A Head Full of Ghosts

by Paul Tremblay

“Are you good at keeping secrets, Merry?” “I’m better than some.” I pause, then add, “More often than not, they keep me,” only because it sounds simultaneously mysterious and pithy.

I woke up yesterday and just sort of knew the story, like it was something that’s always been there in my head. Stories are like that sometimes, I think. Even real ones. And I know this one was a horrible, terrible, no good story, but I—I can’t stop thinking about it, you know?

So heaven was this vague, uneasy, almost cartoonish concept, a confusing cultural mashup of puffy clouds, harps, winged angels, golden sunlight, a giant hand that may or may not belong to a giant man with a flowing white beard named God. It was this exotic place kids at school would sometimes talk about, telling me their dead grandparents or pets were there. I didn’t understand it, what it was, why it was, and I didn’t really want to.

There was a volcanic increase of volume that shattered everything in my head, which I tried to hold together with my little hands, but pieces slipped through.

That night, standing in Marjorie’s doorway, when I knew nothing of night terrors and old plaster, I saw Marjorie clinging to the wall like a spider. Her circular poster collage, her collection of glossy body parts, was her web, and she hovered over its center. Her arms and legs were spread-eagled, with her hands, wrists, feet, and ankles sunk into the wall as though it were slowly absorbing her.

There’s nothing wrong with me, Merry. Only my bones want to grow through my skin like the growing things and pierce the world.

To my recollection, no one asked me about that night.

I humored him even though I wanted to drop to the floor in a boneless heap and weave myself into the fibers of the throw rug, to disappear under everyone’s feet and to be forgotten. I danced on my toes until they cramped while he halfheartedly opened and closed his outstretched legs in weak attempts to catch me.

Real Marjorie is an object to be observed, but never too closely as we the voyeurs might find she’s a real teenage girl and actually begin to be concerned for her mental health and general well-being.

If she was possessed by anything other than faulty brain chemistry and/or DNA, I like to imagine her as being possessed by the vast, awesome and awful monster that is popular culture. Possessed by the collective of ideas!)

Because of what Dad had said earlier, I knew I was the subject. After the months of all-things-for-Marjorie, I was pleased that something happening in this house potentially involved me. With Marjorie almost exclusively sucking up all our parental resources, I’d felt like I was getting lost, a loose picture that had fallen out of the family album.

Marjorie grunted the words not like a demon, but like only surly teens can.

Have you seen a demon before? What did it look like? Could you see it inside the other person, pressing out on the skin from inside their body? Did you see the outline of a claw, a wing, a face, of a monster in skin? Or can a demon be someone who looks just like me, so it looks like a person stuck inside another person? Does the demon inside leave any marks? Are the possessed marked, so you can tell who’s possessed and who isn’t? Do the marks look like this?”

You believe because it’s easier than dealing with the idea that you just willingly watched a sick, troubled teenage girl purposefully choose to jump from a ledge.