A ghost story, kinda III

Due to a Spanish test there is no post for yesterday, because I didn't write one. I have now returned to regular postings, until the next midterm of course.

Annemarie opened the door and was for a second blinded, this room was not as well lit as the room down stairs and the hall had been. Annemarie, lacking the insight that a narrator must of course have to tell a story, at first didn’t realize that she wasn’t alone in the room. It wasn’t until the man moved that Annemarie noticed him, after all he was wearing black and therefore blended in with the shadows. Well that and he was actually vaguely transparent, that’s right, finally the ghost has arrived in this story.

He wasn’t a scary ghost, he wasn’t wearing old fashioned clothing, everyone knows there is nothing more frightening then a man wearing Macaroni fashions, and he wasn’t very old looking either nor was he very young. Everyone knows that the elderly and children are also terrifying. He looked as if he was, or should I say had been, about seventeen or eighteen, and was extremely modern looking.

“Hey, how’re you?” he asked, raising a hand in salutation.

“Do I know you?” Annemarie demanded. She was about to say something else when the fact that he was transparent struck her and she started to back away. He noticed, being dead makes you very good at observing the living, having not much better to do. He darted forward and swung at her, his fist went right through her head as if nothing had happened.

“See, I can’t do anything to you even if I wanted to, just pretend you are talking to a movie if it makes you feel better, and no we’ve never met. I think I would see you every once in a while when my friends and I would go to get soft serve ice cream but that’s it.”

I could leave the description of the man up to Annemarie, but as previously mentioned narrators have better eyesight and are able to tell you things normal humans can’t. I am sure that the reader will like it better therefore if I actually do my job, especially since I know far more then Annemarie could ever know about the man in question, or boy if you like that better. He’s only, or should I say was only, ghosts make tenses tricky, eighteen and that makes the distinction between man and boy a little tricky as well. I could of course call him a teenager, but I have a strange prejudice against that word in a written description and everyone is allowed their oddities. Because of the awkwardness about how to address him, I will just tell you his name, that’s easier. His name is Daray.

Daray is a total Goth guy, wears all black baggy clothing, hair dyed black and with bangs that hang over his eyes; he even still has headphones around his neck, though they no longer produce sound. If you failed to notice the way light passes through him you probably would expect to find him the in back of a high school class. Contrary to popular belief ghosts don’t always wear the same clothing they died in, that would get boring after a while and ghosts don’t like boredom anymore then any other thinking creature. Daray keeps up on fashion by sticking his head through the boarded up windows and seeing what it is that the people who are walking past are wearing. He has always loved the Goth look though, in life and death, and therefore sticks to black as a color scheme. The headphones are a comfort thing; he grew so used to them that he can’t be parted from them even now.

Having described a black wearing downer kid I must do justice to Daray, he didn’t, I repeat didn’t, commit suicide. I know that is everyone’s instant assumption when they think of ghosts in general and especially teenage Goth ghosts. He was hit by a car while crossing a street, he didn’t hear it coming thanks to the headphones, you would think that he would learn his lesson about the headphone thing. I have wandered far away from what is actually happening in the story though, so back to Daray and Annemarie.

“So why exactly do you want to see me?” Annemarie has been asking for the last two paragraphs, you just don’t know it because I didn’t mention it before.

To be continued...

A ghost story, kinda II

“Annemarie?” the woman asked. Again I wish her voice had been mysterious or wispy and weak. Instead it was strong and no nonsense, matching her appearance perfectly.

“Yes,” said Annemarie, she was trying to remember when it was that she had met the woman. Of course she could have spent the whole night trying to remember and she never would, since she had never met the woman in her life. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to tell her that, so she just stood there dumbly.

“Are you going to come in or not?” the woman demanded.

“I’m sorry but do I know you?” Annemarie asked, finally giving up on her own memory.

“No, of course not,” said the woman. “You’re wasting time, come on.”

Annemarie was halfway up the sidewalk to the abandoned house before she even realized what she was doing. Oh for the narrative convenience of being able to say that she had been placed under some spell, that the woman had hypnotized her, or there was some black magic at work. My life is full of narrative frustrations if you couldn’t already tell. It was the pure authority in the woman’s voice that made Annemarie move without her own volition, which is altogether unromantic.

The door did not squeak when it was opened, the windows were boarded up, but once inside Annemarie could see that was to protect them from being broken rather then because they had been broken. The glass was fully intact and clean, the boards had served their purpose, though they made the room very dark. Here I am happy to finally report that something supernatural happened. I don’t know about the reader but I have been waiting for something like this since I started it with the setting. It was a simple thing I’m afraid, the room was suddenly full of light. It wasn’t from any normal source of light, I have double checked with the electric company and that house hasn’t had power for several years now. It also wasn’t from a candle or portable device, since none were present in room. It was simply that as soon as Annemarie crossed the threshold something seemed to decide that she would need light and provided it.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” Annemarie asked timidly. The woman didn’t really seem like the sort of person who would tolerate questions but at this point curiosity overcame timidity.

“I am the executive of this estate, and I was told to bring you, and you are late already so please walk faster,” snapped the woman. Annemarie might have pointed out that she hadn’t been aware that she had an appointment and therefore couldn’t be blamed for tardiness; I know I would have in that situation, but Annemarie is more timid then I am.

They went up the stairs, which failed to creak ominously, and then down a hallway. The hallway was lit in the same strange manner as the room downstairs had been. They reached a door and the woman stopped in front of it and knocked.

“I brought her like you told me to,” the woman told the door and then nodded to Annemarie. “Go in, I will be downstairs if I’m needed for anything.”

To be continued...

A ghost story, kinda

There are some conventions to stories. So for instance when a story starts at midnight, on Halloween, under a full moon, next to a graveyard, as mine does, it must of course include some sort of specter or spirit. Far be it in my abilities to go against such a long standing tradition. Indeed even should I want to ignore convention and attempt to write a story that was ghost free in such a situation it would be impossible, a spirit of some sort would undoubtedly spontaneously appear anyway through pure force of habit.

You could of course ask why it was that Annemarie was out at such an hour, in such an odd situation. My answer would be that she had been working and was very innocently returning home. The graveyard just happened to be in her path and entirely unavoidable. Indeed it is fair to say that Annemarie is still unaware even that she is doing anything unusual. She is still thinking of it as the day before Halloween, not thinking of the fact that the day changes at midnight and the graveyard has become something she has grown accustomed to with habit. It is therefore with a careless frame of mind that she saunters along the sidewalk, which she has to herself at this hour.

Given all of these facts I doubt that my reader would be much surprised if a witch suddenly flew past the moon, or a vampire suddenly reached out and snatched Annemarie. I am happy to report therefore that neither of these things happened. Annemarie simply became suddenly, acutely, aware of what her situation was. It was the full moon suddenly bursting from behind the cover of a cloud that did it. With its light came the epiphany that she was in what could be called an extremely frightening situation for anyone who was even slightly superstitious.

With this realization came a heightened sense of her surroundings, which she had previously been unaware of. There was an abandoned old house nearby, which was light by the moon now, so that the trellises attached house, now in disrepair, gave the house an extra spooky look. Adding that to the graveyard was too much for Annemarie’s sensibilities and her only desire was to get home at this point.

I wish I could say that it was Fate that interfered with her design to get home, it always sounds good to say that something was Fate. However I am given to understand that fate was busy elsewhere at the time, in a sleazy bar across town seeing to it that two destined lovers met. I am therefore forced to conclude that it was Chance that made her meet the lovely woman who walked from the abandoned house. Chance doesn’t sound as good or dramatic, but it can’t be helped.

It would also help my story if the beautiful woman looked somewhat transparent, or mysterious, or ghostly. Unfortunately she looked none of these. She also wasn’t dressed in old fashioned clothing, in fact she was wearing a pantsuit and looked the image of a well to do young business woman.

To be continued...

Bus Riding VIII

“I doubt any twenty year old grudge is going to cause a murder now,” I said.

“No, there’s a reason for there to be more recent bad blood, that was just the start of it,” Jane said. “You see, Mike’s son was the father of the boy that Henry’s daughter had. In spite of the bad blood between the two fathers their children meant to get married. They loved each other a lot from what I saw. When he found out that his girlfriend was pregnant I though that Mike’s son would burst with happiness, he made a lot of plans. That was one of the great tragedies of the boy’s death; he never got to see his son. The problem is that the family had hardly started to mourn their loss then Henry shows up demanding that Mike help support their grandson. Mike refused.”

“What a mess this whole thing is. I think we can count Annie out of the equation, a small grudge wouldn’t lead her to kill,” I said. “Which would leave Billy and Henry, both because of Mike’s children, so we go to our final qualifier, which would the neighbor want to protect so badly?” Even as I said it I knew the answer.

Even though I wasn’t part of that crowd I knew where mob opinion lay. Billy wasn’t about to win any popularity contests. He stole from anyone, that didn’t make him popular. Usually people had rules about not eating their own so to speak, Billy didn’t. Billy wasn’t the sort of person anyone would protect.

“I remember, a long time ago the neighbor used to go on trips down the river with Henry and Mike. They would all be laughing together, people used to ask if they were brothers, that was all when they were all young men of course. They all changed after a while, as people do,” Jane said slowly. We all looked at one another.

“Should we just never speak of this again?” I suggested, and the others nodded in total agreement.

So I set down my pen, probably for the last time for this sort of account. If you can’t tell from my tone I have been thinking of ending my nightly bus rides. It isn’t doing me any good to be the foolish one who remains. I would be a lot better off if I dedicated myself to more fruitful things. I have enclosed this account of last week’s events for all of you, who at one time belonged to the same club as me, as a sort of nostalgia piece. I thought that all of you, no matter how far away you are would be interested to find out what has been happening around here. But I have a manuscript due soon, and should go back to doing my actual writing for work, I hope you enjoy, goodbye.

Mathew

Bus Riding VII

“Then there’s Annie, there was bad blood between them at one point even though later she seemed to forgive him. You said sometimes she even went over to his house to shoot right Jane?” Paul asked.

“Yeah, I had never heard there was anything wrong between them. They never acted like there was,” Jane said in surprise.

“I think I heard Bill mention something about them not getting along a long time ago,” I said. “I don’t remember the details though.”

“It wasn’t anything important; they just didn’t like each other as far as I know. You both know how Mike was, he wasn’t always easy to like. She would bristle at something that he would say and they would get into it, simple as that. Once they found out that they both liked guns they were able to find common ground and got along a lot better. Annie stopped taking offense at everything he said, and he stopped saying things on purpose to offend her. You could say that they met halfway in the end. Even though they would shoot together with me though they never really loved each other, it was more of a relationship of tolerance.”

“That would be no motive to kill though,” Paul said. I nodded, if we were just going with people who didn’t like Mike because of his attitude then the list could go on for pages.

“But we haven’t seen her for a while, I do worry about that. You don’t think that she is somehow involved do you?” asked Jane. “I mean I didn’t think anything of it when she didn’t come and shoot with us the other day because sometimes she didn’t. I haven’t seen her since either though, and that’s not normal.”

“Does anyone know where she lives or what her number is?” I asked. The other two shook their heads.

“I looked her up in the phone book the other night because I was worried about her, she isn’t listed,” Jane said.

“And I don’t think any of us knew her well enough to go over to her house. The only thing we have is the stop she gets off and that isn’t going to help us much. I know for instance that I live three or four blocks from my stop,” Paul said.

“Yeah, so we have nothing to go on. We should probably stop trying to play detectives,” I admitted.

“Weren’t you just saying that we should avenge our own?” Jane demanded. She has the habit of arguing with everyone, if you agreed with her then she would instantly changer her opinion most of the time.

“Yeah, I was,” I confessed. “But you know, we just don’t have the resources to solve this. All we can do is talk and that isn’t doing anyone any good.”

“It gives us something to do though,” Paul said shrugging. “Like Henry Johns, he didn’t like Mike at all. There’s someone with a motive.”

“I never did hear how that one started,” I said. If the others were amused by this activity I wasn’t going to ruin their fun. There were worse things they could do to make fun for themselves. Like winning all of my money at poker, which happens more often then I would like to admit, even to myself.

“Mike and Henry used to be partners in business; Henry invested most of his father’s railroad pension in their work. That was that boat and tube rental Mike now owns down by the river. They started it together though, about twenty years back now. How sad that I can remember it,” Jane added with a sigh.

To be continued...

Bus Riding VI

“Mike was a friend, I would think we would all want his killer found,” I said. I had forgotten for a moment that police weren’t always popular with the crowd I was with now, for various reasons. That wasn’t always true anymore, this was the new bus after all, the new bus wasn’t only frequented by the dregs of society, and the willingly dispossessed. But the people who I was talking to at the moment were parts of the original group, the group who had ridden the old bus at first with me. Hard to imagine that I had been a high school student back in those days, times had changed and yet I still stuck around. I guess I am the most pathetic of them all, unable to let go of the past at all, still hanging around in places I have no business in. The others had the sense to move on, but I always was the stupid one.

“I don’t know if I do want to find out who killed Mike,” Jane admitted and I looked at her in shock. “If it wasn’t his neighbor then it was probably one of our number,” she explained. “Having lost Mike I don’t know if I want to lose another friend. Even if they are a murderer,” her voice trailed off. I knew what she meant though. The remnants of our crowd were dwindling already, without this blow.

“It might be someone we don’t know about who has a grudge, it doesn’t have to be one of our group,” I said, even though I knew it was doubtful.

“Mike had his enemies but he didn’t have any that didn’t ride on this bus,” said Paul, looking resigned. “He didn’t talk to anyone much except here, we all know that.”

“We don’t know that much about his life,” I argued weakly. “He might have had people who hated him that we don’t know about. It’s not like we followed him everywhere he went.”

“You can think that if you want,” said Jane dismissively. “It would be better if it was true of course. If we are going to look for the murderer though I think we should probably investigate our own. This was your idea after all Mathew.” I sank a little lower in my seat.

“I say if the neighbor is willing to defend and protect whoever it is who killed Mike then we let him,” Paul said. I had to admit that he had a point. Sometimes my sense of justice was tainted by my companions and their practicality. I doubted that even the people I used to have the club with back in high school would have seen any reason why a man who wanted to take a fall for someone else shouldn’t be allowed to. These were the sort of people who thought that a decision like that should be respected. Sometimes I found it difficult to argue with, even though I knew why it shouldn’t be allowed.

“Let’s go down the list of people who might want to kill Mike, out of the ones that we know. Just as an exercise,” Jane said. She was looking at me and I knew it was a challenge. She wanted to make a point.

“There’s Billy, that kid who liked Mike’s daughter. You wouldn’t think that Mike would object to Billy’s bad habits, like the fact that he was a smalltime crook, but he did. Told Billy to stay away in the end and the daughter didn’t seem to upset about her father’s decision. Billy never forgave Mike though. Talked big around town for awhile but nothing ever came of it,” I said. As a writer that whole situation had peaked my interest, I had changed some of the details, and the names of course, and used it in one of my books.

To be continued...

Bus Riding V

“I haven’t been holding out on you guys, guns never interested me. But I wouldn’t have had to own a gun, the gun that shot Mike was the neighbor’s, so I could have simply picked it up and killed Mike with it.” Paul was getting more and more gloomy.

“But as a first time shooter you wouldn’t be able to hit a brick wall except at very, very close range. I told you, I think you’re safe,” Jane insisted. I shook my head; disaster always seemed to follow Jane where ever she went. I doubted this would be the first or last calamity that she would get herself into.

“So are you a serious suspect, or are they just talking about the possibility?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine Jane killing anyone, no matter how quick tempered she was. If nothing else, if we were going by marksmanship, I had heard she always misses, even though she practices. She just doesn’t seem to have any talent at aim at all.

“They aren’t telling me things in that much detail. But I don’t have an alibi and I know that looks bad. I live alone as well, and didn’t go anywhere but home after I saw Mike. His wife and daughter were out; they are on tape at the superstore at the estimated time of death, so they aren’t suspected.”

“Well I don’t think anyone would suspect Mike’s wife,” Paul said and I nodded. She was far too timid for anyone to ever think of her as a killer. She had spent her entire life entirely happy to leave everything for her husband to decide. I could only suppose that now that Mike was gone that role would go down to her daughter. Mike’s daughter was just as strong willed as her father, for which I respected her. She was all of seventeen and already much more determined and ambitious then I think her mother had ever been.

“No, I don’t think they suspected Mike’s wife, she really doesn’t know what to do with Mike dead. Everything has fallen apart in that house since his death. Of course they investigated her just in case, looking for domestic abuse or something like that as a motive but of course Mike never hit her or their daughter in his life. He was always kindness itself to his family you know, even when he was drunk. There was that idea all shot to pieces. I think they suspected the daughter more then her mother even from the start though. She would do something like murder if she put her mind to it,” Jane pointed out.

“Yeah but she would have no motive, none at all. Her father always gave her everything that she could have ever wanted.”

“Yeah I think that’s what the police have decided. They have backed off from the family anyway. A good thing too, they’re in mourning after all, it wasn’t fair for them to be pestered so much. Those police, they always assume that just because a man drinks a lot he is cruel to his family.”

“Well it’s a common stereotype,” I said. “And it isn’t always wrong that drunks aren’t the best parents. I’m not saying Mike wasn’t a good guy to his family mind you,” I said hurriedly when I saw the faces of the other two.

“This whole thing would be so much easier if they would just find out who the neighbor cares enough about to protect but also had a reason to kill Mike. There can’t be that many people who fit that combination,” said Paul.

“Yes but I suppose it would be difficult to find out that much about everyone. It might be someone that none of us even know about,” I pointed out. “The police don’t have an easy job here.”

“Just who’s side are you on, the polices or what? Are you actually a undercover cop,” Jane demanded.

To be continued...