The Walker in Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  Pat stared, her eyes wide. Josef nodded.

  "Yes, I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye, admittedly; but I couldn't be mistaken. There was no one there. The vase didn't fall, it lifted up into the air before it came at me. I had just time enough to turn and shield my head with my right arm. My hand deflected it somewhat, I think, or I'd be in worse shape than I am. It was quite heavy."

  "Poltergeist," Mark said.

  "Well…" Again the glance Josef gave Mark was mingled with unwilling respect. "I suppose you're right. I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms."

  "What is a poltergeist?" Pat asked, hoping it wasn't quite as unacceptable to common sense as an ordinary ghost.

  Apparently she was the only one unfamiliar with the term. The others all spoke at once. As was to be expected, Mark's voice dominated.

  "It's a mischievous spirit, or malicious ghost. It makes rapping noises and throws stones and things. The classic case-the one that marks the beginning of the Spiritualist movement-was that of the Fox sisters, in 1848-"

  "Not a good example, Mark," Josef interrupted. "Margaret Fox confessed, forty years later, that she produced the rappings by cracking the joint of her big toe."

  "But-" Mark began.

  "Let me finish." Josef turned to Pat. "I became interested in the subject because I once had a case that in-volved a supposed poltergeist. A family had bought a house that proved to be virtually uninhabitable. The bedclothes were pulled off the beds while people were sleeping in them, the walls reverberated with knocking and rapping all night long, stones and rocks fell, apparently out of empty air. The family sued my client, claiming that he knew when he sold them the house that it was haunted. There was no denying that disturbances had occurred; several unimpeachable outside witnesses had observed them."

  "You never told me about that case," Kathy said.

  "It was ten years ago, Kathy; and God knows I never imagined we'd have any personal interest in haunted houses. At any rate, I did some research on poltergeists and learned a few facts that saved my client from an expensive settlement.

  "In almost every reported case, as in that one, there was an adolescent child living in the disturbed house. Often psychic investigators were able to prove that the child had caused the disturbances by the same sort of trickery practiced by stage magicians. The hand is faster than the eye, in fact, and these kids were amazingly adept at twitching strings, pushing objects with their toes, and so on."

  "Wait a minute," Mark said. "Not all the cases could be explained that way. I remember reading-"

  "A book by some quack ghost hunter, probably. People of that ilk are either cynical professional writers, willing to report anything that will sell, or they are incredibly gullible. The investigators of the Society for Psychic Research aren't so naive. When a thorough, controlled investigation of a poltergeist was made, trickery was almost always found."

  Mark's face was getting red. Pat knew he was controlling himself with an effort; he would have interrupted anyone but Kathy's father long since.

  "Aren't you being inconsistent, Josef?" she asked. "You say you saw the vase move, but you maintain that all poltergeist cases are faked. Or are you accusing Kathy?"

  "Certainly not! Besides, if Mark's evidence can be trusted, she was outside the house when the vase moved."

  It was Mark's turn to choke with indignation.

  "If that's what legal training does for you, I don't want it. You can't clear your own daughter of trying to brain you unless she's got an alibi? What kind of-"

  "That's the only way we can approach this mess," Josef said angrily. "By being rigorously logical. If we make exceptions-"

  "Well, dammit, I don't suspect the people I love of-"

  "You young jackass, it isn't a question-"

  Pat banged her hand down on the table. Plates rattled, and the debaters stopped shouting.

  "That's enough," she said severely. "You're behaving like spoiled brats-both of you. Mark, is there any more coffee?"

  Mark got up and went to the stove. Even the back of his neck was red.

  "You are quite right," Josef said, his flush subsiding. "I apologize for shouting. All the same-"

  Mark returned with the coffeepot and poured, rather sloppily. Being younger, he was not as well disciplined as Josef; his cheekbones still showed bright spots of temper, but when he spoke he was obviously trying to be conciliatory.

  "I-uh-guess I should apologize too. But if you'd just let me say something…"

  "He's right, Dad, it's his turn," Kathy said. "You aren't conversing, you're lecturing."

  Josef turned impetuously to his daughter.

  "Kathy, you know I didn't mean-"

  "I know." She patted his hand. "It's that blasted legal training. Now listen to Mark."

  A lesser personage might have been intimidated by the glare Josef turned upon him, but Mark was not the most modest of men. His chest expanded visibly as the others sat waiting for him to speak, and he took his time about beginning, measuring sugar into his coffee and clearing his throat several times.

  "You left out one thing about poltergeists, Mr. Fried-richs. Sure, some of them are out-and-out fakes. But there is another theory. Some psychologists claim that a young person, especially a female entering puberty, is sort of… well… overflowing with psychic and sexual energy. Sometimes, especially if the adolescent personality is disturbed to begin with, this energy finds an outlet in poltergeist-type manifestations."

  Despite Mark's pompous language, his meaning was clear. Pat half expected Kathy to throw something at him. Instead she laughed, freely and delightfully.

  "That's the silliest thing I ever heard of."

  "It certainly couldn't apply to Kathy," Pat agreed. She smiled at the girl, ready to forgive even the ruination of her favorite negligee. "I've never seen a less disturbed adolescent personality. Besides, if you are talking about puberty-"

  "I went through that six years ago," Kathy said scornfully. "It's just silly, Mark. I mean, back in the nineteenth century maybe it was a shock to a girl, but these days…"

  "Oh, I don't believe it," Mark said. "I just mentioned it to clear the air. I don't think what we've got is a poltergeist, anyway."

  Josef followed the exchange interestedly, his elbows on the table, his fingers buried in his hair.

  "Then what you believe," he said precisely, "is that there is an active, malevolent personality behind this-not just some vague, undefined burst of psychic energy."

  "Good," Mark said patronizingly. "Right on. What we have got, ladies and sir, is a ghost."

  Silence followed this statement. The refrigerator turned itself on with a click. Sunlight streamed through the windows, brightening the faded, flowery chintz of the cur-tains and setting sparks flaring off the coppery molds that adorned the walls. In the center of the kitchen table the yellow roses had spread their petals wide.

  "This is unreal," Pat said.

  Three pairs of eyes turned toward her. Josef's were a deep brown, almost black. She hadn't noticed their color before.

  "I know how you feel," he said gently. "But I'm afraid it's a possibility. At least I'm willing to listen to Mark's statement." His voice sharpened as he turned to Mark. "I assume he has a statement-a long one."

  "Not as long as I'd like it to be," Mark said, with unusual humility. "However, I will start with the fact that this isn't the first time your house has seen manifestations. Old Hiram-"

  "Yes, I've heard of old Hiram," Josef said. "Go on."

  "He wasn't crazy," Mark said. "I guess you could call him eccentric, although Dad used to say any man had the right to live the way he wanted, so long as he wasn't hurting anybody else."

  "Did old Hiram hurt anybody else?" Josef asked.

  Mark grinned. The chipped front tooth, damaged in a hard fall on the basketball court, gave his smile a gamin look.

  "He threw rocks at us," he said. "Looking back on it, I don't think he really meant to hit anybody, any more than we meant to hassle h
im. Well, maybe we did, a little, he was such an old grouch. But mostly it was the place-all overgrown and weedy, a swell place to play war games and spies. And there were the buried-treasure stories. But then old Hiram complained, and Dad made me build that fence. Wow. That really hurt. Spending three Saturdays working, when I could have been playing baseball. Anyhow, after that we didn't bug Hiram; but he kind of liked Dad…"

  "You are wandering from the subject," Pat said.

  "What?" Mark gave her a startled look. "Oh. I guess I was. Anyhow, Hiram told Dad that when he first moved into the house some funny things happened. Lights, and objects moving around. He said he figured it was a ghost, so he stood in the middle of the hall and yelled out that he was a stranger, and he wouldn't bother it if it didn't bother him."

  " 'Eccentric' is hardly the word for Hiram," Josef said drily. "Did that stop the manifestations?"

  "I guess so. He said he never had no more trouble-"

  "Mark, your grammar," Pat said.

  "I'm quoting," Mark said blandly. "But Dad said it was an interesting story. He believed it, not because old Hiram wasn't peculiar, but because his peculiarities wouldn't take that form."

  He looked at the others as if hoping they would understand what he meant. Surprisingly, it was Friedrichs who nodded.

  "Yes, I see. Old Hiram might have delusions of persecution from Russians or Martians or vicious small boys, but not from poltergeists. Nor would he have mentioned the subject to your father, who was only a casual acquaintance, unless-"

  "Yeah, that was it. He didn't want us hanging around anyway; he hated everybody, especially kids. But he told Dad he was afraid we'd start the ghost up again. Things were nice and quiet, he said, and he liked them that way."

  "He wasn't so crazy," Josef muttered. "All right, Mark, I'll accept your first point. The-er-trouble did not originate with us. Are you suggesting I stand in the hall and shout reassurances, as he did, to our racketing spirit?"

  "No, look-you don't get what I'm driving at. It isn't just a random effect. It woke up, like, when Hiram moved in. But he wasn't… what it wanted."

  "Ugh," Kathy said violently. "I don't like that idea."

  "Neither do I," Pat said. "Stop beating around the bush, Mark. You insinuated that you and-and your father had looked into the ghost theory. What are you driving at?"

  "It sounds so unconvincing when you just state it flat out, without explaining-"

  "State it flat out," Pat said firmly.

  "Okay, okay. I think there is a ghost… spirit… whatever you want to call it. I think it dates from the period just after these houses were built. Now wait -do any of you know anything about the history of these two houses?"

  He knew they didn't. Pat glowered at him, and Josef froze him with a cold legal stare; but Mark was basking in the warmth of Kathy's admiration and ignored the adult disdain.

  "They are twin houses, as you know," he said, addressing all of them, though he continued to look at Kathy. "They were built in 1843, by a Mr. Peters, for his twin daughters…"

  Four

  I

  If the midwife hadn't sworn to the fact, people would not have believed that Lavinia and Louisa Peters were sisters, much less twins. They were both fair-haired and blue-eyed, but with that the resemblance ceased. Lavinia was a fairy child, fragile and exquisite; Louisa was chubby and stolid, regarding the world with cool detachment from behind the thumb that was usually in her mouth. As they grew to young ladyhood, Louisa lost her baby fat, but she was never as slim as her sister, whose waist attained the fabulous seventeen-inch span so desired by Southern belles. Her blue eyes kept their look of calm appraisal, while Lavinia's danced coquettishly, flirting long lashes at her dozens of beaux.

  ("I've seen old photographs of the two," Mark said. "They didn't even look alike. They were older when the pictures were taken, but one was still the professional Southern lady; the other had a placid, motherly sort of face.")

  They were devoted to one another, and that was odd; for although the term "sibling rivalry" had not yet been coined, the reality had existed for centuries, and many sisters have a healthy detestation for one another. Not Louisa and Lavinia. It was not surprising that they should fall in love and marry at the same age, for they did every thing together. Nor was it really surprising, considering how different they were, that their husbands should be such opposites.

  Albert Tumbull was a widower, almost twenty years older than Lavinia, but every other factor was in his favor. He was a neighbor, a planter, an aristocrat; his estate, adjoining the Peters' tobacco plantation, included fifty slaves and four hundred acres.

  ("And he was a good-looking guy," Mark said. "I mean, if you like the type-mustache, high cheekbones, the deliberate aristocratic sneer. I don't know why he and Lavinia didn't move into his house. Maybe she refused to live with the relics of his first wife, or maybe the ancestral mansion was falling apart…")

  Whatever the reason, Turnbull moved into the handsome new house built as a wedding gift by his father-in-law. The name he gave it, Halcyon House, was not especially original, but it indicated an optimistic hope for happiness with his new bride. He may not have been so pleased about his new brother-in-law.

  His name was Bates-John Bates. It was a flat, thumping, monosyllabic name, and the pictures of him that have survived show a face that suits the name-expressionless, dour, dark. A New Englander by birth and a school-teacher by trade, he had somehow found his way to Maryland and the headmastership of one of the new private schools in the area.

  ("I don't know how Louisa met him," Mark admitted. "Schoolteachers weren't gentry, not exactly… But they weren't lower-class types either, so I guess she could have run into him at some social function. It must have been a genuine love match. To a girl of her background, Bates had nothing in particular to recommend him. He looked like a sour-faced, sanctimonious old-")

  He wasn't old, though; he was only twenty-six when he married the eighteen-year-old Louisa, more than ten years younger than his brother-in-law, Turnbull. Peters, one of the wealthier landowners of Maryland, endowed his adored daughters with wide acres, and built them each a house. It seems reasonable to suppose that the mutual affection of the sisters dictated the relative proximity of the houses, for western Maryland in those days had plenty of empty space-and the odd fact that they were duplicates. One might have expected the placid Louisa and her stolid New England husband to prefer a more classic style. But old Mr. Peters was providing the money, and perhaps it was he who demanded the very latest mode in architecture-the bizarre mixture of Tudor and castellated medieval styles known as American Gothic revival.

  Some students of local architecture suspect that the twin houses were designed by the same man who built Tudor Hall, the boyhood home of the Booth brothers-Edwin the actor, John Wilkes, the assassin. The red brick walls boasted mullioned windows and diamond-pane casements. The great bay windows in the drawing rooms had Gothic tracery. Wooden curlicues and curls hung like icicles from the porches, roofs, and gables.

  ("Most of the wooden wedding-cake trim is gone now," Mark said. "It was too expensive to paint and repair. The houses aren't exact duplicates anymore because over the years people added things like bathrooms and kitchens. But the floor plans are the same.")

  The name the Turnbulls gave their home was typically pretentious, but names were not pure affectation, they were a convenient form of identification before street names and route numbers. The Bateses also named their house.

  ("It's funny," Mark said. "Most of the old names are remembered. Not that one. It's mentioned in one old book, and nowhere else. Freedom Hall. You could reasonably assume a New England schoolteacher would be an abolitionist. The name he gave his house makes it certain.")

  The slave owner and the antislavery schoolteacher might not have been the best of friends, but the two families lived side by side in apparent amity for almost fifteen years. Turnbull had one daughter from his previous marriage. Lavinia presented him with another child, a son
, born in 1844. Louisa was more prolific than her sister, but not much more fortunate. Her first child was also born in 1844, but it did not survive infancy. She became pregnant again almost at once, producing twins in 1845-a boy and a girl. She had other children, but only one of them lived as long as eight years. By 1860 the pattern of duplication still prevailed, with two members of the younger generation in each of the twin houses. Lavinia's stepdaughter, Mary Jane, was twenty-six. Her son Peter was sixteen. The Bates cousins, Edward and Susan, were a year younger than Peter. In that year the war clouds were gathering, hanging low and dark over divided border states such as Maryland.

  II

  They had agreed not to interrupt Mark. No one did, but Pat was amused at the effort it cost Josef Friedrichs to keep his mouth shut. Every now and then a particularly questionable statement or undefended assumption would produce a visible contortion in the older man's face, his cheek muscles twitching as he struggled not to speak. When Mark ended with his dramatic metaphor Josef could contain himself no longer.

  "You'd be a great trial lawyer," he said caustically. "Eloquent, florid, and full of hot air. How much of that is factual?"

  "There's a genealogy," Mark said. "Deeds, architect's plans-"

  "I assumed you had those. Where did you get all that about Bates's abolitionist beliefs?"

  "But, Dad, it's obvious," Kathy exclaimed. "Can't you see the conflict building between the two families? Maryland was a border state. It almost seceded. It probably would have if the federal government hadn't occupied Baltimore and thrown a lot of Southern sympathizers in jail. There were Maryland regiments in both the Confederate and Union armies-"

  "I'm glad you're learning a little history in that expensive school," Josef said. "Oddly enough, my dear, I knew all that. But you haven't proved that the two families who lived in these houses were divided in their sentiments, or that, if they were, there is any connection whatever with the presumed apparition that-"