A Ghostly Light

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Oh, sure.”

  “These theories require the presence of ten or eleven space-time dimensions, respectively.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This presents the possibility that there are other branes, of course, which could support other universes.”

  “Hold on—brains?”

  “Not ‘brains,’ ‘branes.’ B-R-A-N-E-S. It’s a type of bulk that particles are bound to. And it goes without saying that while these are unlike the universes in the quantum universe theory, both can operate at the same time.”

  “I’m going to stop you right there, Landon,” I said. “You lost me at ‘branes.’ Actually, you lost me at ‘infinite universes.’ Or perhaps when you uttered the phrase ‘several theories.’”

  “I guess the easiest way to put it is that if there are multiple universes, with different kinds of physical laws and dimensions than those we’re familiar with, it opens the possibility of spirits existing on other planes, essentially.”

  “You mean life after death?”

  He tilted his head with an expression of uncertainty. “I wouldn’t say that exactly, at least not in the way I think you, or most people, mean it. But in the sense that there is energy, even souls or whatever you want to call them, existing on wavelengths other than the ones we’re familiar with.”

  “Brain hurting again. And that’s B-R-A-I-N, not B-R-A-N-E.”

  “And yet your brain doesn’t hurt when it’s making sense of ghosts?”

  “Oh, it hurts, all right. But . . . the whole ghost thing involves the heart more than the mind. In fact, if I think too much about it, I go a little crazy. But if I open my heart to the possibilities, then sometimes the spirits can talk to me, and I can help them.”

  Landon held my gaze.

  “Hey,” said Duncan. “Speaking of brains, I heard a good zombie joke.”

  “I can hardly wait,” I said.

  “What do zombies say during a protest rally?”

  “What?”

  “‘What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Brains.’”

  Duncan laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes, but still managed to ease the Callisto up to the island’s rock wall. The tide was high, so the ladder was only about four feet high. Sort of like climbing up the side of a very deep swimming pool.

  The demo guys, then Waquisha, and then even Stephen climbed the ladder. It was no big deal.

  Surely if I could climb this ladder, I would be well on my way to conquering my phobia. I grabbed for the cold metal rung, tried to regulate my breathing and ignore the bobbing of the boat . . . but no. I made the mistake of looking up, and started to sway. Dizziness washed over me.

  “Could you take us around to the yacht harbor, please?” Landon asked Duncan, so I wouldn’t have to. “And then come back and we’ll winch the supplies up.”

  “Sure thing,” Duncan said, a sympathetic look in his eyes.

  I silently berated myself, angry at this weakness.

  Landon rubbed my shoulders gently. “Hey, ease up. Give yourself a little more time.”

  “Back to the ghosts.” I changed the subject as the boat headed to the little yacht harbor on the east side of the island. “Do you really think this multiple-universe theory might explain different planes of existence?”

  He shrugged. “It might well be a load of rubbish. ‘Ghosts’ might be nothing more than the result of infrasound waves.”

  “How so?”

  “The human eyeball has a resonant frequency of eighteen cycles per second; normal waking brain is between seven and fourteen cycles per second in a beta state. Above or below that are states of drug-induced euphoria or meditation or sleep or near sleep. So if you have a situation where low-level waves are caught inside a building, such as with certain pipes or machinery, they might help mold human perception so you think you see a ghost.”

  “I really don’t think low-level sound waves are making me stand in the woods talking to Alicia’s dead ex-husband. Anyway . . . what do you believe?”

  Landon gave me his patented slow smile, the one that carried a million thoughts and ideas and drove me crazy.

  “I believe that my girlfriend has introduced me to a whole world I never knew existed, and against which I would have argued in the past. But now, knowing she’s awfully smart and not completely nuts, I have to figure this thing out.”

  “And therefore figure me out? I thought men liked women of mystery.”

  “Not me.” He shook his head and smiled. “Figuring things out is what I do.”

  Duncan pulled the boat up to the harbor dock. The usual boats were in their slips, plus a new one. I waved to Paul Halstrom, who sat on the deck of a boat named Flora, and appeared to be whittling something.

  I dropped my hand when Halstrom glared at me. So much for trying to be neighborly. I was guessing he was still angry about no longer having the run of the island.

  I climbed off the boat, searching my peripheral vision for Thorn. I doubted he’d be able to answer my questions any more satisfactorily than two days ago, but I didn’t want him popping up at an inopportune time and scaring the you-know-what out of me.

  No sign of Thorn. Not lurking in the woods, not peeking out one of the lighthouse’s narrow windows. At least for now.

  Fingers crossed that he had been lingering the other day out of sheer confusion, and that by now he would have gone wherever it is we go. I hoped so. Maybe he’d be able to work out some of his disastrous personal issues in the afterlife. Or some parallel universe.

  I wasn’t sure I bought Landon’s attempt to explain the existence of ghosts through physics, but I did wonder, not for the first time, whether we moved on to another plane after death, or got a do-over in a new life as a new person. It was intriguing, but so far none of my otherworldly sources had been able to give me the slightest clue. All I knew for sure was that our spirits existed long after our deaths, which was comforting. I liked knowing, for instance, that my mother was still extant, in some form or another. At times, when I was half asleep, I could feel the soft weight of her hand on my head, stroking my hair. Perhaps it was simply my imagination, but it was nice to think she would come back to visit, from time to time.

  Landon and I walked the five minutes from the harbor to the lighthouse buildings. The frosty day had brightened, the gray haze slowly thinning as the sun burned through it. Birds sang and fluttered through the trees. The air carried the scent of brine and eucalyptus. I tried to imagine what it must have been like, back in the day, to live here day in, day out, watching the bay and tending to the lamp.

  I doubted Landon noticed any of it, intent as he was on trying to get a signal on his phone. He kept holding it at different angles, high and low, to the left then the right, as though searching out stray radio waves.

  “I told you, cell phones rarely work out here on the island,” I said. “But you can send texts, for some reason. Makes no sense, but that’s how it is.”

  “Texts require much less bandwidth than voice calls,” Landon explained, “and they terminate after sending, so even if a connection is intermittent, a text might slip through, whereas a call won’t be able to establish connectivity.”

  “Oh. I guess it does make sense, when you put it like that.”

  By the time we got to the courtyard, the crew had already unloaded Duncan’s boat, winching the pallet up the rock wall. I had everyone gather around while Buzz and Krauss—another hulking man with close-cropped hair who wore expensive sunglasses even on the foggiest days—checked out the Keeper’s House, calling out “Clear!” as they moved from room to room. They had already been on the island for an hour this morning, and had checked out the buildings, but now that we were here they did it again. I got the sense neither of them would be able to face Ellis Elrich were they to find another body on this isle.

  Their efforts were reassuring, but I
couldn’t imagine that whoever had killed Thorn was still hiding in a closet somewhere. The island had been crawling with police officers for the past two days, after all.

  While we waited, I gazed up at the tower. I knew from my earlier inspection that these buildings had good foundations, built into the bedrock. They had been constructed with pride and care, based on designs sturdy enough to withstand the brutal weather of New England or the Great Lakes. And though we saw some rough seas—the Pacific Ocean is not nearly as tranquil as its name would suggest—in general California was a sight more temperate than Maine.

  The house, too, was built to last. I walked the perimeter of the exterior, taking notes. Once we rid it of dry rot and mold, we would be able to reconfigure the layout to Alicia’s specifications without losing too much of the original charm. Many, if not most, of the built-ins and hardware were salvageable. The walls stood straight, the doorframes plumb. And with the exception of the windowsills, the exterior walls appeared to be intact.

  I paused as my boots trod on broken glass. I looked up. Overhead, several of the attic windowpanes were broken. No surprise; the windows of abandoned houses seemed irresistible to kids throwing rocks. But . . . if that were the case, the glass shards should be on the inside of the house, rather than the outside, wouldn’t they?

  A woman’s face appeared at the window.

  Pale, haunting. Fleeting. She vanished as quickly as she had appeared.

  Dingo had mentioned a worker trying to repair a pane in the attic window, and getting scared away. I had inspected the attic months ago, when I first toured the island, but at the time I had been looking for dry rot and roof problems, not spirits.

  “How do you plan to resolve the Internet issue?” Landon asked as we waited.

  “Alicia said she might just do without Internet. Make it a selling point instead of a drawback: ‘Come to the island for a real getaway.’ I think she’s onto something.”

  Landon looked as if I had suggested we kick some puppies. “What an insane notion.”

  “It’s relaxing to unplug,” I said. “You should try it.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Landon said.

  Once Buzz and Krauss gave us the all clear, I led my crew on a walk-through of the main rooms of the house, explaining what I did—and most decidedly did not—want them to salvage. More than once I thought I was seeing a ghost out of the corner of my eye, and then it turned out to be the silent Waquisha, lagging behind.

  The blast of a horn signaled the arrival of the big supply barge, and the crew got to work unloading, under Lyle’s grumpy direction. As soon as the supplies were secured, I designated an area for the junk pile, and the general cleanup began. We’d start a more careful demo next—stripping out wood ruined by dry rot, plaster spotted with mold, floorboards warped and brittle from exposure to the elements. Too often demo teams treated this step as a demolition derby, and I had to admit that method was kind of fun: Getting one’s frustrations out by ripping a place apart, hearing the crack and splinter and crash, was decidedly therapeutic. But Turner Construction didn’t do it that way.

  “Stay out of the attic, for now,” I told the crew. “Start down in the main rooms, that’s where most of the damage is. We’ll assess the second floor and the attic afterward.”

  I put Waquisha and Stephen in charge of gathering the salvage in piles, cleaning and sorting items as the crew brought them over.

  “With historical structures it’s essential to save everything we can,” I explained to Waquisha. Stephen, along with everyone else who knew me, was used to my spiel. But if she was going to work for me, she was going to have to get on the historic salvage bandwagon.

  “I don’t usually like to take a building back to its studs, but it’s necessary in this case because of the mold damage to the plaster and the need to redo electrical and plumbing throughout the building. Still, we always keep as much as we can, of everything, even the wood.” I held up a splintery piece of molding as an example. “The tiny nicks and dents, the very wood itself, holds the spirit of the building as it once was; and even when materials are beyond repair, we retain samples in order to get knives cut to re-mill moldings in the original design. We also need sample swatches to match historical paint colors and wallpapers.”

  “So,” Waquisha said, “essentially you’re saying: Don’t throw anything away.”

  “You should see her bedroom,” Stephen muttered.

  “Yes, in a nutshell, don’t throw anything away,” I said, ignoring my friend’s snide comment. He was right, in any case. Note to self: When looking for a new apartment, make sure it has plenty of shelf space for my salvaged treasures. And books.

  “Even old newspaper?” Waquisha asked, holding up a few shreds attached to a baseboard one of the demo guys had just placed on the already-growing pile.

  I checked it out: part of an article on an election, and an ad for a long-closed San Francisco butchery.

  “Even old newspapers—how cool is this?” I asked, excited, trying to show them the wonder of ancient newsprint. Waquisha and Stephen exchanged a glance, appearing underwhelmed. “Anyway, yes, please keep the old newspapers. In the old days builders often stuffed walls with newspapers as a form of insulation. They can provide hints about the date the work was carried out, and what was going on locally at the time. And they’re just plain cool. Anyway, you two can sort things out and clean things up, so we can start to get an idea of what we have, what we can reuse, what we’ll need to replace. And Waquisha, Jeremy says you know wood.”

  She nodded. “My dad has a woodworking shop.”

  “Good. Show Stephen how to determine if a piece of wood is worth salvaging or not—and it’s probably no surprise by now, but I’m fine with the liberal use of wood fillers and reconstruction if that’s what it takes to keep an original window frame, for example.”

  She nodded again, and she and Stephen got to work.

  The biggest, most obvious problem in the Keeper’s House was that many of the wooden horizontal surfaces—parts of the floors, the outdoor steps, a few counters and lintels—had rotted through, victim of the wear and tear of the bay breezes, salt, and storms—and the general lack of upkeep. Fortunately, the interior stairs were still solid, and we had already placed plywood over the spongy areas of floor where a person might be in danger of putting a foot through the rotting wood.

  Once the demo was in full swing, Landon turned to me.

  “Ghost time?”

  I nodded. “Ghost time.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Somehow I don’t think I’m going to make it up the light tower,” I said.

  “Do you think there’s another way to touch base with the spirits?”

  I nodded. “I want to check out the attic.”

  Inside the Keeper’s House, we were enveloped by the racket of demolition—the screech of nails being pulled from wood, the crack of splintering wood, the very loud music on the radio—as we climbed up to the second floor and proceeded down a small hallway to another set of enclosed stairs. These were steep and narrow, but the wood was still intact. A tight switchback led to a short door with several locks on it.

  “Looks like someone was trying to keep something safe,” Landon commented.

  “Alicia gave me all the old keys to try,” I said, unlocking one of several antique-looking locksets. “Though it looks like someone’s jimmied a couple of them already. I sure hope no one got in here.”

  After several minutes of trying multiple keys, I finally got the door open. “Let me go in alone first.”

  Landon nodded and stood back. “Shout if you need me. I’ll be right here.”

  Heeding Olivier’s warning not to take my spirit encounters lightly, I took the time to prepare myself. I did a full-body scan, breathing deeply. I closed my eyes and reminded myself that the soles of my feet were connected to my boots, which wer
e connected to the wood floor beneath them, which was connected to beams and walls and studs clear to the foundation, itself built into bedrock. I am of this earthly plane. Finally, I rubbed the gold ring I kept on a small chain around my neck; it was my grandmother’s, and had been given to me by my mother. It reminded me that I was connected, across the generations, to a line of strong women.

  Only then did I enter the attic. In classic haunted house fashion, the door creaked a loud protest when I swung it open.

  The room was dim. The sun hadn’t quite burned off the mist this morning, so only a soft gray light sifted in through dormer windows on either side.

  On the opposite wall seemed to be some kind of mural. I tried to make it out—was it the face of a woman? Had vandals entered after all, but simply graffitied the wall?

  I noted a light switch to the left and flicked it on.

  A bare bulb overhead flared to life.

  The mural—or whatever it was I thought I saw—disappeared. The wall was made of lath and plaster and bare wooden studs. Nothing more.

  I tried turning off the light again, but this time saw nothing. It was possible I was talking myself into things. I switched the light back on and started to investigate.

  The chamber was jammed with miscellaneous items: an old baby crib with intricate turned posts; two wooden chairs, one broken; an old storm window; a couple of small side tables; several old neatly stacked wooden crates; half a dozen rotting cardboard boxes. Christmas decorations, a few small paintings, and framed photographs had been stashed together in an open box. A nice old pendulum clock sat on an oak filing cabinet next to a dressmaker’s form, which, I was certain, I was bound to mistake for a human figure and scare myself with in dim light one of these days soon. Mannequins gave me the creeps.

  It took me a moment to realize what was amiss. While the rest of the building carried the distinct musty scent of a long-abandoned home, the attic smelled of lemon polish and furniture wax. Nary a cobweb in the corners, not a visible dust mote on the floor. The windowpanes—made of slightly wavy glass, several of which were cracked or broken—were clean and sparkling, despite their condition.