Ghost Shadows

by Thomas M. Malafarina

  Winston could feel the anger and hatred build inside him. With more forcefulness than he would have believed possible he asked, “You mean to tell me that worthless bastard has been alive, robbing, killing, raping and whatever else he chooses to do while I’ve been suffering unimaginable tortures, which were really meant for him? Is that what you’re saying?”

  The creature looked directly at Winston with his strange, cat-like eyes and replied, “Yes. I’m sorry to say that is exactly what the situation is. So you can see why we are all a bit embarrassed by this unfortunate oversight.”

  “Embarrassed? Oversight?” Winston said in a louder voice than he had used in a very, very long time. “This is not an oversight. That is . . . well . . . I don’t know what the hell to call it.”

  “Yes. You are most certainly correct and have a right to be upset.” The being agreed, “And unfortunately, it’s like trying to un-ring a bell. There is nothing we can do to restore you to life. You are dead and will remain so. However, there might be something we can do to help you get revenge against the man you was responsible for killing you in the first place.”

  Winston looked directly at the creature, suddenly interested. He was furious and if he had an opportunity to right this injustice he would jump at the chance do so. Then perhaps the man who murdered him would be forced to spend eternity along the Path while Winston could move on to whatever place, presumably less painful than this, he was meant to be.

  “How?” Winston asked eagerly. “How can I do this? What do I have to do?”

  The creature gave Winston a sly look and said, “On earth it is currently October 31, Halloween night, the night of the dead. It is the one time during the year when we are permitted to allow certain souls to return to earth to take care of any unfinished business, or to do special tasks on Hell’s behalf. We have made arrangements for you to return to earth for one night to retrieve the soul of Wilson Johns and bring him back here to us.

  Once this job is done you will move on to another place, not heaven—you were never good enough for that, few are—but another place much less unpleasant than this particular section of Hell. All you have to do is return to the world of the living, confront Wilson Johns, take this special dagger, and plunge it into his heart.” Suddenly a long sharp knife appeared in Winston’s hand. “You do that and we will do the rest.”

  “But . . . but, I can’t do that . . . I’m not a killer. I’ve no idea how to do such a thing.” Winston explained his hand uncomfortably gripping the handle of the dagger.

  Looking perturbed the creature said, “Well, Winston. We are sending you back to get Wilson Johns. You will only have a few earth hours to do what must be done then you will be returned to us. If you come back empty handed, you will return to where you left off on the Path and will continue serving out a punishment rightfully meant for someone else. The choice is entirely yours.”

  A moment later, Winston found himself standing in an alley in a city that looked very familiar to him. He was wearing the same clothing he had been wearing the night he died. In fact, this alley was the very same alley he had tried to use as a shortcut when Wilson Johns had attacked, robbed, and murdered him.

  In the distance he saw someone entering the alley. As the stranger came briefly into the glow of a nearby streetlight, Winston was shocked to see it was no stranger but was him as he had looked the night he died. He then realized that the strange creature had returned him to earth on the exact night he had been murdered. Winston hadn’t been murdered on Halloween night but that didn’t seem to matter in the strange juxtaposition of time that seemed to exist between the two worlds.

  As the Winston of earth approached the ethereal Winston a man dressed in dark clothing suddenly sprang from the shadows. Winston realized it was all happening again and this time Winston was about to actually see himself being murdered. Reacting, not thinking, Winston forced his spiritual self into his earthly body just as Wilson Johns raised his gun and fired. Simultaneously the spirit of Winston lifted his physical right hand and plunged the invisible dagger deep into the mugger’s chest, piercing his heart.

  Wilson Johns let out a howl and fell to the ground in a dead heap. Winston James floated out of his physical body and stood nearby. From the fallen form of Johns rose a stream of tiny red sparkling glowing lights, which began to flow into the blade of the dagger, causing it to illuminate in a crimson light. Winston knew this was what he had to take back to Hell with him to make things right. He looked down and saw his own dead earthly body lying on the ground. The creature had told Winston he could not undo what had been done, but could only try to make things right.

  Without warning Winston started to slowly fade from the world of the living, and within a moment, found himself back in the room that looked like his old office, the dagger still held tightly in his hand.

  The strange being was still seated behind the desk with it fleshy gloved hands folded in front of him. “Very good work, Winston. I see you have brought back the knife and have acquired the soul we needed to right this injustice perpetrated on you.” The knife disappeared from Winston’s hand the rematerialized on the top of the desk. The creature’s hands did not move to pick it up.

  “Yes . . . yes, I have,” Winston said, still quite shaken from all that had happened. “I’ve done what you asked. Now Johns can be punished as you require and I can move on to wherever it is I have earned the right to move on to.”

  “Well,” the creature said hesitantly, “about that . . . well, there’s a bit of a problem.”

  “What are you talking about?” Winston said, now with an air of defiance. “You said I didn’t deserve to be here, that I was put here by mistake, and that I could move on to another place.”

  The creature wavered then said, “Well, yes. But that was before you returned to your world and killed Wilson Johns. Now, my dear Winston James, you are officially a murderer.”

  “But I did that for you. I was carrying out your orders. I killed for you. If I didn’t do what you said I was going to have to continue down the Path,” Winston said angrily.

  “True, but the final decision to actually kill Johns was yours to make,” the creature said. “And that made you a killer. You had your revenge and you enjoyed it as well. The Path is exactly where murderers belong. It appears, my good Winston, as if you were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t.”

  Then, before Winston had a chance to protest further, he found himself once again outside on the Path. He looked out at the endless road before him, hung his head in sorrow as he listened to the waling of the tortured souls and slowly began to trudge along the Path to his next stop.

  It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

  ‘It matters little,’ she said, softly. ‘To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.’

  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  The solitary automobile moved slowly along the empty main street of town. The man behind the wheel was paying little if any attention to the darkened storefronts or to the virtually abandoned thoroughfare. It was after 11:15 pm and although he was heading home, his mind was still back at the office where it always seemed to be. His thoughts were obsessed with important issues, which should have been resolved long before he chose to leave for the night. Then again, there were always critical issues needing resolution, and he knew even if he worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week he still would never be able to take care of all of them. It seemed for every single problem he managed to rectify three more came forward to take their place. But he supposed such was his lot in life.

  The night was very clear and every star could be seen for miles in the cloudless Pennsylvania sky. The temperature was surprisingly mild for December twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve. For those local residents hoping for a white Christmas, the pleasant temperatures would likely prove somewhat disappointing. Fifty-six-year-old Evan Flint had no ne
ed for Christmas, no desire to celebrate the holiday, or for that matter, no one with whom to share it had he chosen to do so. At first glance, one might think Evan had everything a man could want out of life, being the richest man in the county if not the state. And if someone were to ask him, Evan would likely agree and say that he was quite satisfied with his life, stating categorically that he had absolutely no need for a wife, children, close friends or other such things he often referred to as “trappings of life.” Evan had more money than he could spend in three lifetimes and his fortune continued to grow daily. But he was completely unaware that in such a reply he would be lying not only to the questioner but more importantly to himself.

  Evan was the sole owner of a manufacturing company located on the outskirts of the small Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania town of Ashton. The factory employed well over two thousand residents from all over the county. It was one of the few remaining manufacturing facilities where one could at least attempt to earn a decent living. For most of the workers the factory felt more like a prison and for many of them who were saddled with financial difficulties, a prison was exactly what the place had become. Those residents who had overextended their credit or had lost what few savings they had during the downturn in the economy had little choice but to tolerate the meager pay and substandard working conditions offered at Flint Manufacturing.

  The benefits Evan offered were equally substandard and even though he knew about his workers pitifully struggling to make ends meet he had no qualms whatsoever about taking advantage of each and every one of them. He realized if the economy were good and there were plenty of other places to find profitable employment he would likely lose many of his better qualified employees. Yes, he was certain most of them would leave to seek employment elsewhere. But fortunately for Evan, with the economy in the toilet he could treat his workers however he pleased. To say the least, not many of Flint Manufacturing’s workers could be described as satisfied employees.

  Evan was well aware of the workers’ complaints as well as the various derogatory nicknames they had devised for him and called him behind his back, such as Evan-eezer or Skin Flint. Evan did not think of himself as such a tightwad, but considered his economic philosophy to be conservatively frugal. When he first heard of the names, Evan had been furious and had fired a handful of workers who he had determined to be responsible for starting the whole mess. He was able to identify those people thanks to a few of his loyal cronies and suck-ups who could be counted on to bring him all the latest dirt.

  But one thing that always seemed to be true of such negative nicknames was that once they were spoken aloud, they seemed to stick—and stick forever. Such was the case with the names they applied to Evan. And soon it became apparent to Evan that he would either have to learn to ignore the snide remarks and derogatory name-calling or else he would have to fire his entire workforce.

  The one particular term, which seemed to bother him the most, was Evan-eezer. That name really irked him because it summed up the complete lack of gratitude his workforce felt toward him. He could not understand what was wrong with them. He had managed to keep all of them employed during some of the most difficult economic times in the history of the state.

  Although he didn’t like the idea of being lumped in with such a miserly Dickensian stereotype, if Evan had taken the time to consider the possibility, he might soon discover his own life actually had many similar parallels to that of the fictitious infamous Mr. Scrooge.

  Like Scrooge, Evan was a loner as a child with few if any friends. As a young man in college, he had met, fallen in love with, and married a beautiful young woman—whose name was Claire. Eventually Evan’s true love left him just as Scrooge’s had in the story.

  Evan had started his manufacturing company as a partnership with a young man named Jack Worley. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge had started his company with his partner Jacob Marley. Scrooge’s partner died, leaving him to run the business alone. A similar thing happened to Jack Worley.

  Evan had always been certain that someday his partnership with Jack would end one way or another. He had assumed this from the very start because the two were opposites. Whereas Evan had come from nothing and worked long hours and most weekends to build the business, his partner Jack had come from old money and was known throughout the area as a reckless playboy. Though it was true that Jack had put up the initial startup money for the company, he had no real interest in running the business itself and was glad to leave the day-to-day affairs to Evan. But Jack’s shiftless behavior nonetheless irritated him. Evan’s marriage ended after just a few short years when Claire tired of the long hours he spent at work. Evan explained that he was only working so hard to build a future for the two of them, but that did nothing to appease her. She felt she had no need for money or the finer things of life. She simply wanted the man she married to be there for her when she needed him and Evan was never there. On the day she left, Claire told him his true love was not really her, but his money and the power that money brought to him. Scrooge’s lost love had told him, “Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."

  After Claire left him, Evan immersed himself even further into his work, having nothing else to fill his empty hours. Within a few short years, he had singlehandedly built the manufacturing company to a booming business employing over one thousand people. While other companies were closing and sending their products overseas to be manufactured, Evan’s company was growing and expanding and continuing to hire more workers weekly.

  While Evan was busy working, Jack did virtually nothing to contribute to the business. Instead, he continued his wild and carefree ways, all the time taking his share of the profits. Evan knew that somehow Jack’s reckless behavior had to come to an end, and it was likely going to be left to Evan to find a way to stop Jack. Then one day Jack was killed in a tragic boating accident. The man had been sailing off the New Jersey coast, having a private party on his favorite boat with several young coeds, when a freak explosion killed him as well as all of his passengers.

  An investigation into the accident was started and for quite some time police closely scrutinized Evan Flint, considering him a person of more than just casual interest in the incident. Although the authorities had never gotten so far as to arrest Evan, accuse him of murder, or even refer to the inquiry as a murder investigation, they did comment that the events surrounding the accident were suspicious. They were likewise reluctant to label the incident as an accidental death.

  Their suspicions likely arose when they questioned Evan and he did not even bother to feign the slightest bit of sadness at the loss of his partner. He even stated that as far as he was concerned, it was some sort of cosmic divine intervention and that Jack had gotten exactly what he deserved. To a police investigator that statement alone would set off all sorts of internal alarms.

  But it was later when the police discovered that the two partners had taken out substantial life insurance policies at the time the business was formed—each naming the other as sole beneficiary of those funds—that they believed they had a motive and truly became suspicious.

  The insurance policies were each worth five million dollars each and with Jack’s death the entire sum went to Evan. Police felt that this fact alone would have been motive enough for Evan wanting his partner dead. But they also learned from questioning some of Evan’s employees that there was no love lost between the two partners.

  Regardless of what their suspicions might have been, following a thorough police investigation, it was determined that although Jack’s death could very well have been a planned murder, it was more likely just an unavoidable accident. There were far fewer facts pointing to murder than to an accident so the police had little choice but to reluctantly drop that particular avenue of investigation. In the eyes of several of the investigators, Evan was never completely exonerated but since the affair was officially ruled accidenta
l there was nothing more they could do. And so Evan was free to collect the insurance money.

  But the townspeople and the many workers at his factory were far from satisfied with the authorities' findings. They had watched Evan and Jack interact for years and they believed Evan was a control freak and they thought they knew just how far Evan would go to get his way. And as much as they disliked Evan with his sullen, much too serious disposition, they all seemed to have loved Jack Worley with his outwardly friendly personality. Many of them were certain that Evan was perfectly capable of systematically planning and carrying out the murder of his partner. They also believed he would care nothing for the other guests caught in the accident as collateral damage. If they were given the choice, most of them would have preferred if it had been Evan who had died instead of Jack.

  They all had many reasons to hate Evan and had tried on many occasions to unionize their workforce. But each time Evan had managed to successfully fight back those attempts to bring in labor unions. His employees didn’t know how Evan was able to keep the union out but some of them suspected he might have greased the right palms or perhaps used some other form of coercion.

  Evan was always on the lookout for union organizers. As he drove and thought about the events of the day, Evan’s major concern was that his latest planned change in the company’s benefits package might push his workforce too far. He worried that if they tried to unionize again, he might not be able to keep them out. Evan had some underlying discomfort that very possibly his next move might open a door to potential labor union organization. One benefit his workers still enjoyed, which most companies had abandoned many years earlier, was a pension plan. But now Evan had decided he would have to take drastic measures to keep his company competitive with offshore manufacturers and keep his own personal fortune growing as well. The result was that he had decided to do away with the company pension plan. He would essentially freeze the pension, so no one would lose any time and monetary benefits they had accrued to date, but he would not support any additional contributions to the plan. From March or April of the next year on, he would institute a 401K savings plan where employees could put in their own money to save and thereby manage their own retirement funds. The idea made perfect sense to Evan, plus it would save his company a ton of money.