Ghosting

  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