100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2018 #64

TAPESTRY 


My mother by the looks of her appears to be a very bright and intelligent woman in her forties but is, in fact, eighty-six years of age. After dad died mom didn't want to stay in the house anymore
, there were too many memories there and without dad around, it didn't make sense for her to be there. Recently, she tried dating again and I recall getting upset. I told mom that by dating she was disrespecting dad's memory. In response, mom chewed my ass and smacked me upside my head. Yup, I forgot that about my mother. When I got her first cell phone for her, I assumed that it was going to be a chore explaining and showing her how it worked but it wasn't. She was more tech savvy than I thought and she enjoyed her new toy immensely. Mom would often send me pictures of random things via text message and e-mail which I didn't mind because all of this just served to let me know that in case of an emergency she would know how to use her phone. That made me feel better. However, one day she called me and asked me to come to her little apartment on La'au street which is right off of the main thoroughfare of Date. She said there was something wrong with her phone and she wanted me to look at it.

............

Mom's demeanor was calm which would surprise me after the fact. What I mean is that when she showed me her phone, it was already on the video app. She pressed play and she said, "I was just testing the video on this thing, try look."

The video is just from my mom's perspective walking through her apartment, there's no narration and after she makes it back to where she started she directs the video back down the hallway where her bedroom is on the right and the bathroom is on the left. Within that nano-second, you see a girl in a Catholic school uniform walk out of mom's bedroom and cross the hallway into the bathroom. "I've been through this place with a fine tooth comb and I couldn't find any place where somebody could be hiding or maybe use as a hidden entrance. I was about to call the building manager but I thought I'd show this to you first," like I said she was so calm which surprised me because I was freaked out.

"This is a freakin' ghost mom! You got a ghost in your apartment! You have to come back home," my mom's facial expression did not change one iota.

"I'm not going anywhere, I'm not renting this place, I own it. I'm too old to make adjustments and I'm comfortable here. I just want to find out what this is that's all," I told her she was being ridiculous but she would not relent and kicked me out, but in a nice way that mothers do. I was really worried about her but that didn't last long. By the end of the week, she was knocking at the front door of the house looking disheveled and pissed off. With two suitcases on either side of her, she had this look on her face which said she didn't want to hear, "I told you so."

Instead, she walked past me and said, "Everything else is in the truck, can you get it out for me, please? I'm so fucking tired."

...........

An hour later we were sitting at the kitchen table where she was sipping on a glass of wine and I was having a beer. In front of us sat a block of cheese, salami, and crackers. Because mom used to be a career reporter for the paper, she did some digging and found out that years ago a man named Joe Black was the previous owner of her apartment. Rumor had it that he wasn't someone to be trifled with although no one really knew what it was that he did for a living. It turns out that there wasn't only one ghost haunting mom's apartment, there were at least 15. In the years that Joe Black lived in that same building, random people went missing. The strange thing is that there was no pattern to anyone's age, ethnicity, or social standing. People just disappeared. Further digging revealed former residents who'd crossed Joe Black in one way or another, be it purposeful or perceived, some member of their household would suddenly vanish. Talking to the owners in her complex she found out that there was always a suspicion that Joe Black was behind it, but there was never any proof. That is until mom dropped her shampoo bottle in the shower one night, in her effort to retrieve the bottle she stumbled and bumped her head up against the shower wall and heard a hollow thud. With the help of the building manager, they found the remains of a teenaged girl in a large plastic garment bag. She wore a Catholic school uniform, eventually, other hollow spaces and bodies were found in mom's apartment. Fortunately, because of her long-standing media connections and favors that were owed to her, none of this made the six 'o clock news.

"The key to all of this is this man Joe Black," mom had that twinkle in her eyes when she was on to something. "Seems he died seven years ago but no one knows how or why.....ironic right?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Mom?"

"Yes?" That twinkle in her eyes also made me very nervous. "I think its enough that your apartment was haunted by the ghosts of fifteen people who were buried and hidden there. You should let this be, just leave it alone."

I got up from the table and walked over to the fridge to retrieve another bottle of beer and I happened to glance out the window and saw an unusual car parked out front. It was a 1966 Imperial crown, standing in front of it was a Hawaiian man in a dark suit, he was holding a cell phone to his ear. Just then my own phone rang, I picked it up while keeping my eyes on the Hawaiian man outside. He looked directly at me now and pointed to his phone, I answered his call, "Hello?"

"May I please speak to Dora?" The voice was articulate and non-threating.

"Mom, it's for you....it's that guy outside the window," I pointed. The second she saw that Hawaiian man in the dark suit standing in front of the vintage car, she took the phone from my hand and answered.

"Hello Boy, it's been a long while hasn't it?" 

...........to be continued