“About a quarter Jewish, anyway. The rest is Scots-Irish or something. Why, are you anti-Semitic?”
“Not enough to stop me from sleeping with you.”
“Thanks, that’s sincerely white of you.”
“So you watched the film together?”
“She didn’t have a projector, but she didn’t need one. She recalled every frame of it. You were one lucky goddamn kid.”
“Thanks. Could have done without the ‘goddamn’ part.”
Katie laughed. “Yeah, like you’re offended!”
“Hey, I attended church every Sunday with my father!”
“And grew up refusing to even consider anything the least outré or spiritual! What about the spirit of Christ, Elliot, isn’t He referred to as a ghost?”
“Are we fighting now? ‘Cause I’d just as soon put it off till tomorrow if we’re going to sleep together tonight.”
“Aren’t you the fast-talking scriptwriting teacher.”
“Or was that just a vague promise to get me to watch my stupid student film?”
Katie smiled brightly. “This is interesting, I never knew how myopic you were! No wonder Rita called you an asshole.”
“She never called me that.”
“She called you worse than that. You were promised to her but not drawn to her. You hated your father and loved your mother, even though you thought she was a flake. You want to sleep with me and you keep pushing me away. Like you don’t deserve what you really want unless it makes complete sense. Unless it’s somehow right with the Universe.”
“Maybe I’m afraid of sex. Doctor.”
“I think—as Rita thought—you’re afraid of love. Because love is mysterious, intangible, and a bit crazy, like your mother. But your father slept with her. And he would have slept with me, believe me.”
“Sorry, I’m confused—so your major was Paranormal Psychiatry? And here I thought you were enjoying kissing me in the T-Bird that night.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t want it, Elliot, I said you’re afraid to believe in it. Like the séance today with Angel.”
I sat up straight. “You think I didn’t believe it was real?”
Katie slumped condescendence. “I’ve got eyes, Elliot!”
“Beautiful ones.”
“You thought the whole thing was a sham. Mama Grace the Voodoo princess and her wired shack, and recorded sound effects and ghostly voices while she banged the underside of the table with her knobby knees!”
“Whereas you believed the whole sitting, out-of-hand.”
“I didn’t just believe it--I knew it!”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“Because of Mama Grace. Didn’t you see her face? She was afraid!”
“She is a professional.”
“Nobody’s that good an actress. She wasn’t stalling around at the beginning of the séance like that just to make it look good; she was genuinely scared! She didn’t want to do that sitting, much as she may have needed the money! And when Amy finally did come calling, the old woman was possessed! Against her will! There was anger in that room, Elliot, little girl anger, and it was palpable. That was not the voice of a recording or a ventriloquist…that was the real Amy.”
“The real dead Amy.”
“Yes!”
“And you’re positive about that?”
“I am.”
“Why?
Katie straightened rigidly, snorted breath, stared at me a long moment. Then, softly: “If I have to explain that to you, Elliot, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve got to learn to trust yourself, baby. May I ask you something?”
“Could I stop you?”
“Have you ever considered the theory that things only appear real to us because we believe in them?”
“Uh…something about quantum physics…”
“I’m serious.”
“’Appear real to us because we believe in them. Hmm. You mean like the movies?”
“That’s not as smartass cute as you think.”
“Katie. Look. I know what you’re saying. I can suspend my disbelief and enjoy a film. Otherwise I couldn’t have made that stupid sophomoric film. But that doesn’t make it real.”
“Quantum mechanics doesn’t make it real either, Mr. Pragmatic. Yet the math works.”
“--where are you going?”
She was up and moving around the shadowed living room. “I’m going to watch your movie again. Unless you’ve had some sudden, brilliant new insight into why Amy Robichou disappeared.”
“I don’t know, Katie…I certainly didn’t then! May I remind you those are expensive antiques you’re pawing through?”
“Right. A 65” flat screen antique. A five thousand dollar Denon home theater receiver”
“We already established the Robichous weren’t broke.”
“Just like to pretend they were. Oh, look! A brand-new Blu-ray player! Now that’s a rare antique!”
“Too bad you’re DVD isn’t a Blu-ray.”
“Not much of a techie, are you? This thing will still play standard DVDs. Even upscale them to 1080i! Wait a second…uh-oh, I don’t see any HDMI cable…”
“So run it through the component ports.”
“Blu-ray won’t play through component. It’s a Hollywood conspiracy. Damn! And there’s no DVD player at the motel.”
“Just an old-fashioned analog TV.”
Katie turned from the boxes of electronics, switched on an overhead light and began perusing a nearby bookshelf.
“Now what are we doing?”
She bent down, ran a searching finger along the shelf, stood, moved to another shelf, repeated same. “None of that digital stuff is hooked up yet—maybe Dean didn’t have time. They might have an old analog TV and player around here somewh—HA!”
She pulled an older Panasonic player from the shelf and began to disconnect the cords.
“You know you’re welcome to help me with this, Elliot, when you’re fully rested there…”
“Katie, you can’t do that!”
“Yeah, I can, it’s easy.” She bundled the player in her arms and started by me.
“It’s stealing!”
She made a scoffing sound, tossed back her hair. “Don’t be silly, Angel’s our friend.”
“Exactly my point!”
She sighed impatiently at the front door. “Then it’s not stealing, it’s borrowing! Grab the knob behind me, will you?
* * *
“I don’t know why you think the cat needed to pee,” I said, standing in motel doorway, gazing at the lakes of urine and little ant hills of poop on the rug.
Katie swept a fawning Garbanzo into her arms. “Poor baby! Had to make doody indoors! We’re terrible masters, Elliot, do you think he’ll ever forgive us?”
“Yes, while he’s rooting through the garbage and drinking out of the toilet.”
“Don’t be unkind, this was inhumane! Have you no feelings?”
“They shoot horses, don’t they?”
She looked up from the edge of the mattress. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I have no idea. But I’ll never forget how Jane Fonda said it in the movie. She’s beaten, see, wrung out, destroyed inside and out from this insane marathon dance contest, and she looks up with these devastated eyes at her dance partner and says—“
“You want to take the cat for a walk, or shall I?”
“He already peed!”
“Elliot.”
“What will you do if I come back here without him?”
She gave me a hooded look. “They shoot horses, don’t they?”
“Cute. Garbanzo, come here. Look at that--the way he guides himself so gracefully and confident around his own excrement, warms your heart, no?”
“Sometime before the end of the week, please. I’d like to see the video.”
I picked up the cat, headed back to the door. “Good-bye. I won’t be back.”
“Bye. Don’t get lost.”
Amy was w
aiting for me when the cat and I came around to the motel side yard.
Okay, she may have been the little blonde from Cabin 7 I’d seen playing earlier, but even in the dark yard I could see the familiar gold hair, the posture, the attitude; the slightly rebellious, older-than-her-years aura emanating across the grass and weeds and breeze-stirred Spanish moss from the swamp behind her.
“Hi.”
At first I wasn’t sure she heard me. The wind off the marsh stirred the yellow curls and hem of her pinafore. Then she looked up. “Hi yourself.”
Yes, it could have been Amy’s voice—or whoever’s voice I’d heard before, sometimes underwater, usually while in a some state of panic.
“Nice evening,” I offered.
“For Manchac. Hot.”
“You’re from around here?”
A cloud, no bigger than a mare’s tail, swept across the feeble moon, and the glowing statue became momentarily obelisk. “Around.”
I nodded companionably, glanced down to find Garbanzo sitting still as an Egyptian statue, only his tail twitching, big green eyes on the little girl.
“But you live here in town?”
She was silent a moment. Then, without turning, pointed out at the swamp toward Chinchuba or maybe Manderville, or maybe Lake Pontchartrain, or maybe just the swamp itself.
It had to be imagination—nothing else made sense—but I could swear I felt a sudden, brief, almost-tangible cold breath of air settle over and past me…from the direction of the child.
“Excuse me for asking, but aren’t you a little young to be out here at night all by yourself?”
Now she did glance toward the swamp for just a moment. “I’m used to it.”
“Are you?”
“Oh, yes. I like the night.”
“Do your parents know where you are?”
“That’s a pretty cat.”
“Thank you.”
“My father knows. I’d like a cat like that. He’s smart.”
“You think? How can you tell?”
“Can’t you?”
“Not really, I guess.”
“Maybe you’re not listening.”
“To the cat? Well…he doesn’t say much.”
“Sure he does. You have to listen.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know how. Maybe you could teach me.”
“No. You have to teach yourself.”
“How?”
“By listening.”
I looked down at Garbanzo, licking his left paw now. “Sorry, can’t hear a thing. How do you do it?”
“By listening to myself. That’s how you start.”
“And how do you do that?”
“By believing.”
The breeze lifted her hem and that cold wedge ran through me again. “Believing in what? Magic?”
“Yes. Your own. Believe in yourself and listen to yourself. Don’t you do that?”
I smiled a little. “Well…I give myself very good advice, but I seldom ever follow it.”
She giggled, the softest sprinkle of sound on the night breeze. “Alice in Wonderland.”
“That’s right. And you’re a very smart little girl. Is that your name, ‘Alice’?”
She stared at me. At least I think she did, I could barely see her eyes. “That sure is a nice cat.”
“Would you like him?”
“I said I did.”
“To have him.”
She seemed to start at that, or maybe it was the wind. “No. He belongs to someone else.”
“Me?”
She cocked her head just slightly. “I’m not sure. I’d have to think about that. Don’t you know?”
I looked down at the cat again, certain the little girl wouldn’t be there when I lifted my eyes again. “I’m not sure myself...”
She was still there when I looked up.
“Then you’re not listening. You should. It makes things so much easier.”
“Things?”
“I have to go now.” She turned.
“Hey! Will I see you again?”
“If I have anything to say about it.”
“Do you? Hey! Little girl? Amy? Hey!”
But she had disappeared into the night.
I picked up Garbanzo. The lights were turned down in the room when I got back.
The rug was spotless. Katie sat cross-legged in front of the motel TV holding the remote. The TV screen was a snow storm of static.
“Just leave it that way, it looks cooling.”
“The TV? I’ve almost got it ready. Sit.”
I sat.
Katie held up the remote and the snow stopped, the screen went dark.
A few rain lines of emulsion scratches and white speckles of dust burs--then the black screen bloomed with an all but forgotten white font title:
A Film by Elliot Bledsoe
THIRTY-THREE
…she was almost to the distant lights, not more a block or two away it seemed. She could hear the music more clearly now and found an edge of comfort in it. Soon she would be there, sloughing her way through waist-deep water and squishy mud and climbing the dark, distant shore where the lights and music and people would be all around her. She’d be back to civilization. She’d been lucky and she knew it, very lucky to have escaped them, but then she’d always had luck on her side, her only true friend.
But it deserted her abruptly as the swamp bottom disappeared and she went under up to her neck. A strong swimmer, she surfaced quickly, remembered not to panic, to hold her chin up and breathe normally. But now she had a choice and, this close to the lights and music, it seemed an unfair choice: either she began swimming now for real, or she turned back--and she could not turn back, not with them still behind her, still searching for her. She pushed off with her toes, grateful to be free of the icky mud, and stroked the warm, black water evenly, in unhurried, measured strokes. She thought of the scows and dinghies at the rental dock but the squeaky oar locks would only make more noise and she didn’t need a boat anyway, didn’t think she did.
But her arms grew tired faster than she’d have thought and she had to stop a moment and tread water. She felt the pulse of something pass her dangling legs, maybe a gator but probably a big carp and it didn’t matter anyway, she’d chosen her course and whatever wanted to take her under could take her now; besides the lights and music seemed nearer. It was going to be okay, she’d beaten them, she was free. She imagined the surprised faces of the party people as she trudged dripping ashore and felt the concerned hands, the warmth of a terry cloth towel…
But her mind didn’t perceive her fatigue. There a strange buzzing in her head and it took her a moment to realize she wasn’t moving, just treading water again. This won’t do, don’t flake out on me now. She pushed off again with a will and the water seemed less truculent against her, like soothing bath water, and she mistook the growing lassitude for renewed strength, felt her arms rowing effortlessly, pushing her for miles. She thought she recognized the distant tune now and closed her eyes to hear it better. Keep your head up! I am, I am, relax, huh?
She was dreaming she was swimming now, sleek as a tireless muskrat, until she gagged water and the night rushed painfully back. She coughed and rubbed at her eyes and saw through a stinging blur the lights still so far away. This can’t be right. She was free and in only a few more seconds she’d complete the freedom and beat them, beat the bastards for good, and boy would she have tales to tell! But she kept slipping under and thinking again how nice a boat would be, how relaxing...
When she saw one, the gray misted bow of it, she thought she was dreaming again and rubbed hard at her eyes. The boat was still there and magically closer, a figure beyond the gunwales. She could already feel the sucking pull of the water as she was lifted aboard. A brown hand reached down to her. Only she must still be dreaming because it caught at her head, not her shoulder, began pushing instead of lifting…pushing down –that’s the wrong way!--and whoever it was better quit fooling around and joking becau
se she was about to fall asleep again and just about out of air…
* * *
The screen went dark.
Then the credit were rolling upward, an unsteady crawl.
And something was wrong. Something was wrong.
I blinked resentment at the bright room lights coming on and Katie was up and turning off the DVD player. She came back and sat beside me again on the motel rug, our backs supported by the foot of the bed. “Goddamn,” she murmured but it sounded more like a prayer than an epithet.
She just stared at the snowy screen for a few moments. “That was amazing. It was like seeing your film for the first time, Elliot. It was great!”
“That’s nice. But it wasn’t my film.”
She jerked to me. “What? What’s that mean?”
“I didn’t make that movie.”
She studied me a moment, slumped back against the baseboard with a patient smile. “You don’t remember making the movie. It has been a long time, twenty years.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t mine. I don’t remember any of it. Especially not that ending.”
“None of it”
I stared at the snow-static. “No. At least…No.”
She sighed, finally pushed around to sit in front of me, take my hand. “First of all, it’s a goddamned cinematic masterpiece that--if anyone got the chance to see it--might win some major awards, made you the next Orson Wells. More importantly, it’s the film your mother gave me, Elliot, so of course you made it. And thirdly, it is without doubt the most gifted work of foresight I’ve ever seen! And I’ve seen some doozies!”
I stared numbly at her lightly freckled nose. “No. No, it’s some kind of mistake. Someone else made it. That’s not my fi--”
She slapped me.
When she didn’t get the proper response, she leaned forward and kissed me full on the mouth, at first softly, then harder and harder and with her tongue. When my hand began to grope for her breast she snapped back fast so our lips made a sharp, wet sound.
She looked into my dizzy eyes. “That clear your head any, buster?”
I blinked. She looked all out of patience.
“Elliot, you’ve got to come out of it! I know it’s been a long day—a long week—but you need to be on top of this thing with me now. I mean--” she jerked her head at the TV screen “—have you ever seen such beautiful foreknowledge in your life? You are not going to sit there and tell me this whole this is coincidence! Elliot, it’s Amy! You filmed her story! I’ll be damned if I know how, but baby, you did it!”
FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 34