A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (15 page)

Marjorie was in bed, under the covers, lying on her side, her head turned away from me. I kept the camera’s light focused on the back of her head. I whispered her name repeatedly as I walked until I was standing right next to her, the light focused into a tight beam on her profile.

Her eyes were closed and she was breathing deeply and looked to be asleep and to have been asleep for quite a while.

“Marjorie?” I poked her shoulder. No response or movement. I watched her on the flip screen: The covers slowly rose and fell with each breath, and her face looked green. I kept the camera light on but paused the recording with a small electronic
blip
.

Marjorie opened an eye and rolled it back toward me. She said, “Did you get it all?” in a low, creaky voice. She calmly repeated herself when I didn’t respond initially.

“Yeah.”

“Good girl. Show it to your pal Ken tomorrow after school. Go back to bed.”

I was suddenly exhausted and could’ve curled up and gone to sleep right
there on her floor. I shuffled out of her room and into the hallway. I looked back and Marjorie was sitting up, muttering to herself, and plugging earbuds into her phone, the music already on and loud, something with heavy, rhythmic synthesizers. Marjorie snuggled back into bed and whispered, “Shut the door, Merry,” but I didn’t.

Out in the hallway I found Tony the cameraman easing his way up the stairs, night-vision camera perched on his shoulder. He didn’t appear to be in any giant rush to get all the way up here.

He sounded annoyed when he said, “What’s going on, Merry? Did I miss something?”

I said, “No, nothing.”

He asked me something else but I turned and walked across the hall into my parents’ bedroom. I shut the door quietly behind me and on Tony who was now at the top of the stairs, filming me. I’d felt the camera pointed at my back. I stood behind the door and listened to him creep a little farther down the hallway and pause at Marjorie’s door. Her door creaked and then latched, and Tony walked back downstairs, the wood groaning under his giant, sloppy feet.

I put my camera down on the cluttered nightstand next to Mom’s head. I crawled over her and into the bed, easily fitting myself between my parents who slept as far away from each other as they could.

THE NEXT MORNING I WORE
my best dress because it was what someone who was on a TV show was supposed to wear. It was dark maroon, squared at the shoulders, and short-sleeved so I wore a white cardigan over it. Mom had bragged about buying it for only ten bucks. She tried to talk me out of wearing the dress to school (it wasn’t warm enough, I’d get it dirty at recess or lunch or art class . . .), but I wouldn’t budge.

I couldn’t wait to ask my friends and classmates if they’d seen me on TV last night. I figured that at least some of my friends might’ve been able to fool their parents into letting them watch it because they wouldn’t have known what it was about or what was on it.

Dad offered to drive me to school, but Mom said she would, and then she was going to run some errands. Plus she wanted him to wake up Marjorie and ask her if she was going to school or Dr. Hamilton today; she had to choose one to go to, she couldn’t stay home. A brief, controlled argument ensued. With cameras and crew members watching, my parents had to keep their dramas quick and to the point. I didn’t wait for its rushed and hushed conclusion. I sprinted out the door ahead of Mom, who yelled after me to wait for her. I didn’t wait. I ran to our car parked in the driveway and started yanking on the locked back door.

“Mom, it’s locked, come on!”

As I walked around the car to try the doors on the other side, I noticed there was a small group, maybe five people, holding handwritten signs in the street near our front lawn. Barry was talking to them. I couldn’t hear him but he didn’t seem happy.

Mom said, “I told you to wait for me.” She unlocked the doors. I asked her who those people were. She sighed and said, “I don’t know but they better not be here when I get back.” I ducked down in my seat as we drove by them, resting my face at the bottom of the window frame so they’d only see the top of my head and my glasses peering out. An old man pointed at us as we drove by and held up his sign, but it was spun around backward and by the time he flipped it around, we were too far away to read it.

At school, when I breathlessly asked my friends if they’d seen the show, most said they weren’t allowed to watch because it was an adult show and/or it was on so late. A few said they’d seen commercials and it looked creepy. Samantha asked why I wore a fancy dress to school. Cara
said that she saw some of it but didn’t see me in the parts that she watched, but then it was too scary to keep watching. Brian said the show was gross. At recess and lunch a pack of fourth and fifth graders, including the neighbor that Marjorie had punched in the face on my behalf a few years ago, made fun of me and Marjorie and called my whole family a bunch of freaks. I immediately told on them. I was more upset that, of my friends, only Cara and Brian had seen it, and they didn’t have anything good to say about it. I asked teachers too, and my favorite, Mrs. Newcomb said, politely, that she hadn’t seen the show, that, “I don’t watch much TV, I’m afraid. I’m just too busy planning for our school day!”

When I got home there were more people standing out front holding signs. They stood behind yellow police tape. Mom said, “We may have to get used to this for a little while,” then went on to say that they were religious fanatics who didn’t approve of what we were doing, and there was nothing we could do about them as long as they stayed off our property. Dad had apparently tried to intimidate them away from our house and he even made physical contact with a few of the protesters, grabbing them by the arm and pulling them down the street. Father Wanderly had intervened and calmed Dad down. Father Wanderly was still out there talking to a few of them. Even though it was cold out, his forehead looked sweaty. They waved their signs at us as we pulled into the driveway. Some signs had names and numbers on them, which I found out later were references to Bible verses. Two signs had red block letters. One sign read:
JUDGMENT IS COMING
. Another:
DON’T PROFIT OFF THE DEVIL’S WORK!

Although this new development was interesting, I decided it wasn’t my problem and didn’t involve me, at least not yet. I ran into the house and changed back into my sweats and Wonder Woman T-shirt. Then Ken and I and my camera went into the crew’s trailer. There was a little living
room section toward the front with a mini-kitchen and couch, but the rest of it was monitors, equipment, and black chairs with wheels. He hooked up my camera to his laptop, which he’d synced to one of the large wall monitors and we watched the previous night’s footage. We heard the scratching noise. We listened to me announce to the cardboard house that I knew she was faking. We saw the blanket disappear. Ken jumped in his chair and grabbed my arm when it happened. We saw the blanket rise inside the house and the skeleton hands wrap around her neck. The hands didn’t look as long and as thin as they had when it was really happening. We watched the house fly into the camera. We saw the lens pressed up against a drawing of Marjorie’s face, her mouth a big red O while I grunted and struggled to get the house off me. We watched as the camera bobbed down the hall and into Marjorie’s room where she appeared to be asleep and I couldn’t wake her up.

When it ended Ken said, “Wow. Are you okay, Merry?”

“I’m okay. It didn’t look as scary as I remember it.”

“I bet. But still, watching it was—That was really scary.”

“Is this something you can use?”

“Yes. Most definitely. But, really, are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just a bad day at school.” Then I told him about my friends and Mrs. Newcomb not watching or liking the show, and how the older kids made fun of me.

Ken said, “I am sorry, Merry. But as I’m sure your parents have told you, that kind of stuff is probably going to get worse as more episodes air. I think this year at school will be really hard, and it’s certainly not fair to you, not at all. What we’re doing here will be hard for people to understand.”

“I know. I’ll be okay. I’m tough.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re the toughest person I know. Just make sure
you talk to your parents or to someone at school, or me if you want, when it gets too hard, okay?”

“I will.” I didn’t want to talk about school anymore. I asked, “Will you change things?”

“What do you mean?”

I didn’t want to come right out and ask if he was going to cut out the part about me saying that Marjorie was faking. “The video I made. Will you change it?”

“You mean will I edit it?”

“Yeah.”

“We always do some editing. Sometimes we’ll really cut it up and move around the different scenes if we think it’ll work better that way. Sometimes we just do small cuts or tweaks, add some sound or music or voice-over narration. But just seeing it once, I don’t think we’ll change much of what you filmed at all.”

I nodded, and was worried that he didn’t really pick up on me talking about Marjorie faking everything while we watched it but he surely would later when he showed it to Barry. I didn’t want to be there for that so I said, “Okay. Bye,” and darted quickly for the door.

“Wait! Don’t forget to take your camera back.” Ken held it up and out toward me, and he shrugged, like he knew I wasn’t sure I wanted the camera back. Or maybe he wasn’t sure he should give the camera back to me.

I actually didn’t want it, but I wanted Ken to go on thinking that I was still tough. So I took the camera. I went inside and up to my room. I put it in the top drawer of my dresser, layered some T-shirts on top of it, and decided I wouldn’t use it again.

THE MORNING AFTER
the second episode aired, I told Mom that I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to stay home from school. I told her my stomach hurt and I thought I had a fever when I didn’t; I felt fine. She placed the back of her hand on my forehead and that was enough. She didn’t question me further or take my temperature. Marjorie stayed home from school too. She hadn’t been to school in a week since the first episode aired.

After spending a long, boring morning in my room rereading the old stories Marjorie and I had written in the Richard Scarry book and counting how many cats she’d drawn glasses on and had named Merry (there were fifty-four, I still remember that number), I came downstairs around lunchtime and announced that I was feeling better. I was dressed up as a news reporter: black T-shirt; black tights; a straw fedora; one blue sock and one red sock, both knee-length, the red sock was a regular sock, the blue sock was one of those glove socks that had toes and made my foot
look like it was a Muppet foot; a button-up red knit sweater jacket that hung down almost to my knees. The sweater jacket had deep front pockets in which I stashed my reporter’s pencil and the black notebook that Ken had given me.

There wasn’t any crew on the first floor, but I took notes anyway as I worked my way to the kitchen. Dad was hunched over the sink and washing dishes by hand.

I wrote down: “Dishes. Dirty.”

“Hi, sweetie. Feeling better, I take it?”

I asked, “Yes. How come you’re not using the dishwasher?”

“There weren’t that many dishes to wash.”

I pursed my lips and nodded. Onto the next question: “Where’s Mom?”

“Out with Marjorie.”

I wrote that down, too, and underlined it.

“But she’ll be back soon. We have a big meeting in”—he looked at the oven clock—“jeez, less than an hour.”

“Can I be there for the meeting? I’m a reporter, see? I’ll take notes.”

“No. I don’t think so. But we may have something to talk to you about afterward.”

“What? Tell me!” I had my pencil pressed into the notebook.

“You’re too funny. But I can’t tell you. Mom and I and everyone else have to discuss it first. It’s nothing bad, though, I promise.”

“But I’m a reporter so you have to tell me.”

“Sorry to be a tease, but we’ll talk after, okay?”

“Ugh. I can’t wait until after.”

Dad laughed, and despite two thousand volts of frustration tingling and twitching through my body, I laughed too. Everything about him that morning seemed relaxed and brighter than it had in months. He’d always
been a moody guy. No one was funnier or more fun to play with than he was when in the right mood and you could feel the barometric pressure drop when he wasn’t.

I heard the front door open and hoped that the big meeting was about to happen and that since I was there already they’d let me watch and take notes. But it was only Jenn. She walked into the kitchen without announcing herself. Someone in the trailer must’ve seen me and Dad together on the surveillance cams, so she was dispatched in case our interaction was video worthy.

“Are you sure I can’t be at the big meeting?” I looked at Jenn and the camera when I said it, even though I was talking to Dad.

“Yes, I’m sure. What do you want for lunch, kid?”

I said, “Mac and cheese?” like I was asking if I could get away with something big. Mom would’ve said no and that I had to stick to the BRAT diet because of my stomach issues (which I seemed to have a lot of at that age) and then made me a plain piece of toast.

“Your stomach doesn’t hurt anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Did it really hurt at all this morning?”

“A little.” I stuck my face into the open notebook.

“Do you think it’ll hurt tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, good. Maybe I’ll have some too. Take down some notes while I make it.”

He boiled water and pretended to be a scientific expert on the properties of water boiling, and how long it needed to boil to make the perfect batch of mac and cheese. I wrote it all down and asked him the tough questions. He spoke of the golden ratio of cheese dust to milk and butter, the diameter and girth of the elbow-shaped pasta, the conductive properties
and molecular structure of the white froth that bubbled over the pot. He held up the blue-and-yellow box and described the superhuman nutritional benefits of each ingredient. He used a funny scientist’s accent. When it was ready we evenly distributed the pasta into two bowls and tested the cheese sauce’s tensile strength: which bowl could keep a fork standing vertically the longest. My bowl won. We laughed, ate, and had a good time.

I remember this lunch in great detail because I remember it as being the last time he was happy-Dad with me. That might sound maudlin, sentimental, and hyperbolic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

MOM TURNED UP THE TV’S
volume purposefully loud and took the remote control with her into the kitchen.

I sat in the living room only sort of watching an episode of
Teen Titans
. My parents, Father Wanderly, Barry, and Ken were in the kitchen having their
big meeting
. Because of what Dad had said earlier, I knew I was the subject. After the months of all-things-for-Marjorie, I was pleased that something happening in this house potentially involved me. With Marjorie almost exclusively sucking up all our parental resources, I’d felt like I was getting lost, a loose picture that had fallen out of the family album.

I couldn’t hear anything said in the meeting and the one time I tried to sneak across the room and get closer to the kitchen, Dad heard and sternly ordered me back to my spot on the couch.

The meeting lasted forever and I began to hate the
Teen Titans
, particularly Beast Boy and his snaggletooth, but finally, everyone came into the living room. Mom sat next to me on the couch. She still had the remote
and shut off the TV, and then she rubbed my back in slow circles, which made me nervous. It was an obvious sign we were to discuss something serious. Barry stood near the front door and spoke quietly into his Bluetooth. Jenn and Tony and their cameras emerged shortly thereafter, each flanking one end of the room. Ken sat in the plush chair by the front windows, lost in his notebook. I waved at him but he didn’t see me. Both Ken and Barry stood outside of camera range so they presumably wouldn’t be in the shot.

Dad followed Father Wanderly into the room and carried one of the kitchen chairs, which he set directly in front of the TV. Dad sat there and struggled to get comfortable. Father Wanderly had a red leather-bound book tucked under his left arm. He said, “Hello, Merry. I love your red jacket. Looks cozy.” He always sounded like his words were full of helium, which rose and dangled above your head. He methodically worked his way around the coffee table to sit on the couch next to me.

I scooted away, closer to Mom, and I stuffed my hands into the jacket pockets. “Hello. It’s not cozy. I’m wearing it because I’m a reporter,” I said, and looked nervously at Dad. I was afraid that if I didn’t address Father Wanderly like he wanted me to he’d get angry.

Dad gave me a reassuring nod and said, “We’re going to talk more about what it is Father Wanderly is trying to do to help Marjorie and how he thinks you can help him. Okay?”

I was disappointed at first to hear this was still about Marjorie, but that quickly passed with the realization that these adults, their actions and motives as mysterious as ever, were going to tell me more, and they wanted my help.

Father Wanderly said, “That’s right, Merry. Are you feeling better? I’m told you stayed home from school today.”

“I’m better. I think I was just really hungry and that made my stomach hurt.”

“I understand.” He smiled and showed off his big teeth, which were a dingy shade of gray.

Up this close to him, I could see flurries of dandruff sprinkled on his shoulders. The white collar squeezed his Adam’s apple so tightly a small flap of skin folded over it. His face was thick with beard stubble that went higher on his cheeks than it should’ve, and I thought about making a werewolf joke. His blue eyes were so light I was afraid if I looked too hard and long I could see straight through into the back of his head. He smelled like powder.

“I’m going to take notes, okay?” I took the notebook and pencil out of my pockets.

“Of course.” He leaned in closer to me and asked, “Do you know why I’m here?”

I nodded, even though I was still fuzzy on how he was going to help us.

“You know that I’m here to help your sister, and your family, and you.”

I nodded again, impatient for him to get to the part where he described how I’d be helping, annoyed that he was talking to me as though I were four, not eight.

“I’ve watched the video you shot in your room, Merry, and I’ve watched your interviews, including that—what do you call it, Barry, a
confessional
? I’m not sure I approve of that.” Father Wanderly smiled at Barry, who returned a
Who, me?
shrug. “In one of them you said an evil spirit lived inside Marjorie. Did she tell you that?”

“Yeah, in the basement she said it to me, yeah.”

“Well, Merry, my first job here is to figure out if she really has a demon spirit inside her.”

“Well . . . it—It’s what she told me?” I started looking to Mom and
Dad in a panic, thinking that he somehow knew that what I’d told everyone had happened in the basement was a lie.

Father Wanderly said, “Merry, I believe you. And I believe that, unfortunately, your poor sister is possessed. I believe that somehow a demon spirit has gotten inside her and it’s what makes her act so strangely, so not like your sister used to be. Yes? My second job, by the Lord’s infinite grace, power, and love, is to help her and your family by getting the demon out of Marjorie, so it’ll go away and leave her alone forever.”

“How?”

“I’ll perform the sacramental ritual of exorcism.” He patted the leather book that was now resting in his lap.

I was getting more nervous so I drew a chain of circles in my notebook.

Dad said, “Merry, stop doodling and pay attention.”

Mom said, “John, she’s doing fine.” She squeezed my shoulders and it turned one of my circles into a squashed blob.

Ken looked up from his notebook but not at me. Dad crossed his arms over his chest and did that thing where he jutted out his bottom jaw and released air through the side of his mouth.

I asked Father Wanderly, “Are you going to read that to her?” and pointed at his small, red leather-bound book.

“More or less, yes, I will read and pray, which is all a part of performing the rite of exorcism.”

“Have you tried it yet?”

“We have not tried it yet. Performing an exorcism is very serious business. The most serious. I first need to get the permission of our local bishop. In order to do so, we must make sure that there is a demon inside Marjorie and that she’s not simply—how should I put it?—that she’s not just sick.”

“Oh. So if she’s only sick you can’t help her, and we just have to give her medicine, or something and then she’ll be better again?”

“Well, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can and does always help, but I’m afraid it’s not that simple—”

Dad cut in with, “We’re all tired, scared, and confused as to why this is happening to Marjorie and to us. But everyone in this house is confident that Marjorie is possessed by a demon. That’s how they say it, Merry: possessed. Okay? Otherwise we wouldn’t have gone to the . . . to the lengths that we’ve gone to here. What Father Wanderly is saying is that the church has to be absolutely sure before he can help her and read the special prayers from his book.”

“I think you should just read the special prayers to her now anyway. Just in case.” I leaned back into Mom, looked up at her, and said, “Mom?” I didn’t say
Do you believe there’s an evil spirit inside Marjorie too
? but that was what I meant.

She said, “Remember all of Marjorie’s doctor’s appointments? We’ve been trying medicine, and we’ve been trying everything we can think of, and things with her—things with her are still getting worse. So we’re doing what we think is best. Father Wanderly truly wants to help your sister.”

No one else said anything right away. Dad leaned back in his chair; the wood creaked and groaned. I wrote the word
chair
down in my notebook and drew a picture of one that had a long back and short legs, and then I quickly drew a ghost that haunted it.

Father Wanderly said, “Merry, this afternoon, Dr. Navidson, who I’ve been consulting with, is coming over to finish his evaluation—or his, um, checkup—of Marjorie on behalf of the church.”

“Who’s that? I thought her doctor was Dr. Hamilton. Right, Mom?”

Mom said, “Dr. Hamilton is still her doctor, sweetie. This new doctor is helping out Father Wanderly.”

“Why does she need another doctor?”

Father Wanderly said, “Dr. Hamilton is a very good man and doctor, but being an atheist, he does not have the sense of spiritual reality required for Marjorie’s case.”

“What’s an atheist?” I drew another ghost.

Father Wanderly leaned down to get into my field of vision. When I looked up at him he said, “A nonbeliever. Someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus or God.”