Goodlow's Ghosts (2 page)

"I want you to take your pants off," Gwendolyn said, and faded once more.

When she reappeared—she was lounging with her legs up on the Victorian sofa, and was dressed in an extremely low-cut red floor-length gown—Ryerson asked, "What good would that do?"

This confused her. Her brow furrowed. She glanced down at the floor briefly. When she looked up, she was smiling happily, as if she'd discovered something that had been missing for a long time. She said, "Well, we could diddle with . . ." The rest of the sentence was inaudible, but Ryerson thought he understood the gist of it.

"How?" he asked.

She faded, returned, faded, returned, and swung her feet to the floor. Ryerson was a little troubled by the total silence that accompanied her movements. He'd encountered the phenomenon a lot, but it, too, was something he'd never grown used to.

"How what?" she asked at last.

"How could we diddle with each other?"

"You don't like me? You don't want to diddle with me?" This seemed to hurt her. "Aren't I attractive enough?"

"You're very attractive. You're wonderfully attractive," Ryerson told her. "But, I'm sorry, you're dead. Do you know that?"

"No," she said, without hesitation, and faded again, returned, faded. She was gone for a full minute. When she reappeared, she was standing on the opposite side of the room near a tall, narrow window, her profile to Ryerson. The window's sheer white curtains had been drawn, and the dismal light of the afternoon was giving her an especially gray and chalky look that, Ryerson thought, she hadn't had when she'd been on the sofa. It was a look that was at once frightening and sad, and his heart went out to her when he saw it. She was, after all, another human being—her form was a bit altered, it was true, and she had long ago left life behind her, but she was another human being, nonetheless (much more a human being, he thought, than the rotting shell that had once been her body, buried in the country cemetery ten miles south of the house). "No," she said again, and added, "I don't know that." She said it slowly, at a whisper, eyes lowered, hands clasped in front of her. "I don't know that," she repeated. "I can't be dead. I
feel
! I
hear
! I
want
! The dead don't have any of that."

Ryerson said, "You are proof that they do."

And she faded again, returned, faded, returned, faded. And, at last, was gone forever.

~ * ~

Ryerson found the ninety-year-old man, Mr. Barclay, in the cellar.

Mr. Barclay once had a workshop there, where he built clocks. His specialty had been cuckoo clocks fashioned from cherry wood indigenous to the area. But he was a lousy clockmaker. He made one stupid mistake after another, so he was constantly cursing at himself, which is how Ryerson was able to find him.

"Fucking fairy farts!" Ryerson heard, in a voice that was old and cracking.

"Hello!" Ryerson called down the cellar stairs.

"Donkey tits!" he heard.

"Who's there?" Ryerson called.

"Rancid rat cocks!"

"You're awfully creative!" Ryerson called.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

"Most of the time."

"Who's there?" called the aged voice.

"I'd like to help you," Ryerson called.

"Bite my bird!"

"Are you building clocks?" Ryerson was still at the top of the stairs; he had found, more than once, that it was easier to talk to a voice alone than to a voice and the image of a body. Besides, there were no lights in the cellar, and Ryerson was all but blind in the dark. He added, "Are you building cuckoo clocks?"

"Lousy
turd
!"

"I want to help you. Will you let me help you?"

"Shit, shit, shit!"

"My name is Ryerson. I'm one of the living." It was a standard line, one he'd developed, and he was proud of it. He had a doctorate in psychology from Duke University (though no one except his first wife called him "Doctor"), and he thought that it was often best to let "the others" come to their own conclusions about whether or not they were still among the living. The whole issue was incredibly complex. "The world of the supernatural," he had told his students at a short-lived night class in the paranormal at New York University, "is every bit as pluralistic and multifaceted as our own. Indeed, it is sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between the two. Each 'event' and each participant in an 'event' must be treated as an individual phenomenon—"

"Eat my shorts!" called the voice in the cellar.

This surprised Ryerson; wasn't
Eat my shorts!
a fairly recent phrase? Maybe the old man was picking up on what visitors to the house had been saying or thinking.

"I'm one of the living," Ryerson called back, and thought that the whole thing was going badly.

"Eat my shorts anyway!" called the voice.

And so it went. Eventually Ryerson closed the cellar door and decided to try again on another day, which was his usual procedure, anyway. Rarely was he able to placate one of "the others" on the first try. The chances were good, at any rate, that the group of businessmen who owned the house was just as content to have the
hauntings
continue.

It was when he was about ready to get into his 1948 Ford station wagon—a car that he'd spent a considerable amount of time and money getting into working condition—that he got a quick mental image of four dark, cold walls and he felt a sense of urgency, fear, and hunger. He looked about, saw the stone smokehouse a good hundred feet behind the farmhouse, and there found Creosote, who was terribly weak and thin. Ryerson called one of the businessmen, explained that he wanted to come back, that there was "additional work to do," and then mentioned Creosote, whom at the time he referred to only as "a damned pathetic Boston bullterrier pup."

"Shit, keep it," said the businessman.

So he did.

What intrigued Sam
Goodlow
most about being dead was the way it felt in his toes and in the tips of his fingers. It felt heavy. It felt as if there were fishing sinkers attached. He had no trouble moving, though. His fingers and toes moved as freely as they ever had. He thought he might even be able to play the piano.

He couldn't remember if he had been able to play the piano when he was alive, but he didn't think that it mattered. Weren't the dead free to do whatever they wished? They could levitate, disappear, read minds, transform themselves into monsters, or play the piano, although such abilities might have been far beyond them in life.

Sam remembered his name. Sam
Goodlow
. He remembered his last mortal moments on earth, remembered flying high into the air above the Lincoln Town Car that had run him down. He remembered a grinning face in the front seat of the Town Car, too, and remembered thinking that there was no justice in the world because the beefy guy grinning at him from the driver's seat of the Town Car would probably get away with this murder. And he remembered that
justice
had little to do with anything that really mattered in the universe.

It was the first time he had ever thought about the universe. In life his thoughts had been more mundane. Breakfast, shaving, getting laid. He had gotten laid often, not because he was disarmingly attractive. He wasn't. Or because he was rich. He wasn't. But because he was charming. He had always been charming. When he was a young man, his mother, his aunts and his uncles had told him a thousand times that he was going to be a "real lady-killer" when he grew up because he was so charming.

He didn't remember being told that he'd be a lady-killer, and he didn't remember getting laid, either. He didn't remember if he had played the piano, or why the big guy in the Town car had run him down, or even what he—Sam
Goodlow
—looked like (so far, mirrors showed him only an elongated mist with hair), or what he had
been
, in life.

But he thought it would all come back to him in time.

He felt good, and it surprised him. He hadn't expected—flying ass-over-teacup above the Town Car—that he would feel
bad
. He had expected that he would feel
nothing
. Wasn't that what most people expected from death?
Nothing
. Not cold or hot or lukewarm. Not pain or comfort or joy. Nothing.

He liked feeling good, of course. But he was distrustful of it, too. He thought that it meant he was being prepared for heaven. He remembered stories about heaven and remembered thinking that it was not a place he would like to spend much time. An eternity in the company of saints and angels and "good people" would surely be a bore.

~ * ~

He felt as if he had eaten well and was very relaxed. He felt as if he had found exactly the right position for sleep.

Oddly, he felt wet, too.

~ * ~

He closed his eyes. He could still see the room he was in. This shocked him. Seeing through his eyelids was something he'd never been able to do in life. It was proof of his situation, proof that he was dead.

He screamed.

Nothing came out.

He opened his eyes.

The room lightened.

He closed his eyes. The room darkened, as if he were seeing through sunglasses.

He opened his eyes. The room lightened.

He closed his eyes. The room darkened. He saw nothing at all.

He smiled and decided that maybe he was alive, after all. It was possible.

~ * ~

He remembered water.

A telephone.

He shivered.
Someone is dancing on my grave
, he thought.

And he remembered that his father had died when he--Sam—was only three years old, although he didn't remember his father's face. Perhaps here, in this new existence, it would eventually come back to him.

~ * ~

He realized that he had to pee. This shocked him. Did ghosts have bowels, kidneys, bladders? Were tales of the supernatural littered with accounts of toilets flushing in empty bathrooms? Maybe. What did he know? In life, he'd never been much interested in the occult, so maybe the world
was
filled with supernaturally flushing toilets.

Or maybe the fact that he had to pee was further proof that he was, indeed, alive.

He glanced about. Bathroom? he wondered. He thought he should know where the bathroom was. This place was so hauntingly familiar.

An open door to his left. He went through it.

It was a closet. There was a broom, a pail with mop, a dustpan, some old newspapers on a shelf. "Dammit!" he whispered. He couldn't pee in here.

He heard a door open. He craned his head out the doorway, looked.

A short woman with wavy, shoulder-length, strawberry blond hair entered the room.

Sam pulled his head back in and stopped breathing.

Ryerson
Biergarten
said to his two-year-old Boston bullterrier, Creosote, sniffing around a pair of Ryerson's argyle socks (its favorite chew toys, especially if Ryerson happened to be wearing them, as he was now), "It's
passion
you feel for my socks, isn't it?" He knew that this was true because, from time to time, he was able to read Creosote's mind—not in any directly translatable way (he wasn't able to carry on a conversation with the dog), but in a way that let him know the dog's moods and appetites. Ryerson understood that Creosote had a sock fetish. And it was not a fetish for just any kind of sock, only argyles. Dimly, Ryerson knew it was the patterns on argyle socks that got the dog worked up.

Passion interested Ryerson today because he had just been thrown over by a woman he had fallen in love with—a woman who, he'd felt sure, had fallen in love with him. Her very last words to him were, "Yes, I do love you, Rye. But for reasons I'd rather not share, I am going to call us completed." Ryerson liked the phrase, but not the sentiment, and he certainly didn't like the emotion that had vaulted from her head to his when she'd said it. It had told him very clearly that their six-week love affair was over, and that it was what she wanted (
had
wanted for some time).

He whispered, "Damn, I miss her."

And so, his thoughts meandered, Creosote had a sock fetish, he—Ryerson—had a broken heart, and the world still turned 'round.

Creosote got a good hold on Ryerson's left sock, planted his feet firmly in the carpet, and tugged hard, wheezing and growling obscenely at the same time.

Ryerson admonished him, face to face, finger wagging, "You mustn't
do
that, Creosote. It's annoying, and it's destructive. I
like
my socks. I don't want them turned into dog drool." Creosote continued tugging on the sock. Ryerson grinned. He knew that Creosote was having a wonderful time.

Ryerson forced the dog's jaw open, so Creosote released the sock. The dog looked momentarily put out, then, after another wheeze and gurgle, curled up at Ryerson's feet. Ryerson reached down and scratched the dog's neck. Creosote gurgled, snorted, and sneezed.