Posted on by Lydia Ink

Waiting for 3:15

Described as a level-headed girl by her parents, she prided herself to be just that – levelheaded. She whispered the words, more to herself than to the listening universe, “I’m a level head woman.” She shuddered and re griped the doorknob and turned it.

Where did this all start? She fell in love. Yes, possibly, but she walked away and was content to do so. She found men her own age distasteful. So, when he took notice of her, she took notice of him. Tall, large brown eyes, powerful hands, and a gentleness she had only read about in 19th century novels.

She needed the vacation. She worked 60 hours a week for several weeks in a row and her temper wore thin.

“Go on, get out of here, you’ve done enough. We have the client, and you need a break. We have you booked at the Old Inn; on the lakeside.” So, there she sat, looking at the stars come out over Lake Huron and sipping wine; the weeks of stress and overwork ebbing away. The Old Inn on Lake Huron was an exclusive place that her company bought into. Employers work their employees to near distraction and then send them to the Old Inn for a week or two.

“Good Evening.” His voice mellow and his manners nonintrusive, she nodded only in good manners to his greeting, feeling he wanted no more interruption than she.

On the third night, a Tuesday, they found themselves alone in the old restaurant. The walls filled with pictures of Great Lakes shipwrecks, old and recent. They nodded to each other in greeting, took their seats at separate tables and became engrossed in the menu. A young waiter came bounding out from the kitchen, looked at them both and laughed, “at least sit closer, can’t you see I’m run off my feet?”

She laughed and so did he, and his lined face framed by his graying hair looked beautiful; like a captain of a ship laughing at the breeze. They did not eat together, but after their meal he stood and asked if he could recommend a wine and send it to her. “I notice that you sit out upon the veranda after your dinner.”

“Only if you join me.” She surprised herself by her reply.

“I’m honored and look forward to furthering our acquaintance.”

And that was it. They spent seven days together. Glorious days. He spoke of poetry and poets, shipwrecks, and the history of the great lakes. She felt an attraction that went beyond love making or hesitation. She touched his hand when silence was nothing more than what they both wanted. He never assumed, and she felt freedom with him because there was rest in their relationship. She could not call it friendship; the attraction was too apparent.

They mutually parted at 3:15 on a Tuesday afternoon. He did not ask her for anything she did not volunteer. No telephone numbers, emails, or social media connections. She wanted to return to her job, to her life. Driving back to Lancing she wondered where he went, what he did and if he thought of her but was content with wondering.

Then the clock on her office wall stopped at 3:15 PM every day. She replaced it and that clock stopped every day at 3:15… every day. She took the clock down and didn’t put up another. Every day she noticed the clock at 3:15 PM. No matter where she was or what she was doing. There were days when she didn’t think of him at all until 3:15 PM.

Three months and fifteen days later, she thought she spotted him across the street from her office building. His back was to her, straight and tall, with silver hair. He was talking to a woman; he turned slightly toward her and appeared to be laughing.

“Hey, did you get a call from Joe, he’s waiting for your report. You okay?”

“Yes, I heard from Joe, I just sent it to him.” Annoyed with the interruption, she turned back to her window and looked down he disappeared.

Her boss called her into his office a few days later. “Listen, I’m just saying you’ve been a little preoccupied. I’m not complaining, your work has been exceptional,”

“Then why the lecture?”

“Because everyone is coming into my office complaining that you’ve been sharp, impatient and downright rude. That’s just not you. You’ve never been nice like a teddy bear, but I had no complaints. Go back to the Old Inn, get some rest and see if you don’t come back in a better mood. I don’t want to lose you; you are important to this company.”

She rose without a word. Threatening her job was not the best way to get through to her. She walked into her office, grabbed her purse, shut out the lights and walked out. That night she sent out her resume to a headhunter, told him she was out of town for a few weeks and to get back to her if anyone was interested. His reply made her relax:  “You’ve got an excellent reputation, I’m sure we can find what you are looking for. Do you want to stay local?

Did she? Maybe if she left the area, the haunting would stop. The word haunting stopped her. Was she being haunted? She grabbed her smart phone to make a phone call: 3:15. Something had changed in the setting to Fiji time.

“Yes, same room, your boss called ahead. Room 315, do you have any luggage?”

“I didn’t have room 315.”

“Let me double check. Yes, a little over three months ago. Yes, room 315, but if you’d like another room, we can see if we can accommodate. I’m afraid it will not be on the lakeside.”

“No. I’ll take it and I can handle my luggage.” The man behind the counter frowned slightly but handed her the old fashion key to her room. She walked the old staircase, broad and ornate on the ground level, but by the third floor the old risers narrowed and creaked. Room 315 was at the end of the hall. She unlocked the door and turned the nob.

Walking in, she breathed a sigh of relief. The room looked the same, deep blue curtains, a large comfortable bed. The room looked underwater and relaxing. She pushed the door shut and felt at home, waiting for 3:15.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Dead Today but not Tomorrow

So, I read today you are dead.

Are dead, and were dead, and was dead. Ah, the beauties of the English language. Each statement reflects for the audience who I am… well, to hell with them.

How long are we dead, Missy? A moment, a flash of time that encompasses exquisite pain and then–what? Do we remain in a paroxysm of memory or do we go blank after a sudden release?  And really, dear friend, what is worse?

Your obituary was brief; no viewing, no opportunity to submit to your favorite charity–the abortion clinic, the woman’s homeless shelter, or possibly the city’s club for user men. They put you in your grave and since weather permits a “brief” family ceremony at graveside, where the dirt hides their mess now. At last, my friend, your very own address.

And what is the funeral ceremony about? The children who don’t know you because you were unfit or broke or worse, deceived into believing you were too much of all the above?  What of your son, reared by your parents, the same parents who smiled at our girl scout uniforms and told us both we were communists? What would, will, shall, it be about?

And your “companions,” will they be there? Yeah, I know dear and so do you. If they slept with you, then they loved you, right? Tell me, did you ever get over that notion? You know, being able to brush your teeth, look in the mirror and say, ‘I am more than an easy lay’? Or did it ever occur to you sex, no matter how intense, is not love? Did they ever give you the time to figure out the mystery which was you?

Maybe. I don’t know.

Missy, I always thought you pretty; your smoke-blue eyes and blemish less ivory skin, even young as we were, I thought you pretty. It was always you who ran from the boys on the playground — they show you their crotch yelling, “sharpen my pencil, Missy, sharpen it for me.” On the playground, God help the early developed girl.

Later we watched the boys, who stood up straight for the blond prom queen’s father. While they fawned over future wives, they made sure you knew their intent; making you blush and me shudder. They snickered in their Christian youth groups and pondered about time with you. We fooled ourselves into thinking their gold crosses meant something to them. Raised right by proud fathers who knew best, the young beautiful sons made sure condoms were always ready in their pockets and roomy back seats. For justice’s sake, I wish them daughters with large breasts and low self-esteems.

Missy, I wait for the dead to tap on my windowpane, and for someone else to tell me their name. Today it was yours and in a swirl of a green girl scout uniform, hobo Halloween costumes and trampled prom dresses your blank, smoke-blue eyes, look back at me, no more questions, just perhaps surprise.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Clever Girl

“Rick Murphy, you must be Cecelia.”

“I am but…” her blue eyes widened in fear. “I thought I was meeting or rather I thought…”  Her hands shook as she groped through her purse; A rather tattered black leather rectangle which had a secondhand shop air about it.   I watched her hands, balled up little fists, knock about the contents of her bag, looking for perhaps an address or slip of paper that would confirm she had not blundered in her own mind although I had called her by name.  Nerves, no doubt.

“Roger Caprice.  Yeah, that’s a pen name – caprice, thought it would be fun.” Her blank stare made me worry; The resume was concise and well written, perhaps the references were a little vague but time didn’t allow several hours in conversation about a temporary editor.

“A pen name, sure.  Caprice, that’s good.”  Her eyes blinked rapidly, and I suspected she fought biting her bottom lip. “I’ll be frank, I don’t read your books and I’m nervous.  I never thought I’d land an editor’s job.”

My hopes lifted; Sure a little stardust in her eyes but nothing she couldn’t work through, if she wanted the job.   I stepped aside and motioned her in.  Cecelia peered past the door as if she were looking down a dark alley. Edging her way in to my apartment she halted, giving me just enough room to shut the door behind her.  The young woman didn’t wince, but I suspected she steeled herself against the desire to do so.  “This is an interesting apartment…” she said.  She remained silent which said volumes.  Her opinion of my taste in decor flickered across her features; She had the good manners to not babble on.  I smiled at her but she determinedly looked out my large dinning room window trying to admire the view.

“An early 20th century tycoon built it.  The place warehoused commodities shipped in through the Great Lakes and later there was some light manufacturing; furniture makers even some papermakers.  Now is houses hip writers and artists who don’t mind freezing in the winter.”  I tried to give her my best, I’m-a-good-guy-smile.  I needed her help.  She didn’t read my books, that was essential, she looked half starved which told me she was a poet and needed the money, she had passed the strenuous testing that I put her through in English grammar.  Everything I needed and wanted; thank God for the online jungle.
Taking a deep breath, muttering something under her breath she turned to me like the condemned facing her judge.  A deep pink blushed spread across her gaunt cheek bones but none the less a pretty girl faced me.  Yes, she was nervous; Her first day on the job jitters.  “Mr. Murphy, I’m so sorry.  I must have looked like a complete idiot.  I had my speech all thought out, and it started out as ‘Mr. Caprice thank you so much for this opportunity’…”

A genuine laugh welled up in me; She would work out just fine.  “Well, you seem to be quick on your feet.  Let me show you around.”
I was rather vain about the place.  Living on sixth floor of eight, I picked the apartment because it was the most spacious out of all and the original brick with all its industrial scars still decorated the walls.  It was on the northeast corner of the building so had a decent view of Lake Michigan despite the taller, steel and glass buildings blocking much of that incredible freshwater sea.  In the winter months those tall buildings came in handy when the famous winds of Chicago became entrapped in wild and lost gusts of vengeance.  Though the windows rattled, I believed that it was the taller buildings which took most of the beatings.   I didn’t mind the seasons the city offered including winter. In Chicago no matter what time of the year, one feels the big lake in its one mood – grating intolerance of human habitation.

My apartment also allowed a panorama of those clueless human habitants. I spent many an enjoyable hour watching the passers-by either sweating or freezing their life away in Chicago; It gives a writer pause and fodder for pen and ink.   The view also gave me time to ponder the arrogance of late 20th and early 21st century architecture; The lake’s brutal history of drowned sailors and with names like Al Capone and Eliot Ness echoing down the timeline there should have been more stone work and gargoyles in Chicago, but hey, it’s Chicago.  The citizens bustle about too busy to remember last week, let alone recall the significance of a gargoyle.  Chicago’s ignorance is its best defense, besides stone crosses and quiet chapels are for chumps.

The tour of the apartment was brief because though it was spacious it was empty; I had little time to stuff it full of memorabilia.  Guest toilet, galley kitchen, the drawer in the fridge I reserved for my temporary staff-all the amenities; All natural all legitimate, all meant to give her a sense of ease.  The ability to make someone comfortable whom you pay for showing up is difficult.  The workplace is old, the floorboards creak, doors have a tendency to slam for no reason and though the ceiling is high, it’s still no reason for the frigidity of the cold spots that persist about the place.  I blamed the anomaly on the Lake, if it was a bad day I took a walk.

It takes a courageous mind or a desperate employee to put up with the physical aspects of a haunted apartment.  I think of myself as courageous but I cannot count on the temporary help to be brave so I try to find the desperate.  The place is my home and I’m used to it though the dimming of the lights bothers me. A flicker is explainable but the draining away of light especially late at night, saps the energy out of inspiration.  I won’t call myself frightened, but it is a new phenomenon in the place and I disliked it.   How in the hell do the supernatural in an old factory cum bohemian apartment building in Chicago dim the damn lights?  Why bother?  I always understood ghosts as having some agenda which didn’t coincide with electricity. So I fiddled with the light switch and called maintenance every once in a while.  The cold spots, slamming door etc., only meant I couldn’t have a dog, I told myself.  I tried it once, but Bullseye didn’t understand me.

I wanted to tell her these things as she walked behind me during the tour.  Hey don’t worry if you get cold it will pass and the lights, I just don’t know, it happens, but I kept my mouth shut on the matter.  I told her she was welcome to the coffee in the pot (just brewed), and I showed her the hall closet for coats, umbrellas and galoshes.   She had none of that apparatus however because it was a summer day in Chicago. I doubted she would have anything more than a rather seedy overcoat if it was a howling January day in Chicago.  The economic differences between a storyteller and an editor isn’t fair, I’m the first to admit it.  One loves the thrill of a turning page the other loves the language in a sick over the top way.  I left her to become acclimated to working with me and working within my ‘haunted’ rooms.  When she shivered, I looked up from my manuscript.

“You okay?”

“Yes, felt like someone just walked over my grave.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, that’s something my grandmother used to say.” Her big blue eyes widened and her shocking long blonde hair sort of bounced around her narrow face.  She seemed to be relaxing.  “When Grandma felt a cold shiver run down her back or over her shoulders, she always said that, ‘someone just walked across my grave’.”

I stared at her a moment, nodded and went back to work; I in no way wanted to encourage past conversations with Grandma.  It was rude but these Indiana (one can always spot a Hoosier) girls had to keep their back-water statements to themselves.  Typical of those coming from the sinkhole side of Lake Michigan she got right back to work with no sniffs or huffs; I admired her pluck.  The girls from outside the city were usually very conscientious, and she was no exception.  When we broke for lunch, I asked her how long she had been living in Chicago.

“About 12 weeks.  I was ready to give it up, I felt so overwhelmed.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.” I was sincere as I passed her the salt.  I needed her help and, well, I needed someone around for a while.  The cold spots were getting worse.  One night I thought I had heard the sounds of footsteps; The quick tap and click of a woman’s step.  I turned expecting a stranger, but I saw nothing but a blank apartment.  I went out to dinner that night and got half sloshed.  God help me I thought I had heard a few sighs so stopped by Saint Something or Other Catholic church and pilfered some Holy Water.  I’m a professed atheist.  Oddly enough things quieted down for a while.  The experience put me behind and my agent, a steely no nonsense older woman let me know that books like mine, though they sell are forgettable.  I needed to pick up the pace.   I needed someone who would come every morning, work hard and make human noises, human movement, human scents, and human residue; I had been alone too long.

“So this used to be an old warehouse, huh?  It makes a beautiful apartment.”

“It is nice,” I said  “I like the view all around.  I think the realtor thought I should be here because she found out I was a writer.”

She nodded as if she understood everyone classified writers as Bohemian by nature; I wasn’t I was just a writer.  The apartment suited me for other reasons; One the city isolated it and two, the noise of the city didn’t crowd in upon my work.  The screams of the outside world didn’t penetrate nor did the screams of my inner beast escape the solid brick building.  I knew from the start that the space was perfect for me.

We worked together for 13 glorious weeks and the manuscript began to take shape.  I know how cliché my words must sound but she wasn’t like other editors who focused on the rules; She allowed for creativity.  She didn’t let me get away with anything in grammar but came up with clever ways around rules; She pushed my abilities, made me think through my use of words.  I began to understand that this work would be something beyond what I had done before.  I felt triumphant that she had not read my books or she may hint at adding her own nom de plume to my own.  She may have comprehended my excitement in suspecting that the book was a damn good piece of work for I often caught her give me a worried look.

One night we made a timeline of the plot and pounded out the conclusion.  We became so consumed with the work she lost track of the time. I looked up, pinched the bridge of my nose and realized what I was seeing was true, it was 11 P.M.  After 10 PM Chicago sounded different; the city took on a low rumble and sinister rattle.  I looked over at her, framed against the windows of the night-time city.  Her hair began to fall out of its pins and curl down around her neck.  Her freckles began to glow through her smudged makeup.  Purplish smudges of weariness deepened her large aqua blue eyes and her wide but well sculptured mouth frowned in a pout.  My heart started to pound, but I understood we were both tired.  Time for attraction later, this was business, all business and I couldn’t mix it with pleasure.  I asked her to text my cell when she arrived at her hovel across town; Public transportation was dangerous late at night.  I remember feeling nervous as the clock started to tick closer to midnight, and I had not heard from her.  I had forgotten about the sighs of those forgotten souls within the bricked walls of my apartment.  At last the soft bell of my phone sounded – she was home safe.  I went to bed exhausted, relieved and not bothered at all by cold spots and dimming lights.  It was as if the apartment was holding its breath too.

One Wednesday evening she was standing in front of the large window that some brilliant soul had installed in the dining room.  I used the dinning room as my work space when writing.  It may sound pagan but when I finished a book, I prepared my victory dinner and ate it alone on the long dark table with the city spread out before me.
Looking out toward Lake Michigan, framed against that window she reminded me of a young girl I once knew, we were together for a short time; A short intense time.  Standing up myself, moving next to her a spiritual sense of communion enveloped me.  The deep summer heat had passed and the early heat of fall turned into gentle puffs of wind which buffeted the old building prophesying of the brutal winter to come.  We were nearing completion of the book and I was glad she would not have to face crossing the city in the cold icy extremes.  The city was clear and gleamed before her, like some promising utopia.  The setting sun reflected on the building and left the lake, to the east, darkened and moving in blackened waves. Chicago looked alive but in an ancient, sinister way that drew me up taller beside her.

Standing beside me I admired her body by vicinity; She was so close. She studied the scene as some young virgin just before the sacrifice – perhaps as some young Aztec, pampered for a year of bliss but then feeling the effects of an ancient drug dulling her sense which would make her death easier, she began to tremble.  I blinked hard and shook my head we were so close to finishing the book I wanted to focus.  I stepped back and noticed her straight, sky-blue skirt,  too large by at least one size.  Her rather bony hips looked enticing through the folds of her skirt and her soft, buff colored sweater cascaded around her narrow shoulders and folded softly around her thin waist.  Her clothes always seemed a size too large, but she wore it well, oddly enough.
“You know,” she said a vacant tone resonated from her voice, “I know someone haunts this apartment.  I heard her crying in the bathroom.”
I stopped imaging her as anybody else but my editor.  She turned at my silence looking a little perplexed.  “What do you think happened?  Do you think she died in an accident while this place was still a factory?”
“No,” I said, relieved she was forming conclusions that didn’t include me.
She looked pouty and my heart beat hard.  “Are you sure?” she asked.  “How do you know?  When did you realize someone haunted the place?”
The sky darkened into a deep blue and for a moment the surrounding space expanded.  “Soon after I moved in, it didn’t take me long.”  I took a deep breath and heaved out a sigh of my own; “Have you ever been kissed?”  It was an awful question, and I didn’t want to ask but being tired I could not stop myself.  Her bright blue eyes widened and then she smiled.
“Yes,” she whispered, now shy. “I know you think me a bumpkin and maybe I am but I’ve kissed before.”  Her breath was soft on my face and even with her thin body standing apart from me I felt her shiver.  I grasped her tiny hips and pulled her toward me, wanting that one kiss not tainted by fear or hatred.  The kiss was moist and lingering, I felt a soft peace and heavy sagging along my shoulders. I would regret this one, I remembered thinking as I lead her to the sofa.  She seemed so desperate for touch and I wanted so much for her to trust me, to remain for just a little while within our first kiss, it made the drama to follow so much more enticing.  Then I heard her whisper in my ear as she arched her thin body under mine, her clothes twisting and pulling around her body.
“I know you killed her,” she whispered softly in my ear.  “I know you did, I knew her well.”

I felt her pull the trigger, felt the bullet rip through my shirt, my skin, my heart my back.  My weight muffled the rapport of the gun.  I remember standing next to her, both of us watching my bleeding body.  She wept and shook and through her sobs she told me she loved someone; I don’t know who.  I suppose I am to blame for I would have added her sighs to all the rest that echoed through the building.

I tried to follow her out but stopped at the door inhibited by nothing. I watched her pale face disappear as she quietly shut the door to my apartment.  She left me here to sigh, chill the air, press down upon the old floorboards and drain the electric lights when anger overcomes me.

No one stays for long.  I think of her often; Clever girl, a very clever girl.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

So This Guy Walks Into a Bar

I’m fairly intelligent. I don’t like Shakespeare and Walt Whitman scares me to death and no I’m not confusing him with some hacker, slasher, novelist of the 21st century. No, old Walt was a poet (definition wide open there) and epitomizes for me the entire east coast of the good old US of A. They all scare me to death.

It’s okay for fairly intelligent people not to like Shakespeare. Sure you’ve got to respect the body of work, but you don’t have to like it–sort of like taxes. Sort of.

At any rate, I’m just a regular guy who finished high school and then finished college in all of four years and started a job in the city and thought about getting married twice. I let those two ideas slip right by and now I have the odd and end girlfriend divorcee. I know it sounds like I’m a bit of a user and maybe I am.

I frequent this bar (remember, I’m fairly intelligent) after the job about three days a week. Definitely on a Monday, then on Wednesday and Thursday. The weekend is just shoulder-to-shoulder and I don’t go in. I usually have dinner with friends or take the occasional depressed middle-aged woman out for some dancing and conversation.  No, it doesn’t always end in bed.

So anyway, I frequent this bar three days a week, not because I couldn’t use a drink on the other four but because I’d like to retire someday. What bars charge for a simple beer these days takes the breath away.

She sat there on a Monday and I could tell she did not want to talk. I didn’t either, it had been a tough day. On Wednesday she was on the same bar stool and in the same clothes and she looked at me, I swear for a solid five minutes without blinking. I asked the bartender what’s up with her and he says ‘who?’

“The lady at the end of the bar,” I wanted to add “wise ass” but the guy looks at me all innocent like and whispers to me–“do you see someone at the end of the bar?”
“Yeah.”

I’m thinking this bartender is like high on something because it’s obvious this chic is sitting there. The bartender looks like he is about to cry and says that he sees her once in a while too but when he walks in her direction, something distracts him and when he looks back, she’s gone.

So I get up and walk around the bar to ask this lady who is doing a good job of ruining my Wednesday, what her problem might be and why the cold stare. There is a loud crash behind me and I turn to see someone had stood up and let their chair fall over behind them. I turn back to the bar and the lady is gone.

I turn around and walk back to my seat at the bar and take a nice long pull and look again. The lady is staring right at me.

“So how many customers do you lose because of this woman at the end of the bar?”

“I don’t know, I’m kinda new here.”

That was true, but I had been going to this bar for years and I had never seen this woman. I sit and study her for a while and wonder why she looks gray and mad and old-fashioned. Her hair is high on her head and looks teased and lacquered with hairspray. She isn’t looking at me anymore but looking straight ahead. I shrug and take another sip of my beer, then glance her way, like I can’t help it. There she sat looking straight ahead so I slide off my chair quiet like and move in her direction. I turn the corner of the bar and move forward just a little more and she doesn’t move. I think for a moment that I might just make it up to her when she turns full on me and smiles.

It was one of those smiles that turn your blood cold, like someone had taken a corpse and pulled their mouth up in a smile and left it stuck there. I swear I heard her say my name kinda low and gurgling in the back of her throat.

I felt this pain radiate down my left arm and a sharp pain in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. And before I passed out and woke up here with beeps and whistles and concerned faced people I swear I heard her tell me to change my ways.

If it was a joke it was a bad one. If it was a ghost, well then I guess I’m the bad one.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

The Ice of Her Curse

It’s minus one on the Fahrenheit scale, and suddenly I’m thinking of Germany. No, not some beauty queen whose hippy parents named her after the country they conceived her in while trekking along in their journey of sexual discovery, no I’m thinking of the country itself.
I was there once, well after the wall that divided the east from the west fell. When I turned to look one last time before boarding a plane back to Chicago I thought, I won’t do this again.  Perhaps I never saw it at all.  How could any old world country slough away the dregs of the 21st century and rediscover the beauty and might of their own brilliant culture?

I’ve never gone back and since it’s minus one on the Fahrenheit scale and my chances of even waking up and seeing Chicago again in broad daylight are slim to none, I guess I was right. That’s how curses work, I suppose.

My Dad spent some time in West Germany after the war. He met my mother there and married her; she was from Iowa. They settled in the burbs of Chicago and all I can remember about my Dad was the sighing he did over West Germany; the sounds of their language, the churches that survived the bombs and the awful night he spent on a dare with some buddies in a burned-out village that no one rebuilt.

“Too many memories, too many sad moments.” He spoke as if he’d had been raised there. Then one day, several years after I buried him, I thought–how the hell did he have enough knowledge of the place to even make the statement he did; “Too many memories, too many sad moments.” I fell asleep right after that question, but the question was sitting on my bed the next morning waiting on me.

That question waited for several years and cropped up here and there, especially when I thought of my Dad. So I went to Germany. I don’t really know why, other than idle curiosity. It was winter and their Christmas markets were in full swing and the women were all beautiful and the wine and beer tasted good. I wandered here and there and wondered no longer why Dad thought only good of that country.

The rubble of the village he spent the night in on a dare wasn’t hard to find. I never got the impression that Germany was vast by any means.  Actually, sometimes I felt pretty hemmed in by mountains and people. I stood amongst the ruins while my guide stood some distance off. I felt I could stay among the ruins and rest for some time since I had just gotten off the Autobahn with the same guide who didn’t have the courage to follow me into the ruins. I scoffed; here was a fellow who went at a speed I wouldn’t attempt on the Midwestern prairies, turning around and looking at me while cars zoomed by asking if “American worry?”

I felt the tension of that trip ease out of my shoulders and my feet sort of sink into the earth and I wondered why I had come all this way just to say I stood in the very German ghost town my Dad spent the night in, so long ago.

“Too many memories, too many sad moments.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, she was standing there with a look of hatred that made me shiver with cold.  Dressed in rags, her hair wet and ragged, clinging to her face and neck, she was a few paces away from me. I swear I could hear the drip of water drop from her blue finger tips. My German wasn’t all that good and her voice rasped like rusty hinges, but my demise was on her lips and I felt the ice of her curse sting into my skin.

I think the only reason I didn’t die on the spot was because I heard my guide calling me.

“Come away, come away from there.”

“Did you see her?”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“You had to have seen her. She was standing right there.”

“No. I don’t know why you wanted to come here. Years ago, soldiers, they stay there on a dare. They never come out again. One left a wife and a baby on the way. No one comes here.”

“What?”

“Yes. I know you won’t believe, but it’s true. They never find them again. Their bodies, nothing.  The place is cursed. No one staying there is the same again. It changes people, it’s like they become ghosts.”

I wonder as it becomes colder and colder in Chicago if I’ve existed at all.