“Someone still living?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’d never been to that area before last week, and I assure you I’m not a ghost revisiting an old locale.”
Howell laughed. “I didn’t think you were.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Were you frightened by what happened the other night?”
“No, just intrigued.”
“Did you experience something you didn’t tell the rest of us about?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because, sometimes, people who are uncomfortable at seances, as you were, either don’t want to admit an experience, or don’t want to draw attention to themselves. Anyway, I just felt you did.”
“Well, yes, I thought I saw a young girl standing at the window.”
“Was this the first time you’d seen her?”
“No, there was one other time.” He told her about the thunderstorm.
“Does any of this have any meaning to you? Something in your personal life, perhaps?”
“No, nothing at all. At least not until after the seance.” He was beginning to trust her, now, to want to confide in her. He told her Enda McCauliffe’s story, and about the player piano’s behavior.
“Well, now,” Joyce said. “You’ve got something very interesting going on there, haven’t you?”
“Well, maybe.”
“The piano interests me a lot. The manipulation of an inanimate object by a spirit is often part of the poltergeist phenomenon, something often associated with the presence of a pubescent child in the house. I take it you have no children there.”
“No.”
“But you say the girl you saw was of that age.”
“Yes, I think so."
“And the O’Coineens had a daughter of that age named Kathleen, and now the piano is playing a song with her name in it.”
“That seems to be what’s happening.”
“So, what does this mean to you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh, come on, John, you just don’t want to acknowledge what’s going on. You don’t need me to tell you that somebody wants to contact you.”
“Then why did the… whatever it was say it wanted Scotty?”
“I don’t know, but Scotty is your friend; maybe it feels you are offering resistance and it’s trying to get to you through Scotty.”
“Well, that’s very interesting, Joyce. I…”
“And it’s obvious that this event wasn’t induced only by the seance, since you had seen the girl before on your own.”
“What’s your advice, then? What should I do about it?”
“If you’re frightened by all this, you can always find a priest and try and persuade him to do an exorcism, but it would be hard to get one to do it, and, anyway, you say you aren’t frightened.”
“No, not yet, anyway.”
“Well, I think it would be a lot more interesting just to see what happens. Lie back and enjoy it, John.”
“Should I speak to her?”
“Sure, if you like. I should tell you, though, that people who see ghosts don’t usually get much conversation out of them. Their actions are more important. What did you say she was doing when you saw her?”
“She was looking out the window over the lake, both times.”
“Well, if it happens again, why don’t you have a look out the window?”
“Well, all right. Can I call you again for advice?”
“I’m afraid Harry and I are leaving tonight for New York, and we’ve got a flight to London tomorrow. My father is ill, and I expect to be in England for several weeks. Try me in a few weeks, though, if it’s still going on.”
He thanked her and hung up. It hadn’t been a very satisfying conversation. He had called her to dispel one notion, and she had planted another, one he didn’t like very much.
When Howell woke on the third day, the pills were gone, and the bourbon wasn’t enough. Scotty was at work, and the thought of waiting until she could refill the prescription was more than he could bear. So was the thought of going back to the quack in Sutherland, with his drugs and injections. The man obviously knew no way to cure his problem. If quacks were all that was available, then what the hell?
When he reached the crossroads, he very nearly turned right toward the town, but a twinge from his sciatic nerve kept him on course, straight ahead. As he passed the mailbox, he reflected that this was the closest he had come to the house. He wasn’t sure why he had been avoiding it; odd people had always appealed to him, and he had never had any trouble talking with the eccentrics and freaks that so repelled most people. In his early days as a reporter, he had gotten more than a few readable features out of just such people – quirky stuff that filled in the cracks between police and political reporting, stuff that caught the attention of editors and, eventually, helped convince them that he might be good for a column.
The house was like hundreds he had seen all over the south; together, he thought, they must form some backwoods school of architecture. It was frame, with a wide porch, deep eaves, and a heavy, gently pitched roof, the house of a moderately prosperous farmer or sawmill operator. It was different, though. There was no lawn, just a hard-packed, pebble-strewn yard, and only scrawny remnants of shrubbery. But if the residents had no enthusiasm for beautification, like their neighbors, neither did they hold with neglect. There were no missing shingles, no broken panes, no rusting automotive heaps on the grounds. The place had a tidy, well-mended look to it.
He stopped in the dirt driveway at a corner of the porch. A young woman was sitting in a porch swing, rocking gently, shelling peas. Her thick, pale, red hair fell to her shoulders, and her skin was powdery and freckled. Her cheekbones were wide and high, her jaw firm, square, her shoulders broad, and, from what Howell could see from his angle, her breasts were full and high under the flowered, cotton dress. He sat, staring at her for a moment. He could immediately see what her younger brother, Brian, might have been had he been born with his full senses.
“Well,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder, “whatever it is you want, you’d better come get it; we don’t offer curb service.”
Howell climbed carefully from the car and ambulated, crab-like, up the porch steps. By the time he reached the top, the leg cramps were coming again, and he nearly dived into the swing next to her to get the weight off his feet.
She held onto the pan into which she had been shelling the peas and waited for the swing to settle down after his lunge for it.
“Have a seat,” she said, drily.
“Sorry, I just couldn’t make it any further. I’ve come…”
“I know why you’ve come,” she interrupted.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Howell said, nodding wearily. “Mama told you.”
She looked at him sideways. “That’s right, Mama told me. What took you so long?” She didn’t sound particularly glad to see him.
“Well, I haven’t been getting around too well these past few days. You’re…”
“Leonie,” she said. She pronounced it Lee-OH-ne.
He started to tell her his name, but then, she already knew it, didn’t she?
“So you’re the famous John Howell,” she said, as if she doubted it. “I used to read you in the paper.”
“Well, I’ve been surprised at how many folks around here have. I wouldn’t have thought people this far up would have read the Atlanta paper.”
“Oh, yes,” she said with mock gravity. “We have to struggle with it, but we manage to get through a newspaper if we move our lips.”
“Look,” he said, irritably, “that’s not what I meant, I…” He stopped, realizing that she was goading him and that it was getting to him. He didn’t want an argument with her. He was, in fact, quite attracted to her. “Do you think I could see your mother?”
“She’s asleep.”
“Well, maybe I’d better come back another time, then.” He shifted his weight in preparation for getting up again.
“Just sit tight. She knows you’re here; she’ll wake up soon.”