A word before our regularly-scheduled show:
Hey, friends. I’m so glad you’re here. Last time, it was the first chapter of the Untitled novel you’re going to help me name. This time, it’s the first chapter of Hauntingly Familial, the third in the Occasionally True series. Don’t worry if you haven’t read Lit By Lightning or Ill-Mannered Ghosts. And don’t worry if you have read those and don’t recognize anybody. It’s a different place and time, but loose ends will be addressed.
Also as I’ve previously reported, the first three chapters of each novel will be free, like my usual Substack tidbits. After those first three, the rest of each book will come every few weeks to paid subscribers. Those paid subscribers will be thanked in future print copies and will receive two copies of each book. The fact that you all are following along in this process—which so many of you have, and I’m grateful—gets both of these books closer to publication. If you know anybody you think might want in on this enterprise, please foreward this email and offer them candy.
Thank you all for reading, and I hope it gives you a little distraction and maybe some joy, something we all need right now. We’re all going through some things. I see you out there trying. Love to all of you.
Hauntingly Familial
Chapter 1
“Oh, thin day drinkers of Cameron Village. Find it please in your gemstone hearts to throw me a turn signal, I who ought to have the sense to know that every white Land Rover veers toward Talbots.”
“No need to die for pumpkin custard,” I was bracing myself a little dramatically. But I was legitimately afraid.
“Stop it, you. I see her. It is after 10 AM on a Friday, so this is all to be expected. We’re in their territory.” Mom swept her hand in a circle, as if to round up all the shining sedans and SUVs blocking our path through the parking lot. “Why do you think the ABC store is right next door? One short, shaky espadrille jog from tasteful shift dresses to Bombay Sapphire.”
This place has never really been the same without Burton’s, Ellisburg’s, and the Federal Bakery. That’s what she’ll say next.
“Frankly, this area began a glacial slide once the organ grinder and his monkey left.”
We were going to get pumpkin custard, because it was pumpkin day at the frozen custard place, dammit, and there’s only like eight of those a year. I wasn’t very hungry, but that’s not the point. I really wanted to sleep. But she always knew when the insomnia started taking over, when I couldn’t pull down the antenna. When I needed my senses overtaken in the present so the past wouldn’t find a crack and sneak in to gnaw at my memories. I knew she was exhausted from nights driving the neighborhood to find me on someone’s lawn. We had to move last year because the house next door’s grandfather kept telling me to dig a hole under the hydrangeas. Before that, it was the people across the street kept having to call her to come and get me as I crawled into their house multiple times through a broken basement window they didn’t know about in order to rifle through their silverware and the wife’s purses. I never took anything. They’d find me crying and apologizing. No one knew, they sputtered to Mom. They had told everyone he’d died of an undiagnosed heart defect. No one knew about the failed rehab attempts. We were the new people. I would only have been four or five years old, they said, when he died. Where did we live before? Maybe I had stalked them? Mom decided it would be far too hard to explain. We just moved again.
I really studied for the last AP Chem exam. I did all the readings and aced the quizzes. But Ms. Franklin, the AP Chem teacher, she had something in her hair. Smelled kind of like a campfire, but more chemical. During the exam period last week, it started to move. Her hair, I mean. It moved around, slowly at first, like it was resettling on her head. Then a red lock snaked out and wrapped around her neck, drawing up tight until her skin puckered. I tried to look away, but after what seemed like only a minute or two, the bell rang. My test sheet was empty. Now I have a makeup test and a documented history of seizures.
Cold pumpkin enfolded my brain, erasing everything. My vision went orange and then brown and then red, tart, spice, a cracking edge of taste like my tongue split open from underneath. Deep cold. Hair on my arms extended. I cringed. I went to push open the door and I could taste the metal of the handle. I could hear Mom’s voice as she guided me to a bench. Outside the smells. Dumpsters and dog piss. And worse: mums.
“That’s right. Don’t let them see you. Don’t give them any room. Breathe.” She caught the cup of pumpkin custard when it fell out of my hand. “Turn the light down in your head. See, that’s right. Take another deep breath. Nobody wants to hurt you. They can’t harm you, even if they wanted to.” She started to tell me a story, something about two sisters who lived in the woods, but I couldn’t. You see, I don’t blame her. Nobody taught her what to do, so she doesn’t know what to say. She never wanted any of this for me. We moved, we moved again. Farther and farther from people. But nowhere is far enough. And the relative quiet of the countryside only made trips into town more acute. Exposure, at small, controlled intervals—I believed it would work, too. I think it was me who believed that. But the voices were everywhere, gaining volume and insistence with the years.
“Was there a restaurant here? In the eighties?”
“Let’s go back to the car.”
“It’s loud here.”
“Car’s right there. Let’s go. Take my hand.”
Once the piano music started, so did the static electricity, except I didn’t just feel it this time. I could see – and at the time, I thought everybody could see – little constellations like floating, no, flying sparklers, swimming around in the sky and reflected in big storefront windows, black and peeling, which slowly started to undulate like tar pits. I’m guessing that’s when I started looking weird to everybody. It wasn’t the first time I transferred over. But it was early, and I wasn’t used to it. I don’t know which parts go where. Without leaving the bench, I was walking into that building, red carpeting, glossy black piano, globes of flame on every table. A waiter in a tuxedo vest was lighting the last of the oil wicks. White tablecloths. Red. Smelled like sautéed mushrooms… in fact, one of the waiters was sautéing mushrooms at a table on a cart. Sterno smells. Everyone smiled like I was in on a joke. I could still taste pumpkin.
“Hey, Vaughan,” A short, red-faced man in satin lapels came up to me, a little too close, and took my hand. “Table six wants to see some tricks. From out of town. The Bakers are in their booth when you get a chance. And talk to me in a little while – there’s something later. If you’re up for a late night job.”
I felt the pocket of my tuxedo jacket for a fresh pack of cards. Two in each pocket, the same way I started every night. Is that right? I don’t know what to do with these cards.
Table six looked a little bored. Vaughn knew what to say.
“Hello, good people. Marcus tells me you are visiting our fair Hamlet from… from…”
“Pittsburgh. We’re driving to her parents’ place in Tampa. Raleigh is one of the last decent spots to stop, you know, on the way. She won’t stop in South Carolina.”
“I can’t stand South Carolina. I got crabs in a rest area there one time.”
Table six was the classy type. Oh, good, Vaughn said inside his head. The classy type.
“Well, well. Aren’t we fortunate that you’ve made your way here. We have precious little glamour to offer to such cosmopolitans as yourself. But allow me to distract you, ever so briefly, from the tawdriness of our temporal world. My good man, judging by your delightful companion, you are yourself a connoisseur of beauty. Would you not say?”
The lady giggled. Vaughn—I mean, I couldn’t help but notice that she had ordered soft-shell crabs.
It occurred to me that the lady in question was not the man’s wife. He did not look at her while I spoke, kept his chin resting on his hand, fingers wrapped over his lips. His eyes stayed level with mine. I proceeded, removing a sealed deck from my jacket pocket and unwrapping the cellophane very slowly, like a jazz piano player unwrapping a pack of cigarettes. Which is exactly what Hal was doing. I could see him, taking a break at the bench. He caught my eye and lifted a single Parliament, tipping it at me in salute. Then I checked behind me. Not certain why. I’m accustomed to being watched, but I felt a presence. A reflex, but it fit the narrative nicely.
“Indeed. We agree. Let me introduce you to another woman – fear not, my dear; this woman is ephemeral – she is not real to us in this world. She is your sister, cherie, in beauty and grace. She is the sister of all great beauties, the mother of all female charm and delight. I call her The Contessa.”
The man at table six chuckled low. The laugh of a vulgar man. There are no stakes here, so it’s just going to go as it goes. I can’t pay everyone’s karmic debts.
I held the box aloft, squeezed the sides slightly, and let the deck fall into my palm with a whisper. The heft and the sharp edge felt good and familiar. I tried not to smile. There wasn’t time. People are terrible. I was beginning to see the things in his head. Let’s keep it moving.
“What do we want in life? Man to man?” I paused to see if he’d come with me, even though I knew he was barely following my sententious rambling. No. Fair enough. I soldiered on, staring at his wriggling eyebrows: “Come now, sir; you can tell me. Tell me what we want as men. What is it that we prize above all. I know you are with me here, man of taste that you are.”
His lady flashed concern for only a second. He didn’t see it. Just as well. He grimaced into a horrifying smile as the correct response alighted on his dehydrated thought nugget.
“Gotta have the money, baby.”
“Ah. I knew you were a practical man. A man of the world. As it should be, of course. Let us move beyond, however, into more ethereal sentiments. What is it money will buy us?”
He chewed on my question like he had chewed on Marcus’s rather subprime rib. I separated the deck in the middle with my left hand, transferring half of it to my right. Eyes to eyes. That’s right, you devil.
“Respect,” he ventured, slowly, laying a finger alongside his nose, like Santa. Dear god. Deliver me from imbeciles. I wove the two sides together, meeting card to card, feeding the halves back to whole.
“Marvelous. Now we are getting someplace. But more to the point: Money. Respect. What are any of these things without…”
“Pussy!” He chortled and threw his arms wide, leaning across the table, eyes bulging. His companion snorted and squealed. Bless me, father. I placed the reunited deck on the table in front of him, shadowed by the nearly-empty chianti bottle.
“Love! Love it is. Absolutely. Now we have it. So we search throughout our brief time on this verdant ball for what? Love. Sir, would you honor me…” I gestured at the deck. “Just, ah, anywhere at all.” For a moment I thought I might have to draw a diagram, but finally he cut the thing, making two little stacks. I felt immediately then that I could have saved myself a great deal of time if I had merely had him pull my finger.
I retrieved both stacks. It’s my policy to proceed at all times as if I am under the greatest of scrutiny from the most astute of judges. Which I am, of course. Myself. There’s no excuse for sloppiness. I stretched my arms, and the flash of my diamond cufflinks emblazoned the room for a moment like threads of lightning. I rejoined halves of the deck exactly as they had left my hands. But he never saw. He had taken a moment to peer into his date’s cleavage.
But someone saw it. I could feel the thrill of judgment, the moment of recognition at the break in the trick. It wasn’t her; she was looking at me, but not at my hands. Her eyes glassy, her smile slightly crooked. She wasn’t bad looking, apart from the distasteful confessions. Marilyn Monroe might have played her, comically tragic, hoping for the best. I can’t help you, darling.
So who it was, I couldn’t tell. The Bakers were in the corner, awaiting their Caesar salads in a rapture as Gene turned the giant wooden bowl like he was steering a yacht, pummeling the egg with a little wooden bat. A few date couples sat along the far wall, deep in conversation. Hal had stepped outside. No matter; time to move on.
I fanned the cards in front of him.
“Think carefully, sir, about what you are looking for in this world.”
“You gonna tell my fortune or do a trick, buddy?”
“It would be some trick if I could do both, now, wouldn’t it?” From then on, I hated myself every time I did or said anything that resulted in that chortle.
He removed a card. “Wait,” I cautioned, but he had turned it up already. Timing is everything for this particular trick.
The lonely King of Spades stared up at us all.
“Ah, sir. I should have explained sooner – you see, you cannot find what your search for without help. And it is our story, in this world, is it not? That we find out only too late that we must ask for and accept the help of others in order to find our way. We must open our hearts. We must find our heart in the one who can show us where it is our heart truly lies.”
I turned so slightly, so slowly, toward the girl. She looked up at me in sudden terror as I fanned the deck in front of her. “Help him,” I said. “You are the One. You can find his heart.”
She shook her head a tiny bit as if to reject the entire premise of my proposal. Our brief glance may have included, among other tragedies, an entire philosophical exploration of the ethics of even attempting to locate anything inside this man that either of us would be willing to name a “heart.” We’d gone to a very dark place. I had led us there. Could she lead us out?
I know better. I know how all of this ends.
Her nails were the color of Pepto Bismol. A shade of which I have intimate knowledge. We could have been happy, once. Just take the card. Don’t hesitate. You’re not interested in any of those, no. You know where it is. Go there. Don’t make me bring it to you – that’s right. Yes. Come along. I don’t like the term “force.” We both know I am giving you a gift.
She withdrew it and held it far away, flat, her elbow straight, arm at an oblique angle.
“Show us, my dear. Do you have his heart?” My own brutality at times is a weighty burden. “Turn over the card and show him. Show it to him, darling, not to me.”
His upper lip twitched once, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “That’s cute,” he said, placing one between his teeth. Newports. Suddenly I felt the craving for one, like an after dinner mint. He took the Ace of Hearts from her hand and tossed it on the table with one hand, placing the other between her thighs.
“But sir, hold, please. We aren’t finished. There’s a lady, as you remember, who wishes to make your acquaintance.” I spoke to him, but met her gaze. But she was someplace else by then. Anyway. We were this far. The only way out is through.
“If I may.” I picked up the Ace of Hearts from the table. Technically, this move meant I was skipping a step in the narrative. But I wanted to put us out of our misery. Indeed: there is no excuse for sloppiness. Now you see why I am doing card tricks in a declining steak house in an obscure Southern town. Things have not turned out. And that’s because I am often putting somebody out of his misery.
And so, I took up the Ace of Hearts and held it over the deck. They watched in a kind of stupor as I struck a subtle sort of martial arts stance, arm holding the deck extended, Ace of Hearts hovering over it like a little cabana roof, a little cabana in Tampa, someplace with daiquiris, someplace where you can keep on your sunglasses and hide a black eye. I was barreling toward the end of the trick. I couldn’t get there fast enough. I could smell him, his sulfurous beading, the grease of his hair.
“She is not easily brought forth. It isn’t out of shyness, no. She moves with dignity, and only at her own pace.”
I moved the Ace rooftop in little circles over the deck, and the deck began to shake. As the trembling increased, I held it out over the lamp flame, the under-light on the deck like the fires of purgatory. Friend, you hang by a meager thread. If you only knew the true state of your soul, the peril you face.
A card began to emerge, its face toward them, the reverse of the rest of the cards in the deck. She was looking them over, and they knew it. The Queen of Hearts looked them over, and then she slid herself back up into the deck.
“What the fuck! That’s some crazy shit, man. See that, baby. Ho, ho. That’s some crazy – how’d you do that, buddy – what the fuck.”
“Wait, wait – I believe you can earn her trust. But you yourself must ask your lady for her help.” I pause. I don’t know why I am pausing. Move along. “Ask your lady. Go ahead. I am certain she will be willing to comply. Yes, madam? But of course. Except, it will only work if you ask her. Sweetly, and kindly.”
That part was probably pushing everyone’s luck, but what was I to do. The Queen must be appeased.
“Baby, you gonna help me or what.” It was a start at least. We must be grateful for the pieces of humanity we find. Even if we have to carve those pieces ourselves, in the dark, out of gristly bits.
She looked embarrassed and frightened. “What else can I do, though,” she complained, grasping his arm and hiding her face behind it.
“It’s simple, really,” I said. “We’ve already come this far. Take his hand in yours, and tap the deck. That’s all there is left to it. Oh, and your love for him must be true. But that part – of course we know, so the rest is a mere formality. Will you? You found his heart, now redeem it.”
Her glossy pink nails skittered back out from under the table and down his arm, like a cartoon spider. In a flash, they knocked on the door of the deck, like two kids on Halloween. Out came the card, with even greater force than usual. I myself was mildly startled. But only for a second. I’ve seen a lot. And that was that. He slipped me a twenty, which was better than I deserved.
The Bakers were still crunching the croutons in the Caesar salads when I came by their table. They were in their late sixties and either forgetful already, or terribly polite; I could recycle tricks after six to eight weeks and they were as new and wondrous to them as if they were fresh from the cabbage patch. They’d never had children, you see.
“Vaughan, one of these days, I’m going to chastise you for flirting so shamelessly with my bride.”
“It becomes a man so fortunate to be generous in turn,” I countered, taking my bow and my leave. They were always good for another five bucks.
Carl was in the kitchen, rolling up ice in his bandana before knotting it around his neck.
“Hey, Vaughan. What are they looking like out there tonight.”
“Like your grandmother’s underpants, Carl. Dingy, saggy, with unknown terrors tucked inside.”
Reaching into a mountain of mushrooms, Carl pulled out a handful and lined them up, tapping them and coaxing the dirt off with a tiny brush. He’d slice five or six, then toss them into the enormous sauté pan already bubbling with butter, garlic and Barolo. Once in a while, when the pan got full, he’d lift it over to a side plate and shake off only the brownest of the mushrooms. They’d scoot themselves out of the pan as if invited. I often got hypnotized, watching Carl cook. He did so without any processing, it seemed, moving slowly but without deliberation, like some kind of meditative dance. Almost as if he had forgotten that those were his hands; their movements were of no interest or consequence to him.
“Want a steak? I got some nice filets on the slab. Pick one out.”
“Can I have some of those soldiers there alongside? The aroma, my word.”
“Help yourself. Get a plate over there.” Carl glanced up from the blade for a second. “Marcus talk to you yet?”
“He mentioned he might need a word later. What’s happening?”
Carl made a snorting noise. “Friend of his coming by. Listen,” he turned straight toward me, pointing the tip of the knife slightly north of my skull. “You know Marcus has got some weirdo shit-for-brains friends. This guy is different. He…”
Carl wheeled back around and started chopping mushrooms again with mechanical regularity before I realized Marcus was behind me.
“Oh Captain, my Captain.” I curtsied.
“Vaughan, I got a bonus for you tonight if you’re interested.”
“From the instant you said ‘bonus.’” Having a pressing need to pay for things.
Carl, it seemed to me, briefly waved the knife upwards between chops. Out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I imagined it. Marcus went on.
“Friend of mine needs a favor. He’s entertaining a client. Investor or something. He’s got a guy in town he’s trying to impress. Gonna come by later.”
“I’ll make dinner a memorable experience indeed.”
“No, no. They’re not coming for dinner. They’re coming especially for you. He wants you to come with them in the limo. He needs your particular, ah, services.”
“I’m only too happy to oblige. What exactly does he wish me to perform? Have I performed for this friend before? A regular?”
“No, I don’t think so. Maybe. He’s been in a few times, but I don’t know if you got, you know. Properly introduced. He’s interested in your hypnosis business. Needs a little extra persuasion for this guy, you might say. Something along those lines. I’m not exactly sure of the details. Dominic will explain it all to you when he gets here.”
I don’t think I had met Dominic before that night, but it was almost certain, from the time he charged into the kitchen through the back door, that he had seen me someplace. And from the second of that realization, I remained at a disadvantage for the entire evening. Really for the entire time I knew Dominic. I was about to enter a new stage of my life. I believe that I knew it. The chill began at the first sound of his name out of Marcus’s mouth. And as Marcus went to open the back door at the behest of incessant, arrhythmic knocking, Carl appeared all at once in front of me, knife in hand.
“Vaughn, whatever you do, don’t get in the car with this guy.”
But there was no decision, it seemed. My hands already belonged to someone else. Mom, I called in a strange voice, but the steering wheel was spinning on its own. I was alone. By the time my feet found the brake pedal, I was skidding down the embankment toward the roaring river.