Only Fools Walk Free

by Sandra R Neeley

  At first he was outraged, then he realized, he could never be the man in her life. Never take her places, never hold her, never protect her or provide for her, never even speak to her. She was doing what he’d asked Clarice to do all those centuries ago — living her life.

  Samuel took a deep breath, letting it out and nodding his head. Yes, this was good. She deserved happy, and it had taken her two lifetimes to find it. No matter the personal pain, he wanted this for her.

  “So, anyway, I just wanted you to know that while I won’t be here as much, I’ll still come by, and I’ll still take care of the place and come to say hello. I just didn’t want you to worry.” She stepped close to the gate, reaching her hands through it toward him.

  Samuel stepped forward, holding her hands in his for what may be the last time.

  She smiled, clearly feeling the contact. “I’ll come by when I can. I won’t forget.”

  Then a young man had broken the moment. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just saying goodbye,” she said, her voice not its usual confident self.

  “I told you it makes people think you’re weird, coming here to spend all your time with a bunch of dead bodies.”

  “I know,” she shrugged. “I just got attached to the place when I started taking care of it when I was younger.”

  “Well, now you have me to take care of. So come on, hurry the hell up. I have things to do.”

  Claire nodded and hurried to catch up to the young man who was sauntering away. She reached to take his hand as he walked cockily down the path and away from Samuel’s crypt. Preston shook her hand off and reached into his pocket, taking out a device of some sort and whisking his fingers across the glass front of it.

  Claire looked back over her shoulder, as though she was hoping her ghostly friend didn’t see Preston shrug off her attempt to hold his hand.

  Samuel put all his strength into it — he forced every ounce of himself into the thought that his appearance should shimmer. And it did, just enough for her to see it in the sunlight. There he stood, glaring at the young man, who had so negatively impacted his Claire.

  Claire’s eyes grew wide as she saw him standing there briefly, before fading away. A tiny part of her heart tried to pull her back to the crypt. But she hung her head and followed Preston out of the cemetery. Her ghost could never be her boyfriend. And Preston, the man she was following out of the place that had given her peace since she was child, could be. She was tired of being lonely — and he liked her.

  “Hurry up. You’ve made me late now by making me stop here.”

  “I am. I’m coming,” she answered. She did not look back over her shoulder. If she could still see her ghost watching her, it would break her heart, so she didn’t let herself look again.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  April 1, 2019 — April Fools Day

  Samuel paced as he always did, back and forth in the small 12’ x 14’ wrought iron fence and gate-enclosed square of land he’d been relegated to, as he struggled to tolerate his existence. He couldn’t leave here. Would never cross the threshold to the other side of the old rusted, peeling wrought-iron fence — though salvation may possibly wait on the other side. He looked over his shoulder, the vague outline of his once corporeal body not even catching his own attention as his mournful eyes searched for her. He looked first down one well-worn pathway, then the other. No, she still wasn’t coming.

  It had been weeks since she’d been here. He worried. She used to come every Sunday. Then less often, but at least every couple of weeks. Now though, he’d not seen her in more than three weeks, and he was worried. The man that had called her away the last time she was here was not the sort he’d trust with her. Samuel was afraid that she needed him, but he couldn’t go look for her. If he did, he’d vanish into nothingness. And that was unacceptable — at least here he could see her when she came to visit. Watch her smile, hear her voice as she hummed a tune while cleaning away the centuries old crumblings of his home, his prison, his tomb. Irritated, frustrated and anxious, he threw himself through the walls into the once magnificent tomb at his back. He lay there, on the stone floor, allowing his mind to wander to another time, another place, another life.

  His memories of Clarice — Claire — were all that kept him sane these days. He lay there dreaming of her.

  ~~~~~

  Claire hurried down the well-worn path that she knew every step of by heart. She gathered her light jacket around her shoulders tightly and wrapped her arms around herself. Her hair was hanging loosely around her face, kinky curls, unkempt and tangled as was not her usual style. She didn’t look up as she went straight for the Dupont crypt. Her heart hurt, her mind hurt, her face and her body hurt. She didn’t stop until she was actually leaning against the front gate of the crypt. She pressed her face against the wrought iron and sobbed, finally letting the tears flow freely down her face.

  Chapter 7

  Samuel was inside the crypt, losing himself in his memories when he heard sobbing. He lifted his head, paying closer attention. Yes, he could hear it clearly. A woman was crying. He lifted himself from the floor and allowed his body to move through the wall to see who was near enough to his own personal hell for him to be able to hear her anguish. Maybe someone else had lost a loved one, and they are laying them to rest in a neighboring crypt, he thought to himself.

  But as soon as he was outside, his heart knew otherwise.

  There she was, his Claire, and she was leaning against the gate crying. He hurried to her, using the tips of his fingers to stroke her hair where it fell through bars of the gate.

  Claire lifted her head, her hair falling back from her face, and his anger surged, making him easily seen for just one brief moment. She reached her hand toward him, and he took it, resting his face against her palm. “Who did this?” he asked, his heart breaking at the sight of her.

  “I didn’t know where else to go. I’m sorry I haven’t been here in a while,” she said around sniffles still lingering from her crying.

  “Who?” he asked, looking at the bruises on her cheekbones, the cut on her lip.

  She couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t hear him, but she could still feel the warmth of his touch on her hand.

  “I wish I could just be in there with you,” she whispered, laying her head against the gate again.

  “No,” he answered. “But you need to be away from whoever did this.”

  “I know you’re there, even though I can’t hear you. Do you even understand me?” she said, looking for the place his image was just moments before. “I wish I could hear you. I wish we could talk.” She wiped the tears from her bruised face. “So, how about like old days? I’ll talk and you listen?” she offered a small, sad smile.

  She paused, looking down at her hands, now being wrung nervously at waist level on her side of the gate. “I’m afraid of Preston. When he gets angry, he hits me. Calls me names. But I can’t leave him. He said if I do, he’ll hunt me down. I’m not even enrolled in classes this semester. He said I don’t need classes. I just need to stay home and take care of him.”

  She lifted a hand to wipe away a tear and just barely saw Samuel standing right on the other side of the gate, gesturing wildly. His face was distorted as though he was shouting at something behind her. And just as she turned to see what he was so upset about, a hand came down, slapping her across the face, reopening the split in her lip.

  “I told you to keep your ass at home. And where do I find you? Communing with the fucking dead — again! Like a fucking freak!” Preston shouted in her face.

  “I’m sorry. I just wanted to go for a walk,” she offered, clearly terrified.

  “Can’t even trust you to do what the hell you’re supposed to. That’s why you keep your ass at home where I know exactly what you’re doing, when you’re doing it and who you’re doing it with. Now get your ass back there. NOW!” he screamed at her, grabbing her by the shoulder and swinging her around toward the path. He shoved her har
d in the direction they’d come, causing her to lose her balance.

  “God damn it!” he said exasperatedly, snatching her up off the ground. “Can’t you even walk on your own two feet? Get up off the ground, woman. People are gonna wonder what the hell I see in you. Stop embarrassing me!” he hissed at her, shoving her forward again.

  Samuel was losing all control, pacing back and forth, banging on the crypt itself, throwing anything he could get his hands on inside the small space he was relegated to. Screaming for the man to keep his hands off Claire, threatening him with untold tortures. Finally, in frustration, he grabbed hold of the gate and shook it so hard it fell off its hinges, crashing to the ground on the outside of the perimeter he was imprisoned within.

  He stood back, looking at the opening. He raised his eyes to the last place he’d been able to see Claire and the man abusing her before they’d left his sight. His chest heaved. “So be it,” he whispered, before stepping over the threshold separating his crypt from the rest of the cemetery. He looked down at himself and found that he was no different than he was when sequestered on the other side — there, but not. If his soul was now lost, so be it. He’d gladly give it for Claire’s safety.

  He set foot on the path Claire had been forced down, on a mission to save her from the man who was supposed to protect her, value her — not hurt her.

  ~~~~~

  “Can’t you walk any faster?” Preston snapped.

  “I’m trying. I’m hurrying,” Claire said, arms wrapped around herself as she walked the six blocks, taking care not to trip on the uneven sidewalks on the way back to their tiny apartment behind Verret’s Lounge on Baronne Street.

  Each time she’d pause to step around one of the raised edges to avoid tripping, Preston, following right on her heels, would shove her from behind. “Stop wasting time!” he’d shout at her.

  The ghostly man following Preston would shove him in a like manner. The first time Samuel had shoved Preston, his hands had passed right through him. But with each subsequent shove, the effect was stronger and stronger. The last shove had almost thrown Preston to the ground.

  He’d regained his footing and jerked his head around to see who’d shoved him, but there’d been no one there. Claire’s footsteps echoing behind Preston had reminded him that he’d been in the process of taking her back home where she belonged and with one more suspicious glare at nothing at all, decided that he must have tripped over the very broken piece of cement that Claire had been trying to avoid. Quickly, Preston had spun back around to follow her, not knowing that he himself was being followed just as closely.

  Finally they reached their apartment. Preston unlocked the door and shoved Claire inside before stalking inside himself, slamming the door and locking it behind them.

  Samuel had no problem following Claire inside and was standing in front of her, facing Preston.

  Preston stalked toward Claire. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “I told you, I was going for a walk. I was upset after last night and just wanted some fresh air.”

  Preston reached out and shoved her shoulder, making her take a step backwards to catch her balance. “Last night was your fault! If you would learn how to do what you’re told, your life would be a lot less miserable.”

  “I did. I made you dinner.”

  “Yeah, and then you let it get cold. And you didn’t make enough for my friends,” he screamed at her. “You embarrassed me!”

  “You didn’t give me enough money for more food. I didn’t know you were going to bring friends home, and I didn’t know you would be so late. I fell asleep waiting. I’m sorry.”

  “Not my fucking problem!” Preston yelled at her, pulling back his hand to swing a closed fist at her.

  Claire closed her eyes and turned her face away to deflect the punch, but the punch didn’t come. Instead she heard gasping sounds. Cautiously she opened her eyes to see what was happening. Her eyes rounded, and she started trembling at what she saw.

  Preston was being held up in the air, his feet off the floor. He was gasping for air, his hands trying desperately to claw at the hand that held his throat in a tight grip. And that hand was attached to a man. A familiar man, a man she never thought to see alive and breathing as he was. Her ghost had come to save her. He was clearly visible, his words clearly heard, as he spoke. “Do not touch her. You are not enough to even step in the dirt that falls from her shoes.”

  Preston was turning blue, his breath completely cut off by the hand gripping and crushing everything in his neck.

  “He can’t breathe,” Claire whispered.

  Samuel didn’t turn to look at Claire. His eyes were locked with Preston’s, and he continued steadily increasing the pressure on Preston’s neck. “Do you care?” he asked her quietly.

  Preston’s eyes flashed to hers, begging for her to intercede.

  She thought of all the beatings she’d endured at his hands, the verbal and emotional abuse he’d spat at her, of him refusing to allow her to finish school, him locking her away from all she loved and the misery he’d made of her life. “No. I don’t care,” she answered.

  Samuel squeezed harder and held Preston aloft in the air until long after he stopped struggling. Once he was sure Preston was no more, he dropped him to the floor.

  Then he turned to face Claire. “I’ve waited centuries to protect you. I failed the first time, but not this time.”

  “How are you here?”

  “You needed me. So I came.”

  “Who are you? I don’t even know your name,” she said wondrously, tears still wet on her face, looking at the corporeal version of the face she’d glimpsed in the mists at the cemetery from time-to-time over the years.

  “My name is Samuel. I am yours.”

  “But, I don’t even know you.”

  “You did once. We have always loved each other, but were never free to be together. Time took you from me, but then your heart brought you back to me as a young girl. And it brought you back again when you needed me. I’ve always been there for you. Watching, waiting, just for a chance to see you smile.”

  “Why didn’t you ever speak to me before?”

  “I couldn’t leave my prison without losing my soul. It was the penalty for leaving my resting place.”

  A panicked look crossed Claire’s face. “But you left it! You can’t give up your soul for me!

  Samuel smiled. “I’d give up everything for you. And have, more than once,” he said sincerely, without resentment of any type. “You’re safe now, Claire. It was worth it, a thousand times over. It was worth it.”

  “No! Can’t you just hurry back? Go back to the cemetery before anyone realizes you’re gone. Please!” she rushed forward, reaching out for the man, the ghost she’d grown to love over the years. She’d always been drawn to him in one form or another all her life. “I don’t want you to be lost. Please, just go back to the crypt before it’s too late!”

  When her hands passed through him, she sobbed. “No! This is all my fault!”

  “It’s alright. You’re safe now,” he said, his image becoming more translucent.

  Claire’s voice shook when she spoke again. “Please don’t go,” she begged. “I’ve only just found you.”

  “Remember me, Claire. As long as you remember me, a part of me will always be here. Remember me,” he said, as he faded away, first into a mist, then into nothing at all.

  “No!” she screamed, falling to her knees and crying, reaching out to the space he was no longer standing in.

  ~~~~~

  Claire lay on the floor, crying for hours. When she finally cried herself out, she got to her knees, took Preston’s phone out of his pocket and dialed the police.

  She didn’t bother to clean or adjust anything at all and left Preston’s body lying just where it had fallen. She was sitting in a rocking chair, staring off into nothingness when a knock on the door got her attention. Claire rose from her chair and opened the door.


  “Ma’am? We got a report of a murder,” an NOPD officer said, his eyes taking in her bruises, cuts and tears.

  “Yes, sir. He’s over there,” she said on a sob, moving aside for the policeman to enter the apartment.

  “Do you know who did it, ma’am?” the second officer asked as the first went to Preston’s body and felt for a pulse.

  “No, sir. I came home from a walk. I could hear fighting from outside before I ever opened the door. When I did, a man was strangling my boyfriend. I tried to make him stop, but…” she gestured at her face with the bruises and split lip. “I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, but when I woke up, Preston was gone. I found his phone and called ya’ll,” she said, ending on a fresh supply of tears and sobbing.

  “It’s alright, ma’am. We’ll just need you to give us a description, then make a formal statement, but first we’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out.”

  Clarie nodded, and watched several more people pass her and the officer speaking to her, and go right into her apartment. She watched as they lifted Preston’s body onto a stretcher, covered it with a sheet, and rolled it away. She allowed herself to be guided to another ambulance where the paramedics checked her out, then drove her to the hospital. And the next day when she was picked up from the hospital and taken to the police station to give her statement, she gave the description of her ghost. There was no way he’d ever be arrested for murdering Preston, so there was no harm in giving his description.

  A few hours later an officer dropped her off at her apartment and she wandered numbly into the living room. She allowed herself to collapse into the rocking chair, and she let the tears come again. She wasn’t mourning Preston. She didn’t care about Preston, he’d proven one too many times what kind of man he was. She was mourning her ghost. He’d been a part of her life since she was a child, and now he was gone, because he’d sacrificed himself for her. Claire reached for the old blanket draped over the arm of the chair and cuddled into it. She wanted to go to her ghost, but he wasn’t there anymore. She was lost, and had no desire to do anything but sit here.