Ghosts in the Attic Read online

  Ghosts in the Attic

  Mark Allan Gunnells

  Anaheim, California

  Digital Edition published by

  Evil Jester Press

  New York

  Ghosts in the Attic

  © 2011 by Mark Allan Gunnells

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  911

  Becky kicked her shoes off as soon as she was inside the door, dropping heavily onto the sofa without even bothering to remove her blue Wal-Mart smock. She was so exhausted that she’d entered that semi-delirious state where nothing seemed quite real, as if she were experiencing everything in a dream. Her bedroom, only a short distance down the hallway, seemed an infinite number of miles away and she didn’t think she had the strength to make the trek. She might just curl up here on the sofa and hibernate until next spring.

  Across the room, she could see her answering machine flashing at her, red and angry. Whatever messages awaited could only be from her mother, phone salesmen, or bill collectors; no one else called her. She wasn’t in the mood to hear from any of them. She’d unplug the phone from the wall and—

  As if right on cue, her phone began to ring, its trilling jangle driving into her brain like an assault. The cordless was on a table by the sofa, and she could read the Caller ID without moving. It was her mother, which was only to be expected. Becky briefly considered letting it go to the machine again, but images of her mother showing up at her doorstep convinced her to answer the phone.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Rebecca Anne Skyler, I have been calling you for hours. Why haven’t you picked up?”

  “I just got home. Haven’t even had a chance to check my messages yet.”

  “Where in heaven have you been?”

  “Working, where else?”

  “I thought you were on the morning shift today.”

  “I was, but we have a lot of workers out with the flu right now so I ended up having to pull a double shift.”

  “Oh Becky honey, you shouldn’t be killing yourself at that job like you do.”

  “Mom, I’m fine, really,” Becky said, although in truth she was so weary that holding the phone to her ear seemed quite a chore. “Besides, I could use the money.”

  Silence from the other end for a moment. Becky knew what was coming next, wished she could think of some way to stop it, but in the end she just had to let it come. “Becky, don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”

  “Mom, please, I really don’t feel like getting into this right now.”

  “But baby, you have a college degree in Communications, you shouldn’t be working such a menial job. It’s beneath you.”

  “Look, I’m tired. I’m going to go.”

  “I’m not saying you have to go back to being a 911 operator,” her Mom persisted, “but there are plenty of options available to you. The terrorist attack of September 11th was nearly a decade ago; it’s time you moved on. The rest of the country has.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to get into this, Mom. How many times must we have the same conversation?”

  “Until I get through to you. I know it was a tragedy, we all felt it, especially here in New York, and I know it was horrible being on the phone with that man when he died, but—”

  “Kyle.”

  “What?”

  “That man had a name; it was Kyle Covington. And I was the last person he ever spoke to before he died.”

  More silence from the other end. Then, “Becky, how long are you going to go on mourning a man you never even met?”

  “Mom, I need to get some sleep,” Becky said then hung up before her mother could respond. She held the phone in her lap for a few moments, expecting her mother to call back. When the phone didn’t ring again, she placed it back in its cradle then turned to the man sitting on the other end of the sofa. “Long time no see.”

  Kyle Covington smiled wanly at her; he was dressed in a gray suit with a blue-with-white-polka-dots tie, as he always was. “So how long has it been since the last time I was here?”

  “Three weeks, give or take a day or two.”

  “Funny, to me it seems like only a second ago we were in the kitchen chatting.”

  Becky nodded but said nothing. This wasn’t the first time she and Kyle had had this conversation, but they never came up with any answers. Kyle had no idea where he went when he wasn’t here, and he always came back. Sometimes within a matter of days, other times longer. The longest he’d gone without popping up was three months. Becky had dared to hope that time that she’d seen the last of him, and then one morning she’d stepped out of the shower to find him sitting on the toilet seat.

  “So that was your mother on the phone, I take it?” Kyle asked.

  “Yeah, she thinks I need to put 9/11 behind me.”

  “I guess that’d be a lot easier to do if I wasn’t always hanging around, huh?”

  Again, Becky said nothing. They both knew the answer to that one.

  “I don’t mean to be here,” Kyle said, fiddling with the knot in his tie like a man who wasn’t dead. “I don’t really seem to have a choice in the matter.”

  “Why me? I mean, it’s not like we really knew each other. I spent fifteen minutes on the phone with you, that’s it.”

  “Yeah, but it was the last fifteen minutes of my life. I’m just guessing here, I don’t exactly have a rulebook or anything, but it’s like you said to your mother. You were the last person I spoke to before I died, you were actually on the line with me when the tower collapsed; that kind of creates a bond between us that goes deeper than mere blood or friendship.”

  “I’d imagine I’m the last person you want to be bonded with for eternity. I remember that day, you seemed more annoyed with me than anything else.”

  “I was under a lot of stress, as you know,” Kyle said with a dry, humorless laugh. “You kept forgetting my name, that’s what I remember, I must have given it to you about a half dozen times, and I think I screamed at you to pay attention.”

  “Well, I’ll certainly never forget your name now.”

  Shortly after 9/11, even before Kyle made his first appearance in Becky’s life, she’d done some research on the man. At the time of his death, he was two weeks shy of his 41st birthday, worked for an accounting firm on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, had never been married and had no children. He’d been late to work that Tuesday morning, but not late enough to save his life. He’d called 911 and been connected to Becky at 10:14 a.m.

  “I didn’t have anyone to call to say goodbye to,” Kyle said. “My folks were dead, and my lover and I had broken up about six months before, so I had no one to call and say goodbye. But I didn’t want to be alone, that’s why I ended up on the line with you.”

  “I know.” And she did. They’d been through all this before, but when you spend several years with a ghost who had no life literally and you had no life figuratively, you sort of ran out of things to talk about. They had a few regular scripts they ran through, and this was one of them. “You know I contacted your ex-lover, Cedric, about a year after it happened. He said he’d never stopped loving you, and he wished you’d called him that
morning. He would have loved to have heard your voice one last time.”

  Kyle snorted a laugh. “Easy for him to say with me being dead and all. Trust me, if I’d survived, he’d have been singing an entirely different tune. But it’s just like him to play up the drama of my death for his own benefit.”

  “You know, you could always go haunt him. I’ve still go his address somewhere.”

  “If only I could. Then I wouldn’t have to keep bothering such a nice lady as yourself.”

  Becky suddenly felt tears very close to the surface, and Kyle’s image wavered and blurred. She blinked and he came back into sharp focus. He wasn’t transparent or pale or any of the things she’d always believed a ghost should look like. He was there, not in the flesh but as solid-looking as the furniture in her small apartment. “I lied to you,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  Taking a deep, shaky breath, Becky unburdened. “In all these years, I’ve never told you this, but I lied to you that day. I kept telling you help was on the way, that rescue workers were making their way up to you, but I didn’t believe it even as I was saying it. The South Tower had already fallen at that point, I knew that rescue workers in the North Tower were trying to get out before the inevitable collapse of that one as well. I was talking to you, knowing that you would never make it out of that building. And then when it happened…I could actually hear the building falling down around you. A loud rumble, not like thunder but more like a freight train. And then you screamed, ‘Lord save me, please, I don’t want to—.’ And that was it, the line went dead and you were gone. Just as I knew would happen, but I kept telling you help was on the way.”

  “What were you supposed to say, yell ‘Dead man walking’ into the phone? I didn’t want to die in there, that’s for sure, but by the time I dialed 911 I didn’t have many illusions about my chances. You did what you had to do to try to keep me calm. I don’t hold any grudges about that.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes, nothing but the sound of a TV playing in the apartment next door filling the emptiness. Then, speaking so suddenly it startled Becky, Kyle said, “There’s something I’ve never told you as well.”

  Becky wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this ghost’s secret, but she was too tired to protest so she just waited for him to tell her.

  “I didn’t die right away. When the building started to fall, it wasn’t instantaneous or anything. I was probably conscious for only another half a minute, but it felt like forever as I was bounced around like a pinball. I could hear my own bones breaking, and it sounded loud even amidst all the crashing and screaming around me. There was pain and fear and then nothing, until I found myself with you that first time.”

  Becky closed her eyes, her chest feeling like it was about to implode. She didn’t need to hear that, didn’t want to know it, and she wished Kyle hadn’t told her. Without opening her eyes, she said, her voice quavering, “Are you going to haunt me forever?”

  “I wish I could tell you, but I really don’t know.”

  Becky leaned toward Kyle, her eyes shining with intensity and more than a bit of desperation. “Don’t you see a bright light, or a tunnel, or a relative waving you on? Anything?”

  Kyle shook his head and stared down at his lap, looking almost ashamed. “Sorry, nothing like that. There’s just this, just me here with you.”

  Wiping tears from her cheeks, Becky got to her feet. “I need to get to bed.” Then without looking back, she went down the short hallway and turned left into the bathroom. Exhausted as she was, she knew she’d never get to sleep without a little help. As was the case most nights. She opened her medicine cabinet and pulled out one of the many bottles of sleeping pills that crowded the shelves. Popping two of the pills, washing them down with lukewarm water from the tap, she headed for her bedroom. As she crossed the hall, she glanced back toward the living room. It was empty, but she did not doubt Kyle would be back.

  He always came back.

  SEED

  I have a watermelon growing in my stomach.

  I’m sure you’re wondering how a girl my age could end up in such a predicament. I keep asking myself the same thing. I’m sixteen years old, I’m not a kid anymore, I should have known better. My mother has told me since I was five years old and had my first watermelon, “Don’t swallow the seeds, otherwise you’ll end up with a watermelon taking root in your belly.”

  So I can’t claim ignorance, can’t pretend that I didn’t know the risks. I have no defense other than stupidity and youthful hubris, that feeling of immortality that a teenager experiences when on the cusp of adulthood.

  It was a dare. That sounds so childish, but that’s what it was. Jimmy Dillingham from down the street was over at the house. We were in the backyard by the pool, our feet trailing in the water, eating watermelon and listening to music. I had taken a big bite, the juicy meat of the melon exploding in my mouth, the sweet nectar trickling down my throat. Jimmy looked over, smiled his gap-toothed grin and said, “I dare you to swallow one of the seeds.”

  I knew it was wrong, I knew that it was something I shouldn’t do, I knew that the consequences of such an act could be more than I could deal with. I knew all of these things, and yet it was with no real hesitation that I poked my tongue out at Jimmy, showing him a large black seed poised on the tip, then pulled my tongue and the seed back into my mouth and swallowed, opening my mouth wide to show him that the seed was now gone.

  I have to say, I didn’t immediately feel guilty like I’d thought I might. In fact, it seemed kind of funny, a lark. We giggled and cracked jokes about it for the rest of the afternoon before Jimmy had to go home. Swallowing the seed actually made me feel rather daring, and I liked the thrill it gave me.

  Eventually the thrill faded, however, and I sort of forgot about the incident for a couple of months. I started to feel a little tired, but I didn’t think much of it. My mother commented on the fact that I seemed to be losing my appetite, and yet I noticed I was gaining a bit of weight. Not all over, just my stomach, a round little bump forming in my abdomen.

  I think I knew what was happening long before I was willing to admit it. I wanted to force ignorance on myself, as if by denying the truth I could somehow alter the very fabric of reality and make it not so. But my belly continued to swell, and I finally had to be honest with myself. I had a watermelon growing in my stomach.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t tell my mother, her disappointment would be crushing. She had raised me better than this, and I didn’t want her to know how thoroughly I had let her down. So I told Jimmy. I thought maybe together we could figure out what to do. After all, it was his dare that had gotten me into this situation in the first place.

  “I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do,” was what he said to me when I told him.

  “I’m not saying you made me do it, but you were there, you were a part of it.”

  “This isn’t my fault. I was just fooling around, you should have been more careful. This is your responsibility, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  After that, Jimmy stopped talking to me, avoiding me in the school hallways. Sometimes when I passed his friends, I thought I heard them snickering and giving me strange smiles. Had he told them?

  I didn’t want anyone else to know. As if I could somehow keep it from being real as long as no one knew about it. I started wearing baggy sweaters to hide my stomach and the watermelon that was growing inside. Some of the kids at school, kids who used to be my friends, started calling me Bag Lady. Even my mother commented on how dowdy I looked, but I told her that baggy and sloppy was the new fashion. I don’t know that she believed me, but she dropped the subject all the same.

  Months have passed now, and my stomach is getting quite large, the melon almost fully ripe inside me. It has become a challenge hiding it. I think some of my teachers suspect, and perhaps even my mother. She avoids me these days, and sometimes when I catch her eye, I think I see h
opelessness there, as if she’s given up on me.

  Things are almost to the point where I have no choice but to tell people and take the judgment that is doled out to me. There aren’t many other options available to me. Not any good ones anyway.

  Which is why I sit here now, my shirt raised up to my small breasts, staring down at my protruding stomach. I think I can actually see the melon under my skin, trying to push its way out. See it as clearly as I see my own hollow-eyed face reflected in the butcher knife that I took from the kitchen. It gleams in the light from my bedside lamp, its blade sharp and wicked.

  Father Hannigan has a watermelon patch out behind the rectory. Would he notice if he got up tomorrow morning to find one more melon in his patch, one that had not grown from the fertile soil there?

  A HELL OF A DEAL

  The Devil looked a lot like David Letterman.

  Lisa wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting—a red-skinned beast with horns and cloven hooves, a debonair gentleman with charming eyes and a black mustache—but this tall gangly man with his gap-toothed smile and mop of light curly hair seemed an unlikely Satan. Then again, when one was the Prince of Darkness, perhaps it was best not to advertise.

  “Thank you for coming,” Lisa said dumbly, as if the Devil were a coworker who had accepted a dinner invitation. As it was, the Devil had been summoned by a spell Lisa had found in a dusty old tome procured from a small, musty occult shop in the city. The candles and incense burned in the darkness, the last words of the incantation still hanging in the air, and the Devil had materialized in front of her without the fanfare of smoke or flame. Just one moment empty space, the next the Devil kneeling on the carpet before her.

  The Devil looked nervous, fidgety, and his eyes darted around the room as if afraid something was going to leap out at him from the shadows. “Why have you brought me here?” he asked, smiling uncertainly. “What is it you want from me?”