One
The ghost had tried many times to leave the house, but it was impossible. Whenever he approached the front threshold or leaned through a window, he disappeared, the sum of him dispersing like mist in the air. He worried that one day he might not be able to take shape again. He wondered if being trapped here was a punishment for the past he couldn’t remember … and if so, how long would it last?
The Victorian house stood at the end of Rainshadow Road, overlooking the circular shoreline of False Bay like a wallflower waiting alone at a dance. Its painted clapboard siding had been corroded from sea air, its interior ruined by a succession of careless tenants. Original hardwood floors had been covered with shag carpeting, rooms divided by thin chipboard walls, wood trim coated with a dozen layers of cheap paint.
From the windows, the ghost had watched shorebirds: sandpipers, yellowlegs, plovers, whimbrels, plucking at the abundant food in tidepools on straw-colored mornings. At night he stared at stars and comets and the cloud-hazed moon, and sometimes he saw northern lights dance across the horizon.
The ghost wasn’t certain how long he had been at the house. Without a heartbeat to measure the passing seconds, time was timeless. He had found himself there one day with no name, no physical appearance, and no certainty of who he was. He didn’t know how he’d died, or where, or why. But a few memories danced at the edge of his awareness. He felt sure that he had lived on San Juan Island for part of his life. He thought he might have been a boatman or a fisherman. When he looked out at False Bay, he remembered things about the water beyond it … the channels between the San Juan Islands, the narrow straits around Vancouver. He knew the splintered shape of Puget Sound, the way its dragon-teeth inlets cut across Olympia.
The ghost also knew many songs, all the verses and lyrics, even the preludes. When the silence was too much to stand, he sang to himself as he moved through the empty rooms.
He craved interaction with any kind of creature. He went unnoticed even by the insects that scuttled across the floor. He hungered to know anything about anyone, to remember people he had once known. But those memories had been locked away until the mysterious day when his fate would finally be revealed.
One morning, visitors came to the house.
Electrified, the ghost watched a car approach, its wheels ironing flat channels in the heavy growth of weeds along the unpaved drive. The car stopped and two people emerged, a young man with dark hair, and an older woman dressed in jeans and flat shoes and a pink jacket.
“… couldn’t believe it was left to me,” she was saying. “My cousin bought it back in the seventies with the idea of fixing it up and selling it, but he never got around to it. The value of this property is in the land—you’d have to tear the house down, no question.”
“Have you gotten an estimate?” the man asked.
“On the lot?”
“No, on restoring the house.”
“Heavens, no. There’s structural damage—everything would have to be redone.”
He stared at the house with open fascination. “I’d like to have a look inside.”
A frown pulled the woman’s forehead into crinkles, like a lettuce leaf. “Oh, Sam, I’m sure it’s not safe.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you getting hurt. You could fall right through the floor, or a beam could drop on you. And there’s no telling what kind of vermin—”
“Nothing’s going to happen.” His tone was coaxing. “Give me five minutes. I just want a quick look.”
“I really shouldn’t let you do this.”
Sam flashed her a grin of renegade charm. “But you will. Because you just can’t resist me.”
She tried to look stern, but a reluctant smile emerged.
I used to be like that, the ghost thought with surprise. Elusive memories flickered, of past flirtations and long-ago evenings spent on front porches. He had known how to charm women young and old, how to make them laugh. He had kissed girls with sweet tea on their breaths, their necks and shoulders dusted with scented powder.
The big-framed young man bounded to the front porch and shouldered the door open when it stuck. As he stepped into the entrance hall, he turned wary, as if he expected something to jump out at him. Each footstep broke through a scurf of dust, raising ashy plumes from the floor and making him sneeze.
Such a human sound. The ghost had forgotten about sneezing.
Sam’s gaze moved across the dilapidated walls. His eyes were blue even in the shadows, whisks of laugh lines at the outer corners. He wasn’t handsome, but he was good-looking, his features strong and blunt-edged. He’d been out in the sun a lot, the tan going several layers deep. Looking at him, the ghost could almost remember the feel of sunlight, the hot slight weight of it on his skin.
The woman had crept to the front doorway, her hair surrounding her head in a silver nimbus as she peered inside the entranceway. She gripped one side of the door frame as if it were a support pole on a lurching subway train. “It’s so dark in there. I really don’t think—”
“I’m going to need more than five minutes,” Sam said, pulling a small flashlight from his key chain and clicking it on. “You might want to go out for coffee and come back in, say … half an hour?”
“And leave you here all alone?”
“I won’t cause any damage.”
The woman snorted. “I’m not worried about the house, Sam.”
“I’ve got my cell phone,” he said, patting his back pocket. “I’ll call if there’s a problem.” The smile lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. “You can come rescue me.”
She let out a dramatic sigh. “What exactly do you think you’re going to find in this wreckage?”
His gaze had already left hers, his attention recaptured by his surroundings. “A home, maybe.”
“This place was a home once,” she said. “But I can’t imagine it could ever be one again.”
The ghost was relieved when the woman left.
Directing the flashlight in slow arcs, Sam began to explore in earnest, while the ghost followed him room by room. Dust lay over fireplace mantels and broken furniture like gauze veils.
Seeing a torn section of shag carpeting, Sam lowered to his heels, pulled at the rug, and shone the light on the hardwood flooring beneath. “Mahogany?” he murmured, examining the dark, gluey surface. “Oak?”
Black walnut, the ghost thought, looking over his shoulder. Another discovery … he knew about flooring, how to sand and hand-scrape and tack-clean it, how to apply stain with a wad of wool fleece.
They went to the kitchen, with its alcove designed for a cast-iron stove, a few scales of broken tiles still clinging to the walls. Sam directed the beam of light to the high trussed ceilings, the cabinets hanging askew. He focused on an abandoned bird’s nest, let his gaze fall to the ancient splatters of droppings beneath, and shook his head. “I must be crazy,” he muttered.
Sam left the kitchen and went to the staircase, pausing to rub his thumb over the balustrade. A streak of scarred wood shone ruddily through the grime. Placing his feet carefully to avoid perforations of rot on the steps, he made his way to the second floor. At intervals he made a face and let out a puff of breath, as if at some noxious odor. “She’s right,” he said ruefully, as he reached the second-floor landing. “This place is nothing but a teardown.”
That sent a jolt of worry through the ghost. What would happen to him if someone razed the house to the ground? It might extinguish him for good. The ghost couldn’t conceive that he had been trapped alone here only to be snuffed out for no apparent reason. He circled around Sam, studying him, wanting to communicate but afraid it might send the man screaming from the place.
Sam walked right through him and stopped at the window overlooking the front drive. Ancient grime coated the glass, blunting the daylight in soft gloom. A sigh escaped him. “You’ve been waiting a long time, haven’t you?” Sam asked quietly.
The question startled the ghost. But as Sam continued, the ghost realized he was talking to the house. “I bet you were something to see, a hundred years ago. It would be a shame not to give you a chance. But damn, you’re going to take some serious cash. And it’s going to take just about everything I’ve got to get the vineyard going. Hell, I don’t know …”
As the ghost accompanied Sam through the dusty rooms, he sensed the man’s growing attachment to the ramshackle house, his desire to make it whole and beautiful again. Only an idealist or a fool, Sam figured aloud, would take on such a project. The ghost agreed.
Eventually Sam heard the woman’s car horn, and he went outside. The ghost tried to accompany him, but he felt the same dizzying, shattering, flying-apart sensation that always happened when he tried to leave. He went to watch from a broken window as Sam opened the car’s passenger door.
Pausing for a last glance, Sam contemplated the house slumped in the meadow, its rickety lines softened by swaths of arrowgrass and clustered pickleweed, and the bristled tangles of chairmaker’s rush. The flat blue of False Bay retreated in the distance, shimmers of tidepools beginning at the edge of fecund brown silt.
Sam gave a short nod, as if he’d decided on his course.
And the ghost made yet another discovery … he was capable of hope.
Before Sam made an offer for the property, he brought someone else to look at it—a man who looked to be about his age, thirty or thereabouts. Maybe a little younger. His gaze was cold with a cynicism that should have taken lifetimes to acquire.
They had to be brothers—they had the same heavy brown-black hair and wide mouth, the same strapping build. But whereas Sam’s eyes were tropical blue, his brother’s were the color of glacial ice. His face was expressionless, except for the bitter set of his mouth within deeply carved brackets. And in contrast to Sam’s roughcast good looks, the other man possessed a near prodigal handsomeness, his features blade-like and perfect. This was a man who liked to dress well and live well, who shelled out for expensive haircuts and foreign-made shoes.
The incongruous note in all that impeccable grooming was the fact that the man’s hands were work-roughened and capable. The ghost had seen hands like that before … maybe his own? … He looked down at his invisible self, wishing for a shape, a form. A voice. Why was he here with these two men, able only to observe, never to speak or interact? What was he supposed to learn?
In fewer than ten minutes, the ghost perceived that Alex, as Sam called him, knew a hell of a lot about construction. He started by circling the exterior, noting cracks in the substrate, gaps in the trim, the sagging front porch with its decaying joists and beams. Once inside, Alex went to the exact places that the ghost would have shown him to demonstrate the house’s condition—uneven sections of flooring, doors that wouldn’t close properly, blooms of mold where faulty plumbing had leaked.
“The inspector said the structural damage was repairable,” Sam commented.
“Who’d you get to do it?” Alex lowered to his haunches to examine the collapsed parlor fireplace, the fractures in the exposed chimney.
“Ben Rawley.” Sam looked defensive as he saw Alex’s expression. “Yeah, I know he’s a little old—”
“He’s a fossil.”
“—but he still knows his stuff. And he did it for free, as a favor.”
“I wouldn’t take his word. You need to get an engineer in here for a realistic assessment.” Alex had a distinctive way of talking, every syllable as measured and flat as unspooling contractor’s tape, with the hint of a rasp. “The only plus in this whole scenario is that with a structurally unsound house on the property, it’s worth less than vacant land. So you might be able to argue for a break on the price, considering the expense of demolition and haul-off.”
The ghost was wrenched with anxiety. Destroying the house might be the end of him. It might send him to oblivion.
“I’m not going to tear it down,” Sam said. “I’m going to save it.”
“Good luck.”
“I know.” Sam dragged a hand through his hair with a scrubbing motion, causing the short, dark strands to stand up in wild dishevelment. He let out a heavy sigh. “The land is perfect for the vineyard—I know I should settle for that and count myself lucky. But this house … there’s something I just …” He shook his head, looking baffled and concerned and determined all at once.
Both the ghost and Sam expected Alex to mock him. Instead, Alex stood and wandered across the parlor, going to a boarded-up window. He pulled at the ancient sheet of plywood. It came off easily, offering only a creak of protest. Light flooded the room along with a rush of clean air, knee-high eddies of dust motes glinting in the newly admitted sun.
“I have a thing about lost causes, too.” A faint, wry note edged Alex’s voice. “Not to mention Victorian houses.”
“Really?”
“Of course. High-maintenance, energy-inefficient design, toxic materials … what’s not to love?”
Sam smiled. “So if you were me, how would you go about this?”
“I’d run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. But since you’re obviously going to buy the place … don’t waste your time with a regulated lender. You’re going to need a hard-money guy. And the rates are going to suck.”
“Do you know anyone?”
“I might. Before we start talking about that, though, you need to face reality. You’re looking at 250K of repairs, minimum. And don’t expect to lean on me for free supplies and labor—I’m going ahead with the Dream Lake site, so I’ll be as busy as a cat burying shit.”
“Believe me, Al, I never expect to lean on you for anything.” Sam’s voice turned arid. “I know better.”
Tension laced the air, a mingling of affection and hostility that could only have come from a troubled family history. The ghost was perplexed by an unfamiliar sensation, a raw chill that would have caused him to shiver if he’d had a human form. It was a depth of despair that even the ghost, in his bleak solitude, had never experienced—and it radiated from Alex Nolan.
The ghost moved away instinctively, but there was no escaping the feeling. “Is that how it feels to be you?” he asked, pitying the man. He was startled to see Alex cast a glance over his shoulder in his direction. “Can you hear me?” the ghost continued in wonder, circling around him. “Did you just hear my voice?”