Chasing Spirits with Spirits

“Good thinking,” Roman said. “What better to chase of a disturbing spirit than a warming spirit? Let’s go get a good scotch.”

“I have a better idea,” I said, remembering a secret stash I had brought with me to the mansion. Let me go get something.

I headed off away from the group, intent on finding a good bottle of absinthe I had hidden. The voice in my head instructed me that this was indeed the best idea I had all day. But the voice added a caveat. It instructed me that I had better lock my study, with a long, strangely stereotypical antique key which I had made for that purpose. Good thinking, I said to the voice, as I turned the lock. We should scare them again soon, said the other, female voice, that ran through my head. I wondered that this voice, compared with the other, masculine voice, remained so silent.

She was always like that, the main voice said. It was very hard to communicate with her.

“Her who?” I asked.

Can’t you guess? The voice asked. I was about to answer, but I had reached my room and pulled out my secret stash of somewhat illicit liquors. I searched through the whines, moonshine, craft micro liquors, and whiskeys until I found that wonderful object: Fee Verde, a bottle of over-strong absinthe smuggled into the US through one of my overseas toy acquisitions. This would make, I thought, a wonderful night. I had already forgotten the lesson of the day prior, and believe it was time, indeed, to imbibe again.

“Chase spirits with spirits,” I said resolutely, and went back to join the others. By now they had adjourned from in front of Robert’s room to the foyer that splashed across the upstairs just after the landing. I returned with my miracle elixir, a box full of sugar cubes, and a lighter. I knew that absinthe truly shouldn’t be prepared with the lighter, but it lent a certain showmanship to the evening that I felt was needed. After all, something had to recenter the group. I wowed them all by preparing the stiff drink with flair. Of course, at first, they despised the taste. But, like most ****, and indeed almost everything-- except for the simplicity of toys-- it turned out to be an acquired taste.

By the third drink I prepared, they were really getting wild. Roman and Robert had descended into arm wrestling to prove that most primal of concerns, as after all, I was the source of their money and merriment, I had to be the top dog, who was indeed the beta leader of the group. The women, for their part, were either egging the others on, swooning over me, arguing, kissing each other, or off in their own worlds. I really have no idea what all they did, as they would from time to time adjourn, together, to the restroom. But they did always seem to return singing loudly, and ready for another round. Sadly, after four rounds of the bottle, split five ways, the whole thing was killed.

This is when the mission of the night began. We were on an upper floor of the house, yet the liquor was all on the bottom floor. It should have been fairly simple to find and witch the booze which we imbibed. And indeed, it would have been, if not for what happened when we tried to descend the stairs. That is when we all saw the ghostly figure of what we supposed was Memoria Hendrickson.

I asked earlier how I could describe the lovely women with whom I spent most of my days at that time of the life. Now I must ask how I can even begin to describe what we saw? It did seem at first like a women, but every other glance was just like the space in front of us was missing. I was the quickest of the group to suggest that it was a hallucination we shared as a group. At this point, however, Robert revealed that he was still so shaken up by the events that had transpired earlier, that he had been depositing each round of the liquor in one of the house plants we had placed in the foyer.

“So you can go past it,” Roman said.

“If you think I am going past that thing,” Robert said, pointing directly at the vision, “then you must be verrückt.”

“We don’t know German,” said Miss Gilda, in an entitled voice.

“He means loco,” said Jacinta. “crazy!”

“You know german?” I asked. My wife shook her head.

“Just a guess, context based,” she said. “Anyways, if he can see it, it cannot be a hallucination. Look at it!”

And look indeed we did. I can’t explain it correctly, but my task of explaining these events requires me to try my best. I have said previously that Memoria seemed like a horrific version of Clara Bow, or even something like Betty Boop. But that can do no justice whatsoever to what we saw. I indeed saw it was an absence as well as a presence. Light seemed to go right through the figure, and yet it did exist. Later, we compared it to the shadow men of my adolescence, or even to the evil friend Rabbie, as Robert described him.

I can’t say the figure wasn’t pretty. Here it was, in a dress of the style of the French court. The bosoms on the figure were pushed up, on display, so they seemed even larger than they were. Yes, she was lovely, said the voice in my head.

“Stop it,” I said. But those around me thought I was speaking to the apparition that blocked our progress downwards.

Where the horror began was at her neck. It seemed more like a hinge than a neck, and her head snapped back and forth over it. It was like that after she fell, said my companion voice, twisting back and forth on the lampshade until her body was taken away. They thought I did it.

“Didn’t you?” I asked the voice. Since everyone was fairly **** at this stage, no one commented on my exclamation. I said I didn’t damn it, the voice yelled at me. Of course, by this point, I had an idea who was speaking to me. Or, at least, I had given the voice a name: it was clear to me that this was some unembodied idea of Hurry Hendrickson.

Why were you in such a Hurry, I asked the voice.

Ha! Ha! said the voice. I never heard that before. You know what? You're kind of rude.

“I don’t intrude in other people’s heads,” I said.

Oh, don’t you? Isn’t that the whole point of a toy? To take over the mind of a child, to fascinate them for hours on end?

“Hey!” shouted Florez. “Are you gonna stand there, or are we going to deal with the ghost in front of us?”

“Yeah,” said Roman. “We can’t get more spirits if we don’t get past this spirit.”

You’re all so clever, said the voice in my head.

“Shut up,” I said, both to the voice and to the people present.

The ghost looked, above her neckline, like a beautiful woman. Except, her jaw seemed to be always dripping away from her, and never missing. Like some melting watch in some surrealist painting. And a little chip, in the back of her neck, opened up to a certain kind of blackness, a darkness that is completely indescribable, only to say it was like a dark veil flowing infinitely in all directions from the back of her head. The whole walls around her seemed to be viewed with some kind of natural fish-eye lens, or perhaps they were more like blurring your eyes by crossing them. But, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

I couldn’t help but try to express my own astoundment. An old rhyme came floating back to me.

“As I was going up the stair,” I sang out to all present, “I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh, how I wish he’d go away.”

“Don’t ever sing that again!” yelled MIss GIlda. Apparently, this was her function now. I had known her before as a tender, big-hearted lover with much to give. But at this moment, she seemed nothing more to me than a shrew. I recited the poem again. She struck me.

“That’s from that scary kids book, Emperor of Nothing, about little invisible gnomes. Oh, how they looked so ghastly in the drawings. I don’t care that they were supposed to be heroes. They were just as bad as what they fought against. It was the preface. Oh, I hated, hated, hated that book.”