The White Night by Desmond Doane

questions for Dakota, trying my best to remember what Ford would ask
during each episode. You would think that stuff would be carved into my memory
like Moses with a sharp chisel. Instead, for a couple of years I blocked out a
lot of those memories on purpose. Less anger that way. Rather than dwelling on
how Ford and Carla ruined everything for the rest of us, I focused on going to
the gym where I lifted heavy things and put them down, again and again. The
repetition, the effort, they were my therapy.
    Dakota tells me
that she bought the house and moved down here for a while because she had been
through an atrocious breakup that cast a fat, black cloud over every aspect of
her life. She lost interest in everything .
    In addition to the
breakup, the hustle of New York City and the crazy, suffocating energy of her crowded,
humming restaurant had become overwhelming. Any time she had tried to get
creative with new dishes they sucked donkey balls—her words exactly—and for
months they were uninspired and lackluster. A handful of bad reviews had hurt
the restaurant’s numbers and her pride. She needed out for a while, at least
until the city concrete no longer felt like quicksand.
    “I didn’t quit,”
she says, “but I handed my spatula over to my sous chef, told her the ship was
hers, and that I’d be back one of these days. I thought my investors would flip
their minds.”
    “Did they?” I ask.
    “Nope. With the
slop I’d been serving for six months, I think they were relieved. I had to get
away, so I bought this place and ran. The whole thing was sort of like my Eat
Pray Love moment. I needed a break from life, and I needed to rediscover
myself.”
    “You just didn’t
expect to do it with an angry ghost around.”
    “Not in the
slightest. Don’t real estate agents have to disclose stuff like that?”
    “If they aren’t
required to, then they damn well should be, huh?”
    “Would’ve saved me
some sleep, that’s for sure.” It’s nice to see her smile while she examines her
toes and wiggles them in the sand. There’s no polish on them, and in fact, her
feet look fairly rough. Bruised with broken blisters. I guess marathons will do
that to an otherwise perfect example of lean perfection.
    Mike, stop.
Professional courtesy, please.
    After another
short round of data-gathering questions, like when she first saw it, had it
ever taken on a human form, had there been any sort of poltergeist activity or
was it just the black mass and blah blah.
    I also ask her why
she hasn’t left yet, then take a tangential turn before I give her a chance to
answer. “That was always, always , one of the top questions from our Graveyard audience. People wanted to know why on God’s green earth some of our
clients—the people on the show—why they would continue to stay in a place that
was so unbelievably terrifying. Simple answer, though. Not enough money to
move, no family nearby. Maybe they can’t transfer jobs or just had other
obligations, you see. The easiest response is that they didn’t have a choice. You do. You’ve got the money. The freedom. So why stay?”
    Dakota points at
her house and says, “Because I wanted to beat it.”
    “Like how? By
yourself?”
    “I know it sounds
ridiculous, and dangerous, but I didn’t want to run from anything else. I was
sick of myself. I was sick of losing at life. I was a winner for so long, and
then I just wasn’t anymore. That’s a hard pill to swallow.” She looks away,
flips a broken seashell over using her big toe. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear
all that.”
    Oh, but I want
to.
    She continues,
“Honestly, when I left New York, I felt like a coward. Like I’d deserted all
the people who were counting on me in so many different ways. Does that make
sense?”
    “Of course.”
    “And then I—everybody
says to pick your battles, and after all the shit that I had been through, I
picked the wrong damn one, you know? What in the hell was I thinking? Fight