The Secret Life of Souls

by Jack Ketchum

  He’s excited. Of course he is. A great big kid with yet another new toy.

  “Wait’ll I get the player hooked up.”

  “You bought a player too?”

  “Sure. Don’t worry. It was half off.”

  “Half off of what?”

  He smiles that sweet disarming smile of his, which had gone a good ways toward hooking her and reeling her ass in some fifteen years ago.

  “Who cares?” he says.

  She gets up and ties her nightie together and slips into bed.

  “No one, evidently. I’m crashing. Keep it down, okay?”

  “Okay, babe. Night-night.”

  She pulls the sleep mask over her eyes. She can hear crickets through the open window. She can hear him moving quietly around the TV set, the silken rustle of his pajamas. She hears the dim regular beating of her heart beckon her down.

  She sleeps on her back, belly up, paws in the air.

  She’s vulnerable. Knows of no reason on earth not to be.

  She smells it first, something to which she is not accustomed. Briefly she considers an approaching storm. But there is no storm.

  The scent is carried on a slight breeze that ruffles the fur along the top of her head. It’s not coming through the window. The open window is in the wrong direction. This is coming from above her, the headboard. She rises off the bed. Points. Eyes jittering. As a burst of air blasts across her muzzle . . .

  . . . and Delia’s face too. The girl’s eyes fly open. Delia’s eyes fix for a moment on the mosaic of silk and sparkles in the canopy above her head and then go to Caity. Caity points. Delia turns on her belly to see where this strange breeze is coming from, up on her elbows as a sudden howl fills the room, a screech, though strangely muted, as though from somewhere far away yet right there in the room, confusing her. It is borne on this same sharp-scented breeze.

  She quivers in full protect mode beside Delia who has thrown herself back almost off the bed. She steps over her, between girl and headboard and a rumble begins low in her throat. The room falls still.

  She feels the girl’s arms around her and smells her fear stronger even than the night before. She leans forward, nose twitching. Old wood, glue, polish, and this newer smell.

  Her memory searches to place it.

  Burning. But not the fireplace. Not the stove. Not the oven. Not the hair dryer.

  And then another grating, screeching scream. Louder. Here and far away. Another impossible blast of air. She yelps. Delia lets out a yell, rolls away off the bed. Caity rises up on her hind legs and paws hard at the headboard, her voice a full-throated, angry bark. Delia rushes from the room. Caity places all her weight into the front of her body, leans forward, pawing, scratching. Whatever this is that has frightened them she will find it, she will destroy it utterly . . .

  “Mom! Daddy!”

  He throws off the covers and swings himself up half-sitting as his daughter slams screaming into him, her hands going to his shoulders, clutching at his thin pajamas. Bart flails for balance, head swimming, those four or five gin and tonics not through with him yet by a long shot, no sir, his right hand catching the side of the night table and sending his empty tumbler crashing to the floor.

  “What the . . . ? What’s going on? Somebody in here? Somebody in the house?”

  He hears Caity’s sharp staccato bark, incessant, insistent. Scary. Where the hell was the alarm? The alarm is supposed to be foolproof. He pushes Delia off onto the bed beside his wife—his wife groggy from her Ambien, her scotch, and only barely awake, eyes barely beginning to focus—and swings his legs around.

  Delia’s on him again, clinging to his shoulders.

  “Dad! It’s after Caity!”

  “What is?”

  “The ghost!” She reaches over to shake her mother. “Mom! Momma, wake up! Mom!”

  Her mother murmurs “whaaa?” and falls back into her pillow.

  Patricia’s going to be useless.

  If anything Caity’s bark is even louder now. He feels a rush of what he guesses is adrenaline and pushes himself off the bed.

  Ghost? What the fuck?

  Is there actually somebody in his house or is this just some kid’s damn fool imagination?

  He feels a sharp stab of pain. A shard of glass. His foot. The tumbler.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  It’s a big one, maybe an inch across. Shit. It drops off his bloody foot to the floor.

  There’s a heavy glass ashtray on the table. He picks it up just in case. A weapon. He stands and limps across the room, dripping blood. Not a bad cut, and first things first. Caity is flipping the fuck out in there.

  In the hallway he collides with his son.

  “Jesus! You scared hell out of me, Robbie!”

  “Sorry,” he says. “What’s going on? Caity sounds like . . . like she’s going nuts!”

  His son looks seriously troubled.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Behind them Delia’s calling to her dog. Cait! Caity! He hears tears in her voice. Bart lurches across the hall. And then he’s in her doorway. He has no idea what he expects to see in there. But it isn’t the family dog trying to tear the shit out of the headboard to Delia’s bed. The dog’s growling, furious, barking up a storm.

  “Caity!” he says. “Caity, stop it! Down, girl! Down!”

  It’s like he isn’t even there.

  “Caits!” That’s Robbie. Still nothing.

  He turns to his daughter. Her face is streaked with tears. “She’ll listen to you, hon,” he says. “Tell her to stop. Make her stop, Deal. You can do it.”

  To be honest the dog is beginning to scare him.

  “Caity,” she says. “Please, girl . . .”

  Delia approaches, hands held out in front of her as though she’s got some treats for the dog but the dog just ignores her, keeps on digging as though she’d like to go right through the goddamn headboard and then the wall behind it, scoring long pale scratch marks deep into the wood.

  “. . . stop, Caits . . . down, girl . . . down . . .”

  She keeps repeating. Down. Down. Down. Until finally she gets a look. Then a pause. Then a longer pause.

  At last she settles back on her haunches, panting, staring first at all of them bunched together, looking as though she were stunned by what’s just happened to her, and then to Delia only, whimpering, sad-eyed. Delia goes to her and hugs her tight.

  “It’s okay, girl,” she says.

  Bart’s standing in his own sticky blood. There’s a trail of it smeared and spotted behind him all down the hall. He wants to ask what the hell, Delia? As though his daughter would have some notion as to what’s in the mind of her pet. Which is ridiculous.

  “Ghosts,” she says.

  FIVE

  That second Ambien at two in the morning had been a mistake. Having set the phone alarm for 6:30 had been another. Between the two she doesn’t so much roll out of bed as melt off the damn thing. Her head feels stuffed with crepe paper. Her mouth feels and tastes like an old dry boot. She tries to work up some saliva. No go.

  For some reason Delia lies curled into the crooked arm of Bart’s sprawl, his head hidden beneath a pillow. Caity lies fetal along her daughter’s thigh, lightly snoring.

  She remembers some disturbance during the night.

  But . . . what the fuck?

  Bart’s feet are sticking out from under the covers. The sole of his left foot has been bandaged with gauze pads stained with dried blood and plastered down with half a dozen Band-Aids.

  Sloppy job, Bart, she thinks.

  And then once again thinks, huh? What the fuck?

  She bends down for a closer look. Lifts an edge of gauze pad. From what she can make out the crusted cut has slopped bleeding. So at least the sheets are spared bloodstains.

  She nearly wakes him to ask what the hell has happened here but then figures that can wait. Bladder trumps curiosity.

  There are blood-spots on the floorboards all around the be
d leading to the bathroom and onto the tiled floor. He hasn’t bothered to clean up. She sighs.

  Bart’s always been kind of a slob.

  No, she thinks, that’s not exactly right. Not a slob. Bart just doesn’t see things. Things that jump right out at most people. Or certainly jump out at her. Muddy shoes tracking the floor after a heavy rain. The toilet paper roll in need of replacing. Bits of food in the sink after stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. Splattered oil or butter on the burners after he’s done with one of his famous chef routines.

  She supposes she should be grateful that Bart bothers cooking at all—most husbands didn’t—but those last two really bother her. She really gets tired of cleaning up after his cleanup.

  He’s pretty good in the kitchen though, she has to admit. Has a nice way with northern Italian white sauces and Italian food in general. That comes as a result of his stint as sous-chef at Lombardia, where they’d met lo those many fucking years ago, Pat waitressing her way through a BA in college—her major in languages for god’s sake, with some vague notion of teaching afterward, though her minor, of course, was in drama—and Bart working his way up from busboy to waiter to chef to general manager. Ambitious, he was, after a fashion, in those days.

  He’d kept that manager job until two years after they married and his inheritance came through. And they’d had the house. His dad, who’d been highly successful during the housing boom of the ’80s and ’90s, was one of the original contractors on their gated community and had gotten in on the ground floor. A great deal.

  He had so many jobs on so many McMansions that Bart grew up thinking of his dad less as a father than as a weekend foreman who happened to sleep in his mother’s bedroom. When head-and-throat cancer from too much booze and way too many cigarettes killed him at age fifty-two, the house was long since paid off and there was a hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy. So he and his mom were never hurting for money. Then when she died, three days short of his twenty-first birthday—breast cancer this time, she didn’t believe in yearly physicals—the house went to him as their only child. That and a hundred-fifty grand. Mom was old-school like his dad. Her own insurance was paid up too.

  As a couple they’d dabbled in investing without much success but not too many significant losses either and then Delia had come along. And Delia was cute and photogenic as hell with that bright ready smile right from the beginning. Her first gig was for HuggleBug Diaper Pads at four months old. And they never looked back.

  So what is her now–eleven-year-old daughter doing sleeping with her dog in their bed?

  She hitches down her pajama bottoms and sits listening to herself pee and puzzles this one over.

  Mom obviously isn’t buying Delia’s haunted bedroom story. He’s heard raised voices coming from Delia’s room and snatches of conversation but he sure isn’t going to get involved, he figures he’s got one more up his sleeve before he calls the game and it’s another hour before his alarm’s set to go off so he just pulls the pillow over his head and goes back to sleep.

  When he comes downstairs they’re running lines at the kitchen table and barely acknowledge him as he pours himself some cereal and then toasts and butters a piece of raisin bread and sits down to eat. Delia waves to him as his mom herds her out the door to the car and that’s that.

  He’s just finishing up when he hears Caity outside scratching at the sliding double doors. They’ve banished her to the yard today he figures. No field trip. A measure of how important this audition is to his mom.

  No Caity equals no distractions.

  “You want in, girl?”

  She does. For about five minutes. She snarfs up the leftover kibble in her bowl and slurps down some water and then she wants out again.

  Typical.

  “See ya later, agitator,” he says and slides the doors shut behind her and heads upstairs to get his butt set for school.

  Bart has no sooner finished zapping his coffee in the microwave when the phone rings.

  “Bartholomew Cross, please.”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Cross?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sir, this is Bob over at Krzykowski Audio. You recently purchased a Helix amplifier for your car?”

  “Yes. Has it come in?”

  “Yes sir, it has. But we’re having a problem here. Your check hasn’t gone through.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, sir. Afraid so.”

  “No problem.” It isn’t a problem, is it? “Let me give you my platinum card.”

  “Sure, sir. Absolutely.”

  “Hold on. Just woke up over here . . .”

  He crosses into the living room and sees Robbie with his backpack headed out the door.

  “Hey, Robbie, wait. Run upstairs and grab my wallet off the nightstand, will you?”

  “Bus’ll be here any minute, dad.”

  “You miss it, I’ll call you a cab.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  His son smiles and shakes his head like, dad’s nuts but in a good way, and turns for the stairs.

  “Take five, Deal,” Miss Hinsey says, “I have to take this call.”

  The dance instructor flips open her cell phone. Delia trudges over to Pat sitting in the hard studio chair and Pat hands her a towel. She sits down beside her and pats her neck dry above the leotard.

  “I don’t get it, mom. What’s this have to do with a pool-party scene for god’s sake?”

  Delia’s being cranky. Has been ever since this morning when she’d told her to please cut it out with the ghost nonsense, will you? and that she should have more important things on her mind.

  Namely, her audition with Veronica Smalls.

  “Body language is everything, Delia,” she says. “It’s not just about the lines. You need to act with your whole body. Caroline’s going to loosen you up. You want to be loose, don’t you?”

  She grabs her by the upper arms and shakes her side to side. Gets her laughing finally despite herself.

  “See? Loose as a goose.”

  “Mo-om!” But she’s smiling.

  Miss Hinsey’s phone snaps shut. “Okay, Deal, up,” the instructor says. “Let’s do some more work with the shoulders and neck. Sooo much tension there . . .”

  Pat sits up straight in the chair and does her own shoulder rolls and works her breathing along with them. Neither one notices. Or if they do, don’t care. She does this pretty much all the time. Follows along. Two for the price of one, she thinks. Why not?

  Dean Kaltsas and Billy Tambour are shooting hoops when he steps out of the cab. According to his watch the bell has already rung five minutes ago but as usual Dean and Billy are pushing it. He crosses the macadam.

  “Whoa!” says Dean. “What? Limo driver call in sick today? You should fire that asshole.”

  “Eat me,” Robbie laughs. He’s used to taking shit from these guys.

  “Pass the fuckin’ ball!” he says.

  They’ve got time. Dean does.

  Caity stretches out to her full length on the lawn, smells the fresh-cut grass, the trees beyond, bird guano and rabbit droppings. Already at this early hour the earth is warm beneath her belly. She yawns.

  The old swings creak on their chains, the sun glints on the tarnished metal slide.

  Slide. That’s a fine idea.

  In a second she’s up and running, in another she is barreling up the slide, paws slipping on its sleek surface but momentum and sheer bulk carrying her to the top. At its peak she sits and listens to the breeze flowing by, around and into her delicate ears, a soft susurration, a tingle, the breathing world a simple comfort.

  She scans the horizon, always familiar yet always fresh with nuance. The bend of a branch, the shadow of a leaf, blossom, birdsong, the drone of bee and dragonfly, the fall of chestnut, acorn, pine cone, their jump and roll and settle on the ground.

  And here, now, the scent of fur still damp with morning.

  Her tail wags, t
witches.

  Something out there.

  Bart sits at his computer, transferring money from his brokerage account to his bank account. Two thousand? Five? What the hell, he thinks, go for five. Don’t need this happening again.

  Too bad he’s always been lousy at math. Dyscalculia they called it, like dyslexia only with numbers. He’s been that way since grade school. Reversing numbers. Omitting numbers. And here he is handling the family’s finances.

  The irony is that Pat’s much better at it. But Pat isn’t interested. In high school and college she’d been an actress, and that’s still where her heart is and what she knows about—and if she wasn’t ever a really terrific actress, if the rejections had finally gotten to her to the point that she’d want to call her shrink after every audition, it was still her area of expertise and the best way for her to contribute to the family.

  So he’ll crunch the numbers. And if the numbers crunch him now and then, so be it. He likes the implicit risk involved, the possibility that he might fuck up, he likes beating the odds forever set against him. The same as investing.

  Make it ten, he thinks, and clicks Enter.

  Her mom was right, she guessed. She does feel good and limber from the exercise, which has even lasted through all Joyce’s primping and pampering with hair and makeup at Rose Blanche. Though that’s one part of the business she isn’t the least bit fond of.

  “They have makeup people at the studio,” she’d said.

  They’d already been walking through the salon’s parking lot. It was a futile gesture toward a last-minute reprieve.

  “You need to look the part when you walk in the door and shake the first hand, kiddo,” her mom had said.

  So Rose Blanche it was.

  And Delia figures she was right again. Because when they arrive at the studio and she’s greeted by all those dark suits, Sean and Polly among them, she feels like her own personal beam of bright light has just entered, waiting to light up the scene.

  Even Abraham, the writer, is wearing black today, though in his case it’s a turtleneck and faded black jeans. He seems really happy to see her and brings her over to meet Veronica Smalls.

  Smalls is sitting in a folding chair and actually gets up to warmly shake her hand. She guesses the story about the accident has gotten around. Smalls is . . . well . . . smaller than she’d thought, and older-looking, clusters of lines around her eyes and mouth and what she’d bet were implants puffing out her cheekbones.