WANTED
You find the advert face down on the table. You’re picking up after your grandma. She insists her mind is sharp as a tack but her empty tea cups and loose handkerchiefs and day-old newspapers litter every surface. You scan the paper, and a part of you is sure there aren’t any more jobs like this.
The paper is yesterday’s paper and the various jobs match LinkedIn: nannying and dog walker and kitchen staff. The advert, the one, is stark against the others. You read the tiny printed words over and over, always getting stuck on the word WANTED.
Your friends told you not to go: what kind of job asks you to meet in the middle of the woods? What kind of jobs has no website or contact info? What kind of jobs were advertised in the goddamn paper? You friends wouldn’t get it.
Anastasia, your best friend since third class, tells you to keep your “Find My Phone” on and call when you get there. She really wouldn’t get it. Your grandma tells you that this is the world, the other version of it, and you are her granddaughter. So go.
You walk the three and a half miles in high heels. This job probably wouldn’t even expect high heels, but old habits die hard. You were once convinced in college your girlfriend cast a curse on you, the sleepless nights and a relentless rash proved it. Now that you’re an adult, an adult-adult, you don't think so anymore. If anything was a witch’s spell, it was LinkedIn. Hours and hours of youth wasted on the same go-around.
5 years of experience and 3 different references and no street parking but the bus is only a block away. You can walk, right? Unpaid overtime and shaving your legs to go sit for an hour in an uncomfortable plastic chair. That’s an unusual last name, is it a family one? Ah. I see.
You can walk for a long while. Your heels slup, slup, slup in the soupy ground and it takes you longer than you’d like to look around. The street lights dwindle. The trees gather. The path disappears. The woods are thick and unfamiliar and an iron fence rises in the distance. Despite the late summer heat, the air smells of frost. Maybe Anastasia was right–whether you are your grandmother’s descendent or not.
She comes out of the woods on rail-thin chicken legs. Her skirt is short, cut at a horizontal angle, and she looks like where the punk scene from the 80s went to die. She has a studded leather jacket and bleach-blonde asymmetrical hair. You shove your hands in your stupid suit jacket and check the skies. Half-moon, just risen, you’re right on time.
“You here for the advert?”
“It’s half-moon, isn’t it?” you say back and flash her a tight smile. You had had a sudden sinking feeling about her ability to write you a paycheck.Â
She looks you up and down. “Spirit?”
“Ghoul.” You shrug. “Yaga?” She sticks out one of her stalky chicken legs. “Servant of one. Two gens back. On my father’s side.” Your strained smile gentles. “I’m Katie.” Her smile sharpens in response. “Stephanie. Come on, let’s take a walk.” “Was that a real advert, Stephanie?” You saddle up beside her despite yourself. “Cause if you’re just here to pull my leg, know that I'm pretty hard to put down.” She lets out a harsh laugh that sounds like it hurts. “I’m counting on it.” She winks. “Now, not sure I know your line so well, what’s the difference between a ghoul and a spirit?” What is a spirit or ghoul? What was a gig worker or a salaried one? Perhaps a whole length away. Stephanie pushes a bush aside to reveal a hole in the iron fence and leads you through. The grass turns from wild heather to manicured green and you emerge into a field of rolling hills. Your skin prickles. You might be hard to kill, but not to capture. You stay low to the ground.
“Can I be paid upfront?” Her breath smells of winter frost and fresh-turned soil. “You down that bad?”
You survey the trimmed grasses and gentle slopes, the unnatural prickle spreads through your skin to your bone. A house rises in the far-distance, and you swallow thickly. “Is this some Scooby Doo shit?”
“Come on.” She pushes your shoulder. “I’ll pay upfront. The only real question is if you’ve got a pair of lungs on you.” You toss your ponytail back. “For as long as you like. But, I gotta ask, are there really not any free banshees right now?” Stephanie’s smile falters for the first time. “Old world is dying,” she snorts. “Or just buried deep enough to feel that way.” “We’re still here.” “Still here.” She slips you two hundred and takes you to the side of a small lake. The water is murky and the edges form an unnatural drop. She hands you a lightweight dress, gauzy and impossibly white, and you wrinkle your nose. You looked back and forth between the far-distant house and the lake.
It took you the whole walk to place the gate and the house and the land: The Turnpikes. Built almost seven generations back and larger than ever. You couldn’t imagine. The old world was dying, but you supposed it was also just right there. You put the dress on and kick your heels off. Gathering your stuff, Stephanie gives you a big thumbs up and backs away. You take a deep breath, you don't need many, but you had a feeling it would count.
A light in the far-distant window turns on. You see your grandma in your mind’s eye, her tangled green hair and wicked little smiles. All this for two hundred? But a ghoul isn't a banshee. You jump in feet first.
The wet and the cold and the dank water with no memory swallows you. You submerge in the tiny manmade lake, and when you come out, you come out screaming.
The fear of ghouls is an ancient one–something hard to kill. That can walk forever, fight forever, go Without forever. And you think, as you toss your head back, drip water, and let your lungs rattle in your chest, that you might scream forever too.
For two hundred bucks, a ghoul can be a banshee and a world can be made old and new and when you scream, you can scream until you’re made real again.
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