“Don’t be pulling attitude on me girl. As I was saying, she had some fool notion about studying up on the spirit world.”
“Don’t you think that’s childish interest for a thirty-year-old woman? And a civil rights activist,” she added, still annoyed at the abrupt end to the Lettie Ruth discussion.
He laughed. “She was just full of fun and had an ornery streak as wide as the Mississippi River. I learned as a child to go along for the ride and enjoy it. She claimed to have heard about several folks interacting with the spirits. Her idea was for us to meet with them, afterwards we’d decide whether or not we believed in ghosts.”
“So what did you decide, Pop? Do you believe in ghosts?” Kat asked, jumping to the chase, her patience worn thin.
“Kathleen, some questions can’t be answered with a yes or no. I’ll tell you the stories we heard, then you make up your own mind.”
Kat drummed her fingers on the sofa cushion. “Pop, my mind is already made up. But I am curious as to what you believe.”
“My personal beliefs have nothing to do with what happened to y’all on that street.”
“Sweet Judas, Pop, can’t you give a body a straight answer? Do you believe in ghosts?” If he didn’t her theories about the man, and especially the phone call, didn’t have a prayer.
Rayson frowned. “Don’t be pulling attitude on me, girl.”
“I just asked a question.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “Yes, I do believe in ghosts, Kathleen. But that’s not the real question you’re askin’ me.”
Kat pushed her annoyance away and stuffed it between the sofa cushions. Any argument at this time would be less than productive. “And what might my real question be?”
“You’re asking if I believe your tale,” he said.
“Well, do you?”
“Of course I do, child. You’re not prone to lying. And I’ve seen plenty of strange things over the years. Now as I said, Lettie and I met the folks on their back porches,” Rayson said, easily picking up his rhythm as though there had been no interruptions. “We’d meet in their kitchens, sometimes if it was hot and muggy we’d go out and sit under the oaks or magnolias, and we’d drink sweet tea and listen to incredible tales.
“Miss Mattie De Carlo, the librarian, called him her Dancing Ghost. Prior to this encounter, she’d been in a wheelchair for ten years, the result of a fall down a flight of stairs.”
Although she could see Pop’s mouth moving, his voice disappeared in the roaring sound in her ears. Mattie De Carlo had died on Park Street in 1963. Kat’s nerve endings tingled. Her instincts were right. The connections did exist.
“Apparently this Dancing Ghost first appeared the previous Fall,” Rayson was saying.
“Do you remember where she lived?”
“The ghost?”
“No, Mattie De Carlo.”
Rayson thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “Somewhere near Aunt Della’s place I think. Why?”
“Because we were parked in front of—” Kat stopped herself. If she admitted what she and Mitch had really been doing, all the weird occurrences would come out. “Just go on with the story,” she said.
Rayson squeezed her shoulder and resumed his tale. “That particular evening, while reading in her wheelchair, a shadow suddenly fell across the page. Mattie told us she knew beyond doubt she was wide awake, and even recalled the exact hour ‘cause the mantle clock struck the hour, seven in the evening. Glancing up, she was quite startled to find a handsome young man standing beside her chair.”
Kat listened, impatient to hear how this ghost tale related to her own dilemma. Thirty-seven years in the pulpit had shaped Alvin Rayson’s conversational style so much that he’d become a master at weaving life’s experiences into a tapestry. A tapestry with a point. Pop preferred to let his listeners discover the parallels between his rhetoric and their situation. She hoped some form of enlightenment would eventually show its face.
“Without speaking,” Rayson continued, “the ghost placed a record on her old Victrola and cranked the handle. A beautiful waltz filled the room. He extended his hand, inviting her to dance. Mattie De Carlo initially withdrew from this apparition, fearful of any contact. But the Dancing Ghost, not easily discouraged, stepped closer. With an engaging smile and a gentle tug, he pulled her out of the chair.”
“She touched him?” Kat asked, thrilled by the first inkling of a connection between this story and her own experience. She remembered how the man on Park Street had passed through her Honda as though he was without substance. If she’d rolled down the window, reached her hand out toward him, would she have touched a flesh and blood man?
“Oh yes indeed. Miss De Carlo mentioned being surprised by his warmth. Well, to get on with it, her reluctance dissolved and she soon waltzed gracefully around the room. Suddenly, without warning, she found herself back in the chair, book in her lap. A soft chiming sound echoed in the room, she glanced to the mantle clock. It read seven o’clock. The hour hadn’t budged more than couple of seconds. The clock was still chiming off the same hour as when the ghost had first appeared.”
“Mitch and I noticed the same thing. It’s like we got stuck in time when our ghost man first appeared outside the car. And it happened again in the shower, when I was transported to Birmingham. Maybe that’s the explanation for why the coffee didn’t finished dripping even though I must have been gone long enough. At least long enough for the hot water to run out.”
Rayson nodded. “Some folks say time has no meaning in the afterlife.”
“Sort of a time continuum?”
“If you’re meaning everything grinds to a stop, then I reckon so.”
Kat laughed and patted his chubby ebony cheek. “Pop, you gotta get out more; go to a few sci-fi movies. Even watch a couple of episodes of Star Trek, they’re very entertaining.”
“Kathleen, the good book is plenty entertaining.”
“So are Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Kat muttered like a grumpy little girl.
Rayson cleared his throat, the prelude to resuming his oration. “Now, Boyd Turley’s tale is an entirely different matter. For some years his family lived apart, divided. One side claimed the other stole a whole peck of money their late daddy intended to be equally divided between his two boys. Boyd assured everyone he never found the money and if he did, he most surely would give his brother an equal share.”
“This is real helpful,” Kat complained.
“You might be surprised how helpful, if you hushed up and listened,” Rayson responded.
At this point Kat surrendered. Pop had no intention of speeding up the process. He’d get around to addressing her questions in the ‘by and by’. She sighed and snuggled against his chest, comforted by his familiar aroma of Old Spice and Ivory soap. Listening to the steady rhythm of his heart, for the first time in days she felt safe.
“Strange things began happening to him around Easter. The first things he heard were the noises. Not the banging or clanking you’d expect from any self respecting ghost, more like rubbing. Sometimes from the front room, other times the bedroom. This went on close to two weeks. One morning, just before he crawled out of bed, the whole room switched around on him. The furniture, bedspread and curtains took on different colors. Suddenly the walls were painted, not wallpapered. It looked like his folk’s old bedroom all over again. He said this image only lasted a few seconds, and later on he figured he went back to sleep and dreamed it all up.”
“I can surely understand his thinking,” Kat said. “I keep asking myself the same thing, could I have been asleep and dreamed it all? Especially now that I think about how those old tupelo trees along the road shrank and out of date cars appeared and disappeared. It was like a magic show.”
“You want to hear the rest of my story or not, Kathleen Ruth Templeton?” he interrupted.
“Sorry, Pop. Please go on.”
Rayson grunted, and then nodded solemnly. “Boy
d Turley was sittin’ in the front parlor when he saw his daddy—who’d been dead for quite some time—cross the room carrying several rolls of wallpaper. Naturally curious, Boyd followed. He watched from the doorway of the bedroom as his daddy unrolled the wallpaper and began applying the paste. To his amazement, his father placed dozens of twenty and fifty dollar bills over the paste and proceeded to paper the walls. When Boyd ripped into the paper later on that same day, he found the missing treasure hidden beneath the delicate rosebud patterns.”
“That story didn’t help me much, Pop. Especially since I’m not searching for missing treasure.”
“Are you seeing people that ain’t there? You told me about the man and the firemen doing things they already done. And that’s the same thing.”
Properly chastised, Kat mumbled an apology, “Sorry, sir.”
“The last story I will share is the most closely related to your situation.”
“Then why didn’t you start with that one?”
“Don’t be pulling attitude on me, girl,” Rayson snapped. “Now, this whole incident appeared to be triggered by a school outing. The day before the trip, a little school girl received a phone call. The caller used her proper name and warned her to not go. Claiming it would end tragically, and if she went along, she would die.”
“What happened?”
“That gal was so spooked she stayed home, is what happened. And sure as molasses, the school bus ran off the road and a good number of children did perish.”
Kat sat up and twisted around to stare wide eyed at her father, her heart flipping somersaults in her chest. “That’s like my phone call. The voice very clearly warned me not to cross over. To stay here.”
“Not to cross over?” Rayson’s brow wrinkled. “I thought you and Mitch already—”
“No,” she interrupted. “No, on Sunday morning we barely stepped over the Park Street center line before turning back. We never went all the way across.”
“So what is your thinking on the meaning of your phone call?”
“Even though the voice said not to cross, I have a deep down feeling I’m meant to go all the way.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I wouldn’t have seen and heard those things otherwise. Pop, I just know something is waiting for me on the other side. Something important.”
“What about the warning?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you positive the things you saw, the people and those fire trucks, were from another piece in time?”
Kat hesitated; her earlier omission had finally sneaked up and bit her on the behind. She should’ve told Pop the whole story. And so she did, explaining how everything pointed to 1963—the prank calls, the computer printout with the matching names, dates and times. Concluding with Dreama Simms’ recollections of the house burnings all those years ago.
“I’ve known Dreama since I was a boy. She and Lettie Ruth ran around together in New Orleans, got into trouble together too.”
“Then you must know what happened with her singing career?”
“I do. But we ain’t gonna talk about it.”
“Pop!” Kat’s frustration peaked. Not only would her aunt remain a mystery forever, now Pop had added Dreama Simms to his ‘Ain’t gonna talk about it’ list.
“If she wanted folks knowing her business, I imagine she’d do the tellin’,” Rayson said.
“How about a hint? Just a baby-sized clue about why she gave it up.”
Rayson rubbed his hand across his throat, his eyes far away. “She can’t sing anymore,” he said. “And that’s all you’ll be hearing from me.”
Kat got up and stomped into the kitchen. She took her annoyance out on the ice trays, banging them on the counter with such force the cubes jumped out and skittered across the floor.
“When you’re done beating my ice trays to death, come on back in here,” Rayson called.
She ground her teeth to keep from responding with a caustic remark. If Pop knew how completely frustrating and annoying she found his behavior, he’d be delighted. Some days she was convinced he only lived to aggravate his only child.
When she returned to the living room, instead of finding an impish glimmer in his eyes, she saw something else. She sat beside him and placed her hand on her father’s cheek, turning his head until she could see his face. Frightened eyes stared out of his face.
“What you’re planning on doing troubles me.” He took a shaky breath. “1963 was such a hard period here in Alabama that I fear for you.”
“Don’t be afraid for me, Pop. I know this is right. You do understand I have to go?”
“I understand, child. It’s just that lots of good folks got hurt … or worse.”
“Good folks like Lettie Ruth?”
He stared into her eyes. “You thinking she’s what this is all about?”
“Possibly. You see, she’s my only connection to 1963.” Could the static ridden voice on the phone belong to her missing aunt? Had Lettie Ruth reached across time by offering Kat a tantalizing glimpse of the past and beckoning her to step closer? Or was her aunt the voice warning her to stay away?
Go or stay? Move backward through time or forget the whole thing and go forward? This was the same as asking a child to choose between eating their dessert or vegetables. Kat’s dessert was the thrill. The adrenalin rush of having the opportunity to jump back in time. A chance to make things right so Pop wouldn’t have to suffer so much.
On the vegetable side, whatever happened to Lettie Ruth could come full circle and trap Kat as well. The warning—Don’t Cross—might be the one truth in all this.
“What should I do, Pop?”
“I don’t suppose you’ll know until you get there.”
=SIX=
At this rate, she and Mitch would be standing eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose, and toe-to-toe until the sun came up. He’d arrived on her doorstep minutes after she’d returned from Demopolis and they’d been at it ever since. They’d been criss-crossing through the pros and cons of Kat taking a time journey across Park Street, until the topic resembled a well-plowed field.
Sighing dramatically, Kat broke the stand-off and moved to the sofa. She glanced over her shoulder at Mitch, still rooted to his space in the middle of the room. “You’re a hard headed Pennsylvania Yankee, James Mitchell. You can’t think past your own opinion.”
“That’s because the only other opinion is complete and unadulterated lunacy.”
“See there, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.” As she spoke, a small part grudgingly admitted there might be a bit of truth in his assessment. A trip through time did sound ludicrous. What exactly did she hope to accomplish once she’d arrived in the past?
As though tuning into to her thoughts, Mitch asked, “Why do you want to go back anyway? Is there a reason you haven’t told me?”
He looked so worried Kat almost canceled the whole project johnny on the spot. But the reason she felt so compelled to return to that turbulent period was personal and beyond Mitch’s understanding. This was a rare instance where race divided the Red and Black unit.
Mitch had never experienced discrimination because of his ginger-red hair and freckles. He’d never been shopping in a department store and had every step shadowed by store security because of his color. His family, friends or neighbors weren’t beaten or shot or hung from a tree branch because they drank out of the wrong water fountain. In other words, he’d never been black.
No white male, or female for that matter, could truly grasp the significance of the civil rights movement. To Mitch, the sixties were historically interesting. To Kat, they heralded the dawn of self-awareness for African-Americans. For the first time, blacks united to demand the same rights taken for granted by white citizens. The right to vote, to eat at a lunch counter, to attend the school of choice, to be allowed in a dressing room in a department store. These rights were what Lettie Ruth fought and died for.
“I have to go back,” Kat said, answ
ering his question after several moments of soul searching. “I’m doing this for my family. For Pop. He’s lived with Lettie Ruth’s disappearance hanging over his head for years. Not knowing what happened to her is eating him up on the inside.”
“If no one figured it out in the last thirty-seven years, what makes you so certain you’ll be able to do any better?”
“I’m a trained police officer, I know how to investigate. If I’m there when it goes down, I can help to put the pieces together.”
Mitch stared into her eyes, into her soul. “You’re going back so you can stop the whole thing.”
Kat remained silent to avoid lying to him. Of course she would try to stop Lettie Ruth from disappearing forever. She would be entering the picture forewarned of a horrible event that could be easily averted with a few cautious steps. How could she be expected to do otherwise? Could Mitch? Given the identical circumstances, she knew he would respond the same way.
“Have you considered the ripple effect from messing with the past?” Mitch asked. “You know the old joke about preventing your own birth? It may not be so farfetched, partner.”
“Mitch, I promise not to marry my father,” she said, trying to lighten his mood.
“Don’t get cute. This is serious stuff with serious consequences. Remember, action equals reaction. And I guarantee saving Lettie Ruth will change Alvin’s future. What-if, your interference prevents him from meeting and marrying your mother? Who knows, he could hook up with some sassy New Orleans’ gal and you’ll dissolve in a puff of smoke.”
On the surface his ideas sounded a bit silly, but underneath lay a very solid foundation. By moving one particular chess piece at a crucial moment, the outcome of a game was set. However, if a different piece were moved in a different direction, the game changed. A new winner emerged.
What-if, Mitch’s theory about trying to change the past was right?
“Scouts honor.” She held up three fingers in the Girl Scout salute. “I won’t try to change anything.” Even as she mouthed the words, Kat knew this promise would be broken. “I’ll investigate afterwards.”
Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel Page 5
