Seven Turns: A Ghost Story/A Love Story

“About time to call it a day, I’d say,” said Katarina, coming into the Hall with an armload of folded towels.

“Kat, let me help you with that,” said Cally, but the woman shook her head. “I’m about to go home, myself. I’ve made fried chicken for Mr. May and the Captain. They’ll be eating in the kitchen, and I am sure they would both be very happy if you would join them.”

“No, I can’t keep mooching and freeloading,” Cally said, grinning. “This is a Bed and Breakfast, not a Bed and Three Meals a Day!”

“Oh, your Joan imitation needs work,” said Katarina, shaking her head. “Or you could join Ignacio and me again. We enjoyed your company last time. Maybe you can convince Ignacio to make tacos!”

Cally laughed, but insisted on having dinner on her own for once. “I still haven’t given young Luke’s pizza place any business,” she pointed out.

“Tell him I said I hope the Force will be with him!” Katarina chuckled at her own joke. “And maybe while you’re in town, you can stop in at the news store.”

“Sure, what do you need me to pick up for you?” Cally said, standing up and gathering her laptop and notebooks.

Katarina smirked at her but did not press the issue. “I will check on Bethany one more time before I go home for the evening. You just have a nice time, okay? If you get home late and the Captain has already gone in, you can just use that key I gave you to the side door.”

“I’m sure I won’t be late,” Cally said. She took her things upstairs to drop them off in the Rose Room, and was pleased to see nobody had disturbed her belongings or even come in to make her bed all day long. She left her laptop and notebooks in a pile on the desk. As she passed by the Daffodil Room she saw that Cyndi Lauper had arrived to relieve Doctor Boojums of guard duty. The little calico was sitting with one leg stuck up in the air, giving her furry belly a wash. “Take good care of our friend,” Cally told the cat as she left.

She went out to the parking area to pay her car a brief visit, though she intended to walk into town rather than drive. “I promise I haven’t forgotten you,” she told all the boxes in the back seat, and patted the car’s fender as she left. She saw Ian May and the Captain making their leisurely way up the hill from the Pirate Ship. They both sounded very merry indeed, and waved to Cally. “Ms. McCarthy!” Ian called as they drew near. “You should bring your boxes and things inside. I’m sure Ignacio could find someplace to store them for you as long as you’re here.”

Cally assured him that though this was a kind offer, she was sure her things would be fine in the car. The two old gentlemen continued companionably toward the house. Halfway up the walk, the Captain’s cane hit a tussock of grass between the pavers and he stumbled. Ian caught him under the arm and nearly fell, himself, but they recovered themselves before Cally could run to them, gasping. “We’ll be fine!” the Captain called cheerfully to her, waving. She watched them from the corner of her eye until she saw they had got safely through the front door.

As she emerged from the residential oaks into the warm evening light of Main street, Cally saw Merv Arkwright sitting on his loading dock, tuning up an acoustic guitar. She waved to him before he could wave to her first, and made a meaningless remark about the weather, pleased with herself for having, she thought, mastered the art of being a proper small-town denizen. Across the street, Dawes News had its lights on inside, but Cally deliberately averted her eyes and did not look to see if Ben and his skinny hips were there.

She waited until she had passed the news store before crossing the street, then headed down the southern end of Railroad Street. From there she had only to follow her nose past the law offices of Reid and Johnston to where Motherboard Pizza stood out like a glowing jewel in red and yellow between its drab neighbors (Doctor Tanahey’s office, she noted with interest, on one side, and the post office on the other.) Delicious aromas emanated from the pizza shop’s open door, and computer-printed signs in the windows advertised bargain computer repair rates and hand-tossed artisanal pizza with fresh, local ingredients, including “Champagne Truffle Brie and Artichoke Heart Focaccia.” Cally stood just outside the open door, studying the posters carefully with a dubious expression.

“It’s actually pretty good pizza,” said a voice behind her.

She jumped, and turned to see Ben Dawes. Looking at his blue eyes to keep herself from verifying Katarina’s estimate of his hips, she said “It’s just that I’m not really in the mood for pizza. Not even gourmet pizza.” She gestured at Luke’s clever signs. “What this town really needs is a burger joint!”

“Among other things,” Ben agreed. “You’d be surprised to hear it, but this town was once a really happening place.”

“I haven’t heard that expression in a long time,” said Cally.

“Guess I’m showing my age,” Ben grinned, shrugging and looking away.

“Well, I knew what you meant, so that shows mine, too.”

Ben gazed past her to the south end of Railroad Street, where the porch lights were starting to come on in the fronts of the houses on the hill rising there. “Hey,” he said. “Do you want to get out of here for a while? There actually is a very good burger place in Blackthorn.”

Certain parts of Cally did indeed very much want to “get out of there” with Ben, but that made her other parts of her – mainly her brain – want to decline the offer.

“I don’t mean it like a date or anything,” Ben said quickly, as if he had sensed her discomfort. “Just that you made me think of burgers.”

Cally laughed. “I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment or not!” Ben stammered, fumbling for a way to respond, and Cally decided to cut him some slack. He was just being a nice guy, after all. She said, “Yes, thank you, I would love to try this amazing burger place. I’ll give Luke’s Motherboard Pizza a try some other time.”

Ben’s warm blue-eyed smile returned, and he bowed slightly, gesturing toward the end of the street. “This way, then.” He led her past the pizza shop and around the far side of the post office. From here, Cally could see the backs of the shops along Main Street. Their windowless rear doors faced a gravel parking lot containing, at present, only three cars. Ben led her to one of these as he dug in his pocket for the keys. Near the steel back door of what Cally figured must be the news store, she saw a small gray coupe that looked to her as if it were a very old style, but if it was old, it was in good condition, and gleamed softly in the fading light. “This is amazing!” she said, gingerly tracing a finger along the smooth curve of the hood.

“It’s a post-war Daimler. C-class, 1947, or something close to it,” said Ben, coming around to unlock the passenger door for her before going back to open his own side. “It’s actually Bree’s. Our father left it for her. It’s pretty much the only thing he left us.”

“Oh,” said Cally, hesitating. “Won’t she be upset if we take it? I don’t want to get her mad at me!”

“She doesn’t drive,” Ben assured her. “I’m the only person who ever lets the poor Daimler stretch its legs.”

Cally got in. The car smelled of brand-new leather inside. “You’ve taken very good care of it,” she said as Ben got in and started the engine. It ran so smoothly she could hardly tell it was running. “Your father should have left it to you instead,” then, “Oh, sorry, I hope that wasn’t too personal.”

He smiled at her as he turned to look out the rear window, backing the car around to leave the parking lot. “No, it’s okay,” he said. “Our father knew Bree would need more taking care of than I would. She does, too!” He grinned. “Even if she won’t admit it.”

So Bree must be his sister, Cally realized, and not his mother as she had originally assumed. She refrained from asking for the story behind their apparent wide age difference.

“He meant for her to sell it and buy a better house or something,” Ben was continuing. “But she wouldn’t. She’s too sentimental.”

While Cally tried to fit the word “sentimental” into her mental image of Bree Dawes, Ben drove onto Railroad Street but instead of turning left on Main Street, as she had expected him to do to so that they could follow the interstate on down into Blackthorn, he turned right, toward the residential end of town. They passed the feed store and could hear Merv Arkwright and two other men trying to cover an old Eagles song. Their guitar playing was adequate, but they were definitely struggling with the harmonies.

When they reached the residential end of Main Street, Cally sank back into the seat as far as she could. She didn’t want to have to deal with what would happen should Katarina catch a glimpse of her in a car with Ben when they passed Vale House.

At the meadow gate, he turned right again, passing all the stately old homes facing the meadow along Gardens Road. The big Yellow House the Captain had grown up in looked dark and unoccupied. Only a handful of houses lined the west side of Gardens Road here, and once past these, the road dipped down to cross a small stream by way of a one-lane bridge, and then curved away between the meadow and a completely dark forest on the right.

“It’s remarkable,” Cally said. “When you reach the town limits in this part of the country, you really know you’ve left town!”

Ben nodded, winding down his window and letting in a meadow-scented evening breeze. “The sprawl has not reached us here yet,” he agreed. “Some of us are very glad about that.”

Cally thought she might be glad about that, too. “It is nice,” she agreed, watching the thin ribbon of road unwind in the headlights in front of the car. The Daimler ran so quietly she could hear the frogs and crickets in the trees.

The road plunged down a hill and crossed another bridge, where Ben took a wide right turn into the heart of the forest, and the darkness became absolutely black except for what lay in the headlights just ahead. Moths occasionally flew out of the darkness, trapped in the headlight beams, and splattered on the windshield. Cally began to wonder if she had really made the right decision, going off into the night with a person she barely knew, despite Katarina’s esteem for him, but then she saw lights ahead. They passed a gas station, under a single street light, that looked like something out of an old movie.

Presently, more street lights appeared ahead, illuminating a street Cally thought at first looked a lot like Woodley’s main street. This street, however, was a much more “happening place.” Most of the storefronts were brightly lit, and cars – even if they seemed a little dated – were parked thickly along both sides of the street. As Ben slowed down to look for a parking spot, Cally could hear music coming from an open doorway.

“They play pretty good music here,” Ben noted. They managed to park a few doors away from The Fountain, where people inside and outside the door sat talking and eating in chatty groups. Three young musicians inside were playing 1980s hair-band covers. Cally thought she recognized Errin’s friend Zenbe among them. Ben and Cally wove between the crowded tables and managed to find an empty booth near the back of the room. Cally’s mouth had begun to water at the smell of sizzling beef.

Accepting two large plastic-coated menus from a server, Ben told Cally “I understand they have a fair wine selection here.”

Cally shook her head. “With a good burger, nothing is better than a cold beer.” Ben seemed relieved to hear her say this, and she relaxed, thinking he reminded her a little of a younger version of Ian May. “Thank you for suggesting this,” she said. The little band launched into a decent cover of a Van Halen song, and several people in the room whooped their approval. She realized she was actually having a nice time.

The burgers were perfect: black on the outside and pink on the inside, nestled in thick, soft rolls. The local ale Ben suggested to go with them was frosty and crisp. As Cally reached the point where she was picking at the last few fries on her plate, considering discarding the rest of her roll so that she could at least finish the patty, Ben leaned toward her, wiping foam from his mustache. “You want to hear some really good music?”

They paid for their food and returned to the Daimler, and Ben whisked them out of the far end of the little big town. The road almost immediately returned to fields and forests and bridges. Cally relaxed (maybe it was the beer) and Ben told stories about the Woodley residents he knew – and he knew them all. Cally learned how Merv Arkwright had come to own the feed store, how the two “Wyrd Systers” thought they could save Woodley by opening their weird bookstore there, that Jud Thornton, the hardware store proprietor, wanted to just bulldoze the whole town and build a mall and almost owned enough of the town to be able to do it, and how Joan had been trying for years to get Ian May to marry her. Cally lost count of all the turns in the road, and the bridges over little rivers.

At last she could see light in the distance again, but this was not streetlights. It was a fire, glimpsed through the trees. She thought of the Captain’s story, but as they pulled off the road and parked on the verge, she saw it was just a perfectly normal campfire, surrounded by a ring of stones. People were walking among the trees, or seated on logs and tree stumps, and some of them were dancing, though the music Cally could hear was not by any means the “really good music” Ben had promised. It sounded more like an orchestra of little flutes and hand-held rhythm instruments, played by inexpert dabblers, and somewhere a fiddle tuning up.

Ben led Cally to one of the logs beside the fire, and she could see that, beyond it, a dark river flowed silently, reflecting the firelight and fireflies hovering over the water. In a clearing near the bank, an old man was cooking over a grill made from half an oil drum, his dark face gleaming in the firelight and his long, white beard tucked behind his apron. Cally thought she recognized him as Ian’s old neighbor Rum, but he seemed much taller.

“That’s Jerome,” Ben said, laying his jacket on the log for Cally to sit on. “He makes the best ribs east of the Appalachians.”

“West of them, too!” said a woman in a long, flowered skirt. She handed Cally a mason jar half full of clear liquid, then danced away.

“You don’t have to drink that,” Ben leaned over and whispered in her ear. “In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it.” His grin flashed in the firelight. Cally sniffed the contents and agreed. She passed the jar to the next person on the log.

The character of the music changed as the fiddle player began to feel satisfied with his tuning. He came closer to the fire and drew out a long note, and the people with their little drums and random instruments organized themselves into an eight-beat rhythm. Finally someone with a flute began to play a piping tune; Cally recognized it as an old Irish folk song she had in her CD collection. The fiddle and the other little instruments joined in, and the music became a good, solid reel. People all around them stood up and began dancing, some by themselves and some forming into couples. Cally decided to concur with Ben’s assessment of the music here as “really good.” She couldn’t help tapping her feet.

He stood and reached both hands down to her. “Come on,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t really have any idea how to dance to this stuff...”

“Neither do I!” Ben laughed. “Come on!”

The music was contagious and Cally couldn’t just sit there and not do anything, so she stood up to join Ben among the dancers. He had told the truth: he really didn’t know how to dance to this stuff, any more than did most of the people there. But he didn’t step on her feet, and that counted for something.

The ground was uneven underfoot, though, and whirling couples nearby kept bumping into them, so Ben steered them through the trees to the side of the river where the flat mud was hard and there were fewer people to bump into. Cally found herself enjoying herself very much. The music switched to a waltz, which was much easier to dance to. Then Cally began to think they had got too far from the crowd; the quiet near the water began to feel just a little too intimate to her. She drew awkwardly back from Ben’s arms and tried to make casual conversation about the weather. He seemed to understand. He released her from the dance, and instead stood beside her and began explaining where they were.

“This is the Harmony River,” he said, gesturing out over the broad, black water rippling with reflected firelight. “It’s actually the same river you crossed over when you first came into Woodley, only it was still just Harmony Creek at that point.”

“An appropriate name,” Cally said, tilting her head toward the music near the fire.

“And that’s Seen’s Mill,” Ben added, gesturing across the river to the lights of about a dozen windows on the far bank.

“Where’s that?” Cally asked. “I haven’t heard anyone mention it. We must have come a long way.”

Ben had gone silent. He was staring across the river, but not at the lights. At least, not at the lights of Seen’s Mill. Cally followed his gaze to the far shore where she could barely make out two dim, red lights close to the ground. As she watched, they winked out and then reappeared a short distance away.

Ben took her arm protectively. “We should go,” he said.

Cally thought this was a little silly of him. “Whatever it is, it can’t get us,” she pointed out. “It’s on the other side of the river.”

“But you can see it...” He hesitated and gave her a long look. “Well, if you can see it, that means it can see you.”

Cally didn’t understand his discomfort, but he seemed adamant about it, so she let him guide her up the bank back to the fireside. He said his goodbyes to Jerome and some others, dropping a few dollar bills into a jar on a stump next to the fiddle player. “We’ll make sure we’re hungry next time we come!” he promised, waving to Jerome and to everyone in general. The piper began another reel, and Ben and Cally returned to where the Daimler waited, softly reflecting firelight, by the side of the road.

Ben was silent as he turned around and drove back over the little roads and bridges. Cally didn’t mind – she found herself dozing off once or twice, lulled by the crickets and the gentle air, and at some point was surprised to wake and see the porch lights of Vale House outside her window. Ben was opening the passenger door to help her out.

Though she insisted it wasn’t necessary, he walked with her to the house. Cally dug the key to the side door out of her purse, but she didn’t need it; the Captain was still on the porch, asleep in one of the wicker chairs, which meant the front door was still unlocked. “I promised Kat I’d get him back inside,” Cally explained to Ben. “Thank you so much. I really had a nice time.” She meant it. “I hope Bree doesn’t give you any grief for pinching her car.”

He smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just her way of showing she cares.”

Cally watched him go back to the car, then bent over the Captain and shook him awake. She supported him by the arm until he was safely through the door, and watched him go into the dining room and turn toward the back hall where his room lay. When he was out of sight, she said hello to George, who was seated at the desk, grinning hugely at her.

“How was your date?” asked George.

Cally locked the front door and switched off the porch light. “It wasn’t a date,” she said firmly.

George was bobbing his head as if he were listening to music, but Cally couldn’t hear anything. “You left your music device on the desk,” he explained. “I’ve been listening. You have many kinds of music. All of it is very good!”

Cally looked over to see her MP3 player on top of the papers Ian still had not signed. It did not appear to be switched on, but George was clearly grooving to something with a backbeat.

“I can do electronic things,” he said. “It has always been the easiest for me. It opened up a whole new world for many of us, when radio and television were invented.”

Cally looked at him carefully. He was dressed, this time, in what appeared to be a perfectly pressed navy blue oxford shirt. “You weren’t ... here... when it was invented, were you?” she asked. “ Radio and TV, I mean. When did you... I mean, how long have you been... ?” She felt awkward. Maybe it was a highly personal question.

“Dead?” he asked, and laughed so loudly Cally worried he’d wake someone upstairs, until she remembered most people couldn’t hear him.

“Well, what I meant was, how long have you been a ghost?” There. She had said it, and it had almost seemed normal.

“Oh, I’ve been here a very long time,” he said. “I started learning then, and I just kept on learning new things. I love to learn. Unlike most of the others.” He shook his head sadly. Then he said, “I love this band, this Rush!” He played a few bars of air-guitar and sang “Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free!”

Cally smiled just as she would have smiled at any other young person who was able to appreciate good music from her own youth. “You can borrow my MP3 player any time you want,” she said. “Just don’t lose it.”

“I won’t lose it,” he said. “Because I can’t pick it up.” He grinned impishly. “There are some things I still haven’t learned how to do. It’s a matter of priorities, you see.”

“Ah, yes, I remember.” He had been telling the truth when he’d told her he wasn’t the one who had been moving things around in her room. Back when she’d been assuming he was a living human being – it seemed so long ago, now. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m still not used to this. You make it all seem so ordinary.”

He laughed and reached over as if to pat her hand, but stopped himself just short of actually touching her. “It is ordinary!” he said. “You’ll see!”

“Well.” Cally looked at her MP3 player. “I’d love to let you keep listening, but I shouldn’t have left my player lying unattended in plain view like that. Will you still be able to use it if I put it in the drawer?”

He nodded, and she stepped around the desk to do so. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we won’t let anyone take it.”

“And how can you stop people from taking it, if you can’t touch things? And who is this ‘we’?” Cally stopped herself. “You know what, I don’t want to know right now. I’m tired. I need some rest. I’ll talk to you another time. We can have a regular interview. Is that OK?”

The ghost nodded. “Enjoy your sleep. I’m glad you had a nice date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” Cally repeated as she went up the stairs. A last backwards glance showed her a dark-skinned young man sitting in a modern office chair behind an antique desk, silently headbanging to inaudible music.