Emily's Ghost by Antoinette Stockenberg Page A

after catching some morning news? She stared at the
baseball game, trying to remember.
    The senator was glancing
around the room, taking it all in.
    Emily sprang into action.
"This isn't normal," she said, grabbing up litter by the armful.
"I'm much neater than this, really, but he was dictating so
fast...."
    "Don't worry about it,"
the senator said, walking up to the television. His hand paused on
the off-button as the announcer intoned, "So at the end of the
fourth inning it's the Boston Red Sox 3, the Yankees 1." A
half-smile flitted briefly over his face. He turned off the
set.
    Emily was watching him.
"You don't believe me," she said, stopping dead in her tracks. Her
arms were full of damp towels and empty cartons; her eyes were
burning with indignation. "You're more interested in the
game!"
    "I turned it off," he
protested.
    "Eventually!"
    "Emily, trust me on this
one: I really can walk and chew gum at the same time. Whether the
Red Sox win or lose will not affect my ability to help
you."
    "You're right; I'm sorry.
I'm just on edge, that's all." She dropped the armload, crumbs and
all, into a side-chair and said helplessly, "He might be
anywhere."
    "They're said always to
appear in the same place," the senator ventured.
    Emily pointed to her
darkened bedroom. "He was in there the night of the
s é ance." She felt
a ridiculous, intense surge of disloyalty. She flashed back to the
third grade, when someone told the teacher that she was hiding in
the cloakroom eating a stolen candy bar. Snitch! she'd cried to the
girl later. Snitch, snitch, snitch!
    But this was different.
"Please be careful. He filled me with light, a great ... burning
light. It was terrifying ...."
    Part of her was convinced
that the ghost wouldn't dare attack a United States Senator; and
part of her shut her eyes tightly in self-defense. She waited. When
she opened her eyes again the senator was standing in the doorway
of the bedroom, watching her thoughtfully. "Nothing?" she asked in
a small voice.
    "Nothing obvious," he
answered. "I've brought a pocket tape recorder with me." He set it
up on her desk, where she was sitting. "I want you to tell me about
this light."
    She did, running through
the sequence of events in great detail, trying to convey her
terror. "I've always read about knees that knocked," she said, "and
the accounts always seemed melodramatic. Now I know better." She
studied her hands, folded and locked in her lap, aware that she
sounded like a patient spilling her guts to a psychiatrist. And yet
she was feeling
relieved, finally talking about it with someone.
    The senator had let her
run on, almost in a monologue, before he spoke. "Do you think he's
here now?" he asked from his seat on the sofa. His voice was calm,
a therapist's voice.
    Too calm; it annoyed her.
"Of course I do," she answered. She'd been trying so hard not to
make Fergus sound like a hallucination. All things considered, she
preferred that Fergus be real and that she be not insane. "You're
probably sitting on him right now," she added, a little
evilly.
    The senator didn't flinch;
his handsome face remained impassive. "Do you think he'll show
himself to me?"
    Emily pushed her locked
hands away from her in a stretch to relieve her tension. "I dunno.
Maybe you have to be wearing the necklace. Want to try it?" she
challenged, reaching up behind her as if to undo the
clasp.
    "No, not now," the senator
answered. "We can always try that later. After all, he's not
appearing to you either at the moment."
    He rose to his feet and
began taking in the measure of the apartment, stopping now and then
to pick up some object or look at a framed print. It was as if he
was trying to know her through her things. He seemed to Emily much
too big for her place, larger than life somehow. He belonged in a
suit of armor and on a horse-- not easing himself between a t.v.
stand and a shelf of paperback books to get a better look at a
poster-print she'd bought from the Harvard Coop. Emily thought