The Chris Effect

Bernard pulled the car over, looking ash-stricken.

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked.

After a moment he turned to her with an expression of anguish, and said, “My wife…she’s dead.”

She didn’t know how to take this news; it didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean? How…”

He looked down at his lap, as if ashamed. “Sometimes I forget.  I think I just don’t want to remember. I’m sorry.” He looked at her again.

It began to get very uncomfortable in the car, and she understood what he meant. She smiled politely and said, “It’s okay, I understand. Thanks anyway.” She opened the car door and left, walking back the way they’d come, disappearing into the night.

Bernard let out a sigh of relief; that was too close. She seemed like such a nice girl, but luckily he’d seen the track marks on her arm as they’d passed under a streetlight. There was no way he was going to let a drugged-out crack head into his house. People weren’t always as they seem, he realized.

He knew his wife was dead, had been dead for a long time. And he’d been so very lonely. Finally he’d come up with the idea to invite someone home, only he hadn’t figured it would be so difficult to find the right person. Still, he wasn’t going to give up. He put the car in gear and drove away, deciding to check another part of town. He was just going to have to be more careful. Maybe try a man this time. He’d always gotten along with men more than women anyway. Perhaps that was the problem.

Margaret had been different; just like one of the guys. Bernard had always been awkward around girls, mumbling and rarely making eye-contact. But with her it was different, easy. She’d awakened in him a confidence he never knew he had. Thankfully it hadn’t left after she did. She’d developed osteoporosis – not uncommon for older folks – and her bones and began to waste away. He took very good care of her those last few years, always at her beck and call. He’d come home one night from retrieving some things from the grocery store for her, and found her at the bottom of the stairs, her neck broken. How long she’d been there he’d never know. The grief nearly ended him.

Bernard pulled up beside the park, to a figure sleeping on a bench, covered in a blanket of newspapers. He put the passenger window down and hollered, “Hey!”

No response from the stranger.

“Hey!” Bernard called again. “Excuse me! You on the bench.” The man lifted his head and stared at him. “Would you like to come home with me?”

The stranger cautiously looked around, then got up off the bench and slowly approached the car. “What?” he asked.

“My wife makes a mean pot roast, and I thought you might like to join us? Stay the night in a warm bed, have a shower. I imagine it would be more comfortable than…” he nodded towards the bench.

“And your wife won’t mind?” the stranger asked, looking suspicious, eyebrows raised.

Bernard smiled. “My wife and I invite a guest into our home about once a week or so, someone less fortunate, such as yourself. It’s our way of giving back. She’ll be expecting you. Well, someone anyway.” He chuckled.

After deliberating for a long minute, the man opened the door and got inside the car. He was older, like Bernard, but not as old, and smelled a little. Scraggly black hair covered his face and poked out from under his toque, and even though he was wearing a thick, worn coat, he appeared thin and frail. It wasn’t hard to get the impression that he’d been living on the streets for a long time.

“Bernard,” Bernard said, offering his hand.

The stranger shook it replied, “Wayne,” before returning his hands to the car’s air vents, relishing the warm air blowing from them. Even though it was early in the fall, the temperature always seemed to drop too fast.

Putting the car back in gear, Bernard pulled away from the curb, hoping the third time was the charm.

The first person he’d invited back to his place, a woman, reminded him of his wife. That’s why he initially picked her, of course. Like the others, she’s been living on the street; the town had no shortage of them. But as soon as she’d gotten in the car Bernard smelled the alcohol on her, and that was it. She wouldn’t do. His wife, Margaret, refused to touch any of that stuff. So she was out.

After her, Bernard thought he’d try someone a little younger. A bit of youth around the house might liven up the place. But that didn’t work either. Still, he wasn’t going to give up, and now that he’d found Wayne, he was glad he didn’t.

As they talked on the drive home Bernard became convinced that things could work well with him around the house. Funny, because when the idea came to him his first consideration was his best friend George. Certainly they got along, and even though he was a man, Bernard could consider him a suitable replacement for Margaret. He’d long since lost the need for female companionship. There was one problem however: George knew people – people that would notice him missing.

But now he had Wayne, and he had a good feeling about him.

“Well, here we are,” he said, pulling into the driveway of an older brick two-storey house. The home wasn’t in the best of shape; the gutters were sagging; the windows were dirty; the lawn was unkempt. But Wayne wasn’t one to judge. He was happy just to be off the street.

Bernard opened the front door and invited his guest inside, yelling, “Margaret, I’m home. And I brought company.” They were greeted with silence. “Margaret?” He wandered into the kitchen and looked out the back window, but didn’t find her.

“Make yourself at home,” he said to Wayne as he headed for the stairs. “She’s probably just down for a nap. I’ll go wake her.”

Helping himself up the stairs, Bernard knew his wife wasn’t there. She’d passed on nearly ten years ago, leaving him alone in the world. They never had children, not that they didn’t want them. Bernard had lost the ability breathing in the wrong chemicals while in Viet Nam. That’s what you got when you worked for the government. But they’d lived a happy life together, each being everything the other needed.

Then she’d had her accident and that was that. It was difficult without her. Many days he didn’t want to get out of bed. But life goes on, at least for some.

Bernard wasn’t too sure when he’d begun to noticed the strange happenings around the house. Getting older sneaks up on you, but after the umpteenth time he’d misplaced the remote he learned to look for it in the same location, and every time it was there. Windows he’d left open somehow shut themselves, which he initially took to mean they were getting loose. But he couldn’t explain the ones that opened on their own. Then there were the lights turning themselves off. He’d always been bad about leaving the lights on, and Margaret used to go around after him, turning them off. He couldn’t leave a light on if he tried, now. He’d also noticed her rocking chair moving on it’s own from time to time.

After a few months of this it dawned on Bernard that his wife was still with him. She was always leaving the remote control in the crook of her rocking chair, opening and shutting the windows as the temperature dictated, and she was still following him around the house, turning off lights when he’d forgotten.

It brought tears to his eyes, knowing he still wasn’t alone, that Margaret never left him, not completely. Whenever he left the toilet seat up, or the television on, or leave an article of clothing on the floor, she fixed it. Often he would forget things on purpose just to feel her presence. He talked to her sometimes, knowing the conversations were all one-sided but feeling heard. The comfort it brought him was immeasurable.

He wandered into their bedroom and grabbed a belt off a hook behind the door, thinking about how all that changed. He shuddered to think it took him so long to notice all the clocks in house kept freezing at 6AM. Time after time he would set them and put in fresh batteries. He rarely used the clocks himself, preferring his trusty watch; they were for Margaret. She wanted a clock in every room of the house, and always insisted they have the correct time. It wasn’t like her to stop the clocks.

He’d also noticed that in all of their family portraits their faces had been marked up, scratches etched in the glass. How long they’d been that way he didn’t know, and it couldn’t have been Margaret’s doing.

But the last straw came when he’d gotten his new hearing aid. Turned up to its highest setting, Bernard heard things, faint whispers, humming. A man’s voice.

He wasn’t feeling his wife’s presence; he was sharing his house with a stranger. He’d contacted the church immediately, and within a few weeks an experienced priest had come to his house to perform an exorcism.

The problem was that it worked.

Bernard quietly crept down the stairs and peaked into the living-room, and found Wayne was sitting on Margaret’s old rocking chair. He snuck by the doorway and into the kitchen, passed through it to the dinning-room, taking the long way around so he could sneak up behind his guest. He stretched out the belt in his hands and quickly wrapped in around Wayne’s neck.

He pulled hard, perhaps too hard, tumbling backwards to the floor and dragging the chair with him. But he held fast. Wayne, frightened and confused, pounded his arms and fists behind him, but the blows landed only on the soft padding of the rocker. A strangled cry escaped his lips, but there was no one to hear him. Bernard had been alone in the house for nearly a year now. No guest or visits from family. No spirits or poltergeist activity. Nothing.

Soon, after a few minutes, Bernard felt the fight go out of Wayne, and sensed his spirit leave his body. He held tight on the belt for another minute, then released. He panted, trying to catch his breath. Killing someone was harder than he thought.

He’d read somewhere that people sometimes haunted the place they died, particularly if their death was traumatic. Pulling himself out from under the chair, Bernard hoped Wayne’s death had been violent enough, and hoped he’d stick around. Most of all he wondered what kind of companion Wayne would be.

He supposed, if things didn’t work out, that he could try again. Get the house exorcised and go looking for a new companion. With so many homeless in the world there was no reason to be lonely anymore.

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