3 Ghosts of Our Fathers

by Michael Richan

  “Then how did she…” The light bulb turned on for Steven. “Oh. I see.”

  “So she wigs out,” Steven said. “Because she thought she knew what it was.”

  Steven didn’t like where this was going. He wanted to be able to talk to Jason about the gift on his own terms, when he felt they were both ready. This felt like an outing, like he was being forced to either lie to his son or come clean about everything, and he wasn’t ready to do that.

  “What did she say about it?” Steven asked, stalling for time to think.

  Before Jason could respond, they heard Eliza calling from the hallway outside the door.

  “Steven! Come quickly!”

  Steven looked at Jason and gave him a “hold that thought” hand gesture, then he went to the door to open it and see what Eliza wanted. She wasn’t in the hallway, so he went to the living room. It was empty, but the front door to the house was wide open. He went out the door, Jason following him.

  “Eliza?” he called, walking down the front deck and onto the sidewalk. Eliza was chasing after Daniel and Roy, who were further down the block. He ran after them. Jason was not far behind.

  When he reached the three of them, he could tell something was wrong. Daniel was walking slowly and deliberately, his eyes fixed forward. Roy and Eliza were on either side of him, talking to him.

  “What’s wrong?” Steven asked.

  “No idea,” Roy said. “He got up and walked out the door.”

  “Daniel,” Eliza said, “what’s going on? Where are you going?”

  “I have no idea,” Daniel said. “I can’t stop my legs. I don’t have control of them.”

  Daniel kept walking. They were approaching an intersection, and Daniel wasn’t slowing, not caring about traffic. They surrounded him, trying to stop him.

  “Daniel, you’re walking into traffic,” Steven said. “We’re going to stop you.”

  “Please do,” he said. Steven reached out to grab him, but Daniel brushed off his hold.

  “I didn’t do that,” Daniel said, continuing to walk and now halfway through the intersection. They held their hands up to stop the cars that were coming. The cars slowed and let them pass.

  “Dad, what’s wrong with him?” Jason asked.

  “Not now, Jason,” Steven said.

  “Do you think it’s Sean?” Eliza asked. “Is it Sean controlling you, Daniel?”

  “I don’t know,” Daniel said. “Maybe. I can’t say. It’s the damndest thing. I’m so incredibly thirsty.”

  “If it was Sean,” Roy said, “I don’t think Daniel’s personality would be at the forefront like this.”

  “Maybe it’s Sean trying to gain control,” Steven offered, “and only succeeding half way.”

  “Why would Sean make him get up and walk?” Eliza said.

  “Maybe Sean is trying to figure out how to control him?” Steven said.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Jason asked.

  “Jason, please, not now,” Steven said.

  Daniel was crossing into the grassy area that sloped down to Lake Washington. He walked over a jogger’s trail and continued down the slope. In another minute he’d be at the lake’s edge.

  “If he tries to go into the water,” Steven said, “I say we all grab him and physically restrain him.”

  “Agreed,” Eliza said.

  They continued to surround him. Steven stood in front of him, facing him, but Daniel was not deterred and kept walking. Daniel looked at Steven. “I can’t stop it,” he said. As they got closer to the water, Daniel began to look scared.

  “Are you going to go into the water?” Steven asked, walking backwards. He was now a couple of yards from the water’s edge. He extended his arm and placed his hand on Daniel’s chest, pressing him back. Daniel met the resistance and pressed forward.

  “I don’t know,” he said. Tears were beginning to form around the edges of his eyes. “I don’t know. Help me, please.”

  When Daniel was about five feet from the water, he stopped. They all took a step back from him.

  Daniel slowly bent down and then fell forward, on his hands and knees. He moved a few more feet towards the water.

  “Get ready to grab him,” Steven said.

  Daniel stopped as his hands came within a foot of the water’s edge. His head started to shake.

  “What the fuck?” Jason said.

  “The River,” Roy said. “Quickly.”

  Eliza and Steven both jumped into the flow. Roy was already there.

  Steven saw the back of Daniel’s head split apart, and a translucent stalk about two inches in diameter began to grow out of it, rapidly. He could hear Daniel crying, gasping for air.

  What is happening to him? Eliza thought.

  I have no idea, Steven thought.

  As they watched, the stalk extended upward about two feet. A joint formed, and the stalk bent, growing rapidly towards the water. Within seconds it extended another four or five feet out from the joint. A bulb formed on the end of the stalk and grew, like a balloon filling with air. It popped, and dozens of smaller bulbs fell lightly out of it. They drifted down to the water, some moved by the air to spots several feet away. When they hit the water, Steven saw small fins emerge and they descended below the surface. Within a few more seconds they had all disappeared below the water.

  They exited the flow. Daniel was still on his hands and knees at the water’s edge. Eliza knelt down to feel his neck. There was no pulse.

  “Call an ambulance,” Steven said to Jason, knowing he’d have his cell phone on him. “Do it now.”

  Daniel remained frozen. Steven bent down to look at him. He was rigid and unmoving. His mouth was stretched open as though he’d been trying to scream, and his eyes were bulging out of his head. Steven turned away, holding his hand over his mouth.

  People walking the jogger’s trail had begun to stop. A couple had come over.

  “Is he all right?” a man asked, his wife with him.

  “We’ve called 911,” Roy said. “We think he might have had a seizure.”

  After a couple of minutes passed they could hear the siren in the distance. The medical crew turned him over onto his back and lowered his arms and legs. They worked with him for a few moments, but he didn’t recover. One of the medics told Eliza that he was dead.

  Things were going by in a blur. Steven was only catching pieces of what was happening, here and there. He watched as they carried the body bag on a stretcher back to the ambulance and placed him inside. Eliza was crying and Roy was holding her. Jason stood next to Steven, unsure if he should say anything.

  “What just happened, Dad?” Jason asked.

  “Honestly, son, I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “He had a seizure?”

  “That’s what they think.”

  “But you don’t think that, do you?”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “When he reached the water, all three of you knew something else was going on. I saw it on your faces. Right after Grandpa Roy said ‘the River.’”

  Steven realized the time had come, whether he wanted it to or not. It was here. He was going to have to tell Jason about the gift, and about him and Roy. It couldn’t be a worse time, with Daniel gone, Eliza upset, and Garth – they would have to let Garth know that Sean was probably gone now too. He wanted to get back to the house and find out from Roy and Eliza what their perspectives were on what they had just seen, but he couldn’t do that with Jason here, not until after he had a chance to introduce Jason to this world properly.

  Fuck it, he thought. Why fight it?

  “You’re about to jump right into the deep end of the pool,” Steven told him. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

  “I’d rather know than not,” Jason said.

  “Come on then,” Steven said. “Let’s go back to the house.”

  He led Jason, Roy, and a sobbing Eliza back up the embankment, past the onlookers, and up the street towards his h
ome.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They walked back to Steven’s house and fell into the chairs and sofas in the living room. They sat quietly for a while, Eliza stifling an occasional sob.

  “I’d like to know what’s happening,” Jason said. “I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

  Steven sighed. “I always planned on telling you,” he said, “but not like this. Still, here we are, so here goes. Your father and my father can enter a place called ‘the River’ when we want to. It’s a flow all around us that most people can’t see or access. You see things differently from within it.

  “What happened to Daniel,” Steven continued, “that we could see, that you couldn’t, was a long stalk emerging from his head. It extended over the water, and some kind of seeds emerged from it, falling into the water and then disappearing below the surface.”

  Jason’s mouth hung open.

  “I’m guessing that wasn’t what you were expecting to hear,” Steven said.

  “So this is how you’re going to dump it on him?” Roy said. “Like this?”

  “Wasn’t how I’d planned it,” Steven said, “but yes, like this. He wanted to know.”

  “Just because he wanted to know doesn’t mean you have to tell him.”

  “Frankly, Dad, I’m sick of secrets and I’m sick of half-assed work. This is partly your fault.”

  “My fault? How do you figure that?”

  “It was your father who fucked this up. He should have eliminated Frank, not caged him. He didn’t solve a problem, he created one.”

  “Frank was abusing those boys,” Roy said defiantly. “He did what he thought was the right thing to do.”

  “It wasn’t the right thing, that’s my point,” Steven said. “He should have stayed out of it if he couldn’t actually solve it.”

  “If he’d stayed out of it, Sean and Garth might not have survived. Frank might have killed them.”

  “And Daniel might be alive, now.”

  “You want to say all this, in front of your boy?”

  Jason’s mouth hadn’t yet closed. He was looking from Roy to Steven, like a tennis match.

  “Why not?” Steven answered. “Why not let him see how his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have fucked it all up? Maybe then he’ll think twice before he steps in. Or maybe he’ll actually finish something once he starts it, unlike you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “In the short time I’ve worked with you in this shitty business, you’ve left two monsters alive. Michael and Jurgen. Time bombs waiting to come back and blow up in our faces, just like Frank came back. How many more time bombs are there, Dad? How many more did you and your fathers create? Don’t you think he should know about them, since he’s going to have to clean up all of the shit you were too lazy to clean up?”

  Roy stood up. He walked over to Jason and looked down at him. “Your father is a disrespectful bastard,” he said. Then he turned and walked out the door, slamming it as he left.

  “Fucking prick,” Steven said as the slam reverberated through the house.

  Jason was looking at the floor, unsure of what to say or think. He looked up at Steven.

  Steven was fuming over Roy. He glanced over to Jason and saw him looking at him.

  “Welcome to the deep end,” he said.

  -

  Eliza was packing up Daniel’s things. She had piled all of the medical supplies into a corner of the guest room. It had been an hour since Roy had left. Steven had sent Jason home, telling him they’d talk more tomorrow. Steven stepped into the guest room to see how Eliza was doing.

  “I’m so sorry,” Steven said.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “And it’s not Roy’s, either.”

  “I know,” Steven said. “I’m just angry and frustrated. Daniel was a good friend to you. I guess the option of Troy ever knowing him is gone now.”

  “True,” she said. She was folding clothes, placing them in Daniel’s bag. “Who knows how that might have gone. You know, I’d like to get to Daniel’s place and try to salvage some of his time artifacts before his family gets to them. They won’t know what they are, they’ll just throw them away as trash. I might be able to get them to sell me his library. It would be nice to try and preserve his collection, it’s his legacy. Maybe Troy can see that someday.”

  “I’ll come with you if you want,” Steven said.

  “That’s kind of you to offer, but I think I’d rather do it on my own,” she said. “I think you’ll have your hands full here, with Roy and Jason. There’s a lot you need to do on both fronts.”

  “I know. I probably could have handled that better. But I’m just so tired of the half-assed approach. Is this normal? Is this how you do it?”

  “Well, I don’t kill people, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Michael was a child killer. Jurgen, well you know about him. Both deserved to die.”

  “If the Manitou didn’t finish Jurgen off, there was a reason for that. I promise you.”

  “What reason could there be? Jurgen was a horrible person.”

  “Justice, Steven. It measured out the exact amount of justice for what he’d done. You might have misjudged his history.”

  “And Michael? Why leave him alive?”

  “That was Roy’s doing?”

  “Yes, and I was too inexperienced to argue with him. I didn’t like the decision at the time, and I told him so. But he thought it was best to ‘let sleeping dogs lie,’ those were his words.”

  “Roy is a smart man,” she said, “and he’s had many years of experience, whereas you’ve had less than one. I don’t know the whole story, but I do know Roy, and if he thought it was best to leave Michael alone, there had to be good reasons for it. Either reasons you’re not telling me or that you don’t know.”

  “Arrrrghhhh!” Steven said in frustration, raising his hands over his head and leaving the room to walk into his bedroom.

  “Steven, come here,” Eliza said. He stopped and returned to the guest bedroom.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Look at these,” she said, holding the objects Daniel had been examining earlier in the day.

  “He got those from Sam,” Steven said. “Wasn’t sure what they’d do.”

  “Yes, he told me. But he also figured them out, this morning. He told me what they were.”

  “Really?” Steven asked.

  “He said this one was a chronosphere, and this one held a demon. A minor demon.”

  “Oh?” Steven said, approaching her to look more closely at the objects.

  “He said the demon was a time demon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know, but I would like to find out. I remember a section on demons in Roy’s book, when we were looking through it while you were in Oregon. I’d like to see if it has more information on this.”

  “I need to apologize to him,” Steven said. “How about we go over there first thing in the morning?”

  “Deal.”

  “I think I’m going to turn in. Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I just want to finish packing up these things of his, and I’ll be turning in as well.”

  She turned to look at him, and he saw the pain in her eyes. He extended his arms and she gave him a long hug. She started to cry again.

  “I really am sorry,” Steven said. “So sorry.”

  -

  The next morning Steven called Roy to tell him they were coming over. Roy didn’t pick up, so Steven left him a message.

  “Look, I know you’re pissed at me and that’s why you’re not answering your phone. But Eliza and I are coming over, so try to look respectable.” He hung up.

  “Nice,” she said. “That’ll start things on the right foot.”

  “He’s much worse than me,” Steven said. “You should see him sometimes.”

  Eliza smiled. “Let’s go.”

  When t
hey arrived at Roy’s, they knocked but didn’t get a response at the door.

  “Listen, Roy, I know you’re in there. Open up. Eliza’s out here in the cold.”

  The door finally opened and a grumpy Roy turned without greeting them and walked back into the house. Steven and Eliza went inside.

  “Here to berate me some more?” Roy said.

  “No,” Steven said. “The opposite. I’m here to apologize.”

  “You can shove your apology up your ass,” Roy said, sitting at the kitchen table. “Eliza, would you like some coffee?”

  “Thank you, Roy, that’d be nice.”

  He poured her a mug and handed it to her, then replaced the pot in the coffee maker.

  “None for me, that’s my penalty for being mean to you last night?” Steven said.

  “Eliza, do you hear a buzzing sound? Like the sound of a buzzing ungrateful piss-ant?”

  “I’m staying out of this,” she said.

  “She urged me to come over and apologize,” Steven said. “And I mean to. I’m sorry, Dad, I shouldn’t have said those things to you, especially in front of Jason.”

  “You needn’t have urged him to,” Roy said to Eliza. “He was bound to come over sooner or later, as soon as he needed something. I’ll bet he needs something now, am I right?”

  “Actually I’m the one who needs something,” Eliza said, taking some of the heat away from Steven. “These objects Sam gave Daniel. Daniel knew what they were yesterday, after he woke up. One of them holds a time demon. I was hoping you’d help me look through your book for information on it.” She smiled.

  “I’d be delighted to help you,” he said. “You’re a kind person who is always respectful and grateful, unlike others. Let me get the book.” He rose and walked into the back bedroom, and returned with the book, which he sat between himself and Eliza where they could both see it as he turned the pages.

  Steven sighed and let Roy help Eliza without his involvement. He’d apologized, and he knew that he just needed to let it sink in with Roy, and he’d accept it. But not right at first – Roy would make him pay first.

  Steven walked over to the chairs in the living room and sat in one of them.