Abigail Myers

I recommended she invest her small inheritance in the shop with the apartment over it. You can’t get evicted if you own the building, that’s the catbird seat right there, I told her, not knowing I was evicting myself. I encouraged her to quit her job in publishing. Everything comes to its conclusion, I told her, forgetting that I was part of everything.

We unpacked the boxes of books on charms and herbs, the stacks of tarot cards. We steamed the creamy linens for the display tables, arranged the crystals in small smooth cherrywood bowls. I toasted her with Veuve Clicquot at the end of opening day. And eventually I remembered the spell she cast after she closed on the property: I bind outside these doors the spirits that would draw me into the past. 

*

I was on my way home, to the apartment above her shop. It was quick—I felt almost nothing, at least at first. As it seemed I had no other pressing business in the afterlife—no bright lights, but also no flames or pitchforks—I thought I’d simply make my way home, that as a dealer in the spirit world she’d know what to do.

Once my decorporealised form was oriented towards moving—I don’t think I could have just jumped back on my motorcycle, even if it wasn’t smashed—I saw her surrounded by her mom, her friends, making tea and passing tissues and murmuring platitudes I was sure she hated. I needed to tell her I was still here, somehow. But I couldn’t get in to knock some pictures off the wall, spill some wine or swap some shoes around. 

I watched through the front window of the shop a few days later as she placed a picture of me on the counter, set a little vase of rosemary before it and lit a candle— she’s illuminating me, my memory, why can’t I get in there— but I still couldn’t get in, and days later, when I remembered the spell, I hovered over the doorstep for hours, causing nothing but shivers in a few customers and feeling sorry for myself.

*

I decided I’d somehow gather some rosemary (an herb for remembering, I remembered from an idle flip through one of her books) that hadn’t yet succumbed to October’s frost, leave a bouquet on the doorstep. I knew she hadn’t forgotten me. I only had to show her that I hadn’t forgotten her, either. 

And then I heard her on the phone one evening while I wafted outside the bedroom window: Thanks, it’s been hard. I don’t—actually, yeah, that would be nice. Maybe in an hour or so? Text me when you get here, I’ll buzz you upstairs. 

I watched her comb her hair, swipe on some lipstick. I watched her go downstairs and do one last sweep of the shop, turn the OPEN sign to CLOSED, lock up, and blow out the candle in front of my picture. And I accepted that some spells can’t, or shouldn’t, be broken.

Abigail’s prompts were: An Esoteric Bookshop, a Ghost, and an Animal Idiom

She said of the challenge: “I’ve been working with the idea of a character who’s on the outside of something/somewhere (literally), looking in but unable to *get* in, and thought this would be an interesting problem for a ghost to have, since we often imagine them being able to float through walls and such. From there it was easy to think of an “esoteric bookshop” as one dealing with magical items, and I came across the phrase “you can’t get evicted if you own the building” in a discussion of small business in New York City. And then it all came together!

Abigail Myers writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on Long Island, New York. Recent work appears with JMWW, HAD, Discretionary Love, Tangled Locks, Farewell Transmission, Stanchion, Major 7th, and The Dodge, among other publications, and is forthcoming from Amethyst Review and Atlas and Alice. Find her at abigailmyers.com and on Twitter/Bluesky @abigailmyers.