Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [59]
A few hours later, Bessie Gilmore left that house dragging her three sons behind her, and she never saw Fay alive again. It wasn’t until almost two generations later, long after Gary’s death, that my mother would tell me the full story of what she claimed had taken place on that ghost night.
Sometime in the hours after midnight, she heard movement in the house. At first it alarmed her, then she remembered that my father had called a day or two earlier to say that he would probably be coming to retrieve her soon, and it was his custom to come in late, drunk and stumbling. She fell back asleep, hoping he would leave her alone when he came to bed. A little while later, she awakened again—this time to an intimate touch. At first, she told me later, it was a gender touch than usual for my father, and still half-asleep in the darkness, she pressed up against him. And then, this hand that had pleased and hurt her in so many ways over the years touched her in a manner that no man had ever touched her before, and she was outraged. She pushed away and opened her eyes—and what she saw, she said, what had tried to caress her so shockingly, was not my father. It did not even look truly human, though it bore a distinctly hungry leer on its face.
Bessie moved fast—faster than she had ever moved before. She pulled free and ran into the hallway, calling for Frank and Gary. It was there that she met her second shock. Moving slowly toward my mother, her white hair flowing down her shoulders like a wild horse’s mane, was Fay, looking entranced and muttering in a low, frightened voice. Fay—who had been an invalid for all the years my mother had known her—had somehow made her way to the upstairs hallway and was walking toward Bessie. At first, my mother was more furious than shocked. Had Fay been faking her debility all this time? But then Fay’s words froze my mother’s anger. “Bessie,” she said, “you must leave here. You must leave this house now. It knows, Bessie—it knows who you are.”
Then, my mother told me, Frankie was in the hallway, grabbing my mother’s hand, pulling her toward his bedroom. He was crying and pointing toward the door, saying, “Mommy: Gary. Mommy: Gary.” Again, she moved fast. When she entered the bedroom, she saw the same figure that had been in the bed with her, bending over Gary, staring into my brother’s eyes. Bessie was terrified but she reached over and swept Gary from the bed, and then she grabbed my other brothers and left the house. My mother and the boys spent the night in a bus depot. She was worried about Fay, but there was no way to get her to leave the house. Besides, she figured, Fay knew how to handle spirits.
Bessie checked herself and the boys into a nearby hotel the next day. She visited and helped Fay in the daytimes but would not stay at the house anymore after dark. A couple of days afterward, my father returned and had a good laugh at the ghost story. A short while later the family moved to San Diego, where my father took a job as a construction worker. On Christmas Eve 1946, my father received a letter: Fay had been returned to the Sacramento County Hospital—which she had been in and out of for the last few years—and died there on December 15. At seven-thirty that evening, her heart just stopped. Shortly after that, Gary started having nightmares. They were always the same dream: He was being beheaded.
THE LETTER INFORMING FRANK OF FAY’S DEATH had been sent to General Delivery in San Diego, so by the time Frank received the news, Fay had already been buried. A brother-in-law, living in New York, paid $256.45 to cover the cost of her funeral and burial, and the attendance of a Roman Catholic priest to say a prayer at her grave. Robert had tried to find Frank to give him