How to Make a Ghost

murder. suicide, violence. gore. angry ghosts.  

Let's face it: 1966 was a bad year. Everything from 'race relations' to 'hairstyles' was bad. Leaded gasoline was bad.  

Dishwashers, terrible.      

Frozen dinners. Cat litter. All bad. 

And '66 was bad for GlenRio. Interstate 15 opened nine years earlier, hoovering all the weary travelers away. Sucking the life out of this one-trick tourist town. 

And as for door-to-door salesmen, extinction was drawing near… the smattering of die-hards still roaming the back roads knew it.  

Clarence McCastor was one of these cordial dinosaurs. He knew the end was near because he could see the asteroid coming. 

I knew because my wife was fucking the Sparkletts Man. 

Six brand spankin' new 'Electro-Lux' canister vacuum cleaners ordered by the 'Borax Wurks' out there in Pahrump. That would be 240 bucks commission in his pocket, making the two-hour drive from Vegas worthwhile. Or so he half-heartedly thought as he left town.  

The shit pouring from his AM radio was as bleak as the landscape around him. Fucking hillbilly music, station after station. An occasional feed from the strip featuring washed-up has-beens singing the same old crap for the past 20 years. He spent the two-hour drive listening to Winnemucca kick Elko’s ass, 64-32 in the high school basketball tournament regionals.   

Clarence wasn't surprised to find the Borax Wurks boarded up with a hand-painted 'FOR LEASE' sign on the loading dock doors. He wasn't upset at all.   

Because this morning, my wife told me to change the Sparkletts bottle, then laughed at me when I couldn't lift it. 

So, I strangled her with a yellow extension cord. 

It didn't bother him when his truck overheated down in Badwater Basin.                                                                              

Because after I killed my cheating wife, I threw her mangy cat in the microwave and punched the POPCORN button.   

He drove west, away from his house with the dead body on the kitchen floor, and the besmirched micro-wave on the counter, no longer concerned with his final destination. That's Fine! 

Because the cashier at 'Munch' n Pump' back in Shoshone, asked me, 

"Hotta nuf fer ya?" 

So, I shot him in the forehead... 

Losing the concept of time and distance, he drove. Aimless.  Lost.                                                                               Jagged limestone cliffs skirt the road, torn by hidden ravines, spreading like spider veins to nowhere. There is nothing here but dust, unrelenting sun, and no water.                                                                                                  So, you can imagine his surprise when confronted by a family of goats dashing across the road, disappearing into the labyrinthine hills. Compelled to follow them, he turned onto a two-lane road winding down into a narrow crevasse. 

Clarence noticed markings chiseled in the limestone cliff. 

'COFFIN VALLY ROAD Glen Rio-3 m.'  

It was slow going on Coffin Valley Road, mostly gravel, and never repaired asphalt. An outcropping of rock jutting from the limestone cliff created a blind curve. He crept around the corner, fully expecting a calamitous welcome on the other side. An impassable rockslide. Or perhaps a deep chasm where the road had collapsed. 

Instead stood a town limits sign, leaning east, like a rusty schooner, buffeted by the westerly wind. 

GLEN RIO Nev.     

Est.1926                                    

Pop. 36  

Elev. 6 ft. 

I had to pull over. Dean Martin was singing ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ reminding me of the early days with my wife when we liked each other.                                                          I smoked a Chesterfield, wiped the tears and snot from my face, and crept down Main Street. 

A clapboard antique shop, paint peeling. Behind the cracked glass, sitting on display, was an impossible amount of cornware and blue glass. It seemed the 'SORRY WE'RE CLOSED' sign hadn't been touched in years.  

Further down sat a Sinclair gas station with archways and rusty gas pumps. The main building was gutted by fire.                                 

Victorian-style houses buried in dunes of drifting prairie dust reminded me of beached whales rotting in the sun.

The only apparent residents were the tumbleweeds. They gathered in the corners and along the fence lines where they trembled, whispered, and waited.  

And then came the laughter. Thick with phlegm coughed up from ancient lungs. I heard that bubbling cackle somewhere before. And when I saw her staring at me in the rear view mirror with a ‘fuck you’ grin on her old leather face, it all came back to me.  

I stopped at her roadside stand the day before. 'HaTcH ChiLi' painted sloppy on a piece of plywood caught my eye. I remembered her hateful gaze as I perused her chili ristras and painted gourds, thinking, ‘Wow, she hates me just because I’m a white guy...’ 

I almost bought a pound of pinon nuts, even picking up a bag and turning towards the old lady.                                                                                                Her expression was one of extreme suspicion. Daring me not to buy her nuts. 

Suddenly, it was crucial that I leave. I put the pinons back, buying instead one bright red chili pepper, mumbled 'thanks,' and headed to my truck. 

That’s when she laughed at me.  

I shivered despite the triple-digit temperature because it was the sound my Uncle Phil made when he choked on a chicken bone at the family reunion five years ago. 

“Reza para que haya agua cerca cuando te comas el fuego.” 

She called out to the back of my receding head. 

I didn’t turn around.  

 'Atomic Motor Lodge' 

 cried the once-grand marquee.  Twisted wires and shards of glass were all that remained of the neon tubing.                      

The mushroom cloud logo looked like just another dusty tumbleweed.                           

I pulled into the cracked and weedy parking lot, the tires crunching.                                           

The faint smell of V-8 exhaust. Echoes of laughter from brothers and sisters, excited to be on the road.  

Screaming. Music. Gunshots. Promises. Vibrations. Ghosts. 

 The gutters were sagging, and the stairs collapsed. The filmy windows with their hidden secrets glared at the intruder.                                    

Morbidly stained curtains hanging askew like the milky cataracts of dead fish. 

The skinny old man behind the desk assured me that room #16 was fine. 

‘Just make sure you wiggle the toilet handle, or it'll run all night.  Sure, the TV works. Channels 7 and 2 and sometimes 4, depending on which way you point the rabbit ears. 

The ice machine is broke. 

The candy machine is empty.’ 

                                                                                                       The old man took my ten dollars, gave me the key, and headed across Main Street to the 'Jack ‘o Hearts' liquor store. 

When I pushed open the dirty blue door, the dry hinges screeched a cynical 'Welcome Home.'  

Stepping through the threshold, I stumbled on the frayed carpet.                                                                                                   That's alright.                                                                                    

Because when the whore looked into his smoggy eyes and saw nothing but death, her face softened. Not the kind of soft love brings, he would never see that. It was more a sagging, mushy kind of soft.                                                                                  

I thought of taking a quick shower, but the hotel tub was crawling with daddy-long legs. That’s OK. 

Because his soon-to-be ex-wife begged for another chance ‘CLARRENSSS PLEEEZZ!! You Can Watch BENNY HILL for CHRIST'S SAKE!' 

After washing the silverfish from the sink, I chose not to splash my face with the sulphury rust water. OK. 

Because Finally, her jaw locked open. She stuck out her tongue as if saying, 'Nanny Nanny, Poo-Poo!’ Blood trickled from her nose; piss ran down her legs. She went stiff as a board for a moment before relaxing into death.  He let her fall to the linoleum floor. 

Listening to my sanity dribbling from the faucet, I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn't look like me. I didn't remember being bald. No problemo.  

I lifted the toilet seat, finally horrified as dozens of greasy earwigs scrambled in every direction.                                                                                    Falling into the bowl. Plopping onto the floor. 

The voices echoing from within my cavernous brain, spewing belittlement and disdain, lost coherency. 

I sat on the avocado bed, resting my feet on the olive-green carpet. The bed bugs and fleas were happy to meet me. They were hungry. 

 The only decent picture I could get on the old Philco was the Andy Williams Show on channel 7.   

My filthy, unfaithful wife loved the gay boy. Watched him every week. She'd be watching him now if she wasn't dead. 

Dead or alive, there she sat, in the padded chair by the window. Her skin, the color of moldy white bread. Her black tongue, flaccid, slug-like. Her eyeballs were now as red as they once were white.                                                                                                  She wore the extension cord like a bolo tie. 

There was a pile of steaming guts on her lap. Stomach. Brains.Tufts of singed fur.  

"Clarence! Would you please get off your fat keester and turn up the sound? Andy is going to sing 'Moon River' after the commercials!" 

I turned the volume to really loud. I sat back on the edge of the bed, fishing around in my knapsack.                                                                                       I pulled out a small pistol, pushed it into my mouth, and pulled the trigger. 

But, as if I needed more problems, the pawn shop special miss-fired, peppering the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat with hot shards of lead. 

Through the fog of pain, I was surprised, expecting the slug to travel smoothly into my brain. 

My un-damaged brain suffered confused brain damage, Desperate for relief, I reached into my backpack and grabbed the first thing to touch my fingers. With all logic turned to ash, I jammed the unknown red thing into my mouth and bit down. And it worked. I forgot all about the chunks of melted lead embedded in my throat. The blood that filled my mouth began to boil, or so it seemed.  

The chili pepper felt like a glowing branding iron on my tongue. Water was the only possible solution. 

I lurched to the bathroom, leaving a trail of black blood.                                                                                             I knelt before the porcelain throne and frantically slurped the scummy toilet water. At some point, I reached up, fumbled blindly with the handle, and flushed. I forgot the instructions given to me by the skinny dude. I had a lot on my mind.  

The water didn’t help. Eventually, my head dropped face down into the bloody water and never came back up. The earwigs were already laying eggs on the back of my head. 

My last unfortunate thought was of the Sparkletts Man, doggy fucking my wife on grandmother's antique divan. 

Back in his quarters, the skinny old dude had his last stroke while gulping his last pint of Wild Turkey.  

 It took a week before anyone noticed he was dead and two more before anyone thought of checking the room where the truck was parked. 

By then, I was filled with maggots, my carcass undulating uncomfortably at the red shitter. When they tried moving my over-ripe corpse, it busted open, releasing a repugnant stench followed by a black, wet substance. But what got them was when they pulled my head from the water, my face peeled off, and my eyeballs fell out. 

Too disgusted to continue, they left me on the floor and left the room. They locked the door behind themselves, spray painted 'KEEP OUT'  

on the door and threw away the key. 

The few who have foolishly tried to enter Room #16 first shit themselves, followed by uncontrollable facial tics, ending with years of psychotherapy. 

So, if you ever find yourself lost on a deserted desert highway and end up in the parking lot of a ruined roadside motel facing room #16, and hear Moon River in the midnight wind, that would be me messing with the Philco. And if you have the misfortune of seeing the dusty curtain peel back, that would be my wife sitting, pensive at the window, waiting for her Sparkletts Man. 

And when she sees you're not her lover, you will feel her disappointment.  

An illogical sense of fear and confusion. 

‘wAd da fuC du Yu wAn?  Gid da fUc oWdda hEer!’ 

And that's exactly what you'll want to do.