THE GHOST WHO LOST HIS BODY
A Midlife Psychic Medium Newsletter Serial
Chapter One: The Naked Ghost
The thing about being a psychic medium is that it doesn’t keep business hours.
I was up before six because my sciatic nerve had opinions about the way I’d slept, and because somewhere around four a.m. I’d had a hot flash that could’ve thawed a Thanksgiving turkey, and once I’m up, I’m up. So I did what any reasonable fifty-something woman does when her body betrays her when it should be recovering. I went downstairs to make coffee and feel sorry for myself in private.
I got the coffee part right.
The privacy part fell apart the second I flicked on the kitchen light and found a naked man standing next to my refrigerator.
Now, I want to be clear. I have seen a lot of things in this kitchen. I’ve seen my mother float through the pantry door uninvited. I’ve seen Jake make a pancake shaped like something I won’t describe before the second cup of coffee. But a strange, undressed man by the Whirlpool at six in the morning was new, so I did what came naturally, which was scream a word my children are not allowed to hear. Even though they’re adults.
The man screamed too. Then he grabbed the dish rag off my oven handle and held it in front of himself, which would’ve been gallant if the towel weren’t the size of a cocktail napkin. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so terribly sorry. I don’t — I didn’t mean — oh, this is mortifying.”
That’s when I noticed the cold. The whole kitchen had dropped about fifteen degrees, the hair on my arms stood at attention, and a few flecks of gold drifted off the man’s shoulder then winked out before they reached the floor.
Dead. Of course he was dead. The living ones at least knock. Unless it’s Mel who hasn’t knocked since God created the heavens and the earth.
“Oh, my.” I pressed my hand to my chest to keep my heart where it belonged. “You scared the life out of me.”
“I scared the —” He stopped and looked down at himself, then back up at me with the kind of horror I had grown to expect from a ghost who didn’t know they were dead. “Why am I not wearing anything?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Madam, I would never. I am a gentleman.” He clutched the dish towel tighter and turned a delicate shade of see-through. “At least, I believe I am. I — please give me a moment.”
And then, I swear on my reading glasses, he scrunched up his face and clothes shimmered onto him, a piece at a time. A cardigan. Brown trousers. One brown loafer and one bedroom slipper, which I related to on a serious level. He looked down at his mismatched feet and sighed.
“Better?” he asked.
“Love the slipper.”
He shrugged. “I’ll keep working on it.”
I should’ve been more rattled than I was. But there’s something about a dead man apologizing for his nudity in a cardigan and a bedroom slipper that takes the fear right out of a situation. I poured my coffee, added too much of the cheap creamer my mother hates, and leaned against the counter. “Okay. Let’s make this simple. I’m Angela Panther, and I can see you because I have a gift. Though honestly, it’s not always a gift in my opinion. What’s your name?”
The man opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His face scrunched up again, harder this time, and the gold flecks flickered at his shoulders.
“I don’t — ” He pressed two fingers to his temple. “That’s strange. That’s very strange. I know it’s in here. I can feel the shape of it. It’s like reaching into your coat pocket for your keys and finding someone’s cut the bottom out.”
“You don’t know your name?”
“Apparently, I do not.” He said it slowly, the way you’d confess something to a doctor. “But I know three things. I know I’m dead. I know my body is — ” he wobbled his hand in the air, searching, “ — missing. Somewhere. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. I think that’s why I’m here. It isn’t where it ought to be. And I know that somewhere out there, somebody should be looking for me. Somebody should have noticed I was gone.”
He said that last part so quietly that I forgot, for a second, to be put out about my morning.
That, naturally, is when my mother showed up.
“Ah, Madone, who’s this one?” Ma drifted in through the pantry door in her floor-length blue robe, took one look at the man, and folded her transparent arms across her chest. “And why’s he in my kitchen?”
“It’s my kitchen, Ma.”
“You keep thinkin’ that.” She floated a slow circle around the man, head to toe, like a customs agent who already doesn’t like what’s in your suitcase. He stood very still and let her, which I respected. “Hmph. Cardigan. One slipper. Where’s the other slipper?”
“He’s working on it,” I said.
“He’s lying.”
“How would you know? He hasn’t said anything with you here yet.”
“I can tell.” She drifted closer to him, narrowed her eyes, and then — this is the part that stuck with me — she stopped. Just stopped mid-float. The shimmer left her edges for a second. Something crossed her face, and on my mother, that was as good as an alarm bell.
“Ma?” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.” She snapped back to herself so fast I almost believed her. “I’m a celestial being. I’m always okay. I’m just telling you, this one’s hiding something. You mark my words. I’ve got a sense about these things. It’s the celestial super sleuth in me.”
“The celestial super sleuth got the wrong house number for a ghost asking about his family three separate times. Don’t ask me to trust your super sleuthing skills.”
“That was a clerical error, and you know it.”
The dead man cleared his throat, which is a remarkable thing for a man with no working lungs to do. “I’m not hiding anything,” he said gently. “That would mean I had something to hide.”
Ma harrumphed and floated up to the ceiling to sulk, which is her version of leaving a room without the dignity of a door.
That’s when Mel let herself in through the garage holding a pink bakery box, because Mel believes that life unaccompanied by pastry is a problem not taken seriously.
She got two steps in, felt the cold, and froze like a deer in a Kroger parking lot. “Nope.” She hugged the bakery box to her chest. “Why is it freezing in here?” She shook her head. “Tell me it’s just Fran.”
“It’s Fran. And a guest.”
“A guest, guest, or a — ” she dropped her voice to a stage whisper the entire neighborhood could’ve heard “— a dead guest?”
“Dead. He’s by the fridge. Cardigan, very polite, missing a shoe.”
Mel turned and squinted hard at my dishwasher, which was a solid three feet to the left of where the man actually stood. “Hi,” she said to the dishwasher, lifting one hand in a little wave. “I’m Mel. I’m not scared of you. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m a little scared of you. Just don’t do anything ghost-y, and I’ll be fine.”
“She’s talking to the GE,” Ma announced from the ceiling, briefly humored by her. “Madone, the woman is gorgeous and she can’t find a ghost with a flashlight and a map.”
“Ma says hi,” I told Mel, because I have manners.
The man inclined his head toward the dishwasher, anyway. “A pleasure, Mel. I apologize for the temperature. I gather that’s my fault. I don’t entirely have the hang of being dead yet.”
“She can’t see or hear you,” I said. “But I’ll tell her.” When I did, Mel’s whole face softened, the fear melting into something a lot closer to motherly.
“Aw,” she said. “He’s polite. Angela, the dead guy’s polite. The last one called me a name I had to look up.” She set the bakery box on the island and flipped it open. Cannoli. She slid the box toward the empty fourth stool, the one Jake always sets a coffee at for Ma, even though Ma can’t drink it. “Here, you two go. I know neither of you can eat it, but maybe if you just look at it you can get a sense of how it tastes. That’s the best I can do.”
“Thank you,” the man said with real feeling. He drifted over to look at the cannoli as if it were the nicest thing anyone had done for him in years. Which, given his situation, it may well have been.
“We can’t keep calling him ‘the dead guy,’” I said. “It’s rude.”
“We should call him Walt,” Mel said.
“Why Walt?”
“Because that’s what I imagine he looks like.” She turned the wrong way intending to acknowledge him, even though she couldn’t see even a shimmer of the ghost. “I mean, he’s grandpa-age, right?”
“Yes.” I looked at him. He looked back, hopeful and apologetic at the same time.
“Walt,” I tried. “Does that ring any bells?”
“No,” he admitted. “But it’s a kind thing to be called. Walt it is.”
From the ceiling, my mother made a noise like a teakettle deciding whether to whistle.
“Don’t get attached. I’m telling you. There’s more to this one than a missing slipper, and I don’t like it one bit.”
“You don’t like anything you can’t control, Ma.”
“I’m dead, Angela. I can control things you can’t imagine.”
“Right. Because you’re a celestial being.”
“Excuse me,” Walt said. “I mean no offense, but are you two Italian?”
I laughed. “What makes you think that?”
“What’s who think?” Mel asked. “I need information.” She stuffed half a cannoli into her mouth. “Please.”
“Walt asked if Ma and I were Italian.”
She burst out laughing. “Walt, Fran is as Italian as you can get, and Angela is a close second.” She winked at me. “Is he asking because of the bickering? That’s their love language.”
“She’s right,” I said. I poured a second cup of coffee because it was going to be that kind of day.
I’d just gotten the milk back in the fridge when Walt spoke again. He wasn’t looking at any of us. He was looking at his own reflection in the dark kitchen window, frowning at it like it belonged to a stranger he’d met once and couldn’t place. “Angela,” he said quietly. “May I tell you something, and you won’t laugh?”
“Walt, you can tell me anything.”
He was quiet a long moment. The gold flecks drifted slow off his shoulders, settling and vanishing, settling and vanishing.
“I keep reaching for who I was,” he said. “And every time I get close, it doesn’t feel like reaching back into one life.” He turned from the window and looked at me, and there was something underneath the politeness now, something that made the kitchen feel colder than any ghost ever had. “It feels like reaching back into two. I think —” He stopped. Steadied himself. “I think I used to be somebody else.”
Up on the ceiling, my mother went very, very still.
And she didn’t say a single word.
