Trail of Tears-Episode one part one

Trail of Tears-Episode one part one(Will Neill) ‘Trail of Tears’
Episode One

Unfinished Business

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, also referred to as Tochō for short, houses the headquarters of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, it is a foreboding sight. Located in Shinjuku the building consists of a complex of three structures, each taking up a city block. The tallest and most prominent of the three is Tokyo Metropolitan Main building No.1, a tower 48 stories tall that splits into two sections at the 33rd floor. The design was supposed to resemble a computer chip while the split towers re-create the likeness of a gothic Cathedral. The governor himself Shintaro Ishihara had personally ordered I should be taken to one of the smaller buildings either side of the towers. I’d overheard the police officer mention the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly structure when he confirmed his destination on the radio with someone I assume was from his head office. He talked about the underground floor level briefly and queried who would be waiting when he arrived. This was as much as I could understand with my limited knowledge of Japanese before he got into what must have been the finer details of my delivery. I was familiar with the area he spoke of because less than a week ago I was standing outside my soon to be destination innocently taking some holiday photographs. It wasn’t a vacation as such, I had a few days to kill before my employer was due to arrive and since he had put me up in the five star Hyatt Regency Hotel I thought I may as well see the sights. The very fact I was in Tokyo made me want to pinch myself, it was one of my dream destinations, but always out of reach on a part time reporters meagre salary. Don’t get me wrong its not that I’m ungrateful for what I have with the New York Gazette, but my farthest most exotic work related location paid for by the paper was a small four day trip to Paris France hoping to do a piece on some short video’s which had went viral on YouTube a few months earlier. The three clips uploaded by a sixteen year old school girl named Sibron Marseille portrayed what seemed to be genuine poltergeist activity at her parent’s apartment. The back story accompanying her fractured English description seemed to suggest everything which had occurred took place only while Sibron’s family were out and she was all alone. For weeks the account she gives is, ‘at first silly things would happen’ she had dubbed over the clip ‘such as a slight movement of a cup from one corner of the table to its other only noticed when I returned to the kitchen, at first I doubted myself. I began to wonder had it been something I’d done without thinking. But then other events began to take place , It was early morning Christmas Eve eight months ago I first heard the voice, it came in a whisper, it asked a question, a simple query, but one which jolted me into a terror.‘’ Are you sleeping?’
Sometime before I can’t be sure when, I’d been disturbed from my dreaming by the sound of my closet door opening, just a short click of the lock leaving its keeper and a slight creak of un-oiled hinges as it settled into an inch or so ajar. I rose then from my pillow and through sleep filled eyes concluded I’d left a window open and that was the cause, a morning breeze had intruded briefly into my room and opened the door I had failed to lock properly after undressing for bed the previous night. The room was bathed in a mellow daybreak sunlight which had found its way in through a crack in my curtains, dust motes floated aimlessly in its sheet of golden rays and I could hear a lonely wood pigeon calling from the Ash tree outside my window. For a few seconds I looked at the door with a puerile anticipation it may continue to open, a chill moved across my shoulders that made me shudder as I remembered the childish tales of monsters lurking in the closet my mother used to tell to me.’
Later in the clip she goes on to say she hears the voice again, a woman she is sure is speaking but not in French. With an accent she does not recognise. Cupboard doors would open and close on their own while she stood making tea. A ball would roll across the living room floor as she watched television, seemly appearing from no where, always when she was alone. She had tried to explain all to her parents who at best thought she was merely daydreaming as young girls do at that age about boys and pop stars. But she explains they didn’t listen, not until she decided to use her phone to document what was taking place. Her first upload lasts no longer than thirty seconds and is a slightly out of focus and shaky recording of a pendant ceiling light in her bedroom swinging to and fro for no apparent reason. In the background audio one can hear her high pitched scream of delight that she has caught something to show the others later, but as the light gets more and more agitated in its movement her initial amusement soon turns to genuine fear as she concludes her spectre is now within the room. Two more of slightly longer duration follow the first, date stamped about a few months apart of inanimate objects like a broom and a coffee pot moving. The last and most chilling is the video she had posted t seemingly showing a brief encounter of a full body materialisation of her ghost which she has nick named Cressida from the tragedy Troilus and Cressida a play by William Shakespeare which depicts calamity and misfortune ending with the death of the noble Trogon Hector and the destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. For she is sure the voice’s she has heard is being spoken in the language now since lost from the bards era.
It begins like the others, blurred and unstable; the camera clicks on just at the moment Sibron sees her closet door creak ajar as she had previously described. It opens enough to allow its small interior light to flash on. Again you can hear Sibron yelp with excitement although it is short lived until a figure of a woman in period dress of the 1600’s materialises just inside her bedroom. You can make out Sibron’s hushed cry for help in her native French and her rushed and heavy breathing as the spectre begins to comb her long shoulder length hair in soft downward motions seemingly staring into an unseen mirror. It finishes when the Lady turns round to Sibron and smiles, only her face is not covered in skin. Just the bony structure of a once beautiful woman stares back with eyeless sockets and lipless teeth. The camera then falls to the floor as Sibron is heard screaming and running from the room.
My Editor thought I was the right person to investigate this phenomenon, not because I currently covered the astrology segment forecasting the reader’s fortunes or miss-fortunes via the star signs section. It was he thought a good idea to introduce a new column that would document people’s ghost experiences around the world and may well help put the gazette on the map. This would then move me from a part time salary onto a full reporter’s wage if it began to sell more. Something I had been pushing for at least a year since I had joined the paper. I was to rewrite the piece for print sent or submitted via the website along with any pictures or videos, making sure the best I could to weed out the fakes. Which I expected most to be just that and when he saw the one on the web from Sibron he insisted I should meet her face to face and maybe record some paranormal activity of my own. At first I was reluctant to get involved and I protested to him I thought it was a bad idea to mess with things we didn’t really understand. But he just looked at me disconcertingly as if to say do you really believe in such nonsense, waiting for me to elaborate as to why I shouldn’t go. But I could not; maybe I should have explained then what took place some years ago at my grandmother’s house. Time had made those memories faded and thin, and I wanted to keep them that way, but ever since I have felt something has always been with me, a sense I could never shake and one I had learned to ignore. If I had been honest he would have looked at me differently I knew that.
Ever since I can remember Mom brought me to visit Grand Mother Charlotte who lived in a large house with old worn furniture that smelled of lavender. It was one afternoon while I was exploring the attic I came across an old man with a short gray beard and gold spectacles placed low on his nose. He was sitting quietly by the window in a hard back chair looking out across the streets below. He saw me as I approached and smiled a crooked grin then ushered me to come closer. ''You can see me?'' he queried softly, smiling and I nodded back like this was normal ''Do you know who I am?'' he asked. I shook my head. '' I like to watch over your grandma'' he said ''Just until we are together again, do you understand Max?'' I nodded again without speaking’ just listening, afterwards I went back downstairs it was then I knew I wasn't going to be like everyone else.
I told grandma what had happened thinking she would say I’d imagined it all, but she placed a hand across her face unexpectedly and looked over at my mother, her eyes were wide and she began to breathe quickly. ‘’ I think he has the gift’’ she said. ‘’Just like your father’’
When I asked what grandma meant all my mother would say was ‘ you are a special little boy’ it was only as I began to grow older did I start to understand. I’d never met my grandpa, only ever seeing him in old black and white photographs that hung on the walls around the house. He’d died about two years before I was born. But I knew the old man sitting in the chair was him. If my experience with the dead had remained in the attic I would have been happy but even though Grandma forbade me to go there again sometimes I secretly went just to sit with him. Later as I got older I began to see others who had passed over, or those who did not want to go into the light. Mostly all they sought was to pass on a message to their loved ones, wanting to let them know they were ok and not to worry. And in the beginning I tried to ignore their apparitions but it was hard to block them out, one little girl in particular the first to fully materialise followed me for two months; we were the same age I guessed so the bond was strong. A beautiful blond child with sea blue eyes dressed in a pink one set sleep suit. She spoke to me as she sat on the end of my bed one night while my Mother slept in the other room, strangely I wasn’t frightened.
‘Daddy had to pick Mom up from the airport’ she began calmly, ‘he couldn’t get Chrissie my regular baby sitter to come over, even though he rang and texted her cell phone she didn’t answer. It was to be my tenth birthday the next day and mom wanted to catch the redeye from Huston to be with me. She was a lawyer doing a big case there for some rich oil tycoon who wanted to get a divorce. ‘’Big money, so it may take a while pumpkin’’ she said to me on the phone. I told her it was ok and not to worry and when the case was over she could come home. But she insisted she would make it for the weekend. Daddy figured it was too expensive to hire a taxi and he didn’t want her getting a bus, so he suggested I ride with him the thirty miles to the airport. It was raining heavy, a storm I think. I was tired and I didn’t want to sit up front so I lay down in the back seat. I must have fallen asleep and when I woke I was standing on the highway looking down at myself on the wet road. My face was bloody and splintered bones stuck out from my neck. I knew I was gone, its funny really there is a peaceful feeling about being dead, and you can see a bright light in the clouds, resembling the moon only bigger, pulsing like a heart. It calls to you just like mom would do when she wanted me to come in from playing, only you know once you enter you can never come back but you some how know you will be happy forever. Dad was standing by the road with a police officer crying and saying he was sorry, I tried to console him but he couldn’t hear or see me. It was then I overheard the police officer when he was talking to the paramedic, ‘’She went straight through the windshield, poor kid, never stood a chance when the truck hit them, the other guy’s dead too’’ That’s when I looked around and saw the truck driver just standing looking up at the white light ‘’Come with me child’’ he beckoned with his hand ‘’ I will look after you’’ but I couldn’t go with him, I wanted to say goodbye to my mom first’’
I asked the girl how she found me; how she knew I could help her. ‘’Your voice, your thoughts were the only ones I could hear in the silence of death’ ’she said, ‘’I was drawn to you like a moth is to a flame, I knew you would be my conduit’’

She told me things only she and her mother would know, and the more she talked the thinner her essence became, slowly fading into nothing until only her soft voice was left floating in the air. She was gone, I was sure, but my problem then became how I pass on to her Mother the message she had left. My only option was to go to Grandma’s, I was certain she would know what to do. At first she tried to discourage me from listening to those who came, recalling how it too (the gift) nearly drove my grandpa insane. ‘Block them out’ she said sternly, the voices, until they leave you alone’
I protested as much as a child could about how I had promised to tell her dad she had forgiven him and he should not worry. But Mother and grandma explained how it might seem coming from a child and all it might do would make things worse. Reluctantly I agreed and eventually after time the memory of the little girl faded along with the voices in the nights. I’d learned just like Grandma had said to block them out as I grew from a child to an adult. Some say when we are born we still have the ability of a sixth sense which fades after time, with our essence still tethered to part of the sprit world from where we existed before we are pushed into the real domain. Something I believe is true for most, but for others like me it’s not so, mine has remained, but like an athlete blocks out the pain of a twisted ankle during an important race I learned to do likewise. Up until I was about nineteen the visitations and voices had stopped. It was only when my Grandmother died the week after my birthday things began to escalate again. Mother had organised that autumn to go and clear out the house so she could put it up for sale. Grandpa had left it to her in his will years before but only on the stipulation that Grandmother could live there until she too passed over. I never thought about it much as we made the drive over to Roosevelt Island in silence from Queens, it would be sad I knew when we got there knowing Grandma wouldn’t be greeting us at the door when we arrived like she always did. And I guess Mom had a feeling I was feeling kinda low since she died so she didn’t really need to say anything other than squeeze my hand occasionally while we drove along. We took the bridge across the East river and that morning was much like the day of Grandma’s funeral, wet and squally with a sharp nip in the air. Weather which Grandma always described as ‘Fresh’ as most October days are in New York. The journey was short, thirty five minutes; traffic was light at mid-day Friday. Some of the houses on route already displayed Halloween paraphernalia on their doors and window for the weekend celebrations of the short holiday and a night of trick or treat. I could already feel an air of tenseness in the car as we approached.
Before the area was named Roosevelt it was called Blackwell Island after Mary Manningham Blackwell, Captain Manning’s stepdaughter, Manning was an English man who had lived their briefly in the 1700’s after surrendering to the Dutch at the end of the Anglo Dutch wars. But before that it belonged to a tribe of Native Americans who sold it to a man by the name of Wouter Van Twiller in 1697. Who named it ‘Hogs Island’ raising rumours for years some of the houses were built on scared Indian burial grounds. Could it be possible that’s why I felt so much more focused while I was there? Grandpa had, according to mom named the family home Athenodorus after the roman man who rented a haunted house. It was his way of having a little fun with the mail service I guess, Mom used to laugh about it. The story goes the philosopher hears of a house to be rented cheaply but the reason its inexpensive is because everyone is afraid of the ghost who haunts it. Athenodorus rents the house and later that night, hears the rattling of chains and wakes to find a man in his room who motions he should rise and come with him. Athenodorus follows the ghost to a spot in the courtyard of the house where the spirit suddenly vanishes. The next day Athenodorus has the city magistrate dig up said spot where they find the remains of a man entwined with chains. He makes sure the body is re- buried with all the proper rites, and the house is no longer haunted. This story is typical in which a spirit appears to seek redress for a wrong. The improper burial of the dead - or lack of any grave- was considered the prime reason for the return of a spirit from the afterlife even above a spirit's desire to have their death avenged. Grandpa wasn’t looking for revenge when I met him as a boy, like him most who linger have some sort of unfinished business.
To say I was apprehensive about returning so soon after her internment would be an understatement. And when we got out of the car the house seemed to rise up out off the ground like a monstrous red brick tower back lit by an angry sky filled with rain that strangled the sun. Its two bay windows sat like malevolent eyes staring either side of its door and steps which seemed frozen in a silent scream waited to eat me if I dared get close. But I wasn’t that young boy anymore and if Grandma was still there then she would have unfinished business and it would be up to me to find out what it was. I wasn’t afraid, I was ready.
Mom came round and stood beside on the sidewalk, and for a moment we just held hands and stared up at the house. Moving clouds above the roof gave the illusion it was traveling like an ancient spaceship looking for a lost planet at the speed of light. The sight of which made me feel dizzy. And for an instance I struggled to stay up right but Mom caught my hand and steadied my feet until I was ok, then ushered me up and inside. I knew she was there the moment I stepped in; Grandma in life was formidable woman, large in stature and a personality to match. She never suffered fools gladly so I wasn’t surprised to feel her presence as strong as I did. I made as excuse to mom, pretending I needed the bathroom and would she mind lifting in some of the fold up storage boxes from the trunk. Spinning a white lie as soon as I had used the head I would come and help. I was certain it would be unlikely she would see Grandma but I couldn’t be sure.
The landing felt cold raising gooseflesh on my arms and transforming my breath into nervous snorts of vapor. Underneath my feet I could hear the familiar floorboards of the short passage which led to Grandma’s room creak under my weight. The sound immediately transported me back to a time when I spent the weekends with her sleeping in the small box room opposite hers. Watching the movement of her shadowy feet walking past my door as she went to bed by the small sliver of light blanching in from under it as I lay in the dark.
However many times I heard Grandma tidying in the kitchen below yet I still saw and heard footsteps silently crossing the hallway. Before I opened the door I could smell her perfume, it was pungently unique, a mixture of sweet rose and apple blossom a concoction she had been given by Grandpa Years before. A conversant thought entered my head as I stopped my hand above the door handle and the feeling of nervous excitement in my stomach reminded me of the trip to Paris and my first meeting with Sibron Marseille. I had called her shortly after landing at Charles De Gaulle Airport and arranged to meet both her and her parents at a small coffee bar close to their apartment called the Café des 2 Moulins, made famous by Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s instant classic film Amelie which used it as the heroine’s place of employment. Ten years after the films release tourists still flock to it on their pilgrimage of Amelie Montmartre. But now it had gone back to being a comfy neighborhood café. The scatter of tables and bright red chairs on the sloping pavement would be a perfect vantage point to observe the lively street market Sibron had described during our first emails to arrange the trip. Thankfully by the time I had got organized Sibron’s parents were more amenable to the papers involvement even though I still detected an air of skepticism from them about the whole poltergeist thing. They still felt it was the tomfooleries of a young adolescent girl looking for attention via a social media site they didn’t understand. Maybe it was the thousand Francs the paper offered for the interview that unclouded their cynicism and lubricated the carriage wheels of disbursement. Finally letting me come to their home to either debunk a childish prank or indeed find what I hoped-an apparition which I could prove existed. With the papers backing the hits would be of biblical proportion; pushing subscribers possibly into the millions almost ensuring a generous payday for them. My first job was to get Sibron’s parents to sign over all rights to any footage they still had and put in place the caveats that went with the legal document, meaning any further activity was now owned by the paper. Sort of like a prenuptial arrangement. Deep down I felt a bit contrived I was telling them how much interest could be generated by having me underpin Sibron’s footage while still knowing what I was doing was more beneficial to me than them. Knowing full well the thousand francs would probably be all they would ever get.
Sibron was a typical teenager like most across the globe, social media such as Facebook and Tinder had shrunk the world. News was instantaneous and people could talk to each other face to face via Skype. Her phone never left her hand the whole time we tried to converse in her shattered English. She was small for her age, maybe no more than five feet in her blue canvas sneakers. Her hair was the color of a summer’s sunset, mellow orange streaks veined through a mane of honey blond locks. It was tied back into a woven plait and fastened with a bauble of plastic pink dice. Over her delicate white ankle long cheesecloth gipsy dress she wore a faded denim jacket. Neither of her parents spoke English, but Sibron masterfully translated every word to them as we went through what would happen next. Mr. Marseille was a bus driver for the RATP and her Mom a nurse at the Hospital Lariboisière explaining because of their work shifts Sibron was often alone at home late into the evening. Sibron resembled her Mother in stature and manner, quiet and unassuming. Mr. Marseille however was more astute, heavier in physique and less willing to believe this was maybe a genuine haunting, still convinced it was nothing more than a childish hoax. And more fool me for going along with it.
In order to sway his feelings I was serious I produced my very expensive Canon XA10 digital camcorder from my shoulder bag. The same one I still have with me now in the back of this police car. It was a loaner (sort of) for the trip from one of the other reporters who worked freelance for the Gazette. A fellow named Tobias Banks, strange guy, chased around after film stars who would be in New York making movies or T.V action crime shows like ‘Castle’ or ‘Sex in the City’ staring Sarah Jessica Parker, and Nathan Fillion as author come detective Richard Castle.
He always seemed to be looking for that perfect shot, a gangly little man in dirty denim jeans and green parker jacket, who in my mind could have done with eating more than he smoked. It was while I was discussing the trip to Paris with my editor in his office he burst in breathless and sweating. His agitation was nearly contagious and made me feel if we didn’t let him speak he would die of heart failure.
‘’Jesus Christ spit it out Toby’’ Tony said. ‘’Can’t you see Max and I are having a meeting’’
‘’I’m sorry Mr. Harlow, Max’’ he nodded at us both ‘’But the thing is-I, I’
‘’Are you on drugs?’’ Tony asked him in his broad New York twang.
‘’No sir’’
‘’Then stop your fucking shaking you’re making me nervous for Christ sake’’
I felt sorry for the poor guy, but I had to hide a snigger behind my hand.
‘’I know that Max is doing the Paris gig’’ he said ‘’And I was kinda wondering if I could tag along, maybe do the pictures or whatever, it could be good for me. And the paper of course’’
Tony turned to me and sucked in air, I got the feeling he didn’t think his budget could run to the two of us, but he knew Toby was one hell of a photographer, drunk or sober. Going by the evidence that was all around his walls in 8x10 frames of his top headline news spreads over the last ten years. And each picture inset was down to Toby. I shrugged my shoulders and played the neutral card; if Toby was going to fuck this up in someway then it wasn’t going to be down to me. ‘’Are you clean’’ Tony asked him finally.
‘’Yeah’’Toby croaked ‘’Cross my heart’’ he said making a crucifix silently on his chest. I noticed he never threw in the ‘hope to die’ ending however, maybe a Freudian slip I pondered later. Cause that’s just what the shit happened. Was he subconsciously aware of his impending demise from shooting up two nights later? If he did he never said when he turned up standing at the end of my bed at about four thirty in the morning. His face was gray and semitransparent he looked frightened like a child would be in the dark. Mostly the sprits I see are just as solid as you or I if it hasn’t been long since they passed over, but I think in Toby’s case in a way he had died a long time ago from his crack habit. He just didn’t know it. His only unfinished business he told me was he wanted to do the Paris gig and simply got high on the advance he had talked Tony into giving him on the back of it. He felt bad about all he had done in his life and wanted me to have the only thing he owned of any value, his camera.
I promised him I would make sure and look after it, he told me where it was kept in his apartment and where the key to the door was stashed. I swore I would make sure he had a good send off. He cried a bit when I said that and I couldn’t think if he ever mentioned having friends or family in all the time I knew him. Moments later he faded away like a morning mist.
I found his body later sprawled on the bed, and then I called the police. But I lied when I said he had phoned me sounding depressed. It was much easier that way. The needle was still in his arm; god only knows what shit was in it.

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