Archive for the ‘Unanchored’ Category
Unanchored (Part Three)
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
For parts one and two of this story please visit my author archives or click here:
http://www.dailycabal.com/2009/12/unanchored/
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Belinda and I walked along Merrick Road. Passing the site of the where the old Cajun man’s shoe repair store had been I felt a pang. I had only been away a day but now I knew I could never touch anything here again.
The ghost of the old Cajun man was sitting on the bus stop bench outside the house with the telephone pole with flower wreath on it making motions like he was feeding the pigeons. The birds poked in the sidewalk cracks looking for anything edible.
“His name is Roland,” Belinda said. “Call to him.”
My pang worsened. I didn’t know where it was I was feeling it. There was no “me” left to have a pang in the gut. I had been shopping in this man’s store for years and I did not know his name. The dentist’s office and chain store sandwich shop, which now stood in the stores place, added an unsightly insult to my injury.
“Call to him,” Belinda repeated. “He needs you. He is too far gone for me to reach him.”
“Roland?” I asked. “Hello. How are you today?”
As he looked up the pigeons took flight in a disturbed flutter.
“You can see me, mon cherie?” he said. “I never knew you knew my name.”
“Ask him to come to you. Take his hand,” Belinda said.
I slowly extended my palm.
“You must be lonely,” I said. “Come.”
He stood, walked over to me, and took my hand.
As his fingers closed around mine Belinda removed her crystal rod from her pocket and waved it in the air. Roland, Belinda and I disappeared and reappeared in the cave. Men and women in trench coats like Belinda surrounded Roland. With crystal rods they directed him, like an errant cattle to a dark alcove of the cave. Roland ambled into the darkness with a strange obedience. There was a flash of light and I knew he was gone. Where I did not know.
“Why did you do that?” I screamed.
“We were only helping,” Belinda said. From the look on her face I knew she was lying. They were only helping themselves and using me, I realized. But why? I only knew it had to stop. It had to stop now.
-End of Part Three-
Unanchored ( Part Two)
Monday, January 25th, 2010
For part one of this story please visit my author archives or click here:
http://www.dailycabal.com/2009/12/unanchored/
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We materialized inside a cave bustling with activity. Men and women in trench coats worked at desks and pointed at dots on giant glass screens at various points within the spacious cavern. A few ghosts, like me were at the sides of some of the operatives.
“Belinda Shepard,” the woman in the trench coat said. “This is our center of operations.”
“Operations?” I asked.
“Anchoring. Anchoring the lost. Like you were.”
I wanted to ask how but looking at the crystal rod in her hand, I remembered. I remembered the car crash in front of the old house, the medics taking my body away, the mourners placing flowers at the telephone pole. I hadn’t believed I had died. Or maybe it was the mourner’s grief that bound me, but I stayed and I wandered. Shopping. The bank. The salon. The supermarket. Up and down the street in a pantomime of my old life. Until Belinda woke me.
“I hope you’ll consider working with us. As my partner,” Belinda said. “You have one foot in our world and one in the hereafter. This can be very useful in our line of work.”
The glass screens were full of images. Cemeteries. Suburban streets. Ordinary people in the motions of their lives. Ambulances and car accidents. Were these all unanchored?
“Why me,” I asked. “I just want to…”
I realized didn’t know what I wanted. And I didn’t know what to say.
“You weren’t the only one who died in that car crash,” Belinda said. “Help me. Help me save them.”
For a moment I feared it might have been my children who had perished, but I remembered I had never married and never had any. How much more of me had I forgotten? How much more of me had already washed away? Then I heard the rich Cajun chuckle of the man in the old building. I had been on my way to his shop to pick up a pair of shoes when… when I crashed. Right into his shop.
“He’s still out there,” Belinda said. “Join me. Together we can anchor him and bring him where he needs to be.”
I wanted to help. I really did. It felt like the right thing to do. But this place. This cave. All these operatives. There was a lot more going on than Belinda was telling me. Helping her seemed the quickest way to find out.
-End of Part Two-