The 'Geisters (26 page)

Philip LeSage towered over her.

He was tall—a head taller than her, easily.

He was not strong.

His shoulders hunched around his hollow chest. His arms, thin as broomsticks, were held aloft, as though waiting her embrace. The freezing air goosefleshed his pallid, naked skin. His eyes stared out at her from sunken hollows, and his mouth twisted from grin to grimace as his head bent slowly, side to side—the only acknowledgment he seemed to give of his own impossibility, there on the catwalk beyond the curtain.

“Oh God.” Ann whispered it as the ice spread from her throat and along her nerves. Philip was a quadriplegic. Normally he couldn’t do much more than lift his little finger; he could barely control the movement of his own head.

But of course, it wasn’t Philip.

His hips swayed, his naked member swinging semi-erect between tree-branch legs. His hands settled gently on her shoulders and his face drew closer to hers.

“I couldn’t have you searching the whole tower.”

The voice was a low buzz, from rattling glass and humming wires—the wind.

The Insect.

Ann pulled back. “No,” she said. “No, stop it.”

Philip pulled back too, his mouth twisted around another word that translated, easily: “
Have it your way. I’m going home.
”

He turned as if on point. His bare feet touched the balcony floor, and moved in a simulacrum of walking, around to the ramp that led to the staircase. Ann sat frozen for a time, watching him. When he got to the stairs, he turned back—the Insect turned him back—and he beckoned.

Ann felt like she was encased in ice; it physically hurt to walk, nearly. But she followed. Philip looked like a giant’s skeleton from this distance, with just bits of flesh and tufted hair. His eyes were black pits in the grey light coming from above. Ann joined him on the staircase, and together, they moved down.

Was that why he had decided to stay here? Ann had thought Ian might be lying about Philip’s choosing, but this made sense: the ’geisters offered him mobility of a kind, hauled along by the unseen hands of the poltergeists. Was that what made it home for him?

God. He was so tall.

It had been a decade since Philip had stood; it had been a decade since Ann had seen him upright. He was a giant when she was a little girl, but that had changed with the bed and the chair, laying him flat or folding him up. Now, his arms folded around her, holding tight with muscles that were barely sinew, nerves that were dead wiring.

This must be agony for him.

Philip stepped off the stairs and onto one of the narrow bridges. They had only gone down one floor and were back on the level onto which she and Rickhardt and Sunderland had originally arrived. They crossed the bridge quickly; Philip’s stride was improving—or more realistically, the ’geist’s ability to manipulate Philip’s numb limbs was growing stronger.

They passed through a curtain halfway round the Octagon. It would have been directly above the kitchen set-piece, unless Ann missed her guess.

“Let me get the door,” said Ann, first to Philip, then, absurdly she thought, again to the air around them. But she had to: she didn’t want the Insect twisting him more than necessary. This wasn’t good for him. What was all this motion doing to his spine?

Philip “stood” to the side as Ann turned the handle, and as she looked through, into this room, she realized something. No one had lied. Not Ian Rickhardt, not Susan Rickhardt, not anyone.

Philip
had
gone home.

But for the empty scooter set by the thick burgundy curtains, this space was a note-perfect recreation of the kitchen, living and dining rooms of the Lake House.

Ann stepped inside, and beckoned Philip—or the thing that bore Philip—to follow. It even smelled familiar . . . that still fresh scent of spruce sap, latex paint, and bacon, the last of which their dad liked to cook way too much of.

It was incredible, in the attention to detail—and the totality of the effect.

Philip came into the room. Any pretense of walking was gone. His feet slid across the tile floor, the tips of his toes squeaking like pencil erasers. His arms dangled listlessly. His head lolled, so much so that Ann thought that he might have fainted from the indignity, or possibly worse . . . that in its puppet game, the Insect had killed him.

But he blinked, his head righted, and for a moment he looked steadily at her, as he had countless times. In this very room.

No. In a room that this room strongly resembled. But not here. Not this room.

All appearances to the contrary, they were not home.

Philip hovered and then settled into the seat of his scooter. His arms lifted and folded over his lap. The Insect adjusted his head so that it fit comfortably into the rest.

Ann took a dining room chair and brought it next to Philip. She sat beside him, and put her hands on his. The flesh was clammy. She heard him exhale raggedly. She might have done the same.

“I made a mistake,” said Ann, looking her brother in the eye. “I shouldn’t have married Michael.”

Philip made a quiet noise.
I know.

“I thought I loved him—but I didn’t. And he didn’t love me either.”

Philip looked away.

Ann leaned in. “Have we had this conversation?”

Did he nod then? Or did the Insect?

“Did you talk to me,” she said, “in that dark school corridor?”

He turned back to her and met her eyes again. There was no nod this time, no shake of the head.

But there was an answer.

The room turned icy—and there came a familiar squeaking sound. Ann turned and looked toward the mirror above the telephone. It had frosted over. And written on it were the words:

YES.

“All right,” said Ann, “am I talking to you now, Philip? Are you talking to me?”

WE ARE

Ann stared at the glass as the words faded, and considered that “we.”

Did the Insect belong to both of them? Did the Insect talk to Philip, just as it had to Ann?

Perhaps so. Perhaps, that was why Rickhardt had brought Philip here, to this facsimile of the Lake House, as it looked in the 1990s, when Charlie Sunderland had collected such detailed information about the LeSage family’s domestic arrangements. Ann walked over to the curtains. They were thicker than the ones that had hung in the living room of the Lake House at any time Ann recalled. But they covered a more damning anomaly; there was no window here that could look out onto the lake, or the woodlot that surrounded the real Lake House.

Was that the nature of all these rooms she wondered? Each slice of the Octagon, a slice of memory from . . . a ’geist and its vessel?

The ’geisters had gone to great lengths to quarantine the ’geist from the vessel early in life—so they would grow apart, like two branches from a split tree-stem. Were these rooms, then, a means to draw the ’geist out, from the point of that separation?

And was this room—their presence in it—an attempt to do something more, with the Insect, and Ann . . . and Philip?

Ann turned and leaned against the curtain, the hard wall behind it. The refrigerator door hung open in the kitchen at the other side.

She crossed the room to close it, and as she did so, the upper cupboard doors opened.

Pale blue plates and bowls were stacked neatly—they were of a pattern that caused a sharp lancet of nostalgia in her. They matched the coffee cups that were stacked next to them. The bins that held pasta and rice and cereal against moths were in their place. The refrigerator was stocked with jugs of milk and a big carton of orange juice and a good dozen bottles of beer, and the freezer overtop was filled with tupperwared leftovers and frozen vegetables.

Ann’s hand hovered over the beer.

You could just disappear into this room, couldn’t you?

Ann pulled her hand away and shut the refrigerator door, and turned to lean on it to keep it shut. The mirror in the dining room was frosty again, but for the words:

YOU COULD JUST DISAPPEAR INTO THIS ROOM,

COULDN’T YOU?

She could disappear, just like Susan Rickhardt disappeared. Like the other vessels disappeared; not into some boozy distraction . . .
well not only into some boozy distraction . . . but into her actual childhood—into the mire of
bona fide
, pure nostalgia; life as memory. It was a tempting pact. The frost faded and dribbled down the glass, obscuring the words. Ann looked at her melting reflection. She looked ghastly. Her eyes were hollow and dark, her hair hung in rattails over her face. The jean jacket she’d worn here was filthy, and her shoulders hung low.

She was exhausted, and thirsty, and hungry. . . .

And she had found Philip, which had been all she’d been thinking about for more than twenty-four hours . . . and the Insect too—she’d found her way back to the Insect. She’d found her way home.

And she was done.

Ann turned away from herself, and stumbled to the sofa, where she let herself collapse, into the Insect’s tender care and her brother’s protective supervision.

As she dozed off, she had the definite sense of the two of them—the Insect and her brother—sharing a knowing glance.

Ann slept deeply.

She lay on the narrow ledge of the sofa cushions. She’d thought to jam a corner pillow between her neck and the sharp edge of the sofa’s arm. She stretched as she slept though, and the pillow slid out, so that her neck cricked against the arm as though it were broken.

Ann worried about that, as she observed herself. She was outside her body; as far as she could tell, she was observing from a vantage point near the living room’s ceiling. The dying might see themselves this way: extended from their bodies, their own ’geist, while their heart slowed and stopped and their brain began to starve, and vanish.

Had the Insect done this, as she lay down—reached down and turned her head, just so—and cracked her neck? She could not believe that were so.

And sure enough, it was not. Ann soon observed herself turn, draw her knees up tighter to herself, and twist her head into a more comfortable position.

So Ann was not dead.

But she thought about what Lisa Dumont had told her, and Susan too: that the Insect would devour her. Was this a place she sat now, on the precipice of the Insect’s throat?

Ann worried about Philip, too. He sat alone in his wheelchair by the curtain, head bent to one side. Was he asleep? Ann didn’t think so, but of course you couldn’t tell with Philip. She didn’t like that he was alone. Since the accident, Philip always had an attendant near; the Hollingsworth Centre made sure of that. If he were to aspirate, there would be no one to help him. He could choke to death. They really did need to get out of here. But of course in order for that to happen, Ann needed to wake up. And that didn’t appear to be happening any time soon.

After a time, the door opened. Charlie Sunderland stepped in. He had changed clothes—he was wearing what looked like a long, purple bathrobe, the same shade as the bruises on his face.

He looked out the door and held up a finger to someone. Ann found herself curious about who that might be, and her curiosity brought her lower, so she could see.

It was Ian Rickhardt, also wearing a bathrobe. He lingered between doorway and curtain, hands jammed deep in the pockets.

Sunderland crossed the floor to the kitchen, eyeing both lolling Philip and sleeping Ann. He opened the refrigerator, and bent down to look in. He was counting the beer bottles. He wanted to see how many of them Ann had drunk. She could not read his reaction to the evidence that she had had none of them.

Ian stepped into the room now. He was followed by others, one or two of whom Ann recognized: the thin man from the hotel bathroom; the smaller one, who’d been in the kitchen scenario; the man from the Gremlin, maybe—she hadn’t seen much of him, but a thick salt-and-pepper moustache made it likely. There were—Ann counted—five others, all wearing those bathrobes. They were made of something like silk, and quilted with a diamond-shaped pattern.

Sunderland was kneeling beside Ann.

Ian stepped around and looked down at her. “Is she done?”

Sunderland looked up at him and smiled tightly.

“
Whatever walks in Hill House, walks alone
,” he said, and Ian chuckled nervously. “Yeah. I’d feel better if we could have talked a bit before this. Reaffirm it. But it looks as though everything’s all right. Like a bee to honey, here she is.”

“Pat yourself on the back,” said Ian drily.

The other men spread across the room, hands spread delicately at their sides, as though they were trying to keep their balance on a world with strange gravity. They looked around, as though seeking something out in the corners and the shadows. None of them looked to Ann where she watched from the ceiling.

Ian turned to Philip. “How you holding up?”

Philip swung his head up and made a noise at Ian. Ann understood it to mean “Ready.”

Sunderland went to Philip’s side. He put a hand on his forehead, as though feeling for fever. “You’ve been very brave.”

Philip made another noise. This one Ann couldn’t translate. Sunderland seemed to understand it, though. He turned to Ian.

“Philip is ready to join the circle,” he said. “Could you get his robes?”

Ian snapped his fingers, and one of the men—a taller one, with feathered blond hair, brought a folded bathrobe. Sunderland took the robe and in series of quick, professional moves, wrapped it around Philip and threaded his arms through the sleeves.

Ann drifted lower, as her curiosity about Philip grew, so that she was able to look directly into his eyes over Sunderland’s shoulder. They were damp—from exhaustion, from tears . . . who knew?

Ann wanted to think there were tears there. She looked for some sense that Philip wanted—needed—to be rescued from this perversion.

Don’t let him make you take your clothes off
, Philip had told her, the first time they went into Charlie Sunderland’s office.

He had been afraid of Sunderland, then. He had not wanted to talk to Sunderland at all, about the things that he had seen, in his room. Now . . . now, he was throwing in with them—letting Sunderland put clothes on him.

“
They’re rapists.
”

Ann didn’t precisely speak the words—whatever force it was that had drawn her from her slumbering body, also robbed her of lips, a tongue. But she still had voice, and she could hear it.

So, it seemed, could Philip. He twisted his lips back from his teeth, and swallowed hard, and said, “Nyuh.”

“
No
.”

Ann spun in the air, searching vainly for the source of the voice.

“
They’re not rapists. They are worshippers
.”

The Insect. It was the Insect.

“
They know better, after what we’ve shown them. They remember Michael Voors. They remember John Hirsch. Peter. They know what we are. They know we’re not their plaything anymore. See how they come before us?
”

Ann turned and looked down. The men were forming a circle—
a circle that encompassed Ann’s sleeping body, and included
Philip.

Why was he including himself in this thing? The Insect had destroyed him . . . taken his limbs, his voice . . . his parents and his girlfriend. Why would he worship?

Why would you worship that thing?
Ann called to Philip, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t answer.

“
He abandoned me. He knows better now too.
”

Ann felt the voice at her shoulder. She turned to it, with great effort. And for the first time, she saw the Insect, hanging above her, long hair dangling over mandibles and great, multifaceted eyes gleaming like giant blackberries.

Ann looked into that eye—and instinctively, the way another person might throw up their hands to ward off an attack or crouch down to protect their vitals, Ann tried to visualize the descending rainbow:
Red, and Yellow . . .

“
No. You should know better than that too.
” And over her, the Insect’s mandibles extended—and took hold of Ann’s limbs—and drew her in.

She vanished utterly, but only for an instant.

She felt herself returning to her body, breath returning to her lungs, and her eyelids flickering open—and watching the men in their circle sway, in some fetish-court perversion of religious ceremony. Her mouth was filled with stale bile, the peach-fuzz sour of unbrushed teeth. She started to get up—as though she could physically flee what was happening to her; as though it were all but done.

She fell back, pushed as if by an invisible hand. Her eyes fluttered shut again, and she was in darkness—a freezing, numbing pool.

Little Lisa Dumont was right. The Insect was devouring her. It had been, for all her life, in slow, measured bites. It might have stopped, as she grew into herself. But the work of Charlie Sunderland had made sure that didn’t happen. It had kept the Insect cocooned, let it grow on its own, even as it sucked the life—the soul—out of Ann.

But then she thought—that wasn’t quite right.

The Insect wasn’t some alien species, come in a shipping crate from far-off lands to denude Ann’s being like the bark off a tree. It was a part of her—at its most removed, a vestigial twin. Or perhaps, a purer part of herself—a part unsullied by the daily exposure to the world that ground at Ann, the rest of her, as she made her way through it. And had she rejoined the Insect now, newly innocent herself, having passed through her flesh as though it were a filter?

Was the act of that moment—a matter of purification?

“
None of us are pure
.”

“
What do you mean?
”

“
Oh Ann. Remember.
”

The Lake House living room. Again. But empty. The curtains were half-drawn, and the remains of afternoon sunlight streamed in.

She could see the lake—and the boat, the
Bounty II
, hauled up onto the shore, mast cracked, gouged hull covered in a shrink-wrap tarpaulin. A TV was on in the basement. Something with a laugh track.

She was not drawn to it.

There were other sounds. The Lake House was young, and its bones were still hardening, setting into themselves. Softly, in the corners, it moaned.

Upstairs a faucet turned, and the pipes hummed behind the walls.

She thought about taking hold of those pipes—of bending the copper, snapping it, stopping the water. She could do it if she wanted to.

She didn’t want to.

She moved from the living room, past the kitchen, and into the stairwell of the Lake House.

Ann’s father sat on the stairs. He was wearing a pair of dark wool dress pants and a white shirt, top button undone. Tufts of hair poked out. His elbows were propped on his knees, his hands hung limp in front of him, and he stared ahead, into the empty front vestibule. He seemed very young. His hair was dark, and too shaggy; he had put off his haircut for a few weeks too long. His eyes were blinking rapidly. His mouth hung.

She was curious about that. But they didn’t linger to satisfy it.

Ann had no say. She may have once. But this was nothing but memory. A conversation, with herself, reminding her of where she had already been.

Up they went. Ann’s father shook his head as they passed, and pushed himself up, his knees cracking as he hung onto the bannister and climbed down off the staircase.

The second floor hall now. Five doors: one, to the home office; another, to a spare bedroom; Ann’s room; Philip’s room. The bathroom. One floor up, and the master bedroom. Another bath. Big windows and its own deck, overlooking the lake.

No need to go there.

There was a long red and green rug on the floor of the hallway. They slid it along—so that it accordioned against the home office door. Perfunctory terror for the next person who saw it.

The bathroom door was closed. Behind it, the shower ran hard enough that steam crept out from underneath the door.

There.

Followed the steam.

Into a room of it.

The bath in here had a sliding door of frosted glass. Behind it: Philip LeSage. Lathering up his hair.

They slid over top of the door. There was Philip. Tall and strong. Eyes shut against the water. They circled him. Ran fingers like rope over his throat.

His hands dropped from his head. Eyes opened.

“It’s you,” he said.

They turned off the water.

“It is,” he said.

They reached, and flickered the lights—on and off, on and off. Then off.

“You were in my room last night.”

They moved through his hair, drew it back from his face. He held his head back so the soapy water flowed down his back.

“You’ve been there before. I know that.”

They withdrew. Philip did too. He sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I’m not afraid.”

He was lying about that. He was trembling, soaking wet and naked, against the tile. His voice was high.

“You have everyone else scared. Not me.”

His backside squealed against the tile as he slid around. He turned the water on again, set the temperature, then started up the shower. He got under the stream of hot water, and the trembling stopped.

“You turned the lamp shade around. You opened the closet door. You left me a sparrow. You kept touching me.”

They thought about stopping the water, or making it cold, or too hot.

They didn’t want to do any of those things.

“It’s okay. You can touch me if you want.”

He finished rinsing off, and shut off the water. In the dark, he found the handle on the shower door and slid it open. He stepped out into the dark, groped around on the wall until he found the light switch.

“If you’re there, I’m going to turn on the light.”

He flipped the switch and the bathroom lit up. Philip looked around, almost disappointed to find himself alone. Even the fog on the bathroom mirror was smooth, unblemished by even punctuation marks.

“I think you’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “I think you’ve been around this family since when I was a baby.”

He took a towel, wrapped it around his middle.

“Maybe you’ve been around before me.” He cracked the door open, peered out into the hall. Satisfied they were still alone, he shut the door. “Maybe from Nan’s family. Mom says she rhymes with ‘witch.’ Maybe that’s where you came from. Maybe you came in with Ann on her birthday. I don’t care. I wanted you to know . . .”

He leaned on the door, as though holding it shut against something.

“I like it when you come to my room. You can always come see me there.”

Could they? They moved in on Philip—wrapping him in tendrils of steam, holding him close in adoration. He began to tremble again, and he did not pull away, and after a moment of that, the trembling turned to a shudder, and he was still.

“You can always come see me,” he said again. “Always, always.”

They believed him.

The bathroom door, open.

Philip, crossing the hallway, heading to his room, noticed the rug, all bunched up. Clutching his towel tighter around his waist, he walked down the hall and took hold of the end of the runner rug, pulling it back straight. As he finished, the door to Ann’s bedroom opened.

Ann. Seven years old. Unrecognizable to herself, with a pageboy haircut and green corduroy overalls.