by Hunter Shea
There were six windows in all in the oversized room. Harrison must have knocked down the wall to an adjoining room to enhance its size.
Not only were all the windows locked, but they had also been sealed with shrunk plastic in anticipation of the winter. There wasn’t a chance that a breeze could break through the barrier. We looked for vents, finding none.
“How can it be so friggin’ cold in here?” Johnny said, his eyes locked on the girl.
I continued looking for some kind of projector or lens, anything that would betray the true nature of the illusion, going so far as to move the furniture and pull the curtains askew. Breathing heavy, I sat on the edge of the bed. The vision of the girl was still there, breathless, nameless.
“Johnny, do me a favor. Can you walk around her? Do it slowly. If it’s a projection, your body will get in the way and her image will blink out.”
He did as I asked. Her image remained unbroken.
I sprang from the bed and held my hand over her head of opaque locks, wondering if something was in the ceiling. The why of this being some sort of hologram created by Harrison never entered my mind. I simply had to know the what of it all.
Nothing caused her image to waver or her stance to so much as shift.
“Please, just come out of there and go. I don’t want to stay here,” Janice pleaded. I glanced at Eva and saw she wanted to do the same.
“Hold on,” I said, tugging my eyebrows as I thought.
Johnny looked out the window. “It’s snowing pretty hard. I don’t think driving’s such a good idea.”
Eva said, “We can’t stay here with…”
“With what?” I asked.
“I…I don’t know.”
“She hasn’t done anything to us at all,” I said. “You’re scared because you don’t know what it is.”
“I do,” Janice said. Her walnut eyes were wide and round and shimmering with tears. “It’s a ghost. It obviously doesn’t want us here.”
I shook my head, confused. “What’s been obvious about that?”
Johnny swatted my arm. “Don’t be a schmuck. Why else would a ghost show up and not fade away if it didn’t want to scare us enough to leave. Maybe we’re just too dumb to get the message.”
My heartbeat tittered. It didn’t make sense. Why did the faceless girl remain? She carried no message from beyond, issued no warnings to get out like the ghosts in books and movies. She was simply there, a puzzle, a map with no legend or key.
“We can sleep in the car,” Eva said. Her arm held tight over Janice’s shoulders.
“We’d freeze to death or die of carbon monoxide poisoning,” I replied.
Stepping to my right, I stationed myself before the apparition. So much of her, from her hands to her limbs to her dress, was in perfect definition. But her face. The absence of a face, I had to admit, froze the fluid in my spine. Inching closer, my nose just inches from her, I stared, allowing my eyes to fix on a central point where her nose should have been.
To my surprise, it wasn’t as empty as I thought. A vaporous swirl, like clouds in the eye of a hurricane, twisted and twirled. Between the gaps in the clouds I could see the window and edge of the bed behind her in prefect clarity. Her face was smoke-filled glass, betraying no consciousness, no emotion.
There was only one thing left to do.
I lifted my hand, slowly.
“Don’t do it, man,” Johnny said. I noticed he’d backed into the hall.
“I’m pretty sure she won’t bite,” I said, but a primal part of me wasn’t so confident.
When my hand was level with the girl’s shoulder, I reached out, expecting to come across some resistance or to feel the kiss of ice water.
I felt neither.
“It’s like there’s nothing there,” I rasped, my throat suddenly dry.
A heavy gust of wind buffeted the house. The timber of the old house groaned and for a moment, I thought the sound came from the girl. I jerked my hand back, rubbing it as if I had just been given an electric jolt.
The girls gave a shrill scream when the lights went out with a pop.
The darkness was complete.
Almost.
“Look at her,” Johnny whispered.
The ghost of the faceless girl shined like a lamp. We could see the room, the hall, and each other by her luminosity.
“It’s spreading,” I said, pointing at Johnny and the girls.
They looked about, spotting the vapor trails left behind by their exhalations. Stepping into the hall, the cold air remained wrapped around me like a second skin. Eva reached out, plucking me into an embrace. “Please, let’s at least try to drive home. Maybe we can find a hotel or something along the way.”
“But what about the girl?” I said, my mouth working miles before my brain could catch up.
“Who the hell cares?” Johnny said. Janice cowered under his arm.
“If she’s a ghost, aren’t you curious to know why she’s here, why she won’t go away?”
Three heads shook with great vehemence.
Standing in the hallway, it was if we’d been plunged into the arctic.
Janice made the sign of the cross several times. “My God, Johnny, what if she’s one of the – you know? I’ve never felt right about what we did.”
Johnny couldn’t comprehend. He shrugged his shoulders.
She bore into his eyes. “What if she’s one of our kids?”
He blew out a breath. “That’s crazy. It would look like a baby, not a full-grown girl. Don’t get yourself all worked up about that again.”
Janice shoved him into the wall, biting back tears. Eva stroked the back of her hair.
A puff of warmth touched my face. I moved closer, like a dog latching onto a scent. I found myself back in the bedroom.
“It’s warming up in here.”
When I spoke, my words weren’t converted into smoke signals. Eva’s teeth had begun to chatter. I motioned to her with my hand. “Come in here. It’s actually pretty nice now.”
“No way.”
I caught her gaze. “Eva, please. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that would hurt you. It’s warm in here, and we have light.” I nodded at the glowing girl.
Eva’s lips pulled into a tight line. I crooked my fingers, drawing her into the room. She rolled her eyes, walked into the room and latched onto my side.
“It is warm,” she said.
“You’re not kidding?” Johnny asked. She shook her head.
He joined us in the room. Janice remained in the hall, shivering.
“Come on, babe. It’s ridiculous to stay out there.”
“Look,” I said. Frost was creeping into the corners of the framed pictures along the walls. “You really should come inside.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” Eva said.
The lathing above her head let out a tremendous crack. Janice jumped, running into the bedroom. She stumbled, nearly brushing against the ghostly girl. She squealed, leaping sideways and crashing into a side table.
I took Eva’s hand in mine. “See.”
She resisted at first. Lacing my fingers with hers, we pushed through the luminous mirage. Eva let out a small cry, but for the first time, it wasn’t laced with fear.
“You can go right through her,” she said, biting her lower lip. She let go of my hand and waved her arm through the apparition’s midsection. “I don’t feel a thing.”
“Let me try,” Johnny said.
Soon, the three of us were caressing the air, bathed in light and warmth, our own spirits oddly buoyed by our non-tactile contact with the ghost.
“You have to try this,” he said to Janice. Her arms were folded across her chest, the flesh on her chin wrinkled.
“I am not touching a ghost,” she insisted.
“Janice, it’s amazing,” Eva said. “I was just as afraid as you. Look at me.” Her fingers slipped through the girl’s hair.
It was if the air had been laced with ecstas
y. Giddy, we suddenly felt a pressing need to touch the phantom. We enticed Janice to join us, peer pressure from a trio of ghost junkies.
“Come on,” Johnny said. He tried to wrap his arms around the girl as if he was giving her a bear hug. He fell through her, stumbling on the other side, laughing.
“Honey, take my hand,” Eva said.
Tears snaking down her cheeks, Janice slipped her hands in hers.
“I don’t believe this,” she said as her arm went through the girl.
As if taking a cue from an unseen director, we sat around the apparition, our knees in contact with the space occupied by a vision of the girl’s legs.
No one spoke.
The storm outside even seemed to move on, not daring to interrupt the silence.
At one point, my vision blurred with tears.
Eva collected them with the pad of her thumb.
We raised our hands as one as if the apparition were the planchette on a Ouija board, a guide to communion with the dead. A pocket of warmth, the kind you felt standing by your mother’s side while she drew a sheet of cookies out of the oven, enveloped us as we made contact with the ethereal.
I thought I heard Eva say something – a word, a name, it was impossible to tell. My eyelids drew down as if an invisible hand passed over them, the final closing of a corpse’s gaze. My muscles constricted. My back molars ground against one another.
I could only compare it to being locked onto a third rail. There was no way to break free.
Pain.
A deep, heavy sorrow came over me. It started in my chest, radiating outwards like poison from a mushroom cloud. Then came anger. And fear. Worst yet, a morbid sense of despair. It was like viewing of one’s life in a flash, grabbing all your regrets, knowing you only had one more breath to set them right and that you would die with them, molecules of melancholy weaving within your spirit body.
A cramp blossomed in my gut. My back ached as I collapsed within myself. My bowels turned to liquid. If I gave in to the pain, I knew I would shit myself.
Something pressed against my windpipe. The flesh of my neck burned. My eyes strained against my closed lids as I struggled to draw a breath.
My mind shouted to open my eyes, to call Eva’s name, to grab her hand, to do anything in the world of the present and the living to shock me from my entombment by the faceless girl.
Dear God, let me go!
I’m dying. I can feel my soul separating from my body.
Eva! Please, hold me Eva. Don’t let my spirit leave. Pull me back! Pull me back!
The lights. Where are they coming from? Where am I? Who am I?
I don’t remember passing out.
One moment, I was burned with a luminescence so intense, I thought I’d be turned to ash. The next, I was thrown down a dark, depthless well.
My shivering brought me to a panicked consciousness. I pushed myself up on my elbows. Harsh, yellow light seared my eyes. I threw my forearm over them.
Why am I wet?
I looked down.
Snow.
I was outside. Through narrow slits, I saw the mansion to my left. My car was covered in fresh snow.
Something groaned.
Eva lay beside me.
Pushing snowflakes from her near-blue face, I raised her to my chest, chanting her name.
Johnny and Janice were opposite us, both struggling to rise.
“Why are we outside?” Eva croaked.
I kissed the tip of her frigid nose. “I don’t know.”
And then I thought of the ghost girl.
“Do you remember anything after we touched the apparition?” I asked.
Eva winced, as if recalling the same pain I had felt. “No.”
“What the fuck happened?” Jimmy said, staggering on his feet. He used both hands to help Janice up. “How did we get down here?”
I brushed snow from Eva’s clothes, holding her close. My knees were so frozen, I wasn’t sure if I could unlock them to walk. “I don’t know. We should get inside, check for frostbite.”
“Frostbite!” Janice’s blue lips quivered as her teeth chattered.
“We can worry about that later,” Eva said. “Right now, we need to warm up.”
We held on to one another – strength in numbers. Every joint ached. It was if the marrow in our bones had frozen solid. The front door was closed. I prayed it was unlocked.
Eva led the way, stumbling after her third step. She fell to her knees, brining us all down with her.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Sorry. I think I tripped on something. It’s hard to tell when you can barely feel your feet.”
We helped one another back up, each hissing with pain.
“What is that?” Johnny said.
Looking down at the area where we had all fallen, we saw a patch of solid ice beneath the scattered snow. A trio of polished rocks the size of cantaloupes ringed the edge of the ice.
“Must be a little pond or part of one of those water gardens,” Janice said.
“Do you think she’s down there?” Jimmy said.
“Who?” Eva asked.
He craned his head toward the house. The empty master bedroom windows starred down at us.
“Why would you say that?” Janice said.
“Why else would we end up down here after touching her? I know I didn’t just walk my ass down here to freeze to death. There has to be a reason.”
I said, “He might be right.”
“You can’t mean that,” Eva said, her body twitching with shivers.
“If she is, what can we do? Chop the ice until we find her? Call the police? What if they don’t find anything?” No one spoke. “And what if they do find her? Then what?”
“Then she’s at least free,” Janice said. “Her soul can move on.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because that’s the way it works,” she blurted.
“That’s a theory proposed by armchair paranormalists and Hollywood. You don’t know that for sure,” I replied.
Eva stepped away from the exposed ice and said, “He killed her. I felt it. I know you all felt it, too.”
My throat hitched recalling the pressure, the searing pain.
“He has enough money to make it all go away. And to make our lives hell for exposing it,” Eva said.
“So what, we just walk away?” Johnny said. “There might be a dead body right under our feet. Isn’t it a crime to just ignore that?”
For once, I didn’t know what to say. They were both right.
I walked to the car, popped the trunk and pulled out the spare blankets I kept in case of emergency. I also snapped up the tire iron.
“I don’t think any of us can leave without at least knowing,” I said, handing out the blankets. “Once we do, then we can decide what to do.”
I brought the tire iron high above my head, brining all my weight down onto the thick ice. Shards of ice kicked into the air. The ice remained solid. I did it again and again, until I’d carved a narrow gouge. Flakes of shaved ice mingled with the snow.
“Don’t stop,” Eva urged.
The morning sun warmed our backs as I pummeled the ice, searching for the faceless girl.
When the ice finally did crack, a strange odor issued from the fissure. Johnny placed a hand on my sore shoulder, taking the tire iron from my hands. “I’ll finish it. You’ve done enough.”
My legs were weak. I stumbled into Eva.
We watched as Johnny jammed the tip of the iron into the crack, working it back and forth. The ice started to break, spider webs etching over the surface.
If she was down there, we would see her soon.
Would she have a face?
Would we have the courage to do what was right?
I wasn’t sure.
“Will you look at that,” Jimmy said, dropping the tire iron. It hit the ice with metallic finality.
We peered into the exposed depths.
Aside from being r
esponsible for infecting me with the writing bug, Norm Hendricks has, on occasion, given me fodder for twisted little tales. In this particular instance, we were at work, bullshitting during a break, when Norm got tongue-tied talking about a pumice stone. It came out as pummel stone. I ran home that night and drew up the following ditty. An editor once wrote back that I should seek professional help and to never solicit his magazine again. Well, his magazine is no more, but the pummel stone, it lives on.
STONED
The smooth surface of the Pummel Stone was ice cold against Kitty’s bare breasts and stomach, and despite the burning slash of the belt on her back and the fevered friction of Ed’s fingers as they worked in and out of her pussy like a trio of funny car pistons, it felt somewhat soothing out here in the blazing South Carolina sun.
God she hated South Carolina. She’d made it out once, all the way to Wyoming. Now there was a place where you didn’t feel like dying come summer, where the heat of the day didn’t hit you like a wet towel fresh from a pot of boiling water. If there was one thing she hated, it was the damn heat and humidity of the deep and nasty south.
He hit her again with the belt. This time, she felt her skin split. When she tried to move away he dropped the belt and used his free hand to grip the back of her neck, pushing her face harder into the rock.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?” he hissed in her ear. His tongue was thick with cheap beer and his breath reeked of day old diapers. “That’s right, bitch. You ain’t leavin’ the Stone until I’m finished up in here.”
Ed’s favorite blasted from the speakers he’d had installed under their covered patio: Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla by Wagner. Lord in heaven did she hate that song. Ed had gotten hooked on Wagner after watching Apocalypse Now one too many times, what with the helicopters and all the bombing and that horrid music blaring in the background. He went out to the music store one day and shuffled through the Nice Price CD box until he found a copy of selected works by Richard Crazy Ass Wagner. There wasn’t much call for regular priced classical CDs in these parts. Kitty thought if the dead composer could see what his music had inspired, he’d approve. All men were bastards that way. Goddamn heathens.