The Haunted

Originally published on Yahoo Voices

The evening sun was shining nearly horizontally down the dirt road in Salsbury. Salsbury was a small town with a population of 25. Everyone knew each other. A slim leather faced man came riding into town and tied his horse to the post. He was hungry and broke. He looked up and down the deserted road. The folks of the town were in their homes eating their suppers. The slim man entered the store. He saw the bearded owner behind the counter reading a newspaper. No one else was in the store.

He took out a gun and pointed it at the owner. He directed the owner to put all the bills from the cash register into a paper bag. The owner dropped the newspaper to the floor and opened the cash register drawer. He did not glance at the gun sitting on a shelf below the counter top. He had bought the gun because he had been robbed too many times and wanted something to defend himself in a robbery. He slowly put the money in a paper bag and handed it to the leather faced man..

The leather faced man backed toward the door warning the owner not to do anything foolish. He was distracted by a horse-driven wagon passing by.

The owner knew this was his only chance. He reached down and quickly grabbed his gun, keeping it below the counter top. He fired one shot.

The robber suddenly grimaced in pain, fired a bullet and fell to the floor. The owner collapsed behind the cash register.

Fifty years later that road was paved with asphalt. The store was still standing and was operated by the owner's son, Fred, who was ten years old when the robbery took place. The town was rapidly growing. New homes were being built everyday. Fred had heard that a family was moving into a newly built home on Abbey Hill. He hadn't met them yet.

Abbey Hill was a half mile away. It wasn't a large hill. People were busy every day chopping down trees on that hill. The new home owner, Jim, had a job working for the Goldman construction company. His current work was just beyond his back yard. Jim's wife, Mary, was not fond of the new home. For some reason, she was uncomfortable staying there. Jim thought perhaps it was just being in a new place. But it was much more than that ...

In the evening Mary was in their bedroom. "Jim! Jim! Come here quick!"

Jim came up the cellar stairs and ran down the short hallway to their bedroom. He turned the door knob but the door wouldn't open. "Take the stuff away from the door!"

"I can't!"

Jim ran down the hallway and opened the back door. Then he ran around the corner of the house and peered in the bedroom window. Mary was pinned to the wall. All the furniture was piled up against the bedroom door.

"Stop fighting it." Jim yelled as he attempted to open the window. It wouldn't open.

Mary stopped struggling. After a few moments she found herself free to move around the room.

Jim tried to open the window again. It opened without a problem. After climbing in the window, he asked, "What happened?"

"That's what I'd like to know."

Suddenly they heard a lot of loud noises coming from the kitchen. Mary looked at the furniture.

"That will take too long." Said Jim, "Stay here."

Jim climbed out the window and ran to the kitchen window. He looked in to see all the appliances up side down. He didn't believe his eyes. He ran back to the bedroom window. "Come on out now."

Mary climbed out the window. "What are you planning?"

"I don't know. But one thing is for sure. We can't stay here." He looked at his wrist watch. "It's six o clock. Let's go."

Mary wanted to ask where but she figured he did not know where to go.

"What do you think happened?" Asked Mary.

"I think we have a ghost."

"From what I've read, ghosts can't move furniture" Mary commented, "Whatever it is, we have to get rid of it."

They were walking around the block.

"Or find out what it wants."

"How?"

"I'll tell you soon as I find out."

"You really know how to make a girl feel better." Mary paused, "Where are we going?"

"The library."

They walked five blocks to the library. As they entered, Mary asked, "What kind of book are we looking for?"

"Communicating with the dead."

She gave him a quizzical look. "Do you know what you are doing?"

"Absolutely not."

Mary stopped. "You search for a book. I'm going back home."

Jim looked at her.

"It's a two pronged approach. You do research. I try to communicate with the ghost." Said Mary.

"Let's do both together." said Jim.

They found information about contacting a clairvoyant or a psychic. They also found information about how to make contact with the dead.

"We need a history of the area." said Jim, "Let's see what I could dig up at the local bar." He handed Mary ten dollars and pointed to a diner a block away. "Go there and get something to eat. I'll be there in a half hour."

As usual on a Friday night, the bar was loaded with people. Jim started chatting with folks while drinking a beer. He didn't ask any questions. He just made comments about how peaceful and quiet the town was. He mentioned all the violence in the city he came from. That's when someone mentioned the robbery of the hardware store.

"You may not believe this, but other than a small fight here or there, this town has been pretty quiet since that robbery. I was ten years old when it happened. My dad was at the store." The man was drunk. "As I understand it, my dad shot the robber and the robber shot back as he was falling. My dad passed away. The robber -- folks didn't give a rat's ass about him. They buried him."

"Where?"

"Abbey hill. He didn't deserve any respectful wake or funeral after what he did. They just buried him. No gravestone. No nothing."

"Did anyone try to contact his family?"

"Like I care." The conversation continued for another twenty minutes. Jim learned that the town was new at the time and had no real law enforcers.

Jim was twenty minutes late arriving at the diner. He saw Mary at a table. Mary's dish was empty.

"What did you find out?" asked Mary after gulping down her soda.

"A lot. I'll explain it on the way home." Jim ordered a steak.

One hour later, they came out of the diner and started walking home, not being sure of what they would find.

After telling Mary about the conversation at the bar, Jim said, "But something isn't making sense."

The lock on the front door wouldn't work.

"It does make sense." said Mary, "It doesn't want us here."

They walked around the house searching for a way in. All the windows were boarded up with wood.

They went to the back door. The back door lock wouldn't work either.

"Get the ax out of the garage." Mary said.

Jim was able to get into the garage. He came out with the ax a few minutes later and started chopping down the back door. They entered the hallway and went to the kitchen. All the appliances were back in their respective places.

A light hovered in the corner beside the refrigerator. A bearded man in the light was barely visible. He signaled them to exit and disappeared.

Jim hesitated. Then they heard a rumbling in the cellar.

"We should leave." said Jim.

"Why?"

"Because I never told you how we should deal with a poltergeist."

"You mean that ghost isn't the only one here?"

"Right." They walked out the back door.

"How do you know?"

They stood in the backyard.

"The ghost told me." Jim said as he looked at their house.

"You mean the ghost is trying to protect us from the poltergeist?"

"Exactly."

"I think I'm beginning to understand. The poltergeist is what's left of the one who robbed the hardware store fifty years ago." Said Mary.

"And the ghost is the store owner. They are locked together because the robber never even got a proper burial. No one cared."

"Could we dig up the body and -- "

"We'd have to move the house."

"Oh shit!"

They entered the hallway through the back door and opened the first door on the right. They climbed down the cellar stairs and Jim collected several of pieces of wood, a board, a brush and some paint. First, he whitewashed the board. Then he used the black paint to write a name date of birth and date of death.

"How do you know that?" asked Mary.

"The ghost let me know." He paused, " It's getting cold in here. We'd better hurry."

"It talks to you?"

"Sort of. Not really talk. He just lets me know things."

A wind started blowing down the stairway. The wind became stronger and stronger until they couldn't stand without hanging on to the stair rail. The hail began. Jim and Mary felt the sharp cold stings as the ice hit their face and head. Jim was struggling to hold onto the board. wood and the stair rail. The cellar floor was getting icy. One of the water pipes cracked and water started dripping on the floor. Jim's foot slipped as he climbed onto the first stair. He scrapped his knee against the edge of the stair. He struggled up to the second stair, keeping his head low. He hung onto the rail with one hand and the board and wood with the other hand. His fingers and toes were aching.

Mary reached out and grabbed the hammer and nails. She fell down. She tried to get up, but she kept sliding and falling back down. She crawled to the stairway and raised herself up, holding on to the rail with one hand. She was breathing heavily.

They got half ways up the stairs when Jim slipped, tumbling backwards into Mary. The wood, board, nails and hammer fell to the cellar floor as Mary and Jim grabbed the rail with both hands. Her feet slipped out from under her and she slid down the rail to the first step with Jim following her.

"This isn't gonna work." said Jim.

"Don't we have a tarp down here?"

"A tarp?"

"Yeah. Remember? From when we use to go hiking."

"We threw it out long ago."

The ice was building up on the cellar floor.

"We can go out that way." Mary pointed to the cellar wall.

Jim looked and realized that Mary was becoming confused. He needed to find shelter. He scanned the cellar for anything that would give them some shelter from the biting wind.

"There!" He said, pointing the work bench. It was a heavy wooden work bench. Jim picked up the board and they slowly made their way toward the bench. Jim knocked all the stuff off of it and tipped it over. The he moved it so it was blocking the wind. They knelt behind the bench and waited. They hugged each other to stay warm. That's when Jim remembered the cellar windows. They were a small windows eight feet above the cellar floor. They couldn't escape through them, but the air outside was warmer and dryer than the air inside. Jim picked up a piece of wood and threw it hard toward the window. The window shattered. The wood fell to the ground. One by one, he smashed all the cellar windows.

It didn't help. His clothes were freezing. The pain in his toes and arms was subsiding. He was losing consciousness. He struggled to stay conscious but failed. Mary and Jim fell over and lay on the icy floor. Jim became conscious for a moment to see a bright light where the workbench use to be. The bearded man was smiling at him. Then the bearded man disappeared.

Jim remembered his playing with the other kids in his backyard. He remembered his first day in high school. That was the first time he saw the bearded man. Only for a moment. He didn't know who it was until today. He was becoming very confused.

Suddenly two warm loving arms brought Jim back to the present. He looked down at the hands and saw a puncture wound in each palm. The hail stopped. The wind stopped. The warm loving hands lifted him and Mary up the stairs and out into the back yard. The ground was dry and warm. The paint, wood, brush and board were on the lawn alongside a hammer and some nails. Jim repainted the sign, nailed a piece of wood to it and hammered it into the ground.

Mary woke up and read the sign aloud. "Richard Koenig. Born 1820. Died 1875." She kissed Joe.

Then they went inside the house. Everything was calm.

For some reason Mary and Jim were no longer troubled. The sign became a town curiosity, but no one took it down. Only three people in the town understood the meaning of the sign: Jim, Mary and the ghost of a bearded man.