Downstairs, they tell Jane the usual. “Yeah,” Max says with a straight face, because these lies kind of amuse him, even if they’re meant to help. “You totally have a poltergeist. One of the biggest we’ve ever seen. Maybe two poltergeists, which is really rare.”
Jane asks if it’s a famous person haunting her attic. “Absolutely,” says Bettina as she collects the first check. Another will come after filming. “Super famous. You’ll find out tonight.” Like any famous spirit would hang out in this random cul-de-sac, she thinks. Why do boring people always think interesting folks would bother with them? Marie Antoinette, Lincoln—they all have better stuff to do.
In the van, Bettina lights another Pall Mall and says, “You think this helps? What we do?”
Max takes off his jacket, bolo tie, sport coat and button-up until he’s just wearing a tank top advertising the crappy metal band he used to be in. “Jane will probably rest easy. And those fifty idiots watching at home seem to enjoy all this. That’s something, right?” Ectoplasm Twins is not a popular late-night, off-brand cable channel program.
She snorts and puffs two white plumes of demon smoke. “Like I care about those idiots. I’m not talking about them, or Jane.”
“What do you mean, then?”
Bettina points at the lonely third floor window. “I’m talking about him, and all the others.”
Max frowns and turns the key in the ignition. Later, after he tells the film crew the score, they’ll come by and light all the fancy blue fires and say pidgin Latin and set up a table with a velvet cloth and knock under the bottom of it (two for yes, one for no) and after they pull all their charlatan tricks at the séance, they’ll proclaim the ghost gone. Then they’ll collect the rest of their money and five grand might sound like a lot, but they don’t have health insurance, so it goes quick. And the show will air and then they’ll investigate other people who get in touch with them. And they’ll lay those ghosts to rest, too. Everyone has ghosts. That’s what Max can never get over. And all the ghosts are dead and it never ends and he isn’t sure he’s happy, but maybe he feels fulfilled.
Finally, he says, “He’s sleeping now, isn’t he? He’s no longer lost.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Bettina says as she rolls down the window. The van pulls out of the street and onto the highway. She takes a final drag and flicks the cigarette outside, breathes until her heart quiets and listens to the world. She feels all the strands of the unquiet dead tugging at her, moaning for someone to listen.
S is for Séance
Jonathan C. Parrish
#LOG ENTRY 153467 ID 33452PS DATE 229712
This will be my last diary entry, tomorrow I start my “post-life” phase as they have been officially calling it. I heard some of the other crew saying we’re “Zombozos” but that’s stupid since we won’t be zombies. The techs are telling us how straightforward and calm it is going to be butwhat the hell can they know? There ain’t no coming back, not that I had ever seen, which is the whole point but also means they can’t have any kind of record. Whatever. It’s just shit they tell the rank and file to keep them on board. Still, it has to beat living, which mostly sucks. I expect to not sleep tonight, I can sleep when I am dead. Wait, can I? Guess I’ll find out tomorrow. I’ll let you know (ha ha!). Psych! Hauntings are not on my assignment list, only maintenance of the downlink circuits.
So, mysterious reader who I have no idea I am writing this for, why did I sign up for this? Adventure? Boredom? Public Service? I guess it was something new to do, something people told me was stupid so that clinched it, no way was I not going to sign up! Re-invent myself and move on in the most spectacular (no pun intended) way. “Spirit harnessing” sounds edgy, even if it is just parts maintenance. I’m sure it’ll be cool to be a ghost. Sad thing is everyone else will be a ghost too (of course I mean “post-life hyper persistent entity”) so I can’t spook the others!
I’m going to have a lot of time to do some thinking I hope, I mean, how much time can I spend checking my nanoboards anyway? I bet someone is making a mint on these massive timescale initiatives, it ain’t me but some of the others are making good for their kids. Trust someone to figure out how to make money from making ghosts move shit. At least I am going into space, not deep sea like the spectre-lunkers.
We were given a speech today about being “committed” and the bozos made jokes about “being committed.” Hardy har har. But here I am, an astronaut that isn’t, a colonist that won’t be. I’m in it for the long haul, because what the hell else am I?
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#LOG ENTRY 0043639 ID 33452HPE DATE 233902 TYPE STATUS TIME IN TRANSIT: 10.75 CREW ENTANGLEMENT: 99.4% SYSTEMS: OK TEMPERATURE: LEVEL 1 (± 8C)
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#LOG ENTRY 0112548 ID 33452HPE DATE 239368 TYPE STATUS TIME IN TRANSIT: 24.42 CREW ENTANGLEMENT: 99.1% SYSTEMS: OK TEMPERATURE: LEVEL 1 (± 8C)
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T is for Transference
Amanda C. Davis
TO DO: PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN, DAY ONE
- Set up work-from-home station
- Set up online grocery orders
- Buy supplies online (masks/sanitizer/toilet paper)
- Learn to Zoom?
- Text Rachel
- Start menu planning (healthy)
- Take walks every day
DAY FIVE
- Work project 20-123
- Reply to Rachel
- Start menu planning
- Learn to Zoom?
DAY TEN
- Work projects 20-123 and 20-125
- Reply to Rachel
- Learn to Zoom?
- Repair pants
DAY FIFTEEN
- Finish work project 20-123
- Work projects 20-125, 20-130, 20-133
- Reply to Rachel
- Learn to Zoom
- Fix pants
- Eat a vegetable
- Start walking for real
DAY TWENTY
- Finish work projects 20-123, 20-125
- Start work projects 20-130, 20-133, 20-139, 20-140
- Take a shower sometime
- Refill meds
DAY TWENTY- FIVE
- FINISH PROJECT 20-123 OR ELSE
- Reply to Rachel
- Give up, turn pants into shorts
- Refill meds
DAY THIRTY
- 20-123
- 20-125
- 20-130
- 20-133
- 20-139
- 20-140
- 20-148
- 20-149
- Meds
- Pants -> shorts
DAY FORTY-TWO
- File for unemployment
- Figure out health care—COBRA? ACA? Because pandemic :(
- Refill meds (???)
- Cancel weekly groceries
- Update resume
- Cry forever
- Shower?
- Uninstall Zoom
DAY FIFTY
- Health care??
- Cancel subscriptions (all)
- Buy ramen online
- Refill meds, somehow, lololol
- Update resume
- Reply to Rachel
DAY SIXTY
- Stop crying every day!!
- Call someone about health care!!
- Eat better!!
- Start taking walks!!
- Stop food/booze/caffeine before bed
- Get!! Meds!!
DAY SIXTY-FIVE
- STOP having dreams about COLLEGE, you have GRADUATED
- Especially the ones where you’ve never been to class and it’s finals week
- YOU NEVER DID THAT
- YOU HAVE A DEGREE
- File for unemployment
- Throw away those pants
DAY SEVENTY
- What if I just stopped?
- I mean like everything.
DAY SEVENTY- FIVE
- Resume food/booze/caffeine before bed because nothing matters (:
DAY EIGHTY
- Call?? Someone???
DAY EIGHTY- FIVE
- Eat
- Sleep?
- Call about something?
- Why?
- Think about stopping everything
DAY EIGHTY- EIGHT
- Food/booze/caffeine
- Walk? Lol
- Sleep??
- Stop everything?
DAY NINETY
- Stop?
DAY NINETY-FOUR
- Stop.
- Sleep.
NIGHT
- Like being chilly without nerves
- Like being in the dark without eyes
- Visions like dreams
NIGHT
- Get to finals
- BS through essay? Never went to class :(
- Where is dorm
NIGHT
- Where is class??
NIGHT
- Up stairs (never ending)
- Down elementary school hallway
- Wrong room
- Wrong shower
- Showering anyway, flooding out the door
- Shower is now in grandparents’ old house
- They’re upstairs and alive right now
- Don’t run upstairs to see their faces again
- Run out the door
- Late for finals
NIGHT
- Wake
- Up
DAY ???
- File for unemployment
- Work project 20-123
- Pass finals
- Pants?
- Sleep?
- No sleep
- Walk
- Call about meds
- Find class
- Make lists
- Walk
- Work projects 20-140, 21-780, 50-12, 7-83, A-20, Z-0-Z?
- Find dorm
- Buy food
- Walk
- Reply to Rachel
- Update resume
- Visit grandparents
- Finish things on list
- Finish everything
- Walk
- Walk
- Walk
U is for Unfinished
Lilah Wild
It started when the first stake pierced the ground. The iron was filthy, streaked with the soil of fifty other counties, sticky from soda spills. It crept into the earth with every smack of the mallet, planting down promises of cotton candy and carousel horses. Innocence and wonder, if you didn’t wander too far in.
Down beneath the grass, sugar met ash.Forty years was enough time for a town to forget. Forty years would sweep the high schools clean of local legends, tragic hauntings. The wandering toddlers struck on back roads, the suicides hanging from hundred-year oaks, the crosses of their roadside memorials swept away. The next generation of death settled over, and the next. And there was no one left to talk about the fire.
Ash met sugar, and remembered.
She was a creature of sparkle and feathered hair, her eyeshadow the same shade of blue as her platform heels. But inside, she felt anything but glamorous. She was exhausted from a night of back-to-back performances and she wanted nothing more than to step off this stage, undo her ankle straps, and walk out back for a long, solitary smoke.
The pressure was on to reveal more, do more. Allow more. The barker hustled harder and the Led Zeppelin got louder. The men came forward with crumpled dollars, and her smile was pasted on as bits of her costume came off. Fingers—tongues—not tonight. It would mean less money,
but not tonight, not after the pictures her bunkmate had shown her earlier today. Onstage, she barricaded herself behind a powder puff the size of a dinner plate.
She’d entered the business a cheerful kid, proud to show off her spangled bikini, a budding sex goddess eager to please. Night after night of hands, eyes, so ravenous, more than she could ever satisfy... there were only so many nights you could fake a smile before the rictus turned real.
She’d been goofing with the other dancers in the afternoon, playing around backstage with some giant feathers and an instant camera. Her laughter died when she saw the polaroids fanned across her dressing table: new lines etched around her vamp-red mouth, the constant road-life fatigue carving new hollows beneath her eyes. Only two years working the bally... the images looked more like she’d aged ten.
She grabbed her radio and smokes, lifted the tent flap and walked into the woods, towards the stream she’d discovered when the tents were going up. The bouncer insisted she take a man’s jacket to wrap herself up and hide from the weirdos. If she was lucky, she’d catch David Bowie on the rock station. Only the Spiders from Mars could be good company right now.
Time to get out, she’d decided, as she watched the midday sun glimmer on the water. Time to go. She’d always wanted to head west. Now, it seemed imperative, a pilgrimage to the holy land of the left coast where she could purify herself with meditation and wheat germ, enlighten her soul with California sunshine. Heal. Yes.
Later, a dollar came towards her, and she handed over the puff, arched her back. Hands that could poke and twist and slap were tamed through the loving touch of the puff. Trucker caps, leather-elbowed blazers, scuffed All-Stars, all kinds, her patrons, and she invited them to shower her bare skin with shimmering powder. The puff was her friend, her protector, and also her weapon when needed. Earlier this evening, a customer had gotten too handsy, grabbed something that wasn’t for sale. She beamed her most saccharine smile, scooped her puff through its box, and brought a dazzling cloud down on top of his head. The men around him had burst into laughter.
G is for Ghosts Page 25