13

 

I took Barbara to the airport the next morning. We didn’t give the kids an excuse for her early departure, and they didn’t ask for one. I assumed they thought we had quarreled, and it would have been better if that’s all it was. Forgiveness is doable. Continuing a relationship with someone who knowingly allows evil spirits to enter her body is impossible.

As I drove home, I thought of Betsy. She had warned me. She hadn’t called yet, and that bothered me. Our last major argument had been years ago. Trina wanted to live on campus her first year of college. She was young, only seventeen, and I wanted her to stay at home and commute. Betsy had taken Trina’s side, stating living on campus was a learning experience. Betsy had won; she always did. Even then, we had still talked every day. I pulled the phone out of my pocket.

A smothering hotness filled the car, choking out my breath. I fumbled for the air conditioning control and cranked it to the coldest level. The car began to cool. I glanced at the cellphone resting on the car seat where I had tossed it. What was I thinking? Barbara may have been a bad experience, but Betsy over-reacted. She had treated me like a little boy. At least Barbara treated me like a man.

I always turned to my older sister for advice, and she had been right. A horn sounded behind me. The light had turned green. As I moved through the intersection, I reached for the phone on the opposite seat where I had tossed it.

A car careened through the intersection. I stomped on my brake. The sound of metal against metal ripped the air. My breath was shoved from my chest as my face hit the airbag. I awoke as the sound of sirens ripped through the air.

“Hey buddy, are you hurt?”

The fog started to lift, and I realized the question was directed at me. I rolled my head to the right, but my vision was blocked by a wall of metal. I focused on each part of my body. My heart lurched.

“I can’t move my legs or arms!” I shouted through the tomb that encased me. “I can’t move! Does anyone hear me?”

Breaths came faster. I was going to die.

“We’re going to get you out. Now you need to do something for me. Can you feel your toes?”

“I can’t reach them! I told you, I can’t move at all.”

“No, you don’t have to touch them. Can you wiggle your toes?”

“I don’t know.” My breaths came in gasping pants. I expected my heart to come flying out of my chest at any moment.

“Are you bleeding?”

I shifted my head back and forth, trying to see as much of me as possible. My left arm had become pinned under me, the right one was fastened between the passenger headrest and my shoulder. Both legs were pinned between the dash and the seat. My left shoulder hurt. As I moved my head, something dripped down my left cheek and plopped onto my shirt. Blood.

I gave my report best I could to the paramedic. In minutes, a window had been pried into the side of the car. An hour later, I was finally released from my bondage, thanks to the Jaws of Life and five firemen.

“I’ll have your car towed,” the policeman said as I was loaded into the squad. “Anything of value we need to rescue?”

“No, just maps and empty coffee cups.”

“Take care of him,” the policeman told the paramedic as the squad door was latched, encasing me in steel one more time.

 



 

“Dad,” Trina asked, “are you feeling up to switching bedrooms today?

I sipped my second cup of after-breakfast coffee and eyed my daughter. I could always tell when something was on her mind. And even though I had settled into somewhat of a slump, I recognized the flitty behavior. “What’s up?” I asked.

“I want to get your room ready for guests. It is one of the nicer rooms. That’s why I chose it for you, but now you need to move.”

“So my welcome as a guest is up?” I winked at her. “Where do I go? The garage? How about the other den, the one you want to paint pink?”

“Oh Dad.” Trina giggled. “You just need to move to the next bedroom. The one Barbara stayed in.” Her expression became serious. “That is, if you feel up to it. It’s only been two days since your accident.” She leaned against the counter. “I can’t believe you weren’t hurt worse. I saw the pictures of the car. It was a mess. The policeman at the emergency room said he had never seen a car smashed up worse and have the driver come out alive.” She pulled a tissue out of the pocket of her shorts and dabbed her eyes. “Dad, we could have lost you.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I knew Trina loved me, but her expressions of caring always touched a special part of me that few were allowed to enter. “You didn’t lose me, and I am fine.” I pushed myself up from my chair and took my cup to the sink. “I will start moving now.”

“I’ll help.”

We each grabbed an armful of clothes and walked to the next room. The air felt close, like the place had been shut up for weeks instead of two days. “Trina, you mind if I open up the window?”

“No, go ahead.”

I went back to my room for another armful, and when I entered the room the second time, I had the sensation of being watched. “Creepy.”

Trina followed me into the room, her hands full of socks and underwear. “Did you say something, Dad?”

“It’s nothing.” I put my shirts into their assigned drawer, and then peered down to look under the chest.

“What are you doing?” Trina chuckled. “Checking to see if I cleaned up here?”

“I just wondered about mice. You know, they like old houses.”

“Dad, you’re so funny. I don’t think you’ll find any mice. If you do, Ted can go buy some of those trap-boxes and we’ll put the critters back outside.”

Trina scanned the room, hands on her hips. “Want to know what color you’re going to paint in there?”

“Me? Paint? Isn’t that Ted’s job?”

“Soft gray.” She said the words as though they were made of silk. “The room already has one of the best views of the back yard. I already bought black iron headboard for the bed, and I want to find dark gray draperies and bedspread, and layer cranberry pillows and a throw blanket.”

It sounded dull to me, but knowing Trina, it would be classy. I headed out for another load.

“Does the air seem funny in here?” I asked on returning. “I opened the window, but it still feels stuffy, like there are too many people and not enough air.”

“And you think the mice are breathing in all the air? They must be having a club meeting.”

I laughed at Trina’s joke, but the sensation of not being alone in the room persisted.

I wondered if the creepy feeling could be from high electro-magnetic fields. There were only two receptacles in the entire room, both the old two-prong format, without the ground. The ceiling light was a flat oval of opaque glass, something from my mother’s era. In my minds-eye, I could see the cracked wires hidden behind the old glass. EMFs generated by old electrical wiring caused some people to have feelings of paranoia. Was there enough old wiring in the room to create my feeling of being watched? I hated to think my brain was affecting by wiring, but the room definitely felt odd.

With my possessions moved, I was eager to escape the heaviness of the house. Perhaps our construction efforts had created toxic fumes, like cyanide that is found in treated wood. Even with the windows open, the air felt stale. I wandered to the backyard.

The only good thing about walking around in a depressed slump is it gives you a chance to see the ground, and in this case the grass. Locals called it centipede. It crept along, one blade crawling over another, rooting as it went. The cross-hatched carpet held the sandy soil in place, but it didn’t look much like Kentucky Blue. Staring at the web of grass, I realized it reflected the current state of my life: a maze with no way out.

I didn’t miss Barbara, but I did miss the opportunity she had provided. With Barbara gone, it was impossible for me to figure out why Jimmy had appeared to me. I would never know who the other ghost boy was, or what role he played in Jimmy’s death. And why would two boys, separated by a hundred years and four states, appear together?

Losing Barbara was like having the Internet crash: there were questions with no way to access the information. Maybe I should forget I had ever seen the ghosts, but knowing the spirits lingered in the house bothered me. Why couldn’t they move on?

And I would never forget the demon Barbara had contacted in the attic. She never resolved where demons went after leaving her. He, too, could still be lurking in the house. Could a demon hurt the spirit-Jimmy? I remembered the warnings going off in my head that first time I had met Barbara. I should have listened. I should have run.

Even in the warmth of the outdoors, my brain continued to spin like a top. A loud noise startled me, and I jumped and then felt foolish as I realized it had been a car backfiring.

I hadn’t been in Ted’s workshop since he moved it to the garage, so I ambled that way. My son-in-law was just what I needed to help me forget my other problems. His singing drifted across the yard.

He stopped when he saw me. “Hey, Bill.”

I looked around, pretending to be comfortable, one man out for a walk, stopping to talk to another. The cans were gone, along with the other junk. More trips to the dump, I imagined. More reasons for Mitch to be at the house. Since Ted had removed several of the smaller trees, natural light filled the room. In addition, a long utility light hung over the work area.

Ted stood behind his easel, the afternoon sun illuminating the space around him. Tubes of paint covered the surface of the old workbench. Small containers rested on a shelf, along with a radio and CD player.

“So what are you working on?” I asked.

“I’ll show you.” Ted turned a large canvas toward me, partially covered in shades of green, with bold red and blue, and bits of brown in the center. I had no idea what it was. It certainly was not like the painting he had done for Betsy. She wouldn’t have lied about Ted painting it, would she?

“It’s called Garden of Gethsemane. It’s not finished, but it’s coming along.

I stared, trying to see a garden in the random dabs of color. “So who’ll buy something like this?”

“It’s already sold. A church in Columbia wants me to do six pieces.”

“Churches buy real paintings?” All I remembered seeing in church was the usual cheap prints of Christ knocking at the door, and the traditional Last Supper that someone had painted-by-numbers and donated.

Ted swatted at a mosquito that buzzed around his head. “You know, art shaped culture in the past. But sometime during the industrial revolution, art and religion got lost. Christian artists, like me, are trying to use art to bring others closer to Christ.”

“I don’t think many churches will buy paintings. That seems beyond what God wants in His house.”

Ted leaned against the side of the heavy workbench. “I disagree. In the beginning, God created. He dreamed and formed—and painted. And He still creates. He makes new lives, new worlds, new species. Our creativity comes from God; it’s one of His gifts to us. I think God smiles when we place art in our churches.”

Where was all this coming from? Ted had never talked so much before. “So how can having art in a church help someone’s faith?” I wasn’t so much interested as I was reluctant to leave his workshop. He believed I saw Jimmy. Maybe not his earth-trapped soul, but something. Maybe Ted secretly agreed with Barbara, that souls can linger. A spark ignited in my chest.

“There’s a spiritual dimension to both music and art,” Ted continued. “When Trina and I go to a Christian concert, the audience is moved by the music in a way words alone can’t. Art has the same ability to show God to the world. It’s another tool He can use.”

Here was my open door. “If there is a spiritual dimension to art, how about death? Is there a spiritual dimension after death?”

“What?”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked, impatience coloring my words.

“I believe in life after death, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did I see Jimmy’s spirit in the attic?” I blurted. My stomach churned. Did it really matter what Ted thought?

Ted was silent before he answered. “No.”

“Then what did I see?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been praying about it because I know it bothers you.”

“Of course it bothers me. It should bother you, too; it’s your house.” Why had I thought I could talk to this man?

“You led us to the fiber and bolt. Maybe that’s all that was to happen. I can’t explain what you saw, so I have to let it go.”

“Let it go. Just like that?”

“What else can I do?”

Ted dabbed at the canvas with his brush, adding bits of yellow.

A mosquito landed on my leg and injected her proboscis into my skin. She needed blood to grow her eggs. I was willing to share, but mosquitoes also brought disease. What kind of stupid plan was that for creation? What else in God’s plan was flawed?

“When do you paint the flowers?” I asked, needing to move my thoughts somewhere else.

“They’re already there. It’s called abstract expressionism. A lot of us Christian artists are using this format, but it’s not new. Actually it started around 1920 with Jackson Pollock.”

“So the flowers are there, but you have to have faith to see them.”

“Sort of.”

“Abstract expressionism, huh?” Talking to Ted had only added to my frustration. “I had better let you get on with abstracting your expressions.” I walked out of the workshop into the hot sun, my black mood failing to provide shelter from the scorching heat.

Everything stable in my life was gone, and I drifted as the tide willed.

 



 

After supper, when the temperature had dropped to eighty--still hot for this northerner but as cool as it was going to get before the mosquitoes descended in earnest—I grabbed the hoe and headed to the back of the yard. Manual labor didn’t require any brainpower of its own, and I had a lot of thinking to do.

Between my earlier hacking, and the trampling by the drug investigators, the marijuana patch was now a weed infested square of sandy soil. It was visible from anywhere in the back yard.

Finding marijuana at the old Barnet place had been local front page news. The story had attracted the curious like garbage attracts rats. Between Ted and me, we had chased a dozen young kids out of the yard since the article had been printed. Mitch hadn’t shown much interest one way or the other. When I quizzed him about it, he acted bored. Not the reaction I expected from someone who had just lost his crop; but then maybe he had another supply growing somewhere else.

The interest in the marijuana patch would remain until the evidence of its existence was gone. At the end of an hour, I had managed to clear a section of weeds extending from the edge of the marijuana patch all the way to the foundation of the old summer kitchen. As far as thinking, I had gotten nowhere. The ghost boys were still lingering but unable to contact me, Ted was still my son-in-law, Mitch was still strange, and the demon was still missing.

Trina approached, holding a glass.

I gulped the cold water gratefully.

“You’ve really been working. Devil got your tail?”

“What?”

“You used to ask me that when I was working hard. You said I acted like the devil was after me. It was supposed to be funny, but I never got it.”

I thought of my experience in Williamson Park, the swirling entity trying to force its way into my body. Is the devil after me?

“It looks nice,” Trina said.

“I’ve been working to get rid of your marijuana plot. After all the lectures I gave you in high school…”

“Dad,” Trina laughed.

“Mostly I want to keep the kids from trampling through the yard.”

“There isn’t much here to trample.”

“I’ve been thinking. How about a gazebo?” I put the empty glass in the grass and moved to the stone foundation of the old summer kitchen. “We could put it here. And then we could plant some of those azalea bushes around it, to make it look nice.”

“That would be pretty.” She plopped onto the grass and stretched out her long legs.

“I can run some wiring out to it, and install a ceiling fan. That’ll keep most of the mosquitoes away in the evenings, at least for a while.”

“Strange how you and I both ended up not doing what we were supposed to do.”

“What do you mean?” I sat beside her in the moist grass.

“You were supposed to be a lawyer. All the men in your family were lawyers. Instead, you’re a school teacher. And I am a school teacher, when what I really love is fixing up this house and starting a business…”

“But you went to school to be a teacher.”

“I know.”

She had never told me this before. Had I pressured her to be something she didn’t want to be? “Maybe we’re the family rebels.”

She lay back in the grass, her arms folded under her head. I followed her example, remembering the nights we used to do this. We would weave the most elaborate stories about outer space, and the stars, and what might really be out there. I longed for those years.

“Aunt Betsy called today.”

My back stiffened. “Oh? What did she want?”

“She wanted to know how you were, said you hadn’t called in a while.”

“The phone works both ways.”

“You should call her.”

“You know my phone was lost in the wreck.”

She rolled toward me. “You can always use mine. What did you fight about?”

“Nothing important.”

“Then why won’t you call her?”

I looked away from her questioning eyes, back to the spot where the marijuana had been growing. “I didn’t see Mitch today. The police finally get around to raiding his house?”

“He’s working extra at the garage. I really think you’re wrong about Mitch.”

I was surprised when she let the subject drop so easily. It wasn’t like her to let me off the hook.

“How?”

“You see a lot of kids at school. And I trust your judgment, I really do.”

“But?”

“But Mitch is not a bad person.”

“A rattlesnake looks harmless until he’s backed into a corner. Just keep your eyes open when he’s around, that’s all I ask. If he’s smoking pot, it won’t hurt anyone but him. Except now he’ll have to grow his crop somewhere else.”

She sat up, her back stiff. “Why are you so absolutely sure it was Mitch?”

“Who else could it have been?”

Trina snatched the empty glass off the grass and stood. “It wasn’t Mitch.”

I watched her retreating back, and then returned to my hoe, forcing it deep into the sandy soil.

There was something I had yet to discover about this house. The thought made me uneasy. So far, discovery had been painful. As for Betsy, she would call when she was ready.

 



 

“Good night Dad.” Trina stretched and walked toward the stairs. “You headed to bed soon?”

“After I catch the rest of the news.”

“Don’t stay up too late.”

“I’ll be up as soon as the news is over. Maybe I can trap some of those Palmetto bugs of yours before I turn in.”

“If you can do that, stay up all night! The jar’s under the sink.”

“Don’t need the jar,”

Trina’s mouth turned down. “Then don’t catch them. It’s not their fault they ended up in my kitchen. We just need to put them back in their own place. Besides, the one you stomp might be a dad with a family, or a mom with babies to feed.”

“Trina, go to bed,” I said, laughing.

Her soft spot for everything living had created many funny memories. Obviously, she had forgotten our earlier disagreement.

The news ended. I remained in the recliner.

A late movie came on.

The sound of gunshots woke me. I looked at my watch. One AM. Rambo was after the bad guy. I hoped he would have better luck with his problems than I was having with mine. After a glance in the kitchen for bugs, I headed up the stairs.

As I reached for the light switch, my arm brushed against something stringy, and I jerked in response, clawing at my skin with my opposite hand. Spider webs! I groped for the light switch and flicked on the overhead light. I looked toward the wall, along the floor, all the space that surrounded me. Where there was a web, there had to be a spider. Any remaining web must have been jerked from its location by my frantic motions; I couldn’t find any trace of it.

I remembered the thick molding stretched along each wall, and how I had admired it. Molding. Spiders love to lurk along the floor against the molding. I slipped off one shoe and clutched it in my hand, and started to walk the perimeter of the room.

This time the webs touched my face. I ran to the middle of the room, swiping my eyes, my chin. More webs. My body jerked as though on fire.

I ran into the hall, panting. A glance toward Trina and Ted’s room showed the door still closed. Listening, I didn’t hear any sound coming from down the hall.

It has to be one huge spider. Or a nest of tiny ones. Gathering courage, covering my face with one hand and grasping the shoe with the other one, and entered the room. Nothing along the wall. Nothing under the bed. Nothing on the bed. Nothing.

I crawled into Barbara’s bed and pulled the sheet up to my chin.

A neighborhood dog barked, and then another, and soon the noise of a yowling pack of canines filtered through the screened window. Rolling over, I buried my head in the pillow.

The wind churned. I flipped onto my back, tucking the sheet against me as I moved. The leaves on the trees swished like a woman’s silk dress.

Or was it leaves? I held my breath, listening. Was someone in the house? There it was again, a faint sound coming from somewhere in my room.

Without moving, keeping my breaths even, I scanned the darkness.

Black tentacles stretched across the floor and crept onto the bed. I tried to shift, to avoid the darkness, but it slithered closer. My ears strained for the sound.

The air was thick, heavy.

No one was in my room. I knew it, just as I knew the darkness that pressed the air out of my chest was only the night. But I kept listening, my mouth dry.

Fear held me in its trap, just as it had every night since I changed rooms—not fear of what I saw, but of what I knew.

I knew I was not alone in the room, and it wasn’t spiders that shared my space.