Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

LISA TUTTLE Haunts

John Hutchinson was a haunted man. Not bad — I’ll never believe that — and not mad, as others think, but haunted. Driven to what he did by a ghost. You can’t blame him for what he did; I honestly believe that. Of course, he didn’t believe in ghosts. But in the end belief doesn’t matter a damn. Things happen that make no human sense. Trying to make sense of them could drive you mad — or worse.

I probably knew John Hutchinson as well as anybody. He was one of my best friends in high school — Hutch, John Wayne Barlow, Greg Hainey and me. We called ourselves the Big Four, sometimes the Famous Four. In some ways, it was an unlikely alliance. Greg and Hutch were budding scientists, engineers-in-training, devoted to rationality, practical and smart, whereas John Wayne and I loved the arts, the psychological and the weird. Really, we should have hated each other, and maybe at a bigger school we would have. But we were all misfits growing up in a small town in Texas. To everybody else, we were geeks and losers. We didn’t have any other friends. So we tended to kind of get lumped together — bookworms, hopelessly unfashionable, no good at sports — and learned to like each other.

For three years we hung out together, wasted time, and helped each other at school, both socially and academically. It was Greg who kept me from flunking out of Algebra, it was John Wayne who turned him on to Mervyn Peake and Aubrey Beardsley and Edward Gorey, it was Hutch who got me to take an interest in science, it was me who helped him with his English essays, and tried to teach him there had to be more to life than the strictly rational.

We used to go on ghost-hunts. Mostly, I guess, they were an excuse to huddle together in a graveyard or an abandoned house at night and try to scare each other, but we were serious about it as well. Greg and Hutch were complete unbelievers, rationalists who bemoaned the fuzzy-minded attitude which allowed me and John Wayne to reckon that there just might be ‘something’ there. John Wayne and I wanted to see a ghost, for real, to experience what we’d read about so often. Greg and Hutch wanted to prove that there are no such things as ghosts, to force me and John Wayne to admit that they were right and we were wrong.

Well, we never saw a ghost. And since Hutch disallowed self-reported ‘creepy feelings’ as evidence, there were never even any close calls, although we did have a couple of really weird sessions with my mother’s old Ouija board. We ended our brief career as psychic investigators with our established belief-systems unshaken: Greg and Hutch were still rationalists, John Wayne and I still hoping.

After graduation we went our separate ways — Hutch to the West, John Wayne to the East, Greg and me to the University of Texas in Austin. We kept in touch, and got together at Christmas when we could escape from our families.

I might as well admit right here that I used to have a crush on Hutch. But I kept my feelings to myself, and I’m sure he never knew. My self-esteem was low. I was a skinny, flat-chested girl with glasses and a bad home-perm, and I felt that the survival of the ‘Big Four’ was dependent on my sexuality being kept as hidden as John Wayne’s. Like him, I pretended to be ‘one of the guys’ to survive. I had a lot of fantasies about Hutch one day waking up to my presence, really seeing me for the first time — but I couldn’t do anything to try to make it happen. If I made him see me differently, what if he didn’t like what he saw? It wasn’t just that I couldn’t face rejection. If I declared myself, the balance of power would shift. The Big Four would crumble. I couldn’t risk destroying it for all of us.

Then we went away to college. Although we stayed in touch, the old raison d’être for the alliance had gone. Life at the university was totally different from a small-town high school. I found new friends, intellectual soulmates, and also lovers. I let my hair grow long, put on a few pounds in strategic places, borrowed my roommate’s clothes, gained confidence. I felt that I was completely changed.

That first Christmas when I saw Hutch again — saw the new assurance in his skinny, slouching stance, saw the way he filled out his Gap T-shirt and chinos — I felt a fluttering in the pit of my stomach and realised that here was one thing which hadn’t changed: I still wanted him. In fact, I wanted him more than ever — and now there was no reason, I felt, why he shouldn’t want me.

So, after Mr and Mrs Hutchinson had gone to bed, and Greg and John Wayne had staggered off home to their parents’, I stayed on. Hutch got out another six-pack and we settled down on the flowered chintz sofa in the enclosed back porch for more personal conversation.

By way of checking that the path was clear, I asked if he had a girlfriend at college.

He grinned, and told me of his conquests. There were nearly a dozen already; he was averaging one a week. A different girl each weekend. He didn’t like to repeat himself, because if you asked a girl out two weeks running, she’d start making assumptions and talking about a relationship for God’s sake!

’The problem with girls,’ he told me, as if I weren’t one, ‘is they’re hard-wired for monogamy, which guys aren’t. Girls screw around, sure they do. But if they screw the same guy regularly, then after a certain point, which I reckon is about a month, it’s like some switch in their brain gets tripped, and they get flooded with these chemicals, you know, serotonin and that, and suddenly they’re in love.’ He did the fingers-for-quotemarks thing in the air with his hands as he spoke those dire words in a tone dripping with irony.

The attraction — why not be honest and call it lust — which I’d been feeling for him, died inside me.

’The problem is,’ he went on, after pausing to chug some beer, ‘a month is about the time when the average guy stops feeling so horny for her and starts to get kind of bored. His genetic imperative is to move on to fresh pastures, try to knock somebody else up. Even if, you know, you’re not intending to knock anybody up, ever — well, that old urge is still there, genetically encoded.’

’So in other words,’ I interrupted him, trying to make my own voice just as ironic as his, ‘the answer to my question is, no, you don’t have a girlfriend.’

He grinned at me. ‘I couldn’t be that cruel, Becky! Breaking their little hearts? No, but it’s hard. When I find somebody really hot, you know, and think it would be great to get together with her again — well, I just have to resist the urge, and go out to look for somebody new. I always make it perfectly clear that what I want is sex, not a relationship.’

’What about love?’ I demanded. ‘Don’t you ever think about that?’

He shook his head. ‘Love’s a con. It doesn’t exist. There’s body heat, there’s hormones, there’s the genetic imperative — and there’s social myths about romantic love. That’s all it is. It’s not real, just because people believe in it.’

I was reminded of all the conversations we’d had in high school, when Hutch and Greg would put forth the rational, materialistic argument, and John Wayne and I would try (and fail) to shoot it full of holes with alternatives from the arts, from books, from philosophy, from feeling. I suddenly wished I wasn’t alone with Hutch. John Wayne had told me — had he confessed the same to Hutch or Greg? — that he was in love with his roommate. But I didn’t want to use John Wayne’s private feelings as ammunition, and I had no great love of my own to argue from. I’d never been any good at arguing, anyway, not like the boys, who would say anything to score a point. Occasionally, when John Wayne and I were flailing too badly, one of them would switch sides to argue our position, to make it a fairer fight. I knew Hutch could wipe the floor with me, and I’d never be able to believe in love again…

‘Gosh, it’s late,’ I said looking at my watch. ‘I’d better go home.’

The years went by. John Wayne did postgraduate work in set design, then moved to New York, where he seemed to be always on the fringes of the theatrical and/or art world, barely surviving, but happy. I worked for a free-sheet in Austin, and then got offered the chance to start up an arts and entertainment paper in Galveston. Hutch had a job with one of the big oil companies based in Houston; I think he had something to do with designing drilling equipment. Greg was the most successful of us all. The little software business he’d started up in college took off in a big way, and by the time we were in our mid-twenties, Greg was a millionaire. He settled in Austin in a big, beautiful house, married a doctor named Linda and became a leading light on the charity fundraising circuit. Despite all the demands on his time, he kept in touch with his old friends.

I’m not sure I would have stayed in touch with Hutch but for Greg. Although I’d thought of myself as being the very heart of the group when we were in high school, now he was the one who forwarded my replies to his e-mails to Hutch, and vice-versa. It was only his efforts which kept alive the ghost of the Big Four.

Even though Houston and Galveston are very close together, I never saw Hutch from one year to the next except at Christmas, when our visits to our parents overlapped, or up in Austin at one of Greg’s parties. He threw great parties, especially at Hallowe’en. Even in Austin, a city where Hallowe’en is taken seriously, Greg’s Hallowe’en parties were the stuff of legend.

I was surprised, and flattered, when Greg invited me to Austin one weekend in April, to discuss plans for that year’s Hallowe’en party. He said he wanted to pick my brain; he desperately needed my help to create a unique and unusual experience.

He sent the same invitation to Hutch and John Wayne. He even paid for John Wayne’s plane ticket.

So there we were, suddenly, the Famous Four reconstituted, with the addition of Greg’s wife, Linda. We stood in their living room, grinning uneasily at each other.

’You should have brought Luke,’ Greg said. ‘I hope I made it clear Luke would be welcome?’

He had. I nodded and explained, ‘I didn’t want him overwhelmed with our shared nostalgia.’

’Who’s Luke?’ John Wayne asked. ‘There was no “Luke” mentioned in your Christmas card!’

I could feel Hutch staring at me, and I hoped I wasn’t blushing. ‘We’re not actually living together yet,’ I said carefully.

Greg rolled his eyes at my coyness. ‘Luke is her fiancé,’ he announced. ‘At least, she told me they were engaged.’

’Tick-tick-tick,’ said Hutch.

’I think you’ll find that men have biological clocks, too,’ I said, trying not to sound annoyed.

’Not in the Hutchinson theory of life and love,’ Greg said, grinning, ’There, women have but a short shelf-life, while men are the eternal hunter-gatherers.’

Hutch shrugged. ‘It works for me,’ he said.

John Wayne looked him up and down. ‘It might work now, but what about when your visible assets start to go?’ He struck a pose. ‘Madame Fortuna predicts: a lonely old age.’

’Oh, I’ll probably get married eventually,’ he said. ‘Becky’s right — ’

I nearly dropped my drink as he nodded this acknowledgement to me.

’ — men can afford to leave it till later, but we’ve got the same urge to procreate. And I don’t actually want to be a bachelor forever. Studies show that married men are happier and live longer than singles. I figure when I’m in my late thirties I’ll start shopping around for a er wife.’

Linda snorted. ‘God, Hutch, you make it sound so romantic! How could any woman resist you?’

’I don’t know, but many have,’ he told her, grinning.

’Luckily he’s not too picky,’ said Greg, putting his arm around her. ‘When the time comes, he’ll just head for the Generic Wife aisle at le Wal-Mart — ’

’Target, surely,’ I objected, giving it the French pronunciation.

’Come on, let’s move to the dining room,’ Linda interrupted.

Hutch had been barely nineteen when he’d formulated his theory about men, women and love. But it seemed that nothing which had happened to him during the next eight years had made him change his mind. I knew from Greg that Hutch no longer picked up and discarded women with the rapidity of his college years. Probably, he didn’t find it so easy off-campus. More recently, he’d gone for longer-term, yet easily broken, liaisons with married women.

Behind me, as we walked through to the dining room, I heard John Wayne quizzing Hutch. ‘So you’re just going out to shop for a good little wifey when the time is right? I know you like to be Mr Unemotional, but get real. What about that crazy little thing called love?’

‘He doesn’t believe in it,’ I said, taking the seat the Linda motioned me to.

‘Belief has got nothing to do with it, believe me! Is that true?’ When Hutch nodded, John Wayne said thoughtfully, ‘Boy, you are really ripe for a fall! I just hope I’m around to see it when you fall head over heels for… whoever.’

He was looking, very thoughtfully, at me, as he spoke. I didn’t know why, but I could feel myself blushing. I dreaded Hutch’s rejoinder, his devastating deconstruction of the fraud of romantic love.

Greg rescued us all from that. ‘Let’s talk about this Hallowe’en party,’ he said firmly.

‘That’s what we’re here for,’ John Wayne said. ‘I’m sure once we four put our heads together, we’ll come up with some great ideas. What do you want?’

‘I want a haunted house,’ Greg said.

‘Not the whole house,’ Linda objected quickly.

Greg shrugged and shook his head. ‘No, Linda’s right. I can only give you the west wing to work on.’

‘This house?’ I asked.

‘No, we’ve got a new house under construction on a lot overlooking Lake Travis. Figure it should be ready for a Hallowe’en house-warming. And I’d like to do something really special with it — with the west wing, anyway.’

‘Creepy Gothic decor?’ John Wayne suggested.

Greg nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s part of it — I was hoping I could leave that part to you and Becky. Hire artists or decorators, buy whatever you need — I want it to be scary, but subtle. Disturbing, but not so severely that nobody could stay there. And I want Hutch to provide the ghost.’

‘Thank you,’ Hutch said, bowing his head gravely. ‘However, honoured though I am to be proposed as a sacrificial victim, I should warn you that, if murdered, I will not return to haunt you or your house!’

‘Hutch, this is your old pal Gregory talking to you. We both know that ghostly phenomena are not caused by the spirits of the dead.’

‘Right, right. So what kind of a con-trick do you want from me?’

‘Not a con-trick. An experiment.’ His eyes were bright, his round face glowing like a jack-o’-lantern. He paused as a waiter came in to deliver the first course.

‘A couple of guys in England did some research into the effects of low-frequency soundwaves on human physiology. The results were reported in several places — I can’t believe none of you guys read about it!’

‘Well, we didn’t, so you’d better tell us,’ I said, tasting the bright green soup. Leek, creamy and delicious.

‘They found that if you set up a standing wave of about nineteen cycles per second, a person in it is going to start feeling more and more uncomfortable: shivery, oppressed, frightened, just completely creeped-out.’

‘And in that state, they’re very suggestible, maybe start imagining ghosts,’ I guessed.

‘The human eyeball has a resonant frequency of eighteen cycles per second,’ Greg explained. ‘Infrasound just above that frequency will cause sympathetic vibrations in the eyeball — ’

‘And you’d start seeing weird things,’ said Linda. She shuddered.

Greg was already positively vibrating with excitement as he gazed intently at Hutch. ‘Could you repeat the experiment for me? I mean, set up a standing wave which would make the west wing seem to be haunted?’

‘If you’re paying for it.’ A slow, wide grin cracked Hutch’s usually solemn face. ‘God, I’d love to try something like that!’

‘I thought you would!’ Greg rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ll put you in touch with the architect and Bud, my contractor, so you can all work together. I’ll tell Bud to give you whatever you need. This takes priority. If we have to change the layout of the house, so be it.’

‘Just as long as the ghost can’t get out of the west wing,’ Linda said. ‘I don’t want the infrasound affecting anybody anywhere else in the house. There could be health implications.’

‘It’ll be a completely localised phenomenon,’ Greg assured her. He looked at Hutch. ‘Bear that in mind — and that there has to be an off-switch, so the west wing doesn’t have to be haunted all the time.’

We all got caught up in the excitement of planning. It felt almost like old times. Although of course there were differences. Greg was paying for it all. It was real work for John Wayne, but Hutch, who said he couldn’t afford to be caught moonlighting, would design and build the machine for producing the sound in his spare time, for expenses only. As for me, well, I was really just an onlooker, although both Greg and John Wayne were good about asking for my input. I couldn’t contribute anything to what Hutch had to do, and he said flatly that there was no point in trying to explain anything to a liberal arts major, I would just have to wait and see.

This I got to do, finally, in September, when I flew up to Austin for a private view. There was no way I was going to wait for the formal unveiling on Hallowe’en like some ordinary, gullible member of the public!

Luke went with me; he wanted to see the house. It was impressive, since Greg had plenty of money and was willing to let the architect have his way rather than insisting on imposing his own (frankly, rather primitive) notions of style, but I was really only interested in the west wing, and seeing the results of Hutch’s experiment. So we left Luke wandering around quite happily while Hutch led me and Greg to the site of his experiment.

I was shivering as I stepped through the last door (the gallant gentlemen let me go first), but whether I was already responding to the atmosphere or just anticipating, I have no idea. The room was big, like all the others in the house, but seemed to have been built on a different scale. It was long and narrow, more like a hallway than a room, and although it was perfectly spacious and airy (the ceiling was very high) and light, there was something oppressive about it. I’m not usually claustrophobic, but I started getting a prickly, trapped feeling, as if I’d wandered into a closet by mistake. There were no windows. I must spend half my life in windowless rooms without giving it a thought, but for some reason, it bothered me here. Although I knew perfectly well I hadn’t gone down any steps or ramps, I started thinking that this room was underground. The real problem was that the air-conditioning and ventilation system weren’t working properly. The temperature had dropped — I was actually shivering with cold — but the place was so airless that no matter how much I gulped I couldn’t get the oxygen I needed.

I was just about two beats away from a full-blown panic attack when I turned to my friends. Hutch was standing and gazing at nothing with a small, proud smile on his lips, and Greg’s bright eyes were darting everywhere. The freckled skin of his bare arms had sprouted goose-bumps, but what parted his lips and made him breathe faster was anticipation, not anxiety.

Of course. We were meant to feel like this. As soon as I’d realised that it was Hutch’s standing wave which was making my pulse race, I stopped being afraid. There was nothing to fear. I still felt uncomfortable, but now that I knew why, I could deal with it.

Greg and Hutch had moved further into the room, and I went after them. I thought I heard someone come through the door right behind me, and I turned, expecting to see Luke.

He wasn’t there, but someone had just slipped past me — from the corner of my eye I caught sight of a slim, grey figure speeding past.

‘There, look!’ cried Hutch, and I whirled around, saw him pointing at the wall, saw — I blinked, narrowed my eyes, struggled to make sense of it — a woman, in a long, grey, hooded coat, backed up against the wall. I had the sense that she was frightened, cornered, with nowhere to run, and then she was gone.

We all sighed simultaneously.

‘So this is the haunted west wing?’ Luke entered, and we all looked to see his reaction. He shivered. ‘Creepy. Really oppressive. That’s not just your standing wave, Hutch, it’s the lighting, the shape of the space.’ He prowled up and down, checking it out. Finally he stopped and looked at us. His eyebrows raised. We were all staring at him so strangely, I guess. I went over and slipped my arm around his waist, feeling better for the contact immediately.

He gave me a squeeze and looked at Hutch. ‘Is it just this creepy feeling, or is anything else supposed to happen?’

‘It might,’ said Hutch. ‘Visual disturbances. Tell us if you see anything weird, huh?’

Luke nodded. We all waited in silence for a bit. I looked at the door, because that was where I’d been looking when I’d first seen something, but Hutch and Greg were both staring at the wall where the figure had disappeared. I could feel Luke’s tension in his arm around me, and he kept jerking his head around.

‘See anything?’ Hutch asked him after the third sudden movement.

‘No — yes — maybe, I don’t know. Just out of the corner of my eye, a sort of grey shape, blurred, like something moving. But when I turn my head, it’s gone.’

‘Something or someone?’

Luke shrugged. ‘No idea. Just a blurry, moving shape. Could’ve been an animal, I guess.’

For some reason his comment really spooked me — I think it was the image it conjured of the grey woman metamorphosing into a beast. She had seemed to me frightened, not frightening, but the idea of a shapeshifting monster was terrifying.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

‘Fine with me,’ said Luke, walking me towards the door.

‘I’m going to stick around for a while longer,’ said Hutch. ‘Just to see what happens. How about it, Greg?’

I expected Greg to agree; I’d thought the haunted west wing was going to be his new toy. But he was looking oddly pale. He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so, man. I’ve got kind of a headache… I got to get out of here for a while. And I really don’t think you should stay too long.’

Hutch shrugged. ‘I just want to check something out. I’ll meet y’all out front in about fifteen minutes.’

What a relief it was to leave that empty room. I began to feel better immediately.

‘My headache’s gone already,’ said Greg, sounding surprised, as we stepped outside the front door. He sighed happily, inhaling the scent of sunbaked earth and cedar. ‘Whew, I feel like I just came back from some dungeon in the Middle Ages!’ Then he looked at me. ‘You don’t think Hutch will do himself any harm?’

‘There are health implications,’ I said cautiously. Since Hutch wouldn’t tell me, I’d looked into the literature about infrasound research myself. ‘But no, I really don’t. And I’m sure it’ll be safe enough for your party guests. Nobody’s going to be in there for more than a few minutes at a time.’

‘Only Hutch. And don’t forget, this isn’t his first time.’

I nodded. ‘But it’s not likely to do him any lasting harm. I’m sure there are factory floors which are worse.’

Greg took us on a tour of his property. We even went down the rough hillside path — ‘there’ll be steps the next time you come’ — to the lake and a wooden dock. We were away for more than twenty minutes, but when we returned to the house there was still no sign of Hutch.

‘I guess I’d better go get him,’ said Greg.

My heart gave a flutter. ‘Let’s all go.’

He gave me a look, then dead-panned, ‘Of course. What was I thinking? In the movies, they always get into trouble when they split up. Oh, my God, we should never have left him alone!’

‘Don’t look be-hiiiiind you.’ It was Hutch, of course, grinning sardonically. ‘Some friends I’ve got — leaving poor little me all alone in the infamous haunted west wing.’

‘Since you’re the one who haunted it — ’

‘Oh, great, so now I discover my so-called friends think I’m a ghost?’ His hand shot out and gripped my arm. I think the movement was meant as a punch-line, but as his fingers, icy cold against my sun-warmed flesh, dug into me, I lost it, and screamed.

The men — even Luke — looked at me as if I was insane.

Hutch yanked his hand away as if I’d burned him.

‘Sweetie, Sweetie, it’s okay,’ said Luke — a little belatedly, I thought, but better late than never.

I hugged Luke to hide my blushes. I felt like a complete idiot. I began to babble. ‘Sorry — sorry — I just — I don’t know, Hutch, you startled me! After-shock, I guess. I mean, even knowing what it was, the whole thing was just so creepy! Really got my adrenalin going. Sorry, Hutch.’

‘That’s okay. You were supposed to be scared. It’s good — means I succeeded.’ Hutch twitched his shoulders. ‘I won’t say I was scared myself, because I wasn’t, but my body sure thought I ought to be. It wanted me out of there! If I wasn’t shivering, I was sweating like a pig. Thank the Lord I’ve still got a clean shirt in my case in the car!’

‘So, did the ghost come back after we’d left?’ Greg wanted to know. ‘Did he have anything to say for himself?’

‘He?’

‘The ghost,’ Greg explained.

I looked at him in surprise.

‘What did you see?’ Hutch was frowning.

Greg shrugged. ‘A grey figure in a long cloak, with a hood, so I couldn’t see his face. I thought he was like a monk.’

‘I saw a woman,’ I said.

‘So did I,’ said Hutch. There was something in the way he said it, looking at me, that made me tingle.

I shrugged irritably. ‘But it’s not like there was anything there to see — there’s not a ghost. We didn’t see anything, really — it’s about perception, not vision. Our eyeballs vibrated, and our brains were just trying to make some kind of shape out of that blurriness.’

Hutch shook his head slowly. ‘It has to be more complicated than that. In so-called haunted houses people see the same ghosts again and again.’

‘Because of tradition,’ Greg put in. ‘People see what they expect to see.’

‘And you expected to see a monk?’ Hutch said sceptically. ‘Doubtless one of the world-famous Lake Travis brotherhood.’

‘Sure, the Indians wiped them out, burned the monastery to the ground, in ought eight,’ Greg said. ‘I always build my houses on sites of historical and religious significance, didn’t you know that?’

‘There isn’t any tradition here, yet,’ I pointed out. ‘We didn’t know what to expect. So our minds were free to make their own connections. For Greg, obviously, grey ghosts have got to be monks.’

‘Whereas for you and Hutch, it’s the sexier option of a dead woman,’ Luke said.

I made a disgusted face at him. ‘Dead women are sexy?’

‘Hey, not to me. But according to Edgar Allan Poe and everybody else who follows that route.’

‘I don’t think somebody who saw an animal ghost should talk about sexy.’

Hutch ignored us. ‘I’d like to interview more people about their experience in the west wing,’ he told Greg. ‘See if some kind of consensus starts to emerge. Maybe at the party.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ said Greg. ‘But try not to get too heavy. Remember, they’re my guests, not your experimental subjects.’

‘Well, hey. I wouldn’t have to bother anybody at the party if I could run an experiment beforehand. If I could bring some people out here, you know, and then ask them to describe their experience.’

‘Mi casa es su casa,’ Greg agreed. ‘I’ll get another set of keys cut for you. There’ll be decorators and such-like coming and going for the next few weeks — that won’t bother you? Good.’

‘You don’t mind if I camp out here for a night or two? I’d really like to find out what happens on repeat visits; you know, does the whole thing cycle through again? Do you get habituated to it, more or less sensitive? All sorts of questions.’

Greg nodded, looking admiring, looking, maybe, a bit envious. ‘I might join you,’ he said. It was as if he’d forgotten this was his house — his ghost. But this was how it had been in high school, when Hutch always had the best ideas — or, at least, the ability to convince us they were his.

Later, at the airport, Hutch asked me if I could sketch a portrait of the ghostly woman I’d thought I’d seen.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Hutch — it was only a glimpse — I’m really not sure. Maybe, if I see her again — ’

‘We don’t know that you’ll see the same apparition twice. I need some hard evidence. God knows, most people are completely incapable of describing what they’ve seen in any kind of detail… I don’t want to rely on what people think they remember. You have a talent, Beck. You can draw. Your portraits are really good.’ He turned to Luke. ‘My mom framed the portrait Becky did of me in high school. She’s still got it on the living room wall, says it’s more like me than any photograph!’

I felt myself blushing, both pleased and embarrassed. I’d given up any serious attempts at drawing while in college. The art teachers there did not admire my work. It lacked flair and individuality. I could copy — but computers could do that sort of thing so much better.

I bought pencils and a pad of paper in the airport shop, and while Hutch, Greg and Luke drank coffee at the next table, I struggled to produce an image of the woman I’d imagined I’d seen. Her figure — coat open over a loose dress — and posture, cowering fearfully against the wall, were what I remembered best about her, and were the easiest to capture. It was her face that was difficult. I did the best I could to sketch the features I thought I remembered, while not making them too individual. Result: generic pretty young woman backed up against the wall by (unseen) threat.

Hutch grinned broadly. ‘That’s her! That’s what I saw!’

‘You know, I think I saw her too,’ Luke drawled. ‘On the cover of a book in the newsstand over there where Becky bought her paper.’

Luke’s sarcasm didn’t register on Hutch. ‘May I keep it?’ he asked.

I nodded. Of course, what else, I had drawn it for him. But I suddenly wished I hadn’t.

The Hallowe’en party was supposed to be the main event, but for me it turned into something less than a sideshow.

Things hadn’t been going well between me and Luke, and for some stupid reason we ended up sniping at each other nearly the whole of the drive from Galveston to Austin. At the party I spent about ten minutes talking to John Wayne, who was in a snit because Hutch didn’t appreciate what he’d done to the west wing — he just flat didn’t like it, if you please, because it distracted the visitors from what John Wayne called ‘Hutch’s special effects’.

I went down to the west wing to see for myself, but there was such a long line of people waiting to get in that I gave up. I meant to go back later, but that never happened. I never even saw Hutch that night. Instead, I found Luke, and the tension which had been building between us suddenly exploded. We left the party to have our fight in private, and we thoroughly demolished the relationship. By the time Hallowe’en had given way to All Saint’s Day, our engagement was off, and we never wanted to see each other again. I made him drop me off at the bus station because I couldn’t bear another four hours of his company on the drive home.

I e-mailed Greg and Linda to apologise for walking out on their party and to explain about the break-up. I sent a similar note, only more grovelling, to Hutch. Knowing how proud and possessive he was of ‘his’ haunting, I figured he’d be furious that I’d disappeared.

Greg’s reply was practically instantaneous, concerned about my emotional state, offering me the lakehouse as a retreat if I wanted to get away from Galveston for a while. From Hutch, nothing. After a week, I e-mailed him again, this time quizzing him about the results of his ‘experiment’.

I’d chosen the right topic. He couldn’t resist a reply.

I’m going to write it all up and submit it as an article somewhere. Till I manage that, here’s a quick breakdown of my findings: Roughly 60 per cent thought they saw some sort of human figure; another 10 per cent saw ‘something moving’ which they thought might have been an animal or a person; 5 per cent thought they just glimpsed something but couldn’t say anything positive about it at all, another 5 per cent ‘heard’, or ‘sensed’ something they couldn’t see; and 20 per cent experienced no ghostly or inexplicable manifestations at all.

Of the (most interesting) 60 per cent, slightly more than half described the figure as female, usually as wearing a long gown, but otherwise their descriptions varied widely. Of those who saw a male figure nearly half described the figure as a monk or a priest! (The long gown again?)

Guess I’ll have to try to make sense of the data, draw some kind of conclusion. Might be good to have your input on that; how would you feel about collaborating?

Nobody else saw our woman.

Our woman. The phrase sent a thrill through me. I was warmed by it, and felt closer to Hutch than I had in years. And he wanted to collaborate! I replied right away, letting him know I was eager and willing to help.

But I didn’t hear from him again for a couple of weeks. It was early December when he phoned and asked if I could come and meet him in Houston.

He didn’t sound like himself. There was something in his voice I’d never heard before. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve found our ghost,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come and see for yourself.’

I met him in Houston the next day. It was the middle of the week and should have been a working day for both of us, but there we were, playing truant. He’d given me explicit directions for how to find a restaurant called The Black-Eyed Pea, where he would be waiting for me.

I couldn’t figure it out. The scenario I imagined centred around old newspaper clippings, maybe the story of a murder in Travis County, maybe the discovery of a young woman’s body in the lake. I surely wasn’t expecting Hutch to greet me, when I joined him in his booth beside a window, by pointing out at a high-rise bank building across the street and saying, ‘She works there. She’ll be coming out of the building for her lunch break in about. ’ he checked his watch, ‘thirty-five minutes. You should get a good view of her then.’

I looked at him. He didn’t look well. I could tell he wasn’t sleeping, or eating right, and he was drinking too much coffee. ‘Who are you talking about?’ I asked, although I already knew.

He waited for the waitress to take my order, and then he told me. ‘Her name is Melanie Caron. She’s twenty-six, single, works for First City National over there and lives by herself in a townhouse in a little subdivision off the Gulf Freeway. Not a rental; I think her parents bought it for her — there’s money in the background, I think.’ He paused, seeming to lose track of what he was saying, and ran a hand over his face.

‘But why?’

‘Oh, the car she drives, the townhouse — ’

‘No, I don’t mean the money! I mean, why her, why are you so interested?’

‘Wait’ll you see her.’

‘No. I don’t remember what I saw. Not well enough to be sure.’

He slammed his hand down on the table, making the silverware judder. ‘Don’t say that! You drew her picture!’

‘It’s a drawing. I’m not a camera.’

‘I know it’s her,’ he said quietly. ‘The second I saw her — sitting at a table just over there,’ he canted his head. ‘As soon as I set eyes on her it was like little things just crawling all over me… the creepiest sensation. I knew it was her.’ He raised his haunted eyes to mine. ‘I don’t know why. I don’t know what it means. But I saw her ghost. It has to mean something.’

‘Why? Why does it have to mean anything?’ This was his line when I’d tried, in my clumsy way, to argue for the existence of God, an afterlife, or even the significance of coincidence.

‘Don’t be an asshole, Becky,’ he said irritably.

‘Don’t you. You want to know what it means? Okay, I’ll tell you: you don’t want to know. It’s a warning.’

He became more alert. ‘You really think so? I need to tell her?’

‘No. You need to keep the hell away from her.’ The way he looked when I said that told me everything. My heart sank. ‘You’ve told her?’

‘Not about the ghost, no, not about seeing her — but you could. Maybe she’d believe you.’

‘And she wouldn’t believe you, because why?’ He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. ‘Because you came on to her, and she didn’t want to know. And instead of letting it drop you’ve been following her around, spying on her.’ I turned to gaze out the window at the bank where this unknown woman worked. I felt a horrible, cold dread filling me up from my feet to my head. ‘Oh, lordy. You’re stalking her.’

‘Becky, come on!’ He gazed at me, anguished. ‘I thought you’d understand! It’s not like that. If you’d help me…’

I prayed that I could.

‘Look, Hutch,’ I said gently. ‘Think about the ghost. Think about how she looked. I don’t just mean her face, I mean her, whaddayacallit — her affect.’

He frowned at me. I spelled it out. ‘She was terrified. Somebody was after her. Maybe you?’

‘I wouldn’t hurt her.’

‘So how’s she supposed to know that? Telepathy?’

Just then the waitress arrived with the food I no longer wanted to eat.

‘Would you like to order now, sir?’ she asked him, but Hutch shook his head. ‘Just some more coffee, please.’

He turned his attention back to me as soon as the waitress had gone. ‘You could tell her the truth. You could just recognise her and go up to her, tell her about the ghost. I bet she’d believe you. Why shouldn’t she? And I bet she’s heard of Greg. If he invites her to a party she’d probably be thrilled.’

‘What if she’s not? What if she doesn’t believe me? What if — ’

He held up his hand to stop me. ‘Quit borrowing trouble. We can deal with any problems when — ’

‘No.’

He blinked at me in disbelief. ‘You won’t help me?’

I was trembling, but determined. ‘I’m trying to, believe me. This is insane, Hutch. Look at what you’re doing — try to look at it from her point of view — ’

‘But she doesn’t know about the ghost!’

‘What difference does that make?’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Becky, it’s the whole point! I’m not trying to woo this woman — I’m not in love with her; she’s a mystery I’m trying to solve!’

I swallowed hard. ‘The mystery is all in your head.’

‘And yours,’ he shot back. ‘You saw her too — don’t you care why?’

Before I could begin to answer, he froze. His head came up like a hunting dog’s and he stared through the window. ‘Here she comes.’

I followed his gaze across the street. But he must have sensed her before she appeared because all I could see were a couple of grey-suited men just emerging from the building. Behind them, a second later, a slim blonde woman in a salmon-pink suit came pushing through the heavy glass doors.

‘See? It’s her.’

‘She’s not wearing a grey hooded coat — ’

‘Look at her face.’

I tried, but from that distance she was just a generic pretty young businesswoman. I’d already made up my mind how to play it, though, so I said, definitely, ‘That’s not who I saw.’

‘What! You’re lying!’

‘I am not. That’s not who I saw.’

‘Wait. Maybe she’ll come in here for her lunch, and you can see her close up.’

For a minute it did look like that was her plan. She crossed at the light and seemed headed straight for the restaurant. But as she came nearer, she looked nervous. I saw her eyes flickering across the cars in the parking lot, and over the big window where we sat, watching.

I think she caught a glimpse of Hutch, and that decided her. Because instead of approaching the entrance she turned abruptly and walked past.

I spent the next half-hour doing my best to argue him out of his obsession, then pointing out how dangerous it was. But he was no more convinced by my attempts at putting forward the rational viewpoint than he’d ever been by my emotion. Even the irony of our reversed positions was, I think, lost on him.

Well, you know the rest of the story. Nothing, not my refusal to help, nor my attempts to make him see reason could stop what was to come.

Hutch became ever more obsessed with Melanie Caron. When charm, reason and persistence all failed, he finally just went after her, to take her by force. His gun wasn’t loaded — after all, he didn’t want to hurt her, only to make her go with him — but she didn’t know that. He didn’t know she had her own gun, that she’d started carrying it with her always, against the threat he posed. But, of course, he didn’t think he was a threat. Even after she’d shot him, as she believed, in self-defence, even as he was dying, did he understand what he had become?

Yet wasn’t he still the same Hutch I’d known and loved?

Everyone else seems to think he’d changed, become a monster, monstrously pursuing the object of his desire.

Even Greg, even his parents, seem to have written him off, sadly, as mad.

Yet if he was mad, it was with the same madness which had always driven him: that of the single-minded scientist, the engineer in pursuit of a practical solution to some material problem. He wasn’t ‘in love’ with Melanie Caron in the sick, obsessive way of stalkers; he just wanted to know what she meant.

And so did I.

After his death, seeing the image of Melanie Caron on TV and in the papers, I became convinced that she was ‘our ghost’. I felt awful because I could never tell Hutch I’d been wrong, could never apologise… I’d completely screwed up the real chance I’d had of helping him.

I felt horribly guilty. Of course, I’d thought I was doing the best, by warning him away from her — and I had been right about the danger. But I should have known he wouldn’t listen to me. He couldn’t walk away from an unsolved problem; it just wasn’t in him. I should have known that, and tried to avert this horror in some other way. Maybe, if I’d done what he’d asked, and approached Melanie myself, I could have talked her around, reached some peaceful accommodation. Would it have hurt her to spend a little time with him, with us? To help us solve the mystery of her haunting?

The mystery remained, and, after all, it was our mystery. Solving it felt like one last thing I could do for Hutch.

Although my intuition that the ghost had been a warning to stay away from Melanie Caron turned out to be horribly right, that didn’t solve the mystery. The logic was circular, like a time paradox: the ghost we saw was a clip from the future, when Melanie had cowered in fear from her stalker — but that future could never have come into being if Hutch hadn’t first seen her cowering in fear. I couldn’t accept the idea of a totally predetermined universe, that our fates were scripts written before our births, so that brought me back to Hutch’s original question. Why her?

I took my time and thought carefully. I couldn’t afford to blow what might be my only chance.

I decided to approach her as a journalist, and told her I was researching a story on the subject of stalkers. She wasn’t a Galveston resident, so had no idea how unlikely a topic that was for the weekly Shore Times. And although she told me she didn’t want more publicity, when I swore I wouldn’t use anything she didn’t approve, and said I just needed some ‘insider detail’ to help me understand the experience of being stalked, she agreed to meet me, suggesting a Starbucks’ near her office. People do like to tell their stories.

I made the most of our first meeting. I’ve never worked harder to make somebody like me. Never felt so desperate for acceptance. But it worked. I racked up a lot of miles on my old car, pretending urgent business in Houston so that I could take her up on her invitation to ‘call, if you happen to be in town’. To keep her talking to me about Hutch, I told her that although my editor had spiked ‘our’ story, I was considering writing a book about stalking.

I sucked up to her shamelessly — and it all paid off, finally, when she invited me out to her house for dinner. She knew I would have a long drive back to Galveston, and one of the things we had in common was a liking for good wine with our dinner, so she invited me to stay the night.

I had been afraid that she might have sold her house and moved, unable to bear to go on living in the place where she had killed someone, but no, she was still there, in the house where Hutch had died.

Why not? she asked me, shrugging. She liked it there. Why should she let ‘that bastard’ drive her out? Since ‘that business’ she’d had an alarm system installed. She felt as safe here as she could feel anywhere.

‘So you don’t feel the house is haunted?’ I held my breath waiting for her answer, hoping. Maybe, despite his determined materialism, Hutch’s spirit was still hanging around.

But she shook her head firmly. ‘I’m sure it’s not. I had this psychic, she’s supposed to be really, really good, come to check it out, and she said there was no evil here, nothing but good vibrations, lots of love.’

I felt my heart turn over. Poor Hutch.

‘But I did get the kitchen completely redone, just to be on the safe side, and I had a Feng Shui expert advise me about the energy flow. ’

‘The kitchen?’ That was where we were sitting now, with glasses of wine and bowls of olives, nuts and taco chips set out. I gaped at her. ‘Why the kitchen?’

She stared at me, obviously suspecting my journalistic credentials. It must have been publicised, or maybe she’d told me when I wasn’t listening. ‘Because this is where I shot him, of course! He actually died in the laundry room, just there — ’ she pointed across at a louvred shutter, painted sunflower yellow, which screened off the narrow back hallway from the rest of the room — ‘but there’s not much to redesign in there. It’s not like I ever spend much time in there, anyway, not like I do in the kitchen. But I did everything I could. I had the carpeting taken up, of course, put down Mexican tiles instead, and had the walls repainted blue, a very harmonious colour, instead of white like they were before, because white’s the colour of the dead in China, after all, and — ’

I got up. ‘Do you mind if I look?’ I was already walking away from her as I spoke. I didn’t want her to see the tears which had sprung to my eyes at the thought of poor Hutch dying all alone in that cramped space while his killer sprinted out the front door to safety.

It was a tiny little room, all right, tightly packed with a big washing machine and even bigger dryer; cupboards overhead held the usual sorts of cleaning stuffs. I tried with all my might to get some sense of Hutch, some lingering trace of his personality, in that little room, but there was nothing. Maybe the Feng Shui had got rid of his hungry ghost. Or, more likely, what Hutch had always believed was true, and there was nothing left of us after death; ghosts were just vibrations aided by imagination and the hope that springs eternal.

I got myself under control and returned to the kitchen, where Melanie was starting to get our dinner together.

The evening dragged on. I’d never realised how exhausting it could be to be constantly ‘on’, always on my guard, like a spy, having to pretend to like someone I would rather have hated. Not that I did hate her, actually, because I understood too well that, in similar circumstances, under siege in my own home, I would have done my best to kill my stalker. What difference would it have made to me to be told that he was somebody else’s beloved friend? At least I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in her. I did, genuinely, want to know everything there was to know about her. Somewhere in that mass of personal detail must be the answer to what had happened to Hutch. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was determined to find it.

Yet somehow the more I knew about her, the less I understood. Melanie was becoming deeply familiar to me, almost a part of myself. Not like the friends we make by choice, but like the playmates forced on children by proximity or family. I thought she was like the boring cousin, a year younger than me, I’d had to play with whenever my mother or my aunt wanted a day off. I knew every detail of her life, knew her room and her toys almost as well as my own, and yet I knew nothing at all about her. When, halfway through college, she dropped out and became a Moonie, I couldn’t say I’d seen it coming, but neither could I be genuinely shocked, because, after all, why shouldn’t she? I had no idea who she was inside.

Was Hutch as mystified as me, or would being in Melanie’s presence have given him what he needed, answered all his questions? As she chatted on, I tuned out, my thoughts drifting back to Hutch, the pain of his loss, the endless regrets…

‘Becky, what’s wrong?’

She reached across the table to touch my hand and I jerked away, spattering fresh tomato sauce all down my shirt.

We both cried out in dismay.

‘Oh, gosh,’ Melanie said, jumping up as I began to dab at myself with my napkin. ‘No, don’t do that! You’ll set the stain — the best thing is to take it off right away and put it under cold, running water. Take if off, take it off now.’

I looked up at her and she blushed. She turned away. ‘I’ll go get you something else to put on, of course,’ she said in a strained voice. ‘Put it straight into the sink, put the cold water hard on it, you hear?’ She kept her back to me as she spoke, and hurried out of the room.

By the time she got back I had remembered: there are no coincidences in this life. Every action is meaningful. Suddenly it made sense to me: I had been thinking about Hutch. This might be a way of getting closer to him, of finding out more.

‘Could I wash this? Really wash it in the machine, I mean?’

‘Uh, if you want. Sure. There’s a couple of towels in it now, they’ll be okay with it.’ She held out her hand but I kept a grip on my dripping shirt.

‘I can do it. Just tell me where the soap is.’

‘Oh, well, if you look in the cupboard just above the machine — are you sure? Okay then, put it on half-load.’

I performed the simple actions slowly, like a ritual. The little room was like a chapel, high-ceilinged, bare, stone floor… My naked arms goose-pimpled. I’d been over-warm in the kitchen, but it was freezing out here.

‘Are you okay?’ I’d taken too long, and she’d come to check on me.

‘Sure, I’m fine.’ I managed a smile, took the T-shirt she offered, followed her back to the table.

About twenty minutes later, as we were still sitting there, sipping wine, I felt it: a sort of low rumble like an approaching storm, and the fine hairs on my arms prickled with electricity. There was a high-pitched whine like a plane taking off.

‘Oh, that machine. ‘ Melanie said crossly. ‘You can’t hear yourself think.’’

As she got up and walked towards the laundry room door — which I’d left open — I followed her. I wanted to get back into the little room, sure that he would be there, invoked by the nearly palpable noise.

But I didn’t get in, because of course Melanie wasn’t going in, she’d only gone to close the door, and I was behind her. When she stopped, I ran smack into her.

We were there on the threshold between the two rooms, possibly on the very spot where he’d been shot. I felt a presence, unmistakable, absolutely electric, as we collided. She gasped, and then gave a sort of helpless little moan and turned around — a tight little turn, more a rotation, which kept her pressed against me, only now it was her breasts I felt, soft and firm against mine.

An absolute imperative brought our lips together. I’d never been attracted to a woman before in this way, but I didn’t question it. I couldn’t. It was the most natural and necessary thing in the world to kiss her. And as I did, I knew that this was what Hutch had wanted. And now it was what I wanted. In this feeling between us was all that was left of him.

If he’d been alive, Hutch would have been horrified, I’ll bet, by my ignorance in thinking that an ordinary domestic washing machine could produce infrasound waves powerful and concentrated enough to haunt a room. But he’d never shared the specifications of his ghost-machine with me, so why shouldn’t I think it?

I still thought it as, still kissing her, I pushed Melanie through the doorway, against the vibrating machine, and moved slowly down her body, kissing her through her clothes and then beneath them. I think I imagined that I was doing this for Hutch, or that he was working through me.

But he’d been just as ignorant, just as foolish, in imagining that he could solve the mystery that was Melanie by pursuing her, and forcing himself on her.

I know otherwise now.

She’s still a mystery to me, although I know her better, inside and out, than I’ve ever known anyone before. And she knows me, even about my connection to Hutch. I’ve told her everything. And yet the mystery remains, which I think we’ll forever try, and probably fail, to solve. It’s called love.