Ghost Walk

CHAPTER TWO

Maria Nasr held her breath and counted to ten.

I will not snap. I will not snap. I will not snap.

She repeated the mantra over and over in her head. It didn’t help. Her anger swelled. This was ridiculous. Her hands curled into fists and her long fingernails dug into her palms, the French manicure from the day before all but forgotten. Her legs twitched in annoyance, rocking the tablet, pen, and digital voice recorder precariously balanced in her lap. The clock on the wall refused to move, the hands seemingly frozen in time. Maria’s temples throbbed.

At the front of the room, the fat man, Orvil Hale, one of the town commissioners, droned on and on about his kid’s private Christian academy and how marvelous it was and how all of the other board members should consider enrolling their children at the school, too. His bald head shined under the fluorescent lighting. Hale’s pudgy, red-splotched cheeks jiggled as he talked. Long hairs dangled from his nose, swaying with each breath. Maria could see them even from where she sat. And he wheezed between words, as if the very act of talking left him breathless. So why didn’t he just shut up? Weren’t they on taxpayers’ time? Yes, of course they were. But rather than getting down to business, Hale kept talking.

It pissed her off. She had better things to do on a Wednesday night than sit here and listen to an elected official proselytize on township time. Okay, maybe laundry, cleaning her apartment, and grocery shopping weren’t exciting, and sure, these meetings were about as thrilling as watching flies have sex, but enough already! Get to the matter at hand, address the taxpayers’ concerns: the new sewage system and who was going to pay for it. That’s what she was here to cover for the newspaper, not this personal fucking nonsense. They could save that for after the meeting.

Occasionally, Maria would skim through Writer’s Digest and other magazines and websites directed toward writers. They always made freelancing sound glamorous and fun.

This was neither.

Maria exhaled, took another deep breath, and forced herself to relax. She stretched her fingers and toes and twisted her head from side to side, cracking the cartilage in her neck. The guy in front of her, a writer for the York Daily Record, turned around and smiled. Maria smiled back.

Don’t get the wrong idea, buddy, she thought. You’re like twice my age and still working as a freelancer. No career drive or higher financial aspirations there, obviously. And besides that, you pick your nose and wipe it on your pants.

It was true. She’d seen him do it at dozens of these township meetings, as well as other municipal government meetings, car wrecks, ribbon cuttings, Jaycee bean suppers, Lions Club pancake breakfasts, and everything else they covered.

The reporter—Mark was his name, she remembered now—turned back around and focused on the front of the room. His index finger crept toward his nose again. The township supervisors were discussing last week’s episode of American Idol. Maria glanced at the clock and sighed. The hands had barely moved.

Somebody kill me now…

She hated this. Hated her job as a freelancer and everything it entailed. This wasn’t how she’d pictured things would be after graduating from college three years ago. She’d imagined moving to New York City or Los Angeles and getting a job for a major newspaper, or maybe writing for Time or Newsweek or Vanity Fair. Instead, she was stuck freelancing here in York County, Pennsylvania, scrambling to sell articles for anyone who would send her a check, and barely making a living at it.

Maria had grown up in Paramus, New Jersey. Her father was a Jordanian Muslim and her mother was a Brazilian nonpracticing Catholic. Both had immigrated to the United States to go to college, and both had ended up living here afterward. They’d gotten married, after her mother converted to Islam. Maria’s father was an engineer. Her mother was a doctor. Both had wanted the best for their daughter, especially since she was an only child. But they also insisted that she earn things on her own. Her father was especially adamant about this. They could have sent Maria to the finest journalism schools in the country and paid her tuition in full, but instead, they’d declined to help her financially. “You must do it on your own,” her father had said. “If you do not work hard now, you will never appreciate the opportunities you are given. You may hate us for it now, but you will thank us one day.”

Maria had ended up picking York College. It was highly accredited, yet still affordable on her college loan. Moving from Paramus to the small Pennsylvania town was a bit of an adjustment, but she managed. She got a job working part-time at a video store, shared an apartment off campus with five other girls, and stayed focused. No boyfriends during her four years in school—there was no time. Becoming a journalist was what mattered. Serious relationships could come later, after she’d graduated and went to work for the New York Times.

Except that it never happened. Maria received her degree, but the job offers weren’t forthcoming. She applied in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington, D.C., and all the other nearby cities. When she had no luck there, she tried the smaller cities like Allentown, Scranton, Trenton, and Richmond, but they weren’t hiring either. Some of them offered her other positions or freelance work, but nothing that was financially feasible. She needed full-time employment—a staff gig. Maria had her student loan to pay off, as well as the cost of living, and moving expenses to wherever she took the job. She couldn’t move back home. Her father remained adamant that she do things on her own, so living with her parents again wasn’t an option. She could have asked them for a loan, but that would have been admitting defeat—and besides, she was already far enough in debt.

In the end, Maria opted just to stay in York. She got a small apartment in York City, bought a Hyundai Accent, and added even more to her debt. Then, still working at the video store—full-time now, rather than part-time—Maria started supplementing her income with freelance assignments. After all, what good was her degree if she didn’t put it to use? So in the evenings, after she got off work, Maria began writing for various markets. It was slow going at first. She had to build up a list of editors and markets that she could submit regularly for. Webzines, travel guides, magazines, newspapers—all of them were looking for freelancers, even the papers who had refused to hire her as a full-time employee. After a year and a half, she had an impressive amount of clippings and could afford to quit her job at the video store—even though she was really only earning the same amount she’d made working there. She continued working hard and stayed prolific, and so far, she wasn’t behind on her bills and could buy groceries and hadn’t crawled back to Paramus to tell her parents she was a failure. The key to being a successful freelancer was the ability to write quickly for a variety of clients.

Like now. Maria focused again on Orvil Hale. She hadn’t missed anything. The officials were just now calling the meeting to order.

Finally, she thought. It’s about fucking time. Maybe we’ll be out of here before Halloween.

Maria crossed her legs. She needed to pee.

Tonight, Maria was freelancing for the York Dispatch. Unlike their rival, the York Daily Record, they used freelancers to cover most local government meetings. Maria earned sixty dollars per story, and while it didn’t seem like a lot of money, every check counted—that was the freelancer’s mantra. On any given week, she could get paid for several magazine articles, half a dozen reviews online, and two or three freelance stories for the newspaper. It all added up. And besides, the local government stories only took her a few hours to write. They weren’t exactly hard work. The only drawback was sitting through the tedious meetings themselves. Maria had yet to discover a way to make sewer lines, street repair, or refuse collection interesting and exciting. No matter how you dressed it up, it was still the most boring shit in the world. Still, she wasn’t getting paid to make it thrilling. She was simply supposed to report the facts, no matter how uninspiring they might be.

The other downside was the fact that she had very few personal relationships and little time for socializing, other than with business contacts and peers she met on the Internet. Maria posted regularly on a few message boards for freelance writers, and had several friends she exchanged e-mails with, but she didn’t go out much. She couldn’t. There was no time. She spent her days and evenings working on the next assignment or trying to line up more. As a result, her social life outside of the Internet was almost non existent. Three years after college, she still had no serious boyfriends. Maria could count the number of dates she’d been on with one hand. And other than a drunken one-night stand with a guy she’d met on assignment six months ago, she’d slept alone.

Yep, she thought, the thrilling, glamorous life of a freelance writer.

Nuts…

Two long hours later, the township officials finished their business and Hale adjourned the meeting. Maria turned off her digital voice recorder, put it in her purse along with her notebook and pen, and stood up. Her notebook was filled with doodles—cat and dog faces, a hexagon, and labyrinthine, concentric circles. She hadn’t taken any notes, confident that the important stuff was on the recorder. She’d play it back when she got home, transcribe it, and make sense of things. Boil two hours’ worth of discussion into a four-hundred-word news brief that would end up buried on the last page of the local section, right after the farm report and church worship schedules for the week. She’d e-mail it to her editor before her one a.m. deadline, and then get some sleep.

Maria filed out with the rest of the attendees. Mark from the Daily Record smiled at her again. His pants legs were covered with dried boogers. She smiled back, and then looked away, pretending to be interested in some Halloween decorations hanging on the wall.

Yeah, her life was really working out the way she’d planned.

Maybe tomorrow she’d look into moving again. Try getting out of York. Search Craigslist for an apartment in New York or Philadelphia. And maybe she’d win the lottery, too. That was the only way she could afford to move, after all.

Like it or not, she was stuck here. Alone.

On her way out the door, she glanced back at Mark. His finger was in his nostril up to the first knuckle.

So she wasn’t the only thing that was stuck.

Maria finished her assignment half an hour before the deadline and e-mailed the attachment to her editor. Her little television flickered in the corner. Conan O’Brien was interviewing Canadian stand-up comedian Pete Zedlacher. The two were laughing at something, but Maria couldn’t tell what because she had the sound muted.

Her apartment was small but comfortable—bathroom, living room, kitchenette, and two bedrooms, one of which served as her office. The place was furnished with a curious mixture of leftover dorm furniture from her college days and more recent purchases from Ikea and Target. A new couch. A used futon. The eggshell-colored walls were sparse—a framed Monet print, a montage of photos from high school and college, and a collectible spoon rack. There was only one picture of her parents in the whole apartment, subconsciously hung above the entertainment center where she didn’t have to look at them every day. Maria spent little time in the living room—when she was home, her evenings were spent sleeping or working. Her office wasn’t much. Two desks had been lined up in an L-shape in the corner. One held her laptop and the other her older desktop. A two-drawer filing cabinet contained her various clippings and bylines, as well as contracts, receipts, and financial records. Two bookshelves leaned against the wall. One overflowed with paperbacks and compact discs. A green vase sat precariously at the top. The other bookshelf held her television and more books.

Conan gave way to an annoying commercial for a headache medicine. She was just about to turn the television off and go to bed when her laptop beeped, signaling a new e-mail. She clicked on Outlook Express and saw it was from Miles, her editor at the paper.

It read:Got the piece. Thanks. Will run in the local section tomorrow. Meanwhile, how would you like a bigger assignment? Looking for a special feature on a new local Ghost Walk. At least one full page, plus pictures. Maybe more, if material warrants. One of the staff photographers has already made arrangements for pics. Just need someone to do the story. Normally, Hilary would cover this, but she’s still on maternity leave and the Ghost Walk’s own er, Ken Ripple, is adamant about coverage. The attraction opens the night before Halloween, so we’ve got to get hopping. Not a lot of time. It’s a rush job. You interested? —Miles

She was surprised to see that Miles was still awake this time of night. But then again, judging by how often he complained about his wife and kids, maybe he was happier at work.

Maria hit reply. Was she interested? A full-page feature? That paid a lot more than a sidebar item about local government. Hell, yes, she was interested, and she told him so. A few minutes later, Miles responded with Ripple’s contact information and a suggestion that Maria come in and go through the newspaper’s archives tomorrow. There was a lot of history associated with the haunted attraction’s location, and since she wasn’t a local, she’d have to brush up on it.

Assuring him that she would, and promising to stop by the office in the morning, Maria logged off and went to bed. It was a long time before she fell asleep.

When she finally did, she had a nightmare about her parents. They were displeased with the path she’d taken in life and had decided to talk to her about it—with knives.

They were very angry, and the knives were very sharp.