Them.
More than one, whatever they were, dragging themselves out from between the moss-covered trunks. Not close. They stayed back. Whether their caution was brought on by fear or weakness, I couldn’t tell. But they stayed back, and I stayed barely on the mobile side of fright.
It wasn’t about them. I wasn’t afraid of them. Not very.
I was afraid that any moment I’d hear the heartbeat. But the heartbeat didn’t come, and as the seconds passed and I remained unmolested, I relaxed just enough to try speaking again.
“I’m looking for Rachel,” I told the long, lumpy shadow.
The shadow did not respond in any manner that I could discern.
“I think she was here. Before they tore everything down, I mean. There was something else here. Something…definitely not like you. Something fast, and mean. It followed me. It talked to me. Can you talk to me?”
Nothing answered—not with any cue that I could hear or see.
“Is there anyone here who can talk to me? Anyone who would like to? I can hear you, if you talk. I can listen. Christ, what are you?”
I closed my eyes for a count of ten, thinking maybe I could draw the presences out by showing some vulnerability. It didn’t work. The line of tangible emptiness stayed where it was, at least at first. Then I saw that the mass was withdrawing in the same drawn-out, incremental fashion with which it had arrived.
Them, I thought again. Not “it. ”
Within a minute or two, they were all but gone. And in a minute more, I heard the first bird sing since I’d arrived. The feathered thing whistled high and sweet from a few feet into the woods, and at the edge of the dormitory foundation a pair of lizards chased one another into the grass.
Nothing.
I glanced around one last time for good measure. When I left, after some careful vehicular maneuvering, I was reasonably confident that the poltergeist of Pine Breeze had abandoned the place to its ruin.
Whether or not it had been Malachi’s mother I might never know, but my suspicion was that the bitter shade could have been no one else. I toyed with the idea of feeding Malachi a line out of kindness. I could tell him that I’d seen other ghosts there.
Two thousand people, wasting away.
I could tell him that some other specter had told me his mother’s name, and that she was gone. He’d believe me, as likely as not. It was true, as likely as not. It would be less a lie than an educated guess.
I went back to my car. My purse was on the passenger’s seat. I fished my cell phone out of the inner pocket and dialed the church in St. Augustine, but no one answered. An answering machine with a cheery greeting encouraged me to leave a message, so I did: a short and sweet one.
“Malachi, I went to Pine Breeze. ”
I looked out my window over the empty area where the sanitarium had once stood, and I made a decision that I knew I might come to regret. But I couldn’t tell him the truth, because the truth was only that there was nothing to know. It might not have been the right thing to do, but I was tired of hurting people. So I said, “Look, Malachi, I asked around up here at the old sanitarium. You don’t need to worry about your mother. She’s gone on. ”
Then I held my breath and whispered into the phone, “Come up to Tennessee if you want—you and Harry. We’ll make a weekend of it. Maybe—maybe I’ll even introduce you to Lu and Dave.
“Your mother’s found her peace. And we should make ours. ”