The Devil, the Grim Reaper, and a Ghost

by Sean M. Hogan

  The ring of a school bell ensnared the crow’s attention. He circled the school. A noisy flood of gray-uniformed girls spilled out from the building, swarming like frantic gray ants over the yellow lunch tables. He glided in, swooping down to a gentle perch on a telephone wire. The crow peered at the busy students, his gaze zooming in on one empty lunch table, devoid of occupants save for one lone girl.

  Sharon Ashcraft ate alone. It was better this way. Best to avoid conflict with the other girls for now. After all, teenage girls can be more vicious than a troop of crazed chimpanzees—ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness. Any girl unlucky enough to get bullied will testify to this fact. And Sharon was at a disadvantage today. She was the dreaded new kid. At an all-girls’ Catholic school, no less. Stuck in one of those humiliating skirts pop-singers wear to fake the appearance of innocence and chastity. But the color. Her uniform’s color made it unbearable. Gray. The depressing shade of gray that steals your very soul and identity. The kind of gray that makes little orphan sweatshop workers chew off their own fingers so they don’t have to sew another damn uniform. Sharon wondered if there was the word conform written in secret on the back of her shirt. Maybe if she had a pair of special alien-exposing sunglasses like from that old eighties movie They Live she would be able to read it. The horrid color made her appear even paler than she already looked. And with her long raven black hair cascading down her slender shoulders she might as well scream Goth at the top of her lungs. She looked around. Goth didn’t seem to be in this year.

  Sharon swallowed another spoonful of blueberry yogurt. She closed her blue eyes and fantasized about having friends. Other girls her age sitting across from her, talking, laughing, gossiping about cute boys and even hotter guys. Hell, they could be talking about stamps for all she cared. Ironic that the solution to her problem was so simple.

  Just get up, she told herself, just stand up and walk over to the nearest table full of smiling happy well-adjusted girls. Introduce yourself. Talk. Tell a joke. Laugh at theirs. And talk... just talk damn it.

  She was sweating now. Drops formed from the pores of her forehead. Her hands clammed up. The nape of her neck cooled to a chill. Her knees threatened to buckle. Her stomach knotted to a nauseating rat’s nest. Another attack.

  Sharon tried calming her racing heart—to slow the frantic beats with controlled, paced, and rhythmic breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Good. That’s good. She was back in control now, freeing her up for another round of self-loathing.

  Sharon Ashcraft is a pathetic pitiful creature, she berated herself, a coward beyond all measure.

  She dug her nails into her thighs. Sharon hated being this way. Hated being “shy”. Shy: another word for anxiety-ridden. Irrational crippling fear. Why even bother trying? She knew what would happen. She’d freeze up. Fumble her words. Speak so softly no one would understand. Become a deer caught in the blinding beams of oncoming traffic. Social road kill.

  Sharon wished she was back at her old home in California, back at her old school where she had one friend at least. Sarah Herman, Sharon’s partner in petty crimes and misdemeanors. Her sole social circle—if you can call one friend a circle. Truth was Sharon had never actually made a friend, Sarah made her, doing all the hard work for her back in second grade. Simpler times. Sharon knew the reason for her suffering. It boiled down to science, as everything usually does. She had missed that critical window of adolescent brain development. Where the skill of making friends, like language and reading human faces, imprinted itself. Sharon was socially blind the way feral children raised by dogs can never truly comprehend complex language. She might as well have been Jane Goodall and the other girls: chimps wearing lipstick and mascara. No matter how hard she tried, socializing would always be awkward and foreign. Pretending to be was never the same as just being. No matter how much she observed and imitated, she could never be one of them, one of the happy, well-adjusted troop. Sharon felt like she was always carrying around a large scarlet letter B sown to her chest. B for broken.

  Three shadows descended on Sharon and swallowed up her sun. Sharon gave a quick sly glance over her shoulder. She spotted three girls horde around her like a pack of hungry dogs sniffing out a foreigner intruding on their territory.

  “So, you’re the new girl?”

  Sharon gave no response.

  One of the girls sat down next to her. Too close. Invading Sharon’s personal space and rubbing her shoulder against hers. A clear display of dominance. Sharon had watched far too many nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel to miss this. The girl brushed back her blonde hair from her eyes and smirked at Sharon. Another power play. She wanted Sharon to know she was in control. Fearless. Of course, she was fearless. She had back up and home field advantage. Lucky her.

  “My name’s Alice Gordon. You’ve probably heard of me. I’m the cheer squad leader and class president. My father’s a senator, Charles Gordon. I know you’ve heard of him.” Alice snatched up one of Sharon’s French fries from her plate and bit the top half off like a hen chomping the head off a caterpillar.

  A shining portrait of American teen superficiality. Alice Gordon and her two friends came jam-packed with glittered bracelets, too much makeup, and overpriced earrings. Anything to standout in this sea of gray uniforms.

  “And you are?” she asked, cutting Sharon short before she could muster up an answer. “Well, it doesn’t really matter who you are. All that matters is that you understand the rules.”

  Sharon just ignored her and continued eating her meal, hoping Alice would just get bored and go pester someone else. She didn’t.

  “I’ll cut to the point,” she said growing irritated in Sharon’s lack of response. “Do you know what the rules are here?” Her question hung in the uncomfortable silent air. Alice’s face tightened as she gritted her teeth. No one ignores a Gordon. “I guess not. Because if you did you would know this is where we eat. F.Y.I. no freaks or emo-bitches. This means you.”

  Alice plucked Sharon’s soda can up into the air, as if her hand was a metal claw hunting for cute fluffy stuffed victims in a vending machine. She poured soda all over Sharon’s food, soaking her fries and chicken sandwich in a pool of black bubbly carbonation. Alice was marking her territory. Her friends covered their mouths, a halfhearted attempt at containing a brew of wicked giggles. They were self-esteem vampires, the lot of them, thriving off the misery of others. Vultures feasting off Sharon’s suffering and delighting in her eternal torment.

  Sharon shot up from her seat and stared down a smug Alice, her fists clenching and nostrils snorting out furious air. Alice took her time standing up, bolstering unapologetic and unwavering eye contact. She was daring Sharon to do something, to act on her emotions.

  Alice Gordon was the kind of narcissistic brat who always got ahead in life. Not because of her charisma or character or work ethic or something of that nature. But because she was born with a little less fear than everyone else. Something Sharon envied Alice for as much as she despised her for. But as Alice would soon learn and Sharon would soon teach her, a little fear can be beneficial to one’s health... given the situation.

  Sharon gave Alice no time to react, hurling her fist into Alice’s smug face, crunching her nose like a fortune cookie. Alice lost her balance and fell, the back of her skull bouncing hard off the cement. Her friends were speechless, their mouths dropping in a breathless gasp. Alice jerked her hands back cupping her now gushing nose. The blood seeped out from between the cracks of her fingers. The red drizzled down the backs of her hands and dripped off her elbows. What came out of Alice next shocked even Sharon. Alice wailed a shrieking bellowing cry, kicking the cement with the back of her heels and flailing her whole body around. A true spectacle of convulsing agony.

  Sharon turned around and, to her horror, discovered everyone was looking her direction. Dozens of yellow lunch tables filled to the brim with girls, strangers, their attention focused on her. A thing of nightmares. Hundreds of eyes, their
cold stares confirming her worst fears: She was an outcast, a freak, a monster, and worst of all, alone.

  ***

  The crow extended his wings and took flight. Off to find a place less crowded, a place where he and Sharon could be alone. He circled the sky above the school, biding his time for her. Finally satisfied enough time had passed, he descended and landed on the branch of an old oak tree stripped bare of leaves save for a few dozen colorful stragglers. The crow’s focus came to a second story window just a few meters away. His ghostly black eyes reflected a figure inside. A girl. Sharon Ashcraft.

  ***

  A woman with gray hair flipped through a blood-red file folder, scanning over the papers inside. Her gaze moved up to Sharon’s high school photo paper-clipped to her transcripts. Sharon frowned in the picture, might as well have been her arrest mug-shot with her holding up a plaque with her new serial numbers.

  Sharon sat on the other side of the desk staring blankly at the principal’s shiny brass name plate. One word: Stone. Not a good sign. She squirmed in the small, cheap, plastic chair. She looked around the office. Everything else seemed so new, especially the principal’s business chair—made with real leather. Must have set her back a grand at least. As if she was some corporate bigwig or something. The contrasting chairs were no accident. Another power play.

  A weathered woman in her fifties, Principal Stone’s humorless face said everything Sharon needed to know. Stone had lost all joy for this job. And accounting for her bland colorless suit and masculine hairdo Sharon bet she hadn’t got laid in years. Principal Stone placed the file folder down, massaged her temples, and took in a heap of air. Sharon braced herself for the worst.

  “This isn’t prison Miss Ashcraft. We don’t pick fights to sort out some survival of the fittest hierarchy on the first day of school. This is not a good start for you. Not the start I wanted for you in the least.”

  Sharon glanced at the door’s fogged up glass window. Outside, stood the school security guard. He had marched Sharon from the lunch tables to the principal’s office, squeezing her arm tightly along the way, as if she was some common criminal. She glanced back at Principal Stone.

  “Government forced attendance in an institution full of mentally unstable strangers,” said Sharon. “Uniforms, metal detectors, and police guards. The way I see it high school couldn’t be more like prison.”

  “Those metal detectors keep guns and knives off my school grounds,” Principal Stone snapped back.

  “And your uniforms reduce violence by stripping the biggest cause of strife known to man.” Sharon’s grin returned. “Individualism. Tell me Miss Stone, do you get all your policies from 1984?”

  Principal Stone stared back at Sharon unimpressed and even less amused. She was nowhere near the mood required to engage in philosophical debate with a seventeen-year-old high school junior. So, she cut straight to the point. “Sharon, why did you assault Miss Gordon?”

  Sharon shrunk in her chair and averted her gaze out the window, unwilling to give an answer.

  “Are you aware of the seriousness of this?”

  Sharon shifted her gaze toward the old oak tree. She spotted something. A crow sat motionless on a branch staring at her, his eyes beyond piercing. And though the wind outside grew, swaying the leaves back and forth, the crow remained still as a statue—not a single black feather catching and lifting on his sleek form.

  “Understandably her parents are very upset. They have threatened to take legal action, against the school and against you.”

  Sharon’s gaze met the crow, his mysterious bottomless eyes entrancing her, pulling her in, and dragging her down into a black void. To her, his eyes were two black suns set ablaze with phantom flames. They turned the sky amber, muting all sound, and bronzed her vision like an old sepia photograph.

  “I’m having a hard-enough time talking her parents out of assault charges as it is.”

  Sharon’s mind cleared itself of all thoughts, tuning out Principal Stone and the rest of the world. She surrendered her consciousness, her being. There was only the now.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Neither dreaming nor awake, her mind was drifting away from her body and the shackles of the real. Her consciousness lost at sea, swept away with the currents of the walkabout.

  “Sharon!”

  Like the flash of a light bulb from an old-fashioned camera Sharon snapped back to reality, as if someone shook her out of a deep sleep. Her trance broken she shifted her gaze from the crow back to Principal Stone.

  “I called your mother. I am well aware of your past, the good and the bad. I think you have underlying issues regarding the situation with your father.”

  Sharon’s eyes lit up at the mere mention of that man, her father.

  “I’m going to request that you seek some counseling.”

  Sharon’s breaths came fuming out of her lungs. Her chest expanded and contracted erratically. Her face burned bright red. “Why stop there?” she asked barely containing herself enough to form sentences. “Why not prescribe me some antidepressants? Hell, I found my US Constitution class boring. I probably need Ritalin, right?” She leaped up from her chair, the flimsy, plastic chair falling back, and stared down Principal Stone. “I’m not some problem to be fixed!”

  “I’m sorry.” Principal Stone closed the red folder. “This isn’t up for negotiations.”

  ***

  Large brown and orange leaves crunched under the force of Sharon’s feet as she stalked toward the oak tree. A voice, beyond the range of human ears, sang to her like the sirens of legend, commanding her to step forward. And when she reached the base of the tree, stepping up onto exposed roots, she gazed up. The crow gazed down, pulling her in once more with his bottomless eyes, slicing through her soul with a simple look. Sharon’s breath turned to white smoke as a cold breeze ripped past her. She huddled herself, wrapping up in her thin sweater. The crow let out a deathly caw, spread his wings, and took flight. He glided in the air above her, encircling, and calling out to her with a crow’s song. And in that moment Sharon knew what he wanted. No sixth sense required. Even if he spoke her native human tongue, he could not be clearer of his desires. He wanted her to follow.

  The crow hopped along the white picket fence. He stopped every post or so and gave a caw back Sharon’s direction, ensuring she kept pace and trailed along the chosen path he laid out for her. She continued down the sidewalk in rhythmic steps, following like a lost child ensnared in the Pied Piper’s tune. The light died and shrouded Sharon in shadow. She stopped and looked up. Monsters, devils with jagged wings, beasts with silent roars, all formed from stone and carved and chiseled to hideous perfection. Each one observed Sharon from their Gothic perches. Gargoyles guarding their master’s castle. This mansion of red brick and overgrown vines and thorns.

  The crow landed on a broken fence leading into the mysterious property. He parted his polished black beak and let go a penetrating caw. Then he glided down, disappearing into the thicket of weeds entangling the back of the yard. Sharon hesitated, the thought of trespassing popped into her mind but just for a moment. The need to follow too great. Sharon slipped through the broken fence with ease. She pushed aside a loose weathered post that dangled from one lonely nail. She brushed past the tall grass and weeds, parting them like jungle vines, and peered through the thicket.

  Two blood-red cellar doors hung open, the smell of water damaged wood and mildew leaking out, revealing the mute darkness of the basement within. The crow hopped down to the edge of the entrance—to the edge of darkness.

  Her eyes focused on the crow. Then, shifting her gaze to the entrance, she lurched forward. She strained her eyes to see beyond the void of the shadow infested basement. Her heart raced, her throat struggled to swallow, and her skin paled. Her feet moved by themselves. To her it felt like they were marching her up to her own casket at her own funeral. But she needed to know what lay inside, even if it meant her own oblivion. She was a moth beating its
dusty wings in a final dance, one last fluttering duet, with the raging flame. Now it was time to fade to black.

  Sharon jumped back, breaking from her trance as a vibration jolted through her body. Was someone behind her? She made a sharp spin, scanning her surroundings. She was alone. The vibration hit her again. She reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out her cell phone. The screen lit up a vibrant green, text flashed in the middle of the screen. A five-letter word: GRACE. Her mother’s name. Sharon canceled the call and took in a deep breath. Great. Now I almost wished I had been caught trespassing. At least in jail I wouldn’t have to sit through another ‘talk’ with Mom. She headed back, ducking under the broken fence. Sharon gave the crow one last look over her shoulder. A reluctant fleeting glance before her reflection disappeared from the crow’s haunting eyes.

  Chapter Three

  The Color of Thoughts

  THE FRONT DOOR slowly cracked open. Sharon tiptoed inside. She scanned the kitchen, all empty save for a few pots and pans resting on the counter. Good. The kitchen looked untouched, exactly how she’d left it this morning, which meant her mother was still at work. She closed the door as quietly as she could—just to err on the side of caution—and scurried off to the living room. Her mother’s voice stopped her mid-stride.

  “Sharon, you need to sit down.”

  Crap! So close to the stairs, too. Sharon, with much reluctance, turned to meet her mother.