“I don’t understand why this is still a problem,” the ACS Director says, point-blank from behind the line of tiny crystal goblets filled with discreet, elegant sips of sherry. The Director’s flight, and that of every sherry-flight at the table, glistens in the muted light of the cabin. He stares on through the front windows of the yacht’s dining room into the night. The city is partially hidden on the horizon, and, up above it all, almost insignificant pin pricks of light lie scattered like fallen sequins.
Only the gentle tip and roll of the lake beneath the yacht breaks the view. Quiet waves
lap against the rudders out by the transom deck viewing area.
“What I really don’t understand is why this is now my problem.” He continues to stare.
In the sloppy atmosphere that coats the world at three in the morning, the three ACS deputy directors glance at each other less surreptitiously than they intend.
“Tell me what is going to be done about it,” he says. No one responds.
The Director leans over and holds down a button built into the teak table. “Garçon, bring up another cask from the hold.”
*********
Hollis stumbles out and slams the car door behind him, placing his rolled right ankle on the asphalt as gently as possible with every step towards the stairs to the second floor, clutching his camera bag. There’s some whinnying from inside. The ghost trails after him after getting the horse out of the car to roam the parking lot. Its new, twisted face doesn’t glow any brighter, but the smirk has more intent than it ever had sitting on a porch.
“Pivoting meeting in five,” Hollis mutters behind him to his follower, who is already gone.
Up on the open air rampart, two people in shorts and bucket hats pose on the walkway, the shorter one waving a selfie stick high in the air. They face the decorative railing that keeps guests from falling down to the parking lot, and are angled such that the concrete path is left plenty clear for any passersby.
Hollis ignores them and takes the last step off the stairs, then pauses, struck by passages in À la CIA: 13 Rules from My Undercover Life. He quickly wrestles his face and posture to be as neutral as possible. He turns his camera bag away to hang on his other hip with a twinge of pain in his leg, then tells himself to be quiet about mission details only to remember he has not said anything. He considers quietly vaulting over the railing and navigating to his door via a jungle-gym maneuver, but decides against it. He recalls the negative effects of his earlier jump from a height of five feet, despite Youtube’s instruction of his parkour technique, and decides that the pronouncements of his Gripmaster correspondence course may also be inaccurate. He’ll have to ask the Field Department about evasive techniques.
“Okay wait, I got it now,” the camera operator cries, “New Jersey cheeeeese.” The second tourist flashes a peace sign and flips her hair, echoing the dairy product cry while Hollis waits. He hugs the railing behind him. He desperately tries to remember the aspect ratio on the average smartphone. He realizes he has never researched that before. And to think I’d been on the camera equipment committee for eight years, Hollis thinks. Nor has he ever researched how phones indicate which camera they’re using. Cursing himself for rookie mistakes, he looks out and away to keep his face obscured. The watery image of the dead horse grazes on the asphalt in the parking lot.
“Oh gosh, are we in your way?” The taller tourist, clad in a pastel green polo shirt, finally notices Hollis with wide eyes. They try to completely flatten against the motel wall, making the path practically empty.
The shorter tourist also glances over in concern. Hollis grimaces, ducks under his bucket hat, and averts his face again before hurrying past them. He misses the camera operator’s curious look, their brow crinkling almost imperceptibly.
Their partner-in-vacationing calls out, “Sorry.” Hollis curses the brightness of the afternoon sun. He manages to get the key into the lock to room 217 and rushes inside.
*********
“Get good pictures?” The two tourists let themselves into room 216. They shed their hats at the pile of caps, beanies, and scarves arranged on top of a suitcase by the door. Small boxes of clear plastic bags neatly labeled in black marker lined the wall beyond it.
Sawyer collapses the selfie-stick and starts sending photos back to HQ, “yeah, but god if the sun isn’t cooperating today. Finally got a decent scan of the cloud patterns.” They stash the stick away, typing in the passcode in the camera luggage, 88201. “Feel bad for that guy, though,” they chuckle, abashed, “Tourists, eh?”
“Blame it on our ‘brewery tour,’” Monica removes the fake mole on her neck, handing it to Sawyer to store.
From the coffee table, a laptop chimes, and Monica hurries over to check. Sawyer walks to the bathroom instead and opens the huge disguise box, comparing in the mirror whether to wear the black sideburns or the green glass earrings later that day.
Monica calls over her shoulder, “There were several anomalous atmospheric changes to the south early this morning.” She grabs her work phone from the table, opening the maps app.
Sawyer decides on the earrings, “So… snow aliens?”
“Not unless you like your blizzards with a side of lightning and high humidity.” Sawyer strides over and examines the screen with her. It’s part thermal imaging map, part data readout on the side. Sure enough, to the south of Sleepy Hollow and Terrytown, several large, amorphous blobs of yellow-colored humidity surrounding something very deep blue and very cold travel west across the landscape for a handful of hours before abruptly disappearing.
“Let’s include that area in the late afternoon sweep,” Sawyer says.
“First thing.” Monica replies, closing the laptop. Its lid is covered in several Alien Extraterrestrial Investigation League: Field-Data Collection Department stickers and barcodes. She enters the locations in the GPS.
“Agreed.”
********
After shedding his bags and coat on the floor, Hollis approaches the information web with an air of solemn duty, the ghost hovering behind him. Before them both, behind the web of red string, is half a notebook page with the phrase: “bridge ghost menacing hikers.”
“We have to keep this project lean.” Hollis says and sighs, shifting his weight off his foot, “Sometimes the Project Leader has to make the tough calls.”
He delicately extracts the piece of paper, crumples it, and throws it behind him. The ghost swerves out of the way, a little miffed.
The rest of the information wall stands by like a newspaper archive slathered on the walls. Hollis angles his steps between the cat’s cradle of red yarn and stacks of paper labeled “ACS” over to the window.
“We can’t stop our attempts. This… might be our fifty-first plan,” he says, mostly to himself.
Hollis flings open the musty curtains to the spacious view of a 7/11. The ghost has already gone over to the TV, turned it on, and is attempting to reach into the blast of grey static without passing through the hardware.
“I have to secure the area,” Hollis says as he claims his ratty office chair.
Laptop in hand, Hollis opens the application to view the “spirit surveillance” cameras. They reveal a sideways view of a crumbling corner of the motel, an awkward angle of the parking lot, and two different hazy views of the forest across the road. Hollis toggles away and reviews the hour-by-hour highlights. At 11:27am a car speeds by, throwing an empty can into a roadside ditch.
Scrolling along to 1:44pm, Hollis leans into the screen when movement stirs in some ferns. A ray of sun breaks through the trees, revealing an orange cat that quickly ducks into a bush.
I would’ve bet this place would be crawling with AEIL counteragents by now, Hollis thinks. He sets aside the screen in favor of reaching for his camera bag, keenly missing his desk. He stops abruptly and stares at the ghost with the TV. Crawling, he realizes, I’m practically a thought leader. He scrambles for the bag, and pulls out a notebook and a text on exorcism.
Smiling, Hollis hefts his aching leg up on the bed and cracks open the book. A new corner office will need a new chair.
*********
Golden light reflects off the low-dipping branches in the dark like splattered syrup. The ghost pushes some aside with relish; for others, it is content to silently wash through the needles and leaves as the horse passes through the underbrush at a trot. The benefactor’s location had been difficult to find originally, but not impossible, and negotiating to meet it again in the same place had not been impossible either.
Whatever had been there in the wild clearing, from the living’s point of view, had slid down and splintered apart long ago. Now it’s a pile of rotting boards being eaten by moss and broken glass sticking up from the soil between tall weeds. A shallow puddle, more like a flooded hole, lay undisturbed. Silver moonlight falls past the taller trees encircling the space (belying one of Hollis’s earlier comments about how it was “unseasonably warm” at twilight and “ripe for scare-able pedestrians.” The ghost does not have eyes to roll, but the horse could).
The ghost dismounts some yards away from the boards and puddle. It slowly drops the reins when the horse refuses to take another step. The steed does not balk or turn like last time, so the ghost continues on without trying to secure the beast. The ghost steps lightly, even if its boots have never made impressions anyway.
Something in the space sighs, breathless and sharp, “Offer,” it insists.
The ghost immediately stops and reaches into its tattered coat. It produces an empty box for orange-flavored Tic Tacs, its previous sugary contents tossed to the raccoons behind the motel.
Inside is a fraction of a nail clipping, two nickels, and a pinch of human hair—brown hair, the kind picked off upholstery.
It could be the soft clap of disturbed water, but it forms a word, “Promise.
The ghost attempts to step forward, mostly shuffling. It stretches out its arm very far and drops the Tic Tac box onto the moss-covered boards. There is a beat of silence. Weight, the weave and wale of the fabric of its destroyed uniform between its shoulders and a force, the ghost recognizes, a weight is pushing it down onto its weightless knees. It hangs its head, the light diffusing out.
There’s a blunt retort of echoless damp, “Vow.”
The ghost bows lower at the waist, almost to the slimy leaves, the flickering candlelight a sickly yellow. It stays there for some time.
Cold moonlight outlines the plastic box, now closed on the dirt, filled with small gravel and sand. The ghost slowly picks it up and pockets it.