People like to think they understand ghosts. They tell their spooky stories, scaring each other with tales of Bloody Mary, of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, of La Llorona and The Lady in Black and the Ghost of Christmas Past. 

But no one talks about the ghosts of normal people. 

#

Chain links rattled like sun-bleached bone as Milo Blumstein vaulted the fence. He touched down on the other side with barely a sound, tucking and rolling with practiced ease. He popped upright, straightened the threadbare flannel across his skinny shoulders, and threw a grin over his shoulder. 

Harper Dubois looked up, halfway through picking the fence’s padlock, and sighed. The man was simply incapable of waiting for something a second longer than he wanted to. 

“You know you still have to wait for me to get in there myself.” 

Milo chuckled, hands in his pockets, sauntering about the entry plaza. “Sure, sure. But I can get the lay of the land in the meantime.” 

The Hudson County Leisure Park and Amusement Pier unfolded into the distance past Milo, sprawling in a ramshackle mockery of invitation. Harper snorted. ‘The lay of the land,’ he says. Like people couldn’t just look through the fence and see the graveyard of rotting steel behemoths and long-plundered food carts. 

Like folk didn’t already know what went down all those years ago. 

“Oh, check it out!” called Milo. Harper redoubled her picking. The last pin clicked into set just as something further in came crashing down. Harper winced. She unwrapped the chain that bound the gate and stepped carefully onto cracked and grimy tiles that still remembered rambunctious cavalcades of delighted children long past. Her non-slip shoes squeaked and squelched underfoot. Her face scrunched up in displeasure. 

A shiver tingled down her spine. 

Milo Blumstein’s red hi-tops stood out almost overwhelmingly in contrast to the bleak, unsaturated park, jutting out from beneath a fallen midway game. Around him loitered long-abandoned milk bottle pyramids, sagging where their glue had begun to fray with age. 

Harper blew a curl out of her eyes. She kicked his foot. “You dead for real this time?” 

Milo clambered from the wreckage like a godforsaken jack-in-the-box. He had a dopey smile on his face and a stuffed cat in his hand. 

“Hey!” he said, ignoring her question completely. “Did you know they still have prizes in some of these booths?” His wavy black hair flared out wildly as he straightened, a look she would have attributed to the chaos of having scaffolding collapse on him if it hadn’t looked wilder beforehand. Harper snatched the cat away. 

“She’s supposed to manifest around the rides, not the games,” she said, fixing him with the sternest look she could. “I don’t want to spend my whole Sunday working pro bono.” Her partner smiled unabated. 

“No, no, I know,” he said, itching the back of his neck. “I just know you like cats.” 

Milo sobered suddenly, eyes unfocusing as he stared at the stuffy. His voice went distant. “A person can’t be around forever, but the things they leave behind can. We keep objects as reminders of folks who aren’t around right now. I hope you keep this and remember me.” 

And without another word, he turned and started jogging down the pier. 

Harper looked down at the stuffed cat, weather-beaten but miraculously dry after a decade of New Jersey open air. One eye had long been lost, probably snatched by a bird who liked the way it glittered; it stared back with a permanent wink. 

Harper sighed. The man couldn’t remember the year, his social security number, even his own name some days—but somehow her love of cats had gotten lodged in that mop-topped head of his. She stuffed the plush into her backpack and made to follow.

#

At the very end of the Hudson County Leisure Park and Amusement Pier, half sunk in the Hackensack, the Atomic Rocket listed in the morning mist. 

Once, it had been the prize of northern Jersey; radioactive-green cars snaking a figure eight, a steep drop, and a loop-the-loop only slightly slower than the turnpike. Now, it lay like the bones of a great and terrible beast—asleep, but not quite dead. 

Milo stopped a half-dozen yards from its feet, head tilted and hands like dowsing rods. 

“It’s here,” he breathed, eyes gleaming. “Do you feel it?” 

Harper slowed. There was no denying it: that tell-tale prickling at the back of one’s eyes, the subtle heat and weight that pressed on a medium’s skin from every direction. Ripples in the astral pond. That unmistakable presence that could only be an unquiet spirit stirring nearby. Wordlessly, she doffed her backpack, producing from it every piece of equipment necessary to summon a ghost. 

The pier was half-rotted from age and moisture. That made chalk a shaky prospect. Instead, they drew their sigils and circles with silvery paint pens that left gleaming rings in the grime. Milo shook out the salt circle, leaving an inch of space at one end—a window left open. Harper prepared the incense, the lavender and sandalwood to ring like last call as they burned. They built their snare like master trappers. Like they’d been doing it forever. Watching Milo’s clever hands work lightning-quick and quiet as night, Harper wondered—not for the first time—if he really had been. 

Soon, the preparations were done. Harper knelt beside the circle, a heavy iron coin clutched in one hand. Milo knelt within, eyes closed, Zippo ready. He took one last breath and lit the incense. Almost immediately the pressure increased behind Harper’s eyes. Across the park, rides flared to life. Tinny intercom systems spun up half-decayed old tape reels. The Amusement Pier erupted, echoing out onto the river and each time coming back a little stranger. The coin in Harper’s fist flared up oven-hot. 

The pier groaned and shook as the Atomic Rocket roared to life, firing like a bullet down the track. The scaffolding creaked like an old house in a summer storm. 

Milo’s eyes shot open. “Now!”

 Harper whipped out her free hand, dashing the circle of salt closed just as the silver-paint glyphs erupted in chthonic flame. Milo jerked backward, rocking on his heels and sucking in gasping breaths. Harper watched in silent reverie as her partner tangled with a force whose shape she could barely see. Milo’s lips began to move. Harper could hardly make out his words beneath the pier’s uproarious din. 

Then, all at once, the roaring stopped. 

Silence rolled in like fog. 

In the newfound stillness, Harper heard not one voice, but two. Milo whispered soothing consolations, cradling the flickering specter of a teenager in his arms as she sobbed into his shirt. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured, patting her semi-corporeal back. “We’re here now. What’s your name?” The ghost girl sniffled, ectoplasm dripping from her nose. 

“Charlie Ray,” she said. Her voice wavered like an out-of-tune radio. Milo met Harper’s gaze over Charlie’s shoulder. She nodded. 

Charlotte “Charlie” Ray had once been called the “Coaster Queen of Coney Island.” She’d been a regional darling in the mid-’90s, voraciously riding every roller-coaster in the tri-state area for a public access cable show. She’d hit her peak in ‘96 when, having exhausted the big names, she’d dived into niche and began exploring more and more obscure attractions. Amusement Pier was one such park, though Charlie’s visit had been cut tragically short by an unrelated chemical spill that killed half a dozen and shut down the park for good. 

It was a tragedy, but Harper couldn’t help feeling a little twinge of pride that her research had paid off in identifying the spirit ahead of time. 

“I’m so stupid,” sobbed the ghost of Charlie Ray. She twisted Milo’s shirt up in anguished fistfuls. “Ghosts are supposed to be held back by important things. Family! Tragedy! Betrayal! Things that mean something!” She hiccuped despairingly. “And here I am, stuck in this stupid park because I didn’t get to ride a fucking roller coaster.” 

“Hey, now,” Milo soothed. “Unfinished business is your business and nobody else’s. This is something that you loved, kiddo. There’s nothing stupid about love. And there sure as hell isn’t anything stupid about you.” 

Harper was, as always, spellbound. It didn’t matter how many times she saw Milo comfort a bereaved spirit; he always seemed to know just what was needed. Milo couldn’t be more than twenty-two—just a bit older than her—but when he spoke to Charlie, it was like watching a beloved uncle calm a distraught niece. He changed, somehow, became what the ghost needed when they needed it. 

In the bottom of her heart, Harper knew that this was why she put up with every bit of impulsive silliness that Milo Blumstein threw her way: this deep well of empathy, by far the greatest weapon a medium could levy against the forces of tragedy and despair. When all was said and done, all ghosts truly wanted was to be seen, to be understood, to be accepted; to have their grief acknowledged and remembered. 

You couldn’t do that for them if you didn’t care. 

“You know what?” said Milo, wiping the tears from Charlie Ray’s insubstantial cheeks. 

“What?” asked the ghost, looking realer by the moment. 

Milo grinned, jerking a thumb towards the Atomic Rocket. “I think that old girl still has one ride left in her. You think you could show me how a real coaster fan does it?” 

Charlie Ray’s face lit up in a wide, beaming smile. She nodded wordlessly, blinking away the glistening in her eyes, and Milo Blumstein smiled in turn. He held out a hand. She looked at it with trepidation, but Milo didn’t rush; just watched her with those deep blue eyes. After just a moment longer, she took it. 

And Charlie Ray, the Coaster Queen of Coney Island, joined with Milo Blumstein and found peace. 

#

An exorcism is like a deal; you promise to do something for the spirit, and in exchange, they move on. It was a contract that needed to be honored. 

Milo Blumstein was a man whose word was his bond. 

Honestly, Harper was shocked that the Atomic Rocket’s control panel even had power. Perhaps it was a residual effect of Charlie’s haunting, but Milo would later tell her that it was the smoothest roller coaster he’d ever ridden. By the time his car trundled back into the station and Harper managed to release the control panel from her white-knuckle grip, the tingle that had suffused the Hudson County Leisure Park and Amusement Pier was well and truly gone. 

Milo shivered as Charlie Ray’s spirit left him. He crawled out of the coaster car and up next to Harper with a grin. 

“You know,” he said, “that was one of the nicer exorcisms we’ve had recently.” 

“Speak for yourself,” said Harper. “You couldn’t see the way the scaffolding rattled.” Milo chuckled. The two of them strolled down the platform stairs. At the bottom, there stood a decrepit photo kiosk. Old, worn letters urged parkgoers to BRING THE MEMORIES HOME! 

“Hey, I wonder if the ride-cam still works,” said Milo, jogging over to it. 

Harper followed, eyes rolling.  “Of course, it doesn’t, Milo. Even if it was still powered, somebody must have stolen the camera by—”

Before Harper could finish, the kiosk clicked and whirred. A bell dinged. A Polaroid-sized square of film dropped into a waist-height receptacle. Milo quirked an eyebrow. Harper crossed her arms and scoffed–but her expression softened when Milo smiled and handed her the photo. Milo and Charlie, side-by-side, riding the Atomic Rocket and having the time of their lives. In the photo, the coaster was intact, and the park shone like brand-new. It was—for this one girl, in this one moment—perfect. 

Milo watched her face with a grin. He put a hand on her shoulder. 

“This is why we do this, isn’t it, Harp?” he asked. Harper felt a different kind of prickle come to her eyes. A lump grew in her throat. She nodded. 

“That’s right, Milo. This is why we do it.”

“The Coaster Queen Rides Again” was first published in Off Limits Press’s Make Your Presence Known anthology. As the anthology is no longer for sale and the exclusivity period has elapsed, it has been shared here in full.