Last week I was honored to have a story featured in Trove’s “Bedtime Hotline”! That was a live event conceived by the inimitable Ian Reid where performers read bedtime tales over the phone to callers trying to fall asleep. While I’ve heard rumblings of something similar (even better imo) planned for the future, the bedtime hotline itself is now Over. I am really proud of the story I wrote though, so I put it here where you can read it for yourself forever.
And then I’ll write a little extra about the magical ritual I came up with that inspired the story.
Enjoy ::)
Canadian Geese in the Graveyard
By Luke Maloney
For Ian Reid
March is the only month you’ll see more than a handful out at a time. The cemetery is full of the cloudy blue smudges of their bodies, treading without footprints across swaths of melting snow. In groups, alone, in black mostly. All the hosts come out of their headstones. Moving with the slow gait of museum galleries, their attentions fixed, they watch the visiting Canadian Geese, their guests of honor.
The cemetery holiday lasts as long as the geese stay, usually a few weeks’ rest on their migration north. The ghosts hum holiday carols as they sew the grass with seeds, precious berries, and gemstones for their guests to eat. When they sing out in the eerie language of the dead they do so from blue-backed hymnals. Thin white candles stand unlit on some of the granite monuments. White string dangles from the bare trees everywhere, strung with pinecone bird feeders and popcorn, and the yard is full of more songbirds, crows, and squirrels in March than at any other point of the year. Beside the scant decorations and carols, there are few discernible traditions for the holiday. I’ve seen a few gifts exchanged (little bags of flower seeds for the coming spring, cards, plush geese). Mostly the shades adore their visitors from afar, keeping a respectful distance as they process between corridors of tombstones.
But, if one of the birds sits in a puddle, it is taken by the spirits as an invitation to leave the crowd and have the honor of washing its feathers with fresh rainwater.
It could have been her first time accepting the honor. It’s not that common one gets the chance, and when she lowered herself into the puddle and the goose presented its tucked wings to be anointed, she shone a childlike, disbelieving smile toward her friends.
Maybe every chance to be that close to an honored goose is met with such a feeling of awe and unreal luck.
The goose, for its part, seemed to feel nothing special. Impatience. As though all the pomp around its presence was just a natural extension of the way things ought to be. This young ghost really shouldn’t be so surprised that she should have to perform her duty eventually. A moment like this should have been rehearsed for all year!
I shouldn’t say they feel nothing. They’re more comfortable in the cemetery holiday. They lack that classic alertness of the geese of the outside world. High swiveling heads relax to eat and bathe. No one has to keep watch. They are less likely to suddenly flap into the air for no reason. Even at my dog’s approach—I let him off leash when we get to the graveyard—the geese barely notice him. He can usually scare the whole group into the air at twenty meters. Today, he’s quickly intercepted and shooed off by a pair of shades shooting me dirty looks for disturbing their spell.
Water, cupped and poured from her light, blue hands, her ringed fingers, trickles down the regal slant of black throat. The goose closes its eyes and tosses its head back and rises to its webbed-feet, and she laughs when it shakes out its wings, splashing cold droplets everywhere.
Here comes the test.
The goose beats its wings almost enough to take off, looses a honk, and then, slowly sinks to rest on its down feathers, back into the water, and bows its black neck to be washed more thoroughly.
And her smile is like victory! Turning to the other ghosts, multiplying the joy. I feel her smile touch my own lips. Not as bright but there it is. The first of the day.
A little christening.
A bottle of champagne.
The spirit girl gets back to work on her goose. She has a bar of soap now. I wonder what it smells like. I wonder who she was. Is the scent tied to the holiday like pine or peppermint is to Christmas? Let’s say it’s eucalyptus, or lavender.
But I know too much about cemetery culture already.
I head toward the grave I’ve come to visit.
It’s a daily stop for Craig and me (my dog). The living and the dead both frown upon the frequency of my visits. Conventional wisdom of the living says one shouldn’t linger too long by that door; it might give the ghosts the idea to dwell in our bars, parks, even our homes. Are hauntings, possessions, poltergeists not common enough?
The spirits, meanwhile, prefer their privacy. We living intruders are tolerated inasmuch as paying respects is a necessary ritual for both parties, but the sight stirs up ages of held resentment.
Memory, paying respects, as I understand it, is like money here in the graveyard. Or else it confers some status. A spirit is stronger and more vibrant when it’s remembered than those that are forgotten whose bodies’ barely manifest and move easily in light breezes.
The memory I bring on visits like these is socially tough on her spirit. Cemetery society has a rigid system about this. A spirit’s remembrance is most directly tied to the number of visitors and devotions it receives. That number is decided primarily by the memorial services and the light trickle of visits a grave gets afterward which are counted on to dwindle to one or two a year if that.
Once the living have forgotten you, the quality of the headstone assumes the role of dominant status symbol. Stone urns, mausoleums, and statues of angels or Mary are the well-to-do crowd and only associate with one another. Regular headstones are free to form their own cliques and still pay close attention to quality. A clean headstone with nice lettering and detailing in marble and gold clearly stands above the unmarked granite slab, pushed to a strange angle as if it grew out of the earth that way. Those ghosts lack even each others’ company for shame.
The rare spirit with a true monument—a fountain or a statue of him or herself or a regularly observed shrine—holds the most power in the yard. They are the only kind that tend to disappear. The other spirits are forced to wade endlessly around the yard, trapped, gently circulating the fog. Memory gives the rare spirit just enough juice to escape into heaven, but even these honored ghosts, shining halos of golden light, tend to linger to enjoy the status. No doubt respected and resented.
As things stand, hers is the brightest spirit in the cemetery. Her halo bathes the snow, and dandelions force their heads out of the earth in her presence. Who else has a daily patron? I don’t see her today. I imagine she's taking cover in her headstone. The social pressure, I think, embarrasses her.
The other ghosts stare through me and Craig. At this point, they look burnt out on their own disdain, over it, just waiting for my stamina to flag, so she can return to the natural order of the forgotten.
Her plot is on the far edge of the cemetery. A simple stone slab. Surrounded, sure enough, by a ridiculous bushel of dandelions, teeming into the air. I kneel before the headstone to begin my ritual and Craig comes running beneath my hands to receive. I scratch behind his ears, under his chin, tussle his ribs so his tail pummels the grass. His pink tongue lolls out from his black smile: total bliss. It’s the best tribute I can give her. Store-bought flowers offer little and rot quickly. And I won’t be building any obelisks in the short term.
Instead, Craig’s pure animal joy flows as a transfusion of living energy into the earth and fills her spirit. The dandelions seem to inch a little further into the air. I stand to make my way out.
It’s an embarrassing expedition at this point, especially during the holiday when the shades’ sneers are visible everywhere. It’s clear to them I take more from my little ritual than she does. She should be out here enjoying the holiday with them. Instead she’s hiding in the ground, and my living ass is ruining their view.
Ghosts don’t speak to the living. No amount of memory is enough to break the silence, but if she did I think she would tell me to cut it out.
I say enjoy it while it lasts.
Craig barrels past me, off between the gravestones, barking after a squirrel that escaped him two trees ago.
I take a seat on the grassy curb, and something tightens in a nearby group of spirits who were hoping I’d keep it short this time. Craig nearly bowls me over running and gives me a wild, confused look from his place on the ground, suddenly receiving no belly rubs, panting heavily.
The spirit girl is still smiling over there. The whole group of them are taken by the beauty as the goose in the water takes flight and eighteen others follow. Chaotic, honking, flapping above the cracks of leafless black trees to the overcast sky.
A familiar tune spreads among the shades. One of their carols. I hum it with them as I stand back up and walk to the gate.
Some Magician claims to have translated phrases of the dead. If you believe her, the song goes “May each field on your journey grow fatter than the last, May you return when the cold chases you from the top of the world.”
My head swivels to catch the blizzard of grey, black, and white feathers splash into the pond to try breadcrumbs from the worshippers there. Not ready to go. Not just yet.
The End.
This Autumn and Winter, I was really walking a real dog named Callie in Holy Cross Cemetery in Flatbush every day of the week, and early on I came up with a ritual that where I would pet Callie over a grave plot and imagine that her happiness flowed into the ghost of whoever was buried there and through that channel blessed every person living or dead with the same name or any relation. Holy Cross is a catholic cemetery so the names on the gravestones were limited but I performed the ritual for Maloneys, Moloneys, Malones, Murphys, Howleys, Mooneys, Santoras, O’Learys, and Lees I found among other names I recognized of family and friends. Of course I keep an eye out for names I know in every cemetery I visit, and if you do too, this ritual could prove very handy:
THE RECIPE:
ARRIVE AT THE BURIAL GROUNDS WITH A BEAST.
it’s unfortunate but true that most souls are neither in heaven, hell, nirvana, nor roaming earth reincarnated but lingering near their mortal remains. I brought Callie the dog. Dogs make wonderful channels of good feeling, but your channel is, of course, up to your discretion.
SEEK NAMES OF SIGNIFICANCE AMONG THE STONES.
these may be familiar surnames as I found. Any names you wish to bless. If the identity of the soul is Known to you, this is a very strong conntection. Even the loosest connection, if it forms truly in one’s mind, will bless the ancestors and descendants affixed in your mental world to the name and share good feeling to the lingering soul.
KNEEL OVER A PLOT AND OPEN THE CHANNEL TO PURE ANIMAL JOY.
I give Callie the best scratches I can. Under the chin, behind the ears, the base of the spine, belly and imagine all the good feeling pouring out of her into the earth. In theory, one could act as their own channel, invite the spirits to embibe—for examble—in ones own joyful experience of eating good cake. There is something unparalleled about the shameless, black-gummed gash of a dog’s mid-scratch smile.
REPEAT.
there are manyfold benefits to this spell. The blessing of a spirit and the names of loved ones, a reminder for the caster of one’s own place in a line of [antecedents] and descendants and of one’s living loved ones. None is clearer—maybe as worthy—as the simple pleasure of a dog!
Thanky for readin me! If ye let yourself try your spell here, do be tellin me!