by Tara Moss
I’d only ever heard the term used humorously. Hadn’t Morticia joked about spontaneously combusting?
‘His body was ashes, along with what they believe were his journals. The rest of the room, and the building, was untouched, they say. And his feet, also untouched. Still in his shoes.’
I felt sick.
‘But surely spontaneous human combustion is impossible,’ I said warily. ‘People don’t just burst into flames.’
‘Perhaps.’
I was quiet for some time after that. I just didn’t know how to respond to all this talk of paranormal research and telepathy and spirits and spontaneous combustion. It was tempting to imagine that my Great-Aunt Celia was as batty as an old lady could get, despite her deceivingly youthful appearance. (I still had no explanation for that, I remembered. Had I only imagined her fresh, unwrinkled face?)
‘What about his family? Did he have children?’
‘Ah, that is a sad piece of history,’ Celia said. ‘They had no children, but his widow hanged herself a year to the day after the fire. In the lobby, I believe. Quite a scandal. Taking your own life is a gruesome thing, really, don’t you think?’
I nodded.
‘Have you perhaps had any unusual experiences while you’ve been here?’ my great-aunt asked. Her eyes were studying me; steadily, calmly. They were not at all the eyes of a crazy old woman. My mind was still so fixated on the image of the sad widow hanging herself in the lobby that it took a moment for my handsome soldier to pop into my head.
Lieutenant Luke. And the woman on level three.
I broke Celia’s gaze, and looked at my hands. Does she know about Luke? I wondered. But how could she? He was only make-believe.
‘I have certain gifts, but I am not visited by the spirits of the dead,’ Celia told me with what sounded like mild regret. ‘Are you, Pandora?’
Was Celia suggesting my imaginings were real?
‘I don’t believe in that stuff,’ I responded weakly, not meeting Celia’s eyes. I sounded all wrong in my own ears because I knew I was lying. Or was I? I still didn’t know what I believed, or what I’d seen. But the thing was, I’d always seen something. Always. My imaginings had started at an early age, and though they had diminished until recently, I had never successfully blocked them out entirely, not even at Aunt Georgia’s – and let me tell you, Aunt Georgia is the last person on earth you would want to broach the subject of ghosts and psychic visions with. When I was thirteen I’d thought my dead mother was visiting me. We chatted a lot that year. She even taught me a bit about archaeology. I’d figured it was a stage of grief.
My thoughts were interrupted when Celia stood up from her leather reading chair, and smoothed out her dress. She slipped her shoes on with a series of delicate movements. ‘I’m sorry to have to run off like this,’ she declared.
I could see the conversation was over. I wondered if my resistance to what she had been telling me was to blame.
‘But I have a date,’ she finished.
This was perhaps the most surprising thing she’d said all evening.
‘Oh.’ I did my best to conceal my surprise, lest I insult her, um, date-ability. ‘Well, that’s wonderful. I, um, I hope you have a good time,’ I managed.
She grinned. ‘Oh, I will. Now don’t worry, we’ll talk more about all this later, Pandora, dear. Think about what I’ve said. I know you will have a lot of questions. I’m glad I’ve told you about this building, anyway. I hope things begin to make more sense. Goodnight – don’t wait up,’ she said, and walked to the door. She slipped a fox stole around her shoulders and unlocked the door. I noticed she didn’t bother with the mahogany cane, which was now leaning against the umbrella stand, discarded.
‘Oh, by the way, what’s your favourite number?’
I blinked. ‘Favourite number? Uh . . . seven,’ I replied.
Celia smiled knowingly. ‘Yes. Seven.’
I was truly confused now.
‘Do look after that cut, won’t you?’ Celia said calmly and stepped out. I still hadn’t put a Band-Aid on it, though the bleeding had stopped. ‘And don’t get up to no good.’
She knew about the third floor! I opened my mouth to apologise but the door had already clicked shut behind her.
I tried to be good. I really did.
I ate a small plate of pasta, sans garlic, and bathed in the claw-foot tub. For hours afterwards I sat in my room, in my nightie, with my feet snug under the blankets. I tried to read my book, but I couldn’t get into it. I started to make notes on the article I wanted to write about the BloodofYouth launch, but I couldn’t concentrate. Instead I stared at the ceiling cornices and replayed Great-Aunt Celia’s every word.
Spontaneous combustion. Psychical research. Hauntings.
Could my great-aunt be confirming my lifetime of imaginings as real? For nineteen years I’d been told that I was weird and different and unnatural and wrong. I had an overactive imagination, I was told. And yet, if I’d understood her correctly, my aunt seemed to be suggesting that all that time it was my accusers who had been wrong, and not me. It was a staggering idea.
Level three. Go back down to level three.
If my imaginings were real, I had to know for sure. What was the thing on the third floor? Was it a ghost? Was I really psychic? A medium of some kind? The new explorer in me simply had to go down there and test this theory. If there was another ghost down there, a ghost like Lieutenant Luke, then what harm could it do to meet her? And since I was definitely awake, I positively knew I wasn’t dreaming; if I saw something, I would be sure I hadn’t imagined it. That would settle it, I decided.
I pulled off my nightie, and put on my favourite pair of jeans and a T-shirt, wrapped my warm winter shawl around me and left the penthouse, armed with a kitchen knife (well, it was New York) and a confidence buoyed by a lifetime of curiosity.
‘Sorry, Celia,’ I said aloud as I got into the lift and pressed the button for level three.
The gothic machinery began to rattle downwards. It didn’t have far to go, but by the time the doors opened again, my heart was in my throat.
I stepped out. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ I stood still on the landing just outside the lift, which closed behind me with its customary rattle. ‘Hellooooo?’
I paced from one end of the landing to the other. The doors were still locked of course. I stood against the railing, and then leaned, listening intently. But there was nothing.
After perhaps the longest ten minutes of my life I decided this attempt at communicating with the dead was utterly ridiculous. Just because I thought I’d seen a nude woman hanging around earlier, didn’t mean she would be here now. And just because I had a new, revolutionary perspective on my visions, that didn’t mean they would walk up and welcome me into this new understanding.
Fool.
I turned to walk back to the lift – then stopped.
A pale figure was folded into the corner at the opposite end of the landing, holding her knees to her chest. It was the woman I’d seen earlier.
I hadn’t imagined her. She was there. She was real – or as real as a ghost could be. That’s what she had to be. A ghost. Like the butcher all those years ago. Like Luke.
‘Hello,’ I said, steeling myself. ‘I am Pandora English. I come in peace.’ What is this, an alien movie? ‘I mean to say, I won’t harm you,’ I told the figure. ‘I’m going to approach you now.’ I carefully placed the kitchen knife on the floor between my feet.
I walked slowly towards the crouching figure, finding myself barely able to breathe. This was by no means the first ghost I had encountered, but now that Celia had encouraged me to believe that what I was seeing was real, it felt very different. I stopped a safe distance away – perhaps two metres.
‘Hello. What’s your name?’ I asked, both terrified and fascinated.
‘Why am I here?’ the woman asked me, looking over my head, and from side to side. She ran bloodless fingers over her young face and began to rock back and forth. ‘Wh
y am I here? Where am I?’ she pleaded.
I bit my lip. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. You’re asking the wrong psychic, if that’s what I am. I don’t know how this stuff works yet,’ I apologised.
I moved closer and offered her my hand. She took it in hers, and to my surprise she felt as real as any human I’d touched, only much, much cooler. She stood up and I blushed. She was nude, after all. Not to mention deceased and evidently a little puzzled about it.
‘Here, why don’t you cover yourself?’ I suggested, offering her my shawl.
She took it and wrapped it around herself.
‘Thank you,’ she said vaguely, then stood listlessly in the corner, silent.
I wondered what I could say to help her with her questions. ‘Well, my Great-Aunt Celia and I just had a very interesting talk tonight – she owns the building, you see, and she says this place was designed to strengthen paranormal activity. That could be why you are here, now that you are, um . . .’ Dead.
This particular ghost did not appear edified by my explanation of the building’s unusual qualities.
‘I’ve already met one other ghost here,’ I added quietly, thinking of Luke. The ghost before me had a very different quality about her, though; she seemed much more ‘real’ than the lieutenant, if very pale. I hadn’t seen her go all nebulous yet. And her hand had felt quite real when I’d taken it in mine. ‘Do you remember this place?’ I asked her. ‘Did you live here?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t recognise things . . . well, maybe a little.’ She looked around her, seeming unsure. ‘You are the only person I’ve seen who will talk to me.’
This made me feel better, like I was doing an afterlife public service of some kind.
‘It’s okay. Just stay calm. I know we will figure this out.’ And then what? I’ll send her to heaven? I was possibly a medium, but I wasn’t God. ‘Have you been here long?’ I asked the nude ghost.
She shook her head again. ‘I don’t think so.’ Her lower lip trembled. Was hers the death I had sensed when I first entered the building? Was that possible? The ghost woman turned and leaned against the wall. She began to cry.
‘Did you say ghost? I’m dead?’
I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so,’ I replied, for lack of less morbid answer.
At this she became hysterical. ‘I’m dead!’ she screamed. ‘I’m dead! I’m dead!’
I bit my lip again, and put my hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her. She threw her arms in the air, pushing me away. ‘I’m dead! Oh, I’m dead!’
‘Oh no! Oh, I’m sorry! It’s just that I thought . . .’ Well, I had thought it was a rhetorical question, actually. ‘You don’t remember anything? You don’t remember what happened to you?’ I asked her.
Another head shake. She was calming now. Her face grew slack and her arms fell to her sides. ‘I was on the shoot, and then . . . and then I can’t remember anything.’
‘On the shoot?’ I repeated, puzzled. Then a thought struck me.
Was it possible?
‘Is your name Samantha?’ I asked, shocked. I held my breath, waiting for her reply.
‘Samantha,’ she repeated dreamily. ‘Yes, Samantha. I am Samantha.’
I could hardly believe it. This was my predecessor at Pandora! I recognised her from the photograph in her desk, I realised now. But how did she come to be dead and haunting Celia’s building? That was a pretty big coincidence. And it was just a coincidence . . . wasn’t it?
‘You don’t know why you are here?’ I queried.
‘No. I don’t think I know this place. Or, maybe I do, but I can’t recall.’
I thought about that. ‘Well, maybe it’s me then? Because I got your job?’ I seemed to be the only link.
Will I be haunted by all the previous employees of Pandora magazine? I wondered fleetingly. Because I could see that being a full-time job.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked. I brought my hands to her face, imploring her to remember. (She certainly felt awfully ‘firm’ under my hands. Not at all like the misty Civil War soldier.) ‘Did someone harm you?’ I cocked my head. ‘What’s that on your neck?’ I pulled my hands away, and my fingers raked across the seam of my jeans.
‘What? What?’ she asked, trying to look at her own neck, which was of course impossible.
My goodness.
‘Those look like . . . bite marks. Bite marks on your neck.’ I backed away slowly, my legs trembling like the earth was giving way beneath me.
Could it be? Bite marks? Fang marks?
Oh my goodness. My sweet, generous, helpful, far-too-young-looking, light-avoiding, garlic-hating Great-Aunt Celia is a vampire and she killed this poor girl so I could get her job!
I covered my mouth with my hand to stop myself screaming.
‘What is it?’ dead Samantha asked, still tilting her head to try to catch a glimpse of her neck.
‘Nothing. I take that back. Forget I said anything.’ Oh, this was bad. This was very, very bad. Had my nice great-aunt sucked this woman dry to get me a job? Really? No. I couldn’t convict Celia solely on the possible presence of bite marks on the neck of an apparition living downstairs from her. That just wouldn’t be right. Would it? I needed a second opinion. But from whom?
I broke off from musing when I realised that dead Samantha seemed to be undergoing some kind of change. Her eyes turned as dark as jet, and she was staring fixedly at my hand with a glittering gaze. It took me a moment to understand that she was focusing on the end of my finger. My cut was bleeding. I even had a little blood on the seam of my jeans.
Dead Samantha opened her mouth into a hideous snarl and this time I couldn’t repress my scream. This nice, confused young dead woman had fangs!
What the hell? She lunged and I backed away as fast as I could.
‘Whoa! Wait!’ I yelped.
She wasn’t dead. She was undead. Big difference.
I thought of the garlic I’d tossed out on account of Celia. Just my luck it was in the dumpster downstairs instead of in a bag beside me as it had been when I’d first seen her. Perhaps that was the reason she had run.
Oh!
Quite out of nowhere, there was a crushing blow between us, and the young fanged woman was thrown back two metres. She fell to the floor of the landing with a thud, and lay there, looking even more confused than before. All the aggression went out of her.
‘I’m sorry. What happened?’ she murmured from the floor. ‘Where am I?’
I felt quite cold suddenly, and not only because the creature on the floor was wearing my shawl. The air around me was moist and cool, like a cloud. In front of me the figure of Lieutenant Luke Thomas formed, slowly at first, and then quite quickly. He placed his arms around me protectively.
‘Let’s get you back upstairs,’ he said urgently.
I had no objection to the plan.
My dead soldier friend guided me into the lift, and when we got out I let us into the apartment, though I suspected he didn’t need me to open the door for him.
Celia wasn’t home yet, I was relieved to see. I led Luke into my room, closed the door and sat on the edge of my bed, doing my best to hold myself together.
‘I didn’t need you to rescue me,’ I said for the second time that night. This time, however, it probably wasn’t true.
Lieutenant Luke held his cap in his hand. ‘Really? Because it sure seemed like you needed—’
‘Okay, okay. Maybe I did need you to rescue me a little,’ I admitted. ‘I thought she was a ghost, like you! No ghost has ever hurt me. I didn’t realise that there are . . .’ I trailed off.
‘Vampires?’ he said.
‘Exactly. Those.’
‘There are a lot of things in Spektor,’ Lieutenant Luke informed me. ‘It is best not to go out alone after dark here.’
That fact was finally sinking in.
‘It’s this building,’ he said. ‘It is the nucleus of the whole neighbourhood, and it has changed everything increasingly, year by ye
ar, since it was erected. Though from what I’ve heard the rest of New York is not much safer at night,’ he said, perhaps trying to lighten the mood.
Spektor had seemed strange, I’ll grant, but then I hadn’t been around much. Who was I to judge what was strange after growing up in a town like Gretchenville? We’d had plenty of bizarre deaths and scandals there, even a little boy who was abducted by a paedophile. With such monsters around, were vampires so hard to believe? Ghosts?
‘That girl is new here,’ Luke said. ‘I’ve not seen her before. I think she is a very new vampire.’
That explained her air of confusion, anyway.
‘I’d be careful of her. The new ones are unpredictable.’ And the older ones aren’t? I wondered. ‘You won’t leave now, will you, Miss Pandora?’
‘Leave the apartment? Not tonight!’
‘No, Miss Pandora. I mean, you won’t leave Spektor, will you?’
I thought about that and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m afraid that Celia might be . . . well, dangerous.’
‘Oh no,’ Luke said. ‘No.’ He moved closer. ‘May I sit?’
I nodded and he sat next to me, barely making an indent in the bed. He put an arm around my shoulder. It felt cool and wonderful. ‘Don’t be afraid of Ms Celia. She would never hurt you. You are safe up here in the penthouse. No one will hurt you here. And she tried to warn you not to go out at night,’ he reasoned.
So had Harold. ‘I know but . . .’ But I think she may have made someone ‘undead’ in order to get me a job. That’s just taking the friendship too far, even if she’d done it with my best interests at heart.
‘Miss Pandora, please don’t leave,’ Luke begged. His bright blue eyes implored me to stay. ‘I haven’t had anyone to talk to in so long. I really like you, Miss Pandora.’
‘I like you, too,’ I found myself saying.
Our eyes met. And then our lips met.
What a sensation.
Luke’s lips were soft as pillows, and he held me with a passion I had never before experienced. Okay, I hadn’t been kissed a lot, but wow, this was quite a different kind of kiss to those of the boys back in my hometown. My only ‘steady’ back in Gretchenville had been Ben Roberts, whom I’d known since we were six, but we were just learning about kissing four years ago. After he moved away with his family at sixteen, there were some other boys, the usual embarrassing fumblings from time to time – a badly manoeuvred tongue in my ear while watching DVDs downstairs at Aunt Georgia’s, that sort of thing. Ultimately, the local boys didn’t interest me. I think I could count the boys I’d kissed on one hand. And they sure didn’t know how to do what dead Lieutenant Luke Thomas was doing to me right now.