Wildest Dreams

2

“There it is,” the little girl said.

I didn’t see the bottle house at first. There was the ocean to look at, so different from the blue waters that washed the golden beaches of Mexico. Two thousand miles north of Los Cabos, the Pacific was wild and cruel. The coast here was framed by arthritic knots of cypress, gray limbs crippled by winds that were as cold as they were relentless. Iron-colored combers crashed against a beach shaped like a reaper’s scythe. The sand was as dark as freshly poured concrete, and the sound of each wave shook me to the bone.

Just like an ordinary little girl, the ghost scrambled over a fallen redwood. I followed. We threaded our way through knots of bleached driftwood as we crossed the concrete beach. My boots compacted damp sand, but the little girl’s shoes left no mark at all.

A splash of sunlight washed the shoreline and I spotted the bottle house, nestled on the cresting cliff that dropped cleanly into the ocean at the south end of the beach.

I wondered why I’d had trouble finding it. After all, it was exactly where Circe Whistler had said it would be.

The sand slowed me down, but there was no slowing the girl. She started up a narrow trail that climbed the cliff, cutting through heavy underbrush. For a while I lost track of her. I hurried to the trail, picking my way through tall stands of beach grass that hid the girl and the house from view.

I was afraid that she would be gone by the time I reached the house. Sometimes it happened that way. Some ghosts have territories which bind them to a plot of ground the same way fear binds an agoraphobic.

But that’s not the way it was. Not this time. When I reached a set of concrete steps and a twisted wrought iron railing, there she was, waiting on the patio above.

The patio was concrete, too. Beach grass knifed through wide cracks that brought California earthquakes to mind, and I suddenly found myself wondering if we were anywhere close to a fault line.

Another look at the bottle house and I stopped wondering. If this were earthquake country, the place wouldn’t be here at all. Composed almost entirely of old bottles set in concrete, the abandoned structure looked about as stable as a sand castle.

But looks could be deceiving. I knew that the house had stood for nearly forty years, since Circe Whistler’s father had cemented the crowning bottle with his own two hands.

Several PRIVATE PROPERTY and NO TRESPASSING signs flapped in the wind, but the house wasn’t exactly secure-there was no door at all, only a battered wooden jam with rusting hinges that held nothing but air. The concrete walls were golden brown with white flecks that caught the afternoon light and added to the sand castle impression. The bottles were of every color, their bases facing out from the walls like startled eyes.

A passing cloud eclipsed the sun. A hundred glass eyes closed all at once, and the wind whipped through the open doorway and played in as many glass throats, the sound a terminal inhalation.

“Some people think this place is haunted,” the girl whispered.

“People believe a lot of strange things.”

She hesitated, drawing close. “I don’t want to go inside.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I will.” She looked up at me, a trembling smile on her face. “If you come with me.”

“Do you suppose your girlfriend is late?”

“Anything’s possible.” We were inside now, and I wasn’t surprised to find that the house’s interior was just as unusual as the exterior. The flagstone floor rose and fell at funhouse angles, throwing off my sense of balance. There was no furniture at all, only a pile of dry tinder heaped near an empty fireplace as if a group of kids had decided to have a party in the ruin only to think better of it as night closed around them.

It seemed a reasonable explanation. Even in the daylight, there was no escaping the spectral wind that played in the open bottles. It sounded like a dying man wheezing through glass lungs. If that kind of thing got to you, it would certainly get to you here. And good.

“No one ever lived here,” the girl said. “Not truly.”

“I can see why.”

The child nodded, staying close to the door. “My mom said this place was like a church. She said there were always people here. Even when it was empty.”

I smiled. “You mean ghosts?”

“I don’t know. I only know that what my mom said scared me. I don’t like creepy places, and I don’t like creepy stories. I guess I’m just a scaredy cat.”

“Stories are just stories,” I said. “They can’t hurt you.”

I might have said more, but that was when I heard the flies.

Trapped inside the bottles, buzzing to be free.

I stared at the wall of glass. A few corked bottles, but most were open. Narrow throats and wide throats. Lips polished and dirty, cracked and smooth…but no flies.

Not yet.

But soon. That was a certainty. Because I had what the flies wanted. They had scented the bloody thing in my backpack.

I couldn’t wait to be rid of that thing, and all that came with it, and all that it attracted.

Flies…and a woman named Circe Whistler.

The woman I’d come to meet. But I wouldn’t wait for Circe here. I’d wait outside, and I’d take the little girl with me.

“Let’s go,” I said, and that was when I noticed that the little girl was already gone.

I took a step back and my heel struck an uneven stone in the floor. It seemed to wobble underfoot, or maybe it was me who wobbled, but the end result was the same. I nearly lost my balance.

The first fly brushed past my cheek.

If I waited another minute, I’d be crawling with the things.

I turned, a chill of disgust capering up my spine.

A woman blocked my way.

I only knew two things about the woman: she wasn’t afraid of flies, and she wasn’t Circe Whistler.

“I was expecting someone else,” I said.

“Plans change,” she said. “Life is fluid.”

“Life is clockwork. Or it should be.”

“Maybe where you come from, but things are different here. Anyway, I didn’t mean to give you such a start.”

She smiled. Blonde and slight, but she didn’t look at all weak. And the way she held onto her amused expression reminded me of some smartass kid who’d just spotted a zipper on Godzilla’s back.

We stood outside, away from the flies. The little girl was nowhere in sight, and I was surprised to find that I was worried about her. I couldn’t help wondering if she’d seen the woman, if this stranger had scared her off “What’s wrong?” the blonde asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I stared at her. Maybe she’d seen the little girl and was being coy with me. Maybe she hadn’t. I couldn’t decide-her eyes were flat and cold, like the ocean.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

“I believe in many things. For instance, I believe that the bottle house is a place of intense energies. Both positive and negative. Souls dwell here. I’ve spoken to them.”

“Really,” I said, doing my best to sound diplomatic. But my new age radar was going up, and going up fast. The last thing I needed was a lecture on energies, or dynamics or “Faith is the key, of course,” she said. “This place was a temple, you know. A place of intense faith. And faith is power. Intense power. Don’t you agree?”

“I’m getting the all-over heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.” I bit off the remark as fast as I could and held out my hand, one last stab at diplomacy. “Clay Saunders.”

She looked at my hand like I’d offered her a bug on a silver platter. “Forgive me if I don’t shake.”

“I’m sure you have your reasons. Energies, dynamics…like that.”

“My name is Janice Ravenwood,” she said, ignoring the jab. “I’m a medium. Perhaps you know my books.”

“No. But then, I stick mostly to nonfiction.”

“I think I’m full up with sarcasm now.”

“I’m not being sarcastic. It’s just the way I am. I only believe what I see.”

“You see what you choose to see.” She raised her hand. “It’s all a matter of energies.” Her fingers did a little dance, and the silver bracelets encircling her thin wrists provided the music. “If you had a sensitive nature-I’m speaking psychically, of course-you’d understand. You’d see beyond the physical, as I do.”

“The physical suits me just fine,” I said, nudging the backpack with my shoulder. “Let’s stick with it.”

“As you wish.”

“Run down the plan for me.”

“You bring your backpack. I bring you. We go to the Whistler estate. You meet a few people. From there on out, you’re on your own.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said. I looked around, searching for spectral company, but the little girl was nowhere in sight. “Seems like I’m always on my own.”

Janice Ravenwood stared at the backpack. She didn’t say a word, but her smile knifed into a smirk.

And then she slipped a pair of dark glasses over her gray eyes, and the sun broke through the clouds behind her, and light caught the bottles and a dozen colors were reflected in the polished lenses of her shades.

She turned and started down the trail before I could say another word.

I followed in silence.

The medium’s Ford Explorer was parked on the beach. “Give me your pack,” she said. “I’ll toss it in the back.”

“I’ll hold onto it, if that’s okay.”

Janice sighed disapprovingly. “Have it your way.”

“Sorry. I have issues. Trust is one of them.”

She laughed, but a wave broke behind her and I hardly heard the laugh at all.

In a moment, nothing remained of the wave but a crust of foam sizzling high on the beach.

“Let’s go,” Janice said.

I got in and buckled my seat belt. The beach was empty-still no sign of the little girl. I sat there with the pack at my feet. Janice Ravenwood got behind the wheel and slammed the door. She keyed the engine, slipped the Explorer into gear, and drove down the beach. Waves broke, but we were sealed in tight and I couldn’t hear them anymore. Just an annoying whisper of new age music coming from the stereo, and the sound of our breathing.

And a fly.

The insect must have followed us inside. It buzzed around the cab and lighted just where I knew it would, on the backpack.

I stared at it. Crawling, fat and black and shiny. Stopping. Rubbing its legs together. Janice Ravenwood saw it too.

She stopped the car and leaned toward me so that her hair brushed my shoulder. In close, I could smell her perfume.

Vanilla-sweet, with a hint of jasmine. It went just fine with the new age music.

Her fingers neared the backpack, but didn’t quite touch it.

Our eyes met. Just for a moment. Janice gave a little sigh, only vaguely theatrical.

Energies, I thought, considering the backpack’s contents. They must be thermonuclear.

It seemed like Janice knew that too. Though her fingers were close, she didn’t touch the backpack.

She was a very patient woman. She turned her hand palm upward, ever so slowly, so that her silver bracelets didn’t make the slightest sound.

We sat there. We sat there a good long time.

Until the fly crawled across Janice Ravenwood’s fingers, into her open palm.

Just that fast, her hand became a fist.

She rolled down her window and released the fly.

“Your good deed for the day?” I asked.

She said, “A wise soul understands the dynamics of mercy.”

For a few seconds we sat there, listening to the waves and the music, smelling the salt air. I guess she thought I needed a little downtime for processing.

Finally, Janice Ravenwood rolled up her window.

She glared at my backpack.

“We really should have put that thing in the back,” she said. “It stinks.”

The beach gave way to a dirt road that snaked through the redwood forest. We followed that road awhile, past the clearing where I’d parked my truck, and then the dirt road intersected with a two-lane highway that clung to the ragged coastline the same way the bottle house did, as if it might tumble into the sea at any moment.

Janice was right about the backpack. It did stink. I cracked my window and breathed the scent of redwood and fern and sea and earth.

Occasionally, another road led inland through the trees. Occasionally, I glimpsed a house set back among the redwoods, but more often than not there was only the forest itself, as impenetrable as the walls of a fortress.

Maybe it was the presence of Janice Ravenwood, girl medium, but I suddenly considered the possibility that anything could happen in a place like this.

Anything, in the dark shadows cast by trees that were centuries old. Anything, in the black places where no one could see.

Anything. It was quite a concept for a guy like me.

A guy like me didn’t do too well with anything. I did better with nothing. That was a concept I could sink my teeth into.

Nothing in the shadows but blackness.

Nothing in the light but what you could see.

Yeah. I could get a hold of that one. After all, I could see more than most. And what I saw didn’t stretch halfway to the boundless possibilities of anything.

Janice pulled off the highway. Tires shushed along a cobbled drive that wound toward the sea. We descended into the trees, and the shadows. As we left the light, Janice flicked on her headlights.

And we saw what there was to see.

A hundred yards of security fencing flashed by on the left. A spiked iron gate. A guard dog.

The dog had three heads, and three open mouths filled with gleaming fangs.

But the dog was bronze. It didn’t move.

“There’s a security box to the left of the gate,” Janice said. “The code is*666*. Circe said to trust you with it, but I can’t imagine why.”

“Thanks.”

“One other thing.”

“What’s that?”

She smiled. “Watch out for dogs.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, shooting a glance at the bronze statue. “But to tell the truth, I don’t have much of an imagination.”

“Hang around a while,” Janice said. “We’ll make a believer of you yet.”

I closed the door and watched the medium drive away. Then I punched in the security code and waited for the gate to open.

A fly buzzed by me.

Another one, or the same one.

It flew between spiked iron bars, and into the darkness. And beyond.