The Ice Cradle (27 page)

“I’m Anza O’Malley,” I said. “And yes, I can see you.”

There was a flurry of breezes and some shrieking, and a few of the ghosts began to rush toward me. Frankly, irrationally, I was scared to death, so I shouted, “No! Keep away!” I glared directly at them, and they stopped in their tracks. But a lot of them were talking excitedly now, and a couple appeared close to tears. The air seemed to hum with massive waves of released electricity, and it was 100 percent clear to me that I had to take control of this entire situation. Immediately.

I stood up straight and said, “I will walk away right now if any one of you comes near me. I mean it. I will. I
want
to help you and I
can
help you, but we’re going to do this
my
way.”

I looked around. The ghosts who had rushed me—a woman in her forties wearing a tattered silk dressing gown, a man in his sixties attired in a midshipman’s uniform, and a teenaged girl with braids encircling her head, looking like an angel in a Florentine painting—retreated a few steps. The girl sank down onto the ground, and the man rejoined a clump of
other spirits at the edge of the pack. He glared at me suspiciously.

I advanced nervously toward Baden. The phantoms stepped aside as I passed, like Moses through the Red Sea, and I pretended not to notice that many of them reached out and touched my arms and my clothes. I ascended the steps, turned, and faced them. Baden willingly relinquished the spotlight.

“Okay,” I said quietly. I didn’t really feel like going into the whole spiel—me, Nona, Vinny, Lola—but I didn’t see any way around it, so I launched into the highly abbreviated version, which takes less than a minute. It’s a lot easier to explain all this to ghosts than it is to people. Ghosts
know
you’re for real, because you’re probably the only live adult they’ve encountered since they died who’s been able to have a conversation with them. Kids can talk to them, sure, but nobody believes that kids have been talking to ghosts. Live people, as opposed to earthbound spirits, have to take a lot on faith; since
they
can’t see or speak with phantoms, there’s no way for them to check the facts.

In my audience tonight, I didn’t have any doubters. I had people who wanted to ask question after question, most aimed at determining whether I could be of any help to them, personally. And breaking the promise I had just made to myself, I told them everything, even that I could create the white light for them and help them cross over.

The crowd reacted noisily, almost violently, to this admission, and for a moment, I felt they might rush up onto the porch and overwhelm me. I took a step back, and the ghost who looked like Dad stepped to the front of the porch and shouted, “Silence!”

He had to be the colonel. From his tone of voice, I could
tell he was used to asserting authority over unruly subordinates, and he stopped them all in their tracks. This gave me time to close the circle of my idea: I would bribe them! If they helped me turn the attention of the ghost detectives away from the Grand View and abandoned their plans to block construction of the wind farm, not only would I create another memorial for them, I would open the white doorway for each and every one of them and help them cross over.

“It’s true,” I said, when the noise had died down. “I have the ability to open that white doorway again. You remember the doorway, the one you saw that first day or two after the
Larchmont
went down? The one that closed and stranded you here?” The crowd was nearly silent. All I could hear was the crashing of the waves and, now that I was so near to the lighthouse, some squeaking from the revolving of the internal works.

“You’re here because something was left unfinished in your life. I know that, but I can’t solve those problems. I just can’t. I have a child, and I—”

I broke off. It wasn’t like me to be rattled in the presence of earthbound phantoms, but I was, and I had to stay strong. “You’re going to have to make a decision. Do you want to cross over, through the light? Or do you want to forfeit
this
chance, too, and stay here—forever?”

“Is it heaven?” someone asked. “Is it heaven’s doorway?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I can’t see through the light or past it. All I
can
say is that spirits like you seem really, really happy when
they
can see through. They call out to their parents, their husbands and wives, the people they loved most in the world.”

There was someone pushing his way through the crowd,
and as he came nearer, I recognized him as the young man who had been eyeing me. He was fair and tall and reminded me of a self-portrait I came across one day at the Gardner Museum. The picture had struck me as impossibly sad, not just because its subject had aged and died, but because the very colors of the paint were dead, having lost all glimmer of life. The resemblance to the young man before me ended there, though. He seemed possessed of almost fearsome energy.

“I’ll go,” he said. “Use me! Show the others.”

He came right to the foot of the steps and stood there, shoulders thrown back in a gesture of exaggerated bravery that revealed how he actually felt: scared to death.

I walked down the steps as all the ghosts gathered around.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Redmond Mullins.”

Redmond Mullins!
I’d read his letter! He’d written to reserve the
Larchmont
’s private library, to ask his girlfriend to marry him! I’d imagined a much older man, but no, here he was, young and passionate and utterly bereft. I even recalled the name of the woman he loved: Evelyn Brosman.

“Why didn’t you leave before? Right after the ship went down.”

“I kept hoping—” He broke off.

“You’d find Evelyn. Evelyn Brosman.”

A strangled cry escaped his throat and he began to sob. “Yes! Yes!” He buried his face in his hands. The crowd became noisy, some spirits shouting, a few running away, some crowding in close and reaching out to touch me.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“You’re absolutely sure.”

He clearly wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, before he had a chance to back out. I closed my eyes and summoned the light. I imagined the pinpoint shining on the near wall of the cottage attached to the lighthouse. I opened my eyes and willed it to grow to the size of a sweet pea, then a grape, then an orange. I willed it into the width and height that would accommodate a grown man, and as I watched, the light grew brighter and whiter and cleaner, so bright that I had to look away.

Cries of astonishment swept through the crowd as Redmond turned and began to walk toward the light. Unlike most spirits about to take those decisive steps, he needed no urging at all, no reassurances, no whispers of encouragement. He said no good-byes to the assembled multitudes, but as he paused before the doorway, an ecstatic smile spread across his features, and I heard him whisper, “Darling! My darling girl!” Then the light consumed him.

At this point, there was a mad rush. I would never have predicted this, but before my astonished eyes, five or six spirits raced over and followed Redmond right through the doorway! If I had been able to think on my feet, I would have kept the doorway open until every last spirit had filed through. That would have solved the problem right then and there—no ghosts to haunt the Grand View! But I panicked. I summoned my power and shut it down. Several of the spirits cried out in protest. I had to think quickly.

I surveyed the crowd. Several phantoms were hurrying away, either in anger or to broadcast the news of my feat far and wide.

“Sunday morning!” I shouted. “I’ll do this again on Sunday morning for all who want to cross over. I promise! But if a
single one of you arrives at the Grand View tomorrow night, the deal is off! For everyone!”

I couldn’t believe I had said these words! This wasn’t me talking, it was Donald Trump issuing an ultimatum on
Celebrity Apprentice
!

“But the park!” one ghost said mournfully. “The book! Will we have a monument, too?”

“You have my word,” I said.

D
ARKNESS HAD GATHERED
as the spirits slipped away, leaving Baden and me with Colonel Hannah and Mr. Duffield.

“Most extraordinary,” the colonel pronounced.

Duffield eyed me suspiciously. He was tall and broad and looked like someone given to saying, “Preposterous!” whenever possible. Now, though, he said, “This changes nothing!” His handlebar mustache quivered with his intensity.

“My good man,” began the colonel. “Surely you—”

“Surely nothing!” Duffield bellowed before vanishing into the wind. The colonel disappeared with him, and I could only hope that it was in order to try to bring him around to our thinking.

Duffield was the real leader of the scheme, Baden explained as we took to the road. A minor civic official—Baden thought he had worked as an assessor for the Providence tax board—Duffield had achieved in death the prominence and influence that had eluded him in life, chiefly by teaming up with the well-liked Colonel Hannah.

“He won’t relinquish it easily,” Baden said.

“Relinquish what?”

“The spotlight. The authority.”

“Because they’re all he has?”

“Perhaps,” answered Baden.

I paused. This was sad. Was there no one Duffield wanted to see again waiting on the other side? It was possible. Maybe his parents had been cruel and cold. Maybe he’d been an only child, with personal qualities that kept him friendless. Maybe he’d never been in love. Maybe the companionship of the other waylaid spirits, here on the island, offered the most connection he’d ever had. If they crossed over and were reunited with all their loved ones, Duffield wouldn’t even have them. Once again, he’d be all alone—this time forever.

Heartbreaking as this scenario was, I couldn’t think about it right now. I had Lauren and Mark to worry about. As Baden and I made our way along the shore road, we drew up a tentative plan. When the ghost detectives arrived at the Grand View tomorrow, Baden would make himself scarce, hiding out in the barn so as not to trip any alarms or energy sensors inside the inn. It would be up to me to get the ghost detectives to the lighthouse. I had no idea how I’d do this, but I had until tomorrow to figure it out.

When the time came, Baden would make a circuit of the island and alert any of the spirits who were willing to cooperate. They didn’t actually reside at the Southeast Lighthouse, but in sheltered groves, empty attics, and peaceful barns all over the island. He would let them know that we were on our way and that they ought to gear up for a grand, if not positively operatic, performance. With any luck, we could short-circuit the ghost detectives’ interest in the Grand View by giving them more than their money’s worth at the lighthouse.

We walked in silence for several moments, and then Baden spoke.

“You did a wonderful thing for that boy. You have no idea.”

“I’d do it for anyone. I’ll do it for you.”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Would that I were as ready as Redmond.”

“He wasn’t ready,” I said. “He was scared to death. But he did it anyway. It can be awfully hard to leave, even if it’s the right thing to do.”

“Yes. In my case—”

He paused. I looked over.

“In your case …,” I prodded. When he gave no indication that he intended to go on, I decided that the time had come for me to storm the gates. I was going to be leaving the island in a day and a half, and I’d really come to like the old guy. I knew he wouldn’t appreciate my elbowing my way into matters he considered private, and possibly quite shameful, but I hated the idea of leaving him here, stranded on his own desert island when I went home.

“In your case,” I said gently, “there isn’t just one woman waiting for you there. There are two.”

“But you forget, my dear. I don’t believe there
is
a ‘there.’ ”

“You think there’s the light, and the door, and then nothing?”

“Precisely.”

I nodded politely.

“Tell me about her,” I said. “Your wife.”

“Lise and I were married for fourteen years.”

“Were you happy?”

“Completely.”

I gave him a look. From my experience, people whose marriages are completely happy don’t usually find themselves in the arms of lovers. Then again, how would I know? Maybe they do. And besides, how many marriages are “completely” happy?

“I know it does not sound possible,” Baden went on, “but this is true. I had no complaints—she was a fine girl, lovely to behold, kind and honest.”

“Did you have children?”

“No. This was not possible. As a child, Lise had rheumatic fever and her heart was badly scarred.”

Aha!
A clue?

“Did you want children?”

“No. Not at all. I have asked myself all these questions, searching for the roots of my behavior, and I still do not understand what led me to betray my wife. It all comes down to a very simple fact: I truly loved two women.”

“That’s not so terrible.”

“But it is!”