“I tried,” he said. “I wanted to be there for you but I didn’t know how.”

The shadow in one corner of the room grew lighter, though the sun was sinking outside and purple dusk crawled across the mountains.

“I haven’t done so bad with Buttercup,” he said. The claim felt thick on his tongue, as if he had licked dust.

Wayne fumbled in his pocket for his EMF recorder, made sure it was off, and laid it on the desk. Such a toy embarrassed him, here in the face of awesome mystery.

A distinct outline fuzzed a few feet from the wall. Wayne held his breath.

The outline grew threads and walked.

And here she was.

Eight years after cancer had ravaged her, eight years after her heart had given one final flutter that barely registered a green quiver on the monitor, several thousand long days since she’d entrusted Wayne with guiding Kendra to adulthood, and here she was. Not all of her, to be sure, but even through the tears dimming his eyes, he could tell.

“Beth.” His voice didn’t crack, but everything else did.

He sought the features of her face in that amorphous mass, but the threads were swirling, fading in and out like a fog in the breeze. Her hair, her legs—is that her funeral dress, or wedding dress?—and the hand reaching toward him all shifted in the twilight, and he couldn’t tell if she were smiling or grimacing. The eyes, the holes in her face, were black and deep and told nothing.

This was the only ghost he’d ever wanted to meet, and now that she was here, he wished he were dead, too.

“Beth, I’m sorry...”

The sibilant trailed off into a sigh. Stupid. Time for apologies is past. What have you got for her? What does she need? What can you pour from your empty cup?

He wanted to stand and move toward her, meet her halfway. If the door between worlds were opening, then maybe he’d see more and understand. But he could trust neither his legs nor his eyes.

The air was brittle with anticipation, as if the ions were charged. A faint smokiness rode above the musty, cleaning-chemical smell of the room. The smoke was pungent enough to sting his nostrils and reminded him of the old coal-burning furnace from his elementary school, tucked away in a brick shed and surrounded by piles of reddish-gray cinders.

Why doesn’t she smell like patchouli or lavender, the scents she always dabbed on her wrist? Or the roses I laid on her casket, or the dirt from her grave, or the diesel fuel from the gravedigger’s tractor?

He was trying to impose logic on a miracle, but his mind was skittering away from the confrontation. What do you say when you need to say everything but don’t know how little time you have?

The threads weaved themselves in and out, a fabric of animated unlife.

You never have long, which is why you should never waste time.

And his thoughts were coming in her voice, the way they had in the months after her death, when he’d tried to pray but all he could do was blame God. Funny, but she’d never blamed the Big Guy Upstairs for her cancer, and Wayne had never had much use for an entity that supposedly had the power to make everything better but refused. But God was handy when you needed a scapegoat.

Anything besides accepting responsibility.

He swallowed and grabbed some air. “You look...wonderful.”

Like a teenager watching his prom date undress. Words without thought, another lie, because he wasn’t sure what she looked like.

Her face grew more solid, the mouth forming words, and he was no lip reader but it looked like she was trying to say “Kendra.” And something else.

Wayne squinted into the shifting morass of her eyes. They took on a frantic light and Wayne felt his muscles sag, as if she were drawing energy from him in order to deliver her message. And she looked afraid.

“Kendra,” her lips formed again, and her voice echoed in his mind, faintly enough that he could deny its existence if he wished, write it off the way he would if someone else had described the phenomenon.

“Yes?” he whispered, wondering if she could hear his voice in her head, too, or if that ephemeral, temporary skull could even hold thoughts.

“Get her out.”

He’d made a promise to meet, she’d held up her end of the bargain, jumping through God-only-knew-how-many hoops to get here, and now she wanted him to leave?

Right when she’d hinted at every secret he’d ever wanted to know, right when she held some answers, right when she could make him famous as the ghosthunter who had successfully proven life after death, right when Digger could become the world’s leading expert in something and finally gain Kendra’s respect and make her proud? Right when all the years of fooling around with gizmos in dark spaces was about to pay off? How could she be so goddamned selfish?

And her face was changing, as if she could read his thoughts, the cheeks crinkling in disappointment, and the face kept twisting, and Wayne didn’t know where his thoughts had come from, because it wasn’t the kind of thing he dwelled upon, all he wanted was to see her, love her, hold her one more time—

Her words, the world’s words, maybe even God’s words, roared through his flesh with a dozen voices.

“THIS IS NOT ME.”

Sounds from outside the room, tapping, knocking, pulled Wayne from his trance and he reached a trembling hand to his beloved wife, but she was changing, her face wizened and mottled, the shadows eating away at the fleeting flesh and only her teeth remained, gleaming pearls that seemed far too sharp. They were arced in a menacing, gleeful grin.

The door opened.

“Dad?”

Wayne stared transfixed into the corner where his wife—and Kendra’s mother—had drifted moments before.

“Dad, I’m sorry about...”

He couldn’t shake the image of Beth’s face in that last glimpse, before the night had reclaimed it. It wasn’t her, she’d said. Or had he only thought it?

Had any of it happened?

All he knew for sure was his cup was empty again.

“Jeebs, Dad, you’re crying.”

Lost her again.

Lost.

Chapter 21

Ann Vandooren had come to science the old-fashioned way: poking dead animals with sticks and dropping worms onto anthills. The offspring of an artist whose bisexuality had transformed into full-blown surgical transexuality and a Realtor specializing in rehabilitated commercial properties, Ann had evolved a world view that embraced both liberation and rigidity.

Her Catholic mother had dished out more than enough structured mysticism and church-approved dogma, rules that encouraged free thought as long as you stayed within the white lines. Her father, a devout Taoist whose favorite argument was that true Taoism couldn’t exist, constantly jousted with anyone who said there was only one path to God, enlightenment, or even the local drug store. But perhaps Mother was right after all, because when Dad turned, he legally changed his name to “Mary.”

Ann’s school years were a litany of academic awards and trips to the counselor, as she learned early on that intelligent, creative people were afforded more leeway and were more easily forgiven. Public education had little to do with children and everything to do with adults controlling, suppressing, and feeling good about themselves, so the prevailing wisdom was that any intelligent, creative kid was bound to be screwed up. And things would only get worse as that kid sought a slot in the real world, where only half of all drivers used their turn signals yet demanded air bags and other expensive safety gear for their vehicles.

By the time she attended North Carolina State University, she’d come to understand the delusions under which most people lived. Because they couldn’t accept the cold, hard facts of their lives, they concocted elaborate fantasies of religion and culture. They saw reality as somehow less inviting than a glorious heaven and harbored hope of better times ahead, even if that future could only come through the rite of passage known as “death.” And because most of them had made bad grades in science, all scientists were viewed with hostility and popular culture often painted them as crackpots, well-meaning but ultimately destructive subversives, or dispassionate observers of small things that didn’t matter.