human hand, for that would be too subtle a thing to warm such a cold surface, but warm as if heat had been directed at it.
Again she studied the bare boards. She stared out at the dark, faceted water and the distant cozy lights of Sausalito on the other side of the bay.
She moved swiftly to the kitchen counter, set down the gun, and picked up the phone.
“I have to reach the Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans. Please dial it,” she said, her voice quaking. And the only thing she could do to calm herself as she waited was to listen, to reassure herself of what she already knew, that she was completely alone.
Useless to check locks and latches. Useless to go poking in drawers and nooks and crannies. Useless, useless, useless.
She was frantic by the time the hotel answered. “I have to speak to Michael Curry,” she said. He was to have checked in that night, she explained. No, it didn’t matter that it was five-twenty in New Orleans. Please ring his room.
It seemed forever that she stood there alone, too shaken to question the selfishness of waking Michael at this hour. Then came the operator again: “I’m sorry, but Mr. Curry is not answering.”
“Try him again. Send someone up to the room, please. I have to talk to him.”
Finally, when they had failed to rouse him altogether, and refused of course to enter the suite without his permission-and for that she couldn’t blame them-she left an urgent message, hung up and sank down on the hearth, and tried to think.
She was certain of what she’d seen, absolutely certain of it. An apparition there on the deck, looking at her, drawing close to her, examining her! Some being that could appear and disappear entirely at will. Yet why had she seen the gleam of light on the edge of his collar; why the droplets of moisture in his hair? Why was the glass warm to the touch? She wondered if the thing had substance to it when it was visible, and if that substance dissolved when the creature “appeared to disappear.”
In sum, her mind ran to science as it always had, and she knew this was her tack, but it could not stop the panic in her, the great awful feeling of helplessness that had come over her and stayed with her now, making her afraid in her own safe place, where she’d never been afraid before.
Why had the wind and the rain been part of it, she wondered. Surely she hadn’t imagined that part. And why, above all else, had this creature appeared to
“Michael,” she whispered. It was like a prayer dropping from her lips. Then she gave a little whispered laugh. “I’m seeing them, too.”
She rose from the hearth and went about the house slowly, with steady steps, turning on every light.
“All right,” she said calmly, “if you come back, it will have to be in a blaze of illumination.” But this was absurd, wasn’t it? Something that could move the very waters of Richardson Bay could trip a circuit breaker easily enough.
But she wanted these lights on. She was scared. She went into the bedroom, locked the door behind her, locked the door of the closet, and closed the door of the bathroom, and then lay down, plumping the pillows under her head, and placing the gun within reach.
She lit a cigarette, knowing it was dreadful to smoke in bed, checked out the tiny winking red light on the smoke alarm, and then continued to smoke.
A ghost, she thought. Imagine it, I have seen one. I never believed in them, but I’ve seen one. It had to be a ghost. There’s nothing else it could have been. But why did this ghost appear to me? Again, she saw its imploring expression, and the vividness of the experience returned to her.
It made her miserable suddenly that she couldn’t reach Michael, that Michael was the only one in the whole world who might believe what had happened, that Michael was the only one she trusted enough to tell.
The fact was, she was excited; it was curiously like her feeling after the rescue that night.
So curious the way it had walked across the deck and peered through the glass at her. “You would have thought I was the strange one.”
And the excitement continued. But she was very relieved when the sun finally rose. Sooner or later, Michael would wake up out of his drunken sleep. He’d see the message light on his phone; and surely, he would call.
“And here I am wanting something from him again, reaching out to him right in the midst of whatever is happening there, needing him … ”
But now she was drifting off, in the warm sweet safety of the sunlight pouring through the glass, snuggling into the warm pillows and pulling the patchwork quilt over her, thinking about him, about the dark fleecy hair on the backs of his arms and his hands, about his large eyes again peering at her through the glasses. And only on the cusp of dream did she think, Could this ghost possibly have something to do with him?
The visions. She wanted to say, “Michael, is it something to do with the visions?” Then the dream swung into absurdity, and she wakened, resisting the irrelevance and the grotesqueness as she always did, consciousness being so much better, thinking-of course, Slattery could fill in for her, and if Ellie existed somewhere she no longer cared whether Rowan went back to New Orleans, certainly, for we had to believe that, didn’t we? That what was beyond this plane was infinitely better; and then she fell back into exhausted sleep again.
Nine
MICHAEL AWOKE ABRUPTLY, thirsting, and hot in the bed covers though the air in the room was quite cool. He was wearing his shorts and his shirt, cuffs unbuttoned, collar undone. He was also wearing his gloves.
A light burned at the end of the little carpeted corridor. Over the soft engulfing roar of the air conditioner, he heard what sounded like the rustle of papers.
Good heavens, where am I? he thought. He sat up. At the end of the little hallway, there appeared to be a parlor, and a baby grand piano of pale and lustrous wood standing against a bank of flowered drapes. His suite at the Pontchartrain Hotel, it had to be.
He had no memory of coming here. And he was instantly angry with himself for having gotten so drunk. But then the euphoria of the earlier evening returned to him, the vision of the house on First Street beneath the violet sky.
I’m in New Orleans, he thought. And he felt a surge of happiness which effaced all his present confusion and guilt. “I’m home,” he whispered. “Whatever else I’ve done, I’m home.”
But how had he managed to get into this hotel? And who was in the parlor? The Englishman. His last clear memory was of speaking to the Englishman in front of the First Street house. And with that little recollection came another: he saw the brown-haired man behind the black iron fence again, staring down at him. He saw the glittering eyes only a few feet above him, and the strangely white and impassive face. A curious feeling passed over him. It wasn’t fear precisely. It was more purely visceral. His body tensed as it might against a threat.
How could that man have changed so little over the years? How could he have been there one minute and gone the next?
It seemed to Michael that he knew the answers to these questions, that he’d always understood the man was no ordinary man. But his sudden familiarity with such a completely unfamiliar notion almost made him laugh.
“You’re losing it, buddy.” he whispered.
But he had to get his bearings now, in this strange place, and find out what the Englishman wanted, and why he was still here.
Quickly he surveyed the room. Yes, the old hotel. A feeling of comfort and security came to him as he saw the slightly faded carpet, the painted air conditioner beneath the windows, and the heavy old-fashioned telephone sitting on the small inlaid desk with its message light pulsing in the darkness.
The door of the bath stood open revealing a dim slash of white tile.
To his left, the closet, and his suitcase, opened on its stand, and wonder of wonders, on the table beside him an ice bucket, beaded over beautifully with tiny drops of moisture, and crammed into the ice three tall cans of
