Karl Wagner - Why Not You and I?

“What’s that mean?” the writer asked, annoyed.

“She doesn’t come on as an outright crock.”

Stryker’s mustache twitched. “Think I’ll write that down.”

He did.

“Useful for rounds,” Russ explained in apology.

“What about the occult angle? So far I’m betting on screwy electrical wiring and vibrations from passing trucks or something.”

Stryker started to reply, but then Gayle Corrington rustled back, three glasses and a wedge of cheese on a tray.

“I’ve been told most of this can be explained by wiring problems or vibrations,” she was saying. “Like when the house settles on its foundation.”

Russ accepted his drink with aplomb — wondering if she had overheard.

“But I asked the real estate man about that,” she went on, “and he told me the house rests on bedrock. You’ve seen the limestone outcroppings in the yard. They even had to use dynamite putting down the foundation footings.”

“Is there a cellar?”

“No. Not even a crawl space. But I have storage in the carport and in the spare rooms. There’s a gardening shed out back, you’ll notice — by the crepe myrtle. Libby liked to garden. All these roses were her doing. I pay a man from the nursery to keep them up for me. Seems like Libby would be sad if I just let them go to pot.”

“Do you feel like Libby is still here?” Russ asked casually.

She hadn’t missed the implication, and Russ wished again Curtiss hadn’t introduced him as a psychiatrist. “Well, yes,” she answered cautiously. “I hope that doesn’t sound neurotic.”

“Has anything happened that you feel can’t be explained — well, by the usual explanations?” Curtiss asked, steering the interview toward safer waters.

“Poltergeist phenomena, you mean? Well, I’ve only touched on that. One night the phone cord started swinging back and forth. All by itself— nothing near it. I was sitting out here reading when I saw that happen. Then my maid was here one afternoon when all the paper cups dropped out of the dispenser and started rolling up and down the kitchen counter. Another night that brass table lamp there started rocking back and forth on its base — just like someone had struck it. Of course, I was the only one here. Christ, I felt like yelling, ‘Libby! Cut it out!”’

“Is there much truck traffic on the highway out front?” Stryker asked. “Stone transmits vibrations a long way, and if the house rests on bedrock…”

“No truck traffic to speak of — not since the Interstates were completed through Knoxville. Maybe a pickup or that sort of thing drives by. I’ve thought of that angle, too.

“But, darn it — there’s too many other things.” Her face seemed defiant. She’s thought a lot about this, Russ surmised — and now that she’s decided to tell someone else about it, she doesn’t want to be taken for a credulous fool.

“Like my television.” She pointed to the color portable resting on one end of the long raised hearth. “If you’ve ever tried to lug one of these things around, you know how portable they really are. I keep it here because I can watch it either from that chair or when I’m out sunning on the patio. Twice though I’ve come back and found it’s somehow slid down the hearth a foot or so. I noticed because the picture was blocked by the edge of that end table when I tried to watch from my lounge chair on the patio. And I know the other furniture wasn’t out of place, because I line the set up with that cracked brick there — so I know I can see it from the patio, in case I’ve moved it around someplace else. Both times it was several inches past that brick.”

Russ examined the set, a recent portable model. One edge of its simulated walnut chassis was lined up one row of bricks down from where a crack caused by heat expansion crossed the hearth. He pushed at the set experimentally. It wouldn’t slide.

“Tell me truck vibrations were responsible for this” Gayle challenged.

“Your cleaning maid…”

“Had not been in either time. Nor had anyone else in the time between when I noticed it and when I’d last watched it from outside.”

“No one else that you knew of.”

“No one at all. I could have told if there’d been a break-in. Besides, a burglar would have stolen the darn thing.”

Russ smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. Stryker was scribbling energetically on his notepad.

Gayle pressed home her advantage. “I asked Cass about it once. She looked at me funny and said they used to keep their TV on the hearth, too — only over a foot or so, because the furniture was arranged differently.”

Stryker’s grey eyes seemed to glow beneath his shaggy eyebrows. Russ knew the signs— Curtiss was on the scent.

Trying to control his own interest, Russ asked: “Cass is still in Knoxville, then?”

Gayle appeared annoyed with herself. “Yes, that’s why I wanted to keep this confidential. She and another girl have set up together in an old farmhouse they’ve redone — out toward Norris.”

“There’s no need for me to mention names or details of personal life,” Curtiss reassured her. “But I take it you’ve said something to Cass about these happenings?”

“Well, yes. She had a few things stored out in the garden shed that she finally came over to pick up. Most of the furnishings were jointly owned — I bought them with the house — but there was some personal property, items I didn’t want.” She said the last with a nervous grimace.

“So I came flat out and said to her: ‘Cass, did you ever think this house was haunted?’ and she looked at me and said quite seriously: ‘Libby?’”

“She didn’t seem incredulous?”

“No. Just like that, She said: ‘Libby?’ Didn’t sound surprised — a little shaken maybe. I told her about some of the things here, and she just shrugged. I didn’t need her to think I was out of my mind, so I left off. But that’s when I started to think about Libby’s spirit lingering on here.”

“She seemed to take it rather matter-of-factly.” Russ suggested. “I think she and Libby liked to dabble in the occult. There were a few books of that sort that Cass picked up — a Ouija board, tarot deck, black candles, a few other things like that. And I believe there was something said about Libby’s dying on April the 30th — that’s Walpurgis Night, I learned from my reading.”

Witches’ Sabbat, Russ reflected. So he was going to find his gothic trappings after all.

It must have showed on his face. “Nothing sinister about her death,” Gayle told him quickly. “Sordid maybe, but thoroughly prosaic. She was dead by the time they got her to the emergency room, and a check of her bloodstream showed toxic levels of alcohol and barbs. Took a little prying to get the facts on that. Family likes the version where she died of a heart attack or something while the doctors worked over her.

“But let me freshen those ice cubes for you. This show-and-tell session is murder on the throat.”

Stryker hopped out of his chair. “Here, we’ll carry our own glasses.”

Smiling, she led them into the kitchen. Russ lagged behind to work at the cheese. He hadn’t taken time for lunch, and he’d better put something in his stomach besides bourbon.

“There’s another thing,” Gayle was saying when he joined them. “The antique clocks.”

Russ followed her gesture. The ornate dial of a pendulum wall clock stared back at him from the dining room wall. He remembered the huge walnut grandfather’s clock striking solemnly in the corner of the living room.

“Came back one night and found both cabinets wide open. And you have to turn a key to open the cabinets.”

“Like this?” Stryker demonstrated on the wall clock.