The Ghosts of Now (13 page)

In my mind I am walking up the front steps toward the draped windows that are like hooded eyes. But the eyes are opening, and there are mouths with lips moving, stretching, twisting, contorting! Screams no one wants to hear! The ghosts of now!

Del grips my shoulders. “Angie? What’s the matter?”

Like an echo I hear the whimpering sounds that have been coming from my mouth.

I lean against Del, shaking, shivering, trying to steady myself. “I’m sorry. Something frightened me.”

He pats my back clumsily. I can hear his heart thumping, and I put one hand against his chest, as though I can soothe the heart back into its normal rhythm. “It’s that Andrews place,” I mumble. “The ghosts—”

I can’t finish the sentence, but it doesn’t matter, because Del twists to look in that direction and says,
“You can hardly see the old house from here. You just let your imagination go crazy.”

“I’m sorry, Del. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I back off and take a couple of deep breaths to steady myself.

“You didn’t scare me. I just didn’t know what was happening to you.”

“Could you drop me off at the hospital? I want to see Jeremy.”

“I’ll come in with you.”

“No. Not yet. I’d rather be alone with Jeremy until I get things sorted out.”

“How will you get home later?”

“Mom might be there at the hospital, or I can call Dad for a ride on his way home from the office.”

He tilts his head, shoving back his hat, and studies me. “You’re sure you’re all right now, Angie?”

I try to smile. “I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he says, takes my hand, and leads me back to his truck.

Del doesn’t ask any more questions, and I’m glad, because I don’t want to tell him the rest—the part about the watch. Maybe because it’s too much of a puzzle, and I can’t figure it out.

The door to Jeremy’s room is closed, and I open it slowly, quietly, disappointed when I poke my head inside and find that Mom isn’t there.

The gray-haired woman in the chair by the bed smiles at me without missing a stitch, her knitting needles tickety-tacking at a great rate.

“How are you, Mrs. Clark?” I ask automatically.

“I’m Mrs. Burrows,” she answers. “Mrs. Clark’s not on duty tonight.”

Someone has taken the second chair away, and Mrs. Burrows is as settled on hers as a fat little robin on her nest. So I put my books on the little table by the wall and stand at the foot of Jeremy’s bed.

“If you want to leave for a while, I’ll stay with him,” I tell Mrs. Burrows.

“That’s sweet of you, dear, but I’d better stay on duty.”

“I can take care of Jeremy.”

“But it’s my job.” She smiles. “There’s really nowhere I’d want to go. I’m settled in and comfortable, thank you all the same.”

I can either leave or try to pretend Mrs. Burrows isn’t there. I choose the latter. It’s important to talk to Jeremy.

“Hi, Jeremy,” I say. “It’s me—Angie.”

Mrs. Burrows’s smile twists into a grimace of sympathy. “Dear, he can’t hear you.”

“He can hear me.”

“But he’s unconscious. It’s as though he’s sleeping. Sleeping people can’t hear what’s said to them.”

“Sometimes they can. There’s such a thing as sleep learning. People play tapes to listen to while they’re asleep.”

The needles never stop. “I hadn’t heard of that, dear.”

“Jeremy,” I say, ignoring her, “I love you.”

Mrs. Burrows sighs. “You’re such a nice little family.
It’s obvious that you and your brother are very close to each other.”

I squeeze my eyelids tightly shut, trying to blot out the burning tears that push against them. A few escape down my cheeks, and I angrily rub them away with the back of one hand.

The door opens and a voice behind me says, “May I come in?”

I turn to see a man with thin white hair, his shoulders rounded. His hand that curls around the door is gnarled with large, blue veins.

“My name is Gerald Clary,” he says. “I don’t want to bother you. I just came by to see how the boy is doing.”

His sudden presence has wiped out my tears. I sniffle away the last of them and nod. “Please come in. I’m Angie Dupree, and this is my brother, Jeremy.”

He nods and bobs, even at Mrs. Burrows, whose name I’ve forgotten. “You’re Mrs. Dupree?” he says.

“No,” she says. “Doris Burrows,” and she gives him her broad smile.

“I’ve called the hospital a number of times, but they don’t want to tell anybody anything; so I thought I’d come by.”

“That’s very nice of you,” I say.

He ducks his chin to peer over the bottom part of his bifocals, examining Jeremy. “That was terrible,” he murmurs. “Just terrible. Is he sedated?”

“I don’t think so,” I answer, as Mrs. Burrows—authority in her voice now—says, “No. He’s still unconscious, but his vital signs are good.”

What does that mean?
I want to shout. But I quietly wait until Mr. Clary asks, “Is the doctor hopeful about the boy?”

“Yes,” I answer. “We just have to wait.”

“My wife stayed with him until the ambulance got there,” he says. Then he adds, “We didn’t know who he was, who else to get in touch with. The ambulance driver said he didn’t have any identification, and he was all alone.”

I turn to stare at him. “You mean you were there when the car hit Jeremy?”

“Not exactly,” he says. “I guess I didn’t explain. My wife and I heard a squeal of brakes. We were still watching TV, and I ran outside, and there he was”—he waves a hand toward Jeremy—“lying there in the street. The car that hit him was nearly a block away, and I couldn’t give the police any information about it at all.”

His face is puckered, and the little grooves around the corners of his mouth turn down in concern. “My wife ran out and put a blanket on the boy,” he says. “And I’m the one who called the ambulance.”

“So you were there just a few minutes after the accident happened.”

Mr. Clary nods. “More like a few seconds. I can still move pretty fast.”

“Was there anyone else on the street?”

“No one,” he says. “What with the street lights and a good-sized moon, I would have seen anyone who was on the block. The only one out there besides my wife and me was whoever was driving that car.”

I thank Mr. Clary for his kindness to Jeremy. My mind is working on two levels at once. I know I’m saying all the right things in response to what Mr. Clary is telling me, but at the same time I’m picking my way through jagged edges of lies that snag my thoughts, holding me back from finding the truth.

Finally he leaves, and I hurry to the man at the admittance desk.

“Could I ask you a question?”

He looks up and smiles. “Hey, sis, I remember you. How’s everything going with your brother?”

“He seems to be the same. Please. I need to find out something.”

“Sure, sis,” he says. “What’s on your mind?”

“Someone called an ambulance for my brother. Would you have a record of that?”

“Not us. The police.”

“Thanks.” I go back to Jeremy’s room and use his phone. Mrs. Burrows watches me closely, but I try to forget she’s there. It doesn’t matter.

It takes a few minutes to find the right person to
speak to when I call the police. The operator who finally talks to me has more questions than I have.

“Yes, we do keep a record of who calls,” she says. “But that’s not exactly public information—unless there’s a good reason. Why do you want to know?”

“I—uh–want to thank whoever called,” I say. Mrs. Burrows looks up quickly. I turn my back on her, so I can’t see her.

“Oh,” the police operator says. “Well, that’s nice, I guess. Just a minute.”

She comes back with the name of Gerald Clary. Even his phone number.

“Was he the only one?”

“That’s the only name we’ve got.”

“If someone else called, too, would you have that name?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, if Mr. Clary had already called, would you just tell the next person ‘never mind’ or something like that and not take his name?”

“We record every call that comes in. It’s on tape as well as written down.” She sounds a little antagonistic.

Something else occurs to me. “What if the call was anonymous?”

“It would still be recorded. I thought you said you wanted to thank the person who called in. Just what are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly. “I just wanted to know who called. Thanks a lot for your help.”

I press down the button on the phone, hold it just a
second, then lift it to get a dial tone. I dial the operator and ask for Dr. Crane’s office.

Someone is in the middle of telling me that Dr. Crane is not in and she’ll take a message when the doctor himself walks into Jeremy’s room.

I simply hang up the phone and turn toward the doctor. “I’m so glad to see you,” I say. “I have an important question to ask you.”

He takes off his glasses and squints at me as though I were a bug. Then he says, “I’ll take a look at my patient first, if you don’t mind.”

Dr. Crane checks Jeremy’s chart, then takes his pulse. He lifts Jeremy’s eyelids and bends nearly into his face as he stares into his eyes with a little light. He keeps doing all the things I guess doctors must do. Finally, he nods to himself, makes a notation on Jeremy’s chart, straightens, and looks at me.

“How is Jeremy?” I ask.

“You’re his sister?”

“Yes. How is he?”

“No changes, to speak of.”

“When will he wake up?”

“That we can’t say.”

He twiddles with the stethoscope that hangs over his dull brown business suit and moves toward the door.

“Wait, Dr. Crane. I need to ask you something important.”

He stops, takes off his glasses, rubs his nose, and puts them on again. “I thought I had answered your question.”

“No. Not this one. I need to know if—well, if Jeremy had been drinking before he was brought to the hospital.”

He frowns. “You think he had been drinking? Your brother is pretty young to be drinking, isn’t he?”

“Jeremy’s friend, Boyd, told me he had been at a party, that he’d been drinking. I don’t think he—that he was right, and I need to be sure. Would you have by any chance checked to see if there was alcohol in his blood?”

“We would have checked, and not just by any chance, young lady. We’re very thorough here, just as we would be if we were in a big city.”

I suppose I can’t blame him for being irritated about Dad bringing in a specialist. Maybe I’d feel the same way if someone thought my work wasn’t good enough. But he shouldn’t take out his grumpiness on me.

“Was there any trace of alcohol?”

“No,” he says. “No trace of alcohol at all.”

“Thank you.”

I’m speaking to his back as he goes through the door. Okay. I’ve found out what I needed to know. Boyd’s story was nothing but lies, and I don’t know why. And I don’t know where to look for the truth. If only Jeremy could tell me.

Mrs. Burrows gives a little sniff. “It’s none of my business, of course,” she says, “but it looks as though you’re deliberately trying to get a very nice boy into trouble.”

“What?”

I blink at her, watching her lips press together and open again before she adds, “It doesn’t really matter who said what or why, does it?”

“I don’t understand this conversation.”

“Probably not.” Her knitting never stops. “But when you say ‘Boyd,’ everyone in town knows you mean the Thacker boy, and what’s the point of suggesting that he tells falsehoods?” Without a pause she says, “He mows my lawn in the summer, y’know. Lovely boy.”

“I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” I tell her. “I’m just trying to find out what happened to my brother.”

She doesn’t answer. I turn and gaze down at Jeremy with the same strong feeling that there are answers I need to find in order to pull him back. And I can’t talk to him. Not with Mrs. Burrows here.

It’s not quite time for Dad to leave his office, but I call him anyway.

Mrs. Burrows makes a little humming noise in her nose and says quietly, as though she’s talking to herself, “They charge fifty cents for each phone call.”

Dad answers, and I tell him where I am and ask if I can get a ride home.

“I’ll come over right away,” he says. “We’re at a standstill here, and I’d like to see Jeremy.” There’s a pause. “I suppose his condition hasn’t changed?”

“No.”

His voice sounds tired as he says, “I’ll be there in a few minutes, Angie.”

He
is
there in just a few minutes, but he doesn’t want
to stay. He sort of pats in the direction of Jeremy’s toes, makes some small talk with Mrs. Burrows, and leads me out of the room.

Dad’s got something on his mind, and I’d feel like an intruder to break in, so for a while we don’t talk. Finally he says, “Angie, there’s something strange going on. Maybe you can tell me why.”

I turn to look at him, and he adds, “This afternoon our land department got word from the bank that they won’t cooperate on some right-of-way leases that up until today looked as though they’d go through with no problems.”

“I don’t know anything about right-of-way leases.”

“No, but you do know that Grandy Hughes is president of the bank.”

“I don’t understand.”

He sighs. “Never mind, Angie. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It couldn’t have anything to do with—”

His voice trails off, and he’s back into his thoughts again. I hate this town. I can’t wait until next year, when I’m back in California.

As we come in through the kitchen we hear voices in the direction of the living room. Someone is babbling on, with a chorus of giggles in the background.

Dad and I look at each other.

“I guess Mom’s got company,” I say.

“That’s good,” he answers, his words rising as though they’re on a musical scale. “I’m glad that she’s got someone with her.”

I follow him into the living room. Mom is there, leaning back against the deep cushions of the sofa. She
has kicked her shoes off, and she waves a glass in our direction. “There’s Greg!” she says to the two women with her. “You know Greg.” She giggles. “And my daughter, Angie, whom youm don’t know.”

They all think that’s terribly funny, and I can see that anything anyone said would be terribly funny. There’s an empty Scotch bottle on the coffee table, along with an almost full one and a shiny aluminum ice bucket that’s sweating and dripping all over the table.