by M Dressler
“Such terrible history in this place,” I whisper.
Though the girl with flowered sleeves had not looked with sadness at her schoolmaster. Her eyes had blazed at him. Accusing.
I feel my eyes burn, too.
I know what it means when a man asks whose fists are stronger.
10
What strange colors snow turns to under lamplight. Mealy grays, like unwashed laundry.
It’s now nightfall, and across the square the citizens of White Bar have gathered with Bill at the café to wait for news about Ruth. At the windows, he hurries back and forth. I see him darting between the tables, his face anxious.
I cross to the mayor’s hotel and find Su Kwon sitting behind Martha’s desk under the rose-pink lamps.
“Rose!” She leaps up. “There you are! I’m so glad to see you! We were all getting worried, with it so cold out. Are you all right? I know you saw poor Ruth. Bill said you were there.”
“I didn’t mean to worry anyone.” I haven’t been thinking of them at all, in fact. “How is Ruth?”
“In intensive care. Martha called. I’m holding down the fort till she gets back. I see Harry got you some boots.” She looks down, half distracted. “Come on, you’ll want to take them off and set them by the fire to dry. I brought in more wood. Hauling things at least makes me feel like I’m doing something.” She shakes her head, her long, sweeping hair, clearly upset. “I was in my shop welding all afternoon. I never caught what was going on till I saw the ambulance leave. Ruth isn’t very old. It’s such a shock.” She busily arranges my boots on one side of the hearth. “Martha said to be sure to keep you comfortable. It’s been a hard day for her. Especially since more visitors have shown up.” She points up to the ceiling. “They keep pounding around up there. It’s driving me nuts. I think they’re finally settling down. Did you get something for dinner?”
“I’m fine.”
“What do you have there with you?”
“A book. From Ruth’s.”
“Oh.” She smiles, again distracted. “Hunters of Gold. That’s a good one. I read that one, too, when I first came here. I’m glad you’ve got something to keep you occupied tonight.” She adjusts her colored scarf. “I hate that you’ve just arrived and then this terrible thing happens. I hope at least it shows you how folks respond to a crisis here. We really do watch out for each another. Martha knew right away Ruth was in trouble. I’ve been thinking maybe Ruth’s been overworking herself between the museum and her soap business and the schoolhouse. Oh, come on!” she interrupts herself, raising her eyes to the ceiling again. “Why so much stomping around up there? They must be dumping out their backpacks. They’re through-hikers, doing the Pacific Crest Trail, showed up right when the ambulance did. They’re staying only one night. They said they might be coming down for a nightcap.” Frowning, she throws another log on the fire, then peers through the lace-curtained window. “I came here so fast I didn’t tend to my own fire. Should’ve closed the damper.”
That’s given me the chance I need.
“Su, why don’t you let me take care of the hotel and the guests, and you go back over to your place? I’ve lots of experience tending to people and houses. It’s what I used to do all day long, remember.”
“No. I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she says, certainly.
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because you’re a guest here.”
“Is that all I am?” I say, as though hurt. “Truly? A guest?”
A clever choice. Her sharp face lightens.
“I’ve begun to think you’re much more than that, Rose. Truly.”
“What you need to do,” I say, bustling her forward, “is get back to your shop. I can see you want to.”
“I was working on something,” she admits.
“And you were still thinking about it, looking out the window, weren’t you? It’s something important you were . . . bending . . . wasn’t it?”
If I can just bend her the way I want . . .
“Wow. Rose. You remember me saying that? You’re exactly right. When I got the news about Ruth I was right in the middle of something really, really pulling on me—a new piece—out of the salvage you helped me with today. When I get going on a new idea that way,” she says, her eyes open but not seeing me, “I need to follow it with all my attention. I don’t mean to say I stop caring about anything else, that I’m not thinking about Ruth. I am. It’s hard to explain. Inspiration, insight, it grabs you. Anyway.” Her eyes come back to me. “It’s hard to let go, when it gets a hold of you like that. Thanks for picking up on it. I’m seriously starting to adore you. You sense what’s going on. How do you do that?”
Haunting is listening.
I go to the door and open it for her. “Go on, now, take your coat. All will be well here.”
She takes my cold hands, startling us both, then pulls away. “Okay. But you know where I am if you need anything. And you’ll be okay with the college kids?” She grimaces toward the stairs. “They’re noisy but might be nice enough. I can come back and make breakfast for them in the morning, if Martha isn’t back yet.”
“No need for that.”
“You are gold, Rose. Something really special. You’re going to stay here, with us. I have totally decided it. I want you to stay here. I want to get to know you. There’s something about you, something . . . I don’t care what awful thing it was that brought you here.” She looks into my eyes. “Wait, that didn’t come out right. You know what I mean. Of course I care. I just want you to know I’m glad you’re here. No matter how it happened. See you soon.”
She goes, her colorful clothing flying across the square.
I feel lighter and darker at the same time.
There’s nothing for it, for the moment, but to do as I’ve said I’ll do. Yet it feels like some part of me isn’t in the room, has gone out with—
Not with a friend, surely. Among the living, the dead have no friends.
I turn to the fireplace and poke the unruly logs to give them more air. The bumping overhead has stopped. It’s the padding of footsteps I hear now, coming down the stairs.
A red-cheeked young couple wanders into the parlor. They wear baggy clothes stretched at the arms and knees, and brown stockings on their shoeless feet. They each slide toward the fire and into one of the parlor chairs, the boy hefting his heels onto the stone hearth, the girl crossing her socks underneath her.
“Man,” she sighs. “This is almost too perfect.”
“Delish,” the boy says.
She grins and gives me a little wave. “Hi. I’m Brin. Nice to meet you . . . ?”
“Rose.”
“Nice to meet you, Rose. You don’t look like a Rose. You look more like a . . . Lily.”
The boy rolls his eyes at me. “Brin’s, um, at altitude, if you know what I mean. Hi. I’m Kyle.”
“Hello, Kyle.”
The girl stretches out, reaching her fingers toward the fire. “It just feels so good to sit and be dry.”
“Everything we own is wet,” the boy explains, stretching his toes out, too. “We’ve been doing the PCT. Snow’s coming in harder over the next few days, so we thought we’d better hoof it on down a few feet and consider our options.”
“We were totally crushing it, though, Ky,” the girl yawns.
“Totally, babe.”
“Twenty miles a day. Killin’ it.”
“We got kind of a late start,” the boy says to me, “but we thought we’d knock out as much of the trail as we could before things got too brutal. We’re glad you’re open.” He yawns. “We’ve been out for weeks.”
My old servant’s voice comes out of me. “Do you have everything you need in your rooms?”
“One room.” The girl swoons toward the boy. “We’re engaged, yo!”
She pulls a device out of her pocket and holds it up for me to see. In its glow the two of them pose on a jutting slab of mountain granite, she hoisted in his arms, balanced ove
r nothing but thin air.
That’s just how I looked, before I fell off the edge of a lighthouse. So trusting we are, when we’re young.
“Congratulations,” is all I tell them.
She takes the photo back. “This is sort of our pre-honeymoon in the mountains. We love it here. You from around here, Rose?”
“From the coast,” I answer and wonder how long it will it be before they go back to their room and I can go back to untangling this town. “I’m only helping out here, for a little while.”
“Sweet. So what’s it like here? It’s like a really antique place, right? Gold Rush town, we read. Any gold still here?”
The boy sniffs. “We’d all be better off if no gold had been found anywhere at all.”
The girl makes a face at him. “Ugh. Ky. Please?”
“The whole monetary system is whack. I say we go back to a barter economy. And no hoarding of resources. Equal shares for all!”
I blink, and in my mind’s eye I’m young again, and alive, and the boy I love is dancing with me and whispering much the same thing in my ear: It’s a modern world we live in now, and there’ll be plenty for all. Come with me. Come with me, Emma.
But then I died, and I lost him, and he died far away from me. And if I think on these things too long, I’ll grow hot inside, and grab that iron poker from the grate, and gut someone’s stomach with it.
It’s Brin’s turn to roll her eyes. “Just ignore Ky. He’s an impractical idealist. So, Rose, like, there’s not much on the internet about this place except that it’s one of the Best-Kept Secret Getaways. I read that the Donner Party came through here, or close by, or a Donner ghost, or something, which I think is so totally sad, I mean I think that whole story is so sad, but not ghosts. I don’t think they’re sad.”
“Why not, babe?” The boy strokes her knee.
She strokes him back. “I know it’s not politically correct, but I love the whole idea of staying on as a ghost. I think it would be amazing. I mean, I know it’s not really sustainable, and if you see a ghost, I know, I know it’s illegal not to report it and all that—but still I’d like to go on forever, if it were up to me. Think about everything you’d see. How far you could go.”
“Babe, it’s unnatural,” the boy says. So young. So certain death is far from him. “And seriously, you’d have to watch everyone you love die. Wouldn’t that suck?”
“That can happen even if you’re alive, my dude. Rose, what do you think?”
I like her. She’s the smarter one of the pair, I decide. So I give her a bit of the truth. “I think the dead go on forever, everywhere, whether they’re ghosts or not. Every piece of earth is a grave, isn’t it? One way or another. When you’re living, you walk around, even if you don’t know it, on ground first traveled by the dead.” The graves, the schoolmaster Landon Albert Longhurst wrote in his letter, lined the trail. “Even in places where the ground looks freshly broken, it’s lined with bones. Human and animal both. No matter where you put your feet, no matter how high or low, you’re still walking the trail of death. Always.”
They stare at me. Awkward. Uncomfortable.
“Yeah, um, I guess we’ve never thought of it that way before?” the boy says, and looks at his girl, jerking his chin in a signal for them both to go back up the stairs. “Um, sweetie, I’m feeling pretty tired now. You know, I think we should probably go upstairs and . . . and, um, prepare for the morning.”
“Right.” The girl stands. “Need to get organized for tomorrow. Back to pounding the trail of the dead again,” she jokes.
Foolish girl. She doesn’t see, behind her, roused by her teasing, a hand reaching out from the fire. An unburned sleeve.
“Let’s get you upstairs,” I say, quickly. “I’ll go with you and make sure everything is all ready.”
“No, no.” The boy takes his girl’s hand. “We can manage. Have to get an early start in the morning. Need to get to sleep as soon as we can.”
“I’m going up to make sure everything’s all right,” I insist as the ghostly arm stretches behind them, grasping for them.
Their stockinged feet, unknowing, slide ahead of me, up the stairs.
On the landing, the sconces are glowing red, not pink.
They don’t notice. “Our room’s right here.” The girl unlocks it.
I ask, “Do you have enough blankets?”
“I’m sure we do, thanks.”
“And will you be wanting breakfast in the morning?”
“Thanks, but we’ll be getting going, like, super early, before sunrise, so I don’t think so. Thanks again for the room.” She shuts the door. I hear groaning laughter on the other side.
The red light flickers softly.
I turn toward a crackling sound.
A little girl, with the same arm that stretched out from the fire, is standing on the landing.
She looks sweet. All of eight or nine. Her blond, wan braids rest against her handsewn dress with baize-green sleeves. Not flowered sleeves. A small boy appears beside her, in a short, uneven coat, holding her hand, his skin darker than hers, his black hair crookedly cut.
I recognize them. Two of the ghost children from the schoolhouse.
My stilled heart goes out to them.
“Good evening. I’m Emma. It’s so lovely to see you here.”
Their little bodies waver, translucent, bristling. They’re half angry, exposed. Uncertain.
“What might your names be?” I ask. “I know they say we shouldn’t say our real names out loud. The hunters, they often use them to call us out and finish us. But I like my own name. And we have a right to them.”
The children shake their heads at me.
“There are more of you, yes?”
They say nothing. They back away.
I heard Philip Pratt say, once, something about the ghosts of children. He said those who die so young aren’t yet finished souls, so their actions are harder to predict after death.
“I’m a friend,” I say. “I’m like you. You must feel it.”
They keep watching, cold and glistening.
“Why are you here, little ones?” I ask.
“He’s looking for us,” the girl whispers. “He’ll find us.”
“Who’ll find you?”
“Teacher,” she says simply.
I try the name from the mad letter. “Longhurst. Is that your teacher?”
“Addy!” The boy tugs at her hand, afraid.
“We’re going.” The girl grips him tighter. “Someone else is coming.”
“Wait,” I say, “wait, please. Where can I find you? At the schoolhouse?”
“Not anymore. It’s broken. It’s all broken.”
They brush past me, flying down the stairs, fading. I go after them.
The door of the hotel opens.
Martha has returned. She leans exhausted against her desk.
“Rose,” she says with a weak shake of her head.
I say, calmly, because I must act as though nothing marvelous has happened, “Martha. Are you all right?”
“I’m so glad to be home.” She rubs a hand over her steely brow. “It’s been such a night. With Ruth. She still can’t speak. She can’t tell us what happened. It’s terrible.”
I still have time, then. Time before Ruth says that she saw a ghost. Before the hunters come. But how much time? I worry.
“The doctors can’t even give us a prognosis. We just have to wait.” Martha raises her head. She looks to the staircase. “My other guests?”
“Gone to their beds.”
“What do they want to eat? In the morning?”
“They’re leaving early and don’t want anything, they said.”
“A small blessing. Oh, Rose. Rose, I’m so tired.” She closes her eyes. “So very, very tired of losing people.”
“You must go to sleep, then.” I guide her toward the staircase. Above, on the landing, the light is an innocent pink again. “Put down your worry, for a while.”
“Was Su here?”
“She was, but I sent her away. I know how to manage.”
“You’re too good, Rose.” She shakes her head again. “Aren’t you tired, too? Have you been waiting up for me?”
“I have.” The kindest thing to say.
A flicker of a smile under the steeliness. “I haven’t had anyone wait up for me in a long, long time.”
“I know. Let’s get you to bed now.”
“Things are the way they are,” she sighs. “Whatever happens is going to happen. You make your bed, and you have to lie in it.”
I help her to the landing. Even into her room. Her quarters are neatly made, and so spare they might as well be a monk’s cell. As though Martha Hayley were a guest in her own home.
“Rose, thank you. I can manage now. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Till morning, then.”
No children return to the hallway, although I open the door of my room to shine a light from it, and wait and turn over possibilities and clues, the bits of gold that have fallen into my hand.
Haunting is waiting.
11
In the morning I hear Martha’s voice floating up from the front desk as I walk down the stairs.
“. . . coming along . . . Yes, a really nice girl . . . I wish Ruth could weigh in . . . I’m checking in every hour or so . . . The hospital said they’d call if there was any change . . . Yes, I’ll ask . . . I understand, of course, of course . . . And there’s Su as well, if you think it’s time for her to . . . I agree. We’ll be all right. Yes. As soon as she’s up. All right. Don’t strain yourself. I don’t think we can handle any more upset, right now.”
She sees me and hangs up.
“Rose! Did I disturb you?”
“No, I’ve been awake and reading a book. Are you feeling better this morning?”
She looks well rested around the eyes.
“Much better.” She nods in thanks. “It’s amazing what a few hours of sleep can do, isn’t it? And the hikers left without any trouble. They changed their minds, decided to get off the trail and go home, said they’d pick it up again someday. Probably for the best.” She looks out her window. “Weather’s still holding, but another system is on its way. Heavier snow. I’m going to head back to the hospital ahead of the storm to see if there’s anything I can do for Ruth. I was just telling Mary Berringer . . .”