by Noel Hynd
O'Hara felt himself gasp, his heart continuing to kick, and he felt a scream forming in his throat. There was no imagining this.
“You're alive!”
I'm dead.
“You're real!”
I'm a ghost.
“You can't be!”
Want to shoot at me again?
O'Hara, screaming: “You cannot be!”
I am!
“Why?”
I'm innocent, man. I didn't kill no girls.
“Gary.. . !”
There's a lady gonna come see you, Frank. Or maybe you'll find her. Go with your instincts, man. Go with what you know is right.
O'Hara was unable to speak. He was paralyzed into his position against the wall, facing a man whom he knew to be dead.
Facing death itself.
I'm innocent, man! I didn't kill no girls!
O'Hara summoned up every bit of courage that he owned. He leaned forward, then desperately lunged, extending one arm directly at the specter.
O'Hara watched his hand. It entered Gary the way an arm would enter a beam of light. It entered and passed through him. Gary was there. His spirit was there, but only in form.
And O'Hara was aware, as his arm passed through the ghost, that it had entered a field that was cold beyond imagination, a coldness that only could be duplicated by sticking one's arm directly into a frozen lake or a bathtub of ice water. And leaving it there for an hour.
Words caught in O'Hara's throat. A scream did not. He lunged with his left arm, and that limb, too, passed through Gary. Again O'Hara felt that deathly cold.
All this time Gary spoke of a woman who was coming to find O'Hara. All this time Gary's laughter continued.
O'Hara sprang backward against the wall, and now his entire home was filled with Gary's maniacal laughter. Laughter that was soon joined by a cry of terror and horror unlike one ever heard by the living.
O'Hara screamed long and hard, hid his eyes, looked back, and Gary was still there.
Standing now.
Leering.
Defying him.
Glaring downward and terrifying him.
O'Hara slumped into the corner where the wall met the floor. The moment, like the rest of the world, seemed frozen.
O'Hara screamed and screamed and screamed. And the last two visions the detective had, before losing consciousness, was first one of Gary grinning and turning away, this small part of his mission accomplished.
And an illusion quickly followed of a big red crab climbing up O'Hara's feet. And the crab began that long, horrifying march-all claws and pincers-across his legs, across his knees, across his genitals and chest until O'Hara was looking at it eye-to-eye, hard-shelled claw to teeth. There it remained for several minutes, O'Hara screaming the entire time, until the crab, which was about the size of a football, crawled into the drunken man's open, imploring mouth; choked him in a beery, boozy vomit of fear; and-as O'Hara bordered upon losing his mind-brought him into a night where the cold and the blackness were absolutely total.
Chapter Thirteen
“You may be my patient,” Julie Steinberg said the next evening, “but I don't usually make house calls.”
“You don't normally have a patient like me,” O'Hara answered, holding open the front door to his home. “So come in.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He closed the door after Dr. Julie had entered. She stood uneasily in the front hall, surveying everything before her. He took her coat. Somehow O'Hara had limped through a day of work, despite the memory of the previous night.
Shortly after noon of that day, he had phoned her and asked if she could come by that evening.
“Frank,” she had asked, “is this a professional request or a social one?”
“Professional,” he had assured her. “Purely.”
“I don't see people socially whom I see professionally,” she said. “I want you to know that.”
“I guessed that before I called,” he assured her. “And this is sort of an emergency.”
“Why can't you come to my office?”
“I want to tell you what happened. And I want you to have a sense of where it happened.”
“Six o'clock. On my way home,” she said.
“Done.”
The day had moved slowly. No progress on the dual homicides before him. He scheduled an interview with newspaper publisher Wilhelm Negri for the next morning. He spent the afternoon readying himself for that interview, but thinking ahead of his appointment with the psychologist that evening.
He invited her in and sat her in the living room before a fire. He poured her a cup of coffee. Then, with the earnestness of a man mixing confession with controlled hysteria, he ran through the events of the last twenty-four hours.
Julie Steinberg listened patiently, sipping coffee as she absorbed what O'Hara had to say.
She found herself wanting to make notes on paper, and at first made them only mentally. Eventually though, she halted him for a moment and brought a notepad out of her purse. He did not object. Nor did he waver from his account of the previous night.
When he made reference to having seen a ghost in that very room, her eyes found the specific place. Yet the spot seemed so mundane and pedestrian now. Harmless. Empty as a broken promise. But it was clear to her that something, something rather terrifying, had transpired, whether it had a basis in reality or not. The bullet holes in the wall attested to that much.
His recounting of the evening, from the first suspicious creak, to the red crab, to the final unconsciousness, took about twenty minutes. During his explanation he led her upstairs. There she saw where he had fired bullets into the wall and the closet when confronted first by the image of Carl Reissman and then by a companion vision of Gary Ledbetter, both of them returned-maybe-from God knew where.
Dr. Steinberg said nothing, merely listening. Nor did he ask her for comments. Eventually, he led her back to the living room where they sat down again.
Then finally, when he was finished, the house gave a strange creak, as if to add a punctuation mark to the end of his story. The creak sounded much like a distant footfall, which was how his whole tale had started. The detective and the psychologist both lifted their eyes to the spot in the ceiling below the sound. The timing might have amused them, had the previous evening not transpired. Each saw the apprehension in the other's eyes. Then the moment passed.
“You have a wonderful fire burning,” Julie Steinberg said after a moment, a glance to the fireplace. “Fires warm old houses very nicely. And as we both know, the warmth causes the walls and floorboards to expand, causing them to creak.”
He recognized her attempt at reason.
“And yet sometimes recently,” he added, “the creaks come on cold nights when the heat is not a factor. Or when the fire has been on and the temperature has reached an equilibrium. There are still creaks then, just as there were last night, as a prelude to everything else.”
“What are you trying to say?” she asked. “That you believe something supernatural occurred?”
He shrugged. “I invited you here to get a feel of the place,” he said. “I wanted you to have a sense of me, where I live, and what could have happened.”
She set aside her coffee cup.
“Frank,” she said. “I don't believe in ghosts. And you'd be better off if you didn't, either.”
He drew a breath and let it go slowly.
“I'm not saying I do,” he said. “I'd be much better off if I hadn't had the experience of last night, either. But I had it. And it was very real.”
“No,” she said. “It seemed very real. There's a difference. A movie can seem very real and scare you, leading you into its own reality much the same way.”
“You're comparing what I saw to a movie?”
“If you want me to, I will,” she said. “It's not a bad analogy. Voluntary suspension of disbelief. Seduction of the viewer into an imaginary world that creates its own reality. A world into
which the viewer wants to go, I might add.”
“I'm not so sure that I imagined anything,” he said, shaking his head. “Nor did I want to see Gary Ledbetter again. Or Carl Reissman.” Suddenly he was quite adamant. “Sheesh, let the dead stay dead, all right? And yet what I saw looked and acted as if it had come from another . . . another. . . .”
He fumbled for an accurate terminology. “Another world,” he tried. “Another dimension.”
She looked at him very seriously.
“Gary Ledbetter. And your ex-partner, Carl Reissman. They were both here? That's what you believe you saw?”
O'Hara drew a very deep breath. “I know it sounds, what, 'crazy'? Is that the word I should use?”
“That's one term for it,” she said. “‘Dementia' is another. So is 'Falling-down drunk.' Which do you prefer?”
“Are you here to lecture me or help me?” he asked.
“Both if it's necessary,” she said. “It's not enough for you to relate to me what happened. You have to understand it yourself.”
“And if I don't?”
“Then it will happen again. Only worse.”
She set aside her coffee. She walked to the living room and stood two feet away from where a slug from a thirty-eight had formed a crater in the woodwork. She stared at it and turned.
“If I didn't think I'd be courting trouble,” she said, “I'd ask Captain Mallinson to take your weapon away from you.”
“Why? For shooting the wall?”
“For going crazy in here with a gun,” she answered. “You could have killed yourself. Or someone else.”
She glanced through the nearest window, her eyes settling upon the home of the closest neighbor. “What kind of weapon are you using?”
“Standard service piece, old-fashioned variety. Colt thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”
“At what distance does a round remain lethal?”
It was a question from the firing range, one for new recruits, or for old boys such as himself who needed reminding.
“Maybe seven hundred meters,” he answered.
“How far is the nearest house?”
He sighed. “I get your point.”
“Then say it out loud.”
“Less than seven hundred meters.”
“I'm worried about you, Frank,” she said, turning back to him. “I'm worried about you on a professional level, and I'm worried about you on a personal level. Crashing around your own house in a D.T.-stupor is not exactly symptomatic of emotional stability. Nor is it a prescription for a long and happy life.”
She paused and he knew what was coming next. “And, of course, you weren't supposed to drink.”
“I know,” he sighed. “But what about what I saw?”
“What do you think?” she answered. “Do you think the red crab was there?”
“No,” O'Hara answered. “Then why do you think Gary Ledbetter was here? Or Carl Reissman?”
“Because that seemed different,” he said.
“Listen to yourself. 'Seemed' different,” she stressed. “Even you are subconsciously admitting that you know that they couldn't have been here.”
“Yes, sure. But-”
“Frank, examine this,” she said. “Gary Ledbetter. Carl Reissman. What have you told me about both of these men?”
He blanked on the connection. So she led him to it. “Both might be considered major tragedies,” she said. “Would I be correct about that? Traumas. Unresolved emotions on your part: a respected partner who committed suicide; a man whom you arrested who went to the electric chair. Frank, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, so tell me whether or not you agree.”
He answered after a moment. “I agree,” he said.
“Don't you think,” she said, “given too much alcohol, given a suggestive mood, given too much stress, given cause to think about both too much, that you might see things that aren't really there?”
He pondered that one long and hard.
“Might I have?” he answered. “Maybe. Did I? That's another question. So I don't know.”
“Frank,” Dr. Steinberg said, “The dead do not walk among us. We've had this conversation already.”
“Maybe they do sometimes, Doctor,” he answered.
“You are seeing things that cannot be there,” she insisted. “Never in the history of humanity has it ever been proven that someone living interacted with someone dead.”
“And the opposite hasn't been disproved, either,” O'Hara replied. “Inexplicable events happen all the time. Like the ones that have happened to me. It's just that they defy proof of a traditional sort.”
“Then you do think the dead walk among us?” she challenged.
“I used to think they didn't,” he said. “I used to laugh at those silly Indian legends and those optical illusions in the trees. Now? Who knows? I only know what I saw.”
“It's not possible, Frank. Should I have you visit the grave of both Reissman and Ledbetter? Should I have copies of the death certificates obtained to give you a good dose of reality? You have to look at all this in the cold light of day. And you have to understand it for yourself. Just to have me tell you this is ludicrous. It won't work that way.”
He said nothing.
Gently, she moved to a conclusion.
“As long as you entertain thoughts like this, Frank,” she said, “you're flirting with a real emotional disaster. I don't want to see that happen. Do you understand?”
“I understand that,” he said. “I just wish you'd been here to see what I saw.”
“If I had been here,” she said firmly, “I would have taken away the liquor and cut you off from your weapon. Then neither of us would have seen anything. And you wouldn't have bullet holes in your wall, either.”
His expression fell a bit, and he momentarily felt his emotions sag. He wondered why he had even called her to his home since her reaction, that of an enlightened rationalist, a scientist, was so damnably predictable. And what the hell? To make matters worse, she was probably right.
A wave of relaxation crossed the room. “All right,” he said. “More coffee?”
“That would be nice,” she said. “Then I have to leave.”
“Where's your home?” he inquired. “I don't know much about you personally.”
“Dublin,” she said. “About a half hour from here.”
“A bad drive?”
“I could do without the ice. But it hasn't been too bad for the last two days.” She smiled at his expression of concern. “I'll be fine,” she assured him.
“Tell me one other thing,” he said.
She waited.
“Seven years ago you did the State's first psychological profile on Gary Ledbetter. Why didn't you ever tell me?”
He thought he had her off guard. Instead, she was ready for the question. She had eventually expected it.
“Professional ethics,” she said. “If you don't ask, I can't tell. And even then, I shouldn't.”
“Still bound by those same standards? Gary's dead, after all.”
A log shifted in the fireplace. Their eyes went to it, then returned to each other.
She considered her response. “How did you find out?” she asked.
“I read what remains of Gary's file in Central Records. Your interview was one of the things that wasn't removed.”
“I'm surprised,” she said. “They didn't like my conclusions. So they hired someone else right away. Got the conclusions they wanted on the next two tries.”
“I know. I read those, too,” he said. It was his turn to smile. “I'm sure you appreciate the irony. You and I were both reassigned from the same suspect. Leads me to think that they didn't like what I was doing, either.”
She sipped some coffee. “A valid point,” she allowed.
“Or maybe they didn't like what I would eventually have done.”
“And what was that?”
“Continue a fair investigation,” he said. “Instead of just making sure we ob
tained a conviction on the most obvious initial suspect.”
“Another valid point.”
“Did you think Gary was guilty?” he asked.
“Everyone did.”
He paused. “Did you think Gary was gay?”
“My interview was a long time ago. I was young and not as experienced as I am now.”
“Your interview pointed in that direction,” he reminded her.
“It's one of the things I wanted to pursue,” she said. “I asked for more time to evaluate. That's when they cut me off. As soon as I went to work on that angle. Ben Ashton. The Attorney General. He wanted to hear nothing of it.”
“I remember,” he said. He paused. “But you didn't answer my question,” he said. “Did you think Gary was gay?”
She finished her coffee. “It was many years ago. I didn't have the opportunity to pursue that point as well as I should have. And I'd only be guessing now,” she said.
“So guess.”
“My hunch is that, yes, he was.”
The logs shifted again, and for a moment the flame merrily danced on a fresh section of wood.
“Why is it still important?” she asked.
“Same reason it was then,” he said. “If he was gay it pulls the underpinnings away from the State's case. It's hard to theorize that a man was a sex killer of women if he wasn't interested in women sexually.”