Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories (11 page)

I saw places from my childhood restored.
Sam’s Diner and the movie theater were back. The little shopping
mall the town officials had torn down for a Wal-Mart in 1990 was
still there. Same with Chester Bailey’s farm that had become
Wal-Mart’s parking lot.

I hurried away from Ridgewood and headed back
to New Cambridge. Along the way, I wondered what would happen to me
if my out-of-place car and I were discovered by the state police.
Nowhere on the highway looked safe, so I drove the back roads
toward New Cambridge and home.

Night came early as stormy clouds quickened
the darkness. When I returned to the highway for the final three
miles home, I could tell by the large round and yellow headlights
that passed me that I was not getting closer to where I wanted to
be. The strangeness had reached New Cambridge and I saw that the BP
filling station where I fueled up every weekend had changed its
square green and yellow signs to red and blue oval ones with AMOCO
AMERICAN GAS in white letters across their blue centers. Amoco’s
gas was 47.9 cents for a gallon of regular, and I laughed like a
loon as I turned on the road to home and drove toward the house I
knew would not be there. It wasn’t.

The road I was on came to a dead end next to
the creek that wound its way behind where my home would someday
stand surrounded by walnut and maple trees with a dog house and two
swing sets and three tire swings below. Someday, three children
would grow up at this undeveloped property. Andrew would go to
college and become a sculptor and teach college art classes at San
Diego, California. The twins, Haley and Becca would become geology
and nursing students respectively at New Cambridge University, and
Becca would fall in love with a guy that her old man would think
wore too many tattoos on his arms.

After I stopped laughing at the absurdity, I
cried. After I cried, I sat alone trying to figure out what to do
next. For sanity’s sake, I knew I had to find someone and some
place familiar. The once beautiful woods that I loved had now
become ominous tree shapes silhouetted by a large spooky looking
moon drifting in and out of view by dissipating storm clouds.

I turned around and drove toward downtown New
Cambridge not sure of where I was going but wanting to see a
familiar place. I started over the railroad tracks on Dearborn
Avenue when I realized that the signal lights were flashing
red.

When had they started using the abandoned
railroad again?

That was my only thought when the train
struck my car and shattered my world and me.

Now, I’m broken, alone, a prisoner to cruel
and sinister circumstances that have left me in a vegetative state,
making me unable to communicate to the medical people around me. I
am Patient John Doe, nobody; no one knows who I am. I left my
wallet on the dresser where Carrie has no idea that I’m here,
trapped in the past.

A feeding tube and ventilator keep me
alive.

God, take away my misery.

#

Ghost Lights

CHARLES DONOHUE FELL. He was on his back and for a
moment he thought he was floating. Raindrops hung in the silver air
all around him, which seemed weird because rocky cliff sides were
rushing past him and upwards. He closed his eyes.

His sudden plummet into wet and bristly
boughs of pine and spruce trees jarred his senses and caused him to
open his eyes to his green attackers.

He tumbled from limb to limb, snapping small
branches with his grabbing hands as he searched dizzyingly for one
that would stop his fall. But the rain on every branch was like
oil. He slipped through them quickly, too heavy to be cradled like
the goldfinches that had been there seconds ago, roosting from the
rain. As the birds flew noisily off, his left hip made contact with
solid ground before his forehead did.

His landing was bristly, yet softer than he
expected. Still, he saw stars and the air had been knocked from his
lungs. He rolled over on his back, lying on an almost dry mattress
of pine needles, and gasped for air until his lungs and stomach
hurt. When his breathing became normal, he closed his eyes and
rested. When he opened them, his head, lungs and stomach ached
less, and the storm had lessened, though cold rain dripped on him
through the towering canopy of pine and spruce branches stretched
over him.

It was the rain that had caused him to slip
on the smooth marble stone atop Myers Ridge and fall off the edge.
If Melissa had been there he probably wouldn’t have ventured so
close to the edge.

A whooshing sound caught his attention. It
was far off, but definitely the sound of an automobile’s rubber
tires passing over State Highway 497’s blacktop, or what the locals
had named Russell Road.

How strange, he thought, that a vehicle was
able to operate this close to Myers Ridge despite the high level of
electronic disturbance he had found. He slowly took out his cell
phone from his buttoned-down shirt pocket and prayed that the slim
black phone would work. It did not. Of course it didn’t. That was
one of the reasons why he, professor of sciences at the nearby Penn
State campus, was here: to find whatever was jamming electronic
devices on and around Myers Ridge.

He put away his phone, then turned his head
to get his bearings when pain knifed through his lower back and
left hip. His left leg was numb and upon slow inspection, looked
twisted at the knee and ankle. He took his time and used pine
branches to pull himself into a seated position so he could examine
his leg. It didn’t feel broken, but the kneecap was out of place.
He held his breath and yanked the patella back where it belonged.
Pain shot up his leg and a sick heat filled his stomach; he almost
vomited. He hiccupped instead and sent pain stabbing through his
lower back and down his leg. He fell back, cried out like some
wounded animal, and felt ashamed.

When he could tolerate the pain again, he sat
up again. The valley felt colder. Another bout of rain began to
fall. It was June and the day had been sunny and warm, but now he
wished he would have worn a jacket—or a long-sleeved shirt, at
least. Melissa would have reminded him to bring a jacket.

A spring-like chill latched onto him and
attacked his leg with mind-reeling pain. He closed his eyes and
waited for the red behind his lids to leave. When the pain subsided
and he opened his eyes, lightning blinked in the distance; thunder
laughed at him from above.

It was late in the evening, perhaps eight
o’clock. His watch had stopped at the same time his car had stalled
upon his arrival that morning. He pulled his legs up until his
knees were below his chin, and then he gently worked on his twisted
ankle, hoping it wasn’t dislocated. It wasn’t. He straightened his
legs and felt the left kneecap lurch out of place again. He undid
his pants, lowered them past his knees, and saw that the patella
had shifted left again. Once more, he held his breath, forced the
kneecap into place again, and screamed from the pain. What else
could he do?

Upon examination, he saw that the skin at his
hip had darkened to the brownish-purple color of eggplant. He
babied his hip along with his swelling knee and ankle while he
hitched up his pants and tried to stand, but the pain roared
unbearable in his knee again and brought him down. He searched the
ground for a branch long enough to use as a crutch. He found none,
so he rolled onto his buttocks, and, using his good leg, he crawled
backward toward the highway. Every slide across the ground felt
like his lower leg was being torn from the damaged knee.

An hour later, or as best he estimated—he had
crawled and rested six times and daylight was almost gone now—he
reached the stream that feeds into Myers Creek north of Ridgewood.
He rolled onto his good side and drank. Much of his strength
returned as soon as the cold water filled his stomach. A noise in
the brush reminded him it was time to move on. He crawled into the
stream’s icy water and urinated for what seemed like several
minutes. Then he crawled onward. The stream’s stone bottom sliced
his elbows, and its chill clawed into his hip and knee and caused
his whole leg to scream out in pain. When he climbed the embankment
on the other side of the stream, enormous lightning flashed. For a
moment, night became day. He saw that he had reached the wooded
edge. A sloping field ran uphill. He was certain that the highway
was on the other side.

When he reached the hilltop, he saw that the
highway did indeed run along the valley, perhaps two hundred yards
away. He looked for houses, a farm, anywhere there might be people.
But this part of Ridgewood was desolate. His car, he estimated, was
two miles south—a long way to crawl.

His cell phone still would not work. In his
shirt’s other pocket was his digital recorder that he had brought
along to take notes. The recorder worked now, which puzzled him.
What was so different between the two electronic devices that one
worked and the other didn’t?

“The batteries,” he said “I’ll have to
experiment that.”

As he began to put away the recorder, he saw
a column of silver fog settle upon the field between him and the
highway. It stood, almost opaque, part of it swirling, sometimes
pulsating with dim red light inside and yellow light along its
narrow top that at times looked almost like a human head surrounded
by a halo. Donohue pressed the record button. He said, “I speak
this alone somewhere within the outer bowels of Myers Ridge.
Hopefully I will survive the night to get this to publication.

“Myers Ridge is a large succession of hills
outside of the town of Ridgewood. Recently, I became aware of
electrical problems here, mainly car engines stalling and cell
phones and digital cameras not working. At the same time, I heard
reports about mysterious fog formations and red and yellow lights
seen at night. My colleagues are, without evidence, claiming that
these formations are hallucinations, downright lies, or at best:
luminous protean clouds rising from deep within the hill.”

The fog shifted. Donohue held his breath.
When nothing more happened, he said, “Long before Ridgewood was
founded, the indigenous people here told tales of a cloud person
with three red hearts and a head of gold that visited them after an
earthquake.

“Another quake was recorded in 1702. A
European settler, when upon viewing a strange fog in his potato
field, killed his wife and two children and stuffed them in the
belly of a slaughtered cow.”

The fog shifted again and stopped. It made no
advancement.

“It’s been centuries since that earthquake
and the one we had earlier this year. I believe the fog and the
quakes are related somehow. Perhaps the fog was released from
underground by the quakes.”

The fog shifted. Its red lights inside became
brighter until Donohue saw that the lights were three distinct
pulsating objects.

“Like living organs,” he said. Then to his
recorder: “Daylight is almost gone. I am viewing now, as best as I
can, what I believe is one of these cloud creatures.” He stopped.
Why had he called it a creature? Why hadn’t he called it a
subject?

“Are those hearts?” His hand holding the
recorder trembled. So did his shoulders, sending small wattages of
pain through his lower back and leg.

“A chill is gripping me,” he said. “I need
warmth.” He once more tried his cell phone. This time he cursed,
his anger directed at the fog.

“You’re the reason no advanced electrical
gadget will work. What are you? Speak to me, damn it. WHAT ARE
YOU?”

The fog remained pulsating but otherwise
still.

Donohue shivered and cried out from the pain.
He closed his eyes until the excruciation abated. When he looked
down the hill, the fog was still there, its red lights pulsating
faster, brighter. Around it, for several feet, the grass and ground
looked dry. More than that, it looked warm and inviting.

Donohue shivered and cried out again. The he
crawled backward, inching his way to the warmth.

The fog stood motionless, waiting.

Donohue crawled to within a few feet from the
fog. Its heat felt like summer sunlight on a wintry day. It entered
his wet clothes, steamed his back and felt good.

He inched closer. His hip stopped throbbing.
He felt his knee mending. He crawled closer still; he needed more
of what the creature was giving him. He crawled to within inches
from the fog, did a crabwalk as he turned to face the fog, and
looked inside, past the pulsating organs. There, he saw a heavenly
place he wanted to be at. And despite what his scientific mind said
as he stood and entered, he saw that it was real.

#

A Haunting

WHAT A CRIME it felt to Reverend Gloria Jackson to
believe such a beautiful house could be haunted. To know the place,
it looked no different from any other Victorian country house in
Ridgewood, Pennsylvania. As Gloria walked the sunny grounds that
October evening, she sensed the leftover energy of a time when
wealthy Victorians spent an incredible amount of time socializing
inside their homes. In Victorian America, nothing displayed one’s
status like their house, and the house of a successful Victorian
family was more than merely a home; it was a statement of their
taste, wealth, and education.

Fiona Bay’s house was one of them, preserved
to remain impressive through time by superb craftsmanship and great
care. Standing in front of Gloria and surrounded by a neatly
manicured lawn and shrubbery that sprawled over half an acre, the
stately house seemed at first glance the most unlikely of places to
house demonic spirits.

“Fiona was calling forth the dead,” Melissa
Bay told Gloria after dinner later that Friday night. Melissa, a
strong-backed woman, sat across from Gloria at the long table.
Richard sat to Melissa’s right inside the spacious dining room.