Just Kill Me (7 page)

Cyn pats me on the back. “Welcome to the profession,” she says. “Rolling with the rotters.”

Rick and Cyn drive the bus to the Blue Line stop at Halsted and I-290, right near Hull House, so I can take the train back home to Forest Park.

“All right,” Rick says. “Start researching all the stories you heard tonight, and be ready to tell the Resurrection Mary story next time you come on the tour.”

“You can get the
Chicago Tribune
archives online through the same library portal you use for the
OED
,” says Cyn. “A few years of some other local papers' archives, too.”

“Thanks for giving me the opportunity,” I say. “I won't let you down.”

This may be the most sincere promise I have ever made.

I will learn everything. I will be the best tour guide ever. They will never regret hiring me.

On the train ride home, I start poking around on the
Oxford English Dictionary
online using my phone and find a fantastic word from 1785: “murdermonger.” A word for one who deals in murders, or in murder stories.

That's what I am now. A murdermonger in training.

Awesome.

From: Megan

To: Ricardo Torre, Cynthia Fargon

Date: Thursday, 12:15 a.m.

Subject: Articles

Reading up like crazy on all the stories in the newspaper archives.

The devil baby was definitely a real rumor that everyone got all excited about; Jane Addams wrote a whole book about it. But she said it was just an urban legend that had no basis in fact. Even if someone had brought a “devil baby” to Hull House, I assume they would have taken it to the hospital, not buried it alive! Jane Addams would never have buried a baby alive, and fuck anyone who says she would.

Also, I found a whole physician's report on the
guy they tried to bring back to life after they hanged him. They got his heart beating again but his neck was broken.

From: Megan

To: Ricardo Torre, Cynthia Fargon

Date: Thursday, 12:45 a.m.

Subject: More Articles

Found a few articles about that Marjorie Kay Stone woman, too. Have you seen this one from the 1960s describing her “Finders of Magwitch Park” business? Not that I doubted you guys, but she sounds like a real trip. It talks about her finding a monkey who could play Monopoly in a commercial. Fun job.

From: Ricardo Torre

To: Cynthia Fargon, Megan

Date: Thursday, 1:15 a.m.

Subject: Monkey

I could totally teach a monkey to play Monopoly. You just have to lay down the law. You say, “Listen, Monkey. Getting $500 for landing on Free Parking is a house rule, not a real rule, and we play the real
rules here.” If he doesn't play right, no bananas.

Thursday, 1:22 a.m.

From: Cynthia Fargon

To: Ricardo Torre, Megan

Subject: Re: Monkey

Doinkus.

ZOEY BABY:

Congrats on the job! You will be awesome.

MEG:

YAY!

MEG:

I'm a murdermonger now. Mom's gonna kill me.

ZOEY BABY:

Murdermonger?

MEG:

OED word for a person who deals in murder stories.

ZOEY BABY:

Hehe. Look up “ghost.”

MEG:

The “ghost” entry is huge! Earliest English use is from “Old English Text #178” in the year 800: “To ymbhycggannae . . . hust his ‘gasta' . . . seter deothrage doemid uueorth[ae.”

ZOEY BABY:

Bork bork bork.

MEG:

HEHE! Well, autocorrect hates me now.

MEG:

Here's a pic of the inside of the tomb. Rick just sent it to me, so you are the first outside Chicago to see it in decades.

MEG:

Would that be enough to get you to send one of you? Even just, like, a silhouette, so I know what to picture when we're . . . you know . . .

ZOEY BABY:

Hmmm . . . *blush* I just get so nervous about that stuff. . . .

MEG:

It's okay. No pressure.

MEG:

Here's another of me. Enjoy, baby.

ZOEY BABY:

mmmmmmmmmmmm nighty night, my little murdermonger.

MEGAN:

Swoon.

From: Megan

To: Cynthia Fargon, Ricardo Torre

Date: Thursday, 2:30 a.m.

Subject: Re: More Articles

Digging up articles on the Couch tomb now.

There's a 1911 one in the Chicago Examiner where a Chicago city official says he went inside in 1901 and it was empty. But in the same article, Ira's grandson says the bodies were never moved, and that he thinks there are at least eight people in there, including two of his own brothers. Dude ought to know where his own brothers were.

From: Megan

To: Cynthia Fargon, Ricardo Torre

Date: Thursday, 4:45 am

Subject: Script for my Res Mary story

See attached file. This look okay? Found a few things on Mary Bregovy in the archives. Even if the ghost is real, it can't be her—the stories were already a few years old when she died. But people
have
been saying the ghost was her for years, so I can see why you'd use her as an intro. None of the others died right on the tour route!

From: Ricardo Torre

To: Cynthia Fargon, Megan

Date: Thursday, 6:00 a.m.

Subject: Re: Script for my Res Mary story

Jesus, Megan, go to sleep! Seriously!

But—great job. You're a natural, my little padawan!

On the Couch tomb: the guy who says it was empty in that article is a Chicago city official. Might as well listen to Edward Tweed.

On Mary: Your script looks good, but it might be too long. For stories we tell while we're moving, not parked, you want a very basic, short version
of the story for nights when traffic isn't too heavy, then a bunch of extra things to add in case you have to stretch it out. For that story, my basic outline is:

1. In 1934 Mary Bregovy died RIGHT ON THIS SPOT!

2. She's a popular candidate for the true identity of Resurrection Mary, our most famous local ghost.

3. People pick her up, then she disappears outside of Resurrection Cemetery.

4. Similar to other vanishing hitchhiker legends, but we have firsthand accounts. So there. Na-na na-na boo-bug, stick your head in a thunder-mug.

Then, if you need to fill space:

—Other possible Marys at Resurrection Cemetery (there are at least 70 from the right time period) (I always try to point out that no one's sure Mary Bregovy is really her, because she's totally NOT the ghost, the story was at least three years old when she died. But she was the girl they focused on when the story was on Unsolved Mysteries and she died right on the tour route, so.)

—Note that there's no reliable sighting in which the ghost even says her name, so we might just be calling her Resurrection Mary because it has a better ring than, say, Resurrection Ethel.

—Specific sightings

—How those specific sightings differ from the standard “vanishing hitchhiker” urban legend

—Other local vanishing hitchhikers (there's a hitchhiking flapper who disappears at Waldheim Cemetery, out by you)

—My plan to kidnap her (if you absolutely must)

We're working the early shift at the home today. Off by 2 p.m. Wanna come meet us at Graceland Cemetery? We'll do some training stuff. You can also sit in on the stand-up class I'm taking at Second City tonight if you want to. Being a tour guide is a similar skill set.

Now GO TO SLEEP!

—Ricardo

T
he last three letters in my bowl of alphabet cereal the next morning are D, I, and E. Die.

“I'm calling in sick at the grocery store,” I say.

“You're going to work,” says Mom. “Don't listen to your cereal.”

“If the youth of today stop listening to their breakfast cereal, this country is done for,” I say. “You say so all the time.”

“I've never said that.”

“I heard you say it while you were embalming some punk who didn't listen to
his
cereal just last month.”

“Not funny.”

“Look, how is this not an omen?”

Mom looks down at my cereal. There is no denying that it says “die.”

“It's German,” she insists. “It means ‘the.' ”

“They make this stuff in Michigan,” I say. “Why would it be speaking in German?”

“It's trying to say ‘
the
only way you'll work off the damage you did to the hearse is by going to work.' ”

“In German?”

“In German.”

“There aren't enough letters in a full bowl to say that all in German.”

“You owe me money. Go to work.”

I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but at least I've made my stand. I gather the last three letters—D-I-E—up in my spoon and gobble them down. In a symbolic way, I'm conquering death.

I'm not quite ready to tell Mom about the new job yet. And anyway, I'm not sure when I'll start getting paid, or how many tours I'll get to run. For now, I have to keep bagging groceries to pay off the damage I did backing her hearse into a cement pillar in a parking lot. A cement pillar which frankly had no business being there, for the record.

But during my whole walk to work, I'm messing with my phone, trying to get the
Tribune
archives to load on it.

I'm hooked.

There is no way to be good at bagging groceries. Everyone has their own weird way they want their stuff arranged, and they all expect you to be able to guess their preferences. Even the most hardened skeptics in the ghost-hunting business probably think their baggers have psychic powers.

Plus, the porta-potty blue of the uniforms is really, really not my shade. And they let me get away with the two-tone hair, as long as I tie it back, but I have to wear a Band-Aid over my lip ring, which is supposed to make me look more respectable to the old people but probably just makes them think I have herpes or something.

Trying to do the job on one hour of sleep is torture.