A Stir of Echoes

Chapter Four

I SPOKE IT THE NEXT MORNING AT BREAKFAST.
I'd been unable to when we'd first gotten up. For a few minutes, of course, there was the inevitable rush of rejection toward what I'd seen. What I'd tried to do the night before, I tried again-to believe that it was only a febrile dream. One's mind can far more easily accept that sort of explanation. There's reason to it, something to grasp hold of; even when it isn't true.
I'd been unable to speak, too, because it seemed so completely inappropriate. It just didn't fit in with good mornings and kissing's and dressing and getting Sunday breakfast ready. But when Richard was finished eating and had gone out into the yard to play, and Anne and Phil and I were sitting at the kitchen table over coffee, I did say it.
"I saw a ghost last night."
It's fantastic how the most terrifying of statements can sound absurd. Phil's reaction was to grin. Even Anne smiled a little.
"You what?" she asked.
Her smile was the first to fade. It went as soon as she saw how serious I was.
"Honey, what do you mean?" she asked. "You dreamed it?" I swallowed. It's not what one could call the easiest thing in the world to talk about.
"I'd like to think that," I said, "but I... can't." I looked at them both. "I really saw one. I mean I was awake and I saw one."
"This is on the level?" Phil asked.
I didn't say anything. I just nodded.
"When?" Anne asked.
I put down my cup.
"After I got up last night," I said. "That is, this morning. It must have been about two."
"I didn't hear you get up," she said.
"You were asleep," I told her. Even as I spoke, a rush of crude hope filled me that it really had been a dream.
"This was-after you told me you couldn't sleep?" she asked. I could tell she didn't believe me; rather, didn't believe that I'd seen what I said I'd seen.
I said yes. I looked at both of them and shrugged with a helpless, palms-up gesture. "That's it," I said.
"I saw a ghost. I saw it."
"What did it look like?" Phil asked. He didn't even try to conceal his fascination. This was meat for him.
I drew in a ragged breath, then shrugged again as if I felt slightly ashamed of what I was saying. As a matter of fact I think I was; a little.
"It was a woman," I said. "She was-in her thirties, I'd say. Had dark hair and-was about, oh, five-foot-six. She was wearing an odd dress-black with a strange design on it. And there was a string of pearls around her neck."
There was a moment's suspension, then Anne said, "You saw this?"
"I saw it," I said. "I was in the living room, sitting on the green chair. I looked up and-she was standing there." I swallowed. "Looking at me."
"Honey..." I couldn't tell what I heard more of in her voice-sympathy or revulsion.
"You really saw it then," said Phil, "I mean with your eyes?"
"Phil, I told you," I said, "I saw it. It wasn't a dream. Let's toss that out right now. It happened. I got up, I went into the bathroom. I heard you sleeping. I checked Richard to see if he was all right, I looked out the back window at the yard. I sat down on the green chair-and I saw her. Like that. I was awake. It wasn't any dream."
I noticed how Anne was looking at me. It was a complex look, compounded of many things-curiosity, withdrawal, concern, love, fear; all of them in the one look.
"Before this happened," Phil said, "what was your mental state? I mean, why couldn't you sleep?" I looked at him curiously. "Why?" I asked.
"Because I think you were in a state of mental turmoil. Before you-let's say-saw what you did."
"Phil, I did see it," I said, a little impatiently now. "Come on. I just won't go along with this dream idea. Don't, for God's sake, humour me. I'm not a mental case."
"Of course you're not," Phil said quickly. "I didn't mean that for a second. What you saw was as real to you as I am, sitting here across from you."
I didn't know exactly what he was driving at but I said, "Okay, then. That's settled."
"You were in an aroused mental state, though," Phil said. It wasn't a question this time. I looked at him a moment, warily. I didn't want to be led to any pat conclusion about this. But of course I had to say yes to his statement.
"All right," he said, "and I imagine you even have a headache now. Do you?"
"A little one." I felt myself start. "How do you know all this?" I asked.
"Because it follows a pattern, brother man," he said. "You had a hallucination as a result of-"
"Phil..." I started.
"Listen to me."
"Phil, it wasn't a hallucination! You were right before, not now. What I saw was as real to me as you are, sitting there."
"Of course it was. Do you think that makes it actual?"
That stopped me cold. It's the sort of question that can topple anything; make even the most objective reality spin away into tenuous nothingness. I sat there staring at him blankly, feeling that light pulse of pain in my head.
"What do you mean?" I finally asked.
"Simply this," he said, "people have had hallucinations before-in broad daylight, much less dead of night. They've shaken hands with their hallucinations, talked with them."
"What you're trying to say," I said, unable to keep from smiling a little, "is that your old brother-in-law is ready for the hatch."
"Oh, hell, no," Phil said. "That woman exists. I don't know where-or when. But she's real. I mean she lives somewhere-or did live somewhere. She's someone you've known or seen-or maybe haven't seen; that isn't necessary. The point is, what you saw wasn't a ghost. Not in the usual sense of the word anyway-though plenty of so-called ghosts would fit into this category."
"Which is?" I asked.
"Telepathic images," Phil said. "If one person can see a card with a symbol on it, another person can see what looks like a human being. I mean see it. Your mind was keyed up high because of our little experiment last night. You saw this woman. Naturally, the first thing you thought of was ghost. That's the trouble with our attitude-not just yours, Tom.
"People won't believe in reasonable, verifiable phenomena-things like hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance. No, that they won't accept. But they see something and, in a second-whammo!-they're off the edge, flying high. Because they're not prepared, because they can only react with instinctive emotion. They won't accept reasonable things with their minds but the fantastic things they'll swallow whole when their emotions are brought into play. Because the emotions have no limits on belief. The emotions will swallow anything-and they do. As witness yourself. You're an intelligent man, Tom. But the only thing you thought of was ghost."
He paused and Anne and I stared at him. He'd sounded just like Alan Porter.
"The end," he said, grinning. "Pass the basket."
"So you don't think I saw it then," I said.
"You did see it," he answered, "but in your mind's eye. And, believe me, brother man, seeing it that way can be just as realistic to you as seeing it the ordinary way. Sometimes a lot more realistic." He grinned. "Hell, man," he said, "you were a medium last night." We talked about it some more. I didn't have much to offer, though-except objections. It's a little hard to let go of a thing like that. Maybe the human reaction is to cling to it a little. As Phil had indicated, it's a lot more "romantic" to see a ghost. Not so really thrilling to write it off as "mere" telepathy. It was Anne who broke it up.
"Well, we're doing a lot of talking about this," she said with her true woman's mind, "but we're missing the whole point. What I want to know is-who was this woman?"
Phil and I both had to laugh at the combination of curiosity and wifely suspicion in her voice.
"Who else?" Phil said. "One of his girl friends."
I shook my head.
"I wish I knew," I said, "but I can't remember ever seeing her." I shrugged. "Maybe it was-what's her name?-Helen Driscoll."
"Whoozat, whoozat?" Phil asked.
"She's the woman who used to live in this house," Anne told him. "She's Mrs. Sentas' sister; the woman who lives next door."
"Oh." Phil shrugged. "Could be."
"So I saw the ghost of Helen Driscoll," I said, straight-faced.
"Except for one little thing," Anne said.
"What?" Phil asked.
"She's not dead. She just went back east."
"Not west," said Phil.
The headache got worse. So much worse that I had to beg off going to the beach that afternoon. I made them go without me; told Anne not to worry, I'd take an aspirin and lie down until the headache went away.
They went a few minutes past two, piling into Phil's coupe with basket, blanket, beach bag, lotions, et al. I stood on the porch waving to Richard as the Mercury gunned up Tulley Street. Like so many young men Phil liked to be doing about fifty before he shifted into third.
I watched until the car turned left onto the boulevard; then I went back inside the house. As I started to close the door I saw Elizabeth out on her lawn again, white gloved, poking a trowel at the garden soil. She had on a wide-brimmed straw hat that she and Frank had bought in Tijuana. She didn't look over at me. I stood there a moment watching her slow, tired movements. The term "professional martyr" occurred to me and I put it off as unworthy.
I shut the sight of her away with the door. Anyway, I had my own troubles. For a moment I wondered where Frank was, deciding that he was either sleeping in his house or else stretched out on the beach, ogling girls. I shook that off too. It simply wasn't my business.
I turned and stood looking at the spot where the woman had been. A shudder plaited down my back. I tried to visualize her but it was hard in the daylight. I went over to the exact spot and stood on it, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on my ankles. It was almost impossible to believe that it hadn't been a dream. I went into the kitchen and put on some water for coffee. I leaned against the edge of the sink counter while I waited for it to boil. It was very quiet in the house. I stared down at the multicoloured spatter design on the linoleum until it swam before my eyes. In the cupboard I could hear the alarm clock ticking. It reminded me of Poe's story about the telltale heart. It sounded like a heart beating hollowly behind the shielding of the cabinet door. I closed my eyes and sighed. Why couldn't I believe Phil? Everything he'd said had been so sensible-on the surface.
There was my answer, I decided. What I felt wasn't on the surface. It was a subterranean trickle of awareness far beneath the level of consciousness. All right, it was emotion. Perhaps emotion was a better gauge for things like that.
"I said come in here!"
I started with a gasp, my head jerking up so fast it sent electric twinges along my neck muscles. For a moment, I actually expected to see the woman in the strange black dress standing before me again.
"Ron!" I heard then. "I mean now!"
I swallowed and blew out a long, trembling breath.
"All right," I heard. "All right. What about that?" I couldn't hear Ron's answer. You never could. Elsie might have been conducting a vituperative monologue across the alley.
"I told you at breakfast, damn it, I don't want your damn clothes laying all over my house!" Amusement broke into sound in my throat and I shook my head slowly. Dear God, I thought; her house. She didn't want his clothes lying all over her house. Ron was a boarder there, not the legal owner. A man's home is his castle, I thought, unless his wife makes him live in the dungeon. I wondered for a diverting moment what kind of match Ron and Elizabeth would make. One thing for sure, I decided, it would be the quietest damn house on the block.
"And what about the oven?" Elsie asked. "You said you were going to clean it this weekend. Well, have you?"
It made me cringe to hear talk like that. I felt my hands curling up into instinctive fists.
"One of these days," I muttered, half myself, half imagining myself as Ron, "one of these days. Pow!
Right to the moon!"
My punch at the air sent jagged lines of pain through my head. Laughter faded with a wince. I couldn't stay amused anyway. There was my own problem. It wasn't over. No matter what Phil said, it wasn't over.
I was drinking my coffee when I heard bare feet padding in the alley. I looked up and saw Elsie come up onto the back porch. Through the film of the door curtains, I saw that she was wearing a black bathing suit.
She knocked. "Anne?" she called.
I got up and opened the door.
"Oh, hi" she said, quickly rearranging her smile from one of polite neighbourliness to one of mathematical seduction. At least that was the effect I got.
"Good afternoon," I said.
The bathing suit clung to her plumpness as if she'd been dipped into it rather than pulled it on.
"Tom, could I borrow those raffia-covered glasses?" she asked. "I'm having some relatives over tonight."
"Yeah. Sure." I backed away a step, then turned for the cupboard. I heard her come in the kitchen and shut the door.
"Where's Anne?" she asked. The sound of the question was innocent. Yet, for some reason, I knew it wasn't.
"Gone to the beach," I told her.
"You mean you're all alone?" she said. "Yum yum." It was supposed to be a joke but, like Frank, Elsie was incapable of obscuring her motive with words.
"That's right," I said, pulling open the cabinet door. Suddenly I felt that tingling in my temples again. It made my hand twitch. I looked back over my shoulder, half expecting to see that woman. There was only Elsie.
"You should have told me," she minced. "I'd have put on something more-appropriate." I swallowed and took down the glasses. I had the very definite inclination to tell her to get out of the house. I didn't know why. There was just something about her that disturbed me. And it wasn't the obvious thing either.
"How long are they going to be gone?" Elsie asked.
I turned with the glasses.
"Why do you ask?" I made the mistake of smiling as I said it. To Elsie it probably looked as if I slipped at that moment. I didn't. I reeled as a wave of raw sensation hit me. I caught for balance at the sink and managed to catch myself without breaking a glass.
"No reason," she said, obviously taking my slip for a form of fluster. "Why? Should I have?" I stood there looking at her. She wasn't smiling. She stood there without moving, one hand on the out-jutting curve of a hip. I noticed the line of dewy sweat across her upper lip and how the sunlight behind her was shining through the golden aura of hair along the edges of her shoulders, arms and neck.
"Guess not." I walked over and handed her the glasses. I don't know whether it was an accident that our hands touched. I jerked mine away a little too quickly to hide it.
"What's the matter, Tom?" she asked with the tone of voice used by a woman who is convinced she's irresistible.
"Nothing," I said.
"You're blushing!"
I knew I wasn't; and realized that it was a trick she used to fluster the men she flirted with.
"Am I?" I said coldly. That desire was thrusting itself through me; the desire to push her violently from the house.
"Yes," she said. "I'm not embarrassing you in this suit, am I?"
"Not at all," I said. I felt physically ill standing so close to her. She seemed to radiate something that wrenched my insides. I turned to the door and opened it. "I have a little headache, that's all," I explained.
"I was just about to lie down."
"Oh-h." The sympathy was false too; I felt it. "You lie down then. Lying down can help a lot-of things." She finished as if it were an afterthought.
"Yes. I will."
"I'll bring the glasses back tonight," she said.
"No hurry," I answered. I wanted to scream into her face- Will you get the hell out of here!
Repressing it made me shiver.
"That was quite a party we had last night," said Elsie. Her voice seemed to come from a distance. I couldn't see her face distinctly.
"Yes," I managed to say, "very interesting."
"You really knew what you were doing, though, didn't you?" she told me. I nodded quickly, willing to say anything to get her out. "Yes. Of course."
"I knew it," she said, satisfied. I closed the door halfway. "Well." Elsie took a deep breath and the bathing suit swelled in front. "Thanks for the glasses," she said as if she were thanking me for something else.
I closed the door behind her and gasped dizzily.
"Get in that backyard!" Elsie screamed.
I jumped so sharply I banged my knee against the door. As I bent over, rubbing it, I heard Candy outside in the alley, whining.
When Elsie was gone I sank down at the table and closed my eyes. I felt as if I'd just climbed out of a well. I tried to tell myself it was only imagination but that didn't work. Mind ran second again, poor competition for my emotions. I felt dazed and weakened. On the surface that was senseless. Elsie was quite ordinary, not very attractive. She'd never bothered me before. I'd always felt slightly amused by her antics.
I wasn't amused now. I almost felt afraid of her.
And, no matter how I went about it, there was only one explanation. I'd seen behind her words, behind her actions. Somehow I'd been inside her mind.
It was an awful place.