by Andra Brynn
“Hey, girl,” Lana says as I wander over. “How were midterms?” She found me studying in the lounge on Monday and joined me for a few hours. She also has an espresso maker in her room, so she kept me supplied with coffee during some of the more crucial hours.
I plop down next to her on the piano bench. “Fine,” I say. “Glad they’re over.”
“Me, too,” she says. “Music theory bent me over a bench and spanked me.”
“Sounds kinky.”
“Not the way I got spanked,” she says. “My brain is mush.”
“You got spanked silly.”
She rolls her eyes and her hands fly over the keys in a sudden roll of harmony and melody. “Doing anything tonight?” she asks.
“Listening to you play piano?”
She rolls her eyes again, this time so hard I think she’s going to fall over. “What’s with you and your hard-on for my elite piano skills?”
“My dad used to play piano,” I say. “I took lessons but I was total shit at it. I just like it.”
“Well I’m not playing all night for you unless you pay me. So tell me what’s going on on this campus? Anything good?”
I shake my head. “I don’t even know where any parties are happening. I’ve been studying like the end of the world is coming.”
“If the end of the world were coming, I wouldn’t study at all.”
“What would you do?”
She frowns, as though she hasn’t thought of this before. “I think I’d just play the piano,” she says. “Or the violin.”
“Really?”
“Fiddle while Rome burns? Play on while the Titanic sinks? I’d like to be that person. I’ll provide the soundtrack for the apocalypse. You bring the drinks. We’ll all go dancing at the end of the world.”
I stare at her and she smiles. Another cascade of notes falls from her fingers, pealing through the air and drowning out the screams of agony as Justin gets clipped.
“Why wait till the end of the world?” I ask.
“Indeed,” she says. “Why should we wait?”
I honestly can’t think of an answer, and then someone’s hands are on my eyes.
“Tanya,” I say.
She takes her hands away and sits on the other side of Lana. “We’re going to go get dinner tonight and go to a movie. Are you in?”
“You only love me for my car,” I say.
“And your sunny disposition.”
I scowl at her but she just grins back. “Come on, I’ll spot you.” She knows how little money I have. I hate being her charity case, but I know there’s nothing in her that feels good or superior about it. She just wants me to come with her.
I heave a sigh, as though this is a huge imposition. “Fine. I suppose.”
“Good,” she says.
In my pocket, my phone buzzes, and I pull it out. It’s a text from Daniel.
Exploring tomorrow?
I type back: Yes. Come pick me up at one.
“Who’s that?” Tanya asks.
“Daniel.”
“He likes you, eh?”
I have to laugh at that, and Lana frowns and stops playing. “What’s so funny?” she says.
“She thinks that no guy could ever like her,” Tanya says.
I shake my head. “It’s not that. He’s studying to be a priest.”
“Oh,” Tanya says. “That’s hot.”
“That’s the opposite of hot,” Lana tells her. “That’s gross. Are you trying to corrupt a priest?”
“I’d like to corrupt this priest,” Tanya says. “He’s hot as hell.”
“Ah.” Lana nods. “A Father Whatawaste. Still super gross.”
I shake my head. Daniel’s hot, yes, but the fact that he’s studying to be a priest is such a relief. No pressure. No issues. No stupid hormones getting in the way. I’d thank God, but I hate that guy, so I’ll just be happy with the way things have shaken out.
“It’s not like that,” I say. “We’re just friends. It’s really nice to have a guy friend and not worry about whether or not they’re just secretly hoping to get in your pants. Not that any of my guy friends want to get into my pants.” I’m not that vain.
“Whatever,” Lana says. “What’s this about a movie? You going to invite me?”
“I thought you were already going,” Tanya says.
“This is how I get left out of everything. No one ever thinks about me,” Lana complains.
“I think about you,” Tanya says. “I think, ‘God, I hate that Lana bitch, I hope she doesn’t ask to come,’“
Lana tries to smack her on the arm, but Tanya leaps up and dances away, laughing. “Oh come on,” she says. “No one thinks that. Come with us.”
“What movie?”
It’s some new superhero movie. It had never even occurred to me to ask what movie it was. I just wanted to go.
By the time six o’clock rolls around, the party has ballooned to nineteen people, and when we get to the restaurant the staff has to push something like eight tables together to accommodate us. I get lucky and get to sit in the middle, able to flip between one conversation and the other at will. On one side, the conversation is about the nature of consciousness. On the other side, they’re playing twenty questions, the answer to which turns out to be, eventually, ‘a Gaussian surface in the shape of a giraffe.’ I don’t even know what a Gaussian surface is. Goddamn CS students.
When at last we pile into the cars and head to the theater, everyone is full of good food and already almost exhausted from laughing, and I realize with a jolt that this is the first time I’ve hung out with the house in a long time. I’m not even lightly wasted. My first Friday in a long time that I’ve managed to refrain.
Wait. No. Last Friday. Last Friday I was fine, too.
I don’t know if I’ll be fine in the future, but for now, I’m fine, and I have to smile as I drive my overly-full car through the mall parking lot, slapping Marc’s hands away from my radio dials.
We head into the movie, find an empty row, and pile in, propping our feet up on the row in front of us, like a bunch of college jackasses, and I can’t even bring myself to care. We chat and laugh until the lights dim, and when the teasers roll everyone holds their thumbs up or thumbs down at the end of each one, and someone will say something cruel and funny and true, and we all laugh, and I want to hang on to this moment so badly it’s a physical pain in my chest.
I want to stay here forever, fold myself inside Marchand House and make it my home. I want to go to classes every day. I want to worry about grades all the time. I want to watch people play crotchball and argue about Marxism. I’ll graduate some day, or get kicked out, but for a wild moment, there in the theater, I tell myself that I won’t leave.
No matter what happens. I don’t want to leave. I’ll stay behind. No one will have to know. I’ll hide in the attic, rattle my chains, watching life unroll below me. Even if I can’t be a part of it, I want to be here. Even if something keeps me separate from everyone else, some deep flaw in my soul, I can’t stand the thought of leaving.
The movie starts and the fear inside me, that I will be kicked out, that I will have to leave a place that has been more home than my own home has been for years, blooms again, a cold pit of dread deep in my stomach.
My fingers itch to reach out and capture this time as it flies by, this intermediate state. I don’t want to move forward. I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here forever, in this place where I could still become anything, where there are people who know me and love me even though I don’t deserve them.
My longing is so fierce, I taste it in my mouth. Bitter, metallic. A desire that can never be fulfilled. Time moves on. All things change, and as the movie starts and everyone’s attention is fixed to the screen, I let the lump in my throat dissolve, flow up and out and down my face in silent tears.
Don’t look at me, I think.
And no one does.
.0.
In the East, ghosts are sometimes
very different. Violent deaths, yes, and unfinished business, yes. The unburied dead come back, vengeful and cruel, just like those in the West that were buried at a crossroads or in an unsanctified grave.
But as you go toward the rising of the sun, emotions carry a lot more weight. The strength of emotion unresolved in life can tie a ghost to this world, just as surely as a violent death will. An emotion so uncontrollable that it takes on a life of its own. They haunt the places they died, tied to this world, and everyone who touches them is infected with the disease of their feelings.
Ghosts who mourn. Ghosts who hate. Ghosts who covet, ghosts who desire. Envy, greed, lust, unrequited love. Resentment. Loneliness.
Sometimes it seems that just about any feeling at all could turn you into a ghost.
.13.
“I don’t want to flunk out of college.”
Those are my first words to Daniel as I climb into his car on Saturday afternoon.
He looks at me in surprise. “I didn’t think you did.”
“No,” I say. “I really don’t want to leave. I couldn’t live if I had to leave.”
His brow creases as he moves the car into gear. “What do you mean?”
What do I mean? I’ve spent all night wrapped up in fear and dread, the strength of my desire to stay so overwhelming that at times I nearly climbed down out of my bed and grabbed a beer from my underwear drawer. Drinking in bed is never a good sign. But I didn’t. There’s no way I could have shown Daniel my hung over face.
Now I can’t wait to get out of this car and into an old building, somewhere that time has stopped. I need to stop time, and this is the only way I know how to even pretend.
I stare at my hands and try to process all the emotions tumbling over and over inside me. “I just feel like I’ll die if I have to leave. You’re friends with Father O’Reilly. Can’t you put a good word in for me?”
His lips tighten, but not in anger. He just looks troubled. “I’m not sure Father O’Reilly thinks much of my assessments right now,” he says.
I frown, then remember. “Oh, right. The sabbatical.”
He nods.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Aren’t you just taking a little time off? Away from the pressures of seminary or whatever?”
His brow creases as we turn onto the road toward the highway. I have no idea where we’re going, but I don’t care. As long as it’s something, as long as I’m doing something other than stewing in fear.
“It’s different when you’re in Seminary,” he says.
“Different how?”
“Different because being a priest is a life-long commitment. If you take a sabbatical when you’re studying eighteenth century Chinese law, no one cares. But if you take a sabbatical when you’re supposed to be called by God...” He trails off and shrugs, but a line of tension remains in his shoulders, and I can see this bothers him more than he is letting on.
Well, it makes sense. “So why are you taking a sabbatical?” I ask. “Is there something wrong?”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out between his teeth. “Yes. No. I don’t know,” he says. “It’s...it’s very personal. Can we not talk about it?”
I don’t want to admit it, but that stings a little. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s fine. Where are we going?”
“Nompton,” he says, clearly relieved at the change in subject. “There’s so much stuff there. I looked it up online, just to see what’s around here.”
I nod. “Yeah, Nompton is Jibril and Alice’s favorite place to go. There’s like ten different places you can explore. The hospital, the school, a couple of old industrial plants, some houses, and there’s this church that’s all boarded up. You can’t go in it, but it’s pretty on the outside. I don’t even think the diner is one anyone’s thought of.”
He nods. “I didn’t see it listed. We’ll have to go back with a camera some time, but right now I want to go visit the old school.”
Oooh, I think. “That sounds delightfully creepy.”
He smiles. “I don’t think there are any ghosts there.”
“Yeah, but I bet there’s a ton of stuff related to kids. Toys and murals and junk associated with kids is always creepy when it’s covered in dust or whatever.”
“You’re probably right,” he says. “You know more about that than I do.”
I snort. “You think so?”
“My parents were pretty strict with me, too,” he says. “My mom didn’t like ghost stories or Harry Potter or any of that stuff. She never expressly forbid it, but I was such a suck up that I didn’t go against what she wanted.” The tone in his voice is almost bitter and I look at him in surprise.
He stares at the road ahead of us, turning onto the highway, and doesn’t even glance at me.
That’s fine. It gives me a chance to study him.
Tanya’s right. Hell, I know she’s right. Daniel is really hot, but to me it’s sort of overshadowed by his personality, which is... almost odd, because if there’s anything Daniel seems like, it’s gentle. He’s gentle in spirit. He’s not hard like me, not full of nails and bile. He’s just sweet, and kind, and a good person. People like that, usually they are retiring. Their sweet natures don’t come out, and you think of them in terms of their looks, but Daniel’s sweet nature almost drowns out the fact that he is, in fact, really hot.
I’m attracted to him, no question, but I’m glad I’m not supposed to be, and he’s not supposed to be attracted to me. It makes it so much easier to not leap on it like a lifeline, as though attraction signified anything other than lust. Here is a man I don’t have to sleep with. Here is a man who won’t sleep with me. We are friends.
It’s a refreshing sort of relationship.
I look back at the road. “I was interested in ghosts since I was an itty bitty kid,” I say. “I’ve always been fascinated by ghost stories, so I had a lot of that stuff under my belt before my mom went a little crazy with the religion.”
“How’d you get interested in that?” he asks me.
I frown. “I don’t know. I don’t remember at all. All I can really remember is that by the time I was in second grade I was reading ghost books like they were candy, and that was all I wanted to read, like, ever. Anything creepy, I loved it. I know all sorts of things about ghosts and werewolves and vampires and stuff.”
He smiles at that. “What do you know about vampires?”
“Everything.”
“Tell me something interesting about vampires.”
I think about this. “Every culture in the world has a vampire figure in it,” I say. “They don’t always drink blood, but they definitely rise from the dead and prey on the living.”
“And werewolves?”
“Did you know you can become a werewolf by drinking water from a wolf’s footprint?”
“I did not know that.”
“Well,” I say. “Now you do. So be careful when you’re drinking water from canine footprints and make sure it’s a dog.”
He laughs at that. “I’ll be sure to remember.”
“What about you?” I say. “What are you into? Other than God.”
He purses his lips. “Art,” he says. “I really did study photography in undergrad, but I went into seminary after I graduated.”
“Why? Because there are no jobs for photography majors?”
He looks vaguely pained. “I know you’re joking, but yeah, that was part of it. The tipping point. It had always been an option for me, you know? In the back of my mind. And when I realized that there was no reason for me to try to pursue photography other than personal pleasure, that ministry would be more fulfilling and more meaningful, I decided to become a priest.”
“What, you have nothing better to do so you wanted to give up sex and love and all that?” I stare at him.
He gives me an irritated glare. “There are different kinds of love,” he tells me.
“I know that.”
“So I wouldn’t be giving up love.”
&nbs
p; I shake my head. “I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that,” I say. Giving up sex? I just can’t even imagine that. “Do you have to give up masturbating, too?” I ask him.
His cheeks color again and I try to stifle my smile. Teasing him is fun. “Are you always so crude?” he asks me.
“Usually cruder,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I’m not sharing that with you.”
“Because you secretly do masturbate and you aren’t supposed to, or because you don’t and just talking about it makes you happy in your pants?”
“Bianca!”
I laugh and hold up my hands. “Okay, okay. I’m just teasing you. You’re fun to tease. I tease because I care.”
“Hmph,” he says, and then we’ve reached the outskirts of Nompton.
Daniel parks the car in our usual spot. I get out of the car and feel the bite of winter in the air. The weather is getting colder, and the last time I saw the sun was on Tuesday. I have a scarf with me this time, and I wrap it around my neck while Daniel pops the trunk. I wonder if he’s made any more of those delicious kolaches and wander over, curious, but instead he pulls out a large dark bag.
He sees me raise my eyebrows and grins at me.
“Equipment,” he says. “Need some light for this one. There’s a lot of interior rooms and it’s bigger than the hospital.”
I nod. “Anything I can carry?”
“No, don’t worry about it. I have it. One of us has to have free hands.”
“I have a flashlight,” I say.
“You won’t need it.”
Now I’m really curious, but I say nothing as we wander down the street, trying to look unobtrusive and totally innocent.
The school is actually in the older part of town, a place I haven’t been before. The town sort of expanded in the direction of the highway when it was built, but the town didn’t actually grow in population, so many of the buildings at the outskirts were abandoned.
“I read this place was closed in the early eighties,” Daniel says as we approach a large, hulking building. “It was used for K through twelve, so there should be some really interesting stuff in it.”