David Nickle - The 'Geisters

It had been a game when they’d sat up late at Sunderland’s lodge, practising the words—the whole family, chanting them together, in their own little circle, learning Sunderland’s nonsense words to banish the demons into the night.

Philip had sat in that circle—straight-facedly reciting the words with everyone else. When they were alone, he would make up other words—“fuckitutilly,” “scroticalific,” “snotufical”—and Ann would crack up.

Now, he couldn’t even articulate the words with the other men—but he looked deadly serious.

And why shouldn’t he?

He had learned what happened when he didn’t take the Insect seriously. When he’d brought Laurie into the Lake House… brought her to his bedroom, held her close as she squirmed out of her sweater and jeans… kissed him, and took hold of him, and with touch and caress and kiss, brought him from shivering arousal to shuddering climax.

He had learned, the price of betrayal, of abandonment.

Now, see how he comes crawling back. See how they all come crawling back.

The words from the ’geisters continued: a sweet, insensible cadence that lulled, like an old song, like a strong, sugared liqueur. Philip swayed, and sang them too—each time around, his pronunciation getting stronger, as though he, too, were training himself to absorb the words.

On the sofa, Ann stirred.

She stretched a leg out, and then another, and rolled over onto her side. She brought a hand to her forehead, brushing hair out of the way, and blinked. She swung her feet to the floor, and sat straight, and shakily, stood, looking around at the circle with measured disinterest.

The men didn’t stop chanting as Ann rocked back and forth to build a bit of momentum, finally got to her feet, and made her way through the circle to the kitchen, and the refrigerator.

She opened the first bottle of beer and finished it in two long swallows.

The men stopped chanting as she opened a second bottle. Ian Rickhardt looked to Charlie Sunderland, who nodded at him.

From the ceiling, she and the Insect watched, as though they were pinned there, as Charlie got up, crossed the room and whispered into her ear.

The corporeal body of Ann Voors nodded, and swallowed half of another beer. And leaning on Dr. Sunderland for support, she let herself be led from the room.

At the ceiling, Ann tried to reach for herself as the door opened—to follow. It was no good. Ann watched herself take a final swig of the beer, dangle it between two fingers, and disappear as the door swung shut.

Fuck. If she’d had arms, she would have wrapped them around herself, curled up, as the reality dawned on her. She would have shut her eyes tight. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Don’t fuckin’ swear, Sis. Not very ladylike.”

Ann opened her eyes.

She stood in the middle of the dark gymnasium, casting her gaze among the shadows, the beams of sickly light that came in through the high windows. It was cold in here. Snow blew outside. Climbing ropes dangled from the darkness of the ceiling like trailing man-o-war tentacles. At either end, basketball hoops were bent up.

“Where are you?” she called. Her voice sounded very small and weak to her, more frightened than she thought.

“I’m here,” said Philip. His voice had an odd echoing quality that took Ann a moment to place. There was a loud thumping sound then, a great drumbeat, and it hit her: he was talking over a PA system—tapping the microphone in the office for the school PA system.

“Is this the high school?”

“Fenlan & District Secondary School, that’s right. If… if you hadn’t gone to live with Nan, you’d have gone here too.”

“It’s awfully dark,” said Ann.

“There’s a light switch over by the door.”

“Can’t you turn it on?”

“What do you want, me to hold your fuckin’ hand?”

It wasn’t entirely dark. As Ann became accustomed to it, dim light entered from high windows. Barely enough to see by.

Ann crossed the floor of the gym to what looked like a big set of double doors at the very edge of the brightest pool of light. It wasn’t exactly clean; things crunched under her feet, like peanut shells. Ann looked down as she stepped into the light. They weren’t shells; they were bugs… beetles and flies, curled up dead. Ann brushed out a path for herself with the toe of a running shoe she hadn’t worn in fifteen years. She crossed back into shadow, and felt on the wall until she found a row of switches, and flipped them on.

“That’s better,” she said. Fluorescent lights flickered in rows on high over the court. At the opposite end, wooden bleachers had been pushed against the wall emerged from shadow, as did a deep green banner crossing the wall, announcing that this gymnasium was home to the Fenlan Panthers. Philip had been a Panther.

It didn’t look like any Panthers had been through in a few years, though.

The walls were also streaked with rusty water-marks, where pipes seemed to have burst. Wind whistled through a broken pane up high. It was cold in here—cold as January, cold as a visit from the Insect.

“What’ve you done, Philip?”

“Oh, chill.”

“Literally.” Ann tried the double doors behind her. They opened a little ways, then stopped. “Seriously. What’ve you done? I watched myself walk away—my body walk away. Where am I?”

“You’re at the high school,” he said. “You’ve been here before.”

“So we did speak—when I was on the road.”

“Yeah. It’s a place I’ve put together. It’s where… where she and I talk.”

“She?” Ann leaned on the doors, hard. They gave a little bit, then stopped again. It was as though something were wedged against it.

“Yeah. After the accident… the crash. Sometimes, I’d wake up here. Back at school. She’d be here.”

“Laurie,” said Ann, although she knew that wasn’t so, and a yowl of feedback over the PA system confirmed it.

“Not Laurie. No. She doesn’t have a name,” said Philip, “but I can tell you—she fucking hates being called the Insect.”

“Ah. So her. ” Ann stepped away from the doors. There was no getting out that way, she thought, as they pushed back shut.

“You’re going to have to stay here,” he said. “Good that you figured that out.”

Ann moved along the wall of the gym. There were doors farther along, the two change-room doors: HOME first, then VISITOR.

“I don’t really want to stay here, Philip,” said Ann. “I want to wake up.”

More feedback. “Wake up? Who said you’re asleep?”

Ann pushed open the HOME door. It opened easily, into a big square room with a bench all around, and coat hangers. There was another door through it, which Ann guessed probably led to showers.

“I want to go back to myself,” Ann said. Her voice was shaking. She wondered, was this how the Insect felt, when she locked it in a tower overlooking the loamy fields of Tricasta? “I want out of this place, Philip. You got to know, this isn’t right.”

“You know Sis, you might be right.” His voice was louder here because it came out of another speaker, set in the wall in this smaller space. “This might be wrong. But it’s all I’ve got. It’s all I had for years. Her.”

“So you’re just like them,” said Ann. “You’ve used the Insect… you’ve used her for your own sexual pleasure. You… you raped her too.”

“No,” he said. “I never raped her. But we’ve been together for so long. Since I can remember, she was there for me. And I let her down. That’s why…”

“That’s why the accident.”

“I should have known better. Laurie was great. But I should have left her to her life.”