by Noel Hynd
Brooks spoke. “For what?”
“For Henry. That’s the spirit we want, isn’t it? Henry Flaherty! “
Brooks felt his heart thunder in the pitch black of the room. He guided his hand back down to the table. Annette’s stayed next to his.
They passed several minutes, parked midway between heightened anxiety and overt fear.
“Be very careful of Henry Flaherty. He’s already caused so much misery.”
It was not the first time Mrs. Ritter’s words had held wisdom. Nor did Tim Brooks need an introduction to what he thought of as the elusive black presence.
He waited. It occurred to him that he and Annette might be killed, so, as he waited, he began to will that they would not be. He knew she was doing the same thing. Only perhaps with her, it was prayer.
Gradually, his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. He could see vague features within the room. The lamps against the walls. The chairs. The contour of the old hearth.
He waited, conscious of his own heartbeat. Somewhere distantly in the house there was another of the maddening creaks. He was aware of Annette next to him and Osaro on the other side. Their hands remained joined.
“Come to us, Henry,” the minister said. “Come to us and share in the holy peace of Our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Osaro paused. The room remained silent. Many more minutes passed. Brooks lost track of time. He suddenly felt greatly fatigued and almost like he was ready to sleep. But the minister roused him when he invoked another prayer.
“As the Apostle Paul said in his Epistle to the Romans, ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.’”
Nothing again. In the dark, the table gave a very short quake, as if something might be starting to happen. But then it settled and became very still, its four legs firmly on the underlying carpet.
“We wish you to come forth, Henry,” the minister urged in a kindly voice. “We wish you to share with us your worldly pain, your eternity of troubles, and your panoply of tears, so that we might help you ease them.”
More time. More nothing.
Osaro asked Annette and Tim to attempt to will the spirit of Henry Flaherty into the chamber. They both tried. The result was the same.
Gradually, Brooks was aware that Osaro was coming out of his meditative state. The minister’s body fidgeted. His hands flinched.
“It’s not going to happen,” Osaro finally whispered. “We can’t get him.”
Osaro made this pronouncement so banally that it sounded as if he were talking about someone receiving a telephone call. Osaro drew his hands away from the table. Brooks was aware of movement by the minister, though he remained in his chair.
Then suddenly there was a flash in the darkness. Both Annette and Timothy recoiled, thinking a spiritually confrontation was at hand. Then they realized that George Osaro had lit a match.
The minister rose and relit the candle. He moved through the room with no fear whatsoever and, for a fleeting second as the wick of the candle took the flame from the match, almost looked like a shimmering presence, himself.
But then that odd vision was gone. Osaro blew out the match and sat down again. He lay his hands on the table, more casually this time, and didn’t touch his partners.
“A few more minutes,” he said quietly. The mood in the room was broken now. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything, but we’ll wait a little longer.”
They waited and Osaro was proven correct. Nothing further. Eventually, the minister asked Annette to turn on the room lights. When they did, the living room looked very ordinary again, even with all the furniture other than the checkerboard table pushed against the walls.
A small wave of relaxation washed around the room, a tiny descent into boredom.
The séance was over.
Chapter Fifty-five
Half an hour later, they closed the house at 17 Cort Street and walked outside.
“What’s Henry doing, George?” Brooks asked. “Why won’t he come forth?”
“Henry is royally jerking us around,” Osaro answered. “He doesn’t want to come forth.”
“I thought he had to. I thought we were drawing him forth with the opportunity to communicate.”
“Not necessarily,” Osaro said moodily. He watched Annette lock her house. Brooks held a flashlight for her so that she could turn her keys properly.
“These entities have their own will,” Osaro explained, continuing. “Do I need to remind you? It’s nothing more than their will that brings them here. Their spirit is their will. That’s what makes them so difficult to battle. It’s all they have to fight with.”
“I want it to come forth,” Brooks said again.
“Then you have to make it want to,” Osaro said. “That’s really the only solution. It will do only what it wants to do.”
Annette completed locking the house. Brooks turned off the flashlight.
“What if it’s not here?” Brooks asked, looking at the house as Annette stepped away from it. Annette had left a small lamp glowing on each floor. “What if Henry’s not in this house anymore? What if the ghost is somewhere else?”
“He’s here,” Osaro said flatly. “I can feel it. His presence is so strong that he’s stirred up every other spirit in the place. Even the little Shipley girl.”
They turned toward where they had left their cars in front of the house. They walked several paces in the night air. A mosquito buzzed Annette. She slapped at it.
“Then what if we can’t draw this particular spirit forth?” Brooks asked.
“There’s always a way,” Osaro said. “Has to be. Otherwise the spirit wouldn’t be wandering. Otherwise it would have passed on. Something’s holding it in this world. We have to find out what. Then we can summon it very easily.”
“Does it know that?” Brooks asked with evident sarcasm.
Osaro shrugged. “If it didn’t know already, it probably knows that now.”
“Why?”
“I’m sure it’s listening to us,” Osaro said routinely. “You don’t think it’s not curious what we’re about, do you?”
Brooks felt the surge of anxiety again. That feeling in his stomach. Behind his neck. For a half a second, he thought something touched his cheek.
“God protect us,” Annette said softly.
“He will,” said Osaro.
Brooks touched his cheek and took her hand. He waited. He waited to hear the spirit’s voice within his head. But it wasn’t forthcoming.
“Where is Henry’s spirit?” Brooks wondered. “Ten feet behind me? Lying in a graveyard? Hurtling through infinity?”
Brooks led Annette from the house to the circular driveway. His mind churned, trying to fit all events and theories into a neat scheme where no neat scheme seemed possible. A pair of mosquitoes buzzed him. He waved them off. Another buzzed Annette. She slapped at it.
“Rather than provide a feast for flying insects,” he said to Annette, “why don’t you go ahead to the car. I’ll be there in a minute.” He handed her his key.
“Okay,” she said.
She jogged ahead to the Jeep. Brooks and Osaro walked slowly behind her, out of earshot.
“I think Henry’s ghost was in my house last night,” Brooks said. “I thought I felt its presence.”
Osaro received this with several seconds of reflection and a raised eyebrow. “You’re getting very good at that skill, aren’t you?” Osaro asked. “This sense of when a ghost is present.”
Brooks looked at his friend in the shadows. “Very,” he said. “Maybe too good.”
“What’s that mean?” Osaro laughed.
“It’s not the most comfortable skill to have,” Brooks said. “Unsettling. Much the way you described it yourself the day we had a talk outside your church.”
“Ah, yes,” Osaro said, remembering.
They walked slowly, insects notwithstanding.
“I read this o
ne paper over at the Eksman Collection at Harvard,” Brooks began. “I found this particularly intriguing. This one psychic researcher, I forget his name, postulated that many ghosts walk the face of the earth. But they look so routine and so normal that no one even perceives them as ghosts. Very flesh and blood.”
Osaro grinned. “I guess that lets me out,” he joked. “The ‘routine and normal’ part.”
“But what do you think about that theory?” Brooks asked.
“I don’t know, Timmy,” Osaro mused. “That one’s a little like the old saw about the tree falling in the woods, isn’t it? ‘If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’ No way to prove it or disprove it.” He paused. “And why do you ask me?” he inquired. “Who else might be a ghost around here? Bill Agannis? Gelman and Rodzienko.” He laughed. “Boomer? That would be a novel development, wouldn’t it?”
Brooks smiled. “I just wondered about your thoughts.”
Osaro shrugged. “Those are my thoughts,” he concluded. “And who cares what I think, anyway? What matters is what you think.”
It was a beautiful night. Nearly a full moon and a billion stars. A breeze from the ocean. Much like the previous evening when Henry took a ride on the island breezes and landed at Brooks’ home.
Tim watched Annette settle into his Jeep. She put the top up. He slapped at another mosquito. They all seemed to pursue him while ignoring the minister. More divine intervention?
“I would think that your Henry is your most pressing problem,” Osaro said, shifting the discussion. “And he doesn’t fit that category of behavior at all, does he? Solid, I mean. He’s very obviously a spirit from what you and Annette tell me.”
“That’s right.”
Osaro nodded. “One deals with spirits accordingly,” Osaro said.
They stopped outside the two vehicles. The Voyager had a new dent in its rear fender. A souvenir of the minister’s most recent trip to Boston, Brooks guessed.
“How do I get him out of my house, George?” Brooks finally asked, turning very serious. “You’re the expert on this. I want to end this haunting before I wake up dead or find Annette dead beside me.”
“Why do you think that could happen?”
“I think it’s what’s next. Unless we dispose of Henry some way. Soon.”
Osaro looked deeply concerned. He blew out a breath. “We’ll do another séance and try to summon him,” the clergyman said. “Similarly, we also have to create a situation where we make him come forth by holding the key to whatever disturbs him.”
To Brooks it sounded almost hopeless. He sighed. “That’s all, huh?” he asked. “How do we do that?”
Osaro saw how forlorn his friend looked. He rapped him confidently on the arm.
“Buck up,” Osaro said. “Sometimes these things resolve very quickly. Have to be positive, you know. A lot of this is willpower, remember. Yours against the spirit’s.”
“Isn’t that something of a mismatch?” Brooks asked.
“It can be,” Osaro allowed. “But the mismatch can go either way. That’s why faith is crucial. Without it, you’re lost. With it, you have the greatest spiritual weapon you can unleash upon the forces of evil. Trust me. I know.
“But until this is over we don’t know who’s got the stronger hand,” Brooks said. Follow?”
“No,” said Osaro. He fingered the cross that hung as a pendant. “I know who has the stronger hand.”
“That’s because you have your faith.”
“Very good, Timmy,” Osaro said. “You’re catching on.”
Brooks was silent. Annette waved to him from the Jeep, then hunched her shoulders and folded her arms in a gesture that indicated she was shivered.
“Very beautiful, your future wife,” Osaro said. “You’re a very lucky man. God has been very good to you.”
“What?”
“Listen, Tim,” Osaro said, ignoring Tim’s protest. “Don’t overthink this. We’ll go after Henry again tomorrow. The more you believe in what you’re doing the easier it becomes.”
“But…”
“See you tomorrow,” Osaro said. “Shut up and go home. Sleep with the lousy light on if you want, it’s your electric bill, buddy.”
He tapped Tim Brooks on the shoulder again and climbed into his van.
Brooks watched as the minister turned over the engine of the car. The Voyager lurched into gear and pulled out onto the street.
Brooks watched him go, then slid into the Jeep with Annette. He started the engine to get some heat. But then for several seconds, Brooks stared at the dark road ahead.
“What did you think?” he finally asked Annette.
“Scary,” was the only word she could find.
“Think we really saw what we both think we saw?” he asked. “Or were we under some bizarre form of hypnosis? Or did we see only what we wanted to see?”
She leaned on him, her arm on his shoulder. “Tim, three people are dead on this island. That’s no one’s form of hypnosis. Nor is it anyone’s self-delusion.”
“Yeah,” he answered in a toneless voice. “You’re right.”
But suddenly a sickening notion was upon him. It seemed so neat and obvious that he wondered why it had taken so long to take from—even if it flew in the face of all the new supernatural reasoning that emerged from the last few weeks:
Was George Osaro a pathological murderer and liar? For reasons that only he knew, he had assaulted the college girl, caused the Canadian boy to drown, and then murdered Hughes.
Motivation? Where was it?
Oh. Sure. Three inexplicable ghostly murders lent credibility to all this spirit stuff he was always pushing. An endless and multifaceted pattern of deceit.
Brooks toyed with running Osaro’s name through the FBI files. Just for fun. Just to see what rose to the surface. Well, this theory was more rational than some of the others he had been working on about George in the last few hours.
Then he was deeply ashamed of himself for casting suspicion upon his closest friend. He was proof of what stress can do to a man’s reason, he told himself.
“Timmy…? You falling asleep or what?” Annette’s yawning voice drew him back into reality, into the Jeep where he sat with her. “Do you realize what time it is?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Midnight?”
“Guess again.”
He glanced at the car’s clock and was as surprised as she had been when she noticed moments earlier. It was twelve minutes past two in the morning.
“Two twelve! Can that be right?” he asked.
“We must have been in there for four hours,” she said.
“Didn’t seem that way, did it?”
“No. It didn’t.”
He asked himself: What had they been doing? Drifting in and out of some other reality to summon the spirits? Brooks’ sense of time was out of kilter. But so were a lot of other things.
They drove back to his house.
Annette slept right away, lying close to him.
Warily, Brooks remained awake for as long as possible. Toward three A.M. he finally drifted off.
The rest of the very eventful night passed without incident.
Chapter Fifty-six
Friday the fourteenth of August marked the third weekend in the summer’s final month. The island was crowded and busy, but already some summer residents were making preparations for closing their houses for the year. At the same time, the final wave of two-week vacationers hit the island, predominantly people from New York or Boston who would stay until Labor Day.
The weather no longer had the clear crispness of June or the glowing warmth of July. Mid-August turned sticky and humid, and hazy muggy days turned into foggy damp evenings. But the day gave every early indication of passing peacefully. George Osaro spent the day at his church, putting his papers and personal belongings in order. The end of the month would close his tenure at Christ and Holy Trinity and he was taking the first steps of easing himself out. H
is departure date was advancing steadily.
Annette went back into her house alone for two hours in the afternoon to retrieve some clothes, books and scripts. The time passed uneventfully. Similarly, Timothy Brooks had a quiet shift on duty.
In the evening, Annette and Timothy dined out again. They sat at a table downstairs this time, both ordered scallops with a ginger sauce and they split a bottle of sparkling white wine. To Annette’s delight, no one recognized her. Afterward, they took a walk together on Straight Wharf, watching one ferry pull into the harbor and another pull out. Across the harbor to the east, adjacent to the Coast Guard station, the red beacon of the Brant Point lighthouse flashed. As a haze remained on the water, its horn sounded, also. Then they walked back to where Timothy had parked his car on India Street. Annette and Timothy climbed into his Jeep. There was a low mist on the island and Brooks drove steadily through it to arrive at his home.
He and Annette went inside.
She showered and readied herself for bed. Brooks had only been home for ten minutes when his cell phone rang. He made the mistake of answering it.
“Brooks?” boomed the voice on the other end.
Brooks recognized the lieutenant’s voice.
“Yes?” he answered.
“I’m at the airport,” Lieutenant Agannis said. “Get out here right away.”
“What’s going on?”
“This is your case, Brooks! Just get here fast!”
“Yes, sir.”
He clicked off.
“Tim? What is it?” Annette asked. She had slipped into a nightgown and wrapped herself in a robe.
“I don’t know,” Brooks said. “Obviously there’s a problem.”
He went to her and kissed her. “I’ve got to get out there fast,” he said. He turned away and began to look for a jacket.
Late evenings at the airport could turn very cool.
She watched him. “Can I go with you?” she asked.
“Think it’s a good idea?” he asked. “You’d probably be safer here. “
He found a blue windbreaker and pulled it on. He strapped his pistol into his ankle holster and took his badge from the top of the dresser. When he turned she was standing very still, very quietly watching him.
