Today, I’m presenting another edited repost from my old blog Vree Erickson. This one has a story about Vree for your reading pleasure.
This is the first story I wrote that featured Vree as the leading main character, which I penned when I was fourteen. I changed the story years later to feature my Dave Evans character (he was more popular with my readers). I titled his version, “Bottom of the Seventh Inning.”
This is the first time Vree’s version has appeared in print. Of course, I’ve made a few minor changes to the original draft—mostly sentence structure and bringing it into the twenty-first century.
Enjoy.
Ghost Love
Vree Erickson’s pleasant expression changed to surprise, then to shock mixed with fright. The air in the dugout became thin and dry, as though an unseen storm had sucked the oxygen from September’s cerulean sky over Ridgewood High School’s softball field. The six o’clock sun sparked Tommy Sorenson’s dark-brown hair where he sat in the bleachers at the right of the dugout. A halo of white surrounded his upper torso from the funeral shirt he wore. But he was no angel come back from the dead.
An icy chill crept across Vree’s back. She shivered inside her blue and white uniform that had warmed her a few minutes ago. Did anyone else see Tommy’s ghost scowling at her?
Coach Walker coughed and drew Vree’s attention away from the bleachers beyond the dugout’s wire mesh. The doorway she stood in framed her short, muscular body. “Pray we make contact with our bats this inning and score some runs,” she said. Down two runs in the bottom of the seventh, the undefeated Fighting Eagles needed a rally in this final inning to beat the visiting black and gold New Cambridge Yellow Jackets.
Walker removed her blue and white ball cap and bowed her head. The players quieted at their seats on the long wooden bench inside the dugout until she said “amen.” Then, “We can hit this pitcher,” Missy Kibler said, three players down from Vree. “My fastball and curve are a lot better than hers, so if you can hit off me in practice, then you can hit her.”
“Yeah! We can hit this rag arm,” Sally Franklin, their catcher, said. She sat next to Kibler and champed her bubblegum between sentences.
“That’s the spirit. Stay focused,” Walker said as she left the dugout.
Lanky Assistant Coach Andrews stepped from the dugout’s far end and called out three names of the players scheduled to bat. Vree stood, responding to the third name called. The team clapped loud and in unison for a moment as Andrews loped to her spot along first base.
“We’re gonna win this game. Come on,” Kibler said, clapping her hands. “This is our game. Never give up.”
Vree’s gaze wandered through the wire mesh to the boy now standing in front of the bleachers and still glaring at her. She looked away. She had to focus on the game. “Stay in the zone,” she whispered.
A yellow softball cracked off a bat. The Ridgewood fans and players jumped to their feet and cheered as Sally Franklin’s base hit shot between the Yellow Jackets’ first and second basemen.
As the cheering ended, Vree put on her batter’s helmet and took her place inside the on-deck circle outside the dugout’s doorway. She snuck a peek at Tommy. He still glowed with a heavenly whiteness … and chilled her with the hellish anger on his face.
Cheers returned her attention to the game. Debbie Jones had laced a hot bouncing double between left field and center field. The centerfielder caught up to the ball and threw it to her shortstop, keeping Franklin from rounding third base and scoring. The Yellow Jackets’ coach called for a pitcher change and Coach Walker lumbered over to Vree’s side.
“Keep the rally going,” she said, huddling close to Vree. “Get the ball into the outfield. We need you to score Sally from third.” She slapped the top of Vree’s helmet before she returned to her coaching spot.
The new pitcher threw nothing but heat during her warmup pitches. Vree’s assurance of scoring Sally Franklin waned. “Focus,” she told herself, forcing her not to look at Tommy. But why was his ghost here? And why did he look so angry?
“Because I failed him as a friend.”
She jumped when the home plate umpire bellowed, “Batter up.”
She dragged her feet to the batter’s box, dug her rubber cleats into the dirt, and swung her bat with sweaty palms. She took in a deep breath to settle her nerves. It didn’t work. The catcher taunted her with “No batter no batter no batter.”
She stumbled from the batter’s box. Had she lost her mind? The pitcher looked like Tommy and glowered at her from the pitcher’s mound.
“Batter up,” the umpire bellowed again.
Vree stumbled back to the batter’s box and tried to stand tall on wobbly legs. “This isn’t real,” she whispered, then shot to the ground as a fastball raced at her and missed her head.
She glared back at the pitcher who looked like Tommy. “Are you trying to kill me?”
Tommy’s face vanished and the pitcher’s true face returned. His voice filled Vree’s head. “Why not? You killed me.”
She grimaced from the blast of pain there. “I’m so sorry.”
The world around her went dark. A familiar vision grew and took away the darkness. She and Tommy stood at the downtown playground and park where he had pitched the murderous softball to her two months ago. She swung hard to see if she could hit it long and far. But the ball had gone straight off her bat instead of lifting and sailing over the trees by the banks of Myers Creek. The ball struck Tommy’s sternum and stopped his heart. Frozen with shock, she barely remembered calling 911 on her phone and weeping over Tommy lying dead in the dirt. “I prayed for you not to be dead,” she said. “But it did no good.”
The scene vanished to darkness. Tommy’s ghostly face floated in front of her, lit by an unseen light. Anger burned red in his eyes that used to hold all the gentle colors of summer wheat. “You never came to my funeral. You’ve never visited my grave. I hate you.”
“No.” His declaration was as painful to her heart as the pain knifing through her head again. “Don’t say that, Tommy. I couldn’t bear to see you dead. My world fell apart when you died. I stopped eating … stopped bathing … stopped answering my phone and going to school. I wanted to die so I could be with you again. I had to see doctors to stop blaming myself for your death. Please forgive me.”
“No. I’m glad you blame yourself. You killed me and then ignored me.” Tommy’s face vanished.
Darkness swallowed Vree again. Her throat and chest hurt. She struggled to breathe. She pushed the fear of death from her mind and tried hard to keep breathing. “I’d do anything … to bring you back. Even trade places … if it meant you could live again.”
His voice came from the darkness. “You lie.”
“No. I love you.”
His voice softened. “Would you really die for me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” His voice became a shout again. “Why would you waste another life? Life is precious. I know that now that I’m dead. And so will you, Vree. So will you.”
His words followed her like a dying echo as the darkness vanished into nothingness. She thought of their good times together. I love you, Tommy. I … always have, I always will. You can hate me for disappointing you, but I’ll never stop loving you.
“Never?” His voice stirred the sounds of life around her, which filled her ears. “Do you really love me as much as you say you do?”
“I do.” Sweet air filled her lungs. She drank it in and gasped from the hand that gripped her left arm and pulled her from the nothingness.
“Are you okay?” Coach Walker asked as she brought Vree to her feet.
Vree’s vision cleared. She was still in the game, at home plate, still at bat. “I’m good,” she said, beaming at her coach’s concerned face peering at her, inches away. “Just had the wind knocked out of me.” She dusted dirt from her uniform pants and picked up her bat. Then she waited for her coach to settle in the coach’s box before she stepped to the plate.
You can do this. Show me how far you can hit the ball. Tommy’s voice was like a gentle breeze at her ears.
Euphoria filled her. She laughed, then grinned at the pitcher who no longer looked like Tommy. The pitch came fast, then seemed to slow in front of her. The ball looked twice its normal size. She swung her bat. There was an audible crack, though hitting the ball felt like hitting a marshmallow. It flew from her bat and headed into leftfield, lifting high until it passed over the orange plastic fence.
The Ridgewood dugout and bleachers erupted with cheers.
Run. Once more, Tommy’s voice was like a gentle breeze.
Vree dropped the bat and hurried around the bases, meeting her teammates at home plate where they mobbed her as soon as her feet touched home with the winning run.
An hour later, the sun slipped beneath the tree-lined slopes of Ridgewood Cemetery. Vree stood at Tommy’s grave and said a tearful goodbye to his ghost in front of her.
“Do you really have to leave?” she asked.
“Yes. Will you still love me after I’m gone?”
“Always and forever,” she said, moments before Tommy vanished. A breeze stirred through the trees of the cemetery and embraced Vree in warmth that whispered Tommy’s love to her. In the last moments of twilight, she wept with a love that would stay in her heart evermore.
* * *
Steve, 6/6/2022; revised and reposted 6/6/2023
This post “Ghost Love, Again” copyright © 2022/2023 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.
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