21: Albert
2006–2007
Wes went back to work at the apartments while I stayed at the shop to build the tables. My first project was making the table rungs. I had to cut and sand hundreds of them. After working for a day and a half, I had almost completed step one.
As I tried to finish, I felt someone walk up behind me. Thinking it was Wes, I continued to work, but wondered why he was home so early. After a minute or two, I felt him breathing on the back of my neck. I turned the sander off and whirled around so I could adequately gripe at him.
There was no one there.
Flipping the sander back on, I recalled my comment about Albert coming home with me. Surely not.
With my workstation now cluttered with the finished rungs, I carried them to a nearby table. For ease of counting, I stacked them in rows of twenty. When I returned to the sanding table, one of the neatly stacked piles of wood toppled over. As I watched, another pile fell, and then another. There was no reason these stacks should have fallen. As I made my way back to the table to restack them, I heard a faint shuffling sound as if someone was walking while dragging their feet. I stopped and called out, “Albert, is that you?” Immediately, one of the rungs floated up into the air and glided across the remaining stacks of wood. It hovered for a few seconds then landed with a thud on the table. My question was sufficiently answered.
We’d never had any paranormal activity at the new shop. We couldn’t say that anymore. After Wes had finished the job at the apartments, he returned to work at the shop. He had his encounters with Albert, too. First, he saw what he described as a black mass moving across the back of the shop. A few days later he saw a black shadow in the shape of a man walk the length of the shop before disappearing.
It took awhile for Wes and I to get used to having Albert at the shop, but eventually we learned to not only accept him, but to look forward to seeing what he was going to do next. However, not everyone shared our sentiments.
Albert had been a resident at our shop for over a year before he made himself known to people other than Wes and me. My dad was the first of those lucky few. One Saturday afternoon, Wes and my dad were using the shop to work on Troy’s car. They had been at the shop working most of the day when they stopped to take a break. As they were talking about their next move to fix the car, they saw the head of an eight-pound sledgehammer skid across the floor. Dad had heard Wes and me talk about our ghosts before, but he had never witnessed any of the activity.
Watching this heavy chunk of metal come to a stop, Dad scratched his head and looked over at Wes. When Wes told him he didn’t think they were alone, Dad picked up his coffee mug and said he thought they should continue their break inside of the house. But Albert wasn’t finished introducing himself just yet.
Because of the heavy workload, Wes hired a young man who was willing to work at the shop or on the job sites. One morning, he and Wes were working in the shop while I was enjoying a day off. Discovering they needed some supplies, Bryan agreed to stay while Wes made a trip into town.
Wes had been gone for about an hour when he called me at the house and asked me if I’d go check on Bryan. My first thought was that he had been hurt. Rushing to the door with the phone to my ear, I asked Wes what had happened.
Now laughing, Wes assured me he was fine. He explained Bryan had been spooked by something at the shop and he refused to go back into the building alone. As I walked to the shop, I wondered what could have happened to scare him bad enough for him to refuse to go back to work.
Laughing myself, I walked around the corner and saw Bryan sitting on the step in front of the shop. I quit laughing. Bryan’s face was pale and his hands were visibly shaking. Not wanting to embarrass him, I just told him Wes had called and asked me to go check on him.
Bryan wiped the sweat from his forehead as he told me he knew Wes was probably laughing at him, but at this point, he didn’t care. Showing no signs of embarrassment, he pointed a shaking finger at the shop and told me he wasn’t going back in there by himself.
After I asked him to tell me what happened, he said he didn’t even know how to explain it, but he hadn’t been alone in the shop. He said he kept hearing all sorts of shuffling noises. When he told me he could feel someone breathing on the back of his neck, I knew he’d met Albert. Bryan continued telling me about his experience by explaining he had tried convincing himself it was just his imagination, but then he heard a loud bang and he just couldn’t take it anymore.
I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew Bryan believed in ghosts because the topic had come up when Wes showed him the picture of Christopher, but I also knew he was terrified of them. I tried to come up with other explanations for the things he’d experienced. I suggested maybe the shop had mice and that was what was causing some of the noise.
He drew in a ragged breath and said it hadn’t been a mouse and he could guarantee that. He stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of the shop. He told me we could fire him if we wanted to, but he’d never work alone in the shop again.
Bryan was a good worker and I didn’t want to lose him. I told him we weren’t going to fire him. We’d work something out. Watching him pace back and forth, I finally suggested we go into the shop together. Bryan shook his head. Thinking he might need some time alone, I left him outside as I went into the shop.
It took ten minutes or so for Bryan to join me. When he walked in, he stood at the door and nervously looked around. He walked in a little further and shivered as he told me he didn’t know what had been in there, but something had been.
I told him I’d stay and work with him until Wes got back. I picked up the broom and started sweeping. Bryan went back to his table and tried to work. Every few seconds I’d see him rub the back of his neck and turn around. He finally gave up; walking up to me, he said he knew that I believed in ghosts. He took a deep breath and asked if anything weird like this had happened in the shop before.
I was beginning to understand that not only was he scared of what had happened, but he also needed someone to believe and understand what he’d experienced. I could relate to these feelings very well so I told him the story of Albert.
“No, no, no,” he said, “I just can’t do this.”
As I tried to reassure him, I heard Wes pull into the drive. I met him at the truck and quickly explained what had happened. I told him if he didn’t want to lose Bryan as an employee he’d better not tease him.
When Wes walked into the shop, Bryan told him to go ahead and laugh because he knew he was going to. Wes told him he wasn’t going to laugh at him because he knew firsthand what a pest Albert could be, but there could be another explanation for what Bryan had experienced. As Wes walked around, he stopped in front of a lawn tractor we had stored in the back end of the shop. He noticed the blade was on the ground. He always kept the blade up. Using the lever, he put it in the upright position then let it fall.
Bryan jumped. He told Wes that was the exact noise he had heard earlier. Feeling a little better about things, he asked if the blade could have fallen on its own.
Wes told him not unless he had bumped it. Bryan stared at the tractor. He told Wes that he hadn’t been anywhere close to it. He paced the shop again and said that even if he had, that wouldn’t explain the breathing on his neck. Shaking his head, he reiterated that he was never going to work by himself in the shop again.
We all agreed if Wes had to be away from the shop that I’d work with Bryan or he could have the day off. This, after all, wasn’t the first time we’d had to make concessions for one of our ghosts.