Caitlin and I slowly drew back from the window, and over her shoulder, behind her pale, shocked face, I saw the young man with the same expression of surprise and disbelief that Caitlin (and certainly I) wore. He was staring at his wife, and they both turned and looked out the window for another moment. Then the young man saw me, and his wife turned, as did Caitlin, both with trepidation, the two women wondering what their husbands were looking at now.
Understanding shot through us. He knew that we had seen it, and I knew the same was true of them. When I looked back at Caitlin, her pale, startled look had been replaced with a pink sheen of excitement. Her posture was erect, and her hands hovered over the table as though she would spring up at any second. Her head jerked toward the window. “Let’s go,” she said.
I yanked out my money clip, glanced at the bill, and tossed down enough twenties on the tray to cover it and a generous tip. Then, with a conspiratorial grin at the young man, I raced down the stairs, Caitlin behind me. We retrieved our coats, threw them on, and went outside, opening the umbrella as we scurried down the porch steps. Caitlin’s arm was wrapped around mine, and I saw the puffs of her excited breath in the cold, damp air.
We paused at the edge of the street, thinking about our next step. The silence between us now was electric and communicative, not sad and awkward as it had been upstairs. We had both seen something unexpected and wanted to see more. Across the street was the Raleigh Tavern, and between it and the building on its right was the small wooden gate through which the ghost, for as such I had naturally come to think of it, had passed.
I looked at Caitlin and gave a small nod, and she nodded back. We had just stepped into the street when a voice behind us called, “Hey…,” just loud enough for us to hear over the attack of rain on our umbrella. We both turned and saw the young man and his wife a few steps behind us, huddled under their own umbrella.
Caitlin and I knew what they wanted, to come with us in search of whatever we had seen. I felt disappointed, yet also relieved that we would not be alone, and voiced my sole concern. “Will you be all right?” I asked, looking at the young woman, whose pregnancy was all too obvious beneath her raincoat.
“Oh yes,” she said, clutching her husband’s arm as tightly as Caitlin did mine.
I gave a shrug of acquiescence, turned, and headed for the gate. It was locked but low, and we were able to climb over, giving extra help to the future mother, who got stuck halfway across. “Oh Tommy…,” she said, more in frustration than pain, as her husband and I bodily lifted her over the obstacle.
I recalled that this gate led back to a bake shop that we had visited earlier that day, and also assumed that we were now trespassing on private property, off limits after hours. We were after a ghost, I was certain, would not prove an effective motive were we to be apprehended.
The bake shop was on our left as we walked back the path. It was dark, as were the other buildings around us. Ahead of us lay an open space, with a broader area to our right, between Duke of Gloucester and Nicholson Streets. We stood, uncertain of how to proceed. It was so dark that I could see the young man and woman beside us as only blacker figures against the black night.
Then, to my right, I saw a glimmer of light moving slowly in the direction of the old public gaol across Nicholson Street. “Come on,” I whispered, and went toward it. With a thrill I saw that it was the male figure we had seen earlier, and I glanced back at the young couple to share my delight. They were scarcely a yard behind us, and I saw a tense alertness in the way they moved.
I had no sooner turned back to look at the figure, which by now had reached Nicholson Street, than it seemed to flicker and fade, and then wink out entirely. I gave a moan of disappointment and stopped, then turned to Caitlin, who was gripping my arm so hard that I winced. Her attention, however, was not focused on the disappearance ahead, but on the one behind us.
I followed her gaze and saw too that the couple who had been only a matter of feet away from us were now gone. Though we stood in an open area twenty yards from the nearest buildings, all of which were locked and dark, the pair was nowhere in sight.
I stood there slack-jawed. It was obvious that they simply could not have run away without our being aware of it, yet they had vanished as quickly and completely as the glowing figure we had seen and followed.
Before this, I would have said that the most dreadful, disconcerting, and alarming feeling in life would be to suddenly be thrust face to face with the inexplicable, a phenomenon that had no logical first cause. Now I know that is not true.
On the contrary, as Caitlin and I stood there in that sopping, muddy lot, the cold rain still pounding down on us as though it would never stop, I don’t believe we had ever felt more thrilled and vital and alive. We held onto each other like children on a roller coaster and felt, perhaps for the same reason, that if we were to let go, we would be yanked away, over the edge of the little conveyance in which we passed through life, and down—or out—into some great abyss.
I put my face close enough to hers so that, even in the dark, I could imagine that I saw her expression. She gave a laugh that held a shudder, the kind of laugh you give when, to use another amusement park allusion, you’ve come out of the house of horrors frightened but unscathed. I laughed too, not because the situation was funny, but because she had laughed and because we were alive.
I felt her lips on mine, and though they were cold, she kept them there long enough for them to grow warm. We held each other, the umbrella listing to the side and finally falling, so that the raindrops drenched our hair and faces, and gently bonded our cheeks together.
Then we began to shiver, and that made us laugh more. We didn’t understand what had happened, but it didn’t matter just then. “We’d better get out of here,” I said, “before we get arrested.”
We found a path that led back to Duke of Gloucester Street, and followed it, our umbrella back up, arms around each other’s waists. I was still frightened, yet revived, and I knew Caitlin felt the same, for she told me later. I didn’t want to see another ghost—or ghosts, as I now suspected. Three were enough.
Still, the coda was necessary, the confirmation required, as it is in all these types of stories. We returned to the King’s Arms. Its interior lights were still on, and the front door was unlocked. I created the pretext that the couple who sat next to us were acquaintances, and that the woman thought she had left her glasses case at the table and we had said we would check for her, as we had to pass the tavern anyway.
We were not disappointed by the response. The hostess fetched our waiter, who looked slightly puzzled, but led us upstairs. The tables at which we and the other couple had been sitting had been cleaned and cleared, and the waiter crouched down and looked at the darkness of the floor under our table.
“No no,” I said, “not us—the couple at this table,” and I crouched, pretending to look under it.
The waiter seemed hesitant to speak. “Sir,” he said at last, “what couple would that have been?”
“The young couple,” I said, and I could feel my heart beating in my chest, “who were sitting right here. The woman was pregnant. They ate at the same time we did.”
He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s been no one at this table since around eight o’clock.”
“Really?” I said, and looked at Caitlin. Her eyes were wide, and she was smiling so that I could see her teeth. “Well,” I said, and again, “Well.”
We sat in our car for a long time, holding each other’s hand on the arm rest. The rain still fell heavily on the roof of the car. I felt Caitlin’s hand leave mine, and then felt her fingers passing through my wet hair. I kissed her, long and deeply, and we drove back to our room, frequently glancing out the window, but seeing nothing out of place. Still, it had once more become a remarkable world.
In our room, Caitlin luxuriated in her bath, using the full contents of the complimentary bottle of bubble bath. I took off my wet t
hings, slipped on a bathrobe and waited to succeed her. Sitting at the round table that seems to be a fixture in every motel room, I idly continued to flip through the photo albums that I had brought in from the trunk the previous day. The album I chose was an older one, filled with black and white photos I did not remember ever having seen. When I turned over the second page, I stopped.
Few of my generation really know what our parents looked like when they were young. Our visual knowledge is usually limited to a sepia wedding picture and an early portrait or two that hung on the walls of our childhood homes for so long that they became iconic and unique, always presented, never noticed. So I suppose it’s not unheard of that that I hadn’t recognized them, those old images made young flesh, moving, speaking, smiling.
Oh Tommy, she had said. She had always called him just Tom for as long as I could remember, or Thomas when she pretended to be peeved.
There they were, held to the page by photo mounts in each corner, looking shyly at the camera, standing holding hands in front of the Governor’s Palace, wearing what Caitlin and I had seen them wear tonight at the King’s Arms Tavern. My mother’s belly was full with what would prove to be her only child.
Wmburg 1947 read the hand-inked caption beneath the small photo, and I looked at it for a long time, until I felt Caitlin’s hand on my shoulder, her fingers pressing tighter as she saw too.
I can’t explain it, but to note that good parents never stop loving their children or wanting to help them, far beyond the point at which they’re capable of doing so. Or maybe what we experienced says that there is no such point.
I won’t pretend that the feelings over what we saw that night will be permanent in Caitlin and me, but they certainly provide an emotional base on which to rebuild. What we expect will always come, so every day we look for a trace of the unexpected, and if we don’t find it, we create it, for ourselves and for each other.
AS YOU HAVE MADE US
By Elizabeth Massie
Their chapel is a gutted service station at the edge of the blistering city, situated between an abandoned warehouse and a lot choked with briars and detritus. They only come to pray at midnight, for that is when no one is there to stare at them or shoot them for sport.
There is nothing left to the station but four walls, a sagging roof, a restroom in the back that requires a key that has been long since lost, and a counter with a shattered glass case that once held candy, quarts of oil, and colorfully illustrated maps to places far away. The floor is covered with leaves blown in on countless winds and bits of glass or metal or cloth the worshippers leave behind as offerings. Sometimes they cut off tiny pieces of themselves, too, pieces decayed and dead, and leave those, but the vermin that scour the small building in the wee morning hours find them and clean them away, carrying the bits home as treats to their nested families.
There are teens and children, men and women, none so old as most of their kind die before they are forty. They come from the darkest, most hidden places in the city. They are the hated ones, the abandoned ones, those looked upon by the Ordinaries as less than human. They are the Discards—distorted and twisted, deformed and ravaged. Born to destitute mothers who have drugged themselves so badly that nothing whole could grow in their wombs, dumped out with the trash. Rescued by their own, one generation to the next, squirreled away and fed and kept warm as best as can be done, clothed with cast-offs, sheltered wherever shelter might be found.
Their pastor is Ryan. He is like them in many ways, thirty-four, dark-haired, jobless, homeless. His is missing an eye and one of his ears is melted down his neck. His left arm ends at the elbow at three nubbed fingers that flex poorly. He limps violently, for his right leg is twisted. Ryan sleeps on the damp earth in the cellar of an empty garage. The Discards love to hear him preach, though his sermons are short. Most of the services are dedicated to prayer and songs.
Each night, they shamble to the chapel. Ryan locks the door behind them, lights the candles. Those who have knees kneel to pray. Hands, where there are hands, rise toward the heavens. Eyes, where there are eyes, close in humble respect and penitence. Tongues, where there are tongues, recite the prayer of acceptance:
“We are as You have made us. We ask nothing but nourishment for our bellies, covering for our bodies, and darkness in which to hide. We ask that the Ordinaries find other means of entertainment than us, and that when it is our time to die, that You remember us well.”
Ryan always brings food for the service. Half-rolls, cooked potatoes and chicken scraps, lumps of cheese, mangled pastries. The Discards never ask where it comes from, the tasty and plentiful offerings, wanting to believe in at least one miracle. He would tell them he found them in bins behind diners if they asked but they don’t. They pray, listen, sing, eat, and then wander off through the shit-black shadows.
It is a cool, late September night when the new Discard comes, inching along in a wheelchair that looks like scrap from the early 20th century—scarred wood, caned backing ripped and rotting, two large wheels with one small, wobbling one in the back. He is no worse off than the others, thin, dead legs, hands twisted and skeletal, and a big hole where his right cheek should be. The bones and teeth that are visible through the hole are blackened, and his breath smells like a fire-pit that has been doused in urine. No one makes a fuss over him. They merely nod and offer him weary looks that accept him into the fold.
He rolls toward the counter where Ryan is shrugging out of his tattered coat and tells Ryan that his name is Ben. Ryan looks at him, says, “Bless you, Ben,” and then inclines his head toward an open space beside one of the benches where those who are able to sit, sit.
Ben maneuvers his chair to the assigned spot, thumping into some of the others as he goes. A woman drops down onto the bench beside him. Her head is oddly shaped, as if someone has crushed it in a vice. Her skin is scaled like that of a shedding snake. She looks at Ben and tries a smile. It is the ugliest thing Ben has ever seen, outside the Master when he is enraged.
Ben watches as the rest of the Discards find their places. He breathes in and out through the hole in his cheek as his nose is clogged. He hates this place. This station, this city, this fucking world. He grinds his stubbed molars together, recalling how much the Master wants Ryan, how much he drooled over the prospect of such a tasty morsel sucking his dick then being roasted and served on a skewer for dinner. Ben hates the Master yet must please him. To please him is to suffer less. To not please him is to suffer profoundly. Ben shivers, as much from fear as from cold. He is always cold.
And now, added to the cold, a damned headache. It started the moment he got inside the station, hurting like someone digging at his brain with a nail. He’s not sure if it’s the Master’s doing. It might just be the shitty air inside this shitty place, unfiltered through the shitty hole in his face, the fucked-up face of the fucked-up body the Master gave him for this task.
A one-legged devil walks into a bar, lookin’ for a good, stiff whiskey....
The Master never appreciates Ben’s jokes. He has no sense of humor at all. Yet Ben can’t help it. He was always a joker before, always quick and witty in hopes of a laugh, and can’t help himself now. He offers puns or wisecracks or stupid stories, hoping someday to make the Master like him more. Hate him less. Whatever.
Ben crosses his arms, hard. The chair creaks beneath him.
The prayers begin, then the songs. There is nothing melodic about the wailings of the twisted creatures, and it’s all Ben can do to keep from putting his hands over his ears. It makes his head hurt worse. He pretends to sing and pray, as well, moving his jaw, waggling the stubby tongue the Master gave him.
The service lasts several excruciating hours. At some time during Ryan’s speech about earthy temporals and eternal peace, some of the Discards begin to scrape at themselves and drop pieces of flesh on the floor. Ben knew they did this, had been told by the Master, but seeing it makes his gorge rise. Ryan says nothing, as if he doesn’t notice, doesn’t min
d, or has some strange understanding of the acts. Some of the Discards wriggle in place, working out sounds and smells that cause Ben to tuck his nose under his elbow. The place grows hot and thick with the stink of blood, diarrhea, and resignation.
What do you get when you cross the devil, an angel, and a politician…?
Another joke that fell flat.
Ba-dump-bum.
At long last Ryan raises his good hand and offers the final benediction. The Discards who are down push themselves up. Those who are up push themselves forward, and, silently, they eat the food Ryan has spread out on the countertop. No one speaks, but they nod their thanks then wander away. Several hold hands as if they are lovers, or friends, or are just afraid they might tip and fall over. The rest keep their distance from each other. Out of fear or respect, Ben can’t quite tell.
Not that they matter.
It’s Ryan who matters to the Master. It is Ryan who has the Master’s tongue and loins tingling in delicious anticipation. If Ben can’t please the Master with humor, he’ll please him with obedience.
The last Discard, a child who looks more simian than human, blows out the candles in the windowsill by the door.
Then there are only Ben and Ryan in the shadowed station.
Ben sits in silence, rubbing his temple, trying to press out the pain in his head. Ryan stands at the counter, gathering the plastic trays, wiping off the crumbs. For all his hideous deformity, Ryan moves with a certain grace that pisses Ben off. It’s all for show, though. Certainly Ryan knows Ben is sitting there, watching him. And so Ryan has to play his part as long as there are eyes…or eye…to see. When he leaves this place, he tries to get himself drunk with left over puddles of beer found in bottles on the side of the road, and then he jacks off into the empty bottles, breaks the bottles, and proceeds to cut his legs with the shards. He hates himself more than any person has ever hated himself, so says the Master. And the Master should know. He watches. He sees. He hears. He tastes the fear and the angst within the human race, and he savors it all.
Mister October Page 9
