The 'Geisters

EMPTY VESSELS

There had been a limo waiting for Ann and Michael when the wedding was done. Ann had thought it was vulgar, and later, when she finally mentioned it as they were waiting for their flight at Pearson Airport, Michael would agree. Rickhardt had ordered it; a long SUV-style limo, the sort of thing rap stars and upwardly mobile movie actors rode around in. It had been idling outside the winery for a couple of hours before they finally departed in it.

Ann had rolled down the window. There was a long gravel road from the concession line leading into the vineyard. On one side of it, rows of grapes blanketed the land to the south. To the north, there was a higher line of orchards. She couldn’t see a thing this time of night, but she liked the scent off the vines; it was fresh, and good.

Michael put his hand on her arm and told her that he loved her, and Ann smiled to herself.

“Do you now?” she said, intending it to be flirtatious. But she wasn’t good at that sort of thing, obviously.

Michael took his hand back. “Of course,” he said.

That was then.

Now, Ann had trouble even finding the place. She’d bought a road atlas for North America back in Alabama, and she had to stop and refer to it three times. She might’ve excused that by the simple fact that she was coming at it from the west, and the numerous times she and Michael had driven here had been from the east—from Toronto. Fatigue might’ve had something to do with it; she’d been on the road for nearly a dozen hours.

But as she slowed down and stopped at the last turn, and just sat, staring into the dark—she thought that might not have been it.

On some level, she just didn’t want to do it. Or more precisely, she did want to—but she feared it.

“What are we going to do?” she said to the dark. “I need to get Philip out of there. But I can’t just do that. We need to… we need to plan.”

Ann felt a cool breath on the back of her neck. “Ah,” she said.

She shut her eyes. The spectrum of colours drew across her thoughts wordlessly, and she breathed deep. She had seldom come to this place so wordlessly. Might that be because she had, on some level, stopped fearing it?

She felt the deeper darkness; and coalescing before her came the corridor, the stairs, the doors along it, all shut.

“This is the new tower, isn’t it?”

Yes.

The word came as a rattling of lockers, as though this high school corridor were the Insect’s throat.

“And you’re finally talking to me—not just sending messages in the morning dew.

Yes.

“Well thank you.” Ann took a breath in the world; here, the air smelled of sweat, and furnace oil. “Can we make a plan?”

We already have.

The lockers stopped rattling entirely, and were quiet.

“What is it?”

And Ann felt the breath again at her neck. She turned.

There was nothing but darkness. Behind her now, the lockers started slamming, open and closed.

Ann opened her eyes.

The transmission shifted into drive, and the van began to move through the intersection. The signal indicator switched on. Ann slammed her foot on the brake, but it wouldn’t move. She took hold of the steering wheel, tried to turn it straight; but it was no good. It turned to the right, and the van wobbled down the concession road.

Ann mashed her hand down on the horn; it tooted once, briefly, then became as immobile as other things. In desperation, she twisted the ignition key, and tugged on it. It stayed put.

The van accelerated, and the blue light of the dashboard indicated the headlights had switched to high beams. Far down the road, she could see the Rickhardt Estates sign on the road—a deep purple backing with a delicate curled font in white that mimicked the label. It was two kilometres off.

Ann undid her seatbelt, and twisted around to look back as the van continued on its course. It was dark there; no sense of any presence, or any movement whatsoever. She was about to try and crawl out of the seat—head back there—when she heard the squeaking sound again. She turned to look.

Words were appearing letter by letter—and disappearing, wiped away as fast. She could make out:

…before the wipe took the entire thing and left the windshield clean, and dry.

The van lurched to the left.

Out the front window, she could now see lights, at the end of a long narrow roadway.

She swore. The van was taking her along the drive to the Rickhardt Estates.

And she was pretty sure it wasn’t the Insect doing it.

The van was going more slowly now. She tried to open the door, but of course it was locked. She shuffled over to the passenger side, tried it too, expecting and receiving nothing. She twisted around in her seat and kicked at the window, but it held firm, and so she kicked again.

The van stopped, and there was a shudder as the engine shut down.

The van began to rock back and forth. The engine started again, but this time it went into reverse. There was a crunch, and Ann was thrown in her seat. The van switched gears, pushing forward and turning and lurching through the narrow ditch at the side of the drive. It bumped again, and crashed through branches. It was going into the orchard.

The window fogged, and in it, the words

wrote themselves, followed by

The driver’s side door swung open as the van snapped the trunk of a young apple tree and juddered to a halt.

Ann didn’t waste time. She pushed the door open and stumbled out. Back at the road, she could see flashlight beams cutting through the dark. There had been a car shadowing her—without its lights on, obviously. But now they were on and it was three-point-turning into the orchard.

Ann stepped into the shadow of the van before the light could catch her. Without even giving her eyes the chance to adapt to the dark, she ran.

She made it a long way before stumbling; the trees were in rows, and she kept going straight through. Behind her, the headlights speared through the trees, the now-leafless branches. When she finally stumbled, it was more from exhaustion; the adrenaline had been spiking her along for the past six hours. It was a resource of very diminishing returns.

Ann fell against a narrow trunk, gasping for breath. She wanted to vomit, but held it back. She needed to hunker down, find a place to hide. She thought about climbing the tree she was leaning on. It was an apple tree, small and not very high, but the branches were low. She gave it a try. Something in her shoulder started to tear. She let go, and fell back to the loamy earth.

“Fuck.” She sat there, huddled against the trunk of the tree—feeling like nothing so much as a field mouse knowing there were owls about.

But the light was gone. The low clouds glowed slightly to the east, and the south, where lights from towns reflected back. But even that seemed muted. And the orchard had become very quiet. It was almost as though she had stepped over a ridge when she slipped from the tree—fallen into a cleft or a valley where she was entirely alone.

After a moment, Ann stood. She was feeling better. At least she had caught her wind.

She started to piece together what had happened. Of course, they had been waiting for her here. These men may have had enough connections to hire a hit man and a Miami lawyer, but they didn’t have the means, clearly, to watch every border crossing twenty-four hours a day. On the other hand, they’d known that one of the few places she’d be going was right here, if she were coming back at all.

So here was where they’d waited. Ann hadn’t considered that but it made sense—it was a logical way to grab her, if that’s what they were going to do—and if they didn’t want to involve U.S. law enforcement to do it for them.

They hadn’t wanted that. Which was why they’d sent Hirsch to the hospital, and offered up a respite home in St. Augustine, against the bogeyman of Ann’s humiliation in front of the Federal Aviation Authority.

She began to shake. Part of that was the cold—it was three in the morning in November, and she wasn’t dressed for it. But that was a small part. More chilling than the cold was that realization: they’d seen her coming.

She pulled her legs close to her and tucked her head into her knees. Like a tongue to a broken tooth, her mind settled back on the colours of the spectrum. But there were no colours; just the words: Red. And orange.

Yellow.

Yellow.

Light.

“There.”

Ann opened her eyes. The speaker turned the mag-light away from her. He was taller than she remembered, had a bit of a paunch that had been hidden by his broad shoulders. His brush-cut hair stood out in spikes, by the light cast by the other flashlights that wove through the tree branches like searchlights, moving toward her.

“Are you hurt?” asked the man. His voice sounded different now than it had in her cabin in the Rosedale Arms.

“No,” said Ann. She pushed herself back against the tree trunk; the bark bit into the thin denim jacket she’d bought on the road.

“Good. You hit my truck pretty hard; back of your van took most of it. Should have been wearing your seatbelt.”

Ann looked up at him. The other flashlights were shining on both of them now, and she could see his face. His hair was greying, but he didn’t look much older than forty.

He looked kinder than he had tossing her cabin, Taser ready in one hand….

She murmured to the Insect: Kill him. Shame came and went, like a wave over beach pebbles. Kill all of them if you have to.

He smiled a bit and bent down as one of the flashlights came up beside him. It was held by a child, or someone very small; it just came up to his waist. It wore a hood. As it moved into the light, Ann saw that it was a little girl. Dark-haired—ten years old, maybe twelve. And yes. The same girl she’d seen for an instant outside the cabin. Of course.

“She’s trying,” said the girl. “But Mister Sleepy has it all sewn up. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” said the man, and patted the girl on the back of her head. “Thank you, Mister Sleepy,” he said, looking not at her but into the night sky. “Thank you, all of you.”

The branches rustled as though there were a breeze, and the man extended his hand down to Ann.

Because she could think of nothing else, she took it. He hauled her to her feet, but it was hard to stand.

“I’ll try and be a gentleman,” he said as he slipped his arm underneath hers.

“See that you do,” said another voice from behind her. It was one that Ann thought she might recognize. Just then, she couldn’t say from where. But he didn’t speak again until much later.

“Now come on, Mrs. Voors,” the first man said.

He led Ann for a few steps, then dragged her, and finally—apologizing again—bent down, drew his other arm behind her thighs, and lifted her.

“You’re shaking like a leaf.”

“She’s afraid,” said the little girl, “of Mister Sleepy.”

Ann shivered, and shut her eyes. She didn’t fight; it was as though all the energy had fled from her. She felt as though she were deflating.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He said something, but she couldn’t make out what, exactly.

The music was not especially loud, but it was too loud to ignore. It was choral. It reminded her of Orff, a bit. One of the middle bits of Carmina Burana. But more primitive. Carmina Burana as arranged for piano movers and orchestra.

Ann opened her eyes. Her mouth was very dry. Her head was propped up on sofa pillows. The rest of her was prone, on a sofa. It felt velvety and lumpy. But it was warm. She looked around; she was in a large room. There may have been windows, but it was hard to tell; thick green curtains hung along two of the walls. The other two walls were painted burgundy. There was a stained pine dining room table, and some chairs near Ann’s couch, and an overstuffed dark leather recliner.

The room was not brightly lit, and what light there was came from the far end.

That was also where the music came from: the speakers next to a big, flat screen TV. Ann propped herself up and looked. There was a game playing on it—a first-person shooter type of game, but with a bow and arrow rather than a big gun, and the fellow wielding it was running around some mountainous terrain on a beautiful autumn afternoon. The view was only partly occluded by a high-backed leather chair, faced away from Ann.

Ann swallowed. It hurt a little to do so. She put her feet on the floor. The game shifted to a menu screen, showing a compass rose of choices.

“Mrs. Voors?”

Ann stood, carefully.

“It’s Ann,” she said. “Yes. Hello Susan.”

The chair turned around. Ian Rickhardt’s wife, Susan Rickhardt, was clad in a dark fleece sweater and pale blue track pants, thick-toed feet proudly bare. The music from the game had devolved into a series of grunts: the piano movers were hefting the Heintzman up the stairs, Ann thought, and suppressed what she was pretty sure would be a crazy laugh.

“You’re awake,” Susan said simply.

“Barely,” said Ann. And it was true; she felt doughy, as though something were holding her down. Something might have been holding her down, she realized. It was somehow easy to forget that she had just been abducted; it was in fact impossible to remember the point at which she had apparently passed out. Which she must have, because here she was, on a couch in this very simply appointed room, looking at Ian Rickhardt’s wife playing a video game. She wasn’t a guest here. She was a prisoner. Was Susan Rickhardt the one they’d left to guard her?

“I take it this room is somewhere in the winery?”

Susan shrugged. “I call it home,” she said.

Ian’s wife Susan—the simple fact of her—had always been a puzzle for Ann. She was heavyset and dull-eyed. The only time she’d seen her out of sweats was at the wedding, when she’d also had her dark, too-thin hair done as nicely as you could ever expect. When they’d first been introduced her hair was as it was just now—flat on her scalp, unwashed. Susan had shaken her hand perfunctorily, almost sullenly. She didn’t seem like the sort of woman a man like Rickhardt would marry. It would have to be love—though Ian didn’t seem to be the type for that.

When she remarked on this to Michael, he’d just winked, and said, “She must have hidden talents.”

Ann had slugged him in the arm and called him nasty, but she hadn’t really been angry. It was one of the few times he’d shown anything approaching lechery, and she thought then she wouldn’t mind if he showed it more often.

If only she’d known.

Ann shook her head. Something was dulling her now; the same weird fatigue that had knocked her out in the orchard.

Focus, she thought, and asked: “Do you know where Philip is?”

Susan Rickhardt picked up the game controller from where it nestled in her lap and tapped a button. The compass rose vanished and she was back at it.

“There’s a dragon on top of that hill,” she said. “I’ll take it down, soon as I can find the path up.”

Ann stood, wobbling a bit, crossed the room. There was no other chair in front of the TV so she knelt beside Susan.

“Skyrim?” said Ann, and Susan nodded.

“Best Elder Scroll yet,” she said.

“So I’ve heard,” said Ann. “You’ve been at this awhile, I see.”

The bar at the bottom of the screen showed she was running a character at Level 48. Susan didn’t answer; she was absorbed in the game.

After a moment, Ann got up. She was steadier on her feet—far steadier, certainly, than she’d been in the orchard. She walked over to the curtain, peeked out the tall window behind it. There was nothing to see but dark; so she’d either slept a long time, or not long at all.

There was a door, behind the sofa where Ann had been sleeping, next to a long mahogany credenza. It was a double door, stained dark, with brass handles. Ann went to it, and turned a handle.

It wasn’t locked. Ann pulled it open a crack. There was a hallway beyond, lit by halogen pot lights. She shut the door quietly and leaned her back on it.

Back at the TV, the battle for Skyrim continued. Susan appeared to be sneaking up a cliff, approaching a camp of barbarians with arrow notched.

“Save the game,” said Ann. Susan responded by letting an arrow fly and killing a lean woman wearing a headdress. Her two companions got up and began looking around for the source.

“Save it,” said Ann again, as she crossed the room back to the TV. Susan put two more arrows into the men. One of them fell dead; the other was strong enough to take it. He drew a sword and moved to attack.

Ann stepped up to the TV stand, and pressed the eject button on the game console. The screen went dark. Ann turned around and faced Susan.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s time for talking. Play later.”

“You are a little bitch,” said Susan. She tried to look around Ann, to the screen. “Put it back in.”

“Okay,” said Ann, “I will in a minute. But first. Where is Philip?”

“Put it in.”

“Where?”

“Put it—”

There was a knock at the door.

“Tell me where my brother is, Susan. Please.”

Susan didn’t answer. She pushed back in the chair, like she was pulling away from something. Her eyes became wide. She shook her head quickly, like she was trying to dislodge something.

The knocking resumed—louder this time.

“Should I get that?” asked Ann, and Susan shook her head no.

“Why not? Is it someone you don’t want to talk to?”

“Put it back in, now,” she said.

“Is it Ian?”

“No.”

“If I put this back in,” said Ann, wagging the disk back in front of her, “will that stop?”

Things happened very quickly after that. Susan drew back, like she was experiencing g-forces in an airplane, and then launched. The chair skidded backwards on the floor, and suddenly, she had hold of Ann’s wrist.

Ann stumbled back as Susan kept pushing, and Ann fell against the TV. It toppled backwards and with a wrenching crash, fell to the hardwood floor behind it.

The pounding abruptly stopped.

Susan let go of Ann’s wrist, and Ann righted herself.

Behind her, the two door handles turned down.

“What’ve you done,” said Susan. Her voice was flat. Dead. She couldn’t even make it sound like a question.

The doors swung inward, until there was maybe a foot of space between them.

“It’s your poltergeist, isn’t it?” Ann said

And from the look on Susan’s face, she could see that she’d guessed it.

Susan had been Ann many years ago, when Ian Rickhardt married her: a young woman who’d had a poltergeist in her from her childhood. And she had sat here, cared for, playing console role-playing games, while Rickhardt carried on. She was a vessel.

She was shut down.

“Does the game ordinarily keep it at bay?” asked Ann. But Susan wasn’t answering; she’d turned around and was staring at the door. Her breath puffed visibly, giving her a smoker’s wreath of mist. She was trembling, now.

Terror circled Ann too, looking for an opening, but Ann wouldn’t give it one. She drew a breath of the newly cold air and stepped close behind the older woman.

“What do you call yours?”

“Little,” Susan said, her voice shaking. “I call it Little, though it’s not. You’re a bitch. Always were.”

Around them, the curtains started to billow—as if perhaps a figure moved behind them. Ann shivered, and Susan’s breath condensed in little clouds.

“I used to play Dungeons & Dragons,” said Ann. “I used that to keep mine quiet. A magical D & D kingdom where I made all the rules. It worked for a long time. Never thought about trying a video game.”

Susan looked around the room, her eyes narrowed into a squint.

“It’s not like that,” she said.

“Then what is it like?”

“You don’t control it,” said Susan. “You don’t keep it quiet. That’s not your job. The only thing you have to do, is stay out of its way.”

The curtains fell back, and were still.

“All you have to do,” said Susan, “you stupid little bitch, is stay out of its way.”

Susan moved behind the table, to survey the damage that was done to the TV. Its glass screen was cracked, and dark. She knelt down and ran her finger along the line in the glass.

“I don’t know where your brother is,” she said, not looking up. “I saw him when he showed up a day ago, but Ian said it might not be for long.”

“Did he say where he was going next?”

“Home,” said Susan. “He said he might go home.”

“So he’s left here, definitely,” said Ann.

“He’s left here definitely.”

“And you think he’s gone back to the rest home.”

“Ian said he was going home.”

“So Ian knows where he’s gone?”

“I guess,” said Susan.

“Thank you,” said Ann, and Susan looked up at that.

“Sorry I called you that word,” she said. “That’s not how it was supposed to go when you woke up.”

Ann tried to smile. “I’m sorry about the TV.”

“My fault,” said Susan. She stood up, and frowned and nodded to herself. “I’m the fuckup. I was supposed to offer you some wine. Maybe something stronger. I got caught up. Stupid game.”

Ann felt a chill up her arms again, but this time, the drapes were still. This chill was familiar in its own way. She’d felt it on the road, at the end of a long day driving, as she pulled into a campground, and thought about opening up the cooler in back.

“Is there wine here?”

“Over there,” said Susan, motioning to the credenza. “Some nice stuff. You should have a glass.”

“Not sure I feel like wine right now. Philip—”

At that, Susan finally cracked a grin. “Oh, come on now,” she said. “I already told you. Philip’s gone.”

Ann looked at the credenza, and at Susan. She shook her head.

“I shouldn’t. Not until—”

“Until what?” Susan motioned to the credenza again. “You’re not going anywhere for at least a few hours. And really—when haven’t you felt like a nice glass of Ian’s wine? Just check it out.”

The credenza was more than it appeared.

When Ann opened the doors, she found inside a small bar refrigerator, installed next to racks of tall stemless wine glasses and a rack of six bottles of red wine. The refrigerator contained another six bottles of white. Ann selected a Gewürztraminer. Rickhardt Estates did a good job with the Gewürzt.

There was a giant corkscrew contraption on the shelf below the glasses. To the uninitiated, it was a puzzle box, but Ian had this model in his kitchen and early in their acquaintance he’d showed Ann the trick. Ann unfolded and twisted and pumped, and the pink rubber cork disappeared in the thing’s belly. She pulled out two glasses, holding them between three fingers by the rims as she set them down, and poured.

It was only after she’d joined Susan back at the wreckage of the TV that Ann noticed. The doors leading to the hallway, right beside her, were shut.

“Sure,” said Susan, taking the glass, “just one.”

“I don’t remember this part of the house,” said Ann. They were sitting on the sofa, each tucked against separate armrests. Susan Rickhardt was back in her Buddha pose, legs crossed up under her, her wine glass cradled in her lap. She was looking at her lap.

“You’re not in the house,” she said.

“We’re at the vineyard, though. I don’t remember this from the winery either.”

Susan nodded. “You never came out to this part. It’s the conference centre.”

“Didn’t know there was a conference centre.”

“It was no secret. But I can see how Ian wouldn’t give you the tour.”

“We had our wedding here. You’d think we’d have at least talked about using this—”

“You’d think you two would’ve talked about a couple things.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure. They don’t do weddings here,” said Susan. “That’s what the new building’s for. Wasn’t that one nice enough for you?”

Ann emptied her glass and reached down for the bottle. It was mostly empty.

“Damn,” said Susan. “I’ll get you another one.”

“It’s not that,” said Ann. “But…” she struggled to put the thought to words. Wine didn’t usually hit her this hard. “… but let’s put it on the table. This isn’t a conference centre, is it now?”

Susan bent down and rummaged under the credenza. “You want to move to red, or another Gewürzt?”

“What goes on here?”

“I think more Gewürzt. You like that special, don’t you?”

“It’s nice, yes. What goes on here, Susan?”

“For you and me,” she said, pulling a fresh bottle from the fridge, “nothing much.”

“That’s not an answer,” said Ann. “There was a—manifestation, a poltergeist a minute ago. Was that, um…”

“Little? I dunno.”

“How can you not know?”

Susan smiled. “One of many, dear.”

Ann stared at Susan Rickhardt. She’d called her dear. A few minutes ago, Ann was “a little bitch,” who’d interrupted her video game. It was as though this were a different woman, now, talking sweet and pouring her drinks. That chilled Ann almost as much as the thing she’d just let slip.

“What do you mean, many?” Ann said. “How many?”

Susan went on. “The boys are in town,” she said, “and with them, their wives. This conference centre, it’s a little like a running party. There are, oh, a dozen couples here. The boys do their thing. And the wives… we wait. Keep ourselves occupied.”

“Occupied with what?”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Rickhardt, “with whatever we like. Used to be a big World of Warcraft junkie. Skyrim’s my poison, these days.”

“I can see.”

“And yours—” Mrs. Rickhardt came back with the bottle, and topped up Ann’s glass. “Well.”

Ann put her glass down. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh,” said Susan, “the same thing that’s been going on all your life.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Susan nodded sagely, as though she were revealing a great truth.

“You’re vanishing. Just like the rest of us did when they shrove us off. Now drink up. It’ll be better if you drink up.”

Ann did not remember when she had her first drink. It was probably wine. It was definitely wine. But it wasn’t at home; her parents were not among those who believed that children should be weaned on wine, or that brandy was the best medicine for a sore throat.

She didn’t remember when, either—other than it was in an innocent time. She must have been very young. She didn’t know how young, but she remembered the moment. It was like stepping into a winter wind, hard enough to steal your breath; a kiss, welcome but still a surprise. The sharp, happy flavour of a good idea. It tasted like luck.

It still tasted like luck. It had always tasted like luck. That first sip of wine had always tasted as sweet, and as fine, as that first time.

Ann thought: I could disappear into it.

“I’m not disappearing,” said Ann. She stood up. “I don’t know what ‘shrove’ means. But I don’t think I’ll stay to find out. I’ll be leaving now.”

Susan Rickhardt looked at her, and set the bottle down.

“You might want to think about that,” she said.

Ann shrugged. “I don’t see anyone here who can stop me.”

Susan smiled at that and she laughed, in a way, as Ann opened the door on the empty hallway.

“You noticed that, did you?”

Ann turned. Mrs. Rickhardt looked back at her steadily.

“They don’t need to stop you,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do anyway.”

Ann shut the door on her.

It was a conference centre.

Ann couldn’t believe that she’d mistaken it for Rickhardt’s home. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been here or noticed it before; it was clearly a major facility.

The hallway should have been her first clue. It was a little wider than you’d expect in someone’s home, and there were semi-circular seats between the doors. Little brass sign-holders were beside each door, where you might put your itinerary for that particular room. The rooms had names, too—named for grapes: Merlot, and Chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio—inscribed in script over the lintels. Lighting came from silvered sconces on the wall, casting their beams to the ceiling, and to the burgundy carpets.

Ann stood there a moment. The air here was warm, conditioned—she flexed her hands, waiting for the chill, or the flare of heat, that indicated a presence here. There were women here—possibly in each room—and they might all be like her, carrying their own Insects, and Littles and Mister Sleepys.

Away from Susan Rickhardt, Ann allowed herself to consider the fact: for the first time since the Lake House, she truly was in a haunted house.

A haunted conference centre, excuse me.

Ann started forward, hands fluttering slowly at her side, feeling the warm air for the iciness of invisible spectres.

The hallway continued a long way, turned at a stairwell, then opened up into a space not unlike the tasting room in Rickhardt’s winery.

It was better appointed, though; something the Krenk team at Ann’s architectural firm might’ve done. For the first time in weeks, Ann found herself appraising space like an architect.

The ceiling opened up into an arching dome, like the inside of an overturned boat. Iron-hooped chandeliers hung from crossbeams on black chains. Behind the bar, wooden wine racks sat empty. Thick oak pillars touched the beams on each side, like piers in the nave of a cathedral.

Tall windows lined one wall—but it was still deep in the night and the only illumination came from a banker’s lamp overhanging the space on the bar where one might find a computer and till.

In its place sat a polished brass container, with a gleaming steel lid.

Ann’s running shoes squeaked on the wooden floor. It was the only sound in here. She approached the bar.

“Would you like to be left alone for a moment?”

Ann froze in the middle of the room. Ian Rickhardt stepped out from behind the tasting bar. He was wearing a white, open-necked shirt and a pair of green khakis. His feet were bare. His hair was damp, as though he’d just showered and dressed. He gestured to the light, the container.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ann,” he said.

Ann blinked. She pointed to the container—“Is that…”

Ian nodded. “Michael’s remains.”

Right. It was not a container. It was an urn.

“You cremated him.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Ian. He stepped closer to Ann. “You disappeared,” he said. “In Miami. You went right off the grid. Can’t blame you, really—after that shit show that Hirsch put on for you. But you were gone, we couldn’t find you anywhere, and decisions had to be made.”

“You found me in Mobile,” said Ann, and Ian raised an eyebrow.

“Did we now?”

Did Ian know? Ann kept her face impassive, but she wondered now: did Ian know that when his agent had come into the cabin in the Rosedale Arms, Ann was tucked away… by the Insect, who knew enough to hide, then?

Did he not know, and did she just tell him?

Ann cleared her throat. “How is Mr. Hirsch?”

“Oh, you don’t know. Of course you don’t. Full recovery. Back on the squash court like nothing happened.”

Ann looked at Rickhardt. He looked back, shook his head, pursed his lips.

“He’s alive,” said Rickhardt. “Doesn’t have much to report. On account of, well, the stroke. But I expect inside that shell of his, he’s happy as a clam.”

Ann stepped close to the cylinder. On one side, there was a little engraved plaque.

“I don’t think so,” said Ann, running her finger around the steel lid. “You weren’t there.”

Rickhardt shook his head. “You don’t know Johnny like I know Johnny.”

Ann took a breath. Once again, the reality of her situation caught up to her. Here she was, in an empty hall with Ian Rickhardt, who’d come to Tobago to… what? To rape the Insect? While she was on her honeymoon, with the man who couldn’t get through one short flight before he did the same thing to it?

Hirsch had warned her about Rickhardt… had promised something better, something she’d find in a spa in St. Augustine. Ann hadn’t believed him about that.

But she did believe him about this: Ian Rickhardt was dangerous.

He’d demonstrated this many times over. He’d sent people after her. He’d sent something else after her. He’d had those people overpower her, and take her virtual prisoner.

“Do you want to cry?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. Maybe not cry, but have that time alone. Over Michael’s ashes. I can leave you for a moment. Given that you’re here now, I should have waited before authorizing the cremation. I’m sorry. That was bad of me.”

“I’m fine.”

“Should I leave? Give you a moment?”

Ann sighed, and took her hand from the urn.

“How do I do this?” she said quietly. Ian didn’t answer, just raised his eyebrows in a question. “How does it go? Michael was a rapist. You’re a rapist. I’ve had to put up with and internalize this shit. So how do I talk about it, to you, in a reasonable and rational way?”

“We’re rapists,” said Ian. “I see.”

“Ian,” said Ann, “can we just drop the pretense? I saw what you did in Tobago. I saw what Michael did on the plane. And I know about you and your friends. What you do.”

“And what is it we do?”

“You rape poltergeists.” She said it very quickly, so that it came out as almost a single word: yourapepoltergeists.

“No, Ann, we don’t.”

Ann shut her eyes. She felt like she was going to vomit. She nearly did, as sour acid filled her mouth.

She summoned the spectrum, a slow ladder to the depths. She murmured: “Red, yellow…”

“Hey,” said Ian, “You’re doing Eva Fenshaw’s trick now, aren’t you? With the colours, and your little prison, aren’t you?”

Ann opened her eyes, expecting to see Ian’s smirk—like when he showed up in Tobago with his wedding video, but really to elbow his protégé out of the way and have first-night privileges. He wasn’t smirking, though. He leaned against the bar, comfortable.

“How do you know about that?”

He shrugged. “Eva told me about some of the stuff she does at the wedding. She’s a great gal, but she likes to talk. We did some healing exercises together, and she told me about the prison.”

“She just told you everything.”

“Well, not just me. But she does like to talk. When she got sick—when that stroke hit… she was very talkative indeed. Told us a lot of things that we missed, after that incident with the minivan. Your parents. Philip. That girl—Laurie?

“That girl.”

“Eva’s like a mother to you, isn’t she?”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Ann, and at that, Rickhardt did smirk.

“I have to confess, Ann. I’m actually a little nervous, talking like this, upsetting you,” he said. “Do you have any idea what’s going on right now outside this place? The state of Michigan is on an orange terror alert. The Port Huron crossing’s a mess right now; the Blue Water Bridge is completely shut down. CNN’s saying there are three dead on the U.S. side. Homeland Security personnel. Doesn’t get more serious than that. The Canadian side isn’t reporting any dead. But it’s a mess too. They’re talking about cyber-terrorism, too. Given that you made it here, I’m assuming that means that somehow, you shut down and wiped all the video surveillance. Because otherwise… they’d have caught you on the drive here. They might’ve shot you, if they’d seen it all.” Ian shook his head. “Surely there was an easier way to get back into your country of birth. Even if you didn’t want to be detected. But oh—it gets very serious, when the Insect goes a-walking, doesn’t it?”

“It did that to Hirsch,” said Ann, “and it can do that to you.”

Ian nodded. “It did that to him. It also killed my dear friend Michael Voors. And your parents, didn’t it?”

“Don’t,” said Ann. Her voice was low. She surprised herself by the fury in it.

“So don’t you,” said Ian. “Don’t call me a rapist. Because, I’ll tell you. Coming from a woman who’s committed… let’s see. Patricide… matricide… and what’s the word when a young bride murders her loving husband? It’ll come to me. Point is this: you really aren’t in a position to call rape.”

“I didn’t do any of that,” said Ann.

“Right,” said Ian, “it was the Insect. A being that has nothing to do with you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You just threatened me, Ann. That your Insect would also harm me, in the way that it did John Hirsch.”

“Hirsch told me about you,” said Ann. “And the others. And the things you did.”

Ian nodded. “And that’s why we’re having this conversation. Part of the reason. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about you. I’d just leave you with Susan. You two could catch up, play a little Skyrim, get good and toasted on the fine wines of Rickhardt Estates. But the fact is, you’re not going to do that. I figured that out for certain when you, ah, wrecked that rather nice television set in the Cab Franc room.”

Ann looked at him. “Did Little tell you about that?”

Ian laughed at that. “Little? Susan’s ‘Little’? No. With one or two notable exceptions, the ’geists don’t run our errands. We also have webcams. A couple of us were keeping an eye on you. We wanted to see how you’d interact… if you could be, uh, integrated.”

“Integrated.”

“Yeah. See, when Michael brought you home, that should have taken care of it. But things took a turn for the worse….” He looked down, then up again. It was like he was checking notes, Ann thought. “Here’s the thing, Ann. We want you back here. And on some level, you want to be back here too.”

“Bullshit.”

“No,” said Ian, “you do. If you didn’t—you would never have come.”

Ann shivered. Was the room chilling? Was the Insect manifesting around her? She rather hoped that it was; she wanted it to reach through Ian’s flesh, and pinch together some blood cells into a clot, as it had with Hirsch.

She rather hoped that it would just kill everyone right now.

“I don’t want to be back here. I want my brother back. Where is he?”

“All right,” said Ian, ignoring the question pointedly, “you don’t want to be back here. But I’ll tell you, kid—the Insect sure as shit does. That’s why it led you home.”

“You’re playing games,” said Ann.

“I’m not,” said Ian, “at least not with you. The reason we’re having this conversation is simple. Because the Insect, as you call it, is back exactly where it wants to be. But it’s tied to you, Ann. There are some of us who think that in fact, it is you. It can’t stay, if you don’t.”

“Such shit,” said Ann, but Ian shook his head, and pointed at the urn.

“Look,” he said, and Ann did.

The urn no longer gleamed metallic in the light. It was covered in hoarfrost—as though it held liquid nitrogen, or some other frozen matter, rather than the cooling ashes of Michael Voors. It looked like nothing so much as an eggshell.

“It’s telling you it’s okay,” said Ian. “It’s calling you to go see it.”

The egg started to throw off tendrils of mist, and Ann opened her mouth to call bullshit once more. But she couldn’t. Not really.

She didn’t need to see words written in the frost to understand that.