Not Flesh Nor Feathers

by Cherie Priest

Page 6

 

  “But this one started acting up before the buyout and the construction. ”

  “Maybe I’m wrong then. I don’t know. ”

  He pointed down one of the wide corridors and jutted his chin towards a door. “That’s it. Room 236. Go take a stab at finding out. Uh—is there anything I need to do? Should I come with you? Stay out here?”

  “Stay out here. I probably won’t be long. If there’s something in there and it wants to talk, great. If not, you’re out of luck. ”

  “Try to get me a name, or something I can check out on the Internet, or through genealogy records. Maybe we’ll turn up a grisly murder. ”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t that be great?” I said, but he didn’t seem to get that I was joking.

  “Hell yes it would. If she bleeds, she leads. Even if she bled out a hundred years ago. People eat this stuff up. ”

  “Your selfless pursuit of justice does you credit. ”

  “They’re going to give me a Nobel any day now, I can feel it. But I’d settle for a Pulitzer. ”

  “I bet you would. ” I checked that the digital recorder was on, and then I took the card key.

  “Feel free to chat into the mic yourself. Share your impressions of the room, the things you see. The stuff you hear. By all means sound a little panicky if you want. People dig panic. ”

  I slipped the card key into the slot lock and a green light appeared, letting me know that it was open. “Sure. And while I’m at it, I’ll slip into something flimsy and investigate a strange sound in the basement. Would that work for you?”

  “Like a charm”

  “Stay put,” I told him. “I’ll be back out in a few minutes. Keep quiet, and don’t knock or anything. ”

  “What if you need help?”

  “I don’t see that happening. Shut up and wait. ”

  I slipped inside and let the door slide close behind me with a hydraulic click. Within the room it was fairly dark, but afternoon sun oozed around the edges of the thick tapestry curtains. I went to the window and found the long white rod and pulled it to the right, drawing the curtains and their thick shade liner aside.

  Thick puffs of dust accompanied the swishing of the curtains, and when the daylight poured in I saw that yes, it had been a while since the place was cleaned. With two fingers I swiped a shiny trail in the finish of the nightstand.

  The bed was covered with a floral print spread, laid out in shades of green, maroon, and cream. A sturdy, cherry-stained headboard was fastened to the wall, and a large armoire held a television. I didn’t see a remote control. There was a coffee-maker, though, and an empty ice bucket beside the vanity sink.

  “Hello?” I asked the room. “Anybody here?”

  I don’t go in for too much formality, because in my experience it doesn’t help much. More often than not, the trigger is something simpler—something obscure and important that you’d never think about in a million years, anyway. You may as well wing it.

  I tried a mental rundown of all the things a maid might disturb.

  I pictured a big cart, laden with towels and shampoo samples. I imagined a vacuum. Dust rags. When would it begin? What would rouse the Lady in White?

  “Anybody?” The red light on the recorder shined an electric thumbs-up that said all was well and ready. “Can anyone hear me? Would anyone like to come out and talk? Or is the staff here completely bananas?”

  I muttered that last part.

  A tiny electric shock zapped my hand, and I dropped the recorder. I shook my hand to chase the prickling sensation away, and bent over to retrieve Nick’s little toy.

  Then the television sparked too, over on my left. It gave a half-hearted spit of electricity, sending a bright line across the center of the screen. Then the screen went dark again, except for the square reflection of the big open window.

  I saw a pattern there, on the screen. It was illuminated by the slanting sun.

  I left the recorder where I’d dropped it and approached the TV. I knelt before it and angled my head to best see the dusty residue in full relief.

  “Now we’re talking,” I breathed. “You are here, aren’t you? You can come out if you want. I’m not afraid of you. I’ll listen if you’ve got something you’d like to say. I’m good at passing messages around. ”

  Pressed into the dust on the screen was a flattened imprint. “Is this you?” I asked, sneaking my fingertip up along the gray glass. “Is this your face? Did you put this here?”

  Very clearly I saw it, and the closer I looked the more details became apparent. A cheek was pushed into the set, with an open mouth, and a closed eye. Along the edges of the eye I spied faint feathering, where lashes had brushed themselves against the dirty monitor.

  The face was hard to read, since I could see only the half impression. It might have been angry, or sad. Or frightened.

  A quick tickle of movement caught my eye. Something flickered through the window’s reflection, but it moved too fast to watch, to register what it was. It might have been an arm, or a sleeve. Something that waves, or directs, or hits.

  But when I looked away from the screen there was nothing there in the gold patch of light beside the bed.

  No matter how hard I squinted I couldn’t make anything out of it, not any proper shape or message. Only . . . if I used my imagination, I might have said that there was a place in the beam where the dust didn’t swirl or float. There may have been a blank spot, where the air was clear. If I thought about it. If I was looking for something to see.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” I told the mostly unseen presence. “You’ll have to be more direct. I want you to know, I’m not here to cast you out or anything. I’m not here on God’s behalf, or for anyone who’d try and make you leave. You can stay, go, or wreak havoc. I don’t care. I just want to know why. Maybe I can help you. ”

  Over on my right, I thought I saw it again—that half-seen blip of motion, relegated to the farthest corner of my eye.

  It was a mistake.

  I stood up straight, having been crouched beside the TV up until that moment. “What was a mistake? Hey, I heard that. Come on, come out. Let’s talk. ”

  She didn’t answer right away, and didn’t come forward.

  “I’m Eden,” I told her. “Who are you? Is there something you want? Something I can help you with? I’m here to listen, if you want to talk. ”

  It was a mistake.

  “What was a mistake? What happened?”

  A loud popping noise startled me. It took me a moment to figure out where it was coming from—the curtains. Up at the top of the rod, one of the circular wooden rings broke and the end of the curtain sagged. Then another did the same. And one more, right next to it. The curtain began to fall.

  “Do you want the curtains open? I can open them for you. Do you want more light? Is that it?”

  Let it burn.

  “Let what burn?”

  The Klan will burn it. All of it.

  The curtain was nearly on the floor, now hanging from just two small rings. These also broke and dropped, and the window was exposed. “All of what?”

  All of us.

  “Did—did you burn? I know there were fires here. ” There were at least two—one when the first hotel burned down a hundred years ago, and another when the new building nearly went up in smoke sometime more recently. “Did you die in a fire here?”

  It would almost be too easy.

  No.

  “Okay. Then please, tell me your name. Tell me who you are. ”

  She started to form, as if the question required more of her presence. She was pacing from one corner of the room to the other, holding up and dragging the curtains, tugging at the faucet handles. Bit by bit they began to turn.

  Caroline.

  “Caroline? Okay. Caroline. ” Nick would be delighted. “Caroline who?”

  She wasn’t
really in white, I didn’t think—but she had that light, faded look that spirits get when they’re only half holding on anymore. By her clothes I thought she might have been from the 1930s; she was wearing a short-sleeved dress that stopped just past her knees, chunky heeled shoes, and a small hat with a decorative bit of mesh. Her hair was ragged and she was wearing one gray glove, but missing the other.

  She scratched at her wrist—the one without a glove covering it—and I wished I could see it better. I wondered what habit she’d had in life that made her keep up the gesture even after death.

  But she wasn’t solid enough to show me any details.

  “Caroline,” I tried again. “Do you know where you are? Do you know what’s happened?”

  Read, she said, in an offhand sort of way that implied she was barely answering me, or not paying attention. I wasn’t sure how well the Q&A was going to go, if she was this distracted and confused.

  I tried to encourage her, to keep her talking. “That’s right, you’re in the Read House. The hotel is being remodeled. Did you know that?”

  The hotel. Again she spoke with her voice and her eyes in different places.

  Since the events with Old Green Eyes, I’d spent a great deal of time on the phone and on the Internet with Dana Marshall, who chased ghosts professionally for a big cable TV station. She’d taught me a lot. I was learning to categorize the dead people I encountered, which was useful because it gave me a better idea of what to expect from them.

  Before Dana and her methodical approach to the supernatural, I’d always walked into these situations freeform. I approached every strange event with an attitude of, “Hey, I’m here and ghosts talk to me. Let’s get this party started. ” But it didn’t always work very well, and I never knew why.

  Come to find out, it’s because there are different kinds of hauntings—with ghosts that show varying degrees of sentience. Dana had it all worked out, with charts and everything; but I still preferred to take a more casual approach when I could get away with it.

  I assumed, based on the general unresponsive nature of Caroline, that she fell into the popular “barely there” category. More often than not, these are the legendary dead who routinely follow some habitual path. They walk the afterlife in a loop of practice, no longer remembering much about what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. In time, most of them fade away to wherever it is they go, having completely forgotten why they stayed in the first place. Sometimes they need help, but more often they refuse it. Occasionally they’re too far gone to accept it.