by Jack Kilborn
I almost shout with glee when he nods his head.
“Sit, Father Bob. This story takes a while.”
He sits beside me, his face a mixture of interest and wariness.
My mouth is dry. I take a sip from a cup of tepid water, soak my tongue.
“Fresh from the Seminary, I was sent to Western Samoa, a group of islands in the South Pacific. It’s tropical paradise, the population predominantly Christian. A garden of Eden, one of the most beautiful places on earth. Except for the hurricanes. I arrived after a particularly devastating storm wiped out most of Apia, the capitol.”
It comes back in fragments, a series of faded snapshots. After a twenty hour plane ride, I landed in little more than a field. The island air and deep blue beaches were a stark contrast to the wholesale destruction throughout the land. I saw livestock rotting in trees. Overturned cars with little brown arms jutting out crookedly beneath them. Roofs in the middle of streets, and jagged pipes planted in piles of rubble where schools once stood.
Worst of all was the constant, keening sob that hung over the city like a cloud.
So many ruined lives.
“It looked like God had smashed His mighty fist down on that country. How could He have allowed this? I had to assist in the amputation of a man’s legs, without anesthetic because there was none left. I had to help mothers bury their babies using gnarled traffic signs to dig graves. I gave so much blood I almost died myself.”
“Natural disasters are a test of one’s faith.”
I shake my head.
“It didn’t test mine. I was sure in my faith, like you are. But it made me question God’s intent.”
“We cannot question God, Mr. Parson.”
“But we do anyway, don’t we?”
I sip more water before I continue.
“In Western Samoa, I did God’s work. I helped to heal. To rebuild. I restarted the parish. I preached to these poor, proud people about God’s grace, and they believed me. Things slowly got back to normal. And then the murders began.”
I close my eyes and see the first body, as if it is in the room with me now. The eyes jut out of the bloody, ruined face like two golf balls pushed into the meat of a watermelon. The flesh is peeled away, in some places exposing pink bone. A rat pokes its greasy head out of a lacerated abdomen and squeals in gluttonous delight.
“Every seven days, another mutilated body was discovered. The police didn’t seem to care. Neither did my congregation. They accepted it like they accepted the hurricane; sad but unavoidable.”
Father Bob folds his arms, eyebrows furrowing.
“Were you killing those people, Mr. Parson?”
“No…it turned out to be one of my parishioners. A fisherman with a wife and three kids. He came to me just after he butchered one — came into my Confessional drenched in blood, bits of tissue sticking to his nails and teeth. Begged me for forgiveness.”
The man had been short, painfully thin for a Samoan. His eyes were the eyes of the damned, flickering like windblown candles, both insane and afraid.
“He claimed he was a victim of a curse. A curse that had been plaguing his island for millennia.”
“Did you dismiss his superstitions?”
“At first. While Christians, the islanders had a distant connection to paganism, sometimes fell back to it. I tried to convince him the curse wasn’t real, to turn himself in. I begged him that God didn’t want any more killing.”
I was so earnest, so full of the Word. Convinced I was doing God’s work.
“He laughed at me. He said that killing is exactly what God wanted.”
The priest shakes his head. He speaks with the sing-song voice of a kindergarten teacher. “God is all-loving. Killing is a result of free-will. We had the paradise of Eden, and chose knowledge instead of bliss.”
I scowl at him.
“God created mankind knowing that we’d fall from grace. It’s like having a child, knowing a child will be hungry, and then punishing the child for that hunger.”
Father Bob leans in, apparently flustered. “God’s grace…”
“God has no grace,” I spit. “He’s a vengeful, vindictive God. A sadist, who plays with mankind like a child pulling the wings off of flies. Samoa was Eden, Father. The real Eden, straight out of the Bible. The murderer, he showed me a mark on his scalp.”
I lift up my bangs, reveal the Mark at my hairline.
“Witness, Father Bob! Proof that God truly exists!”
The priest opens his mouth. It takes a moment before words came out.
“Is that…?”
I nod. I feel inner strength, the strength that had forsaken me so long ago.
“It’s the Mark of Cain, given to the son of Adam when he slew Abel. But the Bible was inaccurate on that point — Cain didn’t wander the earth forever, but his curse did, passed on from man to man for thousands of years. Passed on to me from the murderer in Samoa.”
The Mark grows warm on my head, begins to burn.
“This is your proof of God, Father.”
He stands abruptly, his chair tumbling backwards. I grin at him.
“How does it feel to no longer need faith?”
Father Bob falls to his knees, weeping.
“My God…my sweet God…”
Abruptly, blessedly, the burning sensation disappears. I laugh, laugh for the first time in decades, laugh with a sense of perfect relief.
Father Bob presses his hands to his forehead. He screams, just once, a soul shattering epiphany that I understand so well.
“The Lord be with you, Father Bob.”
And then he falls upon me, mouth open.
I try to push him away, but am no match.
His first few bites are awkward, but he quickly learns my technique.
Nip.
Clench.
Pull.
The pain is exquisite. So much worse than cancer.
So much better…
Another story for a Twilight Tales anthology. This was the first story of mine they ever accepted, for the collection Spooks. I’m mixing genres again, this time PI noir and ghost stories.
“Let me get this straight — you want me to murder you tonight?”
She nodded. “At midnight. As violently as possible.”
I leaned back, my office chair creaking in distress. The woman sitting across from me was mid-thirties, thin, well groomed. Her blonde hair, pulled back in a tight bun, held a platinum luster, and the slash of red lipstick she wore made her lips look like a wound. There was something familiar about her, or maybe it was my whiskey goggles.
I blinked at my watch. 11:00am. I’d been soused since breakfast.
“And this decision is because of your dead husband?”
“Yes.”
“You want to be —” I paused. “—reunited with him?”
A tricky word to pronounce, reunited, even when sober. But being a semi-professional drunk with some serious pro potential, it came out fine.
“I need to die, Mr. Arkin.”
“Call me Bert. And you haven’t offered your name yet, Miss…”
“Ahh…Springfield. Doris Springfield.”
“Are you trying to atone for some sin, Ms. Springfield?”
Another tough sentence, but it slid out like butter.
“No. The death has to be violent, because a person needs to die violently in order to become a ghost.”
I blinked. Then I blinked again. Before my face gave anything away, I broke her stare and went looking through my desk drawer for the Emergency bottle. I took two strong pulls.
A frank look of pity, perhaps disgust, flit past her eyes.
I shrugged it off. Who was she to judge me? She was the one who came in here wanting a violent death.
The bottle went back into the drawer, and I wiped my mouth on the back of my jacket sleeve.
“It’s medicinal.” I didn’t care if she believed it or not. “So…you want to die to become a ghost?”
“Y
es. He haunts me, my husband does. Not in any of the clichéd methods you’ve heard about; I mean, he doesn’t break dishes or rattle chains. Instead, every night, he comes to me and holds me when I’m in bed.”
Her eyes went glassy, and I frowned. Tears made me uncomfortable.
“We’re both so very alone, Mr. Arkin. I want to…I must…be with him.”
“Ms. Springfield, I’m sorry for your loss. But murder is —”
“I have thirty-six thousand dollars.”
The number gave my weak resistance pause. I could put money like that to good use.
Since I’d gotten kicked off the force, a grievous wrong since half the guys in the CPD are alkies, employment opportunities nowadays were slim. I work as a night watchman four times a week at a warehouse, and do the private investigator thing in my free time, mostly lapping up scraps that my friend Barney throws me. Barney is still on the Job, and whenever something minor comes along that the cops don’t have time for, he funnels it my way. Mostly cheating spouses and runaway kids.
But Barney never sent me anyone who wanted to die.
“Just how did you find me, Ms. Springfield?”
“I…I heard about your problem.”
“Which problem is that?”
Her eyes, tinged with red, locked onto me like laser sights.
“You’re being haunted, too.”
This time there was no hiding my reaction, and I recoiled as if slapped. My shaky hands fumbled with the desk drawer, unable to open it fast enough.
The whiskey burned going down, but I fought the pain and sucked until my eyes watered.
Rather than face her, I got up and walked over to the window. My third floor view of the alley didn’t change much from winter to summer, but it did offer me a brief moment to collect my thoughts.
“Who told you?” I managed to say.
“I’d…I’d rather not say. I’m asking you to do something illegal, and if something should happen…well, I wouldn’t want it getting back to him.”
I searched my mental Rolodex for people I’d blabbed to about my problem. Hell, it could have been any bar jockey in any of three dozen gin joints going back two years.
When I drink, I talk.
So I wind up talking a lot.
“Does this person — the one who sent you here — know that you want to die?”
“No. I simply asked around for someone who believes in ghosts, and your name came up. Who haunts you, Mr. Arkin?”
I shut my eyes on the view.
“My mother,” I lied.
“She died violently?”
“You could say that.”
The booze made my tongue feel big in my mouth, and I began to forget where I was. Usually a good thing, but now…
“I can’t do this, Ms. Springfield.”
“There’s no way to link it to you. You can use my gun.”
“That’s not the problem. I just don’t want this kind of thing on my conscience.”
“Is thirty-six thousand enough?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“I also have these.”
I turned to look at her. She opened her purse and took out a small, white envelope.
“Diamonds, Mr. Arkin. About six carats worth. My husband was a jeweler, and he assured me they’re worth over twenty thousand dollars. I was going to leave them to charity, but…”
“Look, Ms. Springfield —”
“I’ll leave you the papers on these. That’s almost sixty-thousand dollars, Mr. Arkin.”
Sixty grand for my conscience?
Who was I kidding? My conscience wasn’t worth sixty cents.
“Congratulations, Ms. Springfield. You’ve hired yourself a killer.
I stumbled out of Harvey’s Liquor on Diversey and took a nip right there in the middle of the street.
Chicago winter wind bit at my cheeks and face, making all the broken capillaries even redder. I stuck the bottle in my jacket and climbed into my car.
Driving was a blurry, dreamlike thing, but I managed to make it home. Truth be told, I’d driven a lot worse. At least I could still see the traffic signals.
My apartment, a little shoe box in Hyde Park, had the smell to go along with the ambience. Checking the fridge revealed just a dirty pat of butter and some old pizza crusts.
So I had a liquid lunch instead.
Part of me wanted to sober up so I wouldn’t make any mistakes tonight.
The other part wanted me to get drunk enough so I wouldn’t remember the details later.
I took a spotty glass from the sink and poured myself three fingers and sat down at my cheap dinette set and drank.
I had to admire the lady. She had guts, and her plan looked like it would work.
At 11:45pm I arrive at her house on Christiana off of Addison. Park in the K-Mart lot across the street. Access her place from the alley; she’ll leave her gate and her back door unlocked. The house will look like it had been robbed — drawers pulled out and pictures yanked off the walls. She’ll be in the bedroom, hand me the gun. A quick blam-blam in the brain pan, and I can leave with the diamonds and the cash. No witnesses, no muss, no fuss.
I got to pouring another drink when the screech of tires raped my ears and made me drop the bottle.
There was a room-shaking, sickening crunch of motor vehicle meeting flesh, followed by the thump-thump of a skull cracking under the front and rear tires.
“Leave me alone, you little bitch!”
She came out of the wall and hovered before me. Her glow was soft and yellow, a flashlight bulb going dead.
I avoided looking at her face, even as she moved closer.
“You’re a bad man, Mr. Arkin.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, refusing to be baited.
“A very baaaaaaad man.”
She touched my arm, and I jerked back, slopping my drink all over the table. Being touched by a ghost was like getting snow rubbed into your bare skin — so cold it was hot.
“Go away!”
I turned to get up, but she already stood in front of me. No more than five feet tall, her head a crushed pumpkin leaking brains instead of stringy seeds. One eye was popped out and dangling around her misshapen ear by the optic nerve. The other one stared, accusing.
“You can still turn yourself in.”
I stumbled away, heading for the bedroom, bottle in hand.
“Call the police, Mr. Arkin. Confess…confess…”
I pulled the door open and screamed. My bedroom had become a winding stretch of suburban highway. Speeding at me at fifty MPH, a swerving, drunken maniac unscrewed his bottle cap rather than paid attention to the road.
Me. It was me driving.
The car hit like a slap from God, knocking me backwards, smearing my face and body against the phantom asphalt in a fifteen foot streak.
I lay there, in agony, as I watched myself get out of the car, look in my direction and vomit, and then get right back into the car and drive off.
The image faded, and I found myself lying on my stained carpet.
“Confess, Mr. Arkin.”
I sought my dropped bottle, the worst of the nightly terror over for the time being.
“Confess?” I spat. “Why should I? Haven’t you tortured me enough for the last two years? I ran you over once. You’ve done this to me how many times? Two hundred? Three?”
She stood next to me now, the loops of intestines hanging out of her belly giving me cold, wet slaps in the face.
“Go to the police and confess.”
“Go to hell, or heaven, or wherever you’re supposed to go.”
I rolled away and struggled to my feet.
“I can’t go away until my business here is done.”
I drank straight from the bottle now, trying to tune her out. Confess? My ass. Going to the cops meant going to prison. And that just can’t happen. I couldn’t survive in prison.
They don’t let you drink.
“You can’t die without res
olution, Mr. Arkin. If you do…”
“I know! You’ve said it a thousand times!”
“Your soul will be mine if you don’t atone.”
She cracked a bloody smile, all missing teeth and swollen tongue.
“I don’t think you’ll like eternity with me in charge.”
I spun on her, jabbing a finger into her spongy head.
“I’ll have money soon! Lots of money! I’ll hire someone to exorcize your preachy little ass!”
She laughed, a full, rich, deep sound that made the hair on my arms vibrate.
“I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Arkin. Soon.”
And then she faded away, like a puff of cigar smoke.
I drank until I started to puke blood.
Then I drank some more.
My hands perspired in the latex gloves Ms. Springfield had provided. The alley behind her house was deserted, except for a rat scurrying into an old Pepsi box.
I walked up to her gate — it was the only one that was unlocked — and let myself into her modest backyard.
Dark ,silent, porch light off. Her back door opened with a whisper.
“Ms. Springfield?”
The door led into her kitchen. Drawers had been pulled out and silverware scattered along the floor. I avoided stepping on anything sharp, and made my way through the kitchen and into a hallway.
“Ms. Springfield? It’s me.”
Silence.
I took a pull from my flask, to calm my nerves. Then another, for luck.
“Ms. Springfield?”
She said to meet her in the bedroom. There were stairs to the right.
I ascended slowly, cautiously. The higher I climbed, the more this seemed like a very bad idea. Even if I could bring myself to murder her — and get away with it — who was to say she wouldn’t haunt me too? One ghost was bad enough. Having two…
“Mr. Arkin?”
Her voice came as such a shock that I almost lost my balance on the steps.
“Ms. Springfield?”
“Second door on the right.”
Her voice was terribly relaxed.
I took a deep breath, blew it out. Reflexively, my hand went to my hip holster, and I haven’t worn a hip holster in years.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, more for myself than for her.
She was sitting on her bed, dressed in a white night gown. Her blonde hair hung over her shoulders. In her hand was a .38 police special.