Vintage: A Ghost Story (8 page)

In the distance, I caught a glimpse of something pale running through the cemetery in great leaps. I shuddered, not wanting to know who or what it once was.

“I have you,” he said. His words thrilled me.
“We have to leave.” I whispered. The other ghosts could hear me. The sound of my voice drew them like filings to a magnet.
He stared at me intently. “Have you ever touched a boy before?”
Why did he have to say that? I blushed. The sudden image of me, no, not me, lying in bed desiring the nurse rose in my thoughts like bile in my throat. I had to focus on Josh, on how beautiful he looked and how much I wanted to be
with
him.
I nearly jumped back when Josh came to touch me. “I can barely feel you,” he said softly. “I want to touch you. Deeply.”
I looked into his eyes, twin pieces of blue ice. Afraid to speak, I mouthed the word “please.”
He came nearer and lowered his head until his face brushed mine and it seemed as if winter pressed against my mouth and a cold gust broke through my parted lips. Such kisses break laws.
Then the clouds finally let loose. Water poured down on me, a fresh new chill to my skin. The sound deafened me and, startled, I broke the kiss to find myself alone. Damn him for leaving me alone. I wasn’t even sure he was truly gone, but I didn’t dare call out. I was terrified something else might answer.
I waited as long as I could stand, shivering as the rain fell. More lightning made everything look stark, unreal with every flash. I headed back in the direction of the mausoleums, sure that the wall would be close by. If followed it, I’d eventually reach the gate. Or I could try climbing over the wall. Even if I broke an arm falling, better that than spend another minute with the dead.
But I must have gone in the wrong direction, for all I saw were more old tombstones. Water pooled on the hard earth, refusing to sink in. My feet splashed as I ran first one way and then another.
I finally caught a glimpse of a streetlamp off in the distance and used it like a lighthouse beacon to find a break in the wall. I nearly kissed the asphalt when I made it to the street.
By the time I made it back to my aunt’s I was a drowned rat, soaked to the bone. I was so exhausted my mind ignored the horrors of the evening and just wanted sleep. I left puddles of water on the floor. As I peeled off the wet clothes I promised myself I would never, ever, visit a graveyard again.

The interior of Trace’s car smelled strongly of licorice, her favorite candy. I asked if she had spilled a bottle of sambuca. She pointed to the used tea light candle glued to the top of the dashboard.

“Aniseed oil keeps away coughs and colds.” Guiding the steering wheel with her knees, she pulled away from my aunt’s driveway and poured more oil into the empty metal shell. She breathed in deeply. “After last night, I’m not surprised you’re sick.”

I had overslept and felt like shit. I called Malvern to ask if I could have the day off. He told me the best way to cure congestion was bed rest and a warmed glass of rye whiskey with rock candy,

“After last night, I could care less about having a cold. All those ghosts. They could hear me, Trace. I know it. As soon as I opened my mouth, they came after me. What the hell is going on?”

I bit back a cough. The aniseed didn’t seem to be helping me feel better. I reached for the small brown bottle halffilled with the oil. The tiny label read
Distillation of Pimpnella Anisum Seed 13 ml.

“
Pimp
inella?” I tried to sound amused but my heart wasn’t in the joke. I uncapped the bottle, bringing it directly under my clogged nose. Immediately the undiluted oil broke through my sinuses not unpleasantly. It reminded me of eating licorice crows with Trace during Labor Day weekend.

“I love that term. Smutty
and
scientific.” Trace stopped the car on a side street. “We’re here.” Atop a hill squatted an immense house nearly hidden by trees with leaves the color of fire.

She started up the walk, a winding series of slate steps, all crumbling at their edges. No one had bothered to sweep away the leaves and debris autumn brought to the lawn.

Trace only winked at me. I was in no mood for theatrics and mysteries. I wanted answers, ones that would let me sleep soundly, ones that would return my life to normal.

We passed the remains of a birdbath. Half the concrete bowl laid on the ground. A raven, his feathers ruffled—I imagined from some fight with another bird or perhaps in indignation at finding the town dull—perched on the broken rim and cawed loudly as we walked by.

“They get more brazen as we near Halloween,” Trace remarked.
I nodded. It made sense, after all.
Just when I grew sick of climbing steps, we reached the hilltop. Ahead of us, the house lurked, an ugly beast of architecture, the sort of place that looked stooped and old, with fallen arches and creaking floors. In other words, I fell in love with it.
“Used to be a mansion. That was like eighty years ago. Then the owner willed the place to the town as the library.”
“
That’s
the town library?” I shook my head in amazement. “Why haven’t you ever taken me here before?”
“How many books have you read since you moved here?”
Touché. “Next to none.” Compared to her, I was an illiterate slob. Besides, I preferred paging through her castoffs.
A bronze placard had been bolted into the wall beside the huge wooden door that bore a wrought-iron knocker. Years of verdigris made it hard to discern all the letters. Trace pulled open the door with a grunt before I could read it.
“C’mon,” she said, holding the way open for me.
Inside, the atmosphere was vastly different from wondrous autumn: the air had a still heaviness to it, as if silence had weight. I took a few steps before the door swung shut, keeping the outside world distant. The library seemed to be holding its breath, quiet, not serene but rather in suspense.
Moving through the foyer, we came to an immense redwood desk blocking our path. The librarian seated at it looked frail. Glass-enclosed bookcases were set against the far wall. To the right, a staircase with a worn runner led up. On our left was an open doorway to a parlor filled with old furniture.
We were about to head up the steps when someone called out to Trace. A man in his late forties walked out of the parlor, holding a magazine. He lifted it slightly as if to wave at us.
Trace murmured to me, “Mr. Algode, evil Math teacher.” She mustered a smile and headed over to where he stood.
I leaned against the banister and admired some of the paintings along the stairwell. My back became chilled, as if someone had opened the door and let in a draft. The aniseed hadn’t helped me feel any better and I began sneezing.
The librarian shushed me, bringing a spindly finger to her puckered lips. I blinked away tears brought on by the sneezes. Her head shook, her tight curls the color of dull steel. Her wardrobe with its lace collar could have been purchased in Malvern’s shop but was so worn that it was almost threadbare. “Sorry,” I said in a quiet tone.
The librarian glared at me and rapped a long finger against a stack of dusty books. She lifted a pair of wire-framed glasses to her face and started reading and I sat down on the bottom step and waited for Trace. I struggled not to cough or sneeze again, my chest feeling constricted, my back aching with stress.
She came back a few moments later, though it seemed like hours, shaking her head. “Ugh, he felt the need to remind me about my algebra deficiency. Like I really care about x and y and z.”
“I think she hates me,” I said and nodded toward the librarian.
“Oh?” She glanced that way. “Who?”
I saw that the huge desk was empty. I couldn’t think of anything reasonable to explain the woman’s disappearance. Fear left me unable to do much else but reach up and squeeze Trace’s hand.
“Again.” My voice caught in my throat. “Another ghost.”
She squatted down before me. “What? Here?” I pulled her fingers to my cheek to warm my face. “What’s wrong with me?” I did not want to suddenly start bawling. But I was afraid. Everywhere I went I seemed surrounded by spirits. I remembered the one with the knife from last night. He had been bad; suppose the next one was worse?
“Come upstairs.”
With my eyes kept low to avoid glimpses of the long-dead men and women in the paintings along the wall, I let Trace lead me by the hand to the second floor. I worried I would catch their mouths moving, as if whispering to me.
“So we need to talk about this. We can figure it all out.” But I didn’t hear confidence in her voice.
We passed through an open doorway to a large reading room surrounded by shelves. After taking a step forward, I saw that old men filled every available seat in the library. I felt their yellowed eyes bore into me with spitefulness.
Trace took hold of my hand, her fingers interlacing my own. A small comfort as we took another hesitant step.
One fossil coughed, the sound of decades’ worth of phlegm dislodged, brought up, examined, and then swallowed.
I wanted desperately to be away from them. How many were real? Any might be ghosts. The entire floor sounded with their creaks and groans. As we reached the stacks, my heart pounded in my chest. I wondered when this had started. How long had I been seeing spirits without knowing the truth? People on the street, in stores that I’d passed by, could all be dead. That girl on the bus, the one no one else had heard but me?
“I’ve come in early in the morning and those old men are always here.” She shook her head slightly. “I think when they lock up and it’s dark, they don’t leave but sit there, waiting for something.”
“Don’t try and scare me.” I glanced back in their direction. “There’s no need.”
She rubbed my back. “Old men are the least of your problems.”
“Thanks.”
She stopped at one shelf full of books so old that their covers had peeled away or titles worn off. She stood up on her toes, scanning the topmost titles.
“So tell me what’s going on. When did I suddenly become the kid from
The Sixth Sense
?”
“Ah,” she said and smiled, taking down a slender volume with brittle yellow pages.
Behind the Scenes with the Mediums.
I held back a sneeze. “I’m surprised you haven’t swiped this.”
“I might today.” She clutched the book to her chest, obscuring the magic eight-ball T-shirt she wore. The cover left a faint block of dust on her chest.
Anxious for her to talk to me and make things right again, I waited a while as she read until I could not stand around doing nothing. I took the first book I saw off the nearest shelf and opened it at random.

This story rather resembles the tale of a much more interesting ghost which inhabited an old manor-house in Somersetshire, and which succeeded for many years in keeping human beings out of the place. Time after time the house would be let, people always making light of its haunted reputation, or else determining to brave its terrors. But they never stayed more than a few weeks, when they invariably went away, declaring that one or more members of the household had seen an apparition on the main staircase

The description—and rather horrible it was—was always the same. The figure of a woman would come gliding downstairs, carrying her head under her arm, and arriving at the foot of the stairs she invariably vanished.

At last there came a tenant bolder than his predecessors, and gifted with an inquiring turn of mind. He said he liked the place and meant to stay there, and if possible evict the ghost. And he at once began to investigate. Beginning at the attics he tapped and sounded every wall and suspicious-looking board in the house, with no result in the way of discovery till he reached the principal staircase. This, being the ghost’s favorite haunt, received special attention, and working his way patiently down step by step, he found at length under the old flooring at the foot of the stairs, a hollow place of considerable size. And in this hole reposed, headless, a human skeleton (which subsequent examination proved to be that of a woman) with the severed head laying by its side. Then the enterprising tenant hied him to the Vicar of the parish and told him of the grisly find, and after due consultation it was de cided to collect the poor remains and bury them decently in the churchyard, a ceremony which seems to have effectually “laid” the ghost, as report says it has never since been seen.

I poked Trace. “This says by burying a ghost’s remains, you lay it to rest.”
Trace looked up at me. “Yeah, that works in some cases. But not all ghosts. Josh is already buried.”
“Oh. Right.” I started to put the book back but decided against it, thinking I should do some reading on the subject myself.
“Listen to this.” As she read out loud, her finger traced the words “There have been known instances where sufferance brings about a new perception, a perlustration that sees beyond the Veil. What once was viewed as commonplace becomes inimaginable as apparitions that haunt the world on occasion are met. These
mediums
are forced to take a path little tread, between the Known World and the Gray Pale, itin erant envoys between the living and the dead.”
“The Gray Pale? C’mon, that sounds silly.”
She rolled her eyes. “It means that people who suffer some awful trauma and come close to death—as in your attempted suicide—can get the Sight. Ever since then you’ve been noticing ghosts. Hon, you’re one of these mediums.”
“A medium?” The word brought up images of old gypsies telling fortunes and peering into crystal balls. Flimflam artists with friends underneath the table making knocking sounds. Bad black and white movies. Not at all apt for being scared shitless and threatened by ghosts everywhere you look.
“That’s why Josh only hears your voice and no one else.” She seemed all excited. “It’s why he followed you home and all the ghosts in the graveyard were drawn to you.”
“Fuck.” The thought of being trendy with the dead left me queasy. I couldn’t even smirk over finally being popular.
“I’m going to check this out. There’s some stuff on channeling. That’s what I think happened to you last night.”
“More like possession.” I tried not to think about it. I did not like losing myself, my identity, so easily.
“Why don’t you go see if they have any old yearbooks?” She patted my chest lightly. “Bet you can find out more what your ghost was like when he was alive.”
I half nodded, half shrugged. Actually, the living Josh interested me less than the dead version. Alive, he was a handsome jock, the sort that would have probably hassled me at school, laughed to my face if not behind my back. Ghost Josh, though, was different. He understood me. Hell, I
was
the only boy for him these days.
“Well, I think we should know.”
“Okay, okay.” I headed back to the center of the room. I managed to find a librarian that didn’t frighten me, a scrawny fellow lost behind thick glasses. He was kind enough to draw me a little map.
Thick tomes in shades of green and rusty brown filled three shelves and dated back to 1940. The one I wanted from 1957 was dog-eared and taped at the corners, looking ready to die. I slowly scrutinized every photo, turned every page, distracted by all the wonderful clothes. I almost forgot what I was looking for until I saw his face again.
I found Josh in one of the early photographs, wearing the same jacket, having that same suggestion of a smile. He stood against a brick wall along with a couple of the other guys in the football team. I froze when I saw the picture, expecting the image to rise up and reform into my ghost. The page felt cool to the touch, not as much as Josh himself felt, but a reminder of him nonetheless.
He was there five times, a mark I took to mean he was popular. My favorite shot was the simple junior class picture, with a deeper grin and hair slicked back. I became hard just thinking of him. The last one in the book had him standing next to another student, a smaller guy with sharp, handsome features. I noted how Josh’s arm draped around the other boy’s shoulder, the fingertips almost touching the other boy’s neck. Both smiled, and Josh looked at the other boy rather than the camera. I felt instantly jealous. Last night when he asked me if I was a virgin, Josh had suggested he had far more experience. This seemed proof of that. I closed the yearbook, ready to leave.
Trace was sitting on the floor, still reading when I returned.
“How goes it, Kolchak?” I asked her.
“So-so.” Trace smoothed out an errant lock of hair from in front of her eyes. “The book doesn’t always make sense. Maybe the author was nuts. Anyway, he sometimes says ghosts are nothing more than memories which a medium can tap into. But then in other places he lists a whole variety of spirits.” She turned a page. “Apparitions. Black dogs. Corpse candles.”
“So wait, I’ll be haunted by roadkill next?”
“Cute.” She held out a hand for help standing up. “I wish there was more on the subject.” She gestured at the stacks. “But after these two books,” she took from me the one I had looked over, “the rest are on animal magnetism, fairy faiths, and crystals. Damn it, if we lived in New Orleans, we’d have a decent occult library.”
I chuckled. “If we lived in New Orleans, I’d be working on my third ghost boyfriend by now.”
We ordered hot soup at the diner off Rt. 47. During the day, the patch of road where I had first seen Josh looked different: just another stretch of Jersey highway
The trip to the library had given me some answers but opened up even more questions—none of which I wanted to consider much. My head hurt, my sinuses complained. I massaged my cheeks just below the eyes.
Trace read her book. I tried with mine, but it all took place in Wales and I quickly lost interest. The paper placemat under the bowl of cream of chicken was decorated with Halloween clip art.
“Heh, that’s what I want him to make me.” I broke up a packet of crackers into the bowl. I stabbed at them with my spoon until they sank.
Trace looked up from the page. “Hmm?”
“Your brother. Would be cool if he made me a jack o’lantern.” I glanced down at my fingers remembering the feel of the clay he brought to the dinner table. A few crumbs clung to the tips and I brushed them off.
“Sure. He’d like that.”
The notion of someone bothering to make me a present was the first good thought of the day. That quickly soured though, when I realized that he’d probably make anyone who asked a sculpture. I wasn’t sure why, but I wished that he’d make a special exception just for me.