Why do they send me this stuff? Well, you know how occasionally you get stuck with something purely because you don’t know how to throw it away? Either because it seems too sacred to get smooshed in with moldy coffee grounds (an old Bible, an American flag, a birthday card from your grandma) or because it seems vaguely dangerous (old shotgun shells, a broken dagger)? All of the shit I’ve collected is kind of a combination of the two—sacred, lethal, or both. So, they dig up my address and stick it in the mail. “David Wong will know what to do with it!” No, I absolutely will not. It just piles up and the stuff that doesn’t seem too dangerous gets sold on eBay (there’s a whole “Metaphysical” category on the site now, it’s great).
Among this week’s junk had been a water-damaged “haunted” paperback copy of Bad as I Wanna Be, the autobiography of Chicago Bulls power forward Dennis Rodman. “Haunted” because this copy, and only this copy, had multiple chapters describing how Rodman conspired with several teammates to ritualistically murder over fifty prostitutes in the years they traveled with the team. It doesn’t appear the book was doctored in any way, the pages have the same typeset as the rest, and they’re exactly as aged. I did some Googling, could find no other reference to the existence of this edition of the book, or to the killings. As usual, I have no idea what it means.
Next to the book was a small piano-black twelve-sided box, each side etched with a different rune in emerald green. I waved my hand over the box and exclaimed, “ODO DAXIL!” The box unfolded and I felt radiant heat waft across my face. Inside was a glowing orange sphere the size of a marble. We got this one a couple of weeks ago. At first it didn’t seem to do much other than emit quite a bit of heat but then, while John was over for Pancake and Video Game Night, he thought he heard a tortured wailing from within the sphere. I initially dismissed the idea, as he was pretty drunk and I think he always hears tortured wailing when he drinks. Still, the next day we took it to the middle school where a friend and former bandmate of John’s named Mitch Lombard (nickname, “Munch”) had gotten a job as a substitute science teacher despite his neck tattoos. He studied the glowing sphere under one of their microscopes for a silent moment, then looked up from the viewfinder to whisper, “His suffering is unimaginable, but the heat of his rage could incinerate the universe a million times over. All is lost. All is lost.” Munch had then passed out, blood running freely from his nose. That was the last time we’d discussed it.
I grabbed a pair of tongs from a kitchen drawer, picked up the glowing sphere, and dropped it into my mug of cold coffee as the phone rang for what I knew would be the last time before it would get dumped to voice mail.
I cleaved off a ragged chunk of muffin with my fingers and answered, “Fuck you and all of the ancestors who led up to you.”
“Dave? We got a missing little girl. You got a pen?”
“If it’s a missing child, call the cops.”
“The cops called me.”
I closed my eyes and let out a breath that smelled like I’d eaten an entire wet dog and washed it down with sweat wrung from a hobo’s undershirt. Let me give you a tip: if you’re ever the victim of a terrible crime—like, say, your kid goes missing—and you see the cops consulting with a couple of white trash–looking dipshits in their late twenties, it’s time to worry. It’s not because John and I are incompetent at what we do—and I assure you, we are—but because you need to start asking yourself a very hard question. Not “Will I get my child back?” but “Do I want to get my child back?”
I dipped my finger into the coffee, which already felt near boiling. I fished out the burning orb and placed it back into its container, which automatically closed around it. I took a sip, winced, and decided that the first person to ever drink coffee was probably trying to commit suicide.
I asked, “What makes it a, you know, a Dave and John case?”
“It’s another locked room situation, it looks like. There’s more, I’ll explain when you get here. But it looks pretty John and Dave to me. Do you have a pen? I have the address here.”
“Just give it to me.”
“One-oh-six Arlington Street. Next to the vape store?”
“You thought I needed pen and paper to remember that?”
“And hurry. I’ve heard you’ve only got forty-eight hours before the trail goes cold.”
“You heard that in a movie. Last week. We watched it together.”
He had hung up.
I sighed and ate another hunk of muffin. I glanced out the window, the bottom half glowing pink from the neon sign of the business downstairs. They left that sign on day and night; the constant hum made me want to blow my brains out.
Oh, well. It’s not like I have anything else to do.
Still, I was going to finish my muffin first.
* * *
Let me tell you what’s bullshit about every supernatural horror movie. Whenever the monster or angry ghost lady turns up, everyone is skeptical for at least the first third of the running time. It’s usually between forty and fifty minutes in that the protagonists begrudgingly admit that the ominous Latin chants emanating from the walls aren’t a plumbing issue. In real life, the very second Mom sees something red oozing from the ceiling, she thinks “blood” not “water from a rusty old pipe.” I wish people were as skeptical as they are in the movies.
This town, the name of which will remain undisclosed for privacy reasons, has been called the Bermuda Triangle of the Midwest. Or at least, I think I heard somebody call it that. I actually wish that was true, too, because there’s nothing to the Bermuda Triangle—just a bunch of routine maritime disasters that grew in the telling. A cargo ship never arrives at port and the headlines coyly say it “disappeared.” It didn’t “disappear,” guys—it sank. It’s a boat, in the ocean. Shit happens. What goes on in [undisclosed] is … different.
My point is, it’s hard to sort out the real stuff from the superstition. So, because I’m sick of getting your e-mails asking for advice, let me just quickly run through it:
1. If Your Home Has a Poltergeist
We got a ton of these calls after that movie Paranormal Activity came out, panicked people saying they had rocking chairs rocking by themselves, untouched drinking glasses scooting off a table, clocks running backward, etc. If you’re in this situation, you can combat it using a technique known as “Getting the Fuck Over It.” You’re telling me you’ve got angry spirits of old murder victims or something floating around and they’re causing less of a disruption to your life than an unruly house cat? Why not worry about your high blood pressure, or take a moment to see if your smoke detector batteries are up to date? Those things are way more likely to kill you than whatever is knocking over salt shakers in your kitchen at night.
2. If You Have Seen a Ghost
If you’ve seen, say, a translucent old woman in a long flowing gown drifting down your hall at night, that’s almost definitely a hallucination or just a regular ol’ dream. Think about it: why would a ghost be translucent? Smoke and fog look like they do because they’re made of tiny particles suspended in the air. Are you suggesting the soul is made of tiny particles?
In reality, your whole idea of what a ghost looks like comes from Victorian era photos, when long-exposure cameras required the subject to sit still for several minutes due to the primitive technology. If the subject left halfway through, you’d get that ghostly image instead. Fun fact: this is also the reason nobody is smiling in those old pictures—try holding a smile for seven straight minutes. If you’ve actually seen a ghost—and I assure you that you probably have, within the last month—it would have just looked like any real, solid person. It’s likely nobody saw that person but you and no, you can’t photograph them. You’re not seeing them with your eyes.