Dead Schmed

So I hired Sedona Ballou, the ghost buster.

I’d heard about Sedona from some of my New Age friends. She had been performing house cleansings in the Twin Cities area for more than ten years with great success. Her references were impeccable, and included praise from dozens of local celebrities, including Prince, who had hired her to remove the ghost of a dead bass player from his Paisley Park recording studio.

Unlike the movie ghost busters, Sedona eschewed the use of machines. She relied entirely on her natural gifts. Using her powers of charm and persuasiveness, she would convince the ghosts to move on the next level of existence. According to Sedona, most manifestations are unfortunates who have died and, to put it in corporeal terms, missed the shuttle to heaven. They just sort of hang out, most often with benign intent, but occasionally to the distress of those who must live with them.

“Can you see him?” she asked me during our initial phone conversation.

“He comes and goes,” I said.

“You must be a little bit psychic. I sensed something when I picked up the phone.”

I decided to remain sober for the ghostbusting. I didn’t want to have to watch my grandfather’s ghost being driven from his own home, even at the cost of spending the better part of the evening unmedicated.

Sedona showed up at exactly nine o’clock. She was an attractive woman in her mid-fifties, conservatively dressed, with long gray-blond hair, big white teeth, and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. She wasn’t in the house more than thirty seconds when she spotted Smed sitting on the living room sofa, or so she claimed.

“Well, hello there,” she said to the sofa. A second later she laughed and shook her head. “He asked me if I was your girlfriend,” she said to me. “You see him?”

“I only see him when I’ve had a few.”

“Alcohol lowers our inhibitions. Sometimes it allows us to utilize our repressed psychic powers. You could learn to exercise those powers without the alcohol, you know.”

“No, thank you. Can you convince him to leave?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

She produced a small ceramic bowl, filled it with dried leaves, and lit them with a disposable butane lighter. The smoke reminded me that it was time for a cigarette, so I pulled my Winstons out and stuck one in my mouth.

“Did he smoke?” Sedona asked.

“Smed? He used to, but he quit.”

“Before or after he died?”

“After.”

Sedona nodded. “Then you had better not light that. The tobacco smoke will only encourage him to stay.”
I pointed at the bowl of smoldering leaves. “And that won’t?”

“Smell it,” she suggested.

I did. The smoke was both piercing and acrid. It made my eyes water.

“You see what I mean?” She looked at the sofa and smiled. “He doesn’t like it, either.”

“The smoke will make him go away?”

“It helps,” she said. “It would also help if you’d wait in the other room.”

I
was happy to do that. The thought that Smed might be present but
invisible disturbed me. I had always assumed that when he was not
visible, he was not there. Sedona’s suggestion that the ghost was a
full-time occupant of my house didn’t sit well with me. I retired to my
bedroom and listened to the muted sounds of conversation and laughter
filtering up the stairs.

The ghostbusting took almost an hour.

“He didn’t want to leave,” Sedona reported. “He was afraid to move on to the next level.”

“Really? He claimed to be shuttling back and forth at will, bringing me messages from my grandmother.”
Sedona
smiled tolerantly. “When a ghost tells you something, you have to take
it with a grain of salt. Most of them are terrible liars.”

After
Sedona left, check in hand, I enjoyed three ghost-free minutes before
noticing a burning odor that was nothing like sage leaves or tobacco.
It smelled like bacon. I ran into the kitchen. The electric stove was
turned on, both front burners glowing red. Smed’s ghost stood holding
one hand pressed down on each burner. He turned his head in that
disconcerting 180 degree way of his, and grinned at me with big yellow
teeth.

“What are you doing?” I cried out. Wisps of smoke rose up from his hands.

“I’m cold,” he said.

“You’re burning!”

He
turned up his palms, which appeared to be unsinged. Smoke continued to
rise from the burners. “You should clean your stove more often, Pete.
You got grease all over these burners. Look at the smoke.”

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be busted.”

He
laughed and put his hands back on the burners. “Is that what that woman
was doing here? Talking to the air? I thought you were smarter than
that, Pete.”

I stared.

“You didn’t pay her much, I hope.”

“Three hundred bucks.”

Smed
began to laugh so hard he had to grab on to the stove to hold himself
up. His laughter dissolved into a coughing fit. I sat down on one of
the kitchen chairs and crossed my arms, waiting for him to pull himself
together. It occurred to me then that, for the first time since our
very first encounter, Smed had decided to visit me when I was cold
sober. I had no idea whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Y’know, Pete,” he managed to gasp, “that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard since the eulogy at my funeral.”

I
stood up and walked right toward him, something I hadn’t ever tried
before, and reached out to turn off the burners. In retrospect, it was
a courageous thing to do, since the ghost stood directly between me and
the stove. I did not know what would happen when my hand touched him.
Either it would pass right through his body or it would strike
something solid. I was hoping for the first.

As my hand
reached his abdomen, for the barest paring of an instant, I felt the
cotton of his shirt, the resiliency of his belly, and then a faint
pop—felt, not heard—then nothing. He was gone. I nearly put my hand on
the hot burner.

***


Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.