by E. C. Bell
“But—but I was going to teach her,” I said, and felt heat waft from me in red waves, too. Now, I knew that both of us being angry wasn’t going to help the situation at all and that it would probably set off a bunch of the other spirits hanging around in the building, but I couldn’t figure out how to shut it off.
“She’s smarter than you,” he replied. Hints of black mixed with the red that was emanating from him made me pause for a moment, even though I was pissed, too. Black was bad. He had to calm down, which meant I needed to, too.
I closed my eyes for a second and thought blue and green calming thoughts. When I opened them, I was happy to see that he’d gone back to just wafting ribbons of red.
“You’re probably right,” I said. “She probably is smarter than me. Maybe it would be better if you keep teaching her yourself. And you can teach me, and then she and I can practice together. How does that sound?”
I still thought it was a monumentally crappy idea but I needed him to teach us and if the black took him over too much, he could disappear—and you never knew how long it would take for the disappeared to return, if they ever did.
It wasn’t often that one of us disappeared and never returned, but it did happen. Phillipa had seen it, as had the old man sitting in front of me. It was before I died, but he’d talked about it, once. He seemed really shaken by the whole experience.
Phillipa hadn’t been bothered, though. At least she said it hadn’t bothered her, and that if a ghost was stupid enough to be pulled somewhere else against their will that was their fault and nothing more, but even she had coloured toward yellow and red, and then she wouldn’t talk about it anymore.
“It’s bad luck,” she said. “To talk about the gone that way.” And I’d agreed, because it was better not to fight her all the time.
The old man sighed as I spoke, as though he really needed a breath of fresh air. “That’s good,” he said. “That you recognize that. Not your fault you’re not that bright.”
“Right,” I said, and tried to keep the anger that was surging big time from overtaking me completely. No disappearing for me. Last time had been bad enough. “How much have you taught her?”
“We got through the alphabet once,” he said. “The next time I went she was incapacitated, and once she was sleeping and I couldn’t wake her up.” He shook his head. “She sure sleeps hard.”
“It’s the meds she’s on,” I said. “You remember how it was.”
“Too straight I do,” he replied, and chuckled. “I still have flashbacks, after all these years. That stuff really sticks with you, don’t it?”
“It does indeed,” I said, then tried to get him back on some kind of a track. “So, you want to show me a couple of those signs?” I asked. “Since I’m here.”
“Right. Right,” he said, and smiled at me warmly for the first time. “I’ll start with the alphabet, just like I did with Marie.”
“The alphabet?” I said. “I thought you guys had signs for things, you know, like ‘love’ and ‘family’ and ‘hate’ and . . . and things.”
“Oh, we do,” he said. “But you need the alphabet too. So that’s where we’ll start.”
“All right,” I said, and tried to tamp down my anger. “Sounds good.”
TWO HOURS LATER I didn’t think it sounded like a good idea at all. I kept mixing up the stupid letters and it didn’t help when Franklin laughed at me every time I spelled something wrong. I was ready to blow my stack when he finally said, “That’s enough for today. You practice as well as you are able, and we’ll see how you do tomorrow.”
“All right,” I said, even though the hand signals that represented letters of the alphabet were already seeping out of my brain. “That’ll be good.”
“Besides, it’s time for group,” the old ghost said. “And we don’t want to be late, now do we?”
“No, we don’t want to be late,” I said. “But hey, let’s not say anything about the sign language lessons, all right?”
He stopped and grinned at me. “Of course, I’m not going to say a word about this,” he said. “Do you think I want Phillipa to flip her lid?”
“No more than I do,” I said.
As we walked into the big wrecked room where we held our group session I wondered if I could trust him to keep his word. After all, he’d let slip that he’d been visiting Marie not two seconds into our conversation. That didn’t bode well for him being able to keep our big secret, but I guessed I had to trust him.
At least until I learned how to control my newly-found ability. Then, I wouldn’t need him anymore. Which would suit me just fine.
Marie:
Hiding in Plain Sight
AFTER MY DAD’S fantastically inappropriate visit, I wasn’t allowed out of my room except to shower. I appreciated the shower very much even though I got no privacy, which was horrifying in its own way.
Being locked back in my room meant no group, which I really didn’t mind. However, it also meant no lunch or supper with the others. That kind of pissed me off, because now that I had a list of potential bad guys I really wanted to find out all I could about them and the only time I had been allowed out and free—more or less—was at meal time.
But I tried not to let it get to me. I’d start the investigation, even if it was just in my own head. At the very least, I had to come up with a game plan, because good old Dr. Parkerson was on that list James had sent in with my father.
Six people on that list. Two were my frigging nurses, and one was my shrink. Fantastic.
I tried to figure out what I could ask them about their time here without raising their suspicions, but as quickly as I thought of something I eliminated it because I knew that any of the questions I dearly wanted to ask would make them wonder what I was up to.
Oh yeah, investigating them was going to be easy as pie, because they were in the midst of assessing me. Everything I said and did was being used for their purposes. Which was to decide if I was crazy or not.
Nurse Willoughby brought in my lunch.
“Have you recovered from the meeting with your father?” she asked as she put the tray down on the bedside table. Then she frowned and picked up the broken pencil.
“What happened?” she asked. “I told you to take care of it.” She shook her head, as if the fact that the pencil was broken did not bode well for me. Which, I suspected, it didn’t.
“It happened in the rec area,” I said. “But hey, I didn’t break the point.” I smiled. “I can still use it.”
She stared at me, her face like stone. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “Perhaps Dr. Parkerson will have to re-evaluate whether you are ready for all this.” She pointed at the crumpled paper, then swept it up in her hand. “I think I’ll keep everything,” she said, “until she gives me the go ahead to return it to you.”
I hadn’t touched the papers since being brought back to my room, and James’s list was in there somewhere. God, if she went through the pages and found that, I’d be in a ton of trouble. More than I was right at this moment.
Why hadn’t I hid it? I was really losing my touch.
“Please don’t do that,” I said, as gently and sanely as I could. “It wasn’t my fault my dad lost it in there. And I came with you when you asked me, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced and she still held the pages and the pencil in her fist like she was never going to let them go. “I think it would be better if I talked to Dr—”
“Let me talk to her about it,” I said. “Please.” I grinned like a dog about to be beaten and felt sick. Cajoling and wheedling, again, but it felt like I didn’t have any other options. My usual go to—yelling and spitting—definitely brought out the worst in the staff, and I needed to get those sheets of paper out of her hands before she saw that list.
“She’ll be impressed if it’s me talking to her,” I said. “You know? And I want to be able to get back to group and go to meals with everybody else.”
/> That, at least, was the truth. I had to get out of that room and speak to the others trapped here in order to find out what was really going on in this place. I smiled again, and hoped it looked at least a little bit real. “You know?”
She sighed. “I suppose,” she said. “But I’m still concerned about the broken pencil.” She frowned and clicked her tongue. “Does not bode well.”
“I know,” I said. “But I can still use it. Please, let me keep it, at least until Dr. Parkerson makes a decision.”
I smiled my dog smile until Nurse Willoughby reluctantly put the papers and the two pieces of the pencil back on the bedside table.
“All right,” she said. “And you’ll talk to her this evening?”
“Most definitely,” I said. Her hand hovered over the pages like she was still thinking about scooping them up, and I thought desperately for the right words to make her finally, truly, back off.
“Can I eat lunch now?” I asked.
She looked surprised, like she’d forgotten about the meal hidden under the plastic cover, and then, finally, pulled her hand away.
“Yes,” she said. “Please eat it all. We are still counting your calorie intake, and you don’t want Dr. Parkerson knowing that you aren’t eating enough.”
“I will,” I said.
“Because I’m the one who writes that report,” she said. “And don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t,” I said, and then, finally, she was gone and I could hide the stupid list. After I ate my lunch, of course. I wolfed down the Wonderbread sandwich with some kind of meat that I didn’t recognize, a half bowl of watery vegetable soup, and another can of the chocolate chalk. I couldn’t have Dr. Parkerson thinking I wasn’t eating all my vegetables and undetermined meat. Not while I was investigating her for murder, anyhow.
I HID THE list in plain sight, because hiding it anywhere else would have been stupid because of the video camera. For a while I thought about tearing it up and throwing it away, but I knew someone would find it. Instead, I quickly finished the crappy picture I’d started on the back of the list just before my father lost it, and then tucked it into the back edge of the mostly empty dresser so it could lean against the wall. It took a bit to keep it from falling forward, because my father had folded it before he brought it into me, but finally it stayed upright so I could see the badly drawn cartoon I’d sketched. It was of my mother’s trailer, back home, and I suspected that Dr. Parkerson would make a pretty big deal of it, if she ever saw it.
Then I tried to come up with at least one question I could ask her that wouldn’t cause all sorts of alarm bells to go off in her head. It took me a long time, but finally, just before Nurse Melodie came to get me for my session with Parkerson, I came up with the perfect thing. I’d ask to see her resume.
“YOU WANT TO see my what?” Dr. Parkerson asked, fairly incredulously, a few hours later. After I’d finished my solitary evening meal and paced in my little cage like a—well, like a caged tiger or something—I was finally taken down to the bowels of the building for my meeting with my shrink. “My resume?”
“Yeah,” I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and settled back in the uncomfortable chair facing the shrink’s desk. “After all, I was planning on firing you before you did all this to me. I think I have a right to see where you’ve worked before, at the very least.”
Dr. Parkerson smiled slightly and looked down at my file, which seemed double the size it had been only the day before. I guess I was pretty busy, but still. “Are you sure you aren’t asking me these questions just so you don’t have to talk about what happened this morning with your father?”
“Oh no,” I said. “I’ve got no problem talking to you about any of that.” I sat upright, trying to act as relaxed and cool as I could, even though my heart was pounding so hard in my chest I was certain she’d be able to hear it if she tried even a little bit. I tapped my finger on her desk like I was impatient.
“But I want to see your resume first,” I said. “I want to make absolutely sure you are the best person for me to deal with, through all this. After all, I have to be able to trust my shrink now, don’t I?”
She leaned back and steepled her hands in front of her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll humour you, if it will help you with your trust issues.”
“I don’t have trust issues,” I muttered. She looked at me and almost laughed. “All right, so maybe I do have a few issues around trust,” I said. “But I have good reasons for that.”
“I understand,” she said, a trace of humour still touching her face. “I do have my diplomas, on the wall.” She pointed behind her at the surprising number of framed diplomas. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Not really,” I said. They did look impressive, but I needed to know where she worked, not where she went to school. “But I heard that people can get these things from diploma mills. You know, over in India or whatever. So, those won’t really do the trick.”
“Would my CV do?”
Before I had a chance to ask her what a CV was, she turned her chair and opened the file cabinet behind her. From the top drawer she pulled a small sheaf of papers. She shut the drawer and turned back to me, dropping the papers on the desk.
“Thank you,” I said, and picked it up.
“Take your time,” she said, and pulled her chair back up to her side of the desk. “I wouldn’t want you to miss anything.”
I imagine if I had a clue what I was seeing, I would have been impressed with Parkerson’s choice of school, and the other places she’d worked before she set up her own clinic. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. I just needed dates and names, so James could check to see if anything untoward had happened at any of the other places where she’d worked. I noticed there was nothing about Alberta Hospital on her CV.
“Why don’t you have this gig on here?” I asked. “I mean, you got everything else, looks like. But nothing about this job. Why is that?”
“Because I’m not looking for another position at this time,” she said. “If and when I decide to leave, I’ll add it.”
“How long you been here?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows. “Twelve years,” she said. “Are you satisfied? Can we get on with your session?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping I’d be able to remember enough of the places and dates so I could add them to the list James had given me. I didn’t know how I was going to get that information to him, but I’d have it when I could.
I handed her resume to her, and she carefully put it back in the file cabinet. She picked up her pen, scratched a few words on the topmost page of my file and then looked at me.
“Now,” she said. “Let’s talk about your father, shall we?”
“Right to it, huh?” I asked.
“Right to it,” she replied. “How did you feel about your father coming to visit?”
“Actually, it kind of pissed me off,” I said. “He and I don’t have a lot to do with each other anymore, and I didn’t think he needed to be involved in this—misunderstanding.”
Her eyebrows quirked. “You consider everything that’s happened to you the past few days just a misunderstanding?” she asked.
“Well, sure,” I said. “After all, the guy who accused me of—what he accused me of—is a killer. Which kind of makes him a little less than honourable, if you know what I mean. The cops will figure out that he attacked me, not the other way around, and that it had nothing to do with ghosts or whatever.” I looked at my fingernails, feigning indifference. “Then, I’m out.”
“You’re sure of that?” she asked.
“Of course,” I replied. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s the truth.”
Well, mostly the truth, but whatever.
“That isn’t what your father said,” Parkerson said, looking down at that stupid file. Looked like she was reading something—probably Willoughby’s version of what happened.
“He spoke of ghosts and spirits many times through your conversation w
ith him,” she said. “Apparently, he believes you can see these spirits—and that your mother could see them as well.” Her lips pursed for a moment. “Does he believe in ghosts? And does he think he can see ghosts, too?”
I stared at her for a full minute while I tried to digest the information she’d just given me, which was that it was not the nurse who’d overheard our conversation, but someone else. I’d kept my voice low while I spoke to my father, just to make sure the nurse didn’t hear.
The beating of my heart got so loud Parkerson had to hear it pounding in my chest like a freaked-out drum. She had to.
“You’ve got microphones hidden in that room, don’t you?” I asked.
She didn’t answer me. Just stared, her lips thin lines on her face. “And what killings were you discussing with your father?” she asked. “Killings a ghost told you about? I’m assuming you were talking about the institution. And that means you are seeing ghosts, here.”
Jesus. She heard everything. Absolutely everything.
“That’s gotta be against the law,” I said, my mouth dry as sand. “You listening on my conversation like that.”
“Everything is done for your own protection,” she said. “Try not to get upset. Getting upset will not help us here, and will only extend the amount of time you’ll be kept under observation.”
Well, that was as direct a threat as I’d heard in a long time.
“I’m not upset,” I said. “I just don’t understand how you can possibly think that listening in on a private conversation is in my best interests.” I looked down at my hands, and saw I’d clenched them. Thought for a second that I was exhibiting signs of stress, and then decided screw it, and left them knotted tightly in my lap. I looked up at her, and smiled, as breezily as I could. “You know what I mean?”
“You do understand that I need to know everything in order to help you, don’t you?” she said. Her face was still as tight as a slap. “And you do understand there is no such thing as ghosts. They are hallucinations. Nothing more. Your mother couldn’t see ghosts, and neither can you. But if you believe you are seeing them, then we need to deal with that issue immediately.”