*
They dispersed then, some towards the castle-cum-house, some to the other exhibits. Lila returned to the gallows. She wanted to be sure she was alone for the next part, but she wasn’t surprised, or indeed upset, when she was joined by Urijah.
“Really something, isn’t it?” he asked, as the pair of them watched the rope swinging.
Almost as if someone was on the end of it.
Lila shivered. “Not my thing really, I don’t think. A bit macabre.”
“I can understand that. A journalist, you said?”
“Uh. Yes, that’s right. Freelance, you know. I’ll do a write-up and see where I can sell it. Maybe sell it direct.” The last thing she needed was for him to ask where she worked. There were so few actual publications these days. Pay-to-read had taken off in the last decade or so, and most journalists were in that market now. Some had become celebrities, after a fashion.
“Good market to be in.” He jerked a thumb at the rope. “Reckon we’ll see anything?”
“No clue. Not sure I want to, if I’m honest.”
“Ah, come on. You can’t come here and only see the incredible disappearing woman.” He chuckled. “He could have got that effect with a lump of dry ice in the container or something. Holograms. Smoke and mirrors.”
He was bound to be sceptical, she imagined. “Yeah, but that bumping along the fence it did looked pretty hard to fake.”
Urijah shrugged. “I suppose. Do you think your gadget could call them?”
She looked at him quizzically. “Call them?”
“Yeah. He said they were attracted to the fields. That was how they lured them into the jar. Reckon putting it by the rope might call one?”
It would be a test, if nothing else. The area enclosed by the lines was quite small, and those fields might be interference, of a sort, but at least she’d have some idea if it was likely to attract her father to the capsule.
“I’m not sure we should. What if they think we’re trying to steal one?”
He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Why would anyone steal a ghost? Not like you’re going to want someone being hanged in your bedroom every night, is it? And if you’re returning the capsule, you couldn’t even put it on your bookshelf for a trophy. Go on. Give it a try.” He grinned. “I double dog dare ya.”
She couldn’t help but grin back. “I never could resist a dare.”
Lila stepped over the double red lines. She unscrewed the top of the capsule and laid the two pieces on the wooden platform out of which the gallows reared. Rather more hastily than she’d intended, she retreated to where Urijah stood.
“Now what?”
“We wait, I guess. Here, ghostie. Come on out.” He whistled softly between his teeth.
Lila blinked. She was imagining things. No way would it have worked that quickly. She shot a glance at the man beside her. Had he set her up somehow? But no, Urijah was watching, open-mouthed, a look of awe on his face that she didn’t think he could have faked.
A figure mounted the platform. He wore a torn and stained shirt that had once been white, and his hands were bound behind his back. He paced up and down as if looking for something, growing more and more agitated, while his wrists grew raw and bloody as he tried to free them from the rope which bound them.
This is sick. I don’t want to be a part of it.
She turned away. People had campaigned against zoos, citing the indignity of them, arguing that animals should not be confined. Others held that they protected species which might die off in the wild. The two sides were permanently at loggerheads, and yet people had kept taking their kids to them, watching the monkeys swing and the bears prowl and the penguins waddle while putting the ethics carefully to the backs of their minds.
She couldn’t believe that this wouldn’t cause the same sort of uproar. These were people for heaven’s sake, albeit people who had died years, maybe centuries ago. While there was any doubt—any!—that they had no awareness, how could this ever be justified? Maybe the guy with the cross had the right idea. She fought back a sob.
“You okay?” The ghost had disappeared, and Urijah had finally noticed her distress.
“I’m just— I’m just not handling this very well.”
“Gotcha. You want me to stick around?”
“If you don’t mind, I think I’d sooner be on my own.” He was sweet. Her mother would like him. But there was no way she could explain to him what she was planning.
“Fair enough. Hey, I’ll be at the mines, if you want company later.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
She reclaimed the capsule, screwing the parts back together. It was time. The tigers had been off to her right when she’d been a child. At school—children still went to school then—she had been something of a star. The other children’s parents had normal jobs; to have a father who was a zookeeper was exotic and exciting. Up till the point when the tiger he had known from a cub—that he had roughhoused with, and fed from a bottle when its mother couldn’t feed it—turned on him and all but ripped his head from his shoulders.
A freak accident, they’d called it. Privately, the zoo suggested that he had grown complacent. That his familiarity with the creature had led him to treat it as more of a pet and less of a wild animal. He’d never have done that. Her father had his faults, many of them, but he knew his animals. He loved them, but it was a love tempered with respect and a more than healthy dose of fear. The tiger had been shot, later.
That wasn’t the event that started the zoo ban bandwagon rolling; there had been other deaths among the keepers over the years, there and at other zoos. It contributed, but it wasn’t the cause. But before the zoo was closed down a few years later, she and her mother heard rumours that he’d been seen. People watching the tigers had seen a man come into the cage and watch them. Just watch. Sometimes wiping his face as if he were crying. Some days, more people stood at the toughened glass in the hopes of seeing the phantom keeper than were there to watch the tigers.
She passed where the pile of flowers had been left by well-wishers outside the tiger enclosure, and stepped over the double red line. The old tiger enclosure now held a hospital-sanatorium-lunatic asylum sort of building, in the haphazardly multipurpose manner this spook zoo had adopted.
She crouched where it had happened, as close as she could judge.
“Hey, Dad. You still here?”
The ghosts couldn’t cross the red lines, Johnson had said, yet he had carried the white lady into the mansion exhibit in the container, so that must negate the restrictions. So if she could only get her dad into the container—if he was even still here, now that his beloved tiger cage was a mockery of a hospital—then she should be able to get him out.
Oh, the container? Yes, Mr. Johnson lent it to me. You can check with him, if you like. I’ll wait.
“Dad?”
Was that a rustle of the grass, or was it her imagination? The hair stood up on the back of her neck, and goosebumps rose on her skin.
“Dad?”
Beer and tobacco.
He had persisted in smoking hand-rolled cigarettes even when the governments of the world had taxed them to the point they were worth their weight in—well, not gold, but they were as expensive as all heck all the same. An occasional treat, to be enjoyed in the same way a good Cuban cigar had once been, usually with a pint or two of craft beer.
Ginger and raw meat.
However well he washed, he somehow managed to smell of the meat they fed the animals. The zoo had suggested that might be why the tiger attacked him; it could smell the blood on him. Ginger biscuits from the staff room.
He was there. She could sense him, smell him.
She could see him, backing away, his hands up to fend something off. His eyes were wide, his face frozen in an expression of terror. Surely he’d want to get into the container, if only to escape the tiger. To escape dying over and over and over again.
“Dad? Come towards the field, Dad. The
tiger won’t hurt you anymore. You’ll be safe in here. Mum still thinks about you. I still think about you. We don’t want you in a zoo, Dad. Come to the container, and I can take you away.”
Take you away from all the dead people.
Her mouth became dry, and her palms became moist.
How the hell does that even work?
“Dad? Dad, come to the container. I can take you away, Dad.”
Come towards the light. Jeez, I sound like the priest. How do you know if you’ve caught a ghost in one of these gadgets? Does it flash, or feel heavier, or what?
She just caught the movement: a mistiness going into the capsule, like the white lady in reverse. She’d got him! Recapping the container, she straightened, breathing hard as if she’d been running. Her pulse raced, and her heart thumped against her ribcage. She had him. She was certain she had him.