A Certain Slant of Light

  I laughed at this, feeling more comfortable whenever James seemed happy.

  “I have a secret treasure, though.” He pulled a box out from under his bed and opened it. “Promise not to tell.”

  “I do.”

  He took out one item after the other and laid them on the bed. A copy of an art history book with a sticker reading $1.00. A tattered photography magazine. A worn paperback of short stories. A dog-eared copy of a collection of Robert Frost poems. Lastly a journal with a feather as a bookmark and a dark purple pencil stuck in the elastic band that held it shut. I laughed in recognition of what a treasure ought to be.

  “I’d like to smuggle in my own favorite music, but Mitch sold Billy’s stereo and computer to pay for the emergency room when the boy almost died, so...” He shrugged.

  I noticed then a piece of lined paper folded up in the treasure box. I could tell from a few handwritten words visible there that it was the page on which he and I had written. I was aflutter with pleasure—I was part of his secret treasure.

  An odd thing happened then. As James was looking at me, his face went pale. He seemed ill. He went to the door and took off the chain. He came back to the bed and carefully returned the treasures to the box.

  “I’m afraid I was being selfish,” he said at last. “This must be like a prison to you.”

  He looked in my eyes and realized that I didn’t understand. “You lived in a world of books and beautiful music and paintings on the walls at Mr. Brown’s house, didn’t you? I must be mad to think you’d want to stay with me in this cave. I’m so sorry.”

  I was taken aback. I watched him slide the treasure box back under his bed.

  “Caves were the first libraries,” I reminded him. “And the first art galleries.”

  Now he blushed and that achingly healthy peach in his cheeks brought all the color back into the world for me.

  “Still, Miss Helen,” he said, “I’ve done a very wicked thing. I’ve lured you away from a wholesome place into a dark one because I didn’t want to be without you. I will understand completely if you do not choose me.”

  I was so unaccustomed to attention, it made me bold. “The most compelling thing in my world, sir, is to be heard and seen by you.”

  He looked at me a long moment. “Then I am most beholden to you.”

  The door banged open again and his brother Mitch leaned in. “Phone.”

  James just looked at him.

  “One of those little assholes is on the phone,” he said with irritation. “You want it?”

  James jumped up and followed him out of the room. I was alone, surrounded by the walls of pictures. I studied Billy’s artwork over his desk, torn-out notebook pages with creatures rolling bloodshot eyes and gnashing dripping fangs—muscled legs and smoking nostrils. The edges of the pages rippled in the draft of my curiosity. Then I noticed a picture from a magazine, taped to the wall beside the bed. A young woman in a white cotton dress, and nothing more, stood under a waterfall. I was startled at the way the cloth clung to her and became transparent. Her head was tilted back, her eyes closed, her mouth open. I had seen enough of these types of images on boys’ shirts and book covers, but in such close proximity to where James slept, I was shocked. A hot sensation almost like jealousy boiled up my legs until I remembered that the decorations were chosen by Billy and not James.

  When James came back in, he looked concerned. He was about to close the door when Mitch slammed it open with one hand.

  “You’re not going anywhere tonight,” he said.

  “I know,” said James, standing between me and his brother.

  “And I better not see that little shit over here.”

  “He’s not coming over,” said James.

  “’Cause you’re grounded until I say so,” said Mitch.

  “I know,” said James.

  Mitch just scowled at him for a moment. “You don’t have to stay locked in here,” he told him.

  “I have a headache,” said James.

  His brother’s face darkened. “What’d you take?”

  “Nothing,” said James, obviously frustrated.

  “You lie to me and I’ll kick your ass.”

  “I’m not lying,” said James. “I just don’t want to hang out with your friends.”

  Strangely, this seemed to calm the man. He shook his head and closed the door. James slipped the chain across again and came back to the bed to sit.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I have so many things to ask you, I don’t know where to start.” He sat cross-legged now.

  “How brave of you to become one of them,” I said. “I think I would never have the courage to even try.”

  He regarded me for a long moment, the way Mr. Brown used to study a paragraph of prose that he loved, refusing to turn the page when I wanted him to, dwelling on his favorite turn of phrase.

  Remembering Mr. Brown, and my struggle through the storm, sobered me at once. A wave of anxiety came over me as I imagined being on my own tonight as James slept.

  “Do you want to sleep?” he asked, as if he could read my thoughts.

  “Did you sleep?” I asked. “When you were a spirit?”

  “Not really,” he said. “But you can rest safe with me. I’m not like the others you’ve been with. I’m akin to you.”

  He motioned me to the bed and I obeyed, trembling all through.

  “Be still,” he said, so I lay down. James sat in the chair and slid the box out from under his bed again, choosing a book. On the ceiling over the bed was the one picture in the room that seemed halfway like James. It was a photograph of a wolf standing in the shelter of dark pines, his coat thick for winter, his gold eyes focused on the photographer.

  Whose woods are these I think I know.

  His house is in the village though.

  He will not mind me stopping here

  To watch his woods fill up with snow.

  I could hear the wind outside and James’s voice inside, calming me. The noise down the hall was gone.

  When I became aware again, I found that the overhead light was out, but the tiny lamp beside the bed was lit, giving off a faint glow like a candle. I found James asleep on the floor with a jacket rolled up as a pillow under his head. The music and voices were filtering in from the rest of the house. I knelt at James’s side.

  “Go to the bed,” I whispered.

  He didn’t open his eyes, but his forehead wrinkled as if he were concentrating on deciphering a dead language. I moved closer to his ear and whispered again, “Get in bed, James.” He slowly rolled over and sat up facing the bed. Still he didn’t open his eyes. He pulled himself up on the mattress and was asleep again instantly. I watched his face, beautiful and pale gold in the lamplight, and his hands, relaxed, half-open, his long fingers so still. I watched his chest rise and fall almost imperceptibly. Finally I reached over to put out the lamp, but, of course, I couldn’t.

  Five

  I WAS ALL AT ONCE AWARE of a falling feeling so deep that I gasped. I had, apparently, been sleeping on the covers beside James, and he had rolled out of bed, right through me, and was now on his feet, still half asleep. He squinted at the small room, lit with the sunrise and the bedside lamp. He turned toward the bed, and we stared at each other, James with his hair wild and the crease of the blanket on his cheek; me, lying on his bed, startled but uncreasable.

  He gave a small wave of apology and crept quietly out of the room. I was stunned. I’d been asleep. It was almost as strange as having been seen. When he came back a minute later, I was still sitting on his brown blanket, also disturbed by the idea that we had been sleeping in the same bed.

  He closed his door and ran a hand through his hair. “Did you rest?” he asked me.

  “Why could I sleep last night when I hadn’t slept since my death?”

  He seemed still very tired as he sat on the mattress beside me. “Perhaps because you aren’t alone now.” Then he shrugged. “The only problem with being Light is you hav
e no mentor to explain it all. You discover the rules by breaking them.”

  He rubbed his eyes as if Billy’s body still needed rest. Without planning to, I put a hand on his shoulder. As he had the time I kissed him, he took a sharp breath and his back straightened. I pressed him toward the blanket and he lay down again, between the wall and me. When I took my hand away from him, I asked, “Does that hurt you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Does it feel cold?”

  He gave a half laugh. “It feels like...” He thought better of it. “No, it doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever felt before. It’s wonderful.”

  I lay down beside him, then. It seemed almost scandalous in one way, and yet in another it seemed as natural as two blades of grass brushing each other in the wind. We lay, looking at each other, and he reached over and touched my closed hand. I opened it, a flower blooming in a sudden heat, and he lay his palm against mine. At that moment it began to rain outside, the hiss of it like a curtain of sound around us. As his flesh touched my spirit, the feeling of falling turned into a feeling of flying. I was soaring through time toward him.

  “Why can we touch?” I wanted to know. “When I touched Mr. Brown, he didn’t feel me.”

  “Because you’re not just touching Billy’s fingers,” said James. “You’re touching me inside him.”

  He lifted his hand off mine and looked at it. He placed his hand on his cheek. He looked at it again, then sniffed his palm.

  “You smell like jasmine,” he marveled.

  “And how is it that you can smell me?” I asked.

  “Ghosts have scents,” he said. “I suppose it’s some residue from the past. Like a memory.”

  “What other ghosts have you smelled?” I felt a ridiculous surge of jealousy.

  “You don’t understand. There are two kinds of ghosts.” Again he delighted in sharing with me the peculiar knowledge that apparently came with body theft. “There are ghosts who know they’re dead and ones who don’t. Before I took over a body, I couldn’t see either kind.” He smiled. “But I still have seen only one like you, who knew she was Light.”

  “And the ones that think they’re still alive,” I said, “what do they say to you?”

  “Nothing,” said James. “They can’t see me or anyone. Not even each other.”

  “What do they do all day,” I asked, “and night?”

  “They usually repeat some task from the past. They walk home from school, they clean the windows of a building that’s not there anymore, they look for something they lost or someone they lost.”

  It seemed so sad. “How many are there?” I asked. “Can you see any now?” The idea made my skin prickle.

  “You mean this guy?” James nodded to the foot of the bed. When I gasped, he laughed at me.

  “That isn’t funny.”

  “You’re right.” He tried not to smile. “There aren’t as many as I thought there’d be when I saw my first in the hospital hallway,” James said. “I’ve seen only a dozen or so since then.”

  Although I knew that he was not seeing an apparition in the room with us, I still felt unnerved by the idea that one might appear at any moment.

  “Where do you think Billy is now?” I asked. “You said you saw him only once. So he’s not attached to his brother or the house.”

  James shrugged. “I don’t really know, but I don’t think he’s attached at all.” He looked around the room at Billy’s sketches taped to the walls. “Maybe he’s wandering, like a runaway child.”

  I wondered what it would be like to fly from house to house and face to face at will. It sounded liberating but at the same time lonely. I felt overwhelmed suddenly, the way I had in the phone booth, and I moved away from him, into the corner. Too much was new too fast.

  “I’m sorry I tricked you,” he said. “About seeing a ghost.”

  I couldn’t explain my cowardice. The tension whined like insects around me.

  “How many hosts have you had?” he asked me, hoping to distract me from any escape plans, I could tell.

  “Five.”

  “How did you choose them?” he asked.

  I told him briefly of each host and how I had claimed them. I left out the envy I’d felt for what Mr. Brown had shared with his bride. The idea of describing my coping with their love life made me want to fold up like a fan and hide.

  “And now I’m host number six,” he said.

  “Yes.” But I felt confused again. “I need to be alone a little,” I told him.

  And he simply said, “Of course.”

  I melted out of James’s room and wandered through the rest of his house. The rain had slowed to a fine mist. In the living room a man in overalls and a kerchief tied around his head slept on the couch with his arm over his eyes. There were cans, bottles, and crumpled paper all over the floor and furniture. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink and the faucet dripped. In the other bedroom, Mitch slept, with one shoe off and one shoe on, his pants unbuttoned, sprawled on top of his covers. There was a tiny empty bathroom with the light left on and a small back porch where the roof dripped rainwater onto a shiny black bag of trash. I wished it were not Saturday but Monday so that I might go to school with James and see my Mr. Brown. No, he’s not yours anymore, I reminded myself. You have a new host. My James.

  I heard a stirring from the hall. Mitch was walking unevenly to the bathroom. I kept my distance, drifting into the kitchen. There some pictures tacked to a corkboard beside the back door stopped me. In one of the photographs, a child of twelve, a dark-haired boy, was holding a four-year-old brown-haired lad upside down by the feet. The little boy was screaming with laughter, and the big boy was mimicking a body builder’s triumphant growl. What stopped me was not only the little laughing face, which must have been James’s, or I should say Billy’s, but more it was the slightly blurred woman’s hand and leg that were caught in the margin of the scene, the owner’s face missing from the memory. Their mother, in the wings, as often mothers and grandmothers are, ready to catch the children should they need saving, but otherwise invisible. Her hand was a pale flutter, her leg slender and bare, wearing a white shoe, the corner of a light green skirt caught in the frame just above the knee.

  “Damn it,” Mitch grumbled from the bathroom. The door must’ve been standing open. “The fucking toilet’s broken!” I heard a hollow sound like porcelain scraping on porcelain and next a sound that made me cold all through. An animal danger thundered down the hallway. I was afraid, but I rushed there. Mitch ran to James’s door and kicked it open. James, who was just unbuttoning the shirt he’d slept in, jumped back in surprise and, bumping into the bed, sat down on it. Mitch pulled a hand back and slapped him so hard across the face that James flew back on the bed and his head thumped the wall. Mitch held a clear bag of white powder in James’s face and shook it.

  “Are you a fucking idiot?” he yelled. “What the hell is this?”

  James was breathing hard and didn’t seem to see anything yet. He put his hand to his face and tried to sit up. Mitch slapped him again. I cried out, but I don’t think even James could hear me. He scrambled back away from Mitch up against the wall, blood in the corner of his mouth. Mitch shook his striking hand, as if James’s face were poison.

  “I should just call the fuckin’ cops right now,” Mitch screamed at him. “You wanna kill yourself, go live in the goddamn street.” The anger burned red on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” said James.

  “Fuck you, you little shit,” Mitch yelled. There were veins standing out on his neck and arms. He paced back and forth for a moment, his fist flexing on the plastic bag.

  “I told you I got messed up that night,” said James. “I can’t remember everything.”

  “You are so full of shit!” Mitch kicked the chair so hard it slammed into the door frame and slid out into the hall.

  “I forgot about that one,” said James. “I didn’t use any, I swear.”

  Mitch stormed out again. I could
hear the groggy voice of the man in the kerchief who’d slept on the couch. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Mitch. Then the sound of water running in the kitchen.

  The fury ebbed out of the room. I waited, watching James touch his jaw gingerly, dabbing at the blood with the back of his hand. He glanced at me, ashamed.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I’m all right.” He rose stiffly and brought the chair back into the room, placing it on its feet beside the desk. Then he looked me in the eyes for a longer moment. “I’m sorry you were frightened.”

  I didn’t know what to say. He noticed that his shirt was open and modestly closed the middle button.

  “I should shower.” He excused himself and I sat on the bed.

  Down the hall, the water pipes began to hoot as the shower started. The bedroom door opened wider as Mitch stepped in. He moved with stealth now and not anger. He went immediately to the dresser and opened one drawer after another, starting at the top, looking under the rumpled clothes and feeling the sides and top of each compartment.

  Mitch opened the closet and rummaged through the clutter on the floor within. He pulled out two scratched army boots, thrusting his hand into each one. I watched him as he looked inside the lampshade by the bed. I stayed very still until he suddenly turned, kneeling, and put his hand where I had been sitting on the blanket. I stood on the bed and backed into the corner as he reached between the mattresses and felt around. His face tensed and he pulled out something hidden there. As soon as he saw the magazine, he laughed and put it back. On the front I caught a fleeting glance of a woman in a tiny bathing suit stepping out of a pool. Mitch was smiling as he felt under the bed.

  He pulled out James’s treasure box and looked inside. Frowning again, he brought out the art book. He shrugged and returned it. He was just starting to open the poetry book when the man in the kerchief came into the doorway.

  “You’re turning into a narc,” he pointed out.