A Ghost Tale Read online

  I went with my family to the Church of the Nativity. The whole city was there, not one more soul fitted in. We stood at the end of the chapel. In the background, near the altar, a white coffin almost buried by bouquets and wreaths of flowers could be seen. Beside the coffin, they had placed a great picture of Anne. She was pretty. Her eyes shone brightly, and she had a huge smile. Her hair was in a straw-color braid and her bangs were opened, as always, by a swirl that she was trying to control without success.

  I felt dizzy and confused. The air smelled of withered flowers, wax, incense, sweat... The atmosphere in there was almost unbreathable. The sound didn’t help. I was listening to people’s murmurs like the dull noise of an idle engine. I couldn’t tell the words, only that rumor that seemed to saturate my head and pushed from inside my skull. Every once in a while, I could overhear some sobs that connected with my soul and produced an echo. Only the pain was a recognizable feeling. The rest was noise.

  I don’t remember anything about that ceremony. I could only feel my mother’s hands on my shoulders, like two anchors that kept me in the world of sanity and prevented me from flouncing away and becoming crazy. I stood firm, focused on the pressure of those two hands, begging so that she wouldn’t let me go and leave me lost and alone.

  I was not feeling well, but in some strange way, I felt that I was not as bad as I should be either. I should have been desperate, undone in tears and full of pain, or so furious as to wish to destroy that place and all its occupants. However, I felt nothing of that and it seemed strange. I felt empty, numb, dazed... It gave me the impression that my soul was anesthetized or that, with the death of Anne, it had decided to retire and hibernate, take refuge in some dark, distant and hot corner of my interior, where grief could not reach it.

  When the ceremony was over, people started moving. Most came out of the church, but a group began to walk down the central aisle towards the altar. My mother squatted in front of me and held my chin sweetly, trying to attract my attention. I was still stunned, so it took me a while to realize that she was talking to me:

  “Eric, Honey. You want to go see her? If you can’t, it’s okay.”

  I just nodded, without even thinking. My mother put her hands back on my shoulders to give me strength and we went to the queue. My mind diverged in two. One part shouted at me to stop, to turn and run away from that church, that, as long as I had not seen her corpse, none of it would have been confirmed, that everything was a nightmare from which I would wake up at any moment.

  The other side told me I had to see her and prove that all that was a lie. The thing resting in that white coffin could not be Anne, not my Anne. She couldn't die. I would discover the scam and convince everyone else that they were wrong and that she had to be alive somewhere else.

  Without realizing it, I found myself in front of her coffin. On a bed of white satin rested her perfect body. On her pale face, her pink lips stood out, curved in a placid smile. She was wearing a black dress with white lace collars. Her hands were crossed over her abdomen, holding a long-stemmed white rose. Her hair, usually scrambled, was untangled and spread out on a shiny cloth pillow. They had even managed to control the swirl of her fringe separating the hair of the face with a headband of fabric flowers. That wasn’t Anne. It was a porcelain doll, a perfect but empty container. I even thought that if I sat her up, she would raise her eyelids like the dolls of my sister Lissie, and that, instead of her bright, brown eyes, I would find two empty, dead crystal balls. I dared not touch her, much less to put a kiss on that cold skin, as I had seen other people did. As long as I didn’t touch her, I could still think that that wasn’t Anne.

  I turned and left the chapel, followed by my mother. We stayed in the church garden until the funeral entourage’s cars began to move towards the Riverside cemetery, across the river. I sat in the back seat with my sister and I spent the time looking at the scenery. It wasn’t fair that it was such a beautiful day. It should have been a gray, rainy, sad day. The whole world should be mourning her loss. Yet the sun shone radiantly in such a blue sky that it ached.

  I was standing near that hole that would swallow her body forever. I watched, without being able to move a muscle, how they lowered the coffin and began to cover it with dirt. Like in pirate stories, we were burying a treasure, but no one would ever come for it, it would never see the light again.

  When they were done, people were approaching Anne’s family to give them condolences. I stood aside, looking at that heap of land, feeling that there was something I didn’t understand, that escaped me. My mother returned to my side, she gave me a big hug and grabbed me by the hand to take me out of the graveyard. I resisted as if I had taken roots beside her grave.

  “What is it, Eric?”

  “Is that it?” I felt my throat shut and my eyes itching. “It’s over?”

  “Yes, darling. That’s it.”She pulled my hand again. “Let’s go to the car.”

  She didn’t understand, but I didn’t know how to explain it either. How could it be that everything ended like this, that there was nothing more? It was impossible for Anne to be dead and for the world to keep spinning as if nothing happened. We cried at her funeral, we talked about how great she was, we put her in a hole and came back to our life? Should we forget and we moved forward as if nothing had happened? It was not possible, neither logical nor fair. Life couldn’t end like this. That injustice began to awaken my sleepy soul, to get it out of its daze to make it scream. I had to be able to do something. At that time, I felt that I would do anything to fix that, that I would fight against anyone to give her back her life, against her murderer, against God Himself... I would do anything for her except the one thing they were asking me to do: to leave that place and leave her down there, in that cold, dark grave, so lonely...

  My mother pulled me again and I got carried away. I was crying so much I didn’t even see where we were going. My mother put me in the car. I felt her warm hand stroking my cheeks, in a vain attempt to dry my tears.

  We followed the funeral entourage back to the Austens’ home. As it was tradition, everyone would take food and spend the next few hours eating and drinking, talking about their children, their partners or their jobs, celebrating in that strange way that life would go on. I couldn’t go there. For me, life could not go on. I managed to stop my crying and asked my parents to leave me at home. My mother looked at me worried, but she ended up accepting. I guess she thought I’d been through enough emotions that day and I could use a break in my room to rest or cry until I drop.

  I didn’t do any of that. When my parents’ car disappeared from my sight, I ran to the garage, I took my bike and started touring the city. I needed to move, feel the air, be alone and think, but above all, I needed to look for him. Anne’s murderer was loose, he traversed Swanton as one more, making normal life, greeting his neighbors, passing unnoticed among the people... However, I knew I would find him, that, in some strange way, I would be able to see the monster behind his mask. And when I would find him, I’d smash him with my own hands.

  When it started to dusk, and the first streetlights began to light, I decided to go home. The rage had disappeared, leaving in return a sense of emptiness, hopelessness and absolute exhaustion. When I left my anger, I began to feel frightened. Maybe the monster knew I was looking for him and he had decided to go out to meet me. Maybe he was watching from the shadows of the park, from a dark tunnel, from some lonely alley... For the first time in my life, Swanton ceased to be my home, the town where I had spent my childhood without being afraid of anything, a place to be safe and happy. At that time, it was a dreary place, full of furtive shadows, echoes of dull footsteps... I felt like a coward and very guilty, but I pedaled home as fast as I could. I had gone out to hunt a monster, to avenge Anne’s death, and returned home as a frightened child who wanted to take refuge in his mother’s lap. I wasn’t a monster hunter. I was just a kid who couldn’t do anything, and as much as it hurt me, I’d have to learn to live with that.<
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  I decided to stay home for the rest of the summer, mourn her loss and pray for the police to find the culprit, but only two days later Jim’s little brother disappeared.

  IV

  Jim’s little brother was named Robert, but nobody called him that. We didn’t call him Bob or Bobby either. For all the kids in the neighborhood, he was “the snotty-faced”. It didn’t matter how many times his mother cleaned him up. He always wore two columns of boogers, green and thick, peeping out of the holes of his nose. It was disgusting, and the bad thing was that you couldn’t ignore it and look away. That nose seemed to call you, attract your attention, hypnotize you... When you couldn’t take it anymore and you said something, the kid tried to suck hard, making a noise that was even more repulsive than the vision of his snot hanging, and then he wiped his nose with the sleeve. He was disgusting, but he didn’t deserve to be killed.

  The day they reported his disappearance, we were all at home. It was a Saturday morning in August. Even though noon hadn’t yet arrived, the heat was oppressive and dry, as if someone had left the door of a giant oven open. My father was soon finished working in the carpentry shop he had at Merchants Row and was in the garage, checking his motorbike. He had a beautiful Harley, a memory of his youthful times. He hardly used it anymore. I think my mother was afraid and would have preferred to sell it, but he stood firm and dedicated his free time to check if it was in perfect condition and to brighten it.

  My mother was with Lissie in the garden. As she pruned the rosebushes, Lissie combed her dolls and sang songs to them. She was two years older than me. She was fourteen and in September she would start high school. Although she no longer had age to play with dolls, she seemed to resist growing. She was still wearing colored dresses with lace collars and she wore ribbons on her hair. Although I loved her very much but, sometimes, when I looked at her, I thought she was surely losing her marbles and that she’s going to suffer a lot in High School.

  I had been locked in my room all morning. My mother came up a couple of times to ask me if I needed anything. I thought that she was still worried about me and that she was afraid that I could spend the day crying or thinking about committing suicide for love, but when she saw that I was entertained in an activity as harmless as drawing, she left me alone.

  Actually, I was trying to draw Anne. The photographs that had come out in the newspapers were not good, they did not show the Anne that I had known. I wanted to draw her as she really was: I wanted to capture her smile and the brightness of her eyes, the way she laughed and the sound of her voice, the way she wrinkled her nose when she got focused on something and the smell of shampoo of her hair... I wanted to catch all that in a single drawing, so that I could never forget about it. That’s why the paper bin in my room started to get filled with crumpled paper balls.

  The sound of a horn made me look up from the paper. A black Buick was advancing down the street, insistently honking the horn. Many neighbors left what they were doing and approached the front fences of their gardens. The car stopped a few steps from the entrance of our house. I peeked to the window of my room to see what was going on.

  A boy had got out of the car and made gestures for people to get close. I recognized him right away. He worked at the gas station, and if he was no busy, he used to help us repair the bike’s punctures and swell the wheels. When the boy felt that he had the attention of all the people on the street, he put his hands on both sides of the mouth, as a speaking-trumpet, and began to shout:

  “The Miller’s little one has disappeared.” As soon as he uttered those words, everyone started talking at once, asking for more information or screaming that something had to be done. “Please, listen to me. Search patrols are forming in the Village Green Park, in front of the city hall. Everyone who wants to help should go there immediately to be assigned a zone.”

  As soon as his announcement ended, the boy went back into his Buick, closed the door without answering any questions and started in the direction of the next street, honking the horn again. My mother turned to my father, who was rubbing his hands with a rag to remove the fat from the bike while watching as the car was moving away.

  “¿Are you going, Jack?”

  “Of course. You stay here with the kids and keep an eye on them.”

  Neither of us said anything. No one on the street dared to say it, but in everyone’s mind there was only one image: that of Anne’s cold body floating upside down in Lake Champlain.

  My father got in his car and spent the next two minutes trying to get it started. It was an 84 Pontiac, one of those huge, elongated cars with the bodywork side made of wood. My mother had been insisting for years to change it for a more modern and smaller car, but he rebelled saying it was a classic and that, besides, there were always too many expenses to buy a new one.

  When he finally got it started, he left the garage on the paved road and took a hand out the window to say goodbye to Lissie and my mother, who had walked to the garden door to see him go. As soon as my father’s car disappeared, I put on my shoes, left my room and went downstairs running.

  My mother was still at the door of the garden, looking at the road my father had left, with a lost gaze and the two hands intertwined in front of her chest. It reminded me of those scenes from the movies in which the protagonist stays at the train station watching his lover leave to warzone, perhaps not to return ever again.

  I thought she was quite distracted with her thoughts so as not to realize my presence, so, taking advantage of the fact that my father had left the garage door open, I got in and climbed on my bike. I hadn’t started to pedal when I heard my mother’s voice:

  “Eric William Armstrong, where do you think you’re going?”

  I was paralyzed. My mother never called me by my full name if she was in a good mood. For her, I was always Eric, or some ridiculous affectionate nickname if we were alone. I turned to her with my best smile as a good and formal boy.

  “I just wanted to get close to Jim’s house. I guess he’ll be worried and it’ll be nice to talk to someone.”

  My mother’s frown vanished immediately to be replaced by a dumbbell smile and by bright eyes filled with excitement. She went through the steps that were separating her from me and she stirred my bangs with affection.

  “You’re such a good boy, Eric. Okay, but do not go out there with the bikes.”

  I nodded, and I started moving. It was true that I was going to Jim’s house, so I didn’t have to feel guilty, but I wasn’t so sure about not going out with the bikes. Ever since I heard the news of his brother’s disappearance, I knew we had to do something.

  Jim lived in my neighborhood, a couple of streets down. From afar it was possible to distinguish without difficulty which one was his house: that which was surrounded by curious and cars of journalists. To my mind came those images of westerns in which the vultures fly round and round the wounded hero, waiting for the right time to jump on the prey.

  I went around the house, I left my bike on the floor and jumped the garden fence. I didn’t feel like walking through all those people, and Jim had a wooden house in the garden on top of a centenary Oak. I was pretty sure I’d find him there.

  I stood under the tree and called him a couple of times. His white and freckled face peeped out the door, surrounded by the faces of Dave and Jake, the twins.

  “Hello, Jim. Can I come up?”

  “Yes, of course. Come up.”

  The three heads hid again in the house. I went upstairs, by using the pieces of wood nailed to the trunk. My three friends were sitting on the floor. They weren’t playing cards or getting entertained with a comic book. They were just there, quietly. I sat in the corner that was free and, for a couple of minutes, we remained silent, waiting for someone to open the mouth.

  “Do you know anything about your brother?” I asked at last.

  “No, nothing...” Jim took a deep breath as if trying to push down the anguish that thronged in his throat. “It was my fault.�
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  “Don’t talk nonsense. Why would it be your fault?”

  “Yes, it is. Mom left us for a while in the park while she was going to the bank. We started playing hide-and-seek and he disappeared.”

  “Did you not see anyone who could take him? A person? A car?”

  “No... Maybe he hid in the trees and there was someone there. Or maybe he went up to the parking lot at the entrance and someone got him in a car and took him. I didn’t see anything.”

  Jim looked down. Dave crawled over his butt until he got close to him and passed his arm around his shoulders.

  “They will find him. Do not worry. I’m sure he’s got distracted and he’s out there walking around. You’ll see how it doesn’t take long for him to show up.”

  We all went back to being silent. We didn’t even hear our breaths, just the chirping of the birds in the hot morning and the distant sound of a car engine. I looked up from the wooden planks on the floor to look at Dave. I directed a smile as an apology. I knew he had said all of that to try to reassure Jim, but I couldn’t keep quiet about what I thought.

  “They won’t find him. At least, not in time.”My three friends looked at me speechless, unable to believe that I was saying that. “You all know what happened to Anne. The guy who took her is still on the loose, and he may be the one that’s taken your brother.”

  “No, no, no...” Jim waved his head from side to side, like a kid with a tantrum. “That is not going to happen to Bobby.”

  “Nobody wants something bad to happen to him, but we won’t be able to prevent it by staying in here.”

  “We can’t do anything else, Eric,” Dave said. “The police are already investigating and are organizing citizen patrols to go out and find him.”