Death Trance

I found Edward Wardwell in the Maritime History department, sitting in the full-size cabin of the 1816 yacht Cleopatra's Barge, reading a sub-aqua manual. I knocked on the woodwork, and said, 'Anybody home?'

'Oh, John,' said Edward. He put down his book. 'I was just thinking about you. Refreshing my mind on diving for absolute beginners. It looks like the weather's going to hold for tomorrow morning.'

'Not if the storm-god answers my prayers it isn't.'

'You don't have anything to be afraid of,' said Edward. 'In fact, when you're diving, it's very important not to be afraid, or at least to try to control your fear. I mean, we all get afraid. We get afraid of not being able to breathe properly; we get afraid of dark water; we get afraid of being tangled up in weed. Some divers even develop a phobia about surfacing. But if you're reasonably relaxed, there isn't any reason why you shouldn't have the time of your life.'

'Hmm,' I said, unconvinced.

'You don't have to worry,' Edward reassured me, taking off his spectacles, and blinking at me. 'I'll be right beside you the whole time.'

'What time do you finish here?' I asked him. 'There's something I want to talk to you about.'

'We close at five, but then I'll have about twenty minutes' clearing-up to do.'

I looked around. Already the light was fading through the museum's arched windows. Another night was approaching; another time when the dead of Granitehead might appear to their long-lost loved ones; and another time when Jane might appear to me. I was going to stay in Salem tonight, at the Hawthorne Inn, but I wasn't at all sure that Jane's visitations were restricted to Quaker Lane Cottage.

'Come and have a drink at the Tavern on the Green,' I suggested. 'I'm going there now. Why don't I see you there about six?'

'I've got a better idea,' said Edward. 'Go down to Street Mall and introduce yourself to Gilly McCormick. She's going to be keeping log for us tomorrow, so you might as well get to know her now. She runs a fashion shop called Linen & Lace, about the sixth shop down, in the arcade. I'll meet you there when I've finished up here.'

I left the Peabody and walked across East India Square to the Mall. It was growing colder now, as well as darker, and I rubbed my hands briskly together to keep myself warm. A small party of tourists wandered past, and one woman said loudly, in a twanging Texas accent, 'Isn't it marvelous'? You can just feel that 18th-century atmosphere.'

Linen & Lace was a small, elegant, expensive little shop selling high-collared Princess-Diana style dresses with bows and ruffles and muttonchop sleeves. An extremely svelte black girl directed me to the back of the shop with a long blood-red fingernail; and there I found Gilly McCormick, tying up a gift parcel for a tired-looking Boston matron in a moulting mink.

Gilly was tall, with curly brunette hair, and a striking high-cheek-boned face. She wore one of her own linen blouses, with a ruffled lace bodice, but it did nothing to conceal the fullness of her breasts, or the slimness of her waist. She wore a charcoal-gray calf-length skirt, and fashionably small black boots. Pixie boots, Jane always used to call them.

'Can I help you?' she said, when the Boston matron had flustered out of the shop.

I held out my hand. 'I'm John Trenton. Edward Ward-well told me to come down and make myself known to you. Apparently we're diving together tomorrow.'

'Oh, well, hi,' she smiled. She had eyes the colour of glace chestnuts, and a little dimple on her right cheek. I decided that if this was going to be the quality of the company I was going to be keeping when I went diving, then I might very well become something of a sub-aqua enthusiast.

'Edward told me you bought that watercolour of the D.D. the other day,' said Gilly. 'He totally forgot about the auction, you know; he was here, helping me put up one of my displays. He was so mad when he came back here and told me you'd bought it. "That damn stuffy guy!" he was shouting. "I offered him $300 and all he did was tell me I could borrow it." '

'Edward's very involved with this theory about the David Dark, isn't he?' I said.

'You're allowed to say «obsessed» if you want to,' smiled Gilly. 'Edward won't mind. He admits he's obsessed, but that's only because he really believes he's right.'

'And what do you think?'

‘I’m not sure. I think I agree with him; although I'm not too sure about all these apparitions in Granitehead. I've never actually met anyone who's ever seen one. I mean, it could be a kind of mass hysteria, couldn't it, like the witch-trials were?'

I looked at her carefully. 'You know about me, and the homicide charge they made against me?' I asked her.

Gilly blushed a little, and nodded. 'Yes, I read about that in the Evening News.'

'Well, whatever it says in the Evening News, let me tell you one certain fact, apart from the one certain fact that it wasn't me who murdered that woman. The fact is that one of those apparitions was there that night. I saw it with my own eyes; and it's my belief that it killed her.'

Gilly stared at me for a very long time, obviously trying to decide whether I was a freak or a fruitcake. She probably wasn't aware of it, but her body language clearly gave her trepidation away: she crossed her arms across her breasts.

'Right,' I said, without smiling. 'Now you think I'm a maniac. Maybe I shouldn't have told you.'

'Oh, no,' she stammered, 'I mean, that's quite all right. I mean, I don't think you're a maniac at all. I just think that — '

She hesitated, and then she said, 'Well, I just think that ghosts are kind of hard to believe.'

'I know that. I didn't believe in them either, until I saw one.'

'You really saw a ghost?'

I nodded. 'I really genuinely saw a ghost. It was Mr Edgar Simons, the dead woman's late husband. He was like — I don't know, electricity. A man made out of high-voltage electricity. It's hard to describe.'

'But why did he kill her?'

'I don't know. I haven't any idea. Perhaps he was getting his revenge for something she'd done to him when he was alive. It's impossible to say.'

'And you actually saw him?'

'I actually saw him.'

Gilly swept back her curls with her hand. 'Edward's always saying that Granitehead is haunted. I don't think that any of the rest of us really believe him; at least we haven't, up until now. He's a kind of an odd duck, if you know what I mean. Very deeply into the Salem witch-scare, and Cotton Mather, and all the peculiar occult sects that kept cropping up in Massachusetts during the 18th century.'

I leaned against the counter and folded my arms. 'I'm not the only person in Granitehead who's been seeing ghosts. The guy who runs the Granitehead Market, that's my local store, he's been seeing his dead son. And, if you ask me, a whole lot of people in Granitehead have been seeing their dead relatives for a long time, but not saying anything about it.'

That's what Edward believes. But why shouldn't they say anything about it?'

'Would you, if your dead husband or wife turned up on your doorstep one night? Who would believe you? And if anybody did believe you, the first thing you'd know, you'd have newspapers and TV and ghost-hunters and rubberneckers all gathering around your house like a flock of buzzards. That's why it's all been so secret. Granitehead people, the old Granitehead people, they've known all about it for years, maybe hundreds of years. That's what I think, at least. But they're purposely keeping it quiet. They want tourists, not psychic hyenas.'

'Well, gee,' said Gilly, at a loss for words. Then she looked at me, and shook her head, and said, 'You've actually seen a ghost. A real live ghost. Or real dead ghost, I guess I ought to say.'

'Let me tell you this,' I said. 'I just pray that you don't get to see one, too. They're not at all pleasant, not in any way at all.'