Spirit Lost by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online Page B

want privacy, peace, and quiet.”
    “Sounds drastic to me,” Mark told him. “Too much of a change too fast. John, you’ve lived your life surrounded by people. You love people, admit it.”
    “I admit it,” John said. “But I also never got any work done. I want to get some work done. Some real work.”
    The wind shrieked. The windows shook. Rain splattered against the panes like pebbles thrown from an unseen hand.
    “You’ll get your work done,” Willy said to her husband.
    “I have to,” John said soberly.
    Anne and Mark looked at each other.
    “Well,” Mark said, a little more loudly than necessary, thinking quickly, wanting to change the subject, “tell me, do you two have a ghost in your house? I hear Nantucket’s supposed to be full of ghosts.”
    “Ghosts!” John laughed, his good humor immediately returning. “In spite of your Halloween party, my friend, I don’t believe in ghosts. No one believes in ghosts anymore.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Willy said. She was slowly stirring her cream into the coffee-and-whiskey mixture, making hypnotic whorls of brown and white. “The other day we drove out to the moors and took a long walk. The moors are beautiful now, even withmost of the color gone. There are bayberries, low bushes, twisted trees, different mosses, everything now olive and dark green and gray, with vivid spots of deep-wine-colored berries here and there. The moors undulate slightly”—Willy dipped her hand slowly—“and there are shallow hollows in the low hills. We stood on a high spot for a while and watched the mist pass through, and honestly, Anne, the way those mists wafted and drifted along—they seemed like spirits. Didn’t they, John? They really seemed human. Or at least alive.”
    “Just looked like fog to me,” John said to his wife, watching her with affection.
    “And then the foghorn,” Willy went on. “It’s so melancholy. So haunting. Like a warning from a lost soul.… ‘Go … go … no … you must not come here … go.’…” Willy drew out the last word as if it were a deep musical note.
    “God, Willy, this island’s making you weird!” Anne snapped, shuddering.
    “Willy’s always been weird,” John said, and reached over to lightly caress his wife’s neck to show her he was kidding. He leaned back in his chair with his Irish coffee in his hands and put his feet up on Willy’s lap.
    “I resemble that remark!” Willy said, laughing, making a familiar joke between the two of them to show she wasn’t hurt. “But really,” she went on, “I wouldn’t mind if we did have a ghost. I could have a friend!”
    “Honestly,” Anne said. “Willy, you are always so optimistic . Isn’t she, John? Doesn’t it just drive you crazy sometimes? I mean, give me a break, Willy, ghosts aren’t people’s friends . They’re evil spirits, they’re malign.”
    “Pol-ter-geist,” Mark said, naming a movie they had all seen together, making his voice deep and ominous as he said the word.
    “Yeah,” Anne agreed.
    “Well, who says ghosts have to be evil?” John asked, more to come to his wife’s rescue than because he cared.
    “Everyone!” Anne answered. “Everyone knows that, John. Ghosts are spirits of people who are not satisfied with what happened to them on earth. They’re angry, or sad—that’s why they’re ghosts. They can’t be at peace, and so they moan around wherever it was they were made unhappy, haunting people and trying to get some kind of revenge.”
    “You see too much TV,” John said.
    “No. No, not really ,” Anne said earnestly, sitting up as straight as she could.“Look at it this way. I’ve got a human being in here,” she said, pointing to her swollen belly. “A person with his or her own special characteristics, his or her own personality—spirit—someone we’ve never met before, someone who has never existed before. But does exist now. I’ve got a very small human being inside me; we all believe that. No