The Haunting Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare a Demon War (The Ghosts & Demons Series)

by Robert Chazz Chute

  “No, you couldn’t,” Detective Owens said. “He was crazy, overdosed on Viagra and he threatened to kill you if you called for help.”

  I watched his eyes as I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s about right.”

  “What’s not right about it?” Owens asked.

  Then I told him everything. He took no notes. He didn’t believe my story, of course. He should have. He was the only one to whom I told the entire truth, including everything I knew about Petra. I was already in a mental hospital. My defense was insanity. Given where I was, that seemed airtight.

  Owens watched me for a long time after I finished. “Tamara, do you plan to hurt anyone else?”

  “Not unless they come at me with a loaded weapon like Dr. Moorely did.”

  He nodded.

  “It was self-defense,” Owens said. “He overdosed on the pills himself. You didn’t scream because you were afraid for your life and your roommate’s life. The bruises on your neck tell the only story I need to know. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how my report will read.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you will never tell anyone everything you just told me. Dr. Moorely told you about Petra. He taunted you with her memory. You did not see her that night. Understand?”

  “Thank you, Detective Owens.”

  The hospital administrators didn’t want the truth getting out, either. Depositions dragged out in court and before the media would be too embarrassing. They wanted the scandal over and done with quickly. I received a decent settlement. Hush money, Mama called it. The lawyers for the hospital said that if I exposed the fact that one of their doctors had abused patients for decades it would besmirch the institution. People who needed help wouldn’t feel safe coming there anymore.

  “Well, boo-hoo. We weren’t safe, were we?” I said.

  I signed the agreement on condition they would discharge me immediately to Mama’s custody. The hospital promised to investigate to try to find more victims. Given the vulnerable population they served at Shibboleth, I doubt they ever turned up another of Moorely’s prey.

  Petra and I certainly weren’t the only victims. I know that (and it’s logical given the patterns of sexual predators as taught to me by CSI Miami.) But for some reason, Petra was the only one who showed up on my ghost radar. Was it because she was his first victim, because she died there or because, like me, she was sane in an insane situation?

  The details of Dr. Moorely’s suicide were not made public. Unless it’s a celebrity who kills themselves, the media’s rule is to avoid inspiring copycats. Why it’s okay to inspire people to kill themselves after a celeb takes his own life is one of those unanswerable mysteries. It’s the gap between what’s smart and what’s done. That gap is everywhere if you start to look around.

  Anyway, I saw Dr. Moorely again. On the day I left the hospital I looked up from my bed and jumped and shrieked. The old man stood before me in an open, bloody robe wearing nothing underneath it. You can use your imagination about what was left between his legs. You won’t need much imagination.

  Moorely stared at me. I saw his fury again. He walked into the room and lay on the floor. A small, red hole gaped in the middle of his forehead. The back of his head was an empty mess of red, white and gray mash. Dr. Moorely stared at the ceiling and wept silently, tears streaming down his face, his arms outstretched as if on a cross.

  My bags were already packed. When I left that room for the last time, I stepped over him as if he wasn’t there. Call-Me-Becks stayed on her bed, rubbing the bony tumors in her feet and chewing the soles of her slippers.

  It was brutal therapy, but I have to confess, I wasn’t quite as scared of ghosts anymore.

  Lesson 12: Psychiatry works!

  7

  Lesson 13: no matter how straightforward the easy answer is, there will always be a skeptic trying to tell you that your life transforming experience didn’t really happen.

  For instance, as soon as I got out of the hospital, I got Mama to drive us to Piggly Wiggly’s. Ten minutes later, we sat at a rest stop off Highway 65, hashing it out over ham sandwiches and Cokes. Mama had a lot of questions, but I didn’t have many answers that satisfied her.

  After about the fifth time of her asking if I was okay, I started to cry. “How can I be okay? What does all this mean?”

  Her troubled look told me she didn’t have a lot of answers that would satisfy me, either. When I asked Mama if she believed my story, she said she believed that I believed my story. That was very unsatisfying.

  “With Brad’s death, you’ve been through a lot, Tammy. What if you’ve got…I mean, what if this is PTSD?”

  “Like what soldiers get?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mama, I loved Brad with all my heart, but are you honestly going to sit there and tell me I got Post-traumatic Stress Disorder from my boyfriend’s death? I mean, if that’s true, wouldn’t everybody get it?”

  “Well…maybe you got it from your fight with the doctor.”

  It was my turn to play skeptic. “If fights and funerals made it that easy to get PTSD, who wouldn’t have it?”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I just…think PTSD sounds more logical and maybe preferable to the other possibilities.”

  “Like what possibilities? I saw Ghost Zombie Brad before I saw Naked Petra, and before Dr. McPervy Bad Touch came into my hospital room.”

  “Maybe we should see another doctor. Get some more opinions. Y’know, just to rule things out.”

  “You think I have a brain tumor or something?”

  “No, Tammy! No! But….”

  “What?”

  “Schizophrenia might be something we should rule out.”

  I lost my appetite for ham sandwiches and took three long swallows of my Coke. I wished it was on ice. I wished I had loaded up on sugar. Girls joke about dealing with a bad breakup by chowing down on Haagen Dazs butter pecan ice cream in a bathtub. Double Stuf Fudgee-os are my drug of choice and, boy, did I crave my medicine. (The Stuf part really is spelled with one f, which gives you something else to ponder when the box is empty too soon, the sugar crash comes and you hate yourself.)

  “Do you think I have what Daddy had?” I asked.

  Mama looked terrified. “We don’t really know what your father had, Tammy. He didn’t stick around long enough for us to find out. But no. Definitely not!”

  “You always called him crazy. You think I’ve got the crazy gene, too, don’t you?”

  “Why do you say these things?”

  “Because if you didn’t think I was crazy, I think you’d look less scared.”

  “He wasn’t crazy, exactly, Tammy. He withdrew. And…yes…he had visions. He said he wasn’t meant for this world.”

  Mama had told me the story many times. She told it the long way. I’ll give you the short version: When Daddy said he wasn’t meant for this world, Mama thought he meant to kill himself. Maybe he just meant he wasn’t meant for our little part of the world. He left Iowa. He disappeared one day and left the divorce papers, already drawn up, in the mailbox. The forwarding address was in Brooklyn.

  “You are not your father. Can’t be. That would be too...too."

  "Too what?"

  "Just too."

  "Just, too, too what, Mama?"

  "Unfair. Too much and too unfair.”

  She looked at the sky as if the clouds would form letters to spell out some reassuring answers to her questions. Her hope for a world where bad things only happened to bad people was the chasm between us. I was jealous of Mama in that moment. She’d somehow held on to that belief even as Brad’s death ripped my hope away.

  Unfairness. Mr. Chang had warned me about thinking too much about what’s fair.

  “Fair in a fight or fair in life?” I’d asked Mr. Chang.

  “Same, same,” Mr. Chang had replied.

  Petra sure didn’t get much of a taste of what’s fair. Mr. Chang was right. Life is hard. Death is
even harder.

  Mama shook her head and wiped away a tear but I barreled on. “If you could have been there and seen the girl, you’d know I’m not making this up or anything. And what about the triage nurse back in Medicament? She didn’t know that poor man was having a heart attack until it was too late. I hit a nerve with her, bang on, didn’t I?”

  “We don’t know what happened there, Tammy.”

  “We don’t, but I do.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I believe you.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to believe I take after my father?”

  “I believe you because you’re my daughter. Whatever was in him that you might have inherited, half of you still comes from me.”

  She hugged me but I wasn’t done being mad at her so I didn’t hug her back.

  “Tammy? Besides coming from Amarillo, I was brought up Presbyterian. What do ghosts mean for the big picture?”

  “What big picture?”

  “Heaven. Hell. Death. Life, the universe and everything. I haven’t been a good Presbyterian,” Mama said. “I mean, I always wanted to believe in heaven, but as a pharmacist, I have questions about how the real world works and it butts up against my Bible. And now? I don’t know what to think. If Death isn’t necessarily the end…well, that’s what we’re all hoping for, isn’t it? Salvation. But, with ghosts, if it isn’t a real new beginning, either…. I just don’t know what to think now. If there are ghosts wandering around just looking in on us all the time, I’m gonna have to start showering with my clothes on, at least until I lose a little weight.”

  I managed to laugh at that. “I don’t have all the answers, Mama. I don’t know about the big picture. I’m just trying to get through the day.”

  “You’ve been a very strong girl and you know I’m proud of you. Even so, Dr. Moorely’s death must have been a shock, even for a strong girl.”

  That’s when I understood that Mama didn’t understand me. Her genteel rules said I was somehow supposed to feel at least a little bad for Moorely. We were supposed to think he was sick. Mama thought I should feel guilt for the wounds I inflicted, especially if they led to the old pervert killing himself. The truth was, I felt nothing but hate for him. Glad he was dead? No. Ecstatic is the right word.

  People who don’t feel sympathy for others are monsters. Mama worried that I didn’t abide by her expectations to express some kind of regret. I never said I was sorry. It was necessary to hurt the doctor badly, so I did. If I’d called the nurses, the situation might have devolved into a he said, she said sort of thing. When I looked in Petra’s eyes, I knew I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t share Mama’s worries that I’d become a monster. In fact, I did feel plenty of compassion for others. I felt deep empathy for Petra. All my sympathy went out to her so I had nothing left for Moorely.

  I didn’t blame Mama for her worries. She was brought up a sweet Southern gal. Mama had not seen the look of fear and pain in Petra’s eyes. When my dead roommate stood naked against the wall with half circles of bite marks across her breasts and trailing down her belly, I felt her horror. When she escaped the trap of that room, I felt her elation.

  I thought of Brad then. How could I release him? Was it really me who was keeping him from going…somewhere?

  That’s Lesson 14, I guess. We don’t know what happens after death, but the dead don’t know any better, either. They’re still stuck, half in and half out of this plane of existence. Most, not all, are like Petra, hoping for a connecting flight to what Mama calls the Happy Hunting Grounds.

  Brad was a good young man. The only sin I ever knew he committed was lust. He committed that sin with me and when it’s that good it can’t be bad. Why he was condemned to stay, I did not know. I only saw him in two places: in the backyard outside my window and in the field, standing amid the tall grasses. I felt he was waiting for something that he could only get from me, but he either didn’t or couldn’t say what that special ticket to ride might be.

  When Mama and I finished our sandwiches from Piggly Wiggly’s and drained our Cokes, she asked me what I wanted to do next. Given my farm boy boyfriend’s trap, I knew I would not return to Medicament. I had some money now. Mama assumed I would go to university and restart my life, fresh and Bradless. That wouldn’t have been fresh enough for me. I wasn’t about to go quiz the clergy or run away to hide at a retreat at a yoga ashram and live off brown rice and tofu, either. Nothing against yoga. I like how my bum looks in yoga pants. As for the clergy, I figured that I already knew more about life after death than most.

  What I chose next might seem a little weird. Until recently, I’d thought I possessed a scientific mind. Maybe I still did because I told Mama, “It’s time to experiment.”

  It was also time to run far away. What’s a girl with money do instead of getting drunk in a dorm for Frosh week? A normal girl might go to Hawaii or Miami or Aspen. I decided to move to New York City.

  Mama looked distraught and a little angry at the same time. “No, not there, Tammy. Please.”

  I told Mama I had two simple reasons: A. It was far from my loitering farm boy boyfriend. B. I’d never been to New York City and it sounded exciting.

  I had an ulterior motive, also. C. That’s where my father ran off to. I told Mama I wouldn’t go near Brooklyn and that I had no interest in tracking him down. I’m sure she knew I was lying but I think she appreciated the effort.

  Lesson 15: When you tell your Mama you’re leaving for a long trip and you don’t know when or maybe even if you’ll come back, hug her. Squeeze her extra tight when she cries.

  “I don’t think New York is the place to put all this ugliness behind you,” Mama said. “Promise me that if you see something, just let it be. Don’t get dragged into anything. No more Dr. Moorelys. Just pretend you don’t see it and move on. You can pretend.”

  She didn’t say, “Pretend to be a Normie,” but it seemed like a perfectly reasonable strategy at the time. Of course, I tried. Good thing I failed. If I’d succeeded, you wouldn’t be reading this guide to surviving Armageddon.

  8

  Lesson 16: Most of the dead move on to wherever they’re going. Heaven? Hell? Maybe they go no more than six feet down. I don’t know, but most of the dead have an address elsewhere. If the stiffs all stayed, the streets and sidewalks of New York would be much more crowded than they already are. The dead would be everywhere in various states of dress and undress, creeping me out at every turn. There are plenty of ghosts around, but the math suggests the ones who remain among us are outliers.

  Lesson 17: ghosts seem to stay for lots of reasons. Not all of them are gritting their teeth about their grizzly murders, lost loves or unsolved mysteries. Not all ghosts are trapped. Some, I think, are lazy. Others seem to hang on and hang out for nostalgic reasons. Maybe the rest are just curious about what happens next in a world that’s moving on without them. We’re all curious about what the future holds. I think that’s true even for those who don’t have a future here anymore. Maybe some are scared to leave.

  I was scared to stay in Iowa, so I took the train to New York. After being locked up at Shibboleth, it was a relief to sit by myself by the window and watch the world go by. Mama wanted to come with me. I told her she had already missed too much time away from the pharmacy. She had to get back to Medicament and back to work.

  Mama argued, of course. Then I told her she couldn’t come to New York. “You weren’t going to come babysit me when I went off to university, so there’s no reason to come now.”

  “But it’s New York City,” she said.

  “And I’m me. I’ll be fine. Besides, you have to go make sure Kelly isn’t drunk with power and annoying the cashiers so much they quit. It’s a small town. We don’t have a big pool of cashiers to draw from.”

  That was true, and just the right button to push with my mother. Kelly Keegan, Mama’s store manager, managed the paperwork, taxes and payroll well, but wasn
’t meant to be in charge of human beings. She was meant to be hidden away in a back office, far from the customers (whom Kelly despised) and away from the staff (at whom she routinely sniffed, reminding them that, if they wanted a raise or time off, they were replaceable.)

  Mama gave a resigned nod. “You’re right. Kelly will have them all in knots and doing deep knee bends just to mess with them.”

  “Go, Mama. The cashiers need you. That woman is a tyrant if you aren’t around. But Kelly Keegan doesn’t mess with Texas.”

  “You’re goddamn right,” Mama said. “Excuse my French.”

  Before I went out on the train platform to leave Iowa and seek my fortune in the big city, Mama and I made small talk about the drugstore. It was a relief to talk about normal things. All the while, I pretended I didn’t see the man in the vintage train conductor’s uniform pacing the train station. The dead man looked far too pale and twice as fussy, comparing the time on his pocket watch to the station’s big clock and staring down the tracks impatiently.

  As passengers were called to board the train, I kissed Mama’s cheeks and tasted the salt of her tears.

  “Don’t worry, Mama. I know what I’m doing.”

  You have to be really young and dumb to have that kind of confidence. Fortunately, when you’re that young and naive, dumb protects you from the truth of your odds of winning. For a while.

  Lesson 18: Mundane is good. If your life is boring, you aren’t being tormented by bad people and dead people aren't vying for your attention. People say they want exciting lives, but most excitement comes from things going horribly wrong in new and surprising ways. By that measure, I lead an exciting life.

  As my train slid out of the station and headed east, I watched the landscape. Flax seed, red clover, rye and wheat shimmered in sunlight. I saw no dead cows or dead boyfriends standing like daydreaming sentinels amid the hay.

  Lesson 19: The movie title is true. All dogs go to heaven. Or at least they don’t stay here. I’ve never seen a ghost who hadn’t once walked the earth on two legs. Animals seem to die and that’s it for them here. Cats don’t stay to haunt the litterbox and prowl the backyard. Maybe, to be a ghost, you need a higher level of self-absorption (though it’s hard to imagine creatures more self-absorbed than cats. I love them, but they know we’re here to serve them.)