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Much to Jeff's surprise - a mix of pleasure and dismay - "the Three M's" were seated around a small table when he showed up. Outside, it was gray and overcast, but the air was thick with wet heat. Everyone was talking about the upcoming storm - "the biggest Memphis has seen since Hurricane Bob, a few years back," they all said. Jeff made the appropriate sounds of fascination until they were satisfied, then turned away. A big mother of a storm was both what he did and didn't need right now: Jeff had always loved big electrical storms that threw up a thunder and wind so hard and fast and loud that it made his furniture rattle. But a big, ongoing tropical storm like everyone was talking – that would not only do a lot of damage to the town, but would also likely trap Jeff in his apartment for hours on end with not much to do except write songs or watch TV. Jeff was currently completely incapable of writing… and daytime soaps no longer interested him like they did when he was four.
Something had to be done.
“Hey, Jeffy,” Mike called, waving. Jeff waved back and smiled – a big, toothy grin that reminded him of Mick’s theory that his smile could hide all the pain in the world. A little dramatic, perhaps. But since yesterday afternoon Jeff certainly felt that it was true.
“Yo guys.” He slid into a seat, noticing with a puzzled quirk of his eyebrows that the other three were shoved on one side of the table and Jeff was alone on the opposite side. Okay, what the hell conspiracy was going on here? Had Jeff suddenly contracted cooties?
“So… ah…” Mike cleared his throat, playing peacemaker, obviously. “Storm coming up, huh?”
“You’re kidding,” Jeff drawled dryly.
“Bet there’s gonna be a flood,” Mike said thoughtfully.
“What do you think they’ll name this one?” Matt asked, laughing. “They need a Hurricane Engelbert or something.”
“I know!” Jeff nearly shouted, banging his fist on the table. “Too many goddamn Hurricane Jakes and Roberts. Where the hell are the Jesuses? And the Moonshines?”
The four of them laughed.
“It’s a good thing Jeff’s not a weatherman,” Matt pointed out. “Otherwise all we’d have were hippie hurricanes.”
“Very funny.” Jeff gave him a playfully annoyed look. “So, as riveting as the weather is, I know you guys have a different reason for getting together like this. What’s going on?”
“Well, ah…” Now it was Mick’s turn to speak. “I think you know why, Jeff. You got my message – I know you did.”
Jeff was tempted to crack a joke about the rambling phone message Mick had left him earlier in the week, but he doubted the man would laugh. He was insanely determined to get to the bottom of whatever was plaguing Jeff. Mick was certainly worried about Jeff’s deteriorating health… but this little powwow was over the top.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about!” Jeff said, his voice sounding brittle and fake. “I’m fine, really. I’m sleeping. I’m great.”
‘Liar,’ Jeff’s bothersome little conscience shrieked. ‘Who do you think you’re fooling? Them? Yourself? You’re bleeding from the inside. You’re broken; you know it. Lying can’t fix it. Stop hiding, coward.’
‘Shut up,’ he moaned silently. ‘Please. I can handle this.’
The three men on the other side of the table looked at him doubtfully. Jeff felt as if some cancer had blossomed inside him and was eating away at his heart. How much more of this could he take? How much more of this silent torture, both from himself and from his bandmates, could he endure before something just… snapped?
“Guys, something’s still wrong with me,” he said finally, quietly breaking down. His voice cracked painfully mid-sentence. ‘If I’m not careful, I’ll break down and sob like a schoolgirl in a minute,’ he groused.
“What?” the other three shrilled, almost in unison.
“I…” Jeff was wracked with sudden self-doubt, a force so hard it stole his voice and nearly made him dizzy.
“Jeff? Are you sick?” Mick asked, concerned.
Jeff could only nod weakly.
“What kind of sick? Flu?” Now Matty was the concerned one.
Jeff winced, swallowing hard and closing his eyes. “It’s the kind of sick that’s in your soul,” he wanted to say. But he couldn’t; not yet. He couldn’t risk everything – his bandmates believed in him. If he let them down…
And what was the use of telling them anyway? Jeff found himself asking this question of his subconscious yet again, for perhaps the twentieth time in the past week. If the last little quirk of his was only temporary, he reasoned, what evidence was there that this… sickness that stole his gift was permanent? The simple explanation was that too much of a good thing would obviously have a backlash. All good things must come to an end. Et cetera, et cetera.
And so he said nothing more, regretting having said anything in the first place, and simply waited for Matt, Mike and Mick to get tired of questioning him with no result.
~ ~ ~
The storm was closer when Jeff returned to his apartment. The bloated, black clouds were hugging the horizon and had crept halfway across the sky. Another hour and they’d be blotting out the sun. The air crawled on Jeff’s hot skin as he sprawled lazily on his couch, arms flung over the cushions and feet hanging over the side. It wasn’t scaldingly hot – the threat of rain kept the air cool, a slight limp breeze stirring the leaves once in a while – but it was hot enough that Jeff had shed all of his clothes except for his denims. The radio was on, picking up nothing but static. Jeff, moving in the reluctant, sluggish way that overheated people do, reached over and switched it off. The silence was thick and disturbed only by the rustling of leaves outside; even the chirping bugs were momentarily quiet.
A board creaked. Somewhere in a far part of the little apartment, a door swung open in the wind and knocked against the wall.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The storm was coming closer still. The sun was nearly gone.
Jeff sat up suddenly, eyebrows raised.
The glass in the windows rattled as thunder shouted lustily. Probably only a few minutes away by now. But the crackling electricity in the air that made his scalp itch and his heart beat faster… It wasn’t thunder. Couldn’t have been. The air was charged, draped over his rigid body, nearly choking him. When he stumbled to his feet, he could feel the floorboards were hot and damp with humidity.
Something was in the apartment with him.
“Hello?” Jeff called. It came out weak and tentative. Nothing moved except the wind in the treetops. “Who’s here?”
He could even hear the ticking of the clock in the kitchen over the sound of his breathing.
“I asked you a question!” Jeff said, nearly commanding. “Who are you? What are you?”
There was an ominous pause. The breeze swallowed itself.
“What do you want?”
The silence dragged on. Jeff gritted his teeth.
“Are you my fa –”
A book toppled from the bookcase onto the floor. Jeff jumped a little, unsure of what to do, then padded over to the place where it landed. It lay facedown, pages splayed open and its worn, tattered cover staring up at Jeff purposefully. He knelt to pick it up, still holding it the way it landed with pages facing the floor, and held it in his hands for a moment. It smelled musty and old.
Jeff ran his finger painstakingly down the creased spine, then flipped it over. He was close to trembling – a sign, this was. The spirit thing, whatever it was – it was trying to talk to him. Whatever it was trying to tell him, it would be in these pages…
But the pages were blank.
This was Jeff’s old journal. Of course. The last pages that he had never filled – he hadn’t had the time to do something as frivolous dictate his emotions onto paper lately. Ironically.
So it was a crock of crap, then. Jeff closed the journal, angry with himself for his paranoid childishness. Though Jeff believed in ghosts and homeless spirits, that didn’t necessarily mean one had taken up residence in his apartment.
But that feeling… And the touch…
All of a sudden, Jeff gripped the book in hand so tightly the pages crinkled and tore at the edges. He swallowed back tears fiercely and stood up. This was real.
“I know there’s something here,” he whispered at the air. “I know you’re there. But do you want to help me or hurt me? Are the one who… I mean, did you…Do you know what’s happening to me?”
The room was dim with heavy half-light. The clouds were directly above him now, pregnant with driving rain and thunder. Nothing moved anymore. Nothing was breathing. All the books stayed in their places.
Forlornly, sick with depression and desperation, Jeff sighed shakily as if releasing air from a balloon and sat back on his heels. He flipped through the journal to the front page, traveling back in time to 1993, and the start of all this music business insanity. He laughed at the naivete of his written words. He was still just a child. He would always be just a child.
A clap of thunder made him yelp and drop the journal. It fell onto the floor with a slap, then it was silent again – the rain hadn’t started yet. From the dark dome of sky overhead, it looked like within thirty seconds’ time it would be a monsoon.
He didn’t even have to wait that long – nearly instantly, rain joined the fray, hissing on the scalding stones of the patio and the shingles of the roof. The wind picked up even more violently. Telephone wires outside were tossed around and around like children jumping a disjointed rope. The sun had disappeared completely.
The storm had broken some barrier or something and let this spirit in. And Jeff was almost certain he knew who it was.
‘But why is he here?’ Jeff asked himself, sprawling out on the smooth slats of the floor. ‘I haven’t seen him since I… since I was ten. Younger, maybe. What does he want?’
Silence. Rain, wind, the rushing hiss of leaves. All Jeff’s inanimate objects remained where they were.
Jeff’s chest grew tight. He reached up and grasped the cross around his neck, his fingers tangling in the velvet rope it hung from. One word was skittering around in his mind, one single syllable that meant so much. Anticipation and curiosity dragged it out of his mouth in a trembling rush:
“Dad?”
Thunder rippled across the sky and writhed in the air. It grew louder and fiercer until it erupted in a monstrous explosion of static sound. Jeff felt the house shudder violently. He himself was shaking: his insides felt like a dusty dishtowel washed, wrung mercilessly, and stomped upon.
His father was here. In this room.
Here.
Jeff stared hard at the couch, imagining the lanky form his Tim sprawled across the cushions, one hand raking through his wild curls. Jeff had only seem him a few times before his death, but his image was so burned into Jeff’s memory, he would never forget. He could see every eyelash on his father’s face. He smelled like smoke and sweat and all things masculine and fatherly. Jeff looked away, staring instead at a splintered old hand-carved chair. Jeff’s nickname – Scotty – was embossed flamboyantly on the seat. A half-joking gift from the Three M’s and his mother, a few years back. But now the dusty soles of Tim’s careless boots obscured the lovingly carved words. When he swung his legs off the chair to face his son, he left footprints like fossils. Ghostly. His eyes were dark and aware and slightly mocking. Jeff looked his dead father full on in the face with eyes like a mirror. His own face was a mirror of his father’s, and it angered him.
Jeff’s face twisted into a bitter pout. “I’m not you! You’re dead! You traitor… You left me. You never even cared.”
Even as Jeff spoke these words with such venomous conviction to the deaf stillness, he knew they were only half-true. Tim had done all the things he did for the sake of his music; he would’ve given his life for his music, if he hadn’t thrown it away on drugs instead. The mirror of the two men, bound by blood and love and passion put to music, continued past their simple physical selves.
The wind whispered in protest of Jeff’s accusations. Tim’s son finally let his imagination run away with all his sensibilities and envisioned the wind *was* his father, chuckling. He remembered Tim’s lean sinewy arms wrapped around his eight-year-old waist as he bounced on one knee and did all his best impressions of George Carlin and giggled unaffectedly.
As much as Jeff tried to deny it, he loved his father dearly though they hadn’t seen each other all that much. There was a rift between them, cold and empty, and Jeff resented it – and Tim – bitterly. He was sure Tim would have saved a lot of time and trouble had his goofball son with the puppy dog eyes and beguiling smile never existed. But their hearts were one and the same, bound with something that stretched on forever.
And now his father had come back, for reasons yet unknown – but the important thing was that he was here. Watching Jeff, sending signs, protecting him.
The storm brought something foreboding, something that sought to perhaps destroy Jeff – and already had, in a way; cleaning him out from the inside by stealing his gift of song – but Tim was here to ward it off.
“You are here to help me, aren’t you?” Jeff asked, slightly uncertain. “You’re not just here to screw with me, right?”
Of course, nothing moved. There was no reply. But, of course, Jeff knew Tim was there all the same.
Jeff shook his head, eyebrows furrowing. “You can’t make any sign? You can’t… you know… rap on the wall or anything?” He tapped his knuckles lightly on the wood of the floor to illustrate his point. “Once for yes, twice for no, you know the deal.”
A loud, clear knock echoed through the heavy air. Jeff nearly jumped out of his skin.
It took a few seconds for his mind to register that the knocking was not the ghost of his long-dead father, but someone at the door.
Cussing helplessly, Jeff rose to his feet and padded over and yanked the door open. A tall figure, wrapped in a threadbare leather jacket and dripping rain into a puddle on the floor of the corridor, stood in the doorway. He looked up, and their mirrored eyes locked in a gaze full of fire and fond laughter.
The gaze didn’t last long; Jeff’s dark eyes rolled back in his head as he slumped to the floor in a faint.
TO BE CONTINUED
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