Beloved: Memoir of a Phantom

Chapter 3: Flowers for Dierdre

CHAPTER 3

                                    Flowers for Deirdre

I was beginning to get that familiar frightened feeling again. “Okay then, can you elaborate a little for me?” I asked trying to get him to come out of the shell he’d withdrawn into. I was trying to be patient with him, but I was also thinking that this was a pretty big ruse to try to weasel out of our deal.

He shook his head. “I really can’t right now. I’ll tell you some other night alright?”

“Why not?” I snapped. “What are you so afraid of?”

He sighed and looked away. “I’m afraid you won’t believe me, that you will run screaming from me and never return.”

I couldn’t believe he was using that as an excuse against telling me, even though he did look dead serious. I decided to try the method of sympathetic persuasion again.

“Don’t worry!” I cooed “Look at it this way; I just told you I see dead people floating around wherever I go. I thought you wouldn’t believe me and you did, right? I think that no matter how bizarre it is I would be the most likely to understand.”

I gave him a sympathetic smile. He was hesitant a moment, but then reluctantly agreed to tell me his story.

“My full name Is Gabriel Irving St. James, I was born in Dover, England in 1756.

Earlier you asked if those people under the angel were distant relatives, well they were closer than that. They were my Mother, Father and younger sister, Deirdre.”

He said glancing over at me.

 I was dumbfounded. “I…How…wh…That’s not possible!” I said breathlessly. He smirked.

“I knew you would say that. Come with me, there’s something I want to show you.” He got up offering his hand to help me to stand.

I was trying desperately to try to make sense of what he had just said. He was born in 1756!? Goodness that would make him 205 years old! Something was severely wrong with his story. He continued as we walked. “We came to Canada in 1759 and my mother had Deirdre shortly after our arrival. This was a very different town at the time; we were of the second group of immigrants to locate to this area, so there was very little set up. There was only schoolhouse, a few small homes and the little church with its little cemetery that surrounded it.”

I looked back at the chapel we had just walked from “It was that one, wasn’t it?”

He smiled, looking back at the old building as well. “Yes, it was; however all this wasn’t here, It was forest at the time.” He motioned to the monuments that surrounded us.

“We lived a simple life; my father built and operated a general store not far from here and I worked there with him. He operated that store until the day he died himself, but I would say overall we were very happy here. Until the day Deirdre got sick.” He stopped walking for a moment and sighed. I could tell that he was having difficulty retelling his past, perhaps for the first time. “The doctor we had in town had tried everything, yet he had no idea what had made her so sick with a high fever, and  because nobody knew how to cure her she passed late in February of 1773. My father had the Angel statue cast in her likeness atop a boulder further away from the rest of the cemetery so that she could be alone.”  He paused and looked up. I hadn’t realized that we had walked all the way back to the angel statue that held the remains of his family. He stepped up to it and took the dead leaves from the angel’s outstretched palm, gently brushing the tips of the tarnished fingertips with his own. He continued with his tale as he looked down at Deirdre’s plate.

“The likeness was so great that my Mother could not come here without crying for days. The poor woman was heartbroken after losing her little girl, so I did whatever I could to keep her from falling to pieces.” He sat down in front of the plate and gently traced the letters on it with his fingers as he spoke. “I would take a bouquet of fresh flowers to this spot every Friday night for my mother. I thought it was the least I could do for her, and growing and picking those flowers brought her so much joy.”

“It must have been hard.” I said trying my best to sit down beside him without falling over.

 He nodded and moved back a bit to give me more room. He was now in front of the plate I hadn’t brushed off earlier. “It broke my heart to see my parents deteriorate so much that year after Deirdre’s death; my mother became so frail, and my father had taken to the bottle. I found I much liked the escape I found by coming here to the forest; it brought me a form of escape from a stressful home life. I even came around when I wasn’t bringing flowers for Deirdre.” He paused and sighed again. This was really hard for him, and I knew it was only going to get worse from here. He continued to spin his tale.

“That was how it happened, in this very spot on the night of October 8th, 1774. I was taking a bouquet of Dahlias to Deirdre’s grave and was about to start off on my nightly constitutional. No sooner did I place those flowers on the ground, that an attacker materialized from the darkness and grabbed me by the throat!

I was speechless at his words; although I was still uncertain about how much of his story was fact and how much was fiction. All that I knew was that I was riveted.

I waited silently for him to continue.

Colour rose in his chalky complexion as he spoke. He narrowed his eyes.

“I struggled and fought the best that I could, but I was no match for him. All that I remember was falling to the ground trying desperately to claw at the bastard’s ghostly face; when he took my head and bashed it off the rock here.” He pointed to a black streak that permanently stained the rock below Deirdre’s name. I examined it with my light; ancient blood. Why hadn’t I noticed it earlier? The colour reduced from his cheeks; his rage giving way to melancholy. “The last thing I remember was feeling a needle-like pain in my shoulder, then darkness.” He looked up at me.

“There are a few little things I had sensed while I was falling through unconsciousness. Just little snatches of the occurrences around me: The taste of a metallic liquid pouring over my tongue, the sound of a horse, the heat from a fire and finally a voice that stated the time of death.”

I could have sworn I’d misheard. “Dead!” I screeched. “Oh no no no, Please tell me that I didn’t hear that right!” I put my hand to my lips to try to keep myself from screaming or possibly crying. Then he did a strange thing; he started scraping the moss from the fourth plate with his long glassy nails without another word. He then nodded to it. “See for yourself.”

I slowly leaned in closer and pointed my flashlight directly on the words emblazoned on the tarnished copper plaque. It read as follows:

“Gabriel St. James

Born March 22, 1756 deceased October 8, 1774

Beloved son of Irving and Millicent St. James

‘Our sainted son’”

I looked up at him in shock.

“The cause of death was deemed unknown. All they were able to obtain was that I was bled dry from wounds in my shoulder and head. Some said I was stabbed to death, but nobody really knew for sure.” He said with a hint of bitterness in his voice.

 I wanted to scream, but all I managed was a whisper. “No,” I shook my head violently. “No! You are real! Other people know of your existence! You can’t possibly be dead!” I was in hysterics. He gently put his hand on my shoulder as I looked into his luminescent green eyes. “I’m afraid I am dead my dear, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not here as well.” He said reassuringly. I stifled a sob. “So you aren’t a spirit?”

“I am definitely not.”

“Then what are you?” I asked very confused and frightened.

He gave a small chuckle at my ignorance. “Ah, but you didn’t let me finish my story yet, have you?”

“I guess not.” I said sheepishly.

“Then let me tell you about when things got really strange… after I regained consciousness.”