She put her feet on the floor. A Bible sat on the battered coffee table, the King James version, the Gospel. She picked it up. Bibles worked against evil, didn't they? Or was that only crosses? But what if the ghosts weren't evil? They had to be evil, or else God would have given them a proper place in heaven.
She pressed the Bible to her chest and went down the short hall to the bathroom. This was a job for Ecclesiastes. She sought scraps of remembered verse, something fortifying and enlightening. The knock came again, like an insistent whisper.
Starlene clutched the door handle. The metal was cold as a morgue slab. She wanted to run, Randy would grab her and hold her, she could cry on his shoulder and everything would be okay and all the bad stuff would go away and Running would show a lack of faith.
God in His mercy would never allow harm to come from the other side of the grave. And surely the dead were beyond sin. Even a soul damned for all eternity should have its license to harm revoked.
Maybe these souls were good souls, Christian folk who had gotten lost on the way to Rapture.
The knock came again, vibrating the air of the room. The deadscape experience had been subjective, a strange and short nightmare, a contrived memory that would have faded with time. This was real. This was happening. Before she could talk herself out of it, she twisted the handle and let the door swing open.
The boy was on his knees, his face as white as the porcelain sink. The hand that had tapped at the door was poised in the air, quivering. His dark eyes were wild and lost, his lips trying to form words. The sun cut an orange slash between the curtains, the light parted the boy's hair, specks of dust spun in the air.
"Deke," she said. "Where have you been?"
His mouth gaped. He was a beggar asking for impossible things. She wanted to reach out to him, but was afraid of what he might do. She had read his case history, and had even built part of it. Sociopathic behavior couldn't be flipped on and off like a light switch, no matter what Kracowski believed.
The door to the linen closet was ajar. Deke must have hidden there since he'd gone missing the day before. The cottage windows were easy to break into. Starlene had forced her way inside several times after misplacing the house key.
His silence was eerie, so she spoke in her authoritative counselor voice. "What are you doing here?"
Deke still didn't speak. Sweat beaded the boy's skin, and though his face looked young and frightened, his eyes were those of a ninety-year-old man's staring down a terminal disease. The bathroom smelled sticky sweet with vomit. And something else.
Starlene stepped forward, pores tightening on the back of her neck, the hairs like electric wires.
Deke shook his head. "It wasn't me," he whispered, one eyelid twitching, his fingers trembling.
Then Starlene saw what was in the bathtub.
She put her hands over her face, trying to block the red images that spattered her mind. She backed down the hall, begging her legs to work, shouting at her feet to stop being so heavy, wanting nothing but the door and the lawn and a sane sky overhead and no more ghosts and no red things in the tub and Hands clutched at her before she reached the front door, two or a thousand. She screamed again and slapped the hands away.
"What in God's name?" Randy said.
"In there," she gasped. The words tasted of Ajax cleanser. Randy disappeared into the bathroom, then came back out moments later.
"Whatever it was is gone," he said. "Spider? Or a mouse? We get a lot of mice out here."
How could he not have seen it? Smelled it?
"The tub," she said.
"Nothing in there."
"Where's Deke?"
"Deke? You know he's gone missing, don't you? Are you okay? You don't look so hot."
She pushed past him into the bathroom, bracing for the nightmare vision that awaited. The tub was empty, except for a bottle of shampoo that had fallen from the shelf and her damp towel hanging over the shower rod. No mutilated corpse, no gleaming bones, no blood running in rivulets down the shower curtain.
And no Deke.
She yanked open the door to the linen closet.
Nothing but towels, extra toilet paper, first aid supplies, and tampons. No hideaway teenager.
No dead body.
No ghost.
She turned and went into the living room. Randy followed, waited until she'd taken a bottled water from the refrigerator and downed half of it, then he said, "Not again."
She sat in the thrift-shop armchair and picked at the cotton. "What do you mean?"
"You saw the man again, didn't you? The one from the lake, the one you nearly drowned yourself over. The invisible man."
"No." The carbonated water's bubbles bit her throat.
"Look, Starlene, you don't have to lie to me. I thought we had something going between us. A little thing called 'trust.'"
"Trust lasts about as far as you can throw it."
"Trust me. Tell me."
"So you can laugh at me again?"
"I don't think it's funny. I'm worried about you. You need to get some help."
Her laughter was as brittle as thin ice. "Help? Maybe I've had too much help."
"Tell me what you think you saw." He sat on the plaid couch. The pattern clashed with his checked shirt and sandy eyebrows. His face was square, precise, not the kind of face that would forgive foolishness. Randy was a rock.
So was God a rock. And the deadscape was a hard place.
And she was caught in between.
The ghosts weren't imprisoned in the basement of Wendover. They had been set free by electromagnetic energy or evil forces or the will of the Almighty. The dead had taken up their robes and walked.
"Deke is dead" she said.
"He ran away. He's done that before. Usually he goes to town and breaks in somewhere and steals some beer, and the police find him sleeping it off behind a Dumpster. We'll find him."
"You won't find him. He didn't run away. He ran here"
Randy leaned forward. "Here?"
"I saw him in the bathroom."
"Saw him? But he couldn't have escaped. You've only got one door."
"Maybe he didn't need a door."
"Honey, we need to get you to the main building. You need to see somebody."
"You mean, besides somebody who doesn't exist?" The image of Deke on his knees, skin like snow, one hand holding Silver and red.
She closed her eyes. "I'm okay. I stayed up too late, that's all. I need a nap before my shift."
Randy's gray eyes narrowed. The square slab of his face softened. "You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah. Really. If a shrink can't sort things out for herself, she's not got much of a career ahead right?"
His face split into a smile. "That's my girl."
He patted her hand leaned forward and for a moment Starlene thought he was going to kiss her, but he gave her a brief hug and stood. "When do you go on duty?"
"Four."
"I'll buy you a cup of coffee, then. Enjoy your nap."
"Randy?"
"Yeah?"
"What are you hiding from me?"
"Nothing."
"You work with Kracowski a lot. What's he up to?"
"I don't know anything. Remember when I told you not to ask too many questions?"
She nodded pressed the cold water bottle to her forehead and reached for the Bible on the end table. The wall between them was as invisible as a faded ghost, but might as well have been miles thick. How far could you throw trust? "Sorry I scared you."
"We'll find Deke. Don't worry."
"I'm not worried."
"The Lord is my Shepherd-"
"I shall not want."
He was gone, and the cottage was silent besides the hum of the refrigerator and the soft rattle of leaves against the foundation.
She would have to face it sooner or later. She would have to look in the mirror, to see if her eyes were bright and her skull cracked and her brains sliding from her face. She would have to stare herself down and give herself a good scolding.