Karma Moon—Ghost Hunter

by Melissa Savage

  Except for the people who pack five suitcases looking for something new and different, but that goes without saying.

  Chef Raphaël nods again. “Please, have a seat and I will be back dans un petit moment with your brûlée.”

  Me and Mags find a table of our own and sit down.

  Buzz.

  “It’s him.” I hold out my phone to show her.

  Mags wedges her ear next to mine.

  “Okay, answer it,” she tells me.

  Me: H-hello?

  Nyx: How many candles did you use?

  Me: Oh, ah…two, I think.

  Nyx: The number is very important. I need to know exactly.

  Me: Two…I’m pretty sure.

  “Yeah, two,” Mags tells me. “The people on YouTube said to create a protective circle.”

  Nyx: Two candles is not a protective circle. What about salt, did you do that?

  Me: There was probably salt on the onion Funyuns.

  I look at Mags.

  “Yeah,” she says. “They were pretty salty.”

  Nyx: (Sigh.) Did you at least close the board?

  I look at Mags again.

  This time she just shrugs.

  Nyx isn’t waiting for my answer anyway.

  Nyx: I knew you newbs would leave it open.

  “What does that even mean?” Mags mouths to me.

  I shrug.

  Nyx: This is the exact reason I warned you guys. You need to officially close the board to let the spirits know you are done. If you don’t, you leave it open for spirits to flood this plane of existence. Especially the evil ones. Oh, man, you probably opened up the entire hotel to evil disembodied spirits. You thought Mr. Honeycutt was your problem? Well, without closing out the board, who knows how many evil spirits you invited in? What you’ve got yourselves is one big paranormal problem.

  Me: You mean there are wandering evil souls pouring out of the board and flooding the Stanley as we speak?

  Nyx: Exactly.

  I turn to Mags.

  “This information can’t be good for my what-ifs,” I tell her.

  “It’s not good for anything,” she agrees.

  Me: So, what do we do?

  Nyx: No protective circle? The board left open? We need to smudge the place. And fast.

  Me: And by smudge you mean…?

  Nyx: I’ll be there tomorrow after work to help you.

  Me: Okay.

  Mags elbows me and whispers, “Ask him about Poltergeist.”

  “You do it,” I whisper back, handing her the phone while I wedge my cheek next to hers to listen.

  Mags: Hey, Nyx, um, have you ever seen Poltergeist? You know, that movie from the eighties?

  Nyx: Who hasn’t? It’s only a blueprint by which all hauntings are measured.

  I gasp while Mags nods with a sly grin. “Told you,” she says.

  * * *

  After we hang up, Chef Raphaël floats out of the kitchen balancing three plates of brûlée.

  “Mes chéries!” he calls, setting a plate in front of me and one in front of Mags. “Your breakfast. I hope it is to your liking.”

  “Thank you, Chef Raphaël,” I say. “It actually looks really good.”

  “It is really good,” Mags says, her mouth already stuffed full of brûlée.

  “Bon appétit,” he says, turning toward the back of the room and then back to us. “Oh,” he says. “What happened to your friend?”

  I freeze and stare up at him. “Friend?”

  “Oui, the fancy woman at the table over there.” He points to the very last table by the window.

  We all turn to look at the empty table in the very back of the room.

  “What do you mean? It’s just us,” I say.

  “But…I saw her,” he says. “Right there. I figured she was with your group.”

  I gasp.

  Mags chokes.

  T. S. Phoenix jumps up with his Geiger counter in his hand and runs over to the empty table.

  “Non, non, non,” Chef Raphaël says. “It was no ghost, she was clear as day. I saw her. Are you saying you did not see her?”

  T. S. Phoenix wipes his hand across the table and we all watch as five dried-up rose petals fall to the floor.

  Dad clicks pictures of the petals with his new Nikon D5600.

  “Whatever it was is burying the needle!” T.S. exclaims. “Look!” He shows Dad.

  “What does that mean?” Mags asks.

  “It means something was here,” T.S. tells us. “An energy force that is reading on the Geiger counter.”

  WHAT IF

  Bloody Mary made it through the toilet portal after all?

  I touch the leather sack of bravery crystals around my neck and take a deep breath.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth.

  Dad gives me an approving nod and that smile. The one that shines a bright ray that bursts through my worry storms every time.

  “Chef Raphaël,” I say, opening my ghost logbook, my pen poised. “Tell me exactly what she looked like and don’t leave a single, solitary thing out.”

  I’m just going to say it. Too much cheese gives me the toots.

  Especially the cheddar kind. I loathe cheddar. I despise it. It’s the vilest of all the cheeses put together. And it wasn’t an allergy or even lactose intolerance that brought me to conclude that cheddar should be banned across all fifty states.

  It was the five suitcases.

  My mom said it was her spirit guide that led her to the Florida Keys via some app called Tinder, where she swiped right to her new life. A life without us on a houseboat named I GOT THE CHEDDA BABY with some creeper named Paul.

  Since that despicable day, the mere mention of cheddar makes my stomach feel hot and achy and roll like thunder.

  The dude’s a perv.

  His perviness announces itself in the name.

  Pervy Paul is a supreme creeper weirdo. Arms too hairy to be normal, with lumpy man bosoms, a balloon gut that hangs over a man-kini and a weirdly narrow mustache that curls on the ends. He has a neck tattoo of an octopus and a suntan that makes him look more like a wrinkled leather loafer than a man.

  Crystal Mystic totally agrees with me.

  CRYSTAL MYSTIC

  YOU CAN THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS!

  When I showed Mags the octopus she said, “I’m sorry, but who puts an octopus anywhere on their body?”

  I actually know a lot more about how things happened than I’m going to tell you. I’ll spare you the horrible details. Mostly because you don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t know. But thanks to the walls of our old-time walk-up circa 1801, I do.

  They’re paper-thin.

  Buzz.

  TOO-TAN MOM:

  Went snorkeling yesterday.

  Picture.

  Her and Pervy Paul in the water with snorkel gear.

  Tears prick at my eyeballs, and words I’m scared to say out loud clog up my throat.

  I show it to Mags while we wait for Madame Drusilla outside her office the next day to do more research on this ghostly woman, who has been spotted twice. First in Mr. Plum’s room and now by Chef Raphaël in the dining hall.

  Still nothing on film.

  And it’s day four.

  Mags looks up from her phone. She’s been Googling straw deaths in sea turtles all morning. I just know she’s planning on heading back to Toy Mountain with more evidence to support her cause. For Mags, if she can change one mind, she’s won a small fight in the battle to save the turtles.

  “That”—she points to my screen—“is disturbing.”

  Mrs. Bogdonavich sent Mags her famous Made-with-Love Chocolate Chip Cookies and FedExed them to
the hotel last night.

  Their best quality announcing itself in their name.

  Love.

  Mags had two and I ate seven.

  I happen to know that her mom’s secret is pudding mix in the batter. But come to think of it, I crossed-my-heart-hoped-to-die for that. So, again, let’s keep that one on the down-low.

  I think hard about what to write back while I wish more than anything that my mom were the pudding-in-the-mix mom I want her to be. But I guess being a pudding-in-the-mix mom doesn’t make her happy.

  Chedda does.

  I start to type.

  ME:

  Why did you leave us?

  Delete.

  Delete.

  Delete.

  ME:

  When are you coming home?

  Delete.

  Delete.

  Delete.

  ME:

  I miss you.

  No emoji needed.

  Send.

  I wait.

  Buzz.

  TOO-TAN MOM:

  Aren’t you happy for me?

  The words are blurry because of the tears.

  The kind of tears that scare me.

  It’s the same kind I cried that first day Mom was gone. The kind that take your breath so long you don’t think you’ll ever find it again. The kind that make you feel like you might drown. The kind of tears you hope you’ll never, ever cry again.

  But they’re back, threatening to take me over.

  And I know if I show the text to Mags and she gives me that look that a true-blue friend is supposed to give you when the worst thing has happened to you, those scary tears will burst out of me.

  And maybe this time they’ll never stop.

  I slip my phone back in my pocket, take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes tight, stuffing it all inside me. Pretending there isn’t a hurricane bomb churning and rolling inside my stomach, making me feel like I’m going to explode.

  But it’s there.

  I hear the squeaky-wheeled cart before I actually see her. Ruby Red in her gray-and-white uniform, pushing her cart at the end of the hall.

  I wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand. “Hi, Ruby Red,” I say.

  “Hello, girls.” She smiles a wide smile at us. “Catch any ghosts yet?”

  I eye her suspiciously.

  “Not exactly,” I tell her. “But Chef Raphaël saw a woman in the dining hall yesterday that no one else saw. Probably the same woman Mr. Plum was talking about that night he skipped town in his underwear. Oh, wait, that’s right…you weren’t there for that.”

  Mags looks up from her phone and we stare at Ruby Red with accusing gazes like a bright bulb on a perp in a police interrogation room.

  But she just shrugs.

  “You don’t seem surprised about that,” I inform her.

  “I’m not,” she says, starting to roll her cart again.

  We watch as she goes.

  “Good luck catching her,” she calls over her shoulder.

  Mags gives me a knowing look and whispers, “Phony baloney supreme.”

  I nod and continue to eye Ruby Red as she wheels the cart away.

  “Do you know when Madame Drusilla is coming back?” I call after her.

  “It might be a while,” she says. “She’s out in the garden, gathering her daily flowers, and that usually takes some time.”

  “How long does it take to gather flowers?” I call again.

  Ruby Red stops and turns to face me. “For Madame Drusilla, it takes a good long time.”

  “Why is that?” I ask.

  “Because she asks the flowers permission to cut them first.”

  Mags snorts. “Wait…,” she says. “She asks who…what now?”

  Ruby Red turns back around and begins to push her cart again.

  “You heard me right.” She points toward the glass back doors leading to the paved rear courtyard filled with heavy iron chairs and tables. “You’ll find her out there.”

  And she’s dead-on, too.

  But she isn’t the only one. Jack the busboy is on the other side of the yard pulling weeds.

  Shirtless, again.

  “Hi, Jack!” Mags calls in a voice that’s far too loud, waving to him.

  He just smiles and keeps weeding.

  “I’ll be over there,” Mags tells me, heading in his direction.

  I grab her arm. “Oh no you won’t,” I say. “We’re Research.”

  “No, you’re Research.” She points at me.

  “Still,” I say. “You have to help. Besties before boyfriends.”

  “Yeah, thaaaaat’s not a thing.”

  “It sure is a thing,” I tell her. “It’s our thing.”

  “Fine,” she sighs, following me to the garden, but not before flashing Jack the busboy one more smile when he looks up at her.

  Madame Drusilla is exactly where Ruby Red said she’d be. Sitting right smack-dab in the middle of the roses like her backside has sprouted roots.

  Eyes closed. Palms up.

  She’s older than my mom but definitely younger than Ms. Lettie. Long, straight gray hair lies flat on her back and a brightly colored scarf is wrapped around her forehead and tied in the back. Next to her is a brown wicker basket with a whole bunch of freshly cut pink roses piled inside it.

  “Excuse me, Madame Drusilla?” I call out.

  Silence.

  “Hello?” I say again.

  “Shhh,” she finally says. “I’m busy listening.”

  I look at Mags and she just shakes her head.

  “Listening to what?” I ask.

  “To the world around me,” Madame Drusilla says.

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing really out here to listen to,” I inform her.

  She opens her eyes then.

  “The garden is full of somethings,” she informs me. “Not nothings.”

  “Oh, riiiight,” I say.

  She closes her eyes again.

  “You are welcome to listen too, if you wish,” she says.

  I close my eyes and listen hard.

  Birds are singing in the trees.

  Water is trickling in the fountain.

  A saxophone is playing jazz music from hidden outdoor speakers.

  I open my eyes.

  “What exactly am I listening for?” I ask her.

  She keeps her eyes closed tight and says, “I’ve asked a question of all the rosebushes in the garden and I’m waiting to hear their answer.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Mags says. “You really are waiting for the rosebushes to talk to you?”

  “To answer me, yes,” Madame Drusilla says.

  Mags’s eyebrows go up. “Can you hear them now?”

  I give her arm a smack.

  Madame Drusilla sighs an exasperated sigh, then opens her eyes again. “We must be respectful of the life of all things. Therefore, doesn’t it just make sense that we would ask permission from the lives in this garden to be cut for our vases?”

  “Not really,” Mags says. “They’re flowers.”

  I shake my head at Mags. “Your channels are so pea soup, it’s just plain embarrassing,” I tell her.

  She gives me her eyes-to-the-sky roll.

  I step carefully between the bushes, making sure not to squish any leafy lives under the heels of my Converse, pulling Mags behind me.

  “What are the bushes saying to you right now?” I ask Madame Drusilla.

  “If you’d like to sit with me and meditate,” she says slowly, “you too can hear the answers for yourselves.”

  I point to the dirt and Mags shakes her head. I point to the dirt harder and Mags shakes her head. I point to the dirt and mouth the word
“Sit!” That’s when she finally blows a puff of air out of her mouth and takes a seat next to Madame Drusilla while I find a patch of ground on the other side.

  “Now close your eyes and focus only on the serenity of the garden and the air going in and out of your lungs.”

  “Actually,” I say, “Dr. Finkelman taught me how to do this.”

  “Dr. Finkelman?” Madame Drusilla asks, her eyes still closed.

  “Yeah,” I say. “He treats my worries and says meditation can quiet my what-ifs. But the problem is that my jumping beans are way too wiggly and my brain far too busy worrying to just sit there and do nothing…it’s a vicious cycle, really.”

  Madame Drusilla takes another deep breath in and out again. “It takes practice,” she tells me. “Just listen and breathe. Don’t judge yourself for the thoughts that come in and out or the wiggles, either. Just be thankful for everything you are.”

  “Everything?” I say. “That sure doesn’t sound right.”

  Her lips crack a smile. “If you focus on gratitude for who you are and the gifts you possess, with that mind-set, the what-ifs will quiet.”

  “That doesn’t sound right either,” I tell her. “Mine are pretty loud. But I’ll give it a shot.”

  I close my eyes and breathe breaths in and out just like Madame Drusilla does.

  In and out.

  WHAT-IFS

  I’m not going anywhere.

  In and out.

  And I listen.

  Still just birds.

  Still just water.

  Still just saxophone.

  WHAT-IFS

  Thankful for me yet?

  Somewhere in the distance a leaf blower buzzes.

  Probably Jack the busboy.

  “Breathe in,” Madame Drusilla tells us, taking a big breath. “And out.”

  “Wait,” I say, opening one eye. “I think I hear something.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” Mags mumbles.