by David Clark
They were locked in their secret language once again, exchanging looks and an occasional mumble with one another. The uncomfortable feelings William had, were now growing into frustration. Was there a point to all this, or could it really be he was just there to explain to William about his gift? Maybe the Bishop was the first of many visitors that will show up at his door. He was now Father Henry’s religious sideshow act for those in the clergy. “Come with me and meet a man that sees ghosts,” William could imagine him barking at a crowd of monks and priests. “Only one of his kind in the emerald isle, come see him now!”, would be another line. If that was it, he had picked the wrong attraction. William had more important tasks to tend to than to be a storyteller, or asked over and over if he could see a ghost in the room with them.
“Gentlemen, I am here. What is this all about? It’s been a long day and I need to finish cleaning up.” The stench that still hung in the room anchored his last point.
Neither man seemed flummoxed by the interruption. If anything, they appeared to understand and finished their conclave together by deciding who would talk next
“William, as we stated, you are rare. You are also valuable. Your skills are needed by the Church, to serve a greater good… a greater purpose. Bishop Emmanuel is here to offer you an opportunity to fulfill that purpose.”
There was a good chance Father Henry was playing the strings inside William’s heart, and he knew it. Those strings were laid out in front of him during the many conversations Father Henry and William had during his childhood, about his longing for something greater. Now was he strumming them like a minstrel, or was this that longing William had felt? That ‘something’ in his bloodline, as both men had stated, knew there was something more. That ‘something’ asked, “What is the opportunity?”
Bishop Emmanuel explained, “There is much more you can do with your gift, but it requires training. Training the Church is willing to provide in return for service.”
“Service, you mean in the conscripts?”
“In a way, yes,” Father Henry said. “Not in the military mind you. There are spots around the world that are more spiritual than others. Ghosts, or spirits,” he corrected, “ tend to gather in those locations. For hundreds of years, the Church has assigned those like you to be their caretaker. To tend to both the living and the dead. If you accept, you will travel to the Vatican and be trained on how to handle the spirits you encounter. At the end of your training, you will be assigned a location. William, will you accept?”
Father Henry and Bishop Emmanuel leaned forward in their chairs toward William. Both looked at him with anticipation. William wasn’t sure what to say. This was his ticket to leave and see the world beyond the ocean. It could also be that greater calling he felt pull at his soul for as long as he could remember. There was no way to know without trying. If he accepted though, it meant he would leave all he has known behind, which included the farm that had been in his family for centuries. That was not a trivial thing to William. He could almost hear his descendants rolling over beneath their gravestones.
“Can I have some time to think it over?”, William asked.
“I leave in four days. If you accept, you will need to return with me then.”
William said, “I understand,” as he sat back in his chair. He did. He understood everything, but he still didn’t have a clue what his decision would be.
9
To say the question weighed on William would be an understatement. No matter what he was doing, or where he was, it was there. Whether working his crops, caring for his livestock, walking through the meadow to clear his head, or even in the outhouse trying to clear something else, the question remained clouding any other thought passing through his mind. It was always there in the front of his mind.
With two days left before Bishop Emmanuel was scheduled to depart, William made a special trip into town and sat on his rock. It was unusually clear that afternoon. The normal marine layer wasn’t there. Instead of a horde of fluffy white clouds passing above the horizon line, there was a majestic blue, just a few shades lighter than the dark blue ocean below it. He needed his rock. Really, he needed the clarity he felt while sitting there and pondering, several times in the past. It was while he sat on that very rock, several years ago, that he told Ainslee how he felt. It was also there where he decided they would need to keep their feelings private. Both decisions helped him quiet a yearning, and the voices of doubt that came with it. He needed that now.
Having no clue which way Italy was, William guessed and faced that direction. It was silly, he knew. At that distance he would see nothing but the ocean. That is all he ever saw from that perch, no matter which direction he looked, but this time was different. This time he had an opportunity to go beyond the horizon and see what was out there. Maybe it was that opportunity that clouded his thoughts the most. If he turned it down now, would he ever have another opportunity? It was doubtful. Visitors didn’t pass through this way often, and none with such an offer.
As good as the offer seemed, there was a great bit of fear that went with it. William still didn’t know what he would really be asked to do. All Father Henry and Bishop Emmanuel had said was, he would be the caretaker for a place. They hadn’t provided any description of what a caretaker did, but they had talked about training. What was there to train on? He already knew how to see and stand in front of ghosts. That was his best natural talent, no one needed to teach him how to do that. The humorous thought that maybe they wanted him to teach them crossed his mind. He pictured himself standing in front of a great hall somewhere, in a grand robe, probably red or blue, with a hat. A hundred sets of eyes focused on him as he lectured them on the art of ghost seeing. He almost chucked out loud at the thought of his lecture, “And this is how you do it. If you see a ghost, you step in front of it. That is all there is to it.”
The humor brought a smile to his face and helped to push back the fear for a moment, but another problem was behind him, literally behind him. Everything he knew, from the day he was born to this moment, was behind him in this town. His friends, his family’s farm, and Ainslee. That last one pulled at his heart a tad more than the others. The thought of never laying his eyes on her again sent a bolt of cold through his core. Not the usual warmth he felt when he thought of her, or heard her voice. A warmth that, to him, felt like the morning sun and could clear any fog or feeling of cold depression away from his soul. A warmth that now spread from his left ear across his face, as the voice of an angel, his angel, whispered, “What are you doing?”
William didn’t turn toward her as she joined him on his rock. She tried a few times to have him rename it their rock, but that was a point he wouldn’t yield. It was his, he saw it first, he sat on it first. In his mind, both of those defined ownership. Together, they sat on his rock. She leaned ever so slightly against him, with her right arm locked around his left, at the elbow.
“Thinking?” she asked.
“Yes,” William replied, with a sigh. His gaze was still locked on the horizon in front of them.
“What about?”
He knew she would ask. She always did. Of course, this time the answer wouldn’t be the normal, “Wondering what is out there” response. William wasn’t even sure he could tell her the truth. Well, he knew he couldn’t tell her the whole truth, that was for sure. “Things. I might be going on a trip for a bit.”
He felt her whole body turn toward him in response. A sharpening of her breath accompanied the wide-open stare of her beautiful green eyes.
“Father Henry has a visitor from…,” William almost slipped up. Ainslee’s family was still royalty. He couldn’t take the chance that she wouldn’t tell her father, and he would feel some old loyalty to the crown. “From the mainland. He offered to take me back with him, to show me what is out there.” William felt that was a plausible excuse. He knew she was aware of how strong his desire to see the outside world was. Hell, she even shared it. There was no doubt in his mind, wh
ile she might be hurt, she would understand it.
“Just like that. You are going to up and leave?”, she asked.
“Yes.”
His terse reply was met with several more short and sharp breaths. Was it possible? Did he have miss prim and proper in a huff? She swiveled next to him like a sign blowing in the breeze. First, she looked at him, and then back out into the ocean, then back at him, and then the ocean. This continued several more times until she stopped and faced away from him.
“It’s my chance. To get out of here, you know?” Before William could finish, she asked a question, hushed, under her breath. This was no attempt to hide the question from anyone passing by. His announcement had stripped the will out of her voice as she asked. “What about me?”
“We have been through all this. Your father would never…”
“Goddamnit, William Miller,” anger had replaced the will in her voice. “Stop using my father as an excuse. You have no reason to hide from him.”
William peered to his side. Her eyes were fixed and watering, but fire burned in her cheeks. She had a temper; he had seen it before, in their youth. In truth, he had seen it more than once. Her reactions to some poor joke or prank he and John had pulled while on the cusp of adolescence. Girls tend to mature before boys, add in a touch of nobility and proper upbringing, and that gap increases. If you asked Ainslee, John and William had yet to grow up. This was different than those times, though. This was no stupid joke or prank. He wouldn’t be letting her off the hook anytime soon to laugh while she calmed down. Her next move told him there would be no calming down.
The always outspoken, never lost for words, Ainslee McLayer stood up and walked off into the sunset. Her hair flowed in the wind as her shape was silhouetted by the setting sun. William wanted to call out to her, but couldn’t muster either the voice, or the words to say. There was nothing to say except goodbye, and he hated those. No one ever left St. Margaret’s Hope, unless they died. This goodbye pained him deeper than any of the deaths he could remember. Perhaps it was easier this way.
10
The night began with sleep forgetting to pay William a visit. He laid in his bed and waited, but it never arrived. Perhaps it waited for his mind and heart to join the rest of his body beneath the covers. Those were still perched on the rock that overlooked the harbor. He sat there for another hour, and waited and hoped for Ainslee to return, but when the sun dipped below the buildings, darkness was cast on his body and his hopes. As he walked away, he stopped to look back a few times, to check and see if she had come back. He knew the chance was slim, but even the slimmest of hopes was hope enough.
“This is how it had to be, “ was the phrase he repeated to himself. It sounded good, and made sense, at least that is what he told himself. He wasn’t sure how much he was buying that argument. What was it his father had told him that time he had gotten caught in a briar patch? The slower he moved, the longer it would hurt, just run quick. It would hurt, but it would be over soon. Maybe this was like that. Cutting all personal ties, quickly and completely, would make it easier to leave. No connections. Nothing to hold him back. That thought caused the heart that had just rejoined the rest of his exhausted and emotional body in bed to sink. Sleep followed the darkness he felt.
The rest wasn’t long, though. Warmth radiated over William from across the room, like a raging fire. Half asleep, William thought he had left a fire burning in the fireplace. Something his father had warned him about many times. It was ok to leave the embers in the fire to supply warmth during the worst of the winter, but careless to leave anything more. A rogue ember floating in the hot air as it rose up in the house, or a shift in the stack sending an engulfed log rolling out into the room, could be all it took to burn down the farmhouse.
William pushed off his blanket to allow more of the night air to cool his body, but relief was not what he found. The source of the heat took aim at his exposed arms and legs, and began to cook them to the point of being uncomfortable, even painful. He rolled over and cracked a single eye open to check the fireplace. The fire he saw was not in the fireplace, it encompassed a shirtless man seated at his table. It had the head of a goat, with a crown made of a dried vine with large thorns pointing out from all sides. A dark brown blood oozed down its head where the thorns pierced through the fur-covered skull. Snorts of smoke accompanied every breath. The yellow centers of its red eyes peeled away at the layers of William’s soul.
He blinked several times to clear what had to be a leftover nightmare that was stuck in his consciousness somewhere between asleep and awake, but each blink revealed the same creature seated there. Now both eyes were open and looked straight at the beast. His breath raced along with his pulse. Deep inside, a little voice yelled “run” as loud as it could, but the fear he felt washed the voice away. The sensation was new. William didn’t fear much. Something he credited to what Father Henry and Bishop Emmanuel called his gift. Once you are used to seeing ghosts, not much else could frighten you, but this was not a ghost.
“I see you there, looking at me. I am real. Not a dream,” it said in a thundering, coarse voice, that was half man and half animal.
William said nothing. He couldn’t. The lump of grey matter between his ears struggled with the appearance of his visitor. Verbalizing a logical coherent thought out loud was way too much to ask. Sitting up and swinging his legs out of the bed was all he could muster.
“Don’t get up. I won’t stay.” The creature put both hands flat on the table and pushed himself up. The flames rose high against the ceiling. William watched the path of the flames as the beast moved around the table. To his surprise, nothing caught fire as the flames passed over them, but the heat grew in intensity as it moved closer, as did the glare of the yellow-centered eyes. It leaned back against the table and crossed its cloven-hoofed feet, one over the other.
“Speaking of staying, “ it continued, “you really should stay here. You have a great home, a sweet lassie, and a great crop this year and every year for the rest of your life. The envy of every farmer around, that is what you will be. Especially when you and Ainslee have those two large strapping boys to help out around here.” It looked in the direction of one of the windows and said, “By the looks of it, you need to start on those boys soon, you are going to need lots of help. I have never seen a crop so full. Why don’t you have a look?” It then extended its left arm and pointed with its skinny, bony finger. A line of flame shot from it and pushed the window open.
William’s body didn’t move. His eyes looked in that direction as far as he could, but his ass, and the rest of him, remained one with the bed. All he could see from there was the dark night sky outside, and the roofline of his slaughterhouse.
It extended its other hand toward him, and one by one curled all five fingers back into its palm. When the final finger reached the palm, William felt his feet leave the floor and his ass leave the bed. He floated first toward the creature, but before he reached it, he turned toward the window, where he was placed down on his feet. Now he had a perfect view of a clear night, with a full moon that was not expected for another ten days. The light of the unscheduled Corn Moon illuminated his pasture, the pasture he had weeded and spread manure in just days before. A pasture that was now full of lush green tops of turnips. A sight that was both too early, and too good, to be true. William had never seen a crop that good before, not on his farm, or anyone else’s, to be honest.
From behind him the voice growled, “You have no reason to leave.” The phrase echoed over and over as four people walked through the crops. He recognized Ainslee and himself, joined at the hand, walking. On either side them were two young men. Both were bigger than him. Everyone was laughing and smiling. They stopped to wave at the window, and then continued on their stroll.
William woke up the next morning to the sound of a rooster welcoming the dawn of a new day, a cold one at that. Even under two blankets, the chill shook his bones as he stirred awake. The remnants of a dream
from his slumber hung over him. Before he opened his eyes, he turned his head toward the center of the room. Then, with one eye, and only one eye, he peeked. There was nothing there, which relieved him as well as helped to settle the question in his mind. Was this real or just a dream?
William swung both legs out of the bed and reached for his shirt. A stretch preceded a walk across the room to start a small fire to knock off the chill and prepare his breakfast. Two eggs sounded good to him, and a hot cup of coffee would warm him right up. The nightshirt he wore to sleep in was deposited over the chair as he put on one he had washed several days ago. He walked over and shut the window and headed across to fetch his pot for coffee, but stopped as he passed the table. There, as clear as day, were two handprints burnt into the surface.
11
William couldn’t shake the events of the previous night. No matter how hard he worked in the field, it didn’t distract his mind from two questions. Was it real or a dream? If it was real, what the hell was it? Neither question had an answer that came right away. Instead, it was a circular spiral. There was no way that was real, but what about the handprints? A few minutes later he would repeat the same circle. The only thought that broke the cycle from time to time was the reminder that he saw ghosts. Could it be that hard to believe he saw such a vision?
If that was true, this was no ordinary ghost. That left only one possibility, it was a demon. If that were true, it would be the first he had seen. The next question would be why? It had shown him the images of a good life, but said that would be possible if he stayed. Was he trying to keep him from leaving? If so, there was that same question again, why? Why would a demon care?