Hungry for the Flesh
“C’mon, jackass…put the meter down, put it down….Shit….”
“Hey, over here,
over here!”
“Clap for Tinkerbelle, good boy clap for Tink—’’
“Whaddya mean, ‘Clap for Tinkerbelle?’”
“You know—what they’re doing…it’s like if they believe
they make us real.”
“Christ I’d give
anything to be real again….”
“You had your chance….”
“Didn’t we all….”
“I think we may just get some EVP here…Just a hunch, you know?” William set the recorder he’d just placed near a tombstone that marked the grave of George Addison (d. 1873) on and made sure the volume was jacked up sufficiently to catch the faintest sounds.
His assistant, Bincie, who was also his latest girlfriend, checked her backpack for spare batteries. William, she knew, would kill her if she’d forgotten them again. Ghosts drained batteries at an alarming rate and you could miss every kind of camera shot, sound phenomenon and all the rest of the show if you didn’t have tons of extra batteries.
“Anything on the digital, Bince?”
Digitals, as he’d explained a million times—or more, she thought--were excellent for spotting ghost activity such as orbs and ectoplasm…you could take a few shots with a digital and then let it really rip with a good 35 mm camera or a video cam.
“Nothing at the moment,” she said.
“Well then, we just wait.” William settled down, crossing his legs Indian-style, and gazed up through the mild night air. “I’ve had lots of luck before right in this very spot. Last time, Pam captured an apparition—and they’re rare, all right. I thought old Pomeroy at the Society was going to flip his toupee when he saw that shot.”
“Pomeroy—’’ Bincie started to say, ignoring William’s tactless reference to Pam who had been his previous assistant and girlfriend.
“Pomeroy,” he bore down hard on the name. “I’ve told you fifty times he’s the head of the International Group I belong to and—
“And that’s the one that has the real cachet,” she finished, hugging her drawn up knees a little tighter. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t listening or didn’t remember what he told her.
“Sssh….they tend to move away from sounds….don’t talk unless you have to.”
“Okay,” she mouthed. She gave William a little smile, but he wasn’t having it….he was too busy concentrating on the wait, the hunt.
Her bottom was cold against the damp grass and she wished she was at least sitting on a tarp, but William had told her tarps were for amateurs…it was a warm end of summer night, he’d reminded her, a tarp was just one more thing to carry, to trip over or to lose.
She was a lithe woman and she leaned forward so her forehead rested against her knees, the faded denim was cheap comfort, but still a comfort against her skin. There was no use wishing for a cigarette, they were expressly forbidden because smoke was the fraudulent twin of ectoplasm. No ghost hunter—not even the rankest beginner—would stake his or her reputation for a lousy cigarette. Ditto drinks; or drugs—whether of the prescription or illegal variety. As William had often told her, the field was just beginning to gain some creditability, and anything that might compromise the impressions and reports of an investigator was a huge no-no. Sitting in the dark now, she winced a little thinking about how when she’d first met him, she’d admired the fact that he was such a purist, so intense about things.
William was even against gum.
Bincie had found that out only the week before.
He didn’t like them to have dinner before they went on a hunt because he felt it made them subject to a certain torpor. In his estimation, the only thing one should consume before an expedition was coffee or tea in very small amounts.
He could afford to
miss a meal—maybe several—since he was nearly six feet tall and weighed close
to two hundred. But she was thin. Her stomach rumbling, as the
“What the fuck is that?” he’d hissed at her.
“Gum,” she whispered; politely, automatically holding out the package to offer him a piece.
He pushed her hand away, and the loosely held package flew from the ends of her fingers and landed with a small hollow thwack. She stared after it….
“Leave the package; and spit out the goddamn gum—Jesus, you can’t make noise or eat anything on a hunt.”
He glared at her while she hunted up a shred of Kleenex to wrap the gum in and shoved it into a side pocket of her backpack
“Too much noise, too goddamn much noise,” he gritted at her.
In the dirty silence and the dark of the musty cellar they’d been sitting in, she thought his voice sounded like the point of an old-time gravedigger’s shovel making the first cut deep into stone-clotted earth.
Here in the graveyard, Bincie hoped they’d get their share of ghost impressions—sights and sounds—soon. Otherwise William might keep them here till dawn. Or if he got angry, as he had on one or two previous occasions, he was apt to hastily pack up camp, pile himself and the equipment in the car, harrie her to get her ass moving and roar off with his engine shattering the peace of the night, his tires sending gravel in a thick glottal-sounding spray and drive them five or fifty miles to another ghost watching location—a church, an abandoned mill, a former prison--all in a big rush to make up for the lost time he’d spent waiting for ghosts who were a no show that place that night.
She heard him suck in his breath and in the same instant he reached swiftly for the camera and began snapping pictures of her—no, not of her, she realized but of the air around her and over her head.
“Jesus, they’re crawling over you…what does it feel like?” William whispered.
It felt like something was taking greedy little nips out of her, not painful bites, but as if something was hungry and wanted to savor her completely. She thought of children eating creamsicles on hot sidewalks. She shivered, not because she was cold, but because the sensation was like a small tongue licking the side of her throat. But she wasn’t about to tell William that.
“Chilled? Is it an intense cold?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said grateful he’d given her her lie.
“Make a note of exactly how it feels,” he said jerking his chin to indicate the pad and lighted pen by her side. “They’re drawn to you, attracted to you. Must be a dozen or more.”
He took more shots of Bincie and the air all around her.
Her mood changed and she felt better. Scarcely visible roundels of light danced around her hair and bounced down to her feet then back up again. When they touched her it was like a soap bubble breaking, thin and suggestive of damp, but a little ticklish, too. They’re happy, so I’m happy, too, she thought. But even though it was her ideation, she didn’t know what she meant.
A few minutes later William reported he could see no more orbs, not even with the digital camera. “Let’s go,” he said. “I can hardly wait to get this film developed. Jesus, maybe we’ve got another apparition…oh man, that would be something. I want to listen to the recordings and download whatever’s on the digital, too….Infuckingcredible.”
Walking backward toward the car, William used the digital to take a few last shots of the cemetery. He looked as happy as a chronic truant on a Saturday morning—free time stretching ahead and no guilt over skipping class. If he weren’t on a hunt, Bincie thought, he’d be practically whistling. She began to gather up the equipment while William spun, pivoted and shot trying to capture unsuspecting ghosts who might be lurking nearby. The last shot she saw him take was high over head, his arms raised in what might have been a vee for victory. Might have; but she also knew William was convinced some of the best ghost photography happened when the portraitist didn’t even aim.
* * *
“Are you almost done with that? I’d like to get started on evaluating what we got tonight.”
That was a Tuna-club sandwich and a plate full of tepid French fries. She’d already winced once when he’d come back from outside the diner after taking her order and announced her part of the take-out bill came to $10 for the sandwich and a coke. Now, in his apartment, at the kitchen table, she winced—inwardly--again. She liked to give people chances, she liked smooth sailing in relationships, but wasn’t William just a little too much? Overbearing and controlling and, seemingly, incapable of talking to her without sounding like he was always irritated. What had she—or he—been doing wrong so that his mien had changed from comfort to discomfort? Was it because he was used to her now, the new-shine worn off ….did it mean he no longer bothered to be polite because he felt sure of her? Or was that just old-school, nice-girl thinking because on some unconscious level she felt guilty about sleeping with him the last 6 months all the while she suspected he didn’t really love her.
He was cramming the last bite of his own sandwich between his jaws, at the same time he was balling up the white deli paper; with quick movements he finished the last of his drink and shoved away from the table. Bincie thought if he were quizzed, he might not be able to say what he’d just eaten. When he was in this mood, he ate like his hair was on fire. She nibbled on a corner of the sandwich and forced herself to pick at a cold limp French fry….
“Where’s the backpack?” he said. He’d turned away and now she was chewing and spread her hands in a ‘hang-on-helpless’ gesture. “Jesus, hurry up, can’t you?...Here. Let me help, you never eat the whole thing anyway, buying you food is like throwing money in the toilet.” His big frame crowded over her, his hand swooped down and fell on a neatly cut triangle of the Tuna club, covering it like some fleshy species of tarantula. The frilled toothpick was gone and the sandwich was on its way to his maw before she could answer.
“Oh there it is,” William said, striding towards the backpack, the rest of the gear.
At that second if she’d been asked, Binicia Ann Del Gado would have said that she never cared if she saw another graveyard or ghost again. William, in any case, would be storming the gates of his computer inside of a minute, and there really was no need for her to stay up and hang around while he downloaded the photos and listened to the recordings. She was going to finish what was left of her sandwich—slowly—and then she was going to take a good long hot bath and go to bed.
* * *
She was lying in the bed, in the dark alone. Bincie was wrapped mummy-style according to a recent habit of hers. Light—any light—bothered her when she was trying to sleep, so she’d hit upon taking her old, worn feather pillow and draping it over her head and face so that just her nose and the point of her chin stuck out. At the same time, she pulled the bedcovers up as high as they would go and lay on her back, her arms stretched out at her sides. The pillow thankfully blocked out noises, too. So if William—and she was sure it was only a question of time—started ranting about what he found on the digital or the recordings, she would be less likely to hear him, less likely to be disturbed.
She blocked out the muffled sounds of William in the next
room and breathed in the scent of the pillow…it was as malleable as a silk
scarf and had been a gift from Binicia’s mother when she’d gone off to college.
They’d both had high hopes for her success; especially because she was going to
be the first one to go away to college. Uncle Tito had gone to Westwood College
of Technology in
Now she was almost 30, she’d had some good years, some that were trying. When her mother became ill two years ago, Binicia nursed her through till the cancer finally took her down. Now that time was past, she was back in Boston, she’d gotten a decent job teaching at St. Mary’s in Winchester, her own apartment; and she’d only given that up to move in with William. He was fascinated with her Mexican background, her ethnicity. He was the first person she’d ever told that her mother firmly believed in ghosts. Before William she always thought it would make her mother sound ignorant, foolish; but William thought it was exciting and wonderful. “And your mother believes she really sees them, talks with them?” he’d asked. “Oh yes…all the time…my grandparents, her sisters, old friends…everyone. She says it comforts her when they visit, like none of them have ever gone away.”
Now lying in the bed, Bincie thought, who cared about the ghosts in the graveyard? Who cared about ghosts that were strangers? She wished her mother’s ghost would come and stay with her awhile.
* * *
“How much longer? I want to snatch her up right this
minute…”
“You can’t. She isn’t ready.”
“Huh, she’s taken a lot more shit from William than I
did.”
“Jesus, you’re still in denial.”
“No I’m not.”
“For Christ’s sake, Pam, he hit you—twice!”
“That self-righteous prick, I’d like to ghost him right
out a second-story window.”
“Anyway, you don’t snatch anyone up; they come
here…evanesce…”
“I just want to touch her a little…she’s so pretty lying
there…whole.”
“Well if she were really whole—as you put it—we
wouldn’t be here now…”
“Was I right, though, or what? I knew good old Bill the Thrill-Seeker would be there tonight, especially after I got that shot of you, Sandy….Apparition--what an asshole…but I bet he checked his fucking computer a hundred times just to make absolutely sure the sun-storms were kicking up—makes for better ghost watching.” She giggled.
“What's so funny?”
“Bill. He had the ghost, he made the ghost...and he runs
around looking for more, looking for dead guys….”
“Yeah, go type a message on his computer—it’s the only
way he’d see it anyhow.”
“It would be hilarious if he had a tape recorder in here
right now.”
“He’d be shitting a brick over the EVP.”
Binicia stirred. There was something in the air around her like a half dream when you hear your name called. She thought of her mother again, wished it was her mother nearby, like her mother used to describe how it felt when her Papa came and sat on her bed and talked to her after he passed on. Papa was letting her know he loved her. That, Binicia’s mother said, was why ghosts came; they came to let you know they loved you.
“Binicia! Binicia!”
William’s voice came through the packed down, the wall of her sleep. Bincie sat up groggily.
“Binicia, you will not believe this!”
It was dark in the bedroom; a narrow triangle of light came
from William’s office. She was tired, and she didn’t want to get out of bed and
move from the comfort of the dark to the harsh glare of the lamplit room.
Couldn’t he understand the school term had started two weeks ago and she had to
work tomorrow? But then, how could he? The money he’d gotten when his father
died meant he could pursue his interests a while as he’d told her over and
over…he wasn’t even 30, there was plenty of time to work later on—that was, if
he couldn’t make a living as a ghost investigator. There would be books and
lectures and all sorts of lucrative avenues…work—the
“Binicia, are you coming?” His voice was excited, loud. “You have got to see these orbs!”
“I’m tired, and—’’
“You’re always tired,” he said.
But at least he fell silent, and Bincie drifted back to sleep.
She dreamt, oddly,
about Pam and about
* * *
When she woke up, Bill was asleep next to her. It was
The computer was still humming, the screen saver was trundling out its view of a Halloween graveyard. The photos from the shoot sprang into view the instant she touched the mouse. She saw herself, the white tomb stones, small specks of round energy glowing. The orbs crowding close to her, like a school of fish feeding on a single crust of bread tossed in a pool.
She scrolled down and saw writing…she was positive William hadn’t seen it; he would never have gone to sleep if he had. He might have stayed awake the rest of his life if he’d seen this genuine communiqué from the world of ghosts addressed to him:
You have it all wrong, Bill.
All wrong.
Ghosts are not dead guys.
Dead is dead.
Let me just say this again, so that even a self-satisfied
smug bully of a prick like you can understand it: Ghosts are not dead guys.
Dead is dead.
Capisce?
Her fingers skated over the keys. Should she just erase it? What would William think when he read this. He’d probably think she’d written it and he’d be furious with her—she could imagine rage inside him like the dirty fall out from a nuclear blast. He would be as outraged by being called a prick as he would by having his “life’s work” dismissed, his certainty and knowledge about ghosts demolished.
Bincie didn’t hesitate. She highlighted the paragraph and hit delete. Some things were better left unsaid, some information was better unknown.
“What the fuck are you doing?” William, disheveled and worn looking from short sleep, stood at the doorway.
“Nothing...just looking at—“
In two strides he was standing next to the desk. “If you lost any of those pictures, I’ll kill you,” he said.
“I didn’t, I was just looking.”
“Get your hands off the keys, get your ass out of the chair.” He took her place and sat down with his face pushed toward the screen, his fingers adjusting views and calling up the photos one at a time. “There better not be any pictures missing, Binicia,” he said.
“There aren’t,” she insisted. “I didn’t erase any photos, I
was just scrolling, Bill.” She noticed right away she’d called him Bill; she
glanced at him nervously, but he was too intent on the screen on the folder
with the downloaded pictures from
“Whatever. You can be such a stupid cunt, who the fuck knows what you did here, or what you fucked up.”
Her face went pale, but she didn’t answer him. She left
before her presence caused a full-fledged fight. She’d have to deal with it
later, after school, but for now flight assured her at least a modicum of inner
calm to get through the teaching day. If it wasn’t so awful it might be
funny….the cemetery was
* * *
“Christ, the car still smells like the inside of a
dirty-water hot dog stand.”
“She puts up with a lot—just to drive this wreck.”
“I’d give anything not to be sitting on 12 different
squashed Happy Meals boxes.”
“Well, what do you expect? She’s not going to drive with
the stuff all over the front seat and sliding under the gas pedal, Pam.”
“I wish one of them would clean out Bill’s fucking car—’’
“Like you used to?”
“Right, right…”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad; she’s a little
tougher than you, but let’s face it—at heart she’s still a fixer of
relationships—prime candidate for abuse—emotional and otherwise. Prime
candidate for ghosthood—as we both know.”
“She looks a little paler already….”
“That was snide.”
“Bullshit,
* * *
There were voices that were tattered whispers…thoughts that came in snatches and then broke apart like wind-driven clouds. All day, on some level, she listened for the sound of soft Spanish—as if that might summon her grandmother, her mother….But the only Spanish she heard was in her own voice in the classes she taught, in the sibilance of 20 children reciting aloud, reading down lists of nouns and the only true whispers were the furtive sounds of one the kids hissing at another, signaling fast to avoid being caught by the teacher.
She ate her lunch alone in her classroom, glad for a bit of respite. Today was the first day Bincie had ever noticed that some children—some adults, for that matter—were paler than others. She wasn’t sure pale was even the right word—because she didn’t mean complexion and she didn’t mean they were untouched by sunlight, she meant…she meant they looked insubstantial, as thin as the smoke that is the soul.
Why did William keep her around? Why did she stay? She thought of the last few times their arguments had dissolved into threats of ending the relationship. Always, William would come sliding around and make up to her. The fact that she knew it was manipulative, that she knew he was manipulating her didn’t change the fact that she forgave and enjoyed the sudden smiles—her own included—or the tender kisses and touches and whispered mantras: I love you.
“He always sounds so sincere,” she said aloud. When she met him he’d been charm itself. The man who always had a smile, who dispensed ideas, opinions, wisdom and caresses as easily as …well, as easily as a vending machine drops its payload of coffee or candy bars. Her eye began to tic as the truth came home to her. The mask of his kindness and seeming love had been there until she moved in and the relationship settled; and then the automatic side of his warmth was gone. Something in him decided she was no longer putting metaphorical coins in the slot; no goodies dropped into her hands.
He did not know how to love, only to control. Kindness was one more way he had.
Then the bell rang and it was time to get through the afternoon, the drive home…she would not let herself think ahead to the night and her time in the apartment with William, to the likelihood that even knowing how he worked and what he was, she was likely to forgive him again.
* * *
In the car, she thought about just driving away….roads led
north deeper into
“Only to prosecute for the theft of the car….”
“And then he’d just find another girl to train to ghostdom. How many ghosts can a man—if you want to call him that instead of monster—how many ghosts can someone like William make?”
“Hah. That’s a which came first ‘the chicken or the egg’ question.”
Bincie was at a traffic light; “I’m either going crazy, or I’m a budding playwright and never knew it,” she said out loud. Small zipping sounds like snickering seemed to emanate from the back seat. She ran her hand through her hair, the light was about to change, but she wanted to hear more of what her internal self was telling her.
Without hesitation, she drove to
“Home,” Bincie said.
“Not for us—cemeteries are for the dead.”
“Ghosts are not dead guys,” she recited. “Dead is dead.”
“One hundred per cent correct, Teach.”
“Then who are the ghosts?” Bincie said.
“We are.”
“Insubstantial folk. Fragiles. People beaten by life, by circumstances—by something inside themselves—or not.”
“I don’t see you,” Bincie said, “I scarcely hear you.”
There was laughter sharp as knives from the back seat.
“Ah, Binicia, your naïveté is like joy on Christmas morning….that you can hear us at all or catch even the merest glimpse—is because….”
“Because the flesh and blood world would say the same of the girl named Bincie: I don’t see you, I scarcely hear you. You hear us, Bincie, because you don’t matter to them.”
* * *
“Shall we?”
Both rearward car doors opened, and Bincie sensed more than saw a hand flashing an invitation out on the graveled path. She could just leave the car, she thought. It wouldn’t even be very difficult for William to retrieve it.
She opened her door and stepped out. The slanting sun made sparkles like orbs dance across her vision.
“Wait,” she said. She shrank against the solid metal of the car, she was aware of her hands on the steel, the back of her head against the tinted glass. “Why here?” Her voice came out in a strangled whisper.
“No reason—place isn’t in it at all,” Pam shrugged. Her smile was a little mischievous, a bit crooked.
Bincie stepped away from the car and someone lightly hooked elbows with hers on either side. The trio walked lightly, their steps in synch.
“Why me?” Bincie stopped, and the motion in the air around her paused, too. “Why did you come to me?” She was suddenly afraid, certain these might be the last words she ever said, the last time she’d hear her own voice. The air and light swirled, brief as a heat mirage on a highway, dipped, and drew close to her. Then there was no more movement, no more sound.
We came to comfort you. Ghosts come to let you know you are loved.
Fiction by P.D. Cacek, Lee Thomas, Mary San Giovanni & More!
includes
my ghost story, "Hungry for the Flesh" 
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