Chapter 14
That night, I dreamt of the first ghostly encounter I’d ever had in my life.
My mother and I were in the living room; it was just the two of us by the time I was thirteen.
Dad, grandmas, grandpas, everyone was gone then.
My older sister had already moved on, out of state, to live with her new husband and finish college.
So, time couldn’t have presented itself better.
My dream wasn’t quite truthful, since, even awake, I could never recall all of the details of that day.
Obviously, many details had been filled in by my sleeping brain to help the dream make sense.
I was sitting on the sofa, my mother next to me, so close our knees tapped each other if we moved at all.
We were staring down at the large wooden box on the coffee table before us.
What is it? I’d asked excitedly.
After a long, tense moment, which made no sense to me, my mother finally breathed out her response.
A test.
Excitedly, I stared at the wooden box with the weird paint and the silver inlays at every single corner. At thirteen, I was a studious young man who loved school and devoured any book I could get my hands on. A test? What fun!
I can’t say I’m not proud of that fact as an adult, but’s also a piece of personal lore that makes me uncomfortable to admit to others to this day.
What kind of test? Is it a puzzle?
No. Not a puzzle. A…sight and hearing test.
Confused by my mother’s words, I stared more intensely at the box. What was I supposed to be hearing and seeing?
When I open this box, my mother said, tell me what you see, Silas. What you hear. Okay?
Nodding excitedly, I was practically gnashing my teeth, waiting for the test.
My mother took a deep breath, patted my knee, and reached for the lid of the box. As she slid it back, I could feel my heart thundering in my chest, a single bead of sweat dribbling over my temple to the apple of my cheek. And then the lid was off.
And my life changed forever.
It wasn’t until a handful of years later, when my mother was bedridden, holding on to her quickly ending life, that I found out my sister had also taken The Test.
She had failed; I had passed.
And I was the last of our bloodline at the time, causing me to vow, in that moment, sitting over my mother’s soon-to-be deathbed, that I would never have to give The Test to a child.
Regardless of nightmares, life goes on every morning, whether one likes it or not.
My morning after summoning so many ghosts, then dreaming about my first encounter with a ghost, proved to be trying.
Having my head in the wrong space meant I nearly punched myself in the face brushing my teeth, I could barely get my hair brushed and styled, I almost slipped in the shower, and getting dressed was nearly impossible.
By the time I got into my car and headed into town, I knew exactly where I was headed.
However, I first stopped at the Gas & Go for an energy drink.
Caleb was on duty again, the blinds at the front of the store shut tightly to the morning sun.
He rang me up for the giant can and ducked back, blinking his eyes at the sun that slivered in the front door when I left.
I had to feel bad for the guy. The Gas & Go faced easterly and was unobstructed by other buildings from the rising sun.
Anyone working the morning shift could easily spend the day blinded by the sun pouring through the giant plate glass windows.
Fortunately, the blinds on the windows made working morning shifts easier.
As I left the gas station, I popped the top of the can and began to chug as I walked down to Shop-A-Teria.
Max Nguyen was pulling up in his truck and parking outside of the grocery store when I walked up.
He waved from the interior of his truck, shut it off, and hopped out quickly upon seeing me.
I gave him a head nod as I approached, then slammed another quarter of the can of energy.
“Mornin’,” Max announced before leaning back into his truck for his phone. He slipped it into his back jeans pocket before closing the door and turning to me again. “Don’t tell me you want to return that cabinet.”
I chuckled nervously. Unfortunately, I didn’t think Max would take the cupboard back after Danny’s alterations.
“I’ve already made some changes so there’d be no point in trying,” I said.
“Good!” Max said, leaning back against his truck as he spoke to me. “What can I do you for then, Si?”
I took another slug of my drink.
“Any idea who left it outside the Shop-A-Teria?” I asked. “I have some questions for the previous owner.”
Good old Max—he didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow of suspicion.
The new owner of a cupboard having questions to pose to the previous owner was completely reasonable.
Why wouldn’t the new owner have questions?
Perfectly understandable that I’d want to ask questions about the unique piece of furniture.
“You know how it is, Si,” Max said. “Folks know I have that room off the side there for selling used home goods. Hardly anyone says anything when they drop stuff off. They just dump it near the entry there, where the elements can’t easily get to it, and leave.”
I sagged, but I understood.
“I can call around,” Max offered. “I’m sure, given enough time, I could find the owner, if it’s that important to you.”
“No,” I said, waving him off, though I really wanted to know, “don’t go to all that trouble. Calling all over town is just as easy for me as it is for you.”
Max shrugged. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks, Max,” I said.
With a wave and a smile, he left me beside his truck and headed up to the automatic glass door at the front of the small grocery store.
Under the shade of the awning, his keys jingled as he unlocked the door and reached up to the turn the switch to “automatic.” As he stepped through the door, he shot me another smile and then headed off to start his day.
I finished my energy drink as I took in the building.
Like many of the other buildings on the main thoroughfare, the two-story red brick building was a landmark with historical significance.
Presently, the renovated bottom floor housed a small grocery store and the second floor stood vacant.
No one cared about the building, save the man who ran his business out of it.
The ten-by-ten stone smokehouse that had been built to the side of the building decades ago was now a secondhand homewares and furniture store.
All of these facts were known to everyone in town.
Anyone could have set the cupboard outside at night for Max to find when he came into work in the morning.
No one lived downtown proper anymore. Not really.
And the only all-night business was the Gas & Go and the Wash-A-Teria.
The laundromat wasn’t staffed at night, solely self-serve.
So, whoever was working overnight at the gas station was my best bet if I was to look for witnesses.
It was possible that someone doing late-night laundry might have also witnessed the cupboard’s drop off.
If Sal had listened to me, she had moved the unhoused folks into Doc Stephens’ old officer building the previous night.
That’s the information I’d passed along to her, anyway.
Sal and I worked together to make sure that during the cold months, the unhoused from her camp knew which abandoned buildings were safe to sleep in overnight.
Sage Grove had no real police force, but county officers would do a nightly drive through town, to make sure everything looked safe and sound.
Once every other week, they’d do a more thorough check of town, checking out abandoned buildings, stopping and checking with residents to make sure everything was copasetic.
When they came to check out buildings, Caleb would watch out for them.
He’d pass long which buildings had been checked, and I’d pass that along to Sal.
They never checked the same building in the same week, so once a building had been checked, it was a safe sleeping spot for the unhoused folks for at least a handful of nights.
Before Doc Stephens’ office building, Sal had all of the folks from the camp sleeping in an abandoned house on the outskirts of town.
However, it had a mold problem and it was so dilapidated that sleeping outside wouldn’t have been much different.
None of them would have seen the cupboard dropped off since they were nowhere near town center.
Basically, as I destroyed my kidneys with chemicals and caffeine outside the grocery store, I could conclude that finding the previous owner of the cupboard would be incredibly difficult.
Unless Caleb had seen something, I was going to have to start asking around.
Even though Sage Grove presently had less than a thousand residents—and dwindling—asking around could take forever unless I got lucky.
I walked back to Gas & Go and my car with an empty can and clearer thoughts. Where the cupboard had come from didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It wouldn’t help me get the ghost out of my house any quicker. But someone had put my name on the cupboard, which was concerning.
Like most sane people with the knowledge, experience, and know-how, they had a ghost and they wanted to get rid of it.
Obviously, everything else was incidental.
My worrying about the details of where, why, and how the ghost had ended up in the cupboard didn’t matter.
Especially since those details would be nearly impossible to acquire.
Get rid of the ghost before it gets comfortable.
That would be my goal.
I tossed the empty energy drink into the back floorboard of my car and hopped into the driver’s seat.
Getting to The Lunch Counter to start prepping for the meal of the day would take my mind off of things.
However, when I rounded the corner to drive down to the diner, the mob waiting outside told me my day wasn’t going to get easier.