The Girl on the Glider (7 page)

    I got out of bed and ran across the house, yelling-I don’t know what I was hollering. It was just nonsense-words. Panic-speak. The language of fear.

    As I ran down the hall, I spotted Sam. He was sitting outside of the baby’s room, unable to get through the door because of the security-gate we have placed in front of it. His back was arched and his ears and tail were flat. He wasn’t barking or growling. Instead, he was whining-a fearful, pitiful sound that scared me even more. This wasn’t a fucking hallucination, because the dog and the baby were all experiencing it, too.

    I opened the gate and Sam pushed past me and barreled into the room. I was right behind him. The baby looked at us, smiled and then clapped his hands.

    “Hi, Da-Da! Hi, Dog-Dog! Hi!”

    The room was empty and dark, save for the night light glowing on the dresser. There were no orbs of light, hovering or otherwise. I shivered, and then realized that I was cold. No, it wasn’t just me. It was the room. My son reached for me, and I bent over and picked him up. He snuggled up against me, lovingly, trying to burrow into my chest. Normally, that’s one of the most wonderful and sweet feelings in the world, but this time, it barely registered with me. Sam nosed around the crib, sniffing furiously, his Beagle-genetics working overtime to catch a scent. Holding the baby tight, I checked the little thermometer hanging above the changing table. Sam began sniffing the rest of the room. According to the thermometer, it was fifty degrees in the baby’s room. That couldn’t be right. I had the heater set to seventy-three throughout the house. As if to confirm this, it kicked on while I stood there staring dumbly at the wall. Warm air blew out of the floor vent, bathing my bare feet. I carried the baby (who was now wide-awake) out of the room and checked the thermostat in the living room. According to it, the house was at seventy-three degrees.

    We walked back down the hall, and I shut the door to the baby’s room. Then I sat him down on the floor in the kitchen to play while I got some things together. I grabbed his diaper bag and changed his diaper there on the floor. Then I got dressed and rounded up the baby and the dog and took them both out to the car. I strapped the baby into his car seat. The dog sat next to him, tongue lolling, his ears back up, his eyes wide with excitement. Sam loves to ride in the car, but a midnight ride with the baby in tow was something new for him. I started the car and left the engine running so that it would warm up inside. Then I went back into the house.

    When I walked through the door, I gasped. The baby’s train was singing, “Chugga chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.”

    Next to it, the baby’s Elmo doll was chattering in that all-too-recognizable-to-all-parents high-pitched voice, asking me for a hug. And beneath the sound of both, I heard that phantom cell phone beeping in my son’s room.

    “What do you want?” I shouted, staring around the living room. “What the fuck do you want from us?”

    “Can you give me a hug, please?” Elmo asked.

    “Chugga Chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.”

    My hands curled into fists at my sides. “You leave my fucking son alone! Do you hear me? Get the fuck out of here and leave us alone!”

    Everything stopped.

    Somehow, that was even more frightening.

    I grabbed the cat (she was hiding beneath the coffee table and when I picked her up, I felt her little heart hammering against my palm). Then I carried her outside, put her in the car with the dog and the baby, and we drove around for the rest of the night. The baby fell asleep. The dog and the cat rode in silence. I listened to Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory and a Howard Stern re-play and tried to keep my hands from shaking.

    Near dawn, I pulled into my parents’ driveway. It was their day to watch the baby, but normally, I don’t bring him to their house until 8 a.m. It wasn’t even six yet. When Mom asked why we were there so early, I told her that he’d had trouble sleeping and I’d resorted to driving him around all night. It was as close to the truth as I wanted to get.

    I crashed in my old room in a bed that no longer fits me, and when I woke up later, I asked my parents if they’d enjoy it if the baby and I spent the night. They said they would.

    I didn’t go back home until Cassi returned three days later.

    

    

    That takes us back up to the present. Or at least a close proximity of the present. After the baby monitor incident, things quieted down again. I still heard the occasional beeping sound. The baby still looked at the top of the driveway and waved hello. I still had the dreams once in a while, and Cassi was still uncomfortable smoking on the deck at night. But the glider didn’t rock anymore, at least, not that I’d seen. There were no floating orbs. No “Chugga Chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.” No Elmo asking me for a hug.

    I didn’t tell anyone about what happened. I didn’t want them to think I was crazy.

    And here we are. When I started writing this diary, I was forty-one, and as I finish it, I’ve been forty-two for a few months. Other than that, not much has changed.

    It is December 19, 2009, and as I type this, the Mid-Atlantic is in the midst of one mean motherfucker of a snowstorm. Earlier, I took a yardstick outside of my office and measured the accumulation. In the non-drift areas, we have twelve inches of snow. The National Weather Service is predicting we could have a lot more. I think they’re right, since the snow shows no signs of abating. On Twitter, Dave Thomas (my sometimes assistant, better known to the world as Meteornotes) called this DEATH STORM 2009. I think that’s a good name for it. I think it’s fine and proper and has a beautiful ring to it.

    But then again, I’m on a death trip.

    My neighbor and I have been taking turns plowing the driveway with his snow-blower. On my last trip up to the top of the driveway, I noticed that the cross was no longer there. I know it was there yesterday, because I see it every time I go up for the mail. But some time early this morning, a snowplow hit it, along with the guardrail. There are a few little pieces of wood scattered amongst the snow drifts on the side of the road, but the rest of the cross is gone. I wonder if, when the snow melts and winter passes, will the victim’s family return and put up a new memorial to remember her by? Or do they remember her in other ways? Or is her memory beginning to fade?

    Yesterday, after poking around online again and coming up empty (Google can tell me the average annual rainfall for Botswana, but it can’t tell me who died at the top of my driveway), I decided that it was time to get serious about this whole thing. One of the benefits of having freelanced for the
York Dispatch
in the past is that I still have access to their clippings library and archives. I once featured that archival room in a novel,
Ghost Walk
. In real life, it’s pretty much like I described it in the book. There is row upon row of massive filing cabinets, filled with clippings from the paper. They are arranged by alphabetical category and span decades of history-going back all the way to the paper’s inception. The really old stuff is on microfilm, rather than paper, and there’s some talk of digitizing the whole collection, but that costs money and newspapers are making about as much money as mid-list horror writers these days.

    I drove to the newspaper’s office, which is located in downtown York City, told the girl at the door who I was, and then went downstairs to the archives. Things hadn’t changed since my previous visit (I’d last been there about a year and a half ago, doing research for an aborted non-fiction book on powwow magic). A few staffers recognized me, and I exchanged pleasantries and made small talk. Then I got to work.

    It took me about twenty minutes to find what I was looking for. I pulled out a file, flipped through the clippings till I found the date, and there she was.

    The girl on the glider.

    Staring up at me from the past.

    Her family had provided the newspaper with her senior photo. In it, she was smiling. I wondered what she was thinking about when it was taken. All of those possibilities that lay ahead on the road of life? The future must have seemed wide open. Little had she known, when the picture was snapped, that the road of life detoured into an embankment at the top of my driveway just a year later, and that none of those dreams or possibilities would ever come to pass.

    We go through the days thinking we have our whole lives ahead of us. We put off things until tomorrow. We spend time consumed with work and obsessed with making enough money to provide for our loved ones, but in that pursuit, we sacrifice spending time with the very people we’re working to support. I spend all of my days writing. That’s all I fucking do. From eight in the morning until five or six at night. Write. Write. Write. Hope someone sends a check on time. Write. Write. Write some more. And at what cost? Sure, my family has a roof over their heads, but if I found out tomorrow that these tumors are no longer benign, and I only had a week to live, would it have been worth it? Would I then contact Mike and Nate and tell them that, instead of finishing whatever stupid novel is left on my computer, they spend time playing with my son instead, because I didn’t have time to finish doing that either? Would I ask them to pay more attention to my wife for me, because I’d been unable to do so?

    There are things I want to do in life. I want to have hobbies again. I want to become a backyard astronomer and take up amateur photography and fish in my trout stream more often. I want to ask my kids how their day was and rub my wife’s feet every night and take the dog for a long walk each and every day, rain or shine. I want to spend more time with my parents, and tell them that I appreciate them and that they are loved. I want to do all of these things, but I never do. I put them off until tomorrow, so sure that I’ll get them done… eventually.

    But eventually doesn’t always happen. The girl on the glider had dreams, too. She had things she wanted to do. I stood there, flipping through the file. There were three articles about the accident. The first simply recounted the accident details, including statements from the State Police and the County Coroner. The second was the follow-up article that I was reading. The third was her obituary. I read them all, and got to know her. I learned about her dreams and wishes and desires. She’d put them all off for whatever reason, figuring they’d happen eventually… and then she died unexpectedly at the top of my driveway.

    After I’d finished, I put the file away and left the building and came back home. The sky was overcast and gray. Death Storm 2009 was approaching. I wondered what I should do next. I couldn’t very well go to her parents, could I? Just show up and knock on their door and say, “Hi, I’m Brian Keene. The guy who writes those books? I’m sorry to bother you, but your daughter has been haunting my house this past year, and I was wondering if you could ask her to stop? I think she might not know that she’s dead. She seems to be trying to contact someone. Have you received any weird text messages lately?” They’d have me arrested. Or shoot me. Or both.

    I decided to do a little magic. I’ve written enough about it that I know the basics. The most important part of magic, regardless of which discipline you’re practicing, is the act of naming. Names are power. If you know something’s true name, it gives you power over it.

    I walked to the top of the driveway. The sun had just gone down and the road was extremely dark. There was very little traffic, on account of the impending snowstorm. I stood there, shivering, hands in my pockets, and stared at the spot where the accident had occurred. Without really knowing what I was going to say, I began to speak out loud.

    “Hi. My name is Brian. Now you know my name. I know your name, too. I found it today. Your name is… I’m really sorry for what happened to you. I’ve got this theory that maybe you’re feeling a little lost. Maybe a little lonely? Maybe you’re not sure where your friends went? Maybe you keep texting them, but nobody is calling you back.”

    I paused. The wind rustled the trees.

    “Did you ever watch
The X-Files
? I don’t know, maybe that was before your time. Maybe your parents dug it, though. I was a big fan of the show There was this one episode where Agent Mulder is hiding out on an Indian reservation, and one of the characters quotes an old Native American saying: ‘Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it.’ I’m not sure how that applies to this situation, but I’m certain that your parents and your friends remember you.”

    I paused again, glancing around to make sure that no one was listening. I didn’t need one of my neighbors going, “Oh, look. Keene is standing at the top of the driveway talking to imaginary people.”

    When I was sure we were alone, I continued.

    “I think you were sent here to teach me something. I think maybe that’s why you can’t pass on. See, I’m an agnostic when it comes to all of this spiritual stuff. I’ve tried Christianity and Buddhism and every other kind of ‘anity’ and ‘ism’ but at the end of the day, I lack faith-and faith is what is required of any belief system. I want to believe that there’s something after this. I want very badly to believe in an afterlife, but I haven’t been able to. Until now. I don’t know what you are. You might be a ghost or a spirit. You might be conscious. You might just be an echo of time-a psychic after-effect. Or maybe you’re just in my head. I don’t know. But I know that I now believe. So I want to thank you for that. You’ve shown me that a part of us-some vital part of what makes us who we truly are-lives on after our death. I don’t have to rely on a literary legacy of books for people to remember me after I’m gone. I don’t have to bust my ass cranking out one pulp novel after another just to insure that I live on. Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. If I get my shit together and change my ways, I’ll live on in the memory of my kids and my grandkids and those whose lives I’ve touched in some way.”