13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days

Somewhere, Beyond the C

This is a story about two unhappy guys. One will be dead when the story ends. The other is dead when the story begins.

The doomed one first:

John Wallace had a good life, an occasionally fun job, and a lovely girlfriend named Alice who lived with him in a medium-sized apartment in an up-and-coming part of the city. Every night, Alice would cook them dinner, then he’d do the dishes, while she put on Frank Sinatra music.

“Let’s dance to this ironically like we used to,” she’d say, wrapping her arms around him from behind, while snapping her fingers as if she were Ol’ Blue Eyes.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he’d say, before putting on his coat to go for a walk.

“I love you,” she’d say.

“Yeah,” he’d say.

His walking route would take him down the hill their apartment sat on, around the canal, and then up the winding tree-lined road where the rich people used to live. When he hit the old cemetery, he’d circle the perimeter and then turn back home. This route sometimes made him feel a little better. Sometimes it reminded him to seize the day, because he’d be dead one day. Other times it reminded him that everything would eventually be okay, because he’d be dead one day.

The cemetery had barbed wire along the top of it, which he thought was funny. Who would want to break into a cemetery?

“Maybe someone’s trying to break out,” he thought that night, chuckling to himself.

Someone was trying to break out.

Horace J. Bakersfield had died 50 years ago that very night.

He sat, as he did every night, smoking ghost cigars with his best friend Weezy Joe on the roof of Sergeant Winston Jefferson’s mausoleum.

“I’ll tell you something Weezy Joe,” Horace said, staring at the barbed wire fence that kept him trapped in eternal purgatory. “Tonight’s the night I’m gonna do it. Fifty years ago this very night that sumbitch took my life. But tonight’s the night I’m walking out a free man.”

Weezy Joe took a long drag on his ghost cigar and nodded. He didn’t really take Horace seriously. He’d sat beside his friend atop that mausoleum roof for decades, watching as the cars got bigger, then smaller, then faster, then bigger again, then smaller once more. He’d seen the vacant lot across the street turn into a house, then get bulldozed into a shopping center, then get bulldozed into a vacant lot again. He watched with interest as the kids in that lot stopped playing stickball and started playing football then put down the footballs to play soccer and the weird game with the sticks. He liked being dead. He liked how everything changed. The only constant in Weezy Joe’s afterlife was Horace J. Bakersfield complaining about being dead.

“You listening to me Weezy?”

“Good night to be alive,” Weezy Joe said.

“There’s a whole world out there beyond The C,” Horace said. He had started calling the cemetery “The C” a few years earlier. It didn’t really bother Weezy Joe. “Someone’s waiting for me, beyond The C. I just know it.”

Weezy Joe nodded. He used to think about the girl who had waited for him. He watched her cry at his funeral. Eventually she stopped placing flowers at his grave. He figured she moved on. He hoped she settled down with someone nice. She had probably died years ago, he realized.

“Tonight is the night,” Horace said.

That’s when they saw John Wallace, chuckling to himself on the other side of the fence.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen that boy smile before,” Weezy Joe said.

“I’m tired of him,” Horace said.

“Always seems kind of sad,” Weezy Joe said.

“Boy like that doesn’t appreciate his life,” Horace said. “Lousy ungrateful sumbitch.”

“Grass always greener,” Weezy Joe said.

Horace snuffed out his ghost cigar and adjusted his bowler hat.

“I’m going over, Joe,” he said. “See you in Hell.”

Weezy Joe nodded and played it cool, but he’d admit in the coming decades that he really was surprised when Horace J. Bakersfield’s ghost took a running start then leapt off the roof of the sergeant’s mausoleum and landed on top of John Wallace.

It’s funny. In that moment, John Wallace felt great. He wanted to go home and sweep Alice off her feet and dance ironically with her to old standards until the sun came up. He wanted to call his estranged brother. He wanted to go into work the next morning ask for a promotion. In that brief moment, John Wallace’s brain finally allowed John Wallace to to accept that everything was going to be okay.

Horace J. Bakersfield gripped the cemetery’s fence and began to shake it. He hadn’t actually tactilely touched a physical object since the Johnson Administration. He shook the fence and let out a primal scream.

A cop car flashed its lights beside him.

“Everything okay John?” Officer Pete ask. He’d seen John Wallace walking before and they’d talked a few times. “Never seen you get worked up about anything before.”

“Everything is more than okay officer,” Horace said, from inside John Wallace’s body. “It’s just a great night to be alive.”

Officer Pete smiled. “Ain’t that the truth,” he said. “You take care of yourself, John Wallace.”

Horace thought of saying goodbye to Weezy Joe, but he never wanted to see the guy again. He took off at a dead sprint toward the tree-lined neighborhood where the rich people used to live, rounded the canal, and almost fell running up the hill to the apartment complex where John Wallace lived with his girlfriend.

“Honey,” Horace said, as he opened the door. “I’m home.”

That was the first time he laid eyes on Alice, then John Wallace’s long-time girlfriend, soon to be John Wallace’s wife of many years. She was crying. A Bobby Darin song played on the antique record player behind her.

She tried to gather herself.

“I didn’t think you’d be home so soon,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Horace J. Bakersfield, or John Wallace, it’s unclear who he was anymore, started snapping his fingers.

“Somewhere,” he crooned. “Beyond the C…. She’s there… Watching for me…”

Then he picked Alice up and dipped her. He’d been a great dancer in life and he’d never forgotten. He spun her around the room and they danced the night away: Alice ironically, Horace with as much sincerity as any man had ever done anything. He looked into her eyes and fell instantly in love.

“What’s gotten into you?” she whispered.

“Finally feeling like myself again, beautiful,” he said.

Down the hill, around the canal, across the neighborhood where the rich people used to live, John Wallace’s ghost sat smoking a cigar with Weezy Joe on top of Sergeant Winston Jefferson’s mausoleum. He looked out over infinity and smiled.

The only rule of 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days is that the story must be posted the same night I started it.

Previously on 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days:
Day 1 The Ghost’s Girlfriend
Day 2 The Girl with the Puka Shell Necklace
Day 3 The Time I Went to the Old Church Later Than I Should Have
Day 4 Ride Scare
Day 5 Miranda, Who Appears as a Portent of Death
Day 6 A Halloween Carol
Day 7 El Mariachi de los Muertos
Day 8 Death on Demand
Day 9 The Ballad of the Cursed Mudville Maroons
Day 10 Officer Mac’s Last Day
Day 11 Chad vs. The Genie
Day 12 Luigi’s Coins