Underground Spirit

by Foxglove Lee

  In the bathroom, when she had a moment to herself, she pressed the meat of her palms against her eyes and whispered, “Leave me alone, Cal. I’m begging you. Please just go. I’ve done all I can do. Just go.”

  When she got into work on Monday morning, the office gossips were all hunched around Norma’s desk at reception. They scattered like cockroaches when they saw Whitney approaching.

  “What’s all the hubbub?” she asked, though she really didn’t want to know.

  Norma’s beady eyes widened and then softened slightly. “You won’t believe it when I tell you,” she said, flapping a tabloid paper around like a bird in the house. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this worked up in all my life. The nerve!”

  “The nerve of what?” Whitney asked.

  Norma flattened the tabloid on her desk so Whitney could get a look. It wasn’t front page news. They’d stuck the story somewhere in the middle. But the headline read: Transgender Psychic Fights for Ghost Rights.

  Whitney’s initial reaction was to chuckle. But she only reacted that way because she didn’t, at first, realize that the article… was about her.

  “There’s your name,” Norma said. “Right there in black and white.”

  Whitney’s heart nearly stopped when she looked to where Norma was pointing. That was her name all right, spelled correctly and everything. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror. The reflection looking back at her was strange and distorted.

  “Psychic?” she sputtered. “Why would anyone… why would…?”

  That’s when she noticed another name: the name of the reporter who’d written the article. Rachel. The same Rachel she’d phoned last week. The same Rachel who’d told her the story about Cal was a snoozefest, that readers wouldn’t understand.

  “Can I borrow this? Thanks,” Whitney said without waiting for an answer. She stormed from reception and marched down the hallway, fuming. She was so angry she walked right past her own office, and then had to turn around and go back.

  Curious heads popped up behind cubicle dividers like puppets in a whack-a-mole game. They asked her what was going on, but she didn’t have time to explain. She closed her office door, flattened the tabloid against her desk, and phoned Rachel the Reporter.

  “How dare you run this story?” Whitney howled.

  A sleepy Rachel asked, “Who is this?”

  “It’s the transgender psychic fighting for ghost rights!”

  “Ohhh, Whitney! Good to hear from you.” Rachel yawned. “Sorry, I don’t usually get up until noon. You’re calling a little early. Let me just quickly brush my teeth. I’ll be right back.”

  “No, wait, you don’t have to—”

  Whitney growled to herself, but the reporter’s temporary absence gave her an opportunity to read the tabloid article. It was a highly sensationalized account of Cal’s horrible death coupled with information no reporter should have known.

  About the haunting.

  Nobody knew about that, no one but herself.

  And Bruce.

  Did Bruce call Rachel the Reporter? Would he betray her like that? No, never.

  But, if not Bruce, then who?

  When Rachel returned from brushing her teeth, Whitney asked, “How did you know all this? That I’ve been seeing Cal’s ghost. How did you know?”

  “You didn’t hang up your phone when I talked to you,” Rachel said simply. “You put me on speaker instead. I heard you talking to your boyfriend about it. Now, he sounds cute. I bet he’d a total doll.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Whitney snapped, though at this point she didn’t know whether to be more upset with Rachel or herself. She was certainly embarrassed. “You shouldn’t have published this stuff about me.”

  “Why not?” Rachel asked. “It’s true. That’s more than you can say for most of the crap that ends up in the tabloids.”

  “And that’s another thing!” Whitney jumped on. “I called you because you were writing for a respectable paper. I never told you to put all this in a tabloid.”

  “I work for more than one paper,” Rachel replied. “I’ll write for anyone who pays me. You have to, these days.”

  “But this is my life you’re playing with. And this headline! Most of it’s not even true!”

  “You’re not trans?” Rachel asked.

  “Well, yes I am trans, but I’m not a psychic.”

  “You see ghosts but you’re not a psychic?”

  “I’ve seen one ghost. Cal. That’s my only ghost.”

  “Potato, pot-ah-to.”

  “And I’m certainly not fighting for ghost rights. Makes me sound like some kind of crusader.”

  “You did call me at one in the morning to ask me to let the public know your ghost pal was genderqueer. Seems to me you believe Cal has the right not to be misgendered, even in death.”

  Whitney couldn’t think how to argue that point. She was still mad as heck. Her head was spinning like a top. “I’m not happy about this.”

  “But I wrote your story. I got the word out.”

  “I wanted you to write about Cal, not about me.”

  “I wrote about the both of you. Trust me, by the end of the day you’ll be calling back to thank me.”

  “I highly doubt that,” Whitney grumbled.

  There was a knock at her office door, and Whitney jumped in her chair.

  Rachel was talking, but Whitney said, “Look, I gotta go,” and hung up the phone. With her luck, it would be the partners, here to tell her they didn’t appreciate having their firm’s name dragged through the tabloids.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Norma’s voice. “Have I got a surprise for you!”

  “Not another surprise,” Whitney grumbled. “Come in, Norma.”

  The door opened, and Norma escorted Bruce into the office carrying two take-out cups. “Look who stopped by to bring you one of those fancy tea lattes you love so much.”

  Rachel was right about Bruce. He was a doll. Big-time.

  All she had to do was look at his handsome face and her heart fluttered. “Bruce. I’m so glad to see you.”

  “I can’t stay long, but—”

  Norma interrupted to say, “I’ll leave you two love birds alone.”

  She made sure to wink before leaving the office, closing the door behind her.

  “You heard about the article?” Whitney asked.

  “Sure did.” He seemed surprisingly excited about it as he handed Whitney her latte. “They just sent me an email with the link. Here, I’ll bring it up on my phone.”

  “Good Lord,” Whitney moaned. “It’s online too? What a disaster!”

  “Disaster?” Bruce asked. “I thought you’d be excited. Wait, what’s that?”

  He’d just noticed the tabloid open on her desk. Transgender Psychic Fights for Ghost Rights.

  “This is the article,” she told him. “Thank you very much, Rachel the Reporter.”

  Bruce’s brow furrowed. “No, I was talking about… what paper is that in?”

  She flipped to the front page to show him.

  He flinched. “Ouch.”

  “She overheard us talking about Cal’s ghost. Remember, I’d pressed speakerphone instead of hanging up? She heard our whole conversation. I’m going to be the laughingstock of the law society.”

  The expression of support and adoration in Bruce’s eyes cut through her bad day like a lighthouse through fog. She’d never felt so supported in all her life. All he had to do was squeeze her hand and kiss her hair, and she felt warmth flowing through her veins, consoling her from the inside out.

  “I’m sure nobody in the law society reads the tabloids. And if they do, they certainly don’t take these stories seriously. Papers like that are good for a laugh, but that’s about it.”

  She smiled meekly. “Everything you say sounds so good. Maybe you should be the lawyer.”

  He smiled too, and showed her his phone. “This is the article I came to tell you about. Remember there was that LGBT news site that took an i
nterest in Cal’s story? Well, look at this. They’ve printed it. Not printed. Posted. It’s just online, but it’s really well researched. The reporter actually confirmed with a bunch of different people that Cal identified as genderqueer and participated in a lot of different trans groups and organizations. They all say Cal’s parents were really dismissive of Cal’s gender identity. It was an uphill battle.”

  Whitney scrolled through the news story on Bruce’s phone. She couldn’t focus to read it in detail. There was a part of her that felt guilty beyond reason, for not doing enough, not believing what Danine said, not understanding Cal from the get-go.

  She took a long swig of latte. The frothed milk felt soft on her palate. So comforting, just like Bruce.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to say, but she did anyway. “Just that I don’t know why Cal came to me. Me, of all people. Because I’m trans? So what? I was just as bad as Cal’s parents. When Danine told us Cal was genderqueer, I didn’t even believe her.”

  “You still helped. You contacted all those news outlets, all those reporters.”

  “We did that together. Cal should have come to you. You’re one of the most open-minded people I’ve ever met.”

  “Maybe just not open to ghosts,” Bruce suggested before taking a sip from his take-out cup. Then his expression changed, like he’d had an epiphany. “Maybe Cal contacted you to get to me. Or to bring us together.”

  “A matchmaker ghost?” Whitney chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”

  “Well, think about it: you saw Cal in the underground. You fainted. I called the paramedics. We went out to dinner…”

  “The rest is history.” Whitney swivelled her chair toward the window and looked up into the bright blue sky. “Thank you, Cal, wherever you are.”

  Bruce set a warm hand on her shoulder. He bent down to kiss her temple, but she turned her face up and diverted his lips toward hers. They kissed softly for all the city to see.

  When he backed away, his eyes were closed and he was smiling.

  “Well,” he said, the word a bit of a sigh. “I’d better get to the office. I’ll stop by at lunch if you want me to.”

  “I want you to,” she replied, eager as a puppy. She wasn’t worried about scaring him off. If a haunting hadn’t frightened him away, nothing would.

  Soon after Bruce had left, Norma poked her head in. “So? What’s all the news?”

  Arching her brow, Whitney asked, “Shouldn’t you be at reception?”

  “Bathroom break. Akhifa’s covering. So give me all the goss. What did Mister Man want? He didn’t come all this way just to bring you a latte.”

  “All this way?” Whitney said with a smirk. “He only works down the street.”

  Norma seemed so eager for gossip that Whitney decided to throw her a bone. She quickly pulled up that LGBT news site on her computer and turned the screen so Norma could see.

  “You’re right, he did have news. The story you read in the tabloid? Well, a better version of it was picked up online. The girl who died in the underground, Calpurnia—Cal—she didn’t identify as female. She didn’t use the pronoun she. Cal was just Cal, beyond binary gender.”

  “I read all that in the tabloid,” Norma said. “Not sure I quite understand, but I read it.”

  “It’s true that Cal’s ghost came to me. More than once. You probably think I’m crazy.”

  “Crazy?” Norma asked with a cackle. “I grew up with ghosts in the attic. I’d never call you crazy for seeing spirits. I used to see ‘em all the time, when I was little.”

  Whitney’s heart softened. Norma had never mentioned that before, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you brought up out of the blue, she now realized. Hard to say who would call you crazy and who would lend their support.

  “Let’s walk to the subway together after work,” Whitney proposed. “You can tell me about those attic ghosts.”

  Norma nodded softly and closed Whitney’s office door. What was she supposed to be working on? Oh, that’s right—paperwork for a corporate merger. The fun never ends.

  Her office phone rang, and she answered without thinking.

  “Is this the transgender psychic who fights for ghost rights?” asked the voice on the other end.

  “Very funny, Akhifa. Did Norma put you up to this?”

  “Ummm…” the voice said. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry. I just thought… maybe… you could help me? Says here you’re a lawyer.”

  Damn, it wasn’t Akhifa on the line. This voice was young like hers, but less confident. Insecure. Scared, even.

  Whitney asked, “How can I help you?”

  The young voice on the phone explained that he was trans too. Young, only nineteen years old. He told her that he’d only recently decided to go for it, whole hog, name change and everything. When he informed his bosses at the movie theatre where he worked, management seemed fine with it face to face, and yet when he got his next schedule, his hours had been cut down to practically nothing.

  “I know what’s going on,” the young man said. “They don’t want to fire me. They’re trying to make me quit. I need a lawyer. Will you be mine?”

  Whitney’s heart softened. She felt like she was back in grade school, getting valentines from girls she didn’t like. Not that she disliked this darling young trans man on the phone. She just wasn’t the right lawyer for him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I work in corporate law.”

  “Well, the movie theatre is a corporation,” he spoke up. “They’re a giant company. Couldn’t you phone them or something? And tell them cutting my hours right after I come out as trans… it isn’t right?”

  “It isn’t right,” Whitney agreed. “But the law I practice…” She glanced around her office. Nothing but paperwork. Boring, corporate paperwork. “I’m not the lawyer you’re looking for.”

  “Yes you are, because you’re trans too. You’re the only lawyer I could trust, because you understand. Nobody else would.”

  Lawyers had a reputation for being heartless, but that wasn’t Whitney. This young man, who hadn’t even told her his name, was plucking away at her heartstrings like an upright bass.

  “I don’t have a lot of money,” he went on. “I’m saving for school. So I can’t afford to pay you much. But maybe you could help me, like, pro bono? I’ve seen that on TV. That’s a real thing, right?”

  A sad smile grew across Whitney’s lips as she shuffled some papers around. She couldn’t say no to this young man. What’s more, she wanted to help him. His case sounded a lot more interesting than anything else on her to do list.

  “Okay,” she said. “Give me your name and number. I just need to run this by my bosses, then I’ll call you back.”

  He seemed elated, which humbled Whitney to the bone. Strangely, helping out this young man made her feel the way she felt when she sat down to dinner with Bruce and he looked into her eyes, and she knew she had value in this world. She knew someone cared.

  Once she’d put down the phone, she rolled her chair back and stood. A whoosh of cold air crossed beside her, making her shiver and reach for her tepid tea. She took a sip, but the room still felt cold. The building maintenance people must have been fiddling with the air conditioning a little early this year.

  She grabbed the memo pad where she’d scrawled notes about her pro bono case. She’d go to Andrea for permission to take it. Andrea was the one partner who was always in her court.

  When she walked around her desk, the air felt colder than cold. Freezing, in fact. She stopped in her tracks, feeling goosebumps all along her arms. Didn’t seem to matter that she had on a suit jacket. Her skin might as well have been exposed on a cold winter’s night. That’s how she felt.

  She took two steps toward the door and grabbed the handle, but her hands were so cold the metal felt hot to the touch.

  There was something behind her. She could feel it.

  Felt like a person, like an
actual human in the room with her, watching her every move. She didn’t want to turn around. She wanted to tear open the door and run from her office, but she couldn’t.

  She didn’t want to turn, but she did.

  And when she did, she saw Cal standing by the window. Right behind her desk, right where she’d just been. Now Cal occupied that spot.

  Graduate Cal in a cap and gown, smiling gently, extending a bouquet of red roses in Whitney’s direction.

  Whitney clutched the doorknob, pressing her back to the wall, wishing she could move through it, and yet at the same time feeling fascinated by the vision before her. No blood, no gore. No matted hair, no shredded scalp. No blue lips, no grey skin.

  As Cal stood by the window, the morning sun grew brighter and brighter still, until it filled the office with the whitest light Whitney had ever seen. She felt like she should be squinting, shading her eyes, but it wasn’t necessary. The light was clean. It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.

  From the centre of that radiant light emerged a second figure: a woman with soft grey hair and sparkling blue eyes. Cal’s lips moved, upon spotting the old woman: “Nana!”

  All smiles. All joy.

  The two joined hands, and when they did, Whitney felt a surge of love like a lightning bolt. Never in her life had she experienced such a powerful expression of emotion. As they left together into the light, and the bright white faded to sky blue, the happiness and peace she’d felt from them stayed with her.

  It took a long moment before she could bring herself to open her office door, and when she did, Akhifa happened to be walking by. Akhifa smiled in her direction, then glanced past her, into the office. Her eyes bugged, and a huge smile grew across her face. “Oh my gosh, are those from your new boyfriend? Norma says he’s super-handsome, like he could be a model. Let me get you a vase. There’s an empty one in the conference room.”

  Akhifa was off down the hall before Whitney had even figured out what the girl was talking about. She turned to look back at her office, and there on the desk sat a bouquet of red roses.