When they had wearily got back into the red truck and wedged the bottle of pagadebiti securely in the glove compartment, Pete started the engine and drove out of the Winchester Mystery House parking lot, but then just made a left turn onto Olsen Drive and an immediate right into the parking lot of a big new shopping center; he drove up to the empty Winchester Boulevard end of the rain-hazed lot and pulled into a parking space under a towering three-panel movie-theater sign and turned off the pnennp The rain drummed on the truck roof, and everv five seconds a drop collected on the rusty underside and fell soundlessly onto the soaked thigh of Plumtree’s jeans.
She was sitting in the back seat beside Cochran, and she fumbled the gold box out from under the soaked leather jacket. It was no bigger than a couple of decks of cards stuck together back-to-back, and its lid appeared to be an unhinged plate held in place by six gold screws.
“Find me a screwdriver, Pete,” she said. “A flat-tip one.”
“No,” said Cochran, “don’t open it. We’re supposed to pitch it into the ocean.”
“Not still shut up tight, though, right? Or she might as well have stayed in the chimney—there’d be no difference between the box sitting there or sitting still-sealed at the bottom of the bay. She’s gotta be broke open, like an egg into a fry pan.” Plumtree leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Her wet hair was plastered to her head and streaked with black. “Is Mammy Pleasant going away voluntarily? Or are you just gonna be shoving her in?”
“Voluntarily,” Cochran said. “She’s going along, anyway. She appears to be resigned to it.” The interior of the truck felt warm and close after the gusty chill outside, and he wrinkled his nose against the remembered childhood smell of doused campfires.
“That’s what I thought.” Plumtree fitted her thumbnail into one of the screw slots and twisted gently, but it didn’t move.
“I don’t know if ghosts really have a whole lot of capacity for voluntary action actual volition,” said Angelica from the front seat; and immediately she frowned, as if ashamed to have had the thought.
“These are dead people, Cody,” Pete said.
“Like Valorie,” Plumtree agreed, nodding expressionlessly. “Where’s that screwdriver?”
Pete sighed and bent forward to grope under the front seat.
“If you let her out;” said Angelica, clearly nettled but not quite ready to interfere, “she’ll be gone as quick as a puff of steam.”
Pete had dragged a black metal toolbox onto the seat, and unsnapped the catches and opened it. Wordlessly he passed a screwdriver over the back of the seat.
“I don’t think she will,” said Plumtree. “Obviously I wasn’t busted out of the madhouse and made a part of this company just so you’d be able to question my father and hell, I’ve already hosted Mammy Pleasant.”
“…Oh,” said Angelica, humbly. “I—I see. Cody, I do think you could get away with not doing it.”
Plumtree had already used the screwdriver to back one of the screws out of the box. “Look at that,” she said, holding the screw up. “All gold, not just the head.”
“I don’t imagine she’d scrimp,” said Cochran bitterly, “on what she thought would be her eternal resting place.” He knew he wouldn’t be able to talk Cody out of hosting the old woman’s ghost, if it was still viable in there, and he only hoped Winchester wouldn’t set her into any trouble or hurt her ribs or her hand. “I wonder when she decided to have this box and these screws made.”
“After 1899, I guess,” said Angelica, “if that’s when her daughter’s handprint showed up. The old lady was apparently a loyal servant of Dionysus before then.”
“Call her Mrs. Winchester,” said Plumtree. “I’ve got three of the screws out, she may be able to hear you.” Plumtree was rocking slightly on the truck seat, and Cochran could just hear what she was humming: Row, row, row your boat. … She peered out the windows at the agitated puddles on the asphalt. “Don’t tell me, if it’s too horrible, but how did we get away from the big black genie-guy?”
“Mammy Pleasant knew him,” said Pete. “I think he was a bit of the god’s remote attention, not able to make many decisions—like a horse’s tail, swatting flies while the horse looks at something else. But he recognized her, and he let us get out with a bottle of the super-Zinfandel.” He stared out the window at the rain that was splashing up in waves of mist across the parking lot. “Poor Johanna,” he said quietly. “The roof in Solville must be leaking like six firehoses. “
Plumtree had unthreaded the last screw and lifted it out of the hole. Now she slid the cover off the gold box, and lifted from a nest of ribbon-tied locks of smoky-fine hair and folded strips of newsprint a corked but apparently empty glass test tube.
“Careful you don’t just eat her, the way Sherman Oaks or your Dr. Armentrout would,” said Angelica nervously.
“I didn’t eat old Pleasant, did I?” Plumtree lifted the tube and stared through it. “I’ve got plenty of practice at just standing aside and making room for an incoming personality, like when the phone rings.”
She frowned slightly, and Cochran knew she must be thinking of Janis, whose job it always was to answer telephones.
“Wide unclasp,” she said then, perhaps speaking to the glass tube. “I’m the one who got the message in the stained glass. Meet the ones that people this little head.” And with one motion she bit out the cork and inhaled strongly over the open tube.
The cork fell out of her lips and she sat back in the seat.
“Oh my Lord,” she said then, exhaling and staring wide-eyed at the three people in the truck with her, “has found me, hasn’t he?” The voice was strong but higher in pitch than Cody’s or Pleasant’s.
“No,” said Cochran, “we’re—well, yes, I suppose so. We’re sort of contract labor for him, I guess.”
Tears gathered in Plumtree’s eyes, and spilled down her sunburned cheeks.
“You don’t have to go,” said Angelica suddenly, “if you don’t want to. We can…I don’t know. Damn it! Is there a way to…hide you again, hide you better?”
Beside her, Pete looked as though he wanted to object, but he just pressed his lips together and rolled his eyes to the rusty ceiling.
Plumtree’s eyebrows went up. “No, there’s not.” She raised Plumtree’s hands and flexed them in front of her face. “I’m…out now!…and bound for the god, bound for the sea; and I’ll take my baby’s ghost with me, at least, dry dust though she is. Lord, I did think we’d have to spend eternity in that box. I ran out of thoughts after only a few hours, I believe, and even my dreams were just of being in the box. The memories of her that I kept, defiantly kept, were just black dust after all. Nothing but soot. I should have known.” The eyebrows went up even further when she looked down at the soaked leather jacket and jeans she was wearing. “I’m…grateful to this person for a little interval time in which to breathe fresh air.”
Hardly very fresh, thought Cochran. He yawned from sheer nervousness, anxious to have Cody back on again.
“What,” asked Mrs. Winchester as Cody’s body seemed to brace itself, “is the date, today?”
“Monday the thirtieth of January,” said Pete, “uh, 1995.”
The news appeared to alarm Mrs. Winchester, and Cochran thought it was learning what day of the month it currently was, rather than that seventy-odd years had passed since her death, that had upset her. “When is the Chinese New Year?” she asked quickly.
“Tomorrow,” Cochran told her. “The Year of the Pig.”