LANE DEVERS

Graveyard Ghosts

The beginning is easy: one
group (the ghosts) hide in the
woods while the others stand at
the base headstone, chanting.

              At the school parades we were never allowed to cover our faces. No masks, goggles, or sunglasses worn indoors. So the same year my brother was a Chicago Bear quarterback,I was a helmet-less power ranger. My cheeks and tears visible to all.

Everyone must have a flashlight,
be home by dark. The younger
siblings always stuck as ghosts,
hiding for the seekers.

There was a story some of us had heard by then about a girl in the Broadmoor hotel, who would flush all of the toilets in the penthouse each night. Break the plumbing; dripping sinks, impossibly clogged drains, water running from the roof down the walls.

Every now and then one of our
mothers would eye us, timidly
ask what time we might be back.
Reminding us of the adults that
would lean against the opening
gates separating the yard from the
sidewalk, smoking.

Very few of us dressed as anything intended to be scary, every attempt unsuccessful. Each elementary party had someone with face paint so cheap it would melt as the festivities went on, revealing our classmate back to us.

Once when passing the central altar, an
angel kneeling in prayer, a man yelled
for us to leave him alone. Told us we
were interrupting him and his wife,
gestured to a lumpy headstone too old
to be anyone he remembered. We all
stared back until he made kissy faces at
the air, then we scattered.

There was a girl named Mackenzie in my second grade class that pulled me aside when a group of us were trick or  treating that year. She told me she heard knocking at her window at night, that it might be her dead uncle calling for her. She had clumpy black hair that resembled a wig and sucked each of her

fingers individually while nervous. That night we chanted some-
thing about the devil into her bathroom mirror and nothing
happened. We both were and weren’t disappointed.

Our least favorite part was the walk home.
Pairs of siblings splitting off into their
respective driveways. Our house being
the one at the end of the block, the final
the stretch was the darkest. Having lost
What visibility everyone else’s light had
Been offering.

When I turned six my mother thought something must have
been wrong. My jaw remained in a lock position for nine
months, in my sleep I would grind my back teeth together
until I bled at the lips, scratched at my bedpost until my
fingernails fell out. She called every priest she knew,
kept one arm draped across my chest to hold me still.

There was a ghost story some of us started to tell about the girl in the Broadmoor hotel whose hair dryer fried her inside bath water when she was napping. How she wanted revenge, or just liked pranks, or actually drowned.

Once, just before reaching the end of the
cul--de-sac my brother turned out his lantern
and yanked on my ankle until I cried.

I remember waking up to find I had clawed at my
kneecaps until they bled. I wrapped a white t-shirt
around the wounds in tight loops until none of the red
was showing. Then I went back to sleep.

For weeks, our roof had a leak that would drip against
our carpet is like a metronome whenever it would rain.
We kept a deaf Dalmatian that would lick the same
spot again and again, drying so quickly there was no
longer a need to place a garbage can beneath it. The
same month, she died of what the vets thought was a
heart attack, my mom swearing she was perfectly in
shape.

all of us shouting in successions of three:
come out, come out, come out whoever you are.

Lane Devers is a senior at Interlochen Arts Academy. His work has appeared most recently in places like Juked, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere.