A Spring Break Carol: A Short Ghost Story Read online

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  The bronze bell clanged five heavy times in the clock tower of Old College, the historic, unimaginatively named original building. The sound penetrated even the double-paned windows of my office in the new administrative building, named for the foundation which matched our alumni’s funds. Although built of the same gray stone, this building was tight and draft-free.

  So the chill stirring around my desk was unacceptable. The air-conditioning, another amenity Old College lacked, was not to be turned on for two months. My executive assistant Susie would speak to Maintenance in the morning.

  My fingers tapped steadily on the keyboard. A paragraph more and the student retention report would be done. In ten minutes, I would close my door, stroll down the hall (noting whether the college controller was still in his office), and descend the front steps at precisely five-fifteen to walk home. I had chosen to live in a neighborhood adjacent to campus. The houses were large, old, and gracious, regentrified a decade ago and perfect for my purposes. The brisk walk kept me trim and provided an example, important with the new emphasis on sustainability. Crossing the whole campus also allowed me to survey it twice daily, and my passage through its manicured grounds reminded me how far I had come and how far I would go.

  A throat cleared.

  Who would be rude enough to enter without announcing himself? Not Susie, who always tapped on the doorframe before stepping through, and Susie had left at four forty-five.

  No one stood in the doorway.

  The throat cleared again. “I’m over here, Jason.”

  The voice came from the visitor chairs, behind my right shoulder, and it had actually said, “Ah’m ovah heeyah, Jayson,” in the unmistakable Tidewater Virginia drawl which had been Maynard’s most irritating trademark.

  Old College Tower was a gray blur beyond the window pane. I pulled my eyes back to the glowing screen and resumed keyboarding.

  “I thought we might could have a little chat,” the same voice said. “I was never fully satisfied with our last conversation. Josh Cummings deserved promotion to associate professor, you know.”

  Whoever had the bad taste to stage this joke would regret it thoroughly. As I swiveled my chair, my eyes raked over the open doorway, the first black chair, the painting of Old College Tower centered on the wall, and then to the corner where Maynard Allen reclined in the second chair.

  He sat exactly as he had on those times he had deigned to grace my office. Almost erect, his straight spine leaned back as though taking his ease in a porch swing. A forearm rested on each chair arm, and his stubby fingers laced loosely in front of his square body. He looked simultaneously too large for the chair and perfectly comfortable in it.

  He also looked completely solid. His skin tone was pale salmon, except for his coarse, sun-roughened cheeks and nose. He wore not the tasteful dark blue suit I had seen on his corpse, but one of his ubiquitous sports jackets, well-made, but a shade too old and not quite pressed. His tie, loose and askew, was not as discrete as it could be.

  The only difference between the real Maynard and my current hallucination was an almost visible snapping in the air a few inches around his form. If fog could shimmer and drape over objects like snow, it might be like the air around Maynard. It floated, like the silver steam rising on cold mornings from the campus lake’s mirrored surface, gradually fading into the atmosphere. It separated him from everything, but without separating everything from him. Perhaps it was more like a smell, the distinctive minty smell of a house, forgotten until you stepped inside after a long absence.

  I clutched the polished desk edge, breathed deeply, and swallowed.

  “I’ll admit that I was expecting more of a reaction,” Maynard said.

  “I can’t imagine what you expected.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t often converse with the dead. Not directly, anyway.”

  “A psychiatrist.” I fumbled for my cell phone, then stopped. I didn’t want that search on my browser history.

  “That’s enlightened of you, though not necessary,” Maynard said. “I’m quite real, I assure you.”

  “What . . . what are you doing here?”

  Maynard cocked his head. “I’m not sure. I had anticipated having conversations with Wordsworth or with Kant. This is a bit of a disappointment.”

  “If this is some kind of joke –”

  “Joke? A joke, Jason? Would all the energy necessary to intervene in the natural world and tweak its laws be expended for a joke? You must think the Almighty has one peculiar sense of humor.”

  “Of course God doesn’t have a sense of humor. I find that kind of . . . of whimsy inappropriate.”

  “Quite right,” Maynard nodded. “Glad to see you’ve got your priorities straight so that little things like this don’t rattle them.”

  He was laughing at me. I could see it in those eyes. I splayed my fingertips on the desktop. “This has been . . . interesting, but I must leave.”

  Maynard smiled. “Yes, my wife always liked me home in time for supper, too.”

  “That is not it at all. I –”

  But Maynard wasn’t there any longer. Only a spindly black chair rested silently in the corner.

  My lungs seemed suddenly more elastic. The bell of the Old College clock rang the quarter-hour as I stumbled down the administrative building’s front steps.