Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Thrillers

by Scott Nicholson

  Roby thought of Granny Aiken’s collection, how the dolls had stared down from the shelves with dark glass eyes while her family scratched and hissed over her worldly goods. What did those dolls think about that? Probably wished they’d get sold and not have to witness any more such foolishness.

  “Eat some pie, Alfred,” he said.

  “You and your damned pie.”

  “Where’s Cindy?” Sarah said. “I didn’t think she let you out of her sight these days.”

  “She’s comforting Momma, since you girls are doing such a bang-up job of it.”

  “She’s sucking up, more like it.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you and Marlene are scheming behind my back, but I’m man of this house now, whether you like it or not. Daddy wanted it that way.”

  “How do you know what Daddy wanted?” Roby said. “You were hardly ever in the same room with him since the day you turned fifteen.”

  Alfred’s cheeks burned red, his eyes narrowed to quick, cruel slits. He glanced at his sister, then back to Roby. “Don’t you dare say another word,” he said in a half-choked whisper.

  “You carry your sins inside you, whether they’re spoken of or not,” Roby said. “In your heart.”

  “Shut up in front of her,” Alfred said.

  Roby looked at the half-empty jar of apple butter on top of the refrigerator. Made from Macintosh apples in the orchard that covered the slope above the meadow. Cooked down over a kettle in October, an all-day event, with taters wrapped in tin foil and tossed into the embers, pan-fried cornbread, fresh-squeezed cider.

  “Don’t trouble yourself none,” Roby said. “Your daddy told me all about it.”

  “What’s he talking about, Alfred?” Sarah said.

  Alfred looked around like a mountain lion caught in a cage. He lunged forward, grabbed a ceramic urn, and flung it across the room. It bounced off the Frigidaire and fell to the floor, unbroken. A spatter of cream blurred and ran in tiny white rivulets down the refrigerator door. The murmur of conversation in the living room eased off.

  “You all okay?” the widow said in her loudest voice.

  “We’re fine, Momma,” Sarah said. “I just dropped a cake plate, is all.”

  “Cake wasn’t on it, I hope.”

  “No. Nothing broke.”

  Alfred stared at the cream as it dripped to the floor.

  “Get a mop,” Roby said to him.

  Cindy Parsons came into the kitchen and hurried to Alfred. “What’s wrong, honey? You took ill?”

  “I’m all right,” he said. He looked at Roby as if daring him to speak, as if the secret of Alfred’s fifteenth birthday was something he’d never shared with his lady friend. With anybody, for that matter.

  Roby crossed the room, scooped up the urn, and examined it under the kitchen fluorescents. “Lucky bounce.”

  Sarah brought a wet dish rag and wiped down the front of the Frigidaire. Then she got on her hands and knees and began soaking up the pool of cream. Roby put the urn back on the crowded counter, then pushed the sweet potato pie toward Alfred.

  “Here,” Roby said. “Have a piece. Take your mind off your anger.”

  Alfred looked into the surface of the pie, more than half of it gone, the dull aluminum pan grease-smeared beneath the part that had been eaten.

  “Go on, honey,” Cindy said. “Momma made it special for the Ridgehorns. Spent half the day on it.”

  “I don’t want no damned pie.”

  “Eat it,” Roby said. “You don’t want to disappoint your ma. No more than you already have, I mean.”

  Alfred scrambled around the counter, sweeping a bowl of green beans with bacon to the floor. He grabbed for the glazed ham, its hunk of exposed bone slick among the red meat. He raised the ham and charged Roby, wielding the weapon like the Bible’s Sampson flailing around the jawbone of an ass. Roby ducked the two blows, hearing the shallow breath squeezing from Alfred’s lungs. Roby spun, grappled at the counter, and came away with Beverly Parsons’s death pie. He shoved it into Alfred’s face.

  Alfred froze, more stunned than hurt. The ham slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. Cindy squealed in panic. Sarah stood at the far end of the counter, the wet rag limp in her hand.

  Alfred took two steps back, then began wiping the sweet orange goo from his eyes.

  “Sorry about that,” Roby said, his voice barely audible.

  By now, the rest of the family had clustered in the kitchen, the widow hunched and squinting, trying to make sense of the scene. Buck fought through the group of his in-laws to Sarah’s side. Marlene let out a laugh that sounded like a pig’s last call at a slaughterhouse. Anna Beth was saying three or four things at once, none of them complete sentences and only a few of the words recognizable as English.

  They all watched Alfred, waiting for his reaction. He peered through the mess that clung to his face and looked at the pie filling and ruptured crust on his hands.

  “Sorry,” Roby whispered.

  In the silence, the sounds of the mountain dusk leaked through the windows and screen door. The cows had come down from the high pasture and bumped against the warped locust gate that led to the barn. A hound dog bayed on a distant ridge, the tolling of a death bell for a treed raccoon. The crickets had risen up in armies now, emboldened by the cool darkness. A lost gray moth battered against the wire screen in the kitchen window.

  Alfred held his hands out, palms up, as if he were experiencing stigmata and wanted the others to witness the miracle.

  The silence grew deeper until the room was swollen with it.

  “You’re right, Roby,” he finally said. “That’s one hell of a pie.”

  Marlene laughed for real. The widow eased forward on legs that were worn by age, each step a creaking curse on gravity. Roby felt his muscles relax and he rose out of the fighting crouch that had knotted his gut. Alfred’s tongue flicked out and licked at the pie that surrounded his lips. Then he lapped the thick substance from his palms.

  The tension that had filled the house all day fell away like mist burned under a strong dawn. Everyone began talking at once, Sarah gave Alfred the towel so he could clean himself, Roby picked the pie pan and ham off the floor, collecting the larger clumps of pie. Buck took a clean plate from the cabinet and heaped it full of mashed potatoes, then broke the skin that covered the cold gravy. He dolloped some gravy on the white mound, then ladled some sliced carrots on his plate.

  Cindy helped Alfred wipe himself, kissing him on the mouth before all the pie was gone, so that her lips were stained and smeared as well.

  “Hope your momma teaches you how to cook that good,” Alfred said to her.

  Sarah got out plates for everybody. The widow was in the mood for casserole. Roby washed the ham off in the sink and put it back in its foil platter. Anna Beth carved a slice and stuck the meat between the split halves of a scratch biscuit. Marlene had a fat, out-of-round piece of Clemens sausage. Roby started a pot of tea and everybody worked on the pile of food, all standing gathered around the kitchen counter except the widow. She sat on an uneven stool, head bent forward like a minister leading a flock in some joyous ritual.

  They were still eating and chattering when the car headlights first appeared as specks on the dim end of the dirt drive, bouncing like twin fireflies.

  #

  V.

  The knock was unnecessary, but Roby knew the action was meant as a sign of respect. Alfred, clean now except for a few stains on his shirt, swung open the screen door and held it as Barnaby entered. The undertaker wore his midnight blue suit, the one he wore when dropping in on a sitting. His black suit, the serious hand-tailored one, was saved for the actual viewing and interment.

  Roby nodded at Barnaby. Barnaby smiled in greeting while somehow keeping the undercurrent of sorrow fixed on his face. Roby marveled at the man’s professional talent. Or perhaps it wasn’t a talent. Maybe his face had grown that way, etched by a thousand funerals, the solemn features worn and eroded like a tombst
one that had weathered too many storms.

  “Hello, Mrs. Ridgehorn,” he said. The widow had risen to her feet and let Barnaby take her hand. “Hope this isn’t an inconvenient time to discuss the final arrangements.”

  “Needs to be done,” the widow said. “No use pretending he ain’t dead.”

  “I’m handling it for Momma,” Marlene said. “I’ll do all the signing.”

  Barnaby, with his hunched back, long neck, and sharp face, had the aspect of a vulture. He hunched even lower in a bow of resigned agreement.

  “We don’t want nothing fancy,” Alfred said. “A regular Baptist funeral, the preacher does his sermon, the choir sings ‘When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder,’ then a straight drive from the chapel to the family cemetery.”

  “And no more wreaths,” Marlene said. “Or memory books. No limousine, just the hearse.”

  Barnaby looked to the widow for approval. She pursed her mouth. The casserole had given her lips a slick sheen. “I reckon Jacob would have wanted the bare bones,” she said.

  “As you wish,” the undertaker said.

  Roby caught a faint whiff of formaldehyde over the aroma of the food.

  Death seeped into a man when he was around it long enough. His breath became the gas of rot and his skin became dust. His eyes became dying lights, dry and gray and empty. He returned to the dirt more slowly than his customers, but the process was just as one-way, with the same end.

  “You want some food?” Anna Beth asked him.

  “No, thank you. I’ve already eaten.” Barnaby made his way around the counter and shook Alfred’s hand. The veins in the undertaker’s neck throbbed visibly under his thin skin. “Alfred. Sorry about your loss.”

  “Our loss is your gain.”

  Roby stiffened, but the undertaker’s colorless smile took the edge off the remark. “When you stick out your chin that way, you look just like your father,” Barnaby said.

  Alfred didn’t know whether to take that as praise or an insult. “Want some cake? The pie’s all gone but we got devil’s food and bundt. Pick your poison.”

  “Thank you, really, but I just stopped by to take care of the details.”

  “Come on, Barnaby,” Roby said. “Make yourself at home.”

  Their eyes met.

  “Any pie left?” Barnaby asked.

  “All gone,” Roby said.

  “Must have been good.”

  “It was. Beverly Parsons made it.”

  Sarah got out a plate and set it before Barnaby. He rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, since you’re being so hospitable.”

  Anna Beth nicked off some of the bundt cake. Barnaby was asking for seconds before Roby could make the offer. Roby wondered how the man stayed so thin, as many sittings as he’d attended over the years. After he’d finished off the second piece, he wiped the crumbs from his chin with a handkerchief he’d pulled from a hidden suit pocket.

  “I have the flowers out in the car,” Barnaby said. “The usual way is for the flowers to stay at the house until the viewing.”

  “No more wreaths,” Marlene reminded him.

  “Oh, of course there will be no charge. These are gift flowers, sent in loving memory. Jacob was well-respected by the community.”

  The widow choked back a sob and rubbed a hand across her eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Clawson, for your consideration in these trying times.”

  “Ma’am, I talked to Jacob a few times in the past year. Even though the Lord took him before any of us expected, he was already laying plans. He didn’t want you to worry over the details.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “I think relieving a loved one of the burden of afterlife care is the best thing a person can do in this life,” Barnaby said.

  Roby wished the man wouldn’t lay it on so thick. It’s not like he needed a sales pitch. He had the product that sold itself.

  “Where are the flowers?” Alfred said.

  “Out in my car,” the undertaker said. “In the trunk.”

  “Let me get them,” Roby said.

  Barnaby fished in his pants pocket and came out with the keys. “You know the right key.”

  Roby nodded.

  “Get the porch light,” the widow said to Anna Beth. “It got dark while we wasn’t looking.”

  Anna Beth followed Roby outside. He felt, more than saw, the dark hulk of the barn off the road to the left of the yard. The early stars were like cold holes in the night sky. The autumn breeze played along the tops of the trees, rattling leaves that had gone to red and brown. The stretch of Jacob’s farm was a distant, forgotten corner of a deep and heartless universe.

  “You wait here,” Roby said to Anna Beth.

  “You might need some help.”

  “I done this plenty. Don’t want you falling in the dark and getting your dress dirty.”

  That was something she couldn’t argue with. She needed something for the viewing, and had to save her best for the funeral itself. That meant she’d be wearing tonight’s dress tomorrow. “Be careful.”

  Barnaby Clawson’s car was parked twenty yards from the house. He could have driven closer to the door, but distance meant respect. And distance meant safety from prying eyes.

  Except from those eyes that could see in the dark, could see through skin, could see right into the heart of things.

  Roby inserted the key, popped the trunk, and looked back toward the house. Through the windows, the kitchen was like a lighted stage. Barnaby looked to be helping himself to a third piece of bundt cake. The widow held a mug of warm tea, Alfred and Cindy had an arm around each other’s waist, Sarah was at the sink washing the latest round of dirty dishes, and Buck was talking to Marlene, no doubt about tractors.

  He ducked under the trunk lid and rummaged under the bouquets of flowers. The smell of crushed petals was heady and sickening. He hurried in his task, eager to breathe the night air again. The suitcase was over the wheel well. His fingers found its familiar frayed piping, the ragged leather raised from its surface like warts on flesh.

  “I’ll be just a second,” he said to Anna Beth, who stood under a swirl of moths that had collected around the porch light. “Got to get something from my car.”

  His palm was sweaty around the handle of the suitcase, his breath shallow, his lungs burning though the air had a September chill. His arm ached, as if the contents were a hundred pounds instead of a few. He reached his truck, opened the door, and slung the suitcase into the passenger’s seat. Roby glanced up to the barn, its black mouth open to the world.

  Roby didn’t like that part of the job, the one that was far removed from bright kitchens, clean plates, solemn families, sweet pies.

  He hurried back to Barnaby’s trunk, stacked some bundles of flowers in his arms, closed the trunk, and headed for the safety of the front door. Anna Beth held the door open and he went in, peering through the stems, stalks, and leaves.

  “Lordy mercy, Roby, you look like you took ill,” the widow said.

  “Where do you want these?” he managed to say, hoping his voice fooled them. All except Barnaby. The undertaker frowned around a forkful of cake.

  “In the living room,” Marlene said. “On the hearth by the chrysanthemums.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” the widow asked.

  “Just a little heartburn,” he said. “It’ll pass.”

  “Hope it wasn’t them deviled eggs,” Sarah said. “I knew we should have put them in the refrigerator.”

  “Probably ate too much of that goddamned Parsons pie,” Alfred said.

  Sarah turned from the sink. “No, if it was the pie, we’d all be sick. We all had some.”

  “Not me,” Marlene said. “I’m on a diet.”

  Roby nearly dropped the flowers on his way out of the room.

  He’d forgotten Marlene.

  VI.

  Barnaby left first, followed by Cindy. Alfred had to drive her home because she didn’t have a car. The widow had turned in early, and Anna Beth went
upstairs to read to her, to help take the edge off the loneliness. Buck, Sarah and Marlene sat on the couch, Roby on a worn vinyl footrest. Jacob’s rocker sat empty beside the coffee table, and the four of them were turned as if Jacob still sat in it.

  “I still say we sell it all,” Buck said. “Except the tractor.”

  “When did you become part of ‘we’?” Marlene said.

  “He’s my husband,” Sarah said. “We share and share alike.”

  “He wouldn’t be saying that if Alfred was here.”

  “Don’t worry about Alfred,” Roby said. He was trying to figure out a way to get Marlene out into the kitchen. He’d have to scrounge through the trash can and find some of the pie that he’d swept up. Then trick her into eating it somehow.

  “Well, I don’t want to stay in these mountains forever. You ever been to that mall in Raleigh? They got a fountain right there in the middle of it, under a glass roof, and a hundred stores, half of them selling nothing but clothes. Name stuff, fancy, not those off-the-rack seconds we get in Barkersville.”

  “Marlene, why don’t you think about somebody besides yourself for a change?” Sarah said.

  “Just ‘cause you’re stuck here don’t mean I have to be.”

  “We’re all stuck here. You’re part of this place, no matter how far you run.”

  “Now,” Roby said. “You girls just lost your daddy. Don’t be at each other’s throats.”

  “Since when did it get to be any of your business?” Buck said.

  “I’m almost as much family as you are.”

  “Why don’t you take your ass to the kitchen and let us work this out? Better yet, why don’t you just get on home? You’re way past polite, to be staying this late.”

  Roby knew it. There were unwritten laws to sittings, the food, the settling of affairs, the burial arrangements. He was a creature of habit, steeped in tradition, and had been to more sittings than he could count. He’d eaten dozens of death pies, he’d served up thousands of plates to grieving relatives. And easy rested those who’d trusted their hearts and souls to Roby.

  Except for Jacob Davis Ridgehorn.

  Roby stood. “Maybe you’re right, Buck. Forgive me, ladies.” He bent low. “I reckon I’ll see you at the viewing tomorrow.”