A Room For The Dead (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 3)

by Noel Hynd

  She took his hand and led him to the stairs.

  They went up the steps quickly and into her bedroom.

  O'Hara noticed that this chamber was furnished sparsely, much as the rest of the house. More of the previous girl's furnishings, she said, though she had added a few small things, curtains on the window and an antique table. Upon the table was a bowl of fruit, and she paused to look at it as she began to undress. Then Carolyn killed the room's only light. And she killed it very quickly.

  To O'Hara, going to bed together seemed like the only logical thing to do. She pulled away the sheets and covers.

  Then they moved to each other as if they had known each other's moves from another lifetime. They coupled into each other's grasp, arms and legs intertwining as if each were the perfect biological partner of the other.

  We fit together, O'Hara found himself thinking, so nicely.

  After a few initial moments, she was very passive. And he, starved for the physical act of lovemaking, was as aggressive as he had ever been with any woman.

  She brought this out of him even more by whispering in his ear. “I'll do anything you want,” she said. “I will be the lover you have always dreamed about, the woman who will please you exactly as you instruct.”

  He could barely speak in response. His physical passion was releasing itself with an urgency that shocked even him, like a fast spring thaw after a frozen winter of cold, dead emotions.

  She was passive, yes. But she had effortless orgasms, first in the minuet stage of their lovemaking, then bigger, more powerful ones during the hell-for-leather stage.

  Throughout, he could not shake the feeling that he had had early on: that he fit upon her and within her perfectly, as if she had been custom-designed for him at some formidable laboratory. And she swore without being asked that she felt the same way.

  She clung almost violently to his neck as he was upon her, her arms tightly around the muscles of his shoulders, occasionally gripping his hair in her fists. Her legs strained against him and wrapped themselves tightly around him as he pushed himself inside her.

  Each time she surrendered to an orgasm, she said, “Oh, my God, I love you!” and repeated much the same each time she felt him having one inside her. The funny thing was, she sounded as if she meant it.

  Afterward, when he felt himself sated from physical desire, she cuddled against him, moving her body within the wrap of his arms. Her flesh was against him, but it felt as light as the voice of an angel. He could feel his own heart in a rhythm with hers, and understood again-for the first time in years-what it could be like to be cut off at the knees by the emotion of love.

  And yet, he had never found an emotional intensity like this. He had never felt what he now saw himself on the verge of.

  As his heart settled, he felt sleep coming over him like an opium high, something resembling a warm, reassuring serpent which slowly coils and gathers a man within its grip and surrounds him with a euphoria unlike any other. His happiness-his physical and emotional satisfaction-was this great moments after going to bed with Carolyn for the first time. And as he dozed, he also knew in advance that by morning his infatuation with her would be total.

  *

  Sometime past three A.M., when it was very still in the city, Carolyn rolled out of bed. Her movement awakened O'Hara who, in turn, kept his eyes closed and did not budge.

  She was naked. She walked across the cool bedroom to the window that looked down on Oswell Street. There were curtains but they were not closed. O'Hara watched her, wondering what she might be looking at, then wondering if she were sleepwalking.

  Then another pair of impressions was upon him. First, he was reminded of the night at his home in New Hampshire four months earlier, the night he had arisen with an overpowering fear in his throat and his heart, the night that had eventually driven him to Julie Steinberg, the police psychologist.

  Then a second thought was upon him, one that scared him. Looking at her in the dim light, her skin seemed unnaturally fair. White as cold marble. Lifeless, which played upon the worst fears that he had about her.

  He wondered: Was he imagining all of this? Was he really here? Was Carolyn really there?

  He reached beside him in the bed. The space was still warm where she had been. He reached to his own groin and knew, as he had remembered it, that he had made love to a woman.

  And yet her back, her skin, her flesh, her entire body, looked so very horribly pale and white. The longer he looked at it in the dark, the more opaque it even seemed to become, much the way a dim light fades when one looks at it in the darkness. Much, he was reminded also, as those ghosts among the trees in the New Hampshire snowscape, the ones that disappeared when he looked directly at them.

  Why was he consorting with the dead? he wondered. Was he on his way to joining them, as she had obliquely suggested over dinner?

  Was it something else? Something worse?

  The vision of Carolyn and the unsettling ideas that came with it nagged at him. It caused him to sit up in bed to view her better.

  He stared at the whiteness of her shoulders, her back, and her buttocks. She was like something out of an art book, one of those perfectly shaped women who model for artists. Long lovely legs, perfectly rounded buttocks and trim waist, the brown hair disheveled and flowing down to her shoulders. Not a blemish. Not a scar. Not an imperfection or flaw. Granted, the room light was dim, but she was something out of a dream.

  “Do you stand there all night or do you eventually come back to bed?” he asked.

  She turned and again he had the sense of seeing her face very clearly in the darkness. Particularly the eyes. She smiled as if she had known all along that he was watching her.

  “Lover?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “What's wrong?”

  “Nothing's wrong.”

  “Something is or you wouldn't have sat up.”

  “I heard you get up,” he said, his own voice soft as the rustle of a curtain in the cool room. His words echoed differently from hers.

  “I do this often,” she said. “I wake up. I don't really sleep much, so I watch out the window. I find it very dreamy. Very comforting, watching a quiet night. It soothes me, and I go back to bed.”

  “To sleep?”

  “To wish I could fall in love,” she said.

  “I thought you loved Gary,” he said.

  “Not in that way,” she said. “Not in the way I could love you.”

  “I consider myself honored,” he said.

  “I'm glad,” she answered.

  She turned fully. From the table near the window she picked out a piece of fruit. She stood in the dim light, in all the beauty of her nakedness, and examined it. After a few seconds, O'Hara could tell that she had an orange because she began to peel it with her long fingers, placing part of the peel on the table.

  Then she walked to him, continuing to remove the skin of the fruit. His eyes travelled up and down her body, from her toes to her hair as she moved silently across the carpet, a gentle glide to her walk. He felt himself falling for her so hard that it hurt. Never before had a naked woman crossing the room seemed more sensual to him.

  She came to the bed and sat down on the edge of it.

  “Will you promise me that I won't have to go back?” she asked.

  “Back where?”

  “I've been in a place that I don't like. Don't make me return.”

  “Carolyn . . . I can't promise anything if I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Just promise that you'll help me stay,” she said. “Please?”

  “I'll do everything I can to help you,” he said. “How's that? I'll do everything I can.”

  He placed a hand on her leg, midway between a perfect knee and her pubic hair. As he was doing so, he had the impression that he was trying to reassure himself. Yes, she was real. No, this was not a dream. Her body was warm and sensual, and the memory of lovemaking from a few hours earlier was not illus
ory.

  She smiled to him, then leaned over and kissed him, as if to share something. A moment. A feeling. A sense of love. Then her gaze lowered to the orange. The skin was removed. She took sections from it. Without asking, she fed one to him, then another. She took two herself. Without speaking further, they split and devoured the orange. When she leaned over and kissed him again, their mouths were as one, their breaths, faintly tinged with the suggestion of a grove of tropical fruit in a warm, comfortable place.

  He wondered if she had done this as a further suggestion of closeness. And he found himself wondering next if she did this with many different lovers, and that was what this getting up and moving about in the middle of the night was all about.

  But if he had uncertainties, he didn't voice them. Instead, she did.

  “I've never found love the way I wanted to find it,” she said.

  He held her in a long gaze. “Why did you tell me that?” he asked.

  “Because it's true. And I feel something for you. Something the way I've always wanted to feel.”

  It wrenched his emotions to make the admission. “I've always felt the same way,” he said. “The same love that was missing.”

  She smiled, leaned toward him, and kissed him. He wondered, during the kiss, if he had lost the final part of his sanity.

  She drew her head back. A strange reflection from the light outside cut slashing crisscrossing shadows on her breasts, which were naked and perfect in front of him.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked softly.

  “What if I do? What if I don't?” he asked in response.

  “I think you do,” she said.

  He felt sweat on his palms. “Are you a ghost?” he asked. “I want to know.”

  “Could you accept it if I am?” Carolyn asked.

  “I think I could.”

  “Do you want me to be one?”

  “No.”

  She smiled enigmatically. She took both his hands and pressed them gently to her breasts. Then she guided his right hand to her thighs and pushed it between her legs. She left it there, allowing him to decide when to pull it away.

  “Do I have the touch of a woman who's dead?” she asked.

  “No.” He withdrew his hand.

  “Then there's your answer. And you may remain my lover forever,” she said.

  He laughed. So did she. They kissed again.

  He moved his head back slightly, withdrawing from the touch of her finger, which was still scented with orange.

  “I believe in you, “O'Hara said. “How's that?”

  “That's perfect,” she answered.

  Then she motioned him backward onto the bed. He reclined and she moved on top, straddling him. She brought herself downward, and their bodies joined as their lips met again. And that strange feeling came over him again, unlike any that he'd ever had with any other woman.

  More passionate. More intense.

  He felt, when he was inside her, that he had become one with her, that their spirits were somehow linked much the way their bodies were. It was a euphoric feeling, though vaguely terrifying for reasons that he couldn't exactly explain. He only knew that he had become one with her in some way that he had never imagined before.

  *

  Afterward, they lay together for several moments, his arm around her. Her breathing was very slight. And he found himself consciously listening for her heartbeat.

  Hoping to hear one. Hoping to reassure himself that if she had a heartbeat, she had to be alive.

  He heard one, and was content as he drifted back to sleep.

  It was past four A.M. when he awakened again, and he knew Gary was in the room. He knew without looking because he sensed it. And then, as if on cue, that terrible stench was in his nostrils.

  The odor of seared flesh. From Gary's execution. And yet inexplicably there was something faintly sweet about the smell, as if it were mingled with something else, far more pleasant.

  And then O'Hara realized. It was the scent of Carolyn's perfume and the residue of the orange consumed earlier that evening.

  O'Hara's eyes were open. He was gazing at the large part of the room, and he felt Carolyn sleeping behind him, her body gently going up and down with each breath.

  Then an incredible thing happened. In the dim room, Gary's face took shape directly before O'Hara's.

  If he had reached out to touch it, the face would have been an arm's length away. It was white, but transparent. White like the beam from a spotlight.

  O'Hara knew exactly what he was looking at. He knew he was seeing a ghost. His heart thundered, but he kept calm. Somehow, he also managed to remain motionless.

  Gary Ledbetter was looking right into his eyes. Or right into his soul. Ledbetter's expression was impassive, as if the dead man could no longer stand to pass judgment upon events in the world of the living.

  At first an extra tremor took hold of O'Hara as he suspected-despite the protestations Carolyn had made-that he was lying with Gary's ex-wife. Or ex-girl. Or maybe a woman he had killed.

  And then another feeling was upon him, almost as if Gary was answering. Something told O'Hara that for some reason it was all right for him to be with this woman, to be her lover. And it occurred to him what he had suspected all along. That she was some sort of conduit, some sort of agent in his life, bringing him something-from the world of the dead?-or taking him somewhere to impart information to him. To give him knowledge that would set things right in a demented universe.

  Perhaps he was reassured by Carolyn behind him. He had an idea. -

  Slowly O'Hara rose up on his elbows. The specter faded. And then from somewhere a thought came into O'Hara's head.

  Please turn, Frank.

  O'Hara obeyed. Gary's ghost was fully before him, standing not far from the bed, head to horrible toe. The odor of death still following him.

  I was innocent, Frank.

  “I'm trying to believe you, Gary,” O'Hara whispered. “I know more now, Gary.”

  You never believed me. You could have saved me.

  “I wish I had been able to.”

  Railroaded. That's what happened to me.

  “You could have saved yourself,” O'Hara muttered. “Couldn't you have named the real killer?”

  Something unspeakable surged forward in the room. An extreme drop in the pressure of the atmosphere combined with the rotting, fetid smell of decomposing flesh.

  O'Hara felt sickened, but stayed his ground. He held tightly to his courage and his wits.

  The ghost moved closer. Gary's hands came up. The stench intensified. Something violent pulled at the sheet and blanket that covered O'Hara. But O'Hara kept hold of it and snapped it back.

  Gary laughed.

  “Who killed those girls?” O'Hara whispered.

  If Gary wanted to answer, he didn't. Or couldn't. He started to fade. And O'Hara was aware of a pattern of behavior. The spirit withdrew when it was uneasy with a particular subject. Or if it were challenged. Gary had reacted that way before.

  The spirit vanished.

  And just as suddenly, it was back!

  O'Hara felt the weight of a human body seat itself on the edge of his mattress. Gary materialized all at once, inches away, almost face-to-face.

  The killer? For you to discover! Gary answered.

  “But why can't you lead me? Why won't you tell me?”

  There! Among the living! the ghost insisted. It is for you to make the discovery, Frankie. Not me. It was your job last time, it's your job this time.

  O'Hara, his heart in his throat, entertained the very real urge to run screaming from this haunted place. Instead, he asked, “The killer is among the living?”

  For now.

  O'Hara pondered the ghost's answer and was chilled by it.

  “Where will I find the answers?” O'Hara asked.

  In my world. Among the dead.

  “Who's 'S. Clay'?” O'Hara asked. “Is 'S. Clay' the killer?”

  Gary laughed and
leaned forward. He kissed O'Hara on the lips. An open mouth. O'Hara's lips stayed closed. He cringed, sickened again. And the kiss was clammy cold.

  “Then who? Who was the killer?” O'Hara asked.

  Gary laughed and drew back.

  O'Hara felt rivers of sweat rolling off him. He wiped his hand across his mouth where Gary had touched him. O'Hara blinked, and Gary flashed into nothing before his eyes.

  O'Hara searched the room. The ghost was gone. The horrible odor and the intense air pressure went with him.

  Carolyn rolled over. Her hand went to him. In the dim light, O'Hara saw her eyes open.

  He looked at her for what seemed like several minutes. In truth, it was probably no more than a few seconds.

  “Gary was here,” O'Hara finally said.

  “I'm not surprised,” she answered sleepily.

  “He's a ghost,” O'Hara said. “And you are, too.”

  “Don't be crazy,” she whispered. “I'm very alive. Otherwise I couldn't have been your lover.”

  “That's what you want me to believe,” he said.

  “That's what I am,” Carolyn answered.

  In the blackest watches of the night, this exchange made perfect sense. O'Hara lay back on the pillow. He felt many things.

  Thrilled. Exuberant. Terrified. Violated. All of the above.

  He felt both sane and crazy at the same time, accepting as reality something that he had always felt was impossible.