In my comedy/sci-fi series, cosmic mountain bike rider Jack Miller finds himself in some weird and wonderful—and dangerous—worlds through the portals along the Ultimate Bike Path. This holds true in the latest entry, The Magic of the Bike Path (A Jack Miller Senior Moment: Book Six). He finds himself in a devastated inner-city neighborhood, one that he soon learns is inhabited by ghosts as an unexpected voice calls out to him. Here is the scene:
“Hello mister, is it all right if I talk to you?”
The high-pitched voice, which came from a little girl of about ten, nearly caused the usual accident, unexpected as it was. She sat on a wooden crate—the kind in which they used to deliver milk bottles to people’s doors back when the deer and the antelope played—about ten feet off the curb, directly in front of me. The redheaded kid wore what looked like a parochial school outfit, saddle shoes and all. Her presence created two genuine WTF moments.
WTF Moment #1: she hadn’t been there when I’d sat down less than a minute ago.
WTF Moment #2: I could see right through her!
“Hey mister, didn’t you hear me?” she asked.
Yeah, I was tongue-tied, but managed to croak, “Uh, sure, what did you want to talk about?”
The girl and the crate floated—I swear!—toward me, stopping practically at my feet. She stood and extended a spectral hand, which creeped me out. It went through my wrist and was immediately withdrawn.
“You’re real!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a real person here before. Everyone else is like me!”
“Then there are other gho— uh, others here?” Come on, Jack-o.
“Yes, a lot. Did you come to take me to my parents?”
I shook my head. “Aren’t your parents here, in this place?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what this place is.” She seemed on the verge of tears. “Please, mister, can I tell you my story?”
Well, why not? “Call me Jack. Sure, go ahead.”
She sat down on the crate again. “Thank you, Mister Jack. My name is Amy. I was with Mommy and Daddy in the car, going home from an assembly at school. Daddy was driving. He’s a very good driver. I was in the back seat, reading a book. The Hobbit. Did you ever hear of it?”
I smiled. “Sure did, Amy. One of my favorites.”
“I was at the part where they all escaped from the elves and floated down the river in barrels. It was very exciting, and I said wow pretty loud, and I must’ve scared Daddy, because he yelled something, and then there was an awful crash, and I guess we all got hurt and killed, and…and I know it was my fault, and I must’ve fallen asleep or something, and I woke up and I was like this, and here…in this place and I don’t know where Mommy and Daddy are and…and I can’t go to any other place…! And it was my fault!”
The kid was rambling now as tears streamed down her face. I held out both my hands, and she took them…sort of. “Amy? Amy, listen to me.”
“Yes, Mister Jack?” she sobbed.
I was winging this one, but ghost or not, this little girl was suffering. More than likely it was her guilt that held her in this nasty place, a sort of…limbo, I guess. Worth a try.
“You did not cause the accident that killed your family,” I told her. “I’m pretty sure the other car ran into yours. Maybe it was a drunk driver, or an inexperienced one. That’s what happened.”
“Are you sure?”
No, not really… “Absolutely.”
“But when I yelled wow—”
The one that started it all.
“I shouted a few wows in my life when reading Tolkien. Let me ask you this. You love to read, right? You’ve read all your life and you know the magic to be found in books.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And because of that magic you’ve shouted lots of wows, at home, in the car, everywhere. And your parents have heard many of them, right?”
She pondered that for a moment. “I…guess so.”
“Well, there you are. Your Daddy would not have been distracted by that. Amy, I’ll say it again: you were not responsible for what happened that day!”
Her look of uncertainty lasted a few more seconds before her cherubic face lit up with a broad smile. “Oh, thank you, Mister Jack!” she exclaimed as she lunged forward and tried to hug me. You can guess how that went…although a flood of warmth, for want of a better description, did kind of pass through my entire body.
Amy’s tears still fell when she stepped back, only these tears were of a different kind. She looked like a whole new kid with that smile on her face.
“So, what now?” I wondered out loud. “Do you get to—?”
I swallowed my next words as something happened in the middle of the street that definitely nudged the Weird-O-Meter up a few more notches. Remember the sentient time portal, the Guardian of Forever, that McCoy, and later Kirk and Spock, go through in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” arguably the greatest episode from the original Star Trek series? Amy spun around, and we both watched as a similar humming portal disgorged an attractive couple, both in their thirties or forties and dressed “to the nines,” as they used to say back in the day.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Amy shrieked as she raced toward the pair and fell into their arms, all of them sobbing as they held tightly to one another for long seconds. And speaking of sobbing, the young fart who witnessed the reunion had to bat back a few tears of his own.
“Thank you, Mister Jack,” Amy called after they untangled. “Thank you, thank you!”
“No worries, kid,” I replied.
Her parents smiled and waved at me as, hand in hand, the trio backed into the portal. Moments later, the happy family and their “transportation” were all gone.