1.6

“You know, people usually pay money to live in a haunted house,” said Bianca. Every day at work and afterwards, I couldn’t stop talking about Violet. Or guitar care. Moonlight Falls was a damp town like Twinbrook, so I was used to it, but an instrument made of wood wasn’t. Couldn’t be too dry, couldn’t be too moist…

“I’d pay her to stay. But I don’t believe in bribing for love.” We started to walk towards the parking lot. Or for me, the one street home.

“Yeah, but will you give me a fiver to kiss you? I wanna get a drink later,” she said.

It was a deal. But Violet and I were going to be exclusive one day. I was tired of getting the second pick on everything in life, like with letting Screwtape take the top bunk when we were kids. At least his dad stepped in and got us separate beds after that. Plus, Violet could have understood me better than anyone else in the town. I had a lot more sympathy for her story as well. Not to ask a woman her age, but she died before experiencing anything of note. No marriage, no family, but she was able to get a copy of her college diploma. She majored in biology in a different time, and I took note of the year.

Violet must have perished not long before I was born. And the world had changed a lot since then.

“Do you need a ride?” I asked Bianca.

“Nah, I think my sister and the new beau are here. Hey sis! Come up for air once will ya?”

“What the hell, Bianca?” Belinda had a face full of her new beau, who to my shock, was another ghost. This one was a shimmering indigo though, not gold or silver. It was hard for me to understand as a former ghost. I never felt like I could be on Earth for long without sinking into the ground. But he was living a normal life, dating a witch.

“Yeah, we summoned Samuel last month. Dude lived here eons ago with his wife and niece until he got poisoned at a dinner party…guess I should’ve warned you guys,” she said.

“I wish you guys worked your magic sooner.”

Bianca smiled. “But then you wouldn’t be here right now. Or you’d be going through menopause like Helen will.”

“I’m still not used to going through the monthlies again,” I said. I forgot that I was in a lot of pain from them when I was a “growing woman” the first time around. And even having Marco didn’t help it much.

I was trying to put thoughts of kids out of my mind. It would have to happen eventually, and I loved kids! But it felt too soon to replace my son.

Helen made it a little harder. She had just gotten back from maternity leave, and was an older woman, to put it lightly. But her ovaries’ last gasp of life made my own story go full circle.

If nothing else, Malcolm was an alright father. The only story about how they met was that he lived close to her and was a hormonal young man. Anyways, he tried to visit Helen’s creepy old house a few times a week to watch Arlene for her. He would paint her and dote on her and then forget about her the rest of the time. So maybe not father of the year, but it sounded better than how Screwtape raised his illegitimate daughter.

And as for Pappy, he was lucky I took him in before any of his exes could enact revenge. I got the sob stories about Gladsten and Linda breaking up with him. He even had twins with Linda and a son with the Caliente hag. Malcolm would have to work hard to beat the crazy old dog.

As far as I was concerned, Carmella had no such reason for being a vagrant and was a far-better behaved housemate than either man. She alluded to getting kicked out of a coven, which sounded more like their problem than hers. She was a brilliant witch. Brilliant at everything she touched. But it was a fierce race between her and Violet.

The first thing to know about the house is that it came huge and furnished. There were doors I didn’t open because the knob got stuck. But enter Violet: a ghost. We could all see her beautiful human-like form but she could still pass through walls.

She was the first to find the “magic room” upstairs. It was full of alchemy equipment and a note from Barry’s daughter for the first person who unlocked the room. Violet opened it for the rest of us from the inside after we pounded on the door enough. She immediately went to mixing potions.

I was in awe, but so was Violet. “Wow,” she said. “It’s like y’all knew I studied and died from this.” Perhaps any fear disappeared now that she was dead.

“With a bio degree and everything?” I asked. She nodded.

Violet let a blue potion stream into a glass bottle. I knew I had seen it somewhere; this was Vega’s preferred dark art too. Bianca and her sisters had a similar setup at their house. Those potions could do tremendous good, after all, curing the hungry and the wounded and the weary. Vega preferred installing fake joy or keeping out the neighbors with unpleasant elixirs. One caused the pain of a hundred bee stings, complete with the venom. My mum was allergic to bees.

“Here, when you can’t sleep after a show or somethin’.” I cherished the gift box she gave me. I didn’t know what I could get for Violet, though. There wasn’t anything she could stuff in her pockets, after all. They didn’t exist any more.

“Have you ever changed your clothes?” I asked. “You know, I died in a cocktail dress and stayed in it for years. I really should have tried a crop top or those big jeans that everyone wore when I was born.”

“Ya know, I think you’re right. I need a hat.” said Violet. She opened the wardrobe in the corner of the room and disappeared inside for a split second.

Violet chose the grunge throwback that I wished Cara helped me pick out, mostly for the beanie that failed to contain Violet’s flowing locks. It wasn’t a huge change but the hat was an excellent idea. No wonder I thought Violet was so brilliant. What else could that beautiful spirit do? Could she cut her hair in an instant? Do plastic surgery on herself? Not that I wanted anything to change, especially that nose.

“You look amazing!” I said. “I mean, I’d say the same if you didn’t change, it was just that no one told me that…”

“I’m learning all this too,” said Violet. “Anyways, I gotta tell Olivia about it tonight. She’ll flip her lid!”

“Olivia?”

So Moonlight Falls had a plague of ghosts. I wasn’t special, and Violet was special only for being the best of them. This one went back to the Samuel that Belinda was dating too. After one encounter with him, I regretted that he was the lynchpin of this ghostly society. He was nuttier than Spot by leaps and bounds. And I made Spot sleep in his own room so I could get an escape from it.

Enter Olivia, the dead ex-wife of Samuel who had a lot of time to question her marriage and sexuality. She was taking out electronics to sell after Samuel’s untimely poisoning and exposed wiring killed her. Unlike Violet or even Samuel, I had no idea who actually wanted Olivia back.

“Sheila? I heard she’s from Twinbrook and smells like it too…”

I won’t doubt that Violet was fond of her. Alone with only ghosts and the creaky old floorboards of their haunted house, maybe Olivia was a nice person. Or had great moves in bed. Or had a mind attuned to the sciences like Violet. But she was a nasty spirit, even if I considered that she died as a young gold-digger. Olivia never had a good word to say to me and was annoyed with everything I did.

Also, it was worth noting that she haunted Helen’s house and hated baby Arlene. Hated that kid to the point where she couldn’t shut up about it. Surely Violet didn’t agree. She radiated nothing but sunshine and rainbows (of the gay kind of course) and her patience would run thin. So I decided to try and win her over and play the waiting game.

And if that didn’t work, Bianca said she’d marry me if we were both 40 and single.

Anyways, inviting Olivia’s ex-husband Samuel to our housewarming party was a disaster. Olivia cheered, and Violet wouldn’t tell me what he did to her to deserve that. But I take back my criticisms of Samuel; he gave us two new mattresses. No one goes that far for a housewarming. He’d probably be amazing around the holidays then.

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“I…might have my regrets about meddling with the spirit world now,” said Carmella, leaning on a wheelbarrow. Violet was the one who tamed our greenhouse, of course, but Carmella still went in there to pick herbs for dinners and spells.

But me? I had no excuse. Just waiting for Violet to finish with her nap or potions or knitting. She got into making socks that she couldn’t wear.

“Hmm, I keep wondering what else I can dig up from it.”

“Heavens, all that’s left are rich assholes like Samuel!”

“And we’re not?”

Carmella huffed. “We’re only rich, and less than you think with my pitiful credit.” She stuffed some coriander into her overalls’ pocket. “Well, I think you’d have a lot of fun cooking with me one night than staying in this stuffy old greenhouse.”

“Maybe if you make some Tom Yum soup?”

“I’ll put that one on the list.”

Thankfully, Violet was on her way to rescue me from being alone with plants I didn’t understand. And that couldn’t make Carmella too angry. I tried to treat my housemates as equals.

Since she was a slow-moving spirit, Violet liked me to water the plants so she wouldn’t have to float around in circles. But she wouldn’t let me install a sprinkler system in the greenhouse either, since the plants needed individual care. I was always impressed by the detail to her craft and equally confused.

“Hey, you know how I promised to show you ‘round this town?” Violet asked me. We snacked on a few too many greenhouse tomatoes and berries and I was in too much of a reverie to remember.

“Oh Violet, you know I’d always go along with that.”

We would take a stroll along the river and then get some beers, right before I had a solo show at the bar too. It would be a slow walk to compensate for her being a ghost, after all. She was able to absorb the flavors of life in a way that I never got the chance to as a ghost. But I could vicariously live (or die?) through Violet much better than I could be with her.

“So how’s life with Olivia?” I asked as we started our journey.

“Meh, we can talk ‘bout other things,” she said.

I questioned her while we soaked up the afternoon sun of Moonlight Falls’ dry season. Of course, I had to make it subtle while yelling over the roaring river beneath us. Violet was always scant on the details of her past life, but I forgave that, since it was so long ago. For me, it was more recent. A lot of people from my first life were alive when I came back, so I got plenty of painful reminders.

“You know, there’s something about dying old that’s so much different from what you went through,” I said to her.

“Yeah? I bet. You don’t say much ‘bout that either,” Violet said.

“Because it hurts. I felt like I wasted all my years, and I also forgot how tight my skin used to be.”

“I like hiding under here,” she said. “Beats not getting to know any town because your dad’s truck has to, you know, move stuff and you live in the back.”

“Oh…I never traveled like that.”

“Man, that was my whole life! Traveling ‘round because my mum left us in the dust, having my cousin complain about summers with us, no friends, poopin’ on the sides of highways…”

“…campfires and gas station hot dogs all year?”

“Woah, yeah, I miss those already.”

I wondered if anyone would know what I looked like if they saw me only as a ghost. Violet said she used to have tawny brown skin and a scar on her face from her cousin pushing her down a steep hill. She loved to hike and press flowers when she had the time, and she collected flowers from all 50 states that they traveled through. Her favorites were the mountain laurels from the northeast, which disappeared after a week of flowering.

The artist in me started to paint in my head: the young Violet against a background of blurry green, and some off-white spots for the Slymer family truck and caravan. Her father, while dear to her, was on the road and keeping stores stocked with him big 18-wheeler truck. His family had been nomads and travelers for hundreds of years, but he turned it into a job.

Sometime afterwards, she would finish university.

“You know, the University of Deseret rejected me,” I said, remembering the sandy hue of her diploma. “You must be smarter than most people assume.”

“Nah, I think my mum bribed them with gold,” said Violet.

“Did she trade all her cash for it?”

“Yeah, probably.”

This loneliness seemed to follow Violet around for a lot of her life. Even at a real school for the first time, she never had a roommate or at least couldn’t keep one. Nothing involved friends, only a cousin popping in every now and again, who seemed to improve after pushing her down a hill. She would meekly watch Violet mix potions from the sidelines. It was hard to fit her into my thoughts though. Sad that she mattered more to Violet than to me.

There was a soft edge to Violet. It took longer than expected for her to finish her degree, between having to accompany her nomadic family or getting busted for tampering with plants at the greenhouse. They said “stealing” but Violet insisted it was authorized work that the dean changed his mind on. So I pictured her in the dead of the night, judged for her studiousness.

“You know, the lab downtown is hiring,” I said to Violet. “I think you’d be a good fit.”

“C’mon, I’m dead, I don’t get any special privileges for that.”

“The undead are a protected class here too…believe me, I looked it up.”

“Huh…hey, lookit that. Some knucklehead bought up my great-grandma’s wagon.”

I was familiar with the town’s colorful wagon, which housed a fortune teller that everyone knew was fake. She was fake enough to get her own TV show about it. But it brought money into the town, so the topic never came up at town meetings. Yet Moonlight Falls must have had real clairvoyants who didn’t exploit their powers for cash. They had everything else, after all.

“It’s a real Slymer family antique?”

“Yeah, they’ve had to have gutted it by now,” Violet said. “I guess it’s better than keeping the shed I died in. I…yup, it’s gone.”

“Right here?”

“Yeah, my aunt’s caravan parked here for the summer and I got in way over my head with that gold thing…”

It was hard not to wonder about the sacrifices we made for discovery. What Violet discovered was how to turn ordinary items into gold, for currency and art and technology alike. And going mad with power is what backfired, taking her life in the process. For a bit I pictured Violet as being chased by jealous witches, but that part of the doodle was erased.

She always worked alone, waiting for the right time to reveal her secrets to the world. I hated to think that she died alone. Not even I could manage that.

But maybe her cousin was watching. I got to go back to a world with my family in it, but Violet didn’t. That cousin had to be gone, bearing a secret about gold that she would never tell the world.

There’s this monument in Russia to the lab rats who gave their lives for science. If we didn’t summon Violet back to Earth on that fateful day, there would be no monument to her.

“Hey there man, I’m just happy to be alive again, more time for learnin’ and beer,” said Violet, taking my hands. “Oh, and my eyes were green, everyone’s shocked when they learn that one.”

“Well, the bar’s on that street across the bridge,” I said.

“Wanna see a cool magic trick instead?”

Violet could float and hold me precariously over the water. It wasn’t a fast flight at all, but she didn’t flinch with me in her grasp. My heart raced when I looked down at the rapids.

And looking up at Violet didn’t help me either. But I could get used to traveling with her. It beat cars, bikes, and trailers for sure. I bet Olivia was so jealous of me. I bet she had to float everywhere on her own or get tormented by her ex-husband’s presence.

I bought Violet a beer before the show. She hadn’t had one since the night before she died, since she was still trying to get her bearings in the world. That was smart. I hit the wine right after being resurrected just to cope with everything and feel something on my tongue again. But it made my whole marriage with Heath into a blur. I must have I worried him every day…

“Thanks for spending the day with me,” I said, taking a seat next to Violet. “It was very special.”

“Yeah, what if I have a job next week? Then we can’t do this again all day.”

“But we live together.”

“We live with a bunch of strangers.”

“I can fix that…isn’t that what today’s been all about?”

“I don’t think Carmella likes me,” said Violet. She shrugged. “But I can’t let it get under my skin, ‘cuz I don’t have any left!”

I started to reach around Violet’s shoulder. Skin or no skin I knew she felt smooth now. It was like the starch and water slurry they made you play with in middle school science. Solid yet liquid, smooth yet textured. Maybe the last one was a metaphor. I pretended to feel the cotton of Violet’s shirt on my palm.

“Ya know, this place used to be groddy as hell,” said Violet. I understood. The seats were new and comfortable, they had central heating and AC, and the potted plants were alive. “I heard they brewed this beer themselves? That’s trippy.”

“You missed the craft beer renaissance?” I had so much to catch Violet up on, from hazy IPAs to candy-flavored stouts. The world went nuts with those when I became a legal adult. “We have so much to catch you up on.”

We were sitting almost nose-to-nose while I caught Violet up on beer and movies. I complained about the deluge of superhero movies and the death of practical effects when I was alive, but it was a novelty to her. Clips on my phone? Even more madness. Her dad had a satellite phone and a radio system in his truck, but a cellphone wasn’t his thing. Even her snobby cousin didn’t like them.

Violet asked if The Simpsons was still on the air, and regretfully, it had more longevity than she did. That was the reason we drank so much that night.

I slurred my words when I had to get up to the mic. “How’dya do moonies?” I said, loud enough for the whole bar to hear. “I…I can still play this geeeeeetar just fine.”

Music and speech use different parts of your brain, so I wasn’t wrong.

It was a good show. I could see Violet and Olivia the whole time. This was the sort of place that disgusted Olivia, but she would do anything to rub Violet in my face. I decided to play it cool. For once, there was a backup plan. Even several before I shrugged and married Bianca for the tax benefits.

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“Monument to the Laboratory Mouse”? It’s real and as amazing as you think. (HE’S KNITTING DNA)