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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Perfect Student, Ms. Beckman

The school, with its colossal white columns, looms over Briar as she settles next to her usual pillar. The teacher in charge of watching the students wears a whistle around her neck, hair dyed unnaturally red, and her phone low and far to compensate for her nearsightedness. Briar catches her eye as she settles against the pillar. Too far to speak, Briar mouths, “Hey, Ms. Cabble.” Ms. Cabble waves with just her heavily jeweled fingers and smiles a false smile. “Bless her heart,” she mutters. Poor girl, reading. She goes back to her Facebook feed, liking photos of local babies.

Briar pulls a lock of nearly white hair behind her ear as she opens the book on her lap. The South Was Right! given to her by Mr. Jackson because she often argued with him in class. She sighs and opens the book, rolling her eyes at the first few sentences. She closes it, and pulls out a tattered and worn copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Just as she’s about to start for probably 50th time, a rock lands near her. She looks around, and the only person she can see is Ms. Cabble, adjusting her glasses and scrolling. She shrugs and goes back to the book. A moment later, a rock hits her right on the crown. “Ow!” she says, rubbing her head. She glances up just in time to see movement in the bushes. She looks to make sure Ms. Cabble isn’t paying attention before going to check it out.

“Judah!” she says, seeing a bush of unmistakable curly black hair within the green bush. A chills runs down her whole body and a tear comes to her eye. “I thought you were--”

Judah hushes her heatedly. “Is anyone looking at you?”

“No...” she says.

“Briar, please, no one else can know I’m alive. I need your help. You in?”

Briar stands there, looking at a bush. The weight of Mr. Jackson’s fat book pulls at her back. “Yes,” she hears herself saying. “OK.”

Judah smiles with all his eyes, which, just a moment ago she believed she would never see again. The smile fades just as quickly, as if another persons pulls it away. “Mr. Jackson is the one who killed my family...”

Briar twitches, feeling the urge to rip off the weight in her backpack.

“Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

A flash of light inside a house, and, just like that, his mother is gone. He blinks at a leaf, not seeing it. The smell of it is green and a touch bitter, like the dried little bay leaves his mother would put in her gumbo.

“Judah?” Briar asks. She takes an unconscious step toward him.

He blinks back to her and the tears away. “Sorry--” he says. His own backpack, weighted similarly with the gun that killed Mr. Jackson, is heavy. He turns to the cool dirt and puts a hand in it, wanting to lay down.

“What do I need to do?” she asks, almost pleadingly.

“OK,” Judah says, bracing himself. He avoids her eyes. “I need you to record Mr. Jackson saying that he killed my family.”

“OK...” she says, eyes working.

“Do you have a phone?”

“No,” she says. “My mom won’t let me.”

Judah pulls his own phone out of his pocket. “Take mine.”

She takes it, thoughtful. “I don’t know how to get him--”

“Leave it with him when he’s alone,” Judah says. “He, uh, talks to himself.”

“Ms. Beckman!” says a jocular voice. Briar jolts fully upright and turns sickly white. “Are you reading that book I lent you?”

Judah pushes himself deep into the bushes, his breath too loud; he claps a hand over his own mouth. The metal of the gun cools his skin through three layers of cloth.

Briar says, “Uhh,” after a long pause. “I started it.”

“I know I ain’t going to convince you, now!” he says. “I just want you to know there is always another side to an argument.”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

“Who are you talking to over here?” he says. Judah watches his beady eyes sweep over him.

“No one, sir,” she says.

Mr. Jackson eyes her now. “Awfully proper today, Ms. Beckman.”

She laughs like a bark.

Mr. Jackson takes a step toward her, looking around to make sure no one can see. Judah’s hand starts toward opening the backpack. He finds himself bearing his teeth.

“Ms. Beckman,” he says, low and dark. She swallows. “I need you to help me grade some papers. For... extra credit?”

Briar laughs with relief. “Oh! Yes, sir.”

Mr. Jackson laughs too. “Did you think you were in trouble? I’ve never seen you look so nervous. What in the world could the perfect student, Ms. Beckman, be up to?”

“Nothing!” she says. They begin to walk together toward his classroom. She looks back at Judah over her shoulder.

Judah exhales. “Shit.”

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Briar

Photo by @tinaflour

“If I walk into my school and shoot my teacher with this gun, I don’t think that’s going to go over well,” Judah says.

“Yeah...” Buddy Red says. They are back at his trailer and his mother is in the same room, watching Steve Harvey. “Don’t make that baby shoot his teacher, now...” she mutters.

“Quiet down, now, momma,” Buddy Red says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I been around long enough to know it ain’t a good idea to get a kid to shoot up a school. I’ve seen the news...”

Buddy Red sighs.

“I should do it!” David says.

“I told you, kid, it needs to really mean something if you want to take out Mr. Jackson. Judah has to do it, and the more public a place, the better.”

David looks at Judah, whose curly black hair and open mouth make him look like when he was a baby again. A baby with an antique gun in his hand. David resists the urge to take the gun away and instead straightens a throw pillow. “I have to shoot Mr. Jackson in front of everyone? Won’t I go to jail?” Judah asks.

“Yeah, how are we going to pin what happened on Mr. Jackson?” David says.

A vein appears in Buddy Red’s neck, and he blinks.

“What if I record him admitting it?” Judah says. “Doesn’t he hang around that ghost, Graham? Maybe he will say something about it and I can have the evidence.”

Buddy Red nods. “There you go.”

“What if you get caught?” David says.

“I’ll bring the gun,” Judah says, finding it almost too heavy to lift without a quiver.

“Ok, but you’re supposed to be dead, so how are you going to get close enough to him to record him without him or someone else seeing you?” David says.

Judah puts his hand to his chin, going in his mind to the place that it was already going pretty often, “There is a girl in my class. Briar. She is the class secretary and helps Mr. Jackson grading papers and stuff.”

“She does?” David says. “That seems inappropriate.”

---

On Monday, Buddy Red drives the boys to Barham School in the next town over, Carter. The park out of view, and wish Judah luck. He has David’s backpack on, heavy with the gun. They watch him go, and he ducks into a bush.

He slowly makes his way to the front yard of Barham, crawling carefully in the dirt, using all the hiding places he knows so well from playing hide-and-seek in this yard. He gets as close as he knows he can and waits for Briar to come out and sit in her usual spot to read. His heart beats with both fear and excitement.

#briar #spilled ink #spilled prose #school #civilghost #chapter 8 #writing #writer #write #writers #story #stories #short story #storytelling #fiction #short fiction

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Lunch Buzz

Photo by @jd_alon

Briar follows Mr. Jackson up the stairs, pausing at each step patiently as she waits for his lumbering ascent. She grips her books at her front, only letting go to pull the hair from her eyes.

They arrive in his room, tattered flags on the wall, including a rebel flag, and trinkets on his sloping desk. He goes to a drawer, opens it with a key, pulls out a stack of tests and drops it on his desk. He darts his eyes up. “AP credit, Ms. Beckman. Harvard, here you come.” He wipes his nose with his hand, needing to breathe out of his mouth in that moment.

Briar smiles uncomfortably. “I won’t tell,” she says.

He looks up, a cornered bear. “Of course you won’t,” he says. “No if you want to keep your perfect grades.” He tilts his head. “Why even put the notion in my head, now?”

She shakes her head. “I was--I just--”

He lifts a hand. “Grade the tests, Ms. Beckman. I need to get lunch--I’m hypoglycemic and my blood sugar is already low. You know what Ms. Kathy made today?” He fumbles around in his pockets.

“Yes, sir,” she says. “Salisbury steak, I heard.”

“Ugh,” he says, looking up, for God, perhaps. He finds a handkerchief in his pocket and dabs the sweat from his forehead. He hikes his pants and toddles to the door, flipping his wrist in a little wave as he exits.

Judah still squats in the bushes. His foot tingles, but he senses that he is sitting on a structural branch, and to move would shake the whole bush-system. Kids play nearby and scream at each other so close to Judah that it makes him angry in a way for which he can’t account. He closes his eyes, feeling that his gaze might somehow be sensed. One kid says, in reference to the made-up-kid-game they are playing, “Dude, I just killed you worse than Judah’s family.”

The bell rings and the kids linger to finish their game, but not for very long, which lets Judah know it must be lunchtime. His own belly gurgles. As the last of the kids clear the area, the porch a few dozen feet away squeaks with a gait that Judah knows: Mr. Jackson. He peeks out enough to see him come down the stairs and turn away toward the cafeteria. No Briar.

The last time Mr. Jackson walked away, the people he left behind were dead. Judah looks to the shabby little car parked on the side of the road, David and Buddy Red waiting inside. Everyone has gone to lunch, Briar has his phone, and this might be his only chance to move without being seen... He looks back to where Mr. Jackson appeared, and hurries toward there, up the stairs, moving swift and quiet.

Upstairs, the phone in Briar’s pocket buzzes, which might as well have been a loose rattlesnake. She clutches her heart as if she is sixty, and pulls out the phone. Buddy Red. “Hello?” she says, like how she answers the home phone.

“Judah!” a voice says. “Where are you going? You need to come back now.”

“This isn’t Judah, Mister,” says Briar.

A beat. “Are you the little girl? Where is Judah?”

“Uh,” she says. “Last I saw he was in a bush...” Judah sneaks through the door, closing it quietly behind him. “No, wait, here he is.”

Judah tears the door back open and scrambles half-way out before he realizes the voice. “Oh,” he says, standing up straight and taking sudden interest in a paint chip. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Tell him he needs to come back, now, before someone sees him,” the phone murmurs.

“Mr. Buddy Red says--”

“I heard him,” Judah says. “I just came up here to, uh, make sure you hid the phone right.”

Briar narrows her elf-eyes. “I can hide a phone, Judah.”

“Obviously not...” he says, gesturing to the fact that it is not currently hidden. He scoffs stupidly.

“What the hell is going on?” David’s voice rings in the background of the phone call.

“He’s coming now!” Briar says. “Go, Judah!”

Judah looks around the room and taps his pocket, unsure of a reason to stay. “Yep,” he says.

“Why are you staring at me?” Briar says.

“I, um--” Judah says, halts because of a familiar sound.

“What?” she says.

Judah steps in the room. “Hang up, hang up,” he hisses.

“Judah! Mr. Jack--” the phone says, hung up mid-word.

“He’s coming...” Judah says.

“You have to hide!” Briar says.

Judah searches the room, one closet, which is currently blocked by a stack of textbooks. Briar has already made a move, but Judah walks to the window. It has been painted shut, but then forced reopened, maybe several times. He lifts it open with some effort and a wood-on-wood screech. The whole building shutters with each fall of Mr. Jackson’s foot.

He clambers out of the window and on the exceedingly rusted fire-escape. The structure swings when he steps on it, and the joints groan. “Judah!” Briar says, turning from her effort to move books away from the closet door. Judah slams the window shut, and ducks. Mr. Jackson opens his door.

“What are you doing, Ms. Beckman?” Mr. Jackson says.

Briar is splayed on the floor, textbooks tossed in all directions around her, opened, upside down, and fluttering. “Huh?” she says.

Mr. Jackson gives her a moment. “What are you doing, I said.”

She swallows. “Oh. The books? I was going to organize them.”

“Uh, huh,” he says. “By throwing them around the room?”

“Well, gotta start somewhere?” she says, a question.

He nods. “OK. That closet is already full of books.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh well. I’ll put everything back.”

He bites the candy bar in his hand and narrows his eyes, looking around the room. “I forgot my mug.” His mug sits on his desk, the only place he isn’t looking.

“There it is,” Briar points.

He does not look.

Outside, Judah squats on the fire escape with his toes. His eyes happen upon an inspection sticker from 1973. He swallows.

“OK,” he says, going to where Briar is. He steps around her and pulls the closet door open, shoving more books aside. It is indeed full of old books Prentice Hall World History and High School History. Stacks of each.

“Sure is, sir,” Briar confirms. She begins stacking books.

Mr. Jackson looms over her. “Is someone else in this room, Ms. Beckman?”

��No, sir,” she answers quickly, honestly.

“Well,” he says, grabbing his mug. “I’ve heard you try to lie before. That should do, now. Pick all that up and grade the tests.” He begins to walk away.

The phone buzzes in Briar’s pocket again, and this time she yelps. Mr. Jackson stops.

“What was that?”

“Sorry--phone buzzed,” she says, feeling the truth might help again.

“Mrs. Beckman finally gave in and got you a phone, huh?”

Briar nods.

He sighs. “You kids and your phones... This country is going straight to hell in a...” He walks out the door. He slams it hard behind him.

That was the last nudge the fire escape needed. Judah drops.

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Learner’s Permit

Photo by @andriklangfield

Judah falls from the third floor. There is another fire escape on the second floor window, which the falling one above deposits Judah on, hard. He collapses on the grating with the hum of struck metal. The fire escape above knocks into the one below as it falls, jolting it one, twice, and then giving way. Judah drops again from the swinging fire escape into the bushes. The pivot action of the last holding anchor swings the mangled rusted metal, so that when it snaps and falls, it lands just a few feet away from Judah. The bushes slow him little, he lands on his back, gun digging into his spine, with a hollow thump and possibly a crack.

Once, he had turned just as a basketball was making its way to him, out of the hands of the most aggressive boy, whose face was covered in painful acne. The basketball thumped him in the chest, and he believed for the next few minutes that he was dying and no one cared. “Got the wind knocked out of you,” said an older boy, later. Spencer looks out for Judah, and scores the most points because he’s the biggest. “First time, you think you’re dying.”

This memory is very little help, as Judah is again convinced he is dying. “Can’t breathe,” he gasps, not nearly loud enough for anyone to hear. The bushes conceal him.

Briar leaps to her feet and yanks the window open with a few frantic tugs. She sticks her head out, not seeing Judah anywhere. “Judah!” she hears herself saying.

A thick pair of hands land on her shoulders and pull her away from the window, so hard that she falls on the hardwood floor and slides. She looks up to see the seat of Mr. Jackson’s stretch-waist khakis as he sticks his head out the window. He looks for a while, like a sniffing dog, before he ducks back in and turns to Briar. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know!” she says, again honestly.

He lurches toward his closet, opens the door, and digs around in a corner until his hand appears again, this time with a Musket in it.

“Mr. Jackson!” Briar says.

Buddy Red sees movement out of the corner of his eye. He whips the car into drive and pulls around toward the teacher’s parking lot, the side of the school with the fire escapes.

“The fire escapes fell!” David says, pointing across Buddy Red’s eye line.

“Get down!” Buddy Red says, shoving David by the head lower in the seat. Mr. Jackson’s form appears in the third floor window.

Mr. Jackson sees the shabby car, and inside it is a man he’s known for over a century now. He laughs to himself, raises the gun to his eye, takes careful aim, and fires. The crack echos over the parking lot.

In a tearing moment, the windshield shatters, and Buddy Red’s right shoulder erupts suddenly like a volcano of blood. “Damn!” Buddy Red says, almost calmly, given the situation. David screams so loudly that the sound seems to contain mass.

Mr. Jackson calmly replaces his gun in the closet, closes the door. “Now, Ms. Beckman, if you tell anyone what you have seen here, I will not only kill Judah, but I will kill your family as well. St. Marysville ain’t my domain, but that will eventually change. Do you understand me?”

Briar nods.

“We are going to go downstairs, pull the boy out of the bushes where I’m sure he is lying with a broken leg or some such, and you don’t tell no one nothing I didn’t say first, you understand me, now?”

They walk down the stairs again, Briar again following, step by step, behind Mr. Jackson’s lumbering decent.

Judah regains the ability to take a breath just when a shot cracks over his head. A musket sticks out of the window for a moment, a billow of black smoke lingering after it. He turns his eyes to the sound of broken glass, and he sees Buddy Red’s car. “No...” he says. He starts to get up, when Buddy Red gets out of the car. “Hide, Judah!” Buddy Red calls out in no particular direction.

Buddy Red opens the back door of his car and lays down. “You drive, kid,” he grunts to David.

“Huh now?” David says. “I just started on my learner’s--”

“Drive, kid!” Buddy Red shouts.

David scurries over the middle and sits in the driver’s seat, “I picked the wrong day to quit smoking...” he mutters to himself, never having smoked. He puts the car in drive and in lurches. “Where is Judah?”

“He is hiding, just go!”

The car lurches and halts its way out of the parking lot. At the exit, David steps all the way on the gas in a 15 MPH speed limit. The road is narrow, solid black, and banked by deep ditches. They reach about 55 MPH when he flings the car to the right, screaming. They lose control, spin, both screaming now. After an endless moment, the side of the car slams into a tree. David slaps the car into park, as if that was all intentional.

“Ok, this should be far enough away for you. I’m going find Judah.” He opens the door and steps out. They are a block away, hidden behind a curtain of trees and an abandoned house.

“No, kid!” Buddy Red says. “No one can know you’re alive.”

“I’ll stay low!” David says. Buddy Red groans, apparently too wounded to argue more.

David pauses. “Are you going to, uh... die?”

“No,” he says. “If I don’t make it, I’ll just be less solid...”

David doesn’t consider this an answer, but turns to find his little brother anyway. He runs through the trees, keeping low.

Mr. Jackson arrives at the porch just in time to see the car disappear beyond the trees, followed by a crash. A crowd is already gathering, looking for the source of the gunshot. Mr. Jackson glances at Briar one last time, to make sure she looks sufficiently afraid. He walks down the last few steps to the bushes below his window. He gazes in, and there is no boy.

“What was that?” says an older student.

“Came down to find out, myself,” says Mr. Jackson. “Did anyone see the car that just left here?”

“I saw an old, red car tear out of the parking lot from over there,” says a girl wearing a skort version of their uniform.

While Mr. Jackson is looking at where the car disappeared, Briar sees the head of curly black hair disappear around a corner. She a sigh of relief comes over her, and Mr. Jackson twists to see why. She hurries her gaze toward the trees where the car is.

“Come with me,” Mr. Jackson says. “We’re going to find that car.”

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Buddy Red

Photo by @zacharykeimig

The woods that had seemed so deep and scary, actually ended just a few yards in, where they opened up on a subdivision; people’s backyards.

Judah and his half-brother hide in those woods now, having watched their family shot by Mr. Jackson just a few moments earlier. Judah weeps and shudders, but David finds clarity in his job to help his little brother. He shushes him, because they are hiding close to the truck. Close to the place where Mr. Jackson and Graham are now returning.

“Why did we just shoot that family?” Graham asks, his Adam’s apple bouncing thoughtfully.

Mr. Jackson puts his musket in the back of his truck, burying it up a pile of empty Coke cans. “I told you, you Yankee bastard,” he says, spirits high. “With the Danielson family gone, the entire town will lose hope for the future. They will turn even more to drugs and to their televisions. I will become even more powerful than I already am.” He opens the door to his little Toyota truck, accidentally yanking the plastic handle clean off. “See? Already don’t know my own strength.”

Graham mouth breathes for a moment. “Remind me how that helps me?” He opens the passenger door, and he looks disappointed when he doesn’t rip the plastic handle off. “I don’t feel stronger....”

“I will use my power to take over the town, then the state, then we will gather a coalition of other Civil War ghost leaders from all over the country, you being one of them, and we will destroy the present and future for everyone. We will become Gods and Generals...”

“I seen that movie,” Graham says. “What about the boys? Don’t you need them dead to get all the power out of the family?”

Judah and David look at one another, laying the moist leaves. They both have silent tears.

Mr. Jackson turns the key and the engine whines but doesn’t crank. “Oh, they will turn up. I’m sure they are at a step-parents house or something... Sinful divorcing types, this family.

“Anyway, I will find them the minute they go to the police. I’m already too powerful to be taken down very easily, as you know, Graham.” The truck whines again, no crank.

Graham puts a finger to his sunken chin. “You could take on the whole police force?”

Mr. Jackson laughs, and the truck seems to join him as it starts. “I could, but let’s see if we can avoid that for now...” The gravely pavement grumbles as they pull away, and drive down the road, eastward.

The boys stare at the road, long after the trucks red-coal taillights turned the corner. “This isn’t real...” David says.

“It feels real...” Judah says. David pulls Judah to his feet and dusts the wet leaves from him. They walk out of the woods, careful to see that the truck isn’t coming back. They stand at the road, and they both take in Sampson’s body, lifeless and totally still in the front yard. “It looks real, David...” Judah says.

“We should call the police,” David says.

“You heard him! He said he would kill us once we called the police...”

“You think that’s true?” David says, genuinely asking more than he expected.

Judah nods quietly. Movement catches his eye, and he turns to see a man approaching them from the parking lot of Honey’s, which is their family’s store, just a door down from their house. There is also blue-lights flashing in the sky just over the hills behind it. Police.

“Stay away!” David says to the man. “Who are you?”

“Buddy Red!” says the man. He’s worked at Honey’s since the boys can remember. He wakes up at 4 am to clean the parking lot every morning. His dark, nearly black skin has a reddish under-hue, hence the nickname. “I saw what happened, y’all need to follow me to hide before the police get here!” He walks with a powerful gait, but it is slowed by a mild limp, which is mostly unseen unless he is hurried, as he currently is.

“Wait!” David says.

Buddy Red does not take this advice, and pulls them both by the arm into the woods from which they just came. He’s as stable as stone, and the boy’s struggle does nothing. “If the police find y’all, he will find y’all. He’ll finish the job, no doubt,” Buddy Red says.

“How do you know that?” Judah asks.

“I’ve known Mr. Jackson for a long time...” he extends the ‘o’ in long. “I was afraid he would try this.”

“Try what?” David says, still struggling impotently against Buddy Red’s steel cable arm.

“He gonna try to take over.”

Judah pauses, gazing at Buddy Red. “Are you a ghost, too?”

Buddy Red doesn’t answer, which is all the answer Judah and David need. They look at one another, like, woah.

Buddy Red pulls them through the woods and into the subdivision. They walk more peacefully together now. The blue lights and sirens of the police are at their house now. David and Judah look over their shoulders. “Y’all got a long road ahead,” Buddy Red says. “It’ll be best if you try not to look back.”

They arrive at what must be Buddy Red’s home. There is a red door on a trailer. Plants are growing all around, lovingly tended. He opens the door, and an old woman is watching TV. “What you doing up, Momma?”

“I heard some gun shots that scared me, baby,” she says. “Who we got visiting?”

“These are Honey and Darissa’s kids,” Buddy Red says. “They were killed tonight.”

“Lord have mercy...” she mutters. “Can I get y’all some food?” She looks at Buddy Red. “They alive, right?”

“Yes ma’am,” he says.

“Well, I’m sure I can make some food...” she gets up with a struggle. “We hadn’t had visitors in a while, now...”

“Excuse me,” David says. “But what the hell is going on?”

“You boys are the only people who can stop old Mr. Jackson now,” Buddy Red says, not looking at them. “Before we get into all that, y’all rest.”

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Killer Mr. Jackson

Photo by @henmankk

Right as Judah falls into sleep, David wakes him with a shove. The sound of Mom snoring fills the silence now, and David nods, like, it’s time. He moves to the window of their shared room.

“The alarm,” Judah says.

David smiles, like, oh my god, just you wait. Two little off-white plastic boxes need to be near one another in order for the alarm not to be going off and Mom and Dad to not be awake. David grips the one stuck to the pane and carefully wiggles it until the adhesive gives up, and he re-sticks it to the other plastic box. He opens the window, like, fuck you, window.

They crawl out of the window and step in the muddy place where the rain pours from the roof when it is raining. As it is, it’s one of those Louisiana winter nights that might as well be summer. The air conditioning unit cranks up and David scrambles to get back in the house, scraping his knee in his total hysteria.

“It’s just the fan thing,” Judah says.

David busies himself closing the window and limping around, like, yeah I know, it’s cool.

The big, wooden fence blocks their path now, keeping people out of the alley between Honey’s and their house, as well as keeping David and Judah from getting out. David goes to the fence and plants a knee--the good one--and cups his other two hands over his thigh. He nods, like, you know what to do.

Judah hesitates, and considers the other boys in his class who wouldn’t hesitate. Fighting against the perception of himself as the sort of boy unable to climb a rope or bench-press the big bar, he just goes for it. Getting what he asked for totally surprises David, whose face cranes away from the muddy shoe in his hands. Judah manages, with little help from David, to grip the top of the fence. His feet clamber impotently at the smooth wood. David rushes to push his butt, which allows him to get a grip a struggle over. Once at the top, he wishes he wasn’t. The fence threatens to castrate him, and his arms threaten to give up at any moment. He wobbles, and then tumbles, not totally ungracefully, to the other side.

“Now how do you get over?” whispers Judah, rubbing his reddened hands.

David takes a step back, leaps, and pulls himself to the top in one fluid motion. He’s older than Judah, so that makes a difference. Judah could probably do better if given another chance, he thinks. He makes a show of guiding David down without touching him.

They find themselves in the front yard in the middle of the night, which is unheard of to the boys. They bask, silently celebrating by walking around with their hands up, like they are in Shawshank Redemption. David sucks in to hiss, bending over to look at his scraped knee.

“What’s the plan to rescue Sampson?” Judah says.

David looks up from his knee, like, are you kidding? “Are you kidding?” he says. “We just pulled the plan off.”

Judah looks across the street to South, the mental hospital. Actually, there is just a road that leads into the woods. At the beginning of the road, there is a traffic stopper with a little booth, which would be attended during the day. As it is, no one is there, and it is easy to imagine a ghostly figure working the gate, or a demon lurking in the woods, or a loose bear. “Yeah,” Judah says. “So we just walk in there?”

“What’s going to stop us?” David says, genuinely asking more than he expected.

Judah crosses the yard. He gets to the road, and looks back to find David hasn’t moved. “Are you coming?”

“This is a bad idea,” David says. “Sampson is in there for a reason. Let’s go to bed, we have school on Monday.”

“It’s Thursday,” Judah says, “And are you really about to give up on Sampson?”

“No,” David says, like, yes.

“Alright, well go back. I’m going to find him,” Judah says. He looks both ways to cross the road, which won’t have another car on in until 5 am. It’s The Village of Lee, and about two thousand people live in the greater metropolitan area. They do have the only red-light in the parish.

“Fine!” David says, hurrying to catch up to his little brother. “I need a drink!” he says, having heard this on TV.

They approach the gate, which is only meant to keep out cars, and only symbolically at that. But they stop at its precipice anyway, gazing at the empty booth, which has a sad little light on in it. Judah ducks under the red and white striped arm-thing and carries on down the wooded road.

“Hey!” David says. “Can we slow down and think, maybe!”

“I don’t wanna wait until I’m too scared,” Judah says.

David jogs to catch up. “Mom would kill me if you got killed by a crazy guy out here.”

Very occasionally, a pale-yellow street light pops out from the trees to guide their way. The road goes on for a while, until it opens up on a playground filled with brightly colored, and currently abandoned, equipment. A slide, a spinning thing you can sit on, and some monkey bars with rubber mats under them.

“Why do they have a playground?” Judah says, as if it is a personal affront.

“Crazy kids?” David suggests. Past the playground, sit white cinder block buildings where the patients are housed. Window units rumble on and off, beyond a few of them are the flickering blue-lights of TV. “Don’t you remember this?” David asks.

Judah shakes his head, eyes wide and fixed.

“We came here once to visit Sampson, and we played on this playground. His room was right there.” He points to one of the buildings. “I bet he’s still in that one.”

They go to that one. The TV flickers on the inside. Judah raises his hand to knock, almost equally terrified of continuing to be alone out here, and finding out that his brother is not behind this door. He knocks.

“I have twenty more minutes,” says the voice, the deep, nasal, drawl that was certainly Sampson. David squeals in his ear and shakes him, and Judah knocks again, more excitedly.

“What!” Sampson says, opening the door. He looks everywhere but down for a moment. “... Are you kids doing here?”

“We came to bust you out!” David says.

Sampson smiles his easy smile. “You did, huh? Your mom know where you are?”

“Duh, no,” David says, practically crawling over Judah.

“Alright,” he says. He steps back in, grabs a cigarette, a lighter, keys, and his phone. “Let’s get y’all back to the house before I get in more trouble, OK?”

“You can leave?” Judah asks.

“I’m a trustee,” he says, patting his head. “But if they catch me gone, that could change.” He lights his cigarette. “Y’all don’t want that, do you?”

“No!” they say.

“Alright,” he says, taking a drag. “Let’s get y’all home.” He leads them back down the street they came, plumes of smoke rising from time to time.

“We thought this was more like jail,” David says. “We wanted to bust you out.”

Sampson chuckles. “Yeah? How were you going to do that?”

“I don’t know! I got us out of the house, didn’t I?” David jumps.

Judah follows a little farther behind, stomach upset.

They arrive at the end of the road, and there is a beat up truck parked there now. “Was this here when y’all came?” Sampson asks, stopping them with his arm.

“No!” David says.

“Look,” Judah says, pointing. There is a big man walking across their yard, talking and gesturing as if there is someone with him, but there is no one.

“Who is that?” Sampson says, taking a drag as he squats behind the car, making sure the boys do the same.

“That’s my history teacher, Mr. Jackson,” Judah says, recognizing his unmistakable waddle. He’s dressed in shabby jeans and a button-down, but he’s got his civil war musket.

“Why does he have a gun?” Sampson says, hush falling on his voice.

“What the hell is going on?” David says.

Sampson shushes him and spins on his toes. “Y’all stay right here and don’t move a muscle, alright?” He stands, puffing his chest. Running back on the football team in high school, the posture comes right back to him. He starts across the street, not looking, flicking his cigarette angrily as he goes, red embers glittering the street.

Mr. Jackson arrives at the front door, unaware of the young man approaching behind him. He lifts his orthopedic black shoe and kicks the door with incredible strength. It flings open like a toy. The alarm goes off. “About two minutes, Graham,” Mr. Jackson says.

“Hey!” Sampson shouts, his body seeming to inflate to twice its normal size. “Get the fuck away from there!”

Mr. Jackson turns, easily and slowly. “Oh?” he says. “What a pleasant surprise. I thought I was going to have to make another stop on this warm, winter’s night.” The boys can just make out his words from behind the car where they hide.

Sampson charges him. Mr. Jackson carefully raises his musket, pulls back the lever, and fires.

Just like when they had gone to see the reenactment, blood and sinew erupt from the spot where the ball strikes. Sampson stops in his tracks. Judah can almost believe for a moment that it isn’t real, because it wasn’t real the other day. But the way Sampson falls, he knows it is real. He jolts to run to him, but David catches him and covers his mouth. “He said to stay, he said to stay,” David says.

Mr. Jackson laughs, and turns to go inside. A few moments later, two more flashes and bang erupt from inside the house. A moment after that, another.

Mr. Jackson steps out of the house, this time joined by another man; a man that Judah recognizes at Graham, from the reenactment. They start toward the boys.

“We have to run away,” David says.

“But... Mom...” Judah says.

“We have to run away. They are coming this way.” David lifts his little brother, and they run into the woods.

#killer #writeblr #civilghost #wip #killed family #short story #short fiction #chapter a day #chapter 3 #daily writing #keepwriting #fiction #fantasy

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Find The Boy

Photo by @mak_jp

“Y’all stay there,” says Mr. Jackson as he marches across the parking lot toward the shabby red car that had vanished behind the trees. The growing crowd of students watches him go; children watching a paternal figure go check out the noise.

Buddy Red is holding his bleeding shoulder in the car when Mr. Jackson clears the trees. He fumbles for his keys to try to start the car, but gives up once it is clear he won’t make it. “I should have known you’d get involved, Mr. Green,” Mr. Jackson says.

Buddy Red just breathes.

“Why hang on, sir?” Mr. Jackson prods. “If you survive, it’ll be some long months of suffering. Don’t you agree?”

Buddy Red reaches into the back seat and finds a bottle of vodka. He pours it over the wound with a shaking hand.

Mr. Jackson grimaces. “Oh, I imagine that whole arm is shattered, now. Might need an amputation.” He reaches across Buddy Red, leaning his great body into the car, and presses his stumpy fingers into the shoulder. Buddy Red groans and tries to get away, but Mr. Jackson is steady as stone, and holds him in place, kicking legs and all. “Where is the boy, Robert?” A whispered grumble.

Sweating, Buddy Red manages to catch a full breath. “I’ve been beat worse to give up less,” he says.

Mr. Jackson smiles, understanding. “A good slave owner don’t beat his slaves. That’s like beating up your coffee maker. A waste.”

Buddy Red spits in Mr. Jackson’s face, and Mr. Jackson pulls himself out of the car, pats his pockets until he finds his handkerchief. He whips the spit away carefully, thoughtfully. “You were always more trouble than you were worth. Really the reason why I let you fight for your freedom. But you were rarin’ to fight for the South, weren’t you?”

“For my kids, Jason,” he says. “For my kids.”

“Oh and where are they now, Robert? Where are their kids? On the streets of Chicago, Detroit?” A moment is filled with Buddy Red’s labored breathing. “Where is the Danielson boy, Robert? Why do you want to protect a white boy anyway?”

“Danielsons was like family, and I’d die before I’d tell you.”

Mr. Jackson raises his eyebrows. “Sounds brave! If you weren’t already dead I might be inspired.” He grabs his finger, as if starting a list. “Let’s see: I kill you now and you come back a little fainter?” Next finger. “A little harder for the living to see? No. I’ll let you suffer in this form. That is the worst I could do you.”

Buddy Red nods, chuckling: they agree.

“I know about as much as you do, anyway, I reckon. The boy is at the school. And I’m going to find him.”

He grabs a branch, too heavy for a normal living man to lift, and raises it above his head easily, creating a shady canopy. He places it on the car, mostly hiding it from view. “There, now you can suffer in peace,” he says, tapping the roof of the car twice. He toddles back toward the school.

When Mr. Jackson is out of sight, Briar hurries toward the last place she saw Judah. She rounds the corner, taking care to attract the attention of no one.

“Judah!” she hisses to the open driveway behind the school. No one is around. She waits and Judah does not answer.

During the summers, when Judah and David aren’t staying up all night to watch stand-up comedy, they come to Barham school and climb around on the old structures. The find passage ways into attics and basements, never meant to be seen by student eyes again. One place they are always too afraid to go: a tunnel under the school. “Filled with bats,” says the lunch lady, Ms. Dot. “I get here early, and I seen ‘em coming in to sleep for the day,” she explains.

Struggling to breathe, Mr. Jackson near with a gun, Judah pulls the door open to the tunnel and climbs in, preferring the bats to Mr. Jackson.

Once inside, he pats for his phone and its light, and realizes that Briar still has it. And there she is, walking down the driveway, calling his name. He watches her, longs to call back to her. No, she’s had enough danger thanks to Judah.

“Judah!” she calls, tears in her eyes.

Just as he is about to change his mind, Mr. Jackson appears behind her. Nearly invisible, Judah catches a glimpse of Graham, Mr. Jackson’s partner. “Reason to think he’d be near here, Ms. Beckman?”

Briar jumps. “No sir!”

Mr. Jackson might have laughed, but enough is enough. He storms to the girl and grips her shoulder. “Judah Danielson!” he calls. “Every moment you do no present yourself to me is a moment closer to this young girl’s death and the death of her entire family.” He squats down to Briar’s level. “I will save you and your family if you find me Mr. Danielson, OK?”

Briar cries.

“Just find the boy!” he says. He stands and hikes up his khakis. “Y’all have 24 hours to figure it out.” He looks at his watch. “By 12:45 tomorrow, I either have the boy, or the Beckman family is my next project.”

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Students Have All Gone To War

The kids stay with Buddy Red (whose real name is Robert Green) and his mother that night. She mutters around the kitchen about how she wasn’t ready for no guests, and she wishes she had some food to feed these little babies. She eventually finds an old looking box of ready-to-cook gumbo. “Y’all like gumbo?”

Judah nods.

“Looks dusty,” David says.

“Yes, baby,” Ms. Green says. She puts an equally dusty pot on the stove and fills it with a random amount of water.

After they eat, it’s time for bed. “Y’all can sleep on the couch,” Buddy Red says. “Get them some blankets, Red!” Ms. Green shouts. Buddy Red listens to his mother.

The trailer finally settles into quiet. Ms. Green begins snoring before long. The boys sleep with heads meeting at the crook of the L-shaped couch. “Do you think they’re really gone?” Judah asks.

David doesn’t answer for a moment, which scares Judah just because that never happens. “I think they’re gone,” he finally says.

Judah tries not to sniff, because it is finally dark enough for him to cry without being seen. “Buddy Red is a ghost. Maybe they can be ghosts, too.”

“I have no idea what to think right now...”

Judah finally sniffs, revealing that he is crying. “What are we going to do? Do we have to live here now?” The unfamiliar place is dark, and creepy, and old, and sad, and makes Judah feel like jumping out of his skin. His stomach is still turning from that terrible, salty Gumbo. His mother’s gumbo was so wonderful, and that makes him cry more.

David sniffs too. “I don’t know, but don’t worry, I'm going to make sure we are OK. Buddy Red needs to show us something, and we will figure it out from there. Everything will be OK, I promise.”

When the boys wake up, they don’t know how long it was that they were actually awake on that couch, or how much of what terrorized them in the night was real and what was just their nightmares. They ask each other questions until they sort out reality, as good as they are able.

Buddy Red arrives from his room in the back, looking the same as yesterday and the same as every day. A trucker’s hat, a green button-down, a weight lifter’s belt (because, as he once explained to Judah, he bent over a lot for work), and jeans. “Y’all ready for a little trip?”

The boys wipe the dry drool from their faces, and feel ready.

Buddy Red leads them to the little car that is always parked in Honey’s parking lot early in the morning. In fact, it is early in the morning now. “Aren’t you usually working right now, Mr. Red?” David says.

Buddy Red looks at David with some mixture of derision and understanding, like how you forgive a small dog who barks at a bigger one. He starts to speak, but he sees that David understands, and does not. Judah watches, as he does. David lowers the seat for Judah so that he can crawl in the back seat of the little Honda.

Buddy Red advises them to duck down in the car as they drive through town, just in case. Coincidentally, they are unable to see the police cars, police tape, and people standing all in their front yard.

“Why can’t we go to the police again?” David asks, watching his little brother huddle up in the back seat of a stranger’s car, afraid.

Buddy Red fixes his mirrors to give his hands something to do. “Lee has ghosts because Lee don’t have no future.”

“That’s why you exist?” David asks.

Buddy Red nods. “Yaw sir.”

“So...” David searches. “Why can’t we go to the police?”

Buddy Red glances at David, some surprise and amusement in his chuckle. “The Danielsons were the only hope of this little town. Mr. Honey’s was the only business that don’t sell liquor or payday loans. Now, y’all boys are the only hope for this little town.” The clock tower of the old town hall passes by the window from where David is ducking. “Mr. Jackson could take out a small army from the plain hopelessness he feeds off of in this little town. When people find out y’all boys are alive, it will weaken him, but he will find you, and he will kill you.”

David and Judah take this in for a while. “Doesn’t that mean you’re stronger too?”

“Yaw sir,” Buddy Red says. He grips the steering wheel of his old car tightly, cables of muscle in his arm rippling.

“Can’t you protect us then?”

Buddy Red shakes his head. “Folks don’t miss slavery as much as they miss the glory of the Confederates.” He gestures out the window, and there is a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, and the namesake of the town.

“I wish they would take that down,” Judah offers.

“Guess who stopped that happening,” Buddy Red says.

The boys both guess it was Mr. Jackson, but neither say it. They turn off the main street, and down a road lined with huge, beautiful live oak trees. There are lovely, restored antebellum homes all down both sides of the street. Some folks sit on the porches and rock in chairs. Suddenly, Buddy Red and his shabby old car seem dangerously out of place. One man in a rocking chair is even cleaning a gun, and looks up menacingly. Buddy Red seems unsurprised, and ready to make some distance from this neighborhood. His eyes grow heavy and his posture slouches.

“Are you OK?” Judah asks.

“Yaw sir,” Buddy Red says. “This place ain’t too friendly to me.”

They arrive at wherever it is they are going. “Y’all can get up, now,” Buddy Red says.

“Oh!” David says. “This is Thompson College. We came here for field trip.” Another antebellum structure, but huge and built majestically on a hilltop, surrounded by a forest of mostly live-oaks. The road leading in is stately and well-maintained. “What are we doing here?”

“Need to show y’all some history,” Buddy Red says. He looks around to make sure no one is around. They walk up the hill.

“It’s locked!” David says.

Buddy Red closes his eyes and pushes his hand, almost as if through jelly, through the glass of the door. His arm turns a little translucent. On the other side, his fingers turn opaque again, and he works the lock. It opens with a click.

“Wow!” David says. “Ghost powers!”

Inside is now a museum, artifacts displayed with plaques explaining them. Buddy Red leads them to a picture framed on the wall. It is the class of 1861, all the faces are exed out and under it is scribbled in cursive, “Students have all gone to war. College suspended. And God help the Right!” They follow Buddy Red’s Finger, pointing to a photo of a fit, handsome man with a wolfish smile. They wouldn’t recognize him if it weren’t for the name under, which reads, “Jason Jackson.”

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Mr. Jackson’s Class

Photo by @nicolatolin

Mr. Jackson drives east out of Lee for only about ten minutes, down highway 10, until he arrives in Carter. It wants to be antebellum-classy, but it is more like Lee--small-town-American-desolation--than it would prefer to admit. But they got a McDonald’s, so... That’s breakfast for Mr. Jackson.

Carter also has the Parish’s prized private school, Barham. Barham was originally a college for women, then it was commandeered as a hospital during the Civil War. After the war, it was abandoned for a while--until the screams and blood that lingered in the halls finally faded from memory. The war was before anesthetic, as well as a before a firm understanding of what causes infection. A shabby cemetery just outside the school with unreadable chucks of stone once told the tales of the men who died, but now they are mostly forgotten. They would be totally forgotten, if it wasn’t for the passion of one teacher, Mr. Jackson, who teaches the history of the Civil War as if he were there. He drives into the school’s parking lot, recently lain black asphalt with speed bumps--because, teenagers. He barely fits in his little truck, which leans to the left at his great weight, and the bed is littered with cans of Coke. Crafted in the 80s, it has sputtered along until now only because it is a Toyota, he says.

Barham resembles a plantation, with massive white columns along the front, a long porch, and two breezeways cutting it into three sections. Funding just barely manages to keep up with repairs to prevent the old place from collapsing, the textbooks from being more than twenty years old, and to keep fresh paint over the student’s constantly drawn penises.

The American flag in the front yard area is flown at half-mast today. Mr. Jackson notes this while he whips his little truck in his teacher’s parking spot, near the entrance. He wipes the crumbs from his belly from his breakfast, and lumbers out of the truck. “Mr. Jackson!” a kid says. Mr. Jackson raises a finger without looking to see who it is.

He waddles up the steps to the porch, books in arm. “Good morning, Lisa!” he says, gentlemanly. “You look very beautiful today.” His is very gentlemanly.

Lisa smiles, like how you smile at creepy old men. Tolerating nonsense is not her job. She turns back to the conversation she’s having with the tiny old lady whose hair has been dyed shockingly red. Mr. Jackson’s expression is stately, verging on giddy.

Mr. Jackson’s classroom is adorned with a confederate flag. Well, he knows it to be the rebel battle flag, and he will tell you all about that. There is a poster from the movie “Gods and Generals,” figurines of Peter Griffin, an American flag, and various educational posters. He hurries to the little window AC unit that has spent its life struggling to keep Mr. Jackson’s room cool, to varying degrees of success.

The first of the students from his first period filter into his classroom. He greets each of them by their last name, jocularly. He drops into his leather chair, which is torn and strained.

The bell rings over the intercom, which signals them to settle. A few moments later, a rustle comes over it, and then the voice of Principle Lisa Perkins. “Good morning, Students,” says Ms. Perkins. The tone conveys, ‘shut up,’ more than ‘good morning.’ “I debated whether to talk to you all about this, but I think everyone will know anyway, and I hope to give all of you some perspective about this terrible tragedy. As I’m sure everyone has heard, the Danielson family has been brutally attacked for an unknown reason. Honey, Darissa, Sampson, and Will Danielson were found shot to death in their home over the weekend. Most of you know Judah and David as fellow students, and can remember when Will and Sampson were students. Judah and David are currently missing, and have been missing for days now. Police are saying that they have likely been killed as well, they just have not found the bodies yet.

“I know this is all very hard to hear. Many of you will hang on to hope for as long as possible, but I want you all to prepare for the worst, as most people who have been missing for more than two days never turn up....” She goes on, telling the kids like it is, treating them like adults. Some students cry.

Mr. Jackson reclines grandly and puts his hands behind his head. His eyes dance around the ceiling, obviously filled with some fantasy to come. Some greater victory to achieve next. A girl with elfish features, a binder with stickers all over the cover, is the only one looking back to see Mr. Jackson, and her tear-filled summer-sky eyes narrow.

Ms. Perkins finishes her prayer, and invites everyone to stand for the pledge of allegiance. They all stand, putting their hands over their hearts. All except for the Goth-y kids in the corner, who Mr. Jackson can no longer physically force to stand and say the pledge. He rolls his beady brown eyes. He says the pledge with hearty enthusiasm, so that his voice is heard over the lifeless drone of the students. “One nation, under God,” he says. The next part, which is “indivisible,” he does not speak. He continues with the rest.

"The South is gon’ rise again!” he says at the top of his lesson. He waddles to the front of the class, uncapping a marker. “Y’all put your books away, I’m fixing to freestyle today,” he says, seeing them go for their books.

“Now, someone tell me what the Civil War was over...”

“The right to keep slaves,” says the girl with the elfish face.

“Wrong!” Mr. Jackson says. Some boys in the class giggle. “States rights, Ms. Briar Beckman...” He slaps States Rights on the board.

“States rights to keep slaves...” Briar mumbles under her breath.

Mr. Jackson’s mood is too good to let this get under his skin. “Did I ever play the rebel battle cry for y’all?” He goes to his computer, pulls up YouTube, and plays a reenactment of the Rebel battle cry. It is like whooping Hyenas. “Imagine this coming at you. Makes your skin crawl...” he says. “Modern bullets go right through you,” he adds, pointing to his arm. “Muskets literally shatter all your bones.” He explodes his fingers, to illustrate his bones shattering.

The intercom comes over the class. “Mr. Jackson, can you come to my office, please?” says Ms. Perkins. The class goes, Ooooo. Mr. Jackson almost forgets to laugh, real fear on his face. “Y’all shut up, now,” he forces a jocular tone. “Jessie, go get me a candy bar and some Doritos from the cafeteria while I’m gone. Go!” Jessie practically falls over herself to get out the door.

Mr. Jackson arrives in Ms. Perkins office. He is sweating profusely, which isn’t too suspicious, because he almost always is. “Yes, Ma’am,” he says. Her office is neat and shiny wood. There is a paddle for spanking children hanging on the wall.

“You might have heard that the Danielsons were killed with Musket fire,” she says, getting to the point.

“Oh?” he says. Ouch, he thinks, hopefully not a heart attack.

She blinks at him. “The police want you to help identify the type and all that sort of thing. We have a sub for you. Are you willing to do that?”

“Of course, Ma’am,” he says.

He leaves in his little truck, escorted by the police.

Later, during recess, a rock hits Briar in her head while she’s reading on the porch. “Ow!” she says, looking at the bush where it seemed to come from. She approaches it. “Judah!” she says.

“Shh!” Judah says, ducking deeper in the bush. “No one else can know I’m alive!” he says. “I need your help. You in?”

She puts a finger on her chin. She looks at her book, which she is just starting and struggling to get into. “Yes, OK,” she says.

#writeblr #writer #writing #chapter 4 #chapter a day #daily writing #civilghost #louisiana #civil war #fiction #short fiction

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

Sampson and South

Photo by @monicabourgeau

If you go about thirty miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you’ll find little towns, which were once vibrant little bits of Americana, and now are forgotten places. Places where people survive, and drug use is a much hated, yet much used form of coping.

If Louisiana was a boot (and it does look like one) these towns would be on the top of the foot, before you get to the toes. St. Marysville, the comparatively rich town, which thrives on visitors to its historical landmarks; Lee, the town with the insane asylum and the inferiority complex; and Carter, the middle brother with no real talent, but lots of ambition (they have a McDonald's).

A family lives in Lee, and as far as Lee is concerned, they are well-known. Mitchel “Honey” Danielson is the chief of the fire department, and Darissa Danielson owns and operates a crafts store, which also sells home-made treats, and is situated one door down from their home, named Honey’s. “Y’all want anything from Mr. Honey’s?” is a common question in Lee households. The Danielson house itself is on the main street that runs through Lee, and everyone always can tell when they are home.

Right across the street, is South, the mental hospital. Every person in the entire state who is deemed clinically insane is sent to Lee’s local hospital. When the clinically insane folks are no longer the responsibility of the hospital, due to recovery (very rare outcome, it turns out), or a state’s-rights governor’s budget cuts, or the staff member’s suggestion that “they’ll be a’ight,” they are not sent back from wherever in Louisiana they came, but rather are just sent out the door to make do in Lee. Mostly, they stay, and that’ll tell you why, over the years, the percentage of people in Lee with a propensity for mental illness was unnaturally high.

A lot of folks blame South for Lee’s slow demise from a charming little southern town into a cautionary tale about opioid use. In truth, it was just one of the reasons. It was certainly one of the reasons for the slow demise of the Danielson family, whose eldest brother, Sampson, was committed.

The youngest brother, and actually the only son who belonged to both Honey and Darissa, is named Jonah, and is nine years old. Sampson is allowed to visit family during Christmas, which it is. You wouldn’t know it by the weather--it’s about seventy degrees--but, that’s Louisiana for you.

Sampson’s eyes have sunk into his head, and are dark, but he’s still handsome. Once, Jonah was helping his mom in the craft store, Honey’s, and a woman Sampson’s age approached him. She was skinny and missing some teeth. “You look like your brother, you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jonah said. He was playing with a toy by himself, and shifting away from this stranger, but thinks running away might hurt her feelings.

She crouched down, and he could smell alcohol. “I almost named my kid after him.”

“I’m doing OK, Darissa,” Sampson says. She didn’t birth him, but she might as well be called Mom. She’d like that. His actual father is in the living room, wife-beater and sweat pants on. “The structure is good for me.”

“What’s it like?” Jonah asks, squeezing some frosting on a sugar cookie which is supposed to be shaped like Santa, but he is making it look like an airplane, Santa’s sack working at the cock-pit window.

Sampson crouches down to his level. “Keeps me out of trouble,” he says. “You stay out of trouble?” When on the phone, people can’t tell if it’s his voice or his father, Honey’s. Both of their deep, slow drawls leak out of their noses as well.

Jonah looks up to his mother guiltily. “I did a bad grade and tried to hide it behind my desk,” he admits. “I’m only allowed TV because it’s Christmas....”

Sampson tussles his hair. “When I was your age I was blowing up shit--”

“Sampson,” Darissa interrupts. “Can you stir this pot?”

Sampson laughs and smiles his easy, charming smile. He does as he’s told. Jonah would very much like to hear the rest of that story, and makes a mental note to ask about it later.

Jonah’s other half-brother, whose Christmas cookies are decorated the right way, has his eyebrows high because he knows something and needs to tell everyone. “If we make bad grades we might end up in South like Sampson, right Sampson?” he asks. Sampson told him this once, and he thinks this is a cool way to demonstrate to everyone that he and Sampson are tight.

Sampson glances at Darissa and smiles. “That’s right, David,” he says. David is twelve, and is not at all related to Sampson, because he is the son of Darissa and her first husband. “Wouldn’t want to end up like me.”

“I would!” David squeaks. “Just not in South...”

“Honey!” Darissa calls. “You ready to eat?”

He doesn’t answer. Darissa begins to serve his plate anyway. 100% Cajun, Darissa makes gumbo, jambalaya, and shrimp étouffée. Normally it would be just one of the three, but it’s Christmas, and everyone has their favorites. Honey likes the shrimp étouffée, which she serves first and walks over to the dining table and sets at the head of the table. She puts a piece of garlic bread and a bottle of Dasani water near the bowl. “Food’s ready, Honey!”

Honey watches the news, tapping the remote on his knee. His huge, bifocal glasses shine in the bluish flicker. He clicks it off at a good stopping point. Everyone watches him rise, take his button-up shirt, which has been lain across the arm of his arm-chair, button it up, and walk to the dining room. His attention goes to Jonah, and only Jonah. “Boostie,” he says, squeezing Jonah’s shoulder.

They eat together, finally joined by the last member, Will-- Honey’s middle son, and the only blonde in the family. “They say I can get out this year on probation,” Sampson says.

Honey blows on his food. “Hmm,” he answers.

“Your problem is that you think shit don’t stick to you,” Will says, pointing at Sampson with his spoon.

“Oh, is that my problem, Will?” Sampson says.

“My problem is that I have too much homework,” David says, stretching his collar in an old-fashioned “yeesh” gesture. He believes he has lightened the mood.

Sampson laughs. Honey laughs, too.

Will looks between them. “This family can’t face the truth. That’s why we’re so fucked up.”

“Will, come on,” Darissa says.

“Sorry, Darissa,” Will says, honestly. “I just speak my mind.”

“Sometimes I’d rather not hear your mind,” Honey says.

“Is South really haunted?” Jonah asks.

Sampson looks to Darissa. “I’m not supposed to talk about that...”

Jonah and David look at one another.

When Christmas is over, Sampson is sent back to South. Jonah and David wave goodbye. “I have an idea to bust him out,” David says, so that his mother can’t hear. “You in?”

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

The Secrets of Barham Institute

Photo by @robbyj

“I heard that Judah killed his entire family and then came to school to shoot Mr. Jackson because he gave him a bad grade,” says a kid the following day. He smells like Axe Body Spray.

“They never could find him, you know,” says a girl so short she can rest her chin on the long, white lunch table without bending over much. “He’s still hiding in the school...”

Outside the cafeteria are armed security and local police, standing around, one guy near the window laughs.

“I heard that Briar tried to help him and now she’s going to jail.”

“Little miss goody two-shoes?” says another girl, an early bloomer.

“Yeah. She apparently snapped because Mr. Jackson was making her grade papers for extra credit.”

“I knew she was crazy,” says the early bloomer.

“I heard that Mr. Jackson is still alive and that he forgives Judah,”

“I guess that proves it,” says the first kid. “Mr. Jackson is a ghost.”

“Oh my God, stop it with that stupid rumor,” says the short girl, straightening her spine and her glasses. “He’s been through enough. We saw him get shot... I think that proves he’s not a ghost.”

Mr. Jackson sweats in a hospital bed. The nurse finishes checking him.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says. He registers her smile as finally, a real man who knows how to talk to a woman.

“That dude just called me fucking sweetheart,” she says to another nurse outside the room. “Ew,” says her friend, not looking up from her phone.

“Good to see a pretty woman like that. Really lifts the spirits, Graham.” Next to the bed stands Graham, looking grim and absent-eyed as a Civil War-era photo.

“You sure these nurses won’t be able to see me? I know they probably seen death...”

Mr. Jackson sighs. He places a gentle hand on his solar plexus, which is wrapped with white bandages. “Death isn’t felt properly in these sorts of places.” He gestures to the curtain around his bed, as if the paisley pattern was the evidence to his claim.

Graham swallows, lifting the prominent Adam’s apple in his neck. “Why don’t you just let your form die?”

Mr. Jackson looks sharp. “I made this form over these years...” he taps his own leg. “I made it big... I turned the misery of Lee into power. Physical power. I can move the world better than any living man. I don’t want to start over...”

While Mr. Jackson talks, Graham places his hand on the hospital bed and focuses on it intently. He tries to push it, but only manages to flutter the sheets. His crest falls.

“Keep me company, Graham, and I will get your physical manifestation back,” Mr. Jackson says knowingly. “The boy shot me, good for him. But now everyone thinks he killed the family. He did me a favor. I feel myself getting stronger and stronger by the love and attention I’m getting and the hatred toward him. Even now, sitting here with a hole in my chest...”

Graham tilts his head, playing in his mind all the times he had shot Mr. Jackson in reenactment to little or no effect. “How did he managed to hurt you so bad?”

Mr. Jackson chuckles. “He shot me with the gun that killed me. I didn’t expect him to be helped by Buddy Red. If it wasn’t for the attention he got me, it might have taken me back to my creator for good.”

...

In the chaos, Judah ran. Briar told him to run. He went right back to that bat-tunnel and dove in. A few people saw him do it, too. He could hear them talking about it. So, he kept crawling. The dirt and the spiders and the bats could not stop him now. Things crawl on him, touch him, possibly even bite him in the total dark, but he keeps going, pushing through his fear.

Adults can’t fit in the tunnel, and the kids are too afraid to go after him, besides--he has a gun, Ms. Perkins reasons.

Judah finds an old ladder by running into it with his nose. He feels it until he understands what it is, and climbs. He realizes that the gun is still in his hands, and puts it in his backpack.

The ladder seems to go on and on, rising through the total dark. The smell of long-untouched things disturbed invades his other senses. He shivers. Now that his eyes are adjusted, he can begin to see rays of light coming through the plaster of the inside of the walls. He squirms through the guts of the school.

At the top of the ladder is a trap door. He pushes it open and climbs up. The room is covered in a layer of dust and long-abandoned--locked from the outside.

“Hello, Judah,” says a voice, like audio from an old phonograph. Judah jolts to the source. A man, not entirely solid, skin as dark and reflective as stained wood, stands before him. “We have been waiting for you.”

More translucent beings emerge from the shadows.

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

The Boy with The Antique Gun

Photo by @leliejens

Judah and David are boy scouts. The older kids, David among them, organize an event--it’s tradition--called “skeet hunting” where they get the younger kids to take all their clothes off in the middle of the woods to catch an imaginary bird called a skeet. Once done, the older boys take their clothes, and leave them in the woods, naked, at night. Hazing. It’s meant to be funny.

“Don’t take your clothes off,” David whispers to Judah. “When everything starts to happen, just follow me.” Judah nods.

As the trick starts to play out, David makes a motion to Judah, and they leave with the older kids.

They quietly follow flashlight beams down a trail, laughing and horsing. “Donny looked like he was going to shit his pants!” says one kid.

“Why are you bringing your little brother, Davey?” asks another older kid.

“Shut up, Ethan,” David says, loudly. “You still miss your mom?” The other kids laugh. Judah walks there, silently.

Presently, he sits in the scary bat-tunnel under his school, watching Mr. Jackson threaten to kill Briar’s family. Something suggests that he should move, but he hasn’t done anything yet. Briar sobs.

“What do you say, Mr. Danielson? Would you like to come out now and be done with all of this?” calls Mr. Jackson to the open air.

The bell rings, which means lunch is over and students are going back to class.

“Last chance, Mr. Danielson,” Mr. Jackson says. “I have to teach these kids the truth about the war of Northern Aggression!”

It dawns on Judah that David is not coming to rescue him this time. His family isn’t coming either. No one is coming. Tears fill his eyes, and he pulls the gun from his backpack. He can barely lift it with one hand. He crawls out of the little tunnel, and stands, covered in dust and cobwebs.

“Judah!” Briar says. “No! Run away!”

Judah shakes his head and lifts the gun with both hands.

“Well, well! Mr. Danielson has a gun!”

Judah flashes the profile of it. “The one that killed you!”

Mr. Jackson’s eyes flash the smallest moment of fear.

“That student has a gun!” says a voice. It’s a teacher coming out of the bathroom behind them.

Mr. Jackson smiles. He puts his hands up slowly. “Put the gun down, son,” he says, loudly enough for the teacher to hear.

The teacher pulls out his phone. “Ms. Perkins!” he says. “A student has a gun!... Behind the school near the football bathroom!... Well, I called you first-- OK, OK, I’ll call 911 now...” He hangs up. He dials and quickly calls again. “Student at Barham school with a gun!” he shouts into the phone.

Judah hasn’t moved. He isn’t even sure what will happen if he pulls the trigger.

Mr. Jackson grabs Briar. “Don’t shoot us,” he fake-pleads.

“Let her go!” Judah says.

“I won’t let you shoot her!” Mr. Jackson says, again loud enough for the now approaching crowd to hear.

“I thought he was dead... Where did he even get that gun?... Is he the one that killed his family?” says the hushed voices of the people gathering around.

Reality seems to be falling into pieces before Judah’s eyes. Puking seems like a reasonable plan of action.

“What is going on here, Mr. Jackson?” says Ms. Perkins.

“I saw Judah sneaking around the school, and I followed him,” Mr. Jackson says, hands still in the air. “I knew he was missing, and I was concerned. It appears that he was trying to contact this young woman.” Mr. Jackson, more mindful now, puts Briar behind himself in a show of protection. “And he pulled a gun from his backpack and pointed it at her.”

“That’s not true!” Briar says.

Ms. Perkins looks at Judah and speaks slowly and calmly. “Why do you have a gun, Judah?”

Judah struggles to show that he is not very close to fainting, which he is. “Mr. Jackson...” he says. “He killed my family.” He does not go on about how he is a ghost, not feeling at all that he has the wherewithal to back up that kind of claim.

All eyes turn back to Mr. Jackson. Now all the students are gathering as well. Teachers shush and try to control the rising noise.

Mr. Jackson acts dumbfounded. “Son, you are the one with the antique gun. Wasn’t that the sort of thing that was used...?”

That aspect of the crime was published and gossiped about thoroughly. This proves to be a very salient point for the crowd, who turns back to Judah and his shaking gun.

“He’s lying! Judah was trying to protect me from him!” Briar shouts. This does little for the growing consensus. Mr. Jackson puts her more firmly behind him, as if Judah were casting a spell on her to make her say such things.

“The police are coming, Judah. Can you put the gun down?” Ms. Perkins says, as if asking him whether he wants any gravy on his mashed potatoes.

Judah lowers the gun, the suggestion reminding him that it is very heavy, if nothing else.

“Good...” she says.

Mr. Jackson approaches him now like you might approach a trapped wildcat, one hand extended, one hand back toward Briar. “Everything is OK,” he says. “We are going to get to the bottom of all this, and as long as you have nothing to hide, you ain’t in any trouble.”

Two flashes in the windows of his home, and his family is gone forever. A man waddles out of the house. There he is, walking toward Judah now. When he is only a few steps away, Judah raises the gun and pulls the trigger firmly. The thing practically explodes, flinging itself back into his chest. Good thing Mr. Jackson was so close, because there was no aiming involved.

The lead ball plunges into Mr. Jackson’s sternum, and he flops backward.

Many scream. A few rush to Mr. Jackson. A few more run away. The boy behind the gun seems to vanish in the chaos.

“Run!” Briar screams, and Judah does.

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lighterandpaper · 4 years

Text

A Painful Past

Buddy Red allows the boys to gaze at the ancient picture of their history teacher, and walks to another place in the building, the shiny, dark and worn floors wiggling and squeaking with every movement. “Is this his... ancestor?” David asks. You could look at the picture of Mr. Jackson and believe that perhaps he once looked like this, but it was not easy to imagine. He looks as gallant and swashbuckling as the present version of him behaves.

“That’s what he tells everyone, but that’s him all right,” Buddy Red says. “Read how he died.”

David finds the Jason Jackson obituary and puts his finger on it for his little brother to find as well. They read. “He died in the 1865 battle of Lee ‘bravely.’ Was given a warrior’s funeral.” David turns to find Buddy Red, who is out of their eye line. “What does it mean, ‘Bravely?’”

“I happened to be there, so I can tell you what really happened,” Buddy Red calls, opening something in the other room and shutting it again.

“You were in the battle?” David asks. “I thought you were a--um, a slave?”

Buddy Red breathes a little laughter. “Toward the end of the war, the South had a funny decision to make. Let the slaves fight for their freedom, or surrender. My slave owner said to me, ‘If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.’” Buddy Red stops speaking for a moment, as if he is lost in this moment of his life. “He picked me to fight for my freedom. I died a free man.”

“You died a traitor, Red,” says another voice. The boys lurch to hide behind a display cabinet. “And look at you now, among the living, working for people who are direct beneficiaries of slavery.” The boys can’t see the source of the voice, but they get the impression that he is talking about them and their family. Judah clutches his heart, reminded of his family’s death.

“I fought for my kids to be free,” Buddy Red says. “I wasn’t fighting for no South--or me. Too late for them, too late for me.”

“Your kids all moved North,” the voice says. “So, what are you still doing here?”

Buddy Red walks toward the boys, into the main room where they are hiding. “Y’all can come out. Marcus ain’t gonna hurt you.”

The boys reluctantly step out. A translucent man wearing a threadbare cotton tunic, pants dyed light blue, and a twine belt, hovers an inch above the floor. Dignity, derision, and dispassion loom on his face. “Look at this, a couple of white boys,” he says.

“Mr. Jackson killed their family last night,” Buddy Red says. He grips an old-fashioned revolver. The black steel and golden pommel glint in the beam of sun in which he is standing.

Marcus rolls his eyes. “You still trying to stop Mr. Jackson? It’s bigger than you, Red. It ain’t just Jackson--this whole town is trapped in the past. That ain’t gonna change. You can leave it behind, I can’t. You ought to go.”

“Naw,” Buddy Red says. “These boys can stop him.”

“You’re both ghosts, then why do you look invisible?” David asks. Judah grips his shirt.

Marcus snorts. “They can see me, huh? They watched Mr. Jackson kill them, then?” He shakes his head, both in sorrow for the boys, and also at himself, warning himself he better not feel for these kids.

Buddy Red nods. “Whole town thinks they’re dead. As long as it stays like that, they have a chance to take down Mr. Jackson.”

It dawns on Marcus. “I see your game, Red. But it ain’t gonna work.”

Judah hides totally behind his brother now, unable to hold himself together anymore. David puffs himself. “We want to go home now, Mr. Red.”

Buddy Red looks tired, disappointed. “Y’all can stop him. If you don’t, he will destroy Lee. He will destroy--”

“How are we going to stop him!” David squeaks.

Buddy Red lifts his hand in which the revolver rests. “This is the gun that killed him. If a living man shoots him with it, he will be put to final rest.”

“Get some other kids to do it,” David says.

Buddy Red sighs. “If he gets y’all, he will be too strong to take out.”

“Are these Danielson boys?” Marcus asks, head tilted. Buddy Red nods, which makes Marcus laugh. “Mr. Jackson is going for it all, ain’t he?”

David narrows his eyes at the laughing ghost. “Don’t laugh at us.”

Marcus becomes serious again. “That man whipped my children before your grandpa was born.”

“He was your...?” David begins. Marcus nods. Judah seems to be calming himself down behind David now. David thinks. “Can I see my dad?”

“I thought Mr. Jackson--” begins Marcus.

“They’re half-brothers,” Buddy Red says. To David, “Will your daddy call the police?”

David considers this, but doesn’t need to. His father would notify the authorities if fireworks went off on the wrong day of the year. “No, he won’t,” he lies.

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