"The Imp's Bottle" ~ Sample Chapter
*The following is a sample chapter from the novel I'm currently working on, entitled "The Imp's Bottle." This chapter takes place toward the middle of the book. Enjoy!*
I was mopping the floor when I felt the chill.
The green and off-white tiles glared up at me in the dim light. They always looked so angry. Guess I’d be angry, too, if I spent my life being stepped on.
I rung out the mop and a trail of icy air went down my back. It used to scare the hell out of me, but it was just a mildly unpleasant sensation now. And an alarm of sorts. There was a routine: the chill, the flicker, the visitor. I barely batted an eye anymore, in spite of the oddity of the whole thing.
Sure enough, the lights flickered and dimmed a bit more, leaving the bar looking like the set of a low budget Halloween movie.
I continued mopping. She always approached from the direction of the front door. I’d see her before I heard anything.
The mop went back and forth across the floor and there were her shoes. Heels, buttons up the sides around her slim ankles, tan stockings, a simple blue dress ending at her knees.
I stopped mopping and glanced at her face. She was stern but pretty, with thin lips pressed into a line of concentration. A slight crease in her high, regal brow, she looked down at me with steel gray eyes.
“Is my husband here?” she asked. Her voice had the echoing, empty quality it always had, stressing what I already knew about her: she wasn’t really here. This semi-translucent woman that stood before me was a memory. A loop from the past, reliving the last time she was here, in this bar.
I stood up straight. “No, ma’am,” I replied, following the script I knew so well.
“Hmm,” she mused. She looked down at her left hand and twirled her wedding ring. As she always did. “Yes, I suppose he would be gone for the evening. Any visitors?”
“Visitors” were cops, I’d come to understand.
“No, ma’am. All clear.”
“Very good,” she said. She looked back up at me. “We must keep it that way. We can’t have anyone knowing about the Speakeasy downstairs. You understand that, don’t you?”
She always asked the same questions. I knew them by heart.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I would never say a word.”
She smiled. As she always did. “I know. You are the model of discreet. What would we do without you?”
“I think you’d be fine, ma’am.”
“Nonsense!” she said. As she always did. “You’re priceless to us. To me and my husband. Thank you for all you do. Do I ever thank you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Every time I see you.”
“Good,” she said. A firm nod of the head. “Good. I’m happy to hear that. Wonderful job on the floors.” She looked around. “When did we change them? They were wood.”
“They were,” I said. “Until recently.”
“Shame…” she said, gazing around. She patted her twisted hair-do, a nervous tick. “The wood was so much prettier. But I suppose most of our business is conducted downstairs, so what does it matter? Has the delivery arrived?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It’s downstairs.”
“Of course it is,” she said, smiling again. “You are so efficient. Thank you. I’ll see to it. When you see my husband, tell him to come down and help me. I really can’t leave until he comes back.”
“I will, ma’am,” I said.
She went through the swinging door to the back room and walked down to the basement. I didn’t follow her. I knew if I did she would vanish halfway down the stairs. As she always did.
The chill dissipated and the lights returned to their normal brightness.
Always the same.
The first time I’d seen her was about a month after I started working at Imp’s Bottle. She’d appeared in front of me while I was cleaning the tables, about thirty minutes after my last patron had left. The button shoes, the tan stockings, the simple blue dress, the dated twist in her hair, her smooth face just beginning to show the fine lines that betrayed her as over forty.
“Is my husband here?” she had asked.
Taken aback because I hadn’t heard a key in the door or her footsteps, I’d sputtered some incoherent half-sentence, thinking she must be the owner’s wife.
She had waited patiently for me to answer, not speaking again until I had told her that, no, he was not in the bar, and yes, I was the only person on that night.
The as-I-knew-it-now script continued, but because I was unfamiliar with her routine phrases and questions (and because I didn’t know or understand who she was), it took us several minutes to get through it.
Ultimately she went through the swinging door to the backroom, walked to the door leading to the basement like she’d been there countless times before, and went down the stairs as soundlessly as she’d come in. I’d followed her closely, afraid more for my job than my safety, and before we’d reached the bottom of the stairs, she’d disappeared.
The old saying is “vanished into thin air.” You don’t realize how terrifying that is until you see it. Something is in front of you, clear as day, then it’s suddenly gone. No trick of the light, no distraction in the form of a loud noise, no something caught in your eyelash – just there, then gone.
Scared the living hell out of me.
I’d nearly wet myself, and I’d called in sick the next two days in a row.
It was curiosity more than anything that brought me back and kept me from quitting. The owner didn’t hassle me for calling in. He was just happy to have me back. He saw my white face and glassy eyes and figured I’d had the flu.
I didn’t see her again for a few weeks.
When I did it was the same thing. All the patrons had left, I’d already locked the door, and I was cleaning up before I left. Again, she just appeared. Again, she asked if her husband was there. Again, she wore the same shoes, stockings, and dress.
That time, though, I noticed the chills down my back and the flickering lights. I noticed how far away and hollow her voice sounded. I noticed that, if I really squinted, I could see the wall and tables behind her through her.
She asked all the same questions, made all the same statements, thanked me, and played with her wedding ring. She walked to the basement and vanished. Into thin air.
I remember sitting on the basement stairs, trembling. My face felt like I’d been vacationing in the Arctic Circle. My back felt like it was on fire. My hair was standing on end from the top of my scalp all the way down my arms. My fingertips were tingling.
It was 3:30 a.m. when I finally emerged from the basement. I went to the men’s room and stared at my stark white face. I splashed some cold water on it and looked again. There was no improvement.
There was a word for what I’d seen. I couldn’t bring myself to think the word. It was impossible. Those things didn’t exist.
To prove I couldn’t possibly have seen what I saw, I did some research at the local library. The computer-scanned periodical records proved equally helpful and damning. Imp’s Bottle was built in 1921 and had been owned by my boss’ family since its erection. The first owners were a husband and a wife. They’d run a speakeasy in the basement from 1925 to 1933. The wife had died of consumption in 1932 at the age of 42 in the upstairs apartment above the bar. A newspaper photograph showed the husband and wife in front of Imp’s Bottle in 1925. The photo was old, yellowed, and faded, but the wife was undoubtedly the woman who had come into Imp’s Bottle in the middle of the night.
Sickness had come over me again, and I dreaded work for many nights thereafter, but I kept going. I didn’t see the Bootlegger’s Wife (as I’d come to know her) again for about two weeks. I found myself hoping I’d had a hallucination brought on by too many alcohol fumes and too few friends.
But no, she returned, hollow-voiced and slightly incorporeal as the two previous encounters. I noticed she followed the same script as before, and I fleetingly remembered something I’d read years before suggesting that ghosts were not the malicious creatures horror films made them out to be, but rather just looped memories visible to overly sensitive people. People like me. The Bootlegger’s Wife seemed to prove the latter, and my relief was palpable. She would not try to kill me or even make my life miserable with pranks and sporadic arrivals. She was simply reliving one of her last memories in the bar – a time shortly before the consumption really took over.
I would live after all.
And she would remain the same, most likely until long after I left.
I felt sorry for her.
