by Alexie Aaron
“I waved at you. You looked right at me.”
“We can’t see anything. It’s dark in here, dude,” Ted complained.
“Ambiance. Get your rear in gear; Old John is going to tell us all about the 1973 disaster. We’ve ordered cheese fries,” he added as he led the way to the table.
Mia moved awkwardly through the tables. The bar was infested with three male spirits, two of which seemed very interested in the newly arrived blonde. Murphy stepped in front of her. He nodded towards the bar, and the trio of ghosts followed him. Mia sighed. Murphy may be a pain sometimes, but he was her protector, first and foremost.
Mike got up when she approached. Audrey sat beside an octogenarian dressed in flannel and denim. He started to smile but stopped. He dug into the pocket of his flannel shirt and came up with a pair of dentures. He popped them in his mouth and then gave her a dazzling smile.
Mia returned his smile, uncomfortably showing her full set of teeth in the process.
Ted wondered if this was a cultural thing, this wide-tooth-baring smile. He nodded his greeting, keeping his long incisors to himself.
“John and I met in the library,” Audrey explained. “I couldn’t believe my luck.”
“First time for me too,” Old John explained. “I usually pick up girls in the Krogers.”
“Anyway, I promised him a few drinks in exchange for some information.”
“She could have saved her money. All I wanted was…”
“John! We talked about that. I’m a good girl from a good family,” Audrey said beet red.
Mike leaned over and whispered, “Old John’s been hitting on her since we arrived. He’s my hero.”
Mia cleared her voice, but it still came out squeaky, “Excuse me, John, I don’t mean to pressure you, but a friend of ours is missing, and I think you can help us out.”
“Yes, miss, I will do my best.”
“Tell us your story.”
“I was at work when the storm hit. We all ran out to see…”
Mia sensed the man was lying, but why? She slid off a glove and reached over and grabbed his hand before Mike and Ted could stop her.
The warm summer breeze seemed to push John along as he walked towards the Tear Drop Tavern. He waved at Mrs. Brewster as she swept off the steps of the Dew Drop Inn across the road. She shook her finger at him, calling out, “Isn’t it a bit early?”
“It’s after twelve,” he called back.
“Maybe in Rhode Island!” she admonished before she walked back into the inn.
He shook his head, imagining the refreshing, icy cold beer that awaited him. He was a hard worker; didn’t he deserve a little tipple now and again?
A strange whistling sound disturbed his thoughts. He looked down the road expecting to see some G Damn hot-rodder racing up Mason Street, but the road was clear. The sound became louder as a cacophony of other strange sounds joined it. He heard a crash and an explosion before he saw a fireball sail over the roof of the Dew Drop Inn. It was followed by two other fireballs. His first thought was Russians! His second was meteorites. Didn’t they say the whatchamacallit asteroid field was passing by earth on the news last night? Another screamed overhead. He didn’t know whether it was safer in the bar or in the inn. He weighed the prospect of weathering the storm with a pot of tea at the inn in the company of Mrs. Brewster against sharing a pitcher of beer with a bar fly, and ran towards the bar. He had his hand on the door when he stopped to look back at the inn. The roar from an impacting meteorite shook the panes of glass in the tavern’s door. Dust billowed down the road. When it cleared, the inn was gone.
Mia was ready to pull out of his mind when she thought she would try something. “Slower, give me your memories slower,” she projected into John’s mind.
She watched as a rock no larger than a basketball landed. The ground shook and a shockwave pushed towards the inn, it moved the building off its foundation several yards. The building skidded along the freshly mowed lawn and disappeared into a shimmer. Another meteorite landed extinguishing the shimmer. Through Old John’s memories, Mia saw the inn and the ley line disappear.
She unclasped her hand and pulled on her glove.
“And there I was battling the flames. I pulled all the orphans to safety,” Old John said triumphantly.
Audrey got up and patted John on the back, looking at Mia apologetically. “That was some story, John. If you will excuse me, nature calls. Mia?”
“Me too,” Mia said, getting the hint that Audrey wanted to talk to her.
“Those gals, got to pee in packs,” Old John crowed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was a liar,” Audrey began.
Mia grabbed her hand and stopped her. “He was a witness, Audrey, but the truth was harder to tell. I think I have to apologize to Ted and talk to the others. Burt may just be in a Fata Morgana, created by the 1973 meteor shower.”
~
Burt left his room and walked along the upper hall, keeping an eye out for the reemergence of the front door. He had on his coat, gloves and two pairs of socks. His mind may not be accepting the cold, but his body was showing signs of hypothermia. Fortunately, Mia made every member of the team carry a bottle of water with them since her adventures in Sentinel Woods. He sipped the water and began to feel better. He was less irritable and his mind sharpened.
If he was in a building, and it was traveling around and about southern Wisconsin in the winter, there would be no fireflies of summer. There would be no herbs growing in the garden. All that, like the food, was a mirage. It stood to reason that the next step off the porch wouldn’t be the death of him. It would just be a step. The reality was that the inn wasn’t moving fifty yards in the air, it was moving along the ground. It only wanted him to think it was a death leap instead of a step. Why did it waffle between winter and summer? Was that important? Were the occupants in the inn spirits or mirages? He suspected the formidable Mrs. Brewster was more than your garden variety ghost, but Millie was another matter.
Why did the inn keep him but let the others go?
“Can I help you, Mr. Hicks?” Mrs. Brewster said from behind him.
He turned around. His eyes saw a kindly older woman, but his instincts told him that he was dealing with something that wasn’t female or male. What it was… was another matter.
“Why me?”
“Why you, what?” the woman asked.
“Why have you detained me, when you let the others go?”
“Others?” The woman seemed puzzled, but realization soon came over her. “They needed help, and we helped them. You, you came to make trouble and…”
“What if I apologize?”
Mrs. Brewster thought a moment. “I’ll consider it. You’ll have to apologize to Millie. She is in a snit.”
“Is Millie like you or like me?”
“You’re a clever creature, Mr. Hicks. Millie is and isn’t. Figure that out.”
“What exactly is happening here?”
“I don’t exactly know myself. All I know is that I run an inn. I provide a service to those lost and have nowhere to sleep at night. I take no payment. We leave, and it all repeats. Like the shampoo bottle. Rinse and repeat,” she laughed.
Burt found he liked the sound of her laughter.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“I don’t know. It’s all the repeating, makes one forget time.”
“This is so much like a Doctor Who…”
“Doctor who?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Who.” He stopped and explained, “It’s a television show called Doctor Who.”
“Television, we have one in the corner of the parlor, but it doesn’t work.”
Burt, fearing that his hostess was losing her concentration, changed the subject. “If I apologize to you and to Millie and promise never to return, will you let me go?”
“I’ll consider it. I’ve grown to like you, Mr. Hicks. You’d make an e
xcellent addition to the inn…”
Burt put his hands, palms out, between them. “Please let me go. I’m a grumpy moody bastard. You’ll tire of me.”
“So you say. Give me time to mull this over. In the meantime, Millie has prepared crepes.” Mrs. Brewster walked past him and down the stairs. She looked back and said, “Come along, I believe you have an apology to make.”
Burt followed her down the stairs, disappointed to see the front door had not returned.
Chapter Four
Murphy didn’t frequent drinking establishments when he was living. His mother, who had a strong dislike of liquor, ruled the roost until he married, and then it just didn’t seem like a good use of his time. Sure, he had imbibed from time to time, but being in the company of other drinkers was a new experience. The trio of spirits he had drawn away from Mia hadn’t all died at the same time. Each had slipped away under the influence and seemed happy to stay within the confines of the Tear Drop Tavern. Two of the men seemed too young to have experienced an alcohol related death; the other had the rheumy eyes and broken capillaries that bespoke of a life tied to the bottle.
“Why call this place Tear Drop?” he asked the men.
“Don’t rightly know. Every place around here had Drop in it at one time. The inn across the way was called the Dew Drop Inn, that’s D E W not D O. The stuff on the grass in the morning,” the older man explained.
Murphy nodded that he understood.
“We used to have a market called the Cash Drop, but that went bust long ago,” added the sports-attired man. Murphy was interested in the strange hat the man wore. It was a plastic representation of a wedge of cheese. He itched to know why anyone would walk around with a piece a cheese on their head but considered it rude to ask. The last of the trio was dressed in a black mourning suit.
“Tell me about the Dew Drop Inn,” Murphy requested.
“Ah, that place was run by the Brewsters. He died, but the widow carried on with the place. I believe they served breakfast and light lunches to their guests.”
“They all do that now,” offered the cheese-wearing spirit. He pushed back his sleeve and Murphy spotted a Green Bay Packers tattoo on his upper arm. “They call them Bed and Breakfasts. Took the wife to one in Appleton once. It was all flowery and smelled like Grandma’s linen cupboard.”
The black-suit-wearing spirit stayed silent. Murphy sensed that talking about the inn brought up a lot of pain. He knew better than to force communication. If the man wanted to talk, he would do so in his own time.
“They sent the daughter to Chicagee to learn how to make all those fancy pastries. What was her name?” the old man wondered aloud.
“Millie,” the suited man broke his silence. “She was the most beautiful creature I had ever met.”
“Oh that’s right, she married Herb Swanson’s eldest, Peter, no, P something…”
“Paul,” the suited man corrected.
“Yes, Paul. He was captain of the football team. We all thought he was going all the way. He got himself one of them scholarships to Northwestern. But instead of bringing home a pro contract, he brought home Millie.”
“We met by accident on Michigan Avenue. I bumped into her. She dropped her things. I was so taken by her beauty that I mistakenly trod on her lunch bag. I offered to buy her lunch, and she accepted.”
The older spirit turned and took a long look at the man. “Paul? Damn, you look different.”
Murphy reached out a hand to Paul. “Stephen Murphy.”
“Paul Swanson.”
They shook hands.
“Did you really have a pro contract?” the cheese-wearing man asked.
“No, not then, but I was on first string at Northwestern,” he explained.
“You gave it all up for a woman?”
“Not just any woman. The woman,” Paul answered. “Of course the meteorite shower took that all away.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not from around here. Can you tell me what happened?” Murphy prodded and motioned for Mia to come over.
Mia left Audrey’s side and walked up to the bar and sat down. She sensed when Murphy didn’t introduce her that she was there to listen. She ordered a whisky to sip and did just that.
“It was a morning much like all the rest of them that summer. Millie left early to go to the Dew Drop to start the day’s baking, and I headed out to the south field to start the irrigation pump. We’d been having some hot dry days, and the corn was reaching out for moisture.”
“Reaching out, what the fuck does that mean?” the fan asked.
“Allow me,” the older man offered. “The leaves of the corn move out like this.” He demonstrated by pushing his arms to the side, still angled upwards but well away from his body. “That’s so the plant can get as must moisture from that air that it can.”
“Oh, I get it. Never noticed that before. Sorry, Paul, go on.”
Mia was impressed that the cheesehead had manners. Perhaps it was that this part of the country held to the kinder ways even though most of the world had moved on.
“I had just turned on the pump when I heard a whistling type of sound. I turned off the pump, worried that the pipe had a break in it, when a piece of fire flew over my head and landed an acre behind me. The impact flattened the corn and tossed me twenty yards. I got to my feet, ran to the truck and started back to the farmhouse. I had just pulled out of the field onto the road when I heard an explosion. That’s when the Sunoco went up in flames,” he explained. “The warning siren on top of the fire station sounded, calling all us volunteer firemen to arms. I changed direction and headed into town. I regret that. If I hadn’t answered the call, I’d be with Millie right now.”
“You were a volunteer fireman; it was your duty to respond,” the older man said, trying to pat Paul on the back but lacking the solidity to do so. Mia watched as his hand moved through Paul a couple of times before he quit.
“My duty was to protect my wife. We couldn’t stop the fire. We did get most everybody to safety though. After, I drove to the inn to tell Millie all about it, but there was no inn.”
“Was it destroyed?” Murphy asked.
“No, it was just gone. We searched for it. You know, sometimes a tornado will pick something up and drop it a few counties away. So I assumed that the large meteorite had done something like that.”
Mia watched as the cheesehead moved his hands in the air, trying to figure out the science of what Paul was saying, and shook his head.
“All that was left was the cellar and the sign.”
The group was silent. The cheesehead took off his trident of plastic cheese and set it on the counter in respect.
“I waited two weeks for news that someone found Millie or parts of the inn, but no one had. I took down the sign and put it in the barn. My family convinced me to have a memorial service for Millie and her ma. It was a nice affair, although, people didn’t know what to say to comfort me. Many of them had lost their homes in the fire, but still they took out time from rebuilding to come. After the service, I walked over to where the inn once stood and cried. It started to rain, so I took cover here. I sat down at the bar and took my first drink, and I never left.”
“Acute alcohol poisoning,” the old man said. “I saw it a time or two. Usually it’s a teen that doesn’t know when to stop. I’m surprised an athlete like you would be so damn stupid.”
“He lost his wife, old man. He had the right to drink,” the cheesehead argued.
“And how did you die?” the old man challenged.
“An argument broke out while we were watching the Green Bay/Vikings game. I believe a pitcher of beer was involved,” he said, patting the back of his head. He picked up the hat and put it on.
“It seems to me that yellow hat of yours would have saved you from the pitcher breaking your skull,” Murphy observed.
“It did, and it didn’t. I was sitting at the bar minding my own business. I said something rude about Vikings really being Vi-queens, and some
purple-wearing monster hit me on the back of the cheese slice with a glass pitcher which pushed my head forward hard, the front of the slice hitting the edge of the bar. The impact snapped my head back fast, and that was that, broken neck.”
“Ouch!” Paul said.
“Didn’t feel it. Death by cheese hat. But I died a fan,” he said proudly.
“Why didn’t you move on?” Mia asked quietly from beside them.
The three turned, amazed that the flesh and blood blonde was talking to them.
“You can hear us?” the old man asked.
“And see you. Why didn’t you move on?” Mia asked the cheesehead.
“I died before the 2011 Super Bowl. I didn’t get to see the game. I’m going to stick around until they win another one.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Mia said, winking at a confused Murphy. “Paul, why didn’t you move on?”
“I’m waiting for Millie.”
“Seems to me, she’d be waiting for you at the pearly gates,” the old man said.
“She wasn’t there so I came back.”
Mia had never heard of such a thing before. Someone coming back? “How far did you get?” she asked.
“I remember the light and hearing my mother’s aunt Gloria calling for me. I asked if she had seen Millie, and she said, ‘No, and her mother’s missing too,’ so I turned around, and here I am, waiting.”
“You had a nice funeral. Did you go?” the old man asked.
“No. I’ve been here waiting for the Dew Drop Inn to return and with it Millie.”
“I wish you luck, son. That inn is gone,” the old man said.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Mia said. She felt Ted’s hand move gently on her back as he slipped onto the barstool next to her. She knew he was saving her the embarrassment of the appearance of talking to herself in front of the live patrons of the tavern, not to mention a very confused bartender. She reached over and squeezed his hand.
Paul looked over at Mia. He looked different to her. Could it be that his newly found hope had invigorated him enough to flesh out his features?