Smith's Monthly #31

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “And not all of them are in Russia.” Fred said.

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said, and downed half of my drink to try to clear that image from my mind.

  We all sat in silence for a few minutes.

  “One thing to remember,” I said, breaking the silence in the big room. “We still haven’t solved the problem of the ghost. And now she pops in and out of here like an unwanted in-law. Anyone got any ideas?

  “Somehow,” Steven said, “Alex must return. That is the only thing I am completely convinced will free Gretchen’s spirit.”

  “Lovely,” Fred said.

  “Maybe Susan will help him get back,” Constance said. “If she went to the same place and wasn’t lying about all that time travel stuff, she might.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But I suppose there is always hope. Assuming that this Alex is still alive after all this time.”

  I let that sink in for a moment, then said, “I need to take a walk. How about we all do some thinking. Maybe there’s something we’re all missing.”

  No one disagreed, so I grabbed my coat and wandered down across the logjam and up a trail under the trees growing on the old mudslide. I found it hard to imagine that at one time, this entire area had slid down and blocked the valley. I looked up through the thirty-foot-tall pine trees and then back at the smooth forest floor and just couldn’t imagine it.

  But it had happened, the same as the ghost had led us to the mirror and Susan had disappeared right out of a chair in the middle of the lodge. There was no getting around the reality of it all happening. Maybe I was starting to do what I had always feared most—close my mind to new ideas.

  I had hated those who refused to live in the present, but instead stuck to the values of their past without thought or reason. I had prided myself on being able to be open-minded with the kids who sat in my classes and who now came into the bar. But maybe I had been kidding myself. Maybe I was as closed-minded as the next fool.

  I stopped and stared through the trees at the lake. Susan had disappeared from the lodge after triggering a mirror she called a transportation focus. That was a fact. And there was a ghost waiting for her lover. That was also a fact. The next question was what to do about it. I was starting to understand how the people of Roosevelt must have felt when they tried to fight the moving wall of mud and rock I was now standing on.

  I wandered away from the lake until the trail dropped down across what Fred had said was Mule Creek. The trail forked at that point, one fork going up the Mule Creek valley in the direction of the old Dewey Mine. Fred said it was a fun place to explore. I didn’t feel like exploring right at the moment.

  I turned and headed down the trail along Monumental Creek, away from the lake. Fred had told me that the trail ran down into the Big Creek valley and then after that into the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. I had thought I would amble a mile or so and then turn back. I didn’t make it that far.

  About three hundred yards past Mule Creek, in an area of the hillside that was flatter than any other, I noticed the old cemetery.

  It was above the trail and fenced off with the bleached remains of a short wood fence. A few of the markers were wood planks on which most of the writing was long gone. About fifteen stone markers dotted the brush and needles under the pines. Most were tipped at odd angles. Another four or five were knocked down. In a few places, the ground had sunk into a grave.

  I read a few of the old stones. Just names and dates, mostly from a few years before the flood. One stone caught my attention. It looked newer, a little whiter, as if it had only been there half the time of the others. I walked over to it and read the simple inscription on it.

  Richard Haycroft

  Beloved Grandfather

  1867—1943

  The first and only Mayor

  of Roosevelt, Idaho. He

  loved the town and wanted

  to be buried here.

  I sat down with my back against a tree near the stone marker and stared out over the narrow valley and the creek below. I knew where I wanted to be buried. Beside Carla in Boise. But now I wondered if I was going to get that chance. Damn it all to hell.

  I took a deep breath of the clear mountain air and tried to organize my thoughts into some sort of reasonable pattern. Being able to order thoughts into rational form is a learned skill. Good trial lawyers have it. So do most scientists. Chess and go players also have the ability to see order in things where, to the untrained observer, there is none.

  I had learned the trick by doing year after year of lectures. Complex or simple topics, I could always boil them down into hour segments, and then within each hour keep the discussion moving along a certain track. Good note takers in my classes always ended up with clear outlines of the material that needed to be covered. It was a trick I hadn’t used in years. Not much need while marking time in a bar.

  But now, with so many new things to make sense of, I tried to force my mind to drop back into that organizational frame. I had to sort out some details.

  After half an hour, I had the questions and events organized into four main areas. First, I had come to help Fred and Constance get rid of a ghost so that they could keep their new lodge afloat in a way they would like. No solution yet. Even with the mirror and the disappearance of Susan, the ghost was no closer to leaving than before.

  Second, I now believed that the ghost did exist and was waiting for someone named Alex to return. The ghost believed that even though eighty years had passed, Alex was still alive. That fact was interesting, considering Alex’s probable age. Of course, as Steven said, ghosts seldom are in touch with the current time.

  Third, Susan had come here looking for something and that something had turned out to be the very same mirror the ghost had focused on. That Susan said she was from the future and had enemies was either believable or not. However, if there were others looking for the mirror, they might show up. I didn’t much like that thought, but Susan had said others would want to use it soon.

  Fourth, Susan had clearly done something to the ghost’s mirror and disappeared. There seemed to be no way of knowing where she went, short of triggering the mirror and following her.

  All four points crossed and crisscrossed and all ended up boiling down to one simple thing. The mirror.

  Yet the biggest questions surrounded the mirror.

  So, I had a fifth main section. What was the mirror? Susan had said it was a random selector device planted by what she called Seeders. If that was the case, where did the Seeders come from? And how were they planting devices like the mirror at the turn of the century?

  There seemed to be no clear answers, especially sitting here in a cemetery. If anything was to be done to help Fred and Constance, then answers were needed. And it followed that the only way to get those answers was to trigger the mirror and see where it took me.

  There. I had finally got to the point that I knew I had to get to the minute Susan disappeared. I had to follow her. Simple and crazy as that.

  For the next few minutes I sat and thought about being buried beside Carla and how important that had become to me in the last few years. If I followed Susan through the mirror, there was almost certain chance I would never make it back. In eighty years, Alex hadn’t. But there was a chance I would. Alex hadn’t had Susan to help him eighty years ago. She seemed to know a lot about what she was doing.

  But was Susan right? Or was she crazier than I was becoming? I kept picturing her sitting there in that big old chair one moment and then gone the next. If I had to place a wager right now, I would bet on her telling the truth. I didn’t like that bet.

  There was only one way to find out. I stood, brushed off my pants, and headed back down the trail.

  ***

  Constance was sitting beside Fred on the main living room couch, talking to Steven as he paced up and down in front of the fireplace.

  “Ghosts don’t lie,” he said. “From everything we know about spirits, it would be impossible
for a ghost to purposely tell a lie. At times ghosts have been mislead by the passage of events since their death. But no, I would stake anything that a deliberate falsehood would not be possible.”

  I dropped down onto the couch in front of the coffee table and the mirror. “What’s that about?”

  Constance shrugged. “I asked Steven if there’s any chance that Gretchen was lying about Alex being still alive.”

  Steven shook his head. “No way. As far as she is concerned, and as far as I can feel by being in contact with her, Alex is still very much alive.”

  “He’d be at least a hundred years old,” I said.

  Fred nodded. “At least.” He stood and handed me an old eight-by-ten framed picture. “That’s one of the pictures we had copied down at the historical society and used to decorate the cabins with. Read the inscription on the back.”

  I glanced at the picture of seven men standing in what looked to be ankle deep mud in front of a large white tent. There was a sign hung across the peak of the tent: ATTORNEYS HOLBERG & WINSTON. In the background were some of the main buildings of the town. The last thing I wanted to look at was that dead town. I needed another drink.

  I flipped the picture over. In Constance’s printing it said, Roosevelt’s first law office.

  “It also had names on the original,” Constance said, “but I didn’t think to copy them down. I do remember that the shortest man there, the one on the left, was named Alex. They put that he was from Boston in parentheses beside his name. That’s why I remembered it.”

  “You think that man was Gretchen’s Alex?”

  “Possible,” Fred said. “Look how old he looks there. Must be at least thirty.”

  I studied the picture. At least thirty. Maybe more.

  “So that makes him one hundred and ten,” I said. “Makes the chance of him being alive very doubtful and answers none of the questions.”

  “Do you think anything is going to?” Constance asked.

  “Someone following Susan would,” I said.

  “I knew it,” Fred said, standing and moving around the couch toward the liquor cabinet. “I knew that was what you were thinking. Damn it all to hell.”

  “You aren’t really?” Constance’s eyes were wide and staring at me.

  I shrugged, but that was as good as screaming a yes to her.

  “I won’t allow it,” she said with a coldness I hadn’t seen from her in years. “This lodge is not worth risking anyone’s life for. No more than we’ve already done by having you two make that stupid dive.”

  Fred fixed himself a drink and returned to leaning against the log wall beside the fireplace. “She’s right. We can get by with the ghost. We’ll just warn people, that’s all.”

  “Hang on a minute. Why don’t we all sit down and talk about this? Let me tell you what I’m thinking and then maybe together we can come up with a better idea. All right?”

  Fred nodded and sat down right where he was on the floor, with his back against the log wall.

  Steven came over and sat down in the big overstuffed chair Susan had used. For a split second, I wanted to warn him to not sit there in case Susan came back, but then realized how stupid that was.

  For the next few minutes, I outlined my five-point summary of the situation, ending with the fact that we had pretty good circumstantial evidence that the mirror worked once in 1909 and we witnessed the mirror working this morning. That alone added a lot of weight to Susan’s future new world story.

  “But that still doesn’t make it safe,” Constance said.

  “And besides,” Fred said, “there’s good evidence that coming back ain’t so easy.”

  “So then let me do it,” Steven said. I glanced over at him. He hadn’t said much the entire day. But I could tell his eyes were blazing with the type of adventure and curiosity that I used to feel before making a dive into a new lake.

  “It’s logical,” he said. “I’m single, have very little family, and am a scientist. The possibilities of this are endless.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “If anyone is going to trigger that thing again, it will be me.”

  “And why’s that?” Steven said. “It makes no—”

  “Because I found it. Simple as that.”

  “Hang on here a minute,” Fred said. “Before we go racing to kill ourselves, let’s at least try to think this through a little more.”

  “Good idea,” I said and Steven took a deep breath and sat back in the chair.

  It was silent in the room for a few moments until I turned to Steven. “Is there anything more that you’ve gotten from Gretchen that you haven’t told us?”

  Steven shrugged. “Nothing except that when I saw the picture I knew Alex was from Boston . . . and that Gretchen didn’t consider herself a good woman.”

  I glanced down at the picture on the couch beside me. So that might be Alex after all. I understood what he meant about the “good woman” distinction that divided turn-of-the-century society. Gretchen had been a saloon girl, or as they were called then, a prostitute.

  “Do you suppose she knew where Alex got the mirror?” Fred asked.

  My mind reeled at what the answer could be. Whoever had been doing the mirrors had been around for a long time. A long time. I didn’t like that thought.

  “Could you tell if she was in contact with Alex?” Fred asked.

  “She believes he is still alive,” Steven said, his voice heavy. “But I haven’t been able to tell if she had any sense of here and now.”

  “Same damn problem,” I said to Fred and he nodded. The silence and the chill hung over the room while we thought about what to do next. I looked at Fred and Constance, then back to Steven. “Think of anything more?”

  Steven laughed a strained laugh. “I know the name of the song she plays. It’s called ‘Tonight Has a Thousand Tomorrows.’ It was Alex’s favorite song.”

  Constance closed her eyes and shivered.

  I felt the same thing. Uncontrollable shivers did a dance along my spine and right up into the back of my neck. A lovely feeling if you’re into that sort of thing. I personally was getting damned tired of it.

  To be continued…

  Pilgrim Hugh loved tough cases. He considered himself the best private detective in the Pacific Northwest, maybe the country.

  He solved most cases within minutes of arriving on the scene.

  But when faced with a case of a man who saw things, Pilgrim Hugh seemed stumped.

  Even for Pilgrim, sometimes the obvious might not be the answer.

  THE CASE OF THE MAN WHO SAW

  A Pilgrim Hugh Incident

  The five-lane road cutting through the small city of Tigard outside of Portland, Oregon, was as busy as it always was during the day. Stoplights at every long block, constant stop-and-go traffic, and hundreds of businesses on both sides of the street, from pet shops to thrift stores to restaurants and fast-food standards. You could find almost everything along this ten-mile stretch of highway if you were willing to wait in the traffic long enough.

  And at all the stoplights.

  Pilgrim usually avoided the highway at all costs. Not today.

  Pilgrim Hugh wasn’t even driving his stretch limo and the traffic lights had annoyed him. He couldn’t even imagine what they were doing to Donna Marks, his assistant and driver.

  Donna had short brown hair and wide brown eyes and when smiling she could light up a room. She was divorced, thirty, and an expert on computers, high-speed driving, and weapons. And when annoyed, she could swear like a mythological sailor. He hadn’t heard any swearing from her on the way out the Tigard highway, so that meant she was in a good mood today. Always a good thing for a woman as smart and good with guns as she was.

  She had only been with him for three months now and he could no longer imagine doing this job without her help. She seemed to read his mind at times, something he actually didn’t mind in the slightest.

  Today she had arrived to work in tight brown shorts, a white
blouse, and tennis shoes. He wore his usual jeans, dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and tennis shoes. People often said they looked good together, which just made Donna shake her head and walk away in disgust.

  Just after one in the afternoon, Pilgrim had been called by the Chief of Police of Tigard to help out on something very weird that had happened on or along this stretch of highway. Pilgrim liked strange and weird. He lived for cases like that and specialized in puzzles that stumped the police. He worked for free for the police forces around Portland and that’s why they called him, because he had also solved every case they had called him for so far.

  He considered himself to be the best private detective in the Pacific Northwest, maybe in the country. He really was that good.

  His road to being a private eye had gone through a bunch of strange events. First, three of years of law school, a three year event he considered so strange he couldn’t believe he survived it. Then a failed first marriage and a corporate law-firm job that proved to him, without a doubt, he sucked at being a lawyer.

  Or a regular husband, for that matter.

  Then his grandmother had died and left him more money than he could imagine. Failed marriage and job in his wake, the arrival of the money sent him on a year of traveling and drinking, mostly drinking, which got really boring.

  So back to school he went to become a private detective because he liked mystery novels and it sounded cool. Even before he hung out his PI shingle, it had become very clear that being a private eye wasn’t what the novels described. The job was all computer work and long boring hours of nothingness.

  He bored easily, no big surprise to anyone who knew him. He needed some excitement and challenges in his life.

  Law didn’t do it by itself and neither did being a standard PI. And he had done enough drinking to last for a lifetime.

  So he had set up Hugh and Associates, a combination law firm and private investigative firm. Then he had hired a couple great associates who took all the boring cases and made the firm lots of money. They hired even more associates that he had no desire to meet who also made him and the firm lots and lots of money.