Chapter 8

   The morning dawned chilly and foggy as well as misty.  The sun was a cool yellow pale and crisp perfect for the time of the year.  Anderson watched the sun rise with new eyes; not human eyes which can only take in so much at one time but with "otherworldly" eyes. He watched as the sun slowly rose making everything sparkle the morning dew glittering with a new brilliance.  

   "Sleep well?" The voice behind Anderson made him jump.  Anderson had been revelling in the newfound beauty that his eyes were giving him.

   "Yea sort of.  I didn't get much though because my thoughts kept running wild.  I have more questions for you if you don't mind."  Anderson didn't take his eyes off the rising sun which grew in brilliance as it rose higher in the sky.  The light which would have blinded a human being filled him with energy in combination with the cemetary.  

   "I figured you would.  What would you like to know?" Teds words still seemed to float into Anderson's mind with a discomforting ease.  His lips moved less and less now, as the need for spoken words grew less and less and Anderson was able to comprehend more without opening his own mouth.  It still hurt to speak verbally but it hurt less.  In fact by sleeping in the cemetary with Ted Andereson was doing himself a favor; a healing favor.  

   "Well, you said earlier that you had done some pretty bad things, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in sharing them with me.  I would like to know about the person who is going to help me find out why I died especially if they have a not so clean history."  Anderson tried to be polite, as hard as that seemed.  Could you offend a ghost? From a human to a spirit's perspective yes a spirit can be agitated.  From a spirit to spirit's perspective Anderson had no clue.

   "This is going to be a complicated story for so early in the morning. Are you sure you don't want to wait till later for this?  It's not like we're rushed or anything." Ted explained quietly still seeming sort of off key from when they first met.

   "What's the point in waiting if this could help me to understand the person who's helping me if that makes any sense."  Anderson's words were becoming less and less spoken and more and more sent directly into Ted's mind.  It was easier to talk that way.

   Ted sighed heavily; what he did still weighed deeply and traumatically on his heart.  He didn't realize how much the choices he made in his own life would effect him even after death.  Ted sent the following story directly to Anderson's mind because it still hurt too much for him to speak it aloud.

  It was a warm sunny day in Ted's hometown of Sandy Hills; the palm trees blew easily and lazily in the warm, soft breeze.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky; the sun shone down on a lazy town that held secrets that no one could possibly know.  The scene would have made a pretty post card for someone who didn't need to knwo the details and it was just as well because they were gruesome.  It was around ten am when the first of the fighting broke out between Ted and his young, pregnant wife.  Ted blamed the whole thing on hormones which of course his wife tried to deny.  Besides said Ted's wife, what would a man know of a pregnant woman's trials and tribulations.  Ted had accused his wife of being immature and that she needed to grow up and for the first time in his life married or no had hit her across the face hard.  She fell to her knees in a corner of the room tears streaming down her face holding her swollen belly protectively.  Ted's wife was in her third trimester the most crucial of all trimester.  Even the slightest injury could cause harm to the baby; Ted knew this.  Why Ted's wife had asked him, why had he hit her? What was wrong with him?  Ted couldn't answer her or his own questions that were swirling in his mind at that particular moment. He stared numbly at his hand, and then he casualy looked at his wife.  The look on her face scarred him for life; that look haunted him in his sleep because what happened next would be with him till he died and apparently even afterwards.

  Boxing his pregnant wife into the corner she was already trying to hide in, and his hand came down again, and hard.  It happened over and over again, striking her soft skin where ever he could for he knew not what reasons.  Her screams and terrified cries got lost in his ears, all sound going numb to him; all sense of reality was fading as well as all sense of right and wrong.  Ted lost all sense of what time it was when he stopped, his mind was a fog of blurred vision and the most powerful sense of rage and anger that he had ever known.  It was like a light switch in his mind that was suddenly and for no viable reason randomly turned off.  Her mood swings had just become so bad throughout the pregnancy that he couldn't control how he was feeling let alone deal with what she must be going through to bring their first child into this world.  

  He ran out of the house, left her in a ball of starting to pool blood, he ran until he collapsed on the side walk.  Ted didn't know where he was, or what had happened or why it had happened.  All he knew was that he was seeing red; not just the red from her blood on his hands, but red rage before his eyes.  Next thing he knew he was heaving; vomitting to no end.  He passed out from rage and weakness and lay there on the concrete his hands balled up into fists his wife's blood on his hands and his heart.  Ted lay there till he lost track of time all together because when he woke up, he was in a hospital room and he didn't know anything.  His mind was a blank; he didn't remember anything that had happened and he was covered in a metallic smell and a chunky substance on the front of him.  His eyes closed once more and when he woke up his whole life would be changed forever.