Ghosts In The Attic

I can see dead people. I know. Kinda disturbing concept, right? What an introduction. But while this may seem like a shocking revelation for you, it’s something I’ve been dealing with my whole life.

I guess I’ve always known I was a little … different, but it never really clicked until I was six. It’s a bit difficult to ignore the fact that you’ve got a sixth sense or a third eye or whatever when your grandmother—who’s grave is still fresh from her funeral service the day prior—wakes you up at the buttcrack of dawn and demands you get your tush down in the kitchen before she burns your toast.

When Great Gran died at the tender age of 94, my mother inherited her frying pan. The result? I come downstairs every morning to Gran rattling around in the kitchen like a general preparing for war. 

No one knows about this quirk of mine. I told Mom once—back when I first saw Gran flipping hallucinatory pancakes in the air that fateful morning—but all I got out of that was one weird look and three appointments with a child psychologist.

Suffice to say, I learned my lesson.

It’s been fourteen years now, and I guess you could say I’m adjusting well to my role as “community ghost whisperer”. Part-time cashier at the local thrift store by day, I spend my life catering to cranky old geezers, self-entitled millennials, and the befuddled spirits of those whose possessions have inadvertently found themselves lodged on our rusty gray shelves.

Most of the time, it’s a pretty decent gig. Other times, I can’t help but wish that I was dead, myself.

Today would be classified under “other times”.

“Is this gonna work?” A portly man with a thick mustache throws a coffee machine up onto my register, and I stare down at it blankly. The coffee pot is missing, the plug is bent out of shape, and—for whatever reason—our thrift store has decided to throw an eight dollar sticker on it.

The man’s still staring at me.

“It’s hit or miss whether they’ve checked it out in the back or not,” I say, fingering the bent up plug prongs. “Sometimes they don’t like risking electrocution.”

The man blinks at me, his mustache twitching into a scowl. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No, sir.”

“So will the blasted machine work or not?”

“I can’t say for certain, sir.”

“Then what’s the point of you working here?” He’s angry now, and because I’m wearing a name tag and a company-ordered t-shirt, his anger is getting focused solely on me.

Joy.

“Eight bucks for a coffee machine and you can’t even tell me if it’s going to work?” The man shoves the machine at me and swats the air, like somehow I’m a disgusting scent, able to be wafted away with a mere wave. “Just forget it. I’m going to Wal-Mart.”

He stomps away before I tell him he should just go back by the bathrooms and rip the tag off; it’s what everyone else does.

The front door swings shut—the bell tinkling angrily—and I’m left at the register with the offending coffee machine. With a sigh, I heave it up into my arms and head towards the back, fully intending to pitch it into the garbage with the rest of the unusable donations. Unfortunately for me, I’m stopped midway by a furious old lady with an infestation of gray hairs speckling her upper lip.

It’s all I can do not to roll my eyes. “What’s wrong now, Martha?”

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?!” Martha asks, as if repeating my question will somehow make it obvious what’s happened to disturb her this time. “You’ve marked down my typewriter again, that’s what’s wrong! Fifteen dollars! A Remington Rand for fifteen dollars! The mere thought—!”

“It’s not selling, Martha,” I say, shifting the coffee machine to my other arm. The plug is digging into my wrist now. “Nobody wants to buy a used typewriter for thirty dollars. It doesn’t even have a ribbon.”

“Ribbon!” Martha splutters, following me as I continue my trek towards the back room. “Ribbon! Ribbon is but a trifle to the value of that holy machine! A typewriter is only as good as the words it’s produced, and that typewriter, my dear, has produced a lot of words.”

“No one is doubting that,” I say calmly. The machine looks like it’s been through a war zone. There’s no way anyone could doubt how much use it’s seen.

“Then why, in the name of all that is good and holy, have you marked my beautiful child for fifteen dollars? Why, if I was still alive...!”

I roll my eyes and let her tirade continue, trying to keep a pleasant, unconcerned expression plastered to my face as I pass by a gaggle of teenage girls ooh-ing and ah-ing over men’s thrifted flannel.

“—and one other thing—”

“Martha, please,” I hiss, gritting my teeth so the words might slither out unnoticed to those of us still living. “I don’t have time for this. I have to help the non-dearly departed at the moment.”

This makes Martha huff, dust billowing out of her nostrils. “Why, I never!” she scoffs, pointing her nose into the air. “When I was your age—”

I kick the door to the backroom open and disappear inside, letting her angry statement snap away as the door closes behind me. Breathing a sigh of relief is impossible, however. The backroom is my least favorite place in the entire building. Despite the fact that it’s a reprieve from the angry old hags and grumpy farts who litter the front of the store, the back is where the donated goods are—the newbs, as I like to put it. This is where everyone gathers when they’re first brought to The Attic, the fresh meat who don’t know heads or tails of where they are or why they’re here. They’re still coping, trying to figure out why their loved ones would dump their precious belongings off at an old thrift store rather than hold onto them forever.

“But my dusty old records!” you say. “But my creepy porcelain dolls with the sunken black eyes!” Boo-hoo, no one cares. Every ‘thing’ you’ve ever collected, every ‘thing’ you’ve ever cherished or loved, it’s all just fodder for our shelves, dusty old artifacts that no one really wants. You kick the bucket, we make a profit.

That should be our motto.

Today the back room is swarming—must be a good day for donations. I have to elbow my way to the back of the room, coffee machine still tottering in my grip, and by the time I break back through to the front, my skin is prickling with the feeling of too many eyes and bodies crammed into too little space.

“Excuse me, sir…” A man who looks to be somewhere in the general ballpark range of 90 to 100 grabs my arm, his icy fingers slipping straight through flesh and bone as if I wasn’t even made of matter. His complexion is pale and flaky, made only paler and flakier by the strange transparency that overtakes every single dead person I’ve met. “Could you please tell me where I am?”

The back room is too crowded with people—some living, most dead—and random piles of donated junk to tell which item he belongs to, but something tells me that whatever it is, it’s just as rusty and spotted as he is.

I shake off the icky feeling of having a dead person run their fingers through your bones before answering, my palm already pushing open the swinging doors that lead out to the store. “You’re at The Attic, my friend,” I say over my shoulder. The man’s eyes are the palest ice blue I’ve ever seen. It’s difficult to look him in the face. “Might as well get adjusted to the place. You might be here a while.”

It’s never easy to tell how long someone will stay at The Attic. Some leave within minutes of hitting the floor, others—like Martha—take longer. Our oldest resident, Mr. Grule, has been here for three months and twenty-eight days—a fact which he frequently touts at random intervals throughout the day. I saw his possession—a fancy gold pocket watch from the 1800’s—exactly once, and then … nothing. It’s still here, though, lurking somewhere in this store like the dead people that only I can see. I know because Mr. Grule is still here, and if the possessor is still here, then so is the possession.

Someone will find it eventually, though. The geezer probably shoved it under one of the shelving units, thinking he could stay here forever.

It’s happened before. Twice.

“Oi! Barker! Get up to the register, will you? We’ve got a line forming!” My boss waves me towards the front of the store, and, holding back the world’s heaviest sigh, I trudge up to the counter. Still wiping away the residue of ghost fingers, I do my best to smile at the girl standing on the other side, but despite my best efforts, it still comes out as a grimace. Not that it really matters, anyway. The girl’s not paying a speck of attention to me. She’s chatting up her bestie beside her, her eyes bright with excitement, which I assume has something to do with the object she’s buying. Reluctantly, I drop my gaze to the item she’s dropped onto the counter.

To my shock, it’s Martha’s typewriter.

“Finally!” Martha’s there in an instant, her mustache grayer than ever and her chest puffed with pride. “So you see, Mr. Barker, someone still appreciates a precious writing tool when they see one! I bet she would have even payed full price for it had you not been so determined to shame me.”

Doing my best to avoid responding negatively to the dead person only I can see, I begin ringing up the typewriter in silence, letting Martha prattle on in my right ear and the girl in my left. I’m just beginning to question whether or not I should risk stuffing the thing in a bag or not when what the girl’s saying finally registers.

“It shouldn’t be too hard to rip those keys off, right? They’re going to make such pretty rings! My Etsy customers will absolutely adore them.”

Martha splutters to a stop, her eyes bulging out of their sockets. For once, words seem to utterly fail her.

“You might be able to turn the body into a planter, too,” the girl’s friend says, her fingers tapping at her cell phone furiously. “Pinterest has a boatload of ideas here. Look.” Best Friend shoves her phone under the first girl’s nose, and together they squeal over DIY boards.

Taking advantage of their little bubble of ecstasy, I glance over at Martha. “You’re right,” I say, tapping the button which will calculate the total. “They do seem appreciative.”

Martha’s jaw snaps shut, and she scowls at me, her lips pursed to rival even a lemon’s sourest pucker.

I choose this particular moment to tell the girl her total.

After handing her the change and deciding that the mechanical beast in front of me would just split through one of our flimsy plastic bags, I watch as Martha stalks out of the building with her new friends, her typewriter clutched like a treasure in the young girl’s hands.

The rest of the day passes as they typically do: ringing people out, haggling over prices with actual hags, watching the residents of our little store walk out those big glass doors into the dazzling sunshine. Eventually the day turns into a blur, transaction after transaction blending into one another until—

I freeze. There’s a guitar on my counter. Normally this wouldn’t surprise me—we get old guitars all the time—but this one … this one I recognize.

It’s a raw green Fender Stratocaster, two strings missing. It belongs—belonged—to my brother, Robbie. His first guitar. Dad gave it to him for his birthday. For three whole years you couldn’t pry him away from the stupid thing, but then he graduated and moved away to college and got a ‘real’ job, and I guess his dream of being the next Bon Jovi sort of faded away.

Strange that. How something could die so easily.

Mom had said she was going to go through his room and donate some of the old stuff he’d left behind, but I can’t help but feel strange seeing Robbie’s old guitar sitting on my counter like a dead paperweight. Selling some random stranger’s junk is one thing. Selling my brother’s favorite guitar is another. I wonder if he’ll miss it when he comes home for Christmas. I wonder if he’ll ask mom where it is, if he’ll be crushed when she says she donated it.

I wonder if he’ll even know it’s missing at all, if he’ll forget it even existed. If he’ll pretend like leaving it behind somehow makes it worthless.

Kinda like he did with me.

I swallow, and my hand comes down on the Stratocaster, spinning it around so that I can read the sticker stuck to the fingerboard.

Fifteen dollars. Martha’s disdain doesn’t feel so misplaced now.

“Nice guitar,” I say, forcing my fingers to remain steady as I type in the numbers. “You play?”

The buyer shrugs one shoulder. Nonchalant, the way people do when they want to brag without bragging. “Little bit. I’m still picking it up. How ‘bout you?”

“No, but my brother does … did.” I swallow and push the guitar towards him. “That’ll be fifteen dollars and ninety—”

That’s when it happens. The crash. The sound of metal crushing metal, people screaming in the parking lot. I’ll never understand why everything slows to a crawl when horrible things happen. I guess it’s a way for our brains to cope with all the yuck life’s flinging our way in rapid succession.

My hand drops away from the register, and the next thing I know, lights are flashing out in the street, ambulance sirens blaring in the distance.

People are flocking to the huge, arching windows at the front of the store, blocking my view of whatever’s happening out on the pavement.

As it turns out, looking outside is unnecessary.

Something flickers in my peripheral vision, and I spin back around, my throat going dry as my customer flinches away from the parking lot.

“Oh, that’s just horrible,” he mutters. “Poor kid.”

I don’t reply. I think, even if I tried, it would come out as nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

Someone new stands at my counter now, but I know by the transparent skin and dull eyes that only I can see him.

He blinks, his expression muddled as he glances down at the Stratocaster. Then his gaze lifts, finds mine.

Recognition sparks between us, and the name is ripped from my throat before I can stop it, hoarse and shallow and pleading that it isn’t true.

This can’t be happening. It can’t.

“Robbie…”