Just get me through tonight,
I breathe,
clenching
and
unclenching
my hands.
So has anyone ever seen a real ghost? asks Chloe again since no one ever answered when she asked before.
She’s still leaning forward,
away from Anil,
sipping her
MoonBuzz.
I wish, says Emma.
Remember how we used to do that Mary Worth thing? asks Chloe.
I do.
At Emma’s.
In 6th grade.
One of the last sleepovers we ever had,
just the two of us.
Scared the living shit
out of me.
In the bathroom,
lights out,
except for a single candle
perched on the toilet seat.
Looking in the mirror.
Just say it over and over, and you’ll see her. I swear, Emma said.
Except I didn’t
want
to see her,
whoever she was,
this malignant white-haired
witch
named
Mary Worth.
Who,
according to Emma,
might reach out
and tear at my face
because she herself
had been
disfigured
by a bottle-wielding psycho,
the skin on her face
cut to
ribbons.
The rose-colored towels
that were hanging on the shiny chrome rack,
were transformed into
shrouds,
the shower curtain,
an undulating specter
in the candlelight.
Say it, Maxie, commanded Emma.
Mary Worth Mary Worth Mary Worth Mary Worth.
Heart pounding,
my tongue thick
in my mouth.
The image of my face
in the mirror
suddenly went jagged,
like the glass was
shattering.
Someone screamed.
Me?
Emma?
I ran out of the bathroom,
my heart
exploding
in my chest.
Scaredy-cat! Scaredy-cat!
Hating the sound
of Emma’s laughter
in my ears.
And now I wonder:
is it that
long-ago laughter
that keeps me pinned
to this leather car seat?
EMMA
I’ve known about the ghost house
forever.
Always wanted to check it out.
Lots of rumors.
Like someone killed someone there
back in the sixties.
Or that a bride, jilted on her
wedding day, lay dead and moldering,
still wearing her worm-infested Vera Wang gown.
Or just that a crazy old lady
lives there with her grandson,
who no one has seen in years.
Brendan is driving too fast.
Probably too drunk to be driving.
I’ll drive us home.
Slow down, Bren, I say. It’s around here somewhere.
We pass Walnut Creek Cemetery.
But I can’t see any sign
of a scary-looking house.
Brendan turns around,
then parks in front of the gates
to the cemetery.
Now what? he asks.
I get out my cell, and dial my friend
Eve because she’s pretty much the expert
on everything weird in this town.
FAITH
My cell phone
is ringing.
It’s Emma.
Hello? I say, eager.
How
amazing
is it that
she’s
calling me
just when
I’ve been
thinking so
hard about
her,
wanting
to call,
but not
wanting to
make her
mad.
Hey, Eve, this is Emma, she says. Listen, can you tell me where that ghost house is?
Eve?
For a second
I’m confused,
then realize
Emma must’ve
dialed wrong.
She didn’t
mean to
call me
at all.
Emma, it’s Faith, I start.
Oh shit, sorry little sis. I meant to call Eve. Oh, I see, her name’s right before yours. Sorry. See ya later.
Emma, I say, urgent, don’t hang up. Mom and Dad had this big fight and . . .
But she’s
gone.
And I
get this
prickly,
scared
feeling.
The ghost house.
And
Emma
sounded
slurry.
Off.
Drunk.
Mom: I’ll take the girls and leave.
I won’t
let that
happen.
I need
to find
Emma.
Warn her.
Don’t
screw up
tonight.
It’s too
important.
I know
the ghost house.
I know
how to
get there.
MAXIE
While Emma’s on the phone,
I gaze out at the
graves
behind the low stone wall
of the cemetery,
rows and rows
of them,
like waves on a
gray,
slow-moving
sea.
There’s one streetlight
on the block
and it shines on
a statue
perched above a headstone,
almost like
a spotlight.
Hold on, I say to no one in particular. I’ll be right back.
I open the car door,
take out my camera,
hop out into the
warm night.
It’s a stone angel,
with a flowing gown
and wings.
But no head.
Crouching, I find
the headless angel
in my viewfinder.
Flash.
WALTER
Tonight I watched Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
I watch it a lot, and Mother likes to tease me.
She says if I’d been born back in the Old West
I’d have been one of those sheriffs.
Like Wyatt Earp
or the marshal of Hadleyville in High Noon,
who faces down lawless gunslingers all by himself
because it’s his duty.
I like it when Mother kids me about that,
because secretly I know she’s right.
I would be a good sheriff
for one of those old western towns.
I’d ride patrol on the dusty streets.
Silver star on my chest,
leather holster with a gun on my hip,
rifle slung across my back.
I’ve loved cowboys since I was a kid.
Mother even got me cowboy bedsheets.
I slept on them until they fell apart,
and Mother turned them into rags.
I saw her using one of those rags the other day,
polishing the leaves of some roses she’d cut
to put in the old milky white
glass vase
with the crack in it.
Tonight I’m wearing a T-shirt Mother found for me
at a thrift store.
It says ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, GUN, I WIN!
and it’s my favorite.
At first Mother didn’t want to get a gun,
but there were too many times
we could hear people in our yard, bad guys,
so she went out and bought one. To protect us.
I’m lying in bed, wishing those old cowboy sheets
hadn’t worn out,
when a faint light flashes outside.
It’s almost like faraway lightning.
But the weatherman didn’t forecast
thunderstorms tonight.
I don’t like storms.
Neither does Mother.
I cross to my bedroom window and
look down the block at Walnut Creek Cemetery.
And I wonder, like I always do,
how many gunslingers are buried there.
EMMA
What’s Maxie doing? I ask.
Communing with the poor dead fucks who live here. Brendan laughs.
I watch Maxie take pictures
of graves. Then look down at my cell
at the directions Eve texted me.
The ghost house is about a block north of the cemetery entrance, I say.
Brendan polishes off his can of MoonBuzz
and crumples the aluminum in his hand,
tossing it at my feet.
C’mon, Maxie, I call out the window, and she suddenly appears, climbing back in the car.
North is the other way, I say to Brendan, impatient.
I know, he says, with a frown.
He swings the car into
a sharp U-turn,
tires skidding.
Go slow, I say.
And as he pulls closer, I see it, or what must be it.
An overgrown mess of shrubbery and trees,
on a corner.
There’s no streetlight on this block, but the
moon is more than half full and through the foliage
I see the outline of a house. The ghost house.
FELIX
back when we were kids, when we were EMFAX, emma was always the one who loved the thrill, the close call. always braver than me, bolder. but i never let on when i was scared. boys can’t. and while i was reading, and rereading, joey pigza books, emma read those goosebumps books. one after the other.
it suddenly hits me, as i watch her lean toward brendan, pointing through the windshield at something, that he, brendan, is now her thrill, her close call.
i think about lighting up another joint, but i’m already too wasted. i remember that gun in the glove compartment. maybe i should let my head clear.
EMMA
You can hardly see the house.
It’s completely dark, a dim silhouette
behind the tangle of bushes and weeds.
Like a fairy-tale castle with everyone
asleep inside. Hushed and expectant.
Waiting to be awakened.
My heart starts beating faster.
Maybe there is no crazy old lady.
Maybe it really is haunted.
I’ve always wanted to meet up
with something not of this world.
I mean truly.
Vampire stories, that old Mary Worth thing,
and the tales told at camp about vanishing hitchhikers
and bloody hooks dangling from car doors.
Even Santa. The tooth fairy. Easter bunny.
I always knew they were fakes.
And it pissed me off.
But a ghost. What a rush that would be,
to see something from another world,
something that most people never get to see.
ANIL
1. If my father lived next door
to the house
we’ve stopped in front of,
with the wild, unkempt yard,
he’d be on the phone,
on a daily basis,
to a local government official,
complaining about standards
and property values
and respecting your neighbors.
2. From the little you can see of it
the house looks abandoned,
like no one has lived there
for a long time.
Maybe the owners moved away,
a divorce, a job transfer,
or an unexpected death.
I get the sudden image in my head
of a dead person, a corpse, lying inside,
on a tattered rug, rotting.
3. My father once took Viraj and me
to a master class on anatomy
at the hospital
to see a cadaver being cut up.
Viraj couldn’t wait.
I didn’t even make it into the room.
In the hallway outside, my dad started explaining
how they preserve the bodies
by pumping the arteries full of a combination of
alcohol, glycerin, and something called formalin,
which keeps the body from decomposing
from the inside out.
I barely made it to the men’s bathroom,
where I threw up in a urinal.
Viraj mocked me for weeks.
4. While I’m watching that dark, lonely house,
I suddenly see
a dim light flicker on
in a second-story window.
I see the outline of a person.
Standing there.
Looking down at us.
MAXIE
Emma turns around
and looks at the
four of us.
I keep my eyes down,
reviewing the images of the
headless stone angel
on my camera.
So who’s coming with me? says Emma.
Brendan turns off the engine,
and the quiet in the car
suddenly seems suffocating,
like everyone has stopped
breathing at once.
I glance at Felix.
His eyes are closed again.
And I suddenly get this crazy picture
of our three younger selves,
back when we were
EMFAX.
It’s like stuff we did
in the old days.
Of course it was always
Emma who’d
dare us.
And, breathless with fear, we’d sneak up to:
the crumbling gravestone
the sleeping pit bull
the house with the crabby cat-lady
the dead chipmunk with its belly gaping open.
Urging each other onward,
a daring, heart-stopping
adventure.
Like Jem, Scout, and Dill
in To Kill A Mockingbird.
A dare, to sneak a look