“What do you think?”
She frowned, searching inside herself. “I try to make those bodies into humans, possibly human children … features distorted because of long exposure to the high desert … or maybe monkeys. There are rumors of missiles being shot off, at White Sands, with animals-dogs, monkeys….”
I sat forward. “Could they have been monkeys, their hair burned off in a crash? I’ll bet dead monkeys that’ve been out sunnin’ in the desert could smell pretty ripe.”
“I want to believe that’s what I saw. But the anatomy was all wrong … and it was consistent from corpse to corpse.” She shook her head, in frustration.
“All I know for certain is it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. Do you think I’m insane, Nathan?”
“No.”
“I wish I were as confident of that as you are,” she said, and collapsed into tears.
I went to her, gathered her in my arms-she was trembling all over, bawling like a baby, and I cradled her in my arms, patted her back, rocking her, saying, “It’ll be all right … it’ll be fine … don’t you cry … shush … shush.” She whimpered and sobbed for quite a while, as I held her, and finally it abated, and she relaxed, face against my shoulder, as I kept rocking her.
She was feather-light, when I carried her up the stairs like Rhett Butler whisking Scarlett O’Hara away, only my Scarlett was sleeping, snoring even, a very unfeminine snore that made me smile. The bedroom was decorated in an Early American style, centering around a four-poster double bed with a quilted comforter. I eased her onto the bed, slipped her black pumps off her tiny feet, made sure the pillow was cradling her head comfortably, then eased out of there, switching off the light, padding down the stairs.
Since I hadn’t even bothered to take my bag upstairs, I camped out on a couch downstairs-a Duncan Phyfe number whose carved mahogany and light blue tapestry-style upholstery looked too elegant to be comfortable. I took off my shirt and my shoes, but decided to sleep in my T-shirt and trousers, for decorum’s sake. I threw some more wood on the fire, got it going again, then stretched out on the couch, whose plump cushions proved my expectations nicely wrong; on my back, elbows winged out, I watched the walls and ceiling where flames and shadows did a mocking dance.
Yet within a day or so of when the Army Air Force may have been out recovering those “foreign bodies” from some unknown desert crash site, Major Jesse Marcel was salvaging pieces of strange debris at a nearby ranch.
The fire was dwindling, and I was nodding off, when a tiny noise drew my eyes to the stairway and the ghostly figure coming down; in the faint dying glow from the fireplace, throwing long shadows, she moved slowly, as if in a trance, the powder-blue dress wrinkled from her sleeping in it, hiking up a little, her knees and even her thighs showing.
She crossed tentatively toward where I lay on the couch, whispering, “Nathan? Are you awake?”
“For a minute there,” I said, moving onto my side, leaning on an elbow, grinning, “I thought you might be Rebecca.”
She sat on the edge of the couch; the raven’s-wing hair was fetchingly tousled, an improvement on the severity of her pageboy. “Who’s Rebecca?”
“The ghost.”
“What ghost?”
“The one the restaurant’s named after-some chambermaid who was killed by her lover, years ago. This is supposedly her favorite room.”
She smiled a little, but nervously. “You’re just saying that. You’re teasing.”
“No. That’s the story. You know, it’s just nonsense to keep the tourists entertained.”
She seemed oddly troubled by the silly tale, and began hugging her arms again. “That’s so
“You’re cold-I’ll feed the fire.”
Thinking that this girl had run into more bizarre occurrences in her time than a stupid ghost story, I went over and put a few more logs on, got some heat and glow going, then returned to the couch, where she was sitting, now; she’d left room for me, and I took the liberty of putting my arm around her.
“We’ll warm you up,” I said, and she snuggled close. “I don’t mean to be fresh….”
But she lifted her face up and her dreamy expression, and her parted lips, gave me permission to get a little fresh, anyway; specifically, to kiss her.
It was a soft, warm, sweet, almost chaste kiss. Almost.
She drew away from me, gazed at me earnestly. Her voice was husky as she said, “It’s so strange … I came down here because I thought … I thought I
“What?”
“… I thought maybe it was an … evil presence.”
“I think Rebecca’s supposed to be a friendly ghost.”
She shuddered. “Well, I don’t want to sleep up there.”
“You want the couch? I’ll go risk the bed …”
“No!” She hugged me tight. “Stay down here, Nathan. Stay with me-all night.”
“Well …”
“Maybe it was dredging up all those … awful memories, maybe that’s what’s got me spooked. But the one thing I know for sure is, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“All right. You take the couch.” I gestured toward the easy chair by the fireplace. “I’ll pull a couple of chairs together and …”
She patted the couch. “There’s room for us both, don’t you think? I’m not very big.”
Some places she was.
“Okay,” I said, and I lay on my side, against the back cushions, and she lay next to me, her back to me, and we were like spoons, as she nestled her bottom into my favorite place, and I looped an arm around her waist, held her next to me and she snuggled; oh how she snuggled.
“Funny,” she said. Whispering. Maybe she didn’t want Rebecca to overhear. “When I first saw you, I thought
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Whose ghost?”
She didn’t say anything. Then I realized she was crying again. Not bawling like before, no racking heaving sobs; just quietly weeping.
Gently I turned her around to face me. “What is it, Maria?”
Emotion tugged at her face. “You look so much like him.”
“Who?”
“… Steve.”
Her husband. Late husband.
Then she was crawling on top of me, kissing me with an urgency that was contagious, and I was on my back as she writhed around on me, the curves of her molding, pressing themselves to me, my hands moving across the back of her, over her rounded bottom, up the curve of her spine, to the buttons.
“Undo me,” she whispered.
