Slow Dance in Purgatory (4 page)

             
"My hero," Maggie whispered dryly.

             
The heavy door swung inward, and Gus stepped out into the hallway and flipped on the switch, illuminating the long expanse as the lights flickered to life. 

             
"You moppin’ in the dark, Miss Margaret?"

             
"It wasn't dark when I started, Gus!"  Maggie huffed out, and then smiled a little when she realized the old man was teasing her, trying to distract her from her nerves.

             
"Helloooo down there!"  Gus called out, his voice ricocheting off the lockers.  He walked down the hallway as if he had all day, Maggie on his heels.  There was no sign of anyone, and the hallway felt empty now, with no unnatural hush or sinister silence.

             
"I don't think anyone's here, Miss Margaret.  They probably slipped out when you left," Gus said matter-of-factly.  "Where's the mop and bucket?  You sure did make quick work of this hallway.  It looks good, too.  I thought it'd take you a lot longer."

             
The hallway was shiny, clean smelling, and freshly wet.  The entire hallway was completely finished.  Maggie gasped and whirled around, spotting her mop and bucket neatly waiting next to the exit door.  She had left the mop splayed in a messy heap, and the bucket had been about a third of the way down the hall.  Someone had finished her work.  It couldn't have taken her more than ten minutes to return with Gus.  Probably even less than that, yet the huge hallway was definitely freshly mopped.  It would have taken Maggie another hour to finish, at least.
             

             
"But…" Maggie stuttered and then stopped.  Had she done more than she thought?  Or maybe the person she'd seen had felt badly that he had scared her and finished for her.  No.  That was just plain weird.  But she didn't have another answer.

             
Gus was already walking back toward her bucket and mop, and Shad was probably already down the stairs.  Maggie didn't wait around to ponder the mystery further.  There was no way she was staying in that hallway one more minute.  She helped Gus return the bucket and mop to the third floor maintenance closet, and they left the school without saying anything more about Maggie's intruder.  Gus tossed her bike into the back of his rickety truck, and the three of them filed into the cab and headed to Maggie's house where dinner was surely waiting.  

             
It wasn't until later that night, as Maggie drifted off to sleep, that she remembered the music.  There was no music playing anywhere else in the school when she had run from the hallway.  There was no music playing when she returned with Gus.  After that, it took Maggie a very long time to fall asleep.

***

             
The day after Maggie’s parents died, she’d seen her mother standing beside her bed, looking down at her.  For a moment, she had even felt her mother’s hand in her hair, and she forgot that she was alone in the world, that her parents were gone.  It had been only for a second, but Maggie had not been asleep.  She had immediately run out into the hallway and down into the room where her parent’s friends were huddled with coffee, deciding what to do with her.  Nobody believed her when she told them she had seen her mom.

            About two weeks after she’d been placed in her second foster home, Maggie had seen a little boy playing with miniature cars on the rug in her “new” room.  She had mentioned it to her foster mother, asking her who the little boy was.  The woman had locked herself in her room for the rest of the day, and though she’d been kind to Maggie initially, after that she barely looked at her.  Apparently there was no little boy.  At least there hadn’t been for two years.  Her new foster parents had lost a child, a three-year-old boy, when he had drowned in a neighbor’s hot tub.  Maggie hadn’t remained in their home for very long.

            Once at a public library, Maggie had asked a busy librarian if there was tutoring available at any time during the week.  The librarian had been juggling books and had held a pencil between her teeth.  She hadn’t responded to Maggie’s question or even looked at Maggie when Maggie spoke, and when one of the books tumbled from the librarian’s hand, Maggie stooped to retrieve it, only to have the book shimmer like a mirage and blink from her sight.  She’d rubbed her eyes vigorously and reached for her glasses where they were perched on her head.  When she had stood again the librarian was gone.  On the way out of the library that day, she had noticed a framed picture of the busy librarian who had rudely ignored her.  It was sitting on a table next to a jar filled with dollar bills and coins.  A large poster next to the jar said “Please give to the Janet March memorial fund.”

             There had been other times when Maggie had seen people who others could not, but with the exception of her mom that long ago morning, the people she saw had been unaware of her, almost as if they weren’t really there at all, like Maggie was simply watching a re-run of them doing something they had done many times in life.  Maggie didn’t know why she could see these little moments caught in time, but she could, and she did.   It wasn’t ever anything that scared her or felt threatening to her.   Whatever she was seeing was long past and completely unrelated to her – again, like watching a snippet of a stranger’s home movie.

             
When she had first moved in with Irene, she had been careful to check to see if her room had been mostly unused.  She didn’t want a room inhabited by a ghost, even if that ghost was just a cosmic loop of energy stamped on the space.  Aunt Irene had given her a few options, and Maggie had chosen the smallest room tucked in the highest eve of the house.  Aunt Irene said the room had been used only for storage.  Imagine her dismay, then, to be startled awake late one night to find Irene’s late husband in her room.

             
  Maggie hadn’t seen her uncle except for a handful of times, but she had known immediately that it was him.  Roger Carlton had gotten quite portly in his old age; he drank too much, overate, and never got any exercise.  Add in a surly disposition, an explosive temper, and a wasted life, and it hadn’t been a huge surprise that he’d succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of 71.

             
The sighting only lasted a minute or two.  He was just standing at the end of her bed, and she swallowed her scream, shoving her fist in her mouth and trying to make herself as small as possible.  Roger didn’t react to her fear or raise his head at all.  He held a large book in his palms and was reading intently, holding it close to his face as he peered out from under his ghostly specs.  Then he was gone. 

             
The next morning, she considered finding a different room to move into, but knew that the odds of seeing “Uncle” Roger again were probably the same, wherever she went.  After all, he had lived in the house for almost fifty years.  He had left his fingerprints in every room.  Fortunately, the episode had not repeated itself.  Maggie wondered if that was what had happened the night before in the hallway at the school.  Maybe she had seen one of her ghostie moments, as she called them.  Giving them a cute name made her feel more normal and made the episodes less jarring.

            “That must be it,” Maggie said out-loud as she rolled out of bed and dug around for her slippers.  “That school is as old as the hills.  It’s a miracle I haven’t seen a whole ghostie mini-series in that place.”

             
Maggie laughed at her own lame joke, but knew there were several big holes in her theory.  Her past experiences seeing ghosts had never involved blaring music or chores being miraculously completed.  Most of the other ‘ghosts’ had never been aware of her at all.  This one had been startled…and somewhat aggressive.  Maggie didn’t want to think about it anymore, so she pushed the unsettling event to the far corners of her tired teenage brain and headed off for morning dance practice.

3

“GONE”

Ferlin Huskey - 1957

August, 1958

            Johnny watched them cover his brother’s body with a white sheet.  Johnny raged and argued with the doctor, demanding that he do something.  The doc didn’t even flinch when Johnny got in his face and screamed.  Roger Carlton, that bastard, stood huddled with his parents not far from where the doc, who also apparently moonlighted as the county coroner, declared Billy dead.  The police were questioning Roger about the gun, which was conveniently still clutched in Billy’s right hand, and about the large blood stain on the floor where Johnny had lain.  Where Johnny’s body should have been but wasn’t.

            “What did you see after they fell over the balcony, son?” the Police Chief repeated the question he had already asked Roger at least once.

            “I told you!  Billy was waving the gun around.  I heard it go off, and I’m pretty sure he shot Johnny.  Johnny grabbed Billy, and they fell over and landed right there!  I saw them both lying there.”  Roger waved his hand toward where they were loading Billy’s body on a wheeled gurney.  “Neither of them was moving.  I didn’t know what to do.  That’s when I ran out front for help.”

            “So where do you think Johnny is?” Chief Bailey asked Roger again.

            “I don’t know!  Why don’t you all go look for him?” Roger yelled, frustrated. His parents shushed and patted, and his father’s face got red as he stepped between the chief and his rattled son.

            “Chief Bailey, he’s told you what he knows.  The Kinross boy obviously wasn’t as hurt as his brother.  He’s obviously run off somewhere.  He’s probably afraid he’s going to get in trouble.”

            “Hmmm.  I guess that could be it, Mayor,” Chief Bailey replied deferentially, “but that’s an awfully big puddle of blood, and it obviously didn’t come from Billy Kinross.  Doc said the fall probably broke Billy’s neck, killing him instantly.  There was a little blood beneath Billy’s head, and he had blood on his shirt, probably from his brother falling against him, but nowhere else.  Plus, you would think if Johnny Kinross walked on out of here, he’d have left a pretty good trail, considering the amount of blood he had already lost.”

            Mayor Carlton shifted his weight uncomfortably.  There was no arguing with that.  There was no blood leading away from the large maroon pool now marking the center of the shiny new lobby.   It was clear that someone had once lain in the blood, but it was not smeared or marred in any other way.   

            Johnny looked down at his chest.  His tee shirt had been soaked in blood when he'd lain beside Billy.  There had been a singed hole where the bullet had ripped through his shirt and burrowed itself into his chest.  His shirt was now as white and hole free as when he had put it on earlier that evening.  He lifted his shirt up and looked at his flat, smooth torso.  It too was free of blood.  He ran his hand across his chest and down his stomach.  There was no wound.  Not a single mark blemished his skin, and he felt no pain.  He had felt that bullet hit him.   He’d seen the look on Billy’s face as he’d fallen into his arms.  Billy.

            Johnny cried out and grabbed his chest.  Now he felt pain, a fiery, tearing, blood-curdling pain exploding in his heart.  Billy was gone, and he was here and no one seemed to be able to see him, though he was standing where Billy had lain.

            “Billy!”  Johnny cried his name again, and ran towards the entrance doors.  He had to go with Billy.  He had to find his momma and tell her what had happened, tell her how he’d screwed everything up.  If only he hadn’t stolen that gun!

            The door had been propped wide to accommodate the gurney they had put Billy on, and Johnny lurched through the opening, only to be violently repelled and hurled back into the lobby.  He tumbled head over heels and landed on his back, stunned, looking up at the rounded ceiling high above him.  Shaking himself, he rose to his feet and again ran through the opening, only to rebound back like he had thrown himself into a fireman’s net.  Slowly, he walked to the open door.  Gingerly, he stretched his hand forward and extended it through the opening.  It felt like reaching into a hive of bees.  Johnny yelped and jerked his hand back, clutching it to his chest and staring out into the blackness of the night.  He realized that he couldn’t see anything but darkness beyond the threshold.  Surely, there should be police cars and flashing lights.  He knew there would be a crowd gathered, pushing forward to see the unfolding tragedy.  There should be excited voices and shouts from police officers to stay back behind the perimeter.  But he could neither hear nor see a thing beyond the entrance doors.

            Without warning, a police deputy surged through the black curtain and collided with Johnny, who had been unable to see him coming. Johnny stumbled back with a grunt, falling to the floor once again.  The deputy winced and, rubbing his shoulder fiercely where it had connected with Johnny, looked around with an incredulous look on his face. 

             
"What the hell...?"  The deputy muttered to himself.

             
"Parley?"  Chief Bailey asked expectantly.  Parley Pratt was a brand-new policeman, still wet behind the ears and easily impressed and distracted.