Waiting for Patrick

by Brynn Stein

  Malcolm came galloping down the stairs and into the living room. “Sheri, you didn’t come over earlier or anything did you?” He stood in the archway between the foyer and the living room, panting.

  Sheri looked away from Elliot, puzzled. “I was with you most of the morning, Mal. You know I didn’t.”

  “Does Daniel have a key?” He’d gotten his breathing under control but still seemed to have something urgent on his mind.

  Elliot gave him his undivided attention, if only to get out of continuing the conversation with Sheri.

  She was even more confused and stood up, walking toward Malcolm. “No, I don’t think so.” But then she turned toward Elliot. “Does he?” Elliot shook his head. “Why?”

  Malcolm smiled but looked past Sheri to take in Elliot’s gaze. “Um, maybe more evidence of the ghost?”

  Sheri stopped in the middle of the room and put her hands on her hips. “Malcolm, what are you talking about?”

  He smiled widely and gestured back toward the stairs. “Come on up and see.”

  Sheri stood her ground, looking for all the world like she was going to refuse to do that. Elliot was curious, though, so he stood up, brushed the wrinkles from his slacks, and headed over toward Malcolm. As he passed Sheri, he snagged her arm and gave a little tug. Giving Elliot a disapproving look and a disgruntled mmph, she allowed herself to be pulled in his wake.

  Malcolm waved them on. “Go take a look in the master bedroom.” He grinned like a fool as they passed and then followed them up the staircase.

  Elliot and Sheri made their way to the bedroom and stopped dead. Sheri stared at what they found, and Elliot smiled.

  Elliot religiously made his bed every morning and had the morning of his heart attack. But now the bed was turned down on Elliot’s preferred side. On top of the folded-down portion sat a typed note reading Welcome Home.

  “Oh, come on, Malcolm.” Sheri was incredulous as she snatched the paper off the bedspread. “You expect us to believe a ghost can type and work the printer?”

  “Why not?” Malcolm asked. “He apparently can move phones, lamps, and bathroom toiletries, and write messages on steamy mirrors.”

  Elliot grinned but looked around the room searching for something—someone—he couldn’t see. “Thanks, Ben.” Elliot didn’t know if he imagined an invisible touch to his cheek, but he liked to think it was his resident ghost.

  Sheri shook her head and slumped down to sit on the bed. “All the men in my life are losing their minds.”

  Malcolm and Elliot simply laughed.

  “OKAY,” SHERI finally said, getting off the bed and moving toward the door. “Ghost or no ghost, I’m hungry.” She grabbed both Elliot and Malcolm as she passed them. “Come on. I have some groceries in the car for a heart-healthy dinner.”

  As soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs, she started giving directions. “Mal, could you go get the stuff out of the car?” She waited to see him nod and start toward the front door, then steered Elliot toward the living room. “You go in here, take a load off. Dinner won’t take long. I’m just making a salad with some tuna tossed in for good measure if you have tuna.” Elliot allowed himself to be led to the living room and sat down in his comfy recliner. “It’ll have to be that god-awful canned stuff that you love because I didn’t know how long the groceries would have to be in the car before we got here and didn’t want to take the chance with fresh fish.” Once she had Elliot seated, she started back toward the archway.

  “Could have gotten frozen fish,” Elliot threw out, mostly because he knew it would annoy her.

  Malcolm bustled through the front door with a bag of groceries and a stack of DVDs. “Did you plan on us watching movies all night, Sheri?”

  “No, Malcolm.” She glared as she took the groceries and pushed him toward the living room. “I thought I’d provide Ellie with a wide selection, and we’d watch a movie or two while we ate and visited.” She headed back toward the kitchen.

  “Well”—Malcolm pitched his voice just loud enough for her to still hear—“we could watch movies until Tuesday with all the ones you have here.”

  Elliot smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll kick you out long before Tuesday.”

  Malcolm dropped the considerable stack into Elliot’s lap. “Choose, O wise one.” And then he took a seat on the sofa, brushing off imaginary lint from his shirt and tugging at the wrinkles on his dress slacks.

  Elliot looked at the proffered titles. He wasn’t in the mood for anything heavy or violent, so he picked out the Die Hard and Terminator movies right away and set them aside on the chair-side table. He didn’t care to watch a romcom, not that he ever did—though the one with Mark Ruffalo gave him pause. He had to admit the man was sexy as sin. But Elliot finally threw Just Like Heaven and the other two on the table and continued looking through the stack. “Frozen?” He stared at the cover of the animated feature, then looked pointedly at Malcolm. “I ask you, do I look like the type of person who would watch Disney movies?”

  Sheri appeared in the archway, carrying a tray with three bowls, presumably of salad, and as many glasses. “Not where anyone else could see you watching them, anyway.” She grinned at Elliot’s scowl and placed the tray on the coffee table. “Pick something else.”

  Elliot couldn’t believe the next title. “Ghost? Really, Cher?”

  “What? Patrick Swayze is hot.” She handed out bowls of salad and glasses of soda, then gave forks to all concerned. Taking her own bowl to the sofa, she sat close to Malcolm and dug in. “I’m right here, Sheri.” Malcolm took his salad and sank back into the sofa to start on it.

  She kissed his cheek. “You’re hot too, sweetie.”

  Elliot held the movie case in one hand and slapped it repeatedly against the back of his other hand. “You know, I have half a mind to watch this, just because I know you only brought it to pick on me.”

  “You only have half a mind at the best of times, Elle.”

  “That’s it.” He threw the case to Malcolm. “Put it in.”

  Malcolm seemed to be trying to suppress a chuckle as he caught the movie, somehow managing not to spill his salad in the process. He set the bowl on the coffee table, took out the DVD, and crossed the room to put it into the ancient player that had come with the house. Sheri hung her head, seemingly realizing she’d been beaten at her own game.

  They made it to the pottery scene in relative silence, each working hungrily on their own salad.

  “Oh hey, speaking of ghosts. I did some more research,” Malcolm started the dialogue as he placed his bowl on the coffee table after finishing his salad. He purposely turned away from Sheri when he said it, and Elliot threw a smug take-that look toward her before giving Malcolm his undivided attention. “Mrs. Buckner had mentioned several soldiers she tended to over the course of the war. From both sides. She was a humanitarian and didn’t much care for politics. She simply acted according to her own moral code.”

  “Sounds like a lady I would get along well with,” Elliot observed, stuffing another forkful of salad into his mouth.

  Malcolm chuckled. “Only if your moral code happened to align with hers. It sounds like she was tenacious when she was fighting for a cause.”

  Elliot nodded and looked at Sheri. “Sounds familiar.” He chuckled when she stuck out her tongue at him. “Still sounds like a very interesting woman.”

  “She was, if the accounts I could find are anything to go by. Granted, mostly what I found were either written directly by her or by a descendant, but there were a few other points of view too. Mostly people she helped, either through the Underground Railroad or in various capacities during the war.”

  “Any mention of Ben?” Elliot wanted to know, setting his now-empty bowl on the chair-side table.

  “Not by name,” Malcolm had to admit. “There’s an account in her diary, though, of two Union soldiers she found in her barn. The details of their injuries match what you’ve told us. One had to leave with a Union platoon passing
through so that they wouldn’t find the other one.”

  Elliot nodded and leaned toward Malcolm, excited by the confirmation. “That fits. The one that stayed was Ben. What happened to him?”

  Malcolm shook his head and said quietly, “About what you’d think, considering we think he’s the ghost here.” Malcolm accepted the empty bowl Sheri handed him, almost without looking at it, and laid it to join its comrade on the coffee table. “His wounds were already infected by the time Mrs. Buckner found them in the stables. She tried to clean them and gave him tea that she felt had healing power. He hung on for a couple of days after the other one—”

  “Patrick.” Elliot had his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, clenching his teeth nervously even though he’d already arrived at this information on his own. Somehow it was harder to hear there was documented evidence that Ben had died here.

  “After Patrick left,” Malcolm agreed. “Ben was delirious and kept muttering, ‘I can’t go. I promised. I promised.’ But he finally succumbed to his injuries.” Malcolm looked sincerely aggrieved for a man he’d never met.

  Elliot appreciated the sentiment. “Patrick made him promise he’d be here when he came back for him.”

  “There’s no mention of the other one coming back, but of course in wartime, anything could have happened.” Malcolm briefly looked at Sheri as she paused the movie. Then he turned back to Elliot. “I’ll keep looking for Patrick Campbell, Candler, or Chandler—”

  “It’s Chandler,” Elliot interrupted. “He introduced himself to Mrs. Buckner in one of the dreams. And Ben was definitely Ben Myers. Not his mother’s name after all.”

  Malcolm nodded. “I’ll keep looking for Patrick Chandler, then, and see if I can find out anything more, but if he was killed in battle somewhere, there’s not likely to be any record.” Malcolm slumped back into the sofa cushions. “Sure does seem like Ben tried his hardest to keep that promise to him, though.”

  Elliot thought for a moment, reclining his chair and turning toward the TV, ready to go on with the movie to get his mind off Ben lying in his bedroom, dying. “I think he did better than that. I think he’s still waiting.”

  AFTER MALCOLM and Sheri left around eight o’clock, Elliot slowly made his way up the stairs and got ready for bed. He smiled again when he saw the note and the turned-down bed.

  He unpacked his small suitcase and looked lovingly at the portrait of Ben that Daniel had drawn.

  “I wish you could talk to me, Ben,” Elliot said to the paper in his hands. He thought he felt the touch on his cheek again.

  He put that picture, and the one of himself, into the nightstand drawer and crawled into bed.

  ELLIOT HEARS a noise in the middle of the night and it wakes him up. He looks around, and there, sitting on the foot of his bed, is a gorgeous blond with blue eyes and the sweetest smile Elliot’s ever seen. He recognizes the man immediately from all those weird dreams and the drawing that Daniel had done for him.

  “Ben,” Elliot says, smiling as broadly as Ben is. “You figured out how to show yourself to me.”

  He shakes his head and scoots closer to Elliot. “Yes and no.” Elliot has always appreciated Ben’s voice in the dreams, but he’s positively smitten by it now. Deep and sensual, and confident in a way it wasn’t in the dreams. Elliot listens as Ben continues, “You’re actually still dreaming.”

  Elliot frowns. “Really? Well shit. I thought we found a way to talk.” Elliot can’t believe how disappointed he is.

  “We have.” Ben smiles even wider, though Elliot would have thought that was impossible just seconds ago. Ben creeps closer and closer to Elliot, and Elliot bends his legs up to allow it. “We just have to wait till you’re asleep.”

  “But you can move things when I’m awake. You made me that sign and turned down my bed. You can write to me.” Elliot tucks himself up against the headboard, drawing up his knees even farther, and pats the space he’s made beside him. Ghost or not, Elliot’s not at all afraid of Ben. Sitting here with him feels right.

  Ben moves to the place Elliot offered to him, still smiling wide enough to split his face. His legs are still off the side of the bed, but he turns toward Elliot as best he can. “Yes, I can move things, even though it takes a lot of effort. But I can’t appear to you then. I’ve tried, many times. It takes way too much energy. If there’s an efficient way, I can’t figure it out.”

  Elliot reaches out to touch Ben’s arm, half expecting his hand to go through him, and he smiles like a loon when it doesn’t. “Well, we have this. This is good.”

  “Yes.” Ben covers Elliot’s hand with his own. “It is.”

  “I thought I recognized the bedroom in the dreams.” Elliot grips Ben’s hand as broaches a hard subject. “You died here, I guess. After Patrick left.”

  Ben nodded and squeezed Elliot’s hand. “A day or two later, I think. I’m not sure. I was in and out of consciousness. Mrs. Buckner tried her best, but I think I was too far gone by the time she found us in the barn. I was surprised I lasted as long as I did.”

  Elliot pulls Ben’s hand to the side a little and Ben moves to sit cross-legged on the bed, instead of on the side of it. Now that they’re facing each other fully, Elliot asks, “What happened when you died? Do we have it wrong? Is there no place to go? There’s obviously life after death.” Elliot gestures toward Ben as proof.

  “Yeah, there is.” Ben drops his head and looks at their clasped hands, running a thumb up and down Elliot’s. “But I promised I’d wait here.”

  Elliot squeezes his hand. “For Patrick?”

  Ben nods but pulls away. “I can’t talk about it yet.”

  Elliot gets the fleeting notion that Ben has had tons of decades to think about it and shouldn’t be this raw anymore, but he changes the subject as he thinks of something he should ask.

  “I should probably get your okay on all these changes to the house before I do them, shouldn’t I?” When Ben looks at him blankly, Elliot adds, “I mean, it’s your house and all.”

  He shakes his head and makes eye contact again. “It was never my house. It belonged to the Buckner family.”

  “Yeah, I know, but they’re not around anymore.” But then Elliot thinks of a possibility and looks around the room. “Are they?”

  Ben laughs and shifts on the bed, causing a fold of bedspread to drop over the side of the mattress. It’s a beautiful sound, and Elliot wants it repeated as often as possible. “No,” Ben was saying, “there are no other ghosts in the house, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Phew.” Elliot exaggerates a sigh simply to hear that laugh again. “So, that makes you the owner.”

  “No, it makes you the owner,” Ben insists. “I’m only waiting here.”

  Elliot frowns, and he just can’t stay away from the subject anymore. “I know you’re still waiting for Patrick.”

  Ben nods.

  Feeling an irrational surge of anger, Elliot leans forward with his hands on the mattress and crosses his legs. “You’ve got to know he isn’t coming, Ben. He died over a hundred years ago.” That was assuming Patrick died in the war. Another possibility occurs to him. “I mean, even if he didn’t die in the war, he was an adult in the 1860s. It’s 2015. He’d be well over a hundred and fifty years old. People don’t live that long.”

  A fleeting sadness roams across Ben’s face. “Only his body died.” He gestures up and down his own body. “Obviously the body isn’t all there is to someone. It isn’t even the most important thing about a person.”

  Elliot thinks he understands now. “You’re waiting for his ghost?” He knows Ben said he didn’t want to talk about it, but Elliot can’t let it go anymore. “But you seem stuck here, where you died. Wouldn’t he be stuck where he died too?”

  “I’m not ready to talk about all this yet,” Ben reiterates, as he shakes his head and drops it, as if he’s sad.

  Elliot still thinks there’s a lot to talk about. He hates seeing Ben waiting around for someone who wi
ll never come. But, eventually, Elliot respects Ben’s right to remain silent… for now. “Okay, we don’t have to talk about it.” Elliot smiles and taps Ben’s hand before leaning back against the headboard again. “But I’d still like your input on the renovations.”

  ELLIOT WAS surprised but delighted to see Sheri at the door the next morning. She came bearing coffee and muffins, and hardly waited for him to unlock the door before she wiggled past him and went to the kitchen.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” She set about getting plates and loading their breakfast onto them.

  “I’m okay.” Elliot sat down and left her to it. He knew better than to get in the way when Sheri was in caterer mode… or mom mode. Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference between those two.

  “Not as much detail as I would have liked.” Sheri set his plate of apple-cinnamon muffin and his mug of coffee in front of him. “But I’ll take it. For now.” She sat across the table from him and took a sip of coffee. “You slept okay last night?”

  Elliot shook his head and tore the paper off the muffin. “So much for not asking for more detail.”

  When Sheri set her coffee down and scowled at him, Elliot knew he’d have to answer.

  “Yeah, I slept pretty well.” He waited until Sheri took another sip of coffee and added, “I talked to Ben last night.”

  Sheri didn’t spit coffee all over the place, much to Elliot’s disappointment, but it was a near thing. “What do you mean you talked to Ben?” She set the coffee down again, and just to be safe, scooted it even farther away. No temptation to put more liquid in her mouth during this discussion. “Like you talked to him in the bedroom yesterday? Just talking to the air?”

  Elliot could tell from her expression that she didn’t believe that was what he meant. “No, I mean he talked back to me. We had a conversation.”

  “You actually saw a ghost.” She said it matter-of-factly while pinning him with her best glare. “He appeared to you? Or you just heard his voice?”