So I guess if I’m gonna tell you about the ghost, first I have to tell you why I had to go all the way to Mama Tee’s house in the first place.

Basically, this one day last summer me and my boys were just chillin in the parking lot of the rec center. We went there to play two on two but we didn’t cause they only let you use rec center balls on the court and you gotta ask a worker for a ball. The only worker was Valerie, and we don’t like her. She ain’t cute, sexy, pretty, nothing¸ just big nappy dreadlocks and pimples everywhere. She always wearing these kinda African clothes and if you say boo she start talking about Orisha and black fatherhood and melanin power and all this shit that is just too much work to listen to when all you want is a basketball. So we stayed out in the parking lot talking and suddenly we heard that sound—woo wooop!—and saw a flash of blue and red. Next thing we know, here come the cops messing with us. They searched us, called us all out our names, made us all sit against the wall with our hands on our heads.

We seriously wasn’t doing nothing but being black, but you can’t say that, not the way cops be acting. They kept saying we “matched a description” and we were all too mad and scared and full of good sense to tell them we ain’t do nothing.

We thought they was gonna let us go with a warning but then here come Valerie. She start yelling at the cops, cops start yelling at her, she start recording, and my boy Low—we call him that cause his eyebrows so low they ‘bout to be eyelashes—start yelling at everybody that he wanna go home cause it’s hot.

Next thing I know, I’m calling my moms from the jail asking her to come get me, and she’s crying, and I keep saying “but I ain’t even do nothing!” and it just—ruined my day. Ruined my summer, too.

She sent her boyfriend Mike to get me from the jail. He a real good dude. The kinda dude you want to come get you out of jail because it makes it look like maybe you shouldn’t really be there in the first place. But he get on my nerves ‘cause he be feeling everything real hard, like on the outside of his skin or something. He don’t have to say he’s mad or sad or whatever, you just know. But even with that, I was feeling pretty good, all things considered. Like, I been to jail. It was wack, but still. I been there. Can’t nobody tell me nothing in these streets. That’s how it’s supposed to work, right?

Problem with that is, my moms ain’t like Low’s mom. Low’s mom is normal and easy to be around. She be telling us how to talk to girls and making viral videos and shit. My moms is a nerd. She think she better than everybody. If she didn’t work all the time and leave me at the crib alone sometimes, I’d be a nerd too, no doubt. I mean, I already kinda am and that’s not a problem, but you can’t be a complete nerd. Like, it’s a balance.

Anyway, Low’s mama was probably being real nice to him but my moms and Mike had a whole conference around the dinner table as soon as I got home and decided I was going to have to spend the rest of my summer at Mama Tee’s house, out in the country in some other state somewhere.

I ain’t even know we had a Mama Tee. Whose mama is she? Where she live? Who gon’ take me down there? Why I gotta go stay with her? Who is she? I’m sitting at the table just sounding like an owl. “Who? Who? Who?” And they just kept talking, like I wasn’t even there. Made me mad.

I’m not gonna tell you how much I yelled and begged and asked questions and tried to fight because that’s boring and they didn’t care anyway. Basically, I had to get on a plane and leave my block and the rec center and all my boys and go live with Mama Tee until school started up again because it was supposed to keep me out of trouble even though I didn’t do nothing bad.

But that’s when this shit gets real weird. Remember, there’s a ghost.

• • • •

People be on social media acting like traveling is wonderful but that shit is also boring, okay? You spend most of your time sitting down next to a stranger who you don’t really wanna talk to and who don’t really wanna talk to you. Just ‘cause you sitting in the sky don’t make it special. Then when you stand up again, you somewhere you never been, around more strangers, and you supposed to pretend it’s exciting just because it’s different. Whatever, man. I didn’t like it. I spent the whole time on the plane thinking about where I was going and how much I did not want to go there.

Like I said, I had no idea I even had a Mama Tee but she’s my grandma’s mom. She lives somewhere down South, in some little town out next to nowhere and don’t really speak to nobody in the family anymore. My grandma died in an accident when I was a little kid, but she wasn’t all that old. I mean, she was old ‘cause she was my grandma, but she wasn’t like maybe-she-might-die old. Mama Tee is that kinda old, though. For some reason I don’t understand, she and my mom hadn’t been speaking that much for a while. I guess one day Mama Tee just started calling up out of the blue and asking for me to come visit like it was important. Not both of us, just me. I wasn’t sure if I should feel special or what, seeing how I didn’t even know her. Apparently, she don’t really have a lot of people around, just her and her “friend” who is some old head named Poe.

“While you’re down there, you will call him Mr. Poe, you hear me?” Mom must have said that at least three times while Mike was driving us to the airport. “He’s gonna pick you up at the airport so when you get there, just wait for him to come. It’ll be late at night so I don’t want you wandering around on your own.”

Whatever. Whoever Poe is, he ain’t my damn daddy. He just some old man. And Mama Tee just some old woman. And I did not want to waste my whole summer sitting in a house with two old ass people I never met before. I was thinking they probably smell funky, you know, with that old people smell? Like licorice and feet? How was I s’posed to talk to girls with that smell on me? And were there even any girls down where I was going? I mean—there’s girls everywhere, but would they be fine girls or ugly ones?

So I got on the plane and when I got to my destination there was nowhere to go anyway so I did like my moms said and waited for Mr. Poe. The airport was small and kind of empty so I just stood under the sign that said “Arrivals” and hoped he would find me. He did. Oh my God, he did.

Poe is like—well, first of all, he the biggest dude I ever seen. He old too, and kinda shrunk, which means he used to be even bigger. He so big and so black that if he was back in my ‘hood everybody would call him Midnight. Look like he just block out all the sun wherever he go. His eyes all bloodshot, hair gray and grizzled, and for some reason he really favors the color blue.

I’ll tell you right now, Poe ain’t the ghost but he could have been. Imagine this: you standing in an airport in a place you’ve never been at and don’t really wanna be at and some eight-foot-tall dude the color of charcoal dressed head to toe in sky blue with red eyes and Frederick Douglass hair just walks straight up to you while staring you down. What would you do?

I dropped everything and started to turn so I could run away but just that quick he snatched up my bag from the ground and said my name. That’s when I thought “Oh, this the dude supposed to pick me up.” I wasn’t scared or nothing, I just wasn’t sure how they do things down south. He coulda been a problem and I ain’t nine feet tall. To be so big, he had a pretty normal voice. Not low, not high, just regular. Not even all that country.

We stood there, looking at each other for a little while and finally he just did this little head nod and turned to walk away. I followed him. I ain’t know what else to do, really.

He drove this old ass truck that was also sky blue even though it was hard to see that in the dark. It just looked gray, and so did his clothes. He threw my bag in the back before going to his side, opening the door, and getting in. It was dark outside and kind of weird and empty and there were all kinds of strange noises and stuff so I just got in. At least Poe was supposed to be all right. I didn’t know about all that other stuff out there.

He didn’t even look at me while I was closing the door, just smooth started up the truck and drove off into the darkness. I didn’t want to ask him any questions but after a while I noticed something that kinda scared me so I had to say something.

“Uh, Poe . . . I mean uh, Mr. Poe, uh . . . Are the headlights supposed to be off on this truck?”

He laughed a little and kind of looked at me sideways. I think we drove under a streetlight at that moment because his eyes looked real shiny, almost like there was a light coming out of them.

“Naw,” he said, and just kept driving in the dark. He turned somewhere and suddenly we was on these back roads with no lights at all. I was glad it was so country ‘cause at least there wasn’t no other cars around to hit us.

Aight then, I thought. So Mama Tee’s boyfriend is crazy as hell. Mama Tee probably is too. What I got to do while I’m down here is find some boys—there gotta be a rec center or a basketball court or something down here—and spend as much time as possible out in these streets. Might even learn something new.

Poe interrupted all my thoughts by asking me “You ain’t old enough to drive yet, boy?”

“Naw. I’m just tall. I don’t start high school until next year.”

He laughed again. “So you a big man!”

“Yeah. I mean, I been to jail!”

He looked at me real quick then and his eyes had that weird gleam again. I couldn’t see nothing at all on the road in the dark but he was driving fast like it was the middle of the day. Maybe he just did it so often it was like second nature to him. I don’t know. But I didn’t really like it.

“You been to jail, huh? Oh, you gon’ fit right in down here, boy. Can’t wait to see it, myself.”

“What that mean?”

“You’ll see, son.”

“I ain’t your son!”

He looked at me real sharp and shiny again but he didn’t say nothing because just then we got to Mama Tee’s house.

• • • •

When you watch movies with people going to visit their family out in the country or down south somewhere, there’s always a gospel song playing in the background. It’s always bright daylight outside, lots of people, and the oldest lady comes out and hugs everybody before they go inside. Go inside, and it’s a football game playing on the TV and kids playing in the backyard and good food everywhere. There’s always one stupid uncle everybody mad at and one stuck up auntie tryna tell him how to live but you know after dinner they gonna play dominos or spades or something and be friends again. In the movies, Black folks who go visit family walk into warmth and love and happiness.

I absolutely did not do that. Poe slid out the truck, snatched up my bag and went on the porch in the dark and I followed him fast cause I wasn’t trying to get lost out there. I had to keep my eye on the gray-looking blue of his shirt to keep up. We got to the porch and I could feel someone standing there. I guessed it was Mama Tee. I could feel eyes looking at me, anyway. I couldn’t see shit in the dark so I just looked at where I thought they was to be polite. Finally Poe dropped my bag at my feet and said “Bye, Ms. Tee.”

“Bye, Mr. Poe,” she said and reached behind her and opened the door. A little light came through it and I could finally see her. Poe was already gone. I don’t even know how. She was looking not at me, but past me, like at something behind me, almost. She hugged me, real quick, real dry, still not looking at me. “Come on in, then, son. If you hungry you got to wait until the morning.” So, I just followed her into the house.

Mama Tee so old, first time I really saw her, I don’t even know how she stay alive. She ain’t but five feet tall and all dried up looking with light skin and big bug eyes and false teeth. She got a little wisp of hair on her scalp that’s like three different colors—gray, white, and some weird brown color where she maybe tried to dye it once.

Mama Tee live in a house that’s real old and real run down. There’s other little old houses around, but not too close, so in the dark that first night it just looked like she was out there in the country by herself. The inside looks kinda messy and everything is all square brown shapes just like my house back home, except it’s a house, not an apartment, and everything Mama Tee owns looks like it was made the year slavery ended. There’s just dust and old ass shit everywhere. Old magazines, little statues, unopened bottles and cans of food they don’t even make no more, rusty tools. Just all this old time shit. Ain’t but two places to sit—a big old armchair in the middle of the front room that Mama Tee was always sitting in and a little breakfast table against the wall in between the armchair and the little dusty kitchen.

So I followed Mama Tee into this house. She walked me down a hallway, but she didn’t say much. She just opened the door and told me good night.

I can’t lie, I was feeling some type of way. Like, why she got to be so cold? So I said, “What I’m s’posed to do?”

She stopped and looked straight at me then, with one of her tiny little wrinkled up hands on the doorknob. There was only one lamp in the whole room and it wasn’t that bright.

She sounded real surprised when she said, “Why, just go on to bed, son.” She started closing the door. “And don’t you come out this room ‘til it’s light outside, you hear?”

So, I went on to bed. But first I said “I ain’t your son,” up under my breath.

One more thing about that night I gotta tell you.

You know how sometimes, when you sleep, you hear something in your dream that is actually happening in real life and it kinda mixes into the dream? Like when there’s music playing in your dream, but you know in some part of your brain that it’s only there ‘cause you left a playlist on? That happened all night long at Mama Tee’s house, only it wasn’t music. It was laughing. These low, bubbly, nasty-sounding laughs. Sometimes they would stop and I’d hear breathing—heavy, sweaty breathing, like somebody with the flu. I kept hearing that all night, and when I finally woke myself up and sat up in the bed, all sweaty and scared, it was daytime.

There was a bird singing somewhere outside. I got dressed and walked down that narrow brown hallway to go see where Mama Tee was. She was sitting in an armchair in the front room, humming. She got this little dry, cracked old lady voice and she was humming some strange sad song, sounding like a slave song from a movie, all scary and old fashioned and shit.

Mama Tee house is tiny. You can look from the hallway to the front door and front room, to the kitchen and back door, without taking a step. I looked at Mama Tee sitting in her chair, then at the kitchen, which was cold and empty. The stove was covered in a whole inch of dust.

I guess she felt me looking because she said, “Good morning, son. Poe be here soon with breakfast. Sit down a minute.”

I turned around, went back to my room without saying nothing. If Poe was gonna be cooking all the food, I needed to call my moms and get her to send me some Pop-Tarts. My phone was dead, so I grabbed it and my charger and went back out. I don’t really know what to say to old ladies but I felt like if I’m staying in her house I at least had to try, even if she didn’t seem to know how to be friendly.

She still didn’t pay me no attention. Just sat still in that chair, big bug-eyes staring at nowhere, humming that awful song.

I sat at the table and plugged the phone charger into the wall, turned on the phone. I was hoping I would get some signal, but nothing. The back door was next to the table, sliding glass set in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. The backyard looked huge and green—all kinds of plants growing big like a jungle. I could see a clothesline and something that looked like a garden.

I was messing with the phone when Mama Tee spoke again, scared me a little. “Some books are there for you to read, son. Your mama said you like them.”

I didn’t really want to look but I still was trying to be polite. They were right there on the table next to me anyway. The first book on the pile was so old it was brown, like it had been dipped in tea. I opened it up to a random page and read “. . . unusual case of Raw Head Bloody Bones, an Irish legend adopted and some may say improved upon by storytellers of the local Negro community which has . . .” I closed that book so fast dust flew up out of it. What was she trying to get me to read? It was boring, Mama Tee was boring, and I was bored. Like, everything I ever heard about going down south to see relatives was a lie. Mama Tee acted like I had been there in her little dark dusty house forever and she wasn’t happy to have me there. I was hungry and already kinda lonely and from the dust on everything I could guess that nobody ever came to visit, ever. Except maybe Poe but he weird anyway.

I knew that something had to be poppin somewhere though. It couldn’t all be like this.

I mean, I was already so bored I was seeing things. Just out the corner of my eye, I saw the cord for my phone charger suddenly jerk. It was like someone real weak had tried to pull it hard so it stood out sharply at an angle where it was hanging from the table all of a sudden and then fell.

Mama Tee’s humming got louder.

I stood up, brushed dust off my jeans and said, just to be polite. “I’ma go look outside, Mama Tee.” I wanted to look and see what else was out there. I wasn’t about to work on a plantation all summer by accident.

She just hummed a little louder.

The glass door leading to the backyard was slid slightly open. When I moved towards it, it suddenly slid closed. There was a handprint, all steamy like someone invisible had put their big sweaty hand on the glass. As I watched, the lock slowly turned and clicked.

It was bright, bright daylight outside. I was still two steps from the door. Wasn’t nobody else inside or outside who could have made that handprint. Or turned that lock.

Mama Tee finally put some words to that tune she had been humming since I got up.

Don’t you weep

Don’t you moan

Just go ta’ sleep

Shut yo’ eyes

Mind yo’ head

And don’t you peep

Don’t you walk

In the dark

When you’re alone

Cause you might

Get snatched

By Bloody Bones!

You know how sometimes you get so scared that all you can do is feel cold? It’s like an icicle fell out the sky and through your body and pinned you to the ground. When I heard Mama Tee creak and croak out that song, that’s how I was. I turned around and stared at her with that icicle running through me. I opened my mouth to laugh or say something but all that came out was “What.” Real flat. I wasn’t asking a question, but that was just the only word that would come out.

She kept singing, sometimes with words, sometimes just humming. I kept trying to move but that icicle had me pinned down hard and I couldn’t do anything.

The front door banged and I jumped and scrambled into the hallway. Sometimes you just gotta take the L.

Poe came walking in the house with a bunch of containers full of good smells stacked up in his hands. He looked at me with his eyes all curious, then at Mama Tee. He grinned real big and said “C’mon and eat breakfast, boy.”

I looked at my phone. Still no bars. Still no data. Mama Tee walked towards the table, staring off into nowhere the whole time. Before she sat down, she carefully unlocked the glass door and slid it open a little bit.

I know this sounds crazy and in the movies, only white girls see something scary and then go act like nothing happened. But in real life, when that kind of thing happens, it’s scary for a minute and then your mind is like—“Okay, that ain’t really what happened. You crazy. Actually, you not crazy, because nothing really happened, right?”

So instead of packing my bag and leaving, I sat down to have breakfast.

Poe wasn’t a bad cook. He brought all those containers and his own dishes and forks and spoons, so I could see why even the sink in Mama Tee’s kitchen was full of dust. She just never went in there. He put everything on the kitchen table, unwrapped some plates that were in newspaper and filled them up real quick with fried fish and grits and cut up fruit and biscuits with butter and jelly. He had a thermos with some coffee in it and I liked that because my moms never lets me drink coffee at home. It wasn’t too bad of a breakfast.

What was bad was sitting there eating with him and Mama Tee. They both ate like all the food on earth was going to disappear later and they didn’t talk. All they did was chew loud and stare at me. Both of them got those eyes that are slowly turning dull blue—I think it’s called cataracts? I read that you can get them when you old. They just stared at me with their weird eyes, with their mouths moving up and down around all that food. When I tried to stare back, they’d look away or past me.

I ate slow. It tasted good but everybody’s weird behavior was worse than having no salt. Also, now that that icicle was out of my spine I was thinking about what I could do down here.

Poe did glance at my plate once and say, “Don’t you want to eat all your food, son?”

I said, automatically, “I ain’t your son.”

He snapped back, “So where your daddy, then?”

I ate faster.

When their plates were empty and mine was still half-full, Mama Tee took a big slurp of her coffee and nodded at Poe. “Go on. Tell him.”

Poe cleared his throat and took a sip too. “So, while you down here, you gon’ have to help Mama Tee round this house. She got some books for you to read, a few little chores for you to do. Clean up after ya’self, don’t give her no trouble.”

My back was to the glass door and I heard it close and the lock start to slide back shut—that metal on metal sound.

I didn’t even know I was gonna say it, but I did. “Mama Tee, is your house haunted?” I got a little mad at myself for being a punk, but I heard that lock behind me slide all the way in and all I could feel was that icicle.

The old folks looked directly at me for a moment, and then looked away just as quick.

“Ain’t really no kids in these parts,” Poe continued. “Most folks here is old, old as me and Ms Tee. Maybe a few older. Come with me when I go to the sto’ sometimes, maybe I can run you by the swimming pool. You might meet a few young folks there.”

“Did you hear me, Mama Tee? You saw that door, right? And the handprint?”

My mother must have learned how to ignore questions from Mama Tee. She acted like she ain’t even hear me, just got up from the table working her mouth and lips around the last taste of her breakfast and went and sat back in that armchair. Just cold.

Poe started stacking up dishes. “Hush up, son. Just come help me take all this out to the truck.”

They were so good at ignoring my questions that I started thinking that maybe I really did just imagine it. That didn’t stop me from going outside as soon as Poe drove off in that rattly-ass truck and walking up and down that long dusty road until I found a place where my phone got bars.

Mom picked up on the first ring and said my name like it was a question.

“Ma! Why you ain’t tell me Mama Tee’s house is haunted?”

Can you believe she laughed at me? A big laugh, too. She ain’t even try to hide it. Made me mad.

“Ma, I’m so serious. You gotta listen.” I told her real quick about the door and about how strange Mama Tee and Poe were and even about hearing things in my dreams. She stopped laughing but she still wasn’t taking me too seriously.

“Baby. This is your first time down there. They just live a little different. You’ll get used to it. And I think maybe you’re homesick and seeing things that aren’t there because you miss your friends and your own bed. Give it a chance, okay?”

“No, Ma, I just . . . I don’t feel good about this, okay? I wanna come home.” I was almost crying. I was standing on the dirt road, surrounded by silence, and it was like I was the only living thing out there. I ain’t never felt so lonely before.

“Well, you can’t. You might not like it down there but you can’t get into any trouble, either. Now behave yourself and do your best to help Mama Tee and Mr. Poe, okay?” She said that, then had the nerve to ask me did I really need anything. All I could do was hang up and walk back to Mama Tee’s. She was still sitting in that armchair, humming to herself.

• • • •

It’s strange but nothing really happened for a while after that. I mean, there was no more ghost shit, and I was looking for it. Every time a light flashed or a breeze blew I was half out of my skin, looking for something. But everything was just—normal. I mean, as normal as it could get out there. Mama Tee still didn’t really talk to me much, and Poe would come over twice a day with a bunch of containers and feed us. Sometimes he would stay a while and sit with Mama Tee, or do some cleaning and gardening and make me help him. Sometimes I would just go out and do it by myself. I mowed the lawns, learned to pull weeds. That was actually okay because there wasn’t much else for me to do and my phone didn’t work most of the time. It was good to do something.

I say that, but actually there was some strange shit. I left all the junk in the house alone but we did wipe all the dust out the kitchen the first week I was there because Mama Tee told Poe she wanted me to be able to fix myself a snack and sometimes I did, during the day. When I went to do it, there was handprints in it. Fingerprints, too. Big ones, like a basketball player’s. Before I wiped it all away, I looked over at Poe’s hands, and he a big man, but his hands kinda small. Not his. Not mine. Not Mama Tee’s.

Poe saw me looking, reached over and swiped his rag over the prints, left the kitchen without saying anything.

So there was that. And there was the laughing. All that nasty, snotty, choked up sounding giggling I would hear in the back of my dreams most nights. At first I didn’t know how I was going to sleep with that noise popping up in my head as soon as I closed my eyes, but it was like growing a mole in a place I couldn’t see. It didn’t bother me all the time, so I just got used to it.

Mostly, though, I just lay on the bed in my room, reading the books Mama Tee would leave out on the table for me, playing the downloaded games on my phone and daydreaming. Sometimes I would open up the notes app and write rhymes. That was disappointing. I am not a good rapper. Like, I front like I am because nobody wants to admit they can’t flow, but like—I look at my rhymes sometimes and even I think I better stay in school. But it was something else to do, anyway.

Other times I would walk around the neighborhood to try to get a signal to call or text one of my boys, but it was always real strange. What did I have to talk about, really? Ay, Low, today I pulled 346 weeds. I know how many because I was so bored that I counted all of them. Then I read this crazy ass book about fairy tales for “negroes,” no shit, it says negroes, and apparently all “negroes” was doing back in the day was telling stories about calling up monsters to kill slave owners and overseers which is kind of dope but also kinda boring because ain’t nobody here to talk to when I’m done reading and clearly that shit didn’t work because, I mean, America is like it is now. What you think?

I almost never saw anybody. I knew people lived in the nearby houses, but I never saw them. Every week Poe would take me with him to the grocery store in town but there was always a big space around him, like a big bubble that folks just bounced off. Whenever I was with him, I was in that bubble too, and when I left the house I was almost always with him, which means I never really got to talk to anybody else. Even if I could talk to other people, they were all old. The “young folks” at the swimming pool Poe told me about were all at least forty. So, there was nobody.

One of the books I read talked about how in between heaven and hell there was this other place where you just have to wait and do nothing until God decides what to do with you for real. I don’t remember what it was called but it might as well have been Mama Tee’s house. Except for the first morning, which I kind of blocked out, that was my summer, just waiting in that lonely, boring space between good and bad.

Until the last two weeks. That was when I saw the ghost again.

It got real hot at the beginning of August, and it was hard to sleep. By then I felt more familiar with Mama Tee’s house, even though I never really felt comfortable. I never came out of my room at night just by instinct, but it was hot and I was thirsty and I guess I just forgot.

I didn’t want to wake up Mama Tee so I didn’t try to turn on any lights. I thought I would just use my phone as a flashlight, walk down the hall, get a drink of water, and then go back to my room. But that is not what I did.

I stepped out on the hall carpet in my bare feet. It was hot and humid and my whole body felt sticky just from that little walk.

I felt a cool breeze when I got to the kitchen and it surprised me so much that I hit my toe on the table and said “shit!” real loud. I heard Mama Tee moving in her room, probably turning over in her sleep, but then I heard a much bigger sound right in front of me, like a big body moving.

Everything I had half forgot about or gotten used to came back to me just that quick. I ran over to the wall and flipped the light switch.

The light flickered. It was dim and dirty and kind of brown like usual, but it was also popping in and out, so I never really got a good look at what was in the kitchen. The look I did get was enough, though. The glass door was open and in front of it was a being, I guess a man, big and broad and dark. At first I thought it was Poe, but then I realized it was way bigger than him and it smelled like the inside of the meat counter in the supermarket mixed with the fertilizer we used in Mama Tee’s garden.

It wasn’t wearing clothes—its skin was just so baggy and soft on its body it looked like a pair of coveralls or some little kid pajamas, comfortable and easy to move in. Its head, though—I kept trying to get a look at it in that blinking light and I just couldn’t figure out what was happening. It was wet and red and white, with little bits of bone showing here and teeth showing there and all of the parts of the face were real sharply defined, like one of the posters on the wall in biology class.

It turned and looked at me and I saw its eyes, round and wet and rolling free in that bloody, muscular skull. It didn’t have eyelids, or eyebrows, or eyelashes—just two big wet brown eyeballs. It snapped its jaws one or two times then took a step towards me. I could hear it start laughing. It was that same nasty laugh, sounding like a backed-up toilet. There weren’t but two steps between me and it in that tiny little house. I started screaming.

When I came to, I was laying on the kitchen floor and Mama Tee was leaning over me, her little old face all pinched up, singing that song about the bones so hard it hurt me to hear it come out of her when I opened my eyes.

“Mama Tee?” I sat up real quick and she stopped singing. I looked around, and the kitchen seemed normal. I even felt okay but my chest felt extra sticky with sweat. I looked down at it, and I almost fell out again.

Right there in the middle of my chest was a sticky bloody handprint so big it went from my collarbone to my navel. The thumb stretched around my side. There was a little sliver of bone tucked in my belly button like a present.

I would’ve started screaming again but Mama Tee grabbed hold of me and shook a little. “Son, don’t you make me have to sing this song again tonight. I know you hate it but I really hate it. You understand?”

That was a real weird thing to say, even for her, but she was looking right at me like a regular human being for maybe the first time ever, so I held that scream behind my teeth and just nodded at her. She looked at me hard for a moment, maybe to see what I was gonna do, and then she nodded.

“Help me get up, son. Mama Tee too old to be sitting on this floor with you.”

I got up and kind of pulled her with me and we went to the kitchen table together. Before I sat down I got a towel, started to try to clean some of that handprint off me.

Mama Tee sighed deeply and said “Ol’ Raw Head, he a white man’s ghost, you know.”

How do you even answer some crazy shit like that? “What?”

“Just that. He a white man’s ghost but when they brought him over here, turns out he likes us better.” She laughed, real dry and spiteful. It was the first time I ever heard her laugh and I didn’t really like it. If she wasn’t so old and dried up, she might have sounded like the ghost.

I had almost gotten the first finger of blood off of me, so I stood up to go rinse out the towel. “Mama Tee, what—ok, look. What does that mean?”

“Raw Head, he likes revenge and punishment, just like that, one after th’other. The white folks, they used him on children back somewhere in England or Ireland. But he likes hard justice best, and when they brought him here—we had more of what he wanted.”

“I don’t want no revenge, no punishment, nothing. And you don’t know nobody but Poe. Why ol’ Big Head in your house, then?”

Mama Tee laughed again but it was a nicer laugh this time. “I ain’t always been old, boy. Poe, neither. There was a time when everybody round here had a taste of Ol’ Raw Head’s power. He kept us safe. Helped our grandparents keep our land, protect our lives, raise children. Lemme ask you something. When’s the last time you saw somebody white?”

I had to think. “Uh . . . at the airport? Maybe?”

“That’s right. Ain’t been white folks out here since before the Civil War. Ol’ Raw Head helped us with that, kept the white folks off us so we could do what we want. But the more we called him, the better our place got. And the better it gets, the harder he is to control, so things start going bad again. Not in the same way, but still bad. He gets bored. Hard to hold. You understand me?”

I was working on the thumb and my side was running red with bloody water. I gave up and decided I was just gonna take a long shower. Then I looked around and realized it was still dark and decided not to do a damn thing but listen until it got light outside. “No. I don’t understand. Ghosts ain’t real!”

“Boy, look at your chest. He real. And he hungry. Can’t nobody but me keep him under control all the way anymore, and I got to sit and sing half the day to do it! I’m too old. Weak. Should be somebody in the family. I thought about your mama, but she too busy trying to do everything right. And Ol’ Raw Head—he real wrong sometimes. Has to be that way.”

“What about Poe?”

“Poe tried. It didn’t set too well. He ain’t blood. Raw Head rode him hard, made him hurt some folks real bad. We ain’t supposed to get revenge on each other, you know. It looks bad. Feels bad, too. Now he stays out here, does my little bit of work. Keeps him from going back to jail. Besides, Poe older’n me, now.”

I was surprised to hear about Poe but I was still scared and the blood on my chest was starting to dry. “Mama Tee, what that got to do with me?”

She looked at me with the same surprised, ain’t-it-obvious face she had my first night in her house. “Why, child, you supposed to take charge of Ol’ Raw Head Bloody Bones!”

That icicle fell from the ceiling again, pinned me in my chair. “I’m supposed to do what?”

She sighed. “Son, I’m old. This town is old and all the young people gone away, don’t hardly come back no more. I believe that maybe—maybe Ol’ Raw Head is just as bored as you is, out here. There ain’t nothing for him anymore. Everybody out here now too old to want revenge on anybody, even each other. We just want to live in peace ‘til Jesus takes us on home.”

“Well, can you give him back to the white people?”

Mama Tee almost laughed again, then stopped and thought. “No, I don’t believe we can. They got too many new ghosts now. So do we, but we still got room for the old, even if they ain’t ours. No, we gotta keep Ol’ Raw Head. Keep him and put him to work. Besides—I think he likes you. He didn’t take not one bite out of you when he came tonight. Not like he did Poe.”

I wanted to think Mama Tee was crazy. I wanted to tell her ghosts weren’t real and I wanted to call my moms and tell her to change my plane ticket right now and bring my ass home. But just then, the lights started to flicker again and I jumped up out of my seat, dropped that towel, and scrambled across to Mama Tee, who put her arms around me and chuckled.

She looked at me and I started to understand that this cold old lady maybe liked me a little bit. Maybe not that much, but we were family, anyway. “Don’t take on, boy. It’s too close to daylight for Ol’ Raw Head to do much more than show hisself.”

I took a deep breath with Mama Tee’s skinny dry arms around me and I made a decision real quick. “So how do I control Ol’ Big Head?”

“It’s Ol’ Raw Head, boy,” she scolded, and then she got real quiet, thinking. “You been reading all those books I gave you?”

I nodded my head.

“All right. Time I gave you some new ones. Your great-great grandfather kept a diary, too. Time for you to read that. Learn what he knew.”

I stood up and Mama Tee looked at all the blood that had gone from my chest to her robe and clicked her tongue at me. “Son, go get in that shower. I’ll stand outside and sing while it’s still dark. But you ain’t about to mess up my good sheets.”

• • • •

Mama Tee died in her sleep a week before I was supposed to go back home, only one day before she promised to introduce me to the ghost and show me how she kept hold of him. Poe found her, sitting soft and lonely in her chair, when he came to bring breakfast one morning. I was in my room reading the diary Mama Tee gave me and heard him start wailing.

I thought it was Ol’ Big Head and came running out ready to do something but it was just Poe, kneeling over Mama Tee’s body, wailing and sniffling like a big baby. He was crying so hard that there were big wet spots on his baby blue t-shirt, like big dark eyes.

He said a whole lot with his eyes, but with his mouth he only said, “Son, you know ‘bout that other thing?”

I could feel my throat closing up a little bit but I still was able to say, “Yeah, Mr. Poe. I got this.” He looked at me for a long minute, like he was measuring me and accepting me all at the same time, and finally nodded his head. Then he started crying again and I started to let a few tears out too.

I went outside and walked and cried until I got bars and called Mom. She and Mike got a flight and came down that same night. They were sad about Mama Tee and worried about Poe and the time from when they got there up until the funeral was just really hard.

Especially the nights.

The first night Mom slept in Mama Tee’s room and Mike slept at Poe’s. I said good night and everything, but as soon as the house got quiet, I got up, slipped down the hallway and out the glass door.

I stood there for a moment, trying to remember everything Mama Tee had told me and everything I had read, and tried to sing a song. The same song Mama Tee did.

Nothing happened. I stopped for a second, then decided to try something that felt more natural to me. I spit a rhyme.

I did not magically become an amazing rapper that summer. This ain’t a movie, it’s a real story about a ghost. But I rap better than I sing, anyway.

Suddenly something in the back of my head got tight and I blinked and there he was, all big and smelly, kind of hiding in the tall green corn stalks and sunflowers. I could see him but not too clear. I kinda got the feeling he liked it that way.

What do you say to a ghost, though? “Ay. Ol’ Big Head.” He moved real fast in the corn for a moment, almost disappeared from sight. “AY! Mama Tee gone. I guess you know that. Um . . . I know you, uh, maybe you kinda bored down here. I can see why. Shit, I am. But I want . . . I want you to come with me. I think . . . I think you might get some of what you really want where I live.”

It was so quiet when I finished talking, and he was so still that I thought maybe I had messed up and was just talking to a scarecrow. Imagining things, you know? But when I was inside the house, getting back in my bed, I heard that low nasty, bubbly laugh again. I slept with an icicle all through my body.

When we flew back I had my great-great grandfather’s diary and a couple of Mama Tee’s old dusty books in my bag, and something . . . something extra traveling deep inside of me, curled up mean and smelly next to my own thoughts and feelings.

• • • •

It took a while for life to get back to normal. When I got back to my hood, school started right away and I didn’t know nothing. No internet for two months had me lost. I felt like a whole nerd even though Low and the rest of the squad were pretty nice about it. They even said sorry about Mama Tee.

But there was still that other thing, too.

The cops had been around way more, I heard. There were a few faces I was used to seeing around that just weren’t there no more. There were other faces that were just—different. Like Low. He always used to have jokes in his rhymes, and laugh at everything, even himself. Something in him was real angry and serious now. I tried to tell him about weird-ass Poe so I could hear him clown and he was just like, “Maybe it’s good you weren’t here.”

I didn’t really know what to think about that. Nothing was the same. Not even me.

I don’t really like being outside when it’s dark too much anymore. Those first few days, I was holding on to Big Head hard. I knew he wanted to go out and do stuff but I didn’t know what would happen if he did so I just held on to him and ignored my moms when she teased me for looking through everybody and always writing rhymes. But when my boys hit me with a message saying they were going to go play ball one night, I got up, put on my jacket and went out.

I took a shortcut through an alley to get to the court. I had done it before so often that it was like second nature, but if I had thought about it, I never would have gone that way. Too dark, too scary, too comfortable for that other thing.

Lots of other things, I guess. I was coming out of the alley when I heard a woman start talking and cussing, loud. I knew the voice. It was Valerie’s weird ass. She must have been walking home from her shift at the rec center. She was standing against a wall at the mouth of the alley. There was a police car parked on the street and an officer was standing close to her, with one hand pushing her up against a wall.

He leaned over and pushed his other hand into her other shoulder and said something I couldn’t hear. Valerie kept cussing, started crying. Now, I don’t really like Valerie, but she’s real small and I could see he was hurting her. Also, even if she is annoying, ain’t no law against that. I started rhyming up under my breath.

I tripped over a piece of garbage or something and they both looked my way real quick. Valerie said my name real sad and scared, and then said “No, no. Get away. Just run away.”

The cop looked me up and down real quick and agreed with her. “Mind your business, son. Just go wherever you were going and mind your business.”

I stood up real straight, stopped my verse. “I ain’t your son.”

“Excuse me?” the cop said, and he let Valerie go. She slid to the ground and started crying harder, begging me to go. “Are you looking for trouble tonight, boy?”

I took a deep breath, made a choice, and said, “I ain’t looking for trouble. He a friend of mine. Ay! Ol’ Big Head! Come out and meet somebody!”

Cop looked past me, started to scream. I walked past him, helped Valerie up and kinda pulled her, dragged her away from the wet nasty sounds behind us. When we got around the corner and back to the light in the rec center parking lot, I started up rhyming again.