Night of the Living Deed (5 page)

There was a mention of my address and two bodies being found on the premises in a half-page article. It identified no police sources, but referred to a Detective Harold Westmoreland visiting the scene.

The headline read, “Two Bodies Found in Local House.”

I realized my jaw had dropped. I was shaking my head. I was breathing through my mouth. How could I have known that there had been two people who died in the house? Had the information been in the file, and I’d missed it? Somehow, I doubted that.

The next morning, I left a message on my mother’s voice mail telling her to push back lunch for a day.

I told myself it was because I hadn’t gotten much sleep.

I thanked Tony and Jeannie for their concern and their hospitality and, since my head was feeling better even without rest, laughed off their offers to drive Melissa to school. I gathered up my daughter, dropped her off where she needed to be and drove to my new house/business/ project.

And when I opened the door, the same two people were standing there, as if they hadn’t moved all night, and even though my vision had cleared up, they still seemed somehow vaguely transparent and fuzzy.

I shut the door and ran for the station wagon. Then I drove to Dunkin’ Donuts and called Jeannie to ask if I could stay there one more night.

“So. How much do you know about ghosts?”

Tony and Jeannie looked first at each other and then at me. The dinner I’d “made” (I’m better at ordering than cooking, mostly because my father taught me to fix houses, and my mother taught me that I was perfection incarnate) as a thank-you gift for the two nights in their house was suddenly going untouched, which would no doubt be a disappointment to the proprietor of the Golden Sun Szechuan House. Melissa could barely hear me, engrossed as she was with her friend Wendy at the far end of the table discussing Halloween costumes, since the candy-and-mask date was a little more than three weeks away (the consensus was
NO DISNEY PRINCESSES!
), and little girls don’t spend much time listening to adults when given a choice.

Suffice it to say, Tony and Jeannie were being remarkably hospitable.

“You mean shadows left behind by paintbrushes?” Tony asked hopefully.

“No,” I said. “I mean real ghosts. You know, people who are dead but don’t go away.”

Jeannie’s eyes narrowed. “Is this about your hallucinations?”

“No!” I insisted. “Of course not. I just was watching this movie last night, and it got me thinking about ghosts.”

Looking relieved, Tony and Jeannie went back to work on the sesame chicken and veggie lo mein. “Good. I was starting to plan a trip back to the emergency room, only the mental health wing this time,” Tony said after swallowing.

“What movie?” Jeannie asked.

“What?”

“What movie were you watching that got you thinking about ghosts?”

Oops. I hadn’t quite thought this plan through. I’d figured if I could start a conversation on the topic, then drop in that odd things had been going on in the house, I might be able to gauge Tony and Jeannie’s opinion on whether I was, you know, crazy. But now that I’d gotten a suspicious reaction on my first foray (which, admittedly, had been clumsy), I instinctively backed off.

“Um . . . what’s the name . . . ?” I had no idea where I was heading. From somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I was hoping to conjure up a nonthreatening ghost movie, but I really didn’t want to use
Casper
if I didn’t have to. “You know, the one with the really benign ghosts. A man and a woman.” Why not? It would make the lie easier to remember.

“
Topper
?” Tony asked.

“That’s right!” I pointed at him like a game show host. “It was
Topper
.” Had I ever seen
Topper
? “It got me to wondering why ghosts are usually supposed to be so dangerous. I mean, not all dead people are going to be pissed off and violent, right? Some of them might just like hanging around the old neighborhood for a while.”

Jeannie laughed. “Only you would see things that way, Alison. Ghosts are scary.”

“So you think there
are
ghosts?” My best friend was leaving the door wide-open for me, the dear girl.

Jeannie almost spat out a mouthful of soy-covered noodles. “Of course not!” she said. “I’m talking about in movies, books, stuff like that.” She swallowed and chuckled low. “Do I think there are ghosts? You kill me, Alison.” I
could
have, at just that moment.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Tony was looking thoughtful, which he does better than most, because he’s actually thinking. “I’ve heard some stories that make you wonder. Friend of mine swears she heard the voice of her husband on the day of his funeral. And she says six friends of hers called her that night to tell her they’d heard it at the same time.”

“It’s silly,” Jeannie gave back. “People just don’t want to let their loved ones go. When someone they love dies, they don’t want to admit the person’s gone forever. So they comfort themselves with a story about spirits and ghosts hanging around, giving them a chance to have a conversation with a loved one who can’t say anything except what they want them to say.” She waved a hand to declare the whole subject absurd.

“Well, what if it’s not a loved one? What if the person thought they saw, or heard, someone they’d never met before?” I had no emotional stake in seeing Paul Harrison or Maxie Malone, after all.

Tony cocked an eyebrow. “Did this ‘person’ have a big ol’ bucket of joint compound fall on her head recently?”

I stuck out my lips in rebellion. “What did I say when you asked me that question the last time?” I asked.

“Name one actor who was in
Topper
,” he countered.

“Oh, Tony, seriously,” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m not playing this game.” Not when I didn’t have immediate access to IMDb, I wasn’t.

This time, Jeannie
did
rescue me. “Stop it, honey,” she told her husband. “Alison’s had a rough couple of days.” She had no idea. “Don’t tease her.”

“Look, fortune cookies!” I said, reaching for the five cookies we’d left in the center of the table and trying hard to change the subject.

“Just take one!” Jeannie warned. “It’s bad luck for someone else to hand you your fortune.”

“Oh,” Tony teased. “So you don’t believe in ghosts, but fortune cookie luck is scientifically provable, huh?” Jeannie didn’t answer.

Melissa must have heard our conversation, because she turned her head toward me and narrowed her eyes. Wendy kept talking about getting wigs that matched.

To change the subject, I took one cookie and gestured that everyone else should do the same. Wendy walked over to get one, and Tony and Jeannie were reaching as I opened the little plastic bag with my teeth. Jeannie always orders from Golden Sun because they have the chocolate fortune cookies we both adore.

“Hey! ‘Your smile illuminates the lives of those around you.’ ” Jeannie grinned beatifically. “What do you think?”

“I think you got my fortune cookie,” Tony answered, and read from his own. “This one says, ‘You are a good and stalwart friend.’ Now, how is that a fortune? That’s just a compliment.” He shook his head. “How about you, Alison?”

I broke open the cookie and pulled out the little slip of paper.

It read, “New acquaintances need your assistance.”

I looked at Melissa. “Would you mind if I took your cookie?” I asked.

Wendy’s mom, Barbara, had invited Melissa for a sleepover on a Saturday night because Barbara thinks I’m a single mother who needs time off to have a social life. Silly Barbara.

So, on my second night in Jeannie’s guest room, right before exhaustion won the battle with anxiety, I decided I’d go to the house the next morning and confront my fears.

Mostly, that meant I’d be tackling the furnace to see why the heating system was so sluggish. But if there happened to be some out-of-focus imaginary people who claimed to be dead on the premises, well, as the owner of a respectable guesthouse, I’d certainly have to confront that, too.

That morning, after a decent amount of sleep and homemade pancakes (Tony is a good cook when he sticks to the basics), I thanked everyone yet again, hopped into my trusty Volvo station wagon around nine a.m., and drove to my home away from home—HouseCenter—where I dropped even more of my money. Then I stopped for some coffee. Then I drove to Oceanside Park and sat on a bench drinking the coffee. Read the paper. Did the crossword puzzle. Went and got some lunch.

But it wasn’t like I was avoiding my responsibilities at the house. I got there about two, I’d say.

I took an extra-deep breath before unlocking the back door leading into the kitchen. And when I walked inside, I exhaled with relief.

There was no one there.

I took off my old denim jacket and dropped it on the floor. There was no point in looking for a clean spot—every surface downstairs had the same coating of dust. The jacket was used to it.

Okay. The nightmare was over. I could start in on the furnace (probably another nightmare in the making). But maybe I should get my feet wet with something a little less complicated. There was still that wall-to-wall carpet to pull up in the living room, and the woodwork was certainly dry enough by now.

It felt like—and I know this is a cliché—an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was downright jaunty as I ambled into the living room, hammer and screwdriver in hand.

And there were Paul and Maxie, actually floating about a foot off the floor. Just as transparent as they’d been yesterday. And the day before.

“Alison!” Paul shouted, sounding worried. “Where have you been?”

“You are not there,” I said. I decided that would be my mantra. “You are not there.”

“Of
course
we’re here,” Maxie said disgustedly. “What we want to know is where
you’ve
been.”

“They are not there.” I changed the mantra to make it even more definitive. If I didn’t acknowledge them, they weren’t there. It was that simple.

“This is hopeless,” Maxie said, presumably to Paul. I wasn’t looking. Instead, I began pulling at a loose corner on the carpet near the door.

“Alison!” Paul shouted. “I know you can hear me. Stop it! We need your help!”

“You’re not really there.” Oops. I’d forgotten not to answer.

Paul sounded irritated with me. “Oh, we’re really here,” he said.

“You’re not. I read about you in the paper. You’re dead. So clearly, you’re not here, and I’m not going to talk to you anymore.” I had the cutout by the door almost entirely carpet free, and started pulling up the padding beneath it. After all the carpet was up, I could go around the perimeter with the screwdriver and hammer and pull up the tackless molding that had held the carpet in place. I bent down.

Paul walked over to me and knelt, or dropped, down so that he was looking directly into my face. “We know we’re dead,” he said calmly. “But we’re here.”

It was just too much. I was biting my lip so hard I tasted blood. But I wouldn’t look.

“Look at me,” he said slowly. “I’m here.”

My eyes started to tear. My jaw was quivering. I couldn’t look. And then there was a strange sensation, like a warm breeze, right in the vicinity of my chin. I looked down and saw his finger trying to raise my chin up to face him.

“Look,” Paul said.

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “No!” I practically wailed. “Don’t you understand? If you’re really here, then I’m either crazy or I’m hurt much worse than I thought, and I can’t face that now. I have too much . . . my daughter needs me, and I . . . you
can’t
be here.”

And then I did the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I looked Paul straight in the face.

He
was
there. He was fuzzy and kinda see-through, but he was there. And my stomach dropped to the floor. He looked so terribly sympathetic, like he wished he wasn’t there, just so I wouldn’t be so upset.