This is part of the #MAYnia challenge run by the @freewritehouse. Today I have written 1854 words. The first 200 or so were written using the following prompts
Today's Maynia prompt: dreamcatcher
@freewritehouse/maynia-day-six
The Daily Freewrite prompt: lame duck
@mariannewest/day-928-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-lame-duck

…

_{_{If you have nothing better to do you can read my previous “chapters”: _{One, Two, Three, Four, Five}}}
…

Jack Painter sat on the porch and stared into the sky. The dreamcatcher - the one that Valerie had bought from that hippy shop in town, the one they had argued over for two hours, once - swung gently in the breeze. Funny how things change. He had hated that bloody dreamcatcher.

And all that it stood for.

Painter was a hard and fast evidence man. Or, he admitted to himself, used to be. If he couldn't see it, touch it or smell it, he'd only believe it if a team of scientists presented him with something he could take to court. All this psychological, astrological, I-can-read-your-mind, airy-fairy, hippy-dippy, mother-fancying-father-killing, dream-catching, crystal-stroking, tree-hugging bullshit! Well, that was for timewasters and nutters. He took a sip of his beer.

Now?

Well, now he didn’t know what to think. Valerie would laugh at him. If she were here.

Maybe I am here, Jack…

He could almost hear her voice. Feel her touch on the back of his neck. Almost.

Jack didn’t believe in ghosts. Or rather, he couldn’t bring himself to. He wasn’t sure what happened next. Was there something after you took your last breath? Heaven? Hell? As a policeman, he had seen people struggle with these questions. Relatives of murder victims who hoped their son’s killer would go to hell. People who were sure their little Johnny would be looking down on them from heaven. People who were certain when you were dead you were dead. That there was nothing.

And then there were the people who believed in ghosts.

Jack had hung around a lot of death. When he was eight years old he held the hand of his grandfather when he took his last breath. As policeman, he had been at the scene of car crashes, suicides, murders… and stupid avoidable accidents. He had never seen a ghost.

And the very idea of ghosts freaked him out. The idea that someones soul could be trapped in the place where they had lived, or died - or both - was a horrific one. What kind of hideous torture would that be. To see the world change around you to watch days, months, years - centuries, perhaps - go past and to be unable to make contact with anyone.

Jack shivered. He hoped that whatever happened after death, it wasn’t that.

The thought that Valerie was standing in the same room as him right now. Unable to make contact with him. Unable to give - or receive - comfort. Just watching him sit there, useless. A lame duck just waiting to die.

And if he died… would he see her? Would he get to join her? Everything anyone had ever told him about ghosts would lead him to think no.

Ghosts were lonesome, unhappy, creatures, it seemed. No one ever talked about happy couple spirits.

So, for Valerie’s sake - for his sake - he hoped she wasn’t here in this room with him. She deserved better than that.

The dreamcatcher turned, twisting more violently as a breeze took hold of it. He wondered what would happen to the dreams it had caught in its web. The wind was strong enough to snatch them away. Would they find someone elses head to pollute, instead of his?

He couldn’t remember the last time he had dreamed of anything. But it wasn’t the dreamcatcher that stopped his nocturnal visions. He could thank the combination of whisky and sleeping pills for that.

Jack had never been much of a drinker. And he hadn’t taken pills for anything more than a headache. No, tell a lie, he’d had a course of anti-biotics after that lunatic bit him in the park that time. But that didn’t really count. He had seen colleagues stagger down the path of dependence on one drug or another: alcohol, antidepressants, beta-blockers, even cocaine.

He had always looked down on them, he realised now. He thought he was better than them, stronger.

It turned out he just hadn’t found the thing that would push him down that road. It took the death of Valerie - cruelly timed with the year he retired. Instead of having time to spend with each other, traveling, seeing a bit of the world, Jack and Valerie had spent the time in cancer treatment centres, and finally the hospice.

The hospice had been Valerie’s idea.

“I don’t want you to think about my bag of bones everytime you walk into the house,” she had said, one afternoon, as they sat on this very porch. The dreamcatcher had been dangling above her head that day too. Jack had been watching it dance, because it was easier to have that conversation and not look at his dying wife. She had been wrapped in a blanket, and wore a thick wollen hat, even though it was summer, and Jack was in a t-shirt and shorts.

“I want you to be comfortable,” Jack said, eventually. “You always said you wanted to… to die at home.” (Valerie had been very clear that he was not to used euphemisms: “I’m not going to pass away,” she’d say. “I’m going to die. Don’t pussyfoot around me. The words death and dying won’t kill me: the cancer will do that.”)

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to turn our beautiful home into a hospice.”

Perhaps, she wanted to make sure her ghost wouldn’t be stuck here, Jack thought.

Being retired meant he had no work to bury himself in. He had nothing to do but to sit in this house trying not to think about how easy it would be to kill himself. Valerie had made him promise he wouldn’t mope. She had told him to go travelling around Europe as they had planned. It was the first promice he had made to Valerie that he had broken.

It’s not too late, Valerie’s voice echoed in his head. You could book the tickets now. Get off your arse, Jack. Do something.

He had tried to book a trip. The day after the funeral he had taken the bus into town. He had walked down the high street to where the travel agent he had used to book his and Valerie’s honeymoon fifteen years before. It wasn’t there. A mental health charity shop was in its place. Jack had gone inside and asked the girl behind the till if she knew what had happened to the travel agent, where it had moved to.

“It closed down,” she said. “No one uses travel agents anymore.”

“How do they book holidays?” Jack knew the answer even as he asked the question.

“The internet,” they said together. They both laughed.

“It’s been closed for years,” the girl said.

“I haven’t taken a holiday in years,” Jack said.

The girl had given him a piece of paper with an address of a website she used, and he had thanked her, stuffed the paper into his shirt pocket and left. He decided to walk the five miles, home, instead of taking the bus. It had started to rain half way home and when he got home he had stripped off at the door and put his clothes straight into the washing machine. It was halfway through the cycle he remembered the paper.

It seemed like a sign.

“You could have used Google,” Ernie said to him in the pub, later that week, when he told his old friend the story. “Just type in European holiday tours, or something.”

“No. I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Well, don’t leave it too long. You don’t need me to tell you, you never know what is around the corner.”

Ernie was right: Jack hadn’t needed Ernie to remind him.

He looked at his watch. Five to six. Almost time. Valerie had a rule: no alcohol before six. And he had stuck to it. More or less.

He stood up and went back into the house. By the time he’d had a piss, and got the whisky out of the cupboard, put the ice in the glass it would past six.

He had just put the bottle back into the cupboard when his mobile rang. It took him five minutes to find the bloody thing. And when he did - it was under a cushion on the sofa - he found that the battery had gone flat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. He found the charger in the drawer under the microwave in the kitchen.

There was a message from Ernie.

“Why don’t you ever answer your phone, you old fool. Call me back would you? I’ve got someone here you might be interested in talking to.”

Jack took a sip of his whisky. Who had wandered into Ernie’s shop now? The last time it had been Mary Parker, an old school friend of Ernie and Jack. Jack had joined them in the pub for a drink, maybe two, before leaving them to it. He could just about handle one on one conversations with Ernie. But he found proper socialisation too difficult.

You always were a miserable, so and so, Jack.

And you didn’t even see me at my worst, Valerie.

“The Old Man And The Sea. Old books and new. Ernie speaking, how can I help.”

“It’s me,” Jack said.

“Jack! Where were you? Not taking a dump, I hope?”

“No. I lost my phone again, to the sofa monster.”

“Ah… look, can you pop down to the shop?”

“I’m a little occupied, this evening, Ernie.”

“Mr Walker keeping you company, again?”

“Mr Glenfidich, Ernie. As well, you know.”

“What about tomorrow morning?”

“What’s this about? I’m not in the mood for a reunion, to be honest. I’m really not feeling up to socialising.”

“What? No. Nothing like that. Look, I have a young man and his sister here. They’ve read your book-” there was the sound of someone talking in the background. “Actually, it is the young man who has read your book.”

“I didn’t even know there were still copies lying around.”

“Neither did I. But my young friend bought a copy here yesterday. And he’d like to talk to you about it.”

“I don’t think I’m in the mood for a book signing.”

“Did you hear about the girl who was injured on the ghost train, yesterday?”

“I might have seen something about it. Some kind of faulty mechanism, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what the manager of the ghost train says. I’ve got the young lady herself here. She tells a different story.”

“Sorry, Ernie. I’m not sure what game you are playing, but I’m not getting involved. I’m not a private investigator. If there is something criminal send her to the police. If not, point her back in the direction of the newspaper.”

“I think you’ll want to hear this, Jack. She says someone attacked her with a knife.”

“Then send her to the police. I’m no longer a policeman, Ernie.”

“Wait until you hear who she said did it.”

“Are we playing a guessing game, Ernie? If so guess what I’m thinking…”

“She said the guy who attacked her said he ‘goes by the name of Poppery.’ Jack? Did you hear me? Jack?”