[START OF RECORDING]
LANGDON: Frank Langdon recording. Date: August 2nd, 1975. Could you state your name for the record, please?
KING: Melissa King, but everyone just calls me Mel.
LANGDON: Okay, Mel. How would you describe it? This thing you do?
KING: My mother called it a gift.
LANGDON: Does it feel like that to you? A gift?
KING: Sometimes, when I’m able to get closure to a family, or help someone move on. Other times…
LANGDON: Other times?
KING: It’s hard to think something is a gift when you’re eight years old and you realize no one else in your class knows what a bullet hole does to a human body.
LANGDON: Jesus.
KING: Sorry, that was too much.
LANGDON: No, it wasn’t too much. I’m writing this book because I want the raw truth about people with your gift. I’m just sorry you had to go through that. Can you always tell what someone died of?
KING: Not always. Ghosts look how they did the second they ceased living. It’s easy to tell with more violent deaths, but there’s no way to know what did it in most cases.
LANGDON: And you can really see them? It isn’t that you can imagine them in your mind’s eye or they’re just a feeling you get? You can see them the same as you can see me?
KING: Well, yes. That’s why I asked to take your picture, earlier. Ghosts don’t show up in Polaroids.
LANGDON: But I showed up?
KING: You did.
LANGDON: Wait, why did you say it like that.
[Pause. Neither speaks for a moment.]
KING: When you first approached me, there was a man with you. He said you were working together on this.
LANGDON: Are you serious?
KING: Greying beard? Wears a gold Star of David and has on an old leather jacket?
LANGDON: Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck I’m going to be sick.
KING: I’m so sorry. If, um, if you’re willing to listen Robby has something—
LANGDON: You really see him?
KING: Yes.
LANGDON: Fuck, sorry. Yeah, okay, what does he want me to know?
KING: He says: I love you, thank you, I forgive you, please forgive me.
LANGDON: God. God.
KING: We should take a break.
LANGDON: I’m sorry, please don’t go—
KING: No, no, I’m not leaving. I’m just going to pause the recordi—
[END OF RECORDING]
