Ghost Rider: Stories by Jonathan Lowe

by Jonathan Lowe

  * * * *

  6/6—Last night I set my alarm to wake me every two hours, and I went over to Ochre to repeat my tests, and to measure the opening. The weather remains comfortable, and once I could even see rain visible in the distance, while the rate of interface contraction remains the same. What to do? While trying to decide, I have begun shuttling large items through to the other side. Extension ladder, tool chest, offroad bicycle, tent, sleeper sofa.

  P.M.—I've just returned from a fifth trip to the Super Wal Mart in Nogales, where I've also purchased a water purifier with cleanable filters, chemicals, seeds, fishing tackle, first aid kits, some smaller pup tents, repair kits, fuel, and enough canned goods to feed the crew of an aircraft carrier for a month. I've now maxed out my credit cards, and moved everything over to Ochre, along with all my clothing, extra shoes and boots, some of my books, various containers, utensils, towels, crank powered flashlights, and a solar powered PDA with three different Encyclopedias of Knowledge on it—one technical, one practical, and one medical. If only Robinson Crusoe had it so good.

  * * * *

  6/7—Things have escalated in the direction of this being goodbye. After all, I have no family here that I can relate to, much less be proud of, which may also explain to you why I've been a loner most of my adult life. My father wanted to supply me with girlfriends, but they only look at me because of him and his money. It is reprehensible, what he is doing. His associates are evil, being involved in money laundering and racketeering. So I have taken my trust fund, and given it to the needy. Regarding America, and the nature of freedom, let me say I find it ironic that so many illegal aliens try to come to a land where most people ignore or use each other. I hope they don't lose the simple, real things like love and family. I've seen them at the parks, here and in Sonora, with their relations. They laugh and sing upbeat tunes while we live indoors, playing video games and watching actors with pretend lives on TV. How do I define poverty? What does freedom mean to me? I'm not sure, anymore. All I know is that I've never desired wealth, if it means such anxiety, impatience and greed, or includes having spoiled brats as children, and a beautiful wife with soulless, cynical eyes.

  I have placed a call to a mule I know who lives in Nogales, Sonora. His instructions are explicit, with timing and directions to this “safe house” for one hand-picked family, of whom I hope to become a new member. If there is a daughter of childbearing age, so much the better. We shall all cross over together, and find our destiny in a new world without prejudice, hostility or traffic of any kind.

  * * * *

  6/7—My family is here. They have seen Ochre, and agreed to come with me. They see this opportunity as a miracle from God. There are fourteen of them, all healthy. I believe the oldest daughter, Rosa Celeste, will be my wife. They are simple people from El Salvador, and have sold everything to come to America. There is no turning back now. Estaban asked me if he could go back if things didn't turn out, but I just pointed and said, “that's home now” in Spanish. He could see the bridge in the distance, and the stacks of provisions waiting. Then a bird landed nearby to investigate. It looks like a crow, although more brown than black. It gave me a strange idea, which I leave for you now to contemplate. What if this world is not parallel in space, but in time? What if this is our own mother Earth, in the far future, and the machinery I see has somehow opened this door so that we can get past the hypernova to save humanity? Just a thought, albeit an ironic one, wouldn't you say?

  You will find photos of everything, plus all the testing data, on my computer hard drive. Wish us luck, whatever the case...

  * * * *

  "The case,” Detective Bryant repeated, closing the notepad.

  "What?” asked agent Fletcher.

  "Nothing. See a computer anywhere, by chance?"

  Fletcher pointed out a USB cable lying on the floor in one corner of the bedroom. “I think that's for downloads from a digital camera. You can see impressions in the carpet made by a desk, too."

  Bryant leaned close, and nodded. Then he straightened, and tapped the notepad again before pocketing it.

  "What is it?"

  "Nothing. Just ... that this might a’ been the most bizarre suicide note ever, but without a body, I'd say our young Carter split with his trust fund to old Mexico, leaving a none-too-subtle message that he'd like to be left alone."

  "You mean his father was secretly harassing him?"

  "Oh God, no. Did I say that? But Nick's never said anything negative about his old man up to now, either. Or taken any of his money. So something like this is bound to hit the tabloids, if it gets out."

  "What do you mean ... if?"

  "Never you mind. It's un-American, is what it is. And there's no way to prove any of it. All part of his plan to disappear while making his dad look like an jerk after bragging about him over the years.” He lowered his voice. “Going into the closet instead of coming out. That's a funny trick."

  As Bryant strode out, Fletcher followed closely, asking, “You mean you're not calling the Sheriff, sir?"

  "Is that a problem for you, son?"

  "Not with me, but ... I mean, where did he go?"

  Bryant stopped to rub the back of his thick neck with one hand, considering it. “Well, see, I can't really say. Have to consult the family after the handwriting is verified first, before we can say anything. You understand?” As they walked through the open side door, out toward the cracked concrete patio, Bryant observed how the door had obviously been forced by a crow bar. “Nice touch, that."

  Near their respective cars, Fletcher made a circular motion back toward the rear of the ranch house with one hand, like he'd forgotten something.

  "What the problem now?” Bryant asked.

  "Just some plants growing in pots out back I thought you should see. Thought it was marijuana at first, but then I saw that I was mistaken."

  Fletcher led him around the back of the house, where he indicated four small clay pots containing ferns against the back wall, in the shade of a cottonwood tree. A brown hose was curled like a snake next to them. Bryant kneeled, and stuck a finger into one of the pots, finding the soil moist. Then he impulsively upended one of the pots, and spread the ochre-colored soil across the ground. A shiver ran across his scalp as he got to his feet.

  "What's the matter?” the young Border Patrol agent asked him.

  Bryant ran back into the house, through the kitchen and into the master bedroom. At the closed closet door he paused, then carefully opened it, and stared as Fletcher came up behind him. The walk-in closet was empty, except for a nest of wire clothes hangers pushed to the far right on the long wooden pole. Bryant turned and now stared beyond the patrolman's left shoulder. Stared at the framed poster on the far wall.

  "What's wrong, sir?"

  "Nothing's wrong,” Bryant replied, uncertainly. He suddenly flashed on the playoff game that his wife had nagged him for watching. In his mind, he imagined her, even now, lurking just out of sight, forever peering at him with mocking disgust in her soulless, cynical eyes.

  Especially now.

  "Did I say something was wrong?” Bryant asked, raising his voice.

  Fletcher winced as if he'd been slapped too. Then started out. But before following him, he felt the kind of shiver that intuition brought to his job, and to fight it off stuck out his own tongue—in return—at Einstein's gleeful face.

  REPLER

  (originally published in The Silver Thread)

  The silent darkness felt almost palpable, as if pressed by the intrusion. After the door swung shut behind him, he stretched out, face down, on the mattress. Although listening, he could only hear the steady rhythmic pulse of blood in his head now. His calves and feet throbbed with fatigue. Reaching beside him, he pulled part of the ragged blanket over his legs. Then he drifted into fitful sleep.

  He woke on his back, staring up at the spotted plaster ceiling. It must still have been early, because he could hear his neighbor in the adjacent apartment, making b
reakfast. The sound of silverware was distinct, but distant. It summoned to him dormant memories of once familiar faces. He did not know where or if those same faces gathered, but only the year—1998—which was the last year he'd known family. Now the though oppressed him, accentuated by the loss of his job at the Pearson street Daynite Foods, and he fought it off by thinking of the old man on the other side of the wall. Did he really know anything about him? They'd spoken only three times in the six weeks they'd shared the duplex. “I'm Jamie,” he'd told the man—at least three times his age—soon after moving into the ramshackle house with only his mattress and a suitcase of old clothes. “And I'm Repler,” the old man had replied with a voice like sandpaper, before scurrying inside. Subsequent conversations had been no more significant.

  Jamie sat up and shivered. He tried to picture Mr. Repler sitting in his identically tiny kitchen, close to the wood stove, not wearing his thick black overcoat. It took more than a bit of imagination. He'd never seen him without that coat of his. Always, and in any weather, the old man trudged the city streets as if impelled. Not that there weren't others, of course ... Homeless derelicts who moved with instinctive aimlessness down alleys, pausing at trash can fires to warm their callused hands. But he wondered, glancing about the room curiously, what it would be like to be that old and still have only ... this.

  He got up and approached the wall, listening. There was still movement over there, but no longer in the kitchen. He decided that Mr. Repler was preparing himself for his morning stroll. No doubt Social Security allowed him the eccentricity, perhaps with the help of the Salvation Army. And it was possible that he was covered by insurance and Medicare, although he seemed healthy enough with all that walking. At least he was spared of trying to survive on an endless string of minimum wage stints as a print shop sweeper, groundskeeper, or grocery clerk. Jobs lost, inevitably, to what Jamie considered “personality conflict.” Maybe the old man even had connections to relatives or friends somewhere, and hadn't been booted free of his family in a not-quite-forgotten past. But when you boiled away all the pretense, that was all it was—survival.

  Jamie went into the kitchen and opened the stove grate. Scooping some soot and nails off the bottom with his hand, he shoved several jagged pieces of wood into the opening. Then he tore a dozen pages out of a National Geographic from a stack of them he'd obtained at the Mission. Rogue wave rising over an enormous trough breaks over the Supertanker Esso Netherland—loaded with Persian Gulf crude oil off the Cape of Good Hope one caption read. His eyes tracked in the slanted morning light. Breath misted in front of him. Preparing to strike a match, Jamie heard a voice—faint emanations from Mr. Repler, talking to himself again. He couldn't make out the words, but the tone was just perceptibly parental.

  He crouched into the pantry, placing his ear against the particle-board panel which separated the two pantries, and thought he heard the words “Not much longer now” before a door closed. But he couldn't be sure. The sound was unnaturally hollow, as through a tunnel. And then, because Mr. Repler was gone, the house returned to its usual cold silence.

  He spent the day at the employment office, applying for what benefits might still be left to him. The place was filled with mostly bored, young blacks wearing jeans, although there were occasional executive types in suit and tie who sat—it seemed to Jamie—as if they were above it all. What eye contact was made was brief. One fat white woman with too much lipstick and a red scarf drawn over her bund of hair played solitaire across two folding chairs. A man in a Stetson, leaning back and studying the fly-specked rows of fluorescents overhead, idly tapped a pool-cue case beneath his boot. And yet Jamie lingered until closing before lifting the lapels of his worn leather jacket against the bleak and already-dimming skyline.

  Irritable at having been offered a Tec school grant to study welding instead of either a job or benefits, he walked westward, glancing back over his shoulder compulsively. The downtown buildings reflecting the crimson sunset seemed to stand obliquely, as if unwilling to face that abandoned zone of poverty—the slums and tenements of the indigent. Down the elevated bypass which swathed across the perimeters of the west end whisked carloads of city workers, their destination the untainted promontory of the middle class. From a hundred ramps and back road parking lots the glittering python had been summoned, but already it had become segmented as the bulk of the snake like scales, reflecting the dying sun, was shunted north. Soon the stilted ribbon of concrete was thrummed only intermittently as Jamie walked under it.

  Returning hurriedly to the apartment, Jamie caught glimpses of street people, their shadows stretched in front of them in the growing gloom. Exhaust puttered from solitary cars roving narrow back streets. Smoke rose from chimneys and mouths. Two scarfed black men stood framing the rusted Coca Cola sign on the front of the barred-up Pauli's Superette, slowly rocking and staring. Their words were muffled, unintelligible.

  Nearer his street now, Jamie saw him—Mr. Repler in his big black overcoat. The old man moved methodically, stepping over the broken and buckling sidewalk. Then he paused at a grate near the corner to let the hem of his coat billow slightly in the rising warmth. Was he off on another trek? Jamie hesitated, but decided not to follow.

  That night he ate at the Rescue Mission at the end of the street. The neon cross outside sputtered JESUS SAVES against the darkness. First everyone listened to brother Shoemaker's sermon on the evils and sins of alcohol, then afterward they were served meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn donated by an eastside A&P because the cans had begun to rust. It tasted good, though. None of the men, although mostly transients, ever grumbled.

  Back in the apartment, Jamie climbed the ladder into the attic through the trap door in the kitchen ceiling, hoping to find wood not essential to the skeleton framework of the house. He had intended to replenish his supply by ripping some boards from the condemned boarding house on the next block, as he'd seen a woman pulling a red wagon do. But it was late now, and the previous night he'd been forced to walk the six miles home after his boss fired him.

  He lit a match and held it to one side, squinting. Well, well. The old man had installed a bulb. He reached across the rafter as far as he could and pulled the short chain. The bulb lit, swaying and throwing his distorted shadow behind him. Maybe the old man had electric heat now. He waved the match into smoke and began looking around.

  The ceiling boards sagged. The twin metal chimney pipes were sooty with leaks. What insulation lay between the rafters was stained and smelled moldy. But he saw why the old man had put in the light. Over to one side, near the opposite trap door, were half a dozen low wooden boxes. Beside these were several hand tools on what looked like a restaurant chopping block. There was a claw hammer, a pair of pliers, a chisel, and a hacksaw.

  Crawling along the rafters, he edged closer. His shadow reached it sooner. Poised carefully, the light behind him now, he stretched to pull free one of the boxes lids. Then he breathed into his hands and slid beside it.

  At first he thought there was nothing inside. He put his arm into the opening and came out with a handful of straw. Something moist dewed the pale strands. He smelled it and returned it to the box, disgusted. Then he opened another box. It too was empty, except for the straw.

  Suddenly, he heard a door open, somewhere below. Mr. Repler's apartment. He reached behind him and pulled the chain. The darkness which rushed around him felt thick and close, almost cloying. Mr. Repler walked into the kitchen, directly below. He could hear the old man breathing heavily, as if in pain. For a long time, just standing there, breathing. Was he looking up at the attic trap door? But now Mr. Repler was fumbling in the sink. There was the sound of silverware again. Something was taken out of the pantry. A meal was being prepared. After a few minutes he went into the other room and a rustling followed, like a paper sack being inverted. Repler began to mumble to himself again. Or was he alone?

  Jamie resisted the urge to bend closer, and began sliding backward, along the rafters. Touchi
ng Repler's chimney in passing, he discovered it warm. Had it been burning all along? Gingerly, he let himself down into his kitchen, thinking that tomorrow he would find firewood. For tonight he would burn the National Geographics.

  The next morning was the same. Mr. Repler was up early and out by eight o'clock. Jamie watched him walking away along the uneven slabs with quick, short steps, the lapels of his coat drawn up beneath his ears in protection. Where was he going? Considering it, Jamie realized he'd never seen the old man at the Mission.

  Jamie burned the remaining magazines, washed himself, and changed clothes. Through his kitchen window he saw Mr. Repler turn the far corner, his gait slow but energetically steady, and looking like a mannequin being trotted along invisibly.

  Unable to find distraction, or any comfort in the opportunity, Jamie made his decision as a way of relieving his anxiety. He lowered the trap door and climbed into the attic. Hesitantly, then, he crawled across to the other side, intently listening. But why was he so careful? Surely there was no one in the house but him.

  He pushed on the opposite trap. It squealed and he stopped. Through a two-inch opening, he could see into the kitchen now. There were dishes everywhere. Cordwood was stacked in one corner, about hip-high. In the open grate he saw several embers glowing dully on a bed of white ash. Another chopping block was propped in the sink, with an oval stain across it from the dripping faucet. Carefully, he pushed the trap down so he could see into the next room. An unmade bed and a round table with an aquarium near the center. As he suspected, the apartment was empty.