The Red-Headed Wraith

Copyright 1999-2004 by Nate Leved
When I was in my early 20's (a long time ago) I bought a house in Los Angeles, down off of the L.A. river. It was a neat old house, built entirely of redwood by an eccentric doctor for his red-headed wife. I don't know why he bothered with the redwood, because the house was always painted white with a green shingle roof. Well, at least the termites wouldn't eat it.

I really bought the house because the back gate opened into the river. I used to ride Harley Davidson motorcycles back then, and I could ride all up and down L.A. in that wide river bed, just like they do in the movies. Mostly, the river is dry above ground, except when there is a real bad storm. You have to be careful though, even in good weather. It's best to ride your bike up on the sides or at least on the angled, concrete side walls as the river runs underground, but near the surface in places. Lots of people have inadvertently hit a soft spot and went underground, and were carried away by the river and never surfaced again. That would be a great waste of a good Harley.

Yeah, I could easily run all the way from Dodger Stadium clear up to the north end of the San Fernando Valley without ever setting wheel on a city street. That was great for bar hopping or cafe racing as you couldn't very well get a D.U.I. in the river bottom back then. The river was great for making get-aways too. He, he... Of course, I had to be careful not to run out of gas as I could only get in and out in certain places. In most cases, a car couldn't even get in there, as the access points were cabled off, but a bike could just squeeze through if you were careful.

Anyway, the point of this tale is that with the acquisition of the old house, I also acquired a ghost-- a red-headed, female ghost. Yup, you guessed it, somewhere back in the 1930's the doctor's wife died in the master bedroom-- my bedroom. Anyway, she was ill and for some reason, locked in that room. I guess that the good doctor was a little weird and kept her shut up in there. Well, I don't have any idea what happened to the old doctor after the death of his wife, but as long as I owned that house, his wife was mine.

She wasn't bad looking either. Hell, with her around, I didn't even need a real, live woman, not that she would have let one in the house... It was a weird experience. I guess that she was kind of wild and pretty unfulfilled as she liked to ride on the back of my Harley, especially in the night when the moon was up. Lots of folks back then saw her perched on the back of my old, blue Harley with her fiery red hair and filmy white shroud streaming back behind the bike as we roared along in the night.

Those were some weird old times! Guys would say, "Hey man, who was that neat red-head that you were packing on your scooter last night?" "You don't want to know," I would answer. Ah, I got used to it after a while. Like I said, she wasn't bad, and she was cheap to keep too. Today, everyone would have thought that she was some sort of Goth chick, with all that cool, white skin and misty green eyes that just kind of looked on through you. Only the red hair didn't quite fit.

She liked speed too, as the old shovel- head always seemed to go faster when she was on my buddy seat. She was some kinda hustler all right. What the Hell, we had some good times. I even got used to her sleeping with me in my bed. I mean, I had to, as I couldn't get rid of her. What was I going to do-- call Ghost Busters? It wasn't all that bad, you know. The only time we ever got into a hassle was over the bedroom door...

You see, I like to lock my bedroom door-- I still do. She didn't. She had a real thing about locking that bedroom door. There was no way that she would ever allow it. Well, I guess that I don't blame her, as it had already got her killed once. It seemed that somehow, that unvented gas heater blew out, and she suffocated to death in there one night. That had to be a bum trip. Oh yeah. There were scratch marks on that door too, come to think of it. I guess that she was locked in at the time. Bummer!

Anyway, I'd lock the door and she would unlock it. This went on for quite a while, until one night I woke up and found that damn door wide open again. I got up and walked across the room and pulled it shut by the latch. Well, this time, it must have been the anniversary of her death, as she went nuts right there and then. You don't ever want any damn ghost going nuts on you any time-- I'll tell you right now! She let out a banshee howl that could wake the dead and ripped the door out of my hand, flinging the thing wide open so that it smacked against the wall on the other side. Damn, the bitch was off!

Hell, you could see her eyes glow red in the dark. Never had I ever seen anything like that before in all my born days! I said, "Well all right then! You want the door open, OK, we'll leave it open!" I turned around and stumbled back to bed and crapped out. Well, I didn't see her for a couple days after that. I don't know where she went, but finally she came back and seemed to have regained her ghostly composure like nothing ever happened. She even climbed into bed with me and kinda snuggled up against my back like women do whether they're alive or dead.

Next day, I went to work and worked all day down at the newspaper. When I got home, the house had burned down. Those dammed unvented gas heaters they used to have were a real problem. I guess that is why they are outlawed now. Anyway, all that pretty redwood was in ashes and there wasn't much left. Nobody was home in the neighborhood that day, so nobody called the fire department, and they didn't get there until it was far too late. The place had become a real inferno, destroying everything in it.

Later, the insurance agent asked me what I wanted to do, rebuild the house or cash out. Well, I didn't really want to go back in there again, so I cashed out and split. I figured that after being destroyed twice in that place, the red-headed ghost wouldn't be all that pleasant to live with. So I came to Arizona to get the Hell away from the place. The Harley was melted from the inferno, and for some reason, I never got another one. Anyway, since then, I've lived a fairly ordinary kind of life except that I still like cold pussy.

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