The Ghost in the Glass House

by Carey Wallace

  In those days, she hadn’t been able to fathom how her parents could prefer these small dark images to all the flash and color of actual life. Even her mother’s wedding portrait, with its silver lace and perfect studio halo, couldn’t compete with the flush that came up in her mother’s face each time she began a new story.

  Back then, the album had seemed lifeless.

  Now it felt haunted.

  Clare folded the soft suede cover back to reveal the first page: a snapshot of her father at the end of a dock, his face blurred by a smile.

  To her surprise, her face broke into an answering smile.

  She turned the page.

  Her father grinned up from an Adirondack chair. Behind him, spikes of hollyhock jutted up like a rakish crown. He strutted along the ledge of a high stone balcony. He approached down a long lane, swinging a bunch of flowers wrapped in newspaper the way a ballplayer might bring his bat up to the plate.

  Her mother appeared for the first time in the bow of a canoe. The sun overhead had been so bright that it ate up the horizon so her mother seemed to drift from the surface of the lake directly into the sky. After that, the pictures of her father and mother mingled. In one, her mother stood with her back against a tree. In the next, her father had climbed into its branches, his pale jacket in a heap on the grass below.

  Clare had braced herself for sorrow, but she was powerless against the happiness that washed through her with each glimpse of him. She’d wanted to look at him with eyes wiser than a child’s, but the sight of him turned her childlike again.

  When she reached the end, she let the cover fall back into place. But it didn’t blot the images out. Instead, they crowded together in her mind and came alive. And instead of satisfying her desire to speak with her father, they made it grow wild.

  Clare closed her eyes.

  She’d heard Bridget’s mother insist again and again that to reach into the spirit world wasn’t magic, but science. It was only simple conversation, with an advanced method of listening.

  So with her eyes still closed, Clare let a single word glow and echo in her mind: Daddy? As her mind spoke, her lips parted, but no sound passed between them.

  Someone came into the room.

  Clare knew without a doubt that the person who had joined her was not her father, just as she knew without a doubt that she was not alone. Immediately, her eyes sprang open.

  Nothing in the room had changed. Even the clouds seemed to be frozen to the sky. But the sense that she was not alone didn’t fade. Instead, it grew stronger.

  “Hello?” she said aloud.

  A surge of love swept over her, so strong it was difficult to catch her breath. With it came the sense she got from Tilda’s sharp looks, that she’d been recognized for who she was, and not the pose she’d chosen. But this feeling went even deeper: that whoever had joined her knew everything she’d ever done, things her own father couldn’t know, things even she had forgotten.

  But she didn’t know a thing about it.

  The terror of this brought her to her feet. She left the album askew on the floor, darted into the hall, and pulled the door shut.

  But the presence was just as strong on this side of the door as it had been in her room. It didn’t fade when she rattled down the stairs, or when she burst from the front hall onto the porch, or fled the porch for the lawn.

  It wasn’t until she stopped in the shade of the front oaks, her breath ragged, that the presence receded. But she didn’t have any sense that she’d outrun it. Instead, it seemed to have left her. And when it did, she felt a new kind of loneliness, for something she couldn’t name, like the feeling from a dream erased by waking, with her sore heart the only proof. She gazed around the yard, half hoping the presence would return.

  When it didn’t, she headed over the lawn, toward the glass house. But when she rounded the corner, its door stood open, propped with a garden hoe. Half its contents had been spread under the maples, where Mack wandered through the empty chairs and couches with a strange blend of tenderness and suspicion, as if he were the only living guest at a party for ghosts.

  Twenty

  THE SPIRITIST LAUGHED.

  “Well, you know,” he told Clare’s mother, as the nearby guests looked on from their mismatched armchairs and divans. “It’s very unusual to find a presence out of doors.”

  Clare glanced at the glass house. One object of the party had been to show off its weird charm, but by the time the guests had arrived at dusk, the glass hulk with the candlelight leaking out between the vines had taken on the aspect of a giant coal burning up from the inside. The few guests who had ventured through the shadows to the half-hidden door had found a dim, empty room whose walls seemed to be made from slabs of night. Almost no one who dared to make a circuit of the house ventured inside, and the few who did hurried out again to rejoin the party, which had collected on the furniture Mack had scattered under the maple canopy, between comforting strings of electric lights.

  Bridget’s mother sat beside her spiritist on a leather settee. Bridget’s father sat opposite them on the sea-foam divan. Clare’s mother sat at the foot of the divan, separated from him by a respectable length of cushion. Clare stood just outside the circle, in the shadow of the glass house.

  “Oh,” Clare’s mother said, with extravagant disappointment. “But I was sure you would find us a ghost tonight. None of us have seen anyone but each other since May. We’re all so bored we could spit. You’re sure there’s absolutely no one out here?”

  Bridget’s father and mother hadn’t exchanged a word all night, but they both turned to Clare’s mother at this. Bridget’s mother scanned her face with the sharp eye of a true believer grown suspicious of praise through long years of ridicule. Bridget’s father glanced at her with the sudden unease of a doctor who has just discovered a warning symptom in a patient he’d believed to be healthy.

  Clare’s mother kept her gaze fixed on the spiritist, a young man whose remarkably fine suit was strangely at odds with his eyes, which were bold but wary, like a street child’s. The instinct to maintain his dignity struggled on his features with a showman’s desire to please. Around the gathering, the conversation dwindled as guests turned to observe.

  “I’m sure,” Clare’s mother prompted him with disarming confidence, “if there was anything here, you could feel it.”

  “Well, of course,” the spiritist agreed.

  Clare’s mother leaned forward with an eagerness that almost disguised the malice in her eyes.

  “Would you try?” she asked.

  Bridget’s mother tried to give the spiritist a warning glance, but by now he was in Clare’s mother’s grasp.

  He continued to protest, but only for show. “I’m not sure everyone would be interested in—”

  “Nonsense,” Clare’s mother interrupted. “What could be more interesting than eternity?”

  The entire party had gathered around them now, with two exceptions. Bridget stared stonily at the sky, her legs draped over the side of one of the red wing chairs in a stand of furniture the other guests had abandoned as they gravitated toward the spiritist. Nearby, Teddy took advantage of the distraction to add the contents of his pocket flask to a glass of Tilda’s mint lemonade.

  Amanda Bradburn, a doe-eyed girl with a wide mouth and a nervous laugh who had joined them at the seaside that summer after an ignominious stint at a finishing school in Philadelphia, swept into the open seat between Clare’s mother and Bridget’s father. She gave Clare’s mother a look of open derision as she arranged the filmy layers of her dress, then settled back against the divan.

  Clare scanned the faces of the other guests to see if any of them had taken in this broad commentary on the friendship between her mother and Bridget’s father. She caught Bram’s figure on the far side of the circle, his back to the hill. His eyes met hers. Beside Bram, Denby caught the motion. He searched the gathering, his gaze alert, but didn’t settle on any face.

  “Shall we get you an
ything?” Clare’s mother asked. “A candle? Or a bell?”

  The spiritist set one hand on each knee and gave his head a curt shake.

  “He is the instrument himself,” Bridget’s mother explained, in a tone of scientific rebuke.

  “Forgive me,” Clare’s mother said. But by now the drama was unfolding without her help. The spiritist closed his eyes. Clare’s mother leaned back to watch.

  Unseen fingers threaded through Clare’s. She started. From across the crowd, she could feel Bram’s eyes on her.

  “Watch this,” Jack said, low in her ear.

  She shook her head and reached for him, but only caught the corner of his invisible jacket as he brushed past.

  Fear coursed through her. She didn’t know what powers the spiritist might command. If he discovered Jack, could he hurt or banish him?

  The spiritist took a long breath. Around the circle, the crowd drew in their own.

  For a long moment, nothing stirred. Then the tip of the spiritist’s tie twitched faintly, as if in a private breeze. But the spiritist, locked in his drama of communion with the other world, didn’t flinch, or even seem to notice.

  Clare’s mother’s eyebrows shot up in amusement at the trick, mingled with grudging respect.

  Then the young man shuddered, as if an unseen hand had settled on his shoulder.

  The crowd gave a blunted moan of fright.

  Clare’s hands closed helplessly at her sides.

  The spiritist’s head jerked as if someone had yanked it by the ear. His eyes sprang open. The crowd lurched back. For an instant, the spiritist’s face blazed with raw challenge, like any cornered man’s.

  But as he took in all the eyes still fixed on him, he mastered his fear with admirable showmanship. His hands settled back on each knee. He squared his shoulders and let his chest swell under his well-cut vest. “There is a spirit here,” he announced, in a tone that made it clear that any surprise he had felt was only the bemusement of an expert confronted with an unusual specimen.

  Clare’s mother leaned forward.

  “What kind of spirit?” she asked. Clare could tell her mother still thought she was only playing a part in a magic show. But Clare could barely draw a breath as she waited for the spiritist’s answer.

  He took a moment to gauge the crowd. “A woman,” he said.

  Almost instantly a hank of hair stood up on the top of his head, as if someone had given it a healthy tug. The spiritist’s face contorted with pain. Both his hands flew up to the spot, first to ward Jack off, then to smooth the hair down. Bridget’s mother stared at him with horror and fascination, like a priest confronted by a living god whose actual speech contradicted all his beloved cant.

  “What does she want?” Bridget’s mother asked.

  The young spiritist had not worked his way into the best circles of society by insisting on mystery when his client demanded answers. But he also knew better than to trap himself with specifics. He relied, wisely, on what he had already gleaned of the spirit’s behavior. “To touch us in this world,” he said.

  “She must be lonely,” Clare’s mother said. “Do you think she would take my hand?”

  The young spiritist measured Clare’s mother, still uncertain if she was a convert or a heckler. “It requires sensitivity, and training,” he began.

  “Won’t you just let me try?” Clare’s mother asked, and held her hand out over the grass. “What should I do?”

  The young spiritist checked the crowd again and gave in. “Close your eyes,” he said.

  Clare’s mother obeyed, her hand still extended.

  An unseen arm circled Clare’s waist. She felt the brush of Jack’s cheek against hers. “Come on,” he said, with a gentle tug back into the darkness that surrounded the glass house.

  Across the crowd, Bram gave Clare a questioning frown.

  “I don’t feel anything,” Clare’s mother announced.

  “It may be very faint,” the spiritist prompted.

  “Come on,” Jack said again, then vanished into the dark.

  Around the crowd, eyebrows rose and lips curled. Figures began to shift, restless. The spiritist’s reaction to Jack’s teasing had been so genuine that it made the rest of his act ring false.

  “I felt something just then,” Clare’s mother said. “But it might have been the wind. How do you tell the difference?”

  Bridget’s mother’s eyes narrowed.

  A few guests drifted toward the buffet where Tilda had arranged her cakes, tiled with candied rose petals and violets. The hum of voices began to rise into the dark leaves.

  The spiritist glanced around the thinning crowd, no longer gauging their response, but as if wondering where the next blow might come from.

  Clare waited until Bram, still on the other side of the party, turned away from her to hear something Denby said.

  Then she walked backwards into the darkness, following the curve of the glass house until she came to the door, where she slipped in.

  Twenty-One

  THE CONTENTS OF THE glass house had been shuffled so thoroughly that when Clare first stepped in she wasn’t sure it was the same place. Of all the familiar furnishings, only the piano, buffet, and a few chairs remained, pushed back against the glass walls. The books had been stacked in neat piles on the buffet, the silver vases filled with daisies. Only the carpets, free of furniture, still lay in familiar layers. Even the light was wrong. Instead of filtering down through the leaves, it streamed from a dozen tapers in the chandelier overhead. Its light made the carpets glow like gems, but the whole house seemed to tremble each time the flames guttered in the wind.

  Jack laughed in welcome as she stepped in. But without furniture to blunt the sound, his voice bounced from glass to glass so that it was impossible for her to tell where it had come from.

  Clare frowned.

  The head of one of the daisies from the buffet popped off and began to weave unsteadily toward her through the air.

  “Do you think he’d like a flower?” Jack asked, his voice still full of glee from his prank on the spiritist. “The door’s open. I could carry it out.”

  Clare disarmed him in a single motion.

  “I’d rather you had it, anyway,” Jack said. “You’re prettier than him.”

  Clare cupped the daisy in her hand so the petals wouldn’t break, and ignored the compliment.

  Undeterred, Jack tried a distraction. “Watch this,” he said.

  A moment later, the chandelier lurched, then began to dance. The flames jerked and flattened in the sudden wind. Crystal drops clanged against the chandelier’s glass branches. Hot wax rained down on the carpet below.

  Clare sprang back.

  “Clare,” Bram said from the door. “Are you all right?”

  The chandelier gave one final clumsy swoop, then began to rock back to stillness, like a swing after a child abandons it.

  Bram came across the carpet and laid a hand on the small of Clare’s back. Heat from it bled through the thin fabric of her dress. “What happened?” he said.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Jack asked.

  Bram started. His gaze swung around the room. When it found nowhere else to settle, it returned to Clare.

  Before she could answer, Bridget and Denby pushed into the glass house. Bridget clutched Denby’s hand, but both of them stared at Bram.

  Instinctively, Clare stepped away from him. When she did, she knocked into Jack. She could feel her shoulder crash into his chest, and the brush of his jacket on her hand. His fingers twined through hers.

  She looked down to see if her hand gave anything away. It didn’t.

  Denby looked up at the black dome around them. “You hardly need to come down to the cave, Clare,” he said. “You’ve got your own right here.”

  Clare bristled. “It’s not like a cave,” she said. “During the day.”

  “I thought your mother said they hadn’t opened it all summer,” Bridget said with a sharp loo
k.

  Behind her, Teddy appeared in the door. In his rumpled white suit, lit up by candlelight, he glowed like an apparition. “I bring spirits,” he announced, pulling a silver flask from the striped lining of his jacket with a grand and sloppy flourish. “Spirits and libations.”

  He offered the flask to Denby. Denby took it, slugged back a gulp, then lifted his chin against the burn as he handed it back.

  Teddy held the flask out to Bram. Bram glanced at Clare, a question still in his eyes. But he walked over to take it.

  Bridget reached for the flask as Bram finished. He lifted it high, out of her grasp, and looked at Teddy.

  Teddy smirked and shook his head. “Sorry, little sister,” he said. “I’m not so drunk I’m going to serve you your first whiskey.”

  “It’s not my first!” Bridget insisted, and made another grab.

  Bram passed the flask to Teddy over her head. Teddy secured it in his jacket pocket again. “Who gave you whiskey?” he asked. “The librarian at the ladies’ club?”

  Beside Clare, Jack stifled a laugh. Clare glanced at Bram, but if he had heard anything, he didn’t show it.

  Bridget retreated to Denby with the air of a mistreated soul appealing to her only protector. She collected his hand, then checked to make sure she still had Bram’s attention. “We could play a game,” she suggested. “What about post office?”