Not All Spirits Be Foul

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Trevor frowned. “But he’s a nice ghost. He just wants to play video games and watch movies with us.”

  “All he wants is family.” Trent added.

  Carol wanted to encourage Trent’s empathy, but not when it came to ghosts. “How can you know, Trent? We don’t know what that spirit is.”

  Trent gripped his mother’s arm. “He tells me when I sleep. He talks to me sometimes when I dream. He’s just lonely. He was left alone in this house for years before we came. He misses his family real bad.”

  “And if that is true, then it breaks our hearts, Trent,” James answered. “But your mother and I have to think what is best for our family. I haven’t seen that spirit, but I trust all of you. We don’t argue over the breakfast table, and I don’t want this to be the start of a habit.”

  James peeked again at the wooden mask. He could have sworn the grin had twisted further into the cheeks since he last looked. Did the eyes appear closer together?

  “Are you certain that mask is going to do what you want it to, Carol?”

  Carol sighed. “What else is there, James? I like this home too much to feel scared in it.”

  Trent was near tears. “We can’t. We’re all he’s got.”

  “But your mother is scared, Trent,” James replied.

  “And not just for myself,” Carol added.

  James had an idea. “Maybe we need a compromise. Boys, we won’t make you hang that mask in your room. You two don’t seem afraid, and I don’t want to give either of you nightmares if you’re not already having them. But your mom gets to put that mask wherever else in the house she chooses. If she thinks we need that mask for protection, then I don’t think it’s fair for any of us to ask her to throw that thing away. And, Carol, if that ghost turns awful and starts threatening us in any way, then we can decide if we need to hammer it onto the boys’ wall. Is that compromise enough for us to get back to having a peaceful breakfast?”

  Neither Carol nor the boys said anything in response, and James knew the compromise was acceptable.

  James looked at the mask a third time. Its grin seemed more extreme. The shadows lingering in the eye sockets appeared darker. James couldn’t tell what effect the mask might have on a spirit, but the carved face chilled his bones. He hoped Carol would find the garage or the unfinished basement an acceptable location for the mask's mounting.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7 - The Wrong Monster...

  On the first night the mask came into the country home, Buck huddled with Trevor, Trent and Hunter in the bedroom closet and trembled alongside the warm-blooded living. Buck’s form twinkled from his fear and cast a soft line of luminous blue beneath the closet door. A chill wafted into that crowded space, and Trent and Trevor’s breath misted.

  Something wailed in the outside hall. Fingernails or claws tore at the walls in long, sharp sounds of scratching that hurt the back of the boys’ molars. Crashes vibrated against the walls. Thumps fell down the stairs. The noises escalated and the walls shook.

  A quiet then settled that pulled the hearts of those in the closet into their throats.

  Suddenly, the screeching began anew in the hallway until the crashing thumped against the walls and the smashing rebounded down the stairs.

  Until the first night the mask came into the country home, Trent and Trevor never had reason to be afraid of ghosts.

  “Why are you shaking so much?” Trent glared at Buck’s shimmer.

  “He’s as scared as we are.” Trevor whispered while the wailing continued in the hall.

  “But he’s already a ghost,” Trent answered. “I thought that would make him a little braver.”

  Trent’s words hurt Buck regardless if he was dead. The brothers were better friends than any Buck had known in life. They not only permitted his presence, but they invited Buck to participate in their games and backyard explorations. Buck believed he owed those brothers more than huddling in a closet when something thumped in the night. Why did he still share so much fear with the living? Was he not a wisp himself? Was he not also a ghost who might rattle chains and bemoan his suffering? If so, did he not own the courage to challenge whatever frightened the brothers by wailing so horribly outside their bedroom?

  Buck’s blue form took a deep breath, and the ghost’s glow diminished as Buck gained some power over his fear. Another combination of shrieking and crashing resounded from the outside hall. Buck closed his eyes and drifted through the closet and into the second story’s narrow corridor from which the sound and fury came.

  Buck opened his eyes and gazed upon what appeared to be a tall, white veil shimmering in the hallway. Its movement reminded Buck of ice, for thin cracks, like wrinkles, splintered across the surface, creating a floating melody of chimes. The veil crackled like static before a painful wail burst from the shape and swayed the ghost tail of Buck’s coonskin cap. The veil moved in sudden, jerky movements, giving Buck the impression that it teleported more than floated from one spot to the next. Buck noticed the veil’s surface was smooth after each sudden flash of movement before the splintering cracks returned to crinkle the specter like a rumbled, paper bag. The veil screamed after each such effect, and Buck guessed the white spirit suffered pain.

  Such confused Buck, for he had always found movement an easy, floating process. He had learned to pass through walls by closing his eyes and willing his shape to simply pass through the material world. Yet the ghostly veil he watched bounced off the surrounding walls, each time multiplying the veil’s cracks until the spirit reminded Buck of broken glass.

  Crinkled and shattered, the veil threw itself off another wall before unexpectedly going still, motes of white light falling off its form like sparks. Buck held a breath and hoped the specter’s energy was about to empty.

  The loudest wail yet sounded in that hall shook the walls and dashed Buck’s hope.

  The white veil popped and the air cracked. The shimmering wisp coalesced into a sneering face of a woman in a blink. As in the veil form, cracks webbed the floating face’s features, curving over the eyes, creasing into the mouth. Her hair shimmered like strands of snapping electricity, and like Buck’s, her vapid, white eyes held no colorful iris or orb. Those hallow eyes spun upon Buck and glared into his own empty sockets. The face expanded to fill the hall’s width, and its mouth grinned crookedly before stretching open and rushing towards Buck with cackling teeth that promised a bite of numbing ice.

  Buck stood his ground, determined to face his fear. He reminded himself that he too lingered as an apparition, and that he too might assume a horrible form. Only, Buck failed to imagine a suitable shape as the face howled towards him, and his ghost knees knocked as he closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands.

  The bite never fell.

  Buck cautiously opened his eyes. Having become so excited, his blue luminescence pulsed as never before, casting soft light throughout the hall.

  “Dear Lord!”

  Buck pulled his sight out of his hands and again looked down the corridor. The crackling face had vanished before its teeth descended upon him, and in its place stood the brothers’ parents: the mother Buck had frightened in the mirror and the father Trent and Trevor had not yet decided to introduce. They stared at Buck as his freckled face and coonskin cap twinkled, and the ghost feared the expression in their eyes reflected much of the fear that must have been in Buck’s when he had gazed upon the awful face in the hall. Buck tried to apologize, but the efforts lent an awful shape to his mouth; for as he watched, the blood withdrew from their faces and their skin faded to a white pallor.

  Buck realized quickly, that to those parents who gaped upon him, he was the monster that howled in the night.

  Ashamed and hurt, Buck sobbed as his blue glow faded and returned the dark to the upper story of the home he wished he did not have to haunt.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8 - Father Doesn't Always Know Best...

  Carol’s shoulders slumped before her children’s resi
stance to the mask.

  “After the commotion last night,” she argued, “I’d think the two of you would be happy that the wooden mask is now hanging on your wall.”

  Trevor paced around his bed. “That’s not the ghost we’re worried about. Like Trent tried telling you, there’s a second one in the house now.”

  “That ugly mask brought it,” Trent yelled.

  “It’s only the one, Trevor,” Carol counted before impatience seeped into her voice. “Both your father and I saw him when we hurried out of bed into a hall after we heard that terrible scream. We didn’t see any other spirit. Just the one boy. The same boy I saw in the mirror.”

  Carol turned and left the room rather than argue any further. She was proud of her boys’ courage. After the haunting died down, she would be sure to tell Trevor and Trent how they impressed her with their bravery and sympathy. But a ghost in the hall, no matter a boy or a monster, was not natural. Eventually, the boys would learn that she placed her family’s welfare first.

  Trevor and Trent had felt uneasy all day. Their father had hung the mask on the wall between their beds that afternoon, and already the brothers thought the wooden face turned the shadows wicked. They avoided the room all day. They fought the winter cold in the woods behind the backyard for as long as they could. They pleaded to sleep on the downstairs sofa and floor. But Trevor and Trent knew what battles their mother chose to fight, and they knew she would not relent once the combat had begun. So the boys marshaled every battery in their arsenal and turned on every glowing electronic device in order to prepare for what the mask would bring them.

  James stayed a little longer after tucking each of his sons beneath their blankets.

  “Imagine if you were your ghost friend,” James spoke to the brothers. “Think about how painful it must be for him to be trapped inside this house, to have to linger after all the people he’s ever loved have gone away. I saw your friend last night, and I saw the loneliness in his eyes. I wish I knew how he became stuck in our house so I had an idea how to help him. Maybe he hesitated and a door closed on him before he could walk to heaven. I wonder if that mask your mother brought home with her might be a kind of key to help open that door again. Your friend needs rest. You boys might do best by him by letting him go.”

  Trent buried his face into his pillow as Hunter took a position at the foot of the younger brother’s bed.

  Trevor responded to his father. “Maybe our friend’s spirit isn’t trapped. Maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe we're giving him a second chance to be a boy. There are times in our room when everything just kinda turns on at the same time, like the ghost is so excited to play with it all that he can’t decide what gadget to tinker with first. Maybe that ghost needs to have a little time to be a kid before he can leave and find those who love him.”

  James smiled. “I have fine sons who make me proud.”

  Trent spoke through his pillow. “But at least take down the mask, Dad. I just know that’s where the new trouble comes from.”

  “Like your mother told you,” James responded. “That mask will keep the trouble away.”

  Trevor sat up in bed. “I don’t know, Dad. Trent was the first to meet our ghost friend, and he hasn’t been wrong yet when it comes to that spirit.”

  James nodded. “Tell you what. You two leave your bedroom door wide open, and I’ll be sure to leave mine wide open too. I’ll turn off your lights when I go, but I won’t say a word about all these other little screens you have glowing in the room. At the first sound of trouble, you two coming running into my room, and you can spend the rest of the night with me and mom.”

  The brothers were thankful for their father's assurances, but they still they kept their shoes on beneath their blankets. Though it was cold, neither tucked himself too tightly into his comforter. Hunter growled as he took a sentry position between his boys. None of the living, nor a shade of the dead, expected to get much sleep.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9 - Revealed in a Dream...

  Sleep refused to fall upon Carol the night her husband nailed the grinning mask onto her children’s bedroom wall. When that slumber finally descended, disquieting visions illustrated her dreams.

  Carol stood on a the second story veranda to a glorious home of Colonial style, an old manse built during the country’s youth, a veritable castle overlooking both slave and serf who toiled, and bled, and died in the fields. A damp wind scraped at her skin, bringing to Carol the scent of moss, ivy and underlying decay. She turned to find the wind’s origin and stared upon a forest of barren and crooked trees surrounding the mansion’s grounds, so gnarled and knotted against one another that passage through the wood was not afforded to squirrel or rabbit.

  Laughter floated to Carol’s ear and pulled her eyes downward upon a manicured lawn, its green glowing a luminescence not unlike the glow fireflies twinkled in early summer nights. A labyrinth of hedges twisted throughout the lawn, shifting and reshaping into new patterns as Carol’s eyes followed the path to the maze’s center. There, a pair of girls giggled and smiled. Though a stranger to that dreamland, Carol recognized each child offspring of different worlds: one girl with moonlight and privileged flesh, and a darker girl, whose skin testified her a member of the servant ranks that history, wickedness and birth doomed her to know.

  The wind gusted through the gnarled forest, and in a wink Carol found herself standing amid the labyrinth’s center with the girls. The hedges ceased their shifting and cast a pallor that reminded Carol of a green paper lantern. Though the light grew, the pale girl’s skin faded further by the moment. Carol reached towards her, for her heart mourned for the illness the intensifying whiteness conveyed. Startled, Carol pulled her hand back as coughing spasms shook the girl’s thin frame. The girl withdrew her sleeve from her mouth, and the pale child’s eyes widened at the crimson stain left on the lace. The hedges grew dark. The labyrinth stretched taller. The surrounding foliage became thicker. Shadows stretched into the maze’s center, and Carol saw no exit within the hedge walls.

  The dark girl bravely faced the hedges that tightened about them. She tore a crooked branch from the brambles. She picked a yellow bloom. She bent to her knees and with her fingers dug into the ground to unearth a crooked root. The ingredients mixed as the dark girl twisted her hands against each other. She opened her palms with a smile and revealed a golden pile of dust.

  The dark girl puffed the powder upon her coughing friend. Instantly, the coughing seized, and the pale girl smiled as color returned to her cheeks and the blood stains disappeared from her sleeves.

  The smiles were short lived.

  A shrill erupted from within the manse, a blood-curling scream that stopped only long enough for the lungs that unleashed it to refill depleted oxygen. The girls went silent and gazed frightfully at one another. Carol scanned her surroundings, but she failed to find any direction of escape in the hedges that surrounded the round center of the lawn.

  The shrubbery walls continued to constrict. Carol gasped as she realized the forest trees had somehow moved to the edge of that open center, and her skin paled as she watched the branches bend above them, creaking and interlocking with one another until a thicket of gnarled limbs thatched a dark roof overhead.

  An ear-splitting scream careened through Carol’s brain, and a wide swath tore open in the hedges to reveal the origin of such wailing, a woman whose eyes burned with such hatred that it burned a fragment of Carol’s soul. A billowing white dress composed the woman’s attire, the hems of its skirt and sleeves torn by thorns. Her hair stood on end, waving like serpents and hissing electric fury.

  Carol feared for the girls. But the hedges trapped them in the center of the lawn and refused to indicate any exit. Carol grabbed at the hedges and pulled at the thick brambles. Thorns cut her flesh. She pulled frantically at the growth as the thorns bit deeper, and she felt no concern for the scars her efforts might brand upon her hands.

  For Carol recognized the
woman’s face, the very features carved into the sourgum mask her husband mounted in her children’s room.

  The woman in white paid no attention to Carol as she clutched the dark girl by the neck and lifted her from the ground with an unnatural strength. Carol sobbed as she heard the child’s breath gurgle from the pressure the woman’s fingers squeezed upon her windpipe. The woman lifted the dark child’s body higher until the gnarled branches of the overhead thicket descended to clutch at the girl’s writhing limbs. Vines twisted, like rope, around the dark, young neck. The wailing woman of white released her grasp as the trees suspended the girl, their branches twisted around her waist, their limbs looping around the young girl’s elbows and knees.

  Carol’s bloody hands continued to tear at the hedges for an escape. Yet she made no advances as the woman in white commanded the gnarled trees with her wailing language.

  The dark girl writhed in her suffering. Her throat choked on her pain.

  The woman in white suddenly wailed a final scream. The forest brambles that clawed at the girl pulled in a hundred directions. Carol whimpered as the girl’s suspended body groaned before in a wink tearing into a hundred fragments of her shape. A crimson mist fell from that overhead canopy, and the pale girl’s skin faded to the white of a corpse.