I live alone in a small town and I hear ghosts all the time. I know you probably don’t believe me, but you should. I hear ghosts, I hear them everywhere in this little town, where I’m sure there are more of them than there are people, and now they’ve become my job.
Does that sound strange?
It shouldn’t, because they’re here.
And it’s my job to find them and help them move on.
I was 56 years old when I started the group.
I registered it with the state as an official LLC and I made t-shirts that said “Michigamua Paranormal Society” on them with a logo that I designed myself on the computer in the public library, and when we wear the t-shirts and go places around town the people that see us laugh. The people where we live, like most people who live in small towns in this young country, don’t understand what we do and behind their hands when we walk past them they call us “ghost hunters”, as if the two words themselves could dismiss and make un-real what they don’t want to admit is real, not even to themselves, but lord knows I don’t know anything about that.
What I do know, though, is that we all joined for different reasons, all of us that are in the group.
But, of course, we all joined for the same one, too.
I was alone in the beginning, when I first started it, and when I first registered the LLC, but now there are four of us. Sometimes we work together, and sometimes we work on our own, and between all of us and the cases that we’ve taken on we’ve found ghosts and traces of the supernatural in more places than you could possibly imagine: an out-of-order tanning salon, a family restaurant, some of the too-many churches in our small little town, gas stations, car dealerships, doctor’s offices, banks, an ice cream parlor that used to be a funeral home, a luxury yacht docked on Lake Michigan, too many private residences to count, and of course many, many different parts of the local high school.
Why are there so many there, at the high school?
I don’t know.
I just know that there are, because I’ve seen them.
And we’ve worked in partnership with everyone you could possibly imagine, too, using any method or tradition that’s requested or might have success. We’ve worked with Roman Catholic Priests, Protestant Ministers, Jewish Rabbis and Holy Imams. We’ve worked with those that believe in the church, those that believe in alternative and native forms of spirituality, and also those that don’t believe in anything further than what they can see. Those are the ones that confuse me the most. And after meeting and talking with so many of them, I think they confuse themselves, too. They go through their lives in a state of self-imposed ignorance until all of a sudden there’s a moment when they need someone that does what we do, because there’s no other rationale, no other explanation for what’s happened to them, and no one else to call, and so that’s then when they call us.
My phone rings.
Sometimes we get prank calls at our office (which is really just my living room), but that’s not what this call is.
And I know that because I can feel it.
It rings again.
I hesitate.
I’ve learned to pay attention and listen to how I feel and all of the subtle but ever-present things that come from inside our bodies which are also the things that I used to ignore when I was younger, like so many of us do. But I listen to those things now, and so I know what this call is going to be before I hear the words, the voice, the request. I know what this call is going to be because it’s what I’ve been waiting for, not with anticipation, but with something else.
“Hello?” I say, as I pick up the receiver to the old rotary phone that I keep mounted on the wall because I refuse to have a cordless phone or a computer in the house. My son thinks that’s strange when I tell him and when I returned the computer he got me for Christmas, but I won’t allow them in my house because of what I do and how I know that even things that we can’t see can harm us, and how it’s the things that we can’t see that perhaps even harm us the most.
“Is this Helen?” I hear the voice on the other end, old and tired.
I nod.
“This is Helen,” I breathe.
Then I listen to the story that I already know will be said, the words that I already know will come. And as I listen I’ll close my eyes to quiet my mind and to search my soul and to ask all of the spirits and guides that are around me if I can do this, if I’m strong enough, if all the work that I’ve done has truly led me here to this moment, or if I need to do more, if I’m still not ready.
Am I?
But there’s no feeling inside, not yet, so I still don’t know.
I hear more words and then I nod again before I hang up and slowly make a cup of tea that I take outside and to the garden where I hold the warm mug tightly in my hands. There’s a chill that’s in the air that can be normal this time of year, but this isn’t a normal chill, I know, because this is one that’s been brought here by the rare wind that blows in from the east.
It doesn’t often do that, the wind.
In this part of the world, weather moves across the lake, and not towards it.
I turn my head and I feel it.
The wind, the east wind.
All of the cases that I agree to proceed with take something from me, I know, but this one will take more, I can feel that, deep inside. This one will take much, much more because this case will be more than just an investigation that ends with calming words and firm assurances of the mainly good intention of spirits and some candles and a bundle of sage that’s left behind and invoiced for later.
Because, for the first time, this isn’t a job.
These won’t be strangers.
This will be my love, and my heart.
I think again of how hard it will be, if I accept, and how much I know that I’ll have to give, but then I think of what will come after, if I’m successful: I think of walking back here, out to my garden, and I think of how it will look different, how the greys will be less grey, and how the roses will finally bloom again, and I know what I’ll answer and what I’ll do because I also know that sometimes and at certain points in our lives what we do matters, and this will be that moment for me.
This will matter.
And it will matter for me, and no one else.
Because he was mine, only mine.
I know you might not believe all this that I’m telling you, but you should, you should believe it, because it’s true, and it’s my job, and it’s the job of three others, as well. It wasn’t a job that was given to us, but one that we made, and if you’d seen what we’ve seen in the many places we’ve been or heard what we’ve heard during all of the cases that we’ve taken on then you would believe, too, and it would be different, everything would be different, I know it would, and you wouldn’t whisper behind your hand if you saw us walk past in our t-shirts.
But this isn’t your story.
It’s mine.
And while for you the story will go on, it will surely continue to go on, and the moments in your lives that will matter are still many days and weeks and years away, for me, they’re here, and it’s almost over now, and I can feel it again – that feeling that I told you I learned long ago not to ignore – and when it finally does end, and I’m standing in this garden once more, the chill will be gone, and so will the east wind, and there will be peace. There will finally be peace between these trees and near these hedges and amongst these rose bushes. There will be peace at last, for me, for us, because with all the voices that I’ve heard in this town there’s still one that I’ve been searching for, every day, every hour, every moment since it was taken, one voice that I’ve been waiting so long to hear and when I’m back in this garden again, in our garden – the one that we built, together – after all that I know now is going to come, then I will.
“I’m home,” Jack will whisper.
And then, finally, I will be, too.
—
Christopher Cosmos was raised in the Midwest and attended the University of Michigan as the recipient of a Chick Evans Scholarship. He’s an author and Black List-screenwriter whose debut novel, ONCE WE WERE HERE, is set to be published by Arcade and Simon & Schuster on October 20, 2020. The novel is currently available for pre-order, and more information can be found at www.christophercosmos.com.
