31 Ghosts

31 spooky tales for October

31 Ghosts: Day 2 – Give A Dog A Bone

After starting on a true tale, we’re heading to the land of fiction, but not terribly far off the factual beaten path, as I’m taking a page from the “write what you know” book and placing this story awfully close to home…

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Give A Dog A Bone

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have been walking Kevin off-leash. I live out in the forest where the number of cars the narrow winding roads see each day can be counted on one hand. No, the only issue I ever had was when Kevin, my black Lab, would jog off into the redwood and pine trees, ignoring my calls until he decided to re-emerge from the brush on his own time. As I tied off the dog poop bag, Kevin darted into the forest, disappearing almost immediately down a dry creek bed and around a bend. The sun had already started to set sending fading orange light glowing through the tall trees as I could hear Kevin rustling in the underbrush.
“Kevin!” I called, “come here, boy!” I whistled for him, but the rustling grew fainter. My irritation started to rise. “Kevin!” I called a bit more impatiently. “Let’s go, buddy!” I looked down at the flip flops on my feet and realized if I had to hike up into that creek bed I’d likely twist my ankle and bathe myself in poison oak. “Kevin!!” Finally, I heard his rustling coming towards me and I relaxed a bit. A moment later Kevin burst out of the bushes proudly carrying a long white stick. As he drew closer, though I realized it wasn’t a stick – it looked like a bone. “Drop it!” I said, and Kevin dropped the bone and sat on his haunches, tail wagging expectantly. “I don’t think we’re going to play fetch with this, buddy,” I told him as I picked up the bone. It was clearly too big for a deer leg. It really looked… human. “Let’s get back to the house, Kevin.” He tilted his head confused that I wasn’t throwing the “stick.” I turned and he grudgingly followed.

Kevin’s discovery set off a flurry of activity in my normally-quiet neck of the woods. The sheriff arrived on site almost immediately, confirmed the bone was human and made a single call that caused nearly a dozen vehicles to converge on the back road. High intensity lights turned night into day as a pair of bloodhounds (Kevin liked that part) and their handlers set off up into the creek bed. Within hours they had found Kevin’s grisly discovery – the decomposed body of what the coroner declared to be a woman in her late teens. The remains were carefully removed and deputies draped the copse of forest in yellow police tape declaring it an active crime scene. Detailed photos were taken and the sheriff said they’d be back later that morning as the last police car drove off just as the sun was rising.

My head hit my pillow an instant before my alarm started shrieking for me to get up. I swatted at the alarm and then called work to let them know I wasn’t going to be in for a while. I didn’t end up making it in to work at all because the sheriff woke me around noon asking if he could come by and ask some questions. Apparently, the coroner didn’t sleep because she’d already done a preliminary examination on the remains. She was fairly certain the body was indeed a woman, probably 18 or 19, and she had definitely met an untimely demise. The skull showed evidence of blunt force trauma and the neck bones appeared to be crushed in a manner consistent with manual strangulation. Add to the fact that the body was found in the middle of nowhere and the authorities were fairly certain this was where the body was dumped. Gratefully I was quickly eliminated from the suspect pool when the sheriff learned I’d only been in the area for about a year – for the kind of deterioration they found, the body had been there at least two years, the coroner decided. They thought they might have found something they could use for DNA, but didn’t hold out much hope; they’d already sent the teeth to a forensics lab to check for dental records.

“So you don’t think you’re going to figure this out any time soon?” I asked Sheriff Barnes as he put away his notepad and stood up from the deck chair.

“Soon?” he scoffed, looking into the forest beyond the edge of my deck, “I’ll be honest, we’ll be lucky to figure out just the identity of our Jane Doe. So much time has passed…” he shook his head, “I’d put the odds of actually solving this thing at near-zero.” He let out a sigh, “But,” turning his attention back to me, “stranger things have happened – hell, your pooch finding the bones in the first place is pretty amazing.” He started for the steps leading to the street and his cruiser. “If I need anything more I’ll be in touch,” he said.

Kevin and I went out a few hours later as the sun started setting again – this time I had Kevin on the leash. As we started past the crime scene tape I heard rustling in the bushes. Kevin whined. “No, buddy, I’m not letting you off leash to chase a deer or whatever that is.” But whatever it was had stopped rustling. We started moving again, and the rustling started again, seemingly keeping pace with us but in the trees. I stopped. The rustling stopped. Kevin whined again, but it wasn’t an eager whine – Kevin’s tail drooped between his legs. Kevin was scared. We started off again, hastening our pace. The rustling mimicked our pace, but sounded closer. We sped up to a jog, Kevin glad to speed up. The rustling continued more loudly. I tried scanning the trees and bushes in the fading light to see what was keeping up with us but everything passed in a blur. I increased to a full run, Kevin keeping stride. The road turned slightly and crossed a short timber bridge over another dry creek. My lungs and legs burning, I coaxed Kevin to a stop on the other side. The rustling had stopped and didn’t start up again as we hurried home.

The next evening, we took a different route for his walk.

A few days later I had just turned off the shower when I heard a crash in the family room. I quickly grabbed my towel and rushed out to see what Kevin had knocked over. The family room was empty. Behind me in my room, Kevin raised his head lazily from the bed. I wandered back into the family room and couldn’t find anything out of place. I decided I must have imagined it as I went to return the towel to the bathroom. I gasped. On the fogged up mirror was the word “HELP” drawn in the condensation.

“Be good, Kevin! See you later,” I called as I tried to walk quickly out the door while simultaneously dressing myself. The workday passed quickly and as the day wore on I felt guilty leaving Kevin to face whatever had come home. I picked up a Nylabone for him on the way home. That evening our walk was uneventful, but when we got back to our deck the lights inside the house were on.

“Umm, we didn’t leave those on, did we?” I asked Kevin. He tilted his head quizzically. “Uh, let’s go in,” I tugged at his leash. Kevin didn’t budge. “Kevin, let’s go.” He sat down. “Now!” I said, tugging on his leash harder. Kevin did his best impression of an immovable object. “Fine,” I said, “I’ll go ahead first,” and dropped the leash. I stepped gingerly onto the deck and slowly walked to the door. My pulse raced as I crossed the deck. Looking in through the windows I couldn’t see anything amiss. I put my hand on the doorknob and started to relax as I opened the door.

“See, Kevin?” I said with feigned bravado, “Nothing to be afraid of.” And at that moment all the lights went out. In the enveloping darkness I heard Kevin whine. I wanted to whine. A single light appeared inside the family room. I crossed the threshold to see the glowing screen of my laptop. The same laptop I’d left in my bag when I got home from work. Now it was out on the table, opened, and turned on. I stepped into the dark room and could tell immediately I wasn’t alone. I stepped closer to the table and could see a webpage on the screen. “Search Continues For Missing Girl,” read the headline at the top of an article from the local paper.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” I said out loud to the room.

The lights came back on.

“Who killed you?” I asked.

The laptop went dark, as my peripheral vision picked up movement. I wheeled around quickly enough to see a wisp of blonde hair disappear into my dark bedroom. I heard Kevin step up onto the deck. “Thanks for your fearlessness, buddy.” I moved towards the bedroom. I had taken several steps when I heard the music. “Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane,” the Elton John song started barely audible from the Bluetooth speaker in my room but grew louder, “I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain…” The tempo of the song started speeding up. “Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye…” The song grew louder and sped up. Elton John’s voice rose to a shrieking soprano, “God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes.”

The music stopped. The room seemingly echoed with the silence. I reached into my pocket for my phone, pressed a few buttons and waited for the call to connect. “Sheriff Barnes? I think I have some information for you about the Jane Doe…”

31 Ghosts: Day 1 – A True Story

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I’m starting 31 Ghosts with a true story.

I’ve always been interested in the paranormal and especially in ghosts. My sister Jill and I had both experienced unexplained steps up and down the stairway in the middle of the night in the old house on a hill we lived in years before. Then there were the ghosts that violently slammed the doors in the building along the railroad tracks our dad had run his business from. All of this was before October 1, 1991.

October 1st has become a bittersweet day for me because while it marks the start of my beloved October, it also marks the anniversary of the day my dad died. That morning I started the day in school and after saying goodbye to his body at El Camino hospital I returned to school to get my books. I remember teachers saying, “Take the time you need,” and I remember saying “Oh, I’m fine, I’ll probably be back in a day or so…”

I was out at least a week.

The days passed in a blur of grief, coping, and lots of crying. There were a few moments that still stand out from that blur and this is one of them. It was early afternoon a few days later. Jill and I came out of the kitchen into the foyer by the front door of our house. To our left, our black cat Annie was starting down the hallway from my parents’ bedroom. Directly ahead, Mariah, our long-haired Himalayan cat, lazed on top of the stereo cabinet in the family room.

Annie caught our attention as he (yes, Annie was a “he” – that’s another story) tensed, turned slowly and arched his back, hair standing on end staring down the empty hallway in the direction of my parents’ door. Aside from Annie, the hallway was empty. Annie didn’t hiss, but still at full alert, backed slowly down the hallway towards us. He was tracking something.

Jill looked at me and said, “Are you seeing this?”

“Yes,” was all I could say. This wasn’t footsteps in the night, or a door slamming on the other side of a deserted building – this was right in front of us, and it was moving our way.

Annie had backed into the foyer by this point and the object of his attention moved into the family room in front of us. Mariah now saw the same object and immediately arched her back and her hair, too, stood on end (and if you’ve never seen a long-haired cat’s hair on end, it’s pretty funny in and of itself). Both cats were triangulating the same empty spot in space. Both cats attention remained focused on the spot as it moved deeper into the family room. It crossed the room to the spot on the couch where my dad used to sit (all dad’s have their “spot,” don’t they?). When it reached that spot, the cats both cautiously relaxed, their hair settling down.

“Dad’s here,” Jill said.

I nodded.

He didn’t manifest like that again for us. I don’t presume to know what happens to us after we die, but I found out later that we all had had similar dreams on about the same night a few weeks later involving my dad. In mine I came out of my room and poured myself a bowl of cereal before school. Mom was in the kitchen, and Jill was already at the breakfast table. My dad came out of his room, kissed my mom, and said goodbye to my sister and I – it wasn’t anything unusual, just a regular weekday morning farewell. But he was healthy. He stood in full health, not hobbled by surgeries or wracked by chemo. He smiled and we smiled back. And then he opened the front door and he left.

PS.
Writing this reminded me of one a particularly kind gesture. My dear friend Sarah’s mom, Pat, was the one who picked Jill and me up from school that October 1 after my dad had died. She dropped us off at the hospital and then went to our house where she removed all the reminders of the years-long struggle against cancer. When we got home later that afternoon all the pills, the bandages, the IV tree, the hospital bed that had dominated the family room for long weeks, they were gone. The house felt… normal. And because of that extraordinary gesture we were able to start moving forward instead of focusing on reminders of the immediate struggle. I had no reference at the time, and it’s only through the lens of the intervening years I’ve grown to understand how unbelievably kind and magnanimous that act was. I’m so thankful to Pat for that.

Announcing: 31 Ghosts!

I did it! There are 31 Ghosts! Scroll down for the collected links

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I love October for many reasons, the largest of which are a) my birthday, and b) Halloween. Do you really need other reasons? You might, and I’ll make some of my other October loves clearer as we go on, but here’s the deal. October has, obviously, 31 days. For each day in October I will provide a story — mostly fiction, but there’s bound to be non-fiction in there, as well. They may not all include ghosts, contrary to the name of the project. But they’ll all be Halloween-y and I promise a little bit of creepiness or other-worldliness in each and every one. They’re not going to be long because, well, I just came up with this idea a few days ago and I haven’t had time to write anything in advance. But this is a good thing in our overly-scheduled world; I’m not asking you to devote an hour to read a story, but instead just a few minutes.

Also, there’s now a way to sign up on the sight for email notifications of updates!

The inspiration for “31 Ghosts” comes from two sources. The first is the apocryphal anacdote of Ernest Hemingway betting a group of drinking buddies he could write a novel in six words. He then writes, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” on a napkin and accepts his winnings. The other comes from a book that I absolutely loved as a child. First, let me say this: I was a weird child. Okay, the book is from Time Life Books series, “The Enchanted World” (remember those commercials in the 80’s? OMG, I forgot about this one with Vincent Price!). The first book was “Ghosts” and in a sidebar described a short tale of a haunted room simply, “He woke up frightened and reached for a match, and a match was put into his hand.”

Did I mention I love October? Sign up for updates and I’ll see you soon… if you dare! [cue Vincent Price laughing from “Thriller”]

EDIT:

It’s long past October 2017, and, Spoiler Alert: here are your 31 Ghosts: