Starlene touched the wall again just to be sure that the world was solid and real. She was still dizzy from the treatment, though the ghosts had faded the moment Kracowski had shut off the energy fields. Or were the ghosts still there, only she couldn't see them? What sort of boundaries did ghosts observe? Was the deadscape confined to the basement of Wendover, or were the spirits at this moment running their invisible hands across her flesh?
She felt safer here, in her cottage a hundred feet away and not in the musty bowels of the group home. She shared the cottage with another counselor, Marie, who was on vacation. Too bad, because Starlene could use some company, even if Marie was of that peculiar Baha'i faith. Marie's placid chatter would have been a welcome distraction from the memories of the ghosts.
Starlene picked up the phone and called the main building. "Randy?"
"Yeah," he answered, in the same cold manner he'd displayed toward her since the incident with the man at the lake. "What's going on?"
"I need to talk to you."
"You know I'm on duty."
She was careful to keep her voice level. She hated signs of weakness or desperation in others, and she especially despised them in herself. "Can't one of the other counselors cover you for a few minutes?"
Randy sighed and put a hand over the mouthpiece. She heard his muffled voice as he called out to someone. Moments later, he was back on the line. "Allen will cover. We're in between classes right now, so we should be okay. You at your cottage?"
"Yes."
"Wait there. This had better be good."
She hung up and thought about calling her minister, to ask how ghosts fit in with God's plan for the world. What would Jesus do? If Jesus saw a ghost, what would He do? But the minister wouldn't understand, because his miracles were confined to the pages of the Bible.
She sat on the worn vinyl sofa that might have been here since the 1950s. The rest of the furniture was just as outdated except for the few feminine touches she and Marie had injected. She picked up the cat-shaped throw pillow and hugged it to her chest. Something fluttered in me kitchenette and Starlene lifted her feet from the floor and tucked them under her knees.
A mouse. Probably only a mouse.
A knock came, and at first she thought it was Randy, although Randy usually pounded with the bottom of his fist instead of tapping.
"Come in," she said.
Another knock, softer than the first, and Starlene realized the knock had come from inside the house. The bathroom. No one was in there.
No one.
She could sit there scared half to death, waiting for Randy to come rescue her, or she could open the bathroom door and prove to herself that a ghost hadn't followed her from Wendover. Except you couldn't prove that ghosts didn't exist. Even when you had or hadn't seen them with your own eyes.
She put her feet on the floor. A Bible sat on the battered coffee table, the King James version, the Gospel. She picked it up. Bibles worked against evil, didn't they? Or was that only crosses? But what if the ghosts weren't evil? They had to be evil, or else God would have given them a proper place in heaven.
She pressed the Bible to her chest and went down the short hall to the bathroom. This was a job for Ecclesiastes. She sought scraps of remembered verse, something fortifying and enlightening. The knock came again, like an insistent whisper.
Starlene clutched the door handle. The metal was cold as a morgue slab. She wanted to run, Randy would grab her and hold her, she could cry on his shoulder and everything would be okay and all the bad stuff would go away and Running would show a lack of faith.
God in His mercy would never allow harm to come from the other side of the grave. And surely the dead were beyond sin. Even a soul damned for all eternity should have its license to harm revoked.
Maybe these souls were good souls, Christian folk who had gotten lost on the way to Rapture.
The knock came again, vibrating the air of the room. The deadscape experience had been subjective, a strange and short nightmare, a contrived memory that would have faded with time. This was real. This was happening. Before she could talk herself out of it, she twisted the handle and let the door swing open.
The boy was on his knees, his face as white as the porcelain sink. The hand that had tapped at the door was poised in the air, quivering. His dark eyes were wild and lost, his lips trying to form words. The sun cut an orange slash between the curtains, the light parted the boy's hair, specks of dust spun in the air.
"Deke," she said. "Where have you been?"
His mouth gaped. He was a beggar asking for impossible things. She wanted to reach out to him, but was afraid of what he might do. She had read his case history, and had even built part of it. Sociopathic behavior couldn't be flipped on and off like a light switch, no matter what Kracowski believed.
The door to the linen closet was ajar. Deke must have hidden there since he'd gone missing the day before. The cottage windows were easy to break into. Starlene had forced her way inside several times after misplacing the house key.
His silence was eerie, so she spoke in her authoritative counselor voice. "What are you doing here?"
Deke still didn't speak. Sweat beaded the boy's skin, and though his face looked young and frightened, his eyes were those of a ninety-year-old man's staring down a terminal disease. The bathroom smelled sticky sweet with vomit. And something else.
Starlene stepped forward, pores tightening on the back of her neck, the hairs like electric wires.
Deke shook his head. "It wasn't me," he whispered, one eyelid twitching, his fingers trembling.
Then Starlene saw what was in the bathtub.
She put her hands over her face, trying to block the red images that spattered her mind. She backed down the hall, begging her legs to work, shouting at her feet to stop being so heavy, wanting nothing but the door and the lawn and a sane sky overhead and no more ghosts and no red things in the tub and Hands clutched at her before she reached the front door, two or a thousand. She screamed again and slapped the hands away.
"What in God's name?" Randy said.
"In there," she gasped. The words tasted of Ajax cleanser. Randy disappeared into the bathroom, then came back out moments later.
"Whatever it was is gone," he said. "Spider? Or a mouse? We get a lot of mice out here."
How could he not have seen it? Smelled it?
"The tub," she said.
"Nothing in there."
"Where's Deke?"
"Deke? You know he's gone missing, don't you? Are you okay? You don't look so hot."
She pushed past him into the bathroom, bracing for the nightmare vision that awaited. The tub was empty, except for a bottle of shampoo that had fallen from the shelf and her damp towel hanging over the shower rod. No mutilated corpse, no gleaming bones, no blood running in rivulets down the shower curtain.
And no Deke.
She yanked open the door to the linen closet.
Nothing but towels, extra toilet paper, first aid supplies, and tampons. No hideaway teenager.
No dead body.
No ghost.
She turned and went into the living room. Randy followed, waited until she'd taken a bottled water from the refrigerator and downed half of it, then he said, "Not again."
She sat in the thrift-shop armchair and picked at the cotton. "What do you mean?"
"You saw the man again, didn't you? The one from the lake, the one you nearly drowned yourself over. The invisible man."
"No." The carbonated water's bubbles bit her throat.
"Look, Starlene, you don't have to lie to me. I thought we had something going between us. A little thing called 'trust.'"
"Trust lasts about as far as you can throw it."
"Trust me. Tell me."
"So you can laugh at me again?"
"I don't think it's funny. I'm worried about you. You need to get some help."
Her laughter was as brittle as thin ice. "Help? Maybe I've had too much help."
"Tell me what you think you saw." He sat on the plaid couch. The pattern clashed with his checked shirt and sandy eyebrows. His face was square, precise, not the kind of face that would forgive foolishness. Randy was a rock.
So was God a rock. And the deadscape was a hard place.
And she was caught in between.
The ghosts weren't imprisoned in the basement of Wendover. They had been set free by electromagnetic energy or evil forces or the will of the Almighty. The dead had taken up their robes and walked.
"Deke is dead" she said.
"He ran away. He's done that before. Usually he goes to town and breaks in somewhere and steals some beer, and the police find him sleeping it off behind a Dumpster. We'll find him."
"You won't find him. He didn't run away. He ran here"
Randy leaned forward. "Here?"
"I saw him in the bathroom."
"Saw him? But he couldn't have escaped. You've only got one door."
"Maybe he didn't need a door."
"Honey, we need to get you to the main building. You need to see somebody."
"You mean, besides somebody who doesn't exist?" The image of Deke on his knees, skin like snow, one hand holding Silver and red.
She closed her eyes. "I'm okay. I stayed up too late, that's all. I need a nap before my shift."
Randy's gray eyes narrowed. The square slab of his face softened. "You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah. Really. If a shrink can't sort things out for herself, she's not got much of a career ahead right?"
His face split into a smile. "That's my girl."
He patted her hand leaned forward and for a moment Starlene thought he was going to kiss her, but he gave her a brief hug and stood. "When do you go on duty?"
"Four."
"I'll buy you a cup of coffee, then. Enjoy your nap."
"Randy?"
"Yeah?"
"What are you hiding from me?"
"Nothing."
"You work with Kracowski a lot. What's he up to?"
"I don't know anything. Remember when I told you not to ask too many questions?"
She nodded pressed the cold water bottle to her forehead and reached for the Bible on the end table. The wall between them was as invisible as a faded ghost, but might as well have been miles thick. How far could you throw trust? "Sorry I scared you."
"We'll find Deke. Don't worry."
"I'm not worried."
"The Lord is my Shepherd-"
"I shall not want."
He was gone, and the cottage was silent besides the hum of the refrigerator and the soft rattle of leaves against the foundation.
She would have to face it sooner or later. She would have to look in the mirror, to see if her eyes were bright and her skull cracked and her brains sliding from her face. She would have to stare herself down and give herself a good scolding.
The bathroom door stood open. The linen closet was as she had left it. The tub was empty. Deke no longer haunted her.
She twisted the tap on the sink, splashed cold water on her face. The woman in the mirror was pale, eyes wild, but she had seen worse. She patted herself dry with a towel, then saw the disposable Gillette razor she'd used to shave her legs the day before.
The handle lay beside the toilet, the head torn, plastic bands curling. The blades were gone.