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

by Robert Chazz Chute

That’s when I wandered into Holy Cross Cemetery to find a bench and reevaluate my job search strategy. I had avoided the cemeteries until then, but I needed to sit and rest and, frankly, I was curious what I’d find there. I had pictured an army of the dead, the rotting corpses standing at attention by their headstones, swaying gently in the wind and waiting, mostly in vain, to catch up on the latest family news from those who had survived them.

  That sounded like something out of a horror movie. The truth was a little more boring, but creepy. Contrary to what I had expected, the cemetery itself was serene. The real action was outside each gate to the cemetery.

  Ghosts of all shapes and sizes and ages took a space along the fence. Their clothes were from various ages I recognized and several I did not. If bell bottom jeans were a capital offense (as they should be) some of the dead might have been executed by the fashion police in the ’70s.

  I saw several naked men and women stand watch. The naked ones had visible wounds that looked fresh. I looked away and hurried on. When I glanced back, I saw that they paid me no attention. It was as if the dead expected something momentous to happen inside the cemetery at any moment. They stared inward, longingly, at the graves.

  After scooting past several of the dead at the West gate, I wandered deeper into Holy Cross. A funeral was taking place and I saw a clutch of people in dark suits and dresses staring at a casket as a priest spoke.

  I spotted a green bench, but I almost walked by it. At first, I thought it was occupied by a ghost citizen. An old man in a dark suit stared at the interment proceedings. He was so still that, at a glance, I wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. Then I heard the old guy’s cough and wheeze. He didn’t sound dead to me, but his wheeze and age suggested he wouldn’t have long to wait.

  I gave him a nod and sat at the other end of the bench, as far away as possible.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. He gestured toward the interment, “Good for us…not so good for them, I suppose.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Visiting anyone in particular?” he asked.

  “No. Just passing through. I’m on the hunt for a job and needed to rest.”

  “Oh? How’s it going?”

  “It seems I don’t have enough experience to get experience,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

  Mama always said that the correct answer to, “How are you?” is always, “Fine, thank you.”

  “Tell ’em you’re fine even if your dog’s run away and you’ve pooped your pants ’cuz you’re gut shot,” Mama said. “Nobody likes a whiner, Tammy girl.”

  I knew I shouldn’t complain to a stranger so I tried to work my way back to sounding cheerful. “I’ve got some feelers out, though. I’m sure a decent job will pop up soon. In the meantime, this place is a nice break from handing out resumes and dekeing around people all day on the street. Sometimes I weave through the crowd on the sidewalk so much it feels like I’m playing football, or I’m trying to avoid crashing into somebody who’s trying to crash into me.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Sorry. I’m a chatterbox today.” Then it occurred to me why I couldn’t seem to shut up. I hadn’t had a casual conversation with another human being since I’d come to New York. When people are too friendly and open in the city, it’s always a cue to be wary.

  “It is a beautiful day,” the man said, finally. “You’d never believe it is October. So many of the leaves are still clinging to the trees. I love autumn. As the leaves fall, it is as if the maples are raining a gentle fire upon us, reminding us that even the most fleeting of seasons can compensate for brevity with deathly beauty. The leaves are lifeless, but what is better than the dry crunch of colorful leaves under your feet and the smell of the fall reminding us how good it is to be alive?”

  “That’s very poetic.”

  He smiled. “I’d have preferred to be a poet. Poetry is easier on the back, but it doesn’t pay.” He chuckled and turned to give me his full attention. “I talk too much, too. My wife always said I was too familiar with strangers, but that’s why I have so many friends.”

  “That’s a good way to be. I come from a small town. I understand. It’s weird when everybody knows everybody, too. They all know each other’s business.”

  “That’s the joy of the big city,” he said. “You can choose who knows you and who doesn’t. In a way, that’s friendlier, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I see what you mean. In a small town, friendly is forced upon you. Here, you can pick your friends. I take it you’re friendly with lots of people, though.”

  The old man smiled. “Precisely what I told my wife. Gregarious is a good way to be. Being guarded at all times is so exhausting.” He offered his hand. “My name is Victor. Victor Fuentes.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Fuentes.”

  “Please, call me Victor.”

  “Victor, then. I’m Tamara.” We shook hands. “Are you…um…visiting your wife?”

  He laughed. “No. My wife — Cynthia — is still alive, sadly. Ex-wife now. We divorced a few years ago and I never got over it. I understand she has a new swain on the Upper East Side.” He pointed vaguely beyond the interment ceremony. “She and I still have a plot over there somewhere, ready and waiting. Once she dies, I expect she’ll want to be laid to rest there. Then I’ll know for certain where to find her.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Isn’t it weird? I mean…reserving the plot of ground where…you know…sorry, sir.”

  “Not at all. It would be very strange if I were your age. At your age, I was immortal. We are all so sure of immortality when we are young and healthy. At my age, you begin to get used to the idea and, at the end of life, I’ve heard from several close friends that we may even look forward to lying down. So many resist Death who would not think of resisting a nap. It’s all the same. Death is a deeper sleep. And this,” he gestured to our surroundings, “is one of the most peaceful places in the city. People love Central Park, but there are too many people there for my taste. No matter what the weather, I always take a stroll to Holy Cross. It’s my siesta.”

  He pointed at the cemetery’s perimeter in the distance and his lip curled with disdain. “It is such a relief to get away from the hoi polloi.”

  I straightened in my seat. Something about the curl of his lip told me he wasn’t only talking about the crush of the busy sidewalks and the push of constant traffic that formed the city’s pulse. “The hoi polloi?”

  He glanced my way. “The masses. They are always there. They’re waiting.”

  I wasn’t sure what I could say. I had to be careful not to sound crazy in case I was wrong. “These…hoi polloi…are they a reminder? Like fallen leaves? Is that what the hoi polloi are?”

  He fixed me with a steady gaze. “A reminder. Yes. Time is short for us, is that not true?”

  “But sometimes, for the masses, they have lots of time, don’t they? Just to stand around and stare. Deathly stares.” I felt like we were sparring partners in the first round, throwing a few feints and ready to retreat, feeling each other out.

  Victor crossed one knee over the other, adjusted the crease of his dress pants fussily and picked off a bit of lint. “Tamara, was it?”

  “Tamara Smythe.”

  “Lovely. Tamara, did you know that in ancient times, people called ghosts, ‘shades’? Later on, ghosts were called phantasms. Isn’t that a wonderful word?”

  “Phantasms? Yes. I hadn’t heard that one. I like it a lot. Specters is a cool word, too.”

  He smiled and I could see the handsome young man he’d once been. His eyes were large and sharp and I thought of a bird of prey. He missed nothing. I could sense where he was going. It was then I realized I’d been very tense for a long time and now I could relax.

  “There’s a problem with the word phantasms, though,” he said. Victor watched my face carefully to see how I’d react.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “It’s too much like the word phantasmagoric
al. It suggests that phantasms aren’t real.”

  “It does seem to suggest that, doesn’t it?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Tamara Smythe?”

  “You know I do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know how. Because I had to walk by a bunch at the gate and they’re lined up along the fence, all around this cemetery. They look like they want in.”

  Victor gave me a slow nod and reached out. I took his hand and we shook again, slowly and solemnly. “Welcome to the club, Miss Smythe.”

  13

  Lesson 32: The first rule of Ghost Club is the same as the first rule of Fight Club. Shut up about Ghost Club. At least, don’t talk to people who aren’t in the club. If you do, they’ll likely put you in a mental hospital. And who knows what terrible things might come of that? Yeah, put your hands down. That question was rhetorical and won’t be on the test.

  (You will be tested, though. We are all tested.)

  Lesson 33: When you do find a kindred spirit who sees spirits, spill your guts and share experiences because otherwise it’s a great, lonely world.

  I asked Victor Fuentes how he started seeing ghosts. He told me he owned an antique shop in Park Slope. “The dead have a lot of treasures they want to hold on to. The people who die but don’t go are a nostalgic lot. When I started in this business I was thirteen, moving old furniture for my father. I’d ride around in the truck and we’d go to auctions, mostly estate sales. Sometimes we’d go straight to a house to see what they had to sell. Then we’d take a dresser or a commode or something back to the shop. If a piece of furniture was constructed of a nice wood, I’d strip it down to the original and give it a fresh varnish. My eyes watered and my hands would burn from the chemicals we used to strip the wood, but there’s something special about peeling back the layers to find the secrets underneath, isn’t there? We’d spruce up old furniture, sand it smooth and resell it for a little profit. My father had a good eye for a bargain he could mark up heavily.

  “One day, I went out on a run with my father to a house in Hoboken. My father haggled with this little old man over the price of a rocker. When they arrived at a price, they shook hands and my father handed the old man a few bills. He told me to put the rocking chair in the back of the truck. I said, ‘I can’t,’ and my father says, ‘You can manage it alone. Just be careful going down the stairs so you don’t scratch the walls. And I say, ‘No. I can’t carry it away with the lady still sitting in it. She doesn’t want me to take it.”

  “Only there was no lady in the chair, was there?”

  “Not that my father and the widower could see,” Victor said.

  “Did your father try to get you locked up?”

  Victor shook his head. “This was many years ago and my father was old school from the old country. We are in scientific times now, but when I was a boy we had more respect for manifestations of the ineffable.”

  “What did you do about the chair?”

  “Left it. My father looked at me and said, ‘You’re sure the lady doesn’t want us to take the rocking chair?’ I said I was sure and we got out of there. The old man chased us out to the truck trying to get us to take her rocking chair. My father didn’t even want his money back. The old man planned to remarry. I told him he could remarry, but as long as he had that rocking chair, his dead wife would always be in his house and watching.”

  “Watching him or watching over him?”

  “Not sure. When you think about it, either way is kind of ominous, isn’t it? As a man who has been happily married and happily divorced, I can tell you it’s somewhat off-putting to think a former lover can decide unilaterally that they will be part of your life forever, no matter what.”

  I felt a pang in my stomach about Brad then. The pain was mixed with guilt. I had conceded that my poor farm boy boyfriend could have Medicament, Iowa. Every night I pictured his ghost out in the field under a cold rain or cool moonlight, waiting for a glimpse of me. It was selfish of him not to move on after his arms got ripped off. It was selfish of me to run away.

  “Where are they supposed to go?” I asked.

  “Heaven, maybe. At least, that’s what my grandmother told me. She had the sight, as well. She thought those who die in a state of grace but are not yet pure enough to rise to heaven. The impure dead must endure the temporary torment of the half-life, between worlds. I guess that means we’re in Purgatory, too, since we can see their torment. They say Florida is God’s waiting room, but I’ve traveled the Earth. They’re everywhere and they’re all waiting for something.”

  “You don’t sound sure about the Heaven thing.”

  “I’m not. I think my grandmother was guessing, too. But hers was a developed gift. She not only saw the dead, she saw what was wrong with the living. She told my father he should stop smoking cigarettes or he would die of lung cancer.”

  “What happened?”

  “He didn’t stop. He died of lung cancer.”

  “That’s true of lots of people who smoke, though.”

  “I would agree, Tamara, but my grandmother told my father to go to the doctor before it was too late. She said there was something in his left lung. He was afraid to go to the doctor and, by the time he did, it was too late. The X-rays showed a big spot on his lung. Soon he was spitting up blood.”

  Victor pointed in the same direction he had before, beyond the funeral ceremony. “My father’s ashes are buried over there in the family plot. I hope my ex-wife gets lost at sea or something because if she gets buried next to my father, he’ll be furious.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Dad always hated Cynthia. He wasn’t all wrong.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Victor shrugged. “Everyone dies of something eventually. At least my father had the grace to die and go. He didn’t decide to hang out and frown at me every time I make a bad deal on a chest of drawers and a dish set.”

  “Are there many others?” I asked. “Like us, I mean?”

  His lips went thin. “There are more than will admit the truth. It goes deep. The Powers That Be know, I’m sure. How could they not? No doubt someone is in a lab somewhere at this moment working on the mystery.”

  “Trying to send the ghosts on?”

  He laughed. “Trying to weaponize the dead.”

  I shuddered. “Please. Don’t. I’ve already seen too many zombie movies. This is too much like that. A bunch of those people, when they died, they look pretty much chewed up.”

  “And that’s not pretty.”

  “No.” I saw Brad again, standing in the field behind his house. I imagined how hard it must have been for him to kick in the front door to get to the phone. He should have called 911 and tried to make it for the road. Maybe the extra few minutes would have made the difference between life and a living death. Maybe someone in a passing car could have…nah, probably not.

  Victor checked his watch and stood. He reached to the side of the bench and, when he straightened, the old man held a straight cane topped with an ornate handle of silver and gold. “I’m so sorry. I must get back to the shop. My siesta time is over and I’m expecting a buyer.”

  He tucked the cane under his arm and pulled a shiny case from an inside pocket. The case held business cards. He extracted one card and the case disappeared back into his suit pocket.

  I held out my hand for the card but he held up a finger to tell me to wait. “Tamara, how old are you, if I may?”

  “Almost twenty.”

  “Mm-hm. And do you possess a valid driver’s license?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a good driver?”

  “Started on a friend’s tractor. I’ve driven deliveries since I was sixteen for my mom’s drugstore.”

  He pulled a short calligraphic pen from his shirt pocket, unscrewed the top and wrote on the back of the card. A moment later he offered it to me.

  “Call the number on the front of the card if you want to go deeper, Tamara. Or you can find me here eve
ry day, for that matter. There is more to this than you know.”

  We shook hands and I watched him go. For an old man, he seemed to manage to slip through the crowd of the watching dead with ease and avoided touching them. Victor didn’t seem to need the cane at all.

  As he stepped to the curb, a large man in a long coat and a three-piece suit (an ensemble that looked far too hot for the weather) waited for Victor. The man was built strong and top heavy, like he spent all his spare time working his chest and arms but never his legs. The man’s nose was pushed to one side and he had cauliflower ears. Back in Iowa, we called guys like that hard rocks.

  The man walked quickly toward Victor and said something I couldn’t hear. I headed for the street and reached for my phone, ready to call the police for my new friend. I slowed when I saw the old man put a hand on the hard rock’s arm and they threw their heads back in a shared laugh.

  A moment later, the big man gave a slight bow and opened the back door of a long white limousine sitting at the curb. Victor climbed in the back and soon they drove away.

  I looked at the business card in my hand. The lettering on the front was a raised gold script that read: Victor Fuentes, Collector and Broker. Exclusive Antiques and Rare Art for the Discerning Eye.

  On the rear of the card I found Victor’s short note in a slightly slanted script. If I hadn’t seen him write it out, I might have suspected his perfect penmanship had been produced by a machine. Below a telephone number, his note read: Tomorrow morning, please call Sam about a position that will suit your unique talents. ~ V.

  It seemed I’d made my first friend in New York.

  Lesson 34: You’ll avoid a ton of trouble if you don’t speak to strange men in parks.

  14

  Sam turned out to be a woman. She answered my call with a crisp, “You’ve reached Castille. Samantha Biggs speaking. How may I help you?”

  When I began to explain how I got her number, she said, “Oh, yes. Victor’s girl in the cemetery. Fitting. Do you have a suit? You’re going to need a suit. Pinstripes are fine, checks are not. Not black, navy blue. We find blue makes our people more approachable. I can see you tomorrow for orientation. Can you have a suit by then?”