Pen Pal

I stare wide-eyed at the coin and the ring with my pulse throbbing and a scream trapped inside my chest, knowing that there’s something extremely significant here that I’m missing.

When I glance up at Claire, she says calmly, “Call the detective.”

I whisper, “How did my ring fall through the ceiling?”

“Call the detective, Kayla. We don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean? What’s happening?”

Outside, the storm is gathering power. Rain lashes the windows and roof. Thunder booms and lightning crackles. It seems as if the house itself sits in the center of a tornado and is about to be ripped right off the ground and launched into space.

From her other pocket, Claire removes my cell phone. She must’ve picked it up from my desk. She thrusts it at me, insisting, “Make the call!”

Panicked, I grab the phone from her hand. Crossing the kitchen, I rummage through the open drawer next to the stove where I keep all the junk. I find the detective’s business card and dial his number with shaking fingers.

A woman answers, her tone clipped. “Seattle PD, how can I assist you?”

“Detective Roman Peters, please.”

There’s a pause, then she says, “Are you a friend of his, ma’am?”

What a strange question. “What? No. No, he helped me a while back. My husband was in an accident, and he interviewed me and gave me his card. I’d like to speak with him, please. It’s urgent.”

I glance up to see Claire and Fiona standing beside the kitchen table, encouraging me with smiles and nods.

The woman on the other end of the line says, “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Detective Peters passed on.”

I’m in such a state of agitation, I don’t understand her meaning. “Passed on? You mean he was promoted to another department?”

“No, ma’am. He died. Sudden cardiac arrest. I’ll transfer you to the extension of his replacement, Detective Brown. Please hold.”

I hear a click, then brief silence. Then a recording of a man’s voice plays, instructing me to leave my number.

I disconnect, feeling strangely numb.

Fiona prompts, “Well, what did they say?”

“He’s dead. Detective Peters is dead. He died of a heart attack.”

“When?”

“She didn’t say. Why does it matter?”

Shaking her head in impatience, Claire opens the laptop and taps the power button. She pulls up the internet browser and starts to type.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking up the office of the county recorder. We can check the property records for this address to discover who owned the house before you.” She clicks around for a minute, then types into a search bar. Then she stands back, frowning.

“What is it?”

“Was the deed to this property recorded in someone else’s name?”

“No. It should be listed as Michael and Kayla Reece.” I walk closer and peer over her shoulder at the screen. “Who the hell are Sandy and David Wainwright? It says they bought this house in January!”

Somewhere upstairs, another door slams. I hear the sound of running feet, then a child’s laughter.

My breath catches.

Looking upward, I say, “Wait. The little boy. We’re forgetting about him. If Dante’s the ghost in this house…who’s the kid? And what about the man in the trench coat and hat? How does he fit into all this?”

When I look back at Claire and Fiona, they’re wearing identical expressions of sadness, along with another emotion I’ve seen before. I saw it on Destiny’s face, the psychic I visited who wished me safe travels as I was leaving. It’s unmistakable.

It’s pity.

Unnerved, I demand, “Why are you guys looking at me like that?”

Claire says gently, “It’s all right, Kayla. Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of, my dear.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Give me the phone, dear.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to call the police station again.”

“What for?”

“I think there’s something you should know.”

“Like what?”

“Give me the phone.”

An overwhelming feeling of wrongness overtakes me. I back up a step. My blood turns to ice. All the hair on my arms stands on end, and I begin to hyperventilate.

The storm outside rages.

Claire takes the phone from my stiff hand and hits a few buttons. When a familiar woman’s voice fills the room, I realize she hit redial, then switched the audio to the speaker.

“Seattle PD, how can I help you?”

“Yes, good evening, ma’am. Will you please tell me when Detective Peters died?”

There’s a pause.

Claire explains, “My friend spoke to you a moment ago and was so surprised by the news, she neglected to ask. She’d like to send flowers to the funeral if it hasn’t been held yet.”

“Oh. I see. Well, I’m afraid it’s much too late for flowers. It’s been six months since he passed, almost to the day.”

Claire thanks her, then disconnects. Then she and Fiona stand there staring at me with that awful pity in their eyes, waiting.

As if from very far away, I hear my own voice. “That’s impossible. She’s wrong. He interviewed me after the accident. That was only two months ago. He sat with me out on the dock and interviewed me!”

Claire says sadly, “I have no doubt that he did.”

My hands begin to tremble. I find it difficult to draw a full breath. I back up another step. Looking at her for help, I say, “Fiona?”

She says softly, “You have to understand, dear, that there are very few people who can communicate with spirits.”

My voice rises. “What are you saying? What does that have to do with anything?”

She goes on in that calm, soothing tone, ignoring my panic. “Mediums, of course. A few psychics, too, though most of them are fakes. Also schizophrenics, for reasons we don’t really understand, though it probably has something to do with their altered brain chemistry.”

Claire adds, “Cats as well.”

“Yes, that’s correct. Cats can see ghosts, too.” She pauses. “So can some gifted children.”

The sound of a child’s laughter floating down from upstairs makes my heartbeat stutter.

It falls to a complete standstill when Claire says, “And so can other ghosts. Though they don’t recognize each other as such.”

I look back and forth between them. “I’m sorry, what?”

One of the bulbs in the fluorescent fixture overhead explodes. Another one follows immediately afterward, filling the room with a sharp crackle of shattering glass and the acrid smell of burnt wiring. A cold gust of wind whistles down the chimney in a high-pitched wail that sounds eerily like a banshee screaming.

A line from Dante’s last letter flashes into my mind:

You are the storm. You’re the source of everything that’s happening.

Then I recall something Fiona told me the day she came in and set off the alarm:

“A spirit is energy manifesting itself. Akin to an electrical storm gathering force until it discharges a bolt of lightning. When a spirit is upset, that emotion—that energy—is transformed into a physical outcome. Hence your open cupboards and drawers.”

And one other thing that I didn’t begin to comprehend until just now:

“I’d say the spirit who lives in this house is bloody furious.”

The way she looked at me when she said that, it was almost as if…

As if she were talking about me.

Like an army of spiders, cold horror crawls over my skin. I whisper hoarsely, “No.”

Fiona says quietly, “Yes, my dear. I’m afraid so.”

With the explosive force of a bomb, a hundred different memories detonate in my head all at once.

How shocked Fiona was when she saw me the day after Michael’s funeral. How she asked in that peculiar tone, “So you’ll be staying in the house?”

How all the people at the grief group ignored Madison, the woman whose child was abducted years ago. How she sat alone in the circle, as if she were invisible to everyone except me.

How Eddie the handyman who dressed like a hippie didn’t have a cell phone and thought David Letterman was only a therapist. How, when I went to find him, that therapist didn’t exist.

How all the roofers I called never called back.

How the security camera only recorded static when I went out into the yard.

How Destiny the psychic said mournfully, “I’ll pray for you.”

How when I rang the bell, her mother opened the door, looked around, then closed it, as if there was no one standing there.

The Death card. The Lovers. The reversed Magician, indicating I needed to let go of my illusions.

The upright Ten of Swords that hinted at deep wounds, painful endings…

Betrayal.

Fiona saying, “Reality is simply what we believe it to be. Each of us makes our own truths, even ghosts.”

How, when Claire first came in tonight, she referred to the spirit she came to contact as “her” before correcting herself.

Shaking so hard, I can barely stand, I whisper, “If you give people light, they’ll find their own way.”

When I meet Fiona’s gaze, her eyes are shining with tears.

I sob, then slap a hand over my mouth to stifle it. Then I grab the phone from Claire, run back to the junk drawer, and pull things out, frantically tossing pens, Post-it notes, take-out menus, and batteries onto the floor until I find what I’m looking for.

Eddie the handyman’s business card.

I didn’t notice it before, but the card is fragile and yellowed with age, the ink flaking in places. It looks as if it was printed decades ago.

Which it probably was.

With the sound of the raging storm outside nearly deafening me, I dial his number.

The phone rings twice before a man picks up. “Homefront Handyman, three generations strong. How can I help you?”

Gripping the phone in my shaking hands, I ask, “Is Eddie there, please?”

His short silence seems surprised. “Uh, no. This is Mark. How can I help you?”

“Please, I really, really need to speak with Eddie. Can you put him on the phone? Is he around?”

After another pause, the man on the other end of the line says, “Is this a joke or something?”

I shout, “Just put him on the phone!”

He sighs heavily. “Look, lady. I normally don’t pick up this late, but business has been slow, so I did. You’ve made me regret it. Have yourself a good night.”

“Please!” I beg, desperate. “I have to talk to Eddie! I have to talk to him right now!”

He snaps, “Yeah, well, that’s gonna be kinda hard, lady, because my grandpa died in 1974.”

All the breath leaves my lungs. A sob catches in my throat. Two more fluorescent light bulbs in the ceiling explode with a pop.

“Kayla.”

When I whirl around in panic, Fiona is holding out one of Dante’s envelopes to me.

“Read the name on the return address,” she says gently.

Hyperventilating, I snatch it from her hand. “Dante Alighieri,” I cry, shaking my head. “His name is Dante Alighieri! So what?”

“Don’t just look at it…see.”

When I return my gaze to the upper left corner of the envelope, all the letters in the return address are now moving, trading places with one another and slowly rearranging themselves into something else.

I blink rapidly, trying to clear my vision. It doesn’t help. The letters move sideways, overlapping then straightening out into another name.

A name that rips a hole straight through the fabric of my heart.

Aidan Leighrite.

Dante Alighieri is an anagram for Aidan Leighrite.

Into my mind flashes an image of the framed Thoreau quote on the wall of Destiny’s parlor: “It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.”

I’ve been blind. Refusing to acknowledge the truth.

Looking at everything, but seeing nothing at all.

Tears streaming down my face, I drop the envelope and run from the kitchen. I burst through the door of Michael’s office and fall sobbing onto his desk.

I snatch up the newspaper with Michael’s picture on the front. With shaking hands, I unfold it all the way. When I see the rest of the headline that was obscured, my heart stops beating.

The headline isn’t Local Man Drowns, as it appeared when folded.

The full headline is Local Man Drowns Wife.

From the other side of the crease, my photo stares back at me.

I see myself standing at Michael’s grave the day of the funeral, hearing a woman sob my name, and realize with the sensation of the floor disappearing beneath my feet that the name on the headstone wasn’t my husband’s.

It was my own.

It all comes back in a rush. A locked iron door inside my mind flings itself open, and an icy black ocean of memory floods in.

I scream.

The windows explode outward into a million razor-sharp glinting shards of glass that are instantly sucked into the storm and carried off into the rainy night. A violent whirlwind rips the newspaper from my hand and sends it flying madly around the room, torn to pieces.

Fiona and Claire stand in the office doorway. A small barefoot figure in blue pajamas cowers behind them in terror, peeking out from around Fiona’s legs.

It’s the little blond boy I kept seeing on the lawn.

The boy who took one look at me and screamed in pure terror.

The boy who lives here with his parents, Sandy and David Wainwright, who bought this house a month after my husband ended my life.

Michael didn’t die.

Aidan did.

Michael killed him.

Right before he killed me.