Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

"What?" Her head was reeling.

  "Girl, are ye deaf? Never mind, then. Come here, I say. Why do ye dress in trousers, like a cowboy? Come here, damn ye."

  Emily began to sway; she grabbed the top of her dresser to steady herself and tried desperately to rally her wits. In a low and terrible voice of her own, she warned, "Get out of here right now -- or I'll start screaming."

  It happened instantaneously: the shadowy figure seemed to increase in size and hover over her, around her, through her. It was all done in thundering silence. Emily felt powerless, consumed. She shrank beneath the possession, shutting out the terror of it all. It was an unbelievable nightmare; she had to wake herself up from it!

  So she fainted.

  ****

  When Emily came to, she was on the floor, and every lamp in every room was ablaze. There were not that many watts in her lightbulbs: this light was fantastic, blinding. Warding off the brightness with her hand and squinting as if she were looking into the sun, she peered into the corner where the figure had been lurking and begged, "Please ... the light ... it's hurting me ...."

  At once the lights in the other rooms returned to normal, and the bedroom became dark once more.

  Oh, hell, Emily thought, this is where I came in. She staggered to her feet and stood there, woozy and unsure what to do. "Mr. O'Malley --" she hazarded in the darkness.

  "Plain O'Malley to ye," the voice answered roughly. "We ain't exactly on formal terms."

  "O -- O'Malley, then. Can you just ... stay wherever you are? Until I turn on the lamp?" If he permeated her again--it was the only word that could describe how she'd felt -- she would probably burn out and die. He had a power that no man still on earth could ever hope to possess. She had to keep him -- it -- whatever, at a distance.

  "Light the bloody lamp, then, and let's get on with it."

  "Get on with what, Mist -- O'Malley?" she temporized, creeping the six and a half steps to the right. If she could just reach the phone; if she could just dial 911 ....

  Then what?

  The voice was muttering, "Gawd. So you're the best I could do. A female, no less." The figure seemed to be talking almost to itself.

  Emily picked up the lighted Princess phone -- it was an old and beloved rotary, her mother's, though she was cursing its slowness now -- and dialed the "nine." The rapid clicking sound set off the figure in the shadows again.

  "What's this?" the voice demanded in an angry roar. "More bloody mace?"

  "Nothing! It's nothing!" Emily cried, slamming down the phone. "I'm turning the light on. Please ...," she begged, near tears. "Don't do anything rash."

  The voice made an impatient sound. "Turn up the lamp," it threatened, "or so help me, I'll turn it up once and for all."

  She did as she was told: and when she turned around, she saw the thing that claimed to be Fergus O'Malley, boots and all, standing on her bed.

  He was a young man -- as nearly as she could tell. Because although he was there, somehow he wasn't quite there. At first it was nothing she could pin down. She saw his image in extreme clarity: he was no more than thirty, attractive and slender and of medium height, with reddish-brown hair and green eyes and very fair skin. His hands were resting on his hips, and his mouth, finely cut, was curled in an expression of amused contempt. He was wearing a full-cut muslin shirt under a vest of brown corduroy that had four flaps on the front. His pants were a dark grey, woven of some coarse material; the pockets lay flat and empty. His boots looked like work boots, with a high shin-piece and low heels, the kind of boots a farmhand might wear. Except for the fact that he was standing on Emily's bed, he might have looked perfectly normal, if old-fashioned.

  But there was one tiny other thing: his boots left no imprint in the bedding. Fergus O'Malley was not standing on the bed so much as standing over it. Emily had the proof -- not that she wanted it -- that the threat that faced her was anything but physical.

  "Oh, shit," she whispered, awestruck, as she lowered herself into a caned chair without taking her eyes from the apparition.

  He scowled. "Not only do ye dress like a cowboy, but ye talk like one."

  "I talk like everyone else nowadays," she said, defending herself.

  "And what days are 'nowadays'?" The image descended -- it wouldn't be fair to say he stepped down -- to the floor and stood before Emily, hands still on his hips. "The newspaper in your privy is dated a hundred years later than the last one I picked up. Is it possible?"

  Emily looked up at him, her mouth agape, and said, "You're asking me what's possible? Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here? Who are you?"

  "Hey now!" he said suddenly, with a sharp chopping movement of his arm. Emily cringed in her chair and he said in a voice rich with anger, "Ay, ye'd be the press, all right. Ye bring to mind the rest of 'em in full cry -- hounding me like a pack o' wolves all the way to the scaffold. Well, all that's over. Now it's Fergus O'Malley can hound a man easily to his death. So back off, girl!"

  "I'm sorry," she said humbly. "I meant no disrespect." Her knees had begun to shake uncontrollably. To be taken hostage was one of Emily's great fears in life, and now here she was. What should she do? She'd read that in a hijacked plane it was best not to be in first class or in an aisle seat or on a technical mission. She hadn't read a thing about ghosts in bedrooms.

  She thought of the senator, longingly. He'd know what to do. No doubt there was an incantation for times like these. But Lee Alden was nowhere near, so Emily smiled nervously and didn't make a move.

  "That's better," the visitor said, appeased. "All right, then, ye're going to need a certain amount of history about me for the investigation. I'm goin' to tell ye things I wouldn't have told me own mother, which I suppose can't be helped. Ye need to know."

  "Investigation?"

  "Into my wrongful death by hanging."

  "You were hanged?"

  "Haven't I told you that twice now?" he snapped. "Do ye need to see the mark of the rope?"

  Automatically her glance went to his neck. She saw nothing, but he saw that she was looking for marks and reddened. That surprised her; she had no idea that a ghost could be embarrassed.

  In a solemn voice he continued, "I was hanged by the neck until dead in front of seventy-six townsmen, one o' which was my eleven-year old brother, in the year of our lord eighteen hundred eighty-seven, for the crime of murdering a young lady of station in her bedchamber."

  Not just a ghost; a murderous ghost. "How did you murder her?" Emily whispered, dreading the answer.

  "Goddammit, I did not murder her! Do ye hear anything I say?"

  "Yes, of course; no, I understand perfectly," Emily said quickly. "I only meant, how ... was she murdered?"

  "Strangled," he replied with something like distaste. "A vicious job, with no thought behind it."

  A thoughtful, murderous ghost. Emily heaved a sigh of utter exhaustion. It was obvious that the night was never going to end.

  "She was wearing a medallion of pale rose crystal. It hung on a heavy plated chain, which ended up bein' the weapon," he added calmly.

  Emily went very still. Her hand reached up to the locket that she'd wanted so fiercely; she remembered the paroxysm she'd felt when Cara fastened it around her neck. She shook her head, unwilling to accept the connection.

  "Ay, it's the very one," said Fergus O'Malley with an ironic look, pointing a ghostly finger at her throat.

  She tried to unfasten it and hurl it away from her. But the clasp seemed sealed shut, or else her hands were fumbling too much.

  "And, ye were obliging enough to wear it someplace that mattered to someone like me. I don't mind tellin' ye, I began to despair of ever being able to straighten this mess away."

  She wasn't understanding him at all. "Please ... I'm so ... tired," she pleaded, letting her hands drop helplessly into her lap. She wondered if she were going to faint again.

  "Don't tell me ye're tired!" he shouted, snapping her awake once more. "Ye've gone an hour or two without sleep;
I've waited a hundred-odd years to get on with the rest of my eternity. So who's more tired, hey?"

  He crouched down in front of Emily and seemed to grab the arms of her chair, terrifying her. He was close enough for her to see a mole on his right temple; she would have bet her life he was absolutely real.

  "Understand me once, and understand me good," he said in a voice thick with emotion. "That necklace showing up at that séance were my ticket back across the veil. I might not get another chance to prove my innocence for another hundred years, or a thousand. I had no idea who'd be wearin' the jewel, who it was I'd have to use as my instrument on this side. I was prayin' it wouldn't be some addle-headed whore, which is all I figured would wear a cheap trinket like that. When I learned ye was with the press, I was glad: some of them what covered me trial was sharp as tacks. But now, lookin' at ye, I'm not so sure. Ye're a fearful little thing. I might've done better with the whore."

  "I resent that," Emily flashed, fully awake now.

  "Resent what?"

  "All of it, dammit! I mean, what do you expect? You drop into my condo, scare me to death, nearly blind me, order me to investigate something or other --"

  "Not 'something or other'! A murder!"

  "A hundred-year-old murder! I'm not a detective; I'm an investigative reporter. I thresh out slumlords, and they're usually alive when I do it."

  They were eyeball to eyeball, she sitting, he crouching. She wanted to swing at him for half a dozen valid reasons, but the thought that her hand would pass right through him was more intimidating than if he'd had a gun pointed at her head. She contented herself with a sullen, "Besides, do you know how cold a hundred-year-old trail can be?"

  "I know exactly how cold a hundred years can be," he answered quietly, not moving his gaze from hers.

  Emily stared into those green depths and looked away. There was too much pain there, too much knowledge for a young man to have. "I don't understand," she said, almost shyly. "Where have you been staying for the past hundred years? I guess, not in --heaven?" Heaven. Here I am, asking a ghost if he's been hanging out in heaven.

  "No, not in heaven," he answered wearily. He stood up and rubbed the back of his neck, which made Emily wonder if he felt chronic pain there. He seemed to read her thoughts and drew his hand away instantly. Annoyed, he added, "And not in hell, either. Not anywhere. And frankly, by now I don't much care where I go, as long as it's somewhere."

  "You can't mean that! No one wants to spend an eternity in hell."

  "No one wants to spend it nowhere, either."

  "Are there others in this ... limbo, with you? Did you ever meet anyone named Jimmy Hoffa?"

  He waved her question away and fell into a room-long pace. That intrigued Emily; obviously he could've marched through the walls if he'd wanted to. She was becoming a little used to him. He didn't seem quite as terrifying as he had at first.

  Maybe the nightmare is winding down, she thought. Maybe it's almost morning and the alarm is getting ready to go off.

  He stopped mid-pace and turned to her. "Have ye ever tried to understand nothingness? To imagine yourself not being? No; why should ye? Ye're too busy living. I was the same when I was alive ... always thinking about the next job, always planning the break, the entry--"

  "Then you are a criminal!" she blurted.

  "A thief, not a murderer, ye dimwit. There's a difference."

  "I know that," she answered, offended. "And I wish you would address me with some civility. We don't treat women like servants any more," she lied. "In any case, I thought you said you were innocent."

  "Not of all the charges. I admitted to the court that I broke into the place. I admitted I stole the silver -- excellent pieces, mostly by Paul Revere but some Viennese stuff of real value. By the by, the candlesticks in yer parlor ain't worth a hell of a lot. Plate, and not very heavy at that."

  "They have sentimental value, thank you," Emily said crisply.

  "But I never touched the girl, never even bothered with the bedrooms, because I knew they kept their jewelry in a safe. It was the silver I was after; the old man was a keen collector before he passed on. Trouble was, the son had no interest in it; he was startin' to sell it off. I had no choice."

  O'Malley was sitting on -- above -- the bed now, looking rueful. "'Twas me own fault, rushin' the job. I was sloppy. Someone saw me. They nabbed me before I had a chance to unload any of the goods." He clenched his fists. "But I did not strangle her."

  "Who was she?" Emily asked in a cautious way.

  He shrugged. "The mill owner's daughter. She was a flighty, silly thing, I'd always heard; her head was full of cotton wool. But she was real kind, others said, and generous. Loved animals, loved children. There was talk of a spurned suitor, but no one bothered to prove it. There was talk of a secret affair, but no one would believe it. They were in too much of an all-fired hurry to get someone, and the someone they got was me. Oh, they all hated me, all right. Her brother come at me a couple of times during the trial, screaming I'd murdered his sister and I'd burn in hell for it."

  He made a wry face and stood up. "I guess I showed him."

  Emily had been listening to his story with quiet fascination. "Have you -- you know -- kept track of all these people where you are?"

  "Christ, woman, I told ye: I don't see no one, I don't hear no one, I don't know nothing. I don't know who's been made President, or if we're at war, or if the British are running the country again. All I know is what I just read in your privy: that there are ten traits a Cosmo woman should run from in a man, and that some kind of savings and loan crisis ye're having is going to last into the next century."

  She allowed herself the luxury of a broad grin. The ghost continued to look baffled and she thought, If I have to die, let it be now, in a moment of non-terror, my first of the night.

  Still, when the ghost began to scowl again Emily quickly wiped the grin from her face. "I know I seem unsympathetic to you, but I'm not," she said, careful not to anger him. "It's just that you've made me realize that you never lived to see the worst war the world has ever known, or the invention of the atom bomb --"

  "What do I care about wars and Adam bombs!" he cried, whirling around on her. "I never lived to fall in love, or have a son, or teach him to work with his hands. He might've become something -- a silversmith, maybe. He might've made me damn proud." His eyes burned with a century of indignation.

  For one incoherent second she imagined herself being the wife of Fergus O'Malley in 1887. She banished the thought as instantly as it formed. "But you can't turn back the clock," she said, almost gently.

  "No. I can't. But I can get in line for another try at life -- if I can get the bloody hell out of this--"

  "Limbo? Is that the name for it?"

  He shook his head and sighed. "There is no bloody name for it. Limbo is someplace else."

  "So, if you can clear your name and get out of this ... nothingness, you can be reincarnated? Do I have it right?"

  "So they say," he answered dryly.

  "But if you're innocent, Someone should know that! Why should you be punished this way?"

  He repeated through compressed lips, "I'm not being punished. I'm not being anything."

  "But it's not fair!"

  He laughed at her, a laugh filled with contempt and pain. "Who in hell ever told ye life was fair?"

  She didn't know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

  After a pause Fergus O'Malley said, "Well? Will ye get started?"

  "Now? It's nearly dawn!" she wailed.

  "No better time. Get a pencil and paper."

  She'd been sitting in the hard-backed chair for what seemed like half the night. One of her feet was asleep, her rear end was numb, and her eyes hung heavy as andirons. She glanced at her spindle bed with its downy comforter and beckoning pillows and said, "I can't, Mr. O'Malley. I just can't. In the morning, o.k? Just ... an hour of sleep. One hour. Then I'll do whatever you want."

  He flushed angrily at b
eing opposed and she thought, I don't care. Let him kill me, let him blind me. But let me sleep. She let her eyelids droop and stay closed for one exquisite moment, like an exhausted driver on a dark country road, and when she forced them open again, he was gone.

  Without questioning why or where, Emily threw back the comforter and collapsed, fully clothed, onto her bed. She fell like a stone into a deep and dreamless sleep and when she finally stirred and opened one eye, the sun was not in the east window where it was supposed to be: it was two o'clock in the afternoon. At first she remembered nothing. Then, slowly, bits and pieces of the previous day came back to her, floating at the edges of her consciousness like dried leaves on a pond. Kimberly, and Mrs. Lividus, and the senator -- had they all happened only yesterday?

  And then she remembered -- obviously she'd been trying not to remember -- Fergus O'Malley. Her eyes opened wide and her heart took a flying leap out of her chest. The ghost! She had dreamed of a terrible, endless, bizarrely realistic encounter with a ghost. She sat bolt upright and looked around the room, her breathing coming short and fast. No ghost. She looked for signs of the mace she dreamed she'd sprayed all over. No mace. Her bedroom was absolutely quiet. From somewhere outside she heard children playing their Saturday games, and that was all.

  It was several moments before she dared to feel reassured. Never again would she deny the power of the subconscious mind to produce a terrifying reality of its own. She had wandered into the realm of the mentally disturbed yesterday, and she hadn't got out again without one hell of a scare. Some day, but not now, she'd analyze the symbolism of her spin-off dream of Fergus O'Malley. What a naїf she'd been to skip off blithely to a séance expecting only a little innocent foolery. What a jerk.

  She swung her legs groggily over the side of the bed and realized for the first time that she was wearing jeans and a shirt. God, she'd been truly exhausted last night. Automatically she tried to slip her feet into the slippers that hadn't been placed neatly by the bed before she turned in. Instead she kicked a can, which went rolling off to the side.

  A can of mace.

  Oh, good god. No. No. I can't go through this again, she thought, free-falling into hysteria.