Professor Guzik shrugged and puffed out his cheeks. ‘I can understand your point of view, after what you have been through. If it had happened to me, I would probably feel the same. But whatever your opinion, I don’t see how you can exterminate such a thing. It is a spirit, a ghost, a will-of-the-wisp. Completely insubstantial.’
It had stopped raining by the time they left the café. Jack shook hands with Professor Guzik and thanked him. Professor Guzik said that if Jack ever managed to catch and kill a Forest Ghost, he should be sure to let him know. ‘I would be most interested, believe me.’
Jack and Krystyna walked a little way along Krakowskie Przedmieście. The sun came out and made the wet gray sidewalks shine so brightly that they were dazzled.
‘I’d better get back and check on Sparky,’ said Jack.
‘Will I see you again before you go?’ Krystyna asked him.
‘Sure. We could have dinner this evening, if you like. It would have to be at the hotel. I can’t leave Sparky on his own for too long.’
‘Yes, I would like that.’
Jack took hold of Krystyna’s hands and kissed her on each cheek – once, twice, three times – and this time she kissed him back. They looked into each other’s eyes for a very long moment, and they both knew what they were looking for.
Bad Moon Rising
When Jack returned to the hotel, he found Sparky sitting at the desk by the window, drawing a star chart. Beside him was a plate with a few French fries and some smears of catsup left on it, as well as an empty sundae glass.
Sparky’s hair was sticking up with gel and he was wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of Albert Einstein poking out his tongue.
‘How are you feeling, buddy?’ Jack asked him. ‘You managed to eat some lunch, then?’
‘I’m feeling much better, thanks,’ said Sparky, without looking up from his star chart. ‘Pluto and Uranus are at right angles, which was probably why you thought you saw that white thing last night.’
‘Oh, I see. Pluto and Uranus. Guess I should have realized.’
‘Not only that – the Sun and Uranus have also formed a square. This happens very, very rarely. It’s the first in a series of seven squares of power which are going to keep reappearing for the next three years. Every time that happens, things look strange, not the way they really are.’
‘Oh, OK. So what did you have to eat? Cheeseburger?’
Sparky looked up. Jack couldn’t put his finger on it, but he appeared different somehow, as if he were Sparky’s near-identical twin instead of Sparky himself. His face was even paler than usual, and his eyes seemed almost translucent. He probably needed a good night’s sleep, just like Jack did.
‘Cheeseburger with chili, and a chocolate ice-cream,’ he said. The way he said it, it sounded more like a religious intonation than lunch. Then, ‘How did it go with Professor Guzik?’
‘Very interesting, if you’re prepared to believe in mythological gods and spirits. Professor Guzik believes that trees can communicate and that we were attacked in the forest by the great god Pan.’
He went to the mini-bar, took out a bottle of Tyskie Gronie beer and tore open a small packet of pretzels. He sat down on the couch and said, ‘Professor Guzik thinks there are hundreds of Pans. Maybe thousands. Every forest has its own Pan, as far as I can make out.’
He recounted everything that Professor Guzik had said to them: that these multitudes of Pans had appeared all through history in forests all over the world, causing suicidal panic.
‘Yes,’ said Sparky, when he had finished, almost as if he had known it all already.
‘Do you believe him?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean, I’m totally confused about it. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. What if we’re feeling vengeful about something that doesn’t exist?’
‘You saw the Forest Ghost for yourself,’ said Sparky. ‘That white thing, anyhow, whatever it was. So did I. Why wouldn’t you believe him?’
‘Because there is no such thing as ghosts, for a start.’
‘You thought you saw a ghost last night, in the bathroom.’
‘Yes, but I think that was just me, being hysterical. In fact I think I probably dreamed it. It was the same as hearing your mom talking, on the phone.’
‘You threw the chair at the window. You didn’t dream that.’
‘No. No, I didn’t. But you said yourself that there was nothing there.’
‘There was.’
‘You mean there was something?’
‘No. I mean there was nothing.’
Jack watched him drawing his star chart for a while. Then he said, ‘I’d better confirm tomorrow’s flight home. It’s at twelve-ten but we need to be at the airport by nine.’
‘We are going back to Owasippe, aren’t we?’ asked Sparky, without looking up.
‘Why would we?’
‘We came here to find out why Malcolm and all of those other scouts committed suicide, and why your great-grandfather committed suicide, didn’t we? And now we know that it was the Forest Ghost. The nish-gite. It was Pan.’
Jack said, ‘Even if we believe that, I don’t see how going back to Owasippe is going to do us any good. If this Forest Ghost exists, and if there’s any way of catching it, I’d be the first one to try. We don’t want any more kids like Malcolm killing themselves, or anybody else for that matter. But even if it’s real, it’s a ghost. Professor Guzik believes it’s real, but even he said that it doesn’t have any substance. It’s a ghost, Sparks. We can’t catch it, by very definition.’
‘Actually, we can,’ said Sparky. ‘I’ve been finishing this new star chart for us and the planets say that we’re definitely going to, which means that we will. It says that you and me are going to go to the west to right a great wrong, so that it never ever happens again.’
‘Oh, really? But does it say how? I mean, that would be very useful – if we knew how.’
‘All it says is that we’re bringing back the answer with us, from the east, even though we don’t know what it is yet.’
‘Come on, Sparks – what answer? Even if we believe that people panic because of a Forest Ghost, that doesn’t tell us how to catch it, or stop it, or exorcize it, or whatever you do with ghosts.’
Sparky picked up the star chart and came across to the couch to show it to him. ‘There,’ he said, pointing at some of the symbols and quadrants he had drawn. ‘That’s us returning to the west … that’s your star sign, Aries, and that’s mine, Capricorn. Now there – that’s where we go to Owasippe and right the great wrong.’
‘If you say so, Sparks. Looks just like lines and squiggles to me.’
‘No, Dad – you see here? This is the Moon, rising at the same time as we arrive at Owasippe. But the Moon appears in the square made by the Sun and Uranus, and that turns everything upside-down and back-to-front. That’s when we realize what the answer is. It’s like the answer is kept in a safe, in the heavens, but the Moon is going to unlock it for us.’
Jack swallowed beer from the neck of the bottle and shook his head. ‘You got me there, Sparks. I don’t understand a word of this.’
‘It’s easy to understand. We already have the answer, but we won’t know what it is until we go to Owasippe and the Moon rises.’
‘So in the great scheme of all things astrological, is this a good forecast or a bad forecast or someplace in between?’
Sparky looked down at his chart and frowned. ‘Usually, when the Moon rises in a square, it’s bad. Like, very bad. Everything goes wrong. But this time, I don’t really know. It could be bad or it could be good. The trouble is, I don’t know which, or who for …’
A Promise
‘This has turned out to be such a tragedy,’ said Krystyna, as they sat over dinner in the Platter restaurant on the hotel’s first floor. ‘I feel so guilty about Robert and Borys and Lidia. And what did we achieve? Nothing.’
‘What about the skeletons you found?’ Jack asked her. ‘Grzegorz Walach and his friend Andrzej, if tha
t’s who they are? Will you be able to go back and dig them up?’
Krystyna shrugged. ‘I have no idea. Not yet. I will certainly have to wait until the police have finished their investigation. But even if I do get permission to continue, I’m not so sure that I will ever have the nerve to go back into that forest. Supposing I start to feel panicky, all over again? Supposing I want to kill myself? Supposing I do kill myself?’
She reached across the table and laid her hand on his. She was wearing a small silver ring with a red garnet in it, the birthstone of Capricorns.
‘Forgive me, Jack. I know you had that message from your late wife, and that you would very much like to know why.’
‘No, I don’t blame you. I feel the same way myself. Sparky wants us to take another trip to the forest at Owasippe. He says that if we do that, we’ll find out the answer to what this Pan thing really is. But … I don’t know. I can’t say I’m very happy about it.’
‘You’re not going, are you?’
‘I might have to. The trouble with Sparky is that he’s obsessive. He won’t let anything go until he’s had concrete proof that it’s right or it’s wrong. Sometimes he frets about something that he doesn’t understand until it makes him physically ill.’
‘Well … maybe he will be able to put this Forest Ghost to rest. Let’s hope so.’
‘I still can’t make up my mind if there really is such a thing,’ Jack told her. ‘We’ve heard the trees rustle and felt the wind blow and I know that I’ve seen some white thing running around. I didn’t tell Professor Guzik this morning but I even thought I saw something like it in our hotel bathroom last night.’
‘You saw it in your bathroom?’
‘It was like a bright white figure. So bright you couldn’t even look at it. I was scared shitless, pardon my language. I almost felt like cutting my wrists right then and there. I picked up this goddamned fruit knife, would you believe, this blunt little fruit knife, and I think I would have done it. But Sparky came out and said there was nothing there, and there wasn’t. I went back and searched the room, under the bed, everywhere. Absolutely zilch.’
‘That is so weird. Do you think you might have dreamed it?’
‘I guess I must have done. So – whatever Professor Guzik says – I’m beginning to believe that this Pan character could be all in the mind.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Krystyna. ‘But whatever it is – whether it’s a real ghost or whether it’s a psychological delusion – it frightens me too much to go back. I regret it, very much, but what happened to your great-grandfather might have to remain a mystery. What happened to us might have to remain a mystery, also. To Robert, and to Lidia, and to Borys.’
The waiter brought their main courses – venison medallions with loganberries for Jack and pike with sour pickles for Krystyna. For the rest of the meal, they didn’t talk about the Forest Ghost again. Jack told Krystyna how his parents had started up the Nostalgia Restaurant, and Krystyna told Jack about her girlhood on the Baltic coast, in Gdynia.
They said goodbye in the hotel lobby. Krystyna said, ‘You will keep in touch, Jack? If you go to Owasippe with Sparky, you promise to tell me what happens?’
‘I promise. And you just let me know how you’re getting on, anyhow, even if you don’t have any news.’
He kissed her, and she kissed him back. They held each other for a moment, and then she gave him a little smile and said, ‘Dobranoc, Jack. Have a safe journey.’
He went outside with her and waited until the doorman hailed a taxi. Then he stood on the sidewalk and watched the taxi disappear into the traffic. Suddenly, he felt alone again.
Whispers in the Air
They had been flying for more than seven hours when he heard the first whisper. They had eaten lunch and then watched a new Johnny Depp movie and now the cabin lights had been lowered and most of the passengers had settled down to sleep or to read or to work on their laptops.
Sparky was resting his head against Jack’s shoulder and was fast asleep, breathing through his mouth. Jack had closed his eyes but his mind was jumbled with too many thoughts and images and contradictory feelings for him to sleep. He kept thinking about the forest, and the rustling of leaves, and the blinding white figure he had seen in the hotel bathroom, and then about Krystyna.
He put on his headset and listened to classic pop hits for a while – Bruce Springsteen and Dr Hook and Leon Russell. He had only been listening for a few minutes, however, when his headset abruptly went dead, and then started softly to crackle, like static.
He was about to call the flight attendant and ask for a new headset when an urgent voice whispered, ‘Jack – słyszysz mnie?’
Immediately, he plucked off his headset as if it had given him an electric shock. The gray-haired man sitting in the aisle seat opposite stared at him dubiously, and kept on staring at him.
It was that woman again, that woman who sounded just like Aggie. The same woman he had heard in his head at the Tamara Thorne’s séance, and both he and Sparky had heard on the telephone in their hotel bedroom. Or maybe it really was Aggie, trying to talk to him from God alone knew where. Can people really get in touch with you, from beyond? Can people really talk to you, from heaven? Aggie was lying in a casket in Saint Boniface Cemetery, two years dead. How could she speak to him now?
Cautiously, he picked up the headset again and held one speaker about an inch away from his ear. He could hear more static, and then that whisper again.
‘Jack – słyszysz mnie? Jack – you have to find them – they’re buried …’
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to go on listening but then he didn’t want to stop listening, either. However surrealistic it was to hear Aggie speaking to him through an airplane headset, two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic and thirty-five thousand feet in the air, it was still Aggie, and he still loved her, even if she was dead. The sound of her voice tightened up his throat so much that if anybody had asked him right then if anything was wrong, he wouldn’t have been able to answer.
‘Jack – can you hear me? They’re buried – they’re buried where the path divides three ways.’
I’ve been there, sweetheart, he thought. I’ve seen them. But right now there’s nothing I can do. First of all I have to take Sparky to Owasippe, as much as I don’t want to. Maybe then I’ll know what I’m up against, and how to go back to the witch’s-head rocks without panicking.
‘Jack – can you hear me? Słyszysz mnie, Jack?’
She kept on whispering to him, but her voice was rapidly becoming fainter, and the static was growing thicker and louder. He heard only one more word before she was swallowed up altogether.
‘– dependant …’
He pressed the headset hard against his ear, but she was gone, and almost immediately the music came back. Queen, singing ‘Somebody to Love’. The gray-haired man in the aisle seat opposite was still staring at him. Jack gave him a quick, reassuring smile, even though he thought the man looked like a lizard.
Sparky stirred, and opened his eyes, and looked up at him.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said, and sat up straight.
‘Nothing’s wrong. Why?’
‘You look like you’ve been crying.’
Jack wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘It’s this pressurized air. Always makes my eyes water.’
Sparky kept on looking at him as if he didn’t believe him, but then Jack checked his watch and said, ‘Don’t worry. Only three more hours to go, and we’ll be landing. What do you want to eat tonight?’
‘Pizza. Or kebab. Nothing Polish. I’ve had enough Polish.’
Although they had left Warsaw just after midday and flown for over ten hours, it was only a few minutes past four in the afternoon when they arrived back at Nostalgia. Tomasz was there to greet them, and Duane helped them to carry their suitcases inside.
‘So, good trip?’ he asked Jack. ‘You find out what you want to find out?’
‘Not
really.’ He wasn’t ready yet to tell anybody about their grisly expedition into the Kampinos Forest. ‘To be honest with you, I wish we’d never gone.’
‘Everything here has run just like clockworks. No problems at all. Except next week we have public health inspection.’
‘That’s OK. We got that dishwasher fixed, didn’t we?’
‘Everything is fine. I even got Piotr to clean all grease from ventilator.’
‘Good for you, Tomasz. I’ll make sure you get a bonus for taking care of things while I was away. And I may have to go away again this weekend, but only for a day – maybe two at the most.’
‘That is fine, Boss. Don’t worry. Oh – before I forget …’
He went to his maitre d’ stand and came back with a page torn from one of the check pads. Tamara Thorne had scrawled her address on it: 1961 West Schiller Street, Wicker Park, as well as her telephone number and her cell number. Underneath she had written: Call me, another message has come through for you!!!
‘Thanks, Tomasz,’ he said, and gave him an approving clap on the back. Then he went through to the kitchen to see how Mikhail and Piotr and Duane were prepping for this evening’s service. Piotr and Duane were furiously chopping carrots and mushrooms and celeriac, while Mikhail was standing over the stove stirring a large saucepan.
‘Ah, Boss, you have come back just at the right moment!’ said Mikhail. ‘Taste this soup, tell me what you think.’
He handed Jack a ladle brimming with a brownish, spicy-smelling soup, with macaroni and beans and slices of frankfurter in it. Jack blew on it two or three times to cool it, and then tasted it. It was highly seasoned – peppery, garlicky and smoky – like Aggie’s cooking used to be.
‘You like that?’ asked Mikhail. ‘Uhlan bean soup. My aunt used to make it.’
Forest Ghost: A Novel of Horror and Suicide in America and Poland Page 19
