Sometimes They Come Back

It was a dark and stormy night. The timing was great. If it wasn’t for the loud claps of thunder, I’d probably be asleep at the wheel. No doubt sleep deprivation was taking its toll. The black coffee wasn’t even phasing me. The saddest part was that I needed to clock in, not out. Other than not having to deal with as much traffic and drama, the graveyard shift could really suck.

Even though it wasn’t working for me tonight, I grabbed my thermos full of the hot dark roast from off the passenger seat and stumbled inside the prison as my legs protested. After the audible beep of the machine reading my badge, I let go of it and felt it retract against my chest. Tony, officer on Duty, at your service.

The baton on one side and the revolver on the other swayed back and forth as I made my way into Cell Block A. One of the prisoners I called Elvis (mutton chops and all) was sawing logs atop his bunk. It instantly made me jealous since he got to sleep. I didn’t sleep well earlier in the day after I got the news that Downtown Steve Brown, as I liked to call him, a friend I used to jam with at the local music club, got gunned down in an alleyway. I graduated high school with the man. He truly was a brother from another mother and even in school he could play some mean chords on his bass guitar that would steal your attention, like the thunder that still roared outside the compound.

I made my rounds and sensed the spirits that still inhabited the place, prisoners that had been executed—death row inmates mostly. I always had the gift of sensing those who moved on. I thought it would probably be only a matter of time when I would detect my old friend. I didn’t have to conjure certain people by thinking of them. Sometimes they just appeared out of nowhere. Sometimes they showed up in my dreams and I would wake up drenched in sweat as if I just showered.

I saw Carl down the way coming toward me, another guard. He lifted his baton and waved it at me, his way to say howdy without actually saying it, and then immediately went back to letting it clang against the bars of the cells as he liked to do. Carl thought he was a musician in his own mind, a drummer, but everyone else—me and the prisoners—begged to differ. He was a chump. Probably more accurately a chimp. He deserved to be in a cage, probably at a zoo with some of the uglier monkeys, perhaps the baboons. In short, he should have been treated like the animal that he was, and he had it coming. It was just a matter of time. I gave him maybe the rest of the year, which only consisted of about two months. I had a hunch the cellmates would conspire and form a plan to take him out. I didn’t always side with criminals but I knew how they thought.

About midway through my shift, when sitting down in the lunchroom and biting into my hot pepper Italian sub, I felt a little tug, like somebody or something gently pulling my hair. It was a little near the back of my head. It was a spirit, but not an evil one (or the tug would have been harder). Static electricity could cause a similar reaction, but I could tell this was different. It was downtown Steve Brown. I knew it instantly. I couldn’t clearly make him out visually, but I could smell his English Leather cologne. They let him briefly say hello, a small gesture to let me know he was cool, that they were treating him alright upstairs. I turned to look and grinned as a bright light flashed for a second, a flicker from an overhead fluorescent…and then it was over. He was there and gone. I slept better and felt better later in the day.

I think I gave his wife, Aimee, a sense of closure about a week later when I caught up with her after the funeral and described the encounter I had at work when he Steve visited me. She teared up as she had experienced a very similar thing, except that the tug was on her left hand, the hand that still displayed their wedding ring. She hugged me. We stood there, her arms around me in a tight embrace. Then she rocked me back and forth like a mother with her infant. I let her sway me back and forth. In my mind I envisioned we were two souls slow dancing to some rhythm and blues at a club, the same music club that Steve had frequented. His mean bass was in the foreground. He was working his fingers like a madman, slapping those strings, the bass kicking in like thunder. It felt so good, so right. He was creating an atmosphere like no one else could. His timing was perfect. On stage it was the one and only: Downtown Steve Brown.

A few years had gone by and it was now November 2025. I was back at the same prison, working the same grind on midnights, when it happened. I was finishing up my supper and felt a tug, this time on my left hand. The fluorescent bulbs above flashed bright twice and then that was it. I was confident that I knew what it meant.

About a week later one morning when I got home, as an attempt to get a better sense of closure, I went online and searched for Aimee Brown. It didn’t take long to validate that it was true. Her picture was staring back at me on the screen. It was a nicely written obituary. It made mention about her deceased husband, her guitar hero.

I smiled. It really made my day knowing they were together again. I perused it again and, sure enough, noticed the day of her passing was about a week ago, November 17th, the same night the lights flickered twice: it was Steve letting me know. I printed the obit and put it with the others in my folder. I remember thinking how the thickness of the folder made me feel old.

While sitting at my desk in my study, still holding onto the thick folder but with the bottom edge of it resting on my desk because of its heaviness, I closed my eyes and daydreamed. I saw Steve serenading everyone, alongside angels playing their harps. I also saw Aimee standing at the front of the crowd. She was swaying back and forth to the music and singing words of a song I did not yet know.

My eyes still closed, I hummed the melody like I knew it. But I couldn’t yet clearly think of what it was, no name, no lyrics. I felt like I was free-falling through the sky and toward the crowd below. That was when my hands let go of the folder. It slid flat against my mahogany desk. Then my forehead slammed hard against the folder which might as well have been a boulder.

My body slumped. My skin became pale. The desk lamp flickered.