by Adam Selzer
“Cyn’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had,” I say.
“Did she ever say anything to you about some secret way to turn people into ghosts?”
I shake my head, telling myself it isn’t lying if I don’t say anything.
“Well, there’s a technique that about six people know, and I think Cynthia is one of them.”
“How would she know about it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. That’s a mystery I’m still working on, just like you’re working on Lillian Collier. But I’ve been in the business long enough to have heard about it, and I’m afraid there may be a chance that Cynthia’s not only learned it, she’s planning on having you turn into Lillian’s ghost.”
I let that hang in the air and stare at Edward Tweed. If he’s just trying to freak me out, he’s doing a good job. This feels like a serious warning.
“If you died and your ghost started haunting someplace she was associated with, she could say that it was Lillian’s ghost,” he explains. “You’d look close enough.”
When I just stare at him without saying anything, he goes on.
“I mean, your hair’s not quite right, but I don’t think that technique makes ghosts distinct enough to see those kinds of details.”
When I can finally talk, all I say is “She wouldn’t do that.”
“Think about it,” he says. “Did you have any experience in running tours? Public speaking? Acting? Anything like that?”
“I was in some plays in high school. She saw me in one.”
“I don’t want to put you down, because I know you’re a great guide, but it sounds to me like she hand-picked you without caring whether you were any good or not just because she knew you had the right look.”
I shrug. “She knew I could do research well and I have a good head for this kind of work. I’m a funeral-home kid.”
“Ah.” He chuckles a bit, hits the buzzer again, and says, “Well, I don’t know how much you trust her, but I really recommend you reconsider. Keep your eyes open. Especially if she suggests you start dressing more like Lillian or something.”
I can’t help but think of her suggestion that I let her bob my hair.
“I trust her.”
He leans back against the wall, then idly hits the buzzer yet again as he gives me a look over the top of his glasses.
“Like you probably trusted her not to tell anyone about Zoey? Or your Disney villain stories?”
The moment he says that, the whole vestibule is bathed in a flash of blue light from a police car zipping by, and I think I hear an explosion in the distance. A second or two goes by that are just lost to me. I think I stare at him. My jaw probably drops. But when those few seconds are gone I don’t remember them anymore, like my brain is trying to wipe away the fact that he said that before it can turn into a memory.
It doesn’t work.
My vision goes blurry, and all the sound from the street goes silent for a moment. The ding ding ding of the register in the bookstore that stands beside the entryway gets louder, and I stop caring about shrunken heads.
“Where did you hear about that?” I ask.
“Cynthia told me.”
He’s making eye contact, but it suddenly feels like I’m naked in front of him, and he’s checking out my whole body. Like I’m beyond naked. Like he can see everything, including my internal organs. Like he can see right through me.
Cyn couldn’t have told him about Zoey. She wouldn’t have told him. Not Tweed. She hates him.
“You’re full of shit,” I say. “You must have hacked my computer or something.”
“I’m hopeless with computers,” he says.
“Then you got Saltis to do it for you.”
“He’s even worse.”
“Then you’ve got our bus bugged. You’ve been spying on us.”
“No. Nothing like that. Cyn told me the other night.”
My stomach twists around, and even though I haven’t eaten all day, I feel the bile rising up inside me.
This old man knows about my stories.
This. Old. Creep.
He knows about me. What has he pictured me doing? What is he imagining right now?
Tweed starts to say something else, but I run out of the entryway, through the tiny park next door and around into the nearest alley, where I throw up into a smelly metal dumpster.
“Purgament. Fellowred. Cunnigar.”
I repeat OED synonyms for swear words to myself while I zombie-walk my way to a Blue Line stop, trying to calm down. It doesn’t work. When a train comes, I find the least-crowded car and curl up into a ball in an empty seat. Fetal position.
Tweed knows about Zoey.
Tweed knows about my stories.
Oh, fuck.
Godemiche. Stercory. Hindwin. Nockhole. Stupid fucking Berkeley Hunt.
As the train starts to move, I wonder if maybe Tweed was Zoey the whole time, an idea that absolutely disgusts me. But that one, at least, doesn’t seem plausible. I’d been with Zoey for a while before Ed had any idea who the hell I was.
Either he hacked my computer, he spied on us, or Cyn blabbed.
I don’t know which theory I hate most.
If he hacked my computer, he knows everything. What goes on in my stories. Maybe even the stories Zoey didn’t get to see. Not to mention that the hard drive contained pictures of me that I sure as hell didn’t want him to see. No face in the worst of them, but he’d know it was me.
If Cyn told him, that would be a bit of a relief, in a way, since it meant he only knew what she’d told him about the stories, and that couldn’t be too much. I never showed them to her or anything. But that would mean that she stabbed me in the back.
And that she might be planning to literally stab me in the back to turn me into a substitute for Lillian Collier’s ghost.
The best-case scenario is that he’s bugged our bus and has been spying on us.
That’s it.
I tell myself that it has to be it.
I get off the train at the Medical District stop to puke again, this time into a garbage can, then wait for another train and ride straight home.
The reeks and fumes of my puddled brain probably leave a ghost behind on the Blue Line.
Chapter Eighteen
I don’t leave the house again until the next day, when I have to go run back-to-back tours at seven and ten.
I don’t talk to Rick or Cyn during the day; I just stay in my room, trying to get ahold of Zoey and trying to decide whether or not I hope Cyn is planning to turn me into a ghost, if it meant that Edward Tweed hasn’t hacked my computer and seen my stories.
None of our “charity work” has led to a ghost so clear anyone could tell who the ghost was, but we aren’t exactly using the best candidates. Cyn’s always saying so. According to what she’d read in Marjorie’s papers, a volunteer would leave a much weaker imprint than someone who wasn’t expecting to die that day.
There are lots of X factors. Younger people would leave better imprints than older ones. People who are pregnant or on their period would leave a stronger one, and all of our volunteers are way too old for that sort of thing.
But I’m not.
In fact, I’m a perfect candidate.
So it might work. If Cyn timed things just right, she might be able to make me into a maximum-strength ghost that people could not only see clearly, but might mistake for the ghost of Lillian Collier.
More than once, I remember that she offered to bob my hair and make me look more like Lillian.
And I tell myself that I still trust her.
But I’m glad I’m working with Rick, not her, for my tours tonight.
On Clark Street every tourist seems like a clone of Drunky McLoserbro. Guys in backward baseball caps. Girls wearing Mardi Gras beads even though it’s nowhere near Mardi Gras time, or the right city. All visibly drunk at six o’clock.
Rick and Aaron Saltis are singing a song together outside of the DarkSide bus:
&
nbsp; Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay!
We have no tour today!
Our riders passed away!
Don’t look at me that way!
It doesn’t seem as funny to me as it normally would.
As soon as Rick sees me, he pats Aaron on the back, tells him to have a good tour, then puts his arm around me, leading me over toward our bus.
“How you holding up?” asks Rick. “I heard you got in some hot water with Zoey.”
“You could say that.”
This almost seems like ancient history today. Yesterday’s problem. But it’s still a thing. And now it bubbles back up to the surface.
“But you need to dish, sis. You kissed Morticia?”
I nod. “At Hull House.”
“Were her lips super cold? Did her breath smell like the grave?”
I shake my head. “Super warm, and mint.”
“Mint,” he says. “She planned to kiss you.”
“You think?”
“No one smells like mint unless they’re planning to kiss someone.”
“Maybe she just likes gum.”
“Ghosts don’t chew gum. Normally.”
Rick gets distracted talking to Pierre the necklace guy, and I climb onto the bus and start looking over the dashboard, down in the Rubbermaid bin where we keep tools and extra mic cables and things, and everywhere else, thinking maybe I can find some gadget Ed is using to bug the bus.
But I don’t find anything.
I manage to keep my shit together and put on a pretty decent show for two tours that night. In fact, they’re very good tours. I’m energetic. I’m yelling, “She splattered to a messy death right where that guy is standing!” at passersby. I’m milking every joke and every gasp line, trying to push the darkness away. They’re maybe my best tours ever.
It always helps when we get cool pictures or have a spooky time at one of the stops, though. And that happens tonight. I get a real boost from several really creepy photos at Hull House. Vaguely human forms on people’s pictures, better than anything we’ve gotten after charity work.
Cyn and I never took any volunteers to Hull House.
But it’s the last place I saw Drunky alive.
That night, after trying to fall asleep in bed for hours, I sneak downstairs and sleep, or try to sleep, in one of the caskets, thinking that maybe I’ll feel more at home in one of those. I used to get in them when I was a kid. They’re surprisingly comfortable. Roomy, too. Even now that I’m much older than I was the last time I got in one, there’s plenty of space to move around and mess with my phone.
I look online to see if there’s anything about a young white guy who’s gone missing in Chicago. Nothing.
She couldn’t have killed him. What would she have done with the body?
Still, the last place I saw that drunken guy she “got rid of” seemed haunted tonight. Much more than it usually does.
If Cyn got rid of him, that makes it seem a lot more likely that she’d be plotting to do away with me, too. Maybe she was testing the waters, seeing if a younger person who didn’t volunteer does leave a stronger imprint.
Even thinking about Zoey is better than thinking about this.
While I lay there, I send a handful of texts to Zoey, hoping she’ll answer.
MEGAN:
I’m sorry.
MEGAN:
It wasn’t what it looked like. You’ve got to at LEAST let me explain.
MEGAN:
Please, at least come fight with me.
MEGAN:
I did some bad things this summer. Not really bad, but . . . not legal. Some people would think they were really bad. Like, really, really bad.
MEGAN:
I am a real fucking villain. But nothing makes me feel as bad as what I did to you.
MEGAN:
I’m in a coffin right now and I feel like it’s where people like me belong.
MEGAN:
Please answer.
MEGAN:
I need you to say you don’t hate me.
She never replies.
At three a.m., I wake up when my phone buzzes, thinking it might be her.
It’s Cyn.
SWITCHBLADE CYNTHIA FARGON:
You still wanna do the hair bob? Come by around noon.
Chapter Nineteen
When you have reason to believe that someone may be plotting to murder you, it’s probably not wise to go to their place, alone, for the sole purpose of having them come at your head with sharp objects.
But killing me at her apartment while bobbing my hair wouldn’t do Cynthia much good in the long run. If she’s going to ghost me, she’ll want to do it in Bughouse Square or someplace where anything I leave behind could function as Lillian Collier’s ghost. I’m probably safe anywhere as far off the tour route as Rick and Cyn’s apartment in Humboldt Park.
And anyway, being at their place could be a good chance to do some detective work. Look for clues, ask her subtle questions, see if she lets anything slip.
So I decide to let Cyn cut my hair.
I take the Blue Line from Forest Park through the city, past the Loop, and into Humboldt Park, which is one of those neighborhoods that’s supposed to be getting safer and fancier (gentrified), but still turns up on the news a lot for shootings and stuff. Cyn and Rick say they’re in the “demilitarized zone,” but nothing between the train stop and the three-flat where they live seems rough to me at all; it’s full of dog walkers, old men pushing churro carts, and kids playing on scooters.
Cyn is sitting on her stoop, reading and smoking, when I walk up the sidewalk. I haven’t seen her in person since Edward told me that she told him about Zoey, and it’s awkward to actually have her right there in front of me.
She’s smiling. Clueless about how much I’ve been thinking about her, obviously.
“You ready for this?” she asks.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
She leads me through the front door and up the steps to their apartment, which is the third floor of the three-flat. The stairway is made of rotting wood covered in chipped orange paint; the boards bend below Cyn’s feet as she walks up. Inside, you can tell it was a nice place once upon a time—like, the crown molding is made with actual plaster, not some prefab stuff from Home Depot. But now the paint is peeling, the floor is warped, and there are a couple of spots where duct tape is covering holes in the drywall. Everything is drowning in piles of dirty laundry. I see stains I wish I hadn’t.
On the couch beside the laundry there’s a lanky rat-faced guy with a hairstyle that I guess would be a mohawk if it was sticking up, only it isn’t. It’s just lying down across his scalp. He’s topless and filthy and appears to be stoned.
“This is Punk Rock James,” says Cyn. “Old friend from college. Fellow archaeology student.”
“Hi,” I say to him, as he gives me a silent nod.
“Rick’s working at the home today,” Cyn says, leading me past James and into her bedroom. “Grab a seat on the desk chair; I’ll get some newspapers to throw down.”
Her bedroom is so small that it was probably a closet originally. Or maybe the place was actually a one-bedroom but some landlord made it into a two-bedroom by putting up a wall in the middle of the original one. There’s just barely room for a desk, a mirror, and a twin-size bed, which looks too small for her and Rick to do it on. Maybe his is bigger.
To get to the desk chair, I have to wade through a regular pool of dirty laundry, cigarette ashes, junk mail, books, old fliers, and empty bottles. The walls are covered with band posters, and a bunch of headless dolls sit among the cosmetics and hygiene products on the desk. The necks on the decapitated dolls are about the only empty spaces in the whole room. They don’t seem as cool to me today as they would have a week ago.
Cyn sets her phone to play some punk band, disappears for a second, then comes back with a pair of scissors, singing along with the song coming from the phone, which is about Sherlock Holmes taking drugs.
“This is Stiffs, Incorporated,” she says. “Nineties punk. Their songs were about Jack the Ripper and Edgar Allan Poe and stuff. We’d probably call them ‘steampunk’ now.”
“Nice,” I say.
“Only about six people bought their second album, but the guy from My Chemical Romance says it was their biggest influence.”
“I can kind of hear the connection.”
“You hear it a lot more on the second album than this one. I’ll send you a link.”
Cyn spins the desk chair around a couple of times, making me a bit dizzy, then runs her fingers through my hair.
“How long did it take you to grow it this long?”
“A while.”
She grabs two handfuls of hair from the bottom, the red half, and starts to hold the locks up, sculpting my hair to simulate various styles.
“So what kind of bob are we talking?” she asks. She raises it up and says “Irene Castle?” Then she manipulates it around and says, “Clara Bow?” Then she moves it more. “Mary Pickford?”
“I think the first one,” I say. “That’s the most like Lillian. Irene Castle.”
“Got it.” She runs her fingers through it a few more times, petting me like a cat.
Then she snips off the first red lock in one move and goes to work as the guy from Stiffs, Inc. shouts out, “Quick, Watson, bring the needle!” on the speakers.
“The other day Rick was asking me what you were like when you were a kid,” she says.
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were pretty much the same, really. Didn’t you even make up stories about villains winning and taking the princesses into their dungeons back then, too?”
Snip, snip, snip.
“Uh-huh.”
“I imagine what goes on in the dungeons now is a little different, though.”
“Maybe not as much as you’d think.”
The Sherlock Holmes song ends, another guitar riff starts, and Cynthia keeps working. I look into her face in the mirror, looking for a hint of guilt or something, some sort of clue. She seems totally collected, as always.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Should I trust that face at all?
