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I raised the flame to the lock of hair and without any warning, it went out. I’d felt the breath on my fingers, but I lit it again anyway, just to see it happen. The flame stood up and then it vanished as the Lady blew it out.
I stood there for a time, thinking a bit more deeply than usual. She had wanted me to find the ring of hair with its sad little ribbon, but she didn’t want to be set free. Like I said before, I don’t know exactly why she chose me, but I’ve always had the Garner charm; at least my mom used to tell me I had. She never meant it in a good way, though.
I carried that thing out of the house like it was a live grenade, stopping only to accept the cash payment old Weathers took from a tin in her kitchen. Hell, I’d earned the money. I didn’t even put the ring of hair in a pocket, just carried it out in front of me until my arm grew stiff. I didn’t feel any breath on the back of my neck then, not until I was out on Fisher Street and walking away.
I can’t explain exactly why I did the things I did that day. It would have been easy enough to throw the lock of hair down a drain, or better still into the river so it could be carried out to sea. Maybe if I’d been scared I would have done it, but you have to realize that this was my life’s work. Finally I had proof I wasn’t completely wasting my time. I never claimed to be a good man, but I never wanted to be a complete fake either. It felt like I’d found my Rosetta stone, the key that would unlock it all for me. It was true too, in a way.
I stayed in Penacook for a couple more days and I bought myself the box I carry today. It’s a small brass thing, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, about as big as a pack of cards. The ring of hair went with me and from then on, well, I guess I was haunted.
The Lady was quiet for a few days after. I’ll spare you the details of how I tried to get her to perform—once for a newspaper guy and once in a bar when I’d had too many shots. She stayed in the box and then, just to rile me, blew in my ears all the way home until I was swatting my own head in frustration. I had enough money to live and I spent that time thinking. What if every ghost had its link to the world, like the Lady’s lock of hair? It took me a while, but after about a week, I found myself in Franklin County, Massachusetts. I stopped again to put new ads in all the local papers. For the first time in years, I changed the copy and sold my services as a Ghost Hunter—Satisfaction or Your Money Back. It didn’t hurt that I’d made more money from Mrs. Weathers than my previous six jobs combined. I didn’t even grumble at the rates per word they quoted. There was gold in them thar hills.
The first few months were a bit of a nightmare, I don’t mind telling you. It wasn’t that I didn’t get any calls; I did. I even thought I’d have to get another cell for work, it was so busy. The trouble was that of the houses I visited, not one of them had anything more supernatural than mice behind the walls. Even so, I learned the skills and I put a toolbox together that a carpenter might have approved. I could strip a room in an hour, and I guess the good builders and painters of Massachusetts must have thought it was Christmas with all the extra work I left for them. I found grumbling old pipes, rat nests, a bird trapped in a chimney, all sorts, but the Lady kept quiet. Outside, she would still tickle my head at times, just to show me she was there, but in the houses, she was quiet as the grave probably should be.
The money ran out and for a time I was forced to go back to the old work, just to keep the main ads running and pay for gas. She didn’t like that. I could feel her breath on my face, pushing me away whenever I went to do my readings, until I had to leave the box in the motel room.
It all changed that winter, after a heavy snowfall. I had a live call from my Hunter ads, though it meant driving to a town named Montague, about forty miles from where I was. I couldn’t afford chains and it was hard going, maybe four hours of creeping along with the wipers going and the lights lost in a blizzard. All those big trucks kept whooshing by as well, making me nervous.
I had my tools and the Lady’s box with me and maybe I imagined it, but there was a feeling of excitement as I pressed the bell of a huge old house on Treadle Road, to the south of Main Street. A young Asian woman opened the door and I smiled at her, thinking that servants were a good sign for a payday. I felt that slight pressure at the back of my head as well, pushing me into the house after her.
I’d been wrong before, but not that time. I was taken to a proper library, filled with books from floor to ceiling. The man who finally came to see me was young to own a place like that. I wondered if he’d inherited it, or whether he was some high-powered broker or something. He looked uncomfortable the whole time he talked to me, and I couldn’t read him that well. Turns out it was his wife who had called me, but she was out of town. You could see he would rather have thrown me out, but the snow was still falling and I assume his wife was not the sort of woman you cross lightly. I’ve met a few like that.
He took me upstairs, fidgeting the whole time, like he couldn’t keep his hands still. He didn’t offer me a drink or anything, and I could see he was going to stand over me to be sure I didn’t steal anything. I didn’t mind, though, because the Lady was pushing me the whole way, like she knew there was something good up those stairs.
The stairs opened up onto a landing with six or seven doors. To my surprise and mounting interest, he had to unlock one of them before I could go in. He saw my look and made a grimace.
“It’s always cold in here, even with the boiler going. I don’t think it was properly insulated when the house was built.” I just smiled politely and he made his face again and led me in.
It was cold. Not freezing, but chilly after the rest of the house. Straight away I could feel the Lady blowing on me, but I didn’t want to make it look easy.
“My usual fee is six hundred dollars for this kind of work,” I said. He looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon when I said that, but I just stared him down.
“You should know I don’t believe any of this,” he said, like he was scoring a point. I waited for him to think of his wife and how angry she’d be if he said he’d sent me away. Thing was, though, I’d have done it for free at that moment, just to see how it should work. Still, I waited until he nodded.
“Cash,” I added. He almost sneered at me.
“Of course,” he said.
I left him alone. Time was I’d have taken pains to annoy a man like that, maybe even broken him up a little, but I was eager to get on and I could feel the Lady pressing me farther into the room.
It took about five minutes, maybe less. I’ve learned since not to do it so quickly. The Lady guided me to the right place, and I used a handsaw to cut a floorboard and a claw hammer to yank up the right part. I found a piece of bone lying in the dust there, black with soot.
“Have you ever had a fire here?” I called over my shoulder. He was looking kind of horrified at the damage I’d done, but he nodded.
“My grandfather’s time, yes,” he said. It would have been a good hit, just the sort of thing they don’t expect you to know, even though it would have been in all the local papers at the time.
“And someone died in that fire, in this room,” I said. It wasn’t even a question, and he just gaped at me as I brought the bone out into the air. It was only a piece and I couldn’t tell which part it had come from. Maybe an ankle, I don’t know. It was enough to keep the spirit in the same place, though. I could feel the temperature dropping, though there was nothing special, like frost patterns on the window. This wasn’t a powerful spirit. I’d meet those later.
I took the bone out of his house and he paid me in cash, with all his sneers and fine attitudes neatly cut out of his manner. He had a look of awe in his eyes when he went up to check the room and found it warm. I had the bone in my pocket and it felt like there was winter all round me. I saw the man flinch as he took my hand and pumped it.
“I’ll destroy it,” I promised. I did too. I wasn’t ready then to take in another boarder, and a spirit who just made you cold was no use to me.
I don’t know what he said to his wife, but that girl had connections and there are a lot of old houses in Massachusetts. I stayed there for another six months and work came flooding in. There were the usual blanks, of course, but the Lady helped me with two real ones and I was off and running. I put my rates up for the big houses and for the first time in my life, I made some real money, enough to change out the transmission on the car. I even thought of renting a house for a time, but I’m happier moving on, always have been. Of course in the past, there’s always been bad memories to run from. I passed my fiftieth birthday in a motel and I even bought myself a goddamn cake and a candle. The Lady blew it out and I drank a fifth of good whiskey.
I found Geronimo halfway through my second year. Now I know what you’re going to say and I agree with you. Why would that old Apache medicine man haunt an abandoned mansion in North Carolina? My honest guess is that whoever he really was, he just likes to call himself something different. I don’t know whether he was a New York broker who leaped out of a window, or just some cattle driver from the thirties. I do know he’s powerful, and that’s what matters. That’s what dragged me two hundred miles south when I heard about that old house, falling down with neglect and no one daring to live in it for half a century.
He has enough strength to speak to me. Maybe working with the Lady made me sensitive, I don’t know, but I can hear the old man as a whisper and understand maybe about a quarter of it. The Lady and I found his relic
in the usual way, but that was all that was usual. I’d grown accustomed to thinking of spirits as weak things—a slightly chilly room isn’t The Shining, if you know what I mean. Geronimo could call up a storm, and we found his relics while there were books and dust swirling around us. I had to use an old door from the basement to cover my head while we dug out his bones. I guess he was probably murdered, as they don’t let you bury your loved ones in the garden, even in North Carolina.
