by Ellen Datlow
Is it possible for the random motion of the arm to spell a word, or impart a message with specific meaning to the visitor? If my machine does capture a ghost, is it because the ghost was always there, or do the conditions of the machine itself—an open phone line, an invitation to speak—cause the haunting? I am certain you have questions of your own as well, and I invite you to write them on the provided note cards and drop them in the box affixed to the base of the machine. Perhaps a ghost will answer. I also invite you to take your time in the gallery, and keep an open mind. Let’s explore the questions of the afterlife together.
—Kathryn Morrow, Artist’s Statement, 2017
Studio Session #3—Overlapping Voices (Abby’s Possession)
Georgina wakes to Kathryn leaning over her, gesturing for silence.
“What—”
“Shh. Here.” She presses Georgina’s phone into her hands. “Something’s wrong.”
“I don’t—”
“Come on.” Kathryn tugs her, and Georgina stumbles after her.
“What’s going on?” Lettie joins them, her eyes wide in the dark. They look like they’ve been wide for a long time. Sleepless.
The door to Abby’s studio stands ajar, the murmur of voices emerging from within.
“Turn your camera on.” Kathryn indicates Georgina’s phone.
Confused, Georgina obeys. Her mind is sleep-numb, dazed. She lifts the phone regardless, watching the screen as Kathryn pushes open Abby’s door.
The room is a mess. The sheets on the empty bed are rumpled; Abby’s clothes are scattered on the floor. It looks like someone tossed a deck of playing cards in the air and left them wherever they fell. As Georgina’s eyes adjust, she sees they’re not regular playing cards. There are pictures of rooms on them, stairs, hallways, broken pieces of a house in random order.
Georgina lifts the camera higher, going cold as her eyes and her screen make sense of the image at the same time. Abby stands in the corner, facing away from them. She’s wearing a nightgown with a long skirt and long sleeves. Her hair is loose, and she’s rocking back and forth on her bare feet, muttering words Georgina can’t quite hear.
“Abby?” Kathryn speaks softly behind her. Lettie makes a distressed sound, so small it’s almost lost as Georgina and Kathryn move closer.
Georgina finds herself speaking, like a narrator in a documentary film, before she’s fully registered what she’s doing. Kathryn told her to film this, so she’ll do it right.
“Abby is standing in the corner. She’s barefoot and facing the wall. She’s wearing a nightgown none of us have ever seen before.”
“I don’t like this,” Lettie says.
Georgina inches closer, and Abby’s words either grow clearer, or she’s speaking louder, pitching her voice so her audience will hear.
“In the trees. In the woods. Buried under the road.”
Even if it is a performance, and Georgina really isn’t sure, the skin on her arms tightens, puckering around each hair, and some primal instinct tells her to flee. This is wrong. The voice doesn’t sound like Abby, but there’s no one else it could be.
“There’s something wrong with her spine. The way she’s standing looks wrong,” Georgina says.
If she keeps narrating, it’ll keep what’s happening at a distance. It’s just a movie. She plants her feet, refusing to run, and forces herself to breathe.
“Abby, can you hear me?” Kathryn stops just short of touching Abby’s shoulder. On Georgina’s screen it look like her hand actually bounces away.
“In the woods. In the woods. In the . . .” Abby’s voice grows louder.
“Make her stop.” Lettie’s voice cuts in over Abby’s.
“Abby.” Kathryn finally succeeds in touching her and Abby jerks around to face them, her lips pulled back in a snarl. It’s definitely Abby, but at the same time it looks nothing like her.
“In the woods in the trees in the woods.” It’s almost a chant, and Georgina has the odd sensation Abby’s lips don’t move.
Abby pushes Kathryn, and Lettie catches her. Georgina jumps out of the way, and the image on her screen jumps with her.
“Bury me. Bury me.” Abby’s voice gets louder, closer. Georgina’s head snaps up, looking away from her phone, and somehow Abby is beside her.
Abby grins with her peeled-back lips, a nasty smile. Her gums look wrong, bloody, and Georgina looks away. It’s a moment before she can force herself to follow Abby into the hall.
“Bury me.” The words trail after Abby, but the voice sounds like Lettie’s.
“She’s going to the kitchen,” Georgina whispers to her phone.
A crash reverberates, and Georgina flinches, jerking the screen again. Kathryn pushes past her, and Georgina hurries after her, their footsteps almost, but not quite, covering Lettie’s sob.
There’s just enough light to see Abby standing in the center of the kitchen. Shards from a broken plate radiate around her like the scattered cards in her room. Her eyes are closed now, head tilted at an angle that looks almost painful. Her neck is broken, Georgina thinks, and immediately pushes the thought away. One of Abby’s feet is bleeding; she must have stepped on a piece of the plate.
“It’s my fault.” Lettie speaks so close to Georgina’s shoulder that she nearly drops her phone. “I used the cards to try to build Ellie a path through the house, but the bad thing came through first.”
“Abby, stop it. Now.” Kathryn grabs Abby’s arm, shaking her. Abby lets out a whimper, but doesn’t open her eyes.
“Bury me! Bury me!” she shrieks.
Then her eyes do snap open and she drops to the ground. Kathryn jumps back, kicking a shard of plate that spins away from her. Abby crouches, her feet arched so she balances on the balls of her toes and the points of her fingers. Her mouth opens, and one hand creeps forward, a spider-walk across the kitchen floor, reaching for a broken piece of plate. Georgina’s pulse thumps, her throat too thick to speak.
“No!” Lettie throws herself forward as Abby’s fingers brush the broken plate, and she slaps Abby’s hand away.
Abby snarls, swaying, and Lettie hits her, knocking her back. There’s a painful thump as she hits the ground, but Georgina can’t tell if it’s Abby’s back or her head striking the floor. Lettie scrambles on top of Abby, pinning her down and hitting her again. Abby’s hands come up to defend herself, and Georgina and her camera catch sight of Abby’s face in profile; she looks scared.
Fascination holds her in place. It’s Kathryn who finally grabs Lettie’s wrists and pulls her away. Abby and Lettie are both breathing hard, Abby’s breath hitching on the edge of hyperventilation.
“Turn it off,” Kathryn snaps, and its only then that Georgina fully realizes she’s still filming.
Her thumbs shakes as she taps the stop button. Kathryn puts her arm around Lettie’s shoulder, leading her away. Lying on her back, Abby turns her head toward Georgina. She’s still holding her phone, and she has the sick urge to take a picture of the scene. Abby’s nose is bloodied where Lettie hit her, and red smears her lips and chin, looking black in the dark. Abby’s eyes meet Georgina’s, shiny and wet. Her lips move, mouthing words which might be “I’m sorry” or “Help me,” Georgina can’t tell.
Interlude #3—A Narrow House
There’s another game Ellie and I used to play. We would lie perfectly still in the dark, our bodies straight, our feet together, our arms pressed at our sides, like we were lying in invisible coffins. If we were good enough at pretending, the ghosts would think we were one of them. We called it The Dead Game.
Last night, I came into my studio and found all my paintings for the show rearranged. At first I thought maybe one of the others had been in my room, but I know Georgina and Kathryn wouldn’t do that. I don’t know if I don’t think Abby would either. I realized it had to be a message from Ellie. The deck for Brick by Brick isn’t in my room anymore. I don’t know where it went, but I haven’t seen it in almost a week, and I’ve looked everywhere
. Without it, Ellie had no other way to reach me. She had to use the paintings. The canvases are walls in a house that is always being built. It still isn’t finished.
I looked at the paintings for almost an hour, but I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. Then I thought if I played The Dead Game, she might talk to me directly. I lay on the floor and put my arms at my sides, keeping as still as possible. The room was quiet and dark, but I kept smelling paint, and something like sandalwood. Maybe Abby was burning incense in her room. The smell comes under her door sometimes. It’s so strong some days the scent stays on her clothes and in her hair and trails behind her so we can always tell where she’s been.
I tried to hold my breath. Ellie was always better at that part of the game. One time when we were in the crawl space playing, I got really scared thinking she wasn’t breathing at all. I kept shaking her until she finally opened her eyes and smiled at me. There was someone else inside her looking out at me. I broke the rules then, the ones we’d made up for Brick by Brick, that we’d always help each other and stick together so the monster wouldn’t catch us alone. I ran, and I left Ellie in the crawl space behind me.
Lying in my studio, I listened for Ellie as hard as I could. I kept holding my breath until my head pounded. Until my lungs hurt. Then I let it all out at once, and the sound was like a train thundering over the tracks. Black smoke hung over my head, like I’d breathed myself out entirely. Then there was something else in the smoke. It turned and looked at me and I was so surprised, I gasped. I didn’t mean to, but I breathed it in. The dark thing is inside of me, and now I don’t know how to let it out again.
Studio Session #4—In the Trees
Lettie starts, gasping in a breath. Someone is in her room. Someone is leaning over her. She’s playing The Dead Game, and she is a door and something is stepping through.
“Are you awake?” Abby’s voice jolts her.
Lettie crashes back into herself, but her body feels like a collection of loose bones—an unfinished construction—only barely joined by skin. Her studio resolves around her, the canvases lined against the wall smelling of paint and turpentine, even though she opened all the windows. Abby’s scent is there too, sandalwood threaded through and beneath everything.
“What’s wrong?” Lettie sits up; it’s a struggle.
“The others are asleep,” Abby says. “I want to show you something.”
Abby goes to the door, looking back over her shoulder and beckoning. Lettie follows. She shouldn’t. She doesn’t trust Abby, but there’s no reason not to trust her either. Only there’s something different about her tonight. It’s not like when she spoke in strange voices and Lettie hit her, that night they still haven’t talked about. Now, Abby almost seems to glow. There are hollow spaces inside her, places for ghosts to fill.
“Oh,” Lettie says, and hurries to follow Abby into the dark.
Once they’re outside, she asks, “Where are we going?”
Her feet are bare, but it’s too late to go back for shoes. She picks her way carefully over the warped asphalt, following Abby down the narrow alleyway between buildings.
“I borrowed my brother’s car,” Abby says. “I need to get some things for my performance.”
“At night?”
“They accepted our proposal. Didn’t you hear? We made it into the show. We are the show.”
Lettie stops. As far as she knows, Abby hasn’t even started working on her piece. Any time any of them ask her about it, she changes the subject. And she certainly doesn’t remember assembling images of her own paintings to submit to the jury. Surely she would remember that. Unless Georgina did it, with her camera, got everything ready. Of course that’s what happened. How could she forget?
At the mouth of the alley, Abby turns back to look at her. There’s something disdainful in her expression, but something pitying as well, as if she’s sad that Lettie doesn’t understand. That’s when Lettie sees it, a faint ribbon the color that moonlight would be if it could be made solid. It twists away from Abby, a path, a thread, beckoning Lettie to follow.
She climbs into the passenger seat as Abby unlocks the door of an ancient Dodge Pinto, the car she borrowed from her brother. The rubber floor mat is gritty under her soles. Light slides over them as Abby pulls away from the curb. Everything is sodium orange and bruise-colored, bloodied at the stoplights, drowned green for go. Abby looks at Lettie sidelong, like she’s testing Lettie, like she’s asking a question.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Lettie says.
The vents in the dashboard rattle, exhaling air smelling of burnt toast. Abby started this whole thing, but Lettie still doesn’t know if she believes. The story she told, Lettie suspects Abby made it up on the spot. Why would Abby’s grandmother admit to such a thing, because how else would she know about it unless she was one of the girls involved? And why would she tell her granddaughter about it if she did?
Depending on how Abby answers, Lettie will know whether Abby knows about the moon-colored glow surrounding her, whether she knows about the ghosts, or whether they’re just using her as a vessel to send a message.
“I’m building a suicide tree,” Abby says instead of answering her. “For the show.”
She turns off the main road where there are fewer streetlights, and shadows stick to her skin.
“During my performances, I’ll stand under the suicide tree with a noose around my neck and invite ghosts to prove themselves by making me into one of them, if they can.”
Abby’s eyes cut right, looking for a reaction. Lettie watches the lights instead, the pattern of shadows. She has the strange impression that the car is moving backward in time. She’s heard everything Abby has to say somewhere else before. She watches through the windshield for the place where the glowing ribbon ends, the place it’s leading them.
“We’re here.” Lettie says it so suddenly Abby hits the brakes without engaging the clutch and the car stalls.
The Dodge’s headlights wash over browned grass, showing the expanse of a field. Beyond the field, trees stand like sentinels in eerily perfect rows. Abby’s mouth opens; Lettie smiles to herself. Her suspicion is confirmed; Abby doesn’t know where they are. She isn’t the one in control.
Abby recovers quickly, scrambling with her seat belt, but Lettie is out of the car first, walking toward the trees. She looks over her shoulder. Abby is very small in the darkness, dwindling. Her mouth is a perfect circle, her eyes smudges of black. It’s time.
Abby is a house, waiting for a ghost, so Lettie slips inside, looking out through Abby’s eyes and watching herself walk across the field. Brown grass crackles under her bare feet.
Abby blinks, feeling like she’s waking up from a long dream, disoriented and unsure where she is. She doesn’t remember leaving the studio, but she’s outside and the trees ahead of her are unsettlingly familiar. Georgina’s photographs. And Lettie. Lettie is with her. Panic beats a tattoo against Abby’s skin.
She blinks again, and there’s something between the trees. Someone. There and then gone. Afterimages of Lettie trail behind her leaving luminescent footprints on the grass, except Abby can’t tell which direction they’re going. She has to catch up before it’s too late. She breaks into a run, tripping, and Lettie is even farther away by the time she gets her feet under her again.
This was a mistake. She came here to . . . Why did she come? She wanted . . . She honestly doesn’t know.
Something is terribly wrong. Something she can’t quite remember. Like a story someone told her a long time ago.
Lettie is almost at the trees. At the edge of the field, Lettie stops. Relief crashes through Abby. She bends over, hands on her knees, gulping deep breaths. She straightens just in time to see Lettie open her mouth, but before either of them can get out a word or a name, something dark surges from between the trees. It’s there and then it’s not, and Lettie isn’t there either. She’s gone. Pulled into the trees. Vanished.
Abby screams. She plung
es forward. Trips again, biting her lip and tasting blood. She calls Lettie’s name and her voice echoes back to her, overlapping, a cacophony. There’s no answer but she keeps shouting, on her hands and knees at the edge of the field, calling Lettie’s name until her throat is raw.
Empty
The last room in the gallery is empty. The walls are freshly painted. The special lighting installed to cast shadows from an assemblage in the shape of a tree remains switched off. The room was originally intended to host a performance piece by Abby Farris, but now it is a space defined by absence.
Mostly. A week after the opening of “The Ghost Sequences,” a visitor brought something to the gallery owner’s attention. Along the baseboard near the door, there are words written in blue ballpoint pen, in lettering so small it is almost illegible. The words were not there on the day the exhibition opened. There are two sentences, which almost overlap, possibly written in two different hands, but it’s hard to tell. Rather than retouching the paint to cover the words, the gallery owner let them stand as though they were always meant to be part of the exhibition after all.
I’m sorry Lettie. Ellie I’m still building the house come home.
Deep, Fast, Green
Carole Johnstone
When it’s bad, the lights go out. All of them except the old Victorian oil lamps Mum bought in Portobello: gold filigree and red milk glass. The house clanks and clunks and groans; the walls breathe in.
I always go straight up to bed on those nights because they never recover, they never go back to what they were. Those nights just keep twisting down into that bad something else until the heat and the noise and the clammy dark are all that’s left.
I always stop at Gramps’s room, too, creak open the door. Sometimes he’s there. Sometimes he turns towards me, rears up ramrod straight like a vampire in True Blood, eyes open and unblinking—and no matter how many times he’s done that, I still shit myself enough to make a noise. But he won’t wake up, he never wakes up. Not until morning. The walls in Gramps’s room always move in gold spikes and black squares. He won’t sleep without candles burning all around him, at least half a dozen; he makes them out of pig fat. Mum hates this nearly as much as his rollie-smoking, as the towering, nomadic stacks of his National Geographic s, their pages smelly and yellow. But this is the only place that never stinks of sweat and oil and steel.