Did I mention that it was a nice day outside when we had Virgil’s service? Yep. Sure was. It was June and the weather was just turning toward summer, warm and bright with a small breeze. The kind of weather that folks in Detroit and the rest of Michigan appreciate more than most because of all that winter we have to fight every year.
That was why everybody started looking around at each other funny when it started getting chilly inside the church because…how?But it was a different kind of cold. Like I said, folks in Michigan ain’t no kinda strangers to icy weather. We know what cold feels like and what it’s supposed to feel like.
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But this wasn’t like that. This was something no amount of layers could protect you from; it was something other, something evil. One minute I was sitting there listening to Pastor Simms, wondering what was it he was really trying to say – or to not say – and then all of a sudden there was this frost chewing on my bones and working its way out through my skin at the same time. It wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was downright painful. And I wasn’t the only one. Raymond Parks, who had been sitting near the rear of the church close to the door, stood up (I could hear him cursing and mumbling about how he wasn’t gonna just sit there freezing his ass off and how Virgil wasn’t even that much a friend of his). His plan was to make his way outside and I guess go home, but the church door wouldn’t open. Which was strange because there had never been a lock on that door. No kind of lock of any sort. Those doors had always only swung in or out, but they weren’t made to stop anybody from going anywhere. Until that day.
I knew Raymond from elementary school when we were kids in the same class, and even back then, going back more than 30 years, he hadn’t been one to sit still for anything or anybody getting in his way. Which is to say sometimes things went Raymond’s way and sometimes they didn’t, but never without a helluva fight. His mother, Ruth Parks, the same way. Always in somebody’s face about something. Truth be told, I was pretty damned surprised last year when Raymond showed up in church, his voice all soft, talking about how he wanted to join.
But, you know, whatever.
Anyway, on that day of Virgil’s homegoing service Raymond was all prepared to go back to being true to form. I could see his fist balled up and ready to pound on those doors, when a loud screeching noise came from the church basement. It got louder and louder and lasted for what felt like an hour but couldn’t have been more than a minute, with everybody pinching up their face and clapping their hands tight over their ears. Pastor Simms had his eyes squeezed shut, arms raised high as he faced the ceiling. His mouth was moving rapidly but I couldn’t hear whether he was praying or something else was going on.
Then it stopped. And then came the laughter, only it wasn’t the sort of laughter that would make anybody feel like smiling. It felt like maggots were in my ears.
“It’s so nice to be remembered,” came a voice from somewhere beneath the church, sounding wet and like sickness itself. But also sounding familiar.
Cowardly Lion: “I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts.”