A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel (13 page)

She said, “I’m going to let you in on a big secret, so that you’ll trust me again.”

“Is it about Mom or Dad?”

“No. It’s about me. It’s the biggest secret of all so you can’t, you can’t, you can’t, you
can’t
tell Mom or anyone else. Okay?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear such a big secret. It might not fit in my head and then it would spill out everywhere. But at the same time, my skin prickled with wanting to know what it was. “Okay. Tell me.”

“I am not possessed by a demon or anything like that.”

My face must’ve performed some impressive contortions because Marjorie doubled over laughing. “What, didn’t Dad tell you why this is
all happening with the show and the priests? Didn’t he tell you that they believe Satan or one of his demon peeps lives deep inside me and makes me do terrible, bad-girl things?” When she said “Satan” she crouched down low, widened her eyes, and spread her arms out wide. It made the word extra scary.

I was embarrassed, and meekly explained that Mom and Dad hadn’t mentioned Satan or any demons to me, and they hadn’t told me what exactly was wrong with her, only that everyone was just trying to help her get through a rough time.

“Jesus, that’s messed up. And I’m the one they sent away for two weeks.” Marjorie crossed her arms and walked in a tight circle, as though deciding which one of a million possible directions to go in. “Actually, I am possessed, only I’m possessed by something so much older and cooler than Satan.”

I stood still and stared at her. When she said
I am possessed
I pictured a giant green hand closing over her, hiding her from me forever.

“Ideas. I’m possessed by ideas. Ideas that are as old as humanity, maybe older, right? Maybe those ideas were out there just floating around before us, just waiting to be thought up. Maybe we don’t think them, we pluck them out from another dimension, or another mind.” Marjorie seemed so pleased with herself, and I wondered if this was something new she just thought up or something she’d told someone before.

I asked, “Is that what the voices in your head tell you?”

“Hey, how do you know about the voices?”

“You’ve talked about the voices before. Waking up at night, and at the kitchen table.”

“Oh right, I guess I have. Hard to keep track of everything, you know. The voices, yeah, I don’t know.” Marjorie’s bright, triumphant tone faded. “I think I’m just imagining them, you know?” She paused, wrapped her
arms around her chest, and hesitantly started talking again. “They’re not there most of the time but if I start thinking about them or obsessing about them, they happen, almost like I make them happen, like I’m inside my own head only I don’t know it’s me in there. So I’m trying not to think about them, and now when the voices come back I listen to my iPod on level a billion and drown them out. Seems to work. I can handle them now. No biggie.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, look, Merry.” Marjorie let her arms fall down to her sides, laughed, and shook her head. “Don’t you worry about me. I know I’ve done some weird shit while I’ve been figuring things out, and the voices are real, but the truth is, I’m fine. And I’ve been pretending. I’ve been faking it.”

“Faking what?”

“Faking that I’ve been possessed by something that’s making me do
terrible
things.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? Isn’t it obvious yet?” Marjorie looked around the basement and at me like she was genuinely confused, like she didn’t know where she was. “Mom and Dad were totally stressed about money and the house, I hated being in stupid high school, and then I started hearing the voices, stress induced probably, yeah, but still it sort of freaked me out. Then I got super pissed when they started sending me to Dr. Hamilton and his fastest prescription pad in the east, when they were the ones who should’ve been getting help, not me. They’re a mess, you’ve had to notice that they’re a total mess, right? And then Dad added to the mess with his new finding God BS, so I decided I’d just keep pushing it, see how far I could go, and I was going to leave you out of it, but I got mad at you for telling Mom about my stories, and by the time that super creepy
Father Wanderly got involved, it was easy to keep pushing, keep pretending, keep it all going, and now I don’t have to take Dr. Hamilton’s pills anymore and we have the show, right? You guys should be
thanking
me. I saved the house. I saved us, all of us, and I’m going to make us famous.”

Even as an earnest and gullible eight-year-old and without the gifts and hindrances of hindsight, I saw the gaping holes in her story, and I knew that Marjorie didn’t really believe in what she was saying. She was trying to convince herself that she was okay and in control of what was happening to her and to us. In that moment, I was afraid for her instead of being afraid of her. And I wanted to help the house and family too.

I asked, “So, wait, where do your ideas really come from?”

“Everywhere. The Internet, mostly.” Marjorie laughed with a hand over her mouth.

“You mean the song and the molasses story—”

“Internet. Internet.”

“—the growing things?”

“That one’s mine. That one is—real. You still can’t ever forget that story, Miss Merry. Hey, isn’t this basement just like the basement in the growing-things story? Remember the part where you were in the basement and the growing things came out and up from the dirt, Mom’s poisoned and buried body dangling off the vines? So creepy, right? You can almost see it happening right now. You can almost feel the growing things worming up between our toes.”

Marjorie bent down and tickled my ankles.

“Stop it!” I slapped her hands away.

“Ow! Merry-slaps are the worst. I have no idea how someone so little can hit so hard.”

I laughed, then bared my teeth and raised my free hand, threatening her with more Merry-slaps. Marjorie mock-screamed and I chased her around
the basement. I whiffed on trying to slap her butt as she ran by and dashed into and up the bulkhead stairwell. Then the lights went out.

I gasped, losing all my air. Marjorie screamed, but then started laughing. She said, “Come sit with me in here, Merry. I’ll hold your hand.”

I stood in the middle of the basement. It was dark, but not pitch-black as rectangles of weak light filtered down from the two basement windows. Still, I could see only shadows and outlines, and I couldn’t see Marjorie.

I said, “What did you do? Turn the lights back on!”

“That wasn’t me. Why do you always blame me for everything? Stay where you are, monkey. I’ll come to you.”

I heard her bare feet slowly sliding and shuffling on the cement bulkhead stairs and it sounded like she had many more than two feet. Was she walking on all fours down the stairs because it was too dark to see? I didn’t want to wait for her or stay where I was. I wanted to sprint back up to the first floor and leave her down here, let her wait, watch, and see if any growing things would finally sprout from the dirt floor. It was her idea anyway.

“Is someone down here?” Dad’s voice echoed, followed shortly by heavy pounding on the basement stairs. He and a crew member I didn’t know were at the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner before I could announce myself. The crewman had a flashlight.

“Merry, what the hell are you doing? You didn’t mess around with the breakers, did you?”

“What? Dad. No. I just came down to get a snack.” I held up my spent juice box and unopened pack of crackers. And I also looked to the foundation wall on my right and the bulkhead stairs. Marjorie hadn’t come out yet nor had she announced herself.

He said, “Did Mom say you could do that? I guess that’s fine, right?”

I wasn’t sure if he was asking me if this was fine or the crewman, or if
he knew Marjorie was down here and was trying to trick her out. Either way, Dad didn’t wait for an answer. He walked past me toward the circuit breaker panel that was on the wall between the bulkhead stairs and the washer/dryer.

“What do you think, turning on our coffee maker from 1975 fried it?” The crewman laughed politely. Dad opened the panel, flipped the breaker, and the lights came back on. Marjorie must’ve been up at the top of the stairs, pressed right up against the bulkhead doors because I still couldn’t see her. She wasn’t coming down.

Dad said, “Come on, Merry. You’ve got your snack. I don’t want you playing down here.”

“Okay.”

Dad put a hand on my back and gently nudged me. His hand was warm and a little sweaty. He and the crewman followed me back up to the first floor. They shut the basement door. I scurried under the dining room table and watched the door. I thought about opening the door for Marjorie, not that it was locked or she needed it opened for her. It just felt like something I should do, but I didn’t. When I was munching on my last peanut butter cracker, I heard our front door open slowly, even with all of the commotion and conversations around me. I heard the whisper of the outside coming in, and I heard her quiet but hurried footsteps pattering up the stairs in the front foyer, and again, it sounded like she had more than two feet.

Later, when the crew was done with setup, Barry the director and Dad took me upstairs and told me that the sunroom was now the “confessional room.” We would and could go in there by ourselves and talk to the camera about what had happened, or talk about anything that was on our minds. For my first confessional, I went in with the intention of saying only “I want my sunroom back” and then I would fold my
arms obstinately and glare at the camera, or maybe I’d scuttle behind the camera and actually tear down the terrible black cloth covering the bay window and explain myself by saying the room couldn’t breathe with the window being covered and it could die.

Instead when I went in there and pressed the record button like they’d shown me I thought about Marjorie in the basement and how she had lied about faking everything and saving the house.

I could pretend, I could fake it, I could lie, and help save the house too. So I did.

I told the camera a story about Marjorie sneaking up on me in the basement, her saying weird stuff to me like she had before, her eyes being all white, her eating dirt, making her tongue into a black worm, and how she made the lights go out. I told the camera that Marjorie was being really scary and that something evil was now living inside her.

WE’D BEEN LIVING
with the crew for two weeks. It was a Sunday morning, the same day of the show’s premiere. Dad woke me up and tried to make me go to church. There were no mounted cameras in any of our bedrooms so he brought Jenn the camerawoman up with him, which totally backfired. I’m sure he was thinking that as the good daughter I wouldn’t be able to say no to church with Jenn and her camera watching. I knew that not only could I say no, but that he couldn’t get mad and start yelling at me. So I said no, and I told him that church was creepy. I smiled lazily, reached out to hug him around the neck when I said it, and I meant the creepy part as our little joke. When I was in kindergarten I’d gone through a phase where I’d described everything I didn’t like as creepy. Mom had been annoyed by it but Dad had loved it and had quizzed me on what was or wasn’t creepy: Milk, mud, and airplanes were good; pickles, shoelaces, and purple were creepy. Dad didn’t think
my “church is creepy” joke was funny though. He dodged my hug, let out a sigh, and said, “You shouldn’t say that, Merry. It isn’t right.” He did an awkward little dance trying to get around Jenn and then stormed off down the hallway. Jenn followed. I felt bad enough that I tiptoed to the sunroom, peeled back a corner of the drop cloth, and watched him and Jenn drive off to church.

When I got downstairs, Mom was at the table with the writer, Ken Fletcher, and Tony the cameraman. Ken had a little black notebook on the table in front of him and he jotted down some notes. He was my parents’ age but he looked younger. He wore black Chuck Taylor sneakers, jeans, and dark, logo-less T-shirts. He would talk with me whenever he could, and he actually listened to what I had to say. Not like when other crew members would ask how I was doing; they were only asking to be polite, asking for the sake of asking. Tony the cameraman had oversized earphones looped around his giraffe neck. I didn’t like Tony. He wasn’t friendly. His beard was too curly and his fingernails were too long and clicky. He was creepy.

The three of them were eating breakfast sandwiches. Mom had saved one for me. I quickly pulled mine apart and ate just the cheese and egg part. I told Mom that I had a lot of energy and she had to help me get rid of it with a timed obstacle course. Ken laughed, closed his notebook, and wrapped it with a red rubber band. Tony left the kitchen with his camera perched on his shoulder, announcing he was taking a break.

Mom said, “Really, Merry? But you just ate.”

I grabbed Mom’s arm and pulled her down, her face almost touching mine. “Yes!”

“Merry, stop it. Okay.” Mom turned to Ken and said, “We do this sometimes. She has lots of energy.”

Ken laughed. It was a loud and bright sound. He said, “I love it.”

Mom said, “Okay, listen carefully. Run out to the living room, sit on the couch, then go into the dining room, do two laps around the table, then upstairs to your bedroom, lie down, feet all the way off the floor, then come back down and shake Ken’s hand.”

I was so pleased that I had to shake hands with Ken. I wanted to show off for him, Mom knew this, and indulged. I said, “Got it. Where’s your phone? You have to time me on your phone.” I jumped up and down and tugged on Mom’s shirtsleeve.

“Relax, I’ll just count.”

Ken said, “My watch has a second hand, I’ll time you. Ready—”

“Wait a minute!” I yelled in a Muppet voice and scrambled out of my chair and into imaginary starter blocks. “Okay.”

“Ready. Set.” Ken paused long enough for me to turn, look at him, and give him a scary monster face. “Go!”

I sprinted around the house, following Mom’s instructions to the letter. Racing to the finish, I ploughed into the kitchen like a wrecking ball, slamming into Ken. I tried to shake his hand to end it, but he kept moving it away. I yelled, “Hey,” with mock outrage, then latched on to his arm, held it still, and finally was able to grab his hand.

Mom said, “Yeah. She’s shy.”

“Clearly. And strong. Wow.” Ken let his arm hang like it was dead.

“What was my time? What was my time?”

“Fifty-two seconds.”

“I can beat that.”

I ran the course two more times, with my personal best being forty-six seconds. After the third run I told Ken that he should write my obstacle course into the show. Mom’s and Ken’s smiles dimmed a bit at that, and they both took synchronized sips of their coffees.

Mom said, “Why don’t you go outside and burn off the rest of your
energy? You probably shouldn’t be sprinting around the house with all the expensive equipment we have in here now.”

“No.” I tried not to sound whiny, but there were way too many
o
’s in my
no
.

Ken said, “I’ll go outside with you. Can we kick the soccer ball around?”

“Yeah, okay!”

Mom said, “Ken, you don’t have to.”

“No, it’s okay. I want to get outside. Nice, crisp fall day. And I want to see what kind of soccer player Merry is. I’ve heard she’s real good.”

I sprinted out of the kitchen to get a sweatshirt, afraid Mom would change his mind somehow. I heard her say, “She’s relentless.”

LEAVES COVERED THE BACKYARD, AND
the wind had blown a pile into my small, rickety soccer net. Thin white PVC pipes struggled to hold its barely upright shape. The crossbar sagged in the middle. Ken wasn’t outside yet so I cleared the goal of as many leaves as I could, and pushed the rest though the square holes in the netting. The leaves were wet and I wiped my hands on my jeans and inspected them for ticks, even though it was too cold for ticks.

I marched around crunching leaves and keeping the soccer ball between my feet while waiting for Ken to come out. I had a white fleece sweatshirt on, with multicolored peace symbols all over it. It was tight and too small, but it was my favorite.

Ken walked out of the back door wearing a thick brown and green sweater and a scarf. He bounded down the small back porch, rubbed his hands together, and said, “Brrr, it’s colder than I thought. We’ll be warm after I score a bunch of goals on you, though.”

I said, “Bring it on, old man!”

We jumped right into a game of one-on-one. It was slow going with all the leaves in the way. It was tough to get solid footing. Ken took it easy on me initially, which made me play harder. I did get the sense Ken used to be very good, but his feet were heavier now and weren’t keeping up with the rest of him. He fell a few times and he stepped on my foot once. I didn’t let on how much it hurt. As the game went on, he got winded and I had the advantage of knowing how to use the slight downward pitch of the backyard. I won the slightly rigged game five to four with a goal that almost knocked the net down; the ball skimmed off the crossbar and wrapped around the left post.

After the game we passed the ball back and forth. Ken was down toward the bottom of our yard, I was at the top.

“You’re a very good player, Merry. I’m impressed.”

I said, “Thanks! Your cheeks look like big red apples.”

Ken kicked me the ball and then bent over, putting his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. “Well, you kicked my butt, Merry. Your cheeks look like little crabapples.”

“Crabapples? What are those?” I laughed. I imagined apples with pincer claws and how difficult it would be to pick them off a tree and bake them in a pie.

“They’re little and more purple than red. Can’t really eat them. Believe me, I’ve tried. We had a crabapple tree in my front yard when I was a kid.”

The lazy passing morphed into a playful competition. Our passes became crisper. We both switched legs and stopping techniques. Ken let the ball roll up his foot and into the air, then kicked it with his other foot. I tried to do the same but the ball rolled up my leg and hit me in the chin.

“Ow!”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

I asked, “Did you know that I have to ask permission to go into the confessional room now?”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“It’s not fair because everyone else in my family can go in whenever they want.”

“Well, you have been going in there a lot, and there’s only so much we can show in an hour of TV, which is more like forty-two minutes with all the commercials, and more like thirty-two minutes with the post-commercial scene resets—Whoa!”

I kicked the ball extra hard and a little wide of him. The ball went crashing into the line of tall bushes at the end of our property. I said, “I like to talk. I can’t help it!”

Ken had to go in deep to pluck the ball out of the bushes. He walked back up the hill to me with the ball cradled in his right arm. He said, “That’s it. I’m cooked, and I have to do some work.”

I wanted to shout
No, stay out here with me,
but I fought the urge. Instead my whole body slumped and went slack.

Ken said, “Come on. I have a great idea. Follow me out front.” I grabbed the soccer ball, quickly scrambled up the porch to the back door, tossed the ball into the catchall shoe bin in the mud room, then ran back to Ken. I walked with him around the house, let him lead even though he was taking us the hardest way to go. His scarf got caught as we weaved through and dodged low-hanging tree branches before we finally emerged into the safety of the driveway.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

I ran up beside him and said, “I don’t think my parents are going to let me watch the show when it’s on tonight.”

“You probably shouldn’t. It’s not a show for kids.”

“But I’m
on
it!”

“I know you are, Merry. I know it’s frustrating, but I can show you some edited parts, the parts with just you and nothing too scary. Is that okay?”

“What’s the big deal? It’s supposed to be real, right? Just like
Finding Bigfoot
. It’s all about what really happened, and I was there when it happened.”

“I don’t know quite what to say to that. Yes, you were here when it happened, but you weren’t with your sister all the time, you didn’t see everything, did you?” He paused and I shrugged. “You should probably talk to your mom and dad about it. It’s—It’s a scary show. Too intense for you, I think.”

We walked across the front lawn to the TV crew’s trailer, which was parked half on the street, half on our front yard. Its passenger-side tires had sunk partway into the lawn.

“I’ve told everyone at school and they’re all going to watch it. So I don’t know why I can’t watch it too.”

Ken didn’t say anything to that. He knocked on the trailer door, and called out “Everyone decent in there?” Then he whispered down to me, “Tony will change his clothes right in the middle of the trailer.”

“Ew, creepy.”

“Totally. So, you wait here. I know he’s in there. He might be napping.”

Ken disappeared inside. I backed away from the trailer and tried to watch his progress through the trailer windows. I couldn’t see him. I did watch the trailer tilt and shift as he walked its length. Ken wasn’t gone long and came back out carrying a small black nylon bag. He didn’t say anything, just dangled it in front of me and then walked to the front steps. I nipped at his heels.

“Here, let’s sit. So we’re going to call this the Merry-cam.” He opened the bag and took out a small handheld camera.

“Cool!” I took it and turned it carefully over in my hands. Its metal and plastic was cold and beautiful. It was practically all lens with a small pop-out screen tucked to its side.

“It’s yours to use however you want. You can film all you like. You can do your own confessionals whenever and wherever you want. I grabbed this for you too.” Ken took out a small black notebook wrapped in a red rubber band from his pocket. It looked just like his, but was half the size. “You can use it to write down a short description of the stuff you filmed that you think is important and could be on the show. When you have good stuff or when you fill up the camera’s memory, we can download it, go through your notebook, and decide what we should watch and what we should delete.” Ken showed me how to turn it on, how to delete the file if I didn’t want it, how to zoom, how to turn on a small spotlight, and how to charge the battery.

“Just promise you won’t go to Barry with your footage. You have to come to me first. Deal?”

“Deal.”

We shook on it. Then he said he had do some work and headed back to the trailer.

I ran inside and didn’t tell Mom about the camera. I wanted to already have used it so it would be harder for her to tell me that I couldn’t have it. I wondered if Marjorie had her own camera too, and thought about showing her, but decided against it. She might try to take it away and use it for herself. I went up to the confessional room and turned the camera on. I said: “This is Merry’s first video. And I don’t need you anymore, confessional room.”

Marjorie’s bedroom door opened behind me. I turned around and
Marjorie was in the hallway, yawning and stretching, hair all over the place, sticking out at odd angles. I pointed the camera at her. “Marjorie. Look what Ken gave to me!”

She groaned, blocked her face with one hand, gave me the middle finger with the other.

ON OUR PREMIERE NIGHT, WE
had a full house: Barry, Ken, Tony, Jenn, a handful of other crew I didn’t know by name, a tall man in a jacket and tie, and Father Wanderly as well. Everyone milled about the first floor, eating pizza and drinking out of red cups. Mom and Marjorie were the only ones missing. They were upstairs in Marjorie’s room, hiding from all of us.