Pennies for the Ferryman - 01 (2 page)

Something was definitely wrong. I was about to say something when Jenny reached into her purse and pulled out her painkillers. I was too stunned to do anything to help her as she struggled with the childproof cap with her “good” hand.

The older woman reached down just as Jenny managed to get the top off and swatted the bottle from her hand, spilling the contents to the floor.

“Sorry, I’m such a klutz! Would you mind giving me a hand? Mike? Is something wrong?” Jenny completely ignored the screaming woman. I couldn’t hear her either. Her lips were moving, but it was like one of those silent movies. If Jenny wasn’t speaking I might have started wondering about the hearing in my left ear.

I suppose it was a good thing my classmate didn’t say that I looked like I’d just seen a ghost, because I might have lost it. Stammering that there was something wrong with my eye; I quickly pulled my patch back down and helped her retrieve her pills.

Every few minutes, I’d sneak the patch off my eye and look. The woman was still there. If this was a hallucination, it was a damn fine one! The “mirage” looked like she was in her late thirties or early forties. Given the fact that I could only see her with my bad eye, I couldn’t really tell what she looked like. Straining, I could see a bit of a haze around her.

“Mike, are you sure that you’re feeling okay?” The woman drifted away from Jenny, lingering in the corner.

I lied and said I was fine, but I wasn’t feeling very well at all! Who could have blamed me? I’d been a gunner in Iraq. Any number of people had tried to kill me, and I had killed more than a few of them. Was I losing it? Was this some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder? I worried they would be sending the padded wagon for me soon.

Up until that day, I was certain that ghosts didn’t exist. It was just that simple! The supernatural wasn’t real. That’s for stupid kids who dress up and run out to Burkittsville and look for the Blair Witch, or hang out in Goth clubs wearing black, pretending to be vampires.

Ghosts were for old ladies, desperate to believe their friends and family were in a better place.
They
believe in the supernatural. I believed in things I could touch; things I could see. Well, that sure put a kink in my position, because I was starting to see things.

Jenny had to remind me that I was supposed to copy my notes for her. Later when she looked at them, she might realize that I didn’t write anything for the last fifteen minutes of class, but going insane was a passable excuse in my book. Sneaking another peek, I saw whatever it was still following Jenny as she walked away. As she approached the exit, it moved right up behind her and pushed her and walked right through the glass! Poor Jenny stumbled into the door with a thud and dropped her book bag and purse.

A guy coming in helped the distraught girl to her feet and collected her stuff. I didn’t imagine that. Whatever that thing I just saw was, it sure didn’t like Jenny.

Notwithstanding what I just said about public transportation, I’d never been so glad to be on a bus full of other people in my life.

Mom’s house here in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is a simple ranch style, three-bedroom type that was mass-produced in the 1960’s and 70’s. It’s almost paid for, thankfully, because property values in Montgomery County are beyond ridiculous these days. Even if I had a full disability check coming in from the Army, it wouldn’t cover an apartment. Medical retirement pay for a Corporal doesn’t cover squat. My check pays for my share of the utilities, most of the groceries, and a few odds and ends.

Thinking about concrete things, like bills and the tiny payments I would receive for the rest of my life, was good for occupying my mind. If I hadn’t run out of hot water, I’d still be standing in the shower. Instead, I dragged my sorry ass out and got dressed.

I didn’t feel like eating, and Mom was headed from her cleaning job at the National Institute of Standards and Testing to Pizza Hut, where she waits on tables. Besides, what would I have told her if she asked how my day had been? It might’ve been nice to talk to Dad, but he picked up and left one day when I was nine and we haven’t seen him since.

Having run out of options, I decided I needed to call my doctor. After begging his answering service, I finally got to speak to him.

“Mr. Ross, are you experiencing any problems?” he asked in a calm, professional manner.

I’m sure I sounded pretty panicked at that moment. “Yes, no, I don’t know. I’m seeing, um, distortions and blurred vision. Do you think I should come back in?”

“Some anxiety is natural after getting the stitches out of your eye. If it’ll make you feel better, come in and we will fit you into the schedule.”

“Doc, I was wondering, where exactly did the donor cornea come from?” Up until then, I hadn’t really cared to know anything about the person whose death I benefited from. It suddenly seemed much more important.

“Most people usually ask that question at some point. I figured you would have asked sooner. I don’t have your file with me, but I think there might have been a waiver release signed by the donor’s family. I can tell you tomorrow.”

A day later, I had a name. Darren Porter of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania – the name really didn’t mean a damn thing to me. The man had signed the release himself less than a week before he died. It was all I had, well, that and a search engine called Google.

Waiting for the web page to load was painful. It’s why I usually went to the library to use the Internet, but basic cable was about the only non-essential that Mom and I could afford. It might come as a surprise to some, but high speed Internet actually
is
a privilege, not a right. The twenty dollar difference between dial-up and broadband, well, that’ll buy a lot of macaroni and cheese or put gas in a car for a week.

Imagine the look on my face when I learned that my donor was a psychic. He gave ghost tours of the Gettysburg battlefields, according to the few articles I found. His business had a web page, but it was now a dead link. There was a mention of a public access television show where he and a group called “the Eye of Horus” were paranormal investigators. Who the hell were they? Wasn’t the Internet supposed to be able to find damn near anything?

I searched for the name of the group only to find more dead links and precious little information, mostly useless crap. Who really cares that the little floating eyeball that you find on the back of the dollar bills is the “Eye of Horus?” I pounded the desk with my hand. The only real background information I could find on him dealt with his death.

There was an article in the
Gettysburg Times
about his death. On March 25
^th
, 2006, instead of meeting his tour group, he staggered into the emergency room and collapsed. They pronounced him dead at 4:17pm.

A cold shiver ran down my spine as I read the article. It was probably the first real bit of sheer terror I’d felt since combat and I can assure you it hasn’t been the last. I knew exactly where I had been at that moment. A corpsman was wheeling my battered body across the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base. That was probably the exact moment I had returned to American soil.

When Mom got home, I turned down leftover pizza and told her that I wasn’t feeling well – not a big stretch! I was restless that night. It was a lot like those nights in Iraq, or Germany, or Walter Reed, while I was healing. Back then, a feeling of hopelessness crushed me - my prospects were pretty bleak - but this time it was dread -- cold clammy dread. Was I some kind of freak? I considered not using my drops and hoping my eye would reject the cornea.

I should have been jumping for joy, right? I’d just seen proof of life after death – the eternal question and all that jazz. I was scared; scared like riding in a Hummer waiting for something bad to happen. I thought about a bad movie I’d watched once and concluded that I didn’t like seeing dead people.

At some point, I must have passed out from restless exhaustion. When Mom woke me up, I could smell the coffee and nicotine on her breath as she kissed my forehead. Of course, I probably smelled like cold sweat and body odor, so let’s call it a draw.

Stumbling through my morning routine, I prayed that the stuff I’d read last night was a bad dream. I had no desire to speak to the mental health “professionals”
any time soon – not after that dumb bitch working off her ROTC scholarship at Walter Reed gave me my mandatory psychological counseling for my war injuries. She might as well have read from a damn form letter! The military docs were all right, but I’ll be hanged if I can figure out where they get their psychologists.

Unfortunately, what notes I had on Darren were still there. It had been a nice delusion while it lasted. I doubted that I’d run into Jenny that day. Our next class together wouldn’t be until next Tuesday. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I looked in the Yellow Pages, stopping short of actually copying down the address for a nearby psychic reader. My gut instinct told me that if someone actually had any talent like that, they sure as hell wouldn’t be listed in the phone book here in suburbia.

Trying to decide what to do, I finally came to the conclusion that I should prove that this wasn’t a fluke. I could track down Jenny, but her little friend didn’t exactly seem like “Casper the Friendly Ghost.” That meant I probably needed to find someone to talk to. Well, there was one person I wouldn’t mind seeing again.

All Souls Cemetery in Germantown wasn’t my favorite place. Cemeteries in general have always given me the creeps. Now, I understood why. The man sitting on the ground next to the headstone – twin headstones reading Warren and Melanie Majors – looked as if he was in his early sixties. His wool suit was a little heavy for the warm weather. He stood and greeted me with a wave as I came up to the plot.

I hadn’t come to visit Grandpa’s grave recently. In fact, the last time I’d come up here was that week of leave shortly before my unit shipped out. I tried to ignore the fact that I could now see Grandpa Warren plain as day.

In a way, when Grandpa passed, it was the start of bad times for the Ross household. After his estate had been settled, there was enough money in the bank that a week later dear old Dad emptied the account and decided to make a fresh start for himself, without his wife and son. If I ever catch up with Mr. David Michael Ross, Senior, last known residence Phoenix, Arizona, I’ll have to decide if I’ll spit in his face before or after I beat the shit out of him. Want to really get me going? All you have to do is call me David, Dave, Davey, or especially Junior. It sickens me to no end that I share that SOB’s name.

I looked around to make sure no one was close, before I looked him straight in the face. “Hello, Grandpa. You’re pretty blurry, but I can see you standing right there.”

The ghost in front of me seemed excited and started mouthing words at me, but I couldn’t make anything out.

“I’m sorry. I can’t see you well enough to make out what you’re saying, but it’s good to see you again!” I could tell he was smiling as I held my hand out to him.

When he gripped it, it felt like I was getting an electric shock. It was painful! Almost painful enough to make me ignore that it felt like I was really shaking his hand.

“Damn good to see you too, Michael.”

Stung, I let go, but not before hearing his faint greeting. I looked again and his mouth was still moving, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. There’s nothing like pain to really drive home how surreal a situation can be.

“I could hear you when we touched, but it hurt. Let’s have a seat and we’ll try it again.” Seemed like there actually was an explanation for all those “phantom” pains I experienced in hospitals. Now I really never wanted to set foot in Walter Reed again. I didn’t even want to think about what I might see.

Sitting on the ground, I tentatively reached out for him again, just barely touching his index finger with the tip of mine. This time the feeling was like someone stepping on my hand – painful, but tolerable.

“Can you hear me now?”

Despite the pain, I almost laughed, but knew he probably wouldn’t get the reference. Grandpa never could stand television advertising.

“Yeah, how are you?”

“Dead. Bored. Lonely. Take your pick. Mostly, I’ve been waiting for you.”