Norman Partridge - Wildest Dreams

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

“I believe in many things. For instance, I believe that the bottle house is a place of intense energies. Both positive and negative. Souls dwell here. I’ve spoken to them.”

“Really,” I said, doing my best to sound diplomatic. But my new age radar was going up, and going up fast. The last thing I needed was a lecture on energies, or dynamics or “Faith is the key, of course,” she said. “This place was a temple, you know. A place of intense faith. And faith is power. Intense power. Don’t you agree?”

“I’m getting the all-over heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.” I bit off the remark as fast as I could and held out my hand, one last stab at diplomacy. “Clay Saunders.”

She looked at my hand like I’d offered her a bug on a silver platter. “Forgive me if I don’t shake.”

“I’m sure you have your reasons. Energies, dynamics…like that.”

“My name is Janice Ravenwood,” she said, ignoring the jab. “I’m a medium. Perhaps you know my books.”

“No. But then, I stick mostly to nonfiction.”

“I think I’m full up with sarcasm now.”

“I’m not being sarcastic. It’s just the way I am. I only believe what I see.”

“You see what you choose to see.” She raised her hand. “It’s all a matter of energies.” Her fingers did a little dance, and the silver bracelets encircling her thin wrists provided the music. “If you had a sensitive nature-I’m speaking psychically, of course-you’d understand. You’d see beyond the physical, as I do.”

“The physical suits me just fine,” I said, nudging the backpack with my shoulder. “Let’s stick with it.”

“As you wish.”

“Run down the plan for me.”

“You bring your backpack. I bring you. We go to the Whistler estate. You meet a few people. From there on out, you’re on your own.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said. I looked around, searching for spectral company, but the little girl was nowhere in sight. “Seems like I’m always on my own.”

Janice Ravenwood stared at the backpack. She didn’t say a word, but her smile knifed into a smirk.

And then she slipped a pair of dark glasses over her gray eyes, and the sun broke through the clouds behind her, and light caught the bottles and a dozen colors were reflected in the polished lenses of her shades.

She turned and started down the trail before I could say another word.

I followed in silence.

The medium’s Ford Explorer was parked on the beach. “Give me your pack,” she said. “I’ll toss it in the back.”

“I’ll hold onto it, if that’s okay.”

Janice sighed disapprovingly. “Have it your way.”

“Sorry. I have issues. Trust is one of them.”

She laughed, but a wave broke behind her and I hardly heard the laugh at all.

In a moment, nothing remained of the wave but a crust of foam sizzling high on the beach.

“Let’s go,” Janice said.

I got in and buckled my seat belt. The beach was empty-still no sign of the little girl. I sat there with the pack at my feet. Janice Ravenwood got behind the wheel and slammed the door. She keyed the engine, slipped the Explorer into gear, and drove down the beach. Waves broke, but we were sealed in tight and I couldn’t hear them anymore. Just an annoying whisper of new age music coming from the stereo, and the sound of our breathing.

And a fly.

The insect must have followed us inside. It buzzed around the cab and lighted just where I knew it would, on the backpack.

I stared at it. Crawling, fat and black and shiny. Stopping. Rubbing its legs together. Janice Ravenwood saw it too.

She stopped the car and leaned toward me so that her hair brushed my shoulder. In close, I could smell her perfume.

Vanilla-sweet, with a hint of jasmine. It went just fine with the new age music.

Her fingers neared the backpack, but didn’t quite touch it.

Our eyes met. Just for a moment. Janice gave a little sigh, only vaguely theatrical.

Energies, I thought, considering the backpack’s contents. They must be thermonuclear.

It seemed like Janice knew that too. Though her fingers were close, she didn’t touch the backpack.

She was a very patient woman. She turned her hand palm upward, ever so slowly, so that her silver bracelets didn’t make the slightest sound.

We sat there. We sat there a good long time.

Until the fly crawled across Janice Ravenwood’s fingers, into her open palm.

Just that fast, her hand became a fist.

She rolled down her window and released the fly.

“Your good deed for the day?” I asked.

She said, “A wise soul understands the dynamics of mercy.”

For a few seconds we sat there, listening to the waves and the music, smelling the salt air. I guess she thought I needed a little downtime for processing.

Finally, Janice Ravenwood rolled up her window.

She glared at my backpack.

“We really should have put that thing in the back,” she said. “It stinks.”

The beach gave way to a dirt road that snaked through the redwood forest. We followed that road awhile, past the clearing where I’d parked my truck, and then the dirt road intersected with a two-lane highway that clung to the ragged coastline the same way the bottle house did, as if it might tumble into the sea at any moment.

Janice was right about the backpack. It did stink. I cracked my window and breathed the scent of redwood and fern and sea and earth.

Occasionally, another road led inland through the trees. Occasionally, I glimpsed a house set back among the redwoods, but more often than not there was only the forest itself, as impenetrable as the walls of a fortress.

Maybe it was the presence of Janice Ravenwood, girl medium, but I suddenly considered the possibility that anything could happen in a place like this.

Anything, in the dark shadows cast by trees that were centuries old. Anything, in the black places where no one could see.

Anything. It was quite a concept for a guy like me.

A guy like me didn’t do too well with anything. I did better with nothing. That was a concept I could sink my teeth into.

Nothing in the shadows but blackness.

Nothing in the light but what you could see.

Yeah. I could get a hold of that one. After all, I could see more than most. And what I saw didn’t stretch halfway to the boundless possibilities of anything.

Janice pulled off the highway. Tires shushed along a cobbled drive that wound toward the sea. We descended into the trees, and the shadows. As we left the light, Janice flicked on her headlights.

And we saw what there was to see.

A hundred yards of security fencing flashed by on the left. A spiked iron gate. A guard dog.

The dog had three heads, and three open mouths filled with gleaming fangs.

But the dog was bronze. It didn’t move.

“There’s a security box to the left of the gate,” Janice said. “The code is*666*. Circe said to trust you with it, but I can’t imagine why.”

“Thanks.”

“One other thing.”

“What’s that?”

She smiled. “Watch out for dogs.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, shooting a glance at the bronze statue. “But to tell the truth, I don’t have much of an imagination.”

“Hang around a while,” Janice said. “We’ll make a believer of you yet.”

I closed the door and watched the medium drive away. Then I punched in the security code and waited for the gate to open.

A fly buzzed by me.

Another one, or the same one.

It flew between spiked iron bars, and into the darkness. And beyond.

The security gate swung closed behind me.