The Yggyssey (7 page)

"You knew that La Brea Woman seems to be missing," I said.

"I did," Neddie said. "And Valentino hasn't been seen lately, and some other ghosts, too."

"I wonder what's going on."

"Do you think they died?" Neddie asked.

"Can ghosts die?"

"It's an interesting question. Where would they go?"

"Maybe we should talk to that guy Billy the Phantom Bellboy is spending so much time with," I said. "The one who works at the ghostology lab at Cal Tech."

"Oh, I checked into that," Neddie said. "There is no Ghostology Department at Cal Tech."

"Huh?"

"I think it's time we talked to Melvin," Neddie said.

"Your shaman? We can talk to him, but he's just going to tell us not to get excited, and nature will take care of everything—I think we should talk to Seamus's father."

"Aaron Finn? He's a movie actor."

"He's a man of action."

"Let's talk to Melvin first."

We found Sergeant Melvin Caleb having a hot fudge sundae with nuts at the Zen Pickle Barrel on Wilcox Avenue. The Zen Pickle Barrel started out as something similar to the mushroomburger place, but the proprietor, a guy named Takuan Soho, added ice cream specialties to the menu, and they got to be more popular than Japanese pickles as served in Buddhist monasteries. They still have the pickles, and things like a butterscotch-pickle sundae, but I have never seen anyone order one.

"Hello, Iggy, hello, Cadet Wentworthstein," Melvin said. "Allow me to treat you to an ice cream or pickle specialty."

I ordered a single scoop of strawberry ice cream, and Neddie chose a double chocolate sundae with chocolate ice
cream, marshmallow, and nuts. Neddie is from Chicago and basically has no taste or manners.

Melvin is the guy who stands at the gate at Neddie's school, the Brown-Sparrow Military Academy. He is also the person in charge of military discipline—everybody looking neat and wearing the uniform correctly, marching, saluting, and all that. Neddie told me that Melvin is practically the only person there with actual military experience, although all the teachers dress up in officer's uniforms—most of them are former movie actors. When Melvin is on duty at the school, he wears his incredibly crisp and sharp Marine Corps uniform—when seen around town, he favors shirts in loud colors, wild sweaters, goofy hats, and sunglasses. Melvin is also a shaman, probably Navajo, but it's hard to pin him down on the details.

"I was talking to Neddie about that night a couple of years ago," I began.

"To what night do you refer?" Sergeant Caleb asked me.

"You know—there was some kind of crisis with evil spirits or something. Neddie was supposed to confront some dark power, and the whole future of civilization was at stake."

"Oh, I wasn't there," Melvin said. "I had to go to a bowling tournament with my friend Crazy Wig." Crazy Wig is another shaman. He talks to himself.

"But you know what happened," I said.

"Not in any detail," Melvin said. "Neddie wrote up notes and was going to give them to me to read. What happened to those notes, Neddie?"

"I lost them," Neddie said.

"Well, I'm sure they'll turn up one day," Melvin said. "And I'm sure you did a good job, seeing that we're all here, eating ice cream, and everything is fine."

"Everything may not be fine," I said. "That's why we wanted to talk with you. It seems a couple of ghosts have disappeared—La Brea Woman and Rudolph Valentino. And we wondered if that was normal."

"Oh, you know about that?" Melvin asked.

"You knew about it too?"

"Well, not about La Brea Woman and Valentino—but a number of well-known ghosts have gone missing. There's Harry Houdini, Fritz, the projectionist from the Vogue Theater, two soldiers from the days of Spanish California, and Rin Tin Tin."

"Gee. And this is not a normal thing?"

"Doesn't seem so very normal to me," Melvin said.

"Does it mean something?" I asked.

"It probably means something," Melvin said.

"Should we be worried?"

"Oh, no," Melvin said. "Definitely do not be worried."

"That's a relief," Neddie said.

"Wait," I said. "Melvin, what if you knew for sure that an atomic bomb was going to be dropped on Los Angeles tomorrow? Would you say we should worry then?"

"Oh, no. Definitely do not be worried."

"So, let me put it another way," I said. "When ghosts disappear, is that a bad thing?"

"It might not be good," Melvin said.

You have to know how to talk to Melvin. "Can you say why it might not be good? Can you say what it means when ghosts disappear?"

"Well, it would depend on why they are disappearing," Melvin said. "If they are voluntarily going away—that might mean something bad. Sort of like animals clearing out when there is going to be a volcanic eruption or an earthquake—something like that. On the other hand, if something is taking them away, against their will—that might be bad too."

"So we should worry."

"On the other hand, it might be something good—one of the first things a shaman learns is that one doesn't have all the answers."

"Shamanism is an imprecise science, isn't it?"

"Except for it being a science, you have that right." Just then I thought how awful it would be if my ghostly bunny friend, Chase, were to disappear, and how I would miss her. I wondered if she had told me all she knew. But where could the ghosts be going?

"Where could the ghosts be going?" Neddie asked.

"No idea," Melvin said. "But if you're curious, this is the perfect week to try to find out."

"The perfect week?"

"Sure. You know what Saturday is, don't you?"

"The day after Halloween?" Neddie asked.

"Yes, but something else besides," Melvin said.

"What something else is it?" we asked Melvin the shaman.

"Before I tell you—I mentioned Harry Houdini earlier. You know all about him, do you?"

"He was a magician on the stage?" I said.
"And an escape artist—the kind who can get out of ropes and handcuffs and things?" Neddie said.

"He was world famous," Melvin said. "He drew huge crowds whenever he performed. Audiences would sit still for an hour, or two hours, while he worked his way out of ropes and handcuffs and a canvas mailbag placed inside a
trunk, which was then bound up in chains and padlocks and placed behind a screen. Hundreds of kids worldwide suffocated to death, or at least got nasty rope burns trying to imitate his tricks."

"And people would just sit there waiting for him to get out?" I asked.

"Well, there would be a band playing," Melvin said.

"For two hours?" Neddie asked.

"Sometimes."

"It must have been some good band," I said.

"He would also do things like hang upside down by his feet, and get out of a straitjacket and chains. Or he would be tied and chained up and put into a giant milk can full of water, and have to get out before he drowned."

"At least that would take less than two hours," I said.

"People had a different idea of what was entertaining back then," Melvin said.

"I guess."

"And he had a great and abiding interest in the afterlife. When his mother died, he wanted to contact her—in those days mediums and spiritualists were popular, and people would hold séances, trying to talk to the dead. Houdini went to a few of those, but being a professional
magician, he easily saw through the tricks the mediums used to convince people they were getting messages from their dead relatives.

"So, Houdini started exposing mediums. He would arrive in a city and go in disguise to the most popular medium, and then he would do a big exposé in the newspaper showing how they used research and confederates to find out things about people who were coming the séance, and all kinds of magician's illusions to make it seem like there were spirits talking. The funny thing is that after he had done this for a while, the mediums would beg him to expose them, because after he left town their business would quadruple because they had been in the newspaper. Never mind that the story told how they were frauds—people would go to them anyway."

"That's the most interesting thing you've told us yet," Neddie said.

"Isn't it? Anyway, the whole time Houdini was exposing mediums, he was hoping to meet a legitimate one so he could really contact his mother, or just anybody actually dead. He never found one.

"Before he himself died, he had made all kinds of arrangements with his wife and his friends. He was going to try to get a signal to them from the other side. They had code words worked out so no fake medium
could claim to have gotten in touch with him, and to this day they hold a séance every Halloween, which is the day he died, and try to get in touch with him.

"Now here's the part I like. He has been a fairly popular ghost around Hollywood for years, and done some quite good haunting—I've seen him myself any number of times in the ghostly parade, always escaping from something or other—but he has yet to show up at one of those séances they hold in his honor."

"And now he's gone missing," Neddie said.

"Yep."

"And this story you just told us has something to do with how ghosts have been disappearing, and Halloween coming up?" I asked.

"Well, no, not necessarily," Melvin said. "I just think it's interesting."

"So, what is it you started out to tell us before you went off into the life and death of Houdini?"

"Oh! Right! Día de los Muertos," Melvin said.

"Beg pardon?"

"Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead," Melvin said.

"It's Saturday."

"Isn't that just Mexican Halloween?" I asked.

"No. It's better," Melvin said. "I suggest you go down to Olvera Street and find out all about it."

Before we could go down to Olvera Street and find out about Día de los Muertos, we had to get through regular American Halloween. Neddie, and Seamus Finn, and I were past the age for trick-or-treat, so Halloween would have been a fairly minor holiday for us. We might have gone to a costume party, with the usual bats and witches decorations, and bobbed for apples—reasonably entertaining, but mostly silly—but we knew about ghostly Halloween.

Now, obviously ghosts are going to take Halloween pretty seriously, wherever they may be, but Halloween in Hollywood—well, the departed just go over the top with it. They make a big effort to outdo the living people. The thing you want to see on ghostly Halloween is the parade. This is not held on some major thoroughfare, like Hollywood Boulevard or Vine Street. It's on Lafcadio Hearn Avenue, which is quiet, and fairly deserted after all the shops are closed.

This is the one night of the year when there's an exception to the stay-in-one-haunting-place rule. The ghosts are out in force, and in a very playful mood. We'd seen all this before, and wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Lafcadio Hearn Avenue is where you go for Oriental antiques, old and rare books, dried roots and herbs. The shops are in the front parlors of old houses that have been fitted with plate-glass display windows. They have little front yards and gardens—they're not up against the sidewalk. It looks more like an old village than a commercial street.