part 2 chapter
23
t he man snored, his left arm thrown loosely over his head and one foot hung over
the side of the bed. i could never squeeze my lanky frame onto the goose feather mattresses in
this house, either. but the woman he calls phoebe sat stiffly upright in the dark, her spine driven
vertical by fear. her eyes stared open wide, and her arms were tight bands around her thin ribs,
holding her sides as though to keep a scream in.
she whispered, “is someone there?” then louder, in a halting voice, “is anyone there?” she
warily glanced at the windows once and then again, peering as if to catch a glimpse of
something just beyond the black glass. but she was on the second floor. who could press his
face to the window at that height? her neck strained toward the room’s invisible corners, eyes
searching past the bed’s tall posts, and then she sighed. she turned to watch her husband sleep,
considering whether to awaken him. her hand moved toward his shoulder, but then withdrew at
the last minute. the dog emma stirred, opened her eyes, and sniffed the air. her neck hair
spiked above her silken ears, and she catapulted to the floor in my direction, leaving the warm
nest of ma’s blue patchwork quilt at the end of the bed. head forward and tail aloft, she emitted
a guttural, threatening sound. this was when i made my move. i drifted to the room below.
one foot in front of another, i soaked into the library floor’s pine planks, forcing them to
vibrate, to send out sound waves that could be heard in the bedroom above. there was no
mistaking the thud of my heavy boots. sheets rustled as though pushed aside, and then the
woman demanded, “harry, wake up—did you hear that? there’s somebody downstairs.”
the man responded sleepily. “umph, what? what are you talking about? somebody in the
house? i didn’t hear anything.”
“can’t you please, please, go down to see what it is? grab the poker by the fireplace when
you go.” her vocal cords seemed constricted by terror, so that she could barely force out the
words.
“feebes, you dreamed it. i’m not going downstairs—no burglar would stomp through the
library. that’s not what crooks do. there’s nothing there.” he patted her leg, and when he
reached over to brush her cheek with his lips, the bedsprings squeaked. “go back to sleep, hon.
we’ve got tons to do tomorrow.” the man rolled over, and his snores soon competed with the
hooting of the barn owls on branches beyond the window.
the woman lay stiff as a pine board next to him, eyes staring at the ceiling, unconvinced. i
prayed that this time i had really frightened her.
several weeks later, something happened that made me think i’d succeeded. a balding man
in an oddly cut tweed jacket, brown-framed glasses, and neatly creased pants came knocking
loudly at the front door. phoebe certainly seemed glad to see this ordinary-looking fellow. he
accepted her outstretched hand with a pleasant smile, and then looked curiously over her
shoulder at me, where i watched from the shadows. my knees buckled; no one has so directly
registered my presence since i’d shed my body. afire to learn more about this man, i drew
closer.
“thanks for coming, professor liebowitz. i’m grateful to you for making the trip over the
mountain from the university,” she said. once again, phoebe wore long denim pants—hardly an
outfit to greet a guest—and a loose, flowered blouse with lace on the cuffs that somewhat made
up for it.
he followed her into the library. “no problem. i was glad to do it. your phone call made me
curious.” he sat down on my old sofa. “i hope i can help you.”
“i hope so, too. i’ve read about your research, but never thought i’d be calling you. i’m at my
wit’s end,” she said, perched nervously on the edge of the ladder-back chair in front of the
window. “i was so excited when we inherited this place from my husband’s mother, but not
anymore.” she shook her head ruefully.
while she spoke, he surveyed the room, eyeing the old currier and ives prints on the walls
and the antique tables and chairs. “you’re clearly in the process of renovating, but this is really
an interesting house. it seems frozen in the nineteenth-century. what’s the story behind this
place?”
she said that the farm had been in her husband’s family for more than a century and a half,
but no one had lived here since his great aunt had died thirty years earlier. by the mid-sixties,
the old plumbing had failed to meet county standards, and the toilets couldn’t be flushed. an
expensive new drain field was needed to fix the problem. phoebe’s in-laws, who had lived and
worked in northern virginia, couldn’t afford to have one dynamited out of the native limestone
or to maintain a second home. the house had been without inhabitants, slowing deteriorating.
the great aunt has to be my daughter cara. this man harry is my great-grandson? the same
mischievous tyke who visited years ago before cara passed away? that means he must be my
only grandchild helen’s son. his baseball cap still hangs on the hook behind the front door. i
guess the mystery of who these people are is solved, but it makes them no less threatening as
they strip my world away.
she continued, “they left all the furniture, books—everything—exactly as it had been, i
guess hoping some day they could afford to fix it up. now that we own it, my husband harry
and i are renovating it for a weekend place. he’s a lawyer in washington, and we live not far
from where he grew up,” she said. she seemed mighty proud of all of their destructive work, i
thought to myself.
“so all of this has been in the same family for one hundred and fifty years? that’s
remarkable. you don’t hear of that much these days.” his eyes sparkled.
phoebe nodded.
“you’re lucky. few folks have even one object, much less an entire house filled with old
things from their family.” i thought i noted a hint of something else in his voice.
she grimaced. “i don’t know about being lucky,” she said. “at first i couldn’t believe it. we
never dreamed we’d have a second home in our early thirties. and certainly not a two-hundred-
acre farm. but now i’m too scared to stay here at night. honestly, i wish we could sell it. but
that would break harry’s heart, and besides, no one would want to buy it with all that still needs
to be done.” alarm flared in my chest. i listened even more intently.
“well, selling may not be necessary. let’s start with what you’ve experienced,” he said, now
looking serious.
phoebe sighed and stared at her folded hands in her lap. “you’re the only person who might
understand. even my husband thinks i’m making it all up. but i swear i’m not.” she brushed a
lock of brown hair behind her ear, steadying herself. “i hardly know where to start. it’s like
someone is watching us, but not all the time.” the color drained from her face as she shivered.
“what do you mean? watching but not all the time?”
“it’s only when we change things or throw stuff out. but someone knows about it every
time.” she hardly paused to catch a breath. “and then things get very strange. for instance,
when we tore down the old kitchen cabinets, harry’s toolbox crammed with electric drills slid
across the kitchen floor. it must weigh fifty pounds. i was alone while i watched it move at least
three feet across the level surface.” she told him that the night after they painted woodwork in
the bedrooms, she heard the sound of interior doors repeatedly slam for maybe ten minutes, but
the doors never moved. “when i had the old piano hauled away, someone stomped up and down
the stairs most of that night.”
the professor had leaned forward to catch her softly spoken words. she paused and then said,
“i feel trapped. i could stay at home in northern virginia on the weekends and not help harry
work on the house, but there’s too much for him to do by himself. and because he thinks i’m
making this up, that would probably wreck our marriage.” she explained that they couldn’t
afford to pay workmen to do it all. since they’d owned the place, she’d taken courses in home
restoration and bragged she was now handy with a table saw, could do heavy carpentry, apply
wallpaper, and paint walls and woodwork. harry was dependent on her help.
“i can’t think of a solution. that’s why i reached out to you.” she twisted the strand of hair
that had fallen forward again. “if you can tell me why the ghost is here, what it wants, maybe i
can figure out how to get rid of it.”
professor liebowitz said, “you hear and see these things, but your husband doesn’t?”
she nodded.
“have you had experiences like this in the past?”
she fidgeted with her gold wedding ring, turning it round and round before answering. “not
really,” she said.
the professor appraised her for a minute. he then gently asked, “why aren’t you telling me
the truth?”
now she flushed deeply, the freckles across her cheeks disappearing. she looked at her shoes
and spoke so quietly that dr. liebowitz had to lean forward again. “i’ve always had some kind
of second sight since i was a little girl. maybe this hearing thing is part of that.”
he looked puzzled. “isn’t having second sight a good thing?”
“no! my parents convinced me that people would think i’m crazy if i let on about it, so i’ve
learned to ignore it. i’ve never even told my husband.” she said her father had grown up in a
bible-toting town in alabama. folks there believed such a talent came from the devil. from the
time she could barely talk, she’d accurately predict things. her father would then punish her by
locking her in the hall closet. she remembered his steely voice scolding her as he clasped her
under his arm, her feet desperately kicking as they neared the door.
“small, dark spaces terrify me. even now, i can feel the long coats and dresses flapping
against my face, piling on my head. the more i flailed and screamed, the more stuff fell from the
hangers and landed on top of me. i struggled against the buttons and rough wool and was
convinced my parents would never find me under that heap. that they’d open the door and, not
seeing me, lock it again. to a little kid of only four or five, the possibility seemed very real.”
her brows knitted together. “the trouble was, i never knew when stories about the future would
pop into my head and then spill out of my mouth. i couldn’t help it.” she wouldn’t lift her
glance as she spoke.
“was your mother more understanding?”
“yes, but she was powerless against my father. she fussed at me to stop, but i think it was
more to save me from punishment.”
phoebe told him she had felt unloved and ashamed. she eventually learned to stop the words
before they escaped, and then finally learned to block that part of her mind.
“i’m trying to learn how to forgive them.” her glance flickered in the professor’s direction.
my heart softened toward this woman. i knew how it felt to live with the burden of shame.
the professor regarded her solemnly. “that would have been so painful! but you mustn’t
believe what your parents made you think. you have a true gift, one you should celebrate. best
of all, it’s something you can use to help others.”
“i can?” phoebe brightened for a moment.
“yes, you can. and you could start right here.” he smiled consolingly. “now, let’s see if we
can find out what’s going on.”
he stretched his spine to his full sitting height, flattened his scuffed brown shoes on the
polished floor, placed his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes. the wrinkles around them
smoothed, and his mouth released any sign of tension. the rise and fall of his chest noticeably
slowed. both of them sat in silence as phoebe studied her visitor intently.
dr. liebowitz’s brow knotted and his mouth became cheerless, downturned. “ah, such
sorrow here. scenes of fierce battle, and then some kind of prison. fear, too.” he shook his
head. “powerful fear. poor fellow.”
phoebe’s eyes widened. “who is it?”
dr. liebowitz opened his eyes and relaxed into his normal position on the sofa.
“i’m sorry.” he shook his head. “i can’t see anything more than i’ve told you. but i did see
something in an upstairs room; it looked like old, yellowed papers.” he paused. “they may hold
some clues.”
she wrinkled her nose. “i’ll look. but how can someone who’s dead do the things i’ve seen
and heard? it makes no sense.”
“i’ll try to explain,” he said. “physics has taught us that our senses give us only a limited
view of the world. for instance, they tell us that matter is solid. but a while ago, we learned that
there’s nothing solid about matter. nothing at all. matter is actually made up of subatomic
particles in constant motion. but most of us aren’t willing to think of our bodies in the same way
—particles in constant motion.”
phoebe absently tapped on her wrist bone with her fingers, as if testing professor liebowitz’s
words.
“and now, physicists who study quantum mechanics have dramatically altered how we think
about the past, present, and the future.”
“does that relate to what’s going on here?”
“certainly. but there’s one more thing you need to know. some of these physicists believe
that our minds are part of a much larger consciousness. they are like sifters, straining the larger
consciousness in their own individual ways. for a long time, scientists believed that without a
brain, there is no mind. we don’t think that anymore.”
“so my brain is like a radio or a television picking up a signal?”
“something like that.”
“and what does this have to do with ghosts?”
“i can’t speak in scientific terms about ghosts because that hasn’t been my lab’s primary
focus. but i am sure of this: memory and personality last after death, at least for a while. you
probably saw something about our research on our website.”
“i did, but i don’t get it—how you can be so sure about such a thing.”
“i’m sure because my staff and i have thousands of case studies of american children, most
of them so young they’ve only recently learned to speak and who claim to have been someone
who died before they were born. they give names and minute details about people and places
they couldn’t possibly know now.” he told her that department researchers had tracked down
family members and information about these other people. “in every instance, the children’s
information was correct. even if we discount the idea of reincarnation, these studies certainly
suggest that memory survives without a physical brain.” he said that most of the children lose
these memories by the time they are five or six.
phoebe regarded him with wide eyes. “but what do scientists know about memory and the
brain? can you talk a little bit about that?”
“it’s the part of neuroscience that’s still a big mystery. memory isn’t like something saved in
a bank vault. it occurs in many places within the brain. there are some theories that part of
memory is even located outside of our brain.”
while phoebe puzzled over what he’d told her, professor liebowitz looked around the room
again. “this place, with everything pretty much as it’s been for several lifetimes, is full of
someone’s memories.” he watched her face intently and then said firmly, “you need to ask him
why he’s here.”
phoebe shook her head and her face clouded. “i don’t want anything to do with a ghost. he,
it, or whatever, is a complete stranger, an intruder who comes and goes in my house. and i have
no way of knowing if he’s harmless or what he’ll do next. that’s what frightens me.”
the professor was silent again, then in a calming voice said, “this being won’t harm you.
he’s in trouble. think about it for a minute. how would you feel, stuck in your home after
death, completely yourself in mind and heart but invisible? there’d be no one to laugh at your
jokes, to praise you, to touch you with love, or sympathy. there’d be no one who understood
your past.” he asked again, “how would you feel?”
“i guess it would be unbearable,” she said in a low tone. “i can’t imagine such loneliness.”
her expression softened.
“that’s right. and if a house and its contents still remind you of who you’d been and the
people you’d loved, you might cling desperately to them.” he paused and looked intently at her.
“why not let go of your past to help someone else get free of his? if you succeed, you might
have the house all to yourself. no ghosts.”
phoebe stared out of the window as if she hadn’t heard him.
“this is not someone who means to hurt you,” he said.
she sighed and said, “okay. i’ll try. how do i do it?”
“there aren’t easy answers. you need to find a way on your own, but you will. for starters,
strengthen your intuition. let it out of the dark. and, as a bonus, you’ll be more fully yourself.”
dr. liebowitz rose from the sofa, signaling the session had ended.
phoebe’s face relaxed. “i’m so grateful. you don’t know how much. thank you.” she walked
with the professor to the door.
he turned toward her. “stay in touch and let me know how you’re doing. and keep notes. i’ll
be interested in reviewing what you discover.”
when his footsteps on the porch stairs faded, phoebe leans against the heavy wooden door and
sighs. she lingers there a few minutes and then steps into the center of the front hall.
she takes the stairs two at a time. in the bedroom she and the man share, she searches for a
rusty coat hanger. after twisting the hanger wire open, she heads to the back bedroom where she
used the wire and some unladylike oaths to pry open the swollen closet door. inside are crooked
stacks of my daughter cara’s reader’s digest magazines from the 1930s and ’40s, boxes of
mouse-gnawed handkerchiefs and dresser scarves, wads of rotted jet-beaded black lace, and a
set of thigh-length, one-piece man’s linen underwear with buttons to the neck. she pulls out and
examines each item, then places it on the nearby dresser top. now that the closet is almost
empty, a wooden box is visible in the back of a lower shelf.
she tugs it out and lowers it to the floor. mouse droppings skitter off the top onto the
bedroom rug. this box was my first try at fine carpentry. i made it for my mother’s february
birthday from planed walnut boards from trees along the fence line. it was two years before the
war, and i surprised her with it at breakfast. when she brought the steaming bowls of porridge
from the kitchen, there it was on her dining chair. “where in the world did this come from?” she
asked. she clapped her hands in delight.
“tom made it, ma,” tish broke in.
“i’m so proud of you, tom. this is the best gift i’ve ever received,” she said. she planted a
kiss on my cheek. “william, come see what our son has made for me!” she called to my father
in the parlor. the splinters and my hammer-pounded fingers were nothing compared to this
moment; my heart was near to bursting with pride.
now the box is crammed with a jumble of notebooks, tattered yellow papers, envelopes, and
broken bits of two porcelain cat and dog figurines. the woman squats and paws through it all—
including 1930s tax forms and a rolled-up plan for rail lines to transport cavalry horses during
world war i. these and several french postcards of naked women came home with my son
william after his service in france.
at the bottom of the box are some crinkled vellum pages. she spreads them on the dresser
and flattens the creases with the heel of her hand. the first is a letter from aunt ellen to
reverend brown, the new substitute minister, who was traveling to richmond to comfort our
wounded soldiers in the hospital. he must have saved the letter for ma and given it to her
afterward.
march 30, 1865
sir, i have enclosed a little money which i place at your disposal to be used in any
way you think will do the most good.
there’s one thing i must tell you. we have been hearing from augusta county boys
delivered to richmond from northern imprisonment that the confederate government
does nothing for them. they return south without a cent, and therefore can’t procure
any clothing, food, or a way home. this is a terrible shame after enduring so much for
the confederate cause. we are looking for two boys from our church: my nephew tom
smiley and his friend jeremy beard, prisoners at fort delaware for the past year. if
on your mission to the confederate capital you should see either destitute, please
expend whatever is necessary for their comfort, and let me know. i will refund it.
your friend, ellen martin
the second paper is my signed oath of allegiance to the united states of america, dated at
the moment of my release from the union prison, fort delaware, on june 15, 1865, and certified
by the prison’s commander schoepf. phoebe studies it for a moment with a mournful face, as
though the misery that single page suggests might be contagious. the last item at the bottom of
the box is my likeness as a confederate soldier. mary begged me to sit for a photographer in the
early days and then complained i looked too solemn. the woman turns it over and sees cara’s
handwritten note: my father tom smiley, 1845– 1920. “my god, this is harry’s great-
grandfather. and he was a union prisoner!” she says to herself.
phoebe read and reread the letter from aunt ellen before putting it down on the dresser.
then, resting her back against the edge, she stares pensively through the wavy window glass.
after several minutes, she squeezes her eyes shut and speaks to me. “whoever you are, i know
you’re here. i want to help, but only if you stop scaring me.”
it has been so long since someone addressed me, even if she didn’t call my name. my heart
thaws for a moment, and i believe her. she grabs the two pages along with my photograph, and
rushes from the house to her car to drive home in the thinning light.
