A Ghost At The Movies
~~by Bobbie Cabot~~

Debbie Delaney, professional photographer, had just transitioned into her new chosen gender, but didn’t have time to get used to the new her – she just got a new assignment. Of course, this wasn’t like any kind of photo assignment that she ever had before…

-----

I was moving into my new place. It was about a month after the operation, and though it still hurt, and I had some more healing to do, my gender reassignment surgery was more-or-less complete. I was done. One would assume that I would be happy now that it was over, but the pain was something extraordinary. In the beginning, it was blindingly painful. Literally. And it’s colored my expectations from the surgeries.

I had thought the expression “blindingly painful” was quaintly funny, and that I rarely heard it used anymore. But the expression was apparently not just an expression. After my operation was done and I had eventually gone home and slowly weaned myself away from the painkillers, there were times where I felt shooting pains from my groin that was so debilitating I collapsed and actually went deaf and blind from the pain for a moment.

But that was several weeks ago. I still had pain, but not enough that I was rendered immobile. In fact, I felt good enough that I had already gone and had my cheek implants and the trachea shave a week ago. And I had started dilating already.

The stitches on my neck from the tracheal shave were taken out yesterday, and all that remained of that was a small bandage like a big Band-Aid. There was no need to take out the stitches used inside my mouth from the cheek implant since they used the kind of sutures that dissolved.

I could have waited until I felt better before I had the implants and the tracheal shave, but I wanted to get everything over with. And, as it is, I am now weeks ahead of my own personal “schedule.” I was essentially “done” now. All that’s left now was the final healing.

“It was all a little bit anticlimactic, actually,” I sighed as I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d assumed it would feel more satisfying. But I don’t regret it.

-----

I directed the movers where to put most of my stuff, and left the boxes of clothes, personal items and knickknacks in their boxes for the moment. After they had left, I had a quick lunch, a quick shower, got out a very office-y kind of outfit, but no pants – instead, I wore a knee-length pleated skirt, my fancy, new high-heeled boots and my favorite leather jacket, which I put over a formal kind of long-sleeved cream blouse and necktie à la Angelina Jolie at the BAFTAs. I picked a skirt as the slight pinching of pants still hurt.

I lightly spritzed myself with perfume, ran a brush over my hair, clipped it into a ponytail using a blue butterfly clip, and inspected my face. I decided that the minimal makeup I had on was good enough.

Someone rang my doorbell.

“Who’s there?” I called.

“Miss Delaney?” someone said through the door.

“Yes, I’m Deborah Delaney,” I replied.

“I’m Leonard Smits, the building superintendent.”

I hurried to open the door.

“Hi, Mr. Smits. I’m Deborah Delaney. I got the email saying to expect you. Glad to finally meet you.”

The tall, friendly-looking handyman smiled and shook my hand. “I just wanted to stop by to say hi, Miss Delaney, and introduce myself. Welcome to the building. If ever you need me, I’m in unit six on the sixth floor. My door is the sixth one to the left from the elevators.”

“Call me Debbie. Thank you, Mr. Smits. Appreciate you letting me know.”

“I see you’ve already moved in,” he said, peeking in.

“Just about. But I have to leave the unpacking for later. I’m heading out - I have a project.”

“Oh? What is it that you do?”

“I’m a photographer. I do a lot of stuff for fashion and travel magazines, news outlets and science journals.”

“That’s great! Would I have seen any of your stuff?”

“I doubt it, unless you subscribe to women’s fashion catalogs or travel magazines.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, wait! Are you a National Geographic subscriber? My pictures were featured there six months ago, on a piece about old houses in New Orleans.”

“I do, actually. Six months, you say? That would be the May issue. I’ll dig it up later and take a look.”

I was able to leave the friendly Mr. Smits, eventually (nothing worse than a chatty, friendly handyman, LOL), and rushed down, my camera travel kit backpack over my shoulder.

My Uber ride arrived as I stepped out of the building, just as my app said it would, and it was a short thirty-minute trip to the Flagstaff University grounds (it’s not in Arizona – it’s just the name). A campus security guard pointed me to the Spengler Hall, the home of the university’s Department of Parapsychology.

I, of course, had the normal preconceived notions about parapsychology – you know: all that nonsense about ESP, ghosts and goblins and the laughable characters in the Ghost Hunters TV show. But I did some research – apparently, Spengler Hall was more known for its contributions to the very serious science of Neutrino Particle Detection, and many of the researchers here had worked in a lot of high energy science projects, most notably on the LHC project in Geneva, the Thorium research project of the NEA, and the development of nuclear leaks management policies for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority.

I eventually found the right door, knocked and stepped in. A cluttered room greeted me, typical of the faculty offices of the academics you see on TV or in the movies. A tall, bespectacled man was sitting at a desk, working.

“Dr. Lewis Tully?” I asked. “I’m Debbie Delaney. The photographer? I’m here for the photography job.”

“Ah! Miss Delaney!” the science-y-looking man said. “Just in time. Let’s go.”

And with that, he stood up, shook my hand perfunctorily, and started walking me out.

“Wait, wait!” I exclaimed. “Where are we going?”

“To the theater, of course!”

Huh?

He asked me what camera I used and I said I used a Canon DSLR camera (I didn’t have an MILC yet).

We stopped at a lab for a second, where Dr. Tully picked up what looked like a camera lens bag, and handed it to me.

“There,” he said, handing it to me, “those are the EOS compatible ones.” Ahh. I was right – camera lenses.

He was walking so fast, I was having trouble keeping up. I just gritted my teeth against the ache and walked more rapidly.

We then had a quick ride to the airport, boarded a plane, and after an hour-long trip, we landed.

On the way, Dr. Tully briefed me. Apparently, we were actually going on a ghost hunt – what I was dreading. Apparently he was a crackpot.

He saw my expression and said that, if I didn’t want my name used or mentioned or connected with the project, he could make sure of that. He was used to the reluctance of people being connected with ghosts and ghost hunting and he understood. I felt a little small for wanting it, but I accepted and thanked him.

Apparently, we were heading for the Paramount Theater, an old movie house that opened in 1915, and, over the years, had hosted stage shows and music and film festivals. Though they still do that, what really pays their bills are the movies that they show nightly.

Anyway, their operations had been almost completely halted because of a haunting. Yep, a haunting.

In the past, the Paramount had been known for the Lady in White, whose sad face was usually spotted during pre-production of stage plays, and the Man with the Cigar that paces the the opera boxes in clouds of billowing cigar smoke.

Actually, this had helped attract patrons. Dr. Tully doubted if these were real ghosts. They were probably just a case of wishful thinking. But six months ago, a new spectral entity had appeared, and had been causing trouble. Several people had been hurt already, and one had almost died, all attributable to attacks by this new entity. Naturally, the owners tried to get help, and the Parapsychological Association contacted them when they couldn’t do anything about it.

Dr. Tully and his team had been working on the case for a month now, but they couldn’t understand how this entity was able to manifest itself in this way, and, more importantly, why was it attacking people?

Normally, research into the history of the entity would help in the usual techniques that most “psychic investigators” (the kind that everyone made fun of) used to banish these spirits. However, this one was completely unknown. And these “charlatans” (that was Dr. Tully’s word for them) used that excuse for not being able to get rid of it. For the moment, Dr. Tully and his people had taken to calling the ghost “Jane Doe.”

“So, Doctor,” I asked, “why was I called in? I don’t know anything about ghosts…”

Apparently, they needed a photographer to get better pictures of Jane Doe so they can try and find out who it was - they hadn’t had much luck getting pictures. So they decided to get a professional to help, and apparently, I came highly recommended.

“Plus,” he said, “you’re a girl…”

“Girl?” I asked. What has that got to do with anything? And besides, I don’t know if I…

“You see, Jane only attacks men. Women and children haven’t been attacked.”

He then showed me a bunch of Polaroid shots and they showed a creepy, transparent girl wearing what was, frankly speaking, a very weird kind of outfit – long-sleeved, high-necked blouse with a long skirt that reached the floor. The clothes seemed contemporary, so the spirit was probably from this time. But what girl would wear that kind of outfit?

And, if you can believe it, Jane was wearing what looked like a coronet of flowers on her head. And that made her outfit look even more bizarre. She looked more than a little off. She must have been the ugliest ghost I’d ever seen.

But there was something very familiar about her. I couldn’t put a finger on it.

The shots were pretty scary, with the ghost in various poses that showed she was attacking the photographer, or attacking the men in the shot. But the picture of the girl was always a bit blurry, especially around the face.

I then took out the lenses that he gave me earlier. They looked like pretty standard EOS lenses except that the front lens was bright green. Apparently, the lenses were a special kind of arrangement of filters that makes the energy that makes up ghosts visible. So, they worked like any normal lens except that you can see ghosts with them.

Sure, you can…

I attached one of them to my camera.

-----

It was nighttime already by the time the cab from the airport let us off at the old-looking structure. At the front, over the entrance was an old-fashioned marquee surrounded by big light bulbs. A big sign above the marquee said “The Paramount” in big, bold, three-foot-high letters.

On the unlighted marquee itself, it said “CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.”

“It looks pretty conventional,” I said. “Nothing scary at all.”

“How about you pose in front of the entrance and I’ll take a picture?”

I shrugged, not really minding, and he snapped a picture using my camera with his special lens.

He then handed me my camera and I saw my picture in the camera’s little LCD display. There was a ghostly image of a scary, partially transparent apparition behind me. The girl in the Polaroids!

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I involuntarily spun around to check. But, of course, I didn’t see anything there.

I shivered, but tried to act normally. I took my camera from Dr. Tully and looked at the picture again.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The entity has a kind of boundary. She won’t leave the theater.”

I nodded. But even with that assurance of safety, I couldn’t stop shivers from racing up and down my spine.

“What now?” I said in a shaking voice.

“I’m waiting for my team. I’ve already called them. They should be here in… Ah! There they are now.”

A trio of grad students was walking down the deserted sidewalk towards us.

“Hey, Doc!” the one in the lead, a diminutive little brunette, called and waved. The blonde and the tall, dark-haired guy with her just waved.

“Guys, this is Debbie Delaney,” he said when they got to us. “She’s our photographer.” There was a flurry of handshakes all around.

“And guess what? She’s already had an encounter with our Jane Doe.”

“She did?” Jackson, the tall guy said. “But it’s only eight PM!”

“Yeah. She’s out early tonight,” Helen, the blonde, commented.

“Maybe she’s reacting to Debbie’s presence?” Lucy, the other girl, said.

“Whatever it is, we’ll start early tonight. Maybe we can start now.”

The three nodded, went to a van parked nearby and started getting their equipment.

In a few minutes, they were ready. No proton packs for this bunch. All they had were backpacks filled with recording equipment, cameras and lights. I got ready myself: I replaced my Speedlight flash with my big Neewer LED video light, attached my battery grip and replaced my camera strap with a Black Rapid strap. I also made sure I had extra battery packs and spare SD cards in my jacket pockets. With that, I shouldered my own camera kit. I looked as close to a ghostbuster as they did.

“So, what are we doing now?” I asked.

“Ghost hunting, of course!” Helen giggled.

I shivered again. But I wouldn’t be shown up by these pseudo-eggheads.

“Dr. Tully,” I asked, feigning bravery, “what would you like me to do?”

“Just keep close to the team, Debbie,” he said. “Take pictures – as many as you can. We need clear shots of Jane Doe.”

“How will I know if the ghost is around?”

“With Jackson and I here? You’ll definitely know if she’s around. Trust me.”

I nodded, as if I understood.

Lucy led our group inside. She unlocked the metal accordion gate that served as the security door. Jackson pushed it aside and we filed in, with Lucy at the lead.

“Do we have to navigate this place in the dark?” I asked.

“No,” Dr. Tully answered. He went to a room at the back of the snack counter. He probably switched on some breaker because the lights switched on, but there were a lot of areas still in shadow.

“Not all of the lights are on, doctor,” I called.

“Oh, that’s not the light breakers,” Lucy said. “That’s damage care of Jane.”

The lights did reveal a lot of glass on the floor, upturned trashcans, and broken fixtures and furnishings.

“Okay,” Dr. Tully said. “Let’s break up into two teams. Jackson – you and Lucy go into the theater itself, we’ll take the other areas starting here.”

Jackson nodded and they walked through the main theater doors, moving the velvet ropes aside first.

I looked around and I saw lots of movie and TV posters on the walls. One wall was, in fact, covered from top to bottom by these posters. I thought that was a great gimmick – it looked like fancy wallpaper. But some of the posters were ripped, across the face of the people on them, although most were okay.

I tapped Helen on the shoulder and pointed to the poster wall.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s Jane.”

“But most of the posters are intact. Why did she tear up those particular ones?”

She shrugged. “Just a random thing.”

I looked at the ripped up ones. Something told me they weren’t random. For example, there was a set of the “Lethal Weapon” movie posters side by side. All of them were ripped up, but the rest weren’t. And I noticed that all the Mission Impossible posters were ripped as well, but the surrounding posters weren’t.

That couldn’t have been random…

Putting that aside for the moment, we searched the snack bar and the surrounding areas.

I saw Helen grab a Milky Way. I was about to say something but she rang up the cash register and put some money in the cash register’s drawer. I giggled at her honesty and fastidiousness.

We looked around some more, but it was clear things hadn’t been touched for a while here.

We then looked at other places – the theater manager’s office and the utility room, to name a couple. We then started for the bathrooms. Ekkk…

Just before we were to enter the ladies’ bathroom, I felt a peculiar kind of coldness just in front of the door.

“Wait!” I said, just as what felt like ghostly fingers raced up and down my spine.

“What is it, Debbie?” Dr. Tully said.

“I’m feeling something. Right here.” I pointed to the spot where I was standing. But it was gone, now.

“I felt something at this spot, too,” Helen said, “all the time.”

“You did?” Tully asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, Doctor… I didn’t think it was significant…”

Tully sighed exasperatedly. “Okay. Check the database. See if anything happened here.” He turned to me. “We’ve downloaded all the information we could about the theater. Anyway, turn on your camera and check around if you see Jane.”

I waved it around slowly. I shook my head. “No, nothing at all.”

After typing on her tablet for a while, Helen turned back to us. “There was a short news item, Doctor. I put ‘bathroom’ and ‘paramount’ as keywords. Apparently, about eight months ago, someone got beat up here, in front of the women’s bathroom. There was a 911 call, and the man was sent to the hospital. Someone named Kevin Nyland.”

“Ah. Then that probably isn’t our ghost.”

“Will do, Doctor.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why doesn’t that have anything to do with the ghost?” I got Helen’s tablet and looked at the information.

“Well, it’s a guy, so it’s not our Jane Doe. But you’re right - we need to do more research. We can work on that some more tomorrow.”

I checked the net and looked for anything about Kevin Nyland, and I found an obituary.

As I was about to tell Tully about it, we heard someone scream. It wasn’t Jackson or Lucy. It was blood-curdling and terrifying - it was the high-falsetto sound of the ghost screaming.

The doctor and Helen rushed towards the theater. I followed, but more because I didn’t want to be left alone.

We entered the dim theater, and we saw Jackson being pelted by stuff. Mostly trash and detritus like old soda cans or popcorn boxes.

I brought up my camera and saw the ghost in the little LCD display in all her ectoplasmic glory. She was throwing the trash at Jackson, but was virtually ignoring Lucy. By her movements, clearly, she was getting more and more frustrated since the trash wasn’t really hurting him.

I kept on snapping pictures while Helen and the doctor gingerly approached Jackson and the ghost.

And as the ghost got more and more frustrated and angry, she was becoming more visible. Eventually, I didn’t need my camera to see her. But I continued to snap pictures.

But she didn’t become visible all the way. You could see through parts of her, and see the bones and muscle underneath.

She was screaming louder and louder, and I was actually wincing every time: it was so high, loud and piercing.

Jackson had retreated to the stage below the curtained screen, but he wasn’t really being hurt.

But the ghost was running out of junk to throw. I looked at her and we could see her looking around for other things, but she couldn’t find anything.

The ghost looked down, saw the movie house chairs and wrapped her ghostly fingers around one.

With a long and loud, high-pitched falsetto scream, she tore the chair, in fact a whole row, off its bolts. The chairs were connected to each other apparently.

With incredible power, she threw the entire row at Jackson. Jackson jumped to the right, dodging the chairs, and they hit the edge of the stage with great impact, cracking and splintering the stage’s wood surface. The whole row overbalanced, tipped up and then fell into the orchestra pit with a great metallic “clang!”

Instinctively, my finger was hardly moving from my camera’s shutter button, and I was catching everything on camera.

“Jackson!” Dr. Tully yelled from where we were standing. “Are you okay?”

The ghost, upon hearing the doctor’s yell, flew to us, screamed and backhanded the doctor across his face.

Tully flew back and fell among the chairs. Helen ran to him to see if he was okay. I looked at the ghost and saw her absentmindedly adjust her coronet of flowers, then fly towards Jackson. And then it clicked.

“Stop!” I yelled. “For God’s sake, Kevin, stop it!”

-----

The ghost stopped.

“Yes, I know. Oh, Kevin, I know…”

The ghost looked towards me.

“We’re the same, Kevin,” I whispered, as she floated near me.

“I’ve felt what you’ve felt,” I said. “I’ve gone through what you went through. I know, Kevin. Believe me.”

I found myself holding my hand out. The ghost looked at it, like she wanted to take it, but at the same time, looking like she was afraid.

“Growing up not feeling like things were right, growing up like you didn’t belong. And when you tried to, you were rejected. Your classmates would hurt you or beat you up, girls you tried to be friends with would think you weird and make fun of you. And your folks…”

She looked at me, and the half-transparent skin started to become more solid, and she started looking more and more normal.

“So you pretend and try and be more ‘normal,’ more like a real boy. And soon, it becomes like a habit. But the pain – the hurt – the longing and the wanting – it grows. Eventually, you say to yourself, you don’t care what people think anymore, and you come out, and try to live the way you want to, but no one understands.”

She floated near me, looked me straight in the eye.

“But the haters and the losers – they’re still there. They haven’t gone away. And one night, at the movies, they catch you when you went to the bathroom.

“And they beat you… they beat you to death…”

I couldn’t stop myself, and I started to cry. The ghost reached for my hand. It was like it was made of smoke. It was cold, but I didn’t pull away.

“But you know, it’s all over now. It’s done. No need to fight anymore. Oh, honey, it’s over now. No need to hold on to it. No need to hold on to the pain, and the hurt, and everything.”

I sighed. “It’s done, Kevin. It is. Let yourself believe it, and you can move on.”

She looked at me, with a question in her eyes.

“I promise you, we’ll find out who did this to you, and we’ll make him pay. On my life, I promise.”

After an eternity, she nodded. Behind her, there was a light. She looked behind her and then back to me.

“They’re calling you, huh?” I said.

She nodded.

“Then you should go.”

She smiled.

Slowly, she moved closer, and gave me a hug. It was like I was surrounded by smoke, but I didn’t shrug it off.

She let go, smiled at me and drifted to the light.

“Hey!” I called.

She stopped and turned to look at me.

“What’s your real name?” I asked.

“Anna Marie,” she said, and slowly disappeared away.

“Goodbye, Anna Marie,” I whispered.

-----

A few days later, we were in the local hospital visiting Dr. Tully.

He’d sustained some broken ribs, a broken arm and a concussion, but he was mostly okay now.

They had been poring over the pictures that I had taken, and were marveling at the quality of it. The pictures of Kevin, I mean Anna Marie, were pretty clear, and there were details that I caught that were never seen before. Dr. Tully said that this could open up a whole new range of psychic investigations.

I shrugged. I didn’t care, one way or the other. As far as I was concerned, this was my first and last ghost project.

“But I don’t get it, Deb,” Jackson asked, going back to what we were discussing. “How’d you find out?”

“There were signs, actually,” I said. “It was there, if you knew what to look for.

“The fact that she only attacked men…”

“Not a good enough clue, if you ask me.”

“Also, only certain posters were torn up in the poster wall.”

“Explain that.”

“Only the movies that starred gay bashers were torn up.”

“Wow…”

“Also, the ghost’s entire look. Didn’t she look a little, you know, off?”

“Yeah!” Helen said. “I was just thinking that, but I thought it wasn’t important.”

“Also,” I said, “did you see how she moved, and her voice? It was obvious it was a boy in drag. She was even wearing a wig.”

I reached for the pile of pictures, looked through them, selected the one where I caught her adjusting her coronet and her wig, and showed it to them.

“Ahhh!” Jackson and the girls said in belated acknowledgement.

“It was so, so obvious.”

“Well, it wasn’t obvious to me,” Jackson said.

I shrugged.

“Good work, Debbie,” Doctor Tully said from his bed.

“Thanks, Doc,” I said.

“Hey,” Helen said, and put her arm through mine. “Game for some lunch?”

I blushed. “Sure,” I said.

“Let’s go!”

After saying our goodbyes to Dr. Tully, we left his room, and I allowed Helen to lead me towards wherever we were having lunch. Jackson and Lucy trailed after us, maybe about a dozen feet away.

“I still don’t believe that she used to be a guy,” I heard Jackson say.

“Oh, shut up!” Lucy said in exasperation.

---end---

Note - The picture was a collage made from publicly accessible pictures of the Sena Kashiwazaki character and other pictures. No ownership is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.

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