Phantoms of Rockwood

Chapter One

Five phantoms lurked invisibly in a tiny corner of the sky. On stormy evenings, they shed tears that added to the rain that splashed over the Earth. Sometimes, on the gym windows, rivulets of water streaked the clear glass panes, like tears rolling down the cheeks of an unhappy child.

Five marauders, seeking athletic human hosts, and a place for ghosts to take care of unfinished business, a state basketball championship.

They longed for a chance to bounce a basketball once more, to shoot a jump shot, or to make a steal again. They craved to feel the sweat and excitement that human beings feel as they run up and down the court.

Sure, they played games in the airless environment that all athletic ghosts float around in, but something was missing. The sweaty aroma of athletes and the noise of a cheering crowd filling a high school gym on a cold Friday night were essential elements. The Phantoms missed human emotions the most.

Five Ghosts, young basketball players who died too early, too soon, and with unfinished business wanting desperately the opportunity to return to life and the game.

They wanted to ramble some more, find fulfillment again as real athletes with raw human emotions.

Dreams stimulated their restless souls.

They wanted to run up and down a basketball court and feel it.

These five phantoms wanted to leave their corner of the eternal athletic sky for a little while – if only for a moment to sprint up and down the court and win that elusive high school basketball state championship.

They didn’t ask where they were going. They only wanted to be alive again. Playing basketball in the flesh would let their spirits run free. Each individual ghost would exist, simultaneously, in the body of a living basketball player; each ghost would inspire, motivate, and help that player navigate through life’s obstacles.

Some of the phantoms were not good people, but would still be given a second chance. Second chances would come in many names, faces and places. Others would have to redeem themselves with a more difficult human challenge.

Their destiny was a special place on Earth to live and win that state basketball championship so their souls could finally rest. What they wanted couldn’t be found in a restless death, but fulfilled only by returning to life.

Everyone has a dream that sticks to their souls until that dream is fulfilled. The five marauders sang eerily to the dawn of a new existence with a chorus, the chorus based on a chance to be free.

Now, they descended, slowly toward Earth.

The five circled the Earth, looking for just the right place to land in the United States and one last chance to fulfill their dreams. They only had six months, just one basketball season to find and complete a dream, fulfill that dream, return to that corner of the sky and rest, eternally.

Life and even death must be something more than long, this time a reason, a basketball season. They had to find a place where they were needed, to instill the basketball hosts with a winning attitude.

The change would be subtle, as the human basketball player`s psyche would be invaded by a ghostly presence. The players and the Phantoms would be forever changed.

Descending, the search was over as they found a place where a basketball team was in the midst of a long, long losing streak.

Chapter Two

All five arrived in the middle of a thunderstorm in Rockwood, Georgia.

Large white canvas signs swayed in the wind, along Main Street, painted with the image of the high school mascot: The Purple Phantoms .

The tops of the trees blew and the wind whistled a refrain, on a stormy night in Georgia, through the branches of the trees. People sprinted to the front of buildings on Main Street and pressed their backs against the brick walls beneath the buildings` canopies. They cringed with each loud thunderclap and huddled closer together with each lightning flash.

More people looked out the window of John’s Café and whispered to each other, I have never seen a thunderstorm like this one before.

In the Board of Education building, which was situated next to Rockwood High School, the Board Members, the high school principal and some irate parents concocted a plan to fire Coach Larry Jones; the coach who had brought the Purple Phantoms to the regional championship and final four appearances, but forgotten in the midst of this humiliating losing streak.

The crisis in Rockwood was extremely serious, a 30-game losing streak.

The star player’s parents were in the Board of Education office threatening to transfer their son. This was the last drop in a puddle that was turning into a raging torrent of parental and fan discord to the theme of ‘fire the coach’.

Coach Jones sat in his black easy chair in his office, looking out the window as rain drops splashed on the concrete parking lot, listening to the thunder and lightning that mirrored the inner conflict in his soul.

As he looked out the window, the lights in the parking lot dimmed and eventually went out. It was dark, pitch dark. Coach Jones leaned forward, as everything went silent. He bolted back in his chair as the thunder clapped; he thought he saw five-straight lightning bolts flash in the distance.

That was unusual because a thunder clap was usually followed by a single lightning bolt on a night like this. This caught his attention. He thought he saw the silhouette of five people standing, with a basketball under the arm pit of the one in the middle on the last flash. This really unnerved him

Coach Jones’ stomach bulged out from all the slices of pecan pie with vanilla ice cream on top that he had consumed at John’s Café in Rockwood. Each slice added a little more girth to his waistline; he was always talking about adding another notch to his belt.

He was always sharp and purposely alert, but his physical appearance was lacking with his paunch, and hair that needed cutting and trimming with more regularity.

At least my alertness hasn’t been compromised by my excess pecan pie and vanilla ice cream habit, he laughed, as he consumed another piece of pecan pie saturated with butter drizzling down the slice."

Coach Jones pushed himself up and walked from his office through a door that led into the gym. The walls were white with the pictures of the mascot, the Purple Phantom, placed at strategic areas on the gym walls. The center court had the Purple Phantom symbol inscribed on it.

s he walked across the basketball court and sat on the first row of the bleachers, he felt a chill. It was just a little disconcerting as he looked around the gym that he had called home for fifteen years. Now, this would be his last basketball season.

His players were good players: they worked hard, but private schools and high schools around the area recruited the best players from other districts and even from foreign countries. They wanted to win at any cost; that’s called pimping for talent.

Coach Jones’ players were homegrown and sometimes they were good and sometimes they weren’t. He used this approach to win five regional championships and two final four appearances, however, with the change in attitude and people starting to ask, "What have you done for me lately?’’ he’d continue to lose if he didn’t recruit talented basketball players.

He thought about his mission as a high school academic teacher and highly respected winning coach in the state of Georgia. These losing seasons hit hard and he decided to turn in his resignation, which would be effective at the end of the season. In six months, he wouldn’t be a high school basketball coach for the first time in twenty years.

Tears formed in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks when he heard a voice coming from inside the gym, Coach?

He wiped his eyes and looked up to see his team captain, Eric Foots Wilkins, coming straight toward him. Coach, are you alright?

Foots Wilkins sat next to the coach.

Coach Jones looked at Foots, Junior Myers’ parents and the principal came into my office before going to the board and threatened me. If I didn’t resign at the end of the season, Junior was going to transfer, and I would lose my coaching and teaching positions. But if I resign my coach position, I can stay on as a teacher.

Shoot, let him go…he’s just a selfish knucklehead.

I know, but I am thinking about the team and about your future.

"Coach, we’ll learn to win without him. He sure hasn’t helped us put any W`s on the scoreboard. He only cares about how many points he scores.

Coach look up at the wall under the Purple Phantom, you put regional and final four banners on that wall. We’ll put that state championship banner up there, too.

Coach Jones looked at the championship banners and then at the empty space. You’ll probably do it without me…

…Not without you, but with you. We’re going to win several games this year and they’ll have to keep you as coach.

Coach Jones smiled, Let’s hope so. We’ll get through this but for now, let’s get outta here.

They walked toward the door, stopping to put the lights out in the gym.

They had a varsity basketball game tomorrow night. Maybe that would be the night they broke their losing streak.

Chapter Three

Until the losing streak eroded the fan base, Rockwood would cram over two thousand screaming fans into the gym, along with a pep band and an atmosphere that rivaled most local colleges.

Game Time!

The gym was as empty as a tomb with a dirge-like atmosphere. Coach Jones could hear Loser, Get out of town, old man, Why you keep bringing this team down? and We’ll put a ’For Sale’ sign on your lawn," being shouted down from the sparse crowd in the stands like big negative rain drops echoing. The derisive comments brought laughter from the opposing coach, fans and players.

Rockwood was losing again and with one minute left. It was Bernie Harris High with a commanding 85-67 lead and the Purple Phantoms facing defeat number thirty-one, one defeat after the other.

Each of the five ghosts stood in midair, in front of the Phantom mascot symbols on the gym walls.

Foots Wilkins pulled his team together, including Antoine Carter, Greg Reece, Norris Nurse, and James Johnson, who replaced Junior Myers, with less than five seconds left on the clock as Harris High’s free throw shooter was making his last shot.

The ghosts watched as Junior Myers, transferring star player and the leading scorer for Rockwood, walked off the court yelling at his teammates. He threw a towel in the direction of the coach as the crowd booed both the star player and the coach. The Purple Phantoms imploded into an ineffective mess.

Myers, get back on this bench!"

No!"

Coach Jones walked toward Myers, but the buzzer went off, ending the game. He made a move back toward the center court to shake hands with the opposing coach. Myers continued to walk toward the locker room without shaking hands with the opposing players as the buzzer sounded. Before he reached the baseline of the court, he ripped off his purple uniform top and headed straight to the locker room for the last time as a member of the Rockwood Purple Phantom basketball team.

he five looked down on this turbulent scene, floating closer to the locker room, deciding which Phantom each would pair up; they each preferred a like-minded human player.

The ghostly starting five included: James JB Brown, Danny Gnais, Walter Williams, Ivan Pick Brown and Sharon James.

As the boos cascaded down along with the laughter from the opposing side of the gym, Coach Jones led the rest of the team in the traditional end of game handshake. His players kept their heads up as they entered the locker room as the parents, fanatical fans, and an irate principal let loose with a barrage of malicious comments.

As the coach left the gym floor, he heard a whistling sound and then the crash and splat of a bottle breaking just outside the runway to the locker room, Jackass!

In the locker room, all the players were sitting down at their individual stalls. There was an eerie quiet roundabout, except for Junior Myers putting on his street clothes yelling, I’m outta here, losing is not for me.

Quitting is for you! Foots Wilkins yelled back.

Junior Myers looked up and started to say something, but realized that Foots was three inches taller and thirty pounds heavier and was just waiting for a chance to pummel his butt into the floor.

He turned and walked toward the door, glanced back into the locker room and was tempted to say something when he caught Foots’ menacing stare. Junior Myers kept walking out the door.

Anyone else? The door is open, Coach Jones said.

They had ten players on the team and now there were nine, and all seemed to realize they had to stay together to reach their goals for the season.

None, Coach, Foots said.

Good, I see we still have some character players still left in Rockwood.

We lost a lot of games in the past, but we have a lot left and we will win again! We’ve only lost four basketball games this season, and with a unified team, we will wind again. I’m tired of losing.

All the Rockwood players clapped.

They didn’t realize they were being watched and that things were about to take a turn for the better, the winning side.

I want to thank all of you for standing with me and for your loyalty. You saw the atmosphere out there and I wouldn’t blame you if you left…

…Coach, we’re not leaving, Foots said.

Thank you, and when we come together for practice tomorrow, let’s come with a clean attitude. Ignore the stupid comments in school and from ignorant people; get ready to play together as a team and for each other.

Slowly, the players dressed and each moved toward the coach, giving him a bear hug.

When each of the starters left, carrying a team bag with the Purple Phantom