The Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®. Lawrence Watt-Evans
structure could work like a physical structure—if Arturo could move into the house of your marriage, or your heart—but I’ve never heard of that. Of course, this is the first time Malcolm and I have met another ghost. We don’t know if anybody else’s ghostliness works like Malcolm’s.”
“If I build a house in my heart, Arturo could move into it and come with me to the retirement village, you think?” Anna glanced at Wendy. “I have him in my heart already, always; I wear him there as I wear my wedding ring on my finger.”
“Does he know that? Maybe the idea won’t work, anyway. But anything’s worth trying. If he moved into something you built together, maybe you could see him—”
Malcolm walked back through the wall, pulling Arturo by the arm. Arturo’s mouth was set in a stubborn line. “Home wreckers,” he said, and tried to pull his arm out of Malcolm’s grip.
Wendy straightened. “Sir,” she said. Anna studied the direction of Wendy’s gaze, followed it.
“You are an evil young woman,” said Arturo.
“Do you want your wife to kill herself?” Wendy asked. “Is that what you really want?”
“Of course not!”
“Please be very sure. What you are doing now is the same as telling her to kill herself. She wants to take care of herself, to get the help she needs to survive. If she listens to you and chooses something too hard for her to handle, she courts death. Do you love your wife?”
The fury slowly left his face. He stopped trying to jerk his arm free of Malcolm’s grasp. After a long moment, he said, “Alive, I loved her. Dead, I love her. But it is the house that sustains me. If I leave the house I kill myself, and that is a sin against God.”
“What does he say?” Anna whispered.
“He says he loves you but he’s not sure he can leave the house.” Wendy bit her lip and said to Arturo, “We thought about structures that might sustain you. You built yourself into the house. Did you build yourself into your marriage? Anna says she carries you in her heart.”
Arturo looked at Anna. His face softened into a smile again, and then saddened. He walked to Anna and reached out a hand. It disappeared into her chest.
Suddenly another ghost smoked up out of Anna and stood half in the couch behind her, facing Arturo. It was a younger man, his hair black and thick, his eyes alight. “Who are you, old man?” he said.
Arturo staggered back. After a moment, he said, “That is how she remembers me.” He turned an angry face at Wendy. “There is no room in her heart for me!”
“You stiff-necked old donkey!” said his other ghost. “Have to have her all to yourself, do you? Death has not granted you any virtues, has it!”
“Will you leave and let me in?” Arturo asked.
“I will not leave!” said the young man. “But if you ask me very nicely perhaps I will make room for you.”
“Wait just a minute,” said Wendy. “Anna, a ghost came out of your heart and is talking to this other Arturo about both of them living in your heart together. Do you want that?”
“I don’t understand,” said Anna. She sounded very young.
“I wish, I wish you could see them,” said Wendy.
“Does she want to see us?” asked the younger Arturo. “Easy.” He reached into the back of Anna’s head, worked around in it, then said, “There.”
Anna looked up and screamed. Then she clapped her hands over her mouth. “Arturo,” she whispered. She glanced back and forth between the old Arturo and the young one.
“Arturo?” she said.
“How did you DO that?” older Arturo asked. He held up fists and shook them in frustration. “How is it everyone knows secrets except me?”
“Arturo,” said Anna, her voice a little stronger. “What did I tell you about jealousy, always?”
Older Arturo sighed. “That it is a viper’s bite on my heel and weakens me as long as it holds on,” he said. “But Anna, I am like a baby. I do not like it.”
“Of course not,” she said. She stood and took a step toward him, lifting a hand—and then the hand sank back to her side and she slowly folded toward the floor. Wendy jumped up and Malcolm did too, but it was the younger Arturo who caught her and eased her collapse onto the couch.
* * * *
“As I am the man she believes and wishes I was,” said the young Arturo as Wendy rubbed Anna’s hands between hers, “I have more generosity of spirit than you do.” He beamed at Older Arturo, who gave him a ferocious frown.
“Even though it will diminish me to mingle with you, I shall do it,” said Younger Arturo.
“In you I can see clearly what Anna told me about pride being a hobble that makes you take short steps,” said Older Arturo.
Wendy and Malcolm looked at each other. They flicked their eyebrows up and down.
Younger Arturo laughed. “We heard her, but did we ever listen? If you become part of me, some things will change for you. One thing is that she becomes the center of our life. We don’t have the work, and we don’t have the house. We don’t have the evenings at the Taverna with the other men. We enter a smaller existence.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing since I died?” Older Arturo asked. “I cannot even step beyond the lawn.”
“So you are ready to join me?”
Older Arturo looked at the ceiling, lifted his arms and spread them wide as if embracing the house. “I built this well. You don’t know what it is like to be inside a board, to hear it think of the tree it once was, to speak to nails and hear their tales of hiding in the earth before the forge, to ride the currents of heat like sparks rising from a chimney.…”
“You can tell me,” said Younger Arturo.
Older Arturo slowly lowered his arms and smiled at his younger self, then looked at Malcolm. His eyes narrowed. “You better be good to this place,” he said, frowning.
“Maybe you can brief me before you go,” said Malcolm.
Anna’s eyes fluttered open. “Arturo,” she said.
“Anna,” said both Arturos.
Bewildered, Anna looked at Wendy. Wendy gripped her hand. “Watch,” she said, nodding to the Arturos.
They studied each other, then walked toward each other. They grasped each other’s hands, paused a moment, staring into each other’s eyes, then pushed closer. In a shimmery moment they melted into each other, gasping, and finally a single Arturo, a midway mix between the two who had stood there a moment before, turned to look at her. “Oh, Anna,” he said, touching his hand to his heart. “I feel your heart touching mine.”
She held her hands out to him and he came to her, reached for her hands, but his passed through them. They both cried out. In distress and anger, they stared at Wendy.
“It’s not the same as being alive,” she said, “but it’s much, much better than losing a person entirely.”
“I caught her when she fell,” said Arturo.
Wendy nodded. “Sometimes you can do that.”
He frowned. “Wait. I will return in a moment,” he said, and walked out through the kitchen wall.”
“Can he come with me?” Anna asked.
“I think he’s gone to find out,” said Wendy.
Malcolm was watching the wall where Arturo had disappeared. He turned to Wendy after a moment. “Can I try something?”
“Sure,”