THE GHOST TRIO

A couple is haunted by spirits who take them through 20th-century history in Derrick’s novella.

Cluny and his partner, Mike, have retreated from a busy life in Los Angeles to a more suburban setting, and they believe the house across the street is haunted. Cluny and Mike invite the house’s occupants, an older couple named Laurel and Alec, over for dinner and have a perfectly nice time, although the guests start making eyes at each other and then beat a lustful, hasty retreat before dessert is served. While this does not dispel their suspicion that ghosts are involved somehow, Cluny and Mike continue to socialize with them. Laurel comes over one day and tells them a ghost story: As a child, she saw a red-haired man everywhere she went, but no one else could see him. Her search for the man’s identity led her to Prague, roughly around the time of the Prague Spring of 1967, where she met Alec. They believe that the red-haired entity is named Damek, a man who died tragically in the house during the lead-up to World War II. Laurel and Alec speculate about their connections to Damek and his lover, Annelise, connections that remain strong in the present day. Laurel’s story packs a punch, although the present-day narrative doesn’t entirely work as a framing device, as Cluny and Mike are not fleshed-out characters. Some of the prose is a bit purple (“I cannot adequately describe what it means to me to bring resolution to a soul in crisis. It is a calling far transcending theological study….I prayed that whatever I might be lacking would be provided to me. Here, now, I am certain that missing element has arrived, and it is you, Laurel”), but the story pulls the reader along throughout the strange tale of Damek. In a peculiar writerly flourish, the author omits quotation marks, which sometimes makes it tricky to tell what is or isn’t verbatim dialogue. Ultimately, it’s a pleasingly spooky narrative, but it ends a little abruptly and would be stronger without the frame.

An engaging historical ghost story.