The Haunted Man

The man sitting in the plush armchair was haunted. This kind of haunting was not one of a ghostly incorporeal nature. Memories haunted this man and held him in a vise-grip from which he cannot break free. He sat quite still in his daughter’s room, looking with fondness and a bit of wry sadness at her beautiful hair and delicate features. So much like her, he thought. He is thinking of his ex-wife and ex-lover, a woman who stole his heart long ago and has never let go.

The haunting began years ago, when his wife began to show the first symptoms of her disease. They had told him that the disease was incurable and mental. They were the doctors, and he thought that they were full of shit. He had often had dreams about these doctors and the things he did to them were not for the likes of pleasant company. His incurable romanticism had as much of a grasp on him as his wife had on his heart. There was nothing that could ever tear them apart. Theirs love was eternity, and their eternity was love.

The trips to the hospital became more frequent as the years went by, and his desperation rose like mercury in an old thermometer as she would yell at him at the slightest provocation. His love for her reduced all of her hateful and spiteful ranting into willowy shades of what they really were, and it was all those dimly remembered fights that haunted him still. I should have known and I should have done something, he thought for the thousandth time. He was angry with himself, and something of this anger was evident in his grim visage as he watched the only remnants of his once dynamic relationship.

His daughter’s soft sigh broke his reverie. He looked at her as a new person each time he saw her. He found this to be a necessary exercise in mental discipline, and allowed him to separate his feelings for his daughter and his ex-wife. It was becoming harder as the years went on. Young Kayleigh began to resemble her mother more and more, her eight year old frame only starting to look like her mother. The man in the armchair was not sure whether this was reality or his mind conjuring up visions. Since the mind is king, he supposed it really didn’t matter.

A small noise drew his attention away from Kayleigh. The noise was so slight that he was sure he hadn’t heard it at all, but it was repeated with a hurried intensity a moment later.

The house was old, and it came with all of the usual problems associated with houses past a hundred years. He and his wife had bought it on a whim during their wonder years and had planned to put some good hard work into it and then sell it for a shitload more than they had paid. Those plans were upset by the untimely, yet not unwanted, birth of their son Frederick. Unlike the ancient house, Frederick didn’t last very long at all. The early death of their firstborn had only hastened his wife’s mental deterioration even further.

Something about this noise that he was now hearing made him pause before proceeding down the stairs to its source. He was afraid. His feelings were that simple and he was completely unsure as to its genesis. It was wrong and he could feel it in his bones. However, as any aficionado of creeper movies is aware, the things that go bump in the night are almost seductive in their very nature and impossible to avoid. Besides, this was his own house on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood. Were anything to happen, he was assured that his very helpful neighbors would be out en masse to help.

The noise coming from downstairs began to sound like the ticking of an old style grandfather clock. His mind’s eye conjured up a menacing figure of a grandfather clock on the prowl and he began to have serious doubts about his own sanity. No more creeping, goddamnit. This is fucking ridiculous, he thought. He flipped on the switch and saw an empty hallway with bright yellow wallpaper. His wife would be furious at him if she knew how much he wanted to tear down that ridiculous wallpaper. He pounded his head in frustration, attempting to stop himself from thinking about her and the past. The pain brought him swiftly back to his senses.

After going halfway down the old stairs, he noticed that the noise had stopped its slow cadence. For some inestimable reason, this scared him more than the noise had in the first place and he almost lost his will and fled back to the relative safety of his daughter’s room.

“All right, this is ridiculous,” he said. “There is no one here and you know it. You are getting way too addled in your old age.” He said all of this out loud to himself, a habit he had picked up since his wife’s departure. He wasn’t loud enough to wake up his daughter, and there was something comforting in the small reverberations issuing forth from the empty house. He reached the bottom of the flight of stairs and turned into the living room. With a slight tremble in his hand, he flicked the lights on. He stopped dead in his tracks with a look of sheer horror on his face.

“Hello Gerald. It has been such a long time.”

The next few moments would never escape the narrowed confines of Gerald’s memories. She moved with a grace that he remembered so well from their many happy nights together. This time, however, she was not the same woman who had caressed his face with obvious love and attention. This creature was like something transformed. She briefly reminded him of the harpies that he had read about so many years before in High School.

He just barely managed to escape her talon-like clutches as she attempted to wrap her long fingers around his neck. In her heightened state of delusion she posed a threat to him. In normal times, her small frame and delicate features would not have stood a chance against his husky lumberjack frame. These times were far from ordinary, and he knew that he needed to think fast to avoid her attacks even as he was attempting to save her. He knew his first priority was his daughter and he was determined to keep her safe no matter the reason.

“I know you blame me for his death,” he said. He was casting for anything that might tap into the woman he remembered, and the event that had started her spiral was the best he could think of. Her hands were still reaching for his throat, but he believed that he felt a small diminution in her forward advances.

“I blame myself more than you could ever know. He was the world to me…. to us! What happened was unavoidable. You were a great mother to Frederick and you can be a great mother to Kayleigh.”

She had heard all of this before. Perhaps it was the proximity of her only daughter in the room upstairs or the man she had loved at arms length, but for once she seemed to take it to heart. He was not fooled. He had seen her relapse so often during her days at the treatment hospital that he had long ago stopped believing what she said. The love was still there, but that was all that remained. Most of that love was for the memories they had together.

“Gerald?”, she asked. “Is that really you, or is this another trick by the doctors?” He knew she was referring to the various techniques that her caretakers had employed to attempt to help her. Attempt being the optimum word. Nothing that they had every tried had achieved more than a modicum of success. Her mental break had seemed total and irreversible. She seemed to be having a small moment of clarity at this time, and he saw this and he hoped that it might be enough to talk her down and get her back to those who could help her.

“Honey,” he spoke, attempting to speak as if they were still married. In his confused mind, he believed that this would make it easier. “Do you know where you are?”

“This is our house, silly? Don’t you think I know where we live?” she spoke. Though her voice remained passive and even friendly, her physical reactions still bespoke the physical aggression that she had started this conversation with. He knew that the inevitable downswing may be only moments away.

“Of course I know that.” He was finding it difficult to keep his voice from wavering. “I was just joking with you. Now, why don’t you sit down over here and we can talk.”

She glanced towards the sofa briefly, but it was all the time that Gerald needed. He rushed forward and knocked her to the ground. The off-white hospital gown that she had been wearing when she had managed her escape rode up on her and exposed white panties. Something else was evident, however, and it made him pause. Soft bruises were evident around her waist. They looked purple in the bright light of the room, and he thought they looked self-inflicted. This latest revelation was too much for him, and he concentrated on subduing her. This proved difficult as she was now bucking up and down and Gerald had a fleeting image of himself on a mechanical bull. He saw no humor in this. Only sadness.

He did the only thing he could think and he hit her, hard, on the back of the head. He didn’t think this was the appropriate time for restraint. As a former boxer, he knew how to deliver a knockout and this time was no different. She stopped moving altogether, and he was able to turn her over and look at her face. He checked to make sure she was breathing, and then he tied her hands and feet with some rope that he had hanging up by the back door. It wasn’t the tightest knot he could make but it was sufficient to do the job.

He called the emergency hotline and then the police. He double checked his wife’s restraints. Then he rushed up to his daughter’s side to make sure she was alright and had not been too scared by the brief altercation. He reached her door and looked into her room. She was still there. His heart stopped beating as fast and he took a moment to compose himself before he went into the room and woke her up. He was always truthful with his daughter, and this time was no different.

“Hey honey, wake up,” he said.

“Daddy? Its dark still. Is school starting?”, she asked with innocent, wild eyes.

“No honey. It’s still the summer, but I need to tell you something. Your mother is here, but before I let you come and see her you need to know that we both love you very much. ... You know that your mother is not well, right?”

“Yeah.”, she managed. She had begun to sit up in bed and her eyes went curiously towards the stairwell. Quiet, gentle sobs were coming up from the first floor. They had an edge of hysteria to them but had failed to reach that far.

“Some people are coming to take her back so she can get help, but I’ll let you see her if you want. Only if you want to, its completely up to you." He left the question unanswered.

She didn’t answer for several moments, and Gerald could see that her eyes kept darting up to the ceiling then out towards the stairwell. This classic sign of memory made him think that she was trying to remember her mother. She had been five when the break had finally occurred, and he knew that those memories were dim at best. When she did answer, it came in the form of a gesture. She moved her head from side to side slowly as though the decision was difficult for her to make.

“I’m afraid.”

This simple answer from his beautiful daughter made the emotions that he had been feeling bubble up to the surface, and he began to weep. His daughter looked up with watery eyes of her own, though these may have been caused by her sleepiness, and she buried her head in his chest and wrapped her arms around his broad frame. They couldn’t quite reach, but at that moment they were all that was keeping him grounded.

The sound of approaching sirens brought him back to the present, and he gazed down at his daughter once again. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, in danger of closing completely, and he smiled. He knew then that whatever was to happen tonight with his wife and the police, everything would be surmountable as long as he had his daughter by his side.

“Go to bed then, my angel.” She giggled when he called her angel, then drifted back off to sleep.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispered. He stayed for one more silent moment. Then, with heavy steps, he began to walk back down to his ex-wife and the questions that the policeman would have as well as the doctors. For now, however, he believed that her haunting of him had come to an end. He would be content to be there for her as she continued on in her treatments, but he knew now that his true place would be right there in that rickety old house with a daughter he loved and cherished. His last thought was one of joy and jubilation despite the mess that awaited him downstairs.