Smith's Monthly #23 Read online

  I think, more than even the movie, I think my now-dead wife loved the previews of the coming attractions. Something about the possibility of a future trip to the movies held her spellbound like a deer in front of a car’s headlights. We never saw a preview of a movie after which she didn’t whisper to me that she wanted to see the movie. And didn’t it look just wonderful?

  The word “wonderful” was always followed by a long sigh. Just once I wish she would have sighed like that after we had sex.

  Near the end of the second year of our marriage I started writing letters to the theater begging them, at first, and then demanding, that they not show previews of coming movies. A nasty phone call from the police department made me stop writing.

  The theater kept playing the coming attractions.

  She kept wanting to see every movie.

  Of course, we went to them all.

  And they all had coming attractions.

  I still get dizzy just thinking about it.

  That, and all that yellow oil she ate.

  ACT TWO: THE UNLAWFUL CHRISTMAS ARGUMENT

  The idea to take my dead wife to a movie was hers, of course. It seemed that my killing her, then wrapping her body in plastic and stuffing it in an old trunk in the basement didn’t even slow down her love for movies. I guess I was wrong to expect that it would.

  For over two weeks after I killed her I kept saying no. No way in hell was I going to be seen in a movie theater with the ghost of my dead wife. And there were no curses or formulas in my Wizard’s book for getting rid of ghosts, so I had to keep listening to her and arguing with her.

  And of course, as when we were married, she ended up winning all the arguments. She finally used the old “it’s-almost-Christmas” routine and I caved in like a tunnel cut through mud. But I said I would do it on my conditions.

  She didn’t care about that. But she did say we had to follow the ghost rules. Wizard curses, ghost rules, my conditions. This was going to be a very complicated trip to the movies.

  Before I bought the Wizard’s book, I didn’t know Wizards even existed. And I never expected that I might be one, but since one of the Wizard curses worked for me, I suppose I am. But so far I’ve not been able to make another curse work. But I’m going to keep practicing, because what Wizards can do is really cool stuff.

  Before she died I didn’t realize that ghosts had rules, either. But they do. A lot of them. And I discovered the ghost rules are sometimes a little tricky to figure out. For example, there was the main rule about why she was still even around. She said she had her reasons and they were for her to know and me to find out. She said that a lot during our marriage and I never found out a thing.

  I didn’t expect that now that she was a ghost this time was going to be any different.

  As far as going to a movie went, she figured that if I could get her body close enough to the theater, she, her ghost, not her body, could go inside with me and see the movie. For some ghost rule or another she had to stay fairly close to her body, which is why she had been hanging around the house.

  She decided I could put her body in the car and then park the car next to the theater. A simple plan, really. Just get a two-plus week-old dead body right up next to a public theater and then leave it for two hours. I laughed at her when she said that was what we needed to do. I flat out said no way.

  She kept at me, kept me up all night again with the what-a-wonderful-Christmas-present it would be for her. I tried a Wizard curse on her that was supposed to have turned her into a frog, but she stayed a ghost and kept at me.

  I gave in again. About sunrise. Using Christmas in arguments should be outlawed in all marriages, even after death.

  We waited until after dark, which really didn’t upset her because she hated the cheap, early shows. She always said going to a regular show was much better. I never did figure out what was the difference between a cheap show and a regular show, except the price. Every time I asked her about the difference she just looked at me as if I was stupid and just couldn’t see.

  At least this time I would only have to buy one ticket.

  As I loaded her body into the hatchback, she stood in the driveway to watch for the neighbors and cars on the street. It had only been a few weeks since she had died and the decay and smell wasn’t too bad. Or at least I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t that bad.

  I had her wrapped in three sheets of plastic and taped so tightly shut no air, or anything else for that matter, could get in there. Yet I was sure as I draped her over my shoulder that I could smell a rotten, nose-clogging aroma of decay. Like a dead dog three days beside the road.

  She laughed when I mentioned it and told me it was my guilt catching up with me. But I swore I could smell her rotting, right through the plastic bags and all the tape, guilt or no guilt.

  It took what seemed like an eternity to get her body settled and the hatch closed. The backs of newer cars just weren’t made for holding bodies like the trunks of the cars my parents owned. Those trunks were big. To get her in the Impala hatchback I had to remove the spare. No telling what problems we would have if we had a flat.

  She came through the door without opening it and settled into the passenger seat.

  “This is going to be so much fun,” she said, and I shuddered. She had said those very words before every movie we ever went to, almost like a recording.

  Maybe this was my hell. No maybe about it. I was in hell. I was destined to take my dead wife to a movie three times a week for the rest of my life. Maybe I should just kill myself now and get it over with.

  If I could only be certain that would end it.

  ACT THREE: A YELLOW TINGE

  “You won’t think it’s sweet if we get caught,” I said about halfway to the theater after she told me I was being sweet for taking her to a movie. “I get tossed in jail for killing you, and you’ll end up haunting the local cemetery.”

  She shrugged. “Couldn’t be much worse than hanging around here with you.”

  “Now don’t start,” I said. “This is how you got killed in the first place.

  “Don’t you dare blame me again for what happened.” She had her hands on her hips, the sign she was getting mad. “I’m the one who is dead, remember.”

  “How can I ever forget?”

  Actually, I had never really totally hated her. At least not enough yet to kill her. But I suppose it was building to that. I sure had wished she was dead enough times.

  It was her way of arguing that got to me. One afternoon she started in on me. Or, as she tells it, I started in on her. Either way doesn’t make much difference. I got so mad I yelled a Wizard curse at her that I had just read that morning. She laughed, so for a special effect I tossed a handful of sparkle dust from the magic shop in her face. I read that Wizards were always using sparkle dust and I guess it worked.

  She backed up away from me rubbing her eyes, tripped, and hit her head hard on the edge of the counter as she went down.

  I was over her immediately. I didn’t like the way her head hitting that counter had sounded. A sick, deep smacking and cracking sound. Granted, I had cursed her dead, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted her that way.

  Too late. She was already dead. And her ghost was standing above me leaning over her own body.

  “Now see what you have done,” she had said. Even dead she had started out annoying.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence to the theater. I remembered we had done that a lot. Especially the year before she died. Actually, in the two weeks since she died we had gotten along better than ever before. Something about her not expecting sex, I think.

  I parked as close as I could to the multiplex theater building and suddenly she was in a good mood again. She clapped her hands together and floated out of the car before I even had it stopped.

  “I’m in heaven,” she said, moving toward the ticket window.

  I shook my head, muttering that she was a long way from heaven, but I certainly wi
shed she would go there soon. I locked the car and checked twice to see if the hatch was shut tight and the blanket over her body was in place.

  By the time I had bought my ticket to the show she wanted to see, she was already inside, floating in front of the popcorn counter, looking sad.

  I moved up beside her and as softly as I could, without moving my lips, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  She pointed at the popcorn.

  “You knew you wouldn’t be able to eat any?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I can pick it up and put it in my mouth.” To demonstrate she took a piece from the counter and popped it into her mouth and chewed with her mouth half open. Thank god no one was watching.

  “So what’s the problem? And since when can you pick up stuff?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been doing that for days now. But I can’t taste the popcorn.”

  More stupid ghost rules.

  I stared at her for a moment and then glanced around the theater lobby to see if anyone was watching. Again we were in luck.

  “Maybe I can find a Wizard spell to help you,” I said. “Or maybe you’ll just get better with practice.” I regretted saying that immediately.

  “Oh, you think so? Then get an extra large, extra butter. I’ll practice all the way through the movie.”

  I was about to object when this couple moved up behind me and I was forced to get the guy behind the counter’s attention and buy an extra large, extra butter popcorn and a small drink.

  By the time I found her in the sixth theater down the hall the previews were already starting. I started to say something and she shushed me, just like she used to do when she was alive.

  Dead. Alive. Nothing changes.

  I balanced the popcorn on the rail between us and she began to eat handfuls, dropping exactly the same amount that she used to do when she was alive, only this time the dropped popcorn went through her and gathered in a pile on the seat. I’d have to ask her later how that worked and why I couldn’t see the popcorn after it was inside her. More and more strange ghost rules.

  I glanced around to see if anyone was watching or sitting close. We were in luck. This movie was a real dog and there were only five other people in the theater.

  After every preview she leaned over and whispered that she wanted to see that movie, just like she had always done. And, as when she was alive, the thought made me shudder, but now for different reasons.

  I spent most of the movie trying to work out plans of escape. I even thought of just going out of the theater and walking away. But I didn’t have the guts to do that. Besides, eventually the police would find the car and her body and I would get caught. The life of a fugitive just wasn’t one for me.

  When the movie ended she sighed. “I really love movies.”

  “No kidding,” I said under my breath and luckily she ignored me. I sat still, watching the credits and waiting until the other people left before standing.

  “Too bad you couldn’t just stay here.”

  Again she sighed. “That would be wonderful.”

  We headed out the back door near the screen in silence and it wasn’t until I was at the car that I had realized what I had seen.

  The multiplex theater’s back door was right beside the screen. Under the screen, like in old theaters, was a stage, only this stage was fake, just used to get the screen up in the air. A maintenance man, or someone, must have left the access door open to the area under the stage, revealing rough planking on the floor spaced evenly over hard packed dirt.

  There was nothing else under there and no reason for anyone to ever go under there.

  “You really want to stay here?” I asked as she settled into her seat.

  She looked at me with that questioning look, meaning she didn’t understand. I always had liked that look because it meant she didn’t understand something about me. She always took such pride in knowing everything about me, so that look had always cheered me up and tonight was no exception.

  I pointed back at the closed door. “Go back through there and take a look under the stage.”

  “But—”

  “Just do it.” I loved having the upper hand.

  She shrugged and floated/walked/moved toward the closed metal theater door and then through it like it was the surface of a lake.

  A full minute later she was back, excited. “I see what you are thinking. You could bury my body under the stage and I could see all the movies I wanted.”

  I nodded and she tried to hug me, which failed totally. But I suppose it was the thought that counted.

  We went home, got my gloves and a shovel, and I tossed in my Wizards book just in case I might need it. We were back to the theater in less than an hour. I backed the car right up to the closest place I could get near the stage door and we waited until the next show ended and the people were leaving.

  She went inside and stood guard and when she motioned that the coast was clear, I blocked the door open. As the credits were playing I got her body from the car and under the stage.

  While she watched the movie again with eight live people, I buried her. I had to be real quiet, especially taking out and replacing the flooring planks. But I got it done, finishing the digging during the noisy love scene in the middle and then putting back the flooring during the loud chase scene at the end.

  I did a quick Wizard invisibility blessing over her grave, then left the shovel in the back corner, as if it had been left by a workman. I went out behind the last movie-goer of the last show.

  She met me in the car, smiling. “Thanks,” she said.

  I think that was the first time in years she had said that to me. I was taken aback. “My pleasure,” was all I could think to say.

  “Would you come tomorrow night and see a movie with me?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She clapped her hands together like a kid. “Great. You can buy me some popcorn.”

  “I’d be glad to,” I said. And I really meant it. Since then I went to the movies there about once a week. No one ever talked about the ghost of the twelve-plex theater, except to complain about rude noises from empty seats behind them.

  No one ever found her body.

  I bought her popcorn every week and we never fought again. She seemed totally contented.

  But after a few years I noticed she had this yellow tinge about her. I tried a Wizard curse to help her, but it did no good. I figured it was just too much yellow oil build-up.

  [Heaven Painted as a Cop Car cover]

  HEAVEN PAINTED AS A COP CAR

  A Ghost of a Chance Novella

  PART ONE

  A Ghost, A Cop, and A Really Good Meal

  ONE

  EVE BRYSON DIED so fast, she didn’t even realize she was dead for a few minutes.

  The rain was pounding down hard, one of those storms that felt more like standing under a cold shower. She had on only a light cotton summer dress, sandals, and panties. No bra, so this rain was sticking her dress to her like a second skin. Not pleasant in the slightest.

  Around her the heavy pine forest seemed frighteningly dark, even though the sun was hours from setting. She could hear nothing but the pounding rain against her head, matting her long brown hair into a mess down her back.

  She wasn’t even sure how she had ended up in the rain. A moment before she had been driving toward a dinner date at a local brewpub in downtown Portland with three friends from college.

  In the years since college, the four of them had managed to get together every month or so and she loved those evenings. It took her mind off her worthless husband and even more worthless job she couldn’t figure out how to get out of.

  She had thought she would love high-tech work after coming out of college with her masters in engineering. But she hated it, hated the people more than anything else. Their goal wasn’t to create new things, use their brains for good. All they did was try to figure out how to get ahead in the corporate game.

&n
bsp; And just like her job, she thought marrying Simpson Jones right out of college was a good idea as well. It didn’t matter that he was taking a break from finishing his degree. They had had great sex, lots of fun traveling, and planning for a future. She thought she had found a soul mate.

  Maybe a soul mate for her single lost sock. But that might be giving Simpson more credit than he deserved.

  It seemed good ol’ Simp to his friends never understood that working was required to get ahead. She had no idea what he did all day while she was working, but it certainly wasn’t anything to bring in money. She had a hunch he just looked at porn and played online games. She had gotten tired of asking about six months ago.

  The marriage was that dead.

  So for two years now she had supported him and that was going to end very, very soon. All of the rebel things she had found charming with him in college now just annoyed her beyond belief.

  And all of her friends didn’t like him either right from the start. That should have been a clue to her, but when a girl was in the first blush of love and sexual satisfaction, thinking with the logical brain wasn’t that possible.

  So she had made two mistakes right out of college. In six months, she would be out of both mistakes.

  She shivered from the pounding cold rain and looked around. What had happened?

  The two-lane winding road through the trees was empty. Water ran down one side, it was raining so hard.

  Then she saw her wonderful little classic blue Miata off the road and down an embankment. Then she remembered. She had been thinking about how Simpson had complained that she wouldn’t cook his dinner before she left. She had gotten so angry, she had been driving far too fast down the twisting area through the trees from their house in the hills to the main street below.