Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (135 page)

She sighed as she said emphatically, “Let’s just go home. I know you aren’t crazy, I know you, Baby, but something is going on here, and has
been
going on, and we have got to get it under control before it takes the both of us down.”

Almost as suddenly as they started things then began to settle down over the next few days. I saw no phantoms, ghosts of dogs past, nor did I have another near death experience. I actually was sleeping through the night and getting up fully rested. Maybe what had happened were all products of mind, brought on by the trauma of dying and being brought back to life — not once, but twice. Maybe the tests ordered by Doctor Lester would indicate that I was lacking oxygen and that was what was causing all this. Maybe so, but the words of the mystic, at times, ran through my mind
‘you will see the familiars again.’
And that would not explain why things suddenly went quiet.

And so as days turned into months our lives slowly went back to normal. My heart was behaving and my wife was busy with her specialty catering business. My latest article on weird weather had been warmly received, which opened some doors for me that I didn’t expect. One was an opportunity to join a research team that was doing a scientific study on dream patterns and their relativity to the cycles of the moon and the magnetic fields of the Earth. Based on the fact that the moon has such a strong effect on the oceans and the human body is composed of mostly liquid, and considering the magnetic pulls of the energy systems on Earth, this all seemed like a viable project. They needed a writer on the team who could put the project into a language that could be of use to academics, as well as lay persons. I came highly recommended by my friend Justin Timmins, the weatherman/physicist and the rest was easy.

Our team operated out of a lab about twenty miles from my town and was accessible by a back road system so picturesque it almost made my eyes tear every time I was on it at sunset. Life was making sense again and I was feeling confident about my health, mental and physical, and where my wife and I were at, and possibly going. We discussed an ocean cruise after my project was finished. She had recently hired a manager for her business and was experiencing more freedom from the day to day demands of the business.

“So you’re a boss now; please start acting like it,” I chided her, with a smile, as she made a face at me in response. “You’re so pretty and should be taking advantage of that by hanging out at the mall, trying on clothes and such. Isn’t that what successful beautiful women do with their time?” I was pushing her a bit with my humor.

“You are so biased or maybe you’re looking for something. Which is it, big boy?”
S
he said with her hands on her hips in a knowing pose, smiling.

“I
am
looking for something… I want you to take me to dinner tonight. Are you good with that, Mama?” Kate liked being called mama even though our kids were grown and living in Chicago, Madrid and on a ship somewhere between Washington State and Alaska. Our boys were as opposite as two kids could be and our daughter was a perfect balance of yin yang. One became a high school teacher, the other a test driver for high-performance cars and Lucy who became a master chef at sea. Now in their mid and late twenties they were quite independent and not prone to lean on Mama or Dad anymore. They were still single although the teacher, John, was very involved with another teacher at his school. Dennis, the test driver, was a free spirit and not involved in anything but the cars he drove, but he did have a period in his life when he got very involved with drugs and alcohol. He checked himself into rehab in Tucson, Arizona; although it helped him, I suspected that he still played with drugs and that was why we so seldom heard from him. It troubled me to the point of stroke that he used drugs excessively but it troubled me even more knowing how it all affected Kate. She spent many sleepless nights over this. I heard her sobbing loud enough to awaken me from deep sleep.

We received phone calls from John with regularity but he wasn’t prone to visiting. My wife sometimes would tease him about leaving his poor old mom out in the pasture. She was hardly old or in any pasture but she still liked kidding him.

Dennis on the other hand seldom called or visited us and that was very hurtful. He was who he was, but it would have been nice if who he was tried being a little more considerate of those who loved him. Lucy had many of her mother’s qualities but seemed to keep the world and us at arms-length, as demonstrated in her professional lifestyle. Kate kept a lot of her disappointment and sadness within and masked it through her upbeat personality and natural optimistic approach to life. She also had the strength of her personal belief in a loving and forgiving God who she believed was prone to keeping the playing field level. Deep down she knew her children loved her. Deep down I wondered when Dennis would get his head out of his ass and treat his mom and dad like the parents who had raised him and his brother and sister in a loving and nurturing environment. What could I say other than we loved our children no matter what?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The moon was on display in all its fullness on a comfortable night in the Arizona desert and my three man project team was out and away from the city lights behind the Superstition Mountains some fifty miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. Our purpose that night was to get some mood pictures of the moon in the contrasting darkness that could only be seen in certain parts of the world. This was one of them.

My teammates were photographer, Kevin Maroso, who was one of the best there was. He had won so many awards for his work that he was able to name his price and choose whatever subjects or projects he wanted to shoot. I, on the other hand, was one of his favorite story tellers. He had listened intently to my tale of the near death and all that happened after. This was intensely interesting to him because he had once been on a haunting research project and had actually photographed an apparition that had manifested in broad daylight. This had occurred on a ship anchored at Long Beach, California. I remember him saying that one time the apparition actually initiated a conversation with him and before he realized it, Kevin, thinking he was addressing an on-board waiter, had ordered a rum and Coke from the ghost.

Kevin had been working on his camera equipment sitting on a chair near the desk in his room while his room was being cleaned by maid service. He said that he barely noticed who part of the cleaning crew was because he was so focused on his cleaning a camera lens and didn’t notice the man who spoke to him from behind. When he turned to see who was speaking he saw a young man about six feet tall, slender with light hair and a slight beard dressed in a waiters uniform.

“Can I get you a drink from the bar, sir?” he asked Kevin politely.

“Is this part of the cleaning service? This is a first for me, but go ahead… what do you suggest I have?” Kevin responded.

“That depends on whether you are a wine drinker, or do you enjoy liquors or whiskeys, sir?”

“I like rum… especially when it is mixed with cola. Yes, I like rum,” Kevin said as he turned from his camera to where the waiter was standing; but he had disappeared into thin air. There was no way that he could have gotten out of that room because the door was across the room and it never opened. Kevin knew then that he had been talking with a ghost.

The next time he saw the ghost waiter was out on deck, in broad daylight, as he was standing near the door to the restaurant on the main deck. This time Kevin snapped his picture and there he was, right where he was photographed, smiling. He was a happy ghost it seemed. After posing for the picture he turned and went into the restaurant through an open door. Kevin followed him and, true to form, when inside Kevin did not catch sight of him… but he had a picture of him.

He asked a bartender if he knew the man in the picture he had just snapped, showing him the image, but got a “no” as an answer. He then asked another waiter who asked him when he’d taken that picture. He seemed very interested in the photo and asked him if he had taken it on a previous cruise.

“No, I just took it a few minutes ago,” said Kevin.

“Just a few minutes ago? Sir?” The waiter said disbelieving. “I don’t think so.”

“Why do you say that?” Kevin asked him.

“Because that man fell overboard last month, after celebrating his birthday. Drowned. He got a bit daring, and tipsy, and was standing on a rail portside when he lost his balance. We circled back but no dice.”

“I just saw him and had a conversation with him earlier in my stateroom.”

“If you say so. I’ve got to go,” the waiter said, rolling his eyes at the bartender who was listening to the conversation.

* * *

Kevin held very unique views on life and the patterns it holds and the strange things that happen almost daily all around us, yet go unnoticed unless pointed out by the media or the so called “enlightened.” He was a visionary in the purest sense because he lived with no agenda and avoided the politics of organizations and relationships. He had an audacious approach to all things that demanded he be part of the norm but he couldn’t even spell the word. So his photos were expressions of the way he saw the world and that was exactly what I needed to express — my words in pictures. In his early forties, he was a slender wiry man who stood about five foot ten inches tall, with salt and pepper hair.

What I had learned from my near death experience was that the things going on all around but going unnoticed, were signs, sometimes in the form of symbols, messages from the beyond, the hidden, that I realized was co-existing with us, like the fish in water co-exist with humans on land, seemingly oblivious, as are fish in relationship to humans. The humans on land could be equated to that level of existence which immediately follows death. The signal to the fish that we exist is when we swim in the oceans, lakes and ponds and then leave the water, the world in which they live. They have a momentary experience of us and react the same way we do to ghosts, for the most part, startled or in the case of smaller fish, frightened.

Kevin Maroso was very aware of symbols and signs and like me, captured them in his work. His photos abounded with symbols as he went about framing that which he captured in his camera as I framed them in the words of my written work. He viewed his experience with the ghost waiter as a sign of the direction he should take in life… and because of that, who he would interact with as he went. He didn’t seem freaked out by it but more so he appeared to relish the occasion as an opportunity and an opening to a new level of existence. He had seen the swimming human through the eyes of the fish. Now he wanted to know more and I had come into his life telling the most bizarre of tales and he was devouring them like a starving man at a banquet. Kevin knew something, I was certain of that.

Kevin’s camera was rolling, taking picture after picture of the moon framed by rock formations, canyons and mountains. The stars were glorious and incredibly clear on this desert night and I felt a strange energy in these haunted mountains. We were staying in a motor home that was steered into our campsite in a very agile way by the team driver, Anthony Simms, who got his desert driving experience in a tank support unit in Iraq during the thickest of the fighting. He got us into the foothills of the Superstitions with the greatest of ease.

Anthony Simms was a guide, driver and a security expert, in his mid-thirties. He had extensive training as a member of the armed forces and was a very self-confident individual. His attitude seemed to come from life experience, not merely his muscular build. He was someone who paid close attention to what was going on around him.

As we sat outside our mobile home, around a blazing campfire, sucking down a few beers and exchanging stories about our experiences, it was Anthony’s that held us mesmerized as he recounted what had occurred during his one year tour in Iraq. He had faced death many times, and been knocked unconscious for two days by a roadside bomb. He said that when he regained consciousness there were people all around him who didn’t look like ‘they belonged.’

“I remember waking up in a darkened room and the first thing I felt was a severe pain in my head and the second was a pair of hands that gently pushed me back down on the bed.” He said looking up at the sky and after hesitating somewhat, saying, “This sounds a little crazy, I know, but I couldn’t see the person who the hands were attached to.” He looked at me intently as his eyes returned from the sky.

“Was the room that dark?” asked Kevin.

“That’s the point; it wasn’t that dark. I just could not see anyone attached to those arms. Do you think I was hallucinating from the drugs they were giving me?”

I couldn’t resist asking, “What do you think, Anthony?”

“I shouldn’t say… naw… I really think that I was just out of it and strange things kept happening for the first few days right after that.” He said obviously feeling like he had spoken out of turn, sort of like when, people catch themselves saying something stupid but before they can stop, it just falls out of their mouths.

“What kind of strange things?” Kevin and I both said at the same time.

“You don’t have a corner on that one.” I continued with a chuckle.

Anthony looked at Kevin and me with a quizzical expression. “Hey I know that we are all into spooky stuff and all, but I really do believe that what happened to me in Iraq was drug induced. That’s it… let’s just leave it there.” He said as he got up, stretched, yawned and said goodnight, heading into the rig.

Kevin looked at me and shrugged his shoulders saying, “I think I’m going to take a few more pics. See ya’ in the morning, Wordsmith.”

I raised my bottle in a mock salute as he walked into the darkness.

I pulled out my phone and started to dial home when I realized how late it was and that my sweet Kate was more than likely sound asleep. I was a little surprised that she hadn’t called me by now but I guessed that she thought I might still be working, since this was a research trip, after all.