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17
As it turned out, Hilton Gerard had split for Chicago long before we got back to the Gerard Hospital for the Insane and Mentally Feeble.
Too bad.
I was spitting mad and in the mood to give the good doctor a piece of my mind. Don’t ask me how I was planning to do this (being invisible and all), but I sure would have liked to have had the opportunity.
The way it was, Dan thanked the receptionist who turned us away in that locked-down lobby, and when we were back in the parking lot, he held the front car door open so Madeline could get in. I knew nobody was going to bother to open the back door, so I slipped in ahead of her, and maybe it was a good thing I was invisible, at least for that moment. Me in my dorky black skirt climbing over the seat so I could ride in the back . . . well, it was just as well Dan couldn’t see.
He came around to the other side of the car, got behind the wheel, and turned the key in the ignition before he reached across the seat and patted Madeline’s hand. “There are plenty of people who wouldn’t have had the nerve to walk back into that place. Not after what you went through. And you—”
“I just kept my chin up and put on a brave face.”
From the seat behind her, I snarled. “That’s because you don’t know what really happened in there.”
“That’s because I’m peppery.” Madeline giggled.
Dan smiled, too. “I’ll say. And now—”
“Now we can get back to the city.” She stretched, closed her eyes, and made herself comfortable. Not exactly an easy thing to do in Dan’s Honda Civic Hybrid, but then, Madeline didn’t have my exacting standards.
“You’re sure?”
If she’d been paying attention, she would have noticed Dan’s quizzical expression. She popped open one eye. “Sure? Why wouldn’t I be? You tried to talk to Hilton. It didn’t work. There’s nothing to be gained from belaboring the point.”
“And the cops?”
“Oh.” Madeline sat up. While she thought of a way to talk herself out of her little faux pas, she played with the climate control buttons on the dashboard. When she had the heat turned down to a temperature I never would have tolerated and the blower going strong enough to muss her hair, she gave Dan a sidelong look. “I think we need more evidence. And I think we’re only going to find that back in the city.”
“Like that list of names you said you had. The missing patients.”
“That’s right, Danny.” In a move designed to distract him, she skimmed a hand along his thigh.
“Oh, come on, Madeline! He’s never going to fall for that,” I wailed, at the same time Dan purred like a cat with its whiskers in a bowl of cream.
The smile Madeline shot me said it all.
I was up Shit Creek without a paddle.
And getting in deeper every moment.
 
 
I needed a plan and I needed one bad, but instead of coming up with one, I sat in the backseat like a lump and worried and panicked my way back to Chicago.
Of course, there’s only so much worrying and panicking a person can do. Even a person without a body. Did that stop me? Hell, no. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I worried and panicked my way into the hotel on Madeline and Dan’s heels, and I’d just about convinced myself that all that worrying and all that panicking was getting me nowhere when Doris from Detroit stepped off the elevator.
There was so much honest relief on Doris’s face and in the mammoth hug she gave Madeline, even I got teary-eyed. She let go of the woman she thought was me and stepped back to give her a once-over. “Oh my gosh, Penelope. We were so concerned! Where have you been? What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Of course I’m fine.” Madeline had slipped out of Dan’s parka the moment they were through the hotel’s revolving door, and she tugged nervously at the new white polyester blouse she’d paired with a calf-length polyester blend skirt printed with black fern leaves on a taupe background.
As if.
I pulled my gaze from the offending clothing so I could watch the little drama unfolding before me.
“Well, you look...” Doris checked out Madeline again. As long as Madeline was at Wal-Mart using my MasterCard with wild abandon (where—it should come as no surprise—none of my credit cards had ever been used before), she’d tossed in a pair of thick-soled black shoes with low heels, dark stockings, and one of those black cotton cardigans the middle-aged and the tres unchic insist on wearing—the kind with stubby wooden buttons and sleeves that have to be rolled up so they don’t stretch beyond the length of the wearer’s hands.
“You look different,” Doris said.
I can’t explain how much this cheered me. I whooped and yelled, “You got that right,” and I was about to slap Doris a high five when Madeline turned and aimed a sneer in my direction—just to remind me I was wasting my time.
She looked plenty frickin’ smug when she grabbed Dan’s hand and turned back to Doris. “You’re absolutely right,” she cooed, and damn, but if there was ever a clue that this Pepper wasn’t the Pepper that Doris and Dan knew, this should have been it. Even on my worst days, I’ve never sounded that corny. “As of today, everything is different. My life is different. I am different. No more self-centered egotist. No more airhead. No more—”
Doris’s laugh cut her short. “Like you’re any of those things!” She glanced from Madeline to Dan before she leaned in close and lowered her voice so Dan couldn’t hear. “You are all right, though, aren’t you? This guy isn’t bothering you? He isn’t—”
“Don’t be silly!” When Madeline giggled, it set my teeth on edge. “This is my Danny.”
Relief swept over Doris’s expression. “Well, good! It’s just that when you didn’t show up to give your talk—”
Madeline dismissed this comment with a very un-Pepper-like snort. Her words dripped with contempt. “I never miss a professional commitment. I would never—” She caught herself at the same time Dan gave her a funny look.
“I haven’t been well,” Madeline said, suddenly all sweetness and light. “You understand, I’m sure. When a person is as emotionally unstable as I am—”
Doris laughed again. She patted Madeline on the shoulder. “You’re so funny. As long as things are OK, kid, that’s all that matters.”
Madeline stepped nearer to Dan. She slipped an arm around his waist just as the closest elevator doors opened. When she stepped into the elevator, Dan went with her willingly. “Everything is fine.” She looked past Doris to where I stood, and just as the elevator doors closed, I saw her sleek smile and heard her say, “Everything’s going to be fine from now on.”
Call me crazy, or maybe I was just hoping against hope. I had the funny feeling that Doris didn’t actually believe this. She stood there staring at the closed elevator doors for a long time, the expression on her face halfway between befuddled and amazed. Again, my hopes rose. If Doris suspected something was wrong and if she was willing to find out what it was . . .
With a twitch of her shoulders and a shake of her head, Doris headed over to the concierge, and I heard her tell the woman she needed a taxi. She was headed to the airport and on her way back home to Detroit.
My hopes plummeted like a rock. Doris might have had a gut feeling that something was wrong with the Pepper who wasn’t Pepper, but none of it would matter once she was on that plane.
There I was in Chicago. All by myself and invisible to boot.
I didn’t have to worry that my lipstick would look like hell, so I chewed on my lower lip and stood there for a while, holding my panic at bay while I thought about my options. I can’t say I’m one of the world’s great brains, but I did know one thing for sure: if anybody was going to get me out of this mess, it would have to be me.
I also knew where I had to start—the Gerard Clinic.
No sooner did the words form in my invisible brain than a weird thing happened. I felt a tug, as if a hand grabbed me and pulled hard. The world around me rushed by, like the scenery during a roller coaster ride.
The next thing I knew, I was standing in the street right in front of the clinic.
“Cool!” I told myself.
It was. At least until I saw a yellow cab not three feet away and heading right for me.
It was especially not so cool as I watched the front bumper of that cab get closer—and whoosh right through me.
 
 
I needed no more proof that invisibility sucked, and no more motivation to get moving. Traffic was heavy, and before another vehicle could zip straight through the ectoplasm that was me, I raced to the sidewalk. Just as I got there, I ran smack into what felt like a wall of ice.
There was nothing there I could see, but I could feel it, all right. Cold that penetrated deep inside me. Ice that would have chilled me to the bone, if I had any.
And fear.
Oh yeah. I recognized that the moment it climbed up my spine and sent my brain into terror-mode.
By this time, I knew what was happening, so I wasn’t surprised when the cold coalesced and the nothing in front of me swirled and collapsed in on itself.
All that was left in its place was a black hulky shadow.
I’d never been this close to the thing, and this close was not the place I wanted to be.
I stepped back.
The shadow stepped forward. It lifted one of its massive arms and reached for me with a paw tipped with razor-sharp claws, and I closed my eyes and held my breath, not sure what was about to happen.
One paw (hand? talon? hook?) still raised, it stopped.
As if it were thinking, the shadow cocked its head. It leaned closer. It didn’t exactly have a face, so I can’t exactly say it had a nose. Even so, I swore I heard it sniff.
It snuffled to the right of me. It whiffed to the left of me. It got right up into my face and sniffed, and the next thing I knew, it shot upright—and disappeared in a poof.
“Well, pardon me for not having time to spritz on a little perfume this morning,” I snarled, braver now that it was gone. “I’ve been a little busy being invisible.”
And I was more than sick and tired of it. With that thought in mind, I decided to delay a trip into the clinic and headed instead into the alley.
I didn’t knock on Ernie’s box. I mean, why bother? As far as I knew, Ernie was back in Winnetka at the Gerard Hospital for the Insane and Mentally Feeble, and besides, not having a real hand, I couldn’t really knock on anything, anyway. Instead, I closed my eyes, held my breath, and walked right through the tarp that covered the opening of the box. Once I was inside, though, I was nearly knocked for a loop. There was Ernie sitting on a milk crate! I was so relieved that he was safe and back home, I just about cried. I was talking even before I thought about how there was no way he could hear me.
“Thank goodness you’re back! You weren’t hurt at that crazy hospital. You’re not—”
“Dead?”
Ernie looked right at me, and I would have jumped out of my skin if I had any. Being the smart cookie I am, it didn’t take more than a moment for me to realize what was going on.
Ernie confirmed my worst fears when he said, “I’m dead, all right. How else would I be able to see you and talk to you? Looks like you’re pretty dead yourself. That’s a real shame, you being so young and all. I was hoping you’d find a way to get out of that place.”
“I did get out.” I was so upset to hear that Ernie had met the fate of the other people in the study and so happy to finally have someone who could hear and see me, I couldn’t think straight. I hurried over and sat down next to him. There was one good thing about not having a body: the cold didn’t seep into me the way it had last time I visited. “I escaped from the hospital through the ceiling and Dan came and got me out and we left Winnetka and I was safe, but then . . .” This part was hard to explain so I didn’t even try. “I’m not dead,” I told Ernie. “Someone just stole my body.”
He pursed his lips and looked over my shapeless black skirt, my white blouse, and my lab coat. “Someone who doesn’t have your sense of style, that’s for sure. You look like that Doctor What’s-Her-Name, the one who used to work at the clinic.”
“Madeline Tremayne. She’s the one who’s using my body. She learned how to do the switch from the research she was doing for Doctor Gerard.”
Thinking, Ernie shook his head. “Never did trust that woman. Didn’t like the way she looked at folks. You know, like they were invisible.”
“She’s the one who’s been invisible. She was a ghost. After her murder, I mean. And her husband wanted her back more than anything in the world. And now he has her, only he doesn’t know it’s her, and he thinks it’s me and—”
“Hold on there.” Ernie could tell that what little of my composure was left was about to self-destruct. To calm me down, he looked me in the eye. “We’ll talk about all that in good time. Let’s start with what’s most important. You’re telling me you’re not dead, right?”
I nodded.
“Then it seems to me that this is all wrong. If you’re not dead, you shouldn’t be in spirit. That’s unnatural, and I may be crazy, and I’m for sure dead, but I can tell you one thing, I know we’ve got to set things straight and get you back in your body where you belong.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
“Where should we begin?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure, and I told him so. “I thought maybe if we could get into the clinic—”
“Easy as pie.” Ernie rose from the milk crate. “But you already know that, right? You walked right in here like it was no big deal.”
“I took a chance. I wasn’t sure.” I thought back to all the ghosts I’d dealt with in the past and how they’d come and gone at will. “Are you telling me I can go anywhere?” I asked him, and call it force of habit, but the thought of being loose in Saks in the middle of the night...or all alone with the Roberto Cavalli bags at Nordstrom . . . well, it made me tingle from head to toe.
As if Ernie knew exactly what I was thinking, he chuckled. “Like a hot knife through butter,” he said. “One of the few advantages I’ve found to being a ghost. It’s easy to get around.”
He made it sound like being dead was no big deal, but remember, I had experience when it came to this sort of thing; I knew better. Before we got distracted by the task of putting the spiritual me back in physical form, I needed him to know that I understood.
“How . . . ?” Sure, I was used to talking to the dead, but none of them had ever been such recent deaths. And I hadn’t known any of those ghosts in their lifetimes. Face-to-face with all that remained of someone who’d been alive only a short time before, I found myself with a lump in my throat. “How . . . did it happen?” I asked Ernie.
He shrugged off my concern. “Same way it happens to everyone Doctor Gerard takes out to that hospital of his, I suspect. They start out hooking you up to these crazy machines—”
“They did that to me.”
“And they keep turning up the juice.”
I swallowed down the sour taste that filled my mouth. I remembered that, too.
“But when they find out you aren’t the real deal, that you don’t really see ghosts like you say you do—”
“He killed you? He kills all of them? Just like that?”
Another shrug. “Not just like that. I mean, they’re humane enough about it. I guess they don’t want any of us going back on the street, talking about what happens out there. You know, so we don’t scare away anyone else and they always have folks they can experiment on. They take our brains, too, you know, after we pass. That way they can look at the way they work, and the way those machines of theirs affect different parts of the brain. As for the dying itself . . .” He was quiet for a few moments, and I knew he wanted to make sure he could say this without breaking down.
“They gave me a shot of something, I think,” Ernie said. “All I remember is lying on a bed and drifting away. That, and thinking about Alberta as I went.” He looked down to where the photograph of his wife rested against the milk crate. “Last thing I remember is thinking that I should have gone over to her library after all. You know, just to say hello to Alberta. Just so I could hear her voice one more time.”
“You could go now.”
“Don’t seem to be much point now,” he said, and he didn’t sound bitter about it, just resigned. “Only I was thinking that at least if Alberta knew I was dead, she could check and maybe she could get some of my veteran’s benefits. That would be something I could give her. You know, as sort of a gift. Never did much else for the woman.” Ernie shook himself out of his thoughts.
“Enough of that,” he said, “or I’ll start sounding pathetic, and I don’t want to go through eternity like that. Let’s see what we can do about your problem. If that Doctor Tremayne said she found out how to switch bodies through Doctor Gerard’s research, maybe there’s something in the clinic that will tell you how to switch back. Only before we go . . .” Ernie stooped down and picked up the photograph of Alberta. “Not going to leave here again without this,” he said.
I stared at him in wonder. “How did you do that?”
“Do?” He was confused, but only for a moment. “Oh, you mean pick up the picture? I get it! You think your hands are going to go right through things, am I right?”
Now that Ernie mentioned it, I realized I’d never even tried to touch anything. After all, I’d met my share of ghosts, and they weren’t able to touch anything. There was no use frustrating myself even more by trying.
Was there?
As if Ernie was reading my mind, he grinned. “Guess you don’t know,” he said. “You, not being officially dead. But I found out right away. I can touch things. I’ll be able to keep touching them, too. Right up until the next full moon.”
This was not something I’d ever heard from a ghost, but then, the ghosts I knew were long dead and gone.
Except for Madeline, of course.
“But she sent me a postcard,” I said, even before I realized Ernie might not know what the hell I was talking about. “She’s been dead for three years, so that means the first full moon after she died was a long time ago. But she sent me the postcard of the Palmer memorial.”
Ernie scratched a finger alongside his nose. “Can’t say I know what you’re getting at,” he said, and really, I think he was trying his best to understand. “But if that there postcard came from a dead person, and if that dead person was dead for a while, my guess is your dead person had help. You know, from another dead person.”
“Like one of the people whose brains ended up in those jars.” It made sense. “So you’re telling me I can—”
“Touch things. Hold things. Pick things up. Sure.” Just to prove it, he tossed me the photo of Alberta. I caught it with no problem.
“Yes!” I punched a fist into the air and Ernie laughed.
“May last even longer for you,” he said. “You not really being dead. I mean, maybe for you, you just got to prove you believe.”
My momentary triumph vanished just as quickly. “Believe I can get my body back?” Yeah, I sounded gloomy. Like anyone could blame me?
“You’ve got to believe, Pepper.” His words were soft, but the look in his eyes was encouraging.
I couldn’t stand to let him down. “I do believe,” I told him.
Ernie slanted me a look. “Except for the part about how you don’t. I can’t say how this whole thing works, but maybe you just gotta tell yourself that it’s possible. Like . . .”
“Like me fitting into those jeans I bought on sale last fall that were a little tight the first time I tried them on, only eventually I got into them?”
“And I bet you looked like a million bucks!” He grinned. “What do you say, young lady? Let’s see what we can do about getting you back in the body where you belong.”
It was weird walking past the clinic receptionist and realizing she couldn’t see us. It was even weirder when we went straight through the locked door and into Hilton Gerard’s office. Fortunately, he wasn’t there, and I had this vision of him scrambling to cover his tracks now that the Pepper Martin he’d kept prisoner was on the loose and he didn’t know where. Or what she might say to who.
And if he ever found the Pepper who wasn’t Pepper? Since Madeline didn’t have my memories, I suspected she didn’t have my Gift, either. It would serve Hilton right to find her after she couldn’t do him any good. Since Madeline wasn’t nearly as clever as I was, and since she didn’t have half the nerve, she’d never get away from Doctor Gerard’s clutches.
Was it small of me to like the sound of that? Sure. But the thought of Madeline’s brain in one of those jars back at the lab . . . I had to admit, it made me smile.
Ernie noticed. “No time for thinking whatever you’re thinking.” He looked around at the wall lined with file cabinets and the credenza behind Hilton’s desk where more files and books were stacked. “If we’re going to find anything, we’d better start looking.”
We did. We looked through every file in Hilton’s office, and after a couple hours of finding nothing helpful at all, I was more than ready to throw in the towel.
Discouraged, I plunked down smack-dab on a three-foot-high pile of file folders that I’d yanked out of the file cabinets and stacked on the floor. “At this rate, by the time I’m able to get my body back, it’s going to be too old for me to want it.” No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I felt guilty. “I’m sorry. That was tacky of me. Here I am talking about getting my body back when you . . . you know . . . you can’t . . .”
“You mean would it bother me all that much if you got your body back and I couldn’t?” Ernie looked up from the folder he was looking through. “I’m dead, and you’re not. That’s the big difference, isn’t it? And just so you don’t go feeling all bad about it, I can’t say I’m all that sorry about being conked out. I got a nice warm bed to sleep in those last few nights. I didn’t have to spend my final days in a dusty, dirty alley.”
“Dusty.” Why the word resonated, I couldn’t say. I only know that hearing it got my brain working. “She said dusty,” I screeched, and suddenly feeling energized again, I jumped off the pile of file folders and did a turn around the office. “Madeline said she found the information about a ghost switching places with a living person in one of Hilton’s dusty, old books. But we’re not looking through dusty, old books. That’s why we haven’t found what we need.”
Ernie glanced around the room. We’d already been through every file cabinet and every desk drawer. He shrugged. “Maybe he keeps those books at home.”
“Or maybe they’re too precious for that.” I’d already been through the credenza once, and I’d seen there was a safe behind one of its doors, but damn, there I was being shallow again. Back before he ended up in the clink, I knew the only thing my dad kept in his office safe was my mother’s jewelry, and I assumed everybody thought the same way. Jewelry was valuable. Books? Not so much.
Jazzed, I knelt on the floor in front of the safe and looked over my shoulder at Ernie. “What do you think?” I asked.
He knew exactly what I was talking about. “I’m pretty new at being dead,” he said. “Never tried anything like it. But if you believe . . .”
I did. I think. And if I didn’t, I told myself I did, anyway. That was the only thing that gave me the courage to shove my hand right through the inch-thick steel plate door. When I brought it out again, I was holding a sheaf of brittle papers and a book. A dusty, old book.
“Got it!” I jumped up and plopped the book on the desk, then dropped into Doctor Gerard’s chair to start reading. It was no picnic. The book was old, the printing was faded, the font was gothic and tough to read. Still, I was lured by the tantalizing possibility of finding the information Madeline used to steal my body.
Even an hour later, I hadn’t given up, and it was a good thing.
“Here!” I pointed to the page and called Ernie over. “It says exactly what Madeline said the night she pulled the switch. It says the stars and the moon have to be aligned and—”
I read the rest of the sentence and my voice faded. “What? What is it?” Ernie’s eyesight wasn’t all that good. He squinted and bent for a closer look. “It says you can do it again, right? You can switch back?”
I slammed the book shut. “Sure, it says I can do it again. But not until the stars and the moon are aligned the same way. It also says that’s not going to happen again for another seven hundred years.”

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Night of the Loving Dead
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