Charles De Lint - The Ivory and the Horn

Is this my future I see sitting in front of me? I wonder. Because I know all about that feeling of having wasted my life. But then I shake my head. There's a difference. I'm doing something about my problems.

Still, I think maybe I know what's keeping Ellie here now. Not vengeance, not any need. Just regret.

"You really are dead, aren't you?" I say.

"Land sakes, girl. Whatever gave you that idea?"

I'm not going to let her put me off this time.

"I know you're a ghost," I tell her. "No different from the voices in the well."

"You've heard voices in the well?" she asks.

"First the voices," I say, "and then the ghosts. I dream about them. I started wondering what they looked like— the people those voices once belonged to, and now I can't get them out of my head. They've been getting stronger and stronger until now— well, here you are."

It makes sense, I think as I'm talking. The closer I am to the well, the stronger an influence the ghosts would have on me— so strong now that I'm seeing them when I'm awake. I look over at Ellie, but she's staring off into nowhere, as though she never even heard what I was saying.

"I never considered ghosts," she says suddenly. "I used to dream about spacemen coming to take me away."

This is so weird, it surprises a "You're kidding" out of me.

Ellie shakes her head. "No. I'd be vacuuming a room, or cleaning the bathroom, and suddenly I'd just get this urge to lay down. I'd stare up at the ceiling and then 'I'd dream about these silver saucers floating down from the hills, flying really low, almost touching the tops of the trees. They'd land out on the lawn by the wishing well here and these shapes would step out. I never quite knew what exactly they looked like; I just knew I'd be safe with them. I'd never have to worry about making ends meet again."

I wait a few moments, but she doesn't go on.

"Are there ghosts in the well?" I ask.

She looks at me and smiles. "Are there spacemen in the hills?"

I refuse to let her throw me off track again.

"Are you a ghost?" I ask.

Now she laughs. "Are we back to that again?"

"If you're not a ghost, then what are you doing here?"

"I live here," she says. "Just because the bank took it away from me, it didn't mean I had to go. I've got a place fixed up above the office— nothing fancy, but then I'm not a fancy person. I sleep during the day and do my walking around at night when it's quiet— except for when the kids come by for one of their hoolies. I get my water from the stream and I walk along the railway tracks out back in the woods, following them down to the general store when I run short of supplies."

I hadn't gone further into the office than the foyer, with its sagging floorboards and the front desk all falling in on itself. That part of the motel looks so decrepit I thought the building might fall in on me if I went inside. So I suppose it's possible...

"What do you do in the winter?" I ask.

"Same as I always did— I go south."

She's so matter-of-fact about it all that I start to feel crazy, even though I know she's the one who's not all there. If she's not a ghost, then she's got to be crazy to be living here the way she does.

"And you ye been doing this for twenty years?" I ask.

"Has it been that long?"

"What do you live on?"

"That's not a very polite question," she says.

I suppose it isn't. She must feel as though I'm interrogating her.

I'm sorry, I say. "I'm just... curious."

She nods. "Well, I make do."

I guess it's true. She seems pretty robust for someone her age. I decide to forget about her being a ghost for the moment and get back to the other thing that's been bothering me.

"I know there's something strange about this well," I say. "You told me last night that it's cursed..."

"It is."

"How?"

"It grants you your wish— can you think of anything more harmful?"

I shake my head. "I don't get it. That sounds perfect."

"Does it? How sure can you be that what you want is really the right thing for you? How do you know you haven't got your ideas all ass-backwards and the one thing you think you can't live without turns out to be the one thing that you can't live with?"

"But if it's a good wish..."

"Nothing's worth a damn thing unless you earn it."

"What if you wished for world peace?" I ask. "For an end to poverty? For no one ever to go hungry again? For the environment to be safe once more?"

"It only grants personal wishes," she says.

"Anybody's?"

"No. Only those of people who want— who need— a wish badly enough."

"I still don't see how that's a bad thing."

Ellie stands up. "You will if you make a wish."

She walks by me then and pushes her way through the roses. I hear the rasp of cloth against twig as she moves through the bushes, the thorns pulling at her jeans and her shirt.

"Ellie!" I call after her, but she doesn't stop.

I grab my candle, but the wind blows it out. By the time I get my flashlight out and make it out onto the lawn, there's no one there. Just me and the crickets.

Maybe she isn't a ghost, I find myself thinking. Maybe she was just sitting here all along and I never noticed her until she spoke to me. That makes a lot more sense, except it doesn't feel quite right. Do ghosts even know that they're ghosts? I wonder.

I think about the way she comes and goes. Did she have enough time to get out of sight before I got through the bushes? Who else but a ghost would hang around an abandoned motel, year after year for twenty years?

I get dizzy worrying at it. I don't know what to think anymore. All it does is make my head hurt.

I decide to follow the railway tracks through the woods to the general store where Ellie says she buys her groceries. I'll use the pay phone in the parking lot to call Jim. And maybe, if they're still open, I'll ask them what they know about Ellie Carter and her motel.

20

Jim picked up the phone when it rang, hoping it was Brenda calling. He hadn't heard from her for a few days now, and Jilly's odd call this afternoon had left him puzzled and just a little worried. But it was Scotty on the other end of the line.

"I thought you had a date tonight," Jim said.

He carried the phone over to the sofa. Sitting down, he put his feet up on the coffee table and rested the phone on his chest.

"I did," Scotty told him, "but she stood me up."

"That's low."

He could almost see Scotty's shrug.

"I can't say's I really blame her," Scotty said, "if you really want to know the truth. I'm coming on so strong these days, I think I'd stand myself up if I was given the chance."

"What are you talking about?"

"Ah, you know. All I do is think with my cock. I should be like you— take it slow, take it easy. Be friends with a woman first instead of trying to jump her bones the minute we're alone. But I can't seem to help myself. First chance I get and I'm all over her."

"Yeah, well don't hold me up as some paradigm of virtue," Jim said. "And besides, I get the feeling I'm getting a version of the old runaround myself."

He told Jim about the call he'd gotten from Jilly this afternoon and how it had sounded as though she hadn't known Brenda was away on business.

"When you put that together with how Brenda won't even leave me the number of where she's staying, it's... I don't know. I just get a weird feeling about it."

"Sounds like a scam to me," Scotty said.

Jim switched the receiver from one ear to another. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Think about it. It's obvious that she's put her friends up to call you— just to get a rise out of you. To make you more interested."

"How much more interested can I seem? Whenever she calls, we're on the phone for at least an hour. I'd take her out in a minute, but I can't seem to get the chance. She was too sick before she left and now she's out of town."