Apparition (21 page)

“Why relieved?”

“Well, you see, he’d had a sweetheart before he left for the war, and while he was gone she married someone else. We tried to keep it from him at first. But he kept asking after her, and we finally had to break the news to him. And he took it quite badly. But the night of the party, he seemed completely over it. He was happy. That’s why no one could believe that he could change so drastically. So quickly. If it wasn’t an accident … well, the Lord wouldn’t answer our prayers and bring him back home safe and sound only to abandon him to such despair, would He? That was what Father said. The Lord wouldn’t do that to him. To us.”

At this point, I’m sitting on the edge of my seat. Everything she says is starting to sound familiar.

“And since it was an accident,” I say, “he was able to have a proper Christian burial, which he clearly deserved.”

Mrs. Ross looks my way. “Yes.”

“How did the family cope after that, Mrs. Ross?” asks Kip. “It must have been so hard losing Willy. He was the only son, right?”

“Yes. My parents didn’t cope well, I guess. I don’t think they ever recovered. They sold the farm that year. My father died shortly after, and my mother a couple of years after him. No, they never recovered from Willy’s death.”

“Why did they sell the farm, though? Didn’t that make things harder?”

“They couldn’t go on living at the farm without Willy. No one could after that. So it was over. My father never walked into the barn again.”

I realize with a jolt that before that moment, I didn’t know for sure where Willy had died.

“The barn?” Kip asks, clearly thinking the same thing.

“Yes. Willy died in the barn.”

The urge to make eye contact with Kip is enormous, but I fight it. Instead, I focus on the little voice recorder on the coffee table.

“Besides, I moved away, married Philip Ross the next year. That was the boy I’d been going with since high school. He’d been in the army too, and we’d been engaged the whole time. I’d been waiting for him for five years. So I was looking forward to my life with Philip.” Her face brightens a bit.

We smile, allowing the break. We sip our tea. We all seem to relax just a bit. Then Kip’s expression changes again, his brow creasing. His voice is gentle.

“But those poor boys who came back from the war, they didn’t get any counselling the way they would now. For the emotional trauma of what they’d been through, I mean.”

Mrs. Ross nods, and I can see the strain in her face. She’s fighting back tears. Finally one breaks over her pale bottom lashes and onto her cheek. Seeing it makes me feel awful. She speaks in a shaky voice.

“No. No one talked openly about things back then. Willy … Willy wasn’t entirely himself that day. I mean, he was happy enough. But … well, I was the last person to talk to him that night, before he died.”

“You were the last to talk to him?” said Kip. “That must have been very hard for you, afterwards.”

She lets out a sigh. “Yes, it was hard. I’ll be honest with you—I
really don’t want to remember that. It’s too … upsetting.” It takes a long time for her to continue. “He was acting strangely the very last time we talked. Just outside the barn.” Now her eyes are brimming with tears. She looks up, shaking her head. “You know, I’ve never admitted that to anyone before.” She reaches in her pocket for a tissue with a trembling hand, dabs her eyes and blows her nose. We wait as she composes herself, and she finally says, “People today are much more aware of the emotional needs of our army vets, aren’t they? At least I hope so.”

For a long while on the drive back to my place, neither of us says much. When we left her, Mrs. Ross was still gracious and polite but she looked shaken. And what did we gain? Well, one more suicide victim for our list, that’s true, but no mystery solved. And still I’m left with one nagging thought. Finally I decide to test it.

“Kip, remember how Mrs. Ross said that Willy found out the girl he was in love with had married someone else? He must have been heartbroken, wouldn’t you think?” Kip looks over at me and nods. “Well, your dad said something about ghosts—that they are almost like the emotional energy left behind by dead people.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, Willy’s romantic setback kind of reminded me of Paul’s just before he died. And how his sister, Emily, said he was all excited about hooking up with some mystery girl, remember? He’d had a fight with his girlfriend. And then I was thinking about my brother. At the Halloween party, when I talked to him, he was really depressed about Morgan. He’s been in love with her for years, and she kind of leads him on, then pushes him away. That night he told me he’d had enough, and he was going to give up on her.”

“What’s your point?”

“The point is, he did seem broken-hearted. But when he was heading back to the barn, he told me he was meeting someone. It was obvious it was a girl. That was the big giveaway that something wasn’t right. And when I think about his weird ramblings before he fell, he kept repeating, ‘She said she’d come,’ or something like that. I guess I’m wondering if there’s a connection between romantic trouble and getting possessed by some ghost in this barn. I mean, I see a bit of a pattern. Don’t you?”

Kip is frowning. As he turns into our drive he says, “There’s just one thing.” He stops the car, engine still running, and turns to me. “What about Matthew? How does he fit in?”

This is hard to admit. “It was pretty complicated. But Jack told me that Matthew was worried his parents wouldn’t approve of him and me as a couple. So it’s possible that he was feeling a little heartsick as well. Over me.”

I’ve never thought of it like this before, but hearing myself say it, I can see the connections. Am I dreaming? Or am I on to something?

“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t his parents have approved of you?”

“They’re just really serious churchgoers. So I’d be a lost soul to them.”

“Ah. A pagan.”

“Maybe I’m imagining this, but it’s possible this barn ghost connects with guys who have girl problems. Maybe because he had girl problems of his own.”

“You mean there are guys
without
girl problems?”

That annoys me. “I mean serious ones.”

“Oh, serious. Of course,” he says, nodding, slightly sarcastic. “So who is this mystery girl? The one Jack and Matthew both said they were going off to meet?”

“I think she must be the original heartbreaker. The one who started all this trouble.” Then it hits me. “She must hold the key to the word
dot
.”

He suddenly leans over, brushing my hair back from my cheek. I hold my breath. “One last question,” he says. He looks away, out the car window.

I wait for him to go on, and it feels like it takes forever.

Then, finally, “Are you still in love with him?”

At first I’m kind of stunned. Am I still in love with Matthew? I don’t know if I can answer that honestly, but something in Kip’s face makes me want to try.

“I still love him, yes. I think I’ll always love him. But …” It’s so hard for me to admit this. “It’s not quite the same now that he’s dead.” As soon as the words have left my mouth, I feel horrible. But a ghost isn’t a great substitute for flesh and blood.

Kip looks away again. When he turns back to me, he’s smiling. “Well, I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that.”

He leans in and gives me a peck on the cheek. It’s over fast. Nothing like the kiss in the barn.

He says, “See you later, ghost girl.”

I
’ve been experimenting with my desktop picture. I’ve cut myself out of the photo and zoomed in on Matthew’s face, his dark straight hair falling down over his dark narrow eyes, his grinning mouth, a bit of those square shoulders. He’s closer now, but less in focus. I zoom in even more, until he’s just a blur. I stare at the blur for a long time.

I’ve been thinking about Matthew when he was alive. I guess you could say he was a bit of a smartass, but not in a bad way. Everything seemed kind of straightforward to him. He never seemed to doubt himself, or the world around him either. The fact that he worried about how his parents would react if he dated me was an eye-opener, though. Maybe not everything was black and white for him. Love can make a lot of things grey, that’s what I think. But now that Matthew’s getting used to being dead, he’s seeing things as uncomplicated again. If I love him and he loves me, we should be together. Simple. Except that it’s not simple at all. I wish I could feel as confident as he does about everything. Or anything.

I think back to the day Morgan took this picture. The fire alarm had gone off at school and we’d all had to leave the building. It was a false alarm, but we stood on the sidewalk waiting for the fire trucks to arrive. Morgan snapped the picture just after we’d gotten the green light to get back into class. We were feeling a little pumped and excited by the disruption. In the instant she snapped the shot, my eyes were on her and Matthew was looking at me. I wonder what life would have been like if I’d paid more attention back then. If I’d known that he loved me. Everything could have been so different. I might have found out what it was like to kiss him, to feel his arms around me. I zoom back out until we’re both in the photo again. He’s sharper now, and farther away. I wonder if kissing him would have felt as good as it did with Kip.

Morris e-mailed me last night and told me to do an Internet search on the word
Ekarenniondi
. Turns out it’s the name of an ancient aboriginal village. Over on the south side of Blue Mountain at the Scenic Caves mentioned by Kip, there’s a popular hiking trail leading to a lookout and a huge rock that marks the spot of a Petun village. The Petun people were a small native tribe that lived around here for thousands of years before being wiped out by the Iroquois about four hundred years ago. Ekarenniondi means something like “where the rock sticks out.” What’s interesting about the rock is the legend that goes with it. It was supposed to be a sacred gateway marking the start of the journey the newly dead had to take to get to the “Village of the Souls.” The really cool thing is that stationed at this rock was a mythological creature known as Oscotarach, meaning “the head-piercer.” He would pierce the brains of the dead, one by one, as they set off on their journey. According to the legend, Oscotarach was removing their memories of their past lives so they wouldn’t feel so bad about missing the people they’d left behind.
Makes you wonder if he sometimes screwed up and left a piece of memory behind.

I also did some research about those ley lines, or ghost lines, that Morris mentioned. I found out that they were named by Alfred Watkins, a British archeologist, in
1921
. Watkins found all kinds of examples of four or more ancient sacred sites in a row in the landscape. The old English word
ley
means a kind of trench or valley.
Geophysical anomalies that point to an invisible earth-energy network
. I wrote that line down, word for word.

I’m still contemplating Matthew’s face when Morris phones. I’m excited to hear that he’s got hold of two special cameras he’s going to try out at the barn.

“I want to come with you,” I say.

“Absolutely not. It’s safer if I do this myself.”

“But isn’t the whole point to see if the camera can pick up the same things I see? You need me there to tell you where to aim it.”

He hasn’t thought that through. I can hear him agonizing across the phone line.

“It’ll be fine,” I tell him. “I’ll be much better than last time. I’ve had a chance to deal with everything, emotionally.”

He says he needs to think about it. Then he tells me his latest news. “You’ll love this,” he says. “I heard about your heartache theory—about the boys in the barn all having girl problems when they got possessed. Do you remember George McCleary’s son? The one Hank Telford told us was found dead in the barn? I found his sister. She has a law practice in Orangeville, and I managed to get her on the phone last night. She said her brother—his name was Danny—was an easygoing guy who loved folk music and played the guitar and wore his hair long. Red hair, she said, like his dad’s. He wore hippie beads and tie-dyed T-shirts and, like many people in the
sixties, was into experimenting with drugs. She said he had a girlfriend he was crazy about named Loretta, but she had broken up with him two days before he died. She’d left him for another guy, apparently. So Danny’s sister was surprised when she heard later that he’d told one of his friends—the last person to see him alive—that he already had a new girlfriend. He seemed all excited about her, but wouldn’t say who she was.

“They found him in the barn the next morning. He’d cut the arteries in his arms and bled to death. Practically cut his arms off, she said, with some blade from an old farm machine. Both arms. The conclusion was that he’d gone psychotic from a bad acid trip—that and heartbreak over Loretta. She said the new girl was a lie he made up to try to make Loretta jealous. She said everyone believed Danny’s death was drug-related. End of story.”

“Morris, I’ve never said this out loud before, but we’ve got to stop this guy. This evil ghost? We’ve got to figure out how to make him stop.”

I
t’s snowing lightly again. Looking out my bedroom window at the paddocks, I watch the snow settling on the backs of the horses. Morris wants me to meet him on the Telford property—he might run into my grandmother if he picked me up here—but I’m not looking forward to riding my bike up that hill in this weather.

Jack is coming home from the hospital tomorrow, and the house is just about ready. Having him around again will be good for all of us, especially Ethan. Joyce says he failed his geography assignment last week. If he’d stay off the video games once in a while he’d do better, but it’s like he has no motivation at all. I wonder if he’s still working on his new smoking habit.

I keep myself busy with a bit of homework and cleaning up my room until after lunch, then get ready to go out. The idea of returning to the barn seems about as exciting as anything I’ve ever done, and as scary—both at the same time. I’ll be relieved if I can see Matthew again and nothing much has changed with him. It’s weirdly
comforting to know he doesn’t seem to be aware of time passing. It makes me feel less guilty about not having the nerve to visit him more often.