wheeling Norman back to his room after breakfast when Nurse Magill called to him from the top of the stairs that led to the nursing station. She wanted him to go on an immediate errand for her. She turned her back to Norman to talk to Nurse Carruthers who was behind the desk. Norman felt Reepicheep squirm out of his pocket and run down his leg. Norman looked at the little mouse. He winked. Norman nodded, and saluted him. Norman watched him crawl up the newel post and race up the banister toward the top.
The machine gun rattle of Nurse Magill’s conversation ended in a screech. She jumped backward as the small gray mouse launched himself at her bosom. The open staircase was behind her. She tumbled down the stairs, head first, striking her head on each stair with a horrible crunching sound. At the bottom she opened her eyes and stared at Norman. He was close enough to see the glitter fade from her icy green eyes as they stared, unseeing, at the ceiling.
He also saw Reepicheep in the corpse’s cleavage. He bent over and reached out a finger to Reepicheep. Reepicheep reached a paw out to his finger. Reepicheep touched Norman’s finger, then crawled into Norman’s hand. Norman put his hand in his pocket and stared vacantly at the unmoving nurse.
Nurse Carruthers came running down the stairs, and almost fell herself. She was screaming for John as she ran. She knelt beside Nurse Magill’s still form and tried to render aid. When John came, she said to him, “Take Mr. Holliwell to his room, then get a doctor.”
John got behind Norman’s chair and wheeled him to his room. As John helped Norman into bed he said, “Terrible accident, Mr. Holliwell. Try to put it out of your mind. I’d forget all about it, if I was you.” John helped Norman out of his robe and into his bed. He gently laid the robe on the floor. “I’ll hang this up later,” he said.
Norman looked over at Evers’ bed. His body was gone, and his bed stripped. The brush and comb he had used were also gone. “Too much dying, this morning,” John said, following his glance. “If I was a certain mouse, I’d hide in the garden for a while.” Then John went out.
Norman saw Reepicheep creep out of his robe and saluted him. Reepicheep returned the salute, then scurried across the floor and into a hole in the baseboard. Norman never saw him again.
Ghost in the Grove
It was near sundown when I stopped cutting wood and straightened up to stretch. The mist was wrapping gray ribbons around the eucalyptus trunks and the sky over the western hills was turning pink. I laid down my bow saw and looked up into the trees. I saw a set of faintly glowing green teeth near one of the trees. This startled me, a little. I’d seen strange lights in the grove before, but nothing quite like this.
Lips, a nose and eyes showed up, floating near the teeth. Next, the face filled in behind the teeth, a beard showed. Then his body appeared, dressed in a cutaway coat and fancy pants. He glowed inside with a pale green light that showed through his clothing. His feet floated near the branch he was sitting on. The branch, like most eucalyptus branches, was nearly vertical, so the figure was sitting bolt upright in a horizontal position. I laughed. He blinked solemnly at me.
“Good evening, sir,” I called up to him, trying to control my laughter. “Who are you?”
“What is the cause of your unseemly merriment, young man?” His voice was hollow, like he was speaking into a fishbowl. He wagged a finger at me. “Do control yourself. When a deceased ancestor visits, the occasion ought to be treated with gravity. It is an important event.”
“I meant no offense, honorable deceased ancestor,” I said as soberly as I could manage, “but you are sitting at right angles to the vertical. Your placement does detract from the solemnity of the occasion.” He wrinkled his forehead. I guessed he was trying to figure out what I meant by right angles to the vertical.
“You are at right angles to gravity,” I said.
“Oh. One loses one’s sense of gravity in the grave,” he said. His inner glow turned pink, and almost blended into the sunset. He wobbled around a little, then righted himself and stood on a ribbon of fog. He leaned his elbow against the branch. He was about three inches off mark, though, so that his elbow stuck out beyond the branch. I kept my face nearly straight.
“Am I now correctly oriented with respect to gravity?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Which ancestor are you?”
“Possibly yours. I am Sampson Mercer,” he said; “I bought this place in fifty-two from Gutierrez. Gutierrez took it from the Indians. Beautiful place then, grass as high as my head when I was on a horse lying down. Who are you? Are you one of my descendants?”
“I am Jim Hooker. I’m not your descendant. I married your youngest great-great-granddaughter, Molly Ann.”
“You’re already married? How long?”
“About seven years."
“Drat and fustication!” He was turning purple this time. Gold sparks shot through him. “I’m late again,” he muttered.
“What do you mean, late again?”
“Last time I materialized in the ‘Ought-Six Quake. I was trying to make it for the turning of the century six years earlier. I always wanted to see a century change. I neglected to materialize my trousers that time. Fortunately I was a bit off the mark, and landed in San Francisco. A number of the living were rather deshabille (he pronounced it “deeshabble”) at the same time, and I caused no comment.”
“In seven years,” he said, his discomfort obvious from the black dots floating in his apparition, “I presume you have made your marriage complete?”
I took a moment to understand that he was asking if we had consummated our union.
“Yes,” I said, “we did that first thing.”
“Oh.” He looked a little sad. “Quick work, young man, quick work.” His glow dimmed. “I suppose these things take some time.” Some other thought hit him, because he began to brighten up and glow with a healthier looking green.
“Do you know the name of your great-great-grandmother?”
“Yes, her married name was Lucy May Martin. I don’t know what her maiden name was.”
“Where did she live, do you know?”
“Mostly Kansas. I think, but I’m not sure of this, that she came from Kentucky.”
“Knob Creek area?”
“I really don’t know, sir. Kentucky is as close as I can come.”
“Martin was her husband’s name?”
“Yes.”
“It could be. The Law of Compensation works like that. My best boyhood friend was named Martin.”
He was puzzling over something. I waited for him to tell me why he asked questions about my ancestors. My neck was getting sore from looking fifty feet up in the air.
“Sir,” I said to him.
He snapped at me, “What is it, young man? You have interrupted my thinking.”
“I wonder if you could come down out of the tree. I very much approve of looking up to one’s ancestors-in-law but my neck is stiff, and I think I can be properly respectful even when you are on the ground.”
He grimaced. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “I’m out of practice with my levitation, not to mention progressive and retrograde motions.” He shut his eyes and twisted his face, the right half of it. I let myself grin while he couldn’t see it. It was quite a relief. Suddenly he shot a hundred and fifty feet to the top of the tree. If his outline hadn’t glowed I’d have lost him in the fog. I almost laughed out loud again. He was sitting right in the middle of the biggest buzzard in the grove, the one I call Old Crotchety. Old Crotchety was asleep, and didn’t notice Sampson.
“Will that do?” he asked.
“You went up, not down, sir."
“Drat and fustication! Let me think how to reverse this. How far down are you?”
“About two hundred feet, I think.”
“I’ll try” he shouted to me. He said the "try" in a loud voice as he went past my suffering eardrums. He came to a halt in the ground up to his knees.
>
“There,” he said, “right on the button.”
“Very close,” I said. He ignored my equivocation.
Now that he was close, I could see that looked only a little older than the portrait of him we had hanging in our bathroom. I should explain that we live in a mobile home. Everybody else in my wife’s family had a reason they couldn’t hang this portrait of Sampson. Sampson had looked right into the camera when the photographer snapped the picture, so he stares straight at everyone in any room where it hangs. My wife’s guilt saddled us with it. Its frame must weigh twenty pounds. The only stud I could find that was strong enough to hold it was in our bathroom. Most visitors to our place stay in the bathroom no longer than necessary. There are some benefits to ancestral portraits.
“Young man, I had planned to investigate you before you married my great-great-granddaughter, but,” he shook his head, “it’s too late for that. You’re married, regardless of my blessing.” He sighed.
“I’d be honored to accept your blessing now, sir,” I said meekly. I hoped that was what he had come for. I was getting cold, and wanted to go in to lay the fire. Then he harrumphed. I