A Noise Downstairs(73)

“Tell me everything that happened.”

He told her, even the parts about he and Charlotte killing off a couple of bottles of wine and having sex. But the story really started with the discovery of the typewriter next to his bed.

“Is it still up there?” Anna asked.

Paul shook his head. “We got it out of the house. It’s in Charlotte’s car.” He gave his head a slow, deliberate shake. “It’s not coming back in here unless it knows how to get out of a locked trunk.”

Anna didn’t say anything to that.

Paul leaned in closer to Anna and whispered, “Either that thing got up here on its own tonight, guided through the house by the spirits of those two women, or I brought it up here and have no memory of it.” He sighed. “Which would be worse? And if I did bring it up here, if I wrote all those notes, if I did all that, does it mean I’m crazy, or that I’m somehow possessed by the ghosts of Jill and Catherine? Anna, Jesus, there’s no good answer here.”

“Sitting here, talking to you, you do not strike me as someone who’s detached from reality, Paul.”

“Something’s crazy. It’s either me, or the situation.”

Anna took out her phone. “I have to make a quick call to my father. I had to wake him before I left. I didn’t want him waking up and not finding me at home.”

“Of course.”

“Dad?” she said into the phone. “I’m just checking in. Okay. I’ll call you again in half an hour, unless you really think you can get back to sleep.” She nodded. “Okay. Love you, Dad.”

As she put her phone away, Charlotte was getting out hers. “Who are you calling?” Paul asked.

She glanced his way. “Bill.”

“Bill? Why are you—”

“He’s your friend. Maybe it would help if he came—Bill?”

She turned away, walked toward the stairs where she wouldn’t be disturbed by Paul and Anna.

“It might be good to talk to him,” Anna said.

“I hate her waking him up in the middle of the night.”

Anna managed a smile. “But it was okay for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Kidding. What would you like to do, Paul? If you want, I could have you admitted.”

“Admitted?”

She put a hand on his arm. “For observation. For a day or two. And I know you’ve resisted in the past, but once we have you seen by a psychiatrist, and there are a couple of very good ones I can recommend, there might be a pharmacological approach to treatment that we—”

“Drugs,” he said.

Anna nodded. “Yes.”

“I don’t want to be on drugs.”

“You want to just stick with vodka?”

He frowned. “Your point?”

“I’m saying that if you drink, you’re self-medicating. There may be other, more productive approaches. But as a psychologist, I can’t prescribe for you. That’s where an assessment by a psychiatrist could be very helpful.”

“That’s your answer? Go into the loony bin and get doped up.”

“We don’t have to do that,” she said, her voice steady and measured. “As long as you’re not a danger to yourself or anyone else, no one’s going to force you to do that.”

“I wonder what Charlotte thinks,” he said.

“Why don’t we ask her?”

Although still within earshot of the others, Charlotte had moved over to the stairs and taken a seat on the top step. She said into her phone, “I hate to call you in the middle of the night, but I thought you’d want to know about Paul.”

“What’s going—hang on, I’m just turning on the light here— what’s happening over there?” Bill asked.

“His therapist just came over. He had a full-blown meltdown.” Charlotte sniffed, then said, “He’s really messed up.”

“Are you crying?”

“Of course I’m crying.”

“Okay, okay,” Bill said. “What do you want me—”

“Hang on, Paul wants to ask me something.”

Paul said, “Do you think I should go into the hospital?”

“The hospital?” she said. “Like, what do you mean?”

“The psych ward,” Paul said. “It’s an option. They could keep an eye on me and they might give me something. You know, to mellow me out, I guess.”

“Shit, no,” said Bill, who could hear them both talking.

“Hang on,” Charlotte said to Paul. Into the phone, she said, “I’m trying to talk to Paul here.”

“Put him on,” Bill said.

Charlotte held out the phone to Paul. “Bill wants to talk to you.”

Paul held the phone to his ear. “Sorry. Charlotte shouldn’t have gotten you up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bill said. “What’s this about the hospital?”

“I’m talking about it with Anna.”

“You do not want to go into the hospital. There’s no way you want to do that.”

“But they might be—”

“No, you listen to Bill here. Going into a place like that, it’ll only mess you up further. Those places are filled with crazy people, and you are not crazy. You hear me? Once you let them lock you up, they’ll never let you out.”