Death Trance

Fourteen

I kept the shop open until four o'clock in the afternoon, and considering it was early March, and the weather had been so poor, I was visited by quite a reasonable number of buying customers. I managed to sell a huge and hideous ship's telegraph to a gay couple from Darien, Connecticut, who excitedly took it away in the back of their shiny blue Oldsmobile wagon; and a serious silver-haired man spent nearly an hour going through my engravings and unerringly selecting the best.

After I had locked up the shop, I went over to the Crumblin' Cookie (God forgive me) for a cup of black coffee and a doughnut. I liked the girls behind the counter there; one of them, Laura, had been a friend of Jane's, and she knew just how to talk about Jane without upsetting me.

'Good day's business?' she asked me, handing over my coffee.

'Not bad. At least I managed to unload that ship's telegraph that Jane always used to hate so much.'

'Oh, that thing you bought up at Rockport, when you went out buying on your own?'

That's the one.'

'Well,' said Laura, 'you'd better make sure your taste in acquisitions improves, or she'll come back and haunt you.'

I gave an awkward grimace. Laura looked at me, her head tilted to one side, and said, 'Not funny? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to — '

'It's all right,' I told her. 'It wasn't your fault.'

'Really, I'm sorry,' Laura insisted.

'Forget it,' I told her. ‘I’m just having one of my moods.'

I finished my coffee, left Laura a dollar tip, and walked across Granitehead Square into the chilly afternoon. I felt like getting into my car and driving all night, as far away from Massachusetts as possible west, back to St Louis, or even further. In spite of the constant wind, in spite of the ocean, I felt that Salem and Granitehead were small and dark and constricting and old. A great suffocating weight of history pressed on me here, layer upon layer of ancient buildings, long-dead people, mysterious events. Layer upon layer of prejudice and argument and pain.

I drove south-west as far as Lafayette Street, and then crossed into Salem, passing the Star of the Sea cemetery. It was unusually sunny; and sharp reflections of light glanced off windows and car windshields and yachts. A distant airplane glittered in the sky like a needle as it circled in to Beverly Airport, five miles away.

On the car radio, WESX was playing Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away. I drove as far as Charter Street, opposite police headquarters, and then made a right to Liberty Street, where I parked. Then I crossed the road to the Peabody Museum, on East India Square.

Salem had been revitalized in the same way as Granitehead, and East India Square, newly created, was a clean, brick-paved enclave, with a fountain in the centre in the shape of a Japanese gate. Running west from, East India Square was a long mall of 'shoppes', jewelry stores, menswear boutiques, tasteful bric-a-brac emporia. In contrast, the original 1824 building in which the Peabody Museum had been started, East India Marine Hall, overlooked the square like an elderly relative who had been freshly scrubbed and clean-collared to attend a grandchild's wedding-party.

I found Edward Wardwell in the Maritime History department, sitting in the full-size cabin of the 1816 yacht Cleopatra's Barge, reading a sub-aqua manual. I knocked on the woodwork, and said, 'Anybody home?'

'Oh, John,' said Edward. He put down his book. 'I was just thinking about you. Refreshing my mind on diving for absolute beginners. It looks like the weather's going to hold for tomorrow morning.'

'Not if the storm-god answers my prayers it isn't.'

'You don't have anything to be afraid of,' said Edward. 'In fact, when you're diving, it's very important not to be afraid, or at least to try to control your fear. I mean, we all get afraid. We get afraid of not being able to breathe properly; we get afraid of dark water; we get afraid of being tangled up in weed. Some divers even develop a phobia about surfacing. But if you're reasonably relaxed, there isn't any reason why you shouldn't have the time of your life.'

'Hmm,' I said, unconvinced.

'You don't have to worry,' Edward reassured me, taking off his spectacles, and blinking at me. 'I'll be right beside you the whole time.'

'What time do you finish here?' I asked him. 'There's something I want to talk to you about.'

'We close at five, but then I'll have about twenty minutes' clearing-up to do.'

I looked around. Already the light was fading through the museum's arched windows. Another night was approaching; another time when the dead of Granitehead might appear to their long-lost loved ones; and another time when Jane might appear to me. I was going to stay in Salem tonight, at the Hawthorne Inn, but I wasn't at all sure that Jane's visitations were restricted to Quaker Lane Cottage.

'Come and have a drink at the Tavern on the Green,' I suggested. 'I'm going there now. Why don't I see you there about six?'

'I've got a better idea,' said Edward. 'Go down to Street Mall and introduce yourself to Gilly McCormick. She's going to be keeping log for us tomorrow, so you might as well get to know her now. She runs a fashion shop called Linen & Lace, about the sixth shop down, in the arcade. I'll meet you there when I've finished up here.'

I left the Peabody and walked across East India Square to the Mall. It was growing colder now, as well as darker, and I rubbed my hands briskly together to keep myself warm. A small party of tourists wandered past, and one woman said loudly, in a twanging Texas accent, 'Isn't it marvelous'? You can just feel that 18th-century atmosphere.'

Linen & Lace was a small, elegant, expensive little shop selling high-collared Princess-Diana style dresses with bows and ruffles and muttonchop sleeves. An extremely svelte black girl directed me to the back of the shop with a long blood-red fingernail; and there I found Gilly McCormick, tying up a gift parcel for a tired-looking Boston matron in a moulting mink.

Gilly was tall, with curly brunette hair, and a striking high-cheek-boned face. She wore one of her own linen blouses, with a ruffled lace bodice, but it did nothing to conceal the fullness of her breasts, or the slimness of her waist. She wore a charcoal-gray calf-length skirt, and fashionably small black boots. Pixie boots, Jane always used to call them.

'Can I help you?' she said, when the Boston matron had flustered out of the shop.

I held out my hand. 'I'm John Trenton. Edward Ward-well told me to come down and make myself known to you. Apparently we're diving together tomorrow.'

'Oh, well, hi,' she smiled. She had eyes the colour of glace chestnuts, and a little dimple on her right cheek. I decided that if this was going to be the quality of the company I was going to be keeping when I went diving, then I might very well become something of a sub-aqua enthusiast.

'Edward told me you bought that watercolour of the D.D. the other day,' said Gilly. 'He totally forgot about the auction, you know; he was here, helping me put up one of my displays. He was so mad when he came back here and told me you'd bought it. "That damn stuffy guy!" he was shouting. "I offered him $300 and all he did was tell me I could borrow it." '

'Edward's very involved with this theory about the David Dark, isn't he?' I said.

'You're allowed to say «obsessed» if you want to,' smiled Gilly. 'Edward won't mind. He admits he's obsessed, but that's only because he really believes he's right.'

'And what do you think?'

‘I’m not sure. I think I agree with him; although I'm not too sure about all these apparitions in Granitehead. I've never actually met anyone who's ever seen one. I mean, it could be a kind of mass hysteria, couldn't it, like the witch-trials were?'

I looked at her carefully. 'You know about me, and the homicide charge they made against me?' I asked her.

Gilly blushed a little, and nodded. 'Yes, I read about that in the Evening News.'

'Well, whatever it says in the Evening News, let me tell you one certain fact, apart from the one certain fact that it wasn't me who murdered that woman. The fact is that one of those apparitions was there that night. I saw it with my own eyes; and it's my belief that it killed her.'

Gilly stared at me for a very long time, obviously trying to decide whether I was a freak or a fruitcake. She probably wasn't aware of it, but her body language clearly gave her trepidation away: she crossed her arms across her breasts.

'Right,' I said, without smiling. 'Now you think I'm a maniac. Maybe I shouldn't have told you.'

'Oh, no,' she stammered, 'I mean, that's quite all right. I mean, I don't think you're a maniac at all. I just think that — '

She hesitated, and then she said, 'Well, I just think that ghosts are kind of hard to believe.'

'I know that. I didn't believe in them either, until I saw one.'

'You really saw a ghost?'

I nodded. 'I really genuinely saw a ghost. It was Mr Edgar Simons, the dead woman's late husband. He was like — I don't know, electricity. A man made out of high-voltage electricity. It's hard to describe.'

'But why did he kill her?'

'I don't know. I haven't any idea. Perhaps he was getting his revenge for something she'd done to him when he was alive. It's impossible to say.'

'And you actually saw him?'

'I actually saw him.'

Gilly swept back her curls with her hand. 'Edward's always saying that Granitehead is haunted. I don't think that any of the rest of us really believe him; at least we haven't, up until now. He's a kind of an odd duck, if you know what I mean. Very deeply into the Salem witch-scare, and Cotton Mather, and all the peculiar occult sects that kept cropping up in Massachusetts during the 18th century.'

I leaned against the counter and folded my arms. 'I'm not the only person in Granitehead who's been seeing ghosts. The guy who runs the Granitehead Market, that's my local store, he's been seeing his dead son. And, if you ask me, a whole lot of people in Granitehead have been seeing their dead relatives for a long time, but not saying anything about it.'

That's what Edward believes. But why shouldn't they say anything about it?'

'Would you, if your dead husband or wife turned up on your doorstep one night? Who would believe you? And if anybody did believe you, the first thing you'd know, you'd have newspapers and TV and ghost-hunters and rubberneckers all gathering around your house like a flock of buzzards. That's why it's all been so secret. Granitehead people, the old Granitehead people, they've known all about it for years, maybe hundreds of years. That's what I think, at least. But they're purposely keeping it quiet. They want tourists, not psychic hyenas.'

'Well, gee,' said Gilly, at a loss for words. Then she looked at me, and shook her head, and said, 'You've actually seen a ghost. A real live ghost. Or real dead ghost, I guess I ought to say.'

'Let me tell you this,' I said. 'I just pray that you don't get to see one, too. They're not at all pleasant, not in any way at all.'

We chatted for a little while longer. Gilly told me about the shop, and how she had come to open it. She had studied fashion and textiles at Salem State, and then, with a $150,000 legacy from her grandfather, and some extra finance from the Shawmut-Merchants Bank, opened up a small fashion shop out at Hawthorne Square Shopping Centre. Business had been so good that when a lease had become available in the centre of Salem itself, she had 'seized it with all ten claws,' as she put it.

‘I’m independent,' she said. 'An independent business lady selling my own designs. What more could I want?'

'You married?' I asked her.

'Are you kidding? I don't even have time for boyfriends. Do you know what I have to do this evening? I have to drive over to Middleton to collect a whole lot of lace day-dresses that are being hand-sewn for me by two old New England spinsters. If I don't do it tonight, they won't be in the shop in time for tomorrow, and tomorrow's Saturday.'

'All work and no play,' I remarked.

To me, work is play,' she retorted. 'I love my work. It's my whole life. It completely fulfils me.'

'But you are coming diving tomorrow.'

'Oh, sure. I do like to prove that I'm as good as a man in other areas as well.'

'Did I say you weren't as good as a man?'

She blushed. 'You know what I mean.'

At that moment, Edward came into the shop, carrying an untidy collection of papers and books. 'Sorry to keep you,' he said, trying to rearrange his papers and scratch his ear at the same time. 'The Director wanted to make sure that everything was ready for the Jonathan Haraden exhibition tomorrow. Do you want that drink now?'

'Sure,' I said. 'How about you, Gilly? Do you want to come?'

'I have to be in Middleton by seven,' she said. "Then I have to get back to press all the dresses and price them.'

'Drop into the Hawthorne on your way back, then,' I asked her. ‘I’ll still be in the Tavern.'

‘I’ll try.'

We left Gilly at Linen & Lace and walked over to Liberty Street to collect my car. 'She's an interesting girl, Gilly,' said Edward. 'Underneath that good-looking exterior she's got herself a real tough business brain. That's women's liberation at its best. Can you guess how old she is?'

'I don't know. Twenty-four maybe, twenty-five.'

'You didn't look at the skin closely enough, or the figure. She's just turned twenty.'

'Are you putting me on?'

'You wait until tomorrow, when you see her in a bathing-costume. Then you'll realize.'

'Do you fancy her?' I asked him.

Edward shrugged. 'She's too dynamic for me. Too much of a go-getter. I prefer the dreamy young college-girl types, you know, mulled cider in front of the fire, poetry by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Led Zeppelin on the stereo.'

'Did you ever get stuck in your era.'

Edward laughed. 'Maybe I did, too.'

We managed to arrive at the Tavern on the Green at the Hawthorne Inn just as one of the tables in front of the fireplace was being vacated. The Tavern was crowded with homegoing businessmen and shop people, a warm oak-panelled room decorated with pictures of ships and maritime chinaware. I ordered Chivas Regal and Edward asked for a beer.

'I have to tell you something,' I said. 'Something which I omitted to tell you yesterday, for personal reasons, I guess.'

Edward sat forward in his chair and laced his hands together. 'If it's going to make it any easier, I think I already know what you're going to say.'

'For the past three nights,' I told him, ‘I’ve been visited by an apparition of Jane, my dead wife. The first night, I didn't see anything, but I heard her swinging on the garden-swing. The next night I actually saw her there. Last night, after you'd left, I saw her again. She came into my bedroom.'

Edward looked at me with concern. 'I see,' he said, thoughtfully. 'Well, I can understand why you didn't want to tell me. Not many people do, not at first. Did she my anything to you? Did she give you any kind of message? Were you able to communicate with her in any way?'

'She — spoke my name a few times. Then she asked me to make love to her.'

'Yes,' Edward nodded. 'Several people have had that experience. Go on. What else did she do? Did she actually make love to you?'

'I had — well, I don't know what to call it. I had some kind of a sexual experience. It was extremely cold. I'll never forget how cold it was. Do you remember in The Exorcist how the room got so cold? It reminded me of that. It all ended when I saw her as she must have been when she was involved in her car crash. You know — blood, bones — it scared the living hell out of me.'

'Is that why you're not going back to Granitehead tonight?'

'Do you blame me?'

'Of course not. I want you calm for tomorrow, anyway, when we dive. Anxiety leads to stress, and stress leads to mistakes. You don't want to drown your first time out.'

'I wish you'd stop being so damned optimistic about this dive.'

A waitress in a black tuxedo vest and black bow-tie brought us our drinks. While Edward sampled his beer, I took out my ballpen and said, 'There's something else. A kind of written message, burned on the sheets of the bed. It was still there this morning.'

I wrote on my paper coaster the letters that had appeared on my bed, copying them as exactly as I could. SALVAGE. I pushed them over to Edward and he examined them carefully.

'Salvage?' he asked. 'You're sure it's not "savage"?'

'No. It's definitely salvage. It's the second or third time the letters have appeared. Once they were scrawled on my bathroom mirror, and once on the side of my kettle. It's salvage. It's an appeal to me to salvage the David Dark.'

Edward pouted his lips skeptically. 'You really think that?'

'Edward, when you see one of these apparitions, you're aware of feelings and thoughts that you've never ever had before in your life. It's an intuitive experience, as well as a sensory one. Nobody said, "This means that you're supposed to salvage the David Dark." They didn't have to. I knew.'

'Now listen,' said Edward, 'I know that I'm given to drawing tendentious historical conclusions, but I really think that you're jumping a whole lot of logical steps here without any substantive reasoning at all. To find and bring up the David Dark we have to be analytical, as well as theoretical.'

'Do you have anybody close to you, who's recently died?' I asked him, in the softest of voices.

'No, I don't.'

'In that case, trust what I'm saying. I've seen my own dead wife, right in front of me. I've had sex with her spirit, if that's what it was. I'm already beginning to realize that there's another existence right alongside of ours, and it's crowded with pain and self-doubt and fear and longing. Maybe if we bring up the David Dark, like you've always wanted to do, we can find a way to ease that pain, and settle that doubt, and calm all those fears and those longings, for good.'

Edward looked down at the table. He puffed out his cheeks. 'Well,' he said, without any trace of sarcasm, 'you sounded almost religious there, for a moment.'

This is religious, isn't it? It's all tangled up with religion?'

Edward looked doubtful. 'To tell you the truth, I don't know what it is. If you've actually seen those apparitions, then you know more than I do, at least in terms of practical experience.'

I raised my glass. 'Here's to tomorrow's dive. I don't want to go, but I think I'm going to have to.'