Ark Book IV: Ghosts

Ark

(second edition)

BOOK IV: GHOSTS

A novel by John Heldon

Copyright © 2011-2015 John Heldon

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1466446226

ISBN-13: 9781466446229

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011918992

CreateSpace, North Charleston, SC

Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction. The events, characters, locales, establishments, roadways, etc., are products of the author’s imagination. They are solely meant for the entertainment of the reader, and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

To Ginni

Acknowledgments

I need to thank my mother and father, Laney and John Sr, those octo youths who have continued to give me encouragement since the day I was born, and even now when I’m also a senior.

To my wife and son, Ginni and Geoff, who have put up with my irritability and distance at times during this process.

Again to my wife, my in-house editor, whose keen eyes never miss what mine did.

To Calvin Schwartz, author of Vichy Water, for his encouragement and willingness to offer any and all help he could give me.

To Barry Sheinkopf of the Writing Center in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Thank you for planting the seed about twenty years ago, from which a bloom emerged this day.

To the Taub brothers, Jordan and Benjamin. Jordan, for cover design help, and Jamie, for invaluable advice and counsel regarding publication.

To Rob Ducker, for his design and Internet savvy, and helping me see my writing on a whole new level.

John J. Heldon, Jr. March, 2015

When a muse amuses you, that feeling should be shared with others.

This author

A Note On This Second Edition

This is my first novel, so you, the reader, may be wondering why it is now Book IV. Well, a lot has happened since it was completed. When the first addition was finished, my next series of ideas begged the formation of a trilogy. Those two drafts are near their final states, but guess what happened, again. Yes, I began to have ideas about events which precede those depicted in the original three works, and more ideas about events which follow them. This second edition also has some changes to sync better with the larger story I want to tell. My writing journal is getting a workout. I’m seeing more books to the series, possibly nine altogether, but time will tell. In the meantime, I hope this edition, and the other books which follow, are the cause of enjoyment for you.

John Heldon

Prologue

The Men’s Basketball Back Court, our Sunnyside College booster club, was winding down its meeting. The question and answer area, where my attention barometer always swings between boredom and interest, was on life support. A couple of dumb questions in a row had me starting to doze, then begin fumbling for my car keys while glancing at the exit.

The next question came from a booming voice seated a ‘knight’ move, two seats right and one row ahead of me. The voice belonged to a big, hulking guy, obviously a former player, a senior about my age, which put his dunking days far behind him.

I don’t remember the question he asked. I just remember he interjected that his blog was up to one hundred thousand hits. Wow! I thought. I had just started a blog a few months before, finally finding the time in my retirement that I couldn’t find in my working life to pursue my writing. I decided to write anecdotal, funny stories about my family when growing up, sort of a written ‘oral’ history, which present and future family and friends might find amusing. Without trying to ring the bell hit wise, forwarding new stories as they were published to a growing audience, I was up to five hundred hits. I didn’t care about the number. I was having fun, and beginning to feel good about writing for the long term.

Instead of bee-lining toward the exit, I tacked over and introduced myself to Calvin, the hundred-thousand-hit man. He turned out to be a very gregarious, engaging person, genuinely interested in what interested me. I quickly switched the subject from basketball to writing as we walked to our cars. Already a book author, he offered to impart what he’d learned over the years plying his craft. A really nice guy. Just met, and he’s eager to help me. None of us are good judges of character all the time. We’ve had good gut feelings before about someone, and have been wrong, but I was pretty sure I was right about Calvin.

As we approached our cars, we established some background. Where did you grow up? Then, where do you live now?

No shit!! we both said together. Same town. This makes it convenient to car pool to the Summer League basketball games at the Delaware shore, a half hour away, and to continue to talk about our writing.

The day the Summer League schedule was published, Calvin beat me to it. I saw his email as I logged on to send him one. I responded, agreeing we should go to the season opener. We would meet at his house. He offered to drive, and we would happily zoom toward the shore venue. Happily I say, because that day, July 6, was the beginning of the basketball season for us fanatics.

Cal was very emphatic about how his writing, and the idea for his first book, came to him.

Like a thunderbolt, he said. It all came to me at once. The idea, the story, almost the whole book flashed into my mind at once.

I found this very spiritual, and understood that it happens often to great artists who create works that, for the rest of time, earn them the genius moniker. Handel, the composer, wrote Messiah in twenty-four days. Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, shook the plans for Fallingwater, that many consider to be the most famous house in America, out of his sleeve in two-and-a-half hours, while his clients were in route to see them.

I wasn’t counting on that happening to me; or that Cal or I would ever become literary geniuses. After that first meeting with Cal, there was a ferocious thunderstorm that night. One bolt went from my eye to my ear in a split second. Close, I thought, but not close enough to give me my novel idea. I’m going to have to give birth to the book. Slow growing. Expanding. Lots of kicking and screaming. In labor for a long time, but in the end, I was able to announce:

It’s a book! Just like a proud parent.

The idea wasn’t a thunderbolt, but a lens coming into focus. After that chance meeting with Cal, the words began flowing towards me. They kept rolling like the surf, until the last page was finished.

Chapter One

I needed Sleep. Capital S for a sound, uninterrupted; wake up energized, Sleep. The story I had in my head, and how I was going to tell it, was pushing me to stay awake for long hours, until I could organize my thoughts, and start tickling the keyboard. Once my mind saw the story more clearly, I started to calm down. Thomas Edison, the inventor, said that ideas are in the air. If so, I had been waiting and waiting for that fresh air that wafted my story toward me. My story…to me and no one else.

The pillow I eased my head down onto felt like a mixture of cloud and downy feathers. As my head settled as far as it would go, I glanced at Genna, my sound asleep wife, then at the clock: 1:40A.M.

I closed my eyes and started thinking about the Ark. That was the nick name for the old, multi event center at the college I attended forty five years ago. Concerts, assemblies, lectures, and sporting events were all accommodated in the Ark. No animals, just people, were herded in for this or that function.

As far as I can tell, the nickname had no religious connotation, and it was derived for purely secular reasons, a place of refuge or asylum. Quite often in college life, refuge and asylum can mean the same thing. An asylum is where crazy people do crazy things. A few kegs of beer can therefore create an asylum at a college. Anyway, there was nothing religious about the place, as far as I knew.

I think I slept pretty well. I wasn’t tired anymore, but I just felt a little off, is the best way I can put it. Usually if I wake up and haven’t slept well, it takes a while for my head to clear, before getting up to speed. If I sleep well, my brain zooms back onto life’s highway quickly. This wake up was somewhere in between. I was rested, but curiously still thinking about the Ark, the same thought I’d had when I started to recharge.

My first encounter with the Ark was at Freshman Assembly Orientation, where we all got the you or one of your seatmates on either side won’t be here next semester speech. A very cute reality check welcome, but not a confidence booster for a spooked undergrad.

If you mention the Ark to any alum of my generation, however, a sporting event will come to their mind first, most likely, Men’s Basketball. That’s because Men’s Basketball started to gain fanatic interest while I was at the school, and nearly achieved championship status a few years later. By light of day, the Ark is still a magnificent, imposing structure, a Federalist style leviathan with a brick facade, and rows of windows with thick molded scrolls above each. All of the ornate molding around the windows is still painted white, as is the soaring cupola with its bronzed weather vane centered in the middle. To dispel its uniqueness, it was probably one of thousands of such buildings on college campuses across the country. However, I decided to forgo these outside details to visit inside the Ark late one night as I was driving home (just a half hour away). I decided to go late, hoping that no one was there. It would be quiet, and I just might find an unlocked door to gain entrance. Sure enough, a lazy janitor or a careless student left a back door for me to return and reminisce in the old Ark’s darkened quietude.

There were enough night lights for me to drift into the building without needing cat eyes to see. The only sound was my light clicking heels on the wooden floor. I was trying to tiptoe in case someone authorized to be there wouldn’t hear me. Looking down, I saw the faint outline of the center court circle where basketball history had been made. This was the perfect spot to pan the innards of the old place, and I could just barely make out the white painted railings and sky blue seats in the balcony, the familiar school colors. In the darkness, I was beginning to feel like Jonah in the belly of that whale. I kept glancing around, trying to remember the places I used to sit when I first became a basketball junkie. As I picked out a few seats, I must have imagined hearing a slight squeak, the sound of a sneaker on a high gloss court. Nah, this antique of a building must have a variety of sounds all its own, from years of standing up to wind, rain, snow, as well as the heel pounding from legions of students for ninety plus years. After I rationalized that, I heard a few more of those squeaks getting slightly louder, as if coming towards me. Creepy, I thought. The old Ark is playing with me. Then, all of a sudden, really creepy. A gust of air (I’m still inside, right?), goose bumps down my back, from my head to heels, and what felt like a tap on the shoulder. Shit, I thought, a creepy night watchman is onto me. I slowly turned around, trying to conjure an innocent explanation. My first word stuck to my palate as I saw, not a man, but a glowing figure, an apparition.

I started to shake like I’d been tasered, barely able to stand. My mind raced, trying to assess what was happening. A cold sweat oozed from every pore, and I damn near peed my pants, as I struggled to remain upright.

Mercifully, I was given a sense of calm from one word spoken by this ghost before me.

Hi.

He just stood there quietly as he watched my chest sucking and heaving volumes of air my lungs never handled before. As I switched from panic to there’s an explanation mode, I suddenly realized that I knew this ‘guy’, but he probably didn’t know me.

Slick? I said.

That’s me, and how does your sorry old ass know who I am? How can you see and hear me? I was just going to play with you. I didn’t expect you to answer back.

Realizing I startled him as much as he did me helped my spasms to relax their grip even further. Even though I didn’t have half a clue what was going on, I was now relaxed, and had to chuckle. The ghost right in front of me was Slick Sampson, just as he appeared in his playing days forty years ago, on this very court, right down to the short shorts that were then fashionable. The rest of his uniform was vintage 1971, including the high socks and high-top sneakers. He still had the same moustache and medium afro. He had that kind of kinky hair, even though he was White. He was maybe six feet tall in sneakers, but he played taller, able to grab the rim with both hands. Slick was a given nick name, for his style of play. He was lightening quick, slipping effortlessly through screens and picks on defense, and had a jump shot that only knew the inside of the net. Opposing players were afraid of him most when he got behind them, fearing a ball poke from their blind side. He was silicone in motion, known for his brashness and arrogance, which he backed up, of course. He was funny back then, and the way he queried me now made me laugh like old times.

I said, how do you know who I am, and why are you laughing at me?

Slick, I said, I went to school here. Everybody who went here that knows basketball, knows you, especially the way you’re standing before me, as you were in 1971. I’ll go you one better. I know how your sorry old ass, as you put it to me, looks today. In fact, I just saw you a few weeks ago, in 2011. You’re bald as a baby’s ass, but you can still shoot the ball.

I know. I know all that. My first step’s in the crapper, though. Otherwise, I could still be playin. Slick said, always the comedian.

Slick, I said. You got to help me out here. What the hell is going on?

I really don’t know. Me and my teammates play here all the time. People have been walking around here through the years, right up to the present day, and we don’t care. We just play right through’em. We all still love to play, but why over and over? It’s like we were sent here for a reason. What really gave me the heeby jeebs a few years ago was we were playing a game while a 2008 summer league game was being played at the same time. That didn’t bother me. It was when I looked up in the stands and I see me in 2008 watching the game. It looked like me watching me! I knew I couldn’t see me, but it still made me miss my next couple of shots.

I said, incredulously, Okay, Slick, back up. You said there are more of you. Your teammates. From 1971. How is this possible?

It seems not much gets wasted in the Universe. Once events pass in time, they’re still out there, floating around like radio waves. They’re like files everywhere. 1971 is next to 1972. There’s still plenty of room for everything that’s ever happened. It’s a big, big place, you know, and it’s expanding. He paused, and his dead pan delivery broke into a smile.

I’m just playin’ with you, man. I really don’t know. Ask me something about basketball. All I know is we keep playing here, as in 1971. Like I said, it’s still fun at times, but I want to know why.

At the same time, I had a queer thought his notions were provocative.

Well, let