The Presence (11 page)

Downstairs I could hear the cheerful voices and Maureen's ready laugh.

The diary.

With one finger, I flipped over a page.

How can I believe what he is saying about himself? That he is immortal? That he has been alive, or dead and alive again, for more than a century? That he is a ghost? But what else can explain all that is mysterious and, yes, frightening about him?

"No," I whispered. "No." I felt so dizzy I had to hold onto the edge of the dresser. With my elbow, I pushed the drawer closed. "Alive, or dead and alive again." A ghost. It couldn't be. This girl, this Lottie was crazy. It was her craziness that was terrifying me, the nonsense she'd written.

But although I was telling myself it was nonsense, I was remembering the way he appeared and disappeared, the way this Noah could talk to those who had "passed over," the way he knew so many secrets.

I went slowly downstairs, holding tight to the banister.

Maureen and Rita and Arthur oohed and aahed over the cards. I told them that yes, I'd seen Sue in person, and yes, she was just as big and ferocious as they imagined. I was having trouble speaking. My mouth felt full of cotton.

"If you smell burning, don't worry," Grandma told me cheerfully. "The first batch of cookies was fine. The second, we can scrape."

She made tea, and I helped her set out her pretty china cups and fill a plate from the first batch, and we sat eating and drinking, talking happy holiday talk. I nodded and smiled and hoped I looked sane, while the lights on Grandma's little tree blinked white and the poinsettias by the window glowed with their red Christmas glow.

"Did you like the flowers I gave you?" he'd asked. Noah! Noah the ghost?

Upstairs, waiting for me, waiting for the night, was the diary. Nothing in the world seemed real.

Our guests left at five-thirty, complimenting Grandma on her cookies and her oolong tea. We stood in the doorway to wave goodbye.

When the phone in the kitchen rang, Grandma picked it up. "Hello," she said. "Hello." Quickly she smashed the receiver down, scowling at it. "That's the third 'nobody there' call since this afternoon," she said. "What's the matter with these people?"

I knew it was Noah. He was wondering why I hadn't come. He was going to tell me how disappointed Kirsty was. Oh, Kirsty, what am I going to do? I'm scared to death of Noah now. But what if he can put me in touch with you? If there's a chance, I have to try. Wait for me, Kirsty. I won't walk away from you again.

The Presence sat in the church office, hunched over in Rita's chair. Only three days till Catherine went home. No time to waste. What had happened today? Her grandmother made plans and she couldn't get away? Or had something alerted her? He couldn't think what it might be.

He glared at the phone. Three times he'd called, and there'd been only the grandmother. He'd had the awful thought that maybe Catherine had been called back to Chicago unexpectedly, that he'd lost her. What else would keep her from Kirsty?

He tapped a pencil on the desk. She'd come. Almost all of them did in the end. She'd come.

Collin would be here at seven. Invited by Grandma, trying to cheer me. If she only knew how much I wished he wasn't coming. How could I talk to him, be pleasant, eat dinner, behave as if my life and I were both sane?

It was six o'clock. I helped Grandma set the table with her pretty red Christmasy placemats and dark green napkins.

She slid a lasagna out of the refrigerator and peeled off the plastic wrap. "No time for real cooking at Christmas," she said. "But I bought this at Trader Joe's, so it will be good."

"And you have the cookies for dessert." I was proud of myself for remembering that and being with it enough to say it.

When she opened the oven door, the heat blasting at my face made my stomach roil. How was I going to get through tonight?

I told Grandma I needed to change and rushed up to my room, straight to the drawer, to the diary. I couldn't leave it alone. Standing there, I read.

Oh, God! Oh, help me, someone! I am lost. I have to put what happened on paper because there is no person on earth whom I can tell, who would believe me.

The writing was a child's scrawl, up and down the page, lines crooked and running into each other. Fear was in every word.

My chest hurt, and I rubbed at it with my fist.

Yesterday, he said he would take me to his room. But I couldn't
go
to St. Matthew's because my mother had arranged for both of us to attend a recital in the music room of the Green Hotel. The cellist is a friend of my grandparents'. I couldn't get out of it. And I couldn't get word to Noah.

So today I went to St. Matthew's to look for him. There is a new custodian. He was painting the outside window of the choir room, and he let me in when I said I was troubled and needed to pray. Forgive me, god, because all I wanted was to see Noah.

And I saw him. Oh, yes, I saw him. And then I
did
pray.

I am writing this at night. Can he come here and get me? Oh, I am so scared. And my guilt and burden is worse than before.

I stopped reading, gripping the edge of the open drawer till my knuckles ached. This was about Lottie, more than eighty years ago, but it was about me, too. I felt it in my blood and bones.

Music, sweet and somehow sad, drifted up from downstairs, and then I heard Grandma singing in a wobbly voice about memories, and how they lit the corners of her mind.

There was a small silence. Then I heard a loud "Drat!" before the singing started again. So ordinary, so everyday normal.

I flipped to the next page of the diary.

I couldn't find him at first. He'd said his apartment was in the basement. I started down the stairs. It was very dark, dark as Hell must be. I called his name, but softly, in case the new custodian had come in and might hear. I felt along the wall, down, down, down. There must be a light switch, but I couldn't find one.

I went back upstairs. It was so silent in the church, so filled with cold. There was a flashlight, a big one, on a table in the office. I took it and went bach to the basement stairs. Down and down.

At the bottom of the stairs, I came to a big room
that was almost empty. My beam of light showed me only crumbling walls, boxes and things stored, old pews piled on top of each other, everything coated with dust. There were two armchairs, the stuffing hanging out of them, and on the bach wall, a big stone fireplace, blackened with age, adorned with stone carvings. No one here.

I was about to leave when I heard faint voices. Oh, if only I'd gone before I heard what I heard.

The voices came from behind the wall at the back, where the fireplace was. I tiptoed across and put my ear to the old plaster. If there was a door, I couldn't see it. Immediately, I knew that one of the speakers was Noah. The other was a girl.

My heart sank. He had someone in there with him. An ordinary girl, without problems, not like me.

I listened hard. The words were muffled, and I couldn't understand most of them. If only god in His mercy had kept me from understanding any of them.

Lottie's own words ran off the page here. I hardly had the strength to hold the diary closer to the floor lamp and struggle with what was crammed into the margin.

"
Let me go," the girl was saying. "You have no use for me anymore." And something else, something about never telling and her honor.

Noah's voice then. "Ican't—" Something unintelligible. And then I thought I heard the word "disappointed.
"

"
Are you ... kill...?
"

I'm trying to write this word after word as I remember them, though I don't believe I'll ever forget.

I should have run right then, gotten away, but I didn't. Maybe I was numb with shock.

Noah was talking again, his voice raised, and, god help me, I heard everything. "Why would I kill you? My ladies are precious to me. Belinda, my dear, don't cry. There, there, don't cry.
"

I breathed again. This girl, this Belinda, was simply being dramatic. Of course he wasn't going to kill her. I thought of the kindness in his voice when he'd talked to me.

There was a silence. I imagined him holding her, comforting her, and I almost felt jealous.

"
I admit I
have
been disappointed," he said. There was that word again. "But why do you think ... died ... tried to make you love me ... gave you...
"

"
I do love you. I do." Her voice was terrified.

My ear ached from being pressed so hard against the fireplace. But I couldn't risk missing a word.

I remembered how he'd told me that death wasn't the worst thing. How strange he'd sounded. My stomach cramped with fear.

"Catherine?" Grandma was calling from the bottom of the stairs.

I dropped the diary back in the drawer and came to my door.

"Could you come down here for a minute, love? My amber beads broke. Some of them rolled under the fridge, and I can't reach them."

"Sure," I called.

Beads under the fridge. A girl prisoner. A ghost who might be going to kill her. The words I'd read, so horrifying. The words Grandma spoke, so ordinary. How could I hold them together in my head without going crazy?

The beads had rolled to a stop way at the back. I could see the gleam and glow of them when I crouched down. Grandma brought me a wire coat hanger, and I lay on my stomach and dragged them out.

"Clever girl," Grandma said.

I ran back upstairs. No time now to read more. I had to hurry. But ... but I had to read more.

The page was still open where I'd last read.

"
You are very pretty and a good companion," he was saying to the poor girl, whoever she was. "But I've met someone else.
"

Did he mean me?

I thought I heard him move, and that unlocked my muscles and started my blood flowing again. What if he came out and found me here?

I turned and ran behind one of the old, bulky armchairs. I clicked off the flashlight, and dark came down all around me—terrifying, breathless dark.

Then there was a slant of flickering light, a grinding noise, and I saw Noah standing in the big fireplace. The whole center of it was now just space. Somehow it had opened, and I could tell there was a room, a secret room, concealed behind it.

He was half-turned, speaking over his shoulder. I tried to peer past him to whatever—whoever—was in there, but his shape blocked the opening.

"
What can I cook for you tonight ?" he asked the hidden person. "You must be tired of those beans. I'll see if some
thing more interesting has been left in the Food for the Poor box. Tonight's supper should be special. Poor little Belinda!" he added. "Poor little girl!
"

I heard a wail. It could have been a cat. I knew it wasn't.

Dim light oozed out. I saw him press something at the side, a shadowed bump, maybe one of the carvings, and I heard the grinding noise again, as the fireplace closed behind him.

He was standing not ten yards away from me. I cowered behind the chair, my eyes squeezed shut, praying and praying. I couldn't see him, but I heard his soft footsteps pass me, go up the stairs. Did he have eyes for the dark, like a big stalking cat?

I waited, then felt my way along the wall, not daring to switch on the flashlight. Up the stairs, listening, praying, remembering how he could suddenly seem to appear out of nowhere. What if he appeared now, beside me? In the sanctuary. No sign of him as I ran, ran, ran, ran....

"Catherine?" Grandma's voice again, calling cheerfully from the bottom of the stairs. "Honey, Collin will be here any minute."

I had to lick my lips and swallow against the dryness in my throat. I had to try twice before my voice came out. "Coming," I croaked.

I slammed the diary shut, slammed the drawer to keep it in. What had I read? It couldn't be true. No way. But ... My mind was a jumble of belief and disbelief.

I pulled off my clothes, grabbed my black velvet pants and a pale blue sweater. I couldn't get the top button on the pants fastened. My fingers belonged to somebody else, somebody uncooperative. My black velvet clogs were somewhere under the bed, and I had to kneel to find them.

I had to lean my head on the comforter while I said over and over, "Not true, not real, not true, not real."

My face, pale and haunted, stared back at me from the mirror as I brushed my hair. The doorbell was ringing.

"All right," I told my reflection. "You are going to be reasonable tonight. You are not going to scare Grandma. Do you want to be rushed off to talk with a shrink again? Do you want to go back into the hospital?"

I went downstairs.

Collin sat on the couch, and Grandma was in the low dark blue chair. When he saw me, Collin stood and handed me a long-stemmed red rose. He looked awkward and embarrassed, as if he didn't do something like this too often. "For you."

"Oh, thanks." I bent to smell the sweetness of its perfume.

"I bring you flowers," Noah had said.

Noah, stay out of my head.

"I love roses," I whispered, and Grandma beamed.

"I had a beau who brought me a dandelion once," she said. "The fluffy kind, you know, that you blow on and make a wish. And right there and then, in my mother's hallway, he blew on it, and seeds just flew everywhere." She waved her arms like windmills. "T wish that you would be my sweetheart forever and ever,' he said, and I said, 'I wish you'd just clean up the mess you've made before my mother sees it,' and I went and got him a broom and dustpan. He didn't do a very good job. All spring, I kept waiting for dandelions to sprout between the tiles in our hallway."

"You weren't very romantic, Mrs. Larrimer," Collin said, grinning.

"Ah, but I am now," Grandma said. "The older I get, the more romantic I become. It's very pleasant."