Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River (23 page)

Erika let go of the acting dream long ago. She drifted a bit, then came back to New York. Setting up the tours had been her way of inching back into the theater scene. She’d even enrolled in Tisch School of the Arts. She wasn’t enrolled for acting; she had enrolled for writing. Technically, her advisors at NYU had told her that she didn’t need to do this; her background lingered. Bad videos of her and Roth on stage, doing material she improvised, material she sometimes wrote, would have gotten her the work she craved.

Her therapist said she needed written courage, like the Tin Man in the
Wizard of Oz
. A piece of paper to give her legitimacy.

And the therapist was right: Erika wanted that. She wanted to be real, somehow, not this floaty terrorized creature, hiding behind a tough-woman mask.

Which was why she couldn’t let Hannah go without researching her situation. And now, time was of the essence.

Erika took a break from her computer work and the phone calls, and got some room service. She wondered what Roth was doing; the show was dark tonight, and would be dark for one more day. The actual performances started on Tuesday.

Her breath caught just thinking about him. She had never married, which she blamed on her stalker, but she could as easily blame it on Roth. Despite everything, she had loved him. It just wasn’t meant to be.

How could it? His father stalked her from the time she hit puberty and then, when she was just fifteen, he caught her alone and assaulted her. She told no one about that; she just avoided him. Nearly a year later, he caught her again. This time, he threatened her with a gun. Roth had interrupted them.

Roth, all big and strong and so angry. Roth, who was trying to get her out of the room, when his father turned the gun on himself.

Roth’s mother blamed Roth. And Erika. That measly excuse for a woman ran off when she realized that no one would take pity on her for being McKendrick’s wife. She had died of some kind of alcohol poisoning or maybe it was an overdose just a few months later.

At Christmas.

That was when Roth told Erika he wanted to go to New York. He hadn’t tried acting before that. He was trying to take care of her. At least that was how it felt. Only she took care of him, nurturing him to get him on stage, writing his early material until he relaxed and blossomed in front of crowds.

She had withered, and he hadn’t even noticed. Or maybe he had, and it disgusted him. He had certainly married women who looked nothing like Erika—all tall and busty and blonde. He had dated women like that too. Erika was the aberration, and she knew it.

But that didn’t stop her from feeling like a lovesick kid when she looked at him this afternoon.

Someone knocked. Erika peeked through the keyhole, saw the room service waiter, then opened the door. At the end of the hall, an older man watched them. He made her heart pound.

The waiter pushed the food cart inside, and as he did, Erika stepped into the hall. The man seemed to vanish into his room. Erika didn’t even hear the door snick shut.

The room service waiter quoted her a price and she paid it. If she had been leading a tour of businesspeople, she would have charged it to their account. But schools couldn’t afford that. They couldn’t even afford the extra administrative room she usually insisted on, which was why Markovich lay kitty-corner on the bed, snoring as if nothing had happened all day.

Erika tipped the waiter and sent him on his way. She felt oddly dispirited. It was probably a result of seeing Roth, of all the reminders of the past. She didn’t usually look at older men peering out of their rooms in hotels and think they were dangerous—at least, she didn’t any more.

She had gotten better.

Just the combination of Hannah and Roth made her relapse. She would finish dinner, make sure the girls got back safely, and then head to her own apartment.

There, surrounded by her stuff, she would ground herself, so that she could be stronger in the morning.

***

The next morning, Roth found himself standing outside Brandis Tours. It was a tiny little office in a building that had somehow missed the neighborhood renovations. He couldn’t even see inside. He had to open the door, with
Brandis Tours
printed in tiny letters at eye level, and step into a narrow, somewhat cluttered corridor. A Brandis Tours sign pointed toward the back, past other closed doors, and he followed the corridor as if he were heading into hell itself.

It had been a long time since he’d been in a place this rundown. For years now, he had allowed his people to do errands for him. He had stayed inside a cocoon, and tried not to leave, pleading paparazzi, pleading celebrity, pleading nothing except selfish wealth.

He stopped for just a half-second outside the door that had Brandis Tours emblazoned across its yellow front. His heart was pounding as if he were going to go onstage. To be honest, it was worse than if he were going to go onstage.

He took a deep breath, remembered his lines—yes, he had planned lines—and then rapped on the door. The sound echoed in the hallway. He half expected the ghost to make some kind of snide comment about the vicinity, but the ghost had been unusually quiet the last 24 hours. In fact, Roth wasn’t quite sure when the ghost last appeared.

Roth knocked again, and while he waited, he burnished his lines. Would Erika believe he was just here because of the girl? Probably not. But the girl was part of the reason he had come. He had an obscene amount of money and if home truly were indescribable as the girl had implied, then maybe a tiny portion of that obscene amount of money would go to an attorney who could help emancipate her.

Roth had a hunch no one else had thought of that option; he certainly hadn’t at sixteen, and even if he had, even if his mother hadn’t rather conveniently kicked off, he wouldn’t have had the funds to hire an attorney to sever himself from her. Back then, he didn’t think in attorneys and legalities. He’d only learned that in Hollywood, and then because it was the only way to survive.

No one answered. He raised his hand to knock a third time, and then realized what he was doing. He couldn’t summon Erika through will alone. If he really wanted to talk to her, he probably had to call the Brandis Tours 800 number. But he was afraid of getting an over-the-phone brushoff that he knew he wouldn’t get in person.

Something crashed behind the door. He tilted his head, wondered if he had imagined that. Last night, he had dreamed about walking in on his horrid father menacing a frightened, half-clothed Erika with a gun. Erika had fallen backwards against a chair, then grabbed a book off the floor and tossed it at Roth’s father. That hadn’t slowed him down.

Another thump. Or crash. Or something Roth couldn’t identify.

It was probably harmless. It was probably another tenant. If he acted rashly, he would get sued or hit the tabloids or—

He didn’t care. He grabbed the doorknob, and was surprised when it turned under his hand.

He stepped inside an office not much bigger than his closet. Erika, white-faced, held a letter opener like a knife, her back against the desk.

A man leaned over her, a man who turned when Roth came in, a man with Roth’s eyes.

“You son of a bitch!” Roth said.

Erika swiped at the ghost, but of course the letter opener went through him instead of doing any damage.

The ghost’s obsession had lasted past death. Was it what kept the old man moving? Roth had thought maybe it was a final, misguided attempt to get his son’s forgiveness.

All those ghost rules his father had once complained about snapped into context. Maybe sticking with Roth was the only way the ghost figured he could get to Erika. Unfinished business and all that.

“Get out of the way, Erika.” Roth had no idea if the ghost could hurt her, but he’d seen indications that the ghost had gained solidity in the last few years. Maybe the ghost could control what he could touch and what he couldn’t.

Erika looked over the ghost’s shoulder at Roth. He could see it in her eyes:
Not again! What is this?

“Get away from her.” Roth approached the ghost as if he were alive.

“Or what?” The ghost asked. “You can’t do anything to me. You’ve tried.”

Roth had tried everything he could think of. Spells from psychics. Sage in rooms where his father had been. Destroying the gun. Desecrating the grave. Quoting Shakespeare at the old man as if that would make him go away.

Everything except this.

Roth reached forward and grabbed the ghost by the throat. It was a real throat, except that it was cold and clammy. The skin actually felt dead.

“You’re no better than you were when you were alive,” Roth said. “You’re a useless bit of nothing and I’ve given you too much power. We both wear the chains you wore in life, and I, for one, am breaking them.”

He slammed the ghost against the wall. The ghost’s blue eyes widened in surprise. He had clearly felt that.

“It
is
your father?” Erika said as if she couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah,” Roth said, not letting go.

And then a Fury went by him in human form. Erika, launching herself at the ghost, fists clenched, hitting and screaming and kicking. The ghost was screaming now too, and trying to cover up his stomach, his groin, his entire self, but he couldn’t do it because Roth held him tight. Apparently, Roth was keeping him solid.

Good. The bastard needed to feel just a bit of the pain he had caused others.

Erika stepped back. She clearly saw the damage she had done, but she too had just figured out that it was impossible to kill something that had already died.

Death was a small punishment, one that the ghost had actually taken for himself. But death was only the beginning.

“I’m done with you,” Roth said.

“You’ve said that before,” the ghost said, his voice squeezed.

“I’m done keeping your secrets,” Roth said. “I’m going to tell the whole world what you did, how you died, what you were doing all those years, not just to Erika, but to other girls who somehow came to your attention. I’m going to tell everyone what a coward you were and how you couldn’t face anything, how you were so frightened you shot yourself rather than deal with me.”

The ghost’s neck felt less solid.

“And you’ll have to watch,” Roth said. “The whole world is going to know what an awful excuse for a human being you were.”

“You wouldn’t,” the ghost said.

“He would.” Erika leaned right into the ghost’s face. “And I’ll help. I’ll tell every single thing you did—”

“It’ll be about you,” the ghost said. “No one will respect you.”

“With the great Jaime McKendrick at my side?” she asked. “No one will respect
you
.”

The ghost looked at Roth in complete panic. “Son, if you ever loved me—”

“If I ever loved you, I don’t remember it,” Roth said. “No one remembers you with love or kindness. No one.”

The ghost’s eyes filled with tears. “You can’t….”

“Oh,” Erika said. “We will. And we will enjoy it.”

Roth’s hand slipped forward and hit the wall. The ghost had vanished.

Erika felt the air where the ghost had been. “Is he gone?”

“I don’t know,” Roth said. “But I’ve never been able to chase him off before. Usually he crosses the room and taunts me.”

“Has he been haunting you since…that day?”

Roth wiped his hand on his coat. He had been wrong about the goo. He felt like his palm was covered with it.

“Not visibly,” he said. “Not for years. But he slowly started to appear. And then he got more aggressive. I kept ignoring him. I thought that would make him go away.”

Erika let out a half-laugh. Then she bowed her head, and shook it.

“What?” Roth asked.

“Five different counselors,” she said. “They all told me that I can’t ignore the things that hurt me—”

“You confront them.” Roth had left one of the most recent counselors for saying the same thing. “They weren’t talking about ghosts.”

Erika did that Spock-thing with her eyebrow. “Weren’t they?”

Roth felt shaky. He looked at the wall, at his bruised knuckles, and then his knees buckled. He grabbed the side of a chair and eased into it.

“It can’t be that easy,” he said.

“You think that was easy?” she asked. “Five counselors. I couldn’t have gotten in your father’s face without them.”

Roth let out a small sigh. “That day, I should have pulled that gun away from him.”

“I don’t think you could have,” Erika said.

“I should have kept him away from you,” Roth said.

“You didn’t know what he was doing until that moment.”

Roth looked at her. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”

She nodded. “I had to. Otherwise, I would have been stuck, forever.”

They say that people stay the same age they were when they became famous,
Wife Number Three said.
You were, what?, twenty-five? You’re stuck there, Roth. You’re the most stuck person I’ve ever met.