House of Windows

by John Langan

  That wasn't all. The table in the center of the room was heaped with books, most of them with "Afghanistan" in their titles; though a few were called things like The Modern Army and Special Forces: A History. Sandwiched in between the books were manila folders stuffed with papers. A half-dozen ragged legal pads competed with stacks of oversized color photos—the ones I could see were of the streets of a city I assumed was Kabul.

  I couldn't take it all in. I haven't mentioned his desk, or the books stacked on the couch. I said, "Roger."

  He raised his head and said, "No doubt you're wondering what all this is about." He didn't look incredibly insane.

  I nodded.

  "I have been doing a little research of my own—"

  "So I see."

  "—and I believe I know what happened to us three weeks ago."

  "All right," I said.

  "Aren't you going to ask me what I think?"

  I didn't need to. The moment I'd recognized the enormous map hanging across from me, I'd known. I said, "It's Ted, isn't it? You think Ted is haunting us."

  Roger smiled. "You always were my brightest student. I wouldn't use the word haunting, as it connotes something more sinister than what we are experiencing. I prefer to say that Ted is trying to reach out to us."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "There appears little doubt that Our Mutual Weirdness, to use your phrase, was supernatural. I have considered all the natural explanations and found every last one wanting. Given its supernatural character, the question of its origin confronts us. The house itself is the most obvious culprit; however, my investigations into its history convinced me that it was a dead-end in fairly short order, and I am correct in assuming your more extensive research confirms such a conclusion, am I not?"

  "There's nothing glaringly obvious."

  "Once the house is eliminated from consideration, our focus must shift to those who underwent the Weirdness. I cannot think of anything in your short life that would account for such occurrences, which leaves us with me. What is there in my life that fits the supernatural explanation? Only one thing: Ted."

  He delivered his argument the same way he did his case for a particular interpretation of a passage. I said, "And you think Ted is . . . reaching out to us."

  "That's right."

  "Why?"

  Quick as a bird flashing past a window, a look that mingled pain with something else—fear?—crossed Roger's face. "Why sweetie," he said, "I'm his father. Why wouldn't he want to contact me?"

  Here it was, so soon. "Well," I said, "the last time you two spoke, you disowned him."

  He flinched. "I did at that."

  I didn't say anything.

  "It was a mistake," Roger said at last. "I spoke in anger."

  Do you know, that was the first time we'd mentioned his disowning Ted? Let alone him admitting it had been wrong. Under different circumstances, this would have been an important occasion. As it was, it was still significant, but that significance was overshadowed by its context. I said, "You were angry. Maybe Ted saw that, too. But you never took those words back. As far as Ted knew, you no longer considered him your son. I'm not trying to be mean, but why would he think anything had changed? How would he know to make the attempt to get through to you—us?"

  Frowning, Roger said, "Ted and I have unfinished business."

  "Okay," I said, "I guess you do. But I don't—at least, I don't think I do. Why should I be involved in this? How is my feeling the house moving around me Ted trying to communicate with me?"

  "Though I am not certain, you understand, I believe your sensation of the house to be a side-effect of Ted's effort to establish contact with me."

  "Then why did I notice it the moment I set foot in here?"

  "Because," Roger said, "Ted has been struggling to reach me since that time—since before it, most likely. You crossed into the house at the moment he succeeded—the moment he began to succeed, I should say. The house itself may have played some role in helping his effort; its long association with him—with us—may have assisted him in focusing his energies. After all, you didn't notice these feelings on any of the previous times you were in the house, did you? As I recall, you didn't mention it during our rendezvous here."

  "No," I admitted. "Why all the maps?"

  "Everything you see here," Roger said, "is part of my attempt to understand Ted's death. If I am to reach out to where he is, then it is imperative for me to understand as much about the circumstances of his—his leaving this life as is possible."

  "Where do you think he is? Is he still in Afghanistan?"

  Roger shook his head. "I can't say for sure; although Kabul is significant as Ted's—call it his entry point to the hereafter. While I am hardly an expert in these matters, it is my guess that Ted currently inhabits what the Tibetan Buddhists call the bardo, a kind of antechamber to life. From this space, one is supposed to move away from the illusions of this world towards eternity; it is possible, however, for a soul in that state to look back the other way, to the life departed."

  "Tibetan Buddhists?"

  "These last weeks," Roger said, "I've acquainted myself with a great many religious traditions, in hopes that one of them might offer some clues to our situation. The Southern Baptistry of my parents and siblings speaks little to the possibility of ghosts and the ghostly. There may be warnings and encouragement from souls in heaven, or regret and temptation from souls in hell, but little else. As a rule, the more fundamentalist-leaning sects of Christianity appear to have little room for whatever is not spelled out in the Bible. The Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans are somewhat more open when it comes to such matters, but they warn of demons masquerading as the dear departed. Generally speaking, Christian traditions grow very nervous at the hint of anything that suggests death may be more—or less, I suppose—than the carrots and sticks they hold out to and threaten their followers with. The failure of the faith most familiar to me to tell me where my son is sent me searching for what other peoples have had to say, which led me to the Tibetan Buddhists."

  The bardo sounded analogous to Purgatory, but now wasn't the time for an extended theological debate. Instead, I said, "All right. Ted is in the bardo trying to contact you so the two of you can finish your unfinished business—so you can be reconciled and he can be at peace, I assume. What do we know about it? Is there any way we can help him?"

  "I'm not sure," Roger said. "By immersing myself in the particulars of Ted's passing, I hope to become as receptive to him as possible—to put myself on his wavelength, so to speak. I can't say it has succeeded as yet, but I have only been at this for a short time. I believe that much of the work must be done from the other side, by the soul in question. We are on Ted's timetable."

  "Huh," I said, or grunted. Really, what else was there to say? I wandered over to the futon, crowded with teetering stacks of books, and carefully sat down on the edge of it. Roger was watching me expectantly—waiting, I knew, for me to speak and render some kind of judgment on what he'd told me, the whole, mad explanation. Which I couldn't do. Rationally speaking, of course it was insane, but we were already at some distance from what was rational. If Roger was delusional, then I was encouraging him in the worst way just by having this conversation with him, entertaining his fantasy instead of insisting he speak to a psychiatrist. If he wasn't delusional—look, I understand that idea may seem delusional in and of itself, but I'd been at the center of the house's strangeness since I'd set foot in it. I couldn't say whether Roger's explanation was in any way accurate, but at least it acknowledged what I'd been experiencing. Was it so bad for Roger to want to talk to his son, to make up with him? I mean, given everything, wasn't it natural? People grieved in strange ways. How was what Roger was doing here different from a person who goes to church every day in hopes of a message from their loved one?

  He was still waiting. I said, "What's next? Do we hire a medium? Conduct a séance?"

  He exhaled; his shoulders relaxed. "No,
I'm afraid it's more of the same. More research; more waiting until something happens."

  "What is going to happen?"

  "Ted will find a way to contact me."

  "And?"

  "Presumably, he will be able to move off into the bardo—to be at peace."

  That was pretty much that. As I stood to leave the room, Roger surprised me by walking over and catching me in a long hug. "Thank you," he said. "I have evaded this conversation longer than I should have. I was afraid that you would not understand—to be frank, I was afraid that you would think I had descended into raving lunacy. I've wondered the same thing, myself, at certain moments. I appreciate the act of faith this requires on your part, and I am grateful."

  I'm not sure Roger would have been quite so grateful if he'd known I went to speak to a psychiatrist myself three days later; although, since it didn't lead to anything, he might have been. I saw Dr. Hawkins, the psychiatrist my ob-gyn had recommended after the miscarriage. Her office is on Founders, in that red brick house beside the old graveyard. Yes, I noticed that, too. How appropriate, right? The funny thing is, she had a copy of one of Belvedere's paintings hanging in her tiny waiting room; this one called Night Passage. It's a small canvas, maybe a foot by a foot-and-a-half. Belvedere worked on it, on and off, for something like twelve years, from a couple of months after his stay in our house until he abandoned the piece in the mid-sixties. The critics I'd read regarded it as a five-fingered exercise, a diversion from more serious projects. It is unlike any of his other paintings; I actually like it a lot. There's none of the straining after effect you encounter in his major pieces. It reminds me of a cross between cubism and Looney Tunes. The subject of the painting is a black-and-yellow funnel, a stylized tornado, which begins in the lower-left-hand corner and curves up and across an off-white background, growing broader on the way. The funnel is presented in cross-section, as if to give the illusion you're looking down into it, but Belvedere laid on the paint so thickly that it compromises the effect. Surrounding the funnel, passing inside and out, are a series of bright, almost pastel figures that look kind of like the forms you encounter on totem poles, kind of like characters from a children's book. There's one that resembles an eagle or hawk, another that might be a fisherman, something that could be the big bad wolf. It's obvious they're members of Belvedere's personal pantheon—it is to me—but no one's bothered trying to determine their identities. I speculated a bit on them while I sat in the waiting room, wondering if I were betraying Roger.

  Scratch that. I knew I was betraying him by coming here. It was a question of degree. I—it was something I felt I had to do, an option I had to explore. Going in, I had a decent idea what the psychiatrist's verdict would be—though I told myself she might surprise me.

  She didn't. She's tall, Dr. Hawkins, and skinny, so much so that all her joints protrude. Her hands and feet are enormous. I felt like a little kid shaking an adult's hand when she came out to greet me. She wears her hair in a braid that hangs down her back, and these cat's-eye glasses that you know she thinks are trendy but that make her look like the mother on a fifties TV show. She had on a dull red, shapeless dress with a long necklace of black beads—to balance the braid, I guess. From almost the moment we sat down in her office and she opened her mouth, I knew I wasn't going to learn anything new. But it was like, Oh well, I'm here; I might as well talk to her. She kept insisting I call her Yvonne, to put me at ease—which it didn't. When I go to see a professional, I'm going to see them as a professional. I don't want my doctor to be my friend. I want her to be my doctor. It's the same with my students. I'm not "Veronica" to them; I'm "Professor Croydon"; "Ms. Croydon" if they're sticklers about the Ph.D.

  Anyway, I sat in one of Dr. Hawkins's chairs, which wasn't half as comfortable as you'd expect a chair in a psychiatrist's office to be, and gave her the Reader's Digest version of what I've been telling you. My husband thinks the son he disowned is trying to speak to him from beyond the grave. I was paying by the hour. She heard the crucial information, asking occasional questions along the way, and when I said, "That's about it," she said, "I see," and started writing on a legal pad she had balanced on her knee. She wrote for about five minutes, filling one page and going on to another. Finally, still looking at the legal pad, she said, "Without talking to your husband myself, I can only speculate on his psychological state. It's important you understand that at the outset. What I'm offering is speculation. Informed, yes, but speculation all the same. Your husband—Roger has suffered a significant psychic trauma in the death of his son. Losing a child always wounds a parent, no matter how old the child, no matter how poor the relationship. Additionally, in this case, there were complicating factors. Roger had been ambivalent about Ted, natural enough given what you've told me of their history, but uncomfortable for a parent nonetheless. Rather than resolving itself as Ted grew older, Roger's ambivalence towards him increased—fed, I suspect, by his own lingering issues with his father—until their confrontation at the apartment allowed years of pent-up emotion to vent itself in anger and actual violence, climaxing in what you call Roger's cursing Ted. However satisfying such a release may have been in the short term—and I imagine it was very gratifying for your husband to be able to let these feelings out—in the long term, it left Roger in an even more uncomfortable psychic state. And then Ted, the object of decades of conflicting emotions, was killed. That death is like a great, black magnet. It drew all those difficult feelings down into itself and will not release them, thus significantly complicating any attempts by Roger to resolve them. How is this sounding to you? Are you with me?" she asked, looking up.

  "So far," I said.

  "Roger needs to find a way to come to terms with his feelings about Ted, because although Ted is dead, Roger's relationship with him is not. As you can appreciate, this is an intolerable situation. It must be addressed, and the sooner, the better. Roger could have done so positively, through conversation with you, or a therapist, an option he has not chosen. He could have done so negatively, through use of alcohol or recreational drugs, an option he also has not chosen, thankfully. He could have sought a creative outlet for his needs, writing down his memories of Ted, or writing letters to him, techniques I employ sometimes in these kinds of situations. Roger hasn't exactly chosen this course of action, but the one he has selected is related to it. He has invented a scenario that will allow him to meet his needs more directly, namely, the haunting. Tellingly, he has created a situation in which Ted is haunting him—Ted is the one who requires their reconciliation. That Roger has projected his own deepest wishes onto the ghost of his son suggests that, even in so private a fantasy as this one, Roger remains unable to face his past actions, and, I believe, his continuing feelings, fully."

  "All right," I said. "Roger's living out this fantasy." I felt like adding, "Duh," but didn't. "So what's going to happen?"

  Dr. Hawkins held up her hands. "That I can't say for sure. Please keep in mind, this is all hypothetical."

  "I understand that," I said. "I'm asking for your opinion."

  "It's unlikely that Roger will be able to come out of his fantasy on his own. Unlikely to the point of impossible, I would say. From what you've described to me of the changes in his office, he's already invested too much of himself in the scenario he's invented for him to be able to disengage from it without professional help."

  "What if he doesn't want that help?"

  "The fantasy will continue. It could persist for a considerable time, depending on how well Roger is able to accommodate it to his continued failure to communicate with Ted. Over time, such a failure could lead to depression—in fact, I'd say that's almost certain. It could lead to that self-destructive behavior I mentioned, to alcohol or drugs. Veronica," she said, "I know how difficult this is to hear, but without some form of intervention, your husband is not going to get better. There is no good end to this for him. Time is of the essence. The mind is like any other organ: the sooner you catch and attend to a problem,
the easier it is for it to heal."

  That was the end of our consultation. As I was writing the check, though, I said, "What would you say if I told you I thought there might be something to Roger's fantasy?"

  "What do you mean?"

  I tore off the check and handed it to her. "That maybe Roger is being haunted."

  While she filled out my receipt, Dr. Hawkins was silent, but I could practically hear her composing her reply. Handing me the receipt, she said, "I would say that you were caught up in your husband's invention, possibly due to your own guilt at perceiving yourself as the cause of Roger and Ted's last fight. I would stress to you that Roger's fantasy is that. I would repeat to you that this situation cannot turn out well, and I would urge you to seek counseling for yourself immediately. Would you like to schedule another appointment?"