The Frighteners (16 page)

“Help me . . . oh, you mean with my story? Sure, yeah. I’m right on top of things.”

“That wasn’t the way it looked last night,” Bannister said. Even in the semidarkness and without looking, Frank could feel the kid blush. “I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t seem to do anything right lately.”

Bayliss said, “About Magda . . . she is . . . she
was,
I don’t know, a little . . .”

“She was a great white shark, kid. One day you’ll come to see that I did you a favor. My suggestion to you is find yourself a nice cheerleader your own age. Someone who’s a cashier at the 7-Eleven or something.”

“I wasn’t looking . . . she
made me
go home with her.”

“I’m sorry she’s dead,” Bannister said. “You could nail her for sexual harassment. Say, what are you in jail for, anyway?”

“Drunk driving,” Bayliss said dejectedly. “But I only had one glass of claret.”

“After the night you had, I’d get drunk, too. But I wouldn’t drive. Are you getting out anytime soon?”

Bayliss went to look at his watch, then realized the police had taken it away from him.

“My dad is going to bail me out. But he can’t do it until he gets back on land. He owns a lobster boat.” Bayliss laughed bitterly. “Maybe I should go back to working on the boat with him.”

“No lobster has claws as sharp as Magda’s,” Frank said, looking at the ceiling.

“Where were you taking her last night?”

“To save her life. But I blew it.”

“I was trying to follow you.”

“I have one more thing to say, kid. Never try to follow in my footsteps. Go back and work on the lobster boat first.”

“You could be right. Maybe I don’t have the stomach for the newspaper business.”

“If you get drunk on one glass of claret, you sure as hell don’t,” Bannister said. “Look . . . I got to get some sleep. To tell the truth, I can’t tell right from wrong or up from down anymore. Do you mind?”

“No . . . I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Sorry I wrecked your evening, kid,” Bannister said.

Bayliss kept quiet and watched as Frank continued to stare at the ceiling, falling deeper and deeper into a funk. At last he was asleep. Soon Bayliss, too, was asleep in his cell.

The same dawn that broke over the sheriff’s office brought daylight to Holloway Road. The Judge awoke not too long after sunrise; he had been sleeping in a hollow by the side of the road, one of those ditches road crews left behind on mountain roads so sudden rainfall would have a place to collect and run down the hill. The Judge’s dog, Rustler, was licking his master’s face.

The Judge’s eyes flickered open just as Rustler took a grip on the old emanation’s scraggly goatee.

Groggily, the Judge pushed the animal away. “Not now, boy,” he said. “How’d you find me?”

The dog wagged its ghostly tail.

“Oh, come through the woods from Frank’s house, did you? That was some night me and the boys had. We could have used your help.”

He tried to stand, only to remember that he’d lost the lower half of his body.

“Goddammit, somebody’s stolen me vitals.” The Judge gestured to Rustler. “Here, boy. You come back here, Rustler.”

The ghost dog returned obediently and stood while the Judge pulled himself onto his pet’s back. Sitting astride Rustler, he looked like a weird, legless jockey.

“Take me to the cemetery, boy,” the Judge said wearily.

He urged Rustler forward, and the ghost dog carried his master away. “It looks like our friend Frank is gonna need some help,” the Judge told his dog. “And you and me got to see who we can round up.”

Twelve

I
t was late morning in the Lynskey household. Lucy had finally gotten home, after a stop off at the bagel shop to pick up breakfast, and was standing in the shower unwinding as the torrents of steaming-hot water poured over her. She had just shampooed her hair and was rinsing conditioner from her eyes when she suddenly froze. She stared at the glass of the shower stall.

The letter
L
was being drawn in the condensation by an invisible finger. Lucy backed away from the glass as the letters
U, C,
and
Y
followed.

“Ray?” she asked nervously. “Are you here?”

The word
yes
appeared in the condensation.

Irritably, she said, “Are you in the shower with me?” Covering up as best she could with a washcloth and a shampoo bottle, she said, “Get out and wait outside for me.”

Ray walked through the door and a moment later pressed his face against the glass. His face was invisible, but the shape of squashed, distorted lips, nose, and forehead were clearly visible against the steamed-up glass. His mouth moved as if he were talking.

Lucy gasped and rushed out of the shower stall.

Covering herself with a towel, she yelled, “You go wait in the living room.”

Ray said, to himself, for she couldn’t hear him, “Come on, honey, this is me we’re talking about. I’ve seen your body before. I love your body. And God knows we’ve taken showers together before. I can remember that time you . . . well, you get the picture.”

Still covered by the towel, she strode into the bedroom and started pulling on clothes.

Suddenly she yelled, “Get outta here, Ray.”

The window blinds pulled down. The key turned in the lock. And the shape of Ray pressed into the bed. The pillow creased. The sheet indented as the invisible Ray patted the bed firmly with his hand.

Lucy shook her head as she pulled her jeans on. “Get off my bed. Yes, you heard me right:
my
bed. I own it all now and I mean to hang on to it. I could be living a lot better except you blew that sixteen thousand I entrusted you with.”

Ray got off the bed. His impression disappeared. He looked around the room, cataloging the changes she had made since his demise.

Again unheard, he said, “Where’s my rowing machine? Where are my clothes.” He prowled around, pulling open drawers. “Where did all those black panties come from? You always wore pink or white.”

Although Lucy couldn’t see or hear him, she got the last message. She slammed her panty drawer on his hand. He howled with pain, even though his hand passed through the wood and the pain was mostly psychological.

“Keep your hands outta my drawers, Ray. If you want to get your rocks off, take the bus to Portland and haunt your nineteen-year-old aerobics instructor.”

Ray stood in the center of the room, looking disconsolate. His appearance was more decomposed than it had been when he first became an emanation. Ectoplasm was running down his face.

“I don’t want you around me,” she said, searching the room for her car keys. “I don’t want you in this house. I’m a widow, Ray. Leave me the hell alone.”

With that, she stormed out of the house, locking the door behind her and shouting over her shoulder, “I have to go to work. Somebody has to support this household, and you sure didn’t contribute much. Remember, I want you out of here. And don’t slam the door when you leave!”

She got into her car and turned the key. Caught off guard, Ray had to run to keep up with her, slipping through the passenger’s-side door in an awkward movement. Clearly, he hadn’t yet gotten the hang of the emanation stuff.

As Lucy drove along he said, “Okay, it’s my fault. I screwed up. But deep down, you know we have a great relationship, don’t we, honey?”

She didn’t hear a word he said. She was lost in thought, a fact that caused her to fail to notice the Mercury Tracer following her at a discreet distance.

Ray tossed up his hands. “Honey,” he said, “it’s just that lately . . . I don’t feel you’ve been giving it one hundred percent.”

Lucy drove on, oblivious to his presence.

“I know I haven’t always been the perfect husband,” he continued. “And maybe you could have done better than me, you being a doctor and all. I mean, how many doctors are married to personal trainers? By all rights you should have married a top doctor at one of the big medical centers, a urologist or something. And that’s what your mother always wanted you to do. I can remember
those
conversations like they happened yesterday.”

She made the turn into the parking lot of the Fairwater Medical Center and pulled into the parking spot marked with a sign reading
DR. L. LYNSKEY.

The medical center was a smallish, white stucco building on the outskirts of the business district. It was office for several specialists in obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, and reproductive endocrinology and fertility. It had a large cryolab with walk-in freezer space large enough to accommodate the center’s growing in vitro fertilization program, as well as a well-equipped medical testing lab.

With Ray tagging along, Lucy hurried through the back door and along a busy corridor—stopping every ten feet, it seemed, to accept the condolences of one or another staff member or patient—until she got to the reception desk.

“Hi, Mary,” she said to the combination receptionist and insurance biller.

“Dr. Lynskey, what are you doing here?” the older woman asked.

“I needed to do something. It was tough sitting around the house.”

“I know, dear. You must miss your husband so.”

“She does, I can feel it,” Ray said, but of course no one heard him.

“The house must feel so empty,” Mary continued.

“Actually, it seems crowded to me right about now,” Lucy said, thinking of Ray’s ghost.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Mary said, “I’m sure that if you do something like buy new furniture, the house will seem all fresh and new to you.”

“I was thinking of doing that,” Lucy said. “For one thing, the bed reminds me of Ray.”

“You poor thing. You should put it right out in the street and let the garbage men pick it up.”

“That’s an idea.”

“Or else you could hold a yard sale. That’s the best way to get rid of old junk. And there’s another good thing about it . . .”

“What’s that?” Lucy asked.

“You might meet a few fellas.”

Ray turned green. This was a prospect he didn’t want to face, being an emanation forced to watch his widow get on with her love life.

“She doesn’t need anyone new,” he said. “She has me.”

“You know, I think that’s a good idea,” Lucy said.

“I knew you’d like it, Dr. Lynskey, we’ve been so worried about you ever since we heard what happened to your husband. All I can say is, thank God you’re all right.”

“Aw, that’s nice of you to say.” Lucy hugged the receptionist. “Now, is Dr. Kamins in?”

“Yes, he is, Dr. Lynskey. He’s in the cryolab.”

Lucy headed down a flight of stairs, then walked into the cryolab as Dr. Henry Kamins, a middle-aged man with a kindly face, emerged from a small, walk-in freezer carrying a tray of frozen test tubes. He closed the door carefully, and was surprised to see Lucy walk in.

“Lucy! How are you?” he asked, putting the tray down on a stainless-steel bench that was topped, here and there, with various sorts of medical diagnostic equipment.

“I’m okay, Henry.”

They hugged.

“Have you recovered from the funeral and wake yet?”

“Not really. The police have been horrible. They kept me up all night asking questions.”

“Questions? About what?”

“They think Frank Bannister has something to do with these recent deaths—including, I suppose, Ray’s.”

Kamins laughed. “That’s absurd.”

“I know. I was there when Ray had his heart attack, and I wasn’t able to revive him. And you read the autopsy—massive coronary. So I don’t know what they’re talking about. But anyway, Frank Bannister is suspected in the death of Magda Ravanski early this morning.”

“She’s dead? What a loss.” Kamins did not sound especially grief-stricken.

Lucy smiled. “I know she was a favorite of yours.”

“I know she nearly shut us down by printing that phony story that we were transplanting the wrong embryo into the right woman, and so on. We proved her reporter was wrong and she still wouldn’t retract. The case is still on the court’s agenda, but you can’t win. If you sue the press, they only think you’re trying to cover something up. How did Magda die?”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“So, Lucy, why are you here? I thought I told you to take a couple of weeks off.”

“I thought I’d catch up on some paperwork.”

“You know that can wait. Why don’t you go to Europe for a week, see Paris?”

“Too expensive.”

“Go to Boston, then. Or New York. Catch a few shows and have a couple of nights on the town.”

“It all seems like a waste, considering I really enjoy my work.”

“Have it your way.” Kamins shrugged. “Maybe work is the best therapy. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Soon she was upstairs in her office, poring over paperwork. She put on a disc of Beethoven piano sonatas and closed her door, letting the music and the solitude bathe her. Before too long, she forgot about the possibility that Ray could be there with her, and as a matter of fact, he was, at that very moment, pacing back and forth in front of her desk ranting and raving.

“I just don’t understand why you won’t pay any attention to me,” he said. “Is it the way I look? Is it this ectoplasmic stuff?”

He wiped a goop of slimy ectoplasm off his face. “Does it turn you off?” he asked. “Honey . . . come on, honey—you’re not listening to me. Lucy!”

He yelled. “Lucy! You gotta listen!”

Furious, Ray swept his arm across her desk, sending her papers flying onto the floor. Startled, she sat back.

At that moment the phone rang. Lucy composed herself and picked it up.

“Hello. Dr. Lynskey speaking.”

“This is Patricia Bartlett,” the voice on the other end replied. “I . . . I’m sorry, I’m nervous. I haven’t used the phone for a long time.”

Lucy tensed up. “Patricia Bartlett?” she asked cautiously. “Of Bartlett House, up there on the hill?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

Lucy cleared her throat. “You don’t sound nervous, Patricia. How can I help?”

The only furniture in the sheriff’s interrogation room were three folding chairs and a plain folding conference table. Frank was seated at the latter facing Perry; Dammers was standing in the doorway. More for psychological effect than anything else, a single light burned beneath a conical aluminum shade suspended from the ceiling.