At eleven thirty my flashlight went out, which woke me up. And my first thought on waking was, of all things, ‘did I win the bet?’
And really, I think I should’ve. Why spend all night in a spooky house to prove you’re not scared once you’ve already fallen asleep in it? Seems pretty not scared to me. Seems pretty relaxed. Casual. I fell asleep on a half-folded sleeping bag on a linoleum floor that pre-dated the Canadian Shield, would a scared person do that?
No. Nor would a scared person calmly and methodically replace the batteries in the flashlight. I brought backups. I’d tested the first set of batteries, then brought batteries anyways because you need to be thorough about these things. For safety.
Not safety from ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real and if they were real they wouldn’t care about lights. Safety from real things, like fugitive serial killers or SWAT teams or hordes of rabid raccoons or some shit.
So as I replaced the batteries my hands were steady, my breathing was moderate, and my pulse was even. It was only when I flicked the switch and illuminated the decaying, translucent skull in front of me that I started – which I assure you was purely an act of reflex.
“Woah!” I said. Not very helpful, but most people don’t do helpful when startled.
The skull opened its jaws and hissed. It reminded me more of a tarantula than a snake: the noise I was hearing wasn’t coming from a mouth, wasn’t fuelled by lungs, but my mind was reading it as that because of hopeless anthropomorphism. Or in this case, vitalomorphism? Not sure.
THE GRAVE IS DISRESPECTED, it said. And then it opened its jaws even wider, flew through my head, and vanished.
I waited ten minutes, then went back to bed. Whatever it had wanted to say, it had said it.
The next morning I woke up with the ghost hissing in my ear in broad daylight.
RESPECT MUST BE RETURNED. IT MUST BE TENDED.
Then it vanished.
I sighed, got up, walked over to Grace’s place, and paid her ten bucks.
“But you stayed overnight?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I explained. “But it was haunted anyways.”
She shrugged and left it at that and I went home where the ghost was hiding in my fridge behind the milk, screaming spectrally about CLEARING THE COBWEBS.
“Fine,” I said. “Fine. Fine fine fine. Where?”
It didn’t say more, just eddied menacingly behind the cheese and vanished.
For three days I lived ghost-free. Then on my way back from McDonalds it uncoiled itself from my bag of salted deep fried matter with the speed of a striking snake – a little slower than an average human punch – and pointed dramatically across the road.
THERE.
“Huh?” I said. Again, startled people are not helpful animals.
IT MUST BE RESTORED.
And then it vanished inside my chicken mcnuggets.
Across the road was a little field.
In the field was a little old cemetery.
In the cemetery was a little overgrown tuft of grass.
Lodged inside the grass was a tiny and malformed gravestone that appeared to have started life as a randomly-selected boulder.
“This could take some work,” I said.
It didn’t answer.
The headstone cost me a good chunk of money, even if the stonecutter was a friend of Grace’s mom and it was a junk piece.
The clipping I did by hand with dad’s old shears.
I bummed some flowers off’ve Auntie Toby and some little pottery pigs from the kiln down the street that Ryan worked at.
Finally I topped the whole pile off with a little purple umbrella to keep the rain off.
It looked really nice, I thought. Not expensive, but nice. Tasteful, and cared-for, even if it was just a little corny.
“There,” I said to the grave. Then again, a little harder, trying to press in the finality of it: “There.”
The wind blew.
Finally, tempting fate, I said “are you happy NOW?”
One of the little ceramic pigs grew a skull.
WHERE ARE MY OFFERINGS?
“What?” I asked. “They’re right there. You’re IN one.”
I CANNOT FEED OFF CLAY FLESH
“I didn’t sign on for sacrifice. What d’you want, a fresh-bled ox? A human heart? Tears from grieving mothers? This sort of thing isn’t that easy to find, and it’s not cheap!”
THE MC NUGGETS WILL SUFFICE.
“What.”
BRING THEM TO ME. BRING ME THE MC NUGGETS.
I stared.
AND A SHAKE TOO.
NO FRIES THOUGH.
I left, its last ghastly words echoing through my mind.
ONION RINGS.
It was a hungry thing. Three meals a week, then a day, then a night. It cut into my sleep schedule faster and harder than my wallet, and I started missing classes.
“What’s got into you?” Grace asked me at the start of algebra, or might have.
“Flnrorp,” I told her. And then I returned to dreaming or maybe imagining that I was dreaming about imagining dreaming. My head was full of spectral demands for food and comfort.
When I woke up I was home and Grace was talking with my father.
“He says you’ve been getting no sleep, been out all night, and been jumping at everything that moves,” she reported.
“I have to give the ghost food and offerings or it can’t rest,” I said.
“Uh?”
“And back rubs. It wants me to rub its back. It possesses the tomb stone and makes me scratch it with my fingers.”
“Ah.”
“It’s really hard on my nails.”
“Eh?”
“And I guess it’s getting bored too because it wanted me to buy it a phone but I don’t have enough money so it asked me to bring it my credit card so it can order for me” and I realized the words that were coming out of my mouth and stopped so I could consider them.
“Colleen,” Grace said, very carefully, “are you absolutely SURE this… person… you’re dealing with is a ghost?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Because it sounds to me like you’re being scammed.”
“Yes,” I said. “By a ghost. That sonuvabitch must’ve pulled this ‘put me to rest’ con a dozen times.”
“Well, jig’s up. He can sit by that headstone until the end of time.”
“No,” I said. “He bummed a ride out of the house on me, he can bum a ride out of that cemetery on some other sucker passing by. I need to put him somewhere he’ll never meet another mark.”
WHERE IS MY PHONE
“No time, no time,” I said to it, nearly stumbling over the gravestone. “Gonna go get it. C’mon with. Will get you food. C’mon.”
I could tell when it was with me by now. A little cold mist bobbing near, invisible but making your hairs stand up and your breath catch. It hovered impatiently with me the whole way down to the Starbucks, switching from shoulder to shoulder as I bought a coffee and cookie. A big, ugly, crumbly cookie that nearly came apart in my fingers just from me grabbing it.
I DEMAND OFFERINGS, it complained as I drank my coffee and stumbled down the road. I CAN’T REST WITHOUT OFFERINGS. GIVE ME OFFERINGS, WHERE ARE MY NUGGETS.
“Got ‘none, got none,” I mumbled, staggering in the caffeine haze. “Wanna cookie? I got a cookie?”
IT WILL DO.
I held up the cookie between two fingers and whoops the whole thing fell apart into my cup.
“Oh noooo.”
OH NO.
“Better go in after it fast!” I said. “They melt in there! It’s still warm!”
I waited until my coffee cup turned to ice in my fingers, then tripped over my own feet and faceplanted on the sidewalk, one arm flailing right over the sewer grating.
“Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooops,” I said until I was sure that the coldness in the air had followed the coffee down the drain.
Then I did a little dance most of the way home.
Best of all, Grace had paid for the coffee and cookie. Took almost exactly ten bucks. So THAT worked out.