The Hungry Ghost

by Dalena Storm

  “He took the car back out to pick up groceries,” Carly said as she hoisted up Rosa, who had been tugging at her shirt. “Is this what you’ve made so far?” she asked, motioning to the two dishes of salad, a basket of rolls, and a pie sitting on the counter by the stove.

  Bianca smiled proudly. “Some of it. I’ve got cookies in the oven and the rest is out back in the other room, where Jeff’s cooling the drinks.” As she walked, Bianca took Rosa by the hand and guided Carly to the sunroom. When they arrived at the buffet table set opposite the snow-covered garden outside, Carly eyed the feast and let out a short laugh.

  “Oh my. I should tell Tom not to bother with groceries after all. We could probably eat for a week with all of this and never run out of food!”

  “Maybe, but more doesn’t hurt,” Bianca beamed, wiping her hands on her apron. She took Rosa’s little fingers and wiped off the stickiness on them, too. “What did you get into? What’s all over your hands?” Bianca asked the girl, squatting down to her level.

  Rosa avoided Bianca’s eyes, a shy smile spreading across her face as she dug into the pockets of her jeans and pulled out a small handful of bright candies.

  “Skittles,” she said, showing her grandmother the brightly colored candy. The sugar coating was melting, leaving trails of red, orange, and green on her small palm. Rosa let them slip back into her pocket, all except one—a yellow one—which she popped into her mouth before licking her hand thoroughly with her tongue. The girl had always had a sweet tooth.

  “Not before dinner,” Bianca scolded lightly, taking the hand and wiping it off again. “And you’ll destroy your pants. Come with me and we can find a better place to keep those.”

  “Is Sam here yet?” Carly asked, the edge of her voice laced with hesitancy. “I haven’t seen her in ages…not since she was just barely conscious. She seemed a little zombie-like back then, though.”

  Bianca knew Carly meant no harm by her comment, so she tried not to let it bother her. She’d been mentally preparing for this since she brought Sam home last week, and she’d just have to face the reactions that were coming—the stares, the whispers, and the judgment she was sure would fill their eyes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Peter!”

  Bianca’s false cheer was so convincing that Peter almost believed it. He accepted her embrace with goodwill as he stepped through the open door and into Sam's parents' house. “What can I get you to drink? We have soda, juice, seltzer with lime…”

  “Lime and seltzer would be great,” he said, followed with an obligatory, “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “To you, too,” Bianca returned, sweeping gracefully into the kitchen and away from him. The house smelled delicious—of cinnamon and apples and roasted turkey. The cheer of it made Peter choke up. In a way, this had once belonged to him. These people, this home—they had once been his family, too. It was terrible how a divorce could make you feel like only half of yourself, like all the best parts of you had been stripped away. Then again, Peter had never deserved those parts, anyway. He’d known that, and so had Sam. She’d probably always known it.

  “Where is she?” he asked when Bianca brought him his drink, tall and fizzing, filled with ice and capped with a wedge of lime. He could have gone and helped her with it. He could have, but he hadn’t. Strike one, Peter.

  Bianca produced a patient smile and relinquished the drink, but there was something behind her eyes Peter couldn’t name. "At the table in the sunroom, eating appetizers. Want to follow me and grab one of those veggie trays?” she answered, moving away again. “I’m trying to encourage the girls to eat something in vegetable form.”

  Peter trotted into the kitchen and retrieved a tray of sliced carrots, cucumber, and cauliflower heads. “If you’ve got any toothpicks, I bet we could make them into a kind of sculpture…” he started, but Bianca had disappeared through the doorway, ignoring him.

  She was busy, Peter consoled himself. Stressed. After dinner and a few drinks, she’d relax. She’d see he really was making a change—that he didn’t bring anyone down now, because he was on his way up.

  The room was filled with the noise of voices. Jeff was loud, and Sam’s brother Tom was even louder. Both were laughing and moving in a way that indicated they were already aboard the happy train and on their way to Tipsyville, where everything was warm and the light was fuzzy and the beer tasted sweeter. Peter immediately felt emasculated in their presence, aware of the scrawniness of his arms and the roundness of his belly. It was hard not to see how much they must hate him clinging to Sam, a girl who could hold her own in an argument, drink beer with the guys, and make raunchy jokes that sent them all spinning.

  Peter didn’t measure up. Or, he hadn’t measured up. He was different now.

  When Peter saw Sam he noticed that she’d developed a scrawniness of her own. She sat hunched over in her chair, frantically shoveling handfuls of cheese into her mouth. There was an unmistakable roundness to her spine, but it seemed to affect her midsection alone. Her arms and shoulders were thin, almost emaciated, and with her stringy legs and bloated belly she looked one of those starving children on television with protruding stomachs. Peter thought—as he did every time he saw Sam eat—that there was something disturbingly animalistic about her. It was grotesque, but he still wanted her despite it. Peter wanted Sam desperately. He couldn't help it. She'd put on weight, but then hell, so had he. That didn’t change who she was inside, did it?

  Peter placed the tray of vegetables on the table in front of where the two younger girls were playing. “Look at this,” he said, forcing his voice to sound excited over vegetables. “We’ve got some tasty treats here!”

  Rosa perked up at that, lifting her head and craning her chin to get a look. Her attention was distracted, however, by Sam. “Why does she have to eat like that?” she demanded. “It’s so gross!”

  “Hey, be nice,” said Peter, but Rosa had already returned to her game. He tried to catch Bianca’s eye, to shrug, as in, Kids! What can you do? But she wasn’t facing him, and all he was able to manage was a quick hello from Carly as she tried to monitor the girls’ activities. He gave a wave and a nod to the men before assuming the place he really wanted to be: the open seat next to Sam.

  “Hey, Sammy,” he said, affecting a boisterous cheer. “Isn’t this a happy Thanksgiving? You awake and all your family around to celebrate?”

  Sam’s father and brother glanced at Peter briefly before resuming their private conversation. This was the moment in the old days where he would have said, “Enjoying the brewskies?” and helped himself to a bottle, tipping into a carelessness that made socializing more fluid while he pretended at a machismo he picked up on by following the others’ cues. Lean forward. Chest out. Smack the table.

  It was kind of fun, posturing with the guys, once he got the hang of it, but it wasn’t really him. And Sam had loved him because he wasn’t them. He was just himself: an oddball doofus, a little bit sappy, and madly in love.

  “I’ll just steal a piece of this,” Peter said, reaching for a toothpick to spear into a cube of cheddar. Sam’s eyes tracked his hand as he took the piece, but otherwise her eating pattern was uninterrupted. She’d cleared away most of the cheese. There were only a few stray cubes at the edges of the tray, one of which Peter managed to stab. When he reached for a second, though, Sam grabbed for a toothpick, raised it menacingly, and bared her teeth at him.

  “Okay, okay,” Peter said, backing off. “Guess you must be hungry. It’s all yours.”

  Sam consumed what was left of the cheese and then raised the tray to her mouth as she had in the hospital, licking away any traces that were left. Peter should probably have averted his eyes like the others, but he just stared, transfixed, tracking the movement of her tongue. What the hell had happened to her? It made him angry. This was so unlike Sam—she had to be fucking with them!

  When she was finished with the tray, Sam’s eyes lifted but didn’t meet Peter’s gaze. Instead, she l
ooked his body up and down in a manner that gave Peter the unsettling sensation that he was a piece of meat and Sam the butcher. “Hungry,” she whispered in her new throaty voice.

  “Yes,” Peter agreed. He gulped and tried to swallow away the fear that had threatened to eclipse his anger. There was nothing to be afraid of. Sam was just still recovering. “I’m hungry, too. I’ve hardly eaten all day.”

  Sam released the tray and reached for Peter. Instinctively, he pulled back, his fear rushing up his throat like vomit. His retreat was buffered by the arrival of Bianca, Carly, and Tom, who arrived in the room carrying steaming dishes of turkey and gravy and mashed potatoes.

  “Time to eat,” Bianca cheered, oblivious to the sudden tension between Sam and Peter. “Get it while it’s hot!”

  This proved to be a distraction for both Peter and Sam, and they tucked into the food with vigor. Peter rarely cooked for himself. It was a real treat to eat home cooking, especially after months of microwave dinners and bachelor takeout. The turkey was tender and juicy, the gravy thick, and the potatoes fluffy. The green bean casserole was crispy and creamy, though the corn was a little too buttery, not that anyone would mind. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a drink with a little kick to it, something to round out the flavors of the food. The lime seltzer Bianca had prepared for him was too fizzy. It lacked substance. Peter did his best to ignore it, concentrating on the food.

  “How’s work?” Tom asked, and Peter perked up between bites to describe how well he was doing at his new job and how he was getting along with his colleagues, and banking some overtime as well.

  “I made some kickass rye bread—Sammy’s old favorite—and they fell all over themselves to use it in the shop. Maybe one of these days I can have my own bakery and really show ‘em how it’s done.”

  “That’s great,” Bianca said, grinning broadly with her teeth, and Peter thought she might really be impressed. “We’ll have to come by and get a loaf.”

  “I’ll give you the employee discount.” Peter punctuated the statement with his fork to show he was serious.

  “Yes,” Sam mumbled, a slight smile creeping along the edges of her lips. Peter looked at her in surprise.

  “Yes, what?” Peter asked, leaning in and trying to catch her eye in his hope to draw something more substantial out of her. "Yes, you'll come to get some bread?"

  Sam’s smile froze and then vanished, leaving her face devoid of expression. She returned to her food without so much as another glance at him, and Peter sighed, trying to pick up the threads of the conversation that had already moved on without him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After her last visit with Sam, Madeline had experienced a chilling revelation, but she didn’t want to accept it. The revelation was this: Sam was gone, and it was Madeline’s fault. In a way, Sam was still here, because she was still talking and moving around. At the same time, it was clear to Madeline that the person she had known as Sam had been replaced by something else—something dark and deceitful. Something deadly, and disturbingly like the hungry ghost she was writing about.

  Still, Madeline didn’t want to jump to any conclusions about what it was that had replaced Sam. To think that writing a story about their lives could have such a dangerous impact bordered on psychotic, and Madeline didn’t want to think she was insane.

  So, instead she was sitting alone on her bed in her dark bedroom with her laptop on her legs, regretting her life choices and feeling indecisive. Bianca had invited her to Sam’s Thanksgiving/Welcome Home party and Madeline thought maybe she should go, if for no other reason than to confirm her hunch about what might have happened to Sam.

  Madeline had gotten dressed, but couldn’t manage to get herself to leave the apartment. How could she go to Sam’s parents’ house and pretend everything was fine? Could no one else see that Sam was going through more than just a spell of strangeness—that she herself was changed, maybe even replaced? Madeline wanted to see Sam, but she wanted nothing to do with whatever had woken up in Sam’s place. She hated feeling helpless, and yet that was what she was. The only thing she seemed able to do was sit at her computer and write, even though that might have been what had caused all this trouble in the first place. Of course, that was simply another borderline crazy thought she didn’t want to accept.

  She reviewed the scene she'd been writing. Madeline had summoned the ghost into the world through her desperate words, but the happy ending she'd been striving for had vanished. In its place had come the grimmest version of the current situation—the one in which Sam was truly, irrevocably gone. In this new version of the story, the hungry ghost had taken possession of Sam and swallowed her whole as it did everything. The climax, Madeline realized, would happen on Thanksgiving—tonight. It was a feast after all. That was when the hungry ghost would get a chance to really feed.

  But even though Madeline felt deep in her bones that something terrible and unavoidable was coming, she couldn’t write about it. Events were building momentum, but she still couldn’t see where they were headed. She was unable to finish the story, and try as she might she couldn’t seem to fill the last empty pages.

  To gain a little perspective, Madeline opened the window, packed the bowl of her glass pipe with freshly ground marijuana, and settled back onto her bed, smoking meditatively. A few minutes later she felt better, clearer, and more lucid. Whatever was going to happen would happen, and she needed to go and meet it—both the inevitable ending of the story and the woman that had once been her fantasy. It was, after all, just a story.

  It was time to let them both go. But first, she had to go and see Sam, to see whether she was really gone or if there was still a way to save things, which meant she had to go and buy some wine. It wouldn’t do to show up to Sam’s party empty-handed.

  Madeline threw on her coat, her hat, and her gloves, and then paused at the door to search for nearby liquor store options on her phone. Sam’s parents lived near Harvard Square, and there was a liquor store still open not too far off her route that she could swing by. The detour shouldn’t take her more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes. She’d be at the party in time for dessert.

  The world outside was pulsing slightly, or maybe that was the result of the pot. As she stepped out into the winter storm, Madeline felt cleansed instantly of the stale inside air. Her first breath cleared her lungs; the second stung her nose.

  Madeline walked, hands in her pockets, until she reached the subway to Harvard Square. The atmosphere was mostly one of high spirits. College kids swayed where they stood, and older couples walked together, carrying parcels in paper bags. Only a few people she saw seemed less than jovial, and those were the lone travelers in worn shoes, making their way to or from work on a commute that hadn’t cared it was a holiday. Madeline tried not to feel guilty when she saw them, but she always did when she saw people unhappy. She had her struggles, but at the same time, she had it easy. Yeah, she’d fallen in love with a woman who’d gotten possessed or gone insane or something equally bizarre during a tragic accident-induced coma. Still, there were worse things that could happen.

  Madeline exited the subway at Harvard Square with her eyes locked on her phone. She navigated familiar streets before finding herself in new territory, beyond the area of the bars that she frequented. Things seemed vaguely familiar as she passed little boutiques, a hole-in-the-wall crepe place, and a Tibetan artifacts shop. According to the map, the liquor store should be just around the corner, one more block south—not too far past Grendel’s, actually.

  She waited at the light. The few other people out and about seemed to be going in the opposite direction, and so when the light changed a cluster of people crossed one way while she crossed the other alone. Passing the corner shop, she noticed it had a funny name.

  “Jimmy’s Used Cat Emporium,” Madeline read aloud, smirking. What a ridiculous name for a store. It was after seven p.m. on Thanksgiving, but the light in the shop was on, and the sign on the door
said it was open. Christmas music was coming from inside, and within dozens of cats roamed freely. Some of them were rather magnificent, sporting thick manes as they perched proudly on tall cat trees. Others were slinky and thin, sliding like shadows through an obstacle course. Some were old and large and sleeping, and at least half a dozen kittens batted balls of yarn against the wall. Madeline was tempted. It looked like a petting zoo. Would it be okay to go in and just pet the cats for a few minutes? Maybe there was one that she needed to meet.

  No, that was silly, Madeline scolded herself. Why in the world would she need to meet a cat? She shook the thought from her mind as she moved past the shop on her way to the liquor store.

  Over the course of the day, Jimmy had found homes for six cats, including Macy Gray, who’d become impatient with her kittens lately and would probably welcome the solitude. Mickey didn’t seem terribly happy about the recent changes in residency, though. She'd been restless all afternoon but didn't want to play. Jimmy tried to pet and soothe her until at last she’d fallen asleep on the windowsill, where she still was now. Soon he’d be celebrating with his little family. He had a turkey waiting in the oven upstairs and he’d left his guitar by the door in anticipation of some after-dinner serenading.