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Excerpt from “Vintage” by Steve Berman

The interior of Trace’s car smelled strongly of licorice, her favorite candy. I thought she had spilled a bottle of Sambuca, but then she pointed to the used tea light candle glued to the top of the dashboard. Before we left my aunt’s house, she poured more aniseed oil into the empty metal shell.

“This will keep away coughs and colds.” She breathed in deeply. “After last night, I’m not surprised you’re sick.”

I had not only overslept but felt like shit. I called Malvern to ask if I could have the day off. He told me the best way to cure congestion was bedrest and a warmed glass of Rock-n-Rye, whatever that is.

“After last night, I could care less about having a cold. All those ghosts. They could hear me, Trace. I know it. As soon as I opened my mouth, they came after me. What the hell is going on?”

“Just be glad spirits don’t like the rain. They can’t manifest in a downpour.”

The aniseed didn’t seem to be helping me feel better. I reached for the small brown bottle half-filled with the oil. The tiny label read distillation of Pimpinella anisum seed 13ml.

“Pimpinella?” I tried to sound amused but at best the effort made me feel awkward. I uncapped the bottle, bringing it directly under my clogged nose. Immediately the undiluted oil broke through my sinuses not unpleasantly. It reminded me of eating licorice crows with Trace during Labor Day weekend.

“I love that term. Smutty and scientific.” Trace stopped the car on a side street. “We’re here.” Atop a hill squatted an immense house nearly hidden by trees with leaves the color of fire.

“Do tell.”

She started up the walk, a winding series of slate steps, all crumbling at their edges. No one had bothered to sweep away the leaves and debris autumn brought to the lawn.

“So what is this place?”

Trace only winked at me. I was in no mood for theatrics and mysteries. I wanted answers, ones that would let me sleep soundly, ones that would return my life to normal.

We passed the remains of a birdbath. Half the concrete bowl laid on the ground. A raven, his feathers ruffled—I imagined from some fight with another bird or perhaps in indignation at finding the town dull—perched on the broken rim and cawed loudly as we walked by.

“Shouldn’t it be flying off?”

“They get more brazen as we near Halloween,” Trace remarked.

I nodded. It made sense, after all.

Just when I grew sick of climbing steps, we reached the hilltop. Ahead of us, the house lurked, an ugly beast of architecture, the sort of place that looked stooped and old, with fallen arches and creaking floors. In other words, I fell in love with it.

“Used to be a mansion. That was like eighty years ago. Then the owner willed the place to the town as the library.”

“That's the town library?” I shook my head in amazement. “Why haven’t you ever taken me here before?”

“How many books have you read since you moved here?”

Touché. “Next to none.” I felt illiterate, especially next to her.

A bronze placard had been bolted into the wall beside the huge wooden door that bore a wrought iron knocker. Years of verdigris made it hard to discern all the letters. Trace pulled open the door with a grunt before I could read it.

“C'mon,” she said, holding the way open for me.

Inside, the atmosphere was vastly different from wondrous autumn: the air had a still, heaviness to it, as if silence had weight. I took a few steps before the door swung shut, keeping the outside world distant. The library seemed to be holding its breath, quiet, not serene but rather in suspense.

Moving through the foyer, we came to an immense desk blocking our path. I thought it might be redwood, because only a gigantic tree could yield so much wood. The woman librarian seated at it looked frail. Glass-enclosed bookcases were set against the far wall. To the right, a staircase with a threadbare runner led up. On our left was an open doorway to a parlor filled with old furniture.

We were about to head up the steps when someone called out to Trace. A man in his late forties walked out of the parlor, holding a magazine. He lifted it slightly as if to wave at us.

Trace murmured to me, “Mr. Algode, evil Math teacher.” She mustered a smile and headed over to where he stood.

I leaned against the banister and admired some of the paintings along the stairwell. My back became chilled, as if someone had opened the door and let in a draft. The aniseed hadn’t helped me feel any better and I began sneezing.

The librarian shushed me, bringing a spindly finger to her puckered lips. I blinked away tears brought on by the sneezes. Her head shook, the hair tight curls the color of dull steel. Her wardrobe with its lace collar could have been purchased in Malvern's shop but was so worn that it was almost threadbare.

“Sorry,” I said in a quiet tone.

The librarian glared at me and rapped a long finger against a stack of dusty books. She lifted a pair of wire framed glasses to her face and started reading and I sat down on the bottom step and waited for Trace. I struggled not to cough or sneeze again, my chest feeling constricted, my back aching with stress.

She came back a few moments later, though it seemed like hours, shaking her head. “Ugh, he felt the need to remind me about my algebra deficiency. Like I really care about X’s and Y’s and Z’s.”

“I think she hates me,” I said and nodded towards the librarian.

“Oh?” She glanced that way. “Who?”

Even as I motioned towards the huge desk, I saw that it was empty. I tried to think of some explanation, anything that sounded even remotely reasonable to explain how she could have suddenly disappeared. But fear left me unable to do much else but reach up and squeeze Trace’s hand.

“Again.” My voice caught in my throat. “Another ghost.”

She squatted down before me. “What? Here?”

I nodded and pulled her fingers to warm my face.

“You’re trembling.”

“What’s wrong with me?” I did not want to suddenly start bawling. But I was afraid. Everywhere I went I seemed surrounded by spirits. I remembered the one with the knife from last night. He had been bad; suppose the next one was worse?

“Come upstairs.”

I let her lead me to the second floor, keeping my eyes low to avoid glimpses of the long-dead men and women in the paintings along the wall. I worried that I would catch their mouths moving, as if to whisper to me.

“So we need to talk about this. We can figure it all out.”

But I didn’t hear confidence in her voice.

We passed through an open doorway to a large reading room surrounded by shelves. After taking a step forward, I saw that old men filled every available seat in the library. I felt their yellowed eyes bore into me with spitefulness.

Trace took hold of my hand, her fingers interlacing my own. A small comfort as we took another hesitant step.

One fossil coughed, the sound of decades’ worth of phlegm dislodged, brought up, examined, and then swallowed.

I wanted desperately to be away from them. How many were real? Any might be ghosts. The entire floor sounded with their creaks and groans. As we reached the stacks, my heart pounded in my chest. I wondered when this had started. How long had I been seeing spirits without knowing the truth? People on the street, in stores that I’ve passed by could all be dead. That girl on the bus, the one no one else had heard but me?

“I’ve come in early in the morning and those old men are always here.” She shook her head slightly. “I think when they lock up and it’s dark, they don't leave but sit there, waiting for something.”

“Don’t try and scare me.” I glanced back in their direction. “There’s no need.”

She rubbed my back a moment and led me all the way to the back of the immense room. Some of the books on the shelves were so old that their covers had peeled away or titles worn off.

Trace stood up on her toes, scanning the top most titles.

“So tell me what’s going on. When did I suddenly become the kid from Sixth Sense?”

“Ah,” she said and smiled, taking down a slender volume with brittle yellow pages. “Behind the Scenes with the Mediums from 1916.”

I held back a sneeze. “I’m surprised you haven’t swiped this.”

“I might today.” She clutched it to her chest a moment, partially obscuring the magic eightball T-shirt she wore. It left a faint block of dust on her chest. I stood there and watched as she paged through it a while.

Anxious for her to talk to me and make things right again, I waited a while as she read until I could not stand around doing nothing. I took the first book I saw off the nearest shelf and opened it at random.

This story rather resembles the tale of a much more interesting ghost which inhabited an old manor-house in Somersetshire, and which succeeded for many years in keeping human beings out of the place. Time after time the house would be let, people always making light of its haunted reputation, or else determining to brave its terrors. But they never stayed more than a few weeks, when they invariably went away, declaring that one or more members of the household had seen an apparition on the main staircase.

I stopped reading and remembered what Trace has said earlier, even to her exact reference to ghosts eternally trapped climbing stairs.

The description—and rather horrible it was—was always the same. The figure of a woman would come gliding downstairs, carrying her head under her arm, and arriving at the foot of the stairs she invariably vanished.

At last there came a tenant bolder than his predecessors, and gifted with an inquiring turn of mind. He said he liked the place and meant to stay there, and if possible evict the ghost. And he at once began to investigate. Beginning at the attics he tapped and sounded every wall and suspicious-looking board in the house, with no result in the way of discovery till he reached the principal staircase. This, being the ghost’s favorite haunt, received special attention, and working his way patiently down step by step, he found at length under the old flooring at the foot of the stairs, a hollow place of considerable size. And in this hole reposed, headless, a human skeleton (which subsequent examination proved to be that of a woman) with the severed head laying by its side. Then the enterprising tenant hied him to the Vicar of the parish and told him of the grisly find, and after due consultation it was decided to collect the poor remains and bury them decently in the churchyard, a ceremony which seems to have effectually “laid” the ghost, as report says it has never since been seen.

I poked Trace. “This says by burying a ghost’s remains, you lay it to rest.”

Trace looked up at me. “Yeah, that works in some cases. But not all ghosts. Josh is already buried.”

“Oh. Right.” I started to put the book back but decided against it, thinking I should do some reading on the subject myself.

“Listen to this.” As she read out loud, her finger traced the words. “‘There have been known instances where suffrance brings about a new perception, a perlustration that sees beyond the Veil. What once was viewed as commonplace becomes inimaginable as apparitions that haunt the world on occasion are met. These mediums are forced to take a path little tread, between the Known World and the Gray Pale, itinerant envoys between the living and the dead.’”

“The Gray Pale? C’mon, that sounds silly.”

She rolled her eyes. “It means that people who suffer some awful trauma and come close to death—as in your attempted suicide—can get the Sight. Ever since then you’ve been noticing ghosts. Hon, you’re one of these mediums.”

“A medium?” The word brought up images of old gypsies telling fortunes and peering into crystal balls. Flim-flam artists with friends underneath the table making knocking sounds. Bad black and white movies. Not at all apt for being scared shitless and threatened by ghosts every where you look.

“That’s why Josh only hears your voice and no one else.” She seemed all excited. “Why he followed you home and all the ghosts in the graveyard were drawn to you.”

“Fuck.” Despite my history of morbidness, the thought of being popular with the dead made me feel ill.

“I’m going to check this out. There’s some stuff on channeling. That’s what I think happened to you last night.”

“More like possession.” I tried not to think about it. I did not like losing myself, my identity, so easily.

“Why don’t you go see if they have any old yearbooks?” She patted my chest lightly. “Bet you can find out more what your ghost was like when he was alive.”

I half-nodded, half-shrugged. Actually, the living Josh interested me less than the dead. Alive, he was a handsome jock, the sort that would have probably hassled me at school, laughed to my face if not behind my back. Ghost Josh though was different. He understood me. Hell, I was the only boy for him these days.

“Well, I think we should know.”

“Okay, okay.” I headed back to the center of the room. I managed to find a librarian that didn’t frighten me, a scrawny fellow lost behind thick glasses. He was kind enough to draw me a little map.

Thick tomes in shades of green and a rusty brown filled three shelves and dated back to 1940. The one I wanted from 1957 was dog-eared and taped at the corners, looking ready to die. I slowly scrutinized every photo, turned every page, distracted by all the wonderful clothes. I almost forgot what I was looking for until I saw his face again.

I found Josh in one of the early photographs, wearing the same jacket, having that same suggestion of a smile. He stood against a brick wall along with a couple of the other guys in the football team. I froze when I saw the picture, expecting the image to rise up and reform into my ghost. The page felt cool to the touch, not as much as Josh himself felt, but a reminder of him nonetheless.

He was there five times, a mark I took to mean he was popular. My favorite shot was the simple junior class picture, with a deeper grin and hair slicked back. I became hard just thinking of him. The last one in the book had him standing next to another student, a smaller guy with sharp, handsome features. I noted how Josh’s arm draped around the other’s shoulder, the fingertips almost touching the other’s neck. Both smiled, and Josh looked at the other boy rather than the camera. I felt instantly jealous. Last night when he asked me if I was a virgin, Josh had suggested he had far more experience. This seemed proof of that. I closed the yearbook, ready to leave.

Trace was sitting on the floor, still reading when I returned.

“How goes it, Kolchak?” I asked her.

“So-so.” Trace smoothed out an errant lock of hair from in front of her eyes. “The book doesn’t always make sense. Maybe the author was nuts. Anyway, he sometimes says ghosts are nothing more than memories which a medium can tap into. But then in other places he lists a whole variety of spirits.” She turned a page. “Apparitions. Black dogs, Corpse candles.”

“So wait, I’ll be haunted by roadkill next?”

“Cute.” She held out a hand for help standing up. “I wish there was more on the subject.” She gestured at the stacks. “But after these two books,” she took from me the one I had looked over, “the rest are on animal magnetism, faery faiths, and crystals. Damn it, if we lived in New Orleans, we’d have a decent occult library.”

I chuckled. “If we lived in New Orleans, I’d be working on my third ghost boyfriend by now.”

We got some hot soup at the diner off Rt. 47. During the day, the patch of road where I had first seen Josh looked different, just a stretch of highway, nothing special. I tried to figure out just where along the stretch of macadam I first saw him. Had that also been the spot he was struck and killed?

The trip to the library had given me some answers but opened up even more questions, none of which I wanted to consider much. My head hurt, my sinuses complaining, and I massaged just below my cheeks just below the eyes.

Trace read her book. I tried with mine, but it all took place in Wales and I quickly lost interest. The paper placemat under the bowl of cream of chicken was decorated with Halloween clip art.

“Heh, that’s what I want him to make me.” I broke up a packet of crackers into the bowl.

Trace looked up from the page. “Hmm?”

“Your brother. Would be cool if he made me a jack o’lantern.” I glanced down at my fingers remembering the feel of the clay he brought to the dinner table. A few crumbs clung to the tips and I brushed them off, seeing them sink into the pasty soup.

“Sure. He’d like that.”

The notion of someone bothering to hand-make me a present was the first good thought of the day. That quickly soured though, when I realized that Second Mike would probably sculpt something for anyone who asked. It’s not like he was doing it special for me. I wasn’t sure why, but I wished that was the case.

Back at my aunt’s house, I collapsed onto the sofa. On the coffee table lay a newspaper open to the crossword. Aunt Jan had filled in only a third of the puzzle. Maybe she lost interest? Who really cares what German port city is on the Rhine or a five-letter word for tearjerker? I took up the pen and began filling the boxes with words that mattered. Josh became 33 down. Trace 12 across. I saw that 2 down started with M; without thought I filled in Mike and blackened in the final empty box so the name would fit. Then came ghost and passion and why not 1957 as well.

“What’s with 1957?”

My aunt startled me. I looked up to see her reading over my shoulder.

She groaned playfully. “Have you been reading my driver’s license?”

“No. Why?” I quickly pushed away the paper. “You were born in ’57?”

She nodded and sat down in the recliner.

“So you’ve lived your whole life here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever hear anything strange happen? Say out on Rt. 47?”

“Has Trace been telling you about the ghost?”

I had been hoping she would say something like that. “Ghost?” I tried to act ignorant.

“Yeah, well I guess every kid in town hears it at one time or another. It’s our own little spook story. In the 50’s, some high school student got run down on 47. A couple people say they’ve seen him walking the road. Like that legend of the ‘phantom hitchhiker,’ only our town ghost never stops or speaks to anyone. Just keeps walking until he disappears.”

“Have you ever seen him?” My voice had dropped low, like a conspiratorial whisper.

My aunt laughed and blushed. “Well, when I was your age, some friends and I went out to 47 real late at night, hoping to see the ghost. It was a warm summer night. We hid in the bushes along the roadside. Your grandmother gave me no end of grief when she found twigs and dirt all over my clothes the next morning.”

“And?”

My aunt shook her head. “We never saw anything other than a couple of deer. All that happened was we smoked a few cigarettes and finished off a bottle of scotch Sheila Michaels swiped from her father’s stash.”

“Heh. Never thought of you as a wild one.”

Aunt Jan gave me a little smile. “I wasn’t always the upstanding citizen you know now.”

“So what was the craziest thing you ever did?”

“Sounds like the truth or dare games I played as a kid. I guess the worst thing I ever did was steal a car.” Her eyes looked out towards the bay window.

“Grand theft?”

From her unfocused gaze, I imagined she was seeing the past. “Not really. I was twenty and met this boy one summer at the shore while visiting friends. He lived in the next county and I wanted to see him after we both went home. So I borrowed your grandmother’s car.”

“Let me guess. This was not your normal borrowing?”

She chuckled. “Your aunt Becky was the responsible one. Your mother was the favorite. Me…. your grandmother called the police when she woke and found both the car and that troublesome middle child of hers gone. I didn’t even reach the county line when the police pulled me over.”

“Damn.” What a bitch I had for a grandmother. I didn’t remember her at all; she had died when I turned four. Still, I could see where my mother’s moods came from.

“Your turn. What’s the worst thing you ever did?”

That was easy. But I couldn’t tell her.

There was this boy who lived a block away from my folk’s house. We were in the same grade and not really friends, but I hung out with him now and then. Mostly because he wasn’t bad looking and had a ton of underground music burnt on CDs.

We cut school one afternoon late last spring and were hanging out in his bedroom when he pulled a few magazines out from under the cushion of a chair. I had never seen porn before. The boy tossed me one then began leafing through another. I opened the magazine. The naked women spread wide on the page looked airbrushed to be inhuman, their skin too tan, too glossy.

The other boy started talking about girls. He did that a lot. This time though he was explicit, telling me what he wanted to do with the ones in his lap. I glanced up to see him rubbing the crotch of his jeans. I blushed and looked back to the magazine, but kept on sneaking peeks at him squeezing the outline of his dick. He asked me what I thought of the girls. I shrugged and stupidly told him, “Okay, but not really my thing.” He laughed at me, asking if I got off on kinky stuff. He mentioned pictures of women in high heels and shiny vinyl corsets leading men around on leashes he found online. He wondered if I wanted some girl at school to spank me and make me bark like a dog.

“No,” I said, “not that.” In my head, I told myself to shut the hell up.

But he went on, mentioning really demented things. Stomping mice, being swallowed by gigantic women, and even eating shit and I kept on shaking my head, totally amazed he knew about such things. Finally, he flat out asked me what I wanted.

I don’t know why I told him. Maybe years of desire, feeling the need to touch and taste another boy had driven me so much to the edge that I lost all control. Or maybe I was just stupid. Without even thinking, I said, “I want to give you a blowjob.”

His face fell, the skin turning gray. I knew I had made a mistake, had let my disguise fall. I stood up, the dirty magazine falling from my lap, and headed for the door.

“Faggot,” I heard snarled at my back and something hard and fast hit my head above my left ear. I saw the tennis ball bounce between my feet. The first tears started to fall as I looked over my shoulder at him. He held his alarm clock ready to throw. I heard it crash against the door I shut behind me a moment later.

Afterwards, I hid in my room, sick to my stomach with self-loathing and pity. It only took four hours for all the local kids to know, two days for the neighborhood to whisper behind my back and a week for my parents to threaten to kick me out. They told me I was a tremendous disappointment as well as a sick child. I left the very next morning. The bus station opened before my folks even woke up.

All of this went through my head in a matter of seconds. “Nothing really. Staying out all night. That’s the worst.” I hated lying to her. “I’m beat. I think I’ll go lie down.”

But I didn’t sleep. Rather, I lay in bed, dressed warmly, sniffling and waiting and hoping for him to come. I tried to relax, yet I kept glancing back at the clock. When I yawned and saw my breath hanging in the air, the room suddenly cold, I knew he was near.

I heard his voice before I saw him. He called my name softly. I shivered in anticipation. He appeared beside the bed, close enough hat he startled me. He sat down next to me, the mattress unmoving beneath him, and began teasing me, rubbing my chest. At first I could not feel his touch, but as I grew colder he seemed to gain more substance until he finally tugged up my sweater to uncover me.

I looked into that beautiful face, more than anyone should ever be. If being a medium, being a freak, meant that I could have someone like him, I was more than willing to risk scares from all the other spirits just to be able to be with Josh.

“You’re mine,” he whispered, his face moving close to my bare skin. My hands clutched the sheets tightly as I fought to keep still while he tickled me with his mouth below the ribs. I gasped, the touch of his lips almost painful, but delightfully so.

He gazed up at me then and smirked, looking smug and sure of himself. He moved up to my face. I lay rigid beneath him. “You feel so warm.”

When he kissed me, I forgot all about last night’s embrace. This set new standards, chilling my mouth and tongue, as I had to remember to breathe. He relented only when I was sure I must be turning blue.

With his lips brushing across my forehead, it was an effort to talk. But I needed to tell him how he made me feel. “Josh... I could... I’ve never wanted anyone so much... so fast.”

He chuckled lightly. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he murmured.

Just that simple word was enough to splash cold water on the beguiling moment. Instead of another kiss, I wanted to know who else he had loved. “Tell me.”

Josh shook his head and drifted towards my ear, making me tremble as he nuzzled it.

“Tell me,” I said again, though much weaker.

“Roddy razzing my berries under the bleachers.”

“Was he... in the yearbook...” He felt heavier atop me than moments ago. Every time I inhaled, it hurt. “That picture... was of you both?”

“Yes. Even after he took up with that sophomore from the sticks, Roddy wanted me.”

I think he began licking my neck but everything felt so cold I could not be sure. Something chilled began to slip down below my waistband.

A knock on the door stopped me in mid-moan.

“Oh fuck,” I muttered.

Another knock and my aunt’s voice calling my name. I heard the knob rattle, maybe turning.

“No,” I cried out. My hand rose up, sinking up into Josh by an inch or two and pushing him off me. With that sudden, frantic touch an eruption of new memories flooded my head.

I’m lying on the sofa in the family living room, the sound turned down on a black and white set so huge it dominates the rest of the furniture. Wagon Train is on the air and Roddy hates the show, doesn’t understand why it is so popular, so it’s easy to distract him. He lies on the floor next to me, his head leaning back so that soft, dark hair brushes my arm. Both our pants are undone and slipped down while our hands jack each other off. I can hear his heavy breathing and know he’s close. I stop and reach down to clamp my hand over his lightly-haired chest, squeezing where his heart is. Roddy arches back and even though he doesn’t utter a word, I could see he mouths my name. Josh. He shudders and comes and the tips of my fingers slide through the sweat and spunk on his chest.

It lasted only a moment and then I was alone in bed. The door had opened an inch before my aunt quickly pulled it shut.

I panted, rubbing my face, feeling lost. As I rose up, a bit unsteady, I could not focus on a lie for my aunt. I kept wondering if Josh, even as he made out with me, was thinking back to Roddy.

 

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