Posted on Wednesday, 31 October 2007

It was a big night in the Ferrars household. Dr. Edward Ferrars had received an award as top psychiatrist in his field. He and his wife, Elinor, had come home for a private celebration, but it was not to be for long.

“How much do you think a frame like this costs?” Edward asked his wife as they sat in bed admiring the award.

“Why?” Elinor wanted to know.

“Because I want to have it sold so I can help poor people.”

“Putz*,” she replied.

“Oops!” he said, having imbibed in too much bubbly. “Gotta go.”

Unbeknownst to Edward, a former patient (and former fiancée – Edward should have known better than to mix business with pleasure!) one Lucy Steele, was lying in wait. Hiding behind the shower curtain (because Psycho was her favorite movie and she wanted to do the Norman Bates thing in reverse), she waited until Edward, pumped full of champagne, went to the bathroom. Then she pumped him full of lead.

Fast forward a year or so…

Edward’s first client in ages, Maggie Dashwood, was going to need some coaxing to talk to him, he could see that right off.

“Are you a good doctor?” the girl wanted to know.

“I-I-I used to be,” Edward said, stuttering slightly.

“Stuttering Stanley!” Maggie crowed, clearly off her rocker. “And then what?”

“I got an award for being a good doctor. It had an expensive frame I wanted to sell and help poor people with.”

“Putz. Will I see you again?”

“What d-d-do you see now?” he asked in his most clinical voice.

“I see a putz doctor.”

Edward slowly gained Maggie’s confidence, even if he had to resort to some games to get her to tell him what was bothering her.

“L-l-let’s play a game,” he suggested one day. “I’ll try to read your mind, and if I get it right, you have to take one step toward me. If I’m wrong, you take a step back. If I win, you have to stay and talk to me. If y-y-you win, you get to leave.”

“Pervert putz doctor,” Maggie muttered under her breath, but she agreed. It was better than nothing.

“When your parents divorced, your mom saw a doctor who didn’t do anything for her, so you think I’m the same.”

Maggie moved one step forward.

“You’re worried that she t-t-told this doctor some of her secrets, secrets that were yours, too.”

Maggie scowled, but moved closer.

“You have a secret, but you don’t want to tell it to me.”

She came forward another step.

“You’re a g-g-good student in school.”

Maggie shot him a triumphant look and stepped backwards. “I drew pictures of people getting hurt,” she admitted. “And my teacher called my mom.”

“And?” he encouraged.

“I don’t draw them any more. I draw puppies and flowers and rainbows.” She stuck her finger down her throat, to show what she thought of that.

“Are you scared about what is going on in your life?”

“Heck no! I love seeing dead people, don’t you?” she asked, walking out the door.

Once they had made that breakthrough, counseling went a lot easier.

“Tell me who you s-s-see now?” Edward would prompt, getting a ghoulish delight out of her descriptions.

“There’s this woman who is all green and sickly. Her husband poisoned her.”

“What was her name?

“Marianne Brandon. Her husband was in the military and he caught her with another man. He poisoned her and shot the man, Willoughby. Willoughby shows up sometimes, too. I think they are all idiots,” Maggie said deprecatingly.

Edward shook his head. Sometimes he wondered why he was working with such an insensitive child. She was certainly a bloodthirsty little wench.

“What else?”

“You’re a nutcase, do you know that?” Maggie asked. “Why do you get such a kick out of hearing about these dead people?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted with a shrug. “Tell me more. I’m w-w-writing a book about you and the more anecdotes I can tell, the better my story will be.” And the better the funding he could get to help poor people. What a putz.

“I hope I get some sort of royalty for this.” Maggie shivered. “Ever feel the prickly things on the back of your neck?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s them – when they get mad, it gets cold.”

“Sort of like my wife when I come home late every day after seeing you.”

“Yeah, that’s it, exactly!” Maggie happily agreed. “Oh, look!” she exclaimed, pointing to nothing he could see. “It’s Mrs. Jennings! She was suffocated, you know, because she didn’t know when to shut up. I see her daughter, Mrs. Palmer, is with her today. She was strangled by her husband for the very same reason.”

“Interesting…”

“And Col. Brandon is here now. He’s the one who poisoned his wife and shot her lover? Well, he committed suicide, evidently, because there’s a rope around his neck.”

“I see…”

“No you don't, or I wouldn't be telling you all this. Last night I followed home someone named Fanny. Her husband shot her for being a tightwad, hid the body, faked her disappearance and collected a lot of insurance money. Which he is happily spending on himself.”

“You’re a s-s-strange girl.”

“And you are a putz and a pervert.”

In time, Maggie learned to ignore the ghosts she saw, and she finally gave Dr. Ferrars his walking papers.

“You’re going to move on, now,” she said calmly. “Because you’re really a dead person, just like the rest of the people I see.”

“You th-th-think so?” Edward was amused.

“I know so,” Maggie said with confidence.

“Guess again, little girl.” Edward pulled out a gun. “I’m as alive as you are. For now, anyway. My wife has been ignoring me because she wants a divorce, not because she’s a widow, you idiot. I hate the way you make fun of my st-st-stutter, and you’re a freak, talking about dead people as if they were your friends.”

“But…”

“So long, nutcase!” he called, and pumped her full of lead. And with that, the story of Dr. Edward Ferrars came full circle.

*putz is slang for idiot or fool. And, although I did not realize it at the time, Ulrike says it is a word older people use in her local dialect to mean ghost. How coincidental is that?

The End