3 Ghosts of Our Fathers

by Michael Richan

  He was surprised to find an extended section from Roy’s grandfather, Charles. It read clearly to Steven, and he assumed this was because it dealt with something he’d been exposed to. Hoping it was something that might shed some light on his current situation he poured a cup of coffee and read.

  January 21 – Teresa has been terrified by Jenny Mae for several nights. I agreed to sit with her and examine the manifestation. She says JM appears every night just as she is trying to fall asleep. I will set up a chair in Teresa’s room and observe and see what I can do to help. Teresa looks as though she has not slept in many nights. She tells me she often succumbs to sudden and uncontrollable bouts of vomiting when the child appears. Something must be done. — Just as Teresa said, her head had not been on the pillow for more than a couple of minutes before the ghostly apparition of JM appeared. Since she was only three years old when she passed on, her spirit was about two feet tall, and it materialised, hovering in the air at the foot of Teresa’s bed, and it drifted up towards Teresa, who appeared terrified, pulling the bed covers up around her chin in fright. The floating child’s face was angry that Teresa wasn’t wanting to play, and it repeatedly flew at her with an angry scowl, Teresa cowering her head under the covers each time the child approached. The child worked into a frenzy and eventually let out a wail neighbors in the next county could have heard. Teresa screamed in response. This angered the child more. I rushed to Teresa’s side to comfort her and to see if my presence would calm her, since her reactions to the apparition were in my opinion the reason it was accelerating its haunting of her. The ghost child was drifting around the room and when it saw me next to Teresa it became angry again. It began to shake in place, as though it was being rapidly moved back and forth an inch each time, and I felt myself shaking too, in response. I suddenly felt very dizzy and disoriented, and was afraid I might throw up. I slipped into the River and had the impression that I was being physically dislocated. I observed my body and Teresa’s body shifting in small, unusual ways, just like the shaking of the ghost child. When I had the good sense to look at my wristwatch, it all came clear to me. The hands of the watch were rapidly moving backwards and forwards. One moment it would read two seconds later, the next several seconds prior. In its anger the ghost child was whipping us backwards and forwards in time, and it was making both Teresa and myself ill, as our mortal minds were not able to handle anything other than the passing of normal sequential time. I could see the child knew this would be the result of its attack upon us. The sicker Teresa became, the more it smiled and giggled. It liked that it could punish her for not playing with her and doing as it wanted. I stood and banished it from the room, but it took several tries before it would leave, and by this time Teresa was violently ill indeed.

  January 22 – I gave Teresa a potion just before bedtime that I believe will help alleviate the attacks of the ghost child. Tonight I watched as the child appeared, became angry, and began to shake once again, but Teresa was fine and after a while the child gave up and faded away. I told Teresa we would try again the next day.

  January 23 – Again Teresa drank the medicine I provided her and once again as the ghost appeared and tried to whip her back and forth in time it came to naught. Teresa laid back down in bed and attempted to go back to sleep even before JM had disappeared from the room. I believe so long as she takes the precautions I have provided to her, she will be able to get to sleep and stay asleep regardless of what the ghost in her bedroom attempts. She promised me she would continue with the potion, and I agreed to check on her in a week.

  January 29 – All is well, JM has given up attempting to haunt Teresa any longer now that Teresa cannot be made ill and the child’s vengeance is denied. I will continue supplying Teresa with potion for another month, and after that time, provided JM doesn’t appear, she can try forgoing the medicine and see if a new pattern has been developed, hopefully one in which JM doesn’t appear at all.

  Below this last entry Charles had drawn an image of the ghost child floating at the foot of the bed of a young woman. Seeing its little feet dangling in the air gave Steven a chill. I hope I never run into such a thing, he thought.

  The concept of time being used as a weapon was new to him. Charles must have had a recipe for a time-based protection, like the stuff Daniel gave me, he thought. He wondered if the recipe was in the book, or if it had been passed down to David and Roy. Perhaps Roy’s protection incorporates it?

  Steven turned the page and kept scanning for more passages that he could interpret. Of all his progenitors, Charles seemed to have the most time-related entries. Just as he found a section on time binding, his phone rang. It was Daniel.

  “Steven, I’m sorry to call,” Daniel said. He sounded worried.

  “Sure, are you in trouble?”

  “Kind of,” Daniel replied. “I’ve broken down just outside of Ellensburg. My car isn’t the most reliable thing but I thought it would make it. Apparently not. I’ve got a truck coming but the best they’ll do is tow me to Ellensburg.”

  “I’m on my way,” Steven said. “See you in a couple of hours.”

  Steven left the book and poured the rest of the pot of coffee into a travel mug. Then he locked up Roy’s house, got in his car, and headed east on I-90 as fast as he could go.

  -

  Steven found Daniel at an auto repair shop in Ellensburg. The car would be finished by the end of the day. They decided to return to Spokane in the meantime so Daniel could finish analyzing the piece of the glass man collected by the knife. Steven would drop Daniel off to pick up his car in Ellensburg on his return drive home.

  Steven told Daniel about the passages he’d found in Roy’s book as they drove to Spokane.

  “I was wondering, since Charles had a protection with some kind of time element in it, perhaps it’s been worked into the stuff that Roy uses all the time?” Steven asked.

  “Very possibly,” Daniel replied. “There’s a lot going on in your father’s juice, let me tell you. It could very well have some time stuff already in it. I don’t know how Roy feels about sharing the family information, but if Charles had a lot of time experiences I would love to read through them. There aren’t a lot of works on the subject and I’ve exhausted all the ones I have; it’d be like fresh blood to me.”

  “Well, I suppose I could ask him,” Steven said. “When he’s back.”

  They talked more about the book and Daniel’s take on time bindings before the subject seemed worn out and silence filled the car.

  “So,” Steven said, struggling to keep the conversation going, “you know Eliza?”

  “Yes,” Daniel replied.

  “How long have you known her?”

  “Almost twenty years.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” Steven said, “the River is all new to me; did you two meet because of that? Do you guys have conventions or something?”

  “No,” Daniel replied, “we met in a chat room, online. I think our mutual interests sparked things, but there was an attraction there for sure.”

  “Oh, you two were a thing?” Steven asked.

  “For a while,” Daniel said. “Troy’s my son.”

  Whoa, Steven thought.

  “Eliza didn’t tell you?” Daniel asked. “From the look on your face, I’m guessing she didn’t.”

  “No, she didn’t,” Steven answered. So what? Steven thought. It doesn’t matter. Don’t overreact.

  “You know how you can really like someone,” Daniel said, “but could never live with them? That’s me and Eliza.”

  “So you really like her?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Daniel said. “She’s immediately likeable. Everybody loves her. I just couldn’t live with her. And we haven’t had a ‘thing’ for many years now. We’re friends. More like professional acquaintances than anything. She has a lot of those.”

  “And Troy?” Steven asked.

  “I don’t understand that part,” Daniel said. “I offered child support, I offered to st
ick around and be his dad, but she didn’t want any of that. She wanted to raise him entirely on her own without my involvement. I wasn’t too happy with that arrangement at first, but she insisted. I decided to honor her requests and stay out of his life. I’ve only met him once. That was a hard day, let me tell you.”

  “I’ll bet,” Steven said. He thought about his son, Jason, and couldn’t imagine not being involved with him. But then, Jason was at college and was busy with school and friends. He didn’t see him very often, which seemed like the right thing to do, to let him live his own life without a lot of interference. Hell, he’d been pretty distant from Roy up until this year, when Roy stepped in to help him. In reality he hadn’t been all that close with his own father in the past, or even with his son now. Best not to judge, he thought.

  Once they reached Daniel’s house in Spokane, Daniel set about analyzing the sample he had stored in the box. He placed it in a much larger wooden box, about the size of an old 27” television. After several minutes he began to see the symbols he was looking for.

  “Far more complex,” Daniel said, interpreting the symbols. “But we’re getting there. Can you write this down, Steven, while I dictate? It will be easier.”

  “Sure,” Steven said, sitting at a small desk and arranging some paper for him to record Daniel’s comments.

  “His name is…Frank Wilmon…” Daniel said, spelling the last name. “He’s been trapped since…1933.”

  “Eighty years!” Steven said under his breath.

  “He died in 1974,” Daniel continued. “The cage was constructed by…”

  Daniel paused.

  “…Sean and Garth Wilmon, his sons, ages seven and five at the time.” Daniel turned to look at Steven. They both seemed surprised.

  “That wasn’t what I was expecting,” Daniel said.

  “Me either,” Steven replied. “Is there more?”

  “Yes,” Daniel said, returning to the symbols. “Sean passed away. But Garth is still alive.”

  “Does it say where he is?” Steven asked.

  “No,” Daniel replied, “but you can usually find that out in other ways, like the internet.”

  “Can I use this computer, here?” Steven asked, referring to the computer sitting next to him on the desk.

  “Sure,” Daniel said. He returned to the symbols, looking for more information.

  Steven began searching for Garth Wilmon. It didn’t take long to locate a phone number which had a 360 area code.

  “Found it,” Steven said, “looks like the Olympia area. I’m going to give it a call.”

  Daniel didn’t respond, immersed in reading more symbols.

  Steven dialed the number. “This is Tall Pines, how may I direct your call?”

  Steven paused. Tall Pines? Was it a hotel? “Can you connect me to Garth Wilmon?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilmon isn’t in his room right now. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Sure, but before I do, can you tell me what Tall Pines is? Are you a hotel?”

  “We’re an assisted living care facility, sir,” came the voice on the phone.

  Ah, of course, Steven thought. “What are your visiting hours?”

  “Anytime between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., every day.”

  “Yes, would you leave Mr. Wilmon a message?” Steven asked. “Tell him that Mr. Hall needs to meet with him, and I’ll be there tomorrow morning first thing.”

  “Can I tell him what it’s regarding?”

  Steven thought. “Yes, tell him it’s regarding Frank.”

  “OK, I’ll leave this message for him.”

  “Thank you,” Steven said, hanging up.

  Steven turned to Daniel, who was focused on the readout once again. “There’s no way I’ll make it to Olympia before 10 p.m. tonight when they stop visiting hours,” he told him.

  Daniel looked up. “Your dad’s protection is off the charts. It has more variants than any I’ve ever seen, and at the same time it’s the most pure I’ve ever seen. Impressive.”

  “Variants?” Steven asked.

  “Different elements of the recipe that protect against specific things. The most common protection is a generic protect-all kind of mixture. People who know what they’re doing can add variants that make the protection strong in specific areas, like the one I gave you; it has time protection variants. Your dad’s protection — it has dozens of variants, some I’ve never seen before.”

  Steven didn’t know exactly what to make of this information, but he felt a little pride well up in him. Roy had always been just a father, and a distant one at that. Learning that Roy had the gift had distinguished him in Steven’s eyes and over the course of the past year Steven had learned that his father knew far more than he could ever imagine. But to hear that he was distinguished even within these esoteric circles surprised him.

  “You’ve had it, I presume?” Daniel asked.

  “Several times,” Steven answered. “When he and I were working on a few problems.”

  “If he ever decides to market that stuff,” Daniel said, “he’ll make a fortune. I could spend the next ten years trying to duplicate it and wouldn’t get close.”

  “I’ll tell him that,” Steven said, wondering which day Roy had said he planned on returning from his boat trip with Dixon.

  Daniel’s phone rang and he stepped into another room to answer it. Steven took the opportunity to look around Daniel’s workshop a little more. It reminded him of Eliza’s but without the feminine touches. There was no comfortable sitting area, just tables loaded with projects and devices. Along one wall there were bookcases with objects placed on them about a foot apart from each other. They seemed to be on display rather than for use.

  Daniel returned from the other room. “That was the auto place in Ellensburg. The car’s done. Oh, I see you’ve found the unknowns.”

  “I thought you might call them the antiques, but based on the condition of some of them I was wondering if they were just art,” Steven said.

  “The term ‘antique’ doesn’t mean much in my world,” Daniel said. “Those are the devices that I haven’t figured out yet. Some of them I’ve had for years. I may never figure them out. But every now and again I come across something that unlocks what one of them does, and then I’m glad I kept it.”

  Steven surveyed the contraptions. They seemed like odd pieces of junk, without any value or technological elements. One even looked like an old rusty can.

  “Jump in,” Daniel said. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  Steven entered the flow and the objects transformed. The rusty can looked like a round ball with deep etchings. Several of the objects had a light yellow hue to them. The hue pulsed on a few of them. He slipped back out of the River, feeling the slight stab of pain in the back of his neck.

  “Wow,” Steven said, turning to Daniel. “You’ve just collected them over the years?”

  “Some I came across, a couple I bought and some were gifts,” he said. “When people know you collect a certain thing, they feel compelled to give you more of that thing for your birthday or Christmas. I’ve got boxes of the duplicative crap I’ve been given by well-meaning friends. My work and collection is more specialized now, and most of these objects on the shelves are rare.”

  “If I ever decide to give you a gift,” Steven said, “it will be a CD or something. No time objects.”

  “Thank you,” Daniel said. “Unless, of course, you want to give me some really cool and rare time object. Please don’t hesitate in that case.”

  “How would I know if it was cool or rare?” Steven asked. “I’m guessing you can’t determine the value of these items on the internet?”

  “Ah, giving gifts to collectors is a bitch, isn’t it? A CD will be fine.”

  Chapter Four

  Steven drove back to Seattle, dropping Daniel in Ellensburg to retrieve his car. On the way, Steven quizzed Daniel more about the time objects and their capabilities. Daniel had some interesting stories to
tell and the two hour drive went quickly.

  As they pulled into Ellensburg, Daniel turned to Steven.

  “Do you mind if I tag along?” he asked. “On your visit to Olympia?”

  “No, I wouldn’t mind at all,” Steven replied. “You’ve been extremely helpful so far. It would be nice to have you along.”

  “I have to admit I’m intrigued,” Daniel said. “I’d like to hear what he has to say.”

  “Sure, you can stay at my place tonight,” Steven said, “and we’ll drive to Olympia first thing in the morning. Should we just continue on and I’ll bring you back out to get your car?”

  “Oh no,” Daniel said, “that’s way out of your way. I’ll pick my car up now and follow you. That way you won’t have to drive back out here.”

  Steven drove Daniel to the auto repair shop and dropped him off. Soon they were back on the interstate, convoying to Seattle.

  As he drove, observing Daniel’s car in the rear view mirror, Steven was grateful Daniel was available and willing to help. He felt a little lost without Roy around. He’d come to rely on his father far more than he realized. What a change, he thought. I hardly ever see him for most of my life, now I miss the bugger when he’s gone for a week.

  He tried to remember what day Roy said he’d be back. He said he’d be gone a week, Steven thought. It’s been about that. Maybe he’s back today?

  Certainly Roy would have a perspective on this. Roy always had a perspective. He could be cranky and crass, but his heart was in the right place and he’d been there to help Steven when he needed him most. Steven had come to rely on him.