Ghost Brother (Spooky Short Stories by Kathryn Meyer Griffith) (2 page)

Our
visits didn’t always go smoothly.

Last Christmas, while visiting the kids and grandkids, I
did the unforgiveable and, provoked by my pesky brother, made a scene over the
supper my daughter-in-law had made. Everything was way too spicy for my tastes.
Some of those dishes, hey, I could barely stomach, much less recognize. Well,
Gerald wouldn’t stop whispering things my son’s wife kept doing wrong in my
ear, and usually I keep my cool, but this time I lost my temper and stomped
out. It was either leave or say something truly hurtful. Close. Too close. My
daughter-in-law was such a sensitive, oh-please-don’t-hurt-my-feelings-prissy-type.
My son was furious with us and gave me the silent treatment the rest of the
night. I drove us home early the next morning, cutting three days off our stay.
No one treated me like that. Was my wife mad at me. Whew.

But she forgave me by and by, as she always did, no matter
how gauche I could be. It took a while, many I’m sorrys, and three dozen roses.
Yellow being her favorite color. The woman loved me, plain and simple. I took
advantage of that every time. Wasn’t very loving of me, I know. But that Gerald…he
kept reminding me that I shouldn’t let anyone,
anyone
, make a fool out
of me in any way. I was the boss. I merited respect and adoration and if I
didn’t get it, why, I should slap the hell out of someone.

Even Tessa when she deserved it.

***

Tessa. Where was she?

If I’d had my cell phone with me I would have called her.
But there was nothing in my pockets. No wallet, no keys, no phone. Not even a
dooby I could smoke to take the tension off.

The day was ending and the sun, a gleaming ball, was descending
into the horizon. The trees around me were filled with bodiless whispers and
eerie cries and moans. I was cold. If I could have I would have shivered. Yet
it wasn’t the kind of cold you could attribute to the weather. I felt cold
inside. A human icicle. There were so many gaps in my memory and it bugged me.
What should I do now?

Something scuttled along the edge of my sight and I turned
my head. Not quick enough. I barely saw the shadowy figure dodge back into the murk.
I was pretty sure it was the same thing I’d seen in the cemetery. Stalking me.

“Who the hell are you and why are you following me!”

No answer.

“Come on. Show yourself. Stop playing these stupid games.”
I was losing patience.

Still no answer. Ah, well.

I watched the rain fall and racked my brain. What else did
I have to remember? It was so important. Life or death important. I must connect
the dots. A face, sharp and angular, square jawed, with callous eyes that bored
into a person haunted me.

Who? And it finally came to me.

It was Gerald. My dead brother Gerald.

Oh, boy. The years unraveled behind me. I was going back in
time.

And I remembered.

Gerald had been my only sibling, my older brother by three
years, and he’d been a mean cuss all his life. A hardened criminal. We’d had a
hate/love relationship since the beginning because I’d been considered the good
one. The one who’d make it in life. Not that driving an eighteen wheeler for a
living made me so special. It was because I worked at an honest trade and paid
my bills with money I’d earned, had a loving wife and a kid, a mortgage,
friends, that made me a better man than him. He’d gotten into trouble as a
teenager, stealing cars to help pay for his drug habit; later stealing
everything that wasn’t tied down, and his life had gotten worse the older he’d
become. Gerald couldn’t tell the truth about anything if his life depended on
it. He’d had this overpowering need to control everyone around him and messed
up anyone he came close to. Like a human albatross. He couldn’t face the truth
about himself, either. Made excuses for how mean he was. Thought he was an all
right guy. Ha.

He’d had three wives. All of whom he’d cheated on and
mistreated. Two kids who he neglected and who grew up to be as destructive as
he was. He’d almost messed up my life a couple of times, pulling me into his
harebrained schemes and vendettas. When Gerald had a grudge against someone
he’d never stop until he’d gotten his revenge. His pound of flesh as he put it.

Then I’d met Tessa and she changed me. He’d been jealous of
that and more.

Slowly it came to me, the final details of Gerald’s life
and his death. Gerald had had a son, Mike. The two of them, when time and money
ran out, lived in squalor in Wyoming somewhere together. In the end, Mike, high
on drugs his father shared with him and not in his right mind partly due to
Gerald’s lifelong mistreatment, shot and killed him in a rage one night.

 The boy went to prison and Gerald…well, Gerald, as unbelievable
as it sounds, became a malevolent ghost that has followed and taunted me ever
since. I couldn’t get away from him. He’d appear on the passenger seat beside
to me in my rig when I was driving. Make me speed. Go through red lights. Drink
a little too much over lunch. He told me to do horrible things to people. He
was forever whispering in my ears:
Hit that guy, he deserves it. Take that
laptop sitting at your friend’s house. He’s rich, he won’t miss it. Yeah, stay
in the bar and drink another round or two. Spend the bill money. Get drunk. Who
cares if Tessa’s waiting up, concerned, over you. Hey, that woman looks hot…hit
on her. Go ahead. Take her to bed. No wife can tell you what to do. You do what
you want to. That’s it. Don’t let anyone get in your way.

Oh, I remembered my brother.

***

I’d closed my eyes and when I opened them it was morning. I
was standing inside my house watching a bizarre scene unfolding.

It was me and Tessa. Fighting. I was accusing her of cheating
on me and she was crying.

“I’m not cheating on you, Bobby, I swear. Why are you
acting like this?”

Because Gerald had told me she was cheating. Gerald had
said she was leaving me for some rich guy who could give her everything I couldn’t.
Divorcing me and taking all I’d worked so hard for. At first I didn’t believe
him, but he never let up and eventually I knew he was telling the truth. Tessa,
the woman I loved, was going to abandon me and make a fool of me. Leave me all
alone. Like everyone else in my life had. I couldn’t let that happen.

“I love you, Bobby. Why would I want to leave you?”

“You’re lying. Who is he?”

“Who is who?”

“Your boyfriend. I know you have one. You better confess or
I won’t have a choice.”

I remembered the look of anguish on her lovely face. “I
don’t have a boyfriend and why are you doing this? What’s wrong with you?” I
could see the terror in her eyes after I pushed her to the floor. She cringed
away from me when I reached for her.

Whisper
,
whisper
in my ears.

The room around us was like it’d always been. Clean and pleasingly
decorated in shades of brown and gold. Pretty framed pictures hanging on
freshly painted walls. All done by Tessa. She was good at that kind of stuff. The
carpeting spotless and the sofa one of those big plush wall-huggers with built
in recliners. A lot of love in that house. My wife was an immaculate
housekeeper. A fantastic cook. A loving wife…until recently.

God, I loved her. Had always loved her. Will always love
her. So why was I treating her this way?

“I can’t let you divorce me. Take all we’ve worked so hard
for for so many years. You got to understand that. I can’t let you go.”

“I’m not going anywhere. What are you talking about?
Please, Bobby, look at me. Listen to me.”

Instead I went downstairs.

The rest of the morning was a blur. I couldn’t
remember
what had happened after that.

I felt so strange. A strong wind and I would have dissolved
into the woodwork.

I wasn’t that lucky.

***

The next thing I knew I was sitting on a cot in a jail cell;
four by eight feet at the most. The walls closing in on me were a gun metal
gray to match the bars across the front. It was gloomy, depressing. It smelled
like urine and dirty underwear. I could hear weeping and someone shouting and
cussing somewhere down the long narrow hall my prison looked out onto.

A gruff voice pleaded in the cell adjacent to mine, “I’m
innocent. Innocent, I say! I didn’t mug, knife, that tourist and take his
wallet. I didn’t. Somebody please come and let me OUT of here. Anybody!”

Someone was throwing up in another cell, though it could be
the same man who was weeping or the one who was shouting, I didn’t know, and
the stench drifted in to my cell. I gagged.

I got up and threw myself at the bars. My hand, my arms,
shadows, could go through them, but my body wedged between the iron and I
couldn’t get out. I couldn’t run away. And, oh, how I wanted to. I didn’t
belong here. I’d done nothing wrong…so why was I caged like an animal? What was
going on?

Again I thought: what was this? Hell? And why am I here?

Why can’t I go home to Tessa and have the life I’d once
had?

“Because you’re dangerous,” a soft voice behind me said, “and
need to be locked up, that’s why.”

I turned and there was Gerald lounging on the cot, laying
prone, his arms tucked up under his head. He was grinning at me with that evil
I-know-something-you-don’t-know smile of his. The one I hated. It always meant
he’d done something bad.

“Oh, great. If you’re here, it can’t be good. What do you
want?”

“Not much. Just to keep you company, brother. Help you
remember…things. At first it can be a little disconcerting to find yourself
here.”

“Here?”

The ghost on the cot waved his hand in a circle above his
head. “You know, the land of the dead. Ghostworld. Limbo. Whatever you want to
call this place.”

“Ah, so I am dead, huh?”

“You had any doubt?”

“No, not really. I think the first time I was zipped to
another location like somebody beamed me up, I kind of suspected.” I looked out
through the bars again. There’d been a noise down the hallway somewhere.
Voices. Maybe they were coming to let me out.

Over my shoulder, I asked my dead brother, “Okay, so what
am I doing here in this cell? And why can’t I get out?”

“You have a lesson to learn. This place is great for that.

“I bet,” my brother was standing beside me now, “you’ve
already learned a few things since you got here.”

I met his glittering eyes and shrugged.  “Most of it I
didn’t understand.”

“You will.”

Then my brother’s ghost was gone.

“Gerald, you can’t just up and disappear like that! What is
it I’m supposed to learn? What am I supposed to do next? Come back!”

***

The world spun, I shut my eyes and when I opened them I was
again in my house. It was morning. I watched in horror as Tessa and I fought in
the living room. Shades of our former selves. It was as if I were observing some
awful play. Something that had already happened.

I saw Tessa crying. I saw her denying my accusations. I was
so mean to her.

I saw Gerald’s ghost in the corner urging the other me on.
Telling me what I should do. Making trouble like he always did before and after
death.

Don’t listen to him,
I warned.
Don’t listen.

My wife was saying, “I swear it, Bobby, I love only you.
I’ve never been unfaithful. I didn’t take that money out of the bank. I didn’t
write that note to the company that got you fired. Please, you have to believe
me.

“I’m not leaving you!”

As before I watched myself exit the room. I followed as my
other self went downstairs and unlocked my gun cabinet. The impressive iron one
that housed my collection of guns. I’d been buying weapons for years, even when
we couldn’t afford it, and was extremely proud of them. I had a fortune in that
cabinet.

I couldn’t stop the other me from doing what he did next.
It was as if I were in a slow motion nightmare. Gerald was goading the dream me
on and he returned to the living room. Tessa could have left, could have run
away, but she didn’t. She’d been waiting, so sure she could talk some sense
into the other me.

The gun in my hand came up and I shot her. She tried to get
away, I pursued, and shot her two more times in the back. She fell to the floor.
My nightmare self stood over her and glared down.

“You’re never going to leave me now, are you, Tessa?” he
told her. “You know I couldn’t allow it. I love you too much.” He knelt down
besides the body. There was blood spreading everywhere on the beige carpeting,
seeping under the couch and coffee table.

“Oh, no,” I murmured, tears streaming down my face. So
ghosts could cry. “What had I done? Why had I done it? Why would I kill the
woman I love?”