PHARTS

by Alun Williams

Communion wine

You do not know this place or the people who dwell in it. It is not your place in time or history but this is where you have been sent. This is your first assignment, your first haunting.

The house is old. You touch things that are not yours but you need to touch their possessions. It’s what they teach you at the PHARTS. For those less knowledgeable than you, it stands for Phantoms, Hallucinations, Apparitions, and Revenants Training School. Some dead people go nowhere, some into limbo and the lucky ones get to be ghosts. The lucky ones have to be taught to do it though. It doesn’t come naturally to anyone.

Not all dead people become ghosts. You have to have something about you, and you had that something although you would be hard-pressed to know what that something was. 

Now you were here. Your first haunting. You think it’s a test to see what you can do, to see if you have it in you. You don’t know these people, they are chosen at random apparently. You’re glad that this is not your landing zone. A landing zone is where every ghost eventually ends up, one place to haunt forever and eternity or until the fucking Catholic Church takes you out with an exorcism.

You don’t know who lives here, just the name of the town. Hoopla, Texas. Why Hoopla, Texas? You’re not even fucking American and all you ever knew about Texans is that they are die-hard gun-toting bigots and love Big Macs.

Still, you give it a go. It’s two fifteen am. Time to start. You start by opening and slamming bedroom doors. Wow! That got a reaction. A scream, a shout. People start congregating together in the upstairs hallway.

“What happened?” “Did you do that?” What’s going on?”

There are six of them. A mom, dad three kids, perhaps between six and fifteen and an elderly woman. Must be the obligatory grandma. They quieten down. You crank things up a notch. A gramophone starts up downstairs, Artie Shaw, you believe it’s “Stardust”.

They all turn to grandma. 

“That was your grandpa’s favorite.” She says. It doesn’t phase her at all but the mom looks shit scared. You take a liking to her perhaps because she seems a sandwich short of a picnic.

You slam the door behind them. More screaming. The father disappears into the bedroom and gets his obligatory gun. He goes downstairs slowly. 

You sweep his bowling trophies across the floor. You believe you see a small stain of dampness appear on his shorts. You get extra marks for that. 

“What the…” he says.

You do a quick manifestation and he shoots that gun at empty air. More screams from upstairs. You go back up there. The eldest boy holds a baseball bat. Being English, you could never understand the American fascination for rounders. You make the lights flicker then take the baseball bat out of his hands and hurl it through the window.

They rush downstairs and out the door. Everyone except grandma. You start the music again and watch her face light up. Her hands hold out to clasp her long-dead husband. She hasn’t too much time left to live so you’re happy enough to leave her to her memories. 

You survey the scene. 

For the first haunting, you think you’ve made the grade.

The Bagman's Suitcase

By Alun Williams

black coffee

The day after Nixon resigned a Greyhound bus pulled up at Beto Junction on its route to Albuquerque. Last time this had happened was the day JFK visited Dallas.

The stranger who alighted stood tall and wore a dusty brown fedora, an overly large trench coat and desert army boots. He carried a large, weather-beaten leather suitcase in one hand and though he’d never called that way before, walked with a purpose up the rise towards a small diner.

At the Beto Junction Diner, Paul Vance prepared for the day. Too early for his usual breakfast customers, he poured himself a coffee and went back to turn on the grill.

When he returned, the stranger was seated at the counter. “Hi buddy, what’ll it be?”

“Coffee,” the stranger answered. He sat down and took off his hat. He reminded Paul of Johnny Cash ‘cept for the hair, with was steel grey white. Paul couldn’t place the accent; someplace north of Kansas, perhaps.

“Cream?” The man shook his head but helped himself to sugar.

Paul noticed the large suitcase that sat on the floor next to the stranger.

“Planning on staying? Only one boarding room in town. Motel closed two years ago.”

“Just passing through. Name’s Hannigan. Travelling salesman. Last of a dying breed.”

“A bagman; dying breed for sure. Let me guess? Encyclopaedias? Not much call for books here.”

“No, nothing like that.” The stranger put his cup down. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“That’s not much of a sales pitch.”

The stranger smiled, leaned over to pick up his case and placed it on the counter. It was old and one corner had been hastily repaired with Band-Aid. He clicked both locks that snapped back loudly.

“Okay, you’re not going to believe me.” He opened the suitcase. It revealed clear empty plastic bags. Some were plain, others had labels stuck on, either red, yellow or green.”

“Plastic. You’re selling plastic bags!” Paul exclaimed. He laughed.

“I’m not selling, son. I’m buying and trading”

“Plastic?”

“I’m trading memories, dreams. Those yellow tag bags, those are memories I’ve got to trade. The ones with the red tags are the ones I’ve bought. Green ones are customer orders. We do mail order too.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No sir. It’s a new concept from Japan called Kioku, that’s memory in Japanese. We pay you to take a memory away: ten dollars. Everyone’s got a bad memory or two, right. You gotta replace it so you get a new one to choose from. There’s a chemical compound in each bag, that’s the secret.”

“You’re kidding me…”

“All true…”

“So, what happens to the memories you buy?”

“We export them. Canada, Mexico mostly. They pay a hundred bucks for an American's memory. Makes them feel superior.”

“That figures.”

“Can I interest you? You must have a bad memory or two in that head of yours Mr…?”

“Vance. Yeah, a few but I wish I’d never set eyes on Erline.”

“Bad romance, well there you go. Try it?”

“Cheatin’ whore. Do anything to forget her”

Hannigan stood up. “Here’s ten bucks, take a plain bag, think of Erline and blow into it. That’s all you do. Then tell me what kind of memory you want to replace it.”

“Ten bucks, for blowing into a bag!” He choose a plain bag, thought of his ex-wife and blew. He sensed that cheap perfume she always wore then handed Hannigan the bag and watched as he sealed it and attached a red label on it.

“How’s Erline?” Hannigan asked.

“Erline? Who’s Erline?”

Hannigan grinned. “My mistake. Okay, you choose. Have any kind of memory you want from this list.”

Paul read out loudly “High school prom, sport, War…Sex?”

“Sure. That’s our best seller. If you’re lucky you can get a Jane Fonda and you’ll remember it as if it was real. Oh wait, I only got one of those and that’s off a guy I bought it off. It’s red bagged so it’s not for sale.”

“I want a sex memory. You said I could have anything I wanted.”

“This is highly irregular, but you seem like a regular guy. Here…” He handed a bag over. “Don’t blow. Inhale. It’ll take about twelve hours to take effect.” He handed Paul a bag. He hesitated and looked at Hannigan who nodded. “Go on. Could be Jane Fonda…”

He opened the bag and sucked in air. This time he smelled the sweet sickly aroma of orchids. Hannigan took the bag, looked inside then peeled the red label off and tossed it into the suitcase.

“Hey Paul, any chance of service here?” Paul glanced down the counter as two of his regulars walked in.

“Sure, be right there. Wait here, Hannigan.”

He walked over, took their orders and walked back. A five-dollar bill and a coffee cup sat on the counter. Paul walked over to the door but there was no sign of the bagman.

That night Paul Vance dreamt about the best sex he’d ever had. She was blonde with a body like dynamite. It was so real… He dreamt about her again that day. Got so excited he closed early. It was great. On the second night, he dreamt about her again, then just as he climaxed, she screamed. He woke up sweating. The third night he saw his hands grip her neck. It was a memory he couldn’t escape. Each time he thought about her he saw more detail. Her body, her lips, a discarded red dress with a corsage of orchids, a broken set of paste pearls and her fingernails digging into his face as his hands gripped tightly around her delicate neck. He saw the room, patterned wallpaper, the Topeka Times on a table and a calendar displaying the fourth of June that year. Through a window, he saw a clock tower. There was a wall mirror. He saw himself in it except it wasn’t him. It was Hannigan.

Paul Vance had never visited Topeka but after two weeks of his recurring nightmare he took the bus out there.

Topeka only has one clock tower. He found it. The Menninger Clock tower was a building housed as part of a psychiatric unit and there’d been a murder at an adjoining building that June. A nurse called Annie Kopesky had been strangled. He asked questions about it. Too many questions. A guy from campus security notified the police who arrested him.

He explained his story about Hannigan and Kioku and about his dreams. He told them things only the killer could have known, about the orchid and paste pearls. The police checked but found no company called Kioku. They even called Tokyo. After three days of interrogation Paul Vance was charged with first degree murder.

“It’s not real, “Paul said, “I didn’t kill anyone.” No-one believed him.

At his trial, someone called Erline, who claimed to be his ex-wife, testified he had a violent temper. He swore blind he’d never met her but no-one believed him, especially when she produced wedding photos. A guy in a dusty brown fedora sat in the courtroom every day. He carried a large weather-beaten suitcase with Band Aid on one side. Paul screamed out each day that he was the real murderer but no-one took any notice.

They found him guilty but insane and from his cell at the Topeka Asylum Paul Vance has a nice view of the clock tower. He still dreams of Nurse Kopesky and wonders who Erline is…

One night at Harry's

 Alun Williams

Jack on the rocks

 I never knew anyone could smoke so many cigarettes and still have the ability to play piano like he did. Maybe cancer doesn’t affect the hands. I don’t know if that’s correct ‘cause I’m not a doctor, but his fingers, stained desert yellow from years of nicotine abuse never lost their magic. By the time he reached thirty he was thin, gaunt and looking twenty years older. I can honestly say I never saw him eat anything more that a whisky sour on the rocks. It was his staple diet along with sixty Camels a day.

Johnson "JD" Browne never usually talked much to customers; I don’t think he had the energy after his shows, but one night when the winter snows had almost closed the city down, he sat down at his piano at Harry’s Bar and played the show of his life to me, Walter the barkeep and an old black drunk called Smithy.

None of us had anyplace else to go or anyplace else we’d want to be. We were the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel, each one of us with more than a hundred reasons to be there and not one to stay at home.

He didn’t have to play that evening, not to an almost deserted bar, but he lit one cigarette, took his jacket off and played. Piano keys will never be played like that again. I think he must have smoked a hundred cigarettes that night and drank at least fifteen whisky sours. He played anything and everything from jazz and blues to ragtime and Mozart. Walter the barkeep only sold me and Smithy one beer each, because we couldn’t drink anything else for fear of missing a single note.

At the end of his show, he gave us the best rendition of “Strange Fruit” I ever heard and I saw Billie Holiday sing that at Café Society and thought I’d never hear anything sweeter. I was wrong.

After that he joined us for one last drink. He drank Jack on the rocks with a twist of ginger, a single no more, no less. I told him it was the greatest piece of piano playing I’d ever heard. He shrugged his shoulders, wiped his sweaty brow and lit another cigarette. He said one word, “Thanks”, put his coat on and shuffled out into a Chicago winter.

I guess no one knew what really happened that night, but a mail man found his body early next morning, three blocks away, frozen stiff. He had a smile on his face and a half smoked Camel between his lips.

No one plays piano at Harrys’ bar anymore.

One night at Harrys’

I never knew anyone could smoke so many cigarettes and still have the ability to play piano like he did. Maybe cancer doesn’t affect the hands. I don’t know if that’s correct ‘cause I’m not a doctor, but his fingers, stained desert yellow from years of nicotine abuse never lost their magic. By the time he reached thirty he was thin, gaunt and looking twenty years older. I can honestly say I never saw him eat anything more that a whisky sour on the rocks. It was his staple diet along with sixty Camels a day.

Johnson Browne never usually talked much to customers; I don’t think he had the energy after his shows, but one night when the winter snows had almost closed the city down, he sat down at his piano at Harry’s Bar and played the show of his life to me, Walter the barkeep and an old black drunk called Smithy.

None of us had anyplace else to go or anyplace else we’d want to be. We were the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel, each one of us with more than a hundred reasons to be there and not one to stay at home.

He didn’t have to play that evening, not to an almost deserted bar, but he lit one cigarette, took his jacket off and played. Piano keys will never be played like that again. I think he must have smoked a hundred cigarettes that night and drank at least fifteen whisky sours. He played anything and everything from jazz and blues to ragtime and Mozart. Walter the barkeep only sold me and Smithy one beer each, because we couldn’t drink anything else for fear of missing a single note.

At the end of his show, he gave us the best rendition of “Strange Fruit” I ever heard and I saw Billie Holiday sing that at Café Society and thought I’d never hear anything sweeter. I was wrong.

After that he joined us for one last drink. He drank Jack on the rocks with a twist of ginger, a single no more, no less. I told him it was the greatest piece of piano playing I’d ever heard. He shrugged his shoulders, wiped his sweaty brow and lit another cigarette. He said one word, “Thanks”, put his coat on and shuffled out into a Chicago winter.

I guess no one knew what really happened that night, but a mail man found his body early next morning, three blocks away, frozen stiff. He had a smile on his face and a half smoked Camel between his lips.

No one plays piano at Harrys’ bar anymore.

Chalk

Chalk

Alun Williams

Milk

The phrase appeared all over the city, chalked on walls, on sidewalks, and even on the Brooklyn Bridge in letter nine feet high.

            “I still love you.”

After a couple of weeks, the media got wind of this and being a slow week for news, they aired it.

            I recall the pretty CBS blonde anchor-woman pleading with the guy who wrote it to come forward. Perhaps she thought she’d be onto a Pulitzer? Anyhow, even her soulful pleading didn't work. No one came forward.

            Every day since a newly chalked phrase was spotted and broadcast.

The world's media sent their camera crews to New York. The chalked phrases became more elaborate. One summer's afternoon, a plane drew the phrase in red smoke over the Statue of Liberty. The country went nuts. New York was now the city of romance. The French were really pissed off with that.

One phrase chalked on the Empire State Building made the cover of Newsweek and the NY Times offered a reward to whoever could name either the writer or the girl it was intended for. This prompted a response from the gay community who felt maybe they should get in on a piece of the action and handwriting experts were drafted in to argue over whether the writer was male, female and whether or not he/she was gay/straight. Then the black lobby got onto it and the Puerto Ricans, everyone wanted to be the chalker. Damn, the guy was a genius! Bob Dylan wrote a song about it. Best thing he'd written in years. The consensus of opinion was that the writer was male, white and heterosexual, although I never could understand how the so called experts could work that out from the way the letters were leaning.

            Rumours abounded that the writer was a teacher. It was based on the fact that they have access to chalk, but teachers aren't that clever.

What really bugged people, was how the guy could get away with it for so long without being seen. New York is full of cameras. It's like living in an Orwellian state. The only glimpse we got of the guy was a fuzzy, seventeen second black and white film taken from an all-night drugstore camera as he chalked the phrase over the door of a government building. It wasn't clear enough to identify anyone.

            Then as quickly as it had started, the writings stopped. People wondered what happened. The media pontificated for a few days then turned to another story. Nothing was heard of this again until three weeks later when another message was chalked up on Trump Towers in six foot high letters.

            “I don't love you anymore.”

             After that there was nothing. People cried openly on the streets. Romance died and the divorce rate soared. Debates were aired on how America wasn’t macho any more. Charlton Heston really is a jerk. He thought the mystery chalk writer was undermining our society. Hell yeah, I thought to myself. As if we weren’t there already.

            Hollywood got in on the act and made a film of course, but it quickly went to video. David Duchovny wasn't right as the MC. He wasn't angry enough. And it had a happy ending and true life isn’t Hollywood.

            I wish I'd been that guy though. I still love you man.

  

  

About the Author

Alun Williams Writer of short flash. Published a few times, here and there. Member of critters-bar.com. Lives in North Wales

Published July 4th 2016