A Ghost of Fire

by Sam Whittaker

  Chapter Twenty Four

  I arrived at Katie’s place shortly after I left the remains of mine. I sat in the parked car for a few minutes thinking about what I was going to say about everything else that had happened and wondering how she was going to take it. In the end I decided I shouldn’t over-think it and that I should just go and talk with her. I got out and headed for the door.

  She opened it and at first there was happiness on her face. Encouragement swelled up in my heart that she was glad to see me. Her gladness was quickly replaced with concern. She can already read me, I thought. I don’t suppose I was a hard read at that point, however. That day had been long and more trying than any day thus far for months. Some of that was bound to show up on my face.

  “Hey,” she said, “what’s going on Steve? You look like hell.”

  “I should,” I replied. “My apartment burned down today.”

  She looked perplexed. I could see she didn’t know if I was trying to make some awkward joke-gone-wrong or if I was serious. Another moment’s examination of me confirmed the latter. “Oh, God, are you hurt?”

  “Well…” I began but could say no more because this is where a flood of emotion I didn’t know was coming showed up. Tears formed at the bottom of my eyes and she wasted no time coming to me. She wrapped one arm behind me and pulled my head down to her shoulder. As so often is the case, comfort paradoxically invited the pain to come out of hiding. The pain which had been at flood stage for so long and kept at bay by great stone walls of resolve rampaged loose and free. It wanted out and there was no stopping it now.

  We stood there for God knows how long, the torn and the mender meeting at last. She comforted and affirmed and was ultimately there. There was no mystery as to whether I was for once at the right place at the right time. Despite the hell and the sheer weight of the emotional assault I found healing in those arms. When she pulled back from the embrace a little she looked into my eyes and smiled. Then she said, “You going to make it for a while?”

  I managed a weak smile in return. “Yeah,” I said, “I’ll live…ish.” She smiled again at this and put a hand on my cheek and rubbed away a tear with her thumb. The hand slipped down and grabbed my hand and then she led me inside. The door closed and I walked into a modest apartment decorated in a not overly feminine fashion. As is often the case, my eye was drawn to the book case to discern the kind of reader I had on my hands. But on this occasion I decided to leave that analysis for later.

  Katie released my hand and headed into the kitchen. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to make some coffee for us. Do you want some?”

  “Yeah, that would be great. Can I use your phone? I really need to make some calls to let my family know what happened and that I’m okay.” She leaned around the corner so I could see her. She was putting her hair up behind her head and smiled again for me.

  “Sure. You bet. Phone’s in here.” Then she disappeared back into the kitchen. I gladly followed her lead.

  I found her cell phone sitting on the counter and picked it up. “This one?” I asked holding it up.

  “The one and only,” she replied.

  I walked back into the living space and dialed the phone on the way. My first call was to my parents who understandably flipped when I told them. I spent thirty minutes or so assuring them I was fine and that I didn’t need to come over and stay with them. I omitted the part about James Price being the one to start the fire until I could talk to my father only. Toward the end of the call I had dad take the phone off speaker on his end so I could talk to him about telling Stuart Vox the rest of the story. I knew I could count on him not to divulge the information to my mother who would have gone completely off the deep end had she known.

  I finished the call and Katie came out of the kitchen where she couldn’t have helped but to overhear the conversation and said, “So the coffee’s ready. I don’t know how you take it but I have creamer and stuff if you want all set out near the pot.”

  “Sounds great,” I said and headed for the kitchen. She put a hand on my upper arm to stop me.

  “Just a sec,” she said. “James Price. I heard you mention his name to your dad on the phone. He’s the man who came after me in the bookstore yesterday.”

  “He’s also the man who put you in a coma. He caused the accident,” I added.

  “Right, I knew that,” she nodded. “What I don’t understand is why he set your place on fire. Also, are you sure it was him?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he did it. I saw him there after the fire was put out. A cop, a fireman and I tried to chase him down but he got away. Look, he’s not just some kook who’s out to get us. He’s connected to this ghost thing. I’m positive about this. That thing that chased you through the hospital is using him, twisting him somehow. I saw him after the accident, even talked to the scumbag for a few minutes. He was totally different than when he showed up at the bookstore or at my place. He wasn’t wild or crazed or any of that. He was lucid. A complete jerk, yes, but clear headed and conversational too.”

  Katie shivered as she listened. “I don’t like where this thing is headed Steve. I’m worried.”

  “I hear you,” I said quietly. Then I added, “Let’s get ourselves some coffee. I still need to call Trent.”

  As we walked into the kitchen and prepared our mugs Katie said, “So tell me about Trent. What’s the deal with this guy?”

  I gave her a summation of the story starting from when I read part of one of his books, to meeting him in the bookstore the day I found out she had been in the accident with me, and the most recent developments. I did my best to leave nothing out. She nodded her head as she listened.

  “Well,” she began after hearing the tale, “when you call him to tell him about the fire you should probably invite him over here so we can all talk together, don’t you think?” The thought had crossed my mind but I was grateful to hear it from Katie’s mouth before I gave it voice myself. “It’s just that things seem to be gaining speed and if we’re all in this together it’s probably best we’re all on the same page.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I couldn’t agree more,” I said and took a sip of coffee. Before I went ahead to make the call to Trent we stood for a while longer in the kitchen in silence, just drinking the coffee and relaxing as best we could. Once during the interlude we locked eyes with each other and promptly found something else to look at. There was definitely something there which passed unacknowledged between us.

  To ease the awkward moment I took the phone and dialed Trent’s number. I relayed the story I knew I was going to have to tell, retell and edit for people for a while to come. He listened attentively and asked a few clarifying questions along the way. After a few minutes I said, “It would be easier if we could just meet. I’m over at Katie’s right now and she asked me to invite you to come this way too. That way we’ll all be on the same page.” He said he had acquired a rental car since last I saw him and so he could make it over without needing a lift. I gave him the directions and we both hung up.

  “He’s on his way. He should be here in about ten minutes.”

  “Great,” Katie said. There was another awkward pause and we just stood there looking at each other. She broke the silence and asked, “What are you thinking about?” Of course it had to be the question every guy dreads.

  “I’m just thinking about today. It really does feel like things are speeding up, don’t they?” She stepped up close to me and I looked down into her eyes. I saw again that there was something there. This time I saw it clearly for what it was. It was an invitation. Things were speeding up and my heart raced with them.

  I rested my right hand on the side of her face and slowly brushed her cheek with my thumb. Her lips moved apart a fraction of an inch as if she began to say something but stopped. I touched my forehead to hers and when she closed her eyes I closed the distance between our lips. My face flushed with the excitement of the long desired connection. We moved our mouths against
each other and what began as tender graduated to passionate.

  I wanted time to slow for me again as it did in my dreams. I ached for the moments to linger and prolong the feeling I had waited for since I saw Katie in the bookstore all those weeks before. But time has a habit of obeying its own rules instead of ours and the kiss drew to its end. As our lips parted I watched her eyes flutter open and look up at me. I saw she wanted more of the time also. We both knew the end of the kiss was the beginning of something greater. I looked forward to exploring all the dimensions of what was to come for us.

  “That was what I needed,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Any time,” she replied.

  We were still together and I didn’t want to let go. The feel of her warmth and small frame against me was so good. She made no effort to move away so we just held each other for a while. She rested her head on my shoulder and I buried my face where her shoulder met her neck. The smell of her perfume filled my nose. I was so used to the odor of smoke spontaneously appearing that her feminine quality was a most welcome replacement. I inhaled deep and slow. I promised my lips I would linger on that spot later when there was more time.

  As if sensing my thoughts she pulled away a little, winked at me and said, “We’ll continue this another time, Steve. We have company coming.” She smiled playfully and turned to head toward the kitchen.

  “I hope it’s not too long,” I said. “I liked where that was going.” I heard her begin to rifle through her cupboards then I asked, “Do you need any help in there?”

  She stuck her head out of the kitchen and said, “No, you should just relax. Go sit down for a while.” She was right. Mental and physical fatigue was starting to set in and the smartest thing I could do at that point would be to take it a little easy. I found the couch and lowered myself onto it, joints creaking and muscles objecting all the way down.

  When the knock came at the door a few minutes later Katie said, “Don’t worry about it Steve, I’ll get it.” She darted out of the kitchen to the door without giving me a chance to even think about getting up. When I heard the door swing open I had a flash of paranoia. What if it isn’t Trent? I asked myself. Indeed, I wondered if it could have been Price again this time come back to finish the job. But I was relieved to see it was Trent. Katie greeted Trent at the door and welcomed him in. I also stood up and crossed over to him.

  After Katie directed us back to the living room she entered the kitchen again and reappeared moments later with two trays. One had sliced cheese and summer sausage; the other had an assortment of crackers. I sat on the couch and Trent took a chair. Katie set the trays down on a coffee table in front of us and then sat next to me. She leaned into my side where I welcomed her with an arm around her shoulder. We both gave our full attention to Trent.

  “Alright,” he exhaled, “I think I know the identity of the ghost causing all the trouble.” Katie and I both sat forward at the same time. “His name was Jonas Pine.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I know that name from somewhere. How do I know that name?”

  “You read the introduction to my book, Ridding ourselves of the Ghost Myth, didn’t you? I talked about him in there in a footnote.”

  “Yeah, that sounds familiar.” The more I thought about it the less I seemed to be able to recall. It was a lot like the trouble I had recalling the contents of some of my earlier dreams. All I could remember was the bookstore where Katie worked and where Trent made a celebrity appearance and holding Trent’s book in my hand. The pages were a blur in my memory. But something else about the situation sat funny with me too yet I could not pin it down.

  “What do you know about him?” Katie inquired.

  “I know most of what history has recorded of him: not much. But I’ll tell you what there is.” He took a deep breath to prepare himself for the telling. Then he began.

  “First, he was an orphan but he probably didn’t grow up in an orphanage at least not for very long. As far as I can tell he was born during the civil war and both parents were killed around the year eighteen sixty-four or so. The next part is mostly speculation. As a young boy he was known to travel with a man, an escaped slave actually. So, some people think the slave found him as a toddler after the boy’s parents were killed and took him up as he traveled north to find freedom. Although he wasn’t a slave anymore the man couldn’t find honest work so they both turned to thievery and confidence games.

  “During this time the boy gained an appreciation for magic and illusion. He took a particular interest in pyrotechnics. They would travel from town to town and choose the most visible street corner and the boy would just start doing magic tricks there and gather a crowd under the pretense of looking for pity money. While the boy put on the distraction the man would weave through the crowd and pickpocket the wealthy.”

  “That’s a pretty gutsy thing for a former slave to do,” I said. “North or south, non-white criminals were not treated well.”

  “Don’t get ahead of me,” Trent said. “You’re about to find out how bad an idea it was.”

  “This isn’t going to end well, is it?” Katie asked cringing. We could both guess what was coming but that didn’t make it any easier.

  “So,” Trent continued, “for some reason, we don’t know why, the man took them south again. The war had been over for a few years so maybe he wanted to see if anything had changed. Maybe he had grown tired of crime in the north and needed a change of scene. Who knows, but for some reason they traveled south. It went okay at first. They ran the same racket in every town: do a magic show as a diversion then pickpocket. They had done it for a few years in the north so why wouldn’t they expect it to be the same in the south? That turned out to be a miscalculation because pre-civil war racial discrimination had a very long memory.

  They arrived in a sizeable city near Savannah and set up their usual gig. The boy used cards, a cape, flash paper, you name it. He wowed the people and the man went to work…only this time he was caught. There was no trial; the man was lynched almost immediately. He was dragged out of town and hanged in the nearest tree. Pine saw the whole thing. Of course nobody suspected the poor innocent white kid had anything to do with the thieving former slave so when the hanging was over the crowd encouraged the boy to finish the show…and he did. Pine stayed in town for a few more days, doing his show on different street corners in different parts of town.

  “Even at a very young age Pine had a hot temper and was vengeful. Later that week four houses burned down on the same night…in different parts of town.” Trent paused to let the fact sink in. “They belonged to the sheriff, the mayor, a wealthy business man and a steelworker. All of the men had been involved in the hanging. Only the mayor lived through it but he was terribly scarred with burns. After that the boy was never seen again. He just disappeared into the night. He did come back many years later as an adult, however, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

  “He was probably somewhere between eight and eleven years old when that happened. We loose track of him for about twenty years or so and when we meet him again he’s still doing magic tricks and illusions but he refined himself tremendously. He has a whole traveling magic act, he’s hosting séances, claiming to deliver messages for the dead, selling potions, the whole nine yards. And he’s even created a following for himself with a stage name and everything.”

  “What did he call himself?” I wanted to know.

  “The Amazing Blazing Pine,” Trent said with some theatrical flare. “He traveled everywhere and had people eating out of the palm of his hand. He even had a small devoted crew who traveled with him. They waited on his every word and deed. Wherever he went he had people convinced he was the genuine article. And they paid. They paid for potions, shows and private audiences with him and all kinds of things I’m not even going to speculate about. And he was a womanizer. The ladies fell one after another for him. Lot’s of broken hearts in his wake.”

  “Sounds like a real class-act,” Katie said with some ve
nom. I felt her tense beside me as she listened to the description, especially that last part. As if she needed anything else to want to see the spirit put to rest.

  “At some point one of his crew must have discovered the fraud for what it was and blew the whistle on him. The problem was that the curtain had been raised on the truth at the height of one of Pine’s performances when the crowd was firmly his. They didn’t take being duped very well and so they ran him out of town. That was the same town where the escaped slave was lynched when Pine was just a young boy. When he tried to go to a new place he discovered his reputation had preceded him and he was not welcome. The Amazing Blazing Pine was no more than a smoking stump. The act was finished. He tried to reinvent the whole act a few times but it never worked. The crew disbanded and he was left alone again. Here’s where things get a little fuzzy again.

  “He appears to have assumed a different name and moved here where he started over completely with the same act he had with the former slave who took him in, only this time he seems to have picked up an orphan of his own along the way, maybe the son of some other escaped or freed slave.” It was the boy I had seen standing next to the elevator in the basement of Spectra and also in the dream where the little girl had been chased through the tunnels beneath the orphanage. It had to be the same one.

  Trent continued, “He did the show and the boy did the pick pocketing. I’m guessing it was during this time he discovered the series of tunnel beneath the orphanage and set up shop and then he just disappeared. Nobody seems to have seen him after that. And that was around the same time the orphanage burned down and we know he was there. That’s the story of Jonas Pine.”

  “I suppose he was known to travel with a large steamer trunk wherever he went?” Trent nodded. “Do we know what he kept in it?”

  “Equipment for his shows, I guess. Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I just know I saw it in one of my dreams and it seems to have stuck in my memory. Never mind. What does matter is we at least have some idea of what we’re up against.” I wasn’t sure how the news was going to help us but it seemed good to know.

  The knock at the door startled us all. Katie had a clock on the wall which told me it was ten thirty. I looked at Katie and said, “Please tell me you’re expecting someone.” She huddled closer to me.

  “No, I’m not.” I felt her tremble against me.

  I stood and walked over to the door. I looked out the peep hole and no one was there. I turned and shrugged to Katie and Trent. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the knock came again, louder this time.

  I called out, “Hello? Who’s there?” There was only silence in answer. I tried again, “Hello?”

  “Hello, mister?” the little girl’s voice came through the door and sent ice coursing through my veins. “Mister, come see. Come.” I looked at Trent and Katie again and their eyes were wide with terror.

  “It’s okay,” I said to reassure them. “This is the good one.”

  “Are you sure about that,” Trent asked.

  “Well, if it’s not what am I going to be able to do about it?” Then I returned my attention to the door and called out, “Come see what? What do you want me to see?”

  “Come see. Come,” she repeated. “Please, before it’s too late.”

  I reached my hand out slowly to the door knob and then suddenly I jerked the door open. I was greeted by the sight of the walk leading up to Katie’s place and nothing else. “She’s not there, guys. She’s gone.”

  “Where did she go,” Katie wanted to know.

  “She went the same place we’re going right now. Get your stuff together everybody. I get the feeling it’s almost game time.”

  “Where are we going,” asked Trent.

  “We’re going to the hospital.”

  “Why,” he asked.

  “Come see. Come.” I shrugged my shoulders and began to walk to the car.