End of the Road (Ghost Stories Trilogy #1) (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

BOB

Larry was the most
frustrated. He spent days roaming the side of the highway. Back and forth he paced
a holographic image from another era. We respected his anguish. I think Frank
shared some of it too. He never showed it outright like Larry, but every once
in a while he’d lash out at one of us. Or, when he didn’t realize he was being
watched, he would lift his face toward the sky and whisper a prayer.

They all wanted to cross
over and envied Juanita’s swift exit. She had closure, her family came to
visit. They all lived happily ever after and all that fa la la bullshit. I knew
I wasn’t going anywhere. Nobody wanted to claim me.

Our group had become
increasingly restless with each passing day. We were waiting for something new
to happen. Peggy thought Tobin would be the next in our group to crossover.

“His family knows he’s
here, they’ll be back to help him,” she said to me at the end of another
uneventful day.

“Doesn’t do us any good
though, does it?”

“No, but maybe we’ll get
more answers. I don’t understand why I’m stuck here. I can see why you’re being
punished…it’s not like you contributed anything good to society.”

“Hey, I served in ‘Nam.”

“Right, jail or war…real
honorable.”

She shook her head with
disgust and moved away to join Lawrence who was staring off into the horizon
again. I didn’t get it, just staring and not moving for hours on end drove me batshit.
I shrugged off Peggy’s caustic comments and stood out in the middle of traffic
for a while. Each time a car moved through me, a pulse of energy came with it.
After a couple hours of this activity, I had enough stored to move objects
without putting any effort into it. Since my writing in the sand experiment
backfired, I stuck to drawing (usually stick figures of well-endowed women) and
making little rock sculptures. Instead of a random sculpture, that afternoon I
started working on a monument of sorts for Juanita, underneath her tree.

We all missed Juanita,
even though she was only twenty when she died and one of the youngest, she was
a mother and her maternal instincts carried over. Each one of us had a unique
relationship with her. For me, she was practically obsessed with how I died.
She wanted to know how much pain I experienced when I was shot, both during the
war and my fatal wound.

After a particularly
grueling interrogation session I stopped her, mid question, and asked her why
she wanted to know. Her answer was simple. “I want to know if my husband
suffered when he died. I want to know exactly what his last moments were like.”

I thought of her short
life, of where she became a wife, mother and widow in less than two decades on
the planet. What I had done with my time? Not a whole hell of a lot. Well, I
did a lot of drugs.

My sculpture for Juanita started
out as something simple; an extension of the cross she created herself. I used
a large rock with a flat side and with a sharper, harder rock, I etched her
name. I wasn’t happy with the basic tombstone. Her life was deserving of
something more ornate. Over the course of the next few months, I collected
broken glass from the side of the road and small unique shaped stones. These
were placed on the ground, fanning out from the tombstone in all directions.
Slowly a mosaic of sorts formed. During the day the sun reflected brilliantly off
of tiny shards of brown, green and clear glass. At night, especially under a
full moon, they would glow. Larry commented that this was fitting and symbolic
of how our forms change in strength and intensity depending on the energy
around us.

Juanita’s daughter did
come back and she went right to the mesquite tree where she found the finished
monument. Mariella sunk down to her knees and lightly touched a piece of glass.

“Mama, are you still
here?”

We stood around Mariella,
but none of us made a move towards her. Instead, we all looked to Lawrence.

He sighed and squatted
down next to her. He found a stick and picked it up in his hand. As he brought
it around in front of him, Mariella watched its progress, her eyes wide with
astonishment.

Your mother has moved
on.
Larry wrote in the dirt by Mariella’s feet.

“Do you mean she is no
longer a ghost?”

Yes, we believe so.

“We?” Mariella’s eyes
darted around, but she couldn’t see us. “So, she wasn’t alone?”

No, there are 6 of us.
I was here when your mother died.

She became quiet and
stared at the memorial while absentmindedly playing with a small gold cross
which hung on a simple chain around her neck. She slid the cross in a slow
motion, side to side, just below her chin. A gust of sand blew up from behind
her and covered part of the mosaic with a fine layer of dust. She released her
pendant and leaned forward to brush the debris off.

“Did you make this for
her?”

Yes, Bob did after she
left. She crossed right after your visit.

“Bob,” Mariella whispered
and dipped her head to her chest. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she
said. When she made the sign of the cross across her torso with her hand I
figured it was a prayer. Was she praying for me? She stood up and particles of
sand clung to her jeans at the knees so she bent over to wipe them off.

“I’m glad she wasn’t here
alone. I just wish I knew her.” A single tear ran down her cheek and she let it
fall unchecked. “Thank you.” She lowered her head one more time and walked back
to her car, but she didn’t leave. Mariella returned with a small bouquet made
up of pink roses, white lilies and some other flowers I didn’t recognize. “Today
is Mother’s Day,” she said and set it down on top of the rock that bore her
mother’s name.

She stayed for a few more
minutes, looking down at the arrangement, before leaving without saying another
word. Mariella never came back after that.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

TOBIN

When Juanita’s daughter
placed the flowers on the grave marker, I was reminded of Candy and her similar
effort at making a tribute. Mother’s Day…if I were still alive I’d have made
breakfast for Candy and then we would have gotten together with my dad and
brother to take my mom out for dinner. No one from my family had been to see me
in a long time. Was I so easily forgotten? Their absence took root in me as
deep rejection and put me in a bad mood.

My mood festered over the
weeks. Georgia was the only one who dared to come near me. Despite my efforts
at ignoring her, she insisted on hanging out. Each day she asked if I was going
to talk to her and I told her no. The rest of the day we watched traffic.
Occasionally a Roadrunner or a lizard would scurry across the desert. Each time
an animal drew near us, it would pause and sniff the air. They could sense our
presence, but after a few moments of stillness, we weren’t considered a threat
and they’d move on in their wanderings.

Self-pity, which was the
source of my bad mood, made the days go by real slow. The arrival of Juanita’s
family had been the trigger for her to crossover. Well, my family had already
been to see me, knew I was here and nothing fucking happened. I was going to be
stuck on the side of the highway forever.

Georgia had kept her
distance for a few days, but she came back. I admit, I enjoyed her company even
if I was trying to alienate everyone.

“Feeling better?” she
asked.

“Not really,” I said and
kicked a pebble. I watched it skip and bounce across the sunbaked earth,
disappearing into the light brown landscape as if it was swallowed whole.

“What’s wrong?”

I regarded her and
started to speak, but didn’t want to bitch and moan about my existence. Georgia
had been here a lot longer.

“When do you think it
will be our turn to move on?” I asked instead.

“I have no idea and gave
up on the idea a long time ago…until Juanita.”

“Yeah, Juanita changed
things, didn’t she?”

“I think she renewed our
hope and despair at the same time.”

It was selfish of me to
think I was the only one experiencing the frustration of being in limbo.

“Tobin, do you believe in
Heaven?” Georgia asked, her voice almost a whisper.

“When I was little I did,
but my dad…well he kind of got a little crazy with all the religion shit…turned
me off of the whole idea.”

“My father too although
he assured me and my brothers and sister that everyone had a place in the
Lord’s Kingdom. When I was killed and realized I wasn’t at the Pearly Gates, I
assumed my behavior had caused my free pass to be revoked.”

“My dad didn’t seem too
eager to help me out.”

“I think he was scared
shitless. Your existence as a ghost shook his beliefs to the core. He’ll be
back when he’s ready. I envy you. My parents never came to see where my life
was snuffed out.” Georgia flashed brightly before going back to her more
natural, muted state.

Georgia’s point made me
realize my selfishness again. According to the others, until Juanita, I was the
only one who had family visit the site where I died …and more than once.

“If your parents had
visited, would you have tried to communicate with them?” I asked.  

“Oh, definitely! Any
resentment I harbored didn’t carry over with me. I like to think that they came
to Arizona, claimed my body and took me home to be buried. Isn’t it weird to
not know where our bodies ended up? I often wonder about that. Like, why didn’t
we stay with it?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve
thought about it too.”

We kind of got lost in
our thoughts after that. Georgia hummed an old Doors song and occasionally
glanced at me, but mostly watched the procession of cars heading north. Trucks
bound for the lakes struggled to make it up the incline; the burden of the
boats they towed slowing them down.

People drove by
completely oblivious to the fact that we watched them. They were busy getting
to their cabins on a lake or campground in the mountains and living for the
weekend. It really made me wonder what the whole point of my post-death
existence was for. Sitting by the side of the road and counting cars? There had
to be a bigger purpose. And what power kept us tied to this location? I get
that we all died here, but how were the perimeters of our prison decided? Juanita
didn’t come back to clue us in. Where did she even go?

“Hey Georgia.” She
stopped humming and turned to face me. “Do you think Juanita is in Heaven now?”

“Who knows, but I hope
so.”

“I wish she could have
told us what it was like and if it’s like they describe in movies where people
were waiting for her on the other side.”

“Or she got recycled and
her time was up. Now she’s back in rotation somewhere.”

“I hadn’t considered
reincarnation,” I said and shrugged my shoulders. “Now that opens up a shitload
of possibilities.”

“Yeah, you could come
back as a girl,” Georgia teased.

“And you a dude.”

“Or a Bob?” She snorted
and I laughed with her. Bob was standing in the middle of the highway again;
his arms stretched wide and his head tipped back, his face reaching for the
sun.

“What is he doing…trying
to fly?” This set us off again and we watched our crazy friend. The weight of
my oppressive mood started to lift.

Chapter Forty

LAWRENCE

I struggled to hold it
together after Juanita left. Her ability to leave tortured me night and day. She
was my first companion in the afterlife and quite frankly, I always thought I’d
be the first to go…I had been stuck the longest. Everyone else came to me for
an explanation and I had none. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to begrudge Juanita
her happiness. She found her closure and was able to move on, which in itself
was a miracle. It just made my situation all the more helpless.

In the days after she
left us I spent my time walking the parameter, the invisible boundary that kept
us tethered to the desert. I tried all sorts of things to break through. Once I
focused on a rock in the distance hoping that would help me, what Bob calls,
“teleport”. That didn’t work. Objects so easily passed through us, but the
boundary I wanted to pass through the most eluded me.

At times I was content to
wander by myself and keep the others at a distance, but inevitably the need for
companionship drew me in. I was reminded of the time before Juanita joined me
in the desert and how painful the passing of each sunrise and sunset had been. It
seemed as though a century had gone by before Juanita died and became my
compatriot in death. We probably would have never crossed paths when we were
alive.

I moved into the shade
underneath Juanita’s mesquite tree. It’s barbed branches casting intricate
patterns of shadows on the sandy soil. Soil once fortified by Juanita’s
decaying body. We watched the process together until the bones sunk into the
earth. I hoped for a connection or some sort of sign from my departed friend,
but none came. She was gone and I mourned her loss.

Peggy appeared at my side
and bowed her head in respect at the tree. Her presence interrupted my moment,
but any annoyance was forgotten when I saw the tears glistening in her eyes.

“I miss her too,” she
said and reached over, her body grew brighter and denser before she lightly
touched my arm. “We’re glad you came back.”

“I couldn’t go very far,”
I reminded her.

“No, but you looked lost
nonetheless.”

“We’re all lost, aren’t
we? Somehow we made a wrong turn.”

“I’ve always had bad
luck, but this is extraordinary by any means. Maybe we’re here for a reason and
we just don’t know what it is yet.”

“Well, that reason can
show up any time. I’m ready.”

“We did save Tobin’s
family. That’s something.”

I nodded in agreement.
“True.”

“Maybe that’s our
purpose. We’re like roadside guardians.” She said this with a smile and I
couldn’t help but grin too. “And we’ve been selected, like special members. Not
everyone is up to the task. We’ve been chosen.” One of her eyebrows arched up
deviously as if she was letting me in on a secret.

She was teasing me and
her silly theory cheered me up. I needed to stop thinking of Juanita’s
departure as a betrayal. I needed to honor her by making the best of the
situation. Perhaps everything did happen for a reason.