Seeing Ghosts

Seeing Ghosts

Also by James Garcia Jr.

The Dance on Fire series

Dance on Fire

Flash Point

Seeing Ghosts

James Garcia Jr.

SEEING GHOSTS

eBook Edition

ISBN

Copyright © 2013 James Garcia Jr.

Published by James Garcia Jr. at Smashwords

Editor: Natalie G. Owens

Cover Design: Maria Zannini

License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Publisher’s Note

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

For Aida,

Thank you for every one of our wonderful years together. I look forward to the next twenty five. I just hope they don’t pass as quickly as the first.

And to those who search for a love that might outlive us.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

*You can click on the title to be taken to the selection. Additionally, all chapter names will link you back to this table of contents.

Prologue

Cemetery Visit

Flora

The House

Seeking Counsel with the Dead

A Visitor Calls Again

Chasing Shadows

Flora and Paul

Victor

Caught Unawares

Kindle

Lunch

Unexpected Guests

Questions

Rage

Sight

The Star

What’s in the Box?

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Author’s Bio

An Excerpt from Dance on Fire

When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you.

Deuteronomy 18: 9-12

Prologue

I suppose you can say this whole thing began and ended with ghosts. Not all my life, of course, but only all that ever really mattered. Everything before meeting Angie happened simply to get me prepared for our life together. No real living had occurred until that moment. After Angie died, I was left only with ghosts. Now tonight I lie beside another woman who is not my wife, and who I have yet to touch. I marvel at her even, peaceful breathing as I stare at the awful ghost that sits calmly, but menacingly, near the foot of the bed.

Aunt Flora is dead and has been for several months. There’s really no reason on God’s green earth why she should be here, in my home, a place she’d never visited in life, but here she sits just the same, and I’m sure I know why. Perhaps it has everything to do with her not having a home of her own any longer, or because she’s lost her husband once again. She seems to grin at me as if she can read my thoughts.

Now she nods dramatically to say that she can, indeed.

What do you want, Flora? I finally ask, whispering. I try to be as quiet as possible. It seems like a useless proposition. Peace is an illusion to me at this point; like something so far out of my grasp as to be laughable.

You know what I want, Paul. Her voice is low and calm, but seems to reverberate against the walls. "You know very well what I want," she says as the all-too-familiar lightning flashes outside probe into the bedroom and illuminate her. A gust of wind rattles the window briefly. It must’ve been the reason I awoke in the first place. I’m pretty sure it was just wind, but who could know at this point? In any event, there’d be no more sleeping.

I see Flora’s terrible features—that aged and deep-wrinkled skin pulled over high cheekbones; and that profound smile that brings no pleasure, but only sets me on edge. Thunder roars in the distance as if on cue. I am intimately familiar with this particular storm. Both it and Flora seem to have followed me.

I can’t help you with that, Flora, I say.

Yes, I know. All you can do is bring everything to ruin.

I stare at the ghost and say nothing further, taking in the sight of her with her long-sleeved white blouse, dark slacks and black shoes. It’s incredible to me that I’m having another conversation with my aunt. It’s clear she holds me to blame for what’s happened. If I wasn’t afraid before, there’s no denying it now.

Flora reclines against the winged-back chair that was Angie’s favorite and smiles. Her arms remain atop the arm rests, the perfect picture of quiet. Another bolt lights up the sky and my eyes immediately find her claw-like fingers as they seem to be digging into the upholstery. Now I know better and I shiver at this apparently perfect culmination of events.

It’s not over, Paul, Flora says. Her tone is firm and reminds me of a wild animal’s growl. "You know damn well what I want! It is all that I have ever wanted. But you have taken that from me. You have taken far too much. Now I shall do the taking. Do you hear me, Paul? Do you understand what I am telling you?"

Now I’m the one who leans back. I sit up first, positioning myself against the tall headboard. Here is a trend I can’t shake free of—me being awake as the night wanes. Another burst of lightning flashes across the Central California sky and then disappears, casting the room back into shadow. Thunder sounds. The storm is fast approaching. I say nothing more as I recline and simply stare at my dead aunt who sits and stares back, composed for the moment. It would seem I’ve become quite comfortable with ghosts, doesn’t it?

Cemetery Visit

The sun was climbing into the early Saturday morning sky, yet I just couldn’t warm up, although I wore the coat Angie had bought me for our last Christmas together. Perhaps it had nothing at all to do with the crisp nearly spring air or the strong breeze, and more to do with where I stood. Maybe it was warm, but I just couldn’t tell because my insides were cold.

The freshly cut grass was covered in morning dew, so I didn’t sit, but not because I cared what the effect might be to my clothes. I had nowhere else to go. I stood before Angie’s grave, staring at the simple marker. It carried her name and mine, too, when you thought about it: Angie Herrera. It was followed by her date of birth: December 31, 1979. And then, the date of all of our deaths, in one manner or another: February 23, 2010. We had just celebrated Valentine’s Day together. I realized it had occurred more than a week before her death, but I still thought of her absence in days, not years.

I tried very hard not to consider the unborn baby that she perpetually carried. I buried them together. She had only been about seven weeks, so there was really no way of finding out the sex of the child, much less match it with a proper name. We had just received confirmation from the doctor that we were expecting a few days prior to our Valentine’s Day date of a fancy dinner, dancing and then a movie. We discussed becoming parents throughout the date, but thought it much too early to think about potential names until the second trimester at the very least. Something to do with luck, we figured. Little did we know.

I remembered every part of that night. I had the New York Steak and she had the Chicken Breast. Neither one of us had dessert because we had our minds on buttered popcorn. We saw the Gary Marshall film, Valentine’s Day, which was memorable only for the large star-studded cast. I had longish hair, which was in need of a haircut. She teased me about it. I told her that she had better enjoy it while it was there, since my family was notorious for the men having lost their hair at young ages. She also called me mean for having ordered a glass of red wine at dinner when she couldn’t have any.

I remembered everything about my Angie—every night and every day of our all-too-brief life together. Everything. I will never stop remembering. I could see her face, even though there was no photograph to stare back at me upon her tombstone.

I know what you look like…looked like.

I had tons of photos of her at home, but installing one here in the Kingsburg Cemetery, to be left to the elements and the birds, felt too much like abandonment. It was bad enough that I had to leave her in this place.

I looked up at some point and noticed my brother leaning against his truck. It was parked next to mine, just as they had been that afternoon that he and I picked them out at his dealership. He saw me and raised a cup of something I figured probably wasn’t coffee.

I love you, Angie, I said to my wife, hoping she was somewhere great and that she could hear me. If her new home was better than this one, as I fully expected it was, I almost didn’t care whether she could hear me, or even if she knew where I currently stood; just as long as she was saving me a spot there.

I gave her gravestone one last look and caught a shape move past the corner of my eye. I looked up after it, but it was gone. Where to, I didn’t know, nor did I care. I surveyed the grounds one final time and then walked back to my truck.

’Morning, Bro, I said to Ray.

Good morning. Care for some coffee? he asked, raising his cup to me.

Yeah, right! I laughed. What are you up to?

Lookin’ for you, he replied innocently.

Did you look long? I asked.

Nope. First place I looked. Where else would you be on February 23rd?

If I didn’t love my baby brother already, I would have fallen just then, and he knew it. He switched hands with his coffee and hugged me on the side, as cool brothers do. Suddenly, sharing a drink with my brother sounded like the perfect thing to do at a quarter to nine in the morning.

What are we drinking? I asked him.

Coffee, I told you, he said with a smirk as he released me and produced a flask from his inside coat pocket. It was stainless steel with an Oakland Raiders emblem. He fished a clean cup off of his dashboard and poured me what smelled like Tequila.

This coffee smells like Patron, I told him as he poured some for me and handed it over.

Really? he said with a laugh as he refilled his cup. Don’t mind if I do.

Aren’t you supposed to be at work?

I told them I was coming in late today. Jen knows why.

Jennifer was Ray’s boss at the Ford Dealership in Selma, California and just minutes up the old highway. She and Angie had been friends since grade school. What about the booze on your breath? I asked.

Man, you sound like Mom more and more every day! he teased. I’ll go home and freshen up before going to work. Don’t worry about it. Besides, I work behind a desk. Shit! After the eight minute drive, the most intricate thing I operate is a wireless mouse.

You know, if you picked a new football team, you might drink less, I teased him.

He took a sip and shook his head. There it is! You enjoy my hospitality and then bash my team. I drink because my only brother, who occupied the same womb before me, somehow ended up a Niner’s fan. The booze helps me cope.

It was good to laugh with my brother. We’ve always been very close and laughed constantly. I couldn’t have asked for a better sibling. It also helped to keep the tears at bay. I hadn’t cried yet, but I felt I would at some point during the day. I was stronger now than I had been that first black anniversary, but not by much.

We all loved Angie, Ray said to me, and he was right. Not a week goes by when someone doesn’t tell me that. They no longer do it with words, of course, wanting to spare my heartache, but I can see it clearly in their eyes. I love them for that.

I know, I said.

We hung out for the duration of my drink and then made plans for dinner at my place later that evening. I knew there were two reasons for this. The obvious one was to hold my hand, so to speak, until this day of recollections ended, and the second, because my television was nearly twice the size of his. That hadn’t always been the case, but the large television he owned was mounted to the living room wall in a house that Ray no longer had rights to. Not only did my ex-sister-in-law take the house in the divorce, but she made sure to kick him in the nuts by taking his pride and joy as well.

I started up the truck and checked the pre-sets on my stereo as Ray drove away. I stayed away from the one elevator music station for fear of hitting Manilow or Bee Gees or something dangerous like that. Instead, I trolled only at the classic rock, figuring my tender emotions would be safer there. Boy was I wrong.

It was mid-guitar solo, but I instantly recognized the song and cracks began to form. Heaven by Warrant transported me back. I pictured Angie that first time I laid eyes upon her, while she was having lunch alone at a Carl’s Jr. Restaurant in Fresno. I didn’t try to meet her then. A week later, I saw her again at Save Mart in Kingsburg. I spoke to her then for the first time, asking her if she might have been that same woman I’d seen days before. Flash forward and I recalled how radiant she looked and the glorious way she giggled all night the day I proposed marriage on our two year anniversary. Lastly, I saw how absolutely beautiful she looked that last Valentine’s Day, not yet two months pregnant but glowing already.

Whether it was those recollections, the inevitability of this terrible day, singer Jani Lane’s emotion as he sang about memories rushing back and making it pretty hard, or even his unfortunate death in 2011, or the combination of all of it—I finally lost it then and there and cried. Thankfully, no one witnessed my meltdown but the local cemetery ghosts.

Ray showed up around six o’clock with pizza and beer. I owned a well-stocked bookcase full of DVD’s and Blu-rays to choose from to go with my 60-inch widescreen LG and the surround sound, so we had no worries about what to watch. Chances were pretty good it’d be a war movie or some sort of action flick, but definitely nothing with any kissing in it. That meant that Michael Bay’s version of Pearl Harbor was out. We ended up watching Black Hawk Down. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen that film with the surround cranked—helicopters literally flying across the living room, rounds zipping by your ears and hot empty shells landing at your feet. If the neighbors weren’t happy about the noise, they never said anything. Angie and I knew most of them and they’d all loved her, too.

Speaking of being well-stocked, my refrigerator already had plenty of Coors Light in it, but since my brother apparently owned stock in Budweiser, he felt compelled to bring that stuff over. Consequently, he brought the twenty-four pack, despite a couple of bottles being left over from his last visit. It wasn’t all for tonight. Neither one of us drank that much anymore. The reason was that my house had become a home away from home for my brother, too, even though he only lived a few minutes away.

After the first film, I sent Ray back into my library to pick another. He came back with The Sons of Katie Elder, starring The Duke and Dean Martin, among others—a classic that neither of us had seen in long while. We finished off the pizza and worked on some chips and salsa that I had in the fridge before calling it a night. It was the perfect way to spend what would have been a tough day to get through with so many ghosts hanging over it. Ray didn’t go home until after midnight, and I appreciated him holding my hand for as long as he did.

There wasn’t much to do in terms of cleaning up since Ray had helped me take out the carcasses of the pizza box and empty beer bottles to the recycling bin before he left. We did finish off the salsa, so I had a few things to wash. I filled the left side of the sink with some dish soap and hot water, grabbed a bowl and began to wash it, but nearly dropped it when I saw a shadow move in the hallway to my right. Catching myself before breaking it, I turned to look. I waited, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I slowly turned back to my work and used my peripherals to see whether it might happen again. When nothing did, I went back to my dishes. I washed the silverware, rinsed each one and then set them upon a drying mat. Releasing the water, I reached over to flip the switch for the garbage disposal when I thought I saw somebody standing before me. When I looked up, again, no one was there, but a definite chill crawled up my spine.

I stood there without running the disposal and waited. Eventually, I reached over for a dish towel to dry my hands while slowly surveying the room. I turned off the kitchen lights and moved into the dining room. Empty. After double-checking the front door was securely locked, I moved back into the great room. I flipped the hall lights on before turning out the lamps in the television area, first one, then the other, carefully watching everything. Shadows accumulated, but none seemed to move. I loitered at the hallway photos of Angie and me before moving to the master bedroom, wherein lay our engagement and wedding photos. I could never help but smile as I gazed upon her happy face. With an avid gaze, I traced her short dark hair, light-colored skin and ultimately, looked deeply into her brown eyes. I had avoided looking at the photos until now—my way of letting Angie know that she had not been forgotten, but very much remembered; that I simply needed to keep her at bay a little bit in order to survive the weight of the day.

I did my teeth-cleaning ritual of brushing, flossing and rinsing, and then changed for bed. Climbing into the covers and adjusting them the way I wanted, I found a comfortable position and began to think about anything other than Angie.

Just then, the front door suddenly opened and slammed against the wall as if a bomb had exploded.

I froze. There was no mistaking it. I listened for the duration of my rising pulse. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I leapt from the bed and flipped on the bedroom lights. I stared down the hall that led toward the other bedroom, the guest bath and the laundry room. The doors were open except for the laundry room. I always kept that one closed and that door squeaked unmistakably anyway, so I ignored it.

I flipped the hall lights on. Nothing was amiss and there was no sound as I shuffled forward, wearing nothing but underwear and a concert t-shirt. It was at times like these that I wished I carried a Louisville Slugger behind my bed.

I peeked cautiously into doorways but both the guest room and guest bath were empty. At the corner where one hall met the other, I peeked down into the rest of the house.

One more guest bedroom left to check. The one that housed my bookcases full of books, movies and my music collection before I’d made the move from compact discs to digital. I flipped on that light.

No one there.

From that doorway I could see nearly all of the great room, dining room and kitchen. I slowly moved forward until I reached the ceiling fan and light switch that I rarely used, and turned on the light. Bathed in artificial light, the great room appeared fine, but the house felt much colder than usual. The curtains on the north side of the house gently billowed with the breeze but otherwise seemed undisturbed. I planned to check the windows and see whether they were only opened slightly and still securely locked into position, but first I needed to take a look at the front door.

Reaching the edge of the hallway where it joined the entry way, I peeked around the corner. The front door stood wide open, revealing the dark of night behind it, silent and suddenly ominous. The house sat on the edge of the city so it faced nothing but open, unused farm land. Despite the cool breeze, a flush of warmth came over me as I surveyed the door to see how it could have been forced open. The frame seemed fine from that distance, with no signs of forced entry.

The kitchen also appeared undisturbed, although only part of it was visible. I cautiously moved there, preparing myself for God knew what. I should have called the police from the very beginning, but for some reason, I didn’t. I felt so naked—not because I was hardly dressed, although that was certainly the truth, but because I had no weapon of any kind.