From the journals of Marvin Deitz:
BRIEF NOTES RE: SPECTER DETECTIVES OPENING CREDITS:
AESTHETIC: Grainy, jittery camera work, grit on lens. Image: A cemetery in the daylight, bright green grass. Vacillate between hot colors and subdued sepias. Closeup of a weathered stone angel, backlit by the sun.
Somber opening music—haunting—single cello or violin piece. Commission something? Casper demands guitars, says it’s the right sound “according to his guts,” but he has yet to prove himself a reliable source musically—especially if his choice of shirts is any indication. We’ll see.
VO: “Los Angeles, California. Home of Hollywood’s extravagant entertainment industry, where fortunes are made and dreams come true. But that’s not all that makes up Los Angeles. Not anymore. Ghosts—visions and specters—now haunt the city. From the tallest high-rise and most decadent mansion to the seediest back alley, these apparitions have become as commonplace as celebrity sightings. Still, so many questions remain unanswered: Who are they? Who were they in life? Why are they here?
“And most importantly, can we help them find their way home?”
Casper actually has a good voice for narration. He might have something there. It’s a rough draft—especially just focusing on the Hollywood aspect of LA—but screw it. We can work loose and tighten it up later.
• • •
The sky above the parking lot of the Tip-Top glimmered with stars. It was night, and I could hear the crickets chirruping out in the grass. I stood in the parking lot and smelled earth, warmed asphalt, Vale’s cigarette. I felt better than I had earlier. We had passed through a late-summer rain and bright pools of reflected neon pocketed the ground here and there.
Casper opened the car door for me and I put my feet on the pavement, looked toward the front window of the Tip-Top. I saw Janelle, the waitress, through the glass. And there was Casper’s brother, Gary, leaning across the counter for the sugar container, next to the line of old men.
This all seemed like a lifetime ago, the last time we were here. I could hear Vale rooting around in the trunk, and when he came around to the door with my walker, I was weeping unceremoniously, sitting in the back seat with the door open. It hurt my stitches, crying like that. He and Casper looked down at me.
“Marvin?”
I laughed and rubbed tears away with my palm. I was embarrassed. “Sorry,” I said. Vale’s cigarette flared in the dark. He crouched down and his eyes were kind, and I thought, What, a few days sober and Vale’s not a shithead all of the sudden? If he lays some pearl of wisdom on me, I’ll put his eye out, the sanctimonious prick.
But he just crouched there before me, nodding.
“It’s cool,” he said. Not having a clue what he was talking about, of course. And yet, that was when I really started blubbering.
“I just realized that I could die in there,” I said. Beyond the glass, the men in their cowboy hats sat lifting forkfuls of pie. Janelle poured more coffee for Gary, who looked out and saw us. He said something to Janelle and she turned our way and smiled.
Casper said, “The meatloaf’s bad, Marvin, but it’s not that bad.”
I laughed, a choked, strangled sound. “I just mean, I could die any second.”
“Or in twenty years,” Vale said. “Thirty. I mean, you took two bullets pretty goddamned well, dude.”
“How do you guys do this? How do you handle this not knowing? I’ve never had to do this before. I don’t remember how to.”
They looked at each other. Vale still didn’t understand the Curse, hadn’t been told, but the point remained the same, didn’t it?
How do we live with the time we’re given?
Casper looked back at me and shrugged. “It’s just life, Marvin. You just do it.”
Vale frowned. Something had changed between us after he’d seen me speak to the ghost on the side of the freeway. After he’d seen it reach toward me. The flat relief in the thing’s—the man’s—eyes. A freedom there. Grace. The grace inherent in relief.
“Marvin, you’re here now,” Vale said. He stood up, his knees popping. “The food sucks. They have severed animal heads in the bar. I don’t know if you knew that.” His cigarette sparked against the gravel and he ratcheted open my walker in front of me. “But you’re among friends, okay, and you’re still walking upright and taking solids. You’re winning. Anything beyond that is thinking too far ahead.”