Apparition (11 page)

I whip around in the direction he’s pointing. I can’t see anything in the darkness.

“Like John Lennon glasses,” he says.

“Who … who is it?” I’m trying not to freak.

“I don’t know. His hair is kind of long. And red.”

“Is he the guy you said was crying?”

“No, that’s someone else. He’s around here somewhere.”

“Anyone else?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Matthew, I need to ask you something. That girl you told me you were meeting. Is she here?”

“What girl? I’m not sure what you mean, but I don’t think there’s a girl here.”

I’m holding my hand over my mouth, trying not to cry. “But have you ever seen a girl in this barn, Matthew? Concentrate. I have to know.”

“I don’t think so … I don’t know.”

It’s crazy, but I could sob with relief. At least there isn’t another girl in the picture. “You told me you were meeting her.”

He shrugs.

“Okay, how about
dot
? Does that word mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

I tell him he carved it into his desk in his bedroom on the day he died.

“Dot as in dot-com?” he asks, but I shake my head. He says it means nothing to him and he doesn’t remember carving it.

I need to find out one more thing. “Matthew, what happens if I touch you?”

Still leaning against the wall, he slowly sinks down until he’s squatting, like he was when I saw him earlier. He reaches out to touch the rope. He moves it, just a little, in the dirt.

“I can touch some things, objects,” he says, “but it’s like I’m not all here. I don’t know where the rest of me is.” Still looking down at the rope, he asks in a quiet voice, “Am I really a ghost?”

He holds up his arm and looks at his hand. Then he holds it out toward me and rises to his feet.

I take a step closer to him, but it’s as if the shadow he stands in is growing darker, or maybe my eyesight is growing dimmer, and now I can’t see him as well. I lean forward, stretching my shaking hand toward his. But as I do, he fades even more, and where our fingers should have touched, I feel nothing but cool air.

I can’t see him anymore.

He’s gone.

I
sit beside Morris in his car in the Telford driveway, freaking out. It’s like I’m having a nervous breakdown. I can’t stop asking, “Why Matthew? Why me?” The fact that he’s dead—that life can never go back to the way it used to be—is hitting me all over again. I look to Morris as if maybe he has the answers, but he just wears a pained expression, like he has a headache.

“It can’t be easy for you,” he finally says, shaking his head. He offers me his Thermos of cold coffee again, and I take a small sip before remembering how awful it tastes. As I pass it back, I notice a tremor in his hands. He apologizes and says he’s going to have a quick smoke, and then he climbs out of the car. He walks a short distance away, dragging on the cigarette, pacing like crazy. When he comes back he apologizes again, says he’s trying to quit. But I don’t care about his smoking.

“I knew it,” I say quietly. “I knew it all along. I knew my mother’s ghost was real.”

Then Morris tells me his story.

“Years ago, my wife and I lost a baby girl to crib death. It was just one of those nightmares you live through, waiting to wake up from it, except you never do. But then I started hearing my daughter crying down the hall in the empty nursery at night. At least, I thought I was hearing her cry. In the night, half-asleep, I’d run to her room. Of course, by the time I got there, the crying had stopped. It put me over the edge.”

He’s looking down, his chin practically on his chest, his voice tight and his eyes almost shut. We sit in silence like that for a minute.

“God. I’m sorry, Morris.”

He shrugs heavily. “For a long while I thought it was just the feeling of guilt, but it wouldn’t stop. What saved me was that I finally started thinking about the whole thing differently—just to keep from going crazy. I started asking myself whether I wasn’t really hearing her ghost. And I started doing research. The more I studied, the better I could cope with it. My research took over my life, I guess. The sound of crying gradually stopped. But by then I’d lost my wife, and my son too. She got a teaching post at the University of Chicago, took Kip with her and found herself a new husband. So I’ve been digging myself out of a depression for years. This crazy ghost obsession is what keeps me sane. And sober.” He mumbles the last part. “And I don’t mind saying, your mom was a huge inspiration. Huge.”

I ask him what he means by thinking differently, and he tells me that he stopped trying to convince himself that his daughter
wasn’t
there and started asking himself what it meant if she
was
. He says his research shows that by far the most common connection to the spirit world is through sound. So the most “extrasensory” of the human senses is hearing. It’s far more common to
hear
something supernatural than it is to
see
it. I’d never thought of that before.

“What else have you learned?” I ask him.

“Well, one of the reasons we can hear ghosts is that they can move stuff. Even though they aren’t solid, they seem to be able to move things that are. Inanimate objects. So they can make a racket if they want to. It’s only living things they have trouble with. The only way they can move living things is by possessing them.”

Possession.
That
little trick. I’ve never thought of it like that before.

“I’m not a religious man,” he goes on, “and I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife the way most religions talk about it. But after years of researching stories of apparitions, I’m convinced that a ghost is an emotional entity. The emotional fingerprint of a departed person.”

“You mean like a soul?”

“Call it what you want.” He shrugs. “The bloody mystery is how that energy survives the body and has an existence that some people can hear or even see.” He looks over at me like he’s looking for the answer in my eyes, but he realizes I don’t have it, so he struggles to explain some more. “I’m just saying that ghosts aren’t big thinkers. They feel. They feel the feelings they had when they were alive. So like everyone who can feel, they can suffer.”

Listening to his gravelly, sad voice, I realize that for all the talk of ghosts I’ve heard throughout my life, I’ve never understood what they are. Morris sighs, like he’s finding all this hard to say.

“Ghosts still long to connect emotionally with the living, only they’re damaged in some way. They’re traumatized. And it seems that some are outright emotionally disturbed.” He pauses and then carefully goes on. “I think a ghost made Matthew kill himself. Maybe the same ghost that made Paul commit suicide. And that same ghost made Jack fall.”

He starts up the car. “I’m sorry I put you through this, Amelia. It was selfish. I don’t think you should ever come here again.”

As we drive back up 12th Line, I’m thinking that I like Morris’s theory a lot. I don’t know how to tell him, and I don’t know why, but
I realize I feel a bit better. Because I
did
feel emotion from Matthew. It felt real. And I always felt emotion coming from my mother’s ghost too.

Morris lets me out on the road in front of my house and I creep in through the front door, managing to avoid Joyce, who is still out back in the paddock. I feel pretty rough and I don’t want to be seen like this, so I slip into the bathroom.

Lying in a tub of warm water high with bath bubbles, the bathroom light turned off, I feel a kind of peace I haven’t felt for a long time. It’s almost sundown, the room is dark and warm and silent, and I’m finally calming down. But it’s not only because of what Morris said about ghosts. It’s because of the way he talked about ghosts
to me
. Like I was an adult. A sane adult. And for the first time, I feel like admitting that, yeah, I do see ghosts. I’ve seen ghosts all my life. So what? Get over it.

And then there’s that other matter: the fact that Matthew—whoever, whatever part of Matthew I saw—finally told me he loves me.
Better late than never, Matthew
.

I’ve told Morris I’ll do what I can to help him uncover the history of the barn. He’s fascinated by Matthew’s reference to the red-haired guy, and to the one who was crying. And he’s intrigued that Matthew didn’t remember our mystery girl. Morris thinks we can get at the truth without ever going back inside the barn. I don’t agree, though I haven’t said so. The question is, Do I have the guts to go back in alone?

Morris did make me realize one other thing: that something or someone in that barn may be causing people to kill themselves, or at least attempt it. That amounts to murder. So there really is a murderer on the loose in Grey County after all. But I can’t think about that right now. I try to empty my head. I want to feel empty, in a good way.

I remember that when I was about eight years old, Mom rented a cottage on Lake Huron. The water was cold and the shore was
rocky. There were big beautiful rocks you could play on, jumping from one to the other, trying to step only on the pink ones.

One evening after supper, my mom and I were playing cards in the screened-in porch at the back, facing the water. Jack was there too. And out on the lake, a long way from shore, there was this odd boat, bigger than a fishing boat, a faded green and blue. The sun was going down and there was a beautiful red sunset and the waves were rippling, red and shiny. My mom stood up and walked down the grassy slope toward the dock, and then she just stood there and looked at that boat. Jack and I jumped up and ran out after her.

I remember asking her, “What is that?” And she said it was a beautiful old boat. A really old boat. She said you never saw boats like that anymore. There were three people on the small deck. I could barely see them, but I could tell they were wearing strange clothes. I asked her why they were dressed so funny. I remember her looking down at me, and Jack in the background whining, “I don’t see a boat.” But after a few minutes the boat had moved a little, right into the path of the setting sun, and I couldn’t see it anymore. Mom was shielding her eyes, still gazing out. Then she looked down at me again and touched the palm of her hand to my head.

A loud rap on the bathroom door startles me to death, causing a small tidal wave that splashes over the edge of the tub. I must have fallen asleep. The bathwater has cooled down and the bubbles are almost gone. Ethan is knocking and yelling, “Are you done in there yet? Someone called for you, you know. I didn’t even know you were home, so I took a message. Some guy named Chip, or something weird like that.”

“Out in a minute,” I shout, grabbing a face cloth and soaking it in the water. I scrub my face till it hurts.

I
step inside Toby’s Tavern, still gasping from running four blocks, a pain in my side. I’m twenty minutes late. I really don’t think I’m up to this. As I catch my breath, I look around. Toby’s is one of those slightly shabby but cozy pub-style restaurants. It’s Sunday, late afternoon, and there are just a few groups of guys here, drinking beer and eating nachos.

I check out all the tables and finally catch sight of a shaggy blond head, a hand lifting to his brow and saluting as I scan past. Kip has a small table in a corner near the window. A draft beer is half-empty in front of him, and he looks like he’s been waiting for a while. Ugh.

This was Morris’s idea. He’s worried he’s falling behind on a deadline, so he asked if Kip and I could do a bit of detective work without him. Maybe we should get to know each other a little first, he suggested, since we’re going to be a research team. I’m dreading this.

I walk over to Kip’s table, aware that I look like I just stepped out of a hurricane. I’m sure my face is red, and I’m sweating, too. Perspiring, I mean. From running and nerves. I try to smile and not seem too
self-conscious. Wow! I suppose he’s kind of hot. I say hi and sit down, tugging at my coat, trying to get it off, struggling to pull my arms out. Somehow I manage to turn the coat into a bloody straitjacket. I’m now wrestling with the sleeves, which are turned inside out and stuck, hanging from my elbows. Totally awkward. For just an instant I think his eyes flicker over my chest. I’m pretty sure. Maybe I should have worn my push-up bra. Then he looks me straight in the eyes, smiling. I finally get the damn coat off, but with way too much effort and flailing around. I apologize for being late, explaining that I had to wait until my grandmother was ready to visit my brother Jack at the hospital and could give me a lift into town. And that I ran from the hospital. Now I’m fighting to get the coat to stay on the back of my chair. Why is everything so difficult today? Kip smiles, his head slightly cocked like he finds this amusing, and waits for me to settle in.

“Want a beer?” he asks, looking over my head at a waitress a few tables away.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Why? How old are you?”

“Sixteen and three-quarters. How old are you?”

“Nineteen. By the time you get to my age, you don’t break it into fractions anymore.”

“I’m fine with a Coke.” He’s making fun of me. I’m not sure what’s harder, looking at him or not looking at him. I’d better just keep talking.

“So your dad tells me you work at the Grey County Archives. Are you originally from Grey County?”

“No, I’m not from here. Born in Hamilton, raised in Chicago. I’m enrolled in university there but … taking a sabbatical.”

“Sabbatical. Is that like sick leave?”

He laughs. “Not exactly. Kind of. I wanted a break. Also I’m
sinking into debt. One year of college and I already have a student loan the size of some people’s mortgages. So I’m taking a year off to make some money. My dad got me the job. He knows everyone there, since he’s been mining the archives for his history column for years. And in exchange for room and board, I said I’d help him with his research. My moonlighting job.”

“Must have been a shock, going from a big city like Chicago to a little town like Owen Sound. But nice to reconnect with your dad.”

“You know, a little town is nice for a change. And who said my dad and I were disconnected?” He grins. “All right, a little. But I was also looking to get away. I needed to take some time out … to reassess the direction of my life. Happy?”