Nights With My Ghost ...Part 2 ...Spirit Spouse
To do so was the province of fiction. Real life was not as easy as that.
― Lynn Cullen
I sought deliverance from demons and went to my mentor, Father Breton for help—after all, he is the archdiocesan exorcist, but he refused.
I’m torn between attraction for my detective partner, Robyn, and romancing a ghost.
Breton claims I’m not communing with my dead wife at night—the apparitions are merely ‘dreams’.
So, here I am, back home in front of the fire again on a rainy night—a few case files spread out before me on the coffee table—the usual unusual—bloody canvases painted by demented minds…
And Robyn, my partner, and Faith, my wife, haunting me long into the night.
My job is distasteful as working in a slaughterhouse, except the animals I deal with are the bipedal type who lurk in the fringes and prey on the unsuspecting.
It’s given me a unique perspective of the human zoo—and the realization that the price of being sentient is a certain unavoidable pathology.
My monsters carve up people—but my pathology is cutting myself. Isn’t that what I’m doing now—torturing myself for being absent, oblivious to Faith’s mood swings, unable even to be present when she ended her life at twenty-nine?
The room darkens as if in a brownout, and I feel myself sliding down the same slippery slope again.
“You’re punishing yourself, Martin—what happened was not your fault.”
She’s in the half-light of the doorway, leaning up against the doorframe, as if wearied by these interminable conversations.
“I need you, Faith—I can’t go on.”
“You must—you’re tormenting yourself—and people need you. You can make a difference in others’ lives.”
“Whose lives,” I sneer, “these pathetic, twisted torsos, splayed out in death—or my life, my half-life without you here?”
“Do you know why you try to black out drunk every night? Well, I’ll tell you—it’s the same reason lights dim when I come near.”
I chuckle bitterly, “Yeah, and what reason is that?”
She gives me such a sad, forlorn look that it draws the soul right out of me. “I can’t do your thinking for you.”
“Funny, Breton said almost the same thing this afternoon.”
“Did he?” she smiles, “That’s because he knows it’s got to do with need.”
A jagged arm of lightning draws my eyes to the window. I catch a glimpse of a lightning flare illumining some obscure geography of cloud.
I turn back, and she’s gone.
I sit alone in my front room, tear trails staining my cheek, rain shadows patterning the wall, and within, the desolate land of real need.
“Did you make any progress on the Dorm Murders?”
Robyn’s sipping a takeout coffee while scanning the files. The light from the copy machine bathes her in pale light, not unlike the Moon. I look away, not wanting to be reminded of how lovely she is.
“Naw, I’m stymied—what about you?”
“There was a lot of rain last night—brownouts in my building—the lights kept dimming, so I gave up and went to bed.”
“Sounds like my night.”
She looks at me, and I know she sees fatigue shadows and lines. “Doesn’t look like you got much sleep—you look wasted.”
I nod. “Comes with the territory.”
She pauses, gazes at me sadly, and then, gently looks away.
There’s a poetry of gesture between us—an unspoken ballet of nuances, inflections and things left unsaid.
Sometimes, silence can be beautiful, but too much, and your life’s sterile—like mine is.
I force myself to flip the mental page, pick up the file and try to unravel the motives of a killer who slices off women’s breasts.
I’m frustrated in more ways than one—can’t resolve my feelings between Faith and Robyn—can’t solve the Dorm Murders, or catch a crazy on the run.
My clenched fist is pressed to my forehead again. I feel like hitting myself in the face—I can’t get any traction in my life or make progress on this case…
And a killer is overdue to strike once again.
Thank you!