what?” he asks when he sees I’m not letting him go anywhere.
“In ghosts. Not even a little?”
“Hell no,” he spits. “And people who do are fools!”
I shake my head. “So what do you run around hunting them for?”
“For fun,” he snorts, avoiding my eyes. “What else?”
Finally he breaks free, but he doesn’t know the secret entrance to Theater 6 and so just kind of stands there, huffing his apple cheeks, waiting for me to guide him. I shouldn’t. Guide him, I mean. I shouldn’t let him spy on Mr. Fletcher like this.
My sister would understand, about the iPod I mean. She’d wait until the day after Christmas. But I’m in it, now, and it’s about more than the money. Part of me… part of me really wants Mrs. Fletcher to be in there, talking to my old teacher, sharing a haunted Christmas Eve together. A ghost and her man, together, on the sweetest night of the year.
As if on cue, some cheesy Christmas song plays on the speakers overhead and we both look up, as if remembering what night it is, why we’re here, together, in this most unlikely of places, on this most unlikely of nights.
“Come on,” I say, guiding him toward a door marked “Employees Only.” Beyond it are some stairs, leading up to a back entrance into all four theaters in this wing. It’s quiet in here, no canned Christmas music or booming explosions from the latest Astro Saturn Man movie. I find the door marked “6” and put my hand on the knob.
I turn to my guest, meeting his weak green eyes. “Promise me you won’t mess this up, Chester.”
He nods, already looking past me, like I’m not even there. I use my free hand to grab his chin, brown fingers on his pale, scruffy chin, and yank his attention back to me. “Listen to me, Chester. So help me if you ruin that guy’s night I will—”
“I got it,” he interrupts, sliding on his bulky goggles, reaching for his camera. “I got it, just… let’s do this. I’ve got a family waiting at home, you know?”
What, like I don’t? But he’s right; the sooner, the better. I open the door and we slide into a little vestibule. It’s dark, so the light doesn’t upset the customers, separated by two maroon polyester curtains that match the maroon theater seats just outside.
We wait a minute, our eyes adjusting to the light. He looks like a giant bug in his “Specter Goggles” or whatever, and I hide a snicker. The sound of oversized vampire elves battling CGI North Pole Yeti assaults my ears as I slip a hand through the curtain and see my old teacher, Mr. Fletcher, talking… to someone.
He’s turned to one side, and smiling, and chuckling at something. I watch, chills crawling up my spine. For the moment, Chester is behind me struggling with the curtain, getting his goggles straight and trying to hold his digital camera the right away to get a snap off for his article, but for me… I’m transfixed.
“… she thought it was pudding…” Mr. Fletcher is saying, eight or nine rows away, his voice so gay and bright. I can tell it’s the punch line of a joke he’s been telling, or maybe a story, and he’s so happy to be telling it.
There is a pause, like he’s waiting for someone to talk. And he’s looking to the seat next to him, on his right, facing the far wall, waiting… then he laughs. It’s a rare sound, from Mr. Fletcher.
For the last two years I’ve worked Christmas Eve at Snowflake Cinemas, selling him his tickets both nights. He’s gained weight, since he taught me. Like, fifty, sixty pounds? Lost a lot of hair, too, and is roughly about the color of a jellyfish that’s washed up on the shore.
Every year he looks up at me, eyes wrinkling with recognition. “Hi Haley,” he’ll say, handing over a crisp twenty dollar bill like he’s just gone to the bank and pulled it out of one of those little white envelopes nobody uses anymore except my Grams. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you,” I’ll say, as if I don’t know he’s buying a ticket to sit in an empty theater until closing time, talking to the ghost of his dead wife.
And I’ll give him the ticket and his change and he’ll shuffle off, straight to the theater, no candy, no snacks, no popcorn, nothing but a year’s worth of stories to tell a… a ghost.
And now he’s smiling and chatting and chuckling and… and… a different person. “I know, I know…” he’s saying, so familiar, like people talk to each other and you can only hear one side of the conversation but know there’s someone else there. “And then she—” Suddenly he stops, and frowns. “What? Where?” And he turns, right toward us, as if he’s just been warned we’re here.
I feel a rough jolt against my shoulder as Chester pushes me out of the way. I fall to my knees, grabbing the armrest of a nearby chair to keep tumbling down the steps to the theater floor below.
“Ha!” I hear from beside me as Chester runs down the steps, snapping his digital camera like a strobe light. “Nothing! I knew it! Fraud! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
I pull myself to my feet and stumble down a few steps, finding Mr. Fletcher looking from the seat to his right – the empty seat to his right – past stupid Chester and his flashing camera and straight at me.
“Haley?” he asks, voice so wounded and hurt I almost fall to my knees again. “What… how… how could you do this? Why… why would you… do this?”
He backs away, arm up against Chester’s camera assault, somehow stumbling down the steps and out of the theater without breaking his neck. I call after him, racing down the steps, but Chester catches me in mid-flight. “Look,” he says, handing me the goggles from off his face. “Look and see, Haley. There’s nothing there!”
I put them on, hands trembling with emotion, heart pounding even as it breaks. The goggles are clunky and heavy and loose on my head, so I squeeze them against my face and stare at the empty seat next to where Mr. Fletcher was sitting.
He’s right, Chester is; nothing, nobody.
I’m almost… disappointed. I turn to give them back, but Chester is already at the bottom of the steps, rounding the bend, racing for the door and out into the hall.
I let the goggles fall around my neck and follow, eyes blinking in the dark as Santa impales a vampire elf with a giant candy cane on the flickering screen above me.
Outside in the hall, more shouting as Chester chases Mr. Fletcher all the way out of the theater. I watch as he runs all the way into the empty strip mall courtyard, past the gurgling fountain and past the blinking plastic Christmas trees and past the kiosks all bundled up for the night.
But even sixty pounds overweight Mr. Fletcher is too fast for the reporter in skinny pants, racing to his car – the only one still left in the lot – and slamming the door shut as Chester stops, four or five yards away, bent over and clutching his knees to catch his breath.
I chuckle, out loud, in the empty lobby and as I’m laughing, from the belly, my assistant manager’s keys jingle in my pocket. “Yes!” I say, to myself, alone and out loud, as I lock the door, tight, checking it three, four times just to make sure the little pipsqueak can’t get back inside.
Almost as if he can hear the key sliding in the lock, Chester stands up, turns and races back to the theater. “Hey,” he calls, the sound muffled by the thick glass doors. He’s waving his arms, the whole way, apple cheeks flushed red. “Hey, hey, what… what are you doing?”
He reaches the door, sweat splattering off his forehead and onto the glass as I back away, instinctively, waving the keys in front of his face. “I told you not to mess with that man,” I explain, taking another two steps back as he rattles the doors by their metal handles. “I warned you.”
“Gimme my twenty dollars back,” he whines, making a sad, scrunchy, scary face all in one. “Gimme my twenty dollars back or I’ll tell everybody at school it was your idea.”
I snort. “You’ll do that anyway, Chester.”
He nods, looking around. I spot the lights of a security golf cart in the distance, down by the Books ‘N Beans Café. He sees it, too, and turns back with a look of desperation on his face. “Then at least gimme m
y goggles, Haley. Those things were expensive.”
“I’ll give ‘em back to you at school next week, Chester. And your stupid money, too. You get out of here, now, unless you want me to flag down security.”
He huffs, nostrils flaring, breath coming out and steaming up the glass in front of his face. “You suck, you know that?” he says, slamming his white, hammy fists against the glass before turning and walking back out to the parking lot. “You suck!” he calls out over his shoulder, never bothering to look back.
I follow him with my eyes and see that Mr. Fletcher’s car is already gone. Chester yanks his stupid scooter out of the bike rack and fires it up, buzzing away with the sound of a dozen mosquitoes in his engine.
I literally breathe a sigh of relief when he’s gone, leaning up against the Centipede game in the cheesy little “game room” just off the main lobby. “Jesus,” I say to myself, shaking my head. “Jesus.”
That’s when the popcorn starts flying. All over the place.
Everywhere.
“Jesus!” I shout, running toward the concession stand as if one of Santa’s vampire elves has found