TWO SOULS: INTO THE FIRE
43rd installment
warning...adult content
During the night, Ghost had bad dreams. He seemed to hear the eerie voice he'd heard before, saying he was never supposed to be here at all...and of spiders crawling down the walls and into his bed. He called out to Steve, to help him in his dream, and he actually did call out loud, and Steve heard him, and went to Ghost's room. Steve hadn't been asleep yet at all. He'd just tossed around thinking of where the journal could be, and what it might say about Ghost, the picture, and how it probably wasn't good. He worried how it would make Ghost feel.
He got into Ghost's bed, holding him close, while Ghost continued to dream. He knew Ghost would tell him about those crazy dreams in the morning. He always did. At last Steve started humming an old song, and it calmed him enough to sleep.
Both of them slept late, the next morning. Bleary eyed, Steve looked at the time, and quickly made coffee, gulping some down. If he didn't really hurry, he'd be late for work. He shook Ghost mostly awake, telling him he'd be back after work, and to keep looking for the journal. Ghost just mumbled uh-huh, and rolled over. Steve wasn't sure Ghost would actually keep looking. He seemed reluctant, but this was pretty important.
Ghost finally stumbled into the kitchen for coffee. Sitting at the table, he thought about his awful dreams. He wrote all his dreams down in a separate notebook. Then, he wondered if he should look for the mystery journal. First, he tried to get a sense of where it might be. He closed his eyes and pushed his mind into every corner of the house...nothing. So he started looking through the books again. He didn't get very far, without Steve there to keep him focused.
His ADD was worse than it had been in awhile, so he was distracted by the titles of the books, and kept thumbing through, reading bits and pieces. Reading about herbs and spices made him hungry, so he went to fix a sandwich. Taking it out to the front porch, he sat in the old swing, and tried to think of some words to a new song. Words were coming to him fast, so he had to go get his lyrics notebook. He wrote for awhile. Getting sleepy now, he dozed off, there on the porch swing.
Waking some time later, he noticed the star sign he'd painted on the porch in front of the door. It was faded. He found his little jars of paint, and re-did the whole warding off sign. As he passed by the books he'd left scattered around the living room, he remembered he was supposed to be searching the house.
"Damn, this is the longest day ever," he muttered to himself. "When's Steve coming home?"
He figured he'd better try looking some more. Steve would ask if he had, but it was too overwhelming...too much to look through.
"This is impossible," he thought, as he stood in the back room, with the dusty little bottles and boxes of herbs, antique medicines, and...spiders. He hurried out of that room, shutting the door.
He sighed, "Now what?"
As he looked out the back screen door, he thought he saw something move over in the thick trees. "Probably a raccoon," he thought, but got spooked, anyway, and shut and locked the back and front doors. He looked through the books again...no luck.
Finally, finally he heard the gravel on the driveway crunching, then Steve was banging on the door. "Hey, let me in, Ghost!"
Ghost hurried to unlock the door, and nearly knocked Steve down, with a big hug and kisses. "I thought you'd never get home, Steve! I missed you so much. I don't like being here by myself, it's boring and scary." Ghost rattled on and on. Steve smiled at the enthusiastic homecoming.
They sat on the couch, each with a beer, and Steve observed the books lying around. "Any luck?" he asked.
"No, not yet," Ghost said.
"So, where all did you look?"
"Well, the books, and I tried to look in the back room, but I thought there was spiders looking at me, so I had to not look in there," Ghost explained.
"Ok, I'll help you look now," Steve said, patiently, knowing pretty much how it had gone that day with Ghost. He'd known Ghost so long, he could predict that he'd have gotten way off course and distracted. Ghost grinned at Steve, and looked at him through fallen strands of hair on his face.
"Yeah...you're right, that's pretty much what happened."
Steve knew Ghost had heard what he'd been thinking. "So, let's finish up these books, ok?" Steve went to the book wall. Ghost followed. They both just stared at how much there was left, but then started in again.
"It's no use to keep looking, Steve," Ghost complained. They'd been at it for about half an hour."I want to go somewhere," he continued. "I've been here for a bunch of days. I'm tired of staying in the house."
Steve sighed, "I know, Ghost, but I just got home. I don't want to walk all the way back to town. I've got to get a car."
"How ya gonna do that?" asked Ghost.
"Well, I had an idea. Terry has a couple of old junkers he's not using, maybe he'd let me pay a little out of my paycheck each week, for one of them. I'm gonna ask him."
They began to plan where they'd go when they got a car, and Ghost was distracted from going somewhere that night. They still weren't finding anything in the books.
"I'm looking in the kitchen," said Ghost, "and I'm hungry again."
Giving up on the books, Steve went to the back room and opened the door. He'd never been comfortable going in there, even when Ghost and he would sneak in there as kids. It was kind of spooky, but he went in anyway, just to try and poke around. He moved a few dusty boxes, and stomped on the floor, hoping to find a loose floorboard, or a secret safe behind the boxes, but a real spider crawled out from the shelf. Steve decided to get out of there.
"Maybe later," he told himself. He went back to the kitchen, and took in the strange sight of Ghost, standing up on top of the cabinet, throwing stuff out onto the floor, from the top shelves.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Aiii," Ghost hollered, almost falling off. "You scared me!"
"Well?" Steve asked.
"I'm looking, what does it look like?"
"It looks like you're making a mess, and trying to fall and break your neck. That's what it looks like"
"I'm gonna clean it up. This stuff is so old, it's probably got spiders in it." There were half used up boxes of cereal, rusty cans, outdated seasonings, and other miscellaneous kitchen items.
"Yeah, guess you're right," Steve said, grabbing a garbage bag, filling it with the thrown out things.
"Why are you so scared of spiders, Ghost? They're just little bitty bugs." He didn't mention the fright he'd had himself, not ten minutes ago.
"I don't know, they're just creepy. I never liked them."
Next installment coming soon!
Peace, Love, & Writing
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