Free Tapping the Dream Tree by Charles De Lint Page B

side, and the night clerk was anything but, though he had to give her points for trying. She could have been anywhere from nineteen to twenty-nine, her frame more wiry than skinny, her chopped blonde spikes twisted and poking up at random from her brown roots through an odd collection of clips, bobby pins and elastics. Her fashion sense was riot grrl attempting business chic; he could tell she was about as comfortable in the sleek black skirt, white blouse and heels as he was in a tie and jacket—it didn’t feel like your own skin so much as some stranger’s. Her multiple earrings and the tattoo peeking out from below the sleeve of her blouse, not to mention that mad hair, told another story from the one her clothing offered, revealing part of the subtext of who she really was.
    â€œWhat sort of ghost, Mary?” he asked.
    There was an old smell in this hotel, but he didn’t mind. It reminded him of favorite haunts like used book stores and libraries, with an undercurrent that combined rose hip tea, incense, and late night jazz club smoke.
    â€œA sad one,” she said.
    â€œAren’t they all?”
    She gave him a surprised look.
    â€œThink about it,” he said. “What else can they be but unhappy? If they weren’t unhappy, they wouldn’t still be hanging around, would they? They’d continue on.”
    â€œWhere to?”
    â€œThat’s the big question.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    She fiddled with something on the desk below the counter, out of Christy’s sight. Paper rustled. The monitor of the computer screen added a bluish cast to her features and hair.
    â€œBut what about vengeful ghosts?” she asked, gaze remaining on the paperwork.
    Christy shrugged. “Vengeful, angry, filled with the need to terrorize others. They’re all signs of unhappiness. Of discontent with one’s lot in life, or should we say afterlife? Though really, it’s the baggage they carry with them that keeps them haunting us.”
    â€œBaggage?”
    â€œEmotional baggage. The kind we all have to deal with. Some of us are better at it than others. You’ve seen them, sprinting through life with nothing more than a carry-on. But then there are the rest of us, dragging around everything from fat suitcases to great big steamer trunks, loaded down with all the debris of our discontent. Those ones with the trunks, they’re the ones who usually stick around when the curtain comes down, certain that if they can just have a little longer, they can straighten up all their affairs.” He smiled. “Doesn’t work that way, of course. Alive or dead, there’s never enough time to get it all done.”
    She lifted her gaze. “You even talk like a writer.”
    â€œI’m just in that mode,” Christy told her. “Too many days talking about myself, going on endlessly about how and why I write what I do, where I find the stories I collect, why they’re relevant beyond their simple entertainment value. It gets so that even ordinary conversation comes out in sound bites. I’ve been at it so much today my brain hasn’t shifted back to normal yet.”
    â€œI guess you can’t wait to get home.”
    Christy nodded. “But I like meeting people. It’s just hard with so many at once. You can’t connect properly, especially not with those who’re expecting some inflated image that they’ve pulled out of my books and all they get is me. And it gets pretty tiring.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. “I’m keeping you up, aren’t I?”
    Christy had long ago realized that, in one way, ghosts and the living were much the same: most of them only needed to have their story be heard to ease their discontent. It didn’t necessarily heal them, but it was certainly a part of the healing process.
    â€œI can never sleep after a day like this,” he lied. “So tell me about your