The 'Geisters

by David Nickle

  “Well yes, he would,” said Sunderland. “Did you think it was a good idea to go with him? With Hirsch, I mean?”

  Ann thought about that. She’d been pretty hostile to the idea at the time—but in retrospect, it might’ve made sense. It might have been for the best. She’d left Miami on her own, and left a trail of victims as she went. Penny and her husband at the motel probably wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep for a month after what they’d seen; and the border . . .

  There were corpses at the border.

  All that might never have happened, if Ann had gone along quietly—let herself be locked up, or put into a coma, or whatever it was they did there. Or, she supposed, if she had kept the Insect under control in the first place.

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea,” said Ann. “No.”

  “Were you afraid that he might abduct you?”

  “I think those fears were founded, given everything.”

  “Fair point. But did you have them?”

  “Sure,” said Ann. “He laid out my situation for me pretty . . . pretty starkly, I think.”

  “And he didn’t pray.”

  “You keep coming back to that,” said Ann. “Closest he came was offering me communion, from his hip flask.” Sunderland seemed not to understand, so Ann elaborated. “Scotch. He offered me a slug of scotch.”

  “Ah.”

  “Not what you had in mind,” said Ann, and Sunderland shook his head.

  “Should he have prayed?” she asked. “Because he’s part of that religious sect. Who would he be praying to?”

  Sunderland opened his mouth to answer, but something changed in his expression and stopped and looked over Ann’s shoulder.

  “He shoulda been prayin’ to your Insect,” said a child’s voice. “That was his grave mistake, an’ he paid for it dear. Ain’t that right, Doctor Sunderland?”

  It was the girl—Peter’s niece. Ann recognized her from the vineyard.

  She was wearing a fresh white bathrobe that was too big for her. She grinned a little sheepishly as she saw Ann looking at her.

  “Hi,” she said, and Ann said “Hi.”

  She turned to Sunderland. “It’s okay now. Mister Sleepy’s taken care of everything. Everyone’s back in their rooms.” She crossed the sitting area to Sunderland’s side, and whispered something in his ear, pointing at Ann with her thumb as she did so.

  “Thank you, Lisa,” he said.

  “Where’s your Uncle Pete?” asked Ann.

  “He’s resting,” said Lisa. “Late night.”

  “Ann LeSage, please meet Lisa Dumont.” Dr. Sunderland got up.

  “How do you do?” said Lisa. She didn’t come over to shake Ann’s hand, but she waved again. She smiled, but looked at Ann sidelong—like she was trying to put her finger on something. Ann knew the feeling.

  “I’m doing pretty crappy, thanks.”

  Lisa took a step back, and Dr. Sunderland stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” he said to her, and Ann heard, in her ear: It’s all right, like an echo. She only felt the hand on her shoulder by its sudden absence; when she looked, she saw nothing behind her but empty air.

  “All right, Lisa,” said Dr. Sunderland. “We need to talk, Ann and I. Go and see to Mister Sleepy.”

  Lisa stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Mister Sleepy can take care of himself,” she said.

  Dr. Sunderland looked at her, and seemed about to say something to object. But finally, he shook his head.

  Lisa sat down in one of the chairs, curled her legs up under her and looked at Ann levelly.

  “You look bad,” she said.

  Ann rubbed her eyes. They stung. “I’m not sure how to take that,” she said.

  “Yeah, don’t take it wrong. Like you said, you’re feelin’ crappy. I get it.”

  Lisa gave a quick, nervous-sounding laugh, then went quiet, and started to twirl a lock of hair in her fingers. Ann couldn’t really see her face in this light. But she felt her eyes on her.

  “The Insect is pretty scary,” Lisa finally said.

  Ann agreed. “Mister Sleepy is pretty scary too,” she said.

  Lisa shrugged.

  “Mister Sleepy gets it done. He always did. But yours. It’s hard. It’ll do anything.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Ann.

  Lisa leaned forward. “Mister Sleepy knows,” she said. “The Insect is big. That’s why old Mr. Hirsch ought’ve been prayin’.”

  Ann didn’t disagree.

  “Mister Sleepy says it’s going to eat you up.”

  “Lisa!” said Dr. Sunderland. He had moved across the room, just at the edge of the light. “You know that’s not so. Don’t listen to that, Ann.”

  “Quiet, Doctor,” said Lisa, in a voice so bossy it nearly made Ann smile. “You don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, eat me up?”

  Ann’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. She could see that Lisa looked very serious.

  “Well it’s nothing new,” she said. “The Insect’s been eatin’ you for years. That’s what Mister Sleepy says.”

  “Ann—” said Sunderland. But although Lisa didn’t so much as look at him, he cut off.

  “Mister Sleepy says the Insect will eat everybody before too long.”

  Ann squinted. Charlie Sunderland was gone now.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” said Lisa.

  “I’m sorry?” said Ann.

  “Mister Sleepy says if I ask you nicely, maybe the Insect won’t eat me.” Lisa was talking more quickly now. “Mister Sleepy can be real helpful. That’s what he’s made for. He’s not like the girls; he’s not for that. Mister Sleepy’s for helpin’.” She held her hands together in front of her. “I hope the Insect ain’t too mad about Mister Sleepy helpin’ catch you. You know I let you go, back at that motel, right?”

  As Lisa spoke, she began to sob. And it dawned on Ann: this little girl was begging. Ann reached over to touch Lisa’s arm.

  “It’s all right,” she said, and it must have been the wrong thing to say. Lisa recoiled, drew her arm back to her shoulder, and scrunched away in the chair.

  Then she cried even harder. “I’m sorry! I don’t mind if you touch me, not really!”

  Ann’s hand fluttered back. Oh God, she thought. And then she thought about Lisa’s Uncle Peter Dumont, and Ian Rickhardt’s flaccid defence of their shared predilection, and she wondered. Mister Sleepy wasn’t for that.

  What about Lisa?

  “It’s all right,” Ann said. “I’m not going to touch you if you don’t want me to.”

  Lisa calmed down, but only marginally. She was still terrified. She swallowed, and folded her hands into her lap, and looked at them.

  “I can help you, y’know,” said Lisa. “I can help you talk to the Insect. That’s good, right? I can help you and the Insect do whatever you want.”

  Ann wasn’t sure that the Insect needed anybody’s help. But the offer was interesting. It certainly brought up some questions. Lisa Dumont wasn’t more than eight years old—just a little younger than Ann was when she visited Dr. Sunderland’s offices in Etobicoke, and they were all trying to figure out what exactly was happening when the lights went out at the Lake House. Ann didn’t even have a name for the Insect then. Lisa Dumont had somehow developed a genuine rapport. So much so, that she and . . . and Mister Sleepy could actively work as a team—and offer their services.

  How had it been when Lisa rolled in with the ’geisters here? Did she offer them services? Did her uncle?

  What did Lisa and Mister Sleepy get in return?

  The temperature was dropping again—more rapidly this time. It was as though a door had opened onto an icy winter night, and the frozen breeze was being drawn inside. Lisa was looking around rapidly now, head turning this way and that,
as though she’d lost her way suddenly.

  “P-please,” she said, “Mister Sleepy says he’ll be good.”

  In the centre of the room, a shadow moved. Ann looked, and at first there seemed to be nothing.

  “Take me with you,” she said. “I c-can teach you how to talk with yours. We’re not like the other ones. We can work together.”

  That wasn’t quite right, though; as Ann looked the shadow returned again, a blurred smudge across the concrete floor. It was circling the chamber, whatever thing it was that was casting it.

  “Don’t,” said Lisa, and the shadow sharpened. “Please!” she said. “Please!”

  Peter Dumont appeared on the staircase, coming down. He bent, peered under the lip of the bottom-most balcony.

  “Easy, hon,” he said. “Just calm down—everything’s fine.”

  The words of Lisa’s uncle didn’t seem to have too much effect on her nerves. But they sure shut her up—she drew a deep breath.

  “Doctor Sunderland says you’ve been telling stories, now,” he said.

  Ann reached over to touch Lisa’s arm. This time, the girl didn’t pull away.

  “We’re in danger here,” Lisa said.

  “No,” said Peter. “Not at all. Ol’ Mister Sleepy’s got it all under control.” He finished coming down the stairs. At the bottom, he folded his hands in front of him.

  “It’s past Mister Sleepy,” said Lisa. “Insect’s goin’ to get us.”

  “It’s not going to get us.” Peter looked to Ann. “Mrs. Voors—if you’d excuse us, we have to have a talk.”

  “I think I’ll stay,” said Ann. “For the moment.”

  He sighed. “The Insect can’t do anything for right now. It’s here under control. Its husband lost control of it. But now it’s back.”

  “Its husband hasn’t,” said Lisa. Tears were running down her cheek now. “He hasn’t lost control.”

  “He’s—excuse me, Mrs. Voors—he’s dead, sweetie.”

  Lisa shook her head slowly. “He never died,” she said.

  “Mrs. Voors, I really got to apologize,” said Peter as he crossed the floor. His breath clouded in front of him. “She’s a good girl. She doesn’t mean—”

  Ann felt her ears popping an instant before it happened. Peter Dumont’s left shoulder jerked back, as though he’d been struck—and then his right joined it, and he started to fall backwards.

  He never hit the ground. Lisa screamed as the air rushed past them, and Peter’s feet left the floor. He hovered there for an instant—eyes comically wide—and then a gust of wind nearly knocked them all down, and Peter was gone.

  Lisa’s scream gurgled quiet as the air rushed from the space, and Ann felt her own breath hitch, and she feared she might suffocate.

  The instant hung between them. Ann looked at Lisa, and she thought: The husband wasn’t dead?

  Michael was still alive? He was ashes; it didn’t make sense, no sense at all.

  Before she could puzzle it out, the body of Peter Dumont fell to the floor. From the way he landed, on his stomach, head turned hard to the right . . .

  Ann had no doubt he was dead.

  Then came a tap-tapping sound—as from a sudden summer hailstorm, here in this gigantic octagonal silo. The stones bounced on the concrete, and it was only as some of them careered into the sitting room that Ann realized it wasn’t hail.

  It was glass, from the skylight, utterly pulverized.

  It had not made a sound when it shattered.

  The “hailstorm” stopped as fast as it had begun.

  The only sound in the space was the quiet sobbing from Lisa, and a wind that howled over the now-open rooftop. Ann stood carefully, but it was still too quickly. She felt the world grey a bit, but she steadied herself on the back of the chair for the moment.

  Lisa got up. She tiptoed gingerly through the broken glass and knelt at her uncle’s side. Under the light from above, she looked almost angelic, as she leaned over Peter’s body and studied it—as though looking for an “on” switch to make him move again. A breeze came up, hard enough to lift the ends of her hair. She was no longer sobbing.

  Ann walked slowly to the middle of the chamber. The wind picked at her jacket, tugged at her hair. It was icy, but it didn’t chill her.

  Lisa looked up at her, and up into the light. Her face was streaked with tears.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ann, uselessly. “Your uncle . . .”

  “Not him,” she said sharply. “And he’s not my uncle. Not really. Mister Sleepy.”

  Ann frowned.

  “Mister Sleepy’s dead. Mister Sleepy’s dead too.”

  Ann reached out to touch her, remembering only at the last instant how it had upset Lisa, and withdrew.

  “My God.”

  Ann turned. Dr. Sunderland emerged from behind her. His hair was dishevelled. A bruise was darkening on his face, and as he stumbled closer, she saw another one around his throat.

  He hurried past Ann to Lisa, and knelt down beside her. The glass crunched under his knees, but if it cut, he didn’t let on.

  “Oh, Lisa,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

  She looked at him. “Mister Sleepy’s dead,” she said again.

  Sunderland said, “I know,” and he put his arms around Lisa and held her—over the body of her kin, Peter Dumont, shattered with the glass as he fell from the top of the Insect’s tower. Then Sunderland did a thing that she had never seen him do before.

  He let Lisa go, and put his hands together—and began to pray.

  Ann stepped back. She had no business in this place, this tiny circle between little Lisa Dumont and her “therapist” Charlie Sunderland, and the corpse. Ann’s place was elsewhere.

  The wind told her so.

  She stepped around them, quiet as a ghost, and started back up the staircase.

  v

  Ann stopped climbing when the stairs ran out. The open air was just beyond her reach at the top of the tower. A part of herself understood that really, she had climbed out of a shaft—the Octagon was not that high off the ground—on a more fundamental level, she had begun to understand this place for what it was: a tower, where the Insect might sit, a prisoner.

  It was not just the Insect being held here, of course; the ’geists tied to an unguessable number of women were kept here, kept in thrall to the appetites of their men.

  And then there was Philip.

  Of course he was here. In one of these very rooms.

  She crossed the narrow bridge from the stairs to the balcony. It only made sense, to start at the top.

  She found a curtain, and slipped behind it to the door, and opened it.

  A rail-thin man with jet black hair cut long stood in front of a bathroom mirror, in a suite of rooms that resembled a decadent hotel room from a century ago. He was naked. He regarded himself steadily, as the deep red wallpaper surrounding the mirror undulated with faces and hands. The man’s lips trembled, half-open, and a pink tip of a tongue showed itself as he looked deep into the glass. Something in there was transfixing; he didn’t appear to notice Ann when she looked in, and he barely flinched when the straight razor lifted itself from the water glass on the vanity, opened and caressed the soft, lean skin at the base of his jaw.

  She withdrew, and chose another curtain from those circling the balcony.

  Behind that one, a door led into a hideous kitchen—floor, ceiling and countertop all panelled with the same yellow Formica. The refrigerator was a Frigidaire; the stove, an old harvest gold electric range. The room was spotless, except for what looked like pink cake icing, stuck in prints the shape of a child’s hands, on the ceiling. Watching them long enough, you could see them creep from one end of the room to another. A small, muscular man was curled on the floor beside the sink, where a garbage disposal hummed and crunched.

 
The next curtain in the Octagon had more money behind it: a wide, tastefully spare living room with deep chestnut floors that gleamed, furnished with several pieces Ann took to be Louis XIV. The only sound was the ticking of a grandfather clock. She looked around the room, and determining it empty, shut the door. Something heavy fell as she did so, but when she opened the door again to see, all was as it had been.

  Ann continued. She looked in on a room furnished as a little girl’s bedroom; another, made up as a 1970s living room, complete with RCA television set and teak stereo cabinet as long as a coffin; a suburban two-car garage, with a ‘70s-vintage Gremlin parked to one side, a wall of power tools along the other. The Gremlin was bright red. A man sat inside it, staring into the rearview mirror at the empty back seat—terrified, like the others.

  That was the purpose of these rooms ringing the Octagon; small, familiar spaces where scenarios were tailored to the needs, which is to say fears, of the membership. Little curated rooms at Ian Rickhardt’s otherworldly fetish bar. The Haunted Hotel. The Accursed Kitchen. The Demon in the Gremlin.

  Like the I-thought-you-were-holding-my-hand Shirley Jackson game, they were each crafted to help cultivate that sense of terror that Ian Rickhardt said all these men craved.

  And they were each haunted—by the poltergeists that Rickhardt and his friends had raped into submission.

  As Ann quietly shut the door on the garage and stepped back through the curtain, she thought: The only thing terrifying about these rooms is their existence.

  She stepped through the next curtain and door—there were only three more on this top level—and turned the handle. This one smelled of antiseptic. The walls were covered in green tile, and there were IV stands and great hot lights, and carts full of instruments, surrounding an operating table, upon which was splayed the tiny corpse of a vivisected bluebird. There was the sound of a tap running, which she thought might be coming from behind a set of swinging double doors.

  She would have closed the door then and there, but it occurred to her that this might be a place they’d have put Philip; it certainly had the life support equipment he might need.

  Ann stepped into the room and went through the double