Chapter 29
When I arrived in town, the wooden box and hammer in the passenger seat beside me, I didn’t park by The Lunch Counter.
I drove through town, driving at a crawl, making sure that I drove by every alleyway and side street.
Drove by each abandoned building, including Doc Stephens’ old place.
I stopped and got an energy drink from the Gas & Go and chatted with Caleb for a moment before getting back in my car.
After being certain I’d driven every inch of the main part of town, I drove back down to the diner.
I went inside and put the energy drink in the fridge for the following morning and went back to the car.
Instead of getting in and driving off, I opened the passenger door and retrieved the wooden box.
Though I wasn’t certain I was right, niggling doubts tugged at the corner of my brain.
Ignoring all of those thoughts, I took the box under my arm, tucked the hammer into a belt loop, and locked my car.
I didn’t stick to the shadows or creep around like I had the night before.
A beeline was cut from the diner to The Eternity Inn.
Upon approaching the old, off-white Victorian, I walked around the back, and slung the bulkhead door to the cellar open.
I didn’t worry about the creak or the “thump” the door made against the ground.
Drawing attention to my presence wasn’t a concern.
The stairs creaked and groaned as I descended into the black hole of the cellar, guided only by the weak beam of my phone flashlight.
But as they had the night before, the stairs held true.
Now that I knew the layout of the place, I made my way across the cellar and up the old, yet reliable stairs into the kitchen of the inn.
A few moments later and I was climbing the stairs to the second floor.
I didn’t have to guess which room was important when I got into the upstairs hallway.
I went straight to the door to the teal room and ducked inside.
I looked around, my eye stopping on the shadow on the wall where the cupboard once stood, then went about doing the job I’d come to do.
In the center of the room, I set the green sage-ash painted wood box with inlaid silver at every corner.
Kneeling in front of it, my fingers reached for the clasp.
When I flipped it up, I expected a woosh of air and for Marcella’s ghost to fly out frantically.
Instead, I only felt a cold presence and found myself staring into the blueish-gray shimmer of Marcella’s form packed into the box like sardines.
“We’re here,” I said. “I told you I wouldn’t keep you trapped long.”
Long.
What is long to a ghost? When you’ve lived years as a human and then find yourself facing eternity, what does time even mean? Marcella’s time in the box could have felt like an instant or an eternity to her.
“You can come out,” I said gently. “I won’t trap you again.”
A pair of transparent shimmery eyes stared out from the blob of ghost parts in the box, examining me.
“I promise.”
Slowly, like a mist made of death, Marcella’s ghost leaked from the box, bit by bit, as she had done when she materialized at my house.
I waited patiently as she extracted herself from the confines of box and materialized in her ghostly form before me.
Once I was satisfied that she was completely out of the box, and that I was keeping none of her inside, I shut and latched it again.
When she didn’t welp or moan, I knew that she had truly, fully extracted herself.
I stood, leaving the box in place for the moment, and faced Marcella Washington.
“Still not talking?” I asked, though I knew it would be pointless.
One moan sounded.
I nodded, gravely.
“Do you know what happens to someone when they die, Marcella?” I asked softly.
She said nothing, didn’t moan, but still stared at me as if I was the crazy person in the equation. I sighed and rubbed my hands on the thighs of my pants.
“Generally,” I say, “the experience is traumatic. As you can imagine. As you may remember, given enough time living…unliving…outside of a box. They usually find a place to hide. Gather their thoughts, examine what they are feeling and what has happened to them. If they even understand what has happened.”
The ghost stared, her mouth agape.
“Some people know immediately that they are dead. Some don’t,” I added. “Either way, they know something is wrong, so they look for safety, just as they would if they were still alive. Human.”
Two moans escaped the ghost. At least I knew she was following what I was saying.
“Ghosts are attracted to shimmery things immediately,” I said.
“I don’t know if it’s because they are suddenly shimmery and something…
primal…attracts them to things that shimmer.
I’ll figure it out one day, maybe. Or I’ll figure it out when it’s my turn to be a ghost. Either way, silver attracts the freshly dead.
Even if it is dangerous to them. They all learn one way or another to avoid things that shimmer—except other ghosts. ”
Marcella stared at me, floating a few inches from the ground, her feet at an angle so that her toes pointed straight down at the floor.
“That’s why it gets harder to trap a ghost the longer they’ve been dead.
They learn what to avoid. Fresh ghosts…well, they figure things out eventually.
They learn the hard way or start talking to other ghosts.
Or that primal thing makes their instincts kick in.
It’s why you hid from me in the house. You’d already been trapped once.
Figured it out the hard way. Though you’ve still refused to acknowledge your death. ”
She moaned twice.
“I believe you didn’t get into that cupboard after you died simply because someone asked,” I said.
A single moan sounded.
“So,” I said, “I think that you died, saw the silver, and rushed towards it. Then someone shut the cupboard, locking you—now a ghost—inside.”
She moaned once.
“I promised to prove that,” I said with a nod. “If you won’t believe me by simply looking down at your…body…then I’ll have to show you the proof.”
Marcella Washington had a look on her face that she already wanted to believe me as she looked down at her transparent form, but she was too angry at being dead to accept it.
With a sigh, I removed the hammer from the belt loop and went over to the closet door that had been nailed shut.
Fortunately, only two nails at the top, and three on the side had been roughly nailed into the frame. They popped out easily enough.
Swinging the door wide, I was slightly shocked to find it empty.
Marcella moved up behind me to examine the nonexistent evidence in the small closet.
Undeterred, I moved over to the bathroom and popped the nails that had been used to seal it shut.
This door, unlike the closet, pushed inwards, not out.
When I went to open it, even with the nails removed, it resisted.
Frowning, I looked around the frame, confused.
Finally, I noticed the problem. Kneeling down, I found some type of material stuffed between the floor and the door itself. I swallowed hard and yanked at the material. It took some doing, but I finally yanked it free, nearly falling onto my backside when it whipped out of the crack.
The smell was immediate and nauseating, though far subtler than I imagined it would be. Enough time does that.
I glanced up at Marcella behind me, then stood. Sighing, I knew that I was about to add trauma to Marcella’s list, but nothing else could be done. She had to come to terms with her new existence as a ghost. I grabbed the knob, twisted, and pushed the door once more. This time, it swung freely.
The smell of death whispered into the room, and I immediately reconfigured my scarf to cover my mouth and nose, leaving only my eyes visible.
In all actuality, the smell was not that strong, but the smell of death is still unpleasant.
I didn’t want it to work its way into my sinuses and follow me for days.
Marcella followed me as I entered the bathroom, her ghostly form cold at my back.
Inside the white-tiled Art Deco bathroom, there was a toilet, a basin sink with a mirror above it, and an old clawfoot tub with the shower curtain closed around it.
I walked over and grabbed the curtain, took a deep breath, and pulled it back.
Marcella Washington—or what I assumed was her—was in the tub.
Mostly bones and the clothes she had been wearing—that her ghost was now wearing—she was definitely dead.
I stared down at the poor woman’s body, blinking a few times, taking in the clothes, the necklace around her neck, and the stringy hair laid out around her skull.
Shaking my head, I stepped aside as Marcella Washington’s ghost began to moan.
Not once, not twice, but one long, sorrowful moan.
There was no way to comfort the dead, especially one who has just found out that they are dead.
So, I simply stood there beside her as she stared down at her dead body in the tub and moaned.
As she moaned, I examined Marcella’s body with my flashlight, letting it scan her body.
I’m no medical examiner, but I could spot a broken clavicle and hyoid bone easily enough.
Marcella Washington had probably been struck and strangled.
It was probably asking too much that she remembered her killer, but I asked anyway, though I wasn’t certain I needed confirmation.
“Do you remember who killed you, Marcella?” I asked.
She kept moaning a while longer, then gave me a single moan.
No.
“Maybe you will one day,” I said softly. “Once you’ve had time.”
I turned to her and looked into her eyes that no longer looked angry. She looked sad. Mournful.
“If you ever get your voice,” I murmured, “you know where I am. Find me. I’ll be happy to talk with you.”
Marcella said nothing, but I could tell by the new twinkle in her eye that she understood. She floated there before me for a few moments, bobbing in the air, then she began to back away. When she was nearing the doorway to the bathroom, I spoke again.
“Lots of ghosts in the woods out by my house,” I said. “Usually during the day, they keep to themselves. But at night they come out. They can help you. Teach you things. If you want.”
Marcella stopped for a moment to consider what I said, then she was zipping away like a mist blowing off the ocean.
When she zipped out the bathroom door, she blew right through a dark form.
I didn’t jump or scream, I simply crooked my head to look around the man to make sure Marcella made her way out of the inn room and disappeared.
Where she was going first, I had no idea. But her justice was done. She was aware she was dead. She’d figure things out eventually. So, once I was certain she was gone, I lifted my phone to shine my flashlight on Gary.
“Were you able to see her?” I asked, calmly.
Gary’s eyes, squinting against the beam of light, looked me over.
“Just now?”
Gary said and did nothing for several moments, but finally he shook his head. I lowered the light enough to get it out of his eyes, but kept him illuminated.
“She’s in here,” I said. “But you know that.”
Gary nodded.
I watched him for a moment, considering all things, then made a decision.
“You’ll want to go now, Gary,” I said. “I’m leaving, too. But I’ll have to get an anonymous tip to the county police. You won’t want to be here for that. They won’t understand.”
He stared at me.
“Do you hear me? Do you understand?”
He nodded after a moment. His eyes darted to the tub and a single tear slid down his cheek. Then he looked back at me, gave me a bow of his head, and slunk away, disappearing into the shadows. I watched him leave, creeping out of the room into the upstairs hallway, then waited a few moments.
I turned back to the tub and had another look at what had once been Marcella Washington. A young woman, down on her luck, underfed, homeless, penniless, who died trying to do what she had to do to keep herself alive. Such as her life was. I shook my head and left the bathroom.
Both the living and dead were hard to comprehend. Too literal. Too vague. Too proud. Too violent.
If everyone stopped romanticizing what happens on “the other side,” none of them would want to know anything about it. But then I’d be out of a job. Maybe some jobs were too much to deal with, actually.
But there’s only one thing I know how to do well enough to keep myself and The Lunch Counter going.
It was just getting to be too much to do.
I swallowed the bile that was threatening to spew forth as I looked around the inn room.
Then I stuck the hammer back into the belt loop of my jeans, bent down and grabbed the box, and headed out of The Eternity Inn.