Apparition (5 page)

In the kitchen, we’re down to essentials like cutlery and a can opener, a half-dozen dishes and a couple of pots. Everything else is packed. The walls are bare except for faint outlines of whatever used to hang there, spice racks or pictures or shelves, and little holes where nails and screws held them up.

I sit on my mattress on the bedroom floor, waiting for the movers to show up. I have my jeans and toiletries and underwear in a suitcase at the foot of my bed. Everything else is in boxes. Everything I’ve saved from my childhood. Letters from friends I met at camp. Birthday cards from Mom. My old diaries—always good for a laugh—and a few notes from Matthew, saying things like “Know thyself” and “Do you have my red pencil?”

A loud bang on the front door makes me jump. The movers are here.

The next couple of hours are a sickening blur as all our belongings are carried out of our home for good. As the back door of the moving van is slammed shut and locked, I run to my bedroom one last time. She has to be there. She has to be!
Mom?

I look out the window. She’s at the far corner of the backyard, standing in profile, looking at something. That’s different—I’ve never seen her standing before. She’s wearing her old wool cap, like she’s going somewhere.
Mom, can you hear me?
Her head lowers and she just stands there, still, like a statue.
For once, can you just look at me?
Nothing. Then her face slowly tilts up. As she turns toward my window, I raise a hand to the glass. I see her smile, nod slightly. But something has changed. Where is that feeling of concern that’s
always flowed from her before? I just feel love. We hold each other with our eyes until mine blur over. I wipe the tears away but it’s too late. She’s gone.

By nine p.m. we’re sitting among boxes in our “new” kitchen, with its ugly dark wood cupboards and an orange linoleum tile floor, eating lasagna that a friend of my grandmother’s brought over. The air was cold and stale when we arrived this afternoon, because the house had been sitting empty for two months. But now the oil furnace is on and the wood stove in the living room is lit. Add to that the smell of baked lasagna, and even I have to admit it’s not awful in here. Jack and Ethan take seconds and thirds like they haven’t eaten in a week.

I go upstairs to my new bedroom and shut the door behind me. It’s at the back north corner of the house. Ethan’s and Joyce’s bedrooms will be the two at the front of the house and the small extra room is going to be Joyce’s office. Jack’s claimed the bedroom above the garage. I was tempted, but it’s only attached to the house by a covered walkway about six feet wide, so you have to go outside to get from your bedroom to the rest of the house. Forget it.

I check out my bedroom window, the sill littered with a dozen or so dead cluster flies. It’s dark out back, but I can see a faint light coming from Jack’s window above the garage. Beyond the garage, about thirty feet back, is the beginning of the fenced field, with a small barn and a paddock on one side. It’s the whole reason we’ve moved: for Joyce’s two horses. Granddad died of a heart attack long before I was born, and after that, Joyce lived alone on a horse farm in Wellington County. She only sold it and moved in with us in Owen Sound when Mom got too sick, back when I was twelve. Ever since, she’s been boarding her two horses, Marley and Ponyboy, at the riding stables where she works. But she missed her old life,
so basically we’re here in the middle of nowhere because she wants to live with her horses again. I’ve never been into horses myself. Maybe because when I think of horses, I think of Joyce.

I turn on my computer. We aren’t set up for Internet yet but I need to see the desktop picture. Good, it’s still the same. Somehow, I’d been afraid it wouldn’t be. Me and Matthew, smiling for the camera. It’s from last year’s math class, a picture Morgan took and e-mailed to me. Without taking my eyes from the photo, I sit on my bed, dead tired and miserable. I think about my mother and start crying, as quietly as I can. She seems gone for good. Like she’s decided she’s not going to worry about me anymore. I feel like I’ve fallen down a well and no one even notices I’ve gone missing.

After a while I dig out my cellphone, even though I try not to use it often because it’s expensive. I pull a torn piece of paper from my wallet. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. I didn’t know why before, but now I do. I dial the number scribbled on it, my heart pounding.

A guy answers on the third ring. “Hello?” He sounds almost my age. That catches me off guard.

“Hello. Is … uh, Mr. Morris Dyson there, please?”

“Yup, he is. Hang on.” I can tell he’s put a loose hand over the mouthpiece because I hear his muffled yell: “Dad, phone.” No answer. Louder, “Dad? Phone!”

I wait, my anxiety growing. Is this a mistake? I hear someone else asking something and the guy answers, “Some girl … too young.”
How rude
, I’m thinking. Then I hear Mr. Dyson clear his throat as he takes the receiver.

“Hello? Morris Dyson speaking.”

“Mr. Dyson? It’s Amelia Mackenzie.”

“Amelia? Yes. Hello.”

I hear the hint of surprise in his tired, gravelly voice.

“I’ve decided I’d like to meet you after all. I was thinking after school tomorrow. Around four?”

“Yes. Of course. We could talk at my house, if that’s okay?”

I think about it. “Well, okay. But, Mr. Dyson? Only because you knew my mother. That’s the only reason.”

“I understand, Amelia, and I appreciate it. I’m at 87 3rd Avenue West. White frame two-storey. Tomorrow, four p.m. I’ll be here.”

What have I got to lose, Matthew?
I write down the address.

W
hen I step inside Morris Dyson’s house, I’m so nervous I can barely look up at him. We shake hands, then he invites me to take a seat in the kitchen and offers me a cup of tea. It feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I take a deep breath and force myself to get to the point.

“Mr. Dyson, there’s something I need to ask you. What did you mean when you said there was something paranormal going on in the barn? When you phoned me after Matthew’s funeral, I had this feeling that, that maybe you meant … I don’t know, like a ghost or something. I just need to know if you believe in ghosts.”

At first he simply stands there, like he isn’t going to answer me. Then the kettle starts whistling and he unplugs it.

“Please, call me Morris,” he says, pouring hot water into two teacups. It seems to take him forever to go on. “Well, mostly I believe in history, and I like telling history stories. Local history, social history, family history. That kind of thing.”

That figures, because his furniture is really old-fashioned, like in a pioneer museum. And he fits right in.

“The first European settlers in Grey County were mostly Scots. And I don’t know what it is about the Scots, but over the years—and I’ve been at this for almost twenty—I’ve run into an awful lot of ghost stories. I haven’t published anything about them, but I keep track of them. I research them. I look for patterns.” Then he pauses and asks, “How about you, Amelia? Do you believe in ghosts?”

I can’t think how to answer that, but I finally say, “I’m not sure.”

“Well, do you believe you’ve ever seen one?”

“I don’t know.” Why did I even come? Why bother if I can’t talk about this? “Maybe,” I say, “but I’m pretty sure it was just my imagination.”

He nods slowly, saying, “I see.” He sets a cup of black tea in front of me and places a small carton of milk and some sugar cubes on the table. “Why do you think that?”

It’s time for the truth. “Because that’s what I’ve been told.”

He looks at me a little longer, like he’s trying to figure me out, then he starts to talk. “I called you last month because I’ve always wondered about my friend Paul Telford. He killed himself in the same barn as your friend Matthew. He had his whole life ahead of him and he was looking forward to living it. I was sure of that. He was in love with a great gal named Janice. He’d just got accepted into McGill, we both had. On the night it happened, he was in a terrific mood. But there was something strange: he told me he was heading off to meet some mystery girl. That didn’t make sense, because of Janice, but he wouldn’t tell me anything more.” He pauses and I look at his face, so full of sadness and worry. There’s a deep line between his brows. He clears his throat, which was sounding pretty raspy, then continues. “His father found him dead
in the barn the next day. He’d poisoned himself with something he’d found lying around in there.” He clears his throat again. “The thing was, there was always this big bolt on the barn door, and he never used to go in there. He’d forced his way in that night. I don’t know why he did that.” He stops and stares into his teacup, then takes a sip and continues.

“Paul’s parents were devastated. Mrs. Telford never got over it and died not long after. I stayed in touch with his sister, Emily, off and on for years. She told me that Paul and Janice had had a big blow-up the day before he died. Janice had apparently suggested they see other people while he was away at university, and he got really upset. Emily saw him after the fight, crying behind the barn. Then, the very next day, I see him in this euphoric mood, off to hook up with some mystery girl. So like I said, it made no sense.”

I’m focusing my eyes on the sugar cubes in their small blue bowl. I start to lift my teacup but my hands are shaking too much. I carefully put the cup back down in the saucer.

“My mother’s ghost first showed up in the backyard the day after she died,” I say. “I thought I saw her working in the garden a bunch more times after that. Always from my bedroom window. Every time she appeared, I got this terrible strong feeling that she was worried about something.” The words are pouring out now. “I ran outside the first few times, but every time I did, she was gone. She never looked up from what she was doing or anything, but I always imagined she knew I was watching. Until Saturday.”

“You saw your mother’s ghost on Saturday?”

“It was our moving day. We moved out to a farm on 12th Line. About a mile north of the Telford place. That morning, she … well, she looked up at me for the first time. I think she was saying goodbye.”

“I’m so sorry, Amelia. That must have been painful.”

I swallow hard and continue. “When I first started seeing her, I told my grandmother and she got all upset. She made me see a psychiatrist. For a whole year! I guess I’d gone crazy and this was the proof. Anyway, the psychiatrist convinced me that I was only seeing my mom because I missed her so much. That it was my imagination. Only … she always looked real to me. She always felt real.”

I stop there. The pain is building up in my chest and I’m afraid I’m going to start crying. I try to pull myself together, straightening up in the chair. Morris stands up and starts pacing the kitchen floor.

“What I’ve never told anyone except my mom is that years before that, I used to see my grade two teacher sitting alone in the schoolyard on Saturdays. But she died in an accident the year after I was in her class. And there were others. God, I don’t know why I’m telling you this; I didn’t even tell my mom about the others.” I turn and look at Morris. He’s stopped pacing and is looking at something through the kitchen window, his back to me. “The thing is, I guess deep down I do believe in ghosts, Mr. Dyson. Even if they
are
just my imagination.”

“Please, call me Morris.”

“All right. Morris. Which is why I’m wondering if maybe there is something wrong with that barn. Something that made Matthew kill himself.”

He turns and looks at me for a minute without saying one word. Then, as if he’s reached a decision, he says, “Amelia, I need to be honest with you. What you’re telling me isn’t a surprise. It’s the reason I phoned you.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Well, as I told you, I knew your mother. She took a night course I taught at the college. I didn’t know her well, or for long, but maybe I knew her in a way no one else did. I knew that she was a clairvoyant. That she had a special awareness. Of ghosts.”

Has anyone ever told you something that takes you so by surprise, it practically knocks you over? But then you realize that you’ve known it all your life, and you want to fall on your knees and thank that person for reminding you of it? It’s as if you’d forgotten something so important that it left this big hole, and nothing made sense until you got that memory back.

“Amelia, your mother thought you were clairvoyant too. I think she wasn’t sure how much to tell you before she died.”

He sits down. Elbows on the table, he clasps his hands and pushes his forehead against his knuckles, almost like he’s trying to pray.

My mother in her hospital bed. Oxygen through a plastic tube at her nostrils. Thin, veiny hands, bruised and bandaged, taped to a morphine pump. “Don’t be afraid, Amelia.” That’s what she kept saying. “Don’t be afraid.”

I finally gasp and let out a painful sob. “She didn’t say much.”

Like Morris, I’ve been holding up my head, but now my arms drop, accidentally hitting the saucer and flipping over my cup of tea. Morris and I both jump up and my chair tips backwards, banging to the floor.

Morris grabs some paper towels and starts sopping up the hot tea, telling me all the while how my mother accidentally ran into him at a coffee shop when he was writing about ghost sightings at a vacant lot that had been the site of a house fire about fifty years earlier. Mom said she knew the spot and asked if she could read what he’d written, and when she handed his article back to him she said, “It’s his dog. The old man is looking for his dog. It died in the fire with him.” When Morris asked how she knew, she said the old guy had told her—the ghost.

I’m trying to pay attention, but it’s difficult. I’m back on my chair, legs sprawled out like a boxer between rounds. I feel numb, like I’ve been punched in the head. Like my brain has short-circuited.

“And for the record,” Morris says, having dumped a wad of wet paper towel in the garbage bin, “your mother was one of the sanest people I’ve ever known.”

I force myself to my feet, working to keep my balance. “I have to go.”