Page 53 of Ghost in the Cupboard

A single moan sounded.

“So,” I said, “I think that you died, saw the silver, and rushed towards it. Then someone shut the cupboard, locking you—now a ghost—inside.”

She moaned once.

“I promised to prove that,” I said with a nod. “If you won’t believe me by simply looking down at your…body…then I’ll have to show you the proof.”

Marcella Washington had a look on her face that she already wanted to believe me as she looked down at her transparent form, but she was too angry at being dead to accept it. With a sigh, I removed the hammer from the belt loop and went over to the closet door that had been nailed shut. Fortunately, only two nails at the top, and three on the side had been roughly nailed into the frame. They popped out easily enough.

Swinging the door wide, I was slightly shocked to find it empty. Marcella moved up behind me to examine the nonexistent evidence in the small closet. Undeterred, I moved over to the bathroom and popped the nails that had been used to seal it shut. This door, unlike the closet, pushed inwards, not out. When I went to open it, even with the nails removed, it resisted. Frowning, I looked around the frame, confused.

Finally, I noticed the problem. Kneeling down, I found some type of material stuffed between the floor and the door itself. I swallowed hard and yanked at the material. It took some doing, but I finally yanked it free, nearly falling onto my backside when it whipped out of the crack.

The smell was immediate and nauseating, though far subtler than I imagined it would be. Enough time does that.

I glanced up at Marcella behind me, then stood. Sighing, I knew that I was about to add trauma to Marcella’s list, but nothing else could be done. She had to come to terms with her new existence as a ghost. I grabbed the knob, twisted, and pushed the door once more. This time, it swung freely.

The smell of death whispered into the room, and I immediately reconfigured my scarf to cover my mouth and nose, leaving only my eyes visible. In all actuality, the smell was not that strong, but the smell of death is still unpleasant. I didn’t want it to work its way into my sinuses and follow me for days.

Marcella followed me as I entered the bathroom, her ghostly form cold at my back. Inside the white-tiled Art Deco bathroom, there was a toilet, a basin sink with a mirror above it, and an old clawfoot tub with the shower curtain closed around it. I walked over and grabbed the curtain, took a deep breath, and pulled it back.

Marcella Washington—or what I assumed was her—was in the tub. Mostly bones and the clothes she had been wearing—that her ghost was now wearing—she was definitely dead. I stared down at the poor woman’s body, blinking a few times, taking in the clothes, the necklace around her neck, and the stringy hair laid out around her skull.

Shaking my head, I stepped aside as Marcella Washington’s ghost began to moan. Not once, not twice, but one long, sorrowful moan. There was no way to comfort the dead, especially one who has just found out that they are dead. So, I simply stood there beside her as she stared down at her dead body in the tub and moaned.

As she moaned, I examined Marcella’s body with my flashlight, letting it scan her body. I’m no medical examiner, but I could spot a broken clavicle and hyoid bone easily enough. Marcella Washington had probably been struck and strangled. It was probably asking too much that she remembered her killer, but I asked anyway, though I wasn’t certain I needed confirmation.

“Do you remember who killed you, Marcella?” I asked.

She kept moaning a while longer, then gave me a single moan.

No.

“Maybe you will one day,” I said softly. “Once you’ve had time.”

I turned to her and looked into her eyes that no longer looked angry. She looked sad. Mournful.

“If you ever get your voice,” I murmured, “you know where I am. Find me. I’ll be happy to talk with you.”

Marcella said nothing, but I could tell by the new twinkle in her eye that she understood. She floated there before me for a few moments, bobbing in the air, then she began to back away. When she was nearing the doorway to the bathroom, I spoke again.

“Lots of ghosts in the woods out by my house,” I said. “Usually during the day, they keep to themselves. But at night they come out. They can help you. Teach you things. If you want.”

Marcella stopped for a moment to consider what I said, then she was zipping away like a mist blowing off the ocean. When she zipped out the bathroom door, she blew right through a dark form. I didn’t jump or scream, I simply crooked my head to look around the man to make sure Marcella made her way out of the inn room and disappeared.

Where she was going first, I had no idea. But her justice was done. She was aware she was dead. She’d figure things out eventually. So, once I was certain she was gone, I lifted my phone to shine my flashlight on Gary.

“Were you able to see her?” I asked, calmly.

Gary’s eyes, squinting against the beam of light, looked me over.

“Just now?”

Gary said and did nothing for several moments, but finally he shook his head. I lowered the light enough to get it out of his eyes, but kept him illuminated.

“She’s in here,” I said. “But you know that.”

Gary nodded.

I watched him for a moment, considering all things, then made a decision.

“You’ll want to go now, Gary,” I said. “I’m leaving, too. But I’ll have to get an anonymous tip to the county police. You won’t want to be here for that. They won’t understand.”

He stared at me.

“Do you hear me? Do you understand?”

He nodded after a moment. His eyes darted to the tub and a single tear slid down his cheek. Then he looked back at me, gave me a bow of his head, and slunk away, disappearing into the shadows. I watched him leave, creeping out of the room into the upstairs hallway, then waited a few moments.

I turned back to the tub and had another look at what had once been Marcella Washington. A young woman, down on her luck, underfed, homeless, penniless, who died trying to do what she had to do to keep herself alive. Such as her life was. I shook my head and left the bathroom.

Both the living and dead were hard to comprehend. Too literal. Too vague. Too proud. Too violent.

If everyone stopped romanticizing what happens on “the other side,” none of them would want to know anything about it. But then I’d be out of a job. Maybe some jobs were too much to deal with, actually.

But there’s only one thing I know how to do well enough to keep myself and The Lunch Counter going. It was just getting to be too much to do. I swallowed the bile that was threatening to spew forth as I looked around the inn room. Then I stuck the hammer back into the belt loop of my jeans, bent down and grabbed the box, and headed out of The Eternity Inn.