The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold

by Scott William Carter

"The gold is the thing that steals the sight," I said.

  "Excuse me?" Felicity said.

  "Steals the sight. You have a kind of sight, don't you? You look at animals when you do your thing, when you talk to them."

  "Well, yes, I suppose."

  She chewed on her bottom lip, suddenly nervous. I didn't understand why it would be making her nervous.

  "You know something," I said.

  "What?"

  "About the rhyme. The gold. You know something about that."

  "No, I don't."

  "Felicity," I said, "Olivia is counting on us. If you know something about the gold—"

  "All right, all right," she said, "I'll tell you what I know. About the legend. It isn't much. And you really shouldn't go looking for it. None of us should. Wherever the gold is, it's safe right now. It's safe because no one knows where it is. But when people with … with gifts have gotten their hands on it, nothing good comes from it. Other people will come to take it. People will die."

  "What legend?"

  "Maybe that's too strong a word," she said. "Not that many people know the story, and that's a good thing. I want to keep it that way. You should, too, Myron. Can I call you Myron? I hope so. We should be friends. I do want to help you, but if you know what's good for you, you won't go looking for the Blind Man's Gold."

  "The what?"

  She sighed. "The Blind Man's Gold. That's what it's called. My mother told me about it when I was just a little girl. As the story goes, a blind French beggar during the time of Napoleon suddenly starting amassing enormous sums of wealth, mostly through betting and games of chance, but also by investing at just the right time in just the right things. Turns out that the very thing that had caused his blindness—a kick in the head from a horse—had also given him a second sight. He got glimpses of the future. Before long, he fell in love with an extraordinary woman, the woman of his dreams. It was one of the few things he hadn't foreseen. All was well.

  "But then he got a glimpse of his wife's gravestone. No matter what he changed, this vision kept returning. He hired doctors to check her condition every day. He hired guards to protect her. He even hired people to test her food, in case someone tried to poison her. None of this changed anything. Finally, he turned to black magic, using all of his wealth to hire the best alchemists to design something, a potion, maybe, that might protect her. But each person he hired failed to change his vision. It always returned.

  "Finally, when he was beside himself with despair, a beggar appeared at his door. He told the blind man that if he was willing to trade his entire fortune, and his ability to see the future, he could give the blind man a gold necklace that would change everything. It would take away any special ability. If the blind man wore it, the visions would have no power any longer, nor would any he had seen come to pass. But he would have to wear it forever. If he ever took it off, his wife would die that very night.

  "And the blind man, nearly driven mad in his frantic efforts to save his beloved, quickly agreed. He would do whatever it took to save her. He gave up everything—all his money, his house, his belongings. He gave it all to the beggar. In return, the beggar gave him the gold necklace. There was nothing remarkable about it. It looked like a simple chain.

  "What the beggar said was true. Wearing the necklace, the blind man received no visions. His wife did not die. She loved him truly, and vowed to stay with him even if he was penniless. But the blind man, his greed got the better of him. Having once tasted such riches, he could not stand to be so poor again. He also began to suspect he'd been tricked. What if the visions were still going to come true, and all the necklace did was prevent him from seeing them?

  "He decided to take it off, but only briefly. He would use it on a few games of chance, just enough to get them on their feet. Surely they'd avoided her death already, and the necklace was doing nothing but keeping them poor. So he removed it. It was hardly off his neck when he received a vision of another gravestone, but it was not his wife's. It was his own.

  "He put it right back on, but it was too late. As promised, his wife died that very night, peacefully in her sleep. The blind man, distraught in his grief and his remorse, could not stand to live without her. He hung himself from a post in a horse barn. And the necklace? Supposedly a gravedigger took it off him. Since this person had no special abilities to take away, it was nothing but an ordinary necklace. It was sold and resold, passing along from person to person over the centuries. There are rumors that a few have possessed it that needed it to take away some second sight, some unnatural ability, but nobody knows for sure."

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if the very act of telling the tale had taken something out of her.

  "Wow," I said, "that's a chipper story. You don't, you know, have any idea where it is, do you?"

  In response, Felicity pulled down the collar of her sweatshirt and pointed to her neck. The skin was bare.

  "If I did," she said, "don't you think I'd be wearing it myself?"

  "I had to ask," I said.

  She let the collar go and looked at me with those big sad eyes of hers, made all the bigger and all the sadder by the thick lenses of her glasses. "It would be a godsend to someone like me. Do you know how hard I have to work to keep all the animal voices out of my mind? It's a constant struggle. Constant."

  "But you're a ghost," I said. "Forgive me, but … you wouldn't be wearing it anyway, right? I mean, not really. Couldn't you just, I don't know, imagine you're wearing it right now?"

  "Something like this gold, it doesn't work like that. Because of its power, it works on both sides of the divide. Meaning if my body was wearing it, then I would be wearing it, too."

  "Your body? You mean…"

  "Yes, in the grave."

  "What if you were cremated?"

  "Then I guess I'd be out of luck. I'd be stuck the way I am. But not all abilities cross over. Some do and some don't. Mine did. Yours? Who knows."

  I thought about this for a while, about what it meant. What if I wore the necklace myself? To not be cursed with my ability to see ghosts all the time, it was a possibility I'd scarcely let myself dream about. What would that life be like? Felicity saw me thinking about it and reached for my arm, as if forgetting her non-corporeal status for a moment, then let it fall limply to her side.

  "Seriously, Myron," she said, "don't go looking for it. Yes, it could help Olivia. Yes, it could help you. Yes, it could help me. But not all of us. Don't you see? Not all of us, and that's the problem. We might be fine, the three of us, making the choice that's best, giving it to the person who needs it most, but would everyone else? I don't think so. You know that. You know there are terrible people in this world that would do anything to get it. People like Victoria Gath."

  That gave me an idea. "If Gath wore it, it would take away her power, too, wouldn't it? She wouldn't be able to steal memories?"

  "If her body wore it, yes, assuming there's a body to be found. It should affect the ghost, too. Unless you're saying she's still alive?"

  "I don't know."

  "If she's alive, she'd be very afraid of this gold. She'd probably do whatever she could to find it just so no one could use it against her." She sighed. "I want to help you, Myron. I'll do what I can. I'll see if I can find out where Olivia is. The gold, though, let it rest. I stopped looking for it myself, after years of trying. I promise you you'll feel better if you don't even start."

  Chapter 16

  After Felicity Langford had gone, I grabbed a beer and settled in on the recliner, where I did my best brooding. Patch, perched on the couch across from me, cleaned his paws. Only three days had passed since John and Laura Ray had walked into my office and asked for help finding their daughter, but it felt like three decades. Laura went missing. John was murdered, and his ghost was missing, too. Victoria Gath had threatened to kill Jak if I didn't back off. And now this, a bizarre tale about gold with extraordinary power—at least for someone like me. And Felicity. And Ol
ivia.

  I also had a ring in my pocket. It was gold, too, and it also had a kind of power. Not the same kind of power as the necklace, of course, but still the power to change my life. I took it out and examined it, holding it between my thumb and forefinger, watching how the light from the lamp glinted off what was a rather dull and scuffed metal surface. Based on such a cheap token of my affection, was I a fool for thinking Jak would agree to marry me? Sure I was. I'd always been a fool.

  But a good fool. That was something, at least. I tried to do right by people. I tried to make a difference, wherever I could. Avoid cruelty. Avoid hate. Avoid doing bad things. I'd failed a lot, but not for lack of trying.

  At some point, I dozed off in the chair, not waking until my neighbor started his F-150, the one with a bad muffler. Daylight had crept into the room around the edges of the closed curtains. The empty beer bottle was in one hand, the ring in the other. Patch was sleeping, curled into a ball on the couch. I was surprised to find him there, since he seldom stayed so long. I felt sluggish, fatigue doing its best to pull me back to sleep.

  My cell phone, on the coffee table next to me, rang loudly, waking me back up again. When I saw it was an unknown number, I canceled the call.

  Five minutes later, it rang again. Irritated, I answered it, though I didn't even say hello. Somebody asked about ferrets. Ah, yes, the ferrets. After explaining that they were all gone, I willed my torpid muscles to move, the bathroom, a shower, a cup of coffee and some toast. Then, for the next fifteen minutes, I called all the pet stores and asked them to take down my flyers.

  I'd found Felicity Langford. Now I needed to find Victoria Gath—and, hopefully, Olivia.

  But how? Olivia's mother had led me to Mary Rittles. From her, I'd found Felicity Langford. But what had it all amounted to? I knew a bit about a strange gold necklace, one that might have the power to cure people like me and Olivia, if cure was even the right word. Jak was right. I didn't even know if Gath was alive or dead. She very well could be a ghost. But if she was a ghost, the men helping her certainly weren't. Ghosts can't fire handguns. Ghosts can't kidnap little girls and throw them in the back of a van.

  Looking at Patch snoozing away the morning, I was jealous of his ambivalence toward all of my problems. Ah, to be a cat. You can sleep away the vast majority of your life and everyone thinks it's perfectly normal.

  Sleep away your life.

  This thought reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite say what. It was a whisper in the dark recesses of my mind. There was definitely something there. It was something that had happened, or something someone had said. Sleep. What does it mean to sleep? To be unconscious. To not be awake. Awake. That word. What if you were never awake? Well, then you'd be dead. Or …

  I snapped upright in the chair.

  I had it now. It was about Victoria Gath, about something she'd said to me on the phone: "Usually, if they survive at all, they end up in a coma from which they never wake." She'd said it as a threat of what happened when she erased too much of a person's memory. She'd said the mind usually couldn't cope with such a loss. The word usually meant Gath had done it more than once.

  If I could find a list of people in long-term comas, I might be able to find some connection from them to Gath.

  Where would I get such a list? The Social Security Department would probably be the best place to start, since just about anyone in a coma for more than few months would have been classified as having a permanent disability. If anyone could get me that information, it would most likely be them. It would be no small feat to get access to those records, though. Even if I did, who was to say that Gath was even from Portland? She could be from Cleveland, New Orleans, or Portland, Maine for all I knew.

  Something told me she was from here, though. She seemed established, as if she had been building up a presence. Olivia had been drawn here, too. Why? For the Blind Man's Gold? Maybe they both wanted the gold, maybe because it could help Olivia, maybe because it was a threat to Gath.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  In every difficult case, there was a point when all the various pieces seemed to be swirling around me in a tornado, a point when the truth seemed to be right in front of me but nothing made sense. I was there now. All I could do was take the next step, and the next one after that, and keep going until I had at least some idea what everything meant.

  Who could help me get the information from the Social Security files?

  The Department of Souls was the most obvious choice. An email would put me in touch with Winston Hopner, the Associate Director who'd needed my help during the Goodbye Killer case. He owed me one. If I told him I needed the information, no questions asked, he might just give it to me. I doubted it, though. It was much likelier that I'd be taking a risk that things would veer off in a new direction, one I might not like. The Department might already know what was going on, but if they didn't, I really didn't want them involved.

  If I was still with the bureau, it would be easier, but I didn't have that card to play. What I did have was the remarkably talented Alesha Stintson. This would be stretching her patience further than I ever had, though.

  Deciding all I could do was try, I dialed her number. It went to voice mail. I started to leave a message, but she called back when I was in the middle of it, so I clicked over.

  "Just on the other line with Tim," she explained. "Nothing yet. No leads on anything."

  "Too bad. Hey, I need to ask you a favor."

  "Mmm hmm. I think I've heard this song before."

  "It's going to sound strange. I need to find everyone who's in a coma in the Portland metro area—and beyond, too, I guess, if you can get it. You know, Salem, Eugene, whatever you can get in Oregon. Long-term comas—say, more than six months. I was thinking Social Security long-term disability lists would be the place to start."

  She was silent a while. I heard gruff voices in the background, a reminder of the tough, masculine world she constantly had to navigate.

  "Okayyy," she said, her tone clearly implying it wasn't. "Can I ask why?"

  "That's part of the favor," I said, "not asking why."

  "Right. Shocker."

  "I'd tell you if I could."

  "At some point, Myron, that excuse doesn't work anymore."

  "Will you help me or not?"

  "Of course I'll help you. I'll always help you. That's what partners do, you know. They're there for each other."

  "I appreciate it."

  "They also don't keep each other in the dark all the time."

  "Alesha—"

  "No, no, no, it's fine. Really. I'll get right on this, and I'll email you a list when I've got something together. You want anything else? A cup of coffee?"

  "Look—" I began, but she'd already clicked off.

  I stared at my phone for a while, contemplating. I knew I couldn't keep doing this. At some point, she'd finally get fed up, and that would be it for our friendship. I'd already told Jak about me. What was I so afraid of with Alesha? If anything, Alesha, with all her metaphysical talk about crystals, reincarnation, and finding your chi, was the likelier of the two to accept my explanation with the least amount of convincing. But that was the inner Alesha, the one few people saw; there was also the tough-as-nails detective who would rather body-slam someone than have a conversation about her feelings.

  Even after all these years, I still didn't know quite what to make of her. I just knew I liked her. I liked her a lot, too much to risk throwing a hand grenade into our relationship, at least right now.

  Since I didn't want to wait around until Alesha called, I thought I'd do a little research on my own. Using my home laptop, I brought up the Multnomah County Library site, logged in with my library card number and password, then navigated to the page that gave me access to the Oregonian's full-text newspaper articles from 1861 onward. I may have been a dirt-poor private investigator, but I would have gladly paid for access to the newspaper out of my own pocket if my tax dollars hadn't already do
ne so—I'd used the site many times over the years.

  Settling in on my recliner, I searched for any news stories of anyone in the past twenty years who had fallen into a long-term coma. I found about a dozen, mostly older people, mostly people in very poor health. One was a sixty-six-year-old long-term diabetic whose health had been deteriorating. He'd been written up because he'd been a beloved teacher at Franklin Hill School. Another was a young women of thirty-two who'd suffered an unlucky run-in with a drunk driver. Marathon runner, mother of two young children, wife of a distraught husband who'd just come back from serving in Afghanistan. They were all like that, sad stories and unlikely victims of Victoria Gath.

  Of course, it did raise the question: how often would such victims actually end up in the newspaper? Unless there was something really newsworthy about it, such an event might go unnoticed by the larger world. Then there was the possibility that Victoria Gath might not even be from Oregon. I needed to cast a wider net.

  I could also use some help, and I knew just the person. When she answered my call, I heard the sound of splashing water in the background, followed by children's laughter.

  "Don't tell me you went swimming nude after all," I said.

  "Yep, totally naked," Jak said. "You should see the looks on people's faces."

  "Oh man."

  "You just wish you were here."

  "I just—I can't believe—"

  "Relax, Romeo. The outlet mall wasn't too far, so I bought myself a swimsuit. It's even pretty conservative, at least by my standards. One-piece and everything, not even a hint of boob. Now, did you call to make sure I'm not going to get arrested for indecent exposure, or just because you missed me?"

  "Definitely missed you. But I also need help."

  I told her my theory, about why I thought looking for people in comas might point us in the right direction.

  "You know, Vale," she said, "you may not be such an idiot after all."

  "Thank you, Jacqueline, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

  "Ooooh, Jacqueline, too. Now you're getting me all hot and bothered."