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  The Haunted Breadbox

  A Myron Vale Investigation

  Scott William Carter

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  Preview of Ghost Detective

  Electronic edition published by Flying Raven Press, May 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Scott William Carter.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This short story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For more about Flying Raven Press, please visit our web site at http://www.flyingravenpress.com.

  The Haunted Breadbox

  The most surprising thing about ghosts isn't how many of them walk among us. It's how of how few of them could give a rat's ass about the living.

  That's what I was thinking when I turned my Toyota Prius onto the dirt road and saw the covered wagons parked in the grassy field between the white cottage and the dilapidated barn—six wagons in a ring, as battered and beaten as you'd expect them to be after an arduous continental journey. The sun sinking behind the coastal range painted the tattered canvas domes in shades of orange and crimson. The wooden wheels were caked in mud. Dozens of pioneers, women in frilly white bonnets and long dresses, men with heavy beards and ruddy cheeks, huddled around a flickering campfire. Gaunt horses grazed nearby.

  Either there was a random colonial reenactment going on twenty miles from the Oregon coast, or these people weren't, in the technical sense, alive. Because it was me who was seeing them, there was a much greater chance of the second being true.

  None of the people looked my way when I passed. None of them looked my way when I parked my car next to the house or stepped into the cool breeze and chirping crickets. As far as they were concerned, I didn't exist. And that's exactly how I wanted the situation to remain unless there was a very good reason to change it.

  They were ghosts among the living. I was a ghost among the dead.

  "You drive a hybrid?"

  Walking to the house in the chilly evening air, I'd been focused on the pioneer camp, and now I turned to see a short, stubby little man in a brown tweed jacket and matching pants. The thinning hair on top of his head was as white as the handkerchief jutting from his front pocket, though his enormous sideburns still bore traces of black. Gold, wire-rimmed glasses drooped low on a slender nose. A gold chain, the kind that might have been attached to a pocket watch, hung from his front pocket. He looked like such an anachronism that for a moment I wondered if he was a ghost as well, but I knew that was highly unlikely.

  Before hopping in the car back in Portland, I'd done my research. He may have looked ten years older than his faculty picture on the Reed College website, but the site had listed his Fall class schedule on it, and I doubt that would have been the case if his body was currently six feet under. The ivory towers of academia may have had a bad rap for often being out of step with modern times, but I was pretty sure they drew the line at hiring the truly deceased.

  "Yeah, so?" I said.

  My retort was a little more menacing than I meant it to sound, but then, I was self-conscious about my beloved lime green car. When I stepped onto the porch, I towered over him by at least a foot, and I wasn't a huge man myself. I told everyone I was six feet even, but truthfully I only cracked five ten at best, and that was only in the cross trainers with the thick soles I wore most of the time.

  "Oh," he said, a dainty little hand fluttering to his dainty little mouth. He giggled nervously, a very feminine giggle that matched his soft-spoken voice. "Well, I was just expecting something more . . . rough and tumble. An old rusty van perhaps. You are a ghost hunter, correct?"

  "No, sir," I said, and I couldn't quite stifle my sigh. "I'm a private investigator. One of my areas of specialty just happens to be the paranormal."

  "Ah."

  "And I drive a hybrid because I happen to care about the environment. You want to show me the problem or are we going to talk about global warming?"

  Responding with the same nervous giggle, he gestured for me to come inside. I stepped into a farm house that looked nothing like a farm house inside — lots of packed mahogany book shelves, colorful oriental rugs, and perfectly restored nineteenth century furniture. I detected a whiff of pipe smoke, a sweet orange odor that always made me think of my favorite uncle, who died a few years back. He still visits sometimes.

  "I'm sorry if I offended," the professor said. He stuck out his pudgy hand. "Let me introduce myself properly. I'm Doctor Henry Harvinston."

  "Myron Vale," I said, shaking his hand. It was like holding wet tissue paper.

  "Nice to meet you Mister Vale," he said.

  "Myron will do."

  "Yes, Myron then. Well. A Toyota Prius is a splendid car, it truly is. My wife has one — I mean, she did. Before she died. She is the one who decorated this place, so I can't help looking around without thinking of her. Are you married, Myron?"

  "Yes."

  "Children?"

  "No. My wife can't have them."

  "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

  She really wanted them too, one of life's great injustices, but I certainly wasn't going to talk about my complicated marriage with a client. I'd said too much already. "Right. Well, should we—"

  "Can you really see ghosts?"

  "Yes."

  He seemed surprised by my directness. "All the time?"

  "Yes, all the time."

  "They're all over the place?"

  "Yep."

  "You—you see any in here?"

  "Not yet, no. Not in here."

  He nodded, considering, the picture of the thoughtful professor thinking deep thoughts. I wondered if he practiced this expression in grad school or if it just came naturally. Chicken or the egg, that old story. I could have told him about the pioneers camped on his property, but why give him something else to worry about? Those ghosts didn't care about him any more than he cared about them. At least, that's what I was assuming. I didn't know what I was going to find in his breadbox.

  "Is it in the kitchen?" I asked.

  "What? Oh, yes. Please, follow me."

  The kitchen was only a few steps away, but with the slowness and smallness of his steps, it felt like a long journey. It was as if he couldn't be hurried, no matter the cause. You'd think if you had a haunted breadbox in your house, you'd have a little more hustle in your step, but not Professor Henry Harvinston. We could have been on our way to a committee meeting.

  The living room smelled of leather and old books, but as we shuffled our way to the kitchen, something rotten overpowered all other odors. The smell certainly didn't match the decor, a cozy country kitchen with white cabinets and honey oak counters, decorated with a farm house theme. Red rooster mugs hung by the window. Cow magnets covered the humming fridge. Dish towels picturing a farmer on a tractor, his straw hat slightly askew, were draped over the handle of the oven. In a kitchen like that, I would have expected the pleasant aroma of baking bread, not the putrid stench of rotten flesh.

  The breadbox — or at least what I assumed was the breadbox — was easy enough to spot because it didn't match anything else in the kitchen. Where everything else was white or oak, the breadbox was a dull copper, dented and scuffed, something that looked like it had been pulled out of garbage bin rather than an upscale antique shop. It seemed to huddle, like a cornered animal, at the far end of the counter.

  "That it?" I asked.

  He nodded, leading me to it. Even now, there wasn't a hint of fear in his eyes,
just curiosity. I wondered what it would take to ruffle this guy's feathers. Why had he even bothered to call? Most of my client's eyes were practically popping out of their sockets, they were so jacked up with fear.

  "That smell coming from the breadbox?" I asked.

  "What smell?"

  "Oh. Never mind." I approached the breadbox cautiously, the awful stench getting stronger. I was only a little surprised he couldn't smell it. After all, the dead revealed themselves to me in lots of ways they never did to the living. That was both my gift and my curse – the result of a bullet to the brain a few years back. "Tell me again why you think it's haunted."

  "Just a feeling, I guess."

  "What kind of feeling?"

  He shrugged, and even his shrug hardly had anything to it, a barely perceptible lifting of the shoulders. "I don't know. When I look at it, I just feel . . . queer. I guess that's the right word. Not in the homosexual sense, you understand. That word's use long predated—"

  "I'm a literate man, Professor, despite my appearances. I understand your meaning."

  "Right. Right, of course."

  "Does it rot the bread you put inside it?"

  "Hmm? No. I mean, I don't know. I don't use it."

  "You don't use the breadbox?"

  "No. It's empty."

  "Why don't you use it?"

  He gave me another one of his effeminate shrugs. I studied the breadbox. It really did look pretty unremarkable, rusty hinges on the bottom, a worn walnut handle on the top. I grabbed the handle and opened the door. A severed head on its side in the box, an old man with white hair and pink cheeks, gaped at me.

  "Hello," the head said.

  I shut the door.

  "Well," I said.

  "What?" Harvinston said. "What did you see?"

  "Something surprising," I said.

  "What?"

  "There's a head in your breadbox."

  "There's a head in my breadbox."

  "That's right. Apparently it's not so empty after all."

  "Oh my," he said.

  "You didn't see it?"

  "No."

  "You've never seen it?"

  "No."

  His emotional state was still flat. I figured maybe he didn't believe me. After all, he only felt queer around it, so maybe this was all an intellectual exercise for him. Maybe he was actually trying to prove to himself he didn't feel what he thought he felt. I opened the bread box again. The severed head was still there. This time the head offered up a sneering smile, half his teeth capped with gold.

  "Hello again," he said. He had a slight accent, even though his English was impeccable — French, maybe?

  "Hello," I said.

  "Who are you talking to?" Harvinston asked.

  "The head," I said.

  "You're talking to the head?"

  "My name is Bernard," the head said, with a fair amount of huffiness, and now I had no doubt he was French. "I assure you, I'm an important man."

  "Nice to meet you, Bernard. I meant no offense."

  "His name's Bernard?" Harvinston said.

  I looked at the professor. "It'd be helpful if you stayed out of this for a moment, okay?"

  He nodded mutely. I turned back to the head. Bernard went on smiling, his eyes a penetrating blue. They were quite arresting, those eyes. I could definitely believe he was an important man.

  "Why are you in there?" I asked.

  "Oh, well, you know."

  "Enlighten me."

  He let out an exasperated sigh. "Sometimes he puts me places. When he can get away with it."

  "Who puts you places?"

  "Why, the one who killed me, of course!"

  "The man who chopped off your head?"

  His eyes blazed with his indignity. "Quoi? Don't be daft! No — my business partner! He poisoned my wife and framed me for the murder. I went to the guillotine and he got full control of our affairs! A terrible, wretched man!"

  "Where is he?"

  "Merde! How should I know? When he can get away with leaving me somewhere, he doesn't tell me where he's going!"

  He started cursing at me in French, so I closed the door on him. He went on for quite a while, his voice muffled, before finally sputtering into silence.

  "Maybe it would be easier just to get rid of it," I said to the professor.

  "The head?" he said.

  "No, the breadbox. Getting rid of the head would be more complicated."

  He nodded, a finger on his thin lips, his dainty forehead furrowed over his scholarly glasses. I felt like Plato in the presence of Socrates, the two of his about to have a philosophical dialog. What the heck was I doing here?

  "I can't do that," he said quietly.

  "Come again?"

  "I want to keep the breadbox."

  "But it's haunted."

  "Yes. Yes, I believe it is." He giggled. "I wasn't so sure before, but now I am."

  "And yet, you don’t want to get rid of it."

  "No."

  "You don't use it at all, but you don't want to get rid of it."

  "Um . . . no."

  "Can I ask why?"

  "Well . . . For personal reasons."

  I sighed. "Mr. Harvinston, you've brought me out here to—"

  "It was the last thing my wife bought."

  This, finally, was something the professor said with emotion—not a lot, not an explosion of grief or rage, but at least a hint of real pain he carried deep in himself. I heard the quaver in his voice. I saw the mist in his eyes. I was beginning to understand what the problem was.

  "I see," I said.

  He swallowed hard, and visibly shook himself, as if his sorrow was as easy to brush off as dust on his tweed jacket. "She was going to fix it up and paint it. Got it at a yard sale. She—she liked little projects like that. One of the reasons we moved out here, to have some acreage, things for her to do. Little projects . . . I hate — I hate to sound so sentimental. It's, um, not in my nature your see. But—"

  "And what's wrong with being sentimental?" I countered.

  "Well, um, I am a man of reason, sir. I—"

  "Without sentiment, what are we? Robots?"

  "Well..."

  "Here's what I think," I said, "and I'm going to be blunt, because that's my nature. You loved your wife very much, but you were never very good at expressing it. In fact, I bet you have a lot regrets about that, and it tears you up inside. But now she's gone and you have to make peace with that, but you can't. You don't know how to deal with emotions head on. And so this breadbox here" —I tapped it on the top, and Bernard grumbled in response – "is acting as a symbol of all that bottled up grief and regret. Every time you look at it, I bet you wish you'd told her how much you'd really loved her."

  He didn't move an inch, but the pained expression on his face said it all. It was if I'd delivered a body blow to his gut. Slowly, with the mechanical awkwardness of an automaton, he removed his glasses and cleaned them with his handkerchief. A clock ticked in the other room. Outside, one of the horses whinnied.

  "Did the ghosts tell you all that?" Harvinston asked softly.

  "No. The only ghost in your house is in your breadbox."

  "Oh. Not even my wife is here?"

  When he looked up, I saw the hope in his eyes. I'd seen that look on people's faces lots of times, and it was one I hated. I hated it because I usually had to disappoint them. They say at least a hundred billion people have lived and died on planet Earth before anyone alive today was even born, and as far as I know, they're all still here. But the dead have their own needs and keep their own schedules and only rarely do they match up with the needs and schedules of the living.

  "Not right now," I said.

  "Oh."

  "But . . . I sense she's been here recently."

  "Oh?"

  I nodded. I didn't know why I said it. It wasn't my style. My policy was to be honest with people, even brutally so, not because I liked inflicting pain, but because I had a hard enough time with trut
h and reality and all the blurred lines of the world I inhabited without trying to figure out the truth and reality that other people needed to inhabit. It was strange that I was making an exception for him, this odd little man who'd so compartmentalized his grief that he wasn't allowing himself to feel anything at all.

  "Listen," I said, "do you want to get rid of the ghost in your breadbox or not?"

  He fixed his gaze on the hardwood floor where the sun shined through the window, motes of dust floating in the air in the shaft of light. "Yes," he whispered, "of course. I can't — I can't go on feeling this way. This queerness, I mean."

  "Then you have to let your wife go."

  He looked up, startled. "What?"

  "I can't guarantee it will work," I said, "but I've seen this before. Objects of great emotional distress are often magnets for ghosts, especially the troubled ones. It's like — I don't know, like all that bottled up grief and regret of yours is carving out a space inside that breadbox which is kind of . . . sticky."

  "Sticky?"

  "Or something. Allows the guy who's carrying around Bernard's head to leave it there."

  "Ah. So what do I do?"

  "Well," I said, "I only have a guess, but I think you need to use the breadbox."

  "What?"

  "Put some bread in it."

  "Some bread in it?"

  He said this as if it was the strangest thing in the world, actually using a breadbox to store bread. "That's right," I said. "Look, you said this was her last project. I bet some part of you doesn't want to use it because that would be like admitting she's gone, that this last project of hers isn't going to happen. Where do you keep your bread now?"

  He was studying the glasses still held in his hand, as if unsure of how they got there, his face awash with confusion.

  "Professor?" I prodded.

  "Oh, um, the fridge," he said.

  I found it on the bottom shelf, half a loaf of organic whole wheat bread, the same kind I often bought for myself. Maybe we had more in common than I thought. I held it out to him by the loose plastic tied off at the end, the loaf spinning slowly beneath my hand in the shaft of sunlight. He stared at the bread, unmoving. The little folds and wrinkles in the plastic, turning as they were, scattered shards of sunlight on the white cabinets and the oak floor. In that moment, the bread didn't seem like bread at all, but some sacred glass menagerie that held us both in its thrall.