GHOSTS: 2014 edition (THE GHOST STORIES OF NOEL HYND # 1)

by Noel Hynd

  “Henry wants what anyone would want,” Mrs. Ritter said softly. “No matter what he says. What could any soul want?”

  “Eternal peace,” Osaro asked. “Peace with the Creator.”

  She nodded.

  “They did something terrible to him, didn’t they, Helen?” Brooks asked.

  The specter faded again. And now Brooks knew how dangerous the subject was. How horrible.

  “You must tell us,” Brooks said.

  “I mustn’t.”

  “Please, Mrs. Ritter,” Annette said. “Our happiness, our lives depend on it.”

  Her eyes, though yellowish and ghostly now, seemed kindly. She looked closer to the next world than this one.

  “They murdered him, didn’t they?” Brooks asked.

  Silence.

  “The rumor was all over the island,” Brooks tried slowly. “Henry had done many horrible things to Mabel. Made the poor girl miserable. Wrecked her life. Drove her to suicide. So the actors came out one night and took Henry to a field. Am I right?”

  Mrs. Ritter’s image faded and drifted, as if the story disturbed her. But she didn’t disappear.

  “They shot him,” Brooks said. “And they buried him?”

  In the room, from somewhere, there was the sound of a human moaning. Annette felt her entire body crawl with goose bumps when she heard it. Brooks was jolted, too.

  “But they were afraid that his body might be found,” Brooks continued. “So they did something to the body, didn’t they? They did something so that the body, if found, couldn’t immediately be identified. It’s all right, Mrs. Ritter. We know what they did. We understand.” Brooks paused.

  “They cut his head off,” Brooks said simply. “There. Let’s all admit it now. It was many, many years ago.”

  Annette felt her flesh crawl a second time.

  “My sister was a lovely young woman,” Mrs. Ritter said. “Henry made her very unhappy. He saw many other young women. Incessant other women. It wasn’t fair to Mabel.”

  “And did Mabel meet someone else?” Brooks asked.

  Mrs. Ritter nodded.

  “And she wanted out of the marriage?”

  Mrs. Ritter nodded again.

  “And Henry held her. Wouldn’t give her a divorce?” Annette asked.

  Mrs. Ritter nodded a third time. “And in time, the man Mabel loved married another. Mabel felt very much alone,” she affirmed. “So one day she walked into the sea and drowned herself.”

  “And this was in the year nineteen forty-three?” Brooks asked.

  The ghost nodded.

  “And you were familiar with this house back then, Mrs. Ritter. You feel that you check on it because you helped part of the evidence be hidden.”

  “This was my sister’s house,” she said. “From nineteen twenty-four until nineteen twenty-eight. As a little girl, I used to visit…”

  “In a way, you’re still guarding your sister’s house, aren’t you? Keeping an eye on the evidence, even though Henry has returned.”

  Through the darkened room, past the flicker of the candlelight, Brooks thought he saw the nuance of a nod from Mrs. Ritter.

  “But wouldn’t you like your peace, too? Wouldn’t you like to pass on to the next world and be finished in this one?”

  The image of the old woman drifted through the room. It came softly toward the table. One arm reached out. Brooks stared directly at it. He allowed the ghost to reach to him. Spectral fingers touched his cheek. He would never ever forget the feeling. Warm. Gossamer. Again, almost like a spider’s web, but more ethereal.

  “You’re very kind,” she said.

  Then she did something that she hadn’t done before. More than words, she conveyed an image. Brooks saw her standing on the plot of ground where Beth DiMarco had been killed. When that vision faded, Brooks realized that she was then standing on the earthen patch within the cellar below them. Later, both Annette and Osaro recalled seeing the same visions.

  And then the specter was back in the room with them. Mrs. Ritter addressed Annette. “He’s a very wise young man, this policeman,” she said. “He will take good care of you.” Mrs. Ritter glided before Timothy Brooks. “There was no gun,” she said. “Only a sword. The actor who had been a butcher, he was my husband. And he only had a sword. They made Henry kneel, as if to ask for forgiveness. I remember. It was a night with a full moon and Henry begged and begged, for the first time in anyone’s memory.” She paused. “And then they executed him.” Many seconds passed. “Henry deserved it,” Mrs. Ritter said evenly. “An evil man deserved an evil fate.”

  Brooks absorbed this in all of its horror. He kept his eyes on the ghost. Mrs. Ritter’s spirit glided backward from him. Then the image receded.

  “You know all you need to from me,” Mrs. Ritter said. “And you know what to do. So now I can go, thank you very much.”

  Wordlessly, the three people around the table watched her vanish.

  All three participants in the séance remained at the table.

  There was no easing of tension. None, because as soon as Mrs.

  Ritter was gone, they felt the air thicken in the room. They felt the unseen grip, the growing thickening and pulsing of the air. A sense of murder and death. All three had experienced it enough to recognize it.

  “Come on,” Brooks finally said. “Come on, Henry. Let’s have you right out here!”

  They knew his spirit was near. They waited for several minutes. But then, finally, there was a gut-wrenching stench in the room. Foul. Putrid. This combined with an oppressive thickening of the atmosphere. Worse than they had encountered at any previous séance.

  Annette felt like she would vomit. She didn’t. She moved her hand on top of Brooks’ and held on. Brooks squeezed her hand to reassure her.

  The candle wavered.

  The pressure increased heavily in the room.

  Suddenly there was a loud banging. It seemed to shake the entire house. A clap of thunder could not have sounded more dramatically. And they heard, they thought they heard, the sound of a woman screaming, a terrible death being played out into infinity.

  Mabel Mack? Pulled under the waves to her earthly destruction?

  Beth DiMarco? Murdered in a field?

  Helen Ritter? Encountering Henry’s homicidal fury?

  It was almost too intense. Annette made a motion to stand and flee. Brooks held her and shook his head.

  “No! We stay!” he said.

  The foul smell worsened. It was the odor of decomposing animal flesh.

  “He’s challenging our will,” Reverend Osaro said with concern. “Henry’s putting up a fierce opposition to what we want to do.”

  Again, Annette suppressed a feeling of sickness. To Brooks, the feeling was more one of physical challenge. The pressure in the room dropped so low that he felt as if something was trying to push him out.

  Another loud bang! It came from everywhere and was much closer this time. It was as loud as the time that the china cabinet had collapsed.

  “We will not leave, Henry,” Brooks said. “You will come to us.”

  One of the window shades shot up with a loud clap. Then the other. Both Annette and Tim felt a surge of panic in their chests. Henry was that close! And that furious! But still they stood their ground. Still, they would not move.

  “Stay, stay, stay!” Osaro urged. He reached again for prayer, his eyes closed, his face lifted.

  “‘Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than we believed.’” St. Paul.

  Subliminally, there was the sound of a man groaning. Then distantly screaming. The cries gave the impression of great torment, great agony, being played out.

  “‘Be not deceived,’” Reverend Osaro continued softly. “‘God is not mocked. For whatever a man soweth, he also shall reap.’” St. Paul, Osaro’s guiding light, that of the convert, for a second time.

  Then a bloodcurdling scream. It sounded like it was in the room with them. And there followed
the sound of something falling to the mud.

  … like a head lopped off with a sword…

  Then the shadows shifted in the room. The flame of the candle surged into a brilliant flame a foot high and seemed to hover in the air separate from the candle.

  “Tim!” Annette screamed.

  He saw it, too. His eyes went as wide with fear. They were as incredulous as hers.

  The candlestick had also levitated. It too was a foot off the side table, hovering in the air and the flame was now even higher.

  Never in his life had Brooks held such fear within him. Never had he so violently wrestled with the gripping desire to stand and flee. Never had he seen anything so unholy.

  But he couldn’t run. Flee and his battle of wills was lost. Flee and Annette may be lost as well. Flee, and everything he now wanted in life was left behind.

  Instead, he stared. The candlestick, with the candle still burning, floated in the room, its flame magically supported above it.

  “Go back to Hell, Henry!” Brooks intoned softly. “Go back to Satan’s place and stay there!”

  A voice in the room: “You are terrified Brooks! Admit that you’re terrified?”

  Brooks in return, “Show yourself, Henry! If you dare!”

  Annette’s eyes were frozen upon the candlestick.

  Words. A voice speaking. Rising from the night, combating evil. Osaro again, calmly, focused. Another scripture.

  “‘…for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wickedness in high places…’”

  The flame danced and grew.

  Osaro fought it. “‘…take unto you the whole armor of God, and ye may be able to withstand all evil and all night…’ “

  The candlestick whirled in the air. The candle fell to the floor and burned faintly. Above it, from a distance of six feet, the pewter stick flew directly at Tim Brooks. He ducked his head to one side, but only enough to escape the full force of the thrown object. The candlestick glanced hard off his left temple and fell to the floor.

  Brooks, dazed and hurting, stared at the void near the closed door.

  “I’m not moving, Henry. I won’t go,” he said.

  Brooks felt a trickle on the side of his head.

  Warm. Wet.

  Blood flowed slowly down from an open cut where the candlestick had hit him. Annette looked to him in horror.

  Brooks turned and picked up the candlestick. Annette picked up the candle. Carefully, Brooks put the two back together. The flame, never dying, hovered in the air.

  Osaro rose and reached for it. He grabbed it and seemed to crush it with his hands. Then, somehow, used it to relight the candle at the center of the table.

  “You’re winning, Timothy,” Osaro said softly. “Hold on.”

  The stench returned and grew foul again. The three at the table held their hands together. There was another bang. This one sounded as if it came from beneath the table, as if the floor was collapsing.

  As if it were about to fall through.

  It didn’t.

  Then the nature of the stench changed. Suddenly Annette, Timothy and George Osaro involuntarily recoiled.

  Before them on the table, stacked high, were the eighteen slaughtered white ducks. Corpses rotting. Crawling with lice. Eye sockets hollow. Festering and stinking, advanced in their decomposition.

  Somehow, all three seated at the table managed to hold their places.

  “Take them away, Henry,” Osaro said softly. “And present yourself, not a metaphor for your soul.” He paused. “You will not have another chance. We will hold no more séances if we don’t wish to.” The image of the slain ducks faded upon the table. Then the stench receded, as did the oppressive atmosphere in the room.

  There followed a final, tumultuous bang within the house. It was as if they were seated directly below a clap of thunder. Everything shook. The flame of the candle spasmed wildly and nearly died. From other rooms came the sound of small falling objects, crashing onto the wood floors, dislodged from tables.

  But Brooks could sense the easing of the tension. He knew that Henry had withdrawn. Several minutes passed. The room seemed cooler. The air less stagnant. Almost fresh again. A tangible wave of relaxation went around. Osaro opened his eyes.

  He withdrew his hands. He announced what all three knew.

  “Henry’s gone,” the pastor said. “He’s fired his best shots. He’s displayed his anger.” He sighed. “We have the offensive now.” He turned toward Brooks. “Are you certain you don’t want one more séance?” he asked. “Tomorrow we could probably coax him forth.”

  Brooks gazed at the minister.

  “I don’t think we have to,” Brooks said.

  “What?”

  “We won’t need another séance,” Brooks said. “I think it’s clear why he’s here. I think it’s clear why he can’t rest.”

  “Is it?” Osaro asked, almost as a challenge.

  “Yes. Are you willing to you perform a standard Christian burial?”

  “Of course. If you have a body. Or some remains.”

  “Got a few shovels in your garage?”

  “Sure, but…”

  Annette curled her lip.

  “Then we’re almost home,” Brooks said. He rose from the table and turned on an electric light. The room again seemed very mundane, very ordinary. Just another room in an old house with a queer little checkerboard table at its center. He opened a window to let in a fresh breeze.

  “I’d say, another twenty-four hours,” Brooks said. “And I’m pretty confident about it.”

  Reverend Osaro stared at him, saying nothing, but perhaps again reading his mind.

  Fifteen minutes later, they stood outside as Annette locked the house. Osaro then allowed her to walk ahead to the cars before sharing a final thought for the evening. He had been doing some thinking, too, Brooks learned.

  “You might remember something,” the pastor said slowly. “From one of our conversations? Or maybe it was from one of your readings at the Eksman Collection. Extreme trauma, extreme psychological duress will sometimes result in a haunting. Do you recall that point?”

  Brooks remembered it. He believed that he had read it, and Reverend Osaro had mentioned it, too. “Of course,” he answered. The minister exhaled slowly.

  “I once read in a psychological study,” he mused, “that the human brain can stay alive for maybe five to ten seconds after separation from the rest of the body. The brain continues to work until the lack of new blood makes it stop.”

  Brooks listened. “So?”

  “Well, this is just a thought, Tim, albeit a little bit of a grisly one. What could cause greater psychological distress than that? If Henry’s head was chopped off while he was still alive, he had five to ten seconds to brood upon the psychological anguish of his execution. And his particular sort of execution.”

  Brooks tried to envision the anguish. He couldn’t. It was incomprehensible. This was something out of the days of guillotines.

  “Well, in terms of psychological agony, in terms of a spirit imprinting on an area,” Osaro continued calmly, “I can’t think of anything much more hideous. Can you?”

  “Not off hand,” Brooks said.

  “I’m surprised that we haven’t been haunted by this for seventy-five years on this island.” He laughed. “Then again, maybe we have been.”

  “No,” Brooks said. “Someone triggered it.”

  “Who? How?”

  “Someone brought a happy, healthy, loving relationship to this island and dropped it right down on Henry’s remains. It was the type of relationship Henry might always have wanted, but never had. That, literally right on top of his incomplete mutilated corpse and… well, use your imagination.”

  “But who are you talking about?”

  Brooks clapped his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “That’s how I know where his grave is,” Brooks said. “See you tomorrow,” he said
. “And bring a Bible.”

  Chapter Sixty

  On Monday morning, in the bedroom on the second floor at 17 Cort Street, Henry was waiting.

  How foolish these living people were, thinking they had defeated him. What idiots! Like those people who had cut his head off years ago. Each of them, in their separate times and places, had died a horrible death. Well, so would one of these two—Annette Carlson or Timothy Brooks. Henry would draw the big chasm of death between them. How dare they enjoy the type of relationship that he had never had?

  Maybe the man’s will was very strong, Henry reasoned, and maybe he had proven difficult in a confrontation. But these people knew nothing about how events could be manipulated. There were ways of bringing about a death without directly causing it.

  Wonderful ways.

  Annette’s footsteps sounded on the stairs leading to the bedroom.

  Henry recognized her steps.

  She arrived on the landing outside. Henry withdrew into the wall as Annette entered her bedroom.

  Busily, Annette went to her dresser. She opened drawers and pulled out clothing. For a few moments, Henry drifted into the room and hovered directly behind her as she leaned over. He was close enough to easily touch her, had he decided to. To caress her neck. Her cheeks. Her lips. Sometimes Henry reasoned that he loved Annette, too, and causing her death would bring her closer to him.

  She turned abruptly and he slipped out of her line of sight. Annette paused for a moment and froze, as if he had moved not quite fast enough and she had caught the movement of a shadow.

  “What’s there?” she asked. “Anything there?”

  She looked very worried. But Henry was out of view and did nothing to attract her attention.

  She leaned over again, which was perfect. She was looking for a pair of shoes. She reached under the bed, thrusting her hand way back and—

  Perfect again. She found it! Oh, Glory, Henry thought! She had found it already!

  “What the…?” Annette asked.

  The strange metal object clanked against the floor. Annette pulled out the big heavy bed that had been there since the previous tenants.

  Annette muttered in both consternation and amusement. She reached down and picked up an old steel sword in its sheath. The sword was magnificently preserved, she discovered when she pulled it out. Clean and sharp.