Page 26 of Old Flames

It was Daphne. They’d fallen far behind without realizing it. Leo reached for her wrist and together they rushed to join the others at the ticket kiosk on Front Street. Daphne completed the head count and handed out ID bracelets. Two by two, they boarded a waiting trolley, painted black with an assortment of decorative skulls and tombs.

Jules sat by a window. Leo asked if he could join her on the bench. “Or would you rather sit with your friends?”

“Sit,” she said. “My friends have made new friends.”

Ayesha had joined Daphne at the front of the trolley, Sebastien and Dick had spread out comfortably in the back seats, and Vicky and Matty were now inseparable. Leo thanked his luck and sat next to her. When the pretty tour guide boarded the trolley, dressed like Elvira, as regal as a queen, he muttered, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

Jules had a crinkle between her brows. “This feels like a Disney ride.”

Leo reached for the pack of nicotine gum in his pocket and popped a piece in his mouth. “Let’s hope it’s informative. All I want is one solid story idea. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Is it?” she asked. “I’m here to have fun.”

He shifted on the narrow bench to face her. “You know how to do that?”

“Have fun?” she asked. “Apparently not.”

“I’m not good for much, but I can show you a good time, if you want.”

“How selfless of you.”

Elvira tested the mic and welcomed them to the tour. Her opening was interrupted by a group of college kids who rudely hollered at the parked trolley. “Y’all goin’ to hell!”

Vicky took the insult personally. She stuck her head out the window and shouted, “I’ll meet you there, asshole!”

“Easy,” Elvira said. “It’s customary for the locals to interact with us, though not like that. It’s spring break. Those kids are drunk. Here’s what to expect. As we make our way around the neighborhoods, someone might cry out, You’re damned! It’s all in good fun.”

In Key West of the 1880s, Aurora’s heyday, if you didn’t die a violent death—gunshot, shipwreck, or fire—you died of yellow fever or tuberculosis. Either way, the dead did not lie still. They roamed the city. According to Elvira, they could be heard laughing or crying. They knocked on doors. Some were benign, they just wanted to be heard. Others were manipulative or vengeful. Others had a mission of some kind. To keep these wayward spirits at bay, locals painted their homes and businesses aquamarine or haint blue, in the Gullah Geechee tradition. They believed lost spirits could not cross the sea or sky, and the resulting trompe l’oeil steered them away.

But first, the fun stuff: spirits of vengeful pirates searching for stolen treasure, a freakish doll locked in an attic, the ghost of Hemingway spotted at his favorite bar, a polygamist’s wronged widow reclaiming her property, and an icehouse that served as the city’s first morgue. “Not the most sanitary setup,” Elvira said.

They stopped at a museum dedicated to the city’s history of shipwrecks and salvaged treasures. Dick tempted fate and picked up a bar of silver that was cursed, believed to have caused many a shipwreck. They toured a dark, damp cellar that was once a multipurpose storage space for food and the occasional dead body. There were rows of pews and a wooden casket was pushed against a wall. The flame of a single candle danced at the foot of a statue of the Virgin. Elvira invited them to take a seat. Just when they got settled, the candle flickered and died, plunging them into darkness.

“Is that a party trick or what?” Vicky asked.

“No,” Elvira replied. “Whatever spirit still lingers here might want us gone.”

Vicky was intrigued, but Ayesha looked terrified. There was nothing to be frightened of. A draft. A weak flame. One thing was sure: In Leo’s next book a candle would die out at the right time.

“In that case,” Ayesha said nervously, “let’s get going.”

Elvira directed them toward the stairs. “After you.”

The tour resumed, taking a dark turn with heartbreaking tales of children lost to disease or tragic accidents, their voices and laughter haunting their homes, former playgrounds, and even a churchyard. More sinister still, the children lost to the slave trade, rescued at sea by the US Navy, only to succumb to disease. They were buried by the sea at Higgs Beach. A heavy silence spread throughout the trolley, punctuated by Ayesha’s low sobs. Jules did not cry. She stared out the window at the vacant memorial ground, eyes wide, face tight. He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest. He wanted to pull her close, stroke her hair, ease her fear, but didn’t dare.

Instead, he inched closer. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said.

He took her hand.

The trolley pulled away from the beach. A flock of children, alive and well, flew by on bikes, shouting, “You’re damned!” It was enough to break the spell. It drew them back to the present day where kids were free, the spread of yellow fever was controlled, and a course of antibiotics could save a life. Jules relaxed beside him, yet she kept her hand in his.

They passed the old courthouse where a man had kept the corpse of his beloved in bed, dressed in a wedding gown. He was later found to be of sound mind and set free to blast open her mausoleum, snatch the poor woman from her resting place, and take off, never to be seen again.

If these stories had one thread in common, it was grief. They were spun by people struggling with nonsensical loss, using the oldest tool in history to try and make sense of it. A thing Leo understood all too well.

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