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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Hanlon's house was on one of those dreary suburban streets where all the children have grown up and moved away. He turned into an anonymous driveway and parked in front of what I assumed was the haunted garage. "Maybe this isn't such a good idea." He turned off his engine but left his headlights on, spraying white light through the drizzle, two big white spots on the garage door. He sat in the car with his hands tight on the wheel. "Sell me, Will. Make your pitch. It's your fee."
"It's your ghost."
Hanlon laughed and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah. I love a product like that. Sells itself. Something the customer needs." Rain creaked and ticked on the roof of the car. "When I was over in Europe, I worked for this company that sold signals. Flashers, strobes, sirens: all that stuff you see on cop cars, fire trucks. Great product. Every town's got to have 'em, and it's always public money." Hanlon set his parking brake and turned off the lights. "Do you ever see these ghosts? I mean, maybe even when the haunted person can't?"
"Sometimes."
"Son of a bitch." My cousin pulled his key out of the ignition and the red brake indicator winked out. We sat together in the dark. I could feel the bulk of his body in the next seat. Think about the thousand bucks, I told myself. Hanlon's coat rustled. In the darkness he said, "What it comes down to is, I need the product."
He opened his front door and I followed him into an old person's living room. A flower-pattern couch, a large color TV, a china cabinet filled with the kind of knick-knacks my Mamaw Dusty used to love -- egg-cups and ceramic owls and coffee spoons with the crests of the different states on top. "This your mom's house, Tom?"
"Eugenia's. My daddy remarried. They both passed away last year, is why I came back. House being paid for and all."
Eugenia had done like my Great-Aunt Rebecca and laid down little walkways of clear plastic to keep her champagne-colored carpeting from getting dirty and flattened out. In one corner of the room sat a black piano with its feet in oversized plastic coasters. Sheet music for a hymn was open above the keyboard: "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood." I had a sudden dim memory of singing that in church: There IS a fountain FILLED with blood -- breathe -- drawn from Emmanuel's veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood -- breathe -- Lose all their guilty stains. The throb of the electric organ and the boom of Uncle Billy's voice behind me. Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains. And after, the decorous rustle of people sitting back down, and then the stealthy advance of the communion tray, heading toward me with its little shot-glasses full of grape juice.
And SIN-ners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their GUIL-ty stains.
On a hat stand by the front door was a furred cap. Hanlon picked it up and turned it slowly in his hands. He was still wearing his London Fog coat. "See this? Genuine Soviet Army." He held the hat up so I could see the small red hammer-and-sickle pin stuck to the side. I had a flashback of myself at 19, grinning at Josie over a pitcher of beer, thumping a bar table with my fist and thunderously quoting Stalin. You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves!
A sharp scream came from the garage, ending in a muffled grunt. My guts cramped up. Shit, shit, shit. So much for schizophrenia.
Hanlon twitched. "Did you hear that? I thought I heard something."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe a little something." Obviously I was hearing the ghost a lot more clearly than he was. That's why they pay Comrade Will the big bucks. "These sounds always come from the garage?"
"Mostly. Mostly from the garage. Near the car."
Hanlon put back his genuine Soviet Army cap and headed to the kitchen. He pulled a box of grapefruit juice from the fridge and drank from its spout. His hand was shaking. My cousin had killed this girl and wasn't man enough to stick around and face the music. I didn't feel as much contempt for him as you might think. One thing I've learned from watching the dead is that you can never be sure what you'll do when the very worst happens. But after I had looked in the garage I would tell Hanlon he had to confess, or at least call in a tip about the accident. It's for your own good, I would tell him. But mostly I was thinking of that girl's parents, waiting at home while pictures of their kid got old and yellow in photo albums they couldn't bear to open.
"You can wait here while I poke around the garage," I said.
"No." Hanlon looked over the refrigerator door and tried to smile. "Count me in, buddy." He put away the box of juice and dug a small key out of the silverware drawer by the sink. I followed him through the kitchen into a little laundry room, with a washer and dryer and some shelves overhead. Beyond them was the door to the garage. There were new locks on it: a dead bolt Hanlon turned back, a chain lock he unlatched, a padlock he opened with the key from the kitchen drawer and a combination lock.
"Are these here to keep the ghost from coming in," I asked, "or you from going out?"
"Both." He dialed the combination lock and opened the door to the garage. The darkness smelled of damp concrete and sawdust and mold. Hanlon flipped a light switch and a bare bulb came on over three unpainted stairs leading down to a concrete floor.
I clattered down the steps. There was a lawnmower in the near corner of the garage, and a wheelbarrow with a few of last year's leaves still blackening at the bottom. A hacksaw and a drill hung on a pegboard against the back wall. Below them was a worktable -- screwdrivers and hammers and tackle boxes whose slide trays were jumbled with nuts and nails and screws. In the shadows under the worktable, I saw a gallon can of gasoline next to a plastic bucket full of rags. There was also a utility sink hooked up to the near wall. The tap was leaking, a slow steady drip that had left a trail of rust like a bloodstain on the white basin.
Huddled under the sink was the battered body of a young woman. She was nineteen or twenty, soaking wet, wearing a dripping vest over a wet T-shirt. She was naked from the waist down. Her hips and legs were covered in bruises; they had spread like smoke-stains across her clammy flesh. Her face was mottled and bloated, as if she had been beaten first and then drowned. Her mouth was clumsily gagged with a man's silk tie. Two more ties bound her wrists and ankles. The ties were gray. She was all gray, I realized. All in black and white. This was Hanlon's ghost.
Only this girl hadn't been hit by a car. This girl had been tied up and beaten to death.
Stairs creaked behind me. My cousin's right hand was hidden in the pocket of his coat. He wet his lips. "See anything?" he said.
And right then I realized that sometimes a guy is haunted for a really good reason.
