Bri Kupfer

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This story was written as an assignment for my English 116 class at UNO in 1995. The original, rather bland first draft was then re-vamped, checked, and polished, and sent out to my friends over the internet on All Hallow's Eve. That is the version that follows. This document was originally untitled, and the subtitle was my first choice for a title. Those who know the story of the 137CW will find the new, main title quite appropriate. BRK

Silence. The large empty corridor stands, as if waiting. All the lights in the hall had burned out, long ago. The moonlight seeping through the windows throws strange shadows throughout the hall.

A board creaks, sounding like a freight train in the silence.

J.R. stops in his tracks, his heart very suddenly in his throat. He looks down and laughs nervously, realizing he had made the sound.

A little jumpy, aren't we? He thinks to himself as he continues ascending the stairs, towards the forlorn corridor above.

J.R. takes his eyes off the stairs for an instant as he tries to peer into the corridor.

As his foot comes down on the next stair, the rotted wood gives way, and he drops until his shoulders are wedged in the stairway.

J.R. starts to struggle as the rotted wood sends slivers into his back. The blood slowly starts to flow. His struggles only make the wood penetrate deeper. Therefore, he decides to stop, as the pain slowly erodes into his subconscious.

"Great, now what?" He grumbles aloud as his feet dangle in the air below him.

As if in reply, the stair finishes it's crumpling routine and J.R. is suddenly in freefall. He drops to the floor amidst a shower of sawdust and splinters. With a bone-jarring "crunch", J.R. re-encounters the main floor of the building, groaning as the breath is knocked out of him.

Darkness surrounds him while it starts slowly filling his mind. The pain of his injuries slowly, gratefully, fades, as does the light from his-slate grey eyes.

* * *

J.R. slowly, cautiously, and laboriously opens his eyes, only to find he is peering into those of another, eyes that speak of immeasurable and unlifting sorrow.

The slightly luminescent blue orbs before him hold his full attention as he slowly regains consciousness. J.R. could swear that the eyes, which bear the colors of the most pure Caribbean waters, look very familiar, like he has known them all his life, yet he cannot place them.

A light, airy touch caresses his forehead, where a large lump has formed as a result of it's impact with the floor. J.R. notices his headache slowly fade.

J.R. pulls back his gaze, so that he can see the face around the eyes. He is held in awe by what he sees. The slightly high-set cheekbones, the finely chiseled jaw, the full lips, the aquiline nose. All fit together to form a face Michelangelo would have been hard pressed to match. Framing the statuesque face was a cascading flow of auburn, soft as a down filled pillow.

Looking closely at the face, framed so elegantly by the shoulder-length sea of brown, J.R. is more convinced than ever that he knows this woman.

As J.R.'s gaze travels over her, he notices that her finely toned athletic shape is covered by a white dress, that for some strange reason reminds J.R. strongly of the steam made by a nice hot coffee on a cold winter's day.

In the corner of the room, an ancient grandfather clock strikes twice.

Without shifting his gaze, J.R. looks at it for a second, then returns his focus to the mysteriously familiar vapour-clad beauty that is before him. Something nags at an outer corner of his mind, but J.R. pushes the thought away. He is now positive of who the woman before him is, though they have never truly known one another.

J.R. quickly rises, feeling the world twirl around him as he does so.

"I'll never get used to that." he mumbles as he concentrates to overcome the vertigo induced by standing too fast.

He vaguely remembers his father describing the sensation to his uncle, for whom J.R. was named.

J.R.'s uncle had tossed his curly blond locks from one shoulder to the other in a physical representation of his confusion.

Both J.R.'s father and his uncle had been killed shortly after that conversation, while trying to protect the President. J.R. remembered watching the White House burn on T.V. It had happened on his seventh birthday. Happy Birthday, little one...the world had seemed to say.

With a shake of his head, he brings himself back to the present. As he rubs his salt-and-pepper beard, which matches the color of his long hair, he notices the woman, waiting for him. He sighs as he realizes she is at the top of the stairs.

J.R. grabs his cane, a meticulously carved five-foot length of oak, as he passes the foot of the stairs, where he had left it. He leans on it as he slowly starts up the stairs for a second time.

His vision again starts to swim as he climbs the stairs. J.R. leans heavily against the wall and sinks to a seated position on the stairs.

The woman is once again beside him, her expressive blue eyes filled with concern, and the beginnings of tears.

J.R. smiles to reassure her. "I'm alright...my old friend gravity just won't give up." He quips.

A wispy smile fleetingly touches her face, and the blue eyes faintly glitter with subdued amusement. It had been too long since the last time the woman had smiled, she had forgotten how.

However, the brief smile that did cross her face was enough to light up the room. J.R. once again had that feeling of insurmountable awe, and finally understood what his father, in his memoirs, had meant about the power of a woman's smile, particularly, the woman's smile.

There had been a woman, his father had written, that had the power to light up a room by walking into it, to brighten the gloomiest day with her laugh, and to melt the coldest of hearts with her smile. His father had dearly loved that woman. J.R. now had a slight sense of the same feeling. He felt that much closer to the man that greed and stupidity had ripped from him. He also felt the sorrow of never having loved.

Outside, a wolf howls in the cool air of winter. J.R. slowly stands and haltingly makes his way across the large room to the nearest window. He looks around to see that he is in what used to be a bedroom, the dividing wall between it and the living room having crumbled some years ago.

As he approaches the window, he realizes he will have to stand at the far right edge of it to see, as a bullet hole would obscure his vision on the left. He looks out the upper pane onto the sleeping town of Braemar, it's lights faintly glowing off in the distance. J.R. looks for some minutes out at the Tennessee countryside, having to shift slightly to see around a large pine in the yard.

He shifts his gaze back to the window, focusing on the bullet hole. After staring at the hole for a while, and sighting a trajectory from it to the pine, he slowly and critically gazes around the room, his sorrow-filled gaze slowly coming to rest on the woman, who had been looking out the window from behind him.

"This is the room where it happened, isn't it?" He asks her.

She slowly nods. As she does so, J.R. notices her unconsciously start to rub her right wrist. With the confirmation before him, an anger from time eternal springs up within J.R. He slowly squelches it, realizing it can do him no good. What had happened, had happened, long, long ago. J.R. had been only six weeks old at the time, visiting his aunt and uncle, the aunt who would later die as President, and her husband, a bomber pilot. The more he thought about it, that fire had claimed his whole family. Almost.

"Dad always said that this is where he knew for certain his life had ended." J.R. mumbles, a tear welling to his eye. The woman looks at the floor and gracefully moves out of the room. At the spot where the doorway to the bedroom once had been, she turns and motions to J.R.

With one last long and painful look around the bedroom, J.R. turns and clumps across the main room after her. Suddenly, as a moonbeam comes through the window, J.R. slows, then stops in his tracks, staring at a framed photo above what used to be the fireplace. He carefully reaches out and pulls the picture off the wall, then, after glimpsing it fleetingly, clutches it to his chest. The tears start flowing as he once again sinks to the floor. The woman comes across the room and holds him in an embrace.

"It took me my whole life," J.R. sobs, "but I finally found you."

She buries his head in her chest and rocks him as he weeps. There they stay for a while, supporting each other, being comforted by one another's nearness.

As the clock strikes three, the woman stands up, her beauty restored almost to what it had been when she first was truly loved. She motions to J.R. to follow.

J.R. looks up and nods, slowly. The picture slides from numb fingers to gently land beside him on the floor.

The moonlight that had originally brought J.R.'s attention to the picture once again illuminates it. J.R.'s father and the mysteriously beautiful woman, her eyes sparkling, smile up at him, she holding a tiny babe in her arms, he holding her. J.R.'s namesake had taken the photo the day of J.R.'s birth, as evidenced by the Mustang in the background.

J.R. looks up the stairs of the old house, where the woman looks to him questioningly. The house suddenly looks different, younger, as it may have on the day the photo was taken. The woman, whom his father had called Aubree in his journal, motioned again.

J.R. looks at her and smiles.

"Yes, Mama, I'm coming. I'm home." He says.

The wispy form smiles. Their pain was over.

* * *

The cruiser sits outside the ruined house on the hill, it's lights flashing. The cruiser, belonging to the Breamar police, had followed an old man's trail, after the hotel manager where he had been staying became worried when he did not return.

The doctor walks out the front door, telling the officer that the man had died of acute happiness. The officer shakes his head.

"How could anyone find happiness in such a decrepit building?" he muses.

As the mortician arrives, the old man's body is brought out of the house and placed in the hearse.

"I've heard this house is haunted." the officer mumbles to the mortician. "I wonder who used to live here?" He finishes.

The mortician looks at the officer. "An old retired General, big hero from The War, and his wife, an actress. If I remember right, she was brutally murdered some years ago. They were friends of the President that burned in office. He died trying to stop the fire. Seems to me she died a few years before that. People say you can still hear her cries when the train goes by in the valley."

The officer shakes his head again as he climbs into his cruiser and heads back to town.

Aubree's ghost would cry no more....