Rebel Spirits (5 page)

EARLY THE MORNING
of June 30, I open the drapes to dispel last night’s gloom. When I glance down at the lawn, parked right in front of the house is Jocelyn’s fire-engine red pickup. Could it be?

I nearly leap all the way down the stairs to find her asleep in one of the porch rockers, with her feet up on the railing.

“Jocelyn! What’re you doing here? You’re supposed to be up in the Poconos with the horsey girls.”

Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, she says, “I told them I
needed a day off ’cause my mom was getting married. They totally believed me. I left at midnight. Only took me four hours, and I have to be back by five o’clock today.” She unravels her slumped body, and we throw our arms around each other. My ring gets tangled in her long, dark braids.

“Okay,” she says, pulling back. “Where
is
your ghost?”

I glance around to make sure no one’s heard her. Then I whisper, “It’s not like I can just snap my fingers and Nathaniel appears like a genie.”

She’s thoughtful a moment, then, “He isn’t
really
here anyway, is he? I mean, physically?”

Is he? How to answer? “I was able to touch him …” I say, and I feel myself blushing.

“Lorelei Cordelia,” Jocelyn whispers, widening her eyes. “Are you falling for a ghost?”

“What? No. I don’t know!” I snap. I realize I haven’t thought about Danny Bartoli in days. “Besides, what do you know about love?” I challenge.

Jocelyn smiles. “I met someone at camp.”

“You never said!”

“Hunh-uh. I was afraid the whole thing would curdle if I told. Cyberspace is toxic. Anyway, it didn’t curdle. Jude’s still sweet and fresh. Get this: He’s a horse whisperer. Swear to God.”

“That’s wonderful,” I tell her, and I feel a pang of envy. Wouldn’t it be easier if I could fall for a flesh-and-blood boy? If I really am falling for Nathaniel, that is.

“The best news is, he only lives an hour away from us. From me. You live here, I guess.” She looks around at
here
, and I see it through her eyes — a mellow, rambling house cloaked in history and mystery. “Wow, Lori, it’s just like you described. Old and creepy. I like, I like. This would have been a fabulous place to do our séances, yes? I don’t remember why we stopped doing them, do you?”

“Vaguely,” I lie. Some things you don’t tell even your best friend.

I usher Jocelyn in for breakfast, but Hannah has just pulled the muffins out of the oven, so she shoos us away. Gertie and I show Jocelyn the spooky basement, the attic, the shed, the creek, and finally, my tower room. We yammer like magpies, and I tell her everything I know about Nathaniel.

“What’s great about you, Jos, is that you don’t think it’s weird that I’m communicating with a spirit who was killed — murdered — in 1863,” I say as we sit in my room.

“Weird? Far from! It’s totally the coolest thing.”

I don’t feel
quite
that way, but it is exciting. Jocelyn says she’s starving, so we go downstairs for some of Hannah’s cranberry muffins. Mom and Dad come out to say hello to Jocelyn
just as the other guests start to wake up and emerge for breakfast.

Before long, Jocelyn has to sputter back to the Poconos in her leaky-tank pickup. I watch her go from my bedroom window, feeling melancholy. It’s been so good to have her here for a few hours. So normal, if there’s such a thing anymore.

Mom
ding-a-ling
s the parlor bell that calls me downstairs to greet the McLean family, from Cottonwood Falls, Iowa. They’re a mom, a dad, two sons, and a Chihuahua named Brownie. Gertie’s caught a whiff of the dog, and she’s one happy pup. She’s been lonesome, especially for males of the Chihuahua persuasion.

I gallop down the stairs with an armload of monogrammed towels that fly out of my hands when I bump headlong into Bertha.

“You being chased by wolves?” she snaps.

“Why, are they loose in here?”

“Awoooooool,” Evan howls from the computer in the downstairs hall, where he’s been designing a new website for the inn.

I’m gripped by a sudden idea. “Listen, I need to ask you something, Bertha. You can answer, too, Evan.”

“I’m an afterthought,” he pipes up. “Great for the male ego.”

“I’ll answer if it suits me,” Bertha says. Her flowery peasant skirt is cinched at the waist and skims her swollen ankles.

“You two know the ropes around here,” I say, glancing from one to the other. “It has to do with … ghost legend.”

“It’s not legend, missy; it’s money-on-the-nose fact.”

Evan rolls his eyes behind Bertha and hits a few keys dramatically.

“Okay,” I say, not wanting to let on to Bertha that I fully agree with her. “But how can ghosts take on human form?”

“They’re human, same as you and me.”

Evan mouths,
That’s a matter of opinion
.

Can I get through this with a straight face? “I mean, instead of appearing as shimmery, shadowy, see-throughy images or balls of light and energy. What about when they … solidify?”

“Like ice, you mean?” Bertha asks.

“Or real bodies?” Evan pantomimes a He-Man muscle and then a classic wavy female shape, but he drops his arms when Bertha turns toward him.

She scratches her head, loosening her shambles of a bun. “Mostly it’s invisible beings hanging around behind you.” She turns and glares at Evan. “Or a door opening or slamming —
wham!
— when you’re not expecting it. Lord-a-mercy, it scares the living daylights outta you. Sometimes you gotta watch for
dishes and such floating through the air” — Evan tosses a piece of paper like a Frisbee — “unless they’re weighted down good, and even then. Ghosts are powerful things, even if they’re all just puffs of air. But turning solid and all? No, never heard of that, no.”

Is Nathaniel always going to be mostly air and mist, only solid for a few fleeting moments?

“Well, now, hold your horses,” Bertha is saying. “I’m thinking how some tell about spirits that take on animal forms, coyotes and eagles and such. Cats, sometimes.”

Evan says, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

He’s kind of annoying, but also funny. Still, I can’t lose my focus. “But not people?” I press on.

“Missy, you’ve seen too many movies about dead bodies that weren’t dead. Ever see
Cape Fear
, with that Robert De Niro actor fella? He kept not staying dead about a dozen times.”

“Guess I missed that Golden Oldie,” I murmur.

“Too bad. It was a nail-biter.” Bertha smirks; two bottom teeth are missing, one on each side. “Say, you notice that I’m in an awful good mood today?”

I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t stop her.

“Good reason to be grinning ear to ear. Like I told you, Old Dryden will be hiding out in his cave ’til July fourth.” This is the second time she’s told me this. Why?

Evan shuts down the computer. “Gotta pick up my little sister at ballet. Catch you ladies later.”

“Don’t even try,” Bertha mutters, tossing me some cloth napkins to fold for tomorrow’s breakfast.

My napkins are a mess, not perky little dunce caps like Bertha’s, because I’m busy thinking how this quasi relationship I have with a semisolid ghost isn’t quite working for me.

Or is it? Suddenly he’s there, just a shimmery flash of him in the dining room, hunched on the edge of the credenza, and then he’s gone.

“Wait!” I whisper. “Don’t go.”

Bertha gives me a snarly look. “Whaddya want now?”

“No, not you,” I murmur.

“You see anybody else?” She makes a big show of looking all around, under the stack of napkins, down the heat register, inside the silverware drawer.

“No, I don’t see anybody else,” I reply, but I wish I could corral that fleeting spirit and keep Nathaniel close long enough to ask him a few thousand questions. I will in the attic, if he shows and if he stays around long enough.

“See you later, Nathaniel,” I whisper when Bertha retreats to the kitchen. I don’t expect an answer.

“See-throughy images?”
Nathaniel whispers, his tone slightly mocking.

I spin around and see him again, looking as handsome as ever, his dark eyes glinting mischievously. In the afternoon light, his uniform looks bluer than usual.

“You heard the whole conversation?” I snap, even though I’m thrilled to see him. “You’ve been spying on me!”

“Meet you in the attic,” he replies, smiling. “Let’s not wait until after the noon meal.”

“Right now? I’ll dash right upstairs.”

“I’ll get there before you,” he teases.

“Well, yeah, since doors and walls are no obstacle.” I slowly back away, then spin and run as fast as I can up three flights of stairs. Breathless, I push the ceiling door to the attic open, and Nathaniel’s squatting there, ready to pull me up into the attic. He feels very much flesh-and-blood right now, but I gently push him away and lead him to the trunk.

He straddles it with me facing him, my back against a post and my legs crisscrossed.

“I’ll tell you my story,” he says.

I CAME UP
in Punxsutawney,” he begins.

“Punxsutawney!” I cut in, grinning. “You know what that city’s famous for?”

“Coal mining, I would venture, and sand flies,” Nathaniel responds.

“No! Punxsutawney Phil. Groundhog Day.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“February second. The whole country waits for the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, to poke his head out of the ground. If he sees his shadow, we’re in for six more weeks
of winter.” Which sounds appealing now, because it’s sweltering up in the attic.

Nathaniel raises his eyebrows. “Well, I’ll be. Punxsutawney Phil, eh? And if the famous groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, we’re in for roughly six more weeks of winter?” We both laugh at the absurdity of a rodent predicting the weather. Nathaniel’s laugh is robust, full-bodied, and I’ve always been a sucker for great laughers.

“I suppose Punxsutawney Phil is long after my time, but Punx is where I grew up, in coal country. I was always playing alongside my friend Edison Larch. We weren’t just friends, we were third cousins. Our fathers were partners in the Poseidon Coal Company, and I figured we’d be digging coal together until they planted us in Punxsutawney soil.”

“That’s amazing,” I say truthfully. I have no friends that go back my whole life, not even Jocelyn. Living in one hotel after another doesn’t breed lasting friendships. And then I feel a pang of sadness when I realize that Nathaniel was not laid to rest in his hometown.

A cloud passes over Nathaniel’s face.

“What happened?” I ask.

“It was in eighteen and sixty. I was a young man by then. My father got wind that somebody’d struck oil up in Titusville, northeast of Punx. He sold our house and we were on our way
before I could do a jig. Coal was good money, but people were saying it was just chicken feed compared to oil.”

The words tumble out as though they’ve been banked for more than a century. I’m absorbing the details as fast as possible and somehow we’ve inched closer to each other and he reaches unconsciously for my hand.

“That last day before we moved, Edison asked me, ‘You listening about the war and such?’ Well, you couldn’t miss listening. It was on everybody’s lips. Edison thought those southern states had no right to pull out of the Union, and I told him what they had no right to do is keep slaves. One man owning another man? No, sir. Edison asked me if I was fixing to fight, since I was so worked up over the slavery question. Talk’s one thing; shooting’s another. I told him, not unless the fight comes right to my front door, and it didn’t seem a whit likely it’d come up to Pennsylvania. But it came, didn’t it? I joined up with the 93rd Pennsylvania regiment a couple weeks later.”

His regiment — that gives me more to Google him with later. I have so many questions, including why he’s buried in Evergreen instead of the National Soldier’s Cemetery. But for now I wait and let Nathaniel continue.

“Last thing Edison said to me before my family left for Titusville was, ‘So long, then, Nate. Come back to old Punx
when you go broke. I’ll still be here, if I don’t get shot down in Mississippi or Georgia, one.’”

Nathaniel pauses just long enough for me to slip in a question: “Did you go back to see him again?”

“Did. But the Larches were gone. Things there soured like old milk.”

“What happened to Edison?” I ask, trying to picture this old friend. Was he handsome like Nathaniel? For some reason I imagine him as smaller and slight.

Nathaniel peers over my shoulder, as if down through the tunnel of years. “Just after we moved to Titusville, Edison’s family suffered a horrible tragedy. His father’s custom was to inspect each of the mines every week.”

I know nothing about coal mining, but Nathaniel explains that methane gas and coal dust can ignite, and the poor ventilation hundreds of feet into the Earth’s core combine with the gases to create unspeakable disaster.

“That’s why miners started sending a canary down there, to test the atmosphere, see if it was fit for humans to breathe. Mr. Larch, he was proud that not one trial canary had died in our mines in the past two years. So, that day he took up a lantern and went down into the pitch-black Earth’s belly. He no sooner stepped off the elevator when he heard the roof rumbling. The wooden stakes supporting the roof starting buckling.
The rats scurried for an exit, but there wasn’t one. The roof collapsed, most likely knocking the lantern out of Mr. Larch’s hand, which set off an explosion with the trapped gasses. In my nightmares I see a raging river of fire. Only one man survived to tell the story. Not Edison Larch, Senior.”

“How awful,” I murmur.

Nathaniel rubs his face and stammers out his next words: “After that, my father got to be a mighty rich man. Edison’s widowed mother, though, she was left poor as country peasants. I sent them some money, but Edison mailed it back to me with such a cruel letter. He let me know that he didn’t need my charity, and that, in some strange way, he blamed me — my family — for their misfortune. The two were not connected, but in his mind, they were.”

He sighs. I wonder why he’s telling me all this. Do ghosts carry around guilt forever? If so, I don’t want to die.

Nathaniel breathes heavily, and I sense that it’s hard for him to suck in breath; this air is not his natural medium, especially in this sweltering attic. I wait.

“The Pierces and the Larches, we were linked in so many ways.”

“Your fathers being in business and all,” I say, to grease the flow of words.

He strokes his stubble, a
scritch
that’s punctuated by a tree branch brushing the window. “More than our fathers,” he begins. “More than Edison and me being friends and cousins. You see, I was set to marry his sister, Constance.”

“Marry his
sister
?” I’m surprised to feel a jolt of jealousy. I have no reason to be upset about a girl who is now long dead. But I can’t help it.

“You were engaged?” I demand.

“I was about to give Constance a ring, before I came to Gettysburg.”

I pull my hand out of his, crushed to hear this news. Feebly, I say the only thing that’s safe: “But you and Constance were cousins.”

“Distant. It was common in my day for cousins to marry.”

Then I blurt out what’s
really
on my mind: “Did you love her, Nathaniel?”

“She was a handsome young woman, pleasant, familiar. We grew up together. It was always assumed we’d marry. But love her? No. She wasn’t like you, free and vital.”

I jump slightly at his words, new to my ears. Is he saying he didn’t love her, but he loves
me
? My cheeks are burning. He hardly knows me. And I have no idea how I feel about him, deep down. I keep these thoughts to myself, but then I can’t resist; I
have to ask, trying to sound as calm as possible, “Whatever became of Constance Larch?”

“Word is she married a French blacksmith and moved to Louisiana. I suppose that put her on the opposite side of the War Between the States. We never met again, of course, because I was already dead.”

“You’ve never seen her in the spirit realm?” I wonder if ghosts sort of drift toward each other like lazy clouds. Did Nathaniel float up to Constance, asking her help to solve his murder? I feel that stab of jealousy again.

Nathaniel seems surprised by the question. “Why, no. I’ve never had reason to reach her. She’s gone; that’s all there is to that. And you are here.”

But where is
here
— on the
kalunga
line between the living and the dead? And how do we cross that line?

I take Nathaniel’s hand again, feeling its misleading warmth. We look at each other, and I want to tell him to go on with his story — and I also want to lean in close to him — but then I hear my mother shouting, “Lori!” downstairs and I remember I was supposed to bring her the towels and help with the new guests. Before I can apologize to Nathaniel — or wonder if I can make up an excuse to Mom to stay in the attic — he’s given me a quick smile and disappeared. Gone, again. For now.