The Loveliest Dead

by Ray Garton

  As he spoke, Dwayne slowly rotated in place, like a satellite dish, arms up, palms out, eyes closed. He turned left, then stopped and moved back to the right again, and continued talking, repeating the same thing a few more times.

  Jenna was struck once again by the oddness of her situation. A truck-driving medium standing with his hands in the air in her living room—a month ago, she would have found the whole thing absurdly hilarious. But now she saw no humor in it at all.

  “Do you hear me?” Dwayne said. “I’ve come to tell you it’s time to leave this house. Give me some sign that you—”

  He stopped speaking and fell still when the room suddenly became cold. Dwayne’s eyes opened wide as he quickly looked around. It had taken only a few minutes, and he seemed surprised.

  “I sense your presence,” he said. “I know you’re here, I know you can hear me.”

  Dwayne’s words became a mere hum in the background the moment Jenna saw the toddler in the blue hooded jacket standing in the entryway. His hood was up and his head was bowed. Her right hand flew up to cover her mouth.

  Blinking back tears, Jenna slowly turned away from Dwayne and took a cautious step toward the entryway. Then another, and another. “Josh?” she whispered into her palm. “Josh, honey? Look at Mommy. Take off your hood.”

  As the toddler slowly raised his head, he reached up with pudgy hands and pulled the hood back.

  Jenna’s hand dropped limply to her side and she took in a sharp breath. The boy standing before her had a freckled face and thick red hair and pale blue eyes. He was not Josh. She had never seen him before in her life.

  “Now,” Dwayne was saying, “I am telling you once and for all.” He shouted in a clear, booming voice, “It’s time to have this house!”

  Jenna’s attention was still focused on the boy, so she only vaguely noticed the same darkening of the air that had occurred the day before. The room exploded with the sound of shattering glass. Jenna tore her eyes away from the child and spun around in time to see her grandmother’s collection of handblown glass animals on the fireplace mantel fall together and shatter into pieces. She turned around again, and when her eyes found the boy, she screamed.

  “Stop that!” Dwayne shouted into the air. “Stop that right now! You are to leave this house immed—”

  Dwayne doubled over, then fell to the floor on the other side of the recliner.

  The boy still stood in the entryway, staring at her, but his clothes were now old and filthy and decayed, and so was he. His nose was gone, his eye sockets empty, and much of his face had rotted away to reveal tiny teeth and jawbone.

  The little boy was gone for a few seconds before Jenna realized he had disappeared. Her hand slapped over her mouth again, and she stopped screaming as she spun around to see what had happened to Dwayne. His legs were sticking out from behind the recliner, kicking as he rolled back and forth on the floor.

  Then everything was normal again, and the telephone was chirping.

  Dwayne lay still behind the recliner. Jenna hurried to his side and gasped when she saw his face. His nose was swollen and crooked, his face bloody, his left eye nearly swollen shut, lower lip open in a fresh cut.

  “Oh, my God, Mr. Shattuck. Dwayne, can you hear me?”

  The phone continued to chirp.

  “Are you okay?” There was a great deal of blood on his face and neck, and Jenna found herself feeling a bit faint. She took a couple deep breaths.

  “I’ll live,” Dwayne said in a strained voice pinched by his broken nose.

  “My God, what did it do to you? And how?”

  “It happens.” His voice trembled. “Sometimes poltergeists get pretty worked up. ‘Cept that was no poltergeist.”

  Martha came into the living room in a housedress and slippers and looked around. “What the hell is going on in here?” she said. She gasped when she saw Dwayne on the floor. “Who’s he? What happened?”

  “Mom, could you get the phone?”

  Martha turned and left the living room.

  “That was no poltergeist.” Dwayne said again. “You gotta get your family outta this house, Mrs. Kellar. You got somethin’ bad in here. Somethin’ that’s been here awhile, it’s settled in.”

  “I’m going to call an ambulance,” Jenna said. “Don’t move, stay right there.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. He slowly got to his feet and leaned on the back of the recliner for a moment. “It knocked me around, but I’m not crippled.”

  “Your nose is broken.”

  “It’s been broken before.”

  “Jenna,” Martha said as she hurried into the living room. She handed Jenna the cordless phone.

  Something about the look on Martha’s face worried Jenna. She put the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Kellar? Keith Hollander. I run the garage where your husband works.”

  Jenna put a hand to her chest and closed it into a fist, as if to hold her heart together. “What’s wrong?”

  “David had an accident a little while ago, and he hurt his hand. The ambulance just left with him—they’re taking him to St. Joseph.”

  Jenna’s voice was thin as she said, “An ambulance? How bad was he hurt?”

  “Well, he lost a lot of blood.”

  “I’ll get down there right away. Thank you for calling.” Before she could punch the Off button, the phone slipped from Jenna’s trembling hand. She picked it up and handed it to Martha. She heard herself speaking, but her throat felt numb. “David’s been hurt. An ambulance has taken him to the hospital.” She turned to Dwayne. “I’ll take you with me and you can go to the emergency room.”

  “Would you like me to go with you?” Martha said.

  “Somebody has to be here when Miles comes home, Mom.”

  “Are you sure you should drive? You look pale. Are you all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.” But Jenna was not convinced. She got her purse, and her hands trembled so much, she dropped her keys twice. She stopped a moment in the entryway to take a couple deep breaths. All that was important now was David.

  Well, he lost a lot of blood.

  Memories of Josh’s funeral flashed in Jenna’s mind, but with David in the casket instead of their son. She tried to clear her mind and focus on getting to the hospital. She turned to Dwayne as he limped to the front door and took his jacket from the hook on the wall. “Are you going to make it out to the car?” she said.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s you folks I’m worried about. You’ve gotta leave this house.”

  Jenna faced him. “Mr. Shattuck, we have no money to go anywhere else. This house is all we have.”

  “But you’ve got somethin’ bad in this house, Mrs. Kellar, somethin’... sick. And it don’t like bein’ disturbed.”

  “Then we won’t disturb it. That’s the best I can do.” She spun around and put on her coat. “Now, I’m really sorry you’ve been hurt, Mr. Shattuck, and I sure hope you don’t plan on charging us for your hospital bills, because there’s no way we could possibly pay them. I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather not discuss it anymore.” Jenna went out the front door jangling her keys.

  They said nothing on the drive to the hospital.

  David was in surgery for almost four hours, and Jenna knew nothing until his doctor came out afterward and explained the situation to her. David’s left hand had gotten caught on a fan belt. It had been cut between the two middle fingers and down into the palm, almost to the wrist, slicing through several bones and ligaments. The doctor said it was difficult to tell how extensive the damage would be, but he expected David to regain, at the very least, most of the use of his hand. He said David would stay in the hospital overnight, then go home the next day.

  When Jenna went in to see him, her knees wobbled with relief when David gave her a groggy smile. But the aftereffects of the anesthesia and the morphine drip made conversation difficult, so she let him sleep. His left hand and forearm lay a
cross his belly, bandaged and in a blue fiberglass cast.

  She used the telephone on David’s bedstand to call home. She updated Martha on David’s condition and talked to Miles for a few minutes to reassure him that everything was okay. She was hanging up the phone when a uniformed police officer walked in, a pudgy man about Jenna’s age, bald except for short dark hair around the sides and back, and a tuft just above his forehead.

  “Are you Jenna Kellar?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Officer Tom Mayhew of the Eureka Police Department. Could I speak with you a moment, please? Maybe you’d prefer to step outside with me?”

  “Okay.” They went out into the corridor. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Dwayne Shattuck says he was, uh ... well, he says he was beaten up by a-yuh... a spirit. A ghost. In your house.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. He and I were the only two in the room, and I certainly didn’t do that to him. Did he call you?”

  “No, the hospital notified us that someone had been beaten up and—”

  “Well, I saw it happen. Look, I didn’t believe in this stuff either, okay? But lately... well, I’ve had to take a good hard look at what I believe. It’s nothing new to him, though. He’s a medium.”

  Officer Mayhew nodded, frowning. “Yeah, that’s what he said. He was pounded pretty hard. I’m just not sure how to write this one up.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t. No one’s complaining, no charges are being pressed.”

  “The hospital was required by law to make the call, and I answered it. I’ve got to write something up. Besides, nobody’ll believe me if I don’t. Would you mind telling me what happened, Mrs. Kellar?” he said, taking a small notebook from his pocket. “I’d like to see if your story matches Mr. Shattuck’s.”

  Leaving out the child in the entryway—Jenna preferred not to think about that yet—she told him what had happened in the living room.

  “Does this sort of thing happen in your house a lot?” he asked. “Is this part of an investigation?”

  He smiled. “No, I’m just curious.”

  “We’ve had some ... unusual things happen in the house lately, yes.”

  “And your address is...” He looked down at the open notepad. “... 2204 Starfish Drive.”

  “That’s right. But why is that necessary?”

  “It’s just for the record.”

  “Okay,” Jenna said, but she frowned.

  “By the way, Mr. Shattuck’s pretty anxious to talk to you. He wanted me to ask you to go see him in ER as soon as you could. He’s still there. They’ve got him bandaged up, but there’s some kind of insurance holdup.”

  “Thank you for the message.”

  “I hope your husband gets better soon.”

  She nodded, smiled, and Officer Mayhew turned and walked away.

  David was asleep, and Jenna decided to see what Dwayne Shattuck had to say. She felt guilty about his injuries—and at the same time, she was worried about them, wondering if Dwayne was litigious.

  He was sitting in the ER waiting room, paging through an issue of Field & Stream. Jenna sat down in the chair beside him.

  Dwayne had a couple stitches above his right eye and in his lower lip. His face was bruised and lumpy, his nose and eye swollen.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Late with a load, that’s all I know,” he said. “I’m more worried about you and your family.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that, and I appreciate it, but I told you, I’d rather not—”

  “Yeah, I know, but that don’t change the fact that you’re livin’ with somethin’ bad. You’d better keep a close eye on your boy.”

  Jenna felt as if her lungs had been splashed with ice water. “What?”

  “Your son. I don’t know what you’ve got in that house, but I wouldn’t let it near my kid if I were you.”

  “You ... Wait, do you think it would hurt Miles?”

  “You’re not hearing me, are you? I’ve never felt anything like that before—it was scary. I’m tellin’ you, you’re in danger as long as you’re livin’ with that thing.”

  “But I told you, we have nowhere to go. And now that David’s been hurt—there’s just no way we could leave.”

  “Then maybe Ada can help you find someone who can get rid of that thing. But it’ll have to be somebody who knows what he’s doin’, ‘cause that thing’s not leavin’ without a fight.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. I only know it’s about as hostile as a nest of hornets.”

  “You said it’s been there awhile.”

  “That’s the feeling I got. That and ... something twisted.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s a sick thing, whatever it is. I don’t like usin’ the word ‘evil.’ It’s been tossed around too much for too long, and now it doesn’t mean so much anymore. But it sure comes to mind here.”

  “You said it doesn’t like to be disturbed. Well, like I told you before, we just won’t disturb it.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Somethin’s already disturbed it. It’s ... I don’t know, it’s like it’s got somethin’ on its mind.”

  “What should I do?”

  Dwayne shrugged, then winced slightly and massaged his neck with his left hand. “I wouldn’t mess around with Ouija boards or have any more sittings in there. Not until you’ve got somebody who’s ready to deal with that thing. You’re liable to just piss it off, pardon my French. I’ll talk to Ada about it and have her call you.”

  “Would you do that?”

  “Sure. I wish I could do more.”

  Jenna was too confused and frightened to continue the conversation. She stood and said, “Is there anything I can do for you? I feel so bad about all this.”

  “Please don’t, Mrs. Kellar. This kinda thing happens, it’s always a possibility. Tell you the truth, this is the main reason I retired. This one’s the worst so far, though, I gotta admit. That’s because it wasn’t a poltergeist, it’s somethin’ else. But I knew what I was gettin’ into when I agreed to try to clean your house. When you deal with the other side, you just never know what’s gonna happen.”

  A woman at the billing window called Dwayne’s name. He got up slowly and limped over to the window. He exchanged a few quiet words with the woman, signed a paper, and came away with a copy of his own, which he folded up and slipped into his, pocket.

  “I’ll drive you back to your truck,” Jenna said.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  They said little during the drive. As he got out of the car at the truck stop, Jenna said, “You’re not going to get behind the wheel, are you?”

  “Not until tomorrow. I made a couple calls at the hospital. I’m gonna spend the night here.”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can—”

  Dwayne laughed. “You’ve done enough. And don’t you worry, I’m not gonna sue you. Take care of your family, now, ‘specially your little boy.” He closed the door.

  Jenna brought home chicken in a bucket for dinner. In spite of her reassurances on the phone, Miles looked deeply worried. She explained to him exactly what had happened and assured him that Dad would be home tomorrow.

  “But he’ll be groggy for a while,” she said, “because he’ll be taking painkillers. So you’ll have to be the man of the house for me, okay?”

  “Okay. Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

  Jenna laughed, but it was a tense laugh. Miles’s request reminded her of the fat man he claimed to have seen in his bedroom. Jenna wondered if it was connected to the thing Dwayne claimed was sharing the house with them. “We’ll see,” she said.

  After dinner, Jenna did the dishes by hand because she wanted time to think. Her mother had not asked about Dwayne or what had happened that afternoon, although she had cleaned the shattered glass animals off the mantel and the blood from the carpet. But she would bring it up eventually, when they were alone and Miles was
out of earshot. Jenna had no idea what she would tell her. She could not imagine Martha keeping a straight face while listening to Jenna’s story.

  Mrs. Frangiapani says it’s nothing to worry about, she thought, Ada says it’s a poltergeist, Kimberly thinks it might be demonic, and Dwayne says it’s something sick and evil. Who’s right? Whom do I believe?

  It seemed even experts on the supernatural could not agree on much of anything. She regretted not taking Mrs. Frangiapani’s advice in the first place, as Kimberly had told her to, and dropping the whole thing. Maybe if she’d ignored it, it would have gotten bored and gone away.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the freckled face of the redheaded boy in the blue hooded jacket, the boy she had mistaken for Josh—knowing it had not been her son left a dull ache in her chest—then the boy’s round, cherubic face collapsing into the decayed corpse’s skull she had seen before he’d disappeared. Something had made the air cold and had destroyed the glass animals on the mantel.

  I don ‘t know what you ‘ve got in that house, but I wouldn ‘t let it near my kid if I were you.

  Martha never mentioned it. She spent the evening watching television with Miles. Jenna made herself busy around the house, did a couple loads of laundry, and called Kimberly on the phone and told her everything that had happened.

  “Maybe you should call a ... I don’t know, a minister,” Kimberly said.

  “You mean, like a priest?”

  “Minister, priest, rabbi, take your pick.”

  “But I don’t believe in that stuff, either.”

  “Maybe you should start adjusting what you believe to fit what’s happening around you.”

  Jenna laughed, but it was a sad sound. “All I know is, I wish I hadn’t gotten myself started on this stuff.”

  “Then just focus on what’s important, like Mrs. Frangiapani said. Especially now that David’s hurt himself. That’s awful, Jenna. At least he’ll be covered by workmen’s comp.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know what we’re going to do now that he can’t work. I’ll have to get a job, there’s no way around it.”

  “I’ll help you look. There might even be an opening at the store.”