Haint Blue Salt

A Ghost Story

Here’s a little treat for my paid subscribers on Halloween, dedicated to Yakubian Ape and Alexandru Constantin. I hope you enjoy.

It would be nice if I could say I knew her car was haunted the very second I got in, but that's just pride. Fear, too, maybe, of getting old.

Used to be, I could spot a ghost from three blocks away. Didn't even need to see its haunt, but there's that pride again. I hear you, boy. Lie back down.

It was a long time since I was in the profession. I was glad of it. I came to Bulgaria for love, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider the other thing. "Escape" would be too dramatic a way of putting it, but let's just say I was ready to quit eating the dead.

Because Bulgaria doesn't have ghosts. The Communists figured out how to destroy them. Turns out that was their whole thing. Nowadays, Sofia's full of places and things that you'd think would be haunted all to hell, but you'd be wrong.

Walk past an abandoned house and peer past the rusted barbed wire into a garden tangled with sumac and wild clematis. There's paint peeling from the molded stucco, breaking the shape of the graffiti, and a stray dog is passed out against the door. A machine of some sort has collapsed in the shade of the pergola. All that, and there's nothing that looks back at you. Look at it, and nothing comes to your mind except maybe a plan to spend your next weekend in your family's village. Breathe some fresh air and pick the tomatoes.

Anyway, I was off my game when I got into Sarah's car. Rusty as hell. Think of a retired plumber who looks up at the ceiling and wonders, "what just dripped on my head?"

The impression wasn't immediate. She was giving me a ride back to my apartment and the conversation lulled. At first, I thought Sarah was mad at me. I tried to remember what we'd been talking about. Had I said something offensive? Politics hadn't come up, had they? No, she'd told me about the green lizards in her in-laws' village. Seemed fine.

So why did I feel like I'd outraged someone?

What I wanted to do was shut up, smile and nod. Instead, I asked, "Where'd you get this car?"

The feeling of disapproval intensified. It was unbelievable, how unacceptable my behavior was.

"It belonged to my mom," Sarah said, not in the same tone she'd used to describe the lizards. "She was…I think I told you how she passed away fourteen months ago."

"You did," I said. Sarah found a way to work her mom into most conversations. Now I thought I knew why. My old instincts were all sitting up now, ears pricked and noses raised. "She left you this car?"

Sarah nodded, watching the road. "It arrived last month."

Now I noticed the cold breath that tickled the back of my neck. My fingers itched for my frying pan. "You had the car shipped all the way from Richmond?"

"Portsmouth," she said, "but yeah. And I had to go to Burgas to pick it up."

"Good car, is it?"

"Well yeah, it's a hybrid. And an automatic."

I didn't ask her if it also had four wheels. I'd already heard the defensiveness in her voice. It was the same prickly sense I got from the space just behind my nape. How dare I?

I gave the ghost a poke. "Some memories attached to this car, maybe?"

"Uh huh," Sarah said, eyes unfocused. "I remember how my mom used to drive me places. Dairy Queen, McDonads, Chik-fil-A. Places she'd never take me except as a treat after we'd been to the psychiatrist."

I pointed to make sure she made the right turn, but I didn't interrupt. I don't need to know this stuff – I'm no shrink – but I do like to get a taste of what I'm in for.

Sarah kept going. "It was usually the longest time after I'd taken the last meds? So, you know, the memories are really vivid."

I was sure they were. But we were getting close to my apartment. I made a quick decision. "Hey, I got something for you. Can you wait on the street while I run up and get it?"

"Okay." She smiled, but her mother did not. "I'm not in a rush."

I was. I tore up the stair, instincts baying behind me, and shoved my key into my lock. The cat made a break for it like he always does, but my the instincts rushed right through him into the apartment. The cat wasn't used to that sort of treatment and went straight under the couch. He'd probably pee on something now. Whatever. I've made bigger sacrifices.

I turned away from the living room and dove for the pots and pans. No, not the cast iron. People will tell you why you should never use anything but cast iron, but those people are usually haunted, themselves.

The pan does have to have some iron in it. Teflon-coated aluminum lets ghosts through just like glass or skin. That's why my mainstay is stainless steel. That's still the sort of pan I always buy, even though I haven't eaten a ghost in years.

I stop by the pantry and the fridge and, after a moment of casting about like a useless moron, I give up and stuff the butcher's packet into the pocket of my jacket. Guess I'm doing laundry tonight. My instincts are making a terrible racket and I don't have any more time. I make sure the cat is still under the couch and dash out the door.

I send a couple of instincts ahead of me with orders to pin down any impatience or curiosity they find in or around the haunted car. I stop in the foyer of my apartment building, out of sight of the street, and rip off the top corner of the bag of salt I grabbed. I steady my hand with another instinct and pour the salt into the frying pan in the shape of the funnel-circle. It looks a bit like a pizza with one slice missing.

Now, here's another reason I don't use cast iron: it's heavy. With stainless steel, I can hold the handle with one hand and use the other to open the back door of Sarah's car. My grip is steady enough not to distort the circle-valve.

"Are you giving me a pan?" asks Sarah, and I slide the pan right into the space behind her seat.

The salt begins to burn.

It's like when you put sugar in a blender. I don't know if you've ever done that, but my girls used to get a kick out of it. If you turn out the lights, you'll see these little blue-white flashes. That's just piezoelectricity, but it looks the same as burning salt. Haint blue.

Of course, sugar doesn't get so hot.

"This is weird," Sarah says. The instinct I sent after her curiosity would have snapped up a question before it formed in her head, but I didn't set anything to catch a statement like that. Rusty, like I said.

"Uh, yeah," I say. "Well. I'm a weird guy."

I pull the pan out of the car as smoothly as I can and set it on the pavement, where it will leave a mark. Better that than Sarah's upholstery, and I need two hands for this. I pull the 500 gram packet of ground beef from my jacket pocket and break the sticker holding the butcher's paper together. The meat hisses when it meets the metal and salt.

I look up at Sarah, who's staring at me like the world's gone nuts. "You're frying me a hamburger," she says, or something to that effect, and I realize I've forgotten the spatula.

"Just a second," I say. "Don't go anywhere."

The cat tries to escape again when I open the door to my apartment. He's fine. I grab the spatula and a plate and two forks. If I brought down buns, it would be a hamburger and I'd need more fixings. No time for all that, because the meat's going to burn.

"Okay," says Sarah when I get back to her car. "Why are you cooking a burger for me?"

She asking questions again. My instincts got distracted by an old man leaning out of the window of his apartment.

"I wanted to try a new technique," I say, shoving at the meat with the spatula. It's sticking. "I mean an old one."

"Is it really an emergency?"

"Oh, uh. No. I never said it was. I just wanted to give you a try of this, uh, meatball." I hate explaining what I'm doing. It's basically why quit the work and ended up here.

"You hear from Gabriela recently?"

I look up from the sizzling patty. Sarah looks empathetic.

"Gabi? It's not like that. She's got nothing to do with it." Damn meat's got to be ready. "Here. Let's try it."

I use the spatula to divide and serve the patty.

She takes her half. "The girls?"

"Girls are fine. Tell me how it is."

I take the lead and bite into a forkful of my half.

Under the brittle crust of "how dare you," you find the chill, sticky center of "what if?" What if something happens to her? What if she ruins her life with boys? Or people see how sick she is?And they it's my fault. I didn't pick the right diet regimes, the most special classes, the right drugs. If only I'd had more time. If only Sarah didn't feel like she had to escape me.

"Not too salty?" I ask.

"Bitter." Her eyes are watering, but she doesn't seem to notice. At least one of my instincts is still on the job.

I try to think of what to say. "I'm sorry" wouldn't do any good, and it wouldn't be true, either. "You're not crazy," is closer to the mark. "This really happened." But she doesn't need me to tell her that now. She's allowed to just know it.

"Maybe the old recipe needs some adjusting." I straighten up and step away from the car. "Thanks for helping me, uh, beta test it."

"No problem." She wipes her eyes. "I really do have to go, but let's see each other again soon."

"Maybe for a barbecue?"

She laughs and drives off. I wave goodbye with the hand not holding the crusty pan and call back my instincts. I've got dishes and clothes to wash now, and a new instinct to feed. Maybe then I'll buy a train ticket and get out of the city a little. Spend a few days in a village, and breathe the fresh air.