Ghost Stories (Short Fiction)

The Return of 22 Captain

            The return of 22 Captain to his family land elicited an ambiguous response from his dead family. As he reported it, they “showed their teeth” but said nothing.  Realizing this gesture could be interpreted as either a blessing or a curse, he set off on his journey home, conscious only of a certain relief at putting some distance between himself and his deranged relatives.

            Quite a walk – and he only three feet tall – if that – marching his little leather boots through the forest – under trees fifty or a hundred times his height with the wails and cheers of those who had cared for the earth while they lived bouncing off his wooden ear. His smile was fixed – his thin moustache undampened, and his high blue captain’s hat sat tilted back on his head. He knew the way home. No number of passing seasons – not even ninety-eight years worth – could cloud his memory. Nor did the changes in the terrain set him off course; he would have known his way should sky scrapers have been reared across the land since his death. He toddled on (he would prefer “marched” but one owes something to verisimilitude) until he broke from the forest and found a paved road. True, he did marvel somewhat at that but no matter – he knew where he was and who he was – and it was time he was getting home.

            A freak October snow storm had blanketed our town only days before. Shops were selling Halloween candy next to shovels and salt. The two feet of snow on the ground slowed his passage through the woods – one would have seen only his resolute hat and two eyes pushing through the forest. On the paved road he made better time. The night was clear with a three-quarter moon that refracted off the snow and illuminated the road and trees – their branches and trunks silver and white in the strange, luminous darkness. And, he said, he sang a little song as he “marched” – a song they used to sing in the fields at harvest time – but I have forgotten the words.

            This all happened long ago now and yet, really, it seems like yesterday. I was not at home at the time. I was staying at my friend Kayla’s house while she was in the city at her mom’s funeral. I didn’t know her mom but I sure knew funerals and I didn’t envy her the experience. Her house was a large place she’d just expanded from an older, smaller home on a wide patch of land ringed by woods near the far end of the village of Galen’s Mills.  I had been seduced by her satellite TV and my life, that night, revolved around trying to orchestrate the taping of three movies – on three different channels – on three different video tapes. Yes, I said video tapes. I told you this was long ago.

            I had this loathing of inconsistency then. I could not bear to have a six-hour video cassette of, say, “Apocalypse Now” and “Hearts and Minds” with “Annie Hall” sandwiched between. It was all or nothing. It had to make sense.  None of this mixing.  Mixing bothered me. Mixing confused things – confused emotions, confused thoughts. I wanted things simple and uncomplicated.

            I’m not a great thinker now and I wasn’t one then. I’m easily confused. I can hardly figure out how turning a metal key in a cylinder starts a car. I have no idea how I can move two tons of steel by pressing my foot on a gas pedal; never mind serious stuff. But I was trying my mind at serious stuff back then. I was reading books on spirits – ghosts – and what worlds could be waiting to welcome the soul after death. I had only just learned that Halloween is known by pagans as `Samhain’ and how the veil between those living and the dead grows thin at that season.

            I’d experienced what some people call `hauntings’ all my life, raised in upstate New York where, as everyone knows, the dead rise to walk as the evening descends; but experiencing and understanding are pretty different things. You know, someone you love goes to France or Germany, you get a postcard telling you what it’s like and what they’re doing.  Doesn’t happen with death. No one sends postcards back from that place, at least no one I knew.  My dad had just taken that trip a few months before and I missed him. I wanted to know where he was. I wanted a postcard. I thought of trying a séance that night, what with the veil being so thin and all, but I couldn’t muster up the courage to do it alone. I wasn’t even sure one could do a séance alone. Then, of course, thinking about talking to a dead person just scared me; it was much more comfortable to concentrate on the TV.

            The knock came at the door at precisely 12:05 am. “Mr. Jordan” had just ended and I was inserting the cassette to record “Liberty Valance”. The trick was to get the satellite swinging as I changed the tapes in the VCR; by the time the new station was selected I had the new cassette in and was perfectly poised, fingers lightly on the buttons, to snatch another film from the ether.

            I glanced, surprised, out the living room window at the front porch, saw no one, and turned back. The little black box atop the set clicked into place on satellite station T4 and I flipped through the channels to number 16 – the knock came again – a bright knock – one could say “spritely”, a lively rap-rap-rap – unmistakable now. My attention was diverted. Who could be at the door at midnight Monday morning? Kayla’s place was quite isolated out at the far end of the village; no trick or treaters had knocked on the door all night. Why now at midnight?

            Yes. My attention was diverted. It was only – at most – two seconds; but it was enough. I whirled back to the TV and, Good God, the opening credits were spanning the screen. I slammed the record button and just as quickly slammed the stop/eject. It was just not done. It just could not be done. Better no movie than one clipped and slipshod like a thrift shop tux. I pounded the `off’ button into the TV and the screen went black; then I proceeded out to see to the cause of this untimely rapping.

            I opened the door – and no one was there; until I looked down. He was as I’ve described him earlier: about three feet tall, thin, in a dark blue fireman’s cap with 22 Captain on it, blue fireman’s coat and pants and knee-high boots. He had a cheery face and very merry eyes which radiated an electric delight.

            “I’m home!” he smiled.

             “Home?”

            “Home,” he said.

            He walked past me, through the kitchen, and hopped up on the sofa in the living room. His feet stuck out over the edge. I stared at him stupidly from the kitchen, my hand still on the knob of the front door.

            “Oh, moving pictures!” he chirped. “I love `em. Never seen `em, but I knew I’d love `em.”

             He turned and grinned at me – then turned back to stare at the blank screen.

            “Would you mind?” he smiled, turning toward me again.

            I walked silently over to the TV and pulled the set on. The screen filled with light and the room with sound.

            “Hot damn,” he said. “Ain’t that something?”

            I sat down in the chair next to the sofa and watched him watching TV. I knew who he was. I had read of him in Kayla’s local history book – only a passing reference there. But the old people remembered 22 Captain from stories their parents told and, if you stayed around Galen’s Mills long enough, you’d sooner than later hear someone talking – remembering events that happened before their time; when the mills still ran down by the river near the ice houses and the great estates rose high on the hills of the town, 22 Captain was a folk hero in his own time. Fighting fires was his idea of fun – and they’d say he never lost a single life in any fire he put down (except once Mrs. Milroy’s hog – a prize winner – of course).

             I had been intrigued by the man – as I am always intrigued by those who have what I have not or can do what I can only dream of, and I’d pictured him strong and robust, a good six feet.  No one had ever mentioned the fact that the man was only three feet tall – a significant detail to omit, I feel anyway.

            “Sir?”

            “Yes?” he said, his eyes on the screen.

             “You’re Twenty-two Captain.”

             “No doubt about that.”

             I sat back and stared down at my sneaker. I wiggled my toes and thought – then leaned forward again.

             “Sir?”

             “Yes?”

             “Do you know that you’re dead?”

             “No doubt about that either.”

             He glanced at me, then back to the TV.

              “You sure do like to state the obvious, boy.”

            “Well, I didn’t know if you knew,” I said. “You see, I’ve read how sometimes spirits will come back to a place – sometimes haunt a place for years – `cause they don’t know they’re dead.    I just thought – well – that you should know.”

            “Thank you, son.”

            I sat back in the chair and watched him watching TV.  I was no stranger to the occult and the supernatural; to some I was a master, to others a novice – as it is with anything. Whether one or the other, I was used to it all by now, living in a region of New York where the woods and streams, the houses and the rotting hovels were alive, swirling, with past inhabitants. Mill workers or transparent daughters of the Cooper, an Indian Prince or phantom bucks – one or more had roamed or run through my living room or kitchen any hour of the day or night ever since I was aware I was alive and had a memory. I was used to invisible feet on the stairs and faucets going on by themselves. I was used to sightings out of the corner of my eye or the lights flipping on and off. What I was not used to was one who wanted to stay, one who was solid, one who appeared, not in a sudden flash to be suddenly gone again, but at the door – knocking at the door – stating he was home. I leaned forward again.

            “Sir?”

             “Call me Captain.”

             “Captain?”

            “Yes?”

            “What do you want?”

            “Oh, nothing for now. Maybe a beer a little later.”

             “No, – no. I mean, why are you here?”

            “Felt like coming home.”

            “This was your home?”

            “Sure was. The land, you understand, not the house,” he said. He glanced around and then said, “Well, parts of it I recognize. Wasn’t nearly so large in my time.”

            “And – that’s it. That’s all you wanted – was to come home.”

            “Yep.”

             “You don’t have some – some mission, or – uh – message, or warning or anything?”

            “Nope.”

              “You don’t want to talk?  Ease some regret – some guilt you carried with you to your grave?”

             “Nope.”

             I stared at him.

            “You just want to sit here and watch TV?”

             “You mean the moving pictures?”

            “Yeah – those.”

             “Yep.”

            This contradicted everything I had recently read.

            So that night we watched television. I tried to explain it to him and also what the VCR was – but he wasn’t interested and told me to hush up finally. He somehow drank a beer and enjoyed it immensely as he laughed uncontrollably all the way through “Days of Heaven”. Sometime between three and four I fell asleep.

            The next morning I’d have thought the whole thing a dream – but there was his empty beer bottle on the couch table. I knew I hadn’t had a beer because if I had I’d have woken up with my usual one-beer hangover. Even so – and even after all my reading and experience – it was difficult to believe the events of the night were anything more than an elaborate dream.

            I spent the day in the forest behind my own house cutting and hauling cords of wood to sell. I’d lost my job at the health food store when the boss caught me eating a Big Mac in my car one afternoon.  I didn’t live far from Kayla’s house and, after a quick stop at KFC, I returned there.  The TV was going when I came in and there on the couch, feet up, beer in hand, was 22 Captain. He nodded and smiled. I smiled back. His gold buttons shone brightly in the flickering light from the TV screen.

            “Is that fried chicken I smell?”

             “Yeah. You want some?”

            “No, thanks, son. Just love that smell. Reminds me of home.”

            So I ate my chicken and sat on the couch next to him watching TV. A Clint Eastwood western was on and the Captain was really getting into it. I had a thousand questions but he was having too much fun and I didn’t want to bother him.

             Later, though, when the movie ended, I asked him, “What’s it like to be dead?”

            “What’s it like to be alive?” he said.

             “Well – ok, I guess.”

             “Same here.”

             “But – what’s that mean?  Can’t you tell me anything?”

            “What do you want to know?”

            “Well – anything. What it’s like.”

            “Where you been besides here?”

             “Traveled to?”

            “Yep.”

            “Not many places. Maine mostly. The coast.”

             “So, what’s Maine like?  Never been.”

             “Oh, it’s beautiful. The ocean air is so fresh – I always feel like my lungs are getting cleaned out when I’m there. And the pines – you go inland a little? The pines are so sweet smelling and tall. I just lay there sometimes on the soft needles after breakfast and watch the sunlight dancing through the branches above me. Dancing down – to me, you know?”

             “Knew a fellow from Maine once. A logger. Don’t know if he was from the same part you’re talking about. But I asked him the same question I just asked you.”

            He turned from the TV and smiled at me.

            “He said the state of Maine was God’s outhouse and the Lord just hadn’t gotten around to mucking it yet.” 

            He laughed.

            I smiled and looked at him.

            “Same with death – or life. Depends on who you ask. I can’t tell you but what I’ve experienced.  When they first get there, most say they’re miserable – they want their woman again or their man again or their baby again in their arms. Some moan after a cigarette again in the morning with the winter sun coming through the kitchen window, or a cup of coffee or the sound of birds toward dusk. They miss the earth something awful.  Others don’t give a damn `bout anything – probably didn’t notice what they had when they were alive and didn’t give a damn then either `cause they were worrying over things too much to even notice an autumn leaf.

            “But they pretty much all calm down – some sooner and some later and there’s some never do. Depends on their understanding. You see, folks fear death because they think it’s everything you’ve ever had being taken away. It’s not. It’s everything you’ve ever lost being returned to you. It’s just that, well, some people don’t know what they got when they’ve got it – so they don’t feel the value when it comes on back to `em. They don’t recognize it, see?

            “For me? When I get to missing the earth too much, why, I just pay a call.”

            “Is there a Heaven?”

             “Sure, there is – if you want to go there.”

            “Are you there?  Is that where you’re from?”

            “Nope.”

             “Where then?”

            “Right here. This is my home.”

            Throughout the week I stayed there 22 Captain visited every night.  We always watched TV but in the early morning we’d sit and talk before he left. He told some great stories. Funny stories. I’d never laughed so much. I forgot all about taping movies. He said he visited all the old places during the day or sometimes sat and watched me cutting wood.  I told him to make some sort of sign, if he was out there with me when I was sawing, but he wouldn’t.  He said I was doing dangerous work and ought to keep my mind on it instead of looking around for signs from spooks.

            The last night we were together he took from his pocket a small, thin pen knife and put it in my hand.

             “Keep this,” he said.

            “Thanks.” I was startled.

             He sat back on the sofa, his stubby legs protruding his feet over the edge.

            “You worry too much, son,” he said. “It’s in your features. You don’t even have to speak – it’s all over your face you worry too much.”

            I smiled at him and looked down at the knife. It was thin, inlaid with pearl, and had a small, gold chain attached to one end. I ran my finger across the smooth sides, keeping it closed.

             “You take that thing out now and again.” he said. “You get to worrying, you take that thing out and recall to mind that when that knife was made, when I carried it, the earth was a different place – but folks then was worrying same as you. They worried themselves and they worried others but they endured and the earth endured after them.  And when you’re gone the earth is going to be an even different place – but folks will worry still and endure still. Things ain’t half so bad as you think.  You read too much – I can tell in how you put your words together and by the kind of moving pictures you watch. You see things sorrowful and you see things pained. But you ought to know that it doesn’t all have to be that way.”

             I nodded, looking down at the knife.

            “I’m not giving you a sermon.  No call to look so hang-dog. Could I get a beer?”

             “Sure.”

             “I’m going back tonight.” he said, setting the beer down on the table.  He looked like a four-year old sitting on the sofa.

            “Back where?”

            “See the family.  They’re an odd bunch, but they’re blood.”

            Then he told me of his leaving and his march through the woods the week before.

             “You coming back ever?” I asked

             “Might. Don’t know.”

             “I enjoyed your visit.”

            “You’re good company, son. Hospitable, a good listener – you got fine beer here – if only you didn’t worry so much.”

            “I’ll work on it, Captain.”

            “You do that,” he said. “Who’s your lady friend lives here?”
            “Oh, that’s Kayla. She’s just a friend. I mean, she’s not a `lady friend’ or anything.”

            “I see,” he said, then smiled, winked at me. “You might want to work on that, too.”

            He was gone when I got up in the morning – there was not even the empty beer bottle as a souvenir. I went back and lay in bed and handled his knife over and over. I wondered how a spirit could produce a heavy, material object from a ghostly pocket and leave it with me – how a phantom could drink a beer or leave an imprint on a sofa cushion – why none of these things were ever discussed in the many books on the supernatural I’d read. And then I remembered and tried not to worry.

            That night I watched TV by myself and felt the knife in my pocket and I missed the Captain; but I tried not to worry. I felt like I’d gotten my postcard, sure, and I could imagine my dad with the Captain under some great canopy of violet and gold by some eternal lake, laughing at the old stories and I’d smile and feel all right. Then, a moment later, I’d miss him again, miss them both, and I’d feel it all just wasn’t enough.

            I never told Kayla about that night; I’ve never told anyone until now. Maybe I should have told her. Maybe it would have changed how everything turned out and we could have started something new together instead of drifting apart on our own separate seas of grief. I thought I’d just sound crazy talking about a ghost but now I don’t care. He was real; it was all real. He never came back and I’ve never forgotten him and, even now as I am writing this page, that knife hangs heavy in my left breast pocket – and I’m still trying not to worry all these years later. It’s not easy. I suppose the only way to really stop is to open the knife up and use it.  But then that’s not what he gave it to me for.

END

Third Time’s the Charm

On the day of my brother’s funeral, the early October sun brightly lighted  the  church through the long windows. I was sitting with my mother, my aunt and the cousins and my fiancée, Diana, in a long pew toward the front. The minister was saying something but I wasn’t listening. I was lost in time, taking a trip, without even meaning to, back thirteen years to a day Francis and I were both home on break from college and talking in my room.

It was late May and he had just finished reading a book called Messages From Michael. Francis and I had always been close; he was the older brother who had taught me how to play baseball, how to do pretty much everything after our dad died. I always loved our talks but this one was different. It seemed we’d both wound up on the same

path at the same time – questioning the faith we were raised in, seeking the same answers.

I had just been reading The Katha Upanishad where the hero, Nachiketa, travels to the realm of Yama, god of the dead, to ask if there is life after death. Messages From Michael dealt with the same question.

“It’s all pretty cool,” Francis said. “Reading about this stuff. But I’d feel a lot better if there was some actual proof, you know? Like someone coming back to tell about it.”

“Yeah, that would be pretty great but don’t hold your breath. Even Shakespeare called it “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns”, you know?”

“What’d he know?” Francis said. “Why do you always cite Shakespeare like he’s an authority on everything? He was just a writer.”

“Oh,” I said, laughing. “Just a writer. Fine. That’s like saying the sun is just a star, don’t you think?”

“Whatever,” he said, waving his hand at me like he’d do. “Just `cause Shakespeare said no one comes back doesn’t mean no one does.”

I shrugged. “Shakespeare or any one else, man, all say the same thing. It’s a one- way road.”

“What about near-death experiences?” Francis asked. “They’re all pretty consistent.”

“Yeah. I want you to listen to what you just said: Near death. That’s not death itself. If something does exist those people have just seen, like, the front door. I don’t think that’s proof.”

“What if we gave the proof,” he said, suddenly, leaning forward in the chair by my bed.  “Won’t do us much good right now but might someday.”

“What? We’re going to die and come back?”

“No, you moron,” he said. “Well, yeah, I don’t know. Maybe. Like this – whichever one of us dies first will come back and appear to the other one. Then we’ll both know.”

“Won’t work. I’ve heard plenty of stories from people saying they’ve seen dead relatives or friends and it’s always, `Oh, he was right there by the door like he used to be and then he was gone’ and I just think that’s bull. Could be anything. Maybe they were just seeing what they wanted to see or maybe they saw something else for a moment. One is too small a number for that sort of thing. If they saw the guy, like, ten times, then maybe.”

“Ok,” Francis said. “Ten times then.”

“Ten is too much. Overkill. Listen, if you show up after you’re dead even once it’s going to scare the crap out of me. Ten times? Don’t think I could take it.”

“All right, would you like to stipulate a number we can agree on?” “Three,” I said. “Three’s a good number. Don’t they always say, `three’s the

charm’?”

“I think it’s `third time’s the charm’.” “Whatever. I say three.”

“Ok, then, three times,” he said. I considered this for a moment.

“Ok, three is a good number,” I said. “But how’s it going to work? You going to show up on, say, a Tuesday and then a Friday and then a Sunday? If there’s going to be a number of times we have to be specific here about how it’ll work.”

“John,” he said. “First, you think too much. But, fine – it’ll run like this: whichever one of us dies first will come back and appear to the other three times in rapid succession, one, two, three boom. No mistaking it.”

“And how?” I asked. “You just going to pop up while I’m eating dinner?” “You keep thinking I’m gonna go first is your big mistake here.”

“You’re the older brother. You’re supposed to get the firsts.”

“You’re hilarious. No, no, it’ll be like, like – uh – oh, like in the book I told you about by Wilson. The occult book? He talked about `in betweens’, like portals between this world and the next. Windows can be in-betweens or doorways or, uh, or mirrors. How about that? Whoever comes back will show up in a window or a mirror.”

“Ok, that sounds all right.”

“Just don’t show up in the mirror any time when I’m shaving. That could be bad.” “Oh, I won’t be showing up in any mirrors or anywhere else. You’re going first.” “I’m not really feeling that, you know? But, really, that’s a point to think about.

Mirrors could be bad news. You know, I get scared – fine, fine – or you get scared – fall down, smash the head on the tub.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Maybe we should just settle on windows. Deal?”

“Windows it is then,” Francis said. “Three times. Deal.” “Shake on it,” I said.

“We’ll show Shakespeare,” he said, and we shook hands. “That know-it-all.”

Now it was thirteen years later and he was dead and I kept looking at windows but I hadn’t seen him in any. There was nothing I could understand about Francis’ death. He was such a great guy, everybody loved him, and he’d always been an instant success at whatever he did. At the time he died he was running his own bike shop and doing great at it. Always had the prettiest girlfriends, always an athlete, handsome, in great shape, don’t even know how many trophies he’d won in triathlons. So why, just a week before, had he thought it’d be a good idea to walk into his bedroom and blow his head off with the .357 he kept in the locked box?

He’d left no note. He hadn’t been sick according to anyone who knew him. Wasn’t in any money trouble, business was great.  Just checked out with a loud `Boom’. He hadn’t said good-bye; and he hadn’t come back like he’d said he would. Shakespeare had been right after all.

The minister was still talking when my mind returned from that day but I still couldn’t seem to concentrate on whatever he was saying. I looked up at the tall windows of the church to my right – there were three of them – and I could hear Francis’ voice from long ago in my head again, “one, two, three boom. No mistaking it,” but the windows were empty.

That was October second. A week later I had stopped looking expectantly at windows. I would pass by the empty windows of The International Market after I left work at the bank and wouldn’t even look up at them. Thirteen years before when I’d sat on that bed and made that deal with Francis I’d never have thought I’d go on to be a bank teller. I’d thought I’d like to be an English Professor. I was an English major back then.

I could not stop thinking along those lines: nothing ever turned out the way people wanted things to. I worked in the First National over in Sanford then and, in the plaza behind the bank, this guy had opened up The International Market in one of the stores. He hadn’t even lasted a year. It was a nice place, too, with imported food and beer from all over the world. I thought of how excited he’d been at the Grand Opening, how much he’d loved his beautiful little store, and now the place was empty. I could remember that day so well – it was the day I met Diana. It seemed everyone in Sanford was there and I was there with Francis and everyone seemed to be having so much fun. Now the store was just a vacant ruin. I walked by it every day to and from work. The windows still read

`The International Market’ in bold white letters bordered by red and green but there was nothing inside now but two chairs facing each other, empty shelves, trash on the floor.

Sure, I supposed, maybe he should’ve known better than to think the people of Sanford, New York would be more interested in grape leaves from Greece or Gazpacho than burgers and fries but still, I thought, still why couldn’t things sometimes really turn

out as you planned? What universal laws would have ruptured if The International Market had been a success instead of the failure it was?

I felt as though I’d been thrown back in time and all those old conversations and debates we used to have whirled again and again around inside my skull. I hadn’t read or thought of Shakespeare in years but now one line from Hamlet burned in my brain daily: “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.” Nothing made any sense.

I said this to Diana one night after dinner, sitting at the table in our little apartment. She was getting ready to correct papers from her classes. She taught physics over at the high school. Francis was supposed to be my best man at our wedding and ever since his funeral we’d been avoiding the subject of who would take his place; just as we’d managed to avoid talking about anything of real significance.

That night, though, I heard myself saying, “If everything is meant to be then it was `meant to be’ that Francis killed himself, right? I mean, like you’re always saying how you and me are `meant to be’ and all. But what’s that mean?”

“What do you mean `what’s that mean’?”

“When you say that. How we are `meant to be’. What exactly `means’ us to be?”

She shrugged and said, “I suppose I just mean it seems unlikely that we would have met, much less gotten involved. Everything just – uh – progressed from the day I met you and Francis at The International Market.”

“Right. But wasn’t that just chance? I’m hanging out with Francis. You’d just bought a bike from him. You guys get bike talking. You drop your ice cream. I buy you a new one. Chance, right? Where’s the `meant to be’ in that?”

Diana shrugged again and said, “It’s just an expression, John.”

“Yeah, sure, I know. But what does `meant to be’ mean? Is it God? Is it Fate?

What is it? Maybe it’s nothing at all.”

Diana came over and patted me on the shoulder. She put her arms around me where I sat and said, “We have each other. What does it matter how it happened or why it happened? Here we are. Let’s just enjoy the time we have.”

“I’m trying to. It’s just nothing makes sense. So it’s all chance, then. Given the right set of circumstances The International Market would have been a big hit, I’d be teaching Shakespeare, Francis would still be alive; given the wrong ones, though, and we have what we have.”

“Part of what we have is each other. Is that the wrong set of circumstances?”

I could hear what was in her voice and said, “No. Of course not. I’m just – trying to get a handle on all this.”

She patted my shoulder and, moving away, said, “You can’t get a handle on this, John. There is no handle. Just take it as it comes.”

Just take it as it comes. Seemed so simple when she said it but so impossible to actually do. I needed his death to have some kind of meaning. If he wasn’t going to come

back then something else should happen. Something. Life could not just go on the way it always did as though nothing had happened. Something had. Something terrible had happened and there had to be some reason for it.

Still, it seemed, there was no meaning and I couldn’t just take it as it comes. And I was not alone in this. We all keep believing in things there is no proof of and, really, no reason to believe at all. No matter how bitterly I spat at that old deal I’d made with Francis long ago I could not stop myself wishing it would come to pass, hoping that it would, even though I knew it would not. And I began to notice, more and more, that I wasn’t alone in wishing and believing, all evidence to the contrary, for some meaning to it all. Everyone around me was in my same state: wanting to believe in the truth of something which was highly unlikely or just not possible, which none of us seemed to really understand at all.

One month to the day after my brother’s funeral, the teller to my right at the bank, Cynthia, asked if I wanted to contribute any money to the office pool. She was going to go buy lottery tickets.

“You’ve already wasted enough money on that, haven’t you?” I asked.

“No, not so much,” she said. “This’ll only be the third time. Third time’s the charm, they say.”

“Why do they say that?” I asked her. “What is it about the number three? Is there some empirical evidence somewhere I’ve missed that makes the number three lucky? I’ve heard of `lucky seven’ but never `lucky three’, you know? What’s up with that?”

Cynthia shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, but you said `third time’s the charm’, right? Why would it be? Why isn’t it tenth time’s the charm? `Cause that’d be overkill? So it’s got to be three or nothing? Is it like that?”

“I – don’t really know what you’re talking about, John,” she said. “It’s just a saying.”

“But why is it a saying? Wouldn’t you think at some point somebody experienced something that made them think `oh, third time’s the charm’ and then was able to prove it? Is there any proof regarding the third time being the charm? I mean, is it all really so meaningless that we all just keep thinking there’s something special about the number three when there isn’t and we just keep repeating meaningless, stupid phrases eternally without thinking about them?”

“Woah,” Cynthia said. “Uh, excuse me, John. Sorry I asked. Really.”

She walked away from me and I noticed, a few minutes later, her stepping into the Manager’s office. He came out, as I thought he would, with her trailing behind him and walked over toward me. I was dealing with a customer at the time and he stood behind me. I could feel him breathing near my ear.

When the lady left, Mr. Bowmore tapped me on the shoulder and said, “A word, please, John?”

I sighed and followed him down past the tellers, Cynthia nestled back a top her stool, not looking at me, across the lobby and into his office. He closed the door behind us.

“Cynthia tells me you two had an altercation?” Bowmore said, sitting down across from me behind his desk.

“Nope,” I told him. “Nothing like it. I just asked a simple question.” “And what was that question?”

“Why do people say things without thinking about what they’re saying? Why do people make promises they don’t keep? Can’t keep. No way of keeping such a promise but they do it anyway. You know? And what the hell is up with the number three? I mean, is the third time the charm or is it not? And, if it is, why is it? And, if it’s not, why the hell do people keep saying it is?”

“You seem very upset, John.”

“Well, who wouldn’t be? Tell me, Mister Bowmore, have you ever said `third time’s the charm’?”

He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I may have. Sure.”

“Well, why? Why would you say it if you don’t know if it’s true? Why would anyone say something if they don’t know if what they’re saying is true? We should say stuff we know is true, is possible, stuff that can be proven, you know? Let’s say you and I make a deal where I say I’m going to fly into work tomorrow with wings. Well, why the hell would you make such a deal with me, right? Has anyone ever flown into work with wings before? No, of course not. So why would you believe me when I tell you I’m going to show up tomorrow flapping my wings?”

“I – don’t see any reason why I would.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Exactly. But every day people are saying this crap about third time’s a charm or God is watching over us or that stupid, stupid bumper sticker I saw the other day. Said, `Never Drive Faster Than Your Guardian Angel Can Fly’ and I thought, come on, what the hell? Has anyone ever seen an angel flying? How do we know how fast an angel can fly? Right? What’d that sticker mean? I mean, if we knew, for a fact, that an angel can fly eighty miles an hour then it’d be no problem to drive eighty miles an hour. But we don’t know that, do we? No. No, we don’t. Maybe an angel can only fly twenty miles an hour. Does that mean we’re all supposed to go around driving twenty miles an hour? I mean, it’s so ridiculous. It’s just – absurd. We say things and repeat things and put stupid stickers on our cars which don’t mean anything. What is it? We think if we say some damn phrase enough it’ll come true?”

I dropped back in my chair and sighed, looking across the room at this tall fake plant he had by the wall under a picture of some crappy waterfall.

“John,” I heard him say from across the desk. “You want to take some more time?

I – don’t think you’re quite over your recent loss.”

“Just – close out your drawer for today, all right? Take some time off. Cool down.

I think you’re – very upset.” “Maybe. A little.”

I stood up and left his office, went back to my station and closed out the drawer. It took absolutely uncanny self control to keep myself from bashing Cynthia over the head with it as I passed by her on the way back to the safe.

I stepped outside and I couldn’t tell if I wanted to cry or scream. It was like there were too many voices in my head all speaking at once – `Third time’s the charm’ – `One, Two, Three Boom. No Mistaking It’ `How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world’ – and then the minister’s voice at the funeral and the crap about the father, son and holy ghost and I just shook my head and started walking. More stuff people said without thinking about what they were saying.

My eyes were burning hot now as I passed by the empty International Market. I had my hands stuffed into the pockets of my slacks and I just stood there, seething hot, glaring at the empty windows.

And there was Francis.

He appeared suddenly, looking just as I’d last seen him, in the window to my left, then in the window directly in front of me, and then in the one to my right. He lingered for a moment in the far right window and smiled at me gently – and then he was gone.

I couldn’t breathe and I felt the tears, hot, spilling out of my eyes and down my cheeks. Suddenly my knees felt weak and I staggered back a few steps, staring at the three empty windows.

“Come back,” I whispered to him. “Come back, Francis.”

I slowly sank down onto the cracked sidewalk, my face in my hands, weeping for what was past and for what was to come and for all that we love but can never hold.

END

The Field of Reeds

            Peter saw them instantly as he stepped off the train. The three of them were sitting up on a flat plateau on the green hill far above him, reclining in lawn chairs. A zigzag path of brown led up from the station platform he stood on toward the hill and the plateau and, behind the three figures in their chairs, rose the old house.

            Peter stepped off the platform and onto the path, slowly making his way up the hill. He noticed that, to his right and left, there were others, many others, making their own way up their own paths. He recognized, with a jolt, a momentary panic but there seemed no alternative to where he was or what he was doing and so he walked on.

            He ascended up through brilliant green grass and vibrant yellow and purple flowers which seemed to bloom as he approached them. Peter slowed in his walk to admire the colors and tried to drink in the long, wide field but it was too late, he recognized, and he had to move forward.

            When he reached the plateau the three were gone. There were not even the chairs there anymore to mark their places. He looked around and, then, saw them up on the deck on the back of the old house. They sat, silently, not moving, gazing down at him, their hands on their knees. He looked at them staring back at him and then noticed the daffodils in full bloom, brilliant yellow against the green of the grass, on the north side of the house by the deck, spilling into the yard and, looking up, he saw the old tree house in the high pin oak where it always used to be.

            Peter strode forward across the smoothly mowed lawn, toward the back-deck stairs, his gaze fixed steadily on the three. He knew them, of course, and knew they could answer his questions. Uncle George, and Gram, and his Mom – there they were – they all smiled gently down at him.

            When it had all started, he’d sensed them. He’d felt them as soon as the street went dark and thought he’d caught a glimpse of them, even heard faint whispers of voices, but then the whole of the world went black and then he was on that train with all of the others, and then he was here. He did not know where `here’ was and he needed to know. It was a question which he kept feeling kicking inside the cage of his consciousness but he was afraid to let it out.

            On reaching the deck, he turned left and jogged up the stairs but, when he reached the top, the three were gone. He stared at the empty chairs and then gazed slowly around and out across the plateau and down to where he had come from. There was a new conveyance there now and there were many more people spilling out from the doors and walking away up the hills toward – what? Peter could not see where they were going. They were just walking up hills in different directions.

            He turned around and gazed up at the old house. Peter had never seen the place look so good. It was no longer the dark brown color with the white trim and black shutters he’d known when he was young. Now it was a soft blue with white trim and forest-green shutters. He crossed the deck and reached out to pull open the sliding glass of the back door but it would not open. Peter tried again but the door would not move.

            Suddenly he noticed, inside, on the old couch where he used to fall asleep as a child, three figures sitting quietly watching him with mild interest.

            “Uncle George! Gram! Mom!” Peter yelled, tugging at the door. “Let me in! Help me out here?”

            They gazed at him – silent and impassive.

            “Hey! Come on, let me in. Please?”

            Uncle George smile and said, “Don’t be in such a hurry. You’ll be joining us soon enough.”

            There was a flash of brilliant white and the scene was gone and, for just a moment, he was driving his Ford truck down Main Street toward Gary’s place and, out his driver’s side window, there was the bus coming up fast and he recognized he’d gone through the stop sign without thinking because his hand was bleeding again through the bandage and the horn of the bus blared loudly as it grew in his sight, swallowing up all the road, and there was a girl’s shriek beside him and the world screamed.

            Peter seemed to tumble upwards, out through the top of his head, and then he spun for a moment and dropped and was looking out through his eyes at his reflection in the bathroom mirror while he shaved. `Wonder if Gary’s going to come through with the hot chick or if this is another of his dumb jokes. Like that Hagatha chick. Jeeze. “Oh, come on, she’s not that bad” and like hell she wasn’t. Looked like a plate.’

            He was living with Aunt Jenny, his mom’s sister, in the house in Eastview. Cynthia knocked on the bathroom door loudly and he nicked his chin with the razor.

            “What?”

            “Hurry up! Aunt Jen says we’re not leaving the house tonight until the garbage is out and the dishes are done.”

            “So, get to it, all right? Jeeze! I’ll be out in a minute.”

            “Better be,” Cynthia’s voice came through the door. “We’re gonna be late.”

            Peter shook his head, putting the razor down on the counter and ripping off a piece of toilet paper for his chin. He looked at himself in the mirror and realized suddenly how much he was starting to look like his father. He stared at his reflection for a minute and then, without thinking, threw his fist forward into the glass and heard it smash. Then there was a sharp, sharp, falling feeling and he was two years younger, standing with Cynthia and Aunt Jenny at the funeral. He looked across at his dad’s family on the far side of the caskets and wished he could’ve known some way to put them all in the ground before that bastard was ever born.

            There was an in-drawing where his chest would be and he felt himself pulled out and backwards and he was sixteen, before the funeral, riding in the backseat of Mrs. Becker’s car, sitting next to Marilyn and he reached out and held her hand. On the other side of Marilyn sat Cynthia. They were going to the movies. Cynthia looked over, saw them holding hands, and said, “Oh, yuk. Please” and they laughed.

            When Mrs. Becker brought them back home that night there were blue and red and yellow lights flashing outside the house and Peter felt the cold clutch in his stomach and his face went hot as he jumped out of the car and ran toward the yellow tape across the driveway.

            “Oh, Jesus, Pete,” the cop said.

            “What’s going on, Mr. Hunter?” Peter said. He pointed back to his sister. “We were at the movies. What’s – going on?”

            Officer Hunter shook his head and lifted the yellow tape. He called to a woman and two others standing near the front door. Peter felt Cynthia close behind him. The woman came up to them wearing the familiar dark blue of the Sanford Police Department his dad had worn and, behind her, walked two other cops he knew by sight, though not by name. From behind them, out the front door, ran Aunt Jenny.

            “Please wait,” the woman said.

            Aunt Jenny ran up and hugged them both to her tightly. She was crying.

            “Oh, God! Thank God you’re all right. You’re okay.”

            “What’s going on?” Cynthia asked.

            “There’s been – an accident. No, no there hasn’t. The hell with that. There’s been a terrible – your mom. Your mom, my mom, Uncle George – they’re all -dead. They’re all dead.”

            “What?” Cynthia said.

            “What happened?” said Peter.

            Aunt Jenny tried to speak but shook her head, her face in her hands.

            “We don’t know specifics yet,” the one cop, the woman, said. “Your father shot himself after he shot your mom, Mr. Graham and Mrs. Jayne. I’m sorry but none of them survived.”

            “Dad? Dad did this?” Cynthia said.

            “I want to go into my house,” Peter said.

            The woman nodded and stepped aside then followed behind Peter and Cynthia. Aunt Jenny stood crying behind them. Just inside the front door they stepped through the foyer into the living room where men in suits and ties and men and women in the familiar dark blue uniforms were moving about and a figure lay beneath a blanket on the pale blue carpet of the living room floor. Peter stared at the blue of the carpet and the dark purple stain growing larger and larger from beneath the blanket. Behind him, he heard Cynthia start to whimper and then sob.

            The floor seemed to fall away from him and he was two years younger coming down the stairs of the house. Gram and her brother, Uncle George, were standing in the living room with his mom and Cynthia. He saw suitcases over by the couch.

            “So, what’s up? You two get evicted or something?”

            Uncle George laughed and his mom frowned at him.

            Gram said, “Nothing of the sort. We just got tired of the Florida sun and thought we’d come mooch off you guys.”

            “Uncle George and Gram are going to stay with us for awhile `till this whole mess with your dad’s done,” his mom said. “Could you please get the rest of their stuff from the car?”

            Peter nodded. He opened the front door of the house and stepped out onto the walk. His sneakers looked different and he understood he was a year younger and Cynthia was running out ahead of him toward the driveway as their dad backed the black sedan quickly out on to the road and sped away.

            “Daddy! Daddy!” Cynthia screamed, and then fell down onto her knees.

            Peter came slowly up behind her.

            They had been playing chess upstairs when the yelling started from out in the back yard. It was only a surprise because it was afternoon and the yelling didn’t usually start until after dinner. From behind him, Peter heard his mom crying and then she said, “Come back in the house, kids.” She still held the gun.

            Peter reached down and took his little sister’s hand and helped her up. They walked toward their mother but suddenly she was gone and he was walking alone through the wreckage of the garden which had once been full of his mom’s daffodils. There was nothing left of them. There was nothing left of any of her flowers. He rounded the back of the house and saw his mom and dad out in the yard and, beyond them, dad’s big green tractor.

            “I told you! This is what you get! This is what you asked for!” his dad was yelling. “You gonna harp on me about getting things done? Well, look how much time you got to help out now that you don’t have to weed the garden.”

            “I want you out of this house! I want you out of this house tonight!”

            “Know what, College Girl? You’re not so smart after all. It’s my house, too. You want to go, fine.”

            Peter watched as his mom turned and started away from his dad. He saw his dad reach down toward the ground and, as he did, Peter was already moving, running, and slammed into his father as the man was just going to throw the stone.

            They both fell into the mower and then onto the ground and then Peter was thrown backwards onto the grass and rolled and heard his father shouting and then his mom screaming and he looked up and she was standing on the deck above them with his father’s black Glock in her hands.

            “You leave. Now,” Peter’s mom said, aiming the weapon steadily at his father.

            “Okay,” his father said, and, walking past him, said, “Put the mower away, will you, Pete? And clean her off? Thanks.”

            The ground beneath him dropped away and he was sitting with Cynthia over on the north side of the house, the daffodils all around them, pencils and paper on the grass before them.

            “I don’t get it, though, Pete,” Cynthia was saying. “What we need a tree house for?”

            “Because it’d be ours,” Peter said. “See, we could build it right up there,” he said, gesturing to the tall pin oak behind her, “and then, when dad starts up, we’d have somewhere to go. See?”

            “Oh,” Cynthia said. “That’d be good.”

            “Yeah. Uncle George said he’d help us build it next time him and Gram visit.”

            “We could see anything from up there.”

            “Right. It’d have a rope ladder, see? We could pull it up after us. Then we can – be all right. We’d be okay up there.”

            “And mom could come up too.”

            “We could all be okay. It’d be like mom says about the Field of Reeds.”

            Then the scene shifted and again he slid down out of himself and he was younger, walking toward his mother who sat at the dining room table. She was grading papers from her history classes.

            “What’d you make them write about this time?”

            “The Field of Reeds.”

            “What’s that?”

             “According to the ancient Egyptians, it’s where we go when we die.”

            “Like heaven?”

            “Similar,” she said. “But consider the sky, Peter. Could there really be a city up there above the clouds? The Field of Reeds is right next to us, beside us, only we can’t see it until we die. Everything is just as it is here only there’s no death, of course, no sickness, and no sadness. We’re all safe and always together.”

            “Sounds nice. When do we go?”

            His mother smiled at him and said, “When we’re not here anymore.”

            “When are we not going to be here anymore?”

            “I don’t know, Peter. A long time from now.”

            Peter Talbot jerked suddenly in the bed and breathed. Everything was white and a light blue around him and there were beeping noises from machines and he heard a woman’s voice calling, “He’s conscious!” and then something else and the sound of feet on the floor.

            Suddenly there was a man above his face looking down at him and then there were other faces gathering around and the first man said something he couldn’t hear to the other faces, all of which were blurry and hazy. It felt as though he were seeing them through gauze wrapping.

            He heard a familiar voice saying, “Pete? Can you hear me?”

            The voice was so close to him; he knew he had heard it many times in his life.

            “Pete? It’s me. I’m here, Pete. I’m right here. You’ll see me soon.”

            He heard his own voice, which was not his voice or didn’t sound very much like it, trying to answer and felt his body thickly throbbing all about him.

            “Peter? It’s Aunt Jen. Can you hear me? You’ve been out, Honey, you’ve been in a coma. You’ll be okay now. You’ll be all right.”

            “It was Uncle George and Ma and Gram and the old house,” Peter said. “Cyn used to call it the potty house when we were kids `cause it looked like crap. Looks great now. Tree house.”

            “Pete,” the other voice, the earlier voice, said. “Just let go.”

            “Mr. Talbot, I’m sorry. I can’t hear you,” the male voice said.

            “You used to call it the potty house `cause it was brown and white.  No one liked the brown. Mom hated it. Dad wouldn’t paint it. Said it’d cost too much. It’s blue now.”

            “I don’t understand what he’s saying,” the male voice said and the face bobbed above his own. “Mr. Talbot, I’m sorry. Can you hear me?”

            “There were daffodils again on the north side of the house, Cyn. Mom was right. We get it all back.”

            “Oh, God, what’s he trying to say? Peter, please, Honey.”

            “I’m sorry, you have to leave the room. Now.”

            “What’s going on? No. I can’t lose him, too.”

            “Nurse. Please. Get her out of here.”

            “Peter! Don’t leave me.”

            “Nurse. Please. Now.”

            “He’s coding. Clear!”

            “The daffodils are all back, Cyn, and it’s beautiful there and Uncle George and Gram and Mom, they all look so young.”

            “Peter, don’t leave me.”

            “Come on, Pete. It’s time to go,” the earlier voice whispered.

            He felt himself somersault forward and speed down corridors of white and golden brown and then, somehow, he was on a train moving fast, ascending high and then descending down and then again it seemed to haul itself endlessly upward and forward and sped straight. He was aware of others around him on this moving, round, train but no one was talking and he had no desire to speak to any of them. They all looked at one another and they all seemed perfectly fine but he knew each one of them felt the same way he did.  There were momentary brief stops along the way and Peter tried to look out of a window but the window only reflected his own image looking into the shade of night. The rolling conveyance moved on and then stopped and he felt, more than heard, that it was time for him to get off.

            Peter saw her instantly as he stepped off the train. It wasn’t really a train, he understood, but, rather, a conveyance he would have called a `train’ once. On the platform Cynthia stood smiling at him.

            “Took you long enough,” she said. “They’re waiting at home. Let’s go.”

END

The Return of Rose White

When Madame Veneris reached the cemetery, the first thing she did, after getting out of her car and setting down the blue blanket and candle, was to pull up the robe at her wrist and turn on the small black device there.

“Where are you located?” she said into it.

“Turn around and look to your left. I’m behind the tree near the angel.”

Madame Veneris peered through the deepening twilight and saw Tom lean out from the tree and wave.

“Did you test out the orb like I asked?”

“Of course I did! It shows up silver this time.”

“All right. I’m turning this thing up. Watch for my signal and then do your best woman’s voice. Make it bright.”

She quickly spread the dark blue blanket, embroidered with gold stars and moons, on the grass between the gravestones and set the candle down in the center. Pulling the device off her wrist, she walked to the other side of the blanket and pushed it down into the grass by a large monument.

Raising her hands up into the air, she cried, “Spirit! Let your presence be known to us!”

From the monument came a woman’s voice, “Who has disturbed my rest? Is that you, Monty? Why, it’s been twenty-five years but you look the same.”

“Great! Perfect! Keep it like that.”

Quickly, she unloaded the rest of the stuff from her car trunk. She set up the tall tiki torches in a circle around the blanket, pushing them hard down into the earth, and lighted them. Placing the small, bronze bowls at the four corners of the blanket, she set the incense cones in them and touched her lighter to their tips.

She had just finished the preparations, lit the candle in the center of the blanket and placed the wind guard, when a car pulled into the cemetery drive. It moved slowly up the hill on the white gravel path between the stones.

Madame Veneris took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. She was always nervous doing séances in cemeteries. One could never be sure who might show up. It was always easier back in her shop where precautions were in place for such things.

“Hope for the best,” she whispered. “Prepare for the worst.”

The car stopped some twenty feet away from where she stood on the blanket, ringed by the lighted torches, and she watched as two people got out.

An older man and younger woman, both in dark suits, walked toward her from the car, the woman carrying a briefcase. The woman came up first, saying, “I’m assuming you’re Madame Veneris? I’m Victoria Klein, we spoke on the phone. This is my client, Mister Herbert Terrence.”

“So very pleased to meet you,” Madame Veneris said, shaking both their hands. “The energies are strong tonight. We shall make splendid contact with your loved one.”

“I’m sure we will,” Mr. Terrence said.

“Are you also a believer, Ms. Klein?”

“Not so much,” she said, shaking her head. She shrugged and then said, “Not an unbeliever, either, though.”

“I see. Well, would you both sit, please, one to either side of me, around the candle.”

When they were seated, Madame Veneris asked, “Who is the spirit we seek commerce with this evening?”

Mister Terrence gestured and Victoria said, “Mister Terrence is thinking of changing his will. He needs some information from a friend of his, Rose, who has now passed on.”

“Rose White,” Mr. Terrence said. “This was one of her favorite spots.”

“Well, let us begin. Please close your eyes and let’s join hands. Breathe in—and exhale slowly—then again, slowly. We must quiet our energies. Think of Rose White. Concentrate all your energies on her name and calling her to us now.”

She repeated the breathing technique, reminded them to focus their energies and, when she paused and listened to their slow, regular breathing, she opened her eyes narrowly. Both their eyes were closed and they seemed to be concentrating. It was always a good sign when the eyes were closed.  Madame Veneris took a deep breath, smiling.

“Oh, spirits of the ethereal plane, come into our presence now and speak to us. Do not fear us as we do not fear you. We invite the spirit of Rose White to walk among us and commune again with life and the living.”

There was silence and then, from behind Mr. Terrence, came a woman’s voice.

“Who has disturbed my rest?”

“What do I do?” Mr. Terrence whispered.

“Speak to her,” Madame Veneris said. “Loudly and clearly.”

“Rose? Is that you?”

“It is I, Herbert.”

“Strange. You don’t sound anything like I thought you would.”

“There are many changes out of the body, old friend.”

“You were my old friend, all right.”

“And you were always mine.”

“Listen, I have to ask you something. You remember that anniversary party when Margaret and I got into that big fight? I need to know—was she cheating on me or did I really just forget that I had bought her that necklace?”

“I am a little foggy on that night. Could you remind me?”

“Foggy? You were right there!”

“Ah, yes, but here in the afterlife we sometimes forget things.”

Madame Veneris heard Mr. Terrence sigh heavily.

“I went to her jewelry box to drop in the necklace I’d gotten her, for a surprise, and I found a necklace there I’d never given her. She said I’d given it to her and forgotten about it. Was she telling the truth?

“I was often very sleepy, you know.”

“Sleepy?”

“I mean ‘sleepy’ as in ‘not paying attention’.”

“Listen, this is important. What about now? Is she cheating on me now?”

“I am close beside you always, dear friend. Open your eyes.”

There was a large silver orb dancing among the gravestones and, as the three watched, it came closer and then darted away.

“What’re you doing?” Mr. Terrence said. “Get back here and answer the question!”

Suddenly, from out of the darkness behind the dancing orb, a large white dog came loping from between the stones. A Labrador, she glared and growled low at Madame Veneris as she came slowly forward and then trotted over toward the monument. The dog sniffed at the monument by Mr. Terrence, picked something up, and dropped it into his lap.

From the device the voice came, “I cannot stay, my friend, but know Margaret was always true to you.”

“Rose White,” Mr. Terrence said, smiling.

He moved to hug the dog but his arms passed through her and he fell forward on to the blanket. Rose bobbed her head and licked at his face with her phantom tongue.

“Rose, it’s so good to see you again.”

Madame Veneris and Victoria Klein stared quietly. Madame Veneris wished she could convince herself that Tom had somehow put this together. She shut her eyes tightly.

“Did you hear my question, Rosie? Was Margaret seeing another guy? Is she seeing him now? Bark once for no and twice for yes.”

The dog barked twice.

“I knew it. You were always the only friend I could count on.”

Mr. Terrence got to his knees, picked up the device and tossed it to Victoria, never looking away from the dog. Then, kneeling, he reached out to stroke the air by Rose’s ear.

“Whether in life or death,” he said. “A dog is more human than a human every time.”

The dog moved to lick at her friend’s hand. She made a low, gentle, sound from her throat.

“Thanks, Rosie,” Mr. Terrence said. “You were always the best.”

Rose White bobbed her head at him, turned, and began trotting away. She looked back once and Mr. Terrence waved to her, smiling, and then she grew paler and vanished into the night air.

Victoria Klein said, “Well, that was certainly very interesting.”

She held up the device before Madame Veneris and said, “But, then so is this. What’s this, then?”

“I am sure I do not know.”

“You don’t know.”

“No.”

“Yes, well, I think you do.”

Victoria spoke into the device, “Nice show but no go,” and then, tossing the device at Madame Veneris, said, “You won’t be paid, of course, and I’m also reporting this to the police. Let’s go, Mister Terrence.”

Madame Veneris sat staring silently down at the flickering candle on the blanket.

As they walked away toward the car, she heard Mr. Terrence say to Victoria Klein, “I actually almost believed it. Couldn’t figure out how a dog was talking, though.”

“That was impressive with the dog, I must say.”

“Oh, that was no trick. That was Rosie.”

“Yes, well. Will you be drawing up the new will, then?”

“Most certainly. Dogs never lie. This one time…”

Madame Veneris watched them get into the car and then stared dully at the red tail lights as they slowly moved down the hill toward the road.

When they were gone, she unzipped her robe, reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She stuck it between her lips and lighted it from the candle. Then she blew the candle out and set it back down in the center of the blanket. She blew a plume of smoke out slowly into the night air, gazing up into the darkness.

Tom walked up and stood at the corner of the blanket, his hands in his pockets. He said, “Well, that didn’t go like I thought.”

Madame Veneris sighed and shook her head. She took another long drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out toward the quiet candle.

“Never does when the real thing shows up.”

“What’ll we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Madame Veneris said. “But how about we get out of here before that dog comes back?”

END

Black Rose

            Sarah Bain ran stumbling between the stones of Old Calton Hill cemetery. All she could hear in her head was her own rasping breath. Tripping over the edge of a stone, she fell forward heavily on the wet grass, scrambled up, ran on.

            The cemetery hadn’t seemed so scary when she’d walked in. Now, every time she ran toward a gate it was choked with whirling ghosts and, all around her, they darted and sped.

            She paused, trying to catch her breath.  From between and behind and beside the rows of cold stones, silver-white under the high moon, they slithered from the earth into the pale night air and sank again back down. Formless shapes of greenish-white, some a faint blue, they sailed through the graveyard.

            Sarah trembled, wiping quickly at her eyes. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. Everywhere she looked, they rose and fell silently and, she suddenly realized, seemed oblivious to her presence. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching the darting apparitions. As her head began to clear, she glanced over at the far gate in the wall and saw her chance to escape. There were none of the greenish-white spirits dancing near it now but it seemed so far away.

            It was supposed to be so simple. Just return the necklace. But nothing in her life lately was simple so why should this be? She’d found the silver necklace on a class trip the week before, in the grass near a stone in the cemetery, and picked it up. Since then, nothing but bad luck and dark dreams had followed her. There was a girl at school, Rebecca Pender, whom everyone said could see and knew about ghosts, so she’d asked her friend James Gardener to introduce them.

            After she’d explained picking up the necklace in the graveyard and then her recent break up with her boyfriend, her slip on the back deck which bruised her hip, losing the keys to her house, and the horrible dreams of the woman in black glaring at her, Rebecca had sat back in the chair in the cafeteria and shook her head. She leaned forward then and, unsmiling, spoke to Sarah like a teacher scolding an errant student.

            “Ok, rule one in dealing with the dead: Don’t take their stuff. If you find a diamond in a graveyard, you leave it where you saw it.”

            “Would’ve liked to’ve heard that bit earlier.”

            “It needs to go back,” Rebecca told her.

            The problem was, first, she honestly couldn’t remember which stone she had picked it up from and, second, she wished she hadn’t come back to do this alone when James had offered to help. She’d never felt so scared. She didn’t think she could move. There seemed no escaping from anything.

            Now, as she watched, the apparitions began to assume human form and shape. She stared as they moved slowly through the rows of stones, ignoring the far gate, heading down the stone steps of the gate to the Edinburgh streets or, some, just standing and gazing silently.

            Sarah stepped quietly back toward the wall behind her and began slowly moving toward the gate on her far right. The shadows of the wall moved thickly with darker shapes and she felt cold and then colder and then, before her, a woman’s face, pearl-white, staring.

            Stumbling, Sarah fell backwards across the grass. The woman seemed to grow to an extraordinary height, staring down at her. She wore a long, dark dress and held out her right hand toward the trembling girl.

            Instantly, Sarah’s fingers went to the necklace at her throat. She wanted to give it to the woman but, somehow, couldn’t seem to move. The woman’s face grew dark and her eyes narrowed. Sarah pushed herself up onto her knees and, trembling, tried to slip the clasp.

            The ghost glared down at her silently.

            Sarah’s fingers fumbled with the clasp and suddenly she felt a searing pain. The chain tightened around her throat and then tightened again. Sarah clawed at her neck but the chain only drew tighter and then tighter and she heard what sounded like laughing above her as the cemetery began to fade to black and, from far away, she heard a shout and then a sound like horse’s hooves running and then there was nothing.

            She opened her eyes and breathed, then coughed, sitting up. On one side of her knelt Rebecca and, on the other, James.

            “You’re all right,” Rebecca said.

            “What happened?” James asked.

            “It was horrible. Did you not see her?”

            “See who?” Rebecca said. “You were passed out when we found you.”

            “There was a woman all in black. A spirit. She was terrible. I couldn’t breathe.”

            “Black Rose?” James asked Rebecca.

            “Sounds like.”

            “Who?”

            “Black Rose,” Rebecca said. “People say it’s just a story but it’s not. In eighteen-twenty-five, Rose Campbell was strangled with a necklace her husband claimed he’d never seen before. The killer was never caught. They say she comes back on the anniversary of her death to look for him. She’s always in black. The necklace you took must’ve been hers. Drew her to you.”

            “I want rid of it,” Sarah said, slipping the clasp quickly and handing the necklace to Rebecca.

            “Let me help you up, Lass,” James said. “We’ll get you something warm for to drink.”

            “Thanks,” Sarah said.

            She watched as Rebecca, walking slowly, scanned the stones in the nearest row.    “Come here.”

            Sarah, trembling, made herself move. The cemetery was silent and empty now save for the three of them. She stood next to Rebecca and read the stone.

            “Rose Campbell. Eighteen-O-Five to Eighteen-Twenty-Five. Blessed Are the Dead That Die in The Lord.”

            “She wasn’t much older than we are,” Rebecca said. “Here,” she said, handing the necklace to Sarah. “You took it. You put it back.”

            Sarah fell to her knees in front of the stone, pulling at the wet grass and earth with her fingers, and buried the necklace, pounding the ground back down. She was shaking badly and started to cry. Rebecca pushed a large, flat stone over the spot where the necklace was buried.

            “That’ll keep it safe.”

            Standing up, Sarah saw Black Rose on the other side of the stone gazing steadily at her – and then slowly fading away. The breeze blew suddenly sharply from the north, then, whispering through the silent cemetery.

            Sarah reached out and touched the worn stone.

Then, turning away, she cried, softly. “Get me out of here.”

END

Asking for Life

            Something was moving in the shadows in the corner of the motel room. Rebecca Pender sat up in her bed and peered over, past her dad sleeping in the other bed, trying to see what was there.

            No form, no shape, just a deeper shadow moving in the darkness of the corner, growing lighter suddenly, a gray wisp, then pulling back down into blackness. Rebecca stared and then forced herself to lie down again. She pulled the blankets up over her head.

            Rebecca was no stranger to ghosts and the supernatural. She’d been aware of the reality of ghosts, in one shape or another, since she’d met the girl, Clarice, a year before when she was thirteen. She’d thought Clarice was just rather oddly affected until the girl’s eyes went black and she became suddenly terribly transparent. After that, Rebecca thought, she should be ready for anything.  There was no getting used to it, though. Every time it happened she felt the same horrid chill and experienced the same disbelief. Each apparition suddenly appearing in the kitchen or on the stairs of her house she met with the same skepticism, even though she knew the phantom figure was as real as anything else in her life.

            Whatever this thing was in the corner was different, though, she could feel that. It wasn’t like any other ghost she’d ever experienced. The energy was palpable in the room, a slow, throbbing pulse. She wasn’t expecting it. Who thought of ghosts down in Tampa, Florida, she thought, it was all supposed to be sunshine and beaches, wasn’t it? Back at their place in New York she was used to bracing herself to see someone suddenly appear in the backyard or in the kitchen by the sink. But who thought about ghosts on vacation in Florida?

            Sitting up in the motel bed, Rebecca looked slowly around the room. The energy was throbbing more thickly now, she could feel it, though she could see nothing. The room was illuminated by the light of the street lamps coming through the long window to her left. She sat, listening to the sound of her own breath trembling between her teeth. She glanced over at her father’s sleeping form beneath the covers of his bed and then looked quickly at the nightstand between them where something suddenly seemed to move. Rebecca jumped back, almost falling off the bed, looking around the room. There was no one there and yet there was – she could feel it – and whatever was in there with her and her dad was growing stronger, larger. No, she thought, it wasn’t quite that, it was something different. Whoever was in there with her, it was not just one spirit – it was legion.

            Rebecca scrambled across the bed, jumped off onto the floor, and hissed, “Get out of here! I don’t want to see you! I’m on vacation here, damn it!”

            Nothing moved in the room but she felt the energy, dark and deep, throbbing and growing stronger. From the far corner, in the shadows, near the bathroom door, a pale light broke from the darkness and, as she watched, it grew. The wall of the room dissolved and, through the sudden portal, a swirling gray diamond shape, the dead walked.

            Rebecca stared as they came. There was a blonde woman walking quickly, a young man, two girls holding hands, an older man, and still more came through the wall and moved about the room, filling it. Rebecca leaped back into her bed and quickly pulled the covers up over her head. She lay in the warm darkness under the blankets, quick-breathing, her eyes tightly shut.

            From above her, she heard a coughing sound and yanked the covers more tightly over her. The sound came again, as though someone were clearing his throat, and she slowly drew the blankets down from her face. Standing by the bed a man was looking down at her. His face was long and thin, and her eyes went directly to his own which stared hotly from inside his head. She only noticed the gaping, bleeding hole in his chest when he spoke to her and it seemed something bubbled there thickly.

            “Is that your Triquetra necklace?”

            He gestured with red fingers toward the nightstand where her pendant and chain lay by the lamp, next to the phone and the digital clock.

            Rebecca nodded.

            “I have to get a message to my wife. I felt the pull from this room. Tell her I’m all right, would you?”

            Rebecca nodded again. She wanted to speak, to say something, but her tongue would not work at all.

            The man spoke again and then, suddenly, he was gone and a little girl stood in his place. Her long, brown hair was wet and her dress muddy. Tear tracks streaked her dirty cheeks. She reached out her hand toward Rebecca, crying, and then she whirled away and there was another man standing by the bedside screaming. His face was torn and an empty eye socket shone brightly wet, dripping darkly, as he glared at her with his one bright eye.

            “It wasn’t supposed to be me up there! Kevin called in. That’s the only reason. That’s the only reason! It should’ve been him! I wasn’t supposed to even be there!”

            He seemed to somersault backward and vanish down into the carpet of the motel floor as, from the now-churning darkness in the corner of the room, a woman appeared and strode quickly toward the bedside, pushing through the swirl of spirits moving around between the beds, passing through the walls. Rebecca scrambled backwards off the bed toward the wall of the room.

            The woman’s face, chest and arms hung in strips of torn flesh and dripping muscle and, when she spoke, it was so fast Rebecca couldn’t catch the words.

            “Slow down!” Rebecca whispered. “Slow down! I can’t understand you! Oh, damn it! Why don’t you all go away?”

            It seemed the woman was asking where she was. Rebecca caught `accident’, `Peter’, `movie’ but the words were all sounding in her head like a roaring stream. Rebecca tried to look away from the flapping skin of the woman’s face, her hot, dark eyes, but she couldn’t.

            “I can’t be dead! I can’t be dead! What happened to my life?”

            Rebecca felt her teeth tightly together inside her mouth. She couldn’t move her jaw to speak. She closed her eyes and whispered, “You’re dead. I don’t know what happened to you but I’m sorry. You’re dead.”

            The woman screamed and Rebecca’s eyes flew open. She saw the woman leap toward her, arms outstretched, there was a piercing shriek, and then she was gone.     Suddenly there was a younger man standing in her place, maybe twenty years old, sandy hair, in a flannel shirt and jeans. He was staring around the room blankly.

            “What’s this place?”

            “A motel room.”

            “Where?”

            “Tampa.”

            “What happened to me?”

            “I don’t know,” Rebecca said.

            The young man looked down at the crumpled sheets and blankets of the bed in the dim light from the front window. He turned and, again, gazed around the room and Rebecca saw the back of his head was gone. Turning back toward her, he shrugged.

            “There was a whole lot more I thought I’d do, ya know? And, what the hell? I wind up here? Tell me this ain’t heaven, please, just you gotta tell me that anyway.”

            “It’s not heaven. It’s Florida.”

            “I’m in hell?”

            “Listen,” Rebecca said. “It’s not like that at all. It’s nothing like that. You’re dead. That’s all. I don’t know where you’re going anymore than you do.”

            “Well, that ain’t a whole lot of comfort to me, now, is it?”

            He reached up as though about to scratch his head and then seemed to realize something was wrong.

            “Where’s the blasted back of my head? Where is it?”

            She watched him move his fingers around the hole in his head. He was about to cry, she could tell, and she wished she could do something for him.

            “This ain’t right! This ain’t no ways right at all!”

            He lunged forward, hands out, fingers grasping futilely at the bed covers. She watched his hands passing through the blankets and he stopped, stared at her with wide, bright eyes, and then he was gone.

Rebecca was breathing heavily and suddenly realized she was sweating through her nightgown. She swallowed hard, looking around the room. The pulsing in the corner was quieter now and the room was empty. It had been so full of ghosts moving around just a moment before that she blinked, looking around for where they had all gone, and whether they were coming back. She stood still, trying to slow her breathing, gazing slowly around the room. There was no one there.  Slowly, she walked around the foot of the bed and up to the nightstand by her pillow. Sitting down, she reached out and picked up the Triquetra necklace by the lamp. Her dad had given it to her for her birthday back in February and she’d worn it ever since. She didn’t think it had ever acted as a ghost magnet before but it sure was doing a fine job of that tonight, she thought. Rebecca held it up before her face, looking at the silver pendant flash in the light from the front window. It was a simple Celtic knot, she thought, what power could it possibly have?

            Sudden movement to her left made her jump and there was a girl standing there, about her own age, she guessed, maybe a little older, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Through the light from the window Rebecca could see the dark rope burn deeply cut into the flesh around her throat. Her eyes stared hugely, bulging, blankly, at the Triquetra in Rebecca’s hands.

            Swiftly closing her fist around the pendant, Rebecca whispered, “You’re dead! You’re dead, all right? You’re all dead! I can’t do anything about it! I can’t do anything about anything! Leave me alone!”

            “Could you just tell `em I’m sorry?” the girl said. “I didn’t really mean to do it. I thought I did but, I swear, when the chair kicked out I didn’t want to go but it was too late. Could you tell `em?”

            “I don’t know who you are!” Rebecca hissed. “I can’t help you. I can’t help any of you.”

            “You can, though,” the girl said. “I felt the energy in the room. We all did.”

            “From this?” Rebecca said, holding up the Triquetra.

            The girl shook her head slowly, her huge eyes still staring at Rebecca. She pointed.

            “From you,” she said. “You’re the energy.”

            “I don’t want to be the energy.”

            “Tell `em I didn’t mean to do it. Tell `em I’m sorry.”

            Her eyes seemed to glow a harsher, brighter white and then she suddenly vanished and there was a tall woman in her place screaming at Rebecca on the bed.

            “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault! You tell them I want to go back! I want to go back!”

            “Shut up!” Rebecca hissed at her. “Stop yelling at me! I can’t help you! I don’t know you and I can’t help you!”

            She jumped up off the bed and yelled, “Get Out!”

The room was silent and still and, over by the bathroom door, the wall had resumed its natural shape and form.

“Rebecca darlin’, what’s wrong?” her father said, propping himself up in his bed.

“Nothing, dad,” she said. “Bad dream is all.”

“You all right?”

“Fine, fine,” she said. “Go back to sleep, okay?”

She sat down on her bed, the triquetra hanging from her fingers, and just stared down at the carpet of the floor. Her heart was pounding all through her body and she could feel the slick wetness of her palms. She put the necklace down on the bed, wiping her hands on her nightgown, and then picked it back up, held it tightly. From the other bed she could hear her dad’s soft snoring.

            Rebecca jumped up off the bed and hurried to the motel door, opening it slowly so as not to wake him. She adjusted the lock and stepped out onto the cool pavement of the sidewalk. The early morning air was moist and still dense with yesterday’s heat. Rebecca looked around and then saw a large potted palm tree three doors down. She quickly ran to it, dug down in the soft earth, and buried the necklace. The air was so thick she could taste it tangibly on her tongue. She licked at her lips and swallowed and then went back to the room.

            Locking the door behind her, she sat down on the foot of her bed and stared at the far corner. There was nothing moving there now. She looked over at the quietly snoring form of her dad under his covers.

            She stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her hands and then lay back down in her bed, pulling the blankets up to her chin. It was all so exhausting, she thought, dealing with the dead. They seemed so needy when they were new to it and then, later, it seemed they just showed up to take in the sights and talk. Rebecca couldn’t understand any of it. She didn’t know why things happened as they did only that, for some reason, they did happen.

            Sitting up, she looked again over into the darkness of the corner of the room, her heartbeat quickening, feeling something again there. She waited, watching, glanced around the room quickly. Everything was still. She lay back down and felt her eyes, hot and heavy, closing on their own. She sighed heavily, rolled onto her stomach, and started to cry, her face pressed deeply into her pillow.

            “I don’t want to be the energy,” she wept. “I don’t want to be the energy. I don’t want to be the energy.”

            She rolled on to her back, wiping at her eyes, and stared up at the dull ceiling of the motel room. Her breath came harsh and hot and her nose and cheeks were wet. She turned on her side, sniffing, and wiped at her face, stared at the blurry numbers of the clock on the nightstand. She knew she would not sleep. How could she? What would stop them all from coming back again? Why had they come in the first place? There were always so many questions and she never had any answers.

            Rebecca felt her eyes closing, blinked, and then felt the weight of the day descend all through her body. She lay in the bed, stared ahead at the red 3:30 of the digital clock, wishing for the morning and the day to come. Her eyes fluttered again and she fell quietly asleep.  

            All through the night, across the landscape of her dreams, they walked. Again the wall of the room collapsed silently and, through the cavernous hole, the dead marched forth from their gray land toward her, endlessly, asking why, asking where, and asking, always, for one more day of life.

END

Three Short Flash-Fiction Pieces (first published in In-Between Altered States online magazine)

Jesus and The Orange Monkey

When the orange monkey finally found Jesus cringing behind the toilet he yelled, “Woah, man! Where’s my crackers?”

Jesus just shrugged and pointed – grinning mysteriously.

The monkey knew he’d been beaten by the best, and no shame in that, but, still, it irked him that he should so suddenly be deprived of something which he loved so well. He beat his chest angrily and punched his fist through the mirror above the bathroom sink, sending shards of glass flying through the room. Jesus hunched his shoulders and pulled back more snugly beneath the toilet.

The blue and white tiled floor was a mosaic of glittering images. The monkey stared down at a hundred different reflections of his face. No image on the floor was whole, he noticed, and there was a nose here below his feet and an ear over there and, when he waggled his fingers, too many fingers waggled back from all across the floor. He looked darkly over to where Jesus was smiling weakly up at him from behind the toilet. Jesus waggled his fingers at the monkey and smiled.

“Where’s my crackers?”

Jesus shrugged again and said, “In the end, they all come back to the room where the beans are roasted.”

“What?”

“Also, if you would, remember the bat. Not the wiffle-ball bat you used to play with when you were a kid but the large, black, winged creature who danced down the wall juggling those lemons you thought were impossibly round, singing that `Impossible Dream’ song. This bat, you know, he never even had a juggling lesson, didn’t even have hands, but he still got that blonde chick in the skin-tight cat suit to feed him bread and wine after the show.”

“What the hell does that have to do with my crackers?”

“Well – everything,” Jesus said, smiling

-End-

Free Soup

            Every night Ralph heard the sounds from the kitchen – pots drawn out from cabinets and the doors softly closing – but when he got down the stairs there was no one. A pot or pan of soup would be steaming on the stove in the morning. It was a mystery. He even slept one night on the kitchen floor but it made no difference. In the morning there was a pan of butternut squash soup simmering on the stove top and all the dishes done and shining brightly in the rack by the sink. He knew he wasn’t sleep cooking as he couldn’t manage cooking anything more than toast while awake and he hadn’t washed a dish in the house since his wife died a month earlier.

            Sleeping on the couch in the living room one night he heard the sound of a pot moving on the stove and footsteps on the kitchen floor. Water ran in the sink, filling something, and then the footsteps sounded again across the linoleum moving toward the stove. He had wanted to rise, to run out and seize whoever was there, but his legs would not move and his heart was beating so loudly he was sure they could hear it in the kitchen – whoever `they’ were. The next morning, he found a pot of vegetable soup waiting for him on the front burner.

            He took to sleeping in the attic where he couldn’t hear the sounds from the kitchen. When he came down the stairs in the morning, always, there was his pot of soup. It was beyond puzzling. He never bought any ingredients. After six months of this Ralph finally told his brother about the situation. “You ought to get out of there. The place sounds haunted.”

            “I know,” Ralph said. “But free soup is free soup.”

-End-

In the Corner at the Dance

            I’m in a land of porcupines with bristling bodies and all eyes. They move before me in circles but never touch me, banging solidly against each other. I see the guy who loves his pistol and always polishes it and if a girl defeats him he lets her die. The mosquito dude lets you live but you lose your hopeful berry. Then there’s iron neck guy who’s worse than triangle head and as I’m watching them all I’m thinking `What’s that horrible music in the background? And who started all of this?’

            Lollipops with musical notes on them float above my head. I’m sitting in a puddle of I don’t know and I don’t know why when here comes the Danger Clown swinging across the floor toward Godiva who stands impassively and doesn’t even shake her head when he shimmies up to her.

            There seems no really controlling any of this.

            If anyone could see me, I would feel unwelcome here. I’d feel like a complete creep. Confetti leaves of artificial trees dance down delicately between me and the world. Another porcupine boy, all hands and eyes on stilt legs, asks the chair beside me to dance. She smiles and shakes her head. He says, “But you need to. We have to get out of here” and she shrugs and takes his hand. He yanks her to her feet and pulls her from the room. Everyone is still banging into each other wide-eyed.  It’s not so much a dance as a collision. My mushroom silence strands me safely. The band plays as the room rises and falls.   

-End-