Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #117: What It's Like To Be a Ghost: "Someone."

George Harrison, author of the song, "Someone"

Ghost stories are always fun to write, and the challenge of the story is to make it somehow different, quirky, dashing expectations, or opening a new understanding what ghosts are or what it feels like to be a ghost. In one of my stories, “The Ghost on Fulton Street,” a girl is murdered. When she finds herself standing beside her dead body, her first thought is, Shit! I’m a fucking ghost. What now? It would be a thing that takes adjustment.

In the story “Someone,” character Michael Paston, who has just gone through a divorce, finds himself drawn to ruined places and abandoned buildings. He goes through a site where workers are demolishing a brownstone. They are listening to the radio, and the song playing is the old George Harrison Beatle song, “Someone.” He listens, hearing the line, Carve your number on my wall / And maybe you will get a call from me—if I needed someone. On impulse, he writes his phone number on the wall. A couple of days later, he gets a call. A young woman named Portia Mallory asks if he would like to get together at an all-night coffee bar. He wonders if she might be a hooker, a mugger, or something along those lines, but agrees to meet with her. She turns out to be petite, attractive, and friendly. They drink coffee and talk. He finds out she works in a cookie factory in town and lives in one of the satellite cities around Grand Rapids (my home town, where most of my stories take place). She allows him to kiss her goodnight and they make plans to see each other again. Michael thinks the date went well.  

He asks a friend who works at the coffee factory if he knows Portia Mallory. He says he did, but she died a year ago by stepping on an electrical cord that had been uncovered during a repair of one of the machines. Michael looks up articles on the internet, reads news stories, looks at photographs, and finds that his friend is correct. The girl he met is dead. She is a ghost.

He is afraid but curious. And he remembers the sad look in Portia’s eyes and remembers how forlorn she seemed at times. He has watched Sixth Sense and knows that ghosts want something. He will find out what Portia wants and why she appeared to him. At a bar, he confronts her. She admits her spectral identity and explains to him that the building she haunts, the building where her apartment was, is, like the building where he wrote his phone number, to be demolished.

“I have to be anchored to a place. I have to have a place to center—somewhere that contains a residue of my past life. By residue, I mean energy, memories, recollections. When the place is torn down, I’ll be sent out into the air.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll have no place to be. I’ll be a spirit whirling around in the wind and the elements—like in Dante’s Inferno where he meets the two lovers.” 

Michael thinks on the situation. The next time he and Portia meet he tells her he intends to stop the demolition of her old apartment building. She asks how, and he reminds her that he is a poet. She is skeptical, but he tells her never to underestimate the power of a poet.  

He begins a campaign to save the old building, which has a shop downstairs and, at one time, was declared a protected historical property. The City Council, however, waived the protection and permitted a company to tear the three buildings on the block down and build a parking garage there. Michael circulates a petition, organizes a rally, and holds a public poetry reading to protest the action by the City Council. The news media takes notice. People in the city rally to oppose the demolition.  

He also learns (this is my take on ghosts) that a ghost can take on a body from about 11:00 until around 3 a.m. He and Portia become lovers. But complications come. 

Portia manages to break out of the negative aura she has created around herself due to bitterness over her death and fear of being thrown out into the elements. Breaking out allows her to meet other ghosts. She finds out there are quite a few them around, and some of them are quite attractive. Michael suddenly has competition. He despairs, thinking he has lost her. She learns he is divorced, his wife is a lawyer and left him a spacious house and pays alimony to him; also, that they had a child and custody belongs to her, not to Michael.

 In the end, Portia decides to stay with him, though she tells him he may have some rivals for her love—rivals from the ghostly community. She and Michael go to his house and bed down for the night. The future for them is uncertain; but so is life, as they both have learned. 

“Someone” is one of the best stories I’ve written. It appeared in Electric Spec. Unfortunately, the journal has not archived all its past issues, so the story is not available online.

Soon, however, a new novel, Sinfonia:  A Painted Lady, will go into publication. Stay tuned for the release date. And, in preparation, read the first novel in the series, Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute. Below is the banner for the new novel. As I said, it will be out soon, no doubt in time for Christmas.

Happy reading!