by Chanel Smith
“No, I haven’t used it. What sort of mystery are you trying to solve?” My radars were up and I was beginning to feel like something from the paranormal world might be going on in Diana’s apartment.
She explained how she had been awakened, checked everything and the only thing that she had found that was out of place had been the typewriter. “I was sure that it was Jaxon who had been playing with it, but if you haven’t borrowed it and he hasn’t been playing with it, how has it been moved. Here let me show you.”
She led me over to the antique desk and showed me the typewriter, which was pushed back into a sort of a cubby-hole at the back of the desk. It was an older model from before electric typewriters were invented. She explained that both the desk and the typewriter belonged to her grandfather and that she was pretty protective of them as they were the only things she had left of her grandfather.
“It was sitting right here last night or this morning, actually.” She placed it in the middle of the desk. “But how did it get there.”
“Can I ask a few questions?”
“Go ahead.”
“So, the sounds that you heard that made you think someone was breaking in sounded like something being dragged across the floor or the countertop, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think the sound you heard might have been the typewriter being dragged across the desk into this position?”
“It could have been, I guess. But who would have dragged it there?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “If it’s not you, not me, not an intruder and not Jaxon, that really only leaves one other possibility.”
“You don’t mean a…” she pondered the thought before letting the word cross her lips. “Ghost?”
Chapter Five
When I’d suggested that she might have a ghost in her house, Diana had laughed at the idea. “That’s just silliness,” she said, however, when she was awakened at 2:00 a.m. on the third night, she listened much more closely to the sound that she heard.
Just like on the nights before, she heard something being dragged across a countertop. Thoughts of our discussion quickly sent shivers up her spine. She decided to go take a look. Better to check it out for myself instead of embarrassing myself with the police again.
Armed with the bat and cell phone, she crept down the hall, feeling the pounding rhythm of her heart at full intensity as she came nearer to the living room. She peered around the corner and toward the antique desk certain that she was going to see a specter sitting in front of her grandfather’s desk and pulling a typewriter to the center of it to begin work.
When she did not see the ghost that she was expecting, she switched on the light and looked toward the desk. Sitting in the middle of the desk was the typewriter. For a moment, she wondered if she had put it back after she’d shown me where she had found it, but dismissed the idea that she had forgotten to put it back, because she distinctly remembered doing so. Seeing where it was and knowing how it had gotten there, made her shiver. There has to be another explanation. There are no such things as ghosts. In the same moment that she had those thoughts, she nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of slow clicking coming from the typewriter.
Though she could barely get her feet to obey her, she moved slowly toward the desk. She could see the keys moving very slowly, one key at a time. Mesmerized by what she saw, she walked in sort of a trance, holding her breath and feeling her heart thundering in her chest. It was completely impossible. She drew nearer to the desk with her eyes drawn to what she was seeing, but still not allowing her to believe that it was possible.
As she drew closer to the typewriter, she reached out a shaky hand toward it. When her hand was only inches away, she jumped out of her skin and screamed in terror, for in that very moment, the bell rang and the carriage return zinged the carriage back to the beginning point. She bolted from the desk and stood shaking with her shoulders pinned against the wall of the kitchen.
With her eyes wide from fright, she watched the typewriter, expecting it to start up again or to see a ghost get up and chase her. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she continued to watch the machine for a long while as it sat on the center of the desk entirely motionless.
Had she really seen what she thought she’d seen? She felt the pain of her fingers pinching her and knew that she was fully awake. She glanced down the hall toward Jaxon’s room wondering if her scream had awakened him. He would surely have come shuffling down the hallway rubbing the sleep from his eyes if he had.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there waiting for the typewriter keys to start moving again, but when she finally decided that it wasn’t going to do anything else that night, she turned off the light and started back down the hall toward her bed.
“There has to be another explanation,” she muttered. “People don’t just have ghosts coming in for a visit and sitting down to write a novel at 2:00 a.m. Maybe I’m hallucinating or something. Something is wrong with my brain, maybe I have a tumor that is pressing on some portion of my brain that makes me hallucinate. Yes. That has to be it; because there is no way that what I just saw was real. There is no way that I have a ghost sitting in my house at my grandfather’s antique desk and typing on my typewriter.”
Hearing herself talk it out did little to convince her of the fact that what she had just seen was real. She started to blame me for putting such a crazy idea in her head. She reasoned that if I hadn’t spooked her with talk of paranormals, she wouldn’t have seen those keys moving, heard the bell ringing and seen the carriage return zinging back to the home position. She’d made those things up in her mind because I had suggested them to her earlier. However, even those arguments rang weak beside the fact that she had witnessed that the typewriter was in the center of the desk. She had heard it being dragged into that position. She had seen the keys moving and she had damned sure seen the carriage return slam back into place while she was screaming and trying to get away from the possessed machine.
Can a machine be possessed? Do I really want to go there? Would I rather have a ghost or a demon in my house? I’m surely going out of my mind. Who starts to weigh out whether a ghost or a demon would be preferable as a haunt? Maybe I should call Ellen. I don’t want to wake her up. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
With those questions continuing to repeat themselves over and over in her mind, it was impossible for her to go back to sleep, so she slipped out of bed, went back down the hall and sat down at the kitchen table. She decided that rather than driving herself out of her mind with thoughts of ghosts and demons in her house, she would try to focus on something constructive and useful. She picked up one of the brochures for the learning programs that she had brought home from the school.
“These are real issues and real problems,” she mumbled to herself. “Along with the fact that I’m going to be completely broke inside of a three months.”
Though the reality of Jaxon’s language development problems and her financial problems began to take over the central theme of her thoughts, she continued to glance toward the silent typewriter, still sitting in the center of the desk. After a while, she stopped trying to ignore it and got up from the table and cautiously approached the machine.
Now this is stupid. I’m sneaking up on a damned inanimate object.
As she drew nearer, she reached out and took it into her palms. She picked it up and moved it back into the place where she always kept it and stood looking at it for a few moments, trying to regain her composure. Feeling satisfied that having it back in the cubby-hole would make her feel much more at ease. She walked back to the kitchen table and refocused her thoughts on the brochure that she had been studying.
The more she studied the brochures in earnest, the less she thought about the typewriter, though, of course, thoughts of what had taken place earlier continued to linger. The information she had seemed to be pretty straight forward and she began to wonder if she and I could perhaps do most of what was bein
g suggested on our own and avoid the expense of the program.
She began to warm up to the idea more and more as she considered that after consulting with her mother and explaining the things that she had been reading about Jaxon’s condition, she might be able to provide adequate help to remedy the situation. Feeling better about that particular problem, she started back down the hall to her room, hoping that she might be able to slip in at least a few hours of sleep before she had to get Jaxon ready for school.
And I’ll have a little chat with Ellen about what I saw and heard tonight as well.
Chapter Six
The couple hours of sleep did little to relief the stress that had begun to gnaw away at Diana and she was pretty eager to start getting some answers when she came pounding on my door after sending Jaxon off to school.
I saw the panic in her eyes as I welcomed her into my apartment. Luckily, I my first class started a little bit later that morning, so I wasn’t rushing around trying to get ready. When I saw her face, I knew she would need to be calmed down. She looked as if she had actually seen a ghost.
“Diana, what’s wrong? You look pale,” I said, ushering her into my apartment. “Sit down. Do you want some coffee?”
“Ellen,” she began. “I know that I’m losing my frickin’ mind. I either have a brain tumor pressing on some sensitive part of my brain that is making me hallucinate or my mind had simply gone way out there.” She whistled like a bird and twirled her index finger near her left ear.
“I’m sure it’s neither.” I tried to remain calm and brought her a cup of coffee, though she had never said that she wanted one. “Take a couple of deep breaths and tell me what’s going on.”
Diana took a long sip of coffee, skipped the breathing exercise and went straight into talking. “It moved last night. I heard it moving and I went to check it out. It was in the center of the desk, just like I showed you yesterday. I put it back in the cubby-hole after I showed you, right? Please tell me I didn’t, but I’m pretty sure I did.”
“You’re talking about the typewriter, then? Yes, I’m sure you put it back in the cubby-hole. Did you see it move or just hear it?”
“Oooohhhh…” she continued. “I didn’t see it move, but I heard it and I saw other things that I’m pretty sure didn’t happen, but I saw them anyway and that’s why I’m pretty sure that I’m either losing my mind or I have a tumor…”
“That is pressing on a sensitive part of your brain making you hallucinate.” I finished the sentence for her. “You said that already.”
“I hope it isn’t the tumor, although, I’m not so sure that being committed to the loony bin would be any better. What would happen to Jaxon? What would he think about his mom going around the bin? I guess you could take him to my mother, right? You’d do that for me wouldn’t you?”
“Diana,” I snapped. When I had her eyes focused on me, I started in with a calm voice. “Jaxon isn’t going anywhere. He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. You’re fine too, you’ve just had a scare, but I’m sure it isn’t nearly as bad as you think it is.”
“It’s not bad?” She seemed to have a little bit more of her wits about her. “I didn’t tell you the rest.”
“Okay, then tell me the rest,” I whispered. My tone had brought her down several notches since she’d come through the door.
“So, I heard the noise, right? And I started down the hall, wondering if you had been right about a ghost moving the typewriter, so when I turned on the light, that was the first place that I looked. It was back in the center of the desk. Oh, Ellen, I prayed that I had forgotten to put it back in the cubby-hole, but even while I was praying, I knew that I had.”
“You did,” I put in again.
“That was enough to freak me out, because I started thinking about what you had told me about the possibility that it might be a ghost. So, while I was trying to get my heart to stop pounding and catch my breath, the keys on the typewriter started to click really slowly. Ellen, I could hardly breathe when I saw that. In fact, I know I was holding my breath as I walked toward it.
“It was the strangest feeling, like I couldn’t keep from moving toward it, though I was absolutely terrified of whatever was going on. When I got closer, I felt like I was going to pass out. I was so scared. I know that my heart was three times its normal rate. When I got to the desk, some crazy idea came into my head to touch it. Please don’t ask me why I would do such a thing.
“Anyway, the worst part came when I reached out to touch it. Just as my hand got close, it had reached the end of the carriage. The bell dinged and then the carriage went zinging back to the home position. Elle, I’m pretty sure that I jumped three feet in the air. I screamed and ran into the kitchen.
“With my back pressed against the wall of the kitchen, I stared at my demon possessed machine and tried to get my heart back to normal. I’m pretty sure that I was only seconds away from having a heart attack. After that, all kinds of crazy shit started going through my head.
“I thought maybe it was demon possessed. That would be better than having a ghost sitting their typing right?”
“Actually, probably not, but go on,” I replied.
“It’s just not possible, Ellen!”
“What’s not possible?”
“It’s not possible that I have a ghost sitting in my living room and typing out the next great American novel. That’s just completely off the wall, out of the question and absurd, right? Please tell me I’m right.”
“As much as I’d like to agree with you, from my experience, and it isn’t a lot, I think it is very possible that there is at least some sort of paranormal activity taking place in your apartment. Did you feel any sort of a chill or anything? Maybe a strange sort of energy charge?”
“You’re not seriously going to start analyzing this as paranormal activity are you?”
“What other explanations are there?”
“That I’m losing my frickin’ mind or the tumor…”
“You’re not losing your mind and you don’t have a tumor. So stop it. Until we have other proof, we have to treat this as if there is a ghost in your apartment or some other sort of paranormal activity is taking place. Just relax and accept it.”
“That’s easy for you to accept.”
“It’s not easy for anyone to accept, but being in a panic over it isn’t going to help us learn more about what’s going on or get any closer to the truth. Do you believe me?”
“Yeah. I guess I believe you. We have to find an explanation, right? It’s not a ghost, but maybe it’s some sort of other anomaly of some sort, right?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Just accept that it’s a ghost work with it instead of being afraid of it.”
“Work with it? Like how? What do I do?”
“Have you considered putting a ribbon and paper in the typewriter?”
“Why the hell would I do that? Besides, finding a ribbon for that typewriter is probably next to impossible.”
“My guess is that someone or something is wanting to send you a message. Did you happen to notice what keys were being pressed on the typewriter last night?”
“You know what, Ellen, I was wrong. I’m not the one that is going cuckoo, you are. Why the hell would I care which keys were being pressed by this ghost that I don’t believe in?”
“I’m just trying to help you figure out a solution. My guess is that once you’ve read the message, the spirit that is trying to contact you will leave you alone.”
“Do you realize how crazy that sounds? Thanks for the advice, but I’m thinking that we hadn’t ought to be fooling around with this sort of thing.” She got up from the table and started toward the door. As she opened it, she paused as she stepped through and looked back at me. “I’m sorry, Ellen, I don’t mean to doubt you, but…” She considered what she wanted to say for a moment and then just turned and continued on out the door speaking as she pulled it closed behind her. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Chapter
Seven
It was 2:00 a.m. when she heard the sound of the typewriter being scooted across the desk and into place. Unfazed by it at that point, though still not ready to admit that there might be a ghost present in her house, she slid out of bed, strolled down the hall and flipped on the living room light.
Just as she knew it would be, the typewriter was sitting in the center of the antique desk again. Just like it had the night before, the keys on the machine started to click slowly. Moving closer toward it, she felt something of a chill as she neared the chair that was sitting in front of the typewriter. Ellen asked me about whether or not I felt a chill. Besides the chill, there was something else. There was a smell, no, an aroma, and one that she recognized from her past.
The aroma was soft at first, but as her nostrils began to search for its presence in the room, it became stronger. Standing with her hands on the back of the antique chair and listening to the sound of the keys clicking, followed by the ring and zing of the carriage return hitting the end and being sent back to the home position, her memory went back to when she was about the age of Jaxon or perhaps a little bit younger.
Her grandfather or “granddaddy,” as she called him, had worked for a newspaper for many years, but once he had finally made it into the world of a fiction novelist, had left the paper and had an office in his house. Diana used to love to play in his office and listen to the sound of him writing, as well as take in the scent of the Cavendish tobacco that he always had in his pipe. He had three jars of it sitting on his desk, each holding a slightly different blend of the rich tobacco. She could still hear him telling her what was in each jar.
“This one is what is known as a Whiskey Cavendish.” He would open the first jar and let her take a smell of the sweet tobacco inside. “This one is a Black Cavendish. It’s a bit stronger, but sometimes you can get it with vanilla flavoring.” The Black Cavendish, though still a sweet aroma was not her favorite. “The last one is Cherry Cavendish.” After the others, the Cherry was always the most appealing to her. Though he knew which one she would pick, he would ask her anyway. “So, which one should I choose.” The Cherry was always her overwhelming choice.