Odd Interlude

In my exhaustion and emotional confusion, I have forgotten my pistol. It’s tucked under the front passenger seat of the Mercedes.

The gun once belonged to the wife of a minister in Magic Beach. Her husband, the reverend, had shot her to death before she could shoot him. In their particular denomination of Christianity, the faithful are evidently too impatient to wait for prayer to solve their problems.

I push open the bathroom door and switch on the lights. The thrumming swells louder, but now comes from behind me.

Turning, I discover that Boo has returned, but he is not the primary point of interest. My attention is drawn to what has also transfixed the dog: a quick transparent something, visible only by the distortion that it imparts to things as it crosses the alcove, enters the sitting area, seems to spring into the TV screen without shattering it, and is gone.

That presence is so fast and shapeless, I half suspect that I have imagined it, except that the wildlife documentary on the TV ripples with concentric rings, as if the vertical screen is a horizontal body of water into which a stone has been dropped.

Blinking repeatedly, I wonder if what I’m seeing is real or if I have a problem with my vision. The phenomenon diminishes gradually until the images on the screen become clear and stable once more.

This was no ghost. When I see one of the lingering dead, it is the very image of the once-living person, and it doesn’t move quicker than the eye can follow.

The dead don’t talk, and neither do they make other sounds. No rattling of chains. No ominous footsteps. They have no weight to make the stair treads creak. And they certainly don’t strum arpeggios from a bass-string harp.

I look at Boo.

Boo looks at me. His tail doesn’t wag.

TWO

I am now wide awake.

The dream of tree and panther lasted less than five minutes. I am still suffering serious sleep deprivation, but I am as alert as might be a man in a foxhole when he knows the enemy will charge at any moment.

Leaving the lights on rather than return to a dark cottage, I step outside, lock the door, and retrieve the pistol from under the passenger seat of the Mercedes.

I am wearing a sweatshirt over a T-shirt, and I tuck the pistol between them, under my belt, in the small of my back. It isn’t an ideal way to carry a weapon, but I don’t have a holster. And in the past, when I have resorted to this method, I have never accidentally shot off a chunk of my butt.

Although I don’t like guns and do not usually carry one, and although killing even the worst of men in self- defense or in defense of the innocent leaves me sickened, I am not so fanatically antigun that I would rather be murdered — or watch a murder be committed — than use one.

Boo materializes at my side.

He is the only spirit of an animal that I have ever seen. An innocent, he surely has no fear of what he might face on the Other Side. Although he is immaterial and cannot bite a bad guy, I believe that he lingers here because there will come a moment when he will be Lassie to my Timmy and will save me from falling into an abandoned well or the equivalent.

Sadly, most kids these days don’t know Lassie. The media dog that they know best is Marley, who is less likely to save children from a well or from a burning barn than he is to barf on them and accidentally start the barn fire in the first place.

The oppressive mood infecting me since recent events in Magic Beach seems to have lifted. Curiously, nothing restores my common sense and puts me back on the firm ground of reason like a creepy encounter with something apparently supernatural.

In the lighted branches of the trees, the weak breath of the night makes the leaves quiver as if in anticipation of an approaching evil. On the ground around me, trembling patterns of light and shadow create the illusion that the land is unstable underfoot.

In the arc of cottages, no lamps brighten any windows except those in my unit and Annamaria’s, although five other vehicles are parked here. If those guests of the Harmony Corner motor court are sleeping, perhaps a secret reader pages through their memories and seeks … Seeks what? Merely to know them?

The reader — whoever or whatever it might be — wants something more than to know me. As surely as the antelope in the documentary is a few days’ worth of meals to the panther, I am prey, perhaps not to be eaten but in some way to be used.

I look at Boo.

Boo looks at me. Then he looks at Annamaria’s lighted windows.

At Cottage 6, as I rap lightly on the door, it swings open as though the latch must not have been engaged. I step inside and find her sitting in a chair at a small table.

She has taken an apple from the hamper, peeled and sectioned it. She is sharing the fruit with Raphael. Sitting at attention beside her chair, the golden retriever crunches one of the slices and licks his chops.

Raphael looks at Boo and twitches his tail, happy that there’s no need to share his portion with a ghost dog. All dogs see lingering spirits; they aren’t as self-deluded about the true nature of the world as most people are.

“Has anything unusual happened?” I ask Annamaria.

“Isn’t something unusual always happening?”

“You’ve had no … no visitor of any kind?”

“Just you. Would you like some apple, Oddie?”

“No, ma’am. I think you’re in danger here.”

“Of the many people who want to kill me, none is in Harmony Corner.”

“How can you be sure?”

She shrugs. “No one here knows who I am.”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“You see?” She gives another slice of apple to Raphael.

“I won’t be next door for a while.”

“All right.”

“In case you scream for me.”

She appears amused. “Whyever would I scream? I never have.”

“Never in your whole life?”

“One screams when one is startled or frightened.”

“You said people want to kill you.”

“But I’m not afraid of them. You do what you need to do. I’ll be fine.”

“Maybe you should come with me.”

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Here and there.”

“I’m already here, and I’ve been there.”

I look at Raphael. Raphael looks at Boo. Boo looks at me.

“Ma’am, you asked if I would die for you, and I said yes.”

“That was very sweet of you. But you’re not going to have to die for me tonight. Don’t be in such a hurry.”

I once thought Pico Mundo had more than its share of eccentric folks. Having traveled some, I now know eccentricity is the universal trait of humanity.

“Ma’am, it might be dangerous to sleep.”

“Then I won’t sleep.”

“Should I get you some black coffee from the diner?”