A Ghost Tale

by Chris Raven

  I stared at Dave with a frown in my face. He always had to be the most responsible and logical one. He seemed to be forty years instead of twelve. My only chance to convince them was to lure his brother Jake by my side. Even though they were twins, they couldn’t be more different. While Dave was calm and rational to the point of not farting without first filling a permission form, Jake was impetuous and nervous like a squirrel with caffeine overdose. He spoke very loudly and moved his hands a lot, to release the energy that burned him inside. And, above all, he had a special virtue fifted my plan perfectly at that moment: he was unable to say no to no plan, no matter how crazy it was.

  “You saw what happened with Anne. They spent hours interrogating people who had no idea, like, for example, me. By the time they went out to search for her, Anne was already dead.”

  “But the guy who took Anne doesn’t have Bobby,” insisted Jim, refusing to see reality.

  “I hope you’re right. I’ll be the happiest person in the world if your brother is only wandering by Swanton and appears whenever, but what if he doesn’t? Are we going to stand idly by and do nothing? I’m going to go get him. Are you coming, Jake?”

  Jake got up in a jump, ready to follow me to the end of the world. I said goodbye to the other two and left the cabin, accompanied by Jake. In a few seconds, I heard how Jim and Dave were moving too. I knew Dave would follow Jake anywhere, and Jim couldn’t stay alone while we all started looking for his brother.

  I felt a little guilty. It’s not that I didn’t worry about Bobby’s luck. He was just a seven-year-old kid who didn’t hurt anyone. However, my motivation to go to the search was not to save him. I wanted to find Anne’s murderer and avenge her, but I knew I would never venture to go exploring the lake by myself.

  V

  We picked up the bikes and went passing them over the fence, so we could go out the back of the house. Neither Jim’s parents nor the police would let us go alone to explore the lake. The very first minutes, everyone pedaled behind me, as if we were four kids walking around on a Saturday morning. If someone recognized us, we could say that we had decided to go for a walk so that poor Jim would clear himself a little.

  As soon as we had left our neighborhood behind, I started pedaling like crazy, convinced that the others would follow me. I knew it was very possible that we didn’t get to find Bobby and that our parents could be mad at us if we were caught, but there was no going back. We had to get to the lake and try to find Anne’s murderer. At that time there was nothing more important. It didn’t matter how dangerous it could be or that I didn’t know what we could do if we found him. I don’t think even a chorus of celestial trumpets announcing the advent of the apocalypse could have prevented me from continuing pedaling.

  Since Anne had died, something inside me seemed to have gone with her. I didn’t recognize myself. I lacked energy, I wanted nothing, nothing interested me... I’ve been crawling around the world for days, restricting myself to exist because I had no choice. Since I had heard about Bobby’s disappearance, my former self seemed to have returned. I needed to move, do things, fight for something big... There was a chance to save the kid, to stop the murderer, to avenge Anne. Although I had no idea how to do all that, at least life started to make sense again.

  We left Swanton through Depot Street and, after passing the bridge, we arrived on Lake Street. I looked back to see if the others were still there, and I decided to slow down a bit. Dave was beginning to lag and there were more than two miles to the lake. It was very hot and the air, dry and suffocating, didn’t help at all. Luckily, the shade of the trees on the roadside made the journey more bearable.

  The part of Lake Street seemed eternal to me. There was nothing to entertain the sight. It was a road without curves or slopes, bordered by trees and light poles. The landscape in the distance seemed to tremble by the effect of the heat on the asphalt. There were no houses, no factories, no crops, an endless row of trees that seemed to spread beyond infinity. We hardly met any cars, but that was something I appreciated. If any acquaintance found us there, he would send us home immediately.

  Even though it was a short tour, Dave was repeatedly complaining about the weather boing hot and suffocating, the path being very long, our presence being absurd and saying we had been so foolish that we had not thought to bring a miserable bottle of water... His complaints became so unbearable that we had to stop for a while among the trees to rest a little. I stood up, holding the bike with one leg on each side and looking at him with a killer face. My main motivation to get to the lake became the need of putting his head down the water to shut him up.

  A while later we continued the march. It seemed that resting suited Dave well because he had stopped complaining and reached our pace. His brother Jake pedaled a little harder to stand beside me and asked me the question I was so afraid of:

  “What are we going to do if we find him?”

  “Bobby? Take him home.”

  “No, you understand me... If the one who kidnapped Bobby is the same one who took Anne and we found him, what are we going to do?”

  I was silent, taking advantage of the fact that a truck loaded with straw-bales covered in black plastic was approaching in the opposite way. The noise of the engine prevented us from talking, and we both put our heads to one side trying to avoid the smell. The straw had already begun to ferment and spread a sweet aroma of rot so intense that you could almost taste it. I thought that Anne’s body had already begun to rot, that she had started to smell like this. I felt a pretty awful nausea which made me stop the bike next to the gutter.

  “Are you all right?” Jake asked me, standing next to me.

  “Yes, it’s all right. It was the smell of the truck. I felt dizzy.”

  We went back to pedaling, followed by Dave and Jim, who marched in silence further back. A couple of minutes later, Jake cleared his throat and returned to the charge:

  “So, what are we going to do if we find him?”

  “Stop him,” I answered, hoping to sound much more convinced than I was.

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  “We’re four against one. We can take him down.”

  We went back to being silent. The sound of the wheels of our bikes on the hot asphalt was our only company. I turned my head to look at Jake. He had a frown and tight lips. You could almost hear him thinking. After a couple of minutes, he spoke again:

  “My Aunt Eloise says that Anne’s body was completely bled out. She thinks it was Champ who drew her to the lake and devoured her.”

  That story seemed so grotesque that I didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. Champ, the Vermont version of the Loch Ness Monster, had always been a lovable and cheerful creature, a kind of green dinosaur present in T-shirts, hats, and other souvenirs. You could even ask for a Champburger in many of the restaurants in the towns close to the lake, a seafood burger with sesame bread that was delicious. To think that something like that could have been the cause of Anne’s death was ridiculous.

  “Your Aunt Eloise is kind of crazy. Isn’t she the one who says she saw a UFO?”

  “Of course, because she saw it...”

  “Isn’t she also the one that has a porch full of weird symbols and amulets?”

  “Yes, they’re protective amulets. She uses those things because she has ancestors who practiced voodoo.”

  “Yes, of course… How can you believe those fairy tales?”

  Jake gave up, but he pedaled a little harder and placed himself ahead of me. I thought I might have hurt his pride, but there was no time to apologize. We had more important things to worry about.

  A while later, when we took a sharp curve to the left, we left Lake Street and went into Maquam road. The scenery changed completely. Instead of endless rows of trees, you could see beautiful single-family houses which overlooked the lake, each one with a private pier. Among the trees, we glimpsed the blue waters of Lake Champlain, which shone thanks to the sun. We stopped at the crossroads t
o decide what to do.

  “Does anyone know where was Anne found?” Dave asked while the sweat was drying out of his forehead.

  “I think it was northwards,” Jim answered, looking up there, almost as if he was trying to see his brother.

  That was logical. Towards the south of the crossroads in which we were, all the land was occupied by private houses. The north was different. There were only trees and trees which reached almost the very edge of the lake. The only trace of civilization was a small paved path located in the forest. Even though the sunlight was intense enough to hurt our eyes, the path seemed dark and gloomy. The trees were so close to each other that they formed a natural tunnel that absorbed the light and converted it into a greenish gloom.

  I looked at my friends and asked them if they wanted to move on. Jim and Jake nodded. Dave just dropped a resigned sigh, but I took it as a yes. I started pedaling my bike again and went into the path, which was parallel to the lake’s shore. Normally there were no more than four or five steps from the road to the water, but the drought was also wreaking havoc on a lake that, until then, I had considered so immense and powerful that it would not be affected by those things. In that month of August, the Champlain, despite maintaining its vivid blue color, seemed sick. The shores were full of mud and, a few steps inland, the ground appeared dry and cracked.

  As soon as we got deep into the shade of the trees, we felt we were entering into another world. The temperature descended several degrees and the air became wetter and breathable. One could hear the song of some birds, the distant croaking of the frogs and the hum of the insects. However, that did not make me feel better. There was something unusual about the atmosphere, something that forced you not to make noise and whisper, something that urged you to finish with what you had gone to do there and to leave as soon as possible.

  We pedaled for a quarter of an hour. Despite the strange feeling that required us to hurry, we advanced slowly, scrutinizing the shore between the trees, attentive to any movement that could indicate that the man who had taken Bobby was still there. We didn’t say so because we didn’t want Jim to worry, but we were also looking for any suspicious bulge on the shore, in case it was his brother’s body. I think, even if he’d never admitted it, he was looking for it too.

  I started to feel a little dizzy. Moving through that forest, where the sunlight seeped through the leaves while trying to scan the view between the bright waters of the lake and the obstacles of the way, was tiring. Also, I noticed that each of my muscles was in tension and that the anxiety grew and grew in my chest, like a balloon that was swelling, and each time there was less space to breathe. But that search didn’t get us tired. Even if we took a while in that forest and had not achieved anything, our desire to search was not reduced. Every time we were more convinced that we were going to find something... or that something would find us. Even Dave had stopped complaining and remained silent.

  Then I saw him. A bulge of light color on the shore hooked on the roots of an old tree. I stopped my bike so abruptly that Jake was about to roll over me. I heard the sound of the others’ wheels skidding on the path’s gravel as they stopped. We were silent, without even breathing, observing that bulge... I prayed that it was just rubbish, a bag forgotten by a tourist, a towel torn from a clothesline nearby... But we all knew it from the first moment.

  Jim was the first to throw his bike on the road and run out there. Jake didn’t take a second to react and run after his friend. Dave and I moved slower, as people move in dreams as if the air had become liquid and it was hard to move.

  When we reached the shore, Jake and Jim watched the waters terrified. Jim whined like a wounded puppy. He uttered words, but I could not understand him at first:

  “Take him out, take him out... He’s drowning.”

  I didn’t want to look at the water, but I had to. Bobby’s body floated on the lake with a sleeve of his Bart Simpson T-shirt hooked on the roots. The soft current rocked his corpse, causing it to hit against the tree. You could hear the sound of his body when colliding: thump, thump, thump...

  I couldn’t move. I was hypnotized by his dead-eyed look. I could only think that it was the first time I saw his nose clean.

  Burlington, July 2016

  I

  I wake up drenched in sweat, with the image of his empty gaze firmly fixed on my brain and a cry of anguish trapped in my throat. For a moment that seems eternal, while I struggle to normalize my breathing and reduce the crazy blows of my heart, I do not know where I am or how old I am. I’m again that twelve-year-old kid terrified at the sight of a drowned child in Lake Champlain.

  I sit on the bed and watch my room while I try to breathe deeply. I’m in Burlington, I’m twenty-seven years old and I’m not afraid anymore. It was left behind, far away, in Swanton. It is only a terrible memory that for some strange reason has decided to go afloat, like the bodies of the drowned.

  That comparison is not going to help me calm down. With a couple of kicks, I get to remove the sheet and get out of bed. I go to the window, I lift the shutter trying not to make noise and I open it. The fresh air of the early morning allows me to breathe again. It gently blows over the sweat attached to my body, causing a shiver in me.

  I breathe several times. At this hour of the morning, the air of the city seems clean. Little by little I notice that my body is calming down, but I still have a feeling of heaviness, infinite sadness, melancholy... Why did all that have to happen? I know there’s no answer or that, at least, I don’t have it.

  I turn to the inside of the room and look for the tobacco package in the pockets of my denim jacket. I turn on the first cigarette of the day sitting at the sill, contemplating how the city is coming back to life. The first cars start to pass, I see a neighbor walking his dog, a crazy early riser practicing running... This world so real and day-to-day gets that, little by little, the memory of Bobby’s corpse fades away. It hides again in some hidden corner of my mind, where I kept it with the rest of my ghosts, from where it should never have moved. Why should I have dreamt of him after all that I have striven through these years to tell myself that everything doesn’t matter anymore?

  The alarm clock takes me out of my thoughts. After all, it seems that my nightmare has not robbed me much sleeping time. I finish my cigarette without hurrying and I end up throwing the cigarette end out the window. I know my mother will be furious if it falls on her gardenias, but maybe someday she’ll understand that not letting me have an ashtray in the room is not going to stop me from smoking.

  I take a shower and prepare myself in less than ten minutes. Like every morning I try to do something with my hair. I don’t understand why it always has to be frizzy and full of swirls. After a couple of minutes, I decide to leave it as an impossible task and go to have breakfast.

  As I go down the stairs, I hear voices coming from the kitchen. It looks like the rest of my family is ahead of me. The table is so full of food as if we had invited breakfast to the whole neighborhood. There are pancakes, cereals, bacon, eggs, freshly squeezed natural juice... I often think that my mother doesn’t sleep. When the house is calm, she sneaks out of bed and spends the night cooking. Only then can it be explained that she has all this food prepared at seven in the morning.

  I sit at the table looking at the food with a scrambled stomach. I’m not hungry. My nightmare has left me feeling crappy and I don’t feel like anything but a coffee, but I know my mother will be angry if I don’t eat, so I take a pancake.

  “Are there no good manners in this house?”She asks me to put her arms akimbo.

  “Good morning, Mom. Sorry, I didn’t sleep well.”

  Those simple words make her get up from her chair in a jump and go around the table at full speed to put the palm of her hand on my forehead. I let myself do, though I sigh of boredom. I know it won’t do any good to protest.

  “What’s the matter with you?”She questions, worried.“Do you have a fever? You’re not incubating something, are you
?”

  “No, don’t worry. I guess it’ll just be the heat.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a virus. I heard Brad coughing last night.”

  I look at Brad, who, in addition to having helped himself a huge bowl of chocolate cereal, he is eating his third pancake. I do not think there is a virus in the world able to confront my nephew, an eleven-year-old boy who is almost as tall as me and whose back is already a few inches wider than mine. The more he grows, the more he looks like his father, the madman, a player from the high school rugby team who coaxed my sister Lissie, left her pregnant and then forgot about her.

  My mother seems to have been calmer after taking my temperature and feeling my throat to make sure I didn’t have swollen glands. For a second, I wonder what would happen if I confessed to her that the reason for not having slept well is that I dreamed again with Swanton. I’m sure she’d get her eyes blank and would start frothing from the mouth. I decide to change the conversation to divert her attention from my state of health:

  “Hasn’t dad gotten up?”

  “No, he went out last night and he’ll be up late.”

  I know exactly what those words mean. My father must have come early in the morning after spending his miserable paycheck on drinking beers with his friends. I understand that he feels so sad and frustrated that he is not able to work, that he is depressed for being a burden to his family, but spending money that you don’t have, doesn’t seem like the best way to deal with it. I look at my mother with an understanding smile and I give a sip to my juice, while I decide that this line of conversation is not suitable for my mood.

  Brad has finished with his bowl of cereals and approximates the tray of pancakes to his place. He throws a defiant look at me, making it very clear that he’s not going to let me near his trophy. My mother, true to her idea that a fat child is a healthy child, smiles to encourage him. Lissie raises for a moment the look of her cell phone and throws a reproachful look at him but does not tell him anything. She never says anything to him or anyone. She is still the perfect porcelain doll, with her long wavy blonde hair and her huge blue eyes. She merely passed through the world as if the gift of her presence was enough. Sometimes she exasperates me. She’s twenty-nine years old and an enormous son to support. She can’t keep dreaming that some talent scout will ever discover her on the street and turn her into a supermodel or a film star. As I am not in the mood to argue with her, I restrain myself to take another pancake from the tray without caring about the hatred look that Brad throws at me. I put on my jacket and I hang the backpack on my shoulder.