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Ghosts: True Hauntings In MontanaBy David Francis Curran
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Copyright©1986 D. F. Curran. All Rights Reserved.
Brautigan, Richard, A Pilgrimage, August 1982
On July 16th, I was jogging through the cemetery by Evergreen Street, thinking of Pam, when I saw this strange tombstone. Gasping for air, I shuffled over. The tombstone was earth-colored marble carved to look something like a mailbox with a wide slot just above the name.
Her name was Wendy Paterson. There was a deep finality about the carved letters and numbers that told me she had been just a few years younger than me and that she'd died just six weeks before. I noticed, then, that the mound was a bit higher than its neighbors, the grass the slightly greener color of a newer grave. I stepped back for a moment, in shock, as if suddenly learning that a good friend had died. I didn't know her, couldn't recall her name. I'm a chemical engineering student. I hardly ever read newspapers. Still, I felt a strange, uneasy curiousity just the same. As slight breeze rustled the green leaves above me, I read the words just above the slot.
"I've died so young, I've hardly had a chance to live, to touch, to be. If you have a message for me, please leave it here. I'll hold it dear."
Her parents, someone, had spent a good bit of money on the thing, corny poetry and all. Kneeling, I peered into the slot, my right hand touching the upper part of the stone. The deep cold of the marble drained the warmth from my hand. As the sun was just right, I could see within the chisled letter slot the already weathered portions of two envelopes, one partially covering the other. For an instant I felt sorry for her.
Finally, catching my breath, and thinking how odd people could be, I continued jogging and went back to thinking of Pam.
Pam had left me in April. I had always been shy and slightly frightened by women. Pam had picked me up, became my girlfriend and then, without warning, dumped me for someone else. Because of her, I was spending too much of the limited money my Aunt Jane had left me for my education on beer. And I knew I had to stop.
The drinking had gotten so bad, that sometimes I'd wake in the morning hungover and be terrified because I couldn't remember much at all about the night before. On those mornings, I'd creep to the window and, with my head throbbing, peer out to see if I'd gotten the car back, and if it was in one piece. That's why I didn't have the car now.
Over the next few days I couldn't get the mailbox, or Wendy Paterson, out of my mind. I wondered what she had looked like, what she had cared about, how she had died.
Now, I knew I could have checked the old local newspapers or asked around among my friends. But, because I was feeling very shy of people, I decided to do a private thing. I wrote her a note:
Wendy,
I sure wish I had had a chance to meet you. Well, perhaps somewhere else in time.
Best,
Josh
I took it the next day on my jog. I had to linger in the cemetery for quite a while. Some old lady, fussing over flowers she was putting on another grave, kept eyeing me. Finally, she left. I waited a little longer until the traffic on Evergreen cleared, then ran over and dropped the note into Wendy's mailbox- like tombstone. It made a soft rustling sound as it landed.
Nothing happened for three long, drinkless, weeks: weeks in which I grew stronger, weeks in which I did my summer reading, weeks in which I thought less and less of Pam. I hadn't expected anything to happen, but then there was, along with my mother's latest harangue about my car in her garage, this thin little lavender envelope, smelling faintly of lilacs, in my mailbox. I knew, before even looking at the return address, what it was. There was a note attached from the postmaster that said it had been recovered from the home of a local youth who had been arrested for ransacking mailboxes. The date on it was the previous May 14th.
Dear Josh,
I'll bet you don't know it, but we have a mutual friend in Dave Wilcox. In fact, I believe we were at a party together at his house not too long ago, but I didn't get to meet you. He told me that you and I share a similar interest in Iroquois false face masks. I wondered if you might like to get together and compare notes. Let me know. My number is 555-6957.
Sincerely,
Wendy
Dave was an English major and a friend. I had known him for a year. I vaguely remembered discussing my interest in false face masks with him at a party in my apartment. I thought her mention of the false face mask ironic. I really only had one. It was a brave's mask, called "Spoonmouth", painstakingly carved out of basswood by a man named Winding River of the Shon-e-on-aka. The wooden, horsehaired mask had always seemed to have a hauntingly magical quality. It had horns, a bulging mouth and shadowy grooves arranged in a countenance designed to drive away evil spirits. The evil spirits this mask was supposed to drive away were those that caused an unhappiness of the heart. I couldn't think of anything more unhappy than somebody dying.
But, then, I began to wonder if it wasn't all some sort of tasteless prank. Had Dave set me up? I thought about that, and knew I'd have to find out.
Taking a flashlight with me that afternoon, I walked over to the cemetery . The cemetery was deserted and the street empty. Bending down, I clicked on the light and shined it into the slot. My note was still there as were the others and all looked undisturbed.
Still, I was sure that Dave had been playing a joke on me, and I was angry.
"What-ta can I do for ya?" Dave said, making himself comfortable on the opposite end of a stained, white, red-flowered, winged couch in his living room. Dave's lips perched open at the end of his sentence in a sort of smirking O. Despite the fact that he was only 21, Dave's brown hair was already receeding. He wore glasses with wire frames.
"I want you to tell me about Wendy Paterson," I said, looking him in the eyes. "You see, I put a note in her tombstone, and then I got this," Josh handed him the letter and the note from the postmaster, "and I wondered if maybe you were playing a little joke on me?"
Dave read the letter quickly, his arrogant look disappearing as he did. He swallowed. After a moment he said, "She was just a girl I met in a drama class." Then he said nothing for a long time; his thick hairy hands moving nervously, he turned, looking out the window.
"Listen, man, if this is some kind of joke, I don't appreciate it," I said, jumping up. "I mean, if you've been going through the letters in Wendy's tombstone and fooling around with sending out letters from her now...."
Dave whirled around, his eyes wild, and for an instant I thought he was going to hit me. And then I saw that the look in Dave's eyes was a deeply pained one.
"I don't know if somebody was playing a joke on you, man." He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. "But it wasn't me."
Dave paused for a moment and then continued.
"I met her last spring in a dramatic speaking class I'd signed up for. I was reading one of my own stories and was as nervous as hell, and I really flubbed it. The teacher verbally cut me to ribbons in front of everybody, and I was so embarrassed I was determined to drop out.
"But, after class, this petite redhead comes up to me and says, 'You wrote that yourself, didn't you?'
"'Yeah,' I said. 'But you don't have to worry about having to listen to me anymore, because I'm dropping out.'"
"'Oh, don't do that. I know your reading didn't go well,' she says, ' but I really liked your story. You're really talented. And you were just nervous today. I'm sure you'll do better when you get used to it....'
"I fell in love with her after that. The next class it was her turn to read. She had this book by a G. Green called THE ARTISTS OF TEREZIN. It was a book of poems and drawings by children in that Nazi concentration camp. She explained that most of the children whose work she was about to read had died there. But she said that she liked the poems, because, with what all those children were suffering, they still had hope. And then she began reading and the voices of those tortured children came alive. She had almost the entire class in tears.
"We went out a few times, but she decided that she and I weren't meant to be. She let me down easy, although she made it clear we could only be friends."
Walking over to a bookcase on the northern wall Dave pulled out a play program and handed it to me. Then he walked over to the window and held the curtain. There was a black and white photo of her and a young man on the cover of the program. I remembered the girl in costume from Dave's party. In the photo, she looked like she might be in love with the boy beside her.
"I still saw her from time to time, as often as I could. And I went to see all her plays. She was a fantastic actress. You should have seen her as Juliet. But we saw less of each other this last spring. And then she ended up being a hit and run. Some drunk probably...."
Dave took his glasses off and openly rubbed the tears from his eyes. If somebody was playing a prank, I decided it wasn't Dave.
"I'd better be going," I said, "thanks."
"Hey," he said, walking over, "I'm pretty sure the post office note about a looter is on the up and up. Because I remember she did ask about you. I did tell her about your false face mask."
"You did?"
"Yeah, but one thing. I'm sure she didn't have any false face masks back then. And she told me she was interested in meeting you."
I wanted to believe Dave. Or had it all been a joke? Dave's, "Some drunk probably...," haunted me. I'd driven drunk. When I needed more beer, I'd hit the road no matter what my condition. That's why my car was down at my Mom's. That's why I was trying to quit. Had somebody, some enemy, figured a way to torture me? No, it didn't make any sense, but just to make sure, I called the post office. I was assured there had been some letters recovered from the home of a mailbox looter. The man at the post office checked a list of victims. My name was on the list of recovered letters.
For days after that I couldn't get Wendy out of my mind. Finally, I slipped another note into her mailbox. This letter had a single hair sealed in one corner under the glue of the flap. Anyone steaming it open would never be able to replace it exactly.
Wendy,
I really would like to meet you, if you can tell me when.
Best,
Josh
Her second letter, with the same post office explanation for the long delay before delivery, arrived two days later. I called the post office. Yes, they informed him, the first mailbox looter had fingered an accomplice and more mail was found in his home. But I waited to open her letter until I was sure.
As I couldn't think of any other way to get it out, I used a piece of gum at the end of a long wire. I didn't care who saw me. My second envelope was still sealed and the hair obviously untouched. I dropped my envelope back in the slot and then opened her's. It was dated exactly three weeks after the first letter. The day before she died.
Dear Josh,
It's been a while without hearing from you, and I've decided to be honest. Women are supposed to be able to do this these days, so I'm going to give it a shot. But it's not easy. I find you attractive, and I would like to get to know you. I do have one false face mask. But I bought it just as an excuse to meet you.
I've enclosed a picture, so you can see what I look like. And it's okay if you don't want to meet me. I won't call or bother you. But I will set up a meeting to make it easy. I'm mailing this today, so you should get it tomorrow. So, it will be "today" when you get this. I hope that's not confusing. I'll meet you "tonight" at the corner of Evergreen and Holmes at 9:30. (I don't get off until 9:00.) And I'll understand if you're not there.
Sincerely,
Wendy
In color she looked much more fragile than she had in the black and white of the yearbook. I remembered something more about the party. I had been getting a drink, and she had come up to me and said, "Hi!" I had said, "Hi," and then because she was so pretty and I was shy, I had not talked to her.
But what did the letter's arrival mean? Was I supposed to wait for a ghost "tonight"? I thought about it for a while. And then a terrible vision hit me. It was the kind of nightmare that a drunk fears more than anything else -- the unveiling of something horrible done during a blackout. And, because the blacked out portions of my mind were a guilty vacuum, able to suck in any horror, I had no idea if it was real or not. Suddenly, I saw her face, full of fear, in front of my moving car.
It took me a few hours to hitch to my folks'. I didn't bother stopping at the house to talk to my Mom. I went directly to the old garage where I'd parked the yellow '67 Mustang, a few weeks ago. The circumstances of the day I'd taken it there were as horribly fogged in my memory as the night that had preceeded it. And ever since Mom had been pestering me to come and talk about it. I stood before the gray and white painted wood of the swinging doors, fumbling for the key for the doors, fearing what I'd find inside. I saw Wendy's face in front of the car. I felt and heard a terrible dull thud. The front wheel lurched, rolling over something, then the rear, and then I was speeding away.
I threw open the doors and looked down in self-judgement on the front bumper of the car. The doors banged against the side of the garage. A leaf blew up against the bumper. The bumper was clean and whole and its slightly rusty self. I put my face in my hands and thanked God.
To Mom's delight, I convinced her that I had stopped drinking, and she let me drive the car back. I arrived at the corner of Evergreen and Holmes at nine. As if on cue, as I stood by the cemetery gate not far from where the mailbox-like tombstone stood, a fog rolled in. It blanketed the stones and road, and I could only see a few feet in any direction.
Nine-thirty came and went with nothing more than a few cars passing by. I waited patiently in the mist. While waiting, I had a chance to think. She had died the day she was to meet me. Was it early in the day? Had it happened when she was coming to meet me? Or had she been leaving, heartbroken and embarrassed, because I hadn't shown up? Suddenly a new weight of guilt clamped down on me.
I had just said a prayer, begging for a chance, to talk to her somehow, when I heard the soft sound of steps coming, coming toward me from the cemetery. I looked up beyond the fence, beyond her tombstone and cemetery path, and for a few moments could see nothing. I could only hear the sound of ever approaching feet, light feet, a woman's feet. And then there was a figure in the fog. It was gray and it was small and it was coming toward me rapidly. I blinked for a moment and grasped the fence tightly.
"Hi," said a voice. Its owner was an older woman in a gray jogging outfit. As she rounded the entrance to the cemetery she added, "Sure got foggy all of a sudden, didn't it?"
I couldn't reply.
When I went home, I consoled myself that Wendy hadn't stood me up really. Her mailbox tombstone was within sight all the time. But, that didn't relieve my new feeling of guilt. When had she died? I kept hoping that she had not been killed after waiting unsuccessfully for me.
There was only one way to resolve it. The next morning I went down to the morgue at the newspaper. The papers weren't that old and were easy to find. My hand's shook as my long thin fingers turned the pages. Finally, I found it. It was in the paper the day after she died.
STUDENT VICTIM OF HIT AND RUN
A twenty-year-old coed died last evening, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run. The victim, Wendy Paterson, of 29 University Place, was found in the center of Evergreen St. at 11 p.m. by a passing motorist who called an ambulance. According to police, she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness. Police estimate that the accident occurred somewhere between 9 p.m and 10 p.m. and urge anyone with any information to call...
I felt cheated. There was, it seemed, no way to solve the problem. And yet it tormented me. I needed to know, to have a bit more of her; I finally decided to go and see her parents.
Darryl and Marilyn Paterson were small people: he was about 5' 6" and she 5' 4". In in that lovely deep brown carpeted living room where I met them, they seemed as fragile as a reassembled pane of broken glass. The loss of their only daughter had broken them.
Mrs. Paterson clung to her husband while he said, "What can we do for you, son?"
"Sir, Mrs. Paterson," I said, "I'm terribly sorry about your daughter's death." There were tears in my eyes. "The thing is, I think she may have been waiting for me when she died. And I didn't even know she was there."
"I don't understand," Mrs. Paterson said. There was a quiet, understandable reserve in her voice, as if she didn't know what to make of me.
I handed them the envelopes, with the postmaster's notes, and the letters. I told them about my putting notes in her tombstone.
They seemed relieved and touched. Obviously they were the people who had thought of the tombstone. And, as I expected, they found a bit of consolation in my response to it. They read the letters and looked at each other in silence. Finally, they looked at me. There were tears in both their eyes.
"We wondered what she was doing there at that time of night," Darryl said. "It had puzzled us to no end. I appreciate your showing us this."
"It's just that it's killing me to think she might have been upset that I didn't show up. And..." I stopped, thinking how awkward my choice of words was.
"No, Josh. No," Darryl said, "you shouldn't worry about that. God wanted her and he took her."
"Besides," Marilyn added, "you're here now. You cared. And that's all that counts.
For a moment I could see the girl from the photo in the mother's eyes.
"Just a minute," Marilyn said. She went through a doorway and returned a few moments later carrying something in her hands.
"Her letters said you liked false face masks, and she bought this one just because you liked them. I really don't like the thing. I think she'd want you to have it."
She handed me the light weight, carved basswood face with the horsehair hair. It, like mine, had been made by Winding River of the Shon-e-on-aka. A little tag was still attached. It was called "Moondancer", and it was a maiden's mask.
As I stood there looking at the mask, knowing Wendy was probably as kind and gentle as her mother, I regretted my coming. I was tormented even more by the idea that she may have died thinking I stood her up.
About a week later, I mentioned what I called "my coincidences" to a girl in the drama department at school. The girl had known Wendy. She told me about a 60-second video screen test Wendy had made. I talked her into arranging for me to see the tape. She said, "I don't think she'd mind now."
The next day she led me to a little wide-screened viewing room, wound the tape to the appropriate spot and left me to watch it alone. My fingers trembled as I switched the recorder on.
Incredibly, on the big screen, the camera panned down on a living girl with red hair and twinkling blue eyes, who blinked and then smiled showing almost perfectly even white teeth.
"I guess," she said, moving her hands in an expressive circle, her voice clear but raspy, " I'm supposed to just give an impromptu personal talk about myself for 60 seconds."
She hung her head for a moment, as if in thought, then her head popped back up and her eyes were wide.
"I'll tell you about something I did. I wrote this guy, a guy I sort of met at a party. His name is Josh. At the party, when I tried to start up a conversation with him, he shied away. I really didn't know how I wanted to handle it, or if I wanted to handle it, and so I left him alone...,"
The camera moved in for a closeup of her face which was now animated with a sort of confiding look. I couldn't believe that she was talking about me. My heart began to hammer. The camera panned to profile. A sultry, sharing-a-secret look, came into her eye.
"....but afterwards, after the party that is, I found myself thinking about him. I don't know why. I mean, he's cute, but so are a lot of guys. I wanted to explore why I was attracted to him, so I asked one of his friends about him. And then I bought this kind of an Indian mask that he's supposed to be interested in. Actually, I didn't buy it only because of him but because I liked it too. I wrote him that I had a mask and asked him to call me. Women are expected to be more aggressive now." The camera drew back for a full view. She had a shy look on her face. "Though, I have to admit, I didn't feel completely comfortable about it.
"But, now I'm committed. If he doesn't write me soon, I'm going to write him again. I may even send him my picture."
She was quiet for a moment. I was feeling a tremendous pressure inside me.
"Because even if he turns out to be a complete jerk, I may at least learn something about myself by doing all this. I don't know what, but something."
She had her hands on her thighs. The camera zoomed in on her eyes. They looked intelligent and proud. She vanished and some screen test information appeared . But I could still see her eyes. They were wide and alive but the girl was dead. I ran to the men's room and threw up.
That screening drove me crazy all day, and that night I dreamed about her. I was waiting, again, by Evergreen and Holmes in a fog. But this time I knew she was coming. And she did come.
"Hi, Josh, I'm sorry to keep you waiting so long."
"I kept you, I mean I'm sorry if I did. I..."
"No, don't say that. You know this is a dream you're having. But it's the only way I can talk to you. Did you ever notice how in dreams people often act exactly as you'd expect them to in real life? Well, take it from me, this is really me, as real as you're going to get me," she paused for a moment and looked into my eyes compassionately. "Now, I know this has upset you. And I'm not even completely sure why I wrote you. But I felt, somehow, there was supposed to be some connection between us. I don't know. So why don't you ask the question you've been wanting to ask?"
I couldn't speak for a few moments, I was so fearful of her answer. Finally I asked, "Were you waiting for me? Did you think I'd stood you up?"
"Silly," she said, bringing her lips up to mine, she kissed me, "I was hit just as I was arriving, I always knew you'd come." I woke up feeling her lips on mine, warm, sweet and alive....
From time to time I take a letter or poem over to that cemetery, I guess I'm still hoping for another letter.
-end-
Brautigan, Richard, A Pilgrimage, August 1982
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