Chapter Four
Behind gray hanks of feathery pepper tree fronds, the old Novak house stood concealed from the road. Leaning on my car for the past fifteen minutes, I had seen no evidence of human activity. The For Sale sign, declaiming the phone number and name of a Vineyard Realty agent, lay on its side on a pile of branches, leaves, and broken concrete. It didn’t matter. Ivy told me the house was sold.
The driveway pepper trees Dad had kept trim wore shaggy beards and ragged branches. The drive made a circle, ended in the garage to the left; moss rimmed a jagged hole in the garage roof; its doors stood open, and I could see broken toys, clothes, plastic garbage bags leaking from it like the entrails of a kill.
The house itself still looked mighty, built of quarried stone carried here more than 100 years ago by some enterprising pioneer. Arches spanned a long veranda; the second story windows, still intact, amazingly, looked down on the weed-choked lawn. Dad had planted dichondra there, a blue-green ground cover where we built fortresses and staged history-bending battles, my brother Dick and I. Before Ivy came.
The property was sold and scheduled to be torn down, according to Ivy. She also told me squatters resided here, runaways. I thought it odd that a small burg like Quantum City could even harbor runaways, but the ills of big cities visited small towns, too. Perhaps they were part-time runaways, pissed off at whichever parent had charge of them at the moment, spending a few days scrounging food and getting high before wandering home to X-Box and frozen pizza.
I left Zoe at home, asleep, Pepper charged with guardianship, a role she relished, and left early. Morning traffic swished past behind me; a busy street, good place for condos or whatever was going in here. But the owners of the condos might not sleep very well at night. The Novak place was haunted, after all.
I worried not about residents wakened by what could not be explained by subterranean waters, but about a certain place in the cellar. Not for the first time did I wonder if Mae’s instruction to get her final diary out of what had once been my house was also a clue to something else, a threat to the very being of the Novaks.
Seeing no squatters or real estate agents, I left the sidewalk where morning sun multiplied the heat units, and strolled up the driveway into the relative cool of the pepper trees. The smell of sage and eucalyptus filled my nostrils—behind the house a stand of the milky-trunked, gray crescent-shaped leafed trees still stood. Beyond them I could see the concrete wall of a housing encampment, where 20 years ago there had been a pasture for Herefords.
Street sounds seemed to fade as I walked toward the house. Memories crowded in. There, by that faucet, I made a pool for my plastic horses. Over there, near the side door, was a rose shrub that sent its aromas across the garden. Up there, on the veranda roof, I threatened to push Ivy off.
I put my foot on the bottom step, looked up to the door. Someone had painted it black, taped a peace sign in one of the lights. The wooden stairs groaned as I climbed onto the veranda. If anyone was inside, that would have gotten their attention.
The veranda was empty. It once held wicker furniture scarred and scaling; I painted one of the chairs lavender, Dad watching proudly, helping. When I was very small I could put both legs through the slats and look through to the street, pretending I was a princess imprisoned in a brier-encrusted castle. As I got older, I couldn’t get even my foot through.
The house gave off the odor of mold and dust, the taint of neglect. After Dad sold it, after he lost his job at the Rad Lab and we moved to the tract home Ivy now occupied, the house had a series of owners, none of whom stayed more than two years. We moved away more than 20 years ago now. I remember my sorrow at leaving. I remember I blamed Ivy for it.
I laid my hand on the doorknob. The old bone-colored one was gone, replaced by pocked, cheap brass. A lock box lay on the veranda boards, removed with pipe cutters. I pushed. The door opened.
Instantly the smell hit me, a wave of boggy air, coming straight from the cellar. Stronger than I ever recalled, but perhaps I was used to it. No wonder no one could stand to stay here; it would have been impossible to fight the odor. No amount of Glade or baking soda or chlorine would eradicate it.
The house did carry the faint nose of patchouli incense. Squatters’ choice for odor control, I thought. Halting just over the threshold, I listened.
Not a sound, complete silence, not even birdsong or traffic noise. Except for something, low and barely discernible. I thought I knew what it was.
I stood still, deciding. I could head straight for the stairs, as quietly as I could and run up. But I remembered the attic stairs, collapsible ones pulled to the hallway floor by a cable. They made a god-awful noise as they came down.
To my left, the living room loomed darkly; the house faced south, but the sun, still low in the east, had not touched here. I waited for my eyes to adjust and scanned the room, seeing amorphous shapes, what might be a folding chair, a cardboard box, remnants of a take-out meal. Beside it, on the floor, two oblong shapes the color of putty. Sleeping bags.
This was the source of the noise I heard earlier, rhythmic snoring. Blinking, I tried to make out the shape of the bags. Shadows obscured them, the house was fond of making shadows where there should be none, a place were it was hard to see, to make distinctions between what was real and what was imagination.
Or maybe that was the effulgent imagination of a nine-year-old girl. But this moment, standing in the house that should have been mine, I doubted what I saw. Was one of the sleeping bags empty?
I had my answer the next second when a sharp object prodded my back, and a breath laced with either garlic or tooth decay warmed my neck.
“What do you want?”
It was a teenaged male voice. An unpredictable mixture: young and male; could it be reasoned with?
Slowly raising my hands, recognizing that it would be wise to show I had no weapon nor intent to use it if I had one, I said. “I used to live here. I wondered what happened to—”
“We live here now, and you better get the fuck out of here.” A teenage voice with balls. The object in my flank jabbed me.
“OK, I’m going, but I just wanted to know,” I moved, turned, faced the open door. “What did you pay for the place? With housing prices around here—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Garlic Breath said, his voice cracking slightly. Barely a teenager and unfortunately male.
Glancing into the living room, I could see the other squatter sitting up in the sleeping bag nearest the folding chair. I could hear rapid, frightened breathing.
“Mark? What’s happening?”
Teenaged and female. Likely to be more reasonable than the male one, but just as unpredictable. A worry tugged me, wondering about what form Zoe would take in five years.
“This is our place. You’d better leave, lady.” Mark pressed whatever weapon he had, knife, gun, broken chair leg, deeper into my back.
I walked toward the door. “Well, if you ever want to sell. I heard the place is haunted.” I stopped at the doorway. “I love haunted houses. I’m a sort of ghost hunter, you know.”
“We know all about it, lady. We’ve seen the ghost.” His voice strengthened with bravado. I had touched a nerve.
“Really? What did it say? What did it look like? Would you like some help?” Starting to turn, I lowered my hands, but Garlic Breath jabbed me.
“Keep moving. We don’t need any help. Maddy is helping. She’s a channeler.”
I kept the smirk off my face. From the living room came the girl’s voice. “Shut up, Mark. We’ve got to get out of here. She’ll call the cops.”
“Well, if you really have a gun and you are really underage, I probably will,” I said, walking across the veranda, down the creaky steps. I was starting to get mad. Reaching the lawn, I turned, ready to fall flat if he was going to shoot me, my knees already quivering, I saw no one on the veranda. The door was closed, but I heard fierce arguing going on inside.
These kids would not make it easy for me to get back into the house. I walked to my car, circled to the driver side door and watched to see if they were leaving. Neither emerged. If they left the house by the back door, they would have to come around to the front, since the wall behind the house did not look easy to scale. If they truly considered themselves ghost hunters and they weren’t just fooling around, they wouldn’t be about to leave.
I leaned against the car door, considering. There was something I had yet to do, and I thought it would be fun to take care of it here, at my old place, in broad daylight with two surly teenage ghost-aficionados looking on.
This time I entered the property following the driveway, but I veered onto the path leading behind the garage. It led me to the side gate which opened easily, the hinge nails being rusty and already broken by trespassers.
A bay window from the dining room looked into the side yard. Oleander shrubs lining the fence had grown to leggy heights. A stone path led to the rear patio. Above, pallid branches of a sycamore crisscrossed the sky. A polite, warm breeze stroked a straggly bougainvillea A perfect, lonely place for a summoning.
Standing with my back to the house, I faced the oleanders. Open palms, closed eyes. Leather jacket, hand-rolled cigarette. Stubble on chin, black hair wrangled with an oily comb. How I hated that comb. I caught the odors first, brandy, ink, cilantro.
Jeeze it was fast, like he had been cruising the veil, waiting for me to call. Jonah Manon, my ex-husband, appeared in miniature, expanded like a whirling close-up shot, and a second later stood before me, oleander blooms faint and visible through his leather jacket.
Behind me came a gasp. A satisfying triumph for me but I didn’t turn around. I knew Mark and Maddy were watching through the window.
In broad daylight on an ordinary Friday morning, before them stood a very human-like full-sized ghost, likely their first real sighting.
“Oh Annie. You look great.”
The sound of his voice, so familiar, nasal, smooth, and at least for now, sincere, pricked me. Looking at him, old feelings swelled, but I shoved them down. He wore black leather, a white shirt, jeans, the ever-present Drum-rolled fag in his hand.
“Good to see you, Jonah,” I managed. He looked so alive! Except for the fact I could see the fence through him, he looked just the same as the day I threw him out of the house.
“How is Zoe? She OK? I looked for her in Seattle. I didn’t know you guys left. Where am I, anyway?” He took a drag of his cigarette. The smoke cycled through his skin, clouded his hair.
“California. Quantum City.” I folded my arms around my chest, wishing he didn’t look so good. I didn’t realize talking to the dead Jonah would be this hard.
“Oh, I see. Back home, huh? Visiting bad old sister Ivy? How is the bitch, anyway?”
Inhaling, I liked the smell of the smoke—it would filter through the immediate neighborhood. Even the two benighted ghost hunters in the house would be able to smell it. Beyond the fence a dog snuffled, whined. Dogs sensed the presence of the dead. It made them nervous. “She’s fine. Listen, Jonah. I need some help.”
He tilted his head, brown eyes focused on me in a look I knew too well. “Whew, you are good at this summoning thing. I felt the pull and here I was whammo! I know I gave you a hard time at first about all your ghost stuff, helping the dead and all that, but you are good, my dear.” His leather jacket creaked as he folded one arm across his chest, the other hanging down, holding the cigarette. Such a familiar Jonah pose. “What do you need me to do?”
After I told him it was over, he had begged to come back. But I couldn’t think about all that now. “When I heard you died, I felt so sad,” I said, wondering why I had to say it.
Making a noise like a strangled laugh, he shook his head. “So did I, Annie. So did I. So come, baby, what do you need me to do? Is Zoe OK?”
“Zoe’s fine.” I wouldn’t tell him, not yet, about Mae’s threat. “I need you to find a ghost. It won’t be very fun. But I don’t have time to do it myself.”
He bowed, swung his hand up in an arc. “At your service. I know a lot of people over there. Gimme a name.”
“Justin Nash.” I watched him as he nodded, waiting for more. Despair caused my throat to tighten; the bright sunshine seemed to leak away, dimming the morning around us. “He died about 20 years ago.”
I had to clear my throat against a growing dryness, as if I was breathing in too much of Jonah’s cigarette. I never let him smoke in the house or the car after Zoe was born.
Jonah’s eyebrows, thick like they had been drawn by charcoal pencils, drew together. “And do I get any more clues?”
Swallowing, I said, “I said this wouldn’t be easy. Justin died when he was only four months old. He’s a baby, Jonah.”
A frown widened his mouth, and he poked the cigarette between his lips and spoke with it hanging there. “Shit. That’s harsh.” Looking around at anything but me, taking in the battered house behind me, the concrete wall separating the old ruin from the tidy neighborhood beyond, I could see him trying to order his thoughts. “Is this that baby?”
Naturally I had told him about the incident of the babysitter and the baby. For a time, early in our marriage, we tried to impress each other with how rotten our childhoods were. I related all the horrors I could think of, but Jonah won with his father beating him up and his mother’s best male friend trying to rape him.
Nodding, I tried to look sympathetic. “I know it’s rotten, but I need this favor. Ivy is in trouble with the ghost of my old girlfriend Mae. The ghost demands I complete these certain tasks, and I don’t have much time, so I’m kind of outsourcing some of the work, you see?”
Shaking his head, Jonah scratched his forehead with one long finger. “What am I supposed to do when I find this kid?”
“Get him to tell what happened. Or if he won’t, let me know and I will come to see him myself.” The thought of anything happening to Zoe kicked me in the gut. But I couldn’t tell Jonah about it, even if he were in a position to warn me about any threat coming from Phantom City. He would become an insane revenant, a screaming skull, an uncontrollable spirit manifesting in all sorts of inappropriate places.
Jonah’s eyebrows rose. “You might come over here? Really?”
He looked too damn gleeful. That was all I needed, him pretending to try to find Justin just to get me to cross over. “Jonah, please understand. I have too many things to do here. I don’t have time to explain now.”
He crossed his arm again, the other suspended with the cigarette nearly burned away into a log of ash. “I like that. The first time you summon me since I died and it’s only because you need something. Zoe just talks to me, calls to say high, tells me about her day, the kids in school, the website she’s building. But you only need Jonah for a favor, nothing else.”
A whining noise started in one ear and fled to the other. My chest became rigid, like I couldn’t move it to take a breath. Why would it surprise me that Zoe would summon her dad to talk to? It’s the most natural thing in the world for a Novak to do. It had never occurred to me she would talk to Jonah secretly and not tell me. A flush burned my cheeks.
“Oh,” Jonah raised his chin. “You didn’t know. She’s a nifty little ghost guide, my little daughter. Inherited my good looks and your brains. What more could I want?”
I swallowed. The air grew hotter. The breeze had fled, leaving only a baking heat. “That’s nice, Jonah. I’m glad to hear it. But I have to go now.”
“I thought you would be pissed off.” Leaning toward me, I could feel his eyes searching my face, even though a heavy veil of smoke drifted between us, and was getting thicker by the minute.
“Please, find Justin for me. And I promise I won’t make Zoe stop summoning you.” My threat sounded as lame as it was. Jonah laughed. Oleander flowers and weathered boards were more discernible through Jonah’s leather jacket and jeans.
“As if,” he said, the nicotine cloud gathering, blurring the edges of his outline, plucking, misty fingers pulling him away. I could barely see him now. But his voice carried through the murk. “Don’t worry, Annie. I’ll find your boy. I’ll send word tonight.” I could see nothing of him now as the breeze returned, churned away the smoke in twin vortexes. But his words found me again, as clearly as if he sat on one of my shoulders. “And tell those two staring out the window that this was all a dream from that grade B weed they shared last night.”
I stood alone in the garden. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the window was empty—Maddy and Mark must have grown bored. Or they were planning a sneak attack on me. But I didn’t want to leave. The breeze played the sycamore, rattling it like a beaded curtain. If I looked toward the backyard, beyond the patio, I could see the kidney outline of the swimming pool, drained no doubt and filled with debris. I wondered if the keys and doll heads and broken portable CD players Ivy and I threw in there would appear now, ghosts of the objects we rejected or shunned, or offered to whatever god might be listening in return for a favor. But I didn’t have the heart to look.
Heading back toward my car, I glanced at the house. The front door was ajar and I could see a hank of red tip-dyed hair and a slice of forehead. Mark or Maddy, I couldn’t tell, but whoever it was watched me. And just below the watchful head, I could see the glinting barrel of something, or thought I did, quickly withdrawn from view. Heat and sweat blushed my forehead. Did they really have a gun? What did he poke into my back?
There would be no reasoning here, no sweet-talking way into the house. But I already had a back-up plan, which I hoped I could pull off.
Heat wavered in the street, I could feel the heat of the tarmac through my sandals. My door handle was baking. Everywhere was silence and I felt super-vigilant, as if all my skin were straining to have eyes and see. Perhaps the proximity of so many dead resulted in this feeling of exposure, or all the muttering voices I thought I heard, everywhere, masses of them. So many wraiths.
Regardless, something made me look down the street. Nothing moved, no humans followed the weed-cracked sidewalk, no curtains moved in the ramshackle homes. Only a car, a heavy-chromed vintage model, Mercury, something, two-toned baby sky blue and white, moved down the street from the west.
I stood watching the pretty car. Shards of cast-off sunlight bounced off the bumpers. A ribbon of reflected light hid the driver from me. The car moved slowly, making no noise. Everything around me was bleached of color as the car approached. All I could hear was the crackling of the white sidewall tires on the tarmac. Even if I wanted to turn to watch it go by, or open the door to my own car, I felt powerless to do anything but watch it roll past.
My head turned as it drew up next to me. Inside the car was shadow, even though I thought the interior was white. Two black-gloved hands rested on the white steering wheel, but I couldn’t see a face. Gloves in the heat of the summer? Was this a manifestation? A sign?
No change in speed as it passed me. I couldn’t tell if the driver were male or female. But a cold realization hit me deeply and I sagged against my car, the hot metal warming my shorts. Watching the car stop at the end of the block, both taillights working, a right-turn signal popped on, and it pulled away into the traffic of Portola Avenue.
What had Ivy said, when she told me about Hollis’s accident? There was this big car coming, an old thing, bright blue, all restored and shiny. She had said the car kept going, never stopped. The car might have caused Hollis to lose control. Why didn’t the driver stop?
And now, here on the street where I used to live, the same car. It didn’t stop this time either. And I was very relieved that it hadn’t.