The man had thought Ghost was harmless (and at his mercy) until he was distracted and busy enough for Ghost to take his chance – then he made the man stop moving forever. It took a long time for the rats to eat the man’s stringless puppet body back in the tunnels, and his money fed Ghost for a long time too.
Ghost had to kill a few bums in those Philly ruins from time to time. The bums would squat for the night in the ruins – if they were only passing through they never even knew Ghost existed. Sometimes they’d tried to move in and stay – but the ruins had been Ghost’s home, Ghost’s to keep and not to share. And in the end, when they saw Ghost’s face – they knew. The rats ate good around there.
But that had been when Ghost was little. He was a lot bigger now. When he was smaller he’d dumpster dive to eat, slithering through the trash to fill his empty gut. These days he was too big for that; he needed the cash.
And thinking of the green, he realized he was in the same block as Sherman, in the ballpark for what Ghost did best. For what he was.
Ahead, Ghost saw Sherman ahead, in the glow of an overhead streetlight – the fog cast a halo around the light as if to make it holy, and Sherman’s shoulders bulked wide under the red leather of his jacket.
But no matter what Sherman might think of himself, he looked like any of the Others. He looked like just what he was now: prey.
Ghost lengthened his already long stride to close the gap all the way, gliding silently closer as he undid his hoodie and let it fall from his face to lie on his shoulders. He probed the semi-industrial neighborhood with all his peripheral senses: no witnesses. If there were, he’d have had his way with them as well.
They were midway between two distantly spaced streetlights now, in a spot as dark and foggy as it was going to get for Ghost. He crept up behind Sherman, timing his breathing to Sherman’s, walking in step with Sherman until he got close enough and then POW!
Ghost wrapped an arm around Sherman’s throat from behind and hoisted him off the ground and choked him as Sherman’ alligator shoes dangled and kicked at the air, his fingernails ripping and scrabbling at Ghost’s sinewy forearm in desperation until, finally, Sherman stopped struggling. Ghost gave Sherman’s neck a finishing wrench, heard that old familiar ‘pop’ of the cervical vertebrae dislocating, and then laid Sherman’s corpse down gentle-like.
A warm wetness dripped down Ghost’s right forearm, the one he’d wrapped around Sherman’s neck. Holding his arm up, he saw that he was bleeding – Sherman’s desperate clawing had raked out runnels of flesh. Ghost’s forearm was also dripping with the activator and moisturizer Sherman had needed to maintain his jheri curls. Angry at Sherman for victimizing him like this, Ghost whipped his arm at the ground, the excess blood and jheri-juice flying off and spattering onto the ground.
Fascinated as ever by blood, even his own, Ghost forgot his irritation with (dead) Sherman as he considered the interesting patterns the spattered drops made on the cement of the sidewalk at his feet. The blood patterns hypnotized Ghost for quite a little while, shining black under the dim light of the distant streetlight.
Sherman resembled a sleeping doll lying there ever so still; he appeared so peaceful that Ghost felt a pang of jealousy. Ghost squatted and searched him, pocketed his stash and his money. Then he arranged Sherman’s belongings on the sidewalk next to his body in a pretty array: the bamboo flute, photos of smiling black faces from Sherman’s wallet, a stick of gum, the eternal optimism of an out-of-date condom.
Ghost stood and studied Sherman’s things spread out on the ground like that. Ghost touched them and rearranged them in different orders, wondering what it was like to have a real life, like Sherman had before Ghost stopped his clock.
That invisible barrier was still there between Ghost and the world, even now, even between him and dead Sherman. It throbbed through Ghost like an electric shock. With all their personal possessions and interpersonal connections to prove they were alive, it was like the Others were the ones that were real, not him.
Maybe Ghost was the one that wasn’t real. Was his selfdom just an optical illusion, a user’s trick of perspective? Process, flow – that’s all the evidence his unstopping thoughts were; there was no proof he really existed at all other than in the form of that transitory current of consciousness.
He hated all the Others even more now with this new epiphany. It wasn’t enough that he had to live apart from them – now they’d found a way to make a lie out of the face he wore every day.
The mask Ghost had built for himself wasn’t enough; it had been a total waste of time all along. It was time to find the way through, to steal his identity and his reality back from them.
He squatted next to Sherman once more, did several heinous things to the corpse on the sidewalk in revenge for having made him bleed, and paying Sherman back for (maybe) being more real than him. Ghost stood and faded away into the dark with the cash and the stash.
There was a little 24-hour market on Alcatraz Avenue where Ghost liked to spend his loot – he was a sucker for Freeze Pops and Ho-Hos. He went in with the hoodie of his sweatshirt back up, the drawstring pulled so tight now that he could only see out of a little sphincter-hole in front of one eye. It was more and more difficult for him to let people see any part of his face when he was in the light anymore, unless he knew they were at his mercy.
The turbaned Sikh East Indian who ran the market thought he knew Ghost by now. He pretended he didn’t see Ghost walk in. He ignored Ghost as he shopped. Even when he took Ghost’s money he didn’t look up or say a word. He never gave Ghost change either – Ghost would bet the man thought he was smarter than the rest of the Others.
As Ghost left the store he loosened his hoodie enough to see with both eyes now that he was out of the artificial interior light. He realized he wasn’t feeling the usual sexual rush of power that a hit like Sherman’s had always filled him with before – his dick wasn’t even pretending to get hard.
Ghost knew that meant something was happening to him now. He was walking the night even when he had money and his belly was full. He hadn’t needed a single thing he’d taken from Sherman, even the drugs, so it wasn’t just about survival anymore.
Ghost never returned anywhere by the same route he’d taken out – who knew what tricks the Others might try? Instead of taking the same street back to Marla’s that he’d used while stalking Sherman, Ghost circled wide to return home through another neighborhood entirely.
As he turned the corner at Golden Gate Elementary he saw three men standing in front of a row of abandoned houses, next to a battered green Valiant. Ghost was very pleased to see that one of them was Little Willy.
Chapter 12
They were preparing to climb into Bob’s car when Speedy saw someone coming toward them, in the direction of the Elementary School across the street from Willy’s erstwhile squat. Since the fog was finally lifting, the person approaching was visible a long way off in the moonlight.
As the guy closed Speedy saw that he was extremely tall, a tree-like angular man in a sweatshirt with the hoodie up and tightly tied around his face. It seemed to Speedy that it was more like this was a machine rolling inevitably toward them on wheels, some sort of geared clockwork apparatus instead of a living, breathing human being. The guy stared at Little Willy as he approached, as if Speedy and Bob weren’t even there.
Speedy stepped forward to interpose himself between his little brother and this ominous stranger. Fat Bob moved forward and out to the guy’s side simultaneously, so that they had this stranger in a box, one of them ready to slam him no matter which way he faced his guard.
He stopped and finally took note of Speedy and Fat Bob, studying them in turn as if unconcerned by their flanking, threatening postures.
“Something?” Speedy asked softly, bouncing once on the balls of his feet.
“Who are you?” the guy asked, studying Speedy with an intensity Speedy felt some might consider rude.
Little Willy shuffled for
ward, nodding at Speedy and the newcomer in turn like he wanted to prevent any kind of beef between the two.
“Ghost, this is my brother Speedy,” Willy said.
It grated on Speedy’s nerves to hear Willy sounding like he was afraid of this man. It also bothered him that Willy even knew this Ghost, or that Willy made like he was taking Ghost’s part even a little instead of standing automatically with family all the way.
“Willy’s told me all about you,” Ghost said, something resembling excitement entering his voice even though his face below his eyes remained as immobile as if the nerves to his expressive muscles had been cut.
“Sometimes Willy talks too much,” Speedy said, observing Ghost’s dilated pupils, smelling the same chemical hubba stench off him that Willy stank of.
Beneath the crack smell Speedy could detect a rank bestial underlying odor, as if hot nameless hormones were pumping off of Ghost.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time,” Ghost said, not taking the hint at all.
“I already got a crew,” Speedy said.
Ghost stepped in with one hand lifted, violating Speedy’s space so that Speedy had to take a step back to maintain it. Speedy was a little shocked – had this guy actually tried to make physical contact with Speedy?
Fat Bob started in to give Ghost the chop but Speedy waved Bob off – Speedy didn’t even want anything of his to touch Ghost if he could help it, as if Ghost were somehow contagious.
“Buddy, you stink like fish on ice,” Speedy said, looking in Ghost’s eyes with a thrill of strangeness. “You’re off the hook, and I’m not liking you at all.”
Speedy’s sawed-off wanted to leap up into his hand for moral support. Ghost was as wrong as any human he’d ever met, and Speedy wasn’t one who ran around making moral judgments.
“I don’t know you, and I don’t want to know you,” Speedy said firmly. “And if you ever get my brother high again I’ll kill you. Now step the fuck off.”
Ghost seemed to think about it for a while, his face showing no sign of whatever processes were roiling around inside his skull. Then, without another word, he floated past them and up the street. Speedy was more than happy to see him go.
“What the hell you have dealings with a freak like that for?” Fat Bob demanded, voice incredulous.
“It ain’t like you were around,” Little Willy replied in a sad voice. “And Ghost ain’t so bad once you get to know him.”
Speedy saw now that he had a lot of work ahead, to bring Willy back up to par.
Chapter 13
Ghost stopped and waited in a holding pattern as soon as he was out of sight around the corner from Little Willy and his friends. Then he excitedly doubled back around onto 63rd when Willy and the rest had left.
Ghost had been trying to figure out where Little Willy slept for a long time. That was actually one of the things Ghost first found tolerable about the little bandit – Willy made it difficult to hunt him, he wasn’t like the Others.
And as for Speedy? He was everything Ghost had dreamed of whenever Little Willy had let slip comments about his big brother; whenever Ghost had winkled one more tale of Speedy’s cunning and derring-do out of Willy.
Now that Ghost knew Willy’s home was this burnt-out ruin of a house, it was time to satisfy his curiosity about Little Willy’s private personal space. Ghost drifted into the backyard and down the basement steps in his permanent stealthy prowl.
There was a candle still burning in the cellar, standing on a work bench in a congealed puddle of wax next to a stack of books. In the candle’s flickering light, Ghost saw hundreds of bloody rat footprints covering a wide circle in the center of the basement floor.
It must have been a real party while it lasted. He wished he’d been there to enjoy it, imagining a witches’ Sabbath of worshiping rats dancing widdershins in dark inhuman ritual. Ghost tried to imagine what Our Lady of the Rats would be like, with his usual longing.
He liked that Little Willy’s roommates were rats, liked that they’d been feasting on something that had resisted their attentions. Ghost almost felt fond of Willy as he acknowledged their apparent similarity in housemates.
Ghost caught a whiff of a shit smell, but not like rat shit (the smell of which he knew oh-so-well). He moved further into the basement, sniffing out the source and carefully walking around the pattern of rat prints (not wanting to mar any of that beautiful rodent artistry).
The smell came from a bucket against the far wall. Ghost leaned over to take a careful peek within, as always as if inspecting a booby trap set by a Creator that owed him nothing.
Ghost saw what was left of the possum, embedded in what appeared to be human shit (undoubtedly Little Willy’s). Three big rocks of cocaine (also undoubtedly Willy’s), lay embedded in the shit next to the remnants of the dead possum.
Ghost decided not to filch the rocks out right now. He’d had to go on fishing expeditions in human shit before, but he wasn’t impatient enough to go after these quite yet. As long as there were crack slingers like Sherman wandering the streets stupidly thinking they were safe, Ghost would never come up empty for drugs.
The street Willy’s squat was on ran slightly uphill heading inland. The lights of all the high and mighty houses shone down from that direction, from the wealthier Berkeley Uplands unreachable miles above. Ghost walked in that direction, not even pretending to look like one of the Others now, Speedy filling his mind’s eye to the exception of all else so that real feelings came creeping out to dominate his face.
As he walked across an intersection through an increasingly hoity-toity residential neighborhood, a Land Rover pulled up at the stop sign next to him, mother and child within. The child – a two-year-old girl named Nicole – saw Ghost’s profile and shrieked.
“Mama,” Nicole wailed, terrified at Ghost’s expression. “That man, Mama. That man right there.”
“Be quiet,” Mama ordered in a shaky voice, praying that her oft-times defiant child would obey for once and only.
Mama’s eyes were as wide as her Nicole’s; she was just as afraid as her baby. She’d gotten a good look at Ghost too, and saw the unholy glee that infested his face. Mama sat there as if hypnotized in the driver’s seat, her right foot seemingly unable to step on the gas and get them out of here, her hands clenched hard enough on the steering wheel to whiten her knuckles.
What if he stops? Mama’s mind gibbered as her prey eyes tracked the passing predator. What if he turns and sees me? She asked, sitting in a trance of terror with her baby Nicole whimpering behind her.
But Ghost continued on, walking tall in the night as he left the beams of her headlights, and his face disappeared from view. Shaking her paralysis away, Mama floored the Land Rover through the intersection swervingly, almost sideswiping several parked cars before managing to straighten out the Land Rover’s course. She didn’t let up on the gas until she was blocks away.
Mama and Nicole both slept poorly that particular night.
As for Ghost, he was too busy exploring his own ‘emotions’ to even have noticed the little family unit aquiver at his elbow (though he definitely would’ve stopped to make their acquaintance if he hadn’t been so distracted – their terror would have been too amusing to pass by).
Ghost was infuriated with Speedy, with another human being, for the first time in his life Ghost found the feeling intriguing. He couldn’t remember ever having reached out emotionally to another person; he’d always been perfectly comfortable in his own head.
Now he’d met Speedy and it felt like déjà vu, as if he and Speedy had met many times before, maybe in multiple other lives. But there was no way Ghost was going to rummage around in his memory vault to find out if this feeling of familiarity was his imagination or not – there were too many dark corners best left undisturbed back there in the recesses of Ghost’s brain.
Speedy was real, which was all that mattered. Even better, no way was Speedy one of the Others.
Speedy was the o
nly other person Ghost had ever met that he wanted to be like, wanted to be near. Ghost realized now that all those qualities he’d liked in Little Willy (the qualities that had caused Ghost to let Willy live as long as he had) were pale imitations of the real deal, of Speedy. Little Willy was a cheap, flawed reflection of Speedy, of Speedy’s power.
Ghost decided he would do anything for Speedy, would make any sacrifice. But Speedy had denied the friendship Ghost knew existed between them.
Speedy couldn’t possibly mean his refusal, Ghost thought (though the rage and pain galled him, surprising him by their mere existence as much as by their intensity). He would chastise Speedy for the error of his ways. He would force Speedy to be his friend.
Ghost felt the risings of a stiffie in his trousers as he thought about Speedy, and was both surprised and troubled. Did this mean he was gay? He couldn’t tell, as he’d never been sure one way or the other.
It didn’t really matter anyway – his dick still worked, which was always a good thing. The bad thing? Marla was too far away to serve her primary purpose, and Ghost knew the urge would soon be so overpowering as to make him abandon all caution.
He had to act now – he had no choice and he wasn’t to blame. He had to do it the way he’d learned back in South Philly, the way he’d been using more and more frequently lately (even with Marla as a provisional dumping ground and safety net).
Ghost walked down the next side street, along a leaf strewn sidewalk that was little more than a tunnel formed by untrimmed shrubbery allowed to run rampant. He picked two houses at random – or perhaps because one had a weird rusty metal sculpture in its front-yard – and pushed through the jungle-like foliage to creep between the houses toward their backyards.
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