Broken Ghosts by Joseph Hirsch
An Airbnb hosts a ghost for Eric.
It did not look like a haunted house. Rather, it looked like all the other houses in the neighborhood, undistinguished, ranch-style with vinyl siding and a basketball hoop in the driveway for children long-since grown.
Whatever, though.
Eric grabbed his duffel bag from off the passenger seat, exited the car, walked to the door.
Above the doorknob, nestled in a brushed steel plate, was a smart lock. He typed the code given to him by the BnB host, waited for the green light to flash, then turned the knob.
Inside, it was dark, the only light coming through the windows and hitting the floor to expose each grain in the hardwood. There was a strong smell of pine-scented cleaner, nary a trace of dust in the air. Not very gothic. Certainly no budding cobwebs or eerie statuary threatening to lend the home a hint of character.
The house opened onto the living room, with a big leather sectional couch facing a glass-topped coffee table edged in faux gold. Drug dealer chic, as impersonal as most other Airbnbs. A large wooden bookshelf with a glass sliding face was set flush against the far left wall, a giant flatscreen smart TV opposite that. The walls themselves were bare except for one large oil painting, though Eric could not make out its amorphous details from this distance in the dark.
He set down his bag, fumbled along the nearest wall, found the dimmer switch, and turned it all the way up.
Now, with proper light, he could better see the painting. It was of a cowboy riding his horse through open desert, a John Fordian landscape of rocky mesas and buttes. The cowboy's mount was bucking but he had a good grip on the saddle's pommel, confident enough in his hold to doff his Stetson with his other hand.
Eric shook his head. A Fred Remington knockoff belonged in the lobby of a border town hotel. Here, in a Midwestern suburb, it made less sense.
He looked around some more, saw a black laminated binder with a white sheet taped to its face, "Manual" written there in black sharpie. The book was perched atop the glass coffee table, where a normal host might display an overpriced glossy hardback.
Eric sat down on the couch, slightly nauseated by the powerful reek of leather, but relieved at least to be off his feet after the long drive.
It had been something like twelve hours, and his legs were cramped, his back tweaked. There'd been lots of construction on the highway - a maddening bumper to bumper crawl across what should have been open road - but he had been intent on making the trip.
This was the only supposedly haunted house in the Lower 48 that had stymied skeptics and was also available to rent. Additionally, it boasted a "superhost" rating of 4.8, which put it among the elite Airbnbs. It had even been featured on several news segments alongside those mindless ghosthunter shows that proliferated on The History Channel after their ignominious descent into superstition. Neither the ghost hunters nor the ghost debunkers - two different groups, but with some overlap - had been able to shake the feeling of an actual supernatural presence here. The only other house with a higher "believability rating" on the North American continent was in Manitoba. Eric would have gladly flown there, but the recent trial had put a severe dent in his finances and he lacked the money for a trip abroad. Maybe if things picked up at the gun store in the next few months, and he struck out here, he would try his luck up in Canada.
Not that he believed in ghosts. He just wanted to make sure...
Eric shifted on the leather couch, soreness slowly beginning to leave his limbs, opened the book.
"Welcome," the printed message began, "to the ONLY truly haunted house known to exist."
A bold claim, Eric thought, and also BS. "In this manual you will find all the usual details listed at Airbnbs designed to make your stay as a guest more comfortable. Everything from the wi-fi password to how to work the smart TV."
Eric smirked.
Did the ghost use wi-fi? One would think that floating through the ether - between the realms of the living and the dead - would obviate the need for such mundane means of communication.
"In answer to your main question, yes this house is genuinely haunted. The ghost's name is Robert Colepepper. He is a bona fide Texas steer roper and vaquero from the nineteenth century. What he's doing here smack-dab in the middle of the Midwest is something he'll be happy to explain to you, or try to explain. That said, there is NO GUARANTEE that Mr. Colepepper will make an apport. He is not my employee and he is not a trained seal. There is a decent chance that he does appear, though that has more to do with the guest's psychic energy than with any attempts to summon him. Conjurings via voodoo or Ouija board or via any other supposedly tried and true methods will have no effect on him. The only thing that may lure him out into the open is perking a pot of coffee. The old cowboy loves the smell of his brewing beans."
There was more - most of it also grade-A fertilizer, and Eric skimmed over it. At the end was the name of the host, Larry Poole, a picture of him in an ill-fitting sharkskin suit, face sporting an equally ill-fitting grin. Beneath his contact number was the phrase "Underpromise and Overdeliver," apparently his motto as both a host of the house and its ghost.
Eric closed the book, stood up, went over to the glassed-in bookcase. Each shelf was filled with tomes and texts, some old, with worn clothbound spines, others more recent glossy paperbacks. Among the titles was a battered one with yellowing pages by Edgar Cayce on ESP, another by Carlos Casteneda about his encounters with the shaman Don Juan. Then there were several books with gold-lettered titles in a foreign language (it looked like French) by one Robert Houdin.
Strangely, this shelf also featured a book by famed escapologist Harry Houdini called The Unmasking of Robert Houdin.
Eric squinted. That was an odd touch. Why include a book on debunking supernatural phenomena in a house that claimed to play host to the same? It seemed counterintuitive, unless, of course, it was a psychological ploy.
Look, Mr. Poole seemed to be saying, We are so confident in the existence of our ghostly vaquero that we can feature books by skeptics and naysayers prominently on our shelf.
Eric turned from the bookshelf, went into the kitchen.
It was small and cramped, with a yellow linoleum floor tiled in a honeycomb pattern, matching yellow curtains over the windows. A sickly seventies artifact, like the set of The Price is Right. On the counter - its butter-colored vinyl peeling at the corners - sat the coffee pot, and next to that some filters and a store-brand can of coffee.
"Cheap prick."
Eric went to the pot, took it from the hotplate, filled it with water from the sink fixture, which was rusty and leaked. After spooning a generous portion of grounds into the reusable mesh weave filter, he replaced the pot on the plate, flipped the switch, went to sit at the kitchen table.
Once seated, he pulled his wallet from his pocket, glanced at his driver's license tucked in its laminated sleeve. Then he flipped that to the reverse side, to a posed photo of someone to whom he bore an uncanny resemblance, one or two features subtly tweaked so only the twins and maybe their wives might know the difference. The man in the photo was wearing a Mossy Oak camouflaged winter jacket, gripping the walnut stock of a rifle in his right hand, crouched in a stubbly, cropless field in late autumn.
Eric couldn't take it. He closed his wallet, put it back in his pocket. Then he put his head down on the table, dropping off into fitful, twilit state that only vaguely resembled that sleep which refreshes.
A few minutes later the coffee pot was full, bubbling and smelling strong enough for the scent to reach him in his semi-slumber.
An hour later, a voice woke him the rest of the way up.
"Coffee smells good," the voice said, directly into his ear.
Eric stood, so quickly the chair he'd been sitting in fell to the floor with a loud clatter. He looked around, gasping for breath, eyes sore and puffy.
"Would you do me a favor?" the voice asked.
Eric had to give it to Larry Poole, or whoever was handling the audio effects for this spook show. The voice did not seem to be coming from a hidden speaker, or a device stashed somewhere in the house. It seemed to radiate from everywhere and nowhere, an auditory hallucination rattling around inside his own head.
Eric smiled. "That you, Mr. Colpepper?"
"Can't say 'in the flesh,' but more or less, yes. Mostly less." The voice had a twang, folksy and harsh from whiskey and cigars but with no meanness to it.
"Can you drink the coffee?" Eric asked, deciding to play along for now.
"No, but there's something about the smell of it hitting that cup - and the way the steam wafts up in pretty little tendrils. It makes me feel like I'm at the suttler's chuck wagon all over again."
"Oh, that's right." Eric went over to the cabinets, opening the first one and finding a shelf with glasses, and above that, the shelf with mugs. "You're a vaquero from the Wild West. How the hell did you end up here, anyway? Seems like quite a distance to travel for no good reason."
"Everything a ghost does is for no good reason."
"What do you mean?"
"We're stuck in limbo, separated from everyone we love and everyone we hate, everyone we know. Their souls are either at rest or burning in eternal flame. Meanwhile we're still here, just wandering about with nothing but time to kill."
"So why settle here? Why not haunt the Alamo or some Tijuana cathouse? Wouldn't that at least feel more familiar to you?"
"I got stuck, like a fly in honey. Oh, I could leave this place now if I wanted, but I've gotten used to it. And you talk about 'distance' as if that meant anything more than time now. One day and one year are pretty much the same for me. Same with one mile and one-hundred."
"Deep," Eric said, running his finger along the mugs. Several were simple and white, plain ceramic, while a few had sayings on them, or drawings of things like hearts and cats. One was pastel pink and said, "Beyond Bitch." Eric smiled. Selecting that one would really undermine the spooky mood Poole and his unseen conspirators were trying to set.
"You got a preference for mug?" Eric asked, gripping the handle of the Bitch one.
"'Beyond Bitch' will work. I've known more than a few spiteful women in my day. Had a cayuse called 'Crazy Bitch,' too, though she was the gentlest mount I ever had. Not sure why the man who sold her to me named her that."
Eric reddened slightly, hoped whoever was watching the kitchen via hidden camera hadn't noticed. And they had to be watching, for they'd seen which mug he'd selected. Moving over to the percolator, he suddenly became very self-conscious in his gestures.
And how many cameras were there in this place, anyway? And what if this Poole guy was some kind of pervert? Tonight Eric would shower with the lights off and the curtains pulled, if only to make the red light of any recording device easier to find. If one were in there, in which case, it was lawsuit time - not just against Poole but against Airbnb, which could mean serious money. Enough not to just salvage the gun shop, but to maybe open a second location and spring for that smithing course Randy had been bugging him about.
For now, though, he would play it cool.
Eric went over to the percolator, poured a mugful of dark coffee. It steamed and the ghost sighed in ecstasy.
"Thank you."
"My pleasure." Eric carried the coffee over to the table, sat down. "And thank you, too."
"For what?"
"For showing up." Eric paused, had a sip, winced in gratitude, shook his head. It was good and hot, strong. Sometimes the generic stuff could surprise you. He lifted the cup, aimed it toward the living room. "The manual in there says that you don't always show up. And yet you showed up promptly for me."
"Well, you and I got some things in common."
"Oh?" Eric had another sip, found it wasn't enough, took a big gulp.
"I sensed it soon as you came through the door."
Eric set the mug back down on the table. He should take it easy; his nerves were already on-edge. "What is it we have in common?"
The ghost paused, went silent. The people running the spook show must have been trawling through Eric's online footprint right now, trying to find out more about him. Seeking details with which to shock or at least surprise him. But it would be hard trying to find things in common between him and a cowboy dead now more than a century. And shouldn't they have started researching Eric as soon as he booked the reservation? Not very professional, this last-minute rush.
"Hello?" Eric said. The room was silent except for the low hum of the AC, the drone of the refrigerator, the roil of the coffee burbling hotly in the pot. "What do we have in common?"
"Well, we both have trouble falling asleep."
Eric nodded. That much was true.
"On account of guilt."
Again Eric reddened slightly, before reminding himself not to fall for this. Like hotline psychics, the people running this charade knew to be vague, and that in that vagueness a false psychic link could be imagined by the mark. Everyone felt guilty about something. The "ghost" might as well have told Eric his horoscope said he was about to experience a big change in his life.
"So ghosts sleep?" Eric asked.
"Well, in order to slip off into your fate - your sentence to Heaven or Hell, you have to let go, like a person dropping off to sleep."
"I see."
"And I've never been able to make it. Every time I'm on the verge, I pull back. Guess I'm a smidge yellow-livered."
Eric took another sip. "What else?"
"Beg pardon?"
"What else do we have in common. You said, 'some things,' and yet you only mentioned one."
There was more radio silence for a moment, then the ghost said, "I'd rather not say."
"Go ahead." Eric lifted his mug, as if the ghost were seated across from him at the kitchen table and he were entreating it to share gossip.
"Well... We both killed our brothers for tupping our wives."
Eric dropped the mug to the floor where it shattered, coffee spilling over the linoleum in a large black splash.
"Relax," the ghost said. "I ain't gonna 'peach on ya. You called your killing a hunting accident and got acquitted by twelve, though the shyster cost you an arm and a leg."
Eric paced the floor, walking directly into the smashed bits of ceramic mug, slipping then falling into the coffee puddle. Jagged shards bit into his arms, scratched the skin to open wounds. Almost immediately, the cuts began bleeding, but the blood wasn't running too fast, so no vein must have been sliced.
"Watch yourself," the voice said.
"Screw yourself," Eric said, wincing in pain, shoes squeaking as he struggled to his feet. Once standing, he walked back into the living room, went over to the binder. He flipped through it, leaving smears of blood on the pages as he browsed. Finding the host's telephone number, he reached in his right pocket for his cellphone.
"Who you calling?" the ghost asked.
"You," Eric said, meaning Larry Poole, the one running this con. Eric didn't know how the man had unriddled his secret, or what he planned to do with the information, but he intended to find out.
"I told you to relax, greenhorn," the ghost said. "'Sides, you can't use the phone right now. I'm using it."
That must have been how Poole had figured it out, scoured his cellphone's history. The things were known for being easily hackable. But Eric had been careful to avoid making incriminating searches on his phone, and he and his lawyer had also been circumspect about texting.
Eric, intending to dial the host's number, found himself instead looking at an open browser.
"Dammit," the ghost said.
Eric stared down at his phone, and displayed there was a gallery of images of black and white vintage porn. They were very old photos from the early days of the art - maybe ambrotype positives. One thumbnail grew then to fill the screen, the video having been selected but not by him. In the old reel there was a woman wearing only white stockings sitting on a picnic blanket lain in a flower-strewn meadow. Next to her on the blanket was a mustachioed man, hard-faced and sporting a black vest, a golden pocket watch dangling from the vest's slash pocket.
Both the woman and man were playing with the seat of her love, fingers fighting to reach the wrinkled rose garlanded thickly with black hair.
"I told you not to look at the phone," the ghost said. "Now you've embarrassed us both."
Eric closed out the tab and the ghost gave a disgusted tongue cluck. "I don't much cotton to the perversions of this age - don't even overmuch like the devices except smart TV cuz it sometimes shows western picture shows. But I do miss cunny, even more than I miss coffee."
Eric ignored the voice, brought up the keypad, dialed the host's number, waited.
The line rang, and then someone picked up.
"This is Lawrence Poole, the host to the ghost."
"Okay, Poole."
"To whom do I have the honor of speaking?"
"This is the guy you're trying to blackmail, though I figured you would make enough from this property to not have to resort to this kind of thing."
"I'm sorry?"
"If you know enough about me to know about me and my brother, then you know I'm not exactly in the best financial straits right now. Hell, springing for this novelty BnB basically broke my pockets. So why exactly are you trying to get blood from this particular turnip?"
"Is this..." The host paused on the other end of the line. "Is this Eric Setter?"
"It is."
"Is something not to your satisfaction over there?"
Eric gritted his teeth, until the top row slid to scrape a resiny film of fresh plaque from the bottom row. He needed to brush his teeth; his mouth was sour from all the truck stop fare he'd eaten on the road. He needed a shower, too.
But he would clean himself up at home, not here, in this house lousy with recording devices.
"Hello?" Larry asked.
Eric hung up the phone, freeing it for the ghost to continue surfing for ancient porn. The ghost, however, was otherwise indisposed, weeping now and sniffling - nose running perhaps with some ectoplasmic variant of snot - and saying, "Billy Boy, I'm sorry I killed you, brother."
Eric went over to his bag where he had set it down, picked it up by its canvas handle.
He'd paid for a whole week and the trip was nonrefundable but he didn't care. It was time to get the hell out of here.
Eric drove pretty much straight through on the way home, not bothering to spend a night at a motel as he had while traveling to the Airbnb. During the long ride back his cellphone rang pretty much nonstop but he ignored it. Only after he was again in his house, plopped down in his La-Z Boy in the corner of his den, did he finally open the phone.
Numerous calls from Larry Poole were waiting for him, along with a large number of voicemails. Additionally there were several texts from Randy over at the gun shop, still asking for a loan or at least time off to take that smithing course.
Eric, after checking his scabbed-over cuts caused by the shards from the coffee mug, pressed Poole's number. It rang once before the man picked up.
"What did you do?" Poole asked.
"Me?" Eric asked. Had he left some appliance on in the Airbnb? The coffee maker sure, but that couldn't burn down a house if left unattended, could it? Certainly not after just a day and some change. Alright, he'd left behind some bloodstains but a deep clean from a maid service could take care of that.
"Yes, you."
Eric sprang up out of the La-Z Boy. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I can't find him," Larry said. "He's not here anymore."
"Who?" Eric walked over to the fireplace, leaned against the cold flagstone hearth. Across the mantle made from a heavy wooden train tie sat a picture of him and his brother, both in reflective orange vests and caps. They were squatted on the forest floor, a felled buck between them, each twin holding a tine of opposite antlers, smiling proudly into the camera.
"Robert Colepepper," Larry Poole said, waking Eric from his contemplation of the photo. "He doesn't always talk to guests when they try to establish contact, but he always talks to me when I want to talk to him. We have an understanding."
Eric shook his head. "I don't see the point of carrying on with the charade. Look, it was a good gag. I didn't spot any cameras and I'm pretty sure not even a bat could have echolocated the voice to its source. And you obviously did your homework on me. So take a bow."
"Now what the hell are you talking about?"
Eric squinted and for a time - probably seconds but it felt like minutes - they both remained still, quiet confusion on either end.
Finally Poole broke the silence, saying, "He's gone. My ghost is gone."
Eric giggled, giddy from sleep-deprivation, fatigued from driving, and already sick of talking, at least to Poole. "So you're saying I broke your ghost. What do you want? You want me reimburse you? You're telling me you don't have haunted house insurance?"
"You think you're funny?"
"A little. But I'm also genuinely curious. What the hell do you want me to do? If I rate my stay five stars will that be enough? Maybe you just want to keep my deposit and we can call it even. Or do you still want to blackmail me for what you found out about what happened on that hunting tri - "
The line went dead, and when Eric glanced down at the phone, the LCD face said, "Call Ended," along with the duration of the call listed below that.
Then the internet browser opened on its own, and the keyboard keys began to get pressed until the words "Vintage Cuties" were spelled out in the search field. The same phantom fingers that had just typed now hit "Return" and the search results appeared.
"Glad you're a horndog like me," that already-familiar voice said. "I don't like mucking around with safe search. 'Course, when families with kids stayed at the BnB, I'd abstain from surfing. But you live alone, so youngins won't be a problem here."
Eric dropped his phone to the floor, but that did not stop the ghost from finding a video after clicking on the website it sought, pressing play, and watching.
On the screen a grainy title card flashed, the words "Assignation in the Outhouse" written there in stark white letters. Then an old codger in longjohns with buttons on the seatback pulled a wooden door open to find a woman squatted over a toilet bowl. The old man smiled so his mostly toothless gums showed, looking like a prospector who'd just found a big seam of gold. Then he began lowering his longjohns, his motions jerky due to the primitiveness of the hand-cranked camera recording this ancient sex act.
"Jesus," Eric said, leaving the phone where it was and walking into the kitchen.
"Do me a favor," the voice said. "Go ahead and brew us up some joe."
"Forget it," Eric said, wearily. "I drove all day yesterday and didn't get any sleep, and then I drove right back. I'm bone-tired."
Suddenly all the rooms in the house went dark, leaving Eric surrounded by blackness except for the glow from the little porno still playing from the cellphone in the other room.
"I can make your life hard," the ghost said. "And I can also come in handy sometimes, too. Hell, I can turn this place into a tourist destination so popular it'll fix all your financial woes."
Eric, feeling strange just standing in the darkness of his kitchen, said, "And what would Mr. Poole have to say about that?"
"Mr. Poole and his affairs are now no longer none of my funeral. Our arrangement, though fruitful for a time, is now at an end. In other words, his string's been played out to the last thread."
Eric sighed, for tired as he was, he knew the unspoken implication.
A new arrangement was taking shape.
The ghost must have sensed his acquiescence, for the lights came back on, and the voice said, "Brew that coffee, and we'll talk about how we can maybe help each other."
Eric, knowing he had little choice, knowing now that the blackmailer operated from the astral plane - that ghosts were not only real, but were as big a pain in the ass as the living - went over to the kitchen cabinets, opened one, got the coffee can down.
"Let's jawbone in earnest," the cowboy said.
"What about?" Eric asked, pulling the lid off the tin, releasing a rich, fresh smell of vacuum-sealed beans into the room.
"Brothers," the ghost said.
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
Whatever, though.
Eric grabbed his duffel bag from off the passenger seat, exited the car, walked to the door.
Above the doorknob, nestled in a brushed steel plate, was a smart lock. He typed the code given to him by the BnB host, waited for the green light to flash, then turned the knob.
Inside, it was dark, the only light coming through the windows and hitting the floor to expose each grain in the hardwood. There was a strong smell of pine-scented cleaner, nary a trace of dust in the air. Not very gothic. Certainly no budding cobwebs or eerie statuary threatening to lend the home a hint of character.
The house opened onto the living room, with a big leather sectional couch facing a glass-topped coffee table edged in faux gold. Drug dealer chic, as impersonal as most other Airbnbs. A large wooden bookshelf with a glass sliding face was set flush against the far left wall, a giant flatscreen smart TV opposite that. The walls themselves were bare except for one large oil painting, though Eric could not make out its amorphous details from this distance in the dark.
He set down his bag, fumbled along the nearest wall, found the dimmer switch, and turned it all the way up.
Now, with proper light, he could better see the painting. It was of a cowboy riding his horse through open desert, a John Fordian landscape of rocky mesas and buttes. The cowboy's mount was bucking but he had a good grip on the saddle's pommel, confident enough in his hold to doff his Stetson with his other hand.
Eric shook his head. A Fred Remington knockoff belonged in the lobby of a border town hotel. Here, in a Midwestern suburb, it made less sense.
He looked around some more, saw a black laminated binder with a white sheet taped to its face, "Manual" written there in black sharpie. The book was perched atop the glass coffee table, where a normal host might display an overpriced glossy hardback.
Eric sat down on the couch, slightly nauseated by the powerful reek of leather, but relieved at least to be off his feet after the long drive.
It had been something like twelve hours, and his legs were cramped, his back tweaked. There'd been lots of construction on the highway - a maddening bumper to bumper crawl across what should have been open road - but he had been intent on making the trip.
This was the only supposedly haunted house in the Lower 48 that had stymied skeptics and was also available to rent. Additionally, it boasted a "superhost" rating of 4.8, which put it among the elite Airbnbs. It had even been featured on several news segments alongside those mindless ghosthunter shows that proliferated on The History Channel after their ignominious descent into superstition. Neither the ghost hunters nor the ghost debunkers - two different groups, but with some overlap - had been able to shake the feeling of an actual supernatural presence here. The only other house with a higher "believability rating" on the North American continent was in Manitoba. Eric would have gladly flown there, but the recent trial had put a severe dent in his finances and he lacked the money for a trip abroad. Maybe if things picked up at the gun store in the next few months, and he struck out here, he would try his luck up in Canada.
Not that he believed in ghosts. He just wanted to make sure...
Eric shifted on the leather couch, soreness slowly beginning to leave his limbs, opened the book.
"Welcome," the printed message began, "to the ONLY truly haunted house known to exist."
A bold claim, Eric thought, and also BS. "In this manual you will find all the usual details listed at Airbnbs designed to make your stay as a guest more comfortable. Everything from the wi-fi password to how to work the smart TV."
Eric smirked.
Did the ghost use wi-fi? One would think that floating through the ether - between the realms of the living and the dead - would obviate the need for such mundane means of communication.
"In answer to your main question, yes this house is genuinely haunted. The ghost's name is Robert Colepepper. He is a bona fide Texas steer roper and vaquero from the nineteenth century. What he's doing here smack-dab in the middle of the Midwest is something he'll be happy to explain to you, or try to explain. That said, there is NO GUARANTEE that Mr. Colepepper will make an apport. He is not my employee and he is not a trained seal. There is a decent chance that he does appear, though that has more to do with the guest's psychic energy than with any attempts to summon him. Conjurings via voodoo or Ouija board or via any other supposedly tried and true methods will have no effect on him. The only thing that may lure him out into the open is perking a pot of coffee. The old cowboy loves the smell of his brewing beans."
There was more - most of it also grade-A fertilizer, and Eric skimmed over it. At the end was the name of the host, Larry Poole, a picture of him in an ill-fitting sharkskin suit, face sporting an equally ill-fitting grin. Beneath his contact number was the phrase "Underpromise and Overdeliver," apparently his motto as both a host of the house and its ghost.
Eric closed the book, stood up, went over to the glassed-in bookcase. Each shelf was filled with tomes and texts, some old, with worn clothbound spines, others more recent glossy paperbacks. Among the titles was a battered one with yellowing pages by Edgar Cayce on ESP, another by Carlos Casteneda about his encounters with the shaman Don Juan. Then there were several books with gold-lettered titles in a foreign language (it looked like French) by one Robert Houdin.
Strangely, this shelf also featured a book by famed escapologist Harry Houdini called The Unmasking of Robert Houdin.
Eric squinted. That was an odd touch. Why include a book on debunking supernatural phenomena in a house that claimed to play host to the same? It seemed counterintuitive, unless, of course, it was a psychological ploy.
Look, Mr. Poole seemed to be saying, We are so confident in the existence of our ghostly vaquero that we can feature books by skeptics and naysayers prominently on our shelf.
Eric turned from the bookshelf, went into the kitchen.
It was small and cramped, with a yellow linoleum floor tiled in a honeycomb pattern, matching yellow curtains over the windows. A sickly seventies artifact, like the set of The Price is Right. On the counter - its butter-colored vinyl peeling at the corners - sat the coffee pot, and next to that some filters and a store-brand can of coffee.
"Cheap prick."
Eric went to the pot, took it from the hotplate, filled it with water from the sink fixture, which was rusty and leaked. After spooning a generous portion of grounds into the reusable mesh weave filter, he replaced the pot on the plate, flipped the switch, went to sit at the kitchen table.
Once seated, he pulled his wallet from his pocket, glanced at his driver's license tucked in its laminated sleeve. Then he flipped that to the reverse side, to a posed photo of someone to whom he bore an uncanny resemblance, one or two features subtly tweaked so only the twins and maybe their wives might know the difference. The man in the photo was wearing a Mossy Oak camouflaged winter jacket, gripping the walnut stock of a rifle in his right hand, crouched in a stubbly, cropless field in late autumn.
Eric couldn't take it. He closed his wallet, put it back in his pocket. Then he put his head down on the table, dropping off into fitful, twilit state that only vaguely resembled that sleep which refreshes.
A few minutes later the coffee pot was full, bubbling and smelling strong enough for the scent to reach him in his semi-slumber.
An hour later, a voice woke him the rest of the way up.
"Coffee smells good," the voice said, directly into his ear.
Eric stood, so quickly the chair he'd been sitting in fell to the floor with a loud clatter. He looked around, gasping for breath, eyes sore and puffy.
"Would you do me a favor?" the voice asked.
Eric had to give it to Larry Poole, or whoever was handling the audio effects for this spook show. The voice did not seem to be coming from a hidden speaker, or a device stashed somewhere in the house. It seemed to radiate from everywhere and nowhere, an auditory hallucination rattling around inside his own head.
Eric smiled. "That you, Mr. Colpepper?"
"Can't say 'in the flesh,' but more or less, yes. Mostly less." The voice had a twang, folksy and harsh from whiskey and cigars but with no meanness to it.
"Can you drink the coffee?" Eric asked, deciding to play along for now.
"No, but there's something about the smell of it hitting that cup - and the way the steam wafts up in pretty little tendrils. It makes me feel like I'm at the suttler's chuck wagon all over again."
"Oh, that's right." Eric went over to the cabinets, opening the first one and finding a shelf with glasses, and above that, the shelf with mugs. "You're a vaquero from the Wild West. How the hell did you end up here, anyway? Seems like quite a distance to travel for no good reason."
"Everything a ghost does is for no good reason."
"What do you mean?"
"We're stuck in limbo, separated from everyone we love and everyone we hate, everyone we know. Their souls are either at rest or burning in eternal flame. Meanwhile we're still here, just wandering about with nothing but time to kill."
"So why settle here? Why not haunt the Alamo or some Tijuana cathouse? Wouldn't that at least feel more familiar to you?"
"I got stuck, like a fly in honey. Oh, I could leave this place now if I wanted, but I've gotten used to it. And you talk about 'distance' as if that meant anything more than time now. One day and one year are pretty much the same for me. Same with one mile and one-hundred."
"Deep," Eric said, running his finger along the mugs. Several were simple and white, plain ceramic, while a few had sayings on them, or drawings of things like hearts and cats. One was pastel pink and said, "Beyond Bitch." Eric smiled. Selecting that one would really undermine the spooky mood Poole and his unseen conspirators were trying to set.
"You got a preference for mug?" Eric asked, gripping the handle of the Bitch one.
"'Beyond Bitch' will work. I've known more than a few spiteful women in my day. Had a cayuse called 'Crazy Bitch,' too, though she was the gentlest mount I ever had. Not sure why the man who sold her to me named her that."
Eric reddened slightly, hoped whoever was watching the kitchen via hidden camera hadn't noticed. And they had to be watching, for they'd seen which mug he'd selected. Moving over to the percolator, he suddenly became very self-conscious in his gestures.
And how many cameras were there in this place, anyway? And what if this Poole guy was some kind of pervert? Tonight Eric would shower with the lights off and the curtains pulled, if only to make the red light of any recording device easier to find. If one were in there, in which case, it was lawsuit time - not just against Poole but against Airbnb, which could mean serious money. Enough not to just salvage the gun shop, but to maybe open a second location and spring for that smithing course Randy had been bugging him about.
For now, though, he would play it cool.
Eric went over to the percolator, poured a mugful of dark coffee. It steamed and the ghost sighed in ecstasy.
"Thank you."
"My pleasure." Eric carried the coffee over to the table, sat down. "And thank you, too."
"For what?"
"For showing up." Eric paused, had a sip, winced in gratitude, shook his head. It was good and hot, strong. Sometimes the generic stuff could surprise you. He lifted the cup, aimed it toward the living room. "The manual in there says that you don't always show up. And yet you showed up promptly for me."
"Well, you and I got some things in common."
"Oh?" Eric had another sip, found it wasn't enough, took a big gulp.
"I sensed it soon as you came through the door."
Eric set the mug back down on the table. He should take it easy; his nerves were already on-edge. "What is it we have in common?"
The ghost paused, went silent. The people running the spook show must have been trawling through Eric's online footprint right now, trying to find out more about him. Seeking details with which to shock or at least surprise him. But it would be hard trying to find things in common between him and a cowboy dead now more than a century. And shouldn't they have started researching Eric as soon as he booked the reservation? Not very professional, this last-minute rush.
"Hello?" Eric said. The room was silent except for the low hum of the AC, the drone of the refrigerator, the roil of the coffee burbling hotly in the pot. "What do we have in common?"
"Well, we both have trouble falling asleep."
Eric nodded. That much was true.
"On account of guilt."
Again Eric reddened slightly, before reminding himself not to fall for this. Like hotline psychics, the people running this charade knew to be vague, and that in that vagueness a false psychic link could be imagined by the mark. Everyone felt guilty about something. The "ghost" might as well have told Eric his horoscope said he was about to experience a big change in his life.
"So ghosts sleep?" Eric asked.
"Well, in order to slip off into your fate - your sentence to Heaven or Hell, you have to let go, like a person dropping off to sleep."
"I see."
"And I've never been able to make it. Every time I'm on the verge, I pull back. Guess I'm a smidge yellow-livered."
Eric took another sip. "What else?"
"Beg pardon?"
"What else do we have in common. You said, 'some things,' and yet you only mentioned one."
There was more radio silence for a moment, then the ghost said, "I'd rather not say."
"Go ahead." Eric lifted his mug, as if the ghost were seated across from him at the kitchen table and he were entreating it to share gossip.
"Well... We both killed our brothers for tupping our wives."
Eric dropped the mug to the floor where it shattered, coffee spilling over the linoleum in a large black splash.
"Relax," the ghost said. "I ain't gonna 'peach on ya. You called your killing a hunting accident and got acquitted by twelve, though the shyster cost you an arm and a leg."
Eric paced the floor, walking directly into the smashed bits of ceramic mug, slipping then falling into the coffee puddle. Jagged shards bit into his arms, scratched the skin to open wounds. Almost immediately, the cuts began bleeding, but the blood wasn't running too fast, so no vein must have been sliced.
"Watch yourself," the voice said.
"Screw yourself," Eric said, wincing in pain, shoes squeaking as he struggled to his feet. Once standing, he walked back into the living room, went over to the binder. He flipped through it, leaving smears of blood on the pages as he browsed. Finding the host's telephone number, he reached in his right pocket for his cellphone.
"Who you calling?" the ghost asked.
"You," Eric said, meaning Larry Poole, the one running this con. Eric didn't know how the man had unriddled his secret, or what he planned to do with the information, but he intended to find out.
"I told you to relax, greenhorn," the ghost said. "'Sides, you can't use the phone right now. I'm using it."
That must have been how Poole had figured it out, scoured his cellphone's history. The things were known for being easily hackable. But Eric had been careful to avoid making incriminating searches on his phone, and he and his lawyer had also been circumspect about texting.
Eric, intending to dial the host's number, found himself instead looking at an open browser.
"Dammit," the ghost said.
Eric stared down at his phone, and displayed there was a gallery of images of black and white vintage porn. They were very old photos from the early days of the art - maybe ambrotype positives. One thumbnail grew then to fill the screen, the video having been selected but not by him. In the old reel there was a woman wearing only white stockings sitting on a picnic blanket lain in a flower-strewn meadow. Next to her on the blanket was a mustachioed man, hard-faced and sporting a black vest, a golden pocket watch dangling from the vest's slash pocket.
Both the woman and man were playing with the seat of her love, fingers fighting to reach the wrinkled rose garlanded thickly with black hair.
"I told you not to look at the phone," the ghost said. "Now you've embarrassed us both."
Eric closed out the tab and the ghost gave a disgusted tongue cluck. "I don't much cotton to the perversions of this age - don't even overmuch like the devices except smart TV cuz it sometimes shows western picture shows. But I do miss cunny, even more than I miss coffee."
Eric ignored the voice, brought up the keypad, dialed the host's number, waited.
The line rang, and then someone picked up.
"This is Lawrence Poole, the host to the ghost."
"Okay, Poole."
"To whom do I have the honor of speaking?"
"This is the guy you're trying to blackmail, though I figured you would make enough from this property to not have to resort to this kind of thing."
"I'm sorry?"
"If you know enough about me to know about me and my brother, then you know I'm not exactly in the best financial straits right now. Hell, springing for this novelty BnB basically broke my pockets. So why exactly are you trying to get blood from this particular turnip?"
"Is this..." The host paused on the other end of the line. "Is this Eric Setter?"
"It is."
"Is something not to your satisfaction over there?"
Eric gritted his teeth, until the top row slid to scrape a resiny film of fresh plaque from the bottom row. He needed to brush his teeth; his mouth was sour from all the truck stop fare he'd eaten on the road. He needed a shower, too.
But he would clean himself up at home, not here, in this house lousy with recording devices.
"Hello?" Larry asked.
Eric hung up the phone, freeing it for the ghost to continue surfing for ancient porn. The ghost, however, was otherwise indisposed, weeping now and sniffling - nose running perhaps with some ectoplasmic variant of snot - and saying, "Billy Boy, I'm sorry I killed you, brother."
Eric went over to his bag where he had set it down, picked it up by its canvas handle.
He'd paid for a whole week and the trip was nonrefundable but he didn't care. It was time to get the hell out of here.
Eric drove pretty much straight through on the way home, not bothering to spend a night at a motel as he had while traveling to the Airbnb. During the long ride back his cellphone rang pretty much nonstop but he ignored it. Only after he was again in his house, plopped down in his La-Z Boy in the corner of his den, did he finally open the phone.
Numerous calls from Larry Poole were waiting for him, along with a large number of voicemails. Additionally there were several texts from Randy over at the gun shop, still asking for a loan or at least time off to take that smithing course.
Eric, after checking his scabbed-over cuts caused by the shards from the coffee mug, pressed Poole's number. It rang once before the man picked up.
"What did you do?" Poole asked.
"Me?" Eric asked. Had he left some appliance on in the Airbnb? The coffee maker sure, but that couldn't burn down a house if left unattended, could it? Certainly not after just a day and some change. Alright, he'd left behind some bloodstains but a deep clean from a maid service could take care of that.
"Yes, you."
Eric sprang up out of the La-Z Boy. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I can't find him," Larry said. "He's not here anymore."
"Who?" Eric walked over to the fireplace, leaned against the cold flagstone hearth. Across the mantle made from a heavy wooden train tie sat a picture of him and his brother, both in reflective orange vests and caps. They were squatted on the forest floor, a felled buck between them, each twin holding a tine of opposite antlers, smiling proudly into the camera.
"Robert Colepepper," Larry Poole said, waking Eric from his contemplation of the photo. "He doesn't always talk to guests when they try to establish contact, but he always talks to me when I want to talk to him. We have an understanding."
Eric shook his head. "I don't see the point of carrying on with the charade. Look, it was a good gag. I didn't spot any cameras and I'm pretty sure not even a bat could have echolocated the voice to its source. And you obviously did your homework on me. So take a bow."
"Now what the hell are you talking about?"
Eric squinted and for a time - probably seconds but it felt like minutes - they both remained still, quiet confusion on either end.
Finally Poole broke the silence, saying, "He's gone. My ghost is gone."
Eric giggled, giddy from sleep-deprivation, fatigued from driving, and already sick of talking, at least to Poole. "So you're saying I broke your ghost. What do you want? You want me reimburse you? You're telling me you don't have haunted house insurance?"
"You think you're funny?"
"A little. But I'm also genuinely curious. What the hell do you want me to do? If I rate my stay five stars will that be enough? Maybe you just want to keep my deposit and we can call it even. Or do you still want to blackmail me for what you found out about what happened on that hunting tri - "
The line went dead, and when Eric glanced down at the phone, the LCD face said, "Call Ended," along with the duration of the call listed below that.
Then the internet browser opened on its own, and the keyboard keys began to get pressed until the words "Vintage Cuties" were spelled out in the search field. The same phantom fingers that had just typed now hit "Return" and the search results appeared.
"Glad you're a horndog like me," that already-familiar voice said. "I don't like mucking around with safe search. 'Course, when families with kids stayed at the BnB, I'd abstain from surfing. But you live alone, so youngins won't be a problem here."
Eric dropped his phone to the floor, but that did not stop the ghost from finding a video after clicking on the website it sought, pressing play, and watching.
On the screen a grainy title card flashed, the words "Assignation in the Outhouse" written there in stark white letters. Then an old codger in longjohns with buttons on the seatback pulled a wooden door open to find a woman squatted over a toilet bowl. The old man smiled so his mostly toothless gums showed, looking like a prospector who'd just found a big seam of gold. Then he began lowering his longjohns, his motions jerky due to the primitiveness of the hand-cranked camera recording this ancient sex act.
"Jesus," Eric said, leaving the phone where it was and walking into the kitchen.
"Do me a favor," the voice said. "Go ahead and brew us up some joe."
"Forget it," Eric said, wearily. "I drove all day yesterday and didn't get any sleep, and then I drove right back. I'm bone-tired."
Suddenly all the rooms in the house went dark, leaving Eric surrounded by blackness except for the glow from the little porno still playing from the cellphone in the other room.
"I can make your life hard," the ghost said. "And I can also come in handy sometimes, too. Hell, I can turn this place into a tourist destination so popular it'll fix all your financial woes."
Eric, feeling strange just standing in the darkness of his kitchen, said, "And what would Mr. Poole have to say about that?"
"Mr. Poole and his affairs are now no longer none of my funeral. Our arrangement, though fruitful for a time, is now at an end. In other words, his string's been played out to the last thread."
Eric sighed, for tired as he was, he knew the unspoken implication.
A new arrangement was taking shape.
The ghost must have sensed his acquiescence, for the lights came back on, and the voice said, "Brew that coffee, and we'll talk about how we can maybe help each other."
Eric, knowing he had little choice, knowing now that the blackmailer operated from the astral plane - that ghosts were not only real, but were as big a pain in the ass as the living - went over to the kitchen cabinets, opened one, got the coffee can down.
"Let's jawbone in earnest," the cowboy said.
"What about?" Eric asked, pulling the lid off the tin, releasing a rich, fresh smell of vacuum-sealed beans into the room.
"Brothers," the ghost said.
I really enjoyed this! Very absorbing, it hums along from start to finish and though I pretty much know the ghost is going to end up being real I'm dying to know how you're going to prove the point. The shared fratricide is a great twist and the antediluvian porn is wryly funny. Very cool!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Cris. Glad you dug it. Happy (early) Halloween to everyone as well. I'll be on the road for the real Halloween, so I might as well give my well wishes now.
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