Hologram

by James Conroyd Martin

“But there is one other thing,” the contractor was saying, pointing to the dormer above the balcony. “See that board beneath the dormer on the right?”

  Meg noticed for the first time that the horizontal board beneath the dormer’s rounded roof was in disrepair, its paint blistered.

  “That piece has to go.”

  Meg trusted him. “Okay, go ahead and replace it.”

  “Sure, just as soon— ”

  Both the contractor and Meg heard a cry come from the balcony at the north end, the area on the driveway side currently being repaired. It was an abbreviated cry, high-pitched—yet the cry of a man, a man in terror, a man falling.

  “Oh, my God,” McKnight cried, “It’s Juan!”

  The columned verandah on the first floor afforded Meg a clear line of vision. She could see now the man plunging to the hard-packed earth. But the height of the verandah’s flooring—some two or three feet above the ground—spared her seeing the actual impact.

  She winced at the dull, heavy thud.

  There was only a sickening, dead silence in those few moments before she and McKnight reached the man on the ground.

  Meg saw immediately that his leg was broken; it lay beneath him twisted as a pretzel. But he was alive just the same, dazed and groaning.

  Kurt hurried out onto the verandah and looked down on the scene. His face was white. “Christ! I saw him hit from the basement window. I’ve got an ambulance on the way.”

  “Thanks,” McKnight said, without looking up. He started to speak to the workman in Spanish.

  Meg knelt down and held the man’s hand. She felt helpless.

  The phone rang inside and Kurt disappeared.

  The workman opened his eyes. He still looked very frightened, very pale. He tried to move, but McKnight dissuaded him. His glazed eyes moved to Meg, and he made a valiant effort to smile.

  As they waited, the man’s eyes seemed to visibly clear, and he became very animated—and agitated. He pointed above, speaking so swiftly that Meg wondered if McKnight could keep up.

  Kurt reappeared. “Wenonah’s on the phone.”

  Meg shot Kurt a look of exasperation.

  Kurt understood. He shrugged, saying, “I tried to tell her it wasn’t a good time, but—well, you know Wenonah. Sometimes she doesn’t hear.”

  “Okay, I’ll come in.”

  Wenonah immediately regretted her pushiness with Kurt. She shouldn’t have doubted him. It probably was a bad time to call.

  Still, Meg had not returned her call. And she herself had found excuses not to call, not to tell her friend about the blonde in the White Hen.

  She could hear Meg’s footsteps now coming across the hardwood floor. Her resolve flagged.

  “Hello, Wenonah.”

  “Hi, Meg. Listen, I’m sorry if this is a bad time to call— ”

  “That’s okay. It’s just that we’ve got an injured workman here. He fell off the balcony.”

  “Good God! Okay, I won’t keep you—but—are things any better, Meg?”

  “Uh, no, not really. There’s the ambulance, Win.”

  Wenonah could hear the siren, too. “Worse?”

  “I don’t know. I took a little fall myself last night.”

  “Meg, you’re all right?”

  “Yeah, sure. Could’ve been bad—listen, Win, I’ve got to go.”

  “The baby— ”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Good.—He?—have you had an ultrasound?”

  “No. I just have a feeling it’s a boy. Female intuition, I suppose. Listen Wenonah, I really will call you. Monday? And I want you to come out again.”

  “Sure, Meg. Absolutely.”

  Wenonah hung up. Damn it, Meg, you think your life is complicated now?

  Juan was being lifted into the ambulance as Meg came out into the driveway. Even a fleeting view of his face told her he had been given a strong sedative.

  “Don’t worry,” McKnight was saying to Kurt as Meg joined them. “I’m fully insured.”

  Meg sensed immediately she had missed out on something important. “Were you— ” Meg started. “Were you able to understand him, how it happened?”

  McKnight looked to Kurt, who looked troubled. Something significant had taken place.

  “Well, that’s a bit of a mystery, Mrs. Rockwell. Your husband says you don’t have any children, that you’re waiting for your first.”

  “That’s true.” Meg felt her throat tighten and go dry.

  Robert McKnight shifted awkwardly. “Well, Juan said that someone tapped at the window off the balcony.”

  “That was enough to make him lose his footing?”

  “That and the fact that it was a pale blond kid who—and here’s where I don’t trust my translation—who passed his hand through the pane—as if—”

  Meg swallowed hard. “As if he were a ghost?”

  McKnight shrugged in a kind of unwilling agreement. “I’m sure there’s an explanation, Mrs. Rockwell. There was no kid in the house. The paramedic did say he likely had a concussion. The fall may have caused a hallucination or something.”

  “Perhaps,” Meg said. She looked at Kurt.

  He was not amused.

  THIRTEEN

  It was evening. Dinner had been strained. The discussion about the house came afterward in the living room.

  Kurt had stopped his pacing and stood now by the fireplace.

  Meg sat on a wicker settee at the side of the bay. She fought back tears. “But you said three weeks, Kurt. You did! It’s only been one.”

  “Three weeks of nothing happening, Meg. Enough has happened this week! And probably even more than you’ve told me—yes?”

  “No.”

  “Meg!”

  Damn it, Meg thought. She felt vulnerable, as if he could read her thoughts, detect any untruths. “Well, just the dreams— ”

  “The dreams that you said had stopped?”

  Meg sat in guilty silence.

  “They haven’t, obviously.”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, well, the dreams may have some kind of explanation, but when it comes to accidents—two in twenty-four hours with real injuries and doctors and ambulances—that’s when we draw the line in the sand. That could’ve been you they put in the ambulance today. Meg, you’re pregnant and as such— ”

  “So you think it’s the house? That it’s haunted? This has convinced you?”

  “I don’t know. But if you do, that’s enough for me to say that’s it, let’s get the hell out of here! Most women would be long gone. How can you still want to stay?”

  Meg drew in a long breath. “I love the house, Kurt. Oh, I know it’s been only a few weeks, but it’s become my home. I feel a part of it. I know I keep saying that, but it’s true.” She paused, still fending off tears. “The thought of moving back to a city condo tears me apart. I don’t think I can do it.—And I’m not most women.”

  Kurt came and sat down next to her. “Sometimes we have to face facts.” He took her hand. “This isn’t working, Meg. But it isn’t the end of the world. We can start looking for another house right away—here in Hammond, if you want.”

  “It’s not Hammond, Kurt. It’s the house. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime house.”

  “Believe me, Meg, I do want you to be happy.”

  “Then let’s wait. We may be able to get to the bottom of this—this mystery. We may be able to purge the house of whatever it is— ”

  “With what? Ghostbusters?” Kurt jumped up in anger. “At what cost, Meg?” He spun around to face her. “Yours? Mine? The baby’s? Huh?” His eyes narrowed. “Our marriage?”

  “No, of course not!” Meg paused, biting her lower lip and waiting for the tension to ease.

  Kurt turned to stare out the front window. A minute or two passed.

  “Kurt,” Meg ventured, “what did you mean about there being an explanation for my dreams?”

  The conversation took a sudden turn. Meg could see that it was he who felt sudden
ly vulnerable. His anger vanished. He had let something leak out. What was it? Meg thought back to the drive home from the station and how he had questioned her about the dreams, as if he had learned something—

  “What is it, Kurt?”

  “Well, truth is I mentioned your—occurrences and dreams to George Ringbloom and he brought up— ”

  “You did what?” Meg felt angry blood rushing to her face.

  “I spoke to George about them.”

  “Without asking me? Great! So he and everyone at Ravensfield is having a field day at my expense! Poor Meg Rockwell, I can just hear it, Kurt. Poor Meg, did you hear how she went off the deep end? She’s gone quite bonkers in Hammond with all kinds of imaginings—poltergeists and such.”

  “It’s not like that, Meg! First of all, George was there for me every step of the way through my divorce and I can assure you that his confidence is as true as a priest’s. Not a single detail got out then, and he won’t betray my trust now.”

  Meg took a breath. Her anger was abating. She had to silently concur because had anything about Kurt’s divorce gotten onto the hospital grapevine, she would have heard.

  “Second,” Kurt was saying, “I have to say that George lent more credibility and weight to your experiences than I had in telling him. Honest to God, Meg. I had to talk to someone about all this, and I couldn’t bring myself to go to a stranger.”

  “Okay, okay,” Meg said. “I just don’t want to be known as Crazy Meg, you know? I do trust George. Now come back and sit down.”

  Kurt obeyed.

  “Now, what did he say about the dreams?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t begin to explain it—something about holograms. Life is like a hologram or some damned thing. I know that sounds bogus, but he thinks your dreams may belong to someone else.”

  “Really? I knew it! I did—how?”

  “I don’t remember exactly, but it made sense at the time, sort of. You should talk to him, Meg. No, better yet, you should talk to this doctor friend of his that specializes in this hologram stuff.”

  Meg’s mind was moving quickly. “So it is possible?”

  “He seems to think so, says the science is there.”

  “This doctor, who is he?”

  “She. I’ve got her name and number, but they’re at the condo. If you’re coming back with me— ”

  “I’m not—not yet.”

  “Then I can call you on Monday with it.”

  “Yes, please do.”

  “Meg, she’s a psychoanalyst.”

  Meg blinked in surprise, then digested the information. “All right. All right, maybe that’s what I need at this point. Maybe she can help us solve this damn thing.”

  “Don’t count on it, Meg.”

  “Hey, this isn’t a trick to get me to a shrink?” The question was only half in jest.

  Kurt laughed. “No, it’s not. And a psychoanalyst is not a psychiatrist.”

  “I know, Kurt, a psychoanalyst. She’s not an MD and doesn’t dispense drugs, but she counsels patients using Freudian theory. So she’s a shrink. Next question: can we afford her?”

  “That’s immaterial.”

  Meg laughed now. “An ironic, even Freudian, choice of words!”

  Kurt smiled, then stiffened. He made a move, as if to take her hand in his, but he couldn’t bring himself to make the contact. “Don’t get your hopes up, Meg. The house goes on the market Monday.”

  “You could at least wait until after I’ve had a visit with the shrink.”

  “I think our course is set, Meg. Monday.”

  Kurt’s clipped comment reminded Meg of Captain Vere’s resigning Billy Budd to his fate, a literary allusion Kurt would not understand. “But you’ll call Monday with her number?”

  “I promise.”

  And he would, Meg knew; he was as unequivocally forthright as the captain in the novel Billy Budd.

  Somehow, though, she sensed that Kurt regretted having told her about the hologram business.

  Long after Kurt had gone to sleep, Meg went out into the bay again, and settled into the rocker.

  Well, she thought, why not give in? The stress was getting to her. Why not admit it? And Kurt was right: there was the baby to consider. At thirty-seven, Meg could not afford to take her first pregnancy lightly.

  Why not move back to the condo and regroup until after the birth? The time there would be confined and boring—but unstressful. No ghosts there yet—maybe in a hundred years. That is, if high rises hold up as well as the finely crafted old houses.

  Meg took stock of her situation. The tapping had stopped. The piano music recurred from time to time, more often in her dreams or half-dream states.

  It just wasn’t that terrible. Did it truly warrant giving up the house? If only she had denied—not the existence of spirits—but the access she had given. Kurt wanted to retreat only because of the spirits’ effect on her. He himself was a skeptic, an unbeliever. He didn’t talk much about religion, for that matter. A lapsed Catholic, he didn’t accompany her to Mass the two or three times a month she attended.

  Meg blamed herself. She had mentally invited communication with the spirits. That may have made the difference. Perhaps poor Juan lay in St. Margaret’s because of her, because she encouraged them to materialize.

  She suddenly stopped rocking, her mind stricken with a thought both terrible and logical: Coming so close in time and description to her own similar mishap, could it be that Juan’s was no mere coincidence? Could it be that he was a victim by proxy? A proxy for her because she had escaped unscathed? The thought was chilling.

  Could it be that they were dealing with a vengeful and malevolent ghost?

  Meg shuddered at the thought, then let it go. She had never been one to think the worst, and she would not do so now. Not about this.

  In any event, her notion that the spirit of the boy was a force for good was put in question. It was capricious at best, and at worst—what? One thing was certain: there were two entities, one of a child and one of a woman, and one or both of them had to be taken very seriously. She drew in breath and thought for a good, long time, deciding at last that she would keep this information from Kurt. Telling him would just add fuel to the fire.

  A noise jolted her now from her thoughts, a noise there in the room.

  Before she had time to react or even think, Rex jumped up into her lap, his meow more of a whine.

  Meg sighed in relief. Enough is enough, she thought, petting him.

  She turned to the window now to watch the night shadows outside and the gentle stir of the new leaves on the old willow in the front yard. Rex began to purr. Will I be here to see it through even one season? she asked herself. Everything about this house feels so right. I want to stay!

  One has to have dreams, she thought. This wonderful old house had become one of hers. How could she shake herself free of it, live her life knowing she had given up?

  She thought back to her first love, her true love. Pete had been a dream unrealized, one that colored the years after him. But she would not blame herself for his loss, as she had for many years. That had been his choice. Having a child had been a dream, too, one that now included Kurt—and the house. How quickly, she realized, having the child and the house had become one seamless dream. How to explain it?

  She couldn’t.

  And neither would she give up the house.

  Kurt was putting the house up for sale on Monday. Meg had no reason to doubt him. Meeting with the psychoanalyst offered some vague hope, but how soon could an appointment be had?

  Never mind, she told herself. She would not sit idly by in the meantime. She would be no sacrificial Billy Budd. There was action that she could take on Monday.

  FOURTEEN

  Fortunately, Meg’s health care calls had been scheduled for the morning. With time running out, she regretted having taken the job—even if it was part time. She performed the calls as efficiently as possible, trying to avoid any sign that she was less than e
nthusiastic.

  Still, her spirits were up. She had called the library early in the morning. Yes, she was told, Miss Millicent would be returning to work today. She thought of leaving her name but didn’t. She wasn’t sure the woman would remember her by name. Miss Millicent struck her as too scattered, too eccentric.

  The morning seemed interminably long. Four house calls and not any one close in distance to another. She finished by noon, though, and stopped home for a light lunch. She wasn’t hungry but managed to force down a tuna on rye—without mayonnaise—and a bowl of tomato soup.

  She ate quickly and headed for the library.

  The first thing Meg noticed in the Calumet Room of the Hammond Public Library was the carved wooden sign on Miss Millicent’s huge oak desk. She did have a last name: Reidy. Fitting, Meg thought, she was so damn thin.

  Miss Millicent was approaching her now. Meg’s eyes fixed on the thinning, curly hair that must have just been subjected to its latest henna home treatment. Bare scalp was more plentiful than the hair.

  To Meg’s surprise, the woman did remember her. All right, she thought, maybe not so scattered, but still five stars in the eccentric department.

  Miss Millicent rubbed her hands together like an overanxious undertaker. Her fingers were quite crooked with arthritis, the nails magenta. “Well, well, where do you wish to start—is it Mary?”

  Meg smiled. “No—it’s Meg. Well, the house was built in 1910, so I’d like to work my way through Hammond history starting a few years before that.”

  “Excellent! Precisely what I thought, too, sweetie. Come over to this table. I’m all set up for you.”

  “You are?” Meg was impressed—and astonished to see that she was prepared, indeed. The long table was piled with loose papers, documents, pamphlets, pictures, and books. The sheer volume was daunting.

  “Now, once you wade through this, I’ll show you some microfiche materials. Do you know how to work a microfiche machine?”

  “Yes, thanks so much, Miss Millicent.”

  “It’s what I’m here for, my dear. Now remember to keep an eye out for the Reichart name. That’s the family that built your home. Johann Reichart was the patriarch. Very reputable!”