Authors: Aiden James
“
Oh, Yeah?? We’ll straighten this out later, Buster!” chided Miriam, popping him lightly on the back of his head as she stood up from the loveseat to return to the kitchen. David feigned the blow injured him, falling out of the loveseat—which drew immediate applause from Tyler followed by a burst of laughter from Jillian and Christopher.
The mood merry, Jillian nearly skipped into the kitchen to join her mom in fixing pancakes and bacon. Christopher seized the opportunity to tell his great aunt all about what Santa brought him. Her sincere interest in what the youngster had to say impressed David, especially when Christopher told her about the storylines to the three games that came with the new system. That explanation lasted halfway through breakfast.
“
Auntie Ruth, would you like to see what I got from Santa?” asked Jillian, jumping up from her chair when finished eating. “One of the sweaters I got looks a lot like the one you were wearing when we picked you up at the airport. And there are
two
dresses, some more sweaters, pants, and blue snakeskin boots. Oh, and see the pendant I got??” She lifted it from where it hung upon her chest as she moved over to where Ruth sat.
“
Why it’s very pretty, dear!” Ruth took a moment to admire the excellent craftsmanship. “You’ll definitely want to take good care of it, don’t you know!”
David wondered if his aunt thought it a bit extravagant to splurge on jewelry for such a young girl, nearly a year shy of the onset of her teenage years, though puberty had already arrived.
“
Snakeskin boots, huh?” said Ruth, “and such a beautiful color!”
“
Yep!” Jillian smiled broadly and then gently tugged on Ruth’s arm to coax her into the living room. Christopher ran after them, announcing he wanted to show Ruth the colorful artwork on his skateboard. Meanwhile, Tyler finished his cereal and prepared to head upstairs, announcing his intent to get his shower out of the way.
“
Hey, sport… don’t you want to show Auntie what Santa got
you?
” teased David.
“
Very funny, Dad,” Tyler replied dryly. “She’s great and all, but I hardly think she’d find any of the RPGs and music I’m into much fun. Hell, you don’t, and you’re not even forty yet.”
David shot him a look, letting him know that he straddled a thin line with his smart mouth.
“
Sorry, Dad—I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Tyler cast his gaze downward, perhaps fearing the upbraiding that often came—at least prior to David’s trip back to Tennessee in October.
“
It’s okay son… just watch your tone next time,” said David, drawing an approving look from Miriam that he didn’t see. The grateful look on Tyler’s face was enough.
“
I will, Dad. I promise.”
He smiled and left the kitchen, moving quickly to the foyer and then upstairs. That left David and Miriam alone in the kitchen, where they snuggled for a moment near the sink. It wasn’t the time or place for anything more, but a whispered promise from her to be patient until later on sufficed in steering his thoughts onto other things.
David started clearing the table while whistling Jingle Bells. It proved to be an effective distraction for him. The dishwasher loaded and quietly cleaning its contents, he moved over to Miriam, gently wrapping his arm around her shoulders to guide her back into the living room where they joined Ruth and the younger kids.
***
The trip upstairs was a quick one, as Tyler refused to linger on the staircase. After nearly getting killed by a ghost in October, caution and being fully aware of one’s surroundings was how he lived each day since. This approach had served him well so far, and even allowed him to catch a glimpse of the ‘old tree man’ that Chris recently described to his parents, Auntie Jan, Auntie Ruth, and the weird psychic friend of mom and Jan named Sara.
Watching the specter move from the dining room to the foyer one day last week, he felt very grateful it seemed unaware of his observation point on the second floor landing. But being woken up with the naked sucker glowering at him in his doorway a couple of nights later almost sent him screaming to his parents’ room. He would have if it hadn’t disappeared once he sat up in his bed.
The apparition scared him worse than Allie Mae’s angry spirit had. He wasn’t sure why, either. More a feeling… one that made him certain it wouldn’t be good if drawn into a face to face physical encounter with the thing.
“
But thank God that’s over with,” Tyler muttered to himself as he reached the second floor.
It seemed cooler up here than earlier that morning. Or, it could just be his imagination running a little wild on him after thinking about this shit…hard to say for sure. But, the milder weather outside usually made it hotter upstairs if the heater ran, like right then.
Come on, dude...hold it together, Ty baby.
He snickered nervously until he reached his room, where he stripped down to his underwear and set out the wool sweater and his favorite pair of faded Lee’s on his bed. As he moved over to his dresser to grab some socks and a clean pair of briefs, he detected movement out of the corner of his eye. Something crept quietly past his open doorway.
Every nerve and muscle tensed and alert, Tyler approached the doorway. He thought about how Allie Mae cornered him in his bedroom two months ago, her invisible feet creaking across the landing as she moved toward him. But not this time. Aside from the hall’s temperature continuing to plummet he didn’t detect anyone else up here.
He moved to the bathroom. Sunlight poured in through the top portion of the back window above dark blue curtains that matched the rest of the bathroom’s décor. Even so, he reached in through the doorway to flick on the light before stepping inside. After checking to make sure no one hid behind the shower curtain, he quickly closed the door and locked it. Tyler rushed through his routine of brushing his teeth and jumping into the shower with a sense of urgency unseen since his dad took him to a Rockies game last summer. Afterward, he put on his deodorant and splashed cologne, leaving his hair to dry natural after combing it back.
With his towel wrapped around his waist, he unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall. The air even colder, he could see his breath. He turned off the bathroom light behind him and hurried to his bedroom. Just as he prepared to enter his room, a man walked out of the guestroom where Auntie Ruth stayed.
He froze, afraid to take a breath. The man turned to face him, and Tyler relaxed, sighing in relief.
“
Dad, you just scared the holy hell out of me!”
Tyler smiled, sheepish, but then a queer feeling washed over him. Yes, the man looked just like David, but somewhat different. And it wasn’t just the tan fedora he wore on his head, or the man’s old fashioned clothes. The fact his hair and beard were a shade darker than his dad’s should’ve tipped him that it wasn’t really him standing there. But it was more the way the man regarded him; wearing a contemptuous grin to go along with four long reddened scars just below the right side of his jaw. The scars pulsed unnatural, perhaps in tune with the creepy man’s heart.
As if amused by Tyler’s horrified expression, the man leaned toward him and said, “Boo!” That’s all it took for him to hurry back inside his bedroom. He listened in terror as footsteps creaked outside his door, until they suddenly stopped. As he had done when faced with Allie Mae’s vengeful ghost, he grabbed the baseball bat above his bed that bore the signatures of his favorite Colorado Rockies players. Summoning his courage, he pulled open his door with the bat wielded as a weapon. But the man had left. When he peered down the hall, he was just in time to see the figure disappear from the landing on its way downstairs.
His protective instincts kicked in. Clad only in his bath towel still wrapped around his waist, and with the bat held ready at his shoulder, he raced after the man that looked so much like his dad. No sign of the figure by the time he reached the stairs, and when he arrived on the main floor the specter wasn’t visible either. Peering into the living room, his family seemed at ease, so he knew the man hadn’t arrived there yet. Tyler backtracked, moving through the dining room and into the kitchen. Still no sign of the phantom man.
“
Son, you’ll catch your death of cold dressed like that!” scolded Miriam, who stepped into the kitchen to grab the pot of tea steaming on the stove. “What did you forget?” She looked amused.
“
Uh…I’m looking for my brush,” he replied, lowering the bat to his side.
David walked in just as he spoke, and eyed him in much the same manner as Miriam.
“
So you need a bat to help you do that?” asked David, teasing him again.
“
Uh…I...I um…I um found this in the dining room just now. I guess Chris or somebody left it in there for some reason,” he lied, realizing how silly he looked and how inconvenient it would be to try and explain what happened with only a towel protecting his privates from his parents’ gaze. He backed into the dining room, hoping for a head-start upstairs before anyone else wandered into the kitchen. “I’ll go back to my room and check again.”
He was gone before David and Miriam could respond.
“
You do that, sport!” David called after him. “Remember we’ve still got some more showers to take care of, Ty, so don’t mess around in the bathroom!”
By the time he reached the second floor landing, the coldness had already receded—just like a few days earlier when the other shit went down in the guestroom. Nonetheless he closed his bedroom door while he got dressed. When he emerged again, the hallway’s temperature had warmed up considerably.
Once he arrived downstairs he took another quick tour of the main floor, just to be sure the apparition was gone. He then returned to the living room, where for the next hour he immersed himself in his music and games, secluded from all else by his new surround-sound headset. While his mom and dad made final preparations for their short trip to Janice’s place, he noticed the photo album that his dad brought back with him from Chattanooga in October, given to him by Auntie Ruth at that time. It sat near the edge of the coffee table closest to him.
Something to idly flip through while listening to the latest Cold Play CD, he recalled how the leather-bound album contained some really old pictures from Tennessee that his dad had shown him in early November. One picture was of an older man wearing a fedora similar to the one he saw the phantom upstairs wear.
Tyler reached over and grabbed the album, and soon flipped the pages until he came to the photograph he sought. He might not have remembered it except for one major detail, since other than the same style of clothing, the image in the album and the apparition he saw earlier didn’t share much else in common. They definitely weren’t the same age, as the guy in the picture was in his sixties, and the man Tyler saw upstairs looked several years younger than his dad. But like the younger man, who must surely be a ghost of some sort, the older man in the photograph had four long scars on his neck, quite noticeable despite the faded condition of the black and white snapshot.
“
Dad… do you remember showing us a picture here in your photo album, of this old man with four scratches on his face?” asked Tyler, removing his headset when his dad returned to the living room.
David’s arms were laden with a Pyrex dish filled with sweet potato casserole that Miriam prepared earlier.
“
Yeah, I do.” He paused to look down at the photograph and appeared curious as to why Tyler seemed so interested in it. “That was your great-great grandfather, William Hobbs. Remember?”
Tyler nodded, thoughtful. Meanwhile, Ruth stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, holding a cherry pie she baked yesterday. She apparently overheard the mention of her grandfather’s name; her dislike for the man evident in the deep scowl she wore. Tyler pointed to the picture again and Ruth told him quietly it wasn’t necessary for her to come any closer to it. She knew the image well enough.
“
I think I saw him today,” Tyler announced, his voice betraying the struggle within; how he worried whether it would be worse to divulge what happened or keep silent and hope it had no significance. “But he looked a lot younger.”
“
Where did you see him?” David asked, after his face fell.
“
Upstairs,” said Tyler. “I saw him walk out of Auntie Ruth’s room and then I tried to keep up with him when he went downstairs. That’s what I was really looking for when you saw me in the kitchen.”
Though his dad went easy on him earlier, he worried what David’s reaction would be now.
“
Oh, Lord,
no!
…
No!”
Ruth murmured. Her hands began to tremble while the color drained from her face.
“
What is it, Auntie?”
She wouldn’t answer David. Instead, she nearly dropped the pie before she set it down upon the coffee table and hurried out of the living room. Miriam followed after her, while David looked for a place to set the casserole dish he carried. He called after his kids to hold off moving upstairs until he could join them.
When they reached the guestroom, Miriam had her arms around Ruth’s shoulders as she wept. Tyler noticed the bed cover had been pulled aside from her pillow, leaving it fully exposed. Something waited for Ruth under the pillow…an item she thought gone forever, lost in the myriad of nooks and crannies of her ancestral Chattanooga home.