The Ghosts of Now by Joan Lowery Nixon Page A

Listening to what?”
    “I don’t know. I walked around this house and felt as though I were being watched. And when I tried the back door I got the feeling that someone was on the other side, holding it shut.”
    “It’s probably locked tight.”
    “Maybe. But I want to go in this house. I can’t get it out of my mind. This house might be able to tell me something.”
    “You playing hunches or getting into ESP? I don’t understand what this house has got to do with Jeremy.”
    “Because Jeremy—” I begin to tell Del about Jeremy’s poem, but something holds me back, so I say, “I think that Jeremy knew something about this house. He warned me not to come here. I have to know why.”
    For a few moments Del looks at me. Then his fingers twine through mine, and he leads me up the steps and into the back porch. “We’ll go through this old place together. And if we get picked up for breaking and entering it will be your job to post bail, because I’m down to my last ten bucks.”
    The doorknob turns easily under Del’s grip, and I shiver.
    “Nothin’ to be scared about,” Del says. “You were probably tugging it the wrong way.”
    But I wasn’t.
    The kitchen’s high wooden cabinets and huge gas stove are out of a museum catalogue. A pair of grimy aluminum salt and pepper shakers sits on the shelf above the burners, and a tea kettle rests on the stove’s metal wings. A ragged straw broom leans against the far wall. Even the sunlight coming in the bare window over the large, chipped sink doesn’t improve this room.
    “This poor old house,” I whisper, as though the house can hear us. I stick close to Del.
    There’s an open door, leading to a dim room that looks like a dining room. But there are two closed doors to our right. I simply point toward them, and Del seems to read my mind.
    “Probably open to a broom closet and a storm cellar.” He looks down at me. “The early houses around here had cellars where people could go in case of tornadoes.”
    “Should we go down there?”
    “I doubt if we’d find anything more than a stray rattler.”
    I shudder. “Let’s check the other rooms instead.”
    The fear remains, even with Del at my side. We’re picking our way through a skeleton, with someone’s memories blowing aside like dust under our footsteps. The cobwebs and faded carpets, the old plush-covered chairs and the photographs on the wall accent the gaps where a few valuable pieces of furniture must have been. The remains of the deceased.
    But where are the ghosts?
    We have moved through the rooms on the first floor, passing the heavy staircase that leads upward to a landing, then turns.
    Del stops and looks at me. “Well?” he asks. “Do you still think someone is here?”
    “No.” I try a smile. “I guess that ghosts must stay out of sight until after dark.” The rooms are chill, even in the midday heat, but whoever had been here has gone.
    “Then let’s forget about looking upstairs and get out of this place,” Del says. “I’ll follow you home, and if you haven’t got anything better to do, we can get hamburgers.”
    We leave the house by the front door. It’s got one of those locks that automatically fastens without a key.
    “Ghosts don’t leave footprints,” Del says, staring at the front porch.
    “Those are my footprints. I was on the porch, trying to look in the windows.” I stoop, leaning down to stare at the boards. “I know I wasn’t wearing one shoe and one tennis shoe.”
    “Which means?”
    “Look,” I say, pointing at a partial ridged footprint in the dust. I stand, and we stare at each other for just a moment. “Someone was in the house. He left by the front door.”
    “He or she. There’s only part of a print. The rest must have been scuffed.”
    “On purpose.”
    “We don’t know that.” Del looks down the street. “Why would anyone be in this house?”
    I can’t help glancing at the shut-in face of the house. “Maybe it’s something we