Second Glance Part 10

He drew his digital camera from his pocket and took pictures from several angles. Then he bent to the tiny LCD display to see what the photos looked like. But in every single picture, the ground was perfectly flat, covered with a layer of undisturbed ice. Confounded, Ross s.h.i.+ned the flashlight down on the same patch of land. There were no mounds of dirt, where minutes ago there had been many.

"I know what I saw." Ross stomped around the small s.p.a.ce, but there was no give to the ground; it was still frozen solid.

Had he imagined all of it? He bent down and rolled up the leg of his pants-no, the welt was even bigger now, and a vivid shade of purple. That stone had fallen. That sound had been digging. Those heaps had been there.

Another reason to miss Lia: had she come tonight, and seen this, Ross would not have thought he was crazy.

That week the Winooski River slowed its flow, leaving fish swimming in circles and was.h.i.+ng up on the banks in confusion. Families with satellite television systems found their programming now completely in Norwegian, the mouths of the actors not quite matching up to the words, like old G.o.dzilla G.o.dzilla movies. At the Comtosook IGA, all four electronic cash registers-newly purchased from an industrial catalog and recently arrived-began to add wrong, so that grapes might ring up at $45 per bunch and cantaloupes cost a penny a pound, while mousetraps and fish sticks were perfectly free. The people who dared to talk of these things found they lost their train of thought right in the middle of a sentence, and would find instead the sweet taste of sugar on their tongue, or the bitter tang of chicory, depending on what they had been about to say. movies. At the Comtosook IGA, all four electronic cash registers-newly purchased from an industrial catalog and recently arrived-began to add wrong, so that grapes might ring up at $45 per bunch and cantaloupes cost a penny a pound, while mousetraps and fish sticks were perfectly free. The people who dared to talk of these things found they lost their train of thought right in the middle of a sentence, and would find instead the sweet taste of sugar on their tongue, or the bitter tang of chicory, depending on what they had been about to say.

It sucked going to the dermatologist.

Not only did it remind Ethan of what a freak he was, it also meant he had to stay up all day long, because the doctor's office hours were during the time he usually slept. And after whatever procedure had been done, he had the added fun of seeing his mother's smile crack like a hard-boiled egg; she was trying that desperately to look at him as if he were perfectly normal.

Today he'd had three precancerous growths removed from his face. The doctor had taken a cotton swab and stuck it into a cup of liquid nitrogen, then held it to Ethan's forehead and nose. It stung enough to make tears come to his eyes, and it itched, now.

His mother pulled into the driveway. Uncle Ross was out-the car was gone. Ethan could have unfastened his own seat belt but he waited until his mother came around the pa.s.senger side and did it for him. "You okay?" she asked quietly, and he nodded and got out of the car. He slipped his hand into hers as they walked up the porch, something he had not done for months, because when you have less time than everyone else it means you have to make yourself grow up faster.

In his bedroom, he pulled off his clothes like taffy. He dragged his pajamas over his head and then glanced in the mirror. The blisters hadn't formed yet-that would be tomorrow. But his face was already a globe, s.h.i.+fting blotchy continents where the growths had been frozen off.

Before he even realized what he was doing, he lifted his fist and smashed the mirror. Blood ran down his arm but the only thought spiking through his mind was that he didn't have to look at himself anymore.

"Ethan?" His mother's voice. "Ethan!" She was behind him now, wrapping his fist in a sheet yanked from the bed. "What happened?"

"I'm sorry," Ethan rocked back and forth. "I'm sorry."

"Now you're propitiating . . ." you're propitiating . . ."

"Pro-what?"

"It means being agreeable. Something you always are, after the fact."

Ethan yanked his hand away. "Then why don't you just say say it?" he yelled. "Why do you use these stupid words all the time no one can understand anyway? Why doesn't anyone ever just tell me, flat out, the truth?" it?" he yelled. "Why do you use these stupid words all the time no one can understand anyway? Why doesn't anyone ever just tell me, flat out, the truth?"

His mother stared at him. "What do you want to hear, Ethan?"

He was sobbing, and his nose was running. "That I'm a monster." He held his splayed hands up to his face, streaking his chin and cheeks with smudges of blood. "Look at me, Ma. Look Look at me." at me."

His mother forced a smile. "Ethan, honey, you're tired. It's way past your bedtime." Her voice kicked into soothing mode, the consistency of warm honey. It rolled over Ethan's shoulders; he had to fight to keep from giving in. He felt his mother probe his hand, lead him into the bathroom to clean the cuts.

"I don't think you'll need st.i.tches," she said, and she wrapped his hand with gauze. Then she took him back into his bedroom. Ethan climbed into bed and stared at the frame on his wall where the mirror used to be.

"You'll feel better after you take a nap," his mother said, and Ethan did not know if she was talking to him or to herself. "We'll do something really wonderful when you get up-take out the telescope, maybe, and try to find Venus . . . or watch all the Star Wars Star Wars videos back to back . . . you've wanted to do that for a while now, haven't you?" As she spoke she crouched on the floor, picking up the shards of the mirror. He wondered if she knew she was crying. videos back to back . . . you've wanted to do that for a while now, haven't you?" As she spoke she crouched on the floor, picking up the shards of the mirror. He wondered if she knew she was crying.

Although he was exhausted, Ethan didn't fall asleep. His hand throbbed, and so did his face. He waited until he no longer heard his mother moving around downstairs, then crept out of bed to reach under his desk, where his mother had missed a triangle of mirror.

Ethan held it up to his face. You could only get a small spot in view-the tip of his nose, one eyebrow, a freckle. It was possible, this way, to believe that added together, the reflections might make up one very ordinary boy. It was possible, this way, to be someone altogether different.

Eli woke with a start and sat up, gasping for air. The room was redolent with the scent of apples, so strong that he looked to the side of the bed to make sure there was not a cider press nearby. He rubbed his eyes, but could not seem to shake the image that danced before his face, no matter which way he turned: it was that woman again.

He knew her voice, although he had never heard her speak. He knew that she had a scar underneath her left earlobe, that her mouth tasted of vanilla and misfortune.

His mother had believed in the power of dreams. When Eli was a child, she'd told him a story of his grandfather, a holy man who had envisioned his own demise. He had gone to sleep and seen a mountain covered with snow, and at the very top, a hawk. The hawk reached into the drifts and pulled out a snake by its neck-pulled and kept pulling-and finally attached to the end of the reptile was the empty sh.e.l.l of a turtle. Shaken, it made the rattle of death. Three months later, at a ceremonial rite, a freak snowstorm stranded Eli's grandfather and three other men at the top of a sacred mountain. The others found the men days afterward, frozen. Their bodies might never have been recovered, if not for the caw of a hawk who led the search party closer and closer.

"When we're awake," Eli's mother used to say, "we see what we need to see. When we're asleep, we see what's really there."

He used to wonder if his mother had ever dreamed of her marriage to a white man; of the diabetes slowly killing her. He wondered if she'd known that her only son would be more likely to cut off his own arm than subscribe to the Indian belief that dreams were more than some crazy neurons firing.

The woman, the one who came to him in the dark-she had eyes the color of sea gla.s.s, a piece that Eli found once on a beach in Rhode Island, and that he kept on the windowsill of his bathroom.

He pulled the covers up to his chin and settled down on his pillows again. Most likely, he was h.o.r.n.y. He was dreaming up beauties because he wasn't getting any honest action.

Although, he admitted, as he drifted off again, if that was the case, it made more sense to picture her in a bikini, or better yet, naked in a sauna. Not like she'd been, fully clothed and crouched on a floor, weeping as she fit together what looked like the pieces of an impossible puzzle.

The scream rang out, high and hysterical, as Meredith raced into Lucy's bedroom. No, no, no No, no, no, she thought. Things have been so normal normal.

Her grandmother was already there, smoothing Lucy's damp hair back from her forehead and murmuring that everything was all right. "She won't stop," Granny Ruby said, panicked. "It's like she can't even hear me."

Meredith clapped her hands on both sides of her daughter's face and leaned closer. "Lucy, you listen to me. You are fine. There is nothing here that can hurt you. Do you understand?"

Like a veil lifting, Lucy's gaze sharpened, and she fell silent. As she realized where she was and what had happened she curled up in a fetal position and skittered closer to the head of the bed. "Can't you see her?" Lucy whispered. "She's right there there."

She pointed to a spot between Meredith and Ruby, a spot where there was nothing at all. Then she burrowed underneath the covers. "She wants me to help her look."

"For what?" Meredith asked.

But Lucy had gone somewhere inside herself, and she didn't answer. Meredith's chest hurt; her heart might have been a stone. "Granny," she said, in a voice that was borrowed, "can you watch her?"

Without waiting for an answer, Meredith walked into her own bedroom again. She picked up the telephone and the small business card she'd placed in her nightstand drawer. She waited for the appropriate series of beeps. And then she paged Dr. Calloway, a surrender.

When Ross arrived at the Pike property at 11 P.M. P.M., Lia was waiting. "Am I late?" he asked casually, as if he'd expected to see her all along. As he set up his equipment he watched her from the corner of his eye. There was something different about her-a fragile determination that Ross didn't want to jeopardize by bringing up the circ.u.mstances of how they'd last parted. So instead, he showed her the spots where the mounds had been two nights ago. He let her look at his new EMF field meter, which had arrived in the mail that afternoon. If she wanted to ghost hunt with him, then he'd let her. It was a starting point, and that was better than nothing at all.

She ran her hand lightly over the video camera on its tripod, pointed off in the distance. "My father has a camera," she said, "although his is a little bigger. Bulkier."

"This one's digital." Ross glanced up at the clearing. He was already getting strong sensations from that spot. "If we sit down and wait, maybe we'll get lucky."

"I . . . can stay?"

"I figured that's why you came."

Lia didn't answer, but settled herself beside him on the frozen ground. Her apprehension pressed between them like a chaperone. Ross wondered what was fueling her fear-the possibility of seeing a ghost, or that her husband would come looking for her. "You okay?" he asked.

She nodded. With the exception of a small flashlight, they were sitting in total darkness. Lia sat with her arms wrapped over her knees, her skirt smoothed to her ankles. She glanced at the EMF meter, its needle stable. "So this compa.s.s," she said, "it goes off if a ghost is here?"

"Technically, it goes off when a ghost is materializing. It's the transition between states that disrupts an electromagnetic field."

She frowned. "I don't understand."

"If the spirit is invisible, and then suddenly starts to look solid-or vice versa-we'll hear crackling."

They fell into a companionable silence full of questions neither one wanted to be first to ask. At some point Ross stopped attending to potential paranormal activity and started to listen instead for the sound of Lia's breathing falling between the s.p.a.ces of his own. He grew acutely aware of the distance between his shoulder and hers. If he shrugged, he would touch her. h.e.l.l, if he inhaled deeply.

It had been nearly a decade since Ross felt this-a physical awareness so intense it seemed to require all of his attention, a fleeting prayer for something beyond his control-earthquake, tsunami-that might naturally close the s.p.a.ce between them. He had been looking for the ghost of a woman for so long, it was unsettling to find himself fascinated by one sitting right beside him. But Lia was married, and Aimee was the one he really wanted.

What if the strange tug he felt around Lia was not the need to save her, but the possibility that she might be able to save him him? What if he was not supposed to find a ghost in Comtosook . . . but rather, this woman?

Aimee is gone. Lia is here . . . . . .

The rogue thought stumbled into the front of his mind, upsetting him so greatly he found himself physically going in the opposite direction, scooting out of the yellow round of the flashlight and away from Lia. "Did something happen?" she asked, breathless.

No, Ross thought, thank G.o.d thank G.o.d. He got to his feet and began to walk around the clearing.

"You feel something?"

"No," Ross answered. Yes Yes.

She stood up, walking into the shadows. "I do," Lia murmured. "Like everything's getting . . . sharper. Harder."

As she moved past Ross, he could feel a breeze. The light edge of her skirt grazed his hand, and before he could stop himself, he grabbed for it, only to have it slip through his fingers like wind.

His heart was too large in his chest, and it was beating out of rhythm. Ross, who had not let his love die when his lover did, was suddenly distracted by something as mundane as the dimple on a woman's knee.

He told himself that he had built a world with Aimee; that she had known him better than anyone had in his life. But the truth was, Aimee would not recognize Ross now. Grief had changed him, from the pitch of his voice to the way he carried himself down a busy street. Aimee had understood what made Ross happy.

But Lia seemed to understand what had crushed him.

There was suddenly, quite clearly, the cry of an infant. "Did you hear that?" Lia whispered, and she reached for Ross, her hand closing over his wrist.

He had heard it. But he realized that Lia was no longer focused on the distant sound. She picked up the flashlight, s.h.i.+ned it square on the scars on Ross's arm. "Oh . . ." Lia said, and the light clattered to the ground, pitching them both into darkness.

Although he could not see Lia, Ross knew she was feeling beneath her sleeves for her own old wounds. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't ask." Ross reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette, bringing her face back from the shadows.

"When?" she said simply.

"A while ago. Back when I didn't think there was anything left for me in this world." He met her gaze, then took the glowing cigarette and pressed it to the flesh inside his arm, daring her to feel sorry for him. "I still don't."

To his surprise, Lia didn't try to stop him. She waited until he tossed away the b.u.t.t, until there was an angry, blistered burn on his skin. "I didn't come here tonight to look for a ghost," Lia admitted. "I came because when I'm with you, I'm not sitting at home and wondering if I should use a knife or pills or poison." All the fine hairs on his arms stood up as she pressed her lips to his ear. "Ross," she whispered, "tell me what's on the other side."

Ross had felt like this once before-dizzy and agonized and bursting from every cell. Afterward, when he'd awakened, three doctors said he'd been struck by lightning. He brought his hand up to Lia's jaw. If you can see me so clearly If you can see me so clearly, he thought, then I must be real then I must be real.

A few feet away, the EMF meter began to crackle. The static came slowly at first, eventually growing so loud Ross could hear it over the blind swell of his mind. Ross had never experienced a response this strong-something significant was coming. And it made perfect sense: the spirit was using the energy that had sparked between Ross and Lia to materialize.

Ross scrambled away, grabbing for the EMF and squinting in an effort to see the readings. "The light," he called to Lia.

But a moment later, his shoe connected with the flashlight. The meter was already waning again, the crackles subsiding. It was the most significant proof of a spirit he'd ever witnessed, yet Ross didn't think he'd care at this moment if the ghost walked right up to him and introduced itself. He needed to find Lia, to see what was written on her face.

Ross turned on the flashlight and swung the beam, but she was gone.

It would not be the first time Ross had seen a person run away during a paranormal investigation. Yet Lia's fear had nothing to do with the coming of ghosts. What had scared her was the same thing that had scared Ross-what, even now, kept him shaking: the knowledge that for the second time in his life, he wanted someone he could not have.

FOUR.

In Comtosook, residents began adapting to a world they could no longer take for granted. Umbrellas were carried in knapsacks and purses, to ward off rain that fell red as blood and dried into a layer of fine red dust. China dishes shattered at the stroke of noon, no matter how carefully they were wrapped. Mothers woke their children, so that they could see the roses bloom at midnight.

After a while, hems on pants began to unravel and words would not stay still on the pages of books. Water never boiled. People in town found they'd wake up without a history- walking out to get the morning paper, they would trip over their own memories, unraveled like bandages across the sidewalk. Women opened their dryers to find their whites had turned to feathers. Meat spoiled in the freezer. The color blue looked completely wrong.

Some attributed the events to global warming, or personal bad luck. But when Abe Huppinworth walked into the Gas & Grocery only to find every single item balanced backward and upside down on the shelves, he wondered aloud if that Indian ghost on Otter Creek Pa.s.s didn't have something to do with it. And the three customers who had been shopping at the time told their neighbors, and before evening fell the inhabitants of Comtosook were all speculating on whether or not it might not just be best to leave that piece of land alone.

There was a large part of Rod van Vleet that didn't want to hear what Ross Wakeman had to say. If there was a ghost- ridiculous as it seemed-what was Rod supposed to do about it? The house had been demolished; the crews were moving the wreckage into Dumpsters. The Redhook Group was going to build, no matter how many locals' signatures and pet.i.tions crossed his desk. Maybe Rod would need to call in a priest to exorcise the d.a.m.n bagel shop that was to be eventually built here, and maybe he wouldn't. The point was that the ghost was negotiable; the development was not.

And yet, Rod really wanted to know if he was displacing a spirit. If the reason his meals all tasted of sawdust, if the reason his toothbrush went missing every night, had anything to do with his current occupation.

"These things . . ." Rod pointed to the TV screen, where a grainy image of a forest at nighttime was scored by blue lines and floating b.a.l.l.s of light. "These things are supposed to be a ghost?" He relaxed inside. Whatever he had been expecting, this was not it. A few sparks and bubbles couldn't hurt anyone. They certainly wouldn't run off potential business.

Ross Wakeman was a charlatan; plain and simple. He'd seen an opportunity to grab a little attention for himself, and he had climbed right aboard Rod's bandwagon to do it.

"That's not a spirit in and of itself," Wakeman explained. "That's a spirit's effect on the equipment. I've had flashlights cut out on me on the property, and this sort of interference recording, and very strong readings on machines that measure magnetic fields."

"Mumbo-jumbo," Rod said. "There's nothing concrete."

"Just because something defies measurement doesn't mean it's not here." Wakeman shrugged. "Consider the difference between property value and actual worth."

"Ah, but you can can measure property value. It's how much people are willing to pay to acquire something." measure property value. It's how much people are willing to pay to acquire something."

"You can measure a ghost, too, by what people are willing to believe."

Suddenly the door to the construction trailer burst open. Van Vleet turned away to find three angry equipment operators storming closer, their excavators as dormant as sleeping dinosaurs.

One, the ringleader, poked van Vleet in the chest. "We quit."

"You can't quit. You haven't finished the job."

"Screw the job." He removed his hard hat and tossed it at van Vleet, a gauntlet. "They're driving us crazy."

"What is?"

"The flies." Another worker stepped forward, continuing to speak in a thick French Canadian accent. "They come right into the ears, and they whisper." With his hands he made small, spinning circles by the sides of his head. "Tsee-tsee. Tsee-tsee."

"And when you go to bat them away," the first worker added, "there's nothing there."

The third worker, still silent, crossed himself.