Pinfall Séance

The soda hit the scoreboard at 8:47 on a Friday night.

I didn't mean for it to happen. But you try holding a large orange crush, a bag of dill pickle chips, and your dignity while your uncle Dale is bearing down on you across four lanes of league night.

I ducked behind the snack bar counter. The cup went first. The chips stayed in my hand. Go figure.

The scoreboard didn't stand a chance. Orange fizz everywhere. It ran down the screen in slow rivers, pooling on the counter, dripping onto the floor.

"Meera!" Dale's voice, from three lanes over. "They need a fourth for the tournament! You're on the roster!"

I was twenty-three years old and hiding behind a counter at the Glow Bowl from my own uncle. Some assistant manager I was. Reliable Meera. Meera who never says no. Meera who bowls in tournaments she doesn't want to bowl in because Dale signed her up before asking.

Not this Friday.

I grabbed the first thing my hand found to soak the spill. It was a seed catalog. Old, dusty, curled at the corners. Someone had been using it as a coaster for years, by the ring stains. I pressed it flat over the soda lake and watched it drink. Tomato page facing up. Big red beefsteaks. A row of Cherry Bomb hybrids.

"Very atmospheric," I muttered.

"Meera? You back there?"

I held my breath. Dale's bowling shoes squeaked closer. Squeaked. Paused. Squeaked away toward lane six.

Okay. New plan. I grabbed the chips, my keys, and the soggy seed catalog, and slipped through the staff door into the back room before he could double back.

The back room of the Glow Bowl is not a room anyone loves. Wobbling table. One chair with a crack down the seat. Stacks of league trophies nobody ever claimed. And the broken glow-in-the-dark pin, the one the old owner rigged with a dimmer switch so it flickers like something dying. It hangs on a nail by the fuse box. Nobody ever turned it off, or nobody could.

I sat down on the table. It wobbled. I sat anyway. Popped the chips. Ate three.

Four knocks on the door. Then it opened anyway, because this is Newfoundland and locks are suggestions.

Collin.

He's twenty-four, works some project management job that involves a lot of email, and he'd been bowling with the Tuesday league since I dragged him here two years ago. We met through Harper, mutual friend, at a house party. He'd watched me top a 5.10 and asked me to teach him to fall. I liked him instantly. We'd been circling each other ever since, all flirt and no follow-through.

"You're hiding," he said.

"I'm strategically located."

He shut the door. His hair was wet from the drizzle outside. April in this town means everything is damp, including you.

"Dale's hunting you," he said.

"I know. Tournament. He signed me up. Again."

"Did you tell him no?"

"Did you ever meet my uncle?"

Collin laughed and leaned against the trophy shelf. Something shifted on it. We both pretended it didn't.

So. Here's where I did the thing I'm not proud of and also completely proud of. I looked at him, and the flickering pin, and the seed catalog still damp under my arm, and I had an idea that was maybe ten percent good.

"Collin. How do you feel about ghosts?"

He blinked. "Which kind?"

"Fake ones."

"Those are my favorite."

I stood up. The table wobbled behind me. I told him the plan. The whole plan. Me and him, back room, candle, the dead pin rigged to flicker, the seed catalog open like some kind of scripture, and me doing a long low moan that carries. Dale and half the regulars are superstitious enough to believe their own fishing stories. Old Man Prevost swears the Glow Bowl sits on an old Anglican cemetery plot. He tells everyone. Nobody checks.

We do the séance. Word spreads. League night empties out. I get a quiet alley and no tournament.

Collin rubbed his jaw. "Meera. That's..."

"Genius. Say genius."

"That's insane. What if someone has a heart condition?"

"Nobody here has a heart condition. Prevost's heart is the strongest thing in this building. It survived his second marriage."

"What if the landlord calls the police?"

"The landlord is in Florida. It's April. Nobody is in Florida's way."

He hesitated. I could see him doing the math he always does, the risk column, the reward column. That's the thing about Collin. He wants someone else to hold the plan so he can just follow it. I'd figured that out at the house party and never said it out loud.

"I promise there's no real danger," I said. "No fire. Candle sits in a jar. Pin runs on a battery. Worst case, we get laughed at."

"Best case?"

"Best case, Dale never asks me to bowl again and I get the whole alley to myself on Fridays."

He looked at the broken pin. It flickered on cue, like it was auditioning.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. But I'm saying I was recruited."

"You're saying you were invited."

"Recruited with chips." He took the bag from my hand.

***

Setting it up took twenty minutes and zero dignity.

The seed catalog went on the table, open to the tomato page. It looked, if you squinted, like a folk grimoire about beefsteaks. Collin arranged it just so, corners squared.

"Should the spirits know we favor the Cherry Bomb hybrid?" he asked.

"Spirits love tomatoes. Everyone knows that."

The candle went in a jam jar, dead center. I'd taken it from the snack bar, birthday candle, half melted. It threw a wobbly little circle of light.

The pin was the centerpiece. I got it down off its nail, careful of the wiring, and set it upright against the fuse box where the dimmer switch was reachable. Flicker, flicker, dark. Flicker, flicker, dark. Greenish light. It looked exactly like something dead and glowing, which is what it was.

"It's perfect," Collin said. "It's terrible. It's perfect."

"Right? Now we need ambience."

I put my hands flat on the table next to the catalog. Took a breath. Started the moan.

Low. Long. Rising a little at the end. The kind of sound you'd make if you were a restless spirit with opinions about league night.

Collin's face went through several stages. Trying not to laugh. Then actually almost laughing. Then, weirdly, going still. His eyes got fixed on the flickering pin.

"That's..." he said quietly.

"Good, right?"

"Unsettling. Do it again."

I did it again. Longer this time. And something happened in the room that I hadn't planned. The candle, the green flicker, Collin going pale and reverent in the half dark. It felt like a stage. It felt like mine. I put one hand on his shoulder and he let me. He let me like the shoulder had been waiting.

"Say nothing," I said, quiet. "Just watch the light."

He watched the light.

The pin flickered. I moaned again, softer, almost a hum. The candle guttered. The room smelled like wax and dust and old fries.

And then the door opened.

Now, a smart person hears a door open and stops the ghost act. But I was committed. I kept the moan going, one long rising note, and Collin whispered, "Someone's here," and I whispered back, "I know," and kept going, because stopping mid-haunt felt worse.

The gasp came from the doorway. A real gasp. Both hands, audible, the works.

"Oh my lord," said Mrs. Hodd, the landlord's wife. "The light. The light in there, do you see it? It's a spirit light."

She was staring past both of us. At the pin. The broken, battery-run, dollar-store pin flickering on a dimmer somebody rigged in 1987.

"It's glowing," she breathed. "And the book. What is that book?"

Collin opened his mouth. I squeezed his shoulder. He closed it.

"The catalogue," I said, in my best graveyard voice. "Of what was planted. And what was... taken."

"Tomatoes," Mrs. Hodd whispered.

"And what lies beneath," I said.

Well. There was nothing beneath. There was a cement floor and a mop bucket. But Mrs. Hodd had already crossed herself with the hand holding her keys, and the keys jingled like church bells, and I knew, I absolutely knew, that by Monday this story would be all over town wearing a new coat every time it got told.

The pin flickered. She gasped again.

Collin, I have to say, recovered beautifully. He put his hand flat on the catalog and bowed his head like a man at a graveside. The crack in the chair was right behind him. He nearly sat on it. I watched him catch himself at the last second, never breaking character, and something about that did something warm and wicked in my chest.

"We should leave them," Mrs. Hodd whispered to no one. "We shouldn't disturb."

"Best not," I said, grave-voice still on.

She backed out. The door clicked shut.

I counted three. Four. Her footsteps went down the hall, quick, then quicker.

Collin turned to me. His face was doing something complicated between horror and delight.

"She believes," he said. "She actually believes."

"Of course she believes. Prevost primed the whole town for years."

"She crossed herself at a seed catalog."

"A tomato catalog."

He sat down carefully on the cracked chair and put his head back and laughed. Really laughed, till his eyes went wet. The pin flickered over him, green and dying and beautiful.

"Okay," he said, catching breath. "That was..." He waved a hand. "That was something. What's the next part of the plan, because I assume there's a next part."

There was a next part. It just hadn't existed until I looked at him sitting there, lit green, waiting for me to tell him what to do.

"Close the door," I said. "Lock it this time."

He got up and locked it.

"Collin." The grave-voice dropped out of mine. "I want to try something that isn't in the plan. I want you on your knees, and I want to boss you around a little. You can say no, and we go back to being two idiots and a tomato catalog."

"Yes," he said, no pause at all. "I'd like that. Yes."

"Kneel," I said.

I hadn't planned that word. It just came out. Grave-voice still on, half for the act, half for the thing underneath the act that had no name yet.

Collin looked at me. The pin flickered green across his face. Then