Goodlow's Ghosts (9 page)

Guy Squires said, as the door opened, "You don't lock it?"

"I don't need to," the brunette cooed. "No one bothers me. No one's ever bothered me. They don't dare." She gave him another coy look. "Go on in. Please." And she held her arm out to indicate the apartment.

Again, Guy Squires became uneasy. He could see only darkness inside the apartment. There weren't even any grayish lumps where chairs or couches would be. "It's too dark," he said.

"Silly me," said the brunette, reached around him, and flicked on a light switch, bathing the apartment in bright light from an overhead fixture. "Is that better?" she said.

But it wasn't.

The apartment was bare. There were dust-covered floors and tall, grimy windows and hideous velvet wallpaper sporting plump, pink cherubs. But no furniture.

Guy Squires asked, "You live here?" He noticed an odd smell from her. It was subtle and unmistakable—the tangy smell of the earth.

"Not exactly," she answered. "Please. Go in. I'll read to you. I'd love to read to you. I've been reading for a very long time."

He glanced at her. He thought that her looks had changed. Her dark eyes had lost some of their color. And her luxurious shoulder-length hair looked longer, wilder.

"Go on in," she said once more, and she attempted another coy look. But it worked badly. The line of her mouth was too hard and thin, and her eyes were too narrow.

Guy Squires said, "I'm afraid this was a mistake."

"Mistake," echoed the brunette. "Mistake," she said again. "No mistake, Jack." And she put her hand in the small of his back and pushed him into the room.

He stumbled, went face down on the bare floor, turned his head, looked openmouthed at her as she came in through the doorway.

She was holding the bad paperback book in front of her as she glided toward him. Her hair had grown and was the length of her body; it caressed her—it was
alive
. And as she approached, as she held the bad paperback book in front of her like a weapon, she leaned over and he saw that her eyes were blank, that they bore no color at all, and that her mouth was lipless and impossibly wide—it terminated at the sides of her head, like the mouth of a toad.

And she said, as she bent over him and he stared wide-eyed at her, as his full bladder let go because of his fear, "I'm going to read to you. And you're going to listen, dammit!"

~ * ~

Ryerson
Biergarten
could not clearly remember what had sent him screaming from his office on the second floor of his town house. He remembered a face, but indistinctly, as if it were covered by a stocking.

He remembered little else. He remembered nothing of the conversation he had had with the man who owned that face, though he remembered that there
had
been a conversation. Oblique and cryptic.

He knew well enough why he couldn't remember what had happened only moments earlier. He was protecting himself from something fearful and odd and unexplainable. If his clocks suddenly began moving counterclockwise, he would have the same reaction. He would tell himself that his clocks were moving clockwise, although his inner self would know better. His inner self, after all, was much better equipped to handle such things. It was connected to the real, unpredictable, anarchic universe in a way that his outer self wasn't. It was that way with everyone, he knew. He wasn't special.

With the eye of his memory, he sought to peel away the stocking that covered the face. He thought that it was a male face, and that surely it had been hideous; otherwise he wouldn't have run screaming from it.

Creosote stood beside him. He glanced down at the dog but said nothing. The dog's flat, gummy face could have been easier to look at, he thought, than the one behind the stocking.

Creosote whimpered.

Ryerson looked away.

He was in his kitchen. He didn't remember coming here. He didn't even particularly like it here. He knew that people congregated in kitchens because they were places that were often filled with warmth and with friendly smells. But his kitchen was bare and utilitarian, and he didn't eat in it often because there was no one to eat in it with.

He couldn't peel away the stocking that covered the face in his memory. He saw Creosote's face beneath it—round, dark eyes, tiny fangs, and triangular patterns of black and white fur. He grinned.

The face in his memory cleared and grinned back. He gasped. But he did not scream. That, he thought, was a beginning, at least. The next step would be communication.

The prospect made him weak in the knees.

~ * ~

Sam
Goodlow
thought,
I am in another man's chair, in another man's house, and I've just scared the hell out of him
. He wondered how he had done it. He wondered what there could be about him that would make a grown man scream and run away.

And he wondered why he was here, in that man's chair, in that man's house.

Why was he
anywhere
?

He was dead, for God's sake. Wasn't he?

Maybe not.

But of course he was. He remembered the mammoth Lincoln Town Car coming at him, the beefy driver grinning at him, remembered the sky coming down, the road coming up.

Then nothing.

Clear enough. He was dead. (Unless he had survived, somehow.)

And he was sitting in another man's chair, in another man's house.

Why? Because the man knew him? Because he knew the man? Because they were friends?

Who knows?
he wondered.

And answered himself that the man knew, of course.

He rose from the desk chair, crossed the room, and went out into the hallway. "Hello?" he called. "Who's here? Is someone here?"

This was stupid, he thought. The man who owned this house had to be here, unless he'd run screaming out into the street.

A tall mirror stood at the end of the hallway, not far off, and Sam looked at himself in it.

What he saw there made him shudder.

~ * ~

The phone rang, and Ryerson turned his head quickly toward it. The phone was in the foyer, down a short hallway from the kitchen. He thought briefly about ignoring it, but went down the hallway and answered it anyway because he had never been able to ignore a ringing telephone.

Jack Lutz, clearly upset, said, "It's my wife, Mr.
Biergarten
. It's Stevie. She's come back."

Ryerson knew from the man's tone that
She's come back
did not mean what it seemed to mean. "Go on," he said.

"Mr.
Biergarten
, she's here, now. I can
see
her, for God's sake."

"You're at home, Mr. Lutz?"

"She's
looking
at me! But I don't think she can see me. I'm sure she can't see me. I
know
she can't see me!"

"Do you smell anything unusual, Mr. Lutz?"

"For Christ's sake, she's looking right at me and she can't see me—"

"Mr. Lutz, do you
smell
anything unusual?"

"Yes. Salt air. Fish." A pause. "Wet clay."

~ * ~

"Yes, Ms.
Erb
," said the woman who called herself Violet
McCartle
. "I'm fully aware of what dumping my stock portfolio might do to the market, but it is, after all,
my
portfolio, and I can do with it what I wish. And I wish to unload it."

Janice
Erb
sighed and poured herself another cup of coffee.

"You may pour me a cup, too," said the woman who called herself Violet
McCartle
.

Janice looked confusedly at her. "When did you start drinking coffee again?"

A moment's silence. Janice noticed that the woman looked suddenly bewildered. She said, "Didn't you say your doctors recommended against it?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, but, as you can see, Ms.
Erb
, I'm doing much better. Once again, I'm ambulatory. My blood pressure has returned to normal, and so I have resumed some old and very pleasurable habits." She withdrew a pack of cigarettes from her cavernous black leather purse. "Do you mind?" She lit up at once and glanced about for an ashtray. There was none. She flicked her ash on the floor, nodded at the coffeepot and said, "Light, no sugar."

Sam
Goodlow
shuddered at his reflection because he saw it with such numbing clarity that it scared him.

He could not remember seeing his reflection so dearly before, and he stared at it now for a long time without moving and thought,
So this is what other people see then they see me
.

He remembered looking at his reflection before, but it had never been the same as it was now. Prior to this moment, looking at his reflection had been like trying to hear is own voice when he spoke. He had always heard it through the passageways, bone, and muscle of his own head, and it was not what other people heard. Looking at is reflection had been the same sort of thing. He had always seen what he wanted to see, what he had
hoped
to see.
 
He had been kind to himself, for his own sake.

But there he was, now. Big and oafish and vulnerable looking. No macho man. Barely more than an infant in a double-X suit. It was what other people saw, and he had ever known it.

He looked away.

He turned around.

There was a stairway close by and he could hear someone talking from below.

He listened for a while, uncertain that he recognized the voice, and started down the stairway.

~ * ~

"But now she's gone," Jack Lutz said. "I can't see her anymore. She vanished, like that, my God, like that,
pff
, Mr.
Biergarten
..."

"It may not have been her you were seeing," Ryerson said.

"But it was. I saw her. It was Stevie."

Ryerson hesitated. He wasn't sure what he was suggesting. Ideas often came to him that way—not fully formed. Often, they stayed that way. Often, they went nowhere. He said, "I'm coming over there, Mr. Lutz. I'll arrive within the hour. Promise me you won't go near the place where your wife disappeared."

"Of course," Lutz said. "I won't go anywhere near it. I haven't been
able
to go anywhere near it."

"Yes, good," Ryerson said, and hung up.

Moments later, with Creosote in his arms, he was leaving the house.

~ * ~

Sam
Goodlow
stood in front of the door, watched Ryerson go, and became very confused. Man and dog had passed through him as if he were no more substantial than air. Good Lord, he and the man had been
talking
together only minutes earlier, and now the man could walk through him and apparently think nothing of it.

What was the protocol here? Who was supposed to acknowledge whom? Would there be times when he—
Samwould
be unable to see him—Ryerson? Or did it work only one way? Were the living usually unable to see the dead? Did the dead have perfect vision and ultimate wisdom? But clearly they didn't. At least
he
didn't or he wouldn't be asking these questions of himself.

Maybe there were people in the house even now and he couldn't see or hear them. Maybe
they
were looking at him and wondering what sort of creature he was.

The idea made his skin crawl.

And then he was in the third seat of Ryerson's 1948 “Woody" station wagon.

~ * ~

It was the twin of a car that Ryerson had owned two years earlier. He had
totalled
that car and replaced it with this one, because his parents had owned a Woody, and going places in it had been among the happiest and most secure times of his life.

This new Woody was gray, it sported real wood siding, its motor hummed as well as any forty-five-year-old motor could hum, and Ryerson drove the car badly because it was all but impossible for him to ignore the barrage of psychic input that came his way from other drivers.

Creosote sat beside him, buckled into a toddler's seat. It had taken a while for Ryerson to teach the dog to stay put, but he sat well in it, now, and Ryerson thought the dog might even be aware that it -was for his own good.

Ryerson was not aware of his other passenger.

~ * ~

Sam
Goodlow
was aware only that he was in a car on a narrow country road, and that the car was moving much too slowly.

~ * ~

This is what the cop saw: an ancient Ford station wagon in mint condition; a driver and passenger (who was sitting very stiffly in the wagon's third seat); a long line of cars, baring angry drivers, behind the wagon.