The Haunting Lessons
How to Survive and Thrive
When Armageddon Strikes
Book One of the Ghosts & Demons Series
Holly Pop and Robert Chazz Chute
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Published by Ex Parte Press
First Edition: December 2014
ISBN 978-1-927607-29-9
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people, living or dead would be both insane and purely coincidental.
Media and rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected].
Dedicated to our readers
because we are
dedicated to our readers.
Special thanks for editorial assistance to Marissa “Mama” Pop, Brian Wright, Russ Sawatsky and Dr. Janice Kurita.
1
We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.
George Eliot, 1819 - 1880
The Lifted Veil
When the nearly departed become the dearly departed, I’m the girl who takes them on their last ride. When strange men try to pick me up in the organic food aisle and ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a bodyguard. I tell them I train Rottweilers to castrate escaped felons. If I like the look of the guy and if he seems really nice and I’m trying to impress, I’ll say I’m in the health services field. When I come clean on the first date and confess that I drive the dead, they usually want to skip dessert and there’s no second date.
“I’ll call you,” they say.
“Sure. It was nice to meet you.”
So much for trying to be a Normie. If they can’t handle the fact that I drive a hearse occasionally, they really aren’t up to the whole demon hunter thing. Normies don’t pay attention to the concept of entropy. Normies don’t see what’s coming. Normies laugh more. I laugh a lot, too, but it’s often the bitter, ironic kind. The crazy thing is, I used to be one of them — the Normies, I mean, not the demons.
Take a picture of me at seventeen: honor roll, year book editor, classical piano, popular small town girl, Senior Prom Princess. (Everybody likes the Princess more than the Queen, anyway. I’m the girl next-door, not the cheerleader headed off to fail in Hollywood.) I wasn’t a cheerleader because Mom said I had to choose between cheerleading practice and martial arts. Cheerleaders and football players were the cool kids at Medicament Regional High School, but at age eleven, I told Mama that a black belt would set me apart on my college applications.
My plan was to get a degree in biology first and then apply to med school. I might have become a veterinarian if I could specialize in cats, dogs and horses.
Mama didn’t want me to study martial arts. “What if they smoosh your nose?” she asked.
“If my nose gets broken,” I told Mama, “maybe they can shave an inch off it and I could have a little button nose. This could work out well for me.”
I was a Mama’s girl because I didn’t know where Daddy went. (Don’t feel bad for me. That’s good. It’s one less person in my life to worry about. Later, I had to worry about him a lot.) Mama brought me up right. I was taught to say please and thank you and to nod and smile when older and better people talked down to me. I read a book a week. I was bound for big things but I was humble and sweet. Everybody said so. I know that much was real because my classmates wrote nice things in my yearbook like: When you talked, you were always so funny in class, and, I wish I’d gotten to know you better, and, Brad & Tam 4Evah!
Which brings us to Brad Evers. Brad had dimples so deep they were dents. He had such a great smile. That’s what I noticed about him first and what I remember best. When I first spoke to Brad, we were only in seventh grade. A senior named Dave Cutcheon cut in front of me at a water fountain at school and I told him to wait his turn. The lug ignored me. Brad shoved the big guy back.
“You wanna die, little boy?” Cutcheon towered over my hero.
Brad looked him up and down, slow, and smiled. “You aren’t really going to kill me. You aren’t going to fight because you’ve got a game Friday night and you can’t risk a suspension. The coach wouldn’t like it. The team needs you, big guy.”
Cutcheon grabbed Brad by the shirt and said, “Maybe I’ll risk it.”
“We both know you won’t. Now show some respect. You’re supposed to be a leader in the school. Won’t do anything for your rep to be pushing around little kids.”
“If your brother wasn’t on the team, man — ”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brad said. “This was over a minute ago and we’re all about to be late for class.”
Cutcheon walked away.
That was Brad in seventh grade. We laughed together. He beamed that thousand watt smile at me. Then he galumphed down the hallway, clicking his tongue to mimic the sound of a galloping horse. Just as he disappeared around the corner he whinnied and called down the hall to me, “Who was that masked man? Hi, ho, Silver! Away!”
He wasn’t my Brad, yet, but I think I knew he would belong to me, even then.
That day I resolved to work harder every day after school to get my black belt. I decided I’d stay in Medicament, Iowa forever and I’d work at the little hospital I was born in. Each night, I’d come home to Brad’s family farm and we’d have horses and cats and dogs and a couple of kids and we’d bring them up right, too.
There were a couple of flaws in my plan. Mama wouldn’t let me date for two more years after what I came to think of as the Water Fountain Incident. I kept busy and getting that black belt was harder than I’d thought it would be. Reading books is much easier than sweating through endless drills. One of the things that kept me going was the thought that one day, with all my academic and physical training, I’d be worthy of the life I planned.
Mama was originally from Texas. She wouldn’t budge on letting me date boys. When I pestered her about dating, demanding to know why I was the last of my classmates to date, Mama’s answer was, “I’m from Amarillo.” She’s a stubborn woman. She taught me lots of things, mostly patience.
Flash forward to ninth grade. Allison Mackenzie, the school’s prettiest redhead, started hanging around Brad. It seemed every time I saw Brad, Allison walked beside him, touching his muscular arms and laughing long and hard in a high titter. Allison had a thousand watt smile, too, but her main advantage was her push up bra. Her boobs and her annoying laugh spawned my secret nickname for Allison: High Titter.
I was sure I was losing the boy of my dreams to High Titter, but I was a go-getter. I had to go get him. I walked up to Brad, turned to smile at Allison and said, “Would you please excuse us? I have to talk to Brad about something.”
I don’t remember what she said. I don’t think I gave her a chance to talk at all. I smiled wider and said, “Please? It’s personal.”
High Titter stalked off and that left Brad looking at me with wide eyes. My cheeks flushed hot and pink — I’m a blusher. I couldn’t handle his gaze at close range so I stared at his dimples and glanced at his tanned arm muscles. I came straight out with it, talking into his dimples. “Are you going with Allison?”
“Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s in all my classes.”
“And?”
He leaned closer and I could smell peppermint on his breath. “Between you and me, she’s a little annoying.”
“Maybe they do, but I was in a crowded classroom on the first day of school and I heard her talk before I saw her.”
“Sorry to be mean, but I suspected she wasn’t so smart,” I said. I wasn’t sorry. I was mean.
He sighed. “Yeah. What she had to say kind of ruined the view.” When I stopped laughing, he asked me what I wanted to talk about that was so personal.
“You remember that day you got Dave Cutcheon out of my way at the water fountain?”
“Yep.”
“I never really thanked you.”
“No big thing. Dave is washing cars at his dad’s dealership now. No NFL for him. No more rude ’roid rage.”
“That’s a shame. So he really could have beaten you to death that day and he wouldn’t have lost anything, huh?”
We laughed and I wanted to laugh with him more. I wanted to laugh with Brad Evers forever, so I asked, “Will you go with me to the Halloween Dance?”
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate. I loved that he didn’t hesitate.
For my first kiss, I was dressed in my gi from Mr. Chang’s School of Hapkido. I had earned my red belt by then. Brad was dressed as a zombie, fake blood and all, in his older brother’s black suit. That’s how we began, Brad and Tam, Tam and Brad. We ended that way, as well, too soon. (Then the relationship continued on, too long past death…but I’ll get to that.)
From junior high through high school, I had the most handsome, most kind and most confident farm boy boyfriend in all of Medicament, Iowa and probably the world. City people think living in a small town is boring. They don’t know the joys of taking your boyfriend out to the tall grass and making love under the sun and stars.
Flash forward to the summer after graduation from high school. I worked part-time at Mama’s drugstore stocking shelves. That’s where I was when the world as I knew it began to come crashing down. I was putting throat lozenges on shelves and pricing them when I missed the last phone call Brad Evers ever made.
Sheriff Birch got to him before the paramedics arrived. Brad was smart enough to call 911 before he tried to call me, but by then he’d already lost too much blood. Brad saw what was coming. A trail of blood led the Sheriff to the open front door of the Evers house. The front door stood open and splintered. Brad was on the floor by the phone.
Medicament is a small town. By the end of the day, half of Medicament, Iowa knew that Sheriff Birch found my farm boy boyfriend with a number two pencil still in his teeth. The hay baler’s engine was still chugging and its metal teeth were still turning, splattered red and hungry for more.
Flash forward a few days to my first funeral, the first of hundreds. Maybe, someday, Brad’s funeral will be the first of thousands.
Now take a picture of me at nineteen: dressed in black, one hand on a closed casket, a single red rose in one hand. Mama’s pulling me away and I don’t want to leave. As soon as I leave, they’re going to put my farm boy boyfriend down in the cold dark with the worms and grubs.
Mama gave me a sedative but I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to walk. Mama told me to look forward not back. “I know you don’t feel normal,” she said, “but you’re still you. Brad was a good boy, but you are still the girl you were before he came along.”
I didn’t feel the same. I had finally earned a black belt from Mr. Chang. I’d graduated at the top of my class. Mama insisted I still had a bright future to blot out the shadows of the past. But you can’t forget or replace a boyfriend like Brad Evers that easily.
His was a regular small town tragedy. Farm accidents happen all over rural America and all over the world every year. But people won’t admit to the fact that death isn’t always the end. Some of the dead hang on. Sometimes, something holds the dead back from going wherever they’re supposed to go. For Brad, that something was me. That’s a terrible burden to put on someone you love. It’s selfish. The deep love that anchored him to me too strongly was the only fault in Brad I can recall.
Days after the funeral, I walked the road by the Evers house outside of town, the long fence stood on my right. I wasn’t Brad’s widow. I was just the dead boy’s girlfriend. People don’t give the plans of girlfriends and boyfriends weight. The love of my life was dead and when I talked about what might have been, people just shook their heads and asked if they could do anything. No, of course not. Then they asked if I wanted some cake or tea or to talk to a counselor. No. No. And definitely not.
“People don’t know what to say to you, that’s all,” Mama said. “Nobody knows what to say when a young person dies. Soon, they’ll give up saying anything because no one wants to think about it.” She patted my arm. “What you don’t understand yet, what’s really tough to acknowledge right now is, that boy wasn’t the love of your life. He was just your first love.”
I love Mama, but I couldn’t bear her saying that. That’s what led me out on that lonely road, back to Brad’s family’s farm. I stared at the Evers farmhouse and thought about Christmas Eve. That was the first night I’d snuck into the Evers’ house. His parents were out.
Later, I think his Dad suspected us. Brad and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other and we smiled more than is considered appropriate in rural Iowa. But Mr. Evers said nothing and never frowned at me. I was already looking forward to calling Mr. Evers my father-in-law.
As I stood on the road in my black dress, I looked at the farm. I realized I wouldn’t step into the Evers’ home again. I had thought Brad and I might own that old house someday. I turned away. I wept and I began the long walk home. The long fence guarded the tall grass on my left. I caught a glimpse of someone in my peripheral vision. I turned and gasped. Brad watched me from the field.
At first I thought he was a hallucination born of the sedative Mama had given me. Then I thought it must be a scarecrow or a cruel joke. As I got closer, I thought it was Brad in his zombie makeup from our first date at the Halloween dance. Except now my farm boy boyfriend with the dents for dimples did not have muscular arms. He had no arms at all.
2
Lesson 1: when you see your dead boyfriend standing in the tall grass with no arms, tell no one. The Normies do not take this sort of information well or lightly.
The denial will come first and you’ll really want to believe Mama’s right. It’s grief. It was a trick of the light. It was a reaction to the drugs that the pharmaceutical company failed to list on the label: May cause drowsiness, suicidal ideation and seeing zombie boyfriends. Objects in the drug-distorted mirror may be weirder than they appear.
But zombie isn’t the right word, is it? Ghost, wraith, specter…dead boyfriend who won’t move on. It adds a whole new dimension to stalking.
Lesson 2: when they send you to the doctor, he won’t necessarily be sympathetic. Dr. Wilson was one of those old school, country docs. He was old enough to have pronounced time of death on a hundred accidents out in farm country: dangerous equipment, chain saw follies, hunting accidents, drunk driving on gravelly country roads. Unless they’ve driven at high speeds with clouds of dust and dirt billowing from the rear wheels, people don’t know — sometimes until it’s too late — that a dirt road may as well be ice if you’re flooring the accelerator.
“You think you’re the first person to experience loss, girl?” Dr. Wilson asked.
“No,” I said. “I know Brad’s mom and dad and his older brother have suffered a terrible loss. They won’t recover from it. But they don’t see the person they’ve lost every time they look out the window.”
Zombie Brad stood beneath my bedroom window every night. At first all I saw was his silhouette. I was too afraid to shine a flashlight beam down into the yard. I screamed for Mama, of course. All she saw was shadows cast by the branches of the oak tree. She held me as I cried and then the moon came out and Brad was no longer a silhouette. He was a zombie ghost amputee staring up, maybe at me, maybe at the full moon. And smiling his dimpled smile.
I fe
lt his love like a cold hand over my heart. I wanted my farm boy boyfriend to go away. Wanting that was worst of all.
Mama still couldn’t see him. That’s when I really knew I wasn’t a Normie, anymore.
Lesson 3: When the drugs don’t work they’ll try to send you to the local hospital. Don’t go. There are more fresh dead people there standing around and looking for a sympathetic person who can see them.
I walked into the ER through automatic doors with Mama, cooperative and hopeful that somebody could help me. Dr. Wilson hadn’t been the one to help me, but surely someone else had gone through what I had. It was a grief thing.
“Grief,” Mama assured me, “is transient. You’re going to get past this. It’s just the shock, is all.”
That made sense. I thought so, too. I would have held on to that idea longer, but a dead guy stood beside the admitting nurse. He was a middle-aged man, thick in the middle. He wore a hospital gown. He stood behind the nurse at the admitting desk and stared at her. I would have thought he was alive except he looked waxy. The dead don’t really look pale. Waxy is the word. Then the waxy man’s eyes met mine.
The nurse looked up at me from her desk, her mouth tight behind carelessly applied lipstick. “Name?”
When I didn’t say anything, Mama answered for me. “Tamara Smythe.”
“What’s the problem, Tamara Smythe?”
I opened my mouth and I said, “I don’t think this is just indigestion.”
The nurse sat straight as if a live electrical wire was shoved up her spine. She sputtered. “Wh-what did you say?”
Hot tears streamed down my face. “It’s not indigestion. Tums ain’t gonna do it.”
The nurse stood, braced and angry. “Who put you up to this? Do you think this is a joke?”
Mama tried to calm the nurse as the woman began to screech. I stared at the dead man and the dead man stared back. He smiled a crooked grin over crooked teeth. The dead man was gone with my next blink, as if he’d never been there at all.
The Haunting Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare a Demon War (The Ghosts & Demons Series) Page 1