Authors: Geoff North
It was getting colder. Hugh could barely
control his shaking body.
Now he knew why the house had never burned
down this time round. He was meant to buy it; he was
destined
to
discover this lost treasure.
He was wrong.
A small female voice spoke from within the
blackness of the crawlspace.
“Those used to be my brother’s.”
Hugh didn’t look over his shoulder to see
who or
what
it was. He crawled slowly toward the attic floor opening
gripped in a cold that made his skin numb and his joints ache, a fear that made
the hair on his arms stand straight. He couldn’t look back, he couldn’t scream.
The comic books were forgotten, his only thought was to get out.
Mrs. Duffy called to him as he walked past
the salon a minute later. “Hel-oo, Hugh! How are you this afternoon?”
He ignored her and went straight to the
kitchen. He grabbed another coffee mug from the cupboard, content to leave his
favorite one three stories above for the rest of eternity, and poured himself a
hot helping. He sat at the table and took three long swallows, grateful for the
sear it created as it went down.
Cathy came in a minute later, not looking
too happy. “What the hell was that? Can’t you even stop to say hi? Jesus
Christ, Hugh! She’s a paying client.”
“Oh that, yeah...Sorry.” He took another
long sip, his hand shaking.
She saw his distress and reached for him. “What’s
wrong? You feel sick?”
He pulled away, not wanting her to feel how
cold he was. “I’m fine, just fine. Tell Mrs. Duffy I had to go to the washroom
or something, tell her I didn’t hear her.”
Cathy nodded and started back to the salon.
She turned and gave him one last look.
He waved her off. “I’m okay. We’ll talk
once she’s gone, alright?”
Hugh finished his coffee and went to brew a
fresh pot. The last ten minutes couldn’t have happened. What were the odds of
finding a box of vintage comic books in the attic of an old house? It was
exactly the type of daydream a guy who loved comic books would have. And wouldn’t
a guy writing a ghost story maybe think he’d heard creepy voices speaking to
him from a black hole in the wall?
It’s NOT a ghost story.
He poured water into the carafe and looked
through the window into the backyard. The grass needed a good mowing. One more
shot of caffeine and he’d get right to it. The fresh air would clear his mind.
“I’m happy
you live here.”
Hugh dropped the glass pot into the sink.
Fortunately it didn’t break, and even if it had, he wouldn’t have heard over
the buzz-fear ringing in his ears and the hiss of running water in the sink.
The little girl voice spoke again. “I
said
I’m happy you live here.”
Hugh moaned and shut his eyes.
This can’t be happening. I’m going mad.
He spun around quickly and saw the kitchen
was empty. He turned off the tap and caught the end of Mrs. Duffy telling Cathy
how much she enjoyed picking raspberries in the summer. It wasn’t Mrs. Duffy
who had just spoken to him, and it hadn’t been Mrs. Duffy stuffed up in the
attic crawlspace.
They met out on the front veranda four
hours later. The lawn was mowed; the sun had begun to set, and Hugh hadn’t set
foot in the house since the incident in the kitchen.
Cathy handed him a cold can of Coca-Cola
and he rolled the dewy metal across his forehead gratefully. She sat in a patio
chair next to him. “You feeling better now? The way you were acting before, I
could’ve sworn you’d seen a ghost.”
“Funny you should say that.”
“That’s what you get for snooping around in
the attic.”
He almost dropped the soda. Had she been
responsible for the whole thing?
She laughed. “Relax, I don’t read minds, it’s
just that you left the step ladder up in the hallway. I had to climb up there
and close drop the door back into place. I swear the whole upstairs floor must
have dropped ten or twenty degrees.”
“Did you…see anything up there?”
“Just junk and a hideous old couch.”
“Did you see the crawlspace opening? Did
you see all the old comic books on the floor?”
She laughed again and it began to annoy
him. “You must have fallen asleep up there. There were no comic books on the
floor, and I definitely didn’t see any kind of crawlspace.”
Hugh leaned back and sighed. Could it all have
been a bad dream? He had been spending a lot of time cooped up in his study
writing. Had he dozed off in the attic? What about the voice in the kitchen? He
was wide awake when that happened, and the voice had even repeated itself.
Could he have been sleep-walking, or perhaps still in some kind of half-awake
dream mode when he came back downstairs?
The thought disappointed him. That meant
Cathy was right, he never had discovered a crate full of old comic books.
Still, it was better than being visited by creepy, invisible ghost-girls.
Sleep didn’t come easily that night. He
kept imagining movement above him, little footsteps running back and forth two
floors overhead. Someone trapped in blackness, kicking at the couch and
scratching the sloping ceiling, someone afraid and furious at the same time,
some little thing desperate to come downstairs.
He dreamed of comic books. He was leafing
through piles of mint books with ten cent covers. All the familiar old titles
were there, the great heroes, the funny animals, the daring astronauts and the double-revolver
wielding cowboys. They were stacked in piles around him, some six, seven, eight
feet high. They leaned this way and that way, swaying in a steady pulse of
sickly red and green light.
One of the piles fell in front of him,
displaying hundreds of covers with disturbing images in cancerous colors. There
was a shiny black copy of
Blood ‘n Brains Bridge,
the title banner
painted
in dripping wet red, the dots over the ‘i’ letters were squirming white
maggots. The cover was of a mangled body holding its own decapitated head. The
face of Bob Roberts grinned at him through skeletal fingers and winked. He
batted it away and saw a copy of
Lofty Tales
beneath it. An image of
Thomas Nelson hanging from a spike stared back at him. He was facing forward
here, the spike’s end protruding through his eye socket. There was a dialogue
balloon beside it. Old man Nelson was screaming. “
YOU’RE DEAD, KID! YER FRIENDS
ARE ALL FUCKIN’ DEAD! WE’RE ALL FUCKIN’ DEAD THANKS TO YOU! DEAD! DEAD!
DEAD!
”
He tore it in half, but there were others.
The
Pharaoh’s Revenge
showed a lurching mummy wrapped in bloody rolls of
rotting linen, the sunken face of his father staring out at him with blank, white
eyes.
A diapered toddler lying dead at the bottom
of a shadowy set of crooked stairs was featured on the cover of
Baby Steps
.
On another cover, Cathy was being done doggy-style by the corpse of Billy Parton;
his head was crushed in on one side with splinters of red and amber tail light
fragments sticking out.
And then he saw
Horror on the Highway.
The
letters were in the shape of comical ice blocks with drifting snow piling over
the top. He saw the wrecked car and the fuel truck it had smashed into on its
side in a black ditch. There were volunteer firemen everywhere and they were
all looking out at the reader. They grinned and waved various body pieces above
their heads.
Hugh tried to scream but couldn’t make a
sound. His eyes snapped open and everything was brown. “Cathy?” He finally managed
to croak. He felt beside him, expecting her to still be in bed with him.
“Welcome back.”
The voice was in his left ear. He smelled
that heavy, rusty smell and knew where he was.
“Am I…Am I going back?”
“Going back where?” The voice in the brown
asked.
“Back to my first life? Is this test, or
whatever it is--is it over?”
“This isn’t a goddamned test.”
“Please! I have to go back!” Hugh felt so
close to reclaiming his first life. If only he could convince the voice to let
him return. He wanted it back, wanted to show his family of 2011 how much he
had changed. He wanted to walk away from that car crash and hold his wife. He
wanted to kiss Dana, and Julie, and Colton. He wanted; he
needed
to love
them again.
“Slow down there, Hugh. You haven’t turned
into a saint in the last nine years. You still have a long way to go.”
It was like a blow in the gut. “Thirty more
years?”
“Only twenty-eight…not a life sentence.”
“Then why bring me back here?”
“I just wanted to let you know you had
company
.”
He sang the last word making it sound like a warning.
“Please! Tell me what this all about! Am I
alive or dead?”
“Shut your eyes.”
When he opened them again he was back in
his bed. Which bed? Which house? When? He could hear Cathy breathing softly
beside him. Moonlight flooded in through the window and he recognized the room.
It was the master bedroom in the McFarlane house. It was still 1983 in his
second go at life.
No. I was so close.
He went to shake Cathy awake. He was still
feeling the effects of the comic book nightmare and he needed to hear her voice
for comfort. She wasn’t there. The soft breathing continued. Hugh felt the
hairs rise on his arms again, the buzz-fear in his ears returned. He turned his
head slowly to the left and saw a little girl standing next to the bed.
“Hi, sleepy head.”
May 14 1983
My mom kept a diary her entire life, or
at least until the Alzheimer’s made it impossible for her to spell her own name
in the late nineties. She never put much in it, but she faithfully made entries
day after day. Where dad was working, recipes she’d found, how us kids were doing
in school, and the weather, always the weather. I guess she figured future
historians would be amazed at how shitty and unpredictable our seasons had been
in the second half of the twentieth century, living in the middle of a country
that could be minus fifty one morning and melting the next.
She gave me this diary on my eighteenth
birthday. She told me how important it was to keep our days recorded, even if there
wasn’t much to say. She didn’t bash other her people in her diary. She never
wrote about who had wronged her or wrote down any juicy gossip she may have
heard. She just wrote about her family, where they were, how they were doing,
and the weather.
I never used the one she gave me in my
first life, not even sure where it ended up. I wasn’t going to bother with this
one either. I guess I figured I could tell my tale through the pages of my
book. I’m glad I found it again. I’m going to try and make entries faithfully.
Not daily like mom, but I will at least try and report the big stuff. Not
because I care if anyone reads it someday. No one would believe a word of it
anyway. I want to keep track of things for myself.
People that see ghosts and claim that
they can read the future have always been considered nut jobs. I’m
not
one of those people. I
have
seen ghosts, and I
do
know what’s going to happen in the future. At least I thought I could see into
the future. I’m not so sure now. This house, the little girl that pops in to
say hello weren’t supposed to be a part of my future.
I thought I was re-living one life, but
now? It seems like there are two of me now. There was the real Hugh, the
selfish, uncaring guy that died in 2011, and now there’s me, Hugh Nance the 2
nd
(sounds cool hey?). I like to think this Hugh is nicer, a guy that’s learned
his lesson.
I’m keeping this journal because I don’t
want to forget old Hugh. I have to keep a record that he
did
exist. The battered old lottery newsletter doesn’t cut it
anymore. New Hugh sees ghosts, and new Hugh is afraid he may be one himself.
I have to keep track of what happens
next; compare it to what happened in that other life. Hopefully the two Hughs
will meet up somewhere, someday, and the ghosts of the future and the past will
go away.
Good news:
have won some big wagers placed on the semi-finals in NHL playoffs this year.
Thirty grand so far, and if I win the final, that figure should double. Islanders
in four-- I like my odds.
“What did she look like?”
Hugh slid the diary into the top drawer of
his desk before Cathy could notice. He had told her of the ghostly visitor he’d
seen the night before, but was reluctant to go into it any further the next
morning. He told her he needed some time to get his thoughts together, that he
needed a hot shower and few strong cups of coffee before he could go into
details. He was still a little sore that she wasn’t in the bedroom to see it.
Cathy had explained his tossing and turning had forced her to sleep on the
couch downstairs, but if she’d been there; if she’d seen it as well…perhaps he
wouldn’t feel so alone. It’s easier to accept you may be going crazy when you’re
not the only one.
She pulled an armchair in front of his desk
and sat down. “Whatever it is you think you saw has really spooked you, hey?”
He ignored the jab of her second question
and answered the first. “She was maybe ten or eleven with these cute little
pigtails sticking out at the sides. And she was wearing one of those
old-fashioned dresses, short sleeves and all frilly at the ends, you know what
I mean?”
She nodded slowly, like a psychiatrist.
Go
on Mr. Nance, you’re safe here…
“I know it was dark, and it’s tough judging
color in low light, but it was like she was all black and white, no--more like
she was kind of grey all over, it was her face that was white. Really white and
her eyes were so black. I shut my eyes and told her to go away. When I opened
my eyes again she was gone. I was terrified…maybe she sensed that.” He
remembered the story his father had told him one Christmas Eve about his dad
paying
him
a little visit in the night.
Cathy shuddered and leaned back in the
chair. “Jesus, that’s creepy. Maybe I don’t want to hear any more.”
“You asked.”
She was silent for a long time. Hugh knew
what she wanted to say, and she said it. “It was probably just a bad dream. You’ve
been working so hard on that story it’s no wonder you have nightmares.”
She didn’t say ghost story this time.
She really does think I’m losing it.
“It wasn’t a bloody nightmare! I was awake,
I
saw
her.”
“I believe you, Hugh…it’s just that, well
these things can seem so real when you’re overworked and under stress. I used
to have all kinds of horrible dreams when I was still living with you know who.”
She refused to even say his name. They had
cut all ties with Cathy’s family, never once spoken on the phone with her mom
since moving back. It calmed his temper just thinking how far Cathy had come in
the last half year. She was much more independent, much happier. “I can prove
it wasn’t a dream, I can take you up into the attic and show you all those old
comic books. You’ll see that hole in the wall she came out of.”
“I don’t doubt that part of it, but finding
some old books in a cubby hole doesn’t prove you saw a ghost.”
“Well it will prove it to me.”
And that’s what he did.
The couch was there, moved away from the
wall. He could see the three foot square hole of black and the brown painted
door lying on the floor. Hugh pulled himself up through the attic floor opening
and called down for Cathy. “Come on up, I’ll take your hand.”
“Are you crazy? I’d break my neck for sure
on that ladder. Go grab me some comic books and I’ll believe your story.”
Hugh stood up in the red and green light of
the attic. It was warm, too warm for the heavy sweater he’d decided to put on
this time. He walked toward the old milk crate and the books piled on the
floor, giving the black opening a wide berth.
Get the comics and get the hell out.
He saw the old newspapers first, then the copies
of Life and the Eaton’s catalogue. He stepped closer and saw the rest scattered
across the dusty floorboards. There were hundreds of battered Reader’s Digests
and National Geographics, the old ones without pictures on the covers. Hugh
fell to his eyes and scattered them about, desperately searching for
Batman
and
Tales from the Crypt.
“What the hell?” He emptied the rest of the
books out of the milk crate. More Digests and Geographics spilled out. There
were boring old farmer magazines and a few dozen issues of Red Book and Good
Housekeeping. There were no mint copies of
Jungle Comics, Forbidden Worlds
,
or
Uncle Scrooge & Donald Duck.
He piled them back into the milk crate and
shoved the entire works back through the hole in the wall. “I should’ve
known…it was too good to be real.”
“You alright up there?”
“I’m fine.” His disappointment gave way to
anger. He pulled a small flashlight from his back pocket and crawled in through
the cubby hole opening. He clicked it on, half expecting a ghoulish child with
black eyes and fangs to lunge at him. But all he saw was the box he’d just
pushed in. He swung the light around and settled on an old baseball glove. Had
that been her brother’s as well? The cramped space ran along the entire length
of the attic but there was nothing else. No old family photo albums, no
secretive journals that could explain who had once lived there.
Cathy steadied the ladder as he climbed
back down. “There, are you satisfied?”
“No, I’m pissed off. Those were some nice
comic books.”
She hugged him. “It was a long winter and
spring for both of us. Don’t feel so bad. Why don’t you talk to your mom and
dad about the house? They probably know a bit about the place’s history.”
Hugh put the ladder away and hung the
sweater back up in the closet. “Maybe I could Google it,” he said absently as
they headed downstairs.
“What?”
It was a time-displaced slip of the tongue.
He didn’t make them as often, but every once in a while they come out. “Nothing.
Why don’t we call them over for supper?”
“As long as you’re cooking.”
She didn’t
care for cooking in his first life. There were some things in history that
couldn’t be changed.
***
“I remember old Michael McFarlane,” Steve
Nance said as his son poured his parents each a cup of tea after a heavy meal
of grilled burgers and smokies. Hugh wasn’t a much better cook than Cathy, but
he knew his way around a barbeque. “He was the town’s doctor back in the day.
Crazy old bastard…scared all us kids whenever we had to go see him.”
“Are the stories true about him committing
suicide?”
“Yeah, he did himself in alright, hung
himself from a basement rafter.”
Marion Nance glanced at Cathy and scolded
her husband. “Steve! You’re going to scare these kids right out of the house.”
“Well, he asked.”
Cathy smiled. “Don’t worry about me, I’ve
read some of Hugh’s stories. Believe me, I can handle it.”
Hugh pressed on. “Was he married?”
“Yeah, he was married. What was her name?
Helen? Ellen?”
“Helena,” Hugh’s mother said.
His father nodded. “She was a mousy little
thing, scared of her own shadow.”
“Any kids?”
“A boy and a girl,” his mother said, giving
Hugh an instant chill despite the warm evening they were enjoying out on the
veranda. “It was so long ago, I can’t recall their names. He was so mean to
them…Helena finally packed up and took the boy with her. They were never seen
again.”
“Just the boy?” Cathy seemed outraged. “What
about the girl?”
“They said it was an accident…that he never
meant to go that far,” she trailed off and looked out over the front yard.
Hugh’s father finished for her. “Too late
for her. McFarlane choked her to death, drunk or high on his own dope, who
knows? He had a wicked temper.”
“She should’ve left him years before,”
Cathy said. Hugh could see the tears in her eyes. The same thing could have
happened to her.
“Yeah, she should have. He never got any
jail time; I guess they figured he’d suffered enough. He locked himself up in
the house and took his life about six months later. That was back in what? Fifty
two or fifty three?”
“It doesn’t matter if it was thirty years
or three hundred,” Marion Nance said. “It was horrible and I wish you’d never moved
into this place.”
“Don’t blame the house; it’s a fine old
building.”
Hugh expected a comment like that from his
carpenter father. “Sorry, Mom, I didn’t want to upset you. Is that the reason
you won’t come to Cathy to get your hair done?” He wasn’t looking at Cathy, but
he could imagine her embarrassment, could sense her glaring at him.
“No dear, of course not!”
“It is so,” Steve Nance piped in. “I
practically had to drag her over here tonight.”
They all laughed at that and the tension
vanished. The evening ended well and Cathy booked Hugh’s mom in for her first
appointment. Questions about the house’s history had been answered, sad and
disturbing as they had been; it made the young couple feel better.
Hugh continued
on with his book and Cathy’s business began to thrive. There were no comics
hiding in the attic, and he never went back up there to explore any further.
Whatever…whoever had been up there was out now. Through the summer and fall of ‘83
and the winter of 83-84, Hugh felt her presence often. In his study there were
nights he could sense someone watching him. He had occasionally seen the
armchair across from his desk pull away a few inches, quietly, furtively, like
someone trying not to disturb his work, but wanting his company never the less.
March 22 1984
I found an
agent! She loves my story and has a big publisher in mind already. It’s a great,
early wedding gift. Plans for that are going well. No plans at all! Unlike the
first time round, we’re eloping. No guests, no drunken disasters, no Gordo! Passports
came in last week and we’ve booked an all-inclusive vacation to Jamaica. Can’t
wait to get away from this frigging cold.
April 30 1984
Caribbean
was great! We were married on the beach and ended up with more guests than the
first time, all tourists and happy locals. My wife was so beautiful. Mexico
next year, maybe Cuba.
June 1 1984
Book deal
has been signed! I’m officially an author! Big advance means I can quit
gambling. Think I might invest some of it in the stock market. I’ve heard some
good things about a few small computer software companies starting up.