The Headless Women

— It wasn’t a dark and stormy night; it would have been better if it had been. Then there might have been some warning-flashes of lightning, peals of thunder, something in the way of ominous background music, some prelude to the tale that was about to unfold.

But it was only an empty, late Sunday afternoon. You know the kind. Haze hung over the city. Like an unwelcome house guest who’s going to linger forever. The yellow light was slowly turning to that sad, end-of-day orange. It was the kind of Sunday you can’t wait to be over. But it hangs around till all you want is for darkness to come and end it, like a period at the end of a sentence.

To top it off, a desk cluttered with last week’s detritus waited at the office, just where I’d left it before giving up for the weekend. The stray form, the odd piece of business correspondence,the frayed reference book, the now outdated memo, the angry letter or two from an irate reader . . . all needed to be taken care of, cleared away, or just filed under Miscellaneous/Forgotten. It was no big job, just a tedious one, but it’d have to be done this evening if Monday morning was going to be a clean start.

I stopped at the diner for a cup of coffee, my substitute for enthusiasm. It being Sunday, the short-order cook would be Lonesome Jack, who always took this solitary shift. There was only one other customer in the place. I didn’t catch his name, mainly because he never threw it. We didn’t have to be introduced. Sitting there at the end of the counter in his slightly rumpled suit, his J.C. Penny tie askew, looking into vacant space, he was just some other guy with nowhere in particular to go, and in no hurry to get there.

He wasn’t of any particular interest. I could have been looking in the mirror. Then I noticed the slight bulge in his breast pocket and, this not being Chicago, realized it was only a flask. Mainly from the way he fingered it from time to time, like false assurance. When he lifted his coffee cup, his hand shook. And you realized his favorite recreational drug was not caffeine. He gave me the obilgatory nod, then a weak trembly smile, like he was apologizing.

“I’m not always like this,” he said to no one in particular. “Just this time of year. When it’s almost Halloween and I start remembering. And know it’ll all come back.”

“What’ll come back?” I made the mistake of asking.

He turned to face me. “The ghosts,” he said. “Oh, I know you don’t believe me. I don’t halfway believe myself. I don’t believe in ’em at all the rest of the year. Just now, just this last week of October. I certainly didn’t believe in ’em when I took the dare. But I was young and foolish-or do I repeat myself? I just did it on a lark. I never realized they would come back to haunt me every year. Right on schedule. Like an annual corporate report or something. I was quite a young sport back then-you don’t hear that word, sport, any more, do you? Times and words change. But not foolishness.

“You know the Old State House? It’s not far from here. My buddies said I wouldn’t dare spend the night there. It was also the old state medical school, you know, long ago. At least one wing of it, the East Wing, was. Complete with medical experiments. And cadavers. Till it got moved out. But that’s all history, and what’s history to the young? I’d show ’em. It’d make a good story, give me something to talk about. I didn’t realize it would give me something to dream about. For the rest of my life.

“It was simple enough to get locked in back then; nobody bothered with motion detectors and TV cameras and all that. You couldn’t get away with it now. I figured all I had to do was find a dark corner till the guard finished his final rounds. I could even hear the key turn in the lock when he left. Then it was just me and the portraits of old governors. It would be fun. And it was-at first. It was pretty neat for a kid who’d never had Arkansas history. You couldn’t turn around a corner without learning something. The exhibits were interesting, the period rooms comfortable. Beats a motel any time. I remember I was just nodding off in the DAR room when I heard it.’’

Then he fell silent. With the light ebbing outside, he said no more. Not for a minute. He reached for his breast pocket, then thought better of it. And plunged ahead:

“At first I thought it was just the floorboards creaking, the way they will in an old building. It must have been near midnight, which didn’t help. Not that I was superstitious, at least not then, but the room grew cramped, uncomfortable and the noises louder, as if approaching from the East Wing. I told myself it was just the wind, but I knew I had to get out of the . . . room. Fast.

“One corridor led to another, one staircase to another as I threaded my way past the gubernatorial portraits. Their eyes began to get to follow me, Elisha Baxter’s especially, with Joseph Brooks creeping up on him, and I was soon hurrying, then running to get away from them. The twists and turns of the old halls got all jumbled together as I stumbled from room to room, up and down staircases, who knows where? All I wanted to do was get away.

“I have a vivid memory of being in a great chamber at onepoint. Oil lamps flickered on rows of desks, and then-strangest thing-there came the sweet scent of fresh-cut roses. Could it have been the bouquet Mrs. Trapnell flung down from the balcony at the feet of Isaac Murphy, the lone voice for the Union at the secession convention so long ago? He was the one member of that assembly who, no matter how hard-pressed, would not join the unanimous vote to tear the country apart. A pool of blood stained part of the floor, whether from some antique duel or a portent of the terrible civil war to come, I didn’t stay to wonder. The wild voices of now forgotten orators rose ever higher around me . . . and I fled.

“I had no idea where I was in those labyrinthine halls when, to my vast relief, I saw a welcoming glow around a corner. Light at last. Maybe it was an exit.

“It wasn’t.’’ The light was finally gone outside. The diner had taken on a new starkness, a flourescent glow. Each cup and plate cast a shadow. The jukebox glowered. My new acquaintance seemed to take on a whole, otherworldly countenance. I looked around the diner but we were alone. It was just us, him and me. No one came, no one left. He fingered a knife someone had left on the counter.

“It wasn’t an exit.” he continued. “There was no exit. It was a small chamber I’d missed before. And as I turned a corner, there they were. All in a row. Illuminated by a ghostly light. As if they’d been waiting for me. Like women at a grand ball lined up for their entrance, each elegantly costumed in a formal gown of her time. One ball gown was all-white and brocaded, like a wedding dress, another deep funereal black, as if for mourning. It would have been a fine sight, an educational exhibit of inaugural gowns, except for one thing. Except for one thing. None of them had heads.

“They found me in the morning, on the floor. Jibbering like someone who’d once been sane. After the rest cure, they said I’d be all right. And I am, I am. I know I am. Except on Halloween, every Halloween, when I see them again, the headless women, swaying in the darkness to a tinny old dance tune, waltzing out of the past, slowly approaching, with my name on their dance card.”

Suddenly it was cold in the diner. And silent.

The swinging door to the back opened with a creak.

And there was . . . Lonesome Jack, who’d been in the kitchen working on his accounts. “Cuppa joe?” he asked, knowing my Sunday night routine. “Yeah,” I murmured when my voice came back. “And maybe my friend would like another . . . .” But when I turned around, the man was gone.

“What friend?” asked Jack, a concerned look on his face. “You’re the only customer we’ve had all afternoon.” -

Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 10/27/2010

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