One humid summer night, he was dozing in his shack. A full moon was rising over the woods, and the cicadas were buzzing like the sisters after a rousing sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The air was deathly still. There had been ten funerals already that week, the earth still dark where the fresh graves had been dug. Through the din, Azie thought he heard the tinkling of a bell. Suddenly alert, he strained to listen. He walked to the door and paused at the threshold. Lightning bugs were flashing in the dark among the gravestones. But he heard no bell.
He walked back to his chair and sat, closing his eyes. His undershirt was wet with perspiration. He picked up a whisk and fanned himself. As if by cue, the cicadas all stopped. And there it was again: the unmistakable sound of a bell.
He picked up his lantern in one hand and his shovel in the other and walked out. The moon illuminated the gravestones so brightly he almost didn’t need no lantern. He passed the grave of Miss Cleta Jones, who had been buried on Monday. Her family hadn’t been able to afford a coffin with a bell, so it couldn’t have been her grave. Over yonder was Marcus Dunbar, who had fought in the 54th Regiment and survived, only to die of yellow fever on Tuesday. But no, the sound wasn’t coming from his grave. In fact, the bell wasn’t coming from any of the recent graves. Yet still Azie heard it, intermittent but insistent.
The cicadas started up again, drowning out the bell so it was hard to tell where it was coming from. An owl hooted nearby, its round eyes catching the light from the lantern and blinking. Azie made his way to each of the graves where families had installed a bell—there weren’t that many, so it didn’t take long. Finally, at the last grave, he heard the bell clearly. But it couldn’t have been this one. This was one of the first graves that had been dug almost a year earlier. Still, he put down his lantern and began digging. The bell kept ringing, urging him on. At last his shovel struck the coffin. “I’m here,” Azie called out. It took another ten minutes to clear away enough dirt to open the lid. The bell stopped. Overhead the moon shone brightly, filling the grave with a ghostly light. Azie straddled the coffin and, using his shovel, pried open the lid.
Staring up at him was a skull with traces of skin still clinging to the bones, the mouth agape as if screaming. Scratches on the inside lid were embedded with bits of nail and dried blood. Azie stared down at the corpse, and scratched his head. Why hadn’t he heard any bell a year ago?
He climbed up out of the grave and brought his lantern close to the bell housing. Sure enough, the cord connecting the bell to the casket had been cut. Someone had not wanted the occupant to ever get out. The cord hadn’t made the bell ring tonight—something otherwordly had. Azie brought the lantern close to the gravestone and read the inscription:
Clayborn Payton
May 10, 1823 - August 29, 1872
He knew what he had to do next.
With lantern in hand, he headed into town, walking the two miles toward the the home of Mrs. Henrietta Coleman. Sister Henrietta was the kind of woman who always wore the newest fashion to church. She was vain, and felt she was better than the darker-skinned maids and laborers who shared the pews at Ebenezer Baptist. Six months after Clayborn Payton died and she inherited his money, she had married Lemuel Coleman.
Azie approached the grand Victorian house and knocked on the door, untroubled by the lateness of the hour. He heard footsteps within, and after a minute or so Mrs. Coleman’s maid, Flozie, answered the door, candle in hand.
“What you want at this hour, Azie?” she asked.
“I need to see Mrs. Coleman,” he said flatly.
“Can’t it wait ‘til mornin’?”
“I need to see her now. It’s about Mr. Payton.”
Flozie’s expression grew grave. “Hold on, then, I’ll get her.”
Azie waited at the doorstep for awhile. After a bit, Mrs. Coleman appeared, clearly annoyed. Azie held out the bell and the clipped cord. Mrs. Coleman gazed down, aghast, and recoiled.
“I think you know why I brung this,” Azie said. Mrs. Coleman opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out. Azie set the items down at the doorstep and turned to leave, when he heard the tinkle of the bell. He turned back to see Mrs. Coleman and Flozie both staring down at the bell, which seemed to be sounding of its own accord.
“Stop that right now,” commanded Mrs. Coleman, but the bell continued to ring. She looked horrified. “Flozie, take that and throw it away.” Flozie picked it up gingerly and stepped back inside. “No, not through the house. Take it around out back.”
Mrs. Coleman silently glared at Azie. She pulled her lace shawl more tightly around her shoulders and watched him as he walked down the street.
In the days that followed, Azie pieced together news of what happened next. All night and the next day, Mrs. Coleman had been followed by the sound of a tinkling bell. She finally had shut herself up in the bedroom, with her hands over her ears. “Stop that infernal bell!” she had screamed to Flozie. But there was nothing that Flozie could do. Still the bell kept ringing.
She developed a fever and grew weaker, refusing to eat. “The bell…” she hoarsely whispered. It was the only thing she seemed able to say. Her eyes shrunk in her sockets and her face took on a wicked yellowish hue. She vomited black bile. “It’s one of the worst cases I’ve seen,” said the doctor. He remarked on the curious sound of the bell that sounded in her presence, but Flozie just shrugged, although she had her suspicions.
Mrs. Coleman’s breathing grew increasingly filled with gasps. “Look, there!” she cried out. “Do you see it?”
“See what, missus?” asked Flozie.
“The corpse sitting in the corner, with the bloodied, bony fingers! Why does he sit there hour after hour, just waiting?”
“But there’s no one there.”
“Don’t you see him?” she screamed. “There! There!”
Flozie took the wet cloth and wiped Mrs. Coleman’s face, but she brusquely shooed her away.
Then at last the ringing stopped. A death rattle emerged from the emaciated body of Henrietta Coleman, her eyes still fixed on the corner of the room. She was buried in Graceland Cemetery, in a coffin equipped with a bell. Azie watched the coffin being lowered into the grave and the clods of earth being piled on top. He just shook his head.
On windless nights, they say you can sometimes hear a bell ringing softly in the dark.
The Ride With the Stranger
A black, ‘61 Chevy Impala convertible pulled up to the stop sign as I crossed the street—only it wasn't the shiny, gleaming black of a well-kept classic car but a weathered, dingy black like ash. The car idled roughly as the driver, a gaunt-faced twenty-something with dark glasses and a black hooded sweatshirt, watched me pass in front.
“Can I give you a ride?” he asked.
“Well, uh, actually—”
He leaned across the passenger side and opened the door, which groaned on its hinges. I hesitated, looking down the street ahead of me, then slipped off my backpack and climbed in, pulling the door shut. “I’m going a few miles down that way,” I pointed. The car backfired as he accelerated and turned without signaling.
The car smelled of age and must. Cracks criss-crossed the dashboard. I must have been looking intently at the dials, because he said after a few moments, “Radio’s busted.” The hood of the car stretched beyond the windshield, the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. I started to say, “They don't make cars like this any more,” then realized it sounded trite, a poor attempt at small talk. Instead, I looked to my right at the houses we were passing.
“I’d like you to tell me a story,” he said.
I heard his words, but the request startled me. “What?”
“A story. You know any good ones?” He sensed my hesitation and added, “I always ask people to tell me a story. Anything you want.”
“You mean like a real story, or something made up?”
“Tell me about something you remember.”
Maybe it was the slightly tattered hood hid
ing his face in shadow, but I suddenly thought of the summer I spent with Carole and Roger and the camping trips when, each night as firelight from the adults’ campfire cast long shadows against the side of our tent, I regaled my nephews and their friends with ghost stories, long epics that continued from night to night.
“Okay,” I said, and told him about the old, deserted farmhouse.
* * *
The Teanaway River cuts through the Cascade Range that is the backbone of Washington state, creating a narrow valley dotted with farms and orchards. On one of our camping trips that summer it threatened to rain. Roger had a friend who had recently purchased a neglected farmhouse on the Teanaway River, not far from where we were camping, and we arranged to sit out the storm in that drier refuge. We drove down the quiet country road and arrived at the farmhouse as dusk chased the already wan light from the sky. Spotlighted by the car headlights, Roger opened the rickety gate, then got back in. We jostled down the driveway to the sound of gravel crunching under the tires.
The farmhouse sat ahead of us, presiding over a wide, overgrown field. A line of dark trees marked the path of the river at the far edge of the field. As we got out of the car, the trees that bunched protectively around the farmhouse were creaking in the wind. We entered through the back door, which led through a hallway into a large kitchen. A single, bare bulb on the high ceiling illuminated the kitchen, whose corners remained half in shadow. Carole went over to the sink and turned on the tap, testing the water. Beyond the kitchen were a side room with two beds, the main parlor, and a huge bathroom that dwarfed its tub, toilet and sink. Carole speculated that the room had been converted to a bathroom sometime after the second world war.
From the back hallway, a closed door sat on the bottom step of what must have been the stairway to the second story. It seemed odd to build a doorway off the floor like that. I opened the door and groped for the light switch. Flicking the switch several times resulted in no light, however.
“Here, give me one of the flashlights,” I said to the other boys. I shined the beam up the stairs into the dark recesses above.
“There are thirteen steps!” my nephew Perry counted, thrilled at the discovery, but that only added to my trepidation. He nudged me forward, and we started up the stairs. As we neared the top, we sensed the light from the hallway behind us suddenly dim, and turned to see the door noiselessly shut. Perry screamed and we bounded down the stairs, flinging open the door so hard it banged against the wall. Drawn by the commotion, Roger ran into the kitchen where we were cowering.
“What happened?” he asked.
“A ghost closed the door on us,” Perry said.
Roger went over to the door in the hallway and opened it, then let go. We watched as the door slowly swung shut. “It’s not sitting evenly on its hinges,” he explained. He opened the door again.
“There are thirteen steps!” Perry blurted out.
Roger shined his flashlight up the stairs. The wind suddenly raced outside, howling through the rafters.
“I think we’ll stay down here,” he said, shutting the door.
As Carole prepared dinner, we took turns bathing in the oversized bathroom. I sat in the tepid bathwater, listening to Roger and my sister talk in the kitchen.
“I’ll bring in the cots and sleeping bags from the car,” Roger said. “We can set them up for the kids in the front room.”
“I want to sleep in your room,” Perry insisted.
“I want to sleep with Perry,” mimicked Kevin, the youngest.
“Okay, we’ll all sleep in the same room.”
We ate dinner seated around the kitchen table. Rain began streaking the windows. The wind continued to howl intermittently, spitting the rain against the panes like a schoolyard bully. The bare bulb sputtered, then went out.
“I better get the lantern from the car,” Roger said, grabbing his flashlight.
Someone went, "Woooooo.”
“Stop it!” demanded Kevin.
The mind imagines frightful things in the dark. Lurking outside the window I saw a skeletal face, the nose eroded away, jagged teeth splintering out from the gaping mouth, thin blades of hair falling across the forehead, dull eyes gazing from dark sockets—the Phantom of the Opera, whose Silent Screen photo haunted my childhood. I heard Roger’s footsteps on the back steps, growing louder as he entered the hallway and rounded the doorway into the kitchen, carrying a lantern. The light chased away the face at the window.
The fortress of cots and bed frames was assembled in the side room, wagons circled protectively. We assumed our positions in bed, side by side. Tree limbs scraped against the siding of the house all night long, nocturnal visitors clawing to get inside. No one slept soundly. When the wet, gray dawn at last arrived, our nightmares were temporarily washed away.
* * *
“I’m going east, so you can let me off at the light,” I told the driver.
“Turn left?”
“Yeah. But you don’t have to take me all the way.”
“No, really, it’s okay. I enjoyed your story.”
I laughed nervously. “So this is how riders pay their fare.” He said nothing in response. We turned east. “You must like ghost stories.”
“Most definitely. So tell me another.”
* * *
Several years later, after Carole and Roger had moved to Michigan and I was in high school, my parents, Grammy and I drove across country for a visit, taking along Sherry's middle son. Rob and I were crammed in the back seat with Grammy. I had brought along my cassette tape recorder, and on the long journey over the Rockies, Rob and I amused ourselves taping Grammy snoring. We dropped Grammy off with some relatives in Denver and continued eastward, across the Great Plains to southwestern Michigan. When we arrived at the house on Indian Lake, no one was home to greet us, so we walked around back to the lakefront lawn. Rob and I picked up croquet mallets and took turns hitting balls through the wickets while Dad sat in the swinging chair and Mom nervously smoked.
Finally, Carole and Roger returned home. “I thought you weren’t arriving until the day after tomorrow!” Carole said. She introduced us to another couple and their ten-year-old son whom they had known back in Washington. “Roger and I will move into the living room, and you and Dad can have our bedroom,” Carole hastily improvised. “The boys can all sleep downstairs, and Jim and Mary can remain in the second bedroom.”
I took my suitcase downstairs. The two adjoining rooms looked very much as they had two years earlier when I had spent the summer. I put my suitcase down in the room with the beds and cots and walked into the second room that was used as an all-purpose family room. The land from the front of the house sloped down to the lake so that the back of the house was two-story. The lower-level windows and a back door looked out onto the lawn and the lake. On the far wall of the family room I noticed one of my Dad’s abstract paintings.
“Look,” I pointed out to my nephews. “There’s a face in that painting.”
“Where?” asked Perry.
“See the outline of the skull? Your parents probably never told you that story when they bought the house.”
“What story?” asked Kevin.
“About the man who was murdered by the previous owners. He was buried in the wall, right there, and now his death’s head is starting to emerge through the painting.”
Kevin shuddered.
Perry’s friend walked up to the watercolor. “That’s a bunch of crap,” he said.
“Suit yourself.” I grabbed my tape recorder, went upstairs to the bathroom and locked the door. I recorded moans while leaning into the reverberant space of the bathtub, then dropped a bar of soap onto the ceramic basin. It made a resounding thunk that sufficiently imitated a ghostly knocking, so I repeated it several times. I heard a flurry of voices downstairs, then a stampede of footsteps coming up the stairs. When I emerged from the bathroom, Kevin was whimpering to Carole about strange knockings that were coming from the closet. She took him back down
stairs and opened the closet.
“See, there’s nothing in there,” she reassured him.
“But we heard a knocking sound,” Rob protested.
“It was probably just the pipes.”
Outside, clouds were slowly collecting into a thunderstorm. The air was almost liquid with humidity. Fireflies were flashing in the dark trees down along the shore of the lake; in the distance, a thin line of lightning ripped through the sky above the lake. There was a long pause, and then a faint rumble of thunder.
“Guys, go out and put away all the stuff you left on the lawn,” Roger instructed. We went outside and began gathering up the croquet set and other items. Perry dragged a yellow rubber raft up to the back porch and secured it. I watched the sky intently, trying to will the storm to come our way. There was another silent flash of light in the distance. I strained to hear the thunder, but none came.
All through dinner, I kept looking out the window at the sky that was now an inky black. Scattered lights twinkled along the far shore of the lake and were mirrored in the surface of the water that was as calm as the sky.
“I want some more potatoes,” demanded Perry’s friend. His mother scooped a helping of scalloped potatoes onto his plate and he went back to the kids’ table.
“Mary, how long have you been visiting?” Mom asked.
“We’ve been here almost two weeks. We’re planning to go back to Seattle on Sunday.”
I saw Carole roll her eyes.
“Is this your first time in Michigan?” Mom continued.
“Yes. We’ve never been east of the Rockies. Carole and Roger took us to a quaint Dutch village today. It’s in Holland—just like the country.” Mary laughed nasally and slightly too loud. “Then we took a river cruise out of Saugatuck.”
“You would really enjoy Holland, Mother,” said Carole. “It’s very picturesque. There's a windmill and tulip gardens, and the downtown has lovely old Victorian buildings.”
By the time we finished dinner, it was late. The boys took turns showering, and I went downstairs to hide my tape recorder under a pile of clothes in the corner beneath the watercolor with the Rorschach face. When everyone had gotten into bed, I said, “I’ll check the back door to make sure it’s locked.” As I returned, I pressed the play button on the tape recorder and turned the volume up high.