Page 20 of The Shape of Night

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all,” I say.

“Oh? What’s his name?”

“Now you arereallybarking up the wrong tree. I’ll call you next week.” I hang up and look at Ned, who is meticulously washing the dishes. At fifty-eight years old, he still has the lean, athletic build of a man who works with his muscles, but there’s more to him than mere brawn; there’s a depth to his silence. This is a man who watches and listens, who takes in far more than others might realize. I wonder what he thinks of me. If he considers it odd that I have isolated myself in this lonely house with a badly behaved cat as my only companion.

“You don’t have to do the dishes,” I tell him.

“It’s okay. Don’t like to leave a mess.” He rinses his bowl and picks up a dishcloth. “I’m particular that way.”

“You said you’ve been working on this house for months?”

“Going on six months now.”

“And you knew the tenant who lived here before me? I think her name is Charlotte.”

“Nice lady. She teaches elementary school in Boston. Seemed to like it up here well enough, so I was surprised when she packed up and left town.”

“She didn’t tell you why?”

“Not a word. We came to work one day, and she was gone.” He finishes drying the bowl and sets it in the cabinet, right where it belongs. “Billy had something of a crush on her, so he was real hurt she never even said goodbye.”

“Did she ever mention anything, um, odd about the house?”

“Odd?”

“Like sounds or smells she couldn’t explain. Or other things.”

“What other things?”

“A feeling that someone was…watching her.”

He turns to look at me. I’m grateful that at least he takes the time to actually consider my question. “Well, shedidask us about curtains,” he finally says.

“What curtains?”

“She wanted us to hang curtains in her bedroom, to keep anyone from looking in the window. I pointed out that her bedroom faces the sea, and there’s no one out there to see her, but she insisted I talk to the owner about it. A week later, she left town. We never did hang those curtains.”

I feel a chill ripple across my skin. So Charlotte felt it too, the sensation that she was not alone in this house, that she was being watched. But curtains cannot shut out the gaze of someone who’s already dead.

After Ned heads upstairs to the turret, I collapse into a chair at the kitchen table and sit rubbing my head, trying to massage away the memory of last night. When considered in the light of day, it could only have been a dream. Of course it was a dream, because the alternative is impossible: that a long-dead man tried to make love to me.

No, I can’t call it that. What happened last night was not love but a taking, a claiming. Even though it frightened me, I ache for more.I know what you deserve,he’d said. Somehow he knows my secret, the source of my shame. He knows because he watches me.

Is he watching me even now?

I sit up straight and nervously scan the kitchen. Of course there’s no one else here. Just as there was no one in my bedroom last night except for the phantom I’ve conjured from my own loneliness. A ghost, after all, is every woman’s perfect lover. I don’t need to charm or amuse him, or worry that I’m too old or too fat or too plain. He won’t crowd my bed at night or leave his shoes and socks strewn around the room. He materializes when I need to be loved, the way Iwantto be loved, and in the morning he conveniently vanishes into thin air. I never need to cook him breakfast.

My laughter has the shrill note of insanity. Either I’m going crazy or my house really is haunted.

I don’t know whom to talk to or confide in. In desperation I open my laptop computer. The last document I typed is still on the screen, a list of ingredients for the next recipe: Whole cream, knobs of butter, shucked oysters combined in a rich stew that would have simmered on cast-iron stoves all along the New England coast. I close the file, open a search engine. What the hell should I search for? Local psychiatrists?

Instead I type:Is my house haunted?

To my surprise, the screen fills with a list of websites. I click on the first link.

Many people believe their house is haunted, but in the vast majority of cases, there are logical explanations for what they are experiencing. Some of the phenomena people describe include:

Pets behaving oddly.

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