Ammie, Come Home (15 page)

“The book,” suggested Ruth. “You believe something moved it.”

“Apparition D?” Bruce scowled; he looked beautifully satanic with his brows coming together in a V. “Well, that plunges us into the next question. Which is—do these apparitions overlap?”

“Now you're talking,” Pat said. He was so interested that he made the effort of sitting erect. “A and B might be the same entity.”

“That occurred to me. The Thing—damn it, we need a name for It; It sounds like something out of a horror movie—”

“I think of It,” Sara said, “as the Adversary.”

“Hmm. Okay, the Adversary might try to work through Sara first. If it finds her unacceptable, or too fragile physically, it might try materializing.”

“It's not a well-read ghost,” Pat said. “The ones I've heard about are all tall white things. This dirty, dark mess—”

“Is the only genuine specter I've ever met,” Ruth said, with a faint smile. “I've really no basis for comparison.”

“Now is there anything to substantiate the impression that A and B are the same?” Bruce continued doggedly.

“No,” Pat said.

“No,” Bruce agreed. “Possible but not proved. Apparitions C and D—if we call the one who moved the book D—may also be identical. But, whether they are one or two, I think they are distinct from A-B and, what is more, hostile to it.”

“Let's have that again,” Sara said.

“I think I follow,” Pat said. “The entity that moved the book is trying to tell us something. Its action is followed almost at once by the appearance of B, malignant and threatening. And the threat seems to be directed at the person who has the book.”

“It's weak,” Bruce muttered. “But it's the best we can do. The Voice seems to all of us neutral, if not benevolent. D is presumably benevolent, since it wants to give us some help. A and B definitely are not benevolent. So maybe C and D are the same, as are A and B. Criminey. As logic that isn't very impressive.”

“No, but there's a feeling about it…. Hell, I can believe in one ghost, or maybe two; but four or five is surely stretching belief pretty thin.” Pat tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Suppose we reduce our apparitions to two. You have produced some evidence to indicate that one is helpful and the other hostile.”

Sara gave a sigh and stretched out full length on the rug, hands clasped under her head.

“I warned you I'd get sleepy if the conversation got dull,” she murmured.

Pat eyed her approvingly.

“You look like a parody of a tombstone,” he said. “With the dog's head on your stomach instead of at your feet.”

“All bosom and leg,” Ruth commented unkindly. “Pull your skirt down.”

“I don't think it will go down any farther,” Pat said agreeably. “Anyhow, the dog's lying on it.”

“You're a hell of a lot of help,” Bruce said, addressing his lady love in bitter tones. “You haven't got a thing to contribute, and now you sprawl all over the room, taking people's minds off serious matters. Get up, wench.”

“Let's get on to the historical research,” Pat said, stifling a yawn. “Then we can get to bed.”

“We didn't find much,” Ruth admitted. “There's a lot of material around, but it takes ages to go through it.”

“Don't I know,” Bruce agreed feelingly. “I had a hell of a frustrating day myself. The records for that period are practically nonexistent.”

“As the skeptic of this crowd I'd like to raise an objection,” Pat said. “You seem to be basing your research on one item—the book. Are you sure you ought to limit yourself to that?”

“Oh, I'm all in favor of cross-checks. If the 1780 Campbell was named Samuel instead of Douglass, I'd be 100 percent sure we were on the right track. Matter of fact, I looked for Sammie today. And I found one. Samuel Campbell, son of George. Died in infancy around—I regret to say—1847.”

“Oh, Bruce,” Sara whispered. Her mouth had a pitiful droop. “That must be it. Think of it, calling your baby all those years….”

“Samuel was one of twelve children,” Bruce said calmly. “Both his parents seem to have been sanctimonious prigs who died in the overpowering odor of sanctity years later. And, if this means anything, there was nothing to indicate that the baby wasn't properly baptized, and all the rest. With all due deference to your sentimentality, luv, I think we can scratch Sammie.”

“Your day was a bust, then.” Pat yawned. “Sorry. I think maybe—”

“Okay.” Bruce extended a hand to Sara and with one seemingly effortless movement pulled her to her feet. There was more muscle in his languid-looking frame than there appeared to be.

“What do we do tomorrow?” Sara asked, leaning against him.

“I go to the Columbia Historical Association. You keep on looking through the house.”

“That worries me,” Ruth admitted. “Are you sure it's safe for Sara?”

“I'm making two assumptions,” Bruce said. “And I hope to God I'm right. One is that the manifestations occur only at night. The other—the other is that they occur only in the house.”

Ruth was sodden with fatigue; it took her several seconds to comprehend the last sentence, which Pat had apparently anticipated; he was studying Sara with thoughtful eyes.

“You mean—here? Something might happen here?”

“Not if Bruce is right,” Pat said. “You know, Bruce, there is a test we could make.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth demanded.

“Hypnosis. Now, Ruth, don't look at me that way. It's a perfectly valid medical technique, not black magic; and I have done it before. I could do it now.”

“No,” Bruce said. “It's too dangerous.”

“But I've had occasion—”

“It's dangerous because it's inconclusive. You guys talk about your friend the subconscious as if you had lunch with it every Tuesday, but the fact is you don't know much about the mind and the way it works. You could unwittingly suggest all kinds of things to Sara, and her subconscious might obligingly produce an imitation of Apparition A just because she thinks we want one. No. I won't allow it.”

“Nor I,” Ruth said flatly. “Pat, I suspect I'm going to have to make my own bed. Let's get at it, shall we?”

Pat looked stubborn; every hair on his head bristled.

“Very well,” he said stiffly. “Bruce, do you want to call a cab?”

Bruce was gnawing his knuckles. He looked up.

“Would you mind if I just flopped down on the couch?”

“Afraid I'm going to pull a Svengali on Sara when your back is turned?” Pat asked nastily.

“It's late, that's all,” the boy said mildly. “I won't be in the way.”

As it turned out, there were three bedrooms upstairs, and Sara offered to share the big four-poster in one of them with Ruth. So it all worked out, and Pat was suddenly bland and amiable about the whole thing. Ruth was left to wonder precisely what he had had in mind when he made the original sleeping arrangements.

Not until she was almost asleep did it occur to her that there had been nothing in Bruce's discoveries to account for his strange, panicky behavior that evening.

 

III

Next day was one of the days Washingtonians brag about—brilliant, mild and balmy, with only a hint of cold under the soft breeze, like the bones under a cat's fur. Pat had the car windows rolled down when he drove them to the house, and he said regretfully, “It's too nice a day for that damned museum. If I hadn't had this appointment for a month—”

“You've got to keep it. We'll be all right.”

“Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't I bring some stuff—Chinese food, maybe—and we'll have lunch in the garden.”

“I thought you were having lunch with the curator.”

“I'll get out of that.” Pat stopped the car in front of the house.

“But Pat—”

“Look, today I feel like eating lunch with you. Both of you,” he added.

Sara giggled, and Pat reached over to give her a fatherly smack as she got out of the car. Or maybe, Ruth thought, it wasn't so fatherly.

“Bruce may be back for lunch,” she reported, putting her head back in the car window.

“The more the merrier,” Pat said resignedly. He put the car into gear. “What do you like? Sweet-and-sour pork? Egg foo yung?”

“Anything but chop suey,” Ruth said, and followed the car with her eyes as it swooped down the street, avoided a woman with a perambulator, and darted around the corner into the stream of traffic on Wisconsin.

Sunlight twinkled off the windshields and chrome of passing cars and warmed the rosy red brick of the houses opposite, bringing out the precise, geometric patterns of the whitened mortar. Most of the shades were still drawn and the dignified facades looked like sleepy old ladies snatching a catnap with hands folded primly in their laps, dreaming of their long honorable lives. One of the trees was alive with starlings holding one of their mysterious conferences; the squawking, which sounded like the United Nations in the lively old Khrushchev era, was unmusical but vigorously alive, and the sidewalk under the tree was already white with droppings. Washingtonians cursed the starlings, but Ruth had a sneaking sympathy for their vulgar, uproarious bustle. They were ugly rusty-looking birds, but when the sunlight glanced off their feathers they glowed with iridescence as brilliant as that of a sequined dress. It was with conscious reluctance that Ruth turned away from the sun and life of the street into the quiet house.

The living room was shadowy and still with all the drapes pulled; when Ruth opened them the sunlight streamed in, filled with dancing dust motes.

“Goodness, the place is dirty,” she muttered.

“Ruth—”

“What's wrong? Do you feel—”

“No, nothing. That's what amazes me. How can the place look so normal?”

“Yes, I know….” Ruth's eyes traveled from the window, where the drapes hung placidly in azure blue folds, across the patterns of the carpet. There ought to be a great charred spot, the mark of burning….

“Well,” she said, giving herself a brisk shake to dispel phantoms, “I think perhaps we ought to stay out of this room, for all it feels so innocent. I remember that there were some papers that looked like letters in a box in the hall closet. Let's take them into the kitchen and look them over while we have another cup of coffee. Then we can try the attic.”

The letters turned out to be fascinating; they were still reading them several hours later when Pat's emphatic pounding was heard at the front door. He was using his foot, not his fist, as Ruth discovered when she opened the door; his arms were loaded with parcels which he dumped on the kitchen table, demanding, “Where's Bruce?”

“Not back yet.”

“Let's eat this while it's hot. We can warm his up for him.”

Bruce appeared while Pat was still sorting little packages of soy sauce and mustard, and they all sat down together.

“You look particularly smug,” Ruth remarked, as Bruce dug into a beautiful concoction with an unpronounceable name which contained, among other commodities, shrimp and snow peas. “You must have made a discovery.”

“Something,” Bruce swallowed, and the rest of his speech became considerably more intelligible. “But I don't want to discuss it while we're eating.”

“We got bogged down,” Sara said. “I've been reading some ancestress's love letters, and they are a panic. Do you know she called her husband ‘Mr. Campbell' after they had been married thirty years?”

“That's what's wrong with our modern society.” Pat shook his head and spread mustard with a lavish hand. “No respect. Old values breaking down.”

Ruth laughed.

“Gosh, it's a beautiful day,” she exclaimed, in a sudden burst of well-being. “Let's not talk about anything important till after lunch. I feel too good to start worrying.”

“It's partly the weather and partly this damned picnic atmosphere,” Bruce said. He stabbed a shrimp and looked at it fondly. “We seem to spend half our time eating and/or drinking, under the most peculiar conditions.”

“ ‘And, my dear husband, do not forget to take food regularly and in good quantity,'” Sara quoted. “She wrote him that when he was off on a business trip. I think it's great advice.”

Looking at Bruce, Ruth was inclined to agree. He was beginning to develop visible shadows under his eyes, and there was a look in them, particularly when he watched Sara, that Ruth found disturbing.

The light mood lasted through the meal, which Pat cleared by dumping everything into a paper bag and depositing it in the garbage can. When he came back in, he said,

“Are we having coffee or more tea? Whichever, let's take it outside.”

The sunlight was seductively warm. Ruth produced a blanket for Sara, knowing her habit of sprawling on the lowest surface available, and Bruce sat down beside her on a pile of leaves.

“I feel like Luther,” Pat announced, and they all stared at him. “I don't believe in anything,” he explained.

“No ghosts,” Bruce said, with a faint smile.

“No ghosts.”

“I wish you were right.” Bruce leaned back on his elbows and contemplated the sky.

“What did you find out today?” Sara asked. The question broke the relaxed, sunny mood; Bruce sat erect, and Ruth felt herself stiffening.

“There was a house here in 1780,” he said. “Douglass Campbell's house. I ran into a piece of luck, a collection of family letters. The Page letters, they're called. The Pages lived up the street a way, but the family died out in the late nineteenth century and the last Page left the papers to the Columbia Historical Society. That's where I've been all morning.”

“Okay, okay,” Pat said. “You don't have to explain every goddamned source. What did the Pages have to say about the Campbells?”