Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

Elsie slowly shook her head. “It’s still my home, at least until I’m able to sell it. I belong there. They don’t come during the day anymore, not since they turned mean.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Garth said, rising from his chair.

Garth took a flashlight, but it wasn’t needed. As they walked along the beach, the shortest and easiest route to Elsie’s home an eighth of a mile away, the sun appeared in the east over the Westchester hills across the river, causing the waters of the Hudson to glow first reddish orange, then golden. By the time they reached the three-story Victorian mansion that was Elsie’s home, it was day. Garth opened the door, walked with Elsie through the large, lushly carpeted living room decorated with antique tapestries into the dining room, which was dominated by a heavy oak table in the center.

“Thank you, Garth,” Elsie said with a sigh, easing herself down into a chair. She removed his robe from around her shoulders, handed it back to him. “Thank you for everything.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“Garth, I don’t know what to do.”

“You know I’m not the one who can help you with your ghost problem, Elsie.”

“I don’t know who else to turn to.”

“Maybe a priest or minister.”

“They don’t believe me either,” she replied, bitterness creeping into her voice. “They only believe in their own ghosts.” She paused, shook her head, and once again tears misted her pale eyes. “Even though I know you don’t believe there are ghosts here, you’re the only person I can feel comfortable with anymore talking about it. I’m so afraid, Garth. What should I do?”

Garth pulled another chair out from the table, sat down, and leaned close to the old woman, looking intently into her eyes. “Stop believing.”

“...What?”

“The ghosts in this house live off you, because of you. Stop feeding them with your belief and they’ll go away.”

“But Garth, one did touch me! He put his hand around my throat!”

“He touched you because you believe he touched you, because you believe there are ghosts and that they can touch you.” Garth suppressed a sigh, brought his chair even closer, and took both the woman’s hands in his. “Elsie, we all have our haunts. Haunts are just bad memories. It’s when we don’t recognize them for what they are that we start to give them the power to hurt us in the present.”

Shadows moved in the woman’s pale eyes as she stared back at Garth. Finally she asked, “You have haunts too?”

“Of course. But I don’t ask them for stock tips, I don’t let them sit on my bed, and I don’t let them wrap their fingers around my throat.”

“Would you tell me one of your haunts?”

“I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. I was maybe nine or ten when one day my favorite uncle, Uncle Bill, for no reason that anybody could fathom, up and left our Methodist church and joined a fundamentalist sect that was into handling rattlesnakes as a way of demonstrating their faith. About two weeks after he joined, Uncle Bill was bit in the throat by a rattler, and he died. The people in the sect he’d joined said he’d died because he lacked sufficient faith.”

“Do you believe he died because he lacked sufficient faith?”

“Of course not. He died because he lacked sufficient brains. You have to be very careful what you believe, Elsie, because you become what you believe. Think of it as a question of mental hygiene. My Uncle Bill became a victim of his own belief system, exactly the same as you’ve become a victim of yours. Belief in gods or ghosts is like a brain fever; some have it, some don’t, and some only pretend to have it because it seems to them that everyone else around them has it, and they don’t want to be different. Just as with what happened to you, the fever is passed from generation to generation, and so all over the world we have tens of millions of people believing in ghosts they call God, Satan, Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus, devils, or angels. But some infections are more virulent and dangerous than others, and they’ll bite you just as surely as that rattlesnake bit my uncle. For whatever reason, your belief system has turned on you. So stop believing before it does you more harm. Or change it. If you insist on believing in the supernatural, why don’t you try something a little less toxic, like Unitarianism, or Reform Judaism, or maybe Zen Buddhism?”

Garth waited for some response from the woman, but there was none. Elsie’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly, as if she wanted to say something but could not find the words. It did not surprise Garth, who gave the woman’s hands a gentle squeeze, then leaned back in his chair and sighed. He knew from the confusion swimming in the woman’s eyes that she had no real comprehension of what he was talking about, and the stunned expression on her face was not unlike that on Harry Parker’s as he sat at this same table a week later during the interrupted séance and stared down at the bloodstain spreading across the front of his shirt. There were shocked gasps from the others around the table, and Linda Luft screamed. Garth eased Mary down on the carpet, then rose to his feet and strode quickly around the table toward his friend. He stopped when Harry Parker held up his hand. “It’s all right, Garth,” the burly man said in a tone that was at once distant and disbelieving, yet firm. “I’m okay.”

“For Christ’s sake, Harry, you’re bleeding.”

“Not anymore,” the magician and investigator of the paranormal replied in the same distant voice. He unbuttoned his shirt to show his bare chest. The thick, wiry hair there was matted with blood, but there was no longer any seepage. “I’m not even cut. The blood must have come right through my pores. Wow.”

“It’s a sign,” Madame Bellarossa intoned. Her head was tilted back now, her arms still extended out over the table. “They want to be taken seriously.”

John Luft cleared his throat loudly. When the others turned to the young man with the blond hair, dark eyes, and thin face, he took his arm from around his ashen-faced, trembling wife and tapped his watch. “Uh, I really think Linda and I should be toddling off. It’s getting pretty late.”

Suddenly Madame Bellarossa’s head came forward and her eyes opened wide. “That could be dangerous!” she snapped. “They haven’t finished telling us what they want us to know!”

For the first time since the séance had begun, Elsie spoke in words not offered as a prayer. She seemed composed now, determined. She looked directly at John and Linda Luft and spoke in a soft but firm tone. “I understand now that this thing will have to be done if there’s ever to be peace in this house. They’ve spoken to Mary this time, not to me, but I sense that they won’t harm us — as long as they can finish their story. But they want the two of you here. If we listen to all of it, I think they’ll go away at last. God knows I need to sell this house, but in good conscience I can’t allow anyone else to move in here until this is resolved. Especially not a nice young couple like you. I certainly understand your fear — but if you don’t stay and continue, then I can’t let you have the house.”

“That’s just fine with me,” the young woman said in a quavering voice as she turned toward the living room. “I’m out of here.”

John Luft grabbed his wife’s arm, pulled her back beside him. His bright eyes reflected the flickering candles as he looked around at the others, then finally settled his gaze on Elsie. “You’re saying that this could be like a kind of exorcism? If the ghosts tell Mary what’s on their minds, and Mary tells us, then they’ll leave the house when you leave?”