Theo is no exception. 

He’s doing his best to focus on blackjack, but his wife keeps wandering off. Dora’s not as strong as she used to be, and he needs to keep her away from the slot machines, where the light is perpetually fading and the floor slopes off to the DARK. Right now, it’s time to place his bet. He concentrates and summons a particularly nice late-summer afternoon the two of them spent by the lake not long before her illness settled in. A strawberry ice cream cone appears in his hand, and with a faint, indigo shimmer the ten of clubs flutters his way. On the next round, a queen. He waves the dealer off. This is the best hand he’s had so far. The dealer is showing a six of spades, and it takes another card. A five of hearts. It turns over its hole card. A jack. Theo avoids looking at the dealer’s face as it grabs his cone and scoops up the other players’ tokens.

He sighs and turns to commiserate with Dora, but she isn’t there. He gives up his spot at the table and goes to look for her by the slots. He can’t see very well back there, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell which of the shadowy souls illuminated in the pale moonlight glow of the machines is his wife. Eventually he finds her staring at rolls of cherries, horseshoes, diamonds, and bells. The rolls never stop spinning because she never puts in a token. She can’t; she hardly remembers a thing. Theo takes her hand and says her name. Dora. She cocks her head as if she’s heard a sound from very far away.

There are ghosts of every age and condition wandering the casino, if that’s what this place is. Some are so old they can’t stand, or speak, and if they don’t go to the DARK right away they lie huddled in dim corners until the next reshuffle. Some are so young they tumble right past the last row of slot machines unless someone scoops them up. It’s rare that anyone does; tending to the young is a task for the living. The ghosts that last more than a few hands are not too old and not too young. They know enough to know that they were short-changed. They want more from life.

Theo fits into this category, more or less.

Waiting his turn at the table, he passes time by watching the new arrivals. He admires their residual vitality but shakes his head as they lay it all on the table, car keys and love letters and pearls, rubber ducks and matchbox cars, and tray after tray of chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. Almost all of them bet too much, too soon and go down to the DARK in no time at all.

The dealers are different from the players. Theo thinks of them as ghouls. They are tall, clothed in wisps of fog and smoke, and their faces glow like moss in a forest at twilight. They don’t seem to have eyes, but they have no trouble running the table. They are also in charge of enforcing the rules, which Theo thinks of in capital letters, just like in the card game rulebooks he used to study as a kid. Theo has seen them drag more than one unlucky ghost towards the edges of this place, edges that slope downward into dusk, and it doesn’t make any difference how strong or clever those unlucky ghosts are; down they go.

There may be hope. Just once, Theo saw the ghouls usher a big winner from the blackjack table towards a spiral staircase—a feature Theo hadn’t noticed until that very moment—and gesture for him to climb. Theo never saw the big winner again, but he would really like to know where he went, and what he did when he got there.

A new ghost has arrived. She’s young, about eleven or twelve, and she orbits the space, watching the dealers, watching the players, studying every move they make. When a spot opens up at the blackjack table, she sits. There’s something different about her, though Theo can only see it in flashes. Or is it she herself that’s flickering? On and off, on and off, like a broken streetlamp.

Now she’s trying to place a bet, but she doesn’t seem to be able to. The ghosts on either side of her close their eyes and hold up their palms, one offering up a bright blue frog and the other a gleaming flute, but she remains empty-handed. She frowns, watching the other ghosts but doing her best not to look like she’s watching them. Theo has seen this before. Dora used to do the same thing when she forgot how to use a knife and fork. What does this mean? It can’t be that the girl has no memories. What is it, then? Something about her is different.

The dealer is leaning towards the new girl when she scoots back from the table and slips away. As she weaves among the ghosts, he studies the flickering quality of her movements. She’s not wispy or pale, like the ghosts. She doesn’t fit. Theo follows her away from the crowd and lays his hand on her shoulder. It’s painfully warm. And then it strikes him. He realizes why she doesn’t fit.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “You shouldn’t be here. You should go home.”

Here’s what Theo has learned about the rules of the house:

First, the living are not allowed. Everyone here is dead.

Second, this is a place for gambling. Ghosts who don’t gamble go to the DARK.

Third, memories are the only valid currency for bets, and they must be real. Fake memories fail to materialize.

Fourth, cheating is a bad idea. If you cheat, the ghouls will drag you down to the DARK.

Fifth, counting cards is considered cheating. Based on what Theo remembers about playing blackjack in regular casinos, this rule is unfair.

Sixth, loose talk at the tables is discouraged. Strongly discouraged.

The seventh rule isn’t even a real rule, because rather than creating order, it creates confusion. Most of the time play proceeds hand by hand, but occasionally there will be a reshuffle. Theo hasn’t been able to figure out what triggers a reshuffle, but when it happens a huge gong strikes from somewhere beneath the floor and sends all the ghosts to their knees, covering their ears, and a lot of them are swept away into the DARK if they can’t find something to hold onto. Memories spill to the floor willy-nilly. The ghouls converge at the table to reshuffle their decks of cards. When the resounding of the gong stops, the tables are cleared and the tokens are gone, all of them, along with a lot of the ghosts. Even if he manages to survive the tide, a ghost who’s just bet it all can lose everything in a RESHUFFLE. And after that, it won’t be long until he finds his way to the DARK.

Theo hasn’t been dead for very long. Dora died first, after a decline that spanned years of what should have been their happy retirement. But instead of traveling the world with her, trying new things and getting to know her again as he had when they were young, he’d spent those years sitting beside her on the front porch, and later, sitting at her bedside, watching and waiting as the woman he’d loved disappeared, bit by bit. He felt something like relief when she finally went. He knew she’d want him to keep on living as best he could, or at least he imagined she would. But it wasn’t any use. She’d been his life, his Dora for far too long.

It was another relief, not long after, when he misjudged the dose of his sleeping medications (or so he would have said, had he anyone left to whom he felt he needed to explain himself) and followed her down.

Some things Theo still remembers, at least for now:

1. Mrs. Poe’s cleavage, sixth grade math
2. Strawberry lip gloss of first kiss, not Mrs. Poe!
3. Two fingers of scotch on his father’s nightstand
4. Single blue line on a pregnancy test

He knows he should bet number four but it feels disloyal to his wife. He doesn’t want the other ghosts to see.

The new girl is standing beside him, flickering like a neon sign. On the other side of her is a child of no more than five, holding the new girl’s hand, though she too flinches from the new girl’s touch, as if it pains her even though she needs it. There’s a strong resemblance between the two, though the second girl doesn’t glow or flicker. She looks just like the rest of the ghosts. 

“Can I talk to you a minute?” the new girl asks.

“You’re not dead, are you?” he asks back.

“No, I’m not.”

Her name is May. The little one beside her is June, her younger sister. Unlike May, June is dead.

“I’m not going to tell you how it happened,” May says.

“That’s fine, honey. Do you want to tell me how you got here?”

May shakes her head. “I don’t know. I swam down after her as fast as I could and grabbed her hand. Now we’re here. But it’s hard to hold on; my body wants to float back up. One time I lost my grip and had to swim back and find her over there.” She gestures to the slots, near the edge of the DARK.

“Keep her away from there,” Theo says, and turns. Oh no. No no no. How could he have forgotten? He pushes past the girl and runs, stumbling past the slot machines to the steep edge where the floor slopes away. Nothing. No Dora. Gone. Gone. She’s gone.

“Darling?”

Behind him a voice. Her voice. He spins and sweeps her into his arms, savoring the smell of Dora, the feel of Dora, even though it persists mostly in his memory now. He tries to ignore the dull confusion trailing in her wake like an ill-considered perfume.

“I’m here,” he says.

But she’s growing faint. There’s not much left to embrace.

Now and then a player will hit it big and collect an armful of other players’ memories, too many to carry. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the ghouls press in around him and lift their arms—or the robes that drift from the places where their arms ought to be—and guide him towards the spiral stair, which only appears for this precise purpose. This player is a big winner. When a big winner climbs upstairs, everyone comes to watch. The big winner climbs in a circle and rises higher and higher, tokens tumbling from his grasp, while the rest of them huddle under the stair to catch a diamond, a tiny shoe, a plastic button. It’s impossible to tell how valuable a token is until you’re holding it in your hand.

No one knows what happens upstairs, but everyone wants to go. None of the big winners come back, so no one can ask what they do up there with everyone else’s memories. All the ghosts have theories, though the house rules keep them from talking about them at the table. Reincarnation, a passel of virgins, eating cake at an endless birthday party—whatever. Theo has his own idea what upstairs might be about. He imagines it like a rummage sale, weeks and months and years of life, more life, laid out on tables for the big winners to help themselves. A second chance at retirement, maybe. Just a little more life, with Dora.

It looks like there’ll be another big winner soon. Patient, methodical, she’s outlasted the other players and collected so many tokens she looks like she’s running a yard sale. The press of ghosts around the table is nauseating; whenever Theo touches one he feels like he’s being turned inside out. The soon-to-be big winner sticks on thirteen. The dealer, showing a nine of clubs and a five of hearts, pulls the nine of spades from the deck. It’s lost no matter what its hole card is. Theo catches a glimpse of May standing just out of the dealer’s reach and watching it closely, a tiny frown on her face. She’s flashing in and out of view like a filmstrip playing at the wrong speed. But before the ghoul finishes dealing itself its last card, the card that will bust its hand and send this lucky ghost upstairs, Theo feels rather than hears the strike of that awful gong rising up through the floor. Reshuffle. He covers his ears to keep it from driving him mad. He watches the ghost’s winning cards swept away along with everything she’s won, and then the ghost herself is swept away. He resists the reshuffle like a riptide, as it tries its best to pull him down to the DARK. He grabs Dora with one hand and the table with the other and holds on for as long as he can. Ghosts stumble past, never to be seen again. The air fills with scraps of yellowed paper covered in handwritten scrawl and tufts of cotton candy trailing down.

Theo tries very hard to think things through, but his mind isn’t what it once was, not without the experiences he lost betting big before he even knew how to play. Memories about school, his job, books and newspapers and journal articles he once read. They seemed unimportant at the time. But he was wrong. Those memories were who he was. They were his life. What was his job, anyway? He can’t remember. All he can think about is the big winners, the way they climb the spiral stair so eager, so hopeful, so delighted to be going upstairs. He wants to go up too, needs to go up and see those tables piled with all the memories the ghosts have lost, more memories than he could ever need.

Despite his cognitive difficulties, Theo has formulated a plan. He takes a chance on discussing it with May, the new girl who doesn’t belong. He’s got Dora by the hand—she pulls lightly against his from time to time, like a skiff tied to a dock—and May is holding her little sister on her hip, frowning and squirming. He’s convinced May to tell him what she remembers, though because May is not a ghost, her memories are wispy, insubstantial things. She doesn’t have to live on them. She still has a future. June pats her big sister’s face as May speaks. 

“She loves to swim in the lake,” May says, “but she can’t do it very well. My parents were in there with us, but I was closest to June when it happened. It wasn’t even that deep.” May pauses for a shuddering breath. “It was a hot day, and all of us were a little sleepy. But I was standing really close to her. I was almost-not-quite holding her hand when she slipped and went under. I kicked down to the bottom right away, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t find her, and I couldn’t get hold of her until…Well. Until I was here.”

“That’s a good memory,” Theo says. “It should be worth a lot.”

“It’s not any good at all,” May says. She starts to sniffle, and her voice buzzes and crackles. “I can’t use my memories like you do.” She wraps her arms tighter around her sister, who’s been whimpering and trying to get away.

Theo knows he should hold her, would hold her if he weren’t a ghost. But touching her hurts.

Instead, he explains his idea.

There’s something about the spiral stair. Theo has seen big winners struggling on them, losing their footing. Sometimes they have to grab the railing, and that’s when their precious tokens fall into the grasping hands of the ghosts below. The stairs are usually invisible, yes, to him at least, but at the same time they’re somehow solid. They aren’t of this place. Just like May.  

He knows he can’t climb the stairs without winning, but he’s willing to bet May can. The stairs are solid; she’s solid. She can go upstairs whether she wins big or not. All she has to do is wait for the right moment, when no one is paying attention. She’s hard to see, anyway. She can sneak upstairs, and then she can sneak back down, and finally he’ll have some information he can use. He’ll be one step closer to finding out how to get those lost years back. Not for him. Or, not just for him. For his Dora.

But there are no more big winners. Everyone’s luck has gone south. Every ghost who takes a hit on more than twelve goes bust. It’s the most pathetic thing Theo has ever seen.

“Why don’t I play?” May asks. “Maybe I could win. I bet I could.”

“You can’t,” Theo says. “You don’t have any tokens, and you can’t make any.”

“You could stake me,” she says, and his mouth gapes open. It’s not a good look for a ghost. “I know the rules,” she continues, “and I’ve been watching. I’ve seen the way the dealer turns a bluer shade of green when its hole card is a ten-count. Their poker faces are terrible.” Is this true? Could Theo have missed such an obvious tell?

Dora is nearby, playing jacks with June. Theo lowers his voice. “I don’t have much left. Nothing that’s worth much of anything.”

“I know what you have left,” she says.

She’s right. There is one more thing. The best memory of all. He tries a blank look, but she isn’t fooled.

“You can trust me with it,” May says. “You know I’ll come back for her.” She nods at June. Dora is teaching the little girl to play hopscotch now. She draws squares on the floor with shimmering fingertips.

Theo is seized by a sudden panic. “What do you want to go upstairs for, anyway? You’re not even dead. It’s not time for you to go. You don’t need to.”

This is stupid. It was his idea for her to go upstairs in the first place.

“I’ll find June’s body and bring it back for her,” she says immediately. “And yours too.”

He doesn’t think this is how it works, but then again, he doesn’t really know how it does work. Suddenly his rummage sale idea feels a little foolish. Maybe she’s right. She is alive, after all. She might know something he doesn’t. Maybe bodies, not memories, are what they need. For a moment he watches Dora and June playing together. They’re fading fast. Neither of them gambles, not even at the slots. Soon they’ll both be gone to the DARK.

“Dora’s too,” he says.

“Of course.”

May takes her place at the blackjack table, Theo’s wedding ring clasped in her fist. It was hard, summoning that memory and handing it over, but he did it. He stands behind May with Dora and June, the three of them holding hands. The ghoul deals.

May is magnificent. Splits pairs, doubles down, never loses a hand. It’s as if she knows the dealer’s hole card every time. Theo watches but he can’t see a change in color at all. He wants to help so he tries to count the cards, but if he ever knew how to do that he doesn’t remember now. Plus the stack the ghoul is dealing from is so tall—how many decks, ten? A dozen? It doesn’t matter. May keeps winning. She draws an admiring crowd, and Theo begins to worry. The ghouls are gathering too in a swirling storm of green and blue. Do they understand what’s happening? It’s against the rules for the living to play, or to be in this place at all, but what’s the punishment for those who disobey? There’s only one punishment Theo knows of.

But May keeps winning, her stake growing. He can still just about see his ring tucked against the motley pile of knickknacks she’s won off the ghosts. He won’t take his eyes off of it. He concentrates. He focuses on it with everything he’s got.

But now, disaster. A resounding strike wells up from the floor, and it’s all he can do to hang on to Dora and little June before the sound swallows him up. The three of them huddle on the floor, clinging to the leg of the table, Dora whimpering and June in outright sobs. It isn’t fair, Theo cries to himself, or maybe he’s shouting out loud. Not now! No one can hear. He wants to open his eyes but can’t. He knows there’s something very important going on, something he must not forget but he can’t see, can’t think, can’t do anything while that gong is sending waves of agony through every—well, through every nook and cranny of whatever it is that he’s become. Just as one strike starts to fade it’s followed by another. He loses count. He doesn’t think it’s ever going to stop.

But finally, it does.

After the reshuffle the table is clear and the casino, if that’s what this place is, uncrowded. There’s an old woman hovering next to him, clutching a five-year-old child against her body. Who is the woman? Who is the child? Who is he? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore.

He sits on the floor that slopes down past the last row of slots, dangling his legs into nothingness. A woman crouches beside him, caressing his face and crooning. It’s a nice sound; it reminds him of something that might have made him happy, once. She seems like a nice old woman, and so he smiles at her as she backs away from him and fades from view. A young child climbs into his lap.

“What’s your name, sweet girl?”

“June.” The girl laughs and tickles his chin. “June, June, June, June,” a singsong like a bird. He closes his eyes. The birdsong grows fainter and fainter. It stops.

Alone.

“It was a fake.”

“I’m sorry?”

“None of it was real.” Another girl sits beside him, cross-legged. This one looks about eleven or twelve years old, but there’s something strange about her. She doesn’t look quite right. She keeps changing shape and color; it reminds him of the pictures on the reels of the slot machines. “It was nothing but ghouls. They asked if I wanted to be one. I guess that’s the big reward for making it upstairs. You get to join the crew. But they were all so stupid. They couldn’t even see I wasn’t a ghost. What are you doing here all by yourself, anyway? Where are Dora and June?”

There is something familiar about this girl, but he can’t quite place it. Maybe he’s seen her before?

Her face falls. “Oh no,” she says. “Oh no.”

“It’s all right, honey,” he says. He tries to rest an arm around her shoulders but she’s far too warm, and the touch of her pains him. “Sorry,” he says as he pulls away.

She’s staring down into the DARK. “That’s where they are, isn’t it?”

She sounds so sad, but he doesn’t understand. The DARK doesn’t look so bad, to him. He murmurs something and hopes it’s comforting.

“The whole thing was a fake. There’s nothing any good upstairs, no old bodies or new bodies, no sweet puffy clouds or angels singing Christmas carols. They don’t even do anything with the memories, just stuff them into trash bags and haul them away. There’s no way back for any of you, Theo,” she says, and begins to cry. “June,” she whispers. Her sobs go on for a long time.

He waits for her to finish. “You don’t belong here, honey,” he says. “You should go home.”

“I will. It’s too hard to stay down here without June to hold onto—like holding my breath underwater when my body wants to float.”

“You’re very brave.”

The girl sniffles and shakes her head. “I’ll come back down as soon as I can. But before I go, I need to give something back to you. I grabbed it during the reshuffle before I climbed the stairs.”

She shows him her fist and opens it.

Theo walks down to the slots, steps over the edge, and floats into nothing. All he feels is relief. It’s good to leave this place behind.

On his finger is a ring.

In his heart, a memory.

And down in the DARK his Dora, waiting for him.

© 2023 Lindsey Godfrey Eccles