By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
The boys were playing in the woods. They weren’t supposed to be there because a rain storm was forecast for that afternoon. But they were doing just that, playing cops and robbers or pirates, I can’t remember which, when they all heard the sound of horses hooves pounding through the woods right past them. They heard the horse’s breath and a rider holler “Whoa!” They all felt the cold air on their skin. ’The Ghost Rider!’
Tony was the first to react. He dropped the stick he was using for his weapon as he ran for all he was worth back home.
Our house was the closest, and when they all got back to our garage, I was working on my bicycle. You could tell without asking that something was wrong. Their eyes were big and they were shaking, faces white and voices weak as they told me what happened to them.
Being Tony’s older brother I couldn’t resist poking fun at them for acting like babies. But when they wouldn’t let it drop, I knew they really did believe they had heard the ghost.
There wasn’t a kid in town that hadn’t heard the stories. A rider dressed in black on a jet black horse by day and glowing white at night, would appear in the woods south of town. Most kids thought it was a way to keep them out of the woods and closer to home. Some older folk’s claimed to have seen it when they were younger. None of these kids had believed them before that day.
It was part of the town’s history. A rider came to town long ago trying to outrun a thunder storm. He and his horse were struck by lightning, killing them both before they could find shelter. They were buried in a grave marked only by a stone saying ‘Rest in Peace.’ This grave was on the furthest edge of the woods where the stream passes the old oak tree. The exact place where they were said to have been hit by the bolt.
Most people thought the stories that were told about the ghost were just to keep the story alive around the campfire. That or to scare the young people in town like they themselves were frightened by the older folks story telling when they were children. But the people in town that had seen or heard the ghost themselves knew it to be true.
Harry and Sam didn’t want to talk about it at all after they had come back from the woods. But the others could not keep quite about it. In fact they wouldn’t talk about anything else for weeks. Charlie started to sleep with a nightlight in his room. Roger wet the bed after a bad dream about it. And Jeffrey couldn’t drift off to sleep without his mother in the room humming a tune. Tony would whimper in his sleep. I could hear him in the upper bunk bed. They all avoided the woods from then on.
I couldn’t help but be a little curious. After a while I gathered up the guys and we would ride our bikes on the well worn paths through the woods but we didn’t see or hear a thing. Soon school was going to start and the guys and I had better things to do than look for ghosts, so we let it go.
“Hey Ronny! Wan’a ride through the woods on the way home from school today?” John asked me as we unlocked out bikes from the bike rack in front of the school.
“Why? It’s not exactly on the way. And besides, don’t you have piano lessons?”
“Well not this week. Mrs. Harrison is out of town ‘cause her mother’s sick or somethin’.”
“Yeah, Okay. I don’t have anything better to do. Larry has to get his hair cut and Rob has wrestling practice until five.”
When I got home Mom made me clean out my side of the bedroom and take out the trash. After dinner I went to do my homework and couldn’t find my math book. I knew I had it when I got on my bike at school but I couldn’t remember having it when I put my bike in the garage. It wasn’t dark yet so I hopped on my bike again to see if I could find it on the ground between here and the woods. If not I’d have to call Larry for the equations.
The book wasn’t on the sidewalk or the street. I looked hard even under the parked cars all the way to the woods. I did see something on the trail just before it turned out of sight, but it was hard to see what it was because it was darker under the trees.
It wasn’t quite dark yet and Mom would be mad if I’d lost the book only a few weeks into the school year, so I took a chance and rode in for a closer look. It was my English book. My math book was further along the path around the bend in the path where my English book had sat. I was this close and nothing was around so I rode up to it. I got off my bike because it was in the ditch and I couldn’t reach it from my bike seat like my I could reach English book.
That‘s when it came. Glowing in the half light. A horse and rider black yet not. Coming towards me on the path at full speed!
Being in the ditch I knew I couldn’t get to my bike before he did so I threw myself under a bush at the side of the trail, hoping he would just pass me by.
I don’t know if it was the bike standing across the pathway or the fact that I didn’t run away, but he stopped and looked down at me. I was never so scared in my life. I think I stopped breathing because the next thing I knew was my Dad and a bunch of neighborhood men with flashlights were there helping me up. I was still clutching my books to my chest. My bike had been trampled, the spokes were broken and bent, and the men kept asking me who had hurt me. I told them about coming for my books and the ghost.
“That was hours ago and you weren’t on the trail the first time we came past.” My father said in his concerned voice. “And look at the dirt in your clothing and hair. You look like you were underground, but the leaves in the ditch are hardly disturbed at all.” They scanned the ground around my feet again with their flashlight beams.
As Dad brushed off the dirt from my cloths, my books slipped out of my arms. They fell to the ground along with the dirt in my arms and some old horse teeth stuck to a decaying piece of jawbone that was burnt on one end.
I was helped home and put in the bathtub. The water got so muddy I had to change it to get clean. But more then just the dirt went down the drain. My hair was white as snow from that day on. My mother thinks it was from the shock of what I had seen, but couldn’t remember of the time I spent with the ghost in the woods.
The strangest thing about that night wasn’t found until the next day. My homework was done in an odd, old fashioned hand writing and it was sticking out of the freshly turned earth of the riders grave. It was signed “Jonathan Grimmes, school teacher.”
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Gravedigger
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
The grave digger was a large, strong man. His name was Jonathan Arnold, and despite the families prestige and standing in the community he was an odd sort. Because of his strength, even as a boy, the family had him apprenticed to the blacksmith. Jonathan didn’t like the heat of the furnace. He would run away from the forge and later would be found in the cemetery. He would be clearing the weeds away from the base of the headstones of the people that had no one to look after their care.
When someone died in town, young Jonathan could always be found helping the old gravedigger make the large squared off hole in the earth. When the old man died, Jonathan was given the job, even though he was only fourteen years old. His family, although they still acted kindly towards him, wouldn’t acknowledge him in public. He moved into the old shack that had been the old man’s house on the edge of the cemetery grounds. His family made it comfortably livable for him and hired the Widow Henderson to provide him his daily meals. She was chosen mostly because she lived the closest to the gravedigger’s small house, but the meals were hardy and hot.
Although Jonathan dug ditches and wells at times, mostly he dug graves and maintained the cemetery grounds. His health was good, better then most, and when a plague came through town he was hired to collect the bodies for Mr. Hanson, the coffin maker.
People in town had their wakes at home. They would clear the end of a room and put the coffin on a table or saw horses. The house would be filled with flowers in the warmer weather to help hide the odor. If the deceased didn’t rise again in a few days, the family would bury the body in the cemetery and all was done until the headstone was made ready. But if there was no family to sit the wake with the body, or they were afraid of becoming ill and dieing themselves, the coffin went straight into the ground with a bell string. A watcher, usually a family member, would sit in the cemetery for the next few days and nights to listen for the bell. This bell was strung through a ‘Y’ shaped stick set upright in the ground at the foot of the grave. The other end of this string had been wrapped around the dead person’s hand before the lid was nailed shut.
Only once was Jonathan woken to save the ringer. The son of a woman buried that day was there to listen for the bell. He woke Jonathan with a shout when he heard the bell ringing, but it was only the wind playing with the bell that had scared the young watcher. After quickly uncovering the casket and finding her still dead, Jonathan went back to sleep. By the time he woke up the next day, the tale was all over town that a bell had been rung in the night, but sadly not in time to save the ringer. No one in town would sit as the bell watcher any longer and that job also was given to Jonathan.
Years later, Jonathan was sitting the bell watch in the night. The widow that had been making his meals these past years had died and been buried that afternoon. Since she was the third to die that week from the latest deadly illness, she was buried with the bell string wrapped around her hand.
Jonathan wrapped a woolen blanket around his shoulders and moved the pebble out from under his rump. He was tired from digging graves all day but he didn’t want to fall asleep on his watch.
The next thing he knew, his head was coming up and he was waking to the sound of a bell. He shook his head to try to clear his thoughts. He looked at the bell in front of him but it wasn’t moving, yet he could still hear a bell ringing.
Jonathan rose up on his feet to hear better. He checked the bells on the other new graves but all were still, yet he could clearly hear a bell in the cemetery. Before he could track it down, the ringing stopped.
He made his way back to the widow’s grave and sat under the tree again after finding another pebble to sit on to keep him alert. He fought harder to stay awake this time, but found himself nodding off.
After a short time the ringing started again. He jumped up to search in the dark. He looked in every direction for the sound, but before he had gone a few steps it stopped. Now he suspected that some of the boys in town were playing a bad joke on him. He walked around the edge of the cemetery for the rest of the night, but the bell was silent. Jonathan was not going to let some young ruffians disrespect the dead.
The next day two others died from the same illness. Jonathan, exhausted from digging graves, tried to find someone in town to do the night watch for him. No one wanted the job.
After dinner, he napped because he didn’t have the energy to do anything else. Once it was dark he went out to the center of the cemetery under the tree by the widow’s grave to start his watch. Jonathan was not going to let the bell ringer get away if they returned to the cemetery that night. He left one lantern at the tree and took the other on his circuit around the outskirts of the cemetery. Most of the night passed without any unusual noises. He heard a fox cry out around midnight, but then it was quiet for hours. Not even a breeze ruffled the leaves.
Jonathan was coming back to the other lantern at the tree when the sound of a bell could clearly be heard. He took a quick look at the nearest bell, but it hung still and quiet from it’s string along with all with the other bells he was watching. During the day he had made a clear path around the cemetery. Jonathan began to run around the outskirts, only to find that the ringing kept pace on the other side of the graveyard from him. Did some boys tie the bell to a dog and let it loose in the cemetery for the night? The ringing stopped by the time he was almost back around, so he sat panting under the tree.
In the morning light he hatched a plan to trap the bell ringer. He spent most of the day digging graves, but found the time and energy to dig some holes here and there in the cemetery to trip up the someone or something running with a bell. He marked the holes with a stake at the side and covered the holes with branches from a nearby bush. Tonight he was going to put a stop to this foolery.
After napping, as the preacher oversaw the most recent internments, Jonathan was ready for a long night. He closed the graves of the latest residents, hoping to find someone skulking about in the lowering light. No one came.
The night moved on like the two before when the brass bell tinkling woke him, taunting him, but no culprit was caught. Jonathan made a vow not to let another night go by without catching the miscreant. He rested all he could during the day and was as fresh as could be expected when the night watch started in the cemetery.
He brought no blanket to comfort against the chill, for this night would be the bell ringers last.
When the bell began to ring, the fury in Jonathan’s eyes would have stopped hardened generals in their tracks. The ringing brought him back time and again to the center of the cemetery and to his starting place under the tree. Now all he could think of was that a ghost bell now inhabited the grave yard.
In all these long years he had never seen or heard a specter, but there were first times for everything one encountered. The bell must have an unseen hand ringing it. He checked all the bells still hanging by their strings from the graves and not one was in movement while the ringing could be heard. Jonathan slept fitfully against the tree. He wasn’t going to shirk his duty to those recently buried and their families. He would wake himself time and again to check the bells for movement until morning.
The sickness left the town with little more then a dozen dead. Things quieted down and Jonathan was back to his business as before. But a month later his mother died and even though she had a wake, he had insisted that she also had a bell, just in case the wake wasn’t long enough for her to revive. He walked the grave yard nightly to check the bell at her feet. The phantom bell still rang out at times in the night air.
This greatly angered him that the ringer would disturb him in his own grief over his mother‘s death. With no one to be caught, he grabbed one of the lower tree branches of the tree above his head and shook it violently. The bell peeled out it’s ringing with a vengeance.
He looked up and saw by the light of his lantern a small brass bell. It was dangling from a birds nest by a string. He gave a hearty laugh for the first time in many weeks. Climbing the tree, Jonathan tried to remover this bell from hell. The string was entangled tightly around the branch along with the nest. He reached further out to remove the whole nest and the branch broke, plunging him to the ground.
As soon as he hit the ground, the bell in the church started to ring out in the night air. Then all the bells in the whole of the town began to ring. People rushed from their beds out into the streets. When the church bell could not be quieted, the town was then searched and by the morning light Jonathan was found with a broken neck under the tree in the grave yard at his post.
He was buried that day without a bell and string, for no one would watch his grave. So when Jonathan awoke in his coffin minutes after being lowered into the ground, he was left to die there all alone as the dirt was shoveled onto the box. He had no bell to save him.
The grave digger was a large, strong man. His name was Jonathan Arnold, and despite the families prestige and standing in the community he was an odd sort. Because of his strength, even as a boy, the family had him apprenticed to the blacksmith. Jonathan didn’t like the heat of the furnace. He would run away from the forge and later would be found in the cemetery. He would be clearing the weeds away from the base of the headstones of the people that had no one to look after their care.
When someone died in town, young Jonathan could always be found helping the old gravedigger make the large squared off hole in the earth. When the old man died, Jonathan was given the job, even though he was only fourteen years old. His family, although they still acted kindly towards him, wouldn’t acknowledge him in public. He moved into the old shack that had been the old man’s house on the edge of the cemetery grounds. His family made it comfortably livable for him and hired the Widow Henderson to provide him his daily meals. She was chosen mostly because she lived the closest to the gravedigger’s small house, but the meals were hardy and hot.
Although Jonathan dug ditches and wells at times, mostly he dug graves and maintained the cemetery grounds. His health was good, better then most, and when a plague came through town he was hired to collect the bodies for Mr. Hanson, the coffin maker.
People in town had their wakes at home. They would clear the end of a room and put the coffin on a table or saw horses. The house would be filled with flowers in the warmer weather to help hide the odor. If the deceased didn’t rise again in a few days, the family would bury the body in the cemetery and all was done until the headstone was made ready. But if there was no family to sit the wake with the body, or they were afraid of becoming ill and dieing themselves, the coffin went straight into the ground with a bell string. A watcher, usually a family member, would sit in the cemetery for the next few days and nights to listen for the bell. This bell was strung through a ‘Y’ shaped stick set upright in the ground at the foot of the grave. The other end of this string had been wrapped around the dead person’s hand before the lid was nailed shut.
Only once was Jonathan woken to save the ringer. The son of a woman buried that day was there to listen for the bell. He woke Jonathan with a shout when he heard the bell ringing, but it was only the wind playing with the bell that had scared the young watcher. After quickly uncovering the casket and finding her still dead, Jonathan went back to sleep. By the time he woke up the next day, the tale was all over town that a bell had been rung in the night, but sadly not in time to save the ringer. No one in town would sit as the bell watcher any longer and that job also was given to Jonathan.
Years later, Jonathan was sitting the bell watch in the night. The widow that had been making his meals these past years had died and been buried that afternoon. Since she was the third to die that week from the latest deadly illness, she was buried with the bell string wrapped around her hand.
Jonathan wrapped a woolen blanket around his shoulders and moved the pebble out from under his rump. He was tired from digging graves all day but he didn’t want to fall asleep on his watch.
The next thing he knew, his head was coming up and he was waking to the sound of a bell. He shook his head to try to clear his thoughts. He looked at the bell in front of him but it wasn’t moving, yet he could still hear a bell ringing.
Jonathan rose up on his feet to hear better. He checked the bells on the other new graves but all were still, yet he could clearly hear a bell in the cemetery. Before he could track it down, the ringing stopped.
He made his way back to the widow’s grave and sat under the tree again after finding another pebble to sit on to keep him alert. He fought harder to stay awake this time, but found himself nodding off.
After a short time the ringing started again. He jumped up to search in the dark. He looked in every direction for the sound, but before he had gone a few steps it stopped. Now he suspected that some of the boys in town were playing a bad joke on him. He walked around the edge of the cemetery for the rest of the night, but the bell was silent. Jonathan was not going to let some young ruffians disrespect the dead.
The next day two others died from the same illness. Jonathan, exhausted from digging graves, tried to find someone in town to do the night watch for him. No one wanted the job.
After dinner, he napped because he didn’t have the energy to do anything else. Once it was dark he went out to the center of the cemetery under the tree by the widow’s grave to start his watch. Jonathan was not going to let the bell ringer get away if they returned to the cemetery that night. He left one lantern at the tree and took the other on his circuit around the outskirts of the cemetery. Most of the night passed without any unusual noises. He heard a fox cry out around midnight, but then it was quiet for hours. Not even a breeze ruffled the leaves.
Jonathan was coming back to the other lantern at the tree when the sound of a bell could clearly be heard. He took a quick look at the nearest bell, but it hung still and quiet from it’s string along with all with the other bells he was watching. During the day he had made a clear path around the cemetery. Jonathan began to run around the outskirts, only to find that the ringing kept pace on the other side of the graveyard from him. Did some boys tie the bell to a dog and let it loose in the cemetery for the night? The ringing stopped by the time he was almost back around, so he sat panting under the tree.
In the morning light he hatched a plan to trap the bell ringer. He spent most of the day digging graves, but found the time and energy to dig some holes here and there in the cemetery to trip up the someone or something running with a bell. He marked the holes with a stake at the side and covered the holes with branches from a nearby bush. Tonight he was going to put a stop to this foolery.
After napping, as the preacher oversaw the most recent internments, Jonathan was ready for a long night. He closed the graves of the latest residents, hoping to find someone skulking about in the lowering light. No one came.
The night moved on like the two before when the brass bell tinkling woke him, taunting him, but no culprit was caught. Jonathan made a vow not to let another night go by without catching the miscreant. He rested all he could during the day and was as fresh as could be expected when the night watch started in the cemetery.
He brought no blanket to comfort against the chill, for this night would be the bell ringers last.
When the bell began to ring, the fury in Jonathan’s eyes would have stopped hardened generals in their tracks. The ringing brought him back time and again to the center of the cemetery and to his starting place under the tree. Now all he could think of was that a ghost bell now inhabited the grave yard.
In all these long years he had never seen or heard a specter, but there were first times for everything one encountered. The bell must have an unseen hand ringing it. He checked all the bells still hanging by their strings from the graves and not one was in movement while the ringing could be heard. Jonathan slept fitfully against the tree. He wasn’t going to shirk his duty to those recently buried and their families. He would wake himself time and again to check the bells for movement until morning.
The sickness left the town with little more then a dozen dead. Things quieted down and Jonathan was back to his business as before. But a month later his mother died and even though she had a wake, he had insisted that she also had a bell, just in case the wake wasn’t long enough for her to revive. He walked the grave yard nightly to check the bell at her feet. The phantom bell still rang out at times in the night air.
This greatly angered him that the ringer would disturb him in his own grief over his mother‘s death. With no one to be caught, he grabbed one of the lower tree branches of the tree above his head and shook it violently. The bell peeled out it’s ringing with a vengeance.
He looked up and saw by the light of his lantern a small brass bell. It was dangling from a birds nest by a string. He gave a hearty laugh for the first time in many weeks. Climbing the tree, Jonathan tried to remover this bell from hell. The string was entangled tightly around the branch along with the nest. He reached further out to remove the whole nest and the branch broke, plunging him to the ground.
As soon as he hit the ground, the bell in the church started to ring out in the night air. Then all the bells in the whole of the town began to ring. People rushed from their beds out into the streets. When the church bell could not be quieted, the town was then searched and by the morning light Jonathan was found with a broken neck under the tree in the grave yard at his post.
He was buried that day without a bell and string, for no one would watch his grave. So when Jonathan awoke in his coffin minutes after being lowered into the ground, he was left to die there all alone as the dirt was shoveled onto the box. He had no bell to save him.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Playroom
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
Mrs. Hillary Wiggins could hear the children cheerfully playing in the playroom upstairs. Their four distinct voices were giggling and cooing.
Six year old Benny fancied himself a soldier, but was playing the father to Gracie’s Momma part. Freddie and Lilly were crawling about on the floor. In her minds eye, Mrs. Wiggins could see all the dolls, stuffed animals, and kitchen playthings set about the room with the children intent in their games.
Freddie will be crying for a late morning nap soon, with Lilly fussing not far after. Benny will defect from his father part since the babies will then be gone and Grace will want to eat. Yes, best to enjoy the peace now. The older two should go outside to play while the little ones slept if the rain stayed away. They would all play again together later in the afternoon. Yes, after lunch they will do just that. While the children are out of the playroom Hillary would go up and straighten in there, then choose a book to read to them in the evening before bed.
All the children liked to be read to in the evening. In fact they won’t sleep well at night without it so a book must be chosen. On the nights Mrs. Wiggins had forgotten to read to the children, they didn’t sleep well at all. They would fuss in the night until a book was read a few times over and they had all fallen back to sleep. She tried to keep them on a schedule, because it was better that way.
Mrs. Wiggins thought about the difference in the house since the children had arrived. Before they came the days ran together, quiet and still. Now there was laughter and many things to do. Lilly was her child, born three years ago this past spring. She never learned to walk but that didn’t stop her from getting around by crawling everywhere. The others were the children of relatives. The country house had been in the family for generations and was where the children in the family were sent for their health when the summers grew too hot in the city.
Mrs. Wiggins liked children, so it didn’t bother her to care for so many that were not her own. Children needed care and she didn’t have anything else to do. They didn’t cause much fuss so she took care of them all. She made them clothing when their play clothes wore out and darned their little socks.
The Wiggins’ housekeeper Mary came to the door of the sitting room and announced that luncheon was served. Mrs. Wiggins went to the dining room and sat at the head of the table and ate her meal all alone. She listened to the children eating their own lunch upstairs. When she heard the older two on the stairs and heading out the door to the back garden, she folded her napkin.
Mrs. Wiggins went up to the playroom to pick up the toys. There was milk spilled on the floor and a puddle in the corner. Someone needed to learn how to use the potty again. She peeked out the window to see the tree swaying with the motion of the swing. It looked like rain again so she returned to her work in case they came back inside earlier then they usually did, she wanted it tidy for them when they returned.
Once all the toys were back on their shelves, she stood before the bookshelf on the wall that was too high for the children to reach. ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ was chosen again for tonight. The children all enjoyed that story and by now Hillary knew it by heart. She placed a snack of cookies for them on the play table and left the room. She put the book on the night stand in their bedroom for later and listened to the babies sleep, breathing and cooing in that baby way. She tiptoed out and went back downstairs to work on the mending.
When she heard the children come in, she put away her sewing and went into the hall. Muddy footprints were left behind on the polished wooden floor. Hillary cleared them away. She could hear the children playing again upstairs and she went to the kitchen to see when dinner was to be served.
Mary told her that ‘The Mister’ would be late again. He worked long hours to keep them fed in these hard times. Hillary asked for her meal to be served at seven. From upstairs there came a scream. Mrs. Wiggins rushed up to find blood droplets on the floor. Benny had picked at his scabby knees to make Gracie cry when he bled. Mrs. Wiggins wiped up the blood and told them that if they didn’t behave she would not read to them before bed. She went back down the stairs, taking the now empty cookie plate to the kitchen.
“Are they trying your patience, Miss?” Mary asked.
“No, not really, boys will be boys.” Mrs. Wiggins replied.
“Benny then?”
“Yes, Benny picking at his scabs.” Mrs. Wiggins sighed. “Since I have the time, I think I will go shopping and see if I can find some yarn to make more socks for my tribe. I’m re-darning the same holes again and again.”
“Yes Miss.”
Mrs. Wiggins put on her coat and hat, not forgetting to pick up her umbrella in case it showered again. On this cool, damp autumn day, she walked down the lane the few minutes it took to get to the shops.
There wasn’t much of a selection. She was hoping for something bright but only found un-dyed ‘seconds’ wool yarn, so she bought the whitest yarn she could find. Hillary made plans to save onion skins to make it a sunny yellow when she had enough of them. She had dyed yarn before when she had to. It was not a pleasant job but was worth the effort. Lilly liked yellow and some of her socks had gone missing again. “How do babies lose socks in the house that were never found again?” She thought to herself. Mrs. Wiggins planned on getting better yarn in the spring, after the sheep were sheared.
When she returned home she asked Mary to save the onion skins so she could later dye the yarn. Mary told Mrs. Wiggins that there was already a bag of them hanging in the basement stairway.
Hillary checked the bag and found more then enough onion skins to dye the yarn that she had just bought. She listened from the hallway and could hear the children playing quietly. Benny and Gracie had awakened from their nap while she was gone. She got out the copper dye pot and filled it with water, placing it on the back of the stove. When the water was hot she added the onion skins and boiled the color out of them. She carefully skimmed out the spent skins and added the vinegar and the pre-wetted yarn. After a while some dull yellow yarn was drying on a screen in the pantry by the open window.
After Mrs. Wiggins had finished with her work, Mary opened the other windows in the kitchen to air out the pungent odors before preparing dinner.
Hillary was tired but happy as she climbed the stairs to change for dinner. As she passed, she listened at the playroom door. Benny was telling the others a story. It was a war story in which he was saving the day again but the others didn’t seem to mind.
She went to her room and changed her now yellow stained house dress. She put on her dusty pink, the one her husband liked, forgetting he would be late. After eating dinner by herself, she waited for him by reading a book in the sitting room. She quickly looked up at the clock when she heard the key in the lock. The children must have fallen asleep long ago. She came out into the hall and walked with her husband up to their bedroom. The children were quiet so she didn’t even look in on them.
They dressed for bed and went to sleep for the night.
In the middle of the night, the door of the bedroom opened, and the light from the hall came in. A book, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ floated across the room a foot off the floor and landed on the night stand with a bang. Mr. Wiggins shook his wife’s shoulder. “Your children are back and they need you. You’re the only one that can settle them down.” He pulled the covers up over his head as she got up, finding her slippers and the flash light.
She put on her heaviest robe and collected the book from the night stand, pulling the door closed to shut out the hall light as she left the room.
Out in the yard on the cold stone bench, she read the book aloud twice by her flashlight beam before the children stopped their crying and fussing. She straightened the flowers and brushed off the leaves of the four little graves huddled there. She kissed the headstones of Benny, Gracie, Freddie, and baby Lilly.
This had been her whole world for the last year and a half since the fire took their small lives as they slept in their beds. They hadn’t moved on, so she continued to care for them, as she would to the last day of her long lonely life.
Mrs. Hillary Wiggins could hear the children cheerfully playing in the playroom upstairs. Their four distinct voices were giggling and cooing.
Six year old Benny fancied himself a soldier, but was playing the father to Gracie’s Momma part. Freddie and Lilly were crawling about on the floor. In her minds eye, Mrs. Wiggins could see all the dolls, stuffed animals, and kitchen playthings set about the room with the children intent in their games.
Freddie will be crying for a late morning nap soon, with Lilly fussing not far after. Benny will defect from his father part since the babies will then be gone and Grace will want to eat. Yes, best to enjoy the peace now. The older two should go outside to play while the little ones slept if the rain stayed away. They would all play again together later in the afternoon. Yes, after lunch they will do just that. While the children are out of the playroom Hillary would go up and straighten in there, then choose a book to read to them in the evening before bed.
All the children liked to be read to in the evening. In fact they won’t sleep well at night without it so a book must be chosen. On the nights Mrs. Wiggins had forgotten to read to the children, they didn’t sleep well at all. They would fuss in the night until a book was read a few times over and they had all fallen back to sleep. She tried to keep them on a schedule, because it was better that way.
Mrs. Wiggins thought about the difference in the house since the children had arrived. Before they came the days ran together, quiet and still. Now there was laughter and many things to do. Lilly was her child, born three years ago this past spring. She never learned to walk but that didn’t stop her from getting around by crawling everywhere. The others were the children of relatives. The country house had been in the family for generations and was where the children in the family were sent for their health when the summers grew too hot in the city.
Mrs. Wiggins liked children, so it didn’t bother her to care for so many that were not her own. Children needed care and she didn’t have anything else to do. They didn’t cause much fuss so she took care of them all. She made them clothing when their play clothes wore out and darned their little socks.
The Wiggins’ housekeeper Mary came to the door of the sitting room and announced that luncheon was served. Mrs. Wiggins went to the dining room and sat at the head of the table and ate her meal all alone. She listened to the children eating their own lunch upstairs. When she heard the older two on the stairs and heading out the door to the back garden, she folded her napkin.
Mrs. Wiggins went up to the playroom to pick up the toys. There was milk spilled on the floor and a puddle in the corner. Someone needed to learn how to use the potty again. She peeked out the window to see the tree swaying with the motion of the swing. It looked like rain again so she returned to her work in case they came back inside earlier then they usually did, she wanted it tidy for them when they returned.
Once all the toys were back on their shelves, she stood before the bookshelf on the wall that was too high for the children to reach. ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ was chosen again for tonight. The children all enjoyed that story and by now Hillary knew it by heart. She placed a snack of cookies for them on the play table and left the room. She put the book on the night stand in their bedroom for later and listened to the babies sleep, breathing and cooing in that baby way. She tiptoed out and went back downstairs to work on the mending.
When she heard the children come in, she put away her sewing and went into the hall. Muddy footprints were left behind on the polished wooden floor. Hillary cleared them away. She could hear the children playing again upstairs and she went to the kitchen to see when dinner was to be served.
Mary told her that ‘The Mister’ would be late again. He worked long hours to keep them fed in these hard times. Hillary asked for her meal to be served at seven. From upstairs there came a scream. Mrs. Wiggins rushed up to find blood droplets on the floor. Benny had picked at his scabby knees to make Gracie cry when he bled. Mrs. Wiggins wiped up the blood and told them that if they didn’t behave she would not read to them before bed. She went back down the stairs, taking the now empty cookie plate to the kitchen.
“Are they trying your patience, Miss?” Mary asked.
“No, not really, boys will be boys.” Mrs. Wiggins replied.
“Benny then?”
“Yes, Benny picking at his scabs.” Mrs. Wiggins sighed. “Since I have the time, I think I will go shopping and see if I can find some yarn to make more socks for my tribe. I’m re-darning the same holes again and again.”
“Yes Miss.”
Mrs. Wiggins put on her coat and hat, not forgetting to pick up her umbrella in case it showered again. On this cool, damp autumn day, she walked down the lane the few minutes it took to get to the shops.
There wasn’t much of a selection. She was hoping for something bright but only found un-dyed ‘seconds’ wool yarn, so she bought the whitest yarn she could find. Hillary made plans to save onion skins to make it a sunny yellow when she had enough of them. She had dyed yarn before when she had to. It was not a pleasant job but was worth the effort. Lilly liked yellow and some of her socks had gone missing again. “How do babies lose socks in the house that were never found again?” She thought to herself. Mrs. Wiggins planned on getting better yarn in the spring, after the sheep were sheared.
When she returned home she asked Mary to save the onion skins so she could later dye the yarn. Mary told Mrs. Wiggins that there was already a bag of them hanging in the basement stairway.
Hillary checked the bag and found more then enough onion skins to dye the yarn that she had just bought. She listened from the hallway and could hear the children playing quietly. Benny and Gracie had awakened from their nap while she was gone. She got out the copper dye pot and filled it with water, placing it on the back of the stove. When the water was hot she added the onion skins and boiled the color out of them. She carefully skimmed out the spent skins and added the vinegar and the pre-wetted yarn. After a while some dull yellow yarn was drying on a screen in the pantry by the open window.
After Mrs. Wiggins had finished with her work, Mary opened the other windows in the kitchen to air out the pungent odors before preparing dinner.
Hillary was tired but happy as she climbed the stairs to change for dinner. As she passed, she listened at the playroom door. Benny was telling the others a story. It was a war story in which he was saving the day again but the others didn’t seem to mind.
She went to her room and changed her now yellow stained house dress. She put on her dusty pink, the one her husband liked, forgetting he would be late. After eating dinner by herself, she waited for him by reading a book in the sitting room. She quickly looked up at the clock when she heard the key in the lock. The children must have fallen asleep long ago. She came out into the hall and walked with her husband up to their bedroom. The children were quiet so she didn’t even look in on them.
They dressed for bed and went to sleep for the night.
In the middle of the night, the door of the bedroom opened, and the light from the hall came in. A book, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ floated across the room a foot off the floor and landed on the night stand with a bang. Mr. Wiggins shook his wife’s shoulder. “Your children are back and they need you. You’re the only one that can settle them down.” He pulled the covers up over his head as she got up, finding her slippers and the flash light.
She put on her heaviest robe and collected the book from the night stand, pulling the door closed to shut out the hall light as she left the room.
Out in the yard on the cold stone bench, she read the book aloud twice by her flashlight beam before the children stopped their crying and fussing. She straightened the flowers and brushed off the leaves of the four little graves huddled there. She kissed the headstones of Benny, Gracie, Freddie, and baby Lilly.
This had been her whole world for the last year and a half since the fire took their small lives as they slept in their beds. They hadn’t moved on, so she continued to care for them, as she would to the last day of her long lonely life.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Ghost of a Dream
8-22-08
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
I woke up with a ghost in my bedroom… or at least that is what it felt like. I knew I was still dreaming because I had been trying to wake myself up in my dream. And besides that, there is no such thing as a ghost. So If I wasn’t going to wake up, I was going to go with the dream just to see where it went.
This ghost in my dream told me that he was named Henry and that he was looking for a person that used to live here at my apartment. A woman named Deidra. I couldn’t help him much but I tried. It was the middle of the night after all.
In my dream I went to the library still dressed in my pajamas. I went to look up the old town records for him. As we approached the building the doors just unlocked and opened up, you know how dreams can be.
After what felt like hours of looking in big old books with yellowed pages that smelled of dust and age, I found what he was looking for. I told him that she had gotten married a year after he had died. During her lifetime she had three children. Forty years later she was buried in the church cemetery. Her death had happened fifty years ago from the present year.
What you need to know about me is that I’m not the helpful type. I don’t open doors for people, 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 haven’t been inside a library since I got my first computer. There are people there and I’m rather antisocial.
Henry asked me to read Deidra’s headstone to him because he had never learned to read, so we walked over to the church yard together. Well, he kind of floated along and I walked.
This was where it started to get creepy. We were standing, or I should say I was standing, and he was floating in the middle of the church cemetery. Another place that I don’t frequent. I had my small pocket flash light that I had for some reason picked up from the night stand by my bed to read the headstones with, when some of the other occupant’s ghosts came up out of their graves to see what we were doing.
As dreams often are surreal, it didn’t bother me in the least that I was now surrounded by ghosts who were 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 out loud to Henry. If I was standing too close they would go right through me with a cold shivery feeling.
I was ready to give up when I spotted her grave. I mean how many Deidra’s do you know? I read it out to him and he sighed. We waited for her to come to him and when she didn’t he started to weep so much I called to her on his behalf.
She finally rose up after the whole group started calling to her name. Deidra admonished all of us for disturbing her. The other ghosts, after being reprimanded, headed back to their graves. She told Henry that she was not and never had been in love with him, that he must move on and stop coming to her grave each year on the anniversary night of his death to talk to her. She said that she was not going to talk to him ever again, so he must 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 to cut it out or I would make it my personal mission to haunt him when I died if he didn’t leave her alone.
He was so distraught that I would have worried about him killing himself if he was alive. So I walked him back to his grave in the public cemetery a few blocks away. I wanted to make sure he was down under 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 shop 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 breaking into the library and church yard in the middle of the night. They had me on various security cameras around town with a nondescript glowy thing floating along beside me. Since I didn’t harm or take anything, no one was going to press charges, this was just a warning. They showed me the tapes or I wouldn’t have believed it myself.
I moved right out of that apartment. Didn’t stay there another night, in fact. But to this day I am helpful to others and I even give to the poor. I’m not taking any chances ever again. I never want to see another ghost. And I always whistle past the graveyard.
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
I woke up with a ghost in my bedroom… or at least that is what it felt like. I knew I was still dreaming because I had been trying to wake myself up in my dream. And besides that, there is no such thing as a ghost. So If I wasn’t going to wake up, I was going to go with the dream just to see where it went.
This ghost in my dream told me that he was named Henry and that he was looking for a person that used to live here at my apartment. A woman named Deidra. I couldn’t help him much but I tried. It was the middle of the night after all.
In my dream I went to the library still dressed in my pajamas. I went to look up the old town records for him. As we approached the building the doors just unlocked and opened up, you know how dreams can be.
After what felt like hours of looking in big old books with yellowed pages that smelled of dust and age, I found what he was looking for. I told him that she had gotten married a year after he had died. During her lifetime she had three children. Forty years later she was buried in the church cemetery. Her death had happened fifty years ago from the present year.
What you need to know about me is that I’m not the helpful type. I don’t open doors for people, 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 haven’t been inside a library since I got my first computer. There are people there and I’m rather antisocial.
Henry asked me to read Deidra’s headstone to him because he had never learned to read, so we walked over to the church yard together. Well, he kind of floated along and I walked.
This was where it started to get creepy. We were standing, or I should say I was standing, and he was floating in the middle of the church cemetery. Another place that I don’t frequent. I had my small pocket flash light that I had for some reason picked up from the night stand by my bed to read the headstones with, when some of the other occupant’s ghosts came up out of their graves to see what we were doing.
As dreams often are surreal, it didn’t bother me in the least that I was now surrounded by ghosts who were 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 out loud to Henry. If I was standing too close they would go right through me with a cold shivery feeling.
I was ready to give up when I spotted her grave. I mean how many Deidra’s do you know? I read it out to him and he sighed. We waited for her to come to him and when she didn’t he started to weep so much I called to her on his behalf.
She finally rose up after the whole group started calling to her name. Deidra admonished all of us for disturbing her. The other ghosts, after being reprimanded, headed back to their graves. She told Henry that she was not and never had been in love with him, that he must move on and stop coming to her grave each year on the anniversary night of his death to talk to her. She said that she was not going to talk to him ever again, so he must 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 to cut it out or I would make it my personal mission to haunt him when I died if he didn’t leave her alone.
He was so distraught that I would have worried about him killing himself if he was alive. So I walked him back to his grave in the public cemetery a few blocks away. I wanted to make sure he was down under 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 shop 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 breaking into the library and church yard in the middle of the night. They had me on various security cameras around town with a nondescript glowy thing floating along beside me. Since I didn’t harm or take anything, no one was going to press charges, this was just a warning. They showed me the tapes or I wouldn’t have believed it myself.
I moved right out of that apartment. Didn’t stay there another night, in fact. But to this day I am helpful to others and I even give to the poor. I’m not taking any chances ever again. I never want to see another ghost. And I always whistle past the graveyard.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Random Circus
9-21-08 edit 03-06-09
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
When I was younger my grandfather would come to visit and he would tell me this story every time. According to him it happened in the town where he was born.
The circus was neither the largest nor the best that anyone in town had seen but you were sure to see a show and anything could and sometimes did happen when the circus came to town. In fact any circus was always worth the price of admission. This was the town of Random and the only thing that Random was known for was that it was the place where the circus elephant died.
You see, many years ago, before cars and trucks, the circus walked from place to place and horses along with other work animals pulled the circus wagons. And Random was the place that the old elephant decided to up and die. She just stopped in the road and wouldn’t move and two days later she was dead. The circus moved on without even looking back at her and the towns people had to bury the carcass themselves. So right there where she lay getting all foul and smelly next to the town square, they dug up the square park and heaved the elephant in. It took all of eight days and every man and boy was needed to help. Using every shovel and even boards they moved the earth and stones with wheelbarrows, carts and even sacks. Mothers and wives made soothing ointment for the blisters on the men’s hands. It took three teams of oxen to pull the elephant into the hole. They didn’t even stop for Sunday services either because the smell on a hot summer day was just awful.
Eventually the mound of earth sunk back into place and people kinda’ forgot about it in their day to day lives. But every year when the circus came back to town it was all that they could talk about. Strange things started to happen with every circus show from that day on. Nothing you would expect, like hearing an elephant trumpet in the still of the night or seeing an elephant walking down the street by itself. No, they experienced things like high wire performers that would fall from their tight ropes but not get hurt, falling far too slowly to be in real time. Tents would blow up into the air like a cyclone had picked them up but not one thing inside the tent would be disturbed. Wild animals would get loose and be found sleeping in someone’s chicken yard with all the chickens accounted for and not one person harmed. You just didn’t know what would happen but it would certainly be a head scratcher.
After a while the circus’s didn’t come around as often. Going to the circus wasn’t as popular as it had been and it was too hard for most of them to turn a profit so a lot of them just closed down. And the ones that did still travel weren’t coming to small towns anymore. The town of Random was down to a small third rate circus every five years or so.
No one thought about the elephant buried under the town square anymore. Some kids didn’t even know about the story of its death or the circus mystery miracles. Old folks sat on the park benches and dozed in the afternoon sunlight over the elephants bones as bees buzzed over the summer flowers planted in the park.
Marcus Williamson was the first to realize that the trucks and vans driving around the square were from a tired, run down, fourth rate, one ring circus and that they were heading for the empty lot next to the supermart store.
Not one word had been forwarded of their coming. They just showed up like it had always been that way and acted like they should have been expected. In fact that is just what they said when someone asked. That they were supposed to come here again but no one in town could remember that particular circus ever being in town before.
Mr. Warner owned the empty lot and let the circus park there but didn’t want them to set up their tents on his property. The lot had recently been black topped and he wanted the macadam to settle without large tent pegs being driven through it. The only place left with room for the tents was the town square itself, so they set them up there.
The people on the square scrambled home to tell the others and to get their money ready for a ticket. By the time the show started the next day almost everyone in town was crammed into the large, well worn, patched up circus tent. Some bought tickets for both the afternoon and evening performances. Word had spread like wild fire that this wasn’t a show to be missed. The old stories were being told in every house and on every street corner. No one wanted to miss a chance at seeing an elephant miracle for themselves.
Everyone was on pins and needles wondering just what would happen this time around, flying people or tame tigers on the loose? Maybe it would be something never seen before.
People strained to see around the people in front of them as all the performers came into the ring and lined up in a circle to start the show to the sound of trumpet music over the loud speakers.
Jumbo’s circus had a lot of things but mostly it was full of used up circus people and animals. It did not have an elephant. The first circus to be without an elephant since the day the old elephant had died on the road around this same square.
As the fanfare music ended, the ground started to rumble and tremble under the tent as the circus people bowed to the applause. The tent pegs slipped out of their moorings. The rigging came down first, only moments before the tent canvas itself and the earth belched the smell of sulfur. People were coughing and their eyes were tearing as they scrambled to safety.
When the towns people finally make it out from under the tenting and pulled it back to try to rescue the circus people trapped under it, what they found instead was a crater with a dead elephant. The elephant was wearing the word Jumbo printed on a tattered and faded material sash on it’s back laying at the bottom of the hole. Not one circus performer was ever found. They had disappeared. Their belongings on Mr. Warner’s lot were searched to find someone to inform of the calamity. The only information they could find were some very old papers that told Random that the circus people were the direct descendants of the circus that had left the elephant behind for the towns people to bury so very many years ago. And now all the town could do was to bury the elephant in the hole again for it to rest in peace.
The mayor got up a collection for a one fourth scale statue of an elephant to be placed on the center of the square and the children in the town of Random play and ride on it’s back to this day. Only they don’t know that it is anything but a plaything to keep them happy on a summers day, and the elephant in the ground underneath them doesn’t seem to mind. Just to be on the safe side the town of Random doesn’t have a circus come to town anymore. But no one misses going to the circus when it comes to a town close by, because it just might be close enough to see an elephant miracle for themselves.
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
When I was younger my grandfather would come to visit and he would tell me this story every time. According to him it happened in the town where he was born.
The circus was neither the largest nor the best that anyone in town had seen but you were sure to see a show and anything could and sometimes did happen when the circus came to town. In fact any circus was always worth the price of admission. This was the town of Random and the only thing that Random was known for was that it was the place where the circus elephant died.
You see, many years ago, before cars and trucks, the circus walked from place to place and horses along with other work animals pulled the circus wagons. And Random was the place that the old elephant decided to up and die. She just stopped in the road and wouldn’t move and two days later she was dead. The circus moved on without even looking back at her and the towns people had to bury the carcass themselves. So right there where she lay getting all foul and smelly next to the town square, they dug up the square park and heaved the elephant in. It took all of eight days and every man and boy was needed to help. Using every shovel and even boards they moved the earth and stones with wheelbarrows, carts and even sacks. Mothers and wives made soothing ointment for the blisters on the men’s hands. It took three teams of oxen to pull the elephant into the hole. They didn’t even stop for Sunday services either because the smell on a hot summer day was just awful.
Eventually the mound of earth sunk back into place and people kinda’ forgot about it in their day to day lives. But every year when the circus came back to town it was all that they could talk about. Strange things started to happen with every circus show from that day on. Nothing you would expect, like hearing an elephant trumpet in the still of the night or seeing an elephant walking down the street by itself. No, they experienced things like high wire performers that would fall from their tight ropes but not get hurt, falling far too slowly to be in real time. Tents would blow up into the air like a cyclone had picked them up but not one thing inside the tent would be disturbed. Wild animals would get loose and be found sleeping in someone’s chicken yard with all the chickens accounted for and not one person harmed. You just didn’t know what would happen but it would certainly be a head scratcher.
After a while the circus’s didn’t come around as often. Going to the circus wasn’t as popular as it had been and it was too hard for most of them to turn a profit so a lot of them just closed down. And the ones that did still travel weren’t coming to small towns anymore. The town of Random was down to a small third rate circus every five years or so.
No one thought about the elephant buried under the town square anymore. Some kids didn’t even know about the story of its death or the circus mystery miracles. Old folks sat on the park benches and dozed in the afternoon sunlight over the elephants bones as bees buzzed over the summer flowers planted in the park.
Marcus Williamson was the first to realize that the trucks and vans driving around the square were from a tired, run down, fourth rate, one ring circus and that they were heading for the empty lot next to the supermart store.
Not one word had been forwarded of their coming. They just showed up like it had always been that way and acted like they should have been expected. In fact that is just what they said when someone asked. That they were supposed to come here again but no one in town could remember that particular circus ever being in town before.
Mr. Warner owned the empty lot and let the circus park there but didn’t want them to set up their tents on his property. The lot had recently been black topped and he wanted the macadam to settle without large tent pegs being driven through it. The only place left with room for the tents was the town square itself, so they set them up there.
The people on the square scrambled home to tell the others and to get their money ready for a ticket. By the time the show started the next day almost everyone in town was crammed into the large, well worn, patched up circus tent. Some bought tickets for both the afternoon and evening performances. Word had spread like wild fire that this wasn’t a show to be missed. The old stories were being told in every house and on every street corner. No one wanted to miss a chance at seeing an elephant miracle for themselves.
Everyone was on pins and needles wondering just what would happen this time around, flying people or tame tigers on the loose? Maybe it would be something never seen before.
People strained to see around the people in front of them as all the performers came into the ring and lined up in a circle to start the show to the sound of trumpet music over the loud speakers.
Jumbo’s circus had a lot of things but mostly it was full of used up circus people and animals. It did not have an elephant. The first circus to be without an elephant since the day the old elephant had died on the road around this same square.
As the fanfare music ended, the ground started to rumble and tremble under the tent as the circus people bowed to the applause. The tent pegs slipped out of their moorings. The rigging came down first, only moments before the tent canvas itself and the earth belched the smell of sulfur. People were coughing and their eyes were tearing as they scrambled to safety.
When the towns people finally make it out from under the tenting and pulled it back to try to rescue the circus people trapped under it, what they found instead was a crater with a dead elephant. The elephant was wearing the word Jumbo printed on a tattered and faded material sash on it’s back laying at the bottom of the hole. Not one circus performer was ever found. They had disappeared. Their belongings on Mr. Warner’s lot were searched to find someone to inform of the calamity. The only information they could find were some very old papers that told Random that the circus people were the direct descendants of the circus that had left the elephant behind for the towns people to bury so very many years ago. And now all the town could do was to bury the elephant in the hole again for it to rest in peace.
The mayor got up a collection for a one fourth scale statue of an elephant to be placed on the center of the square and the children in the town of Random play and ride on it’s back to this day. Only they don’t know that it is anything but a plaything to keep them happy on a summers day, and the elephant in the ground underneath them doesn’t seem to mind. Just to be on the safe side the town of Random doesn’t have a circus come to town anymore. But no one misses going to the circus when it comes to a town close by, because it just might be close enough to see an elephant miracle for themselves.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Out of the Blue
8-29-08
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
Andy had left work for the day and walked down the street without a care in the world. The sun was shining and the breeze was just the right temperature. Birds sang in the trees while squirrels ran up and down the bark. He couldn’t help himself and started whistling a tune, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy. In fact he felt like a boy again on this golden afternoon.
Harriet had the day off and was walking down the same street to shop. She was going in the opposite direction and could see the storm clouds on the horizon coming towards them. The sheer dreariness of the coming storm made her sick inside. She grumbled under her breath as she made her way toward Andy waiting for the light to change so he could cross the street.
As the sun shown down on the corner of Main Street and Park Avenue they met crossing the street. Harriet growled at Andy’s whistling and Andy gave Harriet a friendly wink. Flash Crash! Lightning out of the blue. They were both hit and knocked to the ground. People ran up to them and tried to revive them.
Andy found himself in a strange place. It was a dark and misty forest like place. There were forms just out of range that he couldn’t quite make out that watched him and skulked about. He hoped, wished, wondered about the small weak light in the sky, wanting it to grow into the beautiful warm sun again and burn away the darkness all around him. He screamed and shouted at the things on the periphery to no avail. He felt cold and scared. He didn’t want to move but felt that he had to follow the light.
Harriet was now looking up into the sunshine. It hurt and her flesh felt like it was burning. The people around her looked like they had halos from the brightness. She closed her eyes to the glare. She could hear them trying to help her, she just couldn’t answer back. The pain was too much. She only wished that they would leave her alone and stop hurting her.
The ambulance driver told the police officer on the scene that only one of them seemed to be making it so far. The police officer held the crowd back so the paramedics could do their jobs.
Andy waited for a long time before he felt up to moving and to look for some shelter in the mist for the night that must soon be coming. At times the light in the sky seemed to be getting larger, at others he was sure it was smaller than at the start. He told himself that the mist was making it look that way. He walked through thick brush and briers, all the time keeping the weak light in sight.
Harriet could feel the cold shaking start from deep inside her. “Shock” she heard someone say. She had her eyes closed against the brightness and the pain. The shaking was making the pain turn into agony. She tried to stop the shaking but she couldn’t control anything any longer. The siren started to wail and it strangely calmed her, like it was doing the screaming for her.
Loaded each into separate ambulances, they made their way at top speed to the nearest hospital with a burn unit. The police had cleared the road for them.
Andy was getting tired of fighting the brush and slowed his movement toward the light. He used all his strength and concentration to make a narrow path. He was hurting and tired but he just had to get closer to the light. Small as it was he knew it was where he needed to be. When the greenery opened into a clearing he ran for all he was worth for the other side, afraid that the light would fade into night.
Harriet was bathed in white warm light. The shaking had stopped. They must have given her drugs for the pain because she couldn’t feel anything any longer. Her eyes were still closed and she let them do whatever it was that they needed to do to her. It felt like floating and she just let her body ride the waves of warmth. The voices didn’t concern her any longer. The words didn’t make any sense to her anyway. If only the light would fade and she could sleep like this.
The stretchers were brought into the emergency room one after the other and a separate team of doctors and nurses worked on each of them with all the skills and equipment they had. The young adults in their care were going to get every chance to regain a life to live in full.
Andy heard the bugs of night starting to make noise. It sounded kind of like beeping in this strange new world he found himself in. He checked to see if it was his cell phone, but he had lost it a while back. The light was getting closer and lower in the sky. Night would be falling soon and he still hadn‘t found a place to stay. He didn’t want to. All he could think of was getting to that cool pale light.
Harriet was getting a headache. The meds must be wearing off. She tried to open her eyes but they wouldn’t work. Nothing worked in fact. Everything she tried to move on her body stayed still. She started to panic but couldn’t make a sound. Would they think she was dead and send her to the morgue, then bury her alive? ‘No, they gave her meds and that was what was keeping her from moving. It would wear off any minute.‘ she told herself.
The gurneys were moved one to the morgue and the other to a room in the intensive care unit of the hospital. The families and friends gathered in the waiting room were told of their respective conditions. Unable to visit, they were left crying and clutching to one another. They drifted off to make arrangements according to their loved ones status.
Andy waited holding his breath as the last of the light faded from view. In the darkness he sat where he had stood and cried in sheer frustration. When he was done crying out all his anger and pain he was resolved once again to try all the harder in the morning. He sank into the cold darkened greenery and slept.
Harriet was in a drug induced coma but her mind dreamed on. She found herself with a lantern in her hand looking down at Andy sleeping on the forest floor. After a while she got tired of waiting for him to wake on his own and poked him with her hospital slippered toe.
Andy woke with the light of the lantern just inches from his face. He could feel the warmth of it on his cheek. His body was chilled with the damp into his very bones but he didn’t want to move and frighten Harriet away.
“I’m not standing here all night.” she said to him and waited for him to rise before pushing the lantern into his hands. “You can carry this for a while, I’m tried to death of the brightness of the thing. I hope I never see it again.“ And she turned and walked into the darkened misty woods.
In the doctors lounge, two very tired doctors sat and talked about the day they had encountered. The two people from the same lightning strike had them both too busy to talk before this.
“I still can’t believe what a day I had. We tried to keep her alive, we really did, but she just stopped trying and died despite the fact that she had the lesser injuries of the two. I just came from finishing the paper work. Twelve o’clock midnight was the time she expired. Now that doesn’t happen often.” said the first.
The second shook his head. “That is funny. But I can do you one better. The guy I had was dead and sent to the morgue when he woke up on the table and scared the devil out of the coroner getting ready to prep him for autopsy. I had to pass him on to the next shift because I was swamped with paperwork for sending him down there in the first place but I know for certain he was gone when I pronounced him and signed the papers.”
The door opened and the still white lipped coroner slumped down in the nearest chair. All he said was, “Midnight! It had to happen to me at the strike of midnight.”
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
Andy had left work for the day and walked down the street without a care in the world. The sun was shining and the breeze was just the right temperature. Birds sang in the trees while squirrels ran up and down the bark. He couldn’t help himself and started whistling a tune, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy. In fact he felt like a boy again on this golden afternoon.
Harriet had the day off and was walking down the same street to shop. She was going in the opposite direction and could see the storm clouds on the horizon coming towards them. The sheer dreariness of the coming storm made her sick inside. She grumbled under her breath as she made her way toward Andy waiting for the light to change so he could cross the street.
As the sun shown down on the corner of Main Street and Park Avenue they met crossing the street. Harriet growled at Andy’s whistling and Andy gave Harriet a friendly wink. Flash Crash! Lightning out of the blue. They were both hit and knocked to the ground. People ran up to them and tried to revive them.
Andy found himself in a strange place. It was a dark and misty forest like place. There were forms just out of range that he couldn’t quite make out that watched him and skulked about. He hoped, wished, wondered about the small weak light in the sky, wanting it to grow into the beautiful warm sun again and burn away the darkness all around him. He screamed and shouted at the things on the periphery to no avail. He felt cold and scared. He didn’t want to move but felt that he had to follow the light.
Harriet was now looking up into the sunshine. It hurt and her flesh felt like it was burning. The people around her looked like they had halos from the brightness. She closed her eyes to the glare. She could hear them trying to help her, she just couldn’t answer back. The pain was too much. She only wished that they would leave her alone and stop hurting her.
The ambulance driver told the police officer on the scene that only one of them seemed to be making it so far. The police officer held the crowd back so the paramedics could do their jobs.
Andy waited for a long time before he felt up to moving and to look for some shelter in the mist for the night that must soon be coming. At times the light in the sky seemed to be getting larger, at others he was sure it was smaller than at the start. He told himself that the mist was making it look that way. He walked through thick brush and briers, all the time keeping the weak light in sight.
Harriet could feel the cold shaking start from deep inside her. “Shock” she heard someone say. She had her eyes closed against the brightness and the pain. The shaking was making the pain turn into agony. She tried to stop the shaking but she couldn’t control anything any longer. The siren started to wail and it strangely calmed her, like it was doing the screaming for her.
Loaded each into separate ambulances, they made their way at top speed to the nearest hospital with a burn unit. The police had cleared the road for them.
Andy was getting tired of fighting the brush and slowed his movement toward the light. He used all his strength and concentration to make a narrow path. He was hurting and tired but he just had to get closer to the light. Small as it was he knew it was where he needed to be. When the greenery opened into a clearing he ran for all he was worth for the other side, afraid that the light would fade into night.
Harriet was bathed in white warm light. The shaking had stopped. They must have given her drugs for the pain because she couldn’t feel anything any longer. Her eyes were still closed and she let them do whatever it was that they needed to do to her. It felt like floating and she just let her body ride the waves of warmth. The voices didn’t concern her any longer. The words didn’t make any sense to her anyway. If only the light would fade and she could sleep like this.
The stretchers were brought into the emergency room one after the other and a separate team of doctors and nurses worked on each of them with all the skills and equipment they had. The young adults in their care were going to get every chance to regain a life to live in full.
Andy heard the bugs of night starting to make noise. It sounded kind of like beeping in this strange new world he found himself in. He checked to see if it was his cell phone, but he had lost it a while back. The light was getting closer and lower in the sky. Night would be falling soon and he still hadn‘t found a place to stay. He didn’t want to. All he could think of was getting to that cool pale light.
Harriet was getting a headache. The meds must be wearing off. She tried to open her eyes but they wouldn’t work. Nothing worked in fact. Everything she tried to move on her body stayed still. She started to panic but couldn’t make a sound. Would they think she was dead and send her to the morgue, then bury her alive? ‘No, they gave her meds and that was what was keeping her from moving. It would wear off any minute.‘ she told herself.
The gurneys were moved one to the morgue and the other to a room in the intensive care unit of the hospital. The families and friends gathered in the waiting room were told of their respective conditions. Unable to visit, they were left crying and clutching to one another. They drifted off to make arrangements according to their loved ones status.
Andy waited holding his breath as the last of the light faded from view. In the darkness he sat where he had stood and cried in sheer frustration. When he was done crying out all his anger and pain he was resolved once again to try all the harder in the morning. He sank into the cold darkened greenery and slept.
Harriet was in a drug induced coma but her mind dreamed on. She found herself with a lantern in her hand looking down at Andy sleeping on the forest floor. After a while she got tired of waiting for him to wake on his own and poked him with her hospital slippered toe.
Andy woke with the light of the lantern just inches from his face. He could feel the warmth of it on his cheek. His body was chilled with the damp into his very bones but he didn’t want to move and frighten Harriet away.
“I’m not standing here all night.” she said to him and waited for him to rise before pushing the lantern into his hands. “You can carry this for a while, I’m tried to death of the brightness of the thing. I hope I never see it again.“ And she turned and walked into the darkened misty woods.
In the doctors lounge, two very tired doctors sat and talked about the day they had encountered. The two people from the same lightning strike had them both too busy to talk before this.
“I still can’t believe what a day I had. We tried to keep her alive, we really did, but she just stopped trying and died despite the fact that she had the lesser injuries of the two. I just came from finishing the paper work. Twelve o’clock midnight was the time she expired. Now that doesn’t happen often.” said the first.
The second shook his head. “That is funny. But I can do you one better. The guy I had was dead and sent to the morgue when he woke up on the table and scared the devil out of the coroner getting ready to prep him for autopsy. I had to pass him on to the next shift because I was swamped with paperwork for sending him down there in the first place but I know for certain he was gone when I pronounced him and signed the papers.”
The door opened and the still white lipped coroner slumped down in the nearest chair. All he said was, “Midnight! It had to happen to me at the strike of midnight.”
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Molly’s Train
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
Molly Ferguson headed to the bus station. Her short hair was sticking to the back of her neck on her small frame as she struggled to carry the bags. All that she now owned was in two beat up suit cases and a tote bag. Once she had almost everything she needed and some extras to feel good about. Now all that was left was here in her hands. This latest flood had taken all the rest.
She had wanted to take a train out of town. Molly had dreamed about it for most of her school years, but the trains weren’t running yet and wouldn’t be for a while but the buses were. There was nothing left for her here and it was time to leave town.
She had lived with her grandfather until he broke his hip then she was sent to the Foster Homes. After that she had her little apartment and a job in the local video store.
The flood had washed away her past and Molly was off to start over some place new, maybe in the mountains above where it could flood. As soon as she could find a moving train she was going to get on and keep on going. Molly was tired of waiting. With all the money, which wasn’t much, that her grandfather had left to her when he died and his little house on the edge of town was sold, she was made to wait until her eighteenth birthday and that was the day of the flood. So she was forced to wait some more.
When Molly was younger and lived with Poppop in his little house, she could hear the trains from her bedroom. Their rhythmic clickity clacking on the rails, the low rumble of the engine and the wailing whistle as it left town. Molly liked it all like a lullaby in the night. She wanted, thought about and dreamed of traveling on a train. She wanted it even more when she found out that her parents died on a train. Molly never knew the whole story, Poppop told her that he would tell her the details of how her parents died when she was older but that day never came. So all she had was a faded picture of them and her dreams of trains in her sleep feeling the rumble of it under her in her bed.
Whenever she felt sad or bad as a child she would tell herself that a train would answer all her questions and it would calm all her fears. To the child that she once was a train was all she needed. Molly didn’t believe that any longer but she still wanted to take a trip on a train away from the only town she ever knew but was the loneliest place on earth for her now. The picture of her parents was gone with everything else when the muddy water came through.
The bus traveled through the devastated flood zone. Mud and muck painted everything with the same dead looking gray brush. What once must have been beautiful countryside was ugly caked with muck and piled with debris. Having nothing to look at out the window she read from the tattered novel she had gotten at the shelter from one of the Volunteer workers. It was about a boy named Johnny and his dog, Rufus, trying to get home. Not her type of book but there was nothing else to do. She didn’t even know the title or author because the cover and first few pages were missing and the binding was falling apart it was so old and yellowed. Once she got to someplace that sold new paperbacks this one was getting tossed she told herself.
Once the landscape started getting green again and showed signs of life Molly started looking for train tracks and train stations. At one town she found out that the nearest passenger train was in the next state north and she changed buses to get herself in the right direction. To Molly’s surprise it had worked. There was a train at the station as she got off the bus.
Molly hopped on the train just in time. She wasn’t even sure what direction she was heading in, but she paid for her ticket and just sank into her seat, sighing all the weight of the last few months away. She closed here eyes and absorbed it all into the space where the tension had been inside or her. Molly filled herself up with the smell, feeling and sounds of the train. For the first time in years she felt the feeling of home. Everything else that had once been her life was left behind at the station.
Happy for the first time in a long time Molly set about making herself comfortable for the duration. She changed her clothes and headed for the dinning car. She hadn’t eaten a good meal since the flood and she was finally hungry.
On the way through the cars she smiled and nodded at the other passengers that looked her way. She found the dinning car and ordered her first meal by train. While waiting for her food to be prepared she pulled out the old book again but another couple started asking her about herself and her destination. After she told them she wasn’t sure where she was going they moved over to her table to talk better with her.
They made helpful suggestions and told her that they hoped to see her again in the days to come as they traveled and they left her to eat her meal in peace, but not before Jacky told her that the book she was reading was one of his favorites. “Some day I’ll get myself a dog and name him Rufus too.” he said.
Molly slept so well in her folded down train bed that she felt like she had never known what real sleep was before this.
The next day she looked around for her new friends but the conductor wasn’t sure just who she was talking about when she asked about them. Finally she saw them in the observation car. Helen and Jacky were sitting looking at where they had been instead of where they were headed. Helen shrugged and said, “Just looking for another perspective.”
Jacky asked Molly if she had thought about what they had told her about good towns to get started over in along the way.
Molly told them both ‘yes’ and she asked a lot of other questions to try to narrow the list down to a reasonable few. They chatted most of the afternoon away before leaving her to watch the sunset colors forming in the sky by herself.
Molly sat wondering about them, Helen and Jacky. Did she like them because they were friendly and helpful or because their names were so much like her parents? Hellene and Johnny. They looked a lot like her parents too, but most people of that age did to her. She didn’t remember them much at all only the picture. She was too young when they died, only two. They of course were too young to be her parents. They were almost Molly’s age, just a little older she guessed. But you couldn’t miss their enthusiasm about trains.
They knew the whole line. Every suburb and hallow, town and city, burg and watering hole. She was impressed and a little confused by it all. She couldn’t remember where they said they lived. But that didn’t really matter since they also said that they spent most all their free time riding on the train. Most of the places on the line didn’t interest her much at all. She needed to get a job and find a place to live first. But Molly couldn’t help hoping to be able to hear the train go by at night wherever she found to call home.
On the third day she was nearing the end of the line. Molly had decided with the help of her new friends to start at one end and work her way up the line until she found a place that worked best for her. She went to bed early to rest up for the new world she would be finding waiting for her in the morning and her stop was coming early in the day.
The clickity clacking of the wheels under her and the soft swaying of the train car lulled her into another deep sleep despite her nerves. When she woke in the morning she was surprised to find herself sleeping in her clothing on the ground between the tracks. The tracks themselves were rusty and obviously unused. Brush and grasses grew and died there undisturbed. Nothing she could think of was missing from her belongings when she looked at them.
She collected her bags and walked into the nearest town. It was where she wanted to be but according to he people she asked not one train came through town for many years but a number of them had heard a train early this morning.
Molly got a newspaper to find a job and a place to live only to discover that the date was three days earlier. The day after she had stepped onto the train in fact. June 21st. Somehow she had traveled hundreds of miles on a train that didn’t exist any longer in one night. She knew things about the town and the people here that she shouldn’t have known if her train ride and the people on it weren’t real. Molly knew where most everyone lived and where most everything was in town from what Helen and Jacky had told her.
Molly started to work in the video store because the owner’s son had just decided to take off on his motorcycle to see the world the day before. Soon she was the night manager. She liked her new apartment and made friend easily so she stayed. There was a stray dog that had adopted her and walked her home from the video store each night. Molly named him Rufus like in the book and felt safe here in her new home town.
A year later while walking the dog in the early morning Molly heard a train for the first time since the day she arrived. She followed the sound until it stopped and she found herself on the tracks further down from the spot on the day she arrived. The dog pulled her along until she was off the tracks again and into some over grown bushes.
The dog stopped when he got his leash tangled around a broken stone pillar. By the time she got the dog untangled she had to flip the broken part of the stone over. The writing carved into it said. ‘Hellene and John Ferguson died on this spot in the train wreck of 1992. Helen and Jacky loved their daughter Molly and the cross country train she was born on. May they rest in peace. June 21, 1992’ Now Molly understood all of what had happened to her in the last year. Molly’s parents had helped her find her way back to them. On the anniversary of their death Molly’s train had brought her home.
Molly Ferguson headed to the bus station. Her short hair was sticking to the back of her neck on her small frame as she struggled to carry the bags. All that she now owned was in two beat up suit cases and a tote bag. Once she had almost everything she needed and some extras to feel good about. Now all that was left was here in her hands. This latest flood had taken all the rest.
She had wanted to take a train out of town. Molly had dreamed about it for most of her school years, but the trains weren’t running yet and wouldn’t be for a while but the buses were. There was nothing left for her here and it was time to leave town.
She had lived with her grandfather until he broke his hip then she was sent to the Foster Homes. After that she had her little apartment and a job in the local video store.
The flood had washed away her past and Molly was off to start over some place new, maybe in the mountains above where it could flood. As soon as she could find a moving train she was going to get on and keep on going. Molly was tired of waiting. With all the money, which wasn’t much, that her grandfather had left to her when he died and his little house on the edge of town was sold, she was made to wait until her eighteenth birthday and that was the day of the flood. So she was forced to wait some more.
When Molly was younger and lived with Poppop in his little house, she could hear the trains from her bedroom. Their rhythmic clickity clacking on the rails, the low rumble of the engine and the wailing whistle as it left town. Molly liked it all like a lullaby in the night. She wanted, thought about and dreamed of traveling on a train. She wanted it even more when she found out that her parents died on a train. Molly never knew the whole story, Poppop told her that he would tell her the details of how her parents died when she was older but that day never came. So all she had was a faded picture of them and her dreams of trains in her sleep feeling the rumble of it under her in her bed.
Whenever she felt sad or bad as a child she would tell herself that a train would answer all her questions and it would calm all her fears. To the child that she once was a train was all she needed. Molly didn’t believe that any longer but she still wanted to take a trip on a train away from the only town she ever knew but was the loneliest place on earth for her now. The picture of her parents was gone with everything else when the muddy water came through.
The bus traveled through the devastated flood zone. Mud and muck painted everything with the same dead looking gray brush. What once must have been beautiful countryside was ugly caked with muck and piled with debris. Having nothing to look at out the window she read from the tattered novel she had gotten at the shelter from one of the Volunteer workers. It was about a boy named Johnny and his dog, Rufus, trying to get home. Not her type of book but there was nothing else to do. She didn’t even know the title or author because the cover and first few pages were missing and the binding was falling apart it was so old and yellowed. Once she got to someplace that sold new paperbacks this one was getting tossed she told herself.
Once the landscape started getting green again and showed signs of life Molly started looking for train tracks and train stations. At one town she found out that the nearest passenger train was in the next state north and she changed buses to get herself in the right direction. To Molly’s surprise it had worked. There was a train at the station as she got off the bus.
Molly hopped on the train just in time. She wasn’t even sure what direction she was heading in, but she paid for her ticket and just sank into her seat, sighing all the weight of the last few months away. She closed here eyes and absorbed it all into the space where the tension had been inside or her. Molly filled herself up with the smell, feeling and sounds of the train. For the first time in years she felt the feeling of home. Everything else that had once been her life was left behind at the station.
Happy for the first time in a long time Molly set about making herself comfortable for the duration. She changed her clothes and headed for the dinning car. She hadn’t eaten a good meal since the flood and she was finally hungry.
On the way through the cars she smiled and nodded at the other passengers that looked her way. She found the dinning car and ordered her first meal by train. While waiting for her food to be prepared she pulled out the old book again but another couple started asking her about herself and her destination. After she told them she wasn’t sure where she was going they moved over to her table to talk better with her.
They made helpful suggestions and told her that they hoped to see her again in the days to come as they traveled and they left her to eat her meal in peace, but not before Jacky told her that the book she was reading was one of his favorites. “Some day I’ll get myself a dog and name him Rufus too.” he said.
Molly slept so well in her folded down train bed that she felt like she had never known what real sleep was before this.
The next day she looked around for her new friends but the conductor wasn’t sure just who she was talking about when she asked about them. Finally she saw them in the observation car. Helen and Jacky were sitting looking at where they had been instead of where they were headed. Helen shrugged and said, “Just looking for another perspective.”
Jacky asked Molly if she had thought about what they had told her about good towns to get started over in along the way.
Molly told them both ‘yes’ and she asked a lot of other questions to try to narrow the list down to a reasonable few. They chatted most of the afternoon away before leaving her to watch the sunset colors forming in the sky by herself.
Molly sat wondering about them, Helen and Jacky. Did she like them because they were friendly and helpful or because their names were so much like her parents? Hellene and Johnny. They looked a lot like her parents too, but most people of that age did to her. She didn’t remember them much at all only the picture. She was too young when they died, only two. They of course were too young to be her parents. They were almost Molly’s age, just a little older she guessed. But you couldn’t miss their enthusiasm about trains.
They knew the whole line. Every suburb and hallow, town and city, burg and watering hole. She was impressed and a little confused by it all. She couldn’t remember where they said they lived. But that didn’t really matter since they also said that they spent most all their free time riding on the train. Most of the places on the line didn’t interest her much at all. She needed to get a job and find a place to live first. But Molly couldn’t help hoping to be able to hear the train go by at night wherever she found to call home.
On the third day she was nearing the end of the line. Molly had decided with the help of her new friends to start at one end and work her way up the line until she found a place that worked best for her. She went to bed early to rest up for the new world she would be finding waiting for her in the morning and her stop was coming early in the day.
The clickity clacking of the wheels under her and the soft swaying of the train car lulled her into another deep sleep despite her nerves. When she woke in the morning she was surprised to find herself sleeping in her clothing on the ground between the tracks. The tracks themselves were rusty and obviously unused. Brush and grasses grew and died there undisturbed. Nothing she could think of was missing from her belongings when she looked at them.
She collected her bags and walked into the nearest town. It was where she wanted to be but according to he people she asked not one train came through town for many years but a number of them had heard a train early this morning.
Molly got a newspaper to find a job and a place to live only to discover that the date was three days earlier. The day after she had stepped onto the train in fact. June 21st. Somehow she had traveled hundreds of miles on a train that didn’t exist any longer in one night. She knew things about the town and the people here that she shouldn’t have known if her train ride and the people on it weren’t real. Molly knew where most everyone lived and where most everything was in town from what Helen and Jacky had told her.
Molly started to work in the video store because the owner’s son had just decided to take off on his motorcycle to see the world the day before. Soon she was the night manager. She liked her new apartment and made friend easily so she stayed. There was a stray dog that had adopted her and walked her home from the video store each night. Molly named him Rufus like in the book and felt safe here in her new home town.
A year later while walking the dog in the early morning Molly heard a train for the first time since the day she arrived. She followed the sound until it stopped and she found herself on the tracks further down from the spot on the day she arrived. The dog pulled her along until she was off the tracks again and into some over grown bushes.
The dog stopped when he got his leash tangled around a broken stone pillar. By the time she got the dog untangled she had to flip the broken part of the stone over. The writing carved into it said. ‘Hellene and John Ferguson died on this spot in the train wreck of 1992. Helen and Jacky loved their daughter Molly and the cross country train she was born on. May they rest in peace. June 21, 1992’ Now Molly understood all of what had happened to her in the last year. Molly’s parents had helped her find her way back to them. On the anniversary of their death Molly’s train had brought her home.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Trouble in the Closet
By Lady Euphoria Deathwatch
9-12-08 re-write 1-18-09
Benny had a problem. Not a common problem and certainly not the kind of problem he was going to try to get much help with. He had learned when he was small that no one believed him about this conundrum. Benny had a Ghoul in his closet.
When Benny was small there was no Ghoul. The family lived in a house with no yard to speak of down the street from the cemetery and when Benny went outside playing he would run very fast around the grave stones in a kind of race with himself to see how fast he could run.
One day when Benny was about eight he tripped and skinned his knee on a low stone in the cemetery and bled all the way home. He didn’t run for a few days because his knee hurt, but by the time he was ready to run again something smelly had moved into his closet.
At first he thought it might just have been a ghost from the cemetery that had followed him home and that it liked to frighten him. It looked rather nasty but Benny called him a ghoul because this ghoul told him that he ate the rotting flesh of the dead. And then there was the foul odor of something rotting that always seemed to be coming from the thing. He found the definition in the large old dictionary in the bookcase by the stairs when he was ten. Benny’s mother thought the smell was Benny’s old shoes because his father had a foot odor problem.
Once, when Benny was feeling a bit brave, round about the age of eleven, he asked the ghoul what it’s name was? The ghoul didn’t seem to understand the question and Benny wasn’t feeling brave enough to take the time to explain. So Benny never did have a name to call him, he just called him Ghoul.
At thirteen Benny poured a bottle of his mothers best perfume into the closet to try to stink the ghoul out but the Ghoul stayed. Benny had to stay in his room for a month and the kids at school teased him something fierce for smelling like a very stinky girl.
Benny had hoped that when he was old enough to move out of his parent’s house he would leave the ghoul behind. But soon after he had his own apartment, the ghoul was in the new closet again. Since no one else seemed to be able to see the ghoul or rather the ghoul didn’t show itself when any one else was there, Benny had himself checked out for being nuts.
Dr. Navorski was an older gentleman with glasses and a mustache. Benny went to him for a few weeks before bringing up the ghoul. It was hard to admit that you thought you had something following you that most children stop worrying about ‘round about the age of fourteen if not before. Benny was now nineteen and had long since graduated high school by then.
The session when something like this.
Benny: “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I need to have music on or I hear noises coming from my closet and they wake me up.”
Dr. Navorski: “And what do you think these noises are from?”
Benny: “Well a Ghoul that has been following me since I was a kid.”
Dr. Navorski: “When did you start hearing this ghoul?”
Benny: “When I was eight and I used to run around the headstones in the cemetery for fun.”
Dr. Navorski: “Did you feel guilty about running and playing in a place of grief and mourning? Disturbing the dead so to speak?”
Benny: “Well no, I was a kid and didn’t care as long as I was having fun and using up that extra kid energy. You know?”
Dr. Navorski: “Well there you have it. You were feeling guilty underneath your happy exterior and this is the way you have dealt with it all these years. Give yourself the permission to have once been a thoughtless child and your ghoul will go away. You are as sane as anyone walking the streets. You are just having a little trouble letting go of a childhood fantasy. But now that you know where it is coming from you won’t be needing it any longer and it will go away.”
Benny told the shrink that fantasies were nice things and the ghoul was definitely not nice. He didn’t go back for any follow up sessions.
The Ghoul was not a good house guest. It made his closet smell offal. He couldn’t keep his clothing in there. As a kid he had a free standing wardrobe and a dresser for his clothing and a shelf for his books and games. There was also a toy box for his toys. Nothing but broken, unused and outgrown items ever went into the closet. The ghoul made noises at times and also left things in the closet himself, the smelliest of these Benny buried in the small back yard at night.
The ghoul complained a lot about being so far from the cemetery, any cemetery, once Benny moved from home. Benny did tell the Ghoul he could always move out, but the Ghoul chose to stay.
Finally Benny couldn’t stand it any longer and he moved to an apartment house just across the street from the largest cemetery he could find in the area, only to find out that it was also one of the oldest so there was rarely any new meat. The ghoul was not happy about that at all. Benny started to collect road kill and bring it home for the ghoul.
He would stop at the side of the road whenever he saw a dead animal there. Benny kept some rubber gloves, a shovel, some plastic bags and a great big plastic storage box in the trunk of his car. His friends thought he was a bit goofy but liked the fact that he was so civic minded and felt that if someone had to do clean up of that kind of thing it should be someone with a iron nose like Benny with his foot problem.
The Ghoul didn’t exactly like the road kill and was picky about the condition of the carcass’. If they were too fresh he would throw them back out into Benny’s bed room and make a mess of the carpet. The meat had to have an odor of rot to it for the ghoul to even consider eating it.
All this time Benny wasn’t worried that the ghoul would want to eat him because Benny wasn’t dead. But despite it all, Benny had a fairly normal life. He dated, had friends, and liked to go hunting and camping. Mostly he liked camping because the ghoul generally stayed at home. Benny was moving on with his life.
And then there was Julia. Julia liked everything Benny thought a good girlfriend should like. She could drink beer with the best of them. She had four older brothers and they had taught her everything from burping the alphabet to car maintenance. They had met at one of the hunting trips he went on with his friends to get more meat to leave to rot for his closet guest and it was love at first sight. And what a sight. Julia was one good looking woman.
One night Benny opened the closet after knocking on the door and had a talk with the ghoul. Benny wanted to marry his girlfriend Julia and he needed some answers. Would the ghoul stay hidden when his new wife was in the room? No, came the answer. At first Benny was dismayed. He didn’t want her to be frightened by the ghoul. Then it turned into elation. Someone else would know about the ghoul and it wouldn’t be his secret to carry all by himself any longer.
When he told Julia about the ghoul she got all soft and smiled like his mother had so long ago when he told her about the ghoul. Julia thought it was something from Benny’s imagination like his mother and the psychiatrist. That or a strange excuse for the smell of his old shoes in the closet and she thought she could live with foot fungus. The store isles were full of no end of deodorizers and medications for just such things.
But the ghoul was real and since she had already agreed to marry him anyway, Benny was sure she would soon find out that fact for herself. He only hoped she would still want to stay married to him once she met the ghoul.
On the night they came home from their honeymoon Julia thanked Benny for having the closet in the bedroom cleared out for her and she proceeded to fill it with her belongings. He tried to talk to her about the ghoul but she just pushed him out of the room telling him to let her take care of a few things in peace.
Benny was nervous by the time he heard Julia call his name in that way he knew meant she was ready for some fun. And for the first time in the week since they were married he didn’t feel like answering her call. Benny got up and walked to the bedroom wondering just how long it would be before the ghoul showed up.
Things went better then Benny had expected. The ghoul hadn’t bothered them thou the smell in the closet made Julia move her clothing to the new larger freestanding wardrobe he had gotten for her. Every morning she would spray a new product into the ghoul’s closet just before she left for work and Benny would leave a half an hour later with the ghoul cursing loud and long from behind it’s door.
After a few weeks of trying to get rid of the smell herself she called in a professional cleaning team. One whiff of the smell coming from the ghoul’s closet had them calling in the authorities. After a thorough search including tearing open the walls of the closet itself, nothing was found. But they were keeping an eye on Benny in case he was involved in something they didn’t know about.
Julia was sure that if they just moved they could leave the smell behind. Benny tried to explain again but the closest he came was in having her believe that he had a smelly cheese loving ghost following him around. They moved and the smell moved with them. She wanted to try an exorcism. Benny finally relented, but after the priest left and the smell didn’t Julia was so upset she was ready to leave Benny and the foul smell that followed him. She begged him to stop bringing home the road kill because she thought it just might be adding to the odor in the closet.
Benny showered her with gifts and told her they would buy a house so large that she would never have to go near or smell the ghoul again. All she needed to do was wait until the right house could be found and they would start the search right away. He went to the computer and started looking for a large house close to a fairly new cemetery and Benny found that another newer cemetery had opened up close to a large old Victorian house on a hill in an older section of town. This new cemetery had once been the side gardens of the house.
Benny had been storing all the gold jewelry the ghoul had been leaving behind in the closet. He had just enough to buy the place outright. The price had been lowered because of the amount of repair the old house needed.
It was a longer commute to work, but worth it. Julia was happier in the new house as they fixed it up together by themselves and a baby was coming along in the spring. The ghoul happily resided in an attic room of it’s own. It didn’t like the smell of sweet soft baby products coming from the small bedroom off the master suite anyway.
One night Benny found the Ghoul in their bedroom and sniffing around Julia’s side of the bed. Benny told the Ghoul to go back to it’s own room. The next day that Julia had a doctor appointment they found out she had lost the baby. Benny should have guess.
A month after Julia came home from the hospital Benny had gone up to the ghouls attic room to see how the ghoul was doing. He kind of missed the Ghoul after always being there after so many years. The Ghoul was telling Benny what he had been up to since the baby died and they had last spoke. That was when Benny learned that the ghoul had feasted on his own son in the cemetery.
Benny couldn’t believe it. The ghoul he had come to think of as almost a brother had eaten his child. Benny only saw red and just lost it attacking the Ghoul with his bare hands. Being one of the undead the Ghoul didn’t die but he did killed Benny by pushing him out the fourth floor window and Julia too because she had tried to come to Benny’s aid after hearing the noise up in the attic were Benny had gone.
The police never did find the killer of the new couple living in the big old house up by cemetery hill but they never stopped trying because they could never get the picture or smell out of their heads of the two half eaten bodies found in the house a few weeks after they went missing. And no one could ever live in the house again because of the smell. But the Ghoul didn’t seem to mind. He now had the house to himself.
9-12-08 re-write 1-18-09
Benny had a problem. Not a common problem and certainly not the kind of problem he was going to try to get much help with. He had learned when he was small that no one believed him about this conundrum. Benny had a Ghoul in his closet.
When Benny was small there was no Ghoul. The family lived in a house with no yard to speak of down the street from the cemetery and when Benny went outside playing he would run very fast around the grave stones in a kind of race with himself to see how fast he could run.
One day when Benny was about eight he tripped and skinned his knee on a low stone in the cemetery and bled all the way home. He didn’t run for a few days because his knee hurt, but by the time he was ready to run again something smelly had moved into his closet.
At first he thought it might just have been a ghost from the cemetery that had followed him home and that it liked to frighten him. It looked rather nasty but Benny called him a ghoul because this ghoul told him that he ate the rotting flesh of the dead. And then there was the foul odor of something rotting that always seemed to be coming from the thing. He found the definition in the large old dictionary in the bookcase by the stairs when he was ten. Benny’s mother thought the smell was Benny’s old shoes because his father had a foot odor problem.
Once, when Benny was feeling a bit brave, round about the age of eleven, he asked the ghoul what it’s name was? The ghoul didn’t seem to understand the question and Benny wasn’t feeling brave enough to take the time to explain. So Benny never did have a name to call him, he just called him Ghoul.
At thirteen Benny poured a bottle of his mothers best perfume into the closet to try to stink the ghoul out but the Ghoul stayed. Benny had to stay in his room for a month and the kids at school teased him something fierce for smelling like a very stinky girl.
Benny had hoped that when he was old enough to move out of his parent’s house he would leave the ghoul behind. But soon after he had his own apartment, the ghoul was in the new closet again. Since no one else seemed to be able to see the ghoul or rather the ghoul didn’t show itself when any one else was there, Benny had himself checked out for being nuts.
Dr. Navorski was an older gentleman with glasses and a mustache. Benny went to him for a few weeks before bringing up the ghoul. It was hard to admit that you thought you had something following you that most children stop worrying about ‘round about the age of fourteen if not before. Benny was now nineteen and had long since graduated high school by then.
The session when something like this.
Benny: “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I need to have music on or I hear noises coming from my closet and they wake me up.”
Dr. Navorski: “And what do you think these noises are from?”
Benny: “Well a Ghoul that has been following me since I was a kid.”
Dr. Navorski: “When did you start hearing this ghoul?”
Benny: “When I was eight and I used to run around the headstones in the cemetery for fun.”
Dr. Navorski: “Did you feel guilty about running and playing in a place of grief and mourning? Disturbing the dead so to speak?”
Benny: “Well no, I was a kid and didn’t care as long as I was having fun and using up that extra kid energy. You know?”
Dr. Navorski: “Well there you have it. You were feeling guilty underneath your happy exterior and this is the way you have dealt with it all these years. Give yourself the permission to have once been a thoughtless child and your ghoul will go away. You are as sane as anyone walking the streets. You are just having a little trouble letting go of a childhood fantasy. But now that you know where it is coming from you won’t be needing it any longer and it will go away.”
Benny told the shrink that fantasies were nice things and the ghoul was definitely not nice. He didn’t go back for any follow up sessions.
The Ghoul was not a good house guest. It made his closet smell offal. He couldn’t keep his clothing in there. As a kid he had a free standing wardrobe and a dresser for his clothing and a shelf for his books and games. There was also a toy box for his toys. Nothing but broken, unused and outgrown items ever went into the closet. The ghoul made noises at times and also left things in the closet himself, the smelliest of these Benny buried in the small back yard at night.
The ghoul complained a lot about being so far from the cemetery, any cemetery, once Benny moved from home. Benny did tell the Ghoul he could always move out, but the Ghoul chose to stay.
Finally Benny couldn’t stand it any longer and he moved to an apartment house just across the street from the largest cemetery he could find in the area, only to find out that it was also one of the oldest so there was rarely any new meat. The ghoul was not happy about that at all. Benny started to collect road kill and bring it home for the ghoul.
He would stop at the side of the road whenever he saw a dead animal there. Benny kept some rubber gloves, a shovel, some plastic bags and a great big plastic storage box in the trunk of his car. His friends thought he was a bit goofy but liked the fact that he was so civic minded and felt that if someone had to do clean up of that kind of thing it should be someone with a iron nose like Benny with his foot problem.
The Ghoul didn’t exactly like the road kill and was picky about the condition of the carcass’. If they were too fresh he would throw them back out into Benny’s bed room and make a mess of the carpet. The meat had to have an odor of rot to it for the ghoul to even consider eating it.
All this time Benny wasn’t worried that the ghoul would want to eat him because Benny wasn’t dead. But despite it all, Benny had a fairly normal life. He dated, had friends, and liked to go hunting and camping. Mostly he liked camping because the ghoul generally stayed at home. Benny was moving on with his life.
And then there was Julia. Julia liked everything Benny thought a good girlfriend should like. She could drink beer with the best of them. She had four older brothers and they had taught her everything from burping the alphabet to car maintenance. They had met at one of the hunting trips he went on with his friends to get more meat to leave to rot for his closet guest and it was love at first sight. And what a sight. Julia was one good looking woman.
One night Benny opened the closet after knocking on the door and had a talk with the ghoul. Benny wanted to marry his girlfriend Julia and he needed some answers. Would the ghoul stay hidden when his new wife was in the room? No, came the answer. At first Benny was dismayed. He didn’t want her to be frightened by the ghoul. Then it turned into elation. Someone else would know about the ghoul and it wouldn’t be his secret to carry all by himself any longer.
When he told Julia about the ghoul she got all soft and smiled like his mother had so long ago when he told her about the ghoul. Julia thought it was something from Benny’s imagination like his mother and the psychiatrist. That or a strange excuse for the smell of his old shoes in the closet and she thought she could live with foot fungus. The store isles were full of no end of deodorizers and medications for just such things.
But the ghoul was real and since she had already agreed to marry him anyway, Benny was sure she would soon find out that fact for herself. He only hoped she would still want to stay married to him once she met the ghoul.
On the night they came home from their honeymoon Julia thanked Benny for having the closet in the bedroom cleared out for her and she proceeded to fill it with her belongings. He tried to talk to her about the ghoul but she just pushed him out of the room telling him to let her take care of a few things in peace.
Benny was nervous by the time he heard Julia call his name in that way he knew meant she was ready for some fun. And for the first time in the week since they were married he didn’t feel like answering her call. Benny got up and walked to the bedroom wondering just how long it would be before the ghoul showed up.
Things went better then Benny had expected. The ghoul hadn’t bothered them thou the smell in the closet made Julia move her clothing to the new larger freestanding wardrobe he had gotten for her. Every morning she would spray a new product into the ghoul’s closet just before she left for work and Benny would leave a half an hour later with the ghoul cursing loud and long from behind it’s door.
After a few weeks of trying to get rid of the smell herself she called in a professional cleaning team. One whiff of the smell coming from the ghoul’s closet had them calling in the authorities. After a thorough search including tearing open the walls of the closet itself, nothing was found. But they were keeping an eye on Benny in case he was involved in something they didn’t know about.
Julia was sure that if they just moved they could leave the smell behind. Benny tried to explain again but the closest he came was in having her believe that he had a smelly cheese loving ghost following him around. They moved and the smell moved with them. She wanted to try an exorcism. Benny finally relented, but after the priest left and the smell didn’t Julia was so upset she was ready to leave Benny and the foul smell that followed him. She begged him to stop bringing home the road kill because she thought it just might be adding to the odor in the closet.
Benny showered her with gifts and told her they would buy a house so large that she would never have to go near or smell the ghoul again. All she needed to do was wait until the right house could be found and they would start the search right away. He went to the computer and started looking for a large house close to a fairly new cemetery and Benny found that another newer cemetery had opened up close to a large old Victorian house on a hill in an older section of town. This new cemetery had once been the side gardens of the house.
Benny had been storing all the gold jewelry the ghoul had been leaving behind in the closet. He had just enough to buy the place outright. The price had been lowered because of the amount of repair the old house needed.
It was a longer commute to work, but worth it. Julia was happier in the new house as they fixed it up together by themselves and a baby was coming along in the spring. The ghoul happily resided in an attic room of it’s own. It didn’t like the smell of sweet soft baby products coming from the small bedroom off the master suite anyway.
One night Benny found the Ghoul in their bedroom and sniffing around Julia’s side of the bed. Benny told the Ghoul to go back to it’s own room. The next day that Julia had a doctor appointment they found out she had lost the baby. Benny should have guess.
A month after Julia came home from the hospital Benny had gone up to the ghouls attic room to see how the ghoul was doing. He kind of missed the Ghoul after always being there after so many years. The Ghoul was telling Benny what he had been up to since the baby died and they had last spoke. That was when Benny learned that the ghoul had feasted on his own son in the cemetery.
Benny couldn’t believe it. The ghoul he had come to think of as almost a brother had eaten his child. Benny only saw red and just lost it attacking the Ghoul with his bare hands. Being one of the undead the Ghoul didn’t die but he did killed Benny by pushing him out the fourth floor window and Julia too because she had tried to come to Benny’s aid after hearing the noise up in the attic were Benny had gone.
The police never did find the killer of the new couple living in the big old house up by cemetery hill but they never stopped trying because they could never get the picture or smell out of their heads of the two half eaten bodies found in the house a few weeks after they went missing. And no one could ever live in the house again because of the smell. But the Ghoul didn’t seem to mind. He now had the house to himself.
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