Haunting Memories

Koji flipped open his wallet, displaying his Official Ghost Hunter badge.  He was expecting a problem to arise.  Every Halloween, a local police officer was given the task of standing guard all night at the Lake Helen cemetery, and he, (or sometimes she), was never inclined to like someone in Koji’s line of work.       

The cop standing in front of him barely batted an eye.  With an eyebrow quirked, the officer demanded, “What kind of badge is that?  It’s bright green.”  He tapped it.  “And plastic.”  

With a completely straight face, Koji explained, “It glows in the dark.”  Slipping his thin, leather wallet back into his trench coat pocket, he cleared his throat.  Then, with an air of bruised dignity, he proclaimed, “I’m Koji Wendell, paranormal investigator from the Parker Institute for Supernatural Research.”  He stood straight and tall, the top of his head barely higher than the other man’s nose.  His satchel smacked against his side heavily, but he chewed back a groan.  Even his stained, moth-eaten fedora couldn’t make him look like he was equal with the middle-aged cop’s height.

“Oh.”  Rubbing the bridge of his nose, one hand on his hip, the cop let out a soft moan.  “More of these kooks.  I’ve chased away three kids tonight already.  I shouldn’t even be out here.  I should be trick-or-treating with my daughters.”

“Sorry.”  Koji gave an apathetic shrug.  “But, hey, if you let me in, give me an hour, maybe I can put this whole story about you-know-what to rest and you won’t have to play security guard to a cadaver garden every year.”  His dark eyes twinkled in the moonlight hopefully and he gave a winning grin.  “Whadayasay?”

“Fine, fine!”  Sighing, the officer unclipped an old, jangling brass ring from his belt, selected a key, and unlocked the graveyard gates.  “Say,” here he brightened a little, “you’re not on that show with those plumbers, are you?  You know, where they have the night vision cameras and all that?  I love those guys!”

Koji restrained from scoffing, and instead settled for rolling his eyes.  “Ugh, no.”  

Brushing past, he gave his thanks and stepped into the Lake Helen cemetery.  As soon as his feet made contact with ground, a shudder, like a mild electric shock, passed up through the soles and into his spine.  He bit back a curse and kept going, chiding himself for not being familiar with the feeling by now.  Winding through with a flicking beam of a flashlight to guide him, he made his way past mausoleums, simple slabs, and assorted markers and flowers.  It was a nice, well kept cemetery.  It had to be, considering where it was.  Cassadaga was not only a lovely city, but one of Florida’s best tourist traps.  After all, few places were more interesting than a town inhabited by nothing but psychics.  

It wasn’t long later that Koji found what he’d been looking for: A brick chair.  Dull blocks, the color of mud and rust, created a very geometric and—Koji plopped down on the seat—uncomfortable piece of furniture.  Dirt and dust coated it, as well as bird droppings and the occasional wad of chewed gum.  Around his feet were some cigarette butts.  For the so-called Devil’s Chair of Cassadaga, it was hardly intimidating, except if maybe one had a bony bottom and no cushion.

“Yowch!” Jumping up, he discovered an old thumbtack.  He gave it an angry flick right into a tree stump.

He tried to make himself comfortable.  Failing that, he checked his X-Files watch.  It was only a minute until midnight.  He’d made sure to bring a tape recorder, which he chose at that moment to take out.  “Eleven fifty-nine P.M. Lake Helen cemetery, Cassadaga Florida, here in the Devil’s Chair.  Local rumor has it that at midnight, Satan speaks to whoever’s sitting here—Oh!”  He suddenly flung open his satchel and took out a can of beer and put it on an arm of the seat.  “And,” he continued, “he’ll empty a can of unopened beer, ‘cause even the Prince of Darkness likes a brewski.”  

He waited a few minutes more. He looked up at the stars and admired a satellite.  For a change of pace, he picked at some lichen on the chair.  Then he made shadow puppets.  Koji had a lot of patience. He’d once sat on the shores of Loch Ness for two nights when it was only ten degrees out.

“Kaah-Nii-Cheee-Wuh!”

The hair on the back of the paranormal investigator’s neck bristled. A chill zigzagged up his spine like an angry serpent that had just slithered through an icy stream.  He turned, slowly, prepared to face the most evil of evils imaginable.

Instead what he got was a pot bellied, older man—probably in his early sixties—wearing suspenders and baggy trousers with an off-white shirt.  He had his hands casually in his pockets, and he grinned down at Koji with the benign smile of a loving grandfather.  The only thing strange about him was the fact he was transparent and a tint of greenish-blue.

“Kah-nee-chee-wah!” he cheerfully greeted again.

“Oh…Uh…” Koji wasn’t exactly disappointed.  At least he’d found a ghost.  That was something.  “Despite how I look,” he gestured to his Asian features, “hand to God I only speak English. Really.”  

“Oh,” the old man nodded.  “That’s a shame.  I always wanted to learn a bunch of languages, especially since so many tourists from all over come through here. You pick up sayings here and there, but it’s not the same.  I’m Bub, by the way.”  He held out a hand.

Koji tried to shake, found his fingers going through, and decided to just mime the action.  “As in Beezle?”

“Nope, just Bub.  Bub Arkens.”  He gestured to Koji’s seat with his chin.  “That’s my chair there.”

“Oh.” Koji nodded.  Then his eyes widened and he scrambled up.  “Oh, sorry!”  Stepping to the side, he watched as Bub slowly eased himself down onto the little brick couch.  “So you’re the infamous Devil’s Chair ghost, huh?  By the way people were talking, I was expecting demonic forces whispering in the darkness sort of thing.”

After a lengthy groan, Bub settled back, transparent knees cracking.  “I don’t care if I’m dead, my joints still ache!”  He picked up the beer can left on the chair’s arm.  “D’ya mind if I…?”

Koji waved his hands with an emphatic, “No, no! Go ahead.  I brought it for you.  Well, technically you.  I wanted to find out how you were drinking it without opening the can.”

With a laugh, Bub popped open the beer.  “Demonic forces?  Boy, the only demonic force around here is my indigestion.  Haunts you clear into the afterlife.”  Head titled back, he chugged, the contents splattering the seat and dirt below him.  “I know,” he gave a self conscious chuckle, “but I swear I taste it.  I normally do the ‘drink it without opening’ trick, but you can see and hear me no problem, so why bother?”

“How’d you do that anyway?” Koji realized he had his tape recorder tucked in his coat pocket.  Quickly, he fished it out and held it up.

“Well… What on Earth is this here contraption?”  The spirit poked the mike.

“It’s a voice recorder, so I can review our interview later and take notes for my report.”

“Ah,” Bub nodded.  “I’ve seen some similar ones from other ghost hunters before.  Y’know, there’s been dozens of them out here, but you’re the first one that actually saw and really heard me.”  His wrinkled face broke out into a smile.  “The first one!  I haven’t really talked to anyone in over sixty years!”

Seeing that hopeful grin, the dull eyes light up, and an overall brighter glow to the specter gave Koji a weird, guilty feeling.  From the moment he had entered the cemetery, he’d treated this figure as just a case, nothing more.  A case, a thing to be done, his job; not a person, or former person, anyway.  But when had he ever considered his work anything other than exactly that: work?  Mumbling, he explained, “I’ve got, uh, a gift, I guess you could say.”

“Oh,” Bub perked up, “like the psychics who live here?”

“Kinda.  Not as cool though.  I can’t summon spirits or channel energy or anything like that.  My parents live here in Cassadaga.  They’re mediums.”  He shuffled a tiny pebble with the tip of his sneaker.  “I didn’t inherit much of the talent.  Guess that makes me a small.”

Slapping a knee and spraying beer, Bub let out a ferocious belly laugh.  “A small!  I like you, boy!  You can’t go through life if you can’t laugh at yerself, that’s what I always say.  Like my trick.  You see, what I do is just take my thumbtack here…” He twisted around, trying to find it.  “Where’d it go?”

Koji grimaced.  “I sat on it.  And threw it.  It’s in that tree trunk over there,” he pointed.  “Sorry about that.”

“Not a problem,” the ghost waved it away.  “Anyway, after kids started bringing cans of beer with them when they’d try to sit in the ‘haunted Devil’s Chair,’ I’d poke the cans with the tack, let it drain or sip it out, and wait for them to find out.  Really messed with their heads.”  He sighed.  “I’d never meant to be mean or anythin’.  I was just trying to have some fun.  I’d try talkin’ to ‘em, but they’d usually run off.  I don’t think anyone could hear me like you can.  If I shouted, they’d say they heard whispers.  I guess between the empty beer, the noise, and me saying my name’s Bub, they got it in their heads this place was haunted by the Devil.  Since then, thrill seekers and spook chasers have been in and out, never staying long enough to chat or enjoy a drink.”  He sighed.

Koji swallowed.  There was that guilty tug again.  How many times had he come across a lonely spirit, one who just wanted someone to listen?  All he ever did was ask some questions, get some pictures and answers, and then leave.  Was that really all his job came down to?  

Taking an uncomfortable seat at the base of an old tree, Koji put his tape recorder beside him, making sure he wasn’t placing it on top of anyone’s grave.  A harvest moon hung over the cemetery, illuminating the headstones.  The slabs shone like ghosts sitting up, rapt in attention.  

“Bub, where’d that chair come from?”  Koji asked.  “That’s not a weird tombstone.  It’s just a-a really, really uncomfortable chair.”

Bub gave a little shimmy, settling himself down more into the brick seat.  “You can say it’s uncomfortable all you want, but to me it’s cozy.  Kids today, spoiled by cushions and bean bags and therapeutic pillows.”  He scoffed.  

Then he cleared his throat.  When he spoke next, it was almost a whisper.  “I built this with my own two hands.”  He gave the seat’s arms a pat.  “So I could visit my wife, you see. Cecilia…”  His voice cracked.  Tears glimmered in his eyes.  “She passed away about ten years before me.  I couldn’t bear being without her, but the walks here were rough with my arthritis.  So I made this so I could sit here for hours and visit.  Did a lot of talkin’…  Then one day I just couldn’t walk anymore… Then soon I couldn’t live.”  A tear rolled down his cheek, but he ignored it and let it fall.  

“When I tried to find Cecilia, she was gone.  I ain’t found her yet, but she’s out there, somewhere, maybe in Heaven waitin’ for me to get my ancient backside up there.”  

With the back of his head against the rough bark of the tree, Koji stared at the stars and thought of what could be past them.  “You ever thought of going up to find her?”

Bub leaned forward, eyes wide open and eyebrows arched so high they threatened to escape his face.  “Do… do you think I could, boy?”  It was barely above a whisper.  

Koji matched his gaze.  “There’s a price to pay, my friend.”  

The ghost grasped the young man’s shoulders, his spectral hands clammy and ice cold.  “What is it?  I’d give anything to be with my Cecilia again!”

“Well, you have to—Whoa, dude, you’re freezing!”  He leapt up and fiercely rubbed the spots where he’d been touched.  Any mystical mood he had attempted to set up was ruined now.  He thought it was best to cut right to the chase.  “You have to let go of your fear, Bub.  See, that’s what keeps spirits stuck here: Fear of leaving loved ones, fear of the unknown…  Once you stop being afraid, you can leave.”

Tilting his head to one side with a frown, the spirit considered this.  “But I’ve been scared for so long… What if I don’t find her?”

“You will.”  Koji smiled.  “I know you will.  After what you’ve said, there’s no doubt in my mind she’s been waiting for you.”

Bub returned the grin.  “Y’know, a century’s way too dang long to sit around with an achin’ heart.  And if she’s been waiting for me, well, I’ve just been so rude to stand her up for all these years.  How can I call myself a gentleman when I’ve been keeping a lady waiting?”  He nodded.  “Yep, too long.”  

He took a step back, and that was when the bright, blue light engulfed him. “I’m not afraid anymore, Koji!” he crowed.  Pumping his fists triumphantly, he laughed.  “I’m comin’ Cecilia, baby!  Koji, you go givin’ out advice like this, you’ll be out of a job soon.  There won’t be any more ghosts!”

Watching the spirit rise into the air, Koji shielded his eyes with one hand and held down his fedora with the other.  A gust of wind picked up, whipping his coat and blowing the fallen leaves into disarray.  “It’s a price I’m willing to pay, Bub.”
Nearly out of eyesight now, the soaring spirit shouted once more.  “Koji, do me a favor.  Share my story!  Tell everyone the truth; let those poor cops get a break.  And treat all those other ghosties you meet with the same honesty you did me.”  Now he looked like nothing more than a star twinkling in the night sky.  “You’ll go far, m’boy! You’ll go far!”
  
The star winked out, vanishing into the universe.  Once again, all was still.  Crickets chirped.  Koji picked up his tape recorder, his bag, and the discarded can, then made his way to the gate.  He hoped he could get some sleep.  He had a lot of writing to do in the morning.