Personal demons, p.3
The Haunter (Sam the Spectator Book 1), page 3
I laughed. “I don’t know. So, you haven’t heard anything?” If there were anything to hear, Miss Lily would’ve heard it although what she chose to reveal was up in the smoky air.
“No. I’m just down here sewing short shorts. Nobody tells me shit, girlie. If you’re going back upstairs, will you tell someone in the office to up that air conditioning? I feel like I’m being dried out like jerky down here. Those assholes should give me my own controller thingamabob.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell them, Miss Lily. Have a good night.”
“Don’t sweat the shitheads, Sam,” she called after me as I walked down the dark hallway toward the stairs, definitely sweating the shitheads.
THE THING ABOUT GROWING up in a small town is that you inevitably end up hanging out with people you don’t like. You have to or you’ll end up bored and lonely and probably addicted to something terrible like heroin or doing step aerobics to C&C Music Factory. When my mom and Uncle John were alive, they owned and ran the town bar, Johnny’s. My Papaw told me they had to practice patience all the time because they’d chosen a “rough line of work” and that the locals, while good hard-working people, were a “rowdy sort.” My Meems was a little harsher. She said they were “servin’ up the devil’s whiskey to a bunch of dern rascals” and that she “didn’t know what in tarnation” got into her precious babies. Sometimes they’d have to stand there behind the bar and listen to people spouting all sorts of crazy stuff. Folks hated Democrats and Yankees and redheads. They hated vegetarians and ‘fancy pants too big for their britches’ sorts who liked to occasionally drink a glass of wine that didn’t come out of a box. My mom and Uncle John just rolled their eyes and mixed tequila with lime juice. Small towns run on people being plain polite and swallowing their true feelings down like a shot of Jack Daniels. It was how we survived.
E, Mickey, and I survived by keeping to ourselves but every once in a bit we had to assimilate. I mean, can you imagine going through high school without hitting any parties? What a dismal existence. We had to practice for college, didn’t we? So, we hung out a lot at a place right outside of town called the orchard. I don’t think it was a real orchard and I don’t know why we called it the orchard, but life is better with a bit of mystery. I will say I never noticed any fruit trees. We were pretty tree challenged in West Texas but at least there was a cluster of scraggly specimens out there to shield us from the prying eyes of the adults. There was an orchard party almost every weekend. Somebody’s older brother would get a keg and people would pull their trucks up in a circle bed side in for seating. We’d clutch our plastic cups and talk to kids we ignored and who ignored us at school. If there was an official symbol of misspent Texas youth, I think it would be the red Solo cup. Ahhh, beer in a red cup. Bringing people together since like, I dunno, the 70s or something.
So, the next evening, E and Mickey came to pick me up for an orchard party in Mickey’s station wagon. I had to be home by ten because we had church in the morning and also because my grandparents were intent on ruining my social life. On the upside they let me wear and listen to anything I wanted (they didn’t know Metallica from Conway Twitty and Meems thought my 10-eyelet steel-toed oxblood Doc Marten combat boots were “just darling”), and it was super easy to sneak out at night because did I mention they were old? They slept like babies. Super old babies who snored.
When I walked outside, both dudes were leaning against the station wagon, gazing at my house like they were hypnotized. Mickey’s giant mutt of a dog, Cooper (full name: Alice Cooper), hung his head lazily out of the back window but he sat up and howled when he saw me.
“What’s up, losers?” I yelled at them as I ran down the sidewalk.
“Nada, we’re just tripping on Meems’ Mental Breakdown,” E said, putting his cigarette out on the sole of his combat boots.
“It’s breathtaking,” Mickey said.
“Everything is breathtaking when you’re a stoner,” E said. “You have no breath. You’re breath deficient.”
“That’s deep, man,” Mickey told him.
Meems’ Mental Breakdown was what I called our house. It was a bit of a landmark. For one thing, it was blue. Not just the trim. The whole thing: Blue walls, blue door, blue shutters. Blue like the sky. Blue like a Smurf erupted. And since we lived in BLUEbonnet, it made people smile, no matter how cheesy or on the nose. People liked it on the nose in Bluebonnet. (Uncle John would say people liked it up the nose in Bluebonnet.) The other thing, the nuttiest most obvious thing, was how she’d decorated the yard. It was like a craft fair exploded all over the exterior. There were windmills, yes, and lawn ornaments and other things that are supposed to live in a yard but instead of two or three, there were hundreds. An entire army of plastic pink flamingoes lined the sidewalk. There was a “garden” of spinning pinwheels of various sizes and colors underneath my bedroom window. On the porch hung at least twenty wind chimes, which could get pretty darn annoying on a windy day in West Texas, let me tell you. The plains were flat as a record, as one of my new compact discs. There wasn’t anything to block the wind for miles and miles around.
Oh but that wasn’t all by a long shot. Stone rabbits stood next to marble birdbaths. Two terracotta burros flanked a pecan tree. There were bird feeders made out of old three-liter Dr. Pepper bottles. (I joked to Meemaw that we should fill one of them with vitamins for the locals. She didn’t even laugh. Vitamins were not a laughing matter to Meems.) There were stuffed animals and painted turquoise rubber rats tied to the trees to make it look like they were climbing. There was always a hand-sewn flag flying near the front door corresponding to whatever holiday was coming up. A Valentine’s Day flag with hearts. A Texas Independence Day flag with the state of Texas. A green St. Patrick’s Day flag. A Cinco de Mayo flag with tacos. Yes, tacos. To this day it is my firm opinion that everyone should own a taco flag. The house was a perfect hideout for an evil spectator family just waiting to take down the innocent town with their ghosts and ghouls.
The notable exception in her décor was Halloween. Meemaw didn’t even acknowledge the holiday. She didn’t put up giant fake spider webs or glow-in-the-dark skeletons or ghost windsocks. I always thought that was weird considering she married into a ghost-seeing family, but she maintained that Halloween was “tacky” and “for the devil.” She didn’t even like Día de los Muertos decorations, which was strange since they were decidedly adorable. But, that was Meems for you. A walkin’ drawlin’ contradiction in high-heeled boots.
“You’ve literally seen Meems’ Mental Breakdown a zillion times,” I griped as I scratched Cooper’s velvety head.
“Yeah but it keeps getting better. Look, she added some cats chasing the rats. I still can’t believe it’s a parsonage,” E said.
“Seriously, it’s like a fairy tale on acid. Now, who’s ready to orchard?” Mickey asked, and we all raised our hands including Cooper since I’d grabbed his paw and made him participate.
“Let’s get cigarettes first,” E said. “Gilbert is gonna meet us in the parking lot.”
Because Bluebonnet was a tiny West Texas oil town where everyone knew everyone, we couldn’t buy our own cigarettes so we’d always get one of E’s older cousins to buy them for us at the combination gas station/convenience store/Mexican restaurant, our town’s answer to a 7-11 and, you know, everything else. Seriously, it was a pretty cool place. You could fill your car with gas, your purse with cheap sunglasses, and your belly with sopapillas. It didn’t have a name so everyone just called it the combination gas station/convenience store/Mexican restaurant. It was owned by Pablo Sanchez, who didn’t need to check our I.D.s to know we were minors since he’d known us our whole lives.
I handed E five bucks. I didn’t get a huge allowance but I didn’t really spend a lot either. All I ever bought was Wet n’ Wild lipstick, music, and cigarettes. Sometimes I chipped in for beer. I checked out all my horror books from the library and E gave me free rentals from the video store. I made it work. Meems and Papaw didn’t have a lot of money but it was Bluebonnet. No one there really did. If you had loads of money, you’d move to Abilene or Lubbock, somewhere with a Chili’s.
E slid into the backseat with Cooper, giving me shotgun. I noticed a fuzzy black lump on the dashboard. “Boba-Pett!” I exclaimed, stroking the warm back of the cat, who didn’t move, although the vibration of her purring told me she was alive.
Mickey shrugged. “You know she likes the car. Figured I should get her out of the bat cave. She and Monty have been fighting again.” Monty was his ball python. Monty the python. I know. I rolled my eyes when he named it too. He couldn’t be stopped.
“How old is she now, Mickey? 100?” E asked.
“She’s not old, dude. She’s almost ten. Don’t give her a complex.”
“Whatever, man,” E said, chuckling. “Still a dope name, right, Coop?” Mickey was a tiny kid and had just seen Return of the Jedi for the first time when he got Boba-Pett, thus the name.
Cooper looked out the window as we drove away from the blue house and the looming church next door.
“We’re getting that movie I told y’all about at work,” E said, lighting another cigarette, passing it over the seat to me then lighting another one for himself. He exhaled out of his window. Cooper snorted as if he didn’t approve then turned back to his own view. “I got first dibs so we can watch it at your house, Mickey. You have the biggest TV.”
“We should watch it at your Abuela’s house. She has a big TV and she’ll make us food! Homemade not from a microwave food, dude!” Mickey said, pounding the steering wheel. “Snacks snacks snacks snacks! Wait, what movie?”
“Reservoir Dogs,” E and I yelled at the same time.
“Whoa jinx,” E said to me. I reached back and high fived him.
“Oh right, cool. I can’t wait,” Mickey said. “You going to the theater Monday night, Sammers?”
“Yup. Duty calls,” I said, not wanting to talk about the theater too much with my real friends. I wasn’t a theater dork; I was merely a volunteer who sometimes enjoyed plays. Totally different. Plus, they’d never understand that it was the only place in Bluebonnet where I didn’t feel like a total freak.
“Well? Do you think that preppy girl saw a ghost?” Mickey asked.
“No way,” I muttered.
Mickey pulled into the parking lot of the combination gas station/convenience store/Mexican restaurant and E hopped out. Mickey and I watched him fist bump his cousin and slide him some cash. Then he hopped back into the backseat with the dog.
“So we were talking about Kara Adler,” E reminded us.
“Yeah, keep us posted, Sam,” Mickey said. “Nothing good has ever happened in Bluebonnet ever. Figures that when something finally does, it would be at that theater. It’s the only thing anyone in town cares about. Well, that and oil. If it ever closed, they’d probably make us all shut down shop. Send us packing down the highway with our bags on our backs like hobos.”
“God would smite us,” E said and as I touched up my maroon lipstick in the passenger-side mirror, I could see him grinning at the thought. E would probably enjoy a good smiting, the lunatic.
“It’s gonna make people crazy. Should be fun to watch at least,” Mickey said.
“Yeah, easy for you to say, Mickey. If those fuckos start lynching people, who do you think they’ll start with? You? A rich kid? Or the eyeliner wearing Mexican from the video store?” He shuddered.
Suddenly Gilbert was knocking on the window so I rolled it down. “Greetings, youngsters. I got you your smokes and a little something extra,” he said, passing a large heavy paper bag through the window.
“Thanks, Gilbert,” I said.
“Hey, de nada,” he said, waving and running back toward his Honda. “Later, cuz,” he yelled over his shoulder at E.
As Mickey pulled out of the parking lot, I peeked into the bag and found two packs of Camels and a bottle of Boone’s. I passed the whole thing to E.
Mickey drove past restaurant row, what we called the small strip of road containing the Dairy Queen, the Domino’s Pizza, and the McDonalds, and then out past the fields of pump jacks and old oil rigs and onto the two-lane highway toward the orchard. I took a big drag and hoped my friends wouldn’t bring up getting my license again. They’d been pestering me in the weeks leading up to my sixteenth birthday but I just wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t like I could afford a car anyway and everywhere in Bluebonnet was close enough to ride my bike to. I didn’t want to drive. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Bad things happened out on the highways of West Texas. Especially these days.
It was the same highway my parents and Uncle John died on. People always acted shocked when they discovered that I used to have parents, but of course I did. I didn’t, like, grow in a cabbage patch with a signature on my ass; they just died in a car crash with my Uncle John when I was five. I guess it was technically a truck crash: my dad’s pick-‘em-up truck (his dorky term, not mine) versus a soda-carrying semi on the highway.
Years later, an older kid at school told me his brother saw the accident go down. He said there were cans of soda all over the asphalt for as far as the eye could see and that later, he and his brother took a Radio Flyer wagon down to the highway and filled it with cans of Coke, 7-Up and Country Time lemonade. They hid the stash in their club house and drank them warm for the rest of the summer, having epic burping contests and laughing so hard that Coke came out of their noses. I don’t know why but I think about that a lot and I think it’s pretty cool. Someone got something good out of my parents’ death. It makes it not as sucky. Most living people don’t realize it but sometimes awful things can be beautiful. The dead know that well. I think that’s why they’re always partying.
My mom, her brother, Uncle John, and my dad were on their way back from a spectator job in El Paso when it happened. They were almost home, which really bothered my Meemaw, as if proximity to home had anything to do with bad luck. This was way back before spectators were known so it was a secret job. My dad wasn’t a spectator, of course, he was just a high school history teacher, but he went along for the ride and to protect the “Wonder Twins,” as he called them. It was declared an accident but we’ve never been completely sure about it. Even back then before the world knew about us, there were underground groups against spectators. My grandparents didn’t talk about it much and Uncle John was absolutely no help.
I couldn’t remember my Uncle John much as a living person but that might be because I’d known his ghost for over a decade. He didn’t recall what happened that day with the trucks and the sodas, and he didn’t know why he was a ghost and they weren’t. In the years directly following the crash, he’d searched everywhere for them but couldn’t find them anywhere. But, it wasn’t unusual for people to die and not become ghosts. They just went somewhere else, no one knew where or why. Heaven, hell, oblivion, Sun Valley, Idaho, who knew? Uncle John was aware of all this, of course, he’d been a spectator before death, but when we tried to talk to him about it, he’d just say he missed his twin and then he’d disappear for a day or so, go down to hit the clubs in Austin or spend a week on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Sometimes he’d grumble, “This isn’t Beetlejuice, Sam! I didn’t get a Handbook for the Recently Deceased, you know!” (Ghosts loved that movie. They hadn’t stopped talking about it since it came out.) Uncle John didn’t know much but he was really funny so we let him stick around. He was a non-stop source of laughs for me. For example, one time at a slumber party in 6th grade, he’d moved the planchette of a Ouija board to spell out “SAM ROCKS” when two bitchy girls were operating it, much to my delight. He was my favorite non-person in the whole world.
My low-grade highway-induced panic attack was interrupted by E tapping me on the top of the head.
“Sammy. Are you in there? Can you change the tape, por favor? We’ve all but exhausted ‘Sam’s Summer Sucks Mix 1992.’ If I have to hear “La La Love You” by Pixies one more time, I’ll ha ha hate you.”
“Sorry, man, give me a sec,” I mumbled, digging through Mickey’s disgusting glove box. I dug through greasy lighters and empty cigarette boxes. There was a yellow ‘hi-lighter’ which was a small pipe disguised as an actual working highlighter he’d gotten at a head shop in Austin. There was even a Lone Star beer can crushed down to an almost flat circle. I moved half of an ancient Twinkie and randomly grabbed another one of my mixtapes. I popped it in and Fugazi flooded the car. “Better?”
“Much,” E said. Then he unscrewed the bottle of Boone’s and passed it over the seat to me.
Boone’s Strawberry Hill would’ve been my last choice in alcoholic beverage. I vehemently believed that Boone’s Strawberry Hill tasted like Care Bear puke. Actually, Care Bears probably vomited rainbows and I shouldn’t insult them like that. I took the tiniest sip I could possibly take without Mickey noticing because it was gross but also because I knew I’d need to have a beer or two at the party to seem like a normal non-ghost seeing gal but I couldn’t get drunk. Look, I wanted to get drunk. Oh how I wanted to get drunk. But, I couldn’t let my guard down like that. Last time I got truly drunk at a college party in Abilene I got into a conversation with three ghost boys who’d just died in a drunk driving accident. They told me they’d been “pounding road sodas” which is Texas for “drinking beer in a vehicle like an idiot.” They were about to jam to Lollapalooza and were pretty stoked about it because they never would’ve been able to go when they were alive. Too expensive and too far away. But as ghosts they could go anywhere and do anything they wanted. And ghosts loved an outdoor music festival. Little spectator trivia: Apparently Woodstock was the most haunted event in American history. Kind-of makes sense when you think about it. Hippies like to party and ghosts enjoy beads and feathers. Man, you should see Uncle John at Mardis Gras!
Anyway, apparently, I looked sort-of odd talking to the air or whatever so I had to make up a story to explain it away. I told E that a dude had given me a pill and that I was hallucinating. He bought it. He bought it so much that he left me in the station wagon and went back into the party threatening to beat someone’s ass, which makes me laugh but it also makes me love E a little more. I fell asleep in the passenger seat but he told me later that the dude who gave me the pill had already taken off. Or he didn’t exist, I thought. So that’s why I can’t get drunk anymore. Too dangerous.
