Now You Need To Leave

The story that follows is true, and that makes a difference. You and I, we could tell each other creepy tales of fiction long into the night, go off on flights of imagined horror, shine flashlights under our chins, speak in dark whispers. We might spook the hell out of each other with inventive yarns. That’s fine. But then there are true stories. Stories that shouldn’t be, that shouldn’t fit in with a regular, ordinary life.

 Those stories have a special place around the campfire. This is one of those true stories. Only a couple of the names have been changed because that’s the right thing to do.

All this started during a regular, ordinary week, not so long ago. It happened to Margaret. We won’t change her name.

On Monday, Margaret’s morning started with an orientation for the new Social and Community Services Coordinator, a fresh hire, badly needed to get this backlog of state-level complaints onto an acceptable schedule.

Lorelei was her name. Bubbly. Quite a bit younger than Margaret, late 20s. Like, if Stevie Nicks was Hispanic. Margaret escorted Lorelei past the cubicle where she’d be working, and then they went to the big conference room on 3 to get to know each other.

Lorelei had told great stories in her interview about her local New Mexico knowledge, Chicano heritage. Margaret liked Lorelei’s tattoos – her hands were henna-ed with blue ink. Lorelei wore at least two necklaces every day, one with the goddess Isis, wings spread, another with an AK47 assault rifle in sterling silver.

 
“You have a long drive in?” Margaret asked.

 
“No no,” Lorelei said. “I’m pretty near downtown.”

 
“I thought you were south of Santa Fe.”

 
“I used to be there, I used to live off Agua Fria,” Lorelei said. “But I moved.”

 
“Oh,” Margaret said. “I didn’t know that. I live off Agua Fria.”

 
“Really? Yeah, I was in that little development by Frenchy’s Field.”

 
Margaret laughed. “That’s where I live, I’m on Camino Oraibi.”

 
“I was on Camino Oraibi!”

 
“That’s crazy,” Margaret said.

 
Lorelei said, “I can’t remember the house number. As you’re going down, it’s on the left there, most of the way. Almost to the cul-de-sac. That was like ten years ago.”

 
Margaret paused on that.

 
Lorelei went on. “It had a big wall around the garden in front. You probably know it. Which house are you?”

 
Margaret ignored that. “I bet you had a red car.”

 
“I did,” Lorelei said. “Red Mazda.”

 
Margaret could picture the red Mazda, in the driveway of that house across the way, the house that had belonged to her father over a decade earlier. The owner of that red Mazda was the first person who had moved in after he died.

That was twelve years ago. Twelve years since he died. By now, Margaret wasn’t thinking about her dad every day. At least, not in the way she did when he lived so close to her, behind that big garden wall, when she took care of him as he slipped slowly and then quickly and then slowly again into dementia. When he shifted from being a nattily-dressed widower who flirted with the locals to being a confused octogenarian who mostly flirted with doctors, as he pretended not to forget names and as he searched relentlessly for keys to a car that had been taken from him. Honestly, it was a relief not to have to think about him so often now, not to argue with him, not to fear his irrational moods, not to wonder anymore if he’d endanger himself that day. Or endanger her.

It had taken these twelve years to get here, but he wasn’t haunting Margaret’s thoughts in the same way anymore.

 And now this chipper new hire, Lorelei, randomly, someone who just happened to be qualified for this government job and brought onto Margaret’s team, Lorelei had lived in Margaret’s dad’s house. There was no other place on that street that she could be talking about.

 Still, do you say all that, day one? This is a get-to-know-you cup of coffee. She didn’t want to come off like a stalker. So all Margaret said was, “Amazing.” That was enough. Maybe this topic might come up again another day. Maybe not.

Margaret was getting ready to talk about the invoice decoupling process, which was harder this year with the new tax codes. But Lorelei said, “Yeah, beautiful house. I had to move, though. That place was haunted.”

 
Margaret watched Lorelei.


Lorelei raised her eyebrows. “Really,” Margaret said.

 
“Oh, yeah,” Lorelei said. “Big time.”

 
“How could you –- ah. Huh.”

 
“Yeah.”

 
“Why did you think that?”

 
“Well, it just was. You could feel it. Pretty often. You could just feel somebody in the next room. You’d hear a little rustle like somebody moving, putting away dishes, going through stuff, or searching for something. And nobody was home. And you’d sit there, especially in – there was a back room, the house had this room all the way in the back --”

 
Dad’s office, Margaret didn’t say.

 
“And there was something there. Y’know? A feeling. Like, there would be a noise in the wall, kinda like, I guess, a rubbing sound, god, it was -– have you ever lived in a place that had a ghost? I didn’t feel threatened. I wasn’t in any danger. But --”

 
“Could you tell what it was? Who it was?”

 
“Oh yeah. I never saw him, other people saw him. But I knew.”

 
Belle came into the conference room right about then. Belle was a lifer at the agency and an old friend of Margaret’s. Belle and Lorelei were introduced and Belle said, “What are we talking about?” And Lorelei told her. Belle got it instantly.

 
“Lorelei’s place was right near mine. You know the house,” Margaret said.

Belle’s mouth was open. She turned to Lorelei, didn’t even know what to ask. “So – who was --?”

“I was just telling her,” Lorelei said. “I never saw him, but I felt him. I could feel the energy of this old guy. Unhappy old white guy. I could feel sometimes he was out in the garden and you just knew he was getting agitated, so I’d water the plants and I’d be talking out loud. ‘Don’t worry, I’m taking care of your garden, it’s okay.’”

Belle started to speak, but Lorelei went on.

“I know my sister saw him. I haven’t thought about this in such a long time, it’s funny. One night my sister was staying over and I gave her my bed, in the master bedroom, and in the middle of the night, I’m in the other room and I wake up and I hear this screaming, terrible shrieking and I ran into the bedroom and my sister was up, all the way up, she’s standing on the bed -– and she said she’d felt something weird in the dark and she opened her eyes and this old, old man was leaning down in her face examining her, super close, just, like, curious, looking at her. He’s an inch away from her, so she screamed. And he disappeared.”

 
Right across the street, Margaret thought. This whole time.

 
Then something else seemed to occur to Lorelei. “But the kicker! The kicker was my cousin’s son, he came for soccer camp? Mateo? He came to stay with me for a month for a soccer camp they were doing, and he stayed in the front room, there’s a converted garage.”

 
“Yeah,” Margaret said.

 
“He only stayed one night. He came to me the next morning, really freaked out, he goes, ‘Aunt L, I can’t stay.’ And I go, ‘Why not?’ and he goes, ‘There’s a man in the room where I’m sleeping, an old man.’ And I told him there wasn’t anybody in there, and he said ‘Aunt L. He’s in there. I have to stay someplace else.’”

 
“So the kid saw him?”

 
“He did. That was it for Mateo, freaked him out. And I felt it, too, but I never saw. I felt it till the day I moved,” Lorelei said. “I waited too long. I should’ve moved out earlier, but pretty soon after Mateo told me that, I sold the place. It was the right thing to do. I never felt scared, exactly, but –- y’know.”

 
“Yeah,” Belle said.

 
“I can imagine,” Margaret said. The conference room was quiet.

 
“I’m taking up this whole conversation!” Lorelei laughed. “I’m so sorry!” And she pulled out her list of first day questions and Margaret didn’t ask her anything more that morning about the house on Camino Oraibi.