Muscatine

Dusty stood alone, wondering if the man--the angel--would come tonight. Soft lights glowed in apartment buildings around her; the living, settling into comfortable chairs, eating late dinners, falling in love. She thought she had known love once--but it ended too quickly--like life itself often does.

Snow drifted, fell on sidewalks, swirled in the chilly early evening wind. Eyes shimmered within intricate flakes; spirits of those long dead. Feathery hands reached out to her. Phantom choruses serenaded. If she looked hard enough she could see them and their celestial cathedral--a gateway
between Heaven and Hell--a place she could not reach. They stood within gables, lined altars, knelt in pews--souls of both dark and light.

She was bound to the Earth. Dusty--little girl--little waif. A ghost--wearing a skimpy jacket, and
torn jeans. Dark hair hung in limp ringlets down her back, sleepy eyes stared at traffic easing by. She gazed at pedestrians, bundled from head to toe in winter garb. The living couldn't see her. They couldn't see any of the ghosts who haunted the city.

*************

Arturio ached for the ghost girl, Dusty. He had watched her since her death. But he knew that her time had not yet come.

Ashes fell around him--ashes of the dead. He long ago had grown tired of his penance on earth, his duty as a gatherer of lost souls. He longed to be released from his prison as other fallen angels had been. He knew it would be years before he could claim Dusty as his--years before her spirit--her wispy life would free him. He needed her to end his sentence--one who was born, and who died on the winter
solstice. But he would have to wait--until she realized the truth.

Until then he watched her each night--each passing year, unable to reach out and touch her. He could merely walk by, never allowing his eyes to gaze into hers. ''Until then,'' he whispered as ancient phantasms of the city gathered around him, praying to the dark angel, whispering his name in vain.

(Should I go on)

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Dusty, invisible in death as in life, one of five children. Her mother always too busy, too involved with
some guy or another, too drunk to notice Dusty, never realizing at the age of fifteen her daughter had fallen head over heels in love with a boy named Antonio.

He introduced her to drugs, thievery and physical abuse. On the night the police found Dusty's battered body in the alley--around the corner from where she now stood. Her mother was half way to California, a bottle of whiskey in one hand, the other tucked inside her latest boyfriend's jeans--too far away--too busy to notice Dusty.

Her spirit left her broken body as Antonio ran away, money stolen from an old man tucked in his pocket--the man's body in a parked car a few feet away.

A stray cat sniffed at her for a moment, then slipped away into a maze of garbage and rusted pipes. She rose upward where figures flickered by, none of them seeing her. The cathedral stood in the distance, wavering, cloudy. And even the gods, goddesses and saints who waited in the light only looked past her--to others making their way to the ethereal gates they guarded. She turned around, believing that she had been meant for the darkness. Falling like a cracked and withered Autumn leaf.


Demons brushed by, indifferent to her presence, too busy to welcome the waif of a girl named Dusty. The specter walked behind her, blending with the shadows until she came back to earth, to wander in confusion--her purgatory.

As time went on she learned there were others like her; Gelica and the boy named Billy, who drifted to her side when the sun sank behind the towering mall. He pressed close to her, as if trying to find the warmth death had stolen, whispering, peering at her with dull blue eyes.

Gelica wavered above them, yellow hair glowing beneath the winter moon, eyes laughing as music floated from bars by the water. She recited the same litany each evening. ''I died in my dressing room. Took too many pills and never made my next number.''

''Why didn't you go to heaven or hell?'' Dusty asked the same question.

''Nobody came to claim me. I never tried to get into either place. I stayed here. It's where I want to be--for now anyway.'' She spun around as the music changed, an old disco tune, upbeat, lively. ''Always loved the music.'' Her white face twisted in a macabre grimace.

Billy sighed. ''I'm waiting for my Dad.'' Tears glistened in his eyes. ''The cops called him after the car accident. I heard them say he'd come for me, to bury me near Mom, to take me home.''

Dusty touched his face. ''That was a long time ago. Isn't it time you tried to move on?''

''I don't know. I lost track of time. But it hasn't been that long--I think.'' He looked up at the moon. ''My dad should be coming.''

Dusty knew Billy had died thirty years before, in the famous car accident over by Sable Hill. Billy had been the victim of a hit and run by the drunken mayor. It happened when Gelica had been alive. One night she gave Dusty an account of the accident, how they??™d found Billy's body twenty feet from the car he'd been driving.

Billy's image flickered as he moved gently away from her, rising above the city, then out of sight.

Gelica shook her head. ''If you kids want to have a good time, take a walk to the pier some night.'' She spun around again, her sheer dress rose above transparent thighs. ''You just don't know how to have fun. I love it!'' She sailed away, towards the laughter, the music and the life she once lived.

Dusty smiled weakly at the happy-go-lucky ghost, knowing in time she'd grow too weak to hear the music, to appreciate the thrill of the night life she loved when alive.

A vision of the night she died flickered. Blood splattered the windshield where an old man slumped over the wheel of his car.

******************

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Read it yourself...........

http://www.halloweenghoststories.com/ghosts/ghosts1-1.html

Chosen

Thought you were going off the deep end there for awhile, buddy! Have a good one.