by Joanne Pence
His wife, Astrid, discovered that he had been cheating on her with a woman from the town. In revenge, she cut through a plank in the bottom of the small skiff he used when fishing.
She didn’t cut through it all the way, but only far enough so that, as the boat continued farther out over the ocean, pressure on its wooden underside would tear the plank apart. Water would flood the boat and sink it. She was sure Gunter would survive the dunking being a strong swimmer, and there were always a number of other fishing boats out on the water. She also believed that, although he wouldn’t be able to prove anything, in his heart he’d know she was behind his close call. He would spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder at her.
One winter’s day as she was shopping in town, she heard that the bass were running close and many of the men were heading out to fish. She felt certain Gunter would join them. She smiled and went about her shopping.
Before she knew it, a thick gray wall of fog had blown in off the ocean, turning the sky dark. She couldn’t help but wonder if her husband might be hidden by the fog when his skiff took on water.
She thought of finding someone on the pier to go out and tell Gunter that his father believed something might be wrong with the skiff, and he shouldn’t take it out that day.
But then, she saw the “other woman” walking along the sidewalk, and her heart hardened. She went into a cafe where she dawdled over tea and a sandwich.
Eventually, with the fog so heavy she could scarcely see her hand in front of her face, she headed for home. There, she saw old Johan, but not her daughter.
The old man told her that Gunter had taken Inga with him earlier that day, and they hadn’t yet returned.
She ran from the house.
They said you could hear her calling her husband and daughter’s names as she ran along the pier. The fog hung low on the bay, and nothing could be seen out on the water.
She begged others to search for them, that she believed something might be wrong—a feeling—but no one dared go out in the thick pea soup fog until Gunter and Inga were long overdue.
Neither Gunter, Inga, or the boat were ever seen again.
The townspeople say that Astrid was so distraught and guild-ridden, she confessed to Johan all that she had done. He went to the police, insisting that they arrest her and hang her for murder.
But they had no bodies, no case, and apparently some sightings convinced them that Gunter had sunk or otherwise destroyed the boat, took his daughter, and left the area.
Johan became so furious at them, he had a heart-attack. He died cursing Astrid and saying she would have no peace for all eternity.
She spent the rest of her life half-insane, walking around the house, going from window to window to look out at the ocean. The locals say she’s continued to do that even after death, and that she forces anyone who attempts to live in the house out of it as she waits for Gunter and Inga to return.
o0o
Rebecca, ever the cynic, wondered how much of the story was true. She’d heard similar ones over the years involving different times and different places. But as she looked up at the house from the beach, the curtain over an upper story window moved, revealing something dark just beyond it. She stared, but then the curtain went back to its original position.
“Is someone in the house?” she asked.
“No. Why?” Sandy turned to face the building. “Don’t tell me you saw something?”
“No, not at all. Maybe a draft. That’s all.”
“There’s no draft. My God! We’ve got to try to conjure her up. Let’s go back to the house.” Sandy looked more like a big, enthusiastic puppy than a serious psychic.
“I don’t think so,” she said with a laugh.
He cocked his head. “Well, if you want to be practical about it, we can call her to us in order to ask her where the old German’s gold is hidden.”
“You think it’s still here?”
“Frankly, I think it was a made-up story to add more interest to the place. And to give people a better reason for coming all the way out here than simply to see a ghost.”
She chuckled. “That’s remarkably cynical for a psychic medium.”
“Maybe I think ghosts are a better class of people than the living.” He smiled just enough to deepen his dimples. “Come on. Let’s go. It’s freezing out here.”
“No. I’m enjoying the beach.”
“Ah ha! You do believe!”
“I do not!”
“Prove it.” He held out his hand to hers and waited.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Feeling irritated, but also nervous—had she seen anything, or was it just the play of light and shadow bouncing off the ocean in the twilight?—she put her hand in his. He helped her to her feet and they went back up the hill.
From the rise, Rebeca saw a wall of fog out on the ocean, heading inland, reminding her of the ghost’s story and of fog blanketing the area and leading to the tragedy. A foghorn made a baleful cry, sending shivers down her spine as she followed Sandy into the house.
The house had turned icy cold. He turned on the lights in the dining room, but they had little power, leaving them and the chairs and table in dim shadows. She suddenly didn’t want to be here, but felt as if she were intruding on someone, or something.
Sandy lit a candle on the table, and then shut the electric lights. “Let’s sit at the table,” he said. He and Rebecca faced each other, the candle between them as they reached across the table and held hands, one hand on each side of the candle. “Now, I want you to look at the flickering candlelight, and clear your mind. We both need to relax and then open our minds to the presence in this house.”
“I thought you said that could be dangerous,” she said.
“Only for a novice.” His voice was filled with pride. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Look at the candle, Rebecca,” he said. “Concentrate only on the flame and the sound of my voice.” He began to breathe deeply and to go through a series of relaxing words about each limb of her body growing heavy and relaxing until she felt at one with the candle, its flame, and even the house.
She tried to keep a smile on her face to show how silly she felt doing this, but something about his voice made her start to believe that to relax was very good, even desirable. Her eyes grew so heavy she needed to shut them. Her breathing slowed.
He talked to her for a while before he asked her to open her eyes and look around the room. “This room and the kitchen were where Astrid spent most of her time. What do you see?”
She stared a long time. “I think … Is that a shadow in the kitchen doorway?”
“Is it? You tell me.”
“No. It’s nothing. There’s only darkness now.”
“Do you see a woman? Perhaps she has blond hair, parted in the middle and pulled back? Her dress is most likely black with a high collar that fits tight around her neck.”
“I can’t tell. I don’t think I see anything at all. I don’t like this.”
“Relax, Rebecca. It’s fine. I’m guiding you.”
“I feel so sad.”
“That’s Astrid,” he said softly. “She has the sorrow of a woman who knows she’s killed the only ones she’s ever loved. She was a wife and a mother. Have you ever been a wife or mother?”
“No.”
“Your mother—is she still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see her often?”
“Very little.”
“Why?”
“She’s far away. I disappoint her.”
“Why? What terrible thing did you do, Rebecca? You can tell me.”
“Nothing. My sister is prettier, and very ladylike. She’s in Hollywood because she wants to become an actress. I’m not ladylike at all.”
“Your father—is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Benjamin.”
“Called …?”
“Ben.”
&n
bsp; “Did Ben love you, Rebecca?”
“Yes, but he was always working so I didn’t see him very often.”
“Tell me how he died?”
“His heart. I don’t like to think about him. I couldn’t bear it when he died.”
“Tell me more about—”
“No!” Her breath caught.
“What?” he asked. “Rebecca?”
“There. In the mirror!” She stood and so did he. He let go of her hands as he spun around to look in the mirror over the sideboard behind him.
Rebecca looked around. She found herself standing, facing a mirror. Sandy, too, was looking at it, his face white, his eyes frightened. She glanced down at the candle. It was considerably lower than when she last remembered looking at it. “What happened?” she asked.
He spun towards her. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m so sorry! Did I fall asleep? Why are we standing here?”
“I believe you nodded off, and then had a nightmare. You suddenly stood up. So much for my charm,” he said with a small laugh. “Time to head back to the city, I’d say. But now that you’ve seen all this, please tell me you’ll come to a séance at my office tomorrow night. I promise you, you will not fall asleep.”
Rebecca felt strange. Had she really fallen asleep so easily? That wasn’t like her. He mentioned a nightmare, but a person usually remembers nightmares, and she remembered nothing. She looked around and a felt a sudden chill, the sort her mother used to say meant someone was walking over your grave.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep,” she said.
He chuckled nervously. “Probably too much sea air. You may have caught a chill. Anyway, yesterday you asked about the Sandoristas,” he said. “Well, the séance will be an opportunity to meet some of them. Say you’ll attend. You’ll be my guest.”
Sandoristas … yes, of course. “I’ll be there,” she said.
“One more thing. Do you”—he swallowed hard—“do you now see anything in the kitchen, or perhaps in the mirror?”
“In the mirror?” Whatever was he talking about she wondered. Yet, as she looked at it, she felt that, if she could take a cloth and rub the mirror hard—as if cleaning a window—she might clear the way through the mirror and see …
“No,” she said quickly. “I see nothing at all.”
o0o
Richie finally got away from Claire Baxter, and once in his car, tried to reach Rebecca by phone. She didn’t answer, which wasn’t unusual when she was working. He drove to Homicide. Her SUV was in the parking lot so he went up to see her. Calderon and Benson were there working a murder-suicide. From them, he learned Rebecca had actually left work early that day.
That was a puzzle. She never left early.
More of a puzzle was her SUV—leaving it meant someone had picked her up there at work. But who?
He tried again to reach her by phone. Same lousy results.
Some months back when he first met her and thought she’d be an interesting date, she often ignored his calls. He couldn’t say he blamed her. So, he got over it. Mostly, he got over her. Or so he thought. But then, things got complicated.
He called a guy he knew in the SFPD’s Civic Center precinct where Rebecca’s latest boyfriend worked, and asked if Ray Torres was on the job that night. He learned Torres was cruising around in his patrol car at that very moment, his partner by his side.
For some reason, her dating Torres didn’t bother him—or, not a whole lot, at least. But the thought of her with that psychic …
Could she be with Geller again tonight? Was she getting to like him? Or maybe feeling something even more serious?
CHAPTER TEN
In Homicide the next morning, Rebecca was surprised to learn Richie had shown up the prior evening looking for her. Since he left no message, she assumed he must have wanted an update on her investigation. She had nothing to tell him, and no time for him today, in any case. She would be spending a good chunk of the day in court waiting to testify. She was almost glad of that because, when she did see Richie-the-fixer, she had questions for him which could lead to some unpleasant answers.
When she got back to her desk in late afternoon, she found a half dozen messages from Agent Seymour. All he wanted was to know if she’d contacted Richie and if she’d learned anything about Claire Baxter. She told him she’d get back to him if or when either happened.
By the time evening came, she was almost glad to spend it watching Sandy conduct a séance. At least the dead weren’t “fixers” hanging around her office uninvited, or snoops calling her phone multiple times.
She headed for Sandy’s offices. His assistant, Lucian, met her at the door and led her into the large room she had noticed two days earlier. It was now a very different space. The sofa and lamps had been moved to the walls, and center stage was a large round table. The room was lit only by candlelight, and the drapes had been shut so no glaring city lights shone in.
She thought she would be early for the séance, but a number of people were already present. She walked in and looked around, but didn’t see Sandy anywhere. Lucian, too, had disappeared. Back to man the door, she supposed. Three women and two men were in the room. She was the youngest by a good thirty years, she suspected, but they looked like a well-heeled group, with expensive albeit casual clothes, shoes, and stylish jewelry. At the same time, they all looked a bit wide eyed and strained, as if waiting or hoping for something.
“Hello,” the oldest fellow walked up to her. “You must be a newcomer. I’d have noticed you before, that’s for sure.” He winked. “Donald Luff’s the name. Some like to call me ‘the Luff Bug.’”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or if he was actually being serious. He looked to be in his seventies, about 5’7” or so, and wiry, wearing a suit with a pocket handkerchief that matched his tie.
“Rebecca Mayfield,” she said, “and I am new. Have you been coming here long?”
He explained that he started attending séances a few years earlier because he missed his wife, and then quickly learned that he had an ability to conjure spirits. He had been a computer mainframe programmer “in his youth,” and although he switched over to programming PCs, he simply didn’t enjoy it the way he had the big boxes. Now, as a Sandorista, he liked to say he went “from high-tech to no-tech.”
“So you’re a Sandorista,” she said, doing her best to sound impressed. What luck, she thought, to have found one so easily. “I’ve heard of them.”
Donald Luff beamed. “Yes, I am. There are four of us here tonight, in fact. Myself, Candace Carter, and Henry and Marta Highfield—the couple over by the wine. All of us love coming, and do so as often as allowed.”
“Allowed?” Rebecca asked.
“Sandy only has room for so many people at a séance. They can’t be too large, you know. So you have to apply, and then he makes his selection, attempting to have a mix of men and women, experienced and newcomers, and so on. Since there aren’t that many men involved, I’m able to attend pretty often, same as Henry Highfield. For me, it’s also a nice way to meet some pretty neat gals, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled.
She really couldn’t take much more of this character. “I’d love to meet the Highfields,” she said.
“I’ll introduce you.” The eager beaver took her arm, led her across the room, and made introductions.
She quickly learned that Marta and Henry Highfield had been followers of Sandor Geller ever since attending one of his events when they were vacationing in Denver, some fifteen years earlier. They were in their sixties and had been married for over thirty years, having spent many of those years studying psychics and mediums. Henry, with thick white hair, a rangy build, and dark tan, had taught high school math and science before retiring, and Marta had been a paralegal at a law firm. Marta was still attractive with dyed blond hair, and what was probably a once voluptuous figure that had now thickened with age. The couple confessed to Rebecca that they had “dabbled” with becoming
mediums themselves, but found it too scary when they had felt something demonic coming closer to them. After that, they decided to let Sandy be their go-between with “the other side.”
Rebecca was finding this almost too easy. Usually, it was like pulling teeth to get people she came into contact with to talk about themselves and their interests. These people all but spewed out their stories for her. Almost as if concentrating so much on the dead made them value their time with someone alive more than most people did.
The thought jarred her. It was, she hated to admit it, rather like the life of a homicide detective. She pushed aside the thought. “So, tell me,” she said to Marta, “do you come to these séances very often?”
“Absolutely!” Marta exclaimed. “We were so thrilled when Sandy moved his home and offices to San Francisco some five years earlier, we could scarcely stand it. Sandy’s wonderful, and because we’ve followed him for so long, he only charges us the one participant price, although the two of us attend. Isn’t that wonderful and generous of him?”
Rebecca thought quickly. “I’m here as a guest tonight. If I did come on my own, could you tell me the cost to take part in a séance?”
“It’s five hundred dollars,” Henry said. “And worth every penny. It’s not often you get a vision of the life to come. Most people sit around and play the agnostic, saying they don’t know if there’s life after death. Or they want proof. Well, it’s right here. All the proof they could want. They’re just too damned stupid or lazy to come and see for themselves.”
“Now, Henry,” Marta said with a smile, “don’t be harsh. Not everyone is open to reality.”
Rebecca was struck momentarily speechless by not only the amount of money these people were paying for a couple of hours with Sandy, but that they were so completely convinced what happened at the séances was real. She noticed that Donald Luff had left her side and was now talking to two woman who had entered after she had. One of them appeared quite young and wore jeans and a leather jacket, while the other looked middle-aged with graying hair and glasses.
