The Ghost Who Came in from the Cold

New Orleans was the last place on my list of peaceful writerly getaways. But when my great aunt Millie offered up her little place in Metairie for free if I’d go there and freshen it up for what she called the season, I couldn’t say no. Metairie in January was quiet enough to hear your own second thoughts, and far enough away from the second lines of the infamous French Quarter.

Not that I’d be tempted by the revelry–not with a deadline looming and a neurotic New York publisher breathing down my neck. But as a recovering alcoholic, the more miles between me and temptation, the better. I’d been here before and the church with the AA meeting was just a few blocks away.

I’m not a Big Book thumper, though. Far from it. That particular meeting had a cross-talking busybody who had the nerve to tell me I’d built some pretty high walls around my heart.

Back in the day, I’d have punched him in the kisser. Instead, I mumbled something like keep coming back. But the more I thought about them, the truer his words rang. I had built some walls and reinforced them over the years, Cold War style. No one got out, and no one got in either.

But then, New Orleans was a far cry from Berlin.

Still, it settled my nerves just knowing that serenity was close by, should I need it. Wrapping up yet another Cold War thriller, unraveling the double cross I was tasked with was no walk in Gorsky Park, if you know what I mean.

I’m no le Carré. Just a hack, more likely to misplace a briefcase than uncover a mole. Boring and didactic, yes, but it pays the bills. Especially if I get ‘er done on time.

But every blessing has its curse. And that of this rambling shack of a place was the wiring. Needed replacing badly. And in fact, the electrician was due to come on my watch. Monday next.

I arrived mid-afternoon on a Saturday. The smell of stale lemon polish and mothballs welcomed me. My aunt hadn’t updated the decor since Eisenhower, which was oddly comforting. I tossed my duffel on the lumpy couch and did a perimeter check: kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom, no signs of anything haunted—unless you count the crocheted Jesus on the wall over the toaster.

After a half-hearted attempt at sweeping the porch and opening a few windows to “let the good air in” (as Millie would say), I made coffee, sat down at the kitchen table, and opened my laptop.

The damn cursor taunted me like a middle finger.

Half a chapter to go, and I still didn’t know whether the Russian or the American was the traitor. The writer said, “Just use your best judgment.” My editor said, “Just make it plausible.” My gut said, “Just walk into traffic.”

Instead, I stared out the window at the majestic oaks draped with strands of Spanish moss drooping like my imagination. The neighborhood was too still, too quiet. No kids. No dogs. Just wind rustling the branches like someone pacing on wet pavement.

I cracked my knuckles a few times and began typing.

Rader lit a Lucky Strike with the same match he used to burn the file and would have burned his thumb were it not for a thick callous.

Names. Places. Codes. Lies. The truth. All of it ash now.

Back in Langley…was as far as I got when the lights flickered on and off a few times. Oh, God, not now. Then the power went out.

Yes, I could have scribbled something on a napkin if my handwriting was halfway legible. Since it wasn’t, I moved to the back room and sat at the ancient rolltop desk with the old-fashioned typewriter I played on as a kid. Quick before I lost the thread completely. Thank, God, there was paper in the bottom drawer.

As I whirled the paper in and sent the carriage to the margin with a zing, the keys started pounding on their own. What the—?I yanked my lighter out to light the hurricane lamp in the window and sat down to watch.

The keys banged out three words. Help me finish.

“Help finish what?” I said with a voice shriller than I thought possible.

“My last book.” Said a voice so soft I barely heard it. A woman’s voice. High and clear like a flute.

I looked around, checking the corners and the closet. I was alone. Or was I? This time I lowered my voice. “Who’s there?”

A breeze flashed by me, tousling my hair. I spun around, and there, sitting at the typewriter was a woman. Or let's say the shimmery outline of a woman. Petite, perky, with silky grey hair, and a half smile. She wore a black dress that I could see right through. Not because the dress was sheer. Her whole being was sheer, like an apparition or something.

Shit.

Now I’d lost the whole thread of my closing. “You finish it,” I told her. “If it’s so damn important.”

“I tried to,” she said, pounding the keys. Only instead of making marks on paper, her fingers went right through the machine. “And look what happens.”

Yet somehow she got three words down. It didn't add up unless she was faking. And the last thing I needed was another woman in my life. Especially one trying to manipulate me to do her work when I had work of my own. Important work.

“Get out of my way, Miss–” I stood over her and bent as if to sit.

“Rice. Under one condition,” she said. “You finish my manuscript.”

Chick lit was not my bailiwick. I didn’t have time to waste with meet-cutes and peak-a-boo-hoo romances. “I write killers, crooks, and coups. Not touchy-feelies.”

Miss Rice put a hand on my arm sending shivers through my whole body. “But you, too, lost a child. You know what it means to leave something undone.”

I turned away so she wouldn’t see my face. Yes, I, we, me and my ex lost our Maggie at the tender age of nine. Cancer took her while she still had hair. Leaving us blaming each other, bitter as hell.

I felt a hand on my back. Then it was gone. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and turned back around. “What do you mean, too?”

A tear ran down her cheek. A real tear as far as I could tell. It caught the late afternoon sun streaming in the window. “My daughter, Michelle’s buried in that cemetery down the street. As am I.”

This was just too weird but I had to know. “How old?”

“She would have been six if it weren’t for that damn granulocytic leukemia.”

“Granulocytic?” This rang a distant bell. A very distant bell.

“Yes. Aggressive as, excuse my French, fuck. Nothing we could do but hold her hand as she faded from us, and try not to cry in her presence.”

I knew that one. Boy did I. All that pretending and stiff upper lipping. Worthless. Absolutely worthless. I couldn’t speak, so I nodded.

“You get it. You can write this story. For both of them. Michelle. And Maggie. If they can’t live in the flesh, at least let them live on the page.’

That did it. I plunked my ample derriere down in the chair, fingers poised. “This is what I do, Just tell me what to say.”

“Where the Quiet Hides by Anne Rice.”

I started typing, then stopped, mid-key. “You’re Anne Rice? The Anne Rice?”

Anne looked at me with twinkling eyes. “The very one.”

“Gerry, I mean, my ex–” Did I really call her that? I hadn’t used her name in years. “--loved Interview with the Vampires or whatever it’s called.” For all I knew, she still does.”

“Let’s hope she likes this one, too,” Anne said. And then dictated some more. “Clara had no idea where the quiet came from. But one night, there it was, curled up under her hospital room door like a fine mist, soft and gentle, and glowing just a little.”

“Glowing? Really” I didn’t quite get it.

“Yes, glowing,” Anne said. “This is magical realism.”

An oxymoron if ever there was one. But I kept my mouth shut and my fingers busy.

“Yes, her monitor still beeped,” Anne continued. “Nurses whispered around her and even when they didn't she could hear the shuffle of their shoes. But under all that–dot, dot, dot—was something else.”

“Hmmm, go on,” I said when she came up for the air I wasn’t sure she needed.

“Not exactly silence. But the kind of quiet you get when someone is waiting for you to notice them. Clara hoisted herself up on her stack of pillows and listened.

“That’s when the closet door opened. All by itself.”

At those words, the coat closet door opened. All by itself.

Now I had goosebumps. I got up to check.

Nothing inside but coats and a vacuum cleaner. I closed it and lit a cigarette. “Then what happened?”

I heard a puff and my cigarette went out.

I lit it again, took a long drag, and exhaled in her direction. "No smokes, no story."

Anne said nothing, but three windows opened all by themselves.

Over the next several hours, I went through two packs of Lucky Strikes while typing Clara’s story. This spunky kid discovers a place called Everstill. I had to type it three times. My fingers much preferred Everkill, but that wasn’t right.

Everstill was a magical place full of unfinished stories and unspoken dreams. That’s where Clara meets kids like her, hovering on the edge between two worlds. But instead of life and death, it's life and magic.

She has to make a choice, though. Stay in Everstill, or return to her pain so she can carry those stories and dreams forward. Tough cookie, that Anne.

I had no idea which way Clara was leaning until Anne had me type: “The boy didn’t speak. He just sat cross-legged under the story tree, clutching a leafy branch and a book to his chest like they were all that kept him there.

“Clara sat beside him but said nothing. After a while, he slid the book toward her.

“Inside, all the pages were blank—except one.

“Please remember me,” it said, in small, shaky letters.

“She took out her pencil.”

The more I typed, the sharper that boy came into focus. In my mind’s eye, he wore faded, hand-me-down overalls, with a slingshot in his back pocket. To practice on the squirrels he never managed to hit. The same overalls and sling-shot I had as a boy. The same squirrels I never hit.

“Squirels?” Anne shrieked at me. “Back up. They’re not in this story.”

Not in this story? Well, maybe they were in another one, waiting somewhere in the ethers to be told. In the meantime, we had to get this one done.

I kept my mouth shut and stayed focused until Anne announced, “We’re almost done.”

I nodded. “Lay it on me.”

Anne cleared her throat. “Back in her hospital room, the machines still hummed and blinked, but the quiet was different now. Clara opened her notebook and began again.

“In Everstill, nothing ends. It just waits to be written.”

“And under her pillow, the paper crane glowed softly and nodded its tiny head.”

Nothing ends, it just waits, hiding in silence, until its story gets written. I saw Clara in her hospital bed. Only it wasn’t Clara. It was Maggie, reading a book. This book. This book. She would have loved it.

I gazed at Anne. “And what about that boy?”

Anne smiled that melancholy smile of hers. “He’s you.”

Of course.

I had to look away again, and when I turned back around, she was gone.

“Anne? Annie? Where’d you go?”

I felt a breeze across the front of me this time, chest high. Was that goodbye?

Did all this really happen? I checked the stack of pages. Yep, it did. But how on earth?

Suddenly, I needed a drink. One that went by the moniker, stiff, with labels like Glenfiddich or Laphroaig.

Not something I had on hand, so I poured myself a tall drink of water and checked my phone. Good thing I’d silenced it. My editor texted three times to see where my pages were.

“On their way,” I texted back. Then I put my jacket on and went to Fed-Ex. There I made 52 copies and took a cab to Manning Family Children’s Hospital.

When I got to the nurse’s station of the cancer unit, I handed the gal 50 of them. “Give one of these to every kid on this ward.” She gave me a funny look until she perused a copy. Then she said, “I’d be honored to.”

Those last two copies?

One I mailed to the dude that was on my case from Penguin Random House. After stuffing it in a padded envelope upon which I scrawled, Fragile Contents, Do not bend.

On the way back to Aunt Millie’s, I stopped at the Mentierie cemetery. After some searching, I found the Rice family mausoleum with its inscription: May Perpetual Light Shine Upon Them O Lord.

I propped the last envelope up against the cold marble. “Here, Michelle. It’s a message from your mom.”

All was quiet until a crow flew by cawing its heart out at me.