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ne morning on a cold, blustery Saturday in early March, photographer Jerry Anderson was developing film in his studio darkroom when the faint tinkle of the front door chimes announced that a potential customer had wandered in. Things had been glacially slow business-wise since early January with the end of the frenetic senior picture season, and he’d risked managing the business on his own for an hour while his wife Jan ran errands.
Jerry quickly rinsed and hung two rolls of black-and-white 35mm film, wiped his dripping hands on a towel, and felt his way through the black double curtain separating the darkroom from the studio’s portrait room. Crossing the portrait room, he turned right and jogged down the hallway leading to the front. He arrived behind the sales counter panting slightly.
The young woman ogling the sample portraits in the front lobby stole what little breath he had left. She was one of those rare beauties whose complexion needed no makeup. Her full, cupid’s bow of a mouth was naturally tinted so as to have no need of lipstick, and her peaches-and-cream complexion—already stunning, had been enhanced further by blustery, early March winds before she’d entered the studio.
At first glance, Jerry thought the stunning young lady clothed in ultra-conservative dress a Mennonite maiden who had entered the studio by mistake. There was a Mennonite colony in nearby Jamesport, Missouri, and it wasn’t uncommon to see one or two of them wander into town from time to time for hardware supplies.
But Mennonites never set foot in a studio or allowed themselves to be photographed. According to their beliefs, photographs were “graven images” as set forth in the Bible, and thus a sin. And Mennonite women never ventured out into the larger world, alone; especially if they were single, as this person appeared to be.
Whoever she was, she was completely engrossed in the formal portraits in the lobby. For a few seconds, Jerry watched, fascinated by her understated beauty. Finally, Jerry cleared his throat to get her attention. “May I help you?”
The young lady wheeled and smiled shyly, causing his heart to race. “Why, yes, kind sir, you may.” Turning to the wedding portraits again, she pointed and asked, “Did you take these?”
“Not all of them,” Jerry said. “My father took about half of the ones displayed. I’m filling in while he recovers from an extended illness.”
The young woman slowly approached the wedding portraits, gently trailing her fingers over several. “They’re beautiful,” she sighed wistfully. Then she wheeled so quickly that the frumpish black coat and ankle-length dress she was wearing belled out, revealing a hint of shapely calves and delicate ankles, beneath. Jerry was disgusted to notice that she wore those hideous old-fashioned black “granny lace-up shoes” that had gone out of style long before World War II. Approaching the counter, she smiled again and said, “How rude of me. I was so taken by your work that I forgot to mention my name. I’m Sandra Dye.”
“I’m Jerry Anderson.” Returning her smile, he extended one arm across the counter and shook her proffered hand, and was shocked to find it icy cold.
After a brief time, Sandra released her grip and stepped back. “It’s so hot in here,” she said.
Jerry could understand why she felt that way after having felt her frigid hand.
Then she removed her coat, and any doubts about whether she was a Mennonite maiden were dispelled. Even with the full-length conservative dress she was wearing, Jerry noted that she was at least seven months pregnant. Such was her beauty at that moment that Jerry secretly wished that he could have been the lucky person to have put her in such a state. Immediately after, he felt ashamed and embarrassed, for his wife Jan was a lovely woman that any man would cherish.
Collecting his thoughts and giving himself another mental dose of ice water, he asked, “You seem to be interested in the wedding portraits. Are you thinking of booking a wedding?”
As if reading Jerry’s lecherous thoughts from moments before, Sandra glanced down at her growing midsection and blushed. Without raising her eyes, she said, “Yes. That is what I require. My fiancee and I are to be wed on the last Saturday in April at seven o’clock in the village of Harrison.” Without warning, she dashed forward again and clasped Jerry’s forearms. There was desperation in that grip. Tears sprang from her eyes and she started sobbing disconsolately. “Oh, please, please, kind sir! Tell me that you can—that you will?”
Seeing the desperation in those pleading, almond-shaped eyes was more than Jerry could bear. Leaning forward over the counter, he patted her hands.
Without warning, Sandra craned her neck and kissed him passionately. The glacial coldness of her lips shocked
him anew. But he overcame it, and responded in kind. Then, shocked by the awkward situation, both pulled back, embarrassed. “I-I’m so sorry,” Sandra stammered.” It’s just that—that this is so important to me.”
Breathing deeply to regain his own control, Jerry smiled unevenly and replied, “If anyone should be sorry, it’s me. Don’t worry. I’ll take your wedding pictures. My calendar’s open that Saturday evening. If you want me.” No sooner than he’d said it, Jerry blushed beat-red adding, “I mean, if you want me to take your wedding pictures.”
After the young woman had departed, having paid a three hundred dollar deposit in cash, Jerry’s head was spinning. What the hell had gotten into him? True, Sandra was beautiful, but he had never been one to flirt with anyone outside his marriage of twelve years. And rightfully so. His wife Jan was a beautiful woman and an even more wonderful person.
And yet, there had been things about Sandra that had seemed so—different. She’d always seemed one step ahead of every defense he’d had. And the weird thing about it was that he knew she hadn’t done it intentionally.
Jerry shook his head to clear it, and reran the list of oddities through his mind.
First and most obvious had been her antiquated mode of dress. If she wasn’t a Mennonite (and she wasn’t) then what socially-deprived rock had she been living under? True, north Missouri did have its share of backwater areas and conservative farmers, but Sandra’s dress had seemed ancient, even by their standards. The black lace-up shoes and virginal white bonnet were proof enough of that.
And then there had been Sandra’s speech patterns. More than once, her dialogue had reminded Jerry of lines stolen from old, scratchy black-and-white movie classics from the ‘30’s featuring such Hollywood starlets as Greta Garbo and a host of others. No one spoke like that, anymore.
But the thing that troubled Jerry most was how cold Sandra had felt to the touch. She wasn’t just cold, but frigid. So much so that Jerry wondered if she wasn’t gravely ill. When he’d first shaken her hand, it had taken a supreme act of will to keep from wetting himself, so great had been his shock. The memory caused him to laugh. Because if he had lost control of his bladder, the result probably would have been yellow ice cubes.
And then when she’d surprised him, leaned forward, and kissed him! It’s a wonder his lips hadn’t stuck to hers, so cold had that (secretly delicious) encounter been.
“Must be cabin fever,” Jerry muttered. For winter that year had been long and unusually cold. There had been no “midwinter thaw.” Good thing there hadn’t, Jerry thought. Sandra had supplied all the “thawing” he’d needed, and then some.
There’s an old Midwestern adage that “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” But in the spring of 1997, Jerry thought March had come in more like a famished lioness and gone out like one with a raging case of PMS. Severe thunderstorms rocked much of Missouri north of the Ozarks in its final week, and the Green Hills area seemed to be the epicenter. It took a week with a chain saw after work for Jerry to clear the snapped, fallen trees from his yard. Fortunately, none had fallen on his home.
Business-wise, things remained slow at the studio. But a change was coming, and the marital dam would break about a week into April. Jerry already had nine weddings booked, plus four more call-ins inquiring about availability and rates.
Jerry was tending the studio alone on April third when Sandra Dye dropped in to go over her wedding picture list. Once again, Jan was out running errands.
Sandra wore a drab, old-fashioned dress so antiquated that Jerry half-wondered if she hadn’t rummaged through a musty attic trunk to find it. Now well into her pregnancy, she was more beautiful than ever. Jerry thought the unborn child was going to be a boy, based upon the way her midsection was distended.
For the next two hours, Sandra and Jerry went over every photo she’d requested, with Jerry taking time to explain that certain wedding pictures required cooperation and planning in order to achieve. Sandra proved a fascinated, cooperative person, eager to assist Jerry in whatever way she could.
At the end of their session, Jerry said, “Believe me Sandra, great wedding pictures don’t happen by chance. Sometimes the public thinks that professional photographers just show up and work magic.
“But weddings take teamwork,” he added, lightly touching her shoulder. “Remember: that’s going to be your special day. My job is to make it more so, and achieve that without interfering.” Then he laughed. “I often tell future brides that if I could take their wedding pictures invisibly, I would.”
But instead of the smile he expected to see on Sandra’s face because of his witty remark, she instantaneously paled and her expression clouded. Stumbling back, she put one hand to her forehead, and nearly swooned.
Alarmed, Jerry rushed to catch her before she fell. “Sandra? he asked, alarmed, “What’s wrong?”
Still bent over, she raised one hand to stay him. When the worst had passed seconds later, she raised her eyes to his.
But she didn’t see him, for they were glazed—lost in some faraway, unpleasant memory. At that moment, Jerry might as well have been in another galaxy. “Invisible,” she whispered to herself, shuddering. Slowly, her eyes refocused, but fear remained. “Please . . . don’t ever use that word, again!”
“I-I’m sorry, Sandra,” Jerry stammered, not knowing what else to say.
But within a minute or so, the Sandra that Jerry had come to know started to reemerge, and her face blossomed into a strained smile. “Please don’t apologize,” she begged.
“It’s just . . . something out of my past that I’d rather forget.”
A few minutes later when Sandra left, she had regained her composure completely. Glancing back over her shoulder, she smiled and waved. “Don’t forget. The little church in Harrison five miles north of Chula, last Saturday of April, seven sharp.”
Jerry returned a forced smile and waved as she turned right onto the sidewalk and with a final flip of her dress in a blustery wind, disappeared from view.
But he didn’t say a word after she departed. Sandra’s earlier behavior had unnerved him. Deeply. His gut was grinding like a butter churn, complete with splintered paddles.
And there was something else about Sandra’s wedding plans that troubled him; it had been right under his nose the entire time: he’d driven every county and gravel road within a hundred miles of Trenton, and knew every small town in this part of the state.
He knew where Chula was. But he’d never heard of Harrison.
Jerry was so shocked when his father Richard walked into the studio thirty minutes later that he nearly dropped a new sample portrait that he was hanging in the lobby. “Dad!” he blurted. “What in blue blazes are you doing here? I thought Doc Watters told you to park your bum in front of the boob tube for two more weeks.”
Richard waved off Jerry’s comments with a combined expression that was half sour look, half grin. To Jerry, the effect was like watching Don Rickles eating a lemon—so funny that he barely kept from busting a gut.
“Screw the doc,” Richard said gruffly, ambling behind the front counter to the workroom. “He hasn’t had to pick pimples off his ass and watch ‘dopes’, er, soaps like I’ve had to do the past three weeks.” Grunting, Richard eased himself down onto a swivel stool and unconsciously ran his fingers through his drooping “Doc Holliday” moustache. With a mischievous smile that had caused many a woman (married or single) to swoon in his younger years, he added, “Thought I’d stop by and see how quickly you were wrecking the family business.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jerry replied with a lecherous smile of his own. Secretly relieved to see his father feeling feisty, he added, “Things are purring along just fine, you old fart.”
After a few minutes of good-hearted ribbing, father and son got down to business. Richard took a look at the appointment book, secretly pleased to see how many weddings Jerry had logged. “Damn,” he said, “you’d think they were getting a good photographer, or something.” Then he turned and eyed Jerry lovingly. “Good for you, son. Good for your family, too. Doesn’t look like I oughtta bother coming back to work. If I did, I might just really screw things up. But as long as I’m here, is there anything you need? Anything at all?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Jerry said after a pause. “You ever heard of the town of Harrison?”
Richard had been about to seat himself again on the stool when he froze in mid-stride, and placed both hands on the counter to keep from collapsing. His face instantly turned pasty white, and his breath came in ragged, wheezy pants.
Alarmed, Jerry sprang to his feet and rushed to his father’s side, fearing that he might be having a relapse. The removal of half a lung was no laughing matter. “Dad? You okay?” he asked, gripping his father’s shoulders. Richard nodded his head vigorously to reassure Jerry, but Jerry maintained a firm grip and aided his slumping father to a stool, where Richard collapsed in a heap. Brushing one trembling hand across his sweaty brow, Richard craned his neck at Jerry and fixed him with frightened eyes. “Harrison, Missouri,” he gasped. “Not too far north of Chula, if I remember right. Been there once, forty-odd years ago. Never been back, since.”
Without warning, Richard leaned forward and clutched Jerry’s forearms in a vice-like grip that was at-odds with the naked fear in his shaky voice. “Sandra Dye,” he said, fixing Jerry with dagger-like eyes. “Ever heard the name? Beautiful, radiant young woman. Pregnant. Dressed in clothes that would seem more fitting for the turn of 1900?”
Now it was Jerry’s turn to be shocked and he stared,
goggle-eyed at his father. Had it not been for Richard’s clutching hands at that moment, he would have slumped to the floor. “I . . .booked her wedding for the last Saturday this month. In Harrison. How—how could you possibly know her?” he asked.
Inhaling deeply, Richard released his grip, and rubbed his sweating, icy brow. “Before I answer that, do me a favor: go to the old ‘fridge upstairs where we store the sheet film. At the back on the top shelf on the left, you’ll find a quart of Jack Daniels. When I used to work late at night, I’d sometimes take a short nip after finishing up. Bring the bottle, along with two plastic cups and some ice. You’re gonna need a swig. Maybe several.” Terror caused Richard’s normally deep, booming voice to sink to a husky whisper. “You see, son, I took Sandra’s wedding pictures forty-odd years ago, close to the very same wedding date in Harrison. And I can prove it.”
After knocking back a couple of stout shots, Richard stood and motioned Jerry to follow him to the storage room off the main hallway. “No need putting this off,” he said, “You might as well find out now as later if you think you need to turn your old man over to the looney farm.” After unlocking a metal file cabinet, Richard squatted, opened the bottom drawer, and rummaged through it until he found the dog-eared, large manila envelope he was seeking; it had been buried deep, deliberately.
Then he stood and turned to his son. “Nobody’s ever seen these but me. I’ve only pulled them out a couple of times over the years and looked at them, just to convince myself that I hadn’t lost my mind, and that Sandra’s wedding that particular day was real. I only kept two photos, but they are more than enough. I burned the rest long ago.”
With trepidation, Jerry took the envelope from his father’s trembling hand, opened the flap, and slid out the top 5 x 7 glossy back-and-white image. Despite a surety of what he would see, staring at an image of Sandra Dye taken forty-two years ago caused him to involuntarily suck air through clenched teeth. The beautiful young bride smiling back from the well-preserved photo was none other than the Sandra Dye he’d seen, himself. He shivered, and goose bumps the size of angry wasp stings crawled up and down his spine.
“Yes,” Richard said. “Quite a shock, isn’t it? But you can stop now while you’re ahead—way ahead. Or you can look at the second image . . .”
Like a hypnotized bird before a cobra, Jerry slowly edged the second photo from the envelope. The shock of what he saw caused him to tremble so much that the hideous image fluttered from his nerveless fingers to the floor. “Oh, God,” he whispered in a harsh, dry rasp.
“Yes,” Richard replied gravely, “Now do you see why I’ve kept this hideous secret to myself all these years?”
Numbly, Jerry nodded by way of reply.
Unable to help himself, Jerry lowered his eyes and stared again at the ghastly photo that had landed face-up on the floor as if to taunt him. Eventually, he tore his glance away and looked at his father in tortured disbelief.
Seeing the anguish in Jerry’s eyes, Richard whispered apologetically, “I don’t even remember snapping that picture, son.” Guilt-ridden over something he should not have to explain, he added, “I mean, that’s what photographers do, isn’t
it—take photographs in certain situations without thinking about what they’re seeing?”
Numbly, Jerry nodded. So shaken was he that he temporarily forgot that Sandra Dye had visited the studio long after such a horrible, tragic thing should have been possible. Then he shook himself to dispel the ghastliness of what he’d seen, and his voice hardened. “I hope they roasted the rotten bastard in hell who did that.”
Then Jerry shook his head in denial of the incredible events in which he and his father seemed to be embroiled. “B-but this is simply impossible!”
Richard replied gravely, “Is it, son? Just how strong an emotion is love? Or for that matter, hatred? Can we know with certainty that given enough passion and the right circumstances, that either emotion cannot temporarily overcome even the grave, itself?”
Jerry ran his fingers nervously through his hair. “Come on, dad. There’s got to be a logical explanation.” Tapping the hideous photo, he added, “Maybe the Sandra Dye I’ve booked for the upcoming wedding is a near-descendant of the poor soul whose wedding you took forty-odd years ago? Relatives can look like carbon copies, you know.”
Richard brushed him off with an impatient sigh, shaking his lowered head slowly. “No, son. The Sandra Dye whose wedding pictures I took forty-odd years ago was already long dead and buried in her grave. And I can prove it.”
Richard’s eyes bulged at this new twist.
“Yes,” Richard said. “But before we return to that issue, here’s what happened to me at Sandra’s wedding the last week of that long-ago April in 1945.” Wagging a finger, he added, “If this doesn’t convince you that we’re dealing with supernatural forces, nothing will.”
Richard cursed and wiped sweat nervously from his brow as he drove south toward Chula, Missouri for the third time that late April Saturday afternoon. He had reason to be upset. If he didn’t find his way to Harrison within the next hour, he risked arriving late for Sandra’s wedding.
Normally, he arrived two hours beforehand to do a walk through of the church in order to determine the best vantage points for many of his wedding shots. Even if he’d taken weddings at a particular church many times before, something might be different, and he didn’t like surprises.
Ahead on the right, Richard saw what he was looking for: Cooper’s Hardware. The local business had long been a local gossiping place for Chula’s residents. If anyone had heard of Harrison, he’d find them there. Pulling to the curb out front, he shut off the engine, leapt from his car, and dashed inside. Breathlessly, he leaned on the counter by the cash register and flagged down a young, sandy-haired man in bib overalls stocking nails in wooden drawers.
Sidling up, the fellow said, “Help you, mister?”
“I’m looking for the town of Harrison,” Richard panted. “Supposed to be somewhere north of here a few miles.”
The cashier scratched his head in thought and screwed his eyes at the ceiling, “Welll, I don’t mean to go rainin’ on your parade, but I’ve lived in Chula all my thirty-four years and never heard of it. You sure the town you’re lookin’ for ain’t Harris?”
Richard brushed the reply aside. “It’s not Harris,” he said desperately. “I’ve been to Harris many times. You see, I’m supposed to take a wedding in Harrison about an hour from now, and I can’t find it.”
The cashier started to shrug his shoulders and reply that he couldn’t help when he thought of something. Snapping his fingers, he said, “You see those two old-timers back there by the stove playing chess? Lanky fellow on the right’s Clyde Morris. He’s been in these parts all his ninety-plus years. If he can’t tell you where Harrison is, then nobody can.”
“Much obliged,” Richard said, and trotted back to the ongoing game. Leaning over the codgerly pair, he cleared his throat. “Er, excuse me Mr. Morris, I understand that you may know where the town of Harrison is. I’m in a terrible hurry to get there.”
Clyde cupped his hand over one ear, and glanced up from beneath a battered, sweat-stained tan cowboy hat so old that it looked like it might be some weird skin cancer that had grown from the old man’s skull. “Speak up, sonny. Ol’ ears ain’t what they used to be.”
Richard repeated the question and when he did, both the
old-timers stared at him as if he’d just walked into the store butt naked. “If you’re lookin’ for Harrison, boy, you missed it by over thirty years, give or take. Town just kinda dried up an’ faded away like a popcorn fart, back around 1910.”
Richard stood there with his mouth agape. “B-but that can’t be,” he stammered, looking nervously at his watch, “I’m supposed to take wedding pictures there in about an hour.”
Clyde laughed, and the laugh tapered off into a harsh, ragged cough that doubled the old man over. Pulling a hanky from his breast shirt pocket, he spat a huge wad of greenish-yellow phlegm into it, wadded the hanky, and returned it to his pocket. “Now where was I?”
“Harrison,” his friend Earl said.
“Oh, yeah,” Clyde said. Glancing at Richard, he said, “I wish you luck, son. Ain’t nothin’ there now but cornfields an’ maybe a few stray cow turds, if the land’s under pasture. But just for the sake of doin’ what I can, all you gotta do is drive about three miles north, then jog west for two miles or so . . .if you can find a road, that is.”
Richard thanked the man, shook his hand vigorously, turned, and dashed from the store.
Watching Richard leave, Clyde eyed his partner Earl, and both old men rolled their eyes. “Kids,” he said, “No wonder the country’s goin’ to the shitter.”
“Can’t argue that,” Earl said. Leaning forward, he moved his bishop from its place of concealment, and rubbed his hands with glee as he plunked it down in its new location. “Checkmate. First time I ever beat your scrawny ass.”
Less than thirty minutes later, Richard discovered that Clyde was both right and wrong: the weed-choked turnoff was where Clyde said it would be, but the old fellow was wrong in thinking that the town of Harrison was gone. With barely twenty minutes until the wedding, Richard grabbed his cameras, flash, and film bags from his dusty Ford, and trotted for the whitewashed, simple-looking church nestled beneath a grove of oak trees.
So pressed was he for time that he had no chance to satisfy his burning curiosity about the town and what was going on within it—it seemed that there was a celebration of days gone by that was in full swing.
Everyone he’d met driving through downtown (all three blocks of it) was dressed in turn-of-the-century clothes. And there hadn’t been a single car except his own. Everyone was on foot, on horseback, or driving horse drawn buggies. He’d startled several horses (and their owners) with his car although he’d been driving slowly. That was odd, he’d thought, for most horses had accepted their strange, noisy “brethren,” nowadays.
And then there’d been the issue of the town, itself. Richard had seen old pictures and tintypes of western towns from the 1870’s. Harrison looked as if it had been snatched up by some time-traveling giant, and, when bored with the game of lugging the town around, had plunked it down here.
Simple wood homes were sprinkled helter-skelter just off the main drag. Along both sides of the main street, businesses with blistered, faded paint buttressed against each other like tuna packed in a can. Boardwalks about as level as a seasick roller coaster tied the businesses together like drunken twine. A sagging wood sign with faded paint announced “Saloon” in bold, gaudy letters. Not a single electrical wire or telephone line was evident.
The town’s physical aspect was disturbing. It was one thing to have a celebration of days gone by, but quite another to redo the entire town to look that old. It made no sense. It would take considerable time and money to modernize things, again.
Before entering the church, Richard shook his head to clear it of what he’d witnessed in the past few minutes. Glancing westward at the lowering April sun, he noted that a thickening film of high fleecy cirrus clouds were advancing from the
west—harbingers of a coming spring storm. Already, thicker clouds trailing behind had become a gray, threatening mass. “Good,” he said to himself. “With the warm sticky nights and showers we’ve had the past two weeks, a good rain should get the morel mushrooms popping.” After the stressful day he’d had, a good tromp in the woods picking mushrooms tomorrow afternoon would be just fine.
Richard sat his equipment in the corner of a small alcove near the front of the church and wandered into the nave. The large, stuffy room was packed. Not a single open seat in the pews remained. Sandra and her husband-to-be were obviously quite popular. Once again, Richard marveled at the old-fashioned dress of the gathered crowd, made more ethereal by amber candlelight throughout the church. More than a few of the gathering stared at him, probably due to his clothes, which were so at-odds with theirs. As he always had, Richard had worn his Sunday best for the Saturday wedding.
Dismissing their curiosity, Richard did a quick walk-through of the church, noting where to get the best shots. Just as he was returning to the alcove to retrieve his equipment, Sandra saw him across a sea of people, smiled, and waved. “Thank God you’re here,” she said moments later. “Have any trouble finding the place?”
Her radiant smile disarmed him. “Not really,” he lied, smiling back.
After winding her way through the gathering, she laid a hand on his shoulder and her eyes misted. “It’s almost time,” she said with a sigh. “Now that you’re here, everything’s perfect.” Nervously, she glanced at her watch. “I’d better get going. The ceremony starts in ten minutes.” As she walked away, she glanced back over her shoulder and smiled. “Good luck,” she said. “And thank you so very much for coming.”
Waving back, he said, “And good luck to you, Sandra.”
The ceremony started right on time, but the proceedings were anything but fast. Minister Lawrence Fischer was of the old
school—someone who viewed matrimony as a sacred event. And to that end, he upheld the nature of his profession to God. An hour and a half later, Richard and the throng had become restless and miserable in part due to the sweltering heat in the confined space of the church. Aside from that, Richard’s work proceeded well.
After taking a particular shot or two, Richard stepped outside in the freshening breeze to cool himself before reentering the church and taking the final shots of the exchange of rings, the wedding kiss, and the shot of the bride and groom coming up the aisle as a newly-wedded couple.
Glancing westward while wiping sweat from his brow, he noticed how threatening the sky had become. A bruised, grayish green line of ragged clouds sagged heavily. Just behind them masked by rain and possible hail, lightning flashed in rapid succession. Low thunder rumbled continuously—the kind Midwesterners referred to as “pane rattlers.” The first gusts of glacially cold air cooled his face, reminding him of the potential severity of the storm. The drive back to Trenton after the wedding tonight on hilly, winding Highway 6 promised to be challenging.
Going back inside, Richard tiptoed quietly up the right hand aisle of the church. Crouching low, he advanced to an open spot between the front row of pews and the altar, knelt, and framed the couple through his viewfinder in preparation for the exchange of rings. Despite his careful consideration not to block anyone’s view of the proceedings, several people gave him disapproving looks. As a wedding photographer, he was used to it. The first priority was giving the bride and groom treasures that would last a lifetime. There would only be one chance to capture the moment live, and it was now mere seconds away.
Halfway through the exchange, a thunderous crash of lightning struck one of the old oak trees just outside the window, splitting the trunk down the middle and causing half of it to crash into the north wall of the church. Startled, minister Fischer jumped back. As one, the crowd gasped and a few women screamed.
In an attempt to calm the gathering, minister Fischer raised his voice and said, “Seems our Lord has indigestion, this evening. I’ll speed this along so we can get home as soon as possible.”
He never got the chance.
Just as he proceeded with the exchange of the second ring, a loud, angry voice issued from about halfway up the aisle. “I object to this union. My daughter is fit for the hand of no man!” No one had noticed the gnarled, grizzly, bent figure until that moment. With water dripping from the brim of his weatherbeaten hat and overcoat, the haggard figure quickly stalked up the remainder of the aisle before anyone could blink. With a guttural scream, he withdrew a sawed-off shotgun from beneath his coat and shot the startled groom in the head from five feet away, blowing it off above the eyebrows. Blood and gore spattered the startled minister and Sandra. Frantically, the remainder of the wedding party screamed and dove for cover.
No one’s scream was more penetrating than Sandra’s. Kneeling at her lover’s side, she drew his ruined, gore-spattered face to her breast, and cradled his slack body in her arms. Sobbing, she looked up at the menacing figure towering over her. “I hate you, father, I hate you,” she screamed.
With enraged, rheumy eyes, her insane father pointed the shotgun at Sandra, and shot her in the gut. Still cradling her lover in her arms, she slumped to the floor. A growing pool of the hapless lovers’ blood commingled in front of the altar, as if in defiance of what Sandra’s crazed father had denied them.
From twelve feet away, Richard had reflexively taken the second of the two pictures of the exchange of rings just as the enraged father had shot Sandra. Now he stood rooted to the spot, unable to cope with the magnitude of horror unfolding before him.
A second deafening boom of thunder shook the church, and it startled the frozen crowd into action. All save two men yelled and screamed, running for the exit at the back of the church. In the next instant, the two men who had not fled ran up the aisle and shot Sandra’s father in the back with drawn pistols. After he sank to the floor, they angrily emptied their weapons into his head and torso.
Shocked, Richard watched the horror unfold.
Another deafening crash of thunder roared. Immediately, the gathered throng of panicked people wavered and became semi-transparent. As they did so, their screams and yells faded to barely-discerned, echoing whispers that were increasingly smothered by a screaming hurricane of wind. For the briefest of moments, Richard saw through them as if they were nothing more than distinct puffs of thinning smoke.
Rubbing his eyes, he looked again, and saw that he was right. Lumps of gray mist that had represented individual people in the crowd a moment before spread and mingled, forming one vast, swirling, indistinct mass. Before his startled gaze the tattered fog blew away toward the east, and rose toward the lowering sky. Whipped by the blustery winds, the mist mingled with the storm wrack, and was gone.
Richard blinked again and thrust balled fists into his eyes in a frantic effort to drive the insane scene away. Thunder crashed and cold, dollar-sized spatters of rain stung his face, driven by fierce icy winds.
When he reopened his eyes, the church and town of Harrison were gone as if they’d never been. Richard spun wildly in all directions while a howling wind ripped at his coat and dripping, tangled hair. Startled anew, he saw that he was standing in a rain-drenched field in the middle of nowhere, desperately clutching his camera while a full-blown thunderstorm raged around him. Spotting his car beneath a cluster of gnarled oak trees, he screamed and ran as if his life depended on it.
Maybe it had.
Lightning struck precisely where he’d been standing not five seconds after he’d reached his car.
Sighing, Richard leaned toward his son with pleading eyes. “Now do you see why I’ve secretly doubted my sanity all these years until you told me that you’d seen Sandra, too?
“Those first weeks after witnessing the horrid events nearly drove me insane. Thank God I wasn’t married to your mother, yet.
“The first thing I had to do was drive back to the place where the horror had happened. In my frantic haste to leave, I left my film packs and other equipment sitting in two bags in the middle of the storm.
“It took me a week to get the courage to go back and when I did, finding those two film bags sitting in tall weeds in the middle of that open field was somehow as bad as the horrors that had gone before—it meant one of two things: that I’d either had a waking nightmare and was losing my mind, or that the thing had been real.
“So after I got back to the studio, I developed the film, secretly praying that there would be nothing to see.
“But as you now know, there was.
“Everything I had come to know of reality had been shaken to the core by those images. For awhile, I hid the things away, and tried to forget what had happened.
“But nightmares of the most terrible sort assailed me. I had to do something, or lose my mind.
“That’s when I began researching anything and everything about Sandra Dye that I could get my hands on. And while what I eventually found was disturbing, finding those documents and later the actual graves was comforting because it confirmed that she, her husband, and her insane father had been real. Somehow, I had become entangled in the supernatural. But I never understood why until you told me of your recent encounters with Sandra.”
Now well into his third drink, Jerry sat in stunned silence, absorbing his father’s incredible tale. The rational part of him wanted to shout “bullshit” at the top of its mental lungs.
But a new, heretofore hidden part of him sensed that his father had spoken truth, and a cold trail of goosebumps cascaded down his back like icy rapids. “Please don’t take this wrong, dad, but if what you are telling me is true—and part of me believes it, what on earth can we do?”
Richard slumped further on his stool and sighed. In the past half hour, the emotion of reliving the weird, horrible events of Sandra’s wedding day forty-odd years gone, had taken a harsh physical and mental toll. “I think it’s obvious that Sandra’s spirit, ghost, or whatever it is, sees in us someone it can trust and perhaps ultimately assist it in crossing
over—moving on to its eternal rest.”
“But why you? And why did she return later, seeking me out?” Jerry asked.
“I’ve thought about that. And I think I have the answer.
“Sandra’s spirit is driven by love for the marriage she was denied by her crazed father. Even so, it takes enormous stores of spiritual energy for her ghost to manifest itself on this earthly plane. That probably explains why it’s taken her so long to, er, ‘come back’ twice—first with me, and now with you.”
“Just as important, her spirit had to pick and choose its return carefully—coinciding those returns to mesh with trustworthy, open-minded people.” Richard laughed. “Er, that’s you and me.”
“B-but, what’s to prevent her father’s ghost from showing up at her wedding I’m to take this coming Saturday, and doing the same grisly thing, again?” Jerry stammered.
“This is where what I have to say gets tricky,” Richard said. “Let’s assume that Sandra’s ghost knows that her father’s shade will show up again, with the same results. If it does, even her passion to consummate the marriage she was denied would make no sense; it would be like playing a film loop over and over with no chance of changing the results.”
“So there must be something else Sandra’s ghost knows that we don’t—something that can change the final result,” Jerry interjected. “But for whatever reason, it can’t tell us directly.”
“Precisely,” Richard replied. “And I think I know what it is. Furthermore,” he said, wagging a finger for emphasis, “I think Sandra’s ghost senses that it will take both of us to succeed.”
Intrigued but dreading what he might hear, Jerry asked,
“W-what can the two of us possibly do?”
Richard eyed his son in silence, assessing him.
Beneath his father’s intense gaze, Jerry squirmed uncomfortably on his stool.
Breaking the silence, Richard gravely said, “Obviously, we have to complete the marriage Sandra was denied by her father.”
“How can we possibly do that?” Jerry asked, staring at his father slack-jawed.
A devilish, mischievous smile slowly spread across Richard’s lips, but it carried with it a grim undercurrent. “You up for a little grave robbing, son?”
Shocked, all Jerry could do was stare at his old man as if he were crazy.
Richard pressed on in haste, “Don’t get all flummoxed, now. What I have in mind isn’t grave robbing in the ‘traditional’ sense.” Glancing at his watch, he said, “Anyway, I’ve laid enough on you tonight. It’s getting late. Go home and sleep on it a few nights. If we’re to do what needs doing, I think Wednesday night will work.” Shivering in memory of Sandra’s father’s angry ghost, he added, “Saturday night is out. Sandra’s father has already foiled her wedding plans twice on that day of the week—once as a man, and once as a ghost.” He smiled grimly. “What I hope to do is finish the deed before her father’s ghost has regained all of its evil spiritual Energy. We’re going to catch the evil spirit off-guard.”
As father and son headed west on Wednesday night in Jerry’s Jeep Wrangler just after sundown, Jerry still couldn’t believe he’d agreed to this lunacy.
In the passenger seat, Richard went over the checklist for the umpteenth time. “Okay: we got two shovels and a pickaxe, three flashlights, a first aid kit, and . . .” Pausing to remove a small parcel from his pocket, he unwrapped its precious contents and withdrew two fourteen karat gold rings, “ . . .the wedding bands.”
Jerry glanced at his father and laughed nervously, “What we don’t have is a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, etc., etc. You know this makes us a couple of ‘certifiables’, don’t you? What if some ‘county mountie’ wanders by, and catches us in the act?”
Richard brushed his son’s concerns aside. “Not likely. Fox Hill Cemetary is so far off the beaten path that even the dead need a road map to get there. I drove there a couple days ago, and the place is weed-choked as hell. Seems they don’t even have a proper caretaker right now.”
Jerry didn’t laugh at his father’s humor. “Yeah, well all I’m saying is we’re taking a big, honkin’ chance. And besides: just how do you propose to legally marry a couple of dead people?”
“Easy,” he said. “I never told you about what happened to me in World War II. After I got my leg shattered by a bullet in France, I still wanted desperately to contribute something of worth to the war effort.
“I never mentioned this, but my father was a Justice of the Peace in Gallatin when I was growing up before he was a photographer, and he taught me the ropes for both professions. After my leg got shot up in France, I dusted off my old credentials and served another two years as a minister before they transferred me home early in January ’44.”
“So you can officiate over Sandra’s ‘moonlight’ wedding,” Jerry concluded, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“That’s right,” his father grinned.
“This is nuts,” Jerry said.
“I don’t think so,” Richard said, “and deep down in your heart, neither do you.”
The pair rode the remainder of the trip to the cemetery in deep silence, broken only when Richard had to give his son instructions on where to turn. After heading east on a gravel road four miles south of Chula, they crested one last rise, and Richard pointed to the left. “That’s it,” he said. “Pull the Jeep off at the entrance and park under those low-hanging limbs over by the gravel turn-around. That should offer concealment from anyone who wanders by.”
“Thought you weren’t worried about visitors,” Jerry said.
“Better safe than sorry,” his father replied.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, Jerry turned the Jeep left into the entrance, and cut the headlights. When they’d started west out of Trenton forty minutes earlier, the moon had provided ample light. But now, a thickening film of lowering storm clouds was advancing from the southwest.
“Better get going,” Richard said, un-strapping his seatbelt while glancing at the sky, “I don’t like the looks of this.”
“I haven’t liked the looks of this nutty fiasco since it started,” Jerry replied.
Richard leaned over and patted his son on the shoulder. “Have faith, son. Remember: faith moves mountains. Sandra is proof of that. She just needs a little earthly help.”
“I just hope faith moves a ton of graveyard earth, and fast,” Jerry replied. Climbing out of the Jeep, he added, “Let’s get this over with before the storm breaks.”
Forty minutes later and six feet deeper, Jerry’s spade hit a yielding soft surface. Stooping, he wiped sweat and grit from his eyes and inspected the material with his flashlight. What appeared to be rotted wood and earth lay in his trembling, cramped hand. Glancing up at his father, he said, “I-I think I’ve hit the groom’s casket, or what’s left of it.” Jerry passed the crumbled earth and wood to his father, who inspected it critically beneath his flashlight.
“Good,” Richard said. “Now, you need to proceed carefully. We need to excavate the grave with the care of archaeologists.”
“Why?” Jerry asked.
“Because we need to identify the left hand and the proper ring finger for placing the wedding band, if possible,” Richard said. Glancing skyward, he cursed as distant thunder rumbled. “Damn this weather. What we need is time. We can ill afford to make a mistake, and we still have Sandra’s grave to open. Thank God they were buried side-by-side.”
Jerry resumed digging with as much haste as possible, turning up first a partial shattered skull. “Gahhh,” he said, dropping the shovel and pointing into the darkness at the bottom of the grave while stumbling back and shaking his hand in disgust. “T-there’s f-flesh and brain tissue still attached to the skull.” Strangely, no foul odor issued from the grave.
Richard leaned over the yawning pit and focused his flashlight, grunting in confirmation, “That’s no surprise,” he said. “Remember: Sandra has already visited you twice. The spiritual force that drives her has nearly reached its maximum. If we’d come out here a couple of days later, the groom would probably have been in better shape—completely fleshed out and ready to walk down the aisle.”
“It’s ghoulish,” Jerry said. Nervously, he edged forward and resumed cautious digging. Shortly after, slimy, fleshy ribs came to light, followed by the left arm and hand. Twenty minutes after first hitting rotted wood, he uncovered the groom’s ring hand and finger bones—all partially clothed in oozing flesh.
Jumping into the grave, Richard examined them critically; the ring fingers seemed to be intact, thanks in part to half-rotted flesh and sinew binding them together.
A deepening furrow of worry creased his brow as the thunder rumbled closer. “Hurry. Time is against us,” he said as he bent and took the groom’s hand in both of his. Without warning, he wrenched the slimy wrist back-and-forth repeatedly. Bone cracked and half-rotted flesh and sinew stretched with a wet, sticky sound.
Jerry wrinkled his brow and squinted in sudden disgust.
“W-what are you doing?” he asked.
Without looking up, Richard grimaced with effort, giving the groom’s wrist another wrenching twist, “While Sandra needs our help, I think we stand a better chance of success if we adhere as closely to marriage ritual as possible,” he said. “I’m going to use the groom’s hand as escort for the wedding bands. Now get busy with Sandra’s grave. We’re running out of time.”
Jerry turned away in disgust as his father gave one last violent yank, and the groom’s hand separated at the wrist with wet, tearing sounds. Behind him, his father gagged, and the ripple effect of the sickening noises nearly overcame Jerry.
Crawling from the grave, he stumbled to Sandra’s plot with pickaxe in hand, and began digging frantically. Just as he scooped the first shovelful aside, an icy gust of wind brought the smell of damp earth and rotted leaves to his nose. Normally, Jerry would have welcomed such a smell—a fragrant reminder of the coming of spring.
But in this place at this time, the mingled odors reminded him of life’s flipside—of death.
Shivering, Jerry resumed digging frantically. Forty minutes later, both men heard the distinctive sound of spade on wood.
Initially, Jerry proceeded carefully as before so as not to damage the corpse. But when he scooped away a few shovels of earth, he gasped.
As beautiful as ever, Sandra lay in repose in her grave. Briefly, he thought of all the vampire movies he’d seen.
A mile to the west, the advancing storm vomited several bolts of lightning. Booming thunder rocked the frantic pair.
Climbing into the grave with Jerry’s aid, Richard said, “You’ve done your part well, son. Now it’s up to me.”
Standing above the twin graves as the first cold storm gusts lashed his longcoat, Jerry served as witness to the bizarre proceedings while his father, with open Bible in hand, stood in Sarah’s grave and rapidly read the pertinent passages. When it came time for the exchange of rings, Jerry passed the groom’s ring and the dislodged, rotted groom’s hand to his father. Richard placed the ring on Sandra’s hand, reading the appropriate passages.
Just as he was about to repeat the process, placing Sandra’s ring on the groom’s finger, lightning struck an elm tree twenty feet away. Both men jumped at the deafening thunder, and reflexively turned toward the crashing noise.
Instead of the blinding white light they expected to see, they saw a negative image of the lightning bolt that had shattered the tree. Black as ink, and looking as if it had been vomited from hell itself, the jet-black thunderbolt rippled in slow motion up and down the savaged tree’s trunk for what seemed an eternity. Writhing in actual agony, the tree’s trunk cracked and moaned, swaying beneath that demonic stroke. The pungent smell of ozone and something worse wafted to the frightened men’s noses.
Even as they bent to retch, a dark black mist oozed from the ground beneath the tree’s tangled roots, and they sprang to their feet in alarm. Immune to the howling storm winds, the mist swirled sluggishly, pooled into a vague, gaunt human form, and crawled laboriously across the ground toward the frightened pair.
Richard’s plan had nearly worked.
While neither man could guess at the hideous portals of hell that the gaunt specter of Sandra’s father had struggled to pass through in order to get here, the effort expended had taken a terrible toll on the evil spirit.
“My daughter is mine to have and no other’s,” it screeched from cracked, oozing lips of gray that were slightly darker than its pale, blistered face. “Leave her, or die!”
In that moment, both Richard and Jerry knew the true depths of depravity and horror that Sandra had suffered, and struggled to overcome; both were paralyzed by the evil of what the specter had confessed: Sandra had suffered incest at her father’s hands, probably for many years.
Taking advantage of their shock and indecision, the dark specter spilled over the lip of the groom’s grave like black ink spreading through water. Swirling like angry hornets around a nest, it enveloped Richard in its coils. Darker bands of the horror gripped his throat. Richard sank to his knees and gasped for air. “I-it’s choking me!” he cried.
Desperately, Jerry leapt into the grave, and plunged his hands into the sinister darkness swirling about his father’s head.
But it was to no avail. While both Jerry and his father could feel the frigid, choking malice of the horror, their hands plunged through its presence as if it were fog; they could do nothing to loosen its deadly grip.
Slowly, Richard sank to the bottom of the grave on his back, gasping, while the specter’s murderous grip tightened. In desperation, he gasped, “The ring—groom’s hand.
F-finish what we started.”
For a moment, Jerry hesitated. Then, despite the horror unfolding in front of him, he screamed and lunged for the ring. Scrabbling in the damp earth, he finally clutched the gold band in one hand and the Bible in his other, and yelled in triumph.
But his victory had been voiced too soon.
Sensing what was happening, the horror ceased its assault on Richard, and began throttling Jerry.
But it was too late. Even as the specter’s deadly grip tightened around Jerry’s neck, Sarah’s smile swam into his vision and with it, a surge of anger coursed through him—a fierce surge of hate aimed at all the evils of the world.
With one final, desperate lunge, he grabbed the groom’s severed, rotting hand from his father, and slipped the wedding ring over its wedding band finger. Gasping, Jerry struggled to his feet clutching the muddy Bible. Even as his vision turned to gray and the world tilted sideways, he summoned his last remaining strength and gasped, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Immediately, the specter of Sandra’s father wailed, “No! Nooooooo. You can’t. You can’t take her from me!
Nooooooooooo . . .”
Even as the horror’s last, desperate fading cry split the night air and the evil spirit dissipated and sank into the ground, Jerry felt its horrible powers slip away. As icy rain poured into the grave, Jerry coughed and crawled to his father’s side. After a brief time that seemed an eternity, his father gasped, and resumed breathing. There in the mud at the bottom of the open grave, Jerry cradled his father in his arms and wept, elated that both were alive.
After a few minutes, they climbed from the slippery grave in the downpour.
A brief look into Sandra’s grave revealed only a decades-old skeleton where moments before, a beautiful young woman had reposed. Jerry cried while his father consoled him.
“She—she was such a wonderful person, he sobbed.”
“She not only was, she still is,” Richard said, consoling his son. “Don’t you see? She’s gone on son, that’s all—gone to where she should have been at peace long ago.” Richard stepped back and eyed his son lovingly. “Come on, lad, let’s fill these graves, go home, and grab some well-earned rest of our own.”
Epilogue
Five years after his father’s passing from the cancer that recurred and finally claimed him, Jerry stood after placing flowers on his father’s grave. Lingering above the marker, he whispered, “I miss you, old fellow.”
Normally, his wife Jan and his two children would have accompanied him. But sometimes, he felt compelled to come, alone. This was their special time—a time to reflect upon something that he and his father had shared, and which he could share with no others.
Turning away from the gravestone, he was startled to see three figures in animated, friendly conversation about fifty feet away on the crest of a small grassy knoll in the mid-June sun.
Two of them he recognized—his father and Sandra Dye. The third he recognized by association with the other two—a handsome young man that must be Sandra’s husband.
Seeing that they had been observed, the ghostly trio smiled in unison and waved. Overcome with both joy and grief, he waved in return, and trotted toward them. “W-wait,” he shouted as the trio turned away, “Please don’t go!”
But as he approached, Sandra and her husband waved one last farewell, turned away, and faded from view.
The ghost of Jerry’s father lingered, turning toward him one last time. Across a gulf that no mortal will ever understand, Jerry’s father smiled and whispered, “Your time is not yet, son. Someday, we will all be reunited.” With a smile and one final wave of his hand, Richard’s ghost turned, faded, and joined its companions.
It was the last time Jerry ever saw his father, Sandra, or any other ghost.
But he knew in his heart that when his time came, he would not be alone. |
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