Jenna of jazz DJs on late-night radio.
She picked him up at Hansen’s Truck Stop in Fortuna and asked him if Subway sandwiches were
all right for lunch. When he said the Subway club sandwich was his favorite, she stopped and bought one for him. On the way to the house, she told him everything that had happened lately, right up to Ada’s sitting the day before.
“Well, poltergeists are my specialty,” Dwayne said. “Ada says you can’t get rid of them, they go when they want to go. But I’ve gotten rid of quite a few.”
“How do you do it?”
“I can’t really say.”
“It’s a secret?”
“No, I mean I’m not sure how I do it. They seem to listen to me and go away when I tell ‘em, is all.”
“Ada said you’d retired, but you seem pretty young for that.”
“It don’t take long to get burnt out on poltergeists. Driving a truck’s a hell of a lot more relaxing than dealin’ with them buggers, I’ll tell ya. So I gave it up. But every once in a while, I’ll give somebody a hand. I know how tough it can be tryin’ to live with one of them things in the house. But it’s real strange that you don’t have an adolescent—ten years old is a little young for your son to be drawin’ poltergeist action.”
Before leaving the house, Jenna had managed to talk Martha into taking a nap. Jenna was relieved to find she was still sleeping when they got to the house. She put the sandwich in the refrigerator for later and took Dwayne to the living room. They stood in the spot where Ada’s Ouija board had been set up.
“This is where we had the sitting,” Jenna said.
“Okay. I’ll need you to be quiet. This may take a little while. If you want, you can go do something else.”
Jenna decided to stay.
Dwayne spit on his right palm, then vigorously rubbed his hands together. He raised his arms high, palms out, and closed his eyes. He tilted his head back slightly and said in a clear but quiet voice, “I’m here to communicate with the spirit that has been causing trouble in this house. Do you hear me? Give me some sign that you hear me. I’m here to communicate with you and to tell you it’s time to leave this house. Do you hear me? I am telling you it’s time to leave this house.”