Dead & Buried (& Thirsty) Under the Flames of Asheville

Jo isn’t a psychic. She’s a medium. An intermediary. A radio receiver receiving mostly incoherent static. On occasion, though, her radar will detect a blip rising out of the bardo (the in-between). Her ear to the ether, she’ll pick-up a heavenward song-note, a graveward whisper, a looming ethereal presence or just random elseshit from neverwhere. When Jo does make a connection with the beyond, her cheeks will flush and her pupils dilate. When she disconnects, returning to the here-now, her passions remain heightened. I’ve seen it before. In San Antonio. Miami. Charleston (hell yeah, in Charleston). And earlier tonight. Earlier tonight Jo was communicating with… with what?, gods, devils, ancestral spirits, aliens, lonely truckers over a CB channel? Afterwards, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Jo mashes her lips on my face. It is a strange embrace; impassioned, as if her chest does heaves not for me.

What was that for?, I ask with romantic skepticism. 

Bad gloss, Chito, Jo says to me as explanation. She tells me she’s tasted poultry ever since we left Chicken Alley. She had to clean her lips somehow; the bristle of my mustachioed face being the specific how. And now I can taste it. Even though there are no longer chickens in Chicken Alley, I can taste poultry on the oily balm Jo’s left on my mouth. Vile salmonella from a ghost coop. I spit globs of gloss onto the gravel driveway. My lips can feel flecks of fowl feather. Fuck. I require a palette cleanse. Fortunately, we’re arriving at the bar.

Blue Ridge haze lingers in the streets like the damp breath of a doomsayer drunk on tabloid revelations. The foul atmosphere absorbs the light of the harvest moon and enshrouds Asheville in a spectral glow. Burial Beer Co resides comfortably in the lunar-lit mist. Built as a post-apocalyptic shack, camouflaged in the surrounding hillscape of industrial dumpsters, this brewery stands as a beacon of mortality, memento mori, reminding the traveler of the inevitability of the end. Death of the flesh. Demise of civilization. Descent into madness (or, in the least, intoxication). Burial Beer Co is known for its choice beverages and is perhaps where the veil between this world and the next is thinnest. Perfect for a nightcap. 

Josefina Jesús-María enters the bar like a blue-jeaned satellite spinning out of its orbit. She’s quizzical, her narrowed eyes reflecting her suspicions. She licks the tip of an index finger and holds it aloft, as if judging which way the wind is blowing. She then presses the index finger hard against my left nostril. Smell my finger!, Jo insists, does it smell like dead hookers to you?

I pull my head away from her finger, saying, don’t stick that in my nose! 

Said the nun to the bishop, Jo says as a counter my complaint. 

Well?, she asks. Does it smell like dead hookers? How would I know?, I ask her back. Jo says, I dunno, don’t they teach you dead hooker economics at white boy college? Ay guey, never mind, the answer is “no”, no it does not smell like dead hookers in here, Jo says. Isn’t it the bathroom that’s haunted?, I ask. Yeah, guess so…, she says. Jo continues, I’ll check the toilets for the rumored spilt whore’s-blood. You look like shit, though, Chito maldito. You should stay here and hydrate.

I obey. From the list of house beers, I order a porter the bearded savages native to these hills call Lightgrinder. The beer is malty, rich, smooth. Cold. Soothing against my dry throat. And like the woman I arrived with, this beer whets my lust for ruin. It’s a corruptive elixir and I will give long pause when contemplating a second pint. Which shouldn’t be long now…

Reckon y’all are ghost tourists?, asks a friendly stranger sitting near bar. 

Oh, we’re beyond amateur status, I say to the stranger. I’m a student of the absurd and Jo has a doctorate in the weird. And we’ve both been known to dabble in the dark arts. 

Sorry I asked, says the stranger. 

Leon, though, is not a stranger here. These are his blue-ridged mountains; those are his mismatched denims; this is his local watering hole. Leon is no stranger; certainly he is no stranger than me. He is nursing a sweaty glass of Shadowclock Pilsner. Did I hear y’all right?, Leon asks, you and red-headed Cleopatra are looking for murdered prostitutes? We are. Yep, Leon says with a nod, whelp, y’all’re in the wrong place. There’s another Burial Beer Co cross-town at the Forestry Compound. That’s where there used to be a brothel servicing the groundskeepers who worked out at the Biltmore. Y’all ain’t going to find any ghostly harlots in here.

Glancing over shoulders, I ensure Jo is out of hearing range before asking Leon to keep his fun facts to himself. I explain to Leon, when it comes to dark arts, one must know one’s limits. When wading out into the void, I don’t raise my pant leg above my knees cos I know to go any further. Josefina, however, has the self-discipline of molten lava. She has no limits. She is a radiant torch, scorching to the touch, who will eagerly throw herself into the dark well of oblivion for nothing more than shits & giggles. And if we’re not careful, she will take the whole fucking lot of us with her. Let’s not tell her we’re in the wrong place and maybe she’ll settle for late-night tacos as a plan B. I’ve had enough frights for one night. 

Sounds though y’all already blessed by the welcoming committee, Leon says with a wizened grin. 

Indeed. Earlier tonight, we were at the Flatiron Building downtown when a fellow tourist captured a photograph of what resembles someone leaping off the building. I think it is more likely a bug caught fluttering in the near-distance, but if you look at the image, you could think it is the blurry motion of a faraway flailing body. Good news is we found no busted melon on the sidewalk. So either it’s a ghost, a bug, an optical delusion or Mothman.

Fire department gets calls all the time, Leon says, from people who say they witnessed someone jump off the ledge of the Flatiron but never land in the street. Don’t reckon witnesses are hallucinating insomuch they’re seeing something happening out of time. You reaping what I’m sowing?, Leon asks. Way back, when the railroads came to town, the robber barons built a miniature Manhattan out of Asheville. Downtown became the southern Wall Street for wintering financiers. During the Crash a hundred years ago, there were plenty of bankrupt moneymen who stepped off the ledge of the Flatiron. Maybe that’s history that don’t want to be forgotten. Maybe you saw a reminder play out tonight. 

Stain on history is one thing, I say to Leon, but Jo claims something spoke to her. While standing out in front of the Flatiron, she says I whispered “babe” into her ear. When she turned to look, not only was I not there, no one was there. I was down the street tying with my shoelaces. If it wasn’t me, what was it that mimicked my voice in order to deceive her…?

Whelp, Leon says, it ain’t the work of angels, that’s for sure. At least not the kind of angels you want the attention of. Your lady mustn’t spook easy if she’s still looking for ghosts after all that.

She’s fearless, I say. Raised by wolves in Chicago. We once went to see a horror movie that disappointed Jo so much, she insisted we sneak into a cemetery after midnight and stay until we got the creeps. Leon says, I take you obliged. I nod to Leon, yeah, wouldn’t you?

What’s next gents?, asks Penny, the woman behind bar. I’m quick to order before Jo can return to object, opting for Burial’s dark lager, Pitiless Indifference. 

Have you been to Chicken Alley?, Leon asks. Yes!, I say. Very spooky. Nice touch with the candle vigils and the stacked stone cairns. What’s the story there? Leon shrugs as he says, ask your local knitting circle and they’ll tell you that sometime around turn-of-the-century, a doctor walked into a tavern off of Chicken Alley and was stabbed in the heart during a barroom brawl. They say the good doctor still walks the alley with his cane and wide-brim hat, still looking for his snifter of whiskey. 

I wonder what alley I will haunt when I am dead & buried & thirsty.  

Josefina’s return is soundtracked by the strike of heel points on the concrete floor and the low guttural growl emanating her dissatisfaction. No luck?, I ask. No!, Jo says. Not a single dead hooker! Not a drop of splattered whore’s-blood! The only thing in the bathroom which gave me the creeps was the sound of a fat lady unrolling enough toilet paper to mummify a moose. This place sucks. What are we drinking?

Damn it if Penny, who is wiping down the counter, doesn’t overhear Josefina. The bartender asks, are you looking for the brothel ghosts, honey? Jo studies Penny. Jo has Persian eyes passed down from a traveling Turk who spent a night in her grandmother’s Salvadoran town of Santa Ana a thousand moons ago. Those Persian eyes glimmer with green when her imagination is sparked. Yes!, Jo insists, expecting an impromptu invitation to tour the basement like we received at a haunted Moon River Brewery in Savannah. But that is not in the cards. Instead, Penny tells Jo, you’re in the wrong place, sweetie. You want to be at the Forestry Compound. Same beer, different bar.

The fuck?, Jo asks. I demand to speak to the captain! She turns towards me. Dios mio, Chito Victorito!, she says, this is not our Burial. Did you know we were at the wrong funeral? I’ve been wasting all this time searching bathroom stalls for dead prostitutes. Are there no ghosts here?, Jo asks Penny. Not even an orphaned waif or a hung-himself clown? Chito!, she says to me, we need to go to the other Burial. Babe, I say with a head-shake, they’ve announced last call at this hour.

Josefina pauses, her hands resting at the edge of the bar, her eyes darting as mental calculus is performed. She announces, let’s go to the Highland Hospital! What?, I ask and quickly reject, no!, why?

Y’all don’t want to go up there, Leon says, trying to be helpful. There really ain’t much to see. Josefina turns her wrath on him, saying, go suck a banana, Frank! Leon is quite surprised by the hostility. I’m Leon…, he says halfheartedly. Sorry, I apologize to him. The Merchant of Venice will not be happy until she gets her pound of ectoplasm. 

Chito, she says, the hospital!

It’s private property, I say. There’s nothing to see, nothing to do. Jo says, we can séance, commune with the dead loonies who died in the asylum. We could summon the spirit of Zelda Fitzgerald. Jesus!, I said as a half-curse/half-prayer for help from above. Can we stop summoning shit we really don’t want? You can’t return spirits like you’re buying shit on Amazon, I say to Jo. She asks, when is the last time you’ve let me summon anything? Little Switzerland, I say. Jo is perplexed, who did we summon in Little Switzerland?

A couple hours drive west from Asheville, off the Blue Ridge Parkway, is the sleepy hamlet of Little Switzerland. We rented a tucked-away cottage on a bubbling brook under a canopy of fall leaves. At night, we listened to records and played cards. To make things more interesting, we played a third “devil’s hand”, which strangely always beat whatever cards Jo or I held. At the end of the evening, after turning off the lights and our music, we heard singing from outside. What is that? Are neighbors singing in the middle of the night? We’d open the door and walk out into the cool autumn air to find nothing but the sound of wind and trickling mountain water. We’d close the door and the signing would begin anew. It wasn’t coming from within the house. The record player was silent. No, the singing was from outside, in the woods. And the tune was familiar. Eerily familiar. Are they singing Kumbaya?, Jo asked. Oh shit!, I said with a shiver realizing she was right. We opened the door again and the night went quiet. Inside the house and out, there were no signs of singers, no signs of neighbors or campers. Who are you?, Jo yelled at the wind-shook trees. What kind of psychopaths sing Kumbaya in the middle of the woods in the dark?, I asked. You think maybe it’s the devil trying to lure us into the forest?, Jo wondered. Maybe. Shit. Damn it, how they fuck am I going to sleep now?

I didn’t sleep. I sat-up listening to the faint murmuring of Kumbaya. Josefina, however, slept soundly. 

We won’t be summoning the devil this time!, only Zelda, she insists. Josefina is referring to the literary muse and original flapper girl who died in a mysterious hospital fire in Asheville. But why?, I ask Jo. Porque Zelda? Maybe she can help with your writing, Jo suggests. No!, I say, that’s not how Zelda works. Zelda was mean. At Highland Hospital, she attacked other patients with her tennis racket. And F. Scott admitted Zelda drove him to drink. And F. Scott proceeded to drink himself into a massive heart in his mid-forties. Do you want that for me? Not to mention Hemingway said Zelda was a force of destruction. Jo shakes her head and says, Zelda said Hemingway was nothing but a hairy-chested fairy. Exactly!, I say to Jo, she was mean & being burned alive probably didn’t make her any less so. I say to Jo, all they found of Zelda in the ashes of the hospital fire, they say, were her teeth and a single slipper. Come on, Chito, Jo says. Let’s go to the hospital. If Zelda says anything mean to you, I will cut a bitch.

The most famous ghost in town, Leon says to us, is the Pink Lady at Grove Park Inn. Legend has it the Pink Lady was a beautiful woman in a pink night gown and she fell to her death from the fifth floor after a lover’s spat. Scott Fitzgerald is the most famous guest of Grove Park. Maybe the Pink Lady was his mistress? Maybe Zelda tossed her off the balcony? Of course, Leon says, the Inn is closed to non guests at this hour.

Jesus, Frank!, Josefina says to Leon. You’re not being helpful.

Whelp…, Leon says considering one last option. I do happen to be a Knight of the Dawn with the local freemasons. Would you like a midnight tour of the Masonic Temple?

Are you fucking kidding me, Frank?, Jo asks, emerald eyes glistening. You wait until now to mention this? What are you muchachos hiding in your boy’s club? You got some Ark of the Covenant shit in your crypts?

Something like that, Leon says with a smile. You might be one of the very first women to enter into the inner sanctum of Asheville’s Masonic Lodge. 

Josefina is entranced. Leon has won the night. But I will win the morning when I suggest late-night tacos for the walk home to the hotel. And I’ll bring a bottle of Burial to deposit, opened, in the street of Chicken Alley: a nightcap for the thirsty doctor.