by E. C. Bell
Luckily, Lily the pitcher, who batted next, popped up, and the other team’s right fielder didn’t screw up. Lily was out. The third out. I didn’t have to face the dead girl that inning.
Actually, I didn’t have to face the dead girl for the rest of the game. My next at bat I popped out to centre, and then our time was up, and our game was over. We’d lost, two to nothing.
“Pretty good game, ladies,” Greg said. “Maybe a practice tomorrow night wouldn’t hurt.”
“Oh Greg, you know I don’t practice,” somebody, I think it was the left fielder, said. “I got slow pitch every other night.”
“Well, what about the rest of you?” Greg asked. Most of the women avoided eye contact, suddenly busy with putting away equipment and finding keys, until he sighed and gave up. “All right,” he said. “Try to get to the batting cages, at least. We play Thursday, eight thirty. Right here.”
If I decided to keep playing I was going to have to face the dead girl in two days.
Here was the thing, though. In spite of the dead girl, I actually did feel better. I decided that it would probably be a good idea to keep coming, at least for a while, for more of that sunshine and exercise. Which meant I was going to have to face that dead girl sooner rather than later.
I packed up my hat and my glove, turned back to the diamond, and strode out to second base.
“Hey, Marie!” I heard Greg call. “Get off the diamond. The other game’s about to start.”
I glanced at the women warming up on the field, and smiled broadly. “Just checking for my hair tie,” I said. “I think I dropped it out here.”
I pretended to scan the ground as I walked over to second base and stopped in front of the dead girl. Then, I waited for her to stop pretending she couldn’t see me.
She stared at her feet. At her old-fashioned platform shoes. I could see scuffs on the mock leather, and one of the straps was nearly ready to break.
Not that it ever would because all I was seeing was a mystic representation of the dead girl’s shoes, but whatever.
Her hair, long and curly, was pulled up in a rough ponytail, held by what looked like an actual rubber band.
Nobody used rubber bands to hold their hair back. Not anymore. She was an old ghost, I was sure of it. She’d been here a long time.
I looked at her clothes. A peasant shirt with cheap-looking embroidery around the scoop neck, and a short, heavily gathered skirt. I frowned. When had they gone out of style? Forever ago?
Then I realized she was looking at me. I felt my face heat, embarrassed that she’d caught me staring at her clothing.
“Who are you?” I whispered. I carefully kept my back to the living second baseman, who was just three steps away from me. “And don’t act like I can’t see you, because I can.”
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I want to talk to you,” I whispered. And, hopefully, figure out a way to quickly move her on to the next plane of existence so I could keep playing softball without the dead interrupting me. “I think I can help you.”
The dead girl’s face turned to stone. “Leave me alone,” she said, her voice angry. “I don’t want your help. Just leave me alone.”
“How long have you been here?”
“It’s none of your business,” she cried. “Leave me alone! Now!”
Then she turned away from me, quite pointedly.
Huh.
I walked away from second base and the living girl called out to me. “Did you find your elastic?”
“No,” I said. “Good luck with your game.”
“Thanks,” she said. “We’re up against the Blues. We need all the luck we can get.”
I smiled at her and walked off the field. Looked like we were both going to need some luck.
JAMES WAS POSITIVELY giddy as he drove me home.
“You did really well,” he said, “After the first inning, anyhow. And you can hit!”
“Who knew?” I said.
“I can help you with your fielding—” he said.
“I need to practice batting—” I said at the same time. Then we both stopped speaking. The classic Canadian stand-off. Nobody wanting to be impolite. Finally, James broke the silence.
“If you want, I can take you to the batting cages,” he said. “Tomorrow. After work.”
“Sounds great.”
“And about fielding—”
“Just let me focus on the positives, for a bit,” I said. “Please.”
“Sure. Sure.” He nodded, and pulled out into traffic. “No problem.” We were both silent as he maneuvered down Ninety-Ninth Street.
“So, you’ve decided to keep playing?” he finally asked.
“I think so,” I said.
“What about the ghost?”
I shrugged. “She wants me to leave her alone.”
James glanced at me. “Can you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I had fun tonight, for the most part. And I can’t let the dead wreck everything, now can I?”
“No,” he said. “I guess you can’t.”
We sat in silence for a few moments while I thought about whether or not I could actually leave the dead girl alone. I didn’t know if I could. Mom had taught me that eventually all ghosts want to move on.
“Talk to them, Marie,” she’d said. “Find out what’s holding them here and help them to come to terms with their issues. Then, they’ll want to move on.”
“Are you sure?” I’d asked, every time.
Every time, she’d replied, “I’m sure. It might take some time, but be willing to commit. Help them see what they need to see, and they will always want to move on.”
The girl on second base seemed pretty convinced that she wanted to stay, but if Mom was right about her eventually choosing to move on, I needed to know her deal, even if she wasn’t willing to tell me.
But I wasn’t going to talk to James about any of this at the moment. He was on a need to know basis when it came to ghosts, and as far as I was concerned, he didn’t need to know.
“Looked like you made a friend at the diamond,” I said. “Who was the guy you were talking to?”
“Oh, you mean Andy. Seemed all right, I guess. He knows Sergeant Worth.” He laughed. “I think he knows everybody.”
“Sergeant Worth?” I said, then shrugged. “Everybody probably does know everybody else. It’s a small world. Was he watching his wife play?”
“No.” James glanced over at me. “His wife never played. His daughter used to, but I don’t think she does anymore. He said he’d just come out to see the new recruits. Like you, I guess.”
We were comfortably silent for the rest of the ride to Jasmine’s place. I was still couch surfing there, even though I had a full-time job and could afford to live on my own. We—meaning my always meddling shrink, Dr. Parkerson—had decided that it was better for me if I lived with someone. At least for a while. Until I steadied emotionally, she said.
To be honest, I was glad of the company. Jasmine’s three kids were always entertaining, and Jasmine didn’t seem to mind when I woke her up in the middle of the night, covered in nightmare sweat and needing to talk.
At least it wasn’t every night, anymore. It had been, when I’d come back from Fort McMurray. Fort McMurray was my home town. I’d gone to visit my mom, and ended up being kidnapped and almost killed by my crazy ex-boyfriend’s even crazier girlfriend. That kind of homecoming would make anybody go just a bit bonkers, wouldn’t it?
Seriously, though, after I got back I’d had some dark damned nights, and I wouldn’t have blamed Jasmine at all if she’d thrown me out. But she hadn’t. She was one of the good ones, that was for sure.
“Before we go to the batting cages tomorrow, we need to get you some better footwear,” James said. “You need cleats. And some sweats.” He clicked his tongue. “I can’t believe the coach didn’t give you a complete uniform.”
“He said he’d have pants and socks for the next game,�
� I said. “I think he was trying to decide whether or not he was going to keep me on the team.”
“Well, that’s good,” James said. “But we’ll get you some sweats anyhow. For practices.”
“I don’t think this team practices much,” I said.
“But you need some,” James said.
Surprisingly enough, that didn’t make my sunny disposition disappear. “All right,” was all I said, as he pulled up in front of Jasmine’s neat little bungalow and stopped the car. “You’re right. I need shoes—”
“Cleats.”
“All right. Cleats. And sweats.”
“And practice?”
“Yes,” I said. I felt my jaw tighten, but tried to ignore it. “I need practice, too.”
“Excellent.” He smiled. “And tomorrow—”
“We’ll go to the batting cage,” I said. My voice tightened and I realized I was grinding my teeth.
“Ha! No!” James laughed. “Well, yeah, but after. I was talking about work. We’ve got the Bensons coming in at ten, and then I have to surveil at the Bluebird Motel. Remember?”
“Absolutely!” I said. Talking about work was easy because since James got his licence he actually had some. Hence my full-time job and being able to afford a shrink.
“Because until you can figure out how to make this ‘seeing the dead’ thing pay off, we need the living to keep the lights on.” He laughed again, and I tried to laugh too, but it was a bit harder this time.
My mother had looked after the spirits of the dead her whole life, and had never figured out a way to make it pay. I suspected that she thought that filthy lucre would sully her art, or something.
Maybe it would. I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was, I liked working with James. And I liked working for the living, most of the time. Even when they were conniving jackasses, like our ten o’clock appointment, the Bensons.
“Sounds good,” I said, and leaned over to peck him on the cheek. “Thanks for coming with me tonight, and talking me off the cliff.”
“You are more than welcome,” he replied.
I could smell the sunlight on his skin and leaned closer, wishing I could bathe in it. Just for a moment. He put his hand to my hair and pulled me closer. Then my mouth was on his, and for a while, his sunshine flooded my soul.
Yeah, we were doing all that, too. What can I say? It had been an interesting eight months.
Karen:
Apparently, We Are Doing Something About the Girl
I WENT UP to the bleachers after that Marie girl left because a couple of the old umps had shown up and I wanted to talk to them about her speaking to me. They were ten rows down from Andrew which caused my stomach to tighten more, even though he couldn’t see me. I had to talk to them, though, even with Andrew sitting where he was.
The conversation didn’t go the way I’d hoped it would. At first, they didn’t even want to talk about my problem—just wanted to take in the lights, and the action, and forget about being dead for a couple of hours. But there were a lot of errors on the field, which pissed them both off to no end, so they finally turned to me.
“Tell us about this girl,” Isaac Middleton said.
“Who you think sees you,” Samuel Kelly said.
They both looked like they didn’t believe me, which didn’t surprise me but did tick me off. I pointedly turned away from them to watch the lack-lustre second game of the season being played under the bright white lights.
“Forget it,” I said. “You’re right. I was probably deluded.” I emphasized the word deluded, because Mr. Middleton used that word at me when I’d first tried to tell him about the girl. “Let’s just watch the game.”
They glanced at each other. Mr. Kelly shrugged, but Mr. Middleton wasn’t about to let it go.
“Come on, Karen,” he said, using his wheedling little old man voice. “You know I was kidding. Tell me about the girl.”
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
“What girl?”
Joanne Watson, who’d died in a car crash near Leduc on her way to the Early Bird Tournament here in 1978, slid onto the bleacher next to me. “What girl you talking about?” she asked again.
I shrugged but Mr. Middleton turned around and beamed at her. She was a fine shortstop and he’d always had a soft spot for her. “Karen says a live girl saw her,” he said. “At the early game.”
“Saw you?” Joanne asked. She stared at me as though she was trying to drill holes into my head with her gaze. “You mean, she actually saw you?”
“Talked to her, too,” Mr. Kelly said. “Apparently.” Then he clicked his tongue and shook his head as the living woman at third base booted the ball all over the infield, allowing all runners to proceed safely to their various bases. “What is Gillian thinking out there?” he muttered. “She was steady as a rock last year.”
“Maybe she’s knocked up,” Mr. Middleton said. “That can throw off their timing.”
Mr. Kelly nodded, and then shrugged. “Is she married?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Middleton replied. “But that don’t stop them, now. Maybe it happened over the winter.”
“Well, her game’s gone to hell in a handcart, whatever her problem,” Mr. Kelly said. “She’s gonna have to pull up her socks. No doubt about it.” He turned away from the game, and looked at Joanne. “You ready for tonight?”
“Of course,” Joanne said, and grinned. “It’s not like I can get knocked up now, is it?”
The two umps laughed uproariously. I didn’t. Those two old coots always found Joanne a real cutup but I never had.
After she realized she’d rung all the laughter she could out of her bad joke, Joanne turned back to me. “So tell me,” she said. “About the living girl who saw you.”
“She plays for the Jolene Transport team,” I said. “Right field. And she didn’t just see me. She talked to me.”
“Was she any good?”
“What do you mean?” I said suspiciously. There was no way I was playing straight man for Joanne. But all she did was glare at me.
“Was she any good at right field?”
“No.” I shook my head, hard. “She got lucky a couple of times at bat, but I’m guessing she won’t come back.”
“Well, that would fix the problem, now wouldn’t it?”
“Problem?” Mr. Kelly said, slowly turning in his seat to stare at Joanne. He’d been an ump for nearly thirty years, and had the bad knees and back to prove it. If he sat still for too long, he’d seize up like he was petrified. I would have found it funny if I wasn’t secretly afraid that the same thing would happen to me someday.
Sometimes, the dead who had been here longest would freeze, staring out at the diamond, just like Mr. Kelly sometimes did, and then vanish. I was the oldest dead at the diamond. It hadn’t happened to me yet, but I was afraid it would.
I didn’t want to disappear. I just wanted to keep playing ball.
“Potential problem,” Joanne said. “If this woman can actually see us—”
“And talk to us,” I said.
“And talk to us,” Joanne said, “she could cause us some trouble. You know. Like getting one of them psychics to come to the diamond and exorcise us all, or something.” She frowned. “I don’t think I’d like that, much.”
I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of her actually doing something to us. “So, what can we do?” I asked.
“Drive her off,” Joanne said. “Make her life hell until she leaves us alone.”
“And how would we do that?” Mr. Kelly asked.
“I don’t think she’ll come back,” I said, weakly. “Like I said, she wasn’t very good.”
“Rita Danworth said that she moved a tea cup in her old house, once,” Joanne said. “Scared the living shit out of her old man. Which he deserved, the son of a bitch. Maybe we can talk her into doing something like that to this Marie. Maybe?”
I couldn’t see how moving a tea cup was going to frighten someone who could ac
tually interact with ghosts, but the two umps grabbed onto the idea and wouldn’t let it go.
As the game ground on in front of us, one error-filled inning after another, the three of them put their heads together and hatched a plan to drive Marie away from Diamond Two forever.
Unfortunately, most of the first part of the plan involved me. I tried to talk them out it but they would have none of it.
“This is going to work,” Joanne said, as the living game finally finished, and the lights clicked off, bathing the shale in darkness. “But it’s all up to you, Karen. You gotta figure out a way to be her friend and then the rest of us can take care of her.”
I stared at the three of them but could think of nothing that would talk them out of their horrible little plan.
“I’ll think about it,” I finally said. “Now can we just go play ball, please?”
As I kicked off my platform sandals and headed out on the diamond to warm up with the rest of the dead, I knew that somehow their plan would blow up in our faces. Especially mine. I just wanted to play ball, dammit. Why didn’t anybody understand that? I just wanted to play ball.
Marie:
Missing Girls and Metal Cleats
IT WAS TWO in the afternoon, and I was finally alone in the office. James had scurried off to his second appointment of the day after firing the Bensons as clients—“Because you are both too stupid to live.” His words.
The Bensons had left the premises twenty minutes earlier, but their loud cries of “We’ll sue, see if we don’t,” were still ringing in my ears when the desk phone rang. That was probably why I answered it before checking the caller ID.
“Jimmy Lavall, Private Investigations. How may I help you?” My voice flattened appreciably by the time I got to the end of my usual salutation, because I’d seen Sergeant Worth’s name in the display. EPS—short for Edmonton Police Service—followed it.