Burial by Graham Masterton

particularly salubriousarea but their apartment’s okay. One Friday evening about three weeks ago Mr Greenberg went off to the synagogue, and when he came back he found that something strange had happened.’
    â€˜Harry, if this is something weird, then I don’t want to know.’
    â€˜Amelia, I don’t know who else to ask!’
    â€˜I don’t care, I don’t want to have anything to do with it! Don’t you think the last time was bad enough? It took me
years
to get over the nightmares, you know that. I still can’t look at a table without feeling frightened of what might come out of it — even now, even today!’
    I sat back and lifted my hands in surrender. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t even have come here.’
    â€˜Harry,’ said Amelia, ‘You seem to think that you can use people like characters in your own TV series. You seem to think that when you ask me a favour, I’m going to come running. In spite of how you treated me; in spite of the fact that for fifteen years you haven’t written or telephoned or even sent me a Christmas card. In spite of the risks, too. Especially in spite of the risks.’
    I looked down at my coffee, trying to appear as chastened as possible. To tell you the truth, I would have done anything not to have had to ask Amelia to help me. But whether I liked it or not, there was nobody else. She was the only person I had ever come across who could do for real what I could only pretend to do — contact the spirit-world. She was spiritually sensitive to the point where she could hear whispers when she walked past cemeteries. The dead, if you can believe it, whispering to each other in their sleep.
    Amelia said, ‘You can’t ask me, Harry. It’s simply not fair.’
    â€˜You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘I should have tried to find somebody else. It’s just that we don’t know where to turn next.’
    â€˜Did you tell Karen you were going to ask me?’
    I shook my head. ‘I didn’t want to raise her hopes. Or Michael Greenberg’s hopes, either.’
    â€˜How is Karen these days?’ I could sense that Amelia was circling around this conversation, anxious to know more, yet equally anxious not to commit herself.
    â€˜Karen’s fine.’ I touched the back of my neck. ‘She still has a scar there, but that’s all. I guess we all carry some kind of scar.’
    â€˜You said she was divorced.’
    â€˜That’s right. She couldn’t face the idea of having children. I guess it’s understandable.’
    â€˜And these friends of hers — what’s this strange problem they’ve been having?’
    I touched her hand; her long pale fingernails. It’s very unsettling, touching somebody you used to hold so intimately, after so many years of separation.
    â€˜Amelia, if you don’t want to get involved, I’d rather you didn’t know.’
    Amelia eyed me narrowly through the ribboning sunlit smoke of her cigarette. Out in the street, a young Hispanic kid pressed his face to the window and made a squint-eyed, mouth-blown-out expression. ‘Nice neighborhood,’ I remarked, nodding to the kid; who didn’t run away, but pulled ever-more grotesque faces.
    Amelia smiled. ‘Tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can make some suggestions. Maybe I can recommend somebody.’
    â€˜Well,’ I said, ‘I guess the most accurate way of describing it is to say that it’s a poltergeist manifestation. When Michael Greenberg got home that night from the synagogue, his wife didn’t answer the door. He had to call the fire department to rip it down. He found his wife in the dining room clinging to this single chair, and the rest of the furniture up against the opposite wall.’
    â€˜The furniture seemed to have moved by itself?’
    â€˜Not seemed, did.’
    â€˜How can you be so sure?