Ghost Brother (Spooky Short Stories by Kathryn Meyer Griffith) (3 page)

Gerald.
It
was
his
fault. He’d driven me crazy with suspicions and mistrust. Tricked
me into doing this terrible thing. He’d made my blood boil and made me think my
wife was running around on me, going to abandon me.

None of it had been true. Not one single word. How had
I not known that? Why, oh, why, had I trusted Gerald?

He made me kill her, I brooded. Like he’d goaded his
son to kill him?

Damn, that Gerald was as evil dead as when he’d been
alive. Maybe more.

Time hiccupped.

***

Now the house was hushed around me and it was later in the
day. The shadows had shifted. It was evening.

Behind me there was yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed
over the door entrance. The living room was empty except for the outline of the
murder victim on the floor in front of the couch. Only the blood stains
splattered across the couch and carpeting, the walls, remained. The body gone.
The gun gone. Taken for evidence most likely and locked in some metal box in
the bowels of the police station awaiting a trial. There was broken glass
scattered everywhere and the lamp and knickknacks, Tessa’s tiny glass horses
and cats, that had been on the coffee table were in pieces on the floor. Like my
life. In pieces. No going back now.

What had happened after I’d shot her? Had she died? Again
my memory failed me.

What was I doing here and what was the point of this
charade? Was I sorry I’d shot her? Oh, yes. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t–

I stumbled out on the front porch and sat down on the swing
again. My mind was racing and I felt so sad. Outside now it was dark. Not the
usual dark of a normal earthly night, but a greenish ebony darkness that
reminded me of a tornado sky, a tornado world. I felt weird. Heavy with the
anguish of what I’d done and what would happen next.

I was so frightened.

Whispers and muffled cries arose from the distant trees
like smoke and echoed across the lawns. I stared into the gloom and thought I
saw these
things
, low to the ground and hidden in shadows, scurrying
around in the deeper darkness.

What were they?

Were they after me?

Or was I one of them?

And then I was back in the jail cell.

Except I wasn’t actually in the cell, but observing myself
from the outside, apparently a much earlier self, a more solid one, huddled on
the cot, shoulders heaving; crying.

“I didn’t mean to shoot her, I swear. I don’t know what got
into me,” I was bemoaning. “I loved her. She was my world. It was Gerald. He
made me do it. He–”

Gerald was sitting beside the earlier me on the cot,
laughing.

My hands clutched the bars and an overwhelming hatred came
over me as I watched from the outside. Watched my life crash around me. Forever
ruined. Gone.

“You know you killed her–your wife–don’t you?” Gerald was
haranguing the other me. “You’re a cold-blooded, without redemption murderer.
You’re going to go on trial and all your family and friends are going to hate
you. Turn their backs on you. You’re going to be found guilty and you’re going
to fry in the electric chair.

“No lifetime jail sentence for you in some cushy cell with
three meals a day and a roof over your head…no, it’ll be death. You’re going to
be strapped in and you’re going to die. Gonna be dead just like me.

“Because you’re just like me, only worse. You
killed
your wife. I didn’t kill no one. I was the victim. But you….”

My brother’s ghost went on and on and on. Yelling one
moment at me, laughing in another.

And then it happened. In the cell, I clutched my chest and
the blood drained from my face. “
Help me…help me…
I think I’m having a
heart attack. Oh, no–”

I looked on in horror as my other more solid self collapsed
on the bed and I heard the death rattle and the body go still.

Gerald, in the meantime, was slapping his ghost thighs and chuckling.
“Well, what do you know, brother? Looks like you’re going to join me even
sooner than I thought. Welcome to the afterlife.”

Outside the cell, I screamed profanities and shook my fist
at my brother. “You did this! You did it all. If it’s the last thing I do I’m
going to get you for this! I swear it. I’m going to chase you to hell if I have
to and make you pay. I’m going to–”

***

Time whizzed by once again and I was back in real time. If
death had real time in it. I couldn’t tell you. I had a lot to learn yet. So
far it didn’t seem to. Hopping me all over like a jumping bean.

Gerald and my corpse were gone and I was alone now inside
the darkened cell sobbing.
So that’s what had happened? That’s how I died.
In
a jail cell, a forsaken criminal who’d murdered the wife he’d loved. All
because of my brother.

Lifting my head from my hands, I listened. There were
voices coming through the door and down the hallway towards me. Real voices. I
could almost understand the words. Guards. It was the first human voices I’d
heard clearly since this crazy odyssey had begun.

Oh God, I hoped they could help me.

Lunging up from the cot I threw myself at the bars and was frantic
when I discovered I couldn’t move through them. Trapped. From the inside again.
I couldn’t leave the cell.

Two men in brown uniforms stopped in front of it and stared
in. The first one was short, thin, and had a square shaped face; the second was
taller, heavier, and had blond hair in a military styled cut.

I tried to get their attention. I waved my arms and stomped
my feet. I screamed at the top of my lungs to no avail. The two men didn’t see
me. Didn’t hear me. It took me a while to comprehend that and calm down. Shocked,
I listened to what they were saying. I tried once or twice to interrupt them,
tell them the truth about what had really happened, how sorry I was; that I was
right there in front of them, but they didn’t respond.

Down the hallway I could hear Gerald laughing.

***

“So this is where it happened, huh?” The first guard muttered,
peering into the empty cell.

“Yep. Last Wednesday I came back–I was on the late shift that
night–from supper and on my rounds found him slumped on the cot in the corner
there,” the heavier man said. “Died of a heart attack. The coroner said he went
just like that.” He snapped his fingers in the air.

“And no one had talked to him about why he’d killed his
wife like he did?”

“No, didn’t have time. He was brought in about six that
evening and his lawyer hadn’t shown up yet. He refused to talk to anyone at
first. Though the arresting officer, Reynolds, told me later that when he’d
first taken him into custody at the scene of the crime, at the house, over the
body, and put the cuffs on him, he’d been out of his mind raving something
about his brother having made him kill her. Something crazy like that. Turns
out later that his brother was dead. Has been dead for years. His druggy son
shot him to death. What a family.”

“Yeah, a family of wackos,” the first guard agreed. “The
real psycho nut cases can make up some wild stories, all right.”

“Three bullets, one in her chest and two in her back. She
was trying to get away, poor woman. That’s pretty cold. So no one knows why he
killed his wife then, huh?”

“Not really. That’s the grand mystery here. His family said
he’d been behaving strange lately, hearing voices, disappearing for days at a
time and not going into work, and that his wife was considering a separation or
a divorce, it’s not entirely clear…but there was no history of any violence
with the two. Not one iota. Sure he collected guns and had a cabinet full of
them in the basement, but he was a peaceful, mild mannered man who wouldn’t hurt
a fly. Usually. Or so everyone said.

“Then one day out of the blue he goes and shoots his wife
to death and before anyone can find out why…he dies in this cell of a heart
attack. Talk about ironic.”

“Talk about bizarre.” The blond headed officer rubbed the
side of his face and canted his head. “A real honest-to-God eternal mystery no
one will ever solve. And I hate mysteries. Now no one will ever know why he
actually did it, will they?”

“No, I guess we never will.”

The two were moving away from the cell.

“But that cell gives me the creeps now. Ever since I found
him dead in it like that,” the taller man’s voice drifted back down the hall.

“Yeah,” the other guard replied faintly. “It’s haunted, for
sure.”

“Yeah, haunted.”

Both men snickered and locked the outer hallway door behind
them.

And inside the cell the ghost was screaming.

The End

If you enjoyed this short story you can read others in the
series SPOOKY SHORT STORIES…and please leave a review on Amazon Kindle for it.

About
Kathryn
Meyer Griffith
…

Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic
designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years
before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty
years ago now, and have had sixteen (nine romantic horror, two romantic SF
horror, one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel
and two murder mysteries) previous novels and eight short stories published
from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books,
The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press
.

I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James,
and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in
Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis,
Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too),
and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though
I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing
has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably
write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.

All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Books
available at Amazon.com here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Kathryn+Meyer+Griffith

Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:

Evil
Stalks the Night
(Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, 2012)

The
Heart of the Rose
(Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Eternal Press Buy Link
:
http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615722327

Blood
Forge
(Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2012)

Vampire
Blood
(Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)

Damnation
Books Buy Link:
http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615724253

The
Last Vampire
(Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2010) 
Damnation Books Buy Link:
http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615722075

You
Tube Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZU77j_q4S8

Witches
(Zebra, 1993;
Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2011)

Damnation
Books Buy Link
:
http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615723553

The
Nameless One
(short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology
Dark Seductions
; Damnation
Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
Damnation
Books Buy Link:
http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615723201

The
Calling
(Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)

Damnation
Books Buy Link:
http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615725007

Scraps
of Paper
(Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003…soon to be an Amazon Kindle Direct ebook)

All
Things Slip Away
(Avalon
Books Murder Mystery, 2006…soon an Amazon Kindle Direct ebook)

Egyptian
Heart
(The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)
Eternal Press buy link:
http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615724437
My self-made You Tube Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cogCNYKzPqc

Winter’s
Journey
(The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011) Eternal
Press Buy Link:
http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615724604
)
You Tube Book Trailer address:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYCs2DVhHg

The
Ice Bridge
(The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)

Eternal
Press Buy Link:
http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615725182
You Tube Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28HZqu-my1g

Don’t Look
Back, Agnes
novella & bonus short story:
In This House
(2008;
ghostly romantic short story out; Eternal Press 2012)
You Tube Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3q9rZryFMo
Eternal Press Buy Link:
http://www.eternalpress.biz/people.php?author=422

BEFORE
THE END:
A Time of Demons
(Damnation Books 2010)
Damnation
Books buy link:
httphttp://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615721313
You Tube
self-made Book trailer with original song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0-U9c2Lwfo

The
Woman in Crimson
(Damnation Books 2010)
Eternal Press Buy Link:
http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615721979
You Tube Book Trailer Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcRBvDI5G4Y

The
Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction
:
Volume 1
(I did
the Introduction) &
Volume 2
is coming.

Dinosaur
Lake
(from Amazon Kindle Direct 2012)

My Websites:

http://www.myspace.com/kathrynmeyergriffith
(
to see all my book trailers with original music by my singer/songwriter
brother JS Meyer
)

http://www.bebo.com/kathrynmeyerG

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1019954486

http://www.authorsden.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://www.jacketflap.com/K.griffith

http://www.shoutlife.com/kathrynmeyergriffith

http://romancewriterandreader.ning.com/profile/KathrynMeyerGriffith
 

http://www.romancebookjunction.ning.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith
   

E-mail me at
[email protected]
  I love to hear from my
readers.

***