His Name Is John Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Also by Dorien Grey and Untreed Reads Publishing

  His Name Is John

  “You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  About the Author

  His Name Is John

  By Dorien Grey

  Copyright 2017 by Gary Brown, Executor of Roger Margason/Dorien Grey Estate

  Cover Copyright 2017 by Untreed Reads Publishing

  Cover Design by Ginny Glass

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 2008.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Also by Dorien Grey and Untreed Reads Publishing

  A World Ago: A Navy Man’s Letters Home (1954–1956)

  Short Circuits: A Life in Blogs (Volume 1)

  The Dick Hardesty Mystery Series

  The Butcher’s Son

  The Ninth Man

  The Bar Watcher

  The Hired Man

  The Good Cop

  The Bottle Ghosts

  The Dirt Peddlers

  The Role Players

  The Popsicle Tree

  The Paper Mirror

  The Dream Ender

  The Angel Singers

  The Secret Keeper

  The Peripheral Son

  The Serpent’s Tongue

  www.untreedreads.com

  His Name Is John

  by Dorien Grey

  “You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

  “I don’t,” said Scrooge.

  “What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?”

  “I don’t know,” said Scrooge.

  “Why do you doubt your senses?”

  “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

  Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  CHAPTER 1

  Waking up with a splitting headache and a throbbing shoulder, Elliott had no idea where he was. By clamping his eyes shut and reopening them, he was able to discern that he was in a hospital room, though he had no clue as to how he’d gotten there.

  The one thing he did know was that someone was sitting in the chair beside his bed, watching him. Yet when he managed to turn his head to see who it was, the chair was empty. He was alone in the room. Except he wasn’t.

  He drifted in and out of sleep interrupted with annoying frequency by nurses waking him up to do whatever nurses find it necessary to wake people up to do. Mostly they said nothing and achieved their objectives with expressionless faces. And whenever he awoke, he would glance over at the chair and feel whoever wasn’t there watching him.

  He gradually became aware—he had no idea how—that John was the name of whoever was not in the chair, and got the distinct impression that John was, to say the least, confused, and apparently unable to grasp the concept that he was dead. Elliott also sensed that John not only hadn’t a clue as to how he died but had no idea of who he had been while he was alive.

  Of course, on the subject of being confused, Elliott realized that he was hardly a poster boy for sharp thinking himself. He had no idea why he had ended up in the hospital, or for that matter, which hospital. It wasn’t until he saw Norm Shepard, an ER nurse who lived in his building, standing over him that he realized he was in St. Joseph’s. Norm smiled when he saw Elliott looking at him.

  “Welcome back to the world of the living,” he said.

  Elliott glanced quickly over to the chair. John, he sensed, was not amused.

  “I had to come up to this floor for some charts,” Norm was saying, “and thought I’d check in to see how you’re doing.”

  Elliott opened his mouth to talk, but somebody else’s voice came out, and Norm quickly raised his hand to silence him.

  “No talk just yet,” he said.

  * * *

  Over the next couple of days, every time he looked at the chair, Elliott knew John was there, watching him. When visitors would stop by—his sister Cessy came by a lot, as did several of his friends, and Rick Morrison, a guy he had begun dating a few weeks before the accident—most would stand by the bedside or at the foot of the bed. When anyone sat down, Elliott would be aware that John wasn’t in the chair—apparently even though he was now non-corporeal, he didn’t like being sat on.

  At such times, he would sense John by the window, looking out at the traffic on Lakeshore Drive. He never got the impression that John was particularly interested in whoever else was in the room.

  How Elliott himself had ended up in St. Joe’s he learned in bits and pieces. He was told that he had been crossing Sheridan Road at Wellington, a few blocks from the hospital, around eleven o’clock at night, on his way home from dinner with friends, and been clipped by a car speeding around the corner. He’d hit his head on the curb, although fortunately his left shoulder had taken the brunt of the fall. He’d been unconscious or heavily sedated for several days, and was cautioned that he’d look a bit like a monk for a while after he got out, since they had to shave a part of his head to stitch up a rather nasty cut on his scalp.

  He did his best to convince himself that the concussion from the head injury accounted for John, and that he’d just go away after a while.

  But he didn’t, and Elliott didn’t dare mention him to anyone lest they decide to transfer him to the psychiatric ward for observation. He was nothing if not practical and logical, and John’s intrusion into his life was neither. So they kept their own counsel, John and he.

  He still had the overwhelming sense that John was utterly confused over his current state and how it came about. He also felt that since he was the only one who was aware of John, John looked to him for help, though Elliott had no idea what he could do.

  And then one night just before he was scheduled to be released, Norm stopped by again after his shift. Since his first visit, some vague memories of and after the accident were beginning to return.

  “I think I remember seeing you in the ER when I was brought in,” Elliott said. “I guess I was in pretty bad shape.”

  “We weren’t sure there for a while whether or not there was any bleeding into your brain, but there wasn’t. You’re a lucky guy.”

  Elliott sighed.
“Considering the alternative, I guess you’re right.” Again, he was aware that John did not appreciate his humor. “But I vaguely recall they brought somebody in right after me, and you took off. I guess the other guy was in worse shape than I was.”

  Norm shrugged. “Yeah, you could say that. He didn’t have a chance. Shot six times. It’s a wonder he even made it to the hospital.”

  “Sorry about that,” Elliott said, and he was. “Who was he? Did I see a couple cops come in with him?”

  “Yeah, they brought him in. Found him in an alley less than two blocks from here. No I.D. on him, and he died without fully regaining consciousness.”

  “So did they find out who he was?”

  “I have no idea,” Norm said. “We admitted him as a John Doe.”

  * * *

  John Doe! Was the presence in the chair the guy from the ER? He sensed no particular reaction from the direction of the chair, but if it was the same guy, had he somehow made some sort of link with Elliott in the few minutes they were both teetering on the threshold between life and death?

  Or, more likely, was it Elliott who had made the link? Maybe this whole thing really was just some sort of psychotic episode Elliott’s mind created for reasons of its own. When he got home from the hospital, back in his own world with his own things around him, John would probably just fade away.

  Although he prided himself on logical, linear thinking, Elliott found his thoughts in the hospital skipping over the surface of his mind like a flat stone thrown onto a calm pond. He’d start off pondering one thing, and suddenly find himself somewhere totally unrelated.

  Contemplating his conviction that the presence in the chair was named John, he convinced himself he must have subconsciously heard someone in the ER referring to the other man as “John Doe.” From there, his thoughts inexplicably segued to the fact that names had always intrigued him, possibly because “Elliott” was not a name he would have chosen for himself. When he was a teenager, he liked to think of himself as more of a Tom or perhaps a Mike. He always suspected that his mother, whose maiden name had been Von Eck, had chosen a high-gloss first name like Elliott as a way of compensating for his primer-coat last name—Smith.

  But, being a very adaptable sort, he grew used to it. He, in fact, prided himself on both his adaptability and his practicality, though he took a certain pleasure in his few minor idiosyncrasies. He collected trivia, for example, the way black pants collect cat hair. In addition to a penchant for remembering interesting but relatively useless information from everything he read, he enjoyed using his own observations to provide even more. He knew, for example, the height in stories of every building he passed regularly; he knew the number of steps between floors in any building in which he had occasion to use the stairs.

  Now, bringing his thoughts back to the name John, he knew it is the second most common name for American men—more than four million—just as Smith is the most common American surname. He could think of at least half a dozen Johns he knew personally.

  Although his last name may have been common, his resources were not. He had always been a little embarrassed that, by sheer chance, he was born into an extremely affluent family, not one member of which had done a real day’s work in his or her life. He was hardly foolish enough to turn his back on the family money, but had done his best to avoid its pitfalls.

  Possibly as an offshoot of his fascination with trivia, he had always had the innate ability to look at something and intuitively see how a minimum of effort and investment could produce the maximum results. It subsequently came naturally to him to support himself by buying, renovating and reselling small apartment buildings around the north side of the city, though he made an occasional concession to his wealth by keeping a few he couldn’t bear to part with. It kept him busy, and he enjoyed it.

  That night, and every night thereafter that he remained in the hospital, experiencing vivid technicolor dreams he could not remember later, there was one thing he could not forget, one thought accompanied by a sensation of sorrow and loss, repeating over and over: My name is John!

  * * *

  He convinced his doctors to release him on Friday so that he wouldn’t have to spend the weekend in the hospital. Rick offered to take time off from work to take him home, but Cessy insisted she pick him up and drive him home in her new SUV, a combination thirty-fourth birthday and birth-of-a-third-grandchild present from their parents (“Now that you have three children, Cecilia, you need a larger, more dependable vehicle.”).

  Brad, Cessy’s police detective husband, wasn’t too happy about the gift, though he acknowledged that it was a practical one. But he had put his foot down when Cessy’s parents wanted to buy a new Steinway for their granddaughter Jenny, when she began taking piano lessons at age seven. Brad was an extremely proud guy, and while he never talked about it, Elliott knew that reminders that Cessy had more money than he’d make in several lifetimes really bothered him.

  Their—Cessy’s and Elliott’s—mother had, perhaps not surprisingly, been far less than pleased with Cessy’s choice of a husband, but knew her daughter well enough not to make her displeasure too evident. Cessy was a lot like Elliott in her attitude toward the family fortune, though her practical side had no problem in using it if she needed it. But out of deference to Brad, she was pretty restrained.

  Having gotten him safely home and making him promise about a dozen times to take his medication, rest and not do anything strenuous—he did manage to dissuade her from putting him to bed and tucking him in—Cessy left to attend a parent-teacher affair at Brad Jr.’s school. She said she would return later in the afternoon with some groceries. Elliott’s kitchen cabinets were full, but after being gone for almost a week, he admitted he did need a few perishables like milk.

  After Cessy left, he took a pill to forestall the onset of a recurring headache, then spent a few minutes just looking around the apartment. He was glad to be home. Noticing that Ida, his cleaning woman, had obviously forgotten to water the plants on the balcony off the living room, he went into the kitchen to fill the watering can.

  Doing everything with just one hand proved not to be as easy as he had thought. He opened the sliding glass doors, having to set the can down first. He had already learned through experience that any too-sudden or too-sharp a movement of his upper torso could hurt like hell. Stepping out onto the balcony, he watered the plants, then stood looking out at the city. He’d bought his 35th-floor condo for its unobstructed south view of the city and the Loop.

  It was one of those perfect just-before-summer days, with cotton-puff clouds gliding slowly across an incredibly blue sky. The lake, immediately below to his left, reflected the blue of the sky, and was lightly flecked with whitecaps. He never got tired of looking at it.

  Going back inside, he considered removing the sling the doctor had insisted he wear; he found it more cumbersome than helpful and was sure that as long as he was careful not to move his arm too swiftly, he could do just as well without it. But his practical side won out, and he decided he had better keep it on.

  Sitting in his favorite chair near the window, he picked up a stack of mail Cessy had extricated from his full mailbox and left on the glass-topped coffee table. Opening it with one hand was even harder than filling the watering can had been, and when he did have it all opened, he determined that, other than a postcard from his parents, who were on a passenger freighter plying the islands of the Philippines, there was nothing that needed his immediate attention. Maybe it was all the medication, but as he sat in the sunlight with a nice breeze coming through the open balcony doors, he dozed off.

  My name is John.

  Yes, I know. Tell me something I don’t know.

  I can’t.

  And Elliott woke up, feeling, somehow, very sad.

  He had hoped, or rather assumed, that he’d left John at the hospital—he’d always heard that ghosts hang around the place where they died. Obviously, that was just one of those old ghost tales. He had
read somewhere that newly hatched ducks and geese imprint on the first thing they see when they’re born, and wondered if perhaps John, if he were not just a figment of Elliott’s imagination, had somehow done the same with him when he died. The question now was what was he going to do about it? What could he do about it?

  In the back of his mind there was still the very strong likelihood that all this was, in fact, just a result of his head trauma, and that as he got better, John would just fade away. He had initially supported that theory because of John’s having no clue about who he was, which would be reasonable if Elliott had created him. Then it struck Elliott that, if he couldn’t remember the details of his own accident, the trauma of being murdered could certainly make one unable to remember things clearly. On the other hand, he’d have thought that the act of dying might have clarified things a bit. Obviously, it hadn’t.

  He considered the thought that John might be experiencing some ectoplasmic form of total amnesia. Maybe just being dead produced it, which would account for the relatively few reports of ghosts. But whatever the reason for John’s lack of personal information, given the brief exchange of sleep-submerged conversation, he reluctantly came to accept that John might, in fact, be real, and simply not know who he was.

  * * *

  The afternoon passed with phone calls and the sisterly fussing of Cessy, who returned with the milk plus an entire bag full of things he didn’t really need but which she insisted would be good for him. He had never been overly fond of things he was told were good for him.

  He was tempted to remind her that she was his sister, not his nurse, but resisted, knowing she was just trying to help. The door had no sooner closed behind her when the phone rang.

  “Elliott Smith,” he said, reaching it just before the third ring.

  “Elliott, I called the hospital and they said you’d been released today.” He recognized the voice as Larry Fingerhood, a real estate broker with whom he frequently worked.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I got back just after lunch.”