Kat Richardson - Vanished

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought. I know I can’t always get the attention of a repeater.”

“And if that’s the only manifestation they have, it’s going to be hard to get any information out of them.”

“Nearly impossible, actually.”

“Really? I should write that down. ”

Ever since he’d been mauled by a legendary monster on Marsh Island, Ben had been on disability, staying home with their precocious son while Mara taught full-time. Bored, Ben had started working on a field guide to ghosts, mixing the research he’d been doing for years with the proofs-through-misadventure that I’d made Greywalking for the past two years.

I thought over his suggestion and decided it seemed plausible. I’d have to give it a try. Of course, I couldn’t remember the addresses of our home or Dad’s office. I thanked Ben for the idea and hung up, staring at the box of junk. I stiffened my spine and wondered if I could find the addresses in there and not have to go back to my mother right away. I’d have to show up again eventually; I wanted those shining boxes of photographs and I wanted to know what had actually happened to Christelle. Maybe my father had just gone crackers and only imagined the destruction of his receptionist. I wanted to believe it, but I doubted it.

I scrabbled through the shining pile for the appointment book, hoping someone had thought to put the office information in it. It had Dad’s name and office address on the cover; it was in Glendale, a middle-class suburb just northeast of Hollywood. Since he’d died there, the office seemed like the best place to start looking for him.

Before I went anywhere, I called Quinton just to hear his voice, though all I actually got was his pager and he didn’t call back, so I knew he was busy and I hoped it wasn’t because of anything too creepy. Creepy was becoming the order of the day. Then I had dinner downstairs, thinking rush hour would have dissipated by the time I was done. I stopped at the concierge desk on my way back up to my room to fetch the documents from Dad’s box and asked about the best route to Glendale. The concierge printed a map for me from the computer built discreetly into his Spanish revival desk and told me traffic might still be a bit thick on the freeway until after seven p.m., but it wasn’t very far away and I could take Los Feliz Boulevard instead and make about the same time if I was leaving right away.

Los Feliz was a strange street, starting out wide and smooth as it ran diagonally into the hills below Griffith Park. I glanced up at just the right time to see a few letters of the Hollywood sign with the copper dome of the observatory rising over the hilltop above. If not for the haze, the glimpse could have been mistaken for a postcard. As the street ran on, past the zoo’s massive parking lot and over the cement-bound Los Angeles River, it narrowed and grew more potholed, passing through an industrial slum thick with old warehouses and light manufacturing that left the roads and sidewalks dusky with grime.

After a sudden turn and a cluster of dark-shadowed thugs on a street corner smoking cigarettes and eyeing passing cars, the neighborhood changed. It got clean and slick, with mid-rise office clusters and condominiums lining the street in profusion.

I turned onto Brand, looking for the office address, shadowed by recent developments of white steel-and-glass towers. I passed a shining new shopping center with a massive open plaza and spools of neon lighting that cast color onto the street. The effect was like the change of The Wizard of Oz from black and white to Technicolor. I expected Munchkins and wondered if I’d really lived here.

Passing the Alex Theatre with its old movie palace marquee under the lighted, flowerlike spire that pointed to the sky, I felt the déjà vu like a blow. The farther north I went, the more familiar the scenery grew. I passed under the Ventura Freeway and into the smaller, older neighborhood that urban sprawl hadn’t overrun yet. My eyes watered, and not just from the yellow haze in the evening air. I knew I had walked along this street with my dad, hand in hand. Stopped in at that building for milkshakes (forbidden treats!) when it was a retro-fifties diner. Bought makeup and school supplies in the drugstore right there. The feelings that poured over me weren’t just nostalgic, though; an emotional darkness now tainted every memory and put a stone into my chest. I pulled the car into a parking space at the curb and got out to walk before I hit something from my inattention.

The sidewalks were so clean they sparkled in the late sun, even through layers of ghostly pedestrians and older shadows of orange groves and rolling, empty scrub. I noticed that many of the names on the businesses ended in — ian or — ianian; what had once been a solidly WASP neighborhood was now just as solidly Armenian, and cleaner than ever. The current residents clearly didn’t tolerate sloth or dirt. The shops were mostly closed—only a few restaurants were open at this time of evening—and no one, corporeal or ghostly, paid much attention to me as I went up the street, looking for the building that had once housed my father’s dental office.

It was a three-story brick-and-glass building that had been brand-new when we moved into the area. It looked a little less polished and swanky than its newer neighbors to the south, but it was still a very respectable address for small offices. Dad’s was on the second floor and the main door was locked for the day, but I walked around for a few minutes and found a smaller door at the side that was still open and sporting a sign that pointed up to BELLES SAUVAGES DANCE AND EXERCISE STUDIO.

More déjà vu. I’d never danced there, but as I went up the stairs, the familiar odors of sweat, old shoes, floor varnish, and rosin curdled the air. I could hear the thump of music and feet in rhythm on the wooden floor. As always, that combination of sound and smell roused mixed feelings in me: remembered anxiety and learned—or faked—happiness. I hadn’t hated to dance; I’d hated the emotional freight and unending demands that went with it.

I took the second-floor exit, which should have been locked but wasn’t, and went down the hallway looking for number 204. The suites had been cut up since my father’s time and I discovered that his office was now split between a chiropractor and an accountant. I wasn’t sure which of the new tenants occupied the room where he’d died, but I didn’t think I needed to be right in the room, just near enough. I looked up and down the corridor for cameras, though I didn’t think anyone observing would believe what they might see, and let go of normal.

The Grey in full flush rushed upon me, making the normal world into a dim watercolor beneath the realm of silver mist and lines of hot energy that throbbed as if alive. The layers of time were broken chunks, tumbled at all angles like striated rocks in a floodplain. The displacement of the disjointed temporaclines was much worse than I’d ever seen it in Seattle, and I wondered if it was related to Los Angeles’s famous earthquakes or the near-constant state of construction and reconstruction that went on in the area. I hoped I could do this without recourse to climbing and sliding through those ragged bits of time.

I glanced around and spotted the Grey outline of my father’s office door, still lingering where it had stood for so long. It would be a pain to get through it; it might have been a door once, but it was a wall now. It was much harder for me to move something that had no current existence in the normal world than to utilize the momentary memories of passages opened by ghosts. I could try to find the right stretch of time and get through the door there, but that didn’t look like the safest option. Relegating the temporaclines to last resort, I paced outside the phantom door and waited for a ghost.