Ghosts I Have Been

by Richard Peck

  And those were the last words I heard from that world for quite a time.

  * * *

  I was staring at a lamp bolted to a small nightstand, but it was not Miss Spaulding’s lamp. It was still lit, swaying and throwing shadows in a strange small room. There was some comfort in this swift exit from the principal’s office. But I didn’t know where I was. Maybe out of my body, though I felt a chill, possibly of fear.

  There is nothing more real than fear, fight it though you may. My mouth worked continually as in a nightmare, but I heard none of my words. Only later did I find out that I was telling Miss Spaulding and Seaforth everything as I saw and heard it. But I had left their world behind in time and space, and I was myself a kind of ghost in this foreign territory. I’d graduated to a whole new phase.

  It was nothing like my quick glimpses into past and future and across town. My whole being was elsewhere. And nothing of this new place faded in and out as Minerva did. Never have I been in a realer spot, with every detail as clear as one small lamp could make it. I stood in the corner of an odd room with a slanting floor. A thing with padding and straps hung from a peg behind me. It put me in the mind of a straitjacket. This puffy object swept my cheek. I was half hidden by it, if I was visible at all.

  This whole new world seemed set on the bias. A vase of dark velvet roses had already tipped over on a vanity table. The water fell in a silver line and ran off down the floor, darkening a rich carpet.

  It was a fine room, though cramped, with wood panels and wine-colored silk on the walls. A door to another room was swaying open, casting a patch of light. A small clock set high in the wall told the time: It was just past midnight. But which midnight, it did not tell. Later I was to know. It was the earliest hour of April fifteenth, nineteen hundred and twelve. Just twenty months before the moment I’d suddenly departed from under Miss Spaulding’s disapproving gaze. I’d slipped down through a crack in time, like a termite through a splintered floorboard.

  Though I’d never been afloat in anything bigger than a rowboat, I knew I was on board a ship. The two windows in the room were round. One of these portholes, as they are called, had come open. The cold night air of long distances touched me to my marrow. A small pyramid of glittering ice had spilled in on the floor under the open porthole. Nothing moved except the shadows.

  I’d known from the first that I wasn’t alone in this place. But my eyes didn’t hurry to survey the whole room. At last I looked in the far corner beyond the bedside lamp. A bunk bed was fitted there, and in it a small human form under a blanket was held down by a web belt.

  We were on a great ship, this form and me. The whole room gave a lurch and a shudder. There was a sound of distant dynamos sighing to silence. The grinding sound had ceased. Dead in the water, I thought, as though these words could answer a puzzle. The sudden lurch explained the belt across the form in the bunk. Travelers on the sea have to be strapped in their bunks or they’ll roll out.

  The lampshade wavered once more, and I saw the blond curls of a tow-headed boy on the pillow. I knew I was meeting up at last with the boy I’d seen before, out by the trolley tracks. I knew him like a long-lost pal. Once, he’d come to me. Now I’d come to him. I waited to find out why.

  He was fitful in his sleep. His small, pale hands worried the blanket drawn halfway over his head. I took a step out onto the carpet, looking down to see I was still in my old broken boots. The carpet was thick, but my feet didn’t appear to sink into it. I feared that if I examined myself, I’d be transparent. Oh, Minerva, I mused, I know just how you feel, you poor shade. There was a lightness in my head like the beginning of influenza or something of the sort.

  Along the porthole wall was an orderly pile of luggage, beside the pile of ice shavings. Each piece carried a shipping label. Printed on the labels were the words WHITE STAR LINE. And beneath was the name of the boy, who was still sleeping.

  First Class Passenger MASTER JULIAN POINDEXTER travelling with LADY BEATRIX and SIR CLIFFORD POINDEXTER.

  This valise wanted on the voyage.

  Southhampton-New York.

  My hand rested on the top of this pile while I pondered. I could see through my fingernails to the smooth leather lid of the valise beneath. My whole hand looked like a spun-glass starfish. And then my gaze was drawn to the open porthole.

  Outside it was a night both black and white. Julian Poindexter and me were far out to sea. There was the black line of a far horizon beneath a moon that beamed through icy rays. Whiskers round the moon, I whispered, knowing I’d once said that before. The vast ocean was calm beneath a silent sky. More sky and water than ever I’d seen in one place. I cried out at so much cold loneliness.

  Julian Poindexter stirred in his bunk behind me. It was odd to read his name on his baggage, for I seemed to know it all along. He was only half asleep, as a kid often is. A distant door opened in the room—or cabin, as they call it at sea—connected to ours. People entered in there hurriedly. “Mother?” Julian said. But only I heard him.

  I waited by the luggage while the sea air bit at my glass fingertips, wondering if the people in the next cabin were Lady Beatrix and Sir Clifford; wondering if they were Julian’s mama and paw; wondering if they would come in to check on him; and wondering if they’d see me if they did.

  Then I quit wondering about these matters, for my hand was still on a label glued to a valise. And in the wobbling light I read something beneath Julian Poindexter’s name I’d missed before. It was the name of the ship we were on. I knew where we were then, and why we were dead in the water. I knew why the engines were shut down and why there was ice on the cabin floor. For the label told that we were on the Royal Mail Steamship Titanic.

  We were all at sea on a ship sunk many months ago. And even now it was sinking beneath us.

  12

  THE SINKING of the Titanic on its maiden voyage was a well-known disaster. Word of it had even reached Bluff City, and we studied it at school, here a year ago spring. Our teacher was Miss Botts, who said this famous event was a clear-cut example of mankind’s destruction by his own vanity.

  So I was well aware that the Titanic and quite a number of passengers and crew sank suddenly. At a rough estimate, 1635 souls perished. I had no doubt Julian Poindexter was among the doomed, for I’d already seen him in his death agonies out by the streetcar tracks.

  If I feared for my own skin, cast adrift on the ill-fated Titanic, I disremember now. Though I didn’t relish being an on-the-spot witness to Julian drowning in ice water.

  But I felt a sense of mission in all this. Julian had shown himself to me, a person sensitive to the Spirit World. And these haunts only come forth when they have a tale to impart, and they’ll go to any length to find an understanding ear. I glanced at the wall clock again and judged there was little time to get to the bottom of the story. We’d hit the iceberg an awful whack and were already riding out of the water. By my calculations there wasn’t two hours left. I couldn’t save Julian Poindexter, because nobody can rewrite history, but I hoped to learn how his roving spirit might find ease.

  The noise from the cabin next door grew louder with a pair of wild voices. I barely grazed the carpet in crossing it for a glance into the next cabin. There I saw a man and a woman grappling with each other.

  The woman had the look of a famous beauty. Her hair was drawn up high on her head. Her shoulders and arms were naked but for a quantity of diamonds and rubies. She wore a red satin gown and was screaming. I took her to be Lady Beatrix Poindexter. As she was called Lady on her luggage label, I figured she was English.

  The man with her was clearly Sir Clifford. He had a heavy, drooping mustache and wore black and white clothes. There was the look of a thin walrus about him.

  They both shouted at once and by turns. Sir Clifford had Lady Beatrix by her wrists, which burned with rubies. But he couldn’t do a thing with her and was himself white as a—ghost.

  “We are going to die!” shrieked Lady Beatrix, with some reason.
“I know it! I feel it! Oh, I cannot set foot in a lifeboat. It will break up like an eggshell on these seas. And you know how I suffer with the cold!”

  “Shut up, Beatrix!” the man replied, clinging to her wrists.

  “Oh yes! It is all very well for you!” she spat. “Women and children to the lifeboats, while you men linger here on deck, smoking cigars in perfect comfort!”

  “Have some sense, Beatrix!” the man bawled. “If the ship is sinking, there will be scant comfort for me on the deck!”

  “I should never have come on this ship with you. You have never had a good idea in all your life! Making a new start in America—ha! How very like you to think up a scheme that will kill us both! I should have stayed behind in England and endured my poverty!”

  “Poverty forsooth! You’re hanging in jewels!” the man barked, outraged.

  “Yes,” Lady Beatrix hissed back, “every penny I possess is sunk in this jewelry. Oh, sunk! Why did I say that? I am beside myself! And much good my poor bits of jewels will do me when I am dying of exposure in that lifeboat. If the lower classes do not murder us before we can get to the deck! No, no, no. I see it all now. I should have lived on in poverty until Julian comes of age and into money of his own. Then I might have thrown myself on his mercy. Certainly you have not turned out to be much of a provider. My mother was right about you from the start!”

  “Oh leave off, Beatrix!” Sir Clifford remarked loudly. “This is all disastrous enough without bringing your mother into it!”

  There was an explosion of light outside that flashed at the portholes. Lady Beatrix screamed again. “Ice and now fire!” she pealed. “We are dead twice over!”

  “Shut up, I tell you!” Sir Clifford flung her wrists down and dashed to a porthole. “It is only a flare they’ve sent up, signaling for a rescue!”

  “And who would come to the aid of a ship widely advertised as unsinkable? Answer me that! I abandon all hope!” Lady Beatrix whirled about the cabin, pulling down a fur cape and turning out all the drawers.

  “Is there no ready money? Give me all you’ve got! What if I am saved and you are not? When have you ever thought of me?” She shrieked on in higher and higher key while reducing the room to a shambles.

  The two were in the last stages of panic, running up against each other in their haste. They were nothing like I pictured upper-crust English people. Even if I’d been visible, I doubt they’d have noticed me. They exited at last through a doorway to a long corridor, attempting to pass through at the same time. This was not easy, for both wore life jackets. Lady Beatrix threw hers on over her fur cape. Her shrieks echoed away down a long passage.

  The cabin lights blazed upon the confusion left behind. Only a moment later, the door to the corridor opened slowly again. Sir Clifford, all alone, stepped back inside, the picture of stealth. He went over to a cupboard and pulled out one of Lady Beatrix’s long cloaks. Rummaging on a shelf above, he jerked down a bandbox, tore off the lid, and took out a large feathered hat with veils.

  Imagine my amazement when he planted this female hat on his own head, drew down the veil, and threw the long cloak over his shoulders and life jacket. He crept to the door, flipped off the lights, and peered out. Then he slipped away, pulling the door shut behind him. But not before I saw his wild eyes. They stared blind with fear between his mustache and his wife’s hat brim.

  I stood there between the two cabins, trying to digest this. Nothing we’d learned in Miss Botts’s class seemed to bear on this scene. Then I recollected the ancient law of the sea in such circumstances—women and children to the lifeboats first.

  As a result, very few men survived the sinking, for the Titanic was sailing short on lifeboats. It broke upon me what I’d witnessed. Sir Clifford had returned to disguise himself in his wife’s clothes. With any luck at all, he could slip into a lifeboat and nestle in among the women. I trusted he had the sense not to get in the same boat with his wife, who would surely set to screaming again and give him away. I thought how disappointed Miss Dabney would be in titled English people acting this way.

  Then, just behind me, Julian cried out. I stepped back into his cabin, and my filmy hand hung near his pillow. “Mother?” he said again, looking through me to the far room. “Father? Why have we stopped? Are we at New York? Is it morning?”

  I reached out to take his hands, which were still plucking at the blanket, but I could give him no comfort, nor even get a grasp on him. He whimpered like any child left alone in the night. None of the loud-mouthed carrying on between his folks had stirred him; he was probably used to that. Yet he was half aware of danger in a groggy way.

  With no thought of anything but themselves, his own flesh and blood had left poor Julian for fish bait. This was low, but I recalled more against these villains. It may have been all too easy for his mama to leave him behind if she inherited his money. Miss Botts had hit it on the button. This disaster was a clear example of mankind’s destruction by its own vanity. Poor Julian was left behind as a human sacrifice to greed and selfishness. No wonder he couldn’t rest easy in his wet grave. Who could? If this was an instance of English child care, I for one would settle for Bluff City and my mama.

  Running feet pounded above our heads. Machinery creaked as the lifeboats were lowered. Julian had sobbed himself back to sleep. His thumb drifted up to his lips, though he was somewhat old for this habit. Some people actually go to their graves sucking their thumbs, which is a pathetic thought, but sobering.

  There’s no fighting fate, or changing what’s over and done with. Still, I struggled to wake Julian and send him flying for the lifeboats. I yanked on his blanket, but my poor transparent fingers poked right through it. I darted over to where his life jacket hung on the peg, but my hands scooped through it like a fork into whipped cream. I couldn’t have lifted a matchstick, let alone a life jacket, for I was a ghost, haunting the past. History can be very cruel.

  I wrung my starfish hands and hung over Julian’s bunk. But my hollering was heard only by Miss Spaulding and Lowell Seaforth back in some future world. Oh, Julian, Julian, I wailed, why have you conjured me up when I can’t do a durn thing to save you?

  Then I was by the porthole again, staring out. I could move about that cabin with no more effort than a goldfish twitching its tail. Lifeboats were in the water, lit by the spiky moon, which only made the sea bigger and emptier. The women and children were calling back to their menfolk. Some stood in the small boats clutching their heads. Others seemed to be rowing like men. I was viewing a scene few had lived to tell. There would shortly be frozen bodies bobbing in that unforgiving water, awash in a sea of deck chairs.

  I skinned my eyes for Lady Beatrix or the shameful Sir Clifford, but the lifeboats were fanning out from the dying ship, and the calls grew faint. The Titanic moaned in reply, and there was the sound of breaking glass and thunder from the boilers. Spookiest of all, a pleasant string orchestra above me was playing a church hymn, “Lead Kindly Light.” The notes warbled on the water and played across the pathway of the moon.

  Then the first bodies hurtled past the porthole, as people dropped into the sea. I tumbled back across the cabin and threw my weightless body across Julian. His head was higher than his feet as the Titanic began its final slide. He woke and struggled against the band that held him fast. His mouth was a startled circle. And in that moment I know he saw me. Working one hand free, he reached for where my face was, and his fist closed in the air.

  The electric lamp failed, and water roared through both portholes under heavy pressure. In the last second I found I could clasp Julian’s small hand. He clung tight. This was a miracle, but we were soon parted. A ton of numbing water knocked the bunk from under me. The walls splintered, and the room closed like a lady’s fan. What wasn’t drowned was crushed. I seemed to glimpse the green bottom of the sea, five miles below.

  The floor I hit was polished pine, bone dry except for the spatters of sea water from my drenched hair. Miss Spaulding’s desk lamp lay s
hattered. But the overhead light was on, casting a hard glare. I was rolling on the floor of the principal’s office, and I was sopping wet.

  * * *

  Thrashing around on the level floor, I called out for Julian. But it was Lowell Seaforth who stood me on my feet. My poor old boots gushed ice water, and my teeth rattled in my head.

  Across the desk Miss Spaulding stood with her hand still clamped over her mouth. As I was set on my feet, something wet and heavy fell from my shoulders to collapse on the floor. Miss Spaulding muffled a shriek. Learned woman that she is, words failed her.

  I was coming to myself fast and glad to be back. Still, bubbles that seemed to be Julian’s last strangulations broke in my brain. I heard the sudden silence of a string orchestra quickly cut off in the clatter of collapsing music stands. I stood, shedding water on the heavy thing at my feet.

  “Was I here the whole time?” I inquired, hearing my voice at last.

  Lowell Seaforth stared at me with immense respect. “Yes . . .” he said, “. . . and no.”

  He bent down and dragged up a wool blanket heavy with sea water. His jaw tightened as he unfurled it for Miss Spaulding to see. Her hand shifted from her mouth to cover her eyes. “Oh no,” she sobbed, “this cannot be! This goes against everything!”

  The blanket that Seaforth held high was from Julian’s bunk. I’d snatched at it when I rolled away from him and the water closed over us.

  Miss Spaulding crumpled into her chair. There were white letters woven into the center of the blanket. They spelled out:

  ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIP TITANIC

  I was not surprised to see them. No more than my mama would have been in my place. She’d prophesied all this on the day she read my tea leaves.