Chapter 5
Sawyer
Kennedy would hate Serving Spirits. When I called AAA, only to find myself on hold, then learn from the dispassionate representative the wait time would leave me standing in the sweltering heat for nearly two hours, I reluctantly followed Morgan down the street.
If the poor upkeep wasn’t enough, the paranormal paraphernalia sets me on edge.
Ouija boards wait ready for inquisitive summoners on the tables.
EMF detectors, the cheap devices they use on ghost-hunting reality shows, rest on the hardwood bar, inviting patrons to probe the space for specters.
Old photographs and paintings decorate the walls with plaques attesting to the ghosts in every image.
Morgan loves it. Her eyes go wide with giddy incredulity when we walk in. I thought you found ghosts irritating, I half want to say, except I don’t want to be petty.
Nor do I really want to talk to Morgan Lane when I don’t have to.
The guy from the meeting who handed out coupons waves enthusiastically when he sees us, no doubt pleased his marketing strategy seems to have worked.
Morgan beams. I do not.
I resentfully follow Morgan to one of the leather booths beneath a photograph of a classic California bungalow.
Morgan leans in to read the plaque, then points to a smudge on the window.
Maybe it is the spirit of some 1920s Hollywood ghost, or maybe the camera’s flash caught in warped glass.
We’ll never know, and I don’t care to speculate.
When Morgan opens a laminated menu, however, my disloyal stomach groans.
Reluctantly, I inspect our options. The Great Beyond Burgers. The Blair Sandwich Project. Wings with “haunt sauce.” On Sundays they have Paranormal Flapjacktivity.
Of course.
Morgan eagerly orders the Blair Sandwich. I only muster enthusiasm for the least whimsically named menu item, fries with ghost-pepper ranch dip. The fact ghost peppers happen to be named that doesn’t mean I’m disrespecting the dead.
While we wait, Morgan picks up an EMF detector nearby. She waves the plastic unit in our vicinity.
“Zach,” she says to the empty seat next to her, “is there another ghost here?”
Obviously, no one replies. I keep wishing I could disbelieve her—it would mean I had gained nothing from the meeting Kennedy sent me to.
But everything Morgan has said is impossible to ignore. So here I find myself, in a ghost bar with a woman who is talking to someone invisible.
“He says he can’t see one,” Morgan informs her living lunch companion—me.
“Those don’t work,” I cannot help remarking, nodding to the EMF detector.
Morgan smiles. “You’re such a skeptic for someone who lives with a ghost,” she comments playfully.
“You don’t need a device to measure where they are,” I reply. “You just feel them. Haunting is…”
I hesitate. Is what? What wouldn’t Morgan scoff at? Haunting is the visible echo of countless dreams that won’t happen. Haunting is the future you imagined playing out in the shadow of your worst fear.
“Nothing like this,” I conclude, hoping Morgan hears the finality in my voice.
If she does, she ignores it.
She studies me without judgment. “What’s it like for you, then?”
I meet her gaze. Though I find the question silly—like wondering, What’s memory like? or What’s feeling like?—Morgan’s interest seems genuine. It’s sort of impressive. Openheartedness radiates from her like sunshine.
Despite the EMF detector she’s clutching, her interest relaxes me. “It’s love. Grief so real it’s palpable. Not…jump scares and green slime,” I say, gesturing to the menu references.
Morgan doesn’t sneer like in the support group.
Instead, she looks to her left. To no one.
“I hope you know that if you ever green-slime me, I will re-kill you.” She pauses.
“You don’t even want to know how.” Seeming satisfied, she looks to me.
“I don’t grieve Zach, though,” she replies. “I definitely didn’t love him.”
Her bag, perched on the table, starts to wobble suddenly.
When it tumbles from the edge, Morgan catches it clumsily, looking relieved.
“He doesn’t like it when I’m mean to him, but I don’t like it when he cock-blocks every date I’ve been on since he appeared,” Morgan explains matter-of-factly. “Does your ghost ruin your sex life?”
I shift uncomfortably. “No,” I say.
“You’re lucky,” Morgan informs me.
Unbeknownst to Morgan, I hear the phantom echo of my own promise to Kennedy. I’m the luckiest man in the whole world.
“Maybe Zach loves you,” I say.
Morgan laughs.
“If you could see Zach’s face right now,” she replies. “I promise you. He doesn’t. Okay, okay, dude”—she glances to her other side—“no need to rub it in! I have feelings!”
Our food is delivered. Promptly Morgan produces from her bag shining pieces of black crystal. She sets them up, forming a secure perimeter surrounding her sandwich.
“Leave my food alone,” she warns. I know I’m not the person she’s speaking to.
I start in slowly on my fries. The ghost-pepper sauce is decent, even if eating ranch from a B-rated restaurant may have me joining Kennedy on the other side real soon.
Morgan continues in between bites. “I went on one date with Zach three months ago, and neither of us wanted a second date. I didn’t even know he died until he popped up in my bathroom mirror while I was brushing my teeth. I have no idea why he’s haunting me. Was it similar for you?”
“Not really,” I say, hoping one- or two-word responses will communicate that I do not want to elaborate.
No such luck.
“How did you first discover you were being haunted?” Morgan presses me.
I sigh. I keep to myself mostly these days. I’ve forgotten how pushy the living can be in conversation.
“Kennedy showed up shortly after she died. I didn’t realize it was her at first. Things in my house just kept being moved around. A folded blanket. A dish I left out moved to the sink. Mail brought in,” I explain.
“Man, I wish Zach was helpful like that,” she says. She reaches for one of my fries, then clenches her hand, withdrawing in reconsideration.
“Maybe if he were, you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get rid of him,” I reply.
Morgan considers. She grows serious, the sunlight quality of her eyes clouding.
“I still would,” she finally says. “He’s…
not supposed to be here,” she explains. “I don’t think he wants to be here, either.
I mean, it’s not really a life, just hovering around me.
I think it’s better he move on, or whatever. ”
She clutches the edge of her plate, expecting retribution from Zach, but nothing happens. Her bag sits motionless on the table. He…agrees with her.
My stomach knots.
It’s different with us, I insist to myself. Kennedy and I had a life. Have a life.
“Maybe,” I concede.
Morgan studies me more closely. I feel suddenly self-conscious, like when I shared in the support group. I offer her one of my fries, hoping to distract her.
She looks pleased and hits the ghost-pepper sauce unflinchingly.
Her focus on me doesn’t let up, however.
“Doesn’t Kennedy keep you from living a normal life?
Surely it must be hard to explain to coworkers why the office feels haunted around you,” she ventures.
“Your friends must be creeped out at your place.”
“I work from home,” I say.
Morgan raises her eyebrows, unsatisfied. “And your friends?”
“Kennedy is my friend.”
Morgan’s shoulders slump. “Dude,” she pronounces. “You need to have at least one friend who isn’t dead.”
I shrug. Defiantly, I dip my fry. “Why?”
Skepticism crosses Morgan’s expression when she opens and then closes her mouth. She lifts the EMF detector up and waves the unit closer in front of me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Making sure you’re not a ghost,” she informs me. “Can’t end up in a Sixth Sense situation here.”
I nearly laugh, surprising myself. “Well, what does the very science-backed ghost-hunting tool tell you?”
“According to this, you’re alive, but I’m not convinced,” she informs me. “You’re right. Probably doesn’t work.”
“Tough luck,” I reply.
Those clouds in Morgan’s warm brown irises part. Our gazes lock, and I have the strangest feeling of her sunlight spilling into me. For one moment, I nearly forget I’m in a paranormal-themed bar with a woman and her ghost for company.
“So”—Morgan interrupts the pause—“you’re happy with your one ghost friend in your haunted house, but you came to the support group because you’re worried Kennedy is fading away?”
Her words summon the memory of what waits when I return to my overgrown garden and unfinished home.
“I came because Kennedy wanted me to,” I correct, then promptly change the subject.
“If you want to send Zach away, I think you need to figure out why he’s haunting you,” I suggest. “There must be a deeper connection between you than you think.”
“So there’s a deeper connection between you and Kennedy?” Morgan replies. She’s good at disarming my deflections, at digging up everything I’m trying to keep buried in this conversation.
I don’t flinch or falter. I would have in the months following Kennedy’s death.
In those months, however, our Silver Lake home was not the only remodel I undertook.
I walled off my feelings, my dreams, my shattered heart.
I knew the world would not have patience forever for how broken I was, so I practiced looking fixed.
I learned how to pretend I had returned to a world I no longer recognized.
Working not with clay but with stone, I sculpted the image of someone who had gone through something, who was doing better now.
When Kennedy came to me, I was ready. With the only companion I would ever need, my emotional fallout shelter was complete.
“Yes,” I say simply.
“What—” Morgan starts.
I interrupt her. “I think part of you hasn’t let Zach go. Part of you wants him to stay.”