Vanished

CHAPTER 11

I parted company from Paul Arkmanian outside and pretended to go on my way, waiting until he was out of sight before I ducked back into the building with the help of a pencil stub I’d jammed in the lock earlier. I made my way back up to the office and settled in to wait for another chance to talk to Christelle. I only hoped the security guard wouldn’t come along while I was skulking in the corridor.

About ten o’clock I saw the slim shade of Christelle walking down the hall again, and I slipped deeper into the Grey to talk to her. She wasn’t as friendly this time.

As I drew closer, she muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t catch. Then she pasted on a fake smile and opened the phantom door to the waiting room. “Hi. Are you here for an appointment? You know Dr. Blaine isn’t in, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied, following her into the ghost of the old office. “I wanted to talk to you.”

She looked surprised as she sat behind her desk. “Me? Why?”

I stared at her, trying to catch her skittish gaze with mine. I knew she was capable of responding, of disengaging from the endless loop of memory in however fractured a fashion, and I needed her to speak outside the moment of history. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

She peered back at me, pushing her glasses higher on her nose, her face pinched with suspicion. “No.”

“I’m Harper. I’m Rob’s daughter. Look close.” I hoped the resemblance would be strong enough.

Christelle’s ghost gazed hard at my face, her eyes flicking back and forth in restless study. Then she drew back. “Oh. Oh. It is Harper. I—But. ”

“It’s been more than twenty years since I last saw you.”

“But it can’t be. It’s still Thursday!” she protested.

That made no sense to me at all. “Which Thursday? What’s the date?” I demanded.

“September eighteenth.”

“What year?”

“It’s 1986. Why are you asking me such a crazy question?”

“Because it’s not 1986 for me, Christelle. It’s 2009.”

Her expression puckered into confused fear. “I don’t understand how that can be. ” she whispered. “That can’t be right. ”

“I don’t know, either. Christelle, is this the last date you can remember?”

“I don’t know!” the spectral woman cried.

“Try to think. Just think about the appointment book. Think of each day you sat down and looked at the book. ”

She screwed her face up as she tried to force some kind of memory to come to her remnant mind. I wasn’t sure a ghost could “remember” the way a living person did, but I hoped there was some way for her to fish up some information and give it to me. Finally she shook her head, upset and unhappy. “I can’t remember anything after today. Today is all I remember!” She sounded a little panicked.

I felt like a therapist trying to coax a memory from an amnesia sufferer. “What happened today? What happened to you or to Rob? What can you remember?”

Christelle tried, but the memory was fragmented and she could only bring it back in shards. “I got up, I came to the office. Rob was already here. I don’t think he went home. There was something wrong with the office. There was a man here—no, two men. I’d seen them with the albino man before. They left when I came in, but Rob wouldn’t talk about them. He was angry at me. He said I should stay away from them. He said I should stay away from the office. He. he fired me. He told me to go home. He was angry. But he was scared. He had your picture! I remember! He had your picture in his hand, like he was trying to hide it. I went home. But I didn’t go home. I don’t know! I think I went home, but I don’t remember being home. I only remember being here. But I remember walking. I remember walking toward home and the men came to talk to me. I ran away from them. I think I did. I–I don’t know! I can’t remember! I remember Rob. I don’t know what he was doing. He—No! It’s just a big jumble! No! This isn’t right! Keep him away! Keep him away!” she screamed.

Her screech turned into the roar of the guardian as it rushed into the room and pounced past us toward the source of its agitation in the back room. I couldn’t hear Christelle screaming over the shriek of the beast, but I saw her thrashing at the air as if she were being attacked by unseen things. Then she sat down in a heap, landing in her chair as if broken.

I tried to grab her, shake her, but she had no more substance than a cloud, not even the electrical tingling of an entangled soul. There was no Christelle there, just a shape.

Then she looked up, her face composed and blank. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“Christelle. Listen. Concentrate. Do you know what happened to you?”

“I couldn’t say. Do you have an appointment?”

“No, Christelle. It’s Harper. I want to talk to my dad. Do you know what happened to him? Do you know what happened to you?”

The bland, blank expression didn’t flicker. “The doctor isn’t in right now. Would you like to make an appointment?”

“No, Christelle. I want to know what happened to you.”

“The doctor isn’t in right now,” she repeated. “Would you like—”

“No!” I shouted at her, but she didn’t change her expression or her words; she just continued to ask her mindless question. I gave up, not sure if I’d destroyed whatever was left of Christelle’s lingering memory or not, but quite sure she wasn’t coming back for a while. Whatever intelligence had occupied the space that had been my father’s office had fled, at least for now, and there was nothing I could do.

I left the building, taking care to restore the lock so it clicked closed behind me. A troubling weight of emotion dragged at me as I went: confusion, frustration, grief, and horror. I didn’t know much more than I had when I arrived about what had befallen any of us: my father, Christelle, or me. I wasn’t any closer to knowing why I was the way I was, either.

I tried to shake my mind clear and think hard as I headed back to my car and then onward to my hotel. Christelle’s disconnection from events and her panic might mean she had ceased to exist—at least as a human—after that Thursday in 1986, but what had happened beyond that and who was responsible, I didn’t know. The weird encapsulation of time in the office might account for the incomplete haunting phenomena and the odd silence in the Grey surrounding the time and place of my father’s death. The anomalies—Christelle’s shattered memory and Dad’s lack of presence—had to be related, but what the relation was and how it might be connected to me and my being a Greywalker was still a mystery. Much as it might clear a few things up, it appeared that I wouldn’t be talking to my dad anytime soon. The presence of the guardian beast and the way it had come rushing in each time I got close through the layers of history and connection was not good. I’d have to find another route to the information I wanted and I’d have to tread with care. I might be a Grey creature as far as the beast was concerned, but I’d seen it eat Grey things that misbehaved. I didn’t want to be the next meal or a mindless loop like what remained of Christelle LaJeunesse.

My thoughts left me disturbed and I, childishly, couldn’t face sleep with the chill of them in my mind. Even a long, hot shower couldn’t dispel them after I returned to my hotel room. I paged Quinton and left a code on his pager. Quinton had an excusable paranoia about certain bits of technology, and though I’d upgraded to a cell phone, he never would. We’d worked out a set of codes that communicated volumes in only a few digits—the shorter the burst, the harder it was to trace or crack. I left a code that required a reply. He called back within minutes.

“Hi, it’s me,” he said.

I recognized the voice, of course, and drawled a pleased and tired, “Hey,” feeling a small warmth kindle in my chest.

“How’s the dead boyfriend?”

I bit my lip for a second before answering, “He’s a jerk. And things are becoming stranger than I’d expected.”

“Do you have any answers yet?”

“Not many. My dad—” I choked on the words.

“Honey? Harper? Are you all right?”

His endearment melted the ice block in my throat. “I’m. still confused by a lot of things. I don’t want to discuss them now. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“I like hearing yours, too. I’ve been working on a ghost detector. I’m not sure I’ve got it right, but I’ll show it to you when you get home.”

“I’d rather not talk about ghosts right now.”

“All right. Chaos has been chasing things around that I can’t see and she runs over and tries to steal your shoes. But she only wants your shoes. I think she misses you.”

“She just loves shoes,” I said, imagining the crazy little ferret running manically around the condo or Quinton’s bunker, chasing ghosts and giving her wicked chuckle of glee as they fled before her. She’d dived fearlessly into the Grey when we’d first encountered it and taken on the guardian beast single-handed. I’d had a little trouble getting her back. She was fearless, but she’d learned to pick her fights better after that. You can’t win against an invincible force of the Grey, even if the battle is epic, at least to a fuzz-butt who weighed less than two pounds.

A pleasant silence fell between us and I closed my eyes, thinking I could almost see him.

“She’s not the only one who misses you,” Quinton said.

I smiled. “I miss you, too, and I’ll be home soon.” The conversation wandered and drew to a soft close as I dwindled toward sleep.

“I’ll see you soon,” he whispered before I reluctantly hung up and turned to roll into the covers, falling asleep with the comfort of his thoughts wrapped around me.