The Ghosts of Varner Creek Read online

  The Ghosts of Varner Creek

  By Michael Weems

  Copyright 2011 Michael Weems

  “An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself”

  —Charles Dickens

  Chapter 1

  Six-twenty a.m., November 3, 1984.

  That dead woman is standing out in the hall by my door again. I wake up, open my eyes, and as I give the old body a stretch I see her out there, still as a statue and fixated on me. She’s been visiting more often of late, eerie damn woman. I wish she’d carry herself somewhere else and quit staring at me like that. I don’t know what she finds so fascinating about me, ‘cept maybe she’s figured out I can see her. I guess that might be something of interest to the likes of her, but it’s only a nuisance to me these days. Go on and get, say my thoughts, as though she’d hear them and leave. But she doesn’t. She just stands there. I don’t pay her much mind, though. I’ve gotten used to this one popping up. She's the one that doesn't have a face, just a kind of blur where it should be, like someone smudged her features out. I’ve never seen another one quite like her before, no face and all, but it don't matter. I ignore her just the same. I got nothing to say to you, ghost, so you might as well go somewhere’s else. I change my view to looking outside the window. There’s just a hint of orange on the fringe of the gray dawn. Pretty soon there’ll be yellows, reds, and purples, like a child’s watercolor set splashed out over the world. There’s a nice smell drifting in from across the fields, too. It’s the smell of home for those of us who’ve grown up with it, the smell of a cotton crop freshly picked. You’ve got to know what you’re looking for to catch it as it’s almost overpowered by the strong odors of cleansers and medicines in this place, but it’s a beautiful smell. I’ve seen folks who could poke their nose down a glass of wine and come up telling you everything you’d want to know about it. Me, I prefer the smell of the good earth. With it, I can tell you what the cotton crop is looking like this year. The richness and nutrients of the soil outside drift through the air like perfume. The summer heat didn’t scorch the crops too bad this season, and we had ourselves an extra three inches of rain above average this year, just what the cotton wanted. My nose says they had themselves a good harvest this year, and my nose always knows.

  The cotton will all be ginned and bundled now, and that means they’ll be having the Harvest Festival soon, a tradition that takes me back. It used to be the biggest thing in town once upon a time. Oh, but it’s been such a long time since I’ve been to a Harvest Festival. I’m so out of touch with the world I don’t rightly know how things are now, except I know the tradition still continues because I hear talk as it gets closer to festival time and we get a new beauty queen who makes a round every year. I just don’t know if it’s as important to folks as it once was. I like to think so, though. I lie here in bed while memories dance in two-step to the sounds of old country and I recall past festivals, past days. I let myself get a little lost in the memory, it being such a nice one. I wonder if that dead woman is still there? I peek back over at my unwelcome guest to find she’s gone. Good, go haunt somebody who gives a damn, why don’t yah.

  I don’t have nothing to say to dead people anymore, seeing as how they’ve never had anything to say to me. I see them now and again standing around like folks who forgot what they were doing and now can’t remember why they are where they are. Used to scare the beJesus outta me in my younger years, but we can get used to all sorts of things, I suppose. I've gotten use to living in this nursing home, for one. Besides the living patients we've got a few residents still here whose bodies were wheeled out a long time ago. Nobody else seems to notice them, but I see them from time to time, including that one, walking down the halls at night or popping up here and there during the day. First time I saw Faceless was one morning when I woke up and there she was at my window as though she were watching the dawn like I so often do. I couldn't see her face but I remember thinking how pretty her hair was, still so shiny and black without a spot of gray, the proverbial black sheep in this place I guess you could say. She was wearing a white cotton nightgown like some I've seen, so I just figured she was just some lady who had wandered out from her room.

  “You get lost, ma’am?” I asked her. But she didn’t answer.

  “What room you suppose to be in, ma'am?” I asked politely, trying not to startle her. She didn’t even turn, though. Then I thought she have might be one of them Alzheimer's folks that lost her reasoning so I rang for the nurse.

  When she came in I told her in a whisper so as to not offend the lady at the window, “I think this here lady done wandered off from her room.”

  That nurse looked around and asked, “What lady, Mr. Mayfield?”

  I looked back towards the window and she was gone. Well, I knew right away I’d been fooled. Just another dead person, someone who had passed in my room some time back, I figured.

  “Never mind,” I told the nurse. “Must have been a dream that woke up with me.”

  Faceless has been popping up now and again ever since, though. Why on earth she’d be inclined to visit here is beyond me. Seems like one would be glad to be rid of a place like this. Ghosts like her, as I guess there’s not much else to call them, aren’t all the same, either. Some are skittish and are gone in a flash if they realize you can see them, while others seem to seek out company, like Faceless sometimes does. Some look faint, like only shadows of their former selves, while others look so real it seems like they could sit right down and have a conversation with you, though they never do. At least, I've never had one do it. Those ones just look like they still have thoughts, though. And some, though not many as it’s been my experience, can affect things around them. How they affect things can vary. Sometimes it’s just a chill or an odd feeling you can’t quite place, but there are those rare ones than can do a whole lot more.

  Years ago I was in a hotel room on a business trip and I woke up because I felt the mattress get pushed down close by my feet like someone having a sit. At first, I was so sleepy I thought it was my wife getting up to use the restroom, but then I remembered I was in a hotel room and my wife was miles away sleeping in our bed at home. As my mind woke up more, I felt the oddest of sensations.

  The air seemed to be sucked out of the room and stillness fell over it like no sound would ever be heard in that room again. It was like an invisible sponge was sucking everything up . . . the sounds of the air conditioner and the cars mumbling along the highway outside, the dim light through the windows, even the very air itself. They all seemed to draining away into an unseen hole. I’d never felt anything like it. It was like having a hand put over your mouth and suffocating you, except it was placed over the entire room, suffocating everything within. I sat up and despite the retreating light, I could just make out the silhouette of someone sitting at the foot of the bed. They weren’t moving or doing anything, but I knew what it was. I felt more empty and alone than I’d ever felt, and the feeling seemed to be coming not from within me, but from the one sitting on my bed. Everything was still draining away, and then it was darkness. I panicked a bit. It was like being buried alive in that room. I needed light, something warm and friendly that would break the grip that was beginning to choke me. There were some matches by an ashtray on the night stand, so I grabbed one and slid it along the pack watching the little flame jump to life. Its feeble glow pushed back the darkness a little, and right there in front of me was a pale young man, naked as a jaybird but white as alabaster. He looked like a man, but he didn’t feel like one. He was sitting with his back to me, and he could’ve been an ivory statue someone just carved except they’d made a mess of his head. It sunk in on itself and the back h
ad a big chunk missing, revealing a mangled mess of spongy white tissue that I guess was brain. There wasn’t any blood, though. Not a drop. I figured right away that he must have shot himself in that room or something, because whatever happened in there, he never left. He liked to give me a heart attack because he was so much there like a real person, yet he also seemed to be the source of the hole that had consumed all the life out of the room. When the light from the match hit his face he turned towards me and I could see his hollow eyes, like two pools of swirling black ink. A deep depression flowed over me. As he stared at me I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. I felt worse than I’d ever felt. Then he opened his mouth like he was going to say something to me, but the only thing that came out was a plume of smoke like the bullet which had killed him had just sped its course to his end. His gaze trailed from me to the smoke, and it seemed as though he realized for a moment what it all meant. The plume disappeared into nothingness and his hand crept to the back of his head and in his eyes I knew he realized the awful truth . . . he knew what he was, and he knew what I was. He was the ghost, the suicide who had sought and found his death in this room, and I was the living, who saw it now as it had happened then. He looked at me and I saw in his expression true emotions. He was scared, angry, and almost seeming to ask something of me. It was like he wanted help, but wanted to hurt me both at once. The black pools of his eyes seemed to churn a little more furiously and the room swayed a bit. Where he had a moment ago sucked the life out of the room, he now seemed to be filling it back up again with his misery and suffering. Emotions pulsed from him to me like the crashing waves of a storm pounding to shore. I felt his rage, anger, and despair . . . I felt all of it and it hurt something terrible.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. The words came on their own. I meant it, though. Looking at him, young, lost, angry and afraid, still living out his own suicide in this small room, I felt terribly sorry for him. And the things pouring out of him into that room were the stuff of nightmares. I was sorry for whatever had brought him to his end, and I was sorry there wasn’t anything I could do for him. And I wanted him to stop whatever he was doing that was making me feel the way I was feeling. He didn’t, though. It just got worse and worse so fast I couldn’t understand what was happening. I even found myself crying, yet didn’t know why. I’m not a man to cry much in my life, but the horrible things I felt at that moment were just that overpowering. I felt like I’d forgotten what happiness was, that I’d never love or be loved, that I was nothing but a waste upon the world. I truly wanted to kill myself. “I’m sorry,” I told him again. “There’s nothing else I can do but tell you I’m sorry, so you just stop now.” And to my surprise, he did. The despair broke like a fever and I immediately felt more like myself. He tilted his head to the side and looked at me with a strange expression, curiosity, maybe even pity, I didn’t know. I looked back at him, and for a split second I thought maybe our moment counted for something. Maybe I’d reached him in some meaningful way. In the pools of black that were his eyes, I thought I saw a tear form. But when it fell down his sculpture-like face, it was a tear of blood. Then quickly, more fell behind it and beads of blood droplets formed upon his brow and then they, too, ran. His expression had changed to one of immense anger, like he was suddenly very mad I was in his room and intruding on his loathing. I believe now he’d played his game before, with other people in his room, but they couldn’t see him like I did, and he didn’t like being seen for what he was. The next thing I knew that ghost covered in blood was lunging at me. I thought he was attacking me and I threw my hands up in defense with a flinch, but all I felt was the mattress bounce a little, and when I opened my eyes again he’d disappeared. The room was as it had been before his visit, and not a drop of blood soiled the comforter. He was gone. Thirty seconds later, so was I, thankful I hadn’t been torn apart, and thankful he had lifted from me whatever curse he held in that place. Remembering that one used to keep me up nights, and I’m sure he’s still sittin’ on that bed in the darkness, going over his last moments again and again. And if there’s been an unusual number of suicides in that room over the years . . . well, I just try not to think about such things anymore. I’ve read about possessions and the like in the Good Book, and while he didn’t jump in my body and run me around, I think I know now what possession really is. King Saul himself was haunted by a troubled spirit that made him feel murderous. I’ve never really spoken of it to other people, but there’s no convincing me it wasn’t a spirit like what’s in that hotel room that the Good Book was talking about when it said “unclean spirits”, and that possession is when they fill you up with their own misery.

  That was a long time ago, though. I’m old now. Too old to be worrying about ghosts who are trapped in their own despair, and I've seen more of his kind since then, though none as bad. The only thing I’ve learned from the angry spirits is to steer clear of them, because there are ways they can hurt you even if they don’t physically lay hands upon you.

  Most of the ones I’ve come across are less temperamental. I even used to try to talk to them. It became somewhat of an obsession of mine to get a ghost to say at least one word to me. Just once I wanted to hear a voice from one of them. I wanted to find one that talked and sit them down for a nice long conversation about all the things I didn’t understand. In fact, at the peak of my obsession, if I did come upon a ghost I’d start chasing them down yelling, "Come talk to me! Come on, say something!" That got a reaction, I can tell yah. The ghosts who seemed to be really there didn't know what to do, what with some crazed living person barreling down on them demanding conversation. Most would be gone in a blink. Others would stick around for a moment and look at me as though I was the oddity and that I wasn't talking a normal language. Then they, too, would fade out like a fart in the wind.

  My little obsession went on like that for years before I gave up on trying to talk with the dead. I figured if I didn’t give it up, I was going to end up in an institution doing finger paintings all day. I don’t reckon they can talk, since I’ve never heard one. They can affect, though, and sometimes they let that speak for them. He never said a word, but I heard that young man in that hotel room loud and clear.

  That’s about all I have to say about the dead, I guess. I’ve lived a long life, seen a lot of things, and that’s pretty much the extent of what I’ve learned about them, which is to say not very much. They’re just another nuisance these days, anyway, as it’s not the dead that keeps me up but the living. There’s a man next door to mine that moans and groans all hours he’s awake and the lady across the hall sounds like she’s spitting up a lung when her acid reflux kicks into gear. This getting old thing sure is a bothersome business, and I'm no longer getting there. I've arrived, unpacked, and been settled so long you can smell old on me. My grandkids say it's something between mouthwash and mothballs. At least I haven’t started making old people noises, like the moaner and the spitter-upper. You get used to it, though. It’s just plum amazing what you can get used to after you’ve been around it a long time.

  Now that Faceless is gone I reckon I’d better go on and get outta bed. I gotta take a leak but I was waiting for her to leave me be. I’m a bit bladder shy, whether the one watching is alive or not. It’s nearly six thirty and they'll be serving breakfast soon, and I don’t want my eggs to be cold. I know they’ll be soggy, they’re always soggy, but at least they won’t be cold. Luckily, I can still move myself around. It’s not pretty, but I can still haul my old bag of bones about the place without a wheelchair or one of those IV things on rollers trailing after me. The tile is cold as I shuffle into the bathroom and as I'm relieving myself I catch a glimpse of the man in the mirror. I have to wonder, who’s this stranger looking back? Damn, but don‘t he look old. This mirror must be broken. I give a big smile and stick my tongue out at myself. The teeth are yellowed, the gums receding so much my teeth look like I yanked them from a horse’s mouth, but they’re mine. How many eighty-seven year olds can sa
y that? Not many in this place, I can say that much. I look at the person looking back at me and didn’t expect his face to ever look so old and worn. It creeps up on you, old age. You look over your shoulder and it's stalking you from about twenty or thirty years out, then the next thing you know it's sinking its teeth in you. Your body starts staging a revolt and hairs start popping out of your ears. They crawl back into your skin on your head leaving you bald and then start crawling back out in the weirdest of places. Then you get more lines on your face than a highway map. I study him now and wonder where the man I once knew has gone. His gray hair is receding far back and the bald spot on top of his head is shiny from the reflection of light. Undoubtedly that spot is where the ear hairs came from. There was a time when the hair was thick and black as midnight. The skin that once was tanned and unblemished with youth now hangs loosely on the body, like a suit that once fit perfectly until the man lost too much weight and shrunk into himself. It’s spotted now, too, as though it needs a good cleaning. But soap won’t clean these blotches away. Years ago his skin held tightly, like a fine wrapping to the gift of youth. Now it is thin and frail like silk. The slightest bump and it bruises like an over-ripe plum.

  His face is weathered and creased. I make funny faces sometimes, like now, just to watch the wrinkles fold in and out. I can do the most uncanny impression of a Pug, those wrinkly faced dogs, without even moving a muscle. I can’t remember first seeing these wrinkles. It’s like they were always there and just got more noticeable with age. I know there was a time they weren’t there, though, because I can remember a different reflection staring back at me from behind the glass. This body’s the same old house that time has redecorated. I heard someone say that once long time ago and damn if it ain’t the truth.

  Back in my room I get my slippers on and my mind quiets a bit. The only other sound in the room besides me is the groan of the air conditioning that is set much too cold for normal people to enjoy. It’s a window unit and I walk over to see that it is set as I imagined, full blast and cold as it will go. I set it like that at night because I like the warmth of the blankets in contrast to the cold. Makes me sleep better. My daughter-in-law walked right over and turned it off last visit, rubbing her arms and saying, “Lord, Papaw, don’t you have any blood in you anymore?” I asked her how that there menopause was treating her and she got red and didn’t say no more. I've still got a few snappy comebacks rattling around upstairs. The wiring's old but the lights are still on, by God, and I'll freeze an Eskimo outta here if I feel like it. Air conditioning was such a novel luxury item the first time I lived in a house that had one. I can still remember how annoying it used to be trying to get to sleep when it's ninety degrees in your bedroom. Yes sir, air conditioning is one of the greatest things mankind has ever invented, and I intend to make the most of it in my old age. And who knows? Maybe if it’s like a fridge box I’ll be preserved longer and won’t have to worry about what kind of spirit I’ll end up making. Come to think of it, to hell with that idea. I don't want to keep on going until I can't do anything for myself like so many others here. It's better to check out early with most things working than later when you can't do for yourself. Of course, I suppose letting a nurse like that leggy tan one give me a sponge bath wouldn't be the end of the world. I see bed-ridden Mr. Collins smiling his toothless grin every Thursday morning over his breakfast when I walk by, and I just know it’s because Thursdays are the days he gets a sponge bath from her. I know firsthand a man doesn’t get that happy about eating oatmeal. Over the top of my air conditioner is that window that looks out on the street and houses outside, down to the cotton fields that seem to go on and on.