HELLP
I don't typically post my stories on here, because I just don't really like to, but I'm making an exception this time. I turned this story in for workshopping, and EVERYONE in the class had TOTALLY DIFFERENT things to say about it. Some people would say, "Such-and-such adds so much to the story, I loved it," and others would say that the very same such-and-such was jarring and distracting. One single workship with this particular group of people and I felt like writing was a waste of time. I wanted to give up. So, I'm asking for some help. I need my friends, the people I respect, the people who write stories and screenplays that I respect, the people who aren't total dumbasses like my classmates and also aren't like my professor, who is kind of a bitch, to tell me what they genuinely think. What works? What doesn't? Don't just say "It's good." Because that's less help than what the stupid people in my class gave me. You can say "It's good but..." if you have some things that seem to need work. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this long-winded junk to help me...
Evan had seen photographs of his father before. His mother kept various framed pictures up all over the house. There was even one with him holding Evan as a newborn baby. Evan knew what his father looked like, and although the man standing in front of him looked like the men who sat and smoked cigarettes outside the gas station on the edge of town, and he was much thinner than the man in all of those pictures and looked much older than his father should have looked if he was still alive, Evan knew. The small, upturned nose and unruly flame of red hair that Evan and this man had in common were dead giveaways. You look just like your father, his mother sometimes said. Evan smiled. The man standing in front of him was undoubtedly his father.
Evan couldn’t remember his father at all. He had died long before Evan had started developing lasting memories. He wished that he just had one memory with the man. Sometimes Evan would catch himself trying to convince his mind that he remembered being held in that one photograph, but that wasn’t a real memory. That was just a photograph. Real memory or not, Evan had seen the photos and he knew that he was now seeing his father for the first time in real life.
+ + +
Life had been rough for Evan, never knowing his father. All of his friends knew theirs, and didn’t seem to care one way or another, but Evan had always been jealous. He had always dreamt of how life would have been different if he’d had a father. He imagined learning to ride a bike with the help of a loving “dad”. Usually Evan didn’t allow himself to say or even think the word “dad”. It made the pain and the feelings of separation from his dad much too painful. So whenever he daydreamed of fishing trips and afternoons spent playing catch in the back yard, Evan tried to only think of the perfect mystery man lifted from the photographs in his home and placed into his dreams as “father,” and nothing else.
With no father to teach him about little boy things at the right age, Evan spent most of his time indoors, reading. Sometimes he would go out and play with some of his friends from school, but they all knew much more than he did and his inexperience always seemed to get him into trouble. The other boys knew that Evan didn’t know as much as they all did, and they seemed to take advantage of this at every opportunity. Anytime a baseball was hit into a neighbor’s yard, Evan was always sent to retrieve it, braving snarling dogs, cranky old men firing shotguns into the air, and old ladies brandishing rakes and shovels in attempts to protect their flower gardens. Evan didn’t know how many times he’d been bitten by a guard dog or whacked with a garden tool. He was just thankful that the guns were only fired in the air. Every now and then, Evan would forget about how terrible his time spent with the boys from school was, and he’d let his mom convince him to go out after school to meet with them, but usually he didn’t have any trouble remembering that most of his time outdoors was spent running in fear of something.
So Evan spent as much of his time as possible in the safety of his room, going on adventures of all kinds within the safe confines of a book. He’d already moved up to the grown up books at the local library by the time he was in fourth grade because he’d read all the books in the children’s section, many of them more than once.
Recently Evan had read some popular books about young witches and wizards and had found himself very curious about magic. For the first time in his life, Evan started looking for books outside the fiction sections of the library. He searched the computer card catalogue for anything he could think of that might have to do with magic, typing “witch,” “wizard,” “sorcery,” and so on into the machine, grateful that the librarian had taught him how to use it on his own a few months ago. After he got home with his first big stack of magic books, his mom got a phone call. His mother didn’t get many calls, so Evan was curious. He listened in, but could only hear his mom’s side of the conversation.
“Yes, Mrs. Ellis, I know Evan was at the library earlier today… No, no I don’t get to go with him as much as I’d like. I’m very busy these days, and I would hate for my busy schedule to keep Evan from his beloved books… No, I didn’t ask him what he checked out today. I didn’t realize that the library had anything that I should be worried about my son checking out… Mrs. Ellis, as much as I appreciate your parenting advice, like I said, I’m a very busy woman. If you have something you need to talk to me about, please come out with it…Witchcraft books? You don’t mean those new ones that all the kids are reading right now, do you?… Oh, I see. Well, I’m sure Evan is just curious after reading those books all of his friends at school are reading… No, Mrs. Ellis I trust my son… Of course, I’ll talk to him, for your sake Mrs. Ellis. Would that make you feel better?… I thought it would. Yes, I’ll keep my eye on him, Mrs. Ellis. I’m sure you would have been a wonderful mother… Yes, yes. Good day to you too, Mrs. Ellis.”
As his mom was hanging up the phone, he slipped up to his room as quietly as possible. He was lying in bed with a book, not one of the witchcraft ones, when she walked into the room.
“Evan, that was that nosy Mrs. Ellis from down the street on the phone,” she said.
“Oh really? What did she want? I didn’t through her yard on the way to school again, did I?”
“No, she wanted to let me now that she noticed what you checked out today and she says that she’s concerned about the state of your eternal soul, and worried about what kind of trouble you might be up to. ”
“I’m not up to any trouble, mom. I swear.”
“So what’s this about you checking out a bunch of witchcraft books?”
“Oh, you know, I’m just reading about witches and stuff. It’s pretty neat. Ms. Neal says that me and Luke can do a project about them for our big project coming up. Isn’t that cool?”
“Yes, that’s very cool,” she said, smiling. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to sacrifice me to the devil in my sleep.”
“Aww, mom. I’m not a witch, I’m just reading about them.”
“Okay. I trust you. If Mrs. Ellis bothers you any, you have my permission to tell her to mind her own business.”
After Evan’s mom left his room, he got out all the books he’d checked out and spread them over his mattress. After flipping through a few of them, he found what he was looking for:
“Séances! Page 42,” he whispered as he flipped to the section.
+ + +
Life had been rough for Stanley Byrne for the past ten years. He supposed that it was all his fault; he deserved it. Because he felt like he was getting what he deserved, Stanley never really tried to bring himself out of the terrible life he’d fallen into. He figured that when he’d paid his dues, things would get back on track on their own.
“Stan, my boy,” he said, looking at his reflection in a filthy shop window. “Back in school, did you ever think you’d get here? The guidance councilors never told you about days like these, eh?”
Stanley was just as dirty as the window, and his clothes were in far worse condition than the clothes that the mannequins were wearing on the other side of the glass. He hadn’t bought any new clothes since his wife had kicked him out, and that had been almost ten years ago. He and Dana had been very happy together at first. It was a wonderful situation for Stanley: he didn’t make much money down at the auto plant where he worked, but Dana made enough as a nurse that they were able to live comfortably together.
Why’d you go and cheat on her then? No matter how many times Stanley beat himself up over his infidelity, he would never be satisfied. You just couldn’t be happy with what you had. You wanted more, and now look what you’ve got: nothing.
Stan noticed that he’d been standing so close to the window that his breath had created a hazy fog covering his face. That looks just about right, he thought, walking on. The fog reminded Stanley that it was terribly cold outside and getting colder as the sun continued its descent. He’d finally been evicted from his apartment yesterday, after losing his job a few weeks earlier. It took almost ten years for the booze to do you in, Stan my boy, but yes sir, it finally did it. He wasn’t sure why, but after he’d been evicted he had just started walking towards home. Home. It was weird to think of it like that. After Dana had kicked him out and told him that she never wanted to see him again and never wanted their baby to have anything to do with him, he’d left town. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. Sensible? Hell, you deserved it. He knew that if he stayed in town, he’d see Dana around and he knew that Dana wasn’t the kind of woman who easily let go of a grudge. It would be painful enough to spend the rest of his life separated from the woman he loved and the son she had bore him, but to have to see them going about the town, Dana pretending she didn’t know him from Adam, and the boy genuinely not knowing; not remembering his own father’s face. God, that would be too much to handle, Stanley thought. So what the hell are you doing back here? He didn’t know, but he felt drawn back. He hadn’t really had a home since Dana kicked him out, and now that he didn’t even have a place to live, returning back, even if he couldn’t see Dana or his son, was the only thing that he could think to do. Again noticing the increasing cold, Stanley wondered where the best place in the little town was for a newly homeless person to sleep.
After wandering the small community park, and finding it to be heavily patrolled by local policemen looking for local hoodlums and local hoodlums looking for trouble, Stanley decided that the park was not the right place for him to park his weary old bones.
+ + +
After his mom went to sleep, Evan tiptoed through the house, collecting the necessary items for his séance. He found his mom’s old Ouiji board and gathered a few candles, making sure to only get white ones, because apparently that was important. After putting the game board, the candles, and the book into a grocery sack, he slipped out into the garage and found a can of white spray paint that his mom had used to do touch-ups on the deck furniture. Evan left the garage using the side door and after looking around to make sure there were no night-owl adults who might be curious as to what a 9-year-old boy was doing outside in the middle of the night. He stayed close to the houses, where there were shrubs and trees to partially block him from the view of the road.
As he got near the cemetery, Evan started to have second thoughts. He hadn’t been to his father’s grave in a few years, and he wasn’t even sure that he could find it. He rested behind a bush for a moment before deciding that he needed this chance to have at least one conversation with his dad. Just this once.
+ + +
Wandering around the dark streets of the town, Stanley remembered the small cemetery near the house that he and Dana had once shared. They used to go on walks and would end up sitting on the crumbling stone wall, talking for hours. There was something very peaceful about that cemetery. It didn’t have those creepy vibes most cemeteries have. Vibes? Stanley thought. Who says “vibes”? He figured that he could sleep at the back of the cemetery, between the stone wall and one of the trees that were scattered along the back. It wasn’t likely anyone would see him there, and then tomorrow he could figure out where to go from there.
+ + +
Evan couldn’t remember exactly which of the graves was his dad’s. He was much younger the last time he’d been here, and all of the graves were the same: white limestone, rounded tops, no names or dates. It was really inconvenient, but the cemetery did look very simple, unified, beautiful. He remembered that it was near the back, and he figured that if he got close, that would be good enough. His dad would be able to hear him.
+ + +
As Stanley approached the cemetery from the back side, he wondered what Dana and their son were doing at that moment. His son was probably already in bed, getting his rest for another day at school in the morning. Dana was probably in bed, reading one of her Agatha Christie novels. And what about you Stan, old boy? Getting ready to enjoy your first night of homelessness, eh? Stanley thought as he climbed over the wall. He had found a place were he could nestle between the wall and a large, old tree that stood about two feet from the wall.
+ + +
After spray-painting a big circle in the grass, Evan sat in the middle and lit the candles, which he sat all around him, making sure to set a few more in front of him to give off the light that he’d need to see the Ouiji board. When everything was in place, Evan began to call out to his father.
“Stanley Byrne!” He yelled. “Spirit, come forth. Your son, Evan Byrne wishes to speak with you! Arise, come forward, I come in peace!”
+ + +
Stanley had just gotten comfortable-Between a rock and a hard place, he thought, chuckling at his clever pun-when he heard someone shout his name.
“Stanley Byrne!” The voice yelled. How have I already gotten caught? He wondered. I just got here.
“Spirit, come forth.” Spirit? Stanley thought. What spirit? What’s going on here? “Arise, come forward, I come in peace!”
Not knowing what else to do, Stanley got up and walked around the tree, in the direction that the voice was coming from. He had just stepped around the tree when he stopped, stunned. Standing in front of him, in a circle of tiny lights was… was him. Young Stanley; Stanley as a boy; Portrait of Stanley as a young man, he didn’t understand what was happening, but his younger self was standing right in front of him, yelling about spirits.
+ + +
Evan knew what his father looked like, and although the man standing in front of him looked like the men who sat and smoked cigarettes outside the gas station on the edge of town, and he was much thinner than the man in all of those pictures and looked much older than his father should have looked if he was still alive, Evan knew. The small, upturned nose and unruly flame of red hair that Evan and this man had in common were dead giveaways. You look just like your father, his mother sometimes said. Evan smiled. The man standing in front of him was undoubtedly his father.
+ + +
“Father!” Evan exclaimed. “Do you recognize me?”
Stanley started to nod, but then he realized that the boy in front of him had called him father. “Wait, ‘father,’ you said. What do you mean father?”
“I’m your son, Evan. I’m sorry for calling you back from the spirit world, but I’ve had spend all my life without a dad, and I just wanted to talk to you this one time. I won’t bother you again.”
“Spirit world? Wait, ‘Evan,’ you said? You’re my son?”
“You’re Stan Byrne, right?”
Stanley nodded.
“Then I’m your son.”
“What is this you keep saying about spirits?” Stanley asked.
“You’re a spirit, like a ghost. When you die, do you not realize it?”
“Die? Who’s dead?”
“You are. Mom said when I was a baby, you had a car accident and you died. She doesn’t talk about you much, but I know she misses you really bad. She keeps pictures of you everywhere in the house and sometimes when I do something bad, she cries and tells me that she’s sorry I don’t have a new dad, but she still misses you too much to get married again.”
“She misses me too much?”
“You ask an awful lot of questions, dad. I’m supposed to be asking you things.”
“I’m sorry son. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for questions. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. You said that your mom, Dana, said that I died?”
“Yes.”
“And she misses me too much to get married again?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Well, Evan, I’m not a spirit, not a ghost. I’m your dad for real. I’m not dead.”
“No, you must just not remember dying. Mom told me you were dead.”
“Evan, listen. Adults say things that aren’t true sometimes because it’s easier than telling the truth, but I promise you that I’m not dead. Here, feel,” he said, holding his arm out for Evan to touch. “100 per cent real, live, human skin.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. All I know is a long time ago, your mom and I had some problems and she wanted me to leave. I guess I should have come back to work things out, but I’ve been too scared. I think it’s time I finally did what I should have done a long time ago.”
“What’s that?”
“I guess it’s time for me to come home. I just hope your mom will have me.”
“Oh, she will. At least I think she will.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
+ + +
Evan led the way back to the house, even though Stanley still remembered exactly where it was. His future was still unclear. He had no idea what would happen when he got home, but he knew that he’d been pulled back for a reason. He knew he couldn’t go on with his life without trying. He’d met his son for the first time, and now he would go talk to the woman he loved, the mother of this wonderful, talkative child marching in front of him, and he felt like everything was finally going to be okay again.
Evan had seen photographs of his father before. His mother kept various framed pictures up all over the house. There was even one with him holding Evan as a newborn baby. Evan knew what his father looked like, and although the man standing in front of him looked like the men who sat and smoked cigarettes outside the gas station on the edge of town, and he was much thinner than the man in all of those pictures and looked much older than his father should have looked if he was still alive, Evan knew. The small, upturned nose and unruly flame of red hair that Evan and this man had in common were dead giveaways. You look just like your father, his mother sometimes said. Evan smiled. The man standing in front of him was undoubtedly his father.
Evan couldn’t remember his father at all. He had died long before Evan had started developing lasting memories. He wished that he just had one memory with the man. Sometimes Evan would catch himself trying to convince his mind that he remembered being held in that one photograph, but that wasn’t a real memory. That was just a photograph. Real memory or not, Evan had seen the photos and he knew that he was now seeing his father for the first time in real life.
+ + +
Life had been rough for Evan, never knowing his father. All of his friends knew theirs, and didn’t seem to care one way or another, but Evan had always been jealous. He had always dreamt of how life would have been different if he’d had a father. He imagined learning to ride a bike with the help of a loving “dad”. Usually Evan didn’t allow himself to say or even think the word “dad”. It made the pain and the feelings of separation from his dad much too painful. So whenever he daydreamed of fishing trips and afternoons spent playing catch in the back yard, Evan tried to only think of the perfect mystery man lifted from the photographs in his home and placed into his dreams as “father,” and nothing else.
With no father to teach him about little boy things at the right age, Evan spent most of his time indoors, reading. Sometimes he would go out and play with some of his friends from school, but they all knew much more than he did and his inexperience always seemed to get him into trouble. The other boys knew that Evan didn’t know as much as they all did, and they seemed to take advantage of this at every opportunity. Anytime a baseball was hit into a neighbor’s yard, Evan was always sent to retrieve it, braving snarling dogs, cranky old men firing shotguns into the air, and old ladies brandishing rakes and shovels in attempts to protect their flower gardens. Evan didn’t know how many times he’d been bitten by a guard dog or whacked with a garden tool. He was just thankful that the guns were only fired in the air. Every now and then, Evan would forget about how terrible his time spent with the boys from school was, and he’d let his mom convince him to go out after school to meet with them, but usually he didn’t have any trouble remembering that most of his time outdoors was spent running in fear of something.
So Evan spent as much of his time as possible in the safety of his room, going on adventures of all kinds within the safe confines of a book. He’d already moved up to the grown up books at the local library by the time he was in fourth grade because he’d read all the books in the children’s section, many of them more than once.
Recently Evan had read some popular books about young witches and wizards and had found himself very curious about magic. For the first time in his life, Evan started looking for books outside the fiction sections of the library. He searched the computer card catalogue for anything he could think of that might have to do with magic, typing “witch,” “wizard,” “sorcery,” and so on into the machine, grateful that the librarian had taught him how to use it on his own a few months ago. After he got home with his first big stack of magic books, his mom got a phone call. His mother didn’t get many calls, so Evan was curious. He listened in, but could only hear his mom’s side of the conversation.
“Yes, Mrs. Ellis, I know Evan was at the library earlier today… No, no I don’t get to go with him as much as I’d like. I’m very busy these days, and I would hate for my busy schedule to keep Evan from his beloved books… No, I didn’t ask him what he checked out today. I didn’t realize that the library had anything that I should be worried about my son checking out… Mrs. Ellis, as much as I appreciate your parenting advice, like I said, I’m a very busy woman. If you have something you need to talk to me about, please come out with it…Witchcraft books? You don’t mean those new ones that all the kids are reading right now, do you?… Oh, I see. Well, I’m sure Evan is just curious after reading those books all of his friends at school are reading… No, Mrs. Ellis I trust my son… Of course, I’ll talk to him, for your sake Mrs. Ellis. Would that make you feel better?… I thought it would. Yes, I’ll keep my eye on him, Mrs. Ellis. I’m sure you would have been a wonderful mother… Yes, yes. Good day to you too, Mrs. Ellis.”
As his mom was hanging up the phone, he slipped up to his room as quietly as possible. He was lying in bed with a book, not one of the witchcraft ones, when she walked into the room.
“Evan, that was that nosy Mrs. Ellis from down the street on the phone,” she said.
“Oh really? What did she want? I didn’t through her yard on the way to school again, did I?”
“No, she wanted to let me now that she noticed what you checked out today and she says that she’s concerned about the state of your eternal soul, and worried about what kind of trouble you might be up to. ”
“I’m not up to any trouble, mom. I swear.”
“So what’s this about you checking out a bunch of witchcraft books?”
“Oh, you know, I’m just reading about witches and stuff. It’s pretty neat. Ms. Neal says that me and Luke can do a project about them for our big project coming up. Isn’t that cool?”
“Yes, that’s very cool,” she said, smiling. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to sacrifice me to the devil in my sleep.”
“Aww, mom. I’m not a witch, I’m just reading about them.”
“Okay. I trust you. If Mrs. Ellis bothers you any, you have my permission to tell her to mind her own business.”
After Evan’s mom left his room, he got out all the books he’d checked out and spread them over his mattress. After flipping through a few of them, he found what he was looking for:
“Séances! Page 42,” he whispered as he flipped to the section.
+ + +
Life had been rough for Stanley Byrne for the past ten years. He supposed that it was all his fault; he deserved it. Because he felt like he was getting what he deserved, Stanley never really tried to bring himself out of the terrible life he’d fallen into. He figured that when he’d paid his dues, things would get back on track on their own.
“Stan, my boy,” he said, looking at his reflection in a filthy shop window. “Back in school, did you ever think you’d get here? The guidance councilors never told you about days like these, eh?”
Stanley was just as dirty as the window, and his clothes were in far worse condition than the clothes that the mannequins were wearing on the other side of the glass. He hadn’t bought any new clothes since his wife had kicked him out, and that had been almost ten years ago. He and Dana had been very happy together at first. It was a wonderful situation for Stanley: he didn’t make much money down at the auto plant where he worked, but Dana made enough as a nurse that they were able to live comfortably together.
Why’d you go and cheat on her then? No matter how many times Stanley beat himself up over his infidelity, he would never be satisfied. You just couldn’t be happy with what you had. You wanted more, and now look what you’ve got: nothing.
Stan noticed that he’d been standing so close to the window that his breath had created a hazy fog covering his face. That looks just about right, he thought, walking on. The fog reminded Stanley that it was terribly cold outside and getting colder as the sun continued its descent. He’d finally been evicted from his apartment yesterday, after losing his job a few weeks earlier. It took almost ten years for the booze to do you in, Stan my boy, but yes sir, it finally did it. He wasn’t sure why, but after he’d been evicted he had just started walking towards home. Home. It was weird to think of it like that. After Dana had kicked him out and told him that she never wanted to see him again and never wanted their baby to have anything to do with him, he’d left town. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. Sensible? Hell, you deserved it. He knew that if he stayed in town, he’d see Dana around and he knew that Dana wasn’t the kind of woman who easily let go of a grudge. It would be painful enough to spend the rest of his life separated from the woman he loved and the son she had bore him, but to have to see them going about the town, Dana pretending she didn’t know him from Adam, and the boy genuinely not knowing; not remembering his own father’s face. God, that would be too much to handle, Stanley thought. So what the hell are you doing back here? He didn’t know, but he felt drawn back. He hadn’t really had a home since Dana kicked him out, and now that he didn’t even have a place to live, returning back, even if he couldn’t see Dana or his son, was the only thing that he could think to do. Again noticing the increasing cold, Stanley wondered where the best place in the little town was for a newly homeless person to sleep.
After wandering the small community park, and finding it to be heavily patrolled by local policemen looking for local hoodlums and local hoodlums looking for trouble, Stanley decided that the park was not the right place for him to park his weary old bones.
+ + +
After his mom went to sleep, Evan tiptoed through the house, collecting the necessary items for his séance. He found his mom’s old Ouiji board and gathered a few candles, making sure to only get white ones, because apparently that was important. After putting the game board, the candles, and the book into a grocery sack, he slipped out into the garage and found a can of white spray paint that his mom had used to do touch-ups on the deck furniture. Evan left the garage using the side door and after looking around to make sure there were no night-owl adults who might be curious as to what a 9-year-old boy was doing outside in the middle of the night. He stayed close to the houses, where there were shrubs and trees to partially block him from the view of the road.
As he got near the cemetery, Evan started to have second thoughts. He hadn’t been to his father’s grave in a few years, and he wasn’t even sure that he could find it. He rested behind a bush for a moment before deciding that he needed this chance to have at least one conversation with his dad. Just this once.
+ + +
Wandering around the dark streets of the town, Stanley remembered the small cemetery near the house that he and Dana had once shared. They used to go on walks and would end up sitting on the crumbling stone wall, talking for hours. There was something very peaceful about that cemetery. It didn’t have those creepy vibes most cemeteries have. Vibes? Stanley thought. Who says “vibes”? He figured that he could sleep at the back of the cemetery, between the stone wall and one of the trees that were scattered along the back. It wasn’t likely anyone would see him there, and then tomorrow he could figure out where to go from there.
+ + +
Evan couldn’t remember exactly which of the graves was his dad’s. He was much younger the last time he’d been here, and all of the graves were the same: white limestone, rounded tops, no names or dates. It was really inconvenient, but the cemetery did look very simple, unified, beautiful. He remembered that it was near the back, and he figured that if he got close, that would be good enough. His dad would be able to hear him.
+ + +
As Stanley approached the cemetery from the back side, he wondered what Dana and their son were doing at that moment. His son was probably already in bed, getting his rest for another day at school in the morning. Dana was probably in bed, reading one of her Agatha Christie novels. And what about you Stan, old boy? Getting ready to enjoy your first night of homelessness, eh? Stanley thought as he climbed over the wall. He had found a place were he could nestle between the wall and a large, old tree that stood about two feet from the wall.
+ + +
After spray-painting a big circle in the grass, Evan sat in the middle and lit the candles, which he sat all around him, making sure to set a few more in front of him to give off the light that he’d need to see the Ouiji board. When everything was in place, Evan began to call out to his father.
“Stanley Byrne!” He yelled. “Spirit, come forth. Your son, Evan Byrne wishes to speak with you! Arise, come forward, I come in peace!”
+ + +
Stanley had just gotten comfortable-Between a rock and a hard place, he thought, chuckling at his clever pun-when he heard someone shout his name.
“Stanley Byrne!” The voice yelled. How have I already gotten caught? He wondered. I just got here.
“Spirit, come forth.” Spirit? Stanley thought. What spirit? What’s going on here? “Arise, come forward, I come in peace!”
Not knowing what else to do, Stanley got up and walked around the tree, in the direction that the voice was coming from. He had just stepped around the tree when he stopped, stunned. Standing in front of him, in a circle of tiny lights was… was him. Young Stanley; Stanley as a boy; Portrait of Stanley as a young man, he didn’t understand what was happening, but his younger self was standing right in front of him, yelling about spirits.
+ + +
Evan knew what his father looked like, and although the man standing in front of him looked like the men who sat and smoked cigarettes outside the gas station on the edge of town, and he was much thinner than the man in all of those pictures and looked much older than his father should have looked if he was still alive, Evan knew. The small, upturned nose and unruly flame of red hair that Evan and this man had in common were dead giveaways. You look just like your father, his mother sometimes said. Evan smiled. The man standing in front of him was undoubtedly his father.
+ + +
“Father!” Evan exclaimed. “Do you recognize me?”
Stanley started to nod, but then he realized that the boy in front of him had called him father. “Wait, ‘father,’ you said. What do you mean father?”
“I’m your son, Evan. I’m sorry for calling you back from the spirit world, but I’ve had spend all my life without a dad, and I just wanted to talk to you this one time. I won’t bother you again.”
“Spirit world? Wait, ‘Evan,’ you said? You’re my son?”
“You’re Stan Byrne, right?”
Stanley nodded.
“Then I’m your son.”
“What is this you keep saying about spirits?” Stanley asked.
“You’re a spirit, like a ghost. When you die, do you not realize it?”
“Die? Who’s dead?”
“You are. Mom said when I was a baby, you had a car accident and you died. She doesn’t talk about you much, but I know she misses you really bad. She keeps pictures of you everywhere in the house and sometimes when I do something bad, she cries and tells me that she’s sorry I don’t have a new dad, but she still misses you too much to get married again.”
“She misses me too much?”
“You ask an awful lot of questions, dad. I’m supposed to be asking you things.”
“I’m sorry son. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of time for questions. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. You said that your mom, Dana, said that I died?”
“Yes.”
“And she misses me too much to get married again?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Well, Evan, I’m not a spirit, not a ghost. I’m your dad for real. I’m not dead.”
“No, you must just not remember dying. Mom told me you were dead.”
“Evan, listen. Adults say things that aren’t true sometimes because it’s easier than telling the truth, but I promise you that I’m not dead. Here, feel,” he said, holding his arm out for Evan to touch. “100 per cent real, live, human skin.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. All I know is a long time ago, your mom and I had some problems and she wanted me to leave. I guess I should have come back to work things out, but I’ve been too scared. I think it’s time I finally did what I should have done a long time ago.”
“What’s that?”
“I guess it’s time for me to come home. I just hope your mom will have me.”
“Oh, she will. At least I think she will.”
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
+ + +
Evan led the way back to the house, even though Stanley still remembered exactly where it was. His future was still unclear. He had no idea what would happen when he got home, but he knew that he’d been pulled back for a reason. He knew he couldn’t go on with his life without trying. He’d met his son for the first time, and now he would go talk to the woman he loved, the mother of this wonderful, talkative child marching in front of him, and he felt like everything was finally going to be okay again.