The Ghostly Adventure of Francis D. Hollinger

 

It is the week before Labor Day, the summer has been long and hot, and the weather still is summer, but the evenings are cooler. Francis, also known as Frank, lives in his own place on the edge of Lansing, Michigan. He lost his job at the Albion Evening Recorder over a year ago and has been looking for something ever since. All of the local newspapers had his resume but they are all trying to cut costs and were not about to hire anybody right now. Lansing should have better jobs without having the big city size of Detroit. All the other small towns nearby had even fewer opportunities. Something is going to pop up, he just has to stay sharp and keep looking, that is what he tells himself.

Today in the paper he steals each day there is a new job listing for a potato chip delivery driver, this is something he will jump right on. Usually there are jobs for executive assistants, but they are looking for pretty young ladies; there are jobs for an apartment manager, but they are looking for someone older who wont be moving each spring; there are jobs for automobile salesmen, but they require a natural shark attitude. F knows this because he has applied and interviewed for all these jobs. Office manager, adult day care, night watchman, any of these would fill in a gap, but they would not be his job, his real job, his long term job. These days we have to be more open minded, and cannot be too choosy. He would take anything to get by, and continue to seek another job at a newspaper. He liked going to different places and getting the story, writing it up quickly and handing it in before the end of the day.

The phone rang, it’s his father. “Frank, we need you to go through your grandparents house and figure out what needs to be done to get it ready to sell.”

His grandparents, on his mother’s side, had moved to an old house near Albion to save money and be nearby. They were still able to get around, but the signs were clear, time was running out for them. His parents lived in Albion where he grew up, but times were hard there, recently the hospital had been closed due to money problems. His grandparents had moved into the old house and were just settling in, adjusting to the last place they would live in.

And sure enough, his grandfather had died mysteriously in his sleep, and his grandmother had died shortly afterwards. It was his mother, Emily, who found them a few days later, after nobody answered the telephone. Emily had knocked on the door, it was locked, she had a key and let herself in. 

Immediately she knew what was wrong just by the smell. She did not go any further and had the police go in. Emily’s father was in his bed, her mother was found in the closet, it looked like her mother was curled up and hiding. She must have discovered her dead husband and gone off the deep end, and died a little while later. If only she had stopped in sooner. If only, if only, if only.

Maybe that was a relief, that is what Francis’s father, Duncan, had said. Duncan’s parents had passed away several years ago, his father had a heart attack and died after two days, and his mother had a stroke a year or so later, but she lived for three years in a nursing home. It was horrible. Nobody wants to die helpless and depending on others for basic human functions like eating and hygiene. Nobody wants to visit a nursing home that stinks and is full of sad people. It was a terrible tragedy.

F was still on the phone, barely listening. His father continued, “We do not need to keep anything, just go through it all and sort out the stuff we can sell from the junk. I don’t have any time for this. For cryin’ out loud, don’t let your mother see what you are going to throw away, she will want to keep all that crap, and we have a whole garage full of crap. Frank, I am going to say it again, remember, do not keep any of that old crap, just get ready to get rid of it, but try to save the nice furniture, like the fancy old wooden desk and the old rocking chair with the nice carvings, oh, and the refrigerator and stove, they are new and going to be worth something. Just get rid of all the rest of the crap, especially the old stuff. You get it sorted out and I will come take a look at it and we can figure out how to clear it out of there. I have a real estate guy ready to have a look but they just want to see the house, not the stuff. Frank, you are the only one who has some time on his hands.”

F did not respond to the obvious dig at his unemployment situation. His mother calls him Francis and his father has always called him Frank. They have his 35 year old brother, Duncan Jr. living in the converted garage and 33 year old sister Elizabeth living there in her childhood room, Mom and Dad are not about to have him move in too. They make no secret of this. He did not like going to the family home either.

Elizabeth has special needs, she can get around and even has a job at the Goodwill doing something, she likes it, but she is a sad person and needs to have her parents to help her with meals and getting her off to work in the morning, bringing her home at the end of the work day. She has no friends except at work, she loves to go to work. 

Duncan Jr. has made for himself some kind of job selling stuff on eBay, he buys things for next to nothing at garage sales and then sells them for a profit. It’s all in the descriptions that he writes for the junk, making it into treasure. He is particularly good at finding valuable old books. Often he can get old ladies to give him boxes of them for nothing, they pay him a couple dollars, pretending like he is going to do them a favor by throwing them away almost for free, and then he turns around and sells one or two of those books for several hundred dollars. They get free of the old books, he gets the money.

The old house is just outside of Albion, on a dirt road, a short enough distance to walk on a nice day. It was a bargain, and the grandparents approved of it, they wanted an old house and not some kind of new apartment with nosey neighbors. It was perfect. The house still smells bad, but not of death anymore, it smells of cleanser now. It has been aired out all summer and it looks like nobody has come around to bother things. 

Francis was in the basement when he heard someone come through the window. Nobody is supposed to be there, but they came right in. He had to find out who it was, without letting them know he was there. His instincts are to not confront someone he does not know. It was three teenage boys, too young to drive but to old to stay at home, they were probably from the place next door or down the road or both. They got right to business, smoking pot. He crept up the stairs and stood just behind the door, trying to figure out what to do, and listening to their stoned conversation. You could tell that they assumed that the others knew what they were thinking about, and they did not actually finish their sentences. But they seemed to figure out what the others were talking about.

They smoked for about ten minutes then they went back out through the window. One of them had sold the others a small quantity each and they sampled it then left quickly. The house gave them the willies, they may have heard him hiding behind the door but they were not about to go exploring. It was the old house where the old people had died.

F found a box of old photographs, portraits of a family, probably his grandfather’s people. There were three boxes of old photographs altogether. He decided to keep these for himself and not bother his father with this detail.

Besides the cherished rocker and the valuable old desk, and the new kitchen stuff, there was a couple of nice bed spreads, and a closet with some clothes in pretty good shape. He put the three boxes of photographs into the trunk of his car and sat on the porch, listening to the bugs in the trees and watching the sun get lower in the sky. He was thinking it was time to start driving back to Lansing.

That was when he saw the woman in the strange old clothes. She was pregnant and walked right past him, into the kitchen where she seemed to be preparing a meal. She did not say anything to him, it was the end of the day and the air was quiet. Francis was puzzled about what was going on, first the three pot smokers who must have noticed his car as they were leaving, and now this lady wearing strange clothes and acting like she lived there.

Suddenly she looked right at him and asked him to sit down, she called him William. The baby was obviously heavy for her, but she did not complain. She kept talking and Francis figured out that she thought he was someone she knew, probably her brother-in-law. Her husband was due home soon with the two boys and she was trying to get the meal ready for the five of them. She was not using any of the kitchen appliances, she had a stew she was cooking on the old cast-iron stove that looked like it had not been used in years.

Come to think of it, the stove and refrigerator were not there at all, and he could not remember seeing the cast iron stove before. She put five bowls on the table, he had never seen these bowls before. She had some bread and a pitcher of water.

Something was very wrong, Francis decided it was time to leave, he got up and she did not seem to notice, she kept stirring the stew. He went out the door and then turned around to say something. The kitchen was empty and it was getting dark now.

He drove the boxes of pictures home and spent the evening going through them. Some had writing on the back, Folks farm, and there were five young people. They were very old and some were in bad shape, a few were okay. Most were just dusty.

Duncan was not about to help him actually move any of the stuff outside, so Francis was going to have to ask his friend with a truck to help.

Dave owns a truck, and the two of them got most of the downstairs cleared out and two loads taken to the dump. Francis was waiting in the kitchen while Dave went to borrow a dolly so that they could move the stove and refrigerator. They had been trying to get the basement door open, but it was stuck or locked, it would not budge so they had given up trying to open it.

There was a strange noise in the basement, it sounded like someone sobbing, and then coming up the stairs. The old cast iron stove was back, the regular kitchen was gone now, and Francis sat at the table frozen in terror. Slowly whoever was in the basement was coming up the stairs. The door swung open and the basement was pitch black. A bloody hand came up and then a head, it was the woman who was pregnant. She pulled herself up weeping and cursing, gasping from the effort.

Suddenly from behind Francis a big man walked up and kicked the woman, who was trying to crawl the rest of the way into the kitchen. The blow caught her in the head, she sailed across the room and landed on the floor face up, she was naked but you could not tell, she was covered in blood. She was no longer pregnant, her midsection was running with blood and it looked like her guts were hanging out of her abdomen, probably the cord from having just given birth. The big man had a shovel. “Why don’t you stay dead?”

He stepped on her chest and she looked directly at Francis, right in the eyes. The shovel came down hard on her throat, but she did not look away. She made a horrible gurgling noise, blood was coming out of her mouth and the wounds on her throat. The big man kept chopping with the blade of the shovel, finally her head came off.

He picked it up and put it into a canvas sack, there seemed to be something else in the sack, it sounded like a choking baby. It was very small, the sack was not very big, about the size of a pillowcase. The sack was dripping blood everywhere. The man took the full sack and the shovel down the stairs and Francis sat there in horror, unable to move or even breathe. The woman’s body was shuddering and jerking as it kept bleeding. 

The kitchen had about an inch or so of blood covering the floor and blood was all over Francis, his clothing and shoes were just soaked. He could hear the sound of digging in the basement. He just sat and looked at the dead body, still trembling as it bled out. He could not move, he could just sit there with his eyes wide and his heart in his throat, pounding.

Just then Dave comes through the door to the living room. “Frankie, you look like you’re going to throw up, you feeling alright?”

The floor was not exactly clean, but there was no blood and no dead body. The refrigerator and stove were unhooked and ready to be taken out to the truck. There was no sign of the cast iron stove. Francis had to decide, should he tell Dave what had just happened, even though there was no sign of any drama, or should he say nothing about it.

It did not matter, he could not make his mouth work. Finally he spit it out “Do you hear anything?” The basement door was still open, inky blackness beyond.

Dave paused for a minute, cocking his head. There was no sound. He said “It sure smells awful in here. Smells like blood. You okay Frankie? You been down in the basement? I see you got the door open” 

They got the refrigerator first, the hard part was getting through the door, and keeping it steady going down the stairs was not easy either. Then they got the stove, same problems, but this time when they paused at the top of the stairs, Francis looked back into the kitchen and the big man was back and glaring at him, covered in blood again and holding the shovel. He pointed right at Francis and said “I strangled you last night in your bed, Will. Why wont you stay dead? Why are both of you damned people not dead?”

“I sure am glad that’s over” Francis said to Dave. Dave chuckled, “Its not over yet, Frankie. Tomorrow you have to come back and finish off the upstairs and then there is the basement.” 

“Maybe I can just burn the darned place down.”

So that is what happened, but the story was not quite that simple. Francis brought the gasoline while Dave stood watch. The gasoline started up quickly, but the spectacle of the orange balls of fire attracted too much attention from a passer-by. The old man came running, and assumed we were fighting the fire. He started asking questions about the house, and got the idea that there was someone inside, who was signaling him. He ran into the house and the whole thing came down on top of him.

The Fire Marshall made the easy assumption that it was the old man who had started the fire, why would Dave or Francis burn down their own house?