The Last to See Me

by M Dressler

  “I saw it. I saw the struts get jerked out from under it. And there’s more.”

  He tells her about my kindness, my gentleness to Manoel with the watch. But he doesn’t make it sound kind at all.

  “It’s called extensis. The ability to extend movement outside, beyond. This wasn’t your fault, Ellen. We couldn’t have stopped this. This was a clear message. Manoel was the message. It put the watch right under his nose. To show him time was running out. It was clear and vicious.”

  But I only gave Manoel what he wanted. What he asked for.

  Pratt looks at the ambulance. I stand cold beside it, people rushing past me. I have to stay unfeeling. I can’t let him see what more I can do, can feel. Not now.

  Ellen presses her hands to her eyes. “What am I going to say to Manoel’s family? How do I explain this, that a ghost could do this?”

  “Not all of them could. Or would. But now we know what we’re dealing with. Which means we have to be very, very careful. I want you to step away from all this, please. I don’t want you coming to this house anymore.”

  “No.” She pushes away from the curb and stands. “This is my property. My client. My responsibility. I have to think about all this. I have people to call. I just need to think about what I have to do.” Her small shoulders set. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I jumped clear.”

  “We should have you checked out. By the medics. Right now.”

  “No, I have to think, same as you. I have to think about where it went. The way the grasses bent, blew—it was flying. Toward the cliffs.” He stands too and stares. “In that direction. It was racing. As if it knew where it wanted to go. I asked you for a list of abandoned spaces … It followed a path of some kind. Where could it have been going? Can you think of anything that wasn’t on the list?”

  And now, Ellen, little Ellen, you must do something for me, please, since Manoel can no longer help me with my plan, nor can my plan be as simple as I meant it to be. You must tell him more about Alice. Tell him where Alice painted her watercolors. Tell him about the little hut hidden down on the beach. Remember and tell him, so I can still lead him where I want him to go.

  She shakes her head. “Manoel first. The ambulance … I should go with it. To the hospital. I need to be there with his family.”

  “Just think. Are there caves down there on the beach? Grottoes? Help me.”

  “I need your help.” She looks up at him, amazed and almost angry. “At the hospital. Help me explain to Manoel’s family, first.”

  “Not possible. The constable wants to see me right away. The police never know what to do in a case like this.”

  “Tell them to wait. Tell the constable you’ll meet with him in an hour. Two at most. We can go to the hospital together and then to the constable’s office. That’s what we have to do, need to do.”

  “Fine. Then let’s do that. Now.”

  But why won’t Ellen do as I want? Why is Pratt keeping her so close, taking her arm? She doesn’t belong to him. He doesn’t see what I see—the tense little muscles in her jaw.

  “We’ll take my car,” she says as she loosens from him to get her keys. “The hospital is in Fort Kane. I know the way.”

  I fly after them as far as Evergreen Hill, where they go off to the north, along the highway. I can’t, I don’t like to go any farther. Benito is my home, as far as the Point. A ghost stays because she chooses to stay. Her will chooses it. My will. I’m not like the visitors who come to the cliffs to stare at the horizon, pulling out their cameras and devices to try and capture a moment they’re so afraid they’ll lose and forget. A ghost never forgets. The vows Quint and I made, as we walked along the cliff’s edge … The words we shared, words of faith and hope and some kindness …

  And Pratt calls me vicious. If only I could shout at him: if the living don’t listen to the warnings of the dead, how are we to blame? I hover near the spot where once Quint and I waltzed under a broken moon. For what is a ghost, what is a ghost, except a voice in your head you should pay attention to, but don’t?

  Pratt and Ellen come back at last from Fort Kane. She’s the one who leads the way into the constable’s station. The constable has been waiting for them, too. On a usual day Constable Knightley doesn’t have much work to do, other than handing out tickets to tourists who’ve parked their cars on the wildflowers or let their dogs run across the headland with no leash. I’ve kept busy studying him through the window blinds. He’s a heavy man, his body carved into rolls by his belt and buttons. He’s unhappy watching Ellen and Pratt sit down in front of him. He doesn’t know what to do. He wants to keep Benito quiet and pleasant. He doesn’t want anyone to know there’s ever any trouble along this bright, pretty cove. He wants this village to look safe for the tourists, and it’s his business to make it so. He doesn’t like cleaners, because cleaners mean there is something messy to clean.

  “I’ll need to see your credentials, please, Pratt.”

  From the center of his desk, Knightley slides a curved black device forward. Pratt pushes back his black sleeve and holds the metal band at his wrist under its red eye.

  “Licensed and bonded.” Knightley nods. Then he sighs and doesn’t seem to be any happier. “I don’t recognize that model. The latest from the valley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Worn at all times on duty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I trust you to discharge your weapon only where warranted and at the appropriate target?”

  “Absolutely. This one,” Pratt pulls down his sleeve and nods at the metal buckled to Knightley’s waist, “makes no errors.”

  “Oh really? You’re claiming there have been no mistakes made already today?”

  “Constable,” Ellen says quickly, “Mr. Pratt is one of the very best in the state. We’re lucky to have him here.”

  Knightley turns and jabs his finger toward the window and me. “That out there doesn’t feel anything like luck to me, I’m afraid.”

  “I understand how you must feel.” Pratt stays calm. “But there’s no need for panic or recriminations. You’ve got something aggressive here that has to be dealt with aggressively. And Ellen’s right. I’m here to deal with it. And I will.”

  Knightley seems to sense he’s gone off track and begins making notes. “You’ve reported this as a haunting.”

  “I have.”

  “Not a structural collapse.”

  “No. Demolition. Deliberate and definitive. With extensis. Extensis is—”

  The constable holds his hand up. “I know what it is. But we’ve never had anything like that here, ever.”

  “It’s rare but not unheard of.”

  It’s quiet in the room for a moment. The clock over Knightley’s head ticks like a leak. He looks up and eyes both Ellen and Pratt suspiciously, as though they might be against him, somehow.

  “You told my deputy Cristo went up without any difficulty, at first.”

  “That’s correct. We were in direct communication as he checked the tower. He said everything was fine. And speaking solely as a handyman, he was being accurate. There was nothing deeply wrong with the structure. His assessment was sound. But I think he may have angered the presence. I don’t know how. He went inside the water tank. After I told him not to.”

  “Then why did he go in?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. But when he came out the wood splintered underneath him. It simply … evaporated.”

  “Except that it didn’t evaporate. It crushed him, is what it did. From the neck down.”

  “That was not Manoel’s fault.”

  “Wasn’t it yours?” Knightley leans forward. “Did it never occur to you, since you were looking for a ghost that had already terrified two of Ms. DeWight’s clients, and since you presumably know what these monsters can do, that something like this could happen?”

  He’s just called me a monster, hasn’t he? But some accidents are only accidents—aren’t they? I stay as cold
and still and calm as Pratt does.

  “It’s rare, Knightley. I’ll forever have to live with—”

  “It was the insurance.” Ellen leaps to the hunter’s rescue. “The historical commission. Everyone told us Manoel had to go up there. Everyone. And the Danes—they were scared, but they weren’t hurt. So how could any of us know it was so dangerous?”

  “Well, would you have gone up on that tower, Ms. DeWight?”

  It’s Pratt’s turn to flare. “This has nothing to do with her, Knightley. This wasn’t her fault or Manoel’s, or yours, or anyone else’s. This can’t be about assigning blame. Not to anyone who’s breathing—but you know that. I can see it in your face. You know this isn’t a crime you can cuff a perp for. There’s nothing here that can be vindicated in a court of law. Which is why I’m here.” He sits back again. “We clean. We are judge and jury and executioner. I’m here for one reason and that’s to keep the living on one side and the dead on the other. I’m sorry Benito is having to see the ugliest side of what I do. I know you’ve had cleaners here before and gotten what you thought were good results. You had every reason to believe your town was taken care of. But it isn’t. What is still here, I’m afraid to tell you, is not normal. It is strong, it is angry, and it is, for now, not going anywhere. And that is why I’m here. Because I will sink this thing so something as terrible as today doesn’t happen again. But it will happen again, unless I sink it.”

  But you won’t sink me. You won’t.

  “With your help, Knightley.”

  The constable leans back, his weight relaxing a bit into his chair. “I could almost feel sorry for it, the way you talk.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “We like things on an even keel here, Pratt. Everything in its place. Everyone knowing their place. That’s how a town like Benito goes on, out here in the middle of nowhere. Everyone needs to know we’re safe. We’re a tourist town, these days. We didn’t used to be and we’ve had our share of hard times, but it’s important now that no one sees that. We’re a kind of show, to call a spade a spade. People with time and money to spare come here, and they want to see and walk around something serene and happy and pleasant. They don’t want to think there’s anything unhappy between them and their money buying some happiness. You understand? So we need to take care of this quietly and quickly.

  “And you.” He turns to Ellen. “As for your buyers, you tell them I want not only their inspections and this cleaning finished, now, I want the Cristo family justly compensated for this tragedy above and I do mean above and beyond the terms of Mr. Pratt’s bond. You can tell them I know all about the building permits they’re wanting. There are no secrets in this town. You tell them we expect compensation for damages done.”

  There are no secrets in this town? I’d laugh, if it wouldn’t shake some of my anger loose.

  Pratt stands. “I’ll be the one to talk to Dane.”

  Ellen gets up, too, and I can see she’s trying to look taller than she is. Braver. “I’ll assist Mr. Pratt.”

  Pratt holds out his hand. “And Knightley, I’m trusting that I can call on your deputies again if the need arises?”

  Knightley has stayed in his seat and doesn’t move. “To be honest, you might have some trouble getting them out that way again. They aren’t paid as well as you are, Mr. Pratt. And they certainly aren’t paid anything near enough to cross to the other side, as you call it. Not our jurisdiction, you know.”

  Oh, it’s almost worth it. It’s almost worth it to have had to freeze my heart and listen just so I can see, now, the amazed look on Pratt’s face as he learns how weak and cowardly Benito’s law officers are and always have been. Afraid to look into dark places and corners they can’t name and don’t want to see into.

  Pratt holds his hand up so Ellen can pass by him and walks out after her.

  “We should go back to the hospital now,” she says when they’re outside on the street, beside the seashell and kite and taffy shops, the tourists milling in the sun around them. “Both of us.”

  I think she wants to distract Pratt from the constable’s crudeness.

  “I think you’d better go on by yourself, Ellen. And you’d better keep away from here for a while, as I said.”

  “But the Lambry House never hurt me.” She looks down at the sidewalk, where a dropped and torn map of Benito lies sticky. “Why is that? When I’ve been involved, all the time. I even started all of this, in a way. What does that mean?”

  “All it means is that it hasn’t hurt you yet.”

  “Will it hurt you?”

  “It would have to get close to me to do that. And it won’t want to.”

  “I’m sorry about the constable. He’s afraid.”

  “But not you.”

  “It’s not that I’m not.” She picks up the map and throws it in the can at the curb, then fumbles in her satchel for her keys. “I think it’s that I still remember that boy in the mine. How do you know if what you’re doing is right? How do we know when something is horrible and when it’s only desperate?” Her hand is shaking suddenly. “I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

  “Ellen, you’re not well. Delayed reaction. Don’t go back to the hospital right now.”

  “No.” She shrugs his hand from her shoulder. “I can handle myself. You need to do your work. You need to fix this. You heard the constable. The tourists might start to leave. Then the whole thing falls to pieces … What time is it now?”

  There’s a bench on the sidewalk where Main Street meets Albion Street. Pratt guides her to sit down. Beside the bench stands a street lamp. Attached to the lamp, like a child’s head sticking out from a merry-go-round, is a clock. It was put there years ago by one of the town fathers. I like to sit under it, too, when I need a moment to think and steady myself, and watch its hands move in a circle all by themselves. A clock isn’t a living thing, but it seems to live.

  I remember when Alice gave Manoel his gold timepiece. It wasn’t just because she was in love with him—she wanted him to spend time with her. They were standing very close together in her canopied bedroom, and he was holding her hand and saying he didn’t know how he could wear such a fine thing or explain it to his wife. They’d stood so close their lips had touched, and the gold had glistened between them, and Alice had said, what did it matter, really? No one would ever imagine them together. No one would ever think two people so different in age and looks would ever … So what harm could there be in just saying it was a gift for taking care of her garden and leaving it at that?

  And in this way the old Lambry habit of doing things quietly, underhand, was managed. And the hand keeps going round and round the clock, unless—or until—something stops it.

  I go on sitting beside them while Pratt and Ellen argue about what they should do next. I wait. Dull and cold and dead-bored. For time can be killed, as much as anything else can. A passing couple considers taking a picture of the antique clock—but then senses something, cold and invisible, and doesn’t.

  It’s odd that, no matter how hard anyone stares at the clock, you can’t see the minute when it was decided: who belongs exactly where. You never see the moment the bags are packed and the address given or the place from where the wagon started. You can only see what happens afterwards.

  Ellen and Pratt seem to agree and stand and begin walking down Main Street together.

  But where does a thing start; how far back do you have to go to see when the gears were all wound?

  “Now, isn’t this better, before going back to the hospital? Just a moment for something comfortable?” Pratt says.

  “I didn’t know how tense I was,” Ellen says as she leaves her jacket at the coat check in the Main Street Hotel.

  “We’ll go back this evening together. You need some food and drink in your stomach right now. That’s why you’re shaking,” Pratt says, handing over his own coat.

  “Before, when I saw Manoel’s family, I wasn’t even sure they wanted me there. They looked �
�� so broken.”

  “I think of ghosts as breaking things. Things that want to break us. But we can’t let them. And we have to take care of ourselves. A drink, first? Or straight to the restaurant?”

  “The restaurant.”

  The green wallpaper in the Main Street Hotel is rich and fine. When dusk settles outside the dining room, as it does now, and the lights are lit, the mirrors come to life with their walnut and gilt gleaming. They double how many bright lamps there are at all the tables and double the elbows of the waiters carrying the wine back and forth. It’s so stylish, nowadays, when you sit down. Nothing like when I was young and alive and had a heartbeat.

  At the table, Pratt pours the wine they’ve ordered into Ellen’s glass and says, “Drink. You’ll feel better.”

  But Ellen doesn’t lift it. “Manoel. Out there fighting for his life. And we go on. Like nothing’s happening.”

  “Not like nothing is happening—but we do have to go on.”

  “I can still see his family’s faces. Are you—do you have any family, Philip?”

  “I was married. Not anymore.” I can’t see his face very well from my hiding place inside the mirror. He’s turned his cheek to one side, as though dodging the question.

  “Children?”

  “None. My ex said my work was too … dirty. She didn’t want to put children next to it.”

  “So she left?”

  “She fled, more like.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ellen twists the stem of her glass in front of her. “So sorry, Philip. I didn’t mean to go there. I think I’m just trying to distract myself.”

  “Hope it’s working out.” He smiles.

  “Not really. Does that”—she leans forward, putting both elbows on the table and pointing to his wrist—“does that protect you, in any way? That armor you wear?”

  He holds it up. “I’m not sure what you’re asking. There’s no armor that protects you from everything in life and death, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “But it stops a ghost before the ghost stops you, right?”