Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories

by Ford, Lizzy; Fasano, Donna; Comley, Mel; Tyrpak, Suzanne; Welch, Linda; Woodbury, Sarah; Foster, Melissa; Hodge, Sibel; Luce, Carol Davis; Shireman, Cheryl

  But damn me, I was going to try. I couldn’t cope with a nude spirit camped out in my backyard. “I might be able to, if you tell me what you need.”

  She crossed her wrists, wrapping the ends of her hair around her throat. “My little boy … I have to know what happened to Lawrence.”

  I frowned. The paper did not mention a child. But there could be a reason, something the police were not sharing with the public.

  “He didn’t leave with the police officers?”

  She shook her head wildly. “No! He wasn’t in the apartment. I couldn’t feel him.”

  “Feel him?”

  “I always felt him there. It was a little harder when he played outside. I had to stretch my senses farther.”

  “You mean you sense his physical presence?”

  “Of course. Can’t all parents?”

  Not that I knew of. I had vague memories of my foster parents yelling through my bedroom door, “Tiffany, you stop right this minute,” and not understanding how they knew what I was doing when they couldn’t see me. Later in life, I learned it’s intuition possessed by most parents, not an uncanny talent. Lindy meant something other than intuition.

  Okay, skip it. Not important right now.

  “Lawrence? He would be Lawrence… ?” The paper said she was single, but he could have his father’s name.

  “Lawrence Marchant.”

  “Okay. Do you have family or friends he could have gone to?”

  She shook her head. “No. Nobody. We were all alone.”

  “Then he’s probably in the state’s care.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile. “They’ll make sure he has a good home.”

  I almost choked on the words. I was in and out of their shelters and went through five foster-families, till my latest foster-father made life impossible. I should have gone to my caseworker, but I just wanted out of there, fast. There are a lot of good people at Child and Family Services, but it’s a state bureaucracy; too many regulations and massive caseloads can wear down most well-intentioned people. I figure I did them a favor by cutting through the red tape and leaving Utah.

  “Do you think so? Perhaps they took him before I woke. Can you find out?”

  I halfheartedly nodded. “If it’s what you need, to know where he is, it shouldn’t be hard.”

  Then I had to ask. “Lindy, what happened to you?”

  She let her hair loose and wrung her hands together.

  Until I became accustomed to it, seeing the faces of the dead was an alarming experience, because they are stuck with the expression they wore when they died. Lindy went through the physical motions of pulling on her hair and wringing her hands, as if distressed, but her expression didn’t alter.

  “I was taking a bath and I know I locked the front and back doors. A man came in the bathroom and went behind me. I couldn’t even scream. I wanted to, but I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I gripped the sides of the tub and tried to haul myself up, and he touched me on the forehead. I barely felt it. But then it was like a … a jolt through my body. It took my breath away. I went under the water, just for a second, came back up and I still couldn’t breathe. That’s all I remember till I woke again.”

  I stepped closer. “What do you recall next?”

  Her eyes slid away as she concentrated on a memory which could already be fading. “People there. Police. In the bathroom.” Her gaze darted back to me and her tone turned indignant. “It was so embarrassing! One of the officers picked up my thong and said he wondered if his girlfriend would like one. The detective said he’d get one for his wife, but it would cut off her circulation—not that it would matter because her crotch atrophied years ago. I was stark naked in my bathtub and they joked about my underwear! And then the other officer said he’d heard on good authority if you—”

  I cut in. I didn’t need that much information. I kept my voice and expression neutral, although I wanted to grin at the mental picture her words evoked. “Making jokes at a crime scene is a coping mechanism. A kind of barrier they put between them and the reality of what they see and have to deal with. Your underwear was an excuse, a distraction if you like.”

  She stared at the ground and I hoped she hadn’t lost her train of thought. But she continued: “I tried to cover myself with my hands as I got out the tub. I yelled at them, but they took no notice, as if they didn’t hear me. I tried to wrap a towel around but I couldn’t seem to pick it up. I was … I froze. I couldn’t understand what was happening. And then….”

  She brought her hands up to cover her eyes.

  After talking to so many dead people, you would think I’d become hardened to it, but although I learned to keep my feelings to myself, their sad stories still get to me. After a while they come to terms with what happened to them, and become resigned, although I did meet a couple with a serious case of self-denial. But people like Lindy who have only just passed over—I feel so damned awful for them, for what they go through, not only losing their lives but the frustration, disbelief and fear they experience as they come to realize they are no longer among the living.

  She dropped her hands and looked me in the eyes. “They were talking about the dead woman in the tub and I realized they meant me.

  “They left after a while, taking me with them. I mean … I watched them take my body, but I was still there! Then I was all alone. And then I remembered you. So I came to see you.”

  “How did you manage that, Lindy?”

  “I walked here. It isn’t far. Although it did seem to take a real long time.”

  Two days. She took two days to reach me.

  I didn’t explain how her leaving the apartment was, as far as I knew, an oddity. “I’ll see what I can do. But it could take time and I can’t have you waiting in my yard.”

  “I won’t be a bother,” she said quickly.

  I had to be blunt. “Well, you are a bother when every time I look out the window I see you staring in.”

  She glanced at the yard. “I don’t want to go back to the apartment. Can I stay here if I keep out of your way? If I keep out of sight?”

  I closed my eyes and puffed out a quick breath. I didn’t want her here, but I couldn’t make her leave if she didn’t want to. Compromise would work better.

  The rest of the lot stretches out behind the house. I have an honest-to-god orchard back there with a pear, a couple of plums, a Bing cherry and four apple trees. Grapevines smother the back wall. The harvest is nothing special as the high altitude means a short growing season, but my neighbors are glad to come in and pick their own, and in return I get a few jams, jellies and relishes. Hoping Lindy could follow, I walked toward the orchard. “Why don’t you hang out with the apple trees for now? But when I find your son, I want you gone from here, Lindy. That’s the deal.”

  She came after me. “But where will I—”

  “I don’t know,” I cut in. “But not here.”

  I’m not unsympathetic, far from it, but there have to be boundaries between the living and the dead. Their place of departure is typically their boundary, but in Lindy’s case, with her ability to move about, I had to outline those boundaries for her. My backyard would not to be the place she lingered till she passed over.

  “By the way,” I added as she wandered toward the fruit trees, “the man in your apartment, what did he look like?”

  She half-turned back. “I don’t remember very well. He moved so fast, he was a blur. I think he had long yellow hair. Oh, and his eyes seemed to glint. I don’t mean how a person’s eyes can gleam in lamplight, they … oh, I don’t know. They just looked strange.”

  I headed for the backdoor leading to the kitchen, acorns from the scrub oak crunching underfoot. I made a face. Another oddity. The one thing the dead never forget is the face of their killer.

  “Well?”

  I poured more coffee. “It’s her all right.”

  “And?”

  “A man was in her apartment. I think he killed her, but I don’t know how.
She doesn’t know herself. All she’s interested in is her little boy.” I frowned at Jack, wondering if I skipped over some of the newspaper article. “The paper didn’t mention a child, did it?”

  “If it had, I would have told you.”

  I got up from the table. “I’m gonna talk to Mike.”

  Jack went to the window in the backdoor, from where he could see Lindy. “She’s a looker. Wouldn’t mind wrapping myself around that.”

  “Now that I’d like to see,” said Mel.

  “Yeah, Jack,” I chimed in as I headed for the stairs. “And why don’t you pass me the newspaper while you’re at it.”

  I gave Mel a conspiratorial look. We girls have to stick together. Jack glared at both of us. “I suppose you think you’re funny.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Dead people. They slay me.

  Chapter Two

  Showered, clad in Levis, white long-sleeved sweater and white surgical-style tennis shoes, I headed out the door, grabbing up my green corduroy jacket as I passed through the hall.

  The windows of my navy-blue Subaru Forrester were thick with frost. I knew I should have put it in the garage last night. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Five minutes later, I turned off Beecher onto Second Street and headed downtown.

  My cell rang. It was Colin. “Hi Tiff.”

  Colin is a nice guy. I met him at the court house, me on the way in, he on the way out after paying a speeding fine. We collided in the entrance, kind of rebounded, and looked each other up and down. I guess he liked what he saw as much as I did, because he apologized and invited me for coffee. That was three months ago. Colin is a gangling six-four, with fine, pale-blond hair and lazy blue-gray eyes. During my teen years, we called eyes like Col’s “go-to-bed-eyes.” I didn’t get to that piece of furniture till our eighth date, with a little urging from me. Our relationship had progressed to the “next level” and, well, I was a happy camper.

  My bones loosened a little and my voice dropped an octave. “Hi, Colin.”

  “Did you have a good time last night?”

  “I had a great time.” A nice meal at a good restaurant. A few drinks. Back to his house. His nice empty house. Just him and me. I call that a good night.

  I got lost in the memory a little and almost drove through Gillian as she leaped out in the road. I swerved to miss her, glowering and wagging my finger. She hunched her little shoulders and backed up to the bushes from which she’d emerged.

  I avoided her mother like the plague. Gillian cropped up in the conversation every time I bumped into her mom, even after three years. Listening to a mother reminisce about her dead child is really uncomfortable when the little blighter jumps out in front of your car almost every time you drive past her house.

  On her way to school, Gillian had just left her front yard when some jackass plowed into her, then went on his way, leaving her dead in the street. He was still alive and she still waited to pass over.

  “Tiff?”

  “Uh? Oh, sorry. I was avoiding a jaywalker.”

  “So, when are we gonna explore the sheets in your bed?”

  Never. “Um. I’d feel sort of uncomfortable, you know, with my aunt being here.” When I met Colin, I made the mistake of telling him I lived alone, so I invented an elderly, recently bereaved aunt moving in with me. The few times Col picked me up from my house, Aunty was napping, but she was a light sleeper. I know, a pretty lame story, one which Colin would see through in a nanosecond if I let him in the house, but at the time I happened to be looking at a poster for elderly care.

  “I can understand that. But she isn’t there every minute of the day, is she?”

  I got a familiar sinking feeling. “Pretty much. She’s getting on in years, Col. She doesn’t get out often.”

  He forced a chuckle. “You sure you don’t have a husband hidden away?”

  No, just two nosy roommates. The first time I invited a boyfriend back to what was then my new home, there we were getting down and dirty in my bedroom when I saw Jack and Mel watching us over his shoulder. Killed the moment for me. Their prying had finished two prior relationships. Now it was his place or a motel, or not at all. No, we can’t spend the night, an evening, an afternoon, a few hours on the bed, couch, rug in front of the fire. I didn’t even dare let anyone visit for a couple of hours lest he turn amorous. Sooner rather than later, they got suspicious. They thought I was hiding something. Which I was.

  As I drove past the McClusky place, the window started to fog up and I wiped at it with a piece of paper towel I kept in the car for that purpose. I therefore had an unobstructed view of Frank McClusky as he chased a small, hysterically yipping Pomeranian around the garden, while Daisy McClusky trundled after them, calling to her dog and wondering what on earth had gotten into it. I once had a conversation with Frank, during which I tried to explain how his behavior distressed his wife, but he only said how much he hated the dog while he was alive.

  I told Colin I had to go as talking to him made me think about last night, and getting all gooey while driving was one hell of a distraction. He accepted this as a valid reason to end our call.

  Frank and Daisy were victims of a home invasion. Frank made a break for it and was shot to death in his front yard. The felons were doing life, but they were young men. Daisy had to put up with Frank terrorizing her pooch until the men or the dog died, whichever came first.

  I know people who insist the dead are all around us, although they can’t tell me why the deceased linger, if there is a purpose to it, or why some remain and some pass on. I see only those who died a violent and unnatural death. They are victims of hit-and-run, innocent bystanders caught in crossfire, or the murdered, and they do not leave until their killer dies; which means there are an awful lot of them in the world just waiting for their killer to pass away, so they can move onto wherever the dead go.

  Sometimes, when they finally have the opportunity, they stay here anyway. They can become so entrenched in their lifeless existence it becomes their reality. I found out the hard way. I would have sensed a presence had I bought the house a year later, but my ability was new and, I think, weaker back then in that respect.

  I was furious when I discovered Jack and Mel in my home. Realtors are supposed to disclose a crime on the property they are marketing, and mine told me the previous owner, an elderly man, died in the house, but of natural causes. No mention of a double murder. I tried the psychic ability thing, said I detected a presence in the house, and got the usual weird look. They insisted the only death was of the previous owner, and unfortunately, my research backed that up. So I was stuck. The house was already mine. I had no legal reason to opt out. My only recourse was to sell the place.

  But Jack and Mel were so damned pathetically grateful to have someone to talk to, who could tell them about the outside world and past and current events, I somehow never got to moving out.

  They were pathetically grateful at the time. Their true nature came to the surface once they felt sure of me: sarcastic, abrasive, overbearing, demanding. But now they are more than roommates, they are family, the only family I have.

  The departed lose their memories over time, so neither of my new buddies could tell me much, apart from where their earthly remains lay. In my basement, under a foot of concrete and three feet of dirt. It didn’t bother me because I realized a long time ago that dead bodies are just cast off containers for what a person really was. More research turned up one Jackson Trewellyn, twenty-eight when he disappeared in the mountains above Clarion while hiking alone in 1986. Melissa Trent disappeared in 1990. Divers found her car on the bottom of Long Meadow Lake as they searched for the body of a man pulled under by the nasty little currents in there. Mel was a student at River Valley University, on her way home from her part-time evening job. She never made it. Mel is not wet, so she didn’t die in the lake. Mel and Jack died in my house.

  The previous owner, Frederick Coleman, died at seventy-one. He was a powerful old guy and surprised everyone
who knew him when his heart gave out. I found his obituary in the library, photocopied it and showed it to Jack and Mel, and sure enough, he did them in. So, my roommates can leave anytime they want. They just don’t want to.

  I should have reported the murders to the police, but what would that have accomplished? For a start, they would have dug up my basement. Mel and Jack had no grieving family to notify. And Coleman’s family did not need the stigma and grief of knowing he was a murderer.

  Jack and Mel could have gone on their way when Coleman died, had I not moved in the house and instantly became their best pal. If I ever move out, maybe they will too. But with me to talk to, they feel very much a part of the real world.

  I returned to my hometown of Clarion, Utah, with its population of 82,000, hoping to see less of the dead than in San Francisco. I found two of them on my street and two more in my house.

  Just my luck.

  I haven’t always seen dead people. Until eleven years ago I’d have looked sideways at anyone who told me they did. And of course, I was in a real public place, a popular little sidewalk café crowded with people on a Saturday afternoon when it happened. I finished my iced chai and noticed a woman near the door of the café as I fished in my pocket for change. She stood in the heat of the sun and it burned, but she wore a gray plastic raincoat with the hood over her hair, and black rubber boots peeked from beneath her long black skirt. Another loony, but I envied her for her pale skin and the fact she didn’t sweat. I sat under a big umbrella and I know my face shone pink from the heat.

  I laid two dollars and some change on the table, got to my feet and walked past her, and noticed her tears. They streamed down her face, and she held her hands clenched tightly at chest level, obviously in some distress.

  I went on by, but I turned my head and caught her eyes, and she stared right at me.

  I couldn’t help myself. I stopped and turned to her. “Are you okay?”