OK, I shouldn’t be weirded out on my own birthday any more than anyone else should be. But I’m beginning to think that maybe Dr. Sutter and Dr. Rubin were right back at the psycho ward when they said I was some kinda crazy. To tell you the truth, I’m starting to think that either I am certifiably batshit or I can do more than just see, hear and talk to ghosts.
That Coffey dude offered me a lift back to my house but I thanked him and said I’d rather hang with my friends. So we boarded a bit, some of them wished me a happy birthday and Ramon, one of the kids who was at Clarissa’s party, the one who fell flat on his face, even gave me a digital audio recorder so I could record some ghosts for him. At first, it seemed like a selfish thing for him to do but then I started looking at it from his point of view. Ghost Hunters on the Sci Fi Channel helped clue a lotta people into the facts and theories of the paranormal. So now fans of the show know the lingo and about EVP’s and shit like that. So I took Ramon’s present and thanked him.
Eventually, I decided to leave the park. Since I lost my iPhone and my folks had no way of reaching me, I guessed if I didn’t head home right then I’d get an earful. Just ‘cuz it’s your birthday doesn’t mean that it’s all about you. When people spend money, time and energy puttin’ your party together, it eventually becomes all about them.
I was rolling on a dip in the street on the way back home when I heard a woman scream. It was 3 o’clock and I remember the time ‘cuz my watch’s alarm went off right then to remind me to be home by three like my folks said. I stepped on the back of my board and came to a sudden stop and listened.
“No, no! Please! Don’t!”
It was definitely a chick, one who was scared shitless like she was about to get the crap knocked out of her or something. I picked up my board and walked toward an alley near where her screaming was coming from.
“Oh, God, no! Please don’t!”
I looked around for a cop and nodded to myself. “Yep, when you really need one, where the fuck are they?” I turned around and looked into the alley again, already freaking out over what I’d find.
“N-n-no!” Louder, more frightened. Shit, I couldn’t not do anything. I walked in and yelled, “Hey! What’s the fuck’s goin’ on in there? I’ve got a cop with me!” Right. Like anyone with half a brain would fall for that. Then I saw her behind a dumpster.
She was a young black lady, maybe in her early-mid twenties, flat on her back and she was beating and kicking like she was having a seizure or something but I didn’t see anyone else there.
“Hey, are you alright, Miss? What’s the matter?” She kept her eyes fixed on something or someone that was right on top of her and she ignored me like I wasn’t even there. And, in a way, I wasn’t.
I walked over to where she was struggling, looking around again and kneeled down to her and my hand went through her shoulder to the wet pavement. She never looked at me or gave any sign of my presence. It was just like… Oh, shit, I thought, this is a residual haunting. Finally her arms and legs almost stopped moving as if two pairs of invisible restraints like they use in the mental ward were put over them. Her arms seemed to be held back over her head like someone was forcing them down. Then her skirt shot up over her waist by itself. If this was a residual haunting of a rape and I could see her and not the dude doing it, that meant she was murdered.
One of the suckiest things about being in my position is that when you see shit like this going down, you feel so damned helpless. You have to see people in their last moments on earth and you know there isn’t a fucking thing you can do to help them. You can’t even comfort them as they keep replaying what’s probably the most horrible moment in their life. This woman was raped and killed and I seemed to recall something like this happening about five, six years ago. The police never solved it.
I yelled, “Stop it!” even though I knew damned good and well that no one in this ghostly snuff film could hear me. I had no idea if she was raped by one guy or gang-raped. My hands pawed at the air over her body, hoping to grab hold of whoever was hurting her. The sense of being totally useless was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. It was like trying to fight history, something that had already gone down, literally fighting ghosts.
She kept screaming when her panties began to tug down by themselves and I remembered Ramon’s digital recorder so I whipped it out and hit the “record” button. What the fuck else could I do? I was hoping maybe if her voice came out on the tape, she’d give a clue as to who raped and killed her. Then I’d get labeled a nut job by the Braintree PD after telling them where it came from. Finally a cut developed across her throat and blood began spraying on me. No, not on me. Through me like I was the ghost and not her, landing on the pavement. Her legs began kicking again but her movements just got slower and slower until finally she lay still staring up into the sky.
I was shaking even worse than I did when I saw that Bruley dude hang himself in the bathroom because this wasn’t something involving one person who made a really fucked up choice. This was a murder, plain and simple, the most brutal kind. It didn’t matter much to me if this was live or Memorex. It’s still traumatizing no matter how old the crime.
I looked around the alley just in case I could catch a ghostly glimpse of her murderer then when I looked down, she was gone. I played the tape back and, I’ll be fucked runnin’, her voice came out almost as clear as mine. I didn’t think Ramon would be hearing this one. It would give him more nightmares than even I usually have.
I walked out of the alleyway and my watch’s alarm went off. I lifted my wrist to my face and my watch said it was 3 o’clock. Again. What the fuck? How’s that possible? That’s not supposed to happen with a digital watch, hell, any watch. Clocks and watches aren’t supposed to run backwards.
If I didn’t know any better, and maybe I didn’t, I’d swear that I regained whatever time I spent in the alley.
Laura, Mr. and Mrs. Moss, Rabbi Green and several family friends all yelled, “SURPRISE!” when Adam came through the door, even though it was anything but a surprise. In fact, he’d already seen the garland that said “Happy 18th Birthday, Adam!” that stretched across the hallway and even watched them blow up the personalized Mylar balloons that said basically the same thing. His family had sprung for a half sheet cake of his favorite - Chocolate with whipped cream frosting. Yet, no sooner than the echo from the greeting died down Adam slammed the front door shut and ran upstairs as if they weren’t there. A second later, his bedroom door slammed shut.
A stunned silence took hold over the hallway then Mr. and Mrs. Moss began making embarrassed apologies to Rabbi Green and the others. His mother was about to go upstairs with a full head of steam when Laura interceded and said, “I’ll talk to him, Ma. You stay down here and keep the guests entertained."
For an eerie moment, Laura felt like Arbogast, the Martin Balsam character in Psycho as he made his slow climb to mortality up the stairs to Mrs. Bates’ room. She knew her kid brother wasn’t into murdering people while wearing Mom’s dresses and, despite her horrible new hairstyle, she didn’t even own a wig. Still, she had no idea what she’d find that would explain Adam’s extraordinary rudeness. She knocked on his door.
“Adam? It’s me, Honey. May I come in?”
“Go away,” came the strained response.
She came in, anyway. Why don’t people ever listen and just go away when they’re asked to? It’s just like when you tell someone not to look down and they do it anyway. It doesn’t matter if they’re scared of heights. The idiots will always look down knowing damned good and well it’ll freak them the fuck out.
“Adam, what’s going on? You knew we were throwing a party for you. I mean, forget about Mom, Dad and me. Rabbi Green and the Goldens are down there.”
“I don’t care!” I said.
“Jesus Christ, you’re crying. Adam, what happened? Are they back again?” I told my sister that Clarissa came by last night while leaving out the part about my cherry maybe, maybe not getting popped and that I was given a breather from the Others.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Laura.” But I told her anyway, as briefly as possible, trying to keep the fucked up image of her throat getting cut all by itself. I couldn’t do it. It’s like when something violent and traumatic happens to you and these flashbacks keep arriving in front of your eyes and you can’t control it. It’s sort of like that. I left out the part about regaining the five minutes because I didn’t know what to make of or if I was hallucinating that, too.
“You know, Adam, solitude’s rarely the way to go when you experience something traumatizing.” I ignored her. I really, truly, didn’t want to relive it by talking about that lady’s rape and murder and I resented Laura for making do that. “OK, you don’t have to discuss it any more. But let me tell you a story about something that happened to me when I first became a field agent after my training. Okay?” I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my hood and nodded like I didn’t give a rat’s ass about her story because I didn’t.
She walked to the far side of my room and sat backwards on my computer chair so the back was against her chest. Laura sometimes does masculine things like that. Maybe she does it to make an impact on people that she interrogates, considering she does that for a living. She thought for a bit before she started talking.
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