"No," she said again, and added, "I don't know that." She said it slowly and at a whisper, eyes lowered, hands clasped in front of her. "I don't know that," she repeated. "I can't be dead. I feel. I hear. I want. The dead don't have any of that."
Ryerson said, "You are proof that they do."
And she faded, returned, faded, returned, faded. And was gone.
He found the ninety-year-old man in the cellar. The man had once had a workshop there, where he built clocks. His specialty had been cuckoo clocks fashioned from cherry wood indigenous to the area, but the problem was that he was a lousy clockmaker. He made one stupid mistake after another, so he was constantly cursing at himself, which is how Ryerson found him, from the cursing.
"Fucking fairy farts!" he heard, in a voice that was old and cracking.
"Hello!" Ryerson called down the cellar stairs.
"Donkey tits!" he heard.
"Who's there?" Ryerson called.
"Rancid rat cocks!" he heard.
"You're awfully creative!" Ryerson called.
"Shit, shit, shit!"
"Most of the time, anyway."
"Who's there?" called the aged voice.
"I'd like to help you," Ryerson called.
"Bite my bird!"
"Are you building clocks?" Ryerson was still at the top of the stairs; he had found, more than once, that it was easier to talk to a voice alone than a voice and the image of a body. Besides, there were no lights in the cellar, and Ryerson was all but blind in the dark. He added, "Are you building cuckoo clocks?"
"Lousy turd!"
"I want to help you; will you let me help you?”
“Shit, shit, shit!"
"My name is Ryerson. I'm one of the living." It was a standard line with Ryerson, one he'd developed, and he was proud of it. He had a doctorate in psychology from Duke University (though no one except his first wife called him "Doctor"), and he thought that it was often best to let "the others" come to their own conclusions about whether or not they were still among the living. The whole issue was incredibly complex. "The world of the supernatural," he had told his students at a short-lived night class in the paranormal at New York University, "is every bit as pluralistic and multifaceted as our own. Indeed, it is sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between the two. Each 'event' and each participant in an 'event' must be treated as individual phenomenon-"
"Eat my shorts!" called the voice in the cellar.
This surprised Ryerson; wasn't Eat my shorts! a fairly recent phrase? Maybe the old man was picking up on what visitors to the house had been saying or thinking.
"I'm one of the living," Ryerson called back, and thought that the whole thing was going badly.
"Eat my shorts anyway!" called the voice.
And so it went. Eventually Ryerson closed the cellar door and decided to try again on another day, which was his usual procedure, anyway. Rarely was he able to placate one of "the others" on the first try. The chances were good, at any rate, that the group of businessmen was just as content to have the hauntings continue.
It was when he was about ready to get into his 1948 Ford station wagon-a car that he'd spent a considerable amount of time and money getting into working condition because, he explained to anyone who asked, "I can feel the memories and good times in it; it feels like a comfortable old shoe"-that he got a quick mental image of four dark, cold walls and a sense of urgency, and hunger, and fear pushed into him. He looked about, saw the stone smokehouse a good hundred feet behind the farmhouse, and there found Creosote, who was terribly weak and thin. Ryerson called one of the businessmen, explained that he wanted to come back, that there was "additional work to do," and then mentioned Creosote, which at the time he referred to only as "a damned pathetic Boston bull terrier pup."
"Shit, keep it," said the businessman.
And he did.
Ryerson lived then on Market Street in Boston. Three years earlier he'd moved there from New York City, his boyhood home, and had begun work on a book about the paranormal- Conversations with Charlene, a reference to a particularly intriguing case of "erotic possession" he'd looked into-which sold well enough that he was able to sever his academic ties completely and make a living solely as a licensed psychic investigator.
It was barely a month after finding Creosote in the smokehouse that he got a call from Tom McCabe, Chief of Detectives in Rochester, New York. McCabe had read Conversations with Charlene and had struck up a running correspondence with Ryerson because, he explained, he had a "skeptical but consuming interest in that stuff."
"I think there's something weird going on at The Park, Rye," he said.
"The park? What park?"
"Kodak Park."
"Oh."
"We got a couple dead people," he said, because by then Harry Simons had died.
"That's murder, Tom. I'm not a cop."
"Someone thinks he's a werewolf, Rye."
"I don't think I believe in werewolves, Tom. Are you asking me to help as a psychic investigator, or as a psychologist?"
"I'm not sure, Rye. I guess I'd just like you to have a look around. Could you do that?"
"I could do that, sure. My usual fee applies.”
“Of course." A pause. "What is your usual fee, Rye?"
Ryerson told him. McCabe didn't say anything for several secondsThat's cheap enough, Ryerson read from him, and realized sinkingly that he could have asked for considerably more. Then McCabe said, "Okay, I think I can get that for you, Rye. It'll be tough, but I'll work it out."
"I'm sure you will, Tom. I'll be in Rochester tomorrow."
"Thanks, Rye. You'll stop and see me first, of course. This is a strictly informal invitation, I'm afraid-"
Ryerson cut in, "Yes, Tom. I hear what you're saying. I'll get the ground rules first before I start stepping on any toes." He heard McCabe sigh and added, "Is there a problem, Tom?" He knew there was a problem, and knew what the problem was, but he'd learned, over the years, that regardless of what he knew, it usually made people more than a little nervous to let them know that he knew.
"Yes, Rye. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you're going to have to… pussyfoot around on this." Ryerson had attained something of a reputation in the popular press as someone who relished "stepping on toes.”“Whatever's necessary to get the job done," he would explain. McCabe continued, "Lots of people think that people like you-"
"People like me, Tom?"
"Oh, shit, Rye-you know what I'm talking about."
Rye heard himself slip into his little speech and regretted it at once, though he couldn't stop it; "Listen, Tom, what people choose to believe or dis believe is really none of my concern. It's a very complex world out there, but as complex as it is, Tom, there are other worlds we never see, and they impinge on our own-"
McCabe interrupted, "Yes, Rye. I know. I've heard it before; I think I've got it memorized."
Ryerson sighed. "Uh-huh. Sorry." A quick, embarrassed pause, then he finished, "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Okay?"
"Yes. Thanks, Rye. I'll see you tomorrow."
He got there on Friday, April 14, at 12:30 P.M. At 1:45, a third Kodak Park employee was killed.