The 'Geisters

by David Nickle

  But Ann was a nice kid. So when she made up the invitations, she didn’t make one for Buster. When she handed them out next day at play group, she just gave him a pat.

  Philip was almost as excited as Ann. He, after all, had had six birthdays now—three of them big-production-number parties. The last one had been an outing to Chuck E. Cheese with all his friends from kindergarten. He explained to Ann that soon she would be big enough for a Chucky birthday. But in the meantime, a birthday party at the house would be just fine.

  Their mom cleaned up the basement for the party. It wasn’t super fancy—she was always complaining about the wooden panelling and the tatty carpet. But with birthday decorations and little plastic chairs and a couple of Fisher-Price tables (one borrowed from Robyn’s mom), and the piñata shaped like a robot hanging from the dropped ceiling, she admitted it didn’t look too bad.

  The kids started to show up at lunchtime. First there was Robyn and her mom and dad. They brought a big paper bag covered up with fluffy paper on top. And a card. Ann wondered if this were a present too. One of the boys (whatsisname?) came with just his mom next, and then another boy came along with his mom, who was also looking after whatsername, who was grinning bigger than ever, and carrying her own present, wrapped in bright paper and tied at the top. Ann couldn’t guess what it was.

  And then the last boy came, who Ann was pretty sure was called Stevie. They were very happy, all of them, to get things underway.

  There were two parties. One in the basement, with a bowl of bright red punch, and hot dogs and chicken nuggets and french fries. There was a second one upstairs, in the kitchen and dining room. There, parents and guardians gathered, drinking grown-up drinks and waiting their turn to come downstairs to watch over the party.

  Later birthdays would be more structured. That morning, Ann had picked out the toys she was willing to share, and had them laid out in neat rows in the corner nearest the laundry room. There was a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game tacked up to the wall, but it was clear early on that this was beyond most of the guests’ abilities. And there was the piñata. But that was for later.

  The festivities began with an inventory of the toys. Ann solemnly told her guests which was which, as her dad videotaped.

  “These are my Rainbow Brites!” she exclaimed, pointing at a little clutch of bobble-headed dolls, and their unicorns. “That’s Jem!” She grabbed the more humanly proportioned blonde doll and waved her around, fast enough that her neck would have snapped if she weren’t plastic. “And this!” And she picked up a different doll, whose hair was more mane than coif and who carried a big sword in one fist—and roared: “SHE-RA!”

  Philip cracked up. The girl guests headed in to look more closely. The three boys looked on curiously, but kept their distance.

  “Philip,” said their dad, apprehending the problem before anyone else, “why don’t you go get your Star Wars toys.”

  Philip, who was also a nice kid, ran upstairs to oblige. And Ann settled down with the Rainbow Brite dolls, to arrange a pecking order.

  Robyn went for She-Ra. And the other girl—she must have gone for some punch. It was just Robyn and Ann until lunchtime.

  There was trouble at the table—someone hadn’t set quite enough spaces, and Nicky had to stand for a little while. He kept trying to sit on the smiling girl’s lap, but Ann told him he couldn’t.

  “That’s rude!” she said.

  But Nicky was a baby, and started to cry. So the girl said it was okay and got up.

  Ann was impressed; she didn’t cry at all. She just nodded, and went upstairs with her hotdog and juice cup.

  Probably to tell her mom.

  ii

  “Okay,” said Ann’s mom, “who wants candy?”

  There was general agreement that everyone did. This, after a big piece of cake with icing that was white, and pink, and blue, and multiple sippy-cups of red, sugary punch. The party had not had its fill of sugar.

  “Okay, here’s the game,” she said. “There’s lots of candy. But can anyone guess where it is?”

  “Inside the robot!” squealed Ann, and Robyn yelled “No fair!” because of course Ann was on her home turf. The boys sat quiet, rocking back and forth on their chairs, waiting to see how things would play out.

  “That’s right. The robot there is all full of candy. We’re going to have to get it. Any idea how?”

  “Bang it with a stick!” yelled Nicky.

  Ann’s mother said yes, this was so, and pulled from behind her back a long stick, wrapped in colourful paper. In her other hand, she held a blindfold. “But no peeking,” she said.

  “You have to hit it hard,” said Philip, who then asked if he could go first. But Ann’s mom said no, Philip was too big and strong. And it was Ann’s birthday, not his.

  Ann wanted to be a good hostess, though, so she said she would go later.

  Robyn got the first whack. The blindfold was giant on her head—it made her look like she had bug eyes, thought Ann. Ann’s mother turned her around twice, and Robyn teetered off toward the punch bowl. The kids yelled at her that she was going the wrong way, and eventually she made it back to the robot and clobbered it.

  It was no good; it just swung back and forth slowly, and Ann thought: Robyn’s too little.

  The boys took their turns; each giving the robot a good wallop but not really making a lot of progress. Finally, it was up to Ann, and it was about time; she was jumping from one foot to another, and had to go pee but wasn’t going to say as long as that robot still had its candy in it.

  “Now let’s see how the birthday girl does,” said her mom, and put the blindfold over her head.

  The blindfold was made of a velvety cardboard, and it didn’t fit perfectly; light leaked in on the side. Ann thought she might be able to see out the sides if she turned her head just so. She couldn’t see much, but she could make out the shapes of her friends.

  “Okay baby,” said her mom, “you ready?”

  “YES!” she screamed.

  From somewhere nearby, she could hear her dad laughing as her mom’s hand fell on her shoulder, turning her around and around.

  “Okay,” said her dad, “everybody stand back. The birthday maniac has a stick!”

  Ann cackled on cue and started forward. “No no no!” shouted her guests, and so she turned around, and ran forward. She felt a pair of hands on her back, pushing her away, and her mom yelled, “Hey! No touching, now, Stevie.”

  Someone shouted something that Ann couldn’t understand. She took a few more steps forward, but someone else shouted, “No! Not that way!” right in her ear. Someone else hollered, “Yes! That way!”

  Ann felt her breath get quicker. She thought about all the candy that must be in that robot. And she started to think that maybe if she didn’t get that robot quickly, the candy would be gone. That would be sad. That would suck, like Philip would say.

  She might have started to cry then. She felt the tears welling up in her. But if she let that happen, on some level she knew that would be it—she wouldn’t be able to swing hard enough if she was crying too hard.

  So Ann swung.

  Philip finally took down the piñata. He did it without a blindfold, because at that point their parents and the other adults had concluded that blindfolding little kids and letting them swing sticks around in a relatively small basement rec room was not the safest thing.

  Ann had already apologized to Nicky. The stick had hit Nicky hard across the cheek when Ann swung it. It had missed his eye—it had not, “Thank God,” her mother said, broken skin. Probably it wouldn’t even bruise.

  Still, Nicky didn’t like it, and wailed to high heaven while his mom held him close and told him it would be okay. Stevie was whimpering too—more in sympathy. Ann was flat-out bawling—because even at this moment, when she’d raised a weapon and smashed it across the face of the little boy whose name she was posit
ive now was Nicky . . . she was a good kid. And there was no acknowledgment of that—no absolution whatsoever—here. When she said she was sorry, Nicky just buried his face deeper in his mom’s breast. When she said she was really sorry, raising her voice so that Nicky would be sure to hear it, her mom just took her over to her chair and gave her a hug.

  Finally, her mom patted her on the shoulder, and pointed over to the piñata, where Philip stood ready—grinning incongruously.

  “Okay, Philip,” said their dad, who stood behind her, “show that robot what-for.”

  And Philip wound up, holding the stick in both hands, pulling it nearly all the way around his back, somehow, and swung with all his might.

  The air at Ann’s third birthday party was filled with candy.

  iii

  Things wound down. Ann opened some presents, and said her thank yous.

  It was a good haul: a little baby girl doll, with a bottle; a paint set with Star Wars teddy bears; a colouring book with some puzzles in it too; and a play set with toy ponies.

  By four o’clock, it was over. As her dad set about cleaning up the basement and her mom took her upstairs to the bedroom, she was fidgety and cross—and couldn’t quite figure out why.

  “Nap time, now,” said her mother as she set her down on her bed on the bottom bunk.

  Ann yelled that she didn’t want to sleep, and as he climbed up into his bunk on top, Philip agreed. But there was no arguing. Nap time meant nap time.

  Philip climbed up to the top bunk, and the frame shook as he adjusted himself to at least shut his eyes if not actually sleep.

  “Happy birthday,” he said, and Ann said, “Happy birthday.”

  But something was bothering her. There was something missing. She turned that over in her mind as she drifted off to sleep. There was enough food, and there was a lot of play, and she’d said goodbye to her friends like she was supposed to, and the presents were great.

  And then she thought about it. She had opened presents from every kid except for that girl from the play group. She still couldn’t remember her name, but she definitely remembered that when she arrived, she was carrying a box with a ribbon on it.

  Where was it?

  Had she gotten mad and taken it home with her? Ann hoped not.

  In fact, she bet that it was downstairs in the basement, or maybe by the door from when she came in. Ann thought she should go

  and see.

  She waited until she heard Philip’s breathing get slow, like it did when he fell asleep, and very quietly slipped out from under her covers. She crept across the floor of their bedroom, and cracked open the door, and came out into the upstairs hallway. That was fine. She would keep going.

  She checked the bathroom, in case she had left it in there. She climbed down the stairs, backwards, which was safer, and had a look by the front door. Nothing. Her mom and dad were in the kitchen, and she didn’t want to go there right now because she might get in trouble. So instead, she went straight to the basement door in the dining room and climbed down.

  The lights were out in the basement and Ann was too little to reach the light. But the little windows by the driveway made it just bright enough to see. So she did the backwards-climbing thing again, and went right down to the basement floor. Her feet made a candy wrapper crinkle, and then it stuck to her sock.

  She looked around. There was still wrapping paper on the floor, and she looked through that. But nothing.

  She was about to give up, when she heard a tick-tick-tick sound from behind the wall. There was a little door but she knew she wasn’t supposed to go back there. That was where the furnace was, and furnaces were for big people.

  Of course, she had just had a birthday. She was bigger now than she ever was.

  Ann went through the door.

  And sure enough—there it was! A little box with a ribbon wrapped around it! Right there beside the furnace. Which was ticking, faster and faster.

  Ann picked it up. She wouldn’t open it here. She hauled it upstairs, and being very quiet, snuck up through the dining room and living room, back up the stairs. She tiptoed along the hallway, and back into the bedroom.

  She very quietly got back into bed, and then set about unwrapping the present. The ribbons were hard to remove—they were held on with the stickiest glue ever. But Ann got them off. Then the paper, which was all bright red, had to come off. She tried to take it off quietly, but didn’t do so well at that. It made a rrrrrRIP! sound that she was sure would wake Philip. But although the bunk bed went thunkity-thunk, Philip didn’t come down. So she opened the rest of the paper, and underneath that, found a simple cardboard box like one for shoes.

  She opened that up fast. “Ooo,” she said. “Birdy!”

  It was a beautiful blue bird—with a dark blue head and pale blue wings. It was curled up in a bed of plastic straw. Ann touched it. It was so soft. Its little eyes were shiny and black. Also, it smelled.

  Thunkity, went the bunk bed.

  Ann looked up at the ladder. There was a pair of little legs, not much bigger than hers, standing on one of the top rungs. It wasn’t Philip—he was much bigger. Ann was still puzzling it out when the legs took one step, and another, and disappeared into the top bunk.

  The whole bed swayed a bit. More than a bit.

  Ann put her birdy down, and slid out from under the covers and got onto the floor.

  She stepped back so she could get a good look on top.

  “Hey,” she said.

  The girl looked back. She was sitting up in the bed, grinning wider than ever. Her eyes looked kind of like the bird’s eyes in this light—all black and glittery. But friendly.

  “Thank you for the present,” said Ann.

  The grinning girl bounced a bit. She didn’t say anything, but Ann could hear Philip murmur something.

  “It’s nap time,” said Ann. The girl nodded vigorously. She bounced some more, and looked down at where Philip would be. Ann couldn’t see Philip.

  “You should go to your mommy,” said Ann.

  The girl bent over and disappeared behind the edge of the top bunk.

  There were no more thunkities.

  Ann rocked from one foot and then the other. Of all her friends from the play group, Ann thought she liked this girl best. But this was very strange behaviour coming from her, all the same.

  Why was she still here? Where was her mommy? Everyone else had gone off with their mommies.

  Ann started to climb up the ladder. She wasn’t allowed to do this, but she had done so anyway a couple of times. Because, while she was a nice kid, she was also a curious kid. And the top bunk was great; there was a window up there for one thing. It was a great view, and once she had come up with Philip to look at the sunset through it.

  It was dark and grey when Ann climbed up this time. Drops of water hung on the screen outside the glass.

  The light made the grinning girl look like a black-and-white picture where she lay, cuddling Philip around his chest with her skinny arms. Philip was fast asleep, and the girl was holding him at his back. Her eyes were closed too, like she was sleeping. But Ann didn’t think she was sleeping; she was breathing too fast. It sounded like she had the sniffles. Philip shifted, and she shifted too, so she was holding him even tighter.

  Ann stood on the rung right under the top rung.

  “You need to go home,” she said, and the girl opened her eyes. They flashed dark, like little marbles.

  “Find your own bed,” said Ann. “You go there.”

  The girl pulled away, her arms pulling back from around Philip’s chest.

  “He’s my brother, not yours,” said Ann. “Go home.”

  The girl stood up on her little legs, so her head brushed the ceiling.

  Then she reached down, and ran a finger over Philip’s cheek, and bent down, and stepped out the window.

  Ann clambered onto the bed, and
pushed her face to the glass to see where the girl had gone. Even though she squinted, she couldn’t tell. It had become even darker. The girl had gone somewhere into that. There was no way Ann would be able to tell where.

  Philip stirred and blinked. Ann curled up beside him, and he put his arms around her. Ann didn’t think she’d get to sleep after all that commotion, but she did, all the same.

  THE BRIDGE

  i

  The Insect came to her, finally, in a campground outside of Bloomington, Indiana.

  Ann had been following Penny’s advice—zigzagging across the country rather than making a straight-up run for it. She’d been mindful that the man with the buzz-cut could still be on her, even though he’d been scared off at Rosedale. Or Mister Sleepy had. But who knew if he might try and pick up her trail elsewhere?

  So she stayed offline and kept her new phone battery-free. And when she needed to sleep, she looked for off-season campgrounds, where she could get a shower, but generally avoid even small groups of others.

  The Winding River campground was where she ended up her second night on her meandering, under-the-radar trip home. And it was perfect for her needs. The campground was on a road lined with cornfields, nestled in a copse of trees between farms. It was not in fact on a river, but the owners had fashioned a pond that they stocked with fish. This far into the fall, they didn’t have many customers; at the lodge, they were happy to hook the van up to power and turn on the water in the bathroom for her. Ann thanked them, picked a spot far from the lodge, and cracked a bottle of some interesting-looking California zinfandel, to watch the sunset.

  She hadn’t actually thought to pick up anything to eat. The wine hit her hard as a result. She was asleep before the stars came out.

  At midnight, Ann woke up, throat torn with reflux bile, on the little bench beside the kitchenette. She had not even put up the roof to open up the bunks to sleep properly, so her neck hurt, too.