The 'Geisters

by David Nickle

  And the screen went black.

  It couldn’t have stayed black for as long as it seemed to; the single breath that Ann drew as Susan Rickhardt ended her wave couldn’t have sustained her.

  The editor was working his art again, and the act of transition was somehow transformed into something more. But this time, Ann didn’t feel as though she were spinning; she felt herself a fixed point in space and time. All of it slowed to an instant, and that instant stretched.

  At first, Ann thought she couldn’t look away, that something was holding her gaze on the screen. As the breath rasped through her throat, she began to think that she could look away, could look anywhere she wanted in fact—but the blackness had replaced everything else, so it didn’t matter. Ann began to panic. It manifested in attempts—at screaming, at getting up, at just asking Ian Rickhardt: Please could you turn it off a moment? Nothing would come of it, though. She wondered if she might be dead.

  And here was the fulcrum of it, as Eva might say. The point where we can make a choice: dead or alive.

  Ann wasn’t going to be dead.

  And thinking of Eva, Ann began to imagine—to construct—to inhabit—the safe place.

  It was a struggle; she recalled that first time, sitting with Eva at the hospital, building the castle stone by stone in her mind, clearing the woods around it . . . fashioning, or at least conceiving, the architectural details. It was a true act of creation.

  Here, creation was barred from her. She saw the place she and Eva had made as through a dense fog. Standing in the high corridor, the fog’s tendrils clutched and flowed through the tall windows. Ahead, a blackened branch poked through. She could barely see anything; when she willed a candle, it snuffed out.

  She shuffled down the corridor, which was, she discovered, covered in mud. Sensation returned to her as she did. She felt the cool mud between her toes, rotten leaves sliding beneath her bare heel. She ducked beneath the branch, felt its bare twigs catching in her hair.

  She stood in front of the door to the tower room, the rot of swamp, of cesspool, filling her nostrils.

  And there, she stood and listened.

  Wood scraped against stone—as though a great trunk were being dragged across the floor of the tower room, one end to the other. The dragging stopped. There came a creaking sound then. And a great exhalation of air, as though an old man, an old woman for that matter, had just finished a big job.

  Then came a humming, and a scratching—with an occasional rending sound, as though a claw had found purchase in the wood.

  The humming sounded like a man. The tune was hard to place. It might have been random. It sounded like insanity.

  Quiet down, Ann wanted to say. Behave.

  But she still couldn’t summon the voice to say that. She was still drawing that single breath, and she could only watch—as her lungs filled—as the door buckled—

  —and cracked.

  “Hey li’ si’.”

  She was looking at Philip. He was wearing his jacket-and-tie wedding uniform, although she could only see the collar, the knot of tie, because the camera was in close. His mouth was twisting like it was its own creature; his eyes, though, were steady, gazing straight into the camera as he tried to say, Hey little sister.

  “Con’a—hin,” he said. Congratulations.

  Ann coughed, and gasped, and sucked in lungfuls of fresh air.

  “Oo boofoo.” You’re beautiful.

  She looked around, sat up on the sofa, and took stock of her situation.

  The living room was darker than it had been when the video began. Michael and Ian were gone.

  “Uv oo,” said Philip from the wall.

  I love you.

  Another wicked bass line came up—“Bang a Gong” by T-Rex; actually one of Ann’s choices—and the scene cross-faded to a shot of Ann and Michael and Lesley dancing, very badly, while Mr. T-Rex went on about how dirty, sweet, skinny and black-clad his girl was.

  Ann got to her feet. She was unsteady. Her mouth tasted sour—of too much beer. Had she had too much beer? That might explain things. She rubbed a chill out of her arms.

  T-Rex’s girl was weak, and also had hydra teeth. This was Jeanie, bopping side to side as she breached the fringe of the dance, showing every one of those teeth in a broad grin. She and Bridal-Ann faced off on the screen and yelled at each other to bang gongs, get things on.

  Where were the men? Ann did a check of the main floor. The kitchen was empty, pristine. The entry hall. A little coat closet. She called out: “Michael? Ian?” as she climbed the stairs to the second floor, the bedrooms.

  T-Rex went away and laughter and squealing replaced it. “Congratulations Mikey!” shouted a woman on the TV. People clapped.

  Partway up the stairs, Ann steadied herself and flicked on the hall light and climbed the rest of the way. The doors to the two bedrooms were open, their interiors dark. The bathroom door was closed. So was the door to the linen closet.

  “Guys?” she called as she stuck her head in one bedroom, then the other. “Guys?”

  Nothing. The beds were made.

  “Insect?” she whispered as she touched the freezing cold doorknob to the bathroom, and as she thought of that other door, she pulled this one open.

  The bathroom in the beach house was nice but nothing fancy. There was a biggish bathtub with jets, next to a fibreglass-formed shower stall opposite the toilet, whose tank was high on the wall. You flushed it by pulling on a chain at the bottom.

  Ann flicked on the light. Everything was as it should be at first glance. Towels were hung neatly by the sink. The mirror was clean, and uncracked—and while it was true, her arms and legs were gooseflesh, there was no frost or even mist on the mirror. The water in the toilet bowl was clean and blue. There was nothing amiss.

  Other than the fact my husband is missing.

  Ann shut the bathroom light off and crossed the hall to their bedroom.

  The French doors there opened onto a miniscule balcony; they were cracked open. Had Ann left them that way this morning? Had Michael? Wouldn’t Thea have shut them while they were out?

  Yes. She would have. She most certainly would have.

  Ann closed her eyes—tried to visualize the safe place. That, she knew, was the one sure way to deal with the thing that was happening. But she couldn’t get far—the memory of the shambles that she’d found there, just moments earlier, was too strong. She might be able to reconstruct it, but it would be well-nigh impossible to do it herself. And she couldn’t face that door—not without Eva. And Eva was far away.

  “Fuck,” she whispered, and opened her eyes. “Fuck.”

  It was darker now; the door to the hall was shut. The French doors were wide open. Her mouth tasted copper-salty; she had bitten her lip hard enough to draw some blood.

  Outside, the palm trees swayed; the leaves sounded like knives on a sharpening stone as they rubbed against one another. And underneath that—

  A humming sound.

  It sounded like a man—humming a tune to himself while he worked. What tune, Ann couldn’t say. It was coming from outside the room though. She made her way around the bed, and peered out the window.

  The bedroom was badly placed for any view; it looked out on the small cleared garden behind the beach house, which ended not twenty-five feet off, in thick foliage. There was a moon tonight, but also some cloud. So while Ann could hear that the humming was coming from the edge of that foliage—she couldn’t see much, at first. Just something moving, swaying back and forth. She went to the edge of the railing, and leaned over to look.

  It was a man. Who, she couldn’t say. But she could see arms outstretched on either side—a head that seemed to loll back, far enough that the neck might have snapped. He was turning like a dancer. She wanted to call out—but her throat felt full of sand. She couldn’t even open her mouth.

  She also couldn’t
look away.

  Because she began to realize that he wasn’t turning like a dancer at all—he was spinning, as though he were dangling on the end of a string, or a wound up elastic band; there was no contact with the ground. And as he turned, he seemed to rise up: a half-dozen revolutions, and the tips of his toes soon hovered at Ann’s eye-level—not more than a few metres out.

  His rotation had slowed—he might have been making one revolution every two seconds. His close-cropped beard caught the faint moonlight in a stippling of silver, as he spun to face her for an instant. Then the moon struck silver hair—bare, suntanned shoulders—the flank of pale naked buttock.

  He corkscrewed higher still, and when he turned, Ann found herself face to face with Ian Rickhardt. His eyes were shut—his jaw clenched.

  Ann stumbled back into the room. She fell against the bed and righted herself with her hands. When she turned back to look, the French doors were shut again. The room was like ice now.

  Ann pushed herself up and tried to open the doors. They were stuck—of course. She drew the curtain aside and peered out through the glass. There was nothing there but the trees. She put her hand on her racing heart and drew a deep breath, and shivered. When she exhaled, her breath condensed on the glass, and made a lattice.

  “Get back in your room,” she said. “Back into the tower.”

  But she didn’t have the stamina to do what she had to do—go back to her safe place, visualize the necessary repairs . . . toss those things out the windows on her way to the door, which she might then secure with . . . something . . . something that would keep the Insect in its place.

  “Get back!” She hoped to sound strong. But she was all too aware how her voice broke over the words—how the terror manifested, in her quaver.

  The room hummed back at her—mocking.

  Ann stepped away from the window as a crack started to grow along the frozen pane.

  “Get back!” She tried to turn on the lamp, bring real light to drive away the dark, but it was dead.

  She rounded the foot of the bed and found the door to the hallway. She twisted the doorknob and pulled hard, and the door opened. She stepped out of the bedroom, and into the tropical warmth of the beach house again.

  The hall light was out too—but it wasn’t dark.

  A warm yellow glow was coming from one of the closed doors—not the bedroom or the bathroom. But the utility closet.

  Was there a light fixture in there? Ann didn’t think there was; when Thea had given them the grand tour, she’d shown it to them: the place to get towels and clean sheets, and light bulbs in case one blew.

  “Shit.” Ann swallowed. The light bulbs.

  She had to be careful if that’s what it was.

  The light bulbs had sent her mother to the emergency ward one time; she’d have lost an eye if the glass had flown just an inch higher. Ann approached the closet carefully, one hand shielding her eyes. She pulled open the door, standing behind it as light spilled out, accompanied by the crackling whiff of ozone.

  Ann stepped around the door, and looked in. That’s what it was, all right.

  The dozen sixty-watt bulbs were yin-yanged in their little corrugated cardboard sleeves, next to the stack of towels. They were all glowing bright and hot.

  The packaging was starting to smoulder.

  She could see how this would end—how it had almost ended, the last time.

  Ann opened the washroom door and turned on the tap in the sink. The pipes moaned, but no water came out.

  Fuck you, she thought, and found a small bucket by the toilet. She dipped it into the toilet bowl and pulled out a half-bucket of water. The first bulb popped, then, and as Ann turned she saw the fire had started, flames licking around the edge of the cardboard.

  Ann flung the water into the closet. But she was too far away, and the water that got there just hissed, just threw up steam. Another bulb exploded, and then two more, in fast succession. The fire grew, as though someone were standing close fanning it. Ann dipped the bucket back into the toilet and stepped closer this time.

  “Fuck you!” she shouted, tossing the bucket directly into the flames, which had now spread to the doorframe, making of it a gateway of fire. Steam and smoke billowed from the middle, forcing Ann back.

  She dropped the bucket and coughed. There was a sparking and a hiss over her head, as the ceiling light fixture shorted beneath the inverted dome of the cover, sending a scar of black across the frosted glass. Fine white smoke poured out around the edge and cascaded down like the foam from an overflowing draught.

  Ann bent low and her hand flailed behind her and caught hold of the bannister. She pulled herself to the stairs and, on hands and knees, backed down them to the dark main floor as her injured knee protested. The smoke followed her in grasping tendrils but she was faster, and soon she was on the main floor. Only then did she let herself draw air. She struggled not to let it turn into a sob.

  The Insect was out. And tears? Tears only fed it.

  The door to the front steps was jammed, as was the sliding door to the balcony; a part of Ann knew this would be so even before she checked. She tried various things to smash the glass—a chair, a frying pan, and finally Ian Rickhardt’s laptop, still playing their wedding on its draining battery. Any one of them would have done the job. But Ann wasn’t surprised, when at the end of it the only thing shattered was the laptop. Ann wasn’t that strong to begin with, and the Insect had a way of pulling her punches for her, at times such as these.

  Smoke rolled down the stairwell, crawling across the ceiling of the living room, lit as if from within by the flames from the second floor. Ann bent low and drew in what air there was.

  She wouldn’t be breathing long and she knew it. The smoke, the heat of the flames . . . she would suffocate, immolate, one or the other or both, very soon now.

  The Insect had her, and it knew it too. It pounded triumphantly on the walls, shook the windows in their runners. Outside, it would be stirring up a storm. Nearer: flames roared and the room lit orange, as something caught. The smoke pressed her down further, and she rolled off her knees, so her face touched the floor.

  It would not be long. And there was no way out.

  Ann shut her eyes, and went the only other way she could.

  In.

  “Why?”

  She stood in mud, among the shattered foundations of the castle tower that she and Eva had built together. The sky overhead was a rolling storm. The stones of the tower stretched like the spine of a huge beast, over a dark hill and into twisted branches of a ravine.

  It was no place Ann had dreamed. Yet when her eyes closed, when she sought the safe place—this was where she landed. The field of her defeat.

  She wished Eva were here now, or available somehow, to help her—to reconstruct, to find the Insect . . . rope it back inside. What might she say? First, she would tell Ann to banish this ruin from her mind; to think of bright banners and trumpets sounding, of victory marches. Set her subjects to work, reconstructing the tower, while riders spread out across the land, accompanied by hounds who had gathered the scent of the Insect.

  Above all, she would tell Ann: Step out of the mud.

  But Ann could not; it was thick and deep, and her ankles were mired in it. And as she looked down, Ann realized there was no need to send trackers after the Insect. For in that mud, it crawled and clicked in a multitude of itself, centipedes and blue-backed beetles the size of her fist churned through the mud, spun about her ankles, crawled up as if to consume her.

  “Why?” they clicked and whirred, mocking with their tea-coloured wings and mandibles—with their pounding, growing louder, on the walls of the beach house, “Why does it ever go so?”

  “Why are you trying to kill me?”

  “The heart wants what the heart wants,” sang the Insect through the buzzing of its flies, the chirps of crickets . . . the sharp crack, of
a wooden doorframe.

  Ann felt arms underneath her own, and then the floorboards dragging against her legs. She tried to open her eyes but couldn’t—the smoke stung too badly. Then she was off the ground entirely, draped over shoulders. Someone was shouting, and coughing—and she was moving. At once, there was a sharp pain as her shoulder hit against something hard. And then a wash of cool air—a stomach-lurching shift—and gravel biting into her back, her thigh.

  “Ann!”

  She opened her eyes, and looked up into Michael’s. He knelt over her. He was shirtless, the thin blond hairs on his arms, crawling up his shoulders, turned into a halo of orange sparks by the light of the burning building behind them.

  He slapped her lightly on one cheek. She stopped him from doing the same on the other with her hand. She coughed, and coughed, and eventually managed to sit up, and tell him she was all right.

  “Thank God,” he said. “Oh thank God.”

  He took her in his arms, and she held him too—and they sat like that, as the flames climbed into the night sky, until the sirens announced the arrival of the firefighters and the ambulance.

  iv

  Ian Rickhardt was apologetic, but not to Ann. Michael kept him away from her after the fire. The two men had their conversation in a courtyard of Tobago County Hospital, while Ann drew oxygen and waited for the results of a chest X-ray and a blood test in the emergency department. Ian wheedled and bargained, but Michael held to his guns.

  When he returned to Ann’s bedside, he was alone.

  “He’s going back,” said Michael. “What an awful idea he had, coming here. I won’t let him do that to you again.”

  Ann shook her head and pulled the oxygen mask aside. “I’m fine,” she whispered.

  And she was fine. Ann hadn’t taken in very much smoke at all before Michael got to her, and she’d kept clear of the flames, so there were no burns to treat. She’d re-opened the fish-bite on her knee, but that was a simple matter of cleaning and re-dressing. Her throat still felt raw and her voice deepened half an octave. But Michael thought it sounded sexy and so did she.