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The Crazy Old Doll Woman of Toys “R” Us

6 Sep

September 6, 2012

It began simply enough. Saarah and I had decided to shoot some pool. The pool hall was in Bay Ridge and we parked close by but first I had to stop at the bank. We walked down the avenue and passed a store with milk on sale for $1.99 a gallon, a really good price. Saarah needed milk and we planned to pick up a gallon on the way home. So we continued to the bank and then went back the same way, passing the store again, and finally to the pool hall.

It was awful. I couldn’t sink a ball for the life of me. I missed easy shots, bounced the cue ball off the table time after time, and somehow even lost the grip on my stick and sent it shooting across the hall like a javelin. Luckily nothing was hurt except my pride. And Saarah? She is some kind of superpro. If she ever tries to play you for money, run like the wind. She was awesome and left me with a serious feeling of inadequacy that only the very pathetic can know, like whenever the New York Mets step onto a baseball diamond.

We left and walked to the milk store and before we knew it we were all the way past the bank. We had somehow missed the store. So we walked back and before we knew it we were all the way past the pool hall. We had somehow missed the store. Again.

The store was gone. Not closed, gone. It was a little after 5 in the afternoon and in the scant hour that had passed the store had vanished. We could not even find a sign for a store that would have sold milk.

If it ever existed to begin with.

But the day went on, as days do, and we shopped a little and ate dinner and had a great desert and I even managed to forget how much Saarah totally annihilated me at pool. We started talking about games. We’d bowled recently and just shot pool and Saarah decided that the next game she would beat me in would be chess. Problem is, she didn’t have a chess set and mine was missing a few important pieces, like a knight and both rooks. And the board.

We decided to buy one at Toys “R” Us and that is where this story really starts.

This was Labor Day and it was around 8:30 at night. There were, counting us, (and I counted), only 6 customers in the store. They were getting ready to close and we were walking around, having picked out a chess set, looking at the toys and just generally having fun as I always do with Saarah. We were in the action figure aisle and I was drooling over some toys that I’d buy if only I had a zillion extra dollars when we heard screaming from not too far away, a man and a woman.

“I’m not buying that! I’m broke!”
“Yes you are buying this for me!”
“I have no money, I’m in debt! I can’t buy it!”
“I’m going to put it on your credit card and you’re going to pay for it!”
“I already owe all my friends money!”
“I DON’T CARE YOU’RE BUYING THIS FOR ME!”

We looked over and saw a man, around 55 years old, stomping out of the doll aisle with, literally, his hands waving in the air like he was either trying to wave the woman’s words away or he was signifying that the last of his sanity was slowly seeping out of his head. He had clearly been through this before. As he rushed away, he was still yelling about how he was broke, how he owed everyone money, that his credit cards were over the limit, etc.

It was pretty much like this

Saarah and I started laughing. And we only laughed harder when we saw that the screaming woman was about 75 years old, probably the guy’s mother. She had four or five dolls in her arms, and one of her arms had a black brace on it. She was dumping them into a wagon with some more dolls in it, though I did not get a good enough look to be able to count.

She started shouting.

“Can someone help me here?”
“I need help with the dolls!”
“SOMEBODY HELP ME WITH THE DOLLS!”
“WHERE IS ALL THE HELP!”
“I NEED SOMBEEODY TO HELP ME IN THE DOLL SECTION!”
“WHERE IS ANYBODY TO GET A DOLL FOR ME I CAN’T REACH!”
“NOW!”
“I know you work here COME AND HELP ME!”

As I said, the store was empty. Out of the six customers, two had left, the old woman’s son was MIA, and Saarah and I were just laughing together in the clearance section. There was plenty of sales help to assist the old woman.

The problem was, no one wanted to go near her.

“I NEED HELP!”

She sure did.

We had a clear view of, not ten feet away, an employee shaking his head and trying to get some other employee (out of our line of vision) to go over and help her. He did not want to go over there, in the worst way. And al lthis time the woman was still screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Hey, can’t you come over here? I need help! HELP!” Oops, she spotted him.

“Yes ma’am, sorry, I didn’t hear you.” That was about as bold-faced a lie as I ever heard, and I have told some whoppers myself.

Saarah and I walked around a little more, being nasty and mean and making fun of the woman (to ourselves) who, in all seriousness, has a screw loose. Her son obviously can’t afford to buy any more dolls but she doesn’t care at all. Either she is a hoarder or a shopaholic or, as someone who will remain nameless suggested, just a selfish old be-otch.

Saarah simply wondered why the son would have taken her to Toys “R” Us to begin with.

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The Legend of The Headless Taxi Driver

30 Aug

August 30, 2012

This is a true story.

For Saarah (who hated it.)

Gather around my children, and listen. Draw in close; this is a fine night for a ghost story. It is dark and stormy, and- that sound! No my children, don’t startle so easily, it is only thunder. I can see quite well in the flashes of lightning, it is only us here. Please, move in, tighten the circle. There is strength in numbers when you are in the dark.

This tale happened quite recently. Saarah and I had left the theater very late. The show ended hours after midnight and we walked through the still night, past the empty and vacant lots where the trees cast odd shadows in the lamplight. The late evening, soon to be early morning, was still and quiet. It was a summer night, silent and stark under the glow of the full moon above. Our car was parked down the block from the theater, below a single dull light, a short walk really. We walked down the street lost in our conversation, sparing not a single glance at the odd shapes of the tombstones and crypts to our left, and as we neared… why the shiver, my child? Why the fright?

Did I neglect to mention the graveyard?

Yes, this theater was located directly across the street from a cemetery. As we laughed and thrilled to the show on the screen, the dead lay in the darkness not thirty feet away. And as we walked alongside the necropolis, there was a hush. Our talk quieted and our laughter died. On such a black evening, the dead do not care for the laughter of the living. And although we made it to the car without encountering a single charnel specter, I was later given reason to wonder if we had really not disturbed some ephemeral presence. Perhaps we laughed too loudly. Perhaps we did not show the proper respect. I’ve never been sure……

We drove home, shaking off the chill of the graveyard with music and talk. The streets were quiet and other drivers scarce.  We had all but forgotten the shivering touch of the dead when a vehicle ahead of us drew our attention. It was a taxi, a typical yellow New York taxi, much as hundreds or thousands of others appear. But taxi cabs are not that common a site in Brooklyn. The big fares are in Manhattan. But that alone was not enough to draw out attention, because as we drew near, we saw that the driver, the driver of the taxi, sitting alone in the automobile, all alone with no passenger, was- but I am getting ahead of myself.

The taxi was not far in front of us. As we watched we saw that it was not stopping where it should. While it stopped at the red lights, it would stop midway into the intersection. The car seemed to dare the other traffic. It positioned itself so that it seemed to invite, no children, it seemed to dare Death himself to take the driver in his embrace.

Did you see that? In the flash of lightning, did none of you see that? Just beyond the trees? No, none of you? Perhaps the eaves of an old house, or maybe just this old storyteller’s imagination. Of course you could not see it, the lightning was behind you. But now all seems dark and quiet again.

We drew close to the car. It was not driving as it should at all. It drifted from one lane of travel to another. It crowded the rare car that came too close. It slowed in oncoming traffic and stopped in the center, the dead center, of intersections. We were keeping a respectable distance from this dangerous car, for at first we suspected that it was driven by a drunk, but we quickly noticed something that was not right. I softly pressed the accelerator and we inched closer. We followed, getting inch by inch closer, slowly gaining a better view of the interior.

We spoke not a word. But we knew each other’s thoughts. And one close glance at the car ahead and another in each other’s eyes confirmed that we had not left behind the specters and haunts of the graveyard, that we had not escaped the notice of the undead evils of the tomb. For when we drove close enough, and when the moonlight lit up the driver’s seat, we saw the truth and forever longer shall we wonder when we will next encounter the otherwise normal-looking car and its unearthly driver.

For what Saarah and I saw in the dark, just as we now sit in the same darkness, alone now as we were then, and I ask you children to draw close, press in very close my children, for I can only whisper this blasphemy, and pray I no further disturb the unliving…

When we pulled close to the car which invited Death, we saw that the driver…… the driver of the taxi…. had no head.

But wait! Again, the lightning! I see it! Do you? Look, you can see it! You can hear it! No, don’t wait for me, I am doomed! He has come to take me! The Headless Driver has come! Saarah, oh Saarah, I pray you are not next! He nears! He nears! Run my children! RUN! For I am doomed! Doomed!

.

.

.

Police records indicate that the camp counselor was found three days after being reported missing by camp officials. A search of the woods later turned up his body.

It had no head.

Rumors of a headless taxi driver have been reported during each full moon for the past decade but few dare to drive close enough to be sure.

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