Chapter 25: The Trouble with Ghosts

25. The Trouble with Ghosts

I did not sleep very well that night. The air in my room seemed stale and heavy. Maybe it was because the air conditioning was not running as much as the world outside descended from summer heat into the chill of autumn. But of course it wasn’t really the languid air that kept interrupting my sleep, and nor was it the nasty label that Phyla had decided to plaster onto me. What kept waking me up through the night were images of the life that Michele had lived before coming to Holshue House.

It all seemed so much more real, more immediate, now that I had seen the men who were doing that to her. I had even seen a face, or the edge of a face, upside down through her little homemade telescope. Now nightmares kept awakening me, their images lingering and fostering, men beating slapping, beating and finally raping women. The men were always white, the women were always dark-skinned with eyes full of fear. The real horror was knowing that it had gone on for two years of her life.

She had mentioned one of the girls dying, and then it hit full-force like train. Those men could never let any of those girls leave that place. They would be prisoners for a lifetime, and when they were no longer of use their lives would be ended. It was the only way to sustain the ugly institution, the house of horror and hatred. I was in a prison, to be sure, but it was nothing like that.

And Michele had beat their system. She had escaped, even if it was only into another prison. By somehow getting herself arrested for a murder she did not commit she found a way to safety. And now she had found out why she had not been sent to a conventional prison, why she was sent to this prissy little reform school for rich girls. The dishonest judge, the corrupt cops or someone, knew about the gathering place just outside the grounds. From there they could watch her. From there they could somehow get into the school and then try to kill her. Because the one thing they couldn’t do was to let her live. Eventually she would tell the truth to someone who had the power to bring an end to Jura, and to send all of those men to prison for a very long time.

The next morning it was no surprise that Phyla wasn’t speaking to me. She very deliberately did not even look at me, but I refused to let it bother me. At lunch she seemed to disappear, and I had the thought that she had probably taken her tray to the book room. Again there was the question of how she seemed to be getting all these special privileges.

Again, I was not going to let it bother me. I sat with Michele, oblivious to the scorn cast upon by Erika and her honchos. Then this became my new pattern for the next several days, sitting with Michele, ignoring the looks I got from so many for doing so. And every day there was a quiver of fear that seemed to migrate down through my body every time I sat down with Michele. I wasn’t even sure what it was. A fear of those men coming after me because of association? Or a general fear that Michele and her whole lifestyle was nothing but danger? A fear that I was being foolish by moving away from the one person I had come to trust in my life at Holshue House, Phyla, while at the same time wondering if I had rushed into my trust of her. Somehow the confident hard-ass girl who had arrived eight weeks before seems to have evaporated. It was like I was being stalked by something invisible, but omnipresent, something like the house itself.

So of course I still wanted to ask Michele about the ghosts. And one of the good things about being classified as deviants was that the space around our table seemed to have been slowly been expanding, giving us more privacy. This day, maybe a week after the night I had seen the Jura members going into their clandestine meeting in the old barn, I remember that Michele was wearing a badly frayed black Nirvana t-shirt that was at least a size too big for her and jeans that wanted to slip off of her tiny hips. I wondered where she got her clothes. The other girls received packages from their parents, which of course went thought inspection before being allowed into the house. Allison’s mother hadn’t sent anything for us, but there had been all those clothes in Allison’s closet which found their way into that suitcase that passed through that first day inspection. There had been nothing else in all the weeks since then.

But all of this led me to wondering how Michele got her clothes because she most likely had arrived with nothing, coming from the Jura house after two years of being nothing but an object of perverted hate. Still, somehow she did have numerous outfits, and they all showed signs of wear, and most of them did not fit very well.

Once again she was reading, some book inside her text book. It was like she was always reading. I hadn’t really given it much thought that first day that I had noticed her, when it was the color of her skin that had drawn my attention, but she had been reading even then. I wanted to make conversation, but something told me that the books were not the subject I wanted to broach. I was actually rather embarrassed that I had read so little in my life, when I had had every opportunity available to me as Allison.

Instead I chose this day to finally ask her about the ghosts, since she seemed to have been the only other person in the house who could see them. I leaned in and whispered, “Michele, that first time I was up in your room, you told me that you know about the ghosts, that you can see them too.”

She looked up from her book with a smile, “And I told you not to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Lean in all whispery - like we’re sharing something very secret. It will make everyone suspicious. Just sit back and talk - there’s no one close enough to listen.”

I glanced around and realized that now that Michele and I were the pariahs of Holshue House, there was no one within twenty feet of us. And even Phyla was nowhere to be seen. I started the topic again, this time leaning back in my chair, working to radiate casualness, “Tell me what you know about the ghosts - you told me that you have seen them.”

She nodded, only half looking up from her book, “I first learned about them ‘cause Kitch was coming up to see me. I joke about him seeing me naked, like I really care, but the thing is that they don’t really care much about anything in our world - they are so wrapped up in being part of this house, and their pain from the past. He doesn’t react any differently if he is there when I’m changing.”

Reminding myself not to lean in even though all this talk felt very conspiratorial, I asked, “So what about the ghosts in the basement? Have you seen them?”

“Yeah, Kitch told me about them, so I snuck down there one night to see them for myself. That’s Kitch’s mom, dad and sister, Ruth, Luge and Polly. They gotta stay down there. Kitch is the only one who gets to move around the house. That’s why he comes up to see me. Maybe I’m the only black person he’s seen in this house for a long time.”

“Why can’t the others come out of the basement?”

“How would I know? Let me tell you something, ghosts are not the best conversationalists. I mean Kitch is company of sorts, but it’s more like having a pet guinea pig or something. They are off in their own world.”

“Do you know why you and I are the only who can see them? I took Phyla to the basement and she couldn’t see them at all, even when they were right in front of me.”

“Really? I guess I never gave it much thought as to why I was seeing ‘em and no else ever mentioned them. Or maybe I just assumed it was because I’m black and they’re black.”

“But I’m …” I gestured towards the pale skin of my forearm and then grabbed a clump of my blondish hair.

“Shit. I don’t know. Maybe you got more African blood in you than you think.” She grinned. “After all, you are sitting with me, the only African-American in this pretty-girl hell-hole. Unless you count Phyla, and who knows what the hell she is.”

Even though I was pissed at Phyla for the way she had been acting, I was not about to reveal that she was actually an elf. Not that anyone would have believed me. I decided to keep the conversation focused on the ghosts. “So, when they talk to you what kind of things do they say?”

“I dunno. It’s just nonsense - talk about spirits and pain and the smell of the house being all different and I don’t know what. Nothing very useful.”

“Have you thought about asking them who pushed you into the river that night? They might have seen something, give you some kind of description or something.”

“They aren’t like that. You can ask them questions about stuff going on in the house and it’s like they don’t even hear your questions. They just don’t give a shit about us or this world we live in. Maybe because they’re all trapped in the past and the pain that they felt, and the anger they feel.”

“Oh.”

“Like I said, Kitch is a sorry-ass excuse for company, and I only went down in the basement that one time to see the others. They said hi, but didn’t tell me anything else about anything.”

“Do you think we can do anything about their pain? Help them to move on or something?”

“Shit, I can’t even help the living. I can’t do nothing about those girls I left back at the house, still going through their hell every night. Somehow someone has made sure that no one will listen to me about any of that, and now I really think someone will kill me. I mean, maybe getting out the way I did wasn’t that great an idea in the first place. I’m just going to die here instead of there.”

I realized there was moisture in her eyes even as she kept her voice steady and strong. I had suddenly opened a whole area of conversation that I had been trying to avoid, and then I remembered that the other girls in the house knew nothing about this. They just saw her as some girl from the hood who had no business being there. “I’m sorry,” I whispered quietly, remembering not to lean in towards her.

“It ain’t your fault. And thanks again for being there that night. You know, you don’t gotta sit here with me or nothing.” This time the words were spoken without anger. I could tell she really didn’t want me to go away.

“I’m here because I want to be here with you, and at this point there isn’t much of anyone else who’s going to eat with me.”

She grinned, “So it’s your own damn fault that you're stuck with me, that I’m the only one who will put up with you.” And she went back to her book.