I'll Be Waiting, page 11
“No yard tools?”
“Not from what I can tell.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I murmur.
After a moment of silence, Jin waves at the game board. “You in, Doc?”
Cirillo gives a tired smile. “As long as the answer isn’t ‘the gardener in the basement with pruning shears,’ yes.”
* * *
I want to go outside and watch the sunset. It’s even more brilliant than last night’s, and as everyone putters about, preparing for the first séance, I’m at the back door, working up the courage to brave the bugs.
They’re just bugs.
Harmless insects desperately trying to get laid before their brief life cycle comes to an end.
I should feel sorry for them, maybe even cheer on their buzzing and swarming dances.
You go, bugs. Dance your little hearts out. Catch her attention and win the chance to pass on your genes before you become bird food.
Win the chance to be a daddy.
A chance Anton never got.
Part of me wants to snap “Where did that come from” and get back to my lighthearted rumination on the life cycle of bugs.
But we’re all just bugs, aren’t we? A life cycle much shorter than we’d like, and only a fraction of it—at least for women—open to baby making. The barest sliver of time in our lives before that ship has sailed.
Anton and I had talked about kids. He’d even gotten tested to be sure he didn’t have the CF gene. He didn’t, which would have meant any child of ours couldn’t have cystic fibrosis. Still, adoption or surrogacy seemed the better option if we wanted to add that to our list.
Did we want to add it? Would it be fair, knowing I almost certainly wouldn’t see our child graduate from high school? Would likely not even see them graduate from elementary school?
Had we gone through with it, I would now be raising a child alone when my own health began failing. Our child could very well have been orphaned by the age of ten.
“It wasn’t supposed to be you that died, Anton,” I say under my breath. “It was never supposed to be you.”
A whisper at my ear, and I swear I feel a touch on my shoulder, almost like a squeeze. I turn sharply. No one’s there.
My heart hammers, and I struggle to catch my breath. Then the scent of bergamot tickles past. Anton’s aftershave.
I wheel, sniffing to catch it. “Anton?”
Nothing.
“Are you there?”
Still nothing, and the smell is gone, and I know it was never there. I was thinking of him, and a random sound became a soundless noise of comfort. I imagined a squeeze on my shoulder, and so, with my mind on him, I smelled his aftershave.
“I just want…” I whisper. “I just want…”
My throat closes, and I whip around, grab the door handle, and yank. They’re bugs. Just harmless annoying bugs, and they will not stop me from enjoying this sunset.
I stride out, letting the door shut behind me. As I march forward, the midges drift into my face and fly past my head, but I steel myself against revulsion.
Just bugs. Harmless bugs.
When I smack into a swarm, I divert. The swarm buzzes all around me, bugs in my face, in my hair, crawling on my clothing.
They won’t kill me. Just keep going.
I walk three more steps, and the insects engulf me until I need to slit my eyes. One still manages to hit, my left eye stinging enough that I gasp and bugs fly into my mouth and—
I bend over, letting out a near snarl of frustration as everything in me screams to run back to the house.
Just bugs, damn it. Just bugs.
I want to be stronger than this. Goddamn it, why can’t I be stronger?
In the end, it isn’t the bugs in my eyes or my mouth or my hair that break me. It’s the whining buzz of the swarm, setting every nerve on edge after a day of listening to that goddamn buzzing—
I wheel and run back to the house. I get inside, slamming the door, only to really snarl in frustration when I see the small cloud of bugs I brought with me.
I grab a tissue and begin angrily plucking them off the walls. Footsteps approach, and I look up to see Jin hurrying toward me.
“I went outside,” I mutter.
“Okay.” There’s a note in his voice that has me looking up. “Alone?”
I pause. Shit. I forgot that part.
My shoulders fall. “I’m sorry. I just … I wanted to see the sunset, and I was focused on braving the bugs. They’re just insects, and it’s a gorgeous sunset and…”
I know how I sound. Ridiculous bordering on unhinged.
“I just wanted to see the sunset,” I say as my throat clogs. “We always … When Anton was here, we always went out to see the sunset.”
Jin’s arms go around me in a hug, Then, without a word, he takes a tissue and starts plucking bugs from the wall alongside me.
TWELVE
We’re conducting the séance in the living room. The fire is going, despite the fact that we need to keep the windows closed so we don’t hear bugs screaming on the screens. We’ve turned on the air conditioner instead. We want warm and inviting, not a sauna.
Before we start, we try to settle in with a bit of conversation.
“We should tell a ghost story,” Shania says. “Get us into the mood. Like last night, when Dr. Cirillo told us about his first big case.”
“Uh…” Jin says, and his gaze goes to me.
We’re here to summon my husband. That’s not a ghost story. Not the sort meant for entertainment anyway. But Shania is practically vibrating with anticipation, and if I refuse, gently, she’ll realize the idea is inappropriate and feel bad.
“We could do that,” I say.
“Do you have one, Nic?” she asks.
I think of Patrice and flinch. Then I take a quick sip of my tea. “No.”
“Jin? You’re up.”
“Me?”
She grins at him, and I can’t help but smile. I’d worried she’d be too shy to be comfortable here, especially when Jin and I are good friends, but she started to relax at Jin’s cocktail hour—the two of them sharing war stories about working in the medical field.
“Anything,” she says. “Any experience that you’ve had that could be a little scary.”
“Well…” He slants a look my way. “There was the time Nic offered to cook the turkey for Thanksgiving.”
I whip a decorative pillow at him.
He looks at Shania. “I’ve never actually had a paranormal experience myself, but there was a story my grandmother told me.”
“Yes!” she says, looking ten years younger as she pulls her feet up under her. “Grandmother ghost stories are the best.”
“Okay. This is my maternal grandmother, who’s Chinese. I’m not sure how much you guys know about Chinese ghosts.”
“There’s one that haunts bathrooms,” I say.
He whips the pillow back. “That’s Japanese.”
“Whoops.”
He looks back at Shania and Dr. Cirillo. “There are plenty of ghosts in Chinese culture. Beyond ancestral spirits, though, most of them aren’t exactly Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
“They are mostly considered malevolent,” Dr. Cirillo says. “Which is interesting, because that hasn’t been my experience with spirits.”
“We grow them different over there,” Jin says. “But there’s one particular type called the chang. The way my grandmother explained it, a chang is a person who was killed by a tiger. They come back as ghosts doomed to help the tiger forever, by luring in more victims.”
“That’s not fair,” Shania says. “It’s punishing the victim.”
“Well, I suspect the idea is that you might be pissed off at having been killed by a tiger, and so, being a ghost and not in your right mind, you want others to suffer the same fate. Anyway, that’s the myth. Now here’s the story.”
He sips his tea before beginning. “My grandmother came to Canada when she was seven. They lived in Toronto’s Chinatown, which made it easier, with both the language barrier and the culture shock. It was her first summer in Canada, and her parents didn’t want her leaving Chinatown. They were very clear on that. But my grandmother made a friend, and one day the two girls decided to break the rules. They went deeper into the city and got lost. Then they argued. My grandmother wanted to try asking for help because it was getting dark. Her friend wanted to find the way back on their own. One of them stormed off, and they were separated.”
Jin takes a shortbread piece and tortures us by eating it before continuing. “Night is falling fast, and my grandmother only speaks a few words of English, and she’s in a strange city with no idea how to get home. She’s wandering around, hoping to see a police officer or a Chinese person, but she’s in a residential area, and it’s completely quiet. She thinks of going to a door and knocking but … Well, the reason her friend didn’t want to ask for help is that she’d had some bad experiences. My grandmother is too afraid to knock on doors. She’s walking and trying not to cry when she spots a girl playing hopscotch in a driveway. As she’s thinking of what to do, the girl sees her and waves, smiling and beckoning her over.”
Jin stretches his legs and looks at the fire. “Is it warm in here?”
“Stop that,” I say. “You’re stalling.”
He grins at me. “Fine. Okay, so my grandmother approaches the girl and tries—using sign language and her smattering of English—to explain that she’s lost. The girl understands and—with a bit of charades—says that she’ll get her parents to help. My grandmother said she could have cried from relief. She starts toward the front door, but the girl motions no, she needs to come in the back way. My grandmother knew that Canadian kids often use the rear door, so this made sense. Once she was back there, though, the girl led her through the yard and climbed the fence, indicating that was her house, the one behind.”
“Okay, that’s weird,” Shania murmurs.
“That’s what my grandmother thought. Still, she didn’t know Canadian customs and maybe the other house didn’t have a driveway to play in. So she starts to climb the fence. Then she stops. Or something stops her. She said she felt as if an invisible hand pulled her back. Then her insides went cold, and without even thinking, she turned and ran. She made it two streets and then spotted a police cruiser and flagged it down. She managed to tell the officers she was lost, but she also tried to tell them about the girl. She said she was certain something was wrong and the girl was in danger. Of course, the officers couldn’t understand anything except the part about being lost.”
Jin nibbles his shortbread, and I try not to glare at him.
He takes far too long eating that teeny bit of shortbread and then, of course, has to wash it down with tea.
Finally, he continues, “So they took my grandmother home, and she told her parents about the girl, but they thought she’d just gotten spooked. The poor English child had been trying to help, and my grandmother misunderstood. Two weeks later, my grandmother is with her mother and a neighbor who’s been using the newspaper to teach them both English. There, on the front page, is a picture of the girl my grandmother saw.”
Shania sucks in an audible breath.
Jin continues, “She was on the front page because the police had just arrested a serial killer who’d murdered two young girls. The girl in the picture was one of his victims.”
“Damn…” I say.
“My grandmother was beside herself, thinking she had the chance to save that girl. Then the neighbor, who can read the whole article, asks whether she’s sure the girl she saw was the blond one in the photo, not the brunette. Absolutely sure? She was. The woman stares at my grandmother … and then says that girl has been missing for a year. And all the police found of her was her bones.”
“So she’d been dead…” Shania begins. “She was dead before your grandmother saw her.”
“A chang,” I murmur. “Someone killed by a predator, who then lures other victims to their deaths.”
“Yep,” Jin says. “My grandmother was convinced that’s what she encountered. The spirit of the first victim, who was doomed to lead other little girls to her killer.”
Shania shivers. “And if she hadn’t gotten a bad feeling, she would have been the next victim.”
“That is a fascinating account,” Cirillo says, leaning forward. “Might I ask you for details later?”
“You’d need to ask my grandmother.”
Cirillo pauses, and Jin lets out a laugh.
“No, I’m not telling you to contact her ghost, Doc. My grandmother is still alive. Ninety-two and sharp as ever. She remembers every bit of that story. Whether she’ll tell you is another matter, but I can ask.”
Cirillo thanks him and makes a few notes before announcing it’s time for the séance.
* * *
I’m sitting on the sofa. No one is beside me. That’s Anton’s spot. It would feel more natural if the others were in the armchairs. Instead, they’ve brought in kitchen chairs so they can pull right up to the table where Cirillo is working. That leaves me at an awkward remove, feeling half like an observer and half like an experimental subject.
I don’t argue. I get what Cirillo is doing. Jin and Shania are here to assist him. Conduits and welcoming faces. I’m the main attraction.
Come sit on the sofa with me, Anton. Curl up by the fire. Just the two of us.
I’ve been to a lot of séances in the last eight months. I’d rather not say how many. More than five, less than twenty. Most have a very standard routine that calls to mind Victorian spiritualism. Sit in a circle. Hold hands. Light candles. Maybe burn incense. Set out something for the spirit to communicate through, whether it’s a Ouija board or an old-fashioned spirit board or a pad of paper and a pen, should the medium be seized by the urge to start “automatic” writing.
Except for the semicircle of three people around a table, this is different. There is only a single candle, which Cirillo explains is to detect drafts in the room. If the room is drafty, that would explain sensations of cold or breezes. There are also mechanical devices to measure everything from room pressure to temperature to motion. Those allow for quantifiable proof of environmental changes. A microphone is set up, too, though it’s for amplifying sound rather than recording it.
All this is very rigorous, reminding us that Cirillo is a man of science.
The other items are the ones that remind us that this is a ritual intended to reach beyond science. These are the items I brought. Touchstones to Anton’s life.
A row of three small framed photos sits on the table. The first is Anton as a child at Disneyland with his parents. The second is him in his twenties, skiing with friends. The third is us partying after our wedding. Three stages of his life. Three happy memories.
In front of each photo is a memento from that time of his life. A gold medal from a math competition. The key to his first apartment. His wedding band.
And in the middle of the table … the wooden box that contains his cremated remains.
I’m supposed to get comfortable on the sofa, which makes me feel even more uncomfortable. I’m dressed in clothing I’d worn the first time I came here with Anton. It’d been early enough in our relationship that I’d forgone the vacation-certified sweatpants and comfy sweaters, instead opting for my clubbing jeans and a cashmere sweater that hugged what few curves I had. Under it I’d worn some of the undergarments I’d rush-bought when it seemed like a good bet that our next dinner date would end in bed. It’s not like my drawers had been full of granny panties and shapeless graying bras. Just because I hadn’t dated in a while didn’t mean I was celibate. But I wanted to go the extra mile for Anton.
Now I’m wearing those jeans and that sweater and even a sexy matching bra and panties. I’m sitting demurely on one end of the sofa with my legs tucked under me, but I still feel as if I’m sprawled here like an offering.
Come get me, big boy. You know you want to.
The others don’t notice anything amiss. To them, I’m just curled up in the corner of the sofa, primly waiting for my dead husband to pay a visit.
“Anton Novak,” Cirillo says. “We’d like to welcome you to join us this evening. Nicola is here, and she’s waiting for you.”
Oh, yeah. Come on, big boy. I’m ready and waiting.
I bite my cheek to keep from laughing, but I know Anton would definitely see the humor in this, and if I actually said that, he’d be more likely to respond—with a laugh and a lewd comment—than he would to Cirillo’s polite invitation.
So I let myself smile, and I let my thoughts wander into the ridiculousness of this setup, and that’s what relaxes me. I imagine Anton really there, flopping onto the sofa and lifting my feet onto his lap.
All this for me? You shouldn’t have.
My smile grows, and my shoulders relax as the tension seeps out. I keep picturing Anton there, how he’d look, how he’d react.
Where’s the whiskey, Nic? I come all this way, and you aren’t even offering me a drink?
The professor guy is very serious, isn’t he? I feel like I’m in school. Should I sit up straight? Pay attention?
As Cirillo talks, I conjure Anton until I can feel the solid weight of him under my outstretched legs and the heat of his hand on my calf. I hear his voice, the cadence and the undercurrent of laughter. Yet there is not one second where I think he’s actually there. This Anton is fully woven from memories, and in that he is real, but I don’t hear a word or see a movement that doesn’t come from my head. No whisper at my ear. No squeeze on my shoulder. Nothing.
He is being summoned, and the air around me sits dead and heavy and silent.
It’s the same for the others. Neither Shania nor Jin jumps or looks sharply to one side or reports seeing or hearing anything.
When Cirillo touches one of the devices, tapping the screen, I look over.
“Nothing, right?” I say.
“No, actually…” He trails off and checks the other devices.
