Walk After You

The swirling miasma held him in place...

His knees nearly buckled, and it was all Nicholas could do to remain standing. When the spirit first came forth, her swirling miasma, though spectral in nature, held him in place as firmly as a pair of concrete boots would have.

He made the decision. It was easy at the time. Give your life to save your child? Of course. He couldn’t tell you how many times he’d said something along the lines of I would give my life for my boy. Who wouldn’t? It was self-evident.

The walls shifted around him. They pulled outward, then constricted back, and rotated in various directions, and the miasma twisted through the gaps made by their movement. Plaster cracked and dust filled the air, hovering like astronauts in zero gravity. The noise of rushing air buffeted him, a rolling storm in his head.

Ten minutes before, he and Erich stepped into his family’s home, the place he grew up; one last walk through before selling the old place. This was Erich’s first visit, and Nicholas reminisced on childhood memories, including telling Erich his Aunt Judy always swore the place was haunted. The spirit materialized from the musty air and rooted both his and Erich’s feet to the floor. Nicholas didn’t believe in ghosts and hadn’t the time to come to grips with the situation before she gave him the choice. She gave him a chance to save his son, or himself. Of course he made the right choice; he didn’t have to think about it. In that position again, and now that he’d time to consider his decision, he feared how he might respond.

Several long minutes passed as he struggled to convince his bawling son to run away. To escape outside and leave him behind. Now he’d live in the house with her forever. Warm liquid saturated his pants and ran down his leg. His teeth click-clacked together.

A startled cry split the maelstrom. His heart dropped like a stone into his gut. He recognized the voice that he expected to never hear again. An overwhelming sense of regret washed over him.

Erich came into view. A dark shape in the swirling ectoplasm, grainy and insubstantial but growing more real by the second. Finally, a boy, aged six years, with a red, tear-streaked face stepped into what used to be Nicholas’s living room. Eyes wide with terror gawked at his captive dad at the center of this mad old house, at the mercy of the ghost haunting it.

“Daddy. Daddy.”

Nicholas wept in earnest as Erich rushed over. Tears poured off his face, and drool dangled from his slack mouth. He shook his head at the boy. Erich wrapped his little arms around Nicholas’s waist and cried into his shirt.

He held his son like a drowning man gulping for fresh air. Erich’s presence, his weight and warmth against him, strengthened him. Distantly, he felt like he could fight it, whatever spirit-thing this was. He had his boy, and he would find some way out of this hell hole. Even the manic remodeling of the house’s interior didn’t seem insurmountable anymore.

She spoke for the first time since he agreed to stay. The voice tiptoed up his vertebrae and filled his mind. “And the offspring has returned. A rare second chance.”

Though nothing changed around him, time slowed to a crawl. The house held its breath along with him. Nicholas leaned against Erich for support as, with her words, all the fear and regret from moments ago flooded back into his system.

“Do you wish to change your mind?”

She spoke in his head; he knew Erich couldn’t hear her. Nevertheless, at her words, the boy squeezed him tighter. He wanted to do the right thing. Had to do the right thing. Fear be damned. Fear was for the weak, and you couldn’t be weak as a parent.

“Last chance. Do you wish to change your mind?”

His reaction was involuntary. He didn’t speak, but his head nodded. Twice. And he held Erich tight against him and closed his eyes, knowing he’d damned his son as well as himself.

The miasma shifted, engulfed both of their feet, and after another shift, Nicholas flexed his ankle. It moved. Both of his feet moved. He was free and he opened his eyes as the miasma swirled around Erich’s little boy’s feet, his Superman sneakers.

Something in his chest shattered. He took a deep breath and held his son at arm’s length. His voice was a low croak in the whipping wind. “Look, big boy. I’m going to get help. Okay? I’m going to fix it. Okay? Daddy’s going to...” His words melted into senseless blathering. Daddy’s going to fix it, he tried to say. I love you, he tried to say. He sobbed.

He forced Erich’s death grip from his hands and stepped back and out of reach. He walked around his son.

“Daddy, please. Don’t leave me. Get me. Get me. Daddy, please.”

He forced himself to concentrate on each step. One foot in front of the other. Before crossing into the next room, Nicholas looked over his shoulder at his son’s back. Erich waved his arms about, but he couldn’t turn or move. As if to spite him, the swirling miasma calmed for just a second, allowing Nicholas to hear Erich one last time.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

He ran outside as fast as his gelatinous legs could carry him, collapsed against his car parked at the curb, and lay panting, unable to believe what he’d done.

The house, his childhood home, Erich’s sarcophagus, creaked and groaned. Where before the spectral wind was evident only inside, now it snaked about the windows and doors until the entire structure lifted off the foundation. It twisted into itself like a tornado. Daddy, Daddy, the wind sang. Shards of glass and splintered boards ripped through the air.

Abruptly, the ghostly maelstrom died. The house was gone. Nicholas lay there staring at an empty concrete pad.

Thank you so much for reading my story! Please let me know what you think.