The 'Geisters

by David Nickle

  Ann looked into that eye—and instinctively, the way another person might throw up their hands to ward off an attack or crouch down to protect their vitals, Ann tried to visualize the descending rainbow: Red, and Yellow . . .

  “No. You should know better than that too.” And over her, the Insect’s mandibles extended—and took hold of Ann’s limbs—and drew her in.

  She vanished utterly, but only for an instant.

  She felt herself returning to her body, breath returning to her lungs, and her eyelids flickering open—and watching the men in their circle sway, in some fetish-court perversion of religious ceremony. Her mouth was filled with stale bile, the peach-fuzz sour of unbrushed teeth. She started to get up—as though she could physically flee what was happening to her; as though it were all but done.

  She fell back, pushed as if by an invisible hand. Her eyes fluttered shut again, and she was in darkness—a freezing, numbing pool.

  Little Lisa Dumont was right. The Insect was devouring her. It had been, for all her life, in slow, measured bites. It might have stopped, as she grew into herself. But the work of Charlie Sunderland had made sure that didn’t happen. It had kept the Insect cocooned, let it grow on its own, even as it sucked the life—the soul—out of Ann.

  But then she thought—that wasn’t quite right.

  The Insect wasn’t some alien species, come in a shipping crate from far-off lands to denude Ann’s being like the bark off a tree. It was a part of her—at its most removed, a vestigial twin. Or perhaps, a purer part of herself—a part unsullied by the daily exposure to the world that ground at Ann, the rest of her, as she made her way through it. And had she rejoined the Insect now, newly innocent herself, having passed through her flesh as though it were a filter?

  Was the act of that moment—a matter of purification?

  “None of us are pure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh Ann. Remember.”

  ii

  The Lake House living room. Again. But empty. The curtains were half-drawn, and the remains of afternoon sunlight streamed in.

  She could see the lake—and the boat, the Bounty II, hauled up onto the shore, mast cracked, gouged hull covered in a shrink-wrap tarpaulin. A TV was on in the basement. Something with a laugh track.

  She was not drawn to it.

  There were other sounds. The Lake House was young, and its bones were still hardening, setting into themselves. Softly, in the corners, it moaned.

  Upstairs a faucet turned, and the pipes hummed behind the walls.

  She thought about taking hold of those pipes—of bending the copper, snapping it, stopping the water. She could do it if she wanted to.

  She didn’t want to.

  She moved from the living room, past the kitchen, and into the stairwell of the Lake House.

  Ann’s father sat on the stairs. He was wearing a pair of dark wool dress pants and a white shirt, top button undone. Tufts of hair poked out. His elbows were propped on his knees, his hands hung limp in front of him, and he stared ahead, into the empty front vestibule. He seemed very young. His hair was dark, and too shaggy; he had put off his haircut for a few weeks too long. His eyes were blinking rapidly. His mouth hung.

  She was curious about that. But they didn’t linger to satisfy it.

  Ann had no say. She may have once. But this was nothing but memory. A conversation, with herself, reminding her of where she had already been.

  Up they went. Ann’s father shook his head as they passed, and pushed himself up, his knees cracking as he hung onto the bannister and climbed down off the staircase.

  The second floor hall now. Five doors: one, to the home office; another, to a spare bedroom; Ann’s room; Philip’s room. The bathroom. One floor up, and the master bedroom. Another bath. Big windows and its own deck, overlooking the lake.

  No need to go there.

  There was a long red and green rug on the floor of the hallway. They slid it along—so that it accordioned against the home office door. Perfunctory terror for the next person who saw it.

  The bathroom door was closed. Behind it, the shower ran hard enough that steam crept out from underneath the door.

  There.

  Followed the steam.

  Into a room of it.

  The bath in here had a sliding door of frosted glass. Behind it: Philip LeSage. Lathering up his hair.

  They slid over top of the door. There was Philip. Tall and strong. Eyes shut against the water. They circled him. Ran fingers like rope over his throat.

  His hands dropped from his head. Eyes opened.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  They turned off the water.

  “It is,” he said.

  They reached, and flickered the lights—on and off, on and off. Then off.

  “You were in my room last night.”

  They moved through his hair, drew it back from his face. He held his head back so the soapy water flowed down his back.

  “You’ve been there before. I know that.”

  They withdrew. Philip did too. He sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “I’m not afraid.”

  He was lying about that. He was trembling, soaking wet and naked, against the tile. His voice was high.

  “You have everyone else scared. Not me.”

  His backside squealed against the tile as he slid around. He turned the water on again, set the temperature, then started up the shower. He got under the stream of hot water, and the trembling stopped.

  “You turned the lamp shade around. You opened the closet door. You left me a sparrow. You kept touching me.”

  They thought about stopping the water, or making it cold, or too hot.

  They didn’t want to do any of those things.

  “It’s okay. You can touch me if you want.”

  He finished rinsing off, and shut off the water. In the dark, he found the handle on the shower door and slid it open. He stepped out into the dark, groped around on the wall until he found the light switch.

  “If you’re there, I’m going to turn on the light.”

  He flipped the switch and the bathroom lit up. Philip looked around, almost disappointed to find himself alone. Even the fog on the bathroom mirror was smooth, unblemished by even punctuation marks.

  “I think you’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “I think you’ve been around this family since when I was a baby.”

  He took a towel, wrapped it around his middle.

  “Maybe you’ve been around before me.” He cracked the door open, peered out into the hall. Satisfied they were still alone, he shut the door. “Maybe from Nan’s family. Mom says she rhymes with ‘witch.’ Maybe that’s where you came from. Maybe you came in with Ann on her birthday. I don’t care. I wanted you to know . . .”

  He leaned on the door, as though holding it shut against something.

  “I like it when you come to my room. You can always come see me there.”

  Could they? They moved in on Philip—wrapping him in tendrils of steam, holding him close in adoration. He began to tremble again, and he did not pull away, and after a moment of that, the trembling turned to a shudder, and he was still.

  “You can always come see me,” he said again. “Always, always.”

  They believed him.

  The bathroom door, open.

  Philip, crossing the hallway, heading to his room, noticed the rug, all bunched up. Clutching his towel tighter around his waist, he walked down the hall and took hold of the end of the runner rug, pulling it back straight. As he finished, the door to Ann’s bedroom opened.

  Ann. Seven years old. Unrecognizable to herself, with a pageboy haircut and green corduroy overalls.

  “What are you doing?”

  Philip shrugged. “The rug was all bunched out. You might have tripped.”

&n
bsp; “You should put clothes on. I can see your wee.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “You fuck off.”

  “You can’t see anything. And cut out the swearing.”

  “Fine.” She leaned against the door. “I didn’t make the rug bunch up.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “I think the ghost did.”

  Philip, shrugging. “Maybe. Whatever. Shouldn’t be left like that.”

  “Someone might trip.”

  “You know it.”

  “I hate the ghost.”

  Philip stood up straight. “Don’t,” he said, and tightened the towel again. “I’m going to put on pants.”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Ann as Philip stepped into his bedroom. “Stupid ghost did it.”

  Philip closed the door and Ann was alone in the hall. She looked straight at them.

  “I hate you!” she shouted. When she went back into her room, she slammed the door.

  See? None of us are pure.

  iii

  The circle of men had fallen to their knees, in an approximation of prostration. With the exception of Philip, who sat lolling in his chair, looking at Ann, still asleep on the couch. She was turned away now, so her face pressed into the backrest cushions.

  “Belaim,” said Charlie Sunderland, his head downcast to the floor. “Redawn,” he continued, working his way through the words he’d taught Ann to chant, as a way to rope the Insect in when the chairs started shifting, the windowpanes vibrating. Sheepmorne . . .

  Overwind . . .

  It had been a game when they’d sat up late at Sunderland’s lodge, practising the words—the whole family, chanting them together, in their own little circle, learning Sunderland’s nonsense words to banish the demons into the night.

  Philip had sat in that circle—straight-facedly reciting the words with everyone else. When they were alone, he would make up other words—“fuckitutilly,” “scroticalific,” “snotufical”—and Ann would crack up.

  Now, he couldn’t even articulate the words with the other men—but he looked deadly serious.

  And why shouldn’t he?

  He had learned what happened when he didn’t take the Insect seriously. When he’d brought Laurie into the Lake House . . . brought her to his bedroom, held her close as she squirmed out of her sweater and jeans . . . kissed him, and took hold of him, and with touch and caress and kiss, brought him from shivering arousal to shuddering climax.

  He had learned, the price of betrayal, of abandonment.

  Now, see how he comes crawling back. See how they all come crawling back.

  The words from the ’geisters continued: a sweet, insensible cadence that lulled, like an old song, like a strong, sugared liqueur. Philip swayed, and sang them too—each time around, his pronunciation getting stronger, as though he, too, were training himself to absorb the words.

  On the sofa, Ann stirred.

  She stretched a leg out, and then another, and rolled over onto her side. She brought a hand to her forehead, brushing hair out of the way, and blinked. She swung her feet to the floor, and sat straight, and shakily, stood, looking around at the circle with measured disinterest.

  The men didn’t stop chanting as Ann rocked back and forth to build a bit of momentum, finally got to her feet, and made her way through the circle to the kitchen, and the refrigerator.

  She opened the first bottle of beer and finished it in two long swallows.

  The men stopped chanting as she opened a second bottle. Ian Rickhardt looked to Charlie Sunderland, who nodded at him.

  From the ceiling, she and the Insect watched, as though they were pinned there, as Charlie got up, crossed the room and whispered into her ear.

  The corporeal body of Ann Voors nodded, and swallowed half of another beer. And leaning on Dr. Sunderland for support, she let herself be led from the room.

  At the ceiling, Ann tried to reach for herself as the door opened—to follow. It was no good. Ann watched herself take a final swig of the beer, dangle it between two fingers, and disappear as the door swung shut.

  Fuck. If she’d had arms, she would have wrapped them around herself, curled up, as the reality dawned on her. She would have shut her eyes tight. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  “Don’t fuckin’ swear, Sis. Not very ladylike.”

  iv

  Ann opened her eyes.

  She stood in the middle of the dark gymnasium, casting her gaze among the shadows, the beams of sickly light that came in through the high windows. It was cold in here. Snow blew outside. Climbing ropes dangled from the darkness of the ceiling like trailing man-o-war tentacles. At either end, basketball hoops were bent up.

  “Where are you?” she called. Her voice sounded very small and weak to her, more frightened than she thought.

  “I’m here,” said Philip. His voice had an odd echoing quality that took Ann a moment to place. There was a loud thumping sound then, a great drumbeat, and it hit her: he was talking over a PA system—tapping the microphone in the office for the school

  PA system.

  “Is this the high school?”

  “Fenlan & District Secondary School, that’s right. If . . . if you hadn’t gone to live with Nan, you’d have gone here too.”

  “It’s awfully dark,” said Ann.

  “There’s a light switch over by the door.”

  “Can’t you turn it on?”

  “What do you want, me to hold your fuckin’ hand?”

  It wasn’t entirely dark. As Ann became accustomed to it, dim light entered from high windows. Barely enough to see by.

  Ann crossed the floor of the gym to what looked like a big set of double doors at the very edge of the brightest pool of light. It wasn’t exactly clean; things crunched under her feet, like peanut shells. Ann looked down as she stepped into the light. They weren’t shells; they were bugs . . . beetles and flies, curled up dead. Ann brushed out a path for herself with the toe of a running shoe she hadn’t worn in fifteen years. She crossed back into shadow, and felt on the wall until she found a row of switches, and flipped them on.

  “That’s better,” she said. Fluorescent lights flickered in rows on high over the court. At the opposite end, wooden bleachers had been pushed against the wall emerged from shadow, as did a deep green banner crossing the wall, announcing that this gymnasium was home to the Fenlan Panthers. Philip had been a Panther.

  It didn’t look like any Panthers had been through in a few years, though.

  The walls were also streaked with rusty water-marks, where pipes seemed to have burst. Wind whistled through a broken pane up high. It was cold in here—cold as January, cold as a visit from the Insect.

  “What’ve you done, Philip?”

  “Oh, chill.”

  “Literally.” Ann tried the double doors behind her. They opened a little ways, then stopped. “Seriously. What’ve you done? I watched myself walk away—my body walk away. Where am I?”

  “You’re at the high school,” he said. “You’ve been here before.”

  “So we did speak—when I was on the road.”

  “Yeah. It’s a place I’ve put together. It’s where . . . where she and I talk.”

  “She?” Ann leaned on the doors, hard. They gave a little bit, then stopped again. It was as though something were wedged against it.

  “Yeah. After the accident . . . the crash. Sometimes, I’d wake up here. Back at school. She’d be here.”

  “Laurie,” said Ann, although she knew that wasn’t so, and a yowl of feedback over the PA system confirmed it.

  “Not Laurie. No. She doesn’t have a name,” said Philip, “but I can tell you—she fucking hates being called the Insect.”

  “Ah. So her.” Ann stepped away from the doors. There was no getting out that way, she thought, as they pushed back shut.

  “You’re going to have to stay here,”
he said. “Good that you figured that out.”

  Ann moved along the wall of the gym. There were doors farther along, the two change-room doors: HOME first, then VISITOR.

  “I don’t really want to stay here, Philip,” said Ann. “I want to wake up.”

  More feedback. “Wake up? Who said you’re asleep?”

  Ann pushed open the HOME door. It opened easily, into a big square room with a bench all around, and coat hangers. There was another door through it, which Ann guessed probably led to showers.

  “I want to go back to myself,” Ann said. Her voice was shaking. She wondered, was this how the Insect felt, when she locked it in a tower overlooking the loamy fields of Tricasta? “I want out of this place, Philip. You got to know, this isn’t right.”

  “You know Sis, you might be right.” His voice was louder here because it came out of another speaker, set in the wall in this smaller space. “This might be wrong. But it’s all I’ve got. It’s all I had for years. Her.”

  “So you’re just like them,” said Ann. “You’ve used the Insect . . .

  you’ve used her for your own sexual pleasure. You . . . you raped her too.”

  “No,” he said. “I never raped her. But we’ve been together for so long. Since I can remember, she was there for me. And I let her down. That’s why . . .”

  “That’s why the accident.”

  “I should have known better. Laurie was great. But I should have left her to her life.”

  Ann found the light switch, and the change-room filled with a dim yellow glow. She didn’t have to listen to the rest of the story. She knew it, in a way that made her think she’d always known it on some level: how Philip, mesmerized by the red-haired beauty from History of Europe, had one night turned away from the quiet touch of her—of the Smiling Girl . . .

  He had rejected her. Like Peter Pan casting off Tinker Bell for the womanly temptations of Wendy . . . he’d cast her off.

  And yeah—the Insect, the Smiling Girl, had shown Philip just exactly what that meant.