Covid 43

Jim opened the door and saw it was a stranger, the third one this week. He stood aside for the man to walk through the door into his cottage.

The visitor had a permanent expression of surprise on his face and a knife sticking out of his side. He walked into the small wooden room and took the stool across from the dining table. The table had a candle set in the middle atop a brass candlestick, the light flickering off the wooden surface and walls.

"I am the groundskeeper here", Jim said, "welcome to my cottage. Coffee?"

The visitor nodded mutely, lost in though. He was tall and broad, giving the appearance of a friendly bear. Square jawed, with a buzz-cut and dressed in a simple white shirt and black slacks. The first 2 buttons of the shirt were unbuttoned, showing his neck and thick muscles leading into his shoulders.

"One sugar or two?", Jim asked and the visitor raised his eyebrows, showing a heightened level of surprise that startled even Jim. "Right", Jim said., "one", and kept the coffee in front of the visitor, placing his own cup filled with black coffee, no sugar on the table and taking a seat.

He waited patiently for the visitor to speak.

"I am Jimbo, uh, Seth is my given name, they call me Jimbo", the visitor offered by the way of an introduction, "and I didn’t die of COVID"

"I can see the knife", Jim nodded, taking a sip from his cup.

"Didn't even see the bastard coming", the visitor shook his head grimly, "my own friend and that hussy, I thought she loved me"

Jim cringed, as a rule, he did not encourage swearing, but he just made a mental note so as to not disturb Seth’s flow.

"He was waiting for me in the bathroom, they had it all planned out. In my own house! I get back after the tour, she is not in, so I step in to freshen up and he was there with the knife. There is no loyalty, you understand me", Seth looked at Jim, his jaws clenched, "No loyalty”, he continued. “They patched me up to hide the knife wound and had me declared as a COVID death. No postmortem, nothing"

"I am sorry", Jim felt like he had to say something at this time.

Seth, waved his arms, as if warding off a painful memory, "so here I am", he said, "I can trust no one. My own wife, my best friend, where did it all go wrong? I have to set this right, I can't rest until I get my revenge. I will haunt them to the end of time...". He stopped, spent.

Jim cleared his throat, "Nothing stays the same, things change in this world, and when they change, they catch us by surprise. The mistake we make it to look to external things for our happiness, that car, that relationship. Nothing is permanent, you see."

"What sort of pop psychology is this??", Seth scowled, "Change, is that what you called it? This is not change, its a catastrophe!”, he was waving his arms now, “I cant leave it, just cant. I cant let go, the thought of them living in my home… What would you do, Mr Groundskeeper?"

"We are all slaves of our patterns, and these patterns have been programmed into us since birth. Religion is programming, school is programming, parents do their bit to program us. The truth is, we all really aren’t so much in control of our life as we think we are. Your wife and friend too, they are playing out some deep, dark patterns and they will pay for it, in time. What you don’t want to do is complicate your life… after-life", Jim corrected himself, "I would let it go".

"I wasn't around so much towards the end, maybe if I had spent more time with her".

Jim stopped him with a gentle gesture, "No, no, Jimbo, nothing you did would have changed it. NO, you have to convince yourself, there is nothing you could have done. And there is nothing you can do, except let go. Look to the future, think about how much better it would be if you could leave this baggage behind. Just set it down and travel forward, free"

Seth tilted his head on each side, as if to stretch his neck and then looked with interest around Jim’s cottage. The obsessive organization of everything, dishes sorted by size, clothes by type and color, the shoes all neatly arranged, no art, nothing to personalize the space. He shook his head, as if this was what he was expecting from a man with a lot of time on his hands.

His eyes wandered to the pictures atop the chest of drawers.

“Millie, my daughter”, Jim said, following his gaze, “and her family, my grandchildren. She has been through a lot of… challenges”

"You know, normal people would be more scared of an apparition like me", Seth's eyes narrowed, "who is to say I couldn't take over your body right now? Use it to enact my revenge?". Jim could feel more than see Seth's muscles tighten, as if to spring across the table.

"Yes, the body of a Covid-permanent seventy five year old. Who is trapped inside a cemetery, alone, with no way to get out. Not one of your better plans, is it?", Jim was smiling now. He has seen enough spirits to not be intimidated, that was a slippery slope.

The conversation went almost through the night, Jim gently thrusting and parrying back as Seth came up with increasingly tenuous reasons to choose the door marked "revenge". Finally, when the spirit left, he seemed to be at peace.

In Jim's experience, much like humans, spirits came to him with their minds made up. It was his responsibility as a counselor, to validate and comfort. He sighed and looked at his watch before staggering to small bedroom off to the side.

---

The early morning light filtered through the blinds, Jim looked up at the ceiling, crisscrossed with oak girders. He groaned as consciousness returned, willing himself to sleep for an hour more, continue the dream where he was playing with Millie's kids, his grandchildren. A tear rolled down his cheek as he realized he was now awake and whatever memories he had of the dream would soon evaporate.

Then he remembered Seth's words. The spirits usually gave a parting gift, but Seth had been very specific, complete with directions and time. What he had revealed contained the key that could change the groundskeepers life.

Jim walked out and took a deep breath taking in the sea breeze from the beach a few hundred yards away. The cottage had been build in the most picturesque part of the island, facing the warm waters of the Atlantic. He turned around a half circle and sighed at the lush trees, grass and shrubs as far as the eyes could see.

He pottered around till the afternoon cleaning up the grounds, righting headstones that had been knocked over and generally tidying up things.

The cemetery ran itself, the bodies were dumped into the furnace at the far side of the island, burned to a fine ash and the bones pulverized, they were then transported by remotely operated trucks to various grave-sites and buried. The trucks had cameras and a 2-way sound system, so the operator could talk to Jim as the trucks passed by. Jim was always happy to talk, and made a point to tour the grounds at least stopping to chat once with the various operators, mostly young men, some with families and children that they were happy to talk about.

Jim remembered his daughter had to be physically restrained from hugging him when they diagnosed him as Covid-permanent. His body was not just immune to the virus but was hosting it and allowing it to mutate. The law was clear, he had to be isolated for the rest of his life. He got lucky, drawing the groundskeeper job at this cemetery instead of being imprisoned in hotel-quarantine or banished to one of many internment camps for the Covid-permanents. Millie still wrote to him once a week, enclosing pictures of his grandson and granddaughter. They had grown up so fast.

With advances in medical technology, the population was now vaccinated for most variants and kept up with boosters every few months. The Covid-permanents had been forgotten, though, cast aside for no fault of their own.

As the evening came close, he felt his pulse quicken and the warm rush of blood.

8:30, Seth had said.

At the stoke of 6:00, the operations in the cemetery ceased, and all the machinery had gone back to the shed. Jim had packed some gear in his backpack. He ventured out, taking care to stay behind shrubs and other cover to avoid the various cameras in the grounds. It took him the better part of the hour, but he finally made it to the south gate. He got down to his knees and elbows once the gate was in sight, crawling as close to the soil as possible, to the set of bushes that lined the lawns looking out at the gate. The guards were still there.

He looked at the set of shops and apartments lining the road across from the gate. The sea peeked from between the buildings, the blue water leading out to other islands dotting the Key West. In the far horizon was the city. With luck, he could change into the long-sleeved clothes in the bag and hitch a ride on a boat out to mainland.

He waited. Dusk turned to night and the guards cast long shadows in the harsh floodlight as they marched across the perimeter with M16's slung from their shoulders.

Jim cursed, there was about a hundred feet stretch of lawn that was brightly lit, there was no way he was going to get across without being seen. And even if he got to the guards and surprised them, what was he going to do, a 75 year old man? He sighed, probably best to get back to the cottage. He slowly started crawling back when the floodlight flickered and then went out.

Jim let out a gasp of surprise, the next moment, he was running across the lawn. One of the guards was inside his booth and picked up the phone. His companion was looking the other way. Jim was clear. He got to the base of the perimeter wall and threw over the rope. Its loop caught at one of the iron spikes atop the wall, he pulled himself up.

He struggled up inch by inch, his arms taut with the effort, his shoes scrambling for footholds in the stone wall.

At that moment, the light came back on, bathing him in harsh florescence and one of the guards shouted, "Hey!!".

---

When Jim regained consciousness, he was lying on his back, in the glare of the floodlight, in the middle of the lawn. He turned his head, it was stiff, and looked at the guards patrolling the gates. Back to square one.

For a moment, fear flickered into his consciousness, what were they going to do? Will they reassign him to one of the camps? Jim swallowed, then from deep within, there came up a boiling rage.

His breath quickened, he got up, got his backpack and screamed at the guards, "you dogs, you bloody dogs, I will escape one day, I will kick your head in and I will kill you, you little punks. I am a citizen, I have rights!!".

They looked right through him, continuing with the forced march across the perimeter. Jim, turned around, located a nice smooth rock and heaved it with both hands over his head. He screamed as he rushed towards the closest guard, poised to bash his helmet in.

He slowed down, then stopped, dropped the rock with a muted thud and got down on his knees, overcome with exhaustion. He turned back, got his bag and with his head down, set back on the path to the cottage. He could hear whispers from near the gate. Were they talking, laughing? Laughing at him?

He noticed it was now chilly. The wind seemed to pass right through him and pulling the coat in closer did not help.

He finally saw his cottage. There was light filtering through the curtains. He again felt a stab of fear. Were they waiting for him already?

He approached the door carefully and slowly pushed it open, peeking inside. He breathed a sigh of relief. An elderly couple, were sitting across his table. The candle burned.

He slowly walked in, they smiled at him.

The woman was wearing a red sweater, simple earrings and a whole lot of bangles. They jangled under the long sweater sleeves. The man was bald all the way to a semicircle of graying white hair on the sides. He also wore a sweater, but cream colored. Their bodies showed no signs of violence, nothing to indicate an untimely or violent death. Jim waited for them to speak first.

They looked across the table at each other in silence.

The woman was the first to speak, "We are the groundskeepers here, welcome to our cottage. Would you like sugar with your coffee?"