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Posts Tagged ‘Browning Monument’

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WMSP, Part II, Episode XI: A Burned Man

In Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatre on July 17, 2019 at 2:18 pm

(Ongoing series; first episode here.)

Oakland: Coroner identifies badly burned man found dead in Joaquin Miller Park
By Katrina Cameron, Harry Harris | hharris@bayareanewsgroup.com and Bay Area News Group | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: February 23, 2016 at 12:20 pm | UPDATED: August 11, 2016 at 11:51 pm

OAKLAND — The coroner identified Tuesday the man found badly burned Monday morning in Joaquin Miller Park.

Reginald Richardson, 33, of Oakland, apparently committed suicide in the park, according to police.

His body was found around 11:54 a.m. Monday in the Joaquin Miller Funeral Prye, off Sanborn Drive. A jogger saw smoke from the structure and investigated the cause.

Police did not know how long the man’s body had been there before the jogger found it.

The No. 1 cause for suicide is untreated depression, a condition that is treatable with immediate help. Anyone who may be suicidal can receive immediate help by logging onto suicide.org or by calling 1-800-784-2433. Crisis experts also are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week in Contra Costa County by calling 1-800-833-2900 or 925-938-0725.

Contact Katrina Cameron at 925-945-4782. Follow her at Twitter.com/KatCameron91.

This article is what Jeremy shows me, silent, backstage during rehearsal. I’m sitting in my dressing room, looking at a map of Joaquin Miller Park on my phone; it’s at the exact moment I find the Pyre on the map that Jeremy walks in, holding up his phone.

“What are you doing after rehearsal?” he says, when I’ve finished reading.

“Um …”

“Dude, let’s go up there tonight! It’s fucking perfect! I wish I’d known about it sooner, I’d have been reading all your recent posts right there at the Pyre!”

There’s a nibbling at the back of my mind, however. I feel uncomfortable, and I’m not sure why. I’m consumed with the conflicting desires to run out of the room and to hold the Holey Stone. I take a deep breath. I push my hand into my pocket.

Snap

The memory floods back, even as I’m looking right at Jeremy’s smiling face; we’re at the Browning Monument, it’s earlier this afternoon, right after the revelation of Obi-Wan-point-five’s last words:

Browning! Pyre! Cinderella! To bring my to outfit and now become necessary!

Jeremy nods. We stand, because it’s time to head to the theatre.

“Wait, what about the papers?” Jeremy says.

We turn back: there’s the satchel, the papers loose and tickled by the breeze. They could blow away at any second.

“We didn’t even finish looking at them,” Jeremy says.

He leans down to pick them up and we’re on the road halfway to the parking lot when I look at his hands and he doesn’t have them. Neither do I.

“We left the papers,” I say.

“No we didn’t,” he says.

I stop. I have to think. I feel like I’ve walked into a room and forgotten why. I put my hands in my pocket. There’s the stone.

Don’t talk, just go.

I turn around, my hand firmly in my pocket. I’m walking. Fast.

Jeremy says, “Hey pal, where you goin’?”

I don’t respond.

Jeremy starts after me; he’s chuckling. “Now wait a moment, palsy-walsy,” his voice is weird, sing-song.

I’m jogging now, and Jeremy is getting closer. “Hey chum! What kind of a chum turns his back on his pal, chum? I thought you were my … chummy-wummy.” There’s a tight, angry grin underneath his words. I feel that if I stop, he’ll get me. I take my hand from my pocket and start to run. A thought, different from the first, jarring and too cheery, erupts in my head:

Jeremy is no threat. Turn and be so friendly!

This feels wrong and bad, an unfamiliar voice. I falter, stumbling.

Jeremy says, “Watch your step, buddy. I’m right here. Right behind you. It’s broad daylight. There’s nothing to fear.”

This stone is heavy and I want to throw it away.

The same unfamiliar voice. Like hearing someone who doesn’t know me impersonate what they think my inner monologue sounds like. The voice of an interloper. I put my hand in my pocket, touching the stone, and—snap—I’m fifteen feet ahead, sprinting. This feels right. I speed up, slipping the stone onto my middle finger like a ring, gripping it in a fist. I’m at the base of the slope, my mind on the papers. I don’t hear Jeremy anywhere behind me.

He was never there.

This thought is solid as bedrock, familiar. Not the interloper. I round the Browning Monument—

Jeremy is crouched over the papers, frantic: he’s striking two stones together, trying to make sparks. His fingers are bloody, his face locked in a rictus grin. Every couple seconds, his face crumples into a mask of sadness and pain; he puts the stones down and pulls at his pants, like he’s trying to pull them off, in spite of his buckled belt. When he does this, he’s crying and whispering, “Please stop, please stop, just stop please I’ll do whatever you want, please stop it hurts … ”

Thing is, there’s no way he can make sparks with those rocks—they’re both sandstone.

“Jeremy,” I say. He doesn’t respond. “Hey. Buddy. You okay?” I say, moving closer.

His head snaps up, eyes all wrong directions, his grin a caricature of enraged lust. He looks like a creepy satyr from an early 1920’s cartoon. He says, “Every good boy deserves flavor.”

Coiled to spring, he’s younger than me, more fit. He’ll win.

Stop thinking, take action.

I step forward and touch the stone to his forehead.

Jeremy collapses.

Gather the papers, put them in the satchel, hold onto the stone.

I do this very thing, noting that there are many more papers than I thought. There’s even a leatherbound journal. Several photographs.

Jeremy groans, his eyes fluttering.

Wear the satchel. Don’t talk about it. Head back to the parking lots.

“Oh fuck,” Jeremy says, “did I fall into a corn thresher?”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” I say, smiling but watchful.

“Wow,” Jeremy says. He stands, slow. Like … a man in his mid-40’s who doesn’t get enough exercise. Like me, frankly. He looks around, puzzled. “What were we going to do?”

“I think we were going to get coffee,” I say.

“Right! Yes,” he says, “coffee sounds great.”

“What happened to your hands?” I say.

You shouldn’t have said that.

Jeremy glances down, laughs, shakes his head. “I dropped my camera heading into the house last night, had to dive to catch it, skinned myself on the front walk.” His words are natural, they have the ring of truth. I’m aware that if I weren’t grasping the holey stone, I’d be questioning what I just saw him doing with the stones. Taking him any further on this quest might be unwise.

Trust him. He’s got your back. Find the Pyre—tonight!

I freeze. This isn’t just my inner monologue, they aren’t just thoughts in my head. An actual, new voice is coalescing. But it’s different from the interloper; it feels … safe. Solid. Not mine, but not bad. And here I am evaluating the qualities of the voices in my head. Great, now I’m nucking futz.

“Did you get the pictures?” Jeremy says.

I freeze: does he mean the pictures in the satchel?

“Of the bay? You wanted to take pictures,” he says, stretching. The fog of pain is lifting visibly from him.

“Oh. Yeah. Got ’em,” I say. “Let’s … go.”

“Coffee,” he says.

We walk back to the parking lot, Jeremy expounding upon the amazingness of the various asses in the ensemble. I drive us to Peet’s, and the wooden bench in front is still empty.

All of this surfaces like the turning of a page in my mind. The entire picture, clear before me. We got coffee, we came to the theatre. I kept the satchel on me, and it’s tucked beneath the counter in my corner of the room. I put other stuff on top of it, you can’t even tell it’s there. Rehearsal has been is its usual self: running lines offstage, hasty scribble of blocking on pages where possible.

I don’t want to answer Jeremy yet, so I say, “Hey, here’s something weird: Bryan won’t talk to me. He walked right past me when he arrived.” Part of this is stalling, part of it is a test: does Jeremy remember last night at all clearly?

“Me, neither,” says Jeremy. “Do you think he’s too freaked out by all the super-duper-natural occurrences?”

We look into the ensemble dressing room; there’s Bryan, at his station next to Rod. We head out there. I say, “Did you get home okay, Bryan?”

He turns to Rod as though I haven’t spoken, asking something about eyeliner. Rod glances at Jeremy and I in the mirror, then back to Bryan, then at me. Then with a huge single take to Bryan he says, “Oh Bryan, did you say something? I was listening to Edward’s question. About how you got home last night.”

Bryan says nothing.

Jeremy and I head back into my dressing room. “It appears he has stepped away from the path of this story,” I say.

“All the more reason to go to the Pyre the minute rehearsal’s over,” he says.

I want to bow out, politely decline, vague him off until it fades away. But a thought echoes into my head, the new voice from this afternoon:

Trust him. He’s got your back. Find the Pyre—tonight!

I take a breath. I choose to trust this voice.

“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s do it. But let’s map out an escape plan in advance.”

Jeremy grins and we high-five. As he sits down to “map it out,” I’m ready to misdirect: I’ve already got my escape plan. And I’m not telling him what it is.

Just in case.

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WMSP, Part II, Episode VIII; Friday, July 28

In Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatre, Writing on May 29, 2019 at 12:06 pm

(This, as you can see from the title, is one episode of a story that begins elsewhere. If you’re up to date, dig in. If you’re new to the narrative, I suggest you click here.)

Jeremy texts me at 9 am today: Meet me early at WM? ASAP.

I get ready, arrange for Maxwell’s dog walker to make two visits today, and head out.

I park at the upper lot, close to the trailhead. Jeremy is already here, waiting.

“You have to see this,” is all he’ll say.

We set out at a brisk pace, damn near jogging. Within minutes we’re at the Browning Monument. Everything is less creepy than last night. Tufts of grass growing around the base of the sign, the trail beyond showing signs of someone having slipped in the mud.

I look at Jeremy’s pants. Muddy. “Diddums faww down innums mud-mud?”

He looks at me; direct, even, bloodshot eyes telling me that after our whiskey and coffee last night, he may not have slept at all.

“Your gaze seems important, Jeremy, but I’m not picking up on your message,” I say.

“Go up there,” he says.

I head up the trail, stepping on green grass and protruding rocks to avoid slipping.

And here’s the clearing, all green grass, the tower, the healthy trees …

Healthy trees?

“Mighty fuck,” I say.

“Yep,” Jeremy says, watching me.

Does he think I had something to do with this? How could I?

All the trash is gone. Thick green grass blankets what had been dry, cracked earth; the pine trees are thriving—no longer spindly, diseased and forlorn. It looks like there are redwood saplings popping up as well. I move deeper into the clearing. The air smells fresher.

There’s music on the wind.

“Chimes?” I say.

“I thought maybe a harp,” he says.

I feel something in my pocket; reaching in, I pull out a stone with a hole—and immediately feel a pebble in my shoe. Bending down to fish it out, leaning one hand against the monument

HUUUURRRRRMMMMMM

I open my eyes to find Jeremy leaning over me, concerned. I’m on my back in the grass and I can’t hear him. The sound from the tower fills my head like a blast from a great horn or pipe organ. It’s like a more monotone Koyaanisqatsi.

Trying to respond to him, I can’t move. My whole body hurts. He’s sweating, glancing back down the trail toward the road. He jumps up and looks in that direction, then moves back toward me; spotting something on the ground, he bends down and picks up my holey stone. He shows it to me, then looks through it.

First at the trees, a blinking shake of the head and a second look. A glance at me, words I can’t hear. Then he turns, looking toward the Bay.

Jeremy falls back like he’s been smacked in the forehead with a log. Dropping the stone, scrabbling about frantic, he finds it and comes to me, putting a hand behind me to sit me up. It’s excruciating. Like shards of broken ouch in all my muscles. I’m trying to yell at him to stop. Then he puts his other hand on my chest to steady and turn me.

The hand with the stone.

All pain drops away. I can breathe, which I hadn’t realized was a struggle. Every joint in my body is melting into the ground. This is the best body high I’ve ever felt.

I can hear. The bellowing note of the tower is silenced, and the chimes or harp clearer, now. Jeremy is speaking; it takes a moment for me to focus on his words through the yum-yum goodtimes feeling.

“You have to see this, man. Can you stand? Holy shit, this is fucking crazy, Edward. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”

I take a deep breath, putting my hand over the stone at my solar plexus; Jeremy lets go and steps back as I begin to stand—and then, boing, I’m on my feet with a leap that feels … empowered. Energized. I laugh out loud and look through the stone toward the bay.

But it’s not the bay I know.

It’s larger. Deeper. Bluer.

I’m on the ridge of a mountain. Not mountainous hillsides. A mountain. Among mountains. To my left, the Browning Monument is gone. In its place is a massive tower, ancient stones encrusted with lichen, moss growing on those stones closer to the ground.

Below us, to the left: a … city? Citadel? A redwood forest with trees thousands of feet high, not merely surrounding, but growing within and throughout a shining city. White stone gleaming in the sunlight, pennants and banners flying from the tops of towers, snapping in the wind.

We hand the stone back and forth, each exclaiming at new sights.

The Tower blasts a note again, and this time it does indeed sound like a great horn. Only audible with the stone to the eye.

From the shining city among the redwoods comes an answering cascade of horns, music unlike any I’ve ever heard. The closest I can imagine would be the French Horn, but these are … lighter, more quicksilver. It brings to mind the song of unicorns, making a French Horn sound like the bellow of pregnant oxen. It’s hard to pass the stone to Jeremy. I’m jealous of that music.

The instruments are unfamiliar … but the music itself …

There’s something in the melody. It’s got a hook that echoes through my mind. I pass the stone to Jeremy; “Listen to that music,” I say, “and tell me if it’s familiar to you.”

He does. Head cocked, attentive. After a time he says, “Nope. Never heard it before.”

When he passes the stone back to me (without any hesitation—how is he not covetous of the stone?) there’s something tickling at my mind; I look through the stone at the Tower again.

About nine feet up, a glowing throb. Light. The idea of attention. I lower the rock, steping closer to the Browning Monument. Putting the rock to my eye, I look again.

The glowing is at the height of the top of the Browning Monument.

“Jeremy, boost me up,” I say.

He does. And there, atop the monument, is an oilcloth sack: weathered, dirty, traces of moss and mildew. I pull it down. Dead leaves and insects fall from it as Jeremy lowers me.

“How the fuck do you find this shit?” he says.

“I don’t want to question it,” I say.

Inside the sack is a leather satchel, very old. There are places where the leather is cracking. The buckle is supple enough to open, however, and inside the satchel is an old waterproof envelope containing many pages of different papers—some typed, some hand-written.

At the top of the stack: typewritten, loose pages yellowed with time; this is not a newspaper clipping. We sit in the shade of the Browning Monument; each page I read, I hand to Jeremy. He keeps the pages neat, a skill I lack. I’m wishing for coffee; this first page is a doozy:

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WMSP, Part II, Episode VII; Thursday, July 27: Ghost Child Mary

In Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Sci-Fi, Theatre, Writing on May 22, 2019 at 12:06 pm

(Perhaps you’ve clicked on this from the newness of oh my yes, but you don’t know where to begin? Click here, friend. Below is only what the French call, le spoiler.)

Mama says it’s time for me to tell the truth.

I don’t like that, but I also don’t like spinach and Mama says eating spinach is part of growing up. And I’m too dead to grow up. I wish I’d eaten more spinach, then maybe I’d know more what it feels like to be a grown-up.

Okay, Mama. I’m telling truth now, and the truth is I didn’t know who that old white man was. But I see him sometimes, around the theater. If I’m up to mischief, he’s there. But there’s more truth, other truth I need to tell. Like what happened when that storm came up and the night cracked open.

The top of the tower was too windy, so I dropped inside of it.

I saw when the fancy clothes man and the Chop-Chop Lady got smacked away, which was funny but also scary because that will make them mad. And I know what happens when he gets mad.

I saw the old white man leave.

I saw those two fools follow the footprints in the snow.

I called out from inside the tower, but on the other side of that crack in the air they didn’t look like they heard me. I followed them through the crack. Damn fool white boys think they’re safe.

Sorry, Mama.

Mama says I just need to say what happened, and this is what happened. Without swearing. Even though those boys swear more than they breathe.

That fool with the beard who thinks he’s funny said—

Sorry, Mama.

Edward said, Why the golly is it snowing?

He didn’t really say golly. He said something much, much worse. Something I’m never supposed to say, even though I have to follow this damn fool around listening to his swears—

Sorry, Mama!

Other White Boy said, We must dreaming or imagining this.

Edward said, What’s that way over there?

He pointed, and the moon broke through the clouds like in a movie, and it lit up a castle. A honest-to-goodness castle. Like in a fairy tale. And it was way, way too far away to be in this park.

I was inside of a tree, so I felt down through the roots and looked down the hillside.

This was not the same hillside. This was a mountainside.

Edward saw it right then, and said so (by swearing lots of swears that you can probably guess) followed by, That canyon is thousands of feet deeper than it was before we walked into the snow.

Other White Boy said, We should go back. We might get stuck here.

Edward said, But what if there are Redheaded Elf Girls who want to …

Mama, I don’t want to say that.

But I’m not supposed to!

Well okay then, he said he wanted to marry and raise a family with each and every Redheaded Elf Girl he could find. Do you understand that I am not saying that’s what he said? I think you probably understand.

Other White Boy said, What if they have Elf Civil … iss …

Okay, Mama.

Mama says I can skip this part of the conversation.

These white boys started to get cold because they walked into a blizzard, surprise surprise some white boys didn’t expect a blizzard to freeze them, and they turned around to go back.

Here’s what they saw happening to them: they walked for a long time in the snow. It got colder and colder. No matter how many steps they took, the crack in the air just got farther away.

What I saw happening to them was that they were walking backwards. I thought it was because they’re white-boy stupid, but then that girl who keeps running around the park steps out from inside a tall hollow tree and jabs at the ground with her staff next to Edward and says,

Walk forward!

The white boys walked forward. Because a woman told them to. But they couldn’t see her which is maybe why they listened right away. Boys don’t like to listen if they know it’s advice from a girl. And also, they couldn’t see the roots out of the ground wrapped around their ankles.

Telling the truth: I didn’t see the roots, either. And those roots were what were pulling the boys backwards. Only now the roots looked like skeleton hands, grasping clack-clack-clack when they got forced to let go. The girl with the staff broke the roots and the boys ran toward the crack in the air and it didn’t get farther away.

I started to go too, but there were hands holding my feet now.

I didn’t say any swears, though. Not even when those hands grabbed up my legs and all I could think about was the night I lost my eyes and never saw Mama again.

Yes, Mama.

Okay, I said some swears. But I was so scared. Because things can’t touch me most of the time. And now they were grabbing my arms and they were actual skeleton hands.

There was whispering I couldn’t hear, more like I felt it on my skin. I could feel what they wanted, to pull me down into the ground with them and make me be like them. Even though I’m a Ghost Child, they wanted to put their fingers in my eyes and make me so cold, not cold like the fog that follows me everywhere but cold like rock and stone deep underground where old hatred pools and flows, where the horns, hoofs and claws of an ancient, evil god wait for men to dig them up and use them.

I saw where the shards of that broken god were lodged in the earth, all over the earth. Under deserts, under the ocean, under forests. Skeleton hands know the way.

I saw that in most places, they’re just shards. Bad for the world, but no power.

Except on the northeast side of a mountain near here. That’s the one place where there’s a whole entire horn from his evil head. The whole mountain is growing around it, like an infected pimple. And if that horn is unearthed, these skeleton hands can come get you in your bed at night, and the pimple wants to pop.

It’s popped before.

That’s how the mountain got its name.

But the old white man, and he looks like a wizard cowboy in those clothes and I want to say yipee-ki-yabracadabra but I don’t because that would be disrespectful.

I know, Mama, that’s why I didn’t say it.

Okay, Mama. I’m sorry I was disrespectful to him. He did save me. You’re right.

Well the way he saves me is: he walks up next to my tree and takes me by the hand and walks me through the snow and pushes me through the crack in the night; and I hear whispers turn to screams behind me from the owners of the skeleton roots.

I’m through the crack before the boys, and before they get through Adventure Girl breaks a rock in half with her staff and puts one half in Edward’s pocket. She dropped the other half on the snowy side of the crack.

Old white man looks at her and says, I’ve opened the door for you. Is that wise? Anything could slip in or out.

She says to him, I have to break the pattern.

The boys walk through the crack and it seals right up. Warm night air flows through me. I didn’t realize how much that place was making me cold even from just being there.

Edward falls to the ground, sits on his butt and cries like a little girl.

It was embarrassing.

Other White Boy says, Why are you crying, grown-ass man?

Sorry Mama, but who cries like that?

Anyway Edward said, I just always wanted to find a portal to a magical land. And now I’ve been through one. And I don’t think I’ll ever get back.

And I popped out of the tower and said, Just you wait! Mama says look in your pocket!

Because Mama said to. Right, Mama?

Mama says yes.

And Other White Boy freaks out, because nobody told him about the little black girl with no eyes, but Edward he looks in his pocket. The rock has a hole in it. When he looks through the hole, he can see the other rock in the snow, half of this rock. There’s a seam in the air from that rock.

Edward swore a lot of happy swears and wanted to open the seam, but Other White Boy dragged him away with words like, coffee, whiskey and reality.

That’s what happened.

I told it as best I remember. Did I do okay, Mama?

Oh yeah: the Adventure Girl was standing there watching Edward.

I think she was crying. It made me sad.

I think she knows him.

Okay, Mama. I’ll keep watching after him.

Mama says that’s all for now. I’m waving bye-bye, you just can’t see it.

Because you can’t see me. I’m Ghost Child Mary.

I don’t have eyes.

But I see too much.

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WMSP, Part II, Episode V; Thursday, July 27

In Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Writing on May 8, 2019 at 12:06 pm

(Ongoing series; it begins here. If you’re all caught up, read on!)

“Are you guys going to murder me?”

This from Bryan as we’re walking down Sanborn Drive, the paved road that goes through Joaquin Miller Park. It traces a curvy loop from farther down Joaquin Miller Road, up past the pyramid—where it splits into a higher road and a lower road like a river around an island, converging again behind(ish) Woodminster, whence it leads out past the ranger station to Joaquin Miller Road again. The entrance by the ranger station is now the main entrance to the park, and the only automotive access to Woodminster itself. It’s gated at the lower entrance. At the upper end, automobile traffic is blocked on the right fork where the road splits, the left fork leading down to Woodminster. This blocked right fork is the road I walked down both times in search of the pyramid.

It’s after 10:30 at night, we’ve all parked our cars out on Joaquin Miller Road, as the rangers will eventually lock the front gate. The night is warm, easily 75 degrees. It was very hot today.

“Yes, Bryan, we’re going to murder you,” Jeremy says.

“I, for one, plan to murder you in the face,” I say.

“You make everything sound sexual, Mr. Edward,” Bryan says.

“Do I? How’s this: porkpie hats and a barrel of rum.”

“See? You make everything filthy.”

“Dead puppies.”

“Kinky bastard.”

“Okay, now you’re just projecting.”

“Guys,” Jeremy says. His tone is quiet, urgent. We stop, and I’m aware, in the stillness, that there’s been a goosebumpy susurration in the brittle grass on either side of the road, building as we’ve walked.

We’re on the high road, right-hand side of the island split, exactly the same route I’ve taken each time I’ve walked this road. There in front of us, dimly visible in the night, is a trail leading off to the right, up a hill. Next to it is a wooden sign. I can’t make out what it says from this distance. We stand still like this for quite a while.

Bryan says, “Why am I spooked?”

“I … thought I saw someone. Up that trail,” says Jeremy.

“We’ve all got flashlights,” says Bryan. “Let’s use them?”

Nobody turns on their flashlight.

“What does that sign say?” I say.

“That’s the Browning Monument,” Jeremy says.

Bryan and I both go, “Ohhh … ”

I click my flashlight on. Brown-painted wood, two signboards supported by wooden posts at the sides, yellow lettering, nothing fancy:

THE BROWNING MONUMENT
BUILT 1904

On the lower board it says:

ERECTED BY POET JOAQUIN MILLER TO HONOR
HIS FELLOW POET AND FRIENDS ROBERT AND
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Still, nobody moves.

The grass is whispering, but there’s no breeze here. I’m thinking we should have come during the day.

Someone shoves past us from behind, knocking Bryan to the ground, then tripping over a staff to go sprawling in the dirt and dry grass at the base of the sign.

I train the beam of my flashlight on this person as I move to help them up, saying, “Are you okay?”

It’s a young woman in khaki, an old-school backpack and bedroll on her back. She’s wearing a Smokey the Bear hat, and she’s terrified at my approach. Brandishing the staff, she scrambles to her feet, running away from us.

Her hat falls off.

She runs through the sign marking the Browning Monument, as though it isn’t there.

She notices her missing hat, turns around, runs back through the sign, picks up her hat and, clapping it to her head, runs smack into the sign, falling back onto her ass with a surprised cry of—I kid you not—“Aw, gee!”

“The fuck?” Jeremy says.

Her eyes go wide as she gasps, turning to us, looking scandalized as she again scrambles to her feet. Her hair is all askew now, though from the curls I imagine it escapes regularly.

She looks around, doing a massive comic double-take at those lights of Oakland and the rest of the Bay Area visible from this spot. She lingers a moment, then shakes her head and dashes around the Browning Monument sign, up the slope and into the darkness.

“This is a very complex prank,” says Bryan.

“If she’s a ghost, she’s confused,” I say.

“Confused and hot,” says Jeremy.

“Only straight boys would want to fuck a ghost,” says Bryan.

“Happy Halloween,” says Jeremy.

From the darkness up the slope, a terrified scream.