by Thomas Page
They arrived in Orange County sweaty, dusty, and wiped out from the desert drive. Nora greeted them outside her house with bottles of iced lemonade.
Nora Stone’s house was a home with a vengeance. Kids’ toys seemed deliberately scattered about to reinforce the image of domesticity, the chairs and sofas inside were covered with doilies and decorated coverings. It was a perfect California house, all spacious, light, and airy, choked with flowers and so much glass it seemed walls were added as an afterthought. Dutton sensed that Nora Stone embraced hearth and home to keep her ghosts at bay. Remembering Jones, he decided there was something in the supernatural that brought out the bourgeois in people. Reality was precious to them.
After the lemonade, Nora Stone insisted on feeding them cheese and roasted nuts, and after that she insisted they wash up. She set out some fresh towels for them. They were certainly welcome to stay. She seemed to be putting off the business at hand as long as possible.
After they showered and changed, Nora poured tea for them. It took an hour to explain what had happened and Nora heard them out with little squeaks, gasps, and much sympathetic patting of hands. She regarded death as something on the order of broken shoelaces—too common to get really upset about.
It was the visitation in the motel room that startled her. “Just a minute, he came into the motel room this morning?”
“Yes.”
“But how did he find you?” She held her heart, breathlessly awaiting an answer.
“He’s got plenty of time,” Dutton replied. “All he has to do is look.”
“My goodness, did you tell anyone where you were?”
Kate said, “Steve knows we were there. Some of Larry’s friends knew it, and Bickel.”
Dutton said, “He got me at the other motel by asking somebody in the physics lab and then the desk. It’s not hard to trace somebody.”
Nora Stone did not look very convinced, so she changed the subject. “This morning when he came in, did you see anything?”
“Nothing. We just felt him. And heard him.”
Nora Stone nibbled at a corner of a Danish. “I guess it’s all right. Sometimes you see just a hand or a face, sometimes you see the whole figure. I saw him while he was partially materialized, and later that night the Velasquezes—those poor people—saw him again.”
Dutton sat down his teacup and wiped his mouth with a napkin so pretty he disliked using it. “We both noticed that. Last time, he was very solid. Today he was invisible. I was wondering if it meant he was weakening or fading away or something.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but no. Not that there’s any set time limit. That poor Cheltenham woman in England hung on from the 1880s to the 1970s before fading with time. Mr. Forrester will disappear,” she sighed. “But by then, we all will have, too.”
Dutton could not hide the crushing disappointment that answer forced on him. He wished he could dismiss Nora Stone as a flake and stalk out. “I see. Now you see him, now you don’t.”
“I’m afraid so. I don’t know why it happens that way. Perhaps you would have gotten used to having him around, sort of like putting up with a nasty in-law or something. I must say that the life support capsule sounds like a perfectly dreadful machine and he’s glad that’s out of the way for him.”
Kate said, “I was wondering if maybe he’s scared or something and doesn’t want to leave. He was upset when I saw him in the house. And that dream of him calling to me . . .”
“Oh, no, Kate, it doesn’t work like that. Death is not frightening, it’s dying that’s so scary, it’s the transition from life to death. He’d be perfectly content if only he could free himself of you and the house. Ghosts are so pitiful when you think about them, they want to get away. He really must have loved you, Kate.”
“He really must have hated me a lot,” said Dutton.
“Isn’t jealousy the most ghastly condition? It’s an illness that never leaves you. Poor Mr. Forrester. Sins do have a way of wrecking one’s death as well as life.”
Kate played with the handle of her teacup. “What you’re saying is we can’t do anything, right?”
“Did I say that? There is one thing we can try, I’ve done it before. We have to rescue Mr. Forrester.”
“Rescue him from who? From what?” Dutton asked.
Nora Stone beamed at the doctor. “It’s a manner of phrasing. We must try to set him free so he can be on his way to Summerland.”
“Nora, what are you talking about, what is Summerland?”
“Oh, it’s such a silly phrase. Those who’ve been brought back from a life-after-life experience claim they’ve been to a land of perfect peace and harmony full of light and beings and relatives. Some people actually see meadows and woods and fields. The psychologists studying the cases invented the term ‘Summerland.’ It’s the emotion, not the vision, that’s important. My goodness, one would think heaven was full of amusement parks.”
“Oh,” replied Kate.
“This sense of peace and harmony is why they’re so upset when being brought back. Although it’s not odd how Summerland fits the paradise of the Moslems? No doubt all such words are poetic metaphors. Anyhow! Bear in mind ghosts are sad little souls who can’t get free of the earth and want to go to Summerland. Mr. Forrester is no happier about his condition than you are. We in the spiritualism racket sometimes launch what we call rescue missions to free people like Forrester, so he can be on his way.”
“Is this like an exorcism?” asked Dutton.
“No! It’s more in the manner of a confrontation. Usually it requires the help of several mediums in a seance just to figure out what the ghost wants. But that’s not necessary in this case, it’s all too obvious what he wants.”
“What he wants,” Dutton interrupted, “is Kate.”
“Exactly,” breathed Nora Stone. “And he cannot have her and he must be made to understand this fact. He must see that he will never, ever have you, Kate.” Nora Stone lowered her voice to a whisper. “Think about it. Isn’t it obvious? Even if—God forbid—you were to die, he would never have you; even if he gets you, he won’t have you. That will release him to Summerland. That will break his purpose.”
“That sounds awfully simple, Nora,” said Kate. “How do I do that?”
“What you must do is pretend you’re in love with Dr. Dutton. You don’t love Forrester, you never will, you love someone else. And if he keeps after you, you will hate him.”
Dutton uncrossed his legs and gripped the chair arms. “That kind of puts a curse on me, doesn’t it? Kate’s already warned him off a few times and it didn’t slow him down a bit.”
“He must understand he will never get Kate, no matter what he does to you. He has to see the complete hopelessness of his position. He has to see the two of you together.”
“He did this morning,” Kate said.
“Yes, and he was very weak, wasn’t he? I mean he wasn’t gone, but he will be with a good push.” Nora Stone clasped her little hands in her lap and beamed at them like a den mother. “Look on the bright side,” she chirped.
“I didn’t know there was one,” replied Dutton.
“Maybe we’re underestimating his character. Maybe the reason he keeps after her is because he loves her in the best way and wants to be sure she’s truly happy. Once he sees her with you, he’ll be released.”
Nora Stone had cooked up an inappropriately huge dinner, possibly to cheer them up for the coming travail. She chirped and twittered while serving them spiced meatballs with loads of gravy, scalloped potatoes, and gobs of ice cream, as though courage appeared in direct proportion to carbohydrates. Not surprisingly, neither was very hungry. Kate was silent all through dinner. By now, Dutton knew her well enough to realize she was not dreaming; she was thinking over a particular problem and her thoughts would come soon enough. They came over coffee.
“It�
�s his own fault,” she ruminated out loud.
“How so?” asked Nora Stone.
“A flaw in character or whatever you call it. Daniel knew that machine was dangerous and didn’t act on it. All he had to do was to let somebody else install it. We would never have met, he would never have been killed in the plane. He wanted out of the business, he told me. He did not act according to conscience and I suppose this is a Protestant, vindictive world because he’s paying the price for that.”
“Hamlet’s dilemma,” replied Dutton. “He was a great salesman, I guess he sold himself on it.”
“It’s always that way,” breathed Nora Stone. “And he would never have threatened this Jameson who killed him, and the world would have been a happy place. The fault lies not in the stars, dear Brutus, it lies in ourselves.” So speaking, Nora Stone touched a little pink finger to the oscilloscope screen. “My, my, what a fascinating machine. It makes you think this fellow figured it all out, doesn’t it?”
“I guess he has by now,” answered Dutton.
“Do you really think so? I don’t. I bet he’s in the same pickle, the more answers you get, the more questions you have. Believe me, Kate, Daniel Forrester will be grateful to you for eternity, he will never have to wonder whether we exist or not.” Nora Stone’s eyes widened at the very idea. “Do you think it’s just as frightening for the dead to be reincarnated as it is for the living to die?”
“Do you believe in reincarnation, too?” asked Dutton.
“Why, yes!” she cried.
“Why?”
“Why not?” she answered, then placed a hand on the hand of each.
“When will we go to the house?”
“Why, tomorrow. Don’t you want to get it over with? I know Mr. Forrester does.”
Nora had provided a bedroom for the two of them without so much as a delighted smirk. Kate’s head lay on Dutton’s shoulder, yet neither of them felt like making love. They were thinking.
In the darkness, Kate said, “I’m worried about Steve. Nobody’s at home, not even Diane. I called twice. I bet you anything she walked out on him.”
“Do you still love him?”
“Yes.”
“How much do you love him?”
She giggled and poked his ribs. “I read somewhere that a couple wrote their own marriage contract and the husband’s clause said she was never to ask that question on pain of divorce.”
“I’m being practical, not romantic.” He kissed the top of her head. “Next week I’ll be romantic. Tomorrow we’ve got to be convincing.”
“Oh. I can do that.”
“Really?”
“Sure. No trouble.”
“If worse comes to worst, we can always strip down and do a little hanky-panky on the floor. That’s convincing.”
“No, it isn’t,” she answered. “It’ll just make him mad.” She tried to kiss his chin through his beard. “Don’t worry, he’ll get the message.”
They tried and failed to fall asleep, instead drifting in and out of a daze. The bedroom was fragrant with redwood and the flowers which Nora had thoughtfully set out for them. Once during the night Dutton heard Nora tiptoe into the hall and dial a number on the phone. It sounded to him like she was speaking Spanish but her voice was too faint to understand.
At one point, when he did almost get to sleep, a sudden movement from Kate made him open his eyes. Her body stiffened, then slowly relaxed. “What’s wrong,” he whispered.
“Nothing,” she replied. “I was just worried about Steve.”
In response to an urgent request from a doctor at Los Angeles Memorial Hospital, Irwin Bickel climbed out of bed at one o’clock in the morning, got dressed, and drove out into the night. Something very peculiar was happening with the LS system. Irwin Bickel could pretty well guess what it was.
“We did the best we could,” said the doctor, leading him down to the capsule tucked into a room at the back of the fourth floor. “And to be honest, we’re not sure what’s happening.”
“Let me guess,” said Bickel. “He arrested for an hour or some equally ridiculous length of time and came back again.”
The doctor nodded solemnly. “That’s part of it, yes. I was wondering if something was wrong with the termination module, if it’s just not telling us the patient is gone.”
“That is a possibility, yes,” said Bickel, gazing at the canopy. “His lungs are ventilating?”
“Yes. His brain, naturally, is gone. Everytime it seems his heart is gone, it starts again. This could go on indefinitely.”
“I would recommend that you separate him from the heart and lung monitors and see if his body functions on its own. I believe that at this point the medical criteria would endorse such a move. It might be that the machine best serves postoperative patients or burn cases and is not so good with terminal ones. What’s his name?”
“Steven Rothman. He’s thirty-seven years old.”
“Tell me something. This is a busy hospital, you’ve had this thing here for a while. Why is he the first one to die on it?”
“We’ve been sparing in its use. Most terminal patients would not even survive being transferred into it.”
A nurse spoke. “I had a cancer patient who took one look at it and swore nothing would get her inside. She said she’d rather die. And she did.”
The doctor went on in a deprecating fashion. Not many of the physicians were adventurous with new machinery they did not completely understand and, when you get right down to it, not many doctors are absolutely sure when a patient is completely at the end of his rope. Even the patients themselves are not sure when their own demise is imminent. Primitive peoples understood death far better than modern ones. Remember those tales about elderly men and women sensing oncoming death and constructing their own coffins and burial shrouds? Eskimos used to know when it was time to walk out into the blizzard but today people truly don’t know.
The nurse said, “He had a very strong will.”
“How so?”
“He remained conscious right until he got into the hospital. He told everybody that he had been murdered. He wanted somebody to hear him out.”
“Did he say who?”
“No, and there wasn’t anyone in the car with him. His girlfriend said he didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
“How many times has he arrested?”
“Five. The computer projects another one in fifteen minutes. That’s why we wanted you down here.”
“Do you want me to pull the plug?” asked Bickel, cutting to the heart of the situation. “I will if you do.”
The doctor was embarrassed. “Well, that’s not why we called. You see there were other . . . things that happened during the times he was . . . well . . .”
“Dead,” finished Bickel.
The LS was stashed in a large, unused corner room with drawn curtains and locked doors. Bickel, three doctors, three engineers, and the nurse witnessed Steven Rothman go into arrest again. Bickel was prepared for it, he could recount all the phenomena himself—the sudden cold, the electrical disturbances, the faint magnetism over Rothman’s forehead.
A nurse wordlessly tapped his shoulder and pointed at a wheeled stretcher which had begun moving toward them. A doctor stepped forward and pushed it away. The stretcher wheeled round and rushed toward the doctor, who sidestepped it, letting it crash into the wall.
The lights were dim and they were all breathing steam. All but Bickel were rooted to the floor in terror of the crackling darkness and the sense of a presence in the air.
The doctor whispered, “I was afraid you’d miss this. It doesn’t happen everytime he arrests.”
The nurse squeaked, “Mr. Bickel, that stretcher is coming for you.”
It was moving again with slow, baleful steadiness toward Bickel, like a lumbering iron bull. Irwin Bickel reached
his fingers toward the console switches. The wheeled stretcher stopped.
Bickel shut off the power in the LS capsule. The lung ventilator stopped with a tired hiss, the scanners moved into their recesses. It was just like old times with Daniel Forrester.
For perhaps a minute, the room remained dark with the lights fizzing and the pipes clanking. A nurse checked the thermostat. “You should know the temperature is normal according to this.”
“Yes. I think you all are sure about what’s happening here. And you’re right. As far as the cold goes, you all know temperatures go down when molecular activity slows a bit. I believe there is a wandering particle in this room with a slow electron spin.”
The nurse repeated, “But the thermostat is normal.”
“I know,” Bickell replied equably. “However, I believe that close by is another room full of doctors and another thermostat reading ten below zero. Further than that I am not prepared to go.”
Slowly the lights began to burn more brightly and then the room temperature began to warm up, until everything was back to its antiseptic normality.
Bickel flipped through the switches again. The scanners searched Steven Rothman’s body and found no sign of life.
At long last, there appeared a group of words on the console screen, vital signs terminated. “I’ll be damned,” said Bickel, shaking his head. “Has anybody seen this before?”
The doctor said, “No. We expected to all along.”
“Maybe that’s all we did wrong.” Bickel removed his glasses and began to laugh. “Wouldn’t that be something? It’s a circuit chip costing no more than two dollars and fifty cents. I bet the engineers put it on the wrong scanner. I bet it’s gone wrong in all three capsules. That thing should have come on long before this, back yesterday when he arrested over an hour and cut the scanners and fibrillator off automatically. The goddamned machine didn’t get the message. Hey? Two dollars and fifty cents that chip costs. I feel like I tried to kill a dinosaur and accidentally invented the wheel.”