Several nights later- after I’d had enough time to talk myself into believing that I’d just dreamed the whole thing- I ended up on the couch in the middle of the night. I was having trouble breathing, and I just couldn’t get comfortable so I drug my pillow and my blanket into the living room and crawled on the couch. Bear followed me and lay at my feet. It made me feel a little better, at least I wasn’t alone. Perhaps if someone tried to break in on me he would bark or growl; especially if the hapless burglar tried to ring the doorbell.
I woke in the dark living room to the familiar electric feeling. I had my back turned to the supposedly empty room, but I felt like someone was there with me. I could almost feel them sitting beside me on the coffee table. I had the uncanny feeling that if I turned and looked he would be there and I would see him. It felt like he wanted me to look, like he was waiting for me to look at him. I was terrified, and I didn’t dare open my eyes even though my every natural inclination was to look. It was like having an itch I wasn’t supposed to scratch. No matter how much I wanted to turn and look, my fear would not let me move. I lay there as quietly as I knew how and prayed for some sort of relief. I probably would have stayed like that all night had the Lord not sent my husband to retrieve me.
He bent over me and asked me why I didn’t come back to bed. I followed him obediently back into our bedroom and lay as close to him as I could. Whatever it was didn’t come around when Don was there. I didn’t know why, but that was the last night I spent on the couch until we moved to Screven.
But I had to be at home by myself. I couldn’t just leave and not come back until Don showed up at seven thirty at night. I fought back as best I could. I blasted my rock and roll. Mr. Smith didn’t seem to like my taste in music so I played it loudly. As an added precaution, more for my benefit than anything else, I left all the lights on in the house and if I ever started to feel that electric feeling- well it was time to walk the dog or take a trip to Wal-Mart.
Sometimes it would be days or weeks between visits. One such night I was cooking supper and I heard footsteps down the hall. I wiped my hands on a towel and looked around the corner to see what Bear was up to. He was on the couch with his head tilted as if to ask why I was bothering him. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt as though someone was standing behind me. So I did what could do, I turned off the potatoes and told Bear it was time for a walk.
I took my cell phone and talked to Don who assured me he was on his way home from work. I took an extra long walk that afternoon and then stopped by Mrs. Katherine’s house to play with her weenie dog, Buster. Mrs. Katherine was working out in her little yard. I looped Bear’s leash around a skinny little tree and put Buster on his leash. I walked him around in the yard while I wasted time waiting for Don to come home.
Finally, I had enough and put Buster back in his little pen and I sat down on the porch to talk to my neighbor. Mrs. Katherine worked at the First Baptist Church too so she knew absolutely EVERYBODY in Jesup and she knew ALL the news that was worth talking about. She turned out to be my main source of information on our “ghost”.
“I’m glad you’re trying to keep the place up.” She commented as she worked in her flowers. “You should have seen it when Mrs. Smith lived there. It was always kept up; she had flowers in the yard. She would just die if she could see it today. Before they turned it into a rental it was really pretty.”
That made me feel bad. Maybe our “friend” was visiting because he was angry over the condition of the house he had built.
I gently prodded Mrs. Katherine for more information.
“So… whatever happened to Mr. and Mrs. Smith anyway?” I asked as if I hadn’t heard the story.
“Oh, she’s in the nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s. She thought her husband was still alive. Poor thing.”
I wondered how much of the story Mrs. Katherine knew or would tell me. I asked her how Mr. Smith died.
“Oh, he died on the train.”
“He worked on the railroad?” I asked.
“No, the train de-railed. He was the only one what was killed. They were young and in love. It was so sad, they never had children and Mrs. Smith never married again. She lived there until they took her away and they made the place into a rental. You know, one family had a bunch of ol’ dogs in there. They destroyed that house. I wonder what Mr. Smith would say if he could see it now.”
I wanted to tell her he was probably hanging out in my living room if she wanted to go ask him, but I kept my mouth shut.
Don pulled into the carport and I waved at her. “I gotta get going.” I told her and retrieved Bear from her tree. I had my first clue to the puzzle.
The Librarian gave me the next clue. I was a history major in college and if I learned nothing else, it was how to research. I camped out at the library after school that day and found the newspaper clippings in a big scrapbook. It talked about how the train- Number Ninety Six had derailed just outside of Odum and Mr. Smith was the only one killed. It mentioned that he was supposed to take an earlier train but he had been delayed on his business and he took Number Ninety Six instead.
I shook my head. He wasn’t even supposed to be on that train! It seemed like such a waste.
The feelings came more and more often as summer gave way into fall. I don’t know if the cool weather brought our “friend” out or if I was in the Halloween mood and just started noticing things more. I had finally gotten to the point where I could stand to be home by myself. He had never tried to harm me after all. All he’d ever done was make noises and entertain the dog. Things moved from time to time but I couldn’t say that was his fault and not the fact that I am extremely scatterbrained. I lost my keys every few days but I don’t know if he took them or I just toss them absentmindedly.
He also used to like to lock doors. The front door in particular. When we moved in one of the first things we noticed was that the front door had about six different locks on it. My mother looked at me and said “You must be in a bad neighborhood.” There was the original old lock, which was made into the oak door itself. Then there was the doorknob lock and the deadbolt which we changed, another deadbolt and a slide lock. Okay, that’s five. It had five locks in all. We changed everything out except the lock on the bottom, the original. We just decided that since we didn’t have a key we wouldn’t lock it.
It didn’t matter, it locked itself.
Don asked me why I always locked the bottom lock and I told him I didn’t but he didn’t believe me.
Locks don’t lock themselves.
Except when they do.
And ours did a lot.
He never believed me until it locked itself of it’s own volition one night while we were sitting out on the front porch swing. We had spent the afternoon at the beach and we came home and decided to relax outside on the porch. It was fall and it was just getting cool enough to enjoy Jesup a little. He told me not to close the door but it was too late. We were sitting in the porch swing when we heard the lock turn.
I smiled smugly and Don gave me that “What the...?” Look. Finally! Maybe now he would believe me.
I pulled on the door and it refused to open. Bear peered out at us over the back of the couch and barked plaintively because we had left him inside. We had to call a locksmith from Brunswick to come let us in. He worked on the lock at the front door for thirty minutes and couldn’t get it to turn. We took him around back and he was in at the back door in thirty seconds flat.
He shrugged as my husband doled out sixty dollars. “I guess they don’t make ‘em like they used to huh?”
Don glared at me. “No, I guess they don’t.”
That must have amused our ghost because it soon became his favorite game. I averaged locking myself out about once a month. It would necessitate me sitting out on the porch and listening
to the dog complain until Don arrived or having to walk to the rental agency to pick up the spare.
I tried teaching Bear to unlock the door but I was never successful. Much to my dismay I learned that dogs didn’t have opposable thumbs and that made door un-locking impossible. So he never was much help when I was locked out. Instead he would sit on the couch and peek at me through the living room window and howl as if to ask why I had left him inside while I was quite obviously outside. Other times he would give me that contented doggy grin and wag his tail while I stomped and cursed on the front porch. Sometimes I felt like the two of them were in on it together and often wondered if Mr. Smith and Bear got bored and they would lock me out for fun.
It never was much fun for me though. It was a ten minute walk to the Rental agency. The secretary finally got to the point where if she saw me coming she would go ahead and put the key up on the counter. Finally I got smart, and anytime I wanted to go outside I either propped the door or took my keys.
I guess he could be opening doors in the middle of the night, so between the two I figured I’d rather have locking ghost rather than an unlocking ghost. At least he was a safety conscious ghost and felt that if I could somehow talk him into unplugging the coffee maker when I left it on we’d get on quite well.
Eventually I got used to the noises and the locking and at last even the shadows didn’t bother me.
Then one day, when I thought I had seen and heard it all, I turned and found that wasn’t exactly true.
I hadn’t seen him yet.
Chapter 5
That particular evening I was cooking fried chicken for supper. I don’t make fried chicken anymore because I now associate it with my ghost. To be completely honest, I don’t like fried chicken all that much anyway, so it’s all for the best. Nevertheless that evening I was busy cooking, oblivious to the male presence that had just walked in the kitchen to peer over my shoulder. Don did that from time to time and it always annoyed me; as if he thought the food would somehow cook faster through his powers of suggestion. It bothered me immensely and I looked up from the electric skillet expecting to see Don but instead I saw a stranger!
I was sure we were being robbed! We didn’t live in a great neighborhood after all and to tell the truth there was that pessimistic part of me that had almost been expecting it. So I did what any good southern girl would do when she finds a stranger peering at her fried chicken: I shrieked and threw the wooden spoon at him. It didn’t help, because before I could even react he was gone. My spoon went right through him- or where he had been anyway. It landed in the middle of the kitchen floor with a ‘splat’ and though I seriously doubt it hurt our ghost; it made me feel a little better.
Don was watching a football game in the living room.
“What?” He yelled as he pounded into the room.
“I saw a roach!” I lied looking down at the wooden spoon. Was I supposed to tell him our ghost likes chicken?
He looked down at the wooden spoon and the spatter of grease on the floor.
“Did you get it?” He wanted to know.
“No. It got away.” I replied, still shaken.
“Musta been a big one!” He observed and went back to the football game.
“Yeah, about six feet tall.” I told him and he laughed.
I heard a crazy laugh from the hall as he walked back in the other room. He thought I was exaggerating.
I wasn’t.
I’m not real observant but I got a good look at him in the two seconds that he was there. It’s amazing how closely you’ll pay attention when something like that happens. It’s been years now and I can still tell you what he looked like.
He was tall and blonde; he was wearing dark slacks, a white button up shirt, suspenders and a plain dark tie. He did not look scary, like I imagined a ghost to look.
He looked… normal.
I hadn’t expected normal. I expected the prince of darkness or something. I hadn’t expected him to be handsome, and to look almost as surprised to see me as I had to see him.
A long time ago a lady who wrote local ghost stories visited our school and she told us about the ghost who lived in her house. She didn’t seem to be a bit bothered that she had a roommate from beyond and at that moment I envied her blasé attitude toward him. She even had a picture of her ghost and much to our teacher’s dismay she showed it to us. The other kids laughed and said it looked like a thumb smear on the photograph but I was horrified. I had nightmares for months.
At least the ghost of Mahogany Lane looked like a human and not some strange floating amoeba but despite that, I was terrified. Now that I had seen him with my own eyes, there was no arguing. I had to face the facts. Either we had a ghost or I was crazy and neither scenario was especially appealing. I cried myself to sleep that night because I couldn’t tell my husband. What would I tell him anyway? He would ask me if it was that time of month or if I was pulling a prank. I couldn’t tell my parents. They hated the idea of us moving so far away and it would only cause more grief for them. I couldn’t tell people at work. They’d think I was crazy. I couldn’t tell people at church. We were Baptists, we didn’t even celebrate Halloween. They would think I was some sort of closet cult member... or crazy.
Or both.
What was I going to do?
So, I poured out my heart in my prayers that night. We were too poor to move, and I couldn’t live like this but there seemed to be no end in sight. The verse that came to my heart was the one that said “For I have not given you a spirit of fear…” It’s your house, my heart told me. Tell him he has to go away.
The next night was Friday. I played around on the computer until Don got finished with his TV watching and decided to call it a night. He never came around my husband so I waited for our ghost in the living room. Around eleven o’clock I felt that familiar feeling and I looked up to see him standing in the dining room.
Again, there was an almost horrified expression on his face.
My expression must have been just as horrified, but I managed to speak.
“Mr. Smith. You’re not supposed to be here... You died on the number Ninety Six. I’m sorry…” That was all I had time to say before he dissolved, right before my eyes.
His face showed the dismay he felt as he faded away and I wondered if perhaps he didn’t know he was dead until that moment. Just the thought that he could be lost and alone made me so sad I couldn’t stand it.
I didn’t see him again after that. The shadows stopped, the door never locked itself, and the dog stopped watching nothing. That was the end of our ghost. Or so I thought.
It wasn’t quite over, not yet…
Eventually we found ourselves a house in Screven and we had to leave the little house on Mahogany Lane behind. Mrs. Katherine said she would miss us, and while we packed up I wondered whatever became of Mr. Smith. Had he passed on to the other side or was he still here?
I took the key to the rental place on our last day. The secretary told me they’d miss seeing us around and wished us luck with our move.
“I guess Mr. and Mrs. Smith can sell that house now.” She said offhandedly as I started to walk out that door.
I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to look at her.
“Mrs. Smith?” I asked. “I thought she was in the nursing home.”
The secretary gave me a shocked look. “Naw, I don’t reckon. They live in Odum.”
“They? I thought Mr. Smith was dead.”
“Naw.” She said again. “I don’t reckon. They’re real old, but they’re not dead. Whoever told you that?”
“The neighbors?” I said uneasily. “Said he was dead and she was in a nursing home.”
“You must ‘ha got your folks mixed up.” She said.
“I reckon so. “ I told her and told her to have a nice day. Inside I was furious! The neighbors lied to
me! Were they all in on it? Was this the kind of thing that passed for fun around this town?
We had to meet the people from the rental agency for a final inspection before we turned in our key. I was still fuming when a car pulled up in the driveway but I threw myself into stuffing boxes into the back of the Explorer while Don and the man from the rental agency did the final walk through.
Mr. Jackson crossed the alley and stuck out his hand. “It’s too bad ya’ll are moving. We sure are gonna miss you.”
I thanked him and told him we’d miss him too.
“Don is doing the final inspection.” I told him as I waited.
“I hear Mr. Smith is going to sell this house now. I’m glad. It needs someone to take care of it.”
I nodded.
“I don’t really know why he didn’t sell it when they moved to Odum.” Mr. Jackson laughed and wiped his hand over his face. “You know he claimed it was haunted!”