Shelly rides the bus into the heart of downtown. It’s getting late, but the sidewalks are still busy with shoppers and people heading home from work. They pay Shelly no attention as she walks among them, her pace slow and steady, and hunts for the dead.
There are all sorts of ghosts in the world. Old and young, all different races and genders and everything else. Some so faint they’re just smudges and some almost as solid as living people, ghosts you can only tell are dead because they have an uncanny quality that sets them apart—like Joseph and his eyes. There are all sorts of ghosts, but in the downtown core, where the living congregate in droves, Shelly can’t even feel a whisper of one.
The living are overwhelming. They take up space, they’re loud, and they don’t notice Shelly. They ignore her in a way the dead don’t because the dead are Shelly’s friends, no matter what Joseph says.
The hotel’s green copper roof stands out in a sea of glass buildings. Shelly uses the roof to navigate her way to the hotel and pushes her way into the lobby through a rotating glass door. When she’s working with Grandma, adults don’t pay Shelly much attention; they’re too focused on Grandma. And when Shelly’s alone, adults assume she’s on her way to meet her parents. It’s a kind of invisibility that makes it easy for her to slip past the concierge and head for the elevator.
Shelly remembers which elevator the boy rode in. She remembers the look of resigned frustration on the bellhop’s face when the boy ran his hand over the call buttons and slowed down the car. The living are always concerned about time, about running late and running out of it. Ghosts are hardly ever in a rush to get anywhere.
When the car arrives and she steps inside, the boy isn’t there, but Shelly’s worked with enough ghosts to know how to encourage him to come out. She hits a button for the top floor and lets her hair out of its bun, winding a strand around her finger.
The boy appears as the elevator passes between floors 5 and 6. The first thing he does is press every button between 7 and 30.
Shelly can’t help grinning. Estelle would like him. He haunts the hotel the way a ghost in the movies would.
“Hi,” she says. “Do you want to talk? I bet you’re bored.” It’s a long shot and she feels silly doing it, but Shelly reaches into her pocket for the photograph of her and her mother. She holds it out in front of her. “Have you seen my mom?”
The boy turns to look at her, frowning. He’s a solid ghost, well established in the hotel. Shelly has read the story in the book the hotel manager gave them—it says that the haunting is perpetuated by a young woman who jumped from the building’s top floor. She was beautiful, according to the story, which increased the tragedy. Even sadder, she’d had a young son.
The boy doesn’t look like he wants to help her. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Shelly. Please, I want to find her.”
“I haven’t seen any moms,” the boy says as they roll to a stop at floor 11 and the doors open then close again. “I haven’t seen anyone interesting in forever. Why aren’t there any toys? Why won’t anyone play with me?”
“I’ll play with you,” Shelly says. “Will you look at my photo?”
“I don’t want to play with you,” the boy says, but he looks at Shelly’s photo anyway. The boy shakes his head, flickering in and out of focus, like the ghost in Isabel’s house. Shelly feels a spike of alarm shoot through her. He’s upset. “I’ve never seen her before. Have you seen my mom? Where did she go? She left me here, didn’t she? She left me all on my own!”
Shelly takes a step away from the ghost, pressing her back against the elevator wall. The lights flash off and on. “My mom left me, too. That’s why I’m here,” she tells him, raising her voice. “I’m looking for her!” He seems like he’s in his own world. She gets the feeling it doesn’t matter what she says because the boy isn’t really listening.
“Who are you?” the boy asks. “Why are you here? Why won’t you leave me alone?”
The car shakes. All the unpressed call buttons light up as the light fixture in the ceiling above them goes dark. Shelly’s never been stuck in an enclosed space with an angry ghost before. She doesn’t often see angry ghosts. Usually they’re nice to her. Usually they want to move on or they want to talk, happy to be finally noticed by someone.
Shelly thought she and the boy would be able to talk. They both lost their mothers. They’re both waiting for something to happen. This is different from how things are supposed to go. This is different from how she’s supposed to interact with ghosts. “Where am I?” the boy asks. “Where’s my mom? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know!” Shelly says. “I don’t know what happens next! I don’t know where people go!” Shelly’s hands are shaking. She’s not like Grandma. She’s not going to make the ghost leave just because she can, but part of her wants to push him toward what comes next, to make him move on. He’s been waiting for years. His mother isn’t coming back for him.
“What happened?” the boy demands, stomping his foot. “Tell me!”
The lights flash one more time and then the elevator goes ding as it reaches the next floor. When the doors slide open, the ghost is gone. Shelly gets out and takes the stairs down to the lobby.
• • •
It’s late when she gets home and the lights are on in the living room. Shelly doesn’t have to unlock the door because Grandma opens it before Shelly can even get the key out of her pocket.
“Shelly,” she says, her voice stern and full of anger and worry, “where have you been?”
“I went for a walk.” It’s not the whole truth, but Shelly and Grandma had secrets from her mom, and Shelly and Mom had secrets from Grandma. This is Shelly’s secret.
She doesn’t want to talk about the boy in the hotel. She doesn’t want to think about him losing his sense of self and becoming an angry shade. She doesn’t want to think she might have caused it by talking to him.
He was upset, but he’ll probably calm down, at least for a little while. Shelly knows now why Grandma wanted to get him out of the hotel. If he stays angry, maybe he’ll become like the ghost at Isabel’s house—all anger, lashing out, unable to do anything but rage at the people who come into the space he considers his.
“I’ve been home for half an hour. It’s dark out and Mrs. Potts said you came home because you weren’t feeling well. I was worried about you.” Grandma reaches out to touch Shelly’s loose hair. “Your hair is down.”
Shelly ducks out from under Grandma’s hand and steps into the house, shrugging off her coat. “I didn’t bring any ghosts home with me,” she says. “Not even a moth.”
“That’s not the point,” Grandma says. “Shelly, I don’t want you wandering around alone, especially after dark. It’s dangerous and you could get hurt.”
Shelly takes a hair tie from her pocket and pulls her hair back into a ponytail, so Grandma will stop looking at her all concerned, the way her mom used to look at them both when they got back from hunting ghosts together. Grandma isn’t her mother. “I just needed some fresh air.”
“Shelly, promise me you’re not going to go out alone again.”
Shelly looks at Grandma and thinks about how they’re not supposed to charge for ghosts and how Shelly’s supposed to be Grandma’s apprentice. How ghosts are supposed to be something they do together, but Grandma keeps leaving her behind. “Okay,” she lies. “I won’t.”
17
Shelly stops combing her hair, and in the slivers of time Grandma lets her be on her own, she looks for her mom. When she can’t find her, she seeks out the dead, and she collects more ghosts.
She walks around town and looks for the dead in dark corners and forgotten places. She snatches ghosts from alleyways and buildings and takes them home to hide in her room. She rescues them.
Shelly finds Diya outside the drugstore where her mother used to work when she goes there look
ing for her mom’s ghost. She’s a young woman with long, dark eyelashes framing snowy white eyes, the opposite of Joseph’s black ones. She’s distracted by something Shelly can’t see, only half-present in the world, but Shelly twines a snipped-off strand of hair around Diya’s wrist to stop her from wandering off.
“This place is getting packed,” Estelle says, when Shelly brings Diya home.
Diya floats from Shelly’s hair and immediately gravitates to the cat. “What a cute . . . This is nice,” she says. “How thoughtful of you to . . . I’ll enjoy this.”
“Oh great,” says Estelle. “She mumbles.”
Diya is nice, but she’s not fully grounded in the world, even with the strand of hair wrapped around her wrist. Not the perfect companion for Estelle. Not the person Shelly was hoping to find.
Shelly wanders the route her mother drove to work every morning—all residential streets to avoid traffic lights—and finds Gavin behind an old apartment building. He’s middle-aged and wearing an old-fashioned suit. He’s hovering beside the garbage looking forlorn. When Shelly catches his attention, he looks confused by the state of the world around him. “I went for a walk,” he says. “I could swear I was just in the park.”
“There’s no park around here,” Shelly says. “Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got someplace better for you to stay. Someplace not by a dumpster.”
Gavin tilts his head, looking at Shelly like he doesn’t understand what she’s asking of him, but he nods anyway and lets himself be caught up in her hair.
• • •
“Another one?” says Estelle, when Shelly snips Gavin out of her hair later that day. “This is getting ridiculous.”
“Oh, hello,” says Diya, to Gavin. “I don’t suppose . . . I’m just not sure where . . . Hello.”
“I was in a park,” Gavin says. “I was in a park and then suddenly I wasn’t. I don’t understand. Where are we now?”
“Another excellent conversationalist, I see,” says Estelle. “Where’s that book of crossword puzzles, kid? I need something to do with my time and they’re not exactly riveting company.”
“They needed someplace to be,” Shelly says. They don’t deserve to fade away and be forgotten. They deserve to be noticed. Shelly can provide that. “This can be their home now.”
“This is my home, too,” Estelle says. “Do I really have to share it with them?”
“You like the cat now,” Shelly points out. “You’ll get used to them, too.”
Gavin loses track of where he is and who he’s met and who he hasn’t all the time. Diya can’t seem to hold on to a thought until the end of it, but they’re nice and they do their best to reply when Shelly talks to them. They’re nice in a way that Estelle isn’t, even if neither of them is as aware of their surroundings as she is.
Estelle complains about the company Shelly’s making her keep and the lack of things to do. She complains even when Shelly buys a book of crossword puzzles and leaves it out for her. “I can’t lift a pencil,” Estelle says. “How do poltergeists do it? Teach me more about that, kid. I want to haunt something properly.”
“You’re a ghost,” Shelly says, annoyed. Estelle is never satisfied. If Shelly teaches her about poltergeists, things will just get worse. “Anywhere you are is properly haunted.”
“You know what I mean,” Estelle says. “I want to see what I can do.”
Shelly isn’t afraid of ghosts, but she’s never had one haunting her bedroom before. Estelle needs a distraction, so Shelly does the one thing she can think to do—she goes ghost hunting again.
She doesn’t go downtown or to Zhou’s or to her mom’s work. This time she goes to the thrift shop. Sometimes when people throw out old things, ghosts go with them on their way to find a new home—confused spirits Shelly and Grandma used to snip off objects and bundle up to set free later.
Shelly finds Terry tucked away in a rack of warm coats. He’s an old man who wears a fleece vest and squints at Shelly like he can’t quite make her out. The air around him crackles with static electricity and he keeps reaching up to play with his hearing aid.
“Young lady,” he says, when he notices her looking at him. “I don’t believe I know how I got here. Where am I? You know, I thought being dead would be more exciting. The movies make it look fun.”
Shelly knows he’s perfect right away. “My friend Estelle thinks being dead is boring, too,” she says. “Do you want to come meet her?”
Terry tilts his head and looks around the store. “Why not? It’s got to be more interesting than this.”
Shelly takes Terry home with her. When she opens the door, she freezes in place, her heart hammering. Grandma is right there, wrist deep in a chicken. She glances over her shoulder at Shelly then returns her full attention to making dinner. “Welcome home,” she says. “We’re having chicken for dinner.”
Shelly takes a breath. “Okay,” she says, trying to sound normal as she edges toward the hallway and her room. “I like chicken.”
“We can make sandwiches with the leftovers,” Grandma adds. “I might invite Edna over.”
Shelly doesn’t want to get stuck in a conversation. Any second, Grandma could stop stuffing the chicken long enough to notice Terry. “Okay,” she says again, shuffling sideways to hide Terry behind her back. “I’m going to work on my homework!”
When she reaches the hall, Shelly turns and speed-walks to her room, so she can let Terry out of her hair.
“Oh, hello,” says Diya. “It’s been . . . Hello.”
“Do I know you?” asks Gavin. “I’m not sure where I am.”
Estelle rolls her eyes. “Not another one.”
Terry looks down at Shelly. “Which one is Estelle, the rude one or the vague one?”
Estelle looks shocked. Shelly grins. “Estelle, this is Terry,” she says. “I thought maybe the two of you could talk. He thinks death is boring, too.”
“It is,” Estelle says, her voice firm. “There’s nothing to do and hardly anyone can hear you speak.”
“Tell me about it,” says Terry. “I’ve been stuck in a store for two weeks.”
“I was in a graveyard.” Estelle smiles at Terry. “Let me tell you about my angel.”
Shelly’s room is crowded with all her ghosts and sometimes it’s hard to sleep, but Grandma is always working or tired from working. Shelly likes having the company, even if more and more it seems like the ghosts are concerned with each other and not with her. Even if sometimes, in the middle of Estelle and Terry chatting and Gavin and Diya interrupting with their half-formed thoughts, Shelly still feels lonely.
The weight of all the ghosts she’s carried back to the house in her hair is enough to make her head ache every time she thinks about them. She hides them in the dresser in her closet when she leaves for school and leaves Estelle free to keep an eye on them—Estelle knows to hide from her grandma, even if she’s nasty sometimes, and she’s bossy enough to tell the other ghosts what to do.
Still, she’d rather spend time with her ghosts than with Grandma, who speaks too carefully to her now, or at school, where everyone except Isabel acts like they’ve forgotten how to talk to her at all.
• • •
“Do you think you could teach me to see ghosts?” Isabel asks Shelly before class one day. “Maybe during recess? I have an extra pack of Gushers.”
“It’s a family thing. I can’t teach you,” Shelly says. She’s never known anyone outside of their family who can communicate with ghosts the way they do. It’s something that gets passed down, a skill and a tradition. “And you don’t get rid of all ghosts.”
“Why not?” Isabel asks. “They’re dead. Don’t they have to move on? You could tell me more about them, right?”
“I don’t really feel like it,” Shelly says. “I like to read during recess.”
Isabel leaves her alone af
ter that.
Isabel knows about ghosts, but she doesn’t understand them like Shelly does. And she keeps trying to talk about her parents and how her dad still doesn’t believe in ghosts, but her mom’s convinced. Shelly doesn’t really want to talk about family right now.
Shelly doesn’t really talk to anyone. She ignores the other kids at school, and everyone but Isabel returns the favor. When she’s not at school, Shelly wanders the streets. She finds ghosts and she brings them home—another cat and two dogs, a squirrel that skitters out of a bush and chirps at her feet, the faded memories of ghosts that were once people and are now just impressions of emotions: fear, longing, acceptance, confusion.
“This is too many ghosts for me,” Estelle says, when Shelly brings the raccoon home. She has to elbow Diya out of the way to get to Shelly. “You’re hoarding now.”
“I’m not,” says Shelly. “I’m making sure you aren’t forgotten.”
Shelly ignores Estelle’s complaints. She builds up her collection spirit by spirit. She finds ghosts, but none of them are the one she’s looking for, and more and more the collection feels too heavy to carry.
Grandma keeps leaving her with Mrs. Potts and Mrs. Potts won’t let Shelly out of the house on her own anymore, although she does let Shelly come with her on errands. They go to the grocery store and Mrs. Potts gets Shelly a chocolate bar. They go to the thrift store and when Shelly drifts to the back corner and spots a tape by a band called Siouxsie and the Banshees, Mrs. Potts buys it for her, amused.
“It’s very appropriate,” Mrs. Potts says. “I didn’t know you had a cassette player at home.”
Shelly just smiles and slips the tape into her pocket.
• • •
Maybe Shelly was unfair to Joseph. Of all the ghosts she’s talked to, he’s the most sympathetic, and he’s the only one who still acts like he sees her. Maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like, losing someone from this side of death, but Shelly wasn’t very polite to him before and it’s nice to be able to talk to someone who acts more or less normal around her.
The Ghost Collector Page 9