Those are the tame dreams. Worse are the dreams when she’s reanimated. She comes magically to life, but this time she’s not the same. There’s a scarlet glinting energy in her eyes, all the fury of the underworld, and vengeful delight twists her lovely face as she leaps up, arms out, reaching for my neck to return the favor.
SOMETIMES MY IMAGINATION RUNS WILD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, and I convince myself of myriad ways that Athena might still be alive. The funeral was closed casket, wasn’t it? She could have faked the choking. She could have hired those EMTs. This could all be one grand literary hoax, a deranged publicity campaign for her next project. Perhaps she’ll jump out from behind the corner any minute. Boo! Gotcha, Junie!
But the living are burdened with bodies. They make shadows, footprints. I would prefer that Athena were alive and stalking me, because then she would leave traces—public spottings, narrative inconsistencies, breadcrumbs of proof. The living can’t appear and disappear at will. The living can’t haunt you at every turn. Athena’s ghost has wormed its way into my every waking moment. Only the dead can be so constantly present.
I find myself typing “Chinese ghosts” into Google Scholar and diving deep into all the literature that comes up. The Chinese have so many different words for ghost—“gui,” “ling,” “yao,” “hunpo.” They are obsessed with death without peace. I learn that the most common word for ghost, “gui,” is a homophone for a different “gui,” which means to return. I learn that the female revenant is a common theme in early Chinese literature, a trope employed to explore the regrets of single, unmarried women who died violent and unnatural deaths. I learn about a trope called the “amorous ghost,” in which all the female ghost needs to sate its haunted desire is a good fucking. I learn about something called jiangshi, which as far as I can tell is like a zombie, a corpse reanimated by a spell written on a slip of paper. Perhaps someone reanimated Athena. Perhaps I composed the spell myself, when I published her words against her will.
When the nonfiction sources turn up no helpful advice on exorcising the damn things, I start devouring Chinese ghost stories.
From the Southern Song dynasty: A grave robber breaks into the tomb of a girl recently passed away from heartache and is so taken by her beauty that he rapes her corpse. The infusion of his male energy to her body restores her to life, but since no one else knows she’s alive, the grave robber imprisons her as his sex slave without any suspicions. The girl finally escapes and flees to the home of her former lover, but the lover, frightened by her presence and convinced she is a ghost, throws a cauldron at her head and kills her.
From the Six Dynasties period: A man’s wife of ten years dies before she can bear him a son. Distraught, he weeps over her corpse. His grief reanimates her corpse, and she instructs him to come make love to her in the dark until she becomes pregnant. She hasn’t come fully back to life, mind you—they keep her body in a side room, where she lies inert, waiting to be fucked. Ten months later, she gives birth to a baby boy, and then promptly becomes a limp corpse once again.
Also from the Six Dynasties period: A man’s wife dies, so he marries her cousin. One day, his icy-cold, reanimated first wife comes to lie beside him. He asks her to leave. Later she rebukes her cousin for marrying her widower, and shortly after, the man and the cousin drop dead.
The cultural constructions are clear: so many Chinese ghosts are hungry, angry, voiceless women. In taking Athena’s legacy, I’ve added one to their ranks.
But the normal methods of dispelling ghosts, the ones that work in all the stories, seem insufficient. I doubt Athena will be happy with offerings of food, incense, or burnt paper. Which isn’t to say I don’t try. Deep down I know it’s stupid, but I’m desperate enough to hope the rituals might at least calm my mind. I order incense sticks on Amazon and kung pao chicken from Kitchen No. 1 and place both before a framed photo of Athena, but all it does is stink up my apartment. I print paper cutouts of all the things I imagine Athena could want in the underworld—stacks of money, a lavish apartment, the entire IKEA catalogue—and light them up with a match, but that only sets off the fire alarm, which pisses off my neighbors and lands me with a hefty fine.
I don’t feel better. I feel like a meme of a clueless white person.
The wildest thing about all this is that even now I cannot stop composing. I’m trying to funnel this awfulness into something lovely. My salacious roman à clef will become a horror novel. My terror will become my readers’ terror. I will take my fugue state of delirious panic and compost it into a fertile bed of creativity—for aren’t all the best novels borne from some madness, which is borne from truth?
Perhaps, if I can capture all my fears and constrain them safely on the page, this will rob them of their power. Don’t all the ancient myths tell us that we gain control over a thing once we name it? Dr. Gaily once made me write out by hand detailed descriptions of my encounter with Andrew, and then burn them. It felt good to translate those nebulous, nauseating feelings to concrete words. It felt good to see them crumple to ash, to nothing. Maybe I can’t make Athena disappear, but perhaps I can trap her safely within the covers of a book.
But I’m losing track of the narrative. My thoughts spiral out beyond what the pages can contain. This has gone from a dark, literary coming-of-age story to a jumbled, frantic ghost story. My carefully constructed outline falls apart against the story Athena wants to see. I abandon my original plot. I furiously transcribe everything that comes to mind, which oscillates between my truth and the truth.
I’ve written myself into a corner. The first two-thirds of the book were a breeze to compose, but what do I do with the ending? Where do I leave my protagonist, now that there’s a hungry ghost in the mix, and no clear resolution?
I stare at my screen for hours, trying out various endings, hoping to find one that will please Athena. The ghost devours me whole. The ghost rips me apart limb from limb and bathes in my blood. The ghost sinks into my body and takes over my life for my remaining years as reparations. The ghost impels me to suicide, and I join her in the underworld: two miserable souls without justice.
But none of these produce the necessary catharsis. Athena is not satisfied.
Frustrated, I flop onto my bed and reach, as ever, for my phone.
Athena’s account has updated again.
She’s standing in front of a mirror. There’s a long white paper taped to her forehead. The Last Front, it reads. By Juniper Hayward.
It’s a multiphoto post. I swipe right.
Athena, lying prone on the floor, hands at her neck. Swipe.
Athena, my book on her chest, eyes open. Swipe.
Athena, reanimated, standing up. Swipe.
Athena, veins protruding in her neck and forearms, mascara leaking from her eyes, howling at the camera, grinning, claws out like she wants to rip me apart head to toe. Swipe.
Athena, a vicious blur, leaping toward the camera lens.
I turn off my phone and hurl it across the room.
I’M OVERSTATING MY BEWILDERMENT. THE CONDITIONS OF EXORCISM are no great mystery. I know what this ghost wants, what sort of ending could make this all go away. It’s such a simple truth, loath as I am to admit it: that Athena wrote The Last Front, that I am at best a coauthor, that even though I deserve some credit for this novel, she does, too.
But I’m too deep into this now to confess. That is the only line I cannot cross. If I confess now, I won’t only lose everything I’ve gained, I’ll lose any chance I have at a future. I won’t just go back to square zero. I’ll be sentenced to both literary and social hell.
Tell me, do I truly deserve that? Does anyone?
Athena’s been dead for over two years. She’s already left an impressive legacy. The literary world will remember her forever. She has nothing more to gain.