Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "I consider myself a reasonable skeptic," she replied with dignity.

  He sighed. "I suppose it's a sign of the times," he added, sitting back in his chair. "A hundred years ago people would've run from a haunted house. Now everybody wants to spend the night."

  "Blame it on Stephen King," she answered, laughing. "He's made fans of us all." She was liking the senator a lot just now. For a believer, he was awfully tolerant of her mocking ways.

  She was liking the senator for another reason as well: he was looking at her over the rim of his coffee cup with eyes so crystal-blue that it made her ache to have to look away. But she couldn't just gawk at him like some political groupie. So she looked away.

  "I have another possible explanation of the girl's behavior for you," she said, making a process of adding a sixteenth of a teaspoon more cream to her coffee. "Couldn't she have been telepathizing what was going on in one of the men's minds, yours or the others? Couldn't one of you -- say it was you -- have felt stuck at the seance and been in a hurry and been thinking the things that Kimberly then picked up and said, in that ... that voice?"

  "You believe in telepathy?" the senator asked, surprised.

  She shrugged. "A limited form of it, sure. One of my brothers always knew exactly when I was mad, and why. Another one of them never had a clue. The others fell somewhere in between. It's my opinion that telepathy is all a matter of degree."

  "How many brothers do you have?"

  "Four. All registered to vote in New Hampshire, so don't be getting any ideas." Despite herself, she favored him with her most winning smile. He was so hard not to favor.

  "Do I dare ask how many sisters you have?"

  "Zip," she said, careful to keep it just as light. "My mother and I used to have to huddle together a lot."

  "But you don't any more?" He guessed the answer even as he tried to stop the question.

  "Can't. She's not around any more." Emily sounded cold-hearted and flippant -- anything but how she felt, which was devastated, even now, two years after her mother's death. Her mother was her best friend and ally in the world, and her mother was no more. If ever there were a reason for believing in ghosts, it would be Agnes Bowditch.

  "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "It was stupid of me to press."

  "Oh, that's all right," she answered in her breezy way, trying to cover her hurt. "I'm not going to vote for you for completely other reasons."

  He winced at that. The best defense was a good offense, she told herself; but it brought her no comfort.

  There was a very awkward lull; she took it as her responsibility to fill it. "I saw a mildly telepathic girl sitting in a chair tonight," she said. "What did you see?"

  He made a funny here-goes-nothing face which she kind of liked, and began in a roundabout way to explain why he was a flake.

  "You have to understand that the nature of channeling has been very consistent across all cultures through all of recorded history. And you have to accept that there is a strong desire in all of us for the irrational to triumph."

  "I'm not sure about all of us," she felt obliged to argue.

  "Trust me," he said. "Even you. In the broadest sense, channeling involves any form of focusing creative energy. Artists channel. Poets channel. Physicists channel. Rocket Scientists channel."

  "And California Dreamers named Kimberly channel." Emily was losing interest in the discussion. She hated vague, mystical talk. Who, what, why, where, when --that's what she was after. Facts. That's what she'd been taught in journalism school.

  "Okay, so my plumber channels. Senator, why did you go there tonight? Why do you care about this channeler or any other channeler?"

  He pushed his chair back from the table, balancing it on its hind legs. Emily knew a thing or two about body language, and she didn't care for the distance he was suddenly putting between them. He's not going to tell me a damned thing about himself, she thought, disheartened.

  "You want a story," he said at last. "Okay. Here's a story." He looked away, staring over the café curtains into the night beyond.

  "Once upon a time there was a young couple very much in love, and with everything to live for. He was a rising force in politics. She was a beautiful and accomplished pianist. No one thought the marriage would last, and yet for ten short years the two were incredibly happy. They lacked only one thing, a child, and in the tenth year the woman became pregnant. Now they lacked nothing."

  "But in the tenth year as well, something in the heavens fell out of alignment," he said in a baffled, wondering voice. "The man came down with a stupid, unnecessary attack of appendicitis. He was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. It was no big deal. But the wife didn't believe that. All she knew was that she had to be at her husband's side. So she cancelled a concert appearance in Denver and on her way to the airport, she was killed in a car accident." He continued to stare out the café window. "She was so fiercely determined to come," he said softly.

  Emily had seen the facts of his life on microfiche, but they had not torn her heart the way he had just now. "I'm so sorry, Senator--"

  He turned to her and smiled bleakly. "The story isn't finished. The man was lying in the hospital, heavily sedated and unaware that half a country away his wife had just slid off an icy highway into an embankment, when he had a sudden sense of almost euphoric joy. The room seemed to fill with a kind of whiteness ... a whitish light ... an awesome brightness ... and he was filled with just ... so much joy. Later, when he was clear of the sedation, he thought it must have been the drug. That's when he learned that his wife had died, and when."

  "Ah." It came out of Emily in a whisper, and there was nothing of triumph in it. But suddenly she understood the who, the what, the why, the where, the when. She understood it all perfectly. And in fairness, she couldn't blame the senator for trying to track down the source of that white light ever since. It was an extraordinary coincidence. Of course it was the sedative. But still.

  "So when you go to these sittings, you're" -- she was almost afraid to ask it -- "hoping to establish contact with your wife?"

  "Always, always hoping," he said with a sad shake of his head. "And always, always disappointed."

  Emily had to admit that wherever the voice that took over Kimberly had come from, it hadn't come from a beautiful concert pianist. "There'll be other sittings," she said softly, and amazed herself. So much for coming down hard on him. So much for the downtrodden taxpayer.

  She could see, even as she groped for the right thing to say, that he was forcing himself out of his condition of pain. He turned to her with that dazzling smile and those clear blue eyes, and ran his fingers through that shock of thick brown hair.

  "This is the part where you accuse me of having had a 'hypnagogic hallucination'," he suggested with a boyish grin.

  How did he do it? It was like turning on a charm spigot.

  "I didn't say that," she hedged, though she was thinking it.

  "You're supposed to tell me that ghosts are always spotted right after people go to bed or when they wake up."

  "Apparently you already know that," she said, still hedging.

  "Ah, what's the use?" he said suddenly, signaling for the check. "I've gone only to the best, and the best can't give me Nicole. I don't know why I continue to try."

  Because you loved her with a love that most women would kill for, thought Emily, and she was filled with a wistful envy for this Nicole, this fiercely determined wife and concert pianist. Emily had never loved that way, and she was absolutely certain she'd never be loved that way. She cared too much about her job, and her job demanded that she be clear-eyed and hard-edged. A clear-eyed woman saw all too many flaws in a man, and a hard-edged one turned most men off. If she wanted high romance in her life, she should've been a concert pianist. And, of course, rich.

  The senator had stood up to get Emily's chair for her. It was a charming -- or political -- bit of chivalry and it flustered her ever so slightly. She bobbed up suddenly, and he
r face ended up very near his.

  "Huh. Freckles," he said, focussing on the bridge of her nose. "For such dark eyes and hair, you have very fair skin."

  "I guess." Were freckles good or bad with these people? She suspected, bad.

  "--skin which I think is having an allergic reaction to the chain on your necklace." He traced a feather light but sizzling line across her collarbone, alongside the heavy chain. "There's a bit of a rash here."

  "Really?" she said, reaching up automatically to the spot. If there was a rash, it was impossible to separate it from the trail of heat he'd left behind. "I can't tell," she said with perfect honesty.

  "I'm not sure you want to keep on wearing that," he cautioned as he held the door open for her.

  "Keep up this kindness, and I'll be forced to vote for you after all," she teased. The fact was, she was feeling very vulnerable. Obviously the evening was taking some kind of emotional toll. The rational thing to do was to head home at all due speed.

  But still she dallied, there in the clear May night. "Senator--"

  "We've been through our first vocal trance together; call me Lee."

  "Senator," she persisted, ignoring the bantering request. "You didn't have to tell me all that you did tonight. I know that." She braced herself and threw out the next observation: "I guess I'm wondering why you did."

  "Why?" He sounded less puzzled than incredulous. "Is that the only word you know? 'Why'?"

  She'd never heard his how-dare-you tone before. Not that she wasn't familiar with it; most of the people she investigated eventually hauled it out and batted her over the head with it. But somehow she wanted Arthur Lee Alden III to be different. Somehow she was wrong.

  "What I mean is, you can't have told any but your most trusted friends and associates about your -- your vision, or I would've read about it somewhere. Why did you tell me, of all people?" Simple question; she thought it deserved a simple answer.

  He just stared at her, so she answered the question for him. "It's not just because tonight is off the record. I think it's becausee you were hoping to make me so sympathetic to your plight, so moved by it, that I'd back off investigating this side of your character. After all, I'm a woman; that's what women do -- sympathize. You took a big risk, Senator. You'd never have tried this with a man."

  "Geez, you're paranoid," he said at last.

  "Nosir. Not paranoid," she countered, throwing an index finger up in the air. "I just want to know why you told me."

  "Fine," he said angrily, his hand on the door of his BMW. "You want to know why?" He threw the door open. "I'll tell you why." He got in and slammed the door. He rolled down the window. "I don't know why. That's why."

  He turned the key, the engine jumped to life, and he roared off, leaving Emily alone with the strength of her convictions. Her chin was set, her breathing coming hard and fast. She'd just reduced a United States Senator to gibberish; it should've been a moment of triumph.

  But it wasn't, and all the way home she tried to fathom why. Eventually it all came down to this: she thought more of him for having the courage to face her laughter than she thought of herself for having the courage to laugh at him.

  It wasn't fair. Lee Alden had it all, including a good-old-boy understanding with the press not to expose his fanciful side. Even Stan Cooper left him alone. And yet not all politicians were immune to scrutiny. She thought of Gary Hart; she thought of John Tower. Somewhere someone had stood up and said, "Enough is enough." So why was there this reluctance to go after Lee Alden? Was it because when you did go up against him, you felt rotten about it? The way she was feeling now?

  Too bad, kiddo, she told herself with grim determination. Learn to live with it.

  By the time she squeezed her car into the lone space left on her street, Emily was bleary-eyed with exhaustion. It was well after midnight, but that wasn't the reason she was having to force one foot up the stairs past the other. She'd just spent a most unconventional evening, and she considered herself a very conventional girl. This kind of thing was more of a strain on her system than it was for Shirley MacLaine.

  She was weak with longing for her bed by the time she slipped her key into the dead bolt of her door. Muddled and impatient for sleep as she was, after she turned the key to the left and right she wasn't sure whether she'd even locked the door before dashing out that morning. Most likely not; it wouldn't have been the first time. She threw a switch on the living room wall. As always, her little condo looked perfectly happy to be what it was: a little condo. Everything was neat and tidy, because everything had no choice.

  Emily ran the place like a ship, which is why she noticed, even half-asleep, that one of the silver candlesticks on a small writing table was knocked over. Automatically she stood it back up; she must've hit it when she dumped her book-bag on the table that morning. She pulled open a louvered door to a tiny hall closet to hang her jacket inside, and wrinkled her nose. Tobacco. She stuck her face in the sleeve of her jacket, but now the smell eluded her. The Harvard professor, she remembered. A pipe smoker. The two were practically synonymous.

  Still, somewhere in the deepest part of her brain she was toting up the irregularities as she found them. She had long ago decided that messy people lacked a certain gene, which is what enabled them to live long and happy lives. Neat people, on the other hand, were always noticing things and worrying about them, just as she was doing now.

  When Emily went into her bathroom, she suddenly got a lot more worried.

  She was reaching for her nightgown behind the bathroom door when she saw that the jewelry box she kept on the top of a small bureau -- the little inlaid wooden jewelry box her brother had sent her from Korea -- had been thrown open and its three drawers pulled out and left that way. Short of fleeing an earthquake, Emily was incapable of having left that kind of mess behind. Shocked, she went through the box quickly and inventoried the few things she kept there. Coins, earrings, broken watches, her mother's wedding rings, an old charm bracelet-- all present. Frightened and relieved and very much awake, she thought: They took one look and decided it wasn't worth it.

  Mere bravado. Exactly four seconds after that thought, Emily had another: that they -- or he -- didn't actually finish the burglary. She ran back to her living room. The VCR was still there. The TV. The stereo. Oh, God. Oh, no. If they hadn't finished, where were they now? Had they been scared off by a neighbor in the hall? Were they trying to find a closer parking place for their van? Oh, God. They weren't in the kitchen. The kitchen opened out into the living room. She could see the kitchen. They weren't in the kitchen.

  She looked across to the bedroom, the dark, unlit bedroom. The bedroom with no wall switch, where the nearest light was a lamp on a dresser located exactly six and a half steps to the left of the door. The bedroom where to date the only phone was plugged into the only jack. She cursed the lamp, the phone, the darkness. She would not go in there.

  She would go to a neighbor instead -- Mr. Olafson, who had to get up at 5:30 for the commute to New Hampshire -- and bang on his door, and beg him to come to her apartment to find the burglar for her. He would ask if her door had been open. She would not be sure. He would ask what they took. She would say, "Nothing." He would ask why he, Mr. Olafson, was standing in the hall instead of lying in his bed.

  No, she could not go to Mr. Olafson.

  If this were a boarding house we'd have a pay phone at the end of the hall and I could call the police, she realized, furious with the management. But would she call the police?

  Mace! I have mace! Her brother the policeman had given it to her, a big, unwieldy can that she kept next to the Raid under the bathroom sink. She crept back into the bathroom, her heart hammering wildly and erratically in her breast, and took out the can of mace. She had practiced it a thousand times, grabbing the can so that the button fired away from her. But she grabbed it backwards anyway, and dropped it in her panic, and picked it up again, backwards again, and finally got it right side out, and marched out of the
bathroom with it at arm's length, just in case she hadn't got it right after all.

  She stood in the lighted living room at the threshold to the bedroom, clutching her mace, her eyes failing completely to adjust to the darkness within. She took one step inside, then another. The air flowing from the bedroom was ocean-cold and damp; it wrapped itself around her like a Nantucket fog. A new and utterly horrifying sensation took hold of her. Inside her bedroom there was no burglar lying in wait. There wasn't even someone so comforting as a Boston Strangler. There was something else. Something more. Something worse. Her heart became absolutely still in her breast. She took one step back.

  The lamp was six and a half feet to the left, but she saw -- she was certain she saw -- a shadow move in the emerging dimness to the right. She aimed recklessly and fired; the wet hiss of mace managed to go somewhere other than her face. She saw someone leap away, heard his startled oath. Petrified, she fired again, this time sweeping the area. Again the figure leapt away, unaffected by it.

  "Jesus, woman! Put that thing away!"

  She knew the voice. Oh God, she knew the voice.

  "Kimberly," she whispered, frozen in terror.

  "Kimberly, my ass! I'm Fergus. Fergus O'Malley."

  Chapter 5

  For an eternity or two, Emily stood silent and still.

  Then: "I don't believe ... I know ... an O'Malley," she managed to whisper.

  "Ye do now." The voice was low, almost a snarl. "Get in here, girl. Let's see what we have."

  "Ayyy ... don't think so," Emily said faintly, taking another step back. Her knees were all rubbery; she was close to collapse. The can of mace fell from her hand to the floor with a sharp rap.

  Once again the figure started in the shadows. "What in bloody hell is that?"

  "I ... it's ... mace," she answered in stupified obedience.

  "Mace? A spice, that can hiss like a snake?"