by DM Sinclair
“You need to stay still,” she scolded.
Ryan tried not to think about spiders and let her affix the device to his skull. Its long spider legs clutched almost around to his cheeks. She’s the expert, he thought. And then he wondered how he could possibly know that. She could be making this up as she went along.
“It’s tight,” Ryan said.
“It’s supposed to be.”
“It hurts.”
“That’s because it’s tight.”
He could hear her fiddling with things on the cart. He was afraid to move. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
She sighed. But she stopped what she was doing. He took that as a sign she was listening.
“You’ve done this to a lot of people, right?” he asked. “What do they say?”
“You won’t feel anything other than a soft tingling and a sense of…”
“No,” he interrupted her. “I don’t mean that. I mean what do they usually say about it? Do they freak out after? Or are they, like, happy?”
She wheeled her chair around so he could see her. She was studying his face again, just like she had done when he asked about the procedure days ago. He felt like she was measuring the distance between his eyes, the angle of his eyebrows, the percentage of worry evident in his brow.
“It will be disorienting,” she said. She had softened a bit. She seemed to actually want to comfort him. “You will find yourself without your sensory organs, for example. And weightless. But you will adjust quickly. Your mind is used to accepting sensory input so it will learn quickly how to form the same impressions from the new kinds of inputs it’s receiving.”
She glanced around the room. Ryan felt like she was checking that nobody else was there, but she could just as well have been looking for a pencil.
She leaned in close to him and, to Ryan’s surprise, whispered in his ear.
“Be sure you want this,” she whispered.
Ryan was frozen for a second. He risked a head twist to look at her, wanting to see her expression.
But she wheeled her chair away again and went back to her well-practiced speeches. “Your mind is also used to gravity, solid objects, that sort of thing, and it will adjust to the lack of those quickly as well. Generally it will construct a familiar experience because that’s what it wants.”
He was still thinking about the whispered warning. “What did you just say?” he squeaked.
“Once you get past the first few minutes of disorientation you will be just fine.” She grabbed his head and wrenched it back where it was supposed to be. “Keep your head still,” she said firmly.
Her whispered question circled around in his mind like a disoriented housefly. Did he really want this? He had gone over the logic so many times, done the math from every conceivable angle. And it always gave him the same conclusion. This was the way to optimize the biggest portion of his existence. It made perfect sense. But did he really want it?
She interrupted his line of thinking. “I am going to charge the capacitor now. Everything is going to be fine. We should be ready in a few minutes.”
She emphasized the last sentence so it sounded like a warning. She’s not allowed to talk me out of it, he thought. It’s probably against the rules to tell customers they don’t want the service. But she’s letting me know this is my last chance to make up my mind.
He heard the thump of her flipping the master power switch, and the piercing drone began its steady rise, vibrating the table he was on.
“How is everything going?” Roger said brightly as he ducked into the room, his long legs carrying him like a robotic war machine out of H.G. Wells. “Are we ready?” Ryan caught the exact moment when Roger’s eyes locked onto the T-shirt and a look of disbelief intruded on his usually well-maintained smile. “You know we have a selection of clothing here that you can…”
“Roger, um, sorry,” Ryan interrupted. “Can I have a few minutes?”
“Margie, is everything ready?” Roger said, pointedly ignoring Ryan’s question.
“Almost,” Margie said. “One minute.” He couldn’t see her face, but he thought he caught something in the tone of her voice. Like she was saying to him “you have one minute. Decide now.”
“Roger,” Ryan whimpered, “I need some time. Please.” He just had to think. He was almost certain he’d still go through with it. But he had to think. Just for a minute.
Roger leaned over him and aimed the lighthouse beam of his smile right into Ryan’s eyes. “It’s natural to be nervous. Everyone is nervous at this point. Everyone has second thoughts.”
“Just a minute to think, that’s all.”
“We are on a schedule here, Mr. Matney,” Roger said. “If, however, you would like to reschedule, I’m sure it wouldn’t be more than a few months. Are we ready now, Margie?”
“Roger,” Ryan demanded, “I want to reschedule!” What am I doing? No I don’t! Do I?
“Cold feet, Mr. Matney, that’s all it is. Cold feet. You’re making the right choice.”
Ryan tried to sit up, but was concerned that the metal spider might rip his scalp off if he did it too quickly. He struggled against it, testing how long its wires were.
He felt a soft pressure on his sternum that intensified quickly, pressing him down to the table. Ryan strained to see where it was coming from.
It was Roger, with one arm outstretched, his hand pressing into Ryan’s chest.
“Proceed, Margie,” Roger said firmly.
“No! Margie, no!”
Margie was behind him where he couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the tension in her voice. “Roger,” she said, “He doesn’t want…”
“This happens every time, Mr. Matney,” Roger said coolly. “We see this every day.”
The box made its bright “fully charged” ping, the drone of its capacitor steady now at its highest pitch.
“Go ahead, Margie. Proceed.” Roger’s calm was breaking. It was not a request. It was a command.
But nothing happened. She’s not doing it, Ryan thought, relief and gratitude flooding through him. She’s refusing.
Still keeping his hand on Ryan’s sternum, Roger stepped around the table. His long arm stretched all the way to the box without him having to lift the other off Ryan’s chest.
Ryan heard the wheels on the cart squeak. Roger was pulling it closer to him so he could step on the pedal. He’s going to do it himself.
“That’s alright, Margie,” Roger said. “You may go.”
“Roger, stop!” Margie said.
“Yes!” Ryan whimpered, nodding as wildly as the giant metal spider clutched to his skull would let him. “What she said!”
There was a deep thump.
Ryan had barely a microsecond to register what it meant.
Roger had activated the box.
There was a piercing jet-engine whine as power surged out of the box and into the spider on the back of Ryan’s skull.
Ryan felt the hairs on his head and down both of his arms stand up rigid like cactus spines. A jolt gripped his skull, all the way down his neck and shoulders and into his heart. He wondered if it would stop his heart beating, but his heart kept pounding violently, accelerating.
As his entire body seized, a warmth washed over him. He felt his eyes close.
Electricity was the only sensation he was aware of. He thought he could hear Margie saying something loudly to Roger but he couldn’t tell what it was. Power surged down his spine, inundating every tributary of his nervous system. His toes twitched. His hands balled into fists.
He had a profound sense of vertigo, dizziness, like the table was tumbling out from under him and he was rolling in the air, tumbling infinitely. He didn’t know if he was falling or being lifted. But he was spinning and he couldn’t stop it or get his bearings. He was nothing but electricity and he didn’t know anything but that.
And then, although he was certain he hadn’t been asleep, he woke up.
EIGHT
“Y
ou’re the one who finds missing ghosts, right?”
“That’s what it says on my business card! ‘I find ghosts!’” Lowell Mahaffey answered with a grin that he always assumed came off as winning. He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair so far that his knuckles pressed into the window blinds and wrinkled them out of shape. His chair made a tightly coiled spring noise that threatened to snap any second and topple him out the window into the street six floors below.
The client scanned his desk with a perplexed expression. “You didn’t give me a business card.”
“I don’t actually have any right now. But that’s what it says on them. And there’s an exclamation mark.”
The client flicked her eyes around his office as though wondering if she had somehow overlooked part of it. It was an impressive size—luxuriously spacious, even—but most of the furniture had been removed long ago, so the emptiness of it had a presence, like a five-hundred-square-foot stalker looking over your shoulder. But on the positive side, it was devoid of ghosts, which made it feel nice and private. He had bargained with the ghosts years ago to take off during the day when he was with clients, and they were mostly sticking to their end.
And he still had his desk. The desk made this room an office. The desk gave clients confidence. It said, “Here is a man who needs a surface to write on. Here is a man who has office supplies that need to be in drawers that might even be locked.” Aside from the desk there was only his own leather desk chair, and the plastic folding chair he kept across from him for clients. But the desk, Lowell thought, was undoubtedly the most significant feature of the decor.
“Is that a dentist’s chair?” the client asked, staring.
The desk, Lowell thought, was undoubtedly the most significant feature of the decor—aside from the large, disconnected dentist’s chair balanced on its single metal leg in the corner.
“It is.”
“Why is it here?”
“Because I don’t have room for it in my condo.” That was true, especially given that he didn’t have the condo anymore.
The client shifted in her chair, trying to get comfortable. Lowell felt sorry for her. He knew for certain that it was impossible to be comfortable in that chair. The guy at Staples had practically admitted it.
The client was in her mid 30’s, he guessed, with a professional look. Some kind of junior-level executive, probably. He sized her up, noted her makeup, her nails, her shoes, her cellphone, the way she sat, the way she spoke, the way she kept her hair wound like a cobra sleeping on her head. It all came together in his mind, a swirl of facts unifying into a single, crystalline impression. Human resources, probably tech sector, low six figures. Unhappily married, at least one child. She had breakfast less than an hour ago, bran muffin and coffee.
“May I ask what you do, Mrs. Nichols?”
“It’s Miss. And it’s Nicholl, not Nichols. I’m a graphic designer.”
“What did you have for breakfast?” he pressed, hopefully.
“I don’t eat breakfast. Does that matter?”
“Never mind.” Wrong on all counts. Regardless, she was potentially a paying client and that made her rare and precious, like an endangered bird with a credit card.
Don’t let her go. Impress her.
He leaned across his desk, grateful once again that it was there to be leaned across. Leaning across open space would just have been awkward. “Why don’t you tell me who you’re looking for? Let’s start with that.”
“My father,” she said. “My biological father.” She fished around in her handbag and produced two photocopies. She slid them across the desk to him, and again he thought, if I didn’t have the desk, what would she slide those across?
The pictures were obviously terrible quality even before they were photocopied. These copies showed little more than vaguely human-shaped clumps of photocopier toner. He guessed that each picture had three people in it, but for all he could tell, they could have been three vaguely human-shaped potted ficus trees. “Which one is he?”
“In the middle. Those are the only pictures of him I could find anywhere.”
“What was his name?”
“Leonard Nicholl. Two L’s.”
Lowell nodded, studying the pictures expertly. Or rather, in a manner meant to suggest expertise.
“You’ve got them upside down,” she said.
He decided to just push through that. “How do you know he’s dead?”
“Because I found his obituary. He died of a heart attack in 1993. In his sleep.”
“Did you know him when he was alive?”
“No, I didn’t. They—my biological parents—couldn’t afford to keep me. They gave me up right after I was born.”
Bingo. It would be a bit of a hassle to find those adoption records, but he could do it and that would lead to where her parents lived. Where they would likely still be haunting.
“I tracked down the adoption records and found out their names and where they lived, in Somerville.”
Dammit. She did that already.
“But I looked, and he’s not haunting there. Isn’t it true that ghosts have to haunt where they died? They don’t have a choice, right?”
“That’s exactly right.” It was mostly wrong. But if she knew that, she’d never pay him to do things.
“So if he died at home,” she asked, “why isn’t he in the house?”
This is perfect. She has no idea. Reel her in.
“How much do you know about him?”
“Not very much. I found out he worked for the railroad, in Beacon Park Yard. He was a yard crew foreman.”
Beacon Park Yard. First place to check.
“What about your biological mother?”
“She was at the house, but she drowned in the bathtub in 1996, so she has water in her mouth and can’t speak. It makes it hard for her to tell me anything.”
Lowell leaned back in his chair again. The back of his head pressed into the blinds and he could feel warm, thin patches of sunlight on his scalp. He wondered why, with all this space, he kept his desk so close to the window. “Is there anything else you know? What were his interests? What did he do when he wasn’t working?” Careful, now, don’t give it away.
“Only one thing. When I was at the house, the new owners said they found this.” She dunked into her handbag again and came out with a small trophy, barely eight inches tall, with a three-inch figure of a bowler perched on the base. The tiny plastic man was painted to look like bronze, and frozen forever in mid-throw. Engraved into the base was “1984 Division Champions”. She slid it across the desk to Lowell .
He picked it up and turned it over and over in his hands, pretending to study all of it. But he was only interested in the bottom. There it was: the name of the bowling alley. “Pin Drop Bowlounge”. It even had the address. This would be too easy.
“There were six trophies like that. I guess he was good at it,” the client said. “Oh, and a bowling ball. I didn’t bring that. It’s heavy.”
Lowell nodded sagely and took a deep breath, trying to look like he was carefully considering the evidence and even now devising an investigation plan involving lots of fingerprints, stakeouts, and assistants poring over public records on microfiche. What he was actually thinking about was when he could send her the first invoice.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he finally said, lying to her. “Cases like yours are very difficult. When the ghost isn’t haunting the place where it died, it’s almost impossible to track it down.”
Heartbreak flooded over her face. He almost felt bad. For a second.
But he hurried into his reassuring smile. “But you did the right thing coming to me. Nobody’s better at this than I am.” Happy lies made him feel better.
She looked at him with fresh hope in her eyes. “That’s why I chose you. It said on your website you have a one hundred percent success rate.”
“That was true!”
“Was?”
“Now, I’m not going to say this will be easy. It’s not going to happen overnight. But if you stay committed—and I mean that in the financial sense too—for as many weeks or months as it takes, I promise you, we’ll find him.”
She nodded vigorously. “I’m committed. Just find him!”
He smiled approvingly, as though she had just decided to go to college and make something of herself. “Good. Good. You saw the fees on the web site?”
“Yes.”
He did the smile again. “Good. Good. Well, I have one… two other big cases to clear off my desk first but I’m pretty sure I can start, let’s say, next Monday.”
He caught a flash of disappointment on her face. But he couldn’t have her knowing that he would start, and probably finish, well before lunch.
She leaned forward seriously. “Where will you start?”
“At the house, obviously, since that’s where he died. But if, as you say, he’s not there, it may take a little digging to find out why. There are any number of factors, both natural and supernatural, that can lead to a ghost being displaced from its point of death.”
“And why did you ask about things he liked to do? Is that important?”
Lowell froze. Don’t say anything. Nothing. Don’t speak.
“Mr. Mahaffey? You haven’t said anything for a few seconds.”
He waved as though brushing an irritating thought away. “Oh that was… I was just curious. What kind of guy he was, you know.”
“Is it possible he could be haunting someplace he was interested in? Instead of the house where he died?”
Lowell pretended to carefully consider the possibility. “I doubt it.”
“Does that ever happen? Do ghosts get to haunt places they liked instead of where they died?”
Lowell shrugged dismissively. “It’s very rare.”
“But would it make sense just to look there? Maybe you could find out where this trophy came from!” She reached for the trophy. He slid it backwards away from her.
“That might factor into my investigation, but it will take some time. This is an old trophy. I need to find out where it was made, who it was sold to, that kind of stuff. But don’t worry, I’ve got… connections.” He wondered what kind of connections he could possibly be referring to. Trophy makers? Bowlers? Had anyone ever referred to such people as “connections” before?