I didn’t have a plan. Certainly none came to mind as I drove back to the condominium.
I stopped at the security desk, where I found out Smith and Jones were off for the next few days. I asked the woman working the desk if they had left a message for me. She said they hadn’t, so I didn’t know if they’d found the red Toyota Avalon or not. I might have called Bobby Dunston, except I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone else, for that matter. I couldn’t think of a conversation that wouldn’t make me sound like a lunatic.
I returned to the condo and started walking in a large circle again. By the third lap, it occurred to me that I had no basis on which to judge the reliability of any of the things that I’d seen or heard in the past few days.
“What you need to do is some honest research,” I said aloud.
Unfortunately, of the thousand or so books Nina and I had collected for our library, not one was devoted to the paranormal, except for some Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Neil Gaiman, and I didn’t think that they counted. There was the internet, of course, but after a half hour of surfing all I found was links to movies, books, psychic mediums, and TV shows. So what the hell, I decided, let’s watch some TV. Except, where to begin? I found the titles of 167 TV series devoted to ghosts, psychics, and the paranormal broadcast in the United States since the midseventies, and the only one I recognized was In Search of … with Leonard Nimoy.
I browsed episodes of a handful of the more recent reality shows that I could watch on demand. There seemed to be a lot of contradictions. In one, an exorcist was brought in to cleanse a haunted house of a particularly pesky demon in an elaborate ceremony that included hand-holding, prayer, and burning sage. In another show, the owners were told that they should simply tell the ghosts they were not wanted and the ghosts would leave. In yet another, a psychic medium and an ex–New York homicide cop working together told the homeowners that nothing could be done and they should move. In the fourth show I watched, a group of ghost hunters confirmed that a bed-and-breakfast was indeed haunted, as the owners had surmised, but the spirits weren’t particularly malicious, and they, the B&B owners, and their guests could happily coexist if they simply treated one another with courtesy and respect.
I suppose you could learn to live with a ghost, my inner voice told me.
Stop it, I told myself. There are no such things as ghosts.
Who told you that?
My parents.
So Hannah and Kayla and all those other psychic mediums chanting your name at the Twin Cities Psychic and Healing Festival were just making up all this crap?
This time I spoke aloud. “There are no such things as ghosts.”
It was at that precise moment that my baseball was swept off the shelf of a bookcase onto the hardwood floor.
It occurred so quickly and so unexpectedly that it took a few beats before I was able to register what had happened.
This wasn’t just any baseball, mind you. This particular baseball had been autographed by the seven Minnesota Twins that played on the teams that won both the 1987 and 1991 World Series. It was enclosed in a clear acrylic square box near my desk.
I crossed the room, picked up the box, and held it up to the light. There was no damage.
My first question: What the hell?
My second: Really?
I told myself that there had to be a logical explanation for what happened that had never happened before. I returned the ball to its place on the shelf even as I entertained a theory involving street vibration and the weight of my building.
Didn’t Minnesota Public Radio get something like $3.5 million from the Metropolitan Council to deal with the vibration caused by Green Line trains rolling past its studios in downtown St. Paul?
I took a few steps backward, all the time watching the box.
After a few seconds, I announced again, “There are no such things as ghosts.”
The box began to tremble.
Then it stopped.
Then it flew off of the shelf and landed at my feet. We’re talking at least a five-foot flight.
Three-point-five million bucks, my inner voice repeated.
Mind you, I had just spent a long Saturday afternoon fast-forwarding through over a dozen TV shows arguing that there really were ghosts and that most of them were assholes. Some of the shows even employed electronic devices to prove it, like EMF meters, EVP recorders, REM pods, IR lights, FLIR thermal imaging cameras, and a lot of other stuff with acronyms that I didn’t know. So while this might have freaked me out last Saturday, at the time it seemed perfectly reasonable.
Although, I had to wonder, why was I being haunted now when I’d never been haunted before?
What was it that Hannah Braaten said? It’s possible that Leland attached himself to you.
Are you saying that Leland Hayes followed me home? I asked myself.
Hannah said she’s seen it before.
I flashed on the episode where the psychic medium said that you needed to be firm with the spirits that invaded your space, that you had to let them know who was in charge.
“Hey, asshole.” I spoke loudly. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Leland Hayes, you godless prick. You ruined your life, you ruined your son’s life, and now you want to fuck with me? Screw that. I want you out of here. This is my home, not yours. In the name of God, get out. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, take your worthless ass out of here and don’t ever come back. Go to the other side and take responsibility for your crimes, you chickenshit.”
I stood quietly and waited.
Nothing happened.
I waited some more, thankful that there was no one around to see or hear me—at least no one that I could see or hear.
Some people liked the sound of silence, whatever that was. It made me nervous, which probably said something disturbing about my personality. After a few more minutes of it, I said, “Got nothing to say for yourself? Fine.”
I looked down at the acrylic box at my feet.
There are plenty of things that can’t be explained, my inner voice reminded me. That’s why ancient cultures invented gods.
I picked up the box and walked it back to the bookcase. I told the computer to play random songs from my playlist, and she settled on the Frank Sinatra–Aretha Franklin duet of “What Now My Love” to start. I arranged the box on the shelf so that Kirby Puckett’s autograph was facing outward.
I was interrupted when the door to the condominium opened behind me.
For some reason, the light metallic sound of lock and door handle sounded as loud as gunfire.
I spun toward it and stared.
Nina looked back at me.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Hmm? Sure. Fine.”
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for something to read. What brings you home so early?”
“I don’t know.” Nina dropped her bag and coat on the chair where she usually dropped her bag and coat. “I just felt like I should be here.”
I flashed on the story Kayla Janas told me about her roommate, about how Kayla sent her to the coffeehouse because Kayla felt that’s where she needed to be.
C’mon, McKenzie. It doesn’t always need to be a thing.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Not bad,” Nina said. “How ’bout yours? How was the Twin Cities Psychic and Healing Festival?”
“It had its moments.”
I walked toward Nina. She walked toward me. We kissed. Instead of I’m-happy-to-see-you, it felt more like I’m-happy-that-you’re-in-my-life-and-please-don’t-ever-leave-it.
“And what can I do for you?” I asked.
Nina smiled broadly, and I immediately thought of our master bedroom and the recent acceleration of our sex life.
“Take me dancing,” she said.
“Is that a metaphor?”
She rapped my chest. “You always say you’re going to take me dancing and you never do,” Nina said. “We used to dance all the time when we first started dating.”
I gripped my knee. “Did I ever tell you about my hockey injury?” I said.
“The one that kept you from playing hockey last night? C’mon, McKenzie. Step up. You owe me.”
“All right, all right, I’ll take you dancing.”
“I expect you to do it with a smile.”
I smiled.
The phone rang. Nina read the caller ID before answering.
“Hey, Shel,” she said. “Before you say anything, McKenzie has promised to take me dancing, so … You and Bobby are welcome to come with, but … No … No, Shelby. If you want to join us … Threaten his life. That always works for me … Okay, okay. I’ll see you then.”
Nina hung up the phone.
“Here’s the plan,” she said. “They’re hosting a Swing Night at the Wabasha Street Caves on the south shore of the Mississippi across from downtown St. Paul, the old speakeasy built into the sandstone bluff.”
“I’ve been there.”
“First, we’re stopping at Shelby’s, though. She and Bobby may or may not join us, she doesn’t know yet, but she wants to see us.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? Maybe she’s had a vision. I need to change. Are you going dressed like that?”