Untitled Ghost Story

This is an unfinished Ghost Story

Need Story Title Here

 

            “What do you know about hell?”

            I blinked. It was not your standard job interview question, and I didn’t have an answer prepared. The graying woman opposite me waited, eyebrows elegantly arched. I smoothed my skirt and forced my nervous hands to rest in my lap. “Hell…” I pondered, stalling.

            “Yes, hell,” she continued in a businesslike tone, her British accent clipping the words. “What do you know about it?”

            I frowned in thought. “Do you mean Dante’s hell, with all the levels and different ironic tortures tailored to the offenses?”

            “Fiction,” she said. “What does the Bible tell us? Did you attend Sunday School as a child?”

            I had, sporadically, but hell was not a subject that had come up often in my Presbyterian upbringing as I imagined it might for the child of a fire-and-brimstone Baptist. I floundered. “Well, there’s supposed to be fire and brimstone. Pain and torture, I guess.” From her displeased expression, I feared I was not making the best impression on my potential employer.  Her mouth was pursed and her pen tapped her desk, so I furrowed my brow and scraped the bottom of my brain.

            “Who goes to hell?” she prompted. I gathered she was trying either to prod my memory or to find out what I believed.

            Uhn… bad people? Hitler? Charles Manson? What did she want to hear? An axiom floated up from the dregs of my Sunday School days. “People who refuse forgiveness? Ah… God wants to forgive, but you can only be forgiven if you’re sorry.”  She was nodding.  Encouraged, my memory tossed up a tidbit. “Hell…. Isn’t there something about ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth?’”

            “That’s from the Book of Matthew. Chapter 25, verse 30, I believe. If not, read the whole book, it’ll do you good.” She laughed. “What else?”

            Another sound bite surfaced from the deeps. “Well, some people say there is no hell except what we make here on earth.”

            “Ballocks,” she said. “People who can’t be bothered with fear of the afterlife say that.”

            I nodded. Agree with the potential boss whenever possible. “And some say that God doesn’t really punish anyone, that hell is simply separation from God, and that is punishment enough.” I thought she would pronounce this “ballocks” as well.

            “Very true,” she said. “You have hit on the truest part of all. God does not need to punish evildoers, because what they inflict on themselves is the worst, or best, punishment of all, as you shall see, if you become my assistant.”

            I felt confused, and a little apprehensive. I had thought she was questioning me to garner my beliefs or perhaps my knowledge and background, but she was implying that this was practical intelligence.

            “What does hell have to do with this position?” I asked.

            “I deal with hell. Or, more specifically, I deal with the residents of hell.”

            I should have stood up then, thanked her for her time, and walked out, but I was jobless, desperate, and fascinated.

*                                *                                    *

            The want ad had read “Administrative Assistant needed for Christian medium. Some travel involved. Must be able to work all hours. Must be Christian.” My state job had become a casualty of budget cuts. After nine weeks of unemployment, pointless job interviews, and a increasing stack of past due bills, I had been nearing panic.  “Christian medium” sounded dubious, but choosiness had gone out the window four weeks ago, and I supposed that attending church once in a while qualified me as a Christian. I wondered if it was even legal to advertise Must be Christian, but there it was. I emphasized all my clerical experience, embellished my church involvement, and mailed in my resume. 

            Three days later, Ms. Clara Smythe invited me for an interview. I drove downtown and found her building in a medium-rent (no pun intended) area of town. Her office was up a flight of stairs, above Keegan, Keegan and Neidermeyer, Attorneys at Law. The sign on the door read simply, Clara Smythe. I entered and found myself in a small reception area. Bookshelves lined every wall, floor to ceiling, leaving spaces only for the door by which I had entered and another door opposite. Some of the shelves held books in neat rows, others held piles, still others had books doubled up and in danger of falling on an unsuspecting head. I glanced at a few titles:  Exorcisms of the 15th Century, Haunted Farmhouses, Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. One shelf was devoted to Bibles:  a King James, a Living Bible, a Jerusalem Bible, the Oxford Annotated Bible, a children’s illustrated, and even a comic-book Bible. Readers Digest condensed books filled two entire shelves. Clara Smythe certainly believed in providing a variety of reading materials.

            There was no one there. I knocked on the opposite door, checked my watch, and, feeling at a loss, perched in a cream-colored, overstuffed chair and examined the magazines on the lace tablecloth covering a small, round table. Readers Digest. The Shadow’s Edge. STRANGE Magazine. Guideposts. A sweet scent like pipe tobacco suddenly reminded me of my grandfather. Hunting for the source, I saw an incense burner in one corner, surely an unnecessary threat to the many leaves of bound paper. Various artifacts nestled among the books.  A heavy crucifix of tarnished brass kept a precarious stack of tomes from collapsing. A wooden stag whose antlers were draped with beads stood guard over a pile of paperbacks. Antique jars and bottles – empty, I was relieved to note – glinted from random shelves. Here and there stood photographs, some antique, some contemporary. I spotted a beautiful framed document in one corner and was drawn to examine it. It was an illuminated manuscript, faded, but with a glimmer of gold leaf still evident. Diabolos Incarna, I read. Latin? Perhaps it was a page of the Bible, labored over by a long-dead monk. I leaned closer and saw that the illustrations portrayed souls in hideous torment. Demons wielding pitchforks herded anguished forms around the perimeter of the page. The faded pictures were so compelling that I stared at the details – the flying drops of blood, the agonized expressions.

            “That was a gift from a client.”

            I had not heard her enter the room. I turned to see a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face, displaying a widow’s peak and twisted into a bun at her crown. Grey streaks like dove wings swept back from her temples. She wore dark, nondescript clothes, the kind of outfit that would not seem too casual at a wedding, nor yet too formal at the movies.

            “I’m Clara Smythe,” she said. “You must be Pamela.” Her British accent surprised me, as it is not something you encounter very often in Iowa.

            We shook hands. Her hand was small and cool. She had a firm grip and held on just a second longer than necessary. “Please call me Pam,” I said. I turned back to the manuscript. “It’s so beautiful. So macabre. Is it genuine?”

            “The monk who did the illuminating had a guilty conscience. He thought he was destined for the tortures he depicted.”

            “Really?”  A sinful monk. “Why? What had he done?”

            “I don’t know. I never found out.”

            She led me into the next room where more floor-to-ceiling books greeted my eyes. The sparse furniture — a beautiful old wooden desk, a swivel chair, and a guest chair where she promptly sat me — nearly filled the room. “May I offer you a cup of tea?” she asked.

            “Tea!  I would love some, thank you.”  No one had ever offered me refreshment at an interview before. I wiggled in the chair, a sturdy wooden thing that would support the Colossus of Rhodes, should he decide to drop in. Clara left the room by another door and returned with a silver tea set. I felt very elegant as she poured two cups and asked whether I took any milk or sugar.

            She seated herself behind her desk and we both sipped our tea, saying nothing as I looked around her office. I noticed small personal touches: a photo of a younger Clara Smythe with a man and two boys, greeting cards standing on a shelf, and a vase with three white roses. “I find that tea is a useful tool for many purposes,” she said. She set her cup down and put on her eyeglasses, which hung from a silver chain around her neck. She removed my resume from a drawer, wrote the date at the top, and underlined my name.

            That was when she had asked me what I knew about hell.

*                                *                                    *

            “You deal with the residents of hell,” I repeated. I am told I have an excellent poker face. I do not trust people, so I rarely betray emotion. I didn’t think she would know that I was thinking she was a crazy old biddy. However, she smiled as if she knew exactly that.

            “Hell isn’t what most people think it is,” she said. She leaned forward, arms on the desk, fingers interwoven. Her forefingers undid themselves and pointed at me. “Are you brave enough to face hell?” she asked. “Can you look death in the face and not blanch? Can you stand your ground when threatened? Can you hold on to your sanity when everything that you have ever believed in seems to be unraveling?”

            Again, not your standard interview questions. I didn’t think I could give her my usual answers:  I am honest, punctual, and organized. I love to file, I file everything, you should see my house! I file the bath towels! 

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            Clara leaned back in her chair, tapping her joined forefingers against her pursed lips and blowing out a stream of air. Her fingers interrupted the air so that she made a p-p-p sound as her eyes bored into mine. “Pamela, what has been the most frightening time in your life, and how did you handle it?” 

            This was more like a regular interview question.  I had a good lie prepared. “I was scared to death when I got laid off. With the economy heading into recession, and being a single parent. But I just souped up my resume, posted it on the internet, read the want ads every day, and put the word out, you know.”

            She continued tapping her lips and making the p-p-p sound. “I see you are a practical person who believes that everything has a logical answer. If there is a problem, you don’t waste time crying, you work to find a solution. Is that true?”

            “Yes,” I said, smiling, and, thinking that a “medium” would probably relate to astrology, I added, “I’m a typical Virgo.”

            She frowned. “Astrology is ballocks. I hope you don’t practice it.”

            “Oh, no; not at all,” I assured her. “I don’t even read my horoscope in the paper. Too busy reading want ads.”  I laughed, hoping she would join me.

            She appraised me, p-p-p. Then she asked me one more question. “Tell me about a time in your life when logic could not help you and how you handled it.”

            There was only one time in my adult life when reason had failed me, and I did not want to talk about it. Although some might think that a dead husband would engender sympathy from a potential employer, I had found out three years ago that most business people did not appreciate a woman who broke down and cried during an interview. Even a small, sad smile made them uncomfortable enough to hustle me out quickly. Clara awaited my response, fingers resting against her lips, eyebrows raised. If I answered honestly, it would reveal my answer about the most frightening time of my life to be a lie, yet somehow my mouth came unlaced, and a truthful answer streamed out. “When my husband died. He, uh… well, he killed himself. I didn’t even know anything was wrong. I still don’t know why he did it….” The old, buried pain clawed its way toward the surface, but then I remembered where I was. I shoved it down. I gave her a small, sad smile.

            “I’m so sorry, dear.” Clara came around the desk and placed a hand on my shoulder. “How insensitive of me to ask you such a question.  What you must have been through. What did you do?”

            Deep breath. Control. “I gave up trying to make sense of it. I just let it go. I scrapped everything and made a new plan.”

            “I see,” she said. She patted my shoulder and gazed at me, and I had the feeling she was reading my poker face.

“I’m fine now. It was three years ago. I’m doing okay.” Did she think I was too messed up to hold down a job?

Clara nodded, then returned to her side of the desk and lifted my resume. “You know shorthand. Not many young people do, these days.”

“I learned from my mother. ‘The arcane craft,’ she called it.” In actuality I had bought a dusty book at a second hand store and gleaned enough to be able to say I knew it, hoping it would increase my job chances.

         “Very well, I would like to hire you. I have one more interview this afternoon that I must conduct out of politeness. If you are interested in the position, please be here at eight a.m. tomorrow, and we will go over the specifics.”

            Stunned, I shook her hand and thanked her. She escorted me out. I hurried down the stairs and out into the sun. I looked up at the sky. It was still there. “That was weird,” I said to no one. In the October sunshine the whole event seemed unreal. She had gotten me to talk about my husband; how had I let that happen? And all her questions about hell. The more I thought, the more it seemed I must have misunderstood Clara. Her comments must have been metaphorical, or maybe she was gauging my reaction to unfamiliar situations, seeing how I handled myself when off balance.

            I resolved to come back and find out. This was only my second interview in a month, and beggars can’t be gourmands at the one-dish café.

            The next morning I arrived early and waited in the hallway for Clara. Clara arrived and her eyes sparkled as she unlocked the door. “Good morning,” she said. “Things are going to work out quite well between us, I feel. Come in and I’ll make tea.”

            After the tea, we went over specifics. The salary she offered was less than I had been making, but I was happy to get it. I filled out forms as she told me about the position. “What I need is someone to accompany me, take notes, type everything up, and keep track of it all. When I try to take my own notes, I am distracted. Then something has to suffer, either the notes, or my work.

            “Now. I was so quick to hire you because I have a new case that I am eager to begin. The poor family is suffering. We’ll drive out there this morning. You can see what goes on and have a chance to back out, if you must.”

            Clark City was twenty miles out of town, a farm community. My boss drove a Cadillac and brought only a briefcase. I brought a steno pad and pens in my purse. Clara informed me that the family lived in a two-story home, the original farmhouse on an acreage at the edge of town. She began to explain her work.

            “I help people who are bothered by spirits. I try to get rid of the spirits or, at least, quieten them so they can be lived with.”

            “Like an exorcist?”

            She shook her head. “That movie was ballocks. Spirits do not possess people. Now, I want the family to have confidence in me, so do not let on that this is your first day.”

            “But it’s in the Bible,” I argued. “Jesus cast out spirits, didn’t he?”

            She shook her head again. “He was simply curing mental illness and putting it in terms the people could understand. Unclean spirits. Back then, they thought everything was unclean. Leprosy was unclean. A menstruating woman was unclean.”

            “But what about the part where the spirits knew him, and he made the pigs go over a cliff?” Apparently, I remembered more from my days in Bible camp than I had thought.

            She smiled. “That was just dramatics. Jesus was a real showman with an impeccable dramatic flair. Remember, swine were and are unclean animals, according to Jewish dietary laws.”

            I felt my brain pucker as it tried to absorb Clara’s ideas. Her beliefs seemed inconsistent to me. Why would Jesus say he was casting out spirits if it was just an illness?  Wouldn’t that make him sort of a liar?

            “Now, there are four basic types of ghosts. The quiet, the angry, the confused, and the sorrowful.” She smiled.  “Just remember quacks. QUiet, Angry, Confused, Sorrowful. Any of the last three can make things difficult for the living. My goal is to turn them all into Q’s. The S’s are the easiest. The C’s are the most difficult. And the A’s are the most unsettling.”

            “Mrs. Smythe,” I said, “this might be the best time to tell you, I guess, or maybe not, but I don’t believe in ghosts.”

            “Quite all right, my dear. You will.”

            We arrived at the house on the outskirts of Clark City. The property was a small acreage off a rock road. A line of tall fir trees marched up the gravel driveway to an old two-story with a recent coat of pink paint and blue trim. [need more detailed description of house here] A woman answered the door looking both nervous and relieved. She wore faded jeans and a gray t-shirt adorned with a red Superman S. Dark curls fell to her shoulders.

            “I am Clara Smythe, and this is my assistant, Pamela Robinson. You must be Mrs. Luttrell?”

            “I’m so glad you’re here,” said the woman. “Call me Michelle.” Her handshake felt like a spasm, and her eyes darted every which way before making brief eye contact and looking away again. “Things are quiet this morning, but you never know.”

            “That’s quite all right,” said Clara. “We are only here for an initial reading, and it doesn’t matter what the spirit is doing at the moment.” Michelle led us into a large kitchen, and we sat at a round, formica table. I couldn’t imagine a less haunted-looking place. It smelled of coffee and cinnamon toast. White lace curtains were tied at the windows, letting in morning sunshine. She offered us coffee, which Clara declined and I accepted.

            While Clara rummaged in her briefcase, Michelle moved about the room, sponging the immaculate counters and wiping down the coffeemaker. She returned the half-and-half to the refrigerator and sugar to the cupboard, then pulled them out again and placed them on the table. “This is the room where I feel safest,” she said. “I can’t even go in the basement anymore.”

            Clara nodded. “Please sit down, Mrs. Luttrell. Your motion is disturbing me. You may go outside, if you wish, but if you stay here, you must be still. You and Pamela may converse while I meditate.” Clara folded her hands on the table and closed her eyes, as if praying. For all I knew, she was praying.

            Michelle poured herself a cup of coffee and sat next to me. I got out my pad and pen and wrote her name at the top Michelle Luttrell with the date, and underlined it.  I asked Michelle for her full address, phone number, and whether she had work or cell phone numbers. I tried to think of businesslike queries, which she answered eagerly, running her hands through her hair, stirring cream into her coffee, turning her cup round and round on the table. I asked who resided in the home and jotted down the names of her husband and son, William and Billy, respectively. I asked their ages. Michelle and Bill were both 34, Billy, 8. I asked how old the house was. She wasn’t sure. I asked how long she had lived there. Three years. How long had they been experiencing…problems?

            “When I look back, I can see that it started immediately, but we didn’t recognize it. It was just little things. It’s only lately, about the last nine months, that it’s gotten bad.”  I put on a knowing look and nodded, like one experienced with hauntings. “How long have you been doing this?” she asked me.

            Clara stood and interrupted, “You will lead us through the house now.” Michelle assumed the look of a woman steeling herself against impending doom, but Clara reassured her. “Don’t worry. We don’t need to see the basement.”  Michelle nodded, relieved.

            Clara brandished a hand-held recorder and a pocket bible. “I will make notes on the recorder, but Pamela will take notes exactly as if I were not. Sometimes the tapes don’t turn out, you know. Probably due to ‘sunspots.’” She winked.

            Michelle tried to laugh and seemed to relax a bit. The elegant Clara Smythe, I was learning, was very good with people. She had told me what to do without telling me and made her client at ease in one blow.

            She spoke into her recorder, starting with the same basic information I had jotted:  the date, names of the residents, and address. She continued with information I hadn’t heard before, and I quickly added to my notes. “Original farm house built in 1898 by Jonathan Clark. Additions built in 1937 and 1974. Jonathan Clark died in 1949. His wife, Lucille Clark, died in 1957. They had two sons, Eric and Lawrence. Lawrence Clark was killed in France in WWI. Eric Clark inherited the home and lived here until his death in 1968.” She recited a list of five people who had owned the home since then with dates. For eight years prior to the Luttrells purchase of the home it had been a rental property. Clara did not have the names of the renters, or did not name them now, at any rate. My pen raced across the page.

            “The Luttrells acquired the home three years ago. Small problems began at once. The acceleration began about nine months ago.

            “We’re ready now, Michelle.”

            Michelle took a deep breath and led us into the room adjoining the kitchen. “This is the dining room,” she said.

            “Dining room,” said Clara into her recorder. Dining room, I wrote in my pad. The room had a table, chairs and low buffet, nothing else. “Something occurred in this room?”

            Michelle ran her hand through her hair, pulling the curls straight and letting them zing back. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked. “Not at all,” said Clara. I shook my head. Michelle pulled a pack from her pocket and tapped out a cigarette. I could see her hands shaking. “It’s just that I’m so nervous,” she said. “You know, I quit smoking years ago when I got pregnant, but I started up again recently. When Billy started sleepwalking, it was just so weird and scary.”  She lit the cigarette, folded her right arm around her waist, and rested her left elbow on her arm to hold her cigarette. She took a long drag, turning her head to the side to exhale. She took two more drags before continuing, turning her head for each exhale.

            “Like a month after we moved in, Bill mounted a shelf right there.”  She pointed at a blank wall. “I displayed all my grandmother’s china. It was her wedding pattern, and she gave it to me on my wedding day. I’d had it packed away because I never had anyplace to display it until we moved here. Bill bought special shelves for me. I had spent a couple hours arranging it all just right. It looked so pretty….” She sighed. “Anyway, that night we heard a giant crash. We came bolting downstairs, and the shelves had fallen.”

            She looked at the floor, smoked, and exhaled to the side. Clara and I looked at each other. China shelves fell, I noted.

            “Every single piece was smashed,” she went on. “You’d think that one plate or cup would have survived, but there weren’t even any pieces large enough to glue together. I was devastated. I cried for days. I blamed Bill, of course.”  She walked to the buffet and opened a drawer. “I kept some of the larger pieces.”

            Clara went to look. I followed and peered over her shoulder. White shards filled one black velvet compartment. “May I?” asked Clara. She sifted through the pieces and pulled one out. “Belleek [or some China pattern or something]?” she asked.

            Michelle nodded, surprised. “Yes, it is.”  Belleek? I wrote. Clara held the shard for a moment, and I half expected her to go into a trance over it, but she gently placed it back in its resting place.

            Michelle shut the drawer. “What a shame,” Clara said. I agreed.

            “I couldn’t bear to tell my grandmother. I never have told her.”

            “I understand,” said Clara.

            “It could have been an accident, I know. Shelves do fall down.”

            “Yes,” said Clara. “Let’s go on.”
            Michelle led us into the living room. She explained that in this room, any light left on would later be found to be turned off. Ironically, light bulbs never lasted longer than a week. They grew so tired of changing bulbs that they began leaving the shades off the lamps for convenience. They had had the wiring checked and bought new lamps and tried different kinds of light bulbs. There was also a piano, and sometimes it played. Not any kind of music, just strings of random notes, as if a cat were walking across the keys.

            “Do you have a cat?”  I asked.

            “We did, but it disappeared. I think it ran away.”  Michelle stubbed out the cigarette in a nearby ashtray.   

            “Animals don’t like ghosts,” Clara said. “Do you remember when this was?”

            Michelle flicked her lighter open and shut, open and shut. She shook another cigarette out of her pack, then changed her mind and replaced it.  “About six months ago, I think.”

            Cat gone 6 mo, I wrote.

            As we left the room, Clara suggested that Michelle leave some of the lights on. She did, but unwillingly, I thought.

We continued through the house. Michelle smoked and described what kinds of things, if anything, had occurred in each room. My notebook read like a litany of your standard haunted house phenomenon:  lights on and off, sounds of footsteps, sound of crying, sounds of laughter, doorbell ringing, car alarm going off even when not set, items disappearing and reappearing elsewhere, crack in wall repaired but comes back, cat growls at corner of room, rotten egg smell.

            Michelle carried an ashtray upstairs with her. Evidently, she did not normally smoke upstairs. The nature of the occurrences changed. There were cold spots and sometimes drafts, but not always in the same places. She and her husband would wake abruptly during the night for no apparent reason. Noises in the attic. No TV reception. The last two rooms were a playroom and a boy’s bedroom. “Originally this one was the playroom and that was his bedroom, but, when Billy’s sleepwalking got worse, we switched them to see if a change in location would help.”

            Sleepwalking, I wrote.

            “Did it?” Clara asked.

            Michelle led us into the bedroom, flicking her lighter repeatedly open and closed. The bedroom was wallpapered with race cars. A Chicago Cubs poster and a Monster Truck calendar hung on the wall.  “No. We’ve tried everything. We’ve let him sleep in our room, even in our bed, we tried downstairs on the couch or on the floor; it makes no difference. The doctor says it’s night terrors.” She lit another cigarette.

            “Does he somnambulate at others’ houses also?”  Clara asked.

            Michelle nodded, inhaling on her cigarette. “Yes, but it doesn’t last as long, and he doesn’t say the same things.”

            I was very curious about the sleepwalking, but Clara interrupted and said, “Hello.”

            I looked around to see whom she was speaking to, but, seeing no one, I turned back to Clara. “What?” I said, thinking it had been some sort of British exclamation, like Hello, I have an idea! but then I saw Michelle’s face turn the same color as her cigarette ash, and I realized that Clara had seen a ghost.

            We stood in Billy’s bedroom facing the doorway. Clara spoke to the empty doorway. I saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing. But Clara was having a conversation.

            “I’m Clara Smythe. This is my assistant, and I believe you are already acquainted with Mrs. Luttrell.” She stepped forward and offered her hand to the doorway. “I’m very pleased to meet you. I hope we’ll be having some long conversations in the next few days. May I know your name?” There was a pause. “I see no need to be rude. Won’t you at least shake hands?”  Another pause. “I was invited here, and I….”  Pause. Then in a very firm but still polite tone, “No, this is not your house, as you are well aware. I will tolerate no lies.”

            There was another pause, then she sighed and turned back to us. “It’s gone.”

            I realized that I had been standing like a mannequin and had made no notes at all. I quickly scribbled a record of the “conversation.”  Michelle sank down to the bed, cigarette dangling from her fingers. “Could you tell anything?” she asked.

            “No, it was too brief an encounter.”  Clara sat next to Michelle on the bed. “I couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, but it did speak as an adult. It asked what I was doing here and what my business was. I said I had been invited, and it said, ‘This is my house and I don’t want you in it.’”

            Michelle fumbled with the lighter and dropped it. She looked around her, then stubbed out her cigarette in a die-cast metal car that stood on Billy’s dresser, even though the ashtray was right next to her. “It talked to you. You actually spoke to it. My God.”  She was shaking like an unsteady blender. “I should get him out of here.”

            “Not yet,” Clara said. “We don’t want it to follow him. Remember, the spirit cannot hurt you or Billy. It cannot do anything. It’s really quite helpless, poor thing.”

            “It is hurting him,” Michelle protested. “You don’t know what it’s like. He gets up, walks around, says things. I tell you, it makes my hair stand on end.”

            Clara nodded. “Is Billy having any problems? What is he like during the day?  How is he doing in school?”

            Michelle bent to pick up the lighter.  “He seems fine. He never remembers sleepwalking. He doesn’t remember any nightmares. Sometimes he says he had weird dreams. He’s like a normal, happy kid. He gets decent grades, plays soccer, goes to cub scouts.” She fiddled with the lighter, turning it over and over in her hand.

            Clara placed her hand over Michelle’s. “Children are often more sensitive to spirits. Billy may be even more so than most children. When asleep, he is more receptive, that’s all.”

            “But what if it gets control of him. What if it makes him do something?” Tears gathered in her eyes. She flipped the lighter opened and stared at the flame.

            Clara patted her hand. “Ballocks. Ghosts don’t do that. They can’t.”

            Michelle nodded and gulped. “Is… is it an evil ghost or a good ghost? Could you tell?”

            Clara’s hand went to her mouth. Her thumb rested under her chin, and her forefinger tapped her pursed lips:  p-p-p.

            “All ghosts are bad,” she said finally. “There is no other kind.”

            We descended the staircase, promising to return the next day. We would have time to review our notes and prepare for an overnight stay. Michelle insisted we come for dinner, smiling and seeming more at ease now that the initial reading was over.

            In the living room, all the lights had gone out.

Clara drove in silence. I thought about what I had seen. I had not seen a ghost. I had seen Clara talk to empty air and comfort a client. Yet, somehow, I found myself thinking that the Luttrell’s house really was haunted. Was it just Clara’s dramatic flair?  “I think that went well,” said Clara.

            “You said ghosts can’t hurt people,” I said.

            Clara nodded.

            “What about the china shelves?  What if somebody had been near them when they fell?”

            “The ghost didn’t do that,” she said.

            “I know, but it could have. It could have just as easily collapsed the shelves on somebody’s head.”

            “You misunderstand me. I mean that the ghost had nothing to do with the shelves falling.”

            Speechless, I stared at her. Not noticing, she continued, “If she wants to blame the ghost, let her. It’s better than blaming her husband for such a loss.”

“But, how can you be sure?  If a house is really haunted, isn’t that what ghosts do?”

            “What, break dishes?”

            “Well… yes!”

            She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the road. “The trouble with hauntings is that soon the family begins to blame every little mishap on their ghost. You mop the floor and slip; the ghost must have pushed you. You can’t find your car keys; the ghost must have moved them. Your cat disappears; the ghost must have eaten it.”

            “You said that cats don’t like ghosts!”

            “I said that animals don’t like ghosts. It’s true, but that is not the fault of the ghost.”

            “What’s the big deal, then?”  I was exasperated. “You were telling me how scary this would be, all that ‘Do you have the courage to face hell’ stuff, and now you’re telling me that ghosts can’t hurt people, can’t even break dishes; what is the point then, why bother to exorcise them, I just don’t get it!”

            Clara eyed me with pursed lips. If she had not had both hands on the wheel, she would have been making her p-p-p sound. With a sudden jerk, she pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to me.

            I was taken aback. It occurred to me that I had just been ranting at my new boss. Maybe my soon-to-be new ex-boss. I opened my mouth to apologize.

            “Pamela.” She looked me right in the eye and spoke like a parent lecturing a teenager about drinking and driving. “Many people go into a tailspin the first time they encounter a ghost and recognize it for what it is. That is what is happening to you right now. You are trying to fit the existence of ghosts into your logically organized idea of the universe. I could explain the rules to you, tell you how it works, but you would probably just argue with me.

            “We are going back to the office. I want you to type up your notes in the computer. Then go home. We’ll discuss this further in the morning.”

            She pulled back onto the highway. Chastened, I reviewed my notes in silence. I read and reread what she had said to the ghost. We didn’t speak until she parallel parked outside the office.

            “Clara…. What was the rude thing it said?” I asked.

            Clara frowned in distaste. “Even ghosts are skeptics.” She sighed. “It said that if I were a real psychic, I would know its name.”

*                                *                                    *

 

            All evening I pondered the day’s events. Sitting on the end of Maddy’s bed, I attended as she said her prayers, laid her hands under her cheek and dropped off to sleep. She had always been like that, since the day I brought her home from the hospital some four years earlier. Lay her in bed and she slept, it was that easy. I crossed my legs yoga style and thought. The more I considered, the less it seemed that I had actually encountered anything supernatural. After all, I had not seen a ghost. True, I had thought there was something… but the pure force of Clara Smythe’s personality was enough to influence an observer’s imagination. She had “talked” to a ghost. So was she a charlatan, or merely deluded?  I leaned toward the latter. Yet Clara seemed so sensible, the complete opposite of a delusional fanatic. All right, not deluded, then, just wrong.  She believed in ghosts, believed with a conviction that convinced others.  She believed she could speak to them and somehow “quieten” them. Not all self-styled psychics were out to mislead their clients, some truly believed they possessed unusual powers and endeavored to use these powers to help others.

            I watched Maddy’s sleeping face and told my brain to “quieten” itself. Whatever Clara believed, my tasks were clear: support the boss, agree with the boss, go along with the boss, don’t contradict the boss, and make the boss look good. All this I resolved to do.

            The next morning I dropped an excited Maddy at her grandmother’s. Spending the night with “Gamma” was a treat.  I kissed her goodbye, evaded my mother’s questions about my new job, and headed to work.

            Clara gave me her tape recording from the previous day to transcribe. My computer, the only PC Clara’s business boasted, rested on a shabby metal desk in a larger room adjoining the small kitchen. Overstuffed file cabinets and boxes crowded me, but, having never been a claustrophobe, I did not mind. I transcribed Clara’s tape with no trouble. There were no mysterious noises or whiteouts. Her one-sided conversation did not even seem eerie; it was like hearing one end of a phone conversation. I printed the transcription and my notes from yesterday and brought them into Clara’s office. She sat at her desk batting at a circling fly as she packed her gear. She grinned at me and held up a small vial.

            “Holy water,” she said, giving the vial a shake. “Do you know how they make holy water?”

            “The priest blesses it, some kind of special blessing?” I guessed.

            “No. They boil the hell out of it.”

            She said it in such a deadpan tone that it took me a second to realize it was a joke. I laughed dutifully and handed her the printouts.  She waved them at the fly.

            “Let me get that,” I offered. I leaned over her desk, outstretched my hand, waited till the fly came around again, and snatched it out of the air. It buzzed between my fingers.

            Clara was delighted. “Marvelous! A woman of many talents. Get rid of that, and we’ll talk.”

            I carried the fly to the kitchen and rinsed it down the sink. When I returned, Clara was glancing through the printouts. She frowned, deepening the worry lines between her eyebrows. “There is no mention of the last thing I said to the ghost.”

            “What last thing?”

            “The last thing I said was ‘I promise before God you shall hear only the truth from me and I ask the same courtesy of you.’”

            I stared at her. “I never heard you say that. The last thing you said was, ‘I will not tolerate lies.’”

            “Hm. So there was a gap on the tape?”

            “No, not at all. The tape was fine. But you didn’t say that. I was standing right there.”

            She looked at me. “Did you compare your notes with this?” She shook the pages.

            “Um, no, but, but, um, a transcript of my notes is included there, you can compare them.” I gestured at the pages. “But that’s not in my notes either. The last thing I heard you say was, ‘I will not tolerate lies,’ and then you said it was gone.” I was positive of what I had heard and this seemed to be evidence that she was a charlatan, trying to convince me that something had disappeared from the tape.

            “Hm,” she said again. She tapped her fingers against her lips. “Interesting….”

            I shook my head, and my disbelief must have been plain on my face. “Sit down,” she said. I sat. Clara leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “We need to straighten out a few things before we go over there,” she said. “I expect that events tonight will be very frightening. While it is true that ghosts cannot physically harm people, they can inflict psychological and spiritual damage. You are a strong person, or I would not have hired you. Nevertheless, your tenacity will be tested.

            “I can see that I haven’t made the nature of my work clear to you. You feel that I am misleading people and taking advantage of them. The truth is that I do not charge for my services. My husband was a wealthy man, and he indulged my hobby of meddling in the supernatural. When he died, I made this my life. My life’s work is simply to help people, and to help lost souls.”

            She leaned forward and placed her hands, palm down, side by side on her desktop. “Ghosts are in hell. They are souls who will not seek or accept God’s forgiveness, so they cannot enter heaven. So, you see, many of the rumors about hell are actually true. Hell is here on earth, hell is separation from God, and we make our own hell.”

            I mulled over this information in silence. Dozens of questions battled each other in my head before one overriding problem popped out. “There must be ghosts everywhere then,” I said. “if there’s no hell to go to.”

            “There are ghosts everywhere, but most of them are quiet. Most cause no trouble.”

            “And if there’s no hell, how can you get rid of a ghost? Where can you send it?”

            Clara raised her finger and stabbed at me. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? There are only two things that can be done. One is to get the ghost to shut up, to become a Quiet ghost. The other is to convince it to accept forgiveness and enter heaven.”

            This sounded familiar. “Isn’t that just another way of saying, ‘Go into the light?’”

            She laughed as if I had made a joke, and I chose that moment to ask for an advance on my salary. She grew cautious. “I’d be happy to pay you for yesterday and today, but, the truth is, this night’s work may determine whether you remain in my employ. You’ll be paid for every hour we are there, of course. It will be overtime if your total comes to over forty hours this week, but for your advance it will be paid as straight time.”

I argued that I fully intended to keep this job forever, but she was firm. I accepted her offer to pay me for two days. Normally payroll would be processed by her accountant, but she made an estimate and wrote me a check. On my lunch break I took the check to the bank and chose one bill to pay out of my stack. 

After lunch Clara suggested that I peruse some of her case files. The more recent ones were stored on the computer’s hard drive. Older cases were kept on floppy disks, and file cabinets held hard copies of the oldest incidents as well as backups of everything. I began with the computer files. They proved to be dry reading material and not the fascinating stories I had anticipated. Detailed accounts of homes and families, rooms and furnishings, dates and times, histories and occurrences took up most of the documentation. Conversations between Clara and the ghosts were sometimes written as summaries, sometimes transcribed word for word. In most of them, Clara tried to convince the ghosts that God was ready to forgive whatever they had done. Few records included the ghosts’ offenses. It appeared that knowledge of their sins was not necessary to “quieten” them, and she often did not ever find out what they had done. [Does this par need to be different? Include details? Is this a letdown that the accounts are "dry?" But Pam is skeptical and there should not be much here to change her mind?]

In the late afternoon, Clara and I gathered our things and drove to Clark City. It was a beautiful fall day, cool, clear, and crisp, the kind of day that makes you want to rake up a pile of leaves just so you can jump into them. I tried to enjoy the changing colors as we drove. My mind was teeming with the various case studies I had read. Would this case be similar or different? Was the house truly haunted? Could Clara actually talk to spirits?

If she went into a trance and I bit the insides of my cheeks hard enough, could I keep from laughing out loud?

“Clara… if it didn’t knock the shelves down, which phenomena would you say are attibutable to the spirit?” I felt pleased at my choice of words. This sounded exactly like something a ghost hunter should say.

Clara nodded in thought. “The electronic disturbances, almost certainly. The noises, probably. The cold spots, also probably. The disappearance of items, no. The sleepwalking… the ghost is not the cause of the sleepwalking, but it may be exacerbating his sleepwalking. It is certainly influencing his behavior during the sleepwalking.”

 

We drove up the hill, up the long gravel driveway, past the line of evergreens. The house stood in the shade of a huge, golden-leaved sugar maple.  Leaves littered the lawn. In the early evening, the slanted rays of the sun brought out the golds and greens in a furry glow, as though the end of the day were something you could touch. As we got out of the car, the wind blew a rush of crackling golden leaves at us, bearing the scent of clean earth.

Michelle greeted us at the door. The homey sounds of laughter came from within, and the smell of meat and onion reminded me that I had skipped lunch. She gave us a tight, bright smile. “Come in! Bill and Billy are in the kitchen. Dinner’s almost ready.” We followed her down the hall as she chattered. “I hope meatloaf is okay. I always make it when we’re having guests. It’s easy and it feeds a lot of people, you know? I have a great recipe. I make it with Grape Nuts instead of bread crumbs. This is my husband, Bill, and my son, Billy.”

We entered the kitchen where Michelle’s husband sat at the table balancing a boy across his lap, as though for a spanking. The two were wrestling. Billy apparently was trying to use all his strength to hold down Bill’s left leg. Bill indulgently exerted just enough effort to slowly lift his leg, then allowed Billy to slam it back down. The boy struggled, panting and giggling with the effort, his face red. He screeched in triumph and Bill bellowed in pretended pain each time the foot landed on the floor, whereupon the contest began anew.

“Bill, this is Clara, the medium. And her assistant… sorry, I forget your name?”

“Pam,” I supplied. 

Bill lifted his son under the arms and set him on his feet as he stood to shake hands. “Clara, Pam, nice to meet you.” he said. He wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt over a white tee. He was a big, meaty man, and I felt overwhelmed by masculinity, the faint smell of male sweat alien and yet familiar as I looked up into his bearded face and vainly tried to return the squeeze of his huge hand. Billy plopped himself into a chair and stared at us.

“How lovely to meet you both,” Clara said. “It’s so kind of you to invite us to dinner.”

Michelle gave the back of Billy’s head a tiny shove. “Billy, say hi to Clara and Pam!”

“Hi,” he said.

Michelle waved at the table. “Sit down, sit down! Do you like meatloaf? I don’t use mushrooms, even though the recipe calls for mushrooms. Lots of people don’t like mushrooms. Do you like mushrooms? I could add some on top.”

Clara assured her that we both loved meatloaf and did not care for mushrooms. We crowded around the kitchen table, five seated in a space meant for four, but I thought I understood why they did not wish to use the dining room, the site of the broken china. Billy scrambled over two chairs to sit next to his father. “It smells absolutely divine,” Clara said, inhaling with her eyes closed. “How wonderful to have a home cooked meal. I rarely cook anymore, myself. What about you, Pamela?”

“Oh, now and then. May I use your restroom, please?”

Michelle escorted me to the bathroom as if I might have forgotten where it was even though we had passed it on the way to the kitchen. I closed and locked the door, sat on the stool and put my head in my hands. A great lump had lodged in my throat. Seeing Bill play with his son had unsettled me. The way that fathers interact with their children is different from the way mothers do. I had told myself that I was a great mother and a strong person and that I would do just fine raising Maddy by myself, but, just now, I had been blindsided by the reminder of what had been lost. Maddy would never have a father to roughhouse with her, to roll around on the floor with her, teach her to bait a hook, change a tire, all the things that fathers do. Even if I ever remarried, it would not be the same. A stepfather is not the same thing as a father. A stepfather would never love her as her own father would have, I told myself.

This was no place for a breakdown. I took deep breaths till the lump dissolved then flushed the commode and washed my hands. I faced myself in the mirror. “Maddy will be fine,” I said. “I will be fine, and Maddy will be fine. We’ll be fine.” I adjusted my expression till it showed polite interest, exited the bathroom and joined the group at the table.

Clara had already drawn Billy into conversation. “It was the hugest truck ever, and it drove right over it, SMASH! It creamed it! POW!” He struck one fist into his palm like a hammer and ground it back and forth by way of demonstration.

“What color was it?” Clara asked.

“Purple! And with orange fire painted on it. It was awesome.”

“It certainly sounds awesome.”

“My dad says when I’m sixteen I can have a purple truck with orange fire painted on it.”

“Really!”

“Not as big, though.”

“Well, that’s sensible. You wouldn’t want to run over other people’s cars, would you?”

“Yes, I would!” Billy crowed, and we all laughed.

We dug into the meatloaf, which was very good. I noticed how Billy imitated his father’s every action, declining gravy and opting for ketchup, choosing four dill pickles from a jar and placing them atop the meatloaf, and mounding his mashed potatoes into an elongated row around one edge of the plate. This continued throughout dinner in the way he ate, the way he sat, the way he talked. It was unbearably cute and made my heart ache dully.

 Pushing his plate back and tugging to loosen his belt, Bill gave out a sigh and said, “Well. Guess we’ll go play video games, huh buddy?”

“Yeah!” Billy tore out of the kitchen at a run.

“I’d very much like to observe, if you’ve no objection?” Clara raised her eyebrows politely at Bill.

“Nope. Guess that’s fine.” Bill shrugged.

“Pamela, why don’t you help Michelle tidy up?”

I was mildly annoyed. I had no objection to helping tidy up and probably would have offered, but having the boss order me to do dishes felt demeaning. I got up and began stacking dishes. ”No, oh, no,” Michelle protested. “I don’t need any help, really.”

Clara said, “I would like some time alone with the men.” She looked at me pointedly, and I realized she wanted me to talk to Michelle. About what, though, I could not tell, as my psychic abilities apparently lacked enough to prevent my receiving whatever message the gifted psychic was trying to send me.

“The lights are off again!” I heard Billy yell from the other room. Clara smiled and followed Bill.

“I don’t mind helping,” I said. “It’s no fun cleaning up by yourself. Anyway, we can talk. I was wanting to ask you something….”

“Well, sure, but you can sit while I do the dishes. We can talk while I do them.”

“No, awkward! Anyway,  we’ll get it done faster.” I carried a pile of plates to the counter. “Bill and Billy sure are cute together.” I could have bitten my tongue. That was the last thing I wanted to discuss.

“Yeah. He’s really in that phase now, the identifying with the male authority figure phase.” Michelle opened the dishwasher and began to empty it. “What’d you want to ask me?”

“I — let me get my notebook.” I set down the next stack of dishes and wiped my hands on my jeans so I could fetch my notepad. Opening the pad and writing the date at the top, I sat down and said, ”I want you to tell me what you remember of Clara’s conversation with the ghost yesterday.”

“Oh, that. Well.” Michelle stretched and could not reach the top shelf. She gave the coffee cups a little toss to get them up there. “Let’s see. She introduced herself and I remember she held out her hand, and I was thinking, Does it have a hand? Weird.”

“That’s good. But please relate the conversation to me verbatim, as exactly as you can remember it. I want to compare it with my notes. I need to look for discrepancies and inaccuracies.” I thought this sounded very professional.

Michelle turned around and leaned against the counter, her hands behind her, bouncing herself. She closed her eyes and spoke while I scribbled. “Um, okay. She said, ‘Hello, I’m Clara Smythe, and this is my assistant, Pamela.’ She always calls you ‘Pamela,’ doesn’t she? And she held out her hand, like I said. She said, ‘I was invited here, may I know your name? There’s no need to be rude.’ And then she shook her head and said, ‘I will not tolerate lies.’ Then that was it. That’s probably not exactly right. I was really pretty much in shock, but that’s as much as I remember.”

“That’s perfect; thank you. Now I’m going to read you my transcription of the conversation, and you tell me if any of it sounds wrong to you.” Flipping back through my pad, I found my notes and read: “‘I’m Clara Smythe. This is my assistant, and I believe you are already acquainted with Mrs. Luttrell. I’m very pleased to meet you. I hope we’ll be having some long conversations in the next few days. May I know your name? I see no need to be rude. Won’t you at least shake hands? I was invited here, and I….  No, this is not your house, as you are well aware. I will tolerate no lies.’” I hesitated and then recited what Clara had claimed was her last line. “‘I promise before God you shall hear only the truth from me and I ask the same courtesy of you.’”

Michelle’s eyes had opened during this reading, and she stared at me, bouncing. Finally, she whipped around, rummaged in a drawer and came up with a package of cigarettes and a lighter. “Mind?” she asked, putting one between her lips and raising her brows in a cursory manner.

“Course not. What about what I read? Is there any of it that you don’t remember hearing?”

Michelle lit her smoke, inhaled on it, and turned her head to exhale. “No. It sounds about right.”

“So… the last thing? You remember her saying that?”

“What last thing?”

I repeated the line.

“Yeah. No. I’m not sure. It’s all… it was freaky.”

I nodded. “Michelle, how did you know the ghost was there, in the doorway? Could you see it, or hear it, or feel something?”

Michelle shook her head and smoked some more before answering. “No. I don’t think. Sometimes I think I feel things without knowing? But yeah, no, I didn’t know it was there until she said hello to it.”

 

After an evening of video games and chatting, bedtime arrived. All of us trooped upstairs together. Bill shut out the downstairs lights, leaving only the hall light on. I wondered why he bothered.

 Clara and I were ensconced in the guest room, Clara having left strict instructions that we were to be fetched the moment Billy arose. “You’ll probably hear him, unless you’re hard sleepers,” Michelle said. “But, okay.” She scurried around our room, fluffing pillows, smoothing the bedspread and then turning the covers down, drawing the blinds, offering to open a window.