Phantom

by Thomas Tessier

  Be careful, take nothing for granted.

  He moved cautiously into the first corridor. On his left, the doors opened into rooms overlooking the maze of gardens out back; to his right, the rooms ran along the front of the spa. Ned decided he would go up this wing checking the rooms on the back, and take care of the others on his return to the landing. He pushed the first door wide open. The room was neither large nor small, and it was virtually empty. A few rusty beer cans on the floor, and the remnants of a magazine. Ned bent over to look at the pages and saw the photograph of a naked woman. The colors had pretty much washed out, leaving the picture with a pale bluish tint. Ned poked the magazine with his shoe to flip over some pages, but they had hardened into a lump. He had seen pictures like this once before, last year, in the school yard in Washington. They gave him a funny feeling inside. Ned walked across the bare room to the open window and looked out on the gardens. They seemed somehow different from his previous visit—but perhaps it was just because he had a higher vantage point here. Ned left the room, slightly disappointed. Traces of teenage visitors some time ago, nothing else. Nothing sinister here.

  The next room was the same size as the first. It had the same bleached, chipped walls, and the same plank floor. A few more beer cans and, this time, a pair of women's underpants, so weathered and ragged that they were almost unrecognizable. Again Ned had that funny feeling. Why would people come here, of all places, do whatever they did—and then leave without their underpants? It didn't make sense.

  The third room was the same, except that it was completely empty. And the fourth. Ned began to feel annoyed as he proceeded along the corridor, kicking open the doors of one bare room after another. The spa was not living up to its promise, at least not on this floor. But as Ned approached the end of the wing he noticed something curious. The corridor seemed to narrow down around him, the farther away from the landing he walked. Was it just his imagination, another optical illusion? No, the ceiling was definitely lower here, the walls closer, the passageway tighter. Ned looked back. It was like being in a tunnel. All four sides appeared to focus down toward the point where he stood.

  Ned opened the last two doors on the left side of the corridor. Nothing. He had reached the end of the wing, and now he turned to work his way back, examining the front rooms. But as he turned, the perspective hit him, and it was disturbing now. Both walls and the ceiling were so close Ned felt like he was in a box. The whole building seemed to be settling around him, resting its weight on his body. It was a frightening sensation, but what made it worse was the sudden rush of sorrow and sadness that overwhelmed Ned. He found himself crying, sobbing violently. His body shook so much he was sure he was falling to pieces. Some immense, fearful image had seized his mind. He couldn't make out exactly what it was, but he knew it had something to do with his mother. She was in trouble. She was in grave danger, maybe she was even dying at this very moment, and there was nothing Ned could do about it. He wanted to run and help her, but he couldn't move. He felt as if he were being buried alive, entombed in the spa.

  Mother, take me with you.

  Her face swam in and out of his mind like a fragment of a lost dream. Her eyes were wide with terror, and her lips—they were a shocking bluish-purple—moved frantically but silently. Then her face was spinning away into the distance like a pale coin. Ned wailed and ran after it.

  Don't leave me! Mommy!

  As he ran his body seemed to grow lighter and faster, as if he were disappearing, transmuting into a single, final subatomic particle flying nowhere at the speed of light. Ned shot out of the corridor onto the wide landing and stopped sharply. The vision of the mother was gone, the image vanished. He was a boy again, in his own body. Pain knifed through his side and he doubled over, gasping loudly to catch his breath. He sat down heavily, unceremoniously, on the floor. Moisture streaked his face, but he didn't know whether it was sweat or tears. Not that it made any difference. The important thing was that he was coming out of it now. Ned was still trembling, but he managed to smile faintly. It had tried again, and failed. Surprise, surprise, another inning gone by and the underdog kept the lead. The phantom presence had even tried to use Ned's mother against him, but it hadn't worked. I'm going to make it, Ned thought. I may get bumped and bruised, and it may take every ounce of strength I have in me, but I am going to make it. For sure.

  When Ned's breathing returned to normal and he felt ready to move on, he stood up and adjusted the knapsack on his back. The wooden cross was still hooked through his belt loop, but Ned noticed that it had been bent slightly out of shape. The fall on the stairs had done it, probably. He fixed it.

  Now to the other wing on this floor. The first couple of rooms on either side were empty. As Ned came back into the corridor, he caught a glimpse of something moving at the far end of the wing. A brief shadow, and then it was gone. Into one of the last rooms. Maybe it was nothing, but there was only one way to find out. Ned couldn't take the risk of wandering in and out of all the intervening rooms while something might be sneaking up on him. Slowly, but with determination, he walked down the middle of the long corridor toward the point where he thought he had seen the movement. He unsheathed his small hunting knife and held it ready at his right side.

  Ned thought of his mother again. What if she really were in trouble—like that night years ago in the Washington apartment? She could be sick now, lying on the floor, and this time she'd be alone. Ned's father was at work. There was no one else at the house to help her or to call the doctor. Ned had heard of people having premonitions, or telepathic flashes in emergencies, and he wondered if he had experienced something like that. He tried to dismiss it as just another trick, but it continued to prey on his mind. What if she had cried out to him in a moment of crisis? Perhaps this trip to the spa was the real trick, the point of which was to get Ned out of the house and away so that his mother would be left alone and vulnerable.

  No, please, no.

  And if that were the case, then he would be playing a direct part in his mother's—

  No, no, no!

  Ned reached the end of the corridor, but he was hardly aware of the fact. Visions of his mother filled his head once more. She had fallen, in the kitchen maybe, or the living room, or on the cold bathroom tiles. Absurd voices came from the radio, competing with the steady whirr of the air conditioners. She was on the floor. She was rigid. Her teeth were locked together and a few beads of saliva gathered on her lips—her lips, which were a bright, hideous purple. Her face was white, turning pale blue, a blanched photograph of a person. Her eyelids here half shut and all that could be seen of her eyes was a blind, glassy sheen. She was not breathing.

  Mommy!

  Ned could see it all with alarming clarity, but there was nothing he could do. He had been removed, drawn away by the demon to a safe, useless distance. He walked leadenly into the last room. He went to the open window overlooking the back gardens. His mother was dead now. He knew it. He had lost her. He had given her away. He had let her be taken without a struggle.

  Ned stepped onto the wide window ledge. The wrought-iron grille sagged a fraction of an inch as it took his weight. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. His mother was dead. He looked at the knife in his hand. The blade gleamed in the sunlight. It was a beautiful day. But his mother was dead. The wild foliage of the gardens, a brilliant metallic green, rolled gently in the breeze like rippling water, cool and inviting. Ned looked at the knife again. The sun was harsh and the glare off the blade pained his eyes, but it was irresistible. There was something in it. His mother's face, ringed by a dazzling corona.

  Mommy!

  He held the knife out and up at eye level, and it was as if he held a bar of living fire in his hand. But now the image of his mother was pulling away from him, drifting down toward the green depths of the gardens.

  Don't leave me, take me with you.

  Anguish and loss battered him, but in that instant Ned knew he could still be with his mother
forever. He had one last chance. He could fly—yes—he would swoop down from this perch and dive into that wonderful water garden after her. He had failed her, let her go, and now this was the only way he could put things right. Dead but together. The only way. Infinity.

  Mommy, here I am ....

  The grille lurched another inch or two on the right side, enough to throw Ned against the window frame. The knife fell from his outstretched hand and tumbled down through the air like a miniature jet in flame-out. It clattered noisily on the wrought iron, dropped through and plummeted to the ground far below. Ned jumped back into the room. It was an act of sheer body instinct, an organism recoiling from danger.

  He retreated another step. The blue of sky and the green of garden that filled the window were changing. As he stood there, watching, they became darker, merging together until they seemed to turn into a deep black cloud. The sun was gone; there was nothing but inky blackness. Now it came right to the window, and the first wispy tendrils snaked into the room, licking across the walls and floor.

  Ned backed out of the room and slammed the door shut as he left. Okay, it's okay, he told himself. There's nothing for me here. He hurried along the corridor and came back out into the welcome daylight on the landing.

  Ned found it difficult to think at all about what had happened. What had saved him? Not a guardian angel, not the cross in his belt, and definitely not any display of self-control on his part. Luck, if anything. He felt subdued now, and yet he wanted to believe that this escape was one more sign that he was destined to survive. He wanted to believe—but how could he? How could any person overcome a force, a power so great that it was able to toy with the mind and senses? Maybe that's exactly what it is, he considered. I'm being toyed with, directed, steered, haunted, brought to the brink, and then pushed back for a temporary stay of execution. It can take me any time it wants. Well, get as much sport out of me as you can, Ned thought bitterly. He was filled with anger and hatred, and the dreadful frustration of having nothing to strike back at. Don't let me be taken meek and mild, frozen like a scarecrow.

  Ned descended the stairs to the next landing. He was tired, but now he was only one floor above ground level. At least if he went out a window here he had a little less chance of killing himself. Good news, he thought. Ha ha. The rooms he had seen above had looked very much like living quarters for the spa's guests. Here, perhaps, he would find offices, consulting rooms, work rooms, a dining area—and whatever else.

  He entered one of the corridors, but stopped after he had gone only a few paces. He heard a noise. It was vague and distant, and yet there was something decidedly familiar about it. Ned walked on a short distance and then stopped again. It was growing—a humming, droning sound. He looked around but saw nothing. The noise wasn't coming from this corridor, nor from the landing. It was farther away. The corridor on the other side, the opposite wing. Ned wondered if he should go there at once, or carry on in the direction he was going and try to ignore the sound. But how could you ignore anything in this place? Before he could make up his mind, a number of tiny black specks floated into his field of vision. At first he thought he was seeing things, that it was yet another trick of the eyes, but then he knew they were real. Their number increased rapidly. The buzzing was louder, ugly and insistent. They were flying out of the other corridor and into the open space of the landing. Bees, hornets, wasps—Ned didn't have to know which to know that he was in trouble. They sounded mean and angry. He fought back the impulse to run for the stairs. It was already too late for that; they would catch him for sure. There were too many on the landing, and dozens more joining them every second. It was not a thick, dense swarm, but a loose, swirling cloud. A giant squadron of unguided missiles, circling, cruising, looking for a target.

  This was the awful buzzing noise he had heard those many times at home, but now it had taken on a new, more frightening dimension. Now it could be fatal. No question of poisonous or nonpoisonous; bees killed, pure and simple.

  Ned moved gingerly, but it had the effect of a galvanic shock. The bees responded at once and started pouring into the corridor, right at Ned. Even as he ran he had the terrible feeling that he had finally made the one mistake he wouldn't be able to put right. They would have him trapped in this wing. He glanced back over his shoulder just once—the bees, like a hot, expanding gas, billowed towards him. The noise drowned out his thoughts now. The end of the corridor was in sight—what would he do there?— but seemed to get no closer. The air turned into a heavy soup, and then into a kind of jelly, even more resistant to his body. The harder Ned struggled to run against it, the slower his progress. The bees were almost on him.

  Never mind running.

  Get out of the corridor!

  Ned flung himself against a door, crashing it open. In the room he spun around quickly and banged the door shut. He saw some old rags on the floor—something about them bothered him, but there was no time to think. He grabbed a long piece of cloth and crammed it into the space beneath the door. He poked and pushed until the crack was tightly blocked up.

  Now the smell hit him. It was sweet, too sweet. There shouldn't be much of any smell here, Ned thought, not with a wide open window. The sound of the bees distracted him again. There were tiny patting noises on the other side of the door, as if the insects were actually hurling themselves against the wood. The buzz was fierce, and as relentless as a tornado. Ned checked the latch and the cloth again, to make sure there was no way the bees could get into the room.

  He turned to look again at that pile of rags. They had obviously been there for years. Old blankets. Army green once, now just dingy and ratty. There were a few other things on the floor too, objects that Ned was aware of but couldn't focus on. They were not important. He was drawn to those green rags. They were important.

  Ned peeled back the top layer of blanket.

  Beneath it was a corpse, thin as a pressed flower.

  The skin was translucent yellowing leather, stretched taut over delicate skeletal bones.

  Ned reeled back, screaming, gagging as vomit burned his throat. The room spun around him like a demented carousel. The buzzing snarl cut jaggedly into his brain, and the floor jumped up to kiss him as he blacked out.

  The corpse was his mother.

  * * *

  20. The Spa (2)

  —Child.

  A voice out of darkness.

  —Child.

  An echo of a whisper.

  —Come with me now.

  Urgent, but fading. A flurry of leaves lost on a nightwind.

  Fear woke Ned. His eyes fluttered open anxiously. The side of his face was on a grimy floor. His head throbbed painfully. He remembered: the bees ... the room ... the rags ... and the corpse. The noise of the bees had not gone away. Ned wondered how he could still be there and still be alive. Why hadn't he been taken? A moment ago he had heard a voice. Not so much heard, exactly, as felt, inside his head. But now it was gone. A dream? Just end it all, please, Ned wished in despair. The reason I came here was to get it over with one way or another. So take me now.

  Maybe it was ending. Maybe the resolution was that he would survive. He had escaped everything so far. By this time, however, it was impossible to boost his morale with such thoughts. Much as he would like to, Ned couldn't think himself into believing that he had a chance to win. Not on his own, and probably not at all. This was no phosphorescent balloon, to be punctured by an enterprising junior sleuth. I live because it lets me live. No other reason. He was caught in the rhythm of some titanic force from another world or dimension. No amount of will or effort on Ned's part would influence it or overcome it. He was a leaf on a vast river, going whichever way it took him.

  Stop thinking like that, Ned chastised himself. This place will tie your mind in knots if you let it. Concentrate: one step at a time. You're still alive, that's all that counts. He sat up. The throbbing in his head got worse. He fished the little first aid kit out of his knapsack and took two aspirin, washed d
own with a large gulp of water from his canteen. The water was good, it had a cold, metallic flavor, but it left an aftertaste in his mouth that became unpleasant. No, it wasn't the water—Ned remembered now that he had almost thrown up earlier. He tried to spit out the bad taste, but that was only a slight improvement. The smell in the air was what made it worse, he realized. That terrible, lingering death-stink. Ned spun around and saw the ragged blankets and the corpse again. Still there. No trick. Very real.

  His mind struggled to keep control of itself. No matter how bad it gets, Ned reminded himself, you have to try to see it through and make sense of it. He was afraid to stand up and take a close look at the corpse, but he forced rational arguments on himself. That couldn't be his mother. Even if she were in trouble, even if she had died (no, no!), she wouldn't be here and in this condition. It cannot be. So: it must be someone else. Also: it couldn't harm him. The dead are dead. They don't hurt people (do they?). Maybe that wasn't a proven point, but it was buttressed by something else: surely, if the corpse were going to do anything to Ned it would have done so already. It didn't occur to the boy that he was dealing with the situation in the natural, logical way that would have pleased his father. He drove himself to keep thinking, to come up with a reasonable explanation.

  Those other things on the floor. Food cans. A blackened Sterno container. A canvas bag. Now it began to add up. Someone had taken shelter here, perhaps even lived here for a while, and then that person had died here, undiscovered until now. A hobo or a lone gypsy or an outcast of the swamp people. That's all. It was bad enough to stumble across the remains of a dead person, but at least Ned knew it couldn't be his mother, and it certainly wasn't some vampire waiting to devour him.