A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (20 page)

Over the theater’s life it has been a number of businesses and served many purposes, so it stands to reason that in its history there may have been a period or periods that made the place privy to some nefarious activity, possibly when it was a discotheque or a jazz club. Something may have happened there years ago, and all the recent action on the grounds causes this spirit to manifest strongly. It could be that this place had some meaning in the person’s life and it returned here out of spite or whatnot. This is all conjecture, of course. I have no idea of the story on this place any further than what I have found on websites and what employees have told me. So anything past that is a guess, educated or otherwise, and usually the latter. Who knows what the Bad One really is? The real disturbing question is: what is it going to do next time?

There is that intelligent part of me that knows there really is nothing to be afraid of. These beings—if that is what they are—probably have no idea what they are doing or if they are hurting anyone. But a gun has no idea it is a killing machine. A virus has no idea it can destroy its host. A long fall is an action not a thought. Some things are just what they are, whether they are dangerous or inane. Nature has a way of finding work for everything, kind of like a temp service of this strange world we all troll through. If there is a purpose for these phenomena, maybe we just have not discovered it yet. That explains a lot, seeing as I still have no idea why mosquitoes exist. Bloodsucking, smarmy, disease spreading, larvae-laying, greedy . . . sorry. I have a lot of anger toward those gross, tiny, filthy, fucking bastards. They must think I have sugar in my blood, because they are always after my delicious ass.

I really need to look into ADD medication . . .

I made plans to take a guided tour of the supernatural “hot spots” after the gig so I could get more in depth, maybe even see something with my own eyes, whether it was a shadow or a gas bubble. I mean that could be what all the hubbub was about—electrical interference on the human body. It has been proven that when you spend too much time around faulty wiring or open outlets with improper housing, the electromagnetic waves can cause paranoia, uneasiness, and headaches. It has been known to cause hallucinations as well. So when you find yourself suddenly immersed in the effects of a bad electrical installation for an extended period of time, strange things can happen to the faculties. Something gave me the sneaking suspicion that in a building that was built in the 1920s and had also gone through god knows how many renovations, there may be a reason other than the paranormal for the things that everyone was seeing. You see, I do not just accept blindly—I question until I find the natural end of the conversation. I make up my own mind. Maybe there was something there. Maybe someone with a headache jumped at his or her own shadow.

We played the gig, and it was killer. Unfortunately, I spent half the damn time waiting for a shadow man to go streaking through the crowd, knocking over dude bros like bowling pins on a 7-10 split. I was waiting for anything: a speaker to fall, an orb in the strobe lights, a harmony from beyond the grave. . . . To my sadness, none of that happened. But then again, what the hell had I really expected? A ghost trying to stage dive? A literal Wall of Death? This is what I mean by expectations—I did not want to know anything about the schoolhouse in Farrar for this same reason. My imagination was running the show—nothing I was going to see would be righteous. I would never know if it was real or conjured from my brain.

I have to be honest: I did not know why I was acting this way. It was not like this was my first haunted venue. I had been playing places like the Eagle’s Ballroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for over a decade now, and that fucking place would give even Stone Cold Steve Austin the heebie-jeebies. I had heard stories about the Eagle’s Ballroom since I had first played there back in 1999, that it had been a gentlemen’s club for German spies back in the thirties, and the ghosts of Nazi sympathizers had been haunting the place ever since. I had also heard that it had been a makeshift children’s hospital during an influenza epidemic and that the spirits of some of the children who had not made it still moved about on the lower levels where the pool was operated. I had even seen things happen down in that pool area with my own eyes. I had played there on my solo/book tour; my dressing room had been down in the bowels of the club. On my way to stage I had passed a giant mirror that was mounted on one of the walls, and in that mirror, across the empty pool, I saw three children in nightgowns staring at me. When I whipped my head around to see where they were standing, they had vanished. Needless to say I was a little off my game that night at the gig. Most old clubs just have the usual in their dressing rooms: old posters, furniture, complimentary shitty tea or coffee, and the occasional dick drawn crudely on the walls. The Eagle’s Ballroom certainly had a little more to offer than that.

In fact, the day we played the Eagle’s Ballroom on the same tour, several little things had happened that had added up to a lot of big strong men acting like eight-year-olds. Johnny Chow had been playing his bass near a giant wooden door that was propped open with a nice sturdy wedge. I happened to be standing at the top of a set of stairs nearby. Johnny looked up at our drum tech, Stewart, to say hello, and as his back was turned, the giant door slammed shut. It did not get loose from its wedge and it was not pushed by any of us. The fucking thing slammed itself shut—against the wedge, which was still jammed at the bottom of the door—and did so loudly. It scared all kinds of fuck out of us. But that was just the start of the night’s entertainment. While the band and I were upstairs doing a meet and greet with some fans, our sound guy, Big Shirt, was down in the smoking dressing room, by himself and just chilling out. No one else was in that area. He said that out of nowhere he heard the sound of keys rustling in a door lock, vigorously. This went on for a bit until it slowly stopped. Then, in clear view, he watched as an invisible hand pulled on a tablecloth on one of the hospitality tables. It almost yanked a lava lamp onto the floor. When we walked back into the room, he was bug-eyed and white as a bleached sheet. He told us what had occurred, then left in a state of shock. I loved it—more to feed to my book, I said to myself. I was going to have to come to the Eagle’s Ballroom more often! The key here was none of that affected my gig that night in any way, shape, or form. It had not even crossed my mind while I was up on the stage, and I did not spend half the show searching for “crowd surfers” who had not paid to get in, so to speak.

So why was I so full of expectation here in Niagara Falls, New York? It might have been a plethora of things. I was on the clock hard up against a deadline. I had been promised a slew of examples that I had not experienced myself yet. I was excited and giddy about playing a show for someone who might or might not be among the living. Who knows? Maybe I was just caught up in the moment, and when you find yourself stuck in that trap, even when you get exactly what you were hoping for, it never seems to leave you satisfied. Humanity has such a propensity for need that an ocean of more can never fill its endless reservoir. At the end of the day I suppose I know more about ghosts and paranormal activity than I do about human nature . . . and that may be a sad state of affairs when one realizes it to be true.

Long story short (too late), after the show I washed my face and balls, got dressed, and realized I really did not have time for the ghost tour. The next show was in that city that never lets me sleep—New York City. I had a press list that made my eyes water in pain: I can tell you now that I did not get done with that damn press list until an hour and a half before the show, by which time I was so completely wiped out I almost had no memory of the gig itself. So knowing the next day was going to be murder on all five of my senses, I opted out of the spooky tour, thanked the security guard for making time to do so, collected my shit, and made for the bus. I had mixed feelings in my bag. Part of me was exhausted and wanted desperately to sack out in my bunk with the Investigation Discovery channel. The other part was a bit bummed out. I had been on a wave of enthusiasm all that day because it was going to make for great text, but at the end of it all I was just too shot to engage in the adventure. Was I getting too old for this shit? Hey, if Danny Glover was, I could be as well. Was I losing the mood? Did I need to start taking those tacky artificial testosterone pills I saw on every other commercial that promised a better golf game and guaranteed a threesome in the bedroom every night? That would be rich: me running around a darkened theater with a half-cocked raging boner yelling, “Fore!” Sometimes I definitely scare myself, no spirits required.

Suffice it to say, I have no big wrap-up party for the Rapids Theatre like I did for the Farrar Schoolhouse. No cake and coffee, no evidence to sift through, no bell book or candle—just a very strange day of riders on the storm, waiting patiently for the extraordinary to occur. But just when I thought all was lost, a little nugget from the grave sent me to rest with a thought that the impossible might just be possible if you stick around after the credits for an Easter egg full of continuous legends. After all the positive anxiety and expectation, this gave me a rare moment to reflect on the fact that maybe, just maybe, there was someone looking out for me. Maybe not the Coca-Cola-bleached version of what everyone perceives as the one and only higher power, but perhaps just a pinch of that endless energy I have been going on about, gently letting me know that sometimes, good things come to those who deserve them.

Loaded up with all my bus possessions, my good friend Geoffrey Elizabeth Head was leading me out of the building and toward the back of the theater where the buses were parked. Every few feet or so I stopped to say good night to everyone along the way—the guys in Papa Roach, the various crew members, the people who worked at the venue, and so forth. The exit was taking a lot longer than the entrance had, but I was smiling and hospitable. Soon we found ourselves in a shadowy part of the stairway, heading down in the direction of the main room and the doors to the outside world. One of the managers of the place graciously put down his rum and Coke and led us out, giving us a hand with our luggage. As he and Geoff walked away, I spun around to take one last look at this historical building that had just spent the night reverberating with our clamor of rock noise. The hall was silent and empty, and I could just see back behind me the stairs I had descended to get to the bottom floor. I looked up.

A shadow ran across the top of the stairs into a different part of the venue, which was closed off. It had moved with incredible speed, and if I had not been paying attention, I would have missed it. It just ran through a door into a completely separate side of the house, as if the door was open and it was totally natural to go in that direction. As quick as it happened, it was over. I stood there in half darkness overwhelmed and gob-smacked. I was all alone in a place that had just let me know I was indeed not alone. Most people at a time like this might do something understandably freakish, like shit their pants or scream like a child actor in his first orgy. These are both very reasonable reactions, and I would applaud anyone for doing so. Me? Yeah, I seem to be a little more fucked up than the average bear because I stood there silently for a full thirty seconds while a huge shit-eating grin spread across my dumb-ass face. A watched pot never boils, you can never make a toaster rush, and a ghost never shows his face until it is dressed for the occasion. In that moment I was very near to being totally sated.

I swung my backpack a little tighter on my back, threw a quiet farewell over my shoulder and flew down the fire escape into the seemingly arctic temperatures of the frozen East Coast evening. I had a chapter for the book after all. I was too happy to be shivering and too tired to give a shit about anything else. I guess the one thing to take from this chapter is perseverance. I could quote a shitty pop song right about now, like Wilson Phillips’ “Hold on for One More Day,” but you know me. I have just enough asshole in me to respect your notions to give in to a whim like that. Then again, seeing as I just did, suffer and recover, people. If you are not down with the eighties, that is not my problem. You just need to engulf yourself in more sugary junk food music, whether you were alive during that era or not.

I settled onto the bus and looked out the window, still smiling because the weather had chosen to freeze that look on my face until my muscles thawed and allowed me to unclench my jaws. With a laugh, I gave in to temptation and pushed a little appreciation out into the world with one little simple thought of joy. That thought was this: God, I love it here. I love the people, I love the resilience, I love the attitude, and I love the food. I love the generosity that bursts through just when you think it is extinct around these parts. I love the emotion and the sense that everyone around, you are all in this together. I love the fact that no matter what the hell is going on and no matter what hits this place, people get on with life. They get on with living. Whether it is out in the sticks or deep in the city that bears its namesake, whether it is summer, winter, spring, or fall, whether I deserve the charity and the warmth or not . . .

New York, my friend, you never, ever let me down.