“I’m telling you, I saw a ghost!”
I was, luckily, scheduled to work the same shift on the following day. I had wondered, as I arrived at the preparation area of Seoul Bowl, how easy it would be to convince Hilary to send me down to Frosty’s today. But an argument she’d engaged in with Randy, another regular worker on our team, was heating up as we drew near to the restaurant’s opening. I decided to hold on broaching the subject until it cooled.
“Well, Amber’s here now. Why shouldn’t I ask her?” Randy leaned back into the kitchen area where I was readying stacks of black plastic bowls. “You heard us, right?”
“Hm?” I had, of course, heard the entirety of the argument, at least from the moment I arrived. But this was an old trick I’d employed during my Whitfield scholarship days, years ago. Ignorance among my kind was apparently quite believable among humans, and leaning into it allowed me more time to ponder my response.
“You closed Frosty’s last night. Hilary was saying there was a ghost.”
I was still stuck on whether I should be truthful or not. Well, the truth—or part of it—was easier right now. “I saw something,” I said, drawing out the last word as if pondering. Should I stroke my chin? No, keep it subtle. “Maybe it was a ghost. I don’t know.”
“See?”
“That’s a maybe, Hilary…”
Predictably, the argument remained unresolved through Seoul Bowl’s opening. I’d remembered to wear the red ribbon around my skull, so I felt a little better taking the cash register to start.
About forty-five minutes after opening, I managed to broach the subject with Hilary. “So, um. I, you know, actually enjoyed working down at Frosty’s yesterday. If you needed someone down there today, I’d be happy to put my name forward.”
“You know, I was just about to ask!” Hilary lightly punched my left shoulder in a manner I recognized as playful. “Yeah, remember when Ramona called out yesterday? So, like, apparently her grandma died.”
“Oh. Um, that’s difficult…”
“Yeah, so she won’t be in for the rest of the week.” It was Wednesday. “So if you could close Frosty’s by yourself the rest of the week, that would be amazing.”
“Yeah. Sure. Um, I’d be happy to. As I said. Um.”
I’d had the presence of mind to ask about the temperature before heading down; according to Randy, it was “chilly,” so I was hopeful the stand would prove as popular as it had been a day previous—that is to say, not at all. I wandered down the asphalt path past carnival-style games and a couple queues for a few smaller, less popular ride attractions.
My mind turned to Heather. If the story shared by Hilary was to be believed, the ghost had died in the first few years of the park’s opening, soon after the year 1960. In the time between my shift last night and today, I had visited the library convenient to the small room I rented. A small sampling of ghost stories I’d found there swirled through my head, though little united them beyond a vague theme of terror. To my surprise, not all “ghost” stories featured a ghost as such. Some were constructed in a way that seemed to me deliberately vague; others featured more tangible creatures of myth and legend—vampires, zombies, werewolves.
Soon enough, I was at Frosty’s. I relieved my coworkers Tristan and Zeek of their post and took their place behind the register. I’d kept my awareness wide, but hadn’t spotted Heather. Would she appear similarly during the light of day? All three of the ghosts in the stories I’d read at the library had appeared at night or in otherwise dark places.
I almost didn’t spot Heather at first.
Flitting between the few groups of park patrons milling about in the wide space before Frosty’s, I caught sight of her tiny thread of light. Indeed, it seemed much weaker and dimmer in daylight, though perhaps this was merely due to the much higher ambient light she wended through. I turned my head in her direction, hopefully indicating that I saw her. Ensuring no one else saw me, I subtly beckoned her over with a twist of my right index finger.
She floated low to the ground in my direction. Then, as if wary herself of being seen, she darted under the booth and emerged from the floor between my shoes.
“Greetings,” I said. “It’s, um. Good to see you, Heather.”
I kept my awareness split; much of it on the twisting, faint thread of light drifting through the stand, with the rest on the space in front of the stand’s order window.
Heather drifted back toward my hand, much as she had the night before. I held it out in a manner I hoped read as encouraging.
The thread brushed against my finger, and a whole suite of sensations overcame me.
I stand outside a wide, wooden door with glass panes at eye level. Beside me stands the school’s Dean of Students, a woman with wide-brimmed glasses and long, red spotted plastic nails.
The scene shifts. I’m now in the room beyond the door: a classroom. Adolescent students lounge behind aged desks, as I stand beside the portly man who is their English teacher. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the date written on the blackboard in large, cursive letters and numbers. Thursday, October 16th, 1958.
I’m speaking. “Hello, everyone. I’m Heather Everett, and I’m from, um, New York City. I’m happy to be here.”
The scene dissipated, and I was back in Frosty’s. I turned to the thread named Heather Everett as I processed what I’d just experienced. Clearly, this was a memory from when this ghost was still a human.
“Um. Thank you,” I said. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Amber. I guess… you’re a ghost, yes? So this is how you communicate?”
The thread twisted in the air in a manner I characterized as excited.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I leaned against the back wall of Frosty’s and thought of what to say next. Perhaps… well, this seemed like something new to both of us. “I’m Amber, like I said last night. I don’t really have a surname—in official records, I’m Amber Bone, but that last name doesn’t feel like mine. I didn’t choose it.”
I turned back to the memory the ghost had shared with me. “You know, I’ve never experienced what it’s like to speak like a human. It’s strange. In a good way. You can feel the words as they leave your mouth.”
Heather moved in that excited way I was beginning to associate with Yes. Agreed. I wondered if she was even conscious of this movement.
“I guess you’re a lot older than me. I don’t know how much you’re aware of current events, but I was born about ten years ago. I don’t know the day, but my birth year is 1996. There was a man, someone with the skill to imbue skeletons like me with sentience, though he could also…command us to follow his will. We didn’t know his name, only his chosen title. The Sorcerer.”
I hadn’t spoken of this in years. Mostly because everyone I met knew the basics—but also, I don’t know. It wasn’t polite. Hundreds of humans had died thanks to the actions I and my fellow skeletons had undertaken at the Sorcerer’s command. I had not chosen this, but many humans had refused to believe me and my siblings’ protestations of innocence.
As I related my story, though, it felt like a weight lifted from my shoulders. It was a metaphor that felt oddly appropriate—I had been carrying the weight of the Sorcerer with me, and now, relating my history to a non-human, I could set it down for but a moment.
“Few of the humans of Tinville, Kansas survived contact with me and my siblings. It took about ten days of occupation before the United States military managed to successfully kill the Sorcerer, which immediately freed me and my kind from his control. Since then…”
Another weight settled on me, metaphorically. I wondered how much of my history I should unload, to continue the metaphor, on this tiny thread of light named Heather. To be fair, nothing in her motion indicated any reluctance to listen. But perhaps she was merely being polite.
“But enough about me,” I said. “I’m certain you don’t want to hear my whole life’s story.”
Heather spun towards my hand, hesitated, and then brushed against my finger again.
I’m in another classroom. White flakes of snow swirl outside the classroom’s left-hand wall of windows. I sit behind the desk as a thin, tall woman speaks. Beside her, the date has been partly wiped from the blackboard, but the year is still clear. 1959.
“I want to hear about you. Set down in your composition notebooks a story from your childhood. It could be a happy memory, or a sad one, or something more complicated. No matter what it is, it should come from the heart.”
The scene dissipated, and I heard a knocking on the plastic sill of the order window. “Sorry,” I said, as I straightened. “I was distracted. May I take your order?”
The middle-aged customer was, thankfully, understanding of my momentary lapse in attention, and I sent her on her way with two cups of shaved ice within moments.
Heather was still there, but as I’d prepared the order, she had explored the small stall. “Apologies to you, Heather,” I said as the customer moved out of earshot. “But if you’re really interested in me and my history, I’m grateful.” I paused, pondering the weight of my story. “But I don’t know if I want to relate the whole of it now. I’m curious about you, however, if you’re willing to share. We’d just have to be careful, the both of us, to keep an eye out for customers.”
Over the course of a few days, I learned many things about Heather Everett.
I learned she was born in 1941. I learned she never knew her true father. I learned she was raised by her mother, Patricia, and the man she eventually married in 1948, Dewey Everett. I learned she had many memories of New York City, having grown up in the Brooklyn borough. I learned she relocated to the nearby town of Pleasant Fields in 1958 as her father pursued work in the area.
I learned she was not a happy adolescent; not in her last years in Brooklyn, nor after the move. I wondered at that.
I also learned of her current existence. She used a memory of a tethered dog to communicate her experience after death. That death, however it had occurred, tied her firmly to this place. I surmised the popular conception of a ghost haunting the site of their death held some truth, at least in her case.
In turn, I shared my own history, piece by piece. I talked about the three years me and my fellow skeletons were detained nearby Fort Leavenworth. I spoke of what became known as the Skull Transmission, the hijacking of a commercial television station by one of our number to share our desperate plight with the nation. I spoke of the Whitfield scholarship; of my literary studies at Islington State University.
Heather spoke little of the source of her unhappiness—nor of her death, which I surmised must have occurred in the latter half of 1962, or shortly thereafter. And I spoke little of my time after graduation. Not until three days later, Saturday afternoon.
That afternoon had proven to be much hotter than the days preceding it; this, in conjunction with higher weekend attendance numbers meant Frosty’s was much, much busier.
“I guess I’m embarrassed,” I said as the latest pair of customers walked off to play a nearby game. Heather had just asked—through the medium of her ice skating instructor—why I was working here at an amusement park.
Heather spun lazily, and I recalled from her memories the deep exhalation called a sigh. “I mean, I have a degree in English Literature, after all. The scholarship program was the best thing that happened to me. But…”
Heather brushed against my finger, and I heard a voice I recognized as her mother. “People don’t change.”
“Yes, exactly. They helped us out, but nobody wanted to hire us.”
The first memories Heather had shown me had overtaken all my senses. Now, she had seemingly mastered the art of imparting discrete snippets of sensory input. A single spoken line, perhaps; the smell and tactility of an autumn breeze.
“Tell you what,” I said as I spotted another group of customers slowly approach. “You tell me why you were so unhappy during your life, and I’ll talk more about getting a job here.”
Heather froze for half a second, then began curling around herself in nervousness. She needn’t have worried as I saw to my current customers’ order. I wouldn’t push.
She did, however, brush against my shoulderblade once those orders were fulfilled, imparting a line recalled from a radio announcer, complete with static hiss: “You’ve got a deal!”
I nodded. “You don’t have to go into it if you don’t want to,” I said. “But as for me… well, we skeletons don’t actually need that much money, all told. A place to stay would be nice. But we don’t need food, water, sleep. Staying out in the elements is probably dangerous long-term, but doesn’t pose the same short-term problems as it would a human.”
I recalled one memory of Heather’s, the steady click of a metronome as Dewey—never Father, nor Dad, just Dewey—tried to teach her the fundamentals of piano performance. The click was oddly comforting, even in a borrowed memory. “So, I don’t know. I applied for graduate programs after graduation, but only gained a stack of rejection letters. Some had the…” I had seen humans huff in anger, and by now I had made a habit of the motion to communicate my own. A bob of the head, a particular sound of air through the nose. “Some had the gall to say my lack of high-school transcripts disqualified me. I’m just…”
A brush of Heather’s thread. “Life ain’t fair, but that ain’t no excuse for makin’ it worse.” I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, I got hired on here last October. You know, for Halloween. I think they didn’t expect me to show up for rehiring when the park reopened last May. But I did, and I guess they didn’t care enough to turn me away.”
A small group of customers interrupted our conversation; when they left, I said, “That’s it, I guess. Thanks for listening, Heather. You’re very kind.”
Heather continued spinning nervously. Then, another touch of her thread. Her mother: “It’s nothing really.” A childhood friend from middle school: “I’ll keep an eye out, so just—”
Apparently Heather was ready to send me fully into another memory. “You’re sure? You don’t need to if you’re not comfortable.”
Another hesitation. Then, “I trust you,” in her own voice, followed by a breathy, “I want this,” from unknown lips.
I held out my right hand, palm up.
I am standing twenty paces down an alleyway near a busy street. The din of traffic echoes across long, brick walls. Here, a storefront kept away from prying eyes beckons. I slip in.
My eyes are assaulted by covers of books, shelves marching into the darkness of the shop. Smoke hangs in the air, mingling with the smell of alcohol. I keep my fist in my pocket, securing a handful of coins against robbery. Every shadow feels ready to jump for me.
The sensation of fingers brushing against thin paperback spines is… electric.
I don’t spare even a glance at the covers as I pile half a dozen into my bag. Titles like Spring Fire, like Odd Girl Out, and others weigh me down.
The scene blurs, shifts, dances forward.
I’ve pulled the covers over my head, but the shouting passes through the blanket all the same. Fear sets my heart to racing. I’ve been found out.
“I won’t have it in my house, Pat!” A slamming. Dewey—neither Dad nor Father for him, only Dewey—has thrown my ill-concealed secret onto the dining room table. “It’s a disease, and we need to root it out now!”
Mom speaks too low for me to hear. Dewey’s heavy tread—still in his work shoes, hours after he arrived home—drowns it out. “We need… it’s this god damned city. This wouldn’t happen to our girl in a good, honest, hardworking town.”
Another dancing of the scene, another shift. City streets are exchanged for wide country. I recognize the street, the main street of Pleasant Field, so far from Brooklyn. Thoughts ram together in my head like footballers.
I walk with Jenny. A friend. Only a friend. She isn’t like… me.
“Are you really Jewish?” Jenny asks, and I tense.
Words tumble from my mouth before I can stop them. “Only my Mom, and Dewey’s, um…”
“Right. Tatty said you were Jewish, but you went to the Christmas party and all.”
“I don’t think Mom’s a good one. Dewey’s… well, he’s Seventh Day Adventist.”
“Oh, my uncle is too.” That’s all right, then. One more barrier drops between me and Jenny, and my heart races forward.
Another shift.
“We all know you’re a dyke,” and that word drops from Jenny like an anchor. I shrink back in my seat as I know her taunt could not be answered. It’s happening again. I’d have to go back to the doctor, to the sterile white, to…
“Good morning class!” The chorus of responses flows past me like the tide.
“We have a new student today,” Mrs. Flannigan says, and on cue, another student slouches into the room. “This is Simone.”
Shift, blur, whirlwind.
Simone walks across the schoolyard, and she is perfect and wonderful and oh so tall. I wait by the far shed, right where she told me to. She knows exactly what she wants, and what she wants is me.
Colors blur, and she is there with me, pressing me against brick. “You want this, Heather?” Her eyes spark as her lips part.
Bliss. A bliss that thunders like a racehorse.
And that’s it for part 2! I’ll be working to finish this as soon as I can, though I can’t promise it will be quick.
I’m glad you’re here. Until next time, thank you so much for reading!
UPDATE: Here is the ending!
For those who want to catch up on part one, you can find it here.
Well, this took longer than I thought. After this section turned out even longer than part 1, it’s still not finished. Alas! Hopefully the third part won’t take me nearly as long to write. (I live in hope!)
Here’s what I have so far.