A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (11 page)

Intermission (*Karen drinks more coffee, must have more COFFEEEEEEEEE!!!!*)

Okay. Now, my favorite reenactments and interviews feature the quieter bits that deviate from
The Exorcism
game plan but are no less eerie or disturbing. Let’s go rapid fire on these because I think the quick accumulation of these nice little moments generates a cool effect.

—Marjorie’s molasses-flood story is legit. For a riveting account of the 1919 molasses flood in Boston, check out Stephen Puelo’s
Dark Tide
. Her growing-things story was clearly inspired by a short story from a relatively obscure horror writer. Her drawing the growing things on Merry’s cardboard house recalls the collected mass of wooden stick figures in
The Blair Witch Project
, which is not horror’s first found-footage film, but its most famous. During Marjorie’s midnight freak-out scene, there’s a shot of her bedroom door, which fills the viewing screen, and then the
door subtly bows outward. The very same shot (in black-and-white) is in Robert Wise’s amazing 1963 film
The Haunting
, which was based on
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson. Marjorie’s bit about the voices in her head being so old, ancient, beyond time, and her consonant-heavy speech sound downright Lovecraftian. And of course, we find out later that Marjorie had been exposed to his works. Chthulu for all my friends! (
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh
Cthulhu
R’lyeh wgah’nagl
fhtagn! feel free to check my spelling there!!!) Her super creepy spiel to Daddy Barrett about being in heaven and not knowing if your loved one was real or demon was gently lifted from Vladimir Nabokov and his ultimate unreliable narrator novel
Despair
. The song Marjorie sings and hums in many of the reenactments (and which the show uses as a theme quite effectively in their background soundtrack) is “Gloomy Sunday,” originally composed by Hungarian pianist Rezsõ Seress in 1933. It’s legendary not just because Billie Holliday once sang it, but because it sounded
soooooo
frowny-face sad it supposedly drove a bunch of unsuspecting listeners to suicide. How cool is that? (and yeah, I’ve listened to it like fifty-five times in a row now . . . and I’m still here!!!!)

Keeping all that in mind . . . In an interview toward the end of the pilot, John Barrett duly informs us that Marjorie claims she
never heard of the Internet or the library
doesn’t know where she heard the stories or the song, or where she gets her terrible ideas from. He says that Marjorie has consistently told his family, the psychiatrist, Father Wanderly,
the mailman
, and everyone else who ever asked that all that “stuff” just popped into her head, fully formed, like they were always there. She knew that these were other people’s stories/ideas, but swears she hadn’t learned of them or heard them from outside sources.

So . . . she’s precognitive! Or postcognitive! Something-cognitive! Gnostic, a priori horror makes us weep with fear!!!

Again, I think this is another brilliant bit. The show had horror fans hooked at hello because, frankly, most of us are not picky. We’re like the family dog that wags its tail at a treat, no matter if it’s a crappy store-brand Milk-Bone or a piece of steak. We (yes, I’m still speaking for you, horror hound) don’t mind the familiar and recycled as long as we can consume it without gagging. To the general populace, the recycled bits of classic horror might be naggingly familiar in some recess of their pitiful and atrophied culture-lobe of their brains (mmm, braaaaiiiins!!!), but to them it plays as totally fresh and new, and frightening.

(aside 4: I’ve got this whole thing about how
The Possession
fits perfectly in the Gothic tradition but I haven’t fully worked it out and I have to save something for later blog posts, right? Right! But I love the idea of all these external influences listed above so obviously affecting the story and affecting Marjorie herself. If she was possessed by anything other than faulty brain chemistry and/or DNA, I like to imagine her as being possessed by the vast, awesome and awful monster that is popular culture. Possessed by the collective of ideas!)

By the time we finally meet the real Marjorie (and not her Liz Jaffe reenactment stand-in) in the final moment of the pilot, the show has painstakingly built its thematic foundation through realism, through the fears of our deteriorating middle-class and core conservative family values, and through the recycled cultural lessons borrowed or reimagined from the classics of horror literature and film.

When we finally see the surveillance-style video of
real
Marjorie sitting in a room, across from an unnamed interviewer, wearing her soccer team sweatpants and sweatshirt, flipping her hair away from her face revealing
her tired (haunted?) eyes, we’re afraid for her and we’re afraid of her.

When she says, with her voice cracking, “I’m Marjorie Barrett, and I need help,” we shudder, and maybe we giggle nervously, guiltily, but we’re hooked. Oh, baby, are we hooked.

(cue the pilot outro, which is of course in the same the minor key of “Gloomy Sunday”)

RACHEL SAYS
, “I must say, I’m very impressed by your home, Merry.”

“Thank you! It is a nice place to rest my weary bones, isn’t it?” My two-bedroom condo is a third-floor unit of a South Boston brownstone. The living room’s large bay window overlooks Carson Beach, which really isn’t much of a beach. I’m told it was at one time. I spend my sunny mornings in the living room with a coffee, a blueberry muffin, and my tablet, and I watch the joggers running parallel to the water and going nowhere quickly. On rainy days, I watch the encroaching rising waters lash against the helpless seawalls that will no doubt fail one day.

“You’re much too young for weary bones.” We’re standing in my living room with the coffees she bought. She’s very thoughtful. Outside it’s overcast, and the ocean is sleeping. “That is an amazing view. If you don’t mind my asking . . . What was the asking price? I might be in the market for a condo myself. My daughter is out of the house now and I don’t need all that space.”

I don’t mind. So I tell her.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, the condo is quite expensive even with our seasonal flooding issues. It costs five hundred a month to rent a parking space in the elevated garage out back. Isn’t that ridiculous? But I don’t own a car and I rarely leave my perch, so I’m generally dry.”

“You don’t go out much for fear of being recognized?”

“No one around here knows who I am, or who I was in the context of a fifteen-year-old television show. Maybe that will change when our best-selling book comes out.”

“It’s possible that it might. I hope you’ll be okay with that.”

Rachel doesn’t have her blue hat with her. I miss it, fiercely, like one might miss a newly casual acquaintance one hoped would become a lifelong friend. I do like that she’s wearing a white button-down shirt tucked into her jeans. Her collar practically has the wingspan of an albatross.

I say, “I’ll be fine. I have to pay the mortgage somehow, right?”

“Oh, Merry, I’m sad to hear that you don’t leave your place often.”

I lead her back toward the kitchen and we sit at the granite-topped, L-shaped counter. I say, “There’s no reason to be sad. I didn’t mean to imply that I’m a shut-in, because I’m not. I have dinner with my aunt twice a month. I go out. I speak to people. I even have a few friends.” The last sentence drools with playful sarcasm, and I smile.

“I deserved that.” She laughs politely. “I’m glad to hear it, though. You’re much too young to be . . . living that way. Right? You should be out and having—fun.” Rachel bumbles over her words and pecks at her cardboard coffee cup.

She is much more nervous here in my home than she was at my old house. My not saying anything after her awkward bromide about the exciting life a young, single woman should be living in the big city likely
isn’t helping her feel at ease, so I say, “I could just sit and marinate in this coffee. You’re my hero this morning.”

“I’m glad you approve. I just love the hint of nutmeg on a cold morning like this.” We hum approvingly as we both take a sip. Rachel switches subjects. “Your high ceilings are dreamy. I love your green kitchen and the yellow in the living room. Unexpected color scheme, but it flows well, especially with the open floor plan.”

“Thank you. Each room is a different color. I plan on changing their colors once a year, every February I think. February is such a dreary month otherwise, particularly in Boston.”

“How many more rooms are there?”

“Two. My blue bedroom and my red media room.”

“Media room?”

“It’s the condo’s second bedroom that I use as my play area. It’s where I keep my TV, tablet docking station, bookcases, movies, video games. All the fun stuff.”

She nods, sips her coffee, then says, “Shall we get started?”

“We shall!”

Rachel takes out her phone and turns on her recording app. She places the phone down between us on the counter. There’s an almost reverent moment of silence, as though we’re both acknowledging the power the device has over our conversation and over us.

“I want to focus on the television show today, focus on what it was like living with the cameras and the production crew. That had to be a strange experience for a child.”

“It was. But I think any and all experiences are strange for a child.”

“It had to be especially strange for you.”

“I guess. I’m not trying to be a smartass, but that’s hard for me to say. I haven’t lived anyone else’s normal experience to compare mine to.”

“I have talked to some of the show’s producers and former employees of the production company, but I’m still unclear as to how the show came about.”

“So am I!” I laugh at my own joke.

“Let’s piece it together, then. According to the timeline I have, the show started filming less than a month after the night you found Marjorie in your parents’ room. Can you tell me what happened at home in those weeks in between?”

“Not a lot. I remember Marjorie going away to the hospital for about two weeks, so she could get some rest. That was how Mom put it. It may sound strange, but my world was a scary place, or scarier place, for me with Marjorie gone. In hindsight, it’s likely that Mom was suffering from depression. She started smoking in the house instead of going outside. She was drinking a lot, wine mostly, and cried to herself in the kitchen. I remember her sitting there in all that smoke, alternately holding her head up high, defiantly blowing out her smoke, and then crumbling down into herself. I was too afraid to talk to her, to try to comfort her, and she couldn’t even look at me if I went into the kitchen to get a drink or a snack. I don’t remember Dad being around much while Marjorie was gone, but when he was, he argued with Mom about how long Marjorie would be in the hospital, how they’d pay for any of it, but mostly they argued about letting Father Wanderly try to help them.”

“Did they ever talk about remanding Marjorie to the state? Were they worried that the state would step in?”

“I don’t remember them talking about that, no. I could be wrong, but I think for the most part, Marjorie behaved like a normal surly teen for her psychiatrist and hospital staff. At least that’s what Marjorie told me when I asked her what going to the psychiatrist was like. Anyway, I couldn’t take my parents’ arguments anymore, and stopped spying on
them. After a couple of days without Marjorie, I tried to stay away from my parents altogether. Dad kept trying to bless me and make me pray with him. I ran and hid whenever I felt his big paw landing on my head. When Marjorie finally came back home, it was my turn to leave. They shipped me away to stay with Dad’s sister, my Auntie Erin. I stayed with her for a week, maybe more. I did homework, played with her dog Niko, and cried myself to sleep. Erin brought me to school and took me trick-or-treating on Halloween. I went as a zombie soccer player. Because I was so clever, I shouted, ‘Goal!’ instead of moaning for brains. I remember telling Erin that the candy in her neighborhood was better than mine, but I was just saying it to make her feel good.

“The very day Mom brought me back home, Marjorie was upstairs in her room and Father Wanderly and another priest, a younger guy, Father Gavin, were sitting in the living room. Father Wanderly gave me a crooked smile and the weakest handshake ever. It was like shaking hands with a bird. Father Gavin just waved ‘hi’ at me, shy, like the boys at school who were afraid of catching cooties from a girl. He was short and pudgy and had too much hair on the back of his neck. Then I remember being rushed into the kitchen and my parents sat me down and told me about how we were going to do a TV show. Dad was excited, manic even, pacing around the room, punctuating his sentences with hallelujahs. Mom tried to be reassuring, but she still couldn’t look at me.”

“That was it? It all happened that fast?”

“I was only a kid and they didn’t tell me much of the nitty-gritty details. I’m sure there are gaps in what I’m not remembering as well. What I remember them telling me was that someone was going to make a TV show about us. That these same people were going to help Marjorie get better and help us, too. Dad said that the TV show was going to be our family’s new job, and that we would be paid well for doing our job. Mom
said that cameras would be in all the rooms, some people might follow me around and ask questions, and that if I ever got scared by one of them, to tell her right away.”

“From what little I know and from what you’ve told me so far, I’m surprised your mom wasn’t more resistant to the idea of doing the television show.”

“I think she was very resistant, which is obvious when you watch the show and her interviews, right? As to when or how the final decision to sign the dotted line was made, I have no idea. I was out of that house for more than a week. Maybe Dad wore her down, bullied her into signing the contract. She clearly wasn’t as outwardly fervent as Dad with the new old-time religion, but maybe she saw the light. Even knowing better, maybe despite her protests, deep down she believed it would help Marjorie and she was ashamed by that belief. Maybe it was cold and simple pragmatism. Money. We were going broke and the producers swooped in and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, right? I don’t know. Your guess about why Mom went along with it all is as good as mine.”

“I sincerely doubt that, Merry.”

I smile. It’s the first time Rachel has pushed back and accused me of not being forthcoming. Good for her.

“I was eight and she was my mom. Her motivations were beyond me, and continue to be. I will say that she never explicitly told me the show would transform us into the town freaks, the laughingstocks of the neighborhood. But only because she never had to say it. It was there, between her lines and in everything she did once the cameras were in our house.”

Rachel asks more questions from there and I answer them, or I answer most of them, anyway. Her questions are now about show particulars she probably could’ve just found out herself. Or maybe she already knows the answers and is testing to see how honest I’m being with her.

I say, “Yes, the lag time between filming and the episode airing was about two weeks. Rachel, let’s stretch our legs and finish the tour of the condo. We could go to the roof deck too, if you’d like.”

“May I keep taping our conversation?”

“Certainly.”

We walk through the kitchen back into the living room, then curl right into the first bedroom, which is shaped like a long rectangle. A print of Andrew Wyeth’s
Christina’s World
and a small collection of watercolor landscapes and shorelines from local artists dot the walls. My queen-sized bed has a shiny brass frame and is covered with a fluffy white duvet. The bed is underneath a window that overlooks the ocean. The room is quiet and plain, and the walls are a bright sky-blue.

She says, “That is a spectacular view. Your bedroom is quite lovely. I wish my silly daughter would keep her apartment so tidy and—”

“Adult looking?”

“I was going to say
subdued
, but you’re more to the point.” Rachel walks into the middle of the room, gingerly touches the antique dresser, and does a full turn, spinning like the world’s slowest ballerina. “Is this room the same color as your childhood bedroom?”

I resist the urge to say something that would’ve been totally Marjorie:
Maybe the room was a disastrous and dark blue, the color of a painful bruise, only yesterday
. I say, “I don’t know if it’s the exact shade or hue. But yes, it’s the same. It helps me dream in sky-blue.”

“May I quote you directly on that?”

“Of course. I assumed you’d be using many direct quotes. You’re not writing fiction with this book, correct?”

We both laugh. I’m nervous, almost dizzy as I walk out of the bedroom, and Rachel silently follows me out and next door to the second bedroom, my media room.

Rachel says, “Now this looks like my daughter’s apartment. No offense.”

I say, “You’re terrible!” and gently swipe her shoulder. “So this is my playroom. What kind of playroom would it be if it wasn’t in a state of beautiful chaos?”

The left wall is covered by five black bookcases, each over six feet tall, and the shelves full of books, comics, and movies. On the wall across from the door is the room’s only window. No ocean view here, but the brick façade of the neighboring brownstone. On our right is a desk overflowing with more totems of pop culture. Beneath the rubble, somewhere, is my tablet docking station. Next to the desk is a wall-mounted flat screen. In the middle of the room, a lost island in a violent sea, is my lumpy futon couch.

“You weren’t kidding when you said the room was red.”

“Yeah, it’s redder than I thought it was going to be. It looked different on the paint chip. If there was more natural lighting in the room, it would be a softer red I think.”

“I must say it warms my writer’s heart to see so many hard copies of books filling your shelves.”

“I have digital copies of just about everything you see, but I like having the physical artifacts as well. I used to collect vinyl records too, but that became too unwieldy and expensive.”

Rachel walks to the bookcases, surveys the spines of books and DVDs. She stops at the fourth of the five cases and says my name like a question.