Drt (14 page)

“Wow, man!” his smile dropped, “What happened to you?”
 

“I need a band-aid.”

“You need a shitload of ‘em, bud. Get your ass in here!”

Before I had a chance to doubt myself, the door had closed and I was in the Morris house. The walls were a gleaming clean white. The baseboards were stained wood, like the floor in the foyer, but scuffed and marked as if assaulted by a thousand hits from various childhood playthings. Ahead was a carpeted staircase that ascended to a lazy landing and then turned to go upstairs. To my left was a dining room with a large wooden table that bore a rainbow of crayon and marker smudges leftover from numerous rainy afternoons of carefree coloring that ran off the paper with abandon. This house had known life, but somehow it felt like these were all images of the past, remnants of childhood happiness that had recently faded away. It now felt cold, detached, and impossibly quiet for a house with two small children among its residents.
 

At the end of the foyer, the linoleum I stood on ended abruptly with a piece of metal. I thought for a moment that the brass represented the shore and the linoleum looked like the ocean before I brought my gaze up to the skinny stranger that had let me into the house.

He appeared with a pad of sterile gauze and a brown bottle that I reasoned was some kind of antiseptic. He leaned the bottle over onto the gauze and then handed it to me. I pressed the stinking fabric to my face and looked thankful at him as the liquid burned my wound with a white hot intensity.

“You live across the street, right?”

I nodded.

The skinny man extended his hand.

“Dravin.”
 

“Greg.”

“Well Greg, what did you do to cut your face so bad? Hope it was a fun party.”

Behind Dravin, a blond woman that I recognized from the obituary photo sauntered into view, rubbing her face. She had far away eyes.
 

“I was hanging a picture and I cut my face.”

“Must be one hell of a piece of modern art, one of those paintings made entirely of razors,” he laughed at his humor and looked behind him. “Baby, do we have any of those little butterfly bandages in the bathroom?”

She stared into space, the far away eyes not registering any sign of hearing the words directed at her.

“Leigh Ann?”

“What?”

“Go get the butterfly bandages from the bathroom, please.”
 

Dravin motioned for me to follow. He turned a wooden chair with a high back out from under the dining room table. He stood over me and looked at the wound. I wasn’t sure why this stranger was taking such care but the subterfuge gave enough reason for me to be there. Something felt very wrong about this house.
 

“I’ve seen you coming in and out of your house, Greg. I’m sorry I never said hello.”

“Me too.”

“This is a pretty bad cut but there’s no reason to be worried. I think the patient is gonna make it.”

Leigh Ann emerged from the other room with a brown wicker basket full of various first aid items. She walked them to the table and set the basket down. “There you go, baby,” she said in a distracted voice as she wandered off to the living room. I heard the sound of a TV click to life.
 

Dravin went to work. I could see directly up his nostrils. “Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t talk. It will take me all day if you talk.”

“Your name is Dravin?”
 

“Yeah, Dravin Baxter, my parents were hippies.”
 

“How long have you guys lived here?”

From the couch in the living room, Leigh Ann spoke, “We’ve lived here for a six months. I don’t know if you ever met my husband.”
 

“Jerry?”

The room was motionless for a second. “Yes, he just passed away a little over a week ago.”
 

“I saw the news. I am really sorry.”

“It’s hard but we are adjusting.” She looked like she was about to cry but then brushed it away. “It’s for the best, Greg. My husband and I were not exactly getting along if you know what I mean.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. I’d tell you all about it, but it’s too long.” She lit a cigarette, “Fucker.”

The word came out of her mouth and expanded, filling the room. It was accompanied by an uncomfortable silence that bubbled and stopped every action in the room. That one word, that one communication, brought the world around it to a halt. Every thought and every motion was placed on hold until the parties who heard it could register its meaning. The bald cruelty of a wife cursing her husband that had not even been dead a week peeled the skin off of me but that raw pain was talking. Something was very wrong.

Dravin cleared his throat and addressed Leigh Ann in a tone that seemed polite but bore a clear reproach. “Leigh Ann, Greg doesn’t need to be uncomfortable with your marriage issues. Watch TV.” Without skipping a beat he focused his full attention back on me as Leigh Ann sighed deeply and went back to pushing buttons on the remote. “So Greg, what work do you do?”

“I’m a traffic reporter.”

Leigh Ann turned around again, unable to follow Dravin’s directive after the revelation of my occupation. The lit cigarette she now held in her hand was shaking.

“Did you cover Jerry’s crash?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Was it as bad as everyone said?”

“…”

“Did you see it happen?”

“There are cameras on that site but I was busy.”

“Hayleigh! This man helped cover daddy’s accident on the news.”

Hayleigh Morris walked into my line of sight. She was thin, almost gaunt, and very pale. We stared at each other; her eyes were full of fear. Dravin stood up, done with his bandaging, and looked at me with the curl of a smile on his face. He nodded at me.

I turned back to say hello to Hayleigh but she was already gone.

“Don’t worry about her,” Leigh Ann waved a hand in her daughter’s direction. Her still shaking hand formed a staircase of snaky smoke wafting into the air. “She hasn’t taken it very well. Elroy has been able to handle it without much problem but she was always Daddy’s girl anyway.”

Dravin turned to her and spoke again with that tone intent on silence. “There’s nothing wrong with a daddy’s girl, Leigh Ann.”

“Dravin, you know what I mean about her.”

“So Greg, is it just you in that room across the street?”

“Yes.”

“So you work all night and stay all by yourself in that house?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds pretty lonely, you have any friends?”

“I used to.”

“I think we should fix that, Greg. I can see us all becoming friends.”

“Dravin, honey, did you leave the door open? That smell is back again, like a car’s running.”

I smelled it too.
 

“Leigh Ann, you’re sounding like you’re confused again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We don’t need you to be confused.”

“…”

“I just want to be clear with you, Leigh Ann. You’re not confused are you?”

“No honey, I’m fine, never mind.”

“Sorry you had to see that, Greg. She gets confused a lot more these days because of everything, you know what I mean, but we are working on it. It’s just part of being in love, right Greg? And I’m serious about us being friends. I hope you know that we can be very close…all of us.”

I saw Hayleigh walked around from behind the staircase. She approached me with caution and then stood right next to me, looking up with eyes that seemed to hold far too much sorrow for her age.

Dravin smiled wide, “Did you come to say bye, Hayleigh? Looks like those manners are finally coming around.”

Without warning, Hayleigh reached out and hugged me. I was startled by the action and almost wormed away from this unfamiliar contact. I felt almost claustrophobic as the girl gripped my hips.

Awkwardness smothered me like a blanket but I did not want to rebuke the girl. I worried that insisting that Hayleigh release me would risk the mother’s wrath. I broke the tension with a nervous laugh. “Oh, don’t worry, I will be back!”

The girl freed me without a word and scampered away. Dravin watched her with what seemed like a mixture of amusement and annoyance. Leigh Ann leaned in and spoke in a whisper. “She hasn’t been right since the accident.”
 

“That’s understandable,” I said, as I made motion to the door.

The couple nodded at me and I exited to the porch with a smattering of goodbyes. As quickly as I was in, I was back outside of the Morris house and heading to my own door. I felt defeated again. There would only be two more days by the time Friday night came along. I still didn’t have much to go on.
 

At that moment, I hated the ghost. It gave no guidance. There were no hints or ideas. There were only visions and face slices and this journey across the street that left me just as empty handed as I had been before being sent on that fool’s errand. I had no idea what to do next or what questions should be asked. I felt lost as I crossed the concrete and keyed the door.

The sun was starting to set. The pink haze lifted from the horizon as the night began to dawn. I had to get to work. I decided to change clothes before heading in. I dropped my gray cargo shorts to the ground and they landed with a clink of keys and change. I pulled on a fresh pair of khaki shorts up and fastened them.
 

I picked up the shorts I had just dropped to the floor and fished in the pockets for my keys and wallet. Inside the right back pocket, my fingers closed around a slip of paper. It didn’t feel smooth like a receipt. It must be Sylvia’s number but that seemed weird because I thought I remember slipping that back into my wallet.
 

I pulled it out and realized it was notebook paper, the kind that’s ruled with straight blue lines. It was tightly folded. I turned it over a few times before opening it.
 

My stomach dropped. I looked around to see if the ghost had appeared. Was I hallucinating? There was no indication of that, no flashing lights, no drumming heart beats. The room was empty and silent as I looked back at the note and realized that my sight did not deceive me.
 

On the lined paper were three words written in shaky pink ink. The handwriting was clearly that of a young girl, the same as the crayon drawing. The letters were neat and tidy and screamed off the page, “Please. Help me.”

19

I sat at my work terminal, headphones spilled on the desk in front of me. I leaned back into my chair and turned the small rip of notebook paper between my thumb and forefinger. I listened to the chirp and whelps from the rows of police scanners, but registered none of the words coming from them. I was deep in thought, trying to make sense of anything that happened earlier.
 

I had never in my life had what you could call a “eureka” moment. I didn’t know what one would even look like, but the moment when I pulled Hayleigh’s note out of my shorts had to qualify. I stood in my room for a long time, trying to reconcile what had happened. She must have slipped the note into my pants while she was hugging me.
 

That, of course, wasn’t the most important thing. How the note had been dropped was almost meaningless when compared to the words written across the light blue lines. They screamed out for help in this child’s painfully precise print and confirmed everything.
 

I wasn’t crazy. The ghost of Jerry Morris was real. It was real and meant business. The wound on my face confirmed this and the note represented the mission statement. The ghost needed me to save Hayleigh.
 

“Greg, are you even listening to me?” said Amy.

“What?”

“What happened to your face?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Did you get in a fight or something?”

“I don’t really feel like talking about it.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

I wasn’t used to her talking to me this much. “But thank you for asking.”

“If you want to talk about it, Greg, just ask.”

“I will.”

The invitation to talk to Amy was certainly news to me, but there was too much to go over still to dwell on this development. To avoid any further questions from Amy I would need to do side work until she left.
 

I decided to spend tonight trying to put this all together. The last couple of days had seen a lot of information collected and now I needed to assemble it to form the full picture.
 

There was the walk with Sylvia but that seemed far away now. The dominant thought in my head was the fact of the almost kiss. At least in my head, we almost kissed. The thought seemed at once impossibly erotic and yet at the same time so far away.

The headphones sounded the chime. I grabbed them, half listening, and put them on. I popped on the microphone and said a list of road construction out of pure muscle memory.

I picked up the phone once I was finished, pushed the numbers I read out of my cell, and put the ringing handset to my ear.
 

“Sylvia Barrio.”
 

“Sylvia, it’s Greg.”

“Hey you, I didn’t recognize the number.”
 

“I’m calling from work. Do you have any time tomorrow?”

“Um…yes. I’m free in the afternoon. What do you need to see me about?”

“I went to the Morris house today, and…well let’s say I made a giant discovery that I need your help with.”

“Okay. Do you mind meeting at my house, Greg?”

“No, not at all, just give me the address.”

“Silver Hill Gardens Apartments, it’s on Pearl Dr. just off Silver Hill Rd.”

“I know where that is.”
 

“I’m in building three. Can you be here in the early afternoon?”
 

“Yes.”

We said our goodbyes and hung up the phone. I normally would have been thrilled to spend time with Sylvia at her home but I wasn’t. The literal specter of death was looming a bit large at the moment. I looked back at the slip of paper and tried to figure out what the connection was.