The Devil, the Grim Reaper, and a Ghost

by Sean M. Hogan

  Grace Ashcraft, a unique combination of beauty, elegance, and purity, sat at the head of the living room table. Her purple long-sleeved turtleneck sweater rested tightly against her skin. Her slender face strained with desperation. All to hold back what her brown eyes were screaming out in deafening levels: sadness, overwhelming sadness.

  “Please,” Grace said in an almost pleading tone. “We need to talk. Have a seat.”

  Sharon stepped forward but didn’t pull out the chair to sit down. Instead, she just gripped the top of the chair and squeezed the way a flogging victim bites down on a piece of wood. There was a small stack of books next to Grace on the table. Sharon read the spines. They were all parenting books. Books for the troubled teen, for the teenage mind and soul. New aged psychobabble nonsense books talking about positive emotional energies and spiritual cores. Books written by morons for the naive, thought Sharon. Books written for desperate delusional people like my mother.

  “It’s okay, I’m not going to yell,” said Grace, with a quality of softness in her voice.

  Sharon tightened her fists. “I don’t know, Mom. Maybe we should yell. Yell, scream, and fight. I mean, isn’t that what normal families do? It’s better than just pretending everything’s okay, right?”

  Grace shook her head. “You think fighting is going to solve anything? Did you think hitting one of your classmates would make things any better?”

  “No, maybe not,” Sharon fired back. “But at least I don’t run away from my problems.”

  Grace placed her glasses down and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This was supposed to be a fresh start for both of us. Moving was supposed to be a good thing.”

  “How was leaving everything and everyone I cared about a good thing?”

  “We just have to give it some time. They’ll warm up to you, I promise.” Grace reached out to touch Sharon’s hand. “These things just need time.”

  Sharon stepped back and folded her arms, avoiding her mother’s touch. “You never listen.”

  “I’m just trying to do my best here, Sharon. Some parents don’t even—” Grace stopped herself.

  “Don’t even what Mom? Care? Go on. Say it. Say his name.”

  “Sharon, you know your father still loves you.”

  “Love? I swear to god, if ignorance is bliss then denial must be a freaking orgasm. He ran out on us, Mom. The word ‘deadbeat’ comes to mind.”

  “That’s enough Sharon!”

  “Why, because he might hear us? He’d have to actually be here for that. Wake up. You don’t just decide one day to pack up and leave your family. That’s not something you do out of love. Why can’t you see that? Why are you so blind?”

  “Sharon, I know you’re angry but—”

  Sharon cut her off in a burst of rage. “Angry? I’m furious!” She slammed her fist onto the counter that divided the living room and kitchen. A basket of fruit tumbled to the floor, apples and oranges spilling out and scattering. A picture frame crashed and its glass cover shattered. Tiny shards of glass sprinkled over the tiles like snowflakes. Sharon stormed off toward the stairs. When she got midway up the stairs, she glanced back at her mother. “Why aren’t you?”

  The question hung in the silent air.

  Grace stood to speak, to scold her daughter for making a mess and leaving it, but nothing came out. She just averted her eyes.

  Sharon went into her room, slamming her door with a thunderous boom.

  Grace grimaced as the force rattled her. She stood for a quiet moment before pulling out the dustpan and broom from the closet and gathering the glass shards with care, sweeping them into the dustpan. She came to the picture frame, picked it up, and stared at the picture behind a spider’s web spiral of cracked glass. A photo of Sharon as a child in a yellow-flowered blue dress. Five-years-old and smiling with all the unbridled joy of a rainbow hanging in a virgin blue sky.

  ***

  Silhouetted in the warm glow of morning sunlight, a magnificent blue butterfly stretched out its elegant wings as if it were yawning. Two large blue eyes descended on the butterfly. They widened with wonder and dilated with amazement. Five-year-old Sharon slid her tiny hands underneath the butterfly. The small winged insect crawled into her palms, tickling her skin with its spiraling feeding tube. She folded her fingers around her catch, imprisoning it in her hands and lifting it off the blueberry bush. She scurried off with a spring in her feet.

  A man in a long black coat sat on the park bench, watching the children build castles and skyscrapers in the sand, his face hidden in the blinding glare of sunlight. He turned his head to Sharon as she ran to him and parted her hands to present her prize.

  “Look, Daddy,” she said with a smile, squinting her eyes from the bright sun as she gazed up at her father. “I caught one.”

  “I can’t look, Sharon,” he said. “Grown-ups can’t see them. Only children.”

  Sharon looked down at the butterfly then back up at her father, confusion written all over her face. “Why’s that?”

  “Because they’re scared of us. Because we think bad thoughts.”

  Her face lit up with excitement. “They can read minds?”

  “Of course, our thoughts and emotions are made up of energy just like everything else.”

  Sharon could make out a slight grin on his face.

  “Each energy has its own color so it’s easy for them to see which type you’re giving off.” Her father reached down into his shirt and slid out his necklace. Two glowing crystals dangled from the silver chain. One red and one blue, each encased in a silver cross. He held them out for her, their sparkling light reflecting off her face and cheeks like the glare of a grinning jack o’ lantern. “Positive energies come in shades of blue, like the sky or the ocean.” He frowned as his fingers grazed the red encased crystal. “And negative energies burn bright red.” He dropped his necklace down his shirt and out-of-sight.

  “So why can’t I see them?” asked Sharon, her face drooping with disappointment.

  He smiled with all the warmth in his heart. “Close your eyes, Sharon.”

  Sharon closed her eyelids as hard as she could. She strained with all her might, as if she was climbing Mount Everest and had just looked down. It wasn’t long before she couldn’t help but peek, the temptation stronger than the willpower of a thousand little girls. So, her father turned her around until he was behind her and she faced outward, resting snuggly between his knees.

  He placed his hands over her eyes. “Clear your mind of all worries and doubt,” he whispered into her ear. “Focus on everything blue.”

  Sharon tried her best to concentrate.

  “The ocean...”

  Blue waves rose and crashed onto a golden pebbled beach in Sharon’s mind. The cries of seagulls overhead and the taste of salty air on her lips.

  “Blueberries...”

  She could now taste the sweet flavor of her favorite food, blueberry yogurt, on the tip of her tongue. It brought on an involuntary smile.

  “Blue flowers...”

  One of her most vivid memories came flooding in. She was in a flower nursery with a stained-glass ceiling overhead, images of angels and white doves painted above her. Hundreds of blue wildflowers surrounded her, engulfing her in their brilliant hue. The scent of moist, black soil mixed in with the fragrance of pollen carried on the breeze. Flowers of exotic shapes and designs blanketed the nursery: blue sage, bluebell, morning glory, bachelor’s button, and baby blue eyes.

  “Your mother’s blue dress.”

  Another memory bled in like ink spilling on paper. This one of her mother dancing with her father in the living room. Grace’s radiant blue dress swayed back and forth as she stepped in rhythm. His hands resting on her hips. Her hands wrapped around his neck and her cheek pressed against his chest. His chin nestled atop her head. Sharon watched them in her pajamas from the top of the stairs, peeking out between the posts. She added her own hum in place of the missing music.

  Her father removed his
hands from Sharon’s eyes. He leaned in, his lips to her ear, and whispered. “Now open your eyes.”

  Sharon did as he bid her, struggling not to blink as her pupils adjusted to the light. She squinted down at her hands and parted them like the blossoming of a rose. Her fingers peeled back to reveal a vibrant glow of blue. The light emanated with such a force it was as if Sharon had plucked a shooting star from the night sky and now the star slept in the heart of her palms while she waited to make her wish.

  Sharon’s eyes widened as she glimpsed something strange. There was movement. The light was alive. Her breath was stolen from her lungs. A small impish creature emerged, birthed from starlight, stretching out its tiny butterfly wings and gazing up at Sharon with bug eyes. It blinked at her before cracking a smile. Sharon smiled back at the fairy, her disbelief swallowed up by her delight.

  ***

  Sharon looked on with disdain at the blue teddy bear with fairy wings and black button eyes. Lying back against her pillow, she held it up to the light, examining its knitted yarn smile and heart-shaped nose. This furry creature had been the last gift her father had given her before he left. Without a word, without a note, without justification, without even a simple wave good-bye. Sharon tossed the stuffed animal to the floor. She had spent far more nights than she cared to remember squeezing the life out of that teddy bear, all teary-eyed and sobbing wet from crying for her father to return. He never did. That first Christmas without him had been the worst. All Christmas Eve she prayed and wished with every ounce of her heart. To God, to Santa, to anyone who was listening to show her mercy and grant her one and only desire—to bring her father home for Christmas. All she got was a stocking full of broken hearts. She had looked up to him. He had looked straight through her. He was her rock, her world entire. She was sand slipping between the cracks of his fingers, a speck in his ever expanding and indifferent universe. Sharon was seventeen now and no longer naive. There was no such thing as magic and fairies didn’t exist, except in little girls’ imaginations.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Sarah Herman said, her voice distorting over the live video chat feed on Sharon’s laptop. “A crow wanted you to follow it into some old creepy basement?” Sarah forked up a bite of lemon meringue pie from a slice sitting on a small white dish in the space between her crossed legs. “And you’re sure it wasn’t just trained? Some old perverted man’s way of luring naive little underage girls into his creepy pedophile dungeon?”

  Sharon couldn’t hold back her smile. “I know, Sarah, it sounds bizarre, another in a long laundry list of crap that keeps happening to me since I moved.” Sharon’s smile disappeared as her mind wandered off. Memories of that crow and its hypnotic ghost eyes raked through her thoughts. “It’s hard to describe the feeling when I looked into its eyes. As if I was being pulled into nothingness. And worse yet, I wanted to go. To fill it up.”

  “Uh-huh...” Sarah swallowed a mouthful of pie as she studied Sharon’s uneasy expression. After a moment of careful thought, she let a grin break free. “Wait, dost thou hear that rapping at your chamber door?” she said, tapping the camera lens on her laptop. “Perhaps it’s your new boyfriend come to pay a visit to your Plutonian shore, my little Miss Lenore. Quoth the raven give-me-some-more.”

  Sharon smirked. Sarah’s lame jokes never failed on Sharon no matter how bad they were. Maybe that’s why they were friends. Who else would laugh at Sarah’s weird stand-up? “Thanks for the poem, Poe, but my lover’s a crow not a raven.”

  Sarah shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

  “Ravens are intelligent scavengers that live in the woods. Crows rummage through dumpsters for leftover hamburgers,” Sharon corrected her.

  “Well, I think you should do it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Follow your feathered admirer into the basement. Why not? It could be fun. Imagine all the dark sinister secrets this old pervert could be hiding down there.”

  “Like what, laundry detergent?”

  “I don’t know...” Sarah grinned devilishly. “Maybe there’s the corpse of his dead wife buried down there.”

  The thought filled Sharon with unease. Not the prospect of finding dead bodies as much as the idea the crow might mean her harm. Strange, the thought hadn’t entered her mind until just then. Her encounter with the crow was fading like a dream, slowly slipping into the sea of distant memories. Each time her mind wandered to another subject, she lost a bit more. Soon returning would be all but impossible.

  “Can’t you hear her screams, Sharon?” Sarah raked her long punk-green nails, which matched her spiky blonde hair in attitude, across her keyboard. “Her scratches as she tries to claw through her coffin? Help me Sharon. Don’t leave me!”

  “Maybe I’m just imagining things.” Sharing her experience with the crow with Sarah was stupid in hindsight. Sarah couldn’t take her own funeral seriously.

  “Maybe you’re just scared.” Sarah hollered like a banshee.

  “Right... Or maybe I’m just crazy. My principal certainly thinks so. She even suggested therapy.”

  “You do have that habit of blacking out and waking up with someone else’s blood on your hands, now and then.” Sarah grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

  “Har, har.” Sharon fell back against her pillow. “My mother is the one who needs therapy.”

  Sarah frowned. “She still not past that first stage of grief?”

  “Not even close.” Sharon shifted her gaze over to her bedroom door. Mother should be asleep by now. Good. I don’t have to worry about her coming in for another talk. “She still thinks he’s gonna stroll in one day through the front door. As if we’d all go back to being one happy family, even if he did.”

  Sharon wished Sarah a goodnight and closed her laptop. She fell back against her pillow with a sigh. Some things, once broken, can never be put back together, even with the strongest glue.

  The day her father left, she lost much more than just a parent. She lost who she was supposed to be. No, he stole it from her. The girl she was. The woman she was meant to grow into. Her very identity robbed. Scientists have studied lab mice and how they raise their young, measured the success rates of mothered mice. Those cubs that were un-licked, uncared-for, and unloved turned into timid adults. Anxiety prone, weak, and sickly creatures that made less love and died short, sad lives. A life sentence spent cowering in the farthest corner of the cage. That was the fate he left her to. After he was gone she simply grew quiet, folded in on herself, and became adrift in an endless sea of terrible self-loathing thoughts.

  The reason why people throw things away is because they no longer hold any value. They become worthless and are soon discarded. “Why can’t you understand this, Mom?” she whispered silently to herself. “Why couldn’t you just accept the truth? We were trash in his eyes.”

  She curled up under the covers, too tired to form any more thoughts. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier until she finally drifted off.

  ***

  Sharon opened her eyes. The black button eyes of her blue teddy bear stared back. But the bear wasn’t back on her bed. The bear was floating, bobbing up and down at her eye level. Sharon shot up, mortified. Her room was filled with water. No. She looked around. She was no longer in her room. She was adrift at sea, her bed swaying with the currents of the oily black water. She grabbed the sides of her bed, holding on with a vice grip. At the foot of her bed, the oil bubbled. Two blood-red basement cellar doors rose to greet her. Sharon gazed back with the stillness and rising terror of a rabbit caught in a wolf’s stare. The doors swung open with a hurricane’s force, revealing pure darkness within.

  Sharon peered into the void, motionless, breathless.

  Without warning, the entire sea tilted to one side, letting gravity take over as the black water poured into the entrance. Sharon panicked, plunging her hands into the oil and paddling with desperation through the thick muck. A hopeless endeavor. Her bed swept with the racing flow into the void. Sharon flung her arms
over her face and screamed. She passed between the blood-red doors. Her scream muffled as the darkness devoured her.

  (Read the whole story here!)

  A Halloween Carol

  Sean M. Hogan

  Chapter One

  Private Collection

  Mr. Wilkins ran as fast as his hundred-dollar loafers could carry his 240-pound self. He should have listened to his wife Lenoir and gone on that diet and kept his New Year’s resolution. He would have been faster down those stairs, quicker on those hallway turns. Too bad he wasn’t, too bad Bobby was gaining.

  Bobby was far more menacing than your traditional things that go bump in the night. Most could be avoided if you followed the rules. Don’t fall asleep and Freddy can’t get you, don’t mess with Indian burial grounds or creepy summer camps and hockey masked psychos won’t bother you. Don’t go out on full moons, don’t get bitten, and definitely don’t feed it after midnight and you’ll make it out alive. Not so with Bobby, he didn’t have rules or limitations. If Bobby wants you he finds you, and Bobby’s good at finding things.

  The doorknob wouldn’t twist all the way; the door wouldn’t budge. So, Mr. Wilkins tried another and then another. All locked. School was out for the night. As Mr. Wilkins cursed his own misfortune he remembered something important. Bathrooms don’t have things like locks. He bolted into the girls’ bathroom and into the last stall. He shut the door, sat down, and waited. He waited and listened for Bobby.

  An eerie quiet filled that bathroom, the kind of quiet where there’s a buzzing noise in your ear and, for a moment, you’re not sure whether you’ve just gone deaf or not. Mr. Wilkins hoisted himself onto the toilet and crouched into as round a ball as he could manage. He pulled out his cell phone, flipped open the screen, and dialed the numbers 9-1-1. He placed the phone to his ear and whispered, “Please help me… someone’s… something’s after me.”

  “You’re a funny man, Mr. Wilkins,” said the voice on the other line. “What makes you think you can hide from Bobby?”