A Ghost for a Clue Page 5

A ghost? I snorted. Truth had been dreaming with his eyes wide open. That was that. I doubt he even remembers it now. And the entire reason Starr and I had been trying to reproduce the anomaly we’d seen was to find the more logical explanation.

  After a refreshing drink of water, and with my equanimity restored, I walked back along the dimly lit corridor. But an eerie sensation told me there was something not quite familiar there just when a featherlike touch brushed against my arm. I gasped and lurched away from a wispy figure in white . . . then winced when I got a better look at my mom’s ivory-white pashmina dangling from a coat hook.

  “Oh, Bloody Mary.” Simply talking with Mom has gotten me spooked over a scarf. Yet I had watched calmly as some human-like silhouette materialized right next to my friend. Maybe because my subconscious had instantly known better, that it was definitely not a ghost.

  I huffed away my anxiety and headed back towards the guestroom. Truth, so pudgy and perfectly adorable, stood by the door in his powder-blue pajamas as Mom stroked his puffy blonde hair.

  “He heard your voice,” she said. “Now he insists you tuck him back in bed.”

  I smiled, holding out my arms, and he rushed over to embrace me. We laughed as I hugged him tight and relished the lingering scent of babyhood in his hair as I carried him. I deposited him back in bed and tucked in his teddy bear next to him.

  “Where’s your friend?” he asked, his Rs sounding more like Ws.

  “My friend?” I hoped he was asking about one of my old stuffed toys.

  “In your room. I saw him.”

  I swallowed and forced out a smile. “Can you describe . . . my friend?”

  “He was watching you. I think I scared him.”

  I managed a chuckle. “Well, of course you did.” I poked his little button nose. “You’re my superhero.”

  “He went into your broken wall. Is he still there?”

  “I don’t have a—” All my walls were immaculate. Did he just say it disappeared into a wall? The hair on my nape stood on end. “You should go back to sleep. And this time . . .” I ran my hand gently over his eyes to shut them. “Sleep tight and dream sweet dreams.” I kissed him goodnight and kept a made-up smile on my face until I turned off his light.

  I walked out of the room and jumped at the sight of my mother standing there.

  “If you agree he’s seen a ghost, you must tell me,” she said. “Otherwise, he could be hallucinating, and I’ll have to address it clinically.”

  Mass hallucination. Does that explain what Starr and I saw too? Was that phenomenon even real?

  I walked towards my living room, away from Truth’s earshot. “You think it might be a symptom?”

  “Only if what he saw was irrefutably all in his head. Was it?”

  Not wanting to confirm or deny, I didn’t say anything, which to my mother, a psychiatrist, was tantamount to saying everything. I paused and raised my right hand as if to pledge a solemn oath. “I promise, if I see anything that scares me, I’ll be at your doorstep within the hour.”

  “Oh goodness, no,” she said, crossing her arms with a taunting smile. “You’ll be knocking every other day.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re scared of greatness, sweetheart, but would never admit it.”

  I gaped at the remark. “What sort of diagnosis—”

  “You’re scared of the spotlight but feel trapped because your very chemistry attracts it. You believe you have what it takes to succeed but also fear that maybe you don’t. You want to change the world but are afraid you don’t know how.”

  “Those aren’t fears, Mom. Those are just . . . doubts.”

  “Then, are you afraid of the metaphysical, or do you just doubt it? Ghosts are real. It’s not your fault, so don’t be ashamed of it.”

  “I’m not a—” I paused, then bit my lip, unable to deny it. “Okay. All right. Enlighten me. How can ghosts be possible?”

  Her eyes glowed like that of someone who’d swum to Atlantis and back, certain it was real. “I existed—conscious and alive—even when my brain showed no electrical activity. I saw what my parents were doing while they were waiting outside the ER. I heard their conversation with my sisters over the phone while I was on the operating table. Isn’t that proof enough? Even devoid of a functioning body and brain, the psyche could sense its surroundings, gather memories, and hold itself intact. The mind doesn’t come to an end until it decides it’s over.”

  I shook my head and noticed the still-glimmering aromatherapy candle on the coffee table. “Death isn’t a decision, Mom.” I walked over towards the table.

  “People working in hospitals observe it all the time—patients lingering at death’s door choose to cross over when it’s least stressful for their loved ones. Or they wait for one last person to say goodbye. They decide on the best time to leave their body.”

  Death by sheer will? I scoffed at the thought. “You can’t just decide to stop your heart.”

  “That’s because you’ve come to equate life with a heartbeat.”

  “I’m a botanist.” I blew out the candle. “I don’t deal with heartbeats.”

  Mom stared at the faint tendril of smoke that coiled upwards to nothingness. “Anything extinguished leaves behind a residue.”

  “I agree.” I nodded. “That’s why every life extinguished leaves behind a dead body.”

  “All right then.” Mom took a seat on my tapestry-covered settee. “Let’s look at life and death in terms of compost. Even after we go back to the Earth as fertilizer, bones can stay intact for thousands of years. But does anyone know how long it takes to decompose the stuff that makes up our soul?” She gestured towards the candle, its smoke, its glow, its warmth all gone, though its scent still hung in the air.

  “Assuming there’s such a thing as a soul.” I flicked the hair off my brow.

  She clasped her hands and clipped her ankles, like a merciful queen deciding what to do with one of her stubborn subjects. “Do you know why children below the age of five see ghosts far more frequently than adults do?”

  “Probably the same reason they have more imaginary friends. They’re kids.”

  The sparkle of wisdom beyond mine shone in Mom’s eyes, and I braced for the assault of her science. “The brain is the only body organ left incomplete at birth. At three, Truth’s brain is still being sculpted. Dendrites still being formed, synapses chipped. Electrical impulses are being tossed about his head, still unrestrained by the bindings of myelin. That means a toddler’s brain contains hundreds of trillions more synapses—wantonly communicating—endowing it with capabilities it will eventually lose.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “So you’re saying it’s possible little children can see things we don’t. The same way eagles can see farther, and deer can see better at night. That doesn’t mean what they’re seeing are ghosts.”

  She glanced down the hall towards the room where Truth was sleeping. “Very young children speak of having past-life memories, talking to the dead, or even seeing the future. By five, they’d have all their basic neurons in place. But genetics, epigenetics, and life in general will continue to sculpt their brains until one day, in puberty, they’d have been shaped like the rest of us, desensitized to all stimuli classified as irrelevant by the brain.”

  I gnawed on my lower lip as I searched for all the loopholes in her explanation.

  “For all you know,” she said, “there really is a ghost walking around here right now.”

  No, Mom. It’s just your silk pashmina.

  “If ghosts were dangerous and ought to be feared,” she continued, “evolution would have allowed us to sense them easily. But no. The brain learns rather early that they’re useless sensory information. Isn’t that a plausible argument as to why he sees the ghost, and we don’t?”

  I kneaded my temple, summoning some genie of science to give me an erudite response, but all I could say was, “Mom, you’re an MD. I’m a PhD. He’s three. I rest my case.”


  “And you’ve strengthened mine.” The gracious queen-mother smiled even as she sighed. “At his tender age, Truth’s brain is still dependent on eidetic memory. A photographic ability to remember things that most children eventually lose. Right now, his brain is like a sponge—a naked receiver of information rather than a sensitized sieve attuned to logic. So when he sees a man standing by his sister’s bed, he’d say he saw a man standing by his sister’s bed.” She pursed her lips. “Grownups, on the other hand, would come up with an explanation like a hallucination or an optical illusion—or liken it to something only deer or eagles can see.”

  I crossed my arms, it being my only other means of defense. “Considering I’m a grownup, I guess I’m excused for proposing it’s a hallucination?”

  She gave the subtlest shake of her head. “I know—as both a doctor and mother—that what your brother experienced last night was something external. And just like those with hyperthymesia, synesthesia, and tetrachromacy, your brother may have a little-known capacity most people find bizarre. So have you yourself seen or sensed anything unusual around here?”

  “No.” If she hadn’t included those last two words, I would have said yes.

  Mom narrowed her eyes. “You know what he’s talking about, don’t you?”

  I couldn’t stop myself from swallowing.

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked.

  “Nothing, I’m just—”

  “Scared people will laugh at you? For considering something utterly absurd.”

  I suppose . . . yes. I tilted my head. “Isn’t it?”

  She raised a brow. “Don’t assume that something that seems supernatural isn’t worth any reasonable person’s time. If no one had ever figured out the answers, we’d still think rainbows, thunder, and lightning are heavenly signs of how the gods feel.”

  “Believing in gods sounds sublime.” I shuddered inwardly, suddenly dreading how our efforts could lead Starr and me to uncover the absurd. “Believing the dead come back to haunt the living just sounds downright ludicrous.”

  “It sounds ludicrous because you chose to put it that way. If it’s so unreasonable to think our consciousness lingers even after a person dies, then medical science should be ashamed of itself for working on technology to revive a dead brain.” She rose from her seat and headed towards the hallway. “Perfectly reasonable things can seem like a joke. People used to laugh at one headstrong doctor who insisted on handwashing in clinics because of ‘cadaverous particles’ that nobody could see. He lost his job because of his assertions and eventually had a nervous breakdown. But now that we know what germs are, half the world walks around with hand-sanitizers in their bags.” She paused at the guestroom doorway, like a diva about to make a grand exit. “That ought to tell you it’s not all that ludicrous to believe in things that you can’t see.”

  She disappeared into the room, and I sat frozen until I let my gaze slowly make its way towards my bedroom door that gaped wide open. Could it be welcoming some cadaverous guest that nobody could see?

  What am I thinking? I pulled my hair back and away from my face, prodding myself to think straight. I needed to discuss this with someone perfectly logical and objective—yet someone I could trust not to laugh.

  Only one person came to mind.

  8

  King Of The Stars

  Two days went by before Torula could find time for us to meet again. Two entire days that proved to me she and I had one thing very much in common: Our work had turned into our lives.

  This time, I chose a much better restaurant. Quieter. Fancier. Pricier.

  She walked in with back straight, chin high, clutching a shoulder bag and a jacket. She turned towards me, and my gaze shifted to the front of her button-down shirt left hanging open over a tank top that dipped low enough for me to have to will myself to keep my eyes on her face.

  “Here’s your jacket,” she said, handing it to me. “Sorry for the mistake.”

  “No worries.” I kept my eyes averted, pushing her chair in as she sat down. “How was your day?” I asked and settled across the table from her.

  “Oh, kind of average,” she said with a shrug. “Until we tried to electrocute a papaya.”

  I paused, realizing it wasn’t a joke—but I laughed anyway. The fact that she was serious made it funnier. And more fascinating.

  With that quick exchange, I hoped the ice was broken, at least for the evening. Soon, a waitperson—a human servitor who was among the reasons this place was extravagant—approached our table. As Torula placed her order, I moved aside a vase that obscured my perfect view of her. She caught me staring and used two fingers to push a floating candle away from her and closer to the center of the table, making its ivory glow dance across the crystal.

  She seemed far more at ease than the first time we’d met up. She gestured more as she talked, mostly about work, her best friend Starr, and quite a lot about this new Verdabulary software she had.

  Verdabulary. Clever name. She’d come up with it and was proud of it. So was I.

  I leaned back and enjoyed her buoyant mood. Better I bided my time than have her suddenly close up in shock over my news. She was like one of those sensitive plants we had played with as children. Touch a frond, and the leaves curled up, and if one tried to coax it open, the tighter it folded and the longer one would have to wait before it unfurled.

  My mind wandered back to the day when she had first shown me the trailing plant. “It’s a Mimosa pudica,” she had said. “It’s also known as Sensitive Plant. Touch-Me-Not. Or a Shy Plant.”

  “You’re serious about becoming a botanist, aren’t you?”

  “And you’re serious about becoming an astronaut, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I wanna be king of the stars!”

  Her eyes had twinkled so brightly then, as she looked at me and shared in my dream, that I blurted out, “Maybe you can be my queen.”

  At the age of thirteen, I barely had a clue what I was feeling—but on an impulse, I had pulled her close, the way I’d seen some superhero do it in a movie, and in that longest moment, I felt her heart beating against mine. Her breath against my lips. And I kissed her.

  She shoved me away and said, “You’re so cheesy! I smell a rat.” Blushing, she dashed home to her mother.

  With my heart slightly bruised, but also thrilled, I had learned an irony that day: To keep her close, I had to stay at the right distance.

  “People don’t comprehend the torture they put plants through,” the grown-up Torula said, wrenching me back to the here and now.

  “What torture?” I asked, hoping she hadn’t noticed I’d drifted off.

  “They’re often treated like decorations that grow, just a notch above inanimate objects because they can’t walk or speak.” She tilted her head at me. “How would you define something to be alive?”

  I shrugged. “I imagine there’s an equation out there that defines it.”

  “Biologists have a list of criteria, actually.”

  “A list? Your definition of life is a list?”

  “More like a sum of distinguishing phenomena.”

  “A sum. That’s more like it.” I grinned.

  “Only you would reduce life to a numeric entity.” Her lips curled into a smile. “Sometimes, I think that’s the only reason you want to walk in space. So you could glimpse that cosmic blackboard on which the universal chalk sticks.”

  Finally, an opening! “A walk in space. Is that . . .” I cleared my throat. “Is that something you’ve ever thought about?”

  She shook her head. “Can you imagine being uprooted from your natural habitat and forced to survive in a contained environment, away from sunshine and completely dependent on artificial sources of food, energy, and water?”

  I winced. “That’s what you think of space travel?”

  “No. It’s what life is like as a potted plant, particularly one that’s kept indoors.”

  I cracked my knuckles, having had enough
talk about vegetables. “Besides the Verdabulary—what’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you lately?”

  “At work?”

  “Anywhere. Is there anyone you’re seeing?” My heart thudded at the question.

  She smiled teasingly. “Yes, there is. And I’d like to see it again soon.”

  “It?” An image of Shrek flashed in my mind. “Exactly how ugly is he?”

  She laughed, but I found it impossible to share in her mirth.

  “Starr and I . . . well, she and I . . . We saw something that was like a . . . visual phenomenon that might have been . . .” She bit her lower lip for a moment. “Mom’s convinced it’s a ghost, and she’d like me to dig up an explanation.”

  That was much funnier than electrocuting a papaya, and a chuckle sputtered out of my mouth.

  Her eyes suddenly seemed to darken in shade like a creature in a sci-fi movie about to disembowel its prey. “You, of all people. I’ve been aching to tell you since last night, thinking I could trust you not to laugh.”

  “I wasn’t laughing.” But I said it with a barely restrained smirk.

  “Whatever it was, it’s synonymous to laughing.”

  “Only because I thought—” Christ. I was acting the same way Sienna had when I thought I’d gotten a phone call from the dead. I wiped the smile completely off of my face. “Wait. You . . . really saw a ghost?”

  “I was distracted and applied the wrong software at the wrong time to the wrong plant. I mean—Carica Papaya, Ficus Carica. It’s an understandable mix-up. Anyway—” She huffed out a breath. “To make a long story short, I think I might have triggered the visual phenomenon.”

  I nodded, trying to grasp what had happened. “You keep calling it a ‘visual phenomenon.’ What exactly was it?”

  “It was this human-like figure. Floating. We have no images or recordings. But our equipment is calibrated for plant life, detecting the minutest shifts in electromagnetic and chemical signals, the subtlest of movements, and ultradian events. We found unexplained fluctuations recorded by the EM meter, radiation monitor, and infrared sensor indicating there was something tangible enough for our instruments to have detected movement. It’s something that I don’t want to call a ghost, even though it looked every bit like one.”