When the Spirit Is Willing Read online

  "The odd thing is that my Priscilla was apparently in her mid-twenties when I knew her, and the Priscilla I saw last night seemed no older than that."

  "You're telling me Priscilla is a real person?"

  "She must be a neighbor, surely. Must always have been a neighbor, at least since the time I lived here. She'd have to be older than she looked last night, of course, but it's the only possible explanation. Jessica must have met her, even though you haven't."

  She shook her head. "I know all my neighbors. They're a friendly lot. Too friendly." Her cheeks flushed. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. It's just that I'm so busy, I don't have time for a social life, so I have to discourage…"

  She shook her head and started putting her tools away in a carrier on the counter. "The point is, all my neighbors have called on me at one time or another," she said earnestly. "Jessica plays with their children. They're all very interested in what I'm doing to the house. Brady always said, if you fix up the outside of the house first, all the neighbors will be on your side immediately. Because you've improved the look and probably the value of the whole neighborhood."

  She had lovely skin, he noticed. No makeup on it, just a little gray eyeliner smudged around her eyes, the mascara, maybe lipstick, maybe not. There was something about her that was affecting him strongly. His blood pressure had revved up the minute she smiled. He could almost sense his hormones sitting up and asking what all the fuss was about. Yet Laura Daniel wasn't at all the glamorous kind of woman who usually attracted him. She was a no-nonsense sort of person. A T-shirt and jeans kind of person. Straightforward, practical and capable.

  "I'd remember if I'd met a Priscilla," she said.

  "So maybe the neighbors keep her hidden. The loony aunt in the attic."

  She looked at him skeptically.

  "Well, then, how would you explain the whole thing?" he asked.

  Her lovely wide eyes showed confusion. "I can't."

  "How about we ask Jessica?"

  "I don't think…"

  "Look, Laura, if you've been accusing your daughter of making Priscilla up, you're going to look pretty silly if there really is a Priscilla, don't you think?"

  Her eyes widened. "Good grief!"

  She hurried into the next room, which was apparently used as a den-cum-playroom. Carter followed her. The room was empty. Laura frowned and glanced at the Seth Thomas clock on the mantel. "Ten after six," she muttered. "Jess usually watches Gilligan's Island at this time of day. Fox is featuring reruns. Maybe she's fallen asleep upstairs."

  He followed her up the staircase, his fingers appreciating the satin smooth wood of the banister. She stopped outside the first door on the left. "This used to be my room," he said, feeling as excited as he had when he was a little boy. This was where he used to play… with Priscilla. Priscilla.

  His memories of her were bound up with this house, this room, he realized. "Priscilla must have been a baby-sitter, a nanny of some kind," he blurted out just as Laura opened the door.

  The room was large and airy. Apart from that, it didn't look at all as he'd remembered it. For one thing, the walls were a ghastly orchid color, obviously the work of the previous, color-blind tenant. Laura had improved it temporarily with pretty flowered curtains and bedspread and attractive child-size furniture. There was a large photograph on the small dressing table of an extraordinarily good-looking blond man in a tank top and shorts. Mr. Daniel, no doubt.

  The room had a lived-in look. Over by the big English wardrobe, a model village made of colored pieces of wood had been set up. Yellow plastic racetrack looped all over the place, supported here and there with piles of books. He and Priscilla had played in much the same way.

  Jessica was sitting on the cushioned bow-window seat. "That's a great track layout," he said admiringly. "You do good work."

  "Thank you," she said.

  The doll Carter had brought her was cradled in her arms, he noticed. "Priscilla says a doll is a good thing for a girl to play with," Jessica told her mother solemnly. "It's practice for when I'm a mother, she said." She lifted the doll and placed it against one shoulder, patting its back gently.

  Carter marveled at the instinct that prompted such an action.

  "I'm glad you've decided you like her," Laura said. She stepped carefully over the tracks, then sat down on the curved window seat next to her daughter and put an arm around her. "Jess, honey, I want you to tell me again about Priscilla. Maybe I haven't listened as well as I should have."

  "You haven't listened at all," Jessica said flatly.

  Laura winced. Nothing as devastating as the honesty of a child, Carter thought, then wondered why he felt he knew anything about children. Mostly he thought of them as nasty little noisy people with gummy hands who wanted to touch, pull, poke and pry into everything in his precious museum. He allowed them in only if they were accompanied by a very responsible adult. And even then, every employee was instructed to keep an eagle eye on their every move.

  "I'm listening now," Laura said.

  The room suddenly felt very warm to Carter. That seemed odd, considering the weather had been much cooler today. The warmth seemed to be coming from an area just to his left, and he somehow felt that he shouldn't look in that direction.

  How childish. Of course he could look. All the same, it took a real effort for him to turn his head. The air shimmered above the old Boston rocker in the corner. Was there a heat register there? He didn't think so. Yet the temperature was rising. He loosened his tie and ran a finger around his collar, then unfastened the top button of his shirt. The air in that particular corner seemed misty yet shot with color—iridescent color that shimmered like the reflection of a distant rainbow in a pool rippled by a passing breeze.

  "Priscilla's my friend," Jessica said to her mother. "She gets bored sometimes and gets into your stuff. She doesn't mean any harm. She just likes playing with it." The gamin little face was very solemn. "I asked her about your tools," she continued. "She said she hid them because she was afraid you were going to pull all the walls down and she wouldn't have any house left."

  Laura's voice was soft and loving, but it held a bewildered note. "You're saying Priscilla is in this house?"

  "Sure she is." Apparently running out of patience, Jessica slid off the window seat and put the doll on a little chair nearby. Standing very straight, her hands on her narrow hips, she looked directly at the corner where the effects of the light had caught Carter's eye. "I think you have to let my mom see you," she said in a very matter-of-fact voice. "You don't have to worry. She won't tell anyone about you."

  Laura's eyes widened with horror. Both hands rose to cover her mouth. Obviously she was afraid her daughter had lost her marbles. Which seemed entirely possible. For all that, Carter's gaze was drawn back to the Boston rocker.

  The odd shimmering was dancing all over it now, the way Saint Elmo's fire might dance on church steeples. Prisms? Were there prisms hanging in the window? He hadn't noticed any.

  There was an increasing density to the air that turned it first translucent, then opaque, then solid, with outlines slowly forming and flowing together. At the same time the color was intensifying, the first pale yellow being joined by blue to form a green that began to darken almost at once.

  It was like watching a Polaroid picture come to life, Carter thought with awe. A twentieth-century marvel, which, in this instance, had a nineteenth-century result. The woman who had slowly materialized in the Boston rocker was definitely of the nineteenth century. She was corseted and bustled, richly dressed in jade green, her small feet tightly encased in black buttoned boots, her face innocent of makeup, her long curly brown hair drawn softly back into a bun under a hat trimmed with fluffy feathers.

  She was smiling at him, her green eyes gleaming. Distantly, he heard Laura exclaim hoarsely in disbelief, but over that he heard the other woman's voice.

  "Hello, there, Carter, you're looking more like yourself today."

  He remembered th
at voice. Mischievous, lilting, it had filled his early childhood with laughter… and love.

  Priscilla.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Somehow, Carter had crossed the room without tripping over Jessica's racetracks. He was sitting on the curved window seat, holding on to Laura Daniel as if she was the only solid element in a universe gone mad. He had no memory of taking her in his arms. But there she was, clutching him just as desperately as he was clutching her. Some still-active portion of his brain noted that her body fitted very well against his, as though it belonged there.

  Stunned speechless, he gazed at the woman sitting perkily in the Boston rocker. She looked extremely smug, as though she were enjoying the spectacle of their combined shock.

  "Who are you? What are you?" Laura gasped.

  Her face had gone the color of buttermilk. Her gray eyes shone with a terror that was probably mirrored in his own.

  Looking perfectly composed and fearless, Jessica boosted herself onto the end of the bed and gestured at the woman in green. "This is my friend Priscilla, Mom."

  "How do you do," Priscilla said. "It's a pleasure to meet you at last, Laura, though of course I have seen quite a lot of you."

  "But you—you weren't there. Nobody was. And then you were and that's simply not…"

  "Not possible?" Priscilla asked, tilting her head. "Au contraire. It is perfectly normal behavior for a ghost."

  "A ghost?" Laura's voice was faint, but she was doing better than Carter. He'd apparently lost his voice altogether, along with his ability to think coherently.

  Priscilla beamed at Laura, her green eyes glowing. "A ghost. Or if you prefer, a specter, a phantasm, a spook." She twisted her mouth in a way that would once have been described as a moue. "I'm sorry, I have been watching too much television, I'm afraid. It has affected my speech."

  Apparently becoming suddenly aware that she was hanging on to Carter, Laura disengaged herself, looking embarrassed. "Television," she muttered. "Somebody keeps turning on Gilligan's Island."

  Priscilla nodded and smiled. "One of my favorite programs. I believe Jessica told you I was responsible?"

  Carter was stunned. She looked so alive.

  As though she'd felt the strength of Carter's thought, Priscilla glanced at him, rather coquettishly. "Cat got your tongue, Carter? You never used to be so shy."

  "I don't believe this is happening," Carter said to Laura. He had taken hold of her hand. He had to have something to hang on to now that she'd moved out of his arms. He could feel the pulse beating erratically in her wrist, the bumpy calluses on her palm.

  Maybe he was dreaming. But if he was, why could he also feel a slight draft coming through Jessica's bedroom window and smell the heady fragrance of roses coming in with it. Twisting around, he glanced down into the yard. Sure enough, there was a flower bed directly below. He heard a sea gull's mewling cry and saw the bird some distance away, riding the wind, wings outstretched. The sky was overcast now. In the distance, beyond the bluffs on which the town was built, he could see the Strait of Juan de Fuca gleaming like pewter. A couple of sailboats tacked here and there. A freighter was steaming west at a fair clip. No, it wouldn't be steaming nowadays, would it? What would it be? Dieseling?

  He recognized that his mind was in retreat.

  He turned back to see Jessica looking reproachfully at Priscilla.

  "You never said you were a ghost," she said.

  "I'm sorry, poppet," Priscilla said. "I could not risk you telling anyone there was a ghost in the house. As long as your mother thought I was your imaginary friend, I was safe." She looked sternly at Laura. "I had no intention of showing myself to you. I did so only to alleviate Jessica's distress. I do hope you won't do anything foolish, like summoning the gentlemen of the fourth estate."

  "The fourth…oh, the newspapers. Good Lord, no. I wouldn't want… they'd think I was crazy."

  "Which wouldn't necessarily stop them from publishing the story."

  "I assure you I will not call the media," Laura said firmly, then looked furtively around as if to make sure no one had overheard her making promises to a ghost.

  "I have learned to be cautious," Priscilla said. "Several years ago—" she squinted into the middle distance "—1933, I believe it was—I made the mistake of revealing myself to an adult. Before that I had shown myself only to children. But this woman seemed charming, and kind, always doing good for someone. It seemed possible she might become my friend. It was a great mistake. She immediately summoned a preacher and asked him to exorcise me. Have you any idea how painful exorcism can be? It was all quite unsettling."

  "How come you never told me you were a ghost?" Carter asked.

  "For the same reason," Priscilla said, her voice gentling. "You would have told your father—you told your father everything. He was a nice man, but one never knows whom one can trust. As it was, your father simply thought, like Laura, that you'd invented an invisible playmate. He told your mother it was highly imaginative of you." She glanced slyly at Laura. "People hadn't yet gotten in the habit of rushing children off to psychologists every time they seemed to be imagining something."

  Laura wasn't listening to her. She was looking questioningly at Carter, her fringed gray eyes enormous against her pale face. The pressure of her hand in his had increased minutely. He squeezed it gently.

  "Yes," he said. "She's my Priscilla. She lived here in this house when I was a child and she played with me as I imagine she's played with Jessica." He swallowed. "I guess I can't really say she lived here, can I?"

  "I did once," Priscilla said.

  "She's really good at draughts," Jessica said.

  Laura frowned. "Draughts?"

  "A board game," Priscilla said. "Jessica found it in a closet. You might know it better as checkers. It is similar to chess, but much simpler. Not too popular anymore. Like all the old games people used to play, it has given way to television." Her smile was as mischievous as Carter remembered it. "Not that I am criticizing television. I enjoy it very much." Her mouth twisted. "Except for movies about ghosts. They all get it wrong. All the same, the invention of television did a great deal to alleviate my boredom."

  "You get bored," Carter echoed, not quite able to accept the concept of a bored ghost. His voice still sounded rusty, he decided, but his brain was beginning to function again. The only problem was that it refused to accept the evidence right in front of his eyes.

  "I never was one to sit around and twiddle my thumbs," Priscilla said. "There are limits to what a ghost can do, however. For example, I can't flit around the town like Wee Willy Winkie. This house is my place—like an animal's territory—it belongs to me. I can go out as far as the street but no farther. If I try to stray too far, it's as if a large rubber band pulls me back." Smiling, she cocked her head, hat feathers dipping. "I've seen pictures on television of people jumping off bridges with cords attached to their persons. Bungee jumping, I believe it's called. My experience is like that."

  "Do you believe this is happening?" Carter asked Laura.

  She was still a little wild-eyed, but she sounded composed. "I have to. I pride myself on being a practical, intelligent woman. I see her, I hear her. I don't think my imagination is this peculiar and I've never had any reason to think I was insane. I might think I was hallucinating, except that you see her and hear her and Jessica sees her and hears her. So she must be there."

  He liked the charming little furrow that appeared above her nose when she frowned. She was looking at Jessica now. "Haven't I read about certain spirits attaching themselves to children… ?"

  Priscilla snorted in a very unladylike way. "You're talking about poltergeists," she said. "The very lowest of the low in the spirit world, in my opinion. Oh, there are those with worse behavior, but poltergeists just make mischief for mischief's sake, hurling stones and ornaments and bottles around, making books fall off shelves. What's the point?"

  "Have you always lived… stayed here?" Carter asked, hoping to deflect the le
cture.

  Priscilla smiled. "You might say I came with the house. My husband, Randall Burbage, commissioned this house to be built shortly before our marriage in 1888."

  "Eighteen eighty-eight," Laura marveled. "You're over a hundred years old."

  "It doesn't work that way," Priscilla said waspishly. "I'm twenty-four, the same age I was when I… was who I was. Do I look as if I'm over a hundred years old?"

  "You look exactly as you did thirty years ago," Carter said.

  Priscilla beamed at him. "I always will. That's one of the benefits."

  "What did you mean about the movies getting it all wrong?" Laura asked. She was leaning forward slightly, obviously fascinated by Priscilla now that the shock had worn off. She had let go of Carter's hand.

  Apparently, she had decided to believe in Priscilla's presence without reservation. Under the circumstances it would be rather difficult not to. His brain seemed to be in the process of acceptance, also. Adaptable things, brains.

  Priscilla was giving Laura's question solemn consideration. "I have seen movies where a ghost is present but supposedly only one person can see it. That is clearly ridiculous. Either one has materialized or not. And if one has materialized, one is visible."

  "How do you materialize?" Carter asked.

  "It's fairly simple, merely a question of assembling certain molecules of matter around oneself." She made a dismissive gesture with one small hand and shot him an impatient glance. "I'm not a scientist, Carter. I only know the process has something to do with memory. I must visualize what I looked like when I was last… myself and then I attain that likeness again. It is quite exhausting. Nevertheless, when I am done, I am solid and subject to the laws of logic. I cannot walk through walls, unless I dematerialize and rematerialize on the other side. I must open doors just as you do. That is why I rarely materialize. It's far more soothing to just be."

  "Are you really solid?" Carter asked.

  She rolled her eyes. "I thought you were listening."

  "May I touch you?"