“Come on, Alan, would you focus? I thought you were interested in this stuff,” Liz said.
Joe sat down on the planks next to his mother. She was picking through a big box.
“Why isn’t this stuff in the barn with everything else?”
“The Colonel curated the barn. These boxes are Nana’s,” Liz said. She handed a soap box derby helmet to Joe who took it with reverent care. “This was my uncle’s.”
“Well there’s nobody hiding up here. Let’s move down through the house and make sure she’s not hiding somewhere. Perhaps you can fill me in on any other secret passages while we’re at it,” Alan said.
“There’s nobody in the house, Alan. You’re being paranoid. And you must have known there was an attic up here, you can see the window from the road,” Liz said.
“Let’s all grab a box and head back down,” Alan said. “I can add all this stuff to the trunks in the barn tomorrow.”
Liz looked up at him again.
“Okay,” Liz said. “Grab a box, Joe.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Boat Trip
OCTOBER 11
“WHAT ARE you laughing at?” Bob asked.
The two men were carrying the boat down the little dirt path that ran next to the dam. They’d argued over whether to take the motor off before moving it, but it was a short distance.
Alan took a moment and flattened out his grin. “Nothing,” he said. He couldn’t hold it. He began laughing again.
Bob frowned. He was wearing a red and black checked flannel shirt, brown insulated chinos, rolled up at the ankle to reveal the same red and black pattern, and thick-framed glasses.
“You look like a 1950’s hunter from an L.L. Bean catalog,” Alan said, laughing. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Bob said. He dropped his side of the boat. It splashed in the shallows and banged against Alan’s shins.
Alan grunted with pain but then started laughing again.
Bob rooted around in his pocket and the pulled out a pipe. He tapped it against the lip of the boat. Alan looked up, saw the old pipe in Bob’s hand, and then laughed twice as hard.
“Oh my god, if you just had one of those hats with the little flaps,” Alan said. He held his belly. He could hardly catch his breath. “Since when do you smoke a pipe?”
“I don’t,” Bob said with a smile. “I found it in the pants. I found the whole outfit in my brother-in-law’s closet. It smells like mothballs, actually. I think it belonged to an uncle or something.”
“Oh, Jesus, don’t put that pipe in your mouth. You just said you found it in the closet,” Alan said. He pushed the stern of the boat into the water and spun the boat around. “Get in.”
Bob climbed into the bow of the boat and Alan waded out a couple of paces before he stepped over the edge. Alan wore the Colonel’s waterproof boots that came up almost to his knees. He tilted the motor down and started it up.
“Follow the stream until you can see the road,” Bob said. “Then we’re looking for a big culvert.”
“Okay,” Alan said.
The trip was Bob’s idea. He’d been on the lower lake once and remembered an interesting pond that his brother-in-law had shown him. A larger boat couldn’t reach it, but Bob thought that the Colonel’s little skiff might have no trouble with the shallow water.
“So did anything else happen?” Bob asked, continuing their conversation from earlier.
“Nope,” Alan said. “I didn’t see any more ghosts on the stairs and I haven’t since. Liz keeps telling me that I’m making too big a deal out of it, but it’s like a violation. Someone was in my house.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Bob said.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of these paranormal apologists too,” Alan said. “You’re a logical guy. You can’t possibly believe in that nonsense.”
It was a beautiful fall day. The leaves on either side of the stream were bright yellow, red, and orange, and they reflected off the edges of the serene stream. The sky overhead was brilliant blue and dotted with cotton ball clouds. Bob put two fingers in the breast pocket of his absurd shirt and pulled out a tiny plastic bag. Alan smiled at the crumbled bud that Bob packed into his antique pipe.
“Don’t worry, this is prescription,” Bob said.
Bob wiped the end of the pipe and then put it in his mouth. He applied a lighter to the bowl and took a timid puff. As he held it in his lungs, he offered the pipe to Alan.
“Twist my arm,” Alan said. He took the pipe. The smoke was potent—he inhaled even less than Bob had. Bob took one more little hit and then tapped the pipe on the side of the boat again. Alan exhaled. He didn’t feel anything.
“There’s still so much we don’t know,” Bob said. “You have to consider that there’s still a lot about the universe that we don’t understand.”
“What do you mean?” Alan asked. His throat felt hoarse. He opened the cooler and pulled out a can of soda.
“People only developed the theory of the atom like three-hundred years ago. The word atom means indivisible. Then, about a hundred years ago, we discovered protons, neutrons, and electrons. For a time, those were considered the smallest building blocks of matter. In the seventies, everyone agreed that the proton was actually made up of quarks. What are quarks made of? Right now they’re considered fundamental, but who knows what they’ll decide in another thirty years,” Bob said.
“And all that was discovered by rigorous scientific methods and experiments,” Alan said. “None of which has ever been able to prove anything paranormal.”
Bob shrugged. “But in a hundred years, maybe the experiments will exist. Maybe there’s another type of energy that we don’t currently have knowledge of. Before electricity was discovered, they had lots of theories of lightning. Now the whole thing seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”
“Right, but lots of people experienced and documented lightning. Everyone sees it. Even if you don’t see the flash, you hear the thunder. There aren’t a lot of credible witnesses of paranormal stuff. Where’s the evidence?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re having this conversation right now because you and your son saw a woman sitting on the steps inside your own house,” Bob said.
“Right—and I’m saying there was nothing paranormal about it. It was either some weird trespasser, or maybe a trick of the light. Joe was standing farther away and he thought he saw something. Maybe he said something about a woman, who knows. My eyes are terrible. Once he suggested what I should see, it’s perfectly rational that I thought I saw the same thing.”
“And when you opened the door?”
“She was gone. That’s even stronger evidence to support my theory. It must have been an optical illusion created by the screen door,” Alan said.
The outboard engine putted serenely as they chugged down the little stream. The wind blew the exhaust back towards Alan—he liked the smell from the little engine.
“So here’s a good question then—when you opened the door, did the image stay still or did it come with the door?”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Alan said. His head was starting to feel pleasantly foggy. He wondered if Bob had asked his question once or twice.
“As you pulled the door open, if the image of the woman was because of the screen, she wouldn’t have stayed put on the stairs as the door moved. Did she stay put?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Yes—she was on the stairs the whole time,” Alan said.
“Then it wasn’t the screen,” Bob said.
“So it was a real woman. While I opened the door, she must have vaulted over the railing and run down the hall. She escaped through the shed while I looked for her.”
“Except Joe saw her sitting there until you climbed the stairs. Why would he lie? And don’t you think you’d have seen her vaulting over the railing? Come on,” Bob said.