A Stir of Echoes

A Stir of Echoes Page 3

THE PARTY BROKE UP ABOUT ONE. Until then we sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee and putting down Elsie's high-calorie cakes; talking about what had happened during the hypnosis. Apparently it had been a roaring success. I'd not only gone rigid between those chairs, I'd laughed like a crazy man over nothing. I'd cried like a baby over nothing. That is, over nothing visible. Of course I had something to laugh and cry over. Phil was feeding it to me.

And I shivered and chattered my teeth on an ice floe in the Arctic. I sweated and gasped for water as I lay on the blazing sands of the Sahara. I drank too much nonexistent whiskey-glass by glass-and got owl-eyed, silly drunk. I grew knotted up with fury, my face hard and red, my body shuddering with repressed hatred. I listened to a Rachmaninoff piano concerto played by Rachmaninoff himself and told everyone how beautiful, how magnificent it sounded. I held out my arm and Frank hung from it and Phil stuck straight pins into it.

A roaring success.

I guess we could have gone on all night talking about it. It isn't every day that such intriguing fare enters one's life. But we had two expectant mothers on our hands and they needed their rest. Besides which, I suspected Elsie got a little fed up after a while. It was too far removed from her scope to be more than passingly interesting.

Anne, Phil and I said good night to Frank and Elizabeth after we'd left Elsie's house and they went across Tulley Street to their house as we went to ours.

There was a half hour or so of mute-voiced preparation for bed. I got the army cot out of the closet in Richard's room and unfolded it while Anne got bedding from the hall closet. Phil made up the cot and then we all got into our pajamas, washed our faces, brushed our teeth, said our good-night words and retired.

I couldn't sleep.

I lay beside Anne, staring at the ceiling. There were springs in my eyes. If I shut them they jumped open again. I kept staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the night-the rustle of a breeze-stirred bush outside the window, the creak of the mattress as Anne moved a little, the faint crackling settle of the house; up the street, a dog barking briefly at some imagined foe, then relapsing into sleep.

I swallowed dryly and sighed. I turned on my side and stared at the dark bulk of the bureau.

"What's the matter?" Anne asked, softly.

"Oh... can't sleep," I answered.

"You sick?"

"No. Too much coffee, I guess."

"Oh. You shouldn't drink it at night."

"I know. Well... you go to sleep, sweetheart. I'll be all right."

"Okay." She sighed drowsily. "If you feel sick, wake me up, now," she said.

"I'm not sick." I leaned over and kissed her warm cheek. "Good night, little mother."

"Night."

She stretched out and I felt the warmth of her hip against mine. Then she was still except for the even sound of her breathing.

I lay there; waiting for something, it seemed. I just couldn't shut my eyes. I felt as I had at college after I'd spent about five hours at intense studying-my mind swimming with information and intelligences; turning over and over like a machine somebody forgot to turn off.

I rolled onto my side. Nothing. I turned on my back and closed my eyes. Sleep, I told myself. I had to grin in the darkness as I remembered Phil's earnest voice telling me to sleep, sleep. Well, by God, he'd succeeded. I couldn't needle him on that count. He'd really pulled a fast one. I would have laid odds he couldn't hypnotize me. But he did-and with not too much trouble either. As soon as I'd stopped razzing him and relaxed, it had happened.

I turned irritably onto my side again and punched at the pillow. I heard Anne mumble something and I clenched my teeth. I was going to wake her up again if I didn't stop this twisting and turning. Why was I so restless? I'd had coffee, yes, but not a pot of it; maybe three cups altogether. I frowned to myself. Was it possible the hypnosis had done this? Maybe Phil had forgotten to tie up loose mental ends. Maybe he'd given my brain a spin and neglected to break it.

No, that was ridiculous. He'd obviously known what he was doing. It was coffee and conversation. Living in this neighbourhood I was taking too much of the first and getting too little of the second. I sighed heavily. My brain was alive. That's the only way I can express it. Thoughts spun through it like heated gases, sparking and iridescent. Memories came and went like flashes of half-seen light. My mother, my father, Corky, high school, grammar school, nursery, college, campus grass, books I'd read, girls I'd loved, ham and eggs-exactly how they tasted.

I sat up and actually shook my head as one would shake a clock. Only I didn't want to start it, I wanted to stop it. But I couldn't. It seemed as if my mind were throbbing; like a living sponge in my head, swelling with hot juices of thought, squeezed of remembrance and devising.

I stood up, breathing harshly. My body was tingling, my chest and stomach felt taut. I moved across the rug, then stopped in the doorway and shut my eyes.

"My... God," I remember muttering, only half conscious of speaking. I shook my head. Thoughts were stampeding. Frank, Elizabeth, Ron, Elsie, Anne, Phil, my mother, my father; all of them running across the screen of my mind as if projected by some maniac cameraman. Dozens of half-shaped impressions zeroing in on me, knitting plastically into a hot core of multi-formed awareness. I swallowed again and went into the bathroom. I blinked at the glaring light, shut the door and stepped over to the mirror with a lurching movement. I stared at my blank face. It told me nothing. Something wrong. I don't know whether I said or thought it. But the idea was there. Something was wrong. This was more than coffee nerves, more than animated talk rebounding. What it was, though, I didn't know, I didn't know at all.

I started to run a glass of water but the sound of the splashing seemed unnaturally loud and I twisted off the faucet. I drank a little but it tasted like cold acid and I poured it out and set the glass down. Turning, I flicked off the light, opened the door and padded to the doorway of Richard's room. I listened. All I could hear was Phil's breathing. I stepped over to the crib and put my palm on Richard's back. They're so quiet at night, I remember thinking distractedly. Then I felt the faint rise and fall of his back and I drew away my hand.

I went into the hall again, trying to calm myself. I walked into the living room and looked out the back window a while. I could see the dark shape of Richard's wagon out on the back-yard grass and, over on the next block, the bleak illumination of a street lamp. The neighbourhood was deathly still. I twisted around suddenly.

Nothing. Just darkness and the black outlines of the furniture. Yet I would have sworn I'd heard something. I shuddered and felt the muscles of my stomach draw in spastically. I ran a shaking hand through my hair. What in God's name was happening?

I walked to the other side of the room and sank down on an easy chair. I sighed and lay my head back wearily. The tingling at my temples increased. I could almost feel it physically. I put my fingers to my temples but there was nothing. I put my hands on my lap and stretched out my legs. Rising. Something was rising in me. As if I were a vessel into which was being poured alien cognizance. I felt things, sensed things-things I couldn't understand, things I couldn't even clearly see; shards of strange perception. Perceptions impossible to grasp flowings and flashings in my mind. It was like standing on a fogbound corner and seeing unknown people rushing by-close enough to catch a glimpse of, not close enough to recognize. It got stronger and stronger. Awareness deluged into my mind. I was the channel for a million images.

Which stopped. I raised my head.

Until that moment I had never known what it was to be so afraid my breath was stopped, my body functionless, myself incapable of doing anything but stare in helpless shock. She was in her thirties, pale, her hair in black disarray. She was wearing a strange, dark dress with a single strand of pearls at her throat. I sat rooted to the chair, my limbs dead. I stared at her. I don't know how many minutes passed while that woman and I looked at each other. It didn't occur to me to wonder why it was I could see her so clearly in the darkness, why there was a sort of sourceless light on or rather, in her.

Minutes passed. I knew that something had to break the awful silence. I opened my mouth to speak but couldn't. There was a dry, clicking sound in my throat.

Then, abruptly, breath spilled from my lips.

"Who are you?" I gasped.

The woman edged back-although I never saw her limbs move. She was almost to the window. And breath was gone again, gone with a sucking sound of terror. I felt myself pressing back against the chair, my eyes stiffly set, my lips shaking. Because I could see the lamp on the next street through her. My cry was weak and short-a strangling sound in my throat. I sat there looking at the spot where the woman had been standing. How long I sat there I don't know. I couldn't get up. I must have been there for an hour or more before I dared to stand and slowly, tremblingly, as if I were stalking something deadly, move over to the spot where she had been.

Nothing.

I turned and rushed into the bedroom. It was only when I had slid frightenedly under the covers that I realized how cold I was. I started to shiver and couldn't stop for a long time. Fortunately, Anne was sleeping soundly. At least five times I started to wake her up to tell her-but every time I was stopped by the thought of how frightened she would be. Finally, I decided to tell her in the morning. I even tried to tell myself I'd had a nightmare, that it really hadn't happened at all.

Unfortunately, I knew better. I knew that something had happened to me that I'd never believed could happen to anyone. So simple to put the word itself down; all it takes is a few elementary turns of the pencil. Yet it can change your entire life.

The word is ghost.