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  Fact or Fiction

  Copyright © 2017 by David Archer.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  Published by: David Archer

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  1

  Grace Prichard liked to sleep in on Sundays. She’d started that habit many years ago, partly because she was angry at God over the death of her husband, and partly because she was just naturally lazy. It didn’t really matter why she got into the habit; the fact was that she never intended to get out of it. Sunday mornings were for sleeping, as far as she was concerned, and absolutely nobody on earth was going to be able to tell her differently.

  Unfortunately, that left room for someone who was not on earth to express an opinion, and that was the reason Grace was so irritable as she rolled over and yelled at her bedroom door, “Leave me alone, it’s Sunday!”

  “Grace?” Kim called through the door. Kim was Grace’s tenant, because she rented a room in her house. Grace referred to her as her roommate, but they didn’t actually room together. “Grace, I’m sorry to wake you, but Beauregard says…”

  Grace’s eyes popped open. “Beauregard? Beauregard? Beauregard doesn’t even exist, you mental lunatic. He’s a figment of your imagination, and everybody around you knows it except you.”

  As soon as she uttered the words, Grace regretted them. Kim was not only her tenant, but they were best friends too. They were also what Grace referred to as “joint grandmas.” That was because Grace’s son, Sam, was married to Kim’s daughter, Indiana, and Indiana’s daughter, Mackenzie, loved her grandmothers to pieces. Grace rolled her eyes and rubbed her face with her hands, then sat up on the bed. She couldn’t say things like that to Kim and just leave them hanging. She needed to go and apologize immediately.

  “Grace?” Kim said weakly through the door. “I think that’s the problem. Beauregard says he’s beginning to think the same thing.”

  Grace put on a light robe over her nightgown and shoved her feet into a pair of bunny slippers. It only took her three steps to reach the door, and she yanked it open to see Kim standing there looking frail and frightened. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around the smaller woman and pulled her into a hug.

  “What do you mean?” Grace asked. “I didn’t mean to get you so upset, Kim, I really didn’t. Everything will be okay, it really will.”

  “I know,” Kim said. “I’m just worried about Beauregard. Something’s happened, and he’s beginning to doubt his own existence. Even he is beginning to wonder if I just made him up.”

  Grace turned and, keeping an arm around Kim, started toward the kitchen and the coffee she could already smell brewing. “Kim, just about everyone thinks you did, you know. Even Sam and Indie, they think so, too.”

  “I know, but why would I do that? Why would everybody think I would make him up? I mean, he’s been a pain in my butt since almost the first day I had to deal with him, and the looks I get, the people always acting like I’m crazy—why would I make up something that would cause me that kind of problem?”

  Grace parked Kim at the table and reached up to the cabinet to pull out a pair of coffee cups, then poured one for each of them. She set them on the table and pushed the sugar bowl close to Kim. She took her own coffee black, but Kim used enough sugar for a fair-sized cake.

  “Okay, now,” Grace said, “what brought all this on?”

  Kim shook her head sadly, then slowly raised her eyes to meet Grace’s. “Beauregard woke me up this morning,” she said. “He said he’d learned something important and he was going to need to talk to Sam. I asked him if it was something about Sam being in danger and he said no, that it wasn’t about Sam at all, so I asked him what it was about.” She spread her hands helplessly. “He said it was about his great-great-great-great-however-many-greats-grandchildren, that they were in some kind of trouble, but he didn’t know how to find them.”

  Grace stared at her friend for a moment, then shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. “He wants Sam to track down his descendants? I mean, does he know their names?”

  Kim shook her head again, even more sadly than before. “That’s why he’s beginning to doubt himself,” she said. “He says he knows they’re in trouble, but he doesn’t know who they are. I said, ‘well, maybe you just need to think about it,’ and he said, ‘maybe the reason I don’t know who they are is because I’m not real, maybe I really am just part of your imagination, maybe you really do see the future and use me to cover it up like Sam thinks.’ So I said…”

  Grace reached out and put a hand on Kim’s arm. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said. “He actually told you he’s not sure if he’s real?”

  Kim nodded. “Yeah, that’s what he said. He said maybe he’s just a figment, and maybe Sam is right. You know Sam thinks I’m a split personality, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ll worry about that later,” Grace said. “Did Beauregard say how Sam could find his great-great-whatever-grandchildren?”

  “He doesn’t know,” Kim said, “but I think there has to be a way.”

  Grace stared at her friend for a couple of minutes, then picked up her cup and took a sip of the hot coffee. She held the cup in both hands, bracing her elbows on the table, and mentally steeled herself for what she knew was coming. “Drink your coffee,” she said. “We’ve got to go see Sam and Indie. Sounds to me like Sam has a case he has to solve once and for all.”

  “Grace, do you really think we should?” Kim asked. “I mean, you know Sam is going to get all pissed off when we tell him it’s Beauregard who needs help, right?”

  Grace grinned, but there was a bit of grimace in it. “He might,” she allowed, “but he’s Sam Prichard. To be honest, I don’t think he could turn the case down to save his life. I mean, think about it; he’ll either prove that Beauregard is all in your head, which is what he’s always believed, or he’ll find proof that we don’t just come to an end when we die. Considering how many times he’s come close to death, I think either one of those answers would be enough to make him want to take the cas
e.”

  The two ladies finished their coffees and then went to their respective rooms to get dressed for the day. It was still early on a Sunday, but Grace had decided that this situation offered so many opportunities for her personal entertainment that there was no way she was going to miss it. She hurried up and put on a pair of designer jeans and a frilly shirt with a light jacket, slipped her feet into her leather boots, and walked out into the living room. Kim showed up there a couple of minutes later, and the two of them walked out to Grace’s car. A moment later, they were on the way to Sam’s house, and to what would turn out to be one of the greatest adventures any of them had ever seen.

  *

  Sam also enjoyed sleeping in, but things had changed lately. As Indie’s belly grew along with the baby inside it, Sam found himself taking over more of the day-to-day chores around the house. This included, naturally, getting little Kenzie up and ready for school every day, but her early-morning energy didn’t understand about weekends. The last three weeks, Sam had been up with her at six a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, because the child simply could not sleep in the way her parents wanted to.

  She’d also developed an annoying reluctance to go to sleep at a proper time. She could no longer simply enjoy the bedtime story Sam always climbed the stairs to read to her and drift off to sleep. Instead, Kenzie would often call out for a drink of water or another kiss good night just as Sam and his wife were settling into bed and thinking about having some private time for themselves. This would soon be followed by a “bad dream” and a heart-touching request to crawl in between them.

  “It’s normal,” Indie had told him. “She’s been the only child for six years, now. A new baby on the way means less attention for her, and she’s smart enough to figure that out. She wants to get all that she can now, while she still has us to herself.”

  Sam understood, he really did, but he often found himself longing for just an hour completely alone with the woman he loved. One hour, he often said to himself, that’s all. Just one measly hour.

  On that particular October Sunday, however, Sam had gotten up as soon as Kenzie peeked through the bedroom door. He leaned over and kissed his wife on the cheek, smiled at her, and mumbled, “Love you,” and then put on his slippers and limped his way to the kitchen to make Kenzie and himself some breakfast. He would make some for Indie, as well, but not for at least a couple more hours.

  Breakfast finished, the two of them made their way into the living room and sat down together on the big sofa. Kenzie grabbed the remote and searched through the DVR listings, looking for a movie she had recorded sometime in the past month. As Bill Gates had once discovered, however, icons are easier to recognize than titles; when she spotted the cartoon image of a Polynesian girl, she knew she had found the right movie. She hit the Select button, and it began to play.

  This particular movie had become one of her favorites, so by this time, both she and Sam could recite almost the entire script. When the young heroine found herself facing the man who was supposed to help her but chickened out, they actually played out the parts. Sam recited the guy’s lines while Kenzie delivered the girl’s lines perfectly.

  They were almost to the end of the movie when Sam heard a car pull up, and he got up and walked over to peek through the windows on the front door. As soon as he did so, his eyes went wide; his mother and mother-in-law were sitting in the driveway, and it seemed that they were having an animated discussion of some sort. Sam opened the door and leaned out, and the two women got out of the car and started toward the house.

  “Mom? Kim?” Sam said questioningly. “What are you doing here on a Sunday morning?”

  “Chasing a ghost,” Grace said. “No, wait, that’s your job.”

  Sam stepped back and held the door for them as they entered, then invited them to sit down. Indie came into the living room at the same time, and the expression on her face showed as much surprise as Sam’s.

  “Mom? What’s going on?”

  Kim sat primly on the couch and looked like she was trying to gather her thoughts for a moment, but Grace was impatient. “It’s Beauregard again,” she said. “He wants to hire you, Sam.”

  Sam was about to sit down in his recliner and suddenly fell backward into it. “What?”

  “It’s true, I’m telling you,” Grace said. “He suddenly wants to know if he’s real or not, because now he’s had a premonition that his great-great-forever-great-grandkids are in some kind of trouble.”

  Sam stared at his mother for a moment, then turned to Kim. “What is she talking about?”

  Kim sighed and finally raised her eyes to meet Sam’s. “She’s mostly right,” she said. “Beauregard woke me up this morning and said his grandchildren, several times removed, are in some kind of trouble. The problem is that he doesn’t know who they are or where to find them, so he wants you to track them down. The only problem with that is that it means you have to first prove whether or not he even exists.”

  San shook his head for a moment, then looked at his mother-in-law again. “Kim—look, I don’t know how to say this, but…”

  “You don’t believe in Beauregard,” Kim said. “It’s obvious, Sam—you don’t need to apologize for it. In fact, Beauregard is beginning to believe you may be right. He actually told me this morning that he’s not sure himself whether he’s real or just some psychological mix-up in my head.”

  Sam sat still and stared at her for ten seconds, then shook his head again. “Wait, you’re telling me that Beauregard doesn’t believe in himself anymore? Then how in the hell is he even talking to you?”

  “Sam,” Indie said, “language.”

  Sam winced. “Sorry, babe,” he said. “But still, if he doesn’t believe in himself, then how could he even exist?”

  “Well, if he really is just—just a figment of my imagination, some psychological construct I whipped together to hide my own ability to see the future, which is how you described him on more than one occasion, then I would imagine he’s really just me trying to talk to myself, right? Whether he’s real or not, I sure am.”

  Sam looked at her for a moment, then turned to look at his wife. Indie shrugged at him with her eyes wide, so he turned back to Kim. “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to track down his great-whatevers, assuming they even exist. I mean, how would I go about it?”

  Kim looked at him, but then suddenly her eyelids sagged and she seemed to wobble back and forth for a moment. When she suddenly sat up again and opened her eyes, Sam felt a frisson of fear run down his spine. “Beauregard?” Sam asked cautiously.

  “Hello, Samuel,” Kim said in a voice that sounded like a gentleman from the Deep South. “I do apologize for troubling you this way, but as you can imagine, there is no other that I can turn to. I need your help, Samuel, and there is no time to waste.”

  Sam rolled his eyes but then looked back at Kim’s somewhat distorted face. “But what can I do, Beauregard? How do I find your grandkids if you don’t even know who they are?”

  “I have thought about this all the night,” Kim said, “and I have some idea of a plan of action that might have some chance at success. If you were to go back to the places where I lived before I left the mortal plane, you might find some evidence of what happened to my children. As I recall, I had lost track of them some years before my demise, but there should be some sort of record that might lead you to them, and to a record of their children, and so on. It is my hope that you can then determine which of my descendants might be they of whom I have had this premonition.”

  Sam stared at Kim’s face, amazed at the fact that he could actually imagine that he was talking to an elderly gentleman, rather than a woman who was not yet quite forty-five years old. “I—I don’t know. I wouldn’t know where to begin. How do you track down somebody who’s been dead for what, a hundred and fifty years?”

  “It’s been somewhat less than that, but I understand your concern. While I do not pretend to understand the workings of the device wi
th which Miss Indiana learns so many things, I thought it might perhaps be able to provide some information?”

  Sam looked at Indie and raised his eyebrows. She stared back for a second, then shrugged.

  “I guess we could try ancestry.com,” she said. “I know they have a lot of records of Civil War soldiers and people from that time.” She rose from where she was sitting beside her mother and left the room but came back moments later with her laptop. She set it on the coffee table and powered it up, then began tapping on the keys. “Beauregard, what’s your last name?”

  “Beauregard,” Kim said. “That was my surname. My Christian name is Henry. Henry Thomas Beauregard was my full name.”

  Indie tapped on the keys for a few moments, and then her own eyebrows went up. “I have an H. Beauregard from Virginia and three H. T. Beauregards. Two of them are from South Carolina, but the other one just says Confederate troops. Can you tell me what year you were born?”

  Kim smiled. “That was in 1826,” she said. “July the twenty ninth, in Johnson City, Tennessee.”

  “And the year you died? Do you remember that?”

  “Yes,” Kim said. “That would have been 1875, and it was springtime. May, I believe.”

  Sam did the math and looked at Kim. “You were only forty-nine? Somehow I thought you would have been quite a bit older than that.”

  “Ah, but the war did make old men of us. I was not quite to my forty-ninth birthday, but I had lost a leg to a cannonball and I had taken a bullet that had damaged my liver. I was fortunate to have lived so long, Samuel.”

  “May of 1875,” Indie repeated back. “And you died in Hazard, Kentucky, right? In that house where Mom first heard you?”

  Kim smiled, but again the smile looked like it belonged on a gray-haired man. “Yes, the one on Pikeville Road.”

  Indie nodded. “How many children did you have, and what were their names?”

  “There were three,” Kim said, “one from each of my three wives. In those days, I’m sorry to say, it was not uncommon for young women to die in childbirth. Both of my first two wives did so. There were Henry Junior, Horace, and my only daughter, Winnifred.”