Later

37

Professor Burkett was so old school that he didn’t have tea bags, just loose tea in a cannister. While I waited for his hot pot to boil, he showed me where to find what he called a “tea ball” and instructed me on how much of the loose tea to put in. Brewing tea was an interesting process. I will always prefer coffee, but sometimes a pot of tea is just the thing. Making it feels formal, somehow.

Professor Burkett told me the tea had to steep for five minutes in freshly boiled water—no more and no less. He set the timer, showed me where the cups were, and then stumped into the living room. I heard his sigh of relief when he sat down in his favorite chair. Also a fart. Not a trumpet blast, more of an oboe.

I made two cups of tea and put them on a tray along with the sugar bowl and the Half and Half from the icebox (which neither of us used, probably a good thing since it was a month past its sell-by date). Professor Burkett took his black and smacked his lips over the first sip. “Kudos, Jamie. Perfect on your first try.”

“Thanks.” I sugared mine up liberally. My mom would have screamed at that third heaping spoonful, but Professor Burkett never said boo.

“Now tell me your tale. I’ve nothing but time.”

“Do you believe me? About the rings?”

“Well,” he said, “I believe that you believe. And I know that the rings were found; they’re in my bank safety deposit box. Tell me, Jamie, if I asked your mother, would she corroborate your story?”

“Yes, but please don’t do that. I decided to talk to you because I don’t want to talk to her. It would upset her.”

He sipped his tea with a hand that shook slightly, then put it down and looked at me. Or maybe even into me. I can still see those bright blue eyes peering out from beneath his shaggy every-whichway brows. “Then talk to me. Convince me.”

Having rehearsed my story on my crosstown walk, I was able to keep it in a pretty straight line. I started with Robert Harrison—you know, the Central Park man—and moved on to seeing Mrs. Burkett, then all the rest. It took quite awhile. When I finished, my tea was down to just lukewarm (maybe even a little less), but I drank a bunch of it anyway, because my throat was dry.

Professor Burkett considered, then said, “Will you go into my bedroom, Jamie, and bring me my iPad? It’s on the night table.”

His bedroom smelled sort of like Uncle Harry’s room in the care home, plus some sharp aroma that I guessed was liniment for his strained hip. I got his iPad and brought it back. He didn’t have an iPhone, just the landline telefungus that hung on the kitchen wall like something in an old movie, but he loved his pad. He opened it when I gave it to him (the start-up screen was a picture of a young couple in wedding outfits that I assumed was him and Mrs. Burkett) and started poking away at once.

“Are you looking up Therriault?”

He shook his head without looking up. “Your Central Park man. You say you were in preschool when you saw him?”

“Yes.”

“So this would have been 2003… possibly 2004… ah, here it is.” He read, bent over the pad and occasionally brushing his hair out of his eyes (he had a lot of it). At last he looked up and said, “You saw him lying there dead and also standing beside himself. Your mother would also confirm that?”

“She knew I wasn’t lying because I knew what the guy was wearing on top, even though that part of him was covered up. But I really don’t want—”

“Understood, totally understood. Now concerning Regis Thomas’s last book. It was unwritten—”

“Yeah, except for the first couple of chapters. I think.”

“But your mother was able to glean enough details to write the rest of it herself, using you as her medium?”

I hadn’t thought of myself as a medium, but in a way he was right. “I guess. Like in The Conjuring.” And off his puzzled expression: “It’s a movie. Mr. Burkett… Professor… do you think I’m crazy?” I almost didn’t care, because the relief of getting it all out there was so great.

“No,” he said, but something—probably my expression of relief—caused him to raise a warning finger. “This is not to say I believe your story, at least not without corroboration from your mother, which I have agreed not to ask for. But I will go this far: I don’t necessarily disbelieve. Mostly because of the rings, but also because that last Thomas book does indeed exist. Not that I’ve read it.” He made a little face at that. “You say your mother’s friend—ex-friend—could also corroborate the last and most colorful part of your story.”

“Yes, but—”

He raised his hand, like he must have done a thousand times to babbling students in class. “You don’t want me to speak to her, either, and I quite understand. I only met her once, and I didn’t care for her. Did she really bring drugs into your home?”

“I didn’t see them myself, but if my mom said she did, she did.”

He put his pad aside and fondled his go-to cane, which had a big white knob on the top. “Then Tia is well rid of her. And this Therriault, who you say is haunting you. Is he here now?”

“No.” But I looked around to be sure.

“You want to be rid of him, of course.”

“Yes, but I don’t know how to do it.”

He sipped his tea, brooded over the cup, then set it down and fixed me with those blue eyes again. He was old; they weren’t. “An interesting problem, especially for an elderly gentleman who’s encountered all sorts of supernatural creatures in his reading life. The gothics are full of them, Frankenstein’s monster and Count Dracula being just the pair who show up most frequently on movie marquees. There are many more in European literature and folk-tales. Let’s presume, at least for the moment, that this Therriault isn’t just in your head. Let’s presume he actually exists.”

I kept myself from protesting that he did exist. The professor already knew what I believed, he’d said so himself.

“Let us go a step further. Based on what you’ve told me about your other sightings of dead people—including my wife—all of them go away after a few days. Disappear to…” He waved his hand. “…to wherever. But not this Therriault. He’s still around. In fact, you think he may be getting stronger.”

“I’m pretty sure he is.”

“If so, perhaps he’s not really Kenneth Therriault at all anymore. Perhaps what remained of Therriault after death has been infested—that’s the correct word, not possessed—by a demon.” He must have seen my expression because he hastened to add, “We’re just speculating here, Jamie. I’m going to speak frankly and say I think it far more likely that you’re suffering from a localized fugue state that has caused hallucinations.”

“In other words, crazy.” At that point I was still glad I’d told him, but his conclusion was maximo depressing, even though I’d been more or less expecting it.

He waved a hand. “Bosh. I don’t think that at all. You’re obviously operating in the real world as well as ever. And I must admit your story is full of things that are hard to explain in strictly rational terms. I don’t doubt that you accompanied Tia and her ex-friend to the deceased Mr. Thomas’s home. Nor do I doubt that Detective Dutton took you to Therriault’s place of employment and his apartment building. If she did those things—I am channeling Ellery Queen here, one of my favorite apostles of deduction—she must have believed in your mediumistic talents. Which in turn leads us back to Mr. Thomas’s home, where Detective Dutton must have seen something to convince her of that in the first place.”

“You lost me,” I said.

“Never mind.” He leaned forward. “All I’m saying is that although I lean toward the rational, the known, and the empiric—having never seen a ghost, or had a flash of precognition—I must admit there are elements of your story I can’t dismiss out of hand. So let us say that Therriault, or something nasty that has inhabited what remains of Therriault, actually exists. The question then becomes: can you get rid of him?”

Now I was leaning forward, thinking of the book he’d given me, the one full of fairy tales that were really horror stories with very few happy endings. The stepsisters cut off their toes, the princess threw the frog against a wall—splat!—instead of kissing him, Red Riding Hood actually encouraged the big bad wolf to eat Grandma, so she could inherit Grandma’s property.

“Can I? You’ve read all those books, there must be a way in at least one of them! Or…” A new idea struck me. “Exorcism! What about that?”

“Probably a nonstarter,” Professor Burkett said. “I think a priest would be more apt to send you to a child psychiatrist than an exorcist. If your Therriault exists, Jamie, you may be stuck with him.”

I stared at him with dismay.

“But maybe that’s all right.”

“All right? How can it be all right?”

He lifted his cup, sipped, and set it down.

“Have you ever heard of the Ritual of Chüd?”