If I’m not the hero, I must be my own antagonist. It makes life a hell of a lot harder.
The Ghost Machine’s pretty fucked up, by the way.
I warned you.
I warned you so many pages ago, back when you had the chance to quit without feeling guilty about it. You’re in too deep now.
Keep going.
CHAPTER ONE
I was just sitting there, minding my own business, reading a book, just like you’re doing. Then my phone palsied. It was a number I didn’t know. The phone had been convulsing every ten minutes actually, and I tried to ignore it, all the its: the voice-mails, the texts, the portal to the fucking Internet. The phone was plugged in, filling itself with juice.
Maybe the police somehow had my number?
I don’t even know why I picked it up. All these voices were coming for me, wanted to shriek at me, and, still, every time that phone buzzed, did its little mechanical shimmy like a bug electrified and stuck on its back, I had to look.
In my ear, someone said, “Neptune?”
I knew it right away: a woman’s voice, a little breathy and a little husky. It had a resonant quality to it, like it echoed out of an ancient throat.
I was listening to it still, even during the pause when I was, I guess, supposed to speak, so she said it again: “Neptune?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I need to see you,” she said.
I knew who it was. I could imagine parts of her.
She sounded like her brother, even though she didn’t really sound like him. I had heard her voice only a couple of times,maybe only that one time for any extended period.
“It’s Saskia,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“Allen’s sister. I’m the one—”
“I know.”
“Allen’s dead, you know. Someone shot him a year ago.”
“I heard that,” I said. Marilynne’s ghost stood before me,slumped a little around the shoulders, like her hands were heavy, a tired boxer.
“I’ve got to ask you something really weird,” she said.
“What?”
“Do you remember the Ghost Machine?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said, but then I did: all of a sudden, I remembered Allen rigging it up—an old Sony Walkman—and paying some kind of medicine person, both woman and man or neither, who was said to be 150 years old, to fill it with enchantment. Allen drove all the way across Kansas to get the spell, the blessing, the curse, the whatever. He paid two hundred bucks. He wanted a machine to call up his old ghosts. He wanted to see a dead girlfriend he had loved more than anything, and his mother, and he hoped he’d get to see this Doberman named Ice, who licked up a green puddle of antifreeze and died. That dog didn’t even belong to him. This magic Walkman, he called it the Ghost Machine. Of course it didn’t work. He threatened to drive all the way back across Kansas and fuck up that Indian’s world.
I remembered then, too, that the Walkman had actually been mine. I loaned it to him, or maybe he just took it. I don’t know why he used my Walkman. I don’t know why he believed any of that shit.
“Are you there?” she asked. “Are you seeing anything weird?”
“It’s really fucked up,” I said, “but I can see a ghost.”
“I knew it!” she said. “It started running last night, all by itself. I could hear it playing in a box of Allen’s old stuff.”
“How’d you get my number?” I asked.
“Allen had it. He kept tabs on you. He wrote down places where you lived, phone numbers.”
“He fucked me over,” I said, “and then he did it again.”
“I know,” she said. “He said it was the worst thing he’d ever done.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Can you see my brother? Can you see his ghost?”
“I can’t,” I said.
“I’m still coming to see you,” she said. “I want to see the ghost, to see if I can see him.”
I hardly knew her at all. Her brother had been like my brother, and then a bunch of bad shit happened, and he became this anti-brother. Saskia and I didn’t even know each other, not really, and we already had this fucked-up little history. We were intimate in this fucked-up way.
There’s a story I’ll probably have to tell you.
I had too much to process already.
I tried to squiggle out a to-do list in my head.
1. Dispose of the dynamite
2. Find Tax
3. Get rid of the ghost
Like, why couldn’t number three be number one? Shouldn’t I get rid of the ghost first? Couldn’t Saskia help me? Did all of this start with the Ghost Machine?
“Are you there?” she said. “I can hear you breathing.”
I told her to meet me at Harbour Lights, a bar down on Mass Street, in an hour. Some part of me didn’t trust her. Some part of me wanted other people around.
Of course I believed her. I’d been seeing ghosts since page 54.
CHAPTER ONE
I know the tone and the voice and the mood of this book, the conflict and the central plot, the fucking style, the style of fucking, change every page and a half.
Imagine if that shit happened all the time in your regular life. I bet you’d write a cogent and consistent narrative then.
If I had been trying to “detect” anything, we would have been “uncovering” “clues,” “interrogating” “suspects,” “analyzing” “quotation marks.” I didn’t do any of this. The gravitational force that pulled me toward books, toward liquor, would magnetize Tax eventually too, and if the cops found me, they found me. I could have been found anywhere. I was always someplace. It might as well be Harbour Lights.
CHAPTER ONE
I left a note for Jimmyhead: I owe you. I know it. I’m sorry. I’m probably coming back to crash.
I went into the bathroom and pulled on my jeans. They were dry but stiff, cardboardy. I had to bend my knees a few times to loosen things up.
I called work and let them know I wasn’t coming in.
You probably didn’t think I’d be that conscientious.
You probably thought I didn’t even have a job, but I always work like a motherfucker. Back then, I worked the door at a slick, corny new bar out on Twenty-Third, one I would never go to as a patron, one I hate to even name, but they paid me well, and besides, all the bars I used to work the door for decided my services weren’t strictly necessary anymore. I helped a guy install under-the-table carpet jobs. I did all kinds of work for Marilynne.
Do you know I have my GED, that I’m a college dropout?
Have I shown you my comma scab?
Do you need to see references?
CHAPTER ONE
When I entered Harbour Lights, Joey the bartender looked up, frowned.
“Some dudes are looking for you,” he said.
“Anarchist dudes?”
“Yep.”
“Pretend I’m not here.”
“I don’t want any shit in here today,” he said. “I’m hungover.”
“Bad?”
“Death via percussion.”
“If any of Calvin’s dudes come in, I’m gone.”
“And if the cops come?”
So he knew. I guess everybody knew.
“Same deal,” I said.
The police were looking for me. I was a person of interest,which sounds flattering if you take it out of context.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I don’t think you did it. Not even you are stupid enough to be walking around under those circumstances.”
He poured me a pint without asking and then a shot of whiskey for both of us.
“This’ll put the hair of the dog on your chest,” he said.
We drank the kind burn of it.
“Better?” I said.
“Better,” he said.
Harbour Lights is a huge long room, like a humongous brick shoebox, and Joey and I were mice sniffing aroun
d in it. It reeked of the sweetness of spilled beer and the odor of things about to catch fire.
The place was nearly empty. Two older townies played pool. I checked my phone: 4 p.m.
She’d be there soon.
CHAPTER ONE
I don’t know what she was wearing. I can’t tell you if it had pleats.
I’m pretty sure she wore clothing.
I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed if she hadn’t. That would have stuck with me, I suspect.
When Saskia walked into Harbour Lights, she reminded me of potato chips and a grilled cheese sandwich and a girl sitting on my lap when I was fifteen years old.
Saskia grabbed my hands. Both of them, not like a handshake but like the prelude to some kind of dance. It was a weird thing to do. She looked up into my face, and I looked down into hers, and she had this sliver of her brother in the shape of her forehead, the set of her eyes, which were too bright to be his, too methodical—maybe even scientific. She had eyes like the first bright blue flame of a gas stove.
“Boo,” Saskia said, and I said, “Very funny,” or something like that. I remember every word I said, except for maybe those ones.
“Let me look at you,” she said.
“No,” I said up to the ceiling. It was a tall one; prehistoricnicotine stained the upper walls, from the days when you could smoke in bars and every bartender had lung cancer and a really nice lighter. Nobody scrubbed up there. Nobody looked up there, which made the scrubbing unnecessary.
I was thinking about stuff like that when she grabbed my face and pulled it down a little.
“You’ve looked at me,” she said.
I looked at her hard, and she looked back.
“Harder,” she said, and for a beat, I thought she could read my thoughts. It could have happened. It’s that kind of story.
“What?” I said.
“This is harder than I thought.”
“I’m not going to hug you.”
“I don’t want you to hug me,” she said. Maybe that’s what the hand-grabbing was all about. She held them down by our sides. It created this buffer zone of air between us that we could send words back and forth through. Her hands reminded me of the seashell-shaped bars of soap Marilynne put out in her bathroom. I always had some shit to wash off my hands. I was afraid to use those soaps. Once I touched them, they’d be ruined.
She held my hands like that for a while, long enough that it became a question of dominance. I tried to let go and she held on.
“Do you miss him?” she said.
“Who?”
“My brother.” She said it loud, and her voice opened some kind of fissure in the word brother. Some undergrads by the bar were looking over, and I gave them a fuck-off glare.
I didn’t think I did at first, but, no, I did. I missed everybody.
“Yeah,” I said.
Ghosts are not a substitute for humans. Thoughts are not a substitute for ghosts. Fucked-up memories are not a substitute for thoughts.
She held my hands and summoned up all these fucked-up memories.
She leaned in close and whispered, “Tell me about the ghost.Tell me everything.”
Her mouth hovered right by my ear. “Everything,” she said, and then she turned and offered her ear up to my mouth.
“I don’t know anything,” I said right into her head.
She pulled away but still held on. “I knew you’d say that,”she said in a normal voice. “Allen always said you acted like you didn’t know shit, but you do know shit. It was half a joke.”
“Maybe a quarter,” I said.
She leaned back in and whispered again. The little broken hairs in my ear canal danced for her. “I have the Ghost Machine,” she said. “It’s in my purse. It’s on. It’s been running, and I can’t shut it off.”
CHAPTER ONE
She couldn’t see her brother’s ghost. She couldn’t even see Marilynne’s.
“Tell me about the ghost,” she said, and I tried. I described the ghost to her just like I described it to you.
“Why the fuck did Allen want the Ghost Machine anyway?” she said, and I told her about the dead Doberman, about his dead girlfriend.
“But the big fucking question is, why is it working for me?” I said.
She didn’t know either.
Maybe Allen actually made it for me. Maybe he knew I was the kind of person who needed people to come back.
She pulled out the Walkman. Allen had sealed part of it with duct tape, and he had written Ghost Machine across the tape in black ballpoint pen. “See,” she said, “it works.” Sure enough, the spindles were churning. “I think it summons ghosts. It summons your ghosts.”
“Can you stop it?” I asked,
She hit stop, but it whirred on. She hit eject, but the door wouldn’t open.
“It might never shut off,” she said. “You might see ghosts for the rest of your life.”
Marilynne stood over us. I picked at the duct tape with my fingernail, and Saskia slapped my hand.
“Put on the headphones,” she said. They were the ancient kind, with decomposing foam pads and a metal band that tiaraed your head.
I slipped them on, and I heard a crackle, some static awakening, and then I heard my voice. I recognized it as my voice even as it seemed estranged from my existence, from my belief in my voice. It wasn’t higher or lower. I don’t know what it was.
“You’re not KKK anymore,” I said. “You’re not anything. You’re not dead because of me.”
“This is my curse,” a woman’s voice said. “I will come back —”
I ripped off the headphones.
“This is fucked up,” I said. “It’s playing part of my life.”
“I know,” Saskia said. “It plays all different parts.”
“Did you listen to this?”
“Some,” she said. “A lot actually.”
She had to know me better than anyone. The Ghost Machine sliced me open like a watermelon. You could see the red flesh of me, all the little black marks, all those little bad seeds.
“And?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For listening?”
“For what happened to you,” she said.
I didn’t say anything for a while. We stared at each other until she shrugged.
“You recorded all of that shit on the cassette,” she said.
“The fuck I did.”
“Who did it, then?”
“It’s weird,” I said. “Someone taped it all, but it wasn’t me. I’d never want to hear that again.”
“The tape’s jammed in there or something. Your whole life is jammed in there.”
I looked at her, this small tough thing. Saskia was like the lever on a car jack: just this thin piece of metal, but it can lift the entire car. I think she’d like that. I think it has to do with physics.
CHAPTER ONE
Would you want someone to listen to all of that, all of the things that happened to you, recorded in stereo?
You can probably imagine your own Ghost Machine, your own ghost. Maybe the one who loved you the most would come back to you, even if you didn’t love that person enough, even if that love got ruined somehow.
Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with love.
If you listen long enough to my Ghost Machine, you can hear long stretches of me saying weird bullshit over and over.
And, yes, I can see how maybe it’s a metaphor for this book.
It replayed bad parts, good ones, strange boring ones. Lots of people had yelled at me, I guess.
I could listen to that thing forever. I never wanted to listen to it again.
The Ghost Machine made a clunking sound, and then it whirred again.
I heard a screaming argument between me and some girl when I was fifteen. I can’t even remember her name. We didn’t use names when we yelled at each other.
Then the machine clunked again, whirred again.
I heard Allen on the day he
met me.
“Dude,” he said, “I’ve got a place you can stay. My couch is your couch.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Motherfucking sure as shit,” he said, and then I remember that we shook hands, and he pulled me in, this strange and dangerous hug.
Clunk. Whir.
“I’m doing you up right,” Allen said.
I could hear the buzz of the clippers, and then I yelped, “Shit,man.”
I remembered how the clippers had bit away at the tip of my right ear as he shaved my head.
“I did that on purpose,” Allen said. “A little blood never hurts.”
I remembered clumps of my hair fluttering down to dirty gray linoleum.
CHAPTER ONE
I had one live ghost and the voices of all these others.
“Tell me more about her,” Saskia said. I tried. You can’t just pin ghosts down like butterflies.
Who would want to pin down butterflies? I have inflicted great pain, but I almost never murder a living thing.
It’s not like I introduced myself as a choirboy. I don’t think so anyway. You could go back and check if you want. I’ll wait here.
CHAPTER ONE
I guess I should tell you about the before. I guess I should tell you about some of the shit.
I guess I should tell you what happened with Allen, with Saskia, with the skinheads.
And maybe I should explain that these skins aren’t what you’re thinking. They were “safety skins,” anti-racist, anti-corporate. They’re harmless really, violent as all get-out, but harmless. I wasn’t involved, not fully. I went to some parties. I shaved one guy’s head until his nubbly, pink flesh appeared. It was startling. He looked kind and soft and fresh, tender. That’s up close, but I’ve seen this guy pull a Mike Tyson on somebody. I’m not kidding. I heard the ring of ear cartilage crack between his teeth. I heard the other man screaming, high and tight, in some molecular language. No one understands it anymore, but that language is our only true way of discussing pain. We can speak it. We just can’t comprehend.
This Book Is Not for You Page 6