Ghost Bully

by Brian Corley

  “Seph, Laura from marketing is here!” I yelled from across the sanctuary.

  Seph gave me an embarrassed wave of acknowledgment. What are you embarrassed about, Seph? No one can see us.

  Back to Laura—she was crying. Did I have a chance with Laura from marketing? This—this is my biggest regret.

  Max.

  Max’s head was bowed, and he had his arm around my mom and was comforting her. My heart broke as I watched her and my sister Taylor hold each other’s hand and cry. We lost our dad when we were younger, and now they had to go through this with me. Damn, it wasn’t fair.

  Max looked over, almost as though he was looking at me.

  But he wasn’t looking at me.

  He was looking at Laura from marketing. Hands off, Max, you sonuvabitch! He gave up trying to make eye contact with her after a few seconds and went back to comforting my mom. There you go, Max, back into best-friend territory.

  A massive pipe organ dominated the front of the sanctuary at St. Raphael’s, only making room in the middle for a stained-glass installation depicting an angel with a sword above his head. I would say he looked like Seph, but that’s probably a little too on the nose. I was probably just a little starstruck, having met my first angel, so I thought every angel was him or something.

  The organ played “Shall We Gather at the River.” I hate that song. I’ve always hated that song. Who chose this playlist? I scanned the room again. An old friend here, Allison over there—nice of her to show up. She was handing her card over to my cousin.

  I noticed Zoe and the Psy-kicks right around the time Father Chandler cleared his throat and the room fell silent.

  “Thank you all for being here, even in this tragic time, it’s good to be around those we love …”

  Then he said a bunch of other things, people cried, it was moving. I was ready to go, so I floated back to Seph.

  “You worried about your friends?” Seph asked.

  I nodded.

  “Don’t. Death comes for us all.”

  I shrugged. “Not you.”

  “Eh. You know what I mean. Come on, it’s not so bad. You can fly, wear whatever you want—”

  “Alright, you make a good point.”

  “Besides, they’ll be here soon enough.”

  “What?!”

  “Sorry. Sorry. Bad concept of time over here, I’m billions of years old. A couple months doesn’t seem like a long time for me.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Just kidding,” he said with a chuckle. “You ready?” he asked.

  I nodded an affirmative and faded out.

  I faded in again that night and looked for Willard, but he wasn’t at home. I decided to tour the neighborhood to see if I could help someone else like I did last night with Angela. It didn’t take too long before I was drawn to a house a couple streets away. This time it was a guy about my age. I listened to his story for half an hour or so, and pretty soon his door reappeared for him too. He thanked me and moved on. Good deed done.

  With that behind me, I wanted to try to have some fun, so I decided to check out the scene on Sixth Street, a strip full of bars, like Bourbon Street in New Orleans where people go to get hammered and make bad decisions. It was a real shit show, and everyone loved it.

  I decided to take the scenic route rather than just blink over, so I took to the air at about fifty miles per hour.

  I’d always liked Austin. Growing up, we’d drive over to get new clothes for school. In college, we would travel over to go out and have a good time. I had good memories of the city, and it was a sight to behold from the air. I swooped down and hit the sidewalk at a perfect pace, right at the corner of Congress and Sixth. I’d taken maybe four steps before I heard a voice beside me.

  “You’re a little overdressed, aren’t you?”

  It was Seph.

  “Hey man,” I said, patting him on the shoulder as I changed from my blue suit into some jeans and a pearl-snap button-down. This ghost clothing thing is cool.

  “Heard about what you did earlier, Jonah. That’s good. That’s really good. I’m proud of you.”

  It was early still for Sixth Street to get going, but I noticed there were just as many ghosts out as there were people—and they were having a good time. Up and down the sidewalk they went, laughing and drinking.

  I was confused. I hadn’t had to eat or drink anything as a ghost the past few nights, not to mention go to the bathroom. It was kind of great, to be honest.

  “They’re not actually drinking,” Seph said.

  He can read my mind. I bet he’s reading my mind.

  “It’s just an affectation,” he continued. “What else are you supposed to do out here?”

  I shrugged in agreement, and we kept walking until I heard music that sounded a little louder than what was coming from the bars. It seemed to be coming from a weird place though, behind a wall and not a door. Seph smiled and nodded toward the source of the music. We went through the wall—and the front door—of a phantasmagorical club.

  The place was packed, and a band played on a stage at the opposite end of the club from us. Seph pointed to a ghost guy surrounded by a group of smiling ghost women.

  “That guy,” Seph said, pointing again at each word, “that guy is great. He made this. In the physical world, this is just another junk bar with a light-up floor playing the same music you would find anywhere, but this guy … he can make an entire scene.”

  “Cool,” I yelled over the music. “So does Stevie Ray Vaughn ever get up? Will I get to hear him?”

  Seph shook his head and ushered me outside again so we could talk instead of yell. “Look man, Stevie moved on. He lived a complete and fulfilled life. The guys you see in there are great—don’t get me wrong—they’re amazing. But those guys are the ones that didn’t make it for some reason. Some OD’d. Some killed themselves. Some quit music, took regular jobs, and regretted it for the rest of their lives.”

  He walked me down the street.

  “Most, like ninety-nine percent, of the people you’ve read about from Austin moved on. Ann Richards was gone as soon as she saw that door. She led a great life and was fulfilled. She probably wouldn’t even care that they named a bridge after her. Lady Bird Johnson? Same deal. Gone. She led a complete life and left the world better off having been here.

  “This town is beautiful because of what she did. Town Lake—Lady Bird Lake—it was a cooling area for the power plant, just a dammed-off part of the river. She planted trees all around it, and now it looks like it’s been that way forever. Trust me—it didn’t always look like that. You get what I’m saying to you?”

  I didn’t. I mean, I understood what he was saying, but I wasn’t sure why he pulled me out to say it.

  Seph punched my shoulder. “You want to go see a movie?”

  I did, actually.

  “Yeah, let’s go see a movie.”

  We floated over to a movie theater on Sixth that was owned by a local chain of cinemas. They sold food and alcohol there and had a good reputation for their choices in films. We found a couple empty seats in the back of one of the theaters and acted as though we were just ordinary people watching a movie.

  It was pretty good. It took place in space and had decent dialogue and great special effects. About thirty minutes in, the guy next to me got bored and started spouting off jokes whenever things got quiet. It didn’t look like the girl he brought was too impressed with his observations, but that didn’t stop him from making them.

  After about the tenth comment, I balled up my rage and tapped his beer glass over into his lap. The girl he was with, probably relieved to finally have something to laugh at, did so, but with a bit more gusto than necessary. He stood up, arms out, and set the glass back upright. Searching for napkins without success, he left to go to the bathroom—I guess. He didn’t come
back.

  I hate it when people talk in the theater. Seph casually looked over, gave me a thumbs-up, and focused back on the screen.

  We caught another movie afterward as it was still early for us, and frankly, I was really into seeing movies for free. It was a swashbuckler, and I floated to the middle of the theater to watch it in optimum comfort.

  A voice emerged from the back. “You make a better door than you do a window, pal.”

  I sunk down to an open seat close by Seph, who leaned forward so I could see him, his mouth open and eyes wide as he gave me a condescending thumbs-up while waggling his eyebrows and nodding his head in the affirmative.

  “So, you thought we were the only ones to think about seeing a movie?” Seph said, mocking me on our way out of the theater. “Opening weekend too,” he said and laughed.

  “I thought it would be comfortable.”

  “It looked comfortable—for about thirty seconds—until the entire theater turned against you.”

  “Asshole,” a girl jeered from a small group floating by us.

  I nodded my head with my hands out to indicate I was sorry. The group floated on, and we continued to walk our way back down Sixth headed toward South Congress.

  “Ever been to the Paramount?” Seph asked.

  “Yeah, of course,” I said.

  “Not sure if you’re into this, but they have an amazing orchestra playing tonight with a couple hundred years’ worth of accumulated talent.”

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  “OK, so the guys in the club we saw earlier are really good. Really good. Would totally make it as a world-class band today, but they’re drawing on less than about a hundred years’ worth of song-writing style and accumulated knowledge of those instruments. Not to mention there were only a couple guitars, a bass, and a drum set up there. Now—”

  Seph stopped and hovered over the sidewalk.

  “Think about an orchestra. Hundreds of years of material and knowledge to draw from, right?”

  He started moving again.

  “This guy Karnowsky was traveling through town in the 1860s and died here of pneumonia. He could have been one of the greats. Amazing composer and conductor, his life was cut way too short. He put together a symphony sometime around 1870, and they played in the Capitol building until the Paramount was built in 1915. He’s been recruiting talent ever since, and you will not believe the sound they make. Seriously, if you’ve never heard a live orchestra, it will change you.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Seph was too excited to stop going on about how great this Karnowsky guy was. He wrote his own music, performed the classics, made improvements to the classics. Oh my. Can’t wait.

  My attention found its way to my surroundings. It was late enough that the police blocked off the streets so that people could stumble around basically wherever they wanted to with a significantly reduced chance of being hit by a car. The undead mixed with the living and everyone was having a good time.

  It almost felt like a theme-park ride. Ghosts of the Central Texas Party Strip: Dead Men Tell Plenty of Tales. Really, they won’t stop talking.

  Seph was still rambling on about Karnowsky when we reached Sixth and Congress. I seemed to catch the attention of a beautiful girl across the street. Her dark hair was tied up in a high ponytail, and she wore black from head to toe: black motorcycle jacket over a black top, cool faded black jeans, and black boots with a heel. She had amazing style, and there was something about her that I felt like I’d never seen before.

  We made eye contact, and I smiled with some sort of newfound undead confidence. She nodded back, and a dimple appeared on her left cheek. I tapped Seph as casually as I could, and for some reason, as though I thought she could hear me from across the street, I said under my breath, “Seph, do you see that girl?”

  Seph noticed the direction I was looking and casually glanced that way, then stared for a couple seconds.

  “No,” he said and slipped back into whatever he was saying about Karnowsky.

  A bus passed between us, and she was gone. Just like a movie. I hated movies like that; they don’t make any sense. That never happens in real life.

  Seph gently pulled me in the direction of our destination, at least I was fairly confident it was the right direction due to the brightly lit sign that read PARAMOUNT in front of us.

  It was well past midnight now, and the theater had been closed for hours. We entered a packed house of ghostly apparitions and searched for some empty seats. I observed that it was perfectly fine etiquette to float up to find a space to sit, but you had to be in a seat to enjoy the show (no spiritual loitering like my episode in the theater). We found two open seats in the upper balcony and floated our way toward them.

  I sat next to a guy dressed in a top hat and tails straight out of the ’20s who was with a woman sporting a short, bobbed haircut and wearing a flapper-style dress and a long string of pearls. Seph leaned in and said, quietly enough to be understood as a whisper but loudly enough to be overheard, “Hey Jonah, do you think the couple next to you lived during the ’20s?”

  The man in the top hat swallowed and gave us an appropriately smarmy side-eye.

  “Maybe I should be in my Greek-style robe and sandals,” Seph continued.

  The guy turned his head to look at us. Seph stared back, smiling, and whispered, “I’m billions of years old.” Then he cracked up laughing.

  The man and his date floated to another location, giving us as many passive-aggressive glances as they could.

  “So what did you wear billions of years ago?” I asked, genuinely curious, and now free to talk a little louder than a whisper.

  “Shut up, it’s starting,” Seph replied as the room hushed to the tapping of a baton on a music stand.

  After three and a half hours of music with no intermission (why would we need one—we don’t eat, drink, or pee), I can honestly say I’ve never heard music like that before. Great … hooks? I don’t know what word you would use to refer to a melody that stays with you from that type of arrangement, but I hummed what seemed like classics to me on the way out of the theater.

  Also, it struck me—as a newly minted ghost—that getting out of a theater is so much faster when anyone can go in whatever direction they want. Up, down, sideways, slantways—there were as many exits as directions in a great glass Wonkavator. No more waiting in the aisles like cattle. Instant egress.

  Seph clapped me on my shoulder as we hovered out over Congress. “Alright man, that was great. Did you have fun?”

  “Hell yes, that was a good time. Karnowsky is amazing! Thanks for that.”

  “Good, good. Alright man, I need to get to work a little earlier than usual, so I’m going to head on out.”

  “Work?”

  “Yeah man, work. Remember I said I was in charge of this area? I’m kind of in the military here. Most of our work takes place during the day when people are all up and going, so I can usually let some of my lieutenants handle things if I need them to at night.”

  “When do you sleep?” I wondered out loud.

  “I don’t need to. Not bad, right?” he said, then bolted.

  It was nice out. I would guess it was on the cooler side for a summer night—I guessed because I didn’t feel temperature anymore, another welcome perk to the ghost life. I decided to head home, taking the slow, scenic route again, floating south out of downtown, over the Colorado River/Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake (all of these names apply), down Congress and over Ben White, and finally down to my little neighborhood. I wasn’t tired—I wasn’t sure if I would ever feel tired again—but I decided to lie down on my bed and watch some television. It was early morning now, so I could probably catch up on some news. I faded out as I caught up on the world’s events.

  Chapter 13

  I faded into a terrible smell, which—living
or dead—is never a good thing. It was also the first time I’d smelled something as a ghost, so I was immediately on guard.

  My doorway to the great beyond stood like a monolith in my room, beaming its promising white light, but I felt compelled to get out of there as quickly as possible. Nausea hit even though I had no stomach and nothing to expel. I carefully made my way out of my room and into the hall where I quickly realized I wasn’t alone. Candles and incense burned around the house—acrid smoke in every room but one: the kitchen. So, naturally, that’s where I went.

  There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, were seven familiar faces: Zoe, Lin, Quinton, um … the rest of the Psy-kicks, and Max. Six of the group of seven looked nervous—tight shoulders, shifting stances, eyes closed but opening every so often to check around the circle. One of them pulled their sweater tighter around them, and I recalled how the room cooled whenever we communicated with Willard.

  Zoe, as usual, was centered, determined, and at peace—humming a quiet mantra. The peach sword was back with her and sat across her knees, her middle fingers and thumbs touching, hands resting on opposite ends of the sword. She began to call for someone. I sat still, listening, waiting, and watching.

  Oh … she was calling for me. I remembered how it was done.

  “Spirit or spirits, come. Speak to us,” Zoe invited.

  I saw the ashes and began to draw with my finger but quickly had a better idea. I blinked to my room and ghosted a pen out of my work bag, then blinked back. I began to write in the ashes.

  Hi.

  It wasn’t exactly as neat as I was going for, but it was better than the chicken scratches we endured from Willard, so I was happy to add a little value to everyone’s lives.

  “Willard, is that you?” Zoe asked.

  I thought it best to move it along. They were my friends, after all. Well, Max was my friend. I paid Zoe and the Psy-kicks. I mean, they did show up at my funeral, so maybe we were friends?