The Garrison Diaries (Part Two)

If Russell Fryoux had ever seen a ghost, he'd never said anything to anybody, nor would he ever, in his adamancy to disprove such things. So as he opened the front door and stared straight up the stairwell, he quickly passed off the event to the wind. The rapid opening of the door at the top, and then its quickly slamming shut again, startled him at first, but he knew he was on nerves end, driving through foreign territory in bad weather and arguing with Candace Warren all the way. "Damned wind" he said to his self as he aimed his camera up the stairwell, snapping a photo. As he began to climb the stairwell, careful where he stepped, for fear of falling through the old wood, Russell noticed that the last tenant of the Garrison home, whoever it might have been, didn't even bother to take their belongings with them. But he had read about this. Pictures adorned the wall on the right side of the stairwell. He was surprised to see that the photos were of Earl Garrison and his family. "Why hadn't the last tenants removed these photos?", he asked himself. At any rate, Russell snapped three photos of the framed pictures for souvenirs. Or so he thought. Lightning flashed inside the home, accompanied by the loud crack of thunder, and before Russell could get to the top of the stairs, the door staring him in the face that had swung open and then slammed shut, swung open again, but this time remained open.

At the top of the stairs he realized the interior structure of the house was still in pretty decent shape, as compared to the outer structure. He hadn't fallen through the stairwell, anyways. Russell entered the room at the top of the stairwell and stood in the doorway for a moment looking around. This was obviously the master bedroom due to its size. Moving forward he snapped several more pictures, not believing the once ornate furniture in this room had been left to weather away. There was a queen sized bed, with bed sheets and a bedspread partially covering the mattress, all dry rotting through the process of mother nature. A dresser drawer and a night stand on the other side of the bed, were in roughly the same condition. Glancing at the dresser, Russell noticed the mirror above it seemed as if it had just been cleaned, as a flash of lightning entered through the bedroom window, reflecting its brightness on the mirror. He turned his attention to several items left on the dresser top, and as he moved towards the dresser, the loud boom of thunder seemed to echo right over his head. The bedroom door slammed shut behind him. He turned around swiftly to notice nothing he hadn't seen entering the room, other than the door slamming shut behind him. He told his self he wasn't frightened, but he was, and told his self it was getting late, so he'd better get moving to the rest of the house. As he walked back towards the door he heard the creaking of wood, and thought "oh great, the entire second floor is about to collapse." He turned back around, giving the dresser top one more look. There wasn't a single item on it. Nothing. He rubbed his eyes. Oh well, he had pictures, and he was tired. Glancing back up at the mirror above the dresser one more time, he saw now that the mirror had been worn down through time, mildew almost taking the entire edifice over. Several cracks ran down from the top of the mirror. He shook his head and turned away back towards the door. His attention now focused back on the wood creaking sound he'd heard just seconds before. He realized now that the wood creaking sound had somewhat of a rhythm to it, slow and unbreakable. It seemed to coming from the next room, just to the left of the master bedroom. Russell turned the doorknob and carefully opened the door. As he swung it open, the doorknob also apparently weathered by time, came off in his hand. He stepped out of the room slowly and took a deep breath. The wood floor was still creaking, and furthermore, he now could make out cries of an infant. "This is crazy", he said, his thoughts actually making a sound, and leaving his lips. "They're playing a joke on me", he said , this time in his thoughts. Nothing could prepare Russell Fryoux for what he saw when he entered the room just to the left of the master bedroom. There, in the right rear corner of the room, sat a rocking chair, rocking to and fro slowly at a pace. The woman who sat in it was looking down at the baby she was cradling in her arms, both wrapped in a quilt. His stare remained fixed on her, his hear pounding beneath his chest. Both her and the child appeared to be a holographic image, but he knew better. The chair itself was there, it was solid. The woman and child occupying the chair were less than solid, almost re- defining the word transparent. His stare was broken as the transparent figure looked up at him, her face void of emotion.

There I was, standing behind Earl Garrison's house, soaking wet, as the wind picked up, howling between the treetops blowing leaves in every direction. It seemed like a fair walk between the Garrison house and the cemetery, but arriving at the front of the sacred ground, I noticed several things. The first being that the weather and lack of grounds keeping around the Garrison home is what made the short walk to the cemetery seem to take so long. The second thing I noticed was Earl Garrison's old workshop. Broken, and falling to pieces. It seemed with this storm, it might do just that. Like the house, Earl's workshop was dilapidated. Trees and underbrush grew up the sides of it, swallowing everything in its path. In fact, if there had been a roof on Earl's workshop, it had long been covered with tree limbs that stretched out like grotesquely disfigured arms, and leaves from the trees made a natural roof of the shop, along with what was left of the roof itself. Walking a little further along, I stopped next to what appeared to be a dead oak tree. And there, in front of me, was the infamous cemetery where they found they ol' Earl hanging from a tree. I wondered if the tree I was standing next to was the tree where they'd found him, and the thought of it gave me goose bumps. I started to move away from the tree, but as I glanced up, I saw an even more hideous looking tree right in the middle of the graveyard. It was surely dead, but to what circumstance it hadn't fallen by weather, no one could tell. I was positive that had to the tree from which Earl Garrison drew his last breath. The graveyard itself was unique. Looking at most of the headstones, I guessed the cemetery had been there since about the late 1700's and certainly on into the 1800's. What I found more strange than anything was how clean and well kept the graveyard seemed to be. It was in impeccable shape, as opposed to the Garrison home, which oddly enough, didn't have a fence or gate bordering one from the other. "Guess it doesn't pay enough to keep ol' Earl's place clean too," I said to myself as I turned around, noticing the obvious contrast between the two places. But then, maybe that was the idea. The rain continued to hammer down out of the sky, and it was close to getting dark. I myself wanted a cigarette at this point if only to keep warm, but realized that even had I carried them in my shirt pocket, they would have been rendered useless. But I knew Candace had some in her purse, and a woman's purse is what the Holy Grail was to the Knights Templar. It was time to go. As I turned to leave, a huge flash of lightning appeared about fifty yards in front me, making me quickly turn my head in the other direction. It was quickly followed by a loud burst of thunder, and then oddly enough, through all the wind and rain, it grew deadly quiet. Quite literally. Before I could take the first step back towards the front of the house, I heard the gentle creaking of what sounded like a branch from the cemetery. The same sound I remember hearing as a kid when we tied a rope to the branch of a tree, swinging from an old tire tied to the other end. I couldn't look. "I'm not going to look." "Don't turn around" I kept telling myself, or at least a voice in my head kept trying to plead with my sanity. But it was inevitable. As I turned back around to look at the graveyard one last time, and to see what was causing the eerie noise, I realized what it was that made Gerald Brock move his family out of the state completely. Brock walked up the side of the cemetery regularly during his walks. I had to be seeing through his eyes- what he saw the night he took his last walk that led him up past the cemetery and up to the Garrison home. At the end of the branch of the huge dead tree that lay in the middle of the cemetery, was indeed a rope, rocking back and forth slowly, making the eerie creaking sound as it did so. It didn't stop there. Horrified, my eyes followed the rope to its end, where almost as if he had been there the entire time, swung the lifeless body of Earl Garrison. His head was limp and looked as if it were observing the rest of his body swinging back and forth in the wind from the end of the rope. In the instant that my eyes turned away from the ghostly sight to the time they returned to it, something had certainly changed. Earl Garrison was no longer looking down. His stare met mine. It was all I could do to maintain some composure and tell myself to run. And in fact, I was already running and didn't know it.

By the time I'd made it back to the front of the house, it was if we had all telepathically told each other to meet up there. Russell and I made it there at precisely the same time. Candace was already there, watching the house, and keeping an eye on the car, parked across the road. Poor Candace was soaking wet, but she didn't seem to notice. And from the look on her face, she hadn't really been watching the car at all. She said nothing. Her thoughts had been affixed to the top left window of the old house, shortly after Russell had entered. After several moments, she had become bored, and being the restless person she was, began looking about the house, when she heard the whispers of a little girl. As if it were intuition, she'd looked up into the second story window to see a young girl staring down at her. But it didn't appear as if her lips were moving. She didn't share this with Russell or myself. But almost as if in a trance, or had been turned into some sort of zombie while staring at the small girl, she turned and followed Russell and myself to the car. Nothing was said for the rest of the night. Even after checking into the hotel, the silence was almost enough to drive anyone crazy. The trip home was roughly the same. At one point, I almost tried to start an argument between Russell and Candace, but everybody's thoughts were still at Earl Garrison's home. And yet none of us could tell the other what we had seen, but we were all pretty sure that everyone had seen something to make the trip home seem like a funeral procession.



It wouldn't be until two years later, that Russell and Candace, now married, would confess their findings at the Garrison home to me, and mine to them. Visiting the Fryoux home one night shortly after they were married, Russell showed me the photos he'd taken of the Garrison house. The very first he'd taken as he entered the house portrayed a picture of the stairwell leading up to the second story, stopping at a door. The master bedroom door. He didn't have to point out to me the oddness of the photo. About halfway up the stairwell, the picture looked as if the developing had gone awry. Upon closer inspection, the only thing awry was the transparent figure of a woman, who was apparently descending the stairwell. The only feature to be made out of the woman was her face, which appeared to be void of any emotional features. But the outline of the apparition was quite clear. Russell identified this woman as the same woman he would see later when he climbed the stairs. The pictures he'd snapped of the framed pictures of the Garrison family adorning the wall, as he climbed up the stairwell, weren't in the pictures at all. But Russell had described them down to the last detail. No one doubted him. Candace gave her account of seeing the little girl who stared down at her from the second story window as she waited outside, and finally with much hesitation, I gave my account of visiting the cemetery behind the Garrison house, and seeing Earl Garrison himself swinging from the end of a rope and staring directly at me in the seconds before I fled the grounds.



Everything in New Orleans seems to be back to normal. We'd all agreed that one day we'd tell the story of Earl Garrison and his family, and I believe in the most strangest of ways, it had made the three of us closer. It seems that way. As for the Garrison house, it still sits back off of Rural Route 9 in Vermont, left to be forgotten by those in the surrounding communities, to rot in the woods.