TWO

Suzette looked up from her work and out of the window. She could feel someone was coming, and they would be bringing complections with them. She took her walkman CD player and a book up to the third floor; her rule was, "If you can't hear them knock, you don't have to answer the door." Ethan and The Black Cat watched her ascend the stairs.

The rocking chair was the only furniture in the long narrow room. Daylight came from the windows at opposite ends of the space. One window was a small and round with clear glass, it overlooked the stairs to the widow's walk. While the other window, at the front of the house, was large and rectangular and had stained glass in half of its top pane.

* * *

Don drove up the driveway to the old house, he supposed that if a psychic would live anywhere it would be here. It was a three-story house and it had one of those roofs with the iron fencing. He could not remember what they were called but remembered that they were for women to watch for their husbands as they returned from the sea.

After parking in front of the front door, he stepped out into the sun. He held something in his hand, it was black and rectangular. He had knocked several times on the double screen doors without luck, just before he was going to try the doorknob he saw the doormat. It read, Entering Without An Invitation Is Trespassing. He looked up at the door and was almost sure that she was there. Although he had not heard or seen any movement inside, he had been told by the kid at the grocery store that she had to be home to get her delivery of food.

* * *

In the book she was reading there was a character who always gave good-bye kisses. A wave of loneliness crashed over her. She was suddenly reminded that she had no one to kiss good-bye. Logically she knew that this was for the best, but emotionally, well, it hurt like sandpaper across her soul. Urg, she thought, that made it sound like something out of a badly written romance story. Too bad that was how it really felt.

* * *

He knocked again on the door then decided to walk the porch that was around the house to see if there was another entrance. He caught a momentary glimpse of a cat on the inside window sill but beyond that there were no signs of life on this side of the house.

After knocking on the other two doors he went down the stairs to the yard. He turned to the amazing view. The edge of the backyard dropped away into a view of the bay. Looking out at the water he chewed on the side of his thumb. He had been driving most of the day with the AC on high, but now that he was out in the air he was beginning to sweat. Although he would dearly love a cold drink and a soft bed in any old hotel with a cross breeze or a shady patch of lawn to rest on, he circled back to the front of the house. He could only see shadows on the tops of the walls and the gentle afternoon breeze playing with the curtains from inside the higher windows. What was he going to do if she refused to see him?

This thought had occurred to him after he had been on the road for a few hours, too late to turn back, more than a little stupid to continue forward. He had stopped at the next road side diner, had some coffee and thought about it. Several cups and a slice of pie later he had one thought that made sense to him; right decision, wrong decision, it did not matter as long a decision was made. He continued instead of retreating because of his family. They did not get it. They did not see it as an option and wondered about him because he did.

* * *

Susan's head jerked up from her book as Ethan's whistle penetrated her headphone music. Ethan was standing at the window at the end of the room. The top of the window was made up of blue and white squares of stained glass that were separated by thin silver lines -- Ethan was bent over slightly looking out the bottom part that was open.

Come here, he gestured to her with a tilt of his head.

She put her book down on the floor next to the rocking chair and crossed to him. As she reached him, she took off the headphones.

"What?" she asked.

Ethan looked out the window again. Susan followed his gaze. There was a man pacing in the front of the steps. He was chewing on the side of his thumb. Susan stepped back so that the man could not see her if his nervous movements caused him to look up to the third floor window.

"The point of me coming up here on such a hot day, Ethan, is to avoid knowing that people are down there."

He's circled the house four times, he's knocked on every door but he hasn't peered in the windows, give him credit, he's respecting your privacy.

"Then why is he here in the first place?" she asked, as she edged to the window for another look. He was still there, pacing in the hot sun, gnawing on the side of his thumb.

He must really need your help.

Susan gave Ethan a glaring look that was more effect than felt then went down stairs.

The man did not hear her descend the stairs or see her as she moved to, or stood at, the double screen doors. This enabled her to watch him as he moved back and forth.

He was older than she by perhaps ten years and yet, maybe because of his nervousness, he still seemed youthful. His hair was brown and slightly sun bleached as if he had recently been spent a lot of time outside.

Unwilling to detain this meeting any longer, Susan said, "Did you want something?"

His head snapped around to her then took a half a step toward the stairs. She was behind the screen, which dimmed her image into something that looked like a ghost. "Are you Suzette Phillips?"

She paused and eyed him in what she hoped was a creepy manor. "Yes," she finally admitted.

"I'd like to offer you a job. Can I come in?"

"It would save us both a lot of time and pain if you just left now," she told him.

"Please, let me tell you what the job is and then if you want me to leave I will. I need to make every effort before I give up."

That turn of phrase caught Susan's attention; needing to make every effort, she understood that. And she could feel how sincere he was -- there was trouble, he needed help, and did not know where else to go. Her heart went out to him.

"Damn you, Ethan," she said under her breath as she pushed one of the screen doors open with her left hand. Ethan just smiled.

"Come in," she told the man.

As he came up the stairs, she could see that his nose and forehead had started to burn in the strong afternoon sun. As he crossed the porch and took off his sunglasses, she saw that his eyes were bright blue and that he had a sprinkling of freckles on the upper most part of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

When he stepped inside Susan noticed that he made special effort not to brush against her.

Don did not know what a real psychic was supposed to look like but he would not have picked this woman out of a line up; around five foot seven and not more than twenty-two with long brown hair in a braid nearly down the length of her back. She looked more like a college student than a psychic. Dressed like someone who had recently lost a lot of weight, Susan's shirt was large and flowing and the leggings that she wore were dark gray and ended just below her knees. Her expression was guarded, she was watching him closely.

She gestured him into the front room with her right arm.

"My name is Donald Williams and I got your name through research I was doing," he came around the sofa that had its back to the doorway and sat down as Susan moved to the large, overstuffed chair in the corner.

"I know the what, tell me the why, Mr. Williams"

"'Don.' Everyone calls me, 'Don, '" he said still uneasy and illustrating it by periodically chewing on the side of his thumb.

He really does not like this, Susan thought, as she watched Ethan come into the room and stand behind Don.

"Don. Why?"

"My Uncle Guy has this farm in upstate Virginia, just crops, no animals, corn mostly but he wanted to try his hand at potatoes. So he had this patch of land down in a gully some ways from the corn fields. It was deeply wooded so he had to pay to have it cleared." Don stopped to catch his breath, he was rambling and he knew it. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes tightly as if he was about to taste something foul and said, "The thing is that since it has been cleared, he's been seeing things." He paused and looked at Susan; this was embarrassing for him. She could feel it come off him like heat. "Lights, sort of camp fires, but not electric lights. You can see them from a distance -- but as you get closer they fade and disappear. And about a week ago my uncle said that he saw a man out of the corner of his eye -- but when he turned to face him there was no one there." Don was speaking in a long string of words, sentences, that meshed together in his haste to get his thoughts out. This must be what it is like when someone speaks at a support group for the first time, Susan thought, get the admission out where it can be dealt with. Sure, it was embarrassing and sounds hollow to the speaker but it was nothing that had not been heard before.

"Okay, now I know why, why me?"

"While I was researching, your name came up a few times in newspaper articles. You gave no quotes, you came across as . . . secondary, as if you didn't want to be there." Don looked down at his hands.

"That's when I started to research you. It was funny how many times the Tabloid Psychics used your name as an equivalent of fraud. I think that's what convinced me that you were for real." He gave Susan a smile, then continued conspiratorially.

"What made me decide was when your name was in the punch line of one of the monologue jokes on a late night talk show. It was a sign."

Susan raised an eyebrow at him. "A fraud and a punch line and you still sought me out."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know a kind way to say what happened."

"No, that's fine, I'd rather have hard reality than kind lies.

"What is it that you want me to do?"

"I want you and the team that helped you with the Maryland Graveyard to come to my uncle's farm and make it stop."

Now that he had said his piece, Don looked slightly confused as if he had carefully written a speech and had not referred to it once. All the detailed graphs had given way to an emotional plea.

Susan pulled her legs up into the chair with her and waited. Don had something he wanted to say, she could read it in his anxious expression, she was going to let him get it off his chest.

"My family thinks I'm nuts," he said after a few seconds of quiet reflection. "I'm sure that it looks that way, but I do not know what else to do. Uncle Guy even had the field blessed by a priest and it didn't stop anything." Don shook his head.

"My uncle is a good guy, he doesn't deserve this."

"Your uncle shouldn't take this personally. This is probably the echo of an event and has nothing to do with him."

"Will you . . . " he paused. Susan could hear the words that he did not say.

Help us. Help me. Help.

He could not bring himself to say it, she could hear that too. If he said it, he would be weak.

Instead, he held up a video cassette. "I brought this for you to watch."

Susan led him to the other end of the long room were there was an entertainment center tucked in the corner. They sat next to each other on the love seat that sat in front of the TV. Susan relinquished the video remote to him. As he was fast forwarding, he explained what it was that they were watching.

"Uncle Guy has this neighbor up on the high hill and he fancies himself an amateur movie maker -- he recorded the field being cleared. I think he was going to present it to Uncle Guy after the first crop had been harvested."

The field was a long way down from where the camera was filming and in between was a stretch of trees. Luckily, it was being filmed from such a distance and they could see the whole field from end to end. Part of the closest edge was obscured by tree tops but not much else was hidden. Fast forwarding caused the field to be pulled up and cleared quickly.

"Here," Don said, hitting the play button. "This is it."

The night vision option had been used and caused the picture of the land below to appear as if it were shot though a green filter. There were glowing images in the field. Some campfires burned but there were other lights that seemed to be gathered in a circle, as if they were drawn to one point in the ground in the middle of the field. These lights were not flashlights, they could not be torches, they seemed to be bubbles of light. As Susan leaned forward toward the set, her long braid slipped over her shoulder. The movement caught Don's attention and caused him to turn to her for a moment. Then he got up and moved to the television.

"Now, see here," he pointed to the top of the hill at the far side of the field. "In a second you'll see my uncle turn on his flash light."

The beam of light came on and all the lights in the field disappeared. Campfires and bubble lights were extinguished at once and as one.

"Uncle Guy said that there were voices but they stopped too." He turned off the tape and turned to her.

"I'll have to make some calls," Susan said as she realized that she had decided to help Don.

Owen, she knew, would not be a problem -- he had quit jobs in order to help her. Judy, Jack, and Judy's brother, Karl, were different. They took it all too seriously, as if it were a science experiment instead of something that occurred naturally. They worked well with Owen's gadgets and they never complained when there was physical work involved. The Maryland Graveyard that Don had mentioned had several newly leveled gravestones thanks to them. Don was wiping his sun burned face with his hand.

"Don, would you like something to drink?"

"Yes, please."

Susan turned and passed through the doorway at the end of the room, beyond was a huge kitchen.

Don paused at the door, in awe. "Wow, you must love to cook."

Susan had gone to the cupboard across from the doorway for a glass. She glanced at him as she crossed to the right-hand corner of the room and opened the refrigerator door.

"Sometimes," she answered.

As she leaned in, she disappeared behind the silver refrigerator door and Don realized that it was one of those huge restaurant fridges. Why did a woman who lived alone need so much food that she could not use a regular unit? Now that he took in the full size of the room it was more suited to a large family than for a single person. Really the whole house was too big for just one person.

Rather than handing him the glass she set it on the table that was next to him and stepped back. He picked it up and took a sip -- it was iced tea and really good -- then gulped it down. He put the glass back on the table.

"Thanks, that really hit the spot."

"More?"

"Please."

After he had finished the second glass Susan told him, "I need to make some phone calls. Can you come back tomorrow?"

Don was startled by the abruptness of her request. She had decided that it was time for him to leave and did not see any reason to postpone it.

"Oh. Sure. I can come tomorrow."

He turned, walked through Ethan, and was led back through the house via the long hall that ran down the center of the structure. They walked past an office on the opposite side of the hall from the living room that was well stocked with books. It was not until after the door had closed behind him that it became apparent that he did not have a place to stay, his plan had not gone beyond talking to Susan. In a perfect world she would have had everyone ready and waiting in the driveway. He did not know if there was a hotel in the town, on his drive through he had only registered the grocery store. Perhaps if he went back to the store they could recommend some place to stay.

* * *

Susan had the phone in her hand before Don had driven to his car down the curving driveway.

"Loan Officer, Owen Baker."

"Can you get away for a few days?"

"Hold on." There was the sound of the phone being laid down on the desk top and the fading sound of movement.

He seemed nice, Ethan said while she waited for Owen to return.

"You shouldn't have done that -- you know how I feel about my privacy."

You need to get out more.

"More like you want to get out. You can go without me, you know."

It's more fun with you.

"Coward."

Freak.

Owen picked up the phone. "When do you want to leave?"

"Tomorrow morning, it's upstate Virginia."

"Should I pack the tent?"

"Yeah. The big tent, the gadgets, the generator, everything."

"What time?"

"Six."

"See you then."

* * *

The tapping on the window woke Don with a start. Susan was peering in the driver's side window.

"You're sleeping in my driveway," she said, her voice muffled by the rolled up window.

"The hotel was sold out." He thought that he needed more clarification. "Dental convention."

"Dentists love a coastline." Having said that she turned and walked away up the driveway. Don sat up and watched her; without turning back she made a gesture for him to follow.

By the time he reached the screen doors, she was nowhere to be seen.

"Hello?" he called.

She stepped out of a door on the right-hand side of the hall across from the front room.

"In here," she said.

Don pulled open the door and entered, the doorway was to a small bedroom.

"The light switch is there and there's a W.C. under the stairs. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen." Then she was gone. He could hear her climbing the stairs, he stepped into the hall and watched her climb, her braid swinging her behind her like the tail of a lioness.

He got undressed and laid down into the single bed. As he started to drift off, he heard Susan talking. It was not as if she was talking to herself, it was as if he was only hearing half of a conversation. On the phone, he thought as he floated away.