Ghost of a Dream

I woke up the other night with a ghost in my bedroom. At least that is what it felt like when it was happening. I knew that I was still dreaming because I had been trying to wake myself up in my dream and there are no such things as ghosts, right? So if I wasn’t going to wake up I decided I was going to go with the dream just to see where it went.


This ghost in my room was named Henry, and he was looking for a person that used to live here in my place. A woman named Deidra.

I couldn’t help him much, but I tried. It was the middle of the night, and nothing was open in town after two in the morning.

In this dream of mine I went to the library and looked up the old records for him. The library doors just unlocked and opened up, you know how dreams can be. I told Henry what I found in the records there, that this Deidra had gotten married after he had died. She had three children and was buried in the church cemetery some fifty years after that. And that her death was a good fifty years after the marriage.


What you need to know about me is I’m not the helpful type. I don’t open doors for people, or pick things up that others have dropped, or give to the poor. So I’m feeling quite silly in the library of all places looking up information for a ghost in the dead of night. I hadn’t once stepped into a library since my school years.


Henry had never learned to read and he asked me to read him her headstone, so we walked over to church yard cemetery. And this was where the dream started to get creepy. We were standing, or I should say I was standing with my small pocket flashlight and he was floating in the middle of the cemetery, we were reading headstones, and some of the other occupants came up out of their graves and they came over to see what we are doing.


As dreams often are surreal it didn’t bother me in the least that I was now surrounded by ghosts and they were all chatting and catching up on history while I was reading headstones out loud for this Henry.

I won’t pretend that I wasn’t surprised when some of the specters rose soon after I read their names. If I was standing too close they would go right through me with a cold shivery feeling. Apparently saying their name out loud over their resting place causes them to rise. If only I had know that before I read the stones out loud to Henry I wouldn‘t have done it.


I was ready to give up when I finally spotted her grave. I mean how many Deidra’s do you know? I read it out to him and he sighed waiting for her to rise. We waited for her to come to him and when she didn’t he started to weep, so I called to her on his behalf.

After a while I said to him, “Maybe she isn’t buried here. It doesn’t say how she died.”

The others insisted, “No, she’s there!”

Deidra finally rose up after the whole group started in calling her name.

She admonished all of us for disturbing her, and with the fun over the other ghosts headed for their own graves.

Deidra said to Henry, “I never have been in love with you. You just have to move on, and Please! stop coming to my grave each year on your death day night trying to talk to me. I am not going to talk to you ever again. So Henry, stop bothering the living and the dead with all this hubbub."

As she sank back into the earth Henry tried to pull her back up to be with him. I told him, “Now cut that out, or I will make it my mission to haunt you when I die if you don’t leave her be!”


This Henry ghost was now so distraught I would have worried about him killing himself if he was alive. So I walked him back to his own grave in the public cemetery a few blocks away. I wanted to make sure he was down under the earth again and not about to follow me around. But I didn’t tell him that.


The next day was Saturday and I was at my local coffee place reading my emails when the police came up to me and asked me to come to the police station with them.

They had an odd tale to tell me. It was about me walking around town in my pajamas with a ghost and my breaking into the library, then going into the church yards in the middle of the night. They had me on various cameras around town with a non descript glowy thing floating along side of me, and it appeared that I was talking to it.

Since I didn’t harm or take anything, the caretakers of these places weren’t going to press charges, this police interview was just a warning.

If they hadn’t shown me the tapes I wouldn’t have believed it myself.


I move right out of that old place. Didn’t stay there another night in fact. I moved to the other side of town into a new apartment building. But to this day I am helpful and whistle past the graveyard. I even give to the poor. I’m not taking any chances ever again of bumping into a ghost in the night.

Edit for typo on 11-14-11

The Redneck's Car

Butch was working on his car again. He was always working on that car. It was the same car he had been working on since he was in high school and now his kids were there. It was his pride and joy up on cinder blocks and rusted jacks in the side yard of the house. This was Butch’s 1957 blue and white Ford Fairland convertible.

It looked like rain so he was under the car to do some work on the frame. With only his lower half sticking out of the side of the car his feet could almost touch the neighbors fence as he was working today. It made for a lot of wiggling to get under there so he didn’t want to have to stop what he was doing if it only started to drizzle.

Butch had been out there for a long time without interruptions this Saturday. The kids were elsewhere at their friend’s houses and his wife was busy shopping for the weekly groceries with a friend of hers. The ball game was on the radio and a cold beer was within reach. This was the male equivalent to the bliss of shopping his wife talked about.

He finally found the wrench he had been feeling around for and started on the rusted nut he had coated with lubricant earlier in the day. He has gone to work on the other nuts and bolts while it soaked in and he was back to give it another try. This one particular nut was the rustiest of all of them so far and the wrench kept on coming off as the rusty coating flaked away. Butch’s knuckle was bleeding and it dripped into his eye. After cursing and sucking on his rusty dirty finger he got back to working on that nut. This time the wrench stripped it completely and he had gotten his finger pinched hard in the bargain. Since no one was around to hear him curse he threw the offending wrench full force as he cursed loudly to make himself feel better.

The wrench hit the cinder block so hard there was a spark and he sighed with relief because Butch had taken out the gas tank for more room under the car for him to work in. He was shifting his weight so he could wriggle out and get another beer while retrieving the wrench when he heard the cinder block crack and the car came down on top of him.

When he came to, he found that the car had knocked the wind out of his lungs and it felt like he had broken a few ribs, but he was alive. Butch was pinned so that he couldn’t move and he couldn‘t even reach anything to bang on the car to attract attention from the neighbor‘s. Now all he was able to do was wait for the family to come home and call for help. He tried not to panic.


Butch thought about a lot of things while he waited. Like how his cigarettes were now crushed in his T-shirt pocket and he couldn’t even have a last smoke before he got to the hospital and had to give them up until they let him out again. He thought about how he had to pee from the two beers he had before he crawled under here. He thought about how he was going to miss the card game with the boys tonight and miss out on making a few bucks for beer from the new guy, Len’s cousin, who hadn’t perfected his poker face yet. He thought about how he was going to have to buy a new radio because the one he had been listening to was now smashed to smithereens and he was missing the end of the game. He thought about his car and wondered if they would damage it any when they lifted it off of him.


After what felt like hours, but was really only about thirty minutes, he felt a tickle in his throat and knew a cough was on the way. He tried everything he could think of to distract himself from the feeling, but the more he tried the worse it got. It started small, but once it got started it wouldn’t let go. He coughed until he lost consciousness again.


Butch woke up hearing his wife talking to her friend about him as she brought in the groceries. “He’s probably over Ralph’s by now.” She said. “If he was here that radio of his would be on.” She couldn’t hear him try to call out to her with what little air he could get into his lungs. She just went into the house with the last bag and started putting the food away and then started to make supper. Junior came racing in on his bike and bumped into the other side of the car using it as a stop, and the car came down a little more. Junior then high tailed it into the house saying, “What’s for supper?“ And he didn’t come back out to put his bike away in the garage like he was supposed to.


Now Butch knew it was getting serious. His breathing was taking most of his concentration. He stopped thinking about the blond down the street that likes to sit on her front steps in a thin night gown to drink her morning coffee and he started to tell God he wouldn’t look at her anymore on his way to work. Butch would even take a different street to avoid the temptation, if the good Lord would only send someone to come and get him out from under his car. He even threw in a plea for forgiveness for watching that porn film at the bachelor party a couple of years ago.

His daughter came home from her girlfriends house and Butch hoped that this meant he was saved. The girl’s father dropped Sissy off, but Carl didn’t stop to see what Butch was up to. He probably thought Butch was at Ralph’s house too since the hood wasn‘t up on the car today. Sissy went into the house by the front way. It was raining a little now and she didn’t like to get her hair wet. Hopefully someone would come out to get him for supper when his wife called Ralph and found out he wasn’t there and then they would find him. There was no note telling them he was gone and he hadn’t forgotten to do that since he was missing with his hunting buddies when Sissy was born. But when the door opened his wife just called his name and went back inside because it had started raining a little harder. Why wasn’t Junior coming out to put his bike away?


The rain cooled off the day and made him a little chilly along with wet from the waist down. He peed himself because now that he was getting all wet he couldn’t hold it in any longer. It started to pour buckets and he figured no one would know with all the rain washing over him anyway. And once he let it go he could breath a bit easier. That more than anything was a relief as the moment.

Butch hadn’t put the tarp back onto the car and since he had taken the top down the interior was getting wet. Butch was glad he had taken out the seats and put them in the garage. After a while drips started to trickle through the frame and onto him making him wetter still. The weight of the water added to the car itself and it sunk a little further onto Butch as the cinder block crumbled further.

His breaths came in gasps. Butch thought about all the times his wife wanted him to go to church with the family. He told God he would go every Sunday from now on instead of working on the car. He told God he would stop cursing in front of the kids. He’d even give up the hunting trips that were really only drinking weekends with the boys. He told God he would get rid of this darn old car like his wife had wanted him to for so long.

Butch’s head was pounding and felt like it was going to burst from the need for oxygen. He felt like he was drowning and was seeing stars and his brain was screaming for help as he lost consciousness for the last time still begging God for help.


The funeral was a nice affair and Butch’s wife sold the car to the junk yard the day after he was put in the ground. But she still hears Butch tinkering and cursing out there every time she sticks her head out of the back door and cans of cold beer can be found out by where the car used to be in all sort of weather, but especially when it rains.

The Castle Tour Guide

The old castle hallway was cool and dank, such a difference from the heat of the day outside. Ruth Bradford was enjoying the coolness. It swept up the long skirts of her embroidered tunic covered garb as she walked, cooling her after talking in the sun at the castle entrance a few moments earlier. This little tingle of a chill was refreshing at the moment. Of course in a few short months it would be the cold she would be shying from, but that didn’t stop her from enjoying it now.

How many times Ruth had walked down these halls, stepped into these rooms, and still a shiver went up her spine that had nothing to do with the cool in the hallway. It happened every time without fail, no matter the warmth. Would today be the day she would see the ghosts again?

Ruth would tell the tour, “I’m told I look an awful lot like one of the Grand Dames that used to rule here.” as she showed the tour goers the painting. They always agreed.

That was why she had gotten the job. She didn’t have any experience in conducting historical tours then. But for the last five years she had been studying and perfecting her adaptation and taking over the main tours of the castle as the Lady herself.

That was also when the hauntings started in earnest. Grand Balls in the great hall with the music filling that wing of the building. Everything would disappear once anyone came through the doorway. But you could stand in the hallway and watch the festivities for almost a half an hour if you liked. Once the tour had seen the Lord of the castle himself, sitting on the dais holding court. He had been sentencing someone they couldn’t see to beheading at dawn, who it was they never found out, but then the ghost seemed to notice Ruth standing there and everything just disappeared.


There were also cold spots in the rooms on the days when the fires were merrily heating the rest of the space and oddest of all, was the locking and unlocking of the doors, along with items being moved from room to room of seemingly their own accord. But as nothing bad had ever happened, all the tour guides just made the best of it.


In those first days Ruth was often left feeling ill after one of those strange occurrences. She’d have headaches and couldn’t remember things well. She would find herself on the tour talking about things she had no knowledge of and saying it with an air of one that had been there herself.

The people on the tours liked it, but Ruth knew that she was supposed to stick to the facts that they could verify from the historical records, letters and papers in the archives. That had been a while ago, now she just kept the tour going as if nothing unusual was going on.

Ruth didn’t like the strange things going on. But jobs were not easy to come by in their rural community around the castle. It was down to being a tour guide or a maid in one of the Bed and Breakfasts in town. She liked being a tour guide better and the money was steady. Because Ruth did the tour every day whether the groups she guided were large or small. Maids were laid off in the slow season.


The letter Ruth had been waiting for came in the morning mail:

Dear Miss Bradford,

We at the Historical Tour Guide Association would like to congratulate you on winning this year’s scholarship for a year’s tuition to the college or university of your choice as a freshman history major. Etc.


Ruth had been saving her earnings for all these years so she could afford to go away to University and now to have the first year fully paid for was like a dream come true. She could start this very next semester now. A whole year earlier than she ever thought she would be able to. She couldn’t wait to tell everyone at work and thank Mr. Donewell for the recommendation. She also couldn’t wait to spread her wings.


After Ruth left for school Cathleen took over in the ‘Lady of the Castle’ tours and the spooks grew quieter once again. Cathleen did an excellent job, but it just wasn’t the same. Cathy was a perky blond and Ruth was a brooding brunet with more dignity in her walk then Cathy’s bouncy gate.


Ruth worked day and night to finish school in three years instead of four. The whole town was so proud of her that there was a party planned for her arrival home. It was in the grand hall of castle itself.

Everyone was in costume of the middle ages. The feast on the banquette table made it almost groan from the weight of it. It looked like they all had gone back in time together. And it just so happened to be on the eve of the day that the lady that Ruth looked like had died.

The local coral group sang madrigals and a jester roamed the hall making silly faces at people and telling jokes until they laughed. Mr. Wilson played on his mandolin in turns with the singers so everyone had a chance to eat. And the food was eaten with the hands, with ale and wine in tankards and goblets. It was high fun.

Dancing started after the feast. A band of players was hired for the night and they kept up the lively music of the times. The pipers and drummers helped the people attending out of their seats and onto the dance floor. At one point a jig contest was started to the delight of the crowd. The town’s folk started talking in ‘Olde English’ making it feel all the more real.

Ruth was crowned as ‘Lady of the Manor’ and carried on the shoulders of a few of the young men in the room. Everyone cheered. The fun was still going on until way past midnight. Some people walked their weary body’s home, but most stayed on.

As the party was wearing itself down a man dressed like the grand Lord of the Manor jumped up and accused Ruth of being unfaithful with one of the young men at the party. Others join in thinking it was more of the fun in the night and that they could be part of the game.

They took off Ruth’s crown, garland, and party robes, tied her hands behind her and stood her before the Lord of the castle. He pronounced sentence of “…death in the tower at dawn.” They marched Ruth off to the tower room singing and cheering finding themselves in the play. After they threw her into the empty room and shut the door they laughed and jeered through the door for a few minutes. Then with the fun at an end they tried to open the door to let her out.

The group thought that Ruth was now playing a game on them and had locked it from inside, but she called from the other side, “My hands are still tied and there is no lock on my side of the cell door.”

“Wait while we call a locksmith.” Someone said as another was already on his cell phone.

Some of the people stayed to talk with her through the door as they waited for the situation to be resolved. The rest went down the stairs to make room for the locksmith to work when he arrived.


False dawn was lighting the road as the locksmith drove to the castle. He collected his tools and climbed the many stairs to the top of the tower. Huffing and puffing he sat on his tool box until he had caught his breath. “These old locks can be tricky sometimes.” He said. He tinkered about and oiled the hinges. He picked away at the lock for a few more minutes before saying, “I have to get a few more tools for this job. I don’t want to break anything old here.”

Ruth had been quiet on her side of the door while the man worked. But all of a sudden they all heard her scream. She didn’t answer them any longer when they called out to her and the crowed grew nervous. They egged on the locksmith to no avail. Soon he left to get the other tools from his shop, but before he got back the door flew open on its own.


The scene they saw was a gruesome one. Ruth body lay hands still tied behind her in the middle of the floor. But her head was not with it. That was across the room under the small window staring up at them with a look of horror.

The man in the Lords clothing was never found. But everyone there that night thought they knew who he was. It was the Lord of the castle seeking revenge once again from the Lady who looked so much like Ruth Bradford.

Halloween Pizza

I had been a young guy delivering pizza’s for Papa Vince after class for almost two years. The job was hard and people occasionally stiffed me, leaving me to pay their bill. But for the most part it was interesting enough for a college student to paid the bills that were more then my student loans covered.

My car took a beating I had to get it fixed more then I would have, but all in all I was happy with the situation. Tips were real good around the holidays and that made up for the rest.

I had my favorite customers, regulars that got a pie or two every week end or the Tuesday night meetings of the local sport enthusiast club in the church basement. They collectively tipped with the extra from the food fund each week after the pizza was paid for. Those guys always asked me when I was gonna’ join and I’d always cross my eyes and say, “Do you really want me shooting around you guys?” And they’d laugh.

I didn’t want to deliver pizza’s for the rest of my life, but until I finished college and went onto my doctorate this was the best gig I could find.


Halloween was always fun because we got to wear costumes on the job and got lots of candy along with a tip. Juvenile I know, but what did you expect from a college kid? We had a good group at the pizza place and we all tried hard to out do the others in the costume department.

Despite the fact that the boss, Vince, didn’t want me to wear it on deliveries I got the biggest tips the year I wore my costume of ‘The Fly.’ You know the old movie about the scientist that was caught with a fly in the booth for an experiment and he and the fly got their heads switched. I wore a research coat and made a giant fly, with a dolls head on it for its head, that I attached to the shoulder of the coat, and I had a full head mask of a fly on my head. I added a little squeaky voice saying, “Help me, help me!” sounding like it was coming from the doll head. It got a lot of laughs even from the people that didn’t know the movie.


But the worst Halloween was the one where I had to deliver to the cemetery.


The mayor was having a famous local dead people party there. For some reason the caterer didn’t have enough food for everyone that showed up so I was sent back and fourth with pizza’s as fast as Vince could make the extra ones.

I had Zombies and Ghosts, Witches all over me trying to be the first to get at the last order of pies. They had backed me up to a knee high headstone by the time they grabbed the last pie and didn’t see me trip backwards over the stone.

On the other side was an open grave roped off so no one got hurt, but I fell into it from the top, over the headstone of it‘s head to head neighbor. Right away I knew my arm was broken and I yelled and called for help, but the music was much too loud. No one heard me and if they did they must have thought it was sound effects for the party.

So there I was stuck in a hole, six feet down, with a broken arm, and there were people in every direction. Not one of them coming to help me. I managed to get myself into a sitting position in one of the corners and after waiting for the pain to subside I opened my eyes to see a small boy in the hole with me.

“You afraid?” he asked me.

“No, just hurt.” I told him. “Wait a minute. How did you get down here too? Did you get hurt when you fell in?”

“No. Just found myself down in a hole looking at you.”

I asked him what his name was and he told me Jimmy. I asked his age and he said, “Six.”

“Well your parents should be looking for you soon I guess, and they will find us and get us out.”


The party music played on and no one came looking for the boy. I tried to get up and help him to the top so he could get help, but I just couldn’t do it. My ankle was hurting too much and I couldn’t let go of my arm with my other hand. So I sat in the hole with this kid getting tired and wanting his mama for the rest of Halloween night.

The bandages from my undead costume were thinner then I thought and I was getting cold. Jimmy crawled up to my good side, he sang little rhyming songs to me and his toy dog that was the way we helped keep each other stay warm while we waited. There was nothing else we could do.


We woke to find it morning and we could hear the workers sent to clean up after the party. They were milling about waiting for the truck with the dumpster. I called and after some startled noises from the group I explained where we were and that we needed help getting out.

They gathered around the edge and looked down at me kind of funny, but I thought it was my costume. When I was done looking up and talking with my rescuers I looked back in the hole for Jimmy so they could get him out first while we waited for the rescue truck to come and haul me up in a basket, but he was gone.

I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I just dreamt about the kid?’ But when the nurse came in with my clothing so I could go home she gave me the little toy dog that she said was in my shirt pocket when I got there.

Jimmy was the name on the headstone I had tripped over that night. I stopped by the cemetery on the way home. I left his toy dog at the base of his headstone and thanked him for keeping me company that night. And his name appeared on my cast in a childish scrawl.

Autumn Afternoon, Part 1

My name is Alice Ridges. Alice isn’t a popular name any longer, but the book ‘Alice in Wonderland’ had been one of my mother’s favorite stories when she was a child, so I was named Alice. But I don’t want to tell you about that story. The story I wanted to tell you about happened in the Autumn you see. And every time I smell the aroma of the leaves turning color, like they are right now, I think about what happened then, like it was happening all over again.

I had a job transfer from where I had been living since college, to the town my mother had grown up in. I had often visited my grandparents there as I grew up. A nice town with tree lined streets and children on most every block. The children were a little harder to come by when I was a kid. That generational skip as the kids moved away and the grandkids came back to stay and raise their children. In a word ‘suburbia.’

My grandmother taught me how to knit on the front porch there, while my granddad tossed a ball around with my brother Theo in the front yard. Grandma taught my mom how to knit there too, as my uncle played ball with granddad when they were young. History repeating itself in a way.

Well anyway, my grandparents had died about six years before I moved here. My parents still owned the house and they had a neighbor looking after it. This arrangement was supposed to be a temporary situation, just like when they bought the vacation house in Florida when my brother and I were both in college. But, as you can guess, after that they only came back up north for weddings and funerals.

When I called and told my mother about the job transfer she wrote to the neighbor and sent me the key along with the deed papers saying that I was now the new and sole owner of my grandparents estate. What this really meant that I was given the job of cleaning out and keeping up the old place. Mom wasn’t coming back to do it and didn’t care to. Some memories she didn‘t want to relive I guess. They had given Theo our childhood home when he got married.

I kept the neighbor, an old man named Mr. Wickens, on as a sort of gardener. The boy across the street mowed the lawn, but Mr. Wickens took care of the bushes and flowers. He liked doing it and didn’t have a yard of his own now that he lived in an apartment down the street. I didn’t know a thing about plants and I was busy with the house itself.

I was all moved in by the end of July and spent August working as the new manager of the department store from Friday to Tuesday each week. My weekends consisted of Wednesdays and Thursdays, but I didn’t mind that at all. I worked at cleaning out and repairing the house on the inside as the house painters made repairs and painted the outside. I wasn’t doing too many upgrades yet. I just had the wires and plumbing checked and they were sound. Plenty comfortable for just one person. And I was enjoying a period of reliving my childhood. I made it look as close to how my grandparents had it when I was a kid and just basked in the love and comfort I felt there.

Once September came around I was settled in on the first floor and the one bedroom I had been using upstairs. I was taking a much needed break from working on the house itself. The weather was still warm, but you could feel the difference in the air. There was a coolness to it in the evenings and the smell of the leaves getting ready to change colors.

On this first Wednesday weekend of September I had worked hard cleaning out the last of the old stuff in a closet in the front bedroom all morning and I was knitting in the afternoon shade on the front porch with a pot of tea on the table beside me. I daydreamed of the past as the purple sweater I was knitting grew in my hands.

I don’t know why I looked up… but I think it was the quiet. The kids were now in school and the afternoons to this point had been kid noisy. Jump rope chants, roller skates and bicycles, stick ball games on the corner, squeals from the swimming pools in the back yards.

I looked up to find a small boy at the head of my front walk way to the house. He was just looking at the house in a lonely sort of way as he held onto a teddy bear. I said hello, but he didn’t move or answer at first. This gave me time to look at him. He was about four I guessed. Not old enough to be in school but old enough to walk to a friends house down the block by himself.

He was dressed in shorts and a sweater. The sweater looked hand made, probably from a grandmother or aunt, the pattern was an older style. But he also had on knee socks and brown leather shoes, with a white button down shirt under the sweater like a kid in a story book from the nineteen thirty’s through fifty’s. His teddy bear was old and threadbare, but loved, because it was patched in places.

“Is there children here?” He asked in a small, but not weak voice.

“No. No children, only me.” I answered and then added, “But you can sit here and keep me company until the children get out of school if you like. It won’t take as long to wait that way. Or do you have to ask your mommy first?”

“Mommy has a headache and told me to go out to play, but Sissy is in school and I don’t have anyone to play with until she comes home.”

“Well you can sit here and we can wait for Sissy together. Want a drink of juice?”

“No, I’m not to have food from others. Allergies.” He said with a sorrowful shake of his head.

“My name is Miss Alice Ridges, and you are?”

“I can’t say. But this is Teddy… Teddy Heenmee.” He showed me his bear.

“Glad to meet you Mr. Heenmee Bear.” I said, and the boy laughed as he climbed onto the porch swing.

As I knitted we talked about what school was like for his sister and knitting sweaters and days off from work and headaches and bears until the children came down the sidewalk in groups from school. I poured another cup of tea and when I looked up again he was gone. His sister must have been in the last group of kids, their backs disappearing behind the front hedges of the next door neighbors property.

I went into the house to start dinner feeling that I had at least made one friend since I had moved to town. Not that the neighbors weren’t friendly. I was just too busy up to this point to get to know them for more then a wave across the lawn. I ask Mr. Wickens who the boy was the next time I saw him, but he didn‘t know any of the children by name.


The weather was so beautiful that I repeated the afternoon porch knitting and tea on Thursday and the little boy with the teddy bear showed up once more.

This time he was wearing jeans with the legs rolled up to fit him and a pull over sweater. The bear was still in tow, but his tongue was coming loose… The bear not the boy. I stitched it back in place for him and replaced the one worn eye with an extra purple button from the ones I had bought for the sweater I was knitting, and he thanked me.

I moved to the porch swing to see when the children were coming from the school and he was using my wicker chair with the pillow seat. He had the seat up like it was a car hood and he was pretending to be fixing my car for me while he taught the bear the different car parts that his daddy had showed him.

When I asked him if Mr. Teddy Heenmee Bear like to fix cars too, he looked at me funny and laughed. Then he asked me, “Why do you call my bear Mr. Heenmee?

“Because that is what you told me his name was yesterday. Teddy Heenmee.”

He giggled and rolled on my freshly painted porch floor. “Not Teddy Heenmee. Teddy. He is Teddy and me is Teddy.” He gave the bear a hug and then scrambled up onto the chair and started to give the newly fixed motor a test drive, saying between motor noises, “My mommy said I was okay here, because she knows who you are.”

The phone rang and I went in to answer it, we didn‘t have cell pones back then. By the time I was done talking to my brother about his twins graduating to middle school by the end of this school year, teddy and Teddy were gone.

Autumn Afternoons, Part 2

These Wednesday and Thursday teddy bear visits went on rain or shine through September. By the time it was turning October I had written my phone number on a piece of paper and told him to give it to his mother. I was uncomfortable with not meeting her after so many weeks of her son spending time at my house. But she still hadn’t called me. And his sister never came up the walk to get him, he just seemed to disappear as he dashed away when the children walked past from school.

Teddy was a well behaved boy and he never asked for anything. Not a drink of water or a bathroom break. He just played in a constructive imaginative way, while I knitted away, and we would talk about whatever came to mind as we watched the leaves change color up and down the street.

The day before Halloween he told me he wouldn’t be able to come back to visit because it was getting colder outside and his mother didn’t want him to play outside anymore. But, he would come in costume to ‘Trick or ‘Treat’ the next evening and I would have to guess what costume he would be wearing. I didn’t guess the right answer and he left without me knowing which kid he was at my door the next night. I suspect it was a ghost because, when I thought about it later that night, it was the one thing I didn’t ask him and the most obvious.


I missed his visits in the afternoons, but his mother was right. The weather had turned colder and I didn’t sit on the porch any longer myself. I’d try to get a look at the kids through the window as they past from school, but they were so bundled up and wind blown it was impossible to tell them apart.

In no time at all it was time to get ready for Christmas. I was done with the cleaning out of the second floor and some of the Attic. I wanted to dress the house for the holidays before it got much colder. My brother and his family were coming for Christmas because I was going to their house for Thanksgiving day. This early November Wednesday, I had climbed the ladder to the attic and I was looking for the outdoor decorations. The wooden Santa and Sled for the porch roof had been found in the potters shed out back, and I found someone at work to hire to give them a new coat of paint. But, I was looking for the candy canes and fake candy garland that granddad used to have on the porch rail and steps. And if I didn’t get it set out soon the weather would turn too cold and I only had so many Autumn days left to get the job done in.

I knew that the things I was looking for were probably gone by now, but I kept on looking through the boxes, trunks and dressers up there in the attic just in case there was enough remnants left, or maybe a picture, so that I could have it replaced. I went through boxes and boxes of my mother and uncle’s things from when they were kids. Grandma kept it all from school work to drawings, broken toys to used up clothes. There were many boxes of junk I had to just throw away each week as I was cleaning the place out.

I was dusty and dirty as I came to the last corner to look into. I had found many memories and trinkets from the past up there, but like I said, most of it was junk. I had found the old Christmas tree ornaments and lights. The lights were too old to trust, but I brought the decorations down stairs and it gave me back some hope. I had a pile of shoe boxes of some love letters between Gram and Gramps to be saved and there were some journals from the early years of their marriage that I had spent some time reading instead of finishing the job and the morning was long gone.

I had learned that the uncle my brother was named for, Theodore, had gone missing on Halloween as a kid and was never found again. My brother and I had though he had died from a childhood illness all these years. I couldn’t wait to show Theo these journals when he got here and ask him how to talk to mom about it.

Back in the attic, I moved to the last trunk tucked away deep in the corner. It had been draped in an old sheet that had been made into a child sized ghost costume long ago. The only trouble was that this trunk was locked. I put the ghost costume on the save pile and I brought the boxes of journals down stairs. I found a screwdriver in the ‘catch all’ draw in the kitchen and went right back up to work at the ring with the lock hanging on it.

I pinched my fingers only once. I was working hard and sweating so much by the time I had broken it open, I had muddy sweat running into my eyes.

When I lifted the lid I was thinking about Christmas, but my thoughts quickly turned to Teddy as I saw what the trunk held safe from harm all these years.

The first thing I saw in the trunk as I wiped the muddy sweat from my eyes was an old well loved teddy bear with a new purple button eye. It was wrapped in the mummified arms of a small boy dressed in the same clothing I had seen on Teddy that first day of my Autumn knitting afternoons. It seems my late Uncle Theodor was finally found.

The End

The Good Girl

Jenny Smith took one last look in the mirror before going out the door into the fresh spring air. There was nothing she could find out of place in her reflection, so she left the house and walked to the car.

She hated these yearly reviews at the family court house. The building was meant to look cheery with the flowers and bright colored banners out in front, but she never saw it as cheery in all the years she had been coming there. This was where all her sins were laid bare year after year. Would she never out live that day so long ago?

Her therapist met her on the stairs and walked in with her. This was an informal hearing or more of a review, but it was still going to make decisions for her life none the less. She sat by her lawyer and waited for the judge to come into the room and take his seat at the head of the large conference table. Her husband Jeff was sitting across from her on the other side.

The judge came in and the proceedings began. One side spoke and then the other. Her therapist gave her a glowing recommendation. This wasn’t a custody hearing as they lived together with the children fairly happily through the rest of the year. This had to do with the past. A past from before they were married. From before she was old enough to read or go to school. But it would not go away. The court system wouldn’t let it. So they were back again this year also. Each year it was discussed and gone over until someone always said that it shouldn’t have come this far in the first place, but that never changed a thing.

Jeff knew the whole story before they were married. They both thought that the reviews would stop when she turned twenty one. But they only got more complicated once she became a full fledged adult and worse still after she had the children. What a way to have an anniversary. She wanted to go to the cemetery with flowers for the families graves on this twenty-fifth year since their deaths. There was no one else to remember who they were. Only Jenny was left.

As the hearing slowly moved on, they were up to the part where they were listing her school grades and accomplishments along with her mistakes as she grew up, she let her mind wander. She let her thoughts go back to her childhood when she was just four years old.

.
The family had been sick with very bad spring colds and I was the first to get well enough to get out of bed. My little baby brother had kept my parents up all night with his coughing and Mommy and Daddy just wanted to sleep the day away. I got up and dressed myself as best as I could. Shorts with pink flowers in the print, orange sweater, snow boots with no socks.

I was hungry and was only allowed to make cereal. When mommy asked me what I was doing from the bedroom I answered, “Getting breakfast.”

“Will you bring some in for us too Janie Sweetheart?” Mommy asked.

“Oakie dokie.” I answered feeling all grown up because mommy needed my help. I wanted to make the breakfast good. Just like mommy did. There was no fruit like on the picture on the box in the refrigerator, so I ran out to the backyard and picked the berries growing on the fence. I washed them in the sink from the chair I had pushed over so I could reach. I used the bubbly stuff from under the sink. Then I put them in the bowls. I poured in the cereal and milk over that and I brought it bowl by bowl to my mom and dad.

Mommy and Daddy told me how I was their special Good Girl. They had eaten theirs down by the time I had made some for the baby, but I did good and smushed his with the back of the spoon like mommy did and I fed him his breakfast so mommy could go back to sleep. By the time I was ready to eat my own I was tired again and I spilled my bowl on the floor trying to bring it into the living room so I could watch TV.

There were no berries left or milk either, all the bowls were used, so I ate my cereal dry from the box on the couch in front of the TV. Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up I was cold, so I went to get into bed with my folks. But when I got to their door I knew something was wrong there was bloody throw up on the floor. My baby brother’s room looked the same. So I called ‘nine, one, one’ just like Mommy taught me and the policeman came to the door.


That was the last day Jenny had a family for a long time. She didn’t go to the funeral because she was in the hospital having tests, and the people taking care of her thought a four year old was too young to go to such an event.


From that day on, everyone that knew what she had done had watched to see if she would try to poison someone else again. Janie told them she was just trying to be a good girl, but it didn’t do any good. She was not allowed to play with the other kids, or touch anyone’s food again for a long time. She was never fostered out, but kept in the home and never given a job in the kitchen. She couldn’t get a job when she turned eighteen and was out on the streets when Jeff took her in and they took care of each other.

He taught Janie to cook and how to do a whole lot of other things. She was even able to get her much needed high school equivalency diploma and then went on to the community collage.


When they got married Janie changed her first name too. She is Jenny Smith now, no longer Janie Hunter. She colors her hair and takes care of her children like any other mother in the PTA. But some people at this table, from the prosecutors office, who couldn’t believe that what had happened so long ago hadn’t twisted Jenny through to the heart and soul. They always threw in the possibility that they thought she had done it on purpose. So, here they where back again this year.

With her oldest child approaching the age Janie was when it happened, coupled with the fact that it was twenty-five years, made a few of them nervous. She could see it in their eyes just before they looked away.

Didn’t they believe in all that counseling they made Janie endure for all those years. Janie always had to come back next week, and the week after that, because she hadn’t forgotten what had happened yet. But, how was she suppose to forget when ‘that’ was the reason she was there each week.


The inspections of Jenny’s children were being discussed now. Colds to diaper rash, growth charts and development were reviewed. Had she damaged them in any way as of yet?

Not in any way that could be measured by their tests and suppositions.


Jenny was free to return to her home and children, but never to forget what she did while trying to be a good girl when she was only four.


On the way home Jenny asked Jeff if they could go by the cemetery to have a small visit even though she didn’t have any flower for them. He obliged her even though he wanted to get back home. The reviews got longer each year and the sitter would be getting tired by now.

They stopped for a few minutes and she went to the grave sides of her family. Jenny placed a kiss on the top of each cold gray grave stone and pulled a few blades of grass that had grown too long, from in front of their names and the one stone meant for herself someday. The one on the empty grave that said “The Good Girl” across the front of it.

On her tenth birthday long ago. That day was the first time she was brought to see the graves. The words weren’t there when the case worker and Janie arrived. Mrs. Johnson read out the inscriptions on each one to her and pointed out that the last blank one would be hers some day.

Janie laid the flower carefully on her families headstones. And those words had appeared like magic, carved into that stone, they were there when she was done.

Jenny smiled again today when she read those words set in the stone. Somebody, somewhere knew that she had meant no harm and was only trying to be a good girl like her mommy and daddy wanted.

Seeing those words each year, carved into that stone was enough to get her through the next year until the reviews came again. She smiled and said, “Good-bye until next year. Your ‘Good Girl’ still loves you.”