Meg would not validate the humor relief he was attempting. “You were going to act on it.”
Kurt’s eyes lowered to half-mast. “But I didn’t, Meg. I didn’t.” The eyelids slowly lifted now. “Do you believe me?”
Meg sensed that this was the truth, and relief streamed through her. “Yes,” she said. Kurt squeezed her hand, and she returned the pressure.
“Thanks, Meg.” He leaned over and hugged her to him.
It was an awkward gesture, but she appreciated it, nonetheless.
He drew back now. “Then you’ll come back with me tonight?”
Meg looked into his hopeful eyes and shook her head, sadly. “Not yet, Kurt.”
“Meg— ”
“I’ve still got some things to figure out.”
“About the house?”
“Yes.”
“The . . . spirits?”
“Yes.”
“Are you crazy? Why? What’s making you stay here?”
“I don’t know. A feeling—an impulse voice—that’s what Doctor Peterhof calls it. I feel that somehow I can set things right.”
“To keep the house?”
“Maybe—but, well, maybe I can do some good.”
“For people who have been dead for years? Decades? Come on, Meg!’”
“I need just a little more time in the house. If that doesn’t do it, I’ll come back to the city next week and never look back.”
“And if it is enough time, if it does do it, what then? You expect to stay here? Do you think I would spend another night in the house after this afternoon?”
Meg shrugged. “I can’t think of all the things ahead of us. We could at least sell the house with clear consciences. I know I need only a few days.”
“Even if I don’t—can’t—stay?”
Meg pursed her lips. “Even if.”
Kurt’s face flushed with anger at her resoluteness. She watched as he tried to reign in his temper.
“Then I’m wasting my time,” he said, pulling his hand away and standing. “I have to pack my clothes.”
Meg could think of nothing to say, nothing to resolve their differences.
His temper tore free of its mooring now. “I swear to God the only way I’ll come back to this house is to sign the sale papers. Or to pick you up! And you’ll have to call me, Meg!” He was shouting now. “You’ll have to call me! I won’t call or come begging!”
Meg held back her tears. Still, her mouth would not move.
When the silence became too much to bear, Meg picked up the dishes and went into the kitchen. She heard Kurt moving off toward the bedroom.
Meg went back to the dining table and sat, despondent that she had hurt him. Oh, it was hurt all right that sparked his temper and provoked his ultimatum. Hurt that she didn’t choose to be with him, hurt that she had chosen the house over him. If only he would understand—could understand—what compelled her. But how could he?—when she didn’t understand it herself.
After Kurt had piled his belongings at the front door, after he had carried them to the car, after he had called out a goodbye that begged her to relent, she thought of running to the door and calling to him. She thought of leaving with him.
Now the car was backing down the drive, and Meg stirred herself from her lethargy at the table. She found herself hurrying—not to the door—but to the living room where she had left her purse.
In it was the article on Claude Reichart’s death.
TWENTY-TWO
Kurt had taken the less traveled Chicago Skyway out of Indiana instead of the Bishop Ford Expressway. He couldn’t remember having made a conscious decision to do so. The Caprice emptied into the Dan Ryan expressway now, and the lights, noise, and motion awakened him to the foggy state he was in. He sat up straight, opened the window. One had to drive with all senses alerted when on the infamous Dan Ryan.
Why had he taken the Skyway? He could not even remember paying the $2.50 in tolls—the reason why it was the road less traveled.
His life was in a tailspin. Things that he thought mattered—Mrs. Shaw, The Robbins, unloading the house, even the spirit of the house—fell into perspective. Even his career, or maybe especially his career, surfaced in his mind for what it was—a job with a sharklike nature of overseeing cutting and slashing, a job that made for him a comfortable living, as long as he played the current corporate game of health care, an industry—yes, that’s what it was now!—that precluded any humanitarian thoughts or concern for the health of patients.
What mattered were Meg and his child. These were real to him. And he had screwed up again. How had he managed to do it?
He thought of turning around and going back. He wished that he could, but he couldn’t. He had set an ultimatum for Meg that he regretted now, bitterly. What had he been thinking? Did he expect her to come running out to the drive, make him stop, and accompany him to Chicago?
No, Meg was stronger than that. He was still learning how strong she was.
The Caprice was approaching Lake Shore Drive now. He would be at the condo in ten minutes.
What’s keeping me from turning back?
Meg sat quietly in the bay, but her body was tense, her mind on edge. She had read the article twice. It detailed the burning of the barn that had been repurposed to use as the Reichart garage with servants’ quarters overhead. The wooden structure burned down to the four-foot-high stone and mortar wall and foundation. Claude Reichart, a nine-year-old child pianist and composer, died in the blaze. An investigation of the fire’s cause was being undertaken by the fire and police departments. No one could explain Claude’s presence in the barn. It had been, a grieving Mrs. Alicia Reichart told the reporter, out of bounds for her son.
Mrs. Reichart had been hosting a luncheon at the time for the members of the Presbyterian Ladies Society. Claude, already well known in Northern Indiana as a musical prodigy, was to play the piano for the ladies after the meal.
At the first alarm, the ladies ran to the verandah and watched in horror as the barn was consumed by the blaze. They could, Mrs. Julia Mulvihill said, see Claude’s face and form at the upper window before the smoke inside became too thick. “He was there one moment,” she said, “and then he was gone.”
The story was disturbing and heart-rending.
Meg remembered now what Krista had said about dual unities—that such a manifestation was common with mothers and newborns, but could also apply to a mother and older child if the bond was especially close, or if one or both deaths were traumatic, perhaps leaving things unfulfilled. The likelihood of this phenomenon might even be further increased, she had said, if the mother witnessed the child’s death.
Alicia had witnessed her son’s death, and it had been no bedside vigil where some measure of preparation and closure might have been possible. Alicia had watched her first-born—a child with the talents of one in a generation—burn to death before her very eyes.
Good God! Was it any wonder after that and the subsequent loss of her husband and twins to influenza that the woman died in an asylum?
What a tormented soul she must have been. Or is!
Meg became convinced that the experiences with the spirits—or ghosts—of the boy and his mother did suggest a dual unity.
But what, if anything, did they want from her?
How could they be put to rest?
Meg read the article again, and not long after, a profound tiredness came over her. She fell asleep in her chair at about nine o’clock in the evening.
She dreamt.
Afterward she would recall that it started with a soundless dream she had had before. She was seated in a small, crowded room. It was daylight and the heat was almost tropical. People’s faces turned to her occasionally. Women’s faces. Women with large decorous hats and broad smiles behind waving fans.
All at once the women were on their feet, and Meg found herself in the crush as they pushed toward a doorway. Their faces bespoke panic and horror, but their screams from open mou
ths were as from a silent film.
Meg was on a porch now and looking up at a burning building—a barn. She would recall the dream as one in black and white, like the silents—except for the flames bursting in hues of yellow, orange, and red, flames that rose from the building like fluttering tropical birds.
Then she saw the face at the single window high up on the barn’s façade. The face from the news articles: Claude Reichart’s face. Even in her dream she recognized that this haunting visage was the same she had witnessed that first day in the window of the coach house.
Her heart contracted, and she reached out to the boy in the window, the boy with the huge sorrowful eyes, like those in the old Keane prints. Her mouth opened to call, to scream, but her efforts were voiceless. Her world spun, its bottom dropping out. This was the same sense of losing someone precious to her that she had experienced in her previous dreams. It was a depthless heartache.
Suddenly, the dream shifted, as dreams so inexplicably do. She was in the barn’s hayloft, staring down a ladder to where a man moved about in the gloom. She was afraid to go down, afraid to approach the man. He seemed sinister, dangerous.
She lay down, curled herself into a ball, sniffing at the familiar smell of hay, feeling a bit more secure.
The dream jumped again. She was on her feet. Dark smoke was billowing up the opening that held the ladder she could no longer see. She could not go down.
The heat was intense. She was coughing now, choking. No flames yet up here. But soon, she prayed, they would be climbing to the hayloft in their attempt to reach her.
No—they would not reach her in time. She was going to die, she knew it!
She stumbled to the window. She wiped at the filthy glass, tried to pound at the panes, tried to break them. But whose hands were these? Whose arms?
Why, they were a child’s!
She looked down, seemed to see a crowd of faces looking up at her. Did they see her? Wasn’t anyone going to help her? If the window somehow opened, could she jump? They’re going to think I started the fire!
She looked straight down to the ground.
The smoke, the heat, the vertigo overtook her now, and she felt herself falling . . . falling . . .
But it was the pain of her skin being singed by the flames that danced around her that awakened her, her head snapping back against the high back of the wicker chair.
She had perfect recall and knew immediately what had happened. Reading the article had prompted her to tap into the 1911 memories of the fire. First, as in all previous dreams, she experienced Alicia Reichart’s memories. But then—and this made her shudder—she had somehow tapped into Claude’s, as well.
These were not merely imaginings inspired by the article. They were full of details not in the article, details that made her believe she had envisioned the scenes as they unfolded in life ninety years before. The most haunting of these new details was the presence of the man on the first floor of the barn, a man she somehow knew to be responsible for the fire and for Claude’s death.
This seemed to validate the notion of a dual unity—mother and son. Meg became aware of the familiar smell of decaying violets—the odor she had experienced often after the dreams, during and after the balcony mishap—even Kurt had smelled it!—and after the death of Bernadine Clinton. It was no doubt Alicia Reichart’s favorite flower or fragrance.
But now—acrid, stronger, and more disturbing—came the smell of ash, something burnt. Meg had been aware of it only once before—the night she climbed the stairs following the apparition of the boy that had chased Rex. It made sense now and her stomach revolted at the realization. It was Claude’s smell—that of human ash, burnt flesh. A little boy burnt to death.
Did the commingling of the two very separate smells further underscore the dual unity theory?
Meg went to the bedroom to find a business card she thought she had tossed into the top drawer. She said a little prayer of thanks that it was there—and that a home number was scribbled on the back.
She hurried to the dining room, picked up the phone and started to dial.
She paused before finishing, thought a moment, and hung up.
She picked up the phone and dialed a different number.
“Ravensfield Hospital.”
“The Emergency Room, please.”
No verbal response, just a click. Then ringing.
A woman picked up. “ER.”
“Wenonah Smythe, please.”
She was on the line in a few seconds.
“Listen, Wenonah, would it be a terrible hardship for you to come out here? To stay overnight?”
“Why?” Wenonah sounded worried. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing much, yet anyway.”
“Where’s Kurt?”
“He was here, but he’s gone back to the condo.”
“I see.”
Meg knew Wenonah was trying to fill in the pieces without probing too much. “It’s not as bad as you think—between Kurt and me.”
“Oh.”
“I just need you here.”
“Are you in danger?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t sound all that convincing. Can I come after my shift—we’re swamped with crazies here. Full moon, you know.”
“That’s fine,” Meg said. “You’re off at eleven?”
“Yeah—but I’ll have to stop at home and grab some clothes.”
“No,” Meg blurted. “I’ll supply you with whatever you need. Please come out directly after work.”
“Listen, Meg, I could try to get off now— ”
“No, no! That’s okay. See ya soon, Win.”
“Bye.”
Meg picked up the business card, turned it over, and quickly dialed again.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Peterhof? I mean Krista.”
“Yes?”
“Meg Rockwell.”
“Meg! How good to hear from you!”
“I’m sorry to call you at home—and so late. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Goodness, no! What is it, Meg?”
“Well, I know you’re going to think me odd, but I need some clarification on the dual unity thing.”
“Okay . . . are you all right?”
“Yes, if you could just explain it again— ”
“Certainly. Dual unity is a transpersonal relationship that connects one on a very deep level with another. The experience can occur with mothers and their babies, or during periods of great emotion or shock. Yoga can help facilitate it, as well as certain drugs. It’s possible for one person to feel as if he—or she—is someone else.”
“Might one identify with someone dead?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I see.”
“In a weaker form this element of the holotropic mind is probably more of an empathy.”
“And in the strongest form?”
“Well, I suppose it could almost become a kind of possession.”
“And might someone identify with more than one person or—ghost?
Simultaneously?”
“Yes, absolutely. In fact, I went to Dachau a few years ago and experienced a rather common form of this dual unity, myself. I walked up and down rows of razed cellblocks, crying hysterically. The sense of loss and grief I felt is indescribable, Meg. Unspeakable. For the time I was there, I felt the terrible pain of those tragic souls who suffered and died there. For a time, I became them.”
Meg let out a little gasp.
“Are you all right, Meg?”
“Yes—fine.”
“That sort of transpersonal experience doesn’t usually last too long. Mine was gut-wrenching while it did, I can tell you.”
“I know.”
“You know? You’ve had such an experience? Recently?”
“I’ve discovered quite a bit about the Reichart mother and son.”
“The child prodigy?”
“Yes. And just tonight I read the account of t
he boy’s death. He died tragically in a fire.”
“Without fulfilling his incredible musical promise, of course.”
“Yes.”
“Did the mother witness the death?”
“Yes. After reading the article, I fell asleep in a chair, something I never do. I dreamt about the fire first in the mother’s viewpoint, then in the child’s. I felt the mother’s horror and helplessness, as well as the boy’s fear and physical pain. These feelings stayed with me long after I awoke. They are with me now, the feelings, I mean.”
Meg waited for Krista to respond. The pause was a long one.
“Krista, are you there?”
“Yes, yes, I am. I’m sorry. Your story just turned my arms into gooseflesh. I don’t like it, Meg.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, you say you never nap in a chair.”
“So you’re thinking I was kind of . . . used?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“I told you about the smells that accompanied the two—dead flowers with the mother and burnt ash with the son. Tonight, both smells were here after the dream. That’s why I needed to talk to you about the dual unity concept.” Meg drew in a breath. “So you think it’s possible?”
“Are you there alone, Meg?”
“Yes.”
“Your husband?”
“Oh, he had his own experience and decided to head for the city.”
“Marriage problems?”
Meg paused before responding. “Not unfixable.”
“Meg, perhaps the conservative thing for you to do would be to join him.”
“I expect that might happen next week.”
“No, I mean tonight.”
“Why?”
“We’re sailing in uncharted waters for the most part. I’ve told you that before. Your openness may have tapped you into the tragedy of these two lives. Or perhaps these two . . . ”
“Ghosts? You were going to say ghosts rather than spirits.”
“I was.”
“Because ghosts don’t know that they’re dead— ”
Hologram Page 17