Thing Ten: Ghost Story...

The Ghost of a Little Girl.

A Micro Short Story.

For: Writer’s Block.  Fuck. You.

When my parents passed, I fell into a depression.  I don’t remember much of the build up to the funeral, or the funeral itself for that matter.  I remember sitting in my room a week later, when February had the town in its icy grip, wondering what to do.  I was there, in their old house, surrounded by the fragments of my former life that now had two gaping holes in it.  I got caught by those fragments, hanging here and there on the moments, but the ones that kept getting me were those of my mother saying this part of town or that bit of the house was haunted.  Perhaps that’s natural – they were gone and I wanted them back.  I wanted them to visit and stay a while.

I thought about calling my friends.  Denise was the best choice for these thoughts, but I knew that  she was behind a deadline.  Davy would have gotten nervous at the mention of anything that smacked of the otherworldly, and my brother…well, his wife had told me that he was ready to explode like a well shaken soda.  I texted the three of them – got responses from the two D’s, and decided to drop it.  Denise was locked in her bedroom writing, and Davy was out with his fiancé.  I knew they wouldn’t mind – no matter how weird I got, I knew they’d go with it and see to it that I was ok.  But…I’ve never been someone to ask for help.  Ever.  The last time I did I ended up falling asleep on my driveway waiting for the cops who never showed.  Part of it was that I didn’t want to be a burden, while another part of it was the fear of metaphorically waking up covered in dew and dried blood.

I took up my coat, boot, and pack of cigarettes, and I went for a walk.

I love winter.  I’ve always had a penchant for the bleakly beautiful, and fall and winter’s melancholy has always been peaceful times for me.  Well, that and the fact that I liked walking and felt awkward around people.  That I could own the streets and walk unmolested save for the other hermits who had rolled away their stones and would nod in a kind of knowing acknowledgement to me.  We were together in our own bubbles.

That walk, though, I was hoping not to meet anyone.  I snagged my headphones on the way out the door and clicked the player over to Hildur Gudnadottir – and saw that I hadn’t listened to music since my parents died.  I had been listening to Manowar when I got the news.  That was kind of jarring – I had kind of hoped for something more prophetic than that.  I let the notes of the cello flood over me, and I light my cigarette before heading out.  I walked down the backstreet, past the rows of houses I had seen almost every day for twenty-nine years.  Under the sound of strings, in my mind, I heard the low murmur of my parents’ voices.  I wanted to turn off the music and listen.  When I did, silence filled in around me.

And that was when I saw her.  The girl was in the type of dress that would have been better suited to late spring or early summer – more blue skies and sunlight through leaves than the greyness of an overcast afternoon February.  All of the colors seemed drawn to her in that dress, and the world around her seemed to be covered in a fine coat of dust and ash.  I looked down, and even my long green coat seemed drab now, reflecting the weak winter light receding without its accustomed pomp to the west.  All of these thoughts, though, I had later.  The only thing I could think when my eyes returned to her was: How in the green hills of Hell was she not freezing to death?  If it had snowed, the clouds would have been like homicidal ice cube makers than fluffy school stoppers.  And she was out in a sundress.

I shrugged off my normal avoidance of people and directed myself to her.  The too-blue dress looked homemade, equal parts skill and love had gone into the stitches, the little white color that reminded me of old movies and tea cozies, and poofy sleeves that might have been added for the sole purpose of making the girl feel like a princess.  When she turned to look at me, I froze.  Just for a second.  An instant.

“Are you ok, miss?” I asked.  I always felt stuffy and formal around kids.

She looked up at me with the open honesty of a kid who’s parents had never watched the news.  “Sure, mister,” she said.  She could have been from central casting on the way to a leave it to Beaver remake.  If it hadn’t been for the tire track across her chest and face.  “Are you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You look sad,” the girl said.

I nodded.  What else could I do?  The longer I looked at her, more of her wounds I could make out, like the pattern of wallpaper someone had painted over.  It was like that…seeing the image of a shattered skull, fragments of the whole sticking out at odd angles while never distorting the skin they were in.  I saw her ribs crushed and pulverized organs without seeing them.  She was the perfect little girl, a cookie cutter of Rockwell’s America…and a nightmare of gore.  “I guess I am,” I said.

“Well…don’t be,” she said.  Just as simple as that.

“Aren’t…aren’t you cold,” I asked.

“A little,” she said.  “But you get used to it.  My brother gives me Indian burns sometimes, but after awhile I don’t feel them, even if they’re still red and angry looking.”  She kept her eyes to mine.  “Do you have a car, mister?”  I nodded again.  “You should be careful in it.”

“I am,” I said.  “Sometimes my friends laugh at how I drive, because I go the speed limit.  Well, closer to it than them.”

“Ok,” she said.  She looked back, a phantom hearing a phantom voice.  “I have to go.  Cheer up, mister!”  She waved, and turned, vanishing in the act.  I stood in the middle of the street, listening to my heartbeat and the sounds of the sleeping world before turning on my heel and walking back to the house.  I was more confused than before, but my mother had always said that unexpected advice tended to be the best.  So I stood in the too quiet house, looking at the two quiet dogs.  I whistled for them, and went to go get them treats before heading out to the movies.

In the week that followed I smiled more.  Not much.  I still felt the loss keenly, and knew I would for some time to come.  But I had convinced myself of two things – one, that I had had a hallucination brought on by who knew what, and two – that it had been right.  I cheered up, and smiled more, and life began easing into its new state of normality.  And when my buddy Jared rang and asked if I’d like to get a beer or two, I looked over at the dogs.  They now had free range of the couch, and while they had been clinging more and more to me, I thought we both needed a night away from each other.  So I said yes.

And then there we were, closing down the Inn.  I had wandered down, sat at the bar, and had only moved to go to the restroom when they were kicking us out.  I slurred my through a half-hearted protest about him driving me home – Jared was in worse shape than I was – but in the end I got into the passenger seat and he got behind the wheel and we drove off.  I think one of the bartenders watched us go.  Can’t be sure.  I didn’t go back afterwards.

It was a mile from the Inn to my house, and Jared had been there a hundred times, but he took the turn too fast and we continued to rocket down the street.

I don’t know if Jared saw her.  I remember saying, “Look out!” and getting drowned out by the squeal of breaks as the little girl in the too-blue dress turned and looked at us.  Her face was a mask of shock, horror, and a weird “oh no, not again” glint in the eyes as Jared’s car bowed her.  I watched…this sounds mad.  I watched her extend across the hood of the car.

Have you ever gone driving slowly down a dark road, and noticed how the darkness seems to slither away from your headlights, creeping across the contours of the ground?  That was what her body did, only moving towards us.  Her face slithered, too.  I can’t think of any other word to describe it – her skin twisted and followed the line of her growing jar as her teeth began to bend forward towards us.  They were like horse teeth – somehow worse than fangs would have been.  Ground flat from dull, soft/tough meals and leading the vacant nasal cavity and empty eye sockets that glared out, fury boiling from the pools of black.

She bit into Jared’s face, blood running from the perfect white cubes as the car lurched to a halt.  Her child hands held Jared back against the seat as I cannoned forward, snapped back by my safety belt and then the passenger airbag.  I fought it, trying to knock it away as Jared screamed.  I heard a chorus of bones breaking as the little hands twitched across his ribs, and then squeezed.

I spent the next day and night in the hospital.  The hangover was the least of my worries – most of my body was bruised and my relocated shoulder throbbed.  I listened to the police, and answered their questions.  Apparently the level of alcohol in my blood was good for something – I couldn’t have known that Jared was worse than me.  Of course I couldn’t have.  I was so sloshed that I had seen things.  I took a cab back home once they released me, and stood outside for a long time, looking down the road.

There had been a girl.  Both times, there had been a girl.  I knew Jared hadn’t been pulped because of a faulty airbag, a standard steering wheel column, and enough beer to drown a Shetland pony.  It had been her.  “Mister, you look sad,” I whispered.  And I stood outside, and waited to see if the world would go grey again.