THE GHOST DOWNSTAIRS - Chapter Two

"Do I have a Halloween story for you!"

When Lina, a thirty-two-year-old nurse, takes a live-in job in a Seattle retirement home, her life acquires two disturbing twists: she learns that ghosts have haunted the old house since a manslaughter-suicide in the 1930s; and she finds herself falling for her mysterious coworker Ren, who seems to know more about the strange house than he’s telling.

Chapter One and further info here

Old brick mansion: photo credit

* * *

Chapter Two

Lina had read that it took at least two months to feel at home in a new job—and besides, where else would she go?—so she stuck it out at Drake House even though it often felt like a foreign culture. They called things by pet names or ones she wasn’t accustomed to. The room adjoining the dining room was a “parlor,” a term she never encountered except in Victorian novels. The “living room,” in contrast, was the large room at the front with the grand piano. “Firesides” were the casual gatherings at the fireplace in the living room on cold evenings.

“Having a fireside tonight!” Marla or Alan would tell her. “Come on down!”

The iron fire escape on the house’s back exterior wall was the “smoking lounge,” since no smoking was allowed in the building and therefore smokers had to step outside. As far as Lina could tell, though, none of the residents or employees did smoke, so the term must have been a holdover from the sorority days, like Ren Schultz’s job title of “houseboy.”

Lina didn’t talk to Ren much during the first two weeks. She figured he was avoiding Jackie Clairmont and her vicious walking stick, and he was always busy cleaning or fixing something when Lina did stumble upon him. Though he kept to himself, he seemed to be around a great deal, and Lina wondered if he ever went home. When she remarked on this to Mrs. B one day, she learned he already was home.

“Comes with his job,” Mrs. B said. “Tiny room in the basement. I’ve seen it when I’m down there for laundry. I don’t know how he can stand it. That basement’s eerie if you ask me.”

Lina eased Mrs. B’s bare foot out of the basin of warm water and toweled it dry. “Considering Seattle rent prices these days, he probably thinks it’s a bargain. By the way, have you made friends with Mrs. Clairmont? She doesn’t say much when I visit her.”

“Dolly and Gertrude and I have gotten her to play gin rummy with us. Haven’t asked her yet why she whacked poor Ren, though. Those ugly warts looking any better?”

“I think so. Just going to apply a little more of this stuff.” Lina dabbed wart-remover ointment onto Mrs. B’s heel with a gloved pinky. “She probably has some interesting sorority stories about this place.”

“I expect so. All we’ve talked about in regards to U-Dub was what we studied and what we wore. And how hard it was to get a decent drink during the Depression!” Mrs. B laughed.

Lina smiled and taped a small bandage over the warts. “I wonder if the U Library has any history on the house. Might give us theories on our ghosts.”

“You should go look! And I’ll see if I can’t sweet-talk some clues out of Jackie.”

Sounded like a good hobby, and Lord knew Lina needed one. She still got nervous thrills in her stomach when she checked her email, thinking Brent might write to her, though she had no good reason to be nervous. What could he say?

A spell of self-analysis during an afternoon walk in the cool October sunshine showed her the pathetic truth. She hoped he might write, I was wrong to leave. I love you and only you. I’m dumping Joanne and coming back, or at the very least, I’ll never love her the way I loved you, but if you and I can’t be together I suppose I have to take the second-best option. She thwacked a mailbox post with her rolled-up umbrella on her way past. He was never going to write that. She was acting like a fatuous young girl. A mature woman would forget the jerk and embark upon a spicy new relationship. Say, with a twenty-something coworker.

Unworkable idea, but at least it made her smile.

Anyway, until she answered Brent in a personal email and actually addressed the subject of his engagement, she wouldn’t know what he’d say.

At the end of her second week at Drake House, Lina typed out a message that underwent several drafts before she considered it acceptable.

Dear Brent,

I’ve been so busy with my new job, I haven’t had the chance yet to congratulate you. I didn’t want you to think I was sulking. Of course it was a surprise, but I wish you and Joanne all the best. I hope to meet her someday. Please stay in touch.

Take care,

Lina.

His answer, the next day, was:

Thanks L. Glad you’re doing good. Never thought I’d get engaged so fast but this thing with Joanne knocked me off my feet! You’d like her, she’s really great. Thanks for writing. Makes me feel better about the bitter goodbyes. You take care too.

- B.

She reread his email four times, feeling offended and breathless, like he had casually grabbed her head and stuffed it into a pile of wet leaves. She turned off her computer and staggered down to the kitchen. Ren and the cook were preparing the house’s lunch, but she ignored them and steadied her hands by making a cup of coffee.

Knocked him off his feet. How very nice for him. Nothing at all like his tame, ho-hum relationship with Lina, she supposed he meant to say. She edged past the cook and put two slices of bread in the toaster, tapping her fingers on the counter as she waited. Bitter goodbyes—right, did he mean the part where he had accused her of having no spine, no sense of adventure? Or the part where she had accused him of having no regard for what she valued? Or the way he had answered that she must not really love him, and her retort that maybe he was right?

Her toast popped up. She slapped it onto a plate, attacked it with peanut butter, and thumped the plate onto the breakfast bar beside her black coffee. The Seattle Times lay in a heap on the bar. She pulled it over and flipped through it. She could go to her room and cry, but that would be continuing to act like a fatuous young girl. She could write him a nasty email and never send it, but that would be feeding the fire.

Most infuriating of all, she realized she didn’t even want him back, and was upset over him anyway. What she wanted was that whole year and a half of her life back, since it had come to nothing. She had failed at a relationship, as usual, and hated the fact. She knew she had to get on with life, jump back into the saddle and so forth, but how did people do that?

The crossword puzzle in the newspaper was about one-quarter filled in by someone with a tentative pencil. Lina found the pencil in a cup on top of the microwave and sat down to finish their work. She didn’t have to be on call until after lunch. Might as well burn off some steam by throwing herself against the mighty wall of the New York Times crossword.

It didn’t help. After twenty minutes she still got no satisfaction from filling in the easy clues, and the hard ones just made her want to stab the puzzle creator with a number two pencil.

For instance, what was she supposed to do with “Munchies, his ’n hers,” six letters, beginning with C-R and ending with E? Her mind stalled on “crepes,” but that didn’t end with E, and while crepes might have been considered “munchies,” there was nothing particularly his-’n-hers about them. Adding words and crossword puzzles to the list of things hell-bent on vanquishing her, Lina reached for her toast without looking.

Someone took a sharp breath. A hand caught her wrist. She lifted her head. Inches from her fingers, a hairy brown spider skulked on her plate, two probing feet right there in her peanut butter. She yelped. Counting leg-span, the thing must have been three full inches across.

Ren, after stopping her from putting her hand straight on it, let her go and clapped a dishtowel around the spider. Spindly legs emerged from the cloth, and the creature skittered toward her edge of the counter.

“Look out,” Ren said.

“It got out,” Lina said at the same moment. She leaped off her stool.

When the spider crawled over the edge, lost its footing on the smooth Formica surface, and fell to the floor, Lina was ready: she smacked one sneaker-clad foot down on top of it, and felt a crunch through the rubber.

She retracted her foot to view the crushed brown shape on the floor. “Got it.” She took a napkin from the dispenser on the counter and bent to collect the dead spider. After dropping it in the trash, she allowed a moment for a deep breath. The adrenaline was the first thing to dispel her gloom today.

“Thank you,” she said to Ren.

“No problem. I’d hate to see anyone get bitten. Hobo spiders are venomous.”

“I know.” Lina shuddered. “I saw a case once at the hospital.”

“Nurse. That’s right. You would already know.”

“Maybe Alan and Marla should call an exterminator.”

Ren shook his head. He sorted out the newspaper, peeking under each section. “We have some traps in the basement. I’ll replace them. Best way, really, is to encourage other spiders to live here. They prey on the hobos.”

“You study entomology or something?” Lina picked up her cup of coffee, glancing around for anything small and moving.

“No. Hobo spiders show up in the news now and then.” Ren smiled. “Anyway, entomology is about insects. Does it cover arachnids too?”

“I’m not sure. Good question.”

Ren picked up her plate. “I assume you don’t want this anymore.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

“Can I get you another one?”

“No, I think I’m off toast for a while. Maybe forever.”

“All right.” Ren glanced at the one section of the paper he had left undisturbed. “Going to finish the crossword?”

“No. It’s giving me a headache. I can’t work out the last few clues.”

Ren turned the paper around toward himself. Three seconds later, he picked up her pencil and filled in “C-R-O-Q-U-E” for the “Munchies, his ’n hers” word.

Lina leaned over the counter to read it. “Croque? Oh. Croque monsieur…”

“Croque madame,” Ren finished, saying it with her. “Types of sandwiches. Croque, meaning munch.”

As he spoke, she caught the unmistakable scent of grape gum. Ordinarily the snaps and chomps of gum-chewing irritated her, but he was so subtle with it she hadn’t even noticed until now. She found the smell comforting. It took her back to her childhood when she and her brother would buy gum and candy at the AM/PM and climb up to the cul-de-sac to watch cars zooming by on I-5 below.

“Wow,” she said. “You know about French and arachnids.”

Ren bowed his head, as if he thought he had been too boastful. “Well. Leave it to the kitchen help to come up with the food ones.”

“Would have taken me all day.” Lina stepped back. “Thank you again. See you at lunch.”

“See you.” Ren didn’t glance up; he was immersed in another clue.

He had dark brown eyes, and dark brown eyelashes to match. From that angle, when he was bent forward over the breakfast bar, they appeared to be sweeping his cheekbones. Which was a stupid thing to think, because everyone’s eyelashes were situated close to their cheekbones. Lina marched away.

She had enough time before lunch to start some laundry, so she carried a basket of clothes down to the basement, using the back stairs, which happened to pass the kitchen. Before she reached the ground-level landing, she made sure her underwear and dirty socks were tucked out of sight beneath a towel. On the landing she met Ren coming up from the basement, his apron dusty with flour, his arms laden with institutional-sized cans of peaches.

“Finished your crossword,” he said.

“Already? What was the river in Estonia?”

“Narva. N-A-R-V-A.”

“Don’t tell me you just knew that.”

He shifted the cans. “I think I’d seen it in another crossword before.”

“Too modest.” She started down the stairs to the basement. “You’re good. I’m coming to you next time I’m stuck.”

His voice floated after her. “I’ll do my best.”

His footsteps moved into the pantry over her head as she reached the basement. Her limbs felt lightweight. She switched on the water in a washing machine and scattered powdered soap into it.

What was that, then? Flirting, that’s what. She hadn’t tried that for over a year, since getting together with Brent. As she remembered him, the gloom resettled itself around her. Irrational, really. She would have to get over Brent, yes, and flirting with Ren might be good practice, but it could hardly be anything else. She knew nothing of Ren except his name, his aptitude with vocabulary, the fact that he wasn’t in college, and the way his hair narrowed to a curling point at the nape of his neck.

And she hadn’t even realized she knew that last thing until now.

The laundry room door slammed shut, startling her. She was alone in the room and hadn’t seen anyone in the basement. Drafts and strangely-weighted doors were common enough in old houses, but she still felt uneasy. The basement had no pet name, and Lina saw why. Low ceilings, inadequate light from bare bulbs, half a dozen small rooms with solid doors, and jumbled storage boxes stretching into far dark corners would only have inspired nicknames like “the crypt” or “the mortuary.” Time to go back upstairs.

She turned and almost tripped over her laundry basket, which was lying upside-down behind her. She may have put it there—unlikely a place though it was—but she was pretty sure she did not turn it upside-down.

A chill shimmied up her spine as she remembered the lamp turning itself off her first night.

You were supposed to talk to ghosts, she had heard. Let them know you were friendly. She had been known to murmur hello to dead patients’ bodies in the hospital when alone with them, telling herself it was a courtesy to the deceased person, but also because secretly she hoped it might keep them from turning into vampires and attacking her. She had worked long, late hours and her mind, with Stephen King’s help, devised some bizarre horrors. But nothing in the hospital had ever moved by itself, corpses or otherwise.

“I don’t have anything against you,” she said aloud to the laundry room. “Please don’t try to scare me.”

Nothing answered, of course.

Lina flung her clothes into the machine, picked up her basket, and escaped from the laundry room. She considered stopping on the way up to ask Ren if he had ever noticed anything uncanny around here, but then vetoed the idea. She may have selected him as her latest flirtation practice, but running up and saying, “Something just shut the door and turned my laundry basket upside-down!” won the prize for pathetic conversation openers. Even the names of Estonian rivers beat that.

All the same, she was determined you couldn’t pay her to stay in that basement overnight. No, sir.

* * *

She wanted to forget her wrecked love life and her potassium chloride nightmare, start up new flirtations, and focus on her new job and surroundings. Really, she tried to. But her brain stayed stuck in its pessimistic groove.

That afternoon, as she visited her elderly housemates and checked blood pressures and answered medication questions, she found herself thinking that this was it. This was where she would live out her days. She’d be a nurse here for the next fifty years, then break her hip and get transferred into a room and become a resident, and die in her sleep not long afterward. It was hard to see how she would ever meet a decent person and fall in love. Her choices here were practically nonexistent, unless some resident’s great-nephew was visiting. The only eligible bachelor in the house—aside from George Lambert—was Ren, and she could do better than a boy in his early twenties who tidied up an old folks’ home for a living. Even if he did happen to be a crossword genius, magnificently well-mannered, and delectable as a dish of coffee ice cream.

That night, brushing her teeth in the bathroom down the hall from her room, she stared into the mirror and observed her eyelids succumbing to gravity, and was that another gray hair over her ear? She plucked it out, flicked it into the trash can, and let the toothbrush go slack as she gazed at her reflection. Fine. She knew the truth. She didn’t think of herself as too good for Ren. Rather, she feared he wouldn’t be interested. Not that she was interested in him, but it would have been comforting to think herself desirable. He certainly didn’t go out of his way to talk to her. She had passed him on the way up tonight while he mopped the kitchen floor; she remembered glancing in approval at his strong shoulders and lean waist. Now, with a frown, she thought, I can’t even get the houseboy. I’ve become old and boring.

She spat out the toothpaste. Enough of this. Brent may have gotten knocked off his feet and engaged before his last box was unpacked in Atlanta, but that didn’t mean she had to follow suit. Her only task right now was to make the best of her situation and build a new track record to be proud of.

However, forgetting her love life was difficult when the elderly ladies, who made up eleven of the twelve residents, considered it their favorite discussion topic. For instance, at lunch the next day, Betty Carter produced a photo of her youngest son, who was forty-two and divorced and wore a handlebar mustache. “Coming to see me next month!” she said. “He’s a hit with the single ladies. You ought to drop by.”

“I’ll see if I have time,” Lina said.

“Marla’s nephew Gary is closer to her age,” said Ethel Barker. “He’s a sweetie.”

“But he lives way out of town, doesn’t he?” said Dolly Tidd. “I think she should hook up with Ren here.”

Lina shot a look around, but Ren was at a distant table arranging food on a tray.

“That would be my vote too,” said Mrs. B.

“I’m not sure I’m in the market right now,” Lina said.

The way Ren’s hands moved displayed a grace that reminded her of a heart surgeon she’d had a crush on a few years ago. The surgeon had been twice Lina’s age and married, of course, but there was no harm in admiring people.

Ren turned, caught her eye, and smiled. Lina twitched and dropped a forkful of cornbread into her lap. Ren walked over with a plate of orange-and-black-frosted cookies. “Would you ladies be interested in tasting these for me before I do the big batch?”

Mrs. B leaned to squint at the plate. “Ren, that’s lovely of you!”

Lina folded her napkin around the fallen cornbread, took a crescent-moon-shaped cookie, and peeked up at Ren. “Thanks.”

“I want a cat.” Dolly took a cookie that, to Lina’s eyes, was actually shaped like an owl.

“Hand me one,” said Ethel. “I don’t care about shape, just make it a big one.”

Lina bit into the moon while Ren handed cookies around. Orange-flavored frosting melted with buttery shortbread in her mouth, and she nearly melted as well. “Very good,” she mumbled to Ren as she chewed, one hand covering her mouth.

“Delicious,” said Mrs. B, and smiled at Ren. “You’re such a sweet boy. You must have a girlfriend. Are you seeing anyone?”

The other old ladies tittered. Lina felt blood rush to her cheeks. She carefully took another bite.

Ren smiled. “No, Mrs. B, I’m not.”

“Oh, what a shame! Well, I promise you I won’t set you up with my granddaughter, though I’m tempted to.”

“Thank you for the thought, anyway.” He picked up the plate. “I’ll get to work on these cookies.” He returned to the kitchen.

The old ladies broke into laughter. Lina glanced at Mrs. B and shook her head.

“Well, now you know!” Dolly said.

“I didn’t need to know.”

“He never used to offer us special cookies before you arrived,” said Mrs. B. “You just think about that.”

The trouble was, she did think about it. Ren didn’t have a girlfriend—what was the story there? Could he be a comrade in bad breakups? Might they commiserate with each other some late night in the kitchen? His reticence made him interesting. She suspected he was bright, and obviously he was kind, so what else was under the quiet surface? He was still undoubtedly too young, but Lina considered it good that she was even thinking about another man. It showed she was moving on with life.

On the other hand, she didn’t want to be like her mother, who went rather overboard when it came to moving on to the next guy and being devil-may-care about his age. Lina’s parents had been divorced for fourteen years, and her mom had gone through at least ten boyfriends, and possibly as many hair colors, in that time. Most of the men were either much younger or much older than her—not that Lina actually discussed it with her mother.

But Ren wasn’t like those men. He was clearly more appealing. It wouldn’t hurt to get to know him, would it? She needed a friend. Her former colleagues at Everglade Hospital had already trailed off in their communications with her, as she had predicted. Though she missed feeling part of a group, she didn’t miss the people themselves. They seemed part of another life already, as if Drake House had swallowed her up into its strange self-contained world.

And it was indeed a strange world, as she learned a few days after tasting Ren’s “special cookies.”

While on her rounds, Lina ate an English muffin as an afternoon snack. As she passed Mrs. B’s open door, the old lady called out to her.

“Come in for a moment!” Mrs. B leaned forward from one of her lavender armchairs. “Do I have a Halloween story for you!”

“About what?” Lina sat down in the opposite armchair, careful not to scatter crumbs on it.

“I had a long talk with Jackie this morning. That woman has some interesting stories, all right.”

“Oh, you got something out of her?” Lina took another bite of her muffin.

“I certainly did. It seems in the 1930s, when Jackie was a sorority girl here, there was something of a murder-suicide in this house.”

Lina was startled enough to stop chewing. “A…murder?”

“Manslaughter-suicide, actually. The first death was accidental.”

At the word “manslaughter,” Lina’s stomach went into a tailspin. She forced down her bite of muffin and nodded for Mrs. B to continue.

“You see,” said Mrs. B, “Jackie’s best friend Julia was seeing one of the houseboys. His name was Sean. The girls had a formal dance coming up, with a fairy-tale theme. It was on campus somewhere. Julia wanted Sean to go with her, but he wasn’t comfortable with the idea, because in those days the girls weren’t supposed to date the houseboys. He was afraid he’d lose his job. But Julia just couldn’t live without him taking her to this dance, so she and Jackie cooked up a scheme.

“She got Sean to agree to a private evening at the house while the other girls were at the dance. But what she really planned was to slip him some sleeping pills in brandy, and then while he was asleep she was going to call a taxi, have the driver help haul him into the car, and take him to the dance. Then she was going to revive him there—like Sleeping Beauty, you know, only he would be Sleeping Beauty and she would be Princess Charming.”

“Oh, no,” Lina breathed. She winced at the mention of mixing sleeping pills with alcohol. The manslaughter was even medication-related. She felt sick.

“That’s right. I guess whatever she and Jackie studied at U-Dub, it wasn’t medicine.”

“So he died.”

“Here at the house. They never did make it to the dance.”

“Oh. Oh, gosh.” Lina’s gaze traveled up to the ceiling as she wondered which of these rooms had been Julia’s—and whether she ought to put her head between her knees until the dizziness passed.

“After the funeral,” Mrs. B said, “Sean’s family brought charges against Julia. She didn’t say a word. That night, when everyone was asleep, she went into the garage and started the housemother’s car with the garage doors closed, and killed herself with the exhaust.”

“So she knew about carbon monoxide.” Lina’s medical background provided an automatic answer, which was good, since otherwise it would have been hard to answer coherently during her panic attack.

“Isn’t it funny, the little gaps in people’s knowledge?”

A new thought darted across Lina’s mind, and she clutched at it for support. “Then Jackie saw Ren, and thought he was the houseboy?”

“I guess so. She said he looks just like him. But really now, it’s been seventy years. I imagine being back in this house made her think so. In any case, it gave her a shock.”

A deep breath in and out helped steady Lina’s heart rate. She rotated the last bite of English muffin in her fingers. “Why would she want to live here again, after going through something so awful? I wouldn’t want to move back into the house where my best friend died.” Nor would Lina want to go back to Everglade now, and she hadn’t even been friends with Mr. Ambaum.

“She said she had fond memories after that—she and the other girls bonded and had some good times. Anyway, it’s a lovely house.”

“True.” Lina tucked the muffin piece into the pocket of her lab coat, thinking about the dark, small garage where Marla and Alan’s car now sat. She had been there just the other day, setting out on drugstore errands with Marla. Now she doubted she would ever enter the garage again without remembering what had taken place there. No wonder the basement gave her the creeps. No wonder people said there was a—

She looked at Mrs. B. “So that’s the ghost?”

“Who? The houseboy, or the girl?”

“Either. Maybe both. Do you think it—oh, what am I saying?” Lina wiped her hands on her lab coat. “I don’t know if I believe in that stuff. It’s just things sometimes…never mind.”

“Move around by themselves?”

“Well…yes. Like you said the first day.”

“Yes, I said so, but it sounds to me like you’ve seen something.”

Lina tried not to picture the ghost of a slain youth turning off the lamp in her bedroom, or slamming the laundry room door. “I can’t prove it wasn’t a living person. Or me being forgetful. Or faulty wiring, or a draft.”

Mrs. B chuckled. “Always a rational explanation. You’re probably right.”

Lina’s dizziness receded, but her mind remained a muddle. She rose. “I better go. I need to see Gertrude about a prescription. But I’m glad you told me.”

“I’ll see you at dinner, Lina dear. If you see that ghost, just jump into Ren’s arms. He’ll protect you!”

Lina smiled weakly and left the room with Mrs. B’s laughter bubbling behind her. Not a half-bad idea, really. Sheltering in Ren’s arms sounded lovely. Too bad it would require seeing a ghost.

* * *

An hour before dinner, Lina encountered Ren in the kitchen mixing dough—cookie dough, to judge from the bag of chocolate chips beside him. Mrs. B’s comment returned to her mind and brought a much-needed smile to her face, finally allowing her to set aside thoughts of manslaughter and tormented spirits.

Ren glanced up and smiled back. “Lina Zuendel,” he said, with perfect pronunciation. Must have heard her surname from Marla. “How’s your day going?”

Lina rested her forearms on the bar. “Not bad. By the way, I think Mrs. B solved the mystery of why Jackie attacked you.”

“Oh?” Ren’s shiny red spatula worked the dough off the edges of the bowl.

“A houseboy was killed here in the thirties. By one of Jackie’s friends.”

“Accident, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Lina faltered, a bit deflated. “I guess Marla told you.”

“Marla’s grandma was the housemother here when it happened. I heard about it a long time ago.”

“Everyone knows two kids died here, and no one said anything?”

Ren shrugged. His jaw muscles flexed; apparently he was chewing gum again. “Well, it was seventy years ago.”

“But what about the…the ghost?” Though the question struck her as absurd, curiosity did nag at her. For one thing, the tale resonated with her own demons. And for another—well, everyone liked a good ghost story.

One side of Ren’s mouth quirked, in what could have been amusement or thoughtfulness. He went on working the spatula. “People been telling you stories?”

“Kind of. A couple of the residents said the house was haunted, but I didn’t really believe them. Then one night my lamp switched off by itself, and another time the laundry room door slammed shut…” She pulled herself upright. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

He scraped the spatula on the rim of the bowl. “Haven’t been bitten by one of those spiders, have you? Remember, they can cause hallucinations.”

Lina smiled. She watched him seal the lid onto a plastic tub of baking powder. “You’ve worked here a few years, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever seen anything? I feel stupid just for asking. I don’t believe in these things. Or at least I didn’t before.”

He plopped the dough onto a sheet of waxed paper, then set the bowl aside and wiped his hands on his apron. “If you mean, have objects moved by themselves, then—maybe. I swear sometimes I set something down, look the other way, and then turn back to find it flipped over or arranged differently. If you mean, have I seen transparent figures roaming the house, or met any headless horsemen in the alley, then no.”

“Hm.” Lina dragged a paper napkin around on the countertop with one finger, unsure whether his words were reassuring or disquieting. “Still, don’t you think it’s odd that you look like this dead houseboy? To someone who knew him?”

“Like I said, it’s been seventy years. Memories get fuzzy.” He began forming the dough into long rolls.

“A tragedy like that must have been in the newspapers. Maybe I’ll look it up at the U-Dub library.”

Ren pulled the waxed paper to the edge of the butcher’s block and tore it off. He folded it over one of the dough rolls and twisted the ends. “If you think it would help,” he said, but he sounded dubious.

* * *

Lina took her research idea only as far as a half-hour Internet search that evening. She didn’t know enough about the incident to be able to seek specific names—for instance, Julia’s or Sean’s surnames—and thus had to resort to strings like “Seattle Julia manslaughter suicide Gamma Eta Omicron.” Gamma Eta Omicron had been the letters of the sorority. Lina had spotted them on a dusty set of awards in the file room in the basement. Her web search didn’t turn up anything relevant, which was understandable considering how long ago the deaths had taken place.

She then tried the UW library homepage, since Julia and Sean had been university students, and if anyone had carried the story it would have been the school newspaper. But she needed a university log-in and password to access most of the materials, and as she was no longer a student she had no such thing.

She gave up for the night and blinked at the dark window past her screen to ease her eyestrain. She figured when she had a free afternoon she would walk over to the library and do the research in person. As Ren had pointed out, there was no rush. It was difficult to make an urgent case out of the fact that seventy years ago two people had died.

“But now I’ve got some idea what you’re all about,” she said to her empty room, “and believe me, I understand.” She stretched her arms over her head. “And thanks for giving me an excuse to talk to my own cute houseboy.”

She smiled and got up to prepare for her night shift. Tonight was one of the three nights per week when she was on call. In a house with only twelve patients, all of whom were in fair or good health for their age, the graveyard shift was usually quiet, and she could sleep between calls. A pager, handed off to whoever was on duty, would wake her up. Lina had never received more than two calls per night so far, and they were never medical emergencies—just discomforts like leg cramps, insomnia, or gas. Marla covered two of the remaining nights each week; and Consuela, a nursing school student currently working in the kitchen, covered the other two, dozing on the sofa-bed in the Drakes’ quarters while waiting for calls.

Lina changed into a long-sleeved T-shirt and a soft pair of yoga pants with a drawstring waist, and set her lab coat and slip-on leather shoes beside her bed. She put the pager in her shoe and fell asleep within ten minutes.

The beep woke her. She squinted at the clock—half past midnight—knuckled her eyes to clear her vision, and picked up the pager. The electronic display read Ethel B. Slipping her feet into her shoes, she reviewed in her mind where Ethel’s room was: second floor, toward the end of the L-shaped house. The back staircase would be the best route.

Lina put on her lab coat and shuffled out into the hall. Only half the corridor lights were on, leaving shadowed patches in between. The back staircase, which only had lights on every other landing, was especially dim. Cold, too, she thought, folding her arms and shivering as she padded down the carpeted steps. She paused at the window between the third and second floor, but spied only a black, drizzly night and the bare arm of a tree raking at the glass. The window must have been badly insulated, because the cold was pouring into the stairwell at refrigeration strength. In fact—she puffed out a breath to test—she could actually see her breath.

She turned to the stairs again. She didn’t know why she felt afraid—only a tree tapping the glass, only an autumn storm making it cold—but as she stepped forward to descend to the second floor, her heart started pounding. She took hold of the handrail but couldn’t make herself take the next step. She hadn’t even been reading Stephen King lately. Why was she scared?

As she stood gripping the rail, the end of an orange crepe-paper streamer, stuck to the wall as Halloween decoration, untaped itself from the paneling and lifted into the air. It swung and rippled as if someone was standing there playing with it, just as Mrs. B had said about her door. Lina watched, paralyzed. The streamer swung once more and then dropped. Light footsteps thudded on the stairs in front of her, where no one was standing; she felt the floor vibrate.

“Why didn’t you get to your patient in time?” she imagined some lawyer asking. “Why did you let poor Ethel Barker die?”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t get down there,” she would say. “I thought there was a ghost on the stairs.”

She had to go forward. But she could not.

The footsteps approached, faster now, and closer, until with a rush of air they passed her, rustling the streamers. Cold breath blew down the nape of her neck. Lina shrieked and jumped back against the window. She held the pager raised in one fist, ready to strike anyone who appeared.

All went still. The other residents were playing tricks on her, she thought, throwing her gaze around the stairwell. They cooked up the story about the houseboy and the sorority girl, then paged her at midnight to catch her here, and then somehow made a streamer dance by itself in the air, and made the stairs shake…

New footsteps padded up from below.

She was not going to stand around and wait for that to happen again, no way. She bolted forward, thundering down the last flight to the second floor landing, and ran smack into someone.

She screamed. The person said something, startled. They untangled their arms and stepped apart.

“You okay?” Ren asked. He still wore his houseboy uniform: white button-up shirt, black trousers, and shiny black shoes. His breath smelled of wintergreen gum.

“Oh. Hello,” she said. “Was that you? No, I guess…I don’t see how you would have…”

“What happened?”

“Hah. I understand. This is what you do to new people, right? Good job. Had me scared. How did you do the cold air? Got a window open up there?”

He frowned up the stairs. “None of these windows open.”

“But it’s cold, it’s really cold. Isn’t it cold?” Her shivers had turned into full-on shakes.

“It’s cold.” He put his hand on her arm and brought her into the second-floor corridor. “Did something happen?”

“Only, um, footsteps—other than mine—and decorations coming unhinged, and I, I’m supposed to be seeing…”

“Where were you going?”

“Answering a call. Ethel.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Thank you,” she said, grateful he offered without her needing to ask.

Ethel, in a voluminous purple nightgown, blinked at her from her lilac-scented pillow. “I’m so sorry to bother you, honey. My electric blanket isn’t working, and it’s positively freezing tonight.”

“You’re right about that.” Lina folded up the faulty blanket and found a new one in the closet.

“Was that you thumping down the stairs and shouting?”

“Yes. Just me. I…tripped.”

When she had gotten Ethel reheated and tucked in, she said goodnight and closed her door.

Ren leaned on the wall in the corridor. “All okay?”

Lina nodded. “Thanks for coming with me. I’m a little spooked. I don’t know what happened.” She turned toward the main staircase, avoiding the back stairs for now.

He walked with her, gazing at the light fixtures.

After a few seconds, she added, “I notice you’re not saying, ‘It was just your imagination.’”

“People don’t like to be told that. I could say it anyway. Want me to?”

“I guess not. Hallucinating isn’t much better.”

“Still, after hearing the old stories today…”

“It could have been my imagination,” she finished. “I hope. Kind of.”

They climbed to the third floor. “These night shifts are never popular,” he said. “Even with Marla. But don’t tell her I said that.”

“It was the same at the hospital. It got spooky. Only there was always someone around. Someone visible, I mean.” She glanced at him. “How come you were up, anyway?”

“I don’t sleep much. Just one of those people.”

They reached her door. “So next time I have a night shift, if I scream again, you might come running?”

“I will if I hear you.”

She opened her door and flicked on her overhead light, bright though it was in the middle of the night. “Well, I doubt I’ll sleep any more now.”

“You should try. I think it’s over.”

She looked at him. “What’s over?”

He hovered outside the door frame, gazing down, lips pressed together as if he regretted opening them. “Just…these things, they tend not to last. It should be quiet now.”

“So you don’t even believe it was my imagination.”

“I’d put it out of your mind. Try to relax and sleep.”

“Are you in on this? Really. I won’t be mad, just tell me. Is this a trick for the new nurse?”

He sighed and folded his hands behind his back. “No. We like you and want you to stay. It’s an unusual house, that’s all.” He sounded as if he was choosing his words carefully.

“Cold air breathing down your neck, things moving by themselves, that’s unusual, for sure.”

He smiled at his feet. “Well, call if you need anything. Don’t worry about waking me up. My room has an extension, it’s on the list on your wall.”

“Fine, but—”

“The rest of the night should be quiet. I really think so. Try to sleep.” He bowed his head to her like an Edwardian English butler and walked away.