Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Like Carlsson’s place. Like that stone tower I saw again from the ridge above the town. That one isn’t an abandoned lighthouse, it’s a castle. A county full of castles and forts, disguised as houses.

  The side door—the kitchen door, the door that people used as opposed to the “formal” front door—Susan put her hand on the latch and the House recognized her and passed her into the warm smells of the wood cookstove and pea soup simmering rich with smoked ham hocks. That was the Maine way, the country way. The city girl had learned she wasn’t expected to knock and then stand out in the weather freezing her butt off, waiting for someone to come and let her in. Go on in and shout to the house and warm yourself at the stove, that was the drill.

  But she didn’t need to shout. Aunt Jean sat at the kitchen table, reading, and she did look over her wire-rimmed granny glasses and frown.

  “The trailer, fire . . . .” Dammit, she couldn’t make her tongue work right. She’d defended her thesis under the glares of a panel of sexist-pig fossils that purely hated to give a wildlife doctorate to a girl, a Gook girl at that, and now she couldn’t frame a simple sentence.

  Aunt Jean sat there, quiet, then nodded to herself. “Would you have stayed hidden if I told you?”

  “But the police . . . .”

  “Doctor Tranh, Susan, my daughter, that fire started a few minutes after you left. The sheriff’s deputy said he’d parked over to one side, lights off. Someone pulled in, saw him, turned around, and burned rubber heading east. Deputy chased, lost the suspect, never got a license number or description, not even whether it was a car or truck. When he got back, the trailer was on fire. You know that road. You know how far to the next turn-off or plowed side road.”

  A few driveways far apart and wide open, no place to hide. Next plowed road intersection was three miles east, more than that west. No way a hopped-up cop cruiser could lose a suspect on that stretch of road. She’d just been thinking about that and people following her.

  “The deputy must have . . . .”

  “We heard the fire call on the scanner-radio, oui. The first call gave the road number wrong. When you came to our door, I did not know. We have many fire roads in Sunrise County, many trailers.”

  Aunt Jean shook her head, eyes sad. “When I learned more, I knew that mistake must have been on purpose. I decided I must not tell that man where you were. Most police are good men. The sheriff is a good man. We have Naskeags on the force, nephews, cousins, all good men. Vraiment, it is a shame I cannot trust them.”

  Then she stared over her glasses again, eyes narrowed. “Where is Alice?” Her voice had changed from sad to challenging.

  Susan felt prickles on her spine, the House listening and weighing her. If she’d left Alice in danger, what would they do to her?

  “I left her at Carlsson’s. I needed my camera, I needed to make calls, that creature . . . .”

  Aunt Jean’s look froze the words on Susan’s tongue. It wasn’t a glare, precisely, more disappointment than anger, but it showed steel. The House turned chilly around her.

  “Not a creature, Doctor Tranh. A mother in need of help and safety. She is lost and hurt and surrounded by strangers. Can your heart understand that? Ask it, for the grace of le bon Dieu.”

  Then the kitchen warmed again, filled with the welcome of pea soup. “Eat, ma petit, and go back to Spirit Point. Help. Think. Listen to Eagle. Listen to your heart. She who swims dark waters will still be there. I promise you, she will not be strong enough to leave before you make your choice. Science can be a good thing, but it is not the only good thing in this world.”

  Lost and hurt and surrounded by strangers. Sound familiar, girl? You can be famous, or you can be good. Classic Satan’s choice. What’s it to be now, eh?

  Aunt Jean shook her head again, not focused on Susan anymore. “And bring Alice back here tomorrow or the next day, whatever the weather gives, whenever young Rick Bouchard can take over the care. Tell her, we need to visit a man who does not wish to see us.” She paused.

  “When I first saw you, that morning, I did not know of the fire. Someone who should have told me, did not. And when I found out, that told me things. Oui, that has told me things that people would prefer that I do not know.”

  Now her face turned grim, implacable like a Greek Fate. “Vraiment, we need to visit a man. He will not wish to see us. But he will see us.”

  Susan shivered.

  XIX

  Susan had moved from scared to mad. Mad felt comfortable. She was used to it. She lived most of her life mad at someone or something. Now the world was obliging her with plenty of targets.

  Damn Aunt Jean. Her and her know-it-all placid silence in the middle of her web, manipulating people, pulling strings, keeping secrets. Can’t trust little Susan not to panic. Send her to the mushroom farm, keep her in the dark and feed her horseshit. Poor fragile baby girl, we have to protect her from the truth.

  Susan growled to herself, deep in her throat. Damn near thirty years old, clawed her way off the streets to college and then grad school and her PhD, and she couldn’t be trusted with the truth.

  She squatted to tighten her bootlaces and caught a whiff of char and fuel oil on her pants. She must have brushed up against a snowbank when she was prowling around the wreckage or something.

  She’d been in shock then, nobody home, not noticing the small details. But now the whole sequence—butchered dog and desecrated eagles and that shadow in the night and now the burnt-out trailer—now that it made sense, tied into drug smuggling and corrupt cops, it didn’t seem as scary.

  She knew about rational fear and how to handle it. She’d grown up with it, lost Mom to it. Ten-buck muggings and pushers and twisted cops had just been part of the grime and stink, back on the streets. It had been part of the air she breathed. Arson, too, either insurance or destroying evidence or revenge. No mystery there, not like with Dad. Not like a man leaving for work one morning and just . . . vanishing.

  Susan checked her snow thermometer, glanced past the locked gate and down Carlsson’s snow-bound driveway to measure shadow angles by eye, and smoothed out the blue wax on her skis. She added a layer of purple under the bindings, about two hand-spans’ worth, thought a moment about the areas of open and shaded forest she’d skied through, and added a couple of dabs of tacky red under each foot. Then she glared up at the top of that pine snag, at Eagle perched there and critiquing every move.

  “Satisfied?”

  Eagle stood mute. She entered a plea of “guilty” on his behalf. “Fuck you, too. If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

  Well, the wax would have to do. Another hour and those shadows would swallow the whole point, and the clouds meant a dark night. Not a good choice for skiing, not on snow that had already tried to kill her twice, and she wasn’t sure Alice would let her in once she reached Carlsson’s boat house. Susan knew she’d left a bit of friction behind. Story of her life . . . .

  Shut up and get moving.

  She stowed her wax kit, hoisted her pack and settled it on her shoulders, locked the belt buckle, and clicked her boots into the bindings. The pack sank her skis a couple of inches more than normal, heavy—a couple of gallons of hot pea soup in insulated jugs, two loaves of fresh-baked whole-wheat bread, a bag of mixed Greening and Winesap apples from the trees behind Aunt Jean’s house, a thick wedge of farm cheddar, sausage. Peace-offerings, guest gifts, bribes, whatever.

  Eagle still hadn’t offered any comments. She’d driven back to the gatehouse, tucked the Dart away in the garage, locked the doors, and there he was, perched in that snag, watching, silent. Had she passed the test, not bringing any strangers with her, or was he fed up with her and just waiting for her next fuck-up?

  Talking eagles. What happened to the scientist?

  She kicked off down the trail, skis dragging for an instant and then breaking loose to slide, the wax and snow getting to know each other. Ten yards, twenty yards, the kick and glide smoothed out,
rhythm settled in, she found her pace and was back to flying. Eagle swooped low overhead, silent except for the hiss of wind through stiff feathers, and vanished ahead. He seemed to take the weight of the pack with him.

  What happened? Aunt Jean had happened. Susan thought about that, about the old Naskeag woman with the face as worn and rounded and seamed as the granite of this coast. That woman gave off vibrations like an aura-photo, one of those things the Russian guy did with static electricity. You wanted to please her. Even when she royally pissed you off.

  Granny Tranh had been like that. Calm, quiet, a few words here and there, but you read approval or otherwise in her eyes and wanted to find approval there. Thin and sharp and bony like a bird, not round comfortable dumpling-face and body like Aunt Jean, but Granny Tranh gave the same sense of stone that had weathered through the centuries until nothing but the hardest parts remained.

  If Aunt Jean wanted to keep Sasquatch secret, if Eagle wanted that, Susan damn sure was going to think about it.

  Susan hummed to herself, “Mommas, don’t let your daughters grow up to be scientists. They’ll let emotion intrude on a calm scientific debate.”

  Calm scientific debate? Some of the conferences she’d been to, it’d been a wonder people got out alive. Bears versus wolves versus eagles, and every one of them attacking the deer and rabbits for browsing the range to destruction. Funny, you often could tell what animal a wildlife guy or gal studied by watching how the scientist behaved. Susan had wondered whether that was cause or effect or coincidence—need to get a grant, do a study.

  No, women scientists didn’t have any monopoly on emotion.

  Emotion and their need for external validation. Classic females, always unsure of themselves. Like me. I want Aunt Jean to think well of me, approve of what I’m doing. Where the hell did that come from? Here I am, cursing her name and her family tree for thirty-three generations back, and I want her approval.

  Aunt Jean didn’t need external validation. She knew where she stood and what she stood for. She didn’t need any Nobel Prize as a cross-check on her data, didn’t ask for peer review from God or man. Alice seemed a little shaky on the subject, but she was still an apprentice witch.

  Auras and witches and magic. Talking eagles. Spirit Point, and Carlsson calling on Bear for the strength to carry Sasquatch. That animal must weigh three hundred, four hundred pounds, and Carlsson and Bouchard carried her up from the shore? Bouchard might be wiry-tough and in good shape, but he isn’t big. That kind of strength isn’t . . . human.

  Sasquatch.

  What the hell is Sasquatch? Did I dream her? Am I going to walk into that boathouse and find . . . nothing? Never was? Seven-foot-tall illusion, like that damned movie rabbit?

  She who swims dark waters. Alice and Aunt Jean saw her, too. External validation.

  And that brought her to the boathouse. She popped her ski bindings, stomped snow off her boots and dusted her pants, set skis and poles against the wall where she could find them again if Alice or Carlsson booted her ass back out into the night and forecast storm, and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. People didn’t lock their doors in Sunrise County.

  The door dumped her into the kitchen, orange cat lifting his head in the corner and identifying her with half-opened eyes, into the smell of woodsmoke and coffee and kerosene lamps, and she thumped her pack down on the kitchen table. Alice poked her head around the door from Carlsson’s parlor-bedroom.

  “Soup, kid, pea soup and fresh-baked bread and other goodies. Aunt Jean said she doesn’t want us starving on bachelor food.”

  Alice tilted her head and lifted one eyebrow, but didn’t ask any of the obvious questions. “Better let me take charge of that stuff. You probably think supper is a can of beans. Campbell’s beans.”

  Smart-ass kid. “Hey, I went to school in Boston. At least give me credit for buying B & M.”

  And that was that, straight into family banter, apparently all was forgiven.

  On one side. “Did you know about the fire?”

  Alice had the good grace to look away. “Yeah. I warned you. I had to know. That’s why we took all those cow-paths, coming over here. You couldn’t have done a damn thing about it, and knowing would just have cost you a lot of sleep.”

  “But the police . . . .” There she was, tongue-tied again.

  Alice turned back and stared Susan in the eye. “We learned long ago that we have to defend ourselves. We can’t count on anyone else.”

  That sent a shiver down Susan’s spine. She remembered those beer cans, two shots each, the second one on a bouncing target. All hits. Didn’t matter if that was witchcraft or years of practice—9mm slugs blew the question all to hell.

  Screw that. Susan leaned forward, fists on the kitchen table, getting in Alice’s face. “So you’re my mother, hey? You know what’s good for the little brown-assed girl? When I was your age, I was dodging strung-out smack-heads and pimps on 14th Street and carried a switchblade to school. If shit’s going down, you tell me. Got that?”

  “She’s a Haskell. That means she thinks she’s God, or at least the Archangel Gabriel. You’ll never make a dent in that.” It was Carlsson, leaning on the doorpost and shaking his head. He had two feet again. “What’s this about a fire?”

  “Bastards torched the fucking trailer. Couple of days ago, same night I ran crying to Aunt Jean, but she never breathed a word. Same for this little twit. Keeping secrets. Nice secret bunch of rat-fuckers you got in your corner of the world.”

  Susan cut her rant short. You can take the kid out of the streets, but can you take the streets out of the kid? Clean up your act, Doctor Tranh. Start talking Boston. That accent uses better language.

  “Shit. Burned you out?” Carlsson stood there, question-marks circling around his head like a cartoon character. But he didn’t use any of them. “Look, you can move into the gatehouse if you want to. Power’s turned off, take a couple of days to get it back on and the phone changed to your name, but there’s wood heat and kerosene lamps. Probably still dried food in the pantry, or you can take stuff from here.”

  Susan glared at him. “I don’t want your fucking charity.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out, and glanced up at the ceiling as if asking God to grant him strength. Or to slap some sense into her pointy little head. Then he glared back. “Not charity, you arrogant bitch. We call it ‘being a neighbor’ out here in the boonies. Fire, flood, wind, someone dies, a boat sinks, we pull together. It’s how us hicks survive on the ass end of the world. You want in, I’ve got a guesthouse and some beds I ain’t using. Keys are in back, nail under the shingle skirting of the bay window. You want out, follow the same damned road you drove in on. It works in both directions.”

  Susan took a deep breath, swallowing her snarl and pulling up words instead. “Your goddamn neighbors are trying to kill me. They killed my dog. They killed my eagles. They slashed my tires, ten miles back in those fucking snowdrift boonies with a storm coming on. They broke into my trailer. Three AM, any normal human would either have been sound asleep or have the lights on, but I got lucky and I was sitting there awake in the dark and I had a gun. And then your neighbor cop burned the fucking dump the minute I turned my back on him.” Her hands shook. She knew she was going to start throwing things in another minute or two.

  Carlsson stood there, staring at Alice, staring at Susan, staring at Alice again. If Susan could read faces at all, most of that rant was news to him. Goddamn secrets, Aunt Jean again.

  Screw him. Screw all of them. She elbowed her way past him, found a door at random, and slammed it closed behind her. She ended up back in warm fish-smelling darkness, must be the treatment room again with the lamp turned down. Come to think of it, this place didn’t offer many choices in the door department.

  She waited for her eyes to adjust, found the night-light glow of the Aladdin lamp, and moved to it. “Susan, Susan, Susan. Get a grip. The man’s been hurt and stuck in bed, doesn’t have a phone, damn sure he doe
sn’t get the morning paper delivered to his goddamn front door. And Alice is just a mixed-up kid. She does whatever Aunt Jean tells her to. Don’t blame them.”

  And Aunt Jean wasn’t used to helping strangers to her kingdom. Queendom. Anyone born and raised in Sunrise County knew about the Haskell Witches. Anyone else would have expected Aunt Jean to do exactly what she’d done. Carlsson had just told her that. Anyone born and raised in Sunrise County would have her own connections to the gossip net, would know what the hell was going down.

  “Not Susan. Susan’s always an outsider. Susan doesn’t want to join, ’cause Susan’s been kicked out too many times. Susan feels safer on the outside.”

  She’d calmed down enough now to touch the lamp, turn up the wick without smashing the fragile chimney. She took three deep breaths, in, out, concentrating on easing the muscle knots between her shoulder-blades, and stared at the flame. Up a bit, wait, no carbon on the mantel, up a bit more, orange glow turning to yellow and then to pale white, up some more, a touch of soot, turn it back a hair, wait for full heat, try again, no soot this time. Fiddling with the lamp was a meditation exercise, enforced focus.

  “Susan, Susan, Susan. Doctor Susan Tranh, human porcupine. The man was trying to be nice. Offering you a free bed a mile away from his. No strings attached.”

  She smelled old smoke on her clothes again, the reek of fuel oil blending with kerosene fumes from the lamp. She remembered those bedsprings rusting in the heap of charcoal that had been the Fish and Wildlife trailer. Carlsson risked that happening to his gatehouse. A generation back, someone had torched the main house. He didn’t seem to care.

  Beds. Was she reacting to the other meaning of a place to sleep?

  “Yeah, Doctor Tranh, let’s be scientific. Let’s talk about Susan’s sex life. Damn sure it won’t take long. More of Susan’s rejection syndrome, Susan’s father just walking out one morning and never coming back. Little Susan can’t trust a man to stay, so she only sleeps with ones that she knows won’t. Even Susan’s sex-dreams stick to forbidden fruit, guys who hate her. Safe dreams, ones Susan knows deep down in her darkest id she’ll never even think of acting out in real life. Susan Tranh, PhD, specialist in do-it-yourself psychoanalysis.”