When I turned back around, I saw Virginia. After the accident, she always wore the face it gave her. A ghoul’s mask that any zombie would yearn to own. Her lower jaw was missing, her nose broken off. As she had turned away from the colliding cars, her face was only slightly angled to the left, exposing her right side to the dash. (Her airbag had been removed the week before - as well as mine). Her right cheek was dented in so far, I could look up and see the back of her eye and the muscles attached there. Her right ear had been shoved so far back that it dangled off the nape of her neck, attached as a ghoul’s delight. Only the left side of her face contained any sense of her former self.
Whenever she smiled, I saw the three teeth she still had. This caused her words to come out in a whisper/whistle resonance.
“Dead, again?” she asked.
“I will escape you one day.”
She attempted to laugh. It was grotesque, her head back, her ear tapping her shoulder, attached by small folds of skin.
Captain Michaels stepped around the chair and faced me. He’d been luckier. His airbag had deployed perfectly, hitting him squarely in the chest, saving him from all physical injury except one. The problem with Captain Michaels was his heart. When the airbag smacked him, it stopped his already frail heart, then burst it under the intense pressure, killing him almost instantly.
“These games you continue to play, they have to end,” he said.
I didn’t respond. There was nothing for me to say.
“You cannot kill yourself, over and over, in your head. That is no way to escape. From now on, you have to live in the basement. We won’t tolerate this kind of behavior, will we darling?”
Michaels looked at Virginia. She had stopped laughing. “That’s right. No more insolence,” she said.
I looked around for a weapon. I had to stop them at all costs. I couldn’t live in the basement. The house showed itself for who it really was. The walls were falling apart, the floor collapsing. The front door sat open, a breeze swinging the screen back and forth.
What had my life become? What had I become? Was this all there was? No heaven, no hell? Just me, a ghost of my former self, being haunted by people I once cared about?
They must have had some kind of hold on me, something I had to find out about and reverse before I could escape their grasp.
But what was it, and how could I figure it out, if every day is a repeat of the last?
Captain Michaels walked around behind my chair and began pushing me toward the basement door.
I heard a vehicle pull up out front. I had enough time to turn in my chair and look through the large bay window in the living room that looked out to the street. A van had stopped outside, the company’s name blazoned across the side: Rico’s Demolition.
Demolition?
Did that mean someone was coming to tear down my house? If that was the case, would I be free then?
We got to the top of the stairs, then Frank pushed me, up and out of the chair. I tumbled down each and every step as I heard him laughing. At the bottom, I looked up and saw him folding my chair. He tossed it down after me.
Just wait
, I thought.
One day I will get out of here. When I do, I will kill
you
over and over. If they tear the house down, rebuild it, or leave it the way it is, I will find a way. When I do, I will torture you. If anyone moves into this house or a rebuilt version of it, I will terrorize them to make sure this house falls upon its foundation. One day I will escape, and when I do, the world will never forgive you for what you’ve done to me.
Vengeance is mine and pain is my ally.
I am the haunter, the haunted, and the haunting.
The Truth
Kramer Kay had volunteered, against her will. She knew something would happen. For these events she had a police escort, and two on-duty officers waiting on the side, just in case anything came up.
She would look out at the crowd of about two thousand people and not just see them, but also their past relatives. Concentration proved difficult under those circumstances. Sometimes a murder victim would show up and point out their murderer, or a past relative would reveal a secret that held legal ramifications. This kind of thing wouldn’t hold up in court, but the police had made arrests in the past and had, after a thorough investigation, been able to formally charge them with various crimes.
She looked out at the people meandering through the seating arrangement at the Hershey Center in Mississauga. It had a large crowd capacity for this type of conference, and the place was sold out for tonight’s event.
Kramer’s job was to answer questions from the audience. A lottery system was in place for all ticket holders. They were given a wristband with a number on it. Only twenty would be called, and - when they heard their number - they would come to a microphone set up in the central aisle on the main floor and ask Kramer any question they wanted.
Kramer sat on the dais and tried to focus. Hundreds of faces stared back. Other faces floated by. She felt haunted without the scary, or evil, that went along with that word. Was it a gift, or a curse? How many times had she asked herself that since she first started seeing people on the Other Side?
Her first was her grandmother. She visited and played games with her for two weeks straight. Grandma told her stories about a childhood in the early 1900’s. Kramer had been eight-years-old, and hadn’t been informed of her grandmother’s death for over three weeks after the fact. Her mother had wanted the funeral and burial to be done first, but then the grieving was too great for her to talk about it. After three weeks, she’d been able to talk to little Kramer about it.
“But she’s not dead. She was just here,” Kramer said.
“Kramer. That’s no way to talk about the dead.”
“But mom, she just played Monopoly with me. And then we played crazy eights.”
Her mother was obviously getting upset. Kramer could tell her words were hurting her mother, but didn’t understand what she’d done wrong.
“Kramer, I’ll not have you saying such things.” Her mother stood up and walked to Kramer’s bedroom door.
Kramer looked down at the carpet and said, “I’m sorry, mom. Grandma told me about raising you, and how you were in ballet when you were seven. I was wondering if you’d take me to ballet.”
Her mother gasped, a hand covering her mouth. “How could you know that?”
Kramer looked up. “Grandma told me, silly. I already said that.”
Kramer’s name being announced over the auditorium’s speakers snapped her out of her reverie. It was her turn to take the podium. Numbers were being called. Kramer was introduced, and welcomed with applause.
She stood and walked over to the microphone. She tried to keep her eyes down and away from the prying stare of the dead. If she made eye contact, they almost always pestered her to find their living relatives. Her purpose today was to help the living, not the dead.
The first few questions were about relationships.
Would I ever get married? Can you tell me if my boyfriend is cheating? Am I destined to be happy?
The answers went smoothly, and people sat back down, content.
The fourth random number drawn was a woman. She stepped up to the microphone in the center aisle and asked about her son.
“I’m being told your name starts with the letter ‘C’. Is it Clarice or Clara.” Kramer looked up and watched the woman as she nodded her head. “I’m sorry.” Kramer lowered her head again and listened. “Your son passed away six months ago.”
“Can you tell me if my baby is okay?” the woman asked, her voice altered by her emotions.
“He’s happy. I’m hearing the name Jimmy. That’s his name, right?” Kramer looked up and focused on the woman’s face.
The woman nodded, and a new bout of tears rushed from her eyes.
The proverbial pin could drop and the thousands of people in the Hershey Center would all hear it. The quiet had become a character, only interrupted by a cough or a sneeze.
Kramer paused, and took a big breath. “He says you always called him Jims. He wants me to tell you something. You’re wondering what’s happening to his Winnie the Pooh teddy bear. Is this true?”
After a moment, the woman reached out, and held the stem of the microphone. It picked up an eerie sounding ‘
yes
’ and sent it across the crowded arena. She hadn’t said the word, as much as breathed it.
“He’s saying that, every night he comes when you are asleep, sometime around two or three in the morning. He puts the teddy bear on his favorite chair. He wanted it to look like it was him sitting there. He feels the intense pain you are going through. At five years old, he didn’t know any other way to express his presence to you.”
A man stepped closer to the woman. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as she leaned into him.
“Go home today, knowing that Jimmy is with you. Remember that he lives on in your heart.”
After a few minutes break, allowing Kramer to have a drink of water, and compose herself, more questions were asked. When Kramer was down to her last ten minutes of stage time, at the end of a thus-far-uneventful session, she was startled to see an entity watching her from the side of the stage. She stopped in mid-sentence and looked to her right.
The most intense eyes stared back. A woman, obviously dead, showing her true self to Kramer. Something was wrong with her. She stood at an odd angle, like she was reaching for something.
Before Kramer looked away, another woman materialized behind the first one, another pair of eyes, more intense than the last.
Kramer dropped her eyes and then looked forward, toward the crowd. Two people remained in line. Kramer answered their questions and was about to be relieved from the stage when she asked if she could deal with one more problem. After such an astounding performance so far, the organizers were more than happy to let her continue. Something had to be done. The message she was getting from the dead women to her right was murder.
She stood at the podium, raised to her full height and surveyed the crowd. She needed the find the right people first, formulate a plan. Who would have a gun? Who would mutually benefit from what she was about to do? Thirty seconds of silence passed before she spoke.
“We have a small problem.” She adjusted her shirt and looked down at her feet. She was trying to figure the best way to say it, but also avoiding the eyes of all the entities who were watching her, more intently than before. When she looked back up, she glanced over at the two police officers on the side. Both were staring at her, riveted by what they’d seen today.
She looked back to the audience. “We all have people around us from the Other Side, people who have passed over successfully. But there are others who don’t pass over. They are what we call earthbound… most commonly known as ghosts. It seems like they haunt us, but actually what they’re trying to do is get our attention. They don’t know they’re dead yet. They see you, but only on rare occasions can you see them. We feel and hear them more than we see them. Almost all ghosts haunt a dwelling like a house, or a building; a location that ties them emotionally to this plane. All earthbound entities are here because of some extreme emotional attachment. Now, we have an entity here with us and this entity is not haunting the conference center. They’re stuck here because of someone in the audience.”
Kramer looked across the heads of the crowd. “I was just told the name because I can hear the earthbound whispering it over and over. Could Norma,” Kramer paused, trying to hear the last name better. “Jenkins, please rise and come down to the microphone.”
Everyone in the building turned their heads, leaned forward in their seats and searched the pavilion for movement. Who was Norma Jenkins and where was she?
Wherever Norma was, she remained seated.
“Norma, we need to talk about this. We need to help the people on the Other Side. No matter what they did here, leaving them earthbound is torture. I feel so much pain coming from…your mother. I feel this woman’s name was Gertrude Jenkins.”
No one moved. No one stood up.
Kramer looked to her right. There were four woman standing in a line now. She looked at the woman in the front, and followed her eyes to the floor seats. If the murderer knew he or she was being revealed, who knew what they would do? The murderer - whoever it was - brought a weapon tonight.
“I’m here to help. You don’t need to be afraid. Please come to the podium and tell me what has caused you such grief.”
A woman stood, her gaze locked with Kramer’s. She started out of her row and walked down the aisle, making her way to the microphone. She tapped it twice to make sure it was on and then said, “My father is dying. When he was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, my mother left him. I can never forgive her for that.”
Kramer turned around and pulled out a lighter. She lit a candle that sat on a table beside the podium and held it up.
“Your mother died two months ago. Haven’t you wondered why you have those nightmares? The ones where you always dream of murder.” She stopped and looked at the two cops again. They were still both there. A collective gasp rolled along the audience. Kramer continued, “You’ve been curious about what’s causing this and I’m here to tell you that it’s your mother. You’re very connected to her. The sorrow you’re dreaming is her pain.”