The 'Geisters

by David Nickle

  doors.

  It was a surgical scrub: there were hangers and drawers at the back of the room, where smocks and masks hung, and folded up rubber gloves were stacked neatly on shelves. Bisecting the room were sinks, six of them in an island, three backing on three. The water was running in the middle sink opposite Ann. Looking over the low tile divider, she could see a pair of child’s hands, reaching up over the sink’s edge, scrubbing themselves with a foamy dark soap. She couldn’t see more of the child from where she was standing.

  Ann stepped around the bank of sinks, but as she did so, in just a blink, the hands shifted to the other side.

  “Now you can’t get out,” said a little girl’s voice, “without going past me.”

  Ann considered: this should have really thrown her, the trick of shifting sides on the surgery-prep sinks, the little-girl sing-song voice, happily informing her she was trapped; the likelihood, given that this place really was filled with ghosts, not just little tricks, that in fact she most likely was trapped.

  But Ann didn’t feel a thing. And she realized, looking at those hands in the sink, a little blue around the nails, that she had never, truly, felt anything. This font of terror that Ian and Michael kept coming back to, and Sunderland couldn’t stop studying, and the fellows down in Florida worshipped, was dry for Ann.

  It made sense. After all, for most of her life—she was the one washing her hands in the sinks, trapping her victims in the wash-up. Ann was the font.

  Ann stepped around the sinks to head back to the operating room. Something flickered in the corner of her eye. She didn’t pay it any heed. She felt a tiny hand gripping her ankle. She kicked it away and kept moving. A child’s face, lips blue, long red hair streaking down her face to half-cover eyes that shone like dimes in a puddle, appeared in front of Ann’s face. She walked through it and pushed open the doors.

  These poltergeists couldn’t make the terror. Not like the Insect could, for a simple reason. They didn’t kill.

  The bluebird on the operating table writhed and sang as Ann opened the door, and let it shut behind her.

  As far as Ann knew, it kept right on singing, even as Ann pulled open the curtain into the Octagon, and felt her breath freeze to rime on her throat, at the sight of the one who stood there waiting for her.

  vi

  Philip LeSage towered over her.

  He was tall—a head taller than her, easily.

  He was not strong.

  His shoulders hunched around his hollow chest. His arms, thin as broomsticks, were held aloft, as though waiting her embrace. The freezing air goosefleshed his pallid, naked skin. His eyes stared out at her from sunken hollows, and his mouth twisted from grin to grimace as his head bent slowly, side to side—the only acknowledgment he seemed to give of his own impossibility, there on the catwalk beyond the curtain.

  “Oh God.” Ann whispered it as the ice spread from her throat and along her nerves. Philip was a quadriplegic. Normally he couldn’t do much more than lift his little finger; he could barely control the movement of his own head.

  But of course, it wasn’t Philip.

  His hips swayed, his naked member swinging semi-erect between tree-branch legs. His hands settled gently on her shoulders and his face drew closer to hers.

  “I couldn’t have you searching the whole tower.”

  The voice was a low buzz, from rattling glass and humming wires—the wind.

  The Insect.

  Ann pulled back. “No,” she said. “No, stop it.”

  Philip pulled back too, his mouth twisted around another word that translated, easily: “Have it your way. I’m going home.”

  He turned as if on point. His bare feet touched the balcony floor, and moved in a simulacrum of walking, around to the ramp that led to the staircase. Ann sat frozen for a time, watching him. When he got to the stairs, he turned back—the Insect turned him back—and he beckoned.

  Ann felt like she was encased in ice; it physically hurt to walk, nearly. But she followed. Philip looked like a giant’s skeleton from this distance, with just bits of flesh and tufted hair. His eyes were black pits in the grey light coming from above. Ann joined him on the staircase, and together, they moved down.

  Was that why he had decided to stay here? Ann had thought Ian might be lying about Philip’s choosing, but this made sense: the ’geisters offered him mobility of a kind, hauled along by the unseen hands of the poltergeists. Was that what made it home for him?

  God. He was so tall.

  It had been a decade since Philip had stood; it had been a decade since Ann had seen him upright. He was a giant when she was a little girl, but that had changed with the bed and the chair, laying him flat or folding him up. Now, his arms folded around her, holding tight with muscles that were barely sinew, nerves that were dead wiring.

  This must be agony for him.

  Philip stepped off the stairs and onto one of the narrow bridges. They had only gone down one floor and were back on the level onto which she and Rickhardt and Sunderland had originally arrived. They crossed the bridge quickly; Philip’s stride was improving—or more realistically, the ’geist’s ability to manipulate Philip’s numb limbs was growing stronger.

  They passed through a curtain halfway round the Octagon. It would have been directly above the kitchen set-piece, unless Ann missed her guess.

  “Let me get the door,” said Ann, first to Philip, then, absurdly she thought, again to the air around them. But she had to: she didn’t want the Insect twisting him more than necessary. This wasn’t good for him. What was all this motion doing to his spine?

  Philip “stood” to the side as Ann turned the handle, and as she looked through, into this room, she realized something. No one had lied. Not Ian Rickhardt, not Susan Rickhardt, not anyone.

  Philip had gone home.

  But for the empty scooter set by the thick burgundy curtains, this space was a note-perfect recreation of the kitchen, living and dining rooms of the Lake House.

  Ann stepped inside, and beckoned Philip—or the thing that bore Philip—to follow. It even smelled familiar . . . that still fresh scent of spruce sap, latex paint, and bacon, the last of which their dad liked to cook way too much of.

  It was incredible, in the attention to detail—and the totality of the effect.

  Philip came into the room. Any pretense of walking was gone. His feet slid across the tile floor, the tips of his toes squeaking like pencil erasers. His arms dangled listlessly. His head lolled, so much so that Ann thought that he might have fainted from the indignity, or possibly worse . . . that in its puppet game, the Insect had killed him.

  But he blinked, his head righted, and for a moment he looked steadily at her, as he had countless times. In this very room.

  No. In a room that this room strongly resembled. But not here. Not this room.

  All appearances to the contrary, they were not home.

  Philip hovered and then settled into the seat of his scooter. His arms lifted and folded over his lap. The Insect adjusted his head so that it fit comfortably into the rest.

  Ann took a dining room chair and brought it next to Philip. She sat beside him, and put her hands on his. The flesh was clammy. She heard him exhale raggedly. She might have done the same.

  “I made a mistake,” said Ann, looking her brother in the eye. “I shouldn’t have married Michael.”

  Philip made a quiet noise. I know.

  “I thought I loved him—but I didn’t. And he didn’t love me either.”

  Philip looked away.

  Ann leaned in. “Have we had this conversation?”

  Did he nod then? Or did the Insect?

  “Did you talk to me,” she said, “in that dark school corridor?”

  He turned back to her and met her eyes again. There was no nod this time, no shake of the head.

  But there was an answer.

  The room turn
ed icy—and there came a familiar squeaking sound. Ann turned and looked toward the mirror above the telephone. It had frosted over. And written on it were the words:

  YES.

  “All right,” said Ann, “am I talking to you now, Philip? Are you talking to me?”

  WE ARE

  Ann stared at the glass as the words faded, and considered that “we.”

  Did the Insect belong to both of them? Did the Insect talk to Philip, just as it had to Ann?

  Perhaps so. Perhaps, that was why Rickhardt had brought Philip here, to this facsimile of the Lake House, as it looked in the 1990s, when Charlie Sunderland had collected such detailed information about the LeSage family’s domestic arrangements. Ann walked over to the curtains. They were thicker than the ones that had hung in the living room of the Lake House at any time Ann recalled. But they covered a more damning anomaly; there was no window here that could look out onto the lake, or the woodlot that surrounded the real Lake House.

  Was that the nature of all these rooms she wondered? Each slice of the Octagon, a slice of memory from . . . a ’geist and its vessel?

  The ’geisters had gone to great lengths to quarantine the ’geist from the vessel early in life—so they would grow apart, like two branches from a split tree-stem. Were these rooms, then, a means to draw the ’geist out, from the point of that separation?

  And was this room—their presence in it—an attempt to do something more, with the Insect, and Ann . . . and Philip?

  Ann turned and leaned against the curtain, the hard wall behind it. The refrigerator door hung open in the kitchen at the other side.

  She crossed the room to close it, and as she did so, the upper cupboard doors opened.

  Pale blue plates and bowls were stacked neatly—they were of a pattern that caused a sharp lancet of nostalgia in her. They matched the coffee cups that were stacked next to them. The bins that held pasta and rice and cereal against moths were in their place. The refrigerator was stocked with jugs of milk and a big carton of orange juice and a good dozen bottles of beer, and the freezer overtop was filled with tupperwared leftovers and frozen vegetables.

  Ann’s hand hovered over the beer.

  You could just disappear into this room, couldn’t you?

  Ann pulled her hand away and shut the refrigerator door, and turned to lean on it to keep it shut. The mirror in the dining room was frosty again, but for the words:

  YOU COULD JUST DISAPPEAR INTO THIS ROOM,

  COULDN’T YOU?

  She could disappear, just like Susan Rickhardt disappeared. Like the other vessels disappeared; not into some boozy distraction . . .

  well not only into some boozy distraction . . . but into her actual childhood—into the mire of bona fide, pure nostalgia; life as memory. It was a tempting pact. The frost faded and dribbled down the glass, obscuring the words. Ann looked at her melting reflection. She looked ghastly. Her eyes were hollow and dark, her hair hung in rattails over her face. The jean jacket she’d worn here was filthy, and her shoulders hung low.

  She was exhausted, and thirsty, and hungry. . . .

  And she had found Philip, which had been all she’d been thinking about for more than twenty-four hours . . . and the Insect too—she’d found her way back to the Insect. She’d found her way home.

  And she was done.

  Ann turned away from herself, and stumbled to the sofa, where she let herself collapse, into the Insect’s tender care and her brother’s protective supervision.

  As she dozed off, she had the definite sense of the two of them—the Insect and her brother—sharing a knowing glance.

  HOMECOMING

  i

  Ann slept deeply.

  She lay on the narrow ledge of the sofa cushions. She’d thought to jam a corner pillow between her neck and the sharp edge of the sofa’s arm. She stretched as she slept though, and the pillow slid out, so that her neck cricked against the arm as though it were broken.

  Ann worried about that, as she observed herself. She was outside her body; as far as she could tell, she was observing from a vantage point near the living room’s ceiling. The dying might see themselves this way: extended from their bodies, their own ’geist, while their heart slowed and stopped and their brain began to starve, and vanish.

  Had the Insect done this, as she lay down—reached down and turned her head, just so—and cracked her neck? She could not believe that were so.

  And sure enough, it was not. Ann soon observed herself turn, draw her knees up tighter to herself, and twist her head into a more comfortable position.

  So Ann was not dead.

  But she thought about what Lisa Dumont had told her, and Susan too: that the Insect would devour her. Was this a place she sat now, on the precipice of the Insect’s throat?

  Ann worried about Philip, too. He sat alone in his wheelchair by the curtain, head bent to one side. Was he asleep? Ann didn’t think so, but of course you couldn’t tell with Philip. She didn’t like that he was alone. Since the accident, Philip always had an attendant near; the Hollingsworth Centre made sure of that. If he were to aspirate, there would be no one to help him. He could choke to death. They really did need to get out of here. But of course in order for that to happen, Ann needed to wake up. And that didn’t appear to be happening any time soon.

  After a time, the door opened. Charlie Sunderland stepped in. He had changed clothes—he was wearing what looked like a long, purple bathrobe, the same shade as the bruises on his face.

  He looked out the door and held up a finger to someone. Ann found herself curious about who that might be, and her curiosity brought her lower, so she could see.

  It was Ian Rickhardt, also wearing a bathrobe. He lingered between doorway and curtain, hands jammed deep in the pockets.

  Sunderland crossed the floor to the kitchen, eyeing both lolling Philip and sleeping Ann. He opened the refrigerator, and bent down to look in. He was counting the beer bottles. He wanted to see how many of them Ann had drunk. She could not read his reaction to the evidence that she had had none of them.

  Ian stepped into the room now. He was followed by others, one or two of whom Ann recognized: the thin man from the hotel bathroom; the smaller one, who’d been in the kitchen scenario; the man from the Gremlin, maybe—she hadn’t seen much of him, but a thick salt-and-pepper moustache made it likely. There were—Ann counted—five others, all wearing those bathrobes. They were made of something like silk, and quilted with a diamond-shaped pattern.

  Sunderland was kneeling beside Ann.

  Ian stepped around and looked down at her. “Is she done?”

  Sunderland looked up at him and smiled tightly.

  “Whatever walks in Hill House, walks alone,” he said, and Ian chuckled nervously. “Yeah. I’d feel better if we could have talked a bit before this. Reaffirm it. But it looks as though everything’s all right. Like a bee to honey, here she is.”

  “Pat yourself on the back,” said Ian drily.

  The other men spread across the room, hands spread delicately at their sides, as though they were trying to keep their balance on a world with strange gravity. They looked around, as though seeking something out in the corners and the shadows. None of them looked to Ann where she watched from the ceiling.

  Ian turned to Philip. “How you holding up?”

  Philip swung his head up and made a noise at Ian. Ann understood it to mean “Ready.”

  Sunderland went to Philip’s side. He put a hand on his forehead, as though feeling for fever. “You’ve been very brave.”

  Philip made another noise. This one Ann couldn’t translate. Sunderland seemed to understand it, though. He turned to Ian.

  “Philip is ready to join the circle,” he said. “Could you get his robes?”

  Ian snapped his fingers, and one of the men—a taller one, with feathered blond hair, brought a folded bathrobe. Sunderland took th
e robe and in series of quick, professional moves, wrapped it around Philip and threaded his arms through the sleeves.

  Ann drifted lower, as her curiosity about Philip grew, so that she was able to look directly into his eyes over Sunderland’s shoulder. They were damp—from exhaustion, from tears . . . who knew?

  Ann wanted to think there were tears there. She looked for some sense that Philip wanted—needed—to be rescued from this perversion.

  Don’t let him make you take your clothes off, Philip had told her, the first time they went into Charlie Sunderland’s office.

  He had been afraid of Sunderland, then. He had not wanted to talk to Sunderland at all, about the things that he had seen, in his room. Now . . . now, he was throwing in with them—letting Sunderland put clothes on him.

  “They’re rapists.”

  Ann didn’t precisely speak the words—whatever force it was that had drawn her from her slumbering body, also robbed her of lips, a tongue. But she still had voice, and she could hear it.

  So, it seemed, could Philip. He twisted his lips back from his teeth, and swallowed hard, and said, “Nyuh.”

  “No.”

  Ann spun in the air, searching vainly for the source of the voice.

  “They’re not rapists. They are worshippers.”

  The Insect. It was the Insect.

  “They know better, after what we’ve shown them. They remember Michael Voors. They remember John Hirsch. Peter. They know what we are. They know we’re not their plaything anymore. See how they come before us?”

  Ann turned and looked down. The men were forming a circle—

  a circle that encompassed Ann’s sleeping body, and included

  Philip.

  Why was he including himself in this thing? The Insect had destroyed him . . . taken his limbs, his voice . . . his parents and his girlfriend. Why would he worship?

  Why would you worship that thing? Ann called to Philip, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t answer.

  “He abandoned me. He knows better now too.”

  Ann felt the voice at her shoulder. She turned to it, with great effort. And for the first time, she saw the Insect, hanging above her, long hair dangling over mandibles and great, multifaceted eyes gleaming like giant blackberries.