A Brandenburg Ghost Story

     Mariel Dunne laughed as she dropped her backpack off by the stone lion, eyeing Michael Roberts flirtaciously. "It’s not every day that Dr. Connar can’t retort your paper."

     He laughed, running a hand through his mop of dirty blonde hair. "No kidding. I thought the old lich was going to choke when he looked at your conclusion and couldn’t think of anything to dispute."

     Mariel grinned and perched on the lion’s back, feeling in her backpack for her pack of Camels. She and Mike waved a few friends down, and soon there was a lively group of five students gathered around the stone menagerie set in the lawn before the Biology complex. It was one of those glorious Virginia mornings, warm enough to be pleasant, with a cool breeze to keep the heat down. Cigarettes were lit and passed around, lighters exchanged, drinks offered, and conversation swelled as they all compared notes, chatted about the upcoming finals and gossiped about their friends. It never takes long for college students to begin sharing stories, and Laurie had seen "Thirteen Ghosts" the night before. She talked about it animatedly until Mariel laughed shortly and motioned everyone in closer.

     "Ever seen a real ghost?"

     The laughter was expected, but Mariel’s face was impassive, and she lit another cigarette.

     "I remember something that happened about two years ago. I kind of wish I couldn’t…"

     "It was about two or three years ago when this couple moved downstairs in my old apartment building, that one in the Residential District. They’d been married for only three months or so, and they were sickeningly sweet. Pet names, cuddling on the stoop, buying stupid presents, all that stuff that makes people not so in love themselves gag. It was kind of cute, I’ll admit, watching him come home every night. He’d park down the street and sprint to the stoop. She’d be standing there with a dorky little flowered apron and they’d kiss for five minutes before she’d start blusing and they’d go inside.

     Yeah, you could hear her screaming every night, the kind of screams that make you jealous enough to pound the wall and yell for them to shut up. Just about everyone liked them; they were always friendly.

     "They’d been there about a month when she got pregnant. I remember that day really well. We heard him hollering all the way up on the fourth floor where I was living. They ran up all the stairs, pounded on everyone’s door, told the super, everyone. Neither of them had real family, I think. I remember her parents died when she was a kid, and his mom was in a home somewhere. They just wanted to tell someone that they were going to be a ‘real family’ is how he put it. She was one of those really blooming women. I swear that after they found out, she didn’t walk, she floated. She was always smiling, and he was always tired because he was working overtime to make sure they’d have plenty of money for the baby’s stuff.

     The whole building gave them stuff. There was an older woman on the second floor, Mrs. Ralph Lewis (she always introduced herself that way) who gave them the crib her husband made for their kids. I chipped in with some of my old stuffed animals; I still had a few then. It was mostly secondhand stuff, but they didn’t care. They were just that happy.

     "She didn’t get sick or anything. She was really healthy, so when he came home a week after they’d taken off in the middle of the night, everyone started congradulating him. He didn’t talk back, and he looked…bleak I guess. He didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until the priest started coming every afternoon that we found out what was wrong. Apparently it was a hellacious labor. She started hemorraghing, and the baby was stuck. They did a C-section, but she’d lost too much blood.

     You know how you hear about people looking broken? I swear he looked like a toy some kid had stepped on. He never smiled, and he didn’t really look up anymore. He came home with the baby two weeks later, after the funeral. It scared me, because he held the carrier like you would a flea-covered dog or something. Mrs. Lewis told him she’d be happy to baby sit so he could work, but he just blew her off. I don’t know what went wrong in his head… I guess he blamed the kid for his wife dying. We’d hear the baby crying all night. He’d up and leave the apartment, and we knew he hadn’t taken the baby, ’cause you could still hear it crying. The super called the cops a couple of times, but they always left the baby with him. Maybe he acted like the perfect dad for them.

     "Everyone should’ve known something was up when the baby didn’t cry for a couple of days. Mrs. Lewis said that he’d just come to his senses and started taking care of him. I remember seeing the dad come home with formula and bottles. The super was kind of surpised when he gave his notice to move, but he said he couldn’t stay with all those memories, so the super gave him a break on the lease and handed his deposit back. Like I said, everybody liked them.

     "I remember when the police came. There was a detective, Landsman something, who came out looking like someone had kicked him in the gut. I couldn’t go in, but you could smell that…stink all through the building. One of the officers was a friend of mine, Ben. He told the super and I what they’d found. The baby had been in the crib for almost a month. The super started crying when he heard the coroner tell Landsman the baby had starved to

death. His dad did that. Just let him starve.

     Everyone felt horrible. We all cried at the funeral. It was such a tiny coffin… Landsman called the FBI or something and they put a manhunt out on the dad. I don’t know if they ever caught him. I’m hoping he killed himself or something. I don’t want to think about what happened if he went to live in another city.

     "A family moved into the apartment about six months later. The super didn’t tell them what had happened. None of us wanted to talk about it. It was just nice having normal people around. They had one teenage son who went to the university, and an eight month old daughter.

     It was a month after they’d moved in that the mom started getting worried. Their baby girl was losing weight, and they couldn’t figure out why. She wasn’t sick or anything. Her mom would feed her and feed her, but she just wouldn’t keep any weight on. I used to baby sit for them once in a while. Their little girl was really sweet, but she was way too thin. They kept taking her to doctors, but no one could tell them why she couldn’t gain weight. The mom swore it was something in the apartment’s air, but her husband told her she was silly. Their son said he could hear his sister crying when he’d come spend the weekend, but when they’d check on her, she was asleep.

     "They moved out after three months. Their little girl was just losing too much weight, so they were heading to Boston’s Children’s Hospital to have her get tested. I think they were going to live with one of the grandmothers or something. The super looked really upset when they gave their notice, but he didn’t fuss about it."

     "I spent a night in there after they moved. I’d been helping the super paint (since rent was a little squeaky that month) and I was just too tired to go up four flights of stairs. I still remember waking up because I heard a baby crying. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but when you’re not really awake, you do stupid things. I remember looking towards one of the bedrooms. The door was open, and the crying kept getting louder. I was looking around, and…"

     "…don’t ask. It… If I could forget anything, Id’ forget that. A tiny skeleton with skin, pinched ant-thin in the middle. I could count every bone. The eyes were what really got me. Ever been stared at by a tiger in a zoo? You know that if it could, it would kill you and eat you. That…in those eyes… I probably would have screamed or thrown up, but I was crying too hard to do it.

     "I moved a month later. I didn’t go in that apartment again, but I couldn’t stop hearing the baby every night."