Phantom

by Thomas Tessier

  What?

  —I've missed you.

  What do you want?

  —You.

  Who are you?

  —You.

  The invisible hands clutched his sharply now, the unseen arms locked around him in a crushing embrace. Ned's breath was forced violently from his body and his eyes felt as if they were about to shoot out of his skull. The room was vanishing behind black spots that danced across his vision. The hands—those fingers, like needles, lanced his chest, reached through him to grab his heart, as if to tear it out.

  Nothing, it's nothing, his mind screamed desperately. There is nothing here. You are nothing.

  The hold relaxed, but the buzzing came back, blasting every nerve in Ned's body. He was in a cloud of furies.

  —You will be mine again.

  No! No! NO!

  Ned broke free and ran for his life. The presence stayed with him, enveloping his body as he thrashed to get away. It was in his mouth and his nose, and it blinded his eyes. The buzzing had turned into laughter, howls of mocking laughter.

  He fell against the screen door in the kitchen, smashing it open, and fell out onto the patio.

  "Don't let them take me," the boy moaned before losing consciousness.

  * * *

  18. And/Or

  "No, I don't want a drink," Linda snapped. Unable to sit still, she moved restlessly about the living room. "Michael, the boy was terrified. I've never seen anyone so frightened in my life."

  "I know, I know." Michael stared at the bottle of scotch as if reconsidering, but then he poured a double. A drink wouldn't solve anything, but neither would abstaining.

  "We have to do something."

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "I don't know, I honestly don't know." She looked at her husband pleadingly. "Can't you think of anything?"

  "Yes, I can. I think it's very simple," Michael said calmly, suppressing a smile. "Make him take a rest in the afternoon."

  "A rest?"

  Michael nodded. "What happened today was the result of too much sun and too much heat."

  Linda couldn't believe it. "You think that's all it was?"

  "Of course. You know what August is like. And he's only a boy, honey. He doesn't know when to take a break. Too much running around outside in that sun and heat—and it caught up with him. We should have known better than to let it happen in the first place."

  "Michael—"

  "If he doesn't want to rest, at least make him sit down and read for an hour or two in the afternoon. Or watch TV. Anything, but don't let him be outside all the time, pot until the weather's cooler. It's only for the next three weeks or so."

  "Michael, he said there was someone in his room."

  "Sure there was. In his imagination."

  "You don't think it's possible?"

  "Nope, and neither do you, because if you did you would have been on the phone to the police right away."

  "I was taking care of Ned, and he didn't tell me until a while later, and then you got home."

  "Oh, come on, Lin. He imagined it, pure and simple. If somebody goes into a house to cause trouble, he'll cause trouble. He won't sneak upstairs, say 'Boo' to a kid and then flit. That's just silly."

  "But what if that's what happened? Ned and I are alone here during the day, you know."

  Michael fiddled with a pipe. This was exactly what he didn't want to let happen, a small thing having a catalytic effect on Linda, escalating her natural fears out of all proportion.

  "First, you're a lot safer here than you ever were living in an apartment in Washington, and you know it." His voice was firm and insistent, as it had to be. "And second, when we asked Ned what this Mr. Someone looked like, he couldn't tell us anything. Not even whether the fellow wore long sleeves or short. Nothing, not a thing."

  "You can say what you like, but I think there's more to it." Linda was afraid that the incident earlier that day was the warning sign she had been dreading, the sign that Ned really was in some kind of danger. But if that's what it was, she still didn't know how to interpret it, nor did she have any idea what she could actually do about it.

  "Okay, you think there's more to it," Michael allowed. "Tell me what. I'm willing to listen. Go ahead, tell me."

  "I don't know," Linda admitted helplessly. "But you don't always have to know what's wrong to know that something is wrong, and that's the way I feel now. We can't simply ignore this or play it down as sunstroke."

  "And, so ... ?"

  It was frustrating, infuriating. What could she say? Michael was being cool and reasonable, but that was no help tonight. Still, Linda lacked the tiny, hard seed around which her diffuse anxieties could crystallize into clear thoughts.

  "I think we should go away," she blurted out.

  That brought a sudden look of concern to Michael's face. "Go away? What do you mean? Go where?"

  "Anywhere, it doesn't matter," Linda said. "We could drive up to Buffalo and see the folks, or take a trip down south. I just think it would be a good idea if we took a couple of weeks off and got away from here. You've got the time coming to you anyhow, so why not do something with it?"

  "Hey, hold on there a second, honey. We already talked about this before we moved in. We're spending our vacation here this year, remember? There's so much I have to do around the house, and besides, you know the money's going to be tight for a while. Better to put it into the house than gas and motels."

  "The house won't go anywhere," Linda said. "We don't have to do everything we want to do to it all at once."

  "Sure, but going away and spending money on a vacation isn't going to solve anything either. If there's a problem, as you seem to think there is—"

  "Yes."

  "—what makes you think we wouldn't take it with us, or that it wouldn't still be here when we got back?" It was the wrong argument, Michael knew; he had to stick to money.

  "Doing something is better than doing nothing."

  She was making it easier now. "Not necessarily," Michael said patiently. "One thing I've learned is that some problems will work themselves out or just cease to be problems, if you leave them alone for a while."

  "Michael, we're talking about our son, not the goddamn bureaucracy·. "

  "Take it easy, hon. You're not being rational about this. Now, I'm not insensitive, but I won't go along with a bad idea just for the sake of doing something. It doesn't make any sense, and if you take the time to think about it I'm sure you'll come to the same conclusion."

  Linda turned away and tried to blink back the tears. Michael put down his drink and went to her. He put his arms around her and for a moment they hugged each other without speaking.

  "You've had a rough day," he said comfortingly. "That doesn't mean it'll happen again, or get worse, or anything like that. It just means we have to be careful, and now we know something else to watch out for. In other circumstances you would never let a small thing like this upset you so much."

  Linda knew what he meant by "other circumstances." If she wasn't asthmatic, if she didn't live under the threat of a severe attack, if Ned were not their only child ... then perhaps she would agree with Michael and dismiss today's incident as sunstroke, and not worry unduly about it. But Linda didn't live in "other circumstances," she had to deal with things the way they were. She did have a troublesome medical history. Ned was their only child. She didn't care if this made her an overanxious and overprotective mother; it wasn't a matter of choice.

  "Do you think he should see a doctor?" Linda asked.

  "Sure, why not? If you want to take him in for a check-up, by all means do so. You can tell the doctor what happened today and see what he thinks. That's a good idea." Michael was happy to agree. The doctor's fee would be a small price to pay for peace in the house, and a consultation made a lot more sense than a drive to Buffalo. Besides, he was sure the doctor's opinion would be much the same as his own. Maybe then Linda would feel a little better about it.

  "All right,
I'll do that," Linda said. "We have to do something, Michael. I couldn't live with myself otherwise. I'll make an appointment in the morning."

  "Fine, that makes sense."

  "Oh, Michael, if you could have seen the look on Ned's face. He kept saying, 'Don't let them take me, don't let them take me,' over and over again when he came to. It was awful."

  "I know, honey." Michael hugged her again and began to massage the back of her neck and shoulders. She was still all tensed up. "It was like a nightmare to him and he didn't know what was going on, so his mind just created all that stuff. Of course it was real to him. but ... "

  "I know you think I worry too much because he's our only child, but there's another side to that. We have to remember what it's like for him. You and I have each other, but we're all Ned has. He's more alone than we are. We can't let him down, or he'll be lost."

  "We won't, honey. Not ever."

  "Do you know what I mean?"

  "Mmm-hmm. I saw a good sign, by the way."

  "What?"

  "Ned didn't object to going to bed in his room. It didn't seem to bother him at all, so I guess the room doesn't hold any unpleasant or frightening associations for him. I think that's a good sign, don't you?"

  Linda nodded. "I hope so."

  Upstairs, Ned sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed. He might be wrong but he had the feeling that nothing would happen tonight. Not after the attack this afternoon. And what else could he call it but an attack? The funny part of it was that he now felt more sure of himself than he had before. A move had been made, all pretense dropped, and the game finally seemed to be out in the open. He stood alone against it and he knew he really had one chance, but at least he no longer had to guess about it. It had spoken to him. It had laid hands on him. Oh, yes, it was real. But what was it—a ghost, a phantom, an evil spirit, Satan?

  Next to him on the bed was the book he had just finished reading, The Ghost at Skeleton Rock. It was a mystery involving smugglers and subversives, and at the end of it the Hardy Boys discovered that the "ghost" was nothing more than a huge balloon which had been covered with phosphorescent paint and made to look like the spirit of an ancient Indian chief.

  No answer there for Ned, but then he hadn't really expected to find one. What was happening to him was not the kind of thing that could be taken care of by looking up a remedy or an explanation in a book. He was on his own. His mother and father couldn't help—what could Ned possibly tell them that they might believe? Peeler and Cloudy were at least sympathetic and seemed to understand some of what was bothering him, but they offered no way out. Perhaps because there was no way out. Hadn't Peeler said something about Ned not being able to do anything but see it through? And he had also said that Ned would be the first to know .... But, now what? That grown-ups couldn't help him. It was like that time at the spa, when Ned knew that no one was going to come and rescue him. If he was going to be saved he would have to save himself.

  But could he save himself? He didn't even know what he was up against. His opponent was invisible and apparently capable of doing whatever it wanted. Ned felt that he had no hope of survival in such a one-sided confrontation. He was an insignificant mouse being toyed with by an unimaginable predator. He was in the grasp of supernatural forces which were impossible to resist. Ned thought of the protozoa in the jar of pond water on his desk. Could they influence what he did with them? Hardly. They wouldn't even realize what was happening - whether he put them on a slide under the microscope or simply flushed them down the toilet. It didn't appear to Ned that his own situation was substantially different from that of the protozoa. But he couldn't merely surrender himself to an unknown, blind fate. His instinct was to struggle, to fight back, regardless of whether that would achieve anything or not.

  What could he defend himself with? Were there any weapons he could use against his foe? Ned knew from the movies that vampires were afraid of garlic and the cross, and that a wooden stake driven through the heart would destroy them. A silver bullet or blade was necessary to stop a werewolf, and zombies had to be burned. But Ned also knew that these things were completely irrelevant to his situation. A vampire would already have drained him dry by now, and werewolves and zombies were even more implausible. No, he was not being stalked by such familiar and predictable creatures. They were hard to believe in, but the supernatural was not. It was silly to think that a string of garlic could have any effect on the powers of the supernatural.

  Ned tried again to understand how he had escaped this long. In his bed he had avoided confrontation and capture by staying under the sheets and blankets, and by not looking out or exposing himself to the danger around him. In the old spa he had survived by always moving forward and by refusing to give in to the great temptation to look back over his shoulder. In both situations he had known enough not to gaze into the face of hell. But today, in his room, that had not been enough. The evil presence had touched Ned, spoken to him and very nearly succeeded in taking him. His puny defenses no longer worked. Or did they? What had enabled Ned to break free at the last moment and run? Was it the fact that he had not looked at or seen the face of the enemy? Or perhaps it was that desperate burst of mental rage—You are nothing—which denied the phantom's existence. If so, it could mean that the terror was, after all, nothing but the product of his own imagination. He really could be going crazy, disappearing into his own nightmares. Being taken by a real phantom would be better than that.

  The only other explanation Ned could come up with was that something else had disrupted the attack. Nothing suggested itself to him, but he remembered thinking about the scarecrow in that terrible moment. Why? Now that he considered it again he wondered if unintentionally he could have triggered something when he cut down the scarecrow in the back meadow. But at the time, the scarecrow had seemed to be a visible part of the problem, a dancing, taunting extension of the forces gathered around Ned. Then a picture of the scarecrow formed in his mind and he was shocked by it. Take away the tattered cloth and what was a scarecrow? A man-sized cross. Maybe he was getting somewhere. Ned's parents were not religious, and he was not being raised according to any faith or church, so the cross had little significance for him. It was something you saw on certain buildings and in all vampire movies. But now he found himself in a situation where the cross might well be of importance. Perhaps he had stepped over a fateful line that morning he had chopped the scarecrow to bits.

  It was all too much. No matter how he tried, he couldn't begin to make sense of it .. He wished he could tell Peeler 'everything and beg the old man for help. There was a tremendous desire in him to tell someone, and Peeler was the person most likely to understand. But Ned could imagine what he would be told. Peeler would say that Ned was wrong to try and figure it all out in his head, that it was a mistake to look for answers or explanations where there were none, or where they would do no good. He would tell Ned that he shouldn't try to work this out as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. And Peeler would probably be right, too, Ned thought. But that was no help, because he was in a situation where he really did need an answer, or at least a clue. He couldn't just do nothing and carry on, oblivious to everything that had already happened.

  He wanted it to be over, one way or the other, no matter what that meant for him. It was time to stop thinking, and to start acting. No more shying away. It was time, finally, to lift up the sheets, to turn around and face whatever was there. He had tried everything else but that, and now there was nothing left to do but seek it out. Attack, with nothing but nerve, perhaps, but: attack.

  Ned decided that he had to go back to the spa. Whatever happened would happen there. He didn't want to wait for another invasion of this room, his room, in his parents' house. The struggle was not theirs. Ned knew it was foolish to think of returning to the spa, but there were no alternatives now. He couldn't drift on from day to day, always fearing what might happen at any moment. Nor could he cling to his parents, or to Peeler and Cloudy, for protection; he wasn't a baby
. It was his problem, and his alone. So he would march into the dark ruins and force the issue, once and for all.

  This time, however, he would be better equipped. He would bring along candles and matches, a flashlight and batteries. He would carry rope and a knife. He would wear sensible clothes. He would have no preconceived ideas of what to expect—they would only distract him. He would expect anything, or nothing.

  And, just in case, he would search around in the back field and find two sturdy sticks, which he would bind together to make a cross, and he would carry it with him.

  * * *

  19. The Spa (1)

  He had to wait nearly a week. His mother took him to see the doctor a couple of days after the attack. The physician gave Ned a thorough examination and found him to be in fine health. But he said that as long as the current heat wave continued it would be a good idea for Ned to take it easy and not to overexert himself. Linda told Dr. Melker what had happened, and his opinion was indeed much the same as Michael's had been. The doctor added that Ned's dizzy spell might have been aggravated by hunger, since it occurred in the latter part of the afternoon and light lunches were the norm in summer. He advised Linda to make sure that Ned ate plenty of fresh fruit between meals. She felt considerably relieved after listening to the doctor. On the way home that day they stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a new baseball cap for Ned to wear to protect his head from the sun whenever he went outside. Ned was compliant but uninterested. A visit to the doctor, a baseball cap—these were things obviously of some importance to his mother and father, but Ned knew they wouldn't do him any good when the time came.

  He spent those days carefully going over his plans and preparations. The list of items he was going to take with him grew until his knapsack was full. As far as possible, he was determined the expedition and the likely confrontation would be on his terms. Ned reckoned that by going to the spa he would be taking the initiative, and he hoped that would count for something. Moreover, he intended to set off immediately after breakfast so that he would have the advantage of a full day's sunlight. Ned studied the weather forecasts with great interest. Six days after the attack in his room, the heat broke. The temperature dropped into the low eighties and a steady breeze further improved conditions. Ned knew he couldn't afford to wait any longer.