Are You Haunted (part twenty-one)

Are You Haunted

(part twenty-one)

The glass was intact. Sunlight yellowed the fog’s upper billows; it might all burn off in an hour or two. Powell, as to reject panic he had been instructed, counted his breaths.

He was still keyed up from the attack.

He could hear a hum from below. He pulled on trousers and ran down, smacked the switch by the front door and saw the globe above the foyer light…its cobwebs and moth husks thrown into sudden relief. In the kitchen, the icebox buzzed. Powell felt all the way back, and the motor was forcing cold air, laboring at it. He unhooked his jacket and put it on over his undershirt.

The assault had come at the moment they turned on the power. This he didn’t doubt.

But just the feeling it was malignant and personal…the kind of thing like kids throwing rocks at you…

Where Powell would have grabbed what was his, stolen a little that might be sold, walked. And brooded, walking, emerged still with the loathing, still wanting to be alone.

But that extra bit educated, too.

Lloyd Guy was letting himself in the front door, heavy-treading the downstairs rooms, craning his neck at each empty corner. “Looks like you ain’t been raisin hell in here. That’s somethin.” He dug in his pocket and handed Powell some folded bills wrapped around a few coins. “Come out to the car.” A double-take. “Well, hold on, what’d you do, just get yourself up? Put a shirt on. Get some shoes on your feet. Guess I’ll be waitin.”

Six dollars and forty-three cents. Guy was paying him a dollar a day, as Powell calculated the eccentric sum, seven advanced for the week, last night’s groceries deducted.

He got derailed looking for a toothbrush, not prepared to ask for help. He stepped back cradling his razor, soap, and comb, to read a sign hanging by a string above the aisle: “Special Prices for Mother’s Day”.

He had forgotten the holiday existed. He couldn’t recall where he’d been, last year, or the year before…

May of ’45, of course, he remembered. That was a big time. His mother had died May first, too sick to know war was about done, and his uncle, who never put words on paper, was forced to write it in a letter—come four stops and six months late.

This won’t be a surprise to you. Your mother has gone away home. It was peaceful.

No salutation, no closing. Powell imagined what it would cost his uncle to call him “dear”—to mail off documented proof he had done so. Powell Kenzie, at the bottom in pencil; an afterthought, the date.

The effect was a little surreal. No “yours”—

Truly, sincerely, respectfully, in condolence. Your loving uncle. Powell might have saved the letter…it made him laugh. But he’d lost it. Somehow, he had come back from Europe without souvenirs.

He supposed if he would go down to Little Rock, he could claim the house by rights. Uncle Powell might have a raft of people under the roof by now.

21

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part twenty-two)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)