From the upcoming book, “Haunted Heirlooms: Four Antique Dealers Reveal Their Stories” (C) 2022 Anna Maria Manalo. To be released this summer by Beyond The Fray Publishing. Excerpts in this site may not be reprinted in any magazine or blog without written permission from the author.
Here’s the next installment for more suspense! (Remember to read the previous chapter if you need to catch up with Sam’s voyage into madness…)
Chapter 5
I’m exhausted. I’m seeing things. I’m burying it again. Not tonight, but come morning. No way in hell’s bells am I going out there. Especially alone. Alone or with someone like Dad’s neighbor Brock or Bill or Bob with the ever filthy undershirt – he would just spread the news that the damn thing is that. Damned.
So, Sam, what were you doing in your parents’ backyard digging at ten at night?
Can’t it wait until morning?
Why in such a hurry?
Maybe some pancakes first with grade B maple syrup from Jeannie’s with the blue and white striped awning? Just checking. The lights were on, Sam.
So morning it is, I will rebury it and sprinkle it with some holy water Alice gave me. Don’t worry, Brock or Bill or Bob, I’m not gossip fodder and keep those pigs of yours outta my yard. My parents’ yard, rather. You with the filthy undershirt. Truly, it looked like it could walk.
Focus. Maybe that’s what it was. I forgot to put holy water on top of it before I buried it. Let me try that.
Alice is good that way. So resourceful, my Alice, thinking of the holy water. She would know as she’s the good Roman Catholic that raised our children. Me, what do I know? I am a Moslem, though not practicing as much as when my birth parents were alive. That would have made me five. Barely five, when they fled and who knows how they ended up in Maine and I got left behind. Can’t be a practicing Moslem when you’re five. Bad joke. My “bio dad” and “bio mom”, as my older son would say if he were with me. Glad he’s not here tonight. I don’t want to scare him crapless. Here, son. Take a look at this picture your daddy’s friend bought for a song… it’s going to fetch a hefty price if you can LOOK AT IT before we resell it. No way. DON’T LOOK. I love you, son.
I loved it – the business of antiques – Then we get stuff like THIS? – A lithograph, they call it.
Li-tho-graph.
Mom and dad didn’t object when I dated and became engaged to Alice even though they were Episcophalians and Alice was an Italian Roman Catholic. What if Alice had been Moslem? I wondered about that. Is that why Dan and Mel sabotaged the friendship? Because I’m Arabic? Strange thoughts began coursing through my mind and I decided the isolation with the print was playing games with my mental health. I’m glad natural siblings came after me. Jerry and Siobhan, I love you. I’d be lost without you. They anchored me and let me know I had the right parents pick me. DON’T LOOK at the print, Jerry and Siobhan. Please.
There we go again with my strange thoughts.
Focus.
I have to try to sleep. Good sleep, unlike last night with the sound of mice under the parental summer house: the unfinished basement which I dreaded even as a hefty teen. Didn’t know there were critters down there. Pay the rent, critters. Where the hell am I going to put this thing – this li-tho-graph? Maybe the mice can eat it? Put some food on it. Maybe a nice chunk of cheddar. No government cheese for these mice. Hey, that’s an idea. The mice can live in the house if they eat this lithograph. Pay the rent, critters. EAT this print.
Focus, you fuck. I look at it again, and now the couple with no eyes have changed. They looked tanned like me. As a matter of fact, their hair changed in color too. Their hairs are now a deep dark brown, almost black. The woman is wearing a headscarf. There’s a name for that. It just dawned on me that I’d never been there. Syria. Damascus, Syria. Way before Aleppo came on the map. There was unrest before Aleppo. The houses: made of clay and mud and the mosaics that’s so stunningly detailed on the walls that curve to the ceilings of the mosques. I hear it’s beautiful. Water fountains, dromedaries…
Dates!
Creepy. What just happened?
The background changed right before my eyes. That’s no castle now. It’s like the buildings you see in Morocco. With the minarets. Wait, no. It can’t be. The couple in the foreground is definitely Arabic. What happened to the girl in the swing? Okay, cool it, Sam the man. Get yourself a cheap dinner and relax, ex lax. Just get one foot in front of the other on the carpet stained with green grass… and go… walk out. Don’t look at the li-tho-graph. Run. I’m so confused.
