David Nickle - The 'Geisters

“I don’t think so. He’s sleeping.”

“Okay,” said Paolo. “I don’t want to make trouble on anyone’s honeymoon.”

Ann laughed, and it must have been a bit too hard because Paolo frowned. She waved a hand and shook her head, and asked him, “On that subject… how was the wedding?”

“Oh, it was very beautiful. We all took off our shoes. Danced in the sea as the setting sun turned the bride and groom to gold.” He took a deep pull from the Corona. “Now they are gone, to a house down the coast. And the rest of us will be back to Caracas in a day or so.”

“That sounds lovely.”

Paolo smiled and squinted out at the sea.

“Weddings are often lovely,” he said. “Now tell me, Ann. What are you doing here? Sitting by yourself on the beach. Not even a drink beside you. Not an iPad or an iPod or even a book. No husband. And you are here! Weren’t you staying at a beach house?”

“Burned to the ground,” she said, and he laughed.

“The heat of passion,” he said, and when she didn’t laugh, he apologized.

“It’s all right,” she said. “No offence taken.”

Paolo finished his beer. “You probably think I’m hitting on you,” he said. “And probably, I am a bit. I shouldn’t be. You’re on your honeymoon after all. And your husband is much handsomer than I. Even all burned up.”

He stood up, and made a small bow of his head.

“Excuse me, please, Ann. I hope your husband’s sunburn recovers as well as your lovely knee.”

Ann smiled and thanked him, and Paulo made his retreat. He was out of sight, when she noticed that he’d left the untouched bottle of Corona on the table, within easy arm’s reach.

She contemplated it a moment. From the sweat on the bottle, the beer was still cold; bubbles of carbonation traced up its side and gathered around the triangle of lime stuffed in its neck.

Ann shut her eyes. Another bottle of beer was not what she needed right now. Because there was work to do. She took a deep breath, and imagined a spectrum of colour, in sequence, and dreamed a verdant land at the foot of a range of mountains. It was a place near, but out of sight of the tower where she had imprisoned the Insect long ago. But it was a good site; the mountains would yield stone to build a new tower; the land would yield crops to feed the men and women who would raise the walls that would soon make a home for the Insect once more.

The last time she’d done this, it had been hard work. But she thought that this time it might go quicker; after all, when the closet had lit bright at the Lake House that winter, the first time, Eva had not told her about the safe place. No one had known what to do.

They had all done the best they could, with what tools presented themselves.

The offices that Charlie Sunderland used in those days were situated in a strip mall at the south end of Etobicoke, smack between a medical centre and a pharmacy. But he made it clear to all of his clients who made the observation, that the proximity was entirely coincidental.

“I’m not going to write you a prescription. I promise you that. Because you know by now, drugs aren’t going to resolve anything. And as for the clinic? If you needed a physician, you wouldn’t be here.”

Ann’s mother lifted her bandaged right hand. Two days ago, those bandages had been applied in the emergency room at Perth County General, on top of deep, stitched-up cuts from which the doctors there had extracted three thin shards of glass. They had pulled six more from her shoulders and chest, but the bandages from those wounds were hidden under a thick sweater.

“I wouldn’t say we don’t need a physician,” she said.

Sunderland smiled a little sheepishly and looked down at his own hands. He was a tall man with very dark hair and a prominent chin, a deep tan for this time of year. He didn’t look like a physician to Ann; he wore an open-necked sweater and pale blue jeans, and he smiled too much.

But maybe that was fine. Maybe he was right.

A physician wouldn’t be able to do much for the problem at the Lake House.

“What happened to your hand?” he asked.

Ann’s mother looked down now, and Ann’s father put his hand on her shoulder, and she looked up at him, and said: “The ghost did it.” And then she looked back at her hand, and her lips pressed tight together.

The ghost did it.

This was a hard thing for her to say. Of the four of them, she had held onto her skepticism the longest, edging out Philip by about a week. Until then, Ann’s mother had answered Ann’s complaints with a hug, and a trip to the closet or the basement or the bathroom with a flashlight to say: There’s nothing here .

Not now there’s not. But before—

Not ever, Ann. Imagination’s a powerful thing. But it’s not real. It’s all in our heads.

It’s all in the closet.

You just think so. But really, baby—it’s you.

Saying that was like a challenge—and after the thing had happened in Ann’s brother’s room, the thing he wouldn’t talk about, not yet, Philip tried to tell their mother so. But she wouldn’t listen. She just kept on opening doors and moving curtains aside, shining her flashlight into the dark corners of the bright new house—until she opened the hall closet, and looked into the light.

“Why do you say it was a ghost?” asked Sunderland. Outside, it had begun to snow, and as he spoke, the heating system kicked into higher gear.

“There was… a stack of light bulbs. They weren’t connected to anything—just in the closet. They were… on.”

“On?” Sunderland’s smile faltered.

She looked down at her bandaged hand, and said again: “They weren’t connected to anything. They weren’t just on—they seemed to be pulsing, showing me a pattern. When I got close enough…”

She made an exploding sound with the roof of her mouth—the kind of sound some of the boys that Ann knew would make if they were pretending to blow things up. Dr. Sunderland nodded. He had a computer on his desk, and he glanced at the screen, tapped some keys, and pushed a disk in the three-and-a-half-inch drive.

“We both saw it,” said Ann’s father.

“But you had the presence of mind to get a fire extinguisher,” she said to him.

“You were bleeding.”

“You were right there,” she said. “Thank God.”

Sunderland left them to it, and turned his attention to the computer. He typed something. Ann met Philip’s eye, who was sitting in an old plastic-covered chair by the window. He pursed his lips and nodded with resignation, jammed his fists farther into the pockets of his fleece vest.

“Please excuse me,” said Sunderland. “I’m opening a file for you. That way, we’ll have everything in one place.”

“I thought you had a file already,” said their father.

On the desk beside Sunderland was an old school notebook that Ann had half-filled with what she could remember about the incidents. She had also made some drawings and they were in there too. Philip had used his own computer, and his homework was in a stack of printouts underneath the notebook. Underneath that, a yellow questionnaire that Ann’s mother and father had filled out, and signed.

Sunderland pressed a key and the drive started to write. It made a squonking noise, Ann thought.

Squonk squonk.

He turned his attention to the notes, picking them up and holding them, like a restaurant menu.

“These are great,” he said. “Ann, Philip—you’ve done a great job setting things down. I’m really impressed with you.”

Ann nodded you’re welcome . Philip regarded Dr. Sunderland, but didn’t say anything.