Who Am I This Time

“No,” typed Rueben.

“All that I had wanted to do was to reclaim the Holy Spirit of an innocent child and the lives of any other child that that scoundrel might try to harm. Don’t you see that? Doesn’t anyone even see that?”

“I’m trying to,” typed Rueben.

“There were just so many of them swarming around there, that it was like trying to tiptoe through an ally and not step on garbage. I felt unclean all of the time, everywhere I looked, and all that I saw were Indians. When the bitch, whoremonger went ahead and let that child die out in the hot desert sun, I was insulted, hurt, and then when she was acquitted in a court of law that was just too much for me to handle.

“I like many others in my time had suffered through many other injustices during those awful Gandhi years. When we were seen as the ‘Evil English’ and our methods of government was questioned, I took it on the chin, as did every other soul borne under the Queen.

“Yet extenuating circumstances presented themselves to me one wonderful night that could naught but be ignored. I heard the voice of God calling out to me. Telling that it must be me to go ahead and punish the evil whore for the innocent who could no longer lay claim to the deed.

“Indeed, it was up to me. I cannot tell you how good it felt to slit her throat, and watch as her eyes widened, and she gasped for air like some damned fish that had been brought out upon the land.

“Her blood spewed forth, vomiting from the wound that I had brought about her neck – most unfortunately drenching my clothes in the process and forever both marking me and condemning me to the eternal torment that I am now facing.

The spirit stopped talking and Rueben shuttered as he watched the scene unfold in his head. Instead of seeing death from afar, Reuben watched as HE was the one stalking the poor woman, placing his hand around her neck, holding her tightly to him as he drew the cutlass across her olive tinted skin. He saw the blood that the spirit was talking about, and felt the rush of adrenaline as he felt her struggle against him.

He drew back from the computer, and fell to the ground, his stomach churning, and knotting up. He felt sick, the thought of even thinking about committing an act so violent was torture. Reuben felt unclean, as though even a few years of showers would rid him of the vileness that he was feeling. “Delete the garbage now,” Rueben murmured. “Just take the mouse and drag the whole goddamned file into the trash and purge it forever.”

Rueben placed his hand on the mouse and tried to move it, but he felt as though there was something that was holding his hand.

CHAPTER 4

“Here let me.” There was a voice seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Rueben tried to look around to see where the voice was coming from, but he was unable to do so. It felt as though someone had his or her hands around his head, and he was forced to look straight ahead staring at the computer screen.

“This feels so good,” typed itself out onto the computer screen.

“What?” thought Rueben?

“Being able to tell my story, this really is the first time that someone has actually been able to hear me and ergo listen to me.”

“Glad I could be of service.”

Rueben felt his head turn slightly, from the corner of his eye he saw a glimpse of something misty waft pass, and a cold sensation merged through his right arm. Instantly Rueben felt a great sense of sadness and longing, as though he had not seen a good friend in a long, long time.

His eyes filled up with tears and though he was not truly sad, Rueben started to weep.

He wept for a short time, but the tears were falling like glass shards. “So sad, so very sad. I feel as though my heart is breaking.” He hunched over and wept yet again.

When he regained his composure, Rueben again looked up at the screen, and more had, of course, been typed.

“It seemed rather odd to look at all of them walking around in their clothing, as if they had not a care in the world. A few of them actually had the audacity to look me straight in the eye, and smile. As if they were on equal par with me.

“Of course I knew that they weren’t but it still cut me to the quick to think that now, by law, I would have to treat them as equals. I didn’t know how long that I would have been able to deal with it.

“Actually in a manner of speaking, the Nanny did me a good bit of favor.”

“How so?”

“Well, I knew that there was something going on with me, and I had been feeling rather ill for quite sometime since they were now on equal par with an English gentleman like myself. But there was really nothing that I could do about it. It was not until I had read of the family’s plight, by the audacious hands of that that nanny that I was able to realize what had been missing from my life.”

“What was that?”

“I had always liked hunting as a boy, and then as a teenager my passion took off. My father had given me a nice English Roan for my fifteenth birthday, and I had taken to it as a natural.

“The thrum of the horses hooves as it raced across the landscape hunting with me. As an extension of my own body. Trying to outwit one of the most noble of all animals – the fox – had taken many a wonderful animal, but in the end I was always the victor. There was no question as to who would come through it all with a fine pelt on his back.

A small echo could be heard throughout the room, as though lightning had been a wind had swept through the room. But there was no wind, and if you listened hard enough, it almost sounded as though it was laughter.

A sweat broke out on Rueben’s back, and he pushed himself from the desk. “Who’s there? Identify yourself?”

Silence fell across the room for another minute or so, and nervously Rueben stood up and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

He passed by a guest bedroom, and looked through the open door. A window was open and blowing a wispy curtain.

“Whew,” thought Rueben. “Nobody there. It’s just my imagination.”

He walked to the kitchen and got out a glass.

As he walked to the sink, the water faucet turned slightly towards the left, and water started to flow.

“What the!”

The glass that Rueben had been carrying rose from his hand and levitated its way to the sink. The water stopped flowing as the glass was placed underneath it, and then began again.

Rueben watched fascinated as the glass filled up, and then was brought back to the counter.

“Drink.” The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Then get back to work.”

CHAPTER 5

Rueben blinked once, twice, shaking his head slightly as he tried to re-focus on what was going on. “This is only my imagination. Only my imagination.” He repeated the mantra to himself in a vain attempt to convince himself that it was his imagination and not something else.

The water glass marched forward and stopped at Rueben’s head.

“Drink.” The voice again commanded.

“Heh heh, silly imagination.” Rueben thought to himself, and he backed away slightly from the glass.

A cold wind whipped through the room, and the glass started to rush straight for him!

This wasn’t Rueben’s imagination; however, it did stir him up enough so that he was forced to tear away from the room at a marathoner’s pace. He raced away, and made it as far as the den before he felt something grabbing at him and twisting him back around.

“Who are you and what is it that you want?” Rueben yelled at the unseen force.

The glass stopped at his mouth and pressed violently forwards, forcing Rueben to open his mouth and take in some of the water that the unknown guest was offering him.

As soon as Rueben finished with his mouthful, the glass dropped suddenly, and shattered.

“There, you’ve had your break, now get back to work! You know what I want, and you’ll help me get it or else!”

“Or else what?” Rueben screamed shaking his fist at the computer. He stormed forwards and pressed the “off” button.

The file, however, stayed on.

Frustrated, Rueben walked to the back of the computer and pulled the plug. “There you go, you rotten bastard. See if I’ll write your goddamned book now.”

“I warned you!” The voice came from everywhere and for a moment Rueben had a hard time telling if it was real or not.

However, when an empty mahogany office chair rolled towards him with such force as one that had a live person in it, than one can have no doubt that there was other forces at work. “You will write my book. That is all there is to it. You’ll write my book, or you won’t be released.”

“Nothing doing,” Rueben stated, setting his jaw, and settling down to watch the cursor blink on and off. He didn’t want to do it. He wouldn’t be made to do it and nothing would make him do it. That much was true.

However, Rueben didn’t realize how resilient McIntyre was.

“There is nothing that McIntyre can do to me. Sure he has my body, but he has no way of getting into my mind. I can lose myself there. If McIntyre wants to try anything then, let him. Nothing can get to me.” Ruben contemplated

This moment Rueben was wrong. McIntyre grinned pressing his ghostly pallor into Rueben’s skull. He was shown McIntyre’s body as it morphed from a vibrant young man to a rotted corpse. When he smiled most of his teeth was a dull brown, except for a few that were totally black and rotted out.

The scene began to change drastically to that of an Indian town. Rueben felt himself transported into the middle of a crowded marketplace.

“So many people. So many people,” he whispered, feeling rather claustrophobic as he tried to fight his way through.

“You see what I’m telling you, boy?” McIntyre growled. “Do you understand now what it was like to be pressed into them like sardines in a can? To feel them so close to you that you can’t get away from it?

“This was what it was like every moment of every day for me. To have them shoved into me, and feel their sweaty palms on my back.”

Though he had never been claustrophobic, Rueben shuddered slightly as he tried to get himself out of the vision that McIntyre was bombing him with.

“Perhaps it was true that I did snap. That I did lose control of my sanity and think that there was only one possible way out of my predicament.”

“But,” answered Rueben, “I understand it.”

“Good. Good,” answered McIntyre. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“However, this is the 21st century and you aren’t allowed to prosecute anyone based on their race anymore. The powers that be have called that wrong, and have actually given it a name.”

“Foolhardy,” McIntyre mumbled.

“Actually no,” Rueben shot back. “Racism, also known as racial profiling.”

“Ah. Fancy- dandy words that mean little to me.”

“Yes, but they are true.”

“That may be so, but they have little to do with my own predicament as it is now. The fact still remains that I am dead, and that I still have a lot to teach you.”

“Though nothing that I truly wish to learn.” Reuben shot back at the computer.

“Yet it is also true that you need to learn it. To know what it was that fueled me.”

“Why?”

“So that in time, then you can become like me.”

“And why should I wish to do that?”

“It doesn’t matter, because I am the one who is controlling you!”

“And what if I don’t wish to be controlled?”

A haunting laugh could be heard throughout the house and Rueben tensed, feeling a cold claw grip his flesh and rake back and forth slightly. He breathed in slowly, trying to martial his muscles for one leap when he could be pulled free of Northcliff. Yet the response that Northcliff gave him was nothing like he had ever seen before, and unlike anything that he’d ever expected.

“NO!”

The words were like that of a sonic boom, anything made of glass in the house –mirrors, windows, vases - rattled and broke. Glasses were thrown from the cupboards, and shattered on the floor.

“I didn’t give you the command for you to leave, did I Rueben? Rueben, the writer! I did not say that you could go, did I?”

Rueben tried to open his mouth, but felt that his jaw was wired shut. His body felt as though it was pulling against him, as if his bones were about to be ripped out.

A lone, unbroken mirror passed by where Rueben was sitting. It floated by his face with the reflective side facing Rueben. It was then that Rueben saw the most disturbing vision thus far. There was a small girl, about six or seven, holding the infamous saber. The child was naked, and Rueben was revolted that a child so young could both be shown to him, in that state of undress, and also that he was forced to watch what happened next.

The child placed the blade of tip of the sword to her forehead, and instantly Rueben saw the droplet of blood that formed.

“No. I don’t want to!” This was a child-like voice and Rueben shivered slightly.

“You have to!” Rueben recognized this voice as McIntyre. “For it’s the only way that you’ll be able to reunite with your parents.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Now why would I lie to you?” McIntyre smiled down at her, and Rueben felt absolute revulsion for the man. “Your Mommy and Daddy are waiting for you.”

Rueben sensed that there was something that was driving McIntyre, but he couldn’t be sure. At that exact moment, he didn’t care and instead vowed that if it was the last thing that he did, Rueben vowed that he would “kill” the ghost.

The scenario continued, and Rueben watched as the child continued with her act. Robotically, she forced the blade of the saber into her forehead, and drew downwards slightly.

Rueben shuddered as her skin parted and white bone peeked through slightly.

“Good girl,” McIntyre told her, and patted her head gently, being careful not to place his hand into the laceration that was now opening even wider and leaking out more blood.

“Now place down the saber. If you don’t do it, then I’ll do it for you.”

Rueben was a bit puzzled as to why he was asking her to do this, but all became far too clear as the girl placed down the saber, and McIntyre stepped forwards. He placed his hands onto the girl’s sides and pulled, ripping the skin ever so slightly.

Rueben didn’t know what else that McIntyre had done to her before that scene, but amazingly, she didn’t scream.

“I don’t know how,” Rueben muttered to himself, silently offering up a prayer to whatever Gods there were that they were able to grace a child with such strength of character.

The chair pressed back ever so slightly, and Rueben watched in horror as his arms lifted slightly and settled down on the keyboard of the computer. Like two little live atoms his fingers started to fire off, ten times faster than normal. So fast in fact that he was able to finish a typed page in roughly a minute.

“I really wasn’t sure what to do next. It was all such a blur to me, but I had the shivering child in front of me. My clothes were covered in her blood, and flecks of her skin decorated my collar.

“I am still amazed at what had happened, not to mention the fact that I was able to do it. That I actually had the capability to be so very, very violent frightened me. Yet in the time that I was doing it, it felt so very, very good. I don’t really know what came over me. There was one other thing that I had to do in order to get the pain to leave me. I unbuckled my pants, and felt as my member sprung forth. This is what the queen had ordered, I reminded myself, that they wanted those Turks gotten out of England in any way possible. I forced myself on the girl listening to her moans only slightly as I pressed into her virgin womb…

“It was only after the fact, when I looked down at the ground, the maddening haze, the feeling that I had to go ahead and do something this dastardly, had left me. I looked down to my feet, not really expecting anything, nor knowing what would happen. To me only a few minutes had passed.

“Yet, in those precious minutes I had gone from an every day human male, to something far, far worse.

“Her little body was laying before me. The arms and legs contorted in such a manner that it was unmistakable.

“Yet the most frightening thing that I was unable to understand was ‘Why.’”

“Why what?” Rueben asked, though he realized that he probably knew the answer all ready.

“Why I did what I did, and more importantly, why she had to die.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, I ran as far and as fast as I could away from the scene. All the time thinking that there were going to be police on my tale in a matter of seconds. But I managed to get home.”

“Were there any strange looks from any …onlookers?”

“That was the weird thing. For the next couple of days I expected that there would be police at my door, waiting to arrest me every minute. I opened my door very, very cautiously for the next couple of days.”

“And what happened after that?”

“That, my friend, was an even odder part. It wasn’t until later that I heard from a casual acquaintance that the police had arrested another Indian man for the crime.”

“Oh. What happened after that?”

“I went to his funeral. I had kept my silence long enough. Why not do it for one more time and then all of my troubles would be over.”

“But they weren’t, were they?”

“No, not by a long shot. One of the odd things was that murder is like an addiction, and after I’d committed the first one…”

“And no one had found you out,” Rueben interrupted.

“And no one had found me out. I found that I could do my next one, and the next, and the next and the next, and the next, and so on and so forth.”

“How many did you actually do?”

There was a distinct pause, as McIntyre thought, and Rueben thought for a little while that he had left.

It was not until later when seven booms were heard throughout the house that McIntyre was telling him that he was responsible for seven more murders.

“Seven murders!” Rueben took a deep breath. He wondered if the insane spirit would come through the house, and just for the hell of it, knock the wind out of him. However, nothing else happened.

Rueben was rather thirsty, and pressed the save key on the computer, before he went out to the kitchen for a drink.

There was a hiss from the water as the faucet turned on, and Rueben placed the glass underneath it. He drank the water down in a few gulps, and wondered if his publisher would let him take such a load of crap to them or not.

He laughed as he pictured himself going to Marcus Halbertson, and saying, “Boss, you just aren’t going to believe this, but I transcribed a story from a ghost!”

He heard a small guffaw coming from his boss and the even bigger laugh when he intended to tell the old man that he believed that it was going to be a best seller!

“You aren’t going to believe this Marky, Old Hat, but I believe that we have the next greatest thing since the diary of James Maybrick was found. Yeah, yeah, Maybrick was also known by the more common (not to mention horrific) name of ‘Jack the Ripper.’”

Rueben waited, and imagined the long, drawn out pause that would come from Halbertson as he read the sordid tale. He imagined the pat on the back and the possible raise that he would get once this story came out in print, and thousands, no millions clamored towards the shelves to snatch the story into their greedy little hands and devour each word as though it were a filet minion.

He walked back to the computer. He could hear the phone as it rang, but he paid it no attention as he, once again, felt as though he could write for days. He didn’t know if it was due to McIntyre’s influence (though he believed it was).

He breathed out slowly, and waited for the oxygen to fill his lungs. “This is it. I can tell that I’m going to be able to completely finish this thing tonight. Hopefully McIntyre will be able to finally give me the rest that we both seem to need.”

As if on cue, McIntyre’s spirit popped into Rueben’s head, and began to dictate. “I told you that there were seven others that I did in my little crusade, before they nabbed me.”