A Head Full of Ghosts

by Paul Tremblay

  I whispered, “Marjorie? Stop it. Who’s there?”

  The scratching noise stopped. I thought about running from the room, pictured it in my head, but I saw my feet hitting the floor and then thin, skeleton-white hands reaching out from under my bed and pulling me under.

  I sat and waited and heard nothing, and the nothing seemed to last for hours. I waited. My camera bleeped at me, and I yelped. A red number blinked on the flip screen. I didn’t have much battery power left.

  I watched the blinking red of the screen and then looked over at the blanket-covered house. In the LED white light the blue blanket looked like it was the same white color as the cardboard house, or the same white the house used to be before its growing-things transformation. I stared at or into the blanket, trying to see the blue that I knew was there but wasn’t seeing, and then the blanket was sucked inside the house through the shutters of the front window, as though that window was a ravenous black hole. It was pulled in so roughly that the blanket rubbing against the cardboard sounded like the house was being torn open. The chimney piece flew off and landed on the foot of my bed. It all happened so fast, I didn’t lose my breath and drop the camera into my lap until after the blanket had disappeared.

  I somehow found my voice and said, “I’ll scream for Mom. You’ll get in big trouble, Marjorie.” I pointed the camera back at the house and, feeling more angry than scared, and wanting to ensure Marjorie’s torment of me was on video, to have this as a part of the official, permanent record, I added, “This isn’t funny.”

  The shutters had rebounded and again covered up most of the window. There weren’t any noises coming from inside the house. From the bed, the LED camera light didn’t penetrate the small opening between the shutters. I couldn’t see Marjorie.

  “I’m videoing this, you know.” I waited for a reaction. There wasn’t any. So I hit her as hard as I could with, “I know you’re faking. You told me you were faking.” Letting out her biggest secret while recording, I thought for sure that’d she come out of the house, mad at me, telling me that I was a baby and couldn’t take a joke, and that she was doing this just to make the show better, and didn’t I want to help? And I would say yes, but I’d also cry and make her feel bad so that she’d stay in my room and sleep in my bed, and then we’d delete what I’d recorded and I would’ve been happy doing so.

  “Marjorie, come on.” I hopped off the bed, looking at what was in front of me through the flip screen of the camera, which was much easier for me than seeing the real thing. I tapped the front door with my foot. Still no reaction. I peeled back one of the shutters and slowly traced the house’s interior and floor with the camera’s headlight. The crayon drawings on the back wall were crudely drawn cave paintings and they hung at skewed angles. My blue blanket was in a lumpy heap on the floor. I whispered my sister’s name, and when I did, the blanket started to rise slowly. The rising part was long and thin. It was her arm. It had to have been her arm; she was raising it so that it looked like a snake head, or a vine. I whispered her name again and the rising part stopped. The blanket bubbled with activity underneath it, and then the rising part widened, fattened, to the size of her head, a costumed Halloween ghost without the eyeholes or mouth hole, as she sat there under the blanket with her legs crossed, or maybe she was crouched, balanced on the balls of her feet, her body concealed by the blanket and by the house’s window frame.

  I told her to get out, to leave my room, to go away.

  Those skeleton-white hands I’d previously imagined shooting out from under my bed came out from under the blanket and wrapped around her neck. They pulled the blanket down over her face, skintight, and the blanket formed a shroud with dark valleys for eyes and mouth, her nose flattened against the unyielding cloth. Her mouth moved, and choking growls came out. Those hands squeezed so the blanket pulled tighter and her blanket-covered mouth opened wider, and she shook her head, thrashing it around violently as she gasped and pleaded with someone to stop, or maybe she said she was trying to stop. Her hands were still closed around her own neck, and I’m sure it was some sort of optical illusion or a trick or kink of memory because her neck couldn’t have gotten as thin as I remember it getting, and then the rest of her body began to spasm and lash out, knocking into the house, her feet jabbing out from underneath and recoiling like a snake’s tongue.

  I took another step back and suddenly the cardboard house exploded and shot out toward me. The roof smashed into my face and knocked me over. I fell backward, landing hard on my butt and with my back pinned up against my bed. I managed to keep hold of the camera, which, along with my arms and hands, was stuck inside the chimney slot of the house. I couldn’t see Marjorie over the house she’d dropped on me but I heard her run out of my room and into the hallway.

  I punched and kicked the fallen house, the now loose flaps and folds tangled in my arms and legs like thick weeds. The house finally gave in, slumped off, and rolled away toward the closet. I scrambled onto my feet. My blanket was on the ground, in a harmless heap pinned under the collapsed cardboard. Determined to video an escaping Marjorie, I ran out into the hallway.

  She wasn’t there. The light from my camera failed to reach the end of the hallway and the open mouth of the confessional room. The hallway walls faded and frayed into the dark. I strained to hear movement from Marjorie, from anybody, and all I could hear was my own revved-up breathing.

  I walked down the hall to her door, the whole time expecting Marjorie to jump out of a darkened corner, the bathroom doorway, the top of the stairs, or from the confessional room. Her door was closed. I tried pushing it open with my foot but it was latched shut. I turned the knob and threw my body weight into it, and stumbled inside.

  Marjorie was in bed, under the covers, lying on her side, her head turned away from me. I kept the camera’s light focused on the back of her head. I whispered her name repeatedly as I walked until I was standing right next to her, the light focused into a tight beam on her profile.

  Her eyes were closed and she was breathing deeply and looked to be asleep and to have been asleep for quite a while.

  “Marjorie?” I poked her shoulder. No response or movement. I watched her on the flip screen: The covers slowly rose and fell with each breath, and her face looked green. I kept the camera light on but paused the recording with a small electronic blip.

  Marjorie opened an eye and rolled it back toward me. She said, “Did you get it all?” in a low, creaky voice. She calmly repeated herself when I didn’t respond initially.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good girl. Show it to your pal Ken tomorrow after school. Go back to bed.”

  I was suddenly exhausted and could’ve curled up and gone to sleep right there on her floor. I shuffled out of her room and into the hallway. I looked back and Marjorie was sitting up, muttering to herself, and plugging earbuds into her phone, the music already on and loud, something with heavy, rhythmic synthesizers. Marjorie snuggled back into bed and whispered, “Shut the door, Merry,” but I didn’t.

  Out in the hallway I found Tony the cameraman easing his way up the stairs, night-vision camera perched on his shoulder. He didn’t appear to be in any giant rush to get all the way up here.

  He sounded annoyed when he said, “What’s going on, Merry? Did I miss something?”

  I said, “No, nothing.”

  He asked me something else but I turned and walked across the hall into my parents’ bedroom. I shut the door quietly behind me and on Tony who was now at the top of the stairs, filming me. I’d felt the camera pointed at my back. I stood behind the door and listened to him creep a little farther down the hallway and pause at Marjorie’s door. Her door creaked and then latched, and Tony walked back downstairs, the wood groaning under his giant, sloppy feet.

  I put my camera down on the cluttered nightstand next to Mom’s head. I crawled over her and into the bed, easily fitting myself between my parents who slept as far away from each other as they could.

  THE NEXT MOR
NING I WORE my best dress because it was what someone who was on a TV show was supposed to wear. It was dark maroon, squared at the shoulders, and short-sleeved so I wore a white cardigan over it. Mom had bragged about buying it for only ten bucks. She tried to talk me out of wearing the dress to school (it wasn’t warm enough, I’d get it dirty at recess or lunch or art class . . .), but I wouldn’t budge.

  I couldn’t wait to ask my friends and classmates if they’d seen me on TV last night. I figured that at least some of my friends might’ve been able to fool their parents into letting them watch it because they wouldn’t have known what it was about or what was on it.

  Dad offered to drive me to school, but Mom said she would, and then she was going to run some errands. Plus she wanted him to wake up Marjorie and ask her if she was going to school or Dr. Hamilton today; she had to choose one to go to, she couldn’t stay home. A brief, controlled argument ensued. With cameras and crew members watching, my parents had to keep their dramas quick and to the point. I didn’t wait for its rushed and hushed conclusion. I sprinted out the door ahead of Mom, who yelled after me to wait for her. I didn’t wait. I ran to our car parked in the driveway and started yanking on the locked back door.

  “Mom, it’s locked, come on!”

  As I walked around the car to try the doors on the other side, I noticed there was a small group, maybe five people, holding handwritten signs in the street near our front lawn. Barry was talking to them. I couldn’t hear him but he didn’t seem happy.

  Mom said, “I told you to wait for me.” She unlocked the doors. I asked her who those people were. She sighed and said, “I don’t know but they better not be here when I get back.” I ducked down in my seat as we drove by them, resting my face at the bottom of the window frame so they’d only see the top of my head and my glasses peering out. An old man pointed at us as we drove by and held up his sign, but it was spun around backward and by the time he flipped it around, we were too far away to read it.

  At school, when I breathlessly asked my friends if they’d seen the show, most said they weren’t allowed to watch because it was an adult show and/or it was on so late. A few said they’d seen commercials and it looked creepy. Samantha asked why I wore a fancy dress to school. Cara said that she saw some of it but didn’t see me in the parts that she watched, but then it was too scary to keep watching. Brian said the show was gross. At recess and lunch a pack of fourth and fifth graders, including the neighbor that Marjorie had punched in the face on my behalf a few years ago, made fun of me and Marjorie and called my whole family a bunch of freaks. I immediately told on them. I was more upset that, of my friends, only Cara and Brian had seen it, and they didn’t have anything good to say about it. I asked teachers too, and my favorite, Mrs. Newcomb said, politely, that she hadn’t seen the show, that, “I don’t watch much TV, I’m afraid. I’m just too busy planning for our school day!”

  When I got home there were more people standing out front holding signs. They stood behind yellow police tape. Mom said, “We may have to get used to this for a little while,” then went on to say that they were religious fanatics who didn’t approve of what we were doing, and there was nothing we could do about them as long as they stayed off our property. Dad had apparently tried to intimidate them away from our house and he even made physical contact with a few of the protesters, grabbing them by the arm and pulling them down the street. Father Wanderly had intervened and calmed Dad down. Father Wanderly was still out there talking to a few of them. Even though it was cold out, his forehead looked sweaty. They waved their signs at us as we pulled into the driveway. Some signs had names and numbers on them, which I found out later were references to Bible verses. Two signs had red block letters. One sign read: JUDGMENT IS COMING. Another: DON’T PROFIT OFF THE DEVIL’S WORK!

  Although this new development was interesting, I decided it wasn’t my problem and didn’t involve me, at least not yet. I ran into the house and changed back into my sweats and Wonder Woman T-shirt. Then Ken and I and my camera went into the crew’s trailer. There was a little living room section toward the front with a mini-kitchen and couch, but the rest of it was monitors, equipment, and black chairs with wheels. He hooked up my camera to his laptop, which he’d synced to one of the large wall monitors and we watched the previous night’s footage. We heard the scratching noise. We listened to me announce to the cardboard house that I knew she was faking. We saw the blanket disappear. Ken jumped in his chair and grabbed my arm when it happened. We saw the blanket rise inside the house and the skeleton hands wrap around her neck. The hands didn’t look as long and as thin as they had when it was really happening. We watched the house fly into the camera. We saw the lens pressed up against a drawing of Marjorie’s face, her mouth a big red O while I grunted and struggled to get the house off me. We watched as the camera bobbed down the hall and into Marjorie’s room where she appeared to be asleep and I couldn’t wake her up.

  When it ended Ken said, “Wow. Are you okay, Merry?”

  “I’m okay. It didn’t look as scary as I remember it.”

  “I bet. But still, watching it was—That was really scary.”

  “Is this something you can use?”

  “Yes. Most definitely. But, really, are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just a bad day at school.” Then I told him about my friends and Mrs. Newcomb not watching or liking the show, and how the older kids made fun of me.

  Ken said, “I am sorry, Merry. But as I’m sure your parents have told you, that kind of stuff is probably going to get worse as more episodes air. I think this year at school will be really hard, and it’s certainly not fair to you, not at all. What we’re doing here will be hard for people to understand.”

  “I know. I’ll be okay. I’m tough.”

  “Yeah, you are. You’re the toughest person I know. Just make sure you talk to your parents or to someone at school, or me if you want, when it gets too hard, okay?”

  “I will.” I didn’t want to talk about school anymore. I asked, “Will you change things?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t want to come right out and ask if he was going to cut out the part about me saying that Marjorie was faking. “The video I made. Will you change it?”

  “You mean will I edit it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We always do some editing. Sometimes we’ll really cut it up and move around the different scenes if we think it’ll work better that way. Sometimes we just do small cuts or tweaks, add some sound or music or voice-over narration. But just seeing it once, I don’t think we’ll change much of what you filmed at all.”

  I nodded, and was worried that he didn’t really pick up on me talking about Marjorie faking everything while we watched it but he surely would later when he showed it to Barry. I didn’t want to be there for that so I said, “Okay. Bye,” and darted quickly for the door.

  “Wait! Don’t forget to take your camera back.” Ken held it up and out toward me, and he shrugged, like he knew I wasn’t sure I wanted the camera back. Or maybe he wasn’t sure he should give the camera back to me.

  I actually didn’t want it, but I wanted Ken to go on thinking that I was still tough. So I took the camera. I went inside and up to my room. I put it in the top drawer of my dresser, layered some T-shirts on top of it, and decided I wouldn’t use it again.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE MORNING AFTER the second episode aired, I told Mom that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to stay home from school. I told her my stomach hurt and I thought I had a fever when I didn’t; I felt fine. She placed the back of her hand on my forehead and that was enough. She didn’t question me further or take my temperature. Marjorie stayed home from school too. She hadn’t been to school in a week since the first episode aired.

  After spending a long, boring morning in my room rereading the old stories Marjorie and I had written in the Richard Scarry book and counting how many cats she’d drawn glasses on and had named Merry (there were fifty-fou
r, I still remember that number), I came downstairs around lunchtime and announced that I was feeling better. I was dressed up as a news reporter: black T-shirt; black tights; a straw fedora; one blue sock and one red sock, both knee-length, the red sock was a regular sock, the blue sock was one of those glove socks that had toes and made my foot look like it was a Muppet foot; a button-up red knit sweater jacket that hung down almost to my knees. The sweater jacket had deep front pockets in which I stashed my reporter’s pencil and the black notebook that Ken had given me.

  There wasn’t any crew on the first floor, but I took notes anyway as I worked my way to the kitchen. Dad was hunched over the sink and washing dishes by hand.

  I wrote down: “Dishes. Dirty.”

  “Hi, sweetie. Feeling better, I take it?”

  I asked, “Yes. How come you’re not using the dishwasher?”

  “There weren’t that many dishes to wash.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded. Onto the next question: “Where’s Mom?”

  “Out with Marjorie.”

  I wrote that down, too, and underlined it.

  “But she’ll be back soon. We have a big meeting in”—he looked at the oven clock—“jeez, less than an hour.”

  “Can I be there for the meeting? I’m a reporter, see? I’ll take notes.”

  “No. I don’t think so. But we may have something to talk to you about afterward.”

  “What? Tell me!” I had my pencil pressed into the notebook.

  “You’re too funny. But I can’t tell you. Mom and I and everyone else have to discuss it first. It’s nothing bad, though, I promise.”

  “But I’m a reporter so you have to tell me.”

  “Sorry to be a tease, but we’ll talk after, okay?”

  “Ugh. I can’t wait until after.”

  Dad laughed, and despite two thousand volts of frustration tingling and twitching through my body, I laughed too. Everything about him that morning seemed relaxed and brighter than it had in months. He’d always been a moody guy. No one was funnier or more fun to play with than he was when in the right mood and you could feel the barometric pressure drop when he wasn’t.