Visitations

by Saul, Jonas

  I was up now. Even if I wanted to sleep, I couldn’t. This just went from bad to worse. I grabbed the phone and called my highway supervisor to tell him I was sick and wouldn’t be joining them today. I really was sick. I’m not a criminal or a thief. The money just happened to fall into my hands. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I’m sure no one else will see it that way.

  In ten minutes I was dressed, car keys in one hand and garbage bag of money in the other. I decide to look outside first. No one was in sight. When I opened the front door, the phone rang.

  I hesitated to hear if the caller would leave a message. I heard my brother’s voice again and the sound of an engine revving in the background.

  “Hey, pick up. I need to know what’s going on. Pick up the phone. We just talked to the delivery guy. He said he remembered the house because the guy had a wad of hundreds in his pocket. I was told to visit the address. It’s your house, man. What’s going on? Pick up the phone!”

  I bolted. I jumped in my car, threw the bag in the back seat and peeled out of my driveway. It took me less than fifteen minutes to get to where I was cleaning garbage yesterday.

  Out of the car, down the little embankment and through the line of trees. Everything looked just like it did yesterday. I set the bag half in and half out of the back window like I’d found it. I turned away and started for the road. When I stepped out of the line of small trees I saw a cop car parked behind my vehicle. I stopped in my tracks and watched my brother scan the area. He called my name.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled my wallet out. Over handed, I tossed it as far as I could up the tree line. I roughly saw the area it landed and marked it mentally by a large rock sitting about ten feet to the right of the highway.

  Then I stepped out and waved. My brother was watching me now. I wonder if he saw me throw my wallet. Probably not.

  “You won’t believe what I just found.”

  My brother cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “What are you doing down there. I called the community service guys. They said you called in sick. Then I spotted you racing out of town so I followed you. When you parked here, I saw you get out, but I was too far back to see which direction you ran.”

  “I lost my wallet when we were working yesterday. I’m feeling sick, but I still needed to get my wallet,” I tried to explain.

  I heard a rustling of branches behind me and then the distinctive sound a bag makes.

  When I turned around and peeked through the line of small trees, I saw a man holding the garbage bag in one hand and a tall blond woman in the other. He looked injured, leaning to the side. I stepped through the trees toward them. I could hear my brother yelling for me to stop.

  After two steps, I entered the clearing. The man and the woman were gone. Not ducked down behind the car, or hiding by a tree, gone as in completely.

  I decided the only way to save myself was to find them. My story would be completely clean if I was a hero. I could even explain using the hundred dollar bill for the pizza guy. I could say that I’d found a small bundle out here by the highway yesterday. Not thinking anything of it and subsequently losing my wallet, I used some of the money. It may still look bad, but who doesn’t spend the money they find.

  I bolted down the line of trees away from where my brother would come after me. I knew running from a cop probably wasn’t a good idea, but he was my brother. He wouldn’t shoot me. Besides, the guy with the woman was close by. I had to be the one to find them first.

  About ten yards down, I turned into the line of small trees and jumped through. Cars whizzed by on the highway. I could smell diesel fuel. My car still sat on the shoulder, the cruiser behind it. My brother was nowhere in sight.

  I bent over to look for my wallet. It had to be around here somewhere. I was within two yards of the rock I’d used as a marker. A loud semi raced by, blocking out sound momentarily.

  In a flash, my left arm was wrenched behind me and I was thrust forward. I hit the ground hard. A knee was jammed into my back while my right arm was wrenched back. Handcuffs hurt when they’re slapped on. After he secured me, he flipped me over and I lay on the hard ground, looking up at him.

  “You really did it this time,” he said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I spit. A piece of grass had been sitting on the edge of my mouth from being pushed into the ground and I hadn’t felt it until I talked. “I just saw the guy who robbed the Brink’s truck and the girl he kidnapped. They took off with a garbage bag full of money.”

  I have to admit a sense of loss thinking about how close all that money came to being mine.

  My brother talked into a lapel microphone. Then he turned back to face me. “There was no woman kidnapped. I only told you that to gauge your reaction. We had witnesses to the Brink’s holdup. They described a man of your hair color and weight. When I came over to your house last night, it was to see how you were doing. I told the chief that your case of severe split personality had been handled years ago with therapy and medication. I told him that there’s no way you were mixed up in this and he let me do an unofficial investigation. But we matched the blood on the windshield of the vehicle that rammed the Brink’s truck. Its type O negative, the same as yours and it’s on the windshield in exactly the same spot where your bandage is.”

  I shook my head. “How could I have done it and not known about it? No way, it wasn’t me.” I said this, but didn’t completely believe it.

  “Remember when you were going for therapy years ago in Toronto. We learned that in one personality an individual can be allergic to cigarette smoke, but in another personality, the same individual is a smoker with no allergic reactions. Each personality is isolated from the other. I think they call it Dissociative Identity Disorder now, or DID. I specifically remember yours was accompanied by memory loss, or what your doctor called ‘losing time’. I never forgot the actual term was Dissociative Amnesia.”

  “But that couldn’t be …” I stopped talking because my brother stepped away from me. He mumbled in his lapel microphone again. A moment later, my stomach in knots contemplating if this scenario could be a reality, he turned back toward me, a grave look on his face.

  “I’m gonna have to read you your rights.”

  “Are you serious? You can’t arrest me. Where’s the proof?”

  “When I started to follow you to the highway earlier, a Judge signed a search warrant for your address based on the passing of that hundred dollar bill last night. I was just notified of what they found there.”

  “They couldn’t have found anything.” I said this with a conscience that felt clean. I know for a fact that I didn’t ram a Brink’s truck and steal money. My only possible involvement is if this DID stuff was real.

  “They found half the money in your basement along with a journal. The first few pages they’ve examined so far detail all your plans for the robbery. Where’s the rest of the money?”

  “I thought you said you guys got all the money on the phone last night?”

  “I planted that in your head to watch your response.”

  “But I saw a woman and a man back by the car with the garbage bag,” I protested.

  “Has to be your imagination, your DID. You saw them 'cause I told you they were real.”

  I shook my head as I started to remember the therapy years ago. I thought I was cured. This couldn’t be. I banged my head on the cement when I tripped, that’s why I have a bandage.

  My brother started talking. “You have the right to remain silent …” as he helped me to my feet. We made our way to his cruiser. We stopped at the back door. Another cop car was pulling up behind my brother’s. I felt lost. Could I really have this other personality?

  “I just hope they don’t try too hard to match the hand writing in that journal,” my brother said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Handwriting?”

  “I would hate for them to realize that the evidence was planted. No one is going to bel
ieve you over me, especially with your history of psychological disorders. This was the best thing for the both of us. I get a lot of money quick and I get to keep it because everyone thinks someone else took it. Don’t you think I deserve it after all I’ve done for this little shit town? No one would believe in a million years that I, a recognized police officer, would frame my brother. This helps you too. My plan was genius. You can continue to get help for your problems and have a place to stay and eat for free.”

  He shoved me by my head into the backseat of the cruiser and slammed the door.

  An Illusion of Haunting

  I am the haunter, the haunted, and the haunting.

  I can’t believe what I just witnessed. My heart is pumping in my chest like it’s trying to escape. I have to gulp air to keep it in. I’m so nervous my hands can hardly manipulate the wheels of my wheelchair. But I have to move. I have to tell somebody what I’ve just seen. Someone has to know. I mean, this isn’t real, is it?

  I turned from the window. It took me a full minute to exit the guest bedroom. This doorway hadn’t been renovated after the car accident six years ago, when my wife died. I thought, I’ll never use this room again, so why waste money renovating it? This was the first time I’d rolled into it, in over three months. I wonder why I did in the first place.

  The image of what I’d just seen rolled over and over in my head like the film in a projector, casting a horrid scene in my brain, one that I was unable to banish.

  My house is two stories high. The money from my wife’s life insurance policy had enabled me to have the chair lift for the stairs installed in the house, access ramps added, and doorways modified. I loaded myself onto the elevator and started my descent. Halfway down, I remembered there was a phone in my bedroom. What’s wrong with me? Why am I not thinking more clearly?

  If what I’d just witnessed had happened two seconds earlier or two seconds later, I would’ve missed it. There had to be a reason I’d seen the accident; there just had to be. I believe in omens, premonitions. I had been chosen to witness it. Me alone.

  Captain Michaels - this kind of thing never happened in our quiet little town of Michael’s Bay - no connection to the town’s name - runs the town like it’s his own.

  When I got downstairs, I rolled out of the lift and went to the phone in the living room. I hit speed dial and selected the hands-free feature. After the proper amount of rings, Captain Michaels himself answered the phone.

  “Frank. It’s Bryce Montgomery. I just witnessed a car accident.”

  I found it weird how I seemed to be running out of breath when I was only sitting.

  “Calm down, Bry. Start at the beginning. Where are you right now?”

  “At home. In my living room.” I stopped, and gulped in air like I was eating it now. Maybe I was having a heart attack, and the pain would arrive soon. I tried to ooze lower into my chair, looking for a position of calm. “I just saw, from my guest-room window, an older model white Honda Prelude race by and it hit a guy. He’s still lying in the street at this very second.”

  “Did you just say your guest-room window?”

  This, I couldn’t believe. Why would a Captain of the police force ask me about my guest room when I’m telling him a man may be dying in the street? He’d been inside my house numerous times. He’d visited my wife and I, before she died, for Christmas and Thanksgiving more times than I could count. Captain Michaels and I were very close in high school; he was the best man at my wedding. Virginia, my wife, always tried to set him up with one of her girlfriends. After many years, we’d learned to get used to the idea that the Captain had married his job.

  “There’s a man lying in the street in front of my house. He could very well be dead and you’re asking me what room I was in? You know my guest room faces the street.”

  “Well, Bry, you haven’t been in your guest room for almost three months.”

  This was the second time Frank Michaels had surprised me with a weird comment. Something was off somehow. Maybe the Captain had been drinking and didn’t understand what I was saying? Drinking? Why would I think that? What’s going on with me? And how did he know how often I visited this room or that room?

  “Do you understand what I’ve told you?” I asked. I turned my head and looked around the room as I was feeling watched. The front door of my house stood open. The soft breeze held my screen door in its grasp, swaying it to and fro.

  “Of course I understand. I’ll get in my car and be right over. You watch how quick I’ll be. No accidents for me. Just hang out. Wait for me, okay Bry? Don’t go outside without me.” The line went dead.

  Why was he calling me Bry, instead of Bryce? Virginia was the only one who ever called me Bry. I hadn’t heard that in a long time.

  The car accident that took her life wasn’t my fault. I know I’d been driving, but the accident wasn’t my fault. I keep telling myself that, but it doesn’t work. The truth is, Virginia, the love of my life, died on that snowy highway, Christmas evening, 2006, because of me. No one else was behind the wheel. I lost both legs above the knee.

  I looked at the phone. The dial tone blasted from its speakers. I turned it off. I looked back at my front door. It was shut and I could tell from where I was sitting that it was locked, the thumb bolt turned horizontal.

  I felt stupid and stunned. How could the door have been open a moment ago and now be shut and locked from the inside? Had I imagined it, or could there be someone in my house?

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked the empty room.

  No one answered me.

  I must be day dreaming, thinking about Virginia again. There hadn’t been a day since the accident that I didn’t think about that night; about my wife. Could I have done something different when I saw the headlights careen towards us? Instead of turning to the left and exposing the passenger side to the oncoming car, could I have turned right?

  Not now, I said to myself. Snap out of it. The Captain’s on his way. Probably an ambulance, or coroner too. That guy was whacked pretty hard. Wonder what he was doing in the street in the first place.

  Something scratched the wood flooring upstairs. I looked up, but only saw the ceiling of the living room. I heard a thump and then what I can only describe as something heavy, being dragged along the floor.

  Someone must be in the house. There could be no more guessing.

  I reached out and picked the phone up again. The line was dead. No dial tone.

  What were they after? Who were they? I have nothing of value. The insurance money is gone now. Disability paychecks are small. Only an idiot would try to rob me.

  I’m not the best in physical situations as I’m bound to a leather chair with moveable parts, so I rolled to the front door, unlocked and opened it and then bounced my wheels onto the front porch.

  People across the street had gathered. I counted twelve so far. I looked up and down the street but saw no sign of the white Honda Prelude.

  I eased out further and spun my chair around to look up at the second story windows. Nothing looked wrong. No one stood there, looking down at me.

  I heard a siren in the distance. I turned back around and rolled to the sidewalk. I was safe outside. Whoever was in my house would be in serious shit as soon as the cops arrived.

  As I waited, I took in the sweet smell of summer. The heat rose toward midday. Virginia’s favorite time of year. She loved early May. It was time to work in her garden, clean the windows. She used to say she cleaned them to remove the touch that a cold winter would leave behind. I never understood that, but I do now, as I’ve been touched by the cold hand I was dealt. Bound in a wheelchair, widowed, alone. I understand it completely because my life is like a winter’s touch, desolate, empty, cold, and lonely.

  Virginia’s loss had destroyed me. I’d been paralyzed in the accident. I would never remarry. Who wants an invalid? My life ended when Virginia’s did. I felt incomplete. Not only because of my legs, but because Virginia was gone.

 
An ambulance pulled up. Two guys jumped out and dropped a black bag beside the victim. The Jefferson’s kid from across the street said something to the paramedics. They looked at my house and then at me.

  “That sure is something, eh Bry?”

  I jumped. Well, half of me jumped. It was Captain Michaels. When did he get here? And how did he happen to be standing on my lawn behind me without me seeing his cruiser?

  “What’s something?” was all I could say.