Authors: Michael Jahn
Bannister said, “Maybe I should get a nine-hundred number and do this over the phone.”
“Thank you for helping me.” Lucy touched his arm warmly, warmly enough to give even the hardened Bannister a little flash of heat in his heart.
Fifteen minutes later Bannister had driven back up the hill, through more of Fairwater’s famous winding hillside roads, and reached his house. His home sat on a bluff overlooking Fairwater, which was as dead as a headstone as he looked down on it at three in the morning. Bannister also was exhausted, and pulling into his driveway did nothing to lift his spirits.
For the house was only half-built. As revealed in the moonlight, there was a roof and four walls—for the most part. Either money or interest ran out, possibly both, a long time ago. Whole areas of the house—a would-be family room, for example—were nothing but framework covered loosely by protective tarps. Whenever a wind came up, as it certainly had the night before, they flapped wildly, shaking the entire house.
Stacks of bricks and timber were left untended here and there, and a rusty old concrete mixer had, over the years, filled up with dirt and turned itself into a planter. Wild grass, complete with dandelions, grew from its cast-iron maw. Everywhere was rust and decay, rust on the metal parts and decay on the timber that had been left in the harsh Maine weather for a decade.
Bannister pulled into the driveway and drove the car to the head of the drive, stopping at the cement mixer.
“I’ve got to mow that one of these days,” he muttered as he shut down the engine, got out of the car, and hurried to the trunk. As he popped it open a ghoulish emanation rushed out with a whooshing of stale air.
Bannister jumped to one side as a second emanation joined the first. Then he slammed the trunk shut and stood there looking at them, his arms crossed sternly, like a schoolmaster about to deliver a dressing-down.
The emanation that popped out first had been Stuart Harper when he was alive. He was in his early twenties when he died, a computer tycoon whose brilliance and millions couldn’t save him from an early grave. Now he had a slightly rotten appearance and continually dribbled ecto-plasmic slime. Bannister could see through him, although not always well. At times Stuart seemed thicker than at other times. His density could have been related to his moods, which was not good after a long day and night’s work as well as several bumpy rides cramped in the trunk of the old Ford. Stuart stumbled to a pile of lumber by the side of the driveway and sat down, clutching his stomach.
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” he moaned.
“Not on my driveway you’re not,” Bannister shot back. “Go into the bushes.”
“What, and get bitten by a tick and get Lyme disease,” Stuart wailed.
“There aren’t any deer around here, and anyway you’re dead. Didn’t you learn anything with those degrees in art history and theology?”
“No. That’s why I went into computers. Jesus, my stomach is killing me. When will you ever learn how to drive slow?”
“When bill collectors stop chasing me,” Bannister said. “Which is where you guys come in.”
“Man, I hate that trunk,” said the second apparition, ignoring Bannister’s words.
Cyrus Parks was a black dude from the 1970s, a disco warrior proudly wearing a white disco suit, built-up heels, and an outrageous Afro with immense sideburns. He brushed himself off, taking time to flick an especially large gob of ectoplasm from his wide lapel.
“I mean, I been in some tight spots in my time—”
“Like jail,” Bannister said.
“I ain’t never
been
in jail, man. That one time you keep buggin’ me about was a misunderstanding.”
“I think the word you’re searching for is
misdemeanor,”
Bannister said.
“No, man, it was a misunderstanding between me and the police. My lawyer got it all straightened out and I never spent one night in jail. Well, not
all
night.”
“The victim didn’t press charges or else it would have been a felony.”
“Can I help it if the man had a wallet so fat it kept falling out of his pocket? Guys like that had no business stuffin’ themselves in dance clothes anyway. I mean, the dude was as fat then as John Travolta is now.”
He carefully straightened his pants, then whipped out a white Afro comb and began fixing his do.
“I want to ride in the front of the car from now on,” Cyrus said.
“I’m not having you spreading your ectoplastic muck over my seats.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Frank, but we’re not traveling in the trunk anymore,” Stuart said. “It’s impossible to work under these conditions.”
He stood and stretched. Apparently his tummy felt better. Bannister could hardly see through him, despite the several fashionable moth holes in his wide-knit, L. L. Bean sweater.
“We wanna cruise in style, man,” Cyrus said.
Stuart reached into his pants pockets and angrily flung a pile of Frank’s business cards onto the driveway. “I quit,” he said.
Bannister wasn’t buying any of this. He had heard it before. The staff was always complaining.
“Shut up,” he said.
He gave Stuart an angry shove. The emanation wobbled on his feet, losing his tenuous center of gravity. Emanations are made up of loosely compacted particles that can be distorted, scattered, stretched, or squeezed—but always return to their original shape. Stuart wobbled backward off the driveway, tripped over a pile of bricks, and fell into the bushes that Bannister let grow wild on all sides of the house.
“You clowns left me high and dry tonight,” Bannister said angrily. “I arrive at the house and there’s nothing happening. You guys are just sitting around watching. I couldn’t believe it.”
“We actually strained our backs lifting the bed, Frank,” Stuart complained.
“All I get is complaints,” Bannister replied.
“And if you think that was rough, you should try to create the magic-carpet effect yourself,” Cyrus said. “It’s hard enough lifting a bed. But it’s a bitch and a half making the damn blankets go like Aladdin was cruising the Persian Gulf on top of them.”
“You could have swung some more cupboards open,” Bannister sad. “You could have flashed a few lights. It looks like Martha Stewart’s kitchen in there, for Chrissake. Dancing knives and forks—gimme a break.”
“Our backs were hurting by then,” Stuart protested, rubbing his own for effect.
“I’ve gotta have something I can work with if I hope to get money out of these people,” Bannister said.
He fished his keys out of his pocket and walked up to the front door. Bannister unlocked it and flung it open, even as Stuart was struggling back to his feet. Cyrus jived in the door behind Bannister.
“Frank!” Stuart yelled. “I didn’t go to college to spend the rest of my life haunting people.”
He picked himself up from the bushes, nervously brushing imaginary leaves from himself. He said, “Frank . . . you gotta check me for tick bites. I think I got Lyme in there.”
Stuart ran toward the door, which Bannister slammed in his face. At first, the emanation was flattened against the door, as flat as a pancake, then he passed straight through the wood and began chasing Bannister down a hallway filled with antiques and memorabilia collected from what might have been a thousand haunted houses.
“I’m pretty sure a tick bit me on the leg,” Stuart continued, hiking up a pants leg and hopping down the hall after his boss and friend.
Frank turned and faced him, saying, “You’re
dead,
you hypochondriacal nut. If a tick could bite you, it would choke on the ectoplasm.”
“Humor me. I don’t feel as dead as I look.”
Sighing, Frank bent over and inspected the emanation’s ankle. Stuart’s leg got thinner as the man looked at it until at last Bannister was able to make out the umbrella stand he had picked up at that ranch-style house in Portland.
“You’ll live, so to speak,” Bannister said.
“Thank God.” Stuart shook his leg to get the pants to fall back into place, but in so doing banged his foot on the umbrella stand. “Jesus, this place has too many knick-knacks.”
“The man likes to collect junk,” Cyrus chimed in.
“Sometimes people pay me in furniture,” Bannister said. “The problem with convincing them that a ghost is making their umbrella stand do triple axles in the hall is that a lot of the time they don’t want it around anymore. So they give it to me in lieu of money. Did you know that umbrella stand once sat by the front door of a Newport mansion?”
“I don’t care, Frank,” Stuart said. “I can’t go on like this. We haunt a house. You chase us out of the house. You collect. And nobody gets any respect.”
“We ain’t gettin’ any younger,” Cyrus added.
Bannister said, “Listen, guys. I got a lot of creditors knocking on my door. If I go under, you go under—six feet under, back in the cemetery.”
Stuart looked horrified. “You wouldn’t send us
back!”
“Don’t say that, even kiddin’ around,” Cyrus said. “I mean, I been there and done that, y’dig?”
“No,” Bannister said. “The gravedigger dug. I dug you up and have been supporting you ever since. And all I ask is a little help.”
“You can’t send us back to the cemetery, man. It’s a jungle down there.”
“I’ve been telling people that, but nobody listens to me,” Bannister said. “Business is hard to get. People nearly faint when I give them my card. We’re only just scratching out a living here, and you guys better start pulling your weight.”
Bannister walked into the kitchen and slammed the door.
Momentarily alone in the dark hall, Stuart and Cyrus exchanged worried glances.
“He’s not serious about the cemetery, is he?” Stuart said.
“Man, I hope not. He put a serious chill on the proceedings just talkin’ about it.”
“The man doesn’t know what it’s like in the cemetery.”
“Oh, he knows, all right, and not just because he can see it when other living folks can’t. My man Frank just got a natural affinity for the deep and dead. I’m sure he’ll enjoy it to death when he gets there himself.”
“What a bummer,” Stuart said.
“I got to cool out,” Cyrus said. “I’m gonna play me some music.”
Stuart was horrified. “Oh, God! Not Isaac Hayes,” he pleaded. “Anything but Isaac Hayes.”
Snapping his fingers, Cyrus disappeared through the wall in the direction of the living room. Within seconds, the theme from
Shaft
was booming out over the early-morning darkness of Fairwater.
Five
M
orning brought a day in which the newly risen sun sent long shafts of brilliant light through the unfinished timbers of Bannister’s hilltop home. In the town below, life went on, blissfully unaware of the vibrant doings on the hill. The sound of 1970s disco had long since faded, but in its place was the sound of gunshots. One after another, spaced as they would be by someone taking slow and deliberate aim. The roar of each report, which echoed down the hillside but faded before reaching any neighboring ears, was too loud and too deep to come from any contemporary firearm. The weapon in question had to be old and big.
But not old and big enough to disturb Frank Bannister as he indulged in one of the few pleasures he allowed himself in his close-to-the-edge life. He was taking a shower, humming to himself as he let the water cascade over his head and shoulders.
All of a sudden the water pressure died. Bannister frowned and adjusted the hot and cold faucets. When that didn’t do anything, he twisted the nozzle. Then the pipe bulged, the metal screamed, and Cyrus ballooned out of the shower head, his head and shoulders terribly distorted as the rest of his body slimmed back down into the slender pipe.
“Whaddaya want?” Bannister grumbled, his voice showing irritation but in no way indicating that this occurrence was unusual.
“It’s the Judge, Frank. The cat’s real upset. He’s got his six-shooters out.”
With the water no longer running, Bannister could hear the gunshots. Two especially close ones rattled the glass in the medicine cabinet.
“What’s he upset about?” Bannister asked.
“Beats me. I’m just layin’ low till this blows over.”
With that, Cyrus sucked back into the pipe. Before he could react, Bannister got a faceful of scalding water. “Aargh,” he moaned, grabbing frantically for the faucets.
After finally getting the water shut off, he stepped from the shower stall and hurriedly toweled himself off. The shots were still coming—one every few seconds, as he found his old terrycloth robe and pulled it on, belting it tightly. He stormed into the kitchen.
There, Bannister was confronted by a tall and elderly emanation called the Judge, a lawman from the last days of the Old West. Somewhere back in the closing moments of the nineteenth century, he had died and been embalmed. But the embalming job was a cheap one and hadn’t stood the test of time. His dry, mummified body was in an advanced state of decay. How it all held together—especially in its already fragile ectoplasmic state—was anybody’s guess.
The Judge wore a black frock coat and a white shirt with a high starched collar. A black string tie was decorated with a longhorn steer ornament. The Judge’s face looked as scrawny and funereal as the steer’s skull—especially since he was missing his jawbone.
He was swiveling around, blazing away wildly with two rusty, ghost Colts. Bannister flinched as ghost bullets passed through his body and the wall behind him without leaving a trace. For their parts, Cyrus and Stuart peeked warily out of framed paintings.
“Damn Rustler took me jawbone,” the Judge gurgled.
“What?” Bannister asked in astonishment, though nothing much really surprised him anymore.
“The dog stole his jaw, Frank,” Stuart yelled.
“He’s all worked up about it,” Cyrus added. Their voices, coming across the room, could hardly be heard over the echoes of the shots, the gurgling of the jawless Judge, and the running and panting of the dog.
Rustler was a mangy, transparent ghost mutt that in life had been red and about the size of a Labrador retriever. The dog raced tight circles around the Judge, the jawbone in question clenched firmly between his teeth. Frank dropped to his knees, trying to catch the dog.