GHOSTS: 2014 edition (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 1)

by Noel Hynd

  “Uh. Huh. Blue,” said Brooks.

  “Blue what?” Osaro answered.

  “Labatt’s Blue.”

  “Oh. Right. I ought to just shake yours and hand it to you, but I’ve decided to be nice today.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “No point to raise the dead, is there?” Osaro said, making a joke of everything. Brooks let the line fly away into the air.

  Osaro opened both bottles. Then he lobbed the open bottle into the air in the direction of his friend. “Think fast,” Osaro said.

  Brooks was already thinking. The toss of the open beer bottle was one of the endearing customs of the Osaro domicile. The minister had a way of hefting them upright in a manner in which the open top never turned downward. Never, that was, as long as the hands on the receiving end were steady and cleanly picked off the bottle on the fly. In the past there had been some memorable misses, the details of which were immortalized on some of the furniture and walls.

  Brooks allowed Osaro to return to the den and fall back into his easy chair.

  “So?” Brooks asked.

  “So what?” Osaro offered as an answer.

  “What were you doing in Boston?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  “I’m just asking you as a friend, George,” Brooks said. “To tell you the truth, I was worried about you. As a friend. As a policeman. If you don’t want to tell me, if it’s none of my business, don’t feel obliged to answer. Otherwise…”

  “Do I look like I’m alive?” Osaro asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s the worry?”

  Brooks repeated his original question, plus his concern.

  Osaro had already gulped a third of his bottle.

  “Ah, I’ve been suffering, Timmy,” he finally answered. “That’s where I’ve been and what I was doing. Suffering.”

  Brooks said nothing.

  “Suffering in my own very personal, private and spiritual way.”

  Osaro drew another gulp from the Budweiser bottle and slumped down in his chair. Almost as sudden inspiration, he turned and flipped on a tape deck. Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia. Ripple.

  “I saw that I had a couple of days open on my calendar,” Osaro said. “So I tended to some business. Personal and private.”

  “You went to see your family?”

  The estranged husband nodded. There was something very sad in his eyes.

  “My wife’s seeing a new boyfriend,” Osaro explained. “This one’s quite serious. Well, our divorce is complete and she’s intent on remarrying if this cretin asks her.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “Why would I? He lays my ex-wife.”

  “You’ve met him?” Brooks pressed.

  “Of course not.”

  Osaro spoke sullenly, eyebrows lifted occasionally, as if at any moment he might switch to a more congenial subject. “Her future husband is from Dallas,” the minister said. “Been married twice already. If they married, she would move to Texas with her new cowboy and my son.”

  “And you’d see your son even less than you see him now,” Brooks said.

  “You got it. Then, as if the personal stuff weren’t uplifting enough, I had an appointment face to face with His Royal Buttcrack, Steven Albright, the bing-bang bean-brained butt-boy bishop of Boston.”

  “How did that go?”

  “As expected. He talked. I listened. He screamed. I listened. He ranted. He accused. He bullied. I denied. He binged, I cringed. I felt like Saint Peter, I was denying so much. But here I am back in Nantucket feeding my sheep. You figure it out. I can’t.”

  Osaro shook his head in disgust and blew out a dispirited breath. “I’m in deep do-do here, Timmy,” he said. “Brother Bishop would like to transfer me to shark-infested waters off the coast of Bombay. Or Mumbai. Or whatever they call it now. Since he can’t do that, he’s talking about an imminent reassignment. Oregon, maybe. Northern California. Other than France, is there a more godless place in the universe than California?”

  “Then maybe they can use you.”

  “The French?”

  “The Californians.”

  Osaro’s eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting that you think it’s my time to move along, also? Cozy up with the aforesaid Californicaters?”

  “No,” Brooks answered. “Not at all, buddy! But is that what he’s putting on you? That you’d have to leave here?”

  “Or resign from the ministry,” said Osaro. “The stupid old man says I’ve muddied up the water here with this spiritualism stuff. Says there’s no place for it in his heaven and earth.”

  “You haven’t muddied any water.”

  “Tell him that. It’s his water. Or at least he thinks it is.”

  “If you want me to tell him, I will. We’d miss you here.”

  “Save your breath. Or your postage stamp. Lord, the man is on my case now, got me in the sites of his sanctimonious rifle! You can’t believe it.”

  Osaro took a long drag of beer, glanced out the window toward his church, then looked back to his friend.

  “Fact is, apparently some of my own parishioners complained,” he said softly and with obvious hurt. “Can you believe that? Anonymous letters. How’s that for betrayal?” He raised a single eyebrow. “They think I’m ‘creepy,’ these people here. Why didn’t they just come to me if they had a problem? Can you tell me that, Timmy?”

  Brooks, resentful also, said he had no idea.

  “What is it about me they don’t like?” Osaro pressed.

  “George, maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s a generational thing. Most of your parish is older than you are. They were comfortable with your predecessor.”

  “That old fossil! Ha!”

  “You come in with new ideas, a new face, an unusual approach… It’s just a guess.”

  “Well, I’m grateful for your friendship and support, Timmy. But I suppose I should have expected this from within the congregation. Jesus only had twelve followers and one of them betrayed Him, too.”

  How much of that was meant as a joke, Brooks couldn’t tell.

  Osaro forged on. “This is not without precedence within the church, you know, Tim—the bishop after the renegade cleric for the latter’s study of the supernatural. Ever since the Victorian era, spiritualism has been a thorn in the side of the established Christian churches. The leaders of the church have gone to considerable lengths to eradicate it or isolate anyone, and I include myself here, who entertains or promulgates any thoughts about it.”

  “Why is the church so adamant?”

  “Which do you wish to hear? The stated reason or the real reason?”

  “Try me with both.”

  “The stated reason is that spiritualism could lead to a return of Devil worship. Or witchcraft. Or paganism. That’s why Brother Bishop tries to drop all three on me interchangeably.”

  “And the real reason?” Brooks asked.

  “It’s just a guess. But there’s one theory that’s been afoot for more than a hundred and Fifty years, since the great wave of spiritualism in the eighteen thirties. The theory is that since Christian orthodoxy and philosophy haven’t solved the mysteries of the universe, maybe there’s a chance that answers lie in the study of spirits. You can see what a threat that is to the established church. So, as I said, rather than allow us to bring a new dimension to Christianity and embrace spirits in the afterlife, they seek to expel us. Isolate the idea as well as those heretics who entertain it.” He paused. “Again, such as myself.”

  “Such as yourself,” Brooks repeated.

  Osaro sipped some more brew.

  “But the embarrassment that the Christian churches have had since Victorian times,” Osaro mused further, “is the fate of the churchmen who’ve often been assigned to investigate spiritualism and disprove its merits.” Osaro’s eyes found Brooks’. “Often, when studying unexplained forces,” he said, “the skeptics witnessed events that challenged the system of reason that th
ey had always accepted. And they’ve ended up as converts to spiritualism.” Osaro smiled with the irony and paused. “Such as both of us,” Osaro said. “Am I correct?”

  “You are correct.”

  Osaro shook his head. “To me, the existence of spirits around us is clear. Didn’t I promise you that you, Tim Brooks, would eventually come to believe?”

  “You did.”

  “And haven’t you?”

  Brooks nodded.

  “Then why can’t the old goat in Boston see it, too? Why does his mind have to be hermetically sealed against any new thought?”

  Brooks said nothing.

  Osaro finished his beer and set it aside. He continued in a lighter tone.

  “Anyway, my transfer, is not effective yet,” he said. “The bishop is still brooding upon it. Pontificating, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. Or maybe the constipated old bead-mumbler is just delaying his announcement in case I’d like to consider it a sword held above my head. You know: I behave. I be good. And I won’t get shipped off to live with Bigfoot among the outhouses and rain forests of the Pacific Northwest.”

  Osaro’s eyes narrowed with intrigue. He rambled further. “God works in strange ways, you know. So between now and the time it’s final, maybe we’ll get lucky,” Osaro said. “Divine intervention. I mean, maybe a truck will jump a curb today on Newbury Street and finish off the senile old cretin. With such a miracle, I do believe the diocese might be propelled kicking and screaming into this, the twentieth century.”

  Osaro managed another distasteful grin. Brooks mustered a similar one in agreement and in response.

  “Cheers,” said Osaro raising his bottle in salute to his most recent thought. He put his lips to the bottle and tried to drain the last drops from it.

  For a second, Osaro held an evil glint in his eye.

  “Maybe I should make up a little doll with the bishop’s name on it,” he suggested. “Stick a few pins in. On the one hand, that would confirm every suspicion he’s ever had about me. On the other hand, maybe the voodoo would work. Maybe a curse will befall him and he’ll be bitten by a rabid duck some evening.”

  Brooks smiled again. “Somehow I don’t think that’s your answer,” he advised.

  “No,” Osaro said. “But what is the answer? I’m not into black arts here. I would like nothing more than to define spiritualism and the afterlife in accepted Christian terms.” He sighed. “And the old weasel in Boston fights me tooth and nail.”

  Brooks commiserated.

  “Anyway, Timmy,” Osaro concluded, “if you’re interested in really studying this spiritualist stuff, you ought to make a pilgrimage to Boston, yourself. Harvard Library. Go browse through the…”

  “The Eksman Collection?” Brooks asked.

  “Yes,” he answered, surprised. “How did…? Ah! You’ve been talking to my earnest soul mate, Doctor Friedman.”

  Brooks nodded.

  “Did you go to his home? I should say, his former home?”

  “I did.”

  “And? See anything? Feel anything?”

  “I took a dog there who didn’t want any part of the second floor,” Brooks said. “The same dog bit me before he’d let me drag him into Seventeen Cort Street.”

  Brooks held up his wrist and showed the bandage.

  “No way!” said Osaro with a sly grin. “Which dog?”

  “Lieutenant Agannis’ Labrador. Boomer.”

  “Ah, that mutt doesn’t like me, either,” Osaro said. “But anyway, it sort of figures. Milk Street is a real heavy location. A powerhouse. Is that why you were looking for me, by the way?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what was the reason?”

  “Seventeen Cort Street,” said Brooks. “I was trying to talk you into walking through the place.”

  “Oh, Lord. Is there more to that house?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “Regale me with some anecdotes. Spare no details.”

  Brooks took several minutes to provide Osaro with both. The minister rose, went to the refrigerator and found another brew as he listened. When he plopped down again he was up to date. The Grateful Dead CD in the background spun to conclusion.

  “Lord,” Osaro repeated with a sigh. “Lord, Lord, Lord.” He shook his head.

  “And there’s one other aspect of this,” Brooks added.

  “What’s that?”

  “It talks to me.”

  Osaro froze and stared. “What talks to you?” he asked.

  “The Cort Street spirit.”

  Still staring, “He just sidles up and starts a conversation, this spirit?” Osaro asked. “Or he appears from time to time? Or he comes on your police radio, or what?”

  “I hear his voice.”

  “Out loud?”

  “In my head.”

  “All the time?”

  “At times that he chooses. To threaten. To taunt.”

  For several seconds, Osaro looked away. He considered it. Then he looked back to his friend. “I was hoping when you turned up at the door you just wanted a little basketball,” he said.

  “Sorry. No such luck.”

  “Instead, you’re describing a full-fledged haunting. Tortured spirit. Unable to rest. The whole works.”

  “I know.”

  “And three weeks ago, you didn’t even believe, right?”

  Brooks answered after a moment. “Right,” he affirmed.

  “You know what folks usually say about people who hear voices?” Osaro asked with a certain dismay. “That they need psychiatric intervention.”

  “I don’t hear voices. I hear one very specific voice.”

  “Man? Woman?”

  “Man?”

  “I don’t suppose he left his name.”

  “Henry Flaherty.”

  “What?”

  “The last time we conversed, he gave me that name.”

  “Who is—or was— Henry Flaherty?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you tried to find out? Tried to trace the name at all?”

  “George, the name means nothing. But this voice gets inside my head. I’m getting messages from somewhere. There are times when I even know he’s there and I know there’s a message coming.”

  Osaro listened.

  “Other times I think I see a dark form. I can never get a good look at it, but I think it’s associated with the voice.”

  “You’re lucky that you’re telling this to me and not to anyone else,” the minister said. “If the police department caught the scent of this, Lieutenant Agannis would have you on Thorazine and off duty on screwball sick leave.”

  Brooks paused. “Yeah, I know.” He hesitated. “I also feel that the DiMarco slaying had something to do with this. So did the boy who drowned at Surfside. Then there are a bunch of smaller, macabre events around the island. The McCoy farm had eighteen ducks strangled. A woman in Madaket had a religious painting desecrated…” He paused. “Who knows what’s next?”

  “Now you’re alleging that this spirit is interacting. And violently, to boot. Know how few recorded cases there are of that?” Osaro asked.

  “I wouldn’t know, George. I only know what I see, hear and feel.” He drew a breath. “And I was hoping that you could help me understand it,” Brooks said. “That’s why I want you to come to Cort Street.”

  “Ah, Timmy…” He shook his head and drained his beer. “You know I’m a sucker for this stuff, don’t you? Even after everything I just told you.” He looked dispirited. “Is anyone else at Cort Street right now?”

  “Annette Carlson is in New York. Emmet Hughes is doing some repair work on the wall in her house. But Emmet should be finished for the day.”

  Reverend Osaro sighed. “I suppose,” he said, “we could take your Jeep. A quick look, know what I mean? Just as a favor to you to take a reading on the place. This is not exactly the most propitious time,” he reasoned, “for word to drift back to Boston that…”

  “I understan
d,” Brooks said. “Let’s get over there now. Before dark.”

  They took Brooks’ Wrangler and drove at the time that the sun was setting. In front of them, down a long road bracketed by old trees, there was a crimson western sky rippled with clouds. Once, such a sight had promised Brooks the end of an honest day’s work and the advent of an evening’s relaxation. Now when he looked at it he saw only the inevitable threat of night. Brooks wondered whether Osaro read his thoughts, for the minister looked at his watch. He, too, was thinking in terms of darkness.

  “First week of August,” Osaro said. “And already it’s noticeable how much earlier it’s getting dark. Don’t you think?”

  “We’ll have to hit the roundball courts earlier,” Brooks said, trying to maintain both of their spirits. “Tomorrow night, by the way. Let’s hit the hoops at six.”

  “It’s a deal.” Osaro smiled for the first time.

  “Here’s the house,” Brooks said.

  He pulled into the semicircle and cut the Jeep’s ignition.

  They walked to the back door. Brooks found the key where he had left it under the large mossy rock in the garden. When he went to the rear door and unlocked it, his arm ached again where Boomer had bitten him. And once again he encountered the fear of what he had sensed on the other side of the door.

  His fear was quickly confirmed. The lock turned against the key, but the doorknob would not turn. It was as if there were an unseen hand on the other side, holding the knob in place. Osaro stared at it and the two men exchanged a glance. Then Brooks was again beset by the prickly feeling upon the base of his neck.

  “Timmy, I feel something already,” Osaro said softly. “This is not good.”

  Brooks saw concern on Osaro’s face and nearly lost his own nerve to enter. But he fought to be brave. And to move ahead.

  “Let me try something,” Osaro said softly. “A little psychological warfare. “

  He placed his own hand on the doorknob along with Brooks’. The force remained present on the other side, then seemed to dissipate. Resistance faded from the other side and the door opened gently. Brooks pushed it wide open. He quickly reached within the house to turn on a light which flickered and threatened to fail before it illuminated the room before them.

  Brooks and Osaro stood at the entrance. They both felt something, a presence, something pushing past them to flee the house. For a moment, Osaro seemed shaken. But he, too, brushed his fear aside. “Just stay with it,” he said. “Whatever’s here, we have to drive it back to its own universe.”