The Lovers of the Concrete Castle
By
Carl Reader
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Carl Reader
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters in these stories are purely fictional Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.
Chapter 1
At the Gates of Heaven, the angel towered over me like a big blue transparent plastic doll, or a float out of a Thanksgiving Day parade. He had long brown hair flipped over in a pageboy, a nose nearly as long as a broomstick and lips thinner than a leaf of lettuce. I could see through him to the endless black heavens and the stars, which were far more numerous than on Earth, as though he was a one-way mirror. The light of the stars distorted as though twinkling through a prism as it passed through the angel, and it broke up into shafts of color around me, splattering me with reds and blues and yellows. Without thinking, I reached out for the shafts of color, laughing and watching them mottle my hands, but then realized I was in a very dire and serious situation and had better act that way, rather than as a newcomer, a fool just coming to heaven. I straightened up before him piously.
He stood wiping his nose on the back of his hand, indifferently staring down at his paperwork on me. With a loud "Ah-choo!" he sent a wind flying over my head. I ducked, and more colors mottled me, greens and purples and pinks. The wind from his sneeze flew out over the earth to mix with other winds there. The winds swirled the clouds around and whipped them into a froth, as rough waves do to the sea, and the angel's breath became lost in the clouds over the Earth.
"Creepy people," the angel said, looking down with disdain where his sneeze had gone. "Endless streams of creepy people."
He stood at the entrance to a long tunnel of a light blue color, blocking my way. I barely came up to his knees, and had to tilt my head up to see what he was doing. Other spirits careened past him. The tunnel he blocked to me had a pleasant green light far at the end of it, like the light of the sun going through a new spring leaf, and I felt it pulling me toward it. The spirits entering it, all as small as me, were mustard-colored, with white robes on. I still had on my burial suit, no white robe. The blessed spirits went swirling through the tunnel with cries of joy, tumbling toward some end I could not see. I rose from the angel's kneecaps and flew into the current of spirits, caught by a random wind that sucked me in.
"Not so fast," the angel said to me, pinching me between two of his fingers at the back of my neck and setting me down on the cloud again. He spoke through his nose, which was rough and red, and his eyes were filled with pain. He held up a hand with a golden glow around it, like a traffic cop, but his voice was so hoarse he could barely speak. He pinched me again behind the back of the neck and lifted me up to examine me.
"Oh, misery, misery, misery. Oh, my ... I have to check your portfolio before you go anywhere," he said, holding me up to his eyes for inspection and regarding me as though I were an oddity from some strange world. "We have a warning about you. There seems to be a problem. There always seems to be a problem with your type."
He set me down on the cloud again. He held my records in his other hand. They were in a worn black folder which he opened and lowered his head to read once again. He sniffled as he did so, and cleared his throat with a loud, obnoxious noise. "Oh, misery," he repeated. "Misery ... Just go out there and do your job, He says. No matter how rotten you feel in your soul. Go out there, He says, to work. Tut, tut, tut. Deal with the dead, deal with the dead. Endless streams of the dead."
I rose a few feet in the air anxiously, and then sat down on a granite bench that rested on the cloud. He flipped through my papers, which had the lightness and whiteness of feathers and floated up around his head as he read. Some of the white papers escaped into the black winds and fluttered away toward the stars, but he did not seem to care or notice. I wondered if that made a difference in my case, if he was missing some important information about me.
"Sir, the papers - "
"Sssh, sssh, be quiet. Oh, my," he said, deep in thought, regarding the papers before him with deep concern. "Oh, my, oh, my. We give them intelligence and they riot with it. Pluck the rotten apples from the barrel, He says, pluck the rotten apples. Wipe the spots from our perfection. I suppose I have to ... "
As I waited, I raised my eyes to the sky surreptitiously, as if it the universe might go away were I caught looking at it: it had once before, I recalled. I didn't want to make it seem I wasn't interested in the angel's work, though, for it was my immortal soul he was judging. Far below me was the Earth, in all its blue-green glory. Off to the east over Asia was a slender red-gold semicircle on the horizon. It was the edge of a new dawn. Directly below me were the electric lights of night, like masses of embers from a scattered fire. The earth was pulsing, as was the big blue tube sucking up spirits. Both gave off low, oscillating hums, like ball-bearing factories, and I fidgeted in anticipation and felt both tugging at me the way a first love tugs at a man. The angel was glowing gold all over in thought, pulsing himself like a light bulb during an electric shortage, and he was wiping his nose in annoyance now and then on his sleeve and sniffling. All the while he kept one eye on me as he read. "Keep your feet on the cloud," he warned me, wagging a finger at me. "Don't try to pass through again without my approval. A bad one here ... oh, bad, bad, bad."
He read on.
I fell deeper and deeper into my feelings of relief at being here, of finally making it to heaven. I watched below me when I got tired of looking at the stars and waiting for the angel, and I wondered just what it was like on Earth these days. Surprised at the fact I could think once again, I tried to remember my days as a man. I couldn't. I felt like a long unused light bulb that had suddenly been turned on, but was not yet working.
Looking around at all the glories of the entrance to heaven, I couldn't imagine why I had lain in my grave so long. I should have realized that I could get out of there and once again be part of this beauty. Maybe I had felt too attached to my body. Maybe I did not truly believe I could separate from it. It had not felt particularly wrong to be in my grave, for I knew I had died in my sleep, and I knew I should be set aside and buried once departed out of life. But how wrong that felt now, how backward in spirit. I could soar! Maybe dying during sleep inflicts sleep's drowsiness on the soul, and you go through death in a daze. Or maybe I just needed the rest before moving on. Whatever the reason was, I lay there in my coffin for many years before rising through its lid and the damp earth to float up into the heavy wet night atmosphere again. Just this night it had happened. I had felt the irresistible pull of the blue tube from down deep in my grave and had come up through the earth.
The angel rustled my papers.
"Hah! A little man!" he cried out, his long broomstick nose still buried in my records. "A little man. Hands in the dirt, head in the air. Tut, tut."
He shook his head, and I did not know what he was talking about.
In life, I had known the misty graveyard where I had risen well. I had come out through the earth next to a large sycamore. The white under-bark had broken through the brown bark up the length of the tree. The treetop was just a wiry shadow in the moonlight, with a thick trunk below, and I had no more substance to me than a dream. For a moment I feared it, feared the tree. I had risen through the tentacles of its roots and broken into the air, free of my grave after fifteen years there, suddenly three feet off the ground and astonished to find myself floating there above the rows and rows of head stones, still dazed with death and wondering why a dead man was once again on earth. Thinking it was not right for any sort of man to be floating in the air, let alone one dead for so long, I flew back down to put my feet on the ground where they belonged. My feet sank into the earth, which was also peculiar for any sort of man. Oh, no, I thought. No, no, no. I'm not going back in there, a twice-planted seed that would never sprout. I shot up to the treetops and sat on the highest branch, quivering and staring down at the damp grass and rows of tombstones, wondering just what was to become of me now, and what I was. All the fears of existence once again rose up in me, from memories that had been shut out long ago, and I remembered how frightening things were when you dwelled on them, on what had happened to you on earth. I had a great panoramic view of everything from that treetop. Better to look into the distance than brood on the grave below. Things were so different in town, from what I could see from the treetops. The sight would have taken my breath away, if I had had any. It seemed a hectic tangle of lights, of houses and businesses and restaurants and car washes and headlights. I knew immediately that I did not belong there anymore, in that artificial tangle of illumination. I was feeling the irresistible pull of the blue tube from above, feeling it as a distraction, but still did not understand what I had to do. From my roost on top of the bare sycamore I saw the old familiar center of town, with its Victorian houses filled with bright alien light bulbs and defaced with store fronts. But all around that center were flat buildings and highways and lights, sore-thumb things like Jamesways and warehouses and Howard Johnson truck stops, and rows and rows of lights. Traffic, too, far too, too much traffic. It seemed to go on forever, over land I remembered as green fragrant farms, now creeping with electric-bulb lights.
I didn't belong here: the blue tube tugged on my soul from heaven. I had risen twenty feet above the sycamore unconsciously, while looking at the town. It was then I realized my natural intent as a soul was upward. I had most likely risen from the grave because it was my time to, I thought, and felt a chill with the knowledge, an ice cube down my back, for I didn't know what came next. The grave had been unpleasant, but it had become familiar. I had little choice but to follow the path of my spirit.
Rising up gave me great feelings of exhilaration and freedom and relief. I gained more and more speed the higher I rose, and thought I could fly as fast as I wanted. I accelerated my flight with glee, giggling as I went. Deprived of everything in the grave, I now had movement, air, sight, and great speed. For a moment I could even smell the night sky. There was an immense open space around me, the home of stars, and as I rose I became aware of other spirits around me. There were wraiths rising ahead of me but going in the same direction, cutting through the clouds in a race to reach the sky, and crying out. I yelled with joy with them. I was not afraid as I scooted toward the planets and stars, for I was doing what the dead should do - rise to heaven. Everyone was doing it, with joyfulness. I saw the picture clearly now, saw what was happening to me, and was unafraid. The presence of other kindred spirits gave me courage. With them around, I realized that what was happening was right and natural and that my life was coming to its logical conclusion and I was soon to find out the meaning of all things.
"Meander Twist?"
I looked up, having forgotten about the angel with the flu. He had finished reading and stared down at me grimly. His long nose twitched like a worm. He held my portfolio before him, scorn and a stern resolve filling his eyes. He cleared his throat, gave a sigh of disgust and expectorated toward the earth. I was shocked that he would do such a disgusting thing, shocked that he would spit toward earth without compassion and without concern for the people below, and scatter his germs there.
He looked me in the eye again, sneering, with all his harsh feelings intact.
"Meander Twist ... entrance denied! And how dare you be such a creature as your were?" he asked, trembling with rage. "Dancing among flowers, wasting time looking at the moon. It seems you never really produced a family or did much to further our dear gift of life during your worthless stay on earth. You wasted your time, and ours. Therefore, scoundrel, depart from me! Away! You may not advance to the next spiritual level."
He closed my portfolio, and gained my eyes again.
“Am I going to Hell, then?” I asked, shivering.
"Hell? No. Wastrel that you are, you must continue your existence as a mere ghost. Hah! A mere ghost! Depart from me, ghost! Away!"
He stared at me with a how-do-you-like-that look in his eyes, but I was too shocked to answer, too surprised out of my expectations. I could not move. I though I had been a good man. I stood quivering below him.
"Hah!" he said again in scorn. "Away!"
Pompous ass, I thought, with a flush of anger. What was he talking about, and who was he to do this to me? I felt robbed, as if everything I now cared about and had come so far for was stolen from me. Rising from the grave had been for nothing. Flying through the clouds by the stars and planets to get here had been for naught. Waiting all this time had meant nothing. He had stolen the rest of my existence from me, stolen my salvation.
"But the records are wrong. I may never have - "
"But these are the records we go by. And so must you, you miserable little fleshless nonentity."
I stepped back in shock from the force of his words, and tripped over the bench. Why did he hate me so? He turned his back on me to enter the blue tube alone.
"Away! Away!"
"Wait. What am I going to do?" I said, rising and wiping myself off of cloud-stuff. "I can't go back to the grave. I can't and I won't. You have no right. Where am I supposed to go?"
He spun around in annoyance. He glowed brighter as though anger gave him power over my stupidity.
"Oh, so you won't go? Hah! Have you no idea of what we can do to you, if this continues? This is disobedience, and I don't care if you have no idea of how to wander the earth. That is not my problem. There is a far worse place, should we so choose to send you there, that we reserve for your type ... I thought your sentence was clear, yes, very clear. I've beheld your type before, and I'm not going to listen to any more of your vain arguments. Wise men and poets, lord ... Entrance denied, and good riddance! Your entrance is denied! Feel lucky I haven't decided to damn you all by myself."
He opened and then snapped closed again the folder with my records, and sent a clap of thunder up into the air with the movement. Yet more white feathery pages floated off into space, more of the records of my life that could never be retrieved. He sneezed heartily, and sighed again in disgust.
"Don't my waste time trying to get in," he said. "These gates are closed to you, forever and ever. Amen."
Then he disappeared suddenly in a golden vapor, leaving the entrance to heaven open before me. Perhaps he had forgotten about that, too, forgotten to close up Heaven. His competence level was not very high.
So ... the gates of paradise were denied me because an angel thought I had concluded my affairs on Earth unsuccessfully. Being rebellious by nature, and with the angel gone, I got up to pass through the tube anyway. Let them catch me if they can. All my life I had been denied, but I wouldn't be denied now. No, not now in death.
Then everything changed. Everything around me disappeared. The stone bench vanished. The blue tube was gone. I was falling from that great height toward the embers of the earth, spinning as if going down a drain. My fall lasted only an instant, but I had most definitely fallen through infinity in less time than it takes to blink twice.
"Wait! This is wrong!" I cried out on my way down, but my words circled over me and were pulled down into the maelstrom, too. "You've made a mistake. My feet slipped! I slipped! Retrieve those papers you let blow away! They'll show you I'm right. Retrieve my papers ... How could this be fair to a good man?"
Suddenly I was in the graveyard again, in the night, suspended in the mist and cold. I was floating by the same old bare sycamore, at peace, as if I had awoken from a dream and had never left the Earth, never stood at the gates of Heaven.
"Hello?" I said into the night, but no one was there. "Hello, angel?"
I was indignant at the unfairness of the spirit. I looked up to the skies with a new mistrust. The graveyard, I had learned in lo these many years rotting in it, was no place to be.
I turned away from the cold habitation of my last fifteen years, and resolved that somehow I would get back to heaven, bossy blue angels blocking my way or not.
If they had wished me dead, they should have kept me dead. I was in no mood to submit to any more of their stupidities.
Chapter 2
"Hey! What do you expect me to do down here?" I shouted up to the sky. "Silly spirits. Fools. Funny hairdos," I muttered, when the darkness and stars were silent. I looked around to see what I faced.
The graveyard was filled with tombstones sticking out of the ground, like dragon's teeth, and for a moment I thought I saw eyes looking up over the edges of each stone. "Hey!" I said, but the eyes disappeared. "Anybody there?"
No one answered but I was certain I was being watched.
I could not bear to read the names on the stones. They reminded me of all the lonesome spirits that had occupied the ground and now might still be haunting the earth. Then as I hovered over the graveyard, I saw glowing eyes pop up from behind the tombstones now and then. When they saw me watching they dipped behind the stones again.
"Hey! Are you coming out, or not?" I asked. "I'm not so bad. C'mon out. Show yourselves and let's have some fun, talk and reminisce."
No one came out, and I thought that maybe I was seeing things.
The trees were dripping from the thick wet mist and there were thousands of lights in the town beyond the graveyard, along with the noises of cars. Across the street was Carmen's Barber Shop, with the sign still over the door and with the solid, old-style chairs still inside serving Carmen. Seeing the shop reminded me that there was life beyond the graveyard, and I inched away from the stones.
"Ah, who need you?" I said to the ghosts. “You’re just ghosts, but I was almost one of the blessed.”
A rustling of papers made me turn around. Flitting among the gravestones were stray papers, white as sea gull feathers, and I thought, now, now, I can collect the evidence that the blue angel had lost and ascend to heaven and show him he was wrong. I moved to the skittering papers with a speed that astonished me. I bent to scoop them up and fly once more into the sky. I grasped for the papers, reaching for the proof that would get me out of this graveyard and into all the glories of Heaven that I imagined in the sky. I reached for them, wanting them more than anything I had ever wanted in life, but the wind blew the papers through my hands and off across the lawn, tearing them from me. I reached for other papers, but again the wind tore them from me and blew them out among the others on the lawn. I cried, "No! No! At least let me prove my innocence!" I looked down in horror at my transparent hands. Then I hovered helplessly staring at my illusions tumbling away on the grass. The papers flew out through the fence to the street, and danced away through the crowds. They were real papers, and I was not. I could not grasp them.
I saw a ghost behind a tree, and shivered at the sight of him, for even though I was one, I knew ghosts were terrifying. I was filled with fear, but also needed to talk to him, since he was as I was - alone and confused. He was a bald man with large, hollow, deep-set eyes. My heart beat fast. He was the first authentic ghost I would ever talk to. He was wearing a sixteenth century frock coat and buckled shoes, and had an unhappy look about him. He flitted off, in a bad humor, looking back at me with bitter eyes as I approached. He limped through the air as though there was something wrong with his right leg. He glanced back again at me before sneering and slipping behind a tree.
"Away!" he cried out at me, from behind the tree.
Still startled to see a real ghost on earth, and wanting to talk, I called out to him "Hey, who are you? Why are you here? Don't I know you?"
He hid behind a tree, shivering at my questions and hissing.
I stopped in mid-air. I don't know why he disliked me. I supposed that the rude blue angel had returned him here just as he had returned me here: we had something in common. This had been where the angel had found us earlier and then given us the call to Heaven. For whatever reason, he had found both of us wanting. I felt sad for him, for he appeared to be taking it worse than I was. When I looked for him again he was revolving around his tree, three feet in the air, his eyes on the ground, muttering and spitting as he spun around the trunk of the tree like a piece of broken machinery.
“Sky blue, sky blue, sky blue.”
"Hello! It's all right. Do you know anything about what's happened to us?" I called out. "Do you know what it's best to do now?"
He hesitated in his revolutions around the tree. He glared at me furiously, and then hissed through his teeth.
“Blue sky, blue sky, blue sky.”
“Blue sky?”
"Leave me alone," he shouted, in a voice full of malice. "I have this tree to circle."
That confused me. I didn't know why he had to circle the tree and was not about to ask. I decided it was better to stay away from him, and turned my back to him. I flew a little ways off, wishing he would talk to me but not wanting to force myself on him. I thought I should begin my new existence as a ghost by finding out the simplest things first.
I wondered what time of night it was, and whether it was pleasant or harsh out. I decided it could not be near midnight, since there was still so much activity in the streets. Living people were everywhere beyond the walls of the cemetery, warm solid creatures of immense energy who were totally unlike what I was now. It was a sharp crisp evening, with the wind whistling through the sycamores and an owl hooting. I corkscrewed through the air, pleased at the freedom I had in the blackness, but still a little frightened. My sensations of the night seemed to appear and disappear. It was as though they switched on and off at odd times. Sometimes I could feel the cold; then I couldn't. It was that way with all my senses. Sometimes I smelled the night air; sometimes I couldn't. Sometimes I could feel the trunk of a tree; sometimes I couldn't.
But I had spent my season in the grave. I had no inclination to give more time to it, even though I was so different from those now on Earth. The living, buzzing all around me, had more attraction to me.
As I rose in the air, I felt a zest for my liberation, although I turned quickly to check on the mad spirit, should he do something unexpected. He was still revolving around his tree, muttering and spitting. Other spirits might be near. Just as I had the thought, I saw a ghost dressed as an Arab, with white flowing robes, circling the tree with the first ghost, following him and jabbering at him. He pointed up to me, and muttered in Arabic to the first ghost, but the first ghost shook his head and refused whatever it was the Arab requested. The Arab chased the first ghost, jabbering at him, but he would do nothing but revolve around his tree.
"No! No! No!" I heard him cry. “Blue sky! Blue sky!”
It was too fine a night, with stars as big as fists and rushing winds like mountain streams, to spend any time worrying about them. I no longer counted myself among the dead, and wouldn't engage in any of their silly activities. I flew over the headstones, cartwheeling with ease and laughing. "Woo-who, woo-eee!" I cried out. The flat faces of the stones caught the light from a bright winter gibbous moon, and I saw other eyes of ghosts peeking out at me from behind them again. I more I moved about, the more ghost eyes peered at me and the more I was struck with joy at my release.
"Hey, c'mon," I shouted out to the ghosts. "C'mon out from behind there. Let's fly around and have some fun. We can figure this out."
As soon as I shouted out, all the ghosts ducked back into the earth.
I passed through the wrought iron fence surrounding the graveyard - just as I panicked at the thought of flying into it. But there was so little left of me that I could pass through solid objects at will, just as all the ghost stories I had read while I was alive said ghosts could. That amused me a great deal, and I turned and flew through the fence and flew back out, just to prove to myself I could do so. I flew into the graveyard, and then out. In and out, in and out. So far my new existence was extremely satisfactory.
I raised my eyes to the moon and shouted "You find me alive, my friend!" to the rude blue angel, and I flew through the fence one more time to prove it.
"Ha, ha, in and out!" I shouted.
Then I looked around quickly, fearful I had awakened some adversary under the ground, or gotten the bald spirit's attention.
"Is anyone there? Is anyone there?" I asked. "Don't be so shy. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Blue sky! Blue sky!"
A ghost's head raised itself out of the ground near a tombstone to look at me, but quickly retreated into the earth again. I didn't understand my new condition, or even what my questions meant, or why everyone was so shy. Why did they all prefer rotting in the earth to coming out and talking? I didn't know what my limits were, or what I could do, or why ghosts were the way they were, but I would find out. I wasn't going to remain among these old stones like all the others. I headed into the street.
I swam through the air, forward and backward, remembering what it was like to dive into a river or ocean. Behind me, I saw that the Arabian ghost had come to the graveyard fence to watch me go. I waved to him and shouted out, "C'mon in. The water's fine."
He watched me, without moving, until I swam out of sight around a corner.
I rode on the winds and tumbled through mists like an acrobat. Below me, crowds of live people moved in streams on the sidewalks. I knew that the people I passed over, young people with their arms filled with packages, couldn't see me. They walked on their way as if I didn't exist. I closed the buttons on my burial suit coat, to appear more respectable should I suddenly drop down among them. I was a little embarrassed by the silliness of my cavorting.
"Good evening," I said. "A great evening for a swim, isn't it? Ha, ha."
No one heard.
"Yes, I'm fine," I said. "Thank you very much. Yes, Berlin, 1936. The breaststroke."
From the clouds of breath around the people's heads I knew that it was very cold. But I could not feel the cold, which disturbed me. Maybe I was not as whole as I would have liked. "Excuse me," I said, passing through a woman, to see if I could. She shuddered violently, as if a thin steel wire had run through her stomach. I stepped back in horror. I decided that my rash experiment was a disgusting thing to do, just intruding on someone like that, and resolved that I would avoid flying through anyone henceforth, to spare their feelings. "I'm sorry," I said to the woman. "I didn't know." She merely closed the top button on her coat and looked to the threatening sky. I soared above the crowds, wary and respectful of the people, yet glorying in my resurrection.
"Do you know I was once dead?" I cried out. "Yes, I was dead. I'm not anymore. Hee-hee."
Wander the earth, the rude blue angel had said. I had no intention of doing that.
"Forget it, whoever you are up there. This is too much fun."
I rolled over on my back, knowing just where I would go, and did the backstroke toward home, making the turn at the Casey Mansion and heading up Derrick Street to Main. The angel had acted so indifferently toward me and had shooed me away with so little consideration for my feelings that I certainly was not going to respect him. Now I had my freedom to prove him wrong, I thought, as I flew by lighted windows on Derrick Street and looked in at the people. It was a toy store, and a girl held up a box with colored sides on it to show her parents. I flew past quickly. I was as deserving as anyone, far more than some of the fools I had seen enter heaven before me. I had family. I had forwarded life. No one could tell me differently, and the inaccuracy in the angel's records only made my claim stronger. I'd prove it. I righted myself, and turned onto Main Street and rushed through the wind that blew down it like wind through a tunnel. Yes, I had family. I remembered now. I think I remembered ... I'd prove him wrong.
There were fools even in heaven, many of them, evidently.
I thought I still had a home and a family, although I did not know how much time had passed since my death and I could not remember many details now. I had no idea if they were still alive, but made the right turn onto Springer Avenue to head out of town toward home. It was with them, my family, that I would spend my renewed time on earth, not with the memories I had or with mad spirits lingering in the graveyard - or with all these strangers in town. I hurried on, through the town, intent on that idea.
I increased my flight speed, simply by wanting to, and came to the edge of town quickly. Springer exited onto Route 202.
"Home, home, home, I'm going home," I sang. "Ho, ho, ho."
I was giggling and singing as I flew. In the years I had spent dead the road systems had remained basically the same. I soared far away from the crowds, rushing now to go home. I followed familiar winding ways out of the town center to the country. They were the same roads that I had walked so often while alive to go home, but this time my shoes didn't come within twenty feet of the ground. I had the speed of the wind.
Once or twice I looked back, and saw the unhappy bald ghost with the large, hollow, deep-set eyes following me. Behind him was the Arab, pushing him on and jabbering. I wondered why they were interested in me, and what spite they had in them. They would disappear as soon as I looked back, duck behind a car or bush or truck, and it made me uneasy.
"What do you want?" I called back to them, but they never answered. "Just talk to me. Things are all right. Tell me what you want. Stop being so creepy."
They never came out, but hid behind the trees and bushes, hissing and spitting.
I flew on with my new freedom intact, in the rush of cars on the highway, but also with an unwanted fear at not knowing who the ghosts behind me were or what I was doing or even what I could experience with my new nature. The bald ghost and his Arab friend were not acting normally. It was so easy to be confused, but also easy to be happy. I turned loops in the air, spinning over and over with a view of the stars and the town, on an invisible Ferris wheel, crying out "Who-oa! Whee!" and thinking to hell with ghosts and looking with interest at the inhabitants of the cars rushing all around me. Maybe if the ghosts had a sense of fun they'd come out and talk with me. Otherwise, the hell with them.
I pushed on.
The energy my small town generated amazed me. Cars were rampant, obnoxious rolling beasts with the power of large angry animals. So many electric lights dotted the way that I thought life had become an arcade. The town was filled with bells and sudden flashes and barkers crying out for men to play games or buy toys. I sensed the hum and heard the noise even out on the highway.
"Three for a dime!" I called out, trying to get in the spirit. "Three for a dime! C'mon out! Let's have a little fun," I shouted to the ghosts behind me, but they ducked into a carpet shop when I caught sight of them.
Aside from the carefully spaced street lamps there were floodlights on stores, headlights, blinking colored lights on roadwork and colored lights on houses and in trees and bushes. The red brick Firehouse Number Two sat back from the highway, asleep but ready. Everywhere people rushed toward things I could not see. I flew along, pleased with my easy acrobatics but thinking I should blink a warning, to avoid collisions with other ghosts. I could be breaking some ghost rules, I thought, and that could be why they all avoided me. But light passed through me as it would through water. I was a clear kaleidoscope incapable of doing anyone harm, and no one had said anything about rules.
Soon I reached my goal.
There is no light as welcome as the light of home, and I wept as I hovered over it. I stopped high above my house and stood to gawk at the structure that had sheltered me for so many years, and cried at its familiar shape. I watched my tears fall, and freeze as droplets on the street. The patches of light in the windows of the bungalow I built fifty years ago beckoned me. I rushed toward it. I wheeled in from the sky, and I quivered with delight at seeing it again.
"Everyone! Children, I'm home!"
The house was surrounded by tall larches, with thick growths of trees behind it. It had shuttered windows and a curving sidewalk going up to the front porch. I stopped to hover in front of it when no one answered, suddenly afraid of what might have happened since I had been gone. Memories came back like flashes in my mind, short flashes of a face or scene, and I wanted to make sure my memories were real and true, not illusions. It all confused me so ... There was the day I moved into my house, a blustery March day I was doubly glad to be sheltered from ... Or the day my children came home with me, wrapped in blankets, the best day ... Ed running toward me ... Each memory, drawn up with great difficulty but great suddenness, that came back had its tale to tell me, and there were hundreds. Each had its feeling, but all were so hard to find within me. They had been buried so long, as if in solid rock, and it hurt to bring them out. It hurt. The flashes had stings to them.
God, it was difficult being a new ghost, I thought, and I wept again with sadness now.
Suddenly from above he swooped down on me, frightening me with the quickness of his invasion and the mad way his face twisted with anger.
"I saw you rise from the graveyard!" he cried out at me, his frock coat brushing my face as he swirled around me. "They would not let you pass into heaven, as they would not let me pass! You should not leave the graveyard. Your goose is cooked! Your goose is cooked!"
"W-what are you talking about?" I asked, covering my head with my arm.
He swirled in a mist before me, the ghost with the hollow eyes from the graveyard, twisting like a lariat spun around before my eyes. He was angry at me for some reason, and bit at the air as if bobbing for an apple only he saw. He shot toward me, then away, and bit his own arm. He buzzed my head and flew off, tore by my face and then rushed upward, all the while biting the air or a part of himself. I tried to cover myself with my arms, but he never came close enough to be really dangerous.
"Get away! Be alone!" he cried out to me. "Stay with us in the graveyard! Go no where near humans for human you are no more. Wander the earth!"
Startled, I had not moved. Now the ghost, whoever he was, receded from me in the dark, like a corkscrew made of mist.
"Your goose is cooked!" he cried out, retreating, and I saw a great fear in him. "Your goose is cooked!"
I watched as he spun away from me, like water going down a drain. The Arabian ghost joined him, and they swirled away in the dark together.
"Wander the Earth! Wander the sky!" he cried out, his voice receding. "In the sky you can be yourself. Your goose is cooked! You must wander the Earth."
Then they were gone.
My goose was cooked?
Evidently, now that I was back on earth, I was going to have to deal with more than simply living the unfettered life of the spirit.
Chapter 3
I looked up at the sky, looked for hordes of silver-eyed screaming ghosts following me from the graveyard, and cried out, "Leave me alone!" to whoever sent them.
There was no response. Just the peaceful black of the sky, and the calm twinkling of the stars. Mists swirled over my head, obscuring the stars for an instant. Then the mists got tangled in the branches of the trees and hung there, blotting out the sky, and fear filled me.
I hesitated before going into my house, floating in one spot above the ground, and wondering how far the spirits would go to force me back into the graveyard and grave. Calming down and considering for a moment, I thought that maybe the bald ghost was someone in my family, or someone I knew, already dead, my son or father. Maybe he was trying to help me. Maybe my actions were far out of line from what a ghost should do. But why was there that anger in him? What had I done to him to deserve that? Just why was everything such a damn riddle, and why didn't they want me in the world?
"Leave me be!" I shouted at the sky again, and the stars blinked at me. "I'm free of you, and I've done nothing to hurt you. I simply want to be left alone!"
I wondered if I had forgotten part of my mind, flown out of the grave without it, as I stood out in the cold shouting at a sky that did not answer. Maybe I was suffering delusions and was unaware of it. Maybe all was a sad confusion of electrical nonsense in my mind, or maybe it was all real and the ghost was giving me good advice because he knew me and had a place in his heart for me and was concerned for me. Maybe I was the mad ghost.
I looked back into my house, and floated toward it hesitantly.
Each step I took now had to be a careful one.
I did not know what changes had taken place while I was in the grave, what swirl of differences time had fashioned. A small bird flapped by noisily, and I jumped and shooed it away.
"Out, ghost!" I cried, but then felt silly when I saw the bird roost in one of the larches.
I just wanted to go home. I couldn't keep my eyes from turning to my house again; I floated toward it. Only my house had the feel of age to it of those in the neighborhood, like a shoe left in the closet for years, while other new pairs surrounded it. It was a feel that set it apart from the other houses. I settled onto the sidewalk, letting my feet sink into the concrete. I had to think if I wanted to go on with this, and maybe find strangers inside and everyone I cared for dead, or behave like a normal ghost and flit from empty home to empty home - or return to the graveyard as I was supposed to. So many changes at a glance, and now those ghosts following me to contend with ...
The angel had said I had no children. I did, if I remembered correctly, and for a moment their faces flashed into the mind. I looked to the sky to see if the ghost with the hollow eyes was still harrying me, and then I remembered that their names were Ed and Ethel, solid names for beautiful children. I believed I could still recall what they looked like. Both slender, with Ed like a piece of spring steel and Ethel with a classic, sculpted beauty. Ed wore thick glasses, because of early damage to his eyes from the abuse he had suffered, while Ethel was clear of eye and complexion, even though her eyes had also once been damaged.
Then, as suddenly as their images came to me, they disappeared. I had nothing in my mind about them. My thoughts were as blank as an empty page, and try as I might, that was all I could remember. I hurt so much to think, as if each idea was a tooth being pulled from me.
Still, I had remembered them, and that was proof that I was wrongly thrown out of heaven. I moved closer to the house.
But I had no knowledge what they had become. Yet I wanted very much to lay eyes on them and fill in all the blanks my mind inflicted on me about them. I ascended from my position sunk in the sidewalk by another sycamore, just out of the light thrown by the colored bulbs strung on the house. I stopped. I saw a small dark form there, like a fireplug of flesh, and with a sudden wrenching agony thought of the angry bald ghost again. Immediately my defenses went up. I flew around to the front of the figure, and his eyes shone silver from the light of the house, just as the eyes of the ghosts in the graveyard had shone, and I wondered how you defended humans against a ghost, for I sensed another attack coming from this frail creature.
"Away, spirit, away from this house!" I cried. "Beast! Cruel phantom! Away!"
I looked again, and it appeared to be just a boy in a dirty, ridiculously puffed up red jacket, a jacket that looked as though it had been stuffed with the feathers of a dozen geese. He could have been a balloon on stilts. Still I didn't trust him: his appearance could be a deception, as I knew ghosts could change forms, and his eyes did shine like silver.
"Mmmm," was the only sound that came out of him, and he swayed and stared at the house. He looked drunk.
"Out, ghost!" I shouted at him. "This is my home. I'll cast you to hell!"
He sniffed at my threat, and stared at a window in my house, raising a hand as if to reach for something inside, and then his eyes appeared to blaze. I thought he might send a streak of fire out of his finger toward the house at anytime, or out of his eyes. Instead he brought his hand back and wiped his nose on his glove.
Still, he made me fear the worst. My hands quivered. He would drive me out of my house with the spirits of snakes and mad dogs and gross creations of the dead that I could not understand, and I would have to wander the earth alone, as the angel had commanded me and this ghost would enforce. He stared at the house as if possessed, his eyes catching the light from it and intensifying it, and I circled over his head, spinning around him at high speed like a ball on a string batted around a pole again and again. "Out, out, out!" I shouted. "Out!"
I stopped when I realized I was acting as crazy as the ghost in the graveyard.
"Get away. I'm no one to trifle with," I said from above him, calming and trying to sound a bit more normal. "I have powers. Yes, I do."
Our conversation was one-sided. My powers didn't work on him. He shuffled his feet, and never once looked away from the window.
Someone passed by the patch of light: he stiffened with anticipation. Then he relaxed again, but I stared at the house, regretful I had not gotten a better look at the person inside. The boy shivered incessantly, as if enjoying in the cold a respite from hell. Just as I was about to fly down and attack him, he murmured a name, "Emily. Mmmm."
I stopped. It had a sweet music to it, but I did not understand what he was talking about. I broke off my assault. He shook so much that I thought he must have been standing in the icy wind for hours. He was hatless, and groaned from the cold, and stamped his feet. His nose was as blue as his eyes.
"Ghost?" I said.
"Emily," he murmured once more sweetly. "Mmmm."
Someone passed by the window again: he stiffened, but then relaxed into his shivering dance once more when the figure passed by. Once again, my fears filled me.
"Get back to the graveyard, ghost," I cried out again. "It's where you belong. Leave my house and haunt. Stay far away from humans, for human you are no more."
It was frustrating, how little he heeded me.
I flew once over and around him, circling him in the cold I did not feel and trying to make my presence known. I was ready to attack him again but I was also determined to ascertain what he was and what his motives were. Whether he was a boy or ghost, I would not be like him, afraid to approach the house, afraid to take the chance. Sometimes you have to sidestep a problem in order to get to the next level of existence, and go on. I had to do that now. I had to know who was inside, and I had to prepare to protect my family if I was forced to do so. That was more important than getting to know this being. I pitied the boy, but had to leave him.
"Go inside if you're human!" I shouted at him then, feeling sorry he was cold but more to convince myself than him that I should do just that. "Stay away if you're a spirit! Friend or foe? Are you a friend or foe?"
His movement from side-to-side ceased for a moment, but he did not answer. He looked up at the sky with huge blue eyes that became silver in the glow of the moon, and he listened. I saw his face in starlight. It was thin and handsome, with dark indigo eyes set in a bony skull with full fleshy lips.
"Go inside!" I shouted again, but my voice did not convince him to end his shuffle and go in. He drew in his neck, and moved again from side-to-side.
"Spirit, stay away," I warned, preparing again to go in.
I felt confused and alone and did not know what to do. One ghost had warned me to stay away from my family. Another threatened it from outside. Who would I hurt and who would I help if I went in? I flew to the treetops. I could not move him with my shouts. I could not decide what I should do. But I could help myself by gathering up my courage to face the changes that had taken place during my death. I knew that. I had to be decisive.
I flew fast toward my house, directly toward its walls, like a sparrow intent on suicide. Whether the walls would deny me and leave me broken and heaving on the ground I didn't know, but I had to try to make it home.
Suddenly all was quiet and bright. I sensed warmth: I was inside. I had left the boy behind, and my heart jumped with joy at all the sights of familiar things I had left behind so long ago. So all my possessions were still here. Piano music by Rachmaninoff was playing on my stereo. It was a record I remembered buying now, but I could not recall what it was. All my old furniture and my paintings were there. The walls were my colors, colors I had chosen for them, though freshly put on. Through the big front window I saw the big puffed-up red coat still outside in a patch of light, and the boys eyes were like new quarters catching headlights. In spite of everyone who had tried to stop me, I was home. Things were as they had been.
My son Ed was walking across the old rope carpet. He came upon me as suddenly as a ghost, and my heart leaped. I thought it beat for a second inside me, but then it stopped again when I listened for it.
"Ed!" I shouted.
He made no reply, and I though perhaps he had gone deaf. He was many years older than what I remembered, and the years had worn wrinkles in his face, so maybe that change had come over him. A camera was strung around his neck, as one always had been in life. His finger was on the shutter button and he moved with an eagerness in his bright blue eyes, toward the kitchen. His short red hair had grayed, but he wore his thick glasses, and he swayed from side-to-side as if he really could not see where he was going. Nearly blind, and now deaf, I thought. The slender build was the same as ever, as were his big strong hands. But he looked so old, so old, not at all like the boy I remembered. His mortality saddened me. He looked almost ready to join me on the other side.
"Ed, I've come home," I said quietly, not wanting to frighten him. "I'm up here above you. Ed?"
"Ethel ... Emily ... Come out. Everything's ready," he called. I jumped at his voice, but he had no reaction to mine.
I hovered near the ceiling, too confused for another attempt to make my presence known. I looked around the room, tearing my eyes from my son. I felt as though I had swallowed a rock with all the emotion in me, and thought this is why the bald ghost told me to leave. It's too hard, too hard to be home again and see the life you left so long ago. I closed my eyes for a second, thinking it would all go away if I did, for one more glance from Ed would have shattered me. The rock grew in size in my stomach when I turned to him again and opened my eyes. This was no illusion.
"Son! It's me!" I called out with tears falling from my eyes. I felt the tears welling uncontrollably. "Look up and you'll see me, I swear."
I opened my arms for him to run to me, but he stared toward the kitchen. One of my tears dropped, and fell on his head. He reached up quickly. He felt the spot where the tear had fallen and looked up to the ceiling.
"Huh, roof must be leaking," he said.
I looked around some more, avoiding him and my feelings by looking at things and how they had not changed. But I didn't care much about that and again shouted at him.
"Son, look up at me! It's Meander! Please listen to me," I cried out, and now even my voice was unfamiliar to me. It sounded false and broken and weak. My hands quivered.
A floor lamp I had purchased in the forties burned on its low setting, its ornate while linen lamp shade only slightly the worse for wear. The lamp accounted for the yellow glow of the room. I moved into its light, so that he could see me.
"Now! Now! Look! Ed, I've returned from the grave!" I shouted. Again a tear fell from my eye onto his head.
"Damn roof," he said, wiping it away.
Unable to control myself, I stared once again at Ed to make sure he was real. I was quivering. Then I looked away again and a pain shot through me.
"Here I am, back from the dead!" I shouted out again, but I was unsure if I was telling the truth, from the way he was reacting. All this could very easily be madness. I could be mad. His hearing could be perfectly fine. I felt as I had in life when I had to sweat through a danger, face some tiger.
A clock I had found in a junkyard, with its cupids facing each other on one foot with bows drawn, ticked loudly on the mantle next to an old photo of me. I was standing in the photo with a fish and fishing rod.
"Look!" I said. "I'm the same person as in this photo. Look!"