The Queen and I (21 page)

“Oy gevalt, even I could have done better than that, and I’m not a writer,” Saul chimed in.

“A nightmare? You want me to believe you were having a nightmare?” Rachel yelled. “We were making love, how is that a nightmare?”

“I don’t think she believes you, Jeffrey.”

“Would you shut up?” Jeffrey snapped.

Rachel looked at him in stunned silence and said, “You did not just tell me to shut up.”

‘Maybe I should leave?” Saul asked.

“How dare you tell me to shut up when you’re the one acting crazy.”

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to him.” Jeffrey pointed at the still invisible Saul.

“You mean her,” Saul said.

“What?”

“You mean her. Remember? You told her that you were talking to Esther Feltcher.”

“That’s right, I meant her.”

Rachel shook her head and said, “I have no idea what kind of game you’re playing, but I don’t like it.”

“It’s not very becoming, Jeffrey,” Saul added.

“Stop helping me,” Jeffrey snapped.

Rachel dropped the sheet and started getting dressed. She turned, and Saul noticed the tattoo on the small of her back— the Evil Eye.

Saul eyes went wide, and at that moment, he remembered where he had seen her before, in this very room, doing this very thing with Richard Kearney.

Rachel stormed out of the room, and Jeffrey watched as she left without even looking at him. He wanted to kill Saul, but there was very little you could do in that regards to a ghost. He looked at Saul and asked, “What were you thinking?”

Saul shook his head and gave Jeffrey a sad look and answered, “You have more to be concerned about than a bad night in bed.”

* * *

Rachel packed her things and left immediately. She did not even allow for any kind of explanation. As far as she was concerned, Jeffrey was obviously losing his mind due to the seclusion up here in the woods, and it was affecting him in ways that she could not have possibly thought of.

Jeffrey was furious at Saul for his behavior, and angrier still at the accusations he made after she left. According to Saul, Rachel had visited this cabin on many occasions and was quite familiar and intimate with the former owner, Richard Kearney. The two of them had a long-going love affair that they were both trying to keep silent, which Saul had been privy to witnessing firsthand. To Jeffrey, this was an outrage; he couldn’t believe Saul would stoop to such levels to alienate the woman he loved from the cabin in order to keep Jeffrey for himself and to keep their budding work relationship flourishing.

Jeffrey was so angry at Saul that he decided to leave the cabin himself that evening and to leave the ghost to his own devices without him. Jeffrey headed back into Zion and got a room at the local inn. There he would think about the course of events that had transpired in the last twenty-four hours and how he was going to go forward, knowing what he knew from Saul and the suspicions they were now raising.

Had Rachel been unfaithful to him? Had there really been another man, and it happened to be the one from whom he had bought the cabin? What were the odds of that happening?

Jeffrey was a man without answers, and more questions came up at every turn. He decided he would spend a couple of nights away from the cabin and from Saul and hope that it would help clear his thoughts some and lead him to the answers that he now so desperately sought. It was time for him to get his life back on track, and this was an obstruction he did not need at the moment.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Yom Kippur Is the New Christmas

Waking up in Zion at the little inn where he was staying, Jeffrey was immediately overwhelmed by the sounds of Klezmer music and the singing of Jewish folk songs. He looked out the window and saw that the decorations that had been put up the day before were complete, and the streets now hosted booths and vendors.

He wasn’t quite sure what the special occasion was, but the town’s residents appeared to be having fun, and it looked as if it just might be the very thing that he needed to get his mind off of things back at the cabin.

Jeffrey knew he had screwed up royally with Rachel, and some serious damage control was going to be required to mend the fences that he had destroyed the previous evening. Of course, Saul was mainly to blame for what had happened, and it was up to Jeffrey to try to make the ghost understand that the world is not one great performance after another anymore, and these bouts of theatrics that Saul was prone to were not helping anyone with the tasks at hand. Barging in on a man while he was having sex with his girlfriend was just something that you didn’t do.

He got dressed and checked his phone for any messages, half-expecting to see that Rachel had left a text saying they were through. He was relieved to see no such message was there, and in fact, nothing was waiting for him. As he stepped out of his room, he expected to be attacked by Saul again, who’d be eager to convince Jeffrey to come back to the cabin so that they could begin work on the script, but alas, there was no sign of the ghost.

As Jeffrey walked the streets, he noticed that even though the town was decorated in the bright colors of blue and white, the residents of Zion were all wearing black with white sneakers. If he didn’t know better, he would swear they were celebrating …

“Merry Yom Kippur,” a young man said happily as he passed. He was followed by a group of young teenage girls who all said shalom and wished him a merry Yom Kippur.

This would explain the dress, since Yom Kippur was the day of the year when religious Jews dressed in such a manner, but there was nothing merry about this day. In fact, it was the Day of Atonement and not much of anything joyful was done on this day. He watched as townsfolk after townsfolk wished him a happy holiday, joyfully greeted a friend or relative, and proceeded to go to one vendor or another.

There were booths set up serving various kinds of Jewish cuisine; some of the food had been converted to being served on a stick, and others were selling t-shirts and stuffed animals. He noticed one in particular that looked like a rabbi giving Santa Claus a wedgie. The mere sight of this stuffed wonder was so hilarious that Jeffrey had to buy one. He figured he could give it to Rachel if she ever spoke to him again.

As he walked further down the main thoroughfare, he spotted Sheriff Pitts, who was dressed in clothing which told Jeffrey the older man was headed to the synagogue soon for one task or another. He spotted the mysterious Abby Tisch, who saw him from across the street and gave him a curt nod of the head. Sean Wagner was loitering in front of the nearby bar and spouting anti-Semitic insults to the patrons.

“Shalom, Mr. Rothstein!” came the cry from behind him, and he turned to see a jovial man holding his yarmulke in place, approaching with his free hand extended. “Mayor Elmo Baker, great pleasure to finally meet you,” he said happily, shaking Jeffrey’s hand firmly.

“The pleasure is mine, Mr. Mayor,” Jeffrey answered, wincing a little from the mayor’s grip. “Please call me Jeffrey. I don’t stand on ceremony.”

“Well I do, so make sure you call me Mr. Mayor, or I’ll have you arrested.” He waited a moment and then broke into loud laughter and continued, “See what I did there?”

Jeffrey smiled and replied, “You had me going. Very funny.”

“Please call me Elmo.”

“Nice to meet you, Elmo.”

The two of them stood in silence for a moment, and Jeffrey finally had to ask, “So, are we having a party or something?”

Elmo looked slightly confused by the question and answered, “It’s Yom Kippur. Didn’t you know that?”

Jeffrey looked around at the decorated town and the way they were carrying on at the various carnival-like attractions and thought that this looked nothing like any Yom Kippur he had ever celebrated.

The Day of Atonement was one of the high holidays in the Jewish faith, and it was anything but a party. The majority of the day was spent at the temple praying, and Jews who observed the day fasted from sundown to sundown. The orthodox Jews didn’t wear leather on this day either, hence the sneakers made from imitation leather. There was no handling of money, and there were certainly no games of chance or stuffed animals for the kiddies at any functions. It was obvious to Jeffrey that these fine people, in their innocence, were totally confused about the holidays of their newfound religion and its customs. They were struggling with the old and the new, their old lifestyle as Gentiles to their new one of Jews, struggling to learn the ways of the “matzo eaters,” as he liked to refer to his people.

“Yom Kippur is not that kind of holiday,” Jeffrey began. Elmo looked at him confused and slightly hurt while Sheriff Pitts approached.

“Merry Yom Kippur, Elmo,” he said happily. He extended his hand to Jeffrey and offered him a happy holiday as well. “How are you getting along in our little town, sir?”

“You can call me Jeffrey. The town is fine. I spent the night here, but I’m sure your clandestine informants have told you about that by now.”

The sheriff slowly turned and spied out Sean Wagner and replied, “If you’ve had a problem with anyone in the town, I suggest you come to me about it immediately.”

The two of them stared at each other with knowing looks that spoke of the disdain they had for one another.

“You ready to go down, Malcolm?” a boisterous voice came from Jeffrey’s left, and a large red-haired man with long sideburns and a kilt approached. He too was wearing a yarmulke and a
tallit
, the prayer shawl that so many religious Jewish men wear on holy days.

He extended his hand to Jeffrey and introduced himself. “Rufus O’Neal, future cantor of Zion’s First Reformed Temple.”

“I’m sorry, did you say cantor?” Jeffrey asked.

“You betcha!” Elmo answered emphatically. “Tonight is the night that we as a community will announce who our new cantor will be now that our old cantor, Jerome Washington, has moved to Jerusalem.”

“And I’m going to take the title home tonight,” Rufus announced like a prizefighter before the big bout.

“There’s a lot of singing to do before you can wear that title, Rufus,” SheriffPitts added.

Rufus turned to Jeffrey and asked, “Will you be joining us tonight, young fellow? Should be a good time for all.”

Jeffrey thought about it and agreed to attend. He could use the distraction, and this seemed to be as good a way as any to get his mind offof the events of the last twenty-four hours.

The four of them walked down Gribenes together toward the temple where the big sing-off was to take place, and Jeffrey thought about how he was going to write this scene in the play. He had visions of the stage being decorated like an
American Idol
set with giant menorahs in the background and a chorus line of rabbis as backup singers. This was turning out to be so much better than his original thoughts, which were solely focused around violent revenge and vindictiveness. These people of Zion were the muse he needed, the inspiration he had been searching for, and the answers to his prayers.

A wise man once said, “You can’t make this stuff up,” and in the case of the small town of Zion, it was not only true that you couldn’t forge this kind of behavior, but that reality was sometimes funnier than fiction.

* * *

Melissa was summoned as soon as Jeffrey left. Saul had figured out years ago how to use the phone, in spite of the fact that he was a ghost, and he was able to do other chores for himself. But when it came to what he needed right now, he was more than useless, so he called the young girl and asked her to forego the festivities in town and get over to the cabin as soon as she could.

Now that she was here, Saul instructed her to get on the
fercoktehed
computer that Jeffrey had left behind so she could get the ghost some information he desperately needed.

From his readings of the local paper and the
Times
entertainment section, he knew all that he needed to know about Jeffrey’s professional life and most of his private one as well. But what he did not know was who these mysterious men were that had gone out of their way to harm Jeffrey and his career. He knew their names, but that was it. He wanted to help his new friend and to make right what had gone so wrong when he had barged in on him, so he needed Melissa to help him scour through this thing called the Internet. While she was at it, he also wanted her to find where his girlfriend Rachel lived. He was going to roll the dice and see if he could not fix the damage that he had caused.

“Here they are,” Melissa announced triumphantly. On the screen in front of them were the pictures of Heinrich Schultz and Mendel Fujikawa.

There were detailed biographies of both men and even the address for where Schultz’s office was. The pictures were what Saul was looking for so that he knew he was dealing with the right men when he crossed their paths where he was going.

“What is he wearing?” Saul asked as he examined Fujikawa’s photo.

“Well, maybe he likes color,” Melissa offered innocently.

“Or he’s blind.”

Saul saved the information on the two men and Jeffrey’s girlfriend to memory and asked Melissa to find out the local bus schedule to New York City.

“Why do you need a bus?” she asked.

“What do you think I’m going to do? Walk?”

“I just thought that maybe you could fly or something,” she added.

“Just what the world needs, a flying Jew.” He patted her on the head and continued, “Just get me the schedule.”

Saul was going somewhere he had not been in over sixty years, a place where his name had once held a lot of weight, where he could get a table at any restaurant, and where the audiences fought to be near him. He was going home, and he was terrified by the prospect, but he also knew it was the only thing he could do.

He was going to New York, and he wasn’t coming back without something that could help his friend.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Abby-Dexterous

The cabin appeared to be uninhabited when Abby Tisch and Sean Wagner arrived. There were a few lights on, but they seemed to be serving a more perfunctory purpose than one of necessity. She approached from the side and peered through the curtains, trying to get a good look at whomever or whatever might be inside.

She knew Jeffrey was not at home, since she had seen him in town and watched as he was escorted to the temple to see the ridiculous Sheriff Pitts and Rufus O’Neal battle it out to see who would become the town’s new cantor. With him out of the picture for the next couple of hours, she quickly corralled Sean and instructed him to gather her hunting equipment from her shop while she stood watch. It was not like anything he had ever seen before. Her idea of hunting was not for the majestic ten-point or a bear, her hunting was of the supernatural kind, and all of her equipment was homemade—bottles of holy water shipped in from the neighboring town of Jonestown, crucifixes stacked ten high of various sizes and designs, a couple of squirt guns, and then there was the rock in the vodka bottle.

Sean examined this one particularly closely, since he was confused as to why she would have ruined a perfectly good bottle of alcohol by putting a rock in it, but Abby had assured him that its purpose was the most important in securing the proof that she needed that there was, in fact, a ghost living among them. Once she could prove it, she could eliminate it.

It had been her calling since she was a very young girl, when she was raised by her maternal grandmother, a borderline senile woman of Eastern European descent who believed in putting her granddaughter to bed with tales of Vlad Tepes and the ghosts that had haunted her small cottage in the Black Forest of Germany.

These stories had left quite the impression on young Abby, and she was resolved to rid the world of such monsters to prevent them from ever haunting the dreams of young children whenever she could. To date, she had succeeded in identifying and/or capturing none, but she never let that discourage her, and with every new possibility came a newfound resolve to finally do what no other hunter had ever done—destroy what was already dead.

As she watched the cabin, she was certain the ghost was home and that it was probably aware of her presence as well. The odds were that it was lying in wait for her to make the first move so that it could pounce on her and do God knows what before she even had a chance to scream. That was why she had brought Sean along. The way she saw things, the ghost couldn’t possibly kill both of them at the same time, so one of them stood a very real chance of escaping before it could turn its attention on them. Sean Wagner was not the smartest man in the world, but he was reliable whenever she had called on him before. And his task tonight was very simple, watch her back and report anything to the proper authorities if something went wrong. He was the backup plan, and she knew that she could count on him.

The lights on the porch flickered briefly, and she smiled uncomfortably at the shock to her nerves that it caused. This had to be a message from the specter to let her know that it was aware of her being there, and it was not happy. She motioned for Sean to hand her the bottle of vodka with the rock and started to shake it like a maraca.

Wagner watched as she closed her eyes and began humming much in the way that one does when meditating, and he wondered if this was some kind of magic that he had never heard of before. She opened her eyes slightly and Sean could see only whites, and she was convulsing with such force that he was sure that there had to be some kind of supernatural phenomenon occurring. He did not know what to do, so he watched her and the cabin at the same time and fumbled in his pockets for the keys to his truck in case he had to make a run for it.

She let out a loud scream and opened her eyes wide, revealing a look of stunned horror, while breathing heavily. She turned to Sean and said, “I got nothing. Did you see anything?”

He looked at her in silent bewilderment and replied, “Just you shaking like a leaf. What the hell was all of that stuff?”

She brushed away his question and continued, “The rock says that something is here.”

“Yeah, two lunatics in the woods staring at an empty cabin. I thought you said you got nothing?”

“There is something in the house,” she whispered and motioned for him to follow her. “The rock is not always clear.”

Sean thought the woman was out of her mind.

Armed with a bottle of holy water and two crosses strapped to his back, he followed as she led the way up the walk toward the front door; he was careful to avoid the light shining down from the front porch.

The closer they got, the more she was certain that something was happening. She heard the faint sound of voices, and if she was not mistaken, it was the sound of singing. She paused and listened intently as Sean wondered in confusion about what she was now up to. The sound was becoming clearer and clearer, and she was sure of the fact that she was hearing the song “A Place for Us” from
West Side Story
. The only difference was that it was not being sung by a woman. The voice behind this singing was low and very raspy, the very voice she expected a ghost to have. She smiled in the dark and whispered to Sean, “Go around the back and see if you can get in that way.”

Sean’s eyes went wide with stunned horror and he answered, “Bullshit! I’m not going in there with nothing but a bottle of water and a cross.”

She shook her head at him and replied, “Those are holy artifacts. The ghost will be rendered powerless to you if you use them correctly.”

“And just how is that?”

“Fill the squirt gun and shoot anything that seems ghostly. The cross is in case it is a vampire or a werewolf.”

Sean squinted in confusion at her and said, “Crosses don’t kill no werewolves.”

“They do if they’re Jewish.”

“What if the werewolf is an atheist?”

“Then throw the cross at him and run!” she snapped. “Now go around back.”

He muttered something under his breath and walked off into the surrounding darkness, making no attempt at stealth whatsoever, and Abby shook her head at his thick headedness.

She turned her attention back to the cabin and slowly made her way up the steps and onto the porch. She was trembling slightly, but it was more from excitement at seeing what she knew to be a ghost than any kind of fear that she should have had. This was going to be the culmination of her life’s work, and it was going to make her rich and famous beyond belief.

One of the curtains next to the front door was open, and she peered inside, trying to see if she could spot anything out of the ordinary. She saw a shadow pass one of the open doorways, and her heart skipped a beat. Whatever was there, it was moving, and that excited and frightened her at the same time. She tried to get a better look at whatever it could be, but it was gone for the moment. She was suddenly concerned that Sean would do something stupid and enter the house without getting her first and would either get himself killed or scare off the ghost before she could get a chance to see it. She gripped her water gun, said a brief prayer before trying the doorknob, found that it turned without any resistance, and slowly opened, allowing her access to the home of Jeffrey David Rothstein.

She remained in a low crouch and quietly closed the door behind her as the singing grew louder and clearer. Whoever or whatever it was that was paying tribute to this iconic song was doing more harm than good with this rendition. The voice was all wrong. There was no place for an obviously male baritone with a scratchy undertone to be singing this piece of music, and she found herself wondering what kind of a demented and twisted spirit this was that she was so close to finding.

Abby turned a corner and was now in what had to be the living room. It was dimly lit, and there appeared to be no sign of anyone being present other than a half-drunk glass of milk on the coffee table. The singing was coming from behind the door leading into the kitchen. She was certain of it and reached for a cross and gripped her water gun tightly, hoping that they would be enough to protect her if anything went wrong.

She heard the back door open and slam shut, and she immediately cursed Sean Wagner for his lack of discretion and feared that he was about to be killed, or worse still, scare off the ghost before she could see it. The thought of going through all of this trouble and not even getting a look at her prey was beyond anything else that she could imagine going wrong, and she began to wonder if she should not have come alone.

A shadow passed underneath the door, and she was no longer certain if it was the ghost or if it was Sean ruining everything. She stood up and decided that the element of surprise was all she had left and moved toward the door in an attempt to catch whatever was moving behind it.

The door opened and she found her clueless associate at the counter eating a piece of cake that had been left out. She was disgusted by his behavior and his obvious lack of understanding of the nature of what it was that they were doing. She walked briskly toward him to slap the cake out of his hand. The singing had now moved to the stairs.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she whispered angrily.

“I was hungry,” he replied. “What’s your problem?”

“Don’t you hear the singing?”

“Yeah, I hear it. It sucks.”

She shook her head and continued, “There is nobody home, but there is someone here singing. Don’t you find that to be a little odd?”

“Maybe he left the stereo on.”

“Maybe I should hit you over the head with this cross.”

Sean shrugged his shoulders and answered, “Go ahead, I ain’t Jewish. Crosses don’t hurt me.”

She stared at him in incredulous silence and turned to leave the kitchen, when the singing suddenly stopped. Abby turned to Sean and whispered, “Don’t move and don’t make a sound.”

Sean rolled his eyes and leaned back against the kitchen counter and watched as Abby walked to the door to get a better look at whatever might be on the other side. She turned to her companion and put one finger to her lips as she slowly opened the door.

* * *

“What are we going to do?” Melissa Foreman asked, concerned. “What is the bookstore lady doing here?”

Saul furrowed his eyebrows and looked over the second floor railing at the intruder as she made her way out of the kitchen and back into the living room. He knew who she was and what she was looking for. When Richard Kearney had owned the place, she had frequented the cabin in hopes of getting the former owner to grant her permission to do a full spectral sweep of the place, but Richard was more concerned with pretending that nothing was wrong than acknowledging that something might be amiss.

He watched her grip her water gun and her cross and thought,
What a schmendrick
, as she walked across the living room toward the stairs leading to the second floor. At this point, he was not so upset about the fact that this woman would not leave him alone as he was that she was trespassing, and that angered him to no end. He looked at Melissa and said, “Follow me. I have a great idea.”

Saul led the young girl into Jeffrey’s bedroom and immediately started writing on a piece of paper and handed it to her, saying, “Study these lines quickly and don’t forget them. I’m going to buy us some time.” He turned away from her and quickly went into the bathroom and emerged with a bottle of talcum powder and said, “Dump this over your head and rub it on everything.”

He left her in the bedroom and quickly made his way through walls and downstairs to stand in the kitchen with the miserable Sean Wagner, who was once again eating a piece of the cake that Saul had made just the other night and was polluting his kitchen with his mere presence. Saul walked past him and gently lifted the plate out of Sean’s hands, causing him to jump in fear and immediately crouch down like a frightened child. He left the horrified man shaking in his own fear as he walked out toward the living room and found Abby slowly making her way up the stairs.

Saul ran across the room to one of the lamps and lifted it at an angle, causing a spotlight to shine at the top of the stairway.

He yelled out, “How dare you interrupt my rehearsal,” throwing his voice so that it sounded as if it were coming from the top of the stairs. With a wave of his hand, the lights went out in the house with sparks and flickering, and the only light that shone was the one pointed directly at the young Melissa Foreman, who was now covered from head to toe with talcum powder, giving her an ethereal appearance. She began moving her lips as if saying something, but the voice was that of Saul, who was reciting the script he had instructed her to memorize.

“I have lived in these woods for hundreds of years and have known many hunters in that time. They all now share the same existence as I do, for they knew not the power that I wield. Now you have come to your doom, and the only escape for you is to give yourself over to me and the music.”

At that, the stereo began blasting the opening overture of
Phantom of the Opera,
and Melissa lip-synced as Saul sang the opening song with everything that he had.

Abby Tisch watched in horror as glasses levitated and a candelabra danced in front of her face. The curtains all opened, and the doors began trembling as if to hold back a fierce wind. She threw her hands over her head and braced herself against the onslaught of flying debris and sparks, while Melissa kept a stoic stare and moved her lips perfectly to match the words coming out of Saul’s mouth.

Abby turned and ran down the stairs, almost falling twice, and charged through the front door, into the woods, and to Sean’s truck. He was closely behind, but followed from the back of the house. The truck started, and the two of them left hastily as Saul and Melissa watched with unbridled amusement at the two intruders’ fearful retreat.

“You were brilliant, my dear,” Saul said to Melissa.

“I have a great teacher,” she answered, smiling.

* * *