by Adam Selzer
“Try ten thousand pages,” says Cyn.
“Maybe twenty,” says Rick. “Unless it was thirty. Unnumbered, and not in order. There were pages just scattered all over her house. We probably never even found half of them.”
“God, that was hell,” says Cyn. “Pages in every nook and cranny, and that house had thousands of nooks and crannies.”
“Nooks and crannies and psychotic grannies,” Rick says. “Rust and must and cobwebs. Dust and bones and skeletons.”
“She had six of those,” says Cyn. “Skeletons. First time Rick saw them he about peed himself.”
“I did not,” says Rick. “Point is, we had to type the pages into this ancient computer she had. We did find a bunch of consecutive ones about the time when she was hired to find a ghost that could be in a movie, and in the middle of them she talked about how someone taught her that most of what people call ghosts are just ‘psychic imprints’ from people who died in just a certain way, and in just the right frame of mind.”
“It’s all to do with dying super quick when you don’t quite have time to react to it,” says Cyn. “So the reaction is sort of cut off and hangs in the air. It’s all scientific, not supernatural.”
“I guess that sounds logical,” I say.
“You don’t even have to kill them, necessarily,” says Rick. “Like Highball the dog didn’t die, but he still left something behind.”
“Only that apparently didn’t work,” I say.
“It might have worked at the time,” says Rick. “It’s just long gone now. Those imprints, or whatever you call them, don’t last forever. Couple years, tops. Eventually they dissipate into the environment. That’s just the basic laws of thermodynamics.”
“Listen to him, talking like he knows anything about the laws of thermodynamics,” Cyn teases.
“I do too,” he insists. “And if Highball had been shot, he might have left some stronger imprint that would have lasted longer. Same if it was a little girl—they’re biologically more likely to leave an imprint behind, which is part of why every fucking haunted spot in the world is supposed to have a ghostly little girl floating around.”
“Gun shots and baseball bats to the head will usually do the trick, if the victim is in the right frame of mind,” Cyn says, “but there’s this technique Marjorie called ‘a punch in the brain.’ It replicates the effect without the mess. It’s a really quick operation. Painless.”
“And no one’s gonna suspect foul play,” says Rick. “Not that this is foul, exactly.”
I nod along, not sure if they’re serious or what. Like, they’re talking about how to make someone into a ghost in the same kind of tone you’d use to tell someone how to make a Denver omelette.
It’s probably a hazing prank.
I try to play it cool and set my face into a smirk that I hope makes it look like I’m on to them, but playing along.
“Point is,” says Cyn, “if you kill a person just right, you can get them to leave something behind, and people might pick up on it and perceive it as a ghost. And if we’re going to beat Edward Tweed out, or even stay in business, we’ve got to get more ghost sightings.”
“And you know I hate making stuff up or lying,” says Rick, “but these imprints are close enough that I won’t feel bad if people see one in Lincoln Park and think it’s a ghost from City Cemetery or something. So tonight we’re going to punch someone in the brain.”
“Mrs. Gunderson, down at the nursing home,” Cyn adds. “That poor old woman. Her whole family’s gone. All her friends are gone. She’s got nerve problems, so she can’t even wipe her own ass anymore, and she’s never gotten used to needing help with it, like most of them have.”
“You know how she prayed to die at dinner? She does that at every meal,” says Rick. “Breaks your freaking heart. So we’re gonna help, and she is super excited.”
I nod and freeze my lips in a sort of half-smirk, still trying to look like I’m just playing along. We’re on Lake Shore Drive now, and the waves are coming in so hard and strong that Lake Michigan looks like the ocean. There was a hurricane on the east coast, and we’re getting the tail winds.
Honestly, it wouldn’t bother me that much if they were going to help Mrs. Gunderson slip quietly and painlessly out of the world. She’s old and decrepit and sad. She has some chronic illness, though I’m not sure which one, and seems to want it all to be over with. I’ve heard Mom talk about people like this that she meets to plan final arrangements with, people who are just holding on because their family won’t let them go, or because the doctors want to keep billing someone for taking care of them. People who are already dead, really, but still breathing.
Cyn pulls the bus off of Lake Shore Drive and into the north side of the city, past playgrounds and townhouses and trendy restaurants, while I try to figure out what to do and how I should be responding. I worry a little that if this is a prank and I say that it sounds like a good idea out loud, I’ll fuck everything up. Maybe they’ll think I’m a sociopath. Maybe they’ll even call the cops.
I try to look busy. I take out my phone and start looking up words for “kill” and “dead” in the OED.
“You know,” I say while I scan through synonyms, “I’m pretty sure my dad’s old next-door neighbor once left behind a psychic imprint by having really good sex. Have you ever thought of, like, rigging one up like that?”
“Yeah, Rick?” asks Cyn. “Ever thought of giving it to someone so well they left a ghost behind?”
“Well, I might ask you the same question,” says Rick. “But I think people really have to die to leave anything behind that people might notice on a tour. Sit tight, and we’ll all go kill Mrs. Gunderson.”
I am so glad to have the OED on my phone so I can look distracted instead of actually having to react to this. Because I’m totally unsure how. Reading off synonyms seems safe. Helpful if they really want me to be helping, but casual and funny enough to seem like I might just be playing along. And, of course, it’s a good way to relieve my own stress while I figure out which one of those I’m supposed to be.
“ ‘Kill’ is sort of a negative term,” I say. “Maybe we should use something else. ‘Forfere,’ ‘swelt,’ ‘occise,’ or ‘dislive.’ There’s a bunch of them here.”
“Whatever makes you more comfortable,” says Cyn.
“Here’s one,” I say. “ ‘Ghosted.’ Synonym for ‘dead’ from 1834. We could say we’re going to ‘ghost’ her.”
“Like, as in a verb?” asks Cyn. “You can’t verb the word ‘ghost.’ ”
“You can too,” says Rick. “Or you could in 1834.”
“ ‘Fine,” says Cyn. “We’re ‘ghosting’ her.”
“That does sound better than ‘punching her in the brain,’ ” Rick admits.
“Don’t the old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace have a word for killing people?” asks Cyn.
“Not really a word,” I said, “but they say it’s ‘one of their charities.’ ”
“Yeah,” says Cyn. “That’s exactly what this is. One of our charities. Ghosting elderly chronic patients.”
As we’re pulling into the nursing home, Zoey sends a picture of a cartoon butt.
This could escalate quickly.
The nursing home cafeteria is empty of people now, the tables full of half-finished jigsaw puzzles and stuff. It smells like moldy oranges and Lysol, and the only person there is a forty-something woman sitting behind a reception desk.
“Hi, Cynthia!” says the woman.
“Hey, Shanita,” says Cyn. “We promised Mrs. Gunderson a moonlit stroll in the park tonight.”
“Oh, she’ll love that. Just sign in, and you can go get her.”
Rick and Cyn sign in, then tell me to wait in the common room. I park at a table and distract myself by sending a couple of particularly naughty texts to Zoey in response to the butt picture. She doesn’t answer right away, so I’m left to stare around at the lifeless room.
After a few minute
s Rick and Cyn come back, pushing Mrs. Gunderson in a wheelchair. She looks like it hurts to smile, but she’s grinning from ear to ear anyway.
“Mrs. Gunderson,” says Cyn, “This is Megan Henske. Remember her?”
“You don’t know what this means to me, young lady,” Mrs. Gunderson says.
“Uh, it’s a perfect night,” I say. “There’s a big pink moon.”
“Oh, beautiful!”
She claps her hands together, or I imagine she tries to, but her nerve issues make it so that her arms just sort of flop around. I follow as Cyn wheels her out the door and into the night.
Rick gets behind the wheel of the senior home’s excursion van, giving Cyn a break from driving. I end up on the floor in the back, next to Mrs. Gunderson’s strapped-in wheelchair.
“All right, Mrs. Gunderson,” Cyn says as she buckles up in the front. “Just to be clear, one more time: You know what we’re doing, right?”
“Killing me,” says the old lady, cheerful as a toddler at snack time. “I’m going to be a new ghost on your tour!”
“Ghosting you,” says Rick. “We’re calling it ‘ghosting.’ Megan’s idea.”
“It’s in the Oxford English Dictionary,” says Cyn.
Mrs. Gunderson beams. “How sophisticated!”
This has to be a prank.
Has to, has to, has to.
Mrs. Gunderson is probably in on it.
Maybe it’s a test to see how I do under pressure.
I lean forward and whisper to Cyn, “You’re sure she’s not senile?” That seems like the kind of question they’d want me to be asking.
“Yeah, she’s fine.”
I look at the frail woman beside me, trying to see a glimmer in her eye that can tell me it’s all a joke. All I see is that same look people give Mom when she really, really goes above and beyond and helps them through a tough time at the funeral home. Gratitude. The kind of look she used to talk about getting when she was subtly trying to persuade me to take up a career in the family business.
“They’d keep me alive in that bed for twenty more years,” Mrs. Gunderson says.
“As long as they could keep making money off you,” says Rick.
“I tried to starve myself, you know.”
“We know,” says Cyn.
“I’m too weak to cut my own wrists or hang myself. All I could think to do was starve. But I got so hungry! It takes such a long time to starve.”
“They’d just hook you to an IV and pump in nutrients anyway,” says Cyn.
“You can’t know how much it means to me that you’d do this,” Mrs. Gunderson says. “Are you sure you don’t mind? Really sure?”
“Hey,” says Cyn. “Every time we let fuckers like Edward Tweed tell people to jump right to supernatural explanations for things they can’t explain, we’re killing even more people than we are right here. Whenever some nut starts shooting people because he thinks a spirit told him to, Tweed’s got blood on his hands. Putting him out of business is going to save lives.”
“Well, that’s overstating it,” says Rick. “It’s not his fault people are nuts.”
”It’s overstating a little,” says Cyn. “But think about it. Every business relies on killing. Only reason we can afford the gas to drive the bus around is people dying for oil.”
I pull out my phone and see that Zoey has sent me several messages, each more explicit than the last. I send a few noncommittal “mmm” and “oooh” messages. Enough to keep it going without really getting involved.
Rick turns back to Mrs. Gunderson when we get to a red light.
“Now, you understand,” he says, “that we might have to scare you a bit to make sure the ghost thing works, right? We think it’ll work better if you’re scared when it happens.”
“I understand. But it will all be quick and painless?”
“Totally,” says Cyn.
“I’ve updated my will,” says Mrs. Gunderson. “It says I want the funeral at the home you suggested.”
Cyn smiles back at me, silently telling me what funeral home she means. Then she tilts her head at me and says, “You okay? You look worried.”
“Well,” I say, “I assume you’ve covered all the bases to make sure we won’t get in trouble, right? Assisted suicide isn’t legal.”
“This would be legal in Oregon, if we were doctors,” says Cyn. “That’s close enough for me.”
“Yeah,” says Rick. “Even if there’s an autopsy, it’ll just look like an aneurysm.”
And he pulls the van into the little parking area behind the Chicago History Museum, right near the Couch tomb.
“Thank you so much,” says Mrs. Gunderson. “You really can’t know what it means to me, to die on a lovely October night beneath a beautiful pink moon.”
October.
She said it was October.
It’s June.
As Cyn unloads the wheelchair, I feel like I’ve solved the puzzle. This isn’t real. It’s a test. And I’m going to pass.
I text Zoey that I’ll be back in a few while I wait for Cyn to push Mrs. Gunderson out of earshot.
“She said it was October,” I say to Rick.
“You lose track of time when you’re in the home,” he says.
“Is that the clue I’m supposed to pick up on? The proof that she’s not lucid enough to make a decision like this, so we shouldn’t be doing it?”
“Aw, she’s fine,” says Rick. “She’s been begging and begging for this. Now, this part is your job.”
He picks up a plastic bag from the floor of the van and hands it over to me. I open it up and see a gorilla mask.
A gorilla mask.
“What . . . in the boneless gummy hell?”
“It’s a gorilla mask,” he says.
“I can see that, Ricardo, but what is it for?”
“Hey, we’re not just taking care of her as a favor. We’re also trying to get her to haunt the place, so it’ll help if she’s scared when she dies.”
I stare down at the mask. It smells like Halloween and new school supplies.
“This is supposed to scare her?”
“Hey, gorillas are some of the fiercest killers in the animal kingdom,” says Rick. “Don’t be fooled by those cute ones who learn sign language.”
This can’t be real. It has to be a test.
Cyn comes back to the van, having left Mrs. Gunderson sitting on the grass near the Couch tomb, where any imprint she might leave would be right where our customers would see it. “All set with the mask?”
“Look,” I say, putting it down. “She said it was October, and it’s June. It makes me worry that she’s not as coherent as you said. I’m fine with assisted suicide for chronic elderly patients, but they have to be, you know, of sound mind.”
“Well, go talk to her a bit if you want,” says Cyn. “Make sure.”
“I will.”
And I hop out of the van and march up to the tomb, where Mrs. Gunderson is waiting, slumped down in her wheelchair, looking peaceful and calm in the moonlight.
“It’s June, Mrs. Gunderson,” I say. “Not October. Was that the clue I was supposed to notice? This is all a test, right?”
She doesn’t respond, so I step closer.
Her eyes are closed, but she seems to be smiling. I wonder for a second if old people are like babies, that when she smiles it’s just gas.
But her smile stays frozen as I move alongside her.
“Mrs. Gunderson?”
Her head slumps down onto her shoulder.
I wobble her wheelchair a bit, waiting for her to start laughing and admit it was all a joke, but her arms fall limp at her sides.
Oh, for the love of . . .
The right OED synonym for “shit” just won’t come into my brain. For the love of something.
This can’t be happening.
I touch her face, swear out loud, and put my finger to her wrist. No pulse. I don’t know enough about CPR to know if I’m doing it correctly, but I’ve b
een around enough corpses to know one when I see one, and I’m seeing one now.
I look back at the van, where Rick and Cyn are standing by the passenger side, watching.
“Uh, minor problem!” I call out.
I motion them forward, and they walk across the grass, toward the tomb.
“What’s wrong?” asks Cyn.
“She’s already dead.”
“What?” asks Rick, his eyes suddenly as wide as saucers. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope. She’s dead.”
“This was just a hazing prank!” says Rick. “She wasn’t supposed to die for real!”
“Yeah,” says Cyn. “She was in on it. There’s no way she’s dead.”
“Storven,” I say. “Unquick. Bypast. Off to join the choir invisible. This is an ex-geezer.”
“This is no time to make jokes,” says Rick as he rushes toward me. “Have some respect, padawan.”
“Let me check her,” says Cyn. She comes over and takes Mrs. Gunderson’s pulse, then tries some basic CPR stuff, and when she doesn’t respond at all, Cyn confirms it. Mrs. Gunderson is gone.
“Well, shit,” says Rick. “Should we try some chest compressions?”
“She’s got a Do Not Resuscitate tag,” says Cyn, stepping backward and looking down at her. “This is what she wanted. No extraordinary measures in the event of an emergency.”
I look down at Mrs. Gunderson. It’s seriously cliché to say “she looks so peaceful,” but she totally does. She’s even still smiling. Like she died in the middle of playing a prank. Not a bad way to go, if you’ve gotta go.
Both her hair and Cyn’s blow in the breeze.
“Well, what do we do now?” asks Rick.
“We hurry,” says Cyn, all business. “Let’s get her back in her bed.”
“Not call the police?” asks Rick.
“If they find her in her bed, everyone will think she just died of natural causes in her sleep. If we take her back and say she died, we’ll be drowning in paperwork for years. The insurance company might sue us, or worse. And I sure as hell don’t want to have to explain the gorilla mask.”
Rick is looking pale now. “I swear this was a prank,” he tells me. “You think she just died of too much excitement?”