It was Katie’s idea to go on the ghost tour. “You need a distraction,”
she’d said to me, “and there’s nothing like a good scare to distract you.”
I didn’t tell her that at my age it was impossible to scare me in this
way. Ensconced in my late-forties, the only thing that frightened me
anymore was putting on jeans for the first time after summer had given
way and cooler temperatures crept in—pulling the denim carefully over
my widened hips and sucking my breath in deeply as I zipped the metal
teeth together, praying for a miracle.
Still safe and cozy in her thirties and slender as a tree branch stripped
of its fall leaves, Katie understood nothing. “It’s October. We need to do
something Halloween-y.” She poured more wine into my already full wine
glass and grinned at me the way I’d seen her grin at men she wanted to
do her bidding.
I had agreed, just like the men always did, because it was easier and
because I feared if I didn’t she would try to talk me into dressing in skimpy
Halloween costumes and bar hopping. Since my divorce, Katie had taken
it squarely upon her shoulders to “get me out there again.” The thought
of this exhausted me. I hadn’t particularly liked it “out there” my first time
around and often wondered if I had married just to spare myself one more
bad date.
The day of the ghost tour dawned warm and muggy. Fall in Georgia
was unpredictable at best, sometimes sending cool temperatures and
refreshing winds sweeping down streets, and sometimes punching
summer through one last time, trying to remind us all that we would miss
her when she was gone. Sometimes both happened at once—sweltering
days and chilled nights.
We boarded the ghost tour trolley and Katie pulled out a thermos and
two plastic cups as the trolley bumped through the streets. She splashed
golden brown liquid into each cup. “Mint Juleps,” she said. “Ghost hunting
is such a southern thing to do, we need a southern drink to go with it.”
I toasted her with my plastic cup and drank down the cocktail, feeling a
warmness for Katie spreading through me with the bourbon. Single, young,
and beautiful, surely she had better things to do than go on a ghost tour
with a middle-aged divorcee. I crooked my arm into hers and patted her
hand, determined to make the best of the night.
But the ghost tour was a sham. Instead of visiting spooky hotels and
haunted houses, we were driven to a graveyard where actors, dressed
as historical figures, told us the stories of their lives and deaths—mostly
during the Civil War and just beyond. Katie and I exchanged a roll of our
eyes. “What a waste of money,” she whispered. “I don’t want a history
lesson, I want to be terrified. I want to be so scared, I pee my pants.”
We laughed and poured more Mint Juleps into our cups, wandering off
from the group and trying to read the tombstones in the old graveyard by
the light of the moon, vaguely hoping one would open up and disgorge a
zombie just for our amusement.
Katie, never able to hold her liquor, put her cup down sloppily on a
weathered tombstone and announced she had to use the bathroom. She
staggered off in the direction of trees on the perimeter until I could no
longer see her. I wiped at the granite of the tombstone, the rock rough
beneath my hand, and read the name—George Bartholomew Greene, born
August 3, 1844, died October 31, 1864.
“So young,” I said out loud. I sat on the grass by George Bartholomew
Greene’s final resting place, feeling myself a bit woozy too, unused to
drinking hard liquor. Digging my fingers into the ground, I watched the
ghost tour group travel further up the graveyard, but I was behind the
scenes now and could see the actors move into place, the whole thing
4 TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | OCT 2019
By Hollie Sessoms
seeming more nonsensical by the moment.
I felt a lump of metal in the grass and pulled my hand away as though
I had touched hot iron. Taking the phone from my pocket, I turned on the
flashlight, finding a glint of metal buried. I dug only slightly before pulling
out a gold ring with a round lump of jade set in it. I slipped it on my finger
where my wedding band had set only months before.
The night, which had been warm, turned suddenly chilly—not an
unpleasant chill, but one that seemed to be sweeping in and clearing
out. I stood and stared curiously at the ring on my finger, marveling at
the magnificent condition it was in. It must have been lost only recently.
Suddenly, an openness filled my heart and the future stretched out before
me, an infinite span. Leaves crunched behind me and I turned, hiding my
hand with the ring behind me, expecting to find Katie returned.
There was a man of indeterminate age standing there, a wound to his
head, dried blood in clumps in his hair. I thought to ask if he was okay, but
then realized, feeling foolish for a moment, that he was an actor with the
ghost tour. He was dressed in antiquated clothing—a vest, coat and slim
cravat, his hair oiled to the side. Though his face looked young, the vintage
outfit made his eyes seem old beyond his years.
“You found the ring,” he only said, staring at me with an openness that
was unsettling.
“No,” I said without thinking. Something about the ring made me feel
good, clean, and I didn’t want to give it to this actor even if it belonged to
him. “Did you lose a ring? You should wait until tomorrow and look for it
then.”
“If you choose the ring, you choose all that comes with it.”
“Okay,” I only said, admitting nothing. He didn’t move, continued to stare
at me like he was reading all the secrets of my soul. “I’ll get back to the
group now, my friend had to use the bathroom. She should be back soon.”
“If you choose the ring, you choose all that comes with it.”
Using my thumb, I deftly turned the jade around so that it was hidden
in the palm of my hand and turned to walk back to the group. With every
moment that passed, the more pure I felt, an emptying out of everything
down to discover only me without all my baggage, without all the things
I’d done and not done, the labels I put on myself and the labels I’d allowed
others to put on me.
The man did not follow. “Do you choose the ring?” he said, not raising
his voice, but the sound carrying to me just the same.
I stopped and turned. “I choose the ring.” I blinked and he was gone
or maybe it was a trick of the moonlight, maybe he’d disappeared into
a shadow. I turned the ring round and round on my finger. “I choose the
ring,” I said again and it felt to be the first time I’d deliberately chosen
anything in my life, like everything else I had only allowed to happen to me.
Katie came stumbling back to the tombstone where she’d left her drink.
“Where the hell is she?” she mumbled as she picked up her cup. She
turned and looked at me, standing only a few feet away, but seemed to be
seeing through me.
“We should get back before they leave us,” I said.
She swiped generally in my direction, but said nothing. “Where the hell
is she?” she said again and turned in a circle.
“I’m right here.”
A confusion dawned on Katie’s face and then she shook her head and
looked deep into her cup. “Wait. I came alone.” She looked around her and
breathed out, seeming calm. “That’s right, I came alone.” She jogged off
into the direction of the group.
I walked after her in long strides to the group, by the actors. I searched
for the one with the dried blood in his hair who was looking for the ring I
found, but didn’t see him. I stopped walking at the edge of the cemetery,
feeling unable or unwilling to go on. Like I couldn’t go on even if I wanted
to. Katie laughed at something the group leader said and patted him on the
back. They all boarded the trolley and drove away.
I watched them drive away as every last vestige of who I was poured
out of me and melted back into the ground. As though a breath of wind, I
felt myself be blown away.
The Ghost Tour