by E. C. Bell
Movement. I saw movement in the darkened reception area. I prayed it wasn’t James, and looked at Carruthers again. I could tell by the look on his face that he suspected nothing.
“I’m sure it was only half a minute,” I said again, trying to fill the office with the sound of my voice so he wouldn’t suspect anything until it was too late. “Did you look at your watch? Does it have a stopwatch feature? Maybe you can time me—”
“Shut up!” Carruthers yelled. I’d gone too far, because he’d pulled the gun up to eye level again, and all I could see was the big black hole, with his crazy eyes just above it, and movement behind him, dark movement behind him . . .
“Put the gun down.” Sergeant Worth touched her gun to Carruthers’ left ear. He screamed and inadvertently shot off a round, hitting the computer monitor right in front of me.
I screamed and threw myself to the floor under the desk, then watched as Sergeant Worth deftly knocked Carruthers on his ass and took the gun away from him, tossing it to the side before quickly handcuffing him.
“Clear!” Before the words were properly out of her mouth, a bunch of guys in uniform hut-hutted into the small office and swarmed over Carruthers. Then they hut-hutted out again, with Carruthers in tow. He’d howled out his outrage once, but after he’d been tased to bring him under control, he got really meek really fast. Then he was gone.
“Are you all right?” Worth walked over to the desk, where I was still cowering and making little screechy noises. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m safe,” I whispered. “I’m really safe.” Then I bounded out from behind the desk like a demented gazelle and grabbed the flabbergasted cop in a bear hug.
“Oh my God, it was you, I thought it was you, but then I was afraid it was James and that if that guy heard him, he’d go back and kill him—and Oh! My! God! You saved my life!”
I kept pulling her around in circles, doing my version of a dance of joy until Worth none too gently pushed me away from her.
“Is James all right?” I asked. Then fear pierced my heard when she didn’t answer immediately. “He isn’t—”
Farley popped in from the reception area. “Quit screaming,” he said. “He’s alive.”
“He’ll need to go to the hospital,” Worth said. “Nasty bump on the head, he’ll need X-rays, but I think he’ll be all right.”
“Did you save Helen Latterson?”
“Yes,” Worth said. “She’ll be fine. We picked up Big Randy Ferguson, too. Thanks for the tip, Marie. You saved that woman’s life.” She stared at me oddly for a moment. “Some day, you’ll have to tell me how you did that.”
“But not today,” I said. “All right?”
Worth laughed. “You know what, I’ll give you that. But some day.” She pointed to the telephone receiver still sitting next to the keyboard on the desk. “Who’s on the line?” she asked.
“Emergency operator,” I said. “Tell her thank you.”
“Will do,” she said.
As she quickly brought the operator up to speed, I grinned at Farley like a fool. I couldn’t say anything to him, of course. But I could smile.
Worth and her cronies quickly emptied the office of anything that was remotely connected to Carruthers. They took the computer tower, and went through the desk drawers, taking the file that held all the original bank statements, which were in the drawer I’d pointed out to Carruthers when I thought he was going to kill me.
I guess I know James better than I thought.
Worth looked at the file cabinets, but didn’t touch them. “If we need anything, we’ll be back,” she said. I nodded at her, wondering if James would want to remove the sergeant’s file before that happened.
Some secrets are better kept.
Then, she turned to me.
“You really kept your head, Marie. Nice work. Now, we’re moving James to the hospital. You want to go along? He’d probably like to see a friendly face when he wakes up.”
“That would be great, Sergeant. Thank you.” I followed the cop out of the inner office, and to the hallway. That’s when I realized Farley hadn’t followed me, so I went back.
He was standing in the reception area, staring out the window.
“What are you doing, Farley?” I whispered. “I’m going to the hospital. You have to come. Remember?”
“No,” he said. When he turned, his eyes were glowing, and I felt a jolt of something close to fear. Was he going to move on? He wasn’t ready yet. He hadn’t figured out what he needed to figure out.
But then, they faded back to normal. “No,” he said again. “I think I’ll just stay here.”
“The hospital’s more than ten blocks away,” I said. “You know you’ll get yanked to wherever I am—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore. You have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can take care of yourself. You don’t need me. Do you?”
I stared at him, wondering if, just maybe, he was right. Had I been the one who had linked us? Was it really as simple as me letting him go?
“I’m sorry if I did that to you,” I whispered.
“Go, look after Jimmy boy,” he said. “I’ll hold down the fort.”
“And you’ll be here when I get back?” I asked. I heard the doors to the ambulance slam shut, and knew if I was going to go, I had to go now. “Promise me you will be.”
“I promise,” he said.
Farley:
Meeting One of My Own
Marie and James were gone for hours, so I tried to take a nap. I hadn’t gone to nothingness in a long time, and thought maybe I needed one, and besides I was bored, but it didn’t happen. So, instead, I went for a walk.
I went over to the crucifixion church—the one I’d seen in the police photos on Sergeant Worth’s desk. I don’t know why I went, but I did.
There wasn’t much going on. All the yellow tape was gone. There were a few people still milling around, staring at the tree, at the church front, talking quietly amongst themselves. If there hadn’t been so much blood on the trunk of the tree—and on the lower branches, and the grass around it—it would have been a peaceful scene.
One guy sat on the church steps, staring out at nothing. He looked like a drug addict who needed another fix to get him through a very long day. He also looked like he’d taken a real shit kicking at some time in the recent past. I walked past him to get to the tree, and he stood up and wandered over. He ended up standing next to me.
“Got any change?” he asked. He was staring at the tree, which was pretty hacked up, probably from the emergency guys getting the body down. “I really need to get some food in me. I don’t feel so good.”
I didn’t answer him. No reason to. Nobody can see me but Marie.
“Come on, just a couple of bucks.”
I glanced around, but there was no-one near the guy. Just me.
“Are you talking to me?” I said, feeling like an idiot. Of course he wasn’t talking to me. No-one talks to me except Marie.
“Well, yeah.” The guy seemed confused. “I need a coupla bucks . . .”
I moved to the right, and sure as shit, his eyes followed me.
“Are you all right?” the guy asked, shuffling a couple of steps away from me as though it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he should be a bit afraid.
“How do I look to you?” I asked. “Do I look clear to you?”
“Clear?” The guy shuffled another step away, and I followed him. I wasn’t letting him get away that easily.
“Yeah, clear, you know, like glass.”
“Do you think you look like glass?”
Jesus, the idiot was talking to me like I was a retard or something. “Tell me how I look to you. I’ll get you some money if you tell me.”
I figured Marie would like to meet someone else who could see ghosts. All I had to do was persuade him to come back to the office with me. She had to see this!
The other guy shrugged. “All right, I’ll g
o along. You look old, kinda fat, and you’re wearing sandals with socks.” He bent over, really had a look at my foot and shuddered. “Man, you shoot off your toe or something? That looks bad.”
No worse than he looked. But why wasn’t he seeing me as clear? That didn’t make any sense.
“So I don’t look like glass to you?”
“No, you don’t.” The guy looked impatient as well as sick. “I did what you asked. Gimme the money. I really don’t feel good.”
“I don’t have any money on me,” I said, and pointed down the street. “I gotta a friend though, lives couple of blocks over, if you come with me, I’ll get you some.”
“Son of a bitch.” The guy turned away from me.
“Really,” I said. I was hoping he’d come with me, so Marie could explain why he didn’t see me the way she did. The way I saw myself. “I’ll take you to my friend, she’ll give you money.”
“Fuck off.” He sat down on the steps of the church, and looked like he was about to cry. “The first guy that acts like he sees me, and he’s a fucking looney. Fuck off and leave me alone. I don’t feel good.”
He pulled his legs up to his chest, then flopped over in the fetal position. People walked around him as though he wasn’t there. It wasn’t until someone walked through him that I finally got it.
“Oh my God, you’re dead,” I said.
I wheeled away from him, and then left. Another ghost. As if Marie needed anything like that in her life. She was stuck with me. Wasn’t that enough?
I guess not.
Funny how the world takes great delight in kicking a guy—or a girl—when she’s down. I got back to the office just as Marie’s mother was leaving a voicemail message, for Marie. It was about me.
The gist? I’m still not ready to move on. I had something more to learn about the way I lived my life. What I knew for sure was, I’d barely lived my life at all, but something about that pathetic attempt was still holding me here.
Isn’t that sad? Isn’t that just about the saddest thing you’ve ever heard in your life?
Poor Marie. And poor me.
Marie:
Back from the Hospital, Once More
By the time James and I got back to the office from the hospital, the sun was going down. I managed to manhandle him up the stairs and into the office, him weaving around like he’d had way too much to drink, and me weaving around just as bad, as I tried to keep him upright.
I had been surprised when they let him go, to be honest. It had looked like they were going to keep him overnight, so Sergeant Worth and the rest of the cops had left. That’s when a doctor came in and said that it looked like he could go home. Luckily, James had some money, so we’d been able to take a cab instead of trying to make it by bus. By the time I got him to the office, I was ready to collapse.
I saw Farley standing by the window, watching the sun go down. He didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge our rather dramatic entrance or anything, and I realized I was going to have to find some more strength from somewhere to deal with him.
First, though, I had to deal with James.
“You’re not going to throw up again, are you?” I asked.
He shook his head, gently. He still looked green.
“I must have the flu or something,” he mumbled. “I never throw up like that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I sighed and maneuvered him closer to the door of the inner office. “I think if you lie down for a while, you’ll feel better.”
“Oh, I hope so,” he muttered. “Are your shoes all right?”
“Fine. Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t even want to look at my shoes. “Can you help a little bit? You just have to get through the door, then you can lie down.”
He managed to put one foot in front of the other until we were in the office, and I got him on to the cot. Before I even got his coat off, his eyes were closed, and he was snoring. I left him lying in a heap, and went back out to Farley.
“I think he has a concussion or something,” I said. “I don’t think they should have let him out so soon.”
Farley turned and stared at me, and I quit talking about James. I was right. Something had happened to him.
“You don’t look so good,” I said, cautiously.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I dunno,” he said, and sighed. “Maybe that dumb fuck Jimmy gave me his stomach flu.” He leaned against the desk, then sank to the floor. “What do ya think? Can Jimmy give a dead guy stomach flu?”
“I don’t think he has the flu, I think he was reacting to the pain killers,” I said. “What happened?”
“I went out for a walk,” Farley said. “I met a dead guy.”
“A dead guy? You mean a ghost?”
One ghost seeing another ghost didn’t happen all the time, but often enough that I didn’t have to tell Farley he was doing something else completely off the chart. It usually happened when they were both at the same Phase of Acceptance. I wondered who it was he saw.
Farley slid flat on the floor, staring at the ceiling. He glanced at me, saw I was staring at him, and he rolled over on his side, his face away from me.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “A ghost. Just like me. I figured I should tell you.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
Farley simply interacting with another ghost shouldn’t have brought on feelings of sickness again.
“What else happened?”
“Your mom called,” he said, and waved at the desk. I looked at the phone, red light flashing. “She left a message. You might want to listen to it before Jimmy boy wakes up. She has a bit to say about me.”
Oh. Had my mother given Farley bad news? Could that be why he was looking as terrible as he was?
“What did she say?”
“I don’t know, some shit about something,” he mumbled. “I couldn’t figure it out. She doesn’t think I’m ready to move on yet, though.”
“Oh.”
“And you’re supposed to be nice to me.”
“Oh?” I felt my mouth quirk in a half-smile. Trust Farley to hear that.
“I’m not kidding. That’s what she said. I’m delicate or something.” He shuddered, as though the very thought of him being delicate was more than he could bear. “She says you’re supposed to let me stay with you, until I do figure it out.”
“Oh.” I thought about pushing the button so I could hear the message. He’d obviously missed some important information— Then I realized Farley was staring at me, the look on his face intense.
“So?” he asked.
“So what?”
“You gonna let me stay?” The words rushed out of him as though he’d been holding them in forever. “I know this isn’t what you want, it interferes with your plans and all, but . . . What do you think? You gonna stick with me to the end?”
He looked at me with such naked need, I realized what was making him weak. It was me. Again.
He didn’t know if he could trust me to be there for him to the end and I didn’t blame him. All I’d done since I’d met him was try to figure out ways to get rid of him. I’d tried shortcuts, and nastiness, and fighting with my mother. It was time for me to do the right thing by this guy, and actually start helping him. Really, this time.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to stick with you to the end.”
“Thank you,” he said, and then hastily wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
“Every time I look out at the sun, I keep thinking about my wife,” he whispered. “And my daughter, as she was growing up. And my grandfather.” He sniffled, and then wiped his nose. “Even that ornery son of a bitch.”
His life. He was remembering his life. I was almost certain that was a very good sign, but decided to shut my mouth for once, and listen to my mother’s message. I didn’t want to hurt Farley any more than I already had.
I had to start doing the right thing for this guy.
“I’m going to l
isten to Mom’s message,” I said. “I’m not sure what to do next.”
“That’s a good idea,” Farley replied. “Getting advice from you mother is a very good idea. Not like my grandfather.” He shuddered. “He was mean. Did I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t,” I said. I reached up and pressed the voicemail button, and the machine started.
“Marie,” my mother’s voice quavered. She sounded sicker than the last time I’d spoken to her. “You’re really having a run of bad luck, aren’t you? Maybe it’s time for you to come home. I’ve always got room for you here.” She sighed, then started coughing, and I wasn’t sure she was going to be able to stop. Finally she did, and after she caught her breath, she continued.
“About your friend, Farley. I’ve been doing some thinking, and you know, you didn’t do badly. I wanted to let you know that. Be gentle with him, dear, but help him see what he needs to see. It isn’t the way he died, or who killed him. That’s not what’s holding him here. The manner of death never is, though it sometimes makes for a good book.
“No girl, it still comes down to him figuring out why he lived his life the way he did. From what you’ve said, he doesn’t sound ready for that yet.” She stopped speaking, and I reached for the button, certain she was done.
She wasn’t. Not quite.
“I probably shouldn’t have said that into this machine, should I?” she whispered. “Sorry dear. Give me a call. I’d love to hear from you.” And then she was gone.
I deleted her message, then went back to Farley. “It still comes down to you figuring out why you lived your life the way you did,” I said. “Once you understand that, you will be able to move on.”
I couldn’t tell if he was listening to me or not.
