Hi and welcome back to Short Story Saturday! Here's a little ghost story that I wrote a few months ago. I would do anything for her, and so when she asked me to meet her at the crossroads at ten minutes to midnight, I didn't hesitate.
The night was warm and humid, and the mosquitoes were out in full force. They feasted shamelessly on my bare legs, but I didn't reach to swat them, because my friend seemed unbothered. She held in her tiny hand a white glass encased candle, and her hair looked almost white in the light from the candle's flame and the moon. She looked so captivating that I had to ask her to repeat what she'd just said. "A ghost appears at this crossroads every month," she whispered, "and I want to catch it this time." She had a small video camera in her hand. "When did you get that?" I asked. We both had the same job - scooping ice cream part time for tourists and their snot-nosed brats - and there was no way she'd made enough to buy something like that. "Rory got it for me. Shh! It's almost time. Did you bring the salt?" Rory was Chloe's neighbor. He worked in a Wal-Mart - he was two years our senior - and he was constantly stealing from work. One time, he'd made off with a three-person tent and a Sega Dreamcast. Normally, I'd have been jealous if anyone else had given her something that pricey, but I knew that the only reason Rory would give Chloe a nice video camera is that he'd succeeded in lifting a newer, better one for himself. I also had a camera, courtesy of Rory - it was in my bag, with the salt. "Here," I said, and handed Chloe a box. She wrinkled her brows. "What's Mal-don salt? I knew you'd bring something weird." My mom was a chef. I shrugged. "Salt is salt." (My mother would vehemently disagree.) Chloe also shrugged. She checked her watch - five minutes until midnight. "Hold this," Chloe said, thrusting the candle into my hands. She opened the box of salt and shook out a circle of thin flakes around us. I watched her, so determined, fully concentrated on her task. Our bicycles lay in a heap by the side of the road - a dirt road, far from even our small town. Thick pine woods surrounded us. Crickets and frogs sang in the darkness; mosquitoes danced around my shins and ankles. There's no place I'd rather be, I thought. Chloe straightened, tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear. "Okay," she said, and we traded salt for candle. My camera now hung on a strap around my neck. Chloe had her video camera in her right hand, the candle in her left. "It's supposed to come from the south," she whispered, gesturing to her left. "What kind of ghost is it?" "Whad'ya mean?" "I mean, like…what is it supposed to look like?" Chloe scrunched her nose, a giveaway that she was uncertain about what she'd say next. "Well," she said, "I heard it's different for everyone." She fidgeted with the video camera. "Robert said it's just kind of, like, a green cloud." I turned my face and stifled a cough. Robert was a notorious liar. "But Avery said it looked like a man dressed all in black," she continued. "Shh! It's almost time. Get ready." We crowded into the center of our salt circle. I flicked the switch on my camera, its familiar hum now eerily loud. The crickets and frogs had stopped their songs, and the crossroads was silent. Electricity ran down my spine. Chloe was intent, staring southwards, occasionally stealing a glance at the second hand of her watch. "I see it," I breathed, but no sound actually escaped my lips. It wasn't a cloud or a man in black. It was a woman, or the blurred suggestion of one; her legs ended before I could glimpse her feet, and she floated in the crossroads' center. She shone like a morning fog, her hair fluttering around a smooth, blank oval that perched on her long neck. No face, I thought. My mouth couldn't make words. I wasn't even sure if I was breathing or not. The ghost turned its smooth, featureless head to my gaze. I was rooted to the ground. Vaguely I sensed Chloe next to me, fiddling with her camera - it wasn't working, she was switching out the batteries - something told me that Chloe couldn't see what I saw, that she hadn't seen anything at all. The ghost was still looking at me - can something look at you when it doesn't have eyes? - and it slowly turned towards me and extended its handless arms. Two ghostly stumps. I pressed the shutter on my camera; I heard the lens retract and the camera shut off. The ghost floated closer. Chloe had changed the batteries and somehow gotten her camera back on. She turned to me with her face against the viewfinder. I didn't see Chloe at all. I only saw the ghost, who floated slowly closer. I watched her hair making patterns against the night sky. Once I had a bad cold and my mother had given me two different kinds of medicine, and when I'd closed my eyes I could see what looked like a black kaleidoscope. The ghost's hair reminded me of that black kaleidoscope that had played behind my closed eyelids. I rose from my crouch, fixated on the ghost woman, whose garment flowed around her like a stream flowing around a rock. It felt like the ghost was beckoning me, even though she had no hands with which to gesture. I stepped forward, dazed, dazzled. "Meredith," Chloe hissed. I wouldn't have believed that she'd called my name if I hadn't seen the video. I used to be able to hear Chloe's voice across a crowded cafeteria, separating her sound from the voices of our classmates. Now we were alone, crouching silently at a dirt crossroads in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn't hear anything at all. My body moved on its own. The air around me felt crisp. The white sole of my sneaker breached the circle of salt. "Meredith." An urgent whisper that I wouldn't hear until a week later, when I was better. My heart seemed to hum. I stepped across the line of salt. A warmth spread from the soles of my feet to the back of my neck. It tingled as it spread, and then my mouth finally released a sound: a deep laugh, two octaves lower than my own. An unrecognizable voice, which I'd never heard before or since. Suddenly, I couldn't stand. I fell on the road, still laughing in the voice of a stranger, the rocks of the dirt road piercing the skin of my knees. The ghostly woman floated high above me, her kaleidoscope hair swirling in front of her blank face. I could no longer even kneel. I fell on my side and turned onto my back, the unearthly laugh still emanating from my mouth, resonating in my chest. I felt my back arch and my arms and hands twist and writhe. (When I saw it later, on the video, I had to turn away.) Chloe laid her camera on the ground beside me and grabbed me under my arms, dragging me to the best of her ability. My body was now back in the salt circle, but I'd broken the boundary. Chloe shook more salt flakes over the spot where I'd walked through the circle. The ghost's hair flew back from her smooth face, as though a sudden wind had sprung up. I felt tired, so tired, as though I'd run a marathon or stayed up all night at a slumber party. Exhausted, I exhaled, my eyes closing. I felt a stinging on my face and cracked my eyes open just enough to see Chloe, blonde hair shining in the moonlight, flinging the contents of a holy water bottle in every direction beyond the circle of salt. She still can't see her, I thought. Then I closed my eyes for the night. When I woke up, it was the following evening. Chloe's house had a den where she would host sleepovers. Her mother would line the floor, already thickly carpeted, in old blankets and sheets and sleeping bags. Soft pillows were piled here and there. Chloe sat by my feet, facing the TV. The light from the television in the dark room made a blue halo around her head. Piles of VHS tapes were at the edge of the blanket - old scary movies, courtesy of Rory, who'd worked at Blockbuster two summers ago. I couldn't tell what Chloe was watching, some old vampire movie. I never knew how old the movies actually were, because she would turn the color off on the TV and watch them all in black and white. She was absent-mindedly eating pizza rolls dipped in sour cream. The pillow smelled like her hair. I just wanted to lay there forever. "Hey," I said. My voice was a feeble croak, but at least it was my voice this time. "Hey!" Chloe whispered back. She smiled. "Are you okay?" "Yeah." "You scared me," she whispered, but I thought: Nothing scares you. "Oh," I replied softly. I was confused. This was not a situation I was prepared for. "It scared me, too," I finally said. "Well, no worries. Rory picked us up and got our bikes. My mom called your mom and told her you were staying the weekend. She's working a lot. She doesn't know what happened." Chloe's mother was a security guard and worked an unsteady schedule. I closed my eyes and covered my face with a blanket. Deep breath. Exhale. The first breath of air outside of the blanket felt cold and fresh. I stretched. "Do you…" Chloe trailed off. I could tell she felt awkward, and it almost embarrassed me, because Chloe never felt awkward. "Do you want to watch something?" she asked quietly, not making eye contact. Suddenly I was tired, but not physically; just tired of carrying the weight of the midnight ghost encounter. Enough, I thought. Back to normal. "Yeah," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Um. Do you have The Craft?" Chloe beamed. "Always!" She turned back to the tape stack. I opened a can of soda and watched her rummage through the tapes. Pizza rolls with sour cream? Gross, I thought. But still, there's no place I'd rather be.
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
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