by Pat Cummings
“You know what? You are normal in a lot of ways, Theo.” Dr. Proctor smiled at him. “Everybody you see, every single person you know? They all have some problems they have to wrestle with, twenty-four-seven, every day. We’re all works in progress.”
“Even doctors?” Trace asked.
“Even doctors.”
Trace rested his hands on his stomach, lacing his fingers together as he studied the ceiling. Sunlight was filtering into the room through slats in the shuttered windows and thousands of tiny flecks danced in the light. What gave dust the power to fly? he wondered, remembering his dream. That sense of being suspended in the air, of being weightless, lingered. He still felt good from that dream.
“So, are you looking forward to this evening?” the doctor said cautiously. “Going out with any friends?”
The thought of knocking on doors, carrying a plastic pumpkin and scoring piles of candy, made Trace laugh. And suddenly, he found he was describing Auntie Lea’s gala plans in full detail, cupcakes to candles. He re-created the kitchen for the doctor: bats hanging overhead, pumpkin lights around the window, even Auntie Lea’s ancestral tree chart. The family tree. Trace caught his breath.
“Sounds like quite a project, Theo. And did you add a picture of yourself to the chart?” Dr. Proctor’s voice had softened. It seemed like it was almost tiptoeing across her desk toward him.
Trace had realized too late that he had been here before with her, being led down a corridor by innocent questions only to find that a door had clicked shut behind him. He never felt himself being steered, never intentionally opened the door in the first place, but he also never seemed to see it coming. He had not helped Auntie Lea with that project at all, had changed the subject if she even brought it up. But all right, he decided. Today, for one day only, the Halloween special: anything and everything the doctor wanted him to talk about was okay. Trace studied the doctor’s moonlike face as she watched him and nodded at her. “I will. Sure,” he replied evenly. “It’s my family and I’m the last leaf on the tree.”
An image of the bathtub in his grandmother’s house suddenly popped into his head: the weird, paw-like feet that supported it, the scuffs and scratches written into the porcelain, and the rubber stopper on a chain that plugged the drain. This was how he felt now: like he was in that tub tugging away at the plug. If he just kept pulling, he would yank that stopper out and let all the murky, hot, sudsy water, and everything he needed to scrub off, just swirl away.
Then he was telling Dr. Proctor about the iPod and about the last hugs all around and then about the deer. The deer that would not have been there half an hour, or even ten minutes, earlier. Trace felt as if he dared not stop, as if this was his one chance to confess: he told her about the river, about his mom’s face, her lips moving, and about his dad’s kicking. He told her about the strong dark hands pulling him out, he could see them clearly now, and about the closed windows—but how could they be closed? He felt raw now, reluctant to push on that bruised spot in his chest. But this was it. He even told her the final, impossible, and unfair fact: he was alive when all of it had been his fault.
“Or not,” Dr. Proctor said simply.
Trace sat up. His face was wet. No way had he been crying.
“Wh . . . wh . . . what?”
“Things happen no matter what we do, don’t they? That deer might have crossed that same road the same way a half hour earlier,” Dr. Proctor said quietly. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“But I made them go back. We wouldn’t have been there if . . . if . . .” Trace shook his head. That deer would not have been there earlier. This was some therapist mumbo jumbo she was trying to pull.
“If you had all left earlier, if you had spent the night and left the next day, if you had stopped to gas up, if your dad had driven slower or faster, or your grandmother had convinced you to stay for dinner . . . There may be a thousand what-ifs, Theo.” The doctor leaned back in her chair and looked at him with a sad smile. “Why pick the one that hurts the most?” she asked.
The room was silent. Trace braced for the wave, the lump, the sick feeling that came with any thought of the accident. But the river didn’t come for him. Dust motes kept dancing in the light. The doctor’s clock began chiming softly.
Good question, he thought.
Along some blocks, the sidewalks were ankle-deep with yellow leaves. Trace had to dodge hordes of candy-craving kids, moving gang-like from store to store, as he headed for the subway. Halloween was clearly an all-day event in Brooklyn, and shopkeepers were doing their part to keep the little sugar addicts hooked and happy. On average, Trace witnessed one withdrawal tantrum per block as he sidestepped miniature pirates, aliens, and superheroes.
Once he was settled on the train, the show continued. The cast was older, the costumes more elaborate: a human iPhone leaned against the doors, President Obama slouched in the seat across from him. Trace appreciated the distraction. What he did not want to do was to think about where he was headed and what might await him there.
He had thought about asking Dr. Proctor if she believed in ghosts. Of course, he had heard stories around campfires as a kid. And he had sat through bunches of blockbuster movies with his friends back in Baltimore, laughing every time something levitated or popped out of a closet. But asking an adult about ghosts would mean admitting that he thought they really might exist. No question that Auntie Lea was a believer, even if she had never said anything. And this guy Dallas . . .
The subway car was overly warm. Trace unzipped his jacket and looked up at his image in the darkened window opposite him as the train sped toward Manhattan. The thought that he might see another face, the face of a child sitting next to him or, worse, floating above him, flashed through his mind. He shivered and looked away.
When at last the train lurched to a halt at Forty-Second Street, Trace jumped up, relieved to push into the subterranean throng of real people, flesh-and-blood bodies, as they carried him along or brushed past him. This whole ghost thing was silly. A rush of cold air as he headed up the stairs to the street cleared his head. He would get this over with quickly, just tell Dallas that he needed to head home and help Auntie Lea with the party.
Tugging his gloves out of his pocket, Trace heard a faint clattering sound as something hit the sidewalk. What if he had not turned around? What if he had kept walking? he would think later. But he had turned. The little metal toy, the highlight of his 1860s presentation for Monday, the show-and-tell treasure he had forgotten was still in his pocket, was lying on 42nd Street, ready for any passerby to pick up or trample. Trace silently thanked the god of extra credit as he bent to scoop it up.
Taking the library steps two at a time, Trace shoved the toy back into his pocket, then patted it to be sure it was secure. At the information desk right inside the entrance, he gave his name and asked for Dallas Houston, then looked around while he waited.
It took some effort not to look too long at the woman behind the information desk. Her hair reminded him of spun sugar: pinkish orange, swept into high waves that seemed to float above her forehead, the whole mass shining as though it were shellacked. Her eyebrows, in two different colors, he noticed, were hand-drawn arcs that wobbled around the edges. Trace wasn’t sure that she was in costume.
A loud squeak made him turn. Across the marble hall, the door to the guards’ room was cracked open just enough to reveal the back of a bulky, dark-suited figure who was giving someone in the chair before him a hard time. Only last week, the poor guy in the chair had been him. All that Trace could see of the guy in trouble was a pair of twitching knees and one white-knuckled hand gripping the chair’s armrest before the hulking figure turned and slammed the door shut. In the split second that took, Trace saw the hot seat was occupied by none other than Lemuel T. Spitz.
He should have felt delighted. He was wondering why he didn’t when Dallas Houston appeared, grinning like the two of them were old pals.
“Thanks, Margaret,” Da
llas said to the cotton-candy-haired lady. “You look amazing today!”
The information lady gave Dallas a smile. At least, Trace guessed it was a smile: her thin red lips nearly disappeared as her mouth stretched into a straight line.
“Is she . . . ?” Trace began as they headed to the elevator.
“Margaret has her own sense of style,” Dallas said, giving Trace a wink, “every day.” Once in the elevator, Dallas inserted a key into a slot on a brass panel, gave it a quick turn, then pushed a button. Seconds later the doors opened onto the vast, shadowy underground that Trace had hoped never to see again.
“Right this way, Theo,” Dallas said brightly. Ahead, rows of shelving melted into darkness, and whatever could be seen was dimly lit. Actually, Trace did not want to see anything at all, so he kept his eyes trained on the back of Dallas’s blue denim shirt.
No wonder the guy was nuts, Trace thought. Working in this gloomy cavern, the air filled with book mold and wood-shaving dust, and cold, too—why was the air so chilly?—the smell of the earth down here, like a graveyard or something . . . would have anyone seeing ghosts. Trace nearly bumped into Dallas as the man turned abruptly and pushed open a heavy metal door.
“Welcome to my world,” Dallas said cheerfully, holding it open.
It was as if Trace had stepped through a portal into an underground museum. The room was stuffed—nooks and crannies, shelves and drawers, hooks and bins everywhere—but everything seemed to fit just right. Glowing wood cabinets and shiny metal equipment nestled side by side under a mix of cool blue or warm golden puddles of light spotlighting different workstations. Every wall was covered: carved masks, travel posters, hats by the door, electrical cords over counters, gleaming rows of tools next to a rusty collection of old-fashioned ones that Trace thought couldn’t possibly have any use now.
One corner of the room held a weathered leather sofa complete with patterned pillows, a throw blanket, and a book-burdened coffee table. Except for the wall behind it, which seemed to be covered with peeling wallpaper, it might have passed for a reading nook on one of those HGTV house tours that his mom used to watch. Soft jazz was playing and the scent of cinnamon hung in the air. It was cozy. And not at all what Trace had expected.
“So,” Dallas said brightly, “want some hot cocoa, tea, cider?”
Trace shook his head and looked around, taking in the room slowly. “What’s all that?” he asked, lifting his chin toward the tattered wall. He leaned over the couch to take a closer look.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Dallas beamed. “I’d kept them to see if they might come true, just tossed ’em in a box. Some of them really seemed to hit the nail on the head. Then, wham! One day I got the idea to paper the wall with them.” He smiled at Trace. “What you’re looking at is years of takeout, my man. Wherever your eye lands, there’s always something there. Check it out: pick any one and I betcha it’ll be relevant.”
From the top of the couch to a height of about six and a half feet, predictions and lucky-number slips from Chinese fortune cookies had been stuck to the wall in not-so-precise rows. Some were fading, some were torn or grease-stained, and many just dangled from yellowed tape that was losing its grip.
“Seriously?” Trace asked. He suppressed a twinge of panic. He was underground with a madman. A madman with sharp tools and buzz saws. And ghosts. If he did manage to get out of there in one piece, if he told Auntie Lea about all of this, she’d probably just start saving fortune cookies to help the guy out. For now, Trace was just annoyed. “Look. I promised Auntie Lea I’d be back soon. So, can we please just do this . . . this, whatever it is you got me down here for?”
Dallas grinned and held up both hands. “A’ight, a’ight.” Reaching around Trace, he pressed one loose fortune firmly against the wall. “The past can be your darkness or your lamp,” he read. “Good one. I know, I know, I gotta tape some of these down better.”
Patting Trace on the shoulder, Dallas turned to pour himself some hot cider. Lifting his mug, he offered to pour another one, but Trace shook his head; he hadn’t even noticed the mini kitchen tucked into the shelving near the couch. A melancholy John Coltrane number drifted out of the iPad that was propped atop a microwave oven. It was a tune his dad used to play, and Trace could feel the music wash through him, familiar and warm—tender was how his dad had described it. “In a Sentimental Mood.”
Dallas gestured for him to sit on the couch, but when Trace remained standing, he pulled a stool out from under a worktable with his foot and sat down, mug in hand, in no apparent hurry. He took a hesitant sip, set the mug down, and studied Trace.
“Look, man, I didn’t really think we’d go do a ghost-hunter thing. I just thought it would be cool to talk. I really like your Auntie Lea and I felt, well . . . I wanted to get to know you a bit and for you to get to know me too, all right? I mean, I hope to be spending some time with her and, hey, man to man, I just want us to be cool, that’s all.” Dallas took a deep breath, leaned back, and crossed his arms, waiting.
Trace knew the ball was in his court. He figured he should give the man a hard time. Put him through a workout, grill him for some history, or make him prove somehow that he was worthy of Auntie Lea’s attention. That he had anything to say about what his aunt did or didn’t do was news to him. But it was kind of nice that Dallas had asked. Trace smiled.
“If Auntie Lea’s cool with you, that’s what counts. We’re good, man,” he said. “So, this isn’t about that whole thing with the guards and the kid?”
“That business upstairs with Spitz?” Dallas shook his head. “He probably watches too many cops and robbers shows, you know? The library’s kinda short on criminal activity and he musta figured he’d hit the big time with you. Let’s just say Spitz has, um, missed a few software updates, you know?” Dallas took a slow sip of his cider.
“Okay,” he continued when Trace said nothing. “So the ghost thing.”
Trace braced himself.
“I can’t say I’ve actually seen anyone. I think I see something, someone, and then when I turn or when I get closer, it’s a stack of boxes or a chair that’s been covered. I thought I saw a kid one time, though, I really did.” Dallas seemed focused on a space above Trace’s head, as though trying to pull the memory out of the ether.
He nodded slowly, like he needed to reassure himself. “There is definitely a vibe that’s out there,” he said, gesturing toward the door, which Trace was very happy to see had been closed behind them. “I guess I stretched that bit about actually seeing anyone. But I do hear things from time to time. Things that, well, I chalk up for the most part to creaky shelves, or the building’s old and stuff is settling, or maybe it’s just cranky pipes—that sorta thing. But when I heard Spitz giving you the third degree I thought maybe you had seen him. You saw a kid, right?”
Trace exhaled, not even aware that he had been holding his breath. He really wanted to be done with this. “Right,” he said. “Just like I told the guards.” If he kept it short and sweet, maybe they could just leave.
“You know, this building—well, this property anyway—has some history to it. I don’t know if you know this, but—” Dallas began.
“Yeah, the draft riots, the orphanage fire in 1863, I know,” Trace said, more curtly than he had intended. “Got it.”
“Whoa.” Dallas leaned back, took up his mug again. “A historian. So maybe it’s not just my imagination at all; maybe it’s leftover energy or an aura or whatever—but nothing scary, okay? ’Cause nobody died or anything, they just—”
“A kid was killed,” Trace interjected, immediately sorry he had said it. “I mean, some sources say that and some don’t, so . . . so it’s just that I’ve been doing research for a school project and we’ve . . . well, I’ve been reading, that’s all.” Dallas was leaning forward now, giving him a puzzled look and nodding for him to go on.
“There was a girl, a nine-year-old girl who . . . who didn’t get out. I read that a crowd of angry white folks found
her and . . .” Trace’s voice unintentionally dropped to a whisper. “And they beat her to death. That’s what some sources say anyway,” he added quickly. The air around them was swirling with the last strains of Coltrane’s ballad, and then there was silence.
Suddenly a marimba beat erupted from Dallas’s shirt pocket, making them both jump. He fumbled for his phone.
“Houston speaking,” he said briskly. “Right. Can you bring it down? Okay, okay. What room? Gimme five minutes, ten maybe.” He pocketed the phone.
“Look, I have to go pick up a bench real quick. Tell you what. You chill here for a minute and, when I get back, we’ll head on over to Lea’s and help her set up for the party, okay? I’m taking off early today. We’ll see what we can see between here and the elevator and that’ll be it, deal? You’re officially off the hook.” Smiling, Dallas offered his hand to shake.
Trace grinned. Fortune cookie collection aside, the guy wasn’t entirely nuts. He shook Dallas’s hand.
“Do you need help carrying the bench?” Trace asked.
“No, thanks. Probably against union rules anyway, if not child labor laws,” Dallas said with a wink. “Do me a favor and polish off that cider though. There’s a mug on the shelf there and a jar of cinnamon sticks. I’ll be right back.”
Another tune came on. A Miles Davis piece called “So What” that Trace remembered, another of his dad’s favorites. He would have to find some of those songs and download them. Pouring himself what remained of the cider, he dropped a cinnamon stick into it and sank onto the couch. All the books on the coffee table, he noticed, featured wood, in one form or another. There was one about covered bridges and another about trees, with a deer on the cover stepping gingerly out of a dense forest. Damn deer. Trace eased out of his jacket, twisting to bunch it up by his side on the couch. With a clatter, the toy rattle fell from the pocket again. Trace retrieved it and rested it on the coffee table. He would have to be more careful.
Very quietly, something nearby shifted. There was a soft shuffling sound, then an intake of air like a sob. Trace froze, hearing every note that Miles was draining from his trumpet. Was it the music? A scratch in the recording?
