Ghosts in the Hedgerow

My first flash fiction piece

I hope you enjoy reading this short piece - pure entertainment with a hint of the supernatural…or is it about the supernatural, manipulation, and guilt!?

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“I’m telling you Darrell; I saw something over there again. It was too floaty to be human. I think it was a ghost.”

“Amber, we’ve been through this a few times now.”

Both sighed.

“Why didn’t you wake me up when you saw it? I’ll tell you why – you were really asleep and seeing a dream ghost.”

“I tried to wake you without scaring it away…it’s so small and waivers like it’s afraid. Last night I whispered your name over and over, shook your shoulder, and even thumped you on the head a couple of times. Hard. It’s impossible to wake you up.”

Amber was frustrated, but Darell was mad - sick and tired mad. He felt his head for any tender spots from the supposed thumping but found none.

“So, you truly believe there’s a ghost coming and going from the hedgerow?”

Darrell hated that their bedroom window looked directly over into John and Sandy’s house. The hedgerow was too sparse to block the view – so easy for Amber to spy and pry.

“Yes, she…” Amber began.

“She?! So now, it’s a she?”

“Each time I see her, she comes closer…like she’s trying to tell me something, something I may already know…I wonder if the Krumreich’s have had any sightings.”

“Hmm, they don’t seem like whack jobs to me.”

This was the perfect way to put an end to a stupid conversation, Darrell smiled to himself as Amber tightened her jaw and left the room.

Darrell stretched lazily as his thoughts drifted to his lover. He hadn’t seen or heard from her in over a week and he missed…a beautiful dream presented itself and he easily entered it.

Amber was busy in the kitchen when she heard the first of his lazy snores. She gritted her teeth - the bastard! She walked back into the bedroom, glared at his sleeping form and bumped her whole body into the side of the bed several times, thumping him again on the head for good measure.

“What, what?” Blurry eyed, and reluctant to fully awaken, Darrel felt her standing over him.

In a monotone voice with a deadpan face, Amber said, “I want you to go over there and talk to the Krumreich’s, Darrell. Now.”

When she got like this, there was no way around whatever her demand happened to be. Resigned to the inevitable, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He began to plan how to conduct his bizarre visit to ask his neighbor about ghost sightings in the hedgerow.

It was 9:30 on a Sunday, not too early. All Darrell had to do was walk over, knock on the door and ask to talk with John – alone; a man-to-man would settle this. He already knew how he would frame it – his crazy wife (everyone knew Amber was cuckoo) thought she saw someone, or something, up to no good lurking around the hedgerow. John would laugh, they would talk a few moments then he would return home. After a heart-to-heart with Amber, she would have to agree to ramp up her counseling sessions and maybe even get more powerful meds – hyper-vigilant Amber would become zombie Amber and Darrell’s life would improve immensely.  

                                       *              *              *              *

While standing on Krumreich’s porch, he could see Amber’s pale face in the window watching him. He waved and smiled as he cursed her under his breath.

After the third round of knocking, Darrell was hesitant to continue; they either weren’t home or were avoiding answering their door. He turned to leave, when from the corner of his eye he caught a quick darting movement near the sparce hedgerow between their houses.

“Who’s there?”

The furtive figure looked slight and frail...and even wavery. He walked toward the hedge row and glanced at his house. Amber was standing in her favorite window as always, but she wore a strange expression.

Another furtive movement.

“Who’s there?!”

Suddenly, Darrell felt a sharp pain across the back of his head, then everything folded slowly behind a deep curtain of darkness.

The ambulance was too late to save Darrell, and way past being able to save Sandy whose week-old body was found buried in the hedgerow. The police hand cuffed a disheveled, skinny version of John who seemed to have aged twenty years in the last week.

Amber retreated to her house amid all the expressions of sympathy, long hugs, and after completing a short interview with the investigating officer.

Poor John. He had just found out about the affair a week ago – Amber had known for years. She didn’t blame John – it was a crime of passion, and Darrell had presented his guilty self at just the right moment for a thump on the head far more effective than any Amber had ever given him.

From her catbird seat at the window, she had witnessed everything; the sneaky lovers’ trysts over the years and John’s big fight with Sandy that resulted in the makeshift crypt in the hedgerow. Over the past week, she observed the strange specter that John had become, circling the house with his little ballpeen hammer, staring daggers toward his unneighborly neighbor, trying to get up the nerve to confront Darrell.

But she did wonder about why Darrell walked over to the hedgerow as John stalked him from behind. It was though something drew his attention….it was as though he saw a ghost.

Amber quit her meds a year ago when she took out the life insurance policy on Darrell. She did not believe in ghosts but…

A shudder went through her. Perhaps in a few days, she would call her realtor, and put the place up for sale. It seemed best to find a new place far, far away…just in case there really was a ghost, or now maybe even two, in the hedgerow.