by M Dressler
Such elegant speeches you make, Mr. Pratt; a murderer practiced in his murders.
“Mr. Pratt, you are masterful in your explanations,” Mary praises him. “Thank you very much.”
“Thank you, in advance, for your patience as I work to sort all this out.”
“We’re sure you will, to all our advantages. I suppose if we see anything we should let you know right away?”
“Please do, Madame Mayor.”
“You’re good.” John Berringer narrows his eyes. “But we still need to see your credentials.”
“Of course.”
Pratt pulls back his sleeve and shows them the etched metal cuff welded to his arm. His weapon against us, and his badge.
“Well, friends.” Pratt tugs his sleeve down and stands. “If you don’t mind, it’s been a long day, and it would be nice to find my room.”
“Of course, dear!” Mary agrees. “I’m sure we’re all feeling tired by now and ready to be on our way. Seth, I assume you’ll be heading to your mama’s house for the night? Harold will go with you and let you in. He has the key. Since it looks like there’s a little break in the weather before the next dump arrives, John and I will make our way home, too. Martha, you call us in the morning and let us know if anything might be needed. Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pratt, and so glad you’re here.” She holds out her hand.
“The pleasure is all mine. One of the joys of my profession is getting to visit places that are new to me. This is a beautiful old hotel, and I’m sure the town will be quite beautiful when I get to see it in the morning.”
“You tell him all about the hotel and the square as you take Mr. Pratt to his room, Martha.”
“I will. Be careful going back across, you two. Bill, you go with Mary and John. Call me when you get over.”
“Any word from Rose?” Bill asks Martha, eagerly.
“I believe she’s left us. Our last guest of the season.” She turns to Pratt, smiling. “Well, no, looks like you’ll be that!”
“I’m not a guest. An employee,” he reminds them.
“Except it’s hard to think of people like you, who perform such a service, in that way.”
“He didn’t say,” John Berringer mumbles, “who he was an employee for.”
“For the good of the town,” Pratt answers. “But I hope for the greater good, too.”
“Huh. Could swell your head a bit, seeing yourself that way,” the old man humphs.
“Come upstairs, Mr. Pratt,” the mayor leads him on. “I’d be proud, too, if I were as good as you.”
For the second time in my afterlife, I find myself shadowing Pratt as he climbs the stairs of a house, a haunt, that has no wish for him to be there. Martha is telling him about the old saloon, the madams and the miners and their tastes in rose glass, the little speech she gave me two days ago.
“Of course, we’re family-friendly now. White Bar is a simple, serene place, Mr. Pratt. Peaceful. Peace is our byword. Don’t let the noisy weather fool you. Storms can be quite restful.”
“What a pretty second floor this is. And no problems with haunts in this building?”
“None in recent memory.”
“Because of earlier cleanings?” he asks.
“That’s correct.”
“And you do regular checkups.”
“I can’t say that I do. Should I?”
“Depends on how attentive you are to accidents that might not be accidents. Would you say, Mayor Hayley”—he studies the closed doors down the long hall—“that yours is an attentive community?”
“Oh yes. We try to take good care of each other. That’s how I knew something was wrong with Ruth.”
“Is Ruth Huellet a friend of yours?”
“A dear friend. I’ve known her for many years.”
“Has she ever done anything that might be considered inappropriate? Out of line? Say, stolen or misused something from the museum? From the past?”
“Good heavens, no! Ruth is as honest as the day is long.”
“Yet you assume she’s mistaken about any hauntings here.”
“Because she has to be . . .” Martha falters.
“Why?”
“Because there just aren’t any. That we know of.”
“The dead are serene here, too, you’re saying?”
“Strictly speaking, we don’t have any dead here. The cemetery’s at Dutch Gap. The next town over.”
“I see. But the dead aren’t always interested in graves, as I mentioned. A cemetery can be one of the safest places on earth.”
She ignores this and takes out a key.
Pratt points to it. “It’s a room with us they’re most after.”
“Here’s yours.” She fits the key to the lock.
“You said there was another guest?” Pratt watches her.
“She just checked out.”
“When?”
“After the accident. I guess she didn’t like all the upset. Will this be all right for you?” She holds back the door. “Not overly green?”
She’s put him in a room just like mine, only all is curtained and carpeted in a fine emerald.
I flit up to the canopy above the bed, floating on it like a sea.
“This is lovely. Did your last guest know about the possibility of a haunting?”
“She was just passing through, for a few days. Do you see everything you need, Mr. Pratt?”
“I do. And breakfast is at eight, I think you said.”
“If you don’t mind it being a little dark, still. But then I suppose your work is mostly in the dark.”
“Not necessarily. It’s often in the light I make the most progress. Good night, and thank you.”
“Good night.”
I hover over him as he stands at the dresser and makes his final notes of the evening. After a moment, he sits on the bed, wincing—and the smile he’s been wearing falls slack. A tired look comes across his face, settling on his brow as though he’s been carrying a heavy thing on his back but now it’s lurched forward and dumped its weight on his head.
I don’t care. He’s come to do his dirty work, and though it would be a pleasure to stay here, cold and judging him, watching him ache and moan, I’ve left a body on the roof above us, and that’s the flesh I care about, not his.
The snow is whirling as I top the hotel chimney and look down.
There are four children, staring down at the body I’ve left there, all of them pale and softly keening with the wind.
17
Four of them. The children are as clear as crystal behind the screen of the hotel’s false front.
They’re angry, looking down at the abandoned body in front of them. Their anger is why I can see them. They shimmer.
I must let some of my own anger and grief and pain come to me now, too, so that they can see my form as well.
I float down to them, slowly, whispering so they’ll know my voice, letting all the bitterness I’ve been holding back this night flood and color my soul.
“I’m Emma. I died in 1915. I drowned unjustly. I haunted a mansion for more than a hundred years, until a man tried to put me down again. Some of you have met me before. I’m sorry if this sad corpse has . . .” Reminded us.
They don’t move. They stare at death. Three boys and one girl.
One of the boys, the oldest but still young—Anton he must surely be—his jaw hard, keens, “Why is she left alone in the snow?”
I’ve heard it’s the wisest thing to answer children’s questions as truthfully as you can.
“She died, this summer past. It wasn’t her fault. I took her body up to keep her from being shut moldering in the ground. And so that I could get away.”
They look up at me, at my skirt, my red-ribboned hair, my father’s cleft chin, and I see their confusion. Not the face they knew, melded with the body on the roof at their feet. A different one.
They back away. Mistrusting.
“I can show you,” I say.
I
bend down and will myself to join her. The feeling . . . it’s like diving, deep, then rising into a safe harbor.
Merged, I stand.
“You’re magic?” little William asks, less afraid.
“You’re William,” I say. “And you’re Anton. You’re Adelaide, Addy. And you’re Jack,” I say to the redheaded, bruised boy I’m meeting for the first time.
There is one missing. The ghost of the flowered sleeves.
“Ola,” I say. “Where’s Ola?”
“She’s run away,” Anton whispers. “Ever since Ola—our teacher—” He stops himself.
“I know all about Mr. Longhurst. Is he here?”
“He’s gone after her,” the boy says, still whispering. “He’ll find her. He’ll find all of us. Mr. Longhurst keeps us in line.”
“How can I find her first?” And then I think quickly, How can I get them all away, away from Longhurst, before their anger betrays them to Pratt?
Will sobs, “Where is Ola?” and he holds up his ghostly arms to me.
He’s just a quivering, frightened child. I can’t say no to his arms—though I don’t know, and it’s plain to see the others don’t know either, what will happen when our spirits meet.
I lift him.
And I see, feel so much.
Maman. Maman!
I’m bending over my little bed in my small, lean-to room.
Bonjour, mon petit!
She lets me go play. A puddle in the mud of the square. It makes rings like flapjacks when I poke my finger in it.
A man passing and shouting. Horses. Hammering and sawing whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
Kicking my boots under the school desk.
We burned.
Ola says don’t be afraid. This will be our new school now.
Other children come to this school, too. We have to be quiet. Make no noise. Stand beside them.
Hush, be quiet, Teacher says.
Ola isn’t quiet.
I am quiet.
Where is Ola?
Where am I?
Adelaide pulls him from me before I’m able to see more.
“You’re not Ola,” the girl says coldly.
“Where is Ola?” I ask again.
“Teacher will find her.”
“But what did she do?”
“It’s broken,” the blond girl says. “Ola broke it.”
“What did she break?”
“The bargain is broken.”
A sound of slamming comes over the air to us. I lean over the roof’s edge. Pratt is coming out of the hotel, his head down. He limps to his car, fetches something out of it, then turns and drags through the snow again.
I turn away and say with the wind, “Listen, children. That was a ghost hunter down there. He’s dangerous, and no matter what he does, no matter how he tries to hurt or anger you, you mustn’t listen to him. Keep together, now. Keep away from him, go cold, and hide. Hide from everyone, and keep away from the places they might think to look for you. When I find Ola, I’ll bring her to you, we’ll find you, and we’ll all get away. I’ll show you how. I promise. Hide and wait for me. I’ll find you. Ola will find you. Trust me.”
A low hiss from the blond girl as they fade into the snow.
“We don’t trust anyone. We burned.”
18
But how will I keep my promise to these children?
They disappear and all goes blank. The snowstorm comes so thick that when I hold up this body’s hand I can’t see its fingers in front of me.
The few lights on the square are dim sparks. The world careens under a dome of ice.
I don’t know how much coldness even a cold, dead body can manage. I slide down the gutters of the hotel. I tunnel—that’s what it feels like—through the blizzard, across the square, listening for the call of the wind chimes.
There’s only one other here that I believe I might trust for help.
When I reach Su Kwon’s door, I beat on it, again and again, and don’t stop till she’s let me in.
“My God! Rose!”
She pulls me in. She’s wide awake and dressed in tight stockings with a nightshirt worn over them. Her hair is braided.
She pulls me toward the glowing stove. “Where have you been? What are you doing, my God, don’t you know you could die out there?”
She takes my coat and rubs my hands, and can’t know she’ll never warm them. It’s never the living I’ll be able to touch and know, not in the way I touched and knew little William.
There’s nothing I can do about that. But it feels good, somehow, to be set down in a chair and have a heavy blanket wrapped around these shoulders.
“Hot tea. You need hot tea!”
“No. Stay with me.” The fading of the children has left me feeling so alone again. “I’m better now.”
“Then you weren’t out for very long. Where have you been? You left when, when, at the café—did you hear any of it? What went down in there?”
“There are ghosts here. And all the people here are—”
“—holding them hostage. It’s awful. It’s disgusting. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s sick. Keeping them here to . . . you didn’t hear it all, Rose. It’s worse than you know.”
She tells me what she believes I haven’t discovered. That the blackmailed dead are kept caged and afraid here, to make the living feel powerful. That the living are soothing themselves with the dead.
“They said anyone who breaks this bargain—that’s what they call it—will be hunted and hounded. I don’t know exactly what they mean by hounding. I’m worried it means the dead are forced to turn on anyone who speaks out. That to save themselves, the ghosts would have to become . . . horrible.”
It’s true. Sometimes, to survive, you have to become, they make you become, the terrible thing they want you to be.
“And the ghosts are children, and the teacher who murdered them,” she goes on. “Kept in some horrible limbo together, in the schoolhouse. Once a year there’s a ceremony, apparently, when the bargain, the pact between the town and them, is sworn again. If the children agree to go on acting like docile pets, the town shelters them. They, the Berringers, Martha, Bill, all of them, they’re all in on it, the whole town, and here’s the part they didn’t say, but it’s so obvious: to keep the ‘tradition’ going, they rope in likely converts—castaways, outliers, orphans, misfits, like you and me, they think. Only they made a fucking mistake with me. I am no one’s castaway. You?”
I’m Irish born and Irish stubborn. Raised to be staunch in the face of wounds. I am no one’s castaway either.
“Say something, Rose. Let me know you’re okay, what’s happened.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ve been hiding out.”
“Because of what you heard, what you thought they were going to do to Seth? I know. I thought the same thing. But I stopped it. Or at least the worst of it.” She paces between her artworks. “I saw him going into the Huellet House just now. He looked like a prisoner. Harry was with him. My God, even Harry! People that you love, you think you love, and then . . . They were coming from Martha’s. The hunter, he’s over there. You remember what I told you about my Uncle Bao?” She stops. “I will not stand for this. I don’t stand for hunts and cruelty. I have to do something, Rose. I’ve been waiting to see what happens. If they can convince this Pratt guy there’s no haunting, that will call for a certain kind of action. But if they decide to give a ghost up to him—that’s what they’re actually talking about—then a different action has to be taken, and it has to be quick. Are you following? Am I making sense? I know this is a lot to take in.”
I ask, my rage rising, “Which ghost would they hand to the hunter?”
“I don’t know. If need be, they’ll say it’s whichever one Ruth saw. They’re all described in the letter. Do you still have it?”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“They’re looking for you. They’ve basically given me the job of finding you. I told them I was out l
ooking for you, and I was—but not to drag you into this shit. They think they’ve hooked me into it, got me. Right. As if I’m some Asian orphan that needs adopting. Me!” She slams her desk. “While the ghosts, the actual orphans—”
“They won’t get any of them,” I assure her.
“How can you be so certain?”
“I won’t let them.”
“How? Oh, I don’t care, you are a friend sent from heaven.” She squeezes me. “All right. It’s our pact. And listen, I think I might have a plan.”
I now have a plan, too—though it’s one only a ghost can know. “What is your plan?”
“Mind staying hidden a while longer?”
I do, very much, but don’t say so.
“My idea is you stay here, at my place, while I see if I can start to unravel this. I think Martha might be unhappy, Rose. I’ve been watching her pretty close. She seems like she’s mostly following orders. She’s a prisoner in a way, too, ever notice that? Like Ruth. They’re always having to obey the Berringers—Ruth because she’s stuck with that museum and poor and has no place to go where she would be anyone, and Martha because being mayor means something to her. That’s what they do, they find some way to hold onto you. But I think Martha can be won to our side. If Martha can be brought to see how she’s being used by the Berringers, maybe she can get Bill to see it. Bill respects her. And if Bill comes along, maybe he can get more. But first we have to convince Pratt there are no ghosts here—which is, at least, exactly what the Berringers want. Once Pratt is gone, we good guys simply take charge of the Bar. All of us with decent consciences. We find out what the ghosts really want, each one of them, like with Uncle Bao. We listen. And take things from there. And it won’t make a bit of difference to the success of the town. The tourists will still come. They never knew the schoolhouse ghosts were here to begin with, so what’s the worry? And we’ll be truly welcoming. To anyone who wants to come and move here. No more misfits-only policy.”