Being Dead Page 9

  He thought about it now.

  He put his hand on the stone and tried to imagine what Robert and Eulalia had been like. It was they who had been here Sunday afternoon, he was sure of it He had seen pictures of people of the late 1800s skating on the Genesee River—the men in top hats, the women with fur muffs. He imagined Robert and Eulalia skating on the river. Had they come to the cemetery for Sunday picnics, the way the cemetery tour guides said Victorians used to do, sitting perhaps on that hill there, overlooking the pond? Harrison imagined them laughing together, their voices clear as angels' song, so much in love that one couldn't live without the other, SHE DIED FOR LOVE OF HIM. Nobody loved Harrison that much. Nobody ever would.

  "Kid?" the breeze seemed to whisper. "Kid?" Then, more insistent more human, "Are you all right?" Harrison opened his eyes and found that he had somehow ended up kneeling on the ground. He blinked in the bright sunlight Birds were chirping. In the distance, at the farthest edge of hearing, someone was mowing a lawn. The woman jogger with the dog stood poised on the grass between him and the curb as though unsure how close she should approach. She held on to the dog's collar to keep him from bounding over to Harrison.

  "I'm"—his voice sounded so husky and unused—"taking a shortcut home so I won't be late." He ran his tongue over his parched lips.

  The jogger hesitated before nodding. "Oh." Her jaw twitched, perhaps an attempt at a smile. She took a step back toward the road.

  Harrison pulled himself up by leaning on the gravestone.

  The jogger tugged on the chain collar until she and her dog were both on the road. Harrison checked his bicycle's wheels and chain and handlebars and seat while the two of them disappeared over the crest of the hill. Then he got back off and knelt by the grave.

  SHE DIED FOR LOVE OF HIM. Harrison didn't think he could bear the incredible sadness of it. That they had lived and loved and died before he had even been born. Before his parents had been born. History had always seemed unreal to him, as though everything that had ever happened in the whole of the world had been leading up to him, to whatever moment he was experiencing. Now he felt unreal. Surely things had peaked here, in 1892, for Robert and Eulalia. Surely he was superfluous, extra, unneeded. Not smart Not loved. Worthless. Nobody would ever grieve at his grave.

  We would, a voice whispered into his ear, a voice as warm and beautiful and clear as the singing of angels. We have enough love left over for you. Come to us. Trust us.

  Harrison lay down on the grass and closed his eyes.

  We're the ones who care for you, another gentle voice whispered. Only we. No one else.

  But then a shadow fell across him, blocking out the sun, so that he shivered. "Hello, Harrison," a quiet voice said.

  Harrison looked up and blinked several times to get the tears out of his eyes. Tears for himself. Tears for Robert and Eulalia. They were waiting for him. They'd make everything better.

  "Remember me? Charlie Sonneman?"

  SHE DIED FOR LOVE OF HIM. Slowly the vision retreated; the voices retreated. That was all right. He'd be able to call them back. "Hello, Mr. Sonneman," Harrison said. This was Mr. Reisinger's partner in the gardening business. Or at least he had been. Vaguely Harrison remembered hearing that Mr. Sonneman had retired last summer for health reasons. Why was he bothering Harrison now?

  "How are you doing, Harrison?"

  "Fine," Harrison said, still lying flat on his back.

  "I was wondering if you could give me a lift to the gatehouse."

  Harrison would have thought Mr. Sonneman was too old for riding double on a bike, but apparently Mr. Sonneman didn't think so. Harrison was annoyed at the interruption, but he figured he could always come back.

  "Hasn't your father ever told you," Mr. Sonneman asked as he took hold of the edge of the seat behind Harrison, "not to talk to strangers?"

  "You're not a stranger, Mr. Sonneman."

  "I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about those two: Robert Adams and Eulalia Meinyk."

  Harrison slammed on the brakes hard enough to jerk them both forward.

  "Probably you should go home for the rest of the day," Mr. Sonneman said, ignoring the sudden stop, ignoring the expression that must have been on Harrison's face as Harrison turned to stare at him. "Tomorrow will be easier. You'll be out of danger then. Anniversaries are a powerful thing. As are thunderstorms. And hate."

  "She died for love of him," Harrison protested.

  Mr. Sonneman shrugged. "Robert's mother wrote that She never would believe anything bad about him. But Eulalia knew. He was a drunk and a cheat. He used to beat her. Eulalia got hold of a revolver, one of those little white-painted, very ladylike jobs they used to make, and blew his head off."

  "That can't be true," Harrison protested.

  Mr. Sonneman continued as though Harrison hadn't interrupted. "They had promised each other, once, at the beginning, to love each other forever, to the grave and beyond—which was the sort of extravagant thing they used to say back then. Very emotional people, the Victorians. They wove jewelry out of their hair, you know, to be remembered after they died."

  "But it says she died for love of him," Harrison insisted. "I saw her." There; he'd said it out loud. "I saw her crying for him."

  Mr. Sonneman shook his head. "I've seen her, too. She cries for herself, Harrison. She said she'd love him forever. He held her to that He waited two days after he died, and then he came for her. They heard her scream, but her door was locked. They had to break it down. They found her strangled. She didn't die for love of him. She died for promising to love him.

  "The dead can be very jealous, you know, some of them. They get lonely in their graves and come looking for company. They whisper lies in your ears. They feed oh your own doubts and weaknesses until there's nothing left of you at all."

  "That's an awful thought!"

  "Some of them." Mr. Sonneman shrugged. "There are ghosts, and then there are ghosts. You know you're loved, don't you, Harrison? They couldn't fool you with those lies, could they?"

  Harrison looked away in shame, thinking of his parents, of his friends—of the uncountable ways they had shown their love for him over the years.

  "Sunday was the hundredth anniversary of his death. Today is hers. They'll have less hold on you tomorrow. Even less now, because now you know. They won't be able to manipulate your emotions anymore."

  Harrison shuddered, remembering the tears that had stung his eyes, as though they'd occurred a long time ago, to somebody he no longer was.

  "I'll get off here," Mr. Sonneman said. "Go home." He patted Harrison's shoulder. "Rest."

  Finally he got his mouth to work, but by then Mr. Sonneman had already walked halfway up the hill, where Harrison couldn't follow with the bike, or at least not easily. "Wait."

  "Not all the dead are like that," Mr. Sonneman called back.

  "But how do you know?..." Too late. He was already gone.

  Very strange, Harrison thought.

  And thought it again the following week when he started to ask Mr. Reisinger about his old partner Charlie Sonneman and his peculiar view regarding jealous ghosts. Mr. Reisinger only shook his head and told him Charlie had died last fall.

  October Chill

  The worst part about dying, Emily thought, was knowing it was coming. Which was ridiculous, she knew: Everyone would die, eventually. Everyone knew it was coming. Eventually.

  It was that eventually that made all the difference in the world.

  Not every sixteen-year-old knew she wouldn't see seventeen. Not everyone had gone through test after painful test only to have her doctor tell her, "From now on, we'll concentrate on keeping you comfortable."

  Still, for the moment Emily was comfortable. Emily's mother, who always tried to find something positive about everything, pointed out that at least Emily hadn't had to go through chemotherapy and lose her hair. It was hard to find a whole lot of comfort in that, but Emily supposed she should be grateful that she didn't look obviously sick
. Because the last thing she wanted was people knowing. And people didn't know. Except for her family, of course. And the doctor. And the doctor's staff. And the people at the support group her parents had forced her to join. Not that she had any plans to go back there if whining and sulking could get her out of it. The only good thing about support group was they had finally convinced her mother that hovering was bad. But in any case, at least she didn't have people on the street giving her that pitying look she'd seen them give to the other kids who went to the same oncologist, with their bald heads, and the circles under their eyes, and their arms all bruised from the injections and the IVs.

  See, Emily told herself, you have a lot to be thankful for. So far there was no pain, or nothing the medication couldn't handle, anyway. And she still had her hair. And her school friends and her neighbors didn't know about the inoperable tumor growing in her head. And...

  Emily tried to think of more things to be thankful for.

  And she had this weekend job she loved in the re-created historic village at Seneca Valley Park. And she'd be able to finish the season out, which was good. No need for lies or awkward explanations. She'd work until winter break with nobody suspecting anything, and by the time spring came around, she'd be dead. Did you hear, she could imagine the regulars saying—Norm and Barb and Mary and a couple of the others—that little high school girl who worked over the summer and on weekends died. Just so long as she didn't have to be the one to tell them. She sincerely hoped she would be dead by spring, rather than lingering in a state not quite dead or alive.

  So, what she didn't have was a reason to be feeling sorry for herself. Well, no more than usual. What she didn't have was a reason to be crying.

  But here she was, sitting at one of the round tables at the Ballston Spa Tavern, hoping that she could stop crying before the first busload of tourists came up the gravel path. Just stop it, she told herself, using the corner of her reproduction colonial serving-girl shawl to wipe her eyes. She was faced away from the door, and the fire Norm had started in the hearth wasn't really going yet, so her chest and face were warm, and her back and arms goose bumpy with the cold of an October morning in upstate New York. Any minute now people would arrive—day-camp kids with construction-paper name tags pinned to their jackets, Japanese businessmen bearing cameras, families who preferred the cold of off-season to the summer crowds—expecting die warm cider, which was all this particular tavern served.

  The wood floor creaked behind her, and she felt a cold draft on the back of her neck, though the fire in the grate didn't gutter and she hadn't heard the front door give its characteristic squeal.

  Hurriedly Emily wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks, as though brushing wisps of hair that had gotten loose from the bun under her colonial cap. She pretended to wipe at a smudge on the table with her apron. If Mr. Drake found out that customers were coming in before she was prepared, she would be in for another of his verisimilitude lectures.

  "There," she said, stepping back from the table as though examining it "That's better." She rubbed her arms. "Ooo, a bit brisk today, isn't it?" Finally she turned to see who had entered.

  Not a sightseer after all. He was in colonial costume; that was the first thing she noticed—his oversized, drop-shouldered shirt that put him in the same 1750 to 1790 era she was supposed to represent, though she had never seen him before. Maybe he was subbing for someone. He even had his hair long enough to be bound at the nape of his neck, which the board of trustees didn't insist on, knowing that most of the men were part-timers whose regular employers might disapprove of a pigtail. Emily decided this guy probably wasn't employed. He couldn't have been more than a year or two older than Emily, so he was probably a student, maybe high school, maybe college. Most of the students left after the summer.

  The second thing she noticed was that he was exceptionally good-looking, in a clear-skinned, innocent-eyed manner. Noticing that made her feel uncomfortable. Things being as they were, how this guy looked was none of her business.

  "Yes?" she said, because the young man had said nothing. And she turned her back to him because her eyes were beginning to overflow again.

  "Are you..." His voice was strained, as though he wasn't used to it "Is (here anything. i."

  Oh, damn, he'd realized she'd been crying. "Isn't there something you're supposed to be doing?" she asked, embarrassment putting a snap into her tone. Good; nothing wrong with that. Frighten him off.

  "I'm sony," he said. There was pain in that apology, and Emily knew she had put it there. He'd probably fought with himself, with his inclination not to get involved, and she'd gone and bitten his head off. There's maintaining your privacy, she told herself, and then there's being just plain mean. "Look." She turned back to him. "I'm the one who should—"

  He'd taken a step away. "I'm sorry," he repeated, almost a whisper.

  She'd put him in a panic; she could see it in those wide eyes. That gave her a wretched feeling, and she started, "Don't-"

  He shook his head. "I'm sorry." He stepped back.

  And dissolved into the air.

  By closing time Emily had talked herself into and out of a variety of rationalizations several times over. But each of those rationalizations assumed one of two things, and since Emily refused to believe she was hallucinating—brain tumor or not—she had to assume she had seen some sort of ghost.

  She put out the DISPLAY CLOSED sign, and latched the door and windows from the inside against any stragglers, then she banked down the fire. She wiped down the tables, washed the last batch of mugs, checked the supply of cider, and filled out the daily-attendance-estimate forms. The same as she did every day she worked here. Norm would be by later, as he was every day, to check that all the candles and cooking fires were truly out.

  She could hear the other demonstratois and tour guides calling good night to one another outside, and the crunch of gravel carried in the crisp air as they walked down the path to the covered toll bridge that marked the entrance of the main exhibit area. To the west were several hundred acres of dense wooded area—owned by the museum and slated for development as more historic buildings were moved here from sites all along the eastern' seaboard. Emily knew from experience that the trees' shadows would be long and gloomy already, reaching the Shaker meetinghouse across the commons from the tavern. Everything as it should be. Everything as it had always been, until today.

  Inside the tavern, she was more aware of the smoky smell now than she'd been when the fire had actually been burning. Already her breath was visible in the chill late-afternoon air. All that was left was to douse the candles and go meet her mother in the parking lot. Then it was another evening of just her and her parents pretending everything was fine. Same as all other days.

  And yet ... And yet ... The doubts and questions she had managed to block during her busyness of providing mulled cider and historical information and period atmosphere now rushed to fill the void inactivity created.

  "Hello," she called, very softly, embarrassed even though there was no one to witness her making a fool of herself. "Are you still here? I'm..."

  This was ridiculous. If Mary, who demonstrated spinning and weaving in the log cabin, happened to stop by on her way out as she sometimes did, and found Emily at this...

  Mary would tell her ghosts were silly.

  But what was a handsome young man with distress in his eyes, who dressed in colonial garb and dissolved in thin air?

  "I'm sorry I snapped at you," she told the air. "You startled me; that's all. Please come back."

  Now, what had she gone and said that for?

  "Hello? Whoever you are? Are you still here?"

  Facing the door she felt the draft from behind her, from within the room. "I—"

  Despite herself she gasped at the sound of his voice. She whirled to face him.

  "Don't...," he pleaded. Already he was beginning to shimmer at the edges, the flames from the candles on the mantel behind him faintly visible through h
is torso. "I'm sorry," he assured her. "I meant no harm."

  , "Wait!" she cried. "Don't go!"

  He didn't become any more solid, but at least he didn't disappear.

  "You startled me," she repeated. My God, she was talking to someone she could see right through. She backed into the table. She hadn't truly expected him to return. Now what? His face was pale between his dark hair and darker eyes. That ... may have been his normal coloring. But he looked...

  He looked, she realized, at least as scared of her as she was of him.

  She wasn't used to having people scared of her.

  "I'm sorry," she said again. "Please forgive me." The old-fashioned clothes they both wore encouraged a more formal speech.

  The boy seemed to gulp.

  (Could ghosts gulp?) She forced a smile. "Who are you?"

  He looked desperate for something to be doing with his hands. "John." He cleared his throat "John Mellender."

  Instinctively she extended her hand as she said, "My name's Emily Nash."

  He hesitated, wiped his hand on his breeches, then reached out also.

  Their hands missed.

  Or, rather, they didn't.

  Her hand seemed to pass through cold thick air. She shuddered.

  As did he. He stepped back, hugging himself as if for warmth. "What are you?" he asked.

  "What am I?" she echoed, incredulous, thinking, Oh, no. Don't tell me he doesn't even know he's a ghost.

  But he didn't look like a ghost, not anymore. He had fully materialized, or solidified, or whatever it was that ghosts do when you can't see the wallpaper behind them anymore. His white linen shirt had no bloodstains; nor, except for appearing paler than she'd expect for a man dressed like an eighteenth-century farmer, did he bear any obvious signs of violence or disease. Not like horror-show ghouls. What had killed him? After stepping away from her, he had put out a hand to steady himself, a hand which now solidly gripped the back of one of the tavern chairs. He looked, Emily had to admit to herself, like a man who had just seen a ghost.