Take Me Home

Rain splattered and pooled in the mud over Charlie’s grave and in the middle, Charlie’s ghost sat. He was a young man when he died, only twenty-seven, and even though he had never believed in ghosts, there he was. He knew the air around him was cold. That much was obvious even if he couldn’t feel it. If it wasn’t for the steady and large droplets of water that fell from rolling gray clouds overhead or the brisk wind that rattled what remained of the leaves in the trees, the group of teenagers wearing Halloween costumes that snuck into the cemetery told him as much.

He didn’t pay them any mind. They were harmless and loitered with their umbrellas in the older part of the cemetery. It wasn’t like they could hear him. He had tried to get so many people to hear him over the past couple of weeks. All of Mora, Minnesota was deaf to him and he didn’t know where to go or what to do about it. He wasn’t about to hover around while they scared themselves silly in the darkness.

Another entity could do that. It was one that Charlie didn’t like and avoided any time in drew near. It was a crooked shadow with long arms and staring eyes. Charlie was scared of it to his core so he hid when it came around.

He wondered if those kids could feel it creeping behind the trees. Its eyes were bright and unblinking while they giggled about something in the cluster of their umbrellas. He could see the outline of its long hands on the bark of a thin tree with its bent frame pressed to the trunk, but could they? He doubted it. Who could laugh if they saw that?

Charlie turned and looked at his name on his headstone, Charles Ryan Tiller. Who knew that a bright college graduate would duck under a railway gate because he thought he could move his car faster than an oncoming train?

His family had been in a state of shock for most of the funeral. It was his mom’s breakdown on the way back to the cars that made him stay behind with his body. He couldn’t watch her go through that. He couldn’t watch any of them go through that. The guilt tethered him to his body as if it were the one place where he was allowed to exist.

So he stayed, wearing his best suit, and he waited for any sign of what was to be done next. For some reason, he wasn’t wearing the jeans and t-shirt he had on when he died. Instead, it was the clothes he’d been buried in. The suit he wore to his sister’s wedding two years ago at least. It was a happy time and the best clothes he owned.

People came and went. No one saw him or heard him. Sometimes, at night, the crooked shadow came around, but Charlie was quick to flee. He found himself hiding by trees, near headstones, and on the opposite side of the cemetery when it ventured away from the road towards him.

Charlie had a lot of time to think but not a lot of places to go to. He once tried to walk into town but couldn’t bring himself to step out of the graveyard. He thought of his family, his friends, his lost career, and everything he could have done with his life. He couldn’t bear to face it. His little plot in the Oakwood Cemetery was enough for him. When the shadow wasn’t near, it was peaceful, and sometimes the days stretched by where he felt as though he were resting.

He couldn’t rest in the rain. All he could do was wallow in the mud and wonder what everyone in his life was doing right at that moment. He didn’t want to go to them because they must have been so terribly sad and it was all his fault. He was also afraid that they weren’t sad at all and that would make him feel forgotten. Neither was a weight he could shoulder.

If he couldn’t go to them, what was he to do? What did ghosts do and why weren’t there more in the cemetery? He never believed in ghosts but weren’t cemeteries the natural place for them? He always thought so as a kid but there was no one there.

He slapped his hands into the mud in frustration and the giggles nearby cut out quickly. He looked towards the teenagers and they looked back, unseeing, across the rows of headstones. Charlie was stunned. They must have heard him. He slapped at the Earth again and again but the teenagers soon circled closer together around the oldest headstone in the cemetery. The only difference now was that they weren’t laughing anymore. They had only heard him once.

Charlie glanced from them to the crooked shadow and found large eyes on him. A hand slid down the trunk and it took a step towards him. Fear clutched at Charlie’s heart and he bolted. He ran right to the edge of the graveyard and looked back towards the shadow.

For the first time, he saw it blink. The bright eyes, like headlights, flashed then turned away. Once again, the teenagers were the focus of its attention. It used its bowed legs to get one tree closer to the group. They didn’t even flinch at his gaze.

“Don’t go near him,” a soft voice whispered near Charlie’s ear.

He jumped a foot off the ground and whirled towards the clump of trees behind him. Right along the road was a radiant woman in a long white dress. She had long blonde hair and a willowy figure. Her pale eyes reflected an infinite sadness back at him.

“Who are you?” Charlie gasped.

“Debbie,” she answered. Her voice was so gentle it was hard to hear. “I am trying to go home.”

“Where’s home?” he asked.

Debbie looked off down the road. The longer she looked, the more her body turned toward the shoulder where she could walk unhindered by the grass. Her hair and dress were untouched by the gusts of wind.

Frightened that he would be left alone again, Charlie asked, “Why haven’t I seen you here before?”

“I’m trying to go home,” Debbie repeated.

“I can’t go home,” Charlie confessed.

That got Debbie’s attention. She faced him again. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Come to mine then. If we get a ride, we’ll be there in no time. I just know it. Someone has to stop.”

“I can’t leave,” he told her.

Debbie nodded and her body shifted slightly towards the road. Suddenly, she shook her head hard and told Charlie flatly. “You can. The cemetery isn’t safe at night. The Keeper collects souls. I’ve seen it.”

“The Keeper?” Charlie asked.

Debbie nodded and looked past him. Charlie turned to see the crooked shadow watching him again. There was a scrape as one of its hands came away from the tree. The teenagers behind him whipped their faces towards the noise. A low growl came from the crooked shadow’s mouthless form and the teenagers screamed. They fled, umbrellas dropped behind them in their wake. A small candle burned on the grave they had once surrounded.

“Come,” Debbie’s wispy voice beckoned. She sounded so far away.

The shadow moved with those eyes fixed on Charlie. There was nothing he could do but force himself through the trees and out of sight. He fled further and further down the road. The further he got, the colder he felt.

When he finally crashed out of the treeline, he was half a mile down the road with The Keeper staring at him from the graveyard’s edge. Beside him, Debbie walked along the shoulder. She looked soaked to the bone in a way that he hadn’t noticed before. Her make-up was smeared and her hem had collected globs of mud.

“Debbie, wait,” he called when she passed him. She kept on walking. The Keeper didn’t move. All Charlie could do was follow her. Where else could he go?

Soon a car pulled up and stopped next to Debbie. The window rolled down and Debbie turned to look inside. A man called out, “It’s freezing! What are you doing walking out here like that?”

“I need to get home,” Debbie answered.

Charlie looked in to see his friend Chris in a superhero t-shirt. He hadn’t recognized the car but he couldn’t ever forget Chris’s freckled nose and thick beard. Charlie waved but his movement didn’t elicit any response. Chris’s concerned gaze was only for Debbie.

“Where do you live? I’ll take you there. You’re going to catch your death in this weather dressed like that. Where’s your coat?” Chris answered. He was always a good guy. Charlie’s heart warmed for him in the oppressive cold he felt around his non-existent skin.

“Just down the road,” Debbie told him simply.

“Get in,” Chris told her. “Show me where. Are you new in town?”

 Debbie got into the backseat of the car. Charlie saw a look of unease cross Chris’s features but he rolled up the car window and turned the dial on the heat for Debbie. Charlie hesitated to join them a moment too long. Chris pulled away and left Charlie on the side of the road with the woman in white in the backseat of his car. Debbie’s head and hair seemed to glow in the back window as they rolled further and further away. The cold left with Debbie and once again Charlie felt numb to his senses.

Charlie stood there for a long moment. He didn’t know what to do. Where did he go now? He looked back down the road and caught eyes on the edge of the cemetery property then he saw a black car roll up towards him. He didn’t move until the car stopped and its window rolled down.

He bent to look inside and found a redheaded woman in a collared blue dress. She looked strangely familiar but he couldn’t place her. She smiled at him and said, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you Charlie Tiller.”

“You know me?” he croaked in surprise.

“Of course I do,” she answered. “Where in the world have you been?”

“I’m dead,” he told her softly. His voice dripped with sadness. “I’ve been at the cemetery.”

“With The Keeper? You’re lucky he didn’t swallow you up!” she exclaimed. The door popped open without her ever touching it. Her hands stayed on the wheel and the interior light up with a soft white light. “I actually kind of suspected you were there. You always were set in your ideas, weren’t you? I’m not surprised it took a Lady in White to draw you out, on Halloween of all days. Come on, everyone’s waiting.”

“A lady in white?” he blinked. The story rushed back to him. The reason he thought ghosts stayed in cemeteries was because a cliched woman in white was spotted there beggaring rides every Halloween. Anyone unlucky enough to pick her up was said to find their car empty when they reached the farmhouse at the very end of the road. It was a children’s tale, sure, but how had he forgotten. He waved the thoughts away to be processed later and asked, “How do you know me?”

“I’m your great-grandma silly. I’ve come to take you home,” she laughed.

The more he thought about it, the more she looked like his mom and his grandma. He supposed she could be a relative of one of them but his great-grandma had passed years before he was born. He frowned at her and then back towards the town. He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t face his family’s grief over his own stupid mistake. He wouldn’t.

“I can’t go home,” he told her.

“Not to town,” she assured him. “You have a lot of family to meet, young man, and soon you’ll have a nephew to watch as I’ve watched you. Now get in here. You’ve picked Halloween of all days to leave the cemetery and your wasting time in the thin veil just standing there.”

Charlie stepped closer to the car. He could feel a soft, comfortable heat rolling out to meet him. The interior of the car was eggshell white, clean, and cozy. His hand reached out and he steadied himself on the door.

“How can I watch over a nephew if I couldn’t even wait out a train?” he asked, suddenly not doubting that she had watched over him as she had said. He didn’t doubt that she was there to take him home, to family, or that she had been looking for him. Instead, he wondered if he was even worthy. He felt like such a fool.

“You’ve waited weeks to leave the cemetery. Isn’t that punishment enough?” she soothed. “Come now. You don’t deserve to be eaten up by The Keeper. Who knows what he does to souls in there? Let Grandma Ruth take you home. It’s okay.”

Charlie glanced down the road at The Keeper’s eyes. They were watching, unfeeling, and unblinking. Charlie couldn’t go back. He couldn’t linger there anymore. At that moment, his only real choice was to get into the car.

Warmth engulfed him as he got in. The cushioned seat welcomed him and Ruth patted his hand. The door closed beside him and she told him, “We can only do so much, Charlie. We can only do so much for ourselves and others. Your time was your time and it’s time to go home.”

“Please take me there,” he answered. His voice was too choked with tears to rise above a whisper. He wiped at his cheeks and looked out the windshield to find a brilliant light.

Grandma Ruth gave his hand another loving pat and the car pulled forward. He was going home. He was going where he was meant to be all along and he finally knew it.

Just a few miles away, Chris stopped at the end of the road. It was a dead-end and his passenger had been silent for most of the trip. She just sat there, looking out the window and soaking his backseat in rainwater. There was a dilapidated farmhouse there and nothing else. He hadn’t known anyone to live there in the five years he’d lived in Mora. Frankly, it looked condemnable.

Confused, he turned around to face his passenger and found his backseat empty but for a wet patch on the seat. His heart hammered in his chest and looked around wildly. The woman was gone and nowhere to be seen. He didn’t hear her get out and he didn’t see her outside.

Spooked, Chris pulled a tight u-turn that nearly put him in the ditch and sped back toward town. He chided himself the whole way for picking up a hitchhiker, especially near the cemetery. He went to drive by while paying some respects to Charlie and got himself caught up in playing the hero. He would never make that mistake again, not after that Halloween and not after the ribbing his friends gave him for his addition to the local tales of the woman in white.