The Ghost Sequences

by A. C. Wise

  Jump. Wind stirs a tarp, sifting dust and garbage and revealing a hand, pale fingers curled inward like a dead spider.

  No, George thinks, please no, no more. He can’t take it, not this, but he can’t close his eyes either, he can’t help but see.

  On screen, Mary, Evelyn, Eva, Eve pulls the bedside drawer open all the way, leaving the gun within easy reach. George’s heart beats through his skin. He rubs a hand over his face, stubble rasping against his palm. He needs a shave. He needs to sober up, leave town. He needs to turn the projector off and not watch the end of the film.

  He pours himself another drink instead.

  Cut, and the angle of view changes. A rain-slick street, which looks terribly familiar. A woman, running, dark curls bouncing. He tells himself she could be anyone. It doesn’t have to be Mary Evelyn in The White Canary Sings, even though the shot, the pacing, the beats are all the same.

  The woman’s heels strike the pavement, loud as a gunshot. Her breath is ragged. She never once turns to look over her shoulder, but there’s something behind her. Someone behind her, except George knows he’s the only one here, watching her run straight for the dead-end of an alleyway.

  And that’s where the scene should end, where The White Canary Sings cut to black, leaving the wannabe-starlet’s death to the imagination. This time, the camera doesn’t turn away. It follows the woman into the alley. No lights, only the faint, murky glow coming from overhead between the two buildings. Almost like it’s real. George strains to see through the pouring rain.

  Cut, back to the bedroom scene. Dead girls everywhere. Ghosts between each frame. Sex wrapped up with the violence as the woman straddles the man on the bed, rocks her hips, tilts her head back so her dark curls spill between her shoulder blades, but never quite far enough that her face comes fully into the frame.

  In the alley, flesh collides in a different way. A ragged scream, a wet, heart-rending sound.

  Black. The image on the wall judders and disappears. The film spins on the reel, making a hollow click-click-clicking sound.

  George jumps to his feet. There has to be more. He has to know how it ends.

  He catches the reel, slicing his hand as the metal edge spins past him. He yanks and the projector falls over with a crash and the pop of shattered glass. The end of the film on the reel is burned. The final scenes, whatever they were, turned to ash. Did he do that, or was it always that way?

  He lets the reel fall, film crackling and fluttering its way to the ground. The movie remains, all around him, bleeding off the celluloid and into the real. His office is filled with ghosts. Women with hollow eyes, bruises and cut skin. Women sliced open, their throats purpled with crushing thumbprints, their tongues ripped out and their fingers chopped off.

  George tries to back away, but there’s nowhere to go. His heels strike the desk behind him and he whirls. He pulls open drawers, smearing the handles with blood from his cut palm until he finds the silver lighter monogrammed just for him. The wheel hisses, thuds dully. A spark. He falls to his knees and holds the edge of the film to the hungry flame.

  The acrid smell of burning celluloid fills the room. George chokes on it, and he’s never smelled anything more beautiful. Tears stream down his cheeks, but he’s laughing, too. Laughing and weeping and breathing in the smoke as Mary, Eva, Lillian, Eve, and all her ghosts burn.

  *

  Hollywood Hills

  It’s blue up here, in the dark, and everything below me is stars. No one ever sleeps in Hollywood, but they dream. I wonder what Mama would have thought of it if she’d stayed, if she’d kept running instead of turning back home.

  It’s peaceful up here with the wind and the smell of pine, cool water, and the desert—all those haunted places I passed through to get here. Down in the valley, down among all the glittering lights, I’m there, too. I’m up on the screen, caught in a thousand camera flashbulbs, pinned and framed and famous, just like I said I would be. There are whole constellations spread out in the dark, and I’m a star. I’m going to live forever. Just you watch. Just you see.

  Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story

  On the trestle bridge, a boy and girl stand side by side. They can just see the water through the trees. Directly below the bridge, abandoned rails curve gently to their vanishing point. Weeds grow between the cracked ties, and two children walk, kicking stones along the track.

  On the bridge, the girl looks at the water. Lesser Creek. It seems familiar somehow. The greenery does its best to swallow the sparkle and shine, keeping the light at bay. But all along the bank, running parallel to the tracks, muddy paths cut through the growth, and run down to the water’s edge. Hoof-paths, paw-paths, and foot-paths, carve gaps in the green. They are made for stolen sips and stolen kisses, midnight swims, and midnight drownings.

  She remembers fireflies.

  Maybe it wasn’t this bend of the creek, but some other. She wants to remember blue shadows between the trees, and the secret-wet smell of earth, bare feet trailed in cool water, and luminescent bugs flashing Morse-code transmissions from another world. And so she does. Who’s to say her truth is wrong?

  “It wasn’t always like this, was it?” Memory nags, and she asks the question, wishing she didn’t have to break the silence that has stretched between them for so long.

  The boy beside her watches the children’s dwindling figures, following the rails.

  “Do you think we could catch them all?” he asks.

  For a moment she thinks he must be talking about the fireflies she wants to badly to remember. But his past isn’t her past; his memory is other-wise, and as inconsistent as hers. Who knows what meaning the creek and the rails hold for him?

  Side by side on the bridge, the boy and girl are roughly the same age: fifteen, sliding backward to ten and upward to twenty, depending on who is looking. It is the age they’ve always been, for as long as they can remember. Which isn’t very long.

  She remembers fireflies, and sometimes, she remembers drowning.

  She looks at the boy side-wise, wondering how he died. If he died. Have they had this conversation before? She picks up a stone, weighing it a moment in her palm before letting it fly. It pings the steel, reverberating like the memory of trains.

  Maybe one of the children looks back at the sound, and maybe they don’t. Everyone knows these woods, that bridge, these rails, that water, are haunted.

  The girl picks up another stone, frowns, and closes it in her hand.

  “Will we bet, then?” she says. This seems familiar, too.

  “Yes, a bet,” the boy agrees. “And a tally, on that big rock in the water.”

  He points through the trees; she knows the stone—a big boulder planted firm in the creek’s middle, dividing the current.

  “At the end of the summer, we’ll count up the marks, and see who wins,” the boy says.

  A cicada drones. The sound means heat to her, summer-sweat and irritation so sharp she can taste it. She shivers all the same. It won’t take much for the boy to win, between the airless nights and the far worse days, the sun beating down on everything and pushing people to the edge. She bites her lip, but she’s already nodding.

  The rails, stretching one way lead to the horizon, and in the other, they lead to a town. It nestles around a vast crossroad, and maybe, for that alone, it’s cursed.

  Could it be the town that calls them, again and again, this boy, and this girl, in their myriad forms? Or does the town exist because they come here again and again to stand on this bridge, over these rails, beside that water, to bet on the town’s souls?

  The town has never borne her any love, the girl thinks. Not for the boy at her side, either. She should take joy in the reaping, but she never does. There is a hunger in her, a hole deep at her core; it is in her nature to wish that hole full.

  She isn’t greedy. One soul, just one soul, ripe and sweet as the last summer peach, might last her all winter long. She looks side-long at the boy beside her, and breat
hes out slow.

  “Deal,” she says.

  “Deal.” The boy spits in his hand.

  The devil’s own twinkle shines in his eye. They shake on it, and go their separate ways.

  And so the summer begins.

  *

  The first time you see her, you think: She isn’t real. Because you’ve lived in Lesser Creek your whole life, and you’ve never seen her—never even seen a girl like her—before.

  Your second thought is: She’s a ghost. Because everyone knows these woods are haunted, and didn’t a girl drown here years ago? All the stories say so.

  She’s sitting on a wooden bridge over the narrowest part of the creek. Her legs dangle over the water; one hand touches the topmost rail, fingers curled as if to haul up and flee at any moment. Her hair screens her face, but you know she’s chewing her lip in concentration. Just like you know exactly what color her eyes are, even though you haven’t seen them yet. They are every color you can imagine, and so is her hair. Because even looking at her full-on in the sunlight, you can’t tell anything about her for sure.

  She is definitely a ghost.

  You sit next to her, legs dangling beside hers, close, but not touching. Your mismatched laces trail from scuffed shoes. She doesn’t flee, and so you say, “Hey.”

  You say it carefully, not looking her way. You think of a deer, ready to be startled, though she’s nothing like that at all. She could swallow you whole.

  Where she sits, the air is cooler, like the deepest part of the creek, where the sunlight doesn’t touch. Viewed side-wise, you can see right through her. Her skin is blue, her hair moonlight, and you just know, when she finally turns your way, her eyes will be stones, and her will lips stitched closed. And you decide that’s okay.

  Then she does turn, dropping her hand from the top rail to the sun-warmed wood, almost touching yours. And she’s as real and solid as you.

  “Hey,” she says, and smiles.

  Nothing changes. She isn’t real. She can’t be. Because girls like her don’t smile at you. They frown, and they’re suddenly very busy, always with somewhere else to be when you’re around.

  This girl smiles at you. So she must be a ghost, even though the sunlight catches the fine down on her legs and turns it crystalline. You know it’s a lie. The hair brushing her shoulders, the shadow in the hollow of her throat, the peach-fuzz lobes of her un-pierced ears, and the scab on her left knee—these are all a skin stretched over the truth of her. She is a hungry ghost, and she will devour your soul.

  And you decide that’s okay, too.

  She tells you a name that isn’t hers. You give her one in return. The water murmurs, and you talk about nothing. Time stretches to infinity.

  Maybe, just maybe, her fingers brush yours when she finally stands up to leave.

  “Will I see you again?” you say, hoping your voice isn’t too full of need.

  She doesn’t answer, but her teeth flash bright in a nice, even row.

  And so your summer begins.

  *

  The first murder occurred on a Tuesday. Or rather, it was discovered on a Tuesday, but the body had been cooling over two weeks, based on the flies buzzing over the sticky blood, and the discarded pupa cases nestled in the once-warm cavities.

  Crime of passion. Scratches, bruises, evidence of a struggle, but none of a break-in. Spouses—one dead, one fled.

  On a Thursday, the missing spouse turns up two counties over. A confession ensues.

  Outside the county Sheriff’s Office, the boy from the bridge leans against sun-warmed brick, and smiles. He chews bubblegum, shattering-hard, packaged flat in wax paper with trading cards. Collectors throw away the gum, keep cards. Not him. He savors the dusty-blandness, the unyielding material worked by teeth and tongue until it bends to his will. He throws the cards away, precisely because he knows they will be collectors’ items one day.

  He listens through an impossible thickness of brick, plaster, and glass to the blubbered admission of guilt. There are tears; he can smell them, even over the cooked-hot pavement crusted with shoe-flattened filth. It smells of summer.

  Sweat and stress and a tipping point—all the ingredients he needs. A beery night, a whispered word, a suggestion of infidelity. A death born of rage. This is the way it’s always been. His finger, the feather, the insubstantial straw snapping the camel’s spine.

  The boy pushes away from the wall. Struts, hands shoved deep in too-tight, acid-washed pockets. Hair, slicked-back. He might have a comb tucked into one pocket, or a pack of cigarettes rolled in one white sleeve, depending on the slant of light that catches him.

  He commands the sidewalk. Dogs, children, old men, fall into step behind him. Old women tsk from the safety of their porches. Young girls, well, it’s best not to say what they do.

  He heads west, strolling past scrub-weed and abandoned lots to the fullness of wild fields, cuts left to the creek.

  He shucks shoes, wades in, and lays a hand against the massive boulder splitting the water. It is graffiti-strewn, perfect for sunbathing. Perfect for other things, too.

  The boy chooses a sharp-edged stone from the current, and makes a single mark on the boulder’s side—a white line on the grey.

  His summer has just begun.

  *

  This is what the world tells us about girls: They are always hungry.

  They are cruel.

  They will suck out your soul, and leave a dead, dry husk behind.

  They will laugh at your pain.

  That’s why we stitch up their mouths with black thread. We cut out their eyes, and replace them with stones to stay safe from their tears.

  This is what the world tells us about boys: They are hungry, too.

  They grab food with both hands, stuff it in their mouths, careless of what they eat, never bothering to chew.

  They are too loud.

  They break everything around them, without even noticing it is there.

  That’s why we catch them by the tail, so they won’t turn around and bite. That’s why we cut off their heads, fill their mouths with dirt, and bury them at the crossroads. That’s why we burn their hearts, because unlike girls, we know they’ll never feel a thing.

  It is all true, and every word is a lie. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you about ghosts or devils.

  *

  The second time you see her, you think: This can’t be real.

  Because it’s too perfect. It’s the Fourth of July, and you’re at yet another bend in the creek. (With her, it’s always water.)

  The grass is dry, but it remembers rain. The creek—angry here—smells of mud, death, and time. Things have drowned here. Things have been swept away and forgotten. Things sink, and sometimes they rise. But you take the water for granted; you always have.

  A bonfire leaps high, smelling of meat and burnt sugar and wood. There are fireworks, fractured light captured and doubled, each boom-crack echoing your heartbeat, and reverberating in your bones.

  You are surrounded by people you see every day. They live behind counters in the local stores; they line porches, and spit tobacco; they drive the bus carrying you to school. Except tonight, they are strangers. Tonight they are demons. And in a world of strangers and demons, you latch onto the only girl you’ve never seen before. The only one you know for sure isn’t real.

  She is solid and warm. The fireworks stain her with cathedral window colors. She smiles, and her teeth turn crimson, emerald, and gold. She is fierce and wild, too hard to hold. But you take her hand.

  She leans her head on your shoulder. Her hair tickles your skin, and you smell her above and beyond the campfire, which is black powder and pine needles. She smells of soap and smoke, but also of water, of deep and sunken things. It’s a creek smell, and breathing it is drowning, but you do it just the same. You think: This is love.

  It’s the Fourth of July, but this is where summer begins.

  *

  There’s a story they tell in Lesser Creek abo
ut a girl who drowned. She had just turned fifteen, or seventeen, or twenty-one.

  Just shy of fifteen, she was sad all the time, without ever knowing why. There was nothing wrong with her, other than being fifteen—a world of tragedy in its own right.

  The girl was hungry constantly, and never full. When she simply couldn’t stand it anymore, she went down to the creek, filled her pockets with stones, and lay in the deepest part of the water with her eyes open until she drowned.

  If you go to just the right spot, where the water is the coldest and your feet don’t quite touch, you’ll hear her. It’s hard to be still, treading water, but if you hold your breath, make your limbs only a fish-belly flash in slow motion, never rippling the surface, she’ll whisper your name.

  These woods are full of ghosts.

  Near twenty-one, she was a farmer’s daughter. She got in the family way, and her parents locked her up, and forced her to carry the child to term. Maybe the baby was still-born, and maybe she delivered it screaming, bloody, and alive. Either way, she ran away the night it came.

  She ran to the trestle bridge, and threw the baby off just as a train went howling past. Who can say which wailed louder, the baby or the train? Overcome by guilt, she threw herself after the child. Her body rolled down the slope, and the creek carried it away.

  If you stand at the very center of the bridge and drop a penny, when it lands, you’ll hear a baby cry. Except sometimes it’s the lonely mourn of a train vanishing toward the horizon. And sometimes it’s a girl, just shy of twenty-one, weeping for her sins.