The word had been theirs, and he couldn’t imagine how Amelia Gordon had learned of it. If the board had spelled out “Beth” or “wife” or “I’m here,” he would have dismissed it as coincidence, but she had picked the one word he couldn’t deny. Wayne stared down at the abandoned Ouija board in 218.
“Beth,” he whispered.
The thought of her name somehow seemed safe, because he’d carried her inside him for years. But saying it aloud gave it weight and imbued it with the power of possibility. Making a wish was foolish and believing in ghosts was an act of cowardice. If he really thought he knew better than God, then he would pick up a bottle and hide in the sewers of his own ego and fear.
“Beth,” he said aloud.
I can’t believe in you. Not like this. I believe in how you used to be.
Wayne touched the surface of the Ouija board. The planchette still lay on the floor, where it had fallen after Amelia’s fainting spell.
Amelia had talked about an angel in the ceiling. Room 318 was directly above.
Do I want to know? If I got an answer, would I accept it? Or would I rather cling to the stories that have given me comfort over the years?
Comfort.
No, it wasn’t comfort.
It was survival.
The board was slick and relatively new. He’d bought it as a prop after one of his conference guests had complained that the discussion panels were too tech-oriented and boring. “You can learn all that stuff on the Internet,” said the crank.
So he’d started sexing up his events, tossing in psychics, palm readers, and everything but one-armed, mud-wrestling midgets, and if he could figure out a way to tie those into the paranormal instead of the plain old abnormal, he would do it in a heartbeat. The Ouija board always drew a crowd because people longed for oracles and throughout history had searched for messages in everything from animal intestines to tea leaves.
During their honeymoon, when they’d played with the Ouija board, that’s what they were doing—playing. As they knelt at the coffee table, drinking wine in their bath robes, they summoned Margaret. All for laughs, all for foreplay, all part of the fun of a haunted hotel.
But then the talk had turned serious, and as a cold wind blew in from nowhere, Beth gazed into his eyes and made him swear. Wayne gave an uncomfortable giggle, playing along. So he’d nodded and smiled. An agreement and an invitation.
When Beth had made The Promise, Wayne never imagined he’d outlive her. He was still drinking in those days. Not so much that it had drowned their relationship, but plenty enough. They were too young to acknowledge the inevitability of middle age, let alone mortality. When you had forever, promises were cheap.
The pact was simple: if one of them died, the other would return to the White Horse Inn. The deceased would try to make contact from the spirit world. Harry Houdini had made the same promise, and as far as anyone knew, the greatest magician in history had not found a way to pick the locks of the afterlife and make a successful return.
Wayne might even have forgotten the pact, throwing it on the pile of somedays and pledges and promises, if she hadn’t reminded him of it as she wasted away in a hospital bed. A mastectomy hadn’t stemmed the spread of cancer, and when it showed up in her pancreas and liver, she swore off the chemotherapy and kept her pain medication to a minimum, wanting to be alert for her final days. Wayne went in the opposite direction, crawling into a bottle and pickling himself like a living laboratory specimen.
Beth didn’t scold him or judge him, and her unconditional love radiating from dimming eyes filled him with shame. In some ways, alcoholism was an even more insidious disease than cancer, because it gave the illusion of choice. Beth’s mother, who always knew best even when she knew nothing, had taken on Kendra, showing her granddaughter how to react to the death of a loved one: the stages of anger, denial, fear, acceptance, and then deep, abiding sorrow.
And when the countdown came, when the heart monitor beeped erratically and Beth’s breathing became ragged, she beckoned him close and whispered, “I’ll see you at the inn.”
She smiled and her gaunt fingers gripped his sweaty ones, and Wayne could only nod. Later, days after the funeral, he realized she’d been referring to the White Horse and the glib deal they’d made years before, fresh after making newlywed love in Room 318.
It took a while, but here I am.
Wayne picked up the planchette, half expecting it to throb with unseemly warmth.
It was plastic, made in China, nothing divine about it.
He hurled it across the room and it bounced against the television.
The television switched on.
“–OPEC has pledged to boost production so that heating oil prices will stabilize for the holidays. Crude oil is currently trading at seventy-eight dollars a barrel and–”
Wayne shut it off.
“Okay, Beth,” he said. “If you want to speak to me, do it directly and not through cheap electronics.”
The curtains fluttered even though the window was closed.
Draft, probably blowing through the ventilation system.
“About that promise,” Wayne said. “It wouldn’t be the first we’ve broken. We both said ‘forever,’ remember?”
He sat on the chair by the desk so he could survey the entire room, including the bathroom with its clawfoot tub, tiled floor, and gray wallpaper. He could spare a couple of minutes. He owed her that much. Promises were cheap.
The lights blinked.
“Are you afraid?”
He wasn’t sure if the words were in his head or if they had wended from the corners of nowhere.
He waited 30 seconds, listening to the distant thrum of the ventilation system and the squeal of the elevator. That gave him plenty of time to consider the question, whether he had posed it to himself or not. It was the kind of question that had only two answers, and both were wrong.
If Beth appeared, all the failure would come sluicing down in a gray avalanche. His skeptical convictions would be challenged, and he’d be forced to change the way he viewed the world. He didn’t want to be knocked out of his comfort zone. He preferred to think of Beth in a better place, far removed from the worries of this troubled plane. If he’d dragged her from eternal bliss just to satisfy his whims, he’d have yet another reason to feel guilty.
“I tried,” he said. “I wanted to be there for you but I didn’t know how.”
The shadow in one corner of the room grew lighter, though the sun was sinking outside and purple dusk crawled across the mountains.
“I haven’t done so bad with Buttercup,” he said. The claim felt thick on his tongue, as if he had licked dust.
Wayne fumbled in his pocket for his EMF recorder, made sure it was off, and laid it on the desk. Such a toy embarrassed him, here in the face of awesome mystery.
A distinct outline fuzzed a few feet from the wall. Wayne held his breath.
The outline grew threads and walked.
And here she was.
Eight years after cancer had ravaged her, eight years after her heart had given one final flutter that barely registered a green quiver on the monitor, several thousand long days since she’d entrusted Wayne with guiding Kendra to adulthood, and here she was. Not all of her, to be sure, but even through the tears dimming his eyes, he could tell.
“Beth.” His voice didn’t crack, but everything else did.
He sought the features of her face in that amorphous mass, but the threads were swirling, fading in and out like a fog in the breeze. Her hair, her legs—is that her funeral dress, or wedding dress?—and the hand reaching toward him all shifted in the twilight, and he couldn’t tell if she were smiling or grimacing. The eyes, the holes in her face, were black and deep and told nothing.
This was the only ghost he’d ever wanted to meet, and now that she was here, he wished he were dead, too.
“Beth, I’m sorry...”
The sibilant trailed off into a sigh. Stupid. Time for apologies is
past. What have you got for her? What does she need? What can you pour from your empty cup?
He wanted to stand and move toward her, meet her halfway. If the door between worlds were opening, then maybe he’d see more and understand. But he could trust neither his legs nor his eyes.
The air was brittle with anticipation, as if the ions were charged. A faint smokiness rode above the musty, cleaning-chemical smell of the room. The smoke was pungent enough to sting his nostrils and reminded him of the old coal-burning furnace from his elementary school, tucked away in a brick shed and surrounded by piles of reddish-gray cinders.
Why doesn’t she smell like patchouli or lavender, the scents she always dabbed on her wrist? Or the roses I laid on her casket, or the dirt from her grave, or the diesel fuel from the gravedigger’s tractor?
He was trying to impose logic on a miracle, but his mind was skittering away from the confrontation. What do you say when you need to say everything but don’t know how little time you have?
The threads weaved themselves in and out, a fabric of animated unlife.
You never have long, which is why you should never waste time.
And his thoughts were coming in her voice, the way they had in the months after her death, when he’d tried to pray but all he could do was blame God. Funny, but she’d never blamed the Big Guy Upstairs for her cancer, and Wayne had never had much use for an entity that supposedly had the power to make everything better but refused. But God was handy when you needed a scapegoat.
Anything besides accepting responsibility.
He swallowed and grabbed some air. “You look...wonderful.”
Like a teenager watching his prom date undress. Words without thought, another lie, because he wasn’t sure what she looked like.
Her face grew more solid, the mouth forming words, and he was no lip reader but it looked like she was trying to say “Kendra.” And something else.
Wayne squinted into the shifting morass of her eyes. They took on a frantic light and Wayne felt his muscles sag, as if she were drawing energy from him in order to deliver her message. And she looked afraid.
“Kendra,” her lips formed again, and her voice echoed in his mind, faintly enough that he could deny its existence if he wished, write it off the way he would if someone else had described the phenomenon.
“Yes?” he whispered, wondering if she could hear his voice in her head, too, or if that ephemeral, temporary skull could even hold thoughts.
“Get her out.”
He’d made a promise to meet, she’d held up her end of the bargain, jumping through God-only-knew-how-many hoops to get here, and now she wanted him to leave?
Right when she’d hinted at every secret he’d ever wanted to know, right when she held some answers, right when she could make him famous as the ghosthunter who had successfully proven life after death, right when Digger could become the world’s leading expert in something and finally gain Kendra’s respect and make her proud? Right when all the years of fooling around with gizmos in dark spaces was about to pay off? How could she be so goddamned selfish?
And her face was changing, as if she could read his thoughts, the cheeks crinkling in disappointment, and the face kept twisting, and Wayne didn’t know where his thoughts had come from, because it wasn’t the kind of thing he dwelled upon, all he wanted was to see her, love her, hold her one more time—
Her words, the world’s words, maybe even God’s words, roared through his flesh with a dozen voices.
“THIS IS NOT ME.”
Sounds from outside the room, tapping, knocking, pulled Wayne from his trance and he reached a trembling hand to his beloved wife, but she was changing, her face wizened and mottled, the shadows eating away at the fleeting flesh and only her teeth remained, gleaming pearls that seemed far too sharp. They were arced in a menacing, gleeful grin.
The door opened.
“Dad?”
Wayne stared transfixed into the corner where his wife—and Kendra’s mother—had drifted moments before.
“Dad, I’m sorry about...”
He couldn’t shake the image of Beth’s face in that last glimpse, before the night had reclaimed it. It wasn’t her, she’d said. Or had he only thought it?
Had any of it happened?
All he knew for sure was his cup was empty again.
“Jeebs, Dad, you’re crying.”
Lost her again.
Lost.
Chapter 21
Ann Vandooren had come to science the old-fashioned way: poking dead animals with sticks and dropping worms onto anthills. The offspring of an artist whose bisexuality had transformed into full-blown surgical transexuality and a Realtor specializing in rehabilitated commercial properties, Ann had evolved a world view that embraced both liberation and rigidity.
Her Catholic mother had dished out more than enough structured mysticism and church-approved dogma, rules that encouraged free thought as long as you stayed within the white lines. Her father, a devout Taoist whose favorite argument was that true Taoism couldn’t exist, constantly jousted with anyone who said there was only one path to God, enlightenment, or even the local drug store. But perhaps Mother was right after all, because when Dad turned, he legally changed his name to “Mary.”
Ann’s school years were a litany of academic awards and trips to the counselor, as she learned early on that intelligent, creative people were afforded more leeway and were more easily forgiven. Public education had little to do with children and everything to do with adults controlling, suppressing, and feeling good about themselves, so the prevailing wisdom was that any intelligent, creative kid was bound to be screwed up. And things would only get worse as that kid sought a slot in the real world, where only half of all drivers used their turn signals yet demanded air bags and other expensive safety gear for their vehicles.
By the time she attended North Carolina State University, she’d come to understand the delusions under which most people lived. Because they couldn’t accept the cold, hard facts of their lives, they concocted elaborate fantasies of religion and culture. They saw reality as somehow less inviting than a glorious heaven and harbored hope of better times ahead, even if that future could only come through the rite of passage known as “death.” And because most of them had made bad grades in science, all scientists were viewed with hostility and popular culture often painted them as crackpots, well-meaning but ultimately destructive subversives, or dispassionate observers of small things that didn’t matter.
Ann prided herself on being all three.
So when the paranormal fad started and even respected professional journals ventured into the field in an effort to publish something people would actually read, Ann took it as a tossing down of the gauntlet. Angels, Bigfoot, aliens, and conspiracy theories rarely depended upon objective measurements, but when hunters started buying high-tech equipment, the war was on. She was fully aware that debunking nonsense took away time and energy from real research, but if she could guide even a handful of people to their senses, then the human race ultimately logged an overall gain. For that was the real work of the scientist: to nudge the species just a little further along the path to enlightenment, truth, and understanding.
And, she had to admit, pissing off a flake gave her a serious case of damp squirmies.
“How’s my halo hanging?” Ann asked Duncan.
As usual after sex, Duncan was withdrawn and self-absorbed, his sweating head sunken into the pillow. Despite his verbal cockiness, he was sensitive about his performance, always trying to gauge the letter grade she would assign. She wasn’t as difficult to please as she acted, but figured playing with his ego would keep him rising to the challenge. Plus, when the inevitable day came that she needed to terminate the experiment, it would be easier to pour him down the sink.
“I saw it, Ann,” he said.
“You let a voodoo priestess put a picture in your head, boy. Power of suggestion.”
“It was creepy.”
�
��‘Creepy’? That’s hardly an objective description of a psychological experience.”
He rolled over, his eyes narrowed. “Damn it, Ann. I know your whole game is to get these people coming after you with torches and pitchforks, but I don’t know why you have to fight me, too.”
“Because I’m not sure whose side you’re on.”
“Reality isn’t a ‘side.’“
She reached for his bare belly and stroked the wiry hairs there, feeling him relax. She moved her fingers lower and he tensed. “We’re on the same team, boy.”
“The Vandooren Team.”
“The winners. Always stick with the winners.”
He exhaled heavily, his body responding to her touch. Brain chemicals aside, the manipulation of certain sensitive glands elicited a natural arousal response. People gave it names like “passion” and “love,” but the same response could be achieved in a frontal-lobotomy patient.
“You know how to run up the score,” he said.
“And don’t you forget it.” She gave him one final, alluring stroke, then released him and rolled out of bed, feeling his hungry eyes on her flesh. She turned away to hide her smile of triumph. “Almost midnight. Time to upload the images and let the show begin.”
She slipped into a black nightgown that was just flimsy enough to keep him distracted and crossed the room to the desk. The laptop and video gear was university property, state of the art, and Duncan’s ingenuity had allowed them to patch into SSI’s control-room monitors. The split screens showed the various hunts in progress, some operating with military efficiency and others scattered like a third-grade class field trip. She didn’t see her main target, Wayne Wilson, but a little more chum would help bloody the waters.
A group of six headed down the hall, led by the guy listed on the program as “The Roach.” He was decked out with enough gear to impress any armchair paranormalist, a walking advertisement for pseudoscience as sponsored by Radio Shack. If he shouted “Snake!” then no doubt his followers would jump.
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