Violet Ghosts

by Leah Thomas

  I didn’t know what to do.

  “You can tell me anything,” Seiji told me.

  “I know.”

  And that was the problem. If I spent too long with Seiji, what else would I tell him? Would I ruin his life by telling him about his father? Would I ruin mine, talking about Sarah and what I was letting her do to me, what I could not seem to refuse?

  “You don’t want to be around me,” Seiji said, finally.

  It was three days before our Christmas break, and Rochdale High was celebrating Spirit Week. It was Ugly Sweater Day, but Seiji had missed the memo or gotten it slightly wrong, as usual. His red-and-white-striped cardigan fit him snugly, revealing his firm chest and long torso, making girls whisper about him as he walked by, oblivious.

  “It’s not . . . that’s not exactly it. It’s just not a great time.”

  “Is it about Patricia?”

  “Patricia’s back to normal, reading up a storm.” It was the one healthy glimmer, seeing her hum about the lobby, scheming up little cubbies.

  “It’s about Sarah.”

  “No,” I said, too quickly.

  “Oh. Then is it about your dad?”

  His intuition alarmed me. “I haven’t said anything about him.”

  “I know. But I remember when you moved here.”

  I blinked. “You remember what?”

  “I remember that you and your mom left your dad to come here. You were at the Green House at the same time as Aunt Lavonne. I used to see you there when Mom and I visited. We played together in the family room sometimes. Don’t you remember?”

  I gaped at him. I didn’t remember him at all. No wonder Seiji had always been so upset with me. No wonder he’d always tried to confront me with truth.

  His face expressed a subtle note of hurt. “You don’t remember.”

  “Wait, Seiji. I don’t, and I’m sorry. But yes, I caught Mom talking to my dad.” I exhaled. “And . . . I can’t sleep lately.”

  “Bad dreams?”

  Addy in the walls, Sarah climbing into bed beside me . . . ​ “Something like that.”

  “Come to my house. The day before Christmas Eve. Okay?”

  I stared at him, looking for any hint of guile. “I might never be able to help your Mom, Seiji.”

  “That’s not why I’m offering.”

  “Pardon me if I don’t believe you.”

  He stood up abruptly. “I am not the one using you.”

  I wondered what he meant by that. Was he saying I had used him?

  Or was he saying someone else was using me?

  POWERPOINT

  “You haven’t been yourself,” Patricia told me bluntly. Sarah was in the basement with her projectors and PowerPoints, planning our next big exorcism.

  The thing is, neither of us had told Patricia the truth about what we were doing, and what we had already done to her killer.

  After being so honest with her, saying nothing felt worse than lying.

  I should have questioned why we didn’t say anything. I think I knew that regardless of what her killer deserved, Patricia would be livid with us. Patricia wasn’t like me or Sarah, not now. Patricia was looking forward, trying to grow instead of decay.

  “I’ve been more myself, honestly,” I confessed. “This is me.”

  She frowned. “Really. In that case, give me a little more honesty. Because there’s something I need to ask you, Dani. Something serious.”

  When I looked at her, her expression was troubled. “Have you heard Adelaide crying in the walls?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I have. And I’ve seen her, too.”

  She nodded. “My heart aches for her.”

  “I can’t change that,” I said. “She told me—I shouldn’t have left her. I know that. But she told me to. She didn’t want our help.”

  “She might have wanted help, but some people don’t know how to accept it. Sometimes, murderers aside, the haunting comes from inside the house.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Exorcising my killer—it wouldn’t actually improve my unlife, would it? Because no matter how he hurt me, he’s not part of my life anymore. It shouldn’t matter what happens to him.”

  “I . . . ​we’re shaped by men like that, though. After my dad, I couldn’t . . . ​after your killer. You said he made you afraid to go out.”

  “Yes, he did. But if it weren’t him, it might have been a dozen others. At a certain point, someone reminded me to go outside anyway. He had no power anymore.”

  I hated that she was looking at me knowingly, as if I weren’t full of bile and lies that she couldn’t extricate.

  “Patricia,” I asked, “have you ever been in love?”

  “Oh, gracious. Maybe. I thought I was, anyhow.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  “I won’t say ‘when you know, you know,’ because as clichés go that one wasn’t true for me. I also think love is probably different for every person who experiences it.”

  I put my head in my hands. “I’m always so confused.”

  “My two cents? You might not know when you’re in love, but you’ll certainly know when you aren’t. You’ll certainly know when something feels wrong to you. Listen to that voice in your head, if you hear it. I’m speaking as a divorcée, here.”

  Would telling Sarah not to kiss me end our friendship, divorce us, tear us apart forever? And if that happened, who would I become? Who would she?”

  “About Addy,” I said, “do you think I should try again?

  Patricia did not hesitate. “Are you ready for another teacher anecdote?”

  I nodded.

  “I always let my kids retake their exams. Always. Most of the time they wouldn’t take me up on it, but the opportunity was there. Just in case they wanted the help. Just in case they felt willing to push themselves to do better.” She shook her head. “This is a terrible allegory for what Addy’s going through.”

  “But keep a door open,” I repeated.

  “Yes. And if you’re ever on the other side of another door—consider going through it when it’s kicked open.”

  The next day, I accepted the invitation to Seiji’s place.

  TARGET

  On December 23, I shoved my half-assed present for Seiji into my backpack, combed my shorn hair, threw on a red department store flannel and a green beanie, and prepared to walk my sorry self to Murphy’s Flowers. On my way out, I told Mom I was too busy to bake cookies, but wished her goodbye with hardly any ice in my words. We weren’t talking much, but anger was exhausting.

  Before I started walking, I popped by the lobby.

  Patricia was decorating for the holidays. Sarah had really gotten amazing at levitating things, and she’d managed to string up garlands and lights. Now she stared into the white abyss of a laptop, translucent in the face of it.

  “Wanna come to Seiji’s with me?” I asked her.

  “Honestly, you’re never gonna convince me to like that guy. Besides, I’m working out a strategy for our next exorcism. It’s happening, Dani. You ready?”

  I tried to keep my face straight. “Oh? What is it?

  “The O’Connor Petting Zoo. Remember? Seven murders, a hundred years ago?”

  “The petting zoo. Really?” She’d worked herself up to tackling the large welt at the base of the map, the place where seven women and a child had been found buried in a field, victims of an unidentified Victorian murderer. “It’s the biggest case we’re gonna find, so long as we’re in Rochdale. Getting this guy’ll be a great way to ring in the new year!”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s more important to think of his victims,” Patricia trilled. “New roomies.”

  I wasn’t sure we were ready to take in and house eight new ghosts, despite all the beautiful mailbox bedrooms Patricia had created. I didn’t say so.

  Sarah started rambling about expanding the murder map regionally as well as chronologically. Eventually we’d run out of deaths to avenge in Rochd
ale, she said, and we’d have to go farther to find ghosts to exorcise.

  But there would always be more. There could never be enough cubbies.

  I peered at the map with its dozens of remaining local cases. Sarah’s old house was still encircled in red. I hadn’t asked why; I wasn’t sure I ever could.

  “You know, there’s also the ghost in the flower shop,” I suggested. “He needs help.”

  “That was a suicide. And besides, we aren’t taking in men. No chance in hell.”

  I flinched. “Even if they’re victims, too?”

  “I get that you’re becoming a bleeding heart, but obviously we can’t let men live here. Men traumatized these women. This is supposed to be a sanctuary.”

  I wondered whether any woman hated men as blindly as she did. I wondered what Sarah and Patricia would say if I asked them about Seiji’s father; would they welcome his big shoulders and sad eyes? We could board him in a different room, one of the empty motel apartments. He wasn’t a tar-caked monster, but a wounded soul like they were. Certainly he wasn’t the only dead guy like that.

  “Come back early so we can talk strategy.”

  “Right,” I murmured, and made for the stairs.

  Just out of Patricia’s sight, Sarah appeared in front of me and kissed me again.

  “Merry Christmas, girlfriend.”

  I tried so hard to smile.

  GOLDEN CURRY

  Stepping into Murphy’s Flowers felt like walking onto the set of some festive commercial. The air was warm and smelled of cinnamon, and small candlelit tables were occupied by snow-sprinkled people in hats and mittens. Candy canes dangled from the rims of flowerpots, and you’d have better luck dodging falling snow than avoiding all the mistletoe. Aunt Lavonne was busy behind the counter, wrapping roses into a bundle for a man in a very nice coat.

  The man definitely wasn’t from around here, or maybe he was but only came back to visit family at Christmas. An actual Hallmark Movie man. I got in line behind him, trying not to covet his Adam’s apple. Maybe one day I could come home looking like that: mature and citified and unmistakably independent, unmistakably myself.

  “Coffee or roses?” Aunt Lavonne asked me.

  “I’m here to visit Seiji?”

  She stared at me for five seconds before realization dawned. “Dani? Is that you? My gosh, I didn’t recognize you. What’s happened to your hair?”

  “I buzzed it off.” I knew she was privately wondering why I looked like a walking dead boy rather than a living girl. Seiji hadn’t come out to his aunt, but her reaction told me an awful lot; until she saw my haircut, she’d probably prayed we were dating.

  “Well, welcome! And Merry Christmas! Seiji’s waiting for you upstairs.”

  She sounded jovial. It was grating to suspect—to almost know—that this smiling woman in a Santa sweater and crucifix earrings had lied to her nephew about his father’s death. It was grating to think I’d met her years ago in a women’s shelter, and she’d probably looked nothing like this.

  She guided me to a set of stairs just beyond the counter. As I ascended, something savory struck my nostrils, and my stomach screamed.

  I hadn’t been eating for a while, not really anyhow.

  Seiji came to the door after I knocked, wearing a pink floral apron.

  “I am so glad you’re here,” he said, beaming.

  My cheeks flushed. “Wow, something smells delicious.”

  The apartment was very merry, bedecked in classy wreaths and tasteful cards and delicate candles, as if Martha Stewart had been all up in this joint.

  Seiji had made Japanese curry, of all things, like he said his father used to. He said you could order packets of the flavoring online, and that maybe it wasn’t traditional Christmas food for most people, but it was for his family. He said also that just because he wanted to punch his dad didn’t mean he wanted to punch curry.

  In the corner there was a small shrine dedicated to his mother. I saw her face for the first time, captured in a small framed photograph. She had Aunt Lavonne’s hair and Seiji’s sticky-outy ears. Her smile was as sweet as his. She stood proudly beside a counter laden with floral arrangements.

  “We’ll leave her a bowl of curry, too.” He set one in front of her picture and muttered some kind of prayer beneath his breath. I looked away.

  The curry was freaking delicious, filled with carrots and potatoes and some sort of fried chicken called katsu that tasted like crispy twice-baked heaven. I ate like a pig, and when it came time for dessert, I discovered a second stomach within me and filled it with three slices of Aunt Lavonne’s pecan pie.

  After dinner we lounged on a very white sofa and watched “Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean,” which turned out to be hilarious in the stupidest way. Chestnut purred on my lap, fat and cuddly after all. I wondered if she was trying to make up for gouging me to pieces the last time we’d seen each other.

  “So how goes the ghost world?”

  “Oh, I mean, we’re planning on rescuing more ghosts soon. Giving them shelter.”

  “That’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

  I wanted to slip between the couch cushions. “Yeah, I guess it’s neat.”

  “You’re going to save them.” Seiji smiled. “It’s more than neat.”

  I had to change the subject. “Well—you ever heard about the bodies found at the O’Connor Petting Zoo?”

  “I thought it was an urban legend. Like the one about the electric hermit who lives in the woods.”

  “Electric hermit?”

  “Yeah, people say there’s some kid in the woods who’s got X-Men powers. Liz Becker knows him, I think, but she says he’s just got extreme allergies.”

  “That sounds like bullshit. But the O’Connor Petting Zoo isn’t bullshit. People really did find bodies there. Sarah and I are planning to head over there and see if we can’t take care of their murderer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, exorcise them. Salt and burn them, easy as pie.”

  “And that actually sends the killers away? For good?”

  “We think it might.”

  “Seems too easy.”

  I agreed, but would never say so.

  “Have any more of them hurt you?” Seiji glanced at my neck. “Or is it one-sided?”

  “They’ve hurt plenty of others,” I added, maybe defensively.

  Seiji didn’t argue, but crept toward the Christmas tree in the corner. It was tasteful like the rest of the apartment, clearly informed by Better Homes and Gardens. He pulled a flat, lumpy package out from under the tree and set it on my lap.

  “Open mine first.” I pulled it from my bag. “Don’t expect much. It’s a gag gift.”

  Seiji tore the paper with the reckless abandon of a six-year-old. When he realized what was inside, his careful expression shifted into a big, goofy grin.

  “A matching set,” he announced, holding aloft the larger of two red shirts.

  “I told you, it’s silly.” But Seiji was already pulling the tee over his head. Chestnut didn’t seem as pleased when he pulled the tiny matching one over her head and ears, but she tolerated his gentle hands without clawing his eyes out.

  He held her up and looked at me. His shirt featured her face, and her shirt featured his, and I had to laugh. Seiji was beaming; Chestnut was scowling as only cats can.

  “Actually, I take it back, that’s amazing.”

  Chestnut tolerated her present just long enough for me to snap a picture of the pair with a disposable camera, and then Seiji freed her from her torment and put me back in mine, gesturing at the present on my lap.

  “Open it, please.”

  I felt nervous as I unwrapped the paper. Inside there was a small cardboard box. “If this is a shirt with your face on it, I may lose it,” I warned, peeling the box open.

  Inside I found a tank top made of beige nylon or spandex, slightly stretchy material. The moment I held it, I knew what it was. I found it suddenly hard to breathe, which
seemed ironic.

  “I thought beige would be good, in case you want to wear white T-shirts,” he said.

  I blinked the moisture from my eyes and nodded, clutching the compression chest binder like a talisman. “No more ACE bandages.”

  When I finally looked up, Seiji’s father was there, watching us from across the room. He walked past us toward the stairs, that hangman’s rope in his hands again. A moment later, the door eased open and there was a thumping sound on the stairs.

  Seiji heard it, too. His dark eyes scanned my face.

  “There she goes, right? Mom was just here, wasn’t she?”

  “Seiji,” I breathed, setting the binder in my lap. “I have to tell you something.”

  He waited quietly.

  “The ghost in your house isn’t your mother.”

  Seiji frowned. “Oh, but it has to be her. She feels really familiar.”

  “That’s because the ghost is your father.”

  Seiji closed his mouth and opened it, then closed it again. “No. I told you, my father left. He’s not dead. He’s gone to Chicago or maybe even back to Kyoto.”

  “I’m sorry, Seiji, but he’s not in Japan. He’s here, haunting your greenhouse.”

  “I’m not great with jokes,” he told me, “but I really don’t think this is funny.”

  “Seiji.” I put my hands on his shoulders and met his eyes. They seemed so impossibly open with his hair pulled back. “I’m not joking. I didn’t want to tell you, but I can’t keep lying. Your dad—he died here, after your mom died. Downstairs, in Stella’s Garden.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The first time I came here, I saw him. And just now, that was him, too.”

  He shook his head. “No. If that was true, you would have said so. You would have.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you. I mean, that’s awful news to hear.”

  His laugh was dry. “Even if I believed that—why wouldn’t my aunt tell me? If my dad’s been dead for years, wouldn’t someone care enough to tell me?”

  “I don’t know. He . . . ​Maybe your aunt was too religious to tell you, or too upset, or . . . I don’t know.”

  “What are you saying?”