Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

  “Typically?” I asked.

  “All right,” she said. “Three main reasons.” She ticked off fingers, making a list. “First, unfinished business. The deceased stays around because they feel that they need to control something they’ve left behind. The emotion, the attachment has to be extreme. A mother who leaves behind young children is a good example. Usually a fairly benevolent presence, not really concerned with living people other than those that are the focus of their concern. Sometimes the unfinished business can involve an unhealthy attachment to a person to a place, though, something that’s loved that the dead person is unwilling to part with.”

  She ticked another finger. “Second reason, guilt. The person doesn’t move on, maybe because they’re too caught up in their own anguish. The term ‘rest in peace’ probably comes from this. I don’t think any of us rest after we die--be a long eternity if we did. Has to do with agitated personalities.

  “Third and last, crazy. People who are lost and confused when they leave this life don’t automatically find themselves when they pass on. Those are the ones I worry about. Just as a mentally ill person can be wildly unpredictable, so can a mentally ill ghost. Those are the ones most likely to seek out and interact with strangers and the ones most likely to be angry or hostile.”

  “What am I dealing with?”

  “You have more than one ghost, Mike.” She smiled. “You’ve told me about three of them. The little boy has appeared several times. We think it’s Elijah Tull, the little murdered boy. He fits the description, and you say he’s manifested his injuries.”

  “Not guilt, surely. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, I think we give him the first category. He has unfinished business. He’s not attached to a place. You’ve seen him in the Atlanta graveyard, and now more than once at your island. Nor is he attached to a person. He’s clearly interacting with you, and he never met you in life. He’s even gone to some effort to change his appearance for you, so you know who he is. What’s his business, and where do you come into it?”

  I thought about the little boy’s sunny smile and invariable wave to me. I felt a surge of affection for him. “I wonder,” I said, “why he’d crawl out of the garbage can in the first place?”

  “Sounds just like the kind of grand entrance an eleven-year-old boy would choose.” She smiled slightly. “Then you have the hanging woman, who we assume is Wanda’s mother,” she continued. “She’s in the old store, but she’s not following you anywhere else. I suspect lots of people have run into her over the years. I think, as scary as she is, that she’s just an example of insanity. She’ll resolve and move on eventually. If they ever tear down the old building that may force her to.”

  “Who’s the third ghost?” I asked, momentarily confused.

  “The black woman you saw in the house you were visiting. Molly told me about her when the two of you got back from your first trip down there. You both saw her then, and you said you saw her again, standing in his office. She closed the door when you came down the hall.”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “She fits the first reason. She was the doctor’s de facto medical receptionist; very attached and possessive. I think she died in the house.”

  “How long did she live there?” she asked.

  “A couple of years. I’m pretty sure she went to live with the doctor pretty late in her life and found her calling at his reception desk. She was a bit of a dictator with him and his patients.”

  “Was she very close to him?”

  “Maybe at the end, I don’t know. I think they were estranged most of his life. She sent him away to live with a relative when he was young. Roy said he reminded her too much of his dead brother. She couldn’t take it. The brother, Eli, was apparently her favorite. Poor Roy.”

  Kate waved and called out to a pair of older men who were leaving. They promised to see her the next morning.

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. If they were estranged, I can see her living with him if the alternative was a nursing home, but after she died, why did she stay behind? She may have answered the phones for his medical practice, but it wasn’t ever really her house, by the sound of it. Why stay after death, when she could go to the son she loved? She stayed so no one else would answer her phones? Doesn’t add up.”

  “So you’d put her in one of the other categories? Guilt? Insanity?”

  She shrugged, palms up. “If there’s still something funny going on...I don’t know, she catches my attention, that’s all.”

  “Molly saw her too, when she visited the house. She thought the woman was warning us.”

  Kate nodded. “Unfinished business.”

  “Warning us about what, though?”

  “Don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe there’s no way left to ever know.” She shook a finger at me and pointed to my plate. “Eat your pie.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Dorothy Tull,

  Milton County, Georgia, Sunday, January 1, 1950

  “Pastor Walker, I need to ask you something.”

  “Of course, Dottie. Can you wait for me? We’ll go back to my office.”

  George Walker continued to greet the Sunday parishioners leaving the church. It had been a good service, and there were smiles and laughter. The pastor often thought that when the Spirit was truly present in the congregation, no Broadway show or gin-soaked gala could produce the kind of high spirits he saw in his church.

  He often preached that you’d want Jesus at your party. “Look at the marvelous first miracle, water into wine, for no other reason than that the booze was running low and people were leaving early. He didn’t tie strings to it, either. He didn’t say, ‘Here’s a drink, now listen to a sermon,’ he just did a nice thing. The bride had her day and the guests had a good time. How were you going to make something grim and serious out of that? ‘God was good,’ he said, and people shouldn’t forget that.”

  He watched Dorothy Tull out of the corner of his eye. She was probably barely past her thirtieth birthday, but she looked fifty. A hard fifty, at that. He said goodbye to the last of his flock. Rusty sedans began to thread their way through those people headed out to the road on foot. He sighed and turned his attention to the woman.

  “My office, Dottie?”

  This first day of the year was warm, but she stood with her arms crossed as though she were freezing cold. She stirred herself and followed him back inside, up the central aisle to the front. He went through a door at the side. His office was in the area that had been the sacristy when Catholics had worshipped here. The card table and painted kitchen chairs sat in contrast to the rich stained glass in the windows.

  When they were seated, Dorothy pulled out a worn Bible. She didn’t open it. She could read and write, but it was a trial to her, and she relied on her memory for verses.

  “Pastor, I know that the sins of the fathers get passed down for four generations. Stands to reason that applies to the sins of the mothers, too. I need to know how to make that shorter than four whole generations. It isn’t right it should be so long.”

  He leaned back as best he could in the hard chair. “Dot, that verse isn’t meant to be taken literally. God doesn’t curse us. It doesn’t mean God is punishing us. It means we punish ourselves. It means it’s hard to change a bad example once it’s been set, you see? Our children learn from us and pass it along to their children in turn.”

  She looked determined. “It’s in Ezekiel, chapter five,” she said. “It’s there.”

  “Yes,” he sighed, “it is. But it isn’t to be taken literally. If you go a little deeper into Ezekiel--may I?”

  He reached a hand out for her Bible. She parted with it reluctantly. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked down through his bifocals.

  The only sound in the hushed church for a minute or two was the turning of the thin pages.

  “Here we go,” he said. “It isn’t Ezekiel, it’s Deuteronomy you’re thinking of. ‘Punishing th
e children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.’ If you skip ahead a little way, Dot, to chapter twenty-three--” He shook his head. “This contradicts what you’re thinking. Listen. ‘Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers.’”

  He realized he was talking to the widow of a man who had been executed by the State of Georgia for avenging his son’s murder and mentally kicked himself. “I don’t like any of this much, I’m a New Testament fellow,” he said quickly, “but that clarifies it a little bit, I think. You see?” He looked up, and was startled to see her crying. “What’s this really all about, Dottie?”

  “And the sins of children, Pastor? Do those get passed back? My child suffers because of me, and I suffer because of what my child done?”

  “Eli?” he asked, incredulous. “Eli didn’t sin. Not in any way.”

  “Not Eli.” She shook her head vigorously. “The other one. I sent him away, but I don’t know if that’s good enough.” Suddenly, she stood up and headed for the door. “Only answer is to make sure there are no more generations. Someone got to stop it. How do you get rid of it? I guess I can tell you it’s true about parents put to death for their children. When the parents and the children sin, it just spreads out, like...like...”

  She threw her hands up, and walked out.

  “...ripples in a pond?” he thought, and shook it off. He followed her out. The front door of the church was already banging shut, and he hurried to catch her. Outside, she was already halfway to the road.

  “You left your Bible, Dot!” he hollered.

  She didn’t turn around.

  ***

  Present Day:

  I turned the calendar on the kitchen wall from June to July. Most months were half gone by the time I remembered to do it, but I liked July first. I looked forward to it more than any other day in the year, and always remembered the calendar change. The doctor had gone back to Atlanta, and Molly and I had resumed our routines.

  Canada Day opened the summer. Fireworks splashed against the night sky like prayers of thanks for the trees, water, lush grasses, and the chirp of frogs, blessings on the holiday traffic, and the warm, lazy days when everything was still possible. Hot morning suns and torrential afternoon rains surrendered to inky darkness, full of colored lights that promised every romance would last a lifetime, that death was a lie, and autumn would never come.

  Molly and I had made no decisions about our future together, save that we would be parents. I had asked her to marry me. She’d thanked me sweetly and said it wasn’t the right time to think about it. She was sure that a marriage couldn’t be built on a baby, or we would all suffer, and that we would make a good decision together, in time.

  Practical, sensible, Molly. I wondered how much her ex-husband Joseph, ever-present in her life’s background, had to do with her deferral. Disappointed and hurt, I tried to concentrate on the child.

  Molly had instituted a morning ritual on days that the weather was decent. We swam a circuit around the island in the early morning and watched from the eastern end, treading water as the sun came up over the trees. “Kind of new-agey,” she said, “but there you go.”

  I pulled on a pair of shorts and padded barefoot down to the dock to wait for her. When I opened the screen door, Blue got to his feet and followed me. The dark morning was humid and overcast. I could smell the water, giving up its essence to the air. A half-mile or so across the reach of water that separated our houses, I heard an engine start and Molly’s navigation lights came on. I watched as they got larger, and then the dock lifted under my feet as her boat washed in.

  She leapt up onto the boards before I had her tied off. Blue caught her excitement and danced around her, barking. Even in the near-dark her eyes were shining. “I was sick this morning!”

  “Oh no,” I said. “What’s wrong?’

  She grabbed both my hands. “Morning sickness, you idiot! Oh, my God, I’m so happy. It makes it all real.”

  “Well, forget swimming,” I said. “Can you handle tea? Maybe try some toast?”

  She had kicked off her sandals, and she quickly shucked her shorts. She shot me a sideways scornful look and dove in. I followed her. The water was cold. I surfaced and looked back at dock. Blue sat watching. He had shown a herding propensity, and I was worried he might follow us into the water, but he seemed content to wait on the dock. I followed Molly.

  We swam steadily along the north shore. The goal was to go around and then come back along the southern edge to greet the rising sun in the east. I knew Molly would stop and wait for me under the cliffs at the western end.

  The far side of the island looked as though it had split and tumbled into the water. The vertical rock face rose thirty or forty feet from the surface to the only spot that wasn’t treed.

  There was a large clearing carpeted with low blueberry bushes at the top.

  Molly usually stopped at the end of the island, over the Hole, to tread water and catch her breath, before starting back up the other side. I hated the interlude and usually tried to hurry the break. This morning I stopped under the cliff face where I expected to find her. It was darker than usual because of the overcast, and it was hard to tell gray water from black sky. I didn’t see her. The water always seemed much colder over the deep part beneath me. The lake currents were active, tugging and pulling at my legs.

  “Molly?’ I called. “You here?”

  There was no answer. I only heard the lake lapping at the rocks off to my right. I turned around, treading water, and saw nothing. It seemed odd that she would have changed her routine, and I felt the first scratching of fear in my chest. Suddenly I sensed a change in the water pressure beneath me.

  Three feet away, a head silently broke the surface. My breath stopped, and I fought the urge to swim madly for shore.

  “Molly?”

  “You’re slow, Mike,” she said. “The winter off didn’t do you any good at all.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that,” I said. “Really.”

  “Do what?” she asked innocently. “I was trying to touch the bottom. Had to do something while I waited about an hour for you to paddle your way here. I need to get you one of those floatie things that you blow up.”

  “The bottom is four hundred fucking feet beneath us.”

  She blew water at me and laughed. “Doesn’t mean you can’t try.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Wait a second. I forgot to tell you,” she said. “I got a call. An ‘I know what you did’ call. Definitely the same sort of breathy voice as your dad’s answering machine. Hard to tell if it was a man or woman if we didn’t already know it was Arthur.”

  “Are you kidding? Kind of an important thing to forget to tell me, Molly. Was it a message, or an actual call?”

  “It was a call. I answered when it rang.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night, close to ten,” she said. “I was in bed, reading.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “I laughed,” she said. “I laughed and hung up.” She looked suddenly solemn. “It has to be Arthur Sutton. I probably shouldn’t have laughed. The poor guy just lost his mother. It’s so stupid, though.”

  “The poor guy may well be dangerous,” I said. “Try not to laugh at him if he calls again, okay? He’s dangerous. He’s unbalanced and has a history of assaulting women. There’s no telling what he might do. I don’t understand how the hell he got your number. It’s unlisted.”

  “C’mon, Mike, it doesn’t matter. He’s dangerous in the suburbs of Atlanta. Can you really picture him finding his way up here? A foreign country? And actually locating this lake if he ever got here? It’s almost impossible to give someone directions to my house when I want them to find me.”

  The sky over the trees was lightening. I could tell we weren’t going to see a sunrise in today’s overcast.

  “I think I’m going to stop b
y the police station, anyway,” I said. “I’ll feel better. I’ll call Sydney Cotton down in Atlanta, too. I want to see if she can get the law down there to warn him off.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “Let’s move on. I hate being over the Hole.”

  We swam more slowly back along the south shore, side by side.

  “Have you thought about us?” I asked.

  “Thought about us? We’re right here.”

  “I mean what we’re going to do? What our plans are.”

  “Our plans are right now, Mike. Our plans are happening to us. I don’t know why you can’t see that. Why force things into some agenda?”

  “I guess a kid on the way makes everything between us seem...loose. Vague.”

  “You’re looking for a perfect love story, Mike, and there isn’t one. Wait a second, my mother’s love story was perfect, and I don’t think you’d want it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “She met the love of her life when she was a teenager, and he felt the same. He died in a car crash after the best summer of their lives. She never recovered, never loved anyone else, and I think she was glad when she was able to join him. In fact, I think the rest of her life was all about trying to die.”

  “You never talk about her.”

  “It makes me too sad,” she said simply. “Kate was my mother in every way that matters.” She went underwater for a few strokes, as if to wash away her sadness. When she surfaced again, she went on. “They never had moments when they hated each other,” she said. “They didn’t get old, or have to go on a diet. They didn’t embarrass each other in public. They never flirted with someone else, they never stopped wanting sex for a while, they didn’t disappoint or humiliate. No one said something so unbelievably stupid or hurtful that it took months to get over it. No one found drugs in the other’s coat pocket.”