She scribbled on her pad: Girlfriend Mr. M?
“I’m sure we can take care of it before things start going really badly,” Chess said. “Now, if you could please show me around the house …?”
All three of the Mortons came along on the tour, much to Chess’s chagrin. Extra bodies crowding around her in small spaces like the Morton’s cramped hallway were not what she needed in the slightly nervous state the Nips had left her in. And if little Albert accidentally-on-purpose brushed against her breast again she was going to hit him. The quality and quantity of porn she imagined she’d find under his bed, when she got around to searching, would probably be staggering.
Mrs. Morton’s pale fingers trailed over the picture frames in the hall. “We trace our family back over three hundred years,” she said. “Roots are so important, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.” She wondered what Mrs. Morton would say if Chess told her she had no idea who her parents had been, much less anyone further back.
Her tattoos didn’t so much as tingle, nor did the Spectrometer beep, when they entered a small bedroom on the right, which looked as though some bizarrely pretentious child lived in it. Batman wallpaper warred with posters of mallard ducks and prints from the Tate gallery. A teddy bear slumped on the dresser next to a rack of silver cuff links. Books tilted on the scarred pine bookcase like crooked teeth, but when Chess stepped closer there were dust lines on the shelves. Someone had recently—probably very recently—removed quite a few titles.
Little Albert was into sci-fi and technology. All the big fantasy names were there—Tolkien, Card, Anthony, Weis—along with Sagan, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Straub … but no how-to tech books, not even a single Idiot’s Guide, which was unusual because the more she looked around the room the more she noticed the bundle of cables peeking out from under the bed, the empty shelf under the flat-screen TV in the corner. Albert looked like an A/V Club boy, and A/V Club boys read books about hacking and splicing and F/X. They read about digital imagery and home theaters and how to rewire speakers so they went up to eleven.
When she came back later, or the next night, she’d have a more thorough look around.
She let the Mortons lead her through the spare bedroom and the bathroom, into the master bedroom. The signs of desperate upward mobility were strewn all over the house as if an L.L. Bean cata log had exploded; a beautiful dresser in a bedroom with mismatched bedside tables, expensive lotions on a cracked bathroom countertop. The copy of The Book of Truth next to the bed had been arranged so the light shone off the gold lettering and reflected back at her when she stepped through the doorway.
“This is where it was.” Mrs. Morton waved a nervous hand at a spot on the floor to her left, about a foot from where she was standing. There was something vaguely familiar about the movement, about Mrs. Morton herself. Maybe the family really did attend Church sometimes and Chess had seen her there. “I was in bed, there, like I said, and it just … hovered here, and stared at me. It looked so angry, I just didn’t know what to do …”
This was ridiculous, a waste of her time. She switched off the Spectrometer and tape recorder, shoved them both back into her bag.
“Well, I’ve seen enough for now. If we could go back to the living room and you could sign the complaint, we’ll get started pro cessing it.”
“But … you didn’t see the ghost, does that matter?”
Chess pulled the zipper on her purse shut, realizing as she did that her hand was shaking slightly. She glanced at the clock by the bed. Five to nine. This was taking forever, she needed to go.
“We’re not done yet,” she replied, trying to sound cheerful. “It’ll take at least a week or two to really investigate. This was just to get the papers filled out, and so I could get a feel for what we’re dealing with. You’ll be seeing quite a bit of me, Mrs. Morton, don’t you worry.”
Mrs. Morton smiled weakly. The cheaters always hated it when she said she’d be around a lot. And the Mortons were faking it, she knew it. Not even a beep, not even a blip on the Spectro. Very unusual in an enclosed space with ghosts.
And the Mortons would certainly be learning about enclosed spaces if she was right, and they were faking. The Church didn’t take kindly to attempts to steal from it; Mr. Morton would have a hard time examining eyeballs from a little blue cell.
“So let’s just go sign those papers and I can leave you to your eveni—”
Something darted through the air behind Mr. Morton, so fast it took Chess a second to realize it wasn’t just a hallucination. A black shape, man-size but crouched over. She had the impression of a hood hiding its face, of the light by the bed catching the sharp edge of a blade, before it disappeared into the closet.
It looked almost like a cartoon, like an image projected on the wall instead of moving in front of it, but it had been so long since she’d seen an actual cartoon, she could have been wrong about that.
She wasn’t wrong about the sense of unease, though, more than simply the unease of her body starting to get serious with her about its needs—at least she thought it was. Fuck, she shouldn’t have waited to take her pills, it was throwing her off. For the first time a ribbon of doubt slipped through her mind. Withdrawal, or ghost? No way to be sure.
The Mortons stood watching her, faintly perplexed, waiting for her to finish her sentence. They hadn’t noticed anything—or perhaps they had, and they were watching her to see if she said anything.
Of course. The image had looked like a cartoon, like something being broadcast, because it was. When she came back later she’d look for the projector. It was probably behind the mirror over the dresser. The thought was comforting, but not enough to ease the cool sweat on her forehead and body. She felt sticky with it.
“To your evening,” she finished. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you so late, my last interview ran long. And I’ll be in touch.”
Sooner than they knew.
“Debunking often looks like the most appealing of Church positions, but very few possess the skill, intelligence, and above all, integrity required.”
—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin
All buzzed up and no place to go. At least, not until three, when she investigated the Morton house again.
The Market was closed. Bump’s place would be open—Bump’s place never closed—but she didn’t particularly want to go there either. She had everything she needed.
But the walls of her small apartment were closing in, the faint colors from the stained-glass window sliding over surfaces like they were chasing her.
She could go get cigarettes. The Stop Shop on the corner had special dispensation to be open twenty-four hours. That might be nice. A little walk in the cool night air would clear some of the anxious cobwebs in her head.
What the hell had that thing been? She’d never seen anything like it. Projected image or not, it was menacing. She’d had the feeling that if it had turned and saw her, looked at her, she might have screamed.
Maybe she should eat. It wasn’t like her to get so paranoid. Take a little of the edge off, fix the sourness in her stomach. The Stop Shop sold snacks, too.
She fished a