The Man Who Would Not Die

by Thomas Page

  “They each got him within three months when the state licensing boards checked him. It took us seven.”

  “As I said, he was a good doctor.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ll never forgive him. How can we explain this?”

  “We won’t, sir. Let those who were offended smear him.”

  “Ah. Excellent. Cast the first stone.” Phrasing it in Scripture oriented Branch. He nodded approvingly. “Very good, Lawrence. Maybe it’s for the best anyway. Jameson would have ended up in prison.” Dutton stood up to go.

  “By the way, Lawrence, you didn’t believe that ordure about ghosts, did you?”

  Dutton allowed himself a small laugh. “Oh, I never got over learning there wasn’t an Easter bunny.” He left the office before Branch questioned him further.

  Under the canopy, Daniel Forrester’s chest rose and fell in steady breaths. Dutton watched the body for a few minutes. If Jones were right about Forrester’s ghost killing Jameson, it seemed to Dutton that the next target would be the Clayton clinic. However, Jones was crazy. Dutton found that a comforting thought. Jones was crazy, the tower controller had seen someone else, and Daniel Forrester was safe under glass. Dutton liked thinking that. If he kept at it long enough, he might even begin to believe it.

  In the space under the sign blaring SHERATON was a smaller, embarrassed message reading Welcome Class of 62, St. Helen’s College. Italian food was being catered in the main dining room. Kate showed up after six, wondering if she weren’t making a serious mistake.

  Such functions serve as yardsticks to measure how well one is advancing in life and career. At best they renew old friendships, at worst they are profoundly depressing. A soap opera of tragedies, triumphs, slapstick, and pathos descended on Kate’s head. Martha got cancer and died. Shiralee committed suicide. Margaret had married a master seaman and founded an employment agency in Belfast which was blown up by the IRA. Edith’s oldest child was born without a heart valve. Carolyn’s husband has a mistress in New York and she sleeps with the gardener in Connecticut and they all lunch together. Everyone hauled out family pictures which looked alike to Kate. Everyone had 2.4 children named Michelle or Wayne, everyone earned fifty thousand a year, everyone jogged in Westchester, Long Island, or Orange County, and their husbands were named Barry, Robert, or Stan, everyone played tennis, tie-dyed scarves, and practiced the recorder in the closet.

  The class valedictorian, a girl named Jennifer, said to Kate, “Poor George.”

  “George who? Oh. Hadley. My Hadley? What’s wrong with him?”

  “I thought you’d know! He died, I heard. Did he ever marry that Stanford girl?”

  “What Stanford girl?”

  “Kate!” said Jennifer, shocked. “There’s no sense of community in the twentieth century. Nobody keeps track of anybody.”

  “We lost track of each other after graduation. When did he pass away?”

  “I don’t know, I thought you would. That’s why I mentioned it. I mean I think he died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Kate mused. “He would have made a good Republican.”

  By then Kate was ambling over to a small clump of people surrounding one classmate who was round and plump and pink. Kate exclaimed “Nora Stone!”

  “Kate!” Two tiny hands warmly clutched hers, a tricky feat since a pink daiquiri was in one of them. “How are you!”

  Kate looked her over. The years rolled lumpily on. Here was Nora Stone, the little mouse who never spoke in class, holding a dozen women in some kind of spell.

  One of the grads, Ann Cascarelli, said, “Tell Kate what you do for a living, Nora.”

  Nora giggled and covered her face.

  Ann said, “Nora is a psychic.”

  “I just moonlight,” exclaimed Nora. “Actually I have a wonderful husband, two kids, and a Japanese station wagon.”

  Kate was intrigued. “You read minds and stuff?”

  Ann interrupted. “No, no. A psychic medium. She cases ghosts. Nora’s rated very high in the business.”

  They were all enthralled as they listened to Nora roll on about spirits and haunts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night. She told them about the Welsh apparition who blurted out the community’s sexual peccadilloes during church services; the Englishwoman in India who saw her brother walk in the door at the exact moment he was killed in France; the North Carolina farmer who appeared in a dream to tell his son where he had hidden a will that had long evaded searchers. The son found it sewn into the father’s overcoat.

  “What are ghosts made of?” asked Jennifer. “Light? Dark? Wind? Air?”

  Nora explained the current thinking about ghosts. If the unconscious mind coughs up a picture of Hamlet’s father walking the battlements of his castle, the conscious mind reacts with shock and surprise. Gurney and Myers, founders of the Society for Psychical Research in England, were convinced that ghosts were an entirely telepathic experience, originating from the same part of the unconscious that engenders ESP. The unconscious explains why ESP is so inconsistent and uncontrollable, even in labs, and why so many people see ghosts while they’re asleep and dreaming.

  However, the telepathy concept lets all kinds of cats out of the bag. It is believed that some people are telepathic senders and others, receivers. Could ghost witnesses actually be receiving messages from someone? Did one of Joan of Arc’s neighbors or family actually send the message from heaven? Was Jesus’s returned form actually a mental picture sent by one of his disciples to the others? Clearly, some kind of theoretical structure explaining the survival of life after death was needed.

  That structure may have been unintentionally supplied by Albert Einstein. Einstein smashed the physical world into forces, particles, and mysteries that defy time and space yet have been proven to exist.

  In the 1950s, a pair of British researchers theorized that there may be particles called “psychons”—particles or waves of the Einsteinian sort which are shed by the unconscious mind after death and which can generate pictures in the human subconscious of people much as tiny photons can build huge vivid structures called holograms.

  “The only possible explanation for a ghost,” Nora Stone said, “is that it is the distilled unconscious. At death, the body returns to the elements and consciousness dies. The unconscious is all that could live on. And that explains why ghosts seem to be sleepwalkers. Ghosts are stupid, they constantly walk the same streets, say the same things over and over, look out the same windows. They behave as if they’re completely unconscious.”

  Somebody asked, “But don’t they leave footprints and writing and stuff like that?”

  “No,” Nora Stone said. But, she qualified herself. They create the illusion of doing things. This is because the unconscious can be quite vivid, more real in fact than reality itself, as anyone who’s ever had a nightmare can attest.

  “You’d think scientists could catch them, or something, with all the equipment they have.”

  “Why, yes,” breathed Nora Stone, “but isn’t it awful how researchers are always too early or too late? If only somebody could find a house where the ghost showed up on the dot everyday. Very suspicious, isn’t it? But that’s the subconscious for you, it’s totally undependable and beyond control, you never dream what you want, or remember things. Did you ever break a watch? Or radio? Then when a repairman looked at it, it worked perfectly. Ghosts are maddening, like broken machines.”

  Ann asked, “What’s the last real ghost you saw?”

  Nora Stone clasped her tiny hand to her bosom. “Oh, my! Four days ago I found a real pip! He wasn’t quite materialized but was he ever on the way! Very odd. And very powerful too.”

  “Where?” asked Kate.

  “At this . . .” Nora Stone stopped cold and looked at Kate with sharp curiosity. It was just a small movement but it made Kate wonder if she’d spilled a drink on h
erself. “. . . little town up the coast called Santa Eulalia.”

  It was some seconds before Kate pinned down Santa Eulalia as the little town where Daniel Forrester grew up.

  Ann stood up and said, “Let’s break for dinner before the food turns to stone.”

  “What kind of ghost was it?” asked a classmate across the bursting floral arrangements lining the dining table.

  “A man,” Nora answered. “It’s a fairly new house. Heaven knows what he’s doing there.”

  “Any idea who?” asked Kate.

  In an abrupt change of mood, Nora said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  Down the table Jennifer was slaughtering a bean salad. She said, “It’s a gift, Nora. You should use it.”

  “But I don’t like it,” protested Nora.

  “Why? Are ghosts dangerous?”

  “Not usually. Less than ten percent of the sightings involved malevolence. I just don’t think the living and the dead should mix. It’s like ants and termites. Having a ghost around, even a friendly one, is like having a cobra in the house. Even the tamest one will bite. Ghosts are something you should have a phobia against.”

  Jennifer said, “The R complex.”

  “What’s that?” asked Ann.

  “That’s what I got for taking an adult course in psychology. It fits what Nora said very nicely. The R complex is the reptilian element in the subconscious. The seat of rage and ecstasy and repetitive behavior.” Jennifer told them about the scientist Paul MacLean’s work which began in the early 1960s. MacLean described the human brain as somewhat like the three layers of an onion. The topmost part, the gray matter, is the center of thought and cogitation. Under it is the mammalian layer called the limbic system, from which elemental emotions such as maternal love and social feelings emanate. And beneath them all lies the most primitive structure of the brain, the R complex, the swirling, ferocious engine of subconscious emotion. It is because of the R complex that humans feel deep satisfaction when they celebrate the religious holidays or stick to fashion in their dress or indulge in any activity reflecting repetitive and cere­monial behavior. The R complex exerts its control over some of the most mundane of daily activities. Take away a cigarette from a heavy smoker and watch him turn into a rattlesnake, bursting with barely controlled rage.

  Nora Stone opened her mouth and stared at Jennifer with delight. “Oh, I must remember this! It’s exactly right. A reptile.”

  Jennifer continued. “The way I would envision it is pretty much what you said. Ghosts walk the same streets night after night. Remove the consciousness, you’re left with the R complex of this guy. He doesn’t think because he doesn’t have a mind. Instead of intelligence he has instinct and cunning which looks like intelligence. It’s pure passion. It’s why there was a snake in the Garden of Eden.”

  Kate said, “I had an uncle who was an alcoholic. Some days he was very sweet, other days he beat the hell out of everybody, and never remembered it. Two different people living inside of one man. The booze let it out.”

  Jennifer said to Nora, “Kate here is a journalist. Why not send her to find out why the ghost is in that house?”

  Kate enthusiastically agreed. “I’d love to. I’m in the middle of an article that isn’t working out . . .”

  “Katie, don’t!” Nora’s panic was so vociferous it nearly stopped the dinner.

  Kate shrugged, her face burning. “Fine. Forget it.” She concentrated on her dinner.

  The gathering broke up around ten o’clock. Outside at the parking lot, Kate found herself next to Nora Stone’s station wagon. Nora had barricaded herself in a huge angora sweater and was poking in her purse. Nora took out a piece of paper and wrote down a name and address. She pressed it into Kate’s hand. “I shouldn’t be giving you this, Katie.”

  Beneath Nora’s number and address were the words “27 Ridgeset Lane, Santa Eulalia.” Nora said, “That’s the house. The family moved out of it the day after I was there.”

  “Nora, forget it. If it bothers you.”

  “No, you wanted to know. Maybe you should. That’s what journalists are for. I always admired you, Kate, even in school. You don’t scare easily like me.”

  “Come on, Nora, if I ever saw a real ghost I’d end up splattered on the ceiling.”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts, haven’t you heard?”

  Kate tapped the paper in her hand and decided on a frontal assault. “When you mentioned the name of the town, why did you look at me?”

  Nora wiped a wisp of hair from her face. In the hard light of the parking zone, her face had more character than her shiny softening makeup revealed. “I don’t know. Sometimes I get little stabs of something. Déjà vu I guess.”

  “I wish you’d say what you’re thinking in plain English.”

  “Very well. Somebody’s looking for you, Katie.”

  Kate smiled and squeezed Nora’s arm. “I am impressed.”

  “You are?”

  “You’ve converted me, Nora. You’re right, somebody from Santa Eulalia is trying to get in touch with me. A live one.”

  Nora looked at Kate, mystified. “Kate, listen here. Stay in touch. Call me anytime, day or night, for any reason. Will you do that? Now I must go. Mike worries if I drive any further than a yard at night.” After a brief cheek touch, Nora got in her car and drove off.

  CHAPTER 8

  It began to rain in Clayton at seven-thirty. At the main desk, Bernice fought and won a battle to refuse that last potato chip. Every New Year she vowed to lose weight, every spring she was down twenty pounds, yet every summer it was back again.

  On the desk console, Daniel Forrester’s heart began to fibrillate. His breathing was choked and his blood pressure plunged down. There was a last lung-filling inspiration, then the beep and light appeared, signaling a cardiac arrest. Bernice called Branch’s office.

  “Sir, his heart has stopped.”

  “Thank you, Bernice.” Branch’s voice sounded weak, as though he were taking a nap and had just been awakened. Bernice wondered why all three doctors were here tonight.

  She listened to the rain for a few seconds, then greeted Dr. Dutton who came through the doors separating the IC ward from the rest of the clinic. Dutton studied the console of Forrester’s heart functions. He said, “We’re not treating him, we’re preserving him. This is the world’s most expensive formaldehyde jar.”

  Overhead the long fluorescent light crackled and sputtered to a gloomy dullness. Dutton searched Bernice’s desk for a flashlight and went down to the basement to check the wiring. “Too much power,” he grumbled as he slammed the door.

  Jones was in Mrs. Cheever’s room when the lights on the second floor went down. He had spiked her with sedative to dull the pain of a draining abdominal cyst and she hardly noticed the interference blizzard snowing out the Leslie Howard movie on the color television.

  In the next room, a patient named John English whose face and chest were burned by an oil burner explosion complained, “I thought visitors weren’t allowed this late.”

  “They aren’t. Why?”

  “Some guy just looked in here.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Big guy with a blue coat and fairy yellow hair. And what’s happening to the heating system anyhow?”

  Jones looked round at the flickering lights and felt the creeping cold. “In the mountains, Mr. English, we’re subject to power failures, avalanches, and bigfoots. I’ll check on it.”

  At the wall phone, Jones dialed the guard, an elderly gunslinger named George Stepansky. “George?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did anybody come into the clinic in the past ten minutes?”

  “No, sir, no way.”

  “I think you’re wrong. Keep your eyes open.”

  “I ain’t wrong, Dr. Jones, I�
�m at the front door.”

  Jones decided against calling Evan Branch in his office. There was no point in taxing that rusty heart. Instead he dialed Bernice. “Bernice, is Forrester in arrest?”

  “Yes, sir, since three minutes ago. Dr. Dutton went downstairs to check the circuitry. He thinks the LS overloaded it again.”

  Slowly Jones hung up the wall phone. He noted the quality and ubiquity of the cold air, how it came from no particular source and how with the flickering lights, the walls filled with faint scrabbling and knocking sounds as though mice were loose inside.

  Further down the hall a drug closet was built into the wall. The double-locked door flew open, bursting the steel padlocks, banging so hard against the wall the hinges bent. From within came the sound of the refrigerator door opening and the gurgling explosions of bursting bottles, showering glass and phials of needles all over the floor. After opening and shutting repeatedly, the refrigerator toppled over onto the floor face down.

  Jones dialed Stepansky again, surprised by how badly his hands were shaking. There was no answer, only an angry howl on the line. The phones were out of action.

  Being fifty-five years old, Stepansky knew he was headed toward the end of a totally undistinguished life and was kept on as a guard in the clinic more out of pity than need. With his asthma he liked being close to a medical facility.

  Stepansky had just finished speaking with Jones and was wondering what in hell was happening with the lights when the hall door from Branch’s office opened and a tall man in a blue blazer, pressed gray pants, and loafers walked in. As he passed Stepansky he held up a calming hand. “It’s all right,” he said, passing through the other ward door.

  “Yes, sir,” said Stepansky, sitting at the desk to call his wife. His finger was poised over the dial when a triple whammy of a delayed reaction went off in his mind. Visiting hours were long over. What was that guy doing here?

  He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand and looked down both halls. They were empty. He walked down the hall to where an elderly woman read a magazine in her room. “Excuse me ma’am, did some guy just walk by here?”