11.08.2004

the ghost of anyone except bill bixby

There was a ghost in front of me in the central repository of books, riding a ferry in turbulent water; the books and me and the whole building riding a ferry with a ghost. The ghost looked like Bill Bixby and was carrying heads in each of his hands, by the hair. Bill Bixby with hands full of hair.

Through the window I could see the tips of buildings as they rose and fell on the waves of the harbor. This is where our central book repository had gotten to, our selfishness and inbreeding and furry-headed optimism brought it here regardless of everyone's stated plans. "We'll keep the books in Maryland!" they used to scream. It was redundant, a ritual, words repeated so often that they were part of the tapestry. But they were never true, and the way the place was rocking was proof of that at last.

The Bill Bixby ghost was getting antsy, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. I assumed he was looking around for some place to put the heads.

"You need me to hold something?" I asked him. It's not that I was eager to carry one of these heads -- they were pretty macabre. While the Bill Bixby ghost was at least partially ethereal, such that he offered a reasonable oppurtunity for me to assume I'd gone utterly mad -- seeing the shelves behind him right through his legs, seeing that his feet were barely touching the hardwood floor of this library on a ferry -- the heads themselves were all too real. At least, though, they looked to have been detached for long enough to have dried. There was no wet blood dripping from the necks, just a rusty-dirty crust around the edges.

"Yes, thanks," said the ghost, handing me three heads at once. I was forced to make a basket of my arms to catch them; he'd caught me so off guard that for a minute I had a terrible vision of the heads falling to the ground. Then immediately I realized that I had no idea why they shouldn't just be dropped and left to roll around on the floor.

The whole room lurched to my left, and I smacked my head off of a portal. Through the window I saw a big stone church nearly clip the side of the ferry before it sank beneath the dark and restless water. I think there may have been a penguin on the roof.

"You're Bill Bixby's ghost, right?" I asked as he pulled out a desk chair and sat down.

"Aaaahhh," he said, as if he'd been standing for months. Then, suddenly registering my question, he said, "What? Oh, Bill Bixby. Uhm, no. I used to be called Bill, sure, but my last name wasn't Bixby."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said as I bumbled one of the heads. The floor was really rocking at that point, but the ghost didn't seem concerned that I was about to drop a head.

"No worries, man," he said. "I get that Bill Bixby thing a lot. He played the Hulk, right?"

"Yeah... well, no, he was Bruce Banner. The Hulk was played by that Ferrigno guy," I said. But before I was even finished I could see I'd lost him. He was picking at the surface of the desk at which he was sitting.

There was a loud crack somewhere behind us and I fell on my ass and slid backwards on the floor as the whole rear end of the ferry dropped under the choppy water. Heads rolled everywhichway.

This is the place to which we've dragged our collected knowledge, out here in a churning sea between somewhere bright but stormy and somewhere black and unknown, I thought as I sat on my ass on the splintery floor, before realizing I'd actually just had that thought and then smacking myself on the forehead. Between somewhere bright and stormy and somewhere black and unknown? Jeez louise.

A bookshelf fell right beside me, somehow missing the other shelves and not starting any sort of domino catastrophe. I looked up and saw the ghost who wasn't Bill Bixby looking around on the underside of the desk. "Ah-hah," he mumbled, and reached up to pull off what I hoped was just some dried gum. Whatever it was he stuck it in his mouth.

"How is that I can see through you yet you have enough of a physical presence to affect your environment?" I asked.

"It's all smoke and mirrors, my friend," he said, and whatever he'd been chewing shot out of his mouth and landed on the floor. He stared at it glumly.

There was a crackle from some speakers in the ceiling that I hadn't known were there, and some broken and distorted voice came out of them saying something that at first I couldn't make out at all. Then there was a very clear, "shit," followed by a loud pop, and then the distorted voice came out again without the snap-crackle-pop and said, "We've just collided with Lenny Bruce's pet lizard. The thing's fucking huge, and it knocked a big hole in the front of the Ferry. We're probably sinking but no one's really sure." Another pop, and then the voice cut off.

Through the portal to my right I saw a man hanging tight onto a bicycle as both man and bike hurtled through the air. I coughed.

The ghost who wasn't ever Bill Bixby (if he was to be believed) stood up and brushed off his ephemeral gray trousers. "Thanks for holding the heads, buddy. It's been nice watching you fall on your ass. Judging by the sound of that guy just now, though, it's about time for me to skedaddle."

"What about your heads?" I asked, reaching for the closest one. The face was peaceful on that one, and it looked a little like Kenny Rogers. I was sure it wasn't him, though, because it couldn't even carry a tune. Say what you will about Kenny Rogers, but the man could carry a tune.

"Oh, you can keep 'em," the ghost that never played an anger-prone scientist on TV said as he walked or drifted out the door.

"Would I like you when you were angry?" I shouted after him. He did not respond.

Of a sudden I could feel water under my ass, and I looked around to see that the book repository was filling up. Then I noticed that underneath the collapsed shelf there was a woman's flailing hand. I stood up and began trying to shift the shelf off of whoever was under there.

"Umph," the shelf, or the woman beneath, said, and then, "Grrrunk. Gb oo nk kuut ff?"

I panicked, (which I can always be counted on doing in a pinch,) and kicked the shelf.

"Aaaah!" it snarled. The hand continued flopping around. Two burly men in old-time yellow sailor rain-parka thingies came running toward me as I stood ineffectually nudging the shelf with my toe, their rubber boots slapping against the water on the floor. They took position on either side of the fallen shelf, and without even counting to three they both bent over and lifted it up. It came to rest perfectly upright without even rocking once and then, as soon as they'd come, they ran off again, back in the direction from which they'd come. On the floor now there was a woman with a head under her right arm in addition to the head on her own neck. I assumed that the hand not holding any heads was the one that had been sticking out from under the shelf, and I reached for that one in order to help her up. She ignored my proffered hand and stood up on her own, her face bruised, her lips bloody but smiling.

I nodded to her and asked, "Are you okay?"

Still smiling, she said, "Fk goo, sss oal." Then she ran off the same way the sailors had gone. I looked down and saw a few books that hadn't gone back up with the shelf; surprisingly there weren't many. I reached down and picked one up. It had a blank cover so I tossed it back onto the floor before walking over to sit at the chair the not-Bill Bixby ghost had recently evacuated. I sat down and noticed the water was up to my knees.

Lenny Bruce's lizard smashed its tail against the side of the place, shattering the portholes. I started singing, "Through the years, you've never let me down..."

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