Joyce's all-too-plausible idea of a specter generated by a living person. Though those hadn't proved true, the boar- headed man still gave them a whole new category of manifestation to fit into their respective schemes of things.
Of course, the remote generation idea was only one of many troubling aspects of Bradford's second ghost. His solidity was one of them: Cree lifted her shirt to show Ed the faintly lingering scratches his hand had made on her stomach. In some ways more disturbing was his adaptability: He could perceive and interact with living beings in the current time.
Both features were as frightening for the fieldworking ghost hunter as they were challenging for the paranormal theorist. Together, these two aspects of the boar-headed man affirmed what many witnesses and parapsychologists had long claimed: that ghosts were capable of inflicting more than psychological injury upon a living person, and that ghosts could pursue something like an intentional, interactive agenda with the living, adapting to circumstances. It gave strength to the premise of folk legends all over the world, that ghosts sometimes pursued vendettas on those who had wronged them.
As they continued along Alaskan Way, Ed began to look increasingly troubled. Part of his dismay, Cree knew, was his concern for her, knowing that ghosts could hurt or kill a ghost hunter. The other part was theoretical. His lovingly constructed geomagnetic theory, now buttressed by the tidal-cycle evidence he'd brought back from Gloucester, might explain very limited perseverations, but it would never explain the phenomenon of the boar- headed man.
Nor, she knew, of Mike, that day in Philly.
'So,' Ed asked, 'how did she come out of it? Lila.'
'She wouldn't tell me much about how it went with her father's ghost. She was exhausted. But she definitely emerged much stronger. She'd always had a core of strength, really, it was just a matter of putting her parts together, you know? She's a very different woman now. There's a calm in her now. A resolve. Hard to describe.'
'Weren't you worried she'd learn the truth when she met him – that she'd killed him?'
'A little. But Richard was mainly an… emotional ghost. He was as affectively powerful as he was physically insubstantial. Remember, he didn't know who had poisoned him. And he never really thought about it as he was dying, he just wanted his kids to be all right. I was less worried that he'd reveal something than that her memories would spontaneously awaken from being around him. But it didn't happen. No, if Ron or Charmian don't tell her, I'm pretty sure she'll never know. And her psychiatrist is in on the deception, so I doubt he'll dig it up if she keeps working with him.'
Ed's brow remained wrinkled.
'What else?' she prodded.
He shook his head, looking depressed and worn. 'We go out on these expeditions wanting to figure out how the world works. We're trying to map this hidden terrain. We make terrific progress every time. And yet every time we come back, we have more questions than we have answers. We have new phenomena we can't integrate. Logic fails us. Our categories and taxonomies and theories all fall apart. When are going to know something, Cree?'
'Dunno,' she admitted. She squeezed his hand.
'Speaking of which, what ever happened with that 'episode' of yours? The Civil War daydream?'
'Joyce and I checked it out. The house I saw across the gardens was definitely there, as I saw it, in 1862 – it's on all the plot maps of the period, and we even found a portrait of it the owners'd had painted. The original house burned down in 1954, but the family rebuilt and still lives there. Another old New Orleans family, the Millards. I even found their family crypt, not far from the Lamberts'. The names of the kids of that generation are all on it. Elizabeth – I thought of her as Lizzie – and Jane. The youngest was a boy named William John, who would have been six in 1862. Just as I saw him.'
'Oh, man,' Ed groaned.
'We checked the old Beauforte House site plans, too. They show the old cistern, right behind the kitchen garden. Just where I saw the soldiers drinking.'
Ed was making such hyperbolic expressions of overwhelmedness that she had to laugh: His knees went wobbly and he staggered all over the sidewalk, clutching his chest as if having a heart attack.
'I think we even figured out whose mind I was seeing it through, Ed! General Beauforte had one daughter still living at home in May of 1862. Her name was Claudette, and she was fifteen when the Union Army took over the house. I was seeing it through her eyes as she waited in the slave quarters for them to take her and her mother away. It would have been a powerful moment. The experience lived on and I… I found it. I relived it.'
Ed was looking around with theatrical paranoia. 'Don't tell anyone!' he whispered. 'We'll lose all our credibility. Or the CIA or somebody will kidnap you and make you do remote past viewing or something. Goddamn you, Cree! So help me, I'm going to catch up to you. I'm going to give you something that throws your theories into a tailspin. So help me.'
She came to his side, put her arm around his waist; he did the same, and they walked on with matched strides, hip to hip. 'You know, it's not too early to get a Bloody Mary with lunch,' she told him. 'Take the edge off these outrageous slings and arrows. Celebrate us both getting home. God, it's nice to see you!'
'Cree.' His tone killed the exuberance dead.
'Yeah?'
'Tell me about the psychiatrist. How he fits in.'
Cree saw it all in his eyes. 'Joyce,' she managed, feeling betrayed.'Joyce told you. That's why you didn't come to New Orleans.'
Ed just blinked once.
She was at a loss. 'He was… he and I worked on Lila together. Compared notes. He doesn't 'fit in.' He and I, we – '
'What's this? What're we doing?' He gestured at the two of them, the street, the sky. He meant the good feeling that came so easily with them.'This is nice, isn't it?'
'Of course! It's lovely! It's – ' But Ed was walking on, and she had to jog to keep up with his long strides. She took his arm to slow him down, but he didn't look at her.
'So what's wrong with this?' he insisted. This time he sort of meant me.
Nothing! she almost said. This is as good as it gets! But her heart seemed to cleave inside her as she knew it wasn't quite so. 'I don't know, Ed,' she said.
They walked on for another minute, silent, not looking at each other, side by side but utterly distant.
'You should probably try to figure it out, Cree,' he said at last. 'Do what you have to. You know? We all gotta do what we gotta do. Let me know how it comes out.'
He was offering some sort of permission, and she loved him fiercely for it. But when she tried to figure out what it was she had to do, no answer came. She clung to his arm, almost panicking, afraid he'd get away.'Okay,' she told him. 'I'll try. Thanks.'
They kept walking. They reached Waterfront Park, looked out at the water for a time. The Highway 99 overpass roared behind them as the Bainbridge Island ferry came in from the Sound, its hull banded in white froth. Excursion boats took off from the piers immediately to the south, and beyond them a couple of freighters hove slowly to the forest of gantries of the lower port. After a time they climbed the steps to Pike Place Market, got sandwiches, sat in one of the public seating stalls. They talked about other things. No Bloody Marys; the giddy sense of celebration was gone. Their conversation felt stiff, obstructed, but they forged along with determination. Ed said he'd heard about several other interesting cases in the Gloucester area: Various friends of the Wainwrights had heard about his prelim in their house and cautiously approached him with accounts of their own hauntings. It seemed everybody had some brush with the mysterious.
He said it reminded him again that, for all its weirdness, the world beyond vision was awfully close and immediate. Life – you really never knew what to expect, he said. What would come at you next.
Cree's heart felt as if it would break. Life was indeed strange, she agreed. She shook her head, feeling it: an ache.
Ed bit his lips and nodded his agreement.
