A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (12 page)

“Merry?”

I walk around the futon toward the case, and say, “Ah, my horror section.”

“I am not familiar with all the titles, but I’d say it’s more than a horror section, and that it has a particular focus.” Rachel says it like she’s angry and disappointed. I can imagine the conversations she has when visiting
her daughter’s messy apartment. I’m sad for the both of them, and I’m insanely jealous.

“Well, the possession and exorcism stuff is only a subsection of my horror section.”

“For the benefit of my recorder, would you mind reading me the titles in this subsection?”

“Be happy to. In no particular order. I’ve tried to alphabetize on numerous occasions, but I always seem to lose steam. Anyway, in movies:
The Exorcist
and its four sequels and prequels;
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
;
The Last Exorcism
;
The Devil Inside Me; The Conjuring
;
Constantine
;
The Rite
;
REC 2
;
The Amityville Horror,
both versions;
Paranormal Activity
and its sequels;
Evil Dead I
and
II
;
Exorcismo
.” I quickly explain how other titles like
Session 9, The Legend of Hell House, Burnt Offerings
, and
The Shining
fit into this subsection as well. For novels, I point out other notable titles besides the obvious one written by William Peter Blatty. Those titles include
Come Closer
by Sara Gran;
Pandemonium
by Daryl Gregory;
Rosemary’s Baby
by Ira Levin. For nonfiction I point out
The Exorcist: Studies in the Horror Film
;
American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty
;
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
; and even the laughably bad
Pigs in the Parlor: The Practical Guide to Deliverance
.

When I’m done reading titles, Rachel asks, “Forgive the potentially obvious question, but have you actually seen all these movies and read all these books?”

“Yes. Well, yes for this section anyway. I can’t say I’ve read or seen everything in every bookcase.”

“I have to admit, Merry, I find it shocking that you would collect all these”—Rachel pauses to wave her hand at the bookcase—“titles.”

“Shocking? Really? I don’t know, you could say that I have a personal
interest in the subject matter.” I laugh, then walk over to my desk and sit in the little black chair.

“
Shocking
is an extreme word, but it fits. That you would willingly or obsessively choose to relive, over and over again, the horror of what you went through as a child, is shocking to me.”

“I’m not reliving anything. None of these books or movies come close to being like what I lived through.”

“Are you searching to find answers to what happened to you and your family?”

“I don’t know if I’d put it that way, exactly. But, yeah, I’m always looking for answers in everything I do. Aren’t you? Isn’t that why you want to write a book about me?”

“That’s a good question, Merry. I’m interested in finding the story. An accurate account of what happened.”

“Ah, those can be two different things.”

Rachel smiles, though she is still clearly unnerved by the bookcase discovery. “Very true. Now, Merry, I know this process can be difficult and will continue to become more so. You have to trust that I am not trying to belittle in any way the nightmarish, traumatic experience you suffered through, okay? And that I will treat it with respect. It’s a testament to your character that you’ve become the responsible and well-adjusted adult that you are.”

“You’re too kind; my years and years of therapy have helped. And I do trust you. I do. I wouldn’t have let you in otherwise.”

Rachel carefully considers the bookcases again. “Let me ask you this: Does watching the movies make you feel—I don’t know—empowered or comforted in a weird way?”

“In what weird way?”

“It’s empowering that you’re able to overcome the images on the
screen, which are more over-the-top and overtly supernatural than what you actually experienced.”

“What does that say about you or anyone else that my sister’s nationally televised psychotic break and descent into schizophrenia wasn’t horrific enough?”

“That’s not what I meant, Merry.”

I open my mouth to say something but she holds up a stop hand and keeps talking.

“And it’s not your fault. I’m badly stumbling around the point here.” She pauses, then adds, “Okay, Merry. Why did you show me your media room? You had to know that on some level I’d be surprised by what I saw.”

“Just sharing?” I say it like a question and shrug. We share a smile and a weighty silence. “Okay. I’ll admit what you were saying about the books and movies being a comfort, there’s some truth there. But it’s not about overcoming anything. It’s about making what happened to me seem more explicable when compared to the lurid ridiculousness of those stories.”

“Are you worried you’ll conflate what happened with the fictions you watch and read? You’d said to me on our first day together that your memories were mixed together with what other people told you about what had happened, and you’d included pop culture and media.”

“I said that?” I say, and spin around one full revolution in my desk chair.

“Not in those exact words, but essentially, yes.”

“Sounds like me,” I say. “I’m kidding, I remember telling you that, but I’d meant only the pop-cultural, Internet, and media treatment of the reality show and of what had happened to me and my family. Not the Hollywood movies and books. Let me put it this way: Me and my story might have some fuzzy, blurry parts, but I know my sister wasn’t Regan.”

“You don’t believe your sister was possessed, do you?”

“By a supernatural entity? No, I don’t.”

“Did you believe it when you were eight years old?”

“The eight-year-old me still believed in Bigfoot. But with Marjorie, I honestly wasn’t sure what to believe. I don’t think I knew what I wanted to believe, other than I wanted to believe in her. I always did.”

Rachel nods, and then slowly turns away from me and back to the bookcases. I wonder how many of the books she’s read, which of the movies she’s seen. Her fingers drift over the spines.

I think there was too much sugar in my coffee. Or not enough, as I still feel a little light-headed. I stand and say, “Rachel, did I tell you that I just landed my first paying writing gig?”

“No. I had no idea you were a writer. That’s fantastic, Merry.”

“Thank you, I’m very excited. It’s my first paying job that isn’t bartending or waitressing. It isn’t much, but it’s nice to be no longer solely subsisting on residuals from the show, the family trust fund, and, of course, what your publisher is paying me.”

“What’s the gig?”

“I’ve been writing a horror blog for a few years now—a quite popular one, if I do say so myself—and it was just picked up by the horror ’zine
Fangoria
. They’ll feature my blog online and I’ll write an assignment column for each issue.”

“I’m impressed and I’m very happy for you, Merry. Can I read the blog?”

“Please do! It’s called
The Last Final Girl
. I write it under a pseudonym, Karen Brissette.”

“Why that name?”

“Totally random. Really. Anyway,
Fangoria
has no idea I am who I really am, so they’re paying me for my writing merits only. That’s important to me. I feel, I don’t know, validated. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, yes, it does. You continue to impress me, Merry.”

“Aw, shucks.” I walk toward the door. “Okay, time for the tour to move again. Would you like to see the roof deck?”

“No thank you, I’m not a huge fan of heights, or exposed heights. I know, I’m a mess.”

“Not at all. Let’s go back to the kitchen then. Can I get you a drink of water or anything else?”

“Water would be great. And can we get back to talking about what your life was like when they were filming the show?”

“We can.”

We walk back to the kitchen and we’re back at the counter with our glasses of water. She says, “I’d like to ask you about the basement reenactment from the show. It’s quite a harrowing scene with Marjorie eating the dirt and following you up the stairs.”

“Yeah. It is. I have to admit, much to my shame, that I exaggerated what happened. Or maybe
embellished
is a better word.” I laugh. “It was the first time my parents let me be interviewed in detail by one of the two writers for the show, Ken Fletcher. Ken was such a nice guy. He would play with me downstairs in the living room when there was nothing going on. And there was a lot of nothing going on, at least early on. Anyway, I didn’t want to disappoint him, and I remembered how Dad had told me that the new family job was the TV show, so I wanted to do everything I could to help.”

“Okay. Let’s start with what really happened in the basement, then.”

ON THE FIRST
day, the crew kicked us out of the house.

It was early, so early it was still dark out when Mom shook me awake. Dad and Marjorie left before us, but I don’t remember where they went. We didn’t see them again until we came home the next morning. When Mom and I walked out the front door there were already three white vans parked out front and all sorts of people on the lawn. Some of them had clipboards and milled around the yard looking into the windows and taking measurements. Others carried thick black cases and lighting equipment into the house or they brought in electrical cords that had been coiled into tight circles. There was a subgroup of people who weren’t carrying anything, and they appeared to be a regular family. They clustered on the lawn, looking up at the house and smiling like they’d just moved in. There was a mom and dad and two sisters. Their clothes were new, unwrinkled, and brightly colored. I waved at the little girl who kind of
looked like me, though she was taller. She waved back but then quickly hid behind the older sister, who wore a lot of makeup. The older sister, like the parents, was listening to one of the clipboard-carrying people. The woman with the clipboard gestured at the house while she talked. The family laughed and I didn’t like that they were laughing at our house. Once we were in the car, Mom explained that they would be filming what were called “reenactment scenes” and that the other family was a group of actors who were pretending to be us. She kept stopping to ask me if I understood what she said and what was going on. I lied and told her I did. She also told me the actors would only be at our house for one day and night and that we would be the show after the actors left. We spent the day and night at Auntie Erin’s house. I remember eating too many hotdogs and watching the movie
Monsters, Inc.
by myself twice and falling asleep on the couch.

On the second day, the crew transformed our house.

Marjorie was in her room, sequestered away like the secret everyone already knew. Mom was in there with her. I hid under the dining room table. We had cleared the table of the folded stacks of clothes a few days before. It’d taken me
forever
to clean my room and put all those stupid clothes away. I’d let everyone in the house know how terrible and unfair that chore was. My parents then had covered the table with the white tablecloth that we had only ever used for holiday dinners. All the prep work had seemed needless to me, especially given my parents’ explicit instructions that we were not to act or do anything differently for the cameras.

With the TV people now roaming the house, I pretended the dining room table wasn’t the real one but was a ghost table in its white sheet. The crew wouldn’t be able to see me under it, which may or may not have been true. But from my ghostly vantage I couldn’t see how many people were coming in and out of the house. And I couldn’t see who was barking
orders, who was laughing that well-deep laugh, and who was banging and drilling the walls and ceilings. So I left the safety of the ghost table and wandered.

Dad was in the kitchen, sitting at the table and talking with two men. I’d later find out that the younger one with the black curly hair was Barry Cotton. He was the show’s producer-slash-director. He was nice enough to me, one on one, but I didn’t like how he would talk to me like a baby whenever the rest of my family was around. The other man at the kitchen table was Ken Fletcher, the show’s main writer. He had freckles, thick beard stubble, and a bright smile. Ken would quickly become my friend.

Crew members mounted small, cyclopic cameras on the dining room, living room, and kitchen ceilings. Horrified that they could be doing the same in my room, I ran upstairs to put a stop to it. There were crew members in the hallway and they mounted more ceiling cameras. They all said, “Hi,” to me, with one saying, “Hey there, little lady,” as I ignored them and dodged their stepladders. My room’s door was still closed. I ran inside and there weren’t any crew or cameras, but my cardboard house with its Magic Marker–vine graffiti was back in its old spot. We’d moved it to the basement a few weeks ago because I’d told my parents I didn’t want the house anymore, that it took up too much space, but the truth was that I couldn’t sleep with it in the room any longer, that I was too afraid of the growing things on the outside and the darkness the house kept on the inside. I yelled through my closed bedroom door, “No cameras in my room and no one is allowed to put stuff in my room!” I hesitantly walked over and kicked the cardboard house, but I jumped backward immediately, afraid it would retaliate. My goal kick dented one of the corners.

I wouldn’t be able to drag the house back down to the basement with all those people in the hallway, and I didn’t want to stay closed up in my room with the growing-things house. My room was too clean to set up
any elaborate security devices. So on the way out I retied my purple robe belt to the corner of the bed and the doorknob. It’d never stopped Marjorie from sneaking in, but maybe it would stop the crew.

On my way back to the first floor I stopped and peeked into the sunroom. One guy who smelled like salad dressing and had a tool belt hanging way too low on his skinny hips nailed up a black drop cloth over the bay window. I stood in the doorway, mouth hanging open and fists planted on my sides. I said, “You’re changing our house! It’s not a sunroom if there isn’t any sun.” A woman who adjusted two spotlights, one large and one small, laughed and told me not to worry, that it was only temporary and they’d put everything back the way it was when it was all over. I wanted to ask her what she meant by her
when it was all over
. I told her that I didn’t like it. The yellow wallpaper looked old and faded under the harsh spotlights. Another crew member set up some microphones and a camera on a tripod pointed at the loveseat. He wore a black baseball hat that had the show’s logo on it. The logo was
THE POSSESSION
in white, capital block letters, with
THE
resting on top of
POSSESSION
so that the letters formed the shape of our house.

I went back downstairs and everyone was so big and loud and busy. I couldn’t watch TV and I didn’t think I could go back under the dining room table without being seen. I decided I was thirsty and hungry, but I didn’t want to go into the kitchen and be cornered by Dad, because he’d make me talk to the producer some more. He’d fire off questions about soccer, asking what my favorite book or movie or song was, and I’d feel pressure to perform, as though it was up to me to prove to the world that Mom and Dad were not at fault here and had managed to raise at least one bright, cheery, normal daughter. So I went down into the basement instead.

Normally, the basement was too dark and scary for me to even contemplate
with its dirt floor, the ceiling of exposed wooden beams (those bones of the first floor from which hung more cobwebs than light bulbs), the growly and hissing furnace, and toward the back of the basement on the left side, the bulkhead staircase, which was the creepiest; a literal hole-in-the-wall, a black mouth cut into the foundation that led up to the creaky, rusty bulkhead that opened to the side yard. But since my parents had become flush with TV money, they had gone on a triumphant shopping spree at Sam’s Club, buying bulk quantities of all manner of nonperishable food and drink items. Our fully stocked shelves could sustain us through the show, through the end of the coming winter, and maybe through the apocalypse. Of course these shelves and their cornucopia were in the basement.

I reached inside the door with one arm, groped the wall for the light switch, and found it. Already, my basement bravery had leaked away. I left the door open behind me so that the noisy crew could still keep me company. As I tiptoed down, the stairs felt too soft under my shoes. The sounds of the crew didn’t follow me down, and instead grew distant. I came to the horrifying realization that if something happened to me in the basement I could yell and scream all I wanted and no one would hear me in the loud, busy world of upstairs. The air was cool and moist and pressed against me. I felt my way along the foundation wall, and the gray, misshapen stones were gritty to the touch. I hated thinking about these old stones and their crumbling mortar holding up everything.

Coming down here by myself had seemed like such a better idea when I was upstairs, but I was too stubborn to leave empty-handed. I quickly scooted past the furnace and hot water heater on my right, washer and dryer and their collection of hoses on my left, past the dark mouth of the bulkhead stairs and to the far foundation wall that held up the back end of the house, and the set of slightly crooked wooden shelves stacked to
the ceiling with their cache of goodies: jars, cans, soda and water bottles, and large corrugated cardboard boxes. I wanted to use those boxes when emptied to create a miniature town to replace the white cardboard house in my room.

On the second row of shelves, at my eye level, were plastic-wrapped cases of juice boxes and peanut butter crackers. I had to push, lift, and twist other boxes to get to what I wanted. It was like a life-sized game of Jenga. I almost lost the game as I pulled one corner of a multipack of assorted Cheerios boxes out too far, and everything above it on the shelves shook and settled. I worked a small hole into the plastic wrap, using my teeth like a small, thieving rodent and eventually pried out two juice boxes and a package of crackers. I tried to force the Cheerios back to its spot by ramming my shoulder into the multipack, but it wouldn’t budge. I kept pushing and grunting and even talking to it, telling the cereal to get back into its stupid place.

“Need some help, monkey?”

I screamed, dropped the crackers, and spun around. Marjorie was there, dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt. She was barefoot and her toes wiggled and wormed in the cold dirt.

She smiled and shook her head. “Are you really that afraid of me now?” Her hair was tied back, no loose strands. It felt like I hadn’t seen her without her face obscured by her hair or her hood in forever. Her eyes were bright and focused, her neck long, chin sharpened to a point. She looked older; a glimpse of the adult Marjorie I would never see.

I said, “No.” I was relieved to no longer be in the basement by myself, and I was happy to see Marjorie dressed and walking about on her own, without Mom or Dad following her around like a pet that wasn’t house-trained. But, yes, I was still a little afraid of her.

“Good. You shouldn’t be.” Marjorie walked to the shelves and lifted
up the boxes resting against the wedged multipack of Cheerios. “Here. Go ahead, push it in.”

I pushed with all my might and it slid back into place so easily, I lost my balance, stumbled, and bounced my head off the cereal.

“Ow!” I giggled nervously and rubbed my forehead.

Marjorie walked into the far corner, where there was no dangling light bulb, to where our parents stored holiday decorations, summer clothes, boxes of unlabeled miscellany, and old furniture. She said, “Look at all this junk.”

I held my ground near the shelves. “Does Mom know you’re down here?”

Marjorie picked through some of the open packs and boxes. “Probably not. She fell asleep in my room. Crazy what’s going on upstairs, huh?”

I imagined Mom facedown on Marjorie’s bed. Maybe there was something terribly wrong with her. I tried not to panic, or at least not let it show in my voice when I said, “Yeah, I don’t like it.”

“I am sorry about that. Most of this is my fault.”

“Did you put my cardboard house back in my room?”

“What do you mean? Hasn’t it always been in your room?”

“No, Mom helped me move it down here last week.”

“Really. How come?”

“I don’t know. I was sick of it, I guess.”

“Right.” Marjorie made a show of looking around the basement. “It’s not down here, is it? No. They must’ve moved it back.”

“They?”

“The TV people. I like calling them that.
The TV People
. And they have TVs for heads and their faces can change when the channels change. Creepy, right?”

“I guess. Why would they put the house back in my room?”

Marjorie looked bored but quickly explained that The TV People had been in our house all day and all night yesterday, with actors pretending to be us, and they were filming what they called the “reenactment scenes.” They’d needed the house back in my room so they could film Actor-Merry finding the cardboard house covered in growing things.

I took it all in, not quite sure how she could know all that, and said, “So, it wasn’t you, then.”

“Nope, dope. I didn’t move your house back to your room. I swear.” Marjorie crossed her heart and held up her right hand.

I didn’t say anything. What she’d said to me about Actor-Merry made sense, but I wasn’t sure if she was telling the full truth. It was possible that Marjorie brought the house up herself and The TV People were happy to find it there and use it.

“Merry. You have to trust me. I’m still your big sister. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. Right?”

I looked down and nodded. I picked up my dropped crackers, then pried the plastic straw off the side of one of the juice boxes and stabbed its pointed end through the small tin-foil-covered hole.