A Ghost of Fire

  Chapter Twenty Two

  I returned home from work in the morning and threw my keys across the room where they smacked against the wall and dropped between the wall and the futon. I slammed the door behind me and stalked into the kitchen. The refrigerator door jerked open in my hand and I searched to find something to help me cool off. There was nothing I wanted in there so I slammed the fridge door closed and went into the living room.

  I had been fully prepared and, in retrospect I believe, eager in some ways to come face to face with the dead who still haunted the place. Now that I knew the connection between the dreams I’d been having and the spirits I’d encountered I felt I had been let into a great secret and that I had an edge, an advantage. Despite all this nothing happened. It was a completely uneventful shift. No ghosts, no visions, no strange sounds or the smell of smoke.

  The irony of this is that I would have given anything just a few weeks earlier to have a guarantee of such an uneventful time at work. Now I was practically bouncing on my feet waiting for something, anything at all to happen and nothing did. Ah, I thought, the times…they are a-changin’.

  As often happens with childish outbursts we sooner or later figure out what idiots we are being and settle down to think things through rationally. I found my futon and planted myself there. I closed my eyes and drew in and expelled a few long, cleansing breaths.

  “Okay,” I announced to the empty apartment, “it’s time to be a grownup. What do I do next?” The phone rang startling me out of my newly acquired concentration. “Looks like I answer the phone next.”

  I went over to the thing and picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Steve, this is Trent,” the professor’s excited voice came over the line. “How are you? Did you make it through work okay?” Trent knew I had to go back and waited for a report. After we had made the discovery about the history of the site upon which the Spectra building sat we speculated about what else might happen there. After all, I had certainly been through enough there to anticipate some kind of activity this late in the game.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Absolutely nothing happened.”

  “Wait a minute. Nothing?” He sounded almost as disappointed as I was.

  “Trust me; nobody’s more surprised than me. But listen to this: before I left the apartment I had another dream but this time I was awake when it happened.”

  I heard him suck in some air. “Really? Tell me about it.”

  I ran down the whole story relaying every detail I could recall up until the end. I didn’t want to tell him the part about himself, Katie and the man I suspected to be Stuart Vox being burned up by the dark man. I also told him how I had seen the ghost standing in a crowd on a street corner as I drove home after I dropped Katie off.

  “Whoa,” he said after I finished, “that’s big. You know it’s sort of funny, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” he continued, “most reports you hear about paranormal activity are centralized around a single location. I mean, you do have some of that here but this guy also seems to get around quite a bit.” Then he added, “As does the little girl you talk about, too, right?”

  “That’s true,” I said ponderously, “So what? Is that important do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Trent said. “It could be. I know this is going to sound weird but maybe we’re not dealing with a normal kind of paranormal. Do you know what I mean?”

  “If the last month or so of my life is any indication I don’t think ‘normal’ is a category I’m ever going to deal with again. But maybe you’re on to something.” I thought about the night of work I had and the vision just before it. I wondered then what would happen if these things went unchecked. How far out would they go? How much damage could they do?

  “Hey,” Trent interrupted my train of thought, “there’s something else. I really want to get together with you this afternoon. Are you free for lunch?”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I’ve got a meeting with my dad’s lawyer. Long story, don’t ask. Anyway I really need to keep the appointment but I’m more than happy to get together with you afterward. Is there anything about it you can tell me now?”

  “Well,” I heard the hesitation in his voice, “I really want to share it in person and after what you told me about the early incident with your answering machine I’d rather not say anything over the phone. It sounds paranoid, I know, but we don’t know who might be listening.” I understood his concern and shared it. There were thousands of questions left unanswered and no one to fill us in on them.

  “I hear you,” I said. “I’ll give you a call after I get done with the lawyer.” As an after thought I added, “I better give Katie a call too. She needs to be in on this.” Trent affirmed the idea, we finished the conversation and said goodbye. I called Katie and left a message for her in which I explained briefly what had happened between the time I dropped her off the day before and the conversation I’d just finished with Trent.

  I looked down and noticed there was a message waiting for me on the machine. When I pushed the button the voice of Stuart Vox came out and rattled off the time and place for our meeting. I grabbed paper, pencil and replayed the message so I could be sure to get everything down. When I finished I erased the message.

  With that out of the way I took a shower, got dressed and went about the apartment tidying up a bit so it wouldn’t look like a total bachelor pad when Trent and Katie came over later. I kept an eye on the clock to make sure I wouldn’t work my way through my meeting time with Vox. When the cleaning reached my level of satisfaction I headed for the door. I stopped with my hand on the knob and looked back into the apartment. It felt like something important was missing or out of place.

  I checked my pockets and felt for all the essentials: wallet – check. Keys – check. I felt something tell me I wasn’t all good in the ‘key’ department. I pulled out the key chain and saw everything seemingly in place as it always was. Then I remembered the one key I kept separate, the one I unearthed at work. At that moment it seemed very important that I should have that key with me. Beyond that there was no ready explanation. I decided to obey the instinct, retrieved the key and put it on the key chain with the rest of them. It looked quite out of place.

  I dropped the mess of metal in my pocket and walked out the door feeling a sense of preparedness. My thoughts turned to the lunch meeting ahead and how I would navigate the difficult waters of talking with the lawyer without letting him in on the big secret. The plan of avoidance didn’t sit right with me, however, and I remembered the last vision I had.

  In the dim halls of the hospital the dark spirit held three people captive and the more I thought about it the more I became convinced the third was indeed Stuart Vox. I knew once I walked into the restaurant the man I would meet would be the one I had already seen in advance during the vision.

  Not too much later across town I pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant I’d never dream of going to on my paycheck. I might have gone with the valet parking but I didn’t want to let the keys out of my sight. “It won’t kill you to walk the extra thirty feet or so,” I said. “And even if it did,” I said with plenty of sarcasm, “at least you know you’ll have lots of company.” I got out of the car and looked at the landscaping and then the shining exterior of the mirrored windows. The stone work was beautiful and a man in uniform stood outside, his only job to open the door. It was an impressive piece of architecture. “Well,” I said to myself, “at least he’s smart enough to charge my dad well.”

  Inside was even more stunning. Off to one corner a man played live music on a grand piano and the wait staff wore black and white. They darted about like worker bees, all purpose with no personality. I told myself I could never be comfortable in such a place. I definitely wasn’t comfortable in that moment.

  A sharp looking woman in deep red stood behind a reservation station appraising me. I wore the same suit I had worn to my job interview at Spectra
which I knew was fairly cheap by the standards of such a dining establishment. I moseyed on over to her and told her whom I was to meet for lunch. She consulted her registration book and found Vox’s name. She then led me to an empty table which was fine because I was yet a few minutes early. I took my seat and a menu.

  When I looked inside the menu I nearly lost my sanity. There were things in there I would never eat for prices I would never pay. There were also several things I wouldn’t have eaten even if I were paid to. I knew the lawyer would probably spring for lunch which really meant my dad would get stuck with the bill and so I didn’t let the inflated prices bother me too much. My primary concern was to find something palatable meaning something that I wouldn’t have eaten on a dare years before when I was still living in a college dorm.

  “Classy joint like this at least ought to have a decent prime rib, am I right?” came the voice I only knew from over the phone. I turned in the seat and saw Stuart Vox in all his self-confident glory standing behind me watching me not enjoy the menu. He appeared precisely as he did in the vision I’d had the night before. Here was a man of reason, or so he projected.

  “No offense,” I said jovially, “and you may not understand this but I ate at this barbeque place in Rochester once and everything else seems to have left me cold after that. But what are you going to do?” By the momentary surprise which registered on his face I guessed not many people gave a come back to his quips. After a nearly imperceptible pause he laughed loudly and shook his head.

  “I think I’m going to like working with you, Steve. Stuart Vox,” he said in introduction, extending his hand. “Pleased to meet you at last.” I stood and accepted his hand, shook it once and sat back down.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Vox.” He walked to the other side of the small table and sat. He picked up the menu and flipped through it, hardly stopping to read any of the words and unceremoniously tossed the thing onto the table. I raised an eyebrow. “Already know what you’re having?”

  “Yeah,” he said sounding bored, “something red with most of the blood still in it. But what I really want,” he said changing the subject, “is to get to the heart of James Price and rip it out with my bare hands. To do all that, Steve, I need you. I need everything you know about the guy. I need everything from the first time you bumped into the guy to the last. But first,” he paused and pulled a file out of his black leather bag, “I need you to fill out some boring paperwork.” He dropped the folder in front of me and opened it to the first of several pages.

  I leafed through the packet of papers overwhelmed. “This is crazy,” I said.

  “It’s a crazy world,” Vox said. “Paperwork is the least of it. Bombs going off in libraries is a few clicks above that.” I looked up at him from the papers in puzzlement at this. He read the confused expression and said, “You haven’t heard?”

  “I guess I haven’t. What now?” I asked suspiciously. I didn’t like where this was going.

  “Yeah, some nutcase set off a bomb in one of the libraries across town. Killed someone, one of the librarians I think.” I connected the dots instantly. It was the librarian who helped us find the book who was killed. I just knew it. But I didn’t want to dwell on that topic now so I allowed the conversation to move on.

  “There are some seriously twisted people out there,” I said. When I asked him about the packet he went into lawyer mode and explained each page as we went through it. I signed on lines and asked questions. It went on this way for a good long while. During the process we ordered our food, received it and began to eat. He had to explain a couple of things a few different ways before I understood, or at least got the gist of what they were about.

  When the paper work was complete we both relaxed a bit.

  “So, Steve,” Stuart said nonchalantly, “why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself? What’s new besides the stuff you need me for?” He was looking down at his steak making a valiant effort to cut the thing as he asked this. He was trying to feel me out for something. I wondered if maybe he did this with all of his clients. But maybe he doesn’t, I thought. I tried my best to conceal the surge of anxiety which rose up in me. The last thing I needed in my life was one more person to get in on the fun.

  “Not much at all. Other than being attacked by wild stock brokers and miraculously surviving car accidents I lead a pretty boring life. I work the late shift as a janitor for a data processing company, I love to read books, I indulge in fast food a bit more often than I probably should and I live in a studio apartment I scrape by to afford. That pretty much sums me up.”

  Vox listened intently as I talked only looking up occasionally from his steak. He put a bite in his mouth and began to chew. As he did so he looked up, but not directly at me. His eyes squinted a bit and strayed off to the right not seeming to lock on anything specific. He nodded his head as he chewed as if processing and agreeing with what he heard. Finally as he swallowed he looked right in my eyes. The look on his face unsettled me. It must have been the way large predators look at small furry woodland creatures just before they pounce. This was the look he must have leveled at so many people on the stand as he brought down the hammer. This was why my father employed him. In that moment I felt the tiniest amount of sympathy for James Price when he would have to face this man in court. It would not be pretty.

  He began, “Those are all very lovely and neatly packaged little deflections. They tell me a lot of boring facts but they tell me very little about you. Don’t be offended, Mr. Nicholas…”

  “My father is Mr. Nicholas,” I interrupted, “you can call me Steve if it’s not too much trouble.”

  He smiled, “Yeah, see, there it is. There you are. We all really come out with just a little help from provocation, don’t we? But as I was saying, don’t be offended. This is what I do and how I work. All those things you said aren’t who you are Steve. Those are all the bars in the cage that’s holding you back. I can tell you’re hiding something from me, Steve. That’s my calling. I read people like you read books. And those aren’t what I’m reading from you right now. There’s something else going on that’s bothering you. And it’s not this court case. Whenever you talk about the case you seem fine. But when I ask about how things are in general with your life you get all edgy. Now out with it.”

  There was clearly no point in pretending like I didn’t know what the lawyer was talking about. He was too clever for me to pull the wool over his eyes at this point in the game. I knew that I needed a different strategy.

  “Well you’re right, Mr. Vox…”

  “Mr. Vox is my father. Call me Stuart if you can manage it.” He smiled at his counter move.

  “Touché,” I said. “You’re right, Stuart, I am hiding something but it’s not something I’m willing to talk about. I’m not under oath and it’s not really something that has any bearing on this case of yours.”

  “Ours. You mean, ‘this case of ours’,” he corrected me.

  “Right. ‘Ours.’ But no matter how you slice it it’s irrelevant to the case.” Of course the truth had a very direct bearing on the case but there were all kinds of implications I wasn’t ready to start sifting through regarding that.

  “One thing you’ll learn about me,” Vox responded, “is that I’m one very persistent bastard. You can either tell me now or watch me find out somehow. I can’t tell you how it will happen. I just seem to have a knack for finding things out. It’s your choice.” He sat back in his seat and appraised me as a king would appraise a rival army from atop a fortified parapet.

  I thought about it. What do I really have to lose by spilling the bare minimum? I wondered.

  “To hell with it,” I said. “Do you believe in ghosts?” This time Vox was the one who was unprepared.

  “Do I what? Is that some kind of metaphor or something?”

  “No. It’s a clear question. Do you believe in ghosts?” This time I sat and watched him mentally retreat a bit from the conversation probably so he could regroup his thought
s. He sensed some kind of verbal trap though there wasn’t one there.

  “No, I can’t say I do, Steve. Why do you ask?”

  “I ask because I’m being haunted by ghosts. Are you happy now?”

  “I still don’t get it. I can see you’re telling me the thing you’ve been trying to hide but I don’t understand what you mean.” He was stumped for once. I wondered how many of his fellow lawyers could say they held the distinction of having stumped their colleague in such a fashion any time recently.

  “I don’t mean anything other than what I’m saying. There are real ghosts and they are really haunting me. It’s really messing up my life at the moment, I might add.”

  “Huh,” he said. “There it is.” Then he added, “No, I guess I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I don’t need you to.” Then there came an awkward silence. Finally I said, “Do you still want to represent me?’

  “Yeah,” he said without hesitation. “Why not? I don’t have to look behind myself to check for spooks, do I?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Then we’re good. Just don’t bring that up in court or we could have some serious problems. Price won’t be the only one to look crazy.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Good.” He stood up and grabbed the check. “Look Steve, I don’t believe there’s a boogie man hiding in anyone’s closet. Not unless you count me, of course. By the time this is over Price will wish he were haunted only by ghosts. I’ll stay in contact.” We exchanged a little more polite conversation and then were both on our way.