by Patrick Glancy
Once upon a time a journalist fell from grace. His name was Nate Duffy, and he was one of the best in the world at his profession. Operating as a freelancer, his work was printed in many of the world’s most respected publications. He won numerous awards and traveled the globe bringing an insightful perspective to humanity’s most persistent injustices. He reported on election violence in Bosnia and civil unrest in Colombia. He filed stories from warzones in Iraq and Afghanistan. He interviewed rebels, kings and queens, and popes. Then came Istanbul. It’s better not to speak of what happened in Istanbul— that is a whole story in itself. But after what he did there, he was effectively blacklisted. No newspaper, magazine, or website in the world would touch him after that, regardless of how many Pulitzer Prizes he had stuffed in his closet back home. Whether this harsh treatment was justified or not, Nate could not say. Maybe it was, but either way, the only publication that would hire him after Istanbul was a supermarket tabloid called the Informer. He went from covering world-changing events to interviewing conspiracy theory lunatics who believed the Earth was secretly run by lizard people and predicting weekly apocalypses.
Nate hated his new job, but he had to do something to pay the bills and writing was all he knew. That was why he jumped at the assignment when an old woman called in a tip about seeing the ghost of Leavenworth O’Riley in her Mississippi home. Not that he believed the woman’s story. Nate Duffy didn’t believe in ghosts, and even if he had, he couldn’t see any compelling reason for the spirit of Mr. O’Riley to be lingering in the woman’s house. But that’s how most ghost stories worked. It was always something along the lines of Napoleon hanging out in a farmhouse in Nebraska with no explanation for what he might be doing there in the first place. Leavenworth O’Riley died in New Orleans in 1937, shot dead in a love triangle by his best friend, and the house he was supposedly haunting was built forty years later. But he had been a respected and moderately successful bluesman in his day, and he possessed the right mixture of notoriety and obscurity to make for a believable ghost. At least, that was how Nate sized up the old woman’s angle. He assumed it would be a thrill for her to get her picture in the paper, even if it was a joke rag like the Informer.
He wanted the job anyway. Regardless of whether he believed the tip or not, it still sounded better than most of his assignments. It would give him a chance to get out of the city and away from his own thoughts. He drove south to Mississippi with the windows down and the blues blasting on the radio. Nate was a fan of the blues, and of Leavenworth O’Riley in particular. They were from the same town in Kansas, and they shared the same birthday, nearly seventy years apart. He owned all of O’Riley’s records, and he even bought one of O’Riley’s guitars back when he still had the money to afford such luxuries. So far, he’d resisted selling it to pay the bills, and he packed it in the back seat when he hit the road. The fact that the old woman claimed to have seen O’Riley instead of the hundreds of other similar bluesman she could have chosen struck him as somewhat peculiar and unlikely, but he shrugged off his concern and pressed his foot down on the accelerator. Sometimes life just worked out that way.
The old woman who claimed to have seen the ghost was in the hospital when Nate got to Mississippi. Her name was Ellie Richards, and Nate guessed that she had to be nearly a hundred years old, judging by her looks. She was more wrinkled than a prune left out in the sun, but still sharp and feisty. The staff wouldn’t let her smoke in the hospital, so she sniffed at her cigarettes instead. She was aware of how ridiculous this made her look, but she was too old to care. She waved Nate into her hospital room and shared her story.
Ellie first became aware of the presence in her house three months earlier. She heard music at odd times, but it was always very faint— like someone was strumming lightly on a guitar in the attic when she was in the living room, or left a radio turned on low buried in the couch cushions. Methodically, she searched the house from top to bottom, but never found any clue as to where the music might be coming from. But she recognized the tune. It was “Storyteller Blues” by Leavenworth O’Riley.
“Did you know O’Riley?” Nate interrupted. He hadn’t even bothered to take out his notebook.
“No,” Ellie admitted. “But I remember my daddy playing his records when I was young. He had a very distinctive sound.”
He did, Nate agreed, but that was beside the point. “So if you didn’t know him, is there any other reason his music might magically play in your house?” he asked. “And if there is some reason, why would he wait until now to start playing all of a sudden? The guy’s been dead for over eighty years.”
The old woman glared at him. “I don’t know,” she hissed. “That’s why I called in a smart mouth like you.”
Nate grinned. He still wasn’t sold on her claim, but he liked the old woman all the same. “Is it just the music?” he asked. “Or has the ghost manifested itself in other ways?”
She softened a little. “At first, it was just the music,” she said. “Then, about a week ago, I was gettin’ out of the shower. Not an easy task for someone my age, and he was there in my bathroom, lookin’ at me in my birthday suit. ‘Care for a towel?’ he asked, holdin’ one out to me. I got so scared that I slipped and fell and broke my hip. And, of course, by the time the ambulance arrived, he had vanished into thin air.”
Nate fought the urge to laugh at the story. “So no one else has seen the ghost?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “My son stayed over after I went in the hospital, mostly to water my plants and watch my cable TV. He was doin’ that when the ghost stole his best Sunday church suit. The ghost came struttin’ into the living room with it on and told my son that it didn’t fit him very well. Then he vanished again and the clothes fell to the ground like that Obi-Wan fella from the Star Wars movies. My son got so scared that he ran home in the middle of the night. Even free cable won’t get him back in that house. He says my plants are on their own.”
“It’s an interesting story,” Nate said. It would make a fun little write-up in the back of the Informer, but he didn’t expect it to move the needle much. “Is that it?”
“No, that ain’t it,” Ellie protested. “I called in a medium. Madame Rosanna— she’s supposed to be the best. She’s going to cleanse the house tomorrow. I want you to document that too.”
Madame Rosanna was definitely not the best. Like all mediums and spiritualists, she was a fraud. Nate had actually crossed paths with her on several occasions during his work with the Informer, and he had never come away impressed. She used all the standard tricks of the trade, mostly dealing in vague generalities and telling people what they wanted to hear, but Nate showed up for the exorcism the next day. The house was small and he took a seat in the back of the living room, surrounded by Rosanna, her camera crew, and Ellie Richards’s middle-aged son. The latter was the only one who looked truly nervous. Rosanna and her crew were only putting on an act. Nate fought the urge to read a book.
Rosanna forced her way to the middle of the room, making herself the center of attention. She wore a red handkerchief over her head and dangly earrings. Her skirt swooshed with each overly dramatic movement she made in her attempt to commune with the spirit world. She held a clear crystal ball in her hand, but Nate knew from experience that it was just a prop to add to the atmosphere.
“I feel a presence in the room,” Madame Rosanna declared. Nate snorted, but everyone else ignored him. “The spirit is trapped in our world. Some wrong from his life must be righted before he can reach the spectral plane. Tell us, oh spirit, what must we do to set your soul free?”
Ellie Richards’ son chewed his nails. The camera crew was really getting into it. Rosanna raised the crystal ball to her eyeline and peered into it. Then, an extraordinary thing happened that took everyone by surprise. Mist formed inside the ball and swirled around. Confusion overtook Rosanna’s face. Nate did not miss this development and sat up in his chair. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t that kind of ball. The smoke cleared and a face appeared inside the ball, staring back at Rosanna. “Boo,” it said.
The psychic screamed and dropped the ball. It shattered on the floor as she ran out of the house, followed closely by her terrified crew and Ellie Richards’s son. The face in the broken glass evaporated into smoke again, swirling upward like it was being drawn by a fan until it formed the shape of a man and materialized. Only Nate was left in the room, and he recognized the figure in the sharp navy blue suit from his album covers. He couldn’t explain it, but Leavenworth O’Riley was indeed standing before him. “It’s really you, isn’t it?” he said.
“In the flesh,” O’Riley answered, then caught himself with a grin. “Well, not really in the flesh. Poor choice of words.”
“But why?” Nate asked. He skipped over his disbelief of ghosts because he couldn’t deny what he was seeing, but he still had questions about the logic of it all. “What are you doing here?” He was referring to the house in particular, but the bigger picture questions applied as well.
“It’s as good a place to wait as any,” O’Riley replied, stretching his phantom arms.
“Waiting for what?”
O’Riley smiled at him. “For you, Nate.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed. “For me?” he repeated. “Whadda you want with me?”
“I’m going to help you, Nate,” O’Riley said. “Or rather, we’re going to help each other. I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
Nate had no idea what the ghost was talking about. “I don’t—” he began, but then he caught himself. It dawned on him what O’Riley meant. He snapped his fingers and ran out to his car. He came back a minute later with O’Riley’s guitar. The bluesman’s face lit up at the sight of it.
O’Riley took the instrument from Nate and quickly tuned it by ear. Then he gave it a light strum and laughed in spite of himself. “Pretty as ever,” he said, more to himself than Nate. After taking a moment for himself, he looked up at the journalist. “I was in the middle of writing a new song when I was killed,” he said. “Storybook Blues Part Two.’ Now I can finally finish it. Thanks for taking care of my fiddle for me.”
“No problem,” Nate said.
“And in return for your kindness, I’m going to do you a solid,” O’Riley said.
Nate was unsure. “Oh yeah? How you gonna do that?” He was about to make a lame joke about ghosts and solidity, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
“By giving you a new story to write,” the ghost told him. “A real story, like the ones you used to write. A story so good that they won’t be able to ignore you anymore, even if they really want to.”
Nate thought he saw where O’Riley was going, but he remained unconvinced. “Look,” he said. “With all due respect, you’ve made a believer out of me, Mr. O’Riley. And proving the existence of ghosts would be an amazing story, but they’d never buy it, especially coming from me. Not even if you’re willing to go on a world tour with me.”
O’Riley shook his head. “I’m not talking about ghosts,” he said. “I’m talking about real life, the stuff that really matters. You’re going to write the life and death of Leavenworth O’Riley, and I guarantee it’s the wildest story you’ve ever heard. And I’m going to give you all the juicy details, straight from the bluesman’s mouth.”
Nate considered the offer. He wasn’t sure that the publishing industry would be as forgiving as the ghost believed, or that an obscure bluesman was the kind of “can’t miss” subject O’Riley claimed, but the idea did intrigue him. It would be nice to write something with real substance again, even if he was the only one who ever read it. He was already considering different angles he might take for the project. The dead bluesman wasn’t just offering him a book idea, he was offering him a kind of lifeline, a redemption story of his own. He accepted the proposal and invited O’Riley to come back to Chicago with him and brainstorm.
“I always wanted to make it to Chicago,” O’Riley said. “But does your place have cable TV? I’ve grown pretty used to that here.”
“I’m sure it can be arranged,” Nate assured him.
They departed Ellie Richards’s house, and the old woman would return a few weeks later, as fiercely independent as ever and relieved to have things back to normal. They say she’s still alive and kicking. O’Riley rode shotgun on the way back to Chicago, strumming his guitar and seeking inspiration for his still unfinished final song. “Tell me about Istanbul,” he said.
Nate wanted to get it off his chest, but he still resisted. “I’ve never told another living soul what actually happened in Istanbul,” he said.
O’Riley grinned. “Tell me and that will still be true,” he pointed out.
Nate considered this and shrugged. Then he told the dead bluesman about Istanbul. But that is its own story and need not be told here. Unless you’re not actually a living soul. In which case, listen up.
Patrick Glancy’s work has been featured in Quibble, Heater, Tales of Old, eNoir, Nth Degree, Kiosk, and The Circle. He also publishes a newsletter called Powder Blue Nostalgia on Substack, and occasionally co-hosts a podcast called Atchison Public Library Presents. Follow him on Twitter @PBNostalgia.