by Thomas Page
“Nice bunch, don’t you think? Denenberg and I were at Johns Hopkins back in . . . lord, 1939.” The old doctor sniffed the cold flow of air tinged with pine that whispered down the mountain. “He doesn’t scare me.”
“Who?”
“Forrester. Who else?” Branch tightened his overcoat and began tapping his way on his cane over to his car.
As Dutton finished a sandwich, Mrs. Handel, the nurse, arrived and was relieved that it would be a very light duty. At seven-fifteen, the telephone rang. It was Jones calling from Santa Eulalia. “I drove by the place, Dutton, nothing much to it. The Realtor tried to charge me an entrance fee. Is everything okay there?”
“Quiet as a tomb. I told Bickel everything. Are you still going through with it?”
Scandalized, Jones expostulated, “Christ, yes. I’m here. I’m a hammer looking for an anvil all my life. Is Forrester in Denver yet?”
“He should be. They’re probably hooking the machine up now.”
“It’s definitely Forrester right down to the red tie. Do you realize I just might make history tonight, Larry? Have you any idea of what we’re all sitting on?”
“A great big john,” Dutton retorted. “Stay in touch, Jones, I’ll be at Branch’s then my own place later. Call anytime. And be careful.”
At seven-thirty Bickel called from Denver, his voice subdued. “We got him here okay and the machine’s in place, Dutton. Now according to the computer he’s going to arrest again. Roundabout eight-fifteen.”
“Okay. Jones is in Santa Eulalia, I’ll be at Branch’s party.” He read off Evan Branch’s phone number. “Where will you be?”
“They’ve kindly given me a room here.”
“Good. I hope there’s a phone handy.”
“The one I’m talking from is twenty feet from the ward. Dutton?”
“Yes.”
“You’re still full of shit.” Bickel hung up on that courteous note, but Dutton knew he was hooked.
The Realtor had looked over Jones’s suitcase full of equipment and grimaced while unlocking the door. “I’m a down-to-earth kind of guy, Doc. I just plain don’t believe in ghosts. Can’t help it. It’s the kind of guy I am. I think anybody who takes this crap seriously ain’t wired right. There. I’ve said it.”
The Realtor walked him through the ground floor as the sun set behind the bluffs. As they walked upstairs, the Realtor said, “This girl walked through the place yesterday afternoon taking pictures for an article. I figured a ghost would help move it. I mean, this is California, and the house should have been sold a week ago. But you got to be honest. Ghosts are a crock, Doc. Superstitious hog-shit.”
The corner room looked as innocuous as the rest of the place. Jones could not imagine a less hauntable house. He looked the bare walls over. “Back in 1948 to ’56 a family named Forrester lived here. I checked the records. They had one son, who went to the high school here.”
“That’s before my time. You think this Forrester is it?”
Jones set down his equipment and decided to stick it to the Realtor.
“I don’t believe in ghosts either, to tell the truth.”
“Yeah?”
“I’d rather you didn’t pass this around, but I think what we’ve got here is an extraterrestrial manifestation. No doubt, you know, there’ve been a lot of UFO sightings round here.”
The Realtor’s face suffused with astonishment. He thought for a moment. “Oh boy. Listen, my brother-in-law lives over in Santa Barbara. One of these things landed in his backyard. He swears it. Is that what’s going on here?”
“I think so. I got word the government has been in contact with them, and Forrester, who’s now an engineer, boarded a flying saucer and they’ve been demonstrating their teleportation device using this house.”
The Realtor grabbed his shoulder. “Listen, are you kidding?” He slapped his head, his eyes bright with revelation. “Christ, that’s what’s been happening! Jesus, man . . .”
“They’re the same aliens who landed on earth a million years ago and mated with apes to create the human race.”
The Realtor’s voice shrank to a whisper. “Now, Doc, that makes sense! That I can buy. Are they the guys that built the pyramids as landing beacons?”
“The one and only. And they have been testing the device with an earthling for the past few days. By the way, how often does he show up here?”
“Not all that much, maybe once a day for five minutes, ten minutes . . .”
That revelation struck Jones sideways—Forrester arrested more often than that and he’d only been to the clinic twice. It sounded as though there were some place else he went.
“Back to the UFOs, Doc,” the Realtor said. “Did you ever hear that Jesus was actually from another planet?”
“Yes, though not a planet. We think Jesus was from the moon Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s the only moon in the solar system with its own atmosphere.” He winked at the Realtor.
“Oh, yeah. It fits. It fits.”
“It explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
The Realtor looked round the house with new respect, finally convinced he was onto something, feeling that he was on the verge of a mystery that would crack creation open like a walnut shell. “Okay, Doc. Good luck, call me when you’ve caught him.”
“Like I said, this is on the QT. Right? Not a word to anybody, it’s a U.S. government matter. You’re in on the ground floor.”
“Yeah.” Muttering, the Realtor left him alone in the place.
Something odd in the way the Realtor looked at him caused Jones to check out his equipment. Then he realized the pistol which was tucked into his belt might have been visible through his open jacket. He thought over the ramifications of that and decided he had nothing to worry about. The Realtor was a yahoo, with a brain like soft putty that would hold any imprint, no matter how outrageous, forever. The Realtor did not realize Jones was bulling him. Jones was too good at bullshit to be caught.
Jones set up his equipment, spreading it out on the floor. He fitted the encephalograph over his head. It was grossly uncomfortable. The electrodes that picked up his optic and aural impulses were fitted tight with clamps which he had devised, but too tight or not, this was his little darling. He was proud of himself for throwing it together in two days after doodling for years on the design before finding a use for it.
He tested the tape systems. Something in the corner by the door broke the oscillator beat. On the tape it was positively thunderous, a loud, rattling boiler factory. He aimed the three-foot mesh screen at the corner until he focused on the disturbance, then shone his light on it. The light passed over a gnat barely the size of a period on a printed page.
Now that night had fallen, the only light in the room was a faint pool cast by his electric flash and the cold, eerie green of the oscilloscope screen.
Bickel had spent an exhausting day detaching the LS system from Clayton and reinstalling it in the fourth floor isolation ward of the Denver hospital. As far as he could tell, everything went perfectly; Forrester’s heart did not miss a beat. Yet the computer indicated a fibrillation would occur in an hour. He had warned Dutton; now he was in the ward with the night nurse and two technicians watching it for himself.
The attack occurred at eight-twenty-one. Bickel watched the monitors die and the machine cool off the body. He observed the scanning hoops move back and forth across the body and the program showing which nerves the defibrillator was trying to start.
One of the technicians said, “We’re missing something. We’ve got to be, he’s getting rigor mortis again.”
“That’s what we thought this afternoon.”
Bickel had jotted down Branch’s phone number on a card in his wallet. He dialed the number from the main desk and heard the receiver pick
ed up. In the background was a muted babble of voices and some laughter indicating Branch’s party was well under way.
“Dr. Branch?”
“Yes. Bickel. What can I do for you?”
“I just thought I’d warn you. Forrester arrested at eight-twenty-one and seventeen seconds. We’ve gone over every millimeter of his body and we can’t find a sign of life.”
Branch chuckled. “Don’t be too sure. I shall inform Dutton.”
“And tell him I’ll stay with the body until it revives again.”
“Very good.”
After Branch hung up, Bickel walked back to the room, looking up and down the halls. A technician asked, “You waiting for somebody?”
Feeling foolish, Bickel laughed and shook his head. “I think I’m waiting for Santa Claus. And I don’t think I want to see him after all.”
At eight-twenty-one and eighteen seconds, Gareth Jones realized he was not alone in the Santa Eulalia house. He had been sitting on the floor, back propped to the wall, when a soft rattle ran through the structure of the house as though a gust of wind had struck the walls. The temperature dropped so much that goose pimples appeared on his arms and legs, yet the electric thermometer indicated the air temperature held exactly at sixty-nine. The wind continued blowing, but the foliage outside the window was motionless.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs, steps made by the hard soles of shoes like those worn by Daniel Forrester. Yet the oscillator picked up nothing. No sound waves struck Jones’s aural nerves, yet the cortical center of his brain picked up the steps as they sounded in the form of nerve impulses.
The footsteps turned and came down the hall. Jones aimed the three-foot screen at the door.
In the darkness the doorknob rotated, clicking free. The door swung open. Daniel Forrester strode into the room and stopped, his face twisted in hatred at Jones. The living and the dead faced each other. Jones aimed the screen at the six-foot-two apparition and moved it up and down the length of the body.
Jones was unprepared for the solidity of the man. Despite his research, he still held the idea that ghosts were wispy and transparent. Forrester was terrifyingly real. Indeed, he filled the doorway, every thread of his clothing, every glint of moonlight off his buttons, every curled blond hair unnaturally sharp in the gloom.
“Get out,” snarled Daniel Forrester.
Abruptly Jones found he did not want to look at him anymore. He turned his head to his instruments and tracked Forrester with the corner of his eye.
“You are not there, Forrester.”
In a sense, he was right. Forrester was against the window. He did not walk there, he just was there, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “Go away, Jones.” The voice might have been coming from next to his ear.
“You are a hallucination, Forrester, and I will not give in to it.”
Something jumped on the oscillator needle. Somewhere around Forrester’s waist, the device made contact. Jones’s arm ached with the effort of holding the screen steady and sweat cascaded off his face in waves. There! It happened again.
“I’m here, Jones,” Forrester laughed sarcastically. “Believe me, I’m here.”
“You remember me, don’t you, Forrester?”
“I remember all of you. You’re torturing me.” Forrester’s voice broke. Pain and fear colored his voice as quickly as a child’s mood shifts.
Jones realized the sound of his own voice dissipated his tension. It reverberated round the room, it was normal, it kept his mind level. He followed with the screen as Forrester moved to the wall opposite the window and glared at him. Jones said loudly, “I will not leave. Behold me, Daniel Forrester. I am not frightened of you. I will not get out.”
“I will kill you, Jones.” The voice was soft, almost affectionate.
“No,” Jones barked. “You cannot hurt me, Forrester, you are a delusion. You cannot touch me. Let’s talk, let’s bridge the gap.” Again the oscillator hit a contact of some kind. It was a small disturbance, somewhere around Forrester’s head this time.
“You just died a minute ago, didn’t you.”
“I suppose.” The voice was low, barely audible now.
“What’s it like?”
Forrester murmured indistinctly.
“You’re haunting this house.”
The voice boomed out, loud and precise. “It’s haunting me, I don’t go to it, it comes to me. You’re haunting me, you and the others, leave me be, leave me be. . . . House. Kate.”
Confused, Jones asked, “What? Who? Who’s Kate?”
“Leave me alone, let me go . . .” Then mumbling again. Jones tried to sort out the peculiarly disjointed way Forrester spoke. In emotion, Forrester was exactly like a child, jumping from one thought or subject to the next, probably from one place to the next as his fancy took him. But the voice, the feeling he was not completely here, Jones ascribed to trouble manifesting himself. Mediums reported that ghosts could be anything from a mere voice, a whisper of wind, or a feeling, to a fully realized presence. Forrester faded in and out. Probably all ghosts were like that, probably that was why they rarely stayed more than a few minutes. The repetitive words reminded Jones of the way phantoms repeated themselves always, walked the same battlements, appeared in the same room. Yet there were times when the apparition became focused, when his presence was strong and he was fully aware of what was happening.
“Forrester, who is Kate?”
With a wide, Cheshire-cat smile Daniel Forrester turned toward the window. Jones thought he took a step toward it. It was some seconds before he realized that Forrester was gone from the house entirely.
Jones swept the room with the screen and found nothing. On his tapes were more than enough contacts for Dutton’s friend to work with. He removed the encephalograph band from his head and stowed it. The interview was over. By his watch, it had lasted barely four minutes.
Jones was not frightened of ghosts anymore. He felt that nothing would ever frighten him again. He had reminded Forrester of Kate—whoever that was—and, being a creature of impulse, Forrester had undoubtedly gone to her.
That was easy, he thought. Big deal, it’s like talking to a drug addict.
Jones had just latched his gear in the suitcase when the wind gusted against the house and Forrester was back again. This time the smile was gone, and the hatred was back. Jones switched his flash to a direct beam and shone it directly on Forrester’s figure. A circle of light illuminated his blazer. A circle of light also illuminated the wall behind him.
“Turn it off,” hissed Forrester, his face seeming to swell in size until the wall was a human visage, the doorway a mouth. Jones found that trick highly unpleasant, but he held his ground.
Forrester spoke again. “Leave me alone, Jones. Bury me.”
“You’re not there, Forrester,” Jones replied in a steady voice. “You’re not real.”
The house pulsated with waves of solid fury focused directly on him. Jones stood up and faced Forrester down as the wall became a wall again. From his pocket, Forrester withdrew a cigarette lighter. He snapped the plastic flick and a flame blossomed. “Tell me if you feel this, Jones.”
Jones reached his hand to the flame. To his shock, he felt heat as his fingertips approached it and fire as he touched it. He yanked his hand back. “I can feel it. But it’s a delusion.”
Daniel Forrester touched the lighter to the wall. The wallpaper blackened, curled, flickered; bright orange flames licked up the wall, filling the room with greasy, rolling smoke.
Jones said, “Forrester, there’s no fire.” But he could feel heat from the blazing wall.
Jones’s answer seemed to enrage the ghost. Impotence was undoubtedly his greatest frustration. Forrester grabbed his shoulder and Jones noted the paradox. Forrester’s hands were powerful and squeezed bruises into his flesh as he lifted him
bodily off the floor. Yet Jones’s flailing arms passed through Forrester’s body like they were going through a beam of light. A dream was assaulting him.
Forrester pushed Jones backwards. Jones found himself standing in place, exactly as he had been when Forrester grabbed him. The slip between reality and illusion with this character was unresolvable.
Forrester bellowed, “Jones, is this real?” Grabbing Jones’s hand, he passed the lighter flame beneath the palm. Jones gasped, wriggling his hand free in response to the pain. Red welts surrounded the blackened flesh and charred skin of the palm.
“No,” Jones replied through gritted teeth. “Not even that. Shit on you, Forrester.” He coughed at the smoke as the fire licked across the ceiling, tears welling in his eyes, his lungs raw and choking.
Daniel Forrester touched off the door, the walls, the floor, and, through some optical illusion, the ceiling with the lighter, until the room was a blazing oven, the fire orange and baleful, the smoke streaming in a thick tube out the window. Forrester remained untouched, immaculate in the midst of the flames, as Jones coughed to a kneeling position and withdrew the pistol from his belt. He cocked it.
“Now, Jones, what in hell do you think you’re doing?” Forrester looked at the gun, his hands on his hips, and shook his head.
“I’m going to shoot you,” Jones croaked. “Just for the hell of it. Just to see what happens. Stand still, Forrester.”
Forrester stood still. He folded his arms and cocked his head. Fire bellied out of the wall on both sides of him, the flames coiling and licking through the brown smoke. A shower of sparks accompanied the chunks of plaster falling from the ceiling. Jones fired the gun at Forrester and saw a hole appear in the blazing door behind him. Three more shots blew blazing particles of wood into the hall.
“See?” gasped Jones, waving the gun at him. “You’re not there. Isn’t this what Jameson tried? You can’t hurt me, I can’t hurt you.”
Forrester flickered back to a good-natured mood. “You know you’re right? Yup. What are we going to do with each other, hey, Jones?” He chortled, “Jones, you win. I can’t beat you. You’re too good for me. You take care, hear, ’cause I’ll be seeing you again real soon.” With a sunny smile and airy wave, Daniel Forrester backed through the flames to the door and walked down the hall.