The Walker in Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  "That's it." Mark turned, waving his spatula. "I barely caught Jay; he was ready to take off when I got there, and I had to bribe him before he would let me have the material."

  "What with?" Pat demanded. Even her voice sounded rusty and antique. She cleared her throat. "An invitation to dinner tonight?"

  "I mentioned your name," Mark said innocently. "He really thinks you're a cool lady, Mom."

  An eloquent, ancient Anglo-Saxon four-letter word leaped into Pat's mind. She managed not to say it.

  "I hope you didn't give anything away," Josef said. He seated himself at the table. "You have asked this young man to violate the rules by loaning out such material; you must have given him a pressing reason."

  "I just told him Mom wanted it," Mark said.

  Pat, who was fairly familiar with the moral codes of the younger generation, knew that to Jay and to Mark this was a perfectly adequate reason. They were all so hostile to rules and regulations; they took a perverse delight in breaking the rules, especially for someone they liked.

  She felt no need to explain this to Josef, even if she had been capable of rational conversation. She drank her coffee.

  "We'll have breakfast and then open the carton," Mark went on. He flipped an egg. Grease spattered, followed by a horrible smell of burning oil.

  "Can I help?" Kathy asked.

  "You could set the table," Mark answered, turning. Their eyes met; for a long moment Mark stood still, his spatula poised, dripping grease onto the kitchen floor.

  "The eggs," Pat said.

  "Oh." Mark turned back to his cooking while Kathy set the table. Pat knew Josef was looking at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. She kept her eyes fixed on her coffee cup.

  It wasn't only lack of sleep or the sleeping pill or even her awareness of how she looked that made her silent and sullen. Convinced, and yet unwilling to believe, her mind raged against the events of the previous night.

  The two men had entered swaggering, as they had left; but Josef admitted he needed a drink, and Pat had observed that his hands were not completely steady when he poured it. All the same, he had insisted, he was not completely converted to Mark's theory of a sentient, conscious intelligence as the agent behind the manifestations.

  "But it came and went without completely materializing," Mark had argued. "Damn it-excuse me-Mr. Friedrichs, you must have felt it. I was outside the room, and I felt it. Something came-realized you were not what it was after-and left."

  "It was bad enough, even half formed," Friedrichs muttered.

  "Compared to what Kathy and I encountered, that was nothing," Mark insisted. "We saw it, and felt it. It hit every sense."

  Josef had the last word.

  "If your ideas are correct, Mark, we'll see the proof of them tonight. Your hypothetical entity will come, dismiss you as it dismissed me-or it will have learned, from to-night's experience, that Kathy has left the house, and it will not return."

  Remembering this conversation, Pat felt a surge of panic. Did they really intend to risk Mark tonight, as Josef had risked himself the night before? Both men insisted there had never been any danger; the manifestation had started to fade almost as soon as it began, leaving the victim sickened but unharmed.

  Even if that was true, it was not proof that the thing wouldn't react as violently to Mark as it had to Kathy. Had not Josef said that poltergeists were activated by youth? Besides-Pat went on with her silent argument-even if Kathy was the sole catalyst, where did that leave them? It left them with the conclusion that Kathy could never again enter her father's house.

  "A nice thing that would be," she said suddenly. The others, who had been tactfully ignoring her bad mood, looked at her in surprise.

  "Ah, she is showing signs of life," Mark said. "Eat your eggs like a good girl. As soon as you finish we'll open the carton."

  "That fails to inspire me," Pat said. "What do you expect to find, Mark? A magic formula for exorcising demons?"

  "Facts," Mark said.

  After all, he was too impatient to wait for her to finish a meal for which she had little appetite. Kathy helped him clear away the dishes. Then he began to unload the box.

  It was a motley and rather unsavory collection that appeared. The books and papers were spotted with damp and smelled sour, as if they had been permeated with mold.

  "Jay figured Miss Betsy must have kept this stuff in the basement," Mark explained as his mother withdrew, her nose wrinkling fastidiously. "Some of it is in bad shape."

  "And of the wrong period," Josef said, examining a long thin volume whose covers were held in place only by tatters of cloth. "This is someone's book of recipes-some handwritten, some cut out of newspapers and magazines. The type is too modern to be nineteenth century."

  Kathy pounced on a packet of letters.

  "These are dated 1934," she said, disappointed.

  "I never promised you guys a rose garden," Mark said. "Did you think we'd find a document entitled 'The Family Ghost and what it wants out of life'?"

  "Empty the carton," Josef suggested. "We'll put the irrelevant materials back into it."

  The kitchen table was heaped with miscellany by the time Mark reached the bottom of the box. The last thing he took out was an elaborately bound book some eighteen inches long and several inches thick. Its padded covers, banded in brass, were of velvet turned green with age.

  "Here we go," Mark said, his face brightening. "This must be the family photograph album."

  The others discarded the unproductive documents they were investigating. By returning most of these to the car-ton they cleared enough space for the album, and Mark opened it to the first page.

  It was like meeting, if not an old friend, at the least a familiar acquaintance. They had seen a reproduction of John Bates's photograph in the Morton genealogy; here was the original, and its impact was just as strong on the second viewing-even stronger, perhaps, because the reproduction had been slightly blurred. John Bates's dark eyes looked straight out at the viewer, as if demanding an answer to some vital, if unexpressed, question.

  Mark turned the page. Again familiar faces-those of Louisa and Lavinia, nee Peters, caught for posterity, so long as paper and chemicals would survive. The stilted, simpering smiles seemed unbearably poignant to Pat. Could they have manufactured even a pretense at happiness if they had known what the next few years would bring?

  "Mr. Morton must have had this album," she said.

  "Or copies of the same photos," Mark said. "Louisa was his grandmother, and Mr. Bates was his grandfather. He didn't go farther back with the Bateses; I guess they weren't distinguished enough. No Revolutionary War heroes, or anything."

  They were clustered close around Mark, who had taken upon himself the position of master of ceremonies and official turner of pages. Kathy, too polite to elbow her elders aside, stood on tiptoe to see over Mark's shoulder. Mark lifted his arm and pulled her close to the table, so that she was in front of him instead of behind him. His arm remained draped casually around her shoulders. Pat glanced at Josef. His lips had tightened, but Mark's gesture had been made so smoothly and so naturally that he could hardly complain without sounding foolish.

  Mark turned the page.

  There were two photographs, one facing the other. The first was that of a young man standing straight and proud in the dark of a Union uniform, his face stiff under the unbecoming short-brimmed forage cap. But the audience paid that photograph little heed. Three pairs of eyes focused, aghast and unbelieving, on the picture on the opposite page.

  The girl wore her prettiest party dress, dotted with tiny flowers, ruffles framing her white shoulders, billowing skirts reducing her waist to ridiculous proportions. Ringlets tied with ribbon framed a smiling girlish face… Kathy's face.

  Pat's eyes moved from the yellowing photograph to the living features of the girl who stood sheltered by Mark's arm.

  Kathy had heard the gasps of surprise, but she alone, of them all, seemed unaware of what she saw. Natu
rally, Pat thought, her mind reeling; people don't really know how they look to others, they see only a mirror image, reversed…

  Kathy let out a yelp of pain. Mark's fingers, which had been resting lightly on her arm, crooked like claws.

  "What's the matter?" she demanded shrilly. Her eyes moved from Pat to her father.

  "They aren't the same," Pat said. Her own voice sounded strange in her ears.

  It was true, though; the pictured face was not identical with Kathy's. It was plumper, fuller of cheek. Kathy's exquisite coloring was not reproduced by the brownish tints of the old daguerreotype. Indeed, as Pat continued to stare, she found less and less to marvel at. The face in the photograph was that of a girl about Kathy's age, her inexperienced charm the same; the clustered curls were obviously blond. But the resemblance ended there.

  Mark's taut hand relaxed its hold, but he was still in-capable of speech, an almost unheard-of situation.

  "Who is she?" Pat asked. "The pictures aren't labeled. I don't know why people assume their descendants will know Great-Aunt Mabel and Cousin George…"

  "That's not Cousin George," Mark said. "That's Susan Bates. Don't deny it, Mom; who else could it be? The costume is right for the period, the age is right… And that must be her brother Edward, opposite. He was a Union officer, we know that."

  Now Pat was able to wrench her eyes away from Susan (Mark was right, it had to be Susan) to look at her brother. The cool, direct dark gaze was his father's, but the resemblance between Edward and his sister was just as plain.

  "He's so proud of that uniform," Kathy murmured. "You can see it in his face. Actually, he's kind of cute."

  Pat realized that the girl was still unaware of the resemblance that had struck the others. Looking up, she saw that Mark and Josef were both staring at her, radiating the same silent, imperative message. As if I would tell the child, she thought indignantly. The whole thing is moonshine anyway; pure imagination and nerves.

  "They were a handsome family," she said, in response to Kathy's comment.

  "The men were," Kathy said. "I don't know; I think Susan is stupid-looking."

  "Oh, yeah?" Mark had recovered himself. "I think she's foxy. Cute figure."

  "How can you tell?" Kathy demanded. "All those skirts…"

  Mark put on a convincing leer.

  "What shows is very nice, very nice indeed. Girls in those days used to brag about having waists so small a man could span it with his two hands. I'll bet yours isn't-"

  Kathy giggled and wriggled as he put his hands around her waist. With only a little squeezing, his fingers met. The gesture, meant-in part, at least-as an attempt to amuse and distract, was not such a bright idea. It only reinforced an identity the others were struggling to deny.

  "Go on, Mark," Josef snapped. "Turn the page."

  Considerably subdued, Mark obeyed.

  The next photo was a family group. The father stood, stern in muttonchop whiskers, his hand placed in a proprietary grasp on his wife's shoulder. She was seated- probably, Pat thought, because she was holding a baby. Otherwise she would have stood behind her seated lord and master. Five other children clustered around the mother's skirts. The youngest was a toddler. Held erect by his brother's ruthless grip on his collar, he looked as if he were choking.

  "Good heavens," Pat said, half amused, half horrified. "Look at that lot! Six… Considering the infant mortality rate, even among the well-to-do, she must have had several other pregnancies. No wonder the poor woman looks exhausted. I wonder who she is."

  "Don't you know?" Mark said. "Look at her again."

  Perhaps she caught the truth from Mark's mind. She was almost ready to admit the feasibility of such a relatively sane idea as thought transference. Or perhaps it was some other sense that forced the knowledge into her mind.

  "It can't be," she exclaimed.

  "The man is Henry Morton," Mark said inexorably. "His picture is in the Morton genealogy, that's how I know. He was Susan's husband."

  And the woman was Susan. There was no doubt about it when one looked closely. And yet it was no wonder Pat hadn't recognized her. Kathy had said Susan was stupid -looking. In truth the young girl's face had lacked character; it was unformed, as young faces often are. But instead of gaining distinction or hardness with maturity, Susan's face had lost what little identity it had ever possessed. The very outlines were curiously blurred.

  "No," Kathy said. "Oh, no, Mark. She's… old."

  The word was an epithet, a condemnation. Pat shivered.

  "Not old," Josef said. "Beaten. That is the face of a woman who has given up hope. How old was she when this photograph was taken?"

  "She died at the age of thirty," Mark said.

  "Six children," Pat muttered. "Depending on when she married… A baby every eighteen months?"

  "She died in childbirth," Mark said. "With number nine. Two had died in infancy. That's Henry, Junior, the man who wrote the genealogy."

  His finger jabbed at the page, indicating the smug-looking lad in the sailor suit who had a stranglehold on his little brother.

  The rest of the photographs were anticlimactic. There were no more pictures of Susan, although her children appeared now and then in pictures of family gatherings, as the century wound down toward 1900. By 1890 the stripling Lieutenant Edward Bates had become a portly patriarch, beaming paternally at his increasing progeny and their offspring. Not only had he survived the war, but he had prospered, if prosperity was measurable in inches of girth and increasing children. Pat felt some sympathy for Kathy's obvious disappointment and disgust; no doubt it was distressing to see slim youth buried in fat and complacency. But she had no difficulty in recognizing Edward Bates. His eyebrows whitened and thickened as time went on, but the eyes below them were his father's eyes-steady, dark, demanding, belying the easy geniality of his plump cheeks.

  As Mark turned pages the costumes changed, from the hoop skirts and tight dark suits of the midnineteenth century, through bustles and frock coats, into the middy blouses and straw hats of the turn of the century. The only constant face was that of Edward Bates, who occupied the honored center of every family grouping. Pat found herself searching for Susan's features. Often resemblances reappeared in new generations. But the Bateses were all dark, like their father and the rather plain, sallow girl Edward had married.

  "That's it," Mark said, closing the album.

  "What a disappointment," Kathy said. "I hate seeing people get old. I mean, when it's a real person it happens gradually, so you get used to it."

  The others eyed one another, for once in complete, if silent, accord. All were aching to comment on the resemblance, and what it implied; all were equally reluctant to mention it to Kathy.

  "I'm going to get dressed," Pat said, rising. "I hope somebody is going to volunteer to do the dishes."

  "I will," Kathy said. "Mark did the cooking, it's the least I can do."

  She obviously expected that Mark would offer to help her. Instead he mumbled, "Be back in a minute, Kath. I've got to-got to-er-"

  Josef followed Pat and Mark upstairs, into her room. He closed the door after them.

  "There's your connection," Mark burst out, before either of the others could speak. "Susan. You saw-"

  "A pretty blond young girl," Josef interrupted. "Not really like Kathy at all."

  "It's not so much a physical resemblance, it's-uh- psychic," Mark argued. "You both saw it too. Don't tell me you didn't."

  "Damn it, you're jumping to conclusions again!" Josef's fists clenched. "Stop trying to push ideas into my mind."

  "I don't have to push hard, do I?"

  "All right, Mark," Pat said. "You've made a point; don't belabor it. Now will you two get out of here so I can get dressed?"

  They left, eyeing one another like two strange dogs. Pat shook her head. The antagonism between them was growing; sooner or later it might erupt into open violence. Mark must realize that any such action would end his hopes of friendship with the Friedrichs; so f
ar he had done well, but he was young, and he had his father's quick temper…

  Pat had planned to take a nice long hot bath. Instead she showered quickly and threw on the first clothes that came to hand-an old brown cotton skirt and matching print blouse. Somehow, against her conscious will, Mark had made a convert of her. The evidence was accumulating, slowly, inconclusively; and yet each new detail fit uncannily with the theory Mark had formulated at the very beginning. Knowing her son as she did, Pat would not have been willing to swear that Mark had told them everything he knew. He must have evidence beyond what he had shared with them, otherwise how could he have gotten the idea in the first place? At the start there had been nothing to indicate what Mark obviously believed: that Kathy was the object of a conscious attack, based on some spiritual identity between her and the long-dead Susan Bates.

  Pat paused in the act of putting on makeup. Her face stared back at her from the mirror, her hazel eyes wide and shadowed with incredulity, her lips twisted in a wry grimace. Her hair needed cutting-or styling-or something; the dark locks had lost their usual luster, and surely she had more gray hairs than she had had a week ago.

  Pat turned from the mirror. She didn't like what she had seen. The face of a blithering idiot, she told herself savagely.

  When she started downstairs she heard the voices, raised in angry comment and counterretort. With a sigh she quickened her steps. How long she could keep those two from each other's throats was anybody's guess.

  "What's the problem now?" she demanded, entering the kitchen.

  Josef turned toward her, his face flushed.

  "Your insane son wants to tear my house apart. I told him I won't have Kathy there-."

  "It's perfectly safe in the daytime," Mark said.

  "How the hell do you know that?"

  "One a.m., on the dot, three nights running… Don't you see that points to a specific event?"

  This was a new thought to Pat and, obviously, to Josef also. They considered the suggestion for a moment and Mark took advantage of their silence to make another point.

  "See, Mom, it occurred to me that maybe Kathy isn't the only catalyst. Maybe it's the room itself. I'd like to know who slept in that bedroom in 1860."