A short one because I have a gig today. Keep an eye on your carrots!
The gopher cautiously popped his head out of the mound he’d dug in the grass and surveyed the scene. He looked towards the house where the old man would charge from when the gopher was spotted. But the house was dark. It had been dark a lot lately.
He looked towards the garden and admired the overripe tomatoes splitting in their skins on the vine and the zucchini that had grown to gargantuan proportions. All of it looked divine. But what drew his attention the most were the tall bushy green stems that traced down to dirty orange roots bulging out of the soil – the carrots were ready!
A glance back to the dark house and he popped out of the ground and bounded for the carrot tops. He reached the bushy leaves and expertly yanked one out of the ground immediately chomping on the warm orange tuber.
He glanced at the dark house as he ate and thought of the old gardener. He didn’t care for humans as a rule, but there was something in the back and forth of their relationship. The old gardener never resorted to poisons or traps. He put up silly looking fake birds and mostly just chased the gopher out of the garden and filled in his holes when he found them. But he hadn’t been around lately.
The gopher consoled himself by yanking up another carrot and burying his incisors into it.
“I finally got you!” A voice boomed.
The gopher felt the icy spectral hand of the gardener’s ghost close around its body.
This ended up being longer than I expected. Honestly, there were so many stories I wanted to tell with Adrien “the Ghost” Fattore, so maybe we’ll see him again…
I’m not a nice guy.
Honestly, that’s quite an understatement, but I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. Why would you?
When I was alive I killed people. A lot of people. No, not like a serial killer – those bastards are sick. No, it my job, my vocation, my profession. And, let me tell you, I was good at my job.
I don’t want to talk too much about those days when I was alive – that’s not what we’re here for, right? You want to know about me as a ghost. But just to put things in perspective, let me be clear: I did not kill Jimmy Hoffa.
But I was there.
I was 18, impressionable, and the understudy to the legendary enforcer… no, I’m not going to say his name. But he was a legend. A legend! I learned everything I could from him. He died the next year – you don’t live long in this line of work – and I took over as the chief enforcer.
You could say I was something of a prodigy, I guess, because I was never hurting for work and I never, ever failed to get the job done.
You want me to make a statement? You got it.
You want me to make it look like someone else? No one will ever suspect us.
You want it to be quiet? Yeah… that’s my specialty. If I’m honest, that’s what kept me in work. That’s also how I got my nickname.
The name’s Adrien “the Ghost” Fattore.
See, anyone can open up with a shotgun or beat someone to death. That’s grunt work. If you need the untouchable touched? That was me. I loved the challenge.
Well, I did right up until it caught up with me.
I didn’t expect to live a long life – honestly, I kind of dreaded the idea. So, when I left the bar fumbling with my keys, turned the corner and faced three guys with sawed off shotguns and bad attitudes… let’s just say in the seconds before the blasts I had three thoughts: one, at least it’s gonna be quick; two, I’m an idiot for letting my guard down; and three, I wonder what’s next because I’m having too much fun.
Blam, blam, blam. Fade to black and I became my nickname.
I would be the first person to tell you I was a sure candidate for the e-ticket ride to the fiery place. But that’s not how it worked out.
When I came to as a ghost I met this guy… no, no, he wasn’t a guy. But… you know, let’s skip ahead. Let’s just say there was this… demon and we made a deal – he had some work for me to do. Same thing I was doing when I was alive. Let me tell you, doing this stuff as a ghost? So much more interesting!
And just so we’re clear, it’s not just the guys down below who have work for me since I’ve been “unalived” as the kids these days say. I get plenty of work from the guys with the halos and harps who don’t want to get blood on their starched white robes. I’m an equal opportunity ghost.
But the really interesting jobs don’t come from above or below – no, they come from the earthly plane.
Let’s go back to August of 2019 – before Covid which, well, it took a lot of the challenge out of my work for a while there. I had just done this quiet job in Singapore – this former African dictator needed to be shown his mistakes before he… moved along. The challenge there was just the production – he was 95 and already in poor health. My job was to keep him alive long enough for the parade of souls to pay their respects, shall we say. You know that scary third ghost in A Christmas Carol? It was like that but a thousand ghosts with scores to settle. Ah, by the time everyone got their say in I was pretty tired.
I was relaxing on a beach in Thailand when I heard the chanting. First, I thought it was just the seagulls, but seagulls don’t thymically squawk. It got louder, and I looked around to see if any of the tourists might be playing some Gregorian chant shit on a boom box. I didn’t see anyone and the chanting just getting louder and filling my brain. I put my hands to my ears and closed my eyes… and then the chanting stopped. But so did the sound of the ocean, and the seagulls. I opened my eyes and I wasn’t in Thailand anymore.
I was in a living room. A pretty nice living room – leather couches, nice artwork. I was still sitting, but it was this really nice leather recliner – the kind that massages you, you know? And I was surrounded by a dozen women in black robes who just gaped at me.
“I told you it would work!” A dark-haired woman said to the blonde next to her.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked. “And where the hell am I?”
“You have been summoned!” The dark-haired woman.
“That’s nice,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my questions. Who the hell are you and where the hell am I?” I stood up to emphasize my displeasure at being yanked from my beach but I slammed against an invisible wall face first and fell back into the chair. “What the hell?”
“You are trapped in our summoning circle, ghost!”
“Alright, lady, you’re really starting to piss me off…”
“You are trapped,” she started, then sighed. “Okay, look, I’m not good at the whole ‘authoritative witch’ thing, okay?”
“Janine,” the blonde said, “Stay in character.”
“Katie, you’re the actress, okay? Not me.”
“But you could be!” another blonde chimed in.
“You’ve got such great presence,” a younger brunette agreed.
“Do you really think so?” The dark-haired woman blushed.
“No, seriously,” I interrupted, “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, right,” Janine said. “Hi,” she raised her hand, “I’m Janine. I’m the witch.”
“Aren’t we all kind of witches now?” a redhead asked. “I mean,” she gestured towards me, “this is some serious shit we’ve done!”
Janine raised her eyebrow, “Amber, you’re great. But you’ve got a long way to go before you call yourself a witch.”
Amber looked crestfallen.
I cleared my throat loudly.
“Right,” Janine started again. “I’m the witch who put this little circle together and summoned you to, uh…” She sat up straight and reclaimed her authoritarian voice, “Do our bidding!”
I scowled as I regarded her.
“Too much?” she asked.
I sighed. “Okay, where am I?”
“Los Angeles,” she said. “Well, Laurel Canyon.”
“Huh,” I said looking around. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Laurel Canyon.”
“Welcome,” Janine said with a smile. “But now we need to you get to, you know, doing our bidding.”
“You keep saying that…”
“That’s why you we summoned you.”
I sighed. “Alright, alright, what is this ‘bidding’ you need done?”
She smiled what can only be described as a wicked smile – look, I’ve seen a lot of wicked smiles in my time and say what you will for Janine, she gave me goosebumps. She eyed the other women around her, leaned forward and said, “Kill Ellis Reyes.”
I don’t keep up with pop culture – I didn’t when I was alive, and I sure as hell don’t give a crap what the living are into – but Ellis Reyes was a name I knew. “The producer?”
“The asshole!” a blonde from the other side of the circle cursed. There were enthusiastic agreements around the table.
“Okay, okay,” I held my hands up. “I’m not saying I’m a fan of the guy, I’d just heard of him.”
“We have summoned you to kill him,” Janine said firmly.
“Well, I’m not really in a place to argue,” I said looking around at the shimmering barrier around me. “How do you want it done?”
“How do we…?” Janine looked around. “Isn’t that your specialty?”
“I mean, sure, I can,” I drew my finger across my neck and lolled my head to the side, tongue out. “But do you want, I don’t know, blood everywhere? Natural causes?”
“Make it painful!” another woman said.
“He’s got to suffer!” Katie the redhead added.
“Humiliate him!” another woman chimed in.
Suddenly I realized where the power required to draw me here had come from – these women were pissed.
I nodded as their suggestions got more violent and graphic, and then very anatomically specific.
“Okay,” I held up my hands, “I think I’ve got it. I’m just curious, though… what did this guy do?”
“You don’t know?” Janine asked.
“I wouldn’t ask if I did.”
“He’s in LA County jail right now. They finally arrested his ass,” Katie said. “Numerous counts of rape, sexual assault, sexual assault of a minor, lewd and lascivious behavior, kidnapping…”
I whistled. “Sounds like a real dirtbag,” I nodded. I looked around at the women one by one. “I, uh, I don’t want to get into it,” I started, “But is it safe to say some of y’alls were, uh, directly affected by this dirtbag.”
Nods around the circle.
I leaned back in the chair, “When do you want it done?”
—
Janine and the other women didn’t have an exact date or time other than, “anytime as long as he suffers.” I assured them that that part I could handle.
I visited the Los Angeles County Jail and found it to be your regular shitty jail. But not for Ellis Reyes. No, that dirtbag was in the country club wing. There were still bars and all, but… picture any old office you’ve been to with cubicles. Now replace the fabric cubicle walls with bars, but keep the gentle lighting and the carpet…. He even had a Keurig in his cell!
I spent a day on reconnaissance. I needed to know the rotation of the guards, where they were stationed relative to his cell, that kind of boring shit. It’s mundane, sure, but doing a good job is all about research.
The next night I was ready.
The guards were supposed to check on Reyes every two hours. At 10pm I stood next to Hector, the guard on duty, and whispered in his ear how he really would rather go get a bite to eat then walk by Reyes’ cell. Reyes was fine in his cushy cell! Once Hector was gone, I set the guard room up for Hector’s replacement, Kevin – thermostat up so it was a little warmer than it should be, a couple of the florescent tubes overhead disabled so it was just a little dimmer. He would assume Hector did his rounds at 10 and midnight and with the guardroom set up, Kevin would be fast asleep long before his first 2am rounds. His replacement didn’t start until 6am, so I had Reyes all to myself…
I appeared in the hallway just down from Reyes cell walking in stride. Reyes was laying in his bed, but my footfalls should have gotten his attention. Sure enough, by the time I reached his cell he looked me up and down noticing I didn’t exactly fit the dress code. “Who are you and how’d you get in here?”
When I didn’t answer and kept walking towards him he involuntarily took a step back and yelled, “Guards!” But when my next stride took me right through the bars to his cell his call for help died on his lips.
I kept towards him and he scrambled backwards until his back pressed against the far side of his cell and I stood inches from his face. I just stood there staring at him for a long time. His eyes were wide and he was whimpering. I didn’t blink (nice trick with being a ghost) and held his gaze. He started to hyperventilate as sweat ran down his face. I could see his body was starting to shake. I knew if this went on any longer he was liable to piss himself and I wasn’t ready for that… yet. With Reyes rapidly losing control of his body I said “Boo!” and he blacked out.
—
Reyes woke up on his back in his bunk. He clearly thought he must have dreamt our encounter because he wiped his face with his hands and started to get up… and saw me sitting on the foot of his bed.
He shrieked and tried to jump away but I had tied his torso to the bed with sheet. He thrashed, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hello Ellis,” I said.
“What…. What do you want?” he stammered.
“Really, Ellis, it’s not what I want, it’s what do the people you hurt want.”
“People I…” then his mind must have come around and realized I was talking about his victims. “What? Those bitches? It was all consensual! They’re just trying to–”
“Stop lying, Ellis,” I said calmly. “You have a very finite number of breaths left to take in this life to take. Please don’t waste them on these lies.”
“Wh… what are you going to do?” he asked, terror evident in his eyes.
I remembered Janine’s wicked, wicked smile and I think the one that creased my lips was almost nearly as wicked. “There are lots of things I’d really like to do to you, Ellis Reyes. But unfortunately, I can’t leave marks. So, instead I’m going to do it all to you inside.” I reached out and grasped his forearm with both my hands. He let out a little cry but then fell silent as his eyes started moving as if he was speed reading an invisible text. Which, in some ways, he was. Through my contact I was making him feel the pain and anguish and torment he had inflicted on each and every woman he hurt. His body shook and convulsed at times. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he did piss himself. I made sure not to miss a single unwanted advance or touch, grope. I made sure he felt the lingering fear and pain the women felt afterwards as well.
And then I did it all again.
And again.
On occasion his body would sag and he would black out but I would give him a little electrical shock that brought him back to consciousness so I could continue again.
At five thirty in the morning I finally released his arm and exited his mind, or what was left of it. He lay on his bed staring straight ahead shaking and crying, unintelligible noises emanating from his mouth.
As I untied the bedsheet around his torso I wondered if I did nothing else whether he would ever recover. I imagined all those memories now running around inside his head and as I sat him up on the edge of his bunk and tied one end of the bedsheet around his neck and then fastened the other end tightly to the top bunk. No, I thought, I didn’t imagine he could recover from that. In fact, I thought as I pushed him forward so the bedsheet went taut around his neck, I might have even done permanent damage to his soul. As his breathing stopped I wondered whether someone from downstairs would contract me to deliver his damaged soul. His muscles started twitching as I walked back through the bar and turned around to admire my handiwork. He wasn’t quite dead yet. I looked at my watch – 5:45 – another fifteen minutes before the relief guard checked on him. The twitching stopped. I disappeared.
Let’s close this one out! Grab a blanket, because it’s chilly!
“Okay, slow down, Ritche,” Jules said. “What do you mean he’s here?”
I was pacing the restaurant. “He was in the bathroom! Behind me, looking at me in the mirror… then, gone. Then the lights went out and this wave of cold water hit me…” I realized I was babbling, but my adrenaline was really flowing.
Dale had broken away from the hockey game now. “Whoa, Ritchie, wave of water?”
“It was lake water!” I said.
“Ritche… you’re dry,” Dale pointed out.
“That’s because it was… I don’t know… ghost water!”
Dale and Jules exchanged looks. “Ghost water?” Dale said incredulously.
“Let’s get you back to the house, Ritchie,” Jules said soothingly.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do, Ritchie. I really do! But what can we do about it now? With the whole lake water thing it sounds like he’s telling you you’re on the right track going to the lake. We’ll go back out there tomorrow, okay?”
She made sense. I said my goodbyes to Dale as well as Alan and Terry and Jules drove us down the dark icy roads to her house. The drive served to remind me how tired I was, and my head barely hit the pillow in the guest room before I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
So, I was plenty rested when my eyes snapped open at dawn. I dressed – as warmly as I could – and quietly made my way out the front door and into my rental car without waking Jules. Twenty minutes later I was parked on the side of the road and starting out onto the ice.
The morning was cold, and the chill winter fog clung to the ground obscuring my view even to other side of the lake. The occasional car on the road behind me was the only sound in the wan morning light as I stepped onto the ice.
When I visited the day before with Dale and Jules the circumstances just didn’t feel right – I fell through the ice in the morning. This felt more right. As I took steps further onto the ice, I looked down at the frost covered ice. Though intellectually I knew the ice was thick and secure, the similarity of the time and weather made my feet feel instinctually unsure about their footing. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.
The ground fog seemed to circle around me and cut off even the occasional passing car behind me. I stared ahead into the whiteness of the fog when it seemed to coalesce into a figure. He stepped forward. He wore the same snow pants and jacket I wore that day, though I could see the frost and ice on the fabric. He stared silently at me with those same black, dead eyes.
Finally I spoke. “I’m here,” I said. “You wanted me here, and now I’m here. How do I get rid of you?”
My ghost stared at me.
My fear was replaced with anger. “You haunt me, ruin my dates…” I was yelling now. “I’m here! That’s what you wanted wasn’t it? I’m here!”
My ghost stared at me.
“What do you want?! Leave! Me! Alone!”
My ghost stared at me. I panted a little from yelling, my breathing the only sound.
Without warning a crack like a rifle report echoed across the ice. I barely had time to look at my feet to see the crack widen beneath my feet when the ice below me gave way and I fell through into the freezing water.
When you fall into freezing water, the first thing that happens is the shock drives your breath out in an involuntary gasp. I stared up at the hole in the ice I fell through and marveled for a moment how thick the ice was, realizing this shouldn’t have just happened – this wasn’t the fragile ice I broke through as a kid. No, this is the standard mid-winter thickness.
And yet, here I was, sinking into the darkness.
Looking ahead of me, I could see Him in the water with me, just above me. His black eyes staring at me, his dead blue lips curling into what looked like a semblance of a smile. He reached his arm out towards me.
This is how I was going to die for good – the same way I was supposed to die twenty-five years ago. Surprisingly, I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t angry or afraid. This felt like how it was supposed to end. I reached out my arm towards his. I strained to touch him, to reunite and die in peace with my ghost.
Then a hand shot down and gripped mine. This was not the lifeless fingers of my ghost, this hand held mine and pulled hard, yanking me towards the surface. I stared as my ghost drifted down, down, down into the icy darkness while I sped back up to the surface. The last thing I saw before I broke the surface was my ghost stretching his arms out in submission, one hand curled into a wave goodbye.
My head broke the surface and I gasped for breath.
“Pull me back, Dale!” I heard Jules yell. She lay on her stomach on the ice, her torso bent over the hole in the ice. Looking past her I could see Dale laying on the ice, holding her feet and starting to pull her back and, in turn, pull me out.
I struggled against the splintering ice but managed to get some purchase with my free hand and between that and Jules and Dale, I wriggled my way onto the solid ice.
We all three lay there on the ice panting for a few moments. Then Jules reached out and started slapping my head, “You asshole! What the hell were you thinking coming out here alone? Goddamn it, Ritchie!”
“I’m sorry,” I managed through uncontrollably chattering teeth.
“Beat him up later, Jules,” Dale said. “We need to get you both off the ice and warm!”
With the temperature in single digits, he was absolutely right.
—
Dale managed to get a fire going quickly in a nearby fire pit with driftwood left over from the summer season. I sat on a stump under a moving blanket Dale had in the trunk of his car.
As we started to warm, Jules asked again more quietly and calmly, “What were you thinking?”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” I started.
Jules shook her head, “No. No, try again.”
“I… I thought I needed to be here by myself or he wouldn’t show.”
“There we go!” Jules said. “You idiot,” she said, but there was a slight smile behind her scowl.
“How did you guys…” I started. “How are you here?”
“I heard you leave, you idiot. I didn’t think you were going for donuts!”
“Thank you,” I said.
I thought back to seeing Him under the icy water and the waving as he disappeared again into the deep. “I think he’s gone,” I said.
“Yeah?” Jules asked.
“Yeah,” I said nodding.
Dale came back to the fire and threw another piece of driftwood on and handed me a bottle. I looked at the label – OPW Rye Whiskey from the Honorable Distillery in Marquette. I gave him a look that said, “it’s 9am.” He nodded to the bottle. I pulled out the cork stopper and took a big swig that burned my mouth and throat on the way down.
I looked at the label as the warmth of the whiskey started to spread through me. “Here’s to this being the only spirit I take back home with me!”
