"Like the best looking girls didn't get the best men," I say.
"If you think the girls you see as pretty are any happier than you are, you don't know much about anything."
"Yeah, well—"
Ellie doesn't give me a chance to speak; she just barrels along over the top of what I was about to say.
"What you don't understand," she tells me, "is that all these problems you've got— none of them are your own fault."
"Oh, right. The old cop-out: Society's to blame."
"It is, girl."
"Brenda. My name's Brenda."
I hate the way she keeps calling me "girl."
"Society makes you get all these expectations for yourself and then, when you can't meet up to them, it screws up your life. You spend money you don't have because you're trying to comfort yourself. You smoke because you imagine it relieves your stress. You lose weight, not because you need to, but because you think if you can look like some woman in a magazine your life's suddenly going to be perfect. But it's not going to work that way.
"First you have to accept yourself— just as you are. Until that happens, nothing's going to get better for you."
At least she's not going on about my father, the way the therapists always do, but it still all sounds so pat. And how much did she make of her life? Working her ass off trying to keep her business afloat, having to declare bankruptcy, probably dying broke in some alleyway, one more burned-out baglady.
"What would you know about why I'm doing anything?" I say.
"Because I've been there—" she hesitates for a moment "— Brenda. I spent too much of my own life trying to be somebody that everybody else thought I should be, instead of who I am. If there's anything I regret, if there's anything that really gets me riled up still, it's all those years I wasted."
Is this my future I see sitting in front of me? I wonder. Because I know all about that feeling of having wasted my life. But then I shake my head. There's a difference. I'm doing something about my problems.
Still, I think maybe I know what's keeping Ellie here now. Not vengeance, not any need. Just regret.
"You really are dead, aren't you?" I say.
"Land sakes, girl. Whatever gave you that idea?"
I'm not going to let her put me off this time.
"I know you're a ghost," I tell her. "No different from the voices in the well."
"You've heard voices in the well?" she asks.
"First the voices," I say, "and then the ghosts. I dream about them. I started wondering what they looked like— the people those voices once belonged to, and now I can't get them out of my head. They've been getting stronger and stronger until now— well, here you are."
It makes sense, I think as I'm talking. The closer I am to the well, the stronger an influence the ghosts would have on me— so strong now that I'm seeing them when I'm awake. I look over at Ellie, but she's staring off into nowhere, as though she never even heard what I was saying.
"I never considered ghosts," she says suddenly. "I used to dream about spacemen coming to take me away."
This is so weird, it surprises a "You're kidding" out of me.
Ellie shakes her head. "No. I'd be vacuuming a room, or cleaning the bathroom, and suddenly I'd just get this urge to lay down. I'd stare up at the ceiling and then 'I'd dream about these silver saucers floating down from the hills, flying really low, almost touching the tops of the trees. They'd land out on the lawn by the wishing well here and these shapes would step out. I never quite knew what exactly they looked like; I just knew I'd be safe with them. I'd never have to worry about making ends meet again."
I wait a few moments, but she doesn't go on.
"Are there ghosts in the well?" I ask.
She looks at me and smiles. "Are there spacemen in the hills?"
I refuse to let her throw me off track again.
"Are you a ghost?" I ask.
Now she laughs. "Are we back to that again?"
"If you're not a ghost, then what are you doing here?"
"I live here," she says. "Just because the bank took it away from me, it didn't mean I had to go. I've got a place fixed up above the office— nothing fancy, but then I'm not a fancy person. I sleep during the day and do my walking around at night when it's quiet— except for when the kids come by for one of their hoolies. I get my water from the stream and I walk along the railway tracks out back in the woods, following them down to the general store when I run short of supplies."
I hadn't gone further into the office than the foyer, with its sagging floorboards and the front desk all falling in on itself. That part of the motel looks so decrepit I thought the building might fall in on me if I went inside. So I suppose it's possible...
"What do you do in the winter?" I ask.
"Same as I always did— I go south."
She's so matter-of-fact about it all that I start to feel crazy, even though I know she's the one who's not all there. If she's not a ghost, then she's got to be crazy to be living here the way she does.
"And you ye been doing this for twenty years?" I ask.
"Has it been that long?"
"What do you live on?"
"That's not a very polite question," she says.
I suppose it isn't. She must feel as though I'm interrogating her.
I'm sorry, I say. "I'm just... curious."
She nods. "Well, I make do."
I guess it's true. She seems pretty robust for someone her age. I decide to forget about her being a ghost for the moment and get back to the other thing that's been bothering me.
"I know there's something strange about this well," I say. "You told me last night that it's cursed..."
"It is."
"How?"
"It grants you your wish— can you think of anything more harmful?"
I shake my head. "I don't get it. That sounds perfect."
"Does it? How sure can you be that what you want is really the right thing for you? How do you know you haven't got your ideas all ass-backwards and the one thing you think you can't live without turns out to be the one thing that you can't live with?"
"But if it's a good wish..."
"Nothing's worth a damn thing unless you earn it."
"What if you wished for world peace?" I ask. "For an end to poverty? For no one ever to go hungry again? For the environment to be safe once more?"
"It only grants personal wishes," she says.
"Anybody's?"
"No. Only those of people who want— who need— a wish badly enough."
"I still don't see how that's a bad thing."
Ellie stands up. "You will if you make a wish."
She walks by me then and pushes her way through the roses. I hear the rasp of cloth against twig as she moves through the bushes, the thorns pulling at her jeans and her shirt.
"Ellie!" I call after her, but she doesn't stop.
I grab my candle, but the wind blows it out. By the time I get my flashlight out and make it out onto the lawn, there's no one there. Just me and the crickets.
Maybe she isn't a ghost, I find myself thinking. Maybe she was just sitting here all along and I never noticed her until she spoke to me. That makes a lot more sense, except it doesn't feel quite right. Do ghosts even know that they're ghosts? I wonder.
I think about the way she comes and goes. Did she have enough time to get out of sight before I got through the bushes? Who else but a ghost would hang around an abandoned motel, year after year for twenty years?
I get dizzy worrying at it. I don't know what to think anymore. All it does is make my head hurt.
I decide to follow the railway tracks through the woods to the general store where Ellie says she buys her groceries. I'll use the pay phone in the parking lot to call Jim. And maybe, if they're still open, I'll ask them what they know about Ellie Carter and her motel.