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<![CDATA[The Kaidankai Podcast - September 2024]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 04:18:43 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[September 25, 2024]]>Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.kaidankaistories.com/september-2024/september-25-2024The Fourteen-Fourteen Curse
by William Quincy Belle

This story first appeared online and in Belle's short story collection Salmagundi.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.

Donald tucked the blue recycling bin under one arm and stepped into the hall.

“Hey, Donald.” The man came toward him, looked at the blue bin and held up his own. “Saturday’s chores. Let’s all be good to the environment.”

“I do my part, Mr. Buntrock.” Donald nodded and smiled as he passed. In the utility room, he emptied his bin into a chute on the wall, listening to the various items clatter as they fell from the fourteenth floor to the basement.

Back in his apartment, Donald walked into the living room and saw the stack of newspapers from the previous week. “Oh, shoot.” Resigned, he once again brought out the blue bin and walked around, looking for other items he had forgotten. He took an almost empty and long expired bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator, put it in the bin, and headed back to the utility room.

In the hallway, Mr. Buntrock walked toward him and held up his bin. “Hey, Donald. Saturday’s chores. Let’s all be good to the environment.”

“Yes.” Donald half-smiled, took a few steps, and stopped. He stared after Mr. Buntrock. He shook his head and continued with his errand.

In the kitchen, the clock showed five past two in the afternoon. Tea and a cookie would hit the spot. Donald opened the refrigerator, furrowing his brow as he stared at an almost empty bottle of orange juice. He looked toward the recycling bin and glanced again at the bottle. After emptying it in the sink, Donald took a step toward the blue bin and stopped. Through the arched entry to the living room, he saw a stack of newspapers. He walked over, picked up the top copy, and read yesterday’s date.

What’s going on?

Donald set everything down and went to the washroom to splash cold water on his face. He rubbed his eyes, dried off, and returned to the living room. The bottle and newspapers were gone. His head jerked.

He hurried to the kitchen and inspected the refrigerator. He moved items around but didn’t see the bottle. The blue bin was empty. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, perplexed. A noise sounded in the hall. Curious, he stuck his head out to see Mr. Buntrock pulling the door to his apartment closed, picking up a blue bin with both hands, and making his way down the hall. “Saturday’s chores, Donald. Let’s all be good to the environment.”

Donald stared at him in disbelief.

Mr. Buntrock stopped. “What’s the matter? You okay?”

“How many bins of recycling do you have?”

“Just one. Why?”

Donald looked up and down the hall. “Nothing. I thought I had seen you take the bin out earlier.”

“Nope. I’ve been watching the game. They went to commercial, so I’m taking advantage of the break to get this task out of the way.” Mr. Buntrock walked toward the utility room. “Have a good one.”

Donald shut the door, glaring at his blue bin. He glanced around the kitchen until the view out the window caught his attention. It was dark. He strode across the room, pressed his face against the pane, and looked out over the city. Lighted buildings twinkled under a pitch-black sky. The clock read 11:35 p.m. It was night. He strolled to the living room and sat down. Was he having a stroke? Did he have a brain aneurysm? Was a medical condition affecting his perception or was he blacking out?

He noticed a clock on the side table showed 2:20 p.m. He twisted toward the windows. Rays of sun shone onto the floor. He jumped up and ran to the kitchen window. The scene outside showed a warm, bright afternoon.

Donald leaned back against the counter, running one hand through his hair. He tried in vain to make sense of the situation, comparing it to every other experience. His gaze wandered around the room, taking in the table, two chairs, and refrigerator. The sink and overhead cupboards. Everything looked normal. Everything seemed in order.

Donald chuckled. “This is crazy.”

Saying the words out loud felt comforting. He’d been hallucinating, and now it was over. Donald filled the kettle with water and plugged it in. He grabbed an individually wrapped tea bag from the cupboard. The bag went into the mug, and the folded wrapper was to go in the recycling bin, but first, he checked the bin. It was empty. He chuckled and threw out the wrapper.

Donald stood at the counter, tapping one finger on the plastic laminate. Should he see his doctor? Should he be concerned? Such a thing had never happened. Was this one of those cases where somebody ignores the early warning signs of an impending medical emergency and ends up dying? On Monday, he must phone his doctor — to make sure.

His gaze focused on the kettle. It wasn’t plugged in. But he had plugged it in, hadn’t he? Donald frowned.

There was a plop out into the hall. He checked the time. It was seven o’clock, and there was no mug on the counter. He opened the door to find a newspaper on his doorstep. Other newspapers dotted the length of the hall. He picked up the paper and read the date. It showed Friday.

Donald tossed the paper on the counter and sat in an armchair, using his cell phone to search for the number of the after-hours clinic. He shouldn’t wait until Monday. He needed help now.

The kettle whistled, softly at first but with increasing intensity. Donald gazed through the arch into the kitchen. Steam rose from the spout of the kettle. The newspaper was gone, but the mug was there. The clock displayed 2:35 p.m.

He walked into the kitchen and unplugged the kettle.

What’s going on? This is crazy.

Donald strode out of his apartment to Mr. Buntrock’s. He knocked. There was a moment of silence, followed by muffled footsteps. The door opened, and an unfamiliar face appeared.

“May I help you?”

Donald gawked at the stranger, looking first at the apartment number on the door, then at the name tag Arthur Treacher. “Uh ... Is Mr. Buntrock here?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Buntrock.”

“I’m sorry. You must have the wrong apartment.”

“But ...”

“You must have the wrong floor, then. Go back down to the lobby and verify it using the building’s directory.”

“I ... uh ...”

“Good luck.” The man nodded and shut the door. Dumbfounded, Donald stood in the hall before shuffling back to his apartment. His mind raced, unable to grasp the random changes in time.

His eyes lit up.

Time? Changes in time? Is that what’s going on?

He reentered his apartment and stopped at the arch opening into the living room. His jaw dropped. Everything was different: the furniture, the layout, the curtains. It wasn’t his apartment.

He walked back to the door and opened it to look at the number. It was correct. This was his apartment. He read the name tag — Mr. and Mrs. Fred Schwartz — and gasped. Those were the previous owners, but he’d now been in the apartment for over a year.

Donald shut the door and went to the kitchen, leaned back against the counter, and folded his arms. Time was changing. At least his time was changing, but he didn’t know how or why. Time travel was impossible. Or was it?

The clock showed 2:45 p.m. He whipped around, looking into the living room, once again furnished with his things. Donald ran to the opening, scanning the room. He had returned to the present.

He ran down the hall and knocked on his neighbor’s door. Mr. Buntrock opened it and smiled. “Hey, Donald. What can I do for you?”

“Have you noticed anything unusual today?” Donald asked.

“Unusual?” Mr. Buntrock raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“I ... well ...” His eyes darted around. “I’ve been seeing odd things.”

“Hmmm, the fourteen–fourteen curse?”

“What?”

Mr. Buntrock shrugged. “Oh, a story I heard about the building. About your apartment.”

“Nobody ever said anything about this.”

“Tenants change. People forget. Stories get lost in time.” Mr. Buntrock leaned against the doorjamb. “It’s all a bunch of mumbo jumbo. I never paid it any mind.”

“What’s the story?”

“We’re not on the fourteenth floor. We’re on the thirteenth. The builders left out thirteen in the numbering, so this floor became fourteen. However, it’s the thirteenth.” Mr. Buntrock shook his head and chortled. “We’re such a superstitious lot.”

“Okay.” Donald hung on his words.

“Your apartment is number fourteen, but it’s the thirteenth apartment.”

Donald looked down the hall, nodding. “Because there’s no number thirteen.”

“Right. Your address, fourteen–fourteen, is thirteen–thirteen. Your apartment has the double whammy of being numbered thirteen twice. It’s bad luck times two.”

“You mentioned a curse?”

“Ah, yes. The curse.” Mr. Buntrock grinned. “Rumor has it bad things have happened to the previous tenants.”

“Such as?”

“I haven’t been here that long, so I don’t know if any of these stories are true. Tenants reported strange occurrences in the apartment. One tenant disappeared. The police investigated but never turned up anything. The person had no next of kin, so building management sold everything and gave the proceeds to charity.”

“Strange occurrences?”

“Things moving around the apartment. Items disappeared only to reappear. One bloke thought he was moving through time, visiting the apartment at previous points in the past.”

“Why doesn’t this happen all the time?”

“The curse only happens after Friday the thirteenth on Saturday the fourteenth. And it only happens in the fourteenth hour: two in the afternoon.”

“That’s crazy.” Donald pursed his lips. “Didn’t anybody do anything?”

“You’re kidding, right? Who’s going to do anything with a story like that? What could anybody do? Time travel? That’s one for the books.” Mr. Buntrock chuckled. “People learned to stay out of the apartment between two and three on the day following Friday the thirteenth.” He gave Donald a sly look. “I’m guessing you being here means you’d like to report something funny.”

Donald hesitated. “No, no. I overheard somebody mention something about it, and I got curious. That’s all.”

Mr. Buntrock eyed him. “Sure?”

“Nope. That’s it. You’ve been here longer than me, so I thought you might know something.” Donald started down the hall. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Donald turned the handle of his apartment and glanced up the hall. Mr. Buntrock stood at his door, watching him. Donald waved and went inside.

As he shut the door, he felt a breeze against his cheek. He turned around and faced a space open to the outside. Steel posts spread out along the edge of a cement floor. His apartment was gone. There were no walls. No windows. It was the empty floor of a building under construction.

Frantic, he whipped around. The door had vanished. The cement floor extended to the other side of the building, punctuated by more steel supports. Donald walked over to where his kitchen should be, sliding one foot to the edge. Steel girders and cement flooring were visible, thirteen stories to the ground. Donald realized the cityscape was different. Buildings were missing, and smaller buildings dotted the surroundings. The area looked older, even historical. He got the sense he was in a different era.

When was this building constructed?

He moved back from the edge and looked over the floor at the vast, open area spotted with vertical steel posts. At each end of the rectangular building, there was a cement shaft with a fire door. Donald walked to the closest one, pushed the bar, and stepped into the stairwell. The pneumatic closer eased the door shut. He glanced down the stairwell, taking in the railings of the different flights, all the way to the ground. He looked up and rubbed his chin.

What’s going on?

Donald pulled the door handle. He peeked through the opening and saw the fourteenth-floor hallway stretching to the other end of the building. He stepped into the hall, and he examined the walls, running his hand over the paper. This was his hall. This was the present.

As he reached his apartment door and turned the handle, Donald heard another door open. Mr. Buntrock stepped out and waved.

“I’m going out for dinner tonight,” he said. He locked his door and headed past Donald. “We’re going to the new pub that opened around the corner. I’ve never been there, so I couldn’t pass up the chance. Rumor has it their shepherd’s pie is mouthwatering.”

Donald turned his head toward him. “Try the house lager. I had a pint last week. It was good.”

“Thanks.” As Mr. Buntrock continued to the elevators, he waved.

Donald smiled, pushing open the door and stepping into his apartment. For a few dizzying seconds, he somersaulted as he plummeted to the ground, startled by the looming concrete structures.

***

Saturday, June 24, 2056. A local demolition company has called in police to investigate two skeletons found between the enclosed support walls of the foundation for the Hullmark Building. ABC Demolition was in the last stages of tearing down the 1960s structure to make way for a new condo–shopping complex when they discovered the human remains. The bodies were entombed in the sealed space during the original construction of the building. Police suspect foul play. However, after a hundred years, the possibility of finding the perpetrator is remote. The investigation continues.

💀💀💀

William Quincy Belle is just a guy. Nobody famous; nobody rich; just some guy who likes to periodically add his two cents worth with the hope, accounting for inflation, that $0.02 is not over-evaluating his contribution. He claims that at the heart of the writing process is some sort of (psychotic) urge to put it down on paper and likes to recite the following which so far he hasn't been able to attribute to anyone: "A writer is an egomaniac with low self-esteem." You will find Mr. Belle's unbridled stream of consciousness here (https://www.amazon.com/stores/William-Quincy-Belle/author/B01M1IQ69G).

]]><![CDATA[September 18, 2024]]>Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.kaidankaistories.com/september-2024/september-18-2024The Girl in the Watercolor
By Jon Krampner

Photo by Gabriel Brandt on Unsplash

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.

The girl in the watercolor painting has golden blonde hair that rests lightly on her shoulders. Her hair is so smooth, it almost looks ironed. She’s wearing a white linen blouse with the top button open; her pink skin appears touchably soft. The powder-blue wash behind her is light and airy, like the first mild days of spring.

She appears to be in her mid-twenties, with a small, graceful nose, lips that are thin and, Fred thinks somewhat guiltily, kissable.

There’s something about the girl’s blue eyes — so bright and bordering on royal blue — that draws him in. Her eyes seem thoughtful, almost serious, and maybe a little careworn, paired with a smile hinting of a malicious gleam.

During his lunch break, Fred often wanders around the park across from the small office building near downtown Los Angeles housing the Justice Center of Southern California, the public-interest law firm where he works as a lawyer. Today is Monday, the day of the weekly craft fair. Fred talks with one of the the artists, a thin elderly woman with mottled white skin, gray curly hair, and a frank, direct gaze. She’s sitting in a deck chair at her booth, negotiating her way through a carne asada burrito.

Fred likes her paintings — a multi-ethnic panoply of Los Angeles that runs the gamut from business people to gang members, men to women, young to old. The portraits are vivid and enticing, their subjects seeming to float above the Arches White paper they’re painted on. But his eyes return to the girl in the watercolor.

“Who is she?” Fred asks.

“I don’t know,” the artist says. “I painted her aunt in Plummer Park in West Hollywood — that’s her over there,” she says, pointing to a portrait of a buxom matron. “I couldn’t quite place the accent — one of those Eastern European countries where peasants gather with torches and pitchforks to storm the hilltop castle of the expatriate Russian oligarch. She started talking about her late niece —”

“Late?” Fred asks.

“Some woman in their village accused the niece of bewitching her husband. Probably the marriage just wasn’t going well, although the lady in Plummer Park said men were drawn to her niece…”

“So what happened?”

“The lady killed her. Or had someone else do it, I don’t remember. But I felt bad for the woman so I painted her a portrait of her niece from a photo she showed me and made a copy for myself.”

“Which is this one?”

“Which is this one.”

Fred is oddly moved by the painter’s story and buys the watercolor. He takes it home and hangs it on an empty space on his living room wall opposite the sofa, next to a portrait photo taken of him and his wife Susana on their wedding day. Susana, who’s been feeling edgy since their argument last week at her 40th birthday dinner, comes home, takes one look at the girl in the watercolor and is not impressed.

“Why not?”

Susana can’t say exactly. It’s well done, but the painting unsettles her. The coloring’s wrong to Susana, the girl in the water color a blonde, a rubia, not a morena like herself. They should have picked it out together she thinks. And there’s something about her eyes. To Susana, they look like the eyes of Angelica, Fred’s equally blonde, blue-eyed colleague at the Justice Center. She has lunch with Fred more often than Susana would like and was, in fact, the subject of their argument at her birthday dinner.

When Fred and Susana met as undergrads at USC, Susana never thought of herself as the jealous type. Her parents fled Cuba with her during the Mariel boatlift and wound up in hardscrabble Downey, California, where her father Refugio worked as a handyman and her mother Catarina was a receptionist in a dentist’s office. There was never a lot of money in the house, so Susana worked hard in school and attended USC on a full scholarship. Her intelligence impressed her professors, while her emerald eyes, jet-black hair and café au lait skin impressed the male undergrads, Fred among them.

Fred, with his sandy blonde hair, blue eyes and a athletic body looks like a surfer, though he’s never had any interest in being one. He was raised in an old-growth section of Pasadena, just beyond the shadow of the Rose Bowl, where classic Greene and Greene craftsman houses are as common as corner mini-malls and street gangs in Downey. Fred had his father’s Ford dealership to thank for his comfortable upper-middle-class youth. (Bill Moard can still, to this day, be seen on late-night TV, enthusing “You’re out of your gourd if you don’t buy at Moard!”)

Despite the fact that Fred was a foot taller than Susana’s four feet eleven inches and not quite the star student she was, by senior year he had caught Susana’s eye. Because Susana had the energy of a dynamo, Fred called her his zunzuncita, the tiny Cuban hummingbird. She liked his goofy grin, deeply abiding sense of right and wrong, and the fact that he proposed to her by singing “Guantanamera” at La Cubana restaurant on Melrose Avenue in his well-intended acapella. The patrons cheered, the owner threw in a bottle of wine on the house, and Susana was so embarrassed she wanted to crawl under the table, but she accepted.

Ships leaving port with breeze-laden sails, though, can find themselves becalmed mid-journey. For twenty years, Fred and Susana had been growing older at the edge of Hancock Park. While wanting to right the world’s wrongs, Fred doesn’t always see how he’s depriving Susana of his time and attention. To her irritation, Fred rarely accompanies her to Downey. Fred likes his in-laws Refugio and Catarina — they exude a warmth he’s never felt from his own parents — but there’s always a motion to file or a deposition to review to keep him away. He promises to change, but it’s easy to get stuck in one’s habits. There was also that fling Fred had with Carol, another lawyer, at a conference in Washington, D.C., five years ago, that he guiltily confessed to Susana. He’s sure he’ll never hear the end of that one.

Their apartment is just south of Melrose, where the mean streets of Hollywood give way to the bucolic graciousness of Hancock Park. Although the address is Hancock Park, their apartment is pure Hollywood. Built during the Roaring ‘20’s by Tony Cornero, whose gambling ships evaded Prohibition by floating just beyond the three-mile limit off Santa Monica, their building is a decaying six-story brick castle. Lifelike gargoyles perch over the building’s front entrance and the once-elegant apartment features crown moldings, wainscoting, and high ceilings. Electric sconces line the hallways, which still seem dark at any hour of the day. Shadows in the Cornero Arms start to fall early in the afternoon and linger well past sunrise.
Susana decides not to press Fred about the girl in the watercolor. That night, she turns restlessly in her sleep. She wakes and looks at Fred snoring softly, then heads to the bathroom. As she washes her hands, she thinks she hears something in the living room. She takes a look around but finds nothing. The traps picked up a few mice last month, and she wonders if they’re back.

The next night, as they drift off to sleep, Susana hears a noise again, this time more distinctive — light and graceful, like a woman’s step perhaps. Standing in the darkened living room, she sees nothing, but feels someone walking past her, as if there was a cool breeze swooshing in her wake.

“Who’s there? ” she demands.

“What’s that, honey?” Fred calls from the bedroom.

Susana’s embarrassed, as if she’s been caught talking to herself.

“Nothing,” she says sheepishly. As the school psychologist at Unruh Middle School in the Mid-Wilshire District, she’s supposed to help kids with their problems, not develop her own.

Late Wednesday night, Susana edgily walks into the living room to make sure their fifth-floor windows are closed. But really she is wanting to see if anything is off. She can’t say what she is expecting. She pads around the living room. There nothing to see and nothing to hear so she returns to bed.

Twenty-four hours later as the next day as Thursday night turns into early Friday morning, Susana wakes at 3 a.m., unsettled by visions she can’t reassemble, the residue of half-remembered nightmares clinging to her like cobwebs. She gets up and walks unsteadily to the living room in her white lace nightgown and sits on the sofa, as she often does when sleepless. Susana sits in silence until the movie movie projector in her mind runs out of film and she can return to bed agreeably drowsy.
The air is cool. A police car speeds east on Melrose, its siren blaring. As it fades into the distance, silence reclaims the room. The principal is going to like my grant proposal for helping the kids cope with their electronic gadgets…Why did I get upset about Angelica? There’s probably nothing there, but Fred hasn’t been looking at me the way he used to. Susana is starting to nod off from her thoughts, and she reasons it’s time to go back to bed. That’s when she senses someone standing behind the sofa.

She rapidly wheels around, but there’s nothing there. When she turns back around, her gaze is pulled towards the wall and the watercolor stands out more clearly than it did just moments prior. It’s getting brighter, while their wedding portrait seems to fade and the room’s temperature drops. A sickly, pale light emanates from the girl in the painting.

Susana then sees the eyes of the girl in the painting moving, as if she’s trying to figure out where she is. They settle on Susana, and the look of curiosity turns into a glare of unmitigated hostility. Goosebumps rise on Susana’s arms and back. She shakes her head, closes her eyes and opens them again. But there’s no mistaking the angry look on the girl’s face.

Susana, having overcome her initial shock, glares back. It’s her home, after all. But the girl in the watercolor doesn’t back down and Susana runs to the bedroom.

“Fred! That puta is giving me the evil eye!”

Fred turns over in bed and confusedly faces her.

“Wha—?”

Susana drags him to the living room, now dark. The girl in the watercolor looks just like always.

“What’s up?” a fully-awake Fred asks with a bit of irritation. He and Angelica have to meet with LAPD lawyers in a few hours. Bob Dunn, a client of theirs, was roughed up by police officers during a routine traffic stop. Fred needs to be well-rested for the meeting.

Susana tells him what happened. Fred looks at her with suspicion. He knows she has nightmares and sometimes wakes up clinging to him. Maybe it was just a dream, he suggests. “That was no dream,” she replies, and takes the painting down from the wall.

“Who authorized you to do that?” Fred asks.

“Who authorized you to buy it without consulting me?” Susana replies while facing the painting towards the wall and they both return to bed without speaking another word.

The next day is a busy one for Susana — Fridays always are — so she runs out of the apartment without stopping to grab the girl in the watercolor and throw her in the trash. She’ll do that when she gets home.

Later on in the day she is with one of the last kids she has to talk to, Otelo, a thirteen year-old boy who was bullying a girl on the playground.

“What happened?” Susana asks.

“Filomena is my girl,” says the short, restless Mexican-American kid, puffing out his chest like a bantam rooster. “But she was talking to Jaime over by the swing set.”

“And that’s why you pushed her?”

“I had to show her who’s boss.”

“That’s not the way grown-ups settle their differences.”

“I’m not a grown-up. I’m in the seventh grade.”

“And you’ll never get to the eighth grade acting like that,” Susana says. “You made her cry.”

“I felt bad.”

“That you shoved her?”

“That she was talking to Jaime.”

At least they’re both flesh and blood, Susana thinks. What kind of santeria makes a painting come to life and start glaring at me in my own--

“Miss?” Otelo says, sensing Susana’s no longer there with him.

“Jealousy is one of the feelings that happens when you care about someone,” Susana says, returning her focus to the conversation. “But you can’t act on it like that. Are you willing to apologize to Filomena?”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“You’ll be suspended and your parents will be called in for a conference.”

More out of practicality than remorse, Susana suspects, Otelo promises to apologize. Susana clocks out and heads home.

Susana walks down the dark, fifth-floor hallway toward their apartment, the art-deco sconces barely providing enough light for her to see which key to slide into the lock.

When she closes the front door, she sees the girl in the watercolor back on the wall.
“Fred!” she calls out in her there’s-going-to-be-trouble voice.

Fred ambles into the living room from the den, where he’s been reading depositions from the Bob Dunn case.

“Hi, honey,” he says. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t ‘Hi, honey’ me,” she says. “Why’d you hang it back up?”

“I didn’t,” he says. “It was up when I arrived home. I thought you had changed your mind.”

Susana disproves his assumption by tearing the painting off the wall, carrying it down the hallway and pitching it down the trash chute.

“That was a hundred bucks,” Fred bemoans when she returns.

“It’s cheaper than a divorce.”

Fred knows there’s no crossing Susana when she’s like this, so he acquiesces. Plus, he has a surprise for her.

“I got takeout at La Cubana,” he says.

“Arroz con pollo?” she asks.

He nods.

“With platanos maduros?” Fred nods, knowing of Susana’s weakness for the sweet fried bananas.

“You’re the best,” Susana says, and just like that, Fred is out of the doghouse. They linger over dinner, watch the 10 o’clock news and go to bed. But Susana’s insomnia returns, and in the middle of the night, she slides out of bed and returns to the living room. She sits on the sofa, glad the girl in the watercolor is no longer there.
However, she is there.

The painting is back on the wall.

The girl looks menacingly at Susana as if to say “You’ve crossed me once too often. And you’ve lost.”

It is all too much for Susana. She tries to cry out to Fred, but can’t. She starts to get up, but can’t do that, either. The surrounding air cools and a pallid light again illuminates the girl’s face. The girl’s face twists into a smirk as if to say, “He won’t believe you this time, either.”

Fred wakes up and misses Susana. He walks to the darkened living room, where she’s collapsed on the floor in front of the sofa. She looks badly frightened. Fred shakes her gently. She recoils.

“Honey, it’s me,” he says. “Wake up! You had a nightmare!”

“That was no nightmare,” she says. “Look.”

Susana points at the watercolor.

“But you threw— “

Susana nods and goes to the den, returning with a scissors and starts to take the girl in the watercolor off the wall.

“Not so fast,” Fred says. “I’ll take it back to the artist on Tuesday.”

“You’re not keeping that damn thing around here.”

“I’ll take it to my office.”

Although dubious, Susana agrees. But she locks the watercolor in their hallway closet for the night.

On Saturday morning, Fred and Susana throw some provisions in their car, then go by his office to leave the girl in the watercolor. They head up to the mountains, to the Angeles Crest. Past La Canada, the houses fall away and the scented mountain pines begin to populate the steep, dry hillsides. They drive up to Mount Waterman, find a trail Fred knows well, and hike-in a few miles to a secluded clearing. It has a good view of the surrounding peaks and, on low-smog days like this one, of the Los Angeles Basin.

Fred spreads out a blanket and pulls from his day pack caprese sandwiches, red wine and dark chocolate, what Susana calls comida clasica de gringo. Dusty sunlight filters through the pines. The cool mountain air is alive with the chirping of unseen birds. After they eat, Fred puts his arm around Susana.

“When you return the painting,” Susana says, “ask the artist if she can tell you anything more about the girl.”

Fred agrees. He’s not sure this is really a thing, but wants to do right by his wife. He asks if she wants a backrub. He tries to sound discreetly mischievous, but Susana can hear the lusty catch in his voice.

“Sure,” she says. Maybe the magic is back after all.

“Top off.”

“No way.”

“No partial nudity, no service.”

“That’s blackmail.”

“So what if it is?”

Susana’s top comes off, and then more.

“Fred,” she giggles as he starts to take his own clothes off, “someone will see.”

A light tread crackles the leaves underfoot at the edge of the clearing, and for an instant Fred has the odd feeling they are being watched. But as far as he can tell, no one is around.

Monday rolls around again and with it, the next craft fair. After taking a deposition from one of the policemen from the Bob Dunn traffic stop, Fred grabs the painting and goes to look for the woman who painted the girl in the watercolor.

To Fred’s dismay, the artist isn’t there. Her booth is occupied by Artie Cohen, a middle-aged transplant from Brooklyn, New York who does acrylic paintings of the Fairfax District.

“Where’s the woman who was here last week?” Fred asks.

The artist, irritated that Fred is neither a customer nor an admirer, shrugs.

“Do you know her?” Fred asks.

“Sure I know her. She shares her burrito with me sometimes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Helena.”

“Helena what?”

“Helena Handbasket. How should I know? Hey, Paul,” he asks the oil painter at the next booth, “Where’s Helena?”

“Oh, Jeez. I was meaning to tell you,” the young man in a Dodgers cap and Hawaiian shirt says.

“Tell me what?” Artie asks. “Kidnapped by a band of roving gypsies?”

“Helena died Saturday,” Paul says. “She made a sloppy lane change on the Hollywood Freeway.”

Fred expresses his condolences, and they talk about her for a while.

“I was hoping to learn more about her,” Fred says, holding up the girl in the watercolor.

“Helena did say something about that one,” Paul says. “The kid creeped her out. It was the only one she’d ever done where the subject’s eyes seemed to follow her around the room. She felt that way even when she had her back to the painting.”

“Looks like just another aspiring starlet to me,” Artie says.

Fred is tempted to proclaim “She comes to life when the world should be asleep and my wife is scared to death of her.” But it’s a warm day with a light breeze. What’s frightening at 4 a.m. seems silly under the mid-day sun.

“Just wanted to learn more about my new acquisition,” Fred says and walks away. He returns to his office, intending to throw the painting out. But something stops him. He knows he should get rid of it, but there’s something about the girl’s eyes, and while suppressing a feeling of guilt, he hangs the watercolor on his office wall. He doesn’t tell Susana.

Friday brings with it another birthday party, this one for Jim Greerson, a colleague of Fred’s at the Justice Center. Susana drives Fred in her 2010 silver Acura because his car is in the shop. As she pulls away from the curb, she asks the question she’s been finding reasons not to ask all week: Will Angelica be there? When Fred responds “Yes” Susana grips the steering wheel more tightly.

The party is in Studio City, south of Ventura Boulevard, where the road rises toward the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains and the lots and houses get bigger the higher you go. Following Fred’s directions, Susana stops in front of a sprawling ranch near the top of Laurel Canyon on the Valley side. They get out and Fred rings the bell.

“How can Jim afford this?” Susana asks.

“There’s money in his family, a lot of it” Fred says. The thought that he could have had a house like this if he’d followed his father into the car business briefly drifts through his head, then evaporates.

“Don’t say anything about the painting,” says Susana, thinking it’s in the past. “I don’t want anyone to think we’re certifiable.”

“Or that your pointless jealousy is consuming our marriage,” Fred mutters.

“What was that?”

“Just talking to myself.”

“Not as interesting as talking to Ange —“

The front door opens and Jim appears. He heartily greets them and says everyone’s in the back.

They make their way through the house — which seems as big to Susana as the auditorium at Unruh Middle School — to the backyard. It’s ringed by Washington palms, cypress, and eucalyptus trees, whose sweet, resinous aroma permeates the mild evening air. The sky is a deep cobalt at it zenith, with ever-lighter bands of blue closer to the ground resolving into a glow of bright orange backlighting rooftops to the west, where the horizon still remembers the setting sun. Lights are strung through the trees of the Greersons’ backyard, and the clink of glasses punctuates the murmur of conversations.

By 11 o’clock, Fred and Susana have wound up in separate clusters. Susana’s in a knot with one of the Justice Center lawyers, Fred’s secretary, and the out-of-town brother of the birthday boy. She looks around for Fred and sees his back at the edge of the lawn. Looking at him, deeply engaged in conversation, is Angelica.
Susana is struck by how tall and willowy she is and how gracefully she moves. She laughs at something Fred just said, holding her stomach and bending over. That must have been a good one, Susana thinks. As Angelica straightens up, she touches Fred’s elbow, her still-laughing face illuminated by the party lights strung overhead. We’ll sort this out in the car, Susana thinks.

At midnight, Susana and Fred stumble to her Acura and head south on Laurel Canyon back to Los Angeles.

“You and Angelica were having a good time,” Susana thrusts.

“It’s the Bob Dunn case,” he parries. “It’s going badly.”

“Just like things went badly with Carol in Washington?”

“The statute of limitations has expired on that one.”

“What’s Angelica got to do with the Bob Dunn case?” Susana asks.

“Have you forgotten she’s my co-counsel?”

“If the case is going so badly, what did you say to make her roar with laughter like that?”

Fred pauses, trying to remember. Susana takes his silence as an admission of guilt.
“You see?” she yells, turning to face him. “I knew all along that — “

“Look ou —“

Those are Fred and Susana’s last words. Susana had blown through the red light at Laurel Canyon and Mulholland. They might have just made it past the westbound black Hummer, but a young, blonde girl out late for a walk appears out of nowhere in front of the Hummer, causing it to swerve into Susana’s Acura. The monster of a vehicle t-bones their car, and in a fight between a Hummer and an Acura, the Hummer wins.

The Acura goes over the edge of the hillside and rolls down the hill, turning over repeatedly until it reaches the bottom of the canyon. When it comes to rest, there’s an empty, puzzled look on Fred’s face, as if he’s not quite sure how it all came to an end on the drive home from Jim Greerson’s party. Susana’s right arm is pointing at him — either she’s reaching out to embrace him, or in a gesture of j’accuse. Their car horn is stuck, its high, keening note irritating people up and down Laurel Canyon.

Several days after the funerals, Susana’s parents drive up from Downey to conduct the estate sale. A young social media director from Canoga Park who had a fight with his wife at breakfast that morning buys the girl in the watercolor. He isn’t sure if his wife will like the painting. But he can’t look away from it. There’s something about her eyes.

💀💀💀

Jon Krampner’s short stories and flash fiction have appeared, or are about to appear, in Across the Margin, Eunoia Review, Eclipse, Page & Spine and Collective Unrest. He was selected as a finalist in the Summer 2018 Owl Canyon Press Hackathon. He lives in Los Angeles and is sarcastic in three languages.

]]><![CDATA[September 11, 2024]]>Wed, 11 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.kaidankaistories.com/september-2024/september-11-2024The Talking Thing
By Brittany Hague

Listen to this story here on the Kaidankai podcast.

They'd lived their whole lives with a ghost. They called her “mother.” Always more presence than person, the skeletal woman in the background would chat to herself liltingly, like a sick bird, while sipping champagne from a crystal candy bowl. She was a champagne drunk: one of the rarest kinds.

If the old photos the two sisters found searching in her dresser were to be believed, she had once been an actual person, even a vibrant one. In blurred glimpses into a foreign past, there she sat, neatly posed in an endless series of portraits. To their enduring fascination she was pictured in a procession of clean, untattered outfits. In one photograph she appeared to be just a few years older than the girls in a dainty dress with ribbons in her hair, shyly holding someone’s hand. In another, her hair was cropped in shiny waves, her head thrown back mid-laugh, and her gown was such a deep black they could almost feel the velvet. The girls had no memory of their mother in anything but the ragged nude slip and stained kimono that had become her uniform (even on her erratic neighborhood strolls!) The girls had to squint and use their imaginations to believe that these images were of the same wan and slight woman that wandered their house, particularly the pictures in which she seemed to be amusing friends who were (unfortunately, and always) cropped out of the frame.

That their mother, who mumbled to herself day in and day out, would even have friends seemed ludicrous. The only other constant person in their orbit was Anne: Thick, weird Anne who doted on their mother under the title “Personal Assistant” and took no more notice of the girls than their mother did. Under Anne's watch the bills were paid, a revolving staff kept the house clean, and the massive lawn was cared for. The girls were probably still alive only because of Anne–though their welfare was not her main objective, by any means.

Their dad was gone. Not divorced or dead, just gone. He had “business.” Every few months he returned with terrible but expensive gifts. Once it was a huge wooden rocking chair so uncomfortable and with edges so sharp the girls repurposed it as a Barbie guillotine. Another time it was a box filled with the promise of hundreds of Beanie Babies, though when the sisters finally ripped through the cardboard and packing tape, they found it contained hundreds of the same neurotic looking green frog. It called to mind something grown-ups had said once about plagues. The rare times he did return home, he made them dress nicely for dinners with some visiting business partner from India or Hong Kong.

He did not even return when mother was found at the bottom of the stairs. She had presumably taken a tumble and it seemed like a good time for her to go to the special place she went sometimes to “relax.” When Anne gently walked her to the waiting car, mother held her head and asked, “Oh, where did he go?!” Anne scoffed.

“You know very well he is in Hong Kong. And what do you need him for, anyway? I’m here.”

So, when the voice started coming from the guestroom closet there was no one to tell, except Anne. But they would never tell that woman anything. There would be no comforting arms to hold them and scare the monster away like they'd read happened in books. Just two sisters and a voice in the closet.

The first afternoon it was kind of exciting; an exhilarating secret. They asked it questions and it tried to toy with them. It asked them to set it free, then, in a child's voice, to show it how a candle worked. Then, in their mother’s songbird nonsense, it begged them to open the door and save it. They found this last request hilarious, which annoyed it.

By early evening they had grown tired of the Talking Thing. It had screamed, cursed, told them they were in trouble, mimicked a little boy pleading to stop his father from killing it, and spoke all sorts of strange languages, but it made for lousy conversation.

"Who do you think the best dancer in the world is?" They asked, trying to settle a bet between the two of them.

"Your mother's ill. Let me help her."

"Yeah, we know," rolling their eyes, "But who's the best daaancerrrr?!"

After a few hours of their relentless questions, it gave up and stopped talking. They'd gotten sillier and sillier and by the end they were giggling, "How many butts do you have?" Just the dumbest stuff they could think of. It responded by telling them it was a Reptoid and suicide was the only way forward. Lying on their backs with their legs up against the wall, they turned to each other and squealed, "Reptoid!" throwing themselves into another giggling frenzy. Eventually they sighed, panted, rolled over and left the Talking Thing, still going on and on about its mission on Earth in angry tones.

Back in their beds, under the quiet and darkness of night, the Talking Thing seemed more real, the danger more imminent, so they decided on some rules. First: they would put the key to the closet where no one would find it. The last thing they needed was a cleaning lady letting it loose. Second: they'd never talk to it alone. In fact, they wouldn't even go into the guest room without the other. Silly things had a way of revealing themselves to be horrible if the other wasn't there to crack the first laugh. They had learned this very early in their lives.

As the summer days wore on, the novelty of the Talking Thing faded. It was turning to fall, and worms could be found under the squishy wet leaves, dad had sent new foreign Barbie dolls who required asymmetrical haircuts and custom tattoos, and a couple of teenage girls had moved in next door, begging to be spied upon. Listening to an angry voice became less appealing. Especially when it got creepy, like when it told one of the girls she was carrying the germs of a demon in her wound. How had it known she had scraped her knee? They took note that it could either see them outside of the room or see through clothes. Both were bad. They especially hated its latest trick: making them hear footsteps any time they were alone.

One bright autumn morning, mother returned, looking vacant. Late that evening, Anne killed herself. A leap from the highest balcony. It went unnoticed all morning until mother floated in from the yard at lunch time, blood on the hem of her kimono singing “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” The girls ran to the scene and stopped short when they saw Anne’s feet, crooked and shoeless. They walked silently, hand in hand to tell the new neighbors to call someone (they didn’t know who) for help.
They stayed inside that day, away from the strangers and flashing lights, under blankets in the same bed. The Talking Thing whispered and laughed. Down the hall, two rooms away, they could hear it. “That was me. You aren’t the only ones I speak to. Anne was a very sad woman.” They decided they wanted to be rid of it. When the house quieted the next day, they stood before the closet door to announce that they wanted it to go.

“Ohhh,” it moaned, “I want to go, too. I shouldn’t be here.” The voice, for once, sounded genuine and forlorn. But, they agreed later, that was probably how it wanted them to think it sounded. “I can only go if you feed me. A single person will do.” Well, they weren't going to kill someone for it; they huffed and stormed out before it could even begin its protests.

They changed their minds a few days later when an obnoxious boy came to visit. They had dealt with boys before (their cousin was a boy, but a gentle one that liked wooden soldiers) this kid, Harrison, was a real boy. He smelled bad and alternated between spazzing out and staring comatose at an alarming rate. He spoke in voices from unknown cartoons and pointed imaginary guns at everything while running hard into the furniture. They were over him within ten minutes, but their dad had invited him to play all afternoon while the men talked business. Dad was back until a new Anne could be found.

"Will he do?" one sister asked the closet, pretending to talk to the other. The voice instructed them to open the door and push the boy in.

"Nuh un! We’re not stupid, we'll never open the door," they insisted.
"Then how’s this going to work?"

And on and on. The afternoon had lapsed before they could even agree on ground rules. Harrison, who had been slouching in the corner looking at a little screen, had to go home. Upset, one sister walked up to the closet and kicked the door.

"Happy?!" she screamed. Then quieter, so her dad couldn’t hear, "You are an asshole!" The girls left. Together they felt high on their assertiveness and adult language, but they were no closer to being rid of the Talking Thing.

They started making plans. Obviously, it had to be a boy, and obviously they were going to have to find some way to bind the Talking Thing to the closet while they fed the boy to it. Research consumed their autumn. The library had books on magic and demons, but they were long and boring… And once you actually started to look, there were so many boys out in the world. How could they decide which one deserved to die more than the others?

And then, suddenly the Talking Thing was gone. It was so anticlimactic that even mentioning it felt heartbreaking, so they didn’t. They had heard on the radio that played dimly in the kitchen that a local boy had gone missing, and they wondered, even felt responsible, but mainly they were weirdly upset that they hadn’t been more directly involved in the tragedy. Intrigue had moved on to someone else's household, it seemed.

A new assistant was found, a stern older woman who never smiled. She didn't understand their mother's rituals which caused their mother to throw grander fits and spend more days crying in her canopy bed. Dad was leaving again. The morning he left, their mother stumbled onto the porch where the girls were squashing ants. Even though it was brisk she was still wrapped in her kimono, the unwashed hem of which had darkened to a rusty brown. She smelled sickly sweet and looked flimsy. Her emaciated hand clasped one of the girl’s jackets. They turned to find her eyes clear, as if she finally saw them.

“It’s back where it belongs,” she sang while tapping her forehead. Her eyes glazed over once more. As she teetered back inside, they noticed she was palming something small and brass, a key, rubbing it like a worry stone.

💀💀💀

Brittany Hague (she/her) has worked as a graphic artist, an independent interactive fiction maker, and short story writer. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two children, and familiars. Her short stories have appeared in the Night of the Geminids and Monster (Hidden Fortress Press) anthologies, Last Girls Club, and Black Sheep Magazine. brittanyhague@me.com

]]><![CDATA[September 4, 2024]]>Mon, 02 Sep 2024 19:18:48 GMThttps://www.kaidankaistories.com/september-2024/september-4-2024Alley Ghost
By Rick Kennett

First published in Terror Australis (1988) and The Reluctant Ghost Hunter (1991)

WWII flight suit (from 303rdbg.com)

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.

“We have a ghost that needs killing.”

The strangest letter to ever drop into my mail box arrived one day, addressed in a child's neat printing.

Dear Ernie Pine,

I heard that you killed a ghost one time. We have a ghost that needs killing. It lives in the back and is very frightening. If you need some help me and my friends can be your assistants.

Wendy Ellison

Apparently Wendy and Company had met with something unfairy-like at the bottom of the garden, and saw ghost hunting as fun. My only association with this sort of fun had been with a spectral bike rider in the country town of Donnington. It had been accidental, amateurish and near-fatal. Someone, I suppose, had written about the incident on-line and Wendy had seen it. The return address on the letter was Waratah Road, Airfield South, a suburb on the other side of town near a small airport. Being unemployed at the time and at the mercy of government hand-outs, I had nothing planned for the next few days – possibly weeks -- so I decided to accept their invitation. Not to "kill" ghosts but to talk some sense into these kids.

#

Some youngsters were playing ball on the medium strip the afternoon I swung my motorcycle into Waratah Road. As I parked a girl in the group came over and asked if I was Ernie Pine, having seen my photo on-line. She introduced herself as Wendy, and she was very much as I'd pictured her to be from her letter: ponytail, jeans, jumper, skinny, thirteenish. The other kids milled around, and she rattled off names like a teacher calling the role. Younger than Wendy – nine or ten – I could see she was something of a big sister figure to them. They were all prying fingers for the switches, buttons and levers on the bike's handlebars. I let their curiosity run its course, then we sat down against a front fence while Wendy took centre stage on the nature strip.

It had all started, she explained, with a boy named Ben. A fortnight before this eight year old had tried to run away from home "… because his mum is always drunk and his old man don’t care neither. Anyway, Ben was in the lane. He climbed over his back fence and was in the lane that runs behind the houses here. And that's when he saw the ghost."

"Go on," I said in a non-committal tone.

"It was like the figure of a man, but dark, all shadows, so Ben says. Like it wasn’t really there … like a camera trick in a cheesy movie. Anyway, it’s coming up to him and he starts to see it better. It had big frog eyes on the top of its head." She curled her fingers and placed them above her fringe. "And he says it smelled like a petrol station."

"The ghost smelt of petrol?"

"Yeah … nah. Not just petrol." A look of momentary confusion crossed Wendy's face. "Ben said it was like all the smells, oil and petrol and kerosene."

"Did the ghost say anything?"

"Yeah. It said 'Get off the field I wanna chew your pop'. Ben got so scared he jumped back over the fence."

Wanna chew your pop? Adding this to knowing the boy was having trouble with neglectful parents sent my mind racing in all sorts of strange directions, and none of them I wanted to follow. I said, "What makes you think it was a ghost, Wendy? Could’ve been a drunk loitering in the lane. Could’ve been booze Ben smelt."

"Ben know what booze smells like." Her ponytail swung as she shook her head. "It was a ghost."

"How do you know? You only heard about it secondhand."

"'Cause I saw it one time too."

"Uh huh. Any of you others see it?" I asked the children sitting either side of me.
Two or three of them said yes.

"A ghost,"said Wendy.

I stood and stepped onto the nature strip. "I suppose you’ve all been told by your parents not to play with fire or electricity or in freeway traffic. They tell you this to save you getting hurt by things you’re too young and inexperienced to handle. It's the same with ghosts. Let me tell you what happened to me with that ghost in Donnington. I didn’t 'kill' it. It simply ceased to exist once it had used me as a tool for its vengeance against the man who had killed him. Whether I lived or died didn’t concern it. Ghosts are often the essence of the worst in people." I turned to Wendy; the others were too young to grasp my meaning, but she was old enough to understand. "Leave ghosts alone, Wendy. If you really have one in your back lane, leave it alone."

She looked at me, puzzled, perhaps even disappointed. "But this one says I'm gunna chew you and everything."

"All the more reason to leave it alone. Take my advice and avoid using the lane."
"Mr Pine," she said in such a suddenly grown-up manner it brought me up short. "You don’t live here so you don’t care. But why should we avoid using the lane? We're allowed. What if there was a mad dog down there, what if there were tiger snakes. Someone would have to solve the problem. Right? It's the same with ghosts. It’s our lane and no ghost should stop us from using it. It's … it’s the principle of the thing."

That stung, despite it sounding like something parroted from television.

"All right," I heard myself say, though hardly believing it. "I'll take a look at this ghost of yours, if only for the preservation of 'the principle of the thing'."

Very much the child again, Wendy laughed and jumped and clapped. I knew it then – it was going to be Donnington all over again.

#

The lane was a nameless separation of back fences. We walked down it, the kids filled with daylight bravado, me with vague uneasiness. I told them to look for anything unusual. But it was the most usual lane I'd ever seen, filled with the usual gravel, grass and rubbish. We eventually arrived at its dead end, un-accosted by ghosts, mad dogs or tiger snakes. Heading back I asked the two or three who had admitted to seeing the ghost for their stories.

"I seen it last week," said John, a ten year old wearing a Spiderman tee. "It was in me backyard." He pointed to a fence a little way ahead. "It looked like a man looking for something. I ran in and called me dad, but when he came out there wasn't nobody there."

"Maybe a burglar."

"He didn’t take nothing then."

"Did you say he was looking for something?"

"Yeah. Like …" John bowed his head and shuffled about the lane, examining the ground closely.

"What was he wearing?"

"Dark stuff."

"Did he have frog eyes? Did he smell like a petrol station?"

"Yes.''

"Wendy, you said you saw the ghost."

"Yeah, it was last week. I was coming home from netball practice and I passed the laneway. I see this sort of shadow guy like leaning against the fence like he was sick, you know? Anyway, I see he's crying. Then he sees me and goes, 'I made a stupid mistake and now I will never rest.' Then he just, like, faded away."

We were back at the laneway entrance by now. I turned and looked into the lane, trying to imagine the situation. "Was it day or night?"

"It was just getting dark. About eight o’clock.'

"A shadow guy? Did he have frog eyes?"

Wendy looked uncertain. "Dunno. Didn’t see his face too good."

"Did he smell like a petrol station?"

Again the uncertainty. "Um … yeah, sorta, but more like the airport." She pointed to a couple of low flying aircraft not far to the north. It was only then I recalled the name of this suburb -- Airfield South – and realized I'd been hearing the growl of occasional planes since taking off my bike helmet.

"Aviation fuel?" I asked.

Wendy shrugged. "If that's what they call it."

I looked down the lane again, that very ordinary suburban lane, and wondered what secret it was keeping.
#

It occurred to me, of course, that Wendy and her friends were trolling me. But most of them were nine or ten and it’s been my experience that nine and ten year olds in a group can’t keep a straight face when they think they have a grown up fooled. This lot had been as serious about this ghost business as it was possible for children their age to be.

OK. So if they weren’t fooling me were they fooling themselves?

That was more likely. Some odd bods can be found in back alleys. What had the children seen? A ghost or some strung-out homeless guy? Two of the kids had seen their ghost disappear, but all had seen the ghost at night. What then of the smells and the thing with 'big frog eyes'? Was it all mistakes and imagination? Or was it something more abstract?

My next step was in the direction of the local library where, armed with a pen and a notebook, I read everything I could – both on line and in print – concerning local history. By the time the library closed that evening my head and notebook was crammed with facts and figures, names and dates. The most promising item unearthed was about the airport. It had started as a landing strip in the 1920s, had become an air force base in World War Two which it remained until about 30 years ago when it was sold off to commercial interests and became a suburban airport. Later its outer southern runway was sold off for housing development to the Waratah Construction Company.
#

The next day, back on Waratah Road, I knocked on Wendy's door, but nobody was home. So I wandered into the lane and took some random snaps with my phone. The idea was that though the lane might be empty on the phone' s screen, something might show up in the images. But something showed up on the screen first. It was the dirty face of a little boy standing at the threshold of the lane in trousers that were dirt from hem to hip.

"What you taking pictures of?" he asked, rubbing a threadbare sleeve across his nose.

"The lane," I said, putting the phone away. "I like lanes. Do you like gardening?"
He glanced down at his clothes. "I'm digging a garden and grow veggies in me backyard. Is that your motorbike out there?"

"It is."

"Can I have a ride?"

"Where would you ride to?"

"I dunno. Anywhere but here."

"Sorry, not without a helmet. Anyway, wouldn’t your mother and father worry?"

"Nah." He said as if the idea was a joke, an unfunny one. "Can I sit on your bike then?"
So he sat on my bike, twisting the throttle and revving and roaring to himself as he ripped along the highways of his imagination.

I let a few kilometers go by before I asked, "Is your name Ben?"

"Yep, brrrrrrm brrrrrum."

"Did you see a ghost in the back lane?"

He glanced up at me. "Did Wendy tell you that?"

"Keep your eyes on the road," I told him. "When you ride a motorbike you have to have your eyes everywhere. Yes, Wendy told me. She said you told her this ghost you saw had big frog eyes."

"Yep."

"And smelt like the planes at the airport?"

"Yep. And it had a bib."

I did a doubletake that nearly broke my neck. "It had a what?"

"A bib. Like what babies have when they eat."

"Wendy didn’t say anything about a bib."

"Well, she called me a liar when I told her about the other things so I just shut up then."

"She doesn’t think you’re a liar now. What was this bib like?"

"Yellow." He took his hands off the handlebars and looked around. "Hey, you know what I found buried in my backyard? A bullet."

A bib. A yellow bib and frog eyes. "Yeah? What sort?" I asked, not really listening.

"A big one. All rusty."

Some ghost hunters get the stately spook, others the rowdy poltergeist. I get a frog-eyed phantom wearing a yellow bib in a blind alley.

"I'm going home now," he said, climbing off the bike. "Seeya."

It was then I realized what he'd just said. "Er … you found what buried in your backyard?"

"A big bullet."

"Can I see it?"

"Ma threw it out."

"Terrific. Could you show me where in your yard you found it?"

"Nope. Not allowed to let anyone in. Dad's out and ma's sleeping again."

"Well, how big was it the bullet? This big?" I spread thumb and forefinger.

"Bigger than that." He spaced his hands to show a decent sized caliber. "This big."

But I didn’t look at his hands. I looked at what they represented, and like dominoes my thoughts began toppling, coming to rest on an off-centre notion. Asking Ben to wait a moment I rummaged around in my bike's gear-sack. Was this what the frog-eyed ghost looked like? Well, he wasn’t sure. He'd seen it at night and this was daylight, and things can look different in the dark. But … well, it could be.

As I watched Ben run home I removed the goggles from my forehead and replaced them in the gear-sack.
#

Later that afternoon I called again at Wendy's house and this time finding the family at home was ushered into their lounge room. Truth to tell, I'd been dreading meeting her parents, expecting a "What nonsense is this?" or "Why is this strange man talking to my daughter?" attitude. Wrong. I found Mr and Mrs Ellison accepting and broadminded, the rare kind of parents who hadn’t forgotten that they too had been children once.

Luckily there were few explanations to be made. They knew about me from Wendy who had painted me up as some heroic ghost buster, capable of all sorts of death-defying psychic deeds. Trying not to blush I asked them if they thought there might be something peculiar in their back lane.

"Can't say, Ernie," said Steve Ellison. "Mary and I seldom have cause to go into the lane."

"That's true," Mary put in. "The Loch Ness Monster may use it for his winter holidays for all we know. But if Wendy says something odd is going on in back there I'm inclined to believe her -- at least before dismissing it as childish games and imagination."

"Have you ever found anything unusual while digging in your backyard?" I asked.

Wendy’s parents glanced at each other, then Steve said, "You mean bones?"

"I mean anything: bones, pieces of metal, mechanical parts, bullets."

"Bullets?" said Mary through a disbelieving laugh. "What would bullets be doing in our yard?"

"The little boy a few doors down told me he found quite a large bullet while digging in his backyard."

"Ben," Wendy chimed in.

"Don’t believe everything young Ben says," said Mary Ellison. "He has a hell of a home life with his drunken mother and womanizing father. I mean, I feel sorry for the poor kid, but with so little involvement from his parents he does tend to make his life up as he goes along."

"I believe he saw a ghost."

"Maybe he did," said Steve. "But in the three years we've been here no one's dug up bullets or bones in the yard." He sat back in his chair and added, "Not that we've done that much gardening, I admit. But why the interest in buried treasure?"

'I'd rather not say for the moment. It may confuse things if I'm wrong, especially as the next stage of the investigation may bring in positive result."

'A seance?" Wendy asked hopefully.

"Nothing so elegant, Wendy. Or dangerous for that matter. No, ust a simple vigil. I'm going to sit out in the lane tonight and watch for the ghost."

Wendy jumped and clapped her hands. "And I'm going to help you!"

"No you're not!" said her mother.

"Ah, but mum! There's no school tomorrow."

"I know, but this is something we should leave to Mr Pine, dear." She glanced across at me. "It could be dangerous, couldn't it."

Hadn’t thought of that. At least not the sort of danger there is in a séance. But as I sat there nodding to the question I suddenly did feel like a heroic ghost buster – one who knew himself to be also a total fraud.

#

Well, if I was a fraud at least I was trying to act genuine. In the lane that night I brought warm clothing, a torch, my phone already on camera mode, and a thermos of coffee. I sat against a fence about ten metres down the lane, just at the edge of the street light's reach.

Nine o'clock came and went. Ten o'clock did the same. Around half ten Wendy poked her head over the fence and scared the life out of me.

Midnight caught me napping.

I snapped awake. A strange smell was in the air. The smell of oil and grease and fuel. I looked up to see a figure looking down at me. Its face was in shadow but the flying goggles on the forehead glinted like frog eyes. It wore a yellow life vest.

"Get off the runway," it growled. "You want to be chewed by a prop?"

"Who … who are you?" My hands grabbed at the grass to stop myself from running.
It turned away like a black sheet twisting in the wind.

"No! Wait!" I dug out my phone and flashed off a few shots. "Wait! Who are you?"

"The agony of conscience," it cried, vanishing through the fence. "I will never rest!"
"No! I can help you!"

I waited another hour in the dark but the ghost did not reappear.
#

The Ellisons let me sleep on their sofa that morning, but sleeping was something I did very little of.

By midday I was feeling a bit steadier. With Steve and Mary's permission and Wendy's help I dug four parallel trenches in their backyard.

"What if we find a skeleton?" Wendy asked after the first few shovelfuls.

"Unlikely," I said. "What I expect to find are bits of aircraft. Your alley ghost is … was an airman, Wendy. He was killed in a plane crash when Waratah Road was part of the air force base years ago."

We dug for a while in silence, then Wendy said, "I'm sorry now I said he was frightening and that I wanted you to kill him. I think he’s a very sad ghost."
I could only agree.

Then her spade struck something. It proved to be a tin can.

The second and third trenches yielded nothing. In the fourth, nearly at sunset, we unearthed two more tin cans, a dog's skull and part of an aircraft's propeller blade.
"Sometimes known as a prop," I told Wendy.

#

Next day I paid a visit to the Defence Centre in town. I told them of the situation on Waratah Road (minus supernatural elements), explaining that residents were coming across bits of an aircraft while gardening, and that some suspected their homes were built on the site of a plane crash. Was there any way to verify this?
I was directed to the Public Relations Officer who directed me to the Military Records Library who said they’d look into the matter and asked me to call back tomorrow.

If patience is a virtue then I must be awfully debased. Nevertheless I hung onto my nerves and waited, and tomorrow, like all tomorrows, finally arrived.

"Yes, here it is."

The young woman behind the counter handed me some photocopied sheets of closely spaced typing, all stamped Declassified. I paid the required search and photocopying fees and began to read.

I was right. A plane had crashed on the south runway, approximately where the Ellisons's house now stood. Forty-three years ago a prop engined dive bomber had been conducting target practice off the coast. But after returning to base a tyre blew on landing, causing the plane to flip and crash.

"The pilot, flight lieutenant Henry Jillard, was severely injured and was hospitalized but recovered sufficiently to be discharged two months later. He retired from the air force on medical grounds and – "

I read the last bit several time, but it always said the same thing. I scratched my head, confused. If the pilot survived the crash, who or what haunted the back lane?
And why?

#

While household phone books are becoming a thing of the past, they can still be found at the post office. There were only three Jillards in the local phone book and none of those admitted to being or knowing an old pilot by the name of Henry. Undaunted, I looked through country and interstate directories, phoning every Jillard I could find. Persistence pays. I finally found Henry Jillard interstate, two thousand kilometers away.

"Yes, I was once Flight Lieutenant Henry Jillard," came the brittle voice over the phone, "thought that was an age ago." He paused to cough. "I seem to know your voice from somewhere, young man."

"Yes, sir. We met in an alley in Airfield South a few nights ago."

There was a silence on the line, then Henry Jillard said, "So it's true. I had a horrible suspicion my returns to the south runway were more than nightmares." Another pause, then, "You said you could help, but you’re too late. The doctors told me it was too late a while back, but I’ve known it since the crash of my plane forty odd years ago.

"In what way, Mr Jillard?"

"There are mistakes and mistakes. There’s the mistake of not checking your aircraft thoroughly and having a bomb release jam and a tyre blow on touchdown. There’s the mistake of trying to play hero and save a valuable plane by disobeying standing orders to bail out and let the plane ditch in the sea when a bomb fails to release and just dangles in the cradle. I told flight control I’d managed to drop the bomb and was coming home. I came in at dusk so they couldn’t see the bomb was still there. I had some of the groun crew on-side who could unhook the bomb when I landed, so no one need ever know. Then the tyre blew on touchdown and I crashed. When I came to in hospital no one mentioned the bomb and I guessed it had thrown clear into a bog. That’s when I made my biggest mistake: I failed to see the consequences of my good fortune."

"But why do you search if you think there’s no hope?"

"What is there to do? 'Rest In Peace' they'll put over me, but it'll be a lie. How can I rest when I know what my neglect and vanity has left under someone's home?"

"But there's still time --"

"No there isn't, son. The bomb was not logged as lost and nobody will start pulling down houses on the word of a crazy old man like me. I lost my chance on the south runway all those years ago. I'm damned for my stupidity, and I think we better just leave it go at that."

He hung up.

Where to next? The police? The army? Tell them what? A ghost story?
Knowing what was there, I tiptoed back to Waratah Road.
#

Someone was hammering metal. The noise rang clang clag clang through the street in irregular beats, echoing against the houses, making me more jittery, more on edge than I already was. Near the lane I met John, the eight year old Spiderman fan who had seen the searching figure in his backyard.

"You’re mates with Ben, aren’t you?" I asked him.

"Yeah. Don’t like his dad but. No not either his mum. I only go to his place when they’re not there, like just now when we was digging our garden."

"Ben dug up a big bullet once in your garden. Did you see it?"

"Yep, I seen it. A couple of weeks ago."

"Did he ever dig up anything else?"

"A pipe."

"A water pipe?"

"Nah, a iron pipe. Just a bit of one. Roundy at one end and like skinny at the other."
My blood froze so that my voice came out small. "When did you find this pipe?"
"Just now. Me and Ben was digging our garden and we found this big pipe. Makes a big bad noise when you hit it with a hammer."

Clang clang clang, went the sound through the street.

"John," I said, trying to sound as calm and steady as possible, "run home – run home now and get your mum or dad to call the police. Better still, get them to call the bomb squad. Tell them to come Waratah Road right away. Have you got that?"

The youngster looked suddenly scared, but he nodded and scurried off.

Clang clang clanity-clang.

I was through Ben's front gate and down the sideway in seconds. As I hit the backyard the clanging was cut off by a squeal of fright. Ben sat in the dirt, a hammer in his little hand, the steel cylindrical body of a 250kg bomb protruding from the earth in front of him. He was staring up, open-mouthed. Standing over him, neither shadowed or transparent, was the full-bodied image of an airman in flying jacket, camo trousers, yellow life vest and goggles. He looked both young and old at once – the young man triumphant, the older self exactly the same.

"You were right," said the ghost, though its young and old face did not move. "It never is too late."

And he vanished.

#

The police arrived who took Ben off me after I picked him up and carried him into the street. The bomb squad followed soon after and discovered that young Ben could’ve hammered on that bomb as long as he liked. It was a dud. It always had been.

The army went through the lane and adjoining backyards with metal detectors, digging up a few more bullets, a wing tip, splinters of the plane's fuselage and the inevitable tin cans.

Mercifully, Ben remembered little of the matter, only a great fuss of sirens and flashing lights. This brush with disaster too was a wake up call to his neglectful parents. At least we can hope so.

There only remains my photography.

It was days later before I remembered those photos I took. I'd viewed neither because Ben had interrupted me the first time and I'd been too terrified the second.
The two shots taken the night of the vigil were a disappointment. Something lurked in the flash, but it was vague, indistinct. For all I know it might be my thumb over the lens. I'm happier with the random shots taken earlier. They show an ordinary, empty suburban lane, much as the Waratah Road lane is to this very day.

💀💀💀

I live in Melbourne, Australia. After working as a motorcycle courier for 42 years -- possibly a world record – I am now retired, spending my time listening to podcasts and being addicted to YouTube. Though once a whippet owner I now content myself to talk to next door's white tom who sometimes condescends to talk to me. "Alley Ghost" is one of my Ernie Pine series concerning a ghost hunter who hates being a ghost hunter. He first appeared in the 20th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and has made appearances in magazines, anthologies, podcasts and two novels.

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