Winter Oranges, Page 4

  No answer. Not a single sound. Not a gasp of surprise, nor the shuffle of feet hurrying across the floor.

  Jason frowned, debating. Finally, he tried the knob and found it unlocked.

  He threw the door open, stepping inside. The boy stood there in the center of the room, his eyes wide—not quite with surprise, though. He appeared downright elated.

  “Listen, you!” Jason said, “I don’t know what—”

  And suddenly, Jason realized what he was seeing—the boy. And the room. Specifically, the boy and the part of the room directly behind him, both at the same time, in a way that was utterly impossible.

  “Holy shit!” Jason backed up quickly, ramming into the doorframe, practically falling onto the landing. He took another step back, discovered too late there was nothing beneath his foot, and fell down the first few stairs, twisting his ankle and banging his knee before managing to catch himself on the banister. Still he stared, horrified and unbelieving at the boy, who now stood in the doorway of the guest room. He looked much as he had in the window—young and thin and pale, his skin almost translucent.

  No. Not almost translucent. Literally translucent. Everything from his baggy, high-waisted trousers and worn boots to his rough-woven white shirt and old-fashioned waistcoat, was not quite solid. Jason could see right through him to the cheap watercolor hanging over the bed. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it before—whether due to the reflection of the sun on the window, or whether his mind had simply refused to see it—but staring at the boy now, it was quite clear he wasn’t real.

  “You really are a ghost,” Jason gasped out, still clutching the banister with both hands.

  The boy shook his head, pointing behind him into the room, his lips moving as if he were talking, but no sound came out.

  “Is this a prank?”

  The boy frowned, shaking his head. He started speaking again, as mutely as before.

  Jason’s mind reeled, grasping at possibilities. “Are you a hologram? Are there cameras somewhere?” He wanted to look around for some, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the figure above him. “Who put you up to this?”

  The boy kept shaking his head, gesticulating with his hands, moving his lips.

  As horrified as he’d been, Jason’s alarm faded, made less urgent as the pain in his knee and ankle started to sink in. Was an interactive hologram somehow more plausible than a ghost? He didn’t think so. Whatever this was, he didn’t feel threatened. The apparition—or whatever the boy was—hadn’t moved from the doorway. He was still talking, gesticulating wildly, and Jason sighed and said, “I can’t hear you.”

  The boy stopped, blinking in shock, dumbstruck as the words sank in. He appeared to take a deep breath. Finally, his lips moved. Only two words, but between context and lip-reading, Jason understood. You can’t?

  Jason shook his head, rubbing at his sore ankle. “No.”

  The ghost slumped, crestfallen. He spoke slowly and deliberately, pointing at Jason and then at his own eyes, and then at himself. But you can see me?

  “Uh, yeah. I think we’ve established that.” Jason stood up, testing his weight on the twisted ankle. It didn’t feel great, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t done any real damage. He rubbed his bruised knee, still watching the boy at the top of the stairs, trying to make sense of it all.

  He’d always imagined ghosts to be white, but this one wasn’t. Yes, the boy’s skin was pale, but it was clearly a natural skin tone against his shirt. His pants were dark gray, his boots and waistcoat black. Jason searched the walls and the ceiling, still wondering if the boy was some type of projection, but he didn’t see any cameras. The technology for such an advanced hologram may have existed, but Jason doubted it came cheap. Even a tabloid chasing a sensational photo wouldn’t have the resources to put together such an elaborate hoax. And if they did, they sure wouldn’t waste it on JayWalk.

  The boy watched him, his eyes bright with hope. His lips moved, and he gestured behind him. Jason didn’t need to hear him to know he was being invited back into the guest room. It seemed absurd. Shouldn’t a ghost be trying to scare him? Yelling “Boo”? But no. Instead, he was inviting Jason inside, maybe for a nice spot of tea.

  Jason wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t lost his damn mind.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  The boy held out his hand, looking heartbroken. Looking desperate. His lips formed one simple word. Please.

  What did Jason have to lose? His life? His sanity? His peace of mind? He hadn’t felt too sure about any of those things to begin with. Hollywood and the press had been his reality since the age of eight. Now, at twenty-nine, the idea of living alone with a ghost didn’t seem as bad as facing the tabloids at the newsstand every time he ran out of toilet paper.

  “Okay,” he said, and the boy’s delight was obvious.

  Jason climbed the stairs gingerly. His ankle already felt a bit better, but he didn’t want to make things worse. He stopped on the landing, studying the apparition in front of him. Through all of it, the boy had remained right inside the frame of the door. Now, he backed away, allowing Jason to walk through.

  The space was much as he’d imagined it—a double bed in one corner, with a nightstand and a dresser nearby. A powder-blue couch and a coffee table formed a small sitting area near the window. A desk sat against the far wall, with a single wooden chair tucked underneath. Shelves hung above it, dotted with knickknacks. A door in the corner presumably led to a bathroom.

  Two things Jason hadn’t expected: there wasn’t a single pink flower in sight, and there was absolutely no evidence of habitation. No laundry lying about. No wrinkle in the bedspread. No papers or cell phones or computers on the desk. Not even a glass of water on the nightstand. The room felt as utterly barren as a cheap hotel room, except for this man—this apparition or whatever he was—who stood a few feet away, his hands clasped in front of his chest, grinning as if he could barely contain his excitement.

  “I must be losing my mind,” Jason said.

  The man frowned at him, shaking his head. He gestured toward the couch. Jason hesitated, and the man went first, crossing the room with strangely long steps that seemed out of sync with the distance he traversed. Jason was reminded of the Scooby-Doo cartoons he’d watched as a kid, the way the characters’ legs would spin madly as they ran, and yet the background behind them never seemed to keep pace. The man sank to the couch, although even that wasn’t quite right. He sank a bit too far, an inch or two of his backside disappearing into the cushion. It was as if he’d grasped the theory of sitting, but hadn’t quite mastered the art of stopping when his ghostly flesh hit solid matter.

  “You are a ghost.”

  The man shook his head, his shaggy dark hair flopping around his ears. He gestured to the other end of the couch. Jason lowered himself obediently, feeling as if he was doing the opposite of the apparition. Rather than sinking in, he was touching as little of the cushion as he could, ready to jump up and run at the first sign of—

  Of what?

  Of this ghost suddenly turning hostile? The idea seemed laughable.

  “Who are you?” Jason asked.

  Lips moved and hands flew wildly, but no sound emerged. Jason held up his hand to stop what was clearly a rush of silent words.

  “What’s your name?”

  This time, the ghost kept it simple. One syllable that even Jason could discern.

  “Ben?” Jason asked.

  The spirit nodded, grinning broadly, squirming in delight. He held his hands out to Jason, made a give me gesture. His meaning was clear: Your turn.

  “Jason.”

  Jason. He could read the name on the boy’s lips. Ben gestured around them, at the room, toward the window, pointing toward the house. He raised his eyebrows at Jason in an obvious question.

  “I bought the house,” Jason said.

  Ben nodded, made the give me gesture again. Go on.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  One si
lent word, carefully formed, easy to lip-read. Anything.

  “Umm. Well. I used to live in California. I decided I needed a break, you know? So I bought this house.” Wish somebody had told me it was haunted.

  Another go on motion from Ben.

  “I’m . . .” Jason hesitated. “I’m an actor.”

  Ben’s eyes widened in interest.

  “But things haven’t been so good these last few years, so I’m taking a break.”

  Ben nodded encouragingly, and Jason suddenly felt uncomfortable, the way he had the couple of times he’d tried counseling. He’d never gotten the hang of talking about himself.

  “So, uh . . . you live here?”

  Ben’s head tilted back slightly, his mouth open and his eyes bright. He was laughing, and Jason couldn’t help but smile back.

  Ben made a noncommittal gesture in response to the question—sort of a shrug and a casual wave of his hand. Something that Jason translated to, I guess you could say that.

  “But you’re not dead? You’re not a ghost?”

  Another shrug, but this time while shaking his head. Watching his lips, Jason thought he said, I don’t think so.

  “Okay. When were you born?”

  Ben smiled, seemingly pleased to have a question he could answer. He answered, but Jason’s lip-reading skills weren’t enough to get him through, so the boy held up a finger. Jason took that to mean one minute, or wait, but then Ben held up all five fingers of one hand, plus three of another, and Jason realized he was trying to spell it out.

  “Eight?”

  Ben shook his head. Waved his hands back and forth as if erasing a blackboard.

  Understanding dawned. “Start over.”

  Ben held up a single finger.

  “One.”

  A nod. Then the next one.

  “Eight.”

  Next number.

  “Four.”

  Ben nodded, then made a circle with his hand.

  “Eighteen forty?” Jason asked, incredulous. “You must be joking.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “You were born in 1840?”

  Ben nodded.

  “But . . .” Jason glanced around, once again sure he was the victim of a prank, but there were no cameras in the room. Outside the window, clouds scuttled across the brazen cornflower sky. Beneath his sweaty palms, the blue upholstery of the couch felt stiff and prickly. A bead of sweat trickled down his side. “Oh my God,” he said, standing up. “I’m losing my mind.”

  Ben rose too, holding his hands out as if to calm Jason, his eyes full of alarm. He was talking again, and Jason didn’t need lip-reading to know Ben was begging him not to go.

  “How?” Jason asked. “How is this possible?”

  Ben pointed to the shelves above the desk. Jason followed his finger, found a music box, a couple of hardbound books that appeared to be Reader’s Digest Condensed titles, an empty glass vase, a snow globe, a heart-shaped box no bigger than the palm of his hand, and several ceramic kittens romping around a miniature ball of yarn.

  “What?” Jason asked. “I don’t understand.”

  Ben crossed the hardwood floor with his cartoon-character steps, waving his hand for Jason to follow. Once they reached the desk, he pointed directly to a single item on the shelf.

  “A snow globe?” Jason asked.

  Ben nodded excitedly.

  Jason examined it. The base looked heavy. It was almost bigger than the globe, and made of silver that had long since tarnished. Inside the globe sat a tiny snow-capped cabin. A couple of poorly formed evergreens stood to each side of it. The entire ornament seemed old, not just due to the tint of the silver, but because the scene inside was so simple, and yet so clumsily done, the trees clunky and cartoonish, the colors dingy and faint.

  Jason glanced again at Ben, who pointed to himself, and then to the globe.

  “This is yours?”

  Ben hesitated. Nodded, but made his strange shrugging gesture at the same time, making his affirmation seem unsure. He frowned, then shook his head in frustration. He pointed again to himself, and to the globe.

  “You haunt the globe?”

  Ben smirked, shaking his head. Pointed more emphatically to the globe and the winter scene it contained.

  “You’re . . .” Jason hardly dared say it. “You’re in the globe?”

  Yes! Ben bounced, clapping his hands, once or twice before settling impatiently, his eyes locked imploringly on Jason as if he expected him to do something. As if waiting for his reaction to such an outlandish claim.

  “You want me to believe,” Jason asked, his voice shaking, “that you’re inside this snow globe?”

  Ben nodded again. Said something that might have been, It’s true.

  “In here?” Jason picked up the globe and shook it hard, incredulous, watching Ben for some kind of reaction. Watching to see if he wavered or shook.

  Nothing.

  Jason kept his eyes on Ben and slowly turned the snow globe upside down in his hand. Little pieces of white fluff floated lazily away from the cabin, toward the glass sky. He shook the globe, swirling the fluff around. “Shouldn’t you be falling on your head or something?”

  Ben laughed, shaking his head, his lips moving in a silent explanation, but Jason had had enough. Whatever this was—haunting, hoax, or horribly strange dream—he wanted no part of it.

  “This is crazy,” he said, dropping the globe onto the desktop with a bit more force than was necessary. “I’m leaving.”

  Ben gestured madly as he followed Jason to the door, his lips moving, his eyes pleading. Jason knew Ben was begging him to stay, but he didn’t care. Jason slammed the door to the guest room on his way out for good measure. When he checked behind him, he was glad to find Ben hadn’t followed.

  He locked the door to the garage and crossed quickly to the house, refusing to look back. Refusing to meet Ben’s eyes.

  He wasn’t sure if ghosts could cry or not.

  He wasn’t all that anxious to find out.

  For a while, it seemed his ploy had worked. When Jason hazarded a glance at the garage window later that night, nobody was there.

  Good. Maybe the ghost had left.

  Or maybe he’d never been there at all. Maybe Jason had imagined the entire thing. Maybe he’d dreamed it or . . .

  Maybe he really had lost his mind.

  Of those three options, the dream was by far the most comforting. Unfortunately, it was also the least likely. The one thing in the whole mess Jason was sure of was that he hadn’t been asleep.

  Either his garage was haunted, or he’d just experienced a serious psychotic break from reality.

  He slept fitfully. Ben drifted in and out of his dreams, sometimes simply watching him, sometimes begging for help. Once, he morphed into Dylan, who told him he needed to relax. Maybe have a drink or take a Valium. Another time, Ben turned into Sheriff Ross in old-west sheriff attire, complete with Stetson and spurs. She told him to “Get along, lil’ doggy, ’cause we don’t need any Hollywood trouble ’round these here parts.” He woke up feeling like he’d barely slept at all.

  He didn’t look out his window to see if Ben had reappeared. He took a long, hot shower instead, mulling it over. It was time to deal with his haunted garage in the most logical way he could. So after getting dressed, he settled down on the couch with his laptop and a cup of coffee and started to search.

  First, he searched “psychotic break.” The results varied from mildly alarming to horrifying. Delusions could be a symptom of any number of disorders, including schizophrenia. They could also be the result of a medical condition, like epilepsy or an electrolyte imbalance, or they could be substance-induced. The latter was the one option he felt comfortable ruling out immediately. Despite what the tabloids reported, his drug-using days were well behind him. The strongest thing he’d had in years was a glass of well-aged, single-malt whiskey.

  Still, that left plenty of scary options. But as he read, he found himself dismissing
one possibility after another. The more frightening mental disorders didn’t generally appear out of the blue. A person didn’t wake up fine one day, and then start talking to imaginary people the next. It was usually more of a descent into delusions than a sudden fall. The exceptions were people who suffered a severe injury or traumatic event, but that certainly didn’t apply to him. He had no history of seizures, and his research into the other suggested medical causes led him to lists of symptoms he knew he wasn’t having. No dizziness, muscle cramps, numbness, abdominal pain, or blood in his urine. Most sources of course concluded that only a doctor could make the final diagnosis.

  Should he try to find a doctor in Coeur d’Alene or Spokane? Should he make an appointment and ask to be tested for everything from high blood pressure to sudden-onset psychosis?

  Definitely not.

  He turned to his other option: Ben must be a ghost. But where to begin?

  He typed “Can a snow globe be haunted?” into Google. He found several accounts of people whose snow globes suddenly started playing music by themselves, which was generally attributed to ghosts or spirits in the house, but nothing like what he was experiencing.

  Next, he tried “Can an item be haunted?” This time, he found link after link telling him that yes, it was possible. He began hopefully searching through the answers. In most cases, people reported strange events happening after a specific object was brought into their house—lights going on and off, doors opening and closing, things being moved about, strange smells or noises. Sometimes people felt an aura of evil, or inexplicable cold patches in otherwise warm rooms. A couple reported seeing specters, but none of them reported an interactive, full-body apparition like Jason had witnessed.

  That wasn’t all. The most obvious and telling difference between these people’s accounts and Jason’s experience boiled down to a single word: fear. These people were afraid. They spoke of “dark energy” and “angry spirits,” none of which described Ben.

  Jason drummed his fingers on his keyboard, staring blankly out his living room window as he debated. From his seat on the couch, he could see the door at the end of the cobblestone path, but he couldn’t see the second floor.