by E. C. Bell
“Remember when you asked me if I saw Arnie, after he was dead?” I asked.
“What?” She’d been staring off into space, as though she was listening for that bear I’d pretended to hear. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the first time I was in your apartment. Remember? You wanted to know whether I’d seen Arnie’s ghost.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I did. See him, I mean.”
“I knew it!” she said. “I knew you lied to me that day! He was there, wasn’t he?”
She grabbed my arm and whirled me around, then pointed the gun in my face.
“Yes,” I whispered. “He was there.”
“I knew it.” Her head swung, and she stared at the shrine. More specifically, at the mason jar with the little white candle trapped inside. ”But have you seen him lately?”
“No,” I said. “But I bet, if we go to your place, he’ll still be there. I can help you talk to him, if you want.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary.” Her crazy brown eyes swung in my direction, and her whole demeanour screamed self-satisfaction.
I frowned. Dammit. I had hoped she’d take the bait, but she hadn’t.
“Why won’t it be necessary?” I asked. “Don’t you want to communicate with Arnie again?”
“Oh, I do,” she said, and stared at the mason jar sitting among the fake flowers. “And I will. Very soon. Without your help.”
I looked at the mason jar and then at Rosalie. There was something happening I didn’t understand. “What did you do, Rosalie?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing you need to know about yet, anyhow.”
I stared hard at the mason jar with the candle.
“I don’t think you’re telling me the truth, Rosalie,” I said. I pointed at the jar. “Why does that have a lid?”
Rosalie wouldn’t look me in the eye. “No reason,” she said.
“The rest of the candles are all out in the open, so you can burn them,” I said. “And it looks like you’ve been doing it for a long time.”
“I have,” she said softly. “Since the school was closed.”
“But not that candle,” I said, pointing at the small white candle trapped in the jar. “It looks like that candle was only lit once.”
“That’s true,” she said. And she smiled, a crazy-making smile that gave me the serious creeps, and shrugged. Like she had decided that it didn’t matter what I knew anymore.
That creeped me out even more. My best bet was to shut my mouth and hope that she’d let me live long enough for James and the police to find me.
But I wasn’t one to do what was best for me in the best of situations.
“Why was that candle only lit once?” I asked again.
“I found it on the internet,” she said. “A way to trap Arnie’s spirit and bring him with me. Anywhere I wanted.” She gestured at the mason jar, with the innocent-looking white candle.
“My apartment was cold all the time, no matter how high I turned up the heat. And then, sometimes, I’d feel pinches. Cold pinches on my arms and my face and my neck. I knew, just knew, that it was him. With me.” She sighed. “I’m pretty sure I caught him. I did everything right.”
“You can find anything on the internet,” I said distantly. She couldn’t have trapped Arnie’s spirit in that stupid glass jar. Could she?
And then I heard the voice again. It was Arnie’s voice. Muffled, like he was trapped.
Trapped by a crazy person in a frigging mason jar in an abandoned locker room in a partially demolished high school. Good grief.
“It’s like a miracle, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I guess.” I looked at her, hating her vacuous eyes and her crazy-making smile. “Why did you do it?”
“Well, I couldn’t have him running off and finding you again, now, could I?”
“What?”
“He had that stupid crush on you,” she said, and I watched her eyes turn to ice. “He couldn’t seem to get you out of his system. I thought, once you were gone from here, he’d settle down, you know? But he didn’t.” She shook her head sadly. “I think you had some kind of spell on him. Like a witch or something.” She glanced at me. “Are you a witch or something?”
“No,” I said.
“You and your mother both,” she said, as though I hadn’t opened my mouth. “I bet you’re both witches.”
“No, we’re not,” I said. “Honest to God—”
“I don’t think you should be taking the Lord’s name in vain,” she said primly. “Unless you want to go to Hell.” She put the gun up to my face. “But I imagine that’s exactly what you want. Being a witch.”
“I’m not a witch!” I cried.
“Then why did you keep taking Arnie away from me?” she screamed. The hand holding the gun shook, and I closed my eyes.
“Please don’t shoot me, Rosalie. Please.”
I pointed at the mason jar. My hand was shaking almost as hard as hers. “You have Arnie. Fair and square. Why don’t you let me go? I won’t tell anyone, and you can keep him here, all to yourself.”
“Oh, I plan on keeping him,” she said. “No worries in that regard. But I don’t think I can let you go. I think you need to be punished for your sins. Which means you need to die.”
I heard a metallic click. She’d pulled back the hammer on the gun and had it pointed at my face again. But this time it looked like she was determined to shoot me. Kill me. Dead.
Dead like Arnie.
“If you kill me here, then Arnie and I will be together,” I said, trying to keep the shaking, which had gone from my hands to the rest of my body, out of my voice. It wasn’t working though, because I was quaking like I was standing in a snowstorm and freezing to death. “Together, forever. And there will be nothing you can do about it once I’m dead. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Now, I had no idea if I was telling her the truth or not. But if I could make her think, even for a moment, that she could actually drive Arnie and me back together by killing me, maybe that would give her pause.
Please please please.
“You’re lying,” she said. “The internet said he would be trapped in there until I let him out. And I can take him anywhere I want after you’re gone.” She smirked, an ugly look on her face. “He’s portable.”
“No,” I said, desperation quaking through my voice. “No. Once I’m dead, I’ll be able to get him out myself.”
She frowned. “But the internet—”
“I don’t care what the internet said,” I snapped. “I can do it. Shoot me and see if I’m not telling the truth.”
Please don’t shoot me.
Her frown deepened, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I heard another dry click. But all she’d done was carefully let the hammer down.
“That’s not what I want,” she said. “I want him for myself.”
“Let me go and I’ll leave. You can keep him,” I said, pointing at the mason jar nestled in the cemetery flowers. “Forever, just like you want.”
“I’m not letting you go,” she snapped. “Get that thought out of your head right now. You have to be punished for what you did to Arnie and me.” Her brow furrowed. “I just need to figure out a better way.”
She gestured to the end of the bench, where there were no candles. “Park yourself,” she said. “While I think.”
So I did. After all, she had the gun, and she was batshit crazy. I couldn’t be sure that she’d believe what I’d told her. Heck, for all I knew, she’d check online to see if I was telling the truth.
I hoped she wouldn’t do that. I needed her to believe me, at least for a while longer.
Just until the cops finally found Rosalie’s car and rescued me.
God. I was nearly as delusional as Rosalie. No wonder Arnie had been attracted to us both. We were just about pathetic enough for him to use, any way he wanted.
Arnie:
Hear Me, Please!
“MARIE!”
“Marie!!”
“Marie!!! Get me out of here! Please!”
Fuck.
Marie:
The Crazy Girl Has an Idea
TO BE HONEST, all I wanted to do was put my head down and cry like a baby, but I knew that wasn’t going to do me any good. All I could hope was that Rosalie would take her own sweet time figuring out what else to do with me now that I’d convinced her that killing me would only drive me into Arnie’s arms.
As if.
“I think I have an idea,” she said, two short minutes later. “If killing you would make it so that you and Arnie would be together, then what would happen if I killed myself?”
What?
“All I have to do is kill myself, and then Arnie and I can be together. For eternity.” She smiled. “Right?”
What?
“Of course, that means I won’t be able to watch you be punished for everything you did to Arnie and me, but I guess I’ll just have to live with that.” She snickered and then glared at me.
“Come on,” she said. “That was a pretty good joke, wasn’t it? Because if I kill myself, I won’t be able to live—”
“I get it,” I said hastily. “I just don’t understand. Why would you want to kill yourself?”
“Weren’t you listening to me? To be with Arnie.” She huffed out bitter laughter. “You aren’t too bright, are you?”
Apparently, she was right. I wasn’t too bright. She was talking about killing herself. All I had to do was shut my mouth, and she would eliminate every problem I had.
But I couldn’t do that.
True, she had kidnapped me, and I was absolutely certain that she was nutty as a fruitcake, but I was pretty sure that having her spirit trapped here would make it next to impossible for me to move Arnie on, and he had to move on.
For my mother’s sake and mine, he just had to.
So, I decided to try to scare her into staying alive.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rosalie,” I said. “After all, Arnie’s going to be pretty pissed at you, isn’t he?”
“For what?” she asked. An impatient frown creased her face.
“You know. For killing him.” I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure she was the one who had offed Arnie, and all I had left was a Hail Mary.
“Oh that!” She laughed, as if she was relieved that was all I had on her. “He’ll forgive me, eventually.”
“But—but—” My words stammered to a stop. She had just confessed to killing Arnie, but she was acting like she believed he’d forgive her. He never forgave anyone anything. Ever. “Are you nuts? You killed him. Dead.”
I thought about the condition of her little-girl pink room. His brains all over the rose wallpaper, and his blood soaked into her mattress. “I mean, seriously. He’s never going to forgive you.”
“How do you know that?” she asked. “You don’t know him half as well as you think you do. Most of the time he was a wonderful man, and when he wasn’t, afterward, he’d always apologize. Always. And I always forgave him.” She tittered laughter. “Same as when I did something wrong. He’d let me apologize to him and then he’d forgive me. Every time. See? We have a system. I forgive him, he forgives me. He won’t hold this against me. I know it.”
“Jesus.” I shook my head. “He won’t. You killed him.”
“Doesn’t matter what you think,” Rosalie said stubbornly. “We have a system.”
I don’t know how long this stupid impasse would have gone on if Rosalie hadn’t snapped her fingers and giggled delightedly.
“Now I got it,” she said. “How I can make you pay for what you did, and still get Arnie all to myself.”
She pulled her cell phone from her coat pocket and flipped it open. Pressed three digits, and as it rang, began to breathe more and more heavily, as though she was hyperventilating.
When the 911 operator answered, Rosalie swung into full-bore victim mode.
“This is Rosalie Jacoby. You gotta help me!” she whisper-screamed into the phone. “Marie Jenner has kidnapped me! I think she’s going to kill me!”
“What are you doing?” I gasped, but all she did was wink at me as she continued to cry and whisper into her cell.
“She kidnapped me,” she said, sobbing. “And she took me somewhere. I don’t know where I am, but she’s says she’s going to kill me for stealing Arnie away from her. Arnie Stillwell. S-T-I . . . Oh good.” She winked again and mouthed, “This will only take a minute,” before turning her attention to the phone.
“I didn’t kidnap you! You kidnapped me!” I cried, and scrabbled in my pocket for my own phone, so I could finally talk to my own 911 operator.
But my phone was dead.
“She kidnapped me!” I screamed, hoping against hope that Rosalie’s 911 operator would hear.
Rosalie turned up the volume herself, to out-scream me. “Oh no!” she cried. She sounded terrified, and if I hadn’t been sitting in front of her, I would have been convinced that she was scared to death. “She has a gun! Oh my God, help me! I think she’s going to—”
She fired her pistol right by her cell phone and then slapped her cell shut.
“That should convince them,” she said.
Well, at least someone had convinced the cops that something terrible was happening. But if crazy Rosalie actually killed herself, the cops would be looking for me to arrest, not her. Dammit anyhow.
Arnie:
Blue as a Fresh Bruise
THE GLASS JAR Rosalie had trapped me in made everything on the outside look bluish, like it was freshly bruised. I’d tried getting Marie’s attention a couple of times, but for some reason, she couldn’t focus on me. Every time I yelled, she looked around like she heard something, but couldn’t pinpoint where I was.
But Rosalie was a different kettle of fish. She barely took her eyes from me and the jar as she talked and talked and talked to Marie.
Pinpoint focus.
I wished I could understand what Rosalie was saying, because everything sounded muted and dull, like I was underwater. I only caught the occasional word, and what I heard didn’t make much sense.
What the hell was Rosalie saying?
She waved the gun around, gesturing angrily at Marie. Then they both got real quiet, and I thought that Marie looked like she was going to cry. Wondered idly if it was because of me. I knew she’d told me she didn’t want to get back with me, but we’d been through so much together. She’d forgive me again. She had to, didn’t she?
After all, I was dead.
Rosalie made a phone call, which surprised me. You don’t usually call someone in the middle of a kidnapping. She was carrying on, crying and wailing into the phone even as she smiled at Marie, who looked horrified. Then she shot her little peashooter up into the air and slapped her cell off.
That should convince them. I think that’s what she said.
That set Marie off. She yelled and screamed, only subsiding when Rosalie brought the gun up and pointed it right at her face. But she kept talking, so rapidly I couldn’t read her lips. I was pretty sure she said “crazy bitch” once or twice, but that could have been wishful thinking on my part.
Marie slowly stood. Rosalie gestured with the gun, and evidently told her to sit down and shut up. Marie said something that looked like “screw you,” and took a step over the bench she’d been sitting on. Toward me and my jar.
“He deserves to know,” I think she said.
Rosalie yelled something I couldn’t follow and slapped the gun under her own chin.
Marie shook her head, and reached for the jar. “He deserves to know what you did,” she said. Then her hands blocked my vision as she grabbed it.
I felt more than heard the second shot, and Marie’s hands jerked away from me and the jar.
Had that silly bitch shot Marie?
No. She hadn’t shot Marie. Rosalie had shot herself. She’d aimed under the chin and up, but it looked like she hadn
’t done the right kind of damage, if she was hoping to die painlessly and quick. Looked like the bullet took off a fair bit of her jaw before making it to her brain pan right by her left ear.
Marie watched the light go out of Rosalie’s eyes, then turned to me and my jar.
I was pretty sure she said, “I am not dealing with your girlfriend by myself,” as she grabbed the jar in which Rosalie had me trapped. “Get out here and help me. Right now.”
Then she flung the jar—and me—at the cement wall next to the bank of lockers.
The jar smashed into a thousand pieces, and the blue cast that I’d seen over everything was finally gone. I was free from my prison.
I probably should have hightailed it out of there while I could, but when Marie snapped, “Get your ass over here right now!” I went. After all, she was the woman I loved. I had to figure out a quick way to get on her good side, even if it meant dealing with the ghost of my on-again off-again part-time girlfriend, now didn’t I?
Yes. Of course I did.
Marie:
Had to Remember the CPR
ARNIE SWIRLED TO semi-substance in front of me as Rosalie slumped to the filthy floor, gasping and wheezing small screams of anguish with every diminishing breath.
I saw his eyes look longingly at the door. Like he was thinking about walking out of the situation. That’s when I snapped.
“You stay right here!” I cried. “If this girl dies, you are helping me deal with her spirit. She’s frigging nuts! I can’t do this by myself!”
“All right, Marie. Don’t lose your shit. I’ll stay.”
He wasn’t going to stay. He looked like he was going to bolt as soon as I turned my back. But I had to call Emergency Services to try to save stupid Rosalie’s life.
So I stared at Arnie like I thought my laser-beam eyes would glue him in place or something, as I grabbed Rosalie’s cell phone and dialed 911. Went through the routine, but hung up as the operator entreated me to stay on the line, please stay on the line.
