The Night Strangers

by Chris Bohjalian

  “I understand you only knew Dr. Richmond professionally and hadn’t even been one of his patients all that long,” the older of the pair is saying, his hands on his knees as he sits forward in the easy chair. His badge says R. PATTERSON, but you cannot recall whether he told you his first name was Roger or Rick. He has an immaculately trimmed mustache the color of copper—a more restrained version of your own daughter’s red hair—and occasionally he lifts one of his hands and abstractedly runs a finger along it. The younger trooper is clean-shaven, which makes their age difference even more pronounced. You peg the older of the troopers to be somewhere around forty and the younger to be a mere twenty-five. The younger trooper is taking notes as you speak, while the older one listens. “But did he ever say anything that might be helpful in our understanding of what’s happened to him?”

  You have noticed that they do not say “his death.” He is merely missing. The other day his car was found about two miles from his house, the doors locked, and no one has seen him since. He did not show up at his office that day or the next or see any of the patients on his schedule. The troopers clearly presume that a crime has occurred, but at the moment they do not know this for sure.

  “No,” you tell them. “Mostly we talked about me.” You offer a small, wan smile.

  Although she is not a defense attorney, Emily has already told the troopers that, if she thinks a question is inappropriate, she is not going to allow you to answer it. They have assured the two of you that you are not a suspect in the doctor’s disappearance; they are only, to use the older trooper’s words, nosing around at the moment, and they saw that you were among his patients.

  “Can we ask you why you were seeing Dr. Richmond?” Patterson asks. But before you can respond, Emily squeezes your hand.

  “There is no reason to answer that, sweetheart,” she says, her voice gentle, though her gaze is intent. She looks at you squarely in the eyes.

  You shrug. “I don’t mind,” you tell her. And then you turn to the troopers: “I am being treated for depression and PTSD. As you might have heard, I lost an airplane.”

  “Yes, sir, we did know that,” the trooper says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  There is an awkward pause; there was a flippancy to your tone that you hadn’t expected when you started to open your mouth.

  “Did he ever mention any enemies?”

  “No.”

  “Any personal problems of his own? I know you were talking about the things on your mind, but did he ever relate them to something going on in his life?”

  You grimace involuntarily at a sudden pain in your side, the wince traveling all the way down your arm to your fingers. Emily turns to you, and you nod you’re okay. Then you gaze at Ashley as she stands on the brick hearth by the woodstove. At the moment she seems oblivious to you and Emily and these two state troopers. She is uninterested in dolls or a playmate. She is focused solely, almost quizzically, on the long, daggerlike triangle of metal fuselage on which she is impaled, the piece of your airplane that has sliced through the side of her abdomen. She is fingering the smooth, blue edge, careful to keep her fingers from either the point or the pieces of muscle and stomach and rib that garnish the jagged lip. You find yourself wondering: Was there water in her lungs when they did the autopsy? Or had the metal killed her instantly?

  Becky Davis never did call Emily back, so Emily decided to phone her. But this time she called the woman at work, remembering from their one cryptic conversation in the diner that Becky had said she did something at Lyndon State College. From the school’s automated phone system, Emily learned that the woman worked in the library. There Emily asked to speak to Becky Davis.

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh, I didn’t recognize your voice,” Emily said.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Emily Linton.”

  There was a long pause at the other end, and Emily could imagine the woman sitting a little straighter in her chair. Rubbing the bridge of her nose, perhaps, the way Emily knew she herself did when she was in the midst of a phone call that she found either stressful or unpleasant. “What do you want?” she asked finally.

  Emily took a breath. Becky sounded far less friendly than she had at the diner. “Well, I’m not sure. Tell me: How was your parents’ visit? Didn’t you tell me they were coming up from North Carolina for a bit?”

  “That was a long time ago. They’ve come and gone.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you at your office?”

  “I am,” said Emily.

  “You’re calling me from the law firm,” Becky said, unwilling to hide a small wave of incredulity.

  “Why is that a problem? It’s not like our phones are bugged or you and I are about to share state secrets. It’s—”

  “Fine. You’re in John Hardin’s office. I get it. My husband told me you called the other night. What do you want?”

  “I’m honestly not sure. When you introduced yourself to me at the diner, you were very nice. But you also kept talking about them, and you called them the herbalists. And then you left when you saw Alexander Jackson coming into the diner. Clearly you knew who he was. I didn’t at the time, but I do now. He’s married to Ginger. What was it you wanted to tell me that day about them—about the herbalists? Can you tell me now?”

  “Have you ever been inside John Hardin’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you notice the pictures?”

  “Do you mean the paintings? No, I—”

  “I meant the family photographs!”

  “What about them?”

  “He doesn’t age! Clary doesn’t age! At least it seems that way. It’s not … natural. It’s …”

  “It’s what?”

  “And where is your husband’s doctor? His psychiatrist?”

  “You mean Valerian? Well, she’s at—”

  “Valerian? You know who I mean. Michael Richmond. He sometimes skied with my husband. They were friends. We were friends. Where is he now?”

  “Look, I know something is going on. That’s why I’m calling. I have a house with bones in the basement, Hewitt Dunmore is dead, Michael is—”

  “He’s dead, too. My husband and I are sure of it.”

  “You were telling me about the photos in John and Clary’s house. Can you—”

  “Really, there’s nothing I have to tell you. I love Bethel and I love my family and I think it’s great that you’re here.”

  “Becky, please,” Emily said. But she heard a click and the line went silent.

  “Everything okay?”

  She looked up, and there was Eve, the firm’s young paralegal, standing in her doorway and looking a little concerned.

  “I’m fine,” she answered.

  “You looked like you’d seen a ghost,” Eve said.

  “Nope.”

  “If you need something, you’ll ask?”

  “Tell me something.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why is your name Eve?”

  “I seem to be rather talentless when it comes to plants. I seem to have the opposite of a green thumb,” she said with absolute earnestness, and then she continued on her way down the corridor.

  “It’s for the best,” Valerian said to Emily later that afternoon, sitting across the desk from Emily in her office. John leaned against the wall, ever the sage, avuncular presence. “And it’s not for long.”

  “I just don’t know,” Emily said. “I’m not sure Michael would have agreed.”

  Valerian turned around and looked up at John. “Do they know anything more about Michael’s disappearance? The police, that is?”

  He sighed wearily. “No. I haven’t heard a thing, I’m sorry to say. And while I like to believe he’s just—what did that South Carolina governor once do?—disappeared to be with some hypnotic young siren in South America, I think we can’t help but suspect the worst.” He shook his head, looking uncharacteristically morose. “We like to believe we’r
e exempt from that sort of violence here in the White Mountains. Apparently, we’re not.”

  “I want to think about it some more,” Emily said finally. “I don’t want us to broach this subject with him just yet. Okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Valerian said. “Let’s revisit the idea later this week. I’m seeing your husband tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have a better sense of what we should do after that.”

  You replace the empty battery in the drill with the charged one, grab four long screws, and drop into place another new step on those rickety back stairs behind the kitchen. It takes about a minute because you measured twice and cut once. You like that expression.

  Inside this back stairway, you have found that you do not hear the birds. It feels as if there are more of them here than there were in West Chester. This is probably a delusion. There were plenty of birds in Pennsylvania. But the cheeps and coos and trills sometimes seem to surround you here when you walk between the house and the carriage barn or when you stroll down the long driveway to the mailbox on the road into Bethel. You do not hate the birds. You blame them—but you do not hate them. At least this is what you tell yourself, struggling to be reasonable. You wish you could talk to Michael about this distinction between blame and hate, but you can’t.

  You have come to suspect that the women were involved in Michael’s disappearance, just as you have come to suspect that they were involved in Hewitt Dunmore’s death. But you can’t see why or how. You have the sense now that they are plotting something involving you, and that Emily is complicit. She seems to be seeing more of Valerian. There are phone conversations that end abruptly when you enter a room or descend the stairs to the first floor. Emily brought home some papers from work, and when you aimlessly wandered into the kitchen and saw her reading them, she thrust them into her briefcase.

  This morning Ethan visited you soon after Emily and the girls had left for the day, and he told you in no uncertain terms that your suspicions were accurate: Emily is becoming one of them. People don’t tell you things, but you are aware that secrets are rising like distant thunderclouds. A new name for Emily and new names for your daughters. When were they planning on telling you? It is possible that Emily already is one of them. Just look at the plants that have appeared in your greenhouse. Her greenhouse. The girls’ greenhouse. Ethan tried to reassure you that all of the pain you are experiencing will stop once Ashley gets a playmate—your guilt, too, will melt away—but you told him you would rather live with the pain and the guilt and the debilitating sense of failure. He reminded you that it wasn’t a question of character. It was a question of strength. And he was stronger. The fact was, someday the two of you would do it together. It was inevitable. Think back to the evening when Molly Francoeur was over for dinner and a playdate. Or that night when you tiptoed up to the third floor with Tansy’s knife. You would do it, he told you. You would.

  Meanwhile, outside the house the birds dart among the trees—the evergreens and the maples and the mountain ash alike—and savor their return to the north. Even the geese are back now. But at least they have the kindness to steer clear of your yard.

  You have three more steps to repair on this back stairway when you hear someone calling for you from the front hallway, a woman, and you believe it is Reseda’s sultry voice. So, you adjust the collar of your denim shirt, smooth your hair, and emerge into the kitchen.

  “Well, Reseda, this is a surprise. Lovely to see you,” you say. You hadn’t realized how sunny it had become while you were working in the dark of that back staircase.

  She stares at you in that slightly odd, inquisitive manner that had led you to presume initially that hers was a mind that tended to wander. You have since decided that nothing could be further from the truth. It’s almost as if she can read a person’s mind. But of course she can’t. No one can really do that.

  “What home improvement am I interrupting this morning?” she asks. She is wearing a waist-length black leather jacket and jeans.

  “The back stairs. I have no idea if we’ll ever use them, but you never know. A fire exit, maybe. So, I’m repairing the scarier-looking steps.”

  “Do you have a couple of minutes?”

  You motion toward the deacon’s bench where once the family cat would sleep, and Reseda unzips her jacket and sits.

  “I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I am very, very sorry about Desdemona,” she says. “That was her name, right?”

  “Thank you. It was a bit of a blow,” you admit, taking the ladder-back chair across from her. You wonder: Does she think you killed the cat, too? It’s so clear that Valerian does. And Anise. And, perhaps, even your own family. And yet you didn’t. At least you don’t believe that you did. These days, you seem capable of almost anything.

  “Cats—and dogs—poison themselves all the time. It wasn’t your fault,” she says evenly.

  “Thank you. You want some tea?” Somehow you know she doesn’t drink coffee. Did you learn this when you were at her house for dinner, or is it merely a suspicion that all of these herbalists prefer tea?

  “No, but you’re kind to ask. I want you to tell me something.”

  “Sure.” You realize you have folded your arms across your chest. You try to casually bring them onto the kitchen table.

  “Tell me about the voices,” she says.

  “The voices?”

  “Who are you talking to when you’re alone?”

  “Good Lord, what makes you think I talk to anyone when I’m alone?”

  “One of your girls told me.”

  You pause, your stomach turning over once. This is devastating news. You had no inkling that they had seen—that they knew. “And both know?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have they known?”

  “I couldn’t say. But they seem to comprehend you are experiencing something rather different here from what you were enduring back in West Chester. Is that accurate?”

  You feel the first twinge in your side, the first indication that Ashley is near.

  “Yes. It’s this …”

  “This house. I know.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not angry at you because you didn’t know … but you and that Sheldon character sold us a house with a body in the basement.”

  “If I could do it all over again, I would never have allowed you to buy this place. Never. I would have stopped Sheldon from showing it to you. That’s the truth. I’m sorry,” she says. “But the voices—”

  “The visions,” you say, correcting her. “I wish it were voices only. Then you could diagnose me a schizophrenic and drug me accordingly.”

  “But the visions do not involve Sawyer Dunmore. It may have been his bones in the basement, but he’s no longer here. You’ve never seen him.”

  She is watching you, and you find yourself swallowing uncomfortably. “No. Never him.”

  “There were children who died on Flight 1611. Is it one of them?”

  You nod. “Ashley Stearns.”

  “Who else?” she asks. “Are there others?”

  “Yes.” The word catches in your throat and the syllable grows elongated.

  “How many?”

  “Two—plus Ashley.”

  “Do you know what they want?”

  You see in your mind the knife by your bed, and then you have to close your eyes against the first migraine-like spikes of pain along the top of your head and behind your eyes. Ethan is coming, too.

  “Do you want to get some aspirin?” she asks when you remain silent.

  “Maybe in a minute,” you answer. Then you take a deep breath and tell her in as reasonable a tone as you can muster of your visits with Sandra Durant, the PR executive who liked orange marmalade, and of Ethan Stearns, the father with the serious guns for upper arms who is so angry at the death of his daughter. And, of course, you tell her lots more about Ashley. That child, it seems, is the reason why your own family is in danger. Someday, when it all becomes too much, you may savage one of your chil
dren with the knife you keep by your bed. But you don’t tell Reseda that. It is impossible to say such things aloud. Instead you finish by murmuring, “I had never believed in ghosts. But they’re real, you know. Either that or I’ve lost my mind once and for all.”

  “They’re real,” she agrees simply.

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  “I do.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “I have.”

  “The thing is …”

  “Go on.”

  “The thing is, they were my passengers and they died when my plane was brought down by a flock of geese. There were thirty-nine people who died. Why those three?”

  “Versus your first officer or the flight attendants or anyone else who was onboard?”

  “Exactly! Why not Amy Lynch or Eliot Hardy?”

  “The rest of them have gone on.”

  “To heaven.”

  “That word is as good as any,” she says. “When we’re living, we’re shielded from possession by an aura. When an aura is sound, it’s difficult for a spirit to penetrate it and become one with us.”

  She says this as if she is explaining how the immune system or a jet engine functions. A year ago, you would have assumed it was New Age nonsense. Now? You tend to have a more open mind.

  “And you know all of this … how?” you ask finally.

  “Know is a very loaded word in this case. The truth is, I know nothing. I am certain of nothing. But that’s what faith is, isn’t it? We believe things we can’t prove and have some confidence that we’re right.”

  “They want things from me.”

  “I am sure they do. But if you want me to,” she says, leaning in to you in a fashion that is at once provocative and intense, “I can try to make them leave.”

  “You can?”

  She nods. “I can try. And if I succeed, I want you and your family to move away.”

  “Leave this house?” You are surprised by the loyalty you have to the Sheetrock and plaster. To the rooms you have made new and to the rooms that await new wallpaper and paint. You have changed the house dramatically. Made it yours.