by DM Sinclair
She lowered her eyes. “You’re not dead. And I didn’t steal it.” She shoved the Box into the middle of the table. “Let’s try this again.”
Another question nagged at Ryan. “So when does Roger come in?”
She plugged the paddles into the Box and the Box into the wall. “A couple of years after my project folded. He had heard about my study from some of my former backers, and offered to buy everything. He was converting his funeral business into some kind of ‘post-mortal services’ thing, all built around helping ghosts. He thought the Box could be adapted to give ghosts what they needed. And he would hire me to operate it.” She flipped the master power switch on the Box. The warbling tone as it charged sounded even worse than before, thanks to the addition of a high-pitched buzz. “He made the idea sound good. Roger has a way of doing that. And I was broke, and still had a lot of equipment I hadn’t taken a sledgehammer to. So I said yes, as long as he agreed to my ethical standards. We would be messing with people’s lives, and people’s afterlives. That’s a whole lot of ethics to violate. But as long as everything was on the up and up, I was on board.”
“And now what do you think?”
“I’ve had inklings for a while. I know he’s done some involuntary un-hauntings. Detaching ghosts from their haunts without their consent, just to make living homeowners happy. They probably paid him a mint for it. He denies it, of course. And I can’t prove it. So I’ve stayed on, waiting for the proof. But now… now your body is missing. I don’t know what he’s doing with it, but he’s doing something. This is a whole different level. This is not what I signed up for.”
“So what are you going to do?”
She tapped the paddles together and they angrily spat sparks. “What I’d most like to do is burn the place down, which is impractical because of the fire retardant materials used in the last renovation—I checked. So instead, I’m going to figure out what unethical, illegal, immoral, unimaginable B.S. that man is up to, and make sure he hangs for it. Ooh,” she said, closing her eyes. “It felt good imagining that. Adrenaline surge. I can feel my ventral pallidum activating. Subliminal reward system.”
Ryan didn’t know what that was, but he worried that it might be personal so he didn’t ask.
She shook it off and turned her attention back to the Box. “Come close again,” she said, positioning one of the paddles once again next to the snow globe and the other in front of Ryan.
She lowered her foot gently onto the pedal, clamping her eyes shut. Ryan assumed she must know something he didn’t, so he shut his eyes as well.
The pedal clicked.
There was a soft pop.
Ryan didn’t feel anything at all. He opened one eye.
Dense white clouds billowed out of a seam on the back of the Box.
Margie dropped the paddles. “It’s broken,” she said.
Ryan’s heart dropped. “So… this piece of crap is still tearing me apart? That’s it? There’s nothing we can do?”
The smoke detector went off, a shrill wail.
TWENTY-SIX
Margie was into her second episode of a house-hunting reality show. It seemed to have been made before the Blackout because none of the houses were noticeably haunted. Behind her, Ryan paced. The pacing turned eventually into circling. And the circling turned for some reason into hopping. The hopping didn’t help as much, but he didn’t want to go back to pacing. At least he could time the hopping to synchronize with the dull rhythmic thumps from the water heater downstairs. It gave him something to concentrate on.
For a few minutes he tried to imagine not existing. It wasn’t something people had had to worry about for some time, since the Blackout pretty much confirmed that it didn’t happen. Death had all but dropped off the list of the “great unknowns”. And uninterrupted existence, even after death, became more or less a guarantee. It was reassuring. Now Ryan was staring into the face of not existing anymore. And the thought that there might not be a day after this one made him feel helpless. And made him wonder why all he was doing with his last night was pacing and circling and hopping.
But he paced. And he circled. And, to mix it up, he hopped.
“Your anxiety is understandable,” Margie said from the couch. “But there’s nothing we can do right now. We’ll go back to the Clinic first thing in the morning and beat an answer out of Roger. But if you’re going to stay here tonight, you can’t keep moving around like that. It’s distracting.” She was eating something from a bowl in front of the TV. Even while watching TV and eating, she sat like a librarian waiting for a bus. Straight-backed, no hint of a slouch, legs directly out in front of her and folded in a perfect ninety-degree angle over the edge of the couch.
“This is my apartment!” Ryan retorted.
“Still.” She took another spoonful and chewed distractedly.
Ryan could not shake the feeling that he should be doing something. He had mere hours of existence left. The Box didn’t work. They had no idea where his body was. The detective he had hired seemed not to understand anything of what was happening. And why was the yuppie couple even considering that bungalow when it was out of their price range and clearly they would have to put on an addition? “They won’t take number two,” he said, stepping closer to the couch.
“Yes they will,” Margie said, chewing.
“They can’t. It’s too small.”
“They’ll take it.”
Several minutes later, to Ryan’s great surprise, they did. He looked at Margie with newfound respect, but she just went on chewing. A dribble of milk escaped the corner of her bowl and she pushed it back in with one finger before it could fall onto the couch.
“They’re fools,” she said through a mouthful. “They’re going to have to add on an entire half a house or the space will be well short of their minimum. But I’ve watched twenty-six episodes and house number two was chosen in twenty-two of them. So they’re victims of the producers.”
Ryan sat on the end of the couch farthest from her. “There’s probably fifteen ghosts in that house and they have no idea.”
“Won’t they be surprised in a couple of years when the Blackout happens?”
Ryan glanced at her bowl, the contents of which were more colorful than he had expected. “What’s that?”
“Cereal.”
Ryan leaned in closer, almost involuntarily. He had to know. “What kind?”
She pulled the bowl away from him. “Just cereal.”
“What kind?”
She sighed. “Sugar Frootz. Don’t laugh.”
Sugar Frootz, Ryan knew very well, was a cereal that emerged in the mid 80’s, attached to a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon called “Breakfast Team 9”. The cartoon had died, but the cereal lived on. Perhaps because of its name, which cagily combined what kids want in a cereal with what their parents could be conned into believing it contained. But for Ryan, it was that rarest of beasts: a sugar-coated cereal that he didn’t like.
He couldn’t contain his disappointment. “Oh.”
“So?”
“Nothing.”
“You think it’s weird for a grown woman to eat Sugar Frootz?”
“No. It’s just… nothing.”
“Then you think it’s weird to eat Sugar Frootz at night?”
“No. I could just never get into Sugar Frootz, that’s all.”
“Well when did you have it last?”
“I don’t know. Maybe when I was nine.”
She looked as if he had just said that he’d always wanted to visit Earth but didn’t know where to find it. Her voice accelerated to the point where he could barely distinguish one word from the next. She reached out to grab his arm urgently, forgetting that she couldn’t. “Are you kidding? Were they puffs?”
He kind of wished his arm was there for her to grab. “Yeah, little fruit-shaped—”
“You haven’t had Sugar Frootz at all. In 2007 they went back to their original shape, which was little solid diamonds. They were modi
fied to fruit puffs in 1991 and then in 2007 they changed back. What you had was not Sugar Frootz. These are Sugar Frootz. And even now you’re missing out because they don’t have blue or green anymore because of the manufacturer’s inability to find a suitable natural alternative to the artificial coloring used in the blue and green variations. The artificial color had a unique flavor that is sorely lacking from the current blend, but still compared to 1997 Sugar Frootz it’s absolutely night and day. Try them.” She held out the bowl towards him.
Ryan stared at her, stupefied. It took his mind a few seconds to navigate its way carefully through her maze of words. “I would,” he finally said. “I just…” He waved at his transparent form, just in case she had forgotten.
Apparently she had. Again. “Oh right. Sorry.” She gave him a little accusing look and sat back.
What was that look about? “What?” he asked.
She scooped another spoonful. He got the feeling every spoonful she made had exactly the same number of cereal nuggets in it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ryan said.
“No you don’t.”
“You’re thinking I brought this on myself.”
“No I’m not. But you did.”
“Come on, can you honestly tell me that, working there, you never once thought about having the procedure done yourself?”
“Never once.”
Ryan didn’t actually doubt her, but he pressed on anyway. He felt like he wanted to show her that he had faith in his own decision-making. Even though he didn’t. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I like being material.”
“You could like being immaterial more.”
“Which one of us is eating Sugar Frootz?” She scooped the last spoonful and crunched it without looking at him, though he knew she could feel him looking at her.
The show was drawing to a close, with the yuppie couple freshly bungalowed and evidently pleased with their choice, though they were indeed already planning to put on an addition. Margie threw back the rest of the milk from her bowl. “Well,” she said, “I’m off.”
“There’s two more,” Ryan said quickly, before she could stand up all the way.
“Two more what?”
“They show four episodes in a row.” He knew this from commercials but had never considered sitting and watching even one episode, much less four. But tonight, real estate held new appeal. It kept him from thinking what might happen tomorrow. And he was surprised to find how much more interesting it was with Margie there.
She hovered, not quite standing. Considering. “Would you laugh at me if I ate another bowl?”
“I would laugh at you if you ate less than two more.”
“No promises.”
She ate two more bowls and they watched two more episodes, and in both the couples chose house number two. And then they watched the first episode of the show about decorating that came on after.
During the course of the evening they agreed that Mr. T cereal had been just Cap’n Crunch in a T shape, but fundamentally disagreed on the merits of the various marshmallow-centric breakfast alternatives. Lucky Charms was the key point of contention.
When she finally went off to the bedroom to sleep, he realized that he had completely forgotten that he might not exist anymore in a day or two. And that he wished she wouldn’t leave, but he didn’t know why.
He also kind of wanted to try Sugar Frootz now. Kind of really wanted.
TWENTY-SEVEN
They were supposed to meet Lowell at 10:00, but reached Lowell’s office on Mt. Auburn St. more than an hour early. Ryan woke Margie up with shouts shortly after 7 and finally persuaded her to move at nearly 8. By the time the taxi dropped them outside the office it was just before 9, and Ryan already felt like they were late.
Both of them were a little stunned at the building Lowell had somehow managed to get an office in. Based on what he knew of Lowell, Ryan had expected the place to be a water-stained rodent motel above a laundromat or palm reader. Instead, the address was just off Harvard Square, a modern seven-story brick-and-glass affair so squared-off and shiny it might have been made of Lego. The kind of place you’d expect to find a successful lawyer, not a detective—or whatever Lowell was—who seemed to own only one shirt and probably even fewer pairs of underwear.
But there his name was on the directory in the building’s emphatically waxed marble lobby. “Mahaffey, Lowell”. And beneath it, “I find ghosts!” Some of the other residents of the building seemed to have taken the cue from him and added enthusiastic descriptions of their own, like “Web design professionals!” and “We can help!” The accountants who had written “We do accounting” were the least imaginative, and the only ones who didn’t seem to think their service was worthy of an exclamation point.
A couple of dozen badly wounded 17th-century spirits milled in the lobby, perhaps an entire settlement that had died somehow together in some colonial mishap. But when Ryan and Margie found their way off the elevator and into the richly appointed sixth floor corridor where Lowell’s office was, there were only a couple of stray ghosts in the hall. Almost all of them hurried away when they saw living people approaching. Only one stayed put, and he happened to be standing right next to Lowell’s door. But he stood with his face pressed so close to the wall, the tip of his nose might have been embedded in it.
Ryan felt a little awkward not saying anything to the ghost, but thought he’d feel even more awkward talking to his back. So he said nothing and just waved for Margie to knock.
She didn’t have the same reservations Ryan did. “Sir, are you okay?” she asked the ghost’s back.
“Fine, thanks!” the ghost said cheerily. He didn’t turn around to look at them, and his face didn’t pull away from the wall at all.
Ryan motioned to the door again. Margie finally relented and knocked twice, softly. After a silent pause she knocked again, louder. She tried the handle, but it was staunchly locked.
“He’s not back,” Ryan said. His voice was pinched with anxiety and he knew it.
“The Clinic just opened. He’s probably just meeting with Roger now, so of course he’s not back. So we wait,” Margie said. She turned to the ghost next to the door again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Good, thanks! How are you?”
“You do know you’re looking at the wall, right?”
“Sure do!”
Margie shrugged and looked for somewhere to sit, eventually deciding to just sit on the floor with her back against the wall and her legs straight out in front of her.
Ryan paced, and Margie watched him.
“That’s interesting,” she said.
“What?! What’s interesting?!”
“I can’t make out individual hairs on your head anymore, and yet the logo on your T- shirt is still sharp and legible, and the grease stain under that rip is still the exact same shape it’s always been.”
“It’s not grease,” he mumbled. It was butter. He wasn’t sure if that counted as grease.
The shirt, he now decided, was the exact center of a universe designed specifically to make him unhappy. Everything else in existence could boil away to nothingness and the shirt would still be there, floating in a butter-stained firmament.
“Not that one. That one,” she said, pointing.
“Oh. Yeah. That one’s grease.” He folded his arms self-consciously over it.
“Turn around,” she said. “I want to see if I can still read where it says ‘Do whatever floats your boat’.”
He refused to turn around, and stopped pacing so his back would never be to her. If his shirt still had a slogan on the back, he had no desire to show it off. Plus he was pretty sure there was more butter back there. She didn’t push the issue, but she kept looking over at him sideways.
After a lot of pacing, 10:00 came and went with no sign of Lowell. Time was gnawing at Ryan and by now his hands had steamed away down to the wrists and his feet were little more than heels. “I
can’t take this,” he said.
“You’re surprised?” Margie asked. “Do I need to remind you, you found this guy in a dump.”
“Technically, he found me in a dump.” Ryan couldn’t stand still. He approached the ghost standing with his face against the wall. “Excuse me?”
“Hey,” the ghost said into the wall. He didn’t move or even try to turn his head. “Nice day. I’m just guessing about that. I haven’t looked.”
“Do you know Lowell Mahaffey, the guy in this office?”
“Yeah I know him. He goes by me every day. Nice guy. Always says hi.”
“Have you seen him today?”
“I never see him. I’m looking at the wall.”
“I mean, has he gone past you today?”
“Not today. He went in last night pretty late.”
“And when did he leave this morning?”
“He didn’t. Far as I know.”
Ryan thanked the ghost and called back to Margie. “Wait here. I’ve got a detective to fire.” Then he pushed himself through the door, which he sensed was fairly indifferent about the whole “being a door” thing.
Beyond was an impressive space with a reception area, a small kitchen, and a spacious office. It had all the most expensive warm wood finishes that the highest-end offices install to approximate classic luxury. And the floor-to-ceiling windows provided an expansive view over building tops south to the Charles and Harvard Stadium beyond.
It was also, for the most part, empty. There was a leather office chair, and a plastic folding chair facing it across a modern black desk. Ryan thought he could see scuffed outlines and variations in the color of the hardwood floor where other pieces of furniture had once been, but they were not there now. Indeed there was no other furniture at all except in one corner, where sat what appeared disconcertingly to be an exam chair from a dentist’s office.
Lowell was sleeping in it, snoring loudly.
Rage surged through Ryan, so intense that he thought he could see a reddish glow coming off him reflected in the floor wax. He badly wanted to stomp across and shove Lowell violently off the chair. But his stomping attempt produced nothing but silence and the shove just wasn’t going to happen at all. So he yelled, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying. “Lowell!” Though probably the loudest a ghost could possibly manage, the yell produced no response at all from Lowell.