Trace of a Ghost

by Cherie Claire

  The van is parked outside our cabins, no doubt for Miss Georgia’s bad back, and Winnie takes the opportunity to run inside and refill her flask. “Just in case,” she says, and I know what she means. In case John Henderson or an equally dull speaker wants to fill our evening with boring tales. Native American stories and ghosts would be more apropos in this natural setting with autumn leaves covering the ground and a campfire crackling while we warm by the blaze.

  I get my fire wish as we enter the Loochapola Lodge, an old Civilian Conversation Corps structure from the 1930s. During the height of the Depression, the government hired men to build parks, bridges, and other structures across the country through the CCC. The men learned a trade, helped build infrastructure, and were required to send half of their earnings back home to family. This lodge owns that Depression-era feel, consisting of Mississippi wood and sandstone and in the center, a stone fireplace.

  “Now, we’re talking,” I say as I head for the warmth of the flames.

  As I’m warming my buns by the fire and the rest of the group heads for the buffet spread on a long table, Dwayne sneaks up from behind.

  “Want to learn about evolution?” he asks. “I’m going to check out that ghost story after dinner.”

  That warm feeling I’ve been enjoying from afternoon lovemaking and a moonshine-instilled walk through the wood evaporates. The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

  Dwayne leans a shoulder on the side of the fireplace. “It’s up to you, of course. If you want to see your daughter again.”

  I know I should be wary of this man — lord knows I’ve heard enough warnings from Carmine — but his promises cause my rational mind to disappear. I must know what he’s on about.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Meet me at my cabin ten minutes after this dinner is over and I’ll show you.”

  I try to laugh this off like it’s no big deal but my heart’s beating so hard I swear I can hear it. “I’m not going to waltz off into the woods with you.”

  Dwayne shrugs and that masculine charm is absent. “I’m not going to seduce you, Viola. You’re married. My only wish for you is to send another soul into heaven and tune your gift so that you can see any spirit, including your daughter.”

  There’s a buzz happening, but it’s a distant one, different from the usual spirit messages. I look over and find my buddies huddled around the open bar and I wish I had not left their company.

  Dwayne leans forward and moves to leave. “No biggie. Come if you want.”

  The words pour out of my mouth without thinking. It’s as if my desire to see Lillye bypasses all logical thought. “I’ll be there.”

  Dwayne pats me on the shoulder. “Good girl.” And then he’s gone.

  I swallow hard. What have I done? According to Carmine, Dwayne’s the last person I should be alone with in the wild of Mississippi but I can’t help myself. I want to know what he knows, want to see for myself if evolution is possible. After all, what harm could he possibly do? He’s a journalist like me, he’s not going to murder me in the woods.

  Still, as I join the others for barbecue ribs, fried chicken, and banana pudding with vanilla wafers on the side — it’s the South, after all — I wonder what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.

  After two hours of food and alcohol and another historian discussing how the park named for the leader of the Chickasaw nation contains archaeological excavations that have unearthed Paleo Indians dating back to 7000 B.C., there’s nothing but glazed eyes and longings for bed. We climb into the van, all of us suddenly quiet in need of sleep. As Shelby drops us off at each cabin, I tell TB I need to ask Dwayne a question and head over to his cabin. I feel TB’s gaze on my back the whole way there but when I reach Dwayne’s door and turn to look back, he’s gone inside.

  Dwayne opens the door and smiles. “Good girl.”

  We silently walk into the woods toward Bear Creek, following a trail and those tree markers until we reach the creek’s edge. Dwayne follows the creek for a while until up ahead I hear what sounds like a small waterfall. In the distance, an owl calls out and another responds on the other side of the woods. There’s no moon so walking is difficult, but the darkness feels refreshing after living in a city. I’ve never been afraid in nature, feel the earth blanket me like a mother’s arms.

  “You still with me?” Dwayne asks from up ahead and it breaks the peacefulness I’m experiencing. Suddenly, I’m wary of this man and what we’re about to do, whatever that is.

  “How far are we going?” I ask. “I’m not up for a marathon hike.”

  Dwayne suddenly stops. “Here.”

  I look around and see the sparkle of water tumbling over rocks, hear bullfrogs on a placid stretch of water downstream, but nothing else. “I don’t get it.”

  Dwayne takes my shoulders and turns me toward the water. At first, there’s nothing but darkness with a slight reflection of stars. Then I spot her. A girl of about ten stands knee-deep in the creek, glowing transparent, and staring at us with wonderment.

  “She drowned here,” Dwayne whispers in my ear. “They never found her and she needs peace.”

  I want to ask how he knows this but I’m too focused on the child. “What do you need?” I ask her.

  “My mother,” she whispers back.

  “Where is your mother?”

  She points in the direction of the Trace highway, but that can’t be. There’s no housing on the Natchez Trace.

  “Does she live in a nearby town?” I ask.

  “Tishomingo,” she utters.

  “That’s where we are.”

  Dwayne leans down and whispers in my ear, “There’s a town called Tishomingo near here.”

  Again, I’m wondering how he knows all this, but I ask the child if the town is where her family resides. She nods, so I ask, “Do you want me to tell your family where you are?”

  The girl’s face lights up and she nods, but there’s desperation in her gaze. “I want to go home.”

  I smile warmly, trying to ease her worries to get more information. “I know, sweetheart. Tell me your mom’s name and I’ll let her know where you are and you can go home. You do know where home is now, don’t you sweetie?”

  She nods and points upwards and I relax. I’d hate to have this sweet thing believe she’s still alive and capable of walking in her house, saying “Hey mom, do I have a story to tell you.”

  I swallow and hope for the best. “If I promise to tell your family, will you move on?”

  She nods and relays information on her family, where they live on Jackson Street in Tishomingo, what their names are. I make a mental note and assure her I will do everything possible. Natalie Stephens — that’s her name — smiles broadly and begins to climb the ladder as the warm white light appears and surrounds her. Like the other ghosts I have helped ascend, she closes her eyes and appears serene, as if her mother is present and wrapping her in kisses and hugs.

  “Quick,” Dwayne says, pushing me forward into the water. “Place your hands into the light.”

  I’m stunned that he jolted me so and even more so that I’m suddenly half immersed into the frigid water of Bear Creek, but I reach up, palm first, to feel the outer limits of what we call the God Light when ghosts transcend this plane for another.

  “Move closer,” Dwayne urges, but the light feels electric, reminding me of the static I felt when I first shook Dwayne’s hand. It’s an out-of-this-world sensation and I don’t have time to contemplate its implications so even though Dwayne’s practically yelling at me from the shore to immerse myself in its glow, I hesitate and within seconds Natalie has disappeared and with her, the God Light.

  I watch the waters turn from iridescent to darkness and push my way back to shore through the cold waters. As I climb the bank I can tell Dwayne’s disappointed, even though I can’t make out his face.

  “That light, it’s what evolves us,” he says, as if I’m a petulant child. “You should have embraced it
.”

  By now my teeth are chattering I’m so cold and all I want to do is go back to the cabin, look up Natalie’s family, and call them first thing in the morning so that Natalie rests on the Other Side.

  “Next time,” I mutter, and move to head back towards camp. “Just what was supposed to happen, anyway?”

  “The more you come in contact with the Supreme Being’s essence, the more spiritual you will become.” He sighs like he’s disappointed in me, reminding me of when my father, the math professor, tried teaching me algebra to no avail. That memory rises and pisses me off, that yet another man thinks I’m incapable of learning something. Makes me think of TB and how people treat him when he says something stupid.

  TB. What am I doing out here in the middle of the woods, letting a strange man that Carmine despises make me feel inferior? Why am I letting him deal with a ghost that should have been my responsibility and mine alone?

  “I’m going back,” I say through my chattering teeth and head down the path. “I need to find out about her parents.”

  “Wait,” Dwayne calls out.

  I turn hesitantly and see that he’s holding a flask in his hands, one that resembles Winnie’s.

  “I’ll take care of Natalie’s family. You get back to the cabin and warm up. At least drink something before you go.”

  I take a good look at the flask, wondering how it’s possible they both own the same kind.

  “It’s Winnie’s. She left it in the van. Alcohol’s not my thing but I believe it will take the chill off.”

  I accept the flask and take a sip. Sure enough, it’s her Apple Jack. I take a longer sip, then another, and the warmth of the moonshine settles throughout my body.

  “Take it with you,” he says. “Get it back to her in the morning.”

  I nod and head off down the trail, watching for those tree markers, Dwayne following behind.

  The next thing I know I’m being woken by TB, the morning light filtering through the windows. I’m still dressed in my nighttime clothes, everything below the knee still wet.

  I lean up on my elbows and gaze around, my head suddenly feeling like it’s about to blow.

  “Had a good time?” TB asks, obviously pissed as hell.

  “What happened?” I ask, trying desperately to figure out how I went from walking the creek’s edge to waking up the next morning without remembering anything.

  “You spent the night with Dwayne,” is all my husband will say, as he grabs his suitcase and heads for his pickup.

  Trace of a Ghost

  Chapter Six

  My head’s about to explode when I rise from the bed, but I must stop TB. Something’s wrong and the dream I’m waking from has my heart beating rapidly. For a moment, I can’t tell what’s real and what’s a dream state.

  TB calls out to Stinky and the cat lets out a howl.

  “Stinky, let’s go.”

  Any other time I might look at this scenario and wonder why my husband’s calling my cat like a dog, but the panic rising inside me insists I stop TB from walking out the door. I rise and sidestep my cat who’s still bellowing and make it to the living area. I slip between TB and the door and grab the front of his shirt.

  “Don’t leave,” I plead. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  TB pulls back and my husband’s sweet eyes are as cold as steel. “What’s going on?” he asks exasperated.

  I’m trying desperately to think, but I can’t for the life of me know why I’m still in my clothes, my jeans remain wet, and TB thinks I slept with Dwayne.

  I shake my head. “I can’t remember.”

  TB stands there, suitcase in hand, saying nothing, which unnerves me to no end. He’s usually so protective, so concerned. I don’t know why he’s not inquiring what happened as opposed to rendering me guilty on sight.

  “Why are you so mad at me?” I ask, and his eyes enlarge as if I’ve asked the most ridiculous thing.

  “Why? Maybe because you waltzed in an hour after we got back from dinner and passed out on the bed, drunk.”

  “Drunk?”

  I rub my forehead, which is pounding but I don’t feel hung over. I feel…strange.

  TB attempts to move around me and grab the doorknob. “No worries, Vi. I’m going home.”

  I lean backwards and block his exit. I shiver hard, like a skunk crawling over my grave, as my Aunt Mimi loves to say, because I’m scared shitless. I can’t remember how I got home last night and the dream I had before wakening mirrored what I hope hasn’t happened to me.

  “Please don’t leave me,” I whisper, close to tears.

  Against his better judgment, TB drops his suitcase but he’s still pissed. Underneath that anger, however, I find an ounce of caring.

  “What happened, Vi?”

  I bite my lower lip to keep the tears at bay. “I don’t know.”

  Stinky arrives and rubs up against my shin and his purring relaxes me a bit. I pick him up and hold him tight and my heart rate seems to decelerate.

  TB, on the other hand, isn’t relenting. “What don’t you know?”

  I fall into the nearby chair, Stinky still in my arms. “How I got home last night.”

  “You don’t know how you got back from Dwayne’s cabin?”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t go to his cabin. We went to the creek to find a girl who drowned there. Dwayne wanted me to help her cross over so he could show me how a SCANC evolves.”

  TB pulls his hands through his hair. “Oh God, Vi. Not that again. Carmine told you….”

  “I know what Carmine said!” I’m yelling now and Stinky leaps from my lap and hightails it to the bedroom.

  TB finally gets my panic and slips into the opposite chair. “Then what happened?”

  “It was strange, TB.” I vividly remember that weird electric feeling when I touched the light. “I promised the girl I would tell her parents so they can be at peace and she started to cross over. Then, Dwayne pushed me into the creek so that I would touch the light, said I would evolve by tapping into it. But it was horrible, TB. I can’t explain it but it felt unnatural, wrong.”

  Suddenly, the tears begin to fall. Thinking back on the experience, plus the horrors of the dream I just had, is all too much. I feel shaken to the bone.

  “Did you come home, then?”

  I try to recall what happened after Natalie vanished. I became cold, so very cold. There was Winnie’s flask with Apple Jack to warm me up.

  “He gave me Apple Jack.”

  TB picked up the flask that was sitting on a nearby table. “Yeah, you spilled it everywhere. That’s why it smells like a distillery in here.”

  I take the flask and shake it, but there’s nothing inside. Did Dwayne change out the alcohol, drug me with something else? When would he have had time to do that, I rationalize, and besides, it tasted like Winnie’s moonshine. But to get that drunk on two sips? I’m an LSU grad, would never get drunk on so little, especially so inebriated that I can’t remember a thing past walking up the trail and spotting one of those markers by the creekside.

  Then there was the dream, of Reynald offering Cora whiskey to take the chill off a rainy night by the side of the Trace. They were huddled beneath the wagon, rain pouring down the sides, with Reynald way too close for polite company. Cora hesitantly drank his whiskey because she was cold, so very cold. When she woke the next morning, her skirt was above her knees and her undergarments tangled. She hadn’t been raped by the man, she was sure about that, but she was fairly confident she had been violated in some way. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember much more than the last sips of whiskey.

  I’ve read about women being given date drugs and waking up not knowing what had happened, that maybe, just maybe something awful had.

  “Vi,” TB says, looking me over closely, “you’re scaring me.”

  “Could what have happened to Cora have happened to me?”

  “Who’s Cora?”

  I look him straight in the eyes, hoping somethin
g might float to the surface and allow me to remember what occurred after seeing that tree marker by the creek. “TB, I can’t remember. I only took two sips.”

  He’s out of his chair in an instant, barging through the front door and heading towards Dwayne’s cabin. Dwayne is lounging on his front porch with a cup of coffee and a cigarette so TB finds him instantly.

  “What the hell did you do to my wife, you son of a bitch?”

  I’m hot on his heels because as scared as I am that something might be amiss, I don’t want TB to hurt Dwayne, or worse, get himself hurt.

  Dwayne throws the rest of his coffee to the ground, but leaves the cigarette hanging from his lips. “What climbed up your ass?”

  “What did you do to her?” TB yells.

  Dwayne looks offended but in a cocky way. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  I catch up to them and grab TB’s elbow. “TB, let’s go.”

  TB pulls free. “Not until he gives us some answers.”

  At this, Dwayne throws the cigarette away and finally looks at me. “What’s the problem, SCANC girl?”

  I’m still shaking inside, fearful of the unknown, but I find my voice. “I woke up not remembering anything. I only had two sips of that moonshine.”

  Dwayne looks like he’s about to laugh, but reins it in. “Moonshine is some powerful stuff.”

  TB moves forward and I’m convinced he’s about to plant a fist in this jerk’s face, so I stand between the two men, facing Dwayne.

  “What happened after the creek?” I ask him.

  He climbs down the steps so he’s on our level. “You had a crossover, Vi. You tried to access the light. You got cold, which is normal considering you were standing in a creek, and I gave you something to warm you up.”

  “That’s it?” TB demands.

  “And then she walked home to your loving arms.”

  TB moves forward again, but I hold him back. “Then how come I can’t remember the walk home?”

  “Likely from the experience, coupled with the alcohol. That happens when you engage in the light.” Dwayne frowns. “What did you think happened?”