The Walker in Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  "Tell her I came back. I want her to know. It was hard oh God it was hard, so hard, but I came I want her to know I came I want her I want her I…"

  The last word trailed off in a black scrawl, where Pat had joggled Mark's arm.

  Pat dug her nails into the palms of her hands. The pain helped her control herself.

  "You wouldn't do this for a joke, Mark." She made it a statement, not a question. "You wouldn't do this to me."

  "Bite your tongue," Mark said. He was as white as the sheet of paper, but the insatiable curiosity he had inherited from his father was rearing its head. "Did I really write that?"

  "No," Pat said. "You didn't. It's not your handwriting."

  "Then who…?"

  No one answered. They all knew the truth. They had seen the handwriting before. Spiky, bold, unmistakably distinctive… The handwriting of Peter Turnbull.

  Eight

  I

  Moved by a single impulse, they fled for the house, snatching up their belongings more or less at random. The gracious blue dusk had become an enemy, inhabited by shadows.

  Pat went around the kitchen switching on every light she could find. Mark, who had grabbed the ominous paper, dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and studied the writing, his chin propped on his hands.

  "Amazing," he muttered. "I never knew I had the talent."

  "I could kill you," said his mother in a choked voice. "How you have the nerve to joke about it…"

  "I'm not joking. This is the most fantastic piece of luck! You know what it means."

  "What it probably means," Josef said coldly, "is that your uncontrolled subconscious has expressed itself. You've had this idea in mind all along, haven't you?"

  Mark looked injured.

  "I didn't do it on purpose. That was automatic writ-ing."

  "One of the favorite tricks of the fake mediums," Josef said. "They claim the spirits are directing their muscles."

  "Honest to God, Mr. Friedrichs-"

  "Oh, I'm not accusing you of fraud. In some cases a medium honestly believes he or she has been taken over by some external force. But that force can be the subconscious, just as the spirit guides who speak through the medium can be a secondary personality."

  "What are you talking about?" Pat demanded shrilly. Her nerves had been badly shaken, and she was in no mood for generalizations. "What idea?"

  "I'll state it," Josef said. "Actually, Mark, I'm doing you a favor; it may sound more sensible coming from me.

  "Mark believes that the poltergeist is the conscious intelligence of Peter Turnbull, and that his-er-activities are directed toward and stimulated by the girl who is the spiritual reincarnation of Susan Bates. He thinks Susan and Peter were lovers."

  "I don't see that you made it sound any more sensible," Mark grumbled. "They weren't lovers. Not in the physical sense, anyhow. But… yes, I do think they were in love. I mean, a man doesn't come back from the grave to argue about secession."

  Mark wasn't the only one who had considered the idea. Pat realized that it had been simmering in her own subconscious for some time.

  "But they were first cousins," she said slowly. "Wouldn't that-"

  "Prevent them from marrying? No," Mark said flatly. "Not then. And it would have been marriage that was in question, not casual fooling around; in 1860 a guy didn't dally with a young lady of good family-especially when it was his own family. But can you imagine the parents approving of such a match?"

  "Star-crossed lovers?" Josef shook his head. "Mark, you stole the plot from Romeo and Juliet. It's highly suspect, and so is this presumed message." He picked up the paper and eyed it critically. " Tell her I've come back.' From the dead, one presumes. It would be difficult, I agree. 'I want her, I want her…' Come, now. It was admittedly a melodramatic era, but that's a bit too much."

  "I don't believe it," Kathy said. "I won't believe it. Why would he act so-so violently, if he really loved her?"

  Pat started to speak, and then changed her mind. Kathy was visibly distressed; it would be cruel to frighten her further. But if Mark's theory was correct, there was an explanation for the violence of the manifestations.

  Peter Turnbull, arrogant, spoiled, unaccustomed to deprivation of any kind, had been deprived of the girl he wanted, first by the intolerance of their parents and then by the final frustration. If one granted that some aspect of personality did survive death-and that was becoming harder and harder to deny-then perhaps the boy was still blindly seeking his lost love. It was not necessary to assume that young Turnbull had been malignant and vicious in life. Didn't some spiritualists claim that ghosts were by definition psychotic spirits, lingering on this plane of existence because the shock of violent, untimely death had made them unable to accept their removal from the body? If the spirit of Peter Turnbull was trapped in some such hellish impasse, their problem was insoluble. In the act of seeking Peter would destroy what he sought, and there was no way of giving him what he wanted, or convincing him that it was unattainable.

  Kathy sat hunched over, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold, her eyes staring. Pat started up.

  "It's getting late," she said, with forced cheerfulness. "I could do with a snack and a cup of hot tea. Kathy, how about giving me a hand?"

  "Scotch for me," Josef said.

  Mark said nothing. Like Kathy, he stared into empty space, his lips moving as if he were praying.

  II

  Canned soup and sandwiches were the best Pat could offer, but the food restored their spirits, and, as Josef said, the Scotch didn't hurt. Mark remained abstracted throughout the meal, although he managed to eat twice as much as anyone else.

  When they had finished Kathy collected the dishes as if she had done that job all her life. Josef's eyes followed the slim little figure as it moved back and forth between the table and the sink. His expression was unguarded, and the baffled terror in his dark eyes made Pat ache with sympathy.

  "I made reservations at the motel," he said abruptly. "For all of us."

  Pat half expected that Mark would object. Instead he nodded soberly.

  "I guess we'd better. At least you three-"

  "You, too," Pat said firmly. "You're not staying here alone with vases and mirrors flying around the room."

  "It isn't doing that anymore," Mark said. "The last couple of times there was no poltergeist stuff. Hmmm. That's interesting."

  "Why?" Pat asked.

  "He's got you well trained as a straight man," Josef remarked disagreeably. "You ought to know how he thinks-if the process can be called that. He interprets everything as a sign of a guiding intelligence-an assumption which, like all his other assumptions, he has yet to prove. The idea is that this nasty apparition was awkward and maladroit at first, unaccustomed to its powers. Gradually it is focusing them, concentrating on its real aim, so that it doesn't have to waste energy in random acts of violence."

  Jerry's frown altered his son's face.

  "You wouldn't be able to figure that out if you hadn't reached the same conclusions," Mark said. "Why do you keep fighting it? Hell, I don't like it any better than you do! The trouble is, we're caught in a vicious circle. We don't know enough to take the steps that would enable us to learn more. We ought to be testing the thing, experimenting, finding its limitations. But we can't take the risk."

  "Mark." Josef rose and began to pace back and forth, his hands in his pockets. "I've gone along with your research because the only thing we stand to lose by it is a few days of time. And because-oh, yes, I admit it- because there is a remote chance that we might be able to learn something that would enable us to deal with this- this thing. Any other method is out. It's too dangerous."

  "Why do you say the chance is remote? It seems to me-"

  "Because I too, in my long-distant youth, read ghost stories." Josef leaned against the counter; a faint, reminiscent smile curved his lips. "I'd climb into bed at night with a volume of Poe or Lovecraft and read till my hair stood on end and I was afrai
d to turn out the light. I'm tolerably familiar with the literature, including the so-called 'true' ghost stories. The White Nuns, and the ghostly carriages, the banshees and the headless horsemen… I can't remember a single case in which a ghost was laid by an intrepid investigator who found out what was troubling the troubled spirit. In fiction, yes. Not in fact. Now be honest. You're a screwball, but you have a good mind. Do you know of any such cases?"

  The compliment was not exactly wholehearted, but Mark was rather flattered by it, although he tried to appear blase.

  "Well," he began.

  "I'm not talking about the pop books written by professional ghost hunters," Josef added. "The cases they discuss are so vague, and their evidence is so illogical, that no sane person could take them seriously. I'm talking about ghosts-the kind that walk around old houses politely dematerializing when someone tries to touch them. And that, my boy, is just about all they do. Their activities are singularly aimless. Do you know of any real case like the one you have postulated-a case of a personality returning after death because of some unfinished business or frustrated ambition?"

  "Well…"

  "I don't either," Josef said.

  Mark looked straight at his tormentor.

  "Are you going to write this case up, Mr. Friedrichs? Or talk about it at cocktail parties?"

  Josef's response was wordless. It might best be described as a growl.

  At nine o'clock the others were ready to leave, but Mark had had seconds thoughts.

  "You guys could sit in the car with the engine running, ready for a getaway," he proposed. "I'll wait on the stairs, just to see what happens. If it gets sticky I can run out and-"

  "And lead the thing to the motel," Josef said.

  For once Pat saw her son outmaneuvered. He bit his lip and refrained from further argument.

  Perhaps because he had won that round, Josef was actively cooperative with Mark's next proposal-to set up a tape recorder and camera in his room. The tape recorder was simple enough; Mark's elaborate, expensive hi-fi system included recording equipment that would run for almost four hours. The camera was something else. There was no way of triggering it to go off at one a.m., although Mark proposed several unrealistic and impossible suggestions. The final result looked like a mad inventor's contraption; wires and cords ran all over the room, hooked up to the camera.

  When the final cord across the doorway had been placed, Josef stood back and contemplated the maze with wry amusement.

  "That might work if you were trying to catch a blind burglar," he remarked. "Although I doubt it. Pulling one of those cords will probably just jerk the camera off the tripod."

  Pat glanced over her shoulder. Mark was out of earshot; he had gone down to console Jud and shut him in the kitchen.

  "You helped him set it up," she said.

  "I'll do anything that doesn't involve taking physical risks. Anyway, it kept him busy for an hour; God knows what he would have proposed if I hadn't gone along with this. All right, my dear, let's go."

  Instead of heading for the nearest motel, Josef drove on through town and turned north.

  "Where are we going?" Mark asked.

  " Frederick. I figured we might as well put a little distance between us and our friend."

  Having been concerned with far more vital issues, Pat had not considered the social aspects of their situation. But when the desk clerk addressed her as "Mrs. Fried-richs," a belated realization of what she was doing swept over her. As they walked down the corridor toward their rooms, Josef muttered, "You look like the picture of guilt, my dear. If we hadn't had the kids with us, the clerk would have assumed the worst."

  "Why did you have to give your own name?" Pat hissed.

  "Because I was using a credit card. Relax, will you? I'm already divorced; no one is going to cite you as corespondent." He put his key in the lock and opened the door. "Here we are," he said aloud. "Cozy, isn't it?"

  The room looked like all the motel rooms Pat had ever seen: shabby, characterless and bland. The color scheme was green and yellow. The pictures over the bed were prints of chrysanthemums in green vases.

  Josef crossed the room to a door in the side wall and unlocked it.

  "You and Kathy can share this room," he said to Pat. Then he turned to Mark. "Your room is at the other end of the wing. I couldn't get three rooms adjoining."

  For a moment Mark stared blankly at the key Josef had offered him. His eyes narrowed. Then, with a slight shrug, he took the key, and his mother relaxed. After all, it was the most practical way of arranging matters; Mark and Josef had no desire to share a room. And even Mark could hardly expect the older man to take the room at the end of the hall, away from his daughter.

  "You don't mind if I stick around until one o'clock, do you?" Mark asked politely.

  "Not at all. Make yourself comfortable."

  In addition to the double bed, the room contained the usual furniture: a desk, a chest of drawers, and a table and two chairs. Josef pulled out a chair for Pat. She shook her head.

  "Thanks, but I'd better hang up my dress. I don't want to go to work all crumpled and messy."

  "You aren't going to work tomorrow!" Mark exclaimed.

  "Mark, I have to. I can't go on-"

  "Just one more day, Mom. I told them you had flu and probably wouldn't be in till the middle of the week. Just tomorrow, and then-"

  "And then-what? a miracle?"

  "I've got an idea," Mark said. "If it doesn't work… Please, Mom?"

  "Well… all right. But what-"

  "I think I'll go look for the Coke machine," Mark said, plunging toward the door.

  "Get some ice while you're at it," Josef said.

  "Sure, right. Kath?"

  Kathy followed him.

  Pat closed her mouth on the question she had not had time to ask, and turned to see Josef taking a bottle from his overnight bag.

  Why she should have chosen that particular moment to speak she did not know. In fact, the words that came out of her mouth were words she would normally not have said.

  "Are you going to sit here drinking until one o'clock?"

  With one angry twist of the wrist Josef opened the bottle and splashed a generous amount into his glass.

  "You sound like my ex-wife," he said. "It doesn't become you, my dear."

  "If that's why she left you-"

  "That was one of the reasons. If it's any of your business."

  Then his face twisted, as anger was replaced by horrified concern.

  "My God, Pat, what are we doing? I'm sorry. It is your business, you have every right-"

  He came toward her, his arms outstretched. Pat turned away.

  "No, don't. Not now, not… I don't know what made me say those things."

  She heard his heavy breathing close behind her, but he did not touch her.

  "My ex-wife was a religious fanatic," he said. "A middle-aged Jesus freak. When I married her she was devout, a little straitlaced; I found that charming, can you imagine? I thought marriage would… make her see things differently. But she got worse. She despised all the indulgences of the flesh, including… Kathy was an accident, and was resented as such. Until two years ago my daughter never wore makeup, or cut her hair, or owned a pretty dress. Marion sent her to one of those fundamentalist schools, for girls only. I should have interfered long before I did, but I thought raising a girl was a mother's job. I was a damned fool, and believe me, I paid for it. I can't say Marion drove me to drink. It's always a matter of one's own choice, isn't it? I guess I did it to get back at her. I'm still doing it."

  "You don't have to tell me this," Pat whispered.

  "Yes, I do. It sounds crazy, I know, but I could have admitted that she was promiscuous, or that she had fallen in love with someone else, or even that she found me boring and repulsive. What I couldn't admit was that she was dim-witted enough to leave me for an oily, unctuous evangelist. That's where she is now, in his commune in California, wandering around in a long white ro
be serving saintly Father Emmanuel…"

  "Don't." Impulsively Pat turned, and found herself in his arms. She clung to him, her hands moving over the soft tweed of his jacket, but when he bent his head she turned her face away.

  "The kids will be back any second," she murmured.

  "I guess Mark isn't ready for this development," Josef agreed. His hands slid slowly down her back, as if reluctant to release her. "Are you ready for it, Pat?"

  "No. Not until… We're in an abnormal situation, Josef. I can't trust my feelings."

  "I can trust mine. I love you, Pat, I'll even put up with that outrageous son of yours if you'll have me."

  "Not now," Pat said. She moved away from him and saw, from his expression, that her withdrawal had wounded him. But it was herself she didn't trust; his physical presence had aroused feelings she had not experienced for over a year, and she knew they were clouding her judgment.

  "What would your husband have thought of our ghost?" Josef asked.

  "Jerry?" She considered the question. "He'd have been fascinated-but skeptical. He would have been the first to slap Mark down when his theories got too farfetched."

  She was interrupted by Mark banging on the door. Josef went to answer it. Something of the tension that had filled the room must have remained; Mark looked suspiciously at his mother.

  "What were you talking about?"

  "Your name was mentioned," Josef said. "But only in passing. Strange as it may seem to you, there are other topics worthy of discussion. In God's name what have you got there?" Mark had begun unloading various edibles onto the table.

  "They are fascinated by machines," Pat explained. "Jerry always said Mark would feed a quarter into a slot if he knew it would only give him a punch in the nose."

  She could see that Josef was self-conscious about her references to her husband, and that was something they would have to work out before they could come to any real understanding. Jerry would always be part of her life. She couldn't forget him and she didn't want to. In the last few days she had been able to remember him and talk about him without the gnawing ache of loss, and that was not only a miracle, it was the way things ought to be. Jerry was the last person in the world to expect her to wallow in widowhood. He would rejoice in her new happiness.