Haunted Secrets: Tales of Carl Hesselschwerdt Vol. 5

Splash

Carl tried to remember the last time he had played in the rain. It would have been back in Germany, in the little town where he grew up. His mother never wanted him to play in the rain. She was always afraid he would get sick. There were a few occasions when he’d managed to pull it off, usually when he was already outside before the rain began.

His mother would fuss over how his clothes were soaked, how his shoes needed to be dried out, and how he was sure to catch cold now that he'd been exposed to the elements. She made it seem like rain was a punishment from God some days.

How many years ago had that been? Carl stared out the window at Eloise and felt a strange tightness in his stomach. It would have been over a century. Over a hundred years since he was a child playing in the rain, knowing his mother would scold him when he got home.

Never in his life did Carl imagine he would be in such a position. Of course, he never would have imagined that he would come back after he died, or that he would be in a house in America, trapped forever with a handful of other spirits and a man that he had known since he, too, was a boy. He never would have predicted a single thing that would befall him back when he was splashing in those puddles in Germany.

One hundred years. People sometimes said that the things in their past happened a lifetime ago. They had no idea what that truly meant. Carl did.

He left the room and headed down to the ground, out of the house, and into the rain. He did not often go out in poor weather, probably just a holdover habit from life. There was a strange, disconcerting feeling to it as a spirit. The rain constantly passed through his body, through his face, and before his eyes to create a blurring effect that he found unusual and hard to adjust to. The things no one tells you about being dead, he thought.

“How big can you splash?” Eloise asked, as though she had expected him to join her all along.

The puddles were very deep in some places along the front drive, like tiny lakes of brown, murky water that hid secrets below. She jumped into the nearest one, and the water blasted away in all directions like an anvil had been dropped. The size of the splash was remarkable, far larger than anything a living girl could have produced with a simple jump. Eloise’s efforts sent a force into the water that was powerful and impressive.

Carl laughed, amazed by the height of the splash. What would people have thought if they saw it? He knew it was not very responsible to draw such attention, but it was a torrential downpour in the middle of the night. And splashing puddles was not supposed to be responsible.

He leaped into one of the puddles, concentrating his effort as he did so. He focused down, drawing the very essence of himself from the core of what he felt was his being, and slammed it into the ground as he hit.

The water erupted like a bomb went off. Eloise’s delighted scream was so loud that Carl feared it would wake Shane. They froze, eyes locked on one another, until the girl started laughing.

“That was very loud,” she said softly.

“It was,” Carl agreed.

Even if Shane hadn’t heard, surely the Davis sisters and Thaddeus would have.

“Let’s go,” he suggested, ushering her from the driveway toward Berkley Street.

They fled the scene like two robbers escaping their crime. Carl led them up the street away from the house and they lightly splashed in new puddles and the veritable river that ran down the side of the road toward the nearest drain.

They had each walked that way many times in the past. He knew Eloise often liked to go for walks, and he also went in that same direction sometimes. He realized, almost shamefully, that they had never gone for a walk together. They had been trapped in that house together for decades, and not once had they bothered to take a stroll and enjoy one another's company.

“Did you do this as a boy?” Eloise asked, kicking up another splash that enveloped the curb.

“Not often. There was a pond near my home, and a large wall of rock up one side of it. Almost like a cliff. When it rained very hard, the water flowed down a slope and off the cliff like a little waterfall, and when I was old enough, I swam there.”

“That sounds fun,” Eloise said. “Mother hated when I played in puddles.”

“Mine as well,” Carl said.

They walked slowly, in no hurry to get anywhere since they had no destination, and the rain dissipated until it was finally barely more than a light mist. The hour must have been very late, but that meant little to two ghosts who never needed to sleep or be anywhere at any particular time.

They talked about their mothers, mostly about how their mothers didn't like them doing certain things, and laughed at the similarities between them. Years apart and separated by thousands of miles, it sounded like their mothers were still very similar. Maybe all mothers were that way.

As they walked, Carl caught sight of someone on the far side of the street who was also going for a walk. It was an elderly man with an umbrella and a long overcoat. Carl only saw him from the side, as they were all walking in the same direction. Something about him seemed familiar, though, and as he talked with Eloise, Carl’s eyes kept returning to the old man.