No one else had green eyes like Max.
Get a grip, Rowena told herself, gasping for air. Max isn’t in there, Max is dead. Gone. And then a thought smacked into her, hard. She licked her lips, tasting the memory, and added, you killed him. Remember?
But no, she didn’t exactly remember. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Or no, she remembered him dying (had she done that?). It was what came after that that was jumbled in her mind. Rowena stood shakily and jammed the envelope into the slot. This time it slipped through and she sighed in relief. There, that was that.
As she walked back home, she thought of the doctor finding it in the morning. She hated to upset him before his coffee, really she did, but she couldn’t have him go on believing that Max had simply died from his cancer. That was too easy, too lazy, and she thought even the doctor knew this; she’d seen him about town with his graying skin and sunken eyes. Besides, she’d never appreciated how he’d looked at her with pity, how he’d pressured her to take medication—well it didn’t matter now. No, the point was that the doctor should know his mistakes. That’s how people learned, after all.
She’d have this town in tip-top shape in no time. All cleaned up.
But her steps slowed and her thoughts darkened; Stacey Moore had seen her.
Oh well, the girl had no proof. But if it was her word against Rowena’s, the townsfolk would likely take her side. Wouldn’t that be the way of it. To believe the snivelling teenager over the mayor’s widow. Still, Rowena thought she should probably dispose of the parchment papers. A real shame, but probably for the best.
Rowena turned onto her street. Her bungalow was in sight, a light on. Hadn’t she turned all the lights off? She slowed her steps but the street lights didn’t flicker. No, because Max wasn’t out here now. He was in there. In her house. She darted past the boxwood and the heady overgrown iceberg roses, shivers climbing her spine.
The minute she pushed open the door, she knew. She could smell him, his awful spicy cinnamon cologne. Her fingers balled into fists. But he wasn’t there, the room was empty and silent. An envelope, one of Rowena’s own, the matching ones to her parchment notes, lay on the side table beneath the lamp Rowena had most definitely not left on.
Rowena Hayes, it said.
Rowena found herself beside it, picking it up with shaking hands. She’d know Max’s writing anywhere, but this wasn’t it. He’d written her love letters once. She thought of those letters now like a spider’s web, a way to ensnare. But if it wasn’t from him, then who? Whoever had done this had mimicked Rowena’s own handwriting. Forgery then. She’d figured out who did this, and don’t think she wouldn’t. She slid out the note, her arms numb. On second thought, it was as if all of her was numb, as if she was watching herself, somewhere outside of herself. Such a strange familiar feeling. Her fingers unfolded the note. A single word.
Remember.
The note fluttered to the carpet. And then Rowena was back in her body, rushing to her old cedar chest where she kept her wedding dress, her childhood toys and photos, and the vintage siebert poison flypaper she’d bought from the antique store. There was only one sheet left; she’d used the rest of course, soaked them to extract the arsenic.
She remembered that alright. Oh yes, it was all flooding back.
Someone had left her that note, the same someone that had left the note this time. Your husband is going to kill you.
And then she sensed him. Smelled cinnamon again. She whirled around and there was Max, sitting in his recliner. She held up the paper, swallowed. “I killed you,” she whispered. She hadn’t let him kill her first. No, she’d beat him to it.
But Max only smiled sadly, the way he’d always looked at her. As if he wasn’t as bad as what she made him out to be, and as if he still loved her, regardless.
How infuriating.
How exasperating and annoying and vexing.
How Rowena hated his sympathy and lies. “What do you want?”
Remember. The word popped into her mind, unbidden, though Max hadn’t spoken. Remember, remember, remember. The word crashed around in Rowena’s head. The poison paper wasn’t enough. There was more. Rowena yanked on her own hair, growing dizzy. The room spun around her and she shut her eyes.
When she opened them, Max was gone. He’d disappeared and the light was out. Rowena was left standing in a path of moonlight, holding her flimsy little weapon. And in the window, eyes as big as dinner plates, was Stacey Moore, the little ghost-hunter. The minute the two locked eyes, the girl took off.
Rowena stayed awake the few hours until morning. She wrote one last note to Stacey Moore, Sometimes we get more than we bargain for, and then she hid the remainder of her parchment notes and her last poison flypaper in a secret drawer in the old desk. She couldn’t bring herself to dispose of them. As well, she hid the two unnerving notes that had been addressed to her, the handwriting so like her own she couldn’t find a single fault with them.
Then, Rowena readied herself to do what she should have done a long time ago. Visit the cemetery. Mourn her husband. Wish him farewell. And she would ensure that the town knew all about it. Yes, she would say her good-byes to Max like a proper grieving wife, maybe even shed a tear or two (she practiced pinching herself rather forcefully to encourage this) and then the townsfolk would warm to her again. If anything, she would draw their sympathy, and that was a start. She hated sympathy, really she did, but if that was the only way, then so be it.
Rowena took a shower and when she got out, the smell of cinnamon wafted through the house. The word Remember was written in scrawling letters across the steam on the mirror. She wiped it away. She dressed herself in a long black dress and curled her hair to fall just over her shoulders, the sides twisted back like a crown. Just so. Just how Max liked it. When she set her brush down, there, atop the dresser, was a single white rose. Fine. Yes. Would that make him happy? Rowena tucked the flower into her hair, just like at their wedding, just like her flower crown.
And then, the music started. It was coming from their old bedroom, from behind the closed door. It was Rowena’s jewelry box. The music meant the lid had been opened. Rowena steepled her fingers together.
He wanted her to put on her wedding rings again.
Well, no. Sorry, but that’s where she drew the line. This was a good-bye and he needed to see that very clearly.
At eight-thirty in the morning, at the time when people left for work and busses ploughed through town carrying oodles of detestable children, Rowena pocketed her letter for Stacey Moore and let herself out of her bungalow and walked past her boxwood and roses and continued on down main street. But to her annoyance, no one as much looked at her or acknowledged her, even though Rowena hadn’t been out of her house during daylight for many days (months?). By the time she reached the edge of town, Rowena was huffing mad.
What good would this all be if no one was around to see her?
Would Hazel Grove ever accept her now that Max was gone? The fools.
By the time she walked through the iron gates of Hazel Grove Cemetery, Rowena had forgotten that she had ever planned to cry at all. She ripped the rose from her hair and when she finally spied the name Hayes, she stormed toward the newly polished stone, ripping the petals to shreds. She hurled them like confetti, like revenge.
But then.
The stone was too big. Too wide. To the left, the name Maxwell.
To the right….no.
It wasn’t possible.
Remember.
It was… her name, Rowena Hayes. Carved into the stone in block letters. A death sentence, forever bound to Max. Rowena staggered backward, reaching for something, for anything. But her hand wasn’t there, was it? What was she now? Energy? Particles? Rowena spun about, her chest heaving, until she remembered she had no lungs, no rib cage, no skin or bone. Where was he? Where was Max?
She would kill him all over again. Surely this was his fault.
But he was now
here. There were only real things, solid trees and grass and stones and the sky, so blue today. She collapsed on the ground, well no, not really, not a collapse, more of a floating on her back, a levitation of sorts. She stared at the clouds. They were more like her, wispy and feathery, transparent. She saw shapes in them, shapes of the things she’d been doing. The imaginary tea she’d drunk, the imaginary egg she’d eaten, the empty cups, the nonexistent sugar. The shower without water. Only a memory, and her…stupidly repeating her life actions.
No, no, no.
The memories seeped in. She’d poisoned Max, yes. And then, oh…and then.
She’d poisoned herself, too, hadn’t she? A moment of weakness, of fear.
And now… this. An eternity with Max.
Laughter bubbled up inside of her. What had she done?
But then her fingers closed over the note in her pocket, the note to Stacey Moore, the girl who claimed to see ghosts. The envelope of the note was sharp, pointy. Real.
This she had done. Just like all the other notes.
But Stacey had never seen Max, because Max wasn’t here. No, Max wasn’t haunting Rowena or Hazel Grove; Max was long gone. He wasn’t sticking around, holding grudges.
She’d done him a favour, really. The cancer had been eating him up, and she, Rowena, had been strong enough to put his happiness first. To put him out of his misery.
Yes, Rowena had been ever so gracious.
And now. Now, he suffered no more.
People like Max went to heaven or the other side or whatever was out there. They saw a bright light and walked toward it. That was the way of things.
But people like Rowena…well. People like Rowena walked the streets at night, in the dark, in the moonlight. People like Rowena had reasons to stay. To keep things in order.
Hazel Grove, haunted.
Yes, Rowena thought, rising to walk. Hazel Grove was haunted. And she had a note to deliver.
R is for Remember
Michael B. Tager
When Max and Bettina pull up in their gold-and-silver van, the neighborhood goes quiet. Not the distant woodpecker in the forest behind the track houses, or the bees or the automatic sprinklers—what planned development could ever shut that orchestra up—but the people and the cars and lawnmowers. The outside neighbors are all studiously not watching and the inside neighbors are up against the window, waiting and listening and pointing. They know who Max and Bettina are. Word has gotten around.
“This the one then?” Max asks, gesturing at the white house with the sycamore in between the white house with two sycamores and the white house with none. He’s adjusting his bolo tie in the rear view.
“Looks like,” Bettina says, puffing on her Pall Mall. She really should quit. When she’s done, she crushes it in the ashtray and flicks it out the window. She doesn’t need to check her Windsor knot. She knows it’s sharp.
The old biddy answers the door and Bettina and Max are gratified at how surprised she is at their attire and punctuality. Most people don’t actually watch Ectoplasm Twins, they just know it exists and snicker when it’s the punchline. Assumptions run rampant and honestly, they get it. It’s a pretty stupid title, but they didn’t pick it.
“Where’s the infestation, ma’am?” Max murmurs. He’s the soothing one. He always has been.
The old biddy—Jane—guides them up some rickety stairs and through mounds of magazines and other hoarded garbage. Bettina can’t help her disgusted intakes of breath. Thank God she has gloves. She exchanges twin-eyes with Max and he’s on the same page. Maybe she applied to the wrong show?
Jane pushes open the round attic door at the top of the staircase and they stare into blackness. They both tremble at the smell of mothballs and rat feces, and another, bolder, spicier smell underneath. They shiver at the cold wind bursting out, like it’s searching for an escape. “Jesus,” Bettina says, “Arctic lives in your rafters, huh?” Her suit jacket does nothing to keep the chill out. Why should it? It’s summer after all.
“There, there,” Max says, guiding the woman by the elbow down the stairs and back into the kitchen that must have been tacky in the 70s and has now achieved an ironic beauty. He sits her at the linoleum table stained by decades of tea cups, instructs her to make some Earl Grey, sign the contract, and wait for them to come down. He pushes the contract into her hand, gives her a nice ballpoint pen inscribed with their logo, asks some leading questions about what sounds the ghost makes at night (crying), how long it’s been there (about a year), any recent deaths, has she wronged anyone, any known criminals or saints in her family tree, etc.?
He writes down her answers in his little notepad decorated with dragons, and frowns at one of them. He then pats Jane’s arm and says, “Don’t worry. We’re on it.”
She starts to sign and then narrows her eyes. “You aren’t hucksters are you? Everyone says y’all are full of shit.” Her voice is sharp and throaty. Max sees flecks of dandruff on her thin shoulders.
Max says, “You don’t have to sign anything.” His foot taps and he checks his watch. Two flights up, he hears thumping and cursing and the howl of wind. “You called us, honey. We just want to help.”
“That’s not an answer,” Jane says and now that Max looks at her little white bob, the gold tooth in the back of her mouth, the wiry tension in her knuckles, he sees the edge and beneath that, barely contained grief. Life has done Jane wrong; she’s seen some shit and Max doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of anything she can throw.
Max runs his hand through his patchy beard and says, for the hundredth or thousandth time, “I can’t prove anything to you to make you believe. Sign it and we’ll come back tonight with the television crews and not only will we help, but you’ll be on TV. You’ll have a story to tell for years and when people ask, “Is it real?” you can just shrug your shoulders all enigmatic like.”
Max takes a banana from her fruit basket and waves it. When she nods, he peels it and takes a big bite. “Don’t sign it and we leave and that’s that. No hard feelings.” His nonchalance has the desired effect and by the time he’s done with the banana, the contract is signed and in his pocket.
Bettina is at the threshold when he gets back, rubbing tears from her eyes because she learned the story while he was gone. She’s grateful for his presence. Before she entered, she tried to see what was inside, but it’s full North Pole winter dark and her eyes aren’t built like that. Her nose was no help either, because the overpowering smell of death and rotting brought her to her knees. The howling gale precluded hearing anything at all, and when she put her hands into the darkness, the bone chill numbed her fingers instantly.
“So what did you do?” Max asked.
“What do you think, dummy? I stamped on the floor and then I knelt and closed my eyes and did some ommmm shit and prayed.” She winks but he doesn’t laugh, and she isn’t laughing either. Because she did what she always has to, which was feel with her heart until something touched her.
Max looks at his notebook and reads it out loud, “Her grandson died a year ago?”
She nods.
“He had an asthma attack after playing in the attic? ‘Cause of the dust and heat and the moths?”
She nods again.
“Got sick and died on the way to the hospital while unconscious? This is the last place he knew?”
She slaps at an escaping tear. “It’s like we don’t even need a psychic. Want to take it from me?” She holds out her hand.
Max grasps her and squeezes and heads back to the car and grabs two jackets sporting the Ectoplasm Twins logo, and some other things. They check in on Jane and say they’re making great progress and when they return to the glaring maw of the attic, they walk in together. Bettina sits lotus-style while Max uses a penlight to (barely) illuminate the floor. He lights incense and plays some chill down tempo on his phone and lays down some objects that would be meaningful to a kid. A PlayStation controller, a baseball glove, s
ome colored pencils, a teddy bear. He sits and waits.
Bettina floats in her mental void while Max does all of this. She visualizes it as a blue lagoon enveloping her, or sometimes as the hands of God (which god she’s not sure, but she’s always been partial to Ganesha or Pan or sometimes the Old Testament God), but always as a safe space from which she can radiate nothing but empathy and love and sorrow and understanding. Soon will come the worst part, when she’ll touch the spirit and feel the only emotion it has left, and she needs that comforting center to cushion that blow. This boy, all he feels is rage of stolen time, and confusion and loss, and that will sting her heart so badly. It will scald her and she’s already crying anticipatory tears.
Max sees Bettina jump when contact is made and he reaches out his hand and grabs her ankle, not enough touch to startle her, but enough to relax her. And she does, even as her face scrunches and all the emotion the ghost feels runs through her body. Max wishes he could take some of that burden, but he can’t. And he’s kind of glad, too. He’s the younger twin after all, and what are big sisters for but to take the brunt of life?
Ten, fifteen minutes go by and Max is thinking about getting in touch with their tax guy when the heavy darkness dissipates. Or maybe it was never there, but only in their minds. Either way, Max can now see that the attic they’re in is a plain half-finished little room. Storage boxes wall-to-ceiling, and used mouse traps. Gross.
Bettina sighs, “We’re good now.”
“Does he have any unfinished business for us to take care of?” he asks.
She stands and cracks her neck, arches her back. “No. He just didn’t understand. He thought he was left behind. I explained it to him.”
Max writes it in his little notebook, next to a stegosaurus. “Do we tell Jane the truth? That it was her grandson haunting her?”
Bettina wants a cigarette. “Don’t see how it would help. It wasn’t really her fault.” Bettina kicks at the dust. “Nothing for us to lose sleep over.”
G is for Ghosts Page 24