Poe Page 19

  The tsaritsa was sad, and she gave him a proper burial, to the consternation of all the nobles who worked so hard to kill him. And apparently his popularity wasn’t all that high with the common folks either, because after the February Revolution, they dug up his remains so they could burn them. For good measure.

  And as the flames licked at Rasputin’s bloated, rotting, castrated corpse, the most bizarre unimaginable thing happened.

  He sat up.

  Okay. I have to admit that this definitely has the whiff of urban legend, a la Mikey’s stomach exploding because he drank Coke while eating Pop Rocks. While I’m wondering if there’s any possible scientific explanation why a corpse would sit up while it’s being incinerated—maybe I should have paid more attention in Biology 101—something else catches my attention.

  A small newspaper cartoon shows the tsaritsa on her knees praying to Rasputin, who has horns on his head. He cradles his entrails while staring down a wild-looking woman who holds a knife. But it’s the description below that chills me, one name in particular. Khioniya Gueseva. I almost say it aloud, but I get a superstitious shiver that this might be a bad thing.

  The psychic at Aspinwall was Russian, and her name—how had Amelia pronounced it in my dream? I quickly reach for my notebook, a flutter of excitement in my throat, and find my hastily jotted notes from the back of the photo in Alice’s apartment. “Fitzgeralds as geisha, and K.G. the psychic.”

  K.G. Khioniya Gueseva? Could she also be the prostitute who tried to kill Rasputin? She did escape from the asylum, which would make her about forty at the time of the Aspinwall fire. Stranger things have happened. But maybe in Russia Khioniya and Gueseva are common names, the equivalents of Mary and Smith.

  I’m missing something—I know it. I flip through the pages looking for another reference to Khioniya or K.G., skimming through biographical information that isn’t nearly as exciting as resurrected corpses and intricate murder plots. Rasputin was born in Pokrovskoye in 1869, son of a peasant blah, blah, blah—but then another name stands out.

  Mine.

  Rasputin had a sister and an older brother, Dmitri (the proper Russian spelling), who tragically fell in a nearby river. Rasputin jumped in to save them and also came close to drowning, before all three were pulled from the water by a passerby. While Rasputin survived, his sister didn’t make it. Dmitri caught pneumonia and died shortly afterward. And what does Rasputin name his own son? Dmitri.

  I feel like I’m trying to pull out the vague memory of a dream. I’m surrounded by bits of flotsam and jetsam, but Christ, what does it all mean?

  But there’s no time to think about it further, because suddenly from the bedroom Lisa is screaming.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BROKEN

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. I race to the bedroom, tripping over the light cord and knocking the lamp over in the process, breaking the bulb—I don’t even notice stepping on the glass, because all I can think is I’m going to kill him, so help me God if he’s hurt her, if he’s even touched her…

  But I find Lisa sitting upright in bed, trembling hands covering her ears, eyes shut, and no blood or gaping wound that I can see. I rush to her side and take her in my arms.

  “Are you okay? Was he here? Did he hurt you?”

  She seems to finally register me and she stops screaming, but her body still shakes with fear. Her mouth opens but can’t speak.

  Which makes me think he was here. And maybe still is here.

  I run to the closet, see if Daniel’s inside, but he’s not, which leaves the shower—is the curtain closed? But no, I find it’s open, and the window in the bedroom is closed shut and locked from the inside. Guess that’s the chief benefit of living in a small, crappy apartment—not many places for knife-wielding schizophrenic brothers to hide.

  I take a moment—my heart is still fluttering like a wild bird in my chest, and I start to feel the pain in my feet—but the adrenaline is pumping, and I manage to walk back to the mattress, sit down, and hold Lisa close. She’s still shivering.

  “You’re not dead?” she asks in a choked voice.

  “Not the last time I checked.” I put her hand to my neck. “Do I still have a pulse?”

  She smiles hesitantly. “Then it was just a dream…”

  “Hopefully. What was the dream about?”

  “I don’t know. I was having a nightmare, then I thought I opened my eyes, and I saw…”

  “You saw what?”

  “A face in the window.” She holds out her arm, pointing. “There.”

  I look at the window. The stark, leafless branches of the maple tree sway slightly in the wind, and a scattering of new snow drifts lazily in the haze of a streetlight.

  Lisa whispers, “You don’t think…”

  “Course not,” I say, giving her arm a squeeze. “But I’ll go look just to make sure.”

  Slowly I stand, ignoring the pain in my feet, and step toward the window. I press my hand against the cold pane of glass and quickly scan the street below.

  And my heart clenches.

  There’s a cluster of bootprints at the base of the tree, identical to the ones outside Lisa’s house. A lone, cracked branch dangles from the trunk, like a broken arm, like something or someone was too heavy for it.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “No,” I lie. I turn to her, try for a reassuring smile.

  I can see her question me for a moment, the slight furrow in her brow, but then she presses the heel of her palm against her forehead. “Guess it was just part of my nightmare.”

  I make my way back to the bed, settling in next to her. “Can’t imagine why you’d be having a nightmare. We lead such uneventful lives.”

  “It was so real.” She hugs her knees, looking distant, like she’s underwater.

  “You saw Daniel?” I ask casually.

  “Yes,” says Lisa. “Or I thought I did.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. It was so… quick. But in my dream, I saw Daniel. Or it was him, but it wasn’t…”

  I gently stroke her cheek.

  “It’s hard to explain.” She looks at me and steadies herself. “I’ve never told anyone this before, because it sounds so… crazy.”

  “Crazy as in my crappy apartment is haunted? Or crazy as in I was almost autopsied alive?”

  “It’s up there,” says Lisa.

  “I’m intrigued.”

  Lisa takes a deep breath. “When Daniel… attacked me, his eyes were… different.”

  “In what way?”

  “Daniel’s eyes are green, like mine. But when he attacked me… they were black. Freaky weird black—no iris. I thought maybe it was a hallucination, part of the trauma. But lately, with all that’s happened… I don’t know, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  A cold realization strikes me. “Like Maddy’s eyes.”

  “Maddy’s?”

  “The psychic at Aspinwall.”

  “It was so dark, I didn’t see…” says Lisa. She absently rubs at the scar at the base of her neck, like it’s some kind of charm or talisman.

  “Lisa,” I say quietly, “do you think it’s possible someone can really be possessed?”

  Before she can answer, the light overhead flickers on. My eyes squint, trying to adjust—either ghost girl isn’t following orders, or my Victorian apartment has dangerous wiring. A hard call.

  “Oh Christ, your feet!” says Lisa.

  I look down, and the blood is much worse than I would have thought possible from stepping on broken glass. Maybe I should invest more in plastic.

  “You’re so going to the emergency room,” she says briskly with just a hint of relief, as if she’s glad my feet are bleeding, so we can safely change the subject.

  “Hell, no. It’s not that bad, really. I have Band-Aids, and you know a thing or two about nursing, right?”

  “I’m a receptionist,” she says. “And you probably need stitches.”

  “Not going to the hospital. Not gonna happen.”

/>   She glares at me, but I hold my ground. A standoff.

  “Fine,” she finally says, “but if it gets infected, you’re going to the hospital.”

  I open my mouth to protest.

  “Or you can pull the glass out of your feet yourself and I’ll just go back to sleep.”

  Heartless wench. “Fine,” I grumble.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Now that I see how profusely my feet are bleeding, I think not.”

  “Well, you’ll need to get yourself to the edge of the bathtub so I can clean the cuts. Can you crawl?”

  “Only if it turns you on.”

  She unwraps my arm from her shoulders and gives me a look. “You’re completely impossible, you know that?”

  “I’ve been told.” But then I’m out of jokes, and as I lean over to the floor to get down on all fours, I knock my head against the wall.

  “Karma,” says Lisa smugly as she slips into the bathroom.

  I manage to crawl the ten feet to the bathroom and haul myself up to the edge of the bathtub, gingerly placing my feet inside. Just looking at the blood makes me lightheaded. Lisa, however, is all business; she’s got my Kmart special first-aid kit open and is sorting through its contents, pulling out alcohol wipes, gauze bandages, white medical tape, and long tweezers. She gently lifts my left foot, peers at it closely, and then picks up a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  “This is going to sting a bit,” she says, pouring some over the sole of my foot.

  Understatement of the century—it’s like someone has dipped my foot in acid. The peroxide fizzes and drips into the tub basin, a nauseatingly cloudy pink. “This… is… not… a… bit,” I manage to say through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, so you want to go to the emergency room now? Or would you rather let your feet get infected, contract sepsis, and then go to the emergency room?”

  Damn the woman and her valid points. Just as I start to feel woozy from the blood and searing pain, she starts to gently dab at my foot with a ball of gauze. “Now I can see,” she says, picking up the tweezers. She pulls out a large piece of thin glass, about the size of a quarter, and drops it into the small metal trash can. Clink.

  “So,” I say, staring at a tile in the tub, which has come loose from the caulking, “you had a nightmare that I died? You seemed pretty upset about that.”

  Lisa ignores me, and with more force than I would think necessary, pulls out the next piece.

  “Are you trying to help me or kill me?”

  “Impossible,” she mutters in the direction of my toes.

  “I’m just saying,” I continue, “you must have some feelings for me, right? To get that upset about me dying.”

  Holy mother of God! I think she just pulled out a tendon.

  She expertly places a square of gauze under the heel of my foot, tapes the sides neatly. “I like you. Sometimes.”

  “It’s the pad, isn’t it? A veritable booty lair.”

  She lets my foot drop. Ouch.

  “Until you say stupid shit like that,” she replies, grabbing my right foot.

  I’m seriously reconsidering the hospital visit, because she’s treating my flesh like it’s a game of Operation.

  “So what exactly happened in your dream?”

  For a moment she says nothing, peering intently at a smaller sliver of glass. Then she picks up a sharper pair of tweezers. “Why can’t we talk about normal stuff? Like regular people.”

  “Since when have you wanted to be like regular people?”

  She sighs with a note that hits somewhere between exasperation and exhaustion.

  “Okay, fine, I’ll start,” I say. “How about those Mets?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Dimitri, I dreamed he killed me,” she says hollowly.

  Well now I feel like a moron. “Christ, Lisa. I’m sorry.”

  Somewhat more gently, she plucks out another shard.

  “We were in these woods, and it was snowing. He had a knife to my throat and his eyes were black, completely black, just like last time. You were there, but you didn’t do anything. Like you were frozen. Like it was all—frozen. It was all so dark… so cold. But when he slit my throat I could feel how warm my blood was, and all I could think was how strange it was to notice that. Then suddenly I was above myself, watching my body die. Daniel was walking toward you, taking his time. And he had this terrible smile… I was screaming at you to run, but you didn’t do anything. You didn’t move.”

  Her hand trembles slightly as she pulls out the last sliver. “I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I was invisible. Like a ghost.”

  “Great,” I say, trying to tease out another smile. “Just what I need: another ghost in my life.”

  “Oh Christ, Dimitri, it was horrible. Can’t you take anything seriously for once?” Her voice is edgy and hoarse.

  “Look, if I take any of this seriously, I will go crazy. Because it hasn’t exactly been the best year, if you know what I mean.” My throat constricts at this last word, so I pick at some of the loose caulk and crumble it between my fingers to avoid looking her in the eye.

  Lisa is pointedly quiet. She pulls out some Band-Aids, applying them to the smaller cuts, and then finally gives me a half smile. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”

  I reach out, lift a strand of her hair, and twist it between my fingers. She turns on the tap for the bath for a minute to rinse it out, and I watch my blood swirl in lazy circles before it turns the water a cloudy pink, then drifts away down the drain.

  If ever there were a moment to tell her about the pages I borrowed (or stole, depending on one’s perspective) from Daniel’s room, the bootprints at the base of the trees, and my ring, which somehow Rasputin used to wear, this would be it. But she doesn’t seem to be exactly in the mood for more talk of the supernatural. Which gives me the oddest feeling—that we can be so far away and so close.

  “Do you want to talk—”

  “No,” says Lisa brusquely. She roughly grabs a towel and dries my feet. “It all feels like last time. Exactly like last time.” Then she throws the towel at the wall.

  I reach out, firmly grab her hand in mine, and pull her toward me until our foreheads touch.

  She swallows. “If I say run—”

  I kiss her lightly on the lips, stopping her. “You won’t have to.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. But you will have to help me stand up, because I’m not all that good around blood. Particularly my own.”

  Lisa reaches around my waist and helps me up. The pain in my feet still throbs, but it isn’t as intense.

  “I don’t have the energy to try to clean up that glass,” she says, sounding like she’s far away. I’m somewhere past exhausted, and I nod my head loosely in agreement. “Let’s see if we can fit on the couch.”

  She helps me hobble over, and when I collapse onto the couch, its stubby legs shudder but hold.

  “Scooch over,” she commands. And I do. Then she curls in next to me, so lovely, so warm—I feel safe, protected. She says something else, but by then she’s too far away, and I’m too far gone into sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: AFTER I’VE GONE

  I’m sitting in a Volkswagen van. In front of me is Aspinwall mansion, definitely not in its forties glory. The front lawn has almost completely been taken over by wild blackberry bushes, the front porch is rotted and sagging, and most, if not all, of the upper windows are cracked.

  But there’s a tall aluminum ladder perched against the peeling stucco, and a small swath of weeds has been cleared for a haphazard assortment of paint pails, two-by-fours, new windows, and gleaming copper pipes. A friendly-looking beagle pants on the front step, and it’s hot—that sweltering, humid, New England kind of heat. From somewhere inside the mansion, I hear hammering and the tinny sound of a radio playing something funky.

  I open the van door, it groans in protest, and I discover that the outside of the Volkswagen has been handpainted with rainbows, dolphins, ocean
waves, and peace symbols. Worse still, I’m wearing faded, torn bellbottom jeans, an embroidered purple tunic, and on my wrist is some kind of hand-tooled leather bracelet with a yin/yang symbol. My chin is itchy, and when I reach up to scratch I find a scraggly beard.

  Oh, the horror. I’m Shaggy.

  “Hey, namaste!” calls out an airy woman’s voice from the deep interior of the house. Into the sunshine steps a true flower child, with floaty blond hair, some kind of baggy paisley dress, light freckles, and a wild Susan tucked behind her ear. She beams and drifts out to where I’m standing, girlishly grabbing my hand. “You saw the sign?”

  I nod.

  She giggles and then hugs me lightly. She smells like freshly mown grass. “You’re our first. Come in, come in.”

  I’m pulled up the steps, past the beagle, which only gives my feet the most cursory sniff, and then I’m in the main entry of Aspinwall. One wall is covered with the ghastly wallpaper I remember from my night there, but the others are still Italianate fresco, although mildew has spotted the figures beyond recognition.

  “Wolf!” she calls out. “I’m Celia, by the way. But this month you can call me Lotus. I’ve been feeling very lotusy lately.”

  I have no doubt. But then a cold realization strikes—Celia and Wolf, the hippies from Amherst. One of them will die soon. It’s just a dream, I tell myself.

  A bright-eyed young man with long brown hair tied back by a red bandana, wearing similar bellbottoms and a leather-fringed vest (no shirt), steps out from the kitchen, a hammer in hand.

  “You from San Fran?” he says, wiping his hand before reaching out and gripping mine, like we’re long-lost brothers.

  What the hell. “Yeah,” I say.

  Apparently that gives me some cachet. He’s obviously impressed. “Always meant to get out there, to where the action’s at. But got a little delayed with my woman here.”

  Celia is far from a woman—she could easily pass for a fifteen-year-old—but she giggles appreciatively and twists his hand in hers. “You can take your pick on the second floor; there are lots of rooms. But watch out, ’cause there are bad spots in the floor.”