Ghosts and Other Lovers (28 page)

I was shivering as I stepped through the last door (the gallant gentlemen let me go first), but whether I was already responding to the atmosphere or just anticipating, I have no idea. The room was big, like all the others in the house, but seemed to have been built on a different scale. It was long and narrow, more like a hallway than a room, and although it was perfectly spacious and airy (the ceiling was very high) and there was plenty of light, there was something oppressive about it. I'm not usually claustrophobic, but I started getting a prickly, trapped feeling, as if I'd wandered into a closet by mistake. There were no windows. I must spend half my life in windowless rooms without giving it a thought, but for some reason, it bothered me here. Although I knew perfectly well I hadn't gone down any steps or ramps, I started thinking that this room was underground. The real problem was that the air-conditioning and ventilation system weren't working properly. The temperature had dropped -- I was actually shivering with cold -- but the place was so airless that no matter how much I gulped I couldn't get the oxygen I needed.

I was just about two beats away from a full-blown panic attack when I turned to my friends. Hutch was standing and gazing at nothing with a small, proud smile on his lips, and Greg's bright eyes were darting everywhere. The freckled skin of his bare arms had sprouted goosebumps, but what parted his lips and made him breathe faster was anticipation, not anxiety.

Of course. We were
meant
to feel like this. As soon as I'd realized that it was Hutch's standing wave which was making my pulse race, I stopped being afraid. There was nothing to fear. I still felt uncomfortable, but now that I knew why, I could deal with it.

Greg and Hutch had moved further into the room, and I went after them. I thought I heard someone come through the door right behind me, and I turned, expecting to see Luke.

He wasn't there, but
someone
had just slipped past me -- from the corner of my eye I caught sight of a slim, gray figure speeding past.

"There, look!" cried Hutch, and I whirled around, saw him pointing at the wall, saw . . . I blinked, narrowed my eyes, struggled to make sense of it . . . a woman, in a long, gray, hooded coat, backed up against the wall. I had the sense that she was frightened, cornered, with nowhere to run . . . and then she was gone.

We all sighed simultaneously.

"So this is the haunted west wing?" Luke entered, and we all looked to see his reaction. He shivered. "Creepy. Really oppressive. That's not just your standing wave, Hutch; it's the lighting, the shape of the space . . ." He prowled up and down, checking it out. Finally he stopped and looked at us. His eyebrows raised. We were all staring at him so strangely, I guess. I went over and slipped my arm around his waist, feeling better for the contact immediately.

He gave me a squeeze and looked at Hutch. "Is it just this creepy feeling, or is anything else supposed to happen?"

"It might," said Hutch. "Visual disturbances. Tell us if you see anything weird, huh?"

Luke nodded. We all waited in silence for a bit. I looked at the door, because that was where I'd been looking when I'd first seen something, but Hutch and Greg were both staring at the wall where the figure had disappeared. I could feel Luke's tension in his arm around me, and he kept jerking his head around.

"See anything?" Hutch asked him after the third sudden movement.

"No -- yes -- maybe, I don't know. Just out of the corner of my eye, a sort of gray shape, blurred, like something moving. But when I turn my head, it's gone."

"Some
thing
or some
one
?"

Luke shrugged. "No idea. Just a blurry, moving shape. Could've been an animal, I guess."

For some reason his comment really spooked me -- I think it was the image it conjured of the gray woman metamorphosing into a beast.
She
had seemed to me frightened, not frightening, but the idea of a shape-shifting monster was terrifying.

"Let's go," I said.

"Fine with me," said Luke, walking me toward the door.

"I'm going to stick around for a while longer," said Hutch. "Just to see what happens. How about it, Greg?"

I expected Greg to agree; I'd thought the haunted west wing was going to be his new toy. But he was looking oddly pale. He shook his head. "No, I don't think so, man. I've got kind of a headache. . . . I got to get out of here for a while. And I really don't think you should stay too long."

Hutch shrugged. "I just want to check something out. I'll meet y'all out front in about fifteen minutes."

What a relief it was to leave that empty room. I began to feel better immediately.

"My headache's gone already," said Greg, sounding surprised, as we stepped outside the front door. He sighed happily, inhaling the scent of sunbaked earth and cedar. "Whew, I feel like I just came back from some dungeon in the middle ages!" Then he looked at me. "You don't think Hutch will do himself any harm?"

"There
are
health implications," I said cautiously. Since Hutch wouldn't tell me, I'd looked into the literature about infrasound research myself. "But no, I really don't. And I'm sure it'll be safe enough for your party guests. Nobody's going to be in there for more than a few minutes at a time."

"Only Hutch. And don't forget, this isn't his first time."

I nodded. "But it's not likely to do him any lasting harm. I'm sure there are factory floors which are worse."

Greg took us on a tour of his property. We even went down the rough hillside path -- "there'll be steps the next time you come" -- to the lake and a wooden dock. We were away for more than twenty minutes, but when we returned to the house there was still no sign of Hutch.

"I guess I'd better go get him," said Greg.

My heart gave a flutter. "Let's all go."

He gave me a look, then dead-panned, "Of course. What
was
I thinking? In the movies, they always get into trouble when they split up. Oh, my God, we should never have left him alone . . . "

"Don't look be-hiiiiind you." It was Hutch, of course, grinning sardonically. "Some friends
I've
got -- leaving poor little me all alone in the infamous haunted west wing."

"Since you're the one who haunted it--"

"Oh, great, so now I discover my so-called friends think I'm a ghost?" His hand shot out and gripped my arm. I think the movement was meant as a punch line, but as his fingers, icy cold against my sun-warmed flesh, dug into me, I lost it, and screamed.

The men -- even Luke -- looked at me as if I was insane.

Hutch yanked his hand away as if I'd burned him.

"Sweetie, Sweetie, it's OK," said Luke -- a little belatedly, I thought, but better late than never.

I hugged Luke to hide my blushes. I felt like a complete idiot. I began to babble. "Sorry -- sorry -- I just -- I don't know, Hutch, you startled me! Aftershock, I guess. I mean, even knowing what it was, the whole thing was just so creepy! Really got my adrenaline going. Sorry, Hutch."

"That's OK. You were supposed to be scared. It's good -- means I succeeded." Hutch twitched his shoulders. "I won't say I was scared myself, because I wasn't, but my body sure thought I ought to be. It wanted me out of there! If I wasn't shivering, I was sweating like a pig. Thank the lord I've still got a clean shirt in my case in the car!"

"So, did the ghost come back after we'd left?" Greg wanted to know. "Did he have anything to say for himself?"

"He?"

"The ghost," Greg explained.

I looked at him in surprise.

"What did you see?" Hutch was frowning.

Greg shrugged. "A gray figure . . . in a long cloak, with a hood, so I couldn't see his face. I thought he was like a monk."

"I saw a woman," I said.

"So did I," said Hutch. There was something in the way he said it, looking at me, that made me tingle.

I shrugged irritably. "But it's not like there was anything there to see -- there's not a ghost. We didn't see anything, really -- it's about perception, not vision. Our eyeballs vibrated, and our brains were just trying to make some kind of shape out of that blurriness."

Hutch shook his head slowly. "It has to be more complicated than that. In so-called haunted houses people see the same ghosts again and again."

"Because of tradition," Greg put in. "People see what they expect to see."

"And you expected to see a monk?" Hutch said skeptically. "Doubtless one of the world-famous Lake Travis brotherhood."

"Sure, the Indians wiped them out, burned the monastery to the ground, in ought eight," Greg said. "I always build my houses on sites of historical and religious significance, didn't you know that?"

"There isn't any tradition here, yet," I pointed out. "We didn't know what to expect. So our minds were free to make their own connections. For Greg, obviously, gray ghosts have got to be monks. . . ."

"Whereas for you and Hutch, it's the sexier option of a dead woman," Luke said.

I made a disgusted face at him. "Dead women are
sexy
?"

"Hey, not to
me
. But according to Edgar Allan Poe and everybody else who follows that route . . ."

"I don't think somebody who saw an animal ghost should talk about sexy."

Hutch ignored us. "I'd like to interview more people about their experience in the west wing," he told Greg. "See if some kind of consensus starts to emerge. Maybe at the party."

"Yeah, OK," said Greg. "But try not to get too heavy. Remember, they're my guests, not your experimental subjects."

"Well, hey. I wouldn't have to bother anybody at the party if I could run an experiment beforehand. If I could bring some people out here, you know, and then ask them to describe their experience . . . "

"
Mi casa es su casa
," Greg agreed. "I'll get another set of keys cut for you. There'll be decorators and such-like coming and going for the next few weeks -- that won't bother you? Good."

"You don't mind if I camp out here for a night or two? I'd really like to find out what happens on repeat visits; you know, does the whole thing cycle through again? Do you get habituated to it, more or less sensitive? All sorts of questions."

Greg nodded, looking admiring, looking, maybe, a bit envious. "I might join you," he said. It was as if he'd forgotten this was his house -- his ghost. But this was how it had been in high school, when Hutch always had the best ideas -- or, at least, the ability to convince us they were his.

Later, at the airport, Hutch asked me if I could sketch a portrait of the ghostly woman I'd thought I'd seen.

"Oh, I don't know, Hutch -- it was only a glimpse -- I'm really not sure. Maybe, if I see her again--"

"We don't know that you'll see the same apparition twice. I need some hard evidence. God knows, most people are completely incapable of describing what they've seen in any kind of detail . . . I don't want to rely on what people think they remember.
You
have a talent, Beck. You can draw. Your portraits are really good." He turned to Luke. "My mom framed the portrait Becky did of me in high school. She's still got it on the living room wall, says it's more like me than any photograph!"

I felt myself blushing, both pleased and embarrassed. I'd given up any serious attempts at drawing while in college. The art teachers there did not admire my work. It lacked flair and individuality. I could copy -- but computers could do that sort of thing
so
much better.

I bought pencils and a pad of paper in the airport shop, and while Hutch, Greg, and Luke drank coffee at the next table, I struggled to produce an image of the woman I'd imagined I'd seen. Her figure -- coat open over a loose dress -- and posture, cowering fearfully against the wall, were what I remembered best about her, and were the easiest to capture. It was her face that was difficult. I did the best I could to sketch the features I thought I remembered while not making them too individual. Generic pretty young woman backed up against the wall by (unseen) threat. . . .

Hutch grinned broadly. "That's her! That's what I saw!"

"You know, I think I saw her too," Luke drawled. "On the cover of a book in the newsstand over there where Becky bought her paper."

Luke's sarcasm didn't register on Hutch. "May I keep it?" he asked.

I nodded. Of course, what else, I had drawn it for him . . . but I suddenly wished I hadn't.

The Halloween party was supposed to be the main event, but for me it turned into something less than a sideshow.

Things hadn't been going well between me and Luke, and for some stupid reason we ended up sniping at each other nearly the whole of the drive from Galveston to Austin. At the party I spent about ten minutes talking to John Wayne, who was in a snit because Hutch didn't appreciate what he'd done to the west wing -- he just flat didn't like it, if you please, because it
distracted
the visitors from what John Wayne called "Hutch's special effects."

I went down to the west wing to see for myself, but there was such a long line of people waiting to get in that I gave up. I meant to go back later, but that never happened. I never even saw Hutch that night. Instead, I found Luke, and the tension which had been building between us suddenly exploded. We left the party to have our fight in private, and we thoroughly demolished the relationship. By the time Halloween had given way to All Saint's Day, our engagement was off, and we never wanted to see each other again. I made him drop me off at the bus station because I couldn't bear another four hours of his company on the drive home.

Greg's reply was practically instantaneous, concerned about my emotional state, offering me the lake house as a retreat if I wanted to get away from Galveston for a while. From Hutch, nothing. After a week, I e-mailed him again, this time quizzing him about the results of his "experiment."