The ghosts had paid their first visit that night. Sara's mind, already splintered by grief, took a final wrong turn down the dirt road of madness. Charlie had been disbelieving at first, but now the midnight stops were another part of the day, as fixed in the rhythm of his life as milking the cows and gathering the eggs. Just another hardship to be endured.
Charlie turned his eyes from the photograph and reached for the tobacco. Since he was awake, he might as well have a chaw. He rested his wiry neck back on the pillow and worked the sticky sweet leaf with his gums. Something rustled by the dresser.
“You're a little late, the show's over,” Charlie said. The noise continued.
Charlie raised his head and saw a faint apparition trying to form by the closet. Damned if it ain't a new one, he thought. Threads of milky air spun themselves into a human shape. Charlie blinked and looked at the photograph.
“Can't be,” he muttered. Then he realized it was the one he'd been waiting for, night after long night. “Johnny? Is that you, boy?”
A voice like December answered, “Yeah, Dad.”
Charlie sat up in bed, his heart pounding. He glanced sideways at his wife. Her eyes were closed, and the blankets rose and fell with her even breathing.
“How's it going, son?”
“Not too bad. I've been a little confused here lately.”
“Didn't I tell you to keep an eye out for that damned saw blade? Just look what you've gone and done to yourself.”
Johnny materialized more fully and stepped forward into the moonlight. Flesh hung in ropes from his ruined cheeks. His nose was missing, and chunks of his hair had been torn from his savaged scalp. His Adam's apple bobbed uncontrollably, dangling by a tendon from the gash in his neck.
Charlie gulped, feeling the tobacco sting his throat. “You're looking real good, son.”
“How's Mom?”
“She's fine,” Charlie said. “We better let her sleep, though. Her spring's dried up.”
Johnny nodded as if that made sense. The Adam's apple quivered and made a wet sound.
“They took your pitching arm, son. That was supposed to win you a college scholarship.”
Johnny contemplated his missing left hand as if he could still see it. “It happened so fast, Dad. Hurt for a second, like when you get rope burns or something, but then it was over. Seems like only yesterday, but seems like it never happened, too. Lots of things are funny that way anymore.”
Charlie looked into Johnny's eyes that were deep as graves. He suddenly remembered teaching his son how to tie a slip-knot on a fishing line. They had stood in the shade of a sycamore, where the branches were highest, so the hooks wouldn't snag. Johnny's stubby fingers had fumbled with the line as his face clenched in determination, but now the fingers of his remaining hand were ragged and moldy, with dirt packed under the nails.
Charlie felt the blankets slip from his shoulders, and a coldness flooded his chest, as if his heart had frozen. “You feel like talking about it, son?”
“Well, I'm supposed to be looking for something. I thought I ought to come here,” Johnny said, the bone of his head slowly swiveling.
“Home is where you go when you got trouble,” Charlie said. “I told you I'd always be here to help you.”
“Dad, it ain't the hurt, 'cause I don't feel nothing. But I'm lost, like. Can't seem to find my way.”
Charlie gummed his chaw quickly and nervously before answering. “You know you'd be welcome here, but I don't think that's right. There's others that are your kind now.”
“I reckon so,” Johnny said softly, looking at and through his own torso as if finally understanding. Then his hollow voice lifted. “You remember when those Corcoran boys were picking on me, and you stared down their whole damned brood? Walked right up on their front porch, standing on them old boards ready to fight 'em one at a time or all at once. That sure took the steam out of their britches.”
“Nobody messes with my boy.” Charlie looked into the shadows that passed for Johnny's eyes.
“Say, Dad, whatever happened to Darlene?”
Charlie didn't want Johnny to rest any less easily than he already did. He couldn't say that Darlene had married Jack Corcoran when Johnny was barely six weeks in the ground, before the grass even had time to take root over his grave. Fond memories might give the dead comfort, for all Charlie knew. So he lied.
“She pined and pined, boy. Broke her poor little heart. But eventually she got on with her life, the way a body does. That would have made one fine wedding, you and her.”
“I only wanted to make her happy. And you, too, Dad. I guess I'll never get the chance now.”
The dark maw in the center of Johnny's face gaped like an endless wet cave.
“We all got our own row to hoe, Johnny. I taught you that we take care of our own. But I also told you that you gotta make hard choices along the way. And it looks like this is one path that you better walk alone.”
Johnny shuffled his shredded feet. “Yeah, I reckon so. But I ain't scared. I guess it's what ought to be.”
Charlie felt a stirring in the blankets beside him.
“Them other ones been here lookin' for you. Been here ever damn night, bugging hell out of your mom,” Charlie said quickly.
Sara sat up, her eyes moist with sleep. She gasped as she saw the scraps of her son. Charlie put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from getting out of bed.
A thin strand of drool ran down her chin as she tried to speak. “Juhhhnn...”
Johnny drifted forward. “Mom?”
Charlie pressed Sara's head down onto her pillow. “You'd best be getting on, son. No need to stir up trouble here.”
Johnny moved closer, though not one of his limbs moved. He was beside the bed now, and Charlie felt the stale cold draft of his son's deathwind. Johnny reached out with a hand that was the color of a trout belly.
Sara squirmed under Charlie's arm, but Charlie pinned her and pulled the quilt over her face. When he looked back at Johnny, the vacant expression had been replaced by a look that Charlie had seen one other time. A possum had crawled under the henhouse wire, and Charlie went after it with a pitchfork when the animal refused to give up its newfound territory. Charlie must have jabbed the possum fifty or sixty times, with it hissing and snarling every breath right up until it finally died.
Charlie wondered what kind of pitchfork you used on a ghost.
The mottled hand came closer, and Charlie clenched his teeth. “Ain't proper for a grown man to be making his mother cry.”
Johnny paused for a moment, and his eyes looked like they were filled with muddy water.
“That's right,” Charlie said. “Your spring’s drying up. You got other rivers to run to, now.”
Sara kicked Charlie's leg, but he wasn't about to turn her loose.
Johnny reached out and touched Charlie's cheek. His son's fingers were like icicles. The hand trailed along the line of Charlie's stubble, as if remembering the scratchiness he'd felt against his infant skin. It was the first time they had touched in nearly twenty years.
“I'd best go with them. Seems only right,” Johnny whispered in his lost voice. Affection and a strange pride fluttered in Charlie's chest. This was his only son standing before him. Did it matter that his decaying guts were straining against the cotton of his burial shirt? As a father, it was his duty to teach his son one more of life's harsh little lessons.
“A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.” Charlie pointed to the far corner of the room. “They went that-a-ways.”
Johnny turned his mutilated face, a face that only a mother could love. Then he looked back. He leaned over Charlie and spread his arms wide. The raw meat of his throat jogged as he spoke. “I love you, Dad.”
Without thinking, Charlie reached up, his hands passing through the moist silk of Johnny's flesh. But how could you hug a dried-up spring? How could you hug a memory?
Charlie loved the son who had walked this earth. The small boy who had sat between Ch
arlie's legs on the tractor, pretending to steer while making engine noises with his mouth. The son he had taken to see the Royals play, who had built an awkward birdhouse in eighth-grade shop for his mother, who had slept in the hayloft in the summer because he liked the smell. The son who had buried his old hound himself because he didn't want anyone to see him cry. Johnny did those things, not this blasphemy hovering over him.
Johnny had been the flesh of Charlie's flesh, but this thing was beyond flesh. Resting in peace was a comfort for the living, not the dead.
He almost said the words anyway. But he found he'd rather take his regrets to the grave. Second chances be damned.
“It's good to see you, son.” Like hell.
“Tell Mom that I miss her.” Johnny's maw opened and closed raggedly. Sara was sobbing under the blankets, her fragile bones trembling.
“I will. You take care, now.” Like he was sending Johnny off to summer Bible camp.
Johnny shimmered and faded, the dutiful son to the last. His stump of a left arm raised as if to wave good-bye. The essence that had been Charlie's only son fluttered and vanished just as the first rays of dawn broke through the room. The ghosts wouldn't be back. They had what they had been looking for.
Charlie relaxed and pulled the blankets off his wife's face. She turned her back to him, her gray hair matted against the pillowcase. He touched her shoulder but she shrugged him away. Something rattled in her chest.
He rose from the bed and dressed, working the tightness out of his stringy muscles. He rubbed his hands together to drive away the lingering chill of his son's touch. His heart felt like a charred ember in the ash of a dead fire. His eyes burned, but they had always been miserly when it came to making tears.
He knew you couldn't expect it to keep running forever. When the spring dries up, you had to remember that you had no promise that it would keep on. The water's for everybody or even nobody at all. You had no real right to it in the first place.
Charlie stopped by the front door and put on his overcoat and heavy work gloves. Firewood was waiting outside, frosty and unsplit. He took his ax and his loving memories out under the morning sun so he could hold them to the light.
THE END
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###
HAUNTED
“Do it again, Daddy.” Janie's coloring book was in her lap, forgotten.
Darrell smiled and thumbed open the top on his Zippo lighter. He struck the flint wheel and the flame burst to life. The dancing fire reflected in each of Janie's pupils. Her mouth was open in fascination.
“It's pretty,” she said.
“And so are you. Now back to your coloring. It's almost bedtime.” Darrell flipped the silver metal lid closed, snuffing the orange flame.
Janie put the coloring book in front of her and rolled onto her stomach. She chose a crayon. Gray. Darrell frowned and placed the lighter by the ashtray.
Rita tensed in her chair beside him. She reached out with her thin hand and gripped his arm. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Darrell listened. Janie was humming to herself. The wax of the crayon made a soft squeak across the paper. The clock on the mantel ticked once, again, three times, more.
He tried to hear beyond those normal sounds. His hearing was shot. Too much Elvis, Rita always said. Too much Elvis would make anybody deaf.
“From the kitchen,” she said. “Or outside.”
Janie heard the same noise that Rita was hearing. She cocked her head, the crayon poised above the page. She stopped kicking her feet, the heels of her saddle shoes nearly touching her back.
“Mice, most likely,” he said, too loudly. He was head of the household. It was his job to put on a brave face. The expression fit him like a glass mask.
Why didn't the damned dog bark? Dogs were supposed to be sensitive to spirits from the other side. He put down the newspaper, paper crackling. Mayor Loeb and Martin Luther King looked out from the front page. Black and white.
“Terribly loud mice,” Rita finally answered. Darrell shot her a glance, then rolled his eyes toward Janie. Rita was usually careful in front of their daughter. But having those noisy things around had been stressful.
“Sounds like it's coming from the kitchen,” he said with what he hoped was nonchalance. He pulled his cigar from his mouth. He rarely smoked, and never inside the house. But they were a comfort, with their rich sweet smell and tangy taste and the round weight between his lips.
He laid the cigar carefully beside his lighter, propping up the damp end on the ashtray so the dust wouldn't stick to it. The ashtray was shaped like a starfish. They'd gotten it on their honeymoon to Cuba , back when Americans were allowed to visit. He could still see the map of the island that had been painted on the bottom of the glass.
Darrell stood, his recliner groaning in relief. He looked down at the hollow impression in the woven seat of the chair. Too much food. Too much food, and too much Elvis.
Can't go back. Can't get younger. Can't change things. He shook his head at nothing.
“Don't bother, honey. The mice won't hurt anything.” Rita chewed at the red end of her index finger.
“Well, we can't let them have the run of the house.” It was their secret code, worked out over the long sleepless night. Janie didn't need to know. She was too young to understand. But the things were beyond anybody's understanding, no matter what age a person was.
Darrell glanced at the big boxy RCA that cast a flickering shadow from one corner of the room. They usually watched with the sound turned down. Barney Fife was saying something to Andy, his Adam's apple twitching up and down like a turkey's.
“Get me a soda while you're up?” Rita asked. Trying to pretend everything was normal.
“Sure. Anything for you, pumpkin?”
Janie shook her head. He wished she would go back to coloring. Her eyes were wide now, waiting. He was supposed to protect her from worries.
She put the gray crayon back in the box. Fifteen other colors, and she almost always used gray. Freud would probably have made something of that. Darrell hoped she would select a blue, even a red, something vibrant and found in rainbows. His heart tightened as she chose black.
He walked past her and turned up the sound on the television. Beginning to whistle, he headed across the living room. No tune came to mind. He forced a few in-between notes and the music jumped track somewhere in his throat. He began again, with “I See the Moon.” Janie's favorite.
Where was that dog? Always underfoot when Darrell went through the house, but now nowhere to be found. Nothing like this ever happened back in Illinois . Only in Tennessee .
He was in the hall when he heard Aunt Bea's aria from the living room: “An-deeeee!”
They used to watch “The Outer Limits,” sometimes “The Twilight Zone.” Never again. They got too much of that sort of thing in real life. Now it was nothing but safe, family fare.
Darrell eased past the closet. His golf clubs were in there, the three-wood chipped where he'd used it to drive a nail into the kitchen drawer that was always coming apart. Cobwebs probably were stretched between the irons. Par for the course, these days.
He stopped outside the kitchen. A bright rectangle of light spilled into the hallway. Mice were supposed to be scared of house lights. Well, maybe mice were, but those things weren't. Then why did they only come at night?
There was a smudge of fingerprints on the doorway casing. Purple. Small. Grape jelly.
He tried to yawn, but his breath hitched. He checked the thermostat, even though it was early autumn and the temperature was fairly constant. He looked around for another excuse for delay, but found none.
The kitchen floor was off-white linoleum, in a Pollock sort of pattern that disguised scuffs and stains. Mice would find nothing on this floor.
The Formica counters were clean, too. Three soiled plates were stacked in the sink. He didn't blame Rita for avoiding the
chore. No one wanted to be alone in the kitchen, especially after dinner when the sun had gone down.
A broom leaned against the little door that hid the folding-out ironing board. He wrapped his hands around the smooth wood. Maybe he could sweep them away, as if they were dust balls.
Darrell crossed the kitchen slowly, the broom held across his chest. As he crouched, he felt the bulge of his belly lapping over his belt. Both he and his cross-town hero were packing on the weight in these later years.
Where was that dog? A few black-and-white clumps of hair stuck to the welcome mat at the back door. That dog shed so much, Darrell wouldn't be surprised if it was invisible by now. But the mess was forgivable, if only the mutt would show up. A good bark would scare those things away.
He parted the curtain on the back door. The grass in the yard had gotten tall and was a little ragged. George next door would be tut-tutting to his wife. But George was retired, he had nothing on his mind but lawn fertilizer. There was a joke in there somewhere, but Darrell wasn't in the mood to dig it up.
A little bit of wind played in the laurel hedge, strong enough to make the seat of Janie's swing set ease back and forth. Of course it was the wind. What would those things want with a swing set? The set's metal poles were flecked with rust. He didn't remember that happening. Gradual changes weren't as noticeable, he supposed.
In the dim light, the world looked colorless. Nothing else stirred. If they were out there, they were hiding. He almost expected to hear some corny organ music like they played on the “Inner Sanctum” radio program.
He was about to drop the curtain and get Rita's soda, and maybe a beer for himself, when he saw movement. Two shapes, wispy and pale in the faded wash of the backyard. Trick of the moonlight. Yeah. Had to be. They didn't exist, did they?
He looked forward to the beer bubbling in his throat. The bitter sweetness wasn't as crisp as it used to be back when he was young. Maybe everything got flatter and less vivid as a person got older. Senses dulled by time and timelessness.
Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set Page 2
