The Clairvoyants(88)

*

THAT NIGHT I awoke to footsteps on the stairs, the sound like the clomping of William’s heavy boots. They paused outside my door, and I waited, breathless. The knob turned, but I’d locked the door, and the footsteps retreated down the stairs. I lay in bed, holding my breath, straining to hear the front door open and close, and then rigid with fear, unable to sleep for a long time after. Was this what it was like to be haunted, to have someone return from the dead for you? The next morning Del was at my door, frantically knocking. I opened it, half-asleep, and she pushed past me into the room and slammed the door behind her.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“I saw him,” she whispered. She wore a pair of leggings and a misbuttoned work shirt, Randy’s name embroidered on the pocket.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

She went to the window and peered around the frame. “I saw him,” she said, her voice strained. “He’s out there.”

I joined her by the window, and she pulled me back.

“Nothing’s there,” I said. It was true, William wasn’t in his usual place.

“He was there,” Del said. “He was.”

Del’s face was drained of color, the shade of her platinum hair. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never confessed to seeing the dead to anyone, not even to Del. I led her back downstairs, and she pointed to the hat stand.

“He had it on,” she said.

William’s beaver-skin hat was missing from the vestibule. I had never packed it. I’d left it there, almost afraid to touch it, tangible evidence of William’s existence, almost more than I could bear. Geoff must have tired of seeing it and thrown it out. It had been months since William’s disappearance. To wonder now if he was alive was irrational.

The spring sunlight lit the vestibule’s fading wallpaper, including the edges where it had begun to peel. Del had left her apartment door open, and she followed me inside. I pulled the door closed and locked it behind us.

“What did you see?” I asked, firmly.

“I saw him standing across the street,” Del said. She went over to the small table by the window where she’d abandoned her breakfast—an English muffin, a cup of tea—and she slid into her chair.

“No,” I said, angrily. “That night.”

Del picked up the muffin and set it back on her plate.

“His eyes were closed.”

“Did you feel for a pulse?”

“Of course I wouldn’t touch him! There was blood, around his head. What are you saying?” Del stood. She pulled Randy’s shirt tight around her.

Perhaps I had lost the plot. Alive? Dead? I could no longer tell the difference.

Del moved over to one of the wing chairs and fell into it. “He couldn’t have gotten out of there. We had his phone,” she said.

“It might not even be him,” I said. I tried to keep my voice calm. “Lots of people have odd hats. Even you.” I laughed, and reminded her of the day she’d been trying on the hats. I sat down in the chair across from her. “Why don’t you finish your breakfast.”

“It was him,” Del said. She picked at the tapestried upholstery, pulling threads loose.

I waited for her to insist she wasn’t crazy, but she did not. She decided we should visit Sybil Townsend in the encampment. Partly to appease her, and partly because I felt in need of guidance and lacked anyone else to offer it, I agreed. I warned Del she couldn’t tell Sybil the truth. “We can’t really trust her,” I said.

We walked the same route we’d taken the night of the snowstorm with William. Now, window boxes of pansies decorated the houses’ front porches.

“What do we ask her?” Del kept so close beside me, she bumped my shoulder.

“Let me talk.” I had no idea what I would say. Could Del see William as I did? I had considered that possibility when she’d gotten sick as a teenager. Could she have been following the dead around town? Conversing with them? This seemed unbelievable, and I told myself it was wishful thinking—but maybe she couldn’t accept the voices she heard and the people she saw who asked her to follow. Maybe her breakdown had been a result.

The encampment path was muddy. The brook had swelled its banks, and the rank mud smell was almost overpowering. Under the pine shade patches of snow remained, the tarps stained and faded in comparison. Daylight revealed the camp for what it was—harsh, dirty. Without the cover of darkness and the enchantment of the strung twinkling lights, the place lost any aspect of magic. No one glanced up to spot us or wave hello. The people moved between tents, or traversed the narrow paths, bundled in grubby winter clothes. I hesitated, but Del tugged on my arm and we set off farther down the path, farther into the smoke from the fires, the odor of rotting garbage. Some of the inhabitants, wrapped in blankets, came out of their tents. They stood in front of the entrance flaps, stern and protective. A man approached us and shouted at us, demanding to know what we wanted.

“We’re looking for Sybil Townsend,” Del said.

The man, older, wearing mismatched gloves, marched in place in the mud, the mud squelching around his shoes.

“What do you want with her?” he asked, like a sentinel. His breath was foul, tainted by whiskey and coffee and bad teeth.

“I want to talk with her,” Del said.