“I’ve no more time for ineptitude. It’s quite literally giving me indigestion.” He rubbed at his tingling chest. “We’re taking a four minute coffee break. And then we’ll start again from the top. The very top.” Not a single groan dared emerge from the cast. “Do not be late.”
In his office, amid piles of stacked manuscripts and aging stage props, Barton sipped at a lukewarm cup of coffee with eyes closed, rapping his flimsy wand on the desktop in rhythmic accompaniment to Handel’s Messiah on the stereo.
“Lord, please give me the strength to bear the load of this production, and the fools who threaten to undo it. Sometimes it feels as though I’m the only one who…”
“Cares?” offered a dry voice. The presence of the coarse, familiar rasp catapulted Barton back into reality with a shudder. The lanky, goateed old fellow sitting across from his desk brought a fearful whimper from Barton’s lips. All of a sudden the room was as frosty cold as the newcomer’s stare. “Excuse me for saying so, old friend, but you’re the last person I would inquire of about the definition of caring.”
“You. But, no. You’re not…supposed to be here. You’re not even…”
“Alive? No, I’m afraid I’m not. And, I’m glad to see that your memory isn’t as fractured as your view of reality. Nonetheless, your ignorance is so remarkable I’d be willing to wager that, even using both hands, you couldn’t find your own ass.”
“Maestro,” Barton whispered.
The spirit of Remy Darabont grinned. His skin was faded to a surreal, drained hue, as were his clothes, just a shade lighter than reality should have permitted. He nodded at the conducting wand in Barton’s shaking grip. “You know, I never would have been pompous enough to dare give myself such a name. That title was born out of both good humor and respect. I don’t believe you’re familiar with the word, even though I clearly remember teaching it to you as my assistant. Respect is a mutual necessity between those on and off stage.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Don’t be a fool, Barton. I don’t have time for it. You do remember the content of the production you are currently directing, don’t you?”
“A Christmas Carol? Wait, you can’t be serious?”
“I’ve been watching you since the day I died, my boy. This place, this theater, houses my soul. No surprise considering it housed my heart in life.” The hollowed being tsk-ed softly as he regarded Barton.
“I wanted to believe that you would change, that you would grow to learn the important subtleties of the directing craft. That you would mature and help those with the passion and love for the stage to grow with you. But, alas, you did not.”
“So, you’ve come to haunt me?”
Remy sighed. “No. Given the spirit of the season and the implementation of my all-time favorite stage play, I’ve decided to take this…unique opportunity to help you right a few wrongs.”
Barton narrowed his eyes at the apparition whose formerly living self used to occupy that very office. “You mean, visitation from three ghosts, and all that?” At this, he gave a snort of disdain.
“Perhaps it would be easier for me to explain if you would stop interjecting so many dimwitted questions.”
This last jab angered Barton. “And what if I don’t believe you? What if I say you’re some hack of a wino whom just happens to bear passing resemblance to Remy Darabont, recruited off the street by one of my many failing actors to harass me? Who put you up to it? Was it Saul? Admit it to me and I’ll even double whatever pittance he’s paying you.”
Remy leaned in with a grim expression, his stare icy. The man’s entire body dissolved into a bottomless pool of shadow, pulling the lights of the office into it. Two frosty blue eyes blinked out from the nothingness, stealing Barton’s breath from his lungs.
“Are you calling your director a liar?” Remy asked in a grating tone. “As I’ve already mentioned, I’d rather not dawdle. Now, are you prepared to listen?”
Barton edged as far back into his chair as was possible. He squirmed at the sight of the terrible black void that had overtaken his office and found that he could not force his eyes closed. He whimpered and gave a nod.
The office returned to normal. Well, normal, save for the specter of his former mentor leering at him with dead pearly eyes from across the cluttered desk.
With white knuckles still gripping the armrests of his chair, Barton regained his voice. “How can this be?”
“The dead do not always drift, Barton. I already explained my personal love for this playhouse. Please, you never were a dullard. Let’s not draw this out any further than is necessary.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
Remy smiled. His teeth were still as crooked as they had ever been, resembling the chipped headstones of an uprooted cemetery.
“Why, I’m going to offer you a chance to make good with the ones you’ve hurt. And certainly not all of them, because that really would take some time.” His smile shifted to an all-too-knowing rictus then. “No, just those closest to you. Who naturally happen to be the ones who you’ve hurt deepest.”
Remy made a steeple with his fingers on the desk and watched Barton intently. “Let’s just say I’ve been able to pull a few strings in order to make this a possibility. In a matter of minutes, you’ll be able to find some peace in this mess of a life you’ve made for yourself. Doesn’t sound like too bad a deal, does it?”
Barton was flabbergasted. As usual, he simply rambled the first thought that crossed his mind. “But, why tonight? If you haven’t noticed, I’ve got a ship to run out there. And it’s currently manned by children. We open tomorrow night.”
“I stand here before you, offering you a chance to mend the bridges you’ve burned over the course of your foul life, and all you can do is ask why? Listen, you damnable fool, you’ve just had a heart attack. You are, at this very moment, a dying man. Why the hell do you think you’re capable of seeing me right now?”
Remy snapped his fingers and at once Barton was outside of his body, staring down at himself. His pudgy form was slumped over the filthy desk in a wash of papers. The wand lay broken on the floor along with his coffee mug. Barton was looking at a dead man.
“Not a pretty mess, is it? Does that clarify your situation?”
“No! Get help!” He clawed at his predecessor with choked despair.
“You’re still alive,” Remy said, jerking out of Barton’s grasp. “I can assure you, help is coming. But, we haven’t much time to get you where you need to go. This is our only opportunity.”
“Will I die?”
“I’ve just told you you’re still living. Don’t worry about lost time.” Remy stood from the visitors chair and stepped around the desk to approach Barton. “All said and done, this should only cost you, oh…let’s say four minutes.”
With glazed, tearful eyes, Barton nodded. “Hurry.”
Remy wasted no time with theatrics. He simply raised a fist, which faded into the black of moonless midnight, and pounded Barton in the face.
Barton Doyle felt himself slipping and sliding along what felt like a velvety black tube before he landed heavily on his tailbone. Fortunately, soft earth waited beneath him. He found that he was having a coughing fit, and only when Remy thumped on his back a few times did it subside.
“That’s normal,” Remy assured him. “I think.”
“Where are we?” Barton wheezed.
A moment’s glance around told him all he needed to know. Gravestones dotted the moonlit hillside, a stony field of crops, standing in a permanent state of post harvest. They served to remind Barton in an instant of life’s fleeting fragility.
Remy dusted off his heavy pea coat and narrowed his eyes. “I’m not surprised you don’t recognize it. To the living, all graveyards look the same at night. Try to look a little harder. Just beyond the edges.”
And then his eyes became accustomed to the lunar glow. Things shifted into better focus. The night took on a gray hue previously unfamiliar to
Barton. The gnarled trunk of an old elm tree looped out before them. “Wait. No, I do recognize it.” A frosty finger ran up his spine. He clamped his teeth together and felt the chill of December air tighten his skin of his arms with goosebumps.
They were near the resting place of Barton’s mother, Lois Doyle. The woman was two years in the ground. He turned his head to Remy and snorted.
“And just what are we doing here? I’ve been here before.”
Remy shook his head in dismay. “Barton, I’m sure no one has had the gall to tell you this in your lifetime, but you are a seriously dense pain-in-the-ass.”
Barton’s face sank. He was dumbstruck.
“You’re here to make peace with your mother.”
“That’s absolutely ludicrous. There’s nothing I have to say to that woman that has any bearing on—”
Remy slapped Barton hard enough to blur his vision. “The woman gave birth to you, you ungrateful bastard. She worked three jobs to get you and your brother through high school without a father. And the most you ever did for her was to trade in the equity on your childhood house to place her in a nursing home.”
Barton felt the sting of his former mentor’s words even more sharply than the sting his fingers had left upon his face. “So, what’s the point of us coming to this place?”
“Bartie? Is that you?”
Barton’s eyes widened at the sight of his mother crawling up from her grave.
“Oh. Hello, mother.”
“Don’t you mother me, young man.” The spirit of the very tall, very round old woman, wrapped in the floral print dress that she’d been buried in, rose to cross her arms in front of her eldest son. “You haven’t been to visit me since I was planted in this stinking hole.”
“But…” Barton was flabbergasted at the appearance of the woman. He hadn’t seen her in years. Even before her death, the two had not spoken in almost a decade. But even now, she looked precisely as he’d remembered her, large as life, though her being was devoid of color, like an old black-and-white TV picture. “You always talked about how you would be happy buried next to father.”
“Dad,” Mrs. Doyle corrected. “If he’d ever heard you call him father, I’m sure that would have been the death of him. It was hard enough on him with you going off to that fancy acting school.”
“It was necessary moth—er, Mom. You see, I’m an important director, now.”
Remy elbowed him sharply.
“What?” said Barton.
“Who’s this?” Mrs. Doyle asked.
Barton waved the man off. “Nobody. Nevermind him.” He watched his mother awkwardly as she floated up to perch upon the quaint grave marker. “What I’m actually here for is…”
She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
“Wait. Just a moment.” When Barton looked to Remy for direction, the man had turned his back to him.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, man,” Remy asked when Barton touched his shoulder. “What is it?”
“What exactly am I doing here?” Barton whispered.
Remy forced the words through clenched teeth. “The nursing home, you damned fool.”
Barton’s face blanched. “What do you mean?”
“You traded away the only thing that woman ever owned in her life in order to shuffle her off into a befouled broom closet for the last of her years. What the bloody hell do you think you ought to say to her?”
Barton stood, unblinking.
“Apologize!” Remy hissed.
“Oh, right. Of course.” Barton faced his mother once again and rubbed his hands nervously. “I’m sorry, mom.”
“What for?” she replied, eyes wandering casually around the cemetery.
“Well, for…eh, putting you in the—assisted living community.”
“The nursing home?” she corrected.
Barton fidgeted and found himself examining his fingernails. “Erm, I guess so.”
“Erm, you guess?”
“Well…yes. I mean, of course I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Doyle huffed deeply. “I suppose that’s about the best I could have hoped for from you. Just be glad you don’t have any children who would do the same to you, Bartie. That place was hell.”
Barton’s face had turned crimson. “I didn’t know it was so terrible.”
“You never asked. Not that you’d have had the chance. Hell, Bartie, you just disappeared. No phone calls. No visitations. Only Charlie ever came to see me. He never let me down. If I’d still had my wits about me, I’d have never, ever, left you as the Executor of my Estate.”
Barton lowered his gaze to the ground. It was uncontestable. And, somewhere deep inside, he knew it was true, the convenience with which he’d thrown this woman into the depths of an unknown personal dungeon of pills and confined degradation. Never mind the fact that the place had probably been the death of her, after but two years inside. Loneliness is the most uncaring of killers.
“How’s your brother?”
At the mention of Charles, yet another jagged rift was torn in Barton’s already wounded heart. He did not answer his mother’s question, but instead turned to Remy. The old director had turned his attention to more pressing matters, namely counting the number of planted citizens with last names starting with “D” in that section.
“He’s our next stop, Mrs. Doyle,” Remy said indifferently. “Don’t worry yourself about him.”
“I’ll worry myself with whatever I damned well please, stranger.”
“Of course, ma’am. Of course.”
Barton reached slowly forward to try and touch his mother’s hand. She backed away and started to slink back down into the ground.
“I’m too tired for all of this, Bartie. I just need to rest now. You’ll see, one day. Just tell your brother hello for me, will you. At least he comes out here to visit me regularly. Of course it couldn’t be him that could actually see and talk to me. It had to be you.” Her milky white eyes lolled back inside her head and she slipped below the earth once again.
“What was that?”
“You just apologized for making the last years of you birth mother’s life a living hell.”
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“They got Jell-O. Every night, so I hear it told.”
Remy scowled. “You don’t have the slightest idea, do you? Oh, well, at least the formalities are taken care of.”
“Wait. What formalities? What are you talking about?”
Remy rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Redemption, my selfish friend. Or, at least something akin to it.”
“Are we really going to see my—brother? And his people?”
“Yes.” Remy said flatly. “We are.” With that, the bearded old man belted him across the chin without warning.
This time, Barton’s landing was nowhere near as soft. He crashed painfully onto polished hardwood. The dark shade retreated from around him to reveal the beautifully finished entry corridor of a modernly chic home.
Footsteps hurried from the other room and a man appeared holding a long bread knife in hand.
“Who the—Sweet hell! Barton, is that really you? How did you get in here?” The man possessed Barton’s small eyes and round face, but had fortunately not felt the sting of the Doyle receding hairline. Barton had always secretly envied him for that.
“Door…” Barton choked. The black powder nausea caused him to be sick on the floor. “The door was open.”
Charles put a wary hand on his downed brother’s shoulder. “Are you drunk?”
Barton waved him off and coughed. “Terribly sorry about this. No. I haven’t had a drop to drink.” He raised his hands to beg innocence. A brief glance behind him showed the hovering specter of his long-dead predecessor, whom Charles was apparently unable to see. The Maestro was busy examining a moderately impressive collection of first-edition novels that adorned a wall-length bookcase.
Using his best improvisational skills, Barton continue
d to spill forth his excuse for intrusion. “We were in the middle of rehearsal, Charles. And I just thought I’d come and, well…say hello.”
Charles shook his head and sighed. “You’re rehearsing right now? It’s Christmas Eve, Bart. You’re lucky you don’t have a mutiny on your hands.” He watched his uninvited brother incredulously. “You have no bottom, do you?”
“In fact, Charles,” Remy added, glancing over the top of a dusty tome to survey Barton’s distended pants, “he does have a rather sizable bottom, indeed.”
Charles looked to the window, thinking he’d perhaps heard the gust of an intruding breeze.
“I…” Barton said, shifting his eyes from his brother’s gaze, which had quickly turned from surprise to familiar discomfort. He knew that their last meeting, two years in the past, was likely replaying in Charles’ head.
“Nice place you’ve got yourself, here.” As well as trying to fill the awkwardness accompanying his presence, Barton was truly impressed at the tasteful dark wood finishes and smooth white plaster of the home’s entryway.
“We heathens are known for our good taste in decor, aren’t we?”
Barton winced, unable to look at the man he had grown up with: his own flesh and blood.
“Is…he home?”
“He is actually named Joseph. And since it’s Christmas Eve, of course he’s home. He was taking a nap, though you’ve probably just woken him.”
“Oh, right. I’m very sorry about that, Charlie.” Barton wrung his hands and looked about the room for some assistance from his ghastly guide, but the man had wandered off into the next room.
“Why are you here, Bart?” Charles had never possessed an unkind bone in his body, but his rigid stance and flat tone conveyed the closest thing he could muster to anger. “After mom’s funeral, you said…”
“I know what I said,” Barton said. “Could you please put that knife down?”
“Are you expecting me to invite you in?”
Barton frowned. “No. Of course not. Why should you?”
Charlie placed the knife on the hall table and crossed his arms.
Chasing the Sandman Page 17