'Right now they're only manifesting to me.'
'So show me.'
'There should be one more. I have to wait until they're all gathered.'
'Why?'
'That's just the way it is.'
'Don't screw with me,' she warned.
'You'll get what you want,' I assured her.
Although Datura's customary self-possession had given way to an evident excitement, to a twitchy anticipation, Andre and Robert exhibited all the enthusiasm of a pair of boulders. Each stood by his lantern, waiting.
Andre stared off into the gloom beyond the lamplight. He did not seem to be looking at anything in this universe. His features were slack. His eyes seldom blinked. The only emotion that he'd exhibited thus far had been when he had suckled at her thorn-pricked hand, and even then he had not revealed an ability to emote any greater than that of the average oak stump.
While Andre seemed perpetually anchored in placid waters, Robert occasionally revealed, by a fleeting expression or a furtive glance, that he rode a marginally more active inner sea. Now his hands had his complete attention as he used the fingernails of his left to clean under the fingernails of his right, slowly, meticulously, as though he would be content to spend hours at the task.
At first I had decided that both were on the stupid side of dumb, but I had begun to rethink that judgment. I couldn't believe that their interior lives were rich in intellectual pursuit and philosophical contemplation, but I did suspect that they were more formidable, mentally, than they appeared to be.
Perhaps they had been with Datura for enough years and through enough ghost hunts that the prospect of supernatural experiences no longer interested them. Even the most exotic excursions can become tedious through repetition.
And after years of listening to her all but constant chatter, they could be excused for taking refuge in silence, for creating redoubts of inner quietude to which they could retreat, letting her ceaseless crazy talk wash over them.
“All right, you're waiting for a fifth spirit,' she said, plucking at my T-shirt. 'But tell me about those that are here already. Where are they? Who are they?'
To placate her and to avoid worrying that the dead man I most needed to see might not put in an appearance, I described the player at the blackjack table, his kind face, full mouth and dimpled chin.
'So he's manifesting the way that he was before the fire?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'When you conjure him for me, I want to see him both ways- as he was in life, and what the fire did to him.'
“All right,' I agreed, because she would never be persuaded that I lacked the power to compel such revelations.
“All of them, I want to see what it did to them. Their wounds, their suffering.'
“All right.'
'Who else?' she asked.
One by one, I pointed to where they stood: the elderly woman, the guard, the cocktail waitress.
Datura found only the waitress intriguing. 'You said she was a brunette. Is that right-or is her hair black?'
Peering more closely at the apparition, which moved toward me in response to my interest, I said, 'Black. Raven hair.'
'Gray eyes?'
'Yes.'
'I know about her. There's a story about her,' Datura said with an avidness that made me uneasy.
Now focusing on Datura, the young waitress came closer still, to within a few feet of us.
Squinting, trying to see the spirit, but staring to one side of it, Datura asked, 'Why does she linger?'
'I don't know. The dead don't talk to me. When I command them to be visible to you, maybe you'll be able to get them to speak.'
I scanned the casino shadows, searching for the lurking form of the tall, broad man with buzz-cut hair. Still no sign of him, and he was my only hope.
Speaking of the cocktail waitress, Datura said, “Ask if her name was…Maryann Morris.'
Surprised, the waitress moved closer and put a hand on Datura's arm, a contact that went unnoticed, for only I can feel the touch of the dead.
'It must be Maryann,' I said. 'She reacted to the name.'
'Where is she?'
'Directly in front of you, within arm's reach.'
In the manner of a domesticated creature reverting to a wilder state, Datura's delicate nostrils flared, her eyes shone with feral excitement, and her lips pulled back from her white-white teeth as if in anticipation of blood sport.
'I know why Maryann can't move on,' Datura said. 'There was a story about her in the news accounts. She had two sisters. Both of them worked here.'
'She's nodding,' I told Datura, and at once wished that I had not facilitated this encounter.
'I'll bet Maryann doesn't know what happened to her sisters, whether they lived or died. She doesn't want to move on until she knows what happened to them.'
The apprehensive expression on the spirit's face, which was not entirely without a fragile hope, revealed that Datura had intuited the reason Maryann lingered. Reluctant to encourage her, I didn't confirm the accuracy of her insight.
She needed no encouragement from me. 'One sister was a waitress working the ballroom that night.'
The Lady Luck Ballroom. The collapsed ceiling. The crushing, skewering weight of the massive chandelier.
'The other sister worked as a hostess in the main restaurant,' Datura said. 'Maryann had used her contacts to get jobs for them.'
If that was true, the cocktail waitress might feel responsible for her sisters having been in the Panamint when the quake struck. Hearing that they had survived, she would most likely feel free to shake off the chains that bound her to this world, these ruins.
Even if her sisters had died, the sad truth was likely to release her from her self-imposed purgatory. Although her sense of guilt might increase, that would be trumped by her hope of a reunion with her loved ones in the next world.
Seeing not the usual cold calculation in Datura's eyes, nor the childlike wonder that had briefly brightened them as we had descended the stairs from the twelfth floor, seeing instead a bitterness and a meanness that emphasized the new feral quality in her face, I felt no less nauseated than when, with blood-smeared hand, she had pressed the wineglass to my lips.
'The lingering dead are vulnerable,' I warned her. 'We owe them the truth, only the truth, but we have to be careful to comfort them and encourage them onward by what we say and how we say it.'
Listening to myself, I realized the futility of urging Datura to act with compassion.
Directly addressing the spirit whom she could not see, Datura said, 'Your sister Bonnie is alive.'
Hope brightened the late Maryann Morris's face, and I could see that she readied herself for joy.
Datura continued: 'Her spine was snapped when a ton-and-a-half ballroom chandelier fell on her. Crushed the shit out of her. Her eyes were punctured, ruined-'
'What're you doing? Don't do this,' I pleaded.
'Now Bonnie's paralyzed from the neck down, and blind. She lives on the government dole in a cheap nursing home where she'll probably die from neglected bedsores.'
I wanted to shut her up even if I had to hit her, and maybe half the reason I wanted to shut her up was because it would give me an excuse to hit her.
As though attuned to my desire, Andre and Robert stared at me, tense with the expectation of action.
Although the chance to knock her flat would have been worth the beating the thugs would have administered to me, I reminded myself that I had come here for Danny. The cocktail waitress was dead, but my friend with brittle bones had a chance to live. His survival must be my focus.
