The Diner and That Same Old Feeling Again

by Jeff Brown

Table of Contents
Part 5 appears
in this issue.

part 6 of 11

The Funeral, a Ghost and a Plan

“What do you want, Preacher man?” Tony growled.

“May God have mercy on your souls,” Jack said as he held the Bible out in front of him as if the three men before him were demons.

“You’re about to need mercy on your ass, old man,” Tony said then pushed preacher with both of his hands.

Jack fell backward, clutching his Bible in one hand and trying to break his fall with the other. He tumbled to the ground, his Bible getting away from him and landing face down. As Tony started back to the truck Jake called out to him, Pete and Dolan.

“The angels of death are watching you,” he said. “Repent of your sins and be free.”

The three men walked on, ignoring Jack’s peas for salvation. Pete and Tony got into the battered red truck while Dolan got into the black one. They started their trucks and slowly drove off, leaving Jack sitting in the grass where he had fallen. As they pulled out of the cemetery Jack Wells began to pray for them, for their souls, for their impending deaths.

“I think he saw us,” Calvin said as he watched the preacher drive away.

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah.” Calvin was now looking at Dale. “He saw us alright. He called us the angels of death.”

“What do you suppose he meant by that?” Dale asked.

“I have a feeling the preacher man just saw five ghosts. Not two. I think it’s time to shell out a little justice of our own.”

“Justice?” Dale asked with a puzzled look on his face.

“Yeah, justice,” Calvin responded. “It’s time to scare the hell out of Pete, Dolan and Tony.”

Dale smiled. He liked what he was hearing. A little payback was in order and it looked like he and Calvin were going to be on the giving end of things for a change.

And Then There Were Dreams

“We can do that?” Dale asked curiously.

“We’re dead,” Calvin said. “There are a lot of things we can do.”

“But, we can’t actually make them do anything, can we?”

Calvin seemed to ponder the question for a second or two. Before he had a chance to answer Mrs. Martha interrupted their conversation.

“You can’t make them do anything,” she said as she walked up with the old glass coffee pot in her hand. Steam rose from its open top from the coffee she had just brewed. For a dead person she managed to keep herself pretty busy.

Dale and Calvin both looked up at her. They hadn’t realized they had been talking loud enough for Mrs. Martha to hear them.

“What do you mean?” Dale asked.

“Well,” Mrs. Martha began as she poured some coffee into Dale’s empty coffee pot. “It’s fairly simple. You’re dead, so you have certain limitations. You can’t touch or feel them in any way. As a matter of fact you can’t touch much of anything in the living world. You can breathe on something or walk through something. You can even make the temperature in the room drop or rise. But you can’t physically touch anything in the real world anymore.”

“Yeah, but what about this?” Dale asked as he lifted the coffee mug from the table. He held it in the air took a sip from it and set the mug back on the table. “I lifted this cup and tasted the coffee you just poured in it. How is that possible?”

Mrs. Martha rolled her eyes and let out one of her grunts.

“You’re dead son,” she said. “This is a different reality. We can see and touch and taste things here, in our reality. What you see around you are the places you remember. Those places become your surroundings. This place is all a part of you, just like it’s a part of me and old Vic back there.”

“But, why are you in my memory?”

“Because I remember this place also. It’s where I worked until the day I died, right over there.”

Mrs. Martha turned from them and pointed toward the entrance to the kitchen. There, lying on the floor was a body. Dale recognized it immediately as Mrs. Martha’s. There was a large pool of blood around the chest and head areas.

“What happened?” Calvin asked. “If you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was shot and killed by some drug addict looking to score a couple of bucks,” Mrs. Martha said. “He couldn’t just take the money and run like a good little boy. He had to get all trigger happy and start shooting.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ma’am,” Calvin said.

Mrs. Martha grunted and waved a hand at him as if brushing his condolences aside. She turned and started to walk away.

“Wait,” Dale called abruptly. “If I can’t make them do anything what do I do to get back at them?”

Mrs. Martha stopped. She turned and looked back at Dale and Calvin. “So, it’s revenge you’re after?”

“Well,” Calvin said defensively, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it revenge.”

“Whatever,” Mrs. Martha said, rolling her eyes at them both. “Listen, I’ve been dead a long time and I know what revenge sounds like, and that’s it.”

“Okay,” Dale said. “Just say we want revenge, you know, for the sake of argument. How would we do it?”

Mrs. Martha stood there for a long moment looking at Calvin and Dale. She had a mind to turn around and walk away, to leave well enough alone. Instead she took a few steps toward them.

“Just because you can’t touch them doesn’t mean you can’t give them a push in the right direction.”

Calvin and Dale both looked at her confused.

“It’s simple. You can make suggestions to them. Or blow something across a room. You can scare them.”

“Well, how do we make suggestions, then?” Calvin asked.

“You can get into their dreams,” Mrs. Martha said.

“How do we...” Dale started.

“You’re ghosts. Figure it out for yourselves.”

With that said Mrs. Martha turned and walked away. They watched her until she was around the counter and through the kitchen door.

He was running as fast as his legs could carry him. Running... It was all he could do. He ran through leaves and bushes, branches and thickets. No matter how fast or how far he ran he was getting nowhere. And what was chasing him was gaining ground.

Tony could hear their footsteps as they crept closer and closer to him, their legs moving faster than his allowing them to gain so much ground. He turned to look back. It was a cardinal sin in trying to escape something. But, looking back is just what he did. He could see the figures — men — made of black and red leaves and old, dead branches. It would have been an amazing thing to see if he were watching a movie. This was no movie and the amazement ran out when the leaves took shape and began chasing him.

As Tony looked back his foot caught hold of an upraised root. He yelled as he fell forward, hands out in front of him to try and soften the landing. It didn’t do much good. There was a loud snap as his left wrist broke and collapsed under his weight. Tony yelled in pain as he rolled onto his side clutching his wrist with the other hand. Tony looked up from his shattered wrist long enough to see the black and red leaf people standing over him. They surrounded him on all sides. As they did so their leaves rustled loudly, their branches crackled and snapped with each movement. The sound was almost deafening, as a herd of elephants were running by him in the brush. He wanted to cover his ears and scream for them to go away but when he tried to scream nothing came out.

Tony could see their faces. They actually had faces. As he looked from one face to another he wished there were only black leaves with those pulsating red veins bulging all along them. The faces were of people he had known. Or, more importantly, people he had stopped on along the course of his life. They were the criminals in the prisons; the elderly; nerds and dorks alike. They were his friends, his family. And they were closing in on him.

Tony tried to scoot away with his feet and one good arm. That stopped quickly as vines and roots came out of the ground and began wrapping themselves around his arms, legs and torso. He snapped his head from side to side in disbelief as he watched the roots overtake him.

“NO!” he screamed as the roots pulled him into the ground, silencing him for good.

“Shit,” he yelled out.

It had been a long time since he had any nightmares. It had been an even longer time since one had seemed so real. Tony ran a sweat soaked hand across his face then ran both of his hands through his hair. His breathing had been hard as had his heart’s pounding. The both were slowly beginning to return to normal.

“My God, that was real,” he said to himself.

“We should’ve went back and saved Dale,” Calvin said from beside Tony.

Tony jerked his head to his left where Calvin was standing. He only got a glimpse of his dead friend’s alcohol bloated body before...

Tony screamed as he sat up in the bed. Just as in his dream he was perspiring profusely. But, unlike in his dream, he looked around immediately, his eyes searching for any hidden surprises. There looked to be none. For safe measure Tony pinched himself on the arm.

“Ouch,” he said. “Man, that was so...” His words trailed off as he remembered he had said something like that in his dream. He lied back on his bed and closed his eyes but he would not sleep again this night.

The rain fell in bucketfuls as Pete drove home along Route 8. A beer sat between his legs while another four sat in the six pack carton on the floor board of the truck. It had been a long day and the rain didn’t help matters. He drove along with the rain pelting down on his car. Pete cursed under his breath over and over as lightening began to flash overhead. Thunder clapped shortly after the lightening streaked the sky. It was definitely a night for a beer — several of them.

He rounded the sharp corner that lead to the apartment complex. His head light beams caught a glimpse of the person standing in the road. It was a man and his back was to the truck. Pete mashed the brakes hard on the truck, sending it into a skid. Pete turned the wheel to try and avoid the man who didn’t bother to move or even flinch when the truck’s tires squealed.

Pete cursed loudly as the truck skidded and hit the man. The man hit the hood of the truck. His back smashed the windshield and he flipped over the top of the truck. He came to a landing in the road, rolled a few feet then came to a stop on the side of the road.

Pete turned the wheel heard, forcing the truck off of the road and into the rain soaked dirt. The truck stopped with a jolt as the front end dipped into a ditch. As the truck came to a stop Pete’s seatbelt caught him, holding him to his seat. There were a few seconds where he thought he would be cut in half by the shoulder harness. Pete’s head had snapped forward almost hitting the steering wheel. He caught it with his hands, just barely managing to get his face to hit his own arms.

Steam billowed out from under the crumpled hood of the truck. It wasn’t long before the engine shut off and the rear wheels stopped spinning.

Pete raised his head slowly. His forehead had missed his arms and hit the steering wheel; it was split open just above the right eye. He felt the warm blood flowing freely but ignored it. He had just run over somebody. The only thing he wanted to do was see if the person was alive. His fear was obvious — the man wouldn’t be alive. Then what would he do? He had been drinking and driving. Even though the man had been in the middle of the road it was still a DUI and quite possibly a vehicular homicide as well.

He pushed his body up enough to unsnap the seat belt. It released and Pete felt a relief in his chest as well as pain. He lifted the handle of the door and pushed hard with his shoulder. The door opened a few inches. He pushed harder with his shoulder, this time moving the door completely open as metal rubbed against metal. He looked around to try and find a good place to jump out of his truck. He settled on a patch of what looked like solid ground just past the lip of the ditch. Pete leapt out, planting both feet on the wet ground. His feet slipped out from under him, sending him onto his back.

“Damn it!” he yelled.

Slowly, Pete stood. There was no use brushing himself off — the rain was going to soak him to his socks anyway. He turned to look back down the road. About thirty feet from where he stood lay the body of the man he had just run over.

“Oh man,” Pete groaned, his voice quivering slightly. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all...”

Pete began to walk, a little shakily at first then steadying himself with each step. As he reached the guy he knelt down. At first he was afraid to touch the man. He had never actually touched a dead person before, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted to now. Pete shook him gently.

“Hey, man, are you okay?” he asked as he shook the man’s shoulder. “Well, that’s a dumb question,” he said aloud. “Of course he’s not okay — he’s dead!”

Pete shook the man again. Still, the man didn’t move. Finally, he grabbed the man’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back.

“Mother Mary...” he yelled out at the sight of the mangled face. For a minute he thought he was going to vomit all over the body. He turned away until his stomach calmed enough to look back at him. When he did look back he got another shock.

“We should’ve went back and saved Dale,” Calvin said as he looked up from the road where he was lying.

Pete screamed and started to stand. Calvin opened his mouth wide. From inside it came black leaves with red veins with black stems that held large thorns on them. They shot forward out of his mouth, wrapping themselves around Pete’s head...

Pete awoke with a jerk as his knee hit the steering column of the truck. He looked out the windshield of his truck. It wasn’t broken, shattered from the weight of someone’s body hitting it. The truck wasn’t sitting in the ditch but on the side of the road. Pete glanced in the rear-view mirror. He was on a shoulder on a side road. Then he remembered feeling sleepy and pulling over. He had barely been able to see because of the rain anyway so he had pulled over to take a nap.

He took a deep breath and let it out. Though it had only been a dream — a bad one — it had been so real. Real enough to where he could still hear Calvin’s words ringing in his ears.

We should’ve went back and saved Dale.

To be continued...