David Nickle - The 'Geisters

Dr. Sunderland froze the frame. “You thought you’d have to convince me,” he said with a sympathetic smile. “Because you were sure this… phenomenon… would only manifest at home, that it would have the good sense to keep hidden here.”

Her father gave a small laugh. “That’s about right. Sorry.”

“Why apologize?” said Dr. Sunderland. “Most of the time, when people worry about that, they’re right to. Because most of the time, they’re not dealing with anything real. Just their own overheated imaginations.”

“But this isn’t imagination.” Their mother folded her bandaged hands in her lap and looked up. Her eyes were wide, and frightened. Later, she would identify this moment as the point where the solidity of what was happening to the family sunk in. Broken glass was nothing, she’d say, compared to the proof of videotape.

“No,” said Dr. Sunderland. “This is real. And as you’ve already learned—” he indicated the bandages with the remote control “—it can be extremely dangerous.”

“So what’s next?”

Dr. Sunderland didn’t speak. He reached over to a book case behind his desk, and pulled out a videotape. It was homemade, but it had one word on its label.

The Lodge.

He swapped tapes in the VCR, and hit Play on the remote.

“This isn’t like the tape said,” said Ann.

“Well it’s winter,” said Philip.

“And how.”

They were standing at the top of a long dock, on a lake much smaller than the Lake House’s. And it was winter all right. They were far north and the lake was solid. Ice fishing huts huddled on it in a lonely village.

There was more snow than Ann had seen before. It smothered the branches of the trees. Deep paths the width of a shovel snaked through it like trenches. The cloud was thick and the hour late, and what sun was left made the snow the colour of a wound.

“I know what you mean,” said Philip, and took Ann’s mittened hand in his own, gave it a squeeze. “It’s not just winter. The video totally oversold this place.”

“I don’t like my room. There’s nothing in it.”

“I think that’s the idea. So you don’t… you know, start throwing shit around.”

“Don’t swear .” She looked at Philip with wide eyes, and waggled her other mitten at him, then said in a spooky sing-song: “The Insect doesn’t like swearing!”

Philip smiled and made a little puff of breath out of his nose and looked at her sidelong as she cracked up at her own joke. But she knew he didn’t think it was funny because he let go of her hand.

“Look,” he said, pointing back up the hill to the Lodge. “The innkeeper’s waving at us to come up.”

Ann waved back. “We better go,” she said.

Standing on the long porch in his heavy blue parka, lobster-handed mittens, Dr. Sunderland—the innkeepah as Philip had taken to calling him—grinned and waved again, and headed back inside.

“It’s going to be okay,” said Philip. “It’s two weeks. We’ll all be here. And then—”

Then the Insect will be gone . Ann nodded. That was what Dr. Sunderland had said back at his clinic.

“Ann will undergo a form of behavioural conditioning. Nothing unpleasant. It will be really easy; most of it, she won’t even be aware of—because it’s not conditioning for her. It’s for the Insect. You can all stay and watch over her—in fact, that’s an important part of the process. It will last about two weeks.”

“And then?” asked her mother and Dr. Sunderland leaned back in his chair, folded his hands on his belly, as though he had already finished the job.

“Then the Insect will be gone.”

Eva’s phone went to voicemail for four days after the fire in Tobago. When Ann made the connection, it was not with her, but with a man who said he was Eva’s nephew—not Ann’s old childhood friend Ryan, which was a relief. Another one. David. He didn’t let her speak with Eva at first. Ann begged, and he still wouldn’t put her on, but explained to her what had happened.

“Eva’s suffered a small stroke,” he said. “She’s all right—recovering nicely here at home. But she’s resting.”

“Can she talk?”

“She can talk. But it’s a bit of work.” It was clear that David was not relishing this conversation.

“Could you tell her it’s Ann?”

“Ann? Sure. I’ll tell her you called. But don’t expect a call back soon. Do you have any other message for her?”

“Sure.” Ann’s mind raced—she needed to tell Eva what had happened—the fire, the manifestations… the thing she’d seen happening to Ian Rickhardt. She couldn’t pass that on in a message though. Certainly not through David.

“Tell her to pray for me,” she said, and feeling immediately awful, added: “Tell her I’m praying for her.”

“Sure thing,” said David, and disconnected. Ann switched off her phone and turned back to the bar, where the server had thoughtfully deposited another Caribe for her. She took a deep pull from it, and doing so calculated just how much of a self-centred bitch David must think she was.

“That’s how drowning people must seem when they’re on their own.” she said to no one as she set the half-empty bottle down.

So all on her own, on the beach and in the bar and in their suite, Ann went to work, using all the things that Eva had taught her.

She built a great fortress in her mind; felled forests for thick timbers, quarried a whole range of mountains for the hard stone walls, mined them for the rare ores that made the unbendable steel bars. She made guards this time, from a tribe of hard and watchful men cursed with sleeplessness by the waterfall beneath which they lived. The fortress climbed into the clouds, where winged lynxes circled its highest chambers, watchful lest anyone attempt escape.

Far below, there was a moat filled with smoke and mud and bones. Ann figured she had the place locked down. It would be an escape-proof prison for the Insect… if she could ever get the Insect inside it.

If she could find the Insect at all.

Ann made them miss their flight back, by a simple expedient—she refused to wake up. She was in fact so determined about it that Michael later said he had considered calling the hospital.

She would not explain herself, so Michael surmised a theory, that she had been more affected by the fire than anyone had thought, and was having a post-traumatic stress episode. Ann did not disagree, at least not out loud. It wasn’t so far from the truth. She wasn’t asleep when he’d shaken her. What she was, was uncertain.

No, she was worse than uncertain.

She was terrified.

“It’s all right,” Michael said as she curled up tight on the bed. “We’ll miss the flight. You don’t want to fly in this state.”

She didn’t want to fly in this state; not with the Insect at large somewhere around her, somewhere inside her. What if what happened at the beach house happened in the air?

She couldn’t fly.

They couldn’t stay at the resort any longer either. The place was booked solid, and another couple were checking in later in the day. So Michael made a call to Steve on Trinidad and explained their situation. Steve, he said, was very understanding, and had offered a very generous favour. He had a house in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad, one that he rarely used. If they would like to, they could stay there until Ann felt better. Until Ann felt safe.

They stayed a week.

Ann didn’t call Eva again before they left—it was clear from her one conversation with David that more calls weren’t welcome. But she was not entirely neglectful. She did send her friend emails to her Hotmail address. Two of them.