by J. R. Tate
“A padded room, huh?” He smirks. “I’ve been in one. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
I sift through a different box, making sure he doesn’t come across the one with all of the family pictures, at least, not yet. Without saying another word, we begin to unpack, neither of us saying another word about my grandfather or anything that might put a damper on our mood.
At least we have one thing in common – we’re both great at changing the subject.
***
Nathan
After a day full of attempting to get the house in order, I sit back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. A friend of Rusty’s came and picked him up about a half an hour ago – A day away from the city and the kid is itching to go back. I guess I can’t blame him… it’s all he’s ever known.
Closing my eyes, I think about my conversation with my dad. I shouldn’t dwell too much on it. It’s who he is. I’m giving him all of the power if I let it sit too long. Taking a deep breath, I try to change my thoughts, but no matter what my mind conjures up, my heart feels heavy.
“Nathan…”
I swear I hear someone say my name, and my eyes jolt open. Of course, I’m the only one in the room.
“Nathan…”
It happens again, and it sounds just the same as the first. It sounds a lot like Rose, but it can’t be. Grabbing a pillow, I bury my face in it. No. I’m not going to do this tonight. I will absolutely not do this.
“Nathan… Nathan…”
I feel a breeze hit the nape of my neck and I sit up. As before, I’m alone in the living room. I’m just exhausted. I’ve had a very long, emotional day, and it’s my mind playing tricks on me. My mind. The scariest place I know, and I’ve seen some pretty drastic shit in my lifetime. It’s a place I can’t trust. It’s a place where people have questioned my sanity, put me through electro-shocks to try to jolt the chemicals inside back into the “normal” places to make me think clearly again.
This is how it started up the first time. I was hearing things. But I won’t let it escalate this time. It’s just the new house. The wind. And most of all, my vivid imagination missing my wife. I’m wanting her around so bad that my head is powerful enough to make myself hear her voice again, just in time, since I’ve already accepted the fact that I’ll never hear it again. Those days are gone. And now I’m left with whatever the hell you’d call what is happening.
Standing, I walk to the window that faces the back lot. It’s overgrown and the trees need to be trimmed back. The wind is blowing, making the branches slap against the side of the house and roof. That’s all I’m hearing – the damn wind.
It’s getting dark, and the light hue from the moon is masked by cloud cover, only allowing for slight visibility. The shadows of the trees morph into angry faces, and I fall back, tripping on a chair. Catching myself, I almost fall to the floor, but brace myself on the bar. My brow is sweaty, and I squint toward the window for safe measure. And as expected, there is nothing there.
I’m such a head case. A grown man scared of the dark. If the guys at the firehouse could see this, I’d be the laughing stock of the fire department forever.
“Nathan…”
The same voice. Padding back to the living room, I turn the TV on and flip through the local channels that will come through on the antenna. The satellite isn’t hooked up yet, but at least the random show will mask what I think I am hearing.
I watch the show, but my focus isn’t there. The voice hasn’t “said” anything in a few minutes, but now my imagination runs wild. My mind worries and I stress that it is all happening again. But it can’t be, can it? I took care of business. I helped the souls that came to me. They promised they wouldn’t be back. Does a ghost know how to lie? And what could they possibly need now? I helped them with their unsettled business – and somehow it had involved me. Somehow, they couldn’t rest until they knew I tried my very best to save them.
I should be offended that they would even question it. Of course I tried my best. It’s what I do. A firefighter who half asses a job should quit before more people are killed. I know this. But even the apprehension of the ghosts makes me question my ability on the job, which is another reason my chief has me going to see the shrink.
After another ten or so minutes, I still haven’t heard the voice, and I try hard to get my mind on something else. Anything else. But I can’t help but think about what happened, and what possibly could be happening again. I can’t let it happen, but I’m not sure how to stop something. It’s a force to be reckoned with, and now the stakes are higher with my son only having me now. I’ve always thought about that with my profession, and I always thought I’d be the first to go and he’d be left to take care of his mother. Firefighters die young – it’s not lost on anyone. But my situation? It’s straight out of a horror novel.
I walk to the kitchen and grab the same bottle of scotch that Rusty and I sipped on earlier. Unscrewing the lid, I lift it to my lips, but I don’t take a sip, at least, not yet. In the corner of my eye I see a child peer around the corner, his dark hair disheveled as he eyes me. Making eye contact, he scurries away, as if he’s ashamed to be seen.
Was that… Sammy? It takes me a second to grasp my bearings and I blink to clear my vision. No. It’s been a long day. With my session and the visit with my father, I’m exhausted. It’s my mind playing tricks on me.
I go to lift the bottle again – I’m longing for the burn down my throat, but the child – or what I think is a child, looks around at me again, his laughter making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The bottle of scotch is close enough that I can smell the alcohol, but I can’t move it any farther. Hell, I can’t move at all as I stare at him. This time, he doesn’t run off. This time, I can tell it’s Sammy, just the way I remember him days before he died.
“Sammy?” I whisper, and his eyes widen like he’s shocked I know who he is.
He backs up, and runs off again, and is far too quick for me to catch him, nor do I want to catch him. I want this all to go away. This isn’t even real. No. If I give in, it is. If I ignore it, it’ll fade away like a bad dream.
I slide down against the wall until I’m sitting on the kitchen floor. I’m completely oblivious to what time it is, and I finally take a nice pull off of the scotch and set the bottle aside. All of this commotion has made me feel like I actually do belong back in the mental hospital.
I stare down the hallway where I think I saw Sammy and wait, but it’s dark, and nothing comes back. I’m not sure why I’m so let down about it – I don’t want him to come back. The mixed emotions are enough to drive me crazy on their own. Leaning my head back, I close my eyes – the silence in the house is deafening, and a part of me wishes the wind would start blowing again so I can hear the tree limbs slap against the siding.
I’m tired. My body aches. And I wish my damn mind would shut off for a few hours so I can get some mindless, deep sleep. Right now, that’s all I want.
Chapter Three
Rusty
When I get home from my friend’s house, I’m shocked to see my dad on the floor. At first I can’t tell that he’s sleeping, but as I edge farther into the kitchen, I notice the bottle of scotch next to him, his hand still clamped around the glass. There’s not much less than when I had a sip, but it still bugs me to see him like that.
Glancing at the clock, I make note of what time it is. After midnight, and I’m not sure how long he’s been laying like this. I push my foot against his leg to try and jolt him awake, and his eyebrows rise in response, but he doesn’t fully wake up. He murmurs something that I can’t make out, and with a deep breath, he’s asleep again.
“Dad!” Kneeling beside him, I pat his cheek and I get the same reaction, but this time, his eyes pop open for a second. “Dad, wake up! What are you doing on the floor?”
He sits up and pushes off of the wall, but by his vacant stare, he’s still half asleep. He keeps glancing over my shoulder, toward the hallway,
and I follow his gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
Shaking his head, he swipes his hand over his hair and kicks his legs out. “Nothing. What time is it?” His voice is raspy and he coughs to clear it.
“Half past midnight. Dad, what are you doing on the floor?” I try not to get upset, but I hate seeing him like this, especially if it is something that he can prevent.
“I uhh…” he looks around, finally setting the bottle aside. I can tell he’s embarrassed. “I’m not sure, Russ…”
“Are you not sure because you don’t want to tell me, or because you can’t remember?” I point at the booze and take it back to the bar before he spills it. He’s my father, damn it, but right now I feel like I’m mothering him. I’ve seen what he’s gone through. And as I’ve said before, I can’t blame him – but I wish things could be normal. But what is normal? My mom is gone and obviously, my dad is struggling with her death. He’s struggling with the things etched in his memory. And here I am, coming home to him on the floor. Is that normal? Maybe it’s all relative.
He stands up and sighs. “I’m not drunk, Russ. I know it looks that way, but I had one drink.”
I know he didn’t have much by what’s left in the bottle. “That’s not what concerns me, at least, not right now,” I say as I begin to pace. “Why were you on the floor?”
He shrugs and again, it’s like he’s the teenager and I’m the father. I love my dad and he’s a good man. This just seems odd. Everything about our situation is odd!
“I can’t talk about this right now, Russ. I go back to work in a few days and I just… can’t.” He spreads his hands, his eyes pleading with me to leave it alone.
“Are you?” My voice cracks. He says he wants to leave it alone, but I press on. “Did you see something?”
“No.” His facial expression says otherwise.
“Dad…”
“Damn it, Rusty, I said I can’t do this. Just drop it!” His voice raises, echoing in our undecorated home, surrounded by mountains of boxes waiting to be unpacked.
I take a few steps back – his tone knocks the breath out of me and his harsh glare reminds me of when I was a kid and I had done something to piss him off. I can’t push him to tell me. He’s shut down. Rather than add fuel to the fire, I backpedal toward the stairs and go halfway up before stopping and look over my shoulder at him. He’s still in the same spot in the kitchen, his stare at the floor like he doesn’t know what the hell to do. His eyes are wide and he isn’t moving.
“Whenever you’re ready, Dad, you know you can talk to me. I miss Mom too. I hate that all of this has happened to us.”
He looks up at me, and the cold expression that he once held fades, and his lips part into a small smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I know, Russ. I know…” He nods and breaks eye contact.
I take the remaining stairs two at a time up to my room and fall back into my bed, staring at the ceiling. The silhouette of the trees outside dance with the wind, and it’s the first time I realize just how bright the moon and stars are out in the country. Rolling on my side, I bite back the anger and sadness I feel for my father. Tonight goes deeper than him just missing my mother. Something happened while I was gone. Something that has scared the shit out of him, and I want to know what he saw.
I reach for my phone on the table. It’s going to be a sleepless night, so I scroll through pictures, and it’s a bad idea. Photos of my mother pop up – ones of her smiling, her beautiful grin making the sadness settle in the pit of my stomach. And of course, the next one is of all three of us, my dad grinning much like the picture I saw in the frame, packed in the décor box that hasn’t been touched since. This is definitely a pre-ghost picture – I haven’t seen my dad smile like that since before everything has happened.
It’s picture after picture of us, and I finally put the phone on my table and try to sleep, but rest is impossible when my mind won’t shut down. With it being so quiet in the house, I swear I hear things, but with recent events, I know it’s not real. Sitting up, I kick my legs over the side of the bed and walk to the bathroom, looking in on my dad to make sure he got into bed okay. His TV blankets the bedroom in a blue hue, and I can’t tell what he’s watching, but I calm a bit when I see that he’s asleep, resting in the mounds of pillows and blankets that my mom decorated their other bedroom with. He always used to complain about how many throw pillows she put on the bed, but he keeps them on there now – it must be a way he remembers her, and it makes my heart ache seeing him carry it on at this new house.
He’ll talk when he’s ready. Right now I can’t force him. In the meantime, it’ll be a struggle. I just hope he truly knows I’m here for him.
***
Nathan
I wake up several times throughout the night, and at six AM I give up and go down to the kitchen. The boxes everywhere make me cringe. I know if I just buckle down and do it, that it won’t take long, but something nags at me to not mess with it. I look at the same doorway where I think I saw Sammy last night, and everything appears to be normal. What does a place look like after a ghost visits? I guess that’s a question that has many answers – was it hostile? Did it tear things up? Did it try to hurt me? Whatever I think I saw didn’t do any of that. Then again, I probably didn’t see a damn thing. It’s a number of things. I’m ready to get back to work. It’s stress. And there’s no other answer to it.
I reach for a box that I labeled decorations. It’s one of the last things we need to deal with. Decorating isn’t high on my priority list like unpacking dishes and furniture. Yet I still reach inside and begin to sort through the pictures. Right on top is a family photo of Rose, Rusty, and me. Sitting on the floor beside the box, I can’t take my eyes off of it, reminiscing about the time the picture was taken. It was an act of congress getting Rusty and me to agree to have pictures done, but now I’m glad we did it. It was our last ones together before life blew up in my face.
“Good morning, Dad.”
My son’s voice makes me jump. I’m not expecting him up this early. “Morning, Russ. What are you doing up so early?” I put the picture back on top of everything else and quickly try to swipe the moisture that gathers under my eyes. It’s probably too late – the kid is smart. He knows I was crying.
“Figured I’d get up and get the unpacking done. It’ll feel a little more like home if we do it.”
I shake my head and scoot another box toward me. One that might be of more use for the current situation. It’s dishes, and hopefully I won’t find something inside that will make me cry.
“I see you found it,” Rusty says as he sits by the box and unloads the contents.
“Found what?”
“The picture. It’s what I was looking at when you got home yesterday.”
I grab it again and we both look at it, neither of us speaking. “I’m sorry about last night, Russ.”
“It’s fine, Dad. I can sit here and say I know what you’re going through, but truth is, I haven’t got a damn clue. Yeah, I lost someone I love. She was my mother. But I can’t imagine how it feels to lose the love of your life. It’s a different situation for both of us.”
Like I said, the kid is wise beyond his years. His words alone make me speechless. “It’s no excuse to act like I do. I need to be here for you.”
“Can I ask you something, Dad?”
“Of course.”
He looks at the picture, and toward the hallway. He arches his eyebrow and it’s like I’m looking in the damn mirror – he’s picked up so many of my mannerisms that it’s almost unreal.
“Did you see something last night?”
“No. I was just having a bad night.” I’m not ready to tell him anything, and besides, I’m almost one hundred percent certain that what I thought was Sammy was nothing but a dream.
“You seemed really frazzled when I woke you. You kept looking over my shoulder that way.” He points toward the doorway.
“I was having a dream. Sometimes I d
ream about Sammy, and here lately, about your mom. That’s all it was.” If I say and think it enough, maybe I’ll really convince myself.
I can tell by the look on his face that he doesn’t believe me, and that’s okay. I don’t even believe myself. But it’s too early to be spouting off possibilities of ghosts visiting me again. Hell, it really did happen to me and the thought of it occurring again sounds ridiculous. Lightning never strikes the same place twice. Isn’t it the same for all of this too?
“I think I’m gonna go check out the pond behind the house. Might be good for fishing. Or a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Either way, at least it’s beautiful. Lets go do it before it gets too hot.” It’s my excuse to get away from the unpacking – I still have no motivation to do it, despite Rusty’s point that things will fall into place once we get it done.
He follows me out of the back door and we tread through the lush grass that is in desperate need of mowing. The trees are a bit overgrown, and I get my first good look at the branches that raked against the house and roof last night. No wonder it was so loud.
The pond is about a quarter mile out, and I take a few moments to look around. The woods are thick, and though the sun is rising, it’s still dark from the shade the trees are providing. That’ll be great for our electric bill, but it gives me the chills.
“Holy shit, Dad, did you see that when you looked at the place?” Rusty points toward a solitary tree in the small meadow near the pond. A marbled cross is barely visible in the tall grass – a cross that looks like it has sat out there for no telling how many years.
Standing over it, I squint in an attempt to read the name. Deep down, I’m hoping it’s someone’s pet that got buried, but it says “Lenora Dawson, infant daughter to James and Margaret Dawson. Died August 11, 1912.” It even has the small lamb seen on many graves from the 1800’s of children who didn’t make it. This is all turning out to be cliché. The old house, the noises, and now a damn grave in the back? The universe loves to play with me.