Dagger Key and Other Stories

Of course he had his doubts. Doubts assailed him as he drove back to the cabin. There must be an explanation other than the obvious. A twin sister, an actress hired to play a part. Something. But that was ludicrous, soap opera-ish. The idea of a ghost was much more logical, and what did that say about the world? That the occult could seem more rational than the mundane. Yet he suspected that he must not believe it. If he did he would be more frightened of returning to the lake; he would want to run into the cabin, scoop up his belongings and be gone. Or was it that he was half a ghost himself? So diminished and deadened by his sins, he was accessible to death’s creatures, immune to their terrors. This struck him with the force of truth, and he tried to dredge up some awful fear hidden momentarily from sight, a mortal terror that would humanize him. He conjured new images of Grace. Imagined himself in bed with a corpse, a skull filled with maggots, a mummified tongue. But she was none of those things. Whatever the physics of her substance, it was akin to his own. When he saw her, he thought, maybe then he’d be afraid. Now it was all speculative, but when he saw her…that would be the test of his humanity. Then he’d know if she was too real for him, or if he was sufficiently unreal to be real for her.

The lake had gone a deep ocean blue under the prison sky, sluggish waves piling in to scour the shingle, and the boughs of the evergreens lifted with the hallucinatory slowness of undersea life. The cabin looked forlorn, a shabby relic. Grace was standing among the trees behind it, watching the road as he pulled up. Like a tiny figure placed in the corner of a landscape to lend perspective and a drop of color. He sat in the car, waiting for her to call out, but she remained silent. He climbed halfway out, one foot on the ground, one on the floorboards, and stared at her across the roof of the car. In her jeans and plaid jacket, she looked entirely ordinary. He wanted her to be real. Whether ghost or flesh-and-blood, it made no difference so long as she was real. As he walked toward her, she folded her arms and ducked her head. He stopped a few feet away, thinking that he would see death in her; but she was only herself. Mouth held tightly. Eyelids lowered. He started to frame a question, but could not come up with one that didn’t sound absurd. Finally he said, “I know what happened to you.”

“Do you?” She gave an unhappy laugh. “I’m not sure I do.” Coppery strands of hair drifted across her face—she did not bother to brush them aside.

“You died,” he said. “Two years ago.” Unable to speak for a second, he put a hand to his brow his fingers trembled. “How’s it possible…for you and me…?”

“I’m not an expert on the subject,” she said with irritation. “I’ve only done it the once.”

“But we can touch each other. That’s…It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t understand how it happened. When you put your hand on me, the first time, down by the water…I felt it. That’s all I know.” She shrugged. “I’m amazed you can even see me. No one else does, I don’t think.”

“You were worried about Broillard seeing you. The other day on the beach.”

“That’s how I react to him. I don’t go, ‘Oh, he can’t see me.’ I just react.”

The wind poured through the trees, drowning out every other sound, and Shellane turned up the collar of his jacket. He found himself considering Grace’s edges, hoping to determine if they wavered or flickered or displayed any other sign of the uncanny. Which they did not. And yet there was something about her. That luminous quality he had first observed down by the water. With the gray sky above and trouble in the air, she should have looked pale and drawn; but she still had that glow, that eerie vitality, and he thought now this must be a symptom of her unnatural state. The desolation he’d felt beside the grave returned. He had an impulse to hurry back to the car, but his feet were rooted.

“Avery told me,” he said. “I had a talk with him about the way he treated you, and he told me.”

“You must have frightened him. For all his bullying, Avery’s a very frightened man.”

“I was tempted to kill the son-of-a-bitch.”

She let out a dismayed sigh. “I wanted you to. That’s why I told you that stuff about him. For a long time, getting back at him was all I thought about.”

Some ducks that had been floating by the margin of the shore flapped up from their rest and beat against the wind toward the far end of the lake. Grace watched them go. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hated him so much.”

“And now you don’t?”

“No, I still hate him. But it doesn’t seem as important.”