I'll Be Waiting, page 5
Back then, the room held only a sofa, which would have made it nicely spacious. Now it’s crammed full with a couch, a love seat, and two recliners. If you used it as a sitting room, you’d be sitting on top of everyone else. But the truly creepy part is the dolls.
The room is ringed with bookcases and every shelf holds a motley collection of books plus three or four antique porcelain dolls, all attired in colorful starched dresses, all scrubbed and clean, all retouched and repainted. And all staring at us with vacant eyes.
“I don’t get it,” Shania says, staying in the doorway as Jin and I walk in. “How does anyone not find porcelain dolls creepy? I can see getting some in an ironic way, where you’re being creepy on purpose. But who looks at this room and thinks it’d be a great place to curl up with a book?”
“Under the watchful eyes of the damned,” Jin says.
“This is actually an improvement over the dolls’ last residence,” I say. “Before Anton and I rented this place, we read the reviews. Apparently, when it opened as a bed-and-breakfast, the smallest bedroom was called the Doll Room, and these were displayed in there.”
“Where people slept?” Shania says. “Probably children?”
“Yep. The dolls were quickly moved down here and that became the Disney-themed room. Whenever we stayed here…”
I trail off because I find myself smiling. I’m thinking back to when Anton and I stayed here, and when I smile, it feels like laughing at his funeral. I struggle with that. I know I should smile at memories of our life together. Being able to smile at them is part of the process. But when I do, I feel as if I’m moving too fast. I might not be an old-time widow, draped in a black dress and jet jewelry, but internally, I feel as if I should be in continual mourning, and when I’m not, I’m stricken with guilt.
I smack that guilt away. This is a good memory, and I’m sharing it.
I walk farther into the tiny room. “Whenever Anton and I stayed here, he kept moving the damn dolls.”
“Freaking you out?” Shania says. “If I woke to find one of those things on my bedside table, I’d grab the keys and run. Let him find his own way home.”
“Nothing like that,” I say. “Just moving them around. I’d flop down on the sofa in the living room, and ten minutes later, I’d notice a doll on the shelf. Or on top of the fridge.”
I walk to one, with a gingham dress and bonnet, red braids, and painted eyes with a little too much white around the iris, giving her a demented stare. “This was our favorite. We named her Laura. Pioneer zombie girl. We were thinking of finding one for Lucy, to add to her collection of American Girl dolls.”
“Lucy’s outgrown her doll stage,” Jin says. “She’s moved into the preteen phase where she’d actually love that creepy thing.” Jin looks at Laura and shudders.
We continue our exploration of the house. I show them the dumbwaiter shaft. I’m honestly surprised the owners haven’t sealed it up. I guess it’s safe enough, and it’s something people find cool.
As I poke my head into the shaft, I remember a story Anton told, about his brother scaring the shit out of him as a kid, insisting that you could hear the dumbwaiter at night. I’m about to withdraw and tell the others when a sound stops me. A low moan from below.
I back out fast. “Did you—?”
“Another locked door,” Jin says, his voice distant.
I turn to see him over at the basement door with Shania. I glance back at the dumbwaiter. What was the story Anton told me? That his brother claimed to hear the dumbwaiter moving? No, that’s what Jin had just joked about. Viktor scared Anton … by making noises from below.
I shake my head. Apparently, I might be good at ruining Jin and Shania’s haunted-house fun, but it seems my imagination is having a little of that with me.
Jin jiggles the door handle as I walk over. “Now don’t tell me the entire basement is filled with mops and tissue boxes, Nic.”
I frown and walk back to it. I try the knob myself, but it’s clearly locked and there’s a keyhole in that knob.
“That’s where the washer and dryer were,” I say. “Anton and I stuck our heads down there, but since we only stayed for weekends, we didn’t need to wash clothing.”
“So they blocked access to the washer and dryer?” Jin says. “That’s not suspicious at all.”
“They put compact stackables in the bathroom right there.” I point.
“Because they needed to block off the basement to hide the bodies.”
“There are definitely bodies down there,” Shania says. “And secret tunnels.”
I shake my head. “It was your typical damp old basement, with framed-up walls and a concrete floor. I’m not surprised they’ve blocked it off.”
Jin looks at Shania. “She really is bad at this.”
“The worst,” Shania says.
“Fine,” I say. “The basement isn’t very creepy, but that’s just the part we saw. When we went exploring, Anton wanted to show me the furnace, if it was still there—it was a monster of a thing. But the door was locked. Two doors, in fact. Both locked.”
Shania is about to comment when a floorboard creaks, and she goes still. “Did you hear that?”
“Sounds like someone on the front porch,” I say. Then I lift fingers and count down. “Three … two…”
The doorbell dings. They both sigh as I head to answer it.
* * *
Dinner has arrived, along with our cook. Mrs. Kilmer is the type of woman I always feel a little sorry for, and then chastise myself for jumping to conclusions based on appearances. She’s slight and faintly stooped, despite being only a decade older than me. Her face already shows stress lines around her mouth and worry lines on her forehead, and there’s a hesitancy about her, as if she always expects she’s doing something wrong and is ready to apologize for it.
“Mrs. Kilmer,” I say, smiling. “It’s good to see you again.” Before I can put her on the spot, I say, “I was here last year, and I was hoping you’d still be cooking for the house.”
I don’t say “my husband and I” were here. That’s another thing I feel guilty for, as if I’ve already excised him from my life. But I know that if I say my husband and I stayed here, she might presume he’s with me, and I’ll need to explain, and she’ll feel bad for mentioning it.…
Yep, best to just stick with the singular. I was here.
Mrs. Kilmer does the customary “Oh, yes, of course I remember you,” which probably means she doesn’t, and that’s for the best.
“Would you like me to put this inside?” she says, indicating the rolling cooler she’s brought. “It’s today’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch, along with some fresh muffins for breakfast.”
“Thank you, and I know this is going to sound incredibly rude, but I’ll need to empty that inside and give it back. This week … Well, it’s not actually a vacation, unfortunately.” I lean against the doorjamb. “I’m here with some other scientists, working, and the person in charge has asked that no one else come into the house.”
That does sound rude, and also weird. But I can’t exactly say that we’re doing a séance and the medium has insisted the house be kept clear of “other auras.”
Technically, it’s not a lie either. Dr. Cirillo is a scientist conducting an experiment. I’m an engineer, Shania is a nurse, and Jin is a radiologist, so we all work in STEM fields, right?
“Oh, isn’t that interesting,” she says, without any hint that she’s insulted. “Certainly. I understand.”
She rolls the cooler to me. I take it inside, unload it as fast as I can, and bring it back out, where she gives me instructions for cooking the meals. I thank her, and she trundles off down the lane, pulling the empty cooler behind her.
* * *
We’re enjoying lemon-meringue pie and coffee on the back porch when a voice says, “Hello?”
A man’s head pops past the corner of the deck, and I scramble up, wiping my mouth with my napkin.
“Hello,” I say.
The man is in his early forties, with graying dark hair and a close-trimmed beard. His bright blue eyes crease in a smile. He’s dressed in a golf shirt and chinos, with a jacket over his arm, sunglasses on his head, looking like …
Looking like a guy on vacation.
Shit. I’ve heard of this happening, where you rent a place and it turns out to be double-booked.
“Ms. Laughton?” he says as I hurry over.
I slow. “Yes?”
He extends a hand. “Davos Cirillo.”
“Dr. Cirillo,” I say, shaking his hand.
I’d been so engrossed in the conversation that I’d forgotten we were expecting him after dinner. I also should have looked up a photo of the guy. Stereotypes again. I’m accustomed to mediums like Leilani, with her jangling bracelets and flowing dresses. This guy looks like a doctor or lawyer or … college professor? Yep, because that’s what he is.
“Glad you could make it, Dr. Cirillo,” Jin says as he comes forward.
“Davos, please.”
Jin smiles. “I’m Jin, Nic’s brother-in-law. And this is Shania, our ‘outsider’ for the week.”
“Thanks,” Shania says.
“Hey, that’s your role, right? The designated outsider.” Jin grins at her and then turns to Cirillo. “Come join us. We’re having pie and waiting for the sunset.”
SIX
We sit on the porch with the propane heater taking the chill off as the sun sets, and it is a spectacular sight, pastel blues and pinks darkening as the sun disappears into the lake.
We ask Dr. Cirillo about his work. That seems a safe topic. It’s a bit of an odd situation, with him spending three days in a house with strangers. It’s supposed to give him time to settle and get to know us, rather than ushering us into a room for an hour-long séance. It does mean, though, that he’s here as a professional, and we can’t treat him like a fellow houseguest. I don’t want to ask anything personal, so we stick to work questions.
His actual degree is in psychology. As a discipline, parapsychology is considered fringe science, even junk science. One professor at his college had specialized in an offshoot of parapsychology called anomalistic psychology. It wasn’t what Cirillo imagined studying, but he found himself intrigued.
Anomalistic psychology examines common paranormal experiences and attempts to explain them. I know a bit about it from my spiritualist research, as I girded myself against the predators. As a scientist, I found the explanations fascinating. Like the one that explains the common phenomenon of seeing a dead loved one at your bedside, watching over you. I remember a friend telling me she’d seen her dead grandmother and I will fully admit that, at thirteen, I was a little bit horrified by the thought of my grandmother in my bedroom at night, catching me doing … whatever I was doing while awake in bed at thirteen.
Seeing a dead loved one in your room might be the most common ghostly experience. The scientific explanation is that when we’re falling asleep, we sometimes drift into a hypnagogic state, where we’re still transitioning to sleep and think we’re awake. In that state, we dream of seeing a loved one and mistakenly believe we’re awake.
I remember one time when Anton was away at a conference. Shortly after I went to bed I swore I heard him come home early—open the door, take off his shoes, walk into the kitchen. I’d gone to sneak up and surprise him and found myself alone in the condo. I texted and discovered he was still in Montreal. He’d wanted me to call the police, certain we had an intruder. But the door was locked and the alarm on. I understand now that I’d had a hypnagogic hallucination.
That’s the sort of thing Dr. Cirillo studied under his advisor. Scientific debunking, though he winces at the term when Jin says it. Debunking suggests you’re on a mission to prove people wrong. What Dr. Cirillo’s advisor did was accept people’s experiences and look for the explanation beyond the paranormal.
Many supernatural experiences do have a natural explanation. But our brains are wired for story, and we try to create it where none exists. Our sports team won twice while we were wearing our blue shirt and lost when we wore our green one? The blue shirt is lucky. We notice an ad for a vacation to Cuba, and suddenly we’re seeing ads for Cuba everywhere? It must be a sign. We hear voices in our empty condo? It’s ghosts, not real conversation conducted through the vents. Creaking boards upstairs? Ghosts, not the plumbing system. We want to believe that luck exists, that signs exist, that ghosts exist, and so we find proof.
Dr. Cirillo had been happily pursuing his doctorate, investigating paranormal phenomena and leaping on scientific explanations like a detective solving crimes. At first, they all did have explanations. Then came a few where the explanation felt like jamming an octagonal peg into a round hole. It almost fit … but not quite. That didn’t bother him much. Science doesn’t always perfectly explain everything.
“Then, I had an experience myself,” he says. “One that I couldn’t explain away.”
“Story time?” Jin says.
“If you want it.”
“We absolutely want it,” Shania says.
Jin’s gaze shoots to me, suddenly cautious. “If it’s okay with Nic.”
“Fine with me. I like ghost stories.” I flash a smile that sells the lie and turn to Dr. Cirillo. “Please continue.”
Dr. Cirillo settles deeper into his wicker chair. “I was investigating a haunting at a recently purchased home. The new owners claimed to hear crying and the sound of someone pacing in the attic. They discovered that the former owner had ended his life, quite violently, in that attic.”
“They discovered that after hearing noises?” Jin asks.
“That was the question. They said they definitely heard the sounds first, but I went into it knowing that might not be true. It would be understandable to learn about a violent death and then imagine sounds from that part of the house. Also, it was a very old house, with all the attendant creaks and odd noises. On the first night, I heard nothing. The second night, the whispers and crying came. On the third, the pacing started. That’s when I went into full detective mode. These clearly weren’t the creaks of an old house. Therefore someone was faking a haunting.”
He takes a pause to sip his tea, and I have to give him credit for knowing how to play his audience.
“I tried everything to catch someone in the attic,” he says. “I set up video. I checked for alternate entrances. I positioned myself right below the hatch. Still the noises continued. When I cleaned up the recording, I clearly heard a woman’s voice pleading to be let out. Promising she wouldn’t tell.”
Shania rubs her arms and shifts in her seat. Even I feel hairs prickling.
Cirillo’s gaze goes to Shania. “I could stop there.”
She twists a smile. “Then I’d only imagine the worst. Go on.”
“Well, I don’t have a definitive answer for what I experienced, only a theory. It turned out that the man who’d ended his life had a niece who disappeared a few years earlier. The story went that he was supposed to pick her up at college and drive her home for the summer break. Only he was late to the meetup spot, and she was already gone. The police suspected she’d accepted a ride with someone else when her uncle was late. The family believed the uncle blamed himself for it, and that’s why he ended his life. But … given what I heard in that house, I see another explanation.”
“He did pick her up,” Shania whispers. “And locked her in the attic. After she died, he kept hearing her there. So he went into the attic and…” She shudders.
“I believe so,” Cirillo says. “That experience obviously unsettled me. Not only was it disturbing, but I had no rational, non-paranormal explanation for what I experienced. I told my advisor I needed a break. I thought I was getting too deep into the work. He argued that to properly investigate these phenomena, we had to accept the possibility that there could be something out there. That shook me. I thought I knew what I was doing, and then I didn’t. But I went back to it. Nineteen times out of twenty, I found an explanation. But every now and then…”
“You found one that couldn’t be explained away,” Shania says.
“Yes. I finished my doctorate and decided to stay in the field. Over time, those exceptions to the rule increasingly seized my attention, and my studies evolved to where they are today. I still investigate phenomena with an eye toward scientific explanations, but I also actively try to communicate with the dead, because I believe, sometimes, they are there and want to communicate, as that poor girl in the attic did.”
“So you’re not a medium?” Shania says. “I mean, in the sense of having the Sight or being attuned to the other world.”
“I don’t believe in the Sight, as they call it, nor in the idea of some people being naturally attuned to the spirit world. I am more attuned, but purely through practice. And still, as I explained to Ms. Laughton, ninety-five percent of the time, I find nothing.”
“Nicola, please,” I say. “Or just Nic. Your research is the reason we chose you. I don’t want guaranteed contact, because I know that’s bullshit, pardon my language.”
His eyes warm with a smile. “No need to pardon any language. I’m a professor, not a priest. What I believe is that some spirits are right on the other side, waiting to communicate. Most of them, though, are not. They’ve crossed over.”
“And Anton might have stayed,” Shania says, “because of what he said before he died.”
Dr. Cirillo answers carefully, “It’s possible, but more than that, I think Ms.—Nicola is in a particular situation where what I offer might be what she needs. Not necessarily contact, but answers, even if that answer is that I don’t sense him.”
I nod. “I won’t lie and pretend I don’t care whether I make contact or not. Of course I want to know he’s somewhere and he’s okay. But mostly, I just…” My hands find each other, clutched on my lap even as I try to relax. “Mostly, I want to be done with this. I tell myself that the person who claimed to see Anton’s ghost just wanted attention. But I feel as if … as if Anton disappeared and someone said they saw him, and I ignored it.”
