This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between this story and any actual person, living or dead, is coincidental. Except for Mary herself, who is quite real, although perhaps not quite as depicted here. The story contains mature subject matter. It may contain adult situations and/or language. If you are not old enough to legally read this (and you know who you are), then get out of here before it's too late. You've been warned.

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Resurrection Mary 3

by Kim Em

© 2003 All rights reserved

 

This story will make more sense if you read "Resurrection Mary" and "Resurrection Mary 2" first. Not much more sense, mind you, but enough.

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This was going to be a long Halloween.

First off, it was the first time in over seventy-five years I wasn't 'haunting' Resurrection Cemetery. That was trauma enough, but on top of that, this was the first year I'd spent as a guy.

I suppose an explanation is in order. I just wish I had one.

`Two years ago, on Halloween, as I'd done for three-quarters of a century, I waited at the Chicago City limits, waiting for someone cruising down Archer to give me a lift. In all those years, it'd been my only contact with people, that one evening of the year when I hitched a ride.

That year, a young man, Richard, offered me a ride, chided me for hitchhiking all alone, and dropped me at the cemetery. Something I said or did, though, seemed to have drawn his curiosity, because he got out of his car and followed me to the gates. Slipping on a patch of wet leaves…

-=FLASH=-

…my feet went out from under me. I scrambled to stay upright, windmilling my arms, and I almost recovered, but I lurched forward and plunged right into her... and passed right through her body, my head exploding in a flash of white light.

-=FLASH=-

I woke up a short while later, my head sore from where it had hit the gate. I rose to my feet, my legs unsteady as though I hadn't used them in years. I felt my head, and smoothed the hair where I'd hit the gate. No lump, from the feel of things. It was a kind of miracle that I was intact, all things considered. Even so, I knew things were very wrong. When he touched me at the gate, we would merge. We should have merged. I had never intended this to happen.

I expected there to be two of us, sharing one head and getting to know each other. But Rich was gone, only his memories remaining. I had the sinking feeling that he was dead, taking my place in the beyond. I never wanted, never meant to kill him. I just wanted to come back for an evening so I could have fun.

I got in the car and started driving.

-=FLASH=-

Last year I'd returned on Halloween, drawn by – what? A feeling, really, inchoate and formless, that I should come back to Chicago and the scene of my accidental crime. After a brief stop at a neighboring tavern, Carl's, I left intending to head back to the city where there were lots of people.

I didn't make it.

-=FLASH=-

As I reached for my keys, a noise at the rear of the car drew my attention. Standing there was a man wearing dirty jeans and sweatshirt, scraggly beard and long, greasy hair. He stood stock-still, staring somewhere below my neckline, a broad grin on his unpleasant face. I stared back, trying to intimidate him from doing anything, hoping he wasn't what he appeared. Unfortunately, my intimidation didn't seem to work.

"Hello, Girlie."

-=FLASH=-

Once I recovered from the shock, I saw that where there had once been three of us, now were two. Sitting dazedly on a pile of leaves was... me.

I looked down at my own body, expecting the worst, and that's what I found. I was now in a male body, and not that of the scum who'd attacked me.

The other me shook her head as if to clear it, looked around and then focused on me. She looked down at her body and screamed, enough sound to raise the dead, although that's perhaps not the best way to put it. She finally quieted and stared back and forth at me and then at her own form, seemingly trying to figure out what had happened.

As I watched her, I had a mental image of the man who'd fallen into the attacker, and of course I had to ask.

"Richard?"

She nodded, then took her head in both hands.

-=FLASH=-

And now, another year later, both of us left our home and flew back to Chicago, not knowing what to expect but feeling that again Halloween would be critical.

As the sun sank towards the horizon, a crimson sphere grazing the top of the Frito plant, we headed southwest down Archer, passing the spot where Richard had picked me up two years before.

This time I drove, as Richard, the name I'd been using for the past year. Richard rode, cloaked in my body as he had been since last Halloween. It all still was confusing. I was now "Richard Rose", while Richard lived as "Mary Rose", my wife. The whole thing was to establish public identities, since we had to be somewhere, though both of us dreamed of finding a way to restore ourselves to our rightful identities. Maybe tonight would show us the way back home.

Richard curled in his seat, seemingly lost in thought, while I paid close attention to every detail of the world around me, even the smell of burning corn chips. This might, after all, be my last chance at this.

By all rights I should be three-quarters of a century dead, and what we did tonight could send me where the rest of the dead folks hung out. It's not that I particularly wanted this to happen, but I owed it to Richard to give him his life back. What should have been one night of play for me had turned into two years of torture for him.

As we passed the familiar landmarks, he stirred, stretched, and spoke for the first time since our arrival at Midway.

"Do you think anything will happen?"

"I don't know, but something unusual has for the past two years, and I'm betting that tonight will complete the cycle."

"Complete the cycle?"

"I saw a video a couple of months ago that said, 'Ghost stories always come in trilogies' or somesuch."

He looked sideways at me with a nervous giggle. "I wouldn't put too much faith in horror movies for advice."

"I suppose not."

We both fell silent as we thought about Halloween. So much had changed since the thirties, and yet so much was the same.

I pulled into the entranceway of 7600 Archer just as the last bit of the sun passed below the horizon. We got out of the car and looked around. Richard quietly walked to the gate, standing looking between the bars at the hundreds of rows of tombstones. He turned, idly kicking at a pile of wet oak leaves.

We waited in that driveway entrance for almost half an hour, until we both started at a flash of red light. A distorted voice came seemingly out of nowhere, telling us, "Into the car and out of here, folks, this isn't a parking lot." We laughed semi-hysterically as the police cruiser pulled past the gate, continuing slowly up Archer, looking for vandals and pranksters and, I suppose, anyone strange enough to hang around a cemetery on Halloween.

I pulled across the street, into Chet's parking lot, and we walked inside. The traditional Bloody Mary stood on the bar, waiting my return, though I didn't think I'd drink this one. We stepped over to a table far from the bar, and a few moments later a waitress asked what we'd have. Richard ordered a screwdriver while I settled for a Coke. Somehow I'd lost my taste for alcohol in the midst of all this.

We sat over our drinks for a short while, ignoring the television and discussing our plan. We didn't stick around long, though, wandering out and across the street again, this time leaving the rental in Chet's parking lot and walking.

We kept a weather eye out, knowing that he was out there somewhere, probably waiting for us. Sure enough, as we approached the cemetery gates I saw the shadowy figure of a man in dirty jeans and a sweatshirt. The man – I hadn't ever known his name – leered at Richard, probably thinking he was me.

He stood square on the patch of leaves, waiting as though he knew what was going to have to be done. We approached from different directions, trying to keep him off-balance. I suppose it worked, since his head whipped wildly between the two of us, trying to figure out which of us had the body which was once his.

Richard and I had long since worked this out; we'd both lunge at him at the same time, letting us do a three-way swap that would put the two of them back into their proper forms while I -- I'd go where I was supposed to, finally, as well.

While we were still just outside his reach, before we could lunge, he crossed us up and lunged for me – why he picked me I'm not sure, unless he figured that since I was the guy, I must have his body.

He reached me, and he melted through me I felt a wave of nausea. A wrenching shudder passed through my body as an alien wrongness erupted from me and then vanished in a harmless shower of sparks.

And then there was quiet. I stood there, in the dark, Richard silent and wide-eyed, with no trace of the man or his spirit to be seen. I looked around in the cold end-of-October damp, and felt – different. I looked again at Richard, and saw he was still wide-eyed and staring, and finally took the hint and looked down at myself.

I no longer had Richard's form, but instead was in my own, in the original white dress I wore when I died in 1934. I smiled sadly at Richard and said, "I suppose this is goodbye, then, now that I'm back to where I started."

He burst that bubble right away. "I don't think so. Or, at least, I'm still you. Which means… um. What does it mean?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. But now that I'm back to being a ghost, I don't know what I can do."

I reached out, impulsively, and touched him on the cheek. And – my gods – I touched him – that meant I was solid – that we both were! And both of us were me – Mary!

We stared into each other's faces until she hesitantly asked, "Well, now what?"

 

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Author's Note:

This is fiction, but Resurrection Mary is quite real. There have been numerous sighting over the years, and some physical evidence existed before being destroyed by the cemetery.

Mary is believed to be the ghost of Mary Bregory, who was killed in an accident on March 10, 1934. For more information on sightings plus photographs of the evidence, check out:

http://www.ghostresearch.org/sites/resurrection/

or

http://www.prairieghosts.com/resurcem.html

- Kim

  

  

  

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