Ghosts: Recent Hauntings

by Richard Bowes

  “Donald,” said the Runt. And then, “But they call me the Runt. What do they call you?”

  The boy hesitated. “Dearly,” he said.

  “That’s a cool name.”

  Dearly said, “I used to have another name, but I can’t read it anymore.”

  They squeezed through a huge iron gateway, rusted part open, part closed into position, and they were in the little meadow at the bottom of the slope.

  “This place is cool,” said the Runt.

  There were dozens of stones of all sizes in the small meadow. Tall stones, bigger than either of the boys, and small ones, just the right size for sitting on. There were some broken stones. The Runt knew what sort of a place this was, but it did not scare him. It was a loved place.

  “Who’s buried here?” he asked.

  “Mostly okay people,” said Dearly. “There used to be a town over there. Past those trees. Then the railroad came and they built a stop in the next town over, and our town sort of dried up and fell in and blew away. There’s bushes and trees now, where the town was. You can hide in the trees and go into the old houses and jump out.”

  The Runt said, “Are they like that farmhouse up there? The houses?” He didn’t want to go in them, if they were.

  “No,” said Dearly. “Nobody goes in them, except for me. And some animals, sometimes. I’m the only kid around here.”

  “I figured,” said the Runt.

  “Maybe we can go down and play in them,” said Dearly.

  “That would be pretty cool,” said the Runt.

  It was a perfect early October night: almost as warm as summer, and the harvest moon dominated the sky. You could see everything.

  “Which one of these is yours?” asked the Runt.

  Dearly straightened up proudly, and took the Runt by the hand. He pulled him over to an overgrown corner of the field. The two boys pushed aside the long grass. The stone was set flat into the ground, and it had dates carved into it from a hundred years before. Much of it was worn away, but beneath the dates it was possible to make out the words DEARLY DEPARTED WILL NEVER BE FORG.

  “Forgotten, I’d wager,” said Dearly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’d say too,” said the Runt.

  They went out of the gate, down a gully, and into what remained of the old town. Trees grew through houses, and buildings had fallen in on themselves, but it wasn’t scary. They played hide-and-seek. They explored. Dearly showed the Runt some pretty cool places, including a one-room cottage that he said was the oldest building in that whole part of the country. It was in pretty good shape, too, considering how old it was.

  “I can see pretty good by moonlight,” said the Runt. “Even inside. I didn’t know that it was so easy.”

  “Yeah,” said Dearly. “And after a while you get good at seeing even when there ain’t any moonlight.”

  The Runt was envious.

  “I got to go to the bathroom,” said the Runt. “Is there, somewhere around here?”

  Dearly thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t do that stuff anymore. There are a few outhouses still standing, but they may not be safe. Best just to do it in the woods.”

  “Like a bear,” said the Runt.

  He went out the back, into the woods which pushed up against the wall of the cottage, and went behind a tree. He’d never done that before, in the open air. He felt like a wild animal. When he was done he wiped himself with fallen leaves. Then he went back out the front. Dearly was sitting in a pool of moonlight, waiting for him.

  “How did you die?” asked the Runt.

  “I got sick,” said Dearly. “My maw cried and carried on something fierce. Then I died.”

  “If I stayed here with you,” said the Runt, “would I have to be dead too?”

  “Maybe,” said Dearly. “Well, yeah. I guess.”

  “What’s it like? Being dead.”

  “I don’t mind it,” admitted Dearly. “Worst thing is not having anyone to play with.”

  “But there must be lots of people up in that meadow,” said the Runt. “Don’t they ever play with you?”

  “Nope,” said Dearly. “Mostly, they sleep. And even when they walk, they can’t be bothered to just go and see stuff and do things. They can’t be bothered with me. You see that tree?”

  It was a beech tree, its smooth gray bark cracked with age. It sat in what must once have been the town square, ninety years before.

  “Yeah,” said the Runt.

  “You want to climb it?”

  “It looks kind of high.”

  “It is. Real high. But it’s easy to climb. I’ll show you.”

  It was easy to climb. There were handholds in the bark, and the boys went up the big beech tree like a couple of monkeys, like pirates, like warriors. From the top of the tree one could see the whole world. The sky was starting to lighten, just a hair, in the east.

  Everything waited. The night was ending. The world was holding its breath, preparing to begin again.

  “This was the best day I ever had,” said the Runt.

  “Me too,” said Dearly. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Runt.

  He imagined himself going on, walking across the world, all the way to the sea. He imagined himself growing up and growing older, bringing himself up by his bootstraps. Somewhere in there he would become fabulously wealthy. And then he would go back to the house with the twins in it, and he would drive up to their door in his wonderful car, or perhaps he would turn up at a football game (in his imagination the twins had neither aged nor grown) and look down at them, in a kindly way. He would buy them all—the twins, his parents—a meal at the finest restaurant in the city, and they would tell him how badly they had misunderstood him and mistreated him. They would apologize and weep, and through it all he would say nothing. He would let their apologies wash over him. And then he would give each of them a gift, and afterward he would leave their lives once more, this time for good.

  It was a fine dream.

  In reality, he knew, he would keep walking, and be found tomorrow, or the day after that, and go home and be yelled at and everything would be the same as it ever was, and day after day, hour after hour, until the end of time he’d still be the Runt, only they’d be mad at him for leaving.

  “I have to go to bed soon,” said Dearly. He started to climb down the big beech tree.

  Climbing down the tree was harder, the Runt found. You couldn’t see where you were putting your feet, and had to feel around for somewhere to put them. Several times he slipped and slid, but Dearly went down ahead of him, and would say things like “Just a little to the right now,” and they both made it down just fine.

  The sky continued to lighten, and the moon was fading, and it was harder to see. They clambered back through the gully. Sometimes the Runt wasn’t sure that Dearly was there at all, but when he got to the top, he saw the boy waiting for him.

  They didn’t say much as they walked up to the meadow filled with stones. The Runt put his arm over Dearly’s shoulder, and they walked in step up the hill.

  “Well,” said Dearly. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “I had a good time,” said the Runt.

  “Yeah,” said Dearly. “Me too.”

  Down in the woods somewhere a bird began to sing.

  “If I wanted to stay—?” said the Runt, all in a burst.

  Then he stopped. I might never get another chance to change it, thought the Runt. He’d never get to the sea. They’d never let him.

  Dearly didn’t say anything, not for a long time. The world was gray. More birds joined the first.

  “I can’t do it,” said Dearly eventually. “But they might.”

  “Who?”

  “The ones in there.” The fair boy pointed up the slope to the tumbledown farmhouse with the jagged broken windows, silhouetted against the dawn. The gray light had not changed it.

  The Runt shivered. “There’s people
in there?” he said. “I thought you said it was empty.”

  “It ain’t empty,” said Dearly. “I said nobody lives there. Different things.” He looked up at the sky. “I got to go now,” he added. He squeezed the Runt’s hand. And then he just wasn’t there any longer.

  The Runt stood in the little graveyard all on his own, listening to the birdsong on the morning air. Then he made his way up the hill. It was harder by himself.

  He picked up his schoolbag from the place he had left it. He ate his last Milky Way and stared at the tumbledown building. The empty windows of the farmhouse were like eyes, watching him.

  It was darker inside there. Darker than anything.

  He pushed his way through the weed-choked yard. The door to the farmhouse was mostly crumbled away. He stopped at the doorway, hesitating, wondering if this was wise. He could smell damp, and rot, and something else underneath. He thought he heard something move, deep in the house, in the cellar, maybe, or the attic. A shuffle, maybe. Or a hop. It was hard to tell.

  Eventually, he went inside.

  Nobody said anything. October filled his wooden mug with apple cider when he was done, and drained it, and filled it again.

  “It was a story,” said December. “I’ll say that for it.” He rubbed his pale blue eyes with a fist. The fire was almost out.

  “What happened next?” asked June nervously. “After he went into the house?”

  May, sitting next to her, put her hand on June’s arm. ”Better not to think about it,” she said.

  “Anyone else want a turn?” asked August. There was no reply. “Then I think we’re done.”

  “That needs to be an official motion,” pointed out February.

  “All in favor?” said October. There was a chorus of “Ayes.” “All against?” Silence. “Then I declare this meeting adjourned.”

  They got up from the fireside, stretching and yawning, and walked away into the wood, in ones and twos and threes, until only October and his neighbor remained.

  “Your turn in the chair next time,” said October.

  “I know,” said November. He was pale, and thin lipped. He helped October out of the wooden chair. “I like your stories. Mine are always too dark.”

  “I don’t think so,” said October. “It’s just that your nights are longer. And you aren’t as warm.”

  “Put it like that,” said November, “and I feel better. I suppose we can’t help who we are.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said his brother. And they touched hands as they walked away from the fire’s orange embers, taking their stories with them back into the dark.

  Did ghostly vengeance wait in the lake? Some sort of delayed

  retribution haunting the cold waters?

  Savannah is Six

  James Van Pelt

  For as long as Poul could remember, he’d spent the summer at the lake where his brother drowned.

  This year, as they climbed in the van, Leesa said cryptically, “Savannah is six.”

  Poul held his hand on the ignition key but didn’t turn it. “I know.”

  Each year since Savannah was born, it got harder to come out. The nightmares started earlier, grew more vivid, woke him with a scream choked down, a huge hurting lump he swallowed without voicing. Poul took longer to pack the van; he delayed the day he left, and when he finally started, he drove below the speed limit.

  They pulled into the long, sloping driveway down to the cottage just after noon. Leesa had slept the last hour, and Savannah colored in the back seat, surrounded by baggage and groceries. Her head was down, very serious, turning a white sky into a blue one. She always struck Poul as a somber child, for six, as if there was something sad in her life that returned to her occasionally. Not that she didn’t smile or didn’t act silly at times, but he’d catch her staring out the window in her bedroom before she’d go to bed, or her hand would rest on a favorite toy without picking it up, and she seemed lost. She was quick to tears if either parent scolded her, which happened seldom, but even a spilled drink at dinner filled her eyes, the tears brimming at the edge, ready to slip away.

  Their cottage sat isolated by a spur of nature conservancy land on one side and on the other by a long, houseless, rocky stretch. He bought the place fourteen years earlier, the year after he married, from Dad, who didn’t use it anymore.

  Only a couple of hours from Terre Haute, Tribay Lake attracted a slower paced population; county covenants kept the skiers off, so the surface remained calm when the wind was low. From the air it looked like a three-leafed clover, with several miles of shoreline. An angler in a boat with a trolling motor could find plenty of isolated inlets covered with lily pads where the lunkers hung out.

  By mid-June the water warmed to swimming temperature—inner tubes were stacked next to the boat house for a convenient float—and the nights cooled off for sleeping. Poul and Leesa took the front room overlooking the lake. In the first years they’d opened the big windows wide at night to listen to crickets. Lately, though, he went to bed alone while she worked crossword puzzles, or she retired early and was asleep by the time he got there.

  Poul knew the lake by its smell and sounds—wet wood and fish and old barbeques, and waves lapping against the tires his dad had mounted on the pier to protect the boat, the late night birds trilling in the hills above the lake, and an echo of his mother’s voice, still ringing, when Neal didn’t come back. “Where’s your brother?” she’d asked, her eyes already wild. “Weren’t you watching Neal?” She called his name as she walked down the rocky shore looking for the younger son.

  Savannah closed her book and said, “I’m going to catch a big fish this year. I’m going to see him in my raft first, then I’ll hook him. But I want to visit Johnny Jacobs and his kittens first.” Over Poul’s objection, Leesa had bought Savannah a clear bottomed raft, just big enough to hold a child, and it was all she’d talked about for weeks.

  Poul said, “They won’t be kittens anymore, Speedy. That was last fall. They’ll be cats by now.” Gravel crunched under the wheels. Leesa didn’t move, her sweater still bunched between her head and the window.

  Poul wondered if she only pretended to be asleep. It was a good way to not converse, and the lean against the window kept her as far away from him as possible. “We’re here, Leesa,” he said, touching her hand. She didn’t flinch, so maybe she actually had been sleeping.

  Leesa rubbed her eyes, then pushed her short, black hair behind her ears. She’d started dyeing it last year even though Poul hadn’t noticed any grey. His hair had a couple of streaks now, but his barber told him it made him distinguished. At thirty-five, he thought “distinguished” was a good look.

  “I’m going to walk down to Kettle Jack’s to see if he has fresh corn for the grill. I like grilled corn my first night at the lake,” Leesa said. Poul wondered if she was talking to him. She’d turned her face to the side, where the oak slipped past.

  Poul pulled the car under the beat-up carport next to the cottage. Scrubby brush scraped against the bumper. Leesa opened the door and was gone before he could stop the engine. Savannah said, “I don’t like corn on the cob. Can we have hotdogs?”

  “Sure, Speedy.” On an elm next to the cottage, a frayed rope dangled, its end fifteen feet from the ground. Summers and summers ago, there’d been a knot in the end and Neal hung on while Poul pushed him. “Harder, Poul!” he’d yell, and Poul gave another shove, sending the younger boy spinning. Poul looked at the rope. He didn’t remember when it had broken; it seemed like this was the first time he’d seen it in years. With the door open now, forest smells filled the car: the peculiar lake-side forest essence that was all moss and ferns and rotted logs half buried in loam, damp with Indiana summer dew. He and Neal had explored the woods from the cottage to the highway, a half-mile of deadfall and mysterious paths only the deer used. They hunted for walking sticks and giant beetles, or, with peanut butter jars in hand, trapped bulbous spiders for later examination.

  Someone yel
led in the distance, a child, and Poul jumped. He stood, his hands resting on the car’s roof. Between the cottage and the elms beside it, a slice of lake glimmered, and a hundred feet from shore, a group of children played on a permanently anchored oil drum and wood decked diving platform, whooping in delight.

  “I’d like mustard on mine, and then I’ll go see the kittens,” said Savannah. She had her duffel bag over her shoulder—it dragged on the ground—and was already moving toward the back door.

  “Sure, Speedy,” Poul said, although Savannah was already out of earshot. Poul arched, pushing his hands into his back. Sunlight cut through the leaves above in a million diamonds. He left the baggage in the car to walk to the shore. To his left, a mile away, partly around the lake’s curve, Kettle Jack’s long pier poked into the water. A dozen sailboats lay at anchor, their empty masts standing rock still in the windless day. Part way there, Leesa walked determinedly on the dirt path toward the lodge. Slender as the day they married. Long-legged. Satiny skin that bronzed after two days of sun. He remembered warm nights marveling at the boundaries where the dark skin became white, how she murmured encouragement, laughing deep in her throat at shared joys.

  Poul unpacked the van. Most of the beach toys went around front. He stuck the yellow raft on a high, open shelf in back of the cottage where rakes and old oars were stored. Maybe she’d forget they had it.

  A screen slapped shut behind him. Savannah came down the steps. “I couldn’t find the hotdogs, and something smells bad in the kitchen. I’m going to count fish.”

  Poul said, “Let’s go together. Life vest first.” He found one in a pile in the storage chest against the tiny boathouse. It had a solid heft that reassured him.

  She pouted as he put it on. It smelled of a winter’s storage, a musty, grey odor that rose when he squeezed the belt around her. “Guess you aren’t the same size as last summer? Can’t have you grow up this fast. We’ll have to quit feeding you.”