Read A Minister's Ghost Online
Authors: Phillip Depoy
A Minister's Ghost (22 page)
“I can just imagine the lawsuits,” Orvid chided.
“âThe couple's car was parked right here, just like we are,' Rory told the kids. âAnd the boy was laughing and joking about how scared the girl was, when all of a sudden, there was a noise from inside the farmhouse.' Which was our cue, of course, and Skid and I knocked around the loose boards and generally caused a commotion, which made one of the damned peacocks call out. That got an even bigger scream than before. Tess said, âWhat was that?' and Rory said, âI don't know.' Skid and I let out a howl, and several of the kids blew out a lung yelling. I could hear Tess over the noise: âI was afraid this might happen! We shouldn't have come here on the anniversary of the night those two went into that house ten years ago.' Rory said, âThey never did come back out. And I hear that on Halloween night, after sunset, you can see their ghosts wandering through the ruins.'”
“Your hint to get up and menace,” Orvid guessed.
“Right. We popped up and started our ghostly impersonations with our sheets slung over our heads. I thought the kids would die. They were all screaming and crying; calling for their mothers. The problem was that Skid and I had never had practiced this thing, which was a mistake. The girls seemed to think it would be a good idea, since it was so dark, that they turn on their headlights and shine them into the house so the kids could see the ghosts better. Our eyes
had adjusted to the dark, and when we were hit with the light, we couldn't see a thing.”
had adjusted to the dark, and when we were hit with the light, we couldn't see a thing.”
“Like someone suddenly shining a flashlight in your eyes,” Orvid accused.
“Exactly,” I said, belittling his accusation. “We were yelling and making scary sounds as best we could, but we were blind. Skid bumped into me. I tried to get out of his way and tripped over an old board in the floor and fell down against what had been the wall between the kitchen and the living room. The old wall just crumbled, collapsed completely. Made a hell of a noise. So did I. Skid, meantime, had hit his head on something, which caused him to cuss, a rare occasion for him. The kids were still screaming and the lights were still on, and Skid and I assumed we were destroying the entire spooky gestalt, so we thought it best to just disappear like a good ghost should. I made my way crashing through the wall where I had knocked it in and tried to get out the kitchen door. Skid tried to jump out the back window of the living room. Alas, since the lights had crippled us, neither one of us made it. I ended up facedown in the kitchen flailing away at the sheet in which I was tangled, and Skid caught his sheet on the window, ripped it, and he slapped down on the sill hard enough to make him cuss again.”
“The Three Stooges make a haunted house,” Orvid said, shaking his head.
“By this time, of course, we could hear Tess laughing, and Rory was yelling at the kids that the ghosts were mad and they were coming to get everybody, so the kids were still screaming their heads off. Skid called out to me, rubbing his head, âI think that went pretty well.' The girls drove off, and that was that.”
I fell silent, and the noise of the truck engine took over.
I didn't quite know how to communicate to Orvid how much I had enjoyed that night with Skid, the spooky feeling of the place. I was certain that no one was genuinely frightened, but a part of us all liked imagining the ghostly couple. It wasn't frightening as much as it was comforting. Movies where people are sliced up and worse in a
sea of blood and guts,
that's
genuinely frightening, mostly because it comes from headlines, happens every day on the streets of New York and Chicago; Atlanta, Miami. I was in favor of
The Wolf Man, Dracula
âmovies in black and white.
Bride of Frankenstein
, with her white hair and the cobwebs in the corner of the castle. There was no reality to those threats. Nothing about them was believable. They were just for fun. Like a couple of grown men in bedroom sheets jumping around and making noises in an old house.
sea of blood and guts,
that's
genuinely frightening, mostly because it comes from headlines, happens every day on the streets of New York and Chicago; Atlanta, Miami. I was in favor of
The Wolf Man, Dracula
âmovies in black and white.
Bride of Frankenstein
, with her white hair and the cobwebs in the corner of the castle. There was no reality to those threats. Nothing about them was believable. They were just for fun. Like a couple of grown men in bedroom sheets jumping around and making noises in an old house.
And just as I was about to say something to Orvid along those lines, the moon came out from behind the clouds and, small as it was, lit the countryside around us.
“I don't believe I've ever seen a crescent moon this bright, have you?” Orvid mused. “Look at how pretty it makes everything.”
The breeze picked up, rustled the trees; sent another hundred thousand leaves downward.
“You enjoyed the haunted house,” Orvid went on.
“It was good.” I nodded.
“So that's a pretty nice memory of the girls,” he said softly. “And fairly significant, what with you playing a ghost and all. Considering.”
“Yes,” I realized, “it is.”
“That's a better way to remember them than anything else I can think of. And P.S.: maybe it pays you to think a little bit about what a good friend Sheriff Skidmore Needle has been to you most of your life. Since the memory you've just chosen about the girls was actually more a memory about him than anything else.”
I let out a long, slow breath. With it a great number of minuscule, black ghosts, roughly the size of musical notes, left my body to join the night sky above.
“Are we absolutely certain that you don't have a degree in psychology?” I asked Orvid.
“Only the one experience has provided.”
“Well, Dr. Newcomb,” I said formally, “thanks for the session.”
I finally realized that he was talking to keep my mind occupied.
“How far do you want to go?” I asked suddenly, interrupting his commentary on the difference between cold rain and summer rain.
“Yes.” He fell silent.
“
Yes
is not a distance.”
Yes
is not a distance.”
“You've had time to assess,” he sighed. “Good, I was running out of one-sided conversation.”
“You mean you've just been chattering on so I could gather my thoughts.”
“More or less. You
have
been preoccupied.”
have
been preoccupied.”
“All right, I have,” I agreed, “but some of that has to do with Georgie.”
“Who?”
“Georgie is the man with the nail-studded two-by-four whom you dispatched about a half an hour ago.”
“Really? You think you know his name?” Orvid shifted in his seat so that he could see me better. “You were worried about him? I didn't hit him hard enough to do much damage. I'm very precise about that sort of thing.”
“I'd imagine you would be,” I sniffed, “but as it happens, I had him in my mind because I believe he was the informant who originally told me about Hiram Frazier, the man on the tape I was telling you about.”
“What?” Orvid's voice bordered on the shrill. “Stop the truck.”
I shot him a glance. His face was in dead earnest.
I let off the gas, tapped the brakes several times, my truck slowed. We were coming to a wide paved shoulder, a place where the big trucks could pull to one side and let cars pass. I came to a stop, windshield wipers still slapping back and forth. I tapped the emergency button on the dash, and my lights began to flash.
“Yes?” I turned to him.
“You knew the man I knocked out?”
“No,” I said patiently, “but I think he might be the person I talked to a year ago who told me about Frazier's little key trick.”
“Because his name is Georgie?”
“And he looked a little familiar.”
“That's what you've been thinking about,” Orvid said, not blinking.
“I believe that all coincidence has meaning,” I answered slowly. “An event of this sort is significant in the fabric of reality.”
“I agree. That's why I asked you to stop the truck. But there's more to your introspection. I can tell.”
“You're absolutely certain you don't have a degree in psychology?” I said, slumping a little in my seat.
“What is it that you're worried about?” he pressed.
“I'm afraid of Hiram Frazier,” I blurted out. “I admit it. Something about him absolutely terrifies me. He's like something out of my worst dreams: a body without a soul, eyes without content or context, lost.”
“A ghost,” Orvid said simply. “Only real.”
“I have a friend, June Cotage, who sometimes tells a story that ends with âI don't believe in ghosts, but this is different. This really happened.'”
“That's right.” Orvid smiled.
“I can barely stand to think about him,” I said, softer.
“Then you have to find out why you're afraid of the man. You have to learn what about him frightens you.”
“I suppose.”
“And you believe that this most recent coincidence is a road sign, an indication from something in the universe.” Orvid looked out the window. “Which it might be, who's to say? I'm not a big believer in that sort of thing, but Judy is.”
“So how far are you expecting me to drive tonight? That's what I was asking a moment ago.”
“As far as it takes to find the man we're looking for.” Orvid let out a breath.
“And why am I driving, anyway?” I complained.
“Do you actually think you could fit into my Mercedes sports coupe?” He laughed. “You'd look like a Shriner in a parade, a big man in a toy car.”
“Good point.”
“Anyway, my car wasn't back there. I drove by Judy's on the way
to the train crossing and got her to drop me off. I don't like to leave my nice car just sitting around a place like that.”
to the train crossing and got her to drop me off. I don't like to leave my nice car just sitting around a place like that.”
“I see you didn't spend much time at my house investigating,” I said to him, heavy-lidded. “But the point is, I don't think we're going to find Hiram Frazier on the road tonight. Maybe not at all. It's pouring down rain, it's getting late, and I'm hungry.”
“What's the next town?”
“If we stay on this road, there's nothing until Rabun Gap, but if we hurry, we might make dinner at the Dillard House.”
“The fabled Dillard House,” Orvid said, sitting back. “My cousin Tristan took me there once when I was very young, but I still remember the biscuits and honey.”
“So you wouldn't mind a bite.”
I turned off my emergency lights, checked an empty road in both directions, and pressed the gas pedal.
“I could eat.” He looked out the window. “But you know we're not far from New Hope Primitive Baptist Church.”
How Orvid knew about that church would remain a mystery because I was so startled that he knew it at all. And I was taken by my sudden memories of the place.
I pictured the interior of the building perfectly, plain rough boards, polished floors, backless wooden pews. Exposed rafters hung low over the congregation. There was a single, white door at one end of the long building, a simple altar table at the other. The walls were lined with glass windows painted black, glass and all. The only light in the place were the oil lamps on the altar; there was no electricity in the building.
New Hope was a snake-handling church, a place where the minister drank lye and ate rat poison to prove the power of his faith. He'd been bitten by cottonmouth, copperhead, and rattlesnake without so much as a blink of his eye. He'd never been to a hospital, never looked at an aspirin, never missed a day in church.
There were still a few other churches like it in the mountains, but they were growing rare. My minister friend on Blue Mountain, Hek
Cotage, had stopped his snake services in favor of wife June's more sedate explanations of faith. Hek was still capable of a trance when he was preaching, and there was no telling what might come out of his mouth, but he had not taken up serpents in over a year. Which made New Hope unique at least in our area.
Cotage, had stopped his snake services in favor of wife June's more sedate explanations of faith. Hek was still capable of a trance when he was preaching, and there was no telling what might come out of his mouth, but he had not taken up serpents in over a year. Which made New Hope unique at least in our area.
I had spoken to the minister there many times, a humorless bachelor who called himself Levi. He lived in a trailer close to the church. His congregation had dwindled over the years, but he had never once wavered in his dedication to the faith.
I once told him that his penchant for reptiles, based on the biblical injunction to “take up serpents,” was the Western equivalent to an ancient Taoist notion.
“Allowing Tao to come into you,” I'd told him, “makes you like an innocent child. Poisonous insects will not bite, wild animals attack; no weapon can harm you.”
“That's it,” he'd affirmed with a curt nod of his head. “Like a child.”
He never asked me what the Tao was, or anything about it. His eyes never met mine.
I found the power of his belief awe-inspiring, even though he was clearly a disturbed man.
I wrenched myself from my thoughts, shot a glance to Orvid.
“It is just the sort of place Hiram Frazier might know about,” I said. “Good call. I'm going to ignore the nagging questions in my mind about your knowledge of the place.”
“I assume you know the minister there,” Orvid said, glossing over my suspicions. “I remember that you wrote some sort of article or monograph concerning a serpent bowl. Am I remembering that correctly?”
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