It was a wedding weekend (I think all my October weekends might be…) and I’m bone tired. I prepared a trio of ghostly Haiku to get us over to another, less busy day.
1.
Static on the phone.
My own voice whispers back,
“Do not turn around.”
2.
I left you buried.
Yet each night the house settles—
closer to the earth.
3.
Lantern by the gate—
its flame bends toward the forest.
Something’s walking home.
I began writing just before 9 p.m., the hour when the West Coast inherited the East Coast’s midnight and Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl became ours too. And you can bet I had it on repeat as I worked on the rest of this. The closest I came to the Eras Tour was watching the concert film in theaters. And then I followed all the live streams and recaps as the tour worked its way across Europe and back through Canada; if I couldn’t be there, at least I could do so vicariously. And tonight’s confluence of ghosts and Taylor made me think of all the people who couldn’t go to the concerts because they weren’t around to be able to go. So, let’s get the show started!
The battered white truck pulled to a stop at the end of the driveway leading into the deserted parking lot, its lights illuminating the padlocked yellow gate. The driver side door with “SECURITY” on it opened and a bearded man climbed out and walked to the bollard and took hold of the lock and shook it. He paused, then grabbed the yellow gate and shook it hard, but the gate remained securely closed.
Sighing, he keyed the mic button on the radio clipped to his vest. “Jones, did you check to see if Edwards was high?”
The speaker crackled with laughter. “I take it you didn’t find anything, Rodriguez?”
“Affirmative. West gate is locked tight.”
“No stream of cars coming in?” the voice asked incredulously.
Rodriguez turned in a circle, taking in the empty road, the shrill cry of a grebe in the bordering San Tomas Aquino creek, the dark silhouette of the neighboring amusement park, the headlights streaking by down on Great America Parkway, and finally the looming monolith of the dark Levi’s Stadium. “Yeah, nothing,” he said and reached for the door handle. Before he could open the door, a buffeting wall of wind rocked his body, like a bus passing just a foot away. He steadied himself as he swore he could even smell diesel exhaust and hear the whine of air brakes. Frantically staring into the darkness, he reflexively shone the beam of his Maglite flashlight back and forth illuminating nothing but empty road. The din of a crowded parking lot rose around Rodriguez: idling cars, laughing voices, off-key singing… another wave of air buffeted him again like another bus passing. Eyes wide, he stared around at the empty parking lot noise of cars and voices overwhelming his hearing as the whoosh of passing buses flattened him against the side of his truck.
And then it vanished, and he stood in the darkness, crickets mingling with the lingering ringing in his ears.
In the security room, Jones turned frown on a meek-looking Edwards.
“I’m telling you, five minutes ago that gate was wide and cars were pouring in!” Edwards protested.
“Uh huh…”
Edwards scrolled the grainy security camera footage back and forth on the monitor, reviewing the last few minutes over and over, showing only darkness until the lights of Rodriguez’s truck pulled up. “I swear I saw it…”
“Chief,” the radio interrupted with another voice, “Something weird is on the field.”
Jones pulled his scrutiny off of Edwards and responded, “Go ahead, Allen. What kind of weird are we talking?”
Down on the deserted field, Allen stood on the dew-damp manicured grass of the prepared football field, empty stands surrounding the quiet field… except for a flash in one corner of the stands in his peripheral vision… then another. In the upper deck, more flashes just at the edge of his vision. “Lights…in the stands, sir…” he stammered as stared around, trying to catch one of the flashes head on instead of glances.
Jones turned to Edwards in the security room, “Are you seeing anything in the stands?”
Edwards pressed buttons scrolling through camera view after camera view from various concourses, and sky boxes, and lower level stands, upper deck stands…. Nothing. “Cameras aren’t picking up anything.”
Jones grunted, mumbling, “like cars coming into the parking lot…” under his breath.
The concourse was packed with girls, young women, older women, an occasional man, all dressed in their favorite Taylor Swift outfit. One little girl wore her purple “Speak Now” era dress and traded friendship bracelets with a teenage girl in a cardigan, a flower crown unselfconsciously adorning her head still bald from the failed chemotherapy treatment.
“I love it!” the younger girl in the purple dress squealed.
The older girl smiled broadly, “I’m glad you do! The beads match your dress.”
The younger girl turned this way and that showing her new bracelet against the tulle fabric. “Did you get to go to one of the concerts?” she asked.
The older girl’s smile faded. “No…” she said sadly. “I was in the hospital when she came through Vancouver.”
“That’s okay,” the younger girl grinned, “we’re here now for the new album!”
“TS12!” the older girl brightened.
The staccato snare beat and synth notes signaling the beginning of “The Fate of Ophilia” echoed through the concourse.
“It’s starting!” the little girl yelled and took the older girl’s hand, pulling her into the stream of other girls hurrying to their seats as the music grew louder.
On the dark, empty field, Allen stood rooted to the spot, feeling a thrumming vibration like concert-level amplified music course through his body, but the stadium remained silent. He strained trying to hear the phantom sound waves silently vibrating around and through him, catching more lights in his peripheral vision…
“…Allen? Are you there?”
He shook his head, “S-Sorry, chief… Are you guys seeing anything? There’s something going on here…”
In the security room Jones looked at Edwards who met his gaze with a shrug and shook his head.
“We’re not seeing anything here…”
When the funky guitar riff of “Wood” exploded out of the speakers, the crowd roared as a single entity and everyone swayed and shimmied to the beat.
“This is amazing!” the middle-aged man called to the woman next to him who grinned and nodded vigorously. “Why didn’t I enjoy this when I was alive?”
“Other than it just came out tonight?” she laughed.
“Other than that!”
“That’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?”
He smiled broadly and closed his eyes as he swayed to the beat. A moment later, he felt a tap on his opposite shoulder. Turning, he took in a young woman in a blue sequined body suit holding a friendship bracelet with the square beads spelling out “Suburban Legend.”
“You don’t have a friendship bracelet yet…” she shouted over the music.
The man just smiled and held his wrist out.
“This is so weird,” Edwards said exasperated. “I keep catching these artifacts and movements on the live feed, but scrolling back through the video there’s… nothing.”
“What… what’s that?” Jones asked, eyes scanning the walls that suddenly vibrated in syncopated rhythm.
The beat of the title track “The Life of a Showgirl” played through only once for everyone in the crowd to pick it up and stomp along, causing the whole stadium to echo with the rhythm of thousands of ghostly feet enjoying the new music they didn’t live long enough to hear. The music new, the spirit of the music felt by the ethereal forms gathered in the darkness. As the song faded out, women who were strangers only an hour ago hugged teary eyed. Cheers rose from the crowd.
“Thank you for all coming together for the start of a new era,” a voice spoke over the speakers, quieting the crowd. “We’re going to play the album again… but how about we visit the other eras first?”
In the parking lot, Rodriguez could plainly hear a crowd roaring, “Yeah!”
“Jones?” he asked into the mic. “What the hell is going on?”
Jones and Edwards stared around open-mouthed. “I have no idea,” he finally replied. “Whatever it is, it’s not for us…”
“Otōsan, Okāsan… tadaima. I’m home. Sorry I’m late. The train was packed… and then I couldn’t get a cab…” Emi swiped her hand across her brow, fighting the summer humidity as she set her bag down and took her shoes off.
“Okaeri, Emi. You’re here now,” her mom, Yoshiko, tottered to the door and regarded her daughter warmly.
“Always late, sis,” Ryo poked his head around the corner, his thousand-watt smile teasing. “I mean, I came all the way from Boston. You only had to come from Kyoto? I still made it on time…”
Emi scrunched her face into a mock smile. “Very funny, Ryo. When did you get in?”
Ryo crossed the small entryway and hugged his sister. “Yesterday. You’re right about the trains though – I always forget how insane they are this time of year.”
“I’ve heard it’s getting worse,” Hiroshi, their father, said as he joined his wife and their children. “More young people moving to the cities… At least they still make an effort to come home…”
“Daddy…,” Emi started in a conciliatory tone.
Hiroshi held up his hand to forestall his daughter’s words. “It’s just the way of things. You’re both here now. That’s what’s important,” a smile creased his face, causing the laugh lines around his eyes to stand out as he stepped close to his wife. Turning to her he nodded. “Shall we?”
Emi and Ryo let their parents pass them and open the front door. In the humid dusk, Hiroshi knelt slowly towards the bier he had prepared earlier in the day, quietly groaning with the effort. Ryo and Emi exchanged glances at the sound, reminded that age was catching up to their parents faster every year. Yoshiko handed her husband a long match which he lit and watched the small flame burst to life and settle into a blossom of fire at the head of the match before carefully setting the flame to the kindling in the bier. The small branches caught with an intensity and spread throughout the small sticks. Yoshiko helped him straighten up and then stood by her husband as the fire grew. Ryo and Emi smiled as the white curls of pine smoke rose into the night, the fire snapped and spat in staccato reply to the cicadas’ steady drone.
As the light of the small fire outside the Satō family home in Takayama blazed, what they didn’t see were the spirits in the darkness. As Hiroshi held Yoshiko’s wrinkled hand, his parents became aware of the Mukaebi and flittered across the barrier into the open door of their former home. Their parents followed them. Yoshiko’s parents, too, drifted unseen into the dark wood house in the small village. A grinning uncle. An aunt whose legendary Ohagi recipe Yoshiko had used earlier that day…
Seven weeks ago, the Obon festivals started across Japan with similar ritual lightings of Mukaebi, “welcoming fire,” to invite the ancestors to come home and be celebrated.
In a months’ time, families across Mexico will similarly gather to venerate their family members who are no longer with them. Día de los Muertos. In Michoacán, families will cross the lake in candlelit boats to keep vigil all night at the cemetery. Ofrendas will be decorated in homes with marigolds, food, candles, photos, mementos. Silently, invisibly, the spirits will enter the houses, rise from freshly cleaned graves, admire the ubiquitous brightly colored sugar skulls as they regard their families gathered to honor those who had passed on.
It is in this season of light and memory, of lanterns and marigolds, that I return once again to my own ritual, here on October 1, for the first night of 31 Ghosts.
No, it’s not a generations-long tradition, but this year marks the ninth year of ghost stories, and that’s no small feat, let me tell you. Despite wildfires, pandemics, the daily grind of work, and everything else, come October 1 we kick off our own celebration of ghosts, ghouls, things that go bump in the night, unexplained lights in windows, hollow voices in the darkness, the chill touch of ethereal fingers on exposed skin…
And, pulling back a little from the macabre, we do also celebrate the real ghosts that we remember and visit us in dreams and memories.
Last Sunday I took part in the Spartan Trail 10k race in Saratoga. Having grown up hiking in the Santa Cruz mountains, part of me reveled in the homecoming of running through redwoods and madrone, the damp, aromatic scent of California bay laurel perfuming the air. The trail climbed more than three unrelenting miles up towards Skyline Boulevard, and I pushed myself to better my time from last year. Numerous times on that climb, I moved to the side to let someone pass, alerted by the sound of their footfalls immediately behind me. But when I turned, the closest person was still several meters back on the trail. Was it my dad, ahead of this October 1, spurring me on?
Later, speeding downhill, dodging exposed tree roots, errant rocks, and narrow single-track trails, I realized there’s no better example of focusing on the present than by having to focus on each and every frenzied footfall. Step there, now there, now…there. Head down, forest a blur around me… it felt kind of like this year so far. Work trips have taken me from northern Kentucky to northwestern Germany, San Diego to Las Vegas. Back home, weekends spent exorcising books and clothes and mementoes from dozens and dozens of boxes long ago stored in a garage – what do you keep? What do you give away? Rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat…
I look up and, well, it’s October!
So, let’s light the Mukaebi. Let’s clean the graves and set a bright orange marigold on the ofrenda and let the ghosts in for our month-long celebration. Thank you for joining me for this ninth annual festival of mine. Stick around, let’s see what kind of spirits we can attract this year!
