A Game of Ghosts

by John Connolly

‘Right.’

  He lingered at the door.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked.

  She didn’t even glance up.

  ‘I think I’ll just read for a while longer before I go to sleep. I have a big order to prepare in the morning.’

  Kirk turned away, closed the door behind him, and returned to his room.

  We don’t exist, he thought. There is no Kirk and Sally Buckner.

  We are already ghosts.

  49

  The Collector did not head north to Maine and Parker, but south, back to his refuge in Delaware. It was compromised, this final lair, this sanctuary. Parker had tracked him down to it, but he was alone in doing so, and showed no inclination to share his knowledge of the Collector’s whereabouts with others. This, at least, was good. The Collector had no desire to sell the house and try to move on again, not yet.

  His father, the lawyer Eldritch, was growing frailer. He had appeared to rally for a time after the injuries he sustained during an attack on his old offices back in Massachusetts, but that upturn had been followed by a gentle decline. He now slept for most of the day, and often struggled to recall names and details from old cases. Consequently, his efforts to reassemble his destroyed records from memory had ground to a halt. Without his vocation to spur him on, Eldritch seemed to have given up. His eyes, once clear and bright, were now yellowed and rheumy. He no longer shaved every morning, and had dispensed with the neckties that had previously finished off the careful assemblage of his wardrobe. Even were he considering moving locations, the Collector would have been reluctant to do so for fear of the effect such an upheaval might have on his father.

  But in Eldritch’s moments of lucidity, his former powers were revealed, even if his flawed file on Routh had given only a hint of the dead man’s singularity. The more his father uncovered about Routh, the more ultimately unknowable the man appeared to be. There was his elusiveness, his impenetrability. He had not been as easy to read as so many others that the Collector had punished. Perhaps the fault did not lie with Eldritch. Perhaps there was no fault at all. Routh was simply unusual, and if the Collector required further proof of this then it lay in the reaction of the Hollow Men. They had not wanted to touch this one. They had no desire to welcome him into their number. Routh bore some deeper, odder taint that now made his past worthy of further investigation.

  In the quiet of his study, his father dozing in a chair in the next room, the TV silently broadcasting inanities, the Collector went back over the Routh material, detail by detail, but by the end of the process he had merely confirmed what he already suspected: Donn Routh had, for decades, managed to hide an innate strangeness from view, and in death had left no clues, or none that the Collector could follow.

  The afternoon light was fading, and darkness was rousing from its slumber. He heard a sound from behind. Eldritch laid a hand on his son’s shoulder, like a bird alighting.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Eldritch asked.

  ‘Thinking about this man.’ The Collector gestured at the file, and his father stooped to view the picture attached to it, because he was not wearing his spectacles.

  ‘Routh.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘You did it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why should his file be on your desk, and his fate on your mind? He is gone, done with.’

  ‘He was different.’

  ‘How? Don’t tell me you’re feeling regret at his passing.’

  ‘Only that I did not interrogate him before he died, except I don’t believe he would have told me anything, even under the knife. He was hiding a secret. He’d been hiding it for most of his life, I think.’

  ‘And what was this secret?’

  ‘I haven’t discovered it yet. Possibly the fact that he was worse than we imagined.’

  Eldritch’s grip tightened on his shoulder, the talons of the bird tensing in preparation for flight.

  ‘Then to hell with him.’

  Each stared at the other’s reflection in the window. Snow lay heavy on the lawn, the bare branches of bushes poking through in places like the browned fingers of buried men.

  ‘I’m dying,’ said Eldritch.

  ‘I know.’

  His tone betrayed no feeling.

  ‘You’ve never told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘About what lies beyond. About what awaits me.’

  ‘You’re in no danger. You’ll sleep, and when you wake you will be transformed.’

  ‘Will I remember?’

  ‘Only if you want to.’

  ‘I don’t think that I do, or not this.’ And the Collector knew he meant all that they had done, and the taking of lives in which Eldritch had conspired. ‘I don’t want to forget your mother, though. I don’t want to forget everything.’

  ‘And me?’

  The silence that followed was broken only by the rattle and wheeze of his father’s breathing.

  ‘I treated you like my son.’

  ‘Am I not your son?’

  ‘My son died. You took his place. You wore his skin, spoke in his voice, looked at me with his eyes, but you were never my boy. You were a changeling.’

  ‘You raised me. I called you “father”. If I was not the son you might have had, then I was, at least, a son.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true. Whatever the facts of it, there’s no point in arguing about them now. I’m hungry. There are cold cuts in the fridge. I’m going to make a sandwich. You want one?’

  He did not, but heard himself say that he did. He knew that Eldritch would do no more than peck at the bread, leaving most of it for the trash. He was eating so that his son would eat, and his son was eating so that the father would eat. If it was madness, it was of a gentle character.

  ‘Then I’ll take care of it,’ his father said. He moved away, his reflection fading, but he stopped before it vanished entirely.

  ‘You were a good son,’ he said. ‘I could not have asked for better.’

  The Collector did not answer. He stared beyond himself, into the gathering shadows, and thought that grief, for so long alien to him, might soon be a stranger no longer.

  50

  Moxie Castin operated out of a compact suite of offices on Portland’s Marginal Way. He had been married and divorced three times, and continued, by some miracle, to be on good terms with all his ex-wives, even if he displayed no inclination to make it fourth time lucky. He never wanted for female company, despite his unprepossessing exterior. He was overweight – or undersized: as he liked to tell Parker, ‘My weight is fine, it’s just my height that’s the problem.’ He wore expensive suits that never fit properly, and paired them with either black or brown brogues, regardless of whether or not the color of the shoes matched the outfit. He smoked enough cigarettes to merit a Christmas card each year from Philip Morris, and took his nickname from the carbonated beverage he consumed in similar quantities to oxygen. Although born Oleg, no one in Portland ever called him by that name. Even the newspapers had dispensed with putting his nickname in quotation marks. He was Moxie Castin, and that was the name they would carve on his gravestone.

  Parker had called ahead to make sure Moxie was around, and found him running the numbers with his secretary on a personal injury case in which a man had lost his right arm in an industrial accident. From what Parker could tell, as Moxie waved him into his office, the insurance company was playing hardball because the man was reported to be left-handed, and consequently it had made an offer that was about thirty percent lower than Moxie’s own estimate.

  ‘Vampires,’ said Moxie, with some feeling. ‘Leeches. Snakes in the grass.’

  Moxie’s secretary nodded Parker a greeting. She wasn’t the talkative kind; that, or she’d simply given up long ago on trying to get a word in when Moxie was around, and this silence had infected all of her dealings with the world.

  ‘What will you do?’ Par
ker asked.

  ‘I’ll say he was ambidextrous. Good luck to them proving he wasn’t.’

  He finished scribbling some notes, handed them to his secretary, and asked her to type them up. Moxie ran a bijou, personal business. He had a couple of people he could draft in if needed, but he prided himself on the fact that anyone who availed themselves of his services got looked after by him. Parker did some work for Moxie on occasion, mainly process serving and pretrial investigations. Moxie paid well, and on time. When he died, the people of Maine would have to club together to erect a statue in his honor, if only to remind themselves, and the majority of his profession, that you didn’t have to be a jerk to be a lawyer. Then again, Parker supposed it all depended on whose side Moxie happened to be. Somewhere, an insurance lawyer would soon be cursing Moxie’s name and wondering just how one could prove conclusively that a one-armed man had not, until recently, been ambidextrous.

  Moxie told Parker to take a seat, opened a can of soda, and asked what he could do for him. In return, Parker handed over the documents from Rachel’s attorney. Moxie read through them, slowly. Parker didn’t disturb him. When he was done, Moxie placed the paperwork on his desk and scowled.

  ‘It’s pretty standard stuff at this stage. How are you and Rachel getting along?’

  ‘Could be better. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  ‘Yeah, kind of goes without saying. What I mean is, you’re not throwing stuff at each other, or exchanging gunfire?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is she doing this as a last resort?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Did you feel it coming?’

  ‘Kind of. After what happened with Sam, it was always going to be bad.’

  ‘Yeah. Still, at least it sounds like she’s playing fair. If you’re getting fucked, then you’re getting fucked. But if you’re getting fucked by someone who’s smiling, then you’re really getting fucked.’

  ‘Words to live by.’

  ‘I like to think so. I’ll make the call and get the ball rolling with her attorney. I don’t know her, but if she’s in Vermont she probably wears beads and has someone to cleanse her aura. Best thing to do in these cases is find out what the other party wants, and what she’ll settle for, and then you tell me what you want, and what you’ll settle for, and when everyone’s equally unhappy, we have an agreement that we can present to a judge.’

  ‘I just want what’s best for Sam.’

  ‘Sure, but you don’t need to get hosed. You may think Rachel won’t hose you, but if it comes down to it, she will. You were never married, you live in different states, and people seem to shoot at one of the parties, namely you, on a regular basis. At the risk of casting a pall over proceedings before we begin, you’re not starting from a position of strength. I take it you contributed to the child’s support?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it a formal agreement?’

  ‘No. Rachel and I decided it between ourselves.’

  ‘You keep records?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘She won’t lie about it.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You got stubs, copies of cashier’s checks, anything?’

  ‘I told you: Rachel won’t lie.’

  ‘I hear you, but just find what you can and pass it along to me, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘In the meantime, take a few days. Think about what you really want out of this, your daughter’s happiness aside.’

  Parker opened his mouth to speak, but Moxie held up his hands to quiet him.

  ‘I know, I know: you want what’s best for her, but if you aim to crucify yourself, find another lawyer to hammer in the nails. I’m not in the business of facilitating the creation of martyrs. That’s why I’m telling you to let this sit for a while and figure out what you can live with. For now, try not to shoot anyone, and if anyone looks like he’s going to shoot at you, ask him not to until we’ve been before a judge. You staying around town?’

  ‘I may have to leave for a couple of days.’

  Parker told him about his meeting with Ross, and the investigation into Jaycob Eklund’s disappearance. Moxie, thanks to his work on the contractor agreement, was one of the few people who knew of Parker’s arrangement with Ross, and he didn’t like it.

  ‘Have I told you I don’t like it?’ he said.

  ‘About a million times.’

  ‘Then I’m telling you again. This won’t end well. You think you’re using Ross, and Ross thinks he’s using you. That requires a delicate equilibrium for both parties to remain satisfied, and that equilibrium is never going to be sustainable for long. It’s like a marriage.’

  ‘I can see now why you’re thrice divorced.’

  ‘“Thrice”? Jesus, who are you: William Shakespeare? Whichever attorney let you sign that contract should be ashamed of himself.’

  ‘I’m not sure he has that capacity.’

  ‘Really? I like him more already.’

  Parker stood to leave. They shook hands.

  ‘We’ll get this thing with Sam worked out,’ said Moxie. ‘I promise.’

  ‘I trust you.’

  ‘And I know that it sucks. No one ever wants to end up in court arguing over a child. If we can find a way to avoid that, we’ll both have done a good day’s work.’

  ‘See you around, Moxie.’

  Parker left and closed the office door behind him. He was almost at the lobby when Moxie’s door opened again.

  ‘Hey, did I ever tell you that you shouldn’t have made that deal with Ross?’

  Parker drove up to Middle Street and found a spot near Bull Moose. The store had expanded, and now seemed to have more space for DVDs and Blu-rays than before, although the CD racks had stayed pretty much the same, and there was more vinyl. Whatever the balance, Parker was just glad to see a business that was still thumbing its nose at the death of the record store, and appeared to be doing okay out of it. He even liked the smell of the place, a funk of paper and plastic. He dropped enough money to feel that he was helping the cause, then headed over to Arabica, bought a coffee, and took a seat in the raised area at the back of the café. He was alone.

  He watched the cars go by on Spring Street. He thought about Sam. He remembered the night Rachel told him she was pregnant, how he had held her until she slept, almost overwhelmed by feelings of gratitude and fear. He had lost one daughter, and had never imagined being the father to another. Now his life, in ways that he could not entirely explain to another, revolved around Sam.

  He was glad to be leaving town. It would distract him from his personal problems. He still wasn’t angry. That, at least, gave him some satisfaction. Getting angry wouldn’t help.

  He finished his coffee and got up to leave. The floor felt thin and hollow beneath his feet, as though it must surely disintegrate if more weight were placed on it. Below it – below everything – was only darkness.

  Darkness, and the creatures that moved through the honeycomb world.

  51

  Philip watched Mother pour herself another cup of tea. When she eventually died, and the flesh rotted away, he believed that her revealed bones would be stained brown.

  He loved his mother.

  He hated his mother.

  Although not as much as he hated his father.

  ‘I have a job for you,’ said Mother.

  Philip did not bristle, even though she spoke to him as if to a messenger boy. He had worked hard to develop an exterior that would not show emotion. Whenever it failed him, as it had when Parker mocked him about his parentage, he felt an intense disappointment with himself. He had not slept well the night before, his mind tormenting him with alternative permutations of his confrontation with the detective and his friends, each ending with them on, or in, the ground. Every display of weakness made it harder for him. If he wanted to be a leader, he would have to learn to behave like one.

  ‘Of course, Mothe
r,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to go away.’

  She was working her way through a sheaf of documents: annotating some, adding colored adhesive notes to others, and laying aside a handful to be shredded. He fought the urge to wrench the papers from her hands. This was his future being divided up and disposed of before his eyes, and she did not have the decency to consult him about it. She even appeared to take a certain pleasure in making it clear that she was excluding him from these decisions by working while speaking with him, when she could just as easily have taken care of business matters in the privacy of her own small office.

  But now Philip was confused.

  ‘What do you mean by “go away?”’

  ‘I’m concerned that the final disposition of—’ The pause was barely perceptible, but Philip had spent too long in his mother’s company not to notice.

  Go on, he thought, say it, even if only once: my father.

  But Mother, as always, refused to acknowledge her son’s male progenitor. It was a strange game they played. Ever since he was a boy, he had suspected that Caspar Webb was his father, even though the man showed him no particular affection and displayed little interest in his activities, present or future. For much of his life, he and Mother occupied a wing of the house on Block Island, but it was only in his midteens that Philip came to understand that Caspar Webb, the man for whom Mother acted as secretary, was something more than a wealthy recluse.

  Philip suspected that his conception had been the result of a brief liaison, a moment of weakness and lust on the part of Mother and Webb. He did not believe he was the product of rape, because his mother’s devotion to Webb made no sense in that context, but he could not recall witnessing a single moment of intimacy between them.

  As he mused, Philip found himself cradling his malformed fingers as though to conceal them. They were, for him, an outward manifestation of his blighted pedigree, a physical symbol of his failure. He would sometimes catch Webb glancing at them with disgust, or perhaps this was just a trick of Philip’s mind, a justification for the actions that followed.