by Thomas Page
Lorraine brightened at that. “Oh, I do so love grovelers.”
Kate called several Realtors in Santa Eulalia before finding the one who handled the place. He sighed, “Ghosts. Shit. Why not? Take pictures. I’ll sell the place to a divinity school, the kids can practice on it.” He agreed to provide keys and warned her the place had no electricity. Kate poured a triple load of cat food for Mr. Fudd, who was outraged at being abandoned again, packed her camera, flash, and two rolls of film into her bag, and within the hour was heading up the coast highway.
It was a lousy day for ghost-hunting. The sun was bright, the Pacific on her left was gay with foam, and the bluff hills lining the sea never looked more austerely beautiful. She reached Santa Eulalia by two in the afternoon.
It was one of those towns that came and went nowhere, not because of a desire to hold onto tradition or keep things the way they are but because it was slightly dazed by its own existence. Everything consisted of flat concrete, coated with powdery dust. The suburbs were in the eastern section where trees and grass backed up onto foothills that soared up to the bluffs. Santa Eulalia was not much of a home to be from.
Kate found the Realtor, who looked at her camera and said, “That’s a nice camera there, did you ever write for Cosmopolitan?” while drawing a map to the house on back of an envelope.
The houses on Ridgeset Lane were small, two-story affairs made of white wood, set back from the road by lush lawns, shaded by imported trees. They had front yards and were separated from each other by white fences. Punched into the lawn before the haunted house was a sign reading star realty. The neighboring houses were empty at this hour.
Kate snapped a few pictures of the front of the house as the afternoon sun sank behind the bluffs, casting long photogenic shadows, nice moody lighting. She could tell that the second-floor corner window was closed. That was the room where the dead man supposedly walked. She examined it through her telephoto but saw only bare walls inside.
So far things were disappointing. The trouble with this house was that it was so cosy and nice she wouldn’t have minded living in it herself. She unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
Instantly she was cut off from the world of people, trees, grass, and reality. To her right was a spacious living room, a hall which led to a kitchen at the back of the house, and a downstairs bathroom. Directly ahead was a flight of narrow wooden stairs flanked by a carved wooden bannister. Kate paused to snap a few shots of the living room walls, which were dappled by sunlight coming through the trees. The air was cool, the smells were of musty, dusty, shuttered rooms. She glanced in the kitchen, noting a door leading to the basement.
Then slowly she began to creep up the stairs. The house answered with an engulfing moan of creaking wood. Her footsteps sounded harsh and distracting and the house was acknowledging her presence with its own protests.
She dearly wished the house would quiet down. Even when she stood still, it creaked and groaned. The sounds multiplied as she went up. Wood planking rubbed against itself, tree branches scratched the windows and walls, doors creaked on hinges like ship’s rigging bending under a wind. Kate rattled the bannister and stomped the stairs.
Out loud she said, “Shut up, please.”
When she got to the second floor, she realized how nervous she was. Creaking sounds flowed across the floor ahead of her feet toward the corner room. As she leaned against the top bannister post, she listened to the stairs squeal.
This is stupid. This is where ghosts come from, an overwrought imagination which jumps at every sound.
Even the pipes in the bathroom were noisy. Kate took a few shots of the second-floor hall and, because her own noises quieted her tension, opened and slammed the door shut a few times.
“Keep quiet, I can’t think,” she cried. Her heart thundered blood through her brain, making her dizzy and, in some weird reversal of body functioning, extremely cold. Her feet and fingers were icy.
Poor me, poor delicate me, fair damsel trapped in a freezing house on a sunny afternoon with the first fingers of hell reaching for her. . . . That was utter bullshit. Kate did not believe in ghosts. She was here to make a living, but the subconscious indulged its own fears regardless of logic. Kate did not believe Nora Stone, thinking her sweet but goofy.
Mad at herself, Kate rattled the bannister again. Her hand shook so, it was hard to cock the camera, much less focus it. As she walked to the corner room, her eyes flashed round the hall, terrified at missing some dark space where something like a mouse could be hiding.
She leaned in the doorway for support. Get in, snap some pictures, then scram like a cheetah, forget the house and stick to sex articles. The doorknob was so cold she yanked her fingers back. “Ouch,” she cried.
The room was painted a bright yellow, perfectly innocent and as clean as the surface of an egg. She snapped the window, the floor, and the doorway. There was nothing else to photograph in here.
Then Kate realized someone else was in the house. She thought she saw a shadow scurry from the doorway. The squeals, the squeaks, the groans, and moaning joints coalesced into the spaced, coherent sounds of footsteps walking up the stairs and down the hall toward this room. Kate figured rationally that the Realtor must have come in.
But rationality doesn’t count for much at such moments. Rationality was blown clean out of her head as it seemed that funnels of freezing darkness swirled in the air round her, compressing out of her soul the purest natural terror she had ever experienced. The camera slipped from her hands to the floor.
Paralyzed and speechless, she faced the doorway. Tears flooded her eyes, making the tall figure standing there waver like a column of smoke. Her stomach turned and the freezing cold made her legs weak. But then relief descended on her. Daniel Forrester stood in the doorway, smiling his flashbulb smile with an intensity that seemed to drill through her head.
Kate was too far gone to be embarrassed about sinking to the floor. She muttered, “Daniel . . .” and felt her legs fold up. She saved herself from a serious fall by hitting the wall and sliding to a sitting position. Her fingers scrabbled for the camera strap. “Daniel, I . . .”
Daniel Forrester made no move to help her. He remained in the doorway with that huge grin splayed across his face.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Daniel, you frightened me . . . you scared me so . . .”
Daniel Forrester radiated pure happiness at seeing her. In his blue blazer and gray pants, he looked absolutely smashing. He had always been a man of uncommon presence.
Her camera felt heavy as a cannonball in her hands as she got to her feet. “Okay, don’t help me. I’ll save myself.” Once upright, she dusted herself off and slung the camera round her neck. Then she confronted him and that was when she had her second shock, nothing so ghastly as when she had heard him coming but nevertheless a shock sufficient to cause her to step backwards.
Maybe it was his smile, so wide and goofy. More likely it was that distant, sleepy, slightly stupid expression behind the smile, as though he were stoned. What unsettled Kate was the fact that rather than dulling Daniel, the look had released some kind of animal power. Daniel Forrester came across as a mean dazed drunk, his hooded eyes portals to a ferocity that positively beamed from his whole body. The smile was perfectly awful, yet he had never looked healthier, more tanned, fit, and extraordinarily vivid than he did now.
Mystified, Kate looked him up and down. “Daniel? Remember me? Remember old Kate?”
Daniel Forrester spoke.
“What did you say? I can’t hear you,” she said.
“Kate.” The single word was full and emotional, yet so low she could hardly believe the sound made its way across the room.
Kate took a step toward him, her hand out.
Daniel Forrester’s smile blinked off, replaced by rigid fear so palpable and sudden that she froze.
“Stay there,” she said. “What? Okay
. It’s good to see you, Daniel.”
Daniel Forrester turned his right hand palm up and held it before his face. Then he turned it toward her. “Can you see that?”
“Daniel, you’ll have to speak louder.”
“Can you see it? See this?”
“I can see your hand. Yes.” Kate shifted her camera strap to the other shoulder.
Mistaking the gesture for a move toward him, Forrester stepped back. “Don’t come near me.” He seemed to be crying. Yet as Kate looked at him, she saw no tears.
What in hell was the matter with him?
“Daniel, what’s happened to you? What’s wrong?”
“God have mercy on me. Dear God, have mercy on me.”
His sorrow was on the grand scale, as overwhelming as his voice had been in her dream. Nonplussed, Kate fiddled with her camera strap. “But what is it?”
“In the name of God, don’t touch me, Kate.” His voice changed to indistinct mumbles, its volume falling like the volume on a radio being turned from high to low. “I can’t . . . believe what’s happened to me . . . accept . . . yes . . .”
“Can I help?”
“No one can help. Nobody.”
Kate tried to sort out her impressions. He seemed to have trouble completing sentences as though he could not keep his mind on one thought for any length of time. Definitely he was on some kind of drug or in the midst of a total crackup. She wondered if anything she said got through to him.
“Daniel, what are you doing here?”
“Dreaming . . . don’t know . . .”
“Dreaming what?”
“Torture. I’m in this room . . . they won’t leave me alone, Kate.” His voice became wheedling, pitiable. “I can’t sleep . . . they wake me up . . .”
“Who?”
“Doctors!” The voice segued to a snarl in one of those fast mood changes. “Bastards . . . I’ll get them . . . all of them.”
With a sinking heart, Kate realized the man was completely beyond her. Clearly some catastrophic event had unhinged him since the day he’d left the lodge. He was wandering around Santa Eulalia under the influence of some kind of monster tranquilizer. He must be here to see his parents or relatives. He was no longer living in Marina. Or were his parents dead? Kate couldn’t remember but she knew she would have to walk carefully around him. He was fixated on doctors, probably because of the doubts he had about that machine.
“Daniel, I’d like to help you.”
“Blackouts,” he said.
“What? I do wish you’d speak more loudly. You have blackouts?”
Daniel Forrester mumbled to himself.
“Is that how you got in here? During a blackout?”
“Yes.”
At that moment, Kate’s heart went out to him. The thought of this vigorous, good-natured man who’d been her lover wandering round Santa Eulalia in a tranquilized haze was appallingly sad. She was certain this was temporary; at bottom he was quite strong.
“Daniel. Listen to me. You know I’m a friend. You know you can trust me. Whatever happened, you can handle. I know you, Daniel. I think you’re afraid of me for some reason.”
“Yes,” he answered again, giving her a strangely piercing glance even though his face was now without emotion.
“Well, don’t be. You can do me a favor. I’ve got seven shots on this roll and I want to take a few in the basement. Come down with me, I’d feel a lot better if someone were with me. Will you?”
His smile came back as his answer. He stepped back from the door to let her pass and what ensued was a logical conundrum which Kate would not think about till much later. He moved to her right as she approached the door, presumably to lead the way downstairs. Yet when she emerged in the hall, he was not in front of but behind her, presumably having maneuvered himself to the left without her seeing him. She was speaking as she stepped out and she finished her sentence over her shoulder as they moved to the stairs. “It’ll only be five—where are you? there you are—minutes, okay?”
“Kate,” he answered, his voice almost liquid in its tenderness.
As she walked down the splintery wooden steps into the basement, she felt him behind her. The electricity was off and the only light came from a window slit near the ceiling. The feeble yellow illumination picked out the humped shapes of the water heater, pipes, and furnace. Hands shaking with the cold, she said, laughing, “See how cold it is, Daniel? That’s desert climate for you.”
“Yes.” Now his voice came from the darkness near the furnace.
Kate plugged in her flash and snapped the dusty work table. “Basements are the best places for ghosts, full of rats and spiders and creepy crawlies. Except this one doesn’t have a living thing in it.”
“Yes, Kate.” Now he was over near the opposite wall. He moved like a shadow. Kate turned and flashed a photo of him with that smile.
“Got you,” she gaily cried.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice rolling round the walls.
“Sorry. A lot of people are camera-shy. Do you have to go soon?”
“I don’t know. I never do.”
“The blackouts, you mean. Daniel, I won’t press you. You’ll tell me what happened when you’re ready, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
Kate finished the roll with shots of the furnace, the pile of chopped wood, the empty work table with its dried paint cans, and the cobwebby light fixture. “I saw you in Venice yesterday. Were you looking for me?”
“Yes.”
Kate took out a piece of memo paper. She wrote her name and address in the light from the window. She tried to hand it to Daniel Forrester, who ignored it and stared with disconcerting directness at her face. Remembering he did not wish to be touched, she laid it on the work table. “There is a residual sense of Christian duty somewhere in me, Daniel. I’m worried about you. This is my address and number. Call me when you can.”
Daniel Forrester picked up the piece of paper and put it in his jacket pocket. He faced her with a sad, confused look. Kate walked past him up the steps to the kitchen, where she was surprised to see the sun was almost behind the bluffs.
Apparently Daniel remained in the basement, for she did not see him come up as she walked down the hall to the front door. But to her amazement, she saw him in the living room. Again he had sneaked past her. “Daniel? Are you going now?”
Daniel Forrester did not answer. He gazed up at the living room ceiling for several long seconds. Then he walked down the hall toward the kitchen.
Kate waited for perhaps a minute, hearing no door close, no further footsteps. She returned to the kitchen. He was gone. He must have gone out the back door silently. Kate figured his home was nearby.
“Daniel?” she called down the basement. She felt she had to be sure he was gone. She stepped downstairs again and looked round the basement. No one was there.
On the work table was the scrap of paper with her name and address.
Kate scratched her head thoroughly. She distinctly remembered him putting it in his coat. Why would he have taken it out again? Kate stuffed the paper in her purse with a small chill. The man was a basket case.
In her car, Kate sat for a moment and thought over the whole encounter. It was puzzling, vexing, completely offside, but it had a strange kind of inevitability. Forrester had been raised in Santa Eulalia. He must be staying at his parents’ home, right? But didn’t he say at the lodge that his parents were dead? She could not remember exactly.
Kate started the car and headed for the highway, still pondering. He had been upset about his work and the way his life was going, even to the point of hallucinating in her bathroom. He must have been in a worse state than he let on.
What was he doing in a haunted house?
That was simple. He had seen her drive into Santa Eulalia and followed her there. Why
he did not intercept her before she got there was something of an enigma.
There’s an explanation for everything. Kate decided. She turned on the radio and occupied herself with staying alive on the smog wreathed highway clogged with rush-hour traffic.
CHAPTER 9
Dutton had never been to Jones’s home, Jones being as extroverted as a snail, so he took the invitation for breakfast as a cross between being summoned to a throne room and being tapped for money. “It’s not very convenient,” he said over the phone. “Branch’s people are coming in today and Bickel’s people are transferring Forrester. Can’t we talk at the clinic?”
“I’m not going to the clinic,” replied Jones. “I’m not going to Branch’s raw cauliflower dinner either. I’m going to a little town called Santa Eulalia this afternoon.”
“What in hell are you talking about, you’re not going anywhere. We’re understaffed as it is. What’s in Santa Eulalia?”
“A haunted house. Haunted to hell and gone, Dutton, a place with a blond-haired blue-eyed man in a blazer walking around. The California Psychic Association has confirmed it. And Santa Eulalia used to be Forrester’s hometown; I got that from Stendhal Holmes. Come on over here, have I got an electric train for you.”
Like everyone else up there, Jones lived in a red-pine log cabin with maple walls and wide polished pine floors strewn with animal rugs. Certain Jonesian touches prevented the place from fulfilling its design as a rustic woodland refuge. A big microwave radar dish had been erected between the drive and front door next to a bird feeder. The roof was likewise covered with radio and microwave receivers.
Jones awaited Dutton with a mug of hot coffee. He led him past a sundeck with soft Indian music fluting and twanging in the air.
Dutton was reminded of the fact that Jones had been a computer engineer before switching to medicine. Lying on a table heaped with soldering equipment was a complex mass of gear: two tape machines, an oscilloscope the size of a typewriter, an antenna about three feet tall resting on a circuit base, a huge trumpet-shaped microwave collector about three feet in diameter, and, most elaborate of all, a fantastically tangled headband dangling with wires. All the parts of this whole Rube Goldberg mess were connected by wires.