The Grey Ghost

by Nicholas Cara

  “Well, if she had just pushed her hand straight through my head I might be a little uneasy too,” Joe thought slowly smiling back at Kate as he nodded his agreement.

  Walking past Kate, Joe headed for the staircase that would lead to the kitchen on the first floor. Joe lifted his foot to ascend the stairs, stumbled, and barely caught himself from falling face first into the ground. Frowning, Joe looked down at his foot, which had passed straight through the first wooden step of the staircase.

  “Well that is going to make things difficult,” Joe grumbled looking back at Kate who stood behind him with an annoyed look on her face noticing this new dilemma.

  Standing there silently Joe studied the wooden stairs as if he had never climbed them before, racking his brain on how he could but then somehow now couldn’t touch anything. So invested in the stairs Joe never noticed Kate’s eye’s open wider in recognition as she noticed something on his back. Reaching out her hand Kate slowly touched a piece of woven cloth lying there. To her touch the material was smooth as fine silk. However, she could feel each fiber as if it had been woven by hand. First surprised at the fact she could touch the cloth, Kate slowly reached her fingers over the fringe of the cloth and took hold of the edge. She could see Joe look back as he had just noticed her actions when she pulled the small fabric off his back. Joe wasn’t able to get a word out before he suddenly fell straight to the left smashing into an old wicker chair that had been sitting there in need of repair.

  Throwing the cloth into her pocket Kate quickly reaching down to the help her love but then gasped audibly and involuntarily recoiled. Slowly Kate put her hand to her mouth in shock trying to muffle a scream. Perched against the wicker chair Joe lay there reaching down to his left and squeezing his eyes shut trying to convince himself that what he had just saw wasn’t real. However, each time he opened his eyes, his new reality continued to scoff at him until he cried out in fury yelling a frustrated curse as he smashed his fist into the remains of the chair.

  Minutes ago and mere feet from where Joe now lay he had crashed into this basement and magically stood up whole again. It had been as if walking in a wonderful dream that now Joe seemingly had awakened from in a crash of wicker and pain. Spent, all Joe could do was lie there against the chair on the hard damp floor of the basement and stare at the empty air where his left leg had seconds ago been, but now as magically as it appeared was gone!

  A couple of minutes later Joe finally fell into a chair at the kitchen table on the first floor. Sweating profusely Joe cradled his face in his hands. He was both physically and mentally exhausted. Kneeling in front of him, Kate tried pulling at his hands to get him to look at her, succeeding only slightly. Joe had adamantly refused any help from her while climbing the stairs, even at times purposely looking away from her in shame as he hopped on his backside up each stair individually.

  “Joe, look at me…” Kate begged still pulling at his hands. From what she could see his face was soaked with perspiration and the areas around his eyes were red and sunken. “Things are going to be OK sweetie… just try to calm down…”

  “CALM DOWN!” Joe suddenly barked smacking the table. “Where did it go? How could it just…just disappear like that?”

  Knowing full well that Joe wasn’t yelling at her, Kate though hurt, understood his fuming about the ordeal. She had seen firsthand the pain losing his lost leg had caused Joe since he got back and she could only imagine the thoughts going through his head now having to relive that.

  Looking away stumped Kate said, “I don’t know…We honestly don’t even know how you got it back, never mind that walking through tables thing. But at least now you seem relatively solid again,” she said poking him in the shoulder, noticing that any brawn Joe had magically gained on those shoulders had also disappeared along with his leg.

  Standing up, Kate walked over to the polished tiled counter near the stove. Above that Kate could see that the storm outside had yet to let up as rain dripped down the glass pane of the small kitchen window. A rumble of thunder slightly rattling the window pane told her the storm was far from receding as were their problems inside this old house.

  “Joe can you remember anything different before your leg vanished? Anything you heard or felt?” Kate said still looking out the window. She was desperately trying to recount the events as they had happened and simply couldn’t wrap her brain around the preposterousness of them. Leaning his chin on only one hand, Joe looked up at Kate gazing out the window in thought.

  “I have no clue,” Joe said weakly. Kate noticed both his voice and stature seeming to weaken as time went by.

  “I just have no idea what is going on!” Joe continued throwing his hands in the air. “One minute I’m soaked sitting in the living room and the next I’m flat on my back in the basement. One minute I have only one leg, the next I have two again. One minute I’m crashing into things, next I can’t touch you or anything else, but then somehow I can. And then just when I start to think things can’t get any crazier, PUFF!, my leg disappears again!”

  With that they both settled in silence interrupted by only the now increasing rain pelting the house. Joe eventually broke the silence after hearing the rhythmically tapping of a tree branch being blown into the living room window.

  “Say, what were you trying to tell me before? I remember being surprised because I felt you tap me in the back just before everything went topsy-turvy?” Joe wondered.

  “I wasn’t tapping you….no, no…I was poking at this,” Kate said only now remembering the piece of cloth in her pocket. With that Kate removed the cloth from her dress pocket and placed it on the table. “It was just lying there on your back shoulder. I noticed it when you turned around and tried to walk up the stairs. It was stuck on pretty tight”

  Joe looked down at the cloth. He had never seen anything like it before. Being only a few inches in length, the three torn edges gave the cloth the look of a scrap more than anything ripped from its original source. It seemed hand-made to Joe, loosely woven together as how a child would weave grass together offhandedly.

  “What is it?” Joe asked looking at Kate.

  “I have no idea…” she said now studying the fabric. On further inspection Kate started to notice smaller details of the material. The beige fabric was seemly a yellowed white cloth. To discolor that much Kate reasoned it had to be quite old, however bordering the intact side of the cloth was an untarnished brilliant gold cord.

  Noticing the shining edge Joe picked up the cloth and pointed to the center of the golden cord.

  “Look at the shading on the edge. It looks like it…” Joe couldn’t finish his thought. The table had suddenly skidded away from him as if kicked. A surge of energy cascaded through Joe making him jump from the small chair landing upright…now again on two full legs!

  Looking at over Kate who had jumped away as the table had been kicked across the floor, Joe slowly followed her gaze down to the small piece of cloth still clutched in his hand.

  “That little thing,” Kate proclaimed walking back to Joe. “That’s why you…fell… when I took it off your back!”

  “This little thing is doing ALL this,” Joe repeated looking down at himself. “It is AMAZING! What do you think it could be?”

  Kate started pacing around Joe starring at the fabric. But try as she might she couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. Racking her brain over and over, Kate couldn’t place it with anything in her house. “It doesn’t match any of Mom’s linens, or her napkins or even her older blankets…” Kate listed suddenly stopping mid-thought “blankets…”

  With that Kate ran from the kitchen and taking them two at a time descended the basement stairs. Returning at the same pace, Kate reappeared seconds later in the kitchen now holding the gray blanket Joe had been wrapped in when he crashed into the basement. Quickly spreading it on the table, Kate began examining the material until she suddenly found what she had been hoping for.

  “Here, look at this!” Kate called o
ut waving for Joe to come over. “See this area? Its lighter almost chalky with the same color as that cloth. That cloth was here in the blanket when I put it over you when we came in from the rain.”

  “Brilliant Kate,” Joe said looking at the discolored area.

  “So who’s the master detective now?” Kate laughed at Joe.

  “Hon, I’ll promote you to captain if you can tell me now what this is?” Joe said holding up the mysterious wonder. “Also, how is it doing this to me and why did it have no effect on you? Remember you were holding it just seconds ago.”

  With that Joe leaned against his arm now braced on the kitchen counter. However, he didn’t notice that his hand on the counter was passing through a fork that had been left unwashed from earlier.

  “I think the first bit of business is to figure out how you are doing that,” Kate said pointing to his hand.

  Looking down, Joe noticed the fork and lifted his hand up from the counter. Slowly he reached back to the counter and tried to pick up the fork only to find his fingers passing straight through the fork and now the counter itself.

  “One step forward and two steps back…” Joe grumbled to himself.

  “One step at a time dear. You can do it but, I don’t know. Maybe you just need practice or something?” Kate said shrugging her shoulders. At that Kate glanced up noticing the sound of the pelting rain starting to slow on the roof. Looking back at Joe, Kate suddenly took notice of the fact that Joe was standing in her kitchen without a shirt on and in his bare feet.

  “Joe… Hon do you think you could try to… get you other clothes back on? Kate asked looking away. “The last thing I need is one of these busy bodies seeing you like that through a window or something, I’ll be the scandal of the neighborhood,” she continued as she pointed her thumb in the direction of the neighbors’ houses.

  “Oh…sure no problem, are they still in the living room?” Joe said with a meek grin.

  “Right where you left them, I hope they aren’t still soaked,” Kate said turning to leave the kitchen. From the corner of her eye she saw Joe take a step toward her but when she looked back he was gone! Before she could get a word out a loud crash again resonated from the basement staircase.

  “Joe! Joe, are you alright?” Kate yelled running to the top of the stairs looking into the darkness of the unlit basement.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Joe responded walking from the shadows toward the staircase. “I think you’re right, this is going to take some practice.”

  Glancing up at the ceiling he had just AGAIN fallen through, Joe rubbed his back where he had landed on it. “Make that A LOT of practice…”

  “At least this time I kept my pants on…” Joe thought as he looked up at Kate highlighted from the kitchen light at top of the stairs.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The high-pitched trajectory of the baseball reached its apex seconds after the soft ding of the bat echoed in the empty lot. The short looper’s velocity lacking any real force behind it quickly died allowing gravity to once again pull it toward the grass edge near the second base bag of the abandoned baseball field. Standing near home plate, Kate’s shoulders slumped dropping the bat as she noticed the ball quickly fall, internally admonishing herself for the fact after all the weeks of repeating this she still barely could get it out of the infield.

  As she watched the descending ball she noticed a figure sprinting toward it from the outfield. Diving full out, the figure reaching out toward the ball now only mere inches from the grass snatched it bare handed with a quick grab. Hitting the ground in one smooth motion, the athlete rolled and launched a bullet throw toward first base. Since the base was unoccupied the ball zipped past the bag careening off the infield gate near the visiting team’s dugout.

  “Double play and the crowd goes wild!! Bevine!!! Bevine!!!” Joe yelled cupping his hands around his mouth mocking a crowd’s roar.

  “OK now you are just showing off,” Kate called out to him walking over to where the ball had finally rested.

  “No dear, now I’m showing off,” Joe replied with a smile pointing to his now grassed stained jeans. As Kate watched, the green stains started to shimmer and blur. Before long the green stain faded until it was replaced by the sight of a completely clean pair of pin striped baseball pants. Looking up still amazed at this transformation, Kate also noticed the brown shirt Joe had been wearing only a second ago was also gone, replaced with a matching jersey and that Joe was now wearing a blue baseball hat adorned with a large red “C”.

  “Did you even have a hat on before?” Kate asked looking quizzically at the uniformed figure of Joe beaming back at her.

  “Nope. Neat right?” Joe beamed back.

  “I still can’t understand how that’s possible. You are literally creating mass around yourself, which by all laws of physics should be impossible,” Kate mused out loud rubbing her chin.

  “Well let’s just say this is one time a copper is happy that a law is being broken,” Joe beamed patting his leg.

  “And your command of these… abilities is just remarkable. It was only a few weeks ago that you couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs,” Kate responded staring at Joe as she slowly walked over to where the baseball had come to a rest and rolled it back to Joe. “Even out here when we started this practice, the ball would simply fall straight through your hand. Now you are diving and catching and I swear you have to be faster than you used to be from the speed you’re covering the field.”

  “Trust me sweetie, I’m only making it look easy. I’m literally concentrating on every fiber of my palm to even make contact with this little ball,” Joe responded, flexing his hand around the baseball. “If I don’t focus on memories of the texture of the ball against my skin, the feel of the impact as it would hit my palm and the right amount of grip and force I would need to hold it, the ball would fall straight through my fist. It’s like having to learn to do everything again all off of memory. The rest of me is still air… I guess. But the fun part is the non-solid part of me is really easy to change, almost like drawing in a picture book or painting a canvas all with my mind. All I have to do is use a little imagination and ‘poof,’ I can look like anything.”

  And with that Joe snapped his fingers dissolving his pinstriped uniform into a dark blue tailored suit with a matching overcoat and hat. “But this doesn’t make me any more solid than before,” Joe finished pointing down to the baseball that had fallen to the grass as Joe had seemly lost his focus on it to during his clothes change.

  Walking over to the home team’s dugout, Joe reached in and with one arm and pulled out his folded wheelchair. Slowly, with a deliberate pause and focus on every movement, Joe snapped the final catch into place and looked down at his completed chair. By then Kate had made it over to the dugout and took a place behind the chair taking hold of both push handles.

  “You wouldn’t believe how much I have to think about my own backside just not to fall straight through this monstrosity,” Joe smiled back at Kate as he lowered himself into the chair.

  “I believe you. I still remember you falling through it, the floor and right out of your britches,” Kate blushed smiling down at him. “Thinking back at the amount of times you fell into that basement before we thought to try practicing this crazy thing outside really boggles my mind.”

  “Well you’re the engineer. I’m just a simple beat cop. They left that kind of planning out of the academy training,” Joe laughed looking up at her.

  “Just between you and me, I only got a C in my ‘magical boyfriend made of air’ training class. It is still a sore subject with me so you’ll have to excuse my lack of insight,” she parried back.

  “Touché, touché. What kind of education are they sloughing off on students back at CSU?” Joe teased as he reached his left hand to the base of his watchband. Slowly removing the hidden strange piece of cloth found at Kate’s house all those weeks ago, Joe held it up starring at it as if the reddish glare of morning could illuminate any of
the secrets the mysterious marvel had still not yielded.

  “I wish there was a class on this kind of…stuff.”

  Procuring a small tin cigarette case from his inside pocket, Joe carefully folded the cloth inside the case and snapped it shut. Immediately as Joe lost physical contact with the cloth he felt himself stiffen as if a small jolt of electricity had shot through him. Opening his eyes Joe looked down and not surprised anymore to see his left leg again gone and himself outfitted in his own worn dark gray suit.

  “Yeah this seems a little more in my price range,” Joe mumbled looking at the fraying cuff of the right sleeve and bent brim of the small fedora hat.

  “So you’re still planning on keeping this whole thing a secret?” Kate asked, less than a question than a statement. “It has been weeks and…”

  “And we still don’t know anything more about this than we did back in your father’s basement…” Joe cut her off. “I still want to keep this under hat until we can get our hands around it more. Last thing I need to do to my poor mother is have the old girl see me drop through the floor into her stockpile of preserves in the basement.”

  “I can understand that, but it has to be killing you to have to be in this chair all day when you don’t have to be anymore,” Kate said starting to push Joe away from the field.

  “Trust me honey, every time I have to I look down and see this leg missing again it is like a knife in my side. But Dad always said if you win a big lottery never tell anyone because there is always somebody who will want to borrow some money. Well, this is the biggest jackpot I can think of and the last thing we need is somebody wanting to take it or… wanting it back…” Joe said patting the small lump in his coat pocket.

  “A lot of good it would do them anyways. It only seems to work for you. I could eat that little thing and just get a sour stomach out of it,” Kate replied.