A Ghost Tale

by Chris Raven

  “If you wait ten minutes, I’ll drive you to work,” my mother offers.

  “No, thank you. I’d rather go by bike.”

  I give her a quick kiss on the cheek and go to the garage. My bike, the same one I used when I was twelve years old, is leaning against a wall, almost hidden behind the little family Ford. When we arrived in Burlington, my father agreed to sell his Pontiac and his Harley and exchanged them for that car. He had no choice. The garage was so small that those two monsters didn’t fit in there. Since we came to Burlington, everything is smaller, grayer, sadder... There is no day of my life in which I do not think that we shouldn’t have moved from Swanton, that since we left everything has always been worse... But we had no choice. Besides, there is one responsible for that cluster of disastrous decisions and I meet him every morning when I stand in front of the mirror.

  I decide to leave that line of thought so as not to start the day depressed. It’s funny. In the short time I’ve been awakened and I had tried to forget my nightmare, I had avoided arguing with Lissie although I wanted to do it, I had decided to hide, as I always do, my opinion about my father’s drunkenness, I had preferred to ride a bike to work instead of waiting for my mother so she wouldn’t realize that I am not well and I am trying to bury in my unconscious all the negative thoughts and feelings of guilt that gives me the shit of life that we have here. What would Dr. Coleman have said about all this? “Too many avoidance mechanisms, Eric. You have to learn to deal with your problems.” Give it to her. It’s a good thing I got rid of her years ago.

  I ride my bike and start pedaling down the street. I try not to look at how ugly this area of Burlington is, full of factories and warehouses. At this hour there is still almost no traffic and I can feel like I own the road. The fresh air of the morning stirring, even more, my hair and swelling my jacket as if I were starting to fly, get me in a good mood. It seems that by speeding I have left behind all my fears and problems.

  In less than fifteen minutes I arrive at the door of Phoenix books, the bookstore I work in. Mr. Rutherford has not arrived yet, so I tie the bike to a streetlight and I contemplate the windows for a few seconds. My boss is a good guy. He tries to support local artists in an attempt to become a cultural patron of the city, allowing them to expose their works in the showcase, but I do not think that the work chosen for this month will help us improve the image of the business. The black marble with white veins façade already gives it a somewhat gloomy look, like a funeral home. The central showcase is now occupied by a kind of scarecrow, which has what looks like red, blood-stained spots on its sack head. It is dressed entirely in black, with the sleeves of the suit made with patches of vivid colors, which, far from giving it a cheerful look, they are so out of place that I get shivers. I can perfectly imagine that thing coming out of the window at midnight to go find his next victim. Once dead, he will rip off a piece of his clothes and hang it on one of his sleeves, like a hunting trophy. I know I mustn’t think like that, that I have to control my imagination, but with that thing, I can’t. There are times that when working in the bookstore giving my back to the window, I have to turn at full speed because I get the impression that he is looking at me.

  I stopped watching the bug in the window so that his vision did not fog the little high spirits I had achieved with the bike ride. I know there’s a vision that will lift my spirits a lot more. I look at my watch to see if I still have time and I cross the sidewalk to get into the cafeteria across the street.

  There’s a line of customers waiting to be attended, but I don’t mind waiting. Debbie is behind the bar, serving everyone with a smile on her lips. Just seeing her, I notice I’m starting to sweat. Every day when she has the morning shift I come for a coffee and while waiting at the queue, I try to get enough courage to start an interesting conversation, to ask her on a date... As the line progresses, I’m trying to cheer myself up. People think I have incredible eyes, half green and half yellow, like a cat. And, although it seems to me that my mouth is more or less big, everybody says I have a beautiful smile. It can’t be that hard to tell her something that makes her laugh. Besides, I don’t have anything to lose either. I already have a no.

  With those phrases, I am starting to embolden little by little, as the queue advances and I get closer and closer. When I get in front of her, I’ll lean my arms on the bar to mark my biceps, I’ll throw a deep look at her and, with my most seductive voice, I’ll tell her something like “Give me a black coffee, doll. Black as night and burning like hell.” I’m still thinking this nonsense when she finishes serving the couple that was in front of me in line and I find myself in front of Debbie. As soon as she looks at me with those blue eyes, my whole mental scene crumbles in pieces the size of confetti. I have no biceps to mark, in whole life I could never say a phrase as ridiculous as that and I don’t even like black coffee.

  “A latte macchiato with extra sugar, please. To take.”

  She’s standing still for a while, staring at me. I don’t know if she’s waiting for me to ask her something else or if she also wants to tell me something and finds no strength. I turn my gaze to the corners of the roof of the premises as if looking for cobwebs. There’s no point in imagining that she likes me too. A girl like her will have a thousand guys behind, more handsome, taller, stronger, less rare... I’m never going to have the guts to ask her for a date because I’m terrified she can say no. As long as I don’t ask her anything, at least I’ll have hope, the illusion that one day I’ll dare to speak to her. If I tell her and she rejects me, I’ll lose that emotion and I won’t be able to go back into the cafeteria that serves the best latte macchiato in the whole city.

  She gives me the coffee and throws me a smile that makes my stomach contract and expand a thousand times in a second. I return a shy smile, I nail my gaze on the floor and leave the cafeteria, while I try to silence the part of my mind that hoots me off for being a hopeless coward. I’m trying to convince myself it wouldn’t have worked, that it wouldn’t do any good to have asked her for a date. I have no success with women and with the few who have given me a chance, the relationship has been a disaster. I don’t know what to say or what to do. I guess, after a few hours with me, they realize that I have the same sex appeal as a toad. Besides, they don’t appeal to me either. I know this may seem crazy and that, if people knew, they would not let me near any playground, but I think it does not work nor will work with any of them, because in all of them I’m looking for Anne. I’m not a pedophile or a degenerate. I’m not in love with a twelve-year-old girl who’s been dead for fifteen years, but I’m always looking for her excited look, her energy, her ability to dream that anything is possible, that the world is a territory to conquer and that there will be nothing that can stop us... That’s what she made me feel when she was by my side and nobody ever made me feel that way again. The world turned a dreary and gray place when she left, and I have not found anyone capable of returning it the color. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe no one has that ability beyond the age of twelve. And it’s very possible that Debbie is not that person either.

  I cross the curb depressed and I drink coffee while I smoke another cigarette before going to work. Although the door still shows the closed sign, there is light in the store, so Mr. Rutherford must be ordering the last orders.

  When I enter, he is checking the delivery note of the last order we received. There are a lot of boxes at the entrance, with their loading of books waiting for someone to place them.

  “Good morning, Mr. Rutherford. I see we have work to do.”

  “Good morning, Eric,” he scratches his bald spot with the back of the pen, without looking away from the note. “A lot of novelties had come up. I checked that box. Would you mind putting the books in place? They’re in the children’s section.”

  I nod and take the box. I like working in the Children’s books section. It’s bright and colorful and, just being there for a while, you seem to feel more cheerful. I’m placing the books on their she
lves, taking a look at the covers before putting them in place.

  Suddenly, I run out of air while holding in my hands a little book. The floor seems to oscillate under my feet and all the rest of the room fades. I can’t move, just by watching the book, it seems to vibrate between my trembling hands. What I have in my hands is not possible. It has to be a nightmare or a bad joke. The book I hold is titled “The Lake Crimes” and is written by a certain Anne Austen.

  II

  I hear myself breathing. That’s always bad, it means panic is coming. I open my mouth, trying to get the air into my lungs, but it’s not enough. I am paralyzed, holding the book at the height of my eyes with my trembling hand. I want to release it, throw it away like a snake, but my hand is stiff, and it doesn’t obey me. I can only look at it and look at it, read again and again that title and that name without being able to believe it.

  It has to be a dream. That is it. My whole day is part of a dream. It started with the memory of Bobby’s corpse and has advanced from there, making me believe that I woke up, that I got prepared, that I had breakfast with my family, that came to work... I’m deeply asleep. All I have to do is wake up. I give the order to my brain, I want you to get me out of here and to do it now. However, nothing changes. I remain paralyzed with the book in my hand, feeling that the air I breathe is becoming scarcer and that the world around me begins to become fuzzy.

  I notice a hand on my shoulder and I let go of a choked cry as I turn around. For a second, I fear what I will find when I turn, but it is only Mr. Rutherford. His contact has broken the spell that hovered over me and returned me to the real world, though I keep breathing in a hectic way and I feel dizzy. He looks at me with a worried gesture.

  “Are you all right, Eric? You look pale. Anyone would say you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I refuse with my head, while I reattach my sight in the damned book. I don’t know what I can tell him, there’s no way to explain how I feel. He takes the book out of my hands, puts it on a shelf and then grabs my arm and helps me move on the way to the back room, where we have a small room to rest and have something to drink or to eat.

  “What’s the matter, son?”

  “Nothing, slight dizziness,” I seem to have regained speech capacity. I even get to sketch a smile to reassure him. “I guess I’ve had a little breakfast.”

  When we get to the back room, he helps me sit in a chair and squats in front of me. I duck my head to put it between my knees, while I try to breathe slowly, as Dr. Coleman explained to me. Inhale. One, two, three, four. Exhale. One, two, three, four... I see that Mr. Rutherford gets up, he serves me a huge cup of steaming coffee and puts it in front of me.

  “Take. It’s just done. And in that bucket, you have cookies.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Rutherford. I am fine.”

  “You’re not well. You haven’t seen the face you have. Rest, drink your coffee and eat something. I don’t want to see you around the store in the next half hour.”

  I smile at him and I sip a drink of coffee to convince him that I am better. He gives me a couple of slaps on my shoulder and comes out of the back room. The truth is, I appreciate his concern. Right now, I wouldn’t be able to go back into the bookstore and face that cover again. I need to get calm and understand what’s going on.

  The first thing I do is to pinch myself again and again until I leave my left forearm in the flesh. It’s useless. I don’t wake up in my bed, scared and sweaty. I’m still in the backroom of Phoenix books, watching the smoke coming out of my cup of coffee. I give it another long sip, waiting for the caffeine to clear me up and turn my life into something sharper and more real. Then I get up, I open the back door of the backroom, I put a box of books as a stop so that it does not close, and I support myself on the wall to smoke a cigarette. Out here, with the sun shining high and feeling the air in the face, the world seems stronger and less threatening.

  At least I stopped breathing as if I drowned and my heart is slowly returning at a normal pace. Now I just have to try to analyze what has happened from a rational point of view. I’ve seen a book written by an Anne Austen and entitled “The Lake Crimes.” So, what? It’s okay. I may have read wrong. Most likely, induced still by the dream I’ve had about Bobby, my mind has decided to play me a tricky one. I know I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the book, reading over and over again the title and the author’s name, trying to make sure, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s not the first time in my life that I see things that aren’t there. It’s not reassuring to think I’m hallucinating again, but I think my sanity can better tolerate this fact than to think that my friend who died fifteen years ago has written a book telling what happened.

  Another possibility, much better for my sanity, is that everything is a fucking coincidence. Anne is a very common name, and Austen is not such a strange surname either. There must be hundreds of Anne Austen’s in the world, so, statistically, it is likely that some of them had decided to be a writer.

  All these arguments make me feel much more relaxed by the time I finish smoking. It’s okay, I’m not going crazy. There is a rational explanation and I just have to go back to the bookstore and check it out. I breathe deeply a few more times and enter the back room. I finish my coffee, I check that I stopped shaking and I return to my job.

  The book box is still in the same place I left it. I squat by its side and pull out another copy. I haven’t read it wrong. “The Lake Crimes” is entitled, and the author is Anne Austen. It is not a name that looks like that one or has an initial in the middle or is written differently. It’s the same name my childhood friend had, my first love, my Anne...

  It’s okay. It’s a coincidence, a damn chance. If I don’t let myself be panicked again, I’ll be able to check in a matter of seconds. I open the book and look at the page with the credits. They just published it in Montpelier, in an editorial called Rainbow.

  I look for data about the author in the back cover, on the flap, and on the final pages of the book. There is nothing: neither her photo nor her biographical data. It could be a ghost. In fact, it is for me. I feel a shudder to remember those stories that Anne told me: that she would be a writer and we would live together in a cabin in the forest. I wonder if she’s in that cabin, writing while she’s waiting for me to meet her. I take air several times while I try to calm down. My heart is getting out of control again.

  I need to know more about this book. I need someone to confirm to me that what I’m seeing is real, that I’m not going crazy. With it in my hand, I head to the entrance of the shop. Fortunately, it is still too soon for clients and my boss is still alone, fighting with the same delivery note.

  “Mr. Rutherford, excuse me. Do you know anything about this book?”

  He takes it, adjusts the glasses and contemplates it for a few seconds.

  “The Lake Crimes, by Anne Austen.” My heart hits hard again in my rib cage when I hear those words aloud. “It’s one of the ones that came in today, right? They sent it to us from Rainbow Publishing. It is a new publishing house, which works with self-edited authors. You know, the authors pay the edition and the publishers try to place them to see if anyone gives them a chance.

  “So, she’s not a successful writer?”

  “No, of course not... And I don’t think she’s going to be. How can you pretend to sell a children’s book with that title? I know that now the kids skip the classic tales and there are even scary books for children, but this is too much. No father in the world will want to buy it. I bet a beer that it doesn’t sell a single copy.

  Mr. Rutherford loses his bet, but I’m not going to demand that he pays me. When we close the bookstore and go home, I carry in my backpack a copy of “The Lake Crimes”.

  The Lake Crimes

  By

  Anne Austen

  Many, many years ago, in a small village near a quiet lake, lived a man. It had a nice house, a beautiful black horse, a beautiful wooden cart, a great job and many good neighbors with whom he
got along very well. But, above all that, his greatest treasure was his son, a clever and good boy whom he worshipped.

  One afternoon the man decided to go fishing in the lake. He placed the rods on the shore and laid down. The day had been very hot, but it blew a breeze that cooled the atmosphere. The man was so glad that, without realizing it, he fell asleep.

  He woke up many hours later. It was closed night and a huge moon shone on the waters. The man got up and started to pick up his rods, but something in the middle of the lake caught his eye and made him stay still.

  A shining object slid towards him. As it approached, the man could see it better. Despite the damage caused by the bright light in his eyes, he could distinguish a head, a torso, some arms, and legs. However, the light was so strong that it did not allow him to see the features of the face very well.

  “Who are you?” He asked when the figure was near the shore.

  “I am the spirit of the lake.” Mortals cannot contemplate me without paying a price.

  “What price is that?”