A Short Story by Bill Ectric
Did you ever have a family member who seemed perfectly sane and reasonable in every way, except for when they claimed to see the ghost of their dead husband? It gave me the creeps when Grandma Cole said she saw her late husband Wayne.
Wayne, or as we called him, Grandpa Cole, died of heart failure in his workshop in the back yard of my grandparents’ house. When he didn’t come inside at bedtime, Grandma Cole went out and found him slumped over his workbench.
About two weeks after Grandpa’s funeral, we were visiting Grandma Cole. My Mom and Dad, my six year old brother Jeff, and me, age ten, were all sitting in Grandma’s living room.
Out of nowhere, Grandma Cole said, “I saw him a few days ago.”
“Saw who, Mama?” asked my father.
“Wayne.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was in the den watching TV last Tuesday night. I got up off the sofa, turned off the TV, and was going to bed. When I walked into the hallway, Wayne was standing there, in the bedroom doorway. He looked like he wanted to say something.”
“Oh, Mama,” said my father softly.
“I screamed!” declared Grandma. “I screamed and fainted, right there in the hallway.”
My father said, “Maybe it was a dream.”
“No,” said Grandma Cole calmly. “No, I’ve dreamed about Wayne since he died, but this wasn’t a dream. I saw him standing there when I was awake.”
My brother and looked at each other. I started to say something but my father caught my eye and shook his head with a frown. The subject passed, but Grandma Cole told that story more than once over the years to more people, even after she moved into the Elm Shade Nursing Home, and it never varied.
Once a month, a bus from the Elm Shade Nursing Home rolls up to the Publix grocery store, where I am now the manager. A group of elderly men and women, including Grandma Cole, invade the grocery store, accompanied by a couple of caretakers. Some of the old folks leave their walkers at customer service and use shopping carts to steady themselves. One little granny wears slippers and a bathrobe wrapped over pajamas, but most of them dress more-or-less properly for this outing. A withered man wearing a pale green 1970’s leisure suit and wide tie has a gauze pad taped over the entire side of his head. Two of my bag boys speculate that cancer has eaten the man’s ear off.
Then one of the bag boys says, “Here come the Borg twins!”
People cringe in embarrassment at the phrase “borg twins” but the two old men smile and wave at the bagboy like celebrities. They don’t mind the nickname, being old science fictions buffs that play chess together and debate everything from the merits of Ray Bradbury versus Isaac Asimov, to the theories of evolution versus creation. The word “Borg” comes from the television show Star Trek; Borg is short for cyborg, which is a creature that is part human and part machine.
The “borg twins” are two old fat guys, Pops and Agee, who can’t breathe normally because they have emphysema, so they carry portable oxygen tanks in the top section of their shopping carts. Plastic air tubes run from the oxygen tanks to their nostrils. They stroll side by side, each pushing a shopping cart, basking in latter-day recognition by youthful nerds.
”How’s it going, Pops?” asks a bagboy.
”It sucks!” says Pops, a real wise-ass.
Pops is bald on top, with wild tufts of white hair sticking out over his ears, bushy eyebrows, sloping nose and forehead, and a wide grin.
Loudly, Pops proclaims, “I’m thinkin’ about hopping a freight train outta here!”
Agee smiles quietly. He is a black man, not quite as fat as Pops, who always sports a beret, a goatee, and bifocals with heavy rectangular frames of dark burgundy.
Pops and Agee continue to speak to the bag boys as they plod along, pushing the shopping carts with oxygen tanks in them.
“What’s the problem, Pops?” asks a bagboy.
“That goddam looney bin they keep us in, that’s what! How would you like to live with all those crazy mutherfuckers?”
Agee says, “Watch your damn language, Pops.”
“Oh, by all means!” says Pops sarcastically. “I wouldn’t want to corrupt these unblemished lambs!”
As they shuffle past the bagboy, Agee looks at the teenager and chuckles, “Got to keep the loonies on the path.”
“Hey, that’s from Pink Floyd,” says the bagboy. “You know Pink Floyd?”
“Sure,” says Agee.
“Yeah,” adds Pops. “Wish you were here!”
Both men walk on toward the produce department, laughing.
When you were a child, did you ever want something to be true, and, in spite of all logic, you almost believed it? Here is an example of something I almost convinced myself was true:
Even though it took ninety minutes by car to get from my family’s house to my grandparents’ house, I thought maybe the houses were really side-by-side, separated by only a tall hedgerow. My basis for idea was simple. A scary old woman named Mrs. Buttner lived at the end of our street and the tall, squarely trimmed row of shrubs in her yard looked just like the row of shrubs that backed my grandparents’ property. I hypothesized that we drove around for ninety minutes on some convoluted route that eventually, subtly took us back to our own neighborhood, whereas if one were able to go into Mrs. Buttner’s yard and sneak through the hedge, one would emerge in my grandparents’ yard immediately on the other side! By way of confirming this theory, I set out to make it a reality to my younger brother, Jeff.
We arrived at my grandparents’ house and after the prerequisite greetings, hugging, and shaking of hands, everyone went out back. The parents and grandparents sat on the back porch sipping drinks while my younger brother Jeff and I “played” in the yard. “Playing” consisted mainly of Jeff toddling around and me filling his head with bullshit.
My grandmother always warned us, “Don’t get near them shrubs, boys. There’s wasps in there! Sting you something terrible!”
“You see those shrubs?” I asked Jeff.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” I said. “If you crawl through those shrubs, you’ll come out on the other side in Miss Buttner’s yard. Remember the shrubs in her yard?”
”Yeah,” he said.
”They’re the same shrubs.”
Young as he was, Jeff was suspicious. But the wasp warning kept him from calling my bluff.
”Why does it take so long to get here?” he asked.
”Road and pavement regulations,” I told him with a hint of scorn in my voice, as though he should have known it. “No streets can intersect past the city limits so we have to go around. When the Federal Government finishes building the Interstate Highway System, we can get here a lot quicker. Didn’t you hear Dad say so?”
Here was the genius of my assertion. Jeff and I always heard our parents and grandparents talking about how much quicker it would be to get from our house to their house when the Interstate is finished.
In fact, the advent of Interstate 81 reduced our travel time from ninety minutes to fifty minutes, nowhere near as instantaneous as the mythical shrub passage would have been, had it existed.
Years later, I learned that space can trick me in just the opposite way. Landscape design can create the facades necessary for Americans to feel like we still live in the wide-open spaces of our ancestors. I was surprised to learn how close the baseball field was to my house.
Driving to work every morning, I had to crisscross the neighborhood through several blocks of residential streets just to get to the main road, which had four traffic lights. One of those lights was at a major intersection, so it usually turned red, green, red, and green again before I got through it and rolled onto the Lakeshore Bridge. After crossing the short bridge, I passed the Elm Shade Retirement Home on the left. A block further, just after the Lakeshore Baseball Field, I turned right into the parking lot of Publix, where I was the manager.
Bonnie and I had bought a small, cinderblock house in a nicely shaded, lower-middle-class neighborhood. It was perfect for us. For one thing, the price was right. Banks would not approve us for houses with two bathrooms or a pool. We felt comfortable in this neighborhood. Bonnie and I were not married. The people in this area seemed less judgmental than, say, the residents of gated communities where one is not permitted cars up on blocks with no tires, or weirdly painted houses. Our neighbor across the street drove a van with “Lawn Care Larry” airbrushed on the side.
The neighborhood had block parties. One 4th of July night, the whole street rocked with people drinking, talking, and shooting off illegal fireworks. Kids ran up and down the street. Bonnie and I stood in the middle of the road talking to Larry and his wife, Kyoko.
”Want to smoke some weed?” Larry asked me.
”Sure,” I said, looking at Bonnie
”Not me,” she said. “But you guys go ahead.”
”Yeah, go ahead,” said Kyoko in a cute accent that was part Japanese and part southern drawl. “Bonnie and I will stay here and talk.”
”This way,” said Larry with a subtle hand motion.
I followed him through the crowd of people neighbors as they chatted and milled around, to the end of the block, where we turned right onto another street that dead-ended into the woods. Larry already had the joint in his mouth and the cigarette lighter in his hand by this time.
A little ways into the woods, we came to a small clearing with tire swing hanging from a tree limb.
”Me and some other kids put this up years ago,” said Larry.
He grabbed the rope with one hand, just above the tire, pushed off the ground with his feet, and floated backwards as he lit the joint with his other hand. He then swung slowly back toward me, handed me the joint, and exhaled a trail of smoke as he swayed away again.
I looked around the dark woods while I partook, squinting one eye from the smoke. Larry levitated out of the darkness again and retrieved the glowing tip from my thumb and forefinger. That’s when I saw the unearthly glow in the distance, over the treetops, in the opposite direction from our neighborhood.
”What the hell is that?” I asked in awe.
”Lights from the baseball field,” said Larry. “Lakeshore Little League.”
”Oh, yeah,” I said. “I drive past it on the way to work. Damn, it’s closer than I thought.”
”Yeah, the landscape can trick you,” said Larry as his feet touched down on the ground. “We better get back to the party. I’m ready for another beer.”
Snakes began appearing in the parking lot of Publix on some mornings. It was in the news. It wasn’t just Publix, it was everywhere. Construction companies were cutting down the small wooded areas to build more housing developments, and this was driving snakes, turtles, and armadillos from their natural habitats.
The little road, which Lawn Care Larry and I had walked down to get high, was no longer a dead end. It extended past brand new houses, where the woods and rope swing used to be, and connected to the road beside the ball field. It seemed so strange to me that I could walk to work, now, quicker than I could drive. It was almost a magical feeling, as if that impossible childhood thing had come true.
Did you ever lay in bed after having sex with your girlfriend or wife and talk about the future? One exultant night, after Bonnie and I had sex, I rolled onto my back and held the used condom dangling over the right side of the bed, between the bed and the wall.
“I hope you’re not just going to drop that on the floor,” said Bonnie.
“I’ll pick it up later,” I said, letting go of the used condom. “Right now I just want to lay here, with you.”
“That sounds like an excuse for laziness,” she laughed.
“You know what we need?” I asked.
“What?”
“This house needs more than one bathroom. We need a bathroom connecting right here,” I said, tapping the wall beside me on my right. “I could get out of bed and walk right into the bathroom.”
”Yeah,” said Bonnie. “Well, how much would something like that cost?”
”Not much if I did it myself,” I said. “I bet Larry would help me. Knock out part of this wall for a door . . . there’s plenty of room in the backyard to extend a room out several feet.”
”Oh, look at that,” she said.
The TV was on at low volume. Bonnie reached for the remote and turned up the sound so we could find out why the Elm Shade Nursing Home was on the 11:00 O’clock news.
Taped earlier that day, a middle-aged woman wearing sunglasses spoke with a heavy Brooklyn accent to a reporter. We could see the Elm Shade Nursing Home in the background.
The woman said, “It was nevah a problem in the past! I could come here and visit my mother any time I felt like it! Now, just because they are closing…”
”What?” I said. “Elm Shade is closing?”
”Shhhh!” said Bonnie.
The Brooklyn lady continued, “My job switches me from day shift to evening shift every so awften. I need flexibility when it comes to visiting my mother here at the Home.”
The news reporter concluded the segment, speaking to the camera, “A spokesman for the Elm Shade Nursing Home told us that the more restrictive visitation schedules are a result of increased concerns for the safety of the Home’s residents. Elm Shade has confirmed that they will soon close their doors permanently, but they reassure the public that they will work with each and every family in relocating their loved ones to other suitable retirement homes.”
”That must be what the letter is about,” I said.
”You got a letter from the nursing home?” chided Bonnie. “And didn’t open it?”
”I was going to open it,” I said. “They always send a newsletter every month. Mostly bullshit.”
”Well, tomorrow I guess you’ll have to read it and find out what day and time you can visit your grandmother.”
”That’s bullshit, too,” I said. “I agree with that woman on TV. I’ll visit my grandmother whenever I feel like it.”
“Which is . . . hmmm . . . almost never?” said Bonnie
”I know, I know. I’ll stop by and see her tomorrow, after work,” I said. “What’s tomorrow, Friday?”
”Yeah. Larry and Kyoko are coming over tomorrow evening. We’re cooking out on the grill. So don’t stay at the home too long.”
”Perfect,” I said. That’ll be my excuse to leave,” I said.
”You’re terrible,” joked Bonnie.
”Hey, it’s Lawn Care Larry and his wife, Lawn Care Kyoko!” I said when I opened the front door. It was Friday evening and they were here for the cookout.
It rained, so we all sat in the living room, eating hamburgers and potato salad from paper plates. I told Larry I wanted to expand my house.
“Best thing to do,” he said, “Is put up a big mirror. Mirrors make the place look twice as big.”
“Great,” I said. “Then I can just piss on the mirror and watch it splash back on me.”
“What?” he tilted his head and squinted his eyes at me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Bonnie said, “He wants to add a bathroom, Larry.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Jeez!”
Kyoko and I laughed at Larry’s reaction.
Bonnie said, “But you know, a mirror would look good on that wall.”
Kyoko said, “In Japanese, my names means “mirror.”
“Really?” said Bonnie.
“It’s true,” said Larry. “I looked it up.”
”Cool,” I said. “Hey, I hear they really have a space problem in Japan.”
”Space problem?” asked Larry.
”Oh, you mean limited space,” said Kyoko. “That’s true. The population is dense.”
“Yeah,” said Larry. “We took a course on that when I was stationed over there. About the bubble.”
“Bubble?” I asked.
“The bubble of personal space,” said Kyoko.
“Yeah,” Larry continued. “Americans have what we call bubble of personal space around us. The Japanese don’t have room for that, so they make their own personal space inside their head.”
“Is that true, Kyoko?” asked Bonnie.
“Well, sort of, yeah,” Kyoko said. “The Japanese are much more respectful of each other in public. We speak softly. We use earphones to listen to music. Things like that.”
I said, “I don’t know, I like to escape once in a while to the great outdoors. I mean, we have a big back yard but I wish it was bigger.”
“The way my father taught me,” said Kyoko, “Is like this: If you go to a park that has trees, flower gardens, fountains and statues, when you are walking through the park, you can only be in one place at any given time. What difference does it make if many people are walking in the same park, each following a different path, as long as they do not bump into each other?”
“But I don’t like crowds,” I said.
“There would be no crowd in your mind,” said Kyoto. “Everyone will mind their own business.”
“That’s what the stupid Nursing Home says is part of their visitor problem,” I remarked.
“What do you mean?” asked Larry.
“On the way home from work, I went there to sign papers to have Grandma transferred to the Baptist Retirement Village.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Kyoko. “We saw on the news that Elm Shade is closing.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I wanted to visit with her after I signed the papers, and they wouldn’t let me! Told me to come back on Sunday and visit her in the courtyard.”
“So you didn’t insist on seeing her right then?” asked Larry.
“I did at first,” I said. “I got kind of belligerent. The Director started to call the police! I reached over and pressed the disconnect button on phone, and these two big orderlies acted like they were going to grab me and throw me out on my ass. So I left.”
“So you’re going back Sunday?” asked Kyoko.
“Damn right,” I said. “Apparently, they have some garden paths in the courtyard. They said, if too many people walk these paths at the same time, there’s a greater risk some old fogey will get knocked down and break their hip!”
Bonnie said, “It’s basically about risk management, that’s all.”
Larry laughed, “Got to keep the loonies on the path!”
Kyoko said, “Larry! That’s not very nice.”
”It’s Pink Floyd!” said Larry defensively. “Dark Side of the Moon.”
”Pops quoted the same thing!” I said. “This old guy at the Home!”
”Oh, really?” asked Larry. “Some old geezer was quoting Pink Floyd?”
”Yeah, old Pops is a trip!” I said.
Bonnie said, “Maybe that’s what he was talking about. The paths in the courtyard.”
Did you ever act on a premonition?
One night I had to work late at the grocery store, supervising the stock crew while the regular night guy was out sick. It was almost midnight when we finished.
Driving home, I probably would not have paid any attention to the Elm Shade Retirement Home had they not recently pissed me off. I slowed down and glowered at the building as I drove past it.
All windows were dark in the wide, flat brick building. Only the glass doors to the main entrance showed signs of life. A person sat behind the reception desk in the lit up lobby. A single streetlight cast shadows of shrubbery onto the side of the building. Suddenly, one of the shadows moved.
I stopped in the road, squinting at the side of the building. Someone was crouching down between the wall and the shrubs, creeping toward the back of the retirement home. I didn’t think they saw me watching, so I drove a little further up the road, where they couldn’t see me park on the side of the road. I sprinted quietly to the left side of the building and crept along the left wall, toward the back of the building, while the other figure presumably moved along the right wall in similar fashion.
I eased my head around the rear corner of the building ever so slowly. There was the mystery prowler, a tall man dressed in all black, and wearing a black wool stocking cap. He walked briskly but quietly from the far corner of the building to an archway covered with vines. Then he disappeared through the archway. I followed him.
The archway led to the courtyard paths. These paths were outdoors, but trellised vines everywhere gave the feeling of enclosure. Soft moonlight filtered through the vine canopy, but even so, I could barely see where I was going. I hid behind a marble statue and watched the man in black scan the ground with his flashlight.
The flashlight beam paused on a flat rock beside the path. The guy knelt down on one knee and laid his flashlight on the ground with the beam still shining on the rock. With one hand, he lifted the rock to a 45 degree angle, reached underneath with the other hand removed a small package from a hole in the ground. He let the rock drop back over the hole, stood up with his flashlight and the package, and walked out through the archway as briskly as he had walked in. I had to rotate my position behind the marble statue to stay hidden as the man walked past, but I got a glimpse of long, bushy sideburns extending down past the wool cap.
I stood there, wondering, what was that all about?
A peculiar sensation crept over me – the feeling that I wasn’t alone.
I turned and looked down the dimly lit path. Something moved in the distance.
For a moment, I doubted my own eyes.
A pale form shuffled toward me. An elderly, obese man in a hospital gown spectral in the moonlight.
For the first time in my life, I knew what being “paralyzed by fear” meant. When the old man came closer, I could see his mouth stretched open in a repulsive silent scream. The horror in his eyes made my skin crawl.
Less than ten feet away, he stretched his arms toward me, knotted knuckles clutching at the air between us. When the old man was close enough for me to see the ashen, mummy-like texture of his face, I swear I thought I could see right through him. I backed away to avoid his grasping hands.
I had been hiding behind what I later learned was a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi. In the dark, I didn’t see the little animal statues flocking around the saint’s marble feet. Backing up, I tripped over a stone rabbit, and hit the ground painfully, knocking my breath out.
Rolling onto my side, I looked up, expecting to see the old man on top of me. He was gone.
“Where have you been?” Bonnie was still awake when I finally got home, way after midnight.
“The retirement home,” I said wearily.
“The home? Because of the missing guy?”
“Yeah. I mean no. You won’t believe what happened. What did you just say?”
“The missing guy,” said Bonnie. “One of the residents wandered off and nobody knows where he is.”
“Maybe that’s who I saw.”
The next day I put the assistant manager in charge of the grocery store and went to the Baptist Retirement Village.
“I’m here to see my grandmother, Mrs. Katherine Cole,” I told the receptionist. “She was transferred here from Elm Shade.”
“Of course,” said the receptionist. “Mrs. Cole is in room 211. The elevator is down that hall to your right. I believe a detective is speaking to her now.”
“A detective?”
“Yes. About the gentleman who went missing from Elm Shade.”
I took the elevator to the second floor. The heavy wooden door to room 211 was halfway closed. Hearing a man’s voice, I pushed the door open quietly. I saw my grandmother, propped up comfortably by pillows in her bed. The detective sat politely in a chair between the bed and the window, his legs crossed in that proper way lanky men in suits cross their legs, notepad resting on his knee.
I walked into the room.
“Well, look who it is!” said Grandma. “Detective Poole, this is my son, Bill.”
Holding the notepad and pen in his left hand, Detective Poole stood up and reached across the bed to shake my hand. He was tall and vigorous, middle-aged with a receding hairline, long sideburns, and a youthful glint in his eye that seemed to wink when he smiled.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’ve just been speaking to your grandmother about Mr. Finnegan, the missing resident.”
Unexpectedly, Grandma said, “My husband told me Finny Finnegan was lost.”
I glanced at her and sat down in a chair on my side of the bed and the detective took his seat.
“Your husband?” asked Poole.
Grandma looked at me and said, “My grandson will not like what I’m about to say.”
Detective Poole was puzzled. He looked at me, then back at Grandma, and back at me. His eyes asked for an explanation.
I spoke to her softly, the way I remembered my father speaking to her, “Grandma, Wayne passed away.”
“I know that, baby,” she said. “My husband Wayne has passed from this world to the next.” Then she looked at the detective and added, “But he visits me sometimes.”
Detective Poole surprised me with his answer. He said, “We sometimes rely on psychics to solve puzzling cases, Mrs. Cole. Perhaps this is similar.”
“I don’t think of myself as psychic,” said Grandma. “Well, in a way, I think all mothers are psychic. We can tell when our children are in trouble. You know, Detective Poole, my husband Wayne said that your father still watches over you.”
“Your husband’s name was Wayne?” asked Detective Poole, ignoring the mention of his father.
“Yes,” said Grandma. “The first time Wayne appeared to me was shortly after he died. I was in the den watching TV on a Tuesday evening. I got up off the sofa, turned off the TV, and was going to bed. When I walked into the hallway, Wayne was standing there, in the bedroom doorway. He looked like he wanted to say something.”
“Oh, Grandma,” I said softly.
“I screamed!” she continued her recollection. “I screamed and fainted, right there in the hallway.”
Detective Poole said, “Maybe it was a dream.”
“No,” said Grandma Cole calmly. “No, I’ve dreamed about Wayne since he died, but this wasn’t a dream. I saw him standing there when I was awake. I was only afraid of him the first time he appeared. After that, it was okay. When I moved into Elm Shade, I was so sad because I thought I was leaving Wayne behind in the house. But there was no need to worry! He appeared to me at Elm Shade, the very first night I was there. And two nights ago, I saw him here at Baptist. He is free, not like that poor Mr. Finny.”
“What do you mean?” asked Poole.
“Wayne said Mr. Finny is trapped at Elm Shade and can’t leave.”
”We’ve search Elm Shade thoroughly,” said Detective Poole patiently. “Mr. Finnegan is not there, Mrs. Cole.”
”He is in purgatory!” said Grandma Cole gravely. “Poor Mr. Finny is suffering in purgatory!”
A chill ran through my body.
The next day I was at the grocery store, yawning from lack of sleep, when Pops and Agee shuffled in, pushing their shopping carts with the oxygen tanks on board.
I followed them down the medicine aisle, where they stopped at a shelf full of eye medication.
“You need the Visine,” Pops said to Agee. “Got that red-eye from smoking dope.”
“If anyone uses drugs, it’s you, Pops,” said Agee.
“Don’t bullshit me,” said Pops. “You listen to jazz and smoke grass!”
‘”Yeah, right,” Agee shot back.
I walked up and said, “So, what’s new, borgsters?”
Agee smiled and nodded a hello, friendly eyes framed by thick burgundy eyeglasses.
Pops said, “Hey, young fellow! Agee here needs some generic Visine!”
“Shut up, Pops,” said Agee with a smile.
I said, “What’s this I hear about someone missing from Elm Shade?”
“Finny Finnegan,” said Pops. “Finny’s been missing for a couple of days.”
“It’s a cover-up,” said Agee matter-of-factly.
“A cover-up?” I said.
Agee said, “Pops here thinks he saw Finny’s ghost one night.”
“He’s still at the home,” said Pops with a devious grin. “He never left. And he’s no ghost!”
Agee said firmly, “Pops, what you described to me is a ghost.”
Pops gave a wide-mouthed mocking laugh. “I’m a man of science!” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Are you saying a man of science can’t believe in ghosts?”
“There are believers on both ends of the spectrum,” said Pops. “Agee here is a retired pastor. He literally believes the Old Testament story in First Samuel, about a witch who summons up a ghost.”
“That’s right,” said Agee matter-of-factly. “First Samuel, Chapter 28. King Saul consulted with a witch to summon up the ghost of Samuel.”
I felt a tingle up my spine. I looked at Agee for a moment, and then turned to Pops.
“What do you believe, Pops?” I asked.
His bushy eyebrows arched upwards. “I believe that we are made of atoms, and atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and…”
“Just say string theory,” interrupted Agee, who looked at me and explained, “Otherwise he will go on all day.”
“Maybe this young man doesn’t know about string theory,” said Pops indignantly.
They both looked at me.
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
Pops said, “You know everything has three dimensions, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Height, width, and depth. Some people say the fourth dimension is time.”
“That’s an older theory,” said Pops. “Scientists now believe there may be eleven dimensions. Time is still a part of it, though.”
I said, “I never really understood how time could be a dimension.”
“Well,” said Pops, reaching for a box of Visine wrapped in cellophane. “Look at this box. When I lift it up off the shelf, imagine that it leaves a trail.”
“A trail?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Pops. “You know, a box-shaped trail from where the Visine sat on the shelf, extending up to where I’m holding it now, twelve inches above the shelf. Of course, you can’t really see the trail. You can only see the box in one place at a time.”
He put the box back on the shelf, still holding on to it with his fingers, and said, “You see it here,” then lifting the box six inches, “or here,” then raising the box up another few inches, “or here. The only way you could see it in all those places at once would be if you could step outside of time.”
“Okay,” I said. “So time is the fourth dimension?”
“Well, it would be, if there were only four dimensions,” said Pops. “But if you can imagine a vertical trail when I lift the box straight up, you have to consider that the Earth is turning, so there is also a trail streaming sideways off the box as the Earth turns.”
“So that is another dimension?” I asked.
“I think so,” said Pops. “But that’s not all. The Earth is not only spinning around, it is also traveling around the sun. That’s another trail. And if you believe the theory that the universe is expanding, that’s still another trail!”
Agee smiled knowingly. I realized that Agee understood Pops just fine; they just enjoyed picking on each other.
“So,” I asked. “However many dimensions exist, time is the last one?”
Agee said, “Pops, tell him why we can only see three dimensions.”
“Ahhhh,” said Pops. “That’s where string theory comes in. The study of quantum physics suggests that all these dimensions fold back on themselves. They’re invisible to us!”
“That sounds crazy,” I said.
“He didn’t make this stuff up,” said Agee. “There are mathematical formulas that back it up. There is an invisible world. Of course, I knew that from reading my Bible. Pops here had to get it from the Discovery Channel.”
“Discovery Channel, my ass,” said Pops. “I worked on the particle accelerator in Switzerland. If anything, the discovery channel learned it from me!”
I looked at Agee to see his reaction.
With a knowing smile, Agee said, “It all checks out with God’s creation.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“God made texture in everything,” said Agee. “Did you know that if the inner lining of your intestines were smooth, they would only have about six square feet of surface area? But the fact is, the texture of those inner walls is such that if you could spread it out, it would be 4,000 square feet. It stands to reason that our entire universe is the same way – folding back on itself.”
“And poor old Finny is lost in the folds!” said Pops.
“I think I saw him, too,” I said. “But then again, it sounds impossible. Are you sure you guys aren’t full of shit?”
“Well,” said Pops, “If we are, then Global Interlinear sure has invested a lot of money in shit!”
That name, Global Interlinear, sounded familiar.
I remembered where I had seen it before.
In the grocery store, every available surface carries an ad. They even put ads on the floor between each aisle, glued down and laminated by some protective polymer to withstand thousands of shoes treading and shopping carts rolling. Those little plastic coupon dispensers stick out sideways from the shelves. It’s as if the ad people discovered a new dimension. Not only are the shelves tall, wide, and deep – now they have ads that extend out into space where before there was nothing but air. In tiny letters, on all the coupon dispensers in my store, it says, Global Interlinear Corporation®. I did some research on the company.
Did you ever notice how big companies sometimes diversify into areas with which they formerly had no connection? For example, Lockheed Martin Corporation builds military aircraft, but recently, their information technology department has gone into the Child Support Enforcement business. They are bidding for contracts with several states that want to turn their Child Support departments over to private businesses.
It’s a similar thing with Global Interlinear. They started out building particle accelerators so scientists could split atoms and try to observe quarks and other tiny bits of matter. Then they branched into advertising. Now they have purchased a whole chain of retirement homes. Their public relations literature talks about innovative ways to overcome problems of overcrowding.
I thought it was more than a coincidence that Detective Poole had long sideburns like the man I had seen sneaking around in the courtyard behind Elm Shade. I went to see the detective at the Police station. He invited me into his office.
”Have a seat,” said Poole. “How can I help you?”
Have you ever wanted to say something significantly suggestive, to show that you were hip to a secret? I have, and I didn’t want to miss my chance.
”During your search for the missing man,” I said smugly, “I assume you left no stone unturned in the courtyard.”
I put emphasis on stone unturned and courtyard – to see if I could get a reaction from Detective Poole. It worked!
He did an almost imperceptible double take and looked quizzically at my face. Then he relaxed and leaned back in his chair.
”Ahhhh,” said Detective Poole. “It was you. I thought I heard someone following me.”
I felt like maybe I had been foolish to bring it up.
”I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “I was worried about my grandmother.”
”I believe you,” said Poole. “I caught the guy I was looking for.”
”What was under the rock?” I asked.
”Pain medication,” said Poole. “One of the orderlies was stealing boxes of drugs and stashing them under rocks in the courtyard. Later, he would come back and get them.”
I felt like I was in on some secret Police matter.
“We’ve already arrested the guy,” added the detective. “It’s in the newspapers.”
“I guess I’ve been too busy to read the papers,” I said. “So, was it an old man?”
“No, a young guy, an orderly. He tried to get a plea bargain by turning evidence on the retirement home. He told us he only stole medication from residents who were deceased or missing.”
“Deceased?” I asked.
”He said Elm Shade was covering up deaths. He told us the reason people weren’t allowed to visit their relatives was because the relatives were dead.”
”People were dying?” I asked.
”No! That’s the strange thing about it. None of them were dead, but this orderly swears that their rooms were empty, or that new residents were moved into rooms where previous occupants had disappeared.”
”I saw an old man in the courtyard that same night I saw you there,” I said.
”That’s hardly possible,” said Detective Poole. “The place had been thoroughly searched by then.”
”No wonder Elm Shade had strict visitation times,” I told the detective. “They only had half the residents available at any given time. The other half was there, but they were in the folds of space, where the dimensions fold back on themselves!”
”Well, that’s a bit far fetched,” said Poole. “Where did you come up with that?”
I continued, “When Elm Shade came under scrutiny, they had to bring everyone back. You shut them down before they had time to bring back Finny Finnegan.”
”A fantastic scenario,” said Detective Poole sarcastically.
”You said yourself that sometimes you rely on psychics,” I said. “How is this any more fantastic?”
”I didn’t want to hurt your grandmother’s feelings,” said Poole. “But I don’t really take that stuff seriously.”
“You were pulling my grandmother’s leg?”
“Yeah.”
“What if that crazy stuff is true?” I asked.
“You want to believe it’s true, don’t you?” said Poole.
“I’ve always felt that there was something more,” I said. “Something hidden away from our sight. When I was a kid, I thought I saw a space-warp between my parents’ house and my grandparents’ house.”
“Oh, man,” said Poole. “I thought the same thing!”
“It was in the shrub hedge,” I said.
“Mine was the ocean. My mother and I lived near the ocean. So did my grandparents. When we visited my grandparents, we went by plane, but I always thought that if we had a boat we could get there quicker. You see, when I looked out at the ocean, I saw these trawlers on the horizon.”
Detective Poole closed one eye and pointed his fingers at an imaginary little trawler in a distant sunset.
He continued, “Way out there, the trawlers always looked the same, whether I saw from my mother’s house or my grandparents’ house. I thought they were the same ships. I though if we could just take a boat out there, past those fishing ships, my grandparents’ house would come into view, just over the curve of the Earth.”
“But they weren’t the same ships?” I asked.
“No,” he laughed. “They couldn’t be. It wasn’t even the same ocean. I grew up in Monterey, California. My grandparents were retired in Florida. I figured it out when I got older.”
“Maybe children sense things that adults don’t,” I said.
“Maybe children are naïve and ignorant,” laughed Poole.
”By the way,” I said. “I’m sorry my mother brought your dad into her ramblings, the other day when you interviewed her.”
”I didn’t mind,” said Poole. “That was just one more reason not to take her seriously. As far as I know, my father is still alive and not watching over me.”
”As far as you know?” I asked.
”I haven’t seen him in years.”
That evening, I asked Lawn Care Larry to go with me to Elm Shade.
“Buy us a twelve pack of Budweiser and I’ll do it,” he said.
We each opened our first beer at my house while I told Larry my ideas.
“It’s not that I really believe all that shit about space folding back on itself,” I said. “But I saw that old geezer in the hospital gown. Something’s going on.
“You think he’s still there?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Either way, I can’t get my mind off the place. I want to go back and check it out.”
Bonnie and Kyoko came in and took two of our beers. We told them where we were going and they insisted on joining us.
We decided not to drive. We took the shortcut, walking down neighborhood side road, through the parking lot of Publix, and across the deserted baseball field. Each of us carried a fresh beer. Larry carried more beers in a big plastic cooler with a handle. We each had flashlights of different shapes and sizes.
We stopped at a row of square-cut shrub hedges backed by a privacy fence.
“On the other side of this wall is the courtyard,” I said. “We’re behind the Elm Shade retirement home.”
We put our empty beer cans in the cooler with the rest of the full cans. Squeezing between two shrubs, we stood on the beer cooler to facilitate climbing over the wall.
“Leave the cooler,” said Larry, when we all stood on inside the courtyard. “The shrubs will hide it.”
The courtyard was outdoors, but a wooden framework covered with vines formed a canopy that gave the area a semi-enclosed feeling.
Larry, shining one of those big Maglite flashlights that resemble a police officer’s club, walked through the arched entrance first. Kyoko followed him with a square camping lantern with the handle on top.
“Larry!” said Kyoko. “Where did you go?”
Bonnie and I looked at each other.
“Larry,” said Kyoko with fear in her voice. “Are you hiding from me? It’s not funny!”
I walked through the entrance, my keychain penlight darting all around, expecting to see Kyoko, but I saw no one.
“Where did you guys go?” I asked.
Turning around quickly, I saw that there was no longer a way in or out. I took a step back, moving my light all around, looking for an opening that wasn’t there.
“Bonnie!” I called out.
No answer.
Turning around again, I thought I could see the white marble statue of St. Francis in the distance. I decided to walk toward it.
A boney hand came from behind a tree and gripped my forearm. I jumped and tried to pull away, but the pale hand held on tight. My gaze followed an appallingly withered bare arm, riddled with pustules, to the horrible creature that had grabbed me. The old man I had seen before. He was still in a hospital gown, but now, instead of obese, he looked emaciated, and loose skin hung from his arms and the jowls of his mummy-like face.
“Are you Finny Finnegan?” I asked.
His watery eyes widened. He clinched his yellow teeth into a grimace. He seemed to be looking over my shoulder.
I turned around to see what he was looking at and the sight made me think I was going crazy.
There stood my grandfather. I recognized him from pictures and childhood memories. Unlike Finnegan, he looked just like he did the last time I saw him, still wearing the carpenter’s apron that he had on when my grandmother found him dead in his workshop. I backed up, knees trembling. My legs felt like they would collapse under me from shock, so I sat down on the ground.
My grandfather extended a strong, calloused hand toward Finnegan. After a moment’s hesitation, Finnegan reached out and clutched my grandfather’s hand.
Then, amazingly, both men faded before my eyes. For a moment I could see through them like glass statues and then they were gone.
Crazy lights flashed all around. It was Bonnie, Kyoko, and Larry, suddenly visible, waving their flashlights about. We were all standing within a few feet of one another. We trained our light beams on each other, mystified.
“Where were you?” asked Larry.
“Where were you?” asked Kyoko.
Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I noticed another presence. A man in a suit, holding a gun, had stepped out of the darkness. I recognized him as the Director of Elm Shade Retirement Home.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He pointed the gun at me and motioned with it, toward Larry.
“Move over there,” he said. “You, too, ladies. Huddle together, all four of you. Come on, do it!”
“What’s this about?” I asked, as Kyoko and Bonnie moved to stand next to Larry. ”Why is Finnegan trapped in this place?”
“You must have imagined it,” said the Director. “Maybe one of the statues fooled you.”
“Then why are you pointing a gun at us?” asked Larry.
“You’re trespassing.”
It occurred to me that anyone who was willing to let old people disappear and suffer would also be willing to kill anyone who could testify against them. I decided to stand my ground, away from the others. That way, if the Director shot me, maybe Larry could jump on him and protect the girls.
“I’m giving you one more chance to move over there,” said the Director.
”I need my space,” I said.
”Fine,” he said, raising his arm, extending the gun toward me.
“Drop the gun!” shouted Detective Poole.
The Director turned and pointed his gun at the detective.
The explosive blast from Detective Poole’s gun seemed to narrow into an underwater silence, then fanned out again as a loud echo . The Director lurched backward, half his body disappearing momentarily before crumpling fully onto the floor.
Poole, again dressed in black, knelt quickly beside the Elm Shade director, secured the director’s gun, and checked his vital signs. He removed the wireless radio from his belt and called in his location, adding that the suspect was dead.
“Damn,” said Lawn Care Larry.
The detective stood up and looked at me.
“After your grandmother said my father was watching over me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I did some checking.”
“Oh?” I said.
“My father died a year ago. Maybe he is watching over me.”
“What the hell is going on?” asked Larry. ”I need some air!”
“We shouldn’t be in here,” said Poole. “This place is dangerous.”
I noticed that the exit had reappeared.
When we were back over the fence, grabbing beers out the cooler, I asked Poole, “Can’t the Police shut it down?”
“We did shut it down,” said Poole. “But we had to boot it up again when we realized some people were missing.”
“Some people?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said the detective. “Finnegan was not the only one missing.”
The next day, the Police found the body of Finny Finnegan. The coroner’s report said that Finnegan had been dead for at least a week.
State troopers guard the supposedly empty Elm Shade Retirement Home around the clock.
This story originally appeared in Space Savers & Other Stories by Bill Ectric
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Topher Grace as Jim 
James Caan as Randy Paquinn