“Besides,” the agent had admitted, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “the house is...creepy. I always feel like someone’s watching me. I think the place is haunted.”
I asked why she thought that, and she said, “One time, I saw a man in a suit standing at the top of the stairs. But when I looked again, he was gone. To this day, I will not go in that house alone. I make my husband go with me, but he’s just as afraid as I am. Two scaredy cats!”
The man—the spirit, the entity, the ghost—sitting next to me was not someone or something to fear. He was a father hurting, a father lost, a father looking for answers.
“Why did you call me?” I asked Peter suddenly, as we continued sitting together in the darkening room. That I was sitting next to a ghost in an abandoned old house should have sent me running. I wasn’t running. Not now or ever.
“I...didn’t know who I was calling, truth be known. I found an ad in the Yellow Pages, circled in red ink. I called the number, and got you.”
“You can use the phone?”
“I have become quite adept at physical manifestations, as you can see. I can hold this shape for quite a long time.”
“How did you find the ad?” I asked.
He thought about that, blinking rapidly...and I briefly wondered if this was just a memory of blinking. After all, why did a ghost need to blink, or breathe, or wear clothes, for that matter? He said, “The Yellow Pages had been opened on the counter.”
“Who opened it?”
“Why, I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“No,” I said, thinking of Millicent. “It doesn’t. Not now. Why didn’t you tell me, Peter?”
“That I was dead?”
“Yes.”
He laughed lightly. “Would you have helped a ghost? Or even taken me seriously? And, quite frankly, half the time, I don’t remember that I’m dead. I’m losing my memory rapidly, you see. Forgetting who I am, why I’m here. Half the time, I call out to my wife and baby girl, thinking they’re here with me. A dozen times over, I’ve broken down all over again when I remember they are both dead.”
Jesus, I thought.
“Do you ever see them, too?”
“My wife and baby girl? No, never. I feel them sometimes. I think I see them sometimes. My mother, too. But when I look again, they’re gone.”
I thought of the irony: ghosts haunting ghosts. Or, as Millicent would sternly point out, spirits.
Speaking of which, I noted that Millicent was oddly absent. I suspected I knew why...she could only interfere with her son to a point. Perhaps it was the same with his wife and child. They could only influence so much.
It was up to the living to help the lost return home.
It was, in fact, up to me.
Chapter Thirty
“So, what will you do now?” I asked.
We’d been sitting quietly again, as the house grew colder. This had been the longest I’d been with Peter, and I couldn’t help but notice he was wavering in and out of existence. One moment, he was as real as any man, and the next he was just a ghostly, wispy specter. I tried not to let it freak me out, but it did a little.
“Now?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Now that the killer has been found, you can...move on, right?”
Truth was, I didn’t know a whole lot about what I was talking about. I wasn’t a medium, although, over these past few weeks, I’d certainly seen my share of spirits and ghosts. But I knew that spirits moved on to...somewhere. They had to. According to Millicent, she and I had been reborn together throughout time and space. And Samantha Moon, too. A kind of soul-mate trifecta. I liked that.
He shook his head, briefly disappeared, reappeared, then said, “Oh, I’m not going anywhere, Allison. I’m perfectly happy staying right here, thank you very much.”
“But why here?”
“This is where I last saw my daughter, and where I last saw my wife. This house is full of their stuff and full of their memories. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Allison,” he said and raised his index finger to his lips. The gesture was oddly wooden. He continued, “I have no intention of moving on. I’m staying right here, and I’ll be damned if anyone is going to move in here and take over my daughter’s stuff.”
Help my son...
Millicent’s words again, and I wondered if she thought them to me now, or if they were still bubbling up from my memory.
Probably a little of both.
I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I wasn’t sure how to convince a ghost that it was in his best interest to leave behind all that he knew and loved and to venture off into what I saw as the Great Unknown.
I didn’t know, but I knew it was the right thing to do.
So, I did what I do best. I opened my mind and reached out for an answer, hoping like hell one would come to me.
* * *
As we sat together, as Peter sat forward on the couch, his back straight, rigid and unmoving, I had a brief vision of a golden tunnel with glorious light pouring out. And just as quickly, the vision disappeared.
I asked Peter about the tunnel, and he said, “Ah, yes, the tunnel. I’ve seen it often, although it comes less and less these days. When it does come, I ignore it.”
“What do you mean when it comes? What does it look like?”
He pointed toward the vaulted ceiling high above even the second floor, which rose up into a sort of rounded, windowed dome. Yes, a nice house. “I see it up there. It’s full of light. Sometimes, I can see people inside, but mostly I feel the light. It feels warm.”
“You are warm?”
He shook his head and his body rippled slightly as energy wavered. “No. I’m cold. Always cold.”
“Don’t you want to be warm, Peter?”
He nodded, thought about it, then shook his head vigorously. “I failed my daughter, Allison. I allowed this happened to her, you see? And then I lost my wife, too. I’m not losing their things, too. It’s the last I have of them.”
“They are more than things, Peter.”
“I know. But it’s all I have—”
“What if they are waiting for you in the tunnel?”
“And what if they aren’t, Allison? What if I move on and there’s...nothing?”
I had no argument to that, but then words appeared in my thoughts, perhaps supplied to me by Millicent herself. I said, “Moving on takes great faith, Peter.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not willing to find that out. I will stay right here, with their stuff, with their memory. I can’t leave their stuff behind, Allison. I just can’t let it be thrown out, or forgotten.”