To Feel Stuff (26 page)

“I can tell.”

“When does the story get embarrassing?” E asked.

E told me that the apparition's “eyes were not serious at all, but he pretended to get serious with me.”

“Look,” he said, “This story is for you. I know what happened. I'm not telling it for my health.”

“I can see right through you,” E said, and then she must have realized what she had said and how absurd it sounded. “I mean, I can see right through what you just told me. You like talking to me. I can tell.”

The apparition leaned closer to E. “I'm trying to connect with you. That's a pretty embarrassing thing to own up to, don't you think? Making the admission that I'm putting effort into connecting? Pretty bad. Pr-ettt-yyyy bad.”

E told me that their faces were extremely close together by now. She found herself in the strange situation of both looking in and through the apparition's eyes.

“Are we really having a conversation?” asked E. “I believe that you exist. But are we in a conversation together, or is this leftover talk from back in the day? Are the moments where it seems like we're actually talking to each other coincidence?”

“To me,” the apparition told E, “everything always feels like coincidence. Speaking always seems dicey.”

“I know what you mean,” said E.

“After I passed out and woke up in the hospital, my wrists were secured because they thought that I'd been trying to kill myself. I looked at the nurse and said, ‘Wasn't trying to kill myself.' But the more I said no, the more the nurse believed that I was. The more sincere I was, the more she disbelieved.”

“Yeah. I know about that, too,” said E.

“She even made me draw,” said the apparition.

“I've had to draw before. Hey, look, I'm even helping you connect with me.”

“I know. I'm liking it. Can I show you something?” the apparition asked.

“Well, okay.”

“I asked them if I could have my last picture.” The apparition reached into a pocket in his robe and pantomimed pulling a rectangular object out of it. He went through the motions of unfolding the invisible paper and spreading it out on the floor in front of E.

“What do you think?” he asked.

E looked down at the linoleum, where she saw only floor. “Nothing. I don't see anything”

“Yeah,” the apparition said. “I put the pen in my wrong hand and dragged it around on the paper. The doctor asked me to explain what I'd drawn, and I said, ‘my interpretation of hope.' Then they let me out of the ward.”

E remembers smiling at that point as well. There is another pause on the tape during which there is neither E's voice nor magnetic distortion. After exactly six seconds, the distortion returns.

“Hey,” said the apparition. “A question for you.”

“Mmm hmm?”

“Have you ever had tetanus?”

“No,” E said. “It's one of the few diseases I haven't.”

“That's what I have. It's from hitting a lower hook on the way down.”

“Is that how you died?” E asked. “From the tetanus?”

“No, I'm okay. It wasn't lethal, but I'm supposed to take it easy. They've told me to lie in bed as much as I can with the lights off.”

“Since you're not doing that, maybe that's why you died?” guessed Elodie.

“I'm okay.”

“If you say so. Maybe it's not what I think at all, and you walked outside and got hit by a car. Maybe you had a brain aneurysm.” There is a short pause on the tape. “And maybe the man with the roses could tell that my mom was the type he could pull a mean trick on. Maybe she went looking for a man with roses. Maybe she lied about the roses. Maybe she's made a mistake about the roses, and she knows it. Maybe she's right about the roses. Maybe the roses really mean something.”

E noticed that the apparition appeared to be waiting on her to finish her guessing. She ceased speaking to test the interactivity between them.

“Maybe?” the apparition asked.

E reached her hand out toward the apparition's, wanting to see what would happen if she attempted to hold it. Her fingers passed through his. The apparition did not seem to notice the gesture.

E continued on the tape. “Maybe I'll talk about nothing and fill up my side of the conversation with empty talk. Maybe you can go on without me. Maybe something special will happen when I stop playing along.”

“Nah, don't do that,” the apparition said.

“Oh. Why not?”

“Because we have limited time before we die.” For accuracy, it must be recorded that the apparition smiled again.

“Right. You would know,” E nodded.

“You and me,” the apparition said.

“You and me?”

“And her too.”

“Who's ‘her'?”

“Your mom.”

Elodie wanted to take hold of the apparition's shoulder but was clearly unable to do so. “What do you know about my mom?”

“I'm looking forward to meeting her. And not in the generic way that that sounds.”

E had been concentrating on the apparition's eyes, but she couldn't determine if they were focused on her or if she happened to be in a convenient spot. They glowed faintly like the rest of him, but reflected no external light. “Can I ask you something?”

The apparition's eyes darted back and forth between E's eyes.

“Does she come and talk to all of you? Do you all know her? Know about her?” E asked.

The apparition's eyes stilled. “None of that matters.”

“It doesn't?”

“No.”

Elodie leaned back against the wall. She remembers that her spine was beginning to hurt. “I'm too tired to find out what that means. I want to sit here for a while and think.”

“Okay, then,” the apparition said. “I'll sit here with you.”

The last thing E remembered was sitting in the dark hallway with the apparition for at least an hour. When she woke up, it was almost seven A.M., and there was no sign of him.

E stopped the tape. “All you've got to do is check hospital records for a psych ward patient with tetanus.”

“And if it's all right with you,” I added, “I'd like to take the tape with me. I'm going to locate an EVP researcher and have it analyzed.”

“Okay,” E said, just as my doorbell rang.

“It's the ghost,” she joked. “He misses me.”

I excused myself to answer the door. When I saw my student, R, on the doorstep, I realized I'd forgotten our breakfast appointment. Earlier in the week, I'd held a diagnostic contest in class using a corpse, and R had won. The prize was a personal breakfast at my house and a research assistant position the following semester.

I was about to apologize to R when he said, “E.” The manner in which he said her name told me that he had not meant to utter it. The front doorway offers a clear view to the living-room couch. E was in profile, but when she heard her name, turned.

“Oh, hi, R,” she replied.

“You two know each other?” I asked.

“I had a collapsed lung freshman year, and we met,” said R, appearing suddenly disoriented.

“We had a thing for a minute,” E said.

“Why are you here?” asked R.

“Dr. Kirschling is my doctor. We were having a discussion about my health.”

“You're still sick?”

“And living in the infirmary,” said E.

“Jesus Christ. You're still
there
?” (A week later, E told me that the way R had said “there” was “how I imagine they say it at high school reunions. When people who've left town gasp, ‘You're still living
there?
Which is ‘here' to the people who haven't.”)

“Well, you're still
there,
too,” said E.

R shook his head, confused, and looking at E as though she were impaired. “No, I'm not. I have an apartment on George.”

“I meant that you're also still in the same place you were when I met you. You were going to school, training to be a doctor. You still are.”

“That's not the same thing, though,” R argued.

I watched the two of them, fascinated. I had never before had the chance to watch E interact at length with another “civilian,” so to speak.

“We're both on the same tracks we were two years ago.”

“You're sick, though. That's not a normal state of existence.”

“I disagree,” E said. An awkward pause followed.

R turned to me. “Should I leave? Did I get the time wrong?”

“I've got to get back,” said E. She asked if she could make a quick phone call in my bedroom before she left. I said yes and followed her, assuming that her request had been code-speak for her desiring to have a private discussion with me. Thus, I was surprised when she picked up my phone and dialed. She did not seem to mind my presence.

After a few seconds, E said, “Mom?” Then, “I can see ghosts now. I'm serious. Please go home. I'll call you there tomorrow and tell you all about it.”

E hung up and thanked me, saying she had kept her conversation short because she did not want “to ring up a huge long-distance charge.”

“Well, what did your mother say?” I asked.

“She made a really pleased sound,” E told me, then walked from the bedroom to my front door. Before she stepped outside, she pressed the tape into my palm. I asked her if she needed a ride or wanted me to call a cab, but she said, “I'm going to look into the bus.”

“It was nice to see you again,” called out R, although he fooled neither E nor myself. Once she had left, I tried unsuccessfully to get R to speak further about his time with E. I was interested in the signs of illness she'd been exhibiting during their affair, and how he had perceived them.

I now suspected that although E's symptoms
mimicked
documented illnesses, she did not necessarily have those illnesses. This is the crux of my theory of psychic puberty.

I believe that E was going through a similar breed of transitional turmoil, as her body was preparing for a major change. It was adjusting itself to the extrasensory powers that she was acquiring. I surmised that there were two probable outcomes: (1) that once E's abilities had fully manifested themselves, her health would return, or (2) that she would continue to experience symptoms for the remainder of her life, as her body constantly readjusted itself to the outside (supernatural) forces placing demands on it.

I favor the first scenario, since both her mother and grandmother eventually reached a point where their symptoms ceased. However, E's talents already seemed to supercede those of anyone else in her family. Hence, I felt that her path to equilibrium might prove much more challenging and prolonged.

The following day I mailed the tape to an EVP specialist in Missouri. He warned me that he had projects with higher priority, but I wanted the best in the field. While I waited for results, I resumed my hunt for the apparition's hospital records. I tried every hospital within fifty miles of Providence. Not one could identify a psychiatric patient with tetanus in the last fifty years. The apparition had asked E to guess the odds of his circumstances, but now I desired an educated guess about the odds of my own. Not a single local patient during the past half century with the same identifying characteristics? Not a single lead to follow?

True to his ghostly nature, this apparition had left no traces in the tangible world. E and I had no choice but to wait on the slight physical evidence that we had in our possession—the mysterious crackling on the tape. Whether coincidence or higher intervention—at this stage in my research into the paranormal, I feel ill equipped to even venture a hypothesis—the morning I finally received the analysis of the tape was the same morning that E finally learned who and what the apparition was.

From The Desk of Chester Hunter III

 

I heard guys playing Ultimate Frisbee down in the street, and as dumb as it sounds, I was pleased I could tell what they were playing even without seeing them. This was the morning of the graduation dance. Also, I remember hearing demonstrators passing by the building. They were pissed off about sweatshops. Moving in the direction of the Main Green, they were chanting, “I won't wear anything with sweat on it!” Once I read an article about blind people and how their other senses sharpen to compensate for their eyes, and it featured a kid who could tide his bike only if he made clicking sounds. Basically, he had developed bat sonar. That's what went through my mind when I was listening to all the people outside—that maybe I'd developed special powers while removed from the operational world.

You were in bed looking through the doctors' porn, and you told me that you were interested in becoming a photographer. You said that you'd be able to stare at people through the lens, and they would be so preoccupied with you looking at them that they couldn't stare back at you.

The window was open. Pieces of your hair were blowing into the air in front of you. Your aplastic anemia was back, and you had a marrow transfusion scheduled for the next week, but you seemed less nervous than I thought you should be. I was working at the desk Vivian found me downstairs, needing to pull a B-minus on my Am Civ final. My professor had given me an extension. I didn't tell you, but my grades had slipped since I moved into the infirmary.

When I looked at you, I remember thinking, “It's like we've grown old together.” Not that we had become decrepit or unattractive or anything like that, but I was filled with this feeling that we'd surpassed others around us and left everyone behind. We knew about pain. And, in general, I think we just knew about more.

I remember singing to you the line
“Ain't no mountain high enough,”
and asking what you thought about that lyric.

“Are you asking about climbing real mountains?” you asked.

“I'm more curious about whether or not you believe that if two people believe in each other, there's nothing that they can't accomplish.”