That's Not a Ghost

Here's my latest short story. Feedback is welcome =)

That’s Not a Ghost
By Tristan Mason

Savannah Oaks spent the better part of her teenage years listening to shootings in the outskirts of a Connecticut city. She always heard the gunshots around one in the morning outside of her apartment building. Savannah’s parents ignored them, but the sounds kept her up at night. She tried to drown them out. She locked herself in her room and blasted her favorite CDs. She immersed her mind in a book with a mockingbird on the cover. She imagined flying away with the mockingbirds. But the gunshots kept her haunted and awake.

One night, her brother came home from college and the gunshots stopped. Lenny had been away for so long that she forgot what he looked like. She saw his cheekbones when he kissed Momma Rose. She cringed at his tattered skin when he bear hugged Papa Jack. Lenny was coming apart at the seams.

“How’s my Nuhnuh doing?” Savannah felt the scars on his back and pulled away quickly. She bit her tongue. Lenny laughed under his breath. “I’m sorry, little sis. Baseball practice has run me into the ground lately.”

“They’re working my baby too hard,” Momma Rose said, shaking her head. She grabbed a plate of pork chops from the fridge and thrust it at his chest.

“Leave the boy alone, Rose. College is hard work and baseball is harder. He’s handling it just fine.”

“I can’t mom. I-”

“Don’t you start with that talk about your low calorie diet. I fixed that plate just for you. Now eat.”
Savannah heard a sound from outside. It was loud like a gunshot, but lacked the definition of one. It lacked a reaction too. Normally, dogs would bark, cats would howl and Ms. Jones, her neighbor from downstairs, would shout obscenities out the window. That night, Savannah heard only the March wind blow trash down the street.

“You look distracted, Nuhnuh.” Lenny walked over to the living room window and watched the street with her.

“I’m not.”

“What are you looking at anyway? This place has turned into even more of a shithole since I left. There’s nothing to look at.”

“Watch your damn mouth.” Momma Rose hit him with a folded up newspaper.

“It’s too late for this shit. I’m going to bed,” Papa Jack announced. He limped into his bedroom with a mug of decaf and something else mixed in.

The others acknowledged how late it was and followed suit. Savannah stayed by the window and tried to remember the sound. She noticed a dog wander into the apartment yard, sniffing the ground. She waited until her parents turned off the television and tiptoed into the hallway.

Most of the boarders were sleeping. Blue glare from the televisions illuminated their rooms, but she knew no one was watching. She crept downstairs and into the front yard. The dog disappeared. She stood on a plot of dirt and watched a beer bottle roll into the storm sewer.

“Is that you, Sav? What are you doing out this late?”

She saw a tall shadow with baggy jeans and mini dreadlocks stroll up the sidewalk. She sighed. That boy, Roger Malcolm, was in her freshmen Geometry class. He sat behind Savannah and poked her when the teacher wasn’t looking. He was with someone too, a stocky boy who wore a baseball cap. She figured it was his brother.

“Why do you care? This is where I live.”

“Don’t get defensive, Sav. I’m just saying, it’s probably not safe to be out this late.”

“Then why are you out?”

Roger whispered something to the stocky boy. The stocky boy shrugged. “Don’t laugh, but we’re kind of...well we’re… ghost hunting.”

Savannah shook her head and folded her arms.

Roger scratched the back of his neck.

The stocky boy watched a station wagon drive down the street.

Savannah shrugged. “Have fun ghost hunting. I’m going to bed.”

“You’ll be missing out. Me and Carl got a lead. We heard a loud banging sound on King Street. We think it’s Ms. Gailing’s ghost.”

Savannah studied their faces. She wanted to follow the sound too, so she agreed to go with them. The neighborhood exhausted the legend of Ms. Gailing’s ghost, an old woman who buried living children in her garden. Savannah heard the legend so many times that she was indifferent.

When the three walked to King Street, Savannah tried to imagine her neighborhood the way her brother told her it looked like years ago. She tried to imagine the brick buildings without decay, the street signs without bullet holes or the doors without locks. She tried to imagine vendors on the street, children playing in the park and people walking their dogs. She tried to imagine, but the steam from the street clouded her sight and the smell of sewage reminded her why she wanted to move.

Roger and Carl kicked an empty beer can like a soccer ball while Savannah studied the dilapidated and abandoned buildings. She wondered what the buildings looked like before the business owners relocated to the suburbs. Lenny spoke of movie theaters, markets, restaurants, dance studios and arcades that once filled the buildings, but she couldn’t remember. To Savannah, those buildings were always abandoned and dilapidated.

“I think this is it.” Roger stopped before a two-story house composed of sooty gray bricks, moss and a garden in the backyard that grew like a miniature forest over the years. “And back there must be where the ghost of Ms. Gailing buries her children. This place is scary as shit.”

“Let’s get out of here, Roger.” Carl stammered, shaking his fists inside the pockets of his jeans.

“You guys are so stupid.” The boys took a step back and widened their eyes. Savannah stared at the asphalt and shook her head. She could hear bats crying from the garden. The boys flinched. She didn’t. “The legend of Ms. Gailing is not real. Someone made it up to scare gullible kids like you.”

“Then why the hell did you come with us?”

“Yeah, why?”

She stopped and thought about this question as the bats screeched louder. She heard some rustlings from the garden. She let her braids fall in front of her face and wiped the cool night sweat away from her brow.

“Do you remember Ken Fisher? You know, that weird boy on our block who does magic tricks. Well, when I was in middle school, my momma forced me to be friends with him because his parents were good friends with mine. Anyway, one day, Ken convinced me to go to Ms. Gailing’s house with him to try and find ghosts. We stood in the front yard for an hour. We didn’t see any ghosts, but we noticed a weird station wagon parked with its lights off down the street from this house.”

“Why is that weird?”

“There are no other houses on this street that aren’t abandoned. Seeing a car parked like that was weird. It made me think this place is for something else.”

Roger laughed and waved a hand in the air. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Sav, but I know the ghost of Ms. Gailing haunts this house. Me and Carl saw her before.”

Carl nodded and looked over his shoulder.

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious. When we walked down the street last week, we saw the shadow of that crazy ass ghost in the window. I think she was holding a shovel!”

Another screech from the garden interrupted Roger’s story. It sounded different from a bat’s scream. It sounded more human. Savannah bit her lip. Roger and Carl winced like the screech was flying toward them. They crouched to the ground and clasped their hands over their ears. When they heard the screech a second time, Savannah’s mind flashed back to a conversation she had with Lenny after she saw the old station wagon. They were sitting on the steps to the apartment when she asked him if he had seen the station wagon around town. He joked about the car being his and told her not to believe all the stupid shit she heard. She remembered hearing the same screech that night from somewhere in the distance.

“Savannah…” She turned to see Carl shaking inside his oversized shirt. He looked into the garden. “I-I know you don’t believe in ghosts, but this is getting pretty crazy. I’m not sure I’m up to this.”

“Carl, that’s not a ghost. She exhaled slowly and felt the tension in her shoulder blades. “I think I know what…it is. I don’t want to say, but that’s not a ghost.”

Without another word, Savannah led them into the garden and forgot to look behind her. Thorny green vines, Venus Fly traps and other decaying forms of vegetation towered over them. The plant growth was so extravagant that they could barely see the building when they entered through a small patch of darkness. Carl pricked his hand on a thorn and attempted to scream, but Roger forced his arm over his mouth and told him to be quiet if he wanted to live.

They saw only the dim lights from the backs of tiny fireflies and the outline’s of the Venus flytraps’ mouths snatching and swallowing the flies. When the plants digested the flies, they watched the lights flicker for a few seconds and then dissolve into oblivion. They grabbed onto each other’s arms as they swatted their way through the growth.

“Sav, if we make it out of here,” Roger whispered. “I-“

“Roger, don’t even right now…”

Savannah felt a hand on her arm disappear. She spun around and called the boys’ names. She heard the sound of footsteps scrape the mud. She heard a sharp metal object slash through the plants. She saw the shadow of a tall woman in a wavy, black dress. Savannah felt the impact of a cold, metal shovel against her forehead and fell to the dirt. The shadow dragged her by her feet over rocks, vines, sticks and slimy insects that swarmed her arms and gathered inside her shirt.

The shadow said “Savannah?” in a low, muffled voice.

She felt the impact of the shovel again.

**

She awoke on the couch in her living room, her clothes clean and her shoes sitting in unison by the door. She looked for cuts or scrapes on her hands or legs, but couldn’t find any. She rose slowly from the couch and scanned the room. She heard the hum of the stove and noticed Momma Rose cooking crepes in a frying pan. Momma Rose only made crepes when she was sick.

“You stay on the couch, baby. You’re not going anywhere with a temperature that high. Don’t worry. I took my shift off at the hospital today. By the way, Lenny said you were talking about ghosts in your sleep. I told you not to eat junk food before bed.”

The hum of the stove grew louder. The images from last night slithered through her brain and penetrated her skull. She tried to remember the tall shadow in the wavy black dress and the muffled voice. She tried to convince herself that she dreamed the events of last night, but couldn’t remember when or where or when she fell asleep. She looked at the mirror over the television set. Her skin seemed darker than usual, but she couldn’t see any marks on her forehead.

“Momma?”

“Yes?”

“Is Lenny here?”

“No, he left early. Poor boy. He was up late taking care of you. He said he heard you scream and came to your bedside. He’s such a good brother to you.”

Savannah nodded and looked at her arms again. She thought about the insects crawling inside her shirt and wrapped her arms around her waist.

“Momma, where did Lenny say he was going?”

“You know your brother. He goes out with those friends of his before your papa and I had a chance to ask him. But, I did see him leave in somebody’s station wagon.”

Savannah leaned over and ran her fingers through her hair. When she exhaled, she felt as if the thorns from the garden were puncturing her lungs. Savannah remembered that the shadow spoke like a man. The shadow had the build of a man too.

“Are you okay? Savannah?”

“Yeah momma, I just have to get my inhaler.”

Savannah ran into her room and closed the door. The puncturing sensation spread to her diaphragm. Savannah grabbed the silver locket that sat on the corner of her bed and clutched it to her heart. Her brother gave it to her. She rubbed her fingers against her forehead. Brown foundation make-up caked her fingertips. She yanked some tissues from a box on her bureau, spit into them and wiped the foundation off her forehead, revealing a prominent purple bruise. When she looked out the glass of her bedroom window, she saw a pair of tattered, muddy jeans hanging from the fire escape. Savannah remembered her brother carrying her up the fire escape. He wore the dress.

She forced the window open and jumped onto the platform. She fell against the steel gratings and scraped her elbow. She watched her locket fall to street below and blow with the hurricane of trash. When she looked down at her urban decay of a neighborhood, she realized Lenny helped make it that way. Whenever she heard shootings outside of her apartment building, Lenny was nowhere to be found.

Growing up, she remembered Lenny sneaking out of the apartment late at night and returning with cuts on his different parts of his body. Momma Rose and Papa Jack never questioned because Lenny earned good grades in school and worked somewhere to save money for college. They rarely saw their son or questioned him, but they told Savannah to be more like him. When she read, Momma Rose told her she needed to read more challenging books like the ones Lenny read in high school. When she won second place at her track meet, Papa Jack reminded her that Lenny held the school record for the fastest mile run.

Savannah made her way down the fire escape and sprinted to King Street. When she looked at the buildings, she realized her brother’s story about a once lively neighborhood represented nothing more than a pipe dream. The neighborhood Momma Rose and Papa Jack moved into was one of ruins, one already damaged by the practice of redlining. Lenny merely set fire to that damage.

When she reached Ms. Gailing’s house, she saw multiple shadow figures walk by the tinted windows. She ducked behind the bush and peered through a window. She saw men in black dresses carrying cardboard boxes full of empty syringes. They wore long gray wigs and oval wire rimmed glasses. Suddenly, an arm wrapped around her neck.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Lenny whispered. She felt his saliva spray into her ear. Strands of gray hair covered her eyes. “Don’t talk. They will kill you if they find out you are here.”

Lenny walked Savannah into the garden. He choked her just enough so she could breathe through her nostrils. The plants looked smaller than they did the previous night, the Venus flytraps less menacing. He carried a pistol in a holster that strapped to his dress. She noticed bones and skulls poking through the dirt and a shovel that stood on its blade. She bit his arm and broke free.

“What the hell is this? Who the hell are you?” She clenched her fists. Her nails made her knuckles bleed.

Lenny’s finger stroked the pistol’s safety. Beads of sweat dripped from his wig. “I never wanted you to find out. I’m a coke dealer. Those…men you saw, well, they work for me. We…hide behind the legend of Ms. Gailing. The police never come by because they don’t take the legend seriously. Whenever kids say they saw someone in a dress here, the cops treat it like folklore and laugh it off. We…carry on our trade without having to worry about the pigs.”

She took a step closer to him, her fists still clinched. She whispered “why” and gritted her teeth.

“People like us don’t make it out of here without an athletic scholarship. I tried and I never got one. I had to make my own way. I had to look out for our family. I do this for us. I do this so momma and papa will have an actual home to live in one day. I do this so you could go off to college to be an English teacher.”

“You kill people-” Savannah picked up a joint from the ground and threw it at him like a boomerang. It bounced off his shoulder and into the mouth of a Venus flytrap.

“You don’t understand. No one can find out.”

“Did you kill Roger and Carl?” Savannah grabbed the shovel and gripped it tightly between her fingers. “Did you kill Roger and Carl?”

She swung the shovel at him and knocked the pistol out of its holster. She swung the blade at his kneecaps and watched him fall to the ground. Lenny squinted and screamed. Savannah placed the shovel in his hands, grabbed the Glock and pointed it at him.

“Dig them up. Dig them all up.”