Spirit

by John Inman

  “You’re not touching him,” Sam said. “Neither one of you.”

  And at that, Jack cocked the gun. The metallic ratcheting sound froze us all in place.

  Sally spat like a cat. “Put that thing away!”

  Jack eased the hammer down on the gun, but he still didn’t aim it at anything other than Sam and me. I wasn’t sure, but I thought his hand was starting to tremble from the weight of the thing. That wasn’t a promising development either.

  Sam’s fingers were squeezing my arm so tightly he was cutting off the circulation. I eased myself away from his grip. His gaze kept sliding from Sally to Jack. Back and forth. I could sense him trying to formulate a plan.

  I feared it would take greater minds than ours to come up with a solution to this mess.

  Sally descended the last two steps of the staircase and passed within a foot of us as she moved to Jack’s side. She strode across the basement floor with such assurance, neither Sam nor I thought to grab her, use her as a shield, try to bargain for our safety with her own. Like fools, we simply let her go by.

  She grabbed the gun from Jack before any of us knew what she was intending to do. Including Jack. He looked surprised to find himself suddenly unarmed.

  “Go upstairs and get Timmy. He’s probably in bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Don’t bring him down here. Take him out to the car. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “What about these two?” Jack growled. “We can’t just let them go to the co—”

  “Do what I said!” she snapped. “Go get the boy!”

  Sam tensed at my side. We both did. I wasn’t about to let that creep lay his hands on Timmy.

  “Don’t do it,” I warned as he walked past me.

  He snickered, muttered a curse, and kept walking. Sam moved to intercept.

  Sally stepped closer and aimed the gun at Sam. “Let him go,” she ordered. To Jack, she roared, “Do it! Go upstairs and get Timmy!”

  Jack was at the top of the stairs, just reaching for the door, when Timmy’s voice came once again through the baby monitor under the stairs. “Mommy and Jack played a game on Daddy. They tricked him into coming down to the basement, and when he wasn’t looking, they hit him with the crowbar. Daddy didn’t fall down the stairs. They weren’t having dinner together. Mommy and Jack snuck up on him and beat him until he couldn’t move. He tried to fight back, but he didn’t have a chance. They beat him and left him to die all alone. And all the time he was dying, he only thought of me. He only thought of me. They buried him and told everyone he ran away. That’s what happened. That’s what really happened.”

  “That’s a lie,” Sally screamed to the ceiling. “It didn’t happen that way at all. It didn’t!”

  Only then did it dawn on me that perhaps they weren’t really Timmy’s words we were hearing at all. I flashed back to Bugs Bunny speaking to us through the TV. Was Paul simply using Timmy as a conduit to speak to the living? Us. Was that why sometimes Timmy’s words seemed too mature for a four-year-old? Was Timmy actually still sound asleep in Sam’s old bedroom upstairs?

  God, I certainly hoped so. The last thing I wanted was for him to hear any of this.

  At that moment, it seemed our resident ghost decided to take a more proactive approach to the evening’s festivities.

  Sally’s blonde hair suddenly flew out behind her as a surge of wind tore into her, almost knocking her off her feet. Dust from the basement floor billowed into her face. She turned away to protect her eyes, and the moment she did, Sam lunged for the gun.

  Before he reached it, a horrific crash shattered the night around us, stopping Sam in his tracks and making me crouch away from the sound in stunned terror. We spun to see Jack pinwheeling at the top of the wooden stairs leading up to the service porch, trying to keep his balance as the steps crumbled beneath him. In one horrifying explosion of splinters and dust and lumber, the stairs gave way and crashed to the basement floor, carrying Jack with them. He landed atop the crowbar, which Sam had leaned against the railing at the base of the stairs. The crowbar pierced Jack’s leg like a metal spear.

  Jack hit the floor screaming, the crowbar wedged crosswise through his thigh. His leg was covered with blood before the last timber fell around him. A moment later, a heavy support beam toppled over and struck Jack in the head, knocking him unconscious, which was a shame. I rather enjoyed hearing him scream.

  From beneath the rubble, we heard the baby monitor crackle and squawk, obviously on its last legs, and amid the staticky electronic rumble, Timmy’s voice saying, “Oops,” and then a giggle.

  Sam stared at the ruined staircase and muttered, “Thank you, Paul.” He turned his eyes to Sally, bright with new hope. “Now it’s just you and us.”

  Sally glared right back. If she cared about Jack’s fate, she didn’t show it. She barely glanced his way. “Stay back,” she ordered Sam.

  I tried to reason with her. “Put the gun down, Sally. I can’t pretend to know why you did what you did, but you have to see it’s over now. You aren’t going to make it worse by killing me and Sam, are you?”

  Her hair was wild from the wind that had struck her earlier, her eyes red, her mascara smudged from the cloud of dust Paul had thrown in her face. The gun was so heavy in her grasp she had to aim it in our direction with both hands.

  “I didn’t kill anybody, Jason. It was Jack. Jack did it all. You have to believe me. When Paul found out about the affair between Jack and me, he said he wanted me to leave. Immediately. He said he was taking the house, Timmy, everything. He said he never wanted to see me again. I was terrified, Jason! Without my share of the house, I’d have nothing. Nothing! But still… it was Jack’s decision to kill Paul. Not mine. You have to believe that.”

  She stared at the hole in the bricks behind me, her eyes vacantly peering through the damaged wall as if she was remembering what she had left behind there three years earlier. Her husband. The father of her child. The last hope she would ever have of calling herself a good woman.

  She glanced at Jack, unconscious and bleeding on the basement floor. There was no sympathy in her eyes. None whatsoever. “I thought Jack loved me, but he never did. He only used me. He’s still using me.”

  Sam turned to the wall as if Sally’s gun did not exist, diminishing her hold over him with that one simple movement. “I’m going to look inside the chest. I want to see my brother’s body with my own eyes.”

  Sally pierced me with a stare full of hurt and anguish… and anger. “So you really dug up the trunk. You actually found the body.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We found the body. There’s no way for this to just disappear now, Sally. You have to think of that boy upstairs. Try to make things right with him. Give me the gun. Let me call the police. I can finish this now, if you’ll let me.”

  She turned to Sam, her eyes vacant. Uncaring. “You want to see the body? Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”

  Sam walked away, his back straight, proud and firm and unafraid. I was never more in love with him than I was at that moment. I followed him into the shadows behind the wall. Sally followed too. For a ways. She did not step into the darkness beyond but only peered through the opening, seemingly as eager to see what was in the chest as we were. Only later would I realize I was wrong in that assumption. Sally’s mind had already disconnected. She had already made other plans.

  Sam and I knelt beside the hole where the steamer trunk still rested. We attempted to lift it from its grave but knew immediately it would need to be dug all the way free to be extracted. It was too heavy, too well gripped by the dirt around it. We would have to make do with opening the lid where it lay.

  I reached out for the pole lamp and dragged it closer to better illuminate the trunk.

  Sam gripped the broken latch and, with a grunt, swung the squeaking lid up and out of the way. A reek like I had never known before filled the air around us. I closed my eyes against the stench. Then slowly, I opened them again.

  “Oh my God,” Sam breathed.
He turned to face my sister again. “You liar! You fucking liar! You’re the one who killed him! You!”

  I grabbed Sam’s arm. “What is it? What are you seeing?” I couldn’t bring myself to look inside the trunk. I simply couldn’t do it.

  “Paul’s hand!” Sam cried, his voice ravaged by sorrow and fury. “Look at his hand!”

  And finally, I forced myself to peer inside the steamer trunk. At the body there. Wrapped in plastic. Wedged tight, doubled up to fit inside. Knees to face. Flesh eaten away by time under the clear plastic wrapping. Mouth agape in a silent eternal scream, the teeth inside that horrible gaping maw ragged and shattered, destroyed by the killer’s repeated blows with the crowbar.

  And then my eyes fell on the one sooty hand, mummified, poking from the plastic. Withered and blackened with age. Clutching even now a fistful of long blonde hair.

  Sally’s hair.

  At that moment I understood it all. Every lie she had told us. Every single one.

  I turned to confront the woman I thought I’d known all my life. My sister. The woman I knew now to be a stranger. A murderer. The woman I knew now had done everything Sam suspected her of doing.

  I turned—and Sally was gone.

  A moment later, a shot rang out from the top of the stairs at the back of the house. The clap of the gunshot echoed away into the distant sky like the cry of a startled bird. The night fell to silence around us.

  Epilogue

  TIMMY’S NEW blue suit matched his eyes perfectly. Sam and I loved it. Timmy hated it.

  “I look stupid.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “It’s too many clothes. I can’t breathe.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “The tie is choking me.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Do I have to wear shoes?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “They’re too shiny. They hurt.”

  “They hurt your feet?”

  “No, they hurt my eyes.”

  “Oh please.”

  “Where’s Thumper?”

  “Sleeping on the couch.”

  “How come she doesn’t have to get dressed up?”

  “She’s old. When you’re old, you won’t have to get dressed up either.”

  “What if Grandma and Grandpa don’t like me?”

  “They’ll love you.”

  “What if I don’t like them?”

  “Don’t let them know, or they’ll take your presents back.”

  “I’m getting presents?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “I guess I’ll like them, then.”

  “I thought you would.”

  Sam and I stood arm in arm behind the kid as he stood on my bed and stared at his reflection in my dresser mirror. We beamed like a couple of proud, doting parents. Which now I suppose we were.

  “I look like a sissy. People will think I like boys,” Timmy grumped and bitched and whined, tugging at his tie, tugging at the tail of his coat, tugging at the seat of his pants.

  “Everybody knows Jason and I are the only ones in the family who like boys,” Sam said. “You like girls.”

  “No, I don’t,” Timmy said, twisting around and trying to see his rear end. “Girls suck.”

  Sam laughed. “Well, then, maybe you do like boys. Anyway, we won’t have to worry about it for a few years. Currently, you’re pretty harmless to either sex.”

  Timmy smirked and pointed an accusatory finger. “Omm. You said sex.”

  I smirked and pointed a finger at Sam too. “Omm. You did. You said sex.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Even my lover’s a four-year-old.”

  “I’ll prove you wrong later.”

  Sam bumped me with his hip. “Good. See that you do.”

  Timmy watched us in the mirror. “Does Grandma and Grandpa know you guys are like boyfriends?”

  Sam nodded. “Yes, they do. I told them myself.”

  “What’d they say?” he asked.

  “They didn’t care. They just wanted to talk about you. No sense of priorities at all. I was thoroughly disappointed in them.”

  I laughed, but Timmy wasn’t listening. I got the impression he was beginning to appreciate the way he looked in the suit. He fluffed his lapels and ran a finger and thumb down the crease of his pants. After perching on one foot and buffing one of his shoe tops on the back of his leg, he struck a pose and smiled at himself in the mirror. A real hambone.

  “I’m cute,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Don’t you think I’m cute?”

  “My God,” Sam said. “I guess maybe you like boys after all. That’s what Uncle Jason says every morning when he’s staring at himself in the mirror shaving.”

  I grabbed a fistful of Sam’s hair and playfully tried to wrench it out of his head. He screamed like a little girl, and we collapsed onto the bed, knocking Timmy off his feet. The three of us rolled into each other’s arms, laughing and squirming around like three four-year-olds.

  I was tickling everybody I could grab.

  “Don’t do that, or I’ll pee!” Sam screamed.

  “Me too,” Timmy screamed right behind him. “Uh-oh. I think I already did.”

  Sam and I froze. “You’re kidding, right? You didn’t pee in your new suit, did you?”

  Timmy howled. Tears squirted out of his eyes, he laughed so hard. “Suckers!”

  A car horn blared outside. The three of us froze in midwrestle. “Holy crap!” I said. “They’re here.”

  I rolled off the bed and grabbed Timmy, standing him on his feet at the foot of the bed. The kid was a mess. His tie was twisted all the way around and hanging down his back, his shirt was out of his pants, and he was missing a shoe. At least his hair wasn’t messed up, but then, he didn’t have any.

  “Where’s your shoe?” Sam cried.

  Timmy shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Watch your language!” Sam and I barked in unison.

  Before we could find his shoe or do anything else to make the kid look a little more presentable, the front doorbell rang.

  “Presents!” Timmy squealed and took off running with one shoe on, one shoe off, and his brand new suit hanging askew all over the place. He flew down the stairs before Sam or I could grab him.

  Rather than chase after the kid, which he probably figured he would be doing for the next fourteen or fifteen years anyway, Sam walked into my arms. “They’ll just have to accept him the way he is. And don’t worry. My folks will accept you too. They’ll have to if they ever want to see their grandson again.”

  “Oh, goodie,” I said. “We have leverage. We’ll go to their house for holidays, and I’ll never have to cook a Christmas dinner again. Or Easter, or Thanksgiving, or Fourth of—”

  Sam gave me a shake to shut me up. “I love you, Jason. The three of us are going to be very happy together.”

  The house gave a tiny rumble over our heads. I could hear the toothbrushes clatter in the toothbrush holder in the bathroom. In the next room, a small picture fell off the wall with a thump. Sam’s mother gave a slightly hysterical “Ooh!” somewhere downstairs.

  Sam gazed up at the ceiling. “Sorry, Paul. The four of us are going to be very happy. Don’t throw one of your snits.”

  A staggering gust of wind blasted us in the face, blowing our hair straight up into the air. Our clothes flapped around us like flags in a monsoon while we laughed and tried to duck away. Then the wind stopped, as quickly as it came.

  “Cranky-ass ghost,” Sam muttered, still laughing. He turned to the mirror and tried to arrange his clothes and hair to make himself more presentable. When he was satisfied with himself, he stood in front of me and tried to make me more presentable too. Smoothing my hair, straightening my shirt. Giving me a heartening chuck on the chin. He also gave me a kiss on the lips because he knew I was nervous, meeting his parents for the first time and all. I loved him for that. Of course, I loved him for a lot of other reasons too.

  Sam’s f
ace grew serious as he broke off the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. “Timmy hasn’t mentioned his mother at all.”

  The sadness I kept trying to bury in my heart made a sudden reappearance, giving me another jolt of anguish, just as it always did when it popped up out of nowhere. “I know, Sam. I don’t think her death has soaked in yet. I pray Sally doesn’t end up haunting the place. One ghost in residence is plenty.”

  “I don’t imagine Paul would let her take up residence.”

  “No,” I said, praying Sam was right. “I don’t suppose he would.”

  Sam offered me a sad little smile. “I love you so much. Taking Timmy in. Letting me be a part of your family. Having the good sense to fall in love with me too, just when I was falling in love with you. Is that synergy, or what?”

  I laid my hand to Sam’s cheek and stared deep into his eyes. He was joking, but I was not. “Without you,” I said, “it wouldn’t be a family. And you love that boy as much as I do. It’ll be all right. I know it will. We’ll be happy, and we’ll make Timmy happy too. We’ll get him started on a good life. It’s the least we can do after everything he’s been through already.”

  “Yes” was all Sam said. It was all he needed to say.

  He took my hand and together we made a regal descent down the stairs to the living room, where Timmy was holding court with his new grandparents. I could hear him schmoozing them as we approached, telling them how he hoped they hadn’t brought him any presents since he didn’t have anything for them.

  What a little con man the kid was.

  I clutched Sam’s hand all the tighter as a happy smile spilled out across my face.

  WITH ALL the new toys showered on him from his grandparents scattered around, there was hardly room for Timmy and Thumper on his new bed. The bed was new because we had replaced it after the bullet that passed through Sally’s skull, also passed through the side of the house and blasted a hole in Timmy’s old mattress—the mattress the boy had not been sleeping on at the time because his father, in the guise of good old Bugs Bunny, had previously warned us to move him somewhere safe.