Chapter 3

Caroline texted her friends until the plane took off at JFK, and Charlie looked faintly nostalgic as the plane circled over New York and headed west, and then he turned to his mother with his big brown eyes and dark hair just like Blake’s.

“You’re sure there are no ghosts there?”

“Positive. I promise.” She smiled at him, and handed him his iPad so he could play a game. They all watched movies on the plane and had lunch, and Sybil knew that the children were still faintly apprehensive about seeing their new home for the first time. They were intrigued by how big it was, Sybil said they’d get used to it, and told them how much fun it would be. They could have as many friends over as they wanted in a home that size, and play outdoors on the lawn.

Blake had reported that the painters finished their work on time on the two floors they’d been assigned to work on. The kitchen still needed some help, but was functional. IKEA had installed new cabinets and appliances. And they already had all the linens they needed. She had gotten the upholsterers started on the pieces from storage. The chandeliers and sconces were now in their original locations, and the rest of the furniture that had been stored was placed where Sybil believed it went originally, by guesswork and logical conclusion, and had instructed the movers accordingly. Blake had used the original photographs to place the chandeliers in the right rooms and they had filled in what the children needed for their bedrooms from IKEA. All their Internet and Wi-Fi connections had been set up, so they could use their computers as soon as they arrived. The only things they didn’t have yet were the flat-screen TV and pool table for the basement, but they were due to arrive in a few weeks.

They had worked wonders in a short time, but mostly because there was so much already there, particularly from storage. And the house was theirs now. It felt as though it was meant to be.

They went straight to the house from the airport when they arrived at one o’clock local time on New Year’s Day, and the realtor had very kindly offered to leave food at the house for them. Alicia and José, the Mexican couple Sybil had hired long-distance, with Blake conducting interviews, were off on New Year’s Day, but would be back the next day. They were enthusiastic and energetic, had good references, and said they liked kids. They were going to clean, and José would work outside too. Blake said they didn’t seem daunted by the size of the house. Several other couples they’d interviewed had turned the job down unless they hired more staff, which Blake and Sybil didn’t want to do. They thought two hardworking people would be enough, since they didn’t plan to use the entire house. Alicia had said she would babysit Charlie when Sybil needed her to, and all of José’s references had said that he was tireless and willing, with a great attitude. They were both in their early forties and had done domestic work for many years, since moving to California from Mexico in their teens. They were American citizens now.

Blake rented a van at the airport to accommodate all their equipment and bags. Everything else had already been sent. He had left his own car at the house, in the old garage, which had a chauffeur’s apartment they could use for storage. Blake had shipped his car from New York when he first moved out. And they were going to buy Sybil an SUV to drive the kids around, since she had left her old station wagon in New York for work. Both Caroline and Andy were maneuvering for cars of their own, but Blake was adamant about their waiting until they went to college, and Sybil agreed, which made her car a hot bartering item on weekends.

They chattered noisily on the ride from the airport, but when they drove up to the gate and saw the house, there was silence in the van. It looked bigger and more impressive than it had in photographs, and all three of the children stared as they drove into the courtyard when the gates opened by remote control. For a long moment, no one got out.

“Welcome home,” Sybil said gently, and she and Blake exchanged a smile. One by one they looked around, as Blake went to unlock the house and turn off the alarm. He left the front door open, and went back to the van to help them with their things, and carry Sybil’s bags.

“Go exploring if you want,” Blake invited them, as they entered the house shyly at first, carrying their tote bags and backpacks with what they’d needed for the plane. Sybil led them around the main floor. It looked nice now, and homier with some of the original furniture in it. It was a little sparsely furnished, with many items still at the upholsterers, but it was bright and airy with the fresh coat of paint. Sybil had selected a warm off-white color that went well with the house. All three children stared at the enormous hall with portraits hung along the walls, which Sybil and Blake had brought out of storage, and gave the entrance an ancestral air. The portraits in the hall were of various Butterfields. They looked like historical portraits in a British home. They peered into the living room and dining room, and the library, where she had put a huge partners desk they’d also found in storage. It was a beautiful English antique that was perfect in the room.

“Are there secret passages?” Charlie asked, turning to his mother with excitement in his eyes.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to study the plans in detail yet. I’ll check,” she promised, after they peeked into the kitchen and straggled up the stairs to the second floor to find their bedrooms. They had checked out each room on the main floor from the doorway, but had not gone into the reception rooms like the drawing room and the library. It was a little overwhelming. The chandeliers made the rooms seem more formal, and the long table in the dining room looked endless as Sybil glanced at it from the door, but it was meant for the room. She wondered if the Butterfields had given grand dinner parties, with all twenty-four chairs filled with elegant men and women in evening clothes, and then she ran up the stairs after her children and directed them to their respective rooms. All of them were pleased, particularly Charlie, who was directly across from his parents, and knew he could find his mother easily if he had a bad dream. All he had to do was walk out of his bedroom across the hall into hers.

Andy had a private suite, with a little living room of his own, and Caroline had a dressing room that Sybil had had painted pink, and an enormous pink marble bathroom with a gigantic bathtub. It was just as “cool” as Caro had hoped.

Then they all congregated in their parents’ room, and checked that out. Andy and Caroline and their parents had beautiful views of the bay.

“So what do you think?” Sybil asked Caroline and Charlie, while Blake and Andy brought up their bags. The things that had been shipped were already in their rooms. Blake had organized it all before he left.

“It’s BIG,” Charlie pronounced as he looked around, and his mother and sister laughed.

“Yes, it is,” Sybil agreed. “Does your room look okay?” She’d sent out his favorite pale blue bedspread, the chair he loved to sit in, and a lot of toys, along with his PlayStation. Charlie nodded in answer, and went back to looking around again, while Caroline explored her mother’s dressing room. Half an hour later, they all met in the kitchen to see what there was to eat. There was just enough for lunch and breakfast in the morning, and they were going to order pizza for dinner. Sybil was going to send Alicia to the store for them the next day. The kids had a few more days free before school started, and they were going to look around the city with Sybil, to get to know their new home. Blake was going back to work. He’d been off for ten days.

Sybil made sandwiches for all of them, they helped themselves to sodas, and she poured a glass of milk for Charlie and handed it to him. None of them were comfortable in the house yet, but they were fascinated by everything they saw. After they ate, Andy and Caroline explored the upper floors, which were unfurnished and unoccupied and still in the process of being painted, and they left Charlie in his room. He was still not absolutely certain that there were no ghosts, but the others continued to reassure him that there were none. So he focused on wanting to find the secret passages instead, and Blake said he doubted that there were any.

They went to bed early after the trip and the excitement of moving in. Charlie was asleep before his head hit the pillow. Andy watched a movie, Caroline texted all her friends and sent Instagrams of her suite and her bathtub, and Blake and Sybil retired to their room, pleased that their arrival had gone well.

“Well, that seemed to go okay,” Sybil commented to her husband as she lay on the bed and smiled at him.

“They’ll get used to it in no time, especially once they get busy at school,” he reassured her and lay down next to her. He was tired and knew he had a heavy day of meetings the next day. He was happy that his family was in San Francisco with him now, and Sybil was pleased too. They fell asleep in each other’s arms that night, and she could hear him in the shower when she woke up in the morning. They had the only proper shower in the house. The others all had tubs, with handheld showers added, which Andy had complained about and Caro loved. Blake had told Andy he could use theirs.

Sybil noticed, as she waited for Blake to emerge from the bathroom, that he had managed to open the window that had been stuck the night before. The painters had painted it shut, and neither of them had been able to open it before they went to bed. She had planned to ask José to do it, but now she didn’t have to. It was a sunny day, but the air was cool outside and felt fresh in the room. When Blake emerged from his dressing room, ready for the office, she thanked him for unsticking the window.

“I didn’t. Maybe it just worked itself open after we played with it last night,” he said blithely and headed downstairs. She forgot about it when she followed him to make breakfast, while he read the paper that had been delivered to their door. He preferred reading The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal online at the office, but had ordered the local paper for her.

They talked about his meetings that day, and he left a little while later. She kissed him goodbye in the great hall, and they both smiled at the Butterfield portraits they had hung there: Bertrand and Gwyneth, the couple who had built the house, a daunting old dowager in an elaborate gown with a fierce expression, wearing a tiara, and an older man in a kilt. Sybil wondered if those two were Bertrand’s or Gwyneth’s parents. And there were portraits of two pretty young girls in white dresses, a young man in a military uniform with a wistful expression, and a little boy who looked full of mischief and a little bit like Charlie. It made her think that she really wanted to get to Bettina’s book and find out who they all were. It surprised her that none of their descendants had wanted the portraits and had left them with the house. They were respectable works by different artists, and added dignity to the front hall. The Gregory children had looked at them when they walked in, but didn’t inquire who they were. They were too excited by the rest of the house.

Sybil walked toward the grand staircase to go upstairs, after Blake left for work, she noticed that two of the tables in the front hall had been moved from where she and Blake had wanted to place them when they came from storage, and she wondered if he had moved them. The tables had been switched to opposite sides of the room, but she had to admit they looked better in their new locations as she stopped to examine them for a minute, and then hurried upstairs to get dressed. She and the children had a busy day ahead too.

The children turned up in her room half an hour later, and they went downstairs so she could make their breakfast. They were still eating when Alicia and José arrived, and she introduced them to the children. They were warm and kind, and Charlie liked them immediately. A short time later, Sybil took the children out in the rented van. She was going to keep it until they bought her SUV.

She showed them all the sights, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz sitting in the bay. They followed a cable car downtown on California Street to the Embarcadero, and drove past Fisherman’s Wharf, up to Coit Tower and then around Union Square, and back up to Nob Hill, and then walked through Chinatown, looked at all the souvenir stores and markets, before they had lunch at Ghirardelli Square.

They had noticed a skating rink set up in Union Square, still there after the holidays, and she promised to take Caroline and Charlie skating that weekend. Andy wanted to go to a Warriors basketball game with Blake. After lunch, she drove Caroline and Andy past their new school, which wasn’t far from their house. She explained to Charlie again that he’d be picked up by a school bus every day, at a nearby stop, since his school was in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge.

They seemed satisfied with their new city, and kept occupied in their rooms when they got home, while Sybil spent some time with José and Alicia, and told them what she wanted done first. They had been working there for several weeks, under Blake’s direction. Out of curiosity, she asked them if they had switched the tables in the front hall and they said they hadn’t, so she knew it must have been Blake, which was fine. She didn’t want anyone else changing the décor on their own.

Sybil had dinner on the table when Blake got home from work. It was already beginning to feel like home. The children told him everything they’d done, and he was impressed. And they were planning to drive around Marin County the next day, and drive past Charlie’s school too. He was a little nervous about it, since he’d never seen it and had no friends there, and Sybil thought a drive by might help.

They all played Monopoly after dinner, and everyone was in good spirits when they went up to their rooms. The move was going much more smoothly than Sybil had expected, and she tried to organize her own dressing room that night. She still had shoes everywhere when she finally gave up and decided to finish the next day. She had lain down next to Blake on the bed and was dozing when he shook the bed from side to side. She turned to look at him with a puzzled expression when he woke her up with the sudden movement.

“What are you doing?” She’d already been half asleep.

“Nothing.” He seemed perplexed, and just as he said it, a violent jolt shifted back and forth and nearly threw them out of bed. The chandelier in their bedroom began swinging and they both realized what had happened, and was still happening.

“Oh shit! You lied to me!” she shouted at Blake, as she ran to get Charlie, who was wide awake and terrified in his room. It was an earthquake, and Sybil had no idea what to do. She pulled him toward her own room, as Andy and Caroline came running down the hall from their rooms, looking scared, just as the shaking stopped. It had lasted less than a minute, but felt like forever. And Sybil had noticed a horrible groaning sound that seemed to come from the ground outside while it was going on. She had never been so frightened in her life. The chandeliers were still swinging, and Sybil stared at Blake in terror. “Do you think that’s just the prelude to a bigger one?” she asked, still shaking from head to foot, as Charlie clung to her, and the other two children stood in her bedroom, panicked.

“No, I don’t,” Blake said calmly. “I think that was it. I don’t think it was even a very big one. There may be a few small aftershocks later,” he said, trying to soothe everyone.

“You said there wouldn’t be any earthquakes.” Sybil glared at him accusingly.

“It was just a small one, Syb,” he said insistently. “Welcome to San Francisco, kids,” he said to his children, trying to make light of it. “It’s fine.” Nothing had fallen or gotten damaged. It had just scared the hell out of them. They had never experienced an earthquake before.

“Do you think we should go downstairs and make sure nothing fell and broke?” Sybil asked, worried. They had candelabra with crystal drops, a lot of lamps, and a number of small delicate objects that could have fallen in the rooms downstairs. And dishes in the kitchen that could have slipped off the shelves if the cupboards had opened.

“You can if you want to,” Blake answered. “I’m sure it’s fine.” None of the others were anxious to go anywhere, in case it wasn’t over, or the aftershocks would be too strong. “Why don’t we watch something on TV?” Blake suggested to the children and switched on the remote. All three piled into their parents’ bed, where they saw on CNN that it had been a 5.1 earthquake on the Richter scale in San Francisco, with the epicenter 150 miles away, where it had registered 6.4. It wasn’t huge, but it had been a noticeable quake.

“I’m going downstairs to check,” Sybil said in a soft voice, and Blake nodded, and indicated that he’d stay with the kids.

Sybil turned the lights on in the second-floor hall, and headed down the stairs to the main floor. She wanted to check the living room and the kitchen to see if anything had fallen and broken, and she had just passed the dining room when a woman in a grand gown walked past her. She looked like a dowager, and she looked right at Sybil and spoke to her clearly as she leaned on her cane.

“I thought the chandelier was going to fall right on my head. We have to ask Phillips to check it tomorrow.” And then she narrowed her eyes at Sybil, as a man in a kilt approached her. “And what are you doing downstairs practically naked?” She looked sternly disapproving at Sybil and headed toward the stairs with the man in the kilt, who was reassuring her that it had only been a small quake. As Sybil stared at them, a little boy ran past her, with a terribly pale young woman holding his hand, as a man and a woman left the dining room less hastily and smiled at Sybil, and a tall, handsome young man in white tie and tails asked her if she was all right. There was a young woman with him in an evening dress, and Sybil felt as though she had lost her mind as she tried to answer them and couldn’t speak. And as she turned to look at them on the grand staircase, where they’d been headed, she saw them disappear, and suddenly she was alone in the main hall. She looked at the family portraits she and Blake had hung, and she knew exactly who they were. And while she tried to absorb it, a stern-looking man also in white tie and tails stared at her from the dining room doorway and closed the door. She had no idea who he was, and she didn’t know the names of the others, but they were clearly the Butterfields who had lived there a century before. She was shaking as she ran to the kitchen, saw nothing broken, decided not to check the living room, and raced upstairs. As she entered her bedroom, she was breathless and deathly pale.

“Are you all right?” Blake asked her, and she shook her head to indicate that she wasn’t, and then remembered the children in their bed, whom she had momentarily forgotten about completely in the terror and confusion of what she’d just seen. “I’m fine,” she managed to croak out, as Caroline stared at her more closely.

“You’re pale, Mom. Do you feel sick?”

“The earthquake just took me by surprise—I’m fine,” she insisted, lying down next to her daughter on her pillow and waiting for them to leave. They had all calmed down an hour later, when their father switched off the TV.

“The excitement is over, back to your rooms,” he said firmly, and went to tuck Charlie in, while Sybil lay on their bed, trying to understand what she’d seen. She knew who, but couldn’t figure out how or why.

“What happened to you?” Blake asked her when he came back from putting their youngest son to bed. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

“I did,” she whispered so Charlie couldn’t hear her, still pale. “Eight of them…nine including a man I didn’t recognize in the dining room. They were all leaving the dining room, talking about the earthquake, and headed up the stairs…and the old dowager accused me of standing there naked in my nightgown…and when they reached the top of the stairs, they all disappeared. All of them! They were the people in the portraits, even the little boy.” Her voice was shaking as she described them to him.

Blake grinned at her as she lay there looking terrified. “What did you drink while you were downstairs?” Sybil sat bolt upright in bed and glared at him in frightened fury.

“Don’t give me that! You lied about the earthquake, you said there wouldn’t be one, and now we just had one on our second day. And a whole family of ghosts just walked past me in our new house. No wonder the bank practically gave it away. They must have been scaring the hell out of people for the last forty years!”

“Sybil, please. You’re upset about the earthquake. It jarred your mind. Besides, the bank would’ve had to tell us if anyone had seen ghosts here. It’s the law.” Legally, in California, the bank had to disclose it if a house was thought to have ghosts, but maybe they didn’t know.

“I am going to jar your head if you don’t listen to me. I just saw the whole Butterfield clan leave the dining room and walk up the stairs and disappear. Two of them talked to me. The young man in uniform in the portrait downstairs. He was in white tie and tails. He asked if I was all right. And the old dowager scolded me, and I saw the old man in the kilt, he was talking to her. And they all saw me, I could tell. I saw them, plain as day.” She was badly shaken and Blake was skeptical.

“Do you want a drink now?” he offered, trying not to make fun of her, but he thought the shock of the earthquake, and the fear, had played tricks with her mind. She was obviously more afraid of earthquakes than he’d realized.

“I do not want a drink. I want to know what the hell is going on here. If our children start to see them around the house, they’ll be out of here in five minutes, and this house is toast. Especially Charlie.”

“I don’t know anything about psychic phenomena, but if you didn’t imagine it, maybe earthquakes shake ghosts out into the open. I’m sure they’ll disappear again if that’s the case. They weren’t in the front hall to greet us when we got here, after all.” He couldn’t take her seriously. It sounded absurd to Blake. He was a practical person, but Sybil was too.

“No, but they could have been. Maybe they’re all here in the house, just waiting to scare us away.” She looked panicked.

“Were they scary?” he asked her sensibly, trying to keep a straight face.

“No, just the old lady, and the man in the dining room afterward. The others were perfectly nice.”

“Why don’t we just give them a chance to vanish again?” he said soothingly, making her feel like an escaped mental patient.

“What if they don’t? Blake, I am not going to live with a family of ghosts. They scared the hell out of me.”

“Why? They’re all dead.”

“Are you crazy? What if they try to chase us away? Isn’t that what ghosts supposedly do if you’ve taken possession of a house they haunt?”

“Why don’t we just calm down and see what happens. We can’t move out just because we had a small earthquake and you think you saw a ghost.” Blake didn’t want to feed the insanity. It was unlike Sybil to be hysterical, but clearly she was.

“You don’t believe me.” She glared at him, even angrier at his condescending tone.

“I believe that you think you saw them, but I don’t know what you really saw. Maybe you just saw the portraits downstairs. Maybe they were moving from the quake.” He was looking for a reasonable answer to what she’d seen, or thought she did. But he did not for a minute believe she’d seen a family of ghosts.

“The portraits were not moving—the people were. And it was the same people as in the portraits, all of them. And they talked to me, Blake!” She was insistent and knew what she’d seen and heard. “And walked up the stairs!”

“Sybil, try to relax and be sensible. I’ll bet we never see them again. And there probably won’t be another earthquake for years.” She refused to answer him and lay down on the bed. He clearly didn’t believe her, and she didn’t know what to do next. There was no one she could tell. But she knew now that there were ghosts in the house. And whatever Blake said, the Butterfields were still there. “Did they try to frighten you away?” he asked her cynically.

“No,” she admitted. “But just seeing them nearly gave me a heart attack.” She was so enraged at Blake for everything that had happened, and for not believing her, that she didn’t speak to him again that night. She was up early the next morning, cooking breakfast, when she saw him again.

“How do you feel today?” he asked her quietly after the children finished breakfast and went back upstairs. They had talked about the earthquake all through breakfast, and how scary it had been. But that had been nothing compared to what Sybil had seen after that, when she went downstairs.

“Are you asking me if I’m sane again?” she said coldly.

“Of course not. You were frightened out of your wits last night, after that shake. I don’t blame you for being upset.” He sounded condescending, and she was just as angry at him as she’d been the night before.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I saw all of them, the whole family, and some other man.”

“Who knows, maybe that’s the way those things work. Maybe they appear every hundred years on some anniversary, or only during earthquakes. They’re certainly not hanging around on a daily basis. We never saw them here before.”

“We’ve only lived here for two days. Maybe they don’t want us here, and they think we’re disturbing them. This was their home.”

“And now it’s ours. We can’t let a family of ghosts frighten us away,” he said, still refusing to enter a state of panic with her.

“Oh, no? I’ve heard horror stories about things like that. They could push one of us down the stairs, or scare us into falling. The old lady is pretty damn scary, and there was some weird old guy with her, the one in the kilt. And who unstuck the window in our bedroom that had been painted shut the night before? You and I didn’t, and there’s no one else. In the morning, it was unstuck and the window was open. And who moved the tables in the front hall? Someone switched them and Alicia and José said they didn’t.” And Blake had said he hadn’t either when she asked him, so she assumed the moving men had. “Maybe they’re here watching us right now.” The idea gave her a shiver. “I’m not going to have my children living in a house full of poltergeists, if that’s what they are.”

“Maybe they’re benign spirits who wish us well,” he said, thinking that his wife was going nuts. “Let’s just try to keep a grip on reality, shall we? If you see them again, we can call in an exorcist or something, I’m sure there’s some way to get rid of them. They’re dead, after all.”

“Precisely. And if they’re still hanging around here a hundred years later, you can be damn sure they’re not planning to leave anytime soon.”

“Maybe they’re friendly,” he said, but he could see that he wasn’t going to convince her. The experience of the night before had been too vivid for her.

“I don’t care if they are friendly. This is our house, and I’m not going to live here with them. This is a little too Twilight Zone for me.”

“Try not to think about it today. Enjoy the kids, before they start school.” They were going to drive by Charlie’s school in Marin County, and take a look at Sausalito on the other side of the bridge. Charlie wanted a tour of Alcatraz, but she had found out you had to book it months in advance. Instead, they were going to see the sea lions at Pier 39. “Have a good day,” Blake said cautiously, blew her a kiss, and left for the office, where everyone would be talking about the earthquake and where they’d been when it happened.

The children commented on it again on the drive to Marin, and Sybil was relieved that none of them had seen any of the Butterfields on the second floor. There was no mention of them.

When they got there, Charlie liked the look of his school. They drove through Sausalito, then went back to the city and visited the sea lions, who were barking, and occasionally snapping at each other, and lying in the sun. They had lunch at Pier 39, and then the children all wanted to go home. They still had things they wanted to unpack, and Andy had promised to play a videogame with his little brother. Caroline wanted to call her friends in New York. Once they were busy in their rooms, Sybil took a quiet walk through the house to see if she noticed anything unusual, but all seemed normal. Nothing was out of place and there was no sign of the Butterfields. But despite her husband’s cynicism, she refused to believe she had imagined it.

When she got back to her room, she grabbed Bettina Butterfield’s book out of her travel bag and put it on her night table, and then she opened her computer and started surfing the Net, not sure what she was looking for. There were several sites that referred to ghosts, and even a chat room for people who had seen them, but she was looking for something more scientific. She finally discovered a website for the Psychic Institute in Berkeley, and jotted down their phone number. She closed her bedroom door and called them immediately, and when they answered, she asked to speak to someone for advice. The receptionist told her that all their counselors were busy, and asked if she’d like to make an appointment. On the spur of the moment, she made one for the next day, when all the kids would be in school. She wondered if they’d think she was crazy too, but she wanted to know if there was any basis for what she had experienced. Was it a common occurrence or totally unheard of, and what could she do about it before a family of dead people took over her home? She didn’t tell Blake that she’d called them and made an appointment. He would have been convinced she was crazy. She was relieved when that night there was no repetition of the activity of the night before. The house was peaceful, and Blake was comforted to find that Sybil was no longer on a crusade about ghosts in the house when he got home. She didn’t mention them at all.

The next day, when Sybil got everyone off to school, and had waved Charlie off on the school bus, she got in the van and headed across the Bay Bridge to Berkeley. She found the institute easily with the help of the GPS, and when she got there, it looked like a normal office or a small medical building. There was a very ordinary receptionist, and when Sybil said she had an appointment with Michael Stanton, the girl at the desk asked her to wait. Two minutes later, he came to greet her, and took her to his office. He was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and hiking boots, and had a beard, but his hair was short. He was about Sybil’s age, and he looked like a schoolteacher of some kind, or a college professor. And in his office, she saw that he had a number of degrees, including a master’s in psychology from UC Berkeley. He explained to her that he had been studying psychic phenomena for twenty years, and had written several books on the subject, to reassure her that this was a serious vocation for him.

“It’s surprisingly scientific, even though it’s not always easy to explain to people who haven’t experienced it,” he said pleasantly, and then he turned to her with a warm look and asked what he could do to help her.

“I know this sounds ridiculous, or it would to most people, and my husband is acting like I’m psychotic. We just moved into a new house three days ago. It was built in 1902 by the Butterfield family. They moved out around 1930—I think they lost their money—and a member of the family bought it back many years later and lived there until 1980. It’s had a number of owners since then. My husband and I bought it a month ago. We just moved out from New York. There have been a couple of minor incidents, nothing terrifying, but the other night during the earthquake, I saw them. All of them. The people who built the house, their children, and three other people.” Sybil looked agitated as she explained it to him, remembering how frightened she had been, both by the earthquake and the people in the hall afterward. “I saw them perfectly clearly. They walked out of the dining room, right past me, up the staircase and vanished. Two of them talked to me, and I heard them talk to one another, just as though they were right there with me.” Michael Stanton didn’t look surprised by what she said.

“How do you know it was them?” he asked quietly.

“We have their portraits up in the front hall. We bought the house from the bank, in a foreclosure, and there was quite a lot of furniture and some art in storage. We’re using it, and I liked the idea of hanging the paintings of them, like a portrait gallery in a European château or an ancestral home. It seemed respectful of them.”

“Did anyone else see them the other night?” he inquired, and she shook her head.

“I was alone downstairs and they disappeared before I went back up to the second floor. I went down to see if anything had broken or fallen during the earthquake.” He nodded and jotted down some notes on a pad on his desk. In some ways, he reminded her of a shrink, but he didn’t act as though she was crazy, as Blake had.

“What were they wearing?” he asked, and Sybil thought about it.

“They were dressed in clothes similar to the portraits, though not exactly, but they were wearing clothes of the time when the house was built. Evening gowns, white tie and tails, a kilt.” He nodded again. “Does this sound nuts to you?” she asked him, and he smiled at her.

“Not at all. I hear it all the time. Something about the earthquake the other night may have replicated an incident in their lifetimes, and shaken them loose, literally. Given when the house was built, I assume they must have lived there during the 1906 earthquake. And your moving in may have jarred them too. If the house has been unoccupied for a long time, you may have startled them. Hanging their portraits may have made them feel welcome. And they may be curious about you. Ghosts are sometimes very curious about people in their space.”

“It’s our space now,” Sybil said firmly, and Michael smiled.

“They may not think so. It’s not unusual for people from the spirit life to become quite attached to the homes they lived in during their lifetime. They may have happy memories there. It’s possible that they never left the house and have remained there for all this time. But it’s very unusual for an entire family to stay together in a home. It’s more common for one or two spirits to linger, but not a large group like the one you describe. They must be very comfortable there. Did they feel menacing to you? Did you have the sense that they were trying to frighten you?” Sybil thought about it and shook her head.

“The old lady was pretty daunting, but it was more the way she looked at me and the way she was dressed. I think she had an accent too.”

“What kind of an accent?”

“British…Scottish maybe, and there was a man with her wearing a kilt. He didn’t talk to me. There’s a book about the family and their history in the house, but I haven’t had time to read it yet.”

“Maybe you should.”

She nodded in agreement. “One of their daughters wrote it—the one who bought the house back and stayed until her death many years later. Her daughter had no interest in the house and sold it when her mother died.”

“There could be several reasons why they let you see them the other night. Two, most typically. Either they are trying to reach you and make contact with you, for some unknown reason. Perhaps even because they like you, or had some earlier relationship with you. Or they don’t want you on their turf and are determined to scare you, but it doesn’t sound like that to me. When spirits from another dimension want to frighten people, they’re not shy about it and can really wreak havoc. They don’t sound hostile or ominous to me.”

“They weren’t,” she agreed. “It’s just the idea of them that is unsettling. I’m not even sure that I believe in ghosts. Or I never did before this. But they were extremely real, and stood right next to me. They appeared to be perfectly normal living people, like you and me, and then they disappeared. They just faded away like mist at the top of the stairs.”

“They normally do that extremely well.” He smiled at her. “You see them one minute, appearing quite alive, and then you don’t.”

“The couple who built the house looked entirely alive and smiled at me, and so did the young man. I think he must be their son. There is a portrait of him in uniform.”

“He might have died during the war, so they had him painted in uniform to honor him,” Michael explained. “I have a feeling that they were just comfortable with you, and recognized you as a benign person, so they let you see them. As I said, what’s unusual here is that the entire family still appears to be together, in their home. You don’t hear about that very often. An individual, or a couple occasionally, but not the whole family, including several generations, intact as they were when they occupied the home. They must be a very strong presence to be there over a hundred years later. They may have always remained there, or perhaps they returned more recently, or they may come and go. Their daughter living there for many years would have made remaining there easier for them, and if the house has been unoccupied for many years, that opens the doors for them too. Spirits don’t usually like a busy home, or one where there is too much activity.”

“I don’t want them frightening my children,” Sybil said sternly.

“Of course. Would you mind if I came to visit you? One can often sense what kind of spirit activity is there, and how powerful a force it is. And if they have been there for all this time, they won’t go away easily. You and your family may have to learn to coexist with them.”

“I’m not willing to do that,” Sybil said stubbornly. “I have a six-year-old son who would be traumatized if he ever sees them.”

“You might be surprised. Children are often very receptive to spirits. Their minds are more open than ours.”

“He’s afraid of ghosts,” Sybil insisted. And so was she, now that she had come face to face with them. It was Blake who didn’t believe in them, and thought they were a figment of her imagination. “And a few pieces of furniture have been moved, after I placed them where I wanted them.”

“The phenomenon of moved furniture is fairly typical, particularly if you’re using what was theirs.” He was unimpressed by it. “They may want it all back in its original location, if you’ve placed it differently. Somehow you may have disturbed them, which brought them back en masse, or they are comfortable in your home.”

“I don’t want them to get comfortable. I want them to go away. And if you think it would help to visit the house, by all means come and see it.”

“Would tomorrow work for you?” She nodded. She wanted to find out as much as she could. She was preparing a show for the Brooklyn Museum, but was under no time pressure yet. And she wanted to know more about the Butterfields and make sure they didn’t reappear. They may have been comfortable there, but they were not welcome in her home. She wondered if she should take their portraits down. She asked Michael about it, but he said it wouldn’t change anything, if they were determined to stay in the home, particularly now that they had appeared. She told him it was important to her to get rid of the ghosts in her house, before they drove her and her family away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Michael said pleasantly, as he stood up and ushered her out.

Sybil thought about what he’d said all the way back to the city. In some ways it wasn’t reassuring, although she was happy to know that she was sane. But the fact that whole families who had remained in a home in spirit for a hundred years almost never wanted to leave was not encouraging. At least she was happy he didn’t think they were trying to terrorize them or drive them away. But she had no intention of coexisting with them. She had already decided not to tell Blake what she had learned that day. She wanted to hear what Michael would say when he visited the house, and what kind of vibrations he picked up, hostile or friendly, and if he could tell her anything more.

As she walked into the front hall, she looked at the portraits more closely than she had before. They were exactly like the people she had seen in the hallway the night of the earthquake. And she could have sworn that the grand dowager was gazing right at her in the portrait with a disapproving stare, as she held her fan and a lorgnette. Sybil could still hear her voice that night. She noticed a black pug dog in the painting then too, sitting on the floor next to the woman. The old man in the kilt appeared to observe her with interest as she walked past, trying not to let them unnerve her. This was her house now, she thought with determination, and no longer theirs. And as she walked upstairs to check on her children after their first day of school, Sybil didn’t see the little boy sitting under a table, wearing knee breeches and a cap, holding a bag of marbles, as he smiled, watching her.