The Ghostess and Mister Muir

by J. L. Salter

  Muir pointed to his watch.

  “Yeah, okay. You wouldn’t rush Faulkner like this.” His indignation appropriately expressed, Tacket grinned and continued. “Well, anyhow, one of those stories was about some old porter named Scroggins who was walking from the depot late one night, about a hundred years ago. He lived in one of those rickety shacks that used to be up on the levee east of the tracks.” Another noisy sip of beer. “So this porter claimed he actually saw that famous accident — with the Gregg heiress — but he wasn’t close enough to help.”

  “What happened?” Lucy leaned over the table.

  “Lady, all dressed up, standing on the tracks around midnight and screaming for help… right before the locomotive ran her down.”

  Muir interrupted. “And when Scroggins reported this, it went up the channels, but stopped at the inquest.”

  “Why?” asked Lucy.

  Tacket tapped the stained tabletop with a blunt and weathered fingertip. “Some money changed hands to keep the porter’s story out of the record. Ruled it not admissible.”

  “That’s eye-witness testimony,” sputtered Lucy. “If she was calling for help, then it wasn’t a suicide. Why was that inadmissible?”

  “Scroggins was black… and this was a hundred years ago,” replied Muir, who’d evidently heard a complete version of the story just before Lucy arrived. “His status, plus the bribe — from whomever — equals no testimony.”

  “How come nobody’s ever heard this version before?”

  Tacket’s finger made a lazy oval in the moisture ring left by his glass. “In one place I lived, there’d been a lynching — white guy who allegedly shot the county sheriff — around 1895 or so. About ninety years later, some historical folks found a few papers about it and wanted to do up an article for a magazine. But several of the men involved in that lynching were ancestors of local folks with prominent names. Somebody put a lid on it and the article never showed up.”

  “Mr. Tacket, how certain are you about this information?” Before she realized what she was doing Lucy had clutched his jacketed forearm, but quickly retracted her hand.

  With his generous un-toothy grin, Tacket replied, “I’m not, lady. Was just telling Muir here some of the stories I remembered from that old buzzard at the train depot.”

  “But it clicks with what Danielle told me,” added Muir, “except I don’t recall her mentioning the porter in the distance.”

  “That late at night, she probably didn’t even see him,” added Lucy.

  “So your other girlfriend, the ghost lady, she had something to say about that train killing?”

  Muir nodded and then explained what he’d learned.

  Tacket smiled again. “You two have been talking to a lady ghost and you’re asking me if my source is reliable?” He chuckled so harshly it turned in to a cough. A sip of brew finally settled it. “At least my source was flesh and blood.”

  “Levi, we’ve got to go. I have lots of new stuff to tell you. Important.” Lucy rose.

  “More news bulletins from the haints?” Tacket signaled the bartender for a refill and pointed to Muir as the benefactor. “Both of y’all really sit around talking to that ghost in the Majestic?”

  “I just left her,” stated Lucy, tugging at Muir’s shoulder. “And she’s expecting to meet us in about three hours.”

  Tacket’s eyes widened. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

  “Thanks for the info, Tacket,” said Muir, on his way to pay for their drinks.

  “Don’t mention it. If you need more stories, you know where to find me.” Tacket rubbed his hands together as the gruff bartender approached with his refill.

  Muir paid and didn’t wait for any change.

  Outside the bar, Lucy shuddered. “I’ve been in lounges before, but that was my first old-timey bar. They’re kind of dark and dingy.”

  “But you find really interesting folks in there.” Muir smiled.

  Lucy scratched her temple lightly. “I’ve seen that Tacket guy before… somewhere.”

  “Maybe at the bandstand in the town square. That’s where I found him.”

  “No, not the square. Somewhere else.” She closed her eyes briefly. “There’s something very familiar about him.”

  “It’ll come to you. Now give me the lowdown on your meeting. Apparently Danielle returned…”

  “Let’s sit down for a minute first.” Lucy pointed to a row of benches along the hospital, across Bridge Street.

  “Okay, but three hours from now would be around midnight,” he observed as they crossed the road. “I should tell you I’m not always awake that late.”

  “It’s Friday night of a three day weekend.” She poked his chest. “Man up.”

  Muir looked startled but did not reply, as they sat on a partly rusted metal bench.

  “It’s supposed to rain later tonight.” The sliver of moon did not seem quite as sinister with Muir nearby. Lucy mulled over what she needed to say.

  Muir waited but seemed agitated about the delay.

  “Okay, not sure where to start because we covered a lot of territory. But there’s something I need to know before I tell you her portion.” She took a deep breath. “Are you attracted to me?”

  Even though her directness obviously caught him off guard, Muir responded immediately. “Of course I am. Have been since I first spotted you during the orientation and training.”

  “I have to say, you’ve had some odd ways of showing it at times.”

  He hugged her sideways. “My first thoughts were, a woman that beautiful obviously already has a significant other, so I took a step backwards. Then when I realized you were not apparently attached to anybody, I tried to get closer.”

  “Which is when Danielle began jamming your brain, or whatever.”

  “Apparently so.” Muir leaned over enough to kiss her cheek. “But after I was able to block some of her interference, I realized how much I’d fallen for you.”

  “Maybe you knew, but I didn’t.”

  Muir withdrew his arm so he could turn and look into her eyes. “What’s all this about? I thought you said we were good now.”

  “I wanted to know — needed to hear it — because I think it affects what’s possibly occurring tonight.”

  “Maybe I need to know what happens at midnight.”

  Lucy gulped. “This is the anniversary, the exact anniversary of her train incident. One hundred years ago tonight.”

  “Didn’t realize…”

  “Danielle thinks this is the best opportunity — possibly her only chance — to move on, to wherever her spirit was supposed to go. Just this very specific moment, and she says you have to be there.”

  “Why? For what?”

  “It’s confusing, but apparently whatever happens tonight will either free her or it won’t. And it will either release her hold on you… or it won’t.”

  “But I don’t want her to leave me.”

  Which is part of her hold on you. “You can’t have it both ways, Levi. For her to get where she needs to be, she has to leave. And for you to get where you need to be, you have to let her go.”

  Muir thought for a moment. “And for me to be with you, I can’t have Danielle.”

  “Levi, you couldn’t have her anyway — not in the sense that you’ve been thinking about. There’s no way on earth to have an ongoing relationship with a trapped spirit.”

  “What about on the other side?”

  Lucy whacked his near thigh. “Don’t even think about it, Levi. You are not leaving real life to romp with what you imagine as a spirit girlfriend. This has all been an illusion of sorts — considerably manipulated by that ghostess.”

  “I’ve seen her, touched her, kissed…”

  “I saw her manifestation too, but she’s not a real person. She’s not alive. We were in brief contact with her energy or force, or whatever you might understand it as.”

  “She hugged me.”

  Lucy wondered whether she should mention ho
w central Neddy was to Danielle’s true heart. And if she did mention Neddy, would Levi comprehend there was a rival for the spirit’s affections? With those words on the tip of her tongue, Lucy refrained, on the basis that Danielle needed Muir’s most uncontaminated reactions for the midnight encounter. “Look, I understand some of your confusion because while I was with her, I was also caught up in the excitement of the moment… in the realization I was experiencing the impossible.” She took a breath. “And that, I think, is the point it boils down to — it’s not possible.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “High EMF readings can trigger visual and audible hallucinations, among other things like severe headaches.”

  “But how can you explain the perfume… her moving the bookcase?”

  “I can’t explain it and neither can Danielle. She’s practically as buffaloed as we are.” Lucy searched for imagery that Muir might comprehend. “Are you familiar with theories about worm holes, string theory, or zero point fields?”

  He just stared, then slowly shook his head.

  “English majors.” She sighed. “Well, we don’t have time to develop a seminar on what physicists theorize about or how they could possibly be experienced, but many scientists believe there are connections or channels — perhaps accessible only at certain brief points, though others think more often — through which a person might travel.”

  “Travel?”

  “Not like a trip. It would be more like zooming from this reality to another reality. Shifting focus, like a stationary camera can suddenly zoom to a distant object and see it perfectly.” Her brow wrinkled when she squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ve heard of parallel universes?”

  “Theories about them…” He nodded slowly.

  “Okay. This won’t be exact, but think of the spirit world as a parallel universe. While we’re alive, we maybe get a brief glimpse, if anything at all, but we don’t experience it until we die and become a form of life that fits there.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, Danielle isn’t even there yet. She’s hung up somewhere — evidently X percent on that side of things, but not quite arrived.”

  “Though she’s been waiting for a century.”

  “Right. And what we’ve experienced here is maybe ten percent of that X percent of her entity.”

  “And I can’t have a relationship with her one-tenth of X percent.”

  “Exactly.” Lucy realized her hand was still on his thigh, which she squeezed once and then let go. “But you can’t possess even that tiny sliver of her energy. You have to let her go completely.”

  “This is a lot to absorb, but if you’re sure…”

  “I’m not certain what’s going down, not exactly. But I’m positive we have to be there, or it won’t happen.”

  “The train track at midnight… the spot where Danielle died.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “But we’re not hooking up with your ghost hunters.”

  “No, just you and me are going.”

  Muir squinted. “And nobody’s meeting us there?”

  “No body. Just us two mortals and the ghostess of the Majestic Hotel.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Friday night, August 29

  The rain began a few minutes before midnight.

  Danielle — in fully manifested form — waited in the light drizzle at the south end of the river trestle and looked northward along the tracks. Shifting her gaze, she saw Muir and Lucy approach; when they were within about fifty yards, she motioned for Lucy to remain where she was. Not only was she visible to both of them at the same time — their first instance to see her together — but Danielle was also still able to communicate directly to Lucy’s mind.

  “I’ll do what you say,” transmitted Lucy’s thoughts, “but you’d better not hurt Levi.”

  “That’s partly up to him, Miss Tierney,” Danielle responded wordlessly. She had not visited the site of her train death since that event; almost all of that century had been spent within the Majestic Hotel.

  In the distance, Muir touched Lucy’s arm and said something, then he faced Danielle and waved broadly. Muir approached with a grand smile. Obviously delighted to see her, he had a woefully incomplete awareness of why he was there.

  Everything she’d waited a hundred years for… would occur in a matter of seconds.

  All three could hear the whistle sound in the distance; the train was about to roar into a shallow curve before the straightaway across the river. It was the identical coal powered steam locomotive which had struck down Danielle at the end of August, 1914.

  Another whistle blast by the engineer. The bright beam from its large front headlight swept across Muir as the immense, black locomotive came out of the curve and approached the sturdy wooden pile trestle. As its jarring whistle sounded again, Muir raced in Danielle’s direction and began shouting for her to get off the tracks. He yelped and began to hobble, though it barely slowed him.

  With the same train bearing down, Danielle was again pinned to the tracks with her gown’s hem caught on the jagged head of a rusty spike. When Muir got close enough, he obviously realized she was trapped and sped to reach her.

  She could see his gait was still affected by his bad ankle. “Stay back, Mr. Muir. It is too dangerous,” she shouted over the intense rumble of the wheels, the hellish heat of the boiler, and piercing scream of the whistle.

  “No!” he yelled and hurled himself into her with a flying tackle. The impact knocked them both off the track mere seconds before the locomotive could slam down upon them.

  From the distance, Lucy ran toward them.

  The entire spectral train had disappeared in an instant.

  “Why did you do that?” Danielle panted, crying. “You could have been killed!”

  Muir tried to catch his breath. “You were going to be killed… again. I couldn’t let it happen. I figured if the train took me, then at least we’d be together… maybe.”

  “It was dangerous and foolish.” She placed a hand on the side of his face and kissed his lips lightly. “But I love you for it.

  “You said the L word,” he gasped. “Do you mean it?

  As they lay together in the damp grass just off the siding, she struggled to collect her breath. “It is a complex word and I must explain. We haven’t much time, but we need to clarify what you see as our relationship, about what you just did, and how much it changes everything.”

  “Does this mean we can be together after all?”

  Danielle knew Muir was unprepared for her disclosures, but there was no way she could have told him in advance without wrecking the destiny of that moment.

  Lucy approached them but stayed about fifteen feet away, as Danielle had telepathically instructed her. Muir was evidently not aware of his colleague’s presence.

  “Does it?” he repeated.

  Struggling to sit up, Danielle modestly pushed down the dress which had bunched around her knees. “No, Mr. Muir, it means I can finally move on. There were two things holding me back, even though I fully realized only one.”

  Muir also straightened his legs and groaned as he touched his ankle. “To let people know it was not a suicide.”

  “Yes, that is the one I knew about. But the other was to be the recipient, or object, of real love. Love strong enough that the man would risk himself to save you, rather than stand there too scared to move and instead watch you die horribly.”

  “Like your fiancé did.”

  She nodded. “If Mr. Fairley had done then what you did just now — assuming we both survived — I would probably have married him, despite his cruelty. And I could have endured, perhaps even prevailed. Southern women have always been raised strong.”

  “But you wouldn’t have been happy.”

  “No,” she shook her head sadly, “I would not. Not with him.”

  Muir began nodding energetically. “But you can be happy now… us…”

  “You still do not understand.”

 
He ignored her correction and squeezed her arms. “Please say my given name, at least once.”

  “Why, Mr. Muir?”

  “I want to hear it from your lips.”

  With a sad smile, she replied, “Very well, Levi, though names will not alter what must occur.”

  “But things are different, I can feel you now. Not sure what you call it, but you’re not a mist or a spirit. I’m holding you and I can sense your body. I feel the vibrations of your heartbeat and the breathing of your lungs. I can tell you’re trembling. Surely that means we…”

  “Until now it was not possible to hold me.” She embraced him closely. “For these next brief moments, you will feel my entire form as though it were still my physical body from a century ago. But this is merely a brief transition for me and I will depart very soon. You have freed me from this state I feared would last for eternity. Now I must move on.”

  Plaintively, he reached for her. “Then take me with you.”

  She had tried several days ago to release her grip on his mind, but now Muir evidently struggled to keep that link in place. “Impossible. Things do not work that way. It is not right.” She kissed his lips softly. “You belong here, Levi.”

  “You can’t leave me here knowing the person I love has moved on… whatever that means.” His volume increased and Lucy could easily hear it from where she stood. “It’s not fair.”

  “I could remind you it is not my decision and that is true. But it is also time to admit that I have someone waiting for me.”

  “Neddy?” He sputtered. “All this time, you’ve been reeling me in and you were only thinking about him?”

  She touched his cheek again. “You knew this on some level, but nevertheless I am sorry, truly.”

  “So I have to live the rest of my life knowing what you felt like in my arms, but remembering you were taken from me because of some spirit world technicalities and that you’ve spent a hundred years pining for Neddy?”

  “That is the one thing I can do for you, Levi — eliminate the stressful memory.”