The Ghost and Mrs. McClure Page 10

  “Oh, no you don’t. I’m not doing anything you direct me to until I get a handle on exactly what you are.”

  Suit yourself, baby. When I was alive, I was one skeptic Joe myself. “Concrete Jack”—that’s what they used to call me. So if you wanna run your own version of a background check, who am I to complain? Go to it, babe, you have my blessing.

  With a dead author, a suspicious State Police investigator, and a hidden syringe in my store over the past twenty-four hours, I was now fairly sure I had a bona fide murder mystery on my hands. And the only one who seemed capable of helping me was a ghost.

  Either that or a delusion.

  Okay, so the whole “Jack Shepard” matter was a mystery in itself—one I knew I’d better resolve. And fast.

  I myself knew next to nothing about ghosts, which meant I needed to consult with experts on the matter—and I needed to do it anonymously. That narrowed my investigative options down to one: the Internet.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dark and Stormy Night

  One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it—they also believed the world was flat.

  —Mark Twain

  Ghosts are not spirits of the dead. Ghosts don’t have innate intelligence. Ghosts are merely the hopes, fears, and emotions of the living, recorded on the psychic plane and replayed in an eternal, endless loop long after the person who inadvertently made that recording is dead.

  Such was the hypothesis of Dr. Frederic Haxan, author and paranormal researcher, as typed in a message to me by a graduate student with the self-explanatory screen name SPOOKSCIENCEGUY.

  For the past hour I had fruitlessly surfed the cyberwaves, using the keywords “ghosts” and “haunting.” After hopping from one search engine to another, and one crackpot Web site to another, I’d finally stumbled onto this site, sponsored by the Department of Parapsychology at Wendell University (wherever that was).

  I entered their active chat room and met SPOOKSCIENCEGUY, KARDECIAN, DOYLEFAIRY, M. BLAVATSKY, and the rest of the “Ghostbusters.”

  At last, I could talk freely about my problem. I mean, honestly, how could I tell anyone that I was having an ongoing conversation in my head with the voice of a dead private eye? They were sure to assume I was suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress from witnessing my late husband’s leap.

  Going to a doctor was out for the same reason. Diagnosis of nut job might land me in a straitjacket. And forget my in-laws, that’s all the excuse they’d need to take Spencer away from me for good.

  I took a long sip from my mug of lukewarm coffee and shifted my gaze from the flickering computer screen to the dark, rain-swept street. An SUV swished by, splashing water on the soggy curb, then the thunder rumbled in the distance, and I imagined storm clouds gathering miles off Narragansett Bay, brooding over the surface of the ocean.

  Okay, so “dark and stormy night” is a total cliché, but it really was such a night. And there I sat alone, behind Buy the Book’s checkout counter, typing away on an Internet chat room, reading supernatural jargon from a gaggle of parapsychologists.

  I was about to pose a question to SPOOKSCIENCEGUY—ONE of the thirteen people now chatting—when screen name DOYLEFAIRY crashed our conversation.

  “SPOOKSCIEGUY, YOU ARE FULL OF POO-DOO,”

  wrote DOYLEFAIRY in big, bold, irritated letters.

  “The 1957 Pevensey Castle incident proved ghosts do not exist. The psychic phenomena attributed to specters are really the work of elves and fairies.”

  Elves and fairies!?! I suddenly wondered what planet or dimensional plane DOYLEFAIRY hailed from.

  “Way off base, FAIRY,”

  screen name VENKMANN flashed a moment later.

  “The Pevensey Castle photos are a hoax. That whole incident is about as real as the Cardiff Giant.”

  GHOSTHUNTER jumped into the fray, followed quickly by COLDSPOT, WENDIGO, and GHOUL-LISHOUS.

  I sat back and watched the argument scroll down my computer screen through bleary eyes, my too-fuzzy brain trying to make some sense of what these participants in the wendellunv.edu/psyphenom/talk chat room were saying.

  Terms like “manifestations,” “elementals,” “poltergeist,” “exteriorization phenomena,” and “ur-spirits” were flying—most of them landing somewhere over my head. Meanwhile, the patter of rain against the arched front window was lulling me to sleep.

  I blinked my eyes. My computer monitor began to flicker, and the sound of the rain receded. Against the scrolling banter of chat room text, I saw a man’s powerful profile. Jaw square. Fedora pulled low over the eyes.

  I jumped, fully awake now. The vision vanished. Onscreen, the debate continued about my topic: sudden visitations from an outspoken ghost.

  GHOSTHUNTER suggested an explanation for my “friend’s” problem. (Yes, I tried that transparent ploy, and no one who responded to my questions even pretended my “friend” was anyone but me—evidenced by the fact that they always put quote marks around the word “friend.”)

  GHOSTHUNTER said my “friend” might be experiencing a form of demonic possession. This theory was predicated on the evidence that my “friend” was the only person to hear the entity, witness its physical manifestations, and its evil trickery (the upside-down chairs).

  GHOSTHUNTER even had two suggestions: read Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil, and see The Exorcist.

  Gee, what a comfort.

  DOYLEFAIRY conveyed that “exteriorization phenomena” like turning over chairs and turning them back again was more indicative of poltergeist activity—none too subtly adding that poltergeists, though known as “mischievous spirits,” could be far more dangerous than the definition suggested—the word “mischievous” connoting, to me anyway, the sorts of things one might see the Peanuts gang doing in a Sunday comic strip.

  DOYLEFAIRY also suggested that some “hysterical female” in our household was partly to blame because poltergeist activity required human energy to perform their antics. An anxious adolescent girl might provide such energy—or a mentally unstable woman of childbearing age, in some cases.

  How nice, I thought, to be informed that I was mentally unstable by a woman who believed in elves and fairies.

  I was getting increasingly frustrated. If these parapsychologists were any indication, then the “experts” in the field couldn’t even agree on the definition of the word “ghost.” How were they going to help me with my “dilemma”? (I will also confess that I seriously began to wonder if I needed to be a Roman Catholic to summon an exorcist.)

  Suddenly, a newcomer joined the chat room: WANNADATE. “I’ve got huge breasts and a tiny skirt, and I’m looking for friendship.”

  What the heck was that? I thought, supremely alarmed. But before I could type a thing, the entire chat room told WANNADATE to take a hike.

  Major obscenities came across my screen before the chat room moderator ejected WANNADATE from the group.

  “Who in the world was that?”

  I typed.

  “Sorry, HAUNTED,”

  SPOOKSCIENCEGUY typed back to me,

  “every now and then some jerk gets our address and crashes.”

  “No problem,”

  I typed.

  “. . . but elves and fairies are considered elemental spirits,”

  DOYLEFAIRY was now typing, amid some sort of parapsychological argument with KARDECIAN.

  Okay, I thought. I’ll bite.

  “Excuse me, but what is an ‘elemental’ spirit?”

  I typed.

  “A spirit of the earth,”

  typed DOYLEFAIRY.

  “They only exist if people believe in them.”

  “Oh, come on,”

  I typed, unable to stop myself.

  “Like Tinkerbell?”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad example at all,”

  typed DOYLEFAIRY, apparently unruffled by my apparent skepticism. (Then again, if you professed to believe in fairies, you’d hav
e to get a pretty thick skin, wouldn’t you?)

  “Just consider how J. M. Barrie laid it out,”

  typed DOYLEFAIRY.

  “He posited that saving Tinkerbell’s life, after she drinks the poison meant for Peter Pan, could be achieved by asking everyone to profess their belief in fairies. Accurate. Even though that was an example drawn from literature, there are historical and cultural examples like it. The leprechauns of Ireland, for instance.”

  Okay, I thought, I’ll bite again.

  “So, if belief in these elemental spirits is what keeps them alive, then what happens if people stop believing in them?”

  DOYLEFAIRY typed,

  “I can use Peter Pan again for that one. Just stating the words ‘I don’t believe in fairies’ supposedly results in some fairy somewhere in the world dropping dead on the spot. That’s pretty much it. Once people stop believing in these elemental spirits, their psychic energies are dispersed.”

  I asked, “You mean they go away?”

  “Yes. The psychic energy disperses and collects elsewhere.”

  Elsewhere, I thought. Like where? But what I typed was,

  “Then all I have to do is tell my friend to ignore the ghost.”

  I was momentarily caught up with the thrill of an easy answer. Completely ignoring the ghost of Jack Shepard could be a no-fuss, no-muss way to end all of this. All I needed was a big, fat YES.

  “No!”

  typed GHOSTHUNTER almost instantly.

  “No, no, no! Ghosts are not fairies, for heaven’s sake. Ghosts are the souls of those whose bodies have died. Contrary to the Haxan hypotheses, which SPOOKSCIENCEGUY quoted for you, many parapsychologists believe ghosts exhibit an independent personality. There are many documented accounts of ghosts communicating things to the living that the living didn’t previously know.”

  Darn, I thought. Darn, darn, darn.

  “We have more than one hundred of these kinds of stories in our files,”

  typed GHOSTHUNTER.

  “And those are just the ones reported to us. Most of the time, supernatural encounters are so private or unverifiable, people decide to keep them to themselves rather than risk sounding—you know—crazy.”

  I typed,

  “Believe me, I know.”

  As the data stream went on, I let the chat room continue and opened up a second Web window to surf an on-line bookstore for titles relating to mental diseases, delusions, dementia, and nervous breakdowns. The title A Beautiful Mind popped up, and I felt slightly better. After all, if a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician could learn to live with hearing delusional voices, maybe I could, too.

  Sorry, babe, Jack Shepard said. Sorry to give you the grouch, but I am really not a delusion. Really.

  I sighed. If Jack Shepard’s spirit was only a voice in my head, as it had been for Professor John Nash, then I would have to start establishing some limits right now!

  “I want to be alone,” I said in a clear voice.

  That seemed to work. The ghost had decided not to press the point.

  I stifled a yawn and was about to sign off when screen name RUNE flashed me a private “INSTANT MESSAGE.”

  “You seem to have more than an academic interest in psychic phenomena,”

  the message read.

  I remembered seeing the name RUNE on the chat list, but I did not recall that name participating in the discussion. After a long pause, another instant message appeared.

  “I can understand if you don’t wish to share your issues with me privately,”

  the message read.

  “Though I am sure they are preying upon you.”

  I typed a bland reply, something like

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Then I pressed the “send” button.

  Only after the reply came did I realize I had been holding my breath waiting for it.

  “Just consider this,”

  said RUNE.

  “Psychic talents are like any other talent. As children we are all psychic to some degree. But without an environment to practice and develop our skills, we never know our true potential. Some of us even bury our talent as we mature only to have it crop up in odd ways.”

  “Crop up? How?”

  I typed.

  “The answer to that depends on the individual. But this I know: Once you’ve learned to talk to the dead, you never forget how.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I typed.

  “Are you saying that I should just go ahead”

  —I stopped typing, hit the backspace to delete, and began typing again—

  “that I should tell my friend to just go ahead and start talking to this—ghost?”

  “I know you’re skeptical. But look, if you—that is, your ‘friend’ ”

  —typed RUNE,

  “doesn’t believe in ghosts, then why not think of it as an alter ego, a part of the secret self trying to break through with a message? Why not ‘dialogue’ with it and see where it might lead?”

  I thought of Calvin. Splat. Not a pretty picture.

  “The unknown is a scary place, isn’t it?”

  typed RUNE when I didn’t answer for a full minute.

  “Very,”

  I typed back.

  You think this is a lot of supernatural baloney, don’t you? said the voice of Jack loud and clear in my head.

  Onscreen, RUNE instant-messaged once more before signing off from the chat list.

  “Supernatural. Perhaps. Baloney? Definitely not. After all, why do you think it’s called an afterlife?”

  “This is crazy, all right,” I muttered. “And maybe I am, too.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Don’t Know Jack

  The chief problem about death . . . is the fear that there may be no afterlife, a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. . . . I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

  —Woody Allen

  JACK WATCHED PENELOPE log off the supernatural chat room site and begin frantically searching for information on what she assumed was her “mental condition.”

  “Online Psychological Testing . . .” she mumbled, reading the screen. “Addictions, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder . . . no, no, no. . . .”

  Funny thing, the computer, thought Jack. Before Penelope, he hadn’t given the boxy typewriter two looks. For one thing, it appeared a cold, remote medium, like his old office’s Underwood. Every now and again, Jack would notice the screen above the keyboard reading “Inventory” or “Account Orders,” and Sadie typing away with a glassy-eyed look that reminded him of his old gum-chewing secretary.

  (Not a bad-looking dame, his secretary, but not his type—that is, not much upstairs, which was actually why Jack had hired her. She had no interest in getting wise to his clients’ secrets or Jack’s. Just typed, filed, and answered phones, which was what he needed. In the end, the private dick business came with enough female distractions on the job as it was. Why compound that interest?)

  Anyhow, in old Aunt Sadie’s hands, the computer seemed like little more than a typewriter. But not in Penelope’s. With that sharp cookie at the wheel, that plastic box had come alive, racing down alleyways he’d never even known existed.

  Take that gab-room thing. Ten people all over the world spilling guts and squaring beefs, one after the other, faster than a bookie giving odds at post time. (Even though some of them did remind Jack of those uptown hustlers, full of gin and big words.)

  And those information searches the doll was doing right now. Answers to all sorts of questions with the stroke of a few keys. People, places, events. It spun Jack like a top.

  If he had a nickel for all the shoe leather he’d worn out tracking down information for just one case, he’d have died a rich man.

  In fact, it seemed to Jack this new century had enough ready gadgets to make it possible for your average housewife to become a private dick—which reminded Jack of why he needed t
o talk to Penelope tonight in the first place: Brennan’s murder. And that syringe Josh had swiped.

  “Depression . . .” murmured Penelope, staring at the “Psych Subjects” screen for a long moment. She clicked on the glowing blue D-word and the green screen dissolved into a white page with large black type at the top: CLINICAL DEPRESSION SCREENING TEST.

  Because Penelope was nearsighted, she’d removed the black rectangular frames when she’d first sat down to read the computer screen, giving Jack a rare glimpse of her naked face.