Drt (13 page)

We entered the door and were now in a small room, barely enough room for the both of us. There was a table in the middle with a crystal ball. We sat down on one side.
 

Sylvia leaned in and whispered, “I swear to God, if she appears-”

I heard a pop and large puff of smoke materialized in front of us. It hung in the air, and then dissipated revealing someone who was fighting to get out from behind the curtain. The fortune teller tried to shake herself free of the fabric, it was clear one of her dangling earrings had hooked onto the curtain. She finally freed herself and sat down.

“How embarrassing.”

Sylvia and I just sat there awkwardly.

“Well, you’re here for a reading, not a magic show. So what’s the problem?”

“I think someone is trying to send me a message.”

“Okay, well, let me see that credit card of yours.”

“Of course.”

She took my card and swiped it through an attachment on her phone. “Okay, now sign that with your finger, please.”

I took the phone from her and signed my name on the screen.

“Thank you so much,” she said, looking at the phone, “Gerry.”

“Greg.”

“Whatever. So you need to know a message, huh? I can help you with that. Is the message from someone close to you?”

“No.”

“Someone who knows you?”

“No.”

“Someone you work with?”

“No.”

“Someone you dated?”

“No.”

“Someone who did work for you?”

“No.”

“Uh…who is it?”

“A dead man, I feel responsible for his death.”

“Okay, not the weirdest I’ve ever heard but we can work with it.”
 

The fortune teller picked up a plastic key fob from the table and pressed it. The lights went immediately dim and the crystal ball lit up.

“You’ve gotta be kid-” Sylvia murmured behind me.

“I need total silence,” said the fortune teller shooting Sylvia an annoyed look before she closed her eyes. “Mmmm…yes. Yes, I am starting to see it. This person who you need to talk to, does his name start with a ‘D’ sound?”

“No.”

“Hold on, a ‘P’ sound”

“No.”

“Kind of like a ‘P’ sound?”

“Not really.”

“Well, what is it?”

“His name is Jerry.”

“Oh. Oh ok. That explains it. Yes, Jerry has a message for you.”

“What does he need me to do?”

“Hold on. Now did Jerry have a job?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. His life, he drove didn’t he?”

“Yes! He was a truck driver! Wow.”

“Yeah, I am getting a clearer picture. Did he…did he have…a face?”

Sylvia slapped her forehead.

“Yes,” I replied, “he had a face.”

“Okay, the message is, I am getting a clear picture now. John’s message-”

“Jerry.”

“Yes, Jerry’s message is you need to move on with your life. Yes, he says you are thinking about his death too much and you need to get over it. That is the message of Jerry.”

“So he isn’t going to kill me in three days?”

The fortune teller opened her eyes. “What?”

“So Jerry doesn’t want to kill me anymore?”

“Are you a murderer, Craig?”

“It’s Greg, and no.”

“Then don’t worry about it. A ghost can’t hurt you unless you’ve killed someone.”

My blood ran cold. Jerry held me responsible for his death. “Is he saying anything else?”

The fortune teller closed her eyes, “Yes…something else is coming through.”

“What is it?”

“That’ll be another fifty.”

Sylvia was already out of her chair. “Okay, Greg, we’re leaving. Thank you very much, ma’am.” She opened the door and left the room. I followed her out into the street.

“But maybe she knew something else, Sylvia.”

“Look, Greg, I’m just going to say it. All of this stuff is in your head.”

“But what if it isn’t? She said that the ghost can hurt me if I’m responsible for a death…and I am!”

“You are just having some trouble processing a terrible trauma. That’s all. You feel guilty. You need to do whatever you can to stop feeling that guilt.”

She was right, and I knew it.

“But I’m not telling you what to do, Greg.”

“So you’re saying I just need to forgive myself?”

“I’m saying that you need to forgive yourself for a lot more than just Jerry. I’m guessing that there is more troubling you than what you’re telling me.”

“…Yes.”

“I’m really sorry but I have an appointment I need to get to.”
 

“I understand.”

“We should do this again. Can you call me later?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay walking back to the Metro station?”

“Yeah, which way do you have to go?”

“I have to go grab the red line; I’m going toward the zoo.”

“Okay.”

“Think about what I said. I can be whatever you need me to be.”

“Thank you.”
 

She smiled and put her warm hands on my shoulders. “Everything is all right. Okay?” I believed her. She turned and started walking toward the zoo. “Don’t forget to call me,” she said over her shoulder, before waves of cars and people obscured her from sight.

17

I felt like I had reached an impasse. My little Hardy Boys adventures made me feel better for the last couple of days. I felt important and smart in ways that I hadn’t felt in years. I was talking to people, figuring things out. I felt useful and it seemed like Sylvia cared about me. I had all of these things because I was investigating the death of Jerry Morris but I was wondering if it was all in my head.

I maneuvered out of the open door of the train and squeezed through shoulders on the platform to the escalator. I found my car in the complex and ignited the engine. I felt empty. The events of the last couple of days had made me feel different in some way and this absence was very noticeable on the drive back to my house. The shadow of a possible unseen disaster had been replaced by an assured one that awaited me in three days. For some reason, knowing the future made everything easier.
 

But Sylvia had introduced an idea that that hadn’t occurred to me. What if all of this wasn’t real? She had sounded almost dismissive, about the ghost, the guilt, everything. If all of those problems were merely branches off of the same tree, then acknowledging the anxiety over events I couldn’t control meant the ghost would go away. I had met with Sylvia with the intention to talk about the method of removing Mr. Morris from my company forever but instead it seemed like Sylvia had something different in mind.

She asked about my anxiety, my fears. She asked about why I felt the way I did. All her questions led to the same path. Jerry Morris was not my problem. I was my problem.
 

When I considered this, I felt foolish. I thought that the trips to Dumfries and Rockville Pike to gather evidence seemed time now woefully ill advised. What was Sylvia’s original intent to send me on these errands? Was it merely to placate me into a moment where I would think about the real causes of these visions? I didn’t have an answer and the thought hung in my head.
 

It was right then, on the drive home from seeing Sylvia Barrio that I realized the error. I hadn’t been good at anything in life and you could now add self-diagnosis to the list. I was having anxiety attacks, not being haunted by the ghost of a crash I may or may not have caused.

There was a voice inside my head, standing on that sidewalk in Adams Morgan, where I wanted to lean in and kiss Sylvia. I wanted to lean forward and press my lips against hers. I thought that she would have liked it, why else was she touching my shoulders? She had looked into my eyes and my fear made me miss the moment.
 

I put the car in park in front of home and turned off the engine. The thought of kissing Sylvia Barrio was dominating my thoughts and hopes as I walked across the lawn. I thought about pulling her close, smelling her hair. I thought about how to kiss. I had been longer than I could remember since I had even tried. I had forgotten how to kiss and how to abandon myself in someone’s arms. I thought of how kissing used to feel and how much I used to love the feeling, that feeling of being safe, cared about. I swung open the door in this trance but was immediately shaken from it when my lungs filled with exhaust.

The ghost grabbed my neck and slammed me against the door. I was nose to nose with Jerry Morris. My room was gone and I was again in the black void with the blinking yellow light. The ghost’s impossibly bloodshot eyes burned into me with murderous intent. I wondered if he had sensed my doubt that he was real.
 

I blinked. When my eyes opened, nothing was left of Jerry but a skull. There was a vicious flame that twisted and danced complete and horrifying in the vacuous space where the eyes had once been. Red bits of flesh were hanging as if applied by a spatter brush at a distance. The skull jaw dropped open and a god-awful sound emerged, high pitched and demonic.

I blinked again, if only in defense of this nightmarish image and flesh returned to Jerry’s cheeks. But the mouth was still open, screaming, and he was putting pressure on my neck.

I tried to stay strong. I thought about Sylvia. I wanted to make her proud. I wanted to show her, and myself, that I could stand up to my anxieties.

I sucked in the thick exhaust and yelled at the top of my voice, “You’re not real! I’m imagining you because I feel guilty!”
 

Blink, back to the skull, blink, flesh again. Each time I blinked the view changed. My imagination was taking this a bit far in my opinion.
 

The ghost kept his grip. It looked down for a moment. It was searching. Then he started making a noise I had never heard come out of him before. It was a faraway sound, filled with despair, a hopeless, miserable cry. I heard the sobs of Jerry Morris echoed and desperate to communicate. I did not understand, nor could anyone, the effort it took for Jerry Morris to communicate at all.
 

I tried again to dispel this figment of my paranoia. “All I have to do is convince myself you aren’t real and you will disappear. I am just imagining you.”

The room suddenly grew darker. The figure that was Jerry Morris was again dropped into shadow. His eyes glowed red and bright, burning through the darkness. I felt the lights on my cheek, hot and evil. My skin dried from the heat. The ghost held a silhouette of its hand up and pointed an index finger at my face.
 

The skin on my cheek popped open like a party favor and tiny rivulets of blood ran down my face. The sensation filled me with horror. The ghost dragged its index finger through the air and my skin split making a popping sound as it went.
 

I screamed and fought the ghost as it tore my face apart. I struggled against it but I might as well have been pushing against a solid brick wall. There was no give, no softness. There was nothing there. I screamed with total abandon, but my vocal cords only bubbled and swelled in my throat, causing my airway to become impossibly tight.
 

As I dragged in another breath, a breath that I felt could possibly be my last, I cried, “What do you want me to do? YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!”
 

A clawed hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. I was pressed against the black void where the door had been. The hand gripped my head and forced me hard against the surface.
 

Then even the surface disappeared and the house across the street faded into view. It was lit like a bright summer day and stood out in the storm of darkness around it. It was precisely as far away as it would have been if I had opened the door.

A little girl sat on the porch. She had long, tangly blond hair. The look on her face was despondent. Her cheeks looked like she had been crying. In my memory, there was a cop. He tapped on my window the same day as the accident.
 

“Do you know Leigh Ann Morris?”

“No.”

Well, the address brought me here,” he turned and looked at the house across the street, “but nobody’s answering. Do you know what time they’ll be home?”

Jerry’s daughter was sitting on the porch, Hayleigh. The Morris family lived across the street from me, proving my mother right again.

“OKAY!” I screamed.

The darkness was sucked from the room as if there was a drain in the floor. I fell from what felt like a great height and landed on the hardwood. The contents of the room returned as if they had been covered in a black shroud that was pulled away.
 

I sat on the floor and took giant panic breaths. I tried desperately to corral the feeling. I swallowed. I rubbed my hip in the spot where I fell and felt the warmth of a bruise begin to form. I sat on the floor trying to collect myself and blink away the tears.
 

I clung to Sylvia’s words from earlier, this was just another episode, it wasn’t real. It was all just in my head. I thought about calling her to tell her what just happened. Maybe if I talked to Sylvia I could figure out what triggered it. Maybe I could finally get this under control.

While I thought that, I looked at the floor beneath where I sat. Small drops of blood were falling from my face and staining the wood. The blood spots spread on impact and dried dark.

I lifted one of my hands and wiped my cheek. I felt the sting. I pulled my hand down in front of my eyes and saw a palm-full of blood, clotting and sticky. The ghost was real.

The room was suddenly alive with that sound, that high and low pitched sound that defied logic, a voice from an unseen source that filled the room and shook the walls. The walls inhaled and exhaled at the vibrations as my eyes filled with tears.
 

“THREE DAYS.”

18

I knocked.

Footsteps sounded beyond the door. The mechanism inside the knob turned the latch and the door cracked slightly as the kiss of the insulation smacked like opening a refrigerator. A skinny man stood on the other side of the door. He was slightly taller than me with tan skin and a smile on his face. His black hair was thick and curly, cascading on both sides from the part down the middle of his head. He wore a tight shirt and jeans, with a large oval belt buckle.