by Julianne Lee
“Good for you.” Susan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m glad you decided to tough it out in spite of the difficulty of obtaining fast food on the weekends.
Shelby laughed at that, then sat back in her chair and rested an arm on the back of the chair next to her. She hesitated before speaking again, then said, “Susan, do you believe in ghosts?”
There was a pause, and Susan’s jaw dropped. Then, “Oh, God.” She leaned forward and grinned. “You’ve seen the guy.”
Shelby blinked. “Huh?”
“The ghost. In your house. When I was a kid, there were all kinds of stories about that place. That it was haunted. There was this family living there during the seventies, and they moved out all of a sudden one day. Left all their stuff. Nobody knows why, but folks say they were chased out.”
Shelby leaned close, her voice tightening to a hiss to keep it from rising. “You knew about this? You didn’t think this was something I should know about the house before buying it?”
“I didn’t believe in it.” Susan raised her hand as if to swear to the truth. “I never thought it was a big deal, until I was there yesterday and I...you know...felt it. Sort of. By then it was way too late to say anything, so I kept shut. It’s real, then? There really is a ghost? You saw it?” Her eyes went wide, like a little kid.
“I saw it. Him.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding at all. None. He’s there. What do you know about him?”
Susan shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just that he’s there. And he scared some people. He makes noises, too. They say he talks to himself.” She grinned again. “So you really saw him? Honest to God?”
“He was in the bedroom. He’s this tall guy. Really tall, like 6’3 or so. Dark hair. Smokes cigars, and you can smell the smoke. It’s really weird.”
Susan giggled, like a bubbling spring. “That’s incredible! Is he good-looking?”
A short bark of a laugh erupted, but when Shelby thought about the question a smile stuck to her face and she couldn’t wipe it off. She had to shrug and admit, “Yeah. In a...well, you know...drop-dead gorgeous sort of way.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. Sort of like,” Shelby considered, then said, “there’s this grace about him. Like he’s strong. Not bulky, but very strong. And he’s got these broad shoulders. Out to here.”
“Built nice?”
“Oh!” Shelby nodded. “Brick. Put together just right.” She raised a thumb of approval.
That made Susan laugh out loud. There was a brief pause as what they’d just said sunk in, then they both dissolved into giggles. “Good, Shel.”
“This is just silly.” But she was enjoying the laugh, and the terror she’d felt the night before dissolved in it. Still chuckling, she added, “I don’t know what to do now. I mean, what if he does something? What if he hurts me?”
“Ghosts can’t hurt you.” Susan waved away the thought.
“You said you didn’t believe in ghosts.”
“Well, what would they do? Give you a heart attack, would be the worst of it, I think.”
“He almost did. Scared the snot out of me, appearing then disappearing like that.”
“Right in front of you?”
“Went up in a puff of smoke. Poof.”
“Maybe he’s gone.”
Shelby shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” She took a sugar packet from the little ceramic holder, and folded over the top edge. “What does he do? I mean, what did he do to those other people? Has he ever hurt anyone?”
A shrug, then, “Not a clue. I just hear he shows up every once in a while. Some folks say they’ve seen lights in that bedroom when nobody was living there. The only thing I’ve ever heard is that he talks. Doesn’t move anything, doesn’t set things on fire—”
“Fire? Ghosts set things on fire?”
“I said he didn’t do that. Near as I can figure, he’s just a presence. Like he’s hanging around. Waiting. Or just wanting. Or something.”
“Does anyone know his name?”
Susan shook her head. “Nobody knows who he is, or why he’s there. Or even how long he’s been there. I’d say at least forty years, ’cause I think the stories go back that far. Kids have been passing that around the schoolyard as far back as anyone I know can remember. Most people think it’s just a modern myth like that one about the serial killer with a hook.”
Shelby leaned forward, across the table. “What serial killer with a hook?”
“You haven’t heard that one? I thought everyone knew that.”
“There’s a serial killer with a hook on the loose?”
“No, it’s just a story.”
“You think it’s just a story. You thought the ghost was just a story, too. What about this serial killer with a hook?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Shelby fell silent and sat back in her seat to regard Susan, not too sure about anything any more.
At home that afternoon, the silence in the house was thick again. “Halloo!” she hollered, and it backed away from her. A stamp of her foot echoed from the walls, and the silence fled farther. “I’m home!”
Yes, she was home. If she knew nothing else, she was dead certain this was home. As if she were meant to be here. That brought a tiny smile to the corners of her mouth.
Then she set to work unpacking some more and arranging her belongings into some semblance of how she’d lived in the apartment. The single stack of book shelves, though it had seemed like a huge collection in Nashville, now seemed small and forlorn in the enormous office upstairs. An antique kitchen table served as a desk for her computer, with a small file cabinet tucked underneath in lieu of drawers. The book case stood to one side, and the desk chair was the only other furniture. Shelby stood at the door and sighed, then pondered the question of braided rug versus oriental. It would have to be a big one, whatever it was, or else a couple of not-so-big ones. The floor was wide.
Gradually, she felt the silence fall again. It would be another week before the TV cable would be hooked up, and so her only recourse was music on the boom box downstairs. She headed there to banish the silence with a little Riverdance, but paused at the top of the steps as a thought struck her. Was the oppressive quiet actually absence of sound? Was it an absence of anything? Why did the air feel so heavy? Why was it so difficult to draw each breath, as if the atmosphere in the room were pressing against her chest?
Slowly, she walked to the bedroom to stand in the middle of it. Here was where the feeling was strongest. This room was where the ghost had appeared, and she could still feel him. At least, she thought she could. There was a sense...just a slight sense of energy right here that didn’t exist anywhere else in the house.
“Hello?”
No answer. Of course not. She’d tried this before. Nevertheless, she closed her eyes to concentrate. She didn’t even know his name. She pictured him in her mind. Tall, well-muscled in a long-boned, lanky sort of way, shaggy hair as black and shiny as a raven’s wing, farmer’s tan that made a clean circle at the base of his neck then gave way to paleness that had probably never seen sunshine for even one day. In her memory, he had a shadow of a beard and dark, dark blue eyes. He might have been thirty years old, but no more than that. Had he been that young when he died? What, exactly, was it she had seen?
Breathing deeply and steadily, Shelby concentrated on that image. Tried to make it real. In a whisper, she said “Come to me,” over and over. Over and over, until it became nonsense syllables. Then she looked.
Still nothing there but the feeling. She glanced around the room, but saw no ghosts.
Rats.
It was late. She needed to sleep, for in the morning she would have to start for work half an hour earlier than usual. Hendersonville had a nice, small-townness to it, but it was also a long, congested commute from Nashville. She readied for bed, wondering if she’d only imagined the figure in the linen
shirt, wool trousers and suspenders. Perhaps she had. A vague disappointment settled in at that, and she wondered why.
But over the next week or so she was happy enough to let the mysterious disappearing man slip her mind. Each night she brought manuscripts home to read or line edit, for that was the only way to keep up with the work load, and as she became accustomed to the house, its tics, creaks and currents, she let go of the idea of there being anything strange about it. Cleaning and arranging, settling into her home now, she came to know its corners and cubbies, understood it to be built of brick and wood and plaster, and so stopped thinking in terms of spiritual presence. At least, it began to seem the spiritual presence was nothing more than a strong feeling coupled with a romanticized wish. She might even have imagined it and hallucinated the apparition in a moment of exhaustion.
Fall was soon done fading the maple and oak leaves everywhere in the neighborhood, and on one windy day the trees became bare and the ground scattered with leaves that were grayish brown in death. As the weather grew chilly, the sky lowered and settled in for the winter, Shelby found herself thankful for the two-foot thickness of brick in her walls. And even more thankful for the baseboard heaters in each room. She arranged for an entire cord of wood to be delivered and stacked by the west side of the house, for she anticipated much use of her four fireplaces. Otherwise, what was the point of having them?
In early December a high wind knocked the power out just as Shelby arrived home from work. The entire block went dark, including the apartments on the other side of the tracks, and she found her way to the door by the light of the moon. The weather whipped through the bare trees and tossed the pines every which way. The cold insinuated itself in Shelby’s clothing and in her hair, which tossed like the trees. She hunched against the wind and picked her way to her door. Inside the foyer, though she pushed first the top light switch button then the bottom, over and over, nothing came on. She sighed. Her house was down, too. Since she wasn’t in the habit of turning up the heat until coming home the place was dead cold, and so there was nothing for it but to carry in some wood and build a fire. God knew how she was going to cook supper over it. As she worked, she ran her kitchen inventory over in her mind to figure out what she would eat that evening.
Hot dogs cooked up just fine over the fire in the dining room, spit on a straightened wire hanger. They were actually pretty good, on slightly stale hoagie buns grilled in an iron frying pan set on coals. She slathered the dogs with ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise with a dollop of relish, sitting cross-legged on the floor and reading a manuscript by the light of an emergency candle. Supper tasted like a campout, and except for the bother of carrying the candle everywhere she was little inconvenienced. The electric company had been called and their automated system alerted to the outage, so there was nothing left to do but take her candle and manuscript upstairs to work until bedtime. In the bedroom, she built a nice, roaring fire and sat up in bed with the manuscript. It was peaceful there. The world seemed far away. She wasn’t certain what time it was when she finally set the work aside, put another log on the fire, and readied for bed.
The hearth in her bedroom glowed warm and bright when she slipped under blankets piled high against the cold, hoping for a solid night's sleep regardless of the electricity.
But, exhausted as she was, sleep wouldn’t come. She lay on her back and stared at the flickering ceiling. Stains on the old paint made shadows that jumped and quivered. She tried to close her eyes, but when she did, the flickering light against her lids made her open them.
Then the flickers on the ceiling became a single shadow. Shelby’s pulse leapt. She was afraid to look, but she had to. But she couldn't. Her eyes stayed on the ceiling. Maybe the shadow would go away. It could be just her imagination. She’d spent weeks convincing herself these things were just her imagination. But it did not move. And she knew what it must be. She made her eyes move, and looked.
It was him, sitting in her rocking chair by the fireplace. Not much more than a silhouette against the flames, she knew him by his tall frame. And he began to mumble, his voice betraying anger.
"Blood...so much blood.” His hands flexed and he shifted in his seat, agitated. “God help me, I can’t stand any more death.” he moaned. He laid a trembling hand against his face.
Shelby took a breath to speak, but it all escaped unused. Her throat was tight, and she had to cough it clear. Finally she was able to say, "Who are you?" Inside she was trembling, but her defenses rose and she bluffed. “What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer. After a silence, he spoke again. "Lies. All lies." His drawl was soft and deep.
Shelby crawled forward to the foot of the bed. This man was breathing. Hardly dead at all. Real and solid. He even had to clear his throat to speak through the grief that seemed to clench his body. She leaned in for a closer look, and her heart raced. What was she doing? She should be running for her life, or at least her sanity. She rose to her knees and held the bedpost between herself and the man before her. There was something about him that made her stay. Something in his voice that touched her heart. Her urge to run died as she realized she couldn’t abandon this poor, desolate soul.
He reached to a small table nearby for the candle that seemed to accompany him everywhere, then leaned toward the fire behind him to light it. One hand burrowed in an inner pocket of his jacket to produce a cigar, and he lit that from the candle. The flickering light on his face played over a two-day beard and ruddy skin, and a smudge of something dark—mud, or perhaps blood—crossed his nose. His eyes were dark blue, the color of the sky on a clear midwinter evening just after sunset. His jacket hung loose and open on him, the double-breasted gray of a Confederate officer. It was ragged and torn, and the brass buttons were corroded—some of them not even there. Stained, dirty longjohns were visible beneath his filthy white shirt, torn as well.
Shelby went cold. A Confederate soldier. This ghost had been here way longer than forty years. Almost a sigh, she said, "Civil War."
He never appeared to hear her, and for nearly a full minute she watched him stare at the floor and smoke his cigar. He took a hard pull and the tobacco smoke stung Shelby’s nose. He looked up, and for a moment stared off across the room as if trying to discern something at a distance. “She wasn’t supposed to be the one to die.” Then he returned his attention to the floor in front of him. Pain rose in his eyes, and they glistened. For a moment he busied himself with his cigar, then he pressed a hand to his face and groaned. "Mary. Dear Mary Beth."
His head tilted. "I can’t even know what my heart has lost. I’ll never know." His voice was vague. Adrift. Awash with unfocused pain, Shelby couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Yearning? Sorrow? “Would she have grieved for me at all?”
What a strange thing to say!
He looked up, into the distance again, but found nothing there to help him. No more words came, and no hint of why he was so tormented.
Shelby slipped to the floor and knelt by the bed, then reached over to him. Her hand rested on a solid knee, muscle and kneecap, under heavy wool trousers.
It crumbled under her hand. Like a melting sugar cube, the tall man collapsed in an instant and threw a mist over the chair and Shelby.
She jerked back her hand and the white mist swirled about her. With a sharp gasp, she breathed it in. It tasted like dust, but seemed to fill her head. A buzzing noise shut out all other sound. She felt numb all over, then her heart opened to a great chasm of loneliness. A yawning emptiness, a longing for what might have been but wasn’t. And would never be for all eternity. Another gasp, and she shuddered. She turned and gripped the bedpost with all her trembling strength as she saw the abyss in which this poor man dwelt. Her face pressed against the bedpost, her breaths came hard and she squeezed her eyes shut from the pain of longing.
Chapter 3
At sunrise Shelby awoke and could barely move. For a long moment she lay there in the cold, her memory carefully reassembling the night befo
re. She had touched the ghost. The pain was still with her, her bones aching with the memory of that man’s loneliness. More than just alone, he was adrift in the universe. Shelby didn’t know why, but his soul was torn and bleeding from the loss of something more than just his life.
It took an effort to dress. She would have liked to revive the fire and warm up some, but didn’t like leaving the lit fireplace to go to work. The power was still off, so no coffee. She would have to stop for a latte on Main Street before hitting the bypass.
But, though she was well caffeinated and warmed by the time she made it to her office, she couldn’t tear her mind from last night’s apparition and that man’s overwhelming grief. Throughout the morning she stared at manuscript pages, but never saw a word on them. There were endless echoes of his voice in her head. She couldn’t let go of the feel of his pants beneath her hand and the knee inside them, which had disintegrated to nothingness in her grasp. She found herself clenching her fist, as if trying to recall the moment and somehow keep hold of him. As if she could bring him back and keep him there, so he could tell her what grieved him so. It was more than just curiosity. Her heart needed to know where the pain had come from. She needed in her soul to understand what had happened to that lost, lonely fellow, and only then might she quell the longing in herself. The morning hours passed slowly.
At lunch she hurried from her office to make a quick, brisk walk to the Nashville Public Library a couple of blocks away on Church Street, a huge, beautiful new building of granite and marble. Here, as just about anywhere in Nashville where there were books, it was easy enough to find information about the Civil War. There were shelves and shelves marked just for that period of history. Shelby’s heart sank, for she would never find a particular soldier in all this material even had she known his name. Which she certainly did not. Her only hope was to go to the help desk to ask after materials relating only to the war in Nashville and surrounding towns. The woman at the desk was short and black, with a sprinkling of moles across her nose and cheeks that were so profuse as to look like freckles.
