Then one day, the kid just shows up dead on the front porch, head all bashed up. They trace the weapon back to one of the dad’s carpentry hammers. Denny’s father killed himself before he could be hanged.
Want to hear about another weird part of the story? Nobody knew Denny even existed before he turned up dead. I mean, obviously he existed but as near as I could tell from the newspaper articles, nobody knew the couple even had a child. Easier to hide back then I suppose, but still, poor kid, right? Basically, Denny lived his whole life inside his house, my house, hidden from the outside world.
Well, I determined to not let that happen.
* * *
First, I had to do something about that head wound. You see, Denny was real, by which I mean when he was present, you could touch him, put your arm around him. He wasn’t pale or ghostly, his lips weren’t blue, he didn’t walk through walls or float. He didn’t eat but that didn’t matter much.
So, one evening, this must have been maybe three months ago, Denny and I were hanging out in the living room playing cards, when I decided to bring up the subject again.
“Denny, I want to talk to you about something, but I need you to promise to stay with me,” I said. “It won’t be scary. Can you do that?”
“I think so, Sam,” he said. I noticed that he slid a bit closer to me. The kid scared easy and didn’t like talking about how he died. But that’s parenthood, right? Sometimes you have to have the tough conversations.
“I was thinking maybe we get you some new clothes for you, something you’d like.” I paused and held my breath waiting for him to pop away. “And a hat.”
“You mean to cover my brain up, Sam?”
“Well look, Denny, people wouldn’t understand a little boy like you just playing outside or whatever with a, if you are, you know….”
“Dead.” The word dropped out of his mouth like a dead weight. “But I’m just me, Sam.”
He started to cry, so I just pulled him to me and let him have a good wail on my shoulder. I was careful to not touch the back of his head. As much as I loved the kid, I got queasy by looking at that thing. But I’ll tell you, the fact that we were talking about it and he didn’t just disappear right then and there gave me some hope.
“It’s OK, Denny, I won’t let anything happen to you. I love you, kid.”
That was the first time I said those words, I surprised even myself. But I really did love him. He really was my son.
“You do?”
I nodded.
“I love you too, Sam,” he said between sniffles. “OK, we can get new clothes.”
I was elated! I spent an afternoon at the mall picking up some jeans and T-shirts, cool stuff that a little modern boy might like. I was so excited I even just blurted out to the cashier at Sears that I was picking up some clothes for my son.
“That’s nice!” she said.
It felt good to say that word. Son.
I admit that by this time I wasn’t really working at all. I had some money saved up from past jobs and was putting a lot on my only credit card, but I wasn’t worried. Work would still be out there later, after Denny and I really had the time to get to know each other.
Back at the house, Denny was there, just inside the door, waiting for me. I unpacked all the bags and laid out the clothes for him. He selected a regular pair of jeans, Lee because that’s what I wear, and a Spiderman T-shirt. For a hundred-plus-year-old kid, he was pretty well-versed in all the latest superheroes and fads. I bought him three different hats: a wool knit pull down with a Boston Bruins logo on it, a wide sun hat that had one of those flaps that hung down to his neck, and a baseball hat with a closed snap in the back. He picked the baseball hat.
“Don’t worry,” he said, seeing the look on my face, “I’ll wear the sweatshirt with the hood over it!”
So that’s what he did. There was a long floor mirror in the front hall and after he had dressed we posed in front of it for a picture. That’s the picture I showed you, the one with my arm around him. I’ve looked at that picture often since that day. Turns out that of all the time we spent together, that’s the only shot I ever took of Denny. Again, like I said, all that business about ghosts not appearing in pictures, none of that is true.
Anyway, we stood there for a few minutes, father and son. I thought maybe he even had a few of my own features, you know. A long nose, black hair. He was too young for the beard.
And then we went outside for the first time. And for the last time.
* * *
That was yesterday, and I have to tell you with no exaggeration, it was the best afternoon of my life. We strolled down Main Street with not a care in the world, like father and son. He held my hand. We smiled a lot.
He had this joke he like to tell. He’d look up at me and say, ‘Hey, Sam, what’s brown and sticky?”
I’d say, “I don’t know, Denny, what’s brown and sticky?”
He’d hold up a twig and say, “A stick!” Man, he loved that joke.
We stopped at a pizza joint and he pretended to eat just to humor me, and also because I suppose it would be weird for us to be there and for Denny to just sit there. He said that he could eat, if he wanted, just that he was never hungry.
Honestly, most of the time that I’ve spent here I’ve kept to myself, so I didn’t exactly have any friends and certainly no family. We did, coincidentally, run into Laura, one of the clerks down at the hardware store where I used to go to pick up seed or tools.
“Hey, Sam,” she said. “Haven’t seen you around much lately!”
“Been busy, Laura,” I said. “Denny, say hi to Laura.”
She looked down surprised, like she hadn’t seen him. “Oh, my goodness, aren’t you adorable!”
“Afternoon ma’am,” Denny said.
“And so polite! Who is this, Sam?”
And with pride, I proclaimed, “Denny is my son!”
* * *
We stopped at a local park, one of those pocket deals with a slide and swing. Denny loved that.
“I haven’t been to a park in a long time, Sam,” he said.
Poor kid, more like a hundred years. At one point, on the way down a slide, Denny’s hood slipped off and a big blotch of red sparkled for a second in the midday sun, but I managed to get his hood back up before anyone could see.
Later in the afternoon, we had made our way clear to the other side of town, near the arena, when Denny became quiet.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” I asked.
“Sam,” he said, his eyes begin to tear up. “I’d like to show you where I live.”
I didn’t know what he meant. “You live with me, Denny.”
“No, I mean where I live permanently, over there, in the Valley.”
The air suddenly crackled with the familiar electric air as I realized what he was talking about.
“Denny, do you mean Valley Cemetery? Is that where you were buried?”
He nodded.
“I – why go there?”
The kid shrugged and I could see him begin to shimmer, like he was going to fade away.
“OK, OK, Denny,” I said. “no problem, just stay with me. We’ll go. Can you show me?”
My son once again took me by my hand, and together we walked through the gates of the city’s oldest cemetery, one of those garden-variety places, all woods and green paths. I’d never been there before but Denny knew exactly where we were going.
We reached my son’s grave just as dust had begun to settle on the city, casting long shadows against the gravestones. And there he was.
Denny’s tombstone was tiny, bright white, only about a foot high. He pulled down his hood and stepped up to the rock, ran his fingers against the stone.
There were no other stones around his. It read: Dennis Smith, sweet boy, 1830-1835
I blinked. “Wait ... I thought you died in 1900.”
“I did,” he said, his back still to me. “And dozens of times before and dozens of times after. So many times
.”
He sighed and pulled off his cap. He was still the little boy I knew, but suddenly I saw a depth of age and soul in his eyes that I can’t believe I missed before.
“And now again today, Sam. Doomed to repeat the cycle.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I damn well knew it was bad. But I had nothing, no leverage. No friends. No job. “Wait, Denny, I don’t understand. You’re my son.”
“My friend, Sam,” Denny said, “of all the dads I’ve had, of all the friends, you were pure. You really love me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I whispered. I fell to my knees.
Denny reached out and brushed my cheek with his fingers. They were warm. “I have to go, Sam, I’m sorry you were caught up in this, I do wish you the best.” He smiled and was gone.
***
Well, I suppose you know the rest. I ran home, literally ran, my heart pounding. But when I got to the front stoop of our home, there you were, with him. I’m sorry I caused such a ruckus, I know you and the other police were only doing your jobs. And I imagine finding a little boy on the front porch of my home with his head bashed in was jarring.
It doesn’t surprise me that you found one of my shovels in the back shed covered in blood. And I think everybody in this room knows that the blood will match that little boy down in the morgue.
And you can unlock these cuffs, I mean where do I have to go? I lost a son today and he wasn’t even my son. He wasn’t even real. He was Denny. And he was my ghost.
One Way Dead End by Ogmios
East Boston Relief Station
Paul R. McNamee
If someone stabbed Henry Alvarez in the upper groin with an ice pick, the pain might have matched what he was feeling. He groaned and hissed air through his teeth. Dealing with the discomfort was always difficult, trying to handle the pain while driving a car was worse. Navigating the rainy evening streets of Boston made the drive a complete cluster-fuck.
“Calculating route.” The female voice stated from the GPS unit.
“You damn well better!” Henry had missed his turn. Not hard to do, even with a GPS. His business partners had joked about the grid of streets in Boston. What grid? The place had been laid out along cow-paths in the 1600s and no one had bothered to reroute the streets.
Another stab of piercing pain and Henry doubted the intelligence of his decision to drive himself to the ER. He wasn’t about to call for an ambulance. Not worth the cost, regardless of what his insurance covered. He didn’t know and wasn’t going to find out. He could have called a cab. That would have been the smart thing to do but he was already paying for the rental car.
“Turn right in a quarter mile.”
Henry glanced at the glowing map on his smart phone. Meridian Street.
The GPS dinged for a turn, he almost missed it. There was no street sign but it must have been the turn. He hoped. Sometimes city streets were so close he wondered if he had turned at the correct ding.
Another stab of deep pain. He cried out. He yanked the steering wheel, pulled alongside the parked cars. Unfamiliar with the rental car controls, he took a moment to find the hazard lights and jabbed the button. He gasped and caught his breath. He grabbed the bottled water from the cup holder and gulped down the last sips, even though his stomach was roiling.
His stomach wasn’t the actual problem but the pain nauseated him.
“Fucking kidney stone.”
He peered out the streaked windshield. He saw no lit windows, no porch lights or driveway illumination. Only streetlights. Parked cars lined the street. No pedestrians. No luck catching a leaving car.
Where the hell was he going to park?
He drove on, pained and frustrated.
After a few blocks, the GPS chimed again.
“You have arrived at your destination.”
He looked at the smart phone in the cradle. The glow lit his pained features. The address stated he was at Boston City Hospital.
Henry craned his neck, looking out the window, past the rain drops on the glass.
“The hell I have.”
Across the street, he saw light. A brick building with entrance columns capped with rounded spheres. An old chandelier lit the entranceway. The building matched the age of the light fixture. It looked like a small apartment building, with a row of windows over the entrance doors. Initially, Henry thought the wrought iron fire escape over the door was a balcony, until he realized it was designed for occupants to crawl from their windows.
One window was lit. There were no front steps. A ramp ran from the sidewalk to the entrance. Letters were carved in the stone over the double doors;
BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL
EAST BOSTON RELIEF STATION
EST. 1902
East Boston Relief Station?
What the hell was that?
The place didn’t look like a hospital. Henry doubted it had ever looked like a hospital, even in 1902.
Taken with the odd building facade, Henry hadn’t noticed the obvious – an open parking space, directly in front of the ramp entrance. He glanced around, looking for signs or meters. Nothing appeared to forbid his using the open street space. Pain stabbed again.
“Jesus fuck!”
Henry whipped the car around and backed into the space. Sweat pouring down his face, he wiped his sleeve across his forehead.
“Ticket. Towed. I don’t give a shit.”
He grabbed his briefcase from the floor. All his luggage was at the hotel not in the car. He still had two days before his flight home. The business trip would be shot but so long as he passed the damn stone before then and could go home on time.
Henry paused, stood in the drizzling rain and stared at the entranceway. He couldn’t possibly be at the right place. No blue light, no red light, no EMERGENCY sign. No ambulance driveway. Wooden doors and brick and stone.
The doors opened. Light from an interior hallway limned a woman. She wore a long white dress, and her hair was tied back. Blue cloth wrapped her head.
A nun.
No, not a nun. A nurse. Or perhaps a nun who was a nurse. Her old-fashioned uniform included a dark blue cloak she had placed over her hair to keep off the rain. A white surgical mask hid the lower half of her face.
She glanced about, looked past Henry and then returned through the doors.
“Wait!”
Henry dashed up the ramp. Dark lines indicated where once there had been tread strips but they had long since worn flat. His dress shoe soles slipped on the wet surface. He almost fell on the hard surface but kept his balance. He let out a gruff growl. Kidney stone – bad. Broken bones plus kidney stone – he didn’t want to think about it.
He entered the doors into a hallway of brown and white tile, cold and antiseptic. He saw a flash of dark blue and white turn a corner ahead.
“Nurse!” Henry cried. “Nurse!”
Around the corner, a heavy steel door led to a staircase. Henry took one flight, saw lights through small window on the next door and stepped out. He was in a long hallway, bright fluorescent ballasts leading the way. He saw signs with directional arrows. RADIOLOGY(X-RAY.) BLOOD LAB. 1025-1065. EMERGENCY.
He followed the signs to the emergency room.
A wave of sounds washed over him. Voices. He passed rooms with pinging electronic machinery. Televisions droned quietly. He assumed they’d be shut off shortly. Wasn’t it already late?
He hadn’t noticed how quiet the night had been outside and in the old entrance. He tried not to consider the entrance too much. He didn’t like the idea of anyone being able to walk into the hospital unchallenged – as he had. He thought of patients, vulnerable in their beds. He could be one of them.
Henry lost track of the signs and only realized he’d reached the emergency room when he saw the seats and the usual cast of misfortunate people. Pain etched on some faces. A mother holding her child’s crudely bandaged arm aloft. Plenty of hacking, wheezing, and coughing. Old, young, foreign and domestic judging from those who were a
ble to carry on quiet conversations.
A rotund woman behind a desk waved him over.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Yes, you can. I’m in some pain and would like to see a doctor.”
“OK, sir. Have a seat.”
Before the woman – Peggy, if her name tag was not borrowed – could ask, Henry pulled out his insurance card and license. He didn’t know if she needed the license.
“Thank you.” Peggy took the card and license and started typing. “I see you are ambulatory?”
“What?”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here alone? Did anyone drop you off?”
“Oh, alone. I came in through the old wing.”
“The old wing?”
“I’m not from around here. In town on business. I have a rental car. GPS freaked out and turned me all around. Wound up at the old entrance.”
“Old?”
Henry paused. He looked back over his shoulder and noticed the emergency room entrance. The proper entrance. Lots of glass, a half-circle drop-off driveway. Even a few parking spaces in a small lot. Well-lit with proper signs. Automatic doors.
“It looked old.” Henry shifted back to face Peggy. “The other entrance, anyway.”
Peggy stared at him as if he had more information to offer. He didn’t.
“Yes, I’m here alone under my own power. Never mind entrances.”
Peggy gave him one more overlong glance and then shrugged.
“Do you know why you might be in pain? Injury?”
“Kidney stone.”
“Oh. Oh my, you poor thing.”
Peggy typed a few more notes.
“All set here.” She pointed at the corral of chairs in the waiting room. “Have a seat please. We’ll have nurse see you as soon as we can.
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 7
