by Trisha Telep
“OK. Here goes. Place the candles in a circle.”
I did.
“Light them.”
I did.
“Dip your finger in a pinch of lavender powder from the – no, the lavender powder, that’s right – and now right into the teal . . .”
Even a little flustered, I still managed to follow his instructions correctly.
“‘Whisk your powder-laden finger across the flame’,” he read robotically off the page.
I did.
“Repeat after me: ‘Leatrize, leatrize, cumlaudebacuss, hauntum quantum mechanico localda semanaca’.”
“Leatrize, leatrize, cumlaudebacuss, hauntum quantum mechanico localda semanaca.”
“Wait a minute.” His finger moved to another section of the page. “Oh. ‘Localsum diamanaca’.”
“Is there a problem? Should we start over?”
“I . . .” He looked a little nervous for a minute and then glanced at his watch. “Uh, no, I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s the same ghost. You’ll get the same result. If there’s a problem, you can contact the home office.”
“What?”
“Just go ahead and blow out the candles while ringing the bell.”
I felt a little off balance as I finished the summoning, but the result seemed the same as the first time. A whooshing sound accompanied a flash of light; the frame of my replacement ghost pulsed into sight and a human shape began to form in the glow. I’d never been so annoyed in my life when I finally saw enough to know what he looked like. “This is ‘extra scary’?” I asked, hands on hips.
The deliveryman looked at the ghost and then looked at me like I was insane. “Lady, this one hasn’t got a head.”
The ghost was, indeed, headless, but as his body continued to materialize, I saw that he was muscular and nicely proportioned. He was wearing a fitted suit in a flattering European cut and would have made a suitable date for a cocktail party. Under different circumstances, of course. And if he’d had a head.
I frowned. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to do the job. I assumed ‘extra scary’ meant grotesque and unpleasant and this ghost doesn’t seem unpleasant in the least. He’s wearing a collared shirt and a tie! And is that a Rolex? The last ghost couldn’t get the job done and he wasn’t half as attractive as this one. Well, you know what I mean – this one’s got quite a nice body.”
The deliveryman folded my invoice in crisp thirds and handed it over. “You’ll have to take it up with the home office.”
Freddie called for a beer from the living room and belched loudly enough for the sound to carry. “Wouldn’t it be simpler and cheaper to just break up with him?” the deliveryman asked.
I sighed. “I did. It doesn’t seem to have registered. We broke up months ago and he won’t leave. I just want him out.”
The deliveryman looked sympathetic. “You’d like to get on with your life. Date again.”
“I’d like to get on with my life, but I’m not planning to date again. I’m done with men. I just want to be alone.”
“At some point you’ll change your mind. I’m always hearing girls gripe about how hard it is to meet guys in the city.”
What was that supposed to mean? That we should settle?
“All I’m saying,” he continued, “is that maybe there’s a reason why the first ghost failed. Maybe it was meant to be and—”
“It’s not hard to meet guys,” I said bristling at the insinuation that the blob on my sofa otherwise known as Freddie might actually be my soulmate. “It’s hard to meet guys worth dating. My friend and I wrote this fake, impossible profile and put it on an online dating site, and guys answered as if they actually met the criteria! ‘Meant to be’, my ass!”
The deliveryman was not appropriately outraged. He checked his watch again. “I’ve got to run. Good luck.”
Still fuming, I closed the door behind him and turned to the shimmering ghost. The headless, shimmering ghost.
You are Miss Shelby Robbins?
“I am. Could we just get on—”
Call me Joe. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
“Likewise,” I said, without enthusiasm. Add polite and gentlemanly to his list of flaws. I couldn’t help fixating on the way his suit sculpted his shoulders, all nice and fitted around his glowing, muscular torso. None of this boded particularly well for scaring off Freddie. “Do you mind if we get started?”
Of course.
“So, we should take a moment to strategize here,” I said. “I’m thinking it will take maybe three or four hauntings. One now, and we’ll see if it takes. Then maybe we save the rest for when it’s darker in a couple of hours. Night can be so effective. Maybe if I’d just had the last one focus on evening sessions, things would have—”
Exactly what sort of result are you looking for?
A feeling of dread swept through me. He wasn’t paying attention! “No offense, but I filled out quite a lengthy form when I ordered the first ghost. I’m sure it’s in the computer.”
Sorry, I’d just like to clarify that you don’t expect me to kill him.
I gasped. “No! Just scare him away for ever. Don’t kill him. He’s not that bad.”
Joe’s glow moved toward the living room. Freddie scratched his balls and took a swig of beer. The inertia surrounding the guy was palpable. He looks bad, Joe said.
“Listen, Joe, I’m serious. I ordered a permanent scare, nothing more. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish discussing the strategy. I understand that this process will likely go quite late, and I’m prepared for that. But if we could just lay out the steps, I’m happy to go out and purchase any props or supplies that you—”
Do you mind looking the other way? Joe asked.
I looked the other way. “What are you doing?” I felt Joe leave my side and then Freddie was off his couch for what seemed like the first time in months unless you counted bathroom breaks, and he was running around yelling his head off, picking up his belongings, stuffing them in an enormous Macy’s shopping bag and before I knew it he was out the front door screaming about how this place was haunted and he was never coming back.
The door slammed shut. Joe turned off the television. I heard silence in my own home for the first time in way too long. I turned toward Joe’s shimmering. “Thank you,” I said, caring nothing about the tears in my eyes. “Thank you for that.”
It was my pleasure, he said. I hope you can be happy now.
I would have been deliciously, deliriously happy had it not been for Joe settling himself on the couch exactly where Freddie had been.
“There’s really no need to stay,” I said. “I was looking forward to a little peace and quiet, some personal time. I don’t mind paying for the whole day. I mean, you were astoundingly efficient. You’re a real pro. But don’t hang around just because you think you have to.”
I do have to, Joe said with a sigh. You summoned me for a week.
“But I only paid for a day,” I said.
You summoned me for a week. You can’t return a ghost prematurely. It’s an inventory issue. Did you read the FAQ?
“It was the mechanico part! I had a feeling it didn’t sound right. The delivery guy knew what went wrong and he said it would be fine. Damn it! Can’t you just go back to the home office and explain you finished early?”
I can’t separate myself from the summoning, he said.
“You’re going to be in my house for a week?”
I don’t mind.
“But I hired you because I wanted to be alone!”
I’m not particularly loud.
And he has a sense of humor, I thought grimly. Why weren’t there any real men in the world with these qualities?
The doorbell rang again.
Shall I get that for you?
“No! That’s probably Lillian. Do you mind going into the bedroom? I don’t want you to scare her.”
He projected the sense of quirking his eyebrow at me and faded. Interesting that I could
sense his emotions and detect the expressions he would have had, had he been a complete package and actually arrived with a head. Part of me wished I’d ordered him with a head, but then I remembered I didn’t order him specifically headless, I ordered him specifically ‘extra scary’. And in fact, Lillian was the one who handled all the online crap for the replacement since I was busy hiding in the bedroom, overcome by the twin insults of the fumes from Freddie’s dirty laundry and the fact that the first ghost was less effective than somebody trying to scold an adorable puppy for chewing a slipper.
“I know you’re in there!” Lillian yelled from the other side of my door. “Has Freddie left yet?”
I opened the door. Lillian didn’t look hopeful. I think asking about Freddie was sort of second-hand now, like, “Good morning.” Or “How’s it going?”
“Is Freddie gone?” she repeated.
Suddenly, in spite of my new ghost problem, it hit me. Freddie was finally gone. I burst into tears of relief.
“Oh!” Lillian said, looking horrified as she put her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry. The replacement ghost arrives today, yes? It will be OK. I promise.”
“He’s here.”
“I know he’s here. He’s been here for months. We’ll think of something else.”
“No, the replacement ghost is here. Freddie is gone.”
Lillian looked stunned. She looked like she’d seen a . . . “Ghost here? Freddie gone?” She ran to the kitchen.
“Where are you going?”
“This is cause for celebration!” The champagne had been in the refrigerator forever, waiting for this moment. We had some chocolates too, but Freddie discovered them and ate them around the two-month mark. She grabbed the champagne, got out two flutes and then noticed that I wasn’t quite as celebratory as I ought to have been. “Oh, my God. Did you kill him?”
“Of course not.” I glanced toward the back room. “The replacement ghost is still here. He won’t leave.”
Lillian’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean he won’t leave? The job was a scare, and then it was supposed to be well-deserved peace and quiet for Shelby. I’m the one who ordered it. I know exactly what I ordered.” She put down the champagne flutes and literally rolled up her shirtsleeves. “I’ll take care of this.”
Before I could stop her, Lillian marched out of the kitchen and into the back bedroom. I popped the cork on the champagne, poured two flutes and waited for some shouting.
There wasn’t any. I waited for thirty seconds. Nothing.
I started to get nervous. I forgot to mention to Lillian that the ghost had arrived sans noggin. Maybe she didn’t know that either. What if he’d just scared her to death? My heart pounding, I headed for the back room. “Lillian?” I could see her standing just inside my room, but it was dark in there.
Lillian suddenly turned and cleared her throat. Her eyes were a bit wide, but she wasn’t scared. She was . . . a bit sweaty, a smidge more tousled than when she’d arrived . . . and she had a sort of angelic smile on her face.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
She walked past me. “Gotta go. I have that computer class in fifteen minutes. We’re discussing that pesky copy and paste function I’ve been struggling with, and it’s one class I don’t think I should miss.”
“If I’m looking at you like you might have just gone insane it’s because I think you might have just gone insane. What just happened? What did he say to you?”
“Sorry, Shelby, no time for chatter. I’ll see you at drinks tonight. Congratulations on the Freddie exorcism.” She grabbed her purse and slammed the door behind her.
I swung around to find Joe leaning against the doorway with a distinct air of satisfaction.
I blinked. I looked at my watch. “Did I miss something?”
I don’t think so, Joe said.
“Would you like a glass of champagne?” I asked, paling the instant I said it. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
His silence was edged with a kind of sadness. “If I’m very near to it, I can taste and smell anything I once had in real life. I’d love a glass of champagne.”
I went into the kitchen with Joe following behind. I raised my glass and Joe engulfed his in his glow. We clinked glasses. I took a swig. Goodbye, Freddie, I thought. Goodbye to the past. It’s just me now, at last.
You really want to be alone.
“Yes. I mean, I don’t know about for ever. I just know that I want to be alone now.”
I felt a sudden rush of well-being, but it vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Joe stood quietly with his ghostly hand around the stem of his glass, but I had the sensation that he’d meant to do or say something else.
You can try to reverse the summons, Joe said. I should have told you before, but . . . He shrugged.
“Well, you told me now. Let’s try.” I put down the champagne flute.
Joe followed me to the table. Do you remember the steps?
“I’ll have a go,” I said with a sigh. I began arranging the props to the best of my memory. “What do you get out of this, anyway? The job. The service.”
Joe thought for a bit before he answered. As a ghost, when you finally understand that you have died, the first thing you realize is that you don’t know what to do with yourself. There’s a sense of displacement. You need something to focus on, something to occupy your time, something to give you a sense of purpose until you find a new “home”. And when I say “home” I’m not talking about a literal thing. I’m talking about that intangible something that makes you feel like you have a place you want to be and sense of being at rest. If you can find what you were missing in real life now that you’re a ghost, you’ll be as close as you can ever hope to be to peace. I suppose that sounds too woo-woo?
I couldn’t tell if he was joking that time. “So you’re working for the delivery service until you find ‘home’.”
I am. Until I find home. Ready to try the reversal?
For two hours we tried, me uttering every possible permutation of the summoning ritual I could think of until my brain was a muddle of leatrixes, cumladebacles, hauntum squantums and maniacal lofaldo secaldacas. By the end of the second hour, teal and lavender powder covered my face, I’d set the dining room tablecloth on fire not once but twice, and candle wax was stuck in blobs all over my sweater.
I tried calling the home office but apparently the ghost business is pretty dead on Friday afternoons and nobody answered.
I scoured the internet for similar complaints and accompanying solutions, but it was slow going. Lillian had a habit of muddling up all the settings on my computer, and I was not rewarded for my perseverance in putting it straight – all I could find were links to the Better Business Bureau which reported that the ghost service I’d used had, overall, an excellent rating.
In a blink of the eye, it seemed, the dining room had gone dark with the loss of the sun and there was the doorbell ringing again. I asked Joe to hide, just in case, but it was only Lillian arriving for drinks.
“You are so not ready,” she said. “The secret to being a good wingman is to look good enough to reel in men but bad enough to lose their interest when they see me.”
I didn’t have to look at myself in the mirror to know that I was a mess. “We’ve been trying to reverse the summoning all afternoon,” I said, pouring myself a glass of warm champagne.
Lillian looked around rather hopefully. “Joe is still here?”
“Yes,” I said wearily. “He’s still here.”
“I don’t see him.”
“He’s in my bedroom.”
Her eyes widened. “Pretty incredible, eh?” she said, adding a lot of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. “For having no head.”
I put down the empty champagne glass. “What are you talking about?”
Genuinely surprised, Lillian stared at me for a moment and then tried to fold her expression into something more nonchalant. “Nothing.” And then after an indecipherable pause added, “He’s just
a very unusual ghost.”
I shook my head and sighed. “I suppose. Joe!”
Joe materialized instantly.
“We’re going out. I’ll see you . . . later.”
Lillian walked right up to him in a total violation of personal space and just stood there as if she were waiting for something.
Joe emoted a smile.
“OK, kids,” I said, still unsure what I’d missed. “Lillian, I’m doing this for you, so let’s get on with it.”
Lillian went into the hall, and I closed the door and started for the elevator.
“We should have invited Joe,” she said, just as the unmistakable essence of Joe’s presence made itself known.
I stopped in my tracks and put my hands on my hips. “Apparently, we did.” I wheeled around, spitting mad. “You said you couldn’t go back to the home office because you couldn’t separate yourself from the summoning. Well, the summoning was back in my apartment, so I find it very strange you are here with me now.”
Joe folded his ghostly arms across his chest. If you think I want to go and hang out with a bunch of Freddies in a bar while they hit on you and your friend, you’re out of your head as much as I am. You are the conduit for the summoning, not your apartment. When I said I couldn’t separate from the summoning, I meant I couldn’t separate myself from you. So, for the next week – which I suspect will turn out to be one of the longest in my entire unlife – I’m forced by contract to go where you go, within a reasonable distance.
“What’s a reasonable distance?”
Well, as you may have noted, I was in the bedroom while you were at the door. Approximately that distance.
I looked at Lillian. She shrugged.
“I’m calling the home office again first thing in the morning,” I said.
Call them again right now. The graveyard shift should be starting soon, Joe snapped. Nobody wants to be forced into somebody else’s company.
Something tugged at me then. Joe didn’t have a say in the matter. And he was right: nobody except a Freddie wants to be where he isn’t wanted.
“Joe . . .”
Yes?
“I’m so sorry. I never considered your feelings in all of this. I am truly, truly sorry.”
