Ghosts of Bergen County Read online

  “Gil,” Ferko said and extended his hand, which the doctor made no effort to take.

  “Ferko,” he said, “the man who thinks I’m a rabbi. If it were only true.” Dr. Yoder stuck out his hand in Ferko’s general direction. He was blind, Ferko realized. He wondered why Jen hadn’t warned him.

  He stepped forward and shook the doctor’s hand. “Come in,” Dr. Yoder said.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Jen said, and hung her bag on the newel post and bounded up the stairs.

  “Have a seat.” Dr. Yoder gestured with his open hand toward the living room. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water?”

  Ferko was thirsty, but he didn’t wish to trouble his host. He imagined the old man feeling his way along the walls toward the kitchen, up into the cabinets for a glass, ice from the freezer, and water from the fridge.

  “It’s hot,” Dr. Yoder said. “I’m getting one myself.” He doddered off toward the kitchen.

  “Sure.” Ferko followed him.

  “Jen comes here to nap. I don’t think she gets any sleep in the city.” Dr. Yoder took two glasses from the cabinet and filled them, nearly to the brim and without spilling a drop, from the dispenser on the door of the freezer. “Where do you live now, Ferko, in Sodom or Gomorrah?”

  “Glen Wood Ridge.”

  “Edgefield’s rich cousin,” Dr. Yoder said. He brushed past Ferko on his way to the living room. “Nice town.”

  Dr. Yoder sat in a wing chair, and Ferko sat on the sofa facing the fireplace. He set his glass on the coffee table. Ice clinked against the sides.

  “She tells me you saved her life yesterday.”

  “Hardly.”

  “She wasn’t wearing a helmet, was she?”

  Ferko hoped it was a rhetorical question.

  “What, she’s going to mess up her hair?” Dr. Yoder asked the center of the room. He sipped his water, then set it beside him on the end table. “I tell her, you ride that bike all over the city, in and out of traffic, all those frustrated drivers beating lights to get across town. It’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.”

  He paused, and Ferko nodded in agreement—pointlessly, he realized.

  “She takes some chances, that one.” Dr. Yoder’s tone softened. “She always has. But she’s a sweetie. And smart—book smart and street-smart, even if she’s not common-sense smart.”

  Ferko thought that summed Jen up pretty well, and it also explained why she hadn’t gotten stopped that morning. What did it say about Ferko, though, stopped for merely swimming in her wake?

  They sat in silence. They sipped their water. Then Ferko stood to read the spines of the paperback books on the mantel above the fireplace. There were four books, each a thin volume in a different dark color—navy, maroon, forest green, and black—wedged between two bricks that served as bookends. Each spine bore the name YODER and some variation of the same title.

  “The Ghosts of books,” Dr. Yoder said. “Is that what you’ve found up there, Ferko? First editions, all of them, though not worth the paper they’re printed on. Still, I’m proud of them.”

  “You wrote them?” Ferko pulled one down. Ghosts of Brooklyn. Inside was a map of Brooklyn with circled numbers. Each of these, he learned upon turning the page to the table of contents, corresponded to a chapter in the book.

  “They occupied me when I was younger. A lot of research and a lot of writing. I love ghost stories.”

  “Where did you grow up?” Ferko asked, his finger marking the first chapter, titled “The Orange Street Ghost.”

  “Washington Heights. Is that the volume you have there?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  “A contractual obligation. Start with Washington Heights, the top of Manhattan.”

  Ferko replaced Brooklyn on the mantel and chose Ghosts of Washington Heights, the book with the black cover.

  “In the first half of the twentieth century,” Dr. Yoder said, “Washington Heights was remote and insular, the perfect place for ghosts to thrive. I explain it in the introduction to that book, my first one. Ghosts are like animals that live in the forests. Encroachment from new development destroys their habitat. Ghosts of Edgefield or ghosts of Bergen? I imagine there are, but their presence is too diffuse to be felt. There’s too much here that’s new.”

  Ferko had his own apparition, even though his house was only three years old. “You know a lot about ghosts,” he said.

  “I’m not a scholar. But I’m not a kook, either. Unfortunately, the latter outnumber the former by a wide margin.”

  “Have you ever seen one?”

  “Seeing is not the right question. I’m blind now, but long before I became blind I knew what it was like to feel a presence without seeing it.” He stood and turned toward the stairs. “Peruse Washington Heights. The house in the first chapter is on the street where I grew up. It’s a bookstore now. They still sell the book.” He trundled forward. “Let me see what’s become of our Jen. She’s supposed to take me to the pharmacy.” He mounted the stairs.

  Ferko turned to the first chapter—“The Preacher’s House (185th Street).” The narrative described a house built in 1925 by a Methodist preacher, a Reverend Hurlingham. Now the house had a ghost—the spirit of a boy in its basement, a shallow space, five feet deep, once accessible only by a ladder that hung from a trapdoor in a closet. Legend had it that the preacher sent his children to the basement when they were unruly or when he was in a sour mood. The basement had no lights, no windows. You closed the trapdoor leading to the closet, and the basement contained the sort of blackness that had a tangible quality.

  Reverend Hurlingham and his wife, Libby, had eight children—six boys and two girls—before Libby died of an unexplained illness at the age of thirty-seven. A few years later, so the story went, the youngest boy, Sebastian, who was five and particularly prone to fits, bit his father’s arm. It was the sort of infraction that, in many households of the time (and, indeed, in many households today, Dr. Yoder noted), would have resulted in whacks with a stick or a belt or an open hand. But the preacher had a better punishment in the basement of the house on 185th Street.

  It was late, past bedtime, which further fueled the preacher’s impatience and rage, and so he caught Sebastian by the collar and dragged him toward the closet, picked the boy up, and dropped him, crying, down the hole. The preacher shut the hinged hatch, which stifled Sebastian’s screams, and placed a heavy trunk over it, and the other children, Sebastian’s brothers and sisters—each older from two years to twelve—watched from a safe distance, peering around corners, because they had each spent time shut in the black basement and did not wish to incur their father’s wrath.

  “Ferko.”

  He looked up from the book to find Jen’s head in the stairwell. She tromped down the steps in sweats and a T-shirt. She must have kept clothes at her dad’s for her frequent visits (and naps) on the weekends.

  “I can’t believe he gave you required reading.”

  “He found the books himself.” Dr. Yoder was at the top of the stairs now, taking them one after another. “Ferko is naturally curious about ghosts.”

  He wasn’t sure if Dr. Yoder was being sarcastic, though it was true enough. Perhaps it showed. “Can I borrow this book?” Ferko asked.

  “You can have it.” Dr. Yoder’s legs were visible now, more and more of him with each step. “I have a box of them in the basement.”

  “We’re going to the pharmacy,” Jen said.

  “I’ve got to go,” Ferko said.

  “We’ll meet you out front, Dad.”

  She walked him to his car. “I fell asleep.”

  “I wondered.” Her face looked misshapen, her eyes puffy.

  “Isn’t my dad sweet?” she said, perking up.

  Ferko waved the book, an affirmative answer.

  She leaned against his car. “We had fun, right?”

  They had, but he wasn’t saying.

  “We should do it again,” she said.

 
“Will I ever be the same?”

  “Don’t be dramatic.”

  Dr. Yoder stood on the steps, locking the front door.

  “Thanks for the book,” Ferko called.

  “Nice to see you, Ferko. Stop by anytime.”

  “Isn’t that cute?” Jen asked him. “Nice to see you?”

  “I heard that,” Dr. Yoder said.

  First, Mary Beth grew hungry. Then she grew tired. Then a shaft of sunlight found its way through the leaves on the trees and fell directly on her arm. She moved out of its way. And all this time, while one baseball game ended and another began, no one came up or down the path or through the woods at all that she could discern. No strangers and no one she knew. No dragonflies flitted by. Or fairies, either. She stood and stretched her legs. She even hopped off the tree, careful not to get her pants caught by the prickles. Then she climbed up again and sat, and the girl was standing in front of her.

  Mary Beth nearly fell to the ground.

  “Why are you here?” the girl said. Her hair was still in pigtails, the same fuzzy braids as the day before.

  Mary Beth recovered. “I’m waiting for you.”

  “It’s my house, not yours.” The girl looked at the fallen tree.

  “Of course,” Mary Beth said. She shifted backward on the tree to give the girl room to hop on. When the girl didn’t, Mary Beth stood to get off.

  “You’re invited to stay.” The girl put her hand on the tree to claim her space. “For tea.”

  “Okay.” Mary Beth sat again. The tree shaft here was narrower, and Mary Beth straddled it like the back of a horse. The girl sat cross-legged and faced her.

  She made an elaborate show of preparing the tea—filling the kettle with water and putting it on the flame—and while they waited for the water to boil Mary Beth thought of things she might say (she had a lot of questions), though she didn’t wish to ask them in a way that would upset the girl and destroy the camaraderie they were now developing. Mary Beth had just come up with a question she thought innocent enough and nonthreatening—what plans did the girl have for the summer?—when the girl began to whistle, a single, unsteady note, like a boiling teakettle.

  “Oh,” Mary Beth said.

  “The tea is ready.”

  The girl placed teacups on saucers and poured the tea, slowly and carefully, into two cups. She passed one to Mary Beth, who took it with two hands, one on the saucer and the other with her thumb and index finger on the delicate handle of the cup. She brought the cup to her lips and made sounds with her tongue on the roof of her mouth, a proxy for sipping.

  Then the girl held out her hands again, both this time, as though proffering a large platter. “Cakes?” she asked.

  “Why, thank you.” Mary Beth made a show of choosing one. “They all look delicious.”

  “You can have more than one.”

  Mary Beth raised her hand above the platter. “Hmmmm. I’ll start with this one. No!” She moved her hand. “This one.” She picked up a cake and nibbled it. “Mmm.”

  They sat for a time, enjoying the tea and cakes, each other’s company, and the ambiance offered by the shaded woods.

  A cheer rose from the ball fields above. The girl looked up the hill. “Is Catherine playing baseball?” she asked.

  “No.”

  The girl sipped her tea and waited.

  “If Catherine was playing baseball, wouldn’t I be up there, cheering, with the other parents?”

  “I guess so.”

  Mary Beth wished to cut through the ruse, through the games and the tea and cakes. But this was a child. Still, she said, “Catherine died.”

  “That’s sad.” The girl didn’t blink. She just looked unhappy.

  “I’m Mary Beth.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I followed you here.”

  “From where?”

  The girl paused to consider her answer. Mary Beth felt as if she were floating in some sort of liquid—a thick, warm syrup—from which she might never escape.

  “From your house,” the girl said.

  “Do you live on Woodberry Road?”

  The girl smiled. “I live here, silly.” She touched the bark of the fallen tree.

  It was a game, Mary Beth reminded herself. It was real and make-believe all at once. She wasn’t sure of the rules. She wasn’t sure if she’d get another opportunity to play. She sipped her tea.

  “I used to live there,” the girl said.

  “Where?”

  “Where you live. Before you lived there.”

  “How old are you?” Mary Beth asked.

  “Six. My name’s Amanda.” She presented the platter of cakes.

  “Amanda.” Mary Beth selected one and nibbled it. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.”

  “Mmm. You’re right.” Mary Beth pantomimed swallowing. “It’s nice to meet you, Amanda.”

  A breeze came through and swept the bangs from the girl’s forehead.

  “My house,” Mary Beth said, “was only recently built. I don’t think you lived there.” It was too logical an argument for such a fanciful game. Mary Beth wished she could take it back.

  But it didn’t faze Amanda. “Is that where Catherine lived?” she asked.

  Mary Beth nodded.

  “What color was her room?”

  “Purple.”

  Amanda frowned, as though disappointed by the choice. “Light purple or dark purple?”

  Mary Beth paused. It wasn’t a baby’s room anymore. She remembered the crib and the mobile and the morning sunlight shining through the window. “More light than dark. More blue than red.”

  Amanda considered this.

  “Did you know that that’s how you make purple? You mix red paint with blue paint?”

  “I knew that,” Amanda said.

  “What do you get,” Mary Beth said, “when you mix red paint with yellow paint?”

  Amanda squinted a moment at the bark on the fallen tree between where the two sat. Then she said, “Blue.”

  “Orange.”

  “Are you done with your tea?” Amanda reached out to take Mary Beth’s cup and saucer.

  “I can bring paints and paper.” Mary Beth touched knuckles with the girl in the pretend exchange.

  “I have another party I need to get ready for.” Amanda stood.

  “Next time.”

  Mary Beth swung her leg off into the brush, and the girl hopped down on the other side. “Bye,” she said, and she ran off in the direction opposite the trail. Perhaps there was a different trail that way. But it didn’t matter. Amanda leaped like a deer, pigtails flying. She skipped and then ran and soon her image blended with the rest of the landscape and disappeared completely.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ferko called up the stairs when he arrived home. He called again. No response. Then he took them two at a time and found the bedroom empty, the bed made. Not its normal state. He touched the bedspread, ran his fingers over its raised pattern—green leaves—as though reading Braille. She’d taken great care to smooth it. He stood and absorbed the room’s silence until he heard more than silence—the thrum wrought by the weight of the roof and the floors on the walls and the foundation. He sensed something behind him—not motion, exactly, but not stillness, either; a presence—and he knew it was the girl, though he wasn’t sure how he knew. Remnants from his high coursed through his body. His senses had been dulled and heightened—both, inexplicably, at once.

  He turned and the girl was standing in the hallway just outside the bedroom. She wore her pigtails and a striped shirt and blue shorts and sneakers, and Ferko wondered if her presence now was somehow linked to Mary Beth’s absence. Not the big absence, which was linked, of course, to Catherine’s accident. But the small absence, today’s absence—could that be connected to the girl’s presence here, now? And the made bed? He wished to ask her. He formed a question in his head: There’s
a woman who lives here with me—us?—do you happen to know— But the girl vanished before he could ask or even get it right in his head. He cursed his indecision. He should have just blurted it, which he did now, to the empty space: “Do you know where Mary Beth is?” He walked out of the bedroom and into the hallway. “Where’s Mary Beth?” he asked, but his senses, keen only a moment earlier, now told him nothing. The girl was gone. He retrieved his phone and asked the question—where’s mary beth?—directly to the subject via text. The reply was instantaneous: home soon.

  He sighed. He had Dr. Yoder’s book in his hand. Ghosts of Washington Heights. He shook it in the air to show the girl, if the girl cared, that he was armed with information. He went downstairs and onto the front porch to wait for Mary Beth. He opened the book and found his place. Sebastian Hurlingham, the reverend’s son, had been forced down the hatch to the basement, and his siblings did not step forward to rescue the boy. Instead, they retired to their bedrooms, while the floors and the walls and the doors muffled the boy’s cries, and soon weariness and dread and futility and possible injury muted him completely.

  The house was silent. The family slept.

  Richard Hurlingham, the eldest at seventeen, would recount years later how he wished he’d done something as Sebastian cried out in that first hour. Richard woke early the next morning and saw that Sebastian’s bed was empty and made. His brothers were sleeping in the other bunks. He ran down the stairs to the pantry off the kitchen and the hatch to the cellar, his father at his heels. Richard pushed the trunk off the trapdoor and lifted the latch. What little light there was in the pantry barely reached the basement’s dirt floor. Son and father peered down into the stillness. Neither said a word. They waited. Then the preacher cleared his throat. “Sebastian,” he intoned. There was no response. “Get the lamp lit,” he told Richard.

  The preacher climbed down the ladder. His feet had found the floor by the time Richard returned with the kerosene lamp. The preacher took it and ducked his head, while Richard lay on the floor of the pantry and put his head through the hole in the floor. “There,” he said.

  His father turned around. Sebastian lay facedown on the floor, the crown of his head against the concrete wall of the foundation.