Ghost Story Part 2

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The street was completely dark now. It was wet, drizzly, and occasional silent streaks of lightning flash on the horizon, revealing through the low clouds the buildings way off in the distance. The acrid smell of sulpher mixed with the filthy odors of excrement wafting up from the curbs. He seemed suspended between one step and another.  Rain was blown on to his face. Suddenly a car raced past.  Right out of the darkness without lights. 

“Hey!” shouted.

There was no answer.

There never was.

Not a street at all, he realized, but some field or pasture.  The houses would have had some signs of light.  “

The lightning showed buildings way off in the distance,” he said to himself again.

If he could only put one foot in front of the other and move towards his house.  But his house could not be somewhere near, it was somewhere else in the black thick night.  He had not been out for very long, although it felt like hours or days or years.  Was it a rural road somewhere in Eastern Europe where he had taken his family on a mad research trip?  Was it a mountain track in the Pyrenees—but that would have meant a slope, an incline, and the clear mountain air.

“I have been here before,” he thought. He could smell it, that stench of death and decomposition, fetid air, thick in his nostrils.

Something rubbed against his leg.  A dog? He hasn’t had a dog to walk since the children had grown up and moved away.  He did not like animals.  But what was it, then, this creature of the night brushing against him: swish swish. 

How could it have been a car that seemed to race by out of nowhere and then back into a vacuum? No lights, no pavement, nothing but a stink wafting up out of the ground.  Uncanny, all this, he thought.

“She would know.”  He felt a little comfort.  “She always would know.  Through all those years, she always could figure out what was going on.  But where was she now?”  He felt the ache in his heart. 

His foot touched something when he found it falling towards the ground: cold and hard, a stone, a slab, a gravestone.  That’s what it must be.  He was in a cemetery.

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“Come into the house, dad,” she said. “You’ll catch cold.  Come, I have some hot chocolate for you, just like you always like it.  Come in, please.”

They sat around the table, three police officers, the middle-aged woman, and a man who had walked in off the street.  The room was dark, one small candle burning on the zinc counter near where everyone was seated, each one staring down at the table. 

“I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but I will take your warm drink, if you don’t mind.  It has been a long cold evening.”

“We’ve seen you before,” the officer who seemed to be in charge said.  “Do you live around here?”

The thick sweet taste of the chocolate warmed his insides and he clutched the cup tightly to gather in its heat.

“I used to,” he said, “but that was a long long time ago.”

“He looks like  my father,” the woman said, “but it would be impossible after all this time.”

The second policeman took out a small notebook, flicked through the pages.  “Here,” he said, “it was only two years ago.”

“Let me see that,” said the third officer.

Rather than look at the pages, he smelled them. 

“I used to have a dog,” the old man said.

“It was run over when I was a little girl,” the woman said.

“That’s what it smells like to me,” said the third officer.

“Give me that,” the second policeman said. “Yes,” I think you are right.”

“You’re not my daughter,” the old man said.  “You could be my granddaughter.”

“What a fool you are,” she said.

Later the three officers left, the woman went to bed, and the old man was back in the street. “

“Again,” he thought, “this isn’t a street at all.  This is a field somewhere over there”—and he pointed into the darkness—“when I was studying the Gypsies in Romania.  More than fifty years ago.  That’s when the car came by.  Out of nowhere.  Then there was the blood, the silence, and feeling of throbbing everywhere.”

It was though he were sucked into a black hole, a dream of nothingness.  Except for the heavy stench leaking out from under his feet.  Out of a grave.      

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Report of Constable J.T. Riley, Constable Samuel Akerfield, and Detective Sergeant O. Francis Smith, 2 March 1956. Kings County, New York State.

Received several call-outs during the months of September and October last.  Members of the public worried by repeated presence of an elderly gentleman, unknown to them or neighbours, wandering aimlessly in their vicinity, often to early hours of the morning.  In particular, a Mrs. Geneva Hazleton, widow, said that the man in question would stand rigidly outside her house, and when invited in would claim to be either her father, grandfather, or at times husband.  She reported that her deceased husband bore no relationship to this gentleman.

Along with the two constables above named, I attended Mrs. Hazelton, sat for more than an hour, to calm her down and record her statement.  Twice the old man appeared, as she described, and we invited him in to sit in the kitchen.  He seemed very confused, but not aggressive, and we deemed him not a threat to himself or anyone else.  Attempts to ascertain his identity and home address were unsuccessful. 

We attempted, however, twice to drive him to headquarters for further questioning and examination by a local physician.  The first time he wandered away into the darkness before we could escort him to the squad car.  We decided not to pursue him.  Two weeks later, after a second meeting in Mrs. Hazelton’s house, we were able to bring him downtown for interrogation.  He made a short statement (see below) but strangely disappeared before the scheduled appointment with the physician the next morning.  We cannot explain what happened.

Statement by the Unknown Person.

I cannot remember my name, which used to trouble me greatly, but now seems a great relief.  I find myself awakening in the evenings, when it is usually too dark to see where I am, but have a feeling this is a place where I once lived with my wife and children or perhaps with my granddaughter after my wife passed away and my children went to live overseas.  No one has contacted me as far as I can remember.  I am no longer afraid of what happened to me. 

No, I do not know how old I am.  Sometimes I feel like I am well passed retirement age; at other times, I feel much younger, even vigorous, and eager to find my family.  What bothers me most, during these hours when I can recall being awake and wandering through a street or a field, is a terrible smell. 

No, I cannot describe this odor to you.  Or rather, I do not want to describe it.  The sensations are painful.  They seem to come from under the ground, or perhaps from inside of me.  Please stop talking about it.

At that point, he refused to speak any further.  Though he sat still in the interrogation room, he seemed to disappear into himself, and we were unable to awaken him.  In the morning when the doctor arrived for his examination, we found the room where the elderly gentleman had been waiting, empty.  I am deeply troubled by this incident, as are the two constables.