by Rumer Haven
“Hm.”
“Because I can see that explaining a lot, actually. Our life force being displaced, leaving something non-corporeal behind.” In re-visualizing her experience at the mirror, Margot saw the light of Rand’s toothbrush blinking back at her in the dark. Recharging without electricity.
“Sure.”
“But it would have to continue existing in some form. And I can only conceptualize that as something that could maybe be felt but is invisible or like a shadow or mist. Not something in human form and wearing clothes and everything, like people claim to see.”
Fitz chuckled. “We’re back to ghosts again?”
“You’re the one who brought up poltergeist.”
“Yes, but as I explained, that isn’t associated with hauntings. I thought we’d moved on from this.”
“But it’s interesting to consider, isn’t it? A scientific way to explain spirits.”
“The Christian needs scientific evidence?”
She’s a real laugh riot, isn’t she. Margot sighed. “If energy can’t be created, then where did it come from? I can believe in a divine source that is the energy and put all systems into place to run more or less on their own. So, I can still see miracles in photosynthesis and reproduction even though there’s a biological reason for every step. Why do science and spirituality have to be either-or?”
Fitz chuckled again but said nothing, probably curious as to what would come out of Margot’s fool mouth next.
Fine, then she would deliver. “I searched online last night, just to see how people account for what they see, and it all does basically boil down to energy. We can leave imprints behind in the spaces we occupy, which could explain the human shapes people see. Even actions can appear as residual images, repeating over and over again like a video loop.”
“Hm.”
“And sounds can be captured as EVP, electronic voice phenomena. Then there’s EMF, which is, um…”
“A one-hit-wonder Nineties band.” Fitz laughed—alone. “Before your time, perhaps. Though you are ‘Unbelievable.’”
Margot shook her head at the lost reference and faced her nutty professor in all seriousness. “No, electromagnetic field. Both that and EVP have to do with shifts in pressure and energy, which some people associate with paranormal activity. Some have also linked phenomena to solar flares and lunar cyc—les…”
Grandma Grace’s brooch leapt to mind, as did that April night in Margot’s childhood bedroom when she’d stared out the window at a full moon—the same night of her disturbing dream, the night that had followed Ouija. Then the depression she’d sunk into about a month later. And the full moon she’d woken up to in the cemetery about two lunar cycles after that.
“Uh-huh,” Fitz said in the silence that had fallen. “That’s very interesting.”
“But, uh…” Margot took a second to get her thoughts back on track. “Even Thomas Edison ran experiments based on the belief our souls are made of tiny particles that can rearrange into other forms but still contain our personality. An inventor he mentored, too, John Hammond, specialized in radio waves and created devices to facilitate telepathic communication.” The scientific objectivity of it all was at once feeding Margot’s momentum and bringing her to stillness. She sat back, satisfied she may have just dissected the mystery and stored it away in a jar of formaldehyde. Even the doctor had to give her credit for that.
But Fitz only said, “So,” then paused, rolling her gaze around the room. “Is this your way of telling me you think you communicated with the dead last night?”
At that, the clinical safety of energy and particles disintegrated, abandoning Margot to the realization that, no matter how she attempted to explain it, someone was trying to reach her from the grave.
Corpulent raindrops splattered against the windowpane that Margot stared through into nothing. The dim shade of purple cloud-cover made it seem like night was falling when it was still early afternoon.
Without Rand around to offer company and consolation, she’d gone to gaze at St. Paul’s dome, but the rain sent her inside a coffee shop for a warm drink. Now tucked into a corner on a stool, she alternated between reading and ruminating on where her therapy session had left her.
“All right, okay, but this ‘research’ is all very cursory, Margot,” Fitz had said, adding insult to injury by actually making the air-quotations with her fingers. “You can’t trust just any source you find on the internet.”
Feeling foolish, Margot had withdrawn into herself, reluctant to share more details. But she had shared them, including the sketch of what she’d seen in the mirror and how the candle had blown out with the windows closed.
She dismissed her thoughts to the present as she watched scurrying City commuters scatter like slickened rats on the pavement, producing umbrellas out of nowhere.
“Perhaps the form you saw in the mirror was your reflection, just a negative of your dark silhouette,” Fitz had said. “You’ve seen the perception activity, haven’t you, where if you stare at a white dot against a black background long enough, you then see a black dot when you look at a white background?”
And, of course, Margot’s tingling fingers and feeling of strangulation (which Fitz had redefined as “labored breathing”) must have been symptoms of hyperventilation. Which, but of course, was a symptom of depression.
Margot drew in a shallow sip of hot chocolate to fight her chills. She watched a black taxi speed through a puddle and splash a kid in the face. Stifling a sympathetic laugh through her nose, she readjusted her reading glasses and refocused on the brittle pages of an early edition book she’d found at a local antiquarian bookseller—Rumer Godden’s Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time, which the David Niven film Enchantment had been adapted from.
But she had to reread the same paragraph over a third time to concentrate on what it said rather than what her memories screeched:
“But I say if you’re really serious about this,” Fitz had continued, “you should employ the services of someone who purports to have experience with the paranormal. Though I can’t see how you could possibly vet their credentials.”
Bitterness crept onto the back of Margot’s tongue as she registered the betrayal. She’d trusted the doctor with her most embarrassing thoughts and couldn’t understand why every single one had been treated like a clay pigeon to fire on and shatter. And yet she knew Fitz had a point there. For as much as the therapist had weakened her trust, Margot still had none for paranormal professionals. Or maybe she just didn’t want them to confirm something she was helpless to do anything about. Much as she resented it, Fitz’s skepticism had been a comfort.
The sky had darkened enough that Margot saw her reflection in the window; it seemed to mock her, so she clapped her book shut and stood.
Having foregone Chicago-style smiling-at-strangers for London avoiding-eye-contact-at-all-costs, she looked to the floor as she squeezed out from between the stools and adjacent tables, nearly running into a businessman at the exit. She timidly stared at his navy wool lapels as their mutual dodging of each other became an awkward doorway waltz.
“Margot?”
In confusion, she broke her tunneled vision and looked into the man’s eyes.
“James, oh my God!”
Chapter 14
Stardust
FUCKING COINCIDENCE was all Margot could think as James held her.
He was in town on business. And for all the reunion speeches she’d practiced in front of the mirror, the reality of seeing him again in the flesh had rendered her, well, speechless. He, too, lost the composure that would’ve otherwise accessorized his three-piece suit.
Since she’d been on her way out, he didn’t want to oblige her to stay at the café. Instead, he suggested an old pub down the road where some of his colleagues had gone for lunch, if she was available and hadn’t eaten yet. The rain had lessened to a misty drizzle, so they could probably make it back inside before the sky opened up again.
On th
eir walk down Ludgate Hill, Margot was no less surprised when James offered her a cigarette than he was when she accepted it. It seemed life since they’d last seen each other had granted both a new substance to abuse, and they exchanged shy smiles as James lit both cigarettes in his mouth before inserting one between Margot’s ready lips. She appreciated how he exhaled smoke into the air behind her so that she wouldn’t walk into it.
“It really is amazing to see you here,” she said as she straightened her posture and ignored her lack of makeup.
“Honestly.” He seemed to want to say more but didn’t.
They walked on without words, the silence broken only by the whir of engines and splatter of tires in puddles.
Biting the inside of her mouth, she spoke up. “This is kinda weird, huh?”
“No. Well, yeah. I’m surprised to see you here. I wouldn’t have expected it.” The comment would have come across as a lame redundancy, but Margot knew James better, and she knew what that pinched expression on his face meant.
“Is something bothering you?”
“Mm-mm.” He shook his head, but his pursed lips gave away there was definitely something. “Just a long workweek and looking forward to a midday pint.”
Margot didn’t press the issue. She looked forward to some coping in a cup as well; the circumstances seemed to call for lifting her ban, so it worked out well that he hadn’t been committed to the café for lunch. Their silence resumed until James gestured toward a narrow alley leading off Fleet Street and into seventeenth-century London.
“Rebuilt in sixteen sixty-seven?” Margot asked on reading the sign in the entryway.
“Yeah, the guy who recommended it said it burnt down in the Great Fire.” He followed her inside. “The cellar supposedly dates back to the twelve hundreds.”
“Incredible. And how patriarchal.” She pointed to the faded printing above a wooden doorway, which stated the room was for gentlemen only.
James laughed. “I doubt they still enforce that.”
“Looks like drinks only.” She peered across the way. “But that room might be for dining.” When James didn’t show recognition of anyone seated in there, Margot scooted farther down the wonky hallway to pop her head through yet another doorway, where she was confronted by a few staring businessmen drinking their lunch. “And that one looks like standing-room-only. Those might be your mates, though.”
“Listen to you, talking like a local.”
She leveled him with a flat stare.
“I’m just teasing,” he said.
“Yeah, you always are, aren’t you.”
“Look, don’t get mad. We haven’t seen each other in a long time. Let’s not start this way.”
She inhaled an inward vow to not let James’s knee-jerk condescension get to her. It didn’t matter anymore. So, playing innocent, she said, “I’m not mad. Don’t be so sensitive. Let’s just have fun.”
That sentiment was still caught in her head when, one round of pints and meat pies later, she asked, “That was our problem, wasn’t it? Having fun.”
Nestled within a small alcove in the cellar, they had some privacy away from the tourists in the larger adjacent rooms. James had been gracious enough to shrug off his coworkers since he’d get to see them soon enough back at the office, and he wanted some quality catch-up time with Margot, so she’d kindly fought back a laugh when he’d thumped his head—hard—on a low beam walking down the creaking stairs to where they presently sat.
With loosened tie and rolled shirtsleeves, he asked, “What are you talking about?” before finishing his amber ale with a double sip.
“You always complained that you wanted to have fun and that I was always preventing it.”
“Well, you used to turn everything into an argument. I could never do anything right, and it wasn’t fun anymore.”
“But life isn’t fun!” she asserted, like she had in countless quibbles before. “At least, it’s obviously not going to be all the time. As a whole, it has to involve a lot of serious work, too.”
“Yes, exactly. Enough of that comes from things outside our control, so I think as far as what is in our hands, we should make the most of it and not spend it arguing.” He stared at his empty glass. “Like now, for example.”
“I’m not turning this into an argument. I’m just saying I do want to have fun but don’t understand why you made me feel like it was my fault whenever we didn’t, never considering that it might’ve been something you did to upset me.”
James kept staring at his pint glass as he twisted it on the aged wooden tabletop, pursing his lips again as he did so. “I know. I’m sorry for that.” He paused. “I never knew how to make you happy.”
Margot was next to look down at her glass, escaping into the inch of honey-colored ale that remained. “The thing is, James, it was never your or anyone else’s responsibility to make me happy. We choose that for ourselves. I understand that now. And I’m wondering if maybe not all of us are meant to be happy. I might be biologically incapable of it.”
When she raised her gaze back up, it got caught in the intensity of his stare. Her contact faltered for a moment in mild self-consciousness, but she forced herself to look back at him.
“What are you doing here, Margot?”
“I’m finishing my brew,” she replied to lighten the atmosphere, then gulped down the remnants of her glass.
“No, I mean what are you doing in London? I thought you never wanted to leave home.”
“I don’t, and I haven’t. It’s a summer thing.”
“You don’t think it’s at all possible you’ll stay and find work here?”
“The thought’s crossed my mind, yes. And I should stay open to all my options, but—”
“It’s just me you’re closed to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You wouldn’t move to Zurich even temporarily for me, just to see how it went. Not even Boston when it was only a couple of hours away. I figured you were tied to your family and your job and nothing would take you away from there, but it turns out it was just me.”
That was the frank way she’d always wished he would speak, yet she didn’t know how to handle it now that he was. “Time for one more pint? My treat.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll get it. Same thing?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
As she sat alone in the dim light, she looked at the other few tables tucked away in the nook. Given the confined space, it was mainly other couples speaking barely above whispers, with the bare surroundings offering no distraction from their companions.
How weird that James would choose to sit here, away from the activity and phone reception.
She pressed her palm against the bumpy white wall beside her, and its subterranean coolness traveled to her shoulders. Reading a little blurb on the pub’s history to pass the time, she remarked, “Dickens used to drink here,” when he returned with two glasses dripping down their sides.
“Oh yeah? That’s cool.”
“I guess we’re in good company, then,” she said.
“Well, maybe would’ve been. Somehow I suspect there’s been a downgrade in this place’s patronage.”
“Snob.”
“Cheers.”
They clinked their glasses and swallowed a sip or two before speaking again. Margot felt emboldened.
“We might still be in good company, you know.”
“I know, I was only kidding.” James shook his head as he always had when conceding to one of her points, like a child acquiescing to his mom’s discipline. Knowing he affected this demeanor when at his most agreeable, she went for it.
“No, I mean the dead people.”
“What?” James laughed.
“I’m serious. If souls were happy here when they were living, why not stay when they’re dead? Seems a jolly place to spend eternity.”
“No doubt. I’d be pretty happy.” He cleared his throat with a hoarse ahh after another sip and shifted on his sho
rt wooden stool. “I read on a plaque that a hospital from the fifteen hundreds stood where my office is. Seems like that’d be fertile haunting grounds.”
He’d taken the bait.
“It’s everywhere. This central part is probably the most haunted, the old City. People take smoke breaks in corporate gardens where there are still tombs and burial mounds from the plague. And think of all the executions between Tower Hill and the Old Bailey.”
“Yeah, I saw where William Wallace was executed at Smithfield. Can’t even walk to lunch without stumbling on something like that.”
“It’s everywhere,” Margot repeated. “How could you have such mass death in one spot for centuries—hell, millennia—and not have a few resident ghosts?”
“You serious?” His smile faded, and Margot evaluated the expression when he continued to say, “I think there might be something to that stuff, too.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I dunno. I just remember my great-aunt’s old house as a kid. Her basement scared me shitless because my cousins had stories about it. I dunno, that stuff kinda stuck with me.”
She appreciated the way time and alcohol had loosened his tongue.
“So, you could say it’s something I’m open to,” he said, “just when that seems impossible.” He reached for her hand.
Aw shit. He’s not talking ghosts anymore.
“James, don’t…” She slid her hand out and grabbed her pint glass for another deep swig.
His hand thus unoccupied, he interlaced it with his other and leaned his elbows onto his knees. He looked dejected but kept his tone light. “Hey, I downloaded that Ethan Hawke movie a few months back.”
“Oh, that one.”
“I mean your favorite, the one you always quoted. Before Sunrise.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh yeah? How’d you like it?”
“I liked it a lot. I was surprised. The ending sucks, but I actually watched it over again.”
“Really. So why don’t you like the ending?”
“I won’t lie. I like a Hollywood ending that’s all tied up and happy. That one’s just too open-ended.”
