Giving Up the Ghost (10 page)

My heart immediately shot up into my throat and started racing. On her part, it was just a simple acknowledgment of closeness, trust, and intimacy. My leg just happened to be a perfect place to rest. However, I was, as should be clear by now, not someone accustomed to large degrees of closeness, trust, and intimacy. I had no idea what to do with myself. I felt like anything I said or any motion I made would screw this up. My arm had been extended behind her headrest and was getting numb. I slowly moved my arm out from behind the seat and just kind of let it hang there in midair. I didn’t know what to do with it. Lacking any better idea, I just slowly let my hand come down to rest on her shoulder. She let out a deep sigh and continued to sleep.

We drove that way for about another twenty minutes until we came to a small manmade lake named Lake O’Dea. At least I guessed it was called Lake O’Dea. A large apartment building
next to it was called the Lake O’Dea Apartments, so I just assumed. There was a dead end road that ran behind it that was perfect for hanging out. No traffic. No cops. No bother.

As I shut off the engine, Laura awoke, looking up at me.

“I really liked
Music for Airports
,” she said, sitting up and back against her seat. “I don’t have it with me, but I’ll give it back next time.”

“Oh no,” I replied. “You can keep it.”

That was at least my sixth copy of
Music for Airports
. I kept giving them away to people that I felt should have the record.
Music for Airports
was Brian Eno’s first album of “ambient music”—sparse, simple music meant to create mood and ambience for spaces (like an airport, for example).
Music for Airports
contained only four songs, if you can call them that. Each featured a series of tape loops of a few simple notes (or sometimes just a single note) from a piano, synthesizer, or human voice. These notes would loop on intervals—one loop would repeat every twenty-three seconds, another every thirty-nine seconds, another once a minute, and so on. The randomness generated unexpected harmonies and moments of beauty, surrounded by periods of reverberance and near silence. It was unlike anything anyone I’d known had ever heard.

“Here,” I said to Laura, reaching for my cassette case to give back her dub of Killing Joke’s
Fire Dances
. “It was pretty good. I might pick it up sometime.”

I didn’t want her to know how quickly I’d fallen in love with
Fire Dances
. Most punk rock was like listening to a food processor. You hit the button and it just went, full bore—chopping, spinning, and tearing shit up. Killing Joke was different. The songs sounded like anthems; they had emotion, range, and subtlety. Sure, all their songs were about the end of the world, but hey, at least they brought a little style to their
nihilism. I’d been so willing to return Laura’s tape because I’d already secretly bought my own, as well as every other Killing Joke record I could find.

“Where did you ever hear about Killing Joke?” I asked.

“I saw them in Germany,” she said. “When they played, the club pulled barbed wire across the front of the stage. When everyone was slamming … every once in a while … someone would get thrown against the wire.”

“Oh my God.”

“No, it wasn’t a bad thing … I guess. People would get cut … there was blood all over … but it was okay. It was like a release.”

“A release from what?” I asked.

“Pain,” she replied.

“What? That makes no sense. How can thrashing into barbed wire—”

“A different kind of pain.”

“When they played ‘Frenzy,’ ” she continued after a brief moment, “people started to really flail around and it was getting a little violent. The singer, Jaz, brought out a bottle of rum, and the guys who got cut were begging him to pour it on them. So he did. And then the guys really started to flip out from the burning in the cuts. But then, when it was over, they pulled the barbed wire back, and they brought out jugs of water, and everyone sat around together. It was a shared moment.”

In the years since that night, I’ve often wondered what she felt was so honorable about this story that she would remember and share it. I think she expected me to be impressed with people who controlled their own pain. Rather than get beaten up by life and a world that doesn’t understand you, don’t wait
to get hurt—throw yourself against some barbed wire. Hurt yourself before someone or something else does.

“If you like Eno, you’ll probably like this one, too,” I said, pulling another tape from the box. “It’s different. It’s him with David Byrne from Talking Heads.”

As the music started up I pulled out a little tin box from the glove compartment, opened it, and tipped it toward Laura, like I was offering her a breath mint or something. It contained about half a dozen pills of various sizes, shapes, and colors.

“No, thank you,” she said, though she did accept one of the leftover beers from the backseat.

Then she said, “You sure like that stuff, don’t you.”

“Is that a question or a statement?” I asked, washing down a pill with the remainder of my beer.

“What does that do for you?”

“It makes me fucked up.”

“No, I mean, why do you take it?”

I wanted to trust her, but trying to explain how I felt was just so damn exhausting. “Let’s just say it helps me,” I said.

She didn’t say anything, which to me meant she was expecting more of an explanation.

Pause
.

“Why aren’t you going to school in the fall?” she asked.

“I think I might take some commuter classes.”

“Didn’t you apply anywhere else?”

“Wait-listed—every single one,” I said. “Even the state schools that have to take you.”

“I figured someone like you would have no trouble getting into college.”

“Everyone tells me that the stuff I like will never amount to
anything,” I said. “So if you aren’t interested in anything else, what is the point of trying? So you can end up sitting in an office and wearing a tie and being miserable until you die—is that what I’m supposed to do with my life to make everyone happy? That doesn’t sound like much fun. It’s easier to deal with other people’s disappointments than to deal with your own.”

“Yeah, that seems like it’s working out well for you,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem so happy,” she said sarcastically.

“Oh … fuck off.”

We sat silent, listening to the tape.

Though she didn’t notice, I spent most of the silence looking at her face. As she stared out the window, her face showed all these tiny gestures and expressions as her thoughts moved along with the beat.

“What’s this called again?” Laura asked.

“My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,”
I replied.

I drearily rocked my head and shoulders to the beat. I could start to feel the pill kick in, forming a haze around my thoughts.

“Have you ever seen a ghost?” I asked nonchalantly.

It was a weak segue, admittedly, but I had been looking for a way to bring up Little Girl to Laura. As much as I wanted to share it with her, I cringed at the idea of talking about it. Too late; I’d laid it out there.

“You mean, like a spooky ghost? Like something floating around?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“No,” she said.

Pause
.

“Have you?” she asked.

Pause
.

“Since I was a kid I’ve felt this … ghost, I guess … in our attic. It’s kind of fucked up.”

“There’s a ghost in your attic?” she asked, getting very excited at the idea. “Can we go see it? Have you ever talked to it? Does it move stuff around?”

“It’s not like that,” I interrupted, feeling a slow wave of calm seep through my body. “I think She’s kinda mean.”

“Mean?” Laura replied. “How is she mean?”

I thought for a moment about how to answer. It would be really easy to make something up and get out of this, but I was also almost compelled to tell her about it.

“She comes to me in my dreams,” I said, instantly regretting it.

Silence
.

“Oh, come on,” she said, hitting my arm. “What a bullshitter you are.”

“Actually, no,” I said. “I’m not kidding. I think there really is a ghost in the attic that has it in for me.”

“What?” she exclaimed. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does she want?”

“I don’t know.”

“What makes you sure she wants to harm you?”

“I … don’t … know.”

“Well, then, what
do
you know?”

I sighed, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag.

“I guess I need to figure this out before She does whatever She wants to do to me,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“You know, in order to catch a fox …”

“So you are going to try to outghost a ghost?” she said. “How does that work?”

“I don’t know … What am I supposed to do?”

“Find out what she wants.”

“I can’t,” I said. “She … speaks gibberish.”

“Gibberish.”

“Yes, gibberish. None of it sounds like words. When She looks angry, it seems like it’s because I don’t understand what She’s saying.”

We both just stared out the windows silently until we got to her house. She told me, again, not to get out of the car.

There was an awkward few seconds, which to me felt like an awkward few hours, while I looked at her face, trying to get a read on what she’d do if I tried to kiss her.

While the time we spent together was definitely not like any date I’d ever heard of, it still kind of felt like a date. Or at least my heart was beating in my throat the way it did at the end of a date.

I slowly leaned over and kissed her.

She touched my cheek and kissed me back.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of
Slaughterhouse-Five
. When we were on the phone, she often talked about books she’d read that had meant something to her—none of which I’d read. She placed it in my lap and raised her eyebrows. She didn’t need to say anything—I knew that this was her attempt to get me to read it, partially because she felt it might have the same effect on me and partially because she wanted someone to talk about it with.

“Sweet dreams,” she said with a smile. “Tell your ghost girl I said hello.”

Then she climbed out of the car and ran into her house.

It’s pretty obvious right away that I’m in the right place. As I pull in to the hotel parking lot, three women are circling my car while chanting and holding out dowsing rods to lead their way. Once I walk into the hotel lobby, I’m greeted by a sign that reads:
NO READINGS, HEALINGS, CIRCLES, OR SÉANCES IN THIS AREA, PLEASE
.

Lily Dale, New York, is pretty tiny—two hundred homes—and about an hour south of Buffalo. However, Lily Dale is quite different from the dozens of other towns that dot northwestern New York. The hamlet is entirely owned and run by followers of the Spiritualist religion. Spiritualists believe that they, as mediums, have the ability to communicate with the dead, using the dead spirits as life guides, predictors of the future, companions, and emissaries to God. Starting out as a Spiritualist church summer camp in 1879, Lily Dale grew into a town. Its guesthouses, hotels, museum, and library—not to mention its restaurants, post office, and fire department—are all run by people who believe they can see and talk to the dead.

During the summer, tens of thousands of people descend on Lily Dale for private consultations with its registered mediums,
to attend lectures, church services, and workshops, and to receive healings.

The hotel where I’m staying, the Maplewood, is old, as in falling-apart old. It’s been hosting summer guests since the 1880s and looks it. There are no televisions, telephones, or air-conditioning. Everything creaks and is lumpy, slanted, or sunken. There are signs everywhere warning guests not to smoke, slam doors, light incense, flush sanitary napkins, burn candles, or shower without the curtain completely closed—all because these activities will push the building over some kind of functional abyss.

And of course, the place is supposedly teeming with ghosts.

In fact, ghost sightings are so common in Lily Dale that some claim they can’t tell who is alive and who is dead. Pass a person on the street, and it could be someone staying in the hotel room next to you or it could be someone who stayed there in 1928. Some visitors and residents of Lily Dale have taken to referring to themselves in the plural—as in “We are going shopping today” or “We might stop over later for a visit.” They’re referring to themselves and their spirit posse.

I have no time to investigate the Maplewood’s otherworldly residents, as I am on the verge of being late to the five-thirty Stump Service.

Inspiration Stump is a tree stump in the middle of the Leolyn Woods, a towering old-growth forest on the outskirts of Lily Dale. There are no bells or announcements when it’s time for one of Lily Dale’s four daily public services. At five-fifteen, almost every person in town simply exits home, hotel, or guesthouse and quietly walks to the far end of town and the trail into the woods.

The Stump itself is huge, probably three feet in diameter.
It’s thought by Lily Daleans to be an “energy vortex”; standing near it will amplify a medium’s abilities. For some reason that no one has been able to explain, in 1898 the residents of Lily Dale decided to encase the Stump in cement, later adding a short fence around it. Lily Dale mediums are no longer allowed to stand on top of the Stump when giving readings and messages. Some say it’s because it is too powerful (according to a long-repeated rumor, a medium had a heart attack while channeling atop the Stump). Others suggest it is too unsafe, as the cement covering has caused the actual wooden Stump to rot away completely, leaving an empty shell.

From the 1880s to the 1920s, Spiritualism was the fastest-growing religion in America. Spiritualism was founded, albeit loosely, in 1848, when Kate and Margaret Fox started to receive spirit messages from a murdered peddler who was buried in the basement of their family home. The Fox sisters began demonstrating their medium abilities to others and quickly grew into a national sensation. Other mediums began to emerge, and Spiritualism slowly grew from a curiosity into a movement, then a religion. By the late nineteenth century there were more than eight million followers. And all this despite there being no centralized anything in Spiritualism—no religious texts, no core sets of beliefs, organization, or dogma—except the belief that adherents speak to the dead.