“That’s more or less what I’m saying.” If Pete kept up the pretense and his mother agreed, they could move on.
He should have known better.
Aubrey fluttered her eyelids. “I don’t know what’s more appalling. Your desire that we go along with your faux naïveté, or the fact we should have realized a connection long before this.”
“I’m willing to go with naïveté if you are,” Pete said.
It was his father who moved on, pointing to the photo album he clutched. “What’s that?”
He’d been standing, talking for so long, the object felt as if it’d blended into the rest of him—like maybe Pete camouflaged it. “This thing?” he said, holding it up.
“Yeah. That thing.” Levi pointed again. “And why don’t you sit?”
Levi had always possessed the ability to read Pete better than anyone. He moved slowly to the porch swing. “Well . . . this part. The photo album, it’s curious. Maybe stranger than anything else that happened. You look.”
Reluctantly, he passed the photo album to his mother, his father leaning over. She flipped through the first few pages, absorbing a younger Oscar Bodette. She pointed to one photo, reading the descriptive note. “‘Oscar, Luna Park, 1922.’” She smiled at Pete. “That’s a fine raccoon coat he’s wearing. I wonder whatever happened to it?” She turned to the next page and more photos of Oscar, other people she couldn’t identify. “Kind of crazy. Oscar wouldn’t even meet Charley for another thirty years.”
“Interesting,” Levi said. “It’s as if he lived an entire life before your grandmother.”
“Before marrying Charley bound him to the Ellis clan.” Pete murmured this, still connecting the dots.
“I wouldn’t have recognized Oscar if these photos weren’t marked. In every picture Charley had, he was an old man.” Aubrey turned one more page and picked up the loose larger photo of the beautiful woman, posed on a chaise, holding roses, and wearing a tightly fitted gown with a train. “Oh my . . .”
“She’s very pretty,” Levi offered.
Aubrey’s attention moved sharply to Pete. “She’s also very warm . . . hot, even.”
Pete unfurled his hand, palm open. While his right hand bore the effect of punching a mirror, it was his left that drew a gasp from Aubrey—the kind mothers made. “I’d call it blistering hot. My memento from having touched the photo at the bungalow.” He cocked his chin at the picture, which he had serious reservations about touching again. “Turn it over.”
Aubrey did this, but it was Levi who reacted, sucking in air as if he’d burned his own hand. No psychic perception was required. From the time Pete had learned to write in cursive, since the age of eight or nine, they’d all noted how the son’s penmanship mirrored his father’s—artistic and unique for a lefty. The three of them would know it anywhere, including writing on a photograph from 1917. “‘Esmerelda Moon,’” Levi read, “‘One year, five months before her death. August 1917.’ That’s quite a notation.”
And Pete wasn’t sure if he was commenting on a chilling caption, or a chilling caption that it appeared his son had written. He doubted Levi knew either.
“Pete. I thought maybe you’d find a connection,” Aubrey said. “I never imagined you’d find a photograph—or a whole name.”
“So then you know who she is? Do you recognize her?”
“No. Not physically. Just a guess,” she said. “Esmerelda . . . Esme. They’re one and the same.”
“That’s right. They are.”
“What am I missing?” his father asked.
“Esme, Pa.” Pete blinked back a drop of frustration that seeped through the cracks—in his mind, in the universe. “That’s a photograph of Esme, and I took it.”
He felt as if someone should jump in with “The year before you killed her . . .” But it wasn’t the kind of thing parents would say, even if they’d been presented with smoking gun evidence. “It gets better. Turn the page.”
His mother obliged.
“Oh my God.” Aubrey picked up the smaller but telling strip of photos, her fingertips hovering over the battered images—all posed slightly different, a clear record. “Pete, you don’t think . . .”
“That I did that to her and then I documented it by taking photos of my handiwork?” His shoulders curled forward, his chest sinking. “Well, Mom, I suppose that depends on just how much of a twisted bastard I was. Look at the back.” She did, revealing more of the same handwriting—Esme’s name, the words “Just to show,” and a date: January 1919.
“Pete. Come on,” Levi said. “You don’t seriously believe that you did this, or took these photos?”
“Wet plate photography.”
“What?” he said.
“Wet plate photography. It’s how you produced a strip of photos like that in 1919. I can tell you anything you want to know about modern photography, image processing, and digital asset management. The software I work with that allows me to connect what my eye sees and what the camera records. But how I know the process for wet plate photography, the tedious procedure for producing photos like that . . .” There was a disbelieving shake of his head. “It’s as present and mysterious as my knowledge of World War I.”
“The photography,” Levi said. “You could have read it online or in a book, and you’re just not recalling—”
“Wet plate is a painstaking, complex chemical process that’s obsolete to modern photography. Yet I could take you into a darkroom—assuming we could find one—and repeat the process on demand.” Pete paused, letting the photos and information sink in. “And there’s something else to consider. During this time period, there was a market for sick photos like this, beaten women, bloodied dead bodies.”
Levi was quiet for a moment. “Unfortunately, I’m aware of that dark fact.”
“So add that bit of history to my motives.”
“Pete, stop,” Aubrey said. “Let’s not make assumptions—”
“Assumptions?” he said. “Looks to me like we have more facts than ever. The only conclusion I can draw: maybe Esme has moved on to gaslighting me. Haven’t you said it yourself, Mom?” Pete’s gaze dropped to her pockmarked arm, and she clamped her other hand around it. “Not all spirits come for the benefit of closure. You’re proof of that.”
Aubrey reached to the scar on her chin. Along with the ones on her arm, it was a permanent souvenir of her encounter with evil.
“The specter responsible for those.” Pete pointed to marks she could not deny. “According to you, it was a complete stranger. Imagine the justification if you’d killed someone, the vengeance their spirit might bring.”
Levi inhaled hard, running a hand through his hair—a thinking gesture. The processing of tough information. Pete was curious. Could they manage the positive spin only parents could put on things? Levi removed his glasses, rubbing two fingers across his eyes until they pinched the bridge of his nose. When his father didn’t speak, Pete’s pulse pounded harder. “Say it,” Pete demanded. “It’s even too fucked up for you, isn’t it? There’s nothing good here. Maybe reliving my past like I do is the lesser evil.”
Levi blinked at his son. “I wasn’t going to say anything like that, Pete. I’m just trying to absorb—”
“The impossible. Which is suddenly looking damned probable.” Pete surprised himself, leaning back, feeling smug, as if he’d discovered all the answers—even if it was just the vile truth. Then he glanced at the photo album and a battered Esme. Smugness evaporated, and he was solemn, thinking about the pain she must have endured.
“Pete,” Levi said. “You’re taking fragments of a story and assuming the whole. You don’t know what led to—”
“Murder?” He snickered. “Geez, Pa, if this were your story, these were your leads—would you expect to find facts that supported exoneration or guilt?”
Levi took a different tactic, one that seemed to imply that he was considering the idea. “Look, son, whatever occurred back then . . . you’re not that per
son anymore.”
“Maybe not yet. But every time I come back from that life, I can’t help but think I drag another piece of him into this one. Who’s to say we don’t merge? We know I’ve been strangely attracted to war and conflict my whole life. That’s something we can prove—a World War I medal with my initials, scars I can’t identify. A basement full of models that are one battle scene after another.” Pete flailed his hand at the house. “What if all the events of that life continue to surface in this one?”
Levi turned the photo over again to stare at handwriting he couldn’t argue against.
“If PTSD was my trigger in that life, how long until I come off the hinges in this one? What lucky woman gets to play Esme’s part?”
“Pete, could you give us a minute?” Levi held up a hand as if this might hold off his son’s darkest conclusions. “I’m trying to think it through. There must be a logical way to—”
“What? Find a new way around what I’ve known since I was how old, ten or twelve?”
“Twelve,” Aubrey said absently.
“Whatever age. It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. If you recall, Pete, there was a catalyst for the Esme part of your past. Your innate knowledge of war is something you seemed to know since the time you could talk. But you didn’t speak Esme’s name, you never experienced the visual of . . .” His mother’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Taking her life . . . until after you were kidnapped, drugged.”
“Your mother’s right. We’ve always viewed that as the trigger.” Levi pointed to the photo album. “What you perceive as the memories linked to this.”
Pete hadn’t thought about that, or how events and people connected to this life might have affected his reliving of that one. He leaned back on the swing as if widening his personal space, maybe his mind. “The kidnapping. Bottom line. It all goes back to Zeke Dublin, doesn’t it?”
“Zeke didn’t kidnap you, but yes . . .” His mother glanced at Levi, who wore a “he’s just as guilty” expression. “The motive for your kidnapping was connected to the man Zeke worked for. It was all part of a blackmail scheme, tied to your grandfather’s box of ghost gifts.”
“And both those men, they’re related to Nora Montague’s daughter?”
His mother’s weary frame tightened. “Yes. She’s their niece. Pete, where are you going with this?”
“There’s a piece to the story I haven’t told you. Because I didn’t think it mattered.” His body tightened too. “That’s a lie. I didn’t tell you because I can’t figure out why it . . . she matters.”
“‘She’ being?”
“Zeke’s niece. She showed up at the bungalow, looking for a different photo album.”
“Oh, you hadn’t mentioned her, and I assumed she never showed up. Nora wasn’t sure how quickly her daughter would make the trip. She certainly acted fast.”
“Yeah, well, it’d be the least annoying thing she did.”
“What does that mean?” Levi said, still examining the photo.
“Nothing. She was just assertive . . . abrupt. Ravenous,” he said, tapping his knuckles to a knee that now bounced. “Aggravating, if you want another word. That and she . . .” He stopped, mulling facts once more before saying it aloud. “The most disturbing thing about Zeke’s niece was a photo she had on her phone. It was of the Great South Bay—the one in Bayport, from your postcard.”
“You’re kidding,” Aubrey said.
“Not so much. Even better, she showed me the photo after I told her where I woke up this morning. Then she said, and I quote, ‘I spent two weeks on this beach last summer.’”
Levi looked between mother and son. “And other than an offbeat, coincidental vacation spot, that’s fascinating because . . . ?”
“Because it’s more or less what’s written on the bottom of the postcard. I told you this yesterday,” Aubrey said.
“Right. Slipped my mind.” Levi put down the photo and gave his complete attention to the conversation. “This girl, she repeated the words on the postcard with no prompting from you?”
“None. I suppose if you want to apply a rational explanation, we could assume it’s a fluke on top of coincidence. That’s where you’d go with it, right, Pa?” His father’s jaw slacked, but he didn’t jump to agree. And right now, Pete needed more than a drop of his father’s logical nature. It was something Pete had counted on from Levi his entire life—especially when he began to recall another. “I mean, this ballsy, basically pain-in-the-ass girl shows up. It’s clear she has some freakish six-degrees-of-separation connection to me. I’ll admit that much. But then the photo she has on her phone . . . the words she said. I mean, it’s not like I’d ever seen Zeke’s niece before yesterday—anywhere.”
Aubrey ran her finger over the earrings lining her lobe. “That’s not quite true.”
“How’s it not true?” Pete’s everyday frustration edged toward fitful.
“Shortly after the kidnapping, not long after you came home from the hospital, Nora and her daughter were here.”
Pete pointed at the craftsman’s front door. “Here. That girl was here, in our house?”
“Well, yes. But that’s exactly what she would have been, a little girl. It’s probably why you don’t remember.”
“Or,” his father said, “maybe she didn’t stick in Pete’s memory because of the ordeal he’d been through, the drugs pumped into him. All of which also connects to Zeke Dublin.”
“I don’t remember any of it, not the Montagues being here.”
“It was a brief visit,” Aubrey said. “Aside from Nora being upset about Zeke’s death, nothing of great interest transpired.” She paused. “I do remember her daughter sitting in the living room, holding a baby doll.” Aubrey leaned back in the chair. “Although, if I recall, she couldn’t get your name right.”
Pete stared at his blistered hand, unable to make a clear connection between events from when he was twelve, this morning, and a hundred years ago.
“Pete?” they said simultaneously.
He looked up. While the information his mother offered was disturbing, it was the concerned look on his parents’ faces that hit him harder. He was approaching thirty years old, and he was still dumping the debris from his life in their path. After the trip to Long Island, it’d only grown messier. They didn’t deserve it. “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Just something Esme said.”
“Your mother said you heard her speak. If she did, seems like that’s a milestone worth discussing. Maybe if we put our heads together, deconstruct your trip to Long Island . . .”
Pete stood. Then he lied. “No. I’m fine. You guys have done enough. More than any parents should need to.” He stared at the photo album, seriously considering burning the damn thing. He knew better. You couldn’t set fire to ghosts. He needed to handle this himself. “Right now, I just want to get a shower,” he said dismissively. “Check my messages. Flagler called.” He moved toward the front door. “Really, I’ve got this. You don’t need to worry.”
“Pete.” The tone in his mother’s voice, it resulted in the same halt of forward motion as it had when he was a kid. “You’re not burdening us with this, if that’s what you’re thinking. We want to help.”
He looked at them. Tired. When did they ever look so tired? “I know. I appreciate it—more than you can imagine.” He turned for the door but twisted back. “Oh, about Zeke’s niece. The only relevant thing you need to know is that when I saw her at the bungalow, Zeke showed up too.”
“Did he?”
“Did he?” Levi repeated in a decidedly different pitch. “I don’t suppose he offered you the apology he owes for the hell two uncles put you through.”
“No. In fact, he was fairly in my face, ballsy as the niece.”
“Sounds like Zeke,” Aubrey said, avoiding Levi’s glance. “What did he say?”
“Mostly his message was for Nora Montague. The usual comfort memo,” Pete said. “But he did ask that I tell you something.”
“What was that?” she said, smiling.
“He said he’d visit more often, but you know how grifters’ souls are, more wandering than lingering.”
“Anything else?”
With his parents seated side by side, Pete rethought the rest of Zeke’s message—how he still loved his mother. He considered relationships in the here and now. He reached for yet one more white lie. “No. Nothing else.” Pete left them there. He went inside to do what he said, take a shower and listen to his messages—those from the living and the dead.
ACT IV, SCENE I NEW YORK 1917
The sun sat lopsided over the earth. This was Esmerelda’s impression as she peered upward, through the hotel room window. To see any sky at all, one had to bend over and look up, the building across the alleyway so tight to hers. Since midsummer, this had been her view.
On the verge of fall, Luna Park had cut back on its acts. The Coney Island landmark would officially close for the season in days. Only Barney and Bill’s soft shoe and Jimmie’s dramatic reading remained on the bill. This meant Oscar’s Traveling Extravaganza could only be in one place and Cora had to find other means of employment. She’d taken a job cleaning the bathhouses, remarking to Esmerelda, “It’s no matter. Oscar will be movin’ us all on to other shows. He’ll have to. Only that Elephant Hotel stays open year-round.” Esmerelda’s situation gave Cora a place to sleep, but it was wages Oscar needed to see—whether you earned your nickels juggling cups and saucers and a cat or by scrubbing sand and piss.
Cora said she didn’t mind about the bathhouses. But Esmerelda could see she’d been crying after returning late at night. She also had to insist that Cora bathe before getting into bed. She reeked of urine, sweat, and lye soap.
“Bathe more than once a week? Who ever heard of such a thing?” she said. Esmerelda had draped Cora’s undergarments over a chair, shoving them under her clearer nose the next morning. After this, Cora would wash herself and Esmerelda would scrub her clothes in the sink, hanging them on the indoor clothesline.
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