Mickelsson's Ghosts (55 page)

Mickelsson nodded. He was sure the car had lain dead in the weeds for years.

Jessica asked, looking at the old man's hands, “How do you do your shopping?”

“Oh, I walk in, usually. Lot of time people will pick you up, you know. Everybody knows us. We been livin here sixty-seven years. Course soon's the car's fixed I'll start drivin again.”

“How far
is
it?” Jessica asked.

“Bowt five mile,” the old man said. He smiled, little fires in his eyes, as if something about her tickled him.

Now the door at the end of the room opened again, and the old woman's voice came out, fretful. Her words were slurred, not easy to understand; her false teeth were noisy. “He walks all the way in and he walks all the way back with a big box of groc'ries. Don't
nobody
pick him up.”

Jessica straightened up, trying to get a glimpse of the old woman.

The old man smiled.
“She
don't know,” he said. He leaned forward and winked. “I fly, that's the truth of it. I been granted the gift of flight.”

“His heart's bad, too,” the voice called. “All them cigarettes.”

“Now, Mother,” the old man called, grinning at his lap.

Jessica stole a look at Mickelsson.

“One of these days he'll be dead on the road there like a woodchuck, nobody find him for two, three weeks, and here I'll be all by myself up here, can't even do for myself.”

“Lord God protect us from crabby old women,” the old man said. He tipped his head up to smile at the ceiling.

“But you do have company sometimes, don't you?” Jessica asked, leaning forward again. “I thought I saw car tracks out by the road in front, as if somebody had been here not too long ago—yesterday, maybe, or last night.”

The old man thought about it, grinding out his cigarette in an aluminum frozen-pie plate on the floor beside his boot, then shook his head. “Nope.”

“You sure?” Mickelsson asked. His voice was accidentally stern. “I noticed them myself.”

The old man lifted his chin, his eyes narrowed, on guard. “Ain't seen nobody in a week,” he said. “Mebby that car that sets and watches us.”

“More like a month,” the old woman shouted from her place behind the door.

Mickelsson frowned. “Maybe just somebody turning around in your driveway,” he said. “What kind of car is it?”

“Kids, mebby,” the old man said, and nodded. “I don't go out and mess with 'em.”

Now Jessica stood up, her movements too smooth and restrained, as if she thought herself in danger. “Well,” she said, “it certainly was nice of you to invite us in. If there's ever anything we can do for you—that is, anything Peter …”

“We get a lot of kids up here,” the old man said. He spoke quickly and peevishly, lest they not let him say it. He too got up, bending far forward, pushing down hard on the sides of the chairseat with his arms. “Give 'em half a chance, they'll burn you out.”

“Really?” Mickelsson asked. Now he too was standing.

“Yup. They got a gang. Burn people's houses and barns down for money. Whole thing was in the Seskehenna paper.”

“And you think—” Jessica began.

He was leading them back through the kitchen now, making his way between garbage bags. “That's right,” he said. “But tell the truth, they don't scare me. We're pretty well protected.” He turned, head bowed, to smile back at them. “See this?” he said. He reached up to seize a rope near the kitchen door—a dark, frayed rope that went up into a hole in the ceiling above. “Give this rope a good jerk,” he said—he suggested a pull without carrying it out, then pointed through the grimy kitchen window—“and out there in the dog-house the door on the side there pulls open, and out they tumble.”

Jessica leaned down by the window, pressing her hands against her knees, to look. “Are they dangerous?” she asked. Even bent over she was taller than old Sprague.

“Wal,” the old man said, smiling, “there's worse dogs and better dogs, but I'll tell you this: they're hungry.”

Mickelsson said, “You really think there's somebody that wants your house burned down?”

“Sure I do!” Though he continued to smile, his cheek twitched. He reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, and his knobby fingers came out with just one, as if he had them in there loose. “There's Dudak and Pearson—they'd like to get my land if they could grab it off cheap. And there's the doc.” He raised his eyes to meet Mickelsson's, then smiled, pretending the look was not a challenge. “She's a killer—that's right. Believe me, I know! And
she
knows I can prove it in a court of law. We been goin at it a long time now, her 'n' me.” He hesitated, studying Mickelsson, still smiling. “She stole that house, ya know. Stole it right from under my shoes.”

“My place?” Mickelsson asked.

“That's it.”

Jessica asked, “What happened?”

The old man held a match to his cigarette and sucked in, then coughed. When he was able to talk again, he said, “It's a long story, but the long and short of it is, there was some taxes on the place and she paid 'em and took it, just like that.”

“You couldn't afford—” Jessica began.

“She was quicker, that's all,” the old man snapped. “Got there to the courthouse before I ever knowed what was doin.” Again a coughing fit came over him, ragged smoke-clouds spewing from his lungs with each cough.

“Hmm,” Jessica said. She had her hand extended toward him, getting ready to say good-bye, but now she changed her mind.

“Don't matter. Comin to the end of it,” the old man said. “She's got a hex on 'er.”

“She's got—” Mickelsson began, drawing back a little.

“Never mind who put it,” the old man said, then laughed, eyes crazily merry. “People just never do learn, do they?” He seized the doorknob, turned it, and opened the door for them. “Glad you folks come up,” he said, bobbing his head at Jessica, then at Mickelsson. “Now don't be strangers!”

Across from the porch, the bony hounds were leaping at the fence again, snapping and barking as if in rage and despair. Powdery dust clouded at their feet, obscuring the head on the floor.

“Shet
ap!”
the old man yelled, and flapped his arms at them, to no avail. To Jessica he said, “Say hello to the ghosts for me, missus.”

“I will,” she said, forcing a smile. She stood looking out at the dogs.

“Don't you folks fool with 'em,” the old woman's voice called from somewhere nearby. “You leave
them
alone, the spirits'll leave
you
alone!”

“We'll be careful,” Mickelsson called. “So long!” He waved, in case the old woman was somewhere where she could see him.

“Take care, now,” the old man said, and reached as if toward a cap. “I'll be seein ya.” He winked. “Someday ye'll look up in the sky and there I'll be.” He flapped his arms like a bird.

Jessica smiled. “All right,” she said.

They crossed to the Jeep, neither of them glancing at the head thrown to the dogs. When the motor caught, Mickelsson waved one last time, then backed out. At the road he stopped, shifted into low, ready to start back down the mountain, but Jessica said, “Look, Pete! Look at the snow in the woods! It's full of paw-prints!”

He saw that it was true. “He must've freed them for a while,” he said. “Presumably sometime after last night's snowfall.”

“Or sicked them on someone,” Jessica said.

“Like for instance the doc,” Mickelsson said, slowly nodding.

In his mind's eye he saw the black dogs bounding along like deer beside the doctor's car. He saw Pearson's ram jerk his head up suddenly as the dogs came flying through the fenced-in yard, bellowing, and saw the ram take off, heading in blind terror for wherever the dogs were not.

“Yes,” Mickelsson said, and nodded. “That must be what happened.”

They sat side by side on the couch in his livingroom, staring into the crackling, sputtering fire in the open-doored stove, Jessica with her shoes off, one foot tucked up under her, the back of her head resting lightly on Mickelsson's arm. Her face was solemn, like that of a child listening to the stories of a grandfather. When he moved his hand on her shoulder or arm, she did not stop him. His groin ached dully, and every now and then a light shiver passed over him. Her left arm lay along his right upper leg. He concentrated on willing her to move her hand to his crotch. No luck.

Except for the fireplace and the nightlight in the kitchen, the whole house was dark. Outside, it was snowing a little. Jessica's sherry glass sat untouched on the glass coffeetable, Mickelsson' abandoned martini beside it. How she'd gotten him on the subject of the ghosts Mickelsson couldn't remember.

“So what was it like?” she asked. “He just came into the bedroom and looked at you?” Though her tone was impatient, she was serious, interested.

“As I said, I'm not really sure he was there at all. Anyway, he didn't look at me.” Mickelsson touched his forehead with two fingers. The scent of her hair and the nearness of her mouth impaired his capacity for thought. He said carefully, “He said something to someone—not to me, I think; someone he expected would be there—and then he looked embarrassed, as if he realized he'd made a mistake, and he went out.”

“You don't even remember what he said?”

“Something like ‘Are you there?' or, ?ou in there?'“

“So then what? He turned around and saw you?”

He smiled at her bullying. “I don't think he ever saw me,” he said. “I'm not at all sure I saw him either, you know. The mind's a queer business. People see things that aren't there all the time—crazy people, people on drugs, people who are asleep and don't know it, people who've been hypnotized. … When you think about it, it's a wonder anyone's certain of anything.”

“Maybe so, but really,” Jessica protested, “you can tell at
some
level when what you're looking at isn't really there.”

“I couldn't—not this time—though common sense makes me assume it wasn't. I don't know.” He stared hard into the fire, reliving the memory for her benefit—the bearded old man shuffling in on him, staring with near-sighted, red-webbed eyes at the hatrack across the room. “I remember wondering at the time if maybe I was dreaming,” he said. He glanced at her. “Or crazy.”

“What did you decide?”

“I couldn't tell. I think what I pretty much decided was—” He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to make out whether or not he believed what he was about to say, not that it mattered, then finished: “It wasn't craziness. Something real, possibly not a ghost. It could be, I think, that I was tuning in on something from the past.”

“Spooky,” Jessica said, and sat forward in order to look into his face.

“Spookier than a ghost?”

She shook her head. “It's all pretty spooky, if you ask me.” She considered, then settled back against his arm, snuggling in. With the thumb and first finger of her right hand she caught the wing of her collar, pulling it up almost to the tip of her chin, then letting it fall back. She glanced at him. “Don't pick,” she said, and lightly slapped at his hand. Unconsciously he'd been playing with her sleeve. Her eyebrows lowered and her expression became comically studious, eyes glittering and darkening as the firelight and shadows moved. “You could be right,” she said at last. “I read a book, the autobiography of one of those psychics who work with the police. He talked about what he feels and sees as he works, and it's a little like what you describe. It's as if he's in two different rooms at once, two different times—you know what I mean?” She checked his eyes, though why he should fail to understand her plain English was unclear to him. “He sees the people standing around him—the police, for instance—and he sees something else just as clearly, the way when you're driving down the road and imagining something, you see the road, but you also see the thing you're imagining.” Again Jessica leaned forward to see him better. “Did you feel anything funny? In your body, I mean? Did you feel
old,
for instance?”

Mickelsson shook his head. “Not that I remember.”

“Maybe it's different with different people,” she said. “Are you sure you don't remember?”

He thought of Dr. Rifkin. “I've tried. I can't.”

As if disappointed in him but grudgingly forgiving, she lay her head back on his arm again. “I wish you'd pay closer attention to things,” she said. Then she turned, rolled her eyes toward his, and smiled, as if afraid if she pushed too hard he might get balky and be of no use to her. “But it is interesting.” She rounded her eyes still more. Then abruptly sober: “If only I could make out what it means!”

“It has to mean something?”

“God knows it doesn't
have
to,” she said, “but maybe it does. Why is it
these
ghosts that people get glimpses of? Is it possible they're trying to warn us about something? I know that sounds dumb—I don't mean it, exactly. I think. But why is it this particular house that's so alive? Or maybe it's
you
—something about you, or people like you. …”

“Tell you a different theory,” Mickelsson said. “It all started as a haunted-house story by a bunch of kids, and when I heard the story, being more or less ‘suggestible,' having a history of delusions of this kind—”

She declined the gambit, clenching her fist on her knee. “But I don't think it
is
‘nothing.' There's something about the house that feels … I mean, it's a nice house, it's beautiful. But there's this strange“—she frowned, then slid her eyes at him—”there's this smell, Peter.”

“Probably the spring in the basement,” he said. “It rots the wood.”