Pennies for the Ferryman - 01 Page 3

  While examining a nice collection of Hummel angels, I concluded that no matter when I told her, she was going to think I was a whack job. Why waste all the time and effort getting to know her if she was going to freak out on me anyway?

  She came back into the living room with Rose close behind. I decided to get this over with. Jenny was grabbing a couple of Sprites out of the fridge when I circled near her mother.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Look Mike, I think you’re a great guy, but let’s not rush anything.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “What? Sorry, I thought you were going to ask me out. Uh, ghosts – maybe. I don’t know, why?”

  “Because I can see the one that’s following you around. I think it’s your mom. She’s been pushing you into doors, spilling your drinks and just generally making your life a pain and she’s standing right next to me.” I grabbed the ghost’s arm hard and jerked it behind her back and heard her hiss in pain.

  “Let me go!”

  “Mike, what are you doing?”

  “What do you want from Jenny?” I used my best “tough guy” voice.

  “She needs to suffer. She’s an ungrateful little bitch!”

  “Seriously, Mike, you’re freaking me out! Quit it!”

  The ghost stepped on my foot, hard, but I didn’t let her go. Instead, I slammed the woman’s face down onto the kitchen island, which shook with the impact. I had expected the ghost to pass right through, but contact with me must have made her somewhat tangible.

  I grunted, “Jenny, look at me! Did you hear that? Did I ever touch the island?”

  Jenny just stood there open-mouthed.

  “C’mon! Snap out of it. While I’m holding her, you should be able to feel something here. Just reach out where my hand is.”

  That was the very first time I experienced this harsh lesson – a spirit in contact with the person they’re latched onto can draw energy from that person. As soon as Jenny’s hand touched her mom’s head, I experienced the next best thing to being hit by a bolt of lightning. Whatever it was, it tossed me violently into the pantry door, momentarily stunning me.

  Shaking the cobwebs out of my head, I saw that Jenny had fallen backwards into the living room and was having some kind of seizure. Though I couldn’t hear the ghost anymore, I could probably guess the murderous intention in her eyes as she grabbed a butcher’s knife from the block on the island.

  Maybe I hadn’t felt threatened initially because Rose was a woman. The knife in her hands went a long way toward getting me over my gender bias.

  I’d been a wrestler in high school and the time I’d spent in the Army had only improved my hand-to-hand skills. She was a dead woman with a knife. She slashed at me twice before I stepped inside her lunge. Under the circumstances, I hoped Grandpa wouldn’t mind me roughing her up a bit. My fist smashed into Rose’s jaw and sent her flying, literally, through the wall. The knife clattered to the kitchen floor.

  Quickly, I knelt by Jenny. She seemed to be coming out of her convulsions, but when I reached down she started clawing at me with her one good arm.

  Fabulous! The kitchen’s a mess and now I have defensive wounds on me. I’ll need to start working on my insanity plea.

  “Jenny! Stop! It’s me.”

  “Get back! Stay away! What was that?”

  “I think it was your mom.”

  Her eyes were glazed over in terror. “But she’s dead!”

  Starting to reply, I was cut off by her gasping in disbelief. Looking over my shoulder, I barely got my arm up in time to block the rolling pin.

  Yelping in pain, I kicked her straight in the kneecap. Even for a ghost, that had to hurt. I grabbed an old cast iron skillet and used it to block the next swing of the rolling pin.

  Surprisingly, I blocked it below the pin and her arm rebounded off of the skillet. Next, I whipped it around and hit her directly in the head. If she hadn’t already been dead, that would have finished her. She dropped to the floor and slowly sank into the basement.

  The next minute passed with me dripping blood onto the floor and wildly scanning the kitchen, holding the small frying pan like an undersized Louisville Slugger.

  “Is she gone?” Jenny choked out.

  “For right now, yes. We need to get out of here. Can you drive with your arm like that?”

  “Not that well. My car’s a stick.”

  “You drive, I’ll shift. Where’s your mother’s grave?”

  The poor girl looked confused, before whispering, “Roanoke.”

  “Then that’s where we’re headed. Give me a hand straightening up.” I wrapped a dishtowel around my bleeding, bruised arm and started cleaning up the blood.

  “Why? We need to get out of here!”

  “Jenny, think about it. You told your aunt I was here. There’re signs of a struggle. What happens when your aunt and uncle get home? They’ll put an APB out on me and your car. I’ve don’t want to end up on the evening news.”

  Giving Jenny some instructions helped her out of her stupor. After five minutes, it didn’t look like a brawl had taken place. The broken dishes were tossed into the garbage and I used a piece of duct tape on the backside of a cabinet door. It should hold it up for a day or two. The frying pan went with us.

  Jenny was still in no condition to drive, so I dropped the garbage bag into the trash bin and slid behind the wheel of her Honda Civic. My driver’s license expired while I was in Iraq and there was no way I could pass the vision test now, but it seemed like the best option at the time.

  Lucky for us, it was early afternoon, so traffic on I-270 and the Capital Beltway was manageable. We’d crossed into Virginia and I was trying to remember whether I-66 West was a left or right hand exit, when she finally said something.

  “Mike, what happened back there?”

  “I can’t really say. I haven’t exactly been doing this for long.” I proceeded to tell her about the cornea transplant from a dead psychic. When she had calmed down enough, I convinced her to call her aunt and make up some lie about going out with some friends this evening.

  Hanging up her cell phone, she looked at me. “What are we going to do in Roanoke?”

  “The ghost is either anchored to you, or to something of hers that you have. Do you have any of her jewelry?”

  “No.”

  “Crap. Well, I hope there’ll be a ghost in Roanoke that can tell us what to do. You know where the graveyard is, right?”

  “It’s been awhile, but I’m pretty sure. So all this time, she’s been doing these things to me. I’m not a klutz. I’m not accident prone.” Her voice trembled slightly.

  “No. You’re not. Hey, why are you crying?” I asked.

  Okay, so I’m probably not the quickest when it comes to understanding women and Jenny had been through a lot. Anyone who’s ever been in a car with a crying woman can attest to the feeling of helplessness. I patted her arm every now and then and concentrated on staying in the right-hand lane through the thinning traffic as we headed past Manassas, still about three hours from Roanoke.

  She cried for a long time and then fell asleep. I kept peeling back the patch and looking for signs of the ghost. Of course, if she was farther than twenty feet away, my messed up eye wouldn’t be able see it. The other thing distracting me was the fact that Jenny had a really nice pair of legs. I didn’t see many nice legs in Iraq.

  My passenger didn’t wake until I pulled over near Front Royal and put my last twelve bucks into her gas tank. Having not driven for awhile, the price of gas really shocked me. I hoped she had some money or plastic on her. Otherwise we’d have to explain why we suddenly ran off to western Virginia to run out of gas.

  Fortunately, she did have some cash and we went through a drive through. Somewhere on I-81 South, she started talking about her mother and how much the two of them hated each other.

  We arrived in Roanoke at about seven in the evening. The sun was already setting and there was nobody in
the graveyard —living or dead. Shocking how a couple of days had numbed me to this, but then again, I had just narrowly missed being killed by a dead woman wielding kitchenware.

  Fortunately, the graveyard wasn’t gated. Trespassing, along with Breaking and Entering weren’t words I’d like added to my resume.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  I shook my head.

  “You still don’t know?”

  I heard the slight panic in her voice. “Grandpa wasn’t too clear on what to do. He only said that you’d have to free yourself. Did you ever visit her grave?”

  “I only came here for the funeral,” she replied.

  I was at a loss. “Maybe, you just need to go there and say goodbye.”

  She laughed bitterly. “The last thing I ever said to her was that I’d dance on her grave.”

  “That sounds like a plan. We’ll try that first!” I said.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Well, I’ve driven for hours, looking for ghosts, armed with a frying pan. I’m not sure crazy would begin to cover it, but yeah, we’re going to try that first. If it doesn’t work, try just saying goodbye. After that, we may have to find another ghost to help us.”

  Things were looking up, or at least I thought so. The moment we set foot in the graveyard, though, I saw three figures climb out of the ground, Rose plus two big-ass rednecks. I grabbed the skillet and resisted the urge to mutter something along the lines of ‘out of the frying pan….’

  “Jenny! She’s here and she’s got help. I’ll hold them off!”

  I named the “good ole boys” Bo and Luke and figured they wouldn’t be able to really touch Jenny. On the other hand, I was in trouble. Luke got the business end of the skillet and staggered to my left. Unfortunately, that allowed Bo to bum rush me, knocking the pan out of my hands and sending us both towards the ground. I reverted to my old wrestler form.

  Using a few moves that would have gotten me tossed from any organized match, I was gaining the upper hand when his buddy leapt on us and added to the free-for-all scrum.

  Anyone who’s ever gone down in a pile will tell you that no one comes out clean. Most of the time, your hands are too busy grabbing, pushing, and pulling to be real effective. Elbows, knees, foreheads, and teeth suddenly become just as important as the hands.

  Want to know how much pain I was in? Ever wrestle on top of a fire ant hill? My skull was on fire after I head-butted one of them and my teeth were numb after biting the other’s arm. Through it all I could hear Jenny’s screams.

  Poking the first one in the eye and rolling free, I scrambled back to my feet. “Luke” caught a foot in the face and went limp, while “Bo” grappled with me.

  “You’re not gonna hurt her no more!” he hissed.

  “We’ve never hurt Rose. We’re trying to help her cross.” I figured I’d try that line on the first ghost we ran into.

  The guy stopped for a second, “What?”

  “You know, go on! Pass over. Shit, she’s choking Jenny now!” Not having time to argue the merits of this, I smashed my fist into his solar plexus and left him gasping for whatever it is that ghosts breathe.

  With a strength born of fury, I ripped Rose Goodman off of her daughter and began pummeling her. Thinking back, I was probably projecting some of my own unresolved parental anger on the dead woman, but it’s like the bitch at Walter Reed said, when I experience uncontrolled anger, I should find a way to cope and not take it out on a living creature.

  What do you know; the idiot was actually right about something!

  Rose started to fade into the ground, but I snatched her up and dragged her to her feet. “Oh no, you’re getting a ring side seat for this!”

  Jenny was crawling away on her hands and knees, but I got her attention. Choking out raw sobs, she managed to get to her feet. The one remaining ghost was watching us cautiously, but seemed to be making no more threatening movements.

  It took five more minutes for Jenny to find her mother’s grave, but when she began to dance, the wind picked up and the ghost in my arms moaned and tried to break free. Muttering obscenities and finally begging for Jenny to stop, Rose faded from view.

  There was a long moment of silence as the wind died. There were welts and bruises up and down my arms. My chest felt like someone had shaved it with a dry razor and poured a bottle of rubbing alcohol on it. The one remaining ghost scratched his three chins thoughtfully and approached me looking somewhat ashamed.

  “So you help people get to the other side, right?”

  Episode 2: Retreat from Gettysburg

  I rubbed my aching jaw, “So, tell me why I should help you again?” Standing in a graveyard, looking at the ghost responsible for my aching jaw, I was skeptical.

  “‘Cuz I need some help?” The bloated specter said.

  “Yeah, I got that part. You realize that you and your buddy were just kicking the snot out of me back there?” I asked. He gave me a blank look, so I decided that was enough physical contact for the time; I was in enough pain as it was already.

  “Mike you should help him,” Jenny whined. “It is a him right? You didn’t get beat up by a bunch of women did you?” she asked, moving her hands to her hips as she cocked her head at me.

  I frowned at Jenny Goodman, who, despite almost being killed by her long-dead and now just recently departed mother, seemed to be in a good mood. She made her way to my side while I conversed with the “good old boy” that I had “wrassled” with.

  “Yes, it is a him. I helped you because you’re a friend. Let’s go, we’ve still got a long ride back to Maryland.”

  Jenny didn’t get the hint.

  “Well how about we come back next weekend and help him out?” Jenny asked excitedly.

  Obviously, Jenny wasn’t satisfied with putting her own foot in her mouth, she was willing to stuff mine in there as well.

  The ghost was looking at me all pathetic like. Given that he was an overweight, mid-forties-looking country bumpkin, it wasn’t that hard. I originally called him “Bo”, but after speaking with him I was tempted to go with “Goober Pyle”. Reluctantly, I reached out and touched him, so I could hear him.

  “…man. You just gotta help me, please?”

  I sighed. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a bad guy, but I didn’t really see any incentive to get involved. Natural inclinations aside, I did have Miss milk-of-human-kindness standing next to me, so I supposed, I should find out exactly what I would be getting myself into. “So what kind of help do you need?”

  “The other guy you cold-cocked back there. He’s Mitch …”

  “I’m only considering helping you, not Mitch.” I said rather forcefully. What did he think I was doing there – charity work?

  “No – ya don’ understand -- he pretty much hangs around to make my time miserable,” the spirit griped.

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s complicated …”

  This was getting annoying, “Uncomplicate it or we’re leaving.”

  “Mitch is haunting me.”

  I’ll freely admit that I wasn’t expecting that one. Why would a ghost haunt another ghost? It seemed like a good question, so I asked it.

  “Well it was during hunting season two years ago. He was carrying a deer across his shoulders and I couldn’t see his vest; on account of the dumbshit didn’t wear no orange vest! Anyway, I shot that deer and I ended up shooting the idjit holding it too. Then, I kinda panicked and I buried him out there.”

  I stopped to fill Jenny in, because she was already pestering me for the details. It was like being back in Iraq, holding stop-and-start conversations with the locals through our interpreter.

  “Ask him what happened next.” she prompted.

  Back in the Army, there was a saying in the unit – MOTO, or “Master of the Obvious.” In this case, I guess it was “Mistress.”

  “Well, him and his wife wuz already havin’ problems, mostly cuz of his drinkin’ and his cheatin’, so I hid his truck dow
n a trail--behind some pine trees--and went on with my life. Most everyone including Emily pretty much figured that he done went ahead and left town, like he kept telling everyone he was gonna.”

  I pulled away and explained that I needed to rest my hand from the pain. I never had a brother or sister that would sit next to me when I was on the phone and ask, “What did they say?” all the time. Jenny gave me new respect for anyone out there that does.

  Jenny lecturing the ghost on how he should have gone straight to the police and taken his “lumps” amused me, but then I took pity on “Bo” and reached back out with my other hand.

  “She don’t shut up much, does she?”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself. “Occasionally, but it never lasts.”

  She sputtered, “Hey! Are you two talking about me?”

  “Of course not, Jenny. Now, what happened next?”

  “Things started going wrong in my life. My truck was always breaking down. My alarm clock would never go off and I ended up getting fired. Then one day all that drinkin’ and overeatin’ got to me and my heart gave out. Come to find out that it was Mitch doin’ all those things! I pretty much figure I gotta square things with Mitch before I can move on.”

  “How do you intend to do that?”

  “Well, I reckon, if you could take the police out to where I done buried him and show them his truck, Mitch’d get a proper burial and all that and then he’d leave me alone.”

  “So, you just want me to waltz into the police office and take them to where Mitch is buried and where you stashed his truck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s to stop them from arresting me for killing Mitch?”

  That stumped him and I figured I was home free and heading out of here. Naturally, Jenny found a solution.

  “Mike, if it was two years ago, you were either in Texas or Iraq. It’d be easy enough for the police to verify that you weren’t anywhere near here. We can just tell them that you’re a psychic, which I guess you sort of are.”

  “Yeah! What she said! That’s one smart little girl you got there! You tell her I said that, by the way my name’s Bobby Joe Lambert, but everyone calls me Bebo.”